Chickens Coming Home To Roost

Recently in an editorial in the USA Today, columnist Steve Kluger wrote, People Like Foley are Gays' Worst Nightmare. He was making reference to the recent disclosure of former US Congressman Mark Foley's escapades and pursuit of young male congressional interns. Apparently Kluger and others are seething over how poorly Foley's actions reflect upon the broader gay and lesbian population. Admittedly, the vast majority of gays and lesbians in America are not pedaphiles or predators. However, it would be wrong to not make any connection between the fundamentally deviant behavior of homosexuality in general, and the uber-deviance of homosexual pedophilia in particular. And yet the connection must not stop there. The rise of Foley is nothing more than the manifestation of the ungodly sexuality that permeates our society. Foley's is the story of the Desperate House Member. And yet his story is undeniably connected to, and indeed a natural out growth of, our society's infatuation with Desperate House Wives.

Once you leave the natural, healthy grounds of heterosexual relationships between a married man and woman, the slope upon which you find yourself is not just slippery, but it is inevitably deadly. Foley is not only the gay communities worst nightmare, he is the worst nightmare of a sexually promiscuous society. He is another vivid demonstration of how the human species never has and never will be able to govern its own passions apart from the gracious and loving commands of God. Foley, and those like him, are nothing more than the chickens of unabashed, unconstrained, God-defying heterosexual and homosexual behavior, that so permeates our society, coming home to roost. The chickens are already out of the pen. Our society has let them out. Therefore, it should not surprise us when they come back to roost.

Sadly, this is lost on some within the predominantly black church (I use the word "church" loosely because such talk could not biblically represent the true Church of Christ). Apparently, Rev. Horace Griffin, an Anglican priest, has written a book Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in Black Churches. According to Griffin, "The black church's teaching that homosexuality is immoral has created a crisis for lesbian and gay Christians in black churches. This black-church-sanctioned homophobia produces a lot of twisted black people."

Today, Thabiti Anyabwile at Pure Church has more on Griffin's unfortunate and even pitiful understanding of truth.