Pride Goeth Before a Fall Unless You’re Gay and it is Deemed Okay

Pride Goeth Before a Fall Unless You’re Gay and it is Deemed Okay

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD

www.virtueonline.org

June 4, 2025

The culture has approved of homosexual unions and so have most of the mainline churches and their seminaries. By all accounts there is no going back, only forward, even if the end result is the destruction of the souls of those who practice it and the churches that once preached the gospel.

No more. The die has been cast. In the case of The Episcopal Church, Resolution B012 sealed the deal for homosexual marriage. It was done in the name of inclusion, diversity and equality. The Bible was barely consulted, the texts as the late Louie Crew (the church’s leading lay homosexual) observed were never kind to gays and the “clobber passages” were recast to make homosexuality acceptable to the biblically illiterate. Basically, it was ‘never confuse the bible with absolute truth, we can never know it anyway.’

What matters is how I feel, and that God accepts me as I am and I don’t need to change. If you can’t accept that, you are the homophobe, the Pharisee, the hater; we’re in the clear. And the world agreed and so apparently have most churches. Never mind that millions of queers never materialized in the churches; they were constantly being told they were welcome, that the welcome mat was out and the big red doors were always open. The pews remained empty.

Years of being forced to listen to gays make their case, the constant drumbeat of stories of alleged hate, neglect and fear drove a ready and gullible public to accept their “story.” Feelings triumphed truth. Those with biblical, orthodox views were pushed to the margins, and out the door, even as the church ramped up its doctrine of inclusion that all are welcome.

Of course, you were only welcome if you agreed with them. If you did not, you were shown the door. Former Albany Episcopal Bishop William Love learned that lesson the hard way. More recently Charlie Holt got a rude lesson in inclusivity when he ran for Bishop of Florida. He got dumped not once but twice in his efforts to procure the top slot. He’s gone. His replacement whoever he or she is, will be full on for same-sex marriage.

But as theologian Carl Trueman observed, Gay marriage did not destroy the world as we know it. That’s because marriage had been destroyed long ago with the advent of no-fault divorce. It turned the institution into a sentimental bond, not a relationship designed for both companionship and procreation. It downgraded children, making them peripheral to any normative understanding of the marital union. And that made the necessarily sterile notion of gay marriage entirely plausible. It also reinforced the acceptability, even desirability, of IVF and surrogacy. All of these things are now normalized, and all raise very serious challenges for Christians.

And now another Pride month is upon us. “We can hope this year will continue the trend of becoming more low-key. A less pornified public square benefits us all. But if it does so, it would be premature to assume that this is unmitigated good news. It might simply indicate that so much of Pride’s ambitions have become an intuitive part of our culture and that orthodox Christian attitudes are even more outlandish than they were before,” writes Trueman.

But should we oppose Pride and all its heresy? Should we give Pride a pass because it has all been normalized?

Jim Caviezel, the Hollywood actor who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, and a committed Catholic, has become more animated in speaking out against Pride.

Every time Pride Month comes around, it becomes evermore significant that even if some believe the tide is turning on public LGBT+ solidarity, it still remains very much “in power”, and is arguably still the most significant front-line issue both within and beyond the Church, at least for now.

For Christians, this sheds further light on the wider significance of our convictions. It also offers a very live and pressing context in which to recover the importance of a more combative Christian approach to challenging ideologies which directly oppose Christian convictions, especially those which carry deeper implications. For a long time, we have not wanted to look like ungracious Pharisees, and so we have almost acted as though it is societally immaterial whether or not somebody embraces LGBT+ ideology because, either way, we all rely upon the grace of God. Whilst this is definitely the case, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23) this does not mean the toleration of all sins and all lifestyles is irrelevant, not least in its consequent effects upon wider society.

“I have spoken before of why it is especially important to challenge LGBT+ ideology within the Church rather than in society. This remains the priority for Christians. However, sometimes ideologies need to be challenged in society because our toleration of them there leads to their toleration within the Church too. There is also the case of our basic love of neighbor, and how willing we are to support ideas which will ultimately have negative effects on a great many people.”

“Well, they just started saying it out loud in front of the cameras,” said Caviezel.

Christians are going to have admit that they capitulated in the face of the pansexual steamroller and repent of their sin of cowardice. The consequence of normativity for Christian morality has been great. The churches may never recover; that is why we had a Reformation 500 years ago and why we will need another one today.

God is not mocked. The stones would cry out if we said nothing at all. But some of us are, at great cost. The cross was never a place for wimps and compromisers. It is a place for repentance and a new start. Perhaps June will be that month.

END

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