In his book, Slouching Toward Gomorrah, Robert Bork warned that the left’s efforts to create a radical vision of egalitarianism are eroding our traditional values, values that are required to sustain our Republic. The book was written more than 25 years ago, before any Christian denomination would recognize “gay” marriages.

There was one exception: the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) in Huntington Park, CA, which was founded in 1968 by a former Pentecostal pastor, Troy Perry, to be a home for LGBT people who identify as Christian.

Perry was a closeted homosexual who married a preacher’s daughter and had two sons. When it was discovered that he was having affairs with men, his wife divorced him, and his bishop forced him to resign. That’s when he started the MCC in his home, later moving to a theater. The church grew in numbers and in locations. To date, more than 200 affiliated congregations have been established around the country. In fact, there are branches in 37 countries today.

In 1970, the MCC became the first church, claiming to be Christian, to recognize and perform same-sex “marriages.” I say claiming to be Christian because, at the time, every Christian denomination considered recognizing same-sex unions to be heresy.

It was understood from the beginning, and Jesus explicitly taught, that marriage is between one man and one woman.

It was not until 2005 that the United Church of Christ was next to affirm marriage “equality” for everyone. Since that time, most of the major protestant denominations have split over the issue, creating two different groups, one side in favor and the other against. Through all the turmoil, the Roman Catholic Church has remained steadfastly opposed to accepting same-sex marriage.

At least until last week.

On December 18th, the Vatican, through the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and with the approval of the Pope, took a significant step toward accepting same-sex marriage. Sort of, but with a l0t of qualifiers. The guidance stopped just short of that but permits priests to bless same-sex relationships.

Many mainstream churches, such as the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), aren’t just blessing same-sex relationships, they are performing same-sex marriages.

Is the Catholic Church on the same trajectory?

It is hard to say how many churches now accept and perform same-sex marriages. Every Christian church in the world has experienced pressure to accept same-sex relationships and marriage.

Should we?

The real issue is not whether we accept same-sex marriage. Once we focus on that point, we’ve already accepted that same-sex attractions and relationships are somehow natural. The reason we see so many churches caving in and accepting same-sex marriage in recent years is that most churches, long ago, bought into the false claim that same-sex attractions are naturally occurring.

The culture says that people are born with that desire. It is not developed. “Love is love” has become the mantra of those with this view, despite the phrase itself being logical nonsense.

It is not just the phrase that is nonsense. The claim that some children are born with sexual attractions that fit on some kind of continuum is nonsense. How would that work?

Letters keep being added to LGBT. It started off as heterosexual and homosexual. Then it was differentiated further and became heterosexual vs. gay and lesbian. Bisexual was added. Then transgender. Now we have added queer, questioning, intersex, MAP (which means Minor Attracted Person, a combination of pedophile, hebephile, ephebophile), pansexual, non-binary, and it goes on and on. Of course, the claim today is that whatever you are at this moment can change tomorrow or this afternoon.

Sexuality is fluid, ever-changing.

Where do all these preferences fit on the continuum? What about all the fetishes? Are they sexual identities? We are now told that the number of sexual identities is infinite.

Let that sink in.

Infinite.

If you believe that these various identities are natural, wouldn’t it be appropriate for the church to try and figure out how to incorporate people of all sexual identities into the church? A person’s sexuality is a major attribute of all people. We are human beings created for relationships, including sexual relationships.

The fundamental problem is that too many churches have accepted the lie that people are born something other than male or female. Even if the biological sex of a person is not at issue, many church leaders have come to believe that it is natural for sexual attraction to involve same and/or opposite-sex activity because the brain of some has a different sexual identity than their body.

Again. That is a lie.

The most likely cause of same-sex attraction is childhood trauma—sexual exploitation, exposure to pornography, physical or emotional neglect or abuse, or some other traumatic experience. Accepting the lie that same-sex attraction is naturally occurring condemns children to a lifelong lifestyle that is unhealthy, prevents authorities from seeking out and catching the predator who may have exploited the child, and blocks therapists and researchers from discovering what might have gone wrong in the family to trigger and fuel what is an un-natural attraction.

How did so many churches and church officials come to this distorted view of sexuality?

It started long before homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1973. The Methodist Church pioneered outreach to the homosexual community, starting in 1963 when Ted McIlvenna, a Methodist minister working with the Glide Foundation in San Francisco, was assigned to call members of that community out of their unhealthy lifestyles.

Instead, McIlvenna began shaping the ministry and other church leaders to conform to his belief that every person had unique sexual desires that could not be changed. McIlvenna was an early believer that sexual identities were infinite.

To advance this position, McIlvenna founded the Council on Religion and the Homosexual (CRH) in 1964. Sixteen ministers from the Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, and United Church of Christ denominations and thirteen homosexual activist leaders began meeting. Their purpose was to develop a program to educate church leaders on homosexuality and to enlist churches around the country to encourage acceptance of homosexuality as well as to advocate that churches become allies of the homosexual community.

In 1967, McIlvenna founded the National Sex Forum, in part to help advance the goals of the CRH. He and an associate, Laird Sutton, another Methodist minister, created a 15-hour course on human sexuality. It was created for the benefit of counselors, including clergy, to help them understand the full range of human sexuality and to desensitize them to the various expressions of that sexuality. Hugh Hefner and the Playboy Foundation helped fund it.

George Leonard, in his 1983 book, The End of Sex, describes the program as follows:

“Human Sexuality #101 is based on a process that the [National Sex] Forum calls Sexual Attitude Restructuring (SAR). The basic idea is to offer a certain amount of useful sex information; to break down stereotypes and misconceptions about homosexuals, bisexuals, the aging, and the handicapped; to desensitize members of the audience so that they won’t be shocked by a wide variety of sexual behavior; and to present sex as a rich and enjoyable experience.”

By the time Leonard attended the SAR, 50,000 counselors and clergy had already gone through it. One of the features of the program was, and still is, a video that Laird Sutton had put together showing people, and occasionally animals, engaged in all manner of sexual activities, accompanied by the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. Leonard said:

“It was a technical triumph: up to seventeen simultaneous moving pictures, mostly excerpted from commercial pornography, projected over a period of forty minutes. How did we react? There was shock, laughter, sporadic arousal, and, finally, boredom. By the end . . . nothing seemed shocking.”

For fifty-five years this program has been in use. I don’t know how many more have graduated from the program since Leonard attended. But it’s a lot more than 50,000. The SAR programs are available all over the country now, and around the world.

To be an American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) certified sex educator, counselor, or therapist, you have to go through it. Clergy, too, are still attending the programs. Those who attend them are influencers in all segments of our culture. They influence teachers, writers, Hollywood producers, politicians, everyday moms and dads. Preachers and bishops.

The whole purpose of the SAR program was to erase the cultural boundaries that have been established around sexual activities, including the biblical boundaries.

McIlvenna and his collaborators succeeded. Casual sex—heterosexual and homosexual—is so accepted as the ideal that the National Sex Ed Standards recommend children of any age should be encouraged to experiment. Purity, as a value, is mocked. Sexual activity by children of any age has been declared a right.

Homosexual activity is now fully acceptable to 71% of our population, up from 40% in 2000. In 1970 it was about 30%. In the 1950’s homosexuality was viewed so unfavorably that there was little interest in even asking the question.

McIlvenna, with funding from the Methodist Church and Playboy, helped speed our cultural descent toward Gomorrah primarily by corrupting the views of church leaders, which is what he specifically set out to do.

In less than fifty years, we have gone from a culture that values purity to one that promotes promiscuity, even in our schools. Many churches have actively been involved in bringing this about. Many have been complicit by their silence. Very few have worked to identify where the rot came from and to call it out.

Very few.

Where does your church stand? Maybe we need to start calling out our preachers.