I really appreciate you being here, and we
have a very important topic to talk about.
This is a terrific conference addressing the, I
think, most critical area of social challenge, moral
challenge, and religious witness challenge in our culture.
That is the challenge, the attack on the
family and how it affects what it means
to be Christians and our witness as Christians.
And I would like you to listen, obviously,
very closely to what I say.
Now, it's a bit of a challenge for
this way.
Now, this conference is made up of a
number of different kinds of presentations, both the
plenary sessions and the workshops.
And some of them are presented more on
the popular presentation, and others are challenging more
intellectually.
And I certainly think this is interesting.
I will present it as interestingly as I
can, but it is probing very deeply at
an issue that couldn't be more relevant.
So please stay with me and listen.
It will probably take about 40, 45 minutes
to get through, and then we'll have plenty
of time for some dialogue and interaction.
And I really would appreciate your response.
There are some copies of the paper there
on the back table that you can have.
My apologies.
I've done some editing on the flight in
this morning, and so what I'm going to
give you will have some variation if you're
reading along.
Maybe it would be better just to listen.
But think with me, if you will, on
the subject of eternally fixed sexual being for
an age of plastic sexuality.
Now, the idea of plastic sexuality might be
easy enough to understand.
Obviously, for Christians this would be something very
foreign.
The idea that who we are as sexual
beings, our sexual identities, are things that, you
know, something that is malleable, something that can
be changed and shaped, something under our own
control.
It can be anything we want to be.
That idea, plastic sexuality, in contrast to the
idea that who we are as sexual beings
is something fixed, in fact, so fixed that
it is intended by God and planned by
God to last eternally.
So the abstract, the basic idea of what
we're going to spend this next hour and
a half talking about is this.
That plastic sexuality is the idea that sexual
identity has no fixed meaning.
So anyone can shape their own sexual identity
any way they might happen to choose, and
by rejecting fixed sexual identity this view now
sweeping our universities denies any possible basis for
affirming gender roles.
Christians must prepare to resist such thinking by
clarifying biblical evidence for the doctrine that human
sexual identity is, in fact, eternal.
Now, Christians have always believed that the meaning
of human sexual identity involves something more than
biological reproduction.
Even outside the church, few have disputed the
idea that who we are as sexual beings
involves something more than physical form.
Yet when we start looking at what this
something more might be, our ability to agree
breaks down rather rapidly, usually because we find
there are different opinions on whether or to
what degree sexual identity is fundamental to actually
being human.
This will be clear after asking a few
simple questions.
Just think about them with me for a
minute, if you would.
Is sexual identity something basic to humanity itself,
or is it simply peripheral?
Do sexual differences matter even at the most
fundamental level of human existence, or is sexual
being ultimately irrelevant at the core of human
identity?
Does basic human identity lie beyond whatever differences
divide men from women and women from men,
or is the division between male and female
humanity essential to who we are, essential to
who we are as human beings?
Put in theological terms, the issue has to
do with whether differences in sexual identity will
characterize human existence eternally, or will they someday
come to an end?
Will sexual being remain when we are raised
to a state of sinless immortality at the
return of Christ, or is it going to
pass away along with pain, suffering, and death
when the present order is replaced by a
new heaven and a new earth?
Have you thought about that before?
Have you thought about the implications?
After commenting on the relevance of an opposing
way of thinking now arising in contemporary Western
culture, I'm going to present arguments to support
why I believe Scripture teaches there is an
eternal dimension to the difference that distinguishes male
from female human beings.
These arguments will also serve to explain why
I think this particular biblical doctrine is pivotal
for Christians right now as we battle the
culture over the meaning of male versus female
gender identity and the morality of gender-based
roles in relationships between men and women.
First of all, a look at the contemporary
relevance of something called plastic sexuality.
Today, the essential or fixed nature of human
sexual identity is under fire, mainly because it
stands directly opposed to the social and moral
deconstructionism that underlies hard-line feminism and homosexual
militancy.
The essentialist view of human sexual identity is
the view associated with traditional Christian morality.
It refers to thinking there is some objective
reality that establishes a fixed, unchangeable meaning to
the difference between men and women.
It involves the conviction that while men and
women share a common humanity, there is something
fundamental about human sexual identity that is not
the same when men as men relate to
women as women or as compared to women
as women.
And not only is this difference real, it
also is terribly important because it is rooted
in nature or in creation or in the
will of God.
That's the essentialist view.
But in recent years, a growing number of
social scientists have started promoting a very different
view concerning human sexual identity.
This view, sometimes referred to as the constructionist
view, is based on the idea that human
sexual identity is something conditioned entirely by the
social and cultural history of a people and
by personal choice.
Constructionists claim that there are no fixed features
that define or restrict who we are as
sexual beings, and so of course there can
be no moral boundaries that depend on thinking
sexual differences are actually real.
Constructionist scholars now writing for academic journals and
books are promoting the idea that human sexuality
is plastic, by which they mean individuals are
free to shape their sexual identities any way
they choose.
As described by Adrian Thatcher, plastic sexuality is
the idea that human sexuality is something malleable,
something, quote, able to adjust to changing circumstances,
that a person's sexual identity is something in
his or her control.
Thus social scientist Milton Diamond says a person
can, quote, develop and express his or her
potential in any direction, on all levels of
sexuality, without attaching a negative value to any
variation just because it's different.
To give a few more examples, Andrea Dworkin
in her book, Woman-Hating, argues that the
categories man and woman are in fact, quote,
fictions, caricatures, or cultural constructs, which are, quote,
demeaning to the female and a dead end
for male and female both.
John Stoltenberg in his book, Refusing to Be
a Man, even says the physical biological differences
we think distinguish male from female and female
from male are in fact culturally determined.
And Anthony Giddens in his book, The Transformation
of Intimacy, claims, to quote him, Sexuality today
has been discovered, opened up, and made accessible
through the development of varying lifestyles.
It is something each of us has or
cultivates, no longer a natural condition which an
individual accepts as a preordained state of affairs.
Somehow, in a way, that has to be
investigated, sexuality functions as a malleable feature of
self, a prime connecting point between body, self
-identity, and social norms.
Now, logically, such thinking naturally requires that one
reject fixed gender roles.
In fact, the logic of plastic sexuality mandates
deconstruction of all normative standards, be they moral,
cultural, or even biological, that depend on thinking
that differences between male and female are actually
real.
Of course, whatever sexual ethic comes from such
thinking has to wreak havoc with all efforts
aimed at generating or maintaining deeply human relationships
between men as men and women as women.
Any ethic based on the idea of plastic
sexuality must naturally despise the notion of complementary
difference and sexual union, and it must ridicule
evidence that good might result from cooperation between
fixed differences and sexual identity.
This means the idea of plastic sexuality, in
the end, destroys the social and moral foundations
upon which the institution of marriage depends.
So proponents of plastic sexuality actually praise the
demise of traditional marriage as if it were
some kind of moral goal.
Instead, what they seek is realization of an
ironic notion of sexual equality.
The notion is ironic because while motivated by
desire to improve human sexual relationships in the
name of equality, their goal, if realized, actually
dehumanizes human sexuality by reducing sexual identity to
distinctionless monolithic sameness incapable of sustaining any meaningful
relationship.
Ultimately, the sort of moral thinking that arises
from a plastic notion of human sexual identity
must be characterized by intentional self-conscious rebellion
against God.
Why?
Because any moral perspective set on denying the
reality of meaningful difference between men and women
has to result in an ethic that disdains
the will and work of the Creator.
Yet even as the non-essentialist plastic view
of human sexuality grows more popular in the
culture, ability to justify the position must always
remain weak.
No anthropology that rejects the essential nature of
human sexuality can explain the mystifying depth involved
in relationships where men as men relate to
women as women.
Nor can it explain the persistent power for
both good or evil generated by interaction between
the sexes, a power that very obviously persists
even where biological reproduction is completely out of
the picture.
Universal human experience is inclined another way, and
common experience alone should warn Christians that perhaps
we ought to examine more closely what the
culture is now so busy rejecting.
Although many in our churches are today drifting
with the culture beguiled by the silent song
of teachers now promoting the sort of sexual
equality that is produced by erasing sexual distinctions,
faithful Christians must resist such thinking by examining
biblical and rational reasons that sustain the meaning
of difference in human sexual identity.
Moving on to a discussion of the importance
of distinguishing being and function.
Before looking at the evidence of scripture directly,
we must set the stage with a bit
of philosophical discussion.
What I have in mind is something the
language and thinking of the Bible presumes, but
that we must make explicit in order to
avoid confusing influences arising from our culture.
So before looking at what the Bible says
about the permanent nature of sexual being, we
first need to look at the importance of
distinguishing between the concept of sexual being per
se and the functions of men and women
as sexual beings.
If we fail to see this distinction, we
can easily misread scripture and might fail to
appreciate how consistent the Bible is in all
it says about norms that govern the way
men and women relate to one another.
Any serious examination of the essential nature of
human sexual identity has to start by assuming
that we can distinguish conceptually between sexual being
per se and sexual functions that relate to
specific sexual identity.
It starts by understanding that there is a
conceptual difference between our existence as sexual beings
and our acting on the basis of either
one of two specific sexual identities, either male
or female.
Indeed, one way to understand the basic division
that separates complementarians, Christians who teach the Bible
require respect for gender roles, from egalitarians, Christians
who deny there is any legitimate basis for
gender roles, is that egalitarians follow the culture
in refusing to distinguish between sexual being and
sexual function, while complementarians oppose the culture by
insisting they are different.
On this matter, egalitarians, indeed, egalitarians on this
matter, side with the thinking of contemporary social
scientists not promoting plastic sexuality, while complementarians do
not.
By the quote-unquote being of human sexual
existence, we refer to men and women insofar
as both sexes are centers of transcendent worth,
are creatures uniquely privileged by the image of
God, are moral beings each of whom is
responsible for his or her own actions, and
are, in the language of Immanuel Kant, persons
with the dignity of being ends in themselves
and never just means to an end.
And by functions in connection with human sexuality,
we refer to men and women insofar as
each acts in ways shaped by his or
her specific gender identity, and is assigned responsibilities
in relations with other sexual beings that are
specific to their gender identity.
Sexual functions affect matters that go beyond the
sexual being of mere individuals.
They are what define human sexuality to the
degree that it involves interaction and relationship between
persons in ways defined by specific gender identity.
These interactive functions, or relationships, shape the meaning
of human sexuality in the context of community.
And they concern the meaning of human sexuality
as it has to do with productive capacities,
assignments, achievements, and goals, what the Bible calls
being united and being fruitful.
Because human sexual existence involves both being and
function, and any way of understanding human sexuality
that focuses exclusively on one and not the
other, any way that fails to adequately distinguish
one from the other, or that reduces the
meaning of the whole to one at the
expense of the other, must always be deficient
to the degree it fails to involve both.
And failure to accept both in complete harmony
risks something more than mere deficiency.
It also invites perversion, not just because someone
might dislike the results, but because it tends
to dehumanize human relationships.
On the one hand, ways of understanding human
sexuality that emphasize function over being lead to
the perversion of slavery.
Slavery is abhorrently perverted precisely because a person's
inherent worth as a human being is denied,
and he or she is valued only in
reference to function.
On the other hand, understanding human sexuality in
a way that focuses on sexual being, while
ignoring or denying the importance of functional differences,
leaves relational aspects of human sexual existence, fruitfulness
and union, shallow, barren, and eventually inoperative.
As a result, failing to distinguish between sexual
being and function, and focusing on one at
the expense of the other, can only lead
human sexual relationships into social, moral, and spiritual
confusion.
If nothing defines functional differences between male and
female, then relationships involving gender identity are perverted
and quickly become a struggle for power.
While distinguishing between sexual being and sexual function
helps us to guard against slavery and relational
confusion, it also removes potential objections to the
essentialist view of human sexuality.
If we can distinguish being from function, then
there is nothing at all inconsistent with thinking
that sexual being may endure while functions may
change.
Sexual being can be something fixed, even if
some specific sexual function ceases, for example, the
functions of marriage and procreation, and others might
be modified, perhaps the function of headship.
So now let's go on to biblical evidence
for the doctrine that sexual being is in
fact eternally fixed.
Having set the stage by clarifying the difference
between sexual being and sexual function, something the
Bible just assumes when it presents the equality
of men and women that goes right on
discussing gender roles without any sense of contradiction,
we now will consider direct evidence in the
biblical record that lends very strong support to
the essentialist view.
Specifically, we're going to find that the gender
identity aspect of sexual being, the identity of
men as men and women as women, is
something so profound, so very important to God,
it is going to last throughout all eternity.
And if God says the gender identity aspect
of human sexual being is eternal, then it
cannot be something culturally relative or plastic.
Instead, it must be something very real that
must, of course, remain fixed throughout life on
earth.
Looking at what the Bible teaches about human
sexual identity and whether it will cease or
not is not an entirely new question.
At least we should not think we are
the first Christians to examine scripture for answers.
Augustine in the 4th century studied the question
and he concluded from the Bible that both
men and women will keep their sex-specific
gender identities beyond the resurrection and into eternity.
In his case, Augustine was responding to some
who were saying women would cease to be
women after the resurrection.
To quote him, there are some, he said,
who think that in the resurrection all will
be men and that women will lose their
sex.
For my part, I think that those who
believe that there will be two sexes in
the resurrection are more sensible.
End of Augustine.
How did Augustine reach this conclusion?
Using Augustine's work for a guide and expanding
upon his initial efforts, I will now lay
out and explain four biblically sound theological reasons
for asserting that God in the Bible clearly
gives us an essentialist view of human sexuality.
Two of these reasons come from the record
of creation and two come from the promise
of bodily resurrection and future eternal life in
an embodied state.
First, in the record of creation, we understand
that when God created Adam and Eve, he
created embodied spirits.
God did not first create non-material beings
and then in a second separate act place
them into material bodies.
Rather, each was created whole in a single
act of creation.
Thus, the being of each is presented as
something we might call materialized spirit.
In other words, the creation record teaches that
men and women are beings who exist spiritually
and physically at the same time.
Quote, God formed the man from the dust
of the ground and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life and the man became
a living being.
Genesis 2.7 Also, quote, the Lord God
made a woman from the rib He had
taken out of the man and he brought
her to the man.
Genesis 2.22 Not only is human existence
spiritual, it also requires embodiment in order to
be whole.
So if embodiment includes sexual identity and if
embodiment is essential to being human, then sexual
identity must be essential to human existence.
Put another way, it is only logical to
assume that because God in creation made sexual
identity essential to embody human life, then absent
specific revelation to the contrary, we must assume
that sexual identity will always remain essential to
embodied human existence.
Second, the Bible supports an essentialist view of
human sexuality because when God created Adam and
Eve, he demonstrated the fact that human sexual
identity has absolutely nothing to do with sin.
Of course, what we now experience of human
sexuality certainly is affected by sinful human nature.
But human sexual identity has as such never
actually depended on being sinful.
Indeed, Augustine saw that since Adam and Eve
were sexual beings before the fall, we have
to conclude that sinful sexual desire does not
have any necessary connection with what it means
to be a sexual being.
And because human sexuality existed without sin before
the fall, we have no moral reason to
think that anything having to do with sexual
being will be left behind when God judges
and does away with all moral corruption and
death produced by the fall, and when the
entire created order, including human beings, is finally
released from the curse imposed because of human
sin.
Third, the essentialist view of human sexuality is
presumed in the biblical hope of bodily resurrection
because there is a promise of restorative
and not just a reconstructive
purpose promised in bodily resurrection.
In the resurrection we will experience a continuity
of being and personal identity that links the
new with what was old.
We are told that we will be changed,
but it is we who shall be changed.
The subject remains the subject.
At the resurrection, quote, the perishable must clothe
itself with the imperishable and the mortal with
immortality.
1 Corinthians 15.52.53 But here again,
there will be those same beings who once
were mortal who will at that time will
clothe themselves with immortality.
And since we know there will be continuity
of personal identity, and because sexuality has always
been part of that identity, Augustine says he
then who created both sexes will restore both.
Now what Augustine saw was that because human
sexuality existed before the coming of mortality, Genesis
2.17, and the fall, Genesis 2.25,
we know sexual being is not incompatible with
human life in a state of sinless perfection.
But that is not all.
We also know from the record of creation
that human sexual identity not only is sinless,
it also is created for the purpose of
achieving something good.
In other words, it makes possible the achievement
of some specific good that can be achieved
no other way, not even in the relationship
between human beings and God.
When God created the sexes and separate acts,
he focused attention on some good thing that
can be achieved only because human life is
sexually differentiated.
Quote, the Lord God said, it is not
good for man to be alone.
I will make a helper suitable for him,
Genesis 2.18. In this statement, God revealed
that human sexuality not only is a good
thing in itself, it is also for something
good.
It realizes some good thing that does not
exist apart from a relationship that consists of
unifying the sort of corresponding differences involved in
human sexual identity.
This point adds support to the principle we
noted earlier that absent specific revelation, to the
contrary, we should assume that human sexual identity
is eternal.
If God says human sexual identity is necessary
to realize something he declares good, and if
he reveals no reason to think any good
thing will be left behind, then surely the
resurrection must include the specific sort of good
for which God says complementary differences in human
sexual identity are intended.
Of course, human sexuality might rise to some
higher level of significance and completion, but it
would not be logical to think that it
could ever be less.
It may be enhanced, but it can never
become worth less.
The argument that God's promise of bodily resurrection
presumes the essential nature of human sexual identity
has additional scriptural validation in the record of
those who recognize Jesus after his resurrection, and
a special revelation of a direct link between
present sexual activity and the bodies we look
forward to having after the resurrection.
Following Jesus' resurrection, the disciples recognized the same
male human being they knew and loved before
their crucifixion.
Peter boldly declared that, quote, God has raised
this Jesus, in other words, the very same
man, to life, and we are all witnesses
of the fact, Acts 2.32. And after
his resurrection, angels also testified to his continuing
male identity when they said, quote, this same
Jesus who has been taken from you into
heaven will come back in the same way
you have seen him go into heaven, Acts
1.11. These accounts suggest that all who
saw...
These accounts rather strongly suggest that all who
saw the resurrected Jesus after his resurrection assumed
that he remained a male human being.
But this evidence from eyewitness accounts is indirect,
and we have direct evidence that is even
stronger in the writing of Paul.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6.13-15,
the body is not meant for sexual immorality
but for the Lord, and the Lord for
the body.
By his power, God raised the Lord from
the dead, and he will raise us also.
Do you not know that your bodies are
members of Christ himself?
Shall I then take the members of Christ
and unite them with a prostitute?
Of course not, or never.
Here, by divine inspiration, Paul links sexual sin
involving the bodies we have now with the
moral purity that must characterize the physical bodies
we will have after the resurrection.
The logical connection Paul makes between our pre
- and post-resurrected bodies makes no sense
unless human sexual identity continues to characterize human
embodiment on through the resurrection.
Fourth and last, the essentialist view of human
sexuality is expressed in the way Jesus answered
a group of Sadducees who did not believe
in a physical resurrection and who thought they
could stump Jesus with a question about seven
brothers who were each married to the same
woman, one after the other.
That's given in Matthew 22, 23-32.
Whose wife would she be after the resurrection?
If human sexuality is limited just to this
life, then Jesus would only have had to
explain that their question was irrelevant.
If sexual identity ceases after the resurrection, then
the question is irrelevant because marriage and any
other sort of relationship involving sexual identity will
simply be impossible.
But Jesus didn't respond that way.
Instead of saying that marriage relationships would become
irrelevant, he only said marriages would cease.
In fact, the form of his response actually
underscores the continuing relevance of human sexual identity
per se.
The form of the reply given by Jesus
is the same as though he had said
there'll be no more toll booths in heaven.
That sort of answer would affirm the continuing
presence of roads while denying the use of
toll booths.
In similar fashion, what Jesus told the Sadducees
affirms the continuity of human sexual identity while
denying the practice of marriage as a human
institution.
Augustine, who was arguing against some who thought
female sexual identity might cease, said, quote, Jesus
even affirmed that the sex, i.e., female
human sexual identity, should exist by saying they
shall not be given in marriage, which can
only apply to females.
Neither shall they marry, which applies only to
males.
There shall, therefore, i.e., after resurrection, be
those who are in this world accustomed to
marry and being given in marriage.
Only they shall there make no such marriages.
Final section talking about plastic sexuality now and
the egalitarian position building of what we have
just considered.
We have considered a new way of thinking
that's now emerging in our culture that promotes
the idea that human sexual identity is not
fixed but is instead malleable or plastic.
I, in turn, have argued that Christians must
prepare to resist such thinking by studying reasons
in the Bible for believing that human sexual
identity is something so deeply profound and important
to God it will last through eternity and
if it is eternal, then it certainly cannot
be culturally relative or plastic.
I have also noted how the idea of
plastic sexuality reconfigures sexual ethics and is especially
opposed to gender roles.
And in doing this, I have also pointed
out how egalitarians and the advocates of plastic
sexuality share a common view of equality one
that fails to distinguish between sexual being and
sexual functions.
As we close, I will add some comments
about similarities I see and about which I
think we should all be deeply concerned between
egalitarian teaching in the Church on the one
hand and the promotion of plastic sexuality in
the culture on the other.
In view of a biblical doctrine concerning the
eternally fixed nature of human sexual identity promotion
of plastic sexuality amounts to a wager that
erases sexual boundaries at the cost of real
significance and meaning.
It promises freedom from moral limitations at the
price of perpetual shallowness.
And although Christian egalitarians continue to proclaim faith
in the authority of Scripture and although they
have never been so extreme as those who
openly espouse plastic sexuality the egalitarian position takes
on this same wager.
Egalitarians also sacrifice the meaning of sexual difference
for the sake of monolithic sameness.
The idea of plastic sexuality with its ethical
ramifications is really the inevitable result of humanistic
thinking when thinking about sexual identity is cut
off from objectively defined boundaries as to function
or purpose.
If the meaning and definition of human sexual
identity is intentionally severed from any fixed reference
and is subject only to arbitrary personal choice
we should not be surprised when advocates claim
that human sexuality is arbitrary.
Ironically, the idea of plastic sexuality involves a
profound commitment to thinking there can be nothing
profound about sexual identity.
Plastic sexuality is sex without fixed purpose which
means it is also sex without moral limits
other than the one requirement that every moral
standard be deconstructed or rejected.
Christian egalitarians still say that human sexuality has
purpose but they so reconstruct what they say
of its purpose the idea of sexual difference
is made completely irrelevant.
For example, egalitarian Stanley Grenz writes that, quote,
the basic purpose of our existence as sexual
creatures is related to the dynamic of bonding
and he claims the main problem for which
E was created to be a solution was
Adam's, quote, unquote, solitude.
But relational bonding and human companionship or friendship
do not require the reality of sexual difference.
Defined this way, human sexuality can fulfill its
purpose whether sexual difference is present or not.
Thus for egalitarians, sexual difference is marginalized to
the point of meaninglessness.
And so, in this way, egalitarians end up
arguing for a position not so very different
from that taken by the advocates of plastic
sexuality.
Whether it is social scientists advocating plastic sexuality
or Christian theologians defending egalitarianism both are beguiled
by a vision of sexual equality, quote, unquote
that has no place for meaningful distinctions within
human sexual identity.
Both pursue a vision of equality that rejects
the concept of complementary equality.
Neither allows a sort of equality that has
room for corresponding sexual differences that do not
compromise the equal value of sexual being.
Both insist on an idea of equality that
focuses exclusively on monolithic sameness.
But if gender differences within human sexual identity
really do not matter if in fact what
we think are differences are actually just transitory,
cultural, or perhaps even unreal then the idea
of difference based on separate sexual gender identities
can sustain no real moral value either.
Then the idea that gender based sexual differences
sustain or define any sort of normative behavior
have to be rejected and perhaps even vilified.
So, it turns out, a way of thinking
that leads egalitarians to reject gender roles is
the same process of thought used by advocates
of plastic sexuality to deny there is anything
normative to heterosexual marriage.
Defense for or opposition to convictions about the
reality of enduring meaningful difference in human sexual
identity is one so profound it can define
and sustain normative moral relations between men as
men and women as women.
This lies at the center of a colossal
social, ethical, and ultimately religious struggle now straining
American life and culture.
If the idea of fixed permanent differences in
human sexual identity is ultimately unreal then the
God of the Bible is a deceiver and
the perpetrator of enormous evil.
But, if sexual differences are fixed and real
then the God of Scripture is true and
teachers in the church must stand their ground
against the cultural tide no matter what the
cost.
Scripture cannot be interpreted to accommodate plastic sexuality
and there is no place for plastic sexuality
in the teaching of the church.
Thank you.
All right.
I appreciate your listening.
We have some time now for discussion and
questions.
Phil, how much time exactly do we have?
Twenty minutes.
Okay.
I hope I can come out from behind
the lectern and respond a bit more informally
to you.
Do you have any comments yourself or any
questions?
Please, if you would, state your name when
you do so.
Well, the point is that obviously we are
men and women.
Whatever gender identity we are we are as
fully human as each other.
And I have written elsewhere and Bruce Ware
is giving a presentation right now in the
room next door on male and female image
of God.
And he would argue and I would argue
that men and women, that gender difference is
irrelevant to the degree to which we bear
the image of God.
That we bear the image of God fully
and equally and not just equally in the
sense of equal value but equally in the
sense of the same way.
That's where I would argue.
That we bear the image of God the
same way and completely and fully.
Irrelevant or irrespective of whether we're male or
female.
But that what I'm distinguishing between being and
that's a matter of being.
But distinguishing being and function that the gender
identity is something that is essentially related.
Essentially connected.
That is, you cease to be human human
beings as God has created you if you
cease to be a sexual being.
And you cease to have your specific gender
identity either as male or female.
That there is no such category as being
human and not being either male or female.
Okay?
I don't want to go into the animal
life thing because there are certainly forms of
animals and so forth that there isn't sexual
distinction or they switch back and forth and
all that sort of stuff.
But I'd like to stay on the biblical
ground.
And I do think human life is unique.
Yes?
Is it a strategy question you're asking or
a process question?
Yeah.
Very good question.
First of all, let me just challenge the
premise that it is a feminist culture.
Now, obviously, well, first of all, feminism isn't
a monolithic thing.
There are many different ideas that sort of
get, and everybody isn't buying everything.
But neither is Washington or the culture are
completely overrun with the full ramifications of feminism.
So there are going to be, I think
the challenge would be whatever the context with
whom you might be relating to sort of
identify where they are.
Certainly there are, just in terms of public
life, in the introduction, Tim Berry just mentioned
the issue of women in combat.
The great majority of people in Washington, political
people or folks that might be on staff
or whatever, but I think probably the vast
majority of people in America and in other
walks of life, I think still view that
as, this is radical.
This is something, there's something different about women
that ought not to be erased, and they
were crossing some sort of a line here.
It is the last bastion of public life
that is, for which the government, you know,
managing the affairs and directing and disciplining and
defining relationships and so forth, standards of behavior,
that is specifically a government responsibility, that military
life is sort of the last bastion of
what we call traditional moral values.
And it's precisely because of that that the
feminists can't leave it alone.
That's why they're attacking it right now.
And tremendous things are at stake if that
is lost and I think ground is being
lost, but it's also the easiest to defend
and argue against.
We just need people with backbone who are
willing to stand up and argue.
Because it really, most women don't really want
to be drafted, you know, be treated as
though their sexual identity is completely irrelevant, so
they ought to be subject to a draft,
taken away from their family responsibilities, deployed worldwide
on a moment's notice, and so forth like
this, which is what you're supposed to be
in the military, if you're in the military
profession.
They want to be able to choose it,
but they don't want to be able to
be forced to go in voluntarily, which is
what you would do and so forth.
So they'd like to view it as a
job, but they don't want to view it
as a matter of personal sacrifice.
And of course, anyone who understands the military
culture, its effectiveness, unit cohesion, military discipline, depends
very much on building very intense loyalties with
the other people in your unit.
Bonding, in that sense, which is a fraternal,
type of fraternal love.
Men usually, you know, men in combat die
for their buddies.
They don't really die for their country.
It's too abstract.
They don't want to let their buddies down.
They don't, you know, who are counting on
them.
And so that's, you know, that's what ends
up being the most basic thing that keeps
units together from fracturing and splitting up.
If you start putting sexual tensions into that
mix, it destroys it.
You create jealousies, you create rivalries, you create,
you know, you avoid, you know, you have
intimacy is possible between, you know, where there's
no sexual interest involved, possible in a way
that builds fraternal love.
But you start creating, you know, sexual interest
and all of a sudden you've got to
keep your distance.
You've got to create a private space and
so forth.
That interferes with the kind of, with trust
relationship.
And suddenly somebody's unique and somebody else is
not and so forth like this.
It destroys the most basic foundation of building
effective military combat game.
And everybody knows this who's in the military.
You can't pretend that sexual differences don't matter,
just have strong rules.
It doesn't work.
If you try to make it work, it's
foolish.
Well, business environments are going to be a
bit different and so forth.
Another, I think another way that we have
into the culture is exactly what this conference
is about and it's family life.
You know, even the ones who sort of
try to have these egalitarian marriages where, you
know, sexual difference doesn't matter don't really live
that way.
You know, somebody's got to make the decisions.
Somebody's got to be finally responsible.
Somebody's got to give direction or the two
are going to stay together.
Well, the idea that it's the way you're
born, it's fixed, it's innate and so forth
is really a rhetorical ploy.
If you talk to the homosexual advocates, that's
not real.
That's just to persuade the heterosexual public to
come their way.
What they really want is free choice no
matter what it is.
And to, you know, this is the next
step beyond that.
And they'll admit it if you get them
in a private moment, the leaders.
It's just a way to get the laws
changed so they can go the next step
beyond that.
I mean, you had in the 1990, was
it 1995, 1996, March on Washington, 1995 March
on Washington, you know, when Clinton was first
elected that you had groups marching down Pennsylvania
Avenue chanting recruit, recruit, recruit.
Does that make any sense?
If it's innate and it's not a choice?
How can you recruit if it's something you
can't help and it's no choice?
They know it's not about innate.
For them, it removes the moral barriers.
I get to choose and make up whatever
I want.
Any new light?
There never has been any light on it,
I don't think.
There's a lot of effort to confuse it.
There is a huge body of scientific evidence
that is not being focused on by the
media and being ignored in the public statements
even of a lot of scientists who are
being intimidated by the homosexual agenda that is
on the side of understanding homosexuality as pathological
and deviant.
That it is by and large an acquired
condition.
Sometimes that might be a matter of your
own personal responsibility.
It might be because of abuse and other
sorts of things.
It doesn't necessarily mean that the person who
is struggling with that is completely responsible
for the position that they're in.
What they do about it, certainly, is their
responsibility.
But, for instance, there is all sorts of
evidence that shows that the rate or incidence
of homosexuality varies tremendously, very significantly, according to
education, according to religion, according to culture.
That's impossible if you're dealing with biologically fixed
features.
Race, education, these things would be, let's take
race.
This is biologically fixed.
It doesn't matter what your culture or what
your education or what your religion is.
It's not going to change your race.
It's an irrelevant category.
But with the incidence of homosexuality, it's something
that varies hugely with these things, which would
say that it's primarily a matter of conditioned
behavior.
Primarily.
Well, it's very much a part of the
homosexual agenda.
It's part of the feminist agenda, too.
And what I'm pointing out here is that
it's at the core, it's at the center
of what the egalitarians deny.
I mean, there's a direct connection here.
Denying the sexual difference has any true meaning.
In the name of a sort of equality
that is monolithic sameness and no place for
difference, sexual difference in the back.
Well, you probably best talk with a medical
expert in that field because certainly there are
biological abnormalities and so forth like that.
But usually it's primarily, I don't know, in
all cases, it's usually primarily one thing or
the other.
And what you want to do is try
to define it as best you could in
a corrective way so that it's definitely one
or the other.
Now, possibly someone could make a mistake.
But those cases are very, very rare and
it's never wise to make general moral norms
on very rare circumstances which are obviously exceptional.
Exceptions are by definition not the norm.
Yeah.
Their response, well, their agenda is to dismiss
those as either reinterpret, reconstruct them, redefine them
and to do so in a way that
says that those things are conditioned.
They aren't naturally that way.
It's the culture that teaches girls to play
with dolls and the boys to play with
guns and that sort of thing.
They say even the physical differences are just
really not real.
I'm not going to defend them.
But it's so radical to the point that
they even want to try to deny that
physical differences aren't real.
Now, we have about, actually, I might want
to watch about eight minutes more.
Let me just make a comment here.
We might have time for one more question
after that.
But coming back to the difference between egalitarians
and complementarians, those who teach in the church
and study the Bible, interpret the Bible, those
who, like Stanley Grintz, who is an egalitarian,
argue that there are no gender roles in
the Bible, and those who are complementarians argue
that there are.
What has impressed me and concerns me very
deeply and really is the reason for this
particular presentation is that egalitarians will not admit
any place for meaningful sexual difference.
It's not to say, well, under these circumstances,
but nowhere.
It's that the difference doesn't matter anywhere.
Just give me a little ground.
It doesn't matter anywhere at all?
No, it doesn't matter anywhere at all.
Well, in that case, what are you saying?
It really destroys marriage.
In the name of sort of, this is
sort of resultant, better marriages, because they argue
that if you believe that men should be
the head of the house and these things,
that that turns people into bullies and they're
nasty and they start beating their wives.
And so you've got to be egalitarian in
order to have a good marriage.
That's just foolishness.
Not yet, but I'd be happy to put
it on there.
They're probably going to ask me that as
soon as we finish.
Right, David?
Okay.
All right.
Well, thank you very much.
Oh, one more.
Yeah.
The basic reality, the reality doesn't, they want
to redefine reality.
And so they're very interested in artificial semination.
They're really excited about the idea of cloning.
It would make sex irrelevant and that would
just help them get rid of, you know,
sex-based gender roles.
That'd be wonderful.
See, look, we can, yeah.
It would just be recreational, that's it, yeah.
And however you do it, and you can,
you know, reshape it, whatever.