Last week, Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality hosted Oklahoma pastor James Taylor (no, not the musician) to discuss a summit they attended about health care and the LGBT community. They were upset about a pamphlet handed out at the conference which compared the Old Testament’s prohibition of homosexuality to its rules against eating certain foods, both of which are categorized as “abominations” in Leviticus.
Taylor said that thanks to “refrigeration” it is no longer a sin to eat foods like pork or shellfish, while since there is no equivalent to refrigeration for homosexuality, it remains a sin. He claimed the people who are really trying to “pick and choose” biblical principles are gay-affirming Christians.
LaBarbera: The first thing on the pink sheet says, it takes Leviticus 18:22, ‘You shall not lie with a male as with a woman, it is an abomination,’ Leviticus 20:13, ‘If a man lies with a man as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination and they should be put to death.’ The analysis put forth by this Kathy McCallie of the Church of the Open Arms said that ‘these verses are part of a law code listing this that are forbidden, however, according to Leviticus it is also sinful to eat pork, shrimp, clams or oysters, these texts cannot be used to condemn homosexual behavior unless one is prepared to condemn all these behaviors.’ So they are trying to mix that in, comment on that James.
Taylor: There’s a couple problems with that. Some things are cultural and there are also some things that have happened now in terms of refrigeration and health concerns and those are some of those things that are there. But the reality is it doesn’t change the fact that God has said a man shall not lie with a male like a woman and vice versa and he uses the word abomination, which is the strongest word in the Bible for hate that you can come across. So that’s the problem, they want to pick and choose what they want to have and then to dismiss it as this isn’t what the Bible says, it’s foolishness.
LaBarbera also criticized the conference for engaging in smoking and drug abuse prevention work while also “promoting homosexuality and even gender confusion.”
LaBarbera: How ironic that a conference that’s supposed to be about substance abuse actually promoted a behavior which leads to disease.
Taylor: It promoted criminal behavior and they were given false information about the reliability of condoms.
LaBarbera: I was walking around at that conference and I remember a table, I took a picture of it, with a bunch of pamphlets about smoking. It’s just bizarre to see them all concerned about preventing smoking because that’s dangerous and yet they are promoting homosexuality and even gender confusion, promoting these awful sex changes where the body is mutilated to become something you cannot be, the other sex.
Taylor said that gays and lesbians should expect to face “resistance” over their “choice” to “live that lifestyle,” while LaBarbera commended “ex-gays” like DL Foster for showing that homosexuality is “changeable.”
Taylor: If you want to be that type of—live that lifestyle, that’s your choice. If you are going to swim upstream, you better expect there to be some resistance. If you are going against what is the norm per se, there’s going to be some type of resistance.
LaBarbera: I just find it fascinating and I know it makes homosexual activists nervous because, and a lot of them will say ‘no it’s not really analogous,’ but the underlying assumption is that we have something to be ashamed of and we don’t. Homosexual behavior is wrong, it’s changeable, we know that, there are many people, people like DL Foster, now here’s a black man who can never change his skin color but the changed his homosexual behavior.
