Rights are not necessarily right. In "jurisprudence and law, a right is the legal or moral entitlement to do or refrain from doing something or to obtain or refrain from obtaining an action, thing or recognition in civil society" (online source). The operative expression here is "the legal or moral entitlement." Who is the ultimate authority on this entitlement-government, the people, the church, human rights?
The term "entitlement" entails permission to act in a certain way. Who gives man the authority to determine what is moral or immoral but the "really real" Himself, the only source of truth, God the Creator. Rights, therefore, cannot be "truly" right unless they are based on truth already established by the "ultimate truth maker."
Indeed, the real root of "right" or "rights" is found in truth. Every honest student of law would agree that the ultimate goal of law is to prevent the violation of "'rights" that are right or that conform to truth. Law cannot be used to protect so-called "rights" that are wrong or false.
For example, if a man decides that it is his right to break open somebody's house and steal because he is poor, should that right be protected by law? Or if a man thinks it is his right to lie sexually with a child or a beast, must those rights also be protected by law? Why not? Because they are clearly wrong; we all accept that based on our conscience sensitised by objective truth. Yet there are those who believe it is their right to do such things-clear violations.
What makes homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality or transsexual behaviour superior to the foregoing misdemeanours? Judge for yourself. The Bible says that God created them male (Hebrew zakar = sharp male organ [the donor of seed]) and female (Hebrew nekevah = pierced, womb or opening [the receiver, incubator, developer and nurturer of seed])-Gen 1:27-for the main purpose of procreation.
The position of Bible-believing Christians on homosexuality is very clear. The argument from sexual orientation as a justification for same-sex marriage is a red herring being linked to a false premise that sex is merely psychological and emotional and not rooted in purposeful physical and physiological design by the Creator.
The question of equality between heterosexual and homosexual marriages, therefore, regardless of what international human rights bodies think, or what the President of the US believes, must be examined in light of the foregoing. Truth must first be ontological (rooted in the Ultimate Being, "what is") before it is epistemological (what one believes).
Otherwise truth would be merely subjective and not "truly true." Objective truth, therefore, is the flagship for right and wrong, not how one feels. "Every creed and race find an equal place" is not meant to be an unqualified equality, and cannot mean that one has the right to do whatever one pleases, regardless of its moral and ethical repercussions. So on what grounds does a civil government consider okaying same-sex marriage?
How could same-sex union (a subjective and deliberate rebellion against divinely initiated anatomic design) be on the same level as heterosexual unions (for which the human anatomy is legitimately fashioned)? So-called and ill-defined "human rights" is not authorised to change this. We believe that in a true civil and moral society, no human being has the right to violate God's creative order, design and purpose, and then call for equality under the law. The law is certainly not a fool.
Finally, in the New Testament book of Romans, Chapter 1:18-28, God clearly reveals that human beings professing to be wise became fools: "For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the women, burned in their lust for one another, men with men, committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due" (vv 26-27).
Thus we are opposed to same-sex marriage, holding that homosexuality is wrong; and adhere to the biblical definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman, as originally intended by God, the Creator.
Dr J Vernon Duncan
D'Abadie
• Apostle Duncan is the senior pastor of the Divine Encounter Fellowship Ministries International
