By Craig Ziemba / guest columnist
President Obama’s Presidential Proclamation of June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride month should be read and discussed by all thoughtful Americans. Before this nation ditches heterosexuality as the healthy norm, however, perhaps we should consider where Obama’s attempts to include marriage, adoption rights, and military service to the LGBT community will lead.
A quick glance back through history reveals that cultures accepting homosexuality (Sodom, Ancient Greece, Nero’s Rome) were not in a state not of moral progression, but decline.
Morality is ultimately based on something other than Hollywood trends, political platforms, or personal opinion. For those of us with a Judeo Christian belief system, it’s based on Scriptures which clearly prohibit homosexuality. Modern theologians who ignore or reject this basis for morality fancy themselves more enlightened on this issue than Abraham, Moses, the Apostle Paul, St. Augustine, and Billy Graham. But I’ve yet to hear convincing logic from anyone refuting the clear teaching of the Bible.
Scripture aside, however, the very laws of nature teach us that President Obama’s promise “ensuring adoption rights” to LGBT couples is unnatural and wrong. It takes a man and a woman to have a child, and no proclamation or legislation will ever make it right to force innocent children to grow up in a homosexual atmosphere. If God (or Nature if you prefer an atheistic paradigm) has denied procreation to homosexual couples, what gives man the right to overrule natural law?
Questions like this deserve to be heard, but in today's political climate, unfortunately the large percentage of Americans who feel the same are usually shouted down by those who value freedom of expression only when it’s theirs. I confess that speaking out about controversial topics like this is always uncomfortable, and even more so when traditional viewpoints are termed discriminatory or prejudiced.
Nonetheless, my constitutionally protected right to practice my religion (evangelical Christianity) compels me to hold heterosexuality as the norm. And my right of free speech allows me to publicly express my sincerely held beliefs without being stifled by charges of hate speech. I doubt I’ll convince the hard Left to abandon its planned normalization of homosexuality. But I do hope to convince those on both sides of the issue that preserving the rights of conservatives to dissent from the President’s position is an absolute necessity.
The hallmark of democracy is open debate, and the day we are afraid to exercise these freedoms is the day we no longer live in a free country. Censorship from the Left is every bit as damaging to freedom as censorship from the Right.
The words in this column aren’t hate speech. I don’t hate anyone; I pity LGBTs as I would anyone caught in a destructive addiction. But I will neither celebrate nor accept their lifestyle as normal. And if fathers, pastors, and leaders throughout society refused to bow to these emasculated high priests of political correctness, Washington may finally get the message that we here in the heartland are not about to embrace vice as virtue.
Craig Ziemba is a pilot who lives in Meridian. To have Craig speak at your event, contact him at craigziemba@aol.com.
