Affinity Policy Statement HOMOSEXUALITY

Physical attraction and sexual intercourse are gifts from God to be received gratefully and enjoyed in His common grace. By His created order and explicit revealed purpose for all cultures at all times, marriage between a man and a woman is the only proper context for sexual relationships. Any failure to meet those standards is sin.

As a result of the fall, the human race is subject to disorder. This is the source of any parenting failures which might harm a child’s normal sexual development and it is equally the source of any congenital variations from God’s ideal which might, in a tiny minority of cases, affect sexual preference. One impact of the fall on the individual is to pervert the sex drive from God’s ideal and to promote rebellion against His standards.

The human body was designed for heterosexual intercourse and procreation. In that sense, homosexual conditioning is a feature of fallen humanity and is neither natural nor inherently innocent. For the individual, however, an awareness of such an ‘orientation’ is not in itself any more culpable than the growing awareness of their heterosexual drive by the majority of people. Both have to be acknowledged, controlled and used only within God’s permitted order. Those aware of this orientation are no more free to indulge it merely for their own pleasure than the heterosexual is free to disregard God’s ideal within marriage. To do so is to make an idol of bodily satisfaction. There is not one example of the Bible approving homosexual acts.

Such Christian convictions should not be parodied as homo-‘phobia’, since those pursing an active homosexual life-style are no more to be feared than fornicators or adulterers. Even if some of them hate all who differ from them, we too are fallen sinners and God’s grace is able to pardon, change and perfect in holiness all who call upon the name of Jesus. The love of Jesus must be open to all, irrespective of background, although churches in our culture have not been good at balancing this open friendship with firm biblical standards.

Public policy positions

  1. We repudiate as a contradiction in terms the presumption that a group of people can be ‘Lesbian and Gay’ and at the same time a ‘Christian Movement’.
  2. We reject the claims of homosexual lobbyists that they represent a persecuted minority to be equated with those of a different race. If they do suffer victimisation then they deserve the same protection of the law as any other citizen but no more.
  3. We oppose the lowering of the age of consent to 16 years. There is no clear parallel with heterosexuals as girls reach puberty earlier than boys, some of whom are vulnerable to initiation into a homosexual life-style.
  4. We oppose the repeal of section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, believing that neither schools nor any public body should be funded to promote homosexuality as equally valid with heterosexual marriage.
  5. We similarly oppose the treatment of a homosexual partner as equal in law to a married spouse. This would confer social acceptability on what God has forbidden.
  6. We are convinced that churches and Christian organisations should not be compelled by legislation to act against their principles in the employment of those who cannot sustain their moral distinctives.
  7. We support those teachers calling for the adverse health implications of homosexual acts to be included not only in moral but in health education programmes in secondary schools.