Robert Gagnon debates gay activist Jayne Ozanne on Bible vs homosexuality

I am tempted to say that this is the best podcast I have ever heard on the Unbelievable show. Do anything you have to do in order to listen to this podcast.

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Prof Robert Gagnon has become a well-known voice advocating the traditional biblical view on sexuality. In a highly charged show he debates the scriptural issues on sexuality with Jayne Ozanne, the director of Accepting Evangelicals who came out as gay earlier this year.

You can listen to the debate here.

If you can only listen for 15 minutes, then start at 49 minutes in and listen from there.

The following summary is rated MUP for made-up paraphrase. Reader discretion is advised.

Summary:
Intro:

  • Speaker introductions
  • Gagnon: scholars who support gay marriage agree that the Bible doesn’t support it
  • Gagnon: scholars who support gay marriage agree Jesus taught male-female marriage
  • Ozanne: I went to the hospital because I was sick from trying to suppress my gay desires
  • Ozanne: Doctors told me that I would die if I didn’t act on my gay desires
  • Ozanne: I decided to reinterpret the Bible to fit with my gay desires
  • Ozanne: According to my new interpretation, Jesus actually supports my gay desires

Segment 1: Genesis

  • Ozanne: In Genesis the Bible says that Adam needs a woman to complete him
  • Ozanne: I reinterpret this to mean that Adam needed a “complementarian human being”
  • Ozanne: Genesis doesn’t say whether Eve was complemented by Adam in that chapter
  • Ozanne: It’s not critical that men are complemented by women, a man could complement a man
  • Ozanne: Genesis 2 doesn’t talk about children, it’s all about adult needs from a relationship
  • Gagnon: Genesis 2 has never been interpreted that way in all of history
  • Gagnon: Genesis 2 language specifically implies a human being who is opposite/different
  • Gagnon: Genesis 2 language translates to complement or counterpart
  • Gagnon: Genesis as a whole teaches that the sexuality is for male and female natures
  • Gagnon: The extraction of something from the man that is given to the woman is complementarian
  • Ozanne: I think that people can be complementary outside of male-female Genesis language
  • Ozanne: I don’t want to discuss specific words and texts and Greek meanings
  • Gagnon: the text has always been read and interpreted to support male/female complementarity
  • Gagnon: the male-female nature argument is made because the two natures are complementary
  • Ozanne: the text was interpreted by patriarchal males who treated women like property, it’s biased
  • Ozanne: what is important to me is how Christ interprets Genesis (?? how does she know that?)
  • Ozanne: I am passionate about my interpretation of Scripture which supports my gay desires
  • Gagnon: just because a person is passionate about their interpretation it doesn’t make it right
  • Gagnon: I am not arguing for the male-female view based on passion, but on scholarship, evidence and history
  • Ozanne: both sides are equally passionate about their interpretations (?? so both are equally warranted?)
  • Ozanne: the real question is why God “allowed” two different interpretations of Scripture

Segment 2: Is homosexuality a sin?

  • Gagnon: Jesus affirmed traditional sexual morality, which forbids homosexuality
  • Gagnon: Jesus teaches that marriage is male-female, and limited to two people
  • Gagnon: No one in history has interpreted the Bible to say that homosexuality was not immoral
  • Ozanne: Jesus came to bring life, and that means he supports homosexuality
  • Ozanne: I was dying, and embracing my gay desires allowed me to live, so Jesus approves of me
  • Ozanne: God says “I am who I am” and that means he approves of me doing whatever I want
  • Ozanne: There is an imperative to be who I am, and that means embracing my gay desires
  • Gagnon: Jesus argued that the twoness of the sexual bond is based on the twoness of the sexes
  • Gagnon: Jesus did not come to gratify people’s innate desires, he called people to repent of sin
  • Gagnon: Jesus did reach out to sinners but he never condoned the sins they committed
  • Gagnon: Jesus’ outreach to tax collectors collecting too much and sexual sinners is the same: STOP SINNING
  • Ozanne: I don’t think that Romans 1 is talking about homosexuality
  • Ozanne: I think it’s talking about sexual addiction, not loving, committed gay relationships
  • Ozanne: Paul was condemning pederasty in Romans 1, not loving, long-term, consensual sexual relationships between gay adults
  • Gagnon: nothing in the passage limits the condemnation to pederasty
  • Gagnon: the passage was never interpreted to be limited to pederasty in history
  • Gagnon: rabbis and church fathers knew about committed two-adult same-sex relationships, and said they were wrong
  • Gagnon: the argument for marriage is based on the broad two-nature argument, with no exceptions
  • Gagnon: the condemnation is not limited to exploitative / coercive / lustful / uncommitted relationships
  • Gagnon: even pro-gay scholars agree the passage cannot be interpreted Ozanne’s way (he names two)

Segment 3: The showdown (49:00)

  • Ozanne: I don’t care how many pages people have written on this
  • Ozanne: God says that “the wisdom of the wise I will frustrate” so you can’t use scholars, even pro-gay scholars, to argue against my passionate interpretation
  • Ozanne: I am not interested in the text or history or scholarship or even pro-gay scholars who agree with you
  • Ozanne: what decides the issue for me is my mystical feelings about God’s love which makes my sexual desires moral
  • Ozanne: you are certain that this is wrong, but your view does not “give life” to people
  • Ozanne: your scholarship and historical analysis is “a message of death” that causes teenagers to commit suicide (= you are evil and a meany, Robert)
  • Ozanne: “I pray for you and your soul” (= opposing me will land you in Hell) and “I hope that listeners will listen with their hearts” (?? instead of their minds?)
  • Ozanne: you can prove anything you want with research, even two mutually exclusive conclusions, so you shouldn’t rely on scholarship and research since it could be used to prove my view as well
  • Ozanne: instead of relying on research, you should rely on your heart and your feelings about God’s love to decide what the Bible teaches about sexual morality
  • Gagnon: you are distorting the gospel in order to make your case
  • Gagnon: attacking my “certainty” is an ad hominem attack to cover your dismissmal of the scholarship and history
  • Gagnon: you distort the gospel to make it seem like Christ just wants us to get what we want, when we want it, with who we want it with
  • Gagnon: Christ calls us to take up our cross, to lose our lives and to deny ourselves
  • Gagnon: you have a notion of what “fullness of life” is, but it’s not reflective of the gospel
  • Gagnon: Paul’s life was much more troubling than yours, mine or anyone else around here
  • Gagnon: Paul was beaten, whipped, stoned, poorly sheltered, poorly clothed, poorly fed, shipwrecked, and anxious for his churches
  • Gagnon: on your view, he should have been miserable and angry with God all the time
  • Gagnon: but instead Paul was constantly thankful and rejoicing to be able to suffer with Jesus and look forward to the resurrection
  • Gagnon: I have suffered too, but the suffering we go through never provides us with a license to violate the commandments of God
  • Ozanne: “the ultimate thing is what people feel God has called them to”
  • Ozanne: My goal right now is to tell young people that homosexuality is fine so they don’t commit suicide
  • Ozanne: the view that homosexuality is wrong is “evil and misguided”
  • Gagnon: the greater rates of harm in the gay community are intrinsic to homosexual unions, not caused by external disapproval of homosexuality

Segment 4: Concluding statements

  • Gagnon: gay male relationships on average have more sex partners and more STDs
  • Gagnon: female relationships on average have shorter-length relationships and more mental issues
  • Gagnon: the greater rates of harm are because there is no complementarity / balance in the relationships
  • Gagnon: everyone has some disappointment or suffering in their lives that hurts them, and that they are tempted to break the rules to fix, but we should not break the rules in order to be happy
  • Ozanne: both sides are passionate, so no one can be right, and evidence proves nothing
  • Ozanne: only feelings about “what God is doing” can allow us to decide what counts as sin or not
  • Ozanne: the main thing that is at stake here is to make people like us, not to decide what the Bible says about sin
  • Ozanne: my message to people is to do whatever you want, and ignore mean people who don’t affirm you
  • Ozanne: we should be more opposed to mean people who make non-Christians feel unloved than about doing what the Bible says

Should men marry women who think relationship boundaries are “emotional abuse”?

One of the reasons that I am not married today is because I tried to set spiritual and moral boundaries with women I wanted marry, but those boundaries were rejected. The purpose of the boundaries was to get the woman to be suitable for a marriage designed to serve God. In every case, the relationships ended. And this is actually becoming more common, under the influence of feminism.

Here is an article from The Federalist, written by Kylee Griswold.

She writes:

Who would have thought perpetual adolescent Jonah Hill would be good at grown-up relationships? Well, he is, judging by some apparent texts his surfer ex-girlfriend Sarah Brady shared to Instagram over the weekend — despite the out-of-control media screeching to the contrary.

[…]According to Brady and the TikTokkers, self-proclaimed therapists, media, and fellow thirst-trappers who came to her defense, Hill is a controlling narcissist and misogynist — all for the crime of allegedly asking his then-girlfriend to please put on some clothes.

So, a man told a woman that he was interested in that he proposed certain rules in the relationship, rules that would allow him to get serious, and point the relationship towards commitment (as you’ll see). But the woman, and all of her supportive allies, from the secular left to the religious right, all agreed with her that a man setting boundaries on a woman to make her safe for a marriage commitment is “emotional abuse”.

More:

Specifically, Hill laid down some boundaries for his partner:

[…]Plain and simple: If you need: Surfing with men[,] Boundaryless inappropriate friendships with men[,] to model[,] to post pictures of yourself in a bathing suit[,] to post sexual pictures[,] friendships with women who are in unstable places and from your wild recent past beyond getting a lunch or coffee or something respectful[,] I am not the right partner for you. If these things bring you to a place of happiness I support it and there will be no hard feelings. These are my boundaries for romantic partnership.

Hill’s detractors say this is “emotional abuse.” But can something really be described as “abuse” if the alleged perpetrator tells you “no hard feelings” if you’d rather walk away than agree to the terms?

Feminism has made it a lot harder for men to set boundaries that will orient women towards marriage. No matter how wise the man, and how good the advice, it must all be rejected. But the demands for men to get married to rebels remain. Especially when the feminists are hitting 35, and their friends are all getting married. They feel entitled to marriage, and how dare men tell them no? Many women today don’t want to hear a man talk about the Bible or hear a man talk about right and wrong, they just want weddings, wedding rings, vacations, and things to be fixed around the house. It would be better if men were just walking ATMs that didn’t talk at all.

More:

To protect the health and integrity of his relationship, Hill established reasonable and respectable parameters for how his girlfriend was to behave toward him through how she acted toward other men. Don’t sexualize yourself for other guys or engage in other relationship-compromising behaviors. And he made clear how he would respond if she didn’t respect those limits. I’m not the right man for you.

In my cases, my boundaries were always things that were clearly good for the women, and also good for commitment. For example, I might say “stop spending money on travel, get a private sector job in your field, and pay off your student loans”. But these conditions were rejected. Later on, when the woman reached her early 30s, I would get e-mails about wanting to get back together. But the student loans had only increased, and the resumes now had huge gaps. I can only assume that the body counts had also increased from all the “traveling”. No thanks, I said. No thank you. I can do something more productive than bail women out. I especially don’t want to bail women out who have no respect for men who know how to lead.

This behavior of calling moral and spiritual leadership “emotional abuse” and “controlling” is common – even in Christian circles – because of feminism. In general, the only acceptable male roles are “protect and provide”. Men are supposed to take on all the accountability, but with none of the authority to defend the truth, or to defend morality. On any topic. For example, if you try to tell a single woman in her late 20s about infertility, it’s “emotional abuse”. No amount of evidence can ever beat “follow your heart”. And she has legions of supporters who will shame you for trying to argue from scientific studies.

If you think I am mean, then read Kylee:

Enter feminism, which loves female autonomy and sold women lots of lies about it. Feminism said love yourself. If that means wreaking all kinds of havoc, your second “X” chromosome trumps the consequences. Unrestrained sex and unintended pregnancy? Abort the baby. Not happy in your marriage? Divorce him. Unfulfilled at home? Leave the kids with an underpaid immigrant and climb that corporate ladder. No boundaries. No bonds. No bras.

But news flash: Relationships take two. And sadly, thanks to that third-wave wrecking ball, some dating women need to be told some obvious things when it comes to romantic fidelity, even if those things have to come from their partners: Seeking the approval of other men for how you look is a bad idea. Worse, it communicates lots of bad things about your priorities and desires.

Frankly, a man who’s willing to say that tough thing is probably a man worth holding onto. Thanks in part to “toxic masculinity” messaging and the militant feminization of America, a man who shoots for commitment and faithfulness, and communicates those aims in a straightforward way while proposing an amicable split as the alternative, is a rarity.

Oh, how I love those words.

Sadly, Kylee’s view is in the minority today, thanks to feminism. And if men are not allowed to lead a relationship, then the marriage rate will continue to decline. Neither shaming of men nor blaming of men will cause men to accept marriage without leadership.

For more on this topic, I recommend this excellent article by Mark McDonald, M.D., entitled “Why American Women Are Undatable” The subtitle is “No One Wants to Play with a Porcupine”. Indeed not.

What Christopher Wray – Trump’s nominee for FBI Director – told House Republicans

If I had to pick two of the worst people who served in the Trump administration, I would pick Anthony Fauci, who locked America down and destroyed the economy, and Christopher Wray, who weaponized the FBI to punish Christians and conservatives. Well, the Republicans finally got a chance to question Wray, and this is what they found out.

First, let’s start with a list of 19 times the Democrats politicized the FBI, compiled by Tristan Justice, over at The Federalist. This is from April 2023. Here are a few of them:

  1. Infiltration of Catholic Parishes
  2. Targeting Parents for Domestic Terrorism
  3. Campaign to frame Trump for Russia collusion
  4. Covering up Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server
  5. Pressuring Twitter to censor Hunter Biden laptop scandal
  6. Pressuring Facebook to censor Hunter Biden laptop scandal
  7. Pressuring FBI employees to slow walk Hunter Biden investigation
  8. Persecuting peaceful pro-life protestors
  9. Minimizing actual terrorist attacks by left-wing terrorists
  10. Orchestrating a fake plot to kidnap Michigan governor
  11. Providing biased evidence to Rittenhouse prosecutors

So with that in mind, let’s look at what Republicans asked the director of the FBI, from another article from The Federalist.

FBI involvement in orchestrating January 6th riot:

Wray dismissed allegations of undercover FBI involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot as “ludicrous” and then refused to answer questions about the scale of the agency’s confirmed involvement.

[…]California Republican Darrell Issa immediately pressed Wray for answers on FBI operations that day wherein undercover informants wherein the Justice Department deployed “national” forces out of the FBI installation at Quantico with “shoot to kill” authority.

“How many individuals were either FBI employees or people that the FBI had made contact with, were in the January 6th entry of the Capitol and surrounding area?” Issa asked.

“I really need to be careful here [when] talking about where we have or have not used confidential human sources,” Wray said.

Pipe bombs:

Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie stepped up the pressure on Wray to give Congress answers over the agency’s effort to track down the suspected pipe bomber who left devices at both the RNC and DNC on Jan. 6.

In May, Reps. Massie and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, demanded an FBI briefing on the pipe bomb cases after a whistleblower revealed the agency identified the car used by the prime suspect but refused to track the vehicle down. Both bombs were reportedly inoperable, according to the whistleblower.

Wray sought to hide behind longstanding departmental policy not to comment on active investigations.

Massie reminded Wray that it’s been 900 days since the bombs were discovered.

Censoring social media posts critical of the Biden administration policies:

Wray defended the FBI’s relationship with the Russian-infiltrated intelligence agency in Ukraine to censor American speech. The Security Service of Ukraine, Wray said, which has been notoriously compromised by the Kremlin, is a “longstanding good partner” of the FBI.

A new interim report from the House Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government out Monday revealed the FBI colluded with the Ukrainian agency to flag social media posts to Silicon Valley tech giants for censorship.

FBI agents armed with assault rifles arrest peaceful pro-lifer in pre-dawn raid, in front of his wife and children:

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy pressed the FBI director over the agency’s armed raid and arrest of a Christian pro-life activist named Mark Houck last fall.

“I’m not going to second-guess the judgment of the career agents on the ground who made the determination,” Wray said.

“But your job is to second guess and look at what they’re doing,” Roy said.

Houck was ultimately acquitted of all charges in January.

Protecting the Biden crime family:

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz accused the FBI of engaging in double standards of justice by protecting the Biden family. According to whistleblowers within the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the FBI concealed critical records from federal tax investigators, including an unclassified FD-1023 form implicating the president and Hunter Biden in a multi-million-dollar bribery scheme with foreign actors.

Targeting parents concerned about public schools indoctrinating their kids in secular leftist propaganda:

California Republican Congressman Kevin Kiley asked Wray whether the FBI director believed the Justice Department should rescind a memo directing staff to surveil concerned parents who show up at school board meetings.

In March, House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee published an interim staff report that concluded the Biden administration had “no legitimate basis” for deploying counterterrorism resources on parents.

“It appears, from these documents and the information received previously,” the report read, “that the Administration’s actions were a political offensive meant to quell swelling discord over controversial education curricula and unpopular school board decisions.”

“Should Attorney General Garland rescind that memo?” Kiley asked.

Wray deferred the question to the attorney general.

“I think the FBI conducted itself the way it should here,” Wray said.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sure that Trump could have nominated someone better than Wray. We can do better in 2024. But we have to pick for results.