There's much controversy nowadays about verse 22, which prohibits homosexual behaviour. Many nations around the world are working hard to promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle choice and are redefining how we understand the words, "couple" and "family." Laws are being passed that permit homosexual marriage and that fight for the rights of same-sex couples to adopt children or have IVF treatment. Even Disney Channel has begun to portray same sex couples as an alternative model of a happy and "normal" family.
The reality, if you speak to children who were raised with same-sex parents, is somewhat less rosy: much as they may have loved their "two mums" or "two dads," they often speak with disappointment of what they missed out on by not having a Dad, or not having a Mum in their lives.
Transgender choices are the buzz word of today, and people risk legal action if they dare to voice the opinion that homosexuality is not a desirable lifestyle choice. Laws are in place to protect homosexuals from discrimination, but it seems that no laws are in place to protect the freedom of speech of anyone who happens to believe in Leviticus 18 verse 22.
What's sometimes forgotten amidst the furore is that homosexuality is only one in a list of many possible "alternative" behaviour choices in this chapter. Is championing homosexual relations as "normal" simply a first step in opening the door to the other behaviours in the list - things like having sex with your father, or your granddaughter, or with an animal? Today's Christians are often accused of intolerance if they dare to express the opinion that it's not acceptable for someone to be in a sexual relationship with a person of the same gender. Will future generations be accused of intolerance if they dare to express the opinion that having sex with your dog or cat is not an acceptable lifestyle choice?
Perhaps that last question was shocking and distasteful to you. And yet anyone over the age of forty today has seen in their own lifetime how opening the door to just one area of compromise will quickly lead to that door being wide open to many and greater compromises. Towards the end of the 1990s, I was once present in a youth group where a guest speaker showed a photograph of a woman in a bikini and asked the teenagers what they thought about it. There was much laughter in the group and some of the young people described the woman and the swimsuit as "demure" and "old fashioned." Imagine their shock when the speaker told them that the photo was a picture from a Playboy magazine of early 1954. What was considered pornography in the 1950s was perceived to be rather "reserved" in comparison to the fashions and the advertising of the twentieth century.
Leviticus 18 is considered outdated by many people today. But we ignore at our peril the dangers and consequences of recklessly opening doors that can probably never be closed again.
