EXPLICIT: Gay marriage is too dangerous

BATON ROGUE, La. (Christian Examiner)  -- EDITOR'S NOTE: Warning this editorial contains excerpts of statements by the FDA which pointedly describe homosexual behavior.

Despite Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy's statement in 2013 that there is "no legitimate purpose" for denying gay marriage, his legal opinion in United States v. Windsor (which set off a spate of federal judicial activism that overturned 26 voter-approved state protections for traditional marriage) ignored the preponderance of research showing that same-sex relationships are just "too dangerous" to legalize.

EXTREME STD RATES

For six years, President Obama's Food and Drug Administration alerted the public about the dangers of the very behavior which defines homosexuality.

Until mid-March 2014, the FDA website warned that anal intercourse "is simply too dangerous to practice" – even when wearing condoms – "because it can cause tissue in the rectum to tear and bleed" and allow diseases to pass easily from one partner to the next.

Even now, data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention backs up this claim, revealing that men who have sex with men have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases than any other demographic group in the United States, followed by lesbian and bisexual women.

Despite composing less than one percent of the adult population, gay men are responsible for two-thirds of syphilis infections in the United States – each year for the last five years, in fact.

Likewise, three-fourths of HIV infections occur among men who have sex with men—despite nearly two decades of aggressive federal, state and local public relations campaigns to promote "safe sex" within this sexual lifestyle community.

Even gay activists describe these rates of infection as "epidemics."

Likewise, women who have sex with women also are prone to higher infection rates for STDs than women who are exclusively heterosexual – because of high-risk sexual behavior. Remarkably, one study cited by the liberal Guttmacher Institute (the research arm of Planned Parenthood, no less) even showed that lesbians had more male partners, and more bisexual male partners, in a year than either bisexual or heterosexual women. Lesbians also were three times more likely than heterosexual women to have sex with male injection-drug users, and 50 percent more likely to do so than bisexual women.

HIGH INCIDENCES OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

But concern about same-sex marriage extends beyond the consequences of unnatural sex.

Although the mainstream media portrays LGBT relationships as positive and nurturing, the home environments of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals actually are marked by high incidences of violence.

In 2013, Democrats even forced the rewriting of the Violence Against Women Act to include homosexuals. Moreover, liberals made their case by presenting disturbing findings about the high rates of violence in gay relationships.

A UCLA study published in 2012 illustrates the extent of domestic abuse within LGBT households.

Participants were asked whether they had been a victim of "intimate partner violence" either in the last year or any time since 18 years of age:

— About 52 percent of bisexual women had experienced IPV during their lifetimes (the highest rate in the study), although it was almost always by the male partner. Lesbians, as well as women who have sex with women but deny being LGB, tied for the second highest rate of violence – with about 32 percent of both groups suffering hurt from an intimate female partner at least once after reaching 18 years of age. Only 22 percent of heterosexual women reported being beaten or threatened by a male partner during adulthood – a figure that is alarming but still the lowest among the comparison groups.

— In the one year before the study, only 5 percent of heterosexual women experienced battering or threats from their significant other. By comparison, 10 percent of lesbians experienced harm from another woman, 22 percent of women who have sex with women but claim they are not LGB were hurt by a female intimate, and, 27.5 percent of bisexual women were targets of abuse (but, again mostly by a male partner).

— Almost 27 percent of gay men reported being "hit, slapped, pushed, kicked" or forced to have sex by a male partner during adulthood compared with 11.4 percent of heterosexual men who said they were "hit, slapped, pushed, kicked" by a female. About 20 percent of bisexual men were beaten up by a male intimate partner, and the same was true for nearly 17 percent of men who have sex with men but deny being LGB.

— During the year prior, gay men were 2.6 times more likely to get attacked by their male partners than heterosexual men were to be mistreated by their female partners (4.64 percent). About 9 percent of bisexual men and nearly the same number of men who have sex with men but reject being labeled LGB reported being attacked by a male partner.

At least as far back as the Clinton Administration, the FBI has released yearly data showing that the perpetrators of most of the violence against lesbians and gays are their respective lesbian and gay partners.

UNHEALTHY FOR CHILDREN

Finally, serious scholars have debunked the propaganda by gay rights activists "that there is no difference" between gay parenting and parenting by a married mother and father.

Indeed, a study published in the July 2012 volume of Social Science Research found that the research cited by homosexual advocates was typified by a "lack of high quality data" and that this deficiency "leaves the most significant questions unaddressed and unanswered."

Dr. Loren Marks, an associate professor of sociology at Louisiana State University, said that these studies typically were small and also biased in choosing which subjects to include – favoring white, upper-middle-class lesbian couples as research subjects instead of randomly sampling the general population to get a truly representative group. Moreover, instead of assessing "hard data" outcomes for children such as school grades, employment rates, poverty, criminality, substance abuse and suicide, these studies tended to examine parenting's influence on such variables as children's gender-role behaviors, emotional functioning and comfort with their sexual identities.

In other words, the cited studies were fluff.

What we do know is that robust research has shown children raised by a mother and father in a family that regularly attends worship services are less likely to drop out of school and more likely to achieve good grades as well as avoid risky behaviors (like pre-marital sex, underage drinking and illegal drug use).

Meanwhile, a number of now-grown children of gay parents are testifying in federal court that kids need both a mother and a father.

Indeed, one said that activist courts and advocacy groups are using children as pawns in order to secure marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

"This is truly human trafficking: manipulating children into existence to satisfy the desires of adults," said Katy Faust, who was raised by her biological mother and lesbian partner since age 10 – when her parents divorced.

"With the redefinition of marriage, we are not simply allowing people to form relationships of their choosing," she said. "They have been doing so for decades."

"Now we are normalizing a family structure where a child will always be deprived daily of one gender influence and the relationship with at least one natural parent. Our cultural narrative becomes one that, in essence, tells children that they have no right to the natural family structure or their biological parents, but that children simply exist for the satisfaction of adult desires," she testified.

JUST TOO DANGEROUS

In the end, the greatest danger of legalizing gay marriage is the spiritual insolence and outright biblical disobedience such a decision would chisel into our national identity.

God's model for marriage transcends sexual intimacy, and instead represents a spiritual relationship of trust, fidelity and commitment that He seeks from us:

Ephesians 5: 31 "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." 32 This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Ignoring His design would further decimate the role of marriage and family in our society, and not only accelerate our slide into cultural decline, but also our fall as a nation toward a spiritual abyss.

Gay marriage is just too dangerous.

--Will Hall is editor of the Baptist Message, the official newsjournal for Louisiana Baptists. This column first appeared online here.