Why The Church Should Not Accept The LGBTQ+ Agenda
A goal (one among many) of the church is to provide the most Biblical and moral view of sexual behavior and identity that it can. Because we love God and His Word we always desire to be guided by the precepts of Scripture. (Matthew 22:37-40, 2 Timothy 3:16-17)
The best place to begin the discussion is asking about what the Bible has to say about heterosexual relationships. Study reveals that God has ordained the marriage relationship between man and woman. It was the means by which procreation took place and it was the basis of the family. Heterosexual marriage is a pattern established by God. (Genesis 1:26-27, 5:1-2, Ephesians 5:21-33)
Men and women were to marry to procreate and avoid sexual immorality but they could choose to remain celibate. There was not a third option. Marriage or celibacy are the only Biblical choices. (1 Corinthians 7:1-9). This marriage of two people (a male and female) bonds them in a special way and they become one flesh. (Mathew 19:4-6)
While it is true that we are all broken and that we all sin, we are encouraged to forsake sin and to live a holy life honoring God. (Romans 3:23, Ephesians 5:3)
Homosexual behavior, like the heterosexual sins of fornication and adultery is sinful. This is true in both the Old and New Testament. While some heterosexual behavior is sinful and other heterosexual behavior is not, homosexual behavior is always sinful. The Bible speaks about homosexuality in several verses and it is always condemned. Since the beginning of the “sexual revolution” a number of scholars and writers have claimed that the Bible nowhere condemns homosexuality that takes place in a loving and committed relationship. They claim that the Bible’s condemnation is related either to pederasty or a power imbalance likely related to economic inequality. These writers are theologically liberal. Their exegesis is poor and their arguments are acknowledged by most or many as flawed. Both Natural Law and the Divine Command Theory support the idea that homosexuality (and transgenderism) is aberrant and morally wrong. The verses speak for themselves (Genesis 19:4-11, Jude 7, Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, Judges 19:22, Romans 1:21-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:8-10).
In addition to the Scriptures a number of Early Church Fathers condemned homosexuality (Athenagoras of Athens (2nd Century), Tertullian (160-225), Eusebius of Caesarea (260-341), Saint Jerome (340-420), Saint John Chrysostom (347-407), Saint Augustine (354-430), Saint Gregory the Great (540-604), Saint Peter Damian (1007-1072), Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), Saint Bernardine of Siena (1380-1444), Saint Peter Canisius (1521-1597)).[1]
What can we learn from this? It is certainly clear that the Old Testament, the New Testament and the early church found homosexuality to be an abomination. It was an offense to God’s holiness. How should that truth affect our understanding of the church in 2019 as the culture undergoes a moral tsunami?
The church is always God’s church and God is unchanging. The church must affirm the teachings of Scripture. When developing doctrine and policy the church must first look to Scripture for guidance. There may be areas of Scripture that legitimately lend themselves to more than one interpretation, however, the issue of sexuality is not one of them. The Scriptures and the history of the church are clear. The only appropriate place for sexual acts to occur is between a male and a female and within the bond of a marriage relationship. Biblically, the only recognized Biblical marriage is between one male and one female. Fornication, adultery, homosexuality and transgenderism fall outside of acceptable sexual behaviors. Unfortunately, the one who controls language controls the culture. I contend that even though society and culture recognize homosexual marriage it is something other than biblical marriage.
Individuals who practice sexual sin or who advocate for sexual sin should not occupy positions of influence within the church. They should not pastor, teach, lead worship, or perform any ministry function.
Individuals who experience same sex attraction but who remain celibate should be free to worship and minister in the church without restriction. Likewise, those who have some form of gender dysphoria should be free to worship and minister in the church as long as they are not acting out their dysphoria or advocating for LGBTQ causes.
All individuals who are homosexual, trans, bisexual, asexual or suffering from a gender disorder should be welcomed by the church. The church should not engage in discriminatory behavior. It should be welcoming though not affirming. The church and church members should engage and love those who suffer with sexual issues.
The church cannot affirm homosexuality because it is Biblically declared to be a sin. Transgenderism is also a denial of God’s creation. God created us male and female. Denial of our given sex is an affront to God. A person who claims to feel like the opposite sex is speaking irrationally. He or she has never been the opposite sex and cannot know how that would feel. Additionally, no amount of hormone therapy and no amount of surgery will ever change an individual into the opposite sex. They are still an individual with the DNA of their birth sex, masquerading as the opposite sex. Often transitioning fails to remedy the psychological burden felt by people who consider themselves trans. If, in an effort to be compassionate, we affirm someone’s “adopted sex”, we partake in a game of “let’s pretend.” This might be possible (though not necessarily loving) if there was only the occasional confused individual. However, with the political agenda demanding that individuals and institutions conform to guidelines concerning pronouns, bathroom use, sports etc. it becomes evident that any concessions granted out of supposed compassion will ultimately be used to further the cause of sowing a continuing sexual revolution. This sexual revolution is still gaining traction. In the words of the Bachman-Turner Overdrive Band, “You Ain’t Seen Nothin Yet.” There are moral issues rising on multiple fronts. Children are being hypersexualized. There are Drag Queen children’s hours at libraries, children stripping in gay strip clubs and arguments about the age of consent. School systems seek to expose children gay parenting and gender issues as early as kindergarten. Polyandry is being floated as normal with “throuples” (committed relationships of three) suggested as a way to improve life. All of these efforts are contrary to what the church understands to be God’s will.
As a result of this conflict in values, the society we live in views the church in a negative light. At best it sees the church as antiquated and rigid, at worst it sees the church as hateful or bigoted. Erick Erickson and Bill Blankschaen make the case that the LGBTQ movement is determined to make Evangelicals care very much about sexual issues. In their book, You Will Be Made to Care: The War on Faith Family and Your Freedom to Believe, they document the cost of standing in the way of societal orthodoxy. Today it is impossible to be neutral. We are faced with a choice. We are being pressured to adopt societal values. If we do, some or many will look more favorably on the church as a compassionate, inclusive organization. However, if we choose to be faithful to our Biblical beliefs many will see the church as less socially desirable. There is no question that the churches position on LBGTQ issues will make evangelism and outreach more difficult in a WOKE world.
This topic has played out in the UCC, (United Churches of Christ) the PCUSA (Presbyterian Church USA), ECLA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), and the Episcopal Church, all of which have supported gay marriage and the ordination of homosexual pastors. The Methodist Church is currently struggling but has resisted the pressure to change their book of order because of pressure outside the United States. Accompanying or preceding the ascendency of the modern sexual agenda is a decided move towards liberalism. Both the UCC and the PCUSA have parties that see little need for a Christ that died on a cross nor would they see Christ as necessary for salvation. I cannot speak to the ECLA or the Episcopal Church as I am not personally familiar with them but I suspect it is likely true of them as well.
1.) I urge this committee to reject any overtures to change the Confession of Faith regarding marriage.
6.17 “Marriage is between a man and a woman for the mutual benefit of each, their children, and society. While marriage is subject to the appropriate civil law, it is primarily a covenant relationship under God. As such, it symbolizes the relationship of Jesus Christ and the church, and is that human relationship in which love and trust are best known.”
2.) I urge this committee to recommend that an addition be made to section six that no person engaging in sexual sin or who is engaged in LGBTQ advocacy be eligible for ministry. I would encourage that the same stipulation be made for those who wish to be elders.
3.) I urge the committee recognize and note that just as there are two sexes, there are also two genders and these align with the birth sex. To fail to do so disregards both science and history. Males may behave in a masculine or feminine manner but they are male. Females may behave in a feminine or masculine manner but they are female. No amount of counseling, drugs or surgery is ever going to change a male to a female or a female to a male. That is simply factually true. The committee should recognize transgenderism as a psychological state that will not be successfully resolved through either drugs or surgery. People should find their identity in Christ, not in being bi-gendered, pan-gendered or asexual etc.
4.) I urge the committee to recommend that the CPC condemns the sexual abuses of our culture and encourage every church not only to honor Biblical values, but to act as advocates for those who are being hurt and exploited by our overly sexualized culture. The church should proclaim the truth and set captives free. Early Christianity stood squarely against the sexual abuses of their culture. We should do the same.
5.) The committee is already aware of this, but it needs to be restated. A denominational decision to support gay marriage and/or the ordination of gay ministers will have a significant impact on the church. It is very likely that all of the foreign CPC churches will leave the denomination and I am sure that a number of US churches would also leave. Personally, neither my wife nor I would be able to remain in the CPC if it disregards scripture at such a critical juncture. And because the more conservative members would leave, there would be an inevitable move to the left theologically and deeper apostasy. We view the possible destruction of such a unique and important denomination as a tragedy.
Appendix 1
Biographical Information
Lee and Leslie Attema are ordained ministers in Trinity Presbytery. Currently they reside in Unitedville Belize. Both serve as associate pastors at the Living Word Bible Church and are helping to bring the church into the CPC. Lee and Leslie both hold Master of Divinity and Doctorate of Ministry degrees as well as degrees outside the field of ministry. Lee is a nurse practitioner working in Belize.
Appendix 2
Scripture verses cited above
Matthew 22:37-40
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[c] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a]may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Genesis 1:26-27
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
Genesis 5:1-2
5 This is the written account of Adam’s family line.
When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washingwith water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wivesas their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body.31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”[c] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
1 Corinthians 7:1-9
7 Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt youbecause of your lack of self-control. 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7 I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.
8 Now to the unmarried[a] and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. 9 But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
Mathew 19:4-6
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Romans 3:23
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Ephesians 5:3
3 But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.
Genesis 19:4-11
4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”
6 Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7 and said, “No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”
9 “Get out of our way,” they replied. “This fellow came here as a foreigner, and now he wants to play the judge! We’ll treat you worse than them.” They kept bringing pressure on Lot and moved forward to break down the door.
10 But the men inside reached out and pulled Lot back into the house and shut the door. 11 Then they struck the men who were at the door of the house, young and old, with blindness so that they could not find the door.
Jude 7
7 In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.
Leviticus 18:22
22 “‘Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.
Leviticus 20:13
13 “‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Judges 19:22
22 While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him.”
Romans 1:21-27
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
1 Corinthians 6:9
9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men
1 Timothy 1:8-10
8 We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. 9 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, 10 for the sexually immoral, for those practicing homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine
Appendix 3
Early Church Fathers Quotes.
1. Athenagoras of Athens (2nd Century) Athenagoras of Athens was a philosopher who converted to Christianity in the second century. He shows that the pagans, who were totally immoral, did not even refrain from sins against nature:
“But though such is our character (Oh! why should I speak of things unfit to be uttered?), the things said of us are an example of the proverb, ‘The harlot reproves the chaste.’ For those who have set up a market for fornication and established infamous resorts for the young for every kind of vile pleasure — who do not abstain even from males, males with males committing shocking abominations, outraging all the noblest and comeliest bodies in all sorts of ways, so dishonoring the fair workmanship of God.”
2. Tertullian (160-225) Tertullian was a great genius and apologist of the early Church. Unfortunately, after an initial period of fervor, he succumbed to resentment and pride, left the Church and adhered to the Montanist heresy. Because of works written while still in the Church, he is considered an Ecclesiastical Writer and, as such, is commonly quoted by Popes and theologians. His treatise On Modesty is an apology of Christian chastity. He clearly shows the horror the Church has for sins against nature. After condemning adultery, he exclaims:
“But all the other frenzies of passions–impious both toward the bodies and toward the sexes–beyond the laws of nature, we banish not only from the threshold, but from all shelter of the Church, because they are not sins, but monstrosities.”
3. Eusebius of Caesarea (260-341) Eusebius Pamphili, Bishop of Cæsarea in Palestine and the “Father of Church History,” writes in his book, Demonstratio Evangelica:
“[God in the Law given to Moses] having forbidden all unlawful marriage, and all unseemly practice, and the union of women with women and men with men.”
4. Saint Jerome (340-420) Saint Jerome is both Father and Doctor of the Church. He was also a notable exegete and great polemicist. In his book Against Jovinianus, he explains how a sodomite needs repentance and penance to be saved:
“And Sodom and Gomorrah might have appeased it [God’s wrath], had they been willing to repent, and through the aid of fasting gain for themselves tears of repentance.”
5. Saint John Chrysostom (347-407) Saint John Chrysostom is considered the greatest of the Greek Fathers and was proclaimed Doctor of the Church. He was Archbishop and Patriarch of Constantinople, and his revision of the Greek liturgy is used until today. In his sermons about Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, he dwells on the gravity of the sin of homosexuality:
“But if thou scoffest at hearing of hell and believest not that fire, remember Sodom. For we have seen, surely we have seen, even in this present life, a semblance of hell. For since many would utterly disbelieve the things to come after the resurrection, hearing now of an unquenchable fire, God brings them to a right mind by things present. For such is the burning of Sodom, and that conflagration!…
“Consider how great is that sin, to have forced hell to appear even before its time!… For that rain was unwonted, for the intercourse was contrary to nature, and it deluged the land, since lust had done so with their souls. Wherefore also the rain was the opposite of the customary rain. Now not only did it fail to stir up the womb of the earth to the production of fruits, but made it even useless for the reception of seed. For such was also the intercourse of the men, making a body of this sort more worthless than the very land of Sodom. And what is there more detestable than a man who hath pandered himself, or what more execrable?
6. Saint Augustine (354-430) The greatest of the Fathers of the West and one of the great Doctors of the Church, Saint Augustine laid the foundations of Catholic theology. In his celebrated Confessions, he thus condemns homosexuality:
“Those offences which be contrary to nature are everywhere and at all times to be held in detestation and punished; such were those of the Sodomites, which should all nations commit, they should all be held guilty of the same crime by the divine law, which hath not so made men that they should in that way abuse one another. For even that fellowship which should be between God and us is violated, when that same nature of which He is author is polluted by the perversity of lust.”
7. Saint Gregory the Great (540-604) Pope Saint Gregory I is called “the Great.” He is both Father and Doctor of the Church. He introduced Gregorian chant into the Church. He organized England’s conversion, sending Saint Augustine of Canterbury and many Benedictine monks there.
“Sacred Scripture itself confirms that sulfur evokes the stench of the flesh, as it speaks of the rain of fire and sulfur poured upon Sodom by the Lord. He had decided to punish Sodom for the crimes of the flesh, and the very type of punishment he chose emphasized the shame of that crime. For sulfur stinks, and fire burns. So it was just that Sodomites, burning with perverse desires arising from the flesh like stench, should perish by fire and sulfur so that through this just punishment they would realize the evil they had committed, led by a perverse desire.”
8. Saint Peter Damian (1007-1072) Doctor of the Church, cardinal and a great reformer of the clergy, Saint Peter Damian wrote his famous Book of Gomorrah against the inroads made by homosexuality among the clergy. He describes not only the iniquity of homosexuality, but also its psychological and moral consequences:
“Truly, this vice is never to be compared with any other vice because it surpasses the enormity of all vices…. It defiles everything, stains everything, pollutes everything. And as for itself, it permits nothing pure, nothing clean, nothing other than filth….
“The miserable flesh burns with the heat of lust; the cold mind trembles with the rancor of suspicion; and in the heart of the miserable man chaos boils like Tartarus [Hell]…. In fact, after this most poisonous serpent once sinks its fangs into the unhappy soul, sense is snatched away, memory is borne off, the sharpness of the mind is obscured. It becomes unmindful of God and even forgetful of itself. This plague undermines the foundation of faith, weakens the strength of hope, destroys the bond of charity; it takes away justice, subverts fortitude, banishes temperance, blunts the keenness of prudence.
“And what more should I say since it expels the whole host of the virtues from the chamber of the human heart and introduces every barbarous vice as if the bolts of the doors were pulled out.”
9. Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Commenting upon Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (1:26-27), Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, explains why the sin of homosexuality is so grave:
“Given the sin of impiety through which they [the Romans] sinned against the divine nature [by idolatry], the punishment that led them to sin against their own nature followed…. I say, therefore, that since they changed into lies [by idolatry] the truth about God, He brought them to ignominious passions, that is, to sins against nature; not that God led them to evil, but only that he abandoned them to evil….
“If all the sins of the flesh are worthy of condemnation because by them man allows himself to be dominated by that which he has of the animal nature, much more deserving of condemnation are the sins against nature by which man degrades his own animal nature….
“Man can sin against nature in two ways. First, when he sins against his specific rational nature, acting contrary to reason. In this sense, we can say that every sin is a sin against man’s nature, because it is against man’s right reason….
“Secondly, man sins against nature when he goes against his generic nature, that is to say, his animal nature. Now, it is evident that, in accord with natural order, the union of the sexes among animals is ordered towards conception. From this it follows that every sexual intercourse that cannot lead to conception is opposed to man’s animal nature.”
10. Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) Saint Catherine, a great mystic and Doctor of the Church, lived in troubled times. The Papacy was in exile at Avignon, France. She was instrumental in bringing the Popes back to Rome. Her famous Dialogues are written as if dictated by God Himself:
“But they act in a contrary way, for they come full of impurity to this mystery, and not only of that impurity to which, through the fragility of your weak nature, you are all naturally inclined (although reason, when free will permits, can quiet the rebellion of nature), but these wretches not only do not bridle this fragility, but do worse, committing that accursed sin against nature, and as blind and fools, with the light of their intellect darkened, they do not know the stench and misery in which they are. It is not only that this sin stinks before me, who am the Supreme and Eternal Truth, it does indeed displease me so much and I hold it in such abomination that for it alone I buried five cities by a divine judgment, my divine justice being no longer able to endure it. This sin not only displeases me as I have said, but also the devils whom these wretches have made their masters. Not that the evil displeases them because they like anything good, but because their nature was originally angelic, and their angelic nature causes them to loathe the sight of the actual commission of this enormous sin.10
11. Saint Bernardine of Siena (1380-1444) Saint Bernardine of Siena was a famous preacher, celebrated for his doctrine and holiness. Regarding homosexuality, he stated:
“No sin in the world grips the soul as the accursed sodomy; this sin has always been detested by all those who live according to God…. Deviant passion is close to madness; this vice disturbs the intellect, destroys elevation and generosity of soul, brings the mind down from great thoughts to the lowliest, makes the person slothful, irascible, obstinate and obdurate, servile and soft and incapable of anything; furthermore, agitated by an insatiable craving for pleasure, the person follows not reason but frenzy…. They become blind and, when their thoughts should soar to high and great things, they are broken down and reduced to vile and useless and putrid things, which could never make them happy…. Just as people participate in the glory of God in different degrees, so also in hell some suffer more than others. He who lived with this vice of sodomy suffers more than another, for this is the greatest sin.”
12. Saint Peter Canisius (1521-1597)
Saint Peter Canisius, Jesuit and Doctor of the Church, is responsible for helping one third of Germany abandon Lutheranism and return to the Church. To Scripture’s condemnation of homosexuality, he added his own:
“As the Sacred Scripture says, the Sodomites were wicked and exceedingly sinful. Saint Peter and Saint Paul condemn this nefarious and depraved sin. In fact, the Scripture denounces this enormous indecency thus: ‘The scandal of Sodomites and Gomorrhans has multiplied and their sins have become grave beyond measure.’ So the angels said to just Lot, who totally abhorred the depravity of the Sodomites: ‘Let us leave this city….’ Holy Scripture does not fail to mention the causes that led the Sodomites, and can also lead others, to this most grievous sin. In fact, in Ezechiel we read: ‘Behold this was the iniquity of Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and abundance, and the idleness of her, and of her daughters: and they did not put forth their hand to the needy, and the poor. And they were lifted up, and committed abominations before me; and I took them away as thou hast seen’ (Ezech. 16: 49-50). Those unashamed of violating divine and natural law are slaves of this never sufficiently execrated depravity.”
[1] TFP Student Action, “12 Quotes Against Sodomy from the early Church Fathers”, VirtueOnline, The Voice for Global Orthodox Anglicanism, https://virtueonline.org/12-quotes-against-sodomy-early-church-fathers (accessed August 24, 2019)