There is one, but only one. It is not a political movement although it would affect politics. The answer is simply, but profoundly found only in a Gospel awakening – a Gospel awakening which produces not only the life changing and culture enhancing blessings of redeeming and transforming grace through the saving work of Jesus Christ in the lives of men and women but also the work of common grace through the witness of God’s people “growing in grace.”

The rapid cultural transformation to mainstream the practice of homosexuality now being accelerated by the Federal Court initiative to redefine marriage affirming homosexuality is on the one hand startling but on the other predictable. The decision of the Supreme Court to strike down the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) has predictably opened the floodgates for the same-sex marriage movement designed to legitimize homosexuality. This tsunami wave to moralize the immoral has now engulfed 17 states and has been assisted by nine separate federal court rulings against targeted states that had previously passed constitutional affirmations of the historic definition of marriage as a covenantal, monogamous, heterosexual, and conjugal relationship. The implications are incalculable and almost enumerable but here are 7 to consider. They are selected in light of the undeniable fact that each will now become a thread woven into the social and cultural fabric of the United States. All of them will be applauded by the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) agenda proponents and will be affirmed by the secular progressives as a necessary cultural evolution. I am convinced if unchallenged these predictable consequences will soon signal the demise of what was once an imperfect but significantly blessed national heritage.

The Seven Implications

1. The sexual choices of citizens in the US will now be legally defined as a civil right to be affirmed and protected. Furthermore, these sexual choices will also become the controlling identity factor of an individual’s existence. In other words, one’s sexual behavior will now be considered a civil right. Initially, this effort was designed to promote the acceptability of homosexuality but the rejection of the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic (sexual activity belongs in the context of a heterosexual marriage) required to accomplish the normalization of homosexuality removes the framework necessary to prevent other sexual aberrations as protected civil rights. Presently, the only legal restraint to sexual practices outside of marriage is adult consent. But without a doubt even this restraint will soon be declared immoral and illegal.  Previously, immoral sexual acts will now be declared not only moral but also a Civil right to be constitutionally protected. Furthermore, the idea of defining your essential identity by your sexual behavior would have been considered nonsense but now we have established a predominately sexualized culture where one’s existence is signified and defined by their sexual behavior – (I am homosexual, or I am transsexual, or I am heterosexual, etc.). The identity list now becomes endless as indicated by Facebook’s recent creation of 56 sexually defined identity choices. I’m not sure how or why they would stop at 56 but I will predict that they can’t and won’t. Of course, the sanity of the Biblical world and life view declaring our identity in life as having been created in the image of God as male and female will be a faint echo of a voice from the past. Therefore, the insanity of a national culture of sexual chaos, promiscuity, and aberration will be embraced as normal and a civil right securing the new human sexually defined identity to be legally promoted and protected by the Federal Courts of the United States. This irrational plunge into the abyss of a depraved sexualized culture will soon bring to believers legal challenges determining whether we will “obey God or man.”
2. We will purposefully dismiss all reputable social science studies universally affirming the obvious fact that children need a two-parent, two-gender, male father and female mother environment for a beneficial and normal process of maturity through adolescence. The family unit as the irreplaceable environment to promote the spiritual, physical, psychological, educational, and economic development of children revealed in God’s Word and affirmed by observable evidences will, of necessity, be relegated to at best, an option. These studies unsurprisingly affirm that the same God who created us in His image also created marriage as a one man and one woman for one life institution. This divinely-designed family structure singularly provides the optimum environment for the well-being of children. This means a healthy culture must embrace and establish as normative families who have both a father and mother committed first to each other as a husband and wife and then to their children for life.
3. In the name of thoughtless societal experimentation designed to moralize the immoral in a manufactured chaotic culture we will now consign children in this generation and the coming generations to the likelihood of either a fatherless or motherless home. Of course, the secular progressive authors of this mindless agenda will quickly assure us that this is best for everyone including the children in spite of all the documented evidence to the contrary. The cultural landscape will increasingly be dominated (to the demise of children) by same sex and soon to come, poly-amorous marriages with multiple gender combinations resulting in irrational and destructive family configurations as a consequence.
4. We will officially dismiss the historic definition and declaration of marriage pronounced at the conclusion of a sacred wedding ceremony – “upon the consummation of this union before God I pronounce you husband and wife” – Obviously the dismissal of this benedictory valediction will be  necessary since we will have redefined marriage in a manner which precludes the act of consummation. In a same-sex marriage it is biologically impossible to have a true husband and true wife and therefore a conjugal relationship. The religious and historically legal “sign and seal” of marriage by sexual consummation will be rendered meaningless and impossible. The marriage bed consisting of one man and one woman for one life will be replaced by inventive and vacuous sexuality in a likely soon to be crowded marriage bed of multiple sexually aberrant participants – same sex or otherwise.
5. We will have dismissed the singular essential foundational block of a society and culture – the   monogamous, heterosexual, conjugal covenantal marriage – which provides the necessary environment for human flourishing and the development of future generations. The tried and true creation ordinance of marriage will now become at best, a possible option and at worst, a rejected relic of the past. This previously unimaginable phenomena is the future present even though the historic definition of marriage has provided a culture which has more than doubled our lifespans while advancing living standards and providing a stable social order, all of which has produced an unprecedented era of beneficial human flourishing.
6. We will have intentionally returned to the sexual and familial anarchy of our pagan barbarian forbearers. In other words, we are not entering into a Brave New World but re-entering a Cowardly Old World. This Old World of paganism from which Christianity had rescued our ancestors and progressively transformed their existence (and thus ours) from disorder to order has now become the new objective for today’s cultural elite – back to the future. In other words, the Biblical framework which, by consensus, had guided the moral direction of the culture in general and marriage/family in particular will be rejected for the familial anarchy of our pagan ancestors in order to promote sexual aberrancy as normal. This illogical agenda is now called a cultural progressive evolution although, in reality, it is a cultural regressive devolution.
7. 7.        Finally and ominously, we will arrogantly position ourselves under the inevitable righteous judgment of God as previous nations and city states such as “Sodom,” “Gomorrah,” the “cities of the plains” and Empires who have long since disappeared. That judgment if not by Divine edict is inevitable by Divinely ordained consequences for those who engage in high-handed rebellion against God’s law. Those nations who knowingly break God’s law will inevitably be broken by God’s law. “What a man (nation) sows he (we) will also reap.”

Is there a way out? There is one, but only one. It is not a political movement although it would affect politics. The answer is simply, but profoundly found only in a Gospel awakening – a Gospel awakening which produces not only the life changing and culture enhancing blessings of redeeming and transforming grace through the saving work of Jesus Christ in the lives of men and women but also the work of common grace through the witness of God’s people “growing in grace.” But there will be no Gospel awakening until Christ’s church determines that to be “in the world” does not require us to be “of the world.” There will be no Gospel awakening without a loving, compassionate yet clear and distinctive witness of the redeeming and transforming grace of God in the lives of His people which alone will return the Church to its calling of being both “salt and light” in an “evil and adulterous generation.”

Finally, no such revival will be found in the Church to ignite a Gospel awakening until there is a Reformation within the leadership of Christ’s church. Specifically, a Reformation producing Pastors who in life and from their pulpits faithfully proclaim “the whole counsel of God.” Our great need is the movement of God’s grace providing persistent prayer and Christ-consumed, Bible-filled, Holy Spirit-empowered, Gospel-saturated preaching from the pulpits of local churches.  O Lord, please begin with me.

Harry Reeder is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves a pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Ala. This article appeared in his blog and is used with permission.