Obviously there’s more to the book than this section, so Mohler does go on to talk about other issues, including how to respond to this massive movement with Christian principles.  Again, I’ll write a more detailed review later.  For now, flag this book as “one to read for sure” if you want more solid info and help in thinking about the sexual revolution from a Christian perspective.

This new book by Albert Mohler is quite good: We Cannot Be Silent. It’s a book that talks about the history of sexuality in the United States, and answers questions like: how did we go from a relatively decent view of marriage to gay marriage so quickly?  Mohler’s done his homework, and it shows in the book.  I’ll review it more later, but for now I want to highlight a section where Mohler affirms there is – and has been for some time – a “gay agenda.”  Or, in other words, there is, and has been, a concentrated and purposeful effort in the United States to move to gay marriage and beyond.

In 1989 Kirk and Madsen published a book called, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear & Hatred of Gays in the 90’s.  Mohler breaks down the agenda for the gay rights revolution in Kirk and Madsen’s book.  I’ve edited it a little for length:

1) [They – Kirk and Madsen – petitioned the gay] movement to ‘portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers.’  Their advice to their own movement was incredibly specific, if not troubling.  For example, they advised, ‘It cannot go without saying, incidentally, that groups on the farthest margins of acceptability, such as NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association – an organization affirming pedophilia), must pay no part at all in such a campaign.  Suspected child molesters will never look like victims.

2) Similarly, the two argued, ‘For all practical purposes, gays should be considered to have been born gay….”  In stark contrast to the movement supporting legal abortion, Kirk and Madsen argued powerfully against any space for choice when it comes to sexual orientation: ‘To suggest in public that homosexuality might be chosen is to open the can of worms labeled ‘moral choice and sin’ and give the religious intransigents a stick to beat us with.”

3) “In keeping with the public relations strategy, the activists promoted a strategy that would make gays look good and make ‘victimizers’ look bad.  Specifically, they called for attention to figures who could be vilified in order to further their purposes.”  For example, Kirk and Madsen said it’s good to show an angry Southern preacher pounding the pulpit against gays, then switch to a picture of badly beaten persons, or decent looking, likeable gays, and then go back to the angry face of the preacher.  “The contrast speaks for itself.  The effect is devastating.”

Mohler later writes that…

“…Intellectual honesty requires us to recognize that there was a determined group of activists who were pushing a ‘gay agenda.’  The stunning rate of their success in the field of psychiatry, popular culture, and the courts shows us that so much more was going on beneath the surface.  A new set of moral sentiments was sowing seeds for a revolution, one that would bring about the normalization of homosexuality and the legalization of same-sex marriage.  Therefore it is wrong, as many now insist, to deny that there was ever a ‘gay agenda.’

Obviously there’s more to the book than this section, so Mohler does go on to talk about other issues, including how to respond to this massive movement with Christian principles.  Again, I’ll write a more detailed review later.  For now, flag this book as “one to read for sure” if you want more solid info and help in thinking about the sexual revolution from a Christian perspective.

R. Albert Mohler, We Cannot Be Silent (Nashville: Nelson Books, 2015), p 38-39.

Rev. Shane Lems is a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and services as pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Hammond, Wis. This article appeared on his blog and is used with permission.