A New "Moral" Crusade

Al Mohler has an alarming piece today from his blog where he quotes at length from Theo Hobson concerning the nature of the debate about homosexuality in our culture. He says,

It is refreshing to see Hobson point to the "either/or" character of this controversy. He is precisely right -- there is no middle ground -- no third way. Homosexuality will be seen as either normal or sinful. Everything hinges on that assessment. If it is accepted as normal, those who consider it sinful will be seen as repressive, hateful, and dangerous to the good of society. This, he argues, is where the church now stands.

Hobson's depiction of this moral transformation in the society is chilling, but seemingly impossible to refute. The trends seem all too clear. Can we argue that traditionalist sexual morality is not losing the moral high ground in the larger culture?

The most interesting section of Hobson's article is his explanation that the shift on homosexuality in the culture is "taking the form of a moral crusade," so that those who were once seen as upholding the high moral position are now seen as immoral, with the reverse also true -- those just recently seen as engaged in sexual immorality are seen as morally superior to those who believe homosexuality to be sinful.

As Hobson explains, this seems to represent "the church's perfect storm." In his words: "So the issue of homosexuality has the strange power to turn the moral tables. The traditional moralist is subject to accusations of immorality. And this inversion is doing terrible damage to the Christian churches."

To me, (and I could be wrong here) I feel as though this might be a bit of an alarmist view of the issue. Just based on pure biology and sociology, could our culture get to the point where homosexuality is so embraced that it would get to the point that he describes above? Maybe so, but at that point I believe the civilization of the United States as we know it today would completely crumble. This is simply because it takes a man and woman to reproduce. This reproduction sustains a civilization over the course of centuries. From a raw practical sense, if homosexuality comes to dominate our culture, our culture will cease to exist. Some historical theorists claim this embracing of a different sexuality contributed to the fall of the Roman empire. If they are right, there is nothing that says it couldn't happen here, but from my point of view it seems that humans have an innate desire to be self sustaining. But perhaps sin runs deeper than this desire. Time will only tell.