Same-sex Marriage

Over the past few years, Christians have often been warned that we're "on the wrong side of history" in regards to same-sex marriage. Robert P. George, a law professor from Princeton and co-author of What Is Marriage, said:

I do not believe in historical inevitability …. No good cause is permanently lost. So, my advice to supporters of marriage is to stay the course. Do not be discouraged. Do what the pro-life movement did when, in the 1970s, critics said, 'The game is over; you lost; in a few years abortion will be socially accepted and fully integrated into American life ….' Speak the truth in season and out of season …. Keep challenging the arguments of your opponents, always with civility, always in a gracious and loving spirit, but firmly.

If you are told that you are on 'the wrong side of history,' remember that there is no such thing. History is not a deity that sits in judgment. It has no power to determine what is true or false, good or bad, right or wrong. History doesn't have 'wrong' and 'right' sides. Truth does. So, my message to everyone is that our overriding concern should be to be on the right side of truth.

Earlier in 2024, many of us watched replays of the tragic collision and collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. The accident led to the loss of several lives and caused enormous damage and disruption. As footage emerged, it was striking to see how immediately and totally the bridge seemed to come down. It looked like it happened all at once. The bridge had been constructed without any redundant support structures. The tragedy revealed that all of its supports were essential. Knock any one of these out and the whole thing will fall.

We might say something similar about Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 6:9–11, one of the key biblical texts that addresses same-sex sexuality. This is not the sole focus of the text—Paul is talking about various sins—but it nevertheless provides essential foundations for how we should approach this whole issue as Christian believers.

In today’s climate, the church cannot afford to neglect Paul’s words. Paul provides vital teaching in 1 Corinthians 6 about same-sex sexuality. None of his words are wasted. Each facet of his teaching needs to be upheld alongside the others, like vital supports of a bridge. Neglecting any one will destabilize our approach.

Rosaria Champagne Butterfield was a leftist lesbian professor, who despised Christians. Then somehow, she became one. She shares her testimony in an issue of CT magazine.

Professor Rosaria Butterfield hated and pitied Christians. She thought Christians and their god Jesus were stupid and pointless. She used her post as a professor of English and women’s studies to advance the allegiances of a leftist lesbian professor. She and her partner shared many vital interests: AIDS activism, children’s health and literacy, and the Unitarian Universalist church.

She began researching the Religious Right and their politics of hatred against queers like her. To do this, she would need to read the Bible, the book she believed had gotten many people off track. She then began her attack by writing an article in the local newspaper about Promise Keepers.

The article generated many rejoinders … some hate mail, others were fan mail. But one letter I received defied this filing system. It was from the pastor of the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. It was a kind and inquiring letter. Pastor Ken Smith encouraged me to explore the kind of questions I admire: How did you arrive at your interpretations? How do you know you are right? Do you believe in God? Ken didn’t argue with my article; rather, he asked me to defend the presuppositions that undergirded it. I didn’t know how to respond to it, so I threw it away.

Later that night, I fished it out of the recycling bin and put it back on my desk. With the letter, Ken initiated two years of bringing the church to a heathen. Oh, I had seen my share of Bible verses on placards at Gay Pride marches and Christians who mocked me on Gay Pride Day. That is not what Ken did. He did not mock. He engaged. So, when his letter invited me to get together for dinner, I accepted. Surely this will be good for my research.

Something else happened. Ken and his wife, Floy, and I became friends. They entered my world. They met my friends. We talked openly about sexuality and politics. They did not act as if such conversations were polluting them. When we ate together, Ken prayed in a way I had never heard before. His prayers were intimate. Vulnerable. He repented of his sin in front of me. He thanked God for all things. Ken’s God was holy and firm, yet full of mercy.

I started reading the Bible. I read the way a glutton devours. I read it many times that first year. At a dinner gathering my transgendered friend J cornered me in the kitchen. She warned, “This Bible reading is changing you, Rosaria.” With tremors, I whispered, “J, what if it is true? What if Jesus is a real and risen Lord? What if we are all in trouble?”

I continued reading the Bible, all the while fighting the idea that it was inspired. Then, one Sunday morning, I … sat in a pew at the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. Conspicuous with my butch haircut, I reminded myself that I came to meet God, not fit in. The image that came in like waves, of me and everyone I loved suffering in hell, gripped me in its teeth.

Then, one ordinary day, I came to Jesus. Jesus triumphed. And I was a broken mess. Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything that I loved. But the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. I rested in private peace, then community, and today in the shelter of a covenant family, where one calls me “wife” and many call me “mother.”

Editor’s Note: Rosaria Champagne Butterfield is the author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Crown & Covenant). She lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina, where her husband pastors the First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Durham.

Sharing a Christian worldview with others can often create tense situations. Especially when we are talking with friends and family who do not share our views.

A "Profile" article in The New Yorker spotlighted Ross Douthat, a popular Times columnist. The title of the article is noteworthy: "The Believer: Ross Douthat's Theories of Persuasion." Douthat is a conservative leaning Catholic who is a pro-lifer and an advocate for traditional marriage.

How does he negotiate working with colleagues whose views are radically different from his own? The article offers one example that might be instructive.

In 2015, Douthat wrote a piece critical of the Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage, expressing concern that it reflected a "more relaxed view of marriage's importance." Before releasing it, he thought of Michael Barbaro. Barbaro has been a close friend of Douthat's since childhood. He refers to himself as Douthat's "sidekick." And Barbaro was married to a man. Barbaro recalls:

We hadn't been in touch that much, but Ross reached out to me to say, “I'm about to publish a column in which I come out against same-sex marriage. I want you to know that it didn't come to me easily. It's something I know may be sensitive to you. And, as somebody I care about, I want you to understand it. I don't want you to read about it in my column without us talking about it.”

When Barbaro shared how much he appreciated the note, Chotiner, the New Yorker reporter conducting the interview, was surprised, Barbaro should have been furious! Why wasn't he? Barbaro explained:

I was wounded by the position he took on a personal level. How could I not be? But it was meaningfully tempered by the reality that I knew where he was coming from, and that he had gone to the trouble to reach out to me.

Barbaro and his husband later divorced. When Chotiner interviewed him, Ross was on vacation with his wife and two children. He shared, "I've been on a long journey that I know Ross generally approves of. But, although I didn't do it for him, it's very funny, as I have had children, I can just sense his glee. It's no secret that he wants people to have children and to enter into monogamous heterosexual relationships." Barbaro let out a laugh. "And that wasn't my plan, but I have sensed his joy at that outcome."

Possible Preaching Angle:

Part of the pressure of sharing our Christian worldview comes from our mistaken belief that we must convince others of our views. But our job is much simpler than all that. We are called only to speak the truth in love. And you'd be surprised at how persuasive that simple act can be.

The number of people who live alone—more than a quarter of all Americans—is on the rise in the US, according to 2020 census data. Single-person households accounted for nearly 28% of all US homes, according to the data. Married couples still accounted for most household types (46%) in America, but that share has steadily declined over the past several decades, the census survey found. In 1990, 55% of all households were made up of married couples.

However, the number of people living alone or with non-related roommates increased at a higher rate than typical family homes—a rise of 12% compared to just 7%. The number of women living in a home with no spouse or partner was significantly greater than the number of men living in a home without a spouse or partner with 35 million to 24 million.

The 2020 census also collected data on the different shares of opposite-sex partners and of same-sex partners for the first time. According to the results, married same-sex couples accounted for 0.5% of all US households and unmarried same-sex couples accounted for nearly 0.4%. The states with higher concentrations of same-sex couples were primarily located along the west coast and in the Northeast. The census doesn’t include information about single queer people or transgender people.

Seventeen percent of evangelical women between the ages of 15 and 44 have had sex with another woman, according to data gathered by the CDC and analyzed by Grove City College sociology professor David Ayers. Among evangelical men, the percentage who’ve had sex with other men hovers around five percent.

Changing attitudes toward same-sex relationships—in the US generally and among older and younger evangelicals specifically—have been well documented. The same-sex experiences and orientation of younger evangelicals, however, have not been widely reported.

The CDC surveyed about 11,300 people about sex, sexual health, and attitudes and preferences. More than 1,800 of those people were evangelical, as defined by their denominational affiliation. Looking at that subset, Ayers was able to determine that roughly one percent of evangelical women identify as lesbian and about five percent say they are bisexual. Among evangelical girls aged 15 to 17, more than 10 percent identify as bi.

Ayers asks,

Why are so many younger evangelical females today open to sex with other women? The simple biblical teaching that all sex outside of marriage between one man and one woman is sinful is hardly secret or subtle …. And yet, among younger people especially, it has been quite a few years since biblical beliefs and practices have been the norm among evangelicals.

Writer, poet, and hip-hop artist Jackie Hill Perry was a lesbian in a loving relationship when she felt God calling her to a different life:

God knew he wouldn’t get my attention in a church. Churches didn’t care too well for people like me. Me, being a gay girl. So God came to my house. As suddenly and randomly as Paul was struck blind on the Damascus Road, I had the unsettling thought that my sin would be “the death of me.”

Prior to that moment, the sin I wore on my sleeve was that of a lesbian: a label I had the courage to give myself at age 17. I liked girls, and I knew it, “But I don’t want to be straight,” I said to God, meaning every single word.

I had grown up in the traditional black church, where sermons were presented in a Mount Sinai kind of way, both loud and heavy. I’d heard the preacher speak for God when he read to us from Romans 1 about God giving his creatures over to the sinful desires of their hearts, which included men and women “exchang[ing] natural sexual relations” for “shameful lusts” toward members of the same sex (v. 26).

So when my thoughts spoke of my sin, which I knew to be a prompting from God and not my subconscious behaving unnaturally. What offended me most was that idea that my sin was to be the death of me. Because if that were true, then surely I would be asked to lay it aside for the sake of life.

I loved my girlfriend too much not to be appalled at the prospect of laying aside not only the way I loved but also who I loved. I loved her, and she loved me—but God loved me more. So much so that he wouldn’t have me going about the rest of my life convinced that a creature’s love was better than a King’s.

Homosexuality might have been my loudest sin, but it was not my only sin. By calling me to himself, he was after my whole heart. When God saves, he saves holistically. That night, I knew that it wasn’t just my lesbianism that had me at odds with God—it was my entire heart

I sat up in my bed and thought deeply about all that was happening in me. Now it seemed as if God was inviting me to know him. To love him. To be in relationship with him. That moment—that epiphany that my sin, left untreated, would be “the death of me”—wasn’t a matter of trying to be straight or even trying to escape hell. No, it was about God positioning himself before my eyes, so that I could finally see that he is everything he says he is—and worthy to be trusted.

In the same Bible where I found condemnation (Rom. 1:18-32), I also found the good news that God loved and died for people like me so that I could live forever (John 3:16). I didn’t need to know much more than that. Without a sermon - I saw Jesus. He was better than everything I’d ever known and more worthy of having everything that I thought was mine to own, including my affections.

Shortly after that pivotal night, I was doing the painful work of breaking up with my girlfriend. Her tears were too loud to listen to without regret. To leave her, our love, made no sense apart from the divine doing of God. Though it was painful, it was better for me to lose her than to lose my soul. “I just gotta live for God now,” I said with a tear-broken voice. A new identity was to come after I hung up.

I had no idea what would come next or how I’d have the power to resist everything I’d once lived for, but I knew that if Jesus was God and if God was mighty to save, then surely, God would be mighty to keep. And 10 years later, he is still keeping this girl godly.

A shocking new poll claims that 30% of American women under 25 identify as homosexual, bisexual, or transgender. There is a continuing of “singledom”—a preference for non-married life—among young women in the United States.

Neither the societal shift away from traditional gender roles nor the downstream cultural consequences of that shift are anywhere near complete. Beginning in 2009, for the first time in history, there were more unmarried women in the United States than married ones.

Rod Dreher, writing at The American Conservative says,

We have become a society that no longer values the natural family. And now we have 30 percent of Gen Z women claiming to be sexually uninterested in men. There is nothing remotely normal about that number. It is a sign of a deeply decadent culture — that is, a culture that lacks the wherewithal to survive. The most important thing that a generation can do is produce the next generation. No families, no children, no future.

Andrew Sullivan, a popular mainstream political and societal commentator who identifies as homosexual, isn’t buying the stats. He seems to think they are way out of line and suggestive of openness to “female sexual fluidity.” Sullivan tweeted, “Wild guess: 25 percent bi - meaning female sexual fluidity; 3 percent exclusively lesbian; 1.9 percent trendy trans; 0.1 percent actually trans.”

While the reported statistics about female sexuality are shocking, the rise of “singlehood” is by itself cause for great alarm. Stella Morabito, a senior editor at The Federalist noted, “Any way you look at it, the United States has undergone a seismic shift in marriage culture over the past few decades.”

In a blog post, author Jonathan Van Maren writes:

It wasn’t until I was doing the research for my book The Culture War that I began to come across analyses highlighting a darker aspect of the TV show Friends legacy that I’d never considered. Ashley McGuire of the Institute for Family Studies wrote, “In reality, Friends was a decade-long Hollywood experiment in testing the moral limits of Americans and desensitizing viewers to harmful sexual behavior … the show made a punch line out of casual sex and hookups and portrayed them as consequence-free. No STDS, no trips to the abortion clinic, no staring at their phones waiting for the one-night stand to call. Just a good laugh over the last condom in the apartment and a porn marathon.”

TV sitcoms tell stories; stories have storytellers. The cast and crew of Friends wanted to push the envelope, knowing that TV is a frequently a feedback loop that not only reflects culture but also drives, shapes, and informs it. Friends was the second show on TV to depict a same-sex wedding, decades before the landmark Supreme Court case of Obergefell v. Hodges and a year before Ellen DeGeneres famously came out. Ross Geller’s wife leaves him for a woman and marries her—he walks her down the aisle after her bigoted and homophobic father declines to do so. NBC was braced for a backlash when the episode aired, expecting thousands of angry phone calls. They got only two.

In an interview with Terri Gross, Grammy Award winning songwriter/singer Brandi Carlile was asked about her church’s refusal to baptize her when she was a teenager. The host, Terry Gross asked, “How were you told that you weren't going to be baptized?” Carlile responded,

I was doing the things I thought I was supposed to do. But on the day of my baptism my friends and family had all been invited to the church to see this go down. I got there and was taken aside and told that unless I declared that I intended to no longer be gay, that I couldn't be baptized that day. And it just came as such a shock … it was a big shift in my life spiritually and musically and emotionally.

Gross then asked, “What was the shift spiritually?” Carlile replied,

Well, it made me rethink, where God was in this church? Was God in these people? Was God in these displays of piety, like this grandstanding of baptism, and these testimonials? Or was God maybe in places I'd yet to go, like in music or outside of my town on out on the road out of my house?

At that point I had never even been on an airplane before. So, it's when I knew that it was time for me to seek beyond my station. ... It gave me a sense of a faith in God that's an unshakable by the whims of culture, by politics, by people or by organized religion, and by (the) church specifically.

Currently, Carlile and her wife have two children and they live on a compound in the state of Washington with their extended family. The singer/songwriter she idolized, Elton John, has become a friend.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Carlile turned away from her church and her evangelical faith because she would not give up her homosexual identity. Redefining church, the Bible, and God to fit one’s choice of lifestyle is extremely dangerous and an example of false postmodern religion.

There is a movement within evangelicalism that is trying to argue that the Bible affirms, or at least does not prohibit, same-sex sexual relationships. But renowned progressive New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson disagrees with this approach, even though he himself also holds an affirming position.

He writes, “I have little patience with efforts to make Scripture say something other than what it says, through appeals to linguistic or cultural subtleties. The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says.”

He continues:

I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us.

Possible Preaching Angle:

While we disagree with Johnson’s conclusions, we have to admire his intellectual integrity. On this subject of same-sex sexual relationships, the Bible is clear: “We know what the text says.” The only question is whether that is the authority one chooses to live by.

Rolling Stone magazine reported Angels in America actor Andrew Garfield is trying to live his life as openly as possible--including when it comes to his sexuality. Garfield explained that while he currently identifies as a heterosexual man, he is not shutting out the possibility of being attracted to men in the future.

He said:

Up until this point, I've only been sexually attracted to women. My stance toward life, though, is that I always try to surrender to the mystery of not being in charge. I think most people – we're intrinsically trying to control our experience here, and manage it, and put walls around what we are and who we are. I want to know as much of the garden as possible before I pass. I have an openness to any impulses that may arise within me at any time.

In an interview popular blogger Jen Hatmaker was asked, "Do you think an LGBT relationship can be holy?" Hatmaker replied:

I do. And my views here are tender. This is a very nuanced conversation, and it's hard to nail down in one sitting. I've seen too much pain and rejection at the intersection of the gay community and the church. Every believer that witnesses that much overwhelming sorrow should be tender enough to do some hard work here.

But former lesbian Rosaria Butterfield reproved Hatmaker for this "tenderness" that leaves people in sin. Butterfield wrote:

If this were 1999—the year that I was converted and walked away from the woman and lesbian community I loved—instead of 2016, Jen Hatmaker's words about the holiness of LGBT relationships would have flooded into my world like a balm of Gilead … [I would have thought], Yes, I can have Jesus and my girlfriend. Yes, I can flourish both in my tenured academic discipline (queer theory and English literature and culture) and in my church …

Maybe I wouldn't need to lose everything to have Jesus. Maybe the gospel wouldn't ruin me while I waited, waited, waited for the Lord to build me back up after he convicted me of my sin, and I suffered the consequences … Today, I hear Jen's words … and a thin trickle of sweat creeps down my back. If I were still in the thick of the battle over the indwelling sin of lesbian desire, Jen's words would have put a millstone around my neck.

To be clear, I was not converted out of homosexuality. I was converted out of unbelief. I didn't swap out a lifestyle. I died to a life I loved. Conversion to Christ made me face the question squarely: did my lesbianism reflect who I am (which is what I believed in 1999), or did my lesbianism distort who I am through the fall of Adam? I learned through conversion that when something feels right and good and real and necessary—but stands against God's Word—this reveals the particular way Adam's sin marks my life. Our sin natures deceive us. Sin's deception isn't just "out there"; it's also deep in the caverns of our hearts.

C.S. Lewis was clear about his biblical views on homosexuality. At one point he wrote, "I take it for certain that the physical satisfaction of homosexual desires is sin. This leaves the homosexual no worse off than any normal person who is, for whatever reason, prevented from marrying." But this didn't stop Lewis from building and maintaining a long and close friendship with Arthur Greeves, a man who was honest with Lewis about his same-sex attraction.

The two met when they were boys and bonded over a shared love of Norse mythology. "Many thousands of people," Lewis would later write, "have had the experience of finding the first friend, and it is none the less a wonder; as great a wonder … as first love, or even a greater." For the next several decades, until the end of Lewis' life, the two would maintain their friendship in spite of geographical distance, a gap in intellectual aptitude, and other trivial and not-so-trivial differences and disagreements.

Arthur Greeves admitted at some point to Lewis that he was a homosexual. But as far as the textual record goes, there is no evidence that this ever proved to be an impediment to their intimacy. Lewis certainly didn't try to distance himself from Greeves on account of it, as if he needed to hold himself aloof from Greeves's complex feelings—which may, in any case, never have been directed toward Lewis at all—in order to keep himself from learning too much about his friend's personal life.

On the contrary, their letters are filled with the affection of a deep friendship. In what turned out to be the final year of Lewis' life, he was planning a holiday with Greeves in Ireland. When a heart attack prevented Lewis from keeping those plans, he wrote in the final letter he ever sent to Greeves, "It looks as if you and I shall never meet again in this life. This often saddens me [very] much." And then, in the letter's last line, "Oh Arthur, never to see you again!" Their letters still serve as a model for what friendship between a gay man and a heterosexual sympathizer and confidant might become.

Christopher Yuan, a transformed believer whose past includes gay prostitution, says that celibacy is a choice, but singleness is each person's origin and destiny. "[Some] people are called to celibacy but everyone was single (at birth), is single (through their childhood and young adult years), and in the end will be single (in heaven) … . Celibacy is a commitment; singleness is a state of being." Some Christ-followers are called to celibacy as a vocation, but all single believers are called to chastity.

This vision for sexuality applies to every person, desire, and category. Gay, bisexual, straight, married, single, or other—everyone bears the same burden. For some, this may seem a heavier weight to carry, but, nonetheless, God's design for sexuality applies equally to each person.

In his book, A Fellowship of Differents, Dr. Scot McKnight describes an eye-opening walk he once took down the Roman roads of ancient Pompeii. The volcano that erupted there in 79 A.D. preserved a vivid snapshot of Roman culture in the century when the church was born. "It is not an exaggeration to say the city was swamped with erotic images," writes McKnight. Explicit pornography was everywhere. "The sexual reality across the Empire, of which Pompeii was a typical example, was a total lack of sexual inhibition."

The normal order of things in the first century was for most men (and some women) to have procreational sex with their spouses and recreational sex with others. Those others often included young boys and slave girls. Pederasty (or the practice of sex with children) was widespread and accepted. Lesbianism was well known, but nowhere near as common as recreational same-sex liaisons between men, many of whom were still married to women. And relations with paid sex-workers formed such a major and enduring industry that Rome's most famous orator, Cicero, asked: "When was such a thing not done?"

Las Vegas or Bangkok has nothing on first century Roman society. This was the world in which the church was born and into which it introduced a more constrained sexual ethic.

Possible Preaching Angles: Dan Meyer adds, "Whatever your personal sexual ethics are or your view of the issues of our times, it's helpful to be reminded of the belief-system out of which people like the Apostle Paul were functioning. It may also help to explain why it might be unfair to criticize anyone who raises questions about sexual mores today. Things didn't end well for Rome and there are legitimate questions about whether we in America maybe be heading for a similar fate too."

Dr. Rosaria Butterfield, a former tenured professor at the University of Syracuse, was a committed and comfortable lesbian until she had what she described as a "train-wreck conversion" to Christ. At one point in her life, she wrote, "As an unbelieving professor of English, an advocate of postmodernism … and an opponent of all totalizing meta-narratives (like Christianity, I would have added back in the day), I found peace and purpose in my life as a lesbian and the queer community I helped to create." Today she is married to Pastor Kent Butterfield, and mother of four adopted children and numerous foster children.

After her conversion, she describes an encounter with a female counselor who wanted Dr. Butterfield to bend her message about homosexual practice. The woman asked Butterfield to state publicly that homosexual practice is not inherently wrong. Butterfield writes:

When I entered her office, she directed me to a comfortable chair and made one simple request: "Rosaria, I want you to change your message." I found this a bold and disarming request, and so I told her that I come in the gospel of peace. She said, "Change your message." Finally, I asked her what I ought to change in my message. She said, "Tell people that it is only in your opinion that homosexual practice is a sin."

I responded by letting her know that I am not smart enough to have this opinion, but that this is the position the inspired and inerrant Word of God upholds. It comes to me from the historic Christian church … through the pages of Scripture, and so on down to me. I told her that changing my message would involve denying the plain meaning of Scripture, the testimony of the church, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the gospel. But to the postmodern mind … her request seems reasonable enough: just own this position of mine as a personal point of view. But claiming something that is a universal truth to be a mere matter of personal preference is a lie by omission. This is the Bible's message, and apart from Christ, I am more condemned by it than the woman who made this request.

Words change meaning over time in ways that might surprise you. Here are just a few examples of words (so, preacher, take your choice) you may not have realized didn't always mean what they mean today.

1. Nice: This word used to mean "silly, foolish, simple." Far from the compliment it is today!
2. Silly: Meanwhile, silly went in the opposite direction: in its earliest uses, it referred to things worthy or blessed; from there it came to refer to the weak and vulnerable, and more recently to those who are foolish.
3. Awful: Awful things used to be "worthy of awe" for a variety of reasons, which is how we get expressions like "the awful majesty of God."
4. Fizzle: The verb fizzle once referred to the act of producing quiet flatulence (think "SBD"); American college slang flipped the word's meaning to refer to failing at things.
5. Clue: Centuries ago, a clue (or clew) was a ball of yarn. Think about threading your way through a maze and you'll see how we got from yarn to key bits of evidence that help us solve things.
6. Naughty: Long ago, if you were naughty, you had naught or nothing. Then it came to mean evil or immoral, and now you are just badly behaved.
7. Guy: It comes from the name of Guy Fawkes, who was part of a failed attempt to blow up Parliament in 1605. Folks used to burn his effigy, a "Guy Fawkes" or a "guy," and from there it came to refer to a frightful figure. In the U.S., it has come to refer to men in general.

Possible Preaching Angles: Doctrine; Word of God; Theology; Love; Repentance; Marriage, and so forth—You can pick many words in the Christian vocabulary, words about biblical doctrine or a biblical lifestyle, and examine how these words have changed meanings from Scripture to today. Unfortunately, many of these changes in definitions of biblical words aren't just interesting or innocent; they damage our faith and weaken our understanding of Christ.

Pastor Kevin DeYoung responds to the assertion that Christians can no longer hold to traditional views of homosexuality. The argument usually goes like this: "You Christians are on the wrong side of history with regard to homosexuality. Look at slavery, for instance." DeYoung writes:

While it's true that Christians in the South often defended chattel slavery, this was not the position of the entire American church, and certainly not the universal position of the church throughout history. Unlike slavery, the church has always been convinced (until very recently) that homosexual behavior is sinful. There are no biblical passages that suggest the contrary. There are, however, passages in Scripture that encourage the freeing of slaves (Philem. 15—16) and condemn capturing another human being and selling him into slavery (Ex. 21:16; 1 Tim. 1:8—10).

Furthermore, it's not as if Christians never spoke against the institution until the nineteenth century.

As early as the seventh century, Saith Bathilde (wife of King Clovis III) campaigned to stop slave-trading and free all slaves. In the ninth century Saint Anskar worked to halt the Viking slave trade. In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas argued that slavery was a sin, a position upheld by a series of popes after him. In the fifteenth century, after the Spanish colonized the Canary Islands and began to enslave the native population, Pope Eugene IV gave everyone 15 days "to restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands … these people are to be totally and perpetually free and are to be let go without exaction or reception of any money." Slavery was condemned in papal bulls in 1462, 1537, 1639, 1741, 1815, and 1839. In America, the first abolitionist tract was published in 1700 by Samuel Sewall, a devout Puritan.

Clearly, the church's opposition to slavery is not a recent phenomenon. We do not find anything like this long track record when it comes to the church supporting homosexual practice.

Author and professor Wesley Hill recounts a time as a young adult when he was struggling with the loneliness of living with same-sex attractions. So he visited a friend and mentor named Chris. After Wesley shared his struggles and asked for advice, Chris said:

Imagine yourself standing in the presence of God, looking down from heaven on the earthly life you're about to be born into, and God says to you, "Wes, I'm going to send you into the world for 60 or 70 or 80 years. It will be hard. In fact, it will be more painful and confusing and distressing than you can now imagine. You will have a thorn in your flesh, a homosexual orientation that is the result of your entering a world that sin and death have broken, and you may wrestle with it all your life. But I will be with you. I will be watching every step you take, guiding you by my Spirit, supplying you with grace sufficient for each day. And at the end of your journey, you will see my face again, and the joy we share then will be born out of the agonies you faithfully endured by the power I gave you. And no one will take that joy—that solid, resurrection joy which, if you experienced it now, would crush you with its weight—away from you. Wesley, wouldn't you say "yes" to the journey if you had had that conversation with God?

Then, with his eyes flashing deep care and concern, Chris added:

But you have had it, in a sense. God is the Author of your story. He is watching, supplying you with his Spirit moment by moment. And he will raise your body from the dead to live with him and all the great company of the redeemed forever. And the joy you will have in that moment will be yours for all eternity. Can you endure knowing that? Can you keep walking the lonely road if you remember he's looking on and delights to help you persevere?