It’s Not Like Being Black

Section I: The Myth of the “Sexual Minority” The Making of the Myth In December 2008, America’s leading gay magazine, The Advocate, ran a cover article under the headline “Gay Is the New Black.” The author, responding to California voters’ decision to continue defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, wrote: It’s impossible not to imagine what might have happened if the civil rights of African Americans, Hispanics, women, or any other minority had been reversed by public referendum. If any other group of people in America had their fundamental rights subjected to popular vote, there would be universal outrage in this country.16 The idea that the battle over same-sex marriage was a continuation of the civil rights battles of the 1960s was both strategic and ubiquitous at the time. Gay activists had made a concerted effort to burn this idea into the collective conscience of America decades earlier, and it had worked. The idea that homosexuality was equivalent to race had caught on. To be fair, even the proponents of this argument knew it was a stretch. The author of The Advocate article admitted, Our oppression . . . is nowhere near as extreme as blacks’, and we insult them when we make facile comparisons between our plights. . . . Gay people have more resources than blacks had in the 1960s.17 But the strength of the gay-equals-black argument lies not in the accuracy of its comparison but in the effectiveness of its propaganda. And that has never been clearer than it became in the summer of 2015.

A Tale of Two Stories In July 2015, two seemingly unrelated stories highlighted the effectiveness of this propaganda. The first was when the U.S. Supreme Court declared same-sex “marriage” a constitutional right. The second was a story from the other side of the country: Rachel Dolezal, the leader of the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington, made headlines when people discovered she was a white woman who had been pretending to be black for many years. What do these two events have to do with each other? Dolezal was doing the same thing the LGBTQIA+ lobby, led by lesbians and gay men, had been doing for years: She was working to leverage political power by pretending to be part of an aggrieved minority group. And, like those who identify as homosexuals, her identification was rooted in a history of deep personal feelings and a lifestyle based on living in accordance with those feelings. “I definitely am not white,” she declared on NBC News, noting that by the age of five, she was drawing self-portraits with the brown crayon instead of the peach crayon, and black curly hair. . . . Nothing about being white describes who I am. . . . The closest thing that I can come to is if—if you’re black or white, I’m black. I’m more black than I am white.18 This sounds exactly like the testimony of people who declare themselves to be “sexual minorities.” They’ve “known” it since they were children. They’ve acted upon that knowledge, built their lives around that identity, and presented themselves to the world in that way. I can already hear the objections to this comparison. “But being black is based on genetics.” Right—and so is being male or female, but that hasn’t stopped us from declaring lately that “trans women are women.” We allow transsexuals to use bathrooms and even compete in the Olympics based on their biology-contradicting self-declarations. And we declare homosexuality to be as innate and immutable as ethnicity despite a complete absence of any biological evidence for that belief. This is all because we are dealing not with facts, but with propaganda. Consider what Kennedy wrote in Obergefell. Far from seeking to devalue marriage, the petitioners seek it for themselves because of their respect and need for its privileges and responsibilities. And their immutable nature dictates that same-sex marriage is their only real path to this profound commitment.19 (emphasis mine) Kennedy identified homosexuality as having an “immutable nature,” skipping right over the argument that it is genetically determined—a highly debatable claim at best—to the idea that it cannot be changed. He offered no evidence for his assertion because there is none. In fact, there is quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines sexual orientation as “a person’s sexual and emotional attraction to another person and the behavior and/or social affiliation that may result from this attraction.”20 According to the Association of Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies, sexual orientation has at least three components: 1) the type of person to whom someone is romantically and/or sexually attracted (i.e., attractions); 2) the type of person with whom someone has sex (i.e., behavior); and 3) how someone labels or identifies himself (i.e., identity).21 I share these two definitions because they are consistent with other mainstream definitions that make no mention of the “identities” of “sexual minorities” being either innate or immutable. According to these definitions, the only things that matter are what you desire, what you do, and what you declare—the same standards Dolezal used to justify her identity as a black woman even though she was clearly not one. These two stories continue to bear their contradictory witness. One proclaims that you are what you declare you are (and how you choose to live), and that the law must respect and reflect that choice. The other proclaims that you have no right to declare yourself to be a member of a minority group without sufficient biological evidence to back up that claim. Ironically, Rachel Dolezal is more like me ethnically than she ever will be in terms of her gender since the distance between black people and white people is a matter of degree, while male and female are entirely separate categories. So why do we play these games? Because of a well-placed myth.

I am on his ministry mailing list. He sent out a preview of the book. I purchased it in advance. On 5/9/2024, he sent out a full-text PDF watermarked 'Review Copy', asking buyers to help get it marketed by reading it and giving it a review on Amazon, etc. I started reading it on 5/20/2024.

Copyright © 2024 by Voddie T. Baucham Jr. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Regnery Faith, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018. Version®) All Scriptures are taken from ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard , copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. REVIEW COPY Regnery Faith books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Regnery Faith, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com. Regnery Faith is an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation. Visit our website at www.regnery.com. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file. Cover design by [TK] Cover photo credit [TK] Print ISBN: 978-1-68451-364-2 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-68451-437-3 Printed in the United States. Please follow our publisher Tony Lyons... [Dedication] To the late Mwansa Mbewe (1991–2023), a student, friend, and dear brother whose short life left an indelible mark on all those with whom he came in contact. He was a gentle warrior who worked tirelessly to advance the Kingdom of Christ and bless his fellow man. Contents Section One: The Myth of the “Sexual Minority” Chapter 1: The Making of the Myth Chapter 2: Loving v. Virginia Chapter 3: The Founders of the Feast Section Two: The Growth of the Movement Chapter 4: The Ubiquitous, Ever-Growing, Self-Contradictory Acronym Part I: LGBT Chapter 5: The Ubiquitous, Ever-Growing, Self-Contradictory Acronym Part II: QIA2S+ Chapter 6: How We Got Here Chapter 7: The Enemy Within Section Three: The Truth We Must Define and Defend Chapter 8: Is It Fair to Use the Bible? Chapter 9: What Happens When We Buy the Lie? Chapter 10: God’s Design for Marriage Chapter 11: And Such Were Some of You

To the late Mwansa Mbewe (1991–2023), a student, friend, and dear brother whose short life left an indelible mark on all those with whom he came in contact. He was a gentle warrior who worked tirelessly to advance the Kingdom of Christ and bless his fellow man.

Introduction to 'It's Not Like Being Black'. We are living in crazy times. Biological men are competing and winning against biological women in high school,1 college, 2 professional sports, 3 and the Olympics.4 We are constantly warned about the dangers of toxic masculinity, but when a biological male MMA fighter fractured the orbital bone of a biological female during an officially sanctioned REVIEW COPY event,5 we responded with a wink and a nod because he identified as a woman. And to add insult to injury, there have even been trans contestants crowned in beauty contests! 6 Not only can the newest justice on the U.S. Supreme Court not answer the simple question “What is a woman?”7 but neither can college professors, doctors, or psychologists who are deemed to be at the top of their field.8 In fact, it’s gotten so weird that now state governments are being forced to define the word, as Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt did in August 2023 through an executive order.9 The worst part of all of this is the fact that, in our upside-down world, if you see anything wrong with all of this, you’re the crazy one! If you doubt that men can become pregnant, some women have penises, and infants suffer from gender dysphoria, you’re the uneducated, simple-minded, evil, and dangerous one whom society needs to fear. You may think all of this happened overnight. I assure you, it didn’t. What we are witnessing now is the result of a long series of ideological shifts, court decisions, political maneuvers, and educational strategies whose aims still have yet to be fully realized. And at the heart of much of the change is the idea that the battle for the rights of so-called “sexual minorities” is the latest front in America’s civil rights struggle, stemming from a single lie that took root in our culture: “Sexual orientation is no different than race.” This lie came to a head in 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges—the case that overrode every existing state law and constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy penned the majority opinion in the landmark decision heralded by gay activists from coast to coast, writing that: The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to REVIEW COPY define and express their identity. The petitioners in these cases seek to find that liberty by marrying someone of the same sex and having their marriages deemed lawful on the same terms and conditions as marriages between persons of the opposite sex.10 (emphasis mine) While many Christians and political conservatives saw Obergefell as the end game in the leftists’ agenda, activists saw it as a stepping stone. It is no coincidence that we have witnessed a proliferation in issues related to sexual minorities since Obergefell. Whether it’s the explosion of transgenderism, the proliferation of sexually explicit materials in schools, drag queen story hour, rebranding pedophiles as “minor-attracted persons” and the attending push to include them in the “sexual minority” group, or the introduction of such outlandish identities as “furries,” the post-Obergefell landscape has produced a dizzying array of people taking Kennedy up on his suggestion to “define and express their identity.” For those of us who follow Christ, the moral decay is more than enough to cause alarm. However, there is a more pressing issue at hand: Obergefell set the stage for new “tension in the debate regarding sexual orientation anti-discrimination and religious freedom.”11 What this looks like, argues University of Massachusetts law professor Jeremiah Ho, is a battle between “the autonomy of sexual minorities to be who and what they are, and the autonomy of those whose religious beliefs may not have accepting views of sexual minorities being who they are.”12And that battle has already begun in earnest. In a June 2023 report to the UN Human Rights Council, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a Costa Rican attorney who at press time was in residence at the Harvard University Law School, recommended that the United States “refrain from justifying with religious narratives any act of violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”13 REVIEW COPY That means no one can use or quote from the Bible to address sexual sin. Madrigal-Borloz went on to add that government authorities should “prevent and investigate such acts and ensure the accountability of perpetrators and the provision of effective remedies for damages.”14 This is dangerous rhetoric! This is a declaration of war on the God of the Bible and all those who worship Him. “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 17:15). If we buy the lie that sexual proclivities and preferences are equivalent to race; if we believe that the fight for the rights of “sexual minorities” is the final frontier in the struggle for civil rights, we are not only opening Pandora’s box, but are insulting whole swaths of people who have fought legitimate civil rights struggles. I am a black man, a descendant of slaves. I was born in South Los Angeles and have spent the last eight years living and serving in Africa. Anyone looking at me can see that I am black. I don’t “define and express my identity” as black. I was born black, and I will die black. So allow me to state one thing here that we’ll spend the rest of this book unpacking: Whether you identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, trigender, multigender, twospirit, furry, queer, demiflux, otherkin, or as a mermaid, a British Columbian wolf, or an avian-human hybrid:15 Not one of those things is like being black.