The church body also took a step closer to ordaining homosexual clergy.

The issue here, beloved readers, is only partly a rejection of biblical authority, and only partly a rejection of those passages in the Bible that condemn same-sex sexual activity.

The primary offense is against this passage (Gen. 1:28; see also Gen. 9:1):

Be fruitful and multiply.

Until Protestants recognize and reaffirm this primary purpose and reason for God creating us male and female and as the grand “setup” for His institution of Holy Marriage, one continually will see the inevitable pull and downward spiral of confusion in the Church about sex, marriage, and the ordination of clergy.

Again, it is inevitable due to the integral nature of our embodied-ness as male and female, and church bodies that think they’re immune by upholding the authority of Scripture and condemning same-sex sexual activity while ignoring this passage are only kidding themselves.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled July 8 that the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act discriminates against states like Massachusetts that have legalized gay “marriage.” States are permitted to define marriage as they wish, according to Tauro’s reasoning. He also ruled that DOMA violates the Equal Protection Clause, part of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

Look for more attacks on marriage this fall at the state and federal level. The folks who want gay “marriage” will not stop until they’ve achieved victory.

This is a human rights issue. Just as I was very proud to say the obvious more than 15 years ago in Beijing that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights, well, let me say today that human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights, once and for all.

It is no small matter that the Obama administration, through Madam Clinton’s work in the State department, is equating gay rights with human rights not only locally, but especially globally. You can view the Secretary’s video presentation here.

The policy will be set forth in a ruling to be issued Wednesday by the Labor Department’s wage and hour division, the officials said. . . The new ruling indicates that an employee in a same-sex relationship can qualify for leave to care for the child of his or her partner, even if the worker has not legally adopted the child. . . [i]t is one of many actions taken by the Obama administration to respond to the concerns of gay men and lesbians within the constraints of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman as husband and wife.

Compare The Defense of the Augsburg Confession (XIII: 19):

God wishes the rest [of humanity] to use the common law of nature which He has instituted. For God does not wish His ordinances, His creations to be despised. He wishes men to be chaste in this way, that they use the remedy divinely presented [marriage], just as He wishes to nourish our life in this way, that we use food and drink.

Obama clearly honors a “two-father family” as a “nurturing family.”

I thought that, generally speaking, women were the more nurturing sex.

Why not a three- or four-father family?

This is really getting confusing!

In what should come as no surprise, the US resumed its trend of following Europe in a declining fertility rate. A portion of “Table 1″ is provided above. From the report:

The 2008 preliminary estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR)) was 2085.5 births per 1,000 women–2% ower than the rate in 2007 (2,122.5) (Table 1). The TFR summarizes the potential impact of current fertility patterns on completed family size by estimating the average number of births that a hypothetical group of 1,000 women would have over their lifetimes, based on the age-specifi birth rates obeserved in the given year. The TFR for the United States in 2008 was below replacement after being above in 2006 and 2007. Replacement is the rate at which a given generation can exactly replace itself,k which is generally considered to be 2,1000 births per 1,00 women. The U.S. rate had been below replacement from 1972 to 2005.

Source: Hamilton BE, Martin JA, and Ventura SJ. “Births: Preliminary Data for 2008.” National Center for Health Statistics. National Vital Statistics Reports. 2010;58(16):1-17.

Also, from the Washington Post:

The nation’s overall birthrate fell 2 percent from 2007 to 2008, when about 4.2 million babies were born. The dip pushed the fertility rate below 2.1 per woman, meaning Americans were no longer giving birth to enough children to keep the population from declining.

Here’s a paragraph from an article I recently wrote for The Hausvater Project. Titled “Medicating against Motherhood: As the Pill Turns 50, a New Generation Seeks to Rediscover Marital Chastity,” the article offers an explanation why the Lutheran Church eventually accepted contraception. Included within the article is the connection between Professor Alfred Rehwinkel’s book, Planned Parenthood, and Margaret Sanger, the founder of what today is known as Planned Parenthood. From the article:

[Author Alfred] Rehwinkel’s approach to Scripture, to which he and others had acquiesced in the decades prior to writing Planned Parenthood, is nowadays commonplace among conservative Christians. It is therefore instructive. First, define the moral issue. Second, consult the Scriptures. Third, if the Scriptures do not specifically mention the issue, or they do not specifically prohibit a given practice, then the conclusion: the Christian is free to engage. Savvy believers will recognize that this sort of biblical interpretation has been used by politicians in order to support clear moral wrongs. Recall that President Bill Clinton, a Baptist, suggested, “Nowhere in those Ten Commandments will you find anything about homosexuality.” Of course, the Bible explicitly condemns homosexuality in numerous places, and even says that God’s creation shows that same-sex relations go against nature. But for Clinton, that wasn’t the point. The point was that where he chose to look in the Bible, the prohibitions were not there.

You can read the whole article here.

The decision injects the president squarely into the debate over gay marriage by attempting to end the common practice by many hospitals of insisting that only family members by blood or marriage be allowed to visit patients. . .

By contrast, opponents of gay marriage have said the visitation issue is a red herring, and have argued that advocates want to provide special rights for gays and lesbians that others do not have.

This weekend, in anticipation of the the Focus on the Family ad featuring former Gator and Heisman-trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mom, which will appear during tomorrow’s Super Bowl game, I’ll post a few pro-life goodies and commentary. I’m calling the series “Tebow Truth,” in honor of Tim and his mom’s courageous confession about God’s gift of life.

Here’s the first: Teens for Life. In one word: Awesome! Videos, music, and frank discussions about abortion, embryonic stem cell research, contraception, and a variety of other hot topics from a pro-life perspective. The site also offers an 800 number and immediate IM service to CareNet pregnancy center counselors. Double awesome!