Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, was giving a speech on the floor of the House on Wednesday, June 8, about Republican-led bills that he said targeted LGBTQ+ rights.
Before ending his speech, he said, “I just thought I would now recite for you what Jesus Christ said about homosexuality.” Then, while C-SPAN continued to record, Lieu remained dramatically silent for about 20 seconds before ending his speech by saying, “I yield back.”
Lieu is an educated man and very familiar with the teachings of the Bible and his church. He is being complicit by deceiving others in an irresponsible, duplicitous way, silently suggesting that because Jesus never actually used the word for “homosexual” in the “red letters” of the Bible, He must have approved the practice.
Lieu knows better. He is willfully misleading his congressional colleagues and his liberal constituents back home in the beach communities of western Los Angeles County. He knows that Jesus challenged critics, “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?” (Matthew 19:4-5, NIV).
Jesus’ words took the critics back past the giving of the Jewish Law to Moses to the original creative order with Adam and Eve (Genesis 1:27; 2:24). He spoke of them as a binary pair, man and woman, who willfully joined together in a commitment before God as husband and wife.
Lieu’s “cut and paste” theology also conveniently overlooks the clear teaching of Christ’s apostles on this subject. The Apostle Paul told the Romans that as people continue to reject God, He gives them up to increasingly immoral and destructive activities (Romans 1:24-27). He also confirmed that those who practice such things will be judged by a righteous God, along with those who “approve of those who practice them” (1:32; 2:2-3).
The “Good News” of the Bible is that God will forgive those who repent of and turn from these practices and habits. It is not by human willpower but by a spiritual decision and dimension whereby immorality’s victims can be set free.
I pray that Rep. Ted Lieu will learn “the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” on this subject.
Gary Curtis
Newhall