Baptist Press Reports on Human Rights Campaign Efforts to Alter Public Perception on Homosexuality
NASHVILLE, Nov. 17, 2014 /
Christian Newswire/ -- Baptist Press has released an in-depth look at the Human Rights Campaign's efforts to alter public opinion on homosexuality. The report examines both the HRC's new campaign in Mississippi and its overall efforts during more than three decades of seeking to advance LGBT rights.
HRC, the country's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, unveiled its "All My Children" campaign to increase public and legislative support for LGBT rights in Mississippi Nov. 10, contending that homosexuality is compatible with Christianity.
Such campaigns "will only continue," Russell D. Moore, president of the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, says in the Baptist Press article. "Red states and Bible Belts do not provide adequate protection from these cultural trends."
Churches must preach and explain "a Christian vision of sexuality as rightly expressed in the one-flesh union of a man and a woman," Moore says, and "not stop at morals but go on to show how marriage is rooted in the Gospel, as a picture of Christ and the church." They also must be "those who call for repentance of sin and those who offer mercy to all who come to Christ in repentance and faith," he says.
In the article, John Stonestreet of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview says the church "should find ways to reach out to, and truly love, members of the LGBT community. If we are honest, 'love the sinner, hate the sin' is a bad mantra, and we've done a whole lot more hating the sin than ever loving the sinner. We must find ways to love, without endorsing behavior that is biblically described as sinful."
HRC acknowledges the new campaign in a state with a high percentage of Baptists may be the forerunner of others in the South. "[I]f we find success in this Mississippi campaign, we will absolutely consider similar efforts in other states as well," says Jason Rahlan, HRC's communications director, in the article.
Baptist Press is the news service of the Southern Baptist Convention. The BP article on the Human Rights Campaign can be accessed at www.bpnews.net/43744. BP is on the Web at www.baptistpress.com; on Twitter at @baptistpress; and on Facebook at Facebook.com/Baptist Press. For daily emails of Baptist Press news and features, go to baptistpress.com/SubscribeBP.
