Randall Murphree
AFA Journal editor
July 2021 – “Why am I passionate about an issue like homosexuality or transgenderism in the Bible?” asks Dr. Robert Gagnon (photo, above). “Because what we’re talking about here is the foundation of all sexual ethics for the church. Jesus defined what is normative for the Christian faith in regards to sexual purity matters.”
Gagnon, professor of theology at Houston Baptist University, is among scholars and theologians who validate the application of biblical ethics to sexual integrity in the documentary In His Image: Delighting in God’s Plan for Gender and Sexuality (IHI). The film debuted by American Family Studios (AFS) last October.
“Dr. Gagnon’s book The Bible and Homosexual Practice is the unanswered text on this subject,” said M.D. Perkins, producer of IHI. “No one has been able to refute it.”
IHI director Kendra White interviewed Dr. Gagnon for the film. Below are a few excerpts from the interview.
Kendra White: How do gay-affirming Christians that you debate develop their theology on this subject?
Robert Gagnon: Virtually all persons who promote same-sex relations or transgenderism do so for reasons other than what Scripture says. The reason is obvious – there’s really nothing in Scripture that supports such a position.
KW: Is there a common denominator among them?
RG: Typically, people who promote homosexual unions in the church do so because they’ve had an experience. … [M]ore often than not, it’s a family member or another loved one.
KW: You talk about an inverted revisionist scale. What is that?
RG: Typically, the church defines how it ought to think and behave based on Scripture first, then reason … and science. Then last of all experience.
What’s happened is that the scale has been inverted so that at the top instead of Scripture, we have put experience, as though it were self-interpreting. [Experience is] followed by distorted views of science and philosophical reasoning, and Scripture is in last place.
KW: Why are people today so quick to ignore church history?
RG: Many people today believe that we have this radical “new knowledge” that Christians of previous generations had absolutely no awareness of. It is a sort of elitist view of the Christian faith.
[Yet] for 2,000 years – if we take it to the Old Testament, we can add several millennia to that – the people of God have had a consistent view about a male-female foundation for marriage.
KW: Are all sins equal?
RG: No. A lot of Christians, even those who are on the right page on the issue of homosexual unions and transgenderism, will fall prey to the argument that all sins are equal. The reason people on the religious left promote that view is [to try to misdirect the debate]. They will then pinpoint some sins that we regard as relatively minor, for example, gluttony.
KW: How do you respond to that?
RG: It’s quite clear for anybody – any Jew and any Christian who accepts the Old Testament as the authoritative Word of God – that God is opposed to homosexual practice.
What Jesus did is take that male-female requirement for all sexual relations, which means for marriage. He then drew from that the standard of male-female monogamy. The logic, Jesus says … is that there ought to be only two people in the sexual union: that man and that woman, and that’s it. 
Deeper insights
▶ The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (christianbook.com).
▶ The Bible and Homosexuality with Dr. Robert Gagnon, a two-DVD address from AFS (afastore.net).
▶ AFA Journal’s special In His Image issue.
▶ View free the AFS documentary In His Image at inhisimagemovie.com or order DVDs from afastore.net.
