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Christian leaders react to Bethany Christian Services allowing LGBT couples to foster, adopt
By Leah MarieAnn Klett, Christian Post Reporter
Reuters/Victor Ruiz Garcia
Christian leaders have expressed disappointment after Bethany Christian Services, the largest Protestant adoption and foster agency in the United States, announced it will now be offering its services to LGBT couples.
On Monday, the Michigan-based group announced it will begin placing children in LGBT families nationwide. In a statement to The Christian Post, Nathan Bult, senior vice president of the historically evangelical organization, said that faith in Jesus is at the “core” of their mission," but they are "not claiming a position on the various doctrinal issues about which Christians may disagree."
"We acknowledge that discussions about doctrine are important, but our sole job is to determine if a family can provide a safe, stable environment for children. Unlike many other child and family welfare organizations, Bethany is committed to partnering with churches to find as many families for vulnerable children as possible, and we seek to place children with families that share our mission.
"For us to carry out our mission, we are building a broad coalition of Christians – finding families and resources for children in the greatest need. The people we serve deserve to know they are worthy of being safe, loved, and connected. The need is great, so we are taking an ‘all hands on deck’ approach.
"We believe that Christians with diverse beliefs can unify around our mission of demonstrating the love and compassion of Jesus. It's an ambitious mission, and we can only accomplish it together.”
The international agency said it will begin training all its employees, including those at locations that have not worked with gay couples.
The announcement represents a shift for Bethany, an evangelical organization that has the stated aim of demonstrating the “love and compassion of Jesus Christ by protecting children, empowering youth, and strengthening families through quality social services.”
According to its website, Bethany facilitated 3,406 foster placements and 1,123 adoptions in 2019 and has offices in 32 states. The group says it abides by Matthew 25:40: “I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.”
Bethany’s latest decision was met with disappointment from evangelical and Christian leaders.
Southern Baptist leader Al Mohler said that in choosing to open its services to LGBT couples, Bethany decided to “meet the demands of the moral revolutionaries.”
“The moral revolutionaries are now demanding that every single individual in this society every single institution, every single school, every single religious denomination, every single adoption, and foster care agency, must pivot ... In this case, that means capitulation, it means absolute surrender to the demands of the LGBTQ community, and now we're just talking about generalized the political left in the United States,” he said on a Tuesday edition of “The Briefing.”
“We are now seeing a head-on collision between organizations like Bethany Christian services that had been very committed to a Christian understanding of marriage and the family and human sexuality and gender … and the government.”
Mohler said Bethany has surrendered the “Christian convictional part” in order to retain its partnership with the government.
“Christians have to understand: If you're redefining marriage, if you're redefining parent and family, you are redefining civilization,” he said.
Jim Daly, head of Focus on the Family, tweeted that “Bethany Christian Services should not have to choose between holding to their deeply held religious convictions and serving children and families.”
“No government should tell any ministry how to run their ministry, let alone violate deeply held biblical principles,” he added.
Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, said Bethany’s decision is a “very disappointing capitulation to cultural pressure.”
“Children need a dad and a mom in a healthy, biblical home. God’s Word is clear,” he tweeted.
“I am disappointed in this decision, as are many,” Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said. “This move will harm already existing efforts to enable faith-based orphan care ministries to serve the vulnerable without capitulating on core Christian convictions.”
Though Bethany previously referred LGBT prospective foster and adoptive parents to other agencies, the organization began placing foster children with same-sex couples in 2019 after a legal battle in Michigan.
At the time, the agency announced that despite the decision, its beliefs have not changed.
“Bethany will continue operations in Michigan, in compliance with our legal contract requirements. The mission and beliefs of Bethany Christian Services have not changed,” the agency said at the time. “We are focused on demonstrating the love of Jesus Christ by serving children in need, and we intend to continue doing so in Michigan.”
And a major player trudges down the road toward Sodom and Gomorrah.
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South Korea’s first transgender soldier, forcibly discharged from military, found dead at home
3 Mar, 2021 19:31
FILE PHOTO. © Reuters / Kim Hong-Ji
The first South Korean soldier who underwent gender reassignment surgery while on active duty – and who was later forcibly discharged – has been found dead at her home, with the cause of death so far unknown.
Byun Hee-soo, 23, a former staff sergeant who was locked in a legal battle with the South Korean military ever since her discharge over gender reassignment surgery, has been found dead at her home, police confirmed to the Korean news agency Yonhap.
Emergency services were alerted about a potential incident by Byun’s mental health counsellor, who said the transgender woman could not be reached at least since February 28. Firefighters found her dead at her home on Wednesday.
No suicide note was found and the police have not commented on the cause of death, which remains unknown. However, a local mental health clinic said Byun sought to commit suicide three months ago.
Byun rose to prominence in Korea and beyond last year after she sued the South Korean army over her discharge in a high-profile case. The transgender woman underwent gender reassignment surgery in Thailand while on leave in January 2020, becoming the first active-duty South Korean soldier to do so.
So, I'm assuming she did not have permission from the SK military before going ahead with the surgery.
Army officials then decided that the removal of male genitals amounted to what is termed a “Level 3 physical disability” according to military laws, Yonhap reported. This disability determination categorized Byun as unfit for further service and she was forcibly discharged.
Byun had sought to continue service in the army’s female corps, but the military rejected her petition for reinstatement. In December 2020, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) ruled that the army’s decision not to allow her to serve as a female had no legal grounds.
The Center for Military Human Rights Korea, a civic group, also filed a petition, stating that the army’s actions in Byun’s case might amount to discrimination against transgender people.
Legal proceedings in Byun’s case have been ongoing, and the next hearing was scheduled for April. Back in July 2020, when she filed her complaint, Byun expressed her determination to fight the decision “till the end.”
The case sparked a national debate over transgender soldiers in South Korea, which requires able-bodied men to serve in the military for about two years.
“Apart from my gender identity, I want to show everyone that I can also be one of the great soldiers who protect this country,” she said last year after her dismissal.
Chinese court says homosexuality can be deemed MENTAL DISORDER after former student brings case over textbook definition
3 Mar, 2021 15:14
Supporters of LGBT rights take part in the annual pride parade in Hong Kong © Reuters / Bobby Yip
Homosexuality can be classified as a “psychological disorder,” a Chinese court has ruled, upholding a decision in favor of a textbook publisher. It found only a ‘difference of opinion’ – not fact – between plaintiff and publisher.
The inclusion of homosexuality as a psychological disorder in a popular university textbook constitutes “not factual error but a divergent academic view,” the Suqian Intermediate People’s Court ruled last week. Located in the eastern province of Jiangsu, the court upheld a previous ruling handed down by the Suyu District People’s Court last year.
The plaintiff, Ou “Xixi” Jiayong, was disappointed with the decision, suggesting the court’s idea of what constituted a factual error as opposed to a difference in opinion was “random and baseless.” While she acknowledged she had maxed out all legal avenues, she hinted to SCMP that “there was still much more work to be done” and revealed she planned to work with others in the community to push the case further. “They didn’t even have a trial, they just handed down the judgment,” she complained.
The Chinese LGBT community also expressed disappointment with the ruling, accusing the courts and the textbook’s publisher of being out of touch with modern culture. Ah Qiang, spokesman for the Guangzhou chapter of the PFLAG support group for families and friends of LGBT youth, likened the ruling to a persistent declaration that the sun revolved around the earth. “The editor of the textbook apparently used viewpoints that do not match society’s perception of sexual minorities today,” he stated.
Xixi, who identifies as a lesbian, filed the suit back in 2017, four years after she came upon the Mental Health Education for College Students textbook during her university studies. She told the New York Times last year that she was “shocked” and “deeply stung” to come upon the inclusion of homosexuality under “common psychosexual disorders” in such a widely-used book.
Like cross-dressing and fetishism, the textbook claimed, homosexuality “was believed to be a disruption of love and sex or perversion of the sex partner.”
The former student, now a social worker, demanded that publisher Jinan University Press and retailer JD.com, who stocks the book, both remove the offending text and apologize for including it in the first place, denouncing it as “poor quality work” lacking any sort of scientific support. After losing her earlier case against the publisher and retailer last year, she appealed in November – only to receive the same answer.
Homosexuality was decriminalized in China in 1997 and removed from a list of mental disorders in 2001, though some variations – like homosexuals who are “discordant with themselves” or otherwise feel psychologically uncomfortable with their sexual identity – remain listed as a condition in the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders, according to South China Morning Post. Even the World Health Organization only removed homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1990.
How many thousands of years was homosexuality considered a perversion. Now, only in the past 30 years was that perversion considered normal. It's odd that homosexuality is drawing the western world closer and closer to Sodom, and two main countries, China and Russia are resisting this movement. Go figure!
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