"New Testament Teaching on Homosexuality Not True" -Obama Christian Appointee to Faith-Based Pro...

CNS News ^ | Wednesday, April 08, 2009 | Fred Lucas

[presidio9]

President Obama has named to his faith-based advisory council a self-professed Christian who holds that the New Testament's teaching that homosexual behavior is unnatural and wrong--which is found in St. Paul's letter to the Romans--“is not true."

The appointee, Harry Knox, has also said that Obama's decision to invite the Rev. Rick Warren to say a prayer at the Inauguration "tainted" the ceremony and that Pope Benedict XVI is a "discredited leader."

Harry Knox, a professed gay Christian who is director of the religion and faith program at the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual rights group, was named to President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships on Monday. The advisory council gives federal grants to faith-based organizations.

The appointment came after Knox criticized Obama prior to the Inauguration for selecting Warren, a California megachurch pastor and best-selling author, to deliver the invocation. Writing in The Huffington Post blog, Knox said to Obama, “We don’t feel hopeful anticipation of a new day in our country, and we don’t feel optimism. We feel betrayed.”

Knox said in the December article that Warren’s invocation would make the Jan. 20 Inauguration a “tainted” event because Warren supported the ballot initiative in California to amend the state constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

On the PBS News Hour in December, Knox said that Warren “has in fact leveraged homophobia to get ahead in his career. … This is the worst possible choice the president could have made. This is a divisive choice. … We said to the president-elect today in very strong language, the strongest we can think of and be respectful of the office, you have really slapped us. And we want you to think about that and think very hard what your actions will be going forward because this very symbolic, early decision has sent the exact wrong message.”

Knox could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Knox is one of 25 members of the advisory board of the White House Office Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Obama announced the formation of the office in early February, a continuation of a similar office started by President George W. Bush to issue federal grants to faith-based, non-profit charitable organizations.

Other members include Bishop Charles Blake of the Church of God in Christ in Chicago; the Rev. Peg Chemberlin, president-elect of the National Council of Churches USA; Dr. Frank Page, president emeritus of the Southern Baptist Convention; the Rev. Jim Wallis, president of the liberal Christian group Sojourners; and the Rev. Joel C. Hunter of Northland Church in Longwood, Fla.

Knox has been a long-time gay activist focusing on the faith community. He previously worked for the New York-based Freedom to Marry group, for Georgia Equality and Equality Florida. He has won awards from liberal religious organizations.

In a debate with the Rev. Gino Jennings recorded Nov. 28, 2004 at the First Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Philadelphia, the two men sparred over various biblical verses references homosexual behavior.

This included the Book of Romans, in which St. Paul wrote, “Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”

After reading the scripture, Jennings asked, “Do you believe that? That if a man lie with a man or a woman with a woman it is against nature?”

“I do not believe it,” answered Knox, who at the time was the program director for the group Freedom to Marry.

Jennings responded, “So this is a lie?”

Knox affirmed, “That is not true.”

“Paul did not have any idea of the kind of love that I feel for a partner when I am partnered. He didn’t know what that was about,” Knox said. “The straight man, the heterosexual man who got the privilege of writing the book, the educated, rich, heterosexual man, Paul, who got to write the book, didn’t think it was natural because for him it must not have been.”

Jennings later responded that Paul was not the sole author of the writings. “So you are saying Paul was just closed-minded. I totally disagree because the book says this, the book tells us that all scripture, all of the scripture, not some of it, but all scripture are given by the inspiration of God,” said Jennings.

Before starting at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in 2005, Knox also worked as development director of Equality Florida and was the executive director of Georgia Equality. While in Georgia, his groups successfully lobbied corporations such as Coca-Cola, Bell South, Delta, and Cingular to extend same-sex benefits to employees.

At the HRC, Knox established a weekly preaching resource that provides scriptural commentary to pastors interested in homosexual perspectives on the Bible. He also helped create a network of 22 “progressive state clergy coalitions” around the country, according to the HRC Web site.

Knox has the potential to be a polarizing figure, said the Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman of the conservative Traditional Values Coalition.

“Everything he says will be front-page news,” Sheldon told CNSNews.com. “He will be a political liability to the president. All the good that the faith-based office does will get buried by a loose cannon that fires over the bow. But that’s what Obama wants.”

Last month, Knox was quoted in a gay newspaper criticizing the pope and the Catholic group Knights of Columbus, mainly because the Knights supported the traditional marriage amendment to the California constitution.

Knox told the San Francisco-based gay newspaper the Bay Area Reporter, “The Knights of Columbus do a great deal of good in the name of Jesus Christ, but in this particular case, they were foot soldiers of a discredited army of oppression.” In the newspaper, he included among the “discredited leaders” Catholic bishops and Pope Benedict XVI, as “A pope who literally today said condoms don't help in control of AIDS."

In a brief interview Monday with CNSNews.com, Knox stood by his comments on the pope.

“The pope needs to start telling the truth about condom use,” Knox told CNSNews.com. “We are eager to help him do that. Until he is willing to do that and able, he’s doing a great deal more harm than good--not just in Africa but around the world. It is endangering people’s lives.”

The pope’s comments were mischaracterized by Knox, said Catholic League President Bill Donohue.

“When Pope Benedict XVI recently said that condoms are not the answer to HIV/AIDS, he was simply voicing common sense: the promiscuous distribution of condoms has coincided with a precipitous increase in HIV/AIDS,” Donohue said in a statement Tuesday. “But to gay activists like Knox, the pope is a liar. Indeed, he instructed the pope to ‘start telling the truth about condom use,’ holding the Holy Father accountable for ‘endangering people’s lives.’ He never explained how calls for abstinence could possibly jeopardize anyone’s life.”

In 2000, Knox won the Cordle Award for Promoting God’s Diversity, and the Lancaster Theological Seminary’s 2005 Robert V. Moss Medal for Excellence in Ministry.

[NavyCanDo]

The religious Left came up with their own gender neutral version of the Bible a couple of years ago. Very soon I expect to see a homosexual bible where all references to it being sinful are removed, and incidents of it happening like in Sodom and Gomorrah are rewritten as it being pleasing to God.

[rintense]

Just one more liberal trying to interpret the Bible in order to make his lifestyle, and others, acceptable. Its the PC version with no accountability to God or his Son. The danger in this is the movement to make their interpretation the acceptable one, as all others will be considered hate speech.

[Pilated]

Great more hetrosexual bashing from the man who dislikes America.

[Wilhelm Tell]

The Nazis officially tolerated Christianity, but they tried to play down the books by the man they referred to as the Jew Paul.

The Nazis did more than that. They took over the Protestant churches (except for a persecuted remnant that did not bow to the anti-Christ). The Nazis tried to make the churches become little more than outlets for Nazi propaganda. A lot of real Christians who resisted this were sent to prison or concentration camps. For decades the authority of the Bible had been downgraded, so a lot of church leaders were well-prepared to let the Nazi pagans destroy what was left of Christianity.

[muawiyah]

Knox is the sort of mental whack job who probably thinks highly of St. Paul's injunction to remove bodily parts that offend you.

Someday this guy is going to be out in his backyard getting drunk on cheap wine when he spies a hammer, and the rest is history.

Happens a lot in this class of human being.

[Liz]

NOTRE DAME SHOULD BE NOTIFED ABOUT THIS : Pres Obama's pick for the US' official faith-based advisory council said that Pope Benedict XVI is a "discredited leader."

The appointee, Harry Knox, a self-professed Christian holds that the New Testament's teaching that homosexual behavior is unnatural and wrong--which is found in St. Paul's letter to the Romans--“is not true." He has also said that Obama's decision to invite the Rev. Rick Warren to say a prayer at the Inauguration "tainted" the ceremony.

University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
Phone: 574-631-5000.

NPR---What do you think about President Obama's invitation to give the commencement address at Notre Dame?
TEL 800-989-8255.
EMAIL talk@npr.org

[DaiHuy]

Knox said “... the New Testament’s teaching that homosexual behavior is unnatural and wrong—which is found in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans—“is not true.”

Well Mr. Knox, how about if came directly from God’s mouth.
Read it and weep Mr. Knox.

Leviticus 20
1 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying...13 If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.

22 ‘You shall therefore keep all My statutes and all My judgments, and perform them, that the land where I am bringing you to dwell may not vomit you out. 23 And you shall not walk in the statutes of the nation which I am casting out before you; for they commit all these things, and therefore I abhor them.

Deuteronomy 28:
15 “But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:

27 The LORD will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, with the scab, and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed.

58 “If you do not carefully observe all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, THE LORD YOUR GOD,

59 then the LORD will bring upon you and your descendants extraordinary plagues—great and prolonged plagues—and serious and prolonged sicknesses. 60 Moreover He will bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt, of which you were afraid, and they shall cling to you. 61 Also every sickness and every plague, which is not written in this Book of the Law, will the LORD bring upon you until you are destroyed.

Now Mr. Knox consider this before you use the argument that Jesus negated the Old Testament Law remember what Jesus said

Matthew 5:
17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

And yes Jesus did fulfil the law in the sense that he executed the law: but he also admonished us in the next verses that the law would not be destroyed until all is fufilled, that being his crucifiction. Since Jesus was the Son of God he was the only person capable of fulfilling the law. Jesus then goes on to say

19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

So you can see Mr. Knox, that Jesus did fulfill all that was required of the law so that we could be saved by his grace, but in no way did he say that the abominations that you and the rest of your kind commit continually, even though you know they are sin, are ok to be continuted.

I hope you take your Bible back to where you bought it, and ask for a new one, because it is obvious that there are chapters missing out of the one you read.

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

Jihadists are also opposed to homosexuality.

Yassir Arafat notwithstanding.

[william clark]

Of course this is based on the current cultural definition of “Christian,” which is basically anyone who isn’t a Muslim or Jew, and thinks that Jesus was a swell guy.

[Liz]

Obama is pushed and pulled by the cunning calculating Rahm Emanuel.....they see themselves as "The Wrecking Crew"-----anything remotely connected with the founders, with Christianity, with the Constituton MUST be destroyed..... crushed under the jackbooted heel of the Obamatons until it is dead and and buried.

Day after day the Obama admin is chipping away at the bulwark of democracy----all the solid enduring institutions that make us the nation we are, are being targeted for destruction.

THE NOTRE DAME OUTING IS RAHM'S PLAN TO CREATE CHAOS AMONG RELIGIONISTS............

The calculating, conniving Rahm trots out Obama anyplace where he can create chaos. Obedient Oba mechanically marches out on a round of public events, pressers, travels........robotically reading his speeches from a teleprompter. Rahm's motto is " A Rolling Obama Keeps His Numbers Up."

O's not running a gov't. He's running a reelection pastorate for worshipful Dems.

Messiah of the Church of Whatever Works For Me.

[Happy Rain]

One can be a homosexual Christian or an active homosexual—but never both.

This thing thus speaks from the grave and is best ignored.

[napscoordinator]

It always kills me when they say we are all going to hell for eating shellfish. I am not sure why God does not want us to eat any type of shell fish, but I am taking a risk by eating lobster and things like that. I wish he had not put that in the Bible. It does make me nervous. I want to go straight to Heaven without questions...lol.

[Liz]

OBAMA PUTS CAMEL'S NOSE UNDER THE TENT Obama is being pressured to "dialogue" on same-sex marriage. Obama's nominee, Harry Knox, a self-professed Christian holds that the New Testament's teaching that homosexual behavior is unnatural and wrong--which is found in St. Paul's letter to the Romans--“is not true."

We need to marshall Black churchgoers to this abomination. Keep in mind Obama ran on his opposition to same-sex marriage.

Obama's base----Black churchgoers----vehemently oppose same-sex marriage----some switched to Republican in past years on that issue alone.

[LostInBayport]

“The straight man, the heterosexual man who got the privilege of writing the book, the educated, rich, heterosexual man, Paul, who got to write the book, didn’t think it was natural because for him it must not have been.”

All of the typical liberal plop is in this one...it's all the fault of the intolerant rich, white guy who didn't 'respect diversity' and got the privilege of writing the book based on his social status.

Liberals see themselves as victimized by everyone, even God, I guess. Wonder if he'll agree.

[gidget7]

He will find out worse than that. He will find out that things go worse on ones judgment day, for those who lead His flock astray.

[avenir]

I always remember an essay Camille Paglia wrote—THE JOY OF PRESBYTERIAN SEX—condemning liberal churches and asking “Why do they even call themselves Christians when they don’t believe what the Bible clearly teaches?” We all know Camille is not a Christian, but she is intellectually honest as a historian (she emphasized that homosexual “marriage” has zero historical support and that those who want to do so should embrace Paganism instead of trying to subvert Christianity).

[chris_bdba]

The Bible warns about self professed Christians like you....

[Prov3456]

The Book of Revelation??!!!

I suppose too many people will "have to see it to believe it!"

Scary thought.

[chris_bdba]

I’ve always been of the mind that those food cautions in the Bible came from the fact that shellfish and pork both spoiled fast in the dessert and was put in to keep people from dying of food poisioning in the days before refrigeration. I could be wrong and if I am then I’ll be there right next to you.

[Ken H]

Exod.20 [17] Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.