Homosexuality Violates the Design of our Bodies

Homosexuality, at its root, says that my body tells me nothing about how I should function sexually, and that I can do what I feel like rather than fulfilling the design of my sexuality which is rooted in the biology of the human body. This treats the body as if it is inconsequential and pointless - just a shell of meat that we wear rather than part of who we are. The "true self" in this view is the soul or mind or some non-physical entity that is inhabiting our bodies. The body is viewed as separate and unconnected to the true self, to be used as we please.

This mind/body dualism is actually a very low view of the body compared to the traditional Christian view, which says the body is inherently good, created by God, and part of who we are, not just a shell we inhabit. A lot of Christians today have lost this understanding, but this has been the historic Christian view since the beginning.

This presents a powerful way to reach those struggling with homosexual desires or similar issues (like transgenderism) with a positive message that their bodies are not irrelevant to who they are, but are good and integral parts of their being. Our bodies do have a lot to show us about who we are because they exhibit features that have a design. Behaviors that fit with our design are good and behaviors that violate our design are bad - not just morally bad, but bad for us as well.

Rather than a negative message that they are evil and twisted for having same-sex desires, we can present a positive message that their bodies are good. Our design tells us how we should live.

For example, we can study the digestive system to see what it is for and how it works. But that study also shows us good ways and bad ways of treating our bodies. If we eat nutritious food, then our bodies are helped. If we eat junk food or overeat or binge and purge or starve ourselves, these violate the way our bodies are supposed to work and cause harm. We can see that anorexia and bulimia are disorders precisely because they violate the way the body is designed to work.

It is exactly the same with the sexual organs. Our bodies have a way they were designed to work. They are designed as either male or female and the sexes are designed for their sexual organs to fit together and through that action to create new life. Our desires or attractions do not trump the design of our bodies. If we treat our bodies incorrectly, it causes harm.

This is a high view of the body that treats the body as an important part of who we are and which gives us valuable clues about how we should live so that we can flourish. Note that we do not have to rely on Christian moral teaching at this point. This is an argument from natural law, which is accessible to anyone, even if they don't believe the Bible. And that makes it easier to reach those who are not Christians.

It is worth noting at this point that Christian teaching, not coincidentally, is in line with what we can see in nature. This is good evidence for the truth of Christianity. Christian morality doesn't violate our design. It fits perfectly.

For more arguments like this about the design of human bodies and human sexuality, check out my new book The Bible and Science on Gender, Sex, and Marriage.

Is Your Birth Control Abortifacient? It might be.

For pro-life women like myself, the issue of abortion is a major moral issue. Killing a human child in the womb is a moral evil that we strongly oppose. But while the very thought of having a surgical abortion is abhorrent, many of us may not know that many of the birth control options on the drugstore shelves or available at our doctor's office and touted as purely contraceptive can also kill babies. There are pro-life women who are popping a pill every day, have an implant in their arm, or are using an IUD to prevent pregnancy and may be unknowingly aborting their own children.

Which forms of birth control have this risk? The short answer is that all hormonal contraceptives currently available and all IUDs have the potential to cause early abortions by preventing a newly formed embryo from implanting in the womb. The baby then starves to death. Because there's no implantation, the woman's body never knows it was pregnant. She will never get a positive pregnancy test. She won't miss her period. But her baby died all the same.

Now, that's a very serious issue! I would certainly want to know if I were causing my children to die, and I'm sure you do too. So why isn't this commonly known? Shouldn't women be informed about all the risks?

If you ask most ob-gyns or other doctors, they will tell you that hormonal contraceptives and IUDs are purely contraceptive. They will say they don't cause abortions, and cannot do so. However, there's a very clever trick that allows them to say this. They don't count the first few days of a baby's life. Let me explain.

The evidence from science clearly shows that human life begins at fertilization. When egg and sperm join, the resulting single-celled zygote is a separate and distinct individual with all the genetic material of a complete human organism and the ability to grow and develop his or her own body into adulthood. This child is already either male or female. The hair and eye color and many other traits are already set. The zygote needs only nutrients and the right environment to enable him or her to grow, just like any other child does.

During the trip down the fallopian tube to the uterus, the zygote divides several times until it forms a small ball of cells called a blastocyst. Again, this blastocyst is a distinct human individual. The scientific terms like zygote, embryo, and blastocyst are just stages of growth that all humans go through just like infant, toddler, adolescent, or adult.

The blastocyst is the stage that implants in the womb. This process of implantation occurs from 6-12 days after fertilization. Implantation cannot occur unless there is a living human child present. It is the blastocyst that initiates implantation. The mother's uterus has a thick, highly vascular layer of tissue called the endometrium on the inside surface and the tiny blastocyst must burrow into this tissue and attach to a blood vessel to begin forming a placenta in cooperation with the mother's tissues. The placenta is the organ that gives nutrients to the baby from the mother's blood supply and produces the hormones that will tell her body that a baby is present so that she does not shed the uterine lining through menstruation and instead begins making changes to support her growing child.

Because the baby must travel down the fallopian tube and attach to the uterine lining before getting any nutrients, those first few days of life are a little rough. The egg must be large and have stores of nutrients in order to feed the growing embryo during this time period. By the time the baby gets to the uterus, he needs food. The implantation process is a time crunch to get connected in time, before precious stores of nutrients run out. 

Those first few days of life, before implantation, that baby is alive. Yet back in 1965, pregnancy was redefined to begin at implantation rather than fertilization. So there are 6-12 days when a woman's body contains her living child's body and yet modern doctors don't count her as pregnant because the baby hasn't implanted in the womb yet.

That seems misleading, right? Why would we count pregnancy as beginning at implantation rather than the creation of the child? In times past, pregnancy was synonymous with the old-fashioned term "with child." It meant a woman was carrying a child inside her. So if she's not pregnant, you would think that means there's no baby inside her. That's the way people tend to think about it. Yet with this change of definition, people have been misled to believe that there's no baby inside her during those 6-12 days before implantation.

The really startling fact about this change of definition was that it was intended to mislead people about how birth control works. You see, hormonal birth control - specifically the combination birth control pill - had just been approved for use as a contraceptive in 1960. In the 1950's, female hormones were available to treat menstrual irregularities, but not for use as a contraceptive even though it was known to work as contraception. With the advent of an effective contraceptive pill which could potentially prevent implantation also, it was argued that counting pregnancy as beginning at implantation would be helpful in encouraging the use of the new birth control pill among women. 

Even Wikipedia (not exactly known for its honesty on controversial matters) admits that this was the motivation:

"In 1959, Dr. Bent Boving suggested that the word "conception" should be associated with the process of implantation instead of fertilization. Some thought was given to possible societal consequences, as evidenced by Boving's statement that "the social advantage of being considered to prevent conception rather than to destroy an established pregnancy could depend on something so simple as a prudent habit of speech." In 1965, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) adopted Boving’s definition: "conception is the implantation of a fertilized ovum.""

Wikipedia "Beginning of pregnancy controversy" 

In short, it was considered "prudent" to tell women that the birth control pill only prevents pregnancy and not that it can end the life of a child. In order to do that, they defined pregnancy to begin at implantation so as to hide the fact that human children who had not yet been implanted could be killed by this new "contraceptive." If pregnancy has not yet begun because the baby has not implanted, then there was no abortion. Thus, preventing implantation is not counted as abortion on a technicality, due to this faulty definition of pregnancy, despite the fact that it does kill a human individual.

The potential for ending young human lives with hormonal contraceptives has been known for decades and covered up with misleading definitions. There are several other problems with hormonal contraceptives as well, but this is the most serious moral issue. The hormones in birth control make the uterus inhospitable for a baby to implant and thus can cause an early abortion by preventing implantation.

 
In fairness, this is not the main mode of action. There are three mechanisms by which hormonal birth control works. The main mechanism is to prevent ovulation. If no egg is released, there can be no conception. This mechanism is truly contraceptive by preventing conception. The secondary mechanism is to thicken cervical secretion to impede sperm motility. If sperm do not reach the egg, then no conception occurs. However, the third mechanism works as a backup in case the first two mechanisms fail (which they sometimes do). The uterine lining is thinned by the hormones and becomes less able to care for an implanting child. A thin lining means less blood flow and difficulty in connecting to a blood vessel. If an egg is released and fertilized, then the new child will usually fail to implant in the womb. The baby then starves and dies. There is no way of knowing which is happening each month for any particular woman.

Here are some secular health sites that discuss the mechanisms for hormonal birth control. It is well-known that the uterine lining is affected and may prevent implantation. In fact, one of the main beneficial effects they tout for birth control pills is that they thin the uterine lining and produce lighter periods or even none at all in some women. A thinner uterine lining means a baby cannot implant and get the nutrients he needs.

 

"The hormones in the Pill can also sometimes affect the lining of the uterus, making it difficult for an egg to attach to the wall of the uterus."
Kids Health

"Birth control pills contain synthetic hormones that work to prevent pregnancy. These hormones can stop ovulation and make it more difficult for sperm to enter your uterus. They can also alter your uterine lining, which can reduce the likelihood of implantation."

Healthline

"The pill also thickens cervical mucus so the sperm cannot reach the egg. It makes the lining of the uterus unreceptive to the implantation of a fertilized egg."

HealthyWomen

The abortifacient potential of the combination birth control pill is shared by all hormonal contraceptives because they all contain the same progestin hormone that thins the uterine lining. This includes the regular birth control pill, the mini pill, the implant, the ring, the patch, the depo shot, and hormonal IUDs. All of these have the same mechanisms. They all contain progestin. They all thin the uterine lining. They can all prevent a human embryo from implanting in the womb.

It's not just hormonal birth control that can be abortifacient though. The copper IUD (Paraguard) can also prevent implantation and thus kill children. There are two types of IUDs - hormonal and copper. The hormonal type works just like other hormonal contraceptives. The copper one is often chosen by women specifically because it doesn't have the female hormones, with their sometimes harmful side effects. Yet the abortifacient side effect remains.

The copper in the copper IUD does kill sperm as the primary mechanism, but it also inflames the lining of the uterus and makes it inhospitable to an embryo, if fertilization were to occur. It does appear that preventing fertilization occurs more often, but killing an embryo can occur on occasion. Again, we don't know how often each mechanism is occurring in any particular woman.

Take a look at these scholarly sources that verify that all IUDs can be deadly to a human embryo:

"All IUDs induce a local inflammatory reaction that disturbs the functioning of the endometrium and myometrium and changes the microenvironment of the uterine cavity. Moreover, these effects alter signaling between uterus and ovary. The entire genital tract seems affected, at least in part because of luminal transmission of fluids accumulating in the uterine lumen. Copper or progesterone-releasing IUDs may attenuate or accentuate the inflammatory response, disturb the physiology of the gametes in the female genital tract, or destroy the viability of the embryos or endometrial receptivity to implantation." (Emphasis added)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8972502/

"All intrauterine devices (IUDs) that have been tested experimentally or clinically induce a local inflammatory reaction of the endometrium whose cellular and humoral components are expressed in the tissue and the fluid filling the uterine cavity. ... In the human, the entire genital tract appears affected due to luminal transmission of the noxa that accumulates in the uterine lumen. This affects the function and viability of gametes, decreasing the rate of fertilization and lowering the chances of survival of any embryo that may be formed, before it reaches the uterus." (Emphasis added)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17531610/

Note that you have to read the fine print carefully on this issue because a lot of resources will tell you that IUDs are not abortifacient because the primary mechanism is to prevent fertilization. While it's true that the primary mechanism prevents fertilization, an occasional abortion is ignored, yet is very much an important moral issue that should be considered. They skip over that part on purpose in order to persuade women to use such devices. If you look at the scientific literature, they do admit that IUDs, including the copper one, can kill an embryo if fertilization does occur.

If we believe every human life is sacred, then we need to show that in our actions. I could never take hormonal contraceptives or use IUDs because of the risk of killing my child. There are other ways to prevent pregnancy that don't have this moral stain.

Now, it should be mentioned here that there are sometimes other uses of female hormones besides contraceptive use. The birth control pill and other female hormones are sometimes used to regulate a woman's cycle, treat PCOS, raise abnormally low estrogen levels, or similar medical uses. This is distinct from using these hormone treatments as contraception. It might be the same pill in a lot of cases, but the reason for use is very different. 

Still, these women need to be aware of the risks of causing an early child death when they use these hormonal treatments in order to make an informed decision. If the hormone treatment is needed, they may want to use a barrier method as a backup, to be sure to prevent fertilization. Or they may want to look at other options for treatment. If they're past childbearing age or otherwise infertile, this may not even be an issue for some women. But the information should be available so that they understand the risks. There's also a difference in the morality of taking a necessary medical treatment that has a small risk of causing an abortion versus taking hormonal contraceptives for their contraceptive purpose and taking on that risk of abortion when there is no medical necessity for the woman. These factors take some careful moral reasoning and should not be ignored.

There is one more objection that some will use to argue for these birth control methods. It goes like this. A large fraction - estimated from 10-40% - of human embryos will die naturally even without these birth control methods. In fact, they will even claim that since these methods prevent so many fertilization events, the total number of babies dying goes down. Yet this does not justify occasionally killing human babies. 

When deaths occur naturally, that's tragic, but we aren't responsible for them. People dying of natural causes does not make it okay to kill them, either intentionally or through negligence. When we intervene to control fertility by choosing methods which can be deadly to some babies, we are morally responsible for the outcomes in ways that don't apply to natural deaths. 

As an analogy, suppose there was a nursing home that cared for the elderly, but occasionally gave some of them a lethal injection. Yet the rest of the time, they such a great job at giving the rest of the patients excellent care that, compared to other nursing homes, their death rate was a little lower overall. Would you consider that a good facility? I would hope not. Saving some lives with great care doesn't mean they can now kill a few people. They don't have that right.

Using these abortifacient birth control methods is a similar situation with the statistics. They might prevent some natural deaths by preventing the fertilization in the first place, but they also cause deaths. And because we intervened to use the method, we are responsible for the deaths we cause.

Now, for many of you, you didn't know. You weren't intending to kill any babies. And you're probably upset that no one has told you this before. It's not right that this information is kept from women with sneaky definitions designed to conceal the truth. 

But now you know. You're now responsible for what you know and what you do with that information.

Playing God with Human Reproduction: The Immorality of IVF Technologies

Humans are sacred. The creation of humans is sacred. Children are designed to be formed from the act of sexual intimacy between a husband and wife. When you take the conception of the child outside the marital union and involve third parties (doctors, technicians, etc), you are separating things that God designed and intended to be kept together - sex, marriage, and children. Creating a child in a lab is as much a deviation from God's plan as creating that child through fornication or rape. The child, of course, is just as valuable, regardless of the circumstances of their conception. But we should recognize that an injustice has been done to the child in these cases. 

Every child is made in the image of God and has natural rights. But we violate the natural law when we take conception outside the marital sexual union. It is unfair to children, it treats them as property, and it misuses the sexual design God gave us.

Killing Children

The most serious and obvious problem with in-vitro fertilization is that it commonly results in the intentional killing of human children. We see a lot of dehumanization of embryos created through IVF. They only get implanted if they're judged to be healthy enough. Clinics discard embryos that have genetic defects or "extra" embryos. If too many embryos implant, the babies are "reduced" (i.e. some are killed). These are human children we are talking about, and it is common practice to create more than can be implanted or carried and kill the rest. It's not okay to kill a few babies to get one to hold.

The IVF process also provides opportunity for eugenics and further dehumanization of children. If you want a boy, they can discard the girls for you, or vice versa. "Extra" embryos are commonly frozen for later use (notice the wording - they are there to be used), which increases their risk of damage or death. So we are placing human children in dangerous situations for the convenience of adults, so they can be used as their parents see fit.

Freezing embryos is a risky process. Not only can the freezing itself cause damage or death to a human child in this way, but there's no guarantee that the parents will be able to gestate the child later or that they will choose to, even if they can. People most often freeze embryos in case their current IVF cycle fails, but it if doesn't fail, they may or may not ever implant those frozen embryos. There are currently nearly a million frozen embryos in storage. The vast majority will likely never be given a chance to develop and be born. Many are donated to science, to be experimented on as if they were not living human beings. Others are discarded directly. Some are "donated" like unwanted clothes or trinkets at a thrift shop. At least they get to live. But what are we doing to their psyche when they find out their own parents gave them away?

Eugenics

There has also been talk of genetic tampering with embryos to fix genetic defects or imperfections. This is currently something science is capable of doing. This is not decades down the road. We can do this now, with technology available today. In the very near future we may have designer babies that have been genetically modified to the parents' specifications. You may be able to pick your child's height, eye and hair color, athletic ability, intelligence, and so on. It will certainly be possible to eliminate children with genetic conditions like Down syndrome, Turner syndrome, Celiac disease, Autism or even just nearsightedness or hearing impairment. After all, if children are products designed to fulfill the desires of adults, the customer should be happy with their purchase, right? Nobody wants to spend all that money and get a broken child. This is the mentality that IVF leads to, and we are already seeing it today.

We have to remember that children are people, not a collection of traits designed to make their parents feel good. Treating them as products to be manufactured to specification or discarded when they are not wanted is dehumanizing. It's not a coincidence that people tend to dehumanize human children when they play God in creating them. None of this is possible without IVF first being accepted and normalized. 

Destroying the Family

IVF also allows for any number of further deviations from God's design for families. The biological parents need not be the parents who intend to raise the child, for example. The biological parents may not have even met one another, much less had love or a marriage covenant. With sperm or egg donation, the child is being deprived of their biological heritage on purpose. Homosexual couples use IVF in order to create custom children since their unions are naturally infertile. Surrogacy depends on IVF. 

Sperm and egg donation is immoral. Children have a right to know their biological parents. It actively harms children when we deprive them of their biological heritage. They need to know such things as whether diabetes or heart disease or cancer runs in the family because that's important to their own health care. They need to know whether the person they're dating might be a lost sibling with the same donor father or mother. But more than that, they need to know where they came from and who their parents are. They deserve to be loved by the people who gave them their nose and eyes and whose smile they bear. They need to hear how they look like their grandma or how they have daddy's chin when they are growing up. This gives children a vital understanding of who they are that is missing when their biological parents have been stripped from them. Many adopted and donor-conceived children feel this loss as an ache inside them to know where they came from and who their biological parents are. It is a tragedy when a child loses their parents to accident or disease or abandonment. Why would we impose that tragedy on them on purpose? We don't have that right. 

Surrogacy 

Let's talk a little bit more about surrogacy as well. Surrogacy compounds the dehumanization of the child by also treating women as mere incubators for growing a child. It is bad for both women and children. Gestation is not just a biological process. It is highly emotional and spiritual as well. The bond between mother and child that develops during gestation is completely ignored in surrogacy. At birth, a baby already knows the mother's voice and heartbeat and needs her specifically. I have seen this for myself at the births of my own children who knew and were soothed by the sound of my voice, above the voices of others in the room, when they were mere minutes old. They knew me. They wanted me. No one else would do. Studies have shown that babies learn in the womb. There's a sacred bond between mother and child that develops during gestation. Yet with surrogacy, the child is taken from the only mother she knows at birth. This is highly traumatic for an infant. It has been termed "the primal wound." We should not be intentionally causing trauma to babies so that adults can obtain a child on demand.

There is also a very serious problem that no one wants to talk about when we give children to people who are not their natural parents. There's a certain connection and investment that happens with natural parents that tends to help prevent child abuse. While it is certainly possible for natural parents to abuse their children, it is actually fairly rare. Most abused children are abused by boyfriends or girlfriends of their parents, step-parents, more distant relatives, or unrelated caretakers, not their natural parents. In fact, the mere fact of biological relatedness is not necessarily protective if the child was not created in the natural way and raised by those biological parents. This is a major reason that we carefully screen foster parents and adoptive parents (or at least try to) to be sure they are capable of caring for the child properly and will not be abusive. We don't generally just hand children to strangers without any sort of vetting process. One major exception to this is with surrogacy.

As it stands now, almost anyone can buy a child through surrogacy, with no one checking to be sure they aren't neglecting or abusing that child. There have been a number of cases in recent years where children were being harmed after being obtained through surrogacy. In one notable case, a mentally handicapped man who was not married and was already caring for elderly parents alone had obtained several infants within a short period of time through surrogacy and could not care for them adequately, but little was done since he was their biological father. In another case, a disabled child who had been obtained via surrogate was being denied life-saving medical care by the biological parents who did not want to raise the child while the surrogate who carried him wanted him and was being denied the chance to save his life. There have been multiple cases of biological parents demanding that surrogates abort a disabled child before birth or abandoning them once they are born. Again, we see dehumanization because they're treating the child as a product to be manufactured to specification and they want a product that is not defective. It is also common practice to hand children over to homosexual couples or single parents through surrogacy and thus intentionally deprive them of a home with a mother and father.

There is also the problem of the rights of surrogates being trampled. Many are poor women in countries like India who carry a child for money. This womb-for-hire commerce has some serious problems. If a natural mother plans to give up her infant for adoption, she has every right to change her mind after the birth. Women often change their mind when their child is born because there is a strong emotional bonding that takes place during childbirth. Yet a surrogate is usually not given this option. She can be strongly bonded to the child, yet the child will be taken from her to be given to people she often does not know and cannot be sure will care for the child properly. In several cases, surrogates have been pressured to abort a child for developmental problems and refused and then are required to hand that child over to the same parents who wanted that child dead. In some cases, the intended parents refuse the child due to developmental problems and leave an impoverished surrogate with a child she can't afford to raise, but yet she hates to give up to a foster system. If a surrogate accidentally becomes pregnant with her own child during the surrogacy process, this may not be realized or, if it is, she may be forced to hand her own biological child over to the commissioning parents until the legal issues are worked out.

Clinic Mistakes

There are so many serious problems with surrogacy and other uses of IVF technology. Even when a married couple intends to produce and gestate their own biological child and they don't kill extra embryos, mistakes can occur and the wrong egg or sperm can be used. What do you do when your wife is carrying another man's child because of a mistake like this? You don't have this problem with the natural delivery method.

Health Problems

There is also the issue of health concerns for children. Babies produced by IVF also have a higher rate of embryo death and a higher rate of birth defects or other health problems. More than half of IVF cycles fail. So they're creating and implanting babies that we don't know can be carried successfully. They may be implanting those babies in a womb that cannot care for them. Of course, babies can also die from natural causes when IVF is not used. Some couples have repeated miscarriages, for example. But that's not something we humans are causing. It's a natural outcome. When we take it on ourselves to control the process of conception and implantation, we also own the outcomes in ways that don't apply to natural processes.

Financial Concerns

In addition to the above concerns, there is the issue of money. Not only is IVF extremely expensive (and therefore difficult to justify given the number of existing children who need homes), but that money is given to doctors and reproductive clinics who are discarding embryos, sending them to be experimented on, or freezing them until some future date that may never come. Even if a couple does not discard their extra embryos and does not freeze their children for a later date, they're still funding an entity that does. The money they pay for their "ethical" IVF is keeping the doors open for clinics that mistreat other embryos.

The Root of the Problem

The problems of IVF go beyond these more obvious issues into the depths of what sex and procreation mean. I don't think God ever intended for us to separate the creation of children from the marital act and involve third parties like doctors and technicians. I understand that it is a natural and good desire to want your own biological children, but good desires cannot be rightfully fulfilled outside God's rightful means. It's a good desire to want sex, but we have to fulfill that good desire only in marriage because that is the proper way. It is the same with bearing children. We have to stick to God's way. The tragedy of infertility does not justify taking matters into our own hands or inflicting harm on children. Children are a gift from God, not an entitlement. 

Sex and Reproduction are Sacred

Sex, marriage, and childbearing are all an interconnected web by God's design. They are sacred because they mean something more than just the sheer biological facts. Sex isn't just a pleasurable rubbing together of body parts as our society claims. It has meaning. A sacred meaning. Similarly, the creation of a new life is not just a matter of two cells merging to start a new life. It has sacred meaning. We tamper with that at our peril.

Part of the sacredness of procreation is the mystery and symbolism that God gave us in sex itself and how it is meant to bring husband and wife together to become one flesh and through that union to create new life. The union of husband and wife symbolizes Christ and the church, as we know, but I think we often fail to understand how deep the imagery goes. During the marital act, the husband gives, emptying himself into the wife, and she takes what is given and gives back the fruit nine months later. Similarly, Christ emptied Himself, pouring out His life on the cross. We, the church, take what is given, and bear fruit - not only in our own lives, but in others we bring to Christ. Our biology means something much deeper than we realize. Christ creates new life that will last forever by unity with us just as we create new lives that will last forever through our marital unity.

When we create children in a petri dish, without sex and that union between husband and wife, we are destroying the pattern God gave us which points to Him. We are taking that which is sacred and treating it as if we could re-design and re-purpose it for our own ends, in violation of the Creator. We are treating the physical as the only reality, and ignoring what it means.

The Tragic Results of Violating God's Plan

It's no surprise that when start playing God with our reproduction, lots of evil results. That's why we have hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos - human children - stored in freezers around the country with little hope of ever having a life. That's why we have embryos discarded as "extras" with no regard for their intrinsic value as human beings who bear the image of God. That's why doctors can so casually suggest a "reduction" if too many embryos implant. That's why it's such a mess when doctors inadvertently use the wrong sperm or mix donor eggs with donor sperm and create a child with biological parents who have never even met and who will not be raising the child together. That's why we have children born from donor sperm who will always wrestle with the heart-rending question of "Why did daddy not want to know me?" That's why we have people commissioning a child through surrogacy who think nothing of aborting or abandoning their biological child when he's "defective."

Ignoring the sacredness of reproduction means denying the sacredness of our humanity and treating the physical as all there is. When we deny that we are more than physical beings and think we can manipulate human creation to our own ends, we deny the intrinsic value of ourselves and our children. This leads to many abuses, but most commonly the children are the ones most harmed. Keeping the God-given connections between sex, marriage, and children means valuing humans as made in the image of God and therefore designed to be created according to God's plan. The mentality of IVF is that humans are not sacred, but only flesh that can be manipulated and repurposed as we desire.

These many serious problems I have outlined arise, not as occasional, unrelated bugs in the process, but as intrinsic features because of the wrong worldview. There are systemic problems with IVF technologies because the underlying worldview is false. The fruit of IVF is rotten because the tree is rotten. 

Top 5 Reasons NOT to Use Hormonal Birth Control

Hormonal birth control is extremely common today and many people, including many Christians, take it without a second thought. But there are some important reasons to avoid hormonal contraceptives. Here are my top 5 reasons not to take hormonal contraceptives, in reverse order.

#5 - Hormonal birth control can produce mood swings and even depression in some women. We all know our female hormones can make us moody at certain times of the month. There's a reason we say we're "hormonal." The hormones in birth control can do the same thing. Many women report an increase in feelings of being down, depressed, anxious, or angry while on hormonal birth control. Some women do not seem to be affected in this way, but some are. It can be especially important that women with existing depression or anxiety watch out for a increase in symptoms if they take hormonal contraceptives.


#4 - Hormones in birth control can kill a woman's libido. They have even been known to affect her attraction to her husband. A woman's normal cycle is intended to have a period each month where her libido naturally rises and she desires sex more strongly. Hormonal birth control prevents her natural cycle and this natural increase in desire. The estrogen and progestin in hormonal birth control also lowers testosterone production. While many people believe testosterone is a male hormone, even women produce some. In women, testosterone is one of the major factors that controls the sex drive. Without enough testosterone production, a woman's libido can drop greatly. In some women, it can take away any desire for sex and greatly reduce pleasure during sex. A lot of women go on birth control before becoming sexually active and thus don't have a normal baseline for comparison, so they may think they don't like sex when in fact birth control is destroying their sexual desire and enjoyment.


#3 - Hormonal birth control carries a risk of blood clots. This can be especially dangerous for those with a family or personal history of blood clots, high blood pressure, or various other circulatory problems. The early birth control pills were solely estrogen and killed a number of women due to blood clots. The more recent combination pills, patches, shots, and rings have much lower doses of estrogen, but there is still a risk of blood clots, especially for those with other risk factors.


#2 - Hormonal birth control increases the risk of some female reproductive cancers. This link is especially strong for breast cancer. There is some indication that ovarian and endometrial cancers may have a lower risk while taking hormonal birth control. However, breast cancer risk may increase up to 20% while taking hormonal birth control and for 10 years after stopping. Not only does the pill increase the risk of breast cancer directly, but delaying childbearing can also increase the risk of reproductive cancers. Having children young and breastfeeding them protects against breast cancer.


#1 - Hormonal birth control can be abortifacient. The hormones in birth control make the uterus inhospitable for a baby to implant and thus can cause an early abortion by preventing implantation. In fairness, this is not the main mode of action. There are three mechanisms by which hormonal birth control works. The main mechanism is to prevent ovulation. If no egg is released, there can be no conception. This mechanism is truly contraceptive by preventing conception. The secondary mechanism is to thicken cervical secretion to impede sperm motility. If sperm do not reach the egg, then no conception occurs. However, the third mechanism works as a backup in case the first two mechanisms fail. If an egg is released and fertilized, then the new child will fail to implant in the womb. The baby then starves and dies. There is no way of knowing which is happening each month for any particular woman.

Because of the potential for causing a human child to die, hormonal birth control is not only a health concern, but a moral concern as well. The birth control advocates will tell you that hormonal contraception does not interrupt a pregnancy, but what they don't tell you is that the definition of pregnancy was changed a few decades ago to begin at implantation rather than fertilization so that they could claim hormonal birth control does not cause an abortion. Yet human life begins at fertilization, not implantation. Ending that life is a very serious moral issue.

If we believe every human life is sacred, then we need to show that in our actions. I could not take hormonal contraceptives because of the risk of killing my child. There are other ways to prevent pregnancy, if you must. There are many good reasons to say no to hormonal contraceptives.

Marry Sooner Rather Than Later

Here is my counter-cultural advice to young singles: Marry sooner rather than later. This is Biblical advice because the Bible specifically tells young people to marry rather than continue to burn (I Cor. 7:9). Most young adults have a sex drive, and this is evidence that they should be moving toward marriage. To delay marriage without cause is foolish at best, and sinful at worst. This principle of moving toward marriage rather than burning with sexual desire was given to prevent sexual sin. It is no surprise that in a society that avoids and delays marriage, sexual sin is rampant. We Christians should not be following the ways of the world that lead to sin and destruction, but rather prioritizing God's ways and wisdom. This principle of moving toward marriage intentionally works out a little differently depending on where you are in relationships. Here are some practical tips to help you move toward marriage in your situation. If you are engaged or very close to engagement because you know who you want to marry, plan a simple, inexpensive wedding in the near future. My general recommendation is that engagements should be 6 months or less. It doesn't take very long to plan a simple wedding. The longer you drag the engagement on, the greater the chances that you will fall into sexual sin. The Bible tells us that it is foolish for a man to work to gain the whole world and yet lose his soul. Similarly, it is foolish to choose a long engagement if that means disobeying God by having sex outside marriage. If you arrive on your big day having stained your souls with fornication, you have lost that which was more important. We should not purposely put ourselves in the position of needing super-human strength to stay sexually pure. Move up the wedding date and avoid the temptation. Prioritize obeying God and don't leave room for sin to creep in. A cheaper wedding is also important. Reducing costs is a good thing anyway as it is wasteful to spend large amounts of money on a wedding rather than investing in the marriage. But it's important to be frugal in order to start your marriage off right. Studies have shown that the greater the amount of money spent on the wedding, the shorter the marriage tends to last. Elaborate and expensive weddings tend to lead to divorce. Invest in your marriage. A wedding is just one day and soon over. You want the marriage to last, so prioritize it over the wedding. That might mean giving up some of your dreams for a fancy, picture-perfect wedding, but that is a worthwhile trade to make. If you are in a relationship, be intentional about marriage as your goal. Dating is often a very fun time of getting know someone, and there's nothing wrong with having fun. But fun can't be your purpose for the relationship. A dating relationship needs a goal, and that goal is to determine whether two people should marry. Marriage should be the underlying question in every dating relationship. Are you compatible on your beliefs, your goals, and your values? Do you work well as a team? Do you resolve conflicts well together? Are you willing to fulfill the duties of marriage together if you marry (including leadership/submission, frequent sex, raising children, faithfulness, communication, and selflessness)? These are the kinds of questions you should be answering about each other and your relationship as you go along. When you pursue the relationship with intentionality, this does three important things for you. First of all, it greatly increases the chances that your relationship will be successful. A successful dating relationship does not necessarily mean you will marry. You might successfully determine that you are not suitable for one another and end the relationship. That is a perfectly valid outcome of a dating relationship and not a failure. If you knew you wanted to marry, you could just skip to engagement. The relationship before engagement is precisely to determine whether you should marry. If you decide not to marry, that gives you information you did not previously have and fulfills the purpose of the relationship. If you decide to marry, then you have also fulfilled the purpose of the relationship by finding that you are ready to move toward marriage with one another. But notice what does not fulfill the purpose of the relationship - aimless fun without assessing one another for marriage. They say if you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. That is nowhere more true than in a dating relationship. If you have no purpose for your relationship, you will never know if you have been successful or not. And in the meantime, you waste one another's time without moving toward marriage and set yourselves up for temptation without cause. Too many young people find themselves having dated one another for years and yet still don't know whether they should marry. That's insane. The second thing intentionality does for you is that it speeds up the process of finding a spouse. Aimless dating is one of the biggest reasons for delayed marriage in our culture today. Many young people are not serious about looking for marriage, but they play at romantic relationships for years and sometimes decades. They often don't marry until their 30's or 40's, if at all. Marriage prospects grow more and more dim as one gets older and fertility declines as one gets older as well. It is easier to find a good spouse in your 20's, so don't waste this decade. The third benefit of being intentional is that you are more likely to avoid sexual sin. The people waiting until their 30's to marry aren't usually remaining chaste in the meantime. Our sex drives were given to us to move us toward marriage as marriage is the proper outlet for sexual expression. But if we delay marriage, we have all that drive and no proper outlet for it. This leads to great temptation and, for many, sexual sin. We weren't meant to spend decades single and sexless. If that is our lot through no fault of our own, then God can certainly give us strength to be obedient in this area and remain chaste. But it's best to avoid prolonging the temptation. That is why we are told to marry rather than burn. Avoid wasting your time with a relationship that has no purpose as it will not move you toward marriage and this will lengthen the amount of time you will need to say no to sex and increase the chances that you will give in to temptation. If you are not in a relationship, be intentional about looking for a relationship headed toward marriage. In our culture today, it is easy to drift along, thinking marriage will happen one day, but not in any big hurry to find a spouse. This drifting often goes on for years before the person decides to intentionally pursue a serious relationship headed toward marriage. It is not too uncommon for them to find, to their chagrin, that marriage doesn't appear automatically and that their prospects are few when they finally do start getting serious about marriage. What is especially odd about this lackadaisical attitude toward marriage is that it is usually accompanied by a belief that a good marriage partner is really hard to find. When you think about it, that makes no sense. If we really believe a good spouse is hard to find, it seems like we would want to start early and put a lot of effort into it. We might need to be realistic about our preferences and be ready to settle down with the first person who looks like a decent match and is willing to have us. We might even need to go out of our way to visit places where singles congregate, brush up on our social skills, build up a solid marriage resume, and speak positively about our intentions to marry so as to attract the few decent potential mates out there and get a leg up on the competition. Yet this is exactly the opposite of what most people today are doing. Most young adults think of marriage as something to worry about several years down the road, and then only when they find the perfect person who meets their every preference. Delaying marriage and not pursuing it with any great effort only make sense if we believe awesome marriage partners can be had under every bush and around every corner. If there are great numbers of acceptable matches around us and we could marry any time we please because opportunities are so numerous, then it might make sense to put off the search for awhile and be really picky about choosing the best among the numerous good choices. But that is not the world we live in. The reality is that people of good character who wish to marry are fairly few in our culture, and most of us have quite limited options even among them. That is why we can't afford to leave marriage to chance. It can take years to find a good spouse, even if you are actively looking. Not every relationship turns into marriage. Sometimes you have to date several people before you find someone who makes a good match. So don't put off the search. If you find a spouse right away, that's great. Start building a life together. But if it takes awhile, you'll be glad you didn't wait to get started. So, if you want to build a good relationship that is headed toward marriage, how do you prepare for that? How do you find someone to start a relationship with? And how do you attract them? These are all worthwhile questions to answer. This article is already long enough, so I'll talk about that in a future article. ------- Of course, marriage is not the only purpose of our lives. We can still have purpose and meaning in our lives without marriage. But marriage is a good gift from God that forms a means of normal grace for most people. Marriage is a way to fill our loneliness, satisfy our sexual desires, and build the next generation. Marriage gives us a partner who is there for us through the good times and the bad - someone to witness our lives and for whom we can make a difference. Marriage and child-rearing is a means of taking dominion and bringing the world into submission to Christ. It takes our impact for God down through the generations and multiplies it. Marriage is a means of sanctification. It pulls us out of ourselves and teaches us selflessness, patience, gratitude, and generosity. Marriage is a good thing worth desiring and pursuing. It is God's calling for most of us.
Because marriage is so valuable and because most of us are called to marriage, we should be sensible about pursuing marriage. Other things we value we pursue with focus and determination. The effort most put into building a career, for example, is often lauded as noble and praiseworthy. A good job isn't going to land in your lap. You have to go out and build your skills, search for openings, advertise your strong points, and make the choice of which position to accept very carefully. Yet marriage is much more important than a job and more difficult to find. It is worth expending the effort to pursue it intentionally.

"He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the LORD." Proverbs 18:22 "An excellent wife, who can find? For her worth is far above jewels." Proverbs 31:10 "Marriage is to be held in honor among all." Hebrews 13:4a

Feeling Used and Unrealistic Expectations

I hear from women fairly often that they don't like sex because they feel their husband just wants their body and they feel used. There are women out there who have really selfish or abusive husbands, but many times when women have this feeling, the problem isn't the husband being awful. It's the wife having unrealistic expectations.

For one thing, men don't have quite the expectations about sex that women have. In many cases, men want the sex itself while women want everything around the sex like feeling close. And while women like to integrate everything, men tend to think of things separately. Women tend to multitask, but men tend to focus. While a woman is wanting sex to be everything about their relationship all rolled into one, with appreciation for minds, emotions, bodies, and abilities as part of the experience of sex, men are usually just wanting to focus on the physical at the moment. So when that happens, women might think they're only being appreciated for their bodies and they get offended. But it's not that they're only being appreciated for their bodies. It's just that appreciating her body is what the man is focused on at that time.

There's a scene in the old Cary Grant movie Arsenic and Old Lace where Cary Grant's character, Mortimer, has just eloped and he takes his brand new wife back to her house to pack her things for their honeymoon trip. He's chasing her around a tree in the yard, hinting at how much he's looking forward to that night, and tells her she's so beautiful. She responds by saying "But Mortimer, you're going to love me for my mind, too." He says cavalierly, "One thing at a time!" He's focused on just one thing at the moment, and it's not her mind.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's okay for men to have that urge and fulfill it within marriage. It's okay for a man to appreciate his wife's body without also paying homage to her mind every time. People used to understand this. The movie came out in 1944. Today, it would be called sexist. But you can't change human nature. It's okay to focus on just the physical sometimes. It doesn't always have to happen on the woman's more emotional turf, where she is most comfortable. It doesn't have to be all candles and going slow. It can be raw and needy and gritty and crazy too sometimes.

If you get your ideas about sex today from Hollywood or pretty much any kind of media, they depict sex as both man and woman crazed for each other and can't keep their hands off each other and it just happens. And it's usually so romantic. Candle-light and soft music, staring into one another's eyes, etc, etc. The problem is, this is not real life.

I'm not saying sex can't be romantic. Only that it isn't always romantic, and it doesn't have to be. And you don't have to both start out equally passionate. It's okay to start and then get warmed up as you go. It's okay to not be in the mood, but engage anyway and let yourself get carried away.

When you're married, you're not the only one who matters any more. You're one with someone else. And if they have a need, you have a need too, even if you don't feel it. Meeting that need might take some sacrifice sometimes.

It's okay for sex to sometimes be about meeting a need or giving to the other person and not about romance. That's not being used. That's being unselfish.

Being used is when you have sex outside God's plan - outside marriage. Those people in the movies who have all the candles and music and can't keep their hands off each other, but aren't married? They're using each other. It looks like romance, and our society tells us that's the proper context for all sex - some feeling of love and passion. But without a marriage, they're using one another. They wake up in the morning and they have no commitment to one another. They walk away, not giving of themselves, but thinking about what they got from one another. A feeling. For a little while.

In marriage, it's different. In marriage, you belong to one another, so there's no taking from one another. You're not being used. You're fulfilling the vows you spoke to one another. You're doing what you're supposed to do together.

Ladies, embrace your husband wanting your body and revel in his appreciation of it. There are times for appreciating minds and times to just be physical together. Learn to love the way you can both drive your man crazy and satisfy him too. God made you to do this. It's not bad to embrace the physical side of your relationship, and that side isn't less important than the emotional or mental side. Your marriage needs both.

If you need to make some changes to make it feel better or to add some romance, that's fine too. But don't fall for the world's idea that sex without romance is necessarily bad or being used. When you belong to one another, giving freely to your spouse is a gift to yourself as well.

Why Sexual Refusal Hurts Marriages

Sexual refusal is a serious problem in many marriages. Even Christian marriages. In most cases, it's the wife doing the refusing. So here's my message to the ladies who are saying no to their husbands and denying him sex or those who are struggling with wondering why they are expected to have sex regularly with their husbands.

Ladies, if you're married, your husband probably doesn't have the gift of celibacy. And he got married, at least partially, in order to fulfill his God-given sex drive. That's one of the legitimate purposes of marriage.

Not only that, but when a man is single, while it's certainly difficult to abstain from sex, at least he doesn't have a beautiful woman sharing his living quarters and tempting him every day.

A married man has both the legitimate expectation of getting sex and a woman he loves and is attracted to right there in his home all the time. To expect him to abstain for long periods when the object of his desire is right there in his bed every night is to ask too much. It's like staring at a box of chocolates all day while on a diet. It's torture.

So how does a man deal with a wife who refuses him all the time? The same way we deal with the chocolates when we are trying to diet. We put them away, don't look at them, and try not to think about them.

This is why refusal hurts marriages. A man will withdraw from his wife if he is being constantly refused. And it will tear them apart. It's too hurtful for a man to engage with a wife, spend time with her, and build up all that desire from being around her only to be constantly frustrated. So he'll protect himself by avoiding her.

Don't do that to your marriages, ladies. Build that connection your marriage and your husband need by engaging in sex frequently. It's God's design that marriages need sex to stay strong. Sex isn't just a physical act. It's an act of connection and love. So when you don't feel like it, remember that sex isn't optional or irrelevant. It's important maintenance for your marriage.

Of course, it's even better if you learn to like it. Sex can be great fun. If it's not fun for you, then perhaps there are some things you can do to boost your libido or learn how to get pleasure from it. But even when you can't imagine sex being fun, don't forget how important it is.

Should You Only Have Sex When You Feel Like It?

My last post actually started as a comment on the Matt Walsh Blog which generated over 1,300 likes and dozens of comments in the first 24 hours. So I figured more people would want to read it and posted it on my blog. Apparently, my comment is the sort of thing that people either love or hate passionately because there were also many comments that ardently disagreed. One of the chief criticisms (besides the oft-repeated declaration that I "don't know anything about feminism") had to do with this statement:

"Feminism told them that it's degrading to be a stay-at-home mom or to submit to a husband or to want a lot of children. They should never have sex with their husbands unless they feel like it. They should never let a man make decisions for their family."

Specifically, a lot of people had a problem with the second sentence in that quote. They objected to the idea that a woman should ever have sex with her husband when she doesn't feel like it.

But I absolutely stand by that statement. I think it's perfectly normal and right for a woman to have sex with her husband even when she doesn't feel like it. In fact, I'll even go so far as to say that a woman ought to have sex with her husband even when she doesn't feel like it - at least sometimes.

That sounds like a radical idea, I know. Our society has become so feminized that this idea is actually considered crazy or weird or somehow the same as saying women should be raped. It's not.

You see, there are lots of things we do that we don't feel like doing. I don't always feel like getting up in the morning, making breakfast, feeding my kids, cleaning the house, changing diapers, going to the store, or a million other things I do. But I do them because they need to be done and because I love my family. My feelings don't rule me. I make decisions based on love for my family and what needs to be done to care for their needs.

It should be the same in for caring for my husband's needs, including his need for sex.

Of course, the usual response at this point is to ask whether I consider sex some painful, unpleasant duty. I get people saying my sex life must be horrible. On the contrary.

You see, it is a modern and erroneous notion that "duty" is a bad word and the opposite of "pleasant." But that is a false dichotomy. There is no inherent reason that duties cannot be pleasant. Nor does doing something out of duty mean that one cannot enjoy it. Of course, not all duties are fun, but they don't have to be unpleasant simply because we have a duty to do them.

For example, I may not feel, at the moment, like taking my girls outside to play. It's hot. I'm tired. I have dishes to do. But they want to play outside and the fresh air and sunshine will do them good. So I go because I love them and have a duty to care for their needs. One of their needs is play time and time with mommy. But once we're outside, we have a great time and I'm glad I did it. Duty, in this case, was not preventing me from having fun. In fact, duty helped me overcome laziness, lower priority tasks, and distractions that would have prevented me from having fun with my girls.

There are many other things which work similarly. I have a duty to read and study the Bible, and I enjoy it. I have a duty to feed my family, and I also enjoy it. I have a duty to vote and participate in my government, and I don't find that duty horrid or burdensome. I have a duty to be a witness to those around me, and I find that duty agreeable.  I have a duty to clean my house...ok, maybe I don't necessarily enjoy that one, but it isn't some horrible thing I do just because I have to either. I do it because I love my family. And having a clean home is certainly enjoyable.

In the same way, I have a duty to have sex with my husband, and I also enjoy it greatly. There is no contradiction there.

Another thing to consider is the design of female sexuality. Women are less likely than men to be aroused out of the blue. We women often need touch, closeness, and the right mindset to get us in the mood for sex. If a wife is waiting for the mood to strike her before she says yes, it may be a long time and it will take a toll on their marital intimacy. Thus, women who go ahead and engage (not just laying there, but actively participating), even if they weren't initially in the mood, will often find that they warm up as they go along and end up enjoying it. And the emotional intimacy that comes from physical intimacy will strengthen the marriage and bring husband and wife closer together.

So, if duties aren't necessarily unpleasant or a hardship and women can often enjoy sex if they will choose to engage, then pointing out the duty to have sex within marriage doesn't mean that sex becomes unpleasant or forced. Sure, it could be that way if you let it. But it doesn't have to be. If you have the right mindset, recognizing the duty to have sex can help you overcome laziness, lower priorities, and distractions that would prevent you from having the vibrant, intimate, and fun sex life that God intended you to have in your marriage.

The Consequences of Sexual Immorality

In case you hadn't noticed, our culture is obsessed with sex. It is used to sell everything, from cars to clothing. It's in most of the movies. There's hardly a movie or show made in the last 20 years that doesn't show, insinuate, or assume that the main characters have sex, whether they're married or single, in a relationship or "just friends." People talk about sex at work. They dress provocatively in public. It's on billboards and in video games and books. In short, sex is everywhere. But one of the most inappropriate places to be infiltrated by our culture's obsession with all things sexual is our schools. Our schools now actively encourage young children to "experiment" with sex at younger and younger ages, telling them it is normal and even good for them.

There is a reason that there is a push in our culture toward sexual behaviors in children. There are very few things as effective at creating a dependent culture that votes for goodies from the government and that needs abortion “services” on a regular basis than teaching young people to have causal sex early and often. The liberals, and especially those in the abortion industry, have a vested interest in “values-free” sex education (i.e. sex-ed that teaches promiscuity) because it produces the results they want to see in the culture.

On a more spiritual note, there are few things as effective as sexual immorality at turning young people away from God. The pull to partake in sexual sin is strong, especially in a culture that no only tolerates it, but actively encourages it and looks down on those who choose to abstain. And once young people start down the road of sexual sin, the destruction and fallout in their lives and their souls is tremendous. They learn to want detached sex or porn or a multitude of partners rather than the fidelity of marriage. They develop a taste for ever more debased activities. They seek to fill the emptiness with sensual pleasure. They start to see God, with His rules about sexuality, as a kill-joy rather than a loving Father. They see rules, in general, as merely ways to stop the fun. They can no longer trust that anyone has their best interest at heart, not even God. They become jaded and selfish.

All of this pulls them farther and farther from God and from even wanting to do right. And in the process, they will kill their children through abortion to avoid unwanted consequences. They will divorce, if they do marry, because they no longer know how to be satisfied with one real person. And those children that do survive to be born will be raised in broken homes, deprived of a mother or father, and learning to repeat all the pathological behaviors of their parents and then some.

There’s a reason for the many admonitions against illicit sex in the Bible. Because sex is so entwined with who we are, it has a tremendous power to be used for evil and to deeply harm people and destroy families and children. Used for good, sex is a powerful force to bind families together – husbands and wives to each other and to their children – to provide a stable environment suitable for teaching character and morals and truths about God. But outside of marriage, that powerful force is only destructive.