Same-sex marriage was sold as an act of tolerance, but immediately upon accepting the terms, the people who agreed to be tolerant started getting sued. They then were told they had to use preferred pronouns, display a Pride flag in the cubicle during June, and affirm the idea that men can have babies. Failure to comply risked social ostracization or worse. They can be excused for wondering what happened to the tolerance messaging.

Almost 10 years after the Supreme Court invented a constitutional right to marry someone of the same sex, a recent Gallup survey shows support for same-sex marriage is receding. While the number of Americans in favor of gay marriage remains high—69 percent—it has declined in recent years among Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike. Support among Republicans has dipped below 50 percent and among Democrats dropped to 83 percent, down from 87 percent in 2022.
Despite recent declines, the still-strong public support reminds us of the moral revolution that has taken place in the United States and throughout the West in recent decades. Indeed, Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 as a Democrat who said he believed marriage was a relationship between a man and a woman. Times have changed. Though his position was correct, he quickly abandoned it, and today, there likely isn’t a single elected Democrat in Washington, D.C., who would publicly agree with it. Even many Republicans would be unwilling to defend it. Is recent polling evidence of buyer’s remorse?
Same-sex marriage was sold as a solution to a grave societal injustice.
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According to Barna’s research, those who believe the following are very likely to live a faithful, Christian life: God is the all-powerful, all-knowing, loving, just, merciful, reliable creator who is also our companion and unerring guide for life. All human beings are sinful by nature; every choice we make has moral contours and consequences. Jesus Christ is the sole means to individual salvation, accomplished through our acknowledgment and confession of our sins and complete reliance on His grace for the forgiveness of those sins. The entire Bible is true, reliable and relevant, making it the best moral guide for every person, in all situations.

The decline of religion in the United States is now well documented. According to a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center, 29 percent of Americans now identify as having no religion up from 17 percent in 2010 and 8 percent in 1990 . The religiously unaffiliated population is now one of the largest religious groups in the United States, surpassing white mainline Protestants.
In a new book called The Great Dechurching, the authors share that while most people who leave religion officially do so as adults, the departure from faith begins much earlier. It turns out having Christian parents isn’t enough for children to grow up to be Christians. A specific kind of Christian parent is required. According to the Institute for Family Studies, “Millennials are one of the largest birth cohorts in recent history or since, and their parents were uniquely unsuccessful at passing on their faith to their children.” Why?
A recent survey from George Barna may help answer this question.
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At the heart of modern liberalism is the belief that we belong to ourselves. The “my body, my choice” worldview offers a sense of control but provides no solutions when things are out of control, and liberals are convinced of nothing if not the fact that things are going poorly: The American dream is a sham, climate change will kill us all, and systemic racism is eternal. Not only does modern liberalism require awareness of the problems, both real and imagined, it demands a fixation on them. 

We know America is experiencing a mental health crisis, but the Youth Risk Behavior Survey released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) illustrates just how serious the problem has become for America’s young people. Almost three in five teenage girls felt persistent sadness in 2021. Girls are twice as likely to be depressed as boys and one in three girls said they seriously considered suicide.
Several factors are relevant. Social media had negatively impacted mental health long before the response to COVID-19 made the problem worse. Perhaps most surprising data concerned the CDC’s conclusion that a teenager’s political views impacted his or her levels of depression.
The study, released in December of 2022, found that liberal teens are more likely to be depressed than their conservative peers. In fact, liberal boys are more likely to be depressed than conservative girls, which suggests that political beliefs are more significant than gender when it comes to depression.
The authors of the study attempted to explain the depression of liberal teenagers in two ways. First, the authors suggest liberal teens are depressed because they live in a world dominated by conservative values.
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Newsom makes a similarly flimsy theological argument with his suggestion that the duty to love our neighbor obligates us to facilitate their abortions. The #LoveIsLove crowd would have you believe that loving someone means doing what they want you to do, but God has a different definition of love. Love does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth (1 Cor. 13:6). That means that love does not require or even allow us to facilitate someone’s sin.

A strange development is taking place in the American political landscape. At precisely the moment the Left is sounding the alarm about the growing threat of “Christian nationalism” (see here, here, here, and here), they are increasingly employing religious arguments in support of their policy preferences.
Perhaps the most glaring example is California Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) decision to quote Jesus in a series of billboards he placed in seven states to advertise the state’s new abortion tourism laws. Recently, California decided they will not only pay for the abortions of people who live in other states, they’ll cover travel expenses as well. They won’t pay for cancer treatments, chiropractor appointments, chronic dental problems, mammograms, adoption expenses, or the expenses associated with raising a child. Just your abortions.
The billboard quotes Jesus’s words from the gospel of Mark, “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these.” Apparently, Gavin Newsom believes that if you love people, you will help them get abortions.
Democrat Raphael Warnock, a United States Senator from Georgia who is a self-described “pro-choice pastor,” is in a close re-election campaign with former football player Herschel Walker. Like Governor Newsom, he recently invoked God in his support for abortion. “I trust women in their wisdom and their ability to sit with their own God, and if they choose, choose to sit with their pastor, to pray about that, and let their own conscience guide them,” Warnock said. “Even God gave us a choice.”
Does the fact that God gave us the ability to choose mean that he is indifferent to the choices we make? Of course not. The entire Christian gospel is built on the premise that it is necessary for all people to “repent and believe” (Mark 1:14-15). Repentance is necessary because of sin, and sin is what God calls it when we make the wrong choice. Contrary to Warnock’s suggestion, God is not pleased simply because we made a choice. God wants us to make the right choice — and there are deadly consequences if we don’t.
Newsom makes a similarly flimsy theological argument with his suggestion that the duty to love our neighbor obligates us to facilitate their abortions.
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For Christians, God is the source of truth, and His truth is revealed to us in Scripture. But proponents of CRT see truth differently. They see the “right versus wrong” view of the world as part of the oppressive systems they seek to overthrow.

Some see the debate over Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a disagreement between those who think racism is real and those who do not. But this is not the case. Thoughtful critics of CRT understand that it is not merely a tool for understanding the history of racism. Rather, CRT’s oppressor/oppressed framework is a way of understanding and interpreting the world—one that is significantly in conflict with a biblical worldview because it offers a different understanding of truth.
For Christians, God is the source of truth, and His truth is revealed to us in Scripture. But proponents of CRT see truth differently. They see the “right versus wrong” view of the world as part of the oppressive systems they seek to overthrow. Consider the following comments from an advocate of CRT:
Heterosexual white men in this society tend to have a dualistic view of the world: we are either right or wrong, winners or losers. There is only one truth, and we will fight with one another to determine whose truth is right. To understand oppression requires that we accept others’ experiences as truthful, even though they may be very different from ours. To live with equality in a diverse, pluralistic society, we have to accept the fact that all groups and individuals have a legitimate claim to what is true and real for them”—Cooper Thompson, “Can White Men Understand Oppression?” Readings for Diversity and Social Justice, p. 478
From this perspective, experience guides us to truth, and what is truth for me might not be truth for you. From a biblical perspective, this kind of thinking is very dangerous because our feelings about reality often conflict with reality. Scripture tells us that our feelings can deceive us: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9, ESV). Furthermore, Jesus said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mk. 7:20-23).
The Bible constantly reminds us that our feelings can align with reality but often do not. Even though the accuser might condemn us, Scripture says “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). In addition, the moments in which we feel most self-satisfied are the moments we are reminded to “humble yourselves therefore before the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time” (1 Pet. 5:6).
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