On his radio show, Richard Land told Jennifer Robach Morse of NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, that “the devil takes pleasure in anything that causes destruction in human society and the homosexual lifestyle does cause destruction.” Land is the “embattled head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission,” according to Right Wing Watch. Robach Morse, who is the head of NOM’s Ruth Institute, compared homosexuality to “paganism” and “hedonism” during the recorded radio program.
Land is also a predecessor to NOM’s co-founder and former Chair, Dr. Robert P. George, at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), where he was appointed by President George W. Bush.
Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch — where you can hear the audio — notes that Land “went on to claim that homosexuality was at least partly responsible for the collapse of empires in the past,” and added:
Land and Morse said that they are working against a “secular theocracy†and “sexual nihilists,†with the SBC’s top “ethicist†maintaining that America is witnessing a return to “paganism†where homosexual priests worshiped sex.
And excerpt from the transcript of the audio, via Tashman:
Morse: What we learned in California in the marriage fight is that the secularist thrust, I don’t even know what to properly call it, Richard, maybe you have a good name for it, but the secularists, the sexual nihilists.
Land: It’s a secular theocracy is what it is.
Morse: Yes, that’s exactly—
Land: It’s a secular theocracy driven be a full-blown pagan understanding of human sexuality. It’s just pagan.
Morse: When you say pagan, what do you mean by pagan? I can imagine what you mean.
Land: I mean totally focused on self, anything that feels good do it, just like the Greco-Roman orgies of the 1st Century and 2nd Century AD; same thing that our early Christian forefathers faced.
Morse: That’s very true, the hedonism, the hedonistic aspect of the culture. What I wondered you were going to say is full-on paganism I would think of as somehow worshiping sex, as sex taking on a kind of sacramental role.
Land: As you know many of the Roman religions, the idolatrous religions were sexual, and the priests were homosexuals and they worshiped in Corinth they had homosexual priests had these temples that were pre-Christian paganism.
Via Wikipedia:
The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an independent, bipartisan U.S. federal government commission created by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. USCIRF Commissioners are appointed by the President and the leadership of both political parties in the Senate and the House of Representatives. USCIRF’s principal responsibilities are to review the facts and circumstances of violations of religious freedom internationally and to make policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and the Congress. It describes itself as “[g]rounded in and informed by the American experienceâ€. It is rooted in the U.S. Evangelical movement and its original intention was to protect Christians around the world. Such organisations asChristian Solidarity International, International Christian Concern, Open Doors and the Cardinal Kung Foundation as well as the lawyer Michael Horowitz were influences for the foundation of the International Religious Freedom Act.
It is funded entirely by the federal government on an annual basis and its staff members are government employees.
Related:
NOM Posts Op-Ed Calling Atheists “Whiny, Sniveling, Little, Pusillanimous Cowardsâ€