I urge you to respond with the quote in the title when people make claims about Christianity.  Today’s example: A pro-gay theology fluff piece by the Houston Chronicle about “Bring your gay teen to church day.”  It was pure propaganda-masquerading-as-news.  Of course I’d like to see everyone in church on Sunday, including gays.  I just want them to go to churches that teach the truth.

Ebie Hussey’s first reaction when her son announced that he is gay was to offer unconditional love.

Finding a new church was a close second.

That is a recurring lie they weave into their messages: If you say that sin is sin then you are being unloving.  Christianity may not be Ms. Hussey’s strong suit.

“His first question was, ‘Am I going to hell?’ ” Hussey said of that conversation with her son, Jaxn. “Mainstream Christianity and fundamental Christianity really pushes that homosexuality is a sin, and he had caught on to that.”

Actually, the Bible is pretty clear on this topic:

• 100% of the verses addressing homosexual behavior denounce it as sin in the clearest and strongest possible terms.
• 100% of the verses referring to God’s ideal for marriage involve one man and one woman.
• 100% of the verses referencing parenting involve moms and dads with unique roles (or at least a set of male and female parents guiding the children).
• 0% of 31,173 Bible verses refer to homosexual behavior in a positive or even benign way or even hint at the acceptability of homosexual unions.

Even a lot of pro-gay theology folks will concede that.  They just claim that the Bible isn’t really God’s word or that he has changed his mind.  Run, don’t walk, from “Christians” who claim those things.

Jaxn, now 15, knew his parents didn’t think that. “But I had always heard people saying that kind of thing,” he said.

Note how he and his parents are the arbiters of God’s truth.  The article never even hints that we’d look to the Bible for the answers.

In an effort to counter the message, almost two dozen Houston-area churches have designated Sunday as Bring Your Gay Teen to Church Day.

I wish they would have published a list.  They would be churches to avoid.

“We think it’s important for families to know there’s a safe place to go to worship,” said Jim Bankston, senior minister at St. Paul’s United  Methodist Church. “Families who have gay members want to make sure they feel welcome in church and aren’t bashed in any way.”

There’s that falsehood again: If you say that sin is sin then you are “bashing” people.  Hey “Reverend” Bankston: Is bashing a sin?  Then aren’t you bashing the bashers and committing that sin yourself?  Why aren’t you open and affirming towards “bashers?”

Joanna Crawford, a seminary student at the Houston Graduate School of Theology, said the idea came up after the suicide last fall of Asher Brown, a Cypress-area eighth-grader who killed himself after what his parents said were years of bullying and taunts that he was gay.

Did you catch the non sequitur?  They try to say that teaching biblical truths cause suicides.  The facts show otherwise: These suicide tragedies are usually very complicated.  It isn’t people who just left Focus on the Family “Love Won Out” conferences that are doing the bullying and taunting.

It is a project of the Houston Clergy Council, formed last year to allow churches to work together on shared concerns.

“None of us knew Asher, but we felt if we could get families into our churches, where they have support, where they feel loved for who they are, not in spite of it, something good could come of that,” Crawford said.

They get love backwards.  Yes, love them for who they are: Human beings.  Don’t love them because of a particular sin.

Organized religion has had a complicated relationship with homosexuality.

Mainly because fakes have crept in and polluted the teachings of the church.

Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church, waded into the fray last month when he told CNN that homosexuality is a sin, although he doesn’t preach on the topic and a number of people who attend his church, the largest in the United States, are gay.

Joel finally spoke the truth?!

A survey last fall by the Public Religion Research Institute found that fewer than 20 percent of Americans believe places of worship do a good job on the issue. Almost half said religion’s message on the topic is “negative,” and 40 percent said the messages contribute “a lot” to negative perceptions of gays and lesbians.

This is where surveys prove to be meaningless.  The question shouldn’t be whether the messages contribute to negative perceptions but whether the messages are biblical.

Almost two-thirds said the messages contribute to higher rates of suicide among gay and lesbian youth.

That’s because the wildly biased mainstream media has been telling them that.  It doesn’t mean it is true.

Mainline Protestant churches — including the Episcopal, Lutheran and Methodist churches — began wrestling with how to interpret biblical writings on the issue several decades ago, he said.

That’s only because those churches went soft on keeping apostates out and exercising church discipline on false teachers. But just because some want to ignore the Bible doesn’t mean the teachings aren’t still there.

“Younger people are much more supportive on rights for same-sex couples than the older generation,” he said. “They also were much more likely to see these connections between negative views in the churches and negative views in society and with the higher rates of suicide.”

Wow, they keep working in that false connection, don’t they?  Almost as if the Chronicle wants you to believe it.  One of the tragedies in the last year involved a kid who, among other things. took a stuffed animal to school and insisted on a chair for it.  This kid was deeply trouble and not helped.  To blame his suicide on Bible-believing Christians is ridiculous, but the pro-gay theology ghouls love a good victim story.

Hussey did a computer search for “gay-friendly churches” and discovered Plymouth United Church of Christ in Spring.

“It’s been a huge blessing,” Hussey said. “It has brought me so much closer to God and to my spirituality, having a gay child, because it puts me in the position of Jesus’ message, which is unconditional love.”

Really?  Where did they get this news about Jesus?  If it was the Bible, why do they ignore what He says in the rest of it, including his claim that God’s design for marriage is for one man and one woman?  Why do they pick and choose which parts of Jesus they want to listen to?  Seems to me they are just making up their own version of Jesus.

The Rev. Ginny Brown Daniel and members of the congregation “showed me God doesn’t hate you because you’re gay,” he said.

God hates sin, and He wants to save you.  But you have to repent and believe.  I wonder how often the “Reverend” Daniel teaches that?  The truth sounds like hate to those that hate the truth.

That was important to his parents.

“When a child tells you they’re gay, you don’t want to change your plan for him,” Ebie Hussey said. “I still want him to be a doctor. I still want him to marry a doctor. I still want him to be Christian.”

She should start by being a Christian herself and trusting the word of God and following God on his terms.  As it stands, she is making up her own god.

If you really love those identifying as GLBTX you’ll seek to share the truth with them.  Propping them up with lies to make yourself more popular in our politically correct culture is just loving yourself, not your neighbor.  Here’s one of my experiences sharing the Gospel with someone identifying as gay.