Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Pride Month: What Every Christian Must Know

What Christians Must Know This Pride Month | The Christian Case

Pride Month Special — June 2026

What Every Christian Must Know This Pride Month

A compassionate but uncompromising examination of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and the LGBTQ agenda from the vantage point of Historic Christianity and the Natural Law.

By Raj Richard • The Christian Case

Every June, rainbow flags flood the public square and corporations rush to signal their allegiance to what is called "Pride." For the biblical Christian, this annual moment raises urgent questions: What does Scripture actually say? What does the Natural Law reveal? And how should the church and individual believer respond -- with both truth and love?

Over the years, I have written at length on various dimensions of homosexuality and the LGBTQ movement. This post gathers the most important arguments from those writings into one place -- a resource you can read, share, and use to equip yourself and those you love. My purpose is not hatred toward any person. It is fidelity to the God who loves every human being deeply, and who has spoken clearly through Scripture and through the design of creation itself.

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01 — The FoundationWhat Does God Actually Say About Homosexuality?

The starting point for any Christian thinking about homosexuality must be Scripture. The Bible is not ambiguous on this topic. God designed sexual intercourse to be enjoyed exclusively within the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman.

"For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." — Genesis 2:24; cf. Matthew 19:5; Mark 10:7

Homosexual practice -- not homosexual temptation, but homosexual acts -- is explicitly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments. Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 forbid it in the clearest terms. The apostle Paul addresses it directly in Romans 1:26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9. This is not a fringe view; it is the unanimous position of Historic Christianity across two millennia.

For the Christian, this settles the matter. God is not arbitrary. HE does not invent rules to frustrate HIS creatures. HIS design for sexuality is rooted in HIS creational purposes for humanity.

02 — The Natural Law CaseIs Consensual and Harmless Gay Sex Acceptable?

A common challenge -- popularized by atheist Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion -- goes like this: if two adults consent to sexual activity and no one is harmed, on what basis can anyone object? This is perhaps the most persuasive secular argument for homosexuality. It deserves a serious answer.

The answer comes from the Natural Law theory, championed by Thomas Aquinas and rooted in the Aristotelian understanding of final causes. Every biological organ has a purpose. The eye is for seeing; food is for nourishing the body. The pleasure of eating is nature's mechanism to drive us toward nutrition -- not an end in itself. Similarly, sexual intercourse has a biological and creational purpose: procreation. The pleasure of sex is nature's way of drawing us toward that end.

Point 1 — The Consent Argument Fails: Consensus alone cannot justify a sexual act. A parent cannot justify sexual activity with an adult child simply because the child agreed. Consent does not make every act morally acceptable.

Point 2 — The "Harmless" Argument Fails: An action need not harm others to be disordered or unacceptable. The life of a person addicted to alcohol harms primarily himself, yet we do not call it normal or healthy. Natural law recognizes that some behaviors are contrary to right human living even when no third party suffers.

Point 3 — Gay Sex Cannot Achieve the Purpose of Sex: Because the primary purpose of sexual intercourse is procreative union between a man and a woman, same-sex acts are objectively disordered -- not in the sense of being monstrous, but in the precise sense that they cannot achieve the intrinsic end for which sexuality exists.

The atheist who uses the "consent and harmless" argument must also apply it consistently. By the same logic, one would be forced to accept bestiality, adultery, incest, and polyamory between consenting adults. Most people's moral intuition recoils from this conclusion -- which suggests the argument itself is flawed.

03 — The Science QuestionDoes a "Gay Gene" Mean God Made People Gay?

Pope Francis reportedly told a Chilean Catholic man that God had made him gay and loves him as such. Whether he said this or not, the theological claim is highly significant and must be addressed.

First, there is no conclusive scientific evidence for a genetic cause of homosexuality. The American Psychological Association itself acknowledges that "there is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation." The early 1990s studies hailed as evidence of a "gay gene" were never successfully replicated. The evidence points far more strongly toward environmental and developmental factors in the nurture dimension of a person's life.

"God made you. God loves you. He wants you to be united with Him for all eternity. Do not give in to your temptations or let them define you. You are not a gay man. You are a man. Your desire is not your identity." — Matt Walsh

But even if a genetic predisposition were discovered, it would not follow that God made a person gay in a morally approving sense. We inherit genetic predispositions toward anger, addiction, selfishness, and a host of other tendencies that Scripture still calls sin. A predisposition is not a permission. The claim that "God made me this way" -- if used to justify any sinful behavior -- would logically make God the author of temptation, which Scripture explicitly denies (James 1:13).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church itself -- no matter what Pope Francis may have said privately -- states that those with homosexual inclinations "are called to chastity" and that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." The Church's official teaching, like Scripture, remains unchanged.

04 — The Church QuestionWhat Happens When the Church Blesses Gay Marriages?

Many denominations have capitulated to cultural pressure and now perform or bless same-sex unions. This is presented as an act of love and inclusion. But it is, in fact, a profound betrayal of both Scripture and the people it claims to serve.

When the church blesses what God has forbidden, it does not help the struggling person -- it confirms them in a path that Scripture says leads to spiritual harm. A doctor who tells a patient that their dangerous lifestyle is fine does not love that patient; he betrays them. Love requires truth.

Some sincere Christians who affirm homosexuality often overlook crucial facts: they ignore the plain grammatical and historical meaning of the biblical texts condemning homosexual practice; they ignore that the New Testament authors, writing in a Greco-Roman world where homosexuality was not uncommon, still condemned it; and they fail to reckon with the reality that no branch of the Christian tradition accepted homosexual practice until the last few decades.

Once a church normalizes homosexuality, the same logic drives it toward blessing polyamory -- indeed, this is already happening in several progressive denominations. The abandonment of one Scriptural boundary rarely stops there.

05 — The Social ConsequencesWhy Same-Sex Marriage Matters for Society

The legalization and promotion of same-sex marriage has consequences that extend far beyond the couples themselves. Government endorsement does not merely permit -- it promotes, and promotion shapes culture.

Children need both a mother and a father. Mothers and fathers bring distinct and irreplaceable dimensions of love and formation to a child's development. Same-sex parenting, however loving the individuals involved, cannot replicate what a mother and father together provide. This is not bigotry; it is biology, developmental psychology, and common sense.

When governments and institutions actively promote same-sex marriage as equivalent to traditional marriage, several downstream effects follow: those who teach traditional marriage are increasingly branded as bigots and face legal and professional consequences; religious institutions face pressure to comply or lose their tax status or other privileges; and children in schools are taught that all forms of partnership are equally valid.

The pattern is predictable: the normalization of homosexuality is followed by pressure to normalize polyamory, and the logic that drove the first change drives each subsequent one. What was unthinkable becomes permissible, what is permissible becomes normal, and what is normal becomes mandatory.

06 — Why the World Celebrates PrideUnderstanding the Cultural Momentum

Why has the world so enthusiastically embraced the LGBTQ agenda? The answer is not primarily scientific or philosophical -- it is spiritual and cultural. Several forces converge:

Moral relativism: In a culture that has abandoned the idea of objective moral truth, the only remaining moral category is "tolerance." Anything that claims to tell another person their behavior is wrong is labeled hateful. The LGBTQ movement has positioned itself brilliantly within this framework.

Emotional pressure: The framing of gay identity as something people are "born with" -- and therefore cannot change -- triggers the powerful human instinct toward compassion. To oppose homosexuality feels, to many, like opposing a person's very existence.

Legal and institutional coercion: Once the law endorses same-sex marriage, opposition is increasingly treated as discrimination. Corporations, universities, and media institutions all align with the prevailing cultural consensus, marginalizing dissent.

Laws cannot change what is morally true. The legalization of same-sex marriage does not alter what God has designed or what natural law reveals. Christians must be clear-eyed about this: legal does not mean righteous.

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A Closing WordHow Should the Christian Respond?

None of the above means that Christians are to be harsh, contemptuous, or unkind toward gay or lesbian individuals. Christ came for sinners -- all of us -- and the church must be a place where every broken person is received with dignity, honesty, and grace.

Here is what that looks like in practice:

Teach the truth boldly. The church must not be intimidated by cultural pressure into silence or capitulation. Truth spoken in love is the most compassionate thing we can offer anyone.

Welcome the person, reject the practice. The church must never drive away a person who struggles with same-sex attraction. Christ received tax collectors and prostitutes. But receiving a person is different from affirming every behavior. The same grace that welcomes must also call toward transformation.

Do not perform gay marriages. To bless what God has forbidden is not compassion -- it is a failure of pastoral duty. The church's loyalty is to Christ, not to cultural acceptability.

Offer real hope. Multitudes have been delivered from homosexuality and are living transformed lives. All things are possible with God (Matthew 19:26). The gospel is not merely about managing sin; it is about the power of the living God to change hearts.

The Bottom Line

This Pride Month, the Christian call is not to celebrate what God has called sin -- it is to love every human being enough to tell them the truth, to pray for their transformation, and to point them to the only One who can satisfy every longing of the human heart.

God loves the homosexual person. HE also loves them too much to leave them where they are.

THE CHRISTIAN CASE (Formerly "Reasoned Musings")

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