Normalisation of homosexuality is a 'calamity' - John Piper

Amid ongoing "gay pride" celebrations and the push for gay marriage, influential evangelical John Piper wants to put it all in perspective for the church.

"My sense is that we do not realise what a calamity is happening around us," Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, wrote in a commentary on Thursday. "Christians, more clearly than others, can see the tidal wave of pain that is on the way. Sin carries in it its own misery."

It's been nearly a week now since marriage for gay and lesbian couples was legalised in New York and since hundreds of thousands of Americans celebrated homosexuality with gay pride parades, not only in New York but also in Piper's home state of Minnesota.

Homosexuality and its celebration are nothing new, the Reformed pastor clarified.

"[Homosexuality] has been here since we were all broken in the fall of man," he wrote. "What's new is not even the celebration of homosexual sin. Homosexual behaviour has been exploited, and revelled in, and celebrated in art, for millennia.

"What's new," he underscored, "is normalisation and institutionalisation. This is the new calamity."

America, and the rest of the world, is moving toward the institutionalisation of homosexuality, the 65-year-old pastor lamented.

Yet the Bible makes it clear that homosexual behaviour is sin, he said.

"Alongside its clearest explanation of the sin of homosexual intercourse (Romans 1:24-27) stands the indictment of the celebration of it," he said.

"Though people know intuitively that homosexual acts (along with gossip, slander, insolence, haughtiness, boasting, faithlessness, heartlessness, ruthlessness) are sin, 'they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them' (Romans 1:29-32).'I tell you even with tears, that many glory in their shame' (Philippians 3:18–19)."

For the first time since it began tracking the issue of same-sex marriage in 1996, a Gallup poll last month found that a majority of Americans (53 per cent) believe marriages between same-sex couples should be recognised by law as valid.

Moreover, 56 per cent of Americans say gay or lesbian relations is morally acceptable, another Gallup poll found in May. Only 39 per cent perceive homosexual relations as morally wrong.