While we were adopting our twins, I received a modest pay increase from my employer. This meant we would need to pay more for the cost of adopting. I told Bethany Christian Services’s local director. I’ll never forget her words: “We’ll keep the original amount, Rob. We’re trying to help you adopt these twins.” Today those twins are 21 years old.

Now that great agency has agreed to provide children to same-sex couples in Michigan. It receives money from the state. In order to comply with an order from Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, Bethany had to allow LGBTQ couples to adopt.

“We are focused on demonstrating the love of Jesus Christ by serving children in need, and we intend to continue doing so in Michigan,” Bethany said in a statement. Really? Is it love to place a child in a home whose adults practice behaviors displeasing to God? Any more than it would be love to place a child in a home where two people “lovingly” cohabit without benefit of marriage?

Falling Dominoes

The dominoes are falling. In Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, Illinois, California and upstate New York, faith-based adoption agencies have shuttered their doors. Why? Because they won’t surrender to the liberal fascists who demand they cave.

Thankfully, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is suing the state of Michigan. It’s working on behalf of a Catholic adoption agency, St. Vincent Catholic Charities, and a married couple who adopted five children through St. Vincent. “The actions by the Attorney General of Michigan do nothing but harm the thousands of at-risk children in desperate need of loving homes,” said Mark Rienzi, president of the Becket Fund.

This is all part of a larger pattern, of course. The left has two litmus tests. Normalizing homosexuality is one. Abortion-on-demand is the other. No compromises will satisfy the gay activists. They demand everyone, everywhere, at all times, affirm whatever they do.

Christians who think they can huddle safely in their churches are kidding themselves. Crusaders for so-called “gay rights” will keep pressing until every church, synagogue, and mosque in America celebrates same-sex weddings. Hire homosexual and transgendered pastors. Change their statements of faith to affirm homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism.

Thankfully, there are many who won’t buckle-under. Who are willing to lose state and federal funds, tax exempt status, or whatever other public benefits that might be rescinded by LGBTQ militants. Faithful Christians who will stand up to these militants in the public square.

Yes, these militants deserve compassion. Christians should never resort to name-calling or demeaning attacks. We need to show grace in tone and conduct. We need to turn the other cheek and pray for those who persecute us (Mat 5:39, 44).

An Oxymoron

But we don’t turn the other cheek when they change the law to promote something that’s bad for people. We oppose them using every tool we have: argument, protest, witness, politics and electioneering.

Our convictions are grounded in Scripture, but also in hard social science research and ordinary common sense. They’re not true for Christians only, they’re true for everyone. We need to be prepared to explain why same-sex marriage is an oxymoron, for example. Part of that is showing why children need a male father and a female mother. We need to keep showing how true marriage makes families happier and society better. And we must work and vote for the candidates who know this.

The battle is already being waged. Christians can join it or merely watch and hope for a good outcome. The battle’s about courage and fidelity to God’s Word and love for others. About making key arguments persistently, simply, and over and over again.

My soft spot for Bethany has been replaced by a sense of loss. Ever grateful for Bethany’s generosity, its moral collapse in the name of “love” is an Esau’s bargain. For the pottage of state money, they have given up their spiritual birthright.

To paraphrase Thomas More in the playwright Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his own soul — but for Michigan, Bethany?”