Gagnon's Poor Passion

David Kyle Foster, who first posted this video on YouTube, pushes Gagnon videos on his website. And of course, he's yet another "ex-gay" who blames homosexuality for the same-sex trauma he experienced as a boy. He also blames it for his drug addiction, sex addiction, and steak fat addiction. He probably sat in a dark room thinking what else he could pin on homosexuality (this one makes the fantastic claims that 85% of lesbians come from abuse to all gay men have an "arrested emotional development"' because "not one of them had a loving father"). I don't know what it is, but ex-gays either come off as creepy, fanatical, or feign this hyper-happiness with glassy eyes like they're in a cult. David falls in the first category.

He won't let anyone post a refute on this Gagnon video because he's afraid Gagnon is going to be made fun of in the comments section (exhibit: A) he can't control, so he just hoards this video that gives Gagnon the opportunity to bullet his arguments without a challenge.

Since Foster will delete any dissenting view or negative comment on all of his YouTube comments (I believe he's literally checking comments on the daily and is ready and waiting with his trigger finger on the delete button), I thought I'd bring Gagnon here.

Gagnon pulls the same stunt on his own YouTube channel with even a little length of a refute. Gagnon also refuses to debate the audience with any type of a Q&A after one of his speaking engagements because he's a control freak with a debate setting.

[Updated: Someone contacted me and stated Gagnon will answer little questionnaire cards submitted by the audience, cards he can either reject or accept as long as they don't talk, but this is very different with having a dialogue back and forth with someone in the audience who can point out the contradictions and errors of what he's saying after he's said them.]

This blog has pointed out the error that's the "moral, ritual and ceremonial" paradigm enough to what's being presented by Gagnon here. The man thinks Paul speaks from the center of these Old Testament prohibitions with almost everything he wrote, as if the old Pharisee Saul didn't really completely die to the Law, but still makes a guest appearance from time to time. He misses the very core message of Paul who said the old prohibitions are dead to us and ignores Paul saying in 2 Corinthians; "He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" and again in Romans; "But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code." It's re-stated in Acts; "Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear?" And in Hebrews; "The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless." "The law is only a shadow, not the realities themselves."
Even the ancient Jews believed the new "Messianic Torah" would replace their written Torah; "The Torah that a person learns in this present age is trifling compared to the Law of the Messianic King" (Koheles Rabah 11:8).

Homosexuality was never 'absolutely' proscribed in the New Testament. You have the homosexuality entwined with idolatry in Romans 1 where Paul patterns his sin list in Romans from other idolatry vice lists popular in his day and from Deuteronomy that mirrors Romans word for word. Paul only spoke on homosexuality through the narrow lens of idolatry or exploitation with Gagnon taking these examples to make a blanket statement on homosexuality using clever and deceptive hermeneutics tricks and I already brought up Gagnon's error with seeing homosexuality with being equal as exploitive homosexuality, so I don't need to go further with correcting this view he continues with now and later in the video with his interpretation of "arsenokoites" that's easily refuted by me all over this blog. This is a perfect example of Gagnon's "half-readings" I first brought up in my critique of his book. He quotes extensively from David F. Greenberg's book; "The Construction of Homosexuality" (an book I've also read) in his book. Greenberg gives an exhaustive narrative of homosexuality through the ages as a practice without condemning comment or consequence, all documented by Greenberg, all deliberately left out by Gagnon.

Gagnon brings up his two children and what they KNOW is wrong and equating that with how we are suppose to feel about homosexuality, we should KNOW it's wrong. Gagnon believes so strongly and so deeply homosexuality is so contrary to anything right or good or holy, he's incredulous you can't see it. This is a tactic of his to make you feel foolish with what he thinks you should see as a given. This is Gagnon who sees homosexuality as the equivalent of "a child touching a hot stove."

He takes apart the easy argument of those who bring up the "abomination" of mixing two types of cloth with the "abomination" of homosexuality in Leviticus. Why doesn't he bring up the more complex issue of divorce Christ takes away from Moses? The sin of usury in the Old Testament Christ actually carried over unlike homosexuality? Breaking the Sabbath that also calls for the death penalty? Circumcision the Old Testament says is a "forever" act? Or the other slew of what the Bible calls "abominations?"

Leave it up to Gagnon to make the story of the woman who was going to be stoned to be about the woman's adultery and not about how we are to be merciful and not judging, what Christ tells us to go and 'do likewise' in Luke 10:37. What do we get out of what Jesus did in here according to Gagnon? Saving someone for the future "Kingdom of God" who may choose not to repent. Is it this? Or is it Jesus showing the example of bestowing mercy over the letter of the law (James 2:12,13) to the crowd of witnesses? What made Him an enemy to the Scribes and the Pharisees who brought the woman to Christ to be stoned according to "The Law." By implication Gagnon says Jesus would have took part in the stoning if He could, but begrudgingly stops Himself for the singular reason of saving her for "The Kingdom." This is yet another case of Gagnon not being able to take his head out "Old Testament" weights and balances and missing the mark that Christ did what He did to give an example to the listeners around the adulteress and to us.

Paul called out a man at the church in Corinth with what he was doing that hurt another with what was a transgressional relationship, Gagnon says it's the same with two non-related homosexuals (ironically, Gagnon has stated that the Corinthian man's incest is preferable to homosexuality even when the Bible gives no such account of Paul taking a stance with a homosexual man in the church). He takes the Greek word "Porneia" (harlotry) in the verse describing the Corinthian man's sin and carries that description to mean homosexuality. In all Biblical instances the word is used, without exception, it is either in reference to a breaking of a marriage obligation or prostitution and is never carried over to homosexuality, what Gagnon would have you believe that again is him broadening a prohibition beyond it's clear and stated borders.

Gagnon gives away his bias against Homosexuality with saying tolerance is not loving, but then he says to show tolerance to the divorced with the excuse it's a "one time sin" and immediately it stops being a sin or living in a state of sin.

His question of; "Are homosexuals at risk?" He answers his own question because to him there is no other answer. Gagnon uses the term "Aggressive Love" that to him translates as fighting legislation that would stop gay children from being bullied in school to writing letters to church bodies telling then to kick gays out, THIS is Gagnon's "love" in action, a love he thinks he sees with Christ. Unlike what Gagnon believes, love does not dishonor others or demands its way... just ask Paul (1 Cor 13:5), a 'good disciple' of Jesus.

No comment is needed further with Gagnon's claim the only problem the Pharisees had with Christ was because he was pushy with an even more intensified Old Testament ethic while at the same time being loving, I really wonder if Gagnon believes this stupidity himself.

This is one of Gagnon's weakest argument (I'm assuming your stopping the vid and reading what I say as he's talking), along with the since discredited "science" in his book, that somehow men and women are to be 'complimentary parts' to each other and is a large part of why he believes as he does. I point out this error of his in my review of his book; "The Construction of Homosexuality... " and another reference to his work is another solid treatise on this pagan-based belief. Gagnon goes to bogus science because he can never show the "consequence" of homosexuality he compares to vices that do have notable consequences in Paul's vice lists.

When Gagnon brings up the fact Christ never talks about homosexuality with saying Christ never brought up incest either, he misses the fact Sodom was brought up to Christ. Instead of leading Christ to expand further with what was the sin of Sodom, Christ says nothing other than making it a case for inhospitality.* When Christ comes across the same sex practicing Centurion, He says nothing other than to admire the faith of the Centurion, When Christ does speaks on marriage, he's quick to bring up "born eunuchs" Gagnon himself concedes could fit the the historical definition of a homosexual.

He claims that the Christians of Paul's day would have seen homosexuality as a given prohibition from the Old Testament like incest, let's look at that closer.

Gagnon states; "There is no record of a Jew practicing homosexuality in early Judaism" and "There is no dissenting opinion anywhere in Judaism on the subject of homosexuality," he's wrong (see; "Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition" by Steven Greenberg and "Jacob's Wound: Homoerotic Narrative in the Literature of Ancient Israel" by Theodore W. Jennings Jr).

Gagnon's false claim of the Greek term "Malakoi" he tries to pass off as meaning an effeminate 'gay' man is easily refuted by myself and others (see "Love Lost In Translation" by K. Renato Lings with outside sources referenced: 490 - 499).

The Hebrew expression mishkav zakhar is the Hebrew translation of "lying of a male" from Numbers 31:18 and is only describing the act of penetration. 

This is a refutation of Gagnon saying Leviticus is an absolute prohibition on homosexuality even outside of it's idolatry context with outside sources referenced (see; Myth 2# and 2-3 A – Seven Myths in the Homophobic Interpretations of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13) that also addresses Gagnon's other points mentioned in the video.

It's worth repeating with what scholar Jean-Fabrice Nardelli has to say on Gagnon that needs no further comment:

"Once and for all, let it be said that Gagnon is an inaccurate and poor student of Biblical homosexuality: he is far too opinionated and self-indulging for someone who would have us believe in his impeccable judgement (whence my jibe at his status as an ayatollah), has no grasp whatsoever of the major ancient Near Eastern languages apart from Masoretic Hebrew, never consults scholarly literature in other tongues (German and French Bible studies simply do not exist for him), and he is ridiculously parochial in his selection of primary and secondary sources (they are principally American, and wherever possible come from the Evangelical right). Just consult any piece of his which appears on his website; you will discover that he is all rhetoric and blistering, with virtually nothing in guise of scientific apparatus. I would have been loathe to expose him for what he is had he been decent enough not to charge his opponents with gross dishonesty. So let us not mince words any longer. As a parting shot, I shall like to adduce a point which speaks volumes about his academic credentials: in more than a decade, Gagnon only produced one large book (under, one might add, the covers of a religious publisher, not an academic press) and a handful of papers in peer-reviewed journals; such an output for a senior scholar, coupled with the fact that at well over fifty he is still an Assistant Professor in a second-rate theological seminary, comes on a long way, I think, towards explaining his tooth-and-nail stance as an ideologue and his preference for online preaching over academic work."



*Gagnon brings up Sodom in not this video, but elsewhere in an attempt to force the story from lack of hospitality he admits is the jist of the story to homosexuality. My response is here that also covers Jude 1:7. He makes the lack of hospitality with Sodom about homosexuality and then says no ancient Jews never practiced homosexuality, yet Jeremiah 23:14 says this about the people of Israel; "...They are all like Sodom to me; the people of Jerusalem are like Gomorrah." You can't have it both ways with making Sodom about homosexuality and saying the Jews didn't practice homosexuality when Israel was like Sodom.
As you can see, Gagnon has thoroughly been refuted with what are his general arguments he condensed in the above video on homosexuality and the Bible.