My senator caves to the sin lobby

I am keenly disappointed in my Ohio senator, Rob Portman. Announcing his evolved view that homosexuality can be marriage, his betrayal is one of both substance and timing. With an upcoming Supreme Court showdown on marriage as well as a potential ballot challenge to marriage in our state, he smacked down conservatives in a manner both unprincipled and harsh.

It's not that I can't empathize with the position his son has put him in. Every parent hopes never to face a rebellious child. But Portman has decided not to call this rebellion. Whether it was pressure from his wife or some kind of ultimatum by his son, Portman now issues editorial statements that ring with "gay marriage" advocacy. What a slam on Ohio families!

He opines about "civil marriage rights" as if they don't exist now. These unions will be a stabilizing force bringing "renewed strength" to the institution, he thinks – but Portman is either woefully uninformed or deliberately ignores the mounting evidence against these lifestyles and the political militancy they are unleashing . There is no excuse for a sitting senator to jump on board a movement that viciously targets challengers, forces indoctrination of children in taxpayer- funded schools and bullies the corporate culture as well as the Boy Scouts into bowing before its altar of deviance.

And it's so unnecessary. Every person out there who claims a "gay" identity has the ability to get married in Ohio or anywhere else now. He or she can marry someone of the opposite sex, because that's what marriage is and because a "gay" identity is a delusion. Two men, no matter how sincere they feel, or two women, will never be a marriage. The person who believes this disorder is "who he is," as apparently Portman's son does, has tragically internalized a lie.

The sky is not green; it's still blue – and Jesus' identification of marriage as one man and one woman in Genesis 2 (where He was present as our eternally existent God) and again in Matthew 19 was not a joke. Just because Portman's pastor misunderstands doesn't mean Portman has to. One man/one woman marriage is a good and beautiful thing, not a hateful one. Jesus didn't hate anyone – He came to save us from sin, and homosexuality is always a sin in Scripture.

Homosexual "marriage" is wrong because homosexual behavior is wrong.

Along with his muddle-headed pastor, Portman constructs his own truth with his son's desires, playing the useful Bible compassion card. How many deliberate, defiant sins have been justified in this doctrinally unsound way? Jesus never said, "Hey, folks, even though I will be dying on the cross for your sins, you go ahead and do whatever you want, even proudly and permanently, and it's OK to believe it's not sin!"

Portman's capitulation is not an "evolution." He's a "cave" man, not progressing but regressing to put a stamp of approval on something two other Bible verses call an abomination (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13). He has endorsed ancient, Old Testament sin, which is rearing its head again in modern America with eerie similarity.

The predatory homosexuals at Lot's door (Genesis 19) told him, "Get out of our way!" They scorned Lot's effort to "play the judge" and threatened him with an attack. In 2013, nothing has changed. These are the emails we get daily, and so do other pro-family groups fighting this battle.

Truth could be the salvation for your son, Mr. Portman, and you could have been the one who challenged him, because of his love for you, to face reality. You might have had a strained relationship for a while, but these are the stresses of principled parenting, shared by thousands of other Ohio families. Countless parents have been tempted to compromise principle because a son or daughter gave them the cold shoulder when they said, "No, you are not wearing that skimpy dress to the prom," or responded, "I hate you!" when they said, "No, you are not going to smoke any more pot and live under this roof."

The deception of the culture is easy to accommodate if your principles are weak at the core. Homosexual feelings may seem unchosen, but we do have a choice about what fantasies and desires we nurture and feed. And we always have a choice about public identity and behavior.

His son needs to hear the hope of change and the stories of the thousands of former homosexuals in this country. But his father is apparently not going to tell him. How sad!

Where else would Sen. Portman capitulate? Protecting the unborn? If one of his children, seeking an "opportunity to pursue happiness and fulfillment," had an abortion to end an unplanned pregnancy, what would be the justification? Unwanted pregnancy is often inconvenient, sometimes an embarrassment. Are his children's transitory perceptions of "happiness" going to determine his allegiance to the pro-life cause, too? And lots of pastors support abortion, too.

As someone once said, the truth in the Bible is salvation, but there's no one who doesn't find its clear teachings inconvenient on some point or other. Yet faith means believing God even when you would rather not, even if it costs you something.

If we trust God and show some patience, He will give us understanding.

But just because someone we love believes he was born to engage in homosexual relations and can be "happy" no other way, doesn't make it true. God's standards trump a son's or daughter's truth – or yours and mine, and our childish wishes for an indulgent, designer god.

If it's compassionate to embrace your son's sin, as Portman has done, what would he tell another married child who comes to him confessing adultery? That he understands? Or that, no, that's wrong because it's against his moral framework? Where would Rob Portman get such a moral framework? Why ignore one sin clearly identified as such in the Bible and not another? Is it because of the size and power of that sin's American lobby? The adulterers don't have activists who bully the press and make life miserable for politicians who defy them.

Once again, a Republican is either too intimidated or too self-involved to be a statesman we can count on.

We need a new Republican or perhaps tea-party senator for Ohio, one strong enough to overcome struggles at home while standing up in the public square. Is that too much to ask of a public servant?