Can we allow homosexuals to become leaders in the church? At the moment in England we have a real issue going through parliament, a bill is being passed to allow Gay couples to adopt children. Is this ok? I think that this is not good as didn't God make man and woman to be joined together to be fruitful? Not male and male or female and female. Yet can two same sex people bring up a child in just a caring a way as two different sex people? However, what about the influence on the children? Help!

In the concept of what constitutes immorality, the Bible specifies that immorality includes premarital sex, extra-marital sex, homosexuality, beastiality, and lesbianism.  All of these are sinful before the Lord but not all carry the same degree of sinfulness. Homosexuality is especially targeted by Scripture as being uniquely sinful and that is what brought about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and it resulted in the war against the Danites in the Book of Judges.  God’s decree against homosexuality is found both in the Old Testament and New Testament as well (Romans 1). Therefore, a Bible believing church not only cannot recognize extra-marital sex and premarital sex among its members, nor can it tolerate homosexuality among its members.  Therefore, the church can never recognize homosexual marriages nor recognize homosexual couples as having the right to adopt. On the other hand, it should be remembered that while the Church must speak out publicly on these issues, and if there is a possibility of voting, members must vote against these issues, nevertheless, the church is not called upon to change society and therefore, we cannot force society to live by biblical law.  We should definitely make public where we stand, but the way any government chooses to pass the law, then we have to learn to live with it in society.  This does not mean we have to tolerate it within the church; on the contrary, this is something we cannot tolerate. So no, homosexuals cannot become leaders of churches though we may not have any power to stop them in becoming leaders in human government.  We cannot allow homosexual couples to be part of our churches, though there is nothing we can do about them being part of society. If the government allows gay couples to adopt children, there is nothing we can do to stop this, but we cannot tolerate it within the local church and that is where our responsibility must be carried out. For society we must preach the gospel to them because only when they are regenerated and changed within, will change occur externally.