Supreme Court Affirms Constitutionality of Gay Marriage

The Supreme Court in a landmark decision on Friday ruled gay and lesbian couples have a constitutionally protected right to marry and that states must recognize those marriages, handing advocates a sweeping and historic victory that cements the legality of same-sex marriage nationwide.

U.S. News and World Reports    June 26, 2015

Amos 8  ¹¹ Hear this! The days are coming—
this is the declaration of the Lord God—
when I will send a famine through the land:
not a famine of bread or a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord.
¹² People will stagger from sea to sea
and roam from north to east,
seeking the word of the Lord,
but they will not find it.

Genesis 2 ¹⁸ Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper as his complement.” …but for the man no helper was found as his complement. ²¹ So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to come over the man, and he slept. God took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place. ²² Then the Lord God made the rib He had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³ And the man said:

This one, at last, is bone of my bone
and flesh of my flesh;
this one will be called “woman,”
for she was taken from man.

²⁴ This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh. ²⁵ Both the man and his wife were naked, yet felt no shame.

Genesis 6  ⁵ When the Lord saw that man’s wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every scheme his mind thought of was nothing but evil all the time, ⁶ the Lord regretted that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. ⁷ Then the Lord said, “I will wipe off from the face of the earth mankind, whom I created, together with the animals, creatures that crawl, and birds of the sky—for I regret that I made them.” ⁸ Noah, however, found favor in the sight of the Lord.

Genesis 18 ²⁰ Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is immense, and their sin is extremely serious. ²¹ I will go down to see if what they have done justifies the cry that has come up to Me. If not, I will find out.”

Jude 1 ⁵ Now I want to remind you, though you know all these things: The Lord first saved a people out of Egypt and later destroyed those who did not believe; ⁶ and He has kept, with eternal chains in darkness for the judgment of the great day, the angels who did not keep their own position but deserted their proper dwelling. ⁷ In the same way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them committed sexual immorality and practiced perversions, just as angels did, and serve as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

Romans 1  ¹⁸ For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth,¹⁹ since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse.²¹ For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened. ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.²⁴ Therefore God delivered them over in the cravings of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. ²⁵ They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served something created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.  ²⁶ This is why God delivered them over to degrading passions. For even their females exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷ The males in the same way also left natural relations with females and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Males committed shameless acts with males and received in their own persons^[r] the appropriate penalty of their error.  ²⁸ And because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a worthless mind to do what is morally wrong. ²⁹ They are filled with all unrighteousness,evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,³¹ undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving,^[t] and unmerciful. ³² Although they know full well God’s just sentence—that those who practice such things deserve to die—they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them.

2 Peter 2   But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, and will bring swift destruction on themselves. ² Many will follow their unrestrained ways, and the way of truth will be blasphemed because of them. ³ They will exploit you in their greed with deceptive words. Their condemnation, pronounced long ago, is not idle, and their destruction does not sleep. ⁴ For if God didn’t spare the angels who sinned but threw them down into Tartarus and delivered them to be kept in chains of darkness until judgment; ⁵ and if He didn’t spare the ancient world, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others, when He brought a flood on the world of the ungodly; ⁶ and if He reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes and condemned them to ruin, making them an example to those who were going to be ungodly;⁷ and if He rescued righteous Lot, distressed by the unrestrained behavior of the immoral ⁸ (for as he lived among them, that righteous man tormented himself day by day with the lawless deeds he saw and heard)— ⁹ then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, 

2Timothy 4  I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and because of His appearing and His kingdom:² Proclaim the message; persist in it whether convenient or not; rebuke, correct, and encourage with great patience and teaching. ³ For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear something new. ⁴ They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths. ⁵ But as for you, be serious about everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.

Acts 5  ²⁵ Someone came and reported to them, “Look! The men you put in jail are standing in the temple complex and teaching the people.” ²⁶ Then the commander went with the temple police and brought them in without force, because they were afraid the people might stone them. ²⁷ After they brought them in, they had them stand before the Sanhedrin, and the high priest asked,²⁸ “Didn’t we strictly order you not to teach in this name? And look, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to bring this man’s blood on us!”  ²⁹ But Peter and the apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than men.³⁰ The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had murdered by hanging Him on a tree. ³¹ God exalted this man to His right hand as ruler and Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins. ³² We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him.”

John 15  ¹⁸ “If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me before it hated you. ¹⁹ If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you.²⁰ Remember the word I spoke to you: ‘A slave is not greater than his master.’If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will also keep yours. ²¹ But they will do all these things to you on account of My name, because they don’t know the One who sent Me.