By Joel Hilliker and Brad Macdonald

At the beginning of The Missing Dimension in Sex Herbert W. Armstrong brings the reader up to speed with the advance of the “new morality,” and the disastrous affects it was having on the Western world. Nearly three decades later, the armies of the “new morality” have intensified their assaults and new depths of degradation have been reached. Since 1981, the most alarming and dangerous onslaught has been the emergence and widespread acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle into mainstream society.

Nothing illustrates this better than the “Day of Silence.” This past Friday, hundreds of thousands of adolescents from more than 6,000 schools across America refused to speak—some all day, and others for partial periods—to protest the alleged harassment of and prejudice and discrimination against students who identify themselves as homosexual, bisexual or transgender.

The Day of Silence is organized by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), one of the most powerful and well-funded homosexual activist groups in America. GLSEN’s involvement speaks volumes about the true nature of Friday’s Day of Silence; it has very little do to with bullying and harassment, and everything to do with promoting the homosexual lifestyle in the impressionable minds of adolescents. Friday’s cunning assault was designed by liberal activists to not only arouse sympathy for the homosexual cause, but also to teach children that homosexual conduct is perfectly normal, completely safe and an absolutely acceptable form of sexual expression.

Did you participate in the Day of Silence? Should you have?

The promotion of the homosexual lifestyle is one of the most far-reaching and extreme forms of the “new morality.” Homosexuality is now out in the open. Most everyone is perfectly okay with it. You may see couples at your school, or have a homosexual teacher—maybe even some of your classmates are homosexual. It is everywhere!

How should you handle that?

First, you must establish in your own mind what is right and what is wrong. Homosexuality is sin. There is no gray area. God clearly condemns it in the Bible. Under no circumstances is sin okay. And no amount of public acceptance will change God’s mind.

Events in Genesis 6 describe the world prior to the Flood. If you study that chapter, you will see that moral degradation and the disintegration of marriage and family, including rampant homosexuality, were largely behind God’s decision to obliterate human civilization before it went past the point of no return. Genesis 19 shows that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of pervasive homosexual practices.

There is a specific instance in the Bible where, within one of the congregations in God’s Church, a man was committing a horrible sexual sin (1 Corinthians 5). The Apostle Paul commanded that no one associate with him, and that man was put out of the Church.

But read what Paul said next, in verses 9-10. Dismissing someone from the Church is one thing, but you can’t disassociate yourself from everyone who does such things in the world, or you’d have to remove yourself from the world completely! That is contrary to what Jesus Christ Himself prayed to God the Father in John 17:15, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.”

Trying to live right, while being in the middle of people living wrong, is difficult. It requires self-control and wisdom. That said, the final point is that you do need to choose your friends wisely. Your close friendships should be with those who have values like your own, who will help you grow in character, not break it down. Yes, everyone sins—but at the same time, you must make judgments about who is trying to live according to biblical principles and who is not. And above all, you must put God’s point of view first. The fact that someone is homosexual doesn’t mean you have nothing to do with them, but wisdom dictates that the relationship be limited.

For more on this topic, click here for the full theTrumpet.com article.