We must pay attention to how moral change takes place, and interestingly, it usually takes place according to the same kind of development step-by-step. Certain things have to happen before other things can happen. When you look at something such as the LGBTQ revolution, you realize most of this would have been inconceivable just a short of amount of time ago, but then once L and G and B and T and all these things are moving forward, pretty soon you’ve got to put a plus sign at the end of that acronym.

All right, so let’s also just step back a minute. How does this take place? Interestingly, there is a customary pattern to how it takes place. Let’s start with step number one. 

Step number one, something, a behavior, a lifestyle, a pattern is condemned. It is morally condemned. It’s understood as morally wrong. So first, something is condemned. 

Secondly, the society begins to change and it is no longer universally condemned. What was overwhelmingly a moral consensus gives way to the fact that there are people now who don’t condemn this thing anymore.

The third stage is where there are actually people who will celebrate it. So what was universally condemned then is not so universally condemned and then it is celebrated to some extent. 

The fourth stage is it’s nearly universally celebrated. Those who will not celebrate it are the people who get into trouble, and thus you see how this revolution when it comes to adultery, divorce, sex outside of marriage, and then the LGBTQ array, you can see how this works and remember that plus sign is put at the end of the acronym. So now it’s LGBTQIA plus however you want to put it. The understanding is this is an unfolding moral revolution and there is yet more to unfold. 

And then, you ask the question, okay, how is it that you get from step one to step two? How do you get from something being condemned to no longer being overwhelmingly condemned? What happens there? Well, I’m going to suggest the two major articles that appeared just in recent weeks, one in the New York Times, the other in the Wall Street Journal, really give an indication of how this happens. One of the ways this happens is that this thing would be universally condemned as a moral judgment.It is now held up. It’s no longer just condemned. There are people who say, isn’t this interesting? Isn’t this interesting to watch? All right. 

Number one, the New York Times article, “Love Without Limits, Brazil Flirts with Polyamory.” Now, this is the term about multiple love. It is grounded in the same plural as polygamy, multiple marriage, but in this case multiple spouses, but in this case, love without limits, Brazil flirts with polyamory. Here’s the subtitle. “More people in a still largely conservative and religious nation are rejecting monogamy as they seek new definitions of romance and of family.”

All right, so the article begins, listen to this, “The toddler, still sleepy, wobbled into the kitchen and planted a kiss on the woman helping make breakfast. Her parents followed her and also planted a kiss on the lips of the woman, one of their lovers.” Okay, now, from time to time, I just want to read say one sentence and let listeners to The Briefing hear that one sentence, and understand that your parents would not have been able to understand that sentence. Your grandparents couldn’t possibly have understood that sentence.

You’re supposed to understand that sentence now. And if moral change happens the way those on the left always want it to happen, then your children will not even notice this. It’s interesting enough that it’s a big feature story for the New York Times, and it is in this case, about a polyamorous grouping of people. One of the women identifies a 28-year-old, a graduate student say, “It’s a family. These are the people I chose and they are the people I love.” Okay, let me just back up a moment and say the biblical understanding of family is not first of all, grounded in choice at all. It’s not. It is grounded in kinship. It is not grounded in choice. This just shows you how the modern moral revolution has taken place and many people won’t even notice it when it happens. 

All right, there are other people, by the way, that are already going to be introduced in this article. They’re also introduced as lovers within this relationship. This Brazilian household is we are told and is not just like any other. Okay, that’s another moral move, and I’m going to read that sentence to you. “This Brazilian household, both is and is not just like any other.” Okay, so that’s one of the techniques, that’s one of the major tools if you’re driving a moral revolution. You say this is and isn’t just like the thing that already is. And so when you’re talking about marriage, you say, or the family, you say this new thing, this new household, it is, and it’s not just like any other. Fundamentally, it is not, especially when you have that statement made by the woman that she’s in this because it’s the family that she has chosen.

The logic comes out in about the fourth paragraph where this woman says, “We don’t just have one friend to do everything with, right? So why would we expect one romantic partner to fill all our needs?” The times in reports, “In Brazil, this woman and this man’s rejection of monogamy is part of a movement in which more people are embracing different forms of love, marriage and parenthood.” Okay, so different forms of love, marriage and parenthood. Again, this is a dramatically modern notion. If the statement makes sense to you that there are now different forms of love, marriage, and parenthood, it is because you are so deeply influenced by modernity, by the modern age. You don’t know it until perhaps you look in the mirror and you recognize, “Wait, this is not supposed to make sense to me.” In biblical terms, this is not supposed to make sense. It makes sense, however, to those of us who are surrounded by the messaging here, we have to work very hard to remember that it doesn’t make sense. We have to remind ourselves. We have to remind each other. We have to remind our children. We have to remind our fellow church members. No, this doesn’t make sense. 

The religious aspect comes into the article very early. Listen to this, “The South American nation, that’s Brazil, of 213 million is known for its sensual musical rhythms and skin-bearing carnival costumes.” “But it remains deeply conservative home to the world’s largest number of Catholics and where hard-line evangelical movements are growing.” So it’s very interesting there. It’s not just evangelical movements, it’s hard-line evangelical movements, which in the mainstream media, generally means evangelical movements that are legitimately evangelical. The times then tells us, “The rise of polyamory here and around the world has faced fierce pushback from conservative and religious leaders who have cast it as an affront to family values. Pope Leo XIV weighed in warning ‘against the fragility of unions, the trivialization of adultery and the promotion of polyamory.’” I can just say that’s helpful. That’s a helpful statement actually from the Pope. We could just wish there were more evangelical Protestant Christians who were as vocal on the issue. Hint, hint, this is something we do have to talk about. 

Okay. We’re told that this issue first arose in Brazil “over a decade ago, when a notary office registered a common law union of a man and two women.” Listen to this. “Religious groups were quick to denounce the move. Liberal Brazilians, including the notary scribe, defended it, calling it a reflection of a changing society.” Okay, now get this. The judicial regulator of notaries did go on to say that notaries, and remember that’s a legal function, “Could not recognize such unions, a ruling that has faced repeated court challenges,” and so conservative legislators were trying to push through a bill that would make it illegal for notaries to register such unions of more than two people. Interesting. By the way, it is the number, it’s not about same-sex marriage along as the number is two. So long as the number is two, I guess any two will do according to this understanding of the law.

Again, it’s a breakdown of creation order. One of the people who is promoting this said, “It’s a much wider understanding of love. That’s the way you do it. You say it’s just another form of love. It’s just a wider understanding of love.” We’re then told that one of the women involved in this was “raised evangelical” and had been married to a man from her evangelical church, but she says she, “Began questioning norms that kept her from dating other people,” while she was married, by the way. You’ll notice that she was questioning those norms. And then she “started exploring her bisexuality.” So what you see here is a meltdown. “It was a process to understand myself and to deconstruct these concepts of sin, of spirituality, she said.” All right, well, she accidentally tells us something there. In order to get to her polyamorous lifestyle, she had to deconstruct the biblical concept of sin, and that’s exactly what’s necessary. If you are influenced and accountable to biblical Christianity, if you are living according to historic biblical Christianity, you can’t be confused about these issues, but you just can’t, on the other side of it, claim naivete or confusion.

You have to deconstruct them. Okay that’s also interesting because it’s fascinating that that kind of term about theological deconstruction, that means basically abandoning historic biblical Christianity and turning it into a far more modernist self-religion one way or another. It is very interesting that that word and concept has evidently been transported all the way to Brazil and shows up in the New York Times. 

Okay there’s also a howler of a statement here. I’ll just read it to you. One of the women involved as an activist in this group speaking about polyamory, said, “People think it’s just about sex,” she said, “and it absolutely is not.” I’ll just state that when you say it’s absolutely not about that, when you’re talking about this, it is about that saying it’s not about that, just underlines the fact, it is about that. The New York Times decides to be educational about this, “Most scholars,” isn’t that interesting? You bring in the intellectual authority identified as a scholar. “Most scholars describe non-monogamy as any emotional or sexual relationship, not requiring partners to be exclusive.” I mean to state, you don’t need a scholar. All you need is a dictionary. In order to get that definition.

This is bringing in the cultural authority supposedly of experts is the usual word they use, and now scholars. “This could mean couples who casually swap lovers or people who forge committed relationships with more than one person. Overall, the aim is to move away from a model that casts one romantic partner as more important than another.” Okay? That’s also very, very interesting, because in various historic forms where polygamy has shown up a man with multiple wives, generally there has been a privileged wife.

And so at least in this statement you say, “Oh no. Oh no, there is no privilege in the relationship.” Again, one of the things clinically that shows up in polyamorous relationships is by the way, that that hardly ever happens. You can say there is no favorite, but the Old Testament is brutally honest about this. Even as it’s brutally honest about polygamy. You can say there is no favorite, but it almost always is, and if you define it that way, let me just say again, defining it that way doesn’t mean that you make it that way.

All right, I mentioned the Wall Street Journal, so hold on. We were just talking about polyamory, the New York Times, basically putting it out there. Another way of just at least furthering the process of normalizing it, but the Wall Street Journal, of all things, came out with an article, here’s the headline, “One Throuple had Three Separate Design Tastes. How did they manage a Renovation?” All right, this is interesting. It is more than interesting because this is supposedly an article about a renovation project for a condominium.  Okay that’s what it’s supposed to be about. It’s in the section of the paper that deals with real estate, but it’s pushing the idea of a throuple and just in case you need your own dictionary. That is couple, but now it’s not two, it’s three, which is throuple, or I guess you could say throuple, depending upon your pronunciation preference. There you have it, it means three. But just to make it even more clear what’s going on in the revolutionary character of this article, it’s not, even when it comes to three, it’s not two men and a woman. It’s not two women and a man. No, it is three men, three men sharing one apartment, sharing one open relationship with all three of them, but a throuple, so it’s not just open to everybody. It’s three and even designing, they evidently have a lot of money designing a custom-made bed for three men. I’ll just leave it at that. The Wall Street Journal shows the picture, so you can order one too. 

I’m not going to mention the names here. I will simply read it and let you hear what happened. “When corporate strategists, I’ll say, man one and pharmacist, man two, started living together in Chicago in 2013. They never intended to open their relationship, let alone their home to a third partner. But when they met consultant, man three, through mutual friends in the summer of 2018, things took an unexpected turn. Man one said, we just clicked.” The journal then says “The throuple, which is a committed, romantic or sexual relationship between three people took things slow at first. Man one and man two lived separately from man three who was consulting for a German based client and dividing his time between Germany and Chicago. When he was in Chicago, he still split his time between his home and his partners,” that means both one and two.

“By the time COVID triggered a lockdown in Chicago in March, 2020, the constant shuffling had become impractical and it simply made sense for all three to move in together.” Remember, this is a real estate article, supposedly, “preferably somewhere bigger.” Okay as I say, there are three professional men. They obviously have money. They bought the condominium, which is actually part of a duplex for 1.71 million dollars in 2020, 4,000 square feet with a 2000 square foot roof deck, four bedrooms, three and a half baths. “All three became deeded owners of the condo, but they also drew up a private arrangement to manage how ownership would work in practice. The agreement covered expenses, the sale of a share and major decisions. The contract remains flexible, letting them adapt as their lives evolve and ensuring co-ownership stays harmonious.” Okay I just have to state again, this is basically a real estate article and a real estate broker in Denver went and made this statement, “Monogamy in this economy?” Well, that is a huge tell in itself. That’s just hugely revealing.

Now, you have a real estate figure who is explaining all of this, this throuple thing, this triple thing, this multiple thing, this plurality thing, this polyamory thing. It’s all about the economy. If the economy were better, then this wouldn’t be necessary. Well, that flies in the face of even how these articles begin because they don’t begin with economic necessity as if there is such a thing. They begin with the romantic dimension of it, and I’ll just state when you have to do an article of this detail, you’re a little too detailed in those matters.

There is another vocabulary word that is in this journal article. I need to draw your attention to it, if you haven’t heard it before. It’s polycules, P-O-L-Y-C-U-L-E-S. “A group of people involved in consensual, interconnected and non-monogamous relationships.” Yeah, we are told that designers are taking note of this, “Creating homes that balance privacy and togetherness for throuples and polycules. We’re then told “Common accounts, a design studio based in Madrid and Toronto,” so again, these are not poor people. You’re using design studios based in Madrid and Toronto. “Designed the cabin retreat in Ontario, Canada with a stepped floor plan. That cars out distinct zones including two beds, an Olympic queen and a twin, so a trio of owners have a choice of sleeping arrangements.” As for the three men in the condo, let me just read this quote. Product designers are also exploring intimacy through form. A New York based furniture designer, I’m not going to read it, “Created a sculptural bed called Hug, designed to comfortably accommodate up to three partners.”

I don’t think you really need much more of this. You get the point, but the article, by the way, does go on. It does go on and it goes on. It also has pictures so that if you look at it and say, “Well, what a beautiful arrangement this is. I’d like one of those for myself or for the three of us.” It’s that ridiculous. Now, let me be clear. I think it is almost certain that the vast majority of readers, of the Wall Street Journal are not attracted to this whatsoever. I think there’s some people in the financial world, the real estate world, who look at this and say, “Well, there may be a financial angle to this. Yeah, it may be there.”

I don’t think, I’ll be honest, there are people looking at this article saying, “Man, I want to live that way.” I don’t think that’s it. What it does is break down a moral instinct. What it does is break down a capacity for moral judgment. What it does is break down moral defenses so that the next time you see this, you can say, “Oh yeah, the Wall Street Journal even wrote a huge article on this.” The next thing you know, it looks more and more normal. 

The reason I’m giving this so much attention is because I want us to look at these two articles. I want us to consider them and just realize this can happen all around us, and if we’re not careful, it can happen within us. This process of moral breakdown, and moral renegotiation, moral renovation, moral change, it can take place within our own hearts and minds if we are not careful. And so, we need to look at this. We need to speak about it and remind ourselves this is just as unbeautiful, just as unattractive. It is just as unrighteous as our first instinct is to see it, to be. We need to affirm that instinct.

We also need to make very clear that instinct is produced by the Word, and it’s based in the authority of the Word of God. It is based in creation order, and that’s one of the reasons why I think even people who don’t even think themselves to have any Christian sensibility at all will look at this and go, okay, I don’t care if it’s supposed to be attractive. I don’t care if these are leading architects and designers. This is just weird.

Finally, news came yesterday of the death of the Reverend Jesse Jackson at age 84.

He was born October 8th, 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina. He died just yesterday at age 84 in Chicago, Illinois. One of the most central civil rights figures of the 20th century with influence into the 21st century. He was there on the balcony of the hotel when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He was a central part of the Civil Rights Movement, which by the way, broke into different factions. He would eventually form what was known as Operation Push and would be well-known for all kinds of activity in terms of political activism.

Most famously, he ran in 1984 and in 1988 for the Democratic presidential nomination and stunned everyone including the party leaders by coming in third in 1984 and coming in second in 1988. And he really became a major figure. He was also a divisive figure. He was a controversial figure. He intended to be all of those things. He lived a very large life. He was an activist. He was in many ways a poet with his words and he knew it. And so when, for instance, he made very clear through the statement with which he became famous, “I am somebody,” and he turned that into a statement of self-affirmation particularly for Black children and young people.

Let me just say, he hit a nerve, and even though he was very controversial and involved in so many of the things, including the controversies of the 20th century, he demonstrates moral change within himself. Very interestingly, Jesse Jackson younger in his career, was a pro-life activist. He actually wrote a very clear article defending the protection of the unborn opposing abortion, and making very clear that the disproportionate number and percentage of black babies aborted in the womb was itself a form of racism coming from the white elites.

He changed that position back when he was running in the 1980s for the Democratic Presidential nomination, so he basically put that behind. He was in so many things, a progressivist, a liberal. He was a populist, no doubt about that. He was a populist, and the racial angle to his argument was often front and center. He was eloquent, there’s no doubt about it. In a particular style, he was extremely eloquent. He was very energetic, and he was also theologically trained. He had a master of divinity from Chicago Theological Seminary, by the way, a very liberal school, and he held to actually a very liberal theology. There’s no doubt about it. 

I just want to say something, and that is that I had the opportunity of being with Jesse Jackson more than once in a very interesting situation, I was in a private meeting with him in Atlanta, Georgia years ago. And I can just tell you that there are times in which I have been in a situation in which I have seen somebody, and recognize there’s a lot more to this person than I thought, and that was the case with Jesse Jackson. He was extremely nimble in his thinking and quite perceptive about many things, and I think stunningly honest now, to be honest, he wasn’t, I think so honest about those things outside that room, but he certainly was inside that room.

Anyway, it was just a very interesting meeting, but the most interesting encounter I had with Jesse Jackson was on a television news program, and he and I both appeared from time to time on CNN’s Larry King Live, and at times we appeared together. On one of those times, he made a statement to me that was just incredibly helpful. We were on opposite we are on opposite arguments. We were on opposite sides of an issue, but he was just very kind, and at one point he said to me, he said, you don’t know how to do this.

And I was much younger than he was. I said, what does he mean? He said, “You don’t know how to do this.” He said, “When Larry King asked you a question, he said, you answer it and stop.” He said, no, the way you have to do this is you answer Larry’s question and then you keep talking until he cuts you off. I almost instantly realized that he was right, and that that advice was actually pretty helpful, and many other times appearing on that program, but that just to say it is a reminder to me that when we see someone on television, we see someone who is big on the national stage, we see someone with the activism and even all the controversies related to Jesse Jackson, even when we are on opposite sides of so many issues, even when we come theologically from two very different positions, it is interesting that from time to time, we are reminded of a common humanity and of the fact that even off the air, well, he gave me good advice, and as much as I continued to disagree with him on many things quite dramatically, I also came to understand a bit of why he had such influence in his own circles and why to so many people, he was just such a powerful influence. 

Like so many other people, he was eclipsed by later events, and most importantly, the election of Barack Obama as the first Black President of the United States. When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, that basically changed the entire equation, and well, as we say, the rest is history. When the history of the Civil Rights movement is written and it continues to be written, there is no way that Jesse Jackson will not be a big part of that story. And his death is another reminder to us of the biblical truth that no man knows his time.