Trumps Chooses Openly Gay Christian as NATO Ambassador
The BIG question is: Is this how Trump feels about Rick Grenell or about NATO?
President Trump has chosen open homosexual and “gay Christian” advocate Rick Grenell to be the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, according to several news reports.
The appointment, not yet confirmed by the White House, would make Grenell the highest-ranking open homosexual serving in the Trump administration.
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is the alliance of Western states formed in the Cold War to contain and defend against Soviet Communism. The U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO is commonly called the U.S. Ambassador to NATO. Grenell would replace Douglas Lute, who held the position from 2013 until Trump's inauguration.
Grenell, 50, is a Republican foreign policy expert, former spokesman for three U.S. Ambassadors to the United Nations from 2001 to 2008, and a FOX News contributor. In the last eight years, he could often be heard on the network strongly criticizing Obama’s foreign and defense policy as weak and incompetent.
But there is another side to Grenell: “gay” advocate. As LifeSiteNews reported after he was floated for Ambassador to the UN (a job that eventually went to South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley), Grenell advocates for homosexual “marriage” as a “conservative” issue. He criticizes “loud religious right activists” who oppose homosexuality and touts Trump’s uniquely pro-LGBT credentials as a Republican. He was an early Trump supporter.
On LGBT issues, Trump has disappointed social conservatives by a series of actions that include reinstating an Obama executive order forcing federal contractors to have pro-LGBTQ policies; proclaiming that the homosexual “marriage” issue is “settled” in the courts; and appointing top advisers like Betsy DeVos and Anthony Scaramucci who are pro-homosexual.
But Trump’s recent reversal of Obama’s intrusive “transgender” school mandate thrilled conservatives of every stripe.
“Gay Christian”?
Grenell, who lives in Los Angeles, reportedly has a long-term homosexual partner, Matt Lashey. Grenell is pro-life and has worked over the years to help pro-life advocates at the UN, according to one veteran pro-life advocate involved in international issues.
But when it comes to homosexuality, Grenell calls for greater “tolerance” in the Republican Party despite the party’s clear and longstanding platform language opposing “rights” and “marriage” based on aberrant sex.
In a Feb. 3 podcast with FOX News reporter Shannon Bream, he said, “I am gay, I am a Christian and I am still a man of faith.”
In the interview, Grenell demonstrates precisely the sort of pro-homosexual advocacy that inspires opposition among Christians who accept the age-old biblical proscription against homosexual behavior.
“I know I was born this way,” he emphatically told Bream. (Social conservatives have long dismissed the “born gay” claim, and in recent years socially liberal researchers and even homosexual activists have joined them in saying the theory is simplistic.)
Grenell told Bream that he grew up in a strongly Christian home and went to an Assemblies of God college. He cited his liberating experience attending Harvard graduate school and talking with the late homosexual pastor Peter Gomes. As the professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School, Gomes condemned alleged Christian “homophobia” used his prestigious perch to rebut the religious case against homosexuality.
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In the same vein, Grenell told Bream that biblical passages that historically have been interpreted as clearly proscribing homosexual practice actually do not mean that. The first chapter of the New Testament Book of Romans is one such passage.
“For so many Christians that I grew up with, they were focused on verses in the Bible that talked about homosexuality as a negative thing. And when you go back in and actually look at the original words for these verses, it wasn’t about being homosexual at all. It was about being deviant, or a prostitute,” he said. “And so there was no thought that you were going to be able to have a committed [homosexual] relationship.”
Robert Gagnon, associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and the world’s leading academic authority on the Bible and homosexuality from an orthodox (conservative) Christian perspective, specifically rejects Grenell’s thesis that the Bible does not condemn homosexual relationships.
Grenell said he respects Christians who disagree with him and his interpretation of Scripture.
He’s For Religious Liberty
Grenell said in the interview with Bream that he is strongly “for religious liberties.”
“I am somebody in the gay community who pushes and takes a lot of heat for trying to get the gay community to understand that we should not be trying to get people to jump up and down and be happy about the fact that we’re gay,” he said. “We should be demanding equal rights, equal protections, and that’s it.”
“I’m not looking for approval of my life from people,” he said. “I’m looking for equality and protections — just like you’re not looking for me to approve every area of your life.”
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