Recent United States Supreme Court verdict which has led to legalisation of same-intercourse marriage in more states of that country, has elicited condemnation from Nigerian clerics.
On June 26, a divided court struck down the US government Defence of Marriage Act and said that those who challenged a ruling overturning California's gay marriage ban, known as Prop 8, had no standing to appeal.
According to Religious Link News Agency, the Supreme Court through that ruling dealt two major setbacks to gay-marriage opponents and has given a further boost to those who support legal recognition of same-intercourse unions.
The verdict, the news agency said, had been drawing quick responses from religious voices on both sides and they have reignited the debate over morality and same-intercourse marriage.
And that had effectively opened the door to allowing gay marriage in California, though it would have no immediate effect in states that have not legalised same-intercourse union.
"At this point, same-intercourse marriage seems increasingly ascendant in the court of public opinion, with polls showing a rapid rise in acceptance and particularly strong support among younger generations.
Indeed, in recent months, as the apex court justices have been deliberating, three more states have legalised gay marriage," Religious Link explained.
Considering the implications for both the civil and religious realms of society, clerics in Nigeria have strongly condemned the development in America, which is a major influence in the world today.
Vicar of St. Paul's Anglican Church, Kirikiri, Lagos, Venerable Levi Opara, described gay-marriage as the sickness of the white and not of the black, preferring not talk about it. He, however, said that gay-marriage had been in practice in pre-Bible times pointing out that God declared it as an abomination, and destroyed the first cities that legalised it as a national practice.
His words: "Jesus in His discourse with His disciples (Matthew 24:15, quoting Daniel 9:27) said that whenever an abomination stands in the holy place, we must try and understand that destruction is imminent.
When a man and a man, or a woman and a woman stand before a Priest of God in the sanctuary of God to be joined together as husband and wife, abomination is standing in His Holy Place, because it has been legalised by both church and state.
You can further buttress this scenario if you study the book of Daniel chapter 2 in the light of Matthew chapter 24, and particularly verse 44, regarding the march of world powers, beginning with Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar's head of Gold) to British/American leg of partly clay and partly iron."
The Vicar warned that the scripture could not be broken, adding that the world was running out of time, to be destroyed by itself, Britain and America being the denominators.
In his own contribution, itinerant preacher, Emmanuel Oje Ehimika, of Jesus Dream Organization based in Abeokuta, Ogun State, cited the case of Sodom and Gomorrah during pre-Bible era and maintained that if the parents of the generation of those who practised gay marriage had allowed it, they would not have been born.
He said that gay marriage was a demonic thing; it is from the pit of hell. You see what the devil is doing now is putting people in power, who can make these laws. These, he explained, means that Christians have to rise up and begin to get into the places of power.
"We have to begin to get Christians come to power. Look at David Mark, President of Nigerian Senate; if he had been one of them he would have supported gay marriage. But he is a genuine child of God.
This does not call for too much talking, but getting Christians or the Muslims who are morally sound that can be in such places and will not condone that. We should begin to find our ways into places of power where we can influence decisions," Ehimika said.
Regional Secretary for the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students for English and Portuguese Africa, Revd Gideon Paramalam, disclosed that the development in the US was an unfortunate one.
"It is an attempt to redefine civilisation. When I think the Supreme Court taking a decision to accord the firm right to privileges to same intercourse marriages as have been giving to be enjoyed by the marriage of a man and a woman, I think it is a deliberate attempt to redefine marriage in a way that does not reflect the reality of who we are as human beings from the beginning of creation.
"My own view is heavily influenced by my biblical understanding. At the beginning of creation, God created man, then woman and then he gave them command to go and multiply, in other words to produce children of their kind. That is a man and a woman coming together to produce children, human beings in the very image of God. Now where I struggle with the gay marriage, to be very frank with you, is that is it is possible to pursue this biblical injunction by a man sleeping with a man or a woman sleeping with a woman?" Paramalam asked.
"I think those are the fundamental questions that we need to ask ourselves. It is a question of conscience; it is a question that of honesty that we need to face unless again we want to turn the world into permit me to say a free for all where morals are completely out of equation and anybody just does what he wants. I must be honest with you; the first question I say to myself is that the Supreme Court is approving this just to escape in the wrong direction for the simple reason.
National Mirror