Good afternoon, this is David McManus, student pastor here at Berean Baptist Church. It is Thursday, July 19th, about 12.45pm and I'm coming to you with the News in Focus program this afternoon. An article I found on foxnews.com by Mr. Todd Starnes and it is about Chick-fil-A, a favorite restaurant I know of people here locally and especially in the south in the United States. The title of the article is Chick-fil-A President Says Company Opposes Gay Marriage. An article says the president of Chick-fil-A said his company is, quote, guilty as charged when it comes to supporting traditional marriage and warned that gay marriage is inviting God's judgment on our nation. Dan Cathy, the president and chief operating officer, told Baptist Press that the company founded by his father was unapologetically in favor of traditional marriage. Guilty as charged, he said, we are very much supportive of the family, the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that." In a separate interview on the Ken Coleman Show, Kathy suggested that the nation could face God's wrath over supporting gay marriage. "'I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,' Kathy said. I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we would have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is all about. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said Kathy's comments contradict a statement he made last year indicating the company was not getting involved in the political debate. So I would just like to commend Dan, Kathy, and Chick-fil-A, first of all, for being a Christian business. They have pretty much sacrificed what a traditional business model would be, which is be open as much as possible so you can make as much money as possible. And yet, Chick-fil-A, if you know anything about the restaurant, has always adhered to a closed on Sunday policy. And yet, it says here in the article, Chick-fil-A has 1,608 restaurants with sales of more than $4 billion and a value system that is deeply rooted in the Bible. I feel like I'm not taking too much of a step out to say that God honors Chick-fil-A and I think blesses them with a certain amount of success because of their adherence to these biblical standards, because of their efforts to make sure that people know that they're a Christian company. Now, obviously, in standing up to this, they're getting a ton of criticism, as anybody does in the mainstream nowadays, if you stand up against the sin of homosexuality. It says, but not everyone shares those values. Kathy's comments brought condemnation from the Human Rights Campaign. And let's see, this is spokesman Charles John, J-O-U-G-H-I-N. Chick-fil-A is swimming against the tide on the issue of marriage equality. American companies learned long ago that discrimination is bad for business, and with a majority of Americans supporting marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples, they risk being further marginalized. Joflin also criticized the company's charitable foundation for supporting Christian ministries that adhere to the traditional definition of marriage, including the Family Research Council and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. The fact they are publicly and proudly supporting groups with an anti-LGBT agenda shows just how out of touch they are with mainstream America. Another guy, Lorraine, or woman I guess, Lorraine Devon Wilkie opined about Chick-fil-A's coming out opposed to gay marriage in a column titled, Chicken with a Side of Bigotry, Chick-fil-A's Ungodly Business Plan. She said, Mr. Cathy can freely believe as much as the next person. I do not begrudge him that, regardless of my antipathy, she wrote. But as the president of a company that feeds the public, the big unwieldy melting pot public, his stance against gays and lesbians is not only distasteful, it is stupidly counterproductive to business and what could be holier than the bottom line. So you see what we're looking at here. We just looked at the numbers. They're selling more than $4 billion a year. It doesn't seem to be hurting the bottom line. And what I really want to take into account here today is the quotes before that Jofflin said, American companies learned long ago that discrimination is bad for business, and with a majority of Americans supporting marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples, they risk being further marginalized. Now, if you go out on the internet and you Google these polls, you will find many polls that say that the majority of Americans support same-sex marriage, which leads me to believe that these polls are not so scientific. You'll find CNN polls, you'll find major network news polls, you'll find Gallup polls, and you'll find majority 51, 52, 53, 54% that are in support. of gay marriage. Now I find that very interesting. because that seems to fly in the face of what is really going on in this country. Obviously, we in North Carolina know most recently of an amendment that was voted on on the ballot to define marriage as between one man and one woman. That passed with an overwhelming majority to uphold marriage as one man or one woman. I've just got a little timeline here. November 2000, voters in Nebraska approve a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman. November of 2002, voters in Nevada approve a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman. August of 2004, voters in Missouri approve a constitutional amendment. September 2004, Louisiana approves a state constitutional amendment. November 2004, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Utah approve state constitutional amendments defining marriage of one man and one woman. April 2005, voters in Kansas by a 70 to 30 margin approved a state constitutional amendment. November 8, 2005, voters in Texas approved a state constitutional amendment. June 06, voters in Alabama approved a state constitutional amendment with 81% of voters voting in favor. November of 06, voters in Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin approved state constitutional amendments. November of 2008, voters in Arizona, California, and Florida approved state constitutional amendments. November 5th of 2008, Proposition 8 takes effect in California, of all places, stopping new same-sex marriage licenses. November 3rd, 2009, the same-sex marriage law passed in Maine, a notoriously liberal state. Actually, the same-sex marriage law that was passed in Maine is repealed through a popular referendum with 53% in favor of repeal. And then May 8, 2012, voters in North Carolina approved North Carolina Amendment 1, defining marriage as between a man and a woman. So you can see the list of states that I just rattled off, from states you would consider very conservative to states that you would define as being very liberal. And yet, every single time this issue has been put on a ballot, It has been soundly defeated. It has not been close, and it has been soundly defeated. So for our polls that say a majority of America support same-sex marriage, that doesn't seem to be reflected in the voting booth. When people are given a chance to support it or oppose it, they overwhelmingly oppose it in all corners of this country. And this is a common tactic in the mainstream here to give us inaccuracies, to give us fallacies that we are supposed to accept as fact. It made me think of an article that I use in my worldview class. It's called Homosexuality Fact or Fiction. It's by Joseph P. Goodell. And he talks about this idea, and I know you've heard this statistic, that quote, 10% of the population are gay, are practicing homosexuality. And I'll just read you what he says, he says, I say this is fascinating because virtually nobody knows, or at least cites, where this statistic comes from. The Family Research Institute asked, how many homosexuals are there? USA Today said 25 million gay men and lesbians. This was in 1991, i.e. about 10% of the U.S. population. The Washington Times said 10% of American men are homosexual, 5% of women are lesbian. The American Psychological Association assures us that homosexuality is an orientation found consistently in about 10% of the male population and approximately 5% of the female population. And so you see this being put out there as a statistic. The truth is, he says, is that this 10% statistic comes from a report published more than 40 years ago, the famous 1948 study led by William Kinsey. And if you know anything about psychology, you know about Kinsey's report. The only problem with this report is that its findings were terribly flawed by the methodology used to collect the supposedly representative sample of the US population. Why were his findings flawed? For several reasons. First and foremost, being that approximately 25% of the 5,300 individuals Kinsey studied were prison inmates, who by the nature of their confinement couldn't have heterosexual intercourse. In addition, 44% of these inmates had had homosexual experiences while in prison. This was hardly a representative sample of the American population. But there were other major flaws in the group selected for this research. Kinsey admitted that several hundred male prostitutes were used in his sample. This alone would make a major difference in his findings. And so obviously what we get here is that the statistics that are being cited are flawed. They are not scientifically based. These polls are not reflective of what we see in real life. All you have to do is look at what really happens. What are the real figures, Goodell writes, as far as we can tell today? One recent study of men conducted between 84 and 87 by David Foreman, the senior staff scientist at the Radcliffe Infirmary in England, found that 1.7% of the sample study had ever had homosexual interaction. An even more recent study conducted at the University of Chicago in 1989 and reported at the 1990 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science resulted in a figure less than 1% exclusively homosexual. So science is, if you do it logically, confirms what we all think, and these flawed, propaganda-filled polls and stats do not reflect what's going on. And yet again we're talking about less than 2% of the population, maybe less than 1% of the population that are driving the mainstream. And for this spokesman in the human rights campaign to say the majority of Americans support gay marriage, I don't think that holds water. I think we see that many people side where Chick-fil-A is siding. And Chick-fil-A is taking a stand as a company as an organization, and I think they should be commended for that. They already were getting my business, they will continue to get my business, and I think they will continue to be successful because of their stand. So, I guess the bottom line here as we close this off is all statistics are not statistics. All statistics are not truth. Mark Twain has a great quote about lies and statistics are the worst of all lies. So don't take the numbers for what they are. They are being skewed. They're being used to push this LGBT agenda and notice how the humanist groups swing it around the other way. That the LGBT is the mainstream and that those of us that would hold to a traditional biblical view of marriage are in the fringe. And that's what's trying to be put out in the media, that's what's trying to be put out in the mass culture in order to lessen the impact of biblical truth, of God's design for marriage. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, please feel free to email me dmcmanus.bbc at gmail.com. Thanks.