The picture book for youngsters is entitled Promised Land. In the story, a young prince and a farm boy have a few adventures; at the end of the book, a picture shows the two kissing on the lips. The book states: “They got married and started their own family.”

“That is, of course, impossible,” Dr. William Matt Briggs, a professor at Cornell University, writes in a column for Stream.org. “Two men cannot marry – and two men certainly cannot start a family. That is biologically impossible. These are not only theological truths – they are scientific realities as well.”

“It goes against the culture because quite obviously two men or two women cannot procreate. It’s just something that cannot be done,” he adds in an interview with OneNewsNow.

Briggs contends the stated goal of the authors (Adam Reynolds and Chaz Harris) and supporters of Promised Land is to make homosexuality seem normal. In fact, in an interview with ABC Australia, Harris argues their book “promotes a much healthier relationship … than the ‘love at first sight’ storylines that are common in other fairytales.”

Briggs says: “We have reached a point of decadence that I don’t think anybody could have predicted, say, 100 years ago. And that’s what this book is trying to show you: that not only is the level to which we’ve fallen normal but it has always been this way.”

And if the authors are able to convince readers that “there’s no problem with any of this, so why not accept it? Why not explore these ideas? Why not try it out yourself?” he asks rhetorically.

The intended effect of the book, Briggs argues, is that homosexual relationships will be seen in a more positive light.

“What this book is doing is no different than what Disney did in Beauty and the Beast. That’s the new movie that made a point to show ‘an exclusively gay moment’ – and they did it in a charming way,” he says. “Kids who saw the movie would, as calculated, look with a kinder eye on homosexual relationships.”

He says homosexuality was never thought to be the form or the basis of a culture or civilization – until now. And the result, as he says in his column, is: “We have reached a point in our culture where we could teach Promised Land in schools, but we could not teach about the Promised Land!” (Genesis 28:3-4)