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Former first lady Michelle Obama revealed that she “couldn’t stand” former President Barack Obama for a decade. During an interview with Revolt TV, while promoting her book, Michelle Obama recounted how she was disgusted with her husband for a decade. Michelle Obama declared, “People think I’m being catty for saying this: It’s like, there were 10 years where I couldn’t stand my husband.”
The former first lady of eight years added, “And guess when it happened? When those kids were little.”
The wife of the 44th president added, “For 10 years while we’re trying to build our careers and worrying about school and who’s doing what and what, I was like, ‘Argh, this isn’t even!’”
She continued, “And guess what? Marriage isn’t 50/50, ever. Ever. There are times I’m 70, he’s 30. There are times he’s 60, 40. But guess what? Ten years. We’ve been married 30. I would take 10 bad years over 30 — it’s just how you look at it. People give up — ‘Five years; I can’t take it.’“
Michelle Obama said, “Do you like him? I mean, you could be mad at him, but do you still look at him and go, ‘I’m not happy with you, but I respect you. I don’t agree with you, but you’re still a kind, smart person.‘”
She proclaimed, “Little kids, they’re terrorists. They have demands. They don’t talk. They’re poor communicators. They cry all the time.“
Michelle, 58, met Barack, 61, at a law firm in Chicago in 1989. Michelle married Barack Obama on October 3, 1992. The couple had two daughters: Malia and Sasha. Michelle, Barack, and their daughters lived in the White House from Jan. 20, 2009, until Jan. 19, 2017. The Obama children were ages 7 and 10 when they moved into the White House.
In 2017, Michelle Obama secured a $65 million book deal. In 2018, the Obamas notched a $50 million deal with Netflix.
The New York Post reported in 2018, “Forbes estimated the couple made $20.5 million in salaries and book royalties between 2005 — when Barack Obama became a US senator and they first arrived in Washington — and 2016. They are now worth more than $135 million. And like her husband, Michelle Obama is currently in demand as a speaker for corporations and nonprofits, commanding $225,000 per appearance.”
You can watch the entire Revolt TV interview with Michelle Obama below.
REVOLT x Michelle Obama: The Cross-Generational Conversation www.youtube.com
No matter how you define “marriage,” there is zero respect for it in the so-called Respect for Marriage Act. You may believe it serves to federally codify the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision that rejected marriage as a male-female union. Maybe it would do so temporarily. But that’s not the endgame.
If you’re paying attention, you can see that the Senate’s recent 62-37 vote for cloture on HR 8404 puts us one step closer to abolishing state recognition of marriage entirely. That’s where this train is headed.
This will happen the same way such things always happen — through a demonization campaign that frames skeptics as bigots who are guilty of discrimination. That’s how you get Democrat-pliable Republicans such as Mitt Romney and craven Supreme Court justices like Anthony Kennedy to sign on. That’s how you manufacture a public opinion cascade, warning average Americans that they’ll be pummeled with lawsuits and ostracism if they dare think out loud.
And that’s how Democrats in Congress are likely in the not-too-distant future — via HR 8404 — to make the case that marriage actually comes with privileges that discriminate against the unmarried. Disagree? You’re a bigot who deserves to be socially ostracized! Self-censorship in the face of such accusations will pave the way, as always.
Collectivists Hope to Destroy Private Life and Regulate Relationships
Once they’ve gotten to that point via HR 8404 and Republicans who supported the measure, congressional Democrats will doubtless push us to agree that marriage is a discriminatory institution. We’ll start seeing more anti-marriage initiatives supported by singles, millennials, Julias, and gen Z, all well-groomed for the moment by teacher’s unions, academia, and media.
They’ll fall for the pitch that we can all just write up domestic partnership contracts instead. “Marriage” would then become nothing but a legal relationship (a contract) between two (or more) people for any purpose at all. Bureaucrats would broker those contracts. This proposal is all mapped out in Sunstein and Thaler’s 2008 book “Nudge.” It’s also been promoted for decades by internationally acclaimed feminist legal scholar Martha Fineman who writes that a system of contracts replacing marriage will help the state “regulate all social interactions.”
Under a system that abolishes state recognition of marriage, the family could no longer exist autonomously or unmolested by the state. How could it if the state no longer recognizes marriage as the foundation of the family unit? The government would have no requirement to recognize religious rites of marriage as valid. Thus, it would meddle more deeply in religion and religious communities that recognize bonds of kinship through blood ties.
We Become Atomized Individuals in the State’s Eyes
The atomization resulting from this will have repercussions that go beyond the bill’s guarantee to treat any difference of opinion as a federal crime. If we continue on this path, the government will no longer have to recognize any biological relationships. It need not recognize any legal right you might have as the parent of your biological child. Why should it? It would have already abolished its recognition of the union that produced the child.
Some of this process has already been completed through gender-neutral language in documents like passports, birth certificates, or the rules of the 117th Congress that do not recognize the words “mother,” “father,” “son,” or “daughter.”
Much groundwork has also been laid by surrogacy and abortion laws that treat children as chattel to buy, sell, and dispose of at will. And why would the state have to recognize any other relationships resulting from marriage if it no longer recognizes marriage? It could ignore your blood relationships to brother, sister, aunt, uncle, or any familial bond. In this scenario, you’d likely need a license to raise your own child, an old communist goal that the so-called Respect for Marriage Act conjures up.
When all there is are bureaucratized domestic partnership arrangements, the government would no longer need to recognize spousal privilege and thereby could legally coerce spouses to testify against one another in court. It could also abolish the default path of survivorship through which your inheritance goes to your spouse or next of kin. Instead, the state would be free to redistribute your nest egg at will in its great bureaucratic wisdom.
Indeed, there is no reason to doubt that the Respect for Marriage Act serves as a midwife to the radical left’s long-held goal of abolishing state recognition of marriage. It will allow the government to regulate our relationships, rendering each of us naked before its power.
We are each being set up for a pre-arranged marriage with Big Government operating as our abusive spouse.
Such Atomization Is a Totalitarian Necessity
The path to human atomization is the natural arc of all totalitarian systems in the making. They must always first isolate people in order to control them through terror, as Hannah Arendt noted in her work “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” Tyrants always mask their intentions by borrowing from tradition, using words like “respect for marriage,” “love,” or “equality” as they march us all into virtual solitary confinement.
There’s nothing new about this trajectory. It’s a long-standing vision of all totalitarian systems, which first came into the open with the Communist Manifesto’s proclamation, “Abolish the family!” Communists referred to traditional religion as “the opiate of the people” while setting up communism as a pseudo-religion that demanded unquestioning loyalty. The resulting dependency then truly becomes the fentanyl of the people.
Such deceptions are why Schumer and company talk about marriage as though the government has some sort of litmus test for “love.” But anyone with half a brain knows that love’s got nothing to do with a functioning state’s interest in marriage. Marriage is an institution that exists to allow for a structured society and for the protection of children.
Of course, we easily forget such facts while living in a nation that increasingly promotes infanticide, assisted suicide, recreational drug use, child pornography, and other ways to torture and kill our children. In fact, virtually all of their policy positions are tailor-made for family breakdown, community breakdown, and for hostility toward religious communities.
But maybe you like feeling lonely and alienated, like the idea of a childless and hopeless future, and are all for the state regulating your personal relationships and conversations. Well, then, you’ll like the “Respect” for Marriage Act.
But the destruction of bonds of affection and loyalty in the private spheres of life makes sense from the point of view of statists. Those loyalties get in the way of their ambitions for power and social engineering. They are invested in isolating us so that we become dependent upon them.
Stella Morabito is a senior contributor at The Federalist. She is author of “The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer.” Her essays have appeared in various publications, including the Washington Examiner, American Greatness, Townhall, Public Discourse, and The Human Life Review. In her previous work as an intelligence analyst, Morabito focused on various aspects of Russian and Soviet politics, including communist media and propaganda. Follow Stella on Twitter.
Forcing children to sleep and undress next to kids of the opposite sex effectively puts up a ‘Christian kids need not apply’ sign on public recreation activities.
This spring I got an email from 4-H, a club I participated in as a child, effectively communicating that my Christian family need not apply to summer camps and other activities sponsored by the quasi-public organization. (County governments often sponsor 4-H activities.) This email was signed by a 4-H staffer who put pronouns in his signature and told me, “Youth are assigned cabins based on gender indicated on the 4-H camp application and registration,”suggesting children were roomed by gender identity rather than sex.
Naturally, I was concerned that my tween daughter and son might be roomed overnight with an emotionally disturbed camper or counselor if I enrolled them in this camp. Based on numerous reported stories, I know that if this did happen, the camp likely would not even tell me, so I’d only hear about it after the fact from my kids. When I emailed again to confirm I was understanding this correctly, the staffer refused to answer definitively whether campers could be placed in private facilities such as bedrooms and bathrooms with transgender individuals. That’s an unacceptable risk to children’s well-being, as well as a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Given how socially contagious LGBT identification is, it’s not just about transgender issue but also exposing children to sexual information and pressures far earlier than they are ready. Hand in hand with grouping children by gender identity is forcing conversations about what that means, which pushes children earlier and earlier to declare and investigate sexual behaviors. This is destabilizing to their identity, not “affirming” it.
Given 4-H national’s commitment to the toxic “diversity, equity, inclusion” ideology, the fact that my Christian kids now cannot equally access lots of their programming due to 4-H’s choice to sexualize their activities was no surprise. But I still wanted to see in writing that my red county in my red state was indeed giving tax breaks and other government privileges to an organization that might room children overnight with troubled people of the opposite sex against their parents’ will. The answer is yes. (Thanks, Republicans!)
Everywhere We Go, Someone Wants to Talk Dirty to My Kids on the Public Dime
It’s not just places kids get naked. It’s everywhere. I cannot take my children to the public library anymore, either, because the shelves are so full of pornographic and hostile books that it’s not a safe place for them. There, too, self-righteous LGBT activism has resulted in effectively banning my children from yet another public place and weaponizing my own tax dollars against my children’s safety. The shelves and displays in our library are full of books telling my children lies such as that “men can become women” and “some boys have girl brains” and “gender is a social construct.” I’m happy to have these conversations with my children when they are ready, but I know my six-year-old, and he is not ready. My eight-year-old is not ready, and neither are my 10- and 11-year-old, frankly. It’s grotesque and evil to put books at their eye level that deliberately aim to confuse them about something so deep and important. To do this is to usurp not only my parental wisdom and authority over my own children but to usurp my children’s right to an innocent, emotionally secure childhood.
It Won’t Happen, And When It Does, You Bigots Will Deserve It
These all prove that rapidly rewriting American laws to ignore sexual differences has effectively banned Christian families from equal participation in public facilities and activities. It’s not just Christian families, it’s any family that thinks it imprudent to lodge their sometimes-undressed daughters with an emotionally traumatized male at summer camp or to obtain swimming lessons at a public pool. This all descends from the massive bait and switch inherent to the LGBT policy agenda. We were told it was only about extending government sanction to what consenting adults do behind closed doors. We were told it was about allowing people to visit loved ones in hospice and inherit without legal difficulties. It wasn’t going to affect our families, remember?
Anyone who raised concerns about how calling sexual activities that cannot create a family “marriage” would affect children, faith, and families was smeared as a know-nothing bigot. Anyone who wanted to logically think through how legally equating men to women in the social keystone of marriage would have a domino effect on many other laws and social arrangements was also smeared as a hateful bigot, all the way up to highly intelligent and reasoned Supreme Court dissents. It’s the same toxic play we’ve seen work ever since: Anyone with a contrary opinion or even unanswered questions is not engaged, but simply smeared.
Men and Women Are Different, And That Matters
The fact is that equating homosexual relationships to marriage very often requires explaining adult sexual behaviors to tiny children. Erasing the differences between the sexes in marriage also leads irrevocably to erasing the differences between the sexes everywhere else, from bathrooms to pools to summer camps. Breaking down all sexual differences also results in discrimination against religious expressions that acknowledge men and women are different, and these differences are divinely ordered.
Thus upending the natural sexual order has resulted, not in the falsely promised “equality,” but in simply flipping which social system will rule. For what we were prevented from discussing or even seeing was the fact that these two regimes — treating the sexes as different and complementary versus seeing them as neutered and interchangeable — are mutually exclusive.
You cannot have both transgender swimmers and single-sex sports competition. You cannot have both the sexual profligacy pushed by the dominant LGBT activist class and protect children from sexualized childhoods and predatory social situations. You must have one or the other.
In the absence of clarity about this reality combined with effective use of power on reality’s behalf, abrasive, antisocial activists have fully taken over every public space. Any further sorties are merely tinkering around the edges of their all-encompassing kingdom.
Children Are No Longer a Protected Class, They’re Targets for Groomers
So instead of achieving equality, what we have really achieved is the subversion of children’s developmental needs to adult desires. Instead of equality, we have replaced legal preferences for the only sexual arrangement that produces the most stable future citizens — lifelong married biological parents — with legal preferences for sexual arrangements that harm children and send religious folk to the back of the public bus.
Therefore, all who believe in protecting children from marinating in sexual imagery and ideas everywhere they go are the new underclass in our political regime, and in many cases no Republican officials will even recognize our legitimate concerns, let alone fight for our daughters. That’s certainly the case here in Indiana, where Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb won’t sign bare-minimum legislation protecting girls’ sports and nobody is even talking about making our libraries, camps, and pools safe for families (even though that’s one of the few value-added policies a state like Indiana can offer its citizens).
Many of our major public and private institutions are making the public square completely hostile to a happy childhood and faith. Their “solution” to alleged bigotry was institutionalizing actual bigotry. “Our kind” aren’t wanted in “their” territory, you see. Maybe we would be allowed to have separate pools and summer camps funded by our own money, as long as the ACLU doesn’t sue them out of existence like they do Christian hospitals and foster care agencies.
What we weren’t told was that letting homosexuals out of the closet would require stuffing all the children and Christians inside.
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.
The University of Idaho, located in Moscow, Idaho. | University of Idaho Photo Services
Three Christian college students have sued the University of Idaho for alleged wrongful punishment for expressing traditional views on marriage and sexual ethics on campus. Students Peter Perlot, Mark Miller and Ryan Alexander of the Christian Legal Society sued the university in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, Central Division on Monday.
The defendants named in the suit include University President C. Scott Green, Dean of Students Brian Eckles, Office of Civil Rights & Investigations Director Erin Agidius and OCRI Deputy Director Lindsay Ewan. According to the lawsuit, the three students went to an LGBT event on campus seeking to represent a biblical perspective on marriage and sexuality. When a student approached to ask their views, they offered their perspectives and gave the student a note expressing an interest in continuing the dialogue. Soon after, however, the Christian students were given “no-contact orders” from the OCRI, which prohibited them from communicating with the student.
“The CLS members did not receive notice that anyone had complained about them and were not given an opportunity to review the allegations against them or defend themselves,” according to the suit.
“Instead of allowing the students to disagree civilly and respectfully with one another and to discuss these important issues, the University chose instead to censor Plaintiffs.”
The students are being represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a law firm that has argued religious liberty cases at the U.S. Supreme Court on numerous occasions. ADF Legal Counsel Michael Ross said in a statement released Tuesday that he believed students “must be free to discuss and debate the important issues of our day, especially law students who are preparing for a career that requires civil dialogue among differing viewpoints.”
“Yet the University of Idaho is shutting down Peter, Mark, and Ryan because of their religious beliefs. This is illegal behavior from any government official, and we urge the university officials to right their discriminatory actions immediately,” Ross stated.
Jodi Walker, the university’s senior communication’s director, told The Christian Post that the academic institution “cannot discuss pending litigation or specific student cases.”
Walker explained that the no-contact order was “a supportive measure available to a student under Title IX” and that “these supportive measures must be enacted” when a student requests them.
“When a complaint is made that qualifies under Title IX, the university must make the student aware of the supportive measures available,” noted Walker.
Under the question on “supportive measures,” the guidance explained that schools have “discretion and flexibility to determine which supportive measures are appropriate.”
“The preamble states that a school must consider ‘each set of unique circumstances’ to determine what individualized services would be appropriate based on the ‘facts and circumstances of that situation,’” stated the guidance.
This is the least racist period in the history of our country. If black Americans want to address disparity, we must start with the black nuclear family.
In some respects, I feel as if we are living through a time like Charles Dickens, “The Tale of Two Cities,” of which he wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”
We are bombarded with messages claiming America is overflowing with systemic racism and white supremacists. Even the National Council on Family Relations now labels the traditional two-parent family an extension of white privilege.
If you listen exclusively to the news media, the entertainment industry, and the academic-industrial complex, you will be surprised to learn this truth: This is the least racist period in the history of our country.
Having lived in the Jim Crow south, my parents and grandparents would have loved to have grown up in the America I grew up in. A large percentage of the country has been operating in a post-racial America for many years. Across our nation, people have been interacting with each other with respect, dignity, and compassion regardless of race. They have been judging people by the content of their character.
We can pass laws that allow me to enter the front door and reserve a room in any hotel in this country, but we can’t pass laws to force people to open their hearts and their homes to people who don’t look like them. But that is precisely what Americans have done for decades. So how do we explain the differences in the realities on the ground and what we hear in the media?
My family is a classic example of the “best of times – worst of times” and of the disparity between reality and rhetoric. My children, who are now adults, grew up in a two-parent family. They had their challenges, but they also had stability, unconditional love, and clear boundaries.
Unfortunately, there is a stark contrast with their cousins on my side of the family. Of my four siblings, my children are the only ones who grew up with both a mother and father in the home. As a result, the lives of my siblings’ children have been interwoven with trauma and tragedy.
How do we explain these differences? Was it systemic racism built into American society? Or was it something else? We have two tales from the same family with the same skin color, yet the disparities are quite broad.
On the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, I was five years old. At that time, nearly 80 percent of black children were born into two-parent families. Sadly, in my lifetime, we have seen the black community transform from 80 percent two-parent families to 80 percent fatherless homes without one national initiative to reverse the trend.
If the American black family was a spotted owl or a gray wolf, it would be on the endangered species list. Instead, what has happened to the American black family is nothing short of a cultural genocide.
This is not the dream King had in mind, and it has been a nightmare for children born during this period. The black community has been used as a political pawn for 50 years.
Therefore, I have taken on this crusade to begin a transformation back to cultural roots in the black community and reverse a trend that has devastated generations of families, including helpless children born into situations not of their own making.
I know from personal experience that this country is not systemically racist. My parents and grandparents lived through systemic racism. I did not.
Unfortunately, my siblings made different decisions in their lives. All four of them used drugs and three were incarcerated. Far worse, their children were left to be raised without fathers in their lives. Theirs are the stories of many families ravaged by the lack of father involvement, personal responsibility, faith, and most importantly, hope.
I mourn deeply for what has happened to their lives. My children live in wide disparity from their own cousins, and it is not because of the color of their skin.
To be clear, we do have racist people in our country that do bad things to people, but the country is not systemically racist. To put it another way: If you look for racism in this country, you’ll find it. If you look for opportunities, you will find them 100 times over.
How do we resolve this “Tale of Two Cities,” the 80 percent fatherless homes and the chronically low graduations rates for black high school students? Ironically, the power to change ultimately lies in the hands of black Americans. I would like to direct the following comments to black Americans throughout the country.
For far too long, we have watched our black communities destroyed from within. As a community, we are worse off now than we were before the Civil Rights Era.
We have it within our power to move forward and begin a transition of healing and growth that is long overdue. And we do not need government help or funds to accomplish this transformation.
We are missing out on opportunities in this country to which we are fully entitled as American citizens, opportunities that seem to be clearly visible to nearly everyone except native-born black Americans. Many of us are blinded by tears of anger, mistrust, and misunderstanding that lead to decisions that are not in our own best interests.
Today, black American citizens who have legally immigrated from the Caribbean Islands and African countries like Nigeria earn significantly higher incomes than native-born black Americans. They achieve higher levels of education. They are living the American dream civil rights leaders desired for us.
Many of these new citizens came to the country with intact families, which helped with their achievement and integration. Another reason for their success is they have not been indoctrinated by years of anti-white, anti-American, and anti-capitalist hatred.
Now more than ever, it is imperative that we reconcile with the past sins of our nation, re-establish two-parent families, and rebuild our culture and join other Americans around the “Table of Prosperity” as fellow citizens of this great country. How do we get started?
I believe it starts with tapping into the strengths of our cultural roots, which are linked to our Christian faith. Forgiveness is the cornerstone of Christianity. Just as God extends forgiveness to us in Christ, we are called to forgive others.
As we forgive the country for the sins of slavery, Jim Crow laws, and many other forms of bigotry that followed, the heavy burden of bitterness, anger, and resentment will be lifted from our shoulders. Our eyes will be opened so we can clearly see the path forward allowing us to focus on what is best for our future and the future of our children.
To forgive is an act of strength, not weakness, and we must begin the healing and strengthening process in our communities. This is our Prodigal Moment. It is time to come home.
Now, to all Americans: Our shared history transcends political parties, race, religion, and class. It is a shared humanity that binds us together like the intertwined roots and branches of trees in a dense forest.
Organized groups are igniting forest fires to divide and destroy our unique American culture. It’s imperative that we not only extinguish their efforts, but foster a new movement that nurtures, unites, and strengthens us as Americans, regardless of race, for generations to come.
Kendall Qualls is the president of TakeCharge, which strives to unite Americans regardless of background and to inspire black and other minority communities to take charge of their own lives and not to rely on government and politicians for prosperity. He has been married for 35 years and has five children.
THE VIEWS OF THE AUTHOR, AND THOSE OF THE PARTICIPANTS, DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT THOSE OF WHATDIDYOUSAY.ORG.
The front cover for the book “Endgame: The Church’s Strategic Move to Save Faith and Family in America” by J.P. De Gance and John Van Epp, which was released Sept. 6, 2021. | J.P. De Gance and John Van Epp
For years, Duval County, Florida, and its biggest city, Jacksonville, were known for having among the highest divorce rates in the state. And then something happened.
Various faith-based groups, including the Culture of Freedom Initiative, now called Communio, coordinated efforts with dozens of local churches to try and counter the tide of failed marriages.
The results were telling: From 2015 to 2017, Duval County saw its divorce rate drop by 28% and Jacksonville saw a 24% drop in its divorce rate.
Now Communio President J.P. De Gance wants to expand the initiative to help kickstart “the next Great Awakening in our country” by joining professional counselor John Van Epp, developer of the Relational Attachment Model series, to champion stable homes and families nationwide.
According to the authors, the way to save the declining American family is to have churches across the country more actively pursue family and relationship ministries.
“The message of the book is simply this,” they write. “Churches in America have the opportunity and responsibility to build relationship ministries and outreaches into their congregations and communities — congruent with their faith — that speak to the needs of singles, couples, and families, and, as a result, will grow their churches and transform their communities.”
The Christian Post interviewed Gance and Van Epp about their new book, including topics regarding how broken families are the leading reason why churches are in decline, why the Church is key to reviving the family unit, and advice to pastors on how to make sure their family ministries are strong. The following is an edited transcript from that interview:
CP: Why did you decide to write this book?
Van Epp: Both of us have a history of working with organizations in the community marriage movement, so nonprofits. Churches were not directly involved, per se.
A lot of times, faith-based people were working with nonprofits to try to impact their communities to lower divorce rates, improve quality of relationships in general, and almost all were doing it with government funds. And we both had different involvement.
Our frustration with all of that was as much good as it could accomplish, it never could change mainstream trends. And we came to believe, independent of each other, that it’s only, truly the Church in America that has the potential, the opportunity, and we believe the responsibility, to truly impact marriage and family trends, and dating trends, especially.
Not only among their people, but to reach out into the community and to step off the campus and into the community to build a relationship and offer that kind of content that will then warm people up to the Gospel of Jesus, but will also truly impact trends that are ultimately eroding the transmission of faith in America. So we believe the breakdown of the family is breaking down faith in America as well.
De Gance: My work before connecting with John was a combination of working with nonprofits that were secular and faith-based, but then we also did end up working with churches.
This is with our work in Jacksonville, Florida, which lowered the divorce rate substantially, and it was through trial and error that we recognized “wow, the church can be a huge change agent for marriage.” Not only because the church can affect its own membership, but we recognize that churches had the power to affect the community in a way that other NGOs can’t.
We recognized churches have the ability to affect their membership, we also realize that they can go way outside of their membership and affect their community, inviting folks in.
We need to have a call to action for the church to save the family.
CP: In the book, you wrote, “I had come to Washington to help save the country. But what if the best way for me to contribute to ‘saving the country’ didn’t involve Washington at all?” Do you believe too many people focus too much on using the federal government to change the country, and not enough on other ways?
Unsplash/Jude Beck
De Gance: Yes, absolutely. We have gotten away from our Tocquevillian past where problems were solved by voluntary civil society, by men and women working in their own communities, working through their churches to change real outcomes.
While politics is very important — I’m not dismissing it as important, and politics can change the culture, there have been examples of that — too many times, people of faith conclude that the best way to do it is “there ought to be a law” or “let’s come to Washington and lobby for changes,” when there’s a lot of work we can do, without getting anybody’s permission, right now, working in our church, working in our community.
Van Epp: Our government and our Constitution, we believe in separation of church and state, but some of what is happening in relationships, or you might even say a lot of what goes on in relationships, does have a true spiritual dimension.
The Church needs to speak to both the practical skill side of how to build and maintain relationships in healthy ways. So they need to have that kind of well-rounded understanding, but they bring to it the values, the consistent values of faith and a spiritual dimension that truly brings ultimate fulfillment in whether its romantic dating relationships, or ultimately marriage and family relationships, and that’s something that our government really can’t do.
If we become too dependent on [the government], which we believe is what has happened and we shirk our responsibility, then ultimately, the trends will not stay consistent with faith values and will head toward unhealthy, which is definitely what has happened in America.
CP: You argued in the book that the “collapse of the family is the major driver of the decline of Christianity.” Some say that things like the occasional major Church scandal or secular public education curriculums are the major drivers of Christianity declining in America. Why do you believe is the decline of the family instead of those other commonly claimed factors?
De Gance: This is a big challenge with polling organizations who try to understand the reason why faith is declining by just simply asking people, “Hey, why don’t you go to church?”
The way surveys are drawn up, the respondents will give a left brain rationalization as to why they don’t do something. You got to dig deeper to get the underlying emotional cause of it.
We show that once you control for family structure, if you look at a millennial, and you look at a baby boomer, they go to church at almost the exact same rate. If I know one thing about both people, it’s that if they grew up in a home of continuously married parents, there’s almost no difference whatsoever.
So what that means is, if family structure was the same for millennials as baby boomers enjoyed, then millennials would be going to church as frequently as baby boomers. And, to me, family of origin just settles any questions on correlation and causation.
The data overwhelmingly shows that church attendance varies significantly based on family structure, it’s the family structure that’s changed over the last 60 years and most folks who are trying to solve the problem of faith, are focusing on what we call “the smoke.” The symptom of the fire, the real fire is in the collapse of marriage and the home.
Van Epp: Look at how much money is spent on youth ministry. Because you think, “Hey, if we really just focus on this generation of young people growing up and really impact them, then we’re going to change the trajectory of their life because we’re going to infuse in them faith and faith values.”
And yet, with all of the emphasis of anywhere from $2 billion at a minimum, to up to maybe $6 billion a year spent on the youth industrial complex, from Christian college campuses, Cru and Navigators and InterVarsity, all the way down to staffing and churches, and look at that, it didn’t seem to make a dent in the trend line of each generation, from the baby boomers to the present, each generation moving by about a 10 percent increase away from faith, becoming more religious nones.
So we’re not trying to criticize investment in the youth, but point out that that was not correcting the problem. And what JP just mentioned, by just keeping the family, the parents married, and a young person growing up in an intact family, you have no decrease over the last three generations, you have no decrease in involvement in church. So therefore, that family structure seems to be the transmission belt of faith.
We have several chapters we call “the decoupling effect.” … Marriage was really viewed as a package deal socially, and what was coupled to marriage was sex, life partnership and parenting.
Of course, all through history, somebody had sex, a baby or partnership outside of marriage. But socially, it wasn’t until the ’60s decoupled those three things and they became really viewed as not only independent of marriage but personal rights.”
Fatherlessness also is highly related to the breakdown, the erosion of the transmission of faith.
De Gance: There’s significant evidence that the inability to attach to a father is a huge ingredient to expressions of agnosticism and atheism.
So we start to track that those young adults in our research with the right brain people, who said they reported being the most emotionally unattached or uninterested in church, also overwhelmingly reported having something other than a good relationship with their father.
While we all know there are good single dads or unmarried dads that are out there, on the aggregate, statistically speaking, an unmarried father is generally an uninvolved father and an unattached father. And that might be the secret ingredient as to why the collapse of marriage is destroying fatherhood, which is destroying faith.
CP: You noted in the book that while most pastors believe their churches have a strong family ministry, few actually do. What are some of the warning signs for pastors that they do not, in fact, have a strong family ministry at their church?
Unsplash/Samantha Gades
De Gance: First is, do you have a skills-based ministry where people are taught the skills to have a good marriage and good relationship and that those skills are practiced?
So a lot of times churches and pastors confuse preaching and teaching with practice.
Is your relationship and marriage ministry exclusively wrapped up in sermons or in just a witness talk or are you giving people the chance to practice the interpersonal skills that make marriages flourish?
[Often, churches have] the virtue of marriage down. They hold up marriage, they might champion marriage, in basic teaching, but the skills of marriage are non-existent. There’s almost this idea that faithfulness to the Gospel just begets great marriage skills and the reality is, as John noted, the decoupling effect over the last 60 years has created a lot of wounds in our culture and in our hearts and in our families.
And it’s more important than ever that the Church is teaching the skills to have a great relationship. Helping singles discern a good spouse, a good partner, to have the right cadence of relationship so that they can move into a healthy marriage. It’s so important for them — those who are married — early in their marriage to be taught and to practice the skills to have a good marriage.
The reality is, is the ingredients for a great marriage and a great relationship are known and knowable and are able for all of us to practice.
So if I am talking to a pastor, I would ask the question, “how are you helping your people know the skills of relationship health and practice them on a regular basis?”
Van Epp: Very simply, what JP just said, I would add that I have a relationship series that actually involves sermons. It’s a six-week series. It’s described in the book as called The RAM series, but churches license it, they get it, and they do it, and it has sermons, but it also involves everybody in the church.
However, I do think a lot of lead pastors lean a little bit toward being what I call “series junkies.” So once you do a really great series, as soon as you’re done, or even before you’re done, the big question is, “OK, what’s the next big series we want to do?” And they just bounce off of one. So a lot of churches do something about relationships, and then leave it.
So a real warning sign is, is healthy dating, healthy marriage content and skills-based content, part of your ongoing calendar every year?
Let’s look at the real practical side of things, let’s look at money. Does your budget have any money that is allocated on a consistent basis every year to marriage ministry and to help the singles with their dating relationships?
Because we’ve got to go upstream and help people long before they actually get married. And we’re not just talking money for the youth, let’s put that aside. We’re talking specifically for adult single dating and marriage family ministry. Is there really money in the budget?
Your wallet talks.
De Gance: We need, as a church, to recognize that even before the pandemic, the number of people getting married every single year was down 31% since the year 2000. It’s dropped 61% since the year 1970.
We can either keep doing what we’ve always been doing. If we do that, the last one out should turn the lights off, because that’s the direction the Church is heading if we don’t wrap our hands around the flight from marriage.
CP: What do you hope readers take away from you book?
Van Epp: My hope is that in reading the book or if they do the [RAM series] that it does kick off a real paradigm shift of their priorities going forward into the next 10 to 20 years.
We’re not talking about something that we think can be fixed in just a couple of years. We could make a huge impact if we get lots of churches involved, in working together in a particular community, like what Jacksonville had, they had over 90 churches working in the city of Jacksonville and over a three-year period, they made a huge dent of over 23 percent drop in divorce rate. If churches really work together.
My hope for the book is that it’s truly embraced by the Church in America, both Catholic and Protestant alike.
De Gance: We are not cultural fatalists. Anybody reading the book should be incredibly hopeful that healthy marriage is written into the human heart. And solutions to this are possible, and it’s the church that has the solution.
I always tell people, the fact that 85 percent of churches are spending nothing in this area is actually really great news. It means family and marriage has been in a free fall over the last 50 years and the church hasn’t yet entered the ring for real battle.
If churches actually became strategic, applied best practices, and reached out to their communities to renew relationships and marriages, we could see the next Great Awakening in our country in the decades ahead. And that’s what I hope pastors, and church leaders would conclude.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban delivers a speech in front of the National Museum during Hungary’s National Day celebrations on March 15, 2019 in Budapest, Hungary. Hungary’s National Day celebrations commemorate the 1848 Hungarian Revolution against the Habsburg monarchy. | Laszlo Balogh/Getty Images
The eastern European nation of Hungary has passed a constitutional amendment that will preserve the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
The Ninth Amendment to the Fundamental Law of Hungary, the country’s equivalent of a constitution, was passed in Parliament last week by a margin of 134-45. The amendment, which was backed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, will amend Section L paragraph (1) of the Fundamental Law to read: “Hungary protects the institution of marriage as the association between a man and a woman and the family as the basis for the survival of a nation. The foundation of the family is marriage and the parent-child relationship. The mother is a woman, the father is a man.”
“The main rule is that only married couples can adopt a child, that is, a man and woman who are married,” said Justice Minister Judit Varga, Reuters reported.
Varga, who sent the amendment to Parliament last month, said it will also work to provide “all children with an education based on the values of the Christian culture of Hungary and guarantees the undisturbed development of the child according to their gender at birth,” Hungary Today noted.
“The Fundamental Law of Hungary is a living framework that expresses the will of the nation, the form in which we want to live,” Varga wrote in the justification section of the bill. “However, the ‘modern’ set of ideas that make all traditional values, including the two sexes, relative is a growing concern.”
“The constant threat to the natural laws of the forms and content of human communities, to the concepts arising from the order of Creation that harmonize with them and ensure the survival of communities, and, in some cases, the attempt to formulate them with a content contrary to the original raises doubts as to whether the interests, rights and well-being of future generations can be protected along the lines of the values of the Fundamental Law,” she added.
The passage of the Ninth Amendment comes less than a year after Parliament voted in favor of a measure that defines gender as “biological sex based on primary sex characteristics and chromosomes.” Like the measure preserving the traditional definition of sex, the Ninth Amendment faced strong pushback from LGBT advocacy groups.
“This is a dark day for Hungary’s LGBTQ community and a dark day for human rights,”said David Vig, director of Amnesty Hungary. “These discriminatory, homophobic and transphobic new laws — rushed through under the cover of the coronavirus pandemic — are just the latest attack on LGBTQ people by Hungarian authorities.”
The government of Hungary, led by Orban, has worked to uphold the influence of Christianity on its laws and culture as much of the rest of Europe continues to become more secular. Orban previously described Christianity as “Europe’s last hope.”
Hungary was one of the 31 other countries that joined the U.S. in signing the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which asserts that “there is no international right to abortion.” Rather than rely on immigration to counteract the country’s declining birth rates, the Hungarian government implemented pro-family policies designed to incentivize people to have children.
The United States tried and failed to pass the Marriage Protection Amendment, which would have enshrined the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman into the U.S. Constitution, in 2006. At the time, several states had passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage in response to a Massachusetts Supreme Court decision finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Less than a decade later, the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the constitutional amendments, declaring that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Of the 29 countries that have legalized same-sex marriage, more than half of them are in Europe.
The authors of a new report about marriage, faith, and families found the happiest wives in America are those who are religious conservatives.
“Fully 73 percent of wives who hold conservative gender values and attend religious services regularly with their husbands have high-quality marriages,”wrote researchers W. Bradford Wilcox, Jason S. Carroll and Laurie DeRose at the New York Times.
It turns out that the happiest of all wives in America are religious conservatives, followed by their progressive counterparts https://t.co/jaxXzMkEf7
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) May 20, 2019
Their report, titled, “The Ties That Bind: Is Faith a Global Force for Good or Ill in the Family?”was published by the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institution.
“When it comes to relationship quality, there is a J-curve in women’s marital happiness, with women on the left and the right enjoying higher quality marriages than those in the middle — but especially wives on the right,”the authors explained.
They continued that American wives who are in the middle, both religiously and ideologically, as well as secular conservative wives, are less likely to experience high-quality marriages:
We suspect that part of their relative unhappiness, compared with religiously conservative women, is that they don’t enjoy the social, emotional and practical support for family life provided by a church, mosque or synagogue. We also suspect that these groups are less likely to have husbands who have made the transition to the “new father” ideal that’s gained currency in modern America — and they’re not happy with their partner’s disengagement.
Following behind religious conservative wives, 60 percent of highly religious progressive wives said they were“very happy.”
Among secular liberal couples, 55 percent of married women reported above-average relationship quality, while 33 percent of women in traditional secular marriages reported the same.
According to the researchers, devoted husbands and fathers are at the center of American wives’ view of happiness:
[I]n listening to the happiest secular progressive wives and their religiously conservative counterparts, we noticed something they share in common: devoted family men. Both feminism and faith give family men a clear code: They are supposed to play a big role in their kids’ lives. Devoted dads are de rigueur in these two communities. And it shows: Both culturally progressive and religiously conservative fathers report high levels of paternal engagement.
The researchers’ presentation of their report in the NYT editorial created a stir on social media with a fair amount of bitterness:
Can confirm what all the other Evangelicals are saying. Self-reporting on this is not a reflection of reality. Conservative women are taught that being anything other than happy is a spiritual and moral failure.
— Stephanie McCown (@Lunges_n_Lashes) May 20, 2019
You know absolutely about the repression of religious conservative women, huh?
I would have reported that I was “so happy” while I went back and forth planning my suicide. This is irresponsible reporting.
— Manic Aes Sedai Dream Girl (@RCruzyBee) May 20, 2019
I know Christians from having been in the evangelical church for 20 awful years of my life. Several different ones, different denominations. But all the same. Full of hate. Full of fear. Pretending everything is okay for fear that being ungrateful will make them lose everything.
— Dembai (Tracy Hilliard) (@LadyDembai) May 20, 2019
This is hilarious. They all asked their spouses if it was ok to answer the survey in the first place. Then they made it a dinner table conversation to make sure they answered the questions correctly. I know evangelicals. Women do not have separate lives.
It’s no secret that liberals across the country have tried desperately to stop Donald Trump since he became a candidate, but their efforts to undermine him may now be coming back at themselves like a boomerang.
A scandal which began before the 2016 election was even held has just exploded, at least if a bombshell report from the watchdog group Judicial Watch is accurate. The organization has been diligently unraveling the facts around Fusion GPS, and what they recently found is jaw-dropping.
Fusion GPS, of course, is the “opposition research” firm which was contracted by the DNC to dig up dirt on Trump in the run-up to the election. The company is linked to the infamous dossier containing scandalous — and thoroughly debunked — claims about the president, but the controversy is much wider than just those papers.
It now appears that someone working for Fusion GPS was purposely and frequently collaborating with a deputy attorney general within the Obama administration, sending anti-Trump material in a way that was certainly unethical if not completely illegal.
The Obama-era official is Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, and the anti-Trump figure working for Fusion GPS was his wife.
“[A] series of ‘Hi Honey’ emails from Nellie Ohr to her high-ranking federal prosecutor husband and his colleagues raise the prospect that Hillary Clinton-funded opposition research was being funneled into the Justice Department during the 2016 election through a back-door marital channel,”explained veteran investigative journalist John Solomon for The Hill.
“Ohr has admitted to Congress that, during the 2016 presidential election, she worked for Fusion GPS — the firm hired by Democratic nominee Clinton and the Democratic National Committee to perform political opposition research,” the journalist said.
That kind of research is often used by political campaigns against their opponents, and is not by itself off limits. But Judicial Watch uncovered 339 emails which reveal that Nellie Ohr likely crossed the line by using her marriage as a political tool, and sending pages of anti-Trump research directly to official Department of Justice email accounts.
“They clearly show that Ohr sent reams of open-source intelligence to her husband, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, and on some occasions to at least three DOJ prosecutors: Lisa Holtyn, Ivana Nizich and Joseph Wheatley,”Solomon said.
“Such overt political content flowing into the email accounts of a DOJ charged with the nonpartisan mission of prosecuting crimes is jarring enough. It raises additional questions about potential conflicts of interest when it is being injected by a spouse working as a Democratic contractor trying to defeat Trump,”he continued.
But the scandal is deeper than just emails. Nellie and Bruce Ohr apparently had key roles in pushing the debunked Trump dossier and the false narrative that the future president was colluding with Russia.
“For instance, just 24 days after the anti-Trump screed was emailed, both Ohrs met in Washington with British intelligence operative Christopher Steele,” Solomon said. “She said she learned that Steele had concerns that he hoped the DOJ or FBI would investigate, with help from her husband.”
And that appears to be exactly what happened.
“The next day, Bruce Ohr used his official DOJ position to go to then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe with Steele’s allegations (later to become known as the Steele dossier), and the bureau opened its first investigation into Russia collusion,” he said.
There are obvious parallels to Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two FBI officials who were also having an affair all while texting back and forth about how Trump should be stopped. More and more, it looks like partisan politics and anti-Trump collaboration was widespread within agencies which are supposed to be unbiased.
That is the real scandal here: Not that liberals tried to uncover dirt on a candidate, but that official government personnel within our own government eagerly participated in the partisan witch hunt.
It looks like there was collusion, but not by Trump.
Instead, the real collusion took place between Obama-era government officials and activists who saw nothing as off limits in order to install Hillary Clinton as president — and that should alarm every American, no matter their party.
Benjamin Arie is an independent journalist and writer. He has personally covered everything ranging from local crime to the U.S. president as a reporter in Michigan, before focusing on national politics. Ben frequently travels to Latin America and has spent years living in Mexico. Follow Benjamin on Facebook
Humanist to Church: Drop Bible as Moral Guide / Humanist stumbles in his defense of openly gay United Methodist bishop Karen Oliveto.
What is lacking is the understanding of human beings (including Naff), which is exactly why we need God’s Word.- Dr. Michael Brown
A Huffington Post Humanist Urges the Church to Stop Using the Bible as a Moral Guide. It’s one thing when a humanist attacks the Bible. That’s expected. It’s another thing when a humanist attacks a Christian denomination for using the Bible as a moral guide. But that’s exactly what humanist author Clay Farris Naff did on the Huffington Post on April 29th.
Naff was upset that the highest court of the Methodist Church struck down the consecration of Bishop Karen Oliveto, since her only infraction was being married to another woman. How, he wondered, could the church punish her for love?
He writes, “To anyone free of ancient prejudices, the injustice of condemning Oliveto is plain. How can love be wrong? How can love enfolded in commitment and fidelity be wrong?”
The answers are simple and self-evident. Love is not always right, even when it’s “enfolded in commitment and fidelity.”
A father may love his adult daughter in a romantic way, but that doesn’t make the relationship right. Twin brothers in their 30s may love each other in a sexual way, but that doesn’t make their sexual activity right. A man who no longer loves his wife may now love his female co-worker, but that doesn’t make his adultery right.
It’s possible, of course, that Naff has no problem with consensual adult incest or with adultery. And maybe he has no issue with polygamy or polyamory. But as a thinking man (which he clearly is), he should be able to understand that conservatives have reasons other than “ancient prejudices” for opposing gay marriage. After all, there were ancient cultures that celebrated homosexuality, yet they still recognized marriage as male-female only.
That’s because marriage has had a specific function and purpose through the millennia, and it’s not just “ancient prejudices” that cause many of us to reject its redefinition. Or is it only prejudice that believes God designed men for women and women for men? Or is it only bigotry that believes it’s best for a child to have a mom and dad?
Naff asks, “What possible harm can her marriage cause? Not even the claim of setting a ‘bad’ example holds water. People do not choose their spouses on the example set by clergy. If they did, there’d be no Catholic children, and poor, sultry Elizabeth Taylor could never have married even once.”
Actually, many people do follow the examples set by their leaders (including clergy). As for Naff’s argument regarding Catholicism, wouldn’t he argue that the sins of some pedophile priests have been especially heinous, because they are looked to as religious leaders?
Of course, I’m not comparing Oliveto’s “marriage” to her partner to a priest abusing boys. I’m simply saying that clergy have a special responsibility to set good examples. Their bad examples have a wider, ripple effect.
Naff then focuses on the Bible itself, using the same hackneyed, pro-gay arguments that have been refuted time and again. (For example, he claims that Paul’s categorical prohibition against male and female homosexual practice in Romans 1 is merely “a tirade about some unnamed people who turned their backs on God and indulged in, er, Roman-style orgies”).
Not only so, but he seems oblivious to the idea that, when Methodist leaders speak about “Christian teaching” on homosexuality, they do not refer exclusively to the Bible. They’re speaking in general about the unanimous teaching of virtually all branches of Christianity for nearly 2,000 years. And they’re speaking in particular about the clear teachings of the Methodist Church throughout its history.
But this is not important for Naff, since he feels there’s a much deeper problem with the Methodist Church: hypocrisy. Why, he wonders, does the Church not ban divorce the way it bans homosexual practice?
The answer is that, according to Scripture, there are some legitimate causes for divorce, and these are recognized by the Methodist Church. It is the question of remarriage that is in question, but that’s a question he fails to ask. (He could have made a better argument had he addressed that question.)
Either way, Naff isn’t calling for a church ban on divorce. Instead, he explains, “I am trying to help you see that the Bible may be many things — historical treasure, poetical comfort, and sacred scripture — but as a moral guide, it is hopeless. Some claim to follow its commands literally, but they deceive themselves. No one can do so, for the Bible is a hodgepodge of contradictions and morally obscure or outrageous injunctions.”
So, it’s fine if we take the Bible to be “sacred scripture,” as long as we realize that it’s “a hodgepodge of contradictions and morally obscure or outrageous injunctions,” not to mention “hopeless” as “a moral guide.”
Thanks but no thanks.
That kind of “sacred scripture” is neither sacred nor scripture. Why anyone would take comfort in its words and find guidance for life if, in fact, the Bible is what Naff describes it to be?
After launching a few more (weak) salvos against the Scriptures, Naff writes, “Look at the Bible with fresh eyes, and you’ll find the record of ancient peoples who, lacking any police force, detectives, or proper jails, did their best to construct rules for getting along with each other and used the fear of God to enforce them. Look even closer and you’ll find that those in power often bent the rules in their favor. I suppose God might have wanted the people to heap silver, gold, and fatted calves on their priests, exempt them from any real work, and give them a retirement plan (Numbers 7 – 8), but I find it more likely that the priests themselves heard the Word of God that way.”
Put another way, this is not the Word of God, so don’t treat it as the Word of God.
Instead, Naff states, “I’ve shown that the United Methodist Church is interpreting the Bible to privilege the heterosexual majority while sanctimoniously applying ancient ‘laws’ in a questionable way to Bishop Oliveto. But more important, I hope I’ve shown that Methodists, and all other religionists, would do well abandon the effort to apply scriptural codes to contemporary life. Draw inspiration, by all means, but recognize that the hard work of thinking through right and wrong remains a moral duty for us all.”
In truth, Naff did not prove his points at all, let alone demonstrate them in such fashion that Methodist leaders should feel beholden to follow his counsel. But it is not merely Naff’s attack on the Bible that falls short. It’s his logic that falls short as well, since, if he is right in his description of the Bible, there’s no reason for the Methodist Church (or any church) to exist. There’s not even a reason for a single synagogue to be found on the planet if what we call sacred Scripture is merely a compendium of human ideas, many of them flawed, and none of them perfectly inspired.
In short, if Jesus is not the Son of God who died for our sins and rose from the dead, Christians are believing lies. End of subject. And if the Torah was not given by God through Moses, Jews are believing lies. That’s all that needs to be said.
Not only so, but if the Bible is not a moral guide, it cannot be a spiritual guide, since it purports to tell us who God is and what He requires from us, His creation.
I do understand Naff’s concerns about religious fundamentalism, which he has articulated elsewhere. But he fails to understand that:
1) the Bible’s moral witness is quite coherent when studied holistically and in-depth;
2) scholars have answers for the questions he has raised, along with many more; and
3) there are solid reasons, both practical and moral, to stand against homosexual “marriage.”
What is lacking, then, is not the inspiration of Scripture or the wisdom of Scripture or the moral authority of Scripture. What is lacking is the understanding of human beings (including Naff), which is exactly why we need God’s Word.
Human reasoning alone will always fail us. God’s Word will never fail.
Dr. Michael Brown Guest Blogger, Distinguished Author, Speaker and Christian Apologist More Articles
Filmmakers Carl and Angel Larsen say they wish to tell stories about God’s design for marriage between one man and one woman, without fear the government will punish them for not promoting same-sex marriage. (Photo: Alliance Defending Freedom)
A Minnesota couple is suing state officials to allow their film production company to celebrate marriage as a man-woman union without being forced, against their biblical beliefs, to promote same-sex marriage.
Carl and Angel Larsen, of St. Cloud, Minnesota, say they run Telescope Media Group as a way to deploy their storytelling ability and production services to glorify God.
“The Larsens desire to counteract the current cultural narrative undermining the historic, biblically orthodox definition of marriage by using their media production and filmmaking talents to tell stories of marriages between one man and one woman that magnify and honor God’s design and purpose for marriage,”the lawsuit filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota says.
Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal organization, filed the lawsuit on behalf of the Larsens and Telescope Media Group, which they own.
“Because of their religious beliefs, and their belief in the power of film and media production to change hearts and minds, the Larsens want to use their talents and the expressive platform of [Telescope Media Group] to celebrate and promote God’s design for marriage as a lifelong union of one man and one woman,”the suit says.
Minnesota government officials argue that private businesses face criminal penalties if they promote a marriage between a man and woman but refuse to promote a same-sex marriage, the Larsens’ lawyers at the Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom say.
“Filmmakers shouldn’t be threatened with fines and jail simply for disagreeing with the government,”Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a formal statement.
“Filmmakers shouldn’t be threatened with fines and jail simply for disagreeing with the government,”
If convicted after criminal prosecution under the Minnesota Human Rights Act, the Larsens face a fine of $1,000 and up to 90 days in jail, according to the lawsuit. They also could be ordered to pay compensatory and punitive damages up to $25,000.
The Larsens, who are in their mid-30s and have been married for 14 years, are challenging the law before Minnesota officials take any action against them and their company. The law in question is the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
“The law does not exempt individuals, businesses, nonprofits, or the secular business activities of religious entities from nondiscrimination laws based on religious beliefs regarding same-sex marriage,”the Minnesota Department of Human Rights website says.
The Larsens’ lawyers filed a pre-enforcement challenge against Kevin Lindsey in his official capacity as commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights and against Lori Swanson in her official capacity as attorney general of Minnesota. According to the suit:
The Larsens simply desire to use their unique storytelling and promotional talents to convey messages that promote aspects of their sincerely held religious beliefs, or that at least are not inconsistent with them. It is standard practice for the owners of video and film production companies to decline to produce videos that contain or promote messages that the owners do not want to support or that violate or compromise their beliefs in some way.
The Daily Signal sought comment from both the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and the Department of Human Rights, but neither had responded by publication.
“Telescope Media Group exists to glorify God through top-quality media production,”the company’s website says.
The company has created content for clients such as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and LifeLight, an annual Christian music festival held near Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
“Every American—including creative professionals—should be free to peacefully live and work according to their faith without fear of punishment,” Tedesco said in a release from Alliance Defending Freedom. He added:
For example, a fashion designer recently cited her ‘artistic freedom’ as a ‘family-owned company’ to announce that she won’t design clothes for Melania Trump because she doesn’t want to use her company and creative talents to promote political views she disagrees with. Even though the law in D.C. prohibits ‘political affiliation’ discrimination, do any of us really think the designer should be threatened with fines and jail time?
French fashion designer Sophie Theallet published an open letter Nov. 17 saying she would not dress President-elect Donald Trump’s wife, the future first lady, because of disagreements with him and urged other fashion designers to do the same. Last week, American fashion designer Tom Ford said on TV’s “The View” that he would not dress Melania Trump, in part because “she’s not necessarily my image.”
“The Larsens simply seek to exercise these same freedoms, and that’s why they filed this lawsuit to challenge Minnesota’s law,” Tedesco said.
There is nothing more distressful than for a parent to hurt their child. Especially if that child is seeking to please that parent. Children often do things against their will to win the approval of their neglecting parent. The sick parent can and often does use this to their advantage.
An Oklahoma woman and her adult daughter are behind bars after authorities discovered that they were involved in an incestuous relationship in “marrying” each other earlier this year.
According to reports, the Department of Human Services (DHS) contacted the Duncan Police Department after visiting the home of Patricia Spann, 43, for a child welfare investigation. It found that Spann was living with three of her children, who had been previously taken from her custody and adopted by their paternal grandmother.
Spann reportedly had no contact with her children for years, but when she met her daughter Misty, now 25, the two “hit it off,” she told DHS officials. She also said that she looked into the ramifications of marrying her biological daughter, but determined “that because her name was no longer listed on Misty’s birth certificate, she felt no laws had been violated.”
Now, this is not something that we have not seen. As I reported, there is a similar case happening in New Mexico. And there, the mother and son claim to be in love. Here it may be a little different.
Here the mother has done this before. That’s right, just last year, Patricia Spann married her son. Supposedly she did this to keep him from being deployed to Iraq. Now, she and her daughter both are being held on a $10,000 bond and awaiting trial.
The problem that Oklahoma faces is the same as in New Mexico; who are they to tell them that they cannot get married? This is what happens when you open up the door on self-defining marriage.
Today, First Liberty Institute announced that, along with one of the most famous lawyers in America, it is now representing Aaron and Melissa Klein, the Oregon bakers who owned Sweet Cakes by Melissa—the bakery destroyed by the Oregon government because its Christian owners declined to bake a wedding cake celebrating same-sex marriage—and intends to take the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
In 2013, the Kleins were asked by a lesbian woman to bake a cake celebrating her marriage to another woman, even though same-sex marriage was not even legal in Oregon at the time.
The Kleins had many customers who are homosexual and were happy to sell them cakes and other baked goods, but do not make specialized cakes for same-sex weddings because they individualize each wedding cake to support and celebrate the marriage. The Kleins are Evangelical Christians who believe that marriage is only between a man and woman, and who run their business consistent with their faith as part of their Christian testimony and personal ministry to the community.
The Oregon government pursued the Kleins for two years. On July 2, 2015, Commissioner Brad Avakian, the head of Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI), ordered the Kleins to pay $135,000 to the women as a penalty for what he called the “emotional damages” of offending the women by declining to bake the cake for their non-legal “wedding.”
BOLI also imposed a gag order on the Kleins, telling them that they cannot say that they would decline to bake a same-sex wedding cake in the future, because BOLI contends this would be a form of “advertisement” that the bakers intended to “discriminate” against people on the basis of sexual orientation.
The Kleins informed Oregon that they wanted to appeal this ruling because it violated their First Amendment right to free speech to require them to give a message endorsing same-sex marriage, as well as their right to free exercise of their religion to run their privately owned company consistent with their religious beliefs.
After the Kleins shared this information with BOLI, the government seized the money in the Kleins’ bank accounts. That was not nearly enough to satisfy the judgment. Thousands of Christians across the nation sent small gifts to assist the Kleins, who then handed that money to the government to be set aside in an escrow-type account so that their appeal could move forward.
During this time First Liberty came to assist the Kleins, representing them entirely free of charge, and are taking the Kleins’ case to the Oregon Court of Appeals. The legal team will be led by Ambassador Boyden Gray, a former law clerk to the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, who later became White House counsel under President George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1992, and then served as the U.S. ambassador to the European Union.
“America is a great nation because we celebrate diversity of thought,” Ambassador Gray said in a statement to Breitbart News. “Our right to free expression and religious liberty are some of our most cherished American freedoms. We must safeguard these rights for every American—including Aaron and Melissa Klein.”
“The past three years have been devastating,”Melissa Klein adds in the statement. “Just because we couldn’t participate in an event that violates our religious beliefs, we lost our business. We were committed to serving everyone, regardless of their circumstances, at all other times.”
“The government should never force people to violate their conscience or celebrate causes they don’t believe in,”said Kelly Shackelford, president and chief executive officer of First Liberty Institute. “As the Kleins’ new appellate team, we are committed to fighting for their First Amendment freedoms of religious liberty and free expression.”
Legal briefs will be filed over the next several months, and the Oregon Court of Appeals is expected to hear oral arguments in the Kleins’ appeal in late 2016. The lawyers add that there is a significant chance that this case may finally end up before the Supreme Court of the United States.
Here are a couple videos that will help strengthen your argument should you be in the traditional marriage camp. The Supremes really let the citizens of America down with their moronic argument supporting same-sex marriage.
This one here is a bit NSFW, but Christopher Cantwell has a message for all of those that rainbowed up their Facebook profiles in celebration of the SCOTUS decision.
U.S. Supreme Court (Photo: Jonathan Larsen/Getty Images)
Today is a significant setback for all Americans who believe in the Constitution, the rule of law, democratic self-government, and marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The U.S. Supreme Court got it wrong: It should not have mandated all 50 states to redefine marriage. This is judicial activism: nothing in the Constitution requires the redefinition of marriage, and the court imposed its judgment about a policy matter that should be decided by the American people and their elected representatives. The court got marriage and the Constitution wrong today just like they got abortion and the Constitution wrong 42 years ago with Roe v. Wade. Five unelected judges do not have the power to change the truth about marriage or the truth about the Constitution.
The court summarized its ruling in this way—which highlights that they have redefined marriage, substituting their own opinion for that of the citizens:
The limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just, but its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now manifest.
Manifest to five unelected judges that is. Not to the majority of American citizens who voted to define marriage correctly. As Chief Justice Roberts pointed out in dissent:
If you are among the many Americans—of whatever sexual orientation—who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision. Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.
That’s exactly right. When it comes to the majority opinion, the Constitution “had nothing to do with it.”
We must work to restore the constitutional authority of citizens and their elected officials to make marriage policy that reflects the truth about marriage. We the people must explain what marriage is, why marriage matters, and why redefining marriage is bad for society. For marriage policy to serve the common good it must reflect the truth that marriage unites a man and a woman as husband and wife so that children will have both a mother and a father. Marriage is based on the anthropological truth that men and woman are distinct and complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the social reality that children deserve a mother and a father.
The government is not in the marriage business because it’s a sucker for adult romance. No, marriage isn’t just a private affair; marriage is a matter of public policy because marriage is society’s best way to ensure the well-being of children. State recognition of marriage acts as a powerful social norm that encourages men and women to commit to each other so they will take responsibility for any children that follow.
At the federal level, the First Amendment Defense Act is a good place to start. It says that the federal government cannot discriminate against people and institutions that speak and act according to their belief that marriage is a union of one man and one woman. States need similar policies.
Recognizing the truth about marriage is good public policy. Today’s decision is a significant setback to achieving that goal. We must work to reverse it and recommit ourselves to building a strong marriage culture because so much of our future depends upon it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., researches and writes about marriage and religious liberty as the William E. Simon senior research fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation. He also focuses on justice and moral principles in economic thought, health care and education, and has expertise in bioethics and natural law theory. He’s the author of the forthcoming book, “The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty.” Read his research.
Many books about homosexuality are hitting the shelves to coincide with upcoming U.S. Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage. Among them I reviewed Scott McKnight’s A Fellowship of Differents and now Debra Hirsch’s Redeeming Sex.
Hirsch, a former lesbian-turned-heterosexual-married-self-describing-Christian, exemplifies the need and ability to discern false teaching presented as biblical. Many of her arguments are based on false premises, which lead to false conclusions.
Most disturbing is her approach that distorts and negates the person and work of Jesus Christ.
By suggesting Jesus as a “sex symbol” she writes he “would have been deeply attractive to both men and women” and it was likely that “genital sexual advances were made towards him.” Did Hirsch not read Isaiah 53? Isaiah prophesied that peoples’ redemption would come from one man who “had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.” Jesus was ordinary looking. And the pain and death he suffered, separation from his father, was more than enough to heal every person’s brokenness, including sexual sin.
Her reasoning regarding Jesus and celibacy is equally problematic. Regarding celibacy and comparing Jesus Christ to Roman Catholic priests Hirsch exposes her ignorance about common misperceptions related to institutionalized celibacy. More important, however, is that Jesus, as both fully God and fully man who was without sin, would not have thought romantically about women. His human nature was perfect and incomparable to the rest of a sinful human nature. Hirsch mentions nothing about obedience to God as a reason for celibacy—for all unmarried believers—one of only two sexual relationships Paul consistently and clearly admonishes that honor God.
Jesus was not celibate because he did not want to spare a wife or child from “the pain of the cross,” as Hirsch suggests. Jesus’s sole purpose was soteriological: to die a death he did not deserve for those who did deserve death—including everyone struggling with sexual sin—in order to redeem them from that sin, not to willfully continue it.
This is why through Christ’s love, grace and mercy, combined with a humble, contrite, repentant heart, and healing through the Holy Spirit, no practicing homosexual can claim to know and love Jesus Christ. To love Jesus is to follow him, to trust and obey him—no matter the cost. (McKnight brilliantly communicates this by citing testimonies from people struggling with sexual sin who claim nothing they have given up compares to the joy of knowing Jesus Christ.)
Furthermore, by defining sexuality and gender by man-made (not biblical) terms, Hirsch wrongly surmises the prostitute falling at Jesus’s feet (Luke 7:36-50) evidences what she defines as “social sexuality” and “genital sexuality.” Nothing could be further from biblical truth.
She interprets this text as “Jesus blurs the lines, suggesting it is possible to love intensely outside of a marriage relationship.” This exemplifies both an arrogant western concept and an absurdly false claim.
The prostitute worshipped Jesus. She did not love him in a romantic, socially sexual, or genitally sexual way. The prostitute fell at Jesus’s feet because she loved him as her Lord and Savior.
Worshiping Jesus has absolutely nothing to do with a person’s emotional, asexual, or sexual feelings. Authentically worshiping Jesus for who he is as Lord does not even remotely imply that non-married women and men (the prostitute and Jesus) can love each other deeply. If anything, Jesus loved her as a father loves a child.
Hirsch’s doublespeak astounds. She asserts Jesus is “calling us to be in the ‘right’ loving relationship with God and with people…. to love God is to walk in his ways.” Yet she also maintains “there is no room for self-righteousness and exclusion based on disputed interpretations on nonessential issues of the Bible.” If sex, gender, and same-sex marriage is a nonessential issue of the Bible, then why write a book about it?
Further still, she justifies “God is ok with gay,” monogamous same-sex relationships provide “no incompatibility with following Jesus,” and “no ministry or church has the right to impose any change on an individual, let alone one so intrinsic as a sexual orientation.”
Perhaps this explains why only verses that appear to support her assertions, taken out of context, are used as pull quotes instead of every verse if explained in their context would clearly refute them?
For anyone to argue the Bible “does not understand a modern day understanding of homosexuality” either reflects intellectually dishonesty, deception, or ignorance about sexual norms and practices during the Apostle Paul’s day. In fact, McKnight’s book paints an astonishing picture of that time, to which today’s standards pale in comparison. Again, if the Bible’s view of sex and gender is nonessential, why write a book about it?
One endorser claims Hirsch expresses a “Jesus-centered vision of how sexuality can glorify God and lead us to flourish.” Another, she offers “biblical, Jesus-lens insight.” Neither is truth.
By using the Kinsey Scale as a plumb line Hirsch presupposes that human feelings, rationale, or psychology provide the basis for “trying to understand or define homosexuality,” which she claims, “is no easy task.” Homosexuality is easily understood when one first understands who God is. The gospel, not the Kinsey Scale, is what is needed to completely surrender to Jesus’s love, a love that surpasses all selfish and self-seeking choices to love and be loved by human standards.
Biblical love exposes sin and articulates that only through God’s grace, with or without the help of Christians, God restores broken people to himself. Hirsch and others who condone the behavior and mindset of “practicing homosexual Christians” are not loving, but harming them. Worse still they make Jesus’s death worthless. Hirsch’s misrepresentation of scripture is irresponsibly misleading. Sadly, she is not alone.
Paul, who Jesus exclusively tutored for seven years, wrote more about sex and marriage and male and female relationships than anyone else. Wouldn’t reading what he wrote in its entirety be the logical starting point? Yet few Christians read the Bible.
Those who “walk in the spirit,” those who love God with their whole heart, soul, and mind, those who seek to renew their minds and “pick up their crosses,” would not choose to “walk in the lusts of the flesh.” They would not want to disobey Jesus because their love for him is so great.
Sinning, for believers, leads to repentance, not repetitionof sin. Those who know and choose to follow and obey Jesus grasp the reality that their lives are not their own; their purpose extends beyond themselves. Human sexuality (and intellect, ingenuity, athleticism, or physical or psychological traits) is only rightly understood once God’s will, communicated in scripture, is understood.
The real issue is whether or not Jesus is who he says he is, and if so, is he worthy of following at any cost.
Is the Bible Belt coming unbuckled? Stan Mitchell, pastor of the GracePoint megachurch in Franklin Tennessee, has apparently taken his Bible belt off altogether. Mitchell told his congregation—a congregation that includes superstar singer-songwriter Carrie Underwood—that practicing homosexuals can be card-carrying members of his Bible-believing protestant church and can even hold their gay weddings in the sanctuary. “Our position that these siblings of ours, other than heterosexual, … cannot have the full privileges of membership, but only partial membership, has changed,”Mitchell told the church.
“Full privileges are extended now to you with the same expectations of faithfulness, sobriety, holiness, wholeness, fidelity, godliness, skill and willingness. That is expected of all. Full membership means being able to serve in leadership and give all of your gifts and to receive all the sacraments; not only communion and baptism, but child dedication and marriage.”
Removing the Belt of Truth
Wait, what? Mitchell seems to completely misunderstand—or at least misinterpret—the Bible. Practicing homosexuals may indeed be faithful tithers and attenders, but one cannot reconcile homosexual lifestyles with holiness and godliness. As kind, generous and loving as some practicing gays may be, sexual sin defiles homosexuals the same as it does heterosexuals.
With his announcement, Mitchell has removed his belt of truth (see Eph. 6:14), ignoring altogether Leviticus 18:22, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, 1 Timothy 1:10 and other verses of Scripture in coming to his decision. He set down a key piece of spiritual armour in a culture war that is seeing antichrist spirits watering down the Word of God.
The question here is this: How did Mitchell fall into this deception? What caused him to accept this strong delusion that counters the holy Scriptures? Mitchell is certainly not the first preacher—or denomination for that matter—to reject the Word of God on this topic. What happened?
A Divine Wind?
According to Mitchell’s own testimony, the Spirit of God moved on his heart several years ago, causing him to reconsider his stance on full inclusion for practicing homosexuals at his megachurch. He calls it a divine wind, but God does not speak with a forked tongue. “We were thrust, I believe, by a divine wind, into a prayerful, painful, invigorating, careful and hopeful conversation regarding sexual orientation and gender identity,” he said. “My soul has been stretched to the point that if I do not say what I say today, I cannot be here any longer. I have felt this way for many, many years.”
Clearly, Mitchell is in angst over this move, which I believe is the Spirit of God bringing conviction to his heart over his present unbiblical conclusion. Indeed, if the Spirit of God—or a “divine wind” as he called it—moved over his soul at all it was not to give practicing homosexuals church leadership positions or hold gay marriage ceremonies in his sanctuary. If the Spirit of God moved over him it was to pray against the deception he has now embraced.
Fear of Man Brings a Snare
So what happened? I don’t have all the answers but I believe it comes down to cowardice and compromise in the end. If we are willing to compromise God’s Word in any area, we open ourselves up to all manner of deception. Mitchell may be dealing with the fear of man, since he’s lost so many members while he wrestled with his revelation. The Bible says the fear of man brings a snare (see Prov. 29:25). He has certainly been snared.
Owen Strachan, assistant professor of Christian theology and Church history at Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky, put it this way: “If you fear man, God will become small to you. The approval of fellow sinners will matter more to you than obeying God by the witness of his Word.”
I agree with Strachan, who also points out that many professing evangelicals today have no appetite to honor the Lord. He rightly notes that these professing evangelicals recognize that the winds of culture are against them.“To the core of their being, they are afraid. Biblical Christians recognize, ultimately, that no person is our enemy. We have no Goliath to slay,” Strachan says. “We do have a spiritual force against which we fight, one who would undo us, who would stop our mouths, and who would have us strain ourselves to win the honor of man instead of the honor of God.”
There Is Still Hope
The only saving grace here is that Mitchell remains double-minded about his decision, which means there is still hope for him to come to repentance.
“I am not sure I am right, but I am sure I sense the presence of God, and I know I’m doing my best,” he said. “And I believe before God Almighty to this we have been called, and here we stand.”
I pray he turns from this skewed theology and repents publicly, which could give other pastors the courage to do the same. I also pray that professing evangelicals—whether they are in the pulpit or the pews—will stand and withstand the winds of culture that are raging against us. The days are growing darker. The Great Falling Away is underway. And the next great move of God is emerging even now. I want to stand on the right side of eternity on these issues. What about you?
Did you actually think the debate over “gay marriage” was about marriage? Have you really come to believe that this cultural kerfuffle has anything to do with “civil rights” or “equality”? Have you bought into the popular premise that this is a legitimate discussion on federalism – that it’s a reasonable disagreement over whether the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause requires that newfangled “gay marriage,” something rooted in same-sex sodomy, a deviant and disease-prone behavior our Constitution’s framers officially declared “the infamous crime against nature,” be made law of the land?
A lot of people have, so don’t feel bad. A lot of reasonable, well-meaning and even, at times, intelligent people have taken the bait.
But that’s all window dressing. It’s superficial. It’s collateral. It’s chaff, a diversion, a squirrel. Don’t chase it.
At its core, this increasingly heated fight over “gay marriage” is about two diametrically opposed and profoundly incompatible views of reality (or lack thereof). It’s the modern manifestation of a millennia-old clash between worldviews. This ugly cultural conflict is, in reality, neither legal nor political in nature, but, rather, is fundamentally a philosophical debate. Ultimately, it derives from, and is illustrative of, deep-seated spiritual warfare. Quite simply, the clash over “gay marriage” is emblematic of the larger, and much older, clash between good and evil.
And it’s reaching critical mass.
On the one hand, on the natural marriage side, we have a worldview that recognizes absolute truth – that acknowledges the fixed moral and natural law, authored and enforced from time immemorial by the sovereign and loving Creator of the universe. This same Creator, incidentally, just happened to design and define the very institution over which we quarrel. Those with this worldview concede that every man, woman and child is accountable to this sovereign Creator and will, one day, stand before Him to face final judgment for what they did or did not do during their infinitesimally short-lived stint here on earth.
This, though not a comprehensive representation, is the biblical worldview.
On the other hand, on the unnatural marriage side(or the “marriage equality” side as these self-styled “progressives” euphemistically prefer), we have a worldview that denies absolute truth. It imagines there are no fixed lines of demarcation between right and wrong – that morality, that reality, is entirely relative and, therefore, the very notion of good and evil, right and wrong, sin and repentance are but false and limiting constructs concocted in the narrow minds of a dull bevy of sheepherders some thousands of years ago.
Since those with this worldview either deny God’s very existence altogether or, alternatively, believe that some version of god, like marriage, can be defined, or redefined, in the mind of the beholder, they claim accountability to no one (except goddess political correctness) and, thus, declare reality to be that which they, the secular-”progressive” intelligentsia, proclaim it to be (e.g., that manmade, credulity-straining, reality-warping and oxymoronic counterfeit called “same-sex marriage”).
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who happens to be both a big fan of unnatural marriage and one of the aforementioned intelligentsia, summarized this worldview neatly when he wrote the following in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. He did so while attempting to rationalize government-sanctioned child sacrifice, the evil twin to “gay marriage”: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life,” he pontificated.
Right. Lay off the ‘shrooms, dude.
In other words, man is the measure of all things. Man is god, and there is no god but man. According to Kennedy, and as was first suggested by a garden snake a very long time ago, truth is defined by man’s “individual concept of existence.”
This, of course, is empirically and manifestly stupid.
And so both of these worldviews cannot be right. It’s impossible. The law of non-contradiction precludes it.
So who is right?
It’s simple. Those who acknowledge objective reality, natural morality and absolute truth are right. Those who recognize that there are fixed biological, moral and natural laws – that despite the rebellious machinations of fallen man, can be neither altered nor ignored– won the debate before the debate even began.
There is no debate.
Yet the debate goes on.
As for the continuing kangaroo courtrooms overseeing and facilitating the destruction of marriage via judicial fiat, I fully expect that additional reality-denying judges will call up down, black white and evil good. They’ll declare a “constitutional right” to sodomy-based marriage.
It’s all the rage right now.
Still, there is no legitimate legal argument to be made in favor of this absurdity. The common law, natural law and reality itself preclude any man, any court, any government, even state governments, from presuming to redefine the institution of marriage to exclude the necessary element of binary male-female complementarity.
Mankind can no more redefine marriage to include same-sex parings than can he suspend the laws of gravity.
Yet these arrogant, godless, black-robed autocrats presume to do just that.
The courts are tossing around spiritual nitroglycerin here. It’s the stuff that brings down entire civilizations. Here’s the bad news: The aforementioned Justice Kennedy is the swing vote in favor of imposing fuax marriage on everyone.
Before I even began to dive into this subject, I found several statistics related to cheating (infidelity) online. Keep in mind, these are percentages of only those who actually admitted to cheating. These stats don’t include those who got away with it.
Marriage Infidelity Statistics
Data
Percent of marriages where one or both spouses admit to infidelity, either physical or emotional
41 %
Percent of men who admit to committing infidelity in any relationship they’ve had
57 %
Percentage of women who admit to committing infidelity in any relationship they’ve had
54 %
Percent of married men who have strayed at least once during their married lives
22 %
Percent of married women who have strayed at least once during their married lives
14 %
Percentage of men and women who admit to having an affair with a co-worker
36 %
Percentage of men and women who admit to infidelity on business trips
35%
Percentage of men and women who admit to infidelity with a brother-in-law or sister-in-law
17 %
Average length of an affair
2 years
Percentage of marriages that last after an affair has been admitted to or discovered
31 %
Percentage of men who say they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught
74 %
Percentage of women who say they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught
68 %
Percent of children who are the product of infidelity
3 %
Wow! Right? I’m sure all of you reading this just decided to turn into overbearing psycho stalker spouses/significant others. Just kidding. Anyway, another crazy statistic that I found was that around 60% of people will be cheated on at least once in their lifetime. Awful, isn’t it? So the two big things I want to focus on in this touchy blog are the cheaters and the cheated-on in relationships. If a section doesn’t apply to you, simply don’t read it.
Even if you think this doesn’t apply to you because you’ve never physically cheated, you may be wrong. In my mind, cheating isn’t just physical, it’s emotional. Emotional cheating is also pointed out in the bible. Matthew 5:28 says that if you look at a woman with a lustful intent, you’ve already committed adultery with her in your heart. If you’re emotionally attached or thinking about someone else other than the one you’re with, you aren’t being faithful. Emotions are HUGE in a relationship, and trust me, people aren’t stupid. They know when you’re looking straight through them or wishing they were someone else. The human heart isn’t a toy to be tinkered with. So, don’t let someone allow you to consume their heart and mind if you don’t plan on being there.. ALL there.
One of the huge problems, in my opinion, are people who move from person to person after the current relationship gets boring. This type of person is someone who dates one person during the “googley eyed” stage, and moves onto the next relationship’s googley-eyed stage when the current relationship starts getting too monotonous. Psychologists and other specialists are linking this incident to the multiple loves/sexual partners that people are getting used to before their first real commitment. This made sense to me, but I don’t believe it applies in every case. However, I do believe people with multiple partners have a huge shock when they realize they’ve now committed to be with one person (sexually and emotionally) for the rest of their lives.
Another excuse people use is that their significant other “changed” or “just isn’t the same anymore.” Uh, hello, of course they aren’t the same. You’re out of the giggly, interesting, super exciting beginning stage and you’re needing something else to keep your attention. You feel as if you’ve gotten to know everything about them and there’s nothing else to learn.. and you’re bored. Trust me, there is ALWAYS more to learn about the love of your life. Always.
I’m one of those people that notices and memorizes the stupid little details. If you date me, I’ll know the exact toppings you prefer on your cheeseburger. I’ll decide what type of driver you are the very first time I ride in your vehicle with you. I’ll pay extremely close attention to how you treat your mother and your sisters, and if it isn’t something I approve of, I’ll run in the opposite direction. I pay attention to the cleanliness of your car, your room, and your body. I’ll ask you your favorite books, songs, and movies. Most of all, I pay attention to what inspires you. I made a commitment to myself when I was 18, after the most disastrous relationship I’ve endured, that I’d never date someone I couldn’t picture myself marrying. Make yourself this promise and your relationships will be more valuable to you.
I’m one of those people who loves a chase. I eat it up. If you tell me I can’t have something, I’m going to show you I can, in fact, have it. It isn’t just me, it’s human nature. This is another problem in relationships. You chase someone, get them, the relationship gets boring once again, and you notice someone else who seems unattainable. Annndddd there goes your attention. It’s that easy. Train your mind. Love isn’t about finding the perfect person, it’s about learning to love and devote your life to the person you’ve found.
Not everyone is going to love you the exact way you want them to, but if they seem right for you, and you love them, don’t hurt them. Just because someone doesn’t love you the exact way you want them to, doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have. Cherish this. Protect their heart like it’s the most valuable possession you’ve ever held in your hands. Don’t shatter their heart and mind because you can’t control yours.
Proverbs 6:32 “He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself.”
Hebrews 13:4 “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”
The Cheated
I have to be extremely careful while touching on this subject. First of all, whether or not you choose to stay with your partner after an occurrence of infidelity is no one’s business but your own. It all depends on the situation and what kind of person you are. According to surveys, most people say they leave after being cheated on because “they could never look at their spouse the same way again” or “couldn’t forget that it happened.” Completely understandable.
Those who have stayed with their significant other after infidelity often report that their spouse exhibits feelings of remorse and promises to change and never do it again. Once again, this choice is entirely up to you, and shouldn’t involve the input of anyone else. Keep in mind that those outside of your relationship may tell you things that are easier said than done. It’s easy for us to tell someone to leave their significant other after infidelity, but who are we to say such things? YOU are the one who married them. YOU are the one who loves them. It’s no one’s choice but YOURS to make.
So, choosing to stay or choosing to leave is the first part of the process. Leaving may seem quick and easy because you can pretend you’re okay, mask the pain with hobbies and nights out with your friends, and it seems as if the problem has disappeared. However, if you leave your relationship, you’ll be stuck with your pain and sorrow without the person you loved and depended on to help you sort it out.
I’ve been cheated on several times. One verse that always helped ease my feelings of hopelessness and betrayal was Romans 5:3-5. “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Rejoice in our sufferings.. much easier said than done. During hard times like these, it’s easy to lose all self-confidence and self-worth, but you have to remember that you didn’t cause this person to hurt you. There is something wrong with them, not you. There is no excuse for cheating. It is a selfish act caused by something in that person, not in you. I can’t stress that enough.
When someone hurts me, betrays me, or cheats on me, I like to think of it as an opportunity to make myself stronger than I’ve ever been before. Remember when you were in middle school and those girls or guys would pick on you or leave you out.. and your mom would tell you to get a “thicker skin?” I never understood that phrase until I was cheated on for the first time. Each time someone hurt me, I rejoiced.
I’m not going to lie, my first reaction was anger and hatred. I hated them with every part of me. I spent minutes, hours, days, weeks, and even months wondering how they could do such a thing. I mostly thought about how I could retaliate, because I wanted them to hurt. I wanted them to feel the pain and suffering that they caused me (awful, isn’t it?!). However, over time (A LOT of time), I’ve learned to thank them for making me stronger in the end.
If you rejoice in your sufferings, you’ll gain endurance, character, and hope. So, the next time you want to slash your ex’s tires or throw all of their belongings into the middle of I-10, choose to thank them for giving you endurance, character, and hope. You WILL make it through this, and you’ll come out stronger than you’ve ever been before. Pray. Pray for the person who hurt you, and pray for yourself.
Psalm 34:18“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
For the past several years, Muslims have been attacking Christians in countries like Nigeria and the United States government has said nothing to condemn the slaughter.
Like many nations in the area and in the Middle East, Nigeria is predominately Muslim. However, there is a significant Christian population that lives in the northern regions of the African nation. However, Nigeria’s Muslims are determined to eradicate their country of any and all Christians.
I’ve written in the past of Christians being slaughtered in Nigeria. In one attack, a Muslim suicide bomber attacked a Christian church during services, killing 15 and wounding 40 others. Since many Christians attend church on Christmas Day, this has become a favorite time for Muslim attacks. On one recent Christmas Day, Muslims bombed several Christian churches in northern Nigeria, killing at least 25 and wounding dozens more. After these Christmas Day attacks, the Obama administration issued an impersonal short condemnation and nothing more was said or done.
In mid-November last year, Ann Buwalda, Executive Director of Jubilee Campaign said that around 1,200 Christians had been killed in northern Nigeria. She didn’t say how many more had been wounded in the attacks, but surely it was several thousand. Speaking to the Christian Post, she said:
“We documented 1,200 Nigerian Christians in the North of Nigeria who were killed, some by Boko Haram, some by Fulani herdsmen. These two types of attacks are persistent within several of the Northern Nigerian states.”
“With our statistic of more Christians have been killed in Northern Nigeria than the rest of the world combined.”
“Statistically, we are looking at approximately 60 percent of the world’s Christians that were killed for their faith last year was in Northern Nigeria.”
With Nigeria being the center of Christian genocide in the world, all US Secretary of State John Kerry can condemn Nigeria for is their recent ban on same sex marriages. After Nigeria passed its law, Kerry released an official statement through the State Department saying:
“The United States is deeply concerned by Nigeria’s enactment of the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. Beyond even prohibiting same sex marriage, this law dangerously restricts freedom of assembly, association, and expression for all Nigerians.”
What about the freedom of Nigeria’s Christians to assemble, associate and express their faith? When they do assemble, they always do so in fear of being attacked by members of the religion of peace, or so we are told.
Kerry’s statement condemning Nigeria’s new law suggested that such a law was in conflict with international law. But isn’t the intentional genocide of any group of people a violation of international law? Shouldn’t the world community, as well as the US, be up in arms over the murder and wounding of thousands of Christians?
Both Barack Obama and John Kerry claim to be Christians, but they are so busy protecting the sinful and abominable lifestyle of homosexuals that they can’t be bothered to protect Christians who seems to have a much stronger faith than their own.
How many Americans would go to church on Sunday morning if they knew there was a chance that they could be the subject of a bomb attack? I bet many of our nation’s churches would be nearly empty. But the Christians in Nigeria hold their faith dearly and are willing to risk their lives just to worship Jesus who died for them.
Secretary of State John Kerry’s actions and lack thereof are sickening to me as are those of President Barack Obama. Their liberal anti-Christian agendas are more important to them than the lives of Christians. Obviously gays mean more to them than Christians who hold to God’s Word. What does that say about their own Christian faith?
Piers Morgan is clearly a glutton for punishment. We saw that repeatedly during the gun control debates in the wake of the Newtown shooting.
A couple of nights ago on his program, Morgan criticized Phil Robertson’s recent anti-gay remarks as “repulsive” and claimed that he should be fired. Apparently, that’s Morgan’s way of handling opposing viewpoints from major celebrity figures.
On his program last night, he decided to invite a Biblical scholar, Dr. Michael Brown, on the show so that he could trap him into admitting that Jesus did not, in fact, condemn homosexuality.
That trap was not set properly.
When Morgan asked Brown to cite just one instance of Jesus condemning homosexuality, he probably thought that he had already won the debate. But alas, he was hoisted on his own petard.
Brown cited not one, but three instances of Jesus condemning homosexuality.
First, Jesus said that He came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. In other words, the Old Testament law, even in Jesus’ day, was still in force and Jesus accepted it. That is the same law that condemns homosexuality in the Book of Leviticus.
Next, Brown cited Matthew 15 in which Jesus states that all sexual acts committed outside of marriage defile a human being.
Finally, Brown cited Matthew 19 in which Jesus said that marriage, as God intended it, is the union of one man and one woman.
Do you have any 3rd graders in your life? If they’re anything like the little 8 year old girls I know, they are probably playing with My Little Ponies and Polly Pockets, going to school, listening to One Direction, and painting their fingernails (out on the back porch so as not to get nail polish all over the house).
Because that is the life of 8 year old girls in America.
In many Islamic countries, however, 8 year old girls are donning fancy white dresses and going to get married to adult men.
Recent news reports from Yemen tell of such a child who died on her wedding night.
An 8 year old little girl named Rawan died from injuries sustained within her young, immature body when her 40 year old husband had intercourse with her. The child bled to death in this perverted parody of a marriage after she was sold to her “husband” by her impoverished family.
It would be horrific enough if this was a one-time tragedy, but this is a regular custom for young Muslim girls, especially in impoverished countries. In 2010, a 13 year old girl (a 7th grader in America) died the same way –she hemorrhaged for 5 days until she bled to death after wedding night sex with her husband. Also in 2010, another 12 year old girl died in labor after struggling to give birth for 3 days.
Apparently girls are far easier to mold into “good Muslim wives” if you get them when they’re young. More than a quarter of girls in Yemen are sold into marriage before the age of 15.
The husband of little Rawan was not arrested. The parents of Rawan were not arrested. This was all perfectly legal, so Rawan’s agonizing, terrifying death is considered just an unfortunate accident in Yemen, with no more blame laid than if she had been the victim of a random lightning strike or any other unpreventable incident.
This is part of Sharia law. This is part of the “Religion of Peace.” Directly from the Quran:
“The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with ‘Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).” — Bukhari 7.62.88
According to the site Wiki Islam, this type of pedophilia is not only acceptable, but encouraged. Due to religious reasons, laws cannot be made to discontinue the sickening practice.
Due to its many endorsements within Islamic scripture, child marriages are permitted by the majority of Muslim scholars and leaders, and in many Islamic countries it is common practice. Girls far below the age of puberty are forcibly married to older persons (sometimes in their 50s and later) for various personal gains by the girls’ guardian or with the intention to preserve family honor by helping her avoid pre-marital sex.
Pedophilic Islamic marriages are most prevalent in Pakistan and Afghanistan, followed by other countries in the Middle East and Bangladesh.[5][6] This practice may also be prevalent to a lesser extent amongst other Muslim communities, and is on the rise among the growing Muslim populations in many non-Muslim countries, such as the United Kingdom[7] and the United States.[8]
In countries like Yemen, Bangladesh, Iran, and Northern Nigeria, attempts at reforming laws and banning child marriages have been opposed and stopped on the grounds that such a ban would be un-Islamic,[9][10][11][12][13] and in the case of Malaysia, the growing Muslim population has effectively turned back the clock on social progress by passing new laws which allow for the practice of pedophilic marriages specifically between followers of Islam.[14]
Human rights activists are rightfully outraged by these senseless deaths, but flouting hundreds of years of customs and a religion that is practiced by nearly a quarter of the world’s population has proven to be a difficult battle. Those who disagree with these practices are being painted as intolerant, racist, and anti-Muslim. How dare we step on the tenets of their faith? If you say this is wrong in an Islamic country, you’re liable to get your head promptly lopped off.
This subject is certainly not one of the normal topics on my website, but as the mother of two precious girls, I feel obligated to say something for little Rawan and the thousands of other girls who are abused like this, and not just shake my head at the dreadful tragedy of the ordeal these little ones undergo. This isn’t “Christian vs. Muslim”, but “Right vs. Wrong.”
You don’t have to be the parent of girls to be outraged by this practice and by the religion that turns it into a “right”. You just have to be a human being with a sense of right and wrong and one who believes that the innocence and well-being of children –wherever they happen to be born –should be protected. I’ve always considered myself to be very tolerant of other people’s faith or personal belief system because I expect others to be tolerant of my right to believe the way I do. But when horrific, fatal child abuse is sanctioned because the Quran says it’s okay –well, that is where I draw the line of tolerance and acceptance.
For now, however, the practice putting little girls in a pretty white dress and then raping them to death remains legal in many parts of the world because we certainly can’t infringe on the “religious freedom” that protects the dirty old men who believe it is their deity-given right to do so.
Editor’s Note: According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), between 2011 and 2020, more than 140 million girls will become child brides. Furthermore, of the 140 million girls who will marry before the age of 18, 50 million will be under the age of 15.
About the Author:
Daisy Luther is a freelance writer and editor. Her website, The Organic Prepper, offers information on healthy prepping, including premium nutritional choices, general wellness and non-tech solutions. You can follow Daisy on Facebook and Twitter, and you can email her at daisy@theorganicprepper.ca
“Good morning. We want to apply for a marriage license.”
“Names?”
“Tim and Jim Jones.”
“Jones?? Are you related?? I see a resemblance.”
“Yes, we’re brothers.”
“Brothers?? You can’t get married.”
“Why not?? Aren’t you giving marriage licenses to same gender couples?”
“Yes, thousands. But we haven’t had any siblings. That’s incest!”
“Incest?” No, we are not gay.”
“Not gay?? Then why do you want to get married?”
“For the financial benefits, of course. And we do love each other. Besides, we don’t have any other prospects.”
“But we’re issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples who’ve been denied equal protection under the law. If you are not gay, you can get married to a woman.”
“Wait a minute. A gay man has the same right to marry a woman as I have. But just because I’m straight doesn’t mean I want to marry a woman. I want to marry Jim.”
“And I want to marry Tim!Are you going to discriminate against us just because we are not gay?”
“All right, all right. I’ll give you your license. Next.”
“Hi. We are here to get married.”
“Names?”
“John Stark, Jane James, Robert Green, and June Johnson.”
“Who wants to marry whom?”
“We all want to marry each other.”
“But there are four of you!”
“That’s right. You see, we’re all bisexual. I love Jane and Robert, Jane loves me and June, June loves Robert and Jane, and Robert loves June and me. All of us getting married together is the only way that we can express our sexual preferences in a marital relationship.”
“But we’ve only been granting licenses to gay and lesbian couples.”
“So you’re discriminating against bisexuals!”
“No, it’s just that, well, the traditional idea of marriage is that it’s just for couples.”
“Since when are you standing on tradition?”
“Well, I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere.”
“Who says?? There’s no logical reason to limit marriage to couples. The more the better. Besides, we demand our rights! The mayor says the constitution guarantees equal protection under the law. Give us a marriage license!”
“All right, all right. Next.”
“Hello, I’d like a marriage license.”
“In what names?”
“David Deets.”
“And the other man?”
“That’s all. I want to marry myself.”
“Marry yourself?? What do you mean?”
“Well, my psychiatrist says I have a dual personality, so I want to marry the two together. Maybe I can file a joint income-tax return.”
“That does it!? I quit!!? You people are making a mockery of marriage!!”
Even knowing that there are radicals in all movements, doesn’t lessen the startling admission recently by lesbian journalist Masha Gessen. On a radio show she actually admits that homosexual activists are lying about their radical political agenda. She says that they don’t want to access the institution of marriage; they want to radically redefine and eventually eliminate it.
Here is what she recently said on a radio interview:
“It’s a no-brainer that (homosexual activists) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. …(F)ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.
The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist. And I don’t like taking part in creating fictions about my life. That’s sort of not what I had in mind when I came out thirty years ago.
I have three kids who have five parents, more or less, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t have five parents legally… I met my new partner, and she had just had a baby, and that baby’s biological father is my brother, and my daughter’s biological father is a man who lives in Russia, and my adopted son also considers him his father. So the five parents break down into two groups of three… And really, I would like to live in a legal system that is capable of reflecting that reality, and I don’t think that’s compatible with the institution of marriage.”
For quite some time, the defenders of natural marriage have attempted to point out that the true agenda behind the homosexual demands organizations is not marriage equality; it is the total unraveling of marriage and uprooting traditional values from society. (This will ultimately include efforts to silence and punish some churches that openly adhere to their religious teachings about marriage and sexual morality.)
While few have been as vocal as this lesbian activist was in this interview, we do have numerical examples proving her point. When given the opportunity to marry, after laws have been struck down relatively small percentages of homosexuals actually bother to marry compared to their heterosexual counterparts. This raises question about the true need to unravel marriage for the “fair” extension its benefits. Only 12 percent of homosexuals in the Netherlands marry compared to 86 percent of their heterosexual peers. Less than 20 percent of same-sex couples already living together in California married when given the chance in 2008. In contrast, 91 percent of heterosexual couples in California who are living together are married.
Clearly this is about cultural change and tearing down the traditional family ethic, since it seems that most homosexuals living together neither need nor desire to marry, though they do desire to radically change marriage.
Gays and lesbians are free to live as they choose, and we live in a society which roundly applauds them doing so like never before in our history, but they do not have the right to rewrite marriage for all of society.
In 1989 Micah Clark graduated from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science. Micah interned as a member of the Indiana House of Representatives’…
Next week the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the most critical cases of our time related to marriage equality. On Tuesday, March 26, attorneys will make the pitch both for and against California’s Proposition 8. This, of course, is the Golden State’s pro-marriage amendment. It maintained the timeless definition of natural marriage as between man and wife.
Then, on Wednesday, March 27, the high court will consider the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed in 1996 with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by then President Bill Clinton. It, likewise, secured the definition of legitimate marriage for purposes of federal law.
Although both cases certainly address a multitude of legal and political issues, they also involve a number of moral and cultural considerations that, if wrongly decided, will literally shake Western civilization to the core.
The stakes could not be higher. Of central concern is whether the Supreme Court will put its official stamp of approval on that cartoonish contradiction-in-terms labeled “same-sex marriage.” Ultimately, these nine justices will decide recklessly either to deconstruct, radically redefine and render functionally trivial the age-old institution of natural marriage – or leave it alone.
They’d better leave it alone.
Here’s the bottom line: Homosexual activists don’t want the white picket fence. They want to burn down the white picket fence. The endgame is not to achieve so-called “marriage equality,” but, rather, to render marriage reality meaningless.
In a recent column headlined, “The Revolt of Intelligence Against ‘Marriage Equality,” worldview expert Rick Pearcey addressed one prominent “gay” activist’s admission that the destruction of natural marriage signifies the left’s ultimate cultural coup de grâce.
“Masha Gessen, a lesbian and a journalist, spoke frankly about this at a conference in Sydney, Australia,” he wrote. “‘It’s a no-brainer that we should have the right to marry,’ she said. ‘But I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. … ‘Marriage equality’ becomes ‘marriage elasticity,’ with the ultimate goal of ‘marriage extinction.’”
Still, if counterfeit “same-sex marriage” becomes the law of the land, then a whole lot more freaky deaky will follow before marriage extinction inevitably occurs.
One of liberals’ favorite Alinskyite defense mechanisms is to ridicule the opposition if confronted with some irrefutable argument against some hallowed left-wing delusion. Such is the tactic employed whenever a thinking person walks into the room and points out this big ol’ gay elephant: Once the government pretends that some vague combination of “love” and “consent” are all that a “marriage” requires, then other “arbitrary” and “discriminatory” parameters beyond a binary male-female prerequisite must also go poof.
That is to say, if the Court magically divines some constitutional right to “same-sex marriage,” then full “marriage equality” necessarily demands that polygamous, incestuous and any other equally aberrant nuptial cocktail be likewise permitted.
It’s a “no-brainer,” right?
To that end, I’m very concerned with the Supreme Court’s recent history of radically redefining that which cannot be redefined. Though examples abound, I’m thinking specifically, as concerns the topic at hand, of the Court’s 2003 holding in Lawrence v. Texas.
In Lawrence, the liberal majority, for the first time in history, radically redefined male-on-male sodomy – hitherto classified “a crime against nature” – as a “constitutional right.”
In his characteristically brilliant dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia voiced my concerns better than I can: “State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers’ validation of laws based on moral choices,” he wrote. “Every single one of these laws is called into question by today’s decision.”
So, if the high court removes one natural marriage parameter for one special-interest group, then “equal protection under the law” requires that it remove all natural marriage parameters for all special-interest groups.
Liberty Counsel made these very points in a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the Supreme Court: “Ultimately, there is no principled basis for recognizing a legality of same-sex marriage without simultaneously providing a basis for the legality of consensual polygamy or certain adult incestuous relationships,” noted the brief. “In fact, every argument for same-sex marriage is an argument for them as well.”
Another brief filed by 18 state attorneys general voiced similar concerns: “Once the natural limits that inhere in the relationship between a man and a woman can no longer sustain the definition of marriage, the conclusion that follows is that any grouping of adults would have an equal claim to marriage,” they wrote.
The brief further observed the self-evident “no-brainer” that legitimate marriage is “optimal for children and society at large.”
It’s all very simple. If anything is marriage, then everything is marriage. And if everything is marriage, then nothing is marriage at all. “‘Marriage equality’ becomes ‘marriage elasticity,’ with the ultimate goal of ‘marriage extinction.’”
I sincerely hope that the honorable and learned men and women who sit upon the highest bench in the land can recognize that all of these San Francisco-style social-engineering games are a deceptive means to a destructive end.
And it’s not the emotionalist end they’ve dolled-up and dished out. The left’s fierce push for “gay marriage” has nothing to do with “marriage equality” and everything to do with “marriage extinction.”
Or, as Ms. Gessen candidly put it: “[I]t’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist.”
I just pray that at least five justices still think it should.
There is nothing in our current legal system or national moral climate that will stop polygamy from becoming the next liberal cause:
“Redefining marriage to include same-sex couples would jettison the rationale and logic behind prohibitions on polygamous marriages, according to several friend-of-the court briefs urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the traditional definition of marriage.
“‘Ultimately, there is no principled basis for recognizing a legality of same-sex marriage without simultaneously providing a basis for the legality of consensual polygamy or certain adult incestuous relationships,’ reads one of the briefs, filed by the Christian legal group Liberty Counsel. ‘In fact, every argument for same-sex marriage is an argument for them as well.’”
The Netherlands is a microcosm of how the homosexual community hoodwinked this once-Christian nation into accepting a perversion. A former Dutch Member of Parliament “has admitted that polygamous marriage is the ‘next logical step’ following the introduction of same-sex marriages in the Netherlands.”
Serial polygamy is already accepted in America. People get married and divorced numerous times with little regard for marriage as a covenant bond. Hollywood types change wives like some people change shoes. Others don’t get married but live together, have children out of wedlock, and few people bat an eye.
Watch the Home and Garden Channel (HGTV) and note how many times non-married couples are living together and the number of homosexual couples that are featured.
In some respects, America is becoming a third-world nation. The cultural mores that made America great are quickly disappearing. Providentially there is a Christian and conservative counter culture that is quietly replacing the disintegrating secular worldview.
Abortion kills off future generations. Homosexuality is a sterile worldview. The only way homosexuality can flourish is by recruitment. I believe a good case can be made that homosexuality is the result of failed families, and that mostly means failed fathers.
The State has become the father figure to many young people. This is especially true in the Black community. The Welfare State made it financially easy for fathers to abandon their children and for the State to become a substitute parent.
Rulers have ever been tempted to play the role of father to their people. . . . When the provision of paternal security replaces the provision of justice as the function of the state, the state stops providing justice. . . . Those who are concerned about the chaos into which the criminal justice system has fallen should consider what the state’s function has become. Because the state can only be a bad imitation of a father, as a dancing bear act is of a ballerina, the protection of this Leviathan of a father turns out to be a bear hug.[1]
There’s something going on in the black community known as the Down Low.
“Ten years ago, the New York Times reported on a growing underground subculture in the black community known as Down Low, comprised largely of men who secretly engage in homosexual activity while living ‘straight’ lives in public.”
Why is this happening? Because a number of black men are looking for father figures, and they believe they can find it in other men.
The people who have gotten on the “gay train” don’t realize what it’s dragging behind it.
While many people make take the title of this article and say they have always been (and I would agree with their practice), the Democrat National Convention plans to drop not only an acknowledgement of Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, but also any reference to God from their party platform. I suppose they can do that, since they have already acknowledged the false god of Islam prior to the DNC this week.
Politico makes the comparison between the party platform of 2008 and 20012:
2008: Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.
2012: President Obama and the Democratic Party maintain an unshakable commitment to Israel’s security. A strong and secure Israel is vital to the United States not simply because we share strategic interests, but also because we share common values. For this reason, despite budgetary constraints, the President has worked with Congress to increase security assistance to Israel every single year since taking office, providing nearly $10 billion in the past three years. The administration has also worked to ensure Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region. And we have deepened defense cooperation — including funding the Iron Dome system — to help Israel address its most pressing threats, including the growing danger posed by rockets and missiles emanating from the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. The President’s consistent support for Israel’s right to defend itself and his steadfast opposition to any attempt to delegitimize Israel on the world stage are further evidence of our enduring commitment to Israel’s security.
It is precisely because of this commitment that President Obama and the Democratic Party seek peace between Israelis and Palestinians. A just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian accord, producing two states for two peoples, would contribute to regional stability and help sustain Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state. At the same time, the President has made clear that there will be no lasting peace unless Israel’s security concerns are met. President Obama will continue to press Arab states to reach out to Israel. We will continue to support Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, which have been pillars of peace and stability in the region for many years. And even as the President and the Democratic Party continue to encourage all parties to be resolute in the pursuit of peace, we will insist that any Palestinian partner must recognize Israel’s right to exist, reject violence, and adhere to existing agreements.
Elsewhere in the region, President Obama is committed to maintaining robust security cooperation with Gulf Cooperation Council states and our other partners aimed at deterring aggression, checking Iran’s destabilizing activities, ensuring the free flow of commerce essential to the global economy, and building a regional security architecture (?) to counter terrorism, proliferation, ballistic missiles, piracy, and other common threats.
While I am no dispensationalist, I do acknowledge a nation’s right to declare their own capitol, and as such, the nations of the world should acknowledge that particular city as that nation’s capitol. The Democrat party does not have the right to determine what city is the capitol of Israel. Only Israel can do that. But it seems the DNC is siding with some of their esteemed colleagues in the Muslim Brotherhood and the Bureau of Indigenous Muslim Affairs (BIMA) on this issue. It makes sense seeing that they have both welcomed the Muslim Brotherhood and BIMA with their Jumah prayers prior to the DNC in Charlotte.
CBN also reports that references to God have also been stricken from the platform. David Brody writes,
Guess what? God’s name has been removed from the Democratic National Committee platform.
This is the paragraph that was in the 2008 platform:
“We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.”
Now the words “God-given” have been removed. The paragraph has been restructured to say this:
“We gather to reclaim the basic bargain that built the largest middle class and the most prosperous nation on Earth – the simple principle that in America, hard work should pay off, responsibility should be rewarded, and each one of us should be able to go as far as our talent and drive take us.”
While DNC’s platform does contain a section about “faith,” it never addresses what or who that faith is in. That section reads:
“Faith has always been a central part of the American story, and it has been a driving force of progress and justice throughout our history. We know that our nation, our communities, and our lives are made vastly stronger and richer by faith and the countless acts of justice and mercy it inspires. Faith- based organizations (not identified) will always be critical allies in meeting the challenges that face our nation and our world – from domestic and global poverty, to climate change and human trafficking. People of faith and religious organizations do amazing work in communities across this country and the world, and we believe in lifting up and valuing that good work, and finding ways to support it where possible. We believe in constitutionally sound, evidence-based partnerships with faith-based and other non-profit organizations to serve those in need and advance our shared interests. There is no conflict between supporting faith-based institutions and respecting our Constitution, and a full commitment to both principles is essential for the continued flourishing of both faith and country.”
So we can now say that the Democrat party has officially declared itself “Godless.”
I have shared with you some research into words and phrases the Left throws out there hoping no one will look them up to understand the Marxist/Socialist foundational belief system. This is Part One of an article I believe everyone should read. It validates what I sent you about “Social Justice” and Collectivism”. It will take a while to read. Pleas do so with patience and understanding. What you do with it afterward is between you and your conscious.
Interview: Obama Had Marxist Vision For US At Occidental College
Has anyone ever been interested in President Obama’s ideological past? What were Obama’s beliefs while he was at Occidental? Several interviews by Dr. John Drew during the 2008 campaign cycle gave some insight, but few were interested at that time in what Obama really believed when he attended Occidental College. (See “Meeting Young Obama” and “Even Republicans Rejected Info About Obama’s Past” at www.americanthinker.com/john_drew/). Dr. Drew wrote, “Meeting Obama”, about Obama and his ideology about taking the United States over and making it fail so the, “revolution” could in his article “Meeting Young Obama” on February 24, 2011. He clearly remembers what Obama stated, in his own words, “Like it was yesterday”. Obama espoused without hesitation, “There’s going to be a revolution,” saying, “we need to be organized and grow the movement.” This is disturbing due to the fact what our nation is going through right now drives it to the edge of failure; just what the young Obama stated he wanted to accomplish in 1980: the end of capitalism in the United States.
Obama has in the last three years been declaring, the people with money are the problem with the United States. This reflects back to his Marxist/Socialist training while he was at Occidental College. Obama discussed this ideology with young John Drew during a Christmas break when Drew visited his then girlfriend, Caroline Boss. It was during his visit that he met Obama face to Face. Dr. Drew stated the man Obama had shown up with was an individual by the name of; Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, a 21-year-old Pakistani student Obama hung around with along with Chandoo’s girl friend, Margot Mifflin. All of them were fervent with their ideas of Marxist and Socialist ideology. Dr. Drew gave context to his recollections with the observation he had also read other stories about how Obama had dreamed of working to bring the downfall of Capitalism. Today it looks like Obama is working very hard to obtain those 1980 dreams.
In the below interview, Dr. Drew will, of course, refer to Dr. John Drew and LP will refer to the author of this piece, Louis Puissegur.
Dr. Drew began; “I know Stanley Kurtz’s book, Radical in Chief , that Obama has ties with the Midwest Acadamy, kind of like the Socialist training ground for America. I think that most Americans don’t understand that Obama
has a longstanding tie to Marxism, that is even longer then his ties to Reverend Right.”
LP; “That’s right, he(Obama), didn’t go to Reverend Wright until after he was married.”
Dr. Drew; “Right, I mean, the way I look at it, Barack Obama was probably at least a Communist sympathizer when he came out of high school, he was definitely a Marxist revolutionary when I met him in 1980. It doesn’t look like he
changed a bit, he started hanging out with Bill Ayers.”
LP; “You saw him just before Obama went to Pakistan.”
Dr.Drew; “Exactly, the last time I saw Obama was June 1981, we had a graduation party for Occidental College. I guess he left from there and went on this tour in Indonesia, and somehow got into Pakistan, I guess you were not allowed to do that on a United States passport at that time.”
LP; “How long did you have an association with Obama?”
Dr. Drew; “It is kind of complex, the actual time I spent with Obama was sort of brief and limited, but he was part of my social sphere in the sense I knew his roommate at the time, Chandoo, and Obama was a member of the Democratic Socialist Alliance at Occidental and my girlfriend, Caroline Boss was the co-president of that organization.”
LP; “Democratic Socialist Alliance?”
Dr. Drew; “Yes, that was the Marxist student association on campus, Caroline hung up a huge banner of Karl Marx where the students met at the Occidental College Quad. She and I were pretty intense Marxists we had been involved in about a two-year relationship and she was the one who introduced me to Barack Obama, she knew him better then I did. I wouldn’t be saying he was a Marxist/Socialist revolutionary if it was just based with my face to face talk with him, my comments are based on knowing Chandoo, having known Caroline and the Marxist Professors and that whole culture.”
LP; “Another words, the people he was associated with were deep into the Marxist/Socialist ideology?”
Dr. Drew; “Oh yes, I had considered myself as the enemy of the American government at that time.”
LP: “At that particular time? And what made you change?”
Dr. Drew; “Well, the first thing that happened was kind of spiritual change, I just started having the religious experience, I realized that there was something out there which I now call a higher power. That was very inconsistent with Marxist ideology. Because Marxist taught that stuff like that was just the opium of the people, but to me it was very real, so very real. Then my Doctoral research ended up just confirming a lot of Marxist theory which comes to explain how welfare programs and how Capitalism deals with child labor and things like that. My research pulled me out of Marxism fundamentally but what started it was the spiritual change.”
LP; “How many actual face to face meetings did you have with Obama?”
Dr. Drew; “I never had face to face after Christmas and in Partolo Valley California which is near Stanford. I basically spent the day with him, Chandoo, and Caroline Boss, I was visiting Boss from Cornell where I was studying. I graduated ahead of them but I had come back for the trip to be with Caroline. We hung out with Obama and Chandoo for that day and went out to lunch then we ended up arguing pretty late in the evening about Marxist and politics. Whether or not there would be a revolution, a Communist style revolution in the United States. The key takeaway there is that I may have been one of the first people in the world to confront Barack Obama’s kind of silly belief, Marxist idea that there was going to be an inevitable Communist revolution coming to the United States. I feel in my heart that I had persuaded him that that wasn’t in the cards and it wasn’t going to happen and at the end of that time he believed me. I think a bunch of us, Marxist Communist style people were turned off by a Communist style revolution I think that Obama would have heard that from someone else eventually, but from his reaction, I think I was the first person that he could identify as an ally, and a friend and supporter who sincerely believes that there would never be a Communist style revolution. That debate I think helped Obama intellectually, but it helped seal the end of my romantic relationship with Marxist.”
LP; “Obama was a student there the whole time?”
Dr. Drew; “Yes he was a student at Occidental College and he was taking classes from Roger Boesche, who was a political theorist on campus. Roger was definitely a Socialist. Most of the students followed him as a Marxist revolutionary, but he was kind of precise with that and did not see himself as a Marxist. I would say that 100% of the students considered him to be a Marxist/Socialist.”
LP; “Obama had to have some sort of girlfriends, or was he kind of all alone.”
Dr. Drew; “I think this is very unusual but I can say that I saw Barack Obama about 3 or 4 other times on campus and off campus at parties. As God as my witness, I can say that I never saw Barack Obama with a young woman. I never saw any romantic connections with a young woman or even any socializing with a young woman that had a romantic nature.”
LP; “So he was pretty much by himself all the time?”
Dr. Drew; “I am just a small piece of the puzzle, but if I had ever seen him with a girl, I would be happy to say that, but I did not notice that. If anything I thought that the young Obama was kind of the feminine and he seemed to have a very strong emotional tie to Hasan Chandoo.”
LP; “Now did Chandoo have a girlfriend?”
Dr. Drew; “Yes, Chandoo did have a girlfriend, her name was Margot Mifflin. It was kind of interesting that Chandoo had a girlfriend, Margot Mifflin, who is still in the news today, she is a professor at I think NYU. Caroline Boss had a boyfriend, me, and I am in the news about Barack Obama, but there is not a single girl out there that says she was Obama’s girlfriend.”
LP; “I seem to recall an article you wrote about Obama riding in a big fancy car with Chandoo.”
Dr. Drew; “Yes, Chandoo was very wealthy and he drove a very expensive, very nice luxury car. It was ten times better then the normal Occidental student would drive. One of my theories is that Barack Obama had a good time at Occidental College because of the financial generosity of Chandoo. That was one of the places that Obama learned that rich people would give him money just because he was a nice handsome ideologically consistent person.”
LP: “Do you know or did any one say he had a Visa when he was going to Occidental?”
Dr. Drew; “That I don’t have any knowledge of I don’t I called him Barry, but I don’t remember if he was introduced as Barry Soetoro or Barry Obama. I just remember I called him Barry and I don’t know anything about his citizen
status.”
LP; “How long did he hang around with Chandoo?”
Dr. Drew; “Chandoo is a life long friend of Barack Obama. Chandoo attended Obama’s marriage to Michelle, I think that was 1992 or 1993 or something like that. Chandoo was at their marriage and he was also at a recent Ramadan Dinner at the White House. He is one of those $600,000 bundlers for Obama. Chandoo has been a part of Obama’s life at least since 1980.”
LP; “So Chandoo is a bundler for Obama too?”
Dr. Drew; “Yes, Chandoo would go out and raise contributions from people then put all those checks in a bundle, then deliver it over to the campaign headquarters.”
LP:” Is Chandoo a US Citizen or is he a Pakistani?”
Dr. Drew; “He is living in New York, in America.”
LP: “About how many hours had you spent with Obama?”
Dr. Drew; “I would say that altogether it was about 10 to 12 hours.”
LP; “During that time did Obama display the Marxist ideology?”
Dr. Drew; “We were confiding in each other the way people fight with each other people with major historical struggles in communicating, very down to earth, very honest. Like I said, I am ashamed of my Socialist/Marxist past, I have a conversion story which explains how I became a Christian, Constitutional Conservative. Barack Obama has no conversion story. There is a story about how he stopped being a Marxist, if anything his career, life shows an alarming consistency in his ideological extremism.”
LP; “Do you see the same Marxist ideology now with Barack Obama?”
Dr. Drew; “Yes, especially when he talks about the people holding on to their guns and religion because of economic stress. That is a Marxist idea. Everything he says about it being a good idea to spread the wealth around; that is Marxist/Socialist concepts. Some of the statements Obama makes about things inevitably get better, I think that is a Marxist ideological remnants.”
LP; “I noticed in one of your articles you said it would never happen but Obama said yes it will.”
Dr. Drew; “Yes, I remember that very clearly, even some 20 years later because he thought I was nuts. He thought that I was going against everything he had been taught at Occidental College. I persuaded him, I told Obama there has never been a revolution in Italy, France, Germany, why would you expect one here in America? I said revolutions only occur in backwards raring economies, like China, Vietnam or Russia, not in America.”
LP; “How did he accept your idea?”
Dr. Drew; “I think he believed that the economic stresses would pile up worse and worse and after the stresses built up they would just build up to a breaking point where a new group would take over the country. That would be a large group of workers, students, young people, those who were enlightened by Marxist/Socialist ideology would end up running things.”
LP: “Did Obama ever mention Cloward/Pivens?”
Dr. Drew; “No never did, but he might have bumped into her when he was at Columbia because she taught at Columbia. Part of my research disconcerns the Piven and Cloward teachings that welfare programs rise in reaction to violence and rioting from the lower class. I was able to show that that was not true in America. I perceive Obama as being an out and out liar; hiding his real views from the American people. I think those views are deeply objectionable to most people and I am shocked that more media attention hasn’t been focused on vetting Obama and getting down to brass tacks about how he really is.” (see additional information at end.(1))
LP: “Did Obama ever throw money around when he was with Chandoo?”
Dr. Drew; “He hung with Chandoo, but the impression I had with Obama was that they were both very wealthy. I thought that Barack Obama was a descendent from royalty from the way he carries himself. It did turn out that he did spend his summers on the grounds of the palace of the sultan of Jakarta in Indonesia. According to David Remnick,(“The Bridge, Alfred A. Knopf, 2010, page 104”), that is where Obama would spend his summers. So he actually did grow up on the grounds of an Indonesian Palace. Through his step-father, Lolo Soertoro, he actually had ties to the royal family.” (See addition below(2).)
Now with all this stated by Dr. Drew, one has to ask, has Barack Obama moved away from his Marxist, Radical, Socialist Ideology? Has Barack Obama, the man holding the highest office in the United States “hidden” his true agenda, the one he so proudly proclaimed while at Occidental College? One must now consider: just what are the President’s motives behind producing continued debt upon the United States? Is this meant to further what Dr. Drew so clearly remembers: End Capitalism?
These questions should have been asked in 2008. They must be answered in truth today as the American people continue daily to struggle with the Marxist/Socialist ideals foist upon them by Barack Hussein Obama dedicated to them, ideals which have yet to succeed in all of human history. Some pundits state this is a propaganda used historically by Marxist and Socialist regimes, using the single word “forward” as their base. Has Obama finally given America a true reflection of his days as a revolutionary radical Marxist/Socialist?
(1.) My take on Piven and Cloward is included in my published doctoral dissertation in this book, The American Welfare System: Origins, Structure, and Effects. I demonstrated that there was no relationship between street violence or riots and the later rise of the Progressive Era Mothers’ Pensions movement.”
(2.) Information about how Obama’s mother lived on the grounds of the palace of the Sultan of Yogakarta is available in David Remnick’s book, The Bridge, on pages 84-88.
It’s hard for men to speak out on the issue of abortion and rape. First, men do not get pregnant, and second, men rarely get raped by women, although it does happen. Rape is not about sex. It’s about power and domination.
So when Todd Akin used the phrase “illegitimate rape,” it sounded chauvinistic. Is there any other kind of rape? Isn’t all rape “illegitimate”? By definition, rape is illegitimate.
I believe the reason so many men like Sean Hannity and Mitt Romney threw Akin under the bus so quickly is that there was no way they were going to win an argument with an already biased pro-Obama media and the pro-abortion attack machine that’s always on the march.
While doing my daily reading to keep up on the news, I can across a post from a victim of rape. Not only was she raped, but she was conceived as the result of a rape. Her name is Rebecca Kiessling, and she writes the following:
“Though I’ve previously written that the comment [by Congressman Akin] was a faux pas and unnecessarily uttered, I’d like to address the underlying implications of such a statement, which was very similar to Ron Paul’s phraseology about an ‘honest rape’ when he too was asked about abortion in the case of rape. Are legislators really to blame for implying that there are false claims of rape? Is there a history of illegitimate rape claims, particularly as it relates to this issue of pregnancy and rape? Do some women fabricate these claims? If so, who is to blame for any tendency in our society to question the veracity of rape victims’ accounts? Skeptical lawmakers, judges, juries, media, and the public, or the women who have cried wolf?
Remember that Rebecca is a victim and product of rape. When she was in law school she was beaten up by her “boyfriend” that left her with a broken jaw, loose teeth, and a crushed upper jaw. This experience led her into family law. She continues:
“As a young attorney, I was idealistic and naïve – absolutely indignant that any judge or Friend of the Court referee would dare question the claims of a victim of domestic violence. After all, she finally had the courage to leave the abusive situation after having been threatened, abused and terrorized. How on Earth could a judge or Friend of the Court referee doubt her account and refuse to grant, or dismiss, a Personal Protection Order? I thought that these people must be uncaring women-haters, showing deference only to men. Maybe they were even abusers themselves?!”
It was through experience that she learned that some of her clients lied about their claims of domestic violence so they could get the upper hand in a divorce or child custody dispute. “Finally, the reality struck me,” she writes. “These judges are skeptical because there are women who cry wolf. That’s when I began seeing the judges in a new light, and my resentment grew toward the women who lied. I saw the reality that my clients who really were abused had a difficult time with the court system because of these other women who were ruining it for the real victims.”
Because she needed extensive reconstructive dental work done, she had been referred to a free service of the Give Back A Smile Program. Because it was free and offered to people of domestic violence, she had to prove she was a “legitimate victim,” that she wasn’t a fraud. The scrutiny was not because the people involved in the program were not sensitive to the issue of rape; it was “the result of women who have cried wolf.”
Do women lie about being rape? Not all of them, and it’s the liars that make it bad for real victims. Rebecca Kiessling mentions “the Duke LaCrosse team false rape claim case.” But there’s an even more famous case that served as the basis of the 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion case — the testimony of Norma McCorvey — Jane Roe. It was her claim of rape that set the case in motion. This is her testimony on January 21, 1998, before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism, and Property Rights of the Senate Judiciary Committee:
“My name is Norma McCorvey. I’m sorry to admit that I’m the Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade. The affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court didn’t happen the way I said it did, pure and simple. I lied! Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffey needed an extreme case to make their client look pitiable. Rape seemed to be the ticket. What made rape even worse? A gang rape! It all started out as a little lie, but my little lie grew and became more horrible with each telling.”
The death of tens of millions of pre-born babies is the result of the pro-abortion community lying about rape. Rebecca Kiessling sums it up nicely:
“So the next time you hear anyone complaining about Todd Akin’s ‘legitimate rape’ remark, I want you to remember that abortion rights activists are the women who cried wolf. They are the ones who are squarely responsible for the skepticism we see today regarding women who claim to be pregnant by rape, and they’ve set an example for other women to lie about it too. For those on the left who criticize Akin, I can assuredly call you out as hypocrites.
Let’s petition to get Rebecca Kiessling to speak at the Republican National Convention. Every American should hear her story.
I am constantly disgusted with what I hear people say. They either parrot what they have heard someone say, or they have no clue what is really going on in the country. Considering the fact that we average less than 50% of Americans voting, the reasons are becoming more and more evident.
Jessie Waters, of the O’Reilly Factor, does on the street interviews and asks the public questions about our society, politics and entertainment. It astonishes me the number of people who cannot name the President, or know what is really going on in the world, or politics. Yet they can name entertainers, actors, and whatever they are doing. The lack of knowledge is a growing problem in America and one of the main reasons we are experiencing such a rapid decline in our society.
In the book of Hoses, chapter 4, verse 6, God is recorded as saying, “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.” (NIV). That has prompted me to add to the series of “Preparing to Vote” that my dad has started, and I have shared with you.
Often I ask people around me to define certain terms we hear politicians from the Left using on a regular bases. No one has been able to give a definition, yet they acknowledge they have heard the words or phrases. I believe the Left is counting on people NOT researching these words which unmasks their true intentions and beliefs.
Social justice is justice exercised within a society, particularly as it is exercised by and among the various social classes of that society. A socially just society is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, understands and values human rights, and recognizes the dignity of every human being.[1][2][3]
The term and modern concept of “social justice” was coined by the JesuitLuigi Taparelli in 1840 based on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas and given further exposure in 1848 by Antonio Rosmini-Serbati.[1][2][6][7][8] The word has taken on a very controverted and variable meaning, depending on who is using it. The idea was elaborated by the moral theologian John A. Ryan, who initiated the concept of a living wage. Father Coughlin also used the term in his publications in the 1930s and the 1940s. It is a part of Catholic social teaching, the Protestants’ Social Gospel, and is one of the Four Pillars of the Green Party upheld by green parties worldwide. Social justice as a secular concept, distinct from religious teachings, emerged mainly in the late twentieth century, influenced primarily by philosopher John Rawls. Some tenets of social justice have been adopted by those on the left of the political spectrum.
In To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks states that social justice has a central place in Judaism. One of Judaism’s most distinctive and challenging ideas is its ethics of responsibility reflected in the concepts of simcha (“gladness” or “joy”), tzedakah (“the religious obligation to perform charity and philanthropic acts”), chesed (“deeds of kindness”), and tikkun olam (“repairing the world”).
Catholic social teaching consists of those aspects of Roman Catholic doctrine which relate to matters dealing with the collective aspect of humanity. A distinctive feature of the Catholic social doctrine is their concern for the poorest members of society. Two of the seven key areas[9] of “Catholic social teaching” are pertinent to social justice:
Life and dignity of the human person: The foundational principle of all “Catholic Social Teaching” is the sanctity of all human life and the inherent dignity of every human person. Human life must be valued above all material possessions.
Preferential option for the poor and vulnerable: Catholics believe Jesus taught that on the Day of Judgement God will ask what each person did to help the poor and needy: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”[10] The Catholic Church believes that through words, prayers and deeds one must show solidarity with, and compassion for, the poor. The moral test of any society is “how it treats its most vulnerable members. The poor have the most urgent moral claim on the conscience of the nation. People are called to look at public policy decisions in terms of how they affect the poor.”[11]
Even before it was propounded in the Catholic social doctrine, social justice appeared regularly in the history of the Catholic Church:
The term “social justice” was adopted by the JesuitLuigi Taparelli in the 1840s, based on the work of St. Thomas Aquinas. He wrote extensively in his journal Civiltà Cattolica, engaging both capitalist and socialist theories from a natural law viewpoint. His basic premise was that the rival economic theories, based on subjective Cartesian thinking, undermined the unity of society present in Thomisticmetaphysics; neither the liberal capitalists nor the communists concerned themselves with public moralphilosophy.
Pope Leo XIII, who studied under Taparelli, published in 1891 the encyclicalRerum Novarum (On the Condition of the Working Classes), rejecting both socialism and capitalism, while defending labor unions and private property. He stated that society should be based on cooperation and not class conflict and competition. In this document, Leo set out the Catholic Church’s response to the social instability and labor conflict that had arisen in the wake of industrialization and had led to the rise of socialism. The Pope advocated that the role of the State was to promote social justice through the protection of rights, while the Church must speak out on social issues in order to teach correct social principles and ensure class harmony.
The encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (On Reconstruction of the Social Order, literally “in the fortieth year”) of 1931 by Pope Pius XI, encourages a living wage, subsidiarity, and advocates that social justice is a personal virtue as well as an attribute of the social order, saying that society can be just only if individuals and institutions are just.
Pope John Paul II added much to the corpus of the Catholic social teaching, penning three encyclicals which would deal with issues such as economics, politics, geo-political situations, ownership of the means of production, private property and the “social mortgage“, and private property. The encyclicals of Laborem Exercens, Solicitudo Rei Socialis, and Centesimus Annus are just a small portion of his overall contribution to Catholic social justice. Pope John Paul II was a strong advocate of justice and human rights, and spoke forcefully for the poor. He addresses issues such as the problems that technology can present should it be misused, and admits a fear that the “progress” of the world is not true progress at all, if it should denigrate the value of the human person.
Pope Benedict XVI‘s encyclical Deus Caritas Est (“God is Love”) of 2006 claims that justice is the defining concern of the state and the central concern of politics, and not of the church, which has charity as its central social concern. It said that the laity has the specific responsibility of pursuing social justice in civil society and that the church’s active role in social justice should be to inform the debate, using reason and natural law, and also by providing moral and spiritual formation for those involved in politics.
The official Catholic doctrine on social justice can be found in the book Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, published in 2004 and updated in 2006, by the Pontifical Council Iustitia et Pax
Please go to the link provided above to read more.
Does this explain why President Obama and the Left say and vote the way they do? Can you get in with them and continue the conversion of the United States of America into a Social Justice Socialist (or worst) nation? Are you planning to vote? Are you going to be an informed voter based on our own research? Are you going to sit back and let it all go to hell? Patriot or Unconcerned, self-absorbed, uncaring human taking up space?
Dr. David Barton is more of a historian than a Biblical speaker, but very famous for his knowledge of historical facts as well as Biblical truths.
Dr. David Barton – on Obama. “Respect the Office? Yes. Respect the Man in the Office? No, I am sorry to say.
I have noted that many elected officials, both Democrats and Republicans, called upon America to unite behind Obama. Well, I want to make it clear to all who will listen that I AM NOT uniting behind Obama! I will respect the Office which he holds, and I will acknowledge his abilities as an orator and wordsmith and pray for him, BUT that is it.
I have begun today to see what I can do to make sure that he is a one-term President!
Why am I doing this? It is because:
I do not share Obama’s vision or value system for America;
I do not share his Abortion beliefs;
I do not share his radical Marxist’s concept of re-distributing wealth;
I do not share his stated views on raising taxes on those who make$150,000+ (the ceiling has been changed three times since August);
I do not share his view that America is Arrogant;
I do not share his view that America is not a Christian Nation;
I do not share his view that the military should be reduced by 25%;
I do not share his view of amnesty and giving more to illegals than our American Citizens who need help;
I do not share his views on homosexuality and his definition of marriage;
I do not share his views that Radical Islam is our friend and Israel is our enemy who should give up any land;
I do not share his spiritual beliefs (at least the ones he has made public);
I do not share his beliefs on how to re-work the healthcare system in America;
I do not share his Strategic views of the Middle East; and
I certainly do not share his plan to sit down with terrorist regimes such as Iran.
Bottom line: my America is vastly different from Obama’s, and I have a higher obligation to my Country and my GOD to do what is Right!
For eight (8) years, the Liberals in our Society, led by numerous entertainers who would have no platform and no real credibility but for their celebrity status, have attacked President Bush, his family, and his spiritual beliefs!
They have not moved toward the center in their beliefs and their philosophies, and they never came together nor compromised their personal beliefs for the betterment of our Country!
They have portrayed my America as a land where everything is tolerated except being intolerant!
They have been a vocal and irreverent minority for years!
They have mocked and attacked the very core values so important to the founding and growth of our Country!
They have made every effort to remove the name of GOD or Jesus Christ from our Society!
They have challenged capital punishment, the right to bear firearms, and the most basic principles of our criminal code!
They have attacked one of the most fundamental of all Freedoms, the right of free speech!
Unite behind Obama? Never!
I am sure many of you who read this think that I am going overboard, but I refuse to retreat one more inch in favor of those whom I believe are the embodiment of Evil!
PRESIDENT BUSH made many mistakes during his Presidency, and I am not sure how history will judge him. However, I believe that he weighed his decisions in light of the long established Judeo-Christian principles of our Founding Fathers!!!
Majority rules in America, and I will honor the concept; however, I will fight with all of my power to be a voice in opposition to Obama and his “goals for America …” I am going to be a thorn in the side of those who, if left unchecked, will destroy our Country! Any more compromise is more defeat!
I pray that the results of this election will wake up many who have sat on the sidelines and allowed the Socialist-Marxist anti-GOD crowd to slowly change so much of what has been good in America!
My smash best seller “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America” has just come out in paperback — and not a moment too soon! Democrats always become especially mob-like during presidential election campaigns.
The “root cause” of the Democrats’ wild allegations against Republicans, their fear of change, their slogans and insane metaphors, are all explained by mass psychology, diagnosed more than a century ago by the French psychologist Gustave Le Bon, on whose work much of my own book is based.
Le Bon’s 1896 book, “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind,” was carefully read by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in order to learn how to incite mobs. Our liberals could have been Le Bon’s study subjects.
With the country drowning in debt and Medicare and Social Security on high-speed bullet trains to bankruptcy, the entire Democratic Party refuses to acknowledge mathematical facts. Instead, they incite the Democratic mob to hate Republicans by accusing them of wanting to kill old people.
According to a 2009 report — before Obama added another $5 trillion to the national debt — Obama’s own treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, stated that in less than 10 years, spending on major entitlement programs, plus interest payments on the national debt, would consume 92 cents of every dollar in federal revenue.
That means no money for an army, a navy, rockets, national parks, food inspectors, air traffic controllers, highways, and so on. Basically, the entire federal budget will be required just to pay for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — and the cost of borrowing money to pay for these programs.
When Social Security was enacted in 1935, the average lifespan was 61.7 years. Today, it’s almost 79 and rising. But liberals believe the age at which people can begin collecting Social Security must never, ever be changed, even to save Social Security itself.
Mobs, according to Le Bon, have a “fetish-like respect” for tradition, except moral traditions because crowds are too impulsive to be moral. That’s why liberals say our Constitution is a “living, breathing” document that sprouts rights to gay marriage and abortion, but the age at which Social Security and Medicare benefits kick in is written in stone.
Le Bon says that it is lucky “for the progress of civilization that the power of crowds only began to exist when the great discoveries of science and industry had already been effected.” If “democracies possessed the power they wield today at the time of the invention of mechanical looms or of the introduction of steam-power and of railways, the realization of these inventions would have been impossible.”
Liberals exhibit this exact groupthink fear of science not only toward light bulbs and nuclear power, but also toward medical inventions. Thus, when a majority of the country objected to Obamacare on the grounds that — among many other reasons — a government takeover of health care would destroy medical innovation, liberals stared in blank incomprehension.
They believe every drug, every diagnosis, every therapy, every cure that will ever be invented, has already been invented. Their job is to spread all the existing cures, while demonizing and stymieing pharmaceutical companies that make money by inventing new drugs.
Democrats haven’t the slightest concern about who will formulate new remedies because they are enraged at profit making and suspicious of scientific advancement.
Apart from cures that will never be invented, liberal elites will be mostly untouched by the rotten medical care to which they are consigning the rest of us. Note how Democrats’ friends, such as government unions, immediately received waivers from Obamacare. Rich or connected liberals, such as George Soros, Warren Buffett, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, will always have access to the best doctors, just as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez do.
It is similar to the way that Democrats, who refuse to pass school choice, always seem to bypass the disastrous public schools for their own children, who end up at Sidwell Friends or St. Albans.
Democrats don’t worry about how bankrupting Social Security and destroying the job market hurts black people, bitter divorcees and young people, because they can always demagogue these one-party Democratic voters simply by repeating that Republicans are racist, hate women and aren’t cool like Obama.
The truth is irrelevant; only slogans and fear mongering delight mobs.
The rest of us are forced to live in a lawless universe of no new pharmaceuticals, foreign doctors, gay marriage, girl soldiers, a health care system run by the post office, and bankrupt Social Security and Medicare systems, because liberals can’t enjoy their wealth unless other people are living in squalor.
The country will have the economy of Uganda, but Democrats will be in total control.
This morning a homosexual activist walked into a Christian Lobbyist office and began shooting. If not for the security man, the gunman would have killed or injured untold others. As it is, only the security man gave his life to save the others by was shot in the arm and then disarmed the gunman. The gunman is quoted as asking the security man not to kill him because the reason for his being there and shooting up the place was not “about you. It’s about what these people stand for.”
I told you that the Professional Pot Stirrers were keeping the pot of hate so stirred that this kind of thing would happen. It is only the beginning. It will happen much more as the hateful rhetoric of the Political Left gets more shrill, more hateful, more distorted and more demonized. They want this kind of violence so they can blame it on the Right, especially those that disagree with their stands. The Political Party that proclaims it is the “Tolerant Party”, practices INTOLERANCEwith anyone that does not share their point of view. Chick-fil-A anyone?
How sad that we have allowed our Society to fall so far that we have these circumstances. Express your God endowed, Constitutional Right, opinion in a public setting and you are labeled a HATER or some other label the Left has determined fits anyone expressing differing convictions. Hate breeds hate. Add to that dynamic the Professional Pot Stirrers efforts at bring the pot to boiling over, and riots and violence is the result.
Let us work harder that ever in history to get the truth out there and get every America Loving Patriot the get off their apathy and vote to rid ourselves of these Collectivist, Socialist, Extreme Left Wing cancers.
The secular left has mastered use of the Internet to further its extremist goals. In fact, President Obama’s web-based “Organizing for America” propaganda machine may have given him the 2008 election.
Let’s beat them at their own game.
To that end, I have a strange request. I’m asking each God-fearing, freedom-loving American who reads this column to forward it, post it, tweet it, print it out and give it to every pastor, priest or cleric you know. If you don’t know any, give it to someone who does.
Why? I agree with Barack Obama that November 2012 represents the most important election of our lifetimes – perhaps our history. Of course, that’s where my agreement with Mr. Obama both begins and abruptly ends.
Here’s the operable question: Do we want America “fundamentally transformed” to mirror the secular-socialist ideals of the radical leftist currently “occupying” the White House?
In Barack Obama’s America, individual freedom is trampled beneath jackboots as a matter of course. It’s already happening at an unprecedented rate.
One need only look to the HHS mandate forcing Christian groups – both Catholic and Protestant – to violate, under penalty of law, biblical prohibitions against abortion homicide.
Or consider recent attempts by multiple elected officials, all Democrats, to shutdown Chick-fil-A – a private, Christian-owned business – simply because its leadership holds the biblical view of marriage.
Is this George Washington’s America, or Joseph Stalin’s Russia?
It’s definitely not your father’s USA.
Instead, wouldn’t we prefer the America envisioned by our Founding Fathers? A constitutional republic wherein individual liberty – whether economic, First Amendment or Second Amendment-related – is sacrosanct and off limits?
Pastors, you’re it. You’re our front line of defense. It’s up to you to rally the troops. Now begins the second American Revolution and, as with the first, it’s on you – men of the cloth – to take the lead.
That is, if you hope to remain free to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Speaking of chicken: In recent years there’s been an epidemic of cultural inaction exhibited by far too many ministers of the gospel. It’s fear-based. “Oh, I don’t talk about political issues,” they say. “You know, ‘separation of Church and State’ and all that.”
Baloney.
If this is you – and only you and our Lord know for sure – you’ve been deceived by the enemies of God. You’ve chosen the easy way out – the path of least resistance. This is something Christ, whom all Christians are called to emulate, never did – not once.
So, respectfully, man-up, Padre! Be the “salt and light of the world,” as Christ so admonished.
But you don’t have to go it alone. There are detailed, easily digestible tools available. Civil-rights firm Liberty Counsel, for instance, is distributing more than 100,000 copies of “Silence is Not an Option,” a concise, though comprehensive, DVD and printed material collection informing pastors and churches about what is permissible regarding political activity (Please, get it for your church at LC.org or by calling 1-800-671-1776).
“The church must be empowered to confront the assaults on our culture, our faith, and our freedom,” said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel. ”I don’t want any pastor, church leader or lay person to say, ‘What more could I have done to protect life and liberty?’”
“Silencing people of faith in the public square has always been the goal of those who realize the influence that pastors, churches and people of faith have on elections. I want pastors to remove the muzzle and replace it with a megaphone,” he said. “Pastors and churches have a lot of freedom to address biblical and moral issues, to educate people about the candidates, and to encourage people to vote. Not one church has ever lost its tax-exemption for endorsing or opposing candidates or for supporting or opposing local, state or federal laws.”
Did you get that? Despite hundreds of thousands of threatening letters sent by hard-left groups like the ACLU and Barry Lynn’s Americans United, not a single church has lost tax-exemption for socio-political activity – zip, zero, nada. Not even for endorsing candidates from the pulpit.
Indeed, if these anti-Christian bullies had been around two-and-a-half centuries ago, and our forefathers had paid them any mind, we may never have had the first American Revolution.
Don’t let them halt the second.
We’re on the precipice of the abyss, and, pastors, I think you know it. But know this too: There’s a whole lot relating to both culture and politics you can both say and do, and very little – if anything – you can’t.
Churches can educate about political, moral and biblical issues. These kinds of issues – whether abortion, marriage, feeding the poor or any community issue – are never off limits from the pastor’s pulpit, even if politicians are also talking about them. “Silence is Not an Option” systematically addresses the misrepresentations used to muzzle America’s pastors and Christian leaders.
Leading up to Ronald Reagan’s landslide presidential victory in 1980, Rev. Jerry Falwell captured the crux of the church’s apathy problem: “What is wrong in America today?” he asked. “We preachers – and there are 340,000 of us who pastor churches – we hold the nation in our hand. And I say this to every preacher: We are going to stand accountable before God if we do not stand up and be counted.”
Dr. Falwell’s words ring no less true today.
Imagine the benefit to our culture if thousands of churches across America registered millions of Christians to vote. How about pledge-drives wherein pastors ask tens-of-millions of Christians to simply commit to voting biblical values?
The possibilities are limitless.
Proverbs 4:18 reminds us: “The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.”
Shine bright, salt and light. Don’t be choked into dark silence.
Written on Tuesday, August 7, 2012 by Ralph Barker
You are on the current Hate List if you are:
White Male
Prolife
Heterosexual
Christian
Chick-fil-A customer (New on the list)
Patriot
Conservative
Tea Party Member (God forbid!)
Republican
Love the founding fathers
Believe in free enterprise
Believe in guns
Believe in freedom of speech (non liberal, of course)
(If you said yes to any of the above, you are in danger of being singled out as an enemy of modern American society. You are at risk. If you checked two or more update your passport. If you checked three or more you don’t want to know)
This is a new America. It is not the country I was born in. It is not the country it was four years ago. Almost none of the currently accepted principles of life, mores, or ethics, are the ones that built the country. This is tragic.
This once great nation that had its roots firmly embedded in a biblical worldview is now rejecting the same at all levels. In order to enjoy the full benefits and respect of being an American, people must now, not tolerate, but embrace evil. They must openly accept homosexuality, abortion, pornography, and blasphemy. It’s “un-American” to do otherwise. You will suffer in some form if you don’t raise your PC quotient. From God’s point of view to succumb to this cultural pressure is sin[i].
Not only does our society think we should embrace the bad (pronounced “evil”) things, we must also not verbalize support for anything traditional. This includes marriage between a man and a woman, heterosexual lifestyle, not killing our babies, and holding off on sex until married (Now that’s a prehistoric idea).
It’s pretty scary to think that Dan Cathy, COO of Chick-fil-A fell under vicious attack simply because he believes the Bible and God’s definition of marriage. He basically stated that he feared for America, that we deserved God’s judgment, and that he supported traditional marriage.
This apparently is a crime against humanity according to many. Mr. Cathy’s sentiments were enough to start a war of the words and the worldviews. We are still engaged over the furor that these remarks brought out from the far left. It also launched an overwhelming response from the right, especially Christians.
The Chick-fil-a battle may turn out to be one of those “shots heard around the world.” It is already leading to other battle lines being drawn and the intensification of the rhetoric. It is unbelievable that mayors of some major cities, like San Francisco, would condemn a private company because its COO holds traditional beliefs.
Wednesday, August 1st was Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day. Governor Mike Huckabee had proposed a special day to support Chick-fil-A and it quickly mushroomed into a national effort. Over 200,000 had signed the pledge on Facebook to participate on the 1st. The number of people who signed on was quite large in spite of the fact that the signup page mysteriously disappeared for twelve hours. Then, suddenly, “Poof” it reappeared.
When August 1st arrived the nation wide support of Chick-fil-A was no less than incredible. Preliminary reports are that the company broke all sales records that day. Here in Ellijay, Georgia, where I live, the cars were lined up around the block and you could barely get in the door. This continued all day. It is noteworthy that some other fast food franchises, such as some of the individually owned Wendy’s, joined in support of Chick-fil-A at least until corporate told them to stop.
Dan Cathy has stirred the pot even though I don’t think that was on his mind at all when he made his comments. People on all sides of the issues are now heavily engaged in this war of the worldviews and this is a good thing. At least people are getting involved, but it can explode into violence or chaos. This would not be good for anyone.
We, I truly believe, are in danger of God’s judgment. Why shouldn’t He judge us? As a culture can we really claim that we are good? Do we honor Him or His Word? No.
I agree with Dan Cathy when he said, “…that we are a prideful and arrogant nation for having the audacity to think we can redefine marriage from something other than that between a man and a woman, and may God have mercy on us all.
[i] Sin, n. Webster’s 1828 Dictionary. 1. The voluntary departure of a moral agent from a known rule of rectitude or duty, prescribed by God; any voluntary transgression of the divine law, or violation of a divine command; a wicked act; iniquity. Sin is either a positive act in which a known divine law is violated, or it is the voluntary neglect to obey a positive divine command, or a rule of duty clearly implied in such command. Sin comprehends not action only, but neglect of known duty, all evil thoughts purposes, words and desires, whatever is contrary to God’s commands or law. 1 John 3. Matt. 15. James 4. Sinner neither enjoy the pleasures of nor the peace of piety. Among divines, sin is original or actual. Actual sin, above defined, is the act of a moral agent in violating a known rule of duty. Original sin, as generally understood, is native depravity of heart to the divine will, that corruption of nature of deterioration of the moral character of man, which is supposed to be the effect of Adam’s apostasy; and which manifests itself in moral agents by positive act of disobedience to the divine will, or by the voluntary neglect to comply with the express commands of God, which require that we should love God with all the heart and soul and strength and mind, and our neighbor as ourselves. This native depravity or alienation of affections from God and his law, is supposed to be what the apostle calls the carnal mind or mindedness, which is enmity against God, and is therefore denominated sin or sinfulness. Unpardonable sin, or blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, is supposed to be a malicious and obstinate rejection of Christ and the gospel plan of salvation, or a contemptuous resistance made to the influences and convictions of the Holy Spirit. Matt.12.
Remember during the Monica Lewinsky sagas, President Clinton decided to start a war to distract the populace. This has been a typical ploy by the Left to distract from the real topics and get the world talking about something else. Repeatedly the Left does this so they can control the national conversation.
Now we have Vice President Bidden and other White House people going on the talk shows talking about same-sex marriage. All of a sudden, the topic of conversation has shifted from the economy and joblessness to same-sex marriage. Do you really care what President Obama has to say about the subject?
This morning on the Meygn Kelly’s broadcast on FOX was a Left Wing strategist who made a very interesting comment as the segment ended. According to her, The Political Left intends to overturn the will of the people (30 States now have a law stating that marriage is between one man and one woman). Typical of the Left, when they do not get their way, they go to their partners in the courts to overturn the will of the people under the guise of protecting the minority from the majority.
I am one voter who is fed up with exercising my voting rights to have them overturned by a Socialist System of élite Left Wing Politicians and their willing Judicial Partners. That is the reason you are hearing so many people express their frustration with voting saying they are not going to bother to vote again when the Left can get their way no matter what. Based on that (at least in California) we are no longer a Country governed by a Representative Republic, but instead we are a pseudo Socialist state.
I am not giving up. As God as my witness I will keep up the fight for freedom and defend the constitution. How about you?
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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Dr. Michael Brown Guest Blogger, Distinguished Author, Speaker and Christian Apologist 
It’s called Pandora’s Box.
Hope Gabrielle Rodriguez. 22 year old nursing student at the University of South Alabama. I drink too much iced coffee and laugh way too loud.
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