Tag Archives: Family Proclamation to the World

Jul8

I’m OK With Being on the “Wrong” Side of History If It Means being Alright With God (and the US Constitution)

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“Eros ceases to be a devil only when it ceases to be a god”  C.S. Lewis

“They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall.” Doctrine and Covenants 1:16

When I heard about the Obergefell v. Hodges verdict on the morning of June 26, my heart sank. It did not fall because I am a bigoted, hateful, homophobic religious freak who wants to keep gays down, as most activists, or liberals in general, would claim. It sank because I believe in the Constitution, not case law; and I believe in States’ Rights in so much that I believe the voices of the people of each state have a right to be heard, even if the opinion(s) they voice aren’t trendy or popular with some who really like trendy and popular things. Seriously, for a political party that cries so loud and so hard about the “disenfranchised” voters (think back to the hanging chads in Florida during the 2000 election cycle), one would think Dems/ “Liberals,” who are the ones screaming louder than everyone else in favor of gay-everything (and against God-anything) would care a hair more about overturning the votes of millions in multiple states that included many of the same sorts of folks who were supposedly cast on the side lines during Bush v. Gore!man-woman

I also believe that unless a judge or a panel of judges can point directly to the Constitution when they make any legal decision, and in the case of Obergefell they didn’t even try, then a decision should not be allowed to stand. No, all the five unapologetic liberal judges (well, Kennedy, he doth vacillate) did was pull that decision out of their La-La Land handbag where the unicorns and rainbows frolic (the same place Roberts found his two decisions on Obamacare, btw). By doing so, these puffed up demigods in black gave the final “middle finger” salute to the faith and freedom of conscience held dear by millions upon millions of Americans. Indeed, the religious folks, at least that aren’t just marginally so (you know, those who believe more in the “social” gospel than the actual Gospel), and particularly those Christians, Jews, and Muslims who find much to object to even the concept of “gay marriage,” were just told that they may be looking at the final act of their REAL, unambiguous, not-court-created First Amendment rights in a variety of areas.

Is it not enough that kindly declining to participate in a gay marriage ceremony or celebration can cost a business owner his livelihood? Apparently not. It is clear to me, and has been since Massachusetts got gay marriage via judicial fiat that this issue was never, ever about “love;” it is about retribution, about punishing those who deviate from the current culturally dictated, media driven norms. It is about power. Love, and certainly not tolerance, not in the traditional sense of that word anyway,  play no part in this argument. No, this whole “Love is love” mantra that has been fabricated to appeal to the softened heads of “enlightened” Millennials and their ilk, is just a red herring. If it were just about love, then passing civil union laws and using existing contract law would do just fine. But what is loving about shutting down adoption agencies because they don’t want to adopt to gay couples (when others will)? What is loving about ruining someone’s business because they express a religious objection to participating, even obliquely, in a gay wedding (when others will)? What is loving about protesting and demeaning people of faith or firing individuals who support “traditional” marriage, or not allowing judges to be judges who are a part of groups like the Boy Scouts (California)? What is loving about being a small-minded totalitarian who demands acquiescence to what SOME in society have deemed the “new normal,” particularly when such a small fraction of society is actually even gay or just plain confused?  Does the majority have an obligation not to trounce upon the minority? Absolutely. Sadly, that is only a one way street in modern society. It is a classic case of the mouse who roared, but this mouse has fangs, carries a gavel, and had been given a pedestal and a bullhorn by the shortsighted folks who are also being into to the argument that men and women are exactly the same, that gender is a “social construct.” Geesh, and they think Creationists are delusional.

Not very Christian of me, you say? I never said I didn’t esteem the beliefs and lives of others, nor did I say I wish ill upon any individual or want others to be unhappy or downtrodden, but I have read more than just a few lines out of my Bible and other scriptures, and I’m pretty sure beyond the concept of loving others and not judging unrighteously, Christ and his Apostles also spoke of self-control, overcoming our very human natures, bridling our passions/ sexuality, being sexually pure, not being party to evil or being blown about by the opinions of society, not to mention drawing near to God with our lips, but being far from Him in our hearts, or trying to serving God and Mammon. And I’m quite sure nothing other than marriage between a man and a woman was ever sanctioned in any of the more successful world cultures throughout history. So, you’ll excuse me if I don’t support the current overhaul of society just for the sake of “love.” Destroying traditional marriage encompasses much, much more than that, as does shredding the Constitution.

Still, because there is so much to say, nay “feel,” as all we feel is now sacrosanct in modern thought (and case law), I’m going to include in this post a series of links that state more fully and articulately my concerns and frustrations about this subject and the SCOTUS ruling.

“If anyone says that sex, in itself, is bad, Christianity contradicts him at once. But, of course, when people say, ‘Sex is nothing to be ashamed of,’ they may mean ‘the state into which the sexual instinct has now got is nothing to be ashamed of’. If they mean that, I think they are wrong. I think it is everything to be ashamed of. There is nothing to be ashamed of in enjoying your food: there would be everything to be ashamed of if half the world made food the main interest of their lives and spent their time looking at pictures of food and dribbling and smacking their lips.” C.S. Lewis

#1 Judges, Hubris, and Same-Sex Marriage by Dennis Prager

#2 My own faith’s response to the ruling & The Family: A Proclaimation to the World

#3 Would You “Unfriend” Christianity? The Supreme Court Just Did

#4 The Dirty Dozen: Supreme Court Marriage Decision Launches 12 Religious Freedom Grenades

#5 Justice Roberts: “Just Who Do We Think We Are?”  (Would have been nice if he’d wondered that aloud with his atrocious SCOTUS care ruling!)

#6 The Supreme Court Ratifies a New Civic Religion That Is Incompatible with Christianity

#7 Let’s Drop the Charade: The Supreme Court Is a Political Branch, Not a Judicial One

#8 The Supreme Court Has Legalized Same-Sex Marriage: Now What?

#9 15 Reasons ‘Marriage Equality’ Is About Neither Marriage Nor Equality

#10 Here comes the bride. And another one. And another one! Meet world’s first married lesbian THREESOME . . . and they’re expecting a baby due in July   Truly, who gives a rip about the kids!

#11 Dems Declare War on the Words ‘Husband’ and ‘Wife’ Because mothers and fathers don’t matter, right? It’s just all about ‘love.’

#12 Thomas Sowell: Supreme Court Disasters Erode Freedom

#13 Male-Female Marriage Remains the Ideal  And not just “because”

Some Purely Secular Points, too:  Ten Arguments From Social Science Against Same-Sex Marriage; The Irrationality of Gay Marriage

jefferson

(Unless you are a harassing jerk)

Disagree? Feel free NOT to post. I’ll not be arguing with strangers or friends over this issue. Just suffice it to say that I’ll happily stand with my God, or my interpretation of His, and his prophets and apostles teachings on morality (that’s for ALL, straight and gay alike) and marriage, hence the cogent C.S. Lewis quotes. And I don’t care where that puts me in the mind of those who disagree.

“The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside of marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union.” C.S. Lewis

My opinion is just as valid as they suppose theirs to be, but mine is not based on the fluctuating opinions of a fallen world. I am very happy to agree to disagree, and to be friends with those who don’t embrace my worldview. I love many people with whom I disagree on various issues, and contend that political differences should not lead to the dissolution of friendships based on much more than politics. Others, I’ve noted, feel quite differently, however. To each his cup of tea.

_____________________________

Origin of C.S. Lewis quotes in order:
https://www.cslewis.com/blog/spiritual-sins-are-worse/
http://www.pureintimacy.org/s/sex-where-it-all-starts/
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/139095-if-anyone-says-that-sex-in-itself-is-bad-christianity

Jun5

Some Political Sort of Things That Caught My Eye Recently

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  • Barak Obama, Re-Founding Father, by Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal.  I am disheartened by Congress’s willingness to roll over and play dead, and the judiciary essentially rubber stamping everything Obama. We need a robust division of powers as George Will identifies in his BYU Forum Address “The Political Argument,” from Nov. 5, 2013. I fear our Republic won’t last much longer if we can’t expect more push and pull from our three branches of government.

Cogent bits of Henninger’s column: The central feature of Mr. Obama’s rewrite of what one might call the Founding Fathers’ original vision has been to abolish Congress. Yes, the 535 men and women elected to Congress still show up at the old Capitol building, as they have since November 1800. But once past passage of ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, the 44th president effectively retired Congress from its historic function. If you put the president behind the wheel of a car in front of the White House to visit Congress, he’d probably get lost.

“Obama’s power grabs” is Republican boilerplate. Voters don’t care about power grabs. But most voters, perhaps including many pre-2008 Democrats, still care about being represented in Washington as defined by the first Founding.

  • More wonderful words from George Will given April 21, 2015 at Yale’s William F. Buckley inaugural “Disinvitation Dinner.” Seriously, this is truly brilliant stuff infused with no small amount of humor. Here’s just a bit:

Yesterday, the Democratic Party, the oldest political party in the world, the party that guided this country through two world wars and is more responsible than any other for the shape of the modern American state—the Democratic Party’s leading and prohibitively favored front-runner candidate for the presidential nomination announced four goals for her public life going forward. One of which is to amend the Bill of Rights to make it less protective. It’s an astonishing event. She said that she wants to change the First Amendment in order to further empower the political class to regulate the quantity, content and timing of political speech about the political class—and so far as I can tell, there’s not a ripple of commentary about this in the stagnant waters of the American journalistic community.

 Well, the belief that the First Amendment is a mistake and that the real right that people have regarding speech is the right to avoid speech that annoys them. The column that got me here tonight, for which I am grateful to admit, contained the following sentence, and this is the one that got me into trouble. Roger mentioned it. I said: Colleges and universities are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous and when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims will proliferate. And to ensure that they proliferate, we have amended the doctrine of micro-aggressions and to the idea that one has an entitlement in our entitlement society to a cocoon of serenity everywhere.

 Well, as proof of this, I give you the following: I mentioned the Princeton Graduate School. No one at the Princeton Graduate School pays a dime of their expenses. They are by any measure the top one one-thousandth of one percent of the most privileged people who ever lived on this planet. And a few of them, the Black Graduate Caucus, the Latino Graduate Student Association, and Graduate Women of Color recently sent the following protest note to the Princeton administration because Princeton has shuffled their diversity and multicultural and sensitivity bureaucracy by adding two new people. Their protest said this: Princeton University has deepened the anguish and intensified the alienation of its graduate students of color. Stop laughing this is serious business. Students of color are constantly besieged by the racism at Princeton. Surviving Princeton for students like us is more than a struggle. It is a battle for one’s life and sanity for the dignity of one’s nonwhite flesh.

trigger-warning

This premier event is meant to celebrate those who have been “dis-invited” from speaking on college campuses in recent years- all because the left wing-nuts of the faculty or student body didn’t want others  to be able to hear an alternative point of view. The recent practice of silencing opposition is otherwise known as CENSORSHIP, INTOLERANCE, and CLOSED MINDEDNESS. Way to go, lefties. FYI: The freedom of speech isn’t just for you! Oh, yeah…Trigger warning!!

One more thing from George Will: The Speech Every 2015 College Grad Needs to Hear from Prager U.

Experience teaches us: in order to know oneself well and develop harmoniously, a human being needs the reciprocity of man and woman,” said Pope Francis.  “When that is lacking, one can see the consequences.”Those consequences fuel confusion and error, said the Pope. “For example, I ask myself, if the so-called gender theory is not, at the same time, an expression of frustration and resignation, which seeks to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it,” he said.  “Yes, we risk taking a step backwards.”

 “The removal of difference in fact creates a problem, not a solution,” said Pope Francis.

Seeking to change or dissolve the complementarity between man and woman produces intellectual, social and spiritual darkness, the Pope continued.  “God entrusted the earth to the alliance between man and woman: its failure deprives the earth of warmth and darkens the sky of hope,” he said in his April 15 audience.

The order established by God between man and woman and creation is the key to harmony, said the Pope.

“The great refamily-procsponsibility of the Church, of all believers, and first of all of believing families, which derives from us, impels people to rediscover the beauty of the creative design that also inscribes the image of God in the alliance between man and woman,” said the Pope.

He continued, “The earth is filled with harmony and trust when the alliance between man and woman is lived properly. And if man and woman seek it together, between themselves, and with God, without a doubt they will find it. Jesus encourages us explicitly to bear witness to this beauty, which is the image of God.”

My own faith said something quite similar in “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” in 1995.

 

  • EPA: Fracking Process NOT Harmful to Drinking Water. Great! Now, can we frack for gas, drill in ANWAR, build the XL Pipeline, and start exporting oil, too! All of which will create jobs and revenue and get us off of foreign oil. What is bad about any of that if undertaken in a “good stewardship” manner?
  • Proof that Some People Can Be Offended by ANYTHING! We have become ridiculously thin skinned. More than anything, people screaming about perceived offences need to be met with a brick wall of deafness to their complaints. Perhaps, if college administrators, bureaucrats, business owners, and book and magazine editors would give these individuals a sucker, a balloon, and a pat on the head (with a mallet) instead of a platform from which to cry, people would cease to be so offended.
  • I heard part of an interview on Dennis Prager’s radio program this week wherein he was interviewing Professor Alfred Mele on his new book “Free: Why Science Hasn’t Disproved Free Will.”  I found his words quite provocative, well, at least they would be for those who believe that we can’t possibly be held responsible for our actions for any number of exponentially expanding reasons from “My mama didn’t love me” to  “I was having a bad hair day “to “McDonald’s didn’t warn me their coffee would be hot.” Well, that’s just a bunch of crap, to be quite clear. Things have happened, will happen, and do happen to make it harder to make good decisions, but very few of us can ever claim what is essentially an insanity defense for any of our actions (keep in mind, I do believe that some are unable understand the weight of their decisions, but not near as many as the bleeding hearts would like). The same thing needs to happen to most who use this excuse for bad behaviour as I recommended in the above point: balloon, sucker, smack.

That’s all for now, I suppose. More later.