Monday, December 8, 2014
Gays, the New National Treasure
Some people think the societal embrace of homosexuality is no big deal. They think it can be safely accommodated, that we can be inclusive of it, that it won’t make much difference to anything we hold dear. Wrong. It’s a very big deal. Whether or not it has hit you personally or not, it’s a very big deal.
Make no mistake. When we make one group preferable, we denigrate the opposite group. Our society used to be against sexual immorality, including homosexuality, with laws forbidding it. In other words,sexual immorality used to be denigrated. Now, along with other bad behaviors, society has wholeheartedly accepted homosex with its blatant immorality, inordinate health and societal dangers, and total impotency. Besides the tragedy this brings to individuals, posterity, and families, the natural result on a societal scale is a denigration of its opposite. Society now denigrates normal decent sexual behaviors and has abandoned the most fundamental instinct of the human race, that is, to value its future posterity.
Yes, heterosexuality and everything that goes with it is now being harmed. Sounds nuts, but wait, just hear us out. We can see how this is happening what with intimidation and punishing of individuals and businesses that try to live and make a living according to the dictates of their conscience; the pressure on and persecution of religion and churches (mainly Christian); the rise of gay porn and gay businesses; the putting down of stay-at-home motherhood (going on for decades); the putting off or choice against marriage and children in favor of casual sex and self-centered money-making careers; the popularity of birth control, the barbarity of elective abortion (read: the despising of posterity); unwed mothers and fatherless children; government incentives for unwed mothering and children without fathers, fathers excused for abandoning their families to pursue the gay lifestyle, i.e. gay sex; no-fault divorce laws; disrespect for the Biblical marriage institution; smaller families; support for gay families/parenting, pro-gay indoctrination in education systems, and the many various other anti-humanity organizations and movements.
We're not saying total cultural decline will happen overnight. To borrow from Robert Bork who borrowed from Yeats, we are a nation slouching, but not any longer towards Bethlehem, towards Gomorrah. For some time our society has been on the latter rather than the former path, and we know what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. Obviously, as a society we can’t have it both ways. And the choice is being made.
Yes, homosex is now brave, cool, honest, laudable, while normal, moral heterosex and everything that the wisdom of the ages shows naturally goes with it (good health, chastity, traditional marriage, motherhood, fatherhood, big families, sacrifice, babies being allowed to be born) is quite out of style.How far we have come from when Mark Twain said, "Babies are national treasures." The way we carry on, having legalized the destruction of 60 million while celebrating totally sterile sexuality, it looks like we have substituted generations of innocent unborn babies for a tiny percentage of people of the same sex who lust after each other's bodies. Apparently, and societally speaking, it's now gays who are the national treasure.
Again we quote George Orwell. "[A]ll societies, as the price of survival, have to insist on a fairly high standard of sexual morality." With all his warning vision, we at SoL don't think he never saw this coming.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Murderers of Love
In the movie Dan in Real Life, there's one scene when his young teenage daughter lashes out because Dan makes some boundaries for seeing her boyfriend. Sobbing hysterically, she yells at her dad, "YOU ARE A MURDERER OF LOVE!" It's so innocently passionate and funny. But we have some real murderers of love in our midst and that isn't funny at all.
Ten years ago in 2004, a woman named Midge Decter gave a great speech at Hillsdale College titled "Civil Unions: Compromise or Surrender?" In it she said that gays weren't really about marriage at all, and allowing civil unions wouldn't solve anything. (Notice how the civil union idea never even got off the ground. They went straight for marriage.) She said, "They do not want what the rest of us have---they want to bring the whole house down." She was right. And it seems they are accomplishing just that.
Militant gays, in their rebellion against God, truth, reality, and goodness, are angry people and angry people can be destructive. Even one person can reek a great deal of destruction. But don't look for bombings and shootings. This crime against humanity is being committed in slow motion, in subtle and disguised ways. It's sinking into the pores of an entire generation, practically undetected. For instance, Apple's CEO came out recently as gay and of course the news media is making a great celebration of it. Why? Why do we all need to know this highly personal thing about this man? Isn't sex private? Aren't we getting sick of people telling us what they think about and do sexually? The truth is, the only reason people are publicly proclaiming and celebrating this perverse sexual identity is to force the acceptance of all things homosex on everybody. Otherwise they'd at least be quiet about what should be private, and shameful too. Truth be told, this isn't so much about flesh and blood individuals as it is about principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12).
Today on talk radio one male caller said to the male host," I love you," adding hastily, "but not in a homosexual way." Have you noticed that conservative people now often must refer to love and marriage by qualifying it with words such as "between a man and woman" or "traditional" or "natural?" Love as we know it, as it has been known through the millennia, is on the defensive, and when something so biologically basic and socially certain has to be defended in every arena and in every way in order to merely exist, it's taking its last breaths.
Apparently, the only kind of love that should be sexualized, the kind that consummates itself in sexual union between husband and wife and celebrates itself most fully in procreation, has been abducted, is being tortured beyond recognition, and will end up dead, and along with it will go every other kind of love.
When you redefine something, you change it into something else. When you redefine romantic love to make it possible between same sexes, you have destroyed what it is, what is means, what it does, and made it into something entirely different. Quite suddenly (relatively speaking in reference to the existence of humankind on the earth) marriage is not an institution to make a secure home for children, but a disposable institution to legitimize adult whims. Quite suddenly romantic love isn't something that leads to marriage and children, but is being considered in many forums as open to any coupling or grouping. Human nature proves those whims will have no bounds. As Dan in the movie knew, there's a time and place for that certain kind of love and if it isn't restrained within certain boundaries somebody gets hurt.
Midge Decter concludes, " . . . I want us to stick up for ourselves and the way we live, be as mighty a force in the culture as we are entitled to be if nothing else by the virtue of our sheer numbers. I want us to resist all attacks on the way we live, whether from our kids, our grandkids, their momentary culture heroes, or from the overpaid, mindless, sheep-like followers of fashion in the press and academic community who make so much noise in the world around us every day. Let us be decent, civil and even loving to our homosexual fellow citizens; but draw the line on what they stand for and everything else that makes light of our existence." She's correct. It's our obligation to future generations to stand for our way of life, which means we must stand against creeping homosexualism and the like.
Alas, a lot has happened in the ten years since she said that. Standing against homosexuality is proving to be increasingly difficult, even punishable. The line Midge Decter spoke about has been blurred and is in the process of being erased. Because of sheep-like political correctness, fear, misinformation, intimidation, compromises,concessions, and examples being made of those who dare to resist, hardly anybody is putting up any defense at all anymore. Roger Scruton wrote,
"Homosexual acts should be discussed with an open mind, with a view to making a distinction between what is normal or abnormal, right or wrong, what fulfills our sexual nature and what frustrates it."
Such discussions, and those about the inordinate dangers and health risks of legitimized homosexuality to individuals and society are no longer welcomed, considered, or even allowed. Even churches are falling in line, instructing their members to welcome homosexual identity, homosexual behavior, and gay marriage into their midst, holding gay sensitivity meetings and conferences, and installing gay leaders, all of which necessarily cuts off any of the above important discussions. This very day at Notre Dame the Catholic Church is putting on a conference called "Gay in Christ." Gays and other homosexualists, calculating on their own advantage, are wiping out "the old certainties that once bound communities and societies together (Mark Dooley on Scruton)."
"Normalization of homosexuality imposes large social cost," said Scruton. It's an act of destruction, of a kind of murder, and the essential distinction between types of love, sexual and nonsexual, is one of those losses. It seems we are losing our ability to discriminate, to judge, to discern between Plato's philia (friendship), agape (pure love, charity), and eros (romantic, sexual), between C. S. Lewis's distinct "four loves." We are living in a time when there are no boundaries for human feelings, when every current whim, even of inexperienced children, regarding gender identity, affection, or attraction can and will be grossly sexualized without restraint.
Truth be told, gay activists and the great majority of gays don't care a whit about marriage or anything that goes with it. Derek Washington of Get Equal Nevada, when relatively few same-sex couples took advantage of their new "right" to marriage recently, admitted that it was never about numbers. “I could care less about same-sex marriage legalization except that it’s a constitutional right,” he said. “That’s more what it was about than the actual people waiting to get married, to be honest. Marriage is just one step on our road to full equality. I firmly believe that.” And does this disordered behavior deserve the status of a right, of being equal to heterosexuality? No. Gay sex is fake sex, gay sex is lawless and dangerous, and most gays don't share their lives with their same-sex partners the way opposite sexes properly do, as whole persons.
As a rule, the only thing they share is same-sex fake sex. Most often it's not about any type of real love or lifetime plan, all of which should be unselfish at heart, but a narrow, hurtful, base, masturbatory, narcissistic, and perverse oversexualization of multiple same-sex people, for whatever reason. Those who publicly demand the "freedom" to "love" (read: freedom to lust after and sex around with) whomever they wish have, by default, actually committed cultural and social murder on every proper kind of love. .
Ten years ago in 2004, a woman named Midge Decter gave a great speech at Hillsdale College titled "Civil Unions: Compromise or Surrender?" In it she said that gays weren't really about marriage at all, and allowing civil unions wouldn't solve anything. (Notice how the civil union idea never even got off the ground. They went straight for marriage.) She said, "They do not want what the rest of us have---they want to bring the whole house down." She was right. And it seems they are accomplishing just that.
Militant gays, in their rebellion against God, truth, reality, and goodness, are angry people and angry people can be destructive. Even one person can reek a great deal of destruction. But don't look for bombings and shootings. This crime against humanity is being committed in slow motion, in subtle and disguised ways. It's sinking into the pores of an entire generation, practically undetected. For instance, Apple's CEO came out recently as gay and of course the news media is making a great celebration of it. Why? Why do we all need to know this highly personal thing about this man? Isn't sex private? Aren't we getting sick of people telling us what they think about and do sexually? The truth is, the only reason people are publicly proclaiming and celebrating this perverse sexual identity is to force the acceptance of all things homosex on everybody. Otherwise they'd at least be quiet about what should be private, and shameful too. Truth be told, this isn't so much about flesh and blood individuals as it is about principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12).
Today on talk radio one male caller said to the male host," I love you," adding hastily, "but not in a homosexual way." Have you noticed that conservative people now often must refer to love and marriage by qualifying it with words such as "between a man and woman" or "traditional" or "natural?" Love as we know it, as it has been known through the millennia, is on the defensive, and when something so biologically basic and socially certain has to be defended in every arena and in every way in order to merely exist, it's taking its last breaths.
Apparently, the only kind of love that should be sexualized, the kind that consummates itself in sexual union between husband and wife and celebrates itself most fully in procreation, has been abducted, is being tortured beyond recognition, and will end up dead, and along with it will go every other kind of love.
When you redefine something, you change it into something else. When you redefine romantic love to make it possible between same sexes, you have destroyed what it is, what is means, what it does, and made it into something entirely different. Quite suddenly (relatively speaking in reference to the existence of humankind on the earth) marriage is not an institution to make a secure home for children, but a disposable institution to legitimize adult whims. Quite suddenly romantic love isn't something that leads to marriage and children, but is being considered in many forums as open to any coupling or grouping. Human nature proves those whims will have no bounds. As Dan in the movie knew, there's a time and place for that certain kind of love and if it isn't restrained within certain boundaries somebody gets hurt.
Midge Decter concludes, " . . . I want us to stick up for ourselves and the way we live, be as mighty a force in the culture as we are entitled to be if nothing else by the virtue of our sheer numbers. I want us to resist all attacks on the way we live, whether from our kids, our grandkids, their momentary culture heroes, or from the overpaid, mindless, sheep-like followers of fashion in the press and academic community who make so much noise in the world around us every day. Let us be decent, civil and even loving to our homosexual fellow citizens; but draw the line on what they stand for and everything else that makes light of our existence." She's correct. It's our obligation to future generations to stand for our way of life, which means we must stand against creeping homosexualism and the like.
Alas, a lot has happened in the ten years since she said that. Standing against homosexuality is proving to be increasingly difficult, even punishable. The line Midge Decter spoke about has been blurred and is in the process of being erased. Because of sheep-like political correctness, fear, misinformation, intimidation, compromises,concessions, and examples being made of those who dare to resist, hardly anybody is putting up any defense at all anymore. Roger Scruton wrote,
"Homosexual acts should be discussed with an open mind, with a view to making a distinction between what is normal or abnormal, right or wrong, what fulfills our sexual nature and what frustrates it."
Such discussions, and those about the inordinate dangers and health risks of legitimized homosexuality to individuals and society are no longer welcomed, considered, or even allowed. Even churches are falling in line, instructing their members to welcome homosexual identity, homosexual behavior, and gay marriage into their midst, holding gay sensitivity meetings and conferences, and installing gay leaders, all of which necessarily cuts off any of the above important discussions. This very day at Notre Dame the Catholic Church is putting on a conference called "Gay in Christ." Gays and other homosexualists, calculating on their own advantage, are wiping out "the old certainties that once bound communities and societies together (Mark Dooley on Scruton)."
"Normalization of homosexuality imposes large social cost," said Scruton. It's an act of destruction, of a kind of murder, and the essential distinction between types of love, sexual and nonsexual, is one of those losses. It seems we are losing our ability to discriminate, to judge, to discern between Plato's philia (friendship), agape (pure love, charity), and eros (romantic, sexual), between C. S. Lewis's distinct "four loves." We are living in a time when there are no boundaries for human feelings, when every current whim, even of inexperienced children, regarding gender identity, affection, or attraction can and will be grossly sexualized without restraint.
Truth be told, gay activists and the great majority of gays don't care a whit about marriage or anything that goes with it. Derek Washington of Get Equal Nevada, when relatively few same-sex couples took advantage of their new "right" to marriage recently, admitted that it was never about numbers. “I could care less about same-sex marriage legalization except that it’s a constitutional right,” he said. “That’s more what it was about than the actual people waiting to get married, to be honest. Marriage is just one step on our road to full equality. I firmly believe that.” And does this disordered behavior deserve the status of a right, of being equal to heterosexuality? No. Gay sex is fake sex, gay sex is lawless and dangerous, and most gays don't share their lives with their same-sex partners the way opposite sexes properly do, as whole persons.
As a rule, the only thing they share is same-sex fake sex. Most often it's not about any type of real love or lifetime plan, all of which should be unselfish at heart, but a narrow, hurtful, base, masturbatory, narcissistic, and perverse oversexualization of multiple same-sex people, for whatever reason. Those who publicly demand the "freedom" to "love" (read: freedom to lust after and sex around with) whomever they wish have, by default, actually committed cultural and social murder on every proper kind of love. .
Friday, October 31, 2014
Have You Read the Koran?
I read the Koran. This is my take.
I have nothing much positive to say about the Koran except that it’s good I read it to know the terrible awful truth. Even literarily it has practically no merit. Yes, it’s a translation but so is a lot of what I read including the Bible. I’m still miffed at Clifton Fadiman for putting the Koran in while leaving the Bible out of his “Lifetime Reading Plan” which I've been following more or less for several years. He gave the lame excuse that everybody has read it. Well, haven’t we all read a lot of the books on his 200plus list? And haven’t over a billion people read the Koran? He could have had us read selections from the Bible at least. Of all these books, the Bible is certainly one that can be read over and over. It is obvious to me that the Bible runs circles around everything else, especially the Koran, as classic literature alone. It’s sad, really.
The Koran wasn’t difficult to read. It was mainly repetitive and boring. I did learn some troubling things about the Muslim religion. Very troubling.
1. It is mainly a denouncing of Jesus Christ as Messiah. Over and over it says that God having a son is a “monstrous falsehood”(219). This is what is called anti-Christ. If we are Christians, we should look at this book and this religion as evil. It doesn’t just proclaim its own tenets, it is obsessed with bashing Christianity. Strange. It’s just like the anti-Christs in The Book of Mormon who mocked people’s beliefs and denied the need for repentance and salvation through Christ.
2. It is inconsistent and self-serving. If, as it says, Jesus was not the Christ, then he was lying about himself when he said he was the Son of God, etc. But the Koran accepts Jesus as a prophet. It follows that they are saying a prophet can also be a liar and teach falsehoods. Also there is no love your enemies or golden rule in the Koran. It’s: do evil to those who do evil to you.
3. It teaches that we make it to heaven on our own merits (by attending to prayers, rendering alms, and firmly believing in the life to come, p. 264). This is also anti-Christ as Savior and Redeemer. It presumes that human beings can save themselves by doing enough good stuff. (This of course engenders pride. Christians believe we make it to heaven by relying only on the merits of Christ. This is how we develop all those godly traits like humility and patience and charity.)
4. They don’t believe God has to follow eternal laws but will forgive you just because He can or wants to. The Koran says to repent, yes, but there is no divine advocate. They presume they can purify themselves. They have very harsh punishments for grievous sins I guess because they have no other recourse (no Savior). Hence, the hundred lashes for adultery, cutting off of limbs, and so on. Tragically, they are fooling themselves.
5. Heaven is just luxury; there is no eternal increase or spiritual progression like we believe. Doesn’t it sound so pointless? It’s like that Twilight Zone episode, "A Nice Place to Visit,” in which the man gets all the selfish things he wants after he dies and it turns out to be hell instead of heaven. Muslims want earthly rewards (ease, physical comforts, gratification of base appetites) in heaven (218). I don’t think it works that way. I think exaltation is about selflessness and truth and goodness and progress. It’s a spiritual place for striving spiritual beings.
6. There is no respect for freedom or agency. It seems they do not believe in personal agency at all. Unbelievers are summarily judged and condemned here and now (even to death) unless they become Muslims. In fact, the book is extremely fixated on the unbelievers/infidels. Allah is certainly a respecter of persons (”See how We have exalted some above others,” 198) who actually hates some of his children. On the contrary, Christians believe God loves all of His children no matter what and offers them a spiritual way back to Him if they desire it.
7. They seem to think men lusting after women is okay but men lusting after men is definitely not okay. This is not cogent. Lust is lust. It's all bad. By the way, I think all people who practice homosexuality should be very afraid of this violent, unforgiving religion. And that would not be "Islamophobia" because a phobia is a mental disorder with no basis in reality. A healthy fear of the most radical of these people, especially if you are gay or Christian or British or American or Jewish, would be based on actual facts and real-life events. Radicals (aka: ultra orthodox?) blow up and behead people they don't like. In the case of homosexual behavior, regular Muslims, depending upon the particular country's leaders, punish homosexuality with flogging, to jail time, to execution.
You can see that I am very disappointed in this religion and sorry that so many people claim it. Yes, there is some truth in it, such as God being the Creator and how we should take care of our families. But the overall tone of the book came across to me as shallow, arrogant, selfish, rancorous, violent, and vindictive. Not to mention uncivilized and benighted. They buried their infant daughters alive? (Okay, Muhammad said to stop doing this.) And cut off people’s alternate hands and feet? The Koran states that God says of the infidels to “Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers” (127 and 357). Scary.
Aside from the shocking violence in the Koran, it’s as if Muhammad was jealous of the Bible and the Jews and the Christians. But instead of coming up with his own ideas he borrowed the Bible stories and prophets he liked (Abraham, Moses, Jonah, David) and made up a tortured, broken Bible like the old fractured fairy tales on Rocky and Bullwinkle. The whole point of existence, to Muslims, is to outwardly keep the “main” commandments (evidently little sins don’t matter) and by so doing earn a spot on a brocade cushion in a endlessly delightful garden of streams and fountains with dark-eyed virgins waiting on them forever. And that’s another thing: this is a man’s religion. Women are not equal, in fact, they are not part of the equation except to give men pleasure and offspring. It makes me wonder why it’s so trendy all over the world to champion this religion. Americans especially obviously haven’t read the Koran. If they had, among other things, they wouldn’t have wanted that Mosque at Ground Zero. Also, the book is very self-apologetic. Over and over it defends itself within its own text. This seemed weird. Methinks this religion doth protest too much at its very origins.
We all ought to at least know the five pillars of Islam:
1. One God, Muhammad is His prophet, everything happens according to God’s will
2. Prescribed prayer 5 times a day
3. Fasting from dawn to dusk during month of Ramadan
4. Give alms to the poor
5. Pilgrimage to Mecca once in lifetime if possible
These five pillars may sound nice, but we must recognize that this religion, according to its holy book alone, is about blind conformity and has no divine Savior and no emphasis on the condition of the heart, humility, or repentance (see five pillars--it's all outward, even the praying is prescribed). It contains some truths, but in other ways is selfish, lawless, brutal, and completely intolerant. We should all be wary of this religion and the respect, influence, power, and destruction it is amassing and threatening throughout the world.
-Janice Graham
I have nothing much positive to say about the Koran except that it’s good I read it to know the terrible awful truth. Even literarily it has practically no merit. Yes, it’s a translation but so is a lot of what I read including the Bible. I’m still miffed at Clifton Fadiman for putting the Koran in while leaving the Bible out of his “Lifetime Reading Plan” which I've been following more or less for several years. He gave the lame excuse that everybody has read it. Well, haven’t we all read a lot of the books on his 200plus list? And haven’t over a billion people read the Koran? He could have had us read selections from the Bible at least. Of all these books, the Bible is certainly one that can be read over and over. It is obvious to me that the Bible runs circles around everything else, especially the Koran, as classic literature alone. It’s sad, really.
The Koran wasn’t difficult to read. It was mainly repetitive and boring. I did learn some troubling things about the Muslim religion. Very troubling.
1. It is mainly a denouncing of Jesus Christ as Messiah. Over and over it says that God having a son is a “monstrous falsehood”(219). This is what is called anti-Christ. If we are Christians, we should look at this book and this religion as evil. It doesn’t just proclaim its own tenets, it is obsessed with bashing Christianity. Strange. It’s just like the anti-Christs in The Book of Mormon who mocked people’s beliefs and denied the need for repentance and salvation through Christ.
2. It is inconsistent and self-serving. If, as it says, Jesus was not the Christ, then he was lying about himself when he said he was the Son of God, etc. But the Koran accepts Jesus as a prophet. It follows that they are saying a prophet can also be a liar and teach falsehoods. Also there is no love your enemies or golden rule in the Koran. It’s: do evil to those who do evil to you.
3. It teaches that we make it to heaven on our own merits (by attending to prayers, rendering alms, and firmly believing in the life to come, p. 264). This is also anti-Christ as Savior and Redeemer. It presumes that human beings can save themselves by doing enough good stuff. (This of course engenders pride. Christians believe we make it to heaven by relying only on the merits of Christ. This is how we develop all those godly traits like humility and patience and charity.)
4. They don’t believe God has to follow eternal laws but will forgive you just because He can or wants to. The Koran says to repent, yes, but there is no divine advocate. They presume they can purify themselves. They have very harsh punishments for grievous sins I guess because they have no other recourse (no Savior). Hence, the hundred lashes for adultery, cutting off of limbs, and so on. Tragically, they are fooling themselves.
5. Heaven is just luxury; there is no eternal increase or spiritual progression like we believe. Doesn’t it sound so pointless? It’s like that Twilight Zone episode, "A Nice Place to Visit,” in which the man gets all the selfish things he wants after he dies and it turns out to be hell instead of heaven. Muslims want earthly rewards (ease, physical comforts, gratification of base appetites) in heaven (218). I don’t think it works that way. I think exaltation is about selflessness and truth and goodness and progress. It’s a spiritual place for striving spiritual beings.
6. There is no respect for freedom or agency. It seems they do not believe in personal agency at all. Unbelievers are summarily judged and condemned here and now (even to death) unless they become Muslims. In fact, the book is extremely fixated on the unbelievers/infidels. Allah is certainly a respecter of persons (”See how We have exalted some above others,” 198) who actually hates some of his children. On the contrary, Christians believe God loves all of His children no matter what and offers them a spiritual way back to Him if they desire it.
7. They seem to think men lusting after women is okay but men lusting after men is definitely not okay. This is not cogent. Lust is lust. It's all bad. By the way, I think all people who practice homosexuality should be very afraid of this violent, unforgiving religion. And that would not be "Islamophobia" because a phobia is a mental disorder with no basis in reality. A healthy fear of the most radical of these people, especially if you are gay or Christian or British or American or Jewish, would be based on actual facts and real-life events. Radicals (aka: ultra orthodox?) blow up and behead people they don't like. In the case of homosexual behavior, regular Muslims, depending upon the particular country's leaders, punish homosexuality with flogging, to jail time, to execution.
You can see that I am very disappointed in this religion and sorry that so many people claim it. Yes, there is some truth in it, such as God being the Creator and how we should take care of our families. But the overall tone of the book came across to me as shallow, arrogant, selfish, rancorous, violent, and vindictive. Not to mention uncivilized and benighted. They buried their infant daughters alive? (Okay, Muhammad said to stop doing this.) And cut off people’s alternate hands and feet? The Koran states that God says of the infidels to “Strike off their heads, strike off the very tips of their fingers” (127 and 357). Scary.
Aside from the shocking violence in the Koran, it’s as if Muhammad was jealous of the Bible and the Jews and the Christians. But instead of coming up with his own ideas he borrowed the Bible stories and prophets he liked (Abraham, Moses, Jonah, David) and made up a tortured, broken Bible like the old fractured fairy tales on Rocky and Bullwinkle. The whole point of existence, to Muslims, is to outwardly keep the “main” commandments (evidently little sins don’t matter) and by so doing earn a spot on a brocade cushion in a endlessly delightful garden of streams and fountains with dark-eyed virgins waiting on them forever. And that’s another thing: this is a man’s religion. Women are not equal, in fact, they are not part of the equation except to give men pleasure and offspring. It makes me wonder why it’s so trendy all over the world to champion this religion. Americans especially obviously haven’t read the Koran. If they had, among other things, they wouldn’t have wanted that Mosque at Ground Zero. Also, the book is very self-apologetic. Over and over it defends itself within its own text. This seemed weird. Methinks this religion doth protest too much at its very origins.
We all ought to at least know the five pillars of Islam:
1. One God, Muhammad is His prophet, everything happens according to God’s will
2. Prescribed prayer 5 times a day
3. Fasting from dawn to dusk during month of Ramadan
4. Give alms to the poor
5. Pilgrimage to Mecca once in lifetime if possible
These five pillars may sound nice, but we must recognize that this religion, according to its holy book alone, is about blind conformity and has no divine Savior and no emphasis on the condition of the heart, humility, or repentance (see five pillars--it's all outward, even the praying is prescribed). It contains some truths, but in other ways is selfish, lawless, brutal, and completely intolerant. We should all be wary of this religion and the respect, influence, power, and destruction it is amassing and threatening throughout the world.
-Janice Graham
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Meet THESE Mormons
by Stephen and Janice Graham
As fourth and fifth-generation Mormons, it took us until our 40s and a proverbial tidal wave to experience true conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We tried our best all those years to be perfect, we accomplished a measure of works and achievements, but all of these outward actions did not get us any closer to Christ in any life-changing way. In fact, we were sometimes deeply, utterly, spiritually miserable. We obviously fell short and did not know how to deal with our faults. At least we were honest with ourselves. Perhaps this is the first essential step. Seeing our own emptiness and lack of true religiousity, we began to pray for some spiritual depth, some understanding, some integrity, some wholeness.
Then came serious trouble, and the truth we had begun to guess at pummeled us continually over some months and years like a slow-motion tsunami. The truth was: each of us was a lost lamb. Each of us was the one Christ came to save. We were sinners. Whatever our sins---however small they may seem to others---they were sins nevertheless, terrible sins to each of us, and we saw that we needed a Savior. Continually. And God loved us, and all his children, so much that He provided one.
This knowledge changed our spiritual lives in every way. It's made things a great deal more challenging, yes, much is required, we still make all sorts of errors, holiness costs like nothing else, it often hurts, but it's worth the glorious freedom, infinite love and patience, and joyful gratitude we feel through the love of God and the Atonement of Christ. Now we know we're on the right path. We both feel we are finally making progress, incremental as it is. Our only misery these days is the sorrow we feel for the increasingly Godless, anti-Christ world that exists today.These plain and precious, life-changing truths are being rejected in favor of creeping secularism, humanism, moral relativism, radical individualism, feminism, homosexualism, you name it, every kind of devilish -ism, or false god, imaginable or unimaginable.For heaven's sake, we allow the poisoning, mutilating, dismembering, and destroying of unborn babies! That's how wicked today's people have become. Legalized, legitimized, celebrated, elective abortion as a form of despising posterity is the barometer of our societal depravity. As a civilization, we are truly laboring in iniquity and dwindling in unbelief as the scriptures put it.
Christ as our essential Redeemer and the repentance he offers, take it or leave it, is the overwhelming message of the Standard Works of the Mormon Church, or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which Standard Works include The Holy Bible and The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ. People who condemn the Bible, as many do today, have lost their power of discernment and are past feeling. People who condemn the marvelous Book of Mormon or miss its message, inside or outside the Mormon Church, have not read it, and if they have, refuse to understand it, the same as those who reject the Bible. We find that the eternal truths in these books are ours for the taking if we'll only set ourselves aside, along with our emotions, our oversentimentality, and our earthly treasures, if we'll only, as the scriptures say, humble ourselves, and ask, seek, knock. In fact, endless unchangeable truth, Truth with a capital T, if we'll only seek it, is available all around us.
How did these Mormons miss it all those years? The fault may lie within us Mormons ourselves. Over the centuries, over the decades, amid the increasing influence and lure of the wicked world, what have we come to? What are we centering on? What do we emphasize? What are our perceptions? What have we abandoned? What are we embracing? What premises and principles do we operate under? And most important: What is going on in our hearts? Why do we do the things we do? Who or what is it that we truly serve? Who or what is it that we truly love? It's interesting: these are the very questions posed, and answered, by The Book of Mormon, which turns out to exist---Surprise!---not just for the world and potential converts, but for us Mormons, too, who have always and will always need Christ, not just to make up some imagined percentage of righteousness lacking, but as the only way, 100%. Yes, we must give it all up, open our hands, let it all go, and come to Christ.
These Mormons had to ask themselves all of the above questions. And these Mormons had to repent of a lifetime of worshiping many false idols. These Mormons had to be crushed to bits and born again, as Bible and Book of Mormon testify we must. And the exciting adventure continues.
Apparently there are different kinds of Mormons. What kind of Mormon are you?
As fourth and fifth-generation Mormons, it took us until our 40s and a proverbial tidal wave to experience true conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ. We tried our best all those years to be perfect, we accomplished a measure of works and achievements, but all of these outward actions did not get us any closer to Christ in any life-changing way. In fact, we were sometimes deeply, utterly, spiritually miserable. We obviously fell short and did not know how to deal with our faults. At least we were honest with ourselves. Perhaps this is the first essential step. Seeing our own emptiness and lack of true religiousity, we began to pray for some spiritual depth, some understanding, some integrity, some wholeness.
Then came serious trouble, and the truth we had begun to guess at pummeled us continually over some months and years like a slow-motion tsunami. The truth was: each of us was a lost lamb. Each of us was the one Christ came to save. We were sinners. Whatever our sins---however small they may seem to others---they were sins nevertheless, terrible sins to each of us, and we saw that we needed a Savior. Continually. And God loved us, and all his children, so much that He provided one.
This knowledge changed our spiritual lives in every way. It's made things a great deal more challenging, yes, much is required, we still make all sorts of errors, holiness costs like nothing else, it often hurts, but it's worth the glorious freedom, infinite love and patience, and joyful gratitude we feel through the love of God and the Atonement of Christ. Now we know we're on the right path. We both feel we are finally making progress, incremental as it is. Our only misery these days is the sorrow we feel for the increasingly Godless, anti-Christ world that exists today.These plain and precious, life-changing truths are being rejected in favor of creeping secularism, humanism, moral relativism, radical individualism, feminism, homosexualism, you name it, every kind of devilish -ism, or false god, imaginable or unimaginable.For heaven's sake, we allow the poisoning, mutilating, dismembering, and destroying of unborn babies! That's how wicked today's people have become. Legalized, legitimized, celebrated, elective abortion as a form of despising posterity is the barometer of our societal depravity. As a civilization, we are truly laboring in iniquity and dwindling in unbelief as the scriptures put it.
Christ as our essential Redeemer and the repentance he offers, take it or leave it, is the overwhelming message of the Standard Works of the Mormon Church, or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which Standard Works include The Holy Bible and The Book of Mormon, Another Testament of Jesus Christ. People who condemn the Bible, as many do today, have lost their power of discernment and are past feeling. People who condemn the marvelous Book of Mormon or miss its message, inside or outside the Mormon Church, have not read it, and if they have, refuse to understand it, the same as those who reject the Bible. We find that the eternal truths in these books are ours for the taking if we'll only set ourselves aside, along with our emotions, our oversentimentality, and our earthly treasures, if we'll only, as the scriptures say, humble ourselves, and ask, seek, knock. In fact, endless unchangeable truth, Truth with a capital T, if we'll only seek it, is available all around us.
How did these Mormons miss it all those years? The fault may lie within us Mormons ourselves. Over the centuries, over the decades, amid the increasing influence and lure of the wicked world, what have we come to? What are we centering on? What do we emphasize? What are our perceptions? What have we abandoned? What are we embracing? What premises and principles do we operate under? And most important: What is going on in our hearts? Why do we do the things we do? Who or what is it that we truly serve? Who or what is it that we truly love? It's interesting: these are the very questions posed, and answered, by The Book of Mormon, which turns out to exist---Surprise!---not just for the world and potential converts, but for us Mormons, too, who have always and will always need Christ, not just to make up some imagined percentage of righteousness lacking, but as the only way, 100%. Yes, we must give it all up, open our hands, let it all go, and come to Christ.
These Mormons had to ask themselves all of the above questions. And these Mormons had to repent of a lifetime of worshiping many false idols. These Mormons had to be crushed to bits and born again, as Bible and Book of Mormon testify we must. And the exciting adventure continues.
Apparently there are different kinds of Mormons. What kind of Mormon are you?
Thursday, October 9, 2014
It's Not a Question of Niceness
We're just wondering how we can manage to hold to the rod and at the same time be an active part of this wicked world. It seems we receive mixed messages. Don't sit on the fence, stand firm for truth and righteousness, we're told. And simultaneously we're told to respect all opinions. It's confusing.
We are told to choose sides and then admonished to be respectful, even gracious, to those with contrary views or lifestyles. Respect is about honoring and esteeming someone or something. Well, anyone can see that many opinions aren't worthy of respect. Some are downright evil. Graciousness is a form of acceptance and embrace. We can't embrace evil. We're told to oppose it. How are we supposed to draw a line in the sand and then step right on over it? It's like having one's cake and eating it. How is this possible?
It isn't, not if you're intellectually honest. What we have here are two ancient and opposing world views. In essence, one is Satan's and one is God's. The two worldviews cannot peacefully coexist in any permanent way, hence the war in heaven. Here and now, one worldview will be preferred by the people and the other will be harmed. In other words, one will dominate the other. In America God's way has dominated culturally and societally until relatively recently. Yes, even until one generation ago traditional values were strongly encouraged and sexual immorality strongly discouraged. Now we see unmistakeable evidence of a great shift, from God's ways to Satan's. There are lots of examples of this occurring, but let's take homosexuality.
The modern homosexualist who, because he is operating against God and is always motivated by self-interest, is saying some or all of the following: We've decided that this isn't sinful, it's actually who they are, they can't change, and everybody has to respect their self-determined identity, lusts and acts. We must even allow homosexuality to be modeled and taught to children in schools and churches. It must be protected in our laws. And those who dissent ought to be shamed and marginalized and punished. More and more, homosexualists are getting their way. We see that it is sexual immorality that is now being preferred.
When there are two opposing views on crucial issues such as sexual immorality, it's not a question of niceness. How we treat each other has nothing to do with the real problem. Mere kindness will never knit Satan and God together. Those ancient worldviews stand in total opposition to each other. The question is not about common courtesy or politeness, but which side will be preferred, encouraged, celebrated, and which side will be intimidated, discouraged, silenced, in our country, in our schools, in our churches, in our homes. Of course we know that if you give Satan an inch he'll take a mile. He doesn't stop, ever. He is about thumbing his nose at God and will win over many of God's children, just out of revenge, even though in the end he'll be beaten. So much for graciousness.
If we've decided to embrace homosexuality and/or other wickedness in any form, it's Satan's side we've chosen. As a result God's side will get squelched, bit by bit, more and more, until a formerly God-fearing people don't have have any interest in God at all.
Of course this doesn't have to happen to us as individuals. There are many ways to take God's side. In this world today when evil is preferred and good is harmed, any of those ways may take unimagined sacrifices. We'll be labeled unkind, no matter how ultimately loving we really are. We'll be perceived as lukewarm--to kooks--to apostate, and everything in between. We'll have to endure persecution. We'll lose a great deal. But of course it can be done. It just depends on the level of our courage and faith in the Lord.
There is a time for everything. Sometimes we speak up, sometimes we remain silent, sometimes we act, sometimes we exercise restraint. But one thing is for certain. This life is not just a sociological test to see how gracious we can be to people we disagree with. It's a test with some important absolutely wrong and absolutely right answers. Flannery O'Connor said, " . . .you have to cherish the world at the same time you struggle to endure it." Enduring implies something unpleasant or difficult or painful. In the case of being on the losing side, that is, standing against sin in a world that chooses not to recognize sin any longer, that calls evil good and good evil, it means sacrifice, persecution, loss, sorrow, courage, and faith. And that's a far cry from simply being nice.
We are told to choose sides and then admonished to be respectful, even gracious, to those with contrary views or lifestyles. Respect is about honoring and esteeming someone or something. Well, anyone can see that many opinions aren't worthy of respect. Some are downright evil. Graciousness is a form of acceptance and embrace. We can't embrace evil. We're told to oppose it. How are we supposed to draw a line in the sand and then step right on over it? It's like having one's cake and eating it. How is this possible?
It isn't, not if you're intellectually honest. What we have here are two ancient and opposing world views. In essence, one is Satan's and one is God's. The two worldviews cannot peacefully coexist in any permanent way, hence the war in heaven. Here and now, one worldview will be preferred by the people and the other will be harmed. In other words, one will dominate the other. In America God's way has dominated culturally and societally until relatively recently. Yes, even until one generation ago traditional values were strongly encouraged and sexual immorality strongly discouraged. Now we see unmistakeable evidence of a great shift, from God's ways to Satan's. There are lots of examples of this occurring, but let's take homosexuality.
The modern homosexualist who, because he is operating against God and is always motivated by self-interest, is saying some or all of the following: We've decided that this isn't sinful, it's actually who they are, they can't change, and everybody has to respect their self-determined identity, lusts and acts. We must even allow homosexuality to be modeled and taught to children in schools and churches. It must be protected in our laws. And those who dissent ought to be shamed and marginalized and punished. More and more, homosexualists are getting their way. We see that it is sexual immorality that is now being preferred.
When there are two opposing views on crucial issues such as sexual immorality, it's not a question of niceness. How we treat each other has nothing to do with the real problem. Mere kindness will never knit Satan and God together. Those ancient worldviews stand in total opposition to each other. The question is not about common courtesy or politeness, but which side will be preferred, encouraged, celebrated, and which side will be intimidated, discouraged, silenced, in our country, in our schools, in our churches, in our homes. Of course we know that if you give Satan an inch he'll take a mile. He doesn't stop, ever. He is about thumbing his nose at God and will win over many of God's children, just out of revenge, even though in the end he'll be beaten. So much for graciousness.
If we've decided to embrace homosexuality and/or other wickedness in any form, it's Satan's side we've chosen. As a result God's side will get squelched, bit by bit, more and more, until a formerly God-fearing people don't have have any interest in God at all.
Of course this doesn't have to happen to us as individuals. There are many ways to take God's side. In this world today when evil is preferred and good is harmed, any of those ways may take unimagined sacrifices. We'll be labeled unkind, no matter how ultimately loving we really are. We'll be perceived as lukewarm--to kooks--to apostate, and everything in between. We'll have to endure persecution. We'll lose a great deal. But of course it can be done. It just depends on the level of our courage and faith in the Lord.
There is a time for everything. Sometimes we speak up, sometimes we remain silent, sometimes we act, sometimes we exercise restraint. But one thing is for certain. This life is not just a sociological test to see how gracious we can be to people we disagree with. It's a test with some important absolutely wrong and absolutely right answers. Flannery O'Connor said, " . . .you have to cherish the world at the same time you struggle to endure it." Enduring implies something unpleasant or difficult or painful. In the case of being on the losing side, that is, standing against sin in a world that chooses not to recognize sin any longer, that calls evil good and good evil, it means sacrifice, persecution, loss, sorrow, courage, and faith. And that's a far cry from simply being nice.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
World's Gay, God's Gay?
Years ago, a photographer friend took all sorts of pictures of our family members and sold them as stock photos. We see ourselves in Walmart picture frames and on the backs of moving vans. But the one time we really got a kick out of where we found ourselves was when we got an occupant-type letter from a Christian outfit. Our twin girls, about 14 years old, were pictured on the back of the envelope with the labels, "World's Girl" and "God's Girl." (This was funny because they were actually both very good girls.)
Lately, quite incredibly, some ostensibly religious church people seem to have internalized a similar notion about homosexuality. They think there is a distinct difference between people publicly and quite comfortably claiming homosexuality as an identity who are members of their church and people doing the same thing outside their church. They actually believe their brothers and sisters in the church who are gay are pure and wholesome while the worldly type of homosexual is undoubtedly quite lost and wicked. And yet they use the same cunning but false arguments concocted by the world's best sexual revolutionaries: they were born that way, it's who they are, they can't change.
Those defending homosexuality in the church also add some goofy thought processes of their own. While publicly stating that "God's supposedly celibate gays are not sinful, do not have a disorder, and are not sick in any way, which of course must mean that homosexuality in principle is righteous, orderly, and healthy, in private they believe these people are really messed up, that they've been abused and are miserable. (People with SSA might be interested to know they're being played.) They have also abandoned scripture. When we at SoL have confronted homosexualists within the church with the many scriptures which condemn sexual impurity of all kinds, inside and out, in no uncertain terms, they accuse us of misinterpreting the word of God. Really? How convenient for them.
These people somehow believe that their gays are "moderate," their gays aren't sexually immoral or lustful, their gays are special, their gays are harmless to themselves and everybody else, their gays don't need to repent. (Apparently this attitude creeps into other sexual sins church people commit too, such as the use of pornography.) Seriously? Meanwhile, gays in the church are eating all this nonsense up. They're writing books on how you can be a Christian/Mormon/Jewish homosexual. They know they are making great headway. And they won't stop until their deviant sexual desires and practices are respected and legitimized within their church. Of course they are quite tragically being used as pawns in helping our society along as it slouches towards Gomorrah, as Robert Bork put it.
Is there such a thing as a world's gay versus a God's gay? Is there any significant difference?
God says no.Homosexuality is sexual. Lust is lust. Sin is sin. And God does not look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. There is no such thing as a moderate, nonsexual gay. Celibate or not, however that's defined, it's all bad and harmful, in every degree, no matter how unfortunately it comes about. Remember, sex is a serious thing. If it is misused in the mind, heart, or body somebody gets hurt. Whatever name you call this form of sexual immorality ---and churches are indeed calling it all sorts of nice-ish sounding things---it is a sin in desire, thought, and deed. Homosexuality is destructive to the souls of God's children, and actually only a symptom of something much worse.
There is a greater danger here. The triumph of sin comes with our failure to perceive it, wrote Roger Scruton. A weak sense of sin is tantamount to a weak sense of Christ. If there is no sin, there is no Christ. In other words, we are headed away from the Lord and goodness and toward the devil and evil when we go soft on sin, any sin. God's standards for human behavior do not vary according to what happens to be going on in the world at any given time. Essential principles are absolute, outside and inside the church.
To be a true follower of Christ one must have a strong sense of sin, one's own sins, and sin in general. This takes humility and a consciousness of God and His plan of salvation through Christ. As George Herbert put it so beautifully and succinctly,
Who in heart never kneels
Neither sin nor Savior feels.
There's nothing mysterious or strategic about what's going on in America's churches, how people have fooled themselves into thinking churchy gay is better than worldly gay. What church people are doing in softening toward homosexuality is a direct reflection of what's going on in the culture around us, only with a great deal of doublespeak, smugness, and hypocrisy thrown in.
Lately, quite incredibly, some ostensibly religious church people seem to have internalized a similar notion about homosexuality. They think there is a distinct difference between people publicly and quite comfortably claiming homosexuality as an identity who are members of their church and people doing the same thing outside their church. They actually believe their brothers and sisters in the church who are gay are pure and wholesome while the worldly type of homosexual is undoubtedly quite lost and wicked. And yet they use the same cunning but false arguments concocted by the world's best sexual revolutionaries: they were born that way, it's who they are, they can't change.
Those defending homosexuality in the church also add some goofy thought processes of their own. While publicly stating that "God's supposedly celibate gays are not sinful, do not have a disorder, and are not sick in any way, which of course must mean that homosexuality in principle is righteous, orderly, and healthy, in private they believe these people are really messed up, that they've been abused and are miserable. (People with SSA might be interested to know they're being played.) They have also abandoned scripture. When we at SoL have confronted homosexualists within the church with the many scriptures which condemn sexual impurity of all kinds, inside and out, in no uncertain terms, they accuse us of misinterpreting the word of God. Really? How convenient for them.
These people somehow believe that their gays are "moderate," their gays aren't sexually immoral or lustful, their gays are special, their gays are harmless to themselves and everybody else, their gays don't need to repent. (Apparently this attitude creeps into other sexual sins church people commit too, such as the use of pornography.) Seriously? Meanwhile, gays in the church are eating all this nonsense up. They're writing books on how you can be a Christian/Mormon/Jewish homosexual. They know they are making great headway. And they won't stop until their deviant sexual desires and practices are respected and legitimized within their church. Of course they are quite tragically being used as pawns in helping our society along as it slouches towards Gomorrah, as Robert Bork put it.
Is there such a thing as a world's gay versus a God's gay? Is there any significant difference?
God says no.Homosexuality is sexual. Lust is lust. Sin is sin. And God does not look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. There is no such thing as a moderate, nonsexual gay. Celibate or not, however that's defined, it's all bad and harmful, in every degree, no matter how unfortunately it comes about. Remember, sex is a serious thing. If it is misused in the mind, heart, or body somebody gets hurt. Whatever name you call this form of sexual immorality ---and churches are indeed calling it all sorts of nice-ish sounding things---it is a sin in desire, thought, and deed. Homosexuality is destructive to the souls of God's children, and actually only a symptom of something much worse.
There is a greater danger here. The triumph of sin comes with our failure to perceive it, wrote Roger Scruton. A weak sense of sin is tantamount to a weak sense of Christ. If there is no sin, there is no Christ. In other words, we are headed away from the Lord and goodness and toward the devil and evil when we go soft on sin, any sin. God's standards for human behavior do not vary according to what happens to be going on in the world at any given time. Essential principles are absolute, outside and inside the church.
To be a true follower of Christ one must have a strong sense of sin, one's own sins, and sin in general. This takes humility and a consciousness of God and His plan of salvation through Christ. As George Herbert put it so beautifully and succinctly,
Who in heart never kneels
Neither sin nor Savior feels.
There's nothing mysterious or strategic about what's going on in America's churches, how people have fooled themselves into thinking churchy gay is better than worldly gay. What church people are doing in softening toward homosexuality is a direct reflection of what's going on in the culture around us, only with a great deal of doublespeak, smugness, and hypocrisy thrown in.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
The Business of America: Celebrating Homosexuality
In the last decade many a family-friendly business in America has been caught up---hook, line, and sinker--- into the hands of the militant gay movement. Yes, our banks, our sports stores, our phone companies, are all winning the Human Rights Campaign's highest marks, marching in gay pride parades no less, publicly supporting and participating in this obscene scene.
Have these corporations been played?Have these smart people bought the phony gay line, all the gay lines, that gays are victims, that homosexuality is equal to heterosexuality, that sodomy and the like is worthy of respect and public legitimization, that the Holy Scriptures are outdated, that God is pretty much dead?
Is it just that they haven't connected the dots?Are they really that stupid?
We think not. Yes, the gay movement has been clever, systematic, manipulative, even fascist. It's loaded and it's powerful. But please, these are grown-ups. They know what homosexuality really is. And you're either for it or against it. You're either encouraging or discouraging it. There's no middle ground.
When confronted with the facts, such as that gay pride parades showcase obscenity, sexual immorality, "gay marriage," disorder, and insanity, some Utah CEOs and community leaders are incredulous, responding with: Hey, we're family people. We go to church. We believe in decency and morality. But man, we're getting so much pressure.There are forces at work. We simply have to support diversity and equality in the workplace.
But of course it's not about diversity or equality and even if it were they've gone way beyond that. These businesses are going out of their way to celebrate homosex. They are furthering the anti-god cause of lawless sexual liberation. They are accomplices in exposing little children to it, which amounts to child abuse. Regardless of what they say, they have become homosexualists. An example is Zion's Bank, an organization people think of as based on traditional values. And yet dozens of brightly t-shirted Zion's Bank employees marched in the obscene SLC gay parade this year with a bright blue Zion's Bank shuttle bus, all emblazoned with "Equality: the heart of the matter, Zion's Bank." Yes, Zion's Bank paid for all of this. It's like this: If you say you're basically against a powerful sociological movement, you might have to go along to some extent, but what in heaven's name is making you actually march in the parade? And pay for the privilege? It doesn't make logical, ethical, religious, or moral sense.
Our guess is that all these leaders have known all along exactly what they are doing. By compartmentalizing their business life (the Lord calls this out-and-out hypocrisy), they made that choice long ago and now are past feeling. Hence, they can march along with the flamboyant trannies and mostly naked gyrating men with no qualms. Hence, our city thoroughfares at least annually become a strange freaky mixture of the ostensibly wholesome marching right alongside the obviously wicked. With your own eyes you can see uniformed boy scouts, high school students, and Mormon parents and children marching with gay strippers and dolled-up transvestites, an incongruous spectacle that our most trusted public, community, and business leaders have no shame in sponsoring and supporting.
Does nobody else think this is really weird? Proud and lawless sexual revolutionaries joyfully teaming up with mainstream banks, department stores, auto dealerships, restaurants, hotels, and airlines, not to mention boy scout troops and Christian churches? This is not diversity. This is not equality. It's just plain old wickedness and debauchery. Evil posing as good. As one parade poster put it, "Every time you see a rainbow God is having gay sex." A sign on the Salt Lake City Library parade entry car said, "Reading is Gay." Really.
No, these leaders and businesses and individuals are not that stupid. What they are is cowardly. What they focus on is expediency. What they worship is their own pride and profit. Please, please, please correct us if we're wrong.
A huge chunk of corporate and mainstream and supposedly Christian America has gone gaily homosexualist, whether we see them marching in gay parades or not. But they never had to. It was their choice. Have they never heard of Chick-Fil-A?
FYI, these are the businesses and organizations who participated in the Utah Gay Pride Parade and Festival this year in SLC which has been held annually for the last 30 years (incomprehensible theme this year "Love Equals Love"):
Sponsors: Salt Lake City, Bud Light, BW Bastian Foundation, Le Croissant Catering, Edge Media Network, Mark Miller Subaru, The Sheraton SLC Hotel, Snow Gear Partners, AAA Utah, Bearfoot Wine, Pinnacle Vodka, Diamond Rental, Macy's, Starbucks, State Farm Insurance, Young Automotive, Part City Television, Q Salt Lake, X96, XFinity, Salt Lake City Weekly, Utah Film Center, KRCL, ADP, American Express, Verizon, Wells Fargo Bank, Petco, Human Rights Campaign, Overstock.com, The Gateway, Hotel Monaco, Ebay, Chase Bank, AARP, US Bank, Doubletree Suites, Adobe, RBS, Goldman Sachs, Sentry West, Slug Magazine.
Additional supporting participants and businesses we saw marching in the SLC Gay Pride Parade this year: SLC Mayor Ralph Becker, SL County Mayor Ben McAdams, U of U, Westminster College, Weber State University, West High School flag twirlers, Mormons Building Bridges, Mormons for Equality, Boy Scouts of America, Zion's Bank, Delta Airlines, American Fork High School Gay Straight Alliance club, SL District Attorney Sim Gill, Jewish congregation KOL AMI, Salt Lake Pagan Society, Community of Christ, Pride Interfaith Community, All Saints Episcopal Church, Jerry Seiner Chevrolet, National Organization for Women, Skin Works, First Unitarian Church, The Leonardo, Planned Parenthood, Salt Lake County Health Department STD/HIV Clinic and Prevention Program, Squatter's Bear, Postmos (an ex-Mormon group), Discover Card,Rowland Hall Episcopal School, Ruby River Steakhouse, PFLAG, Snowbird, YWCA, Salt Lake County Sheriff Winder, Miss Teen Utah, American Cancer Society, Absolut Vodka, Salt Lake County Library, Salt Lake City Library, Home Depot, Salt Lake Valley Buick GMC, The Women's Democratic Club, Utah Gay Fathers Association, Sound Warehouse, and many more.
Entertainment at the festival this year included excerpts from "Saturday's Voyeur," an obscene play by the Salt Lake Acting Company.
We didn't attend the 2014 SLC Pride Festival, but here are the paying vendors we saw at the 2013 SLC Pride Festival: Zions Bank, EBAY, Costo, Home Depot, DirecTV, Ikea, Mormons for Equality, Affirmation - Gay & Lesbian Mormons, Momons Building Bridges, LDS Reconciliation, LDS Family Fellowship, Champion Windows and Doors, Direct Buy, Unity Salon, Aspen Gay Ski Week, Human Rights Campaign, City Weekly, Transgender Education Advocates, Xfinity, SLUT, SLUG Magaine, AAA, Salt Lake City, Bareoot Wine, Scentsy, Amazing Rainbow Lights, Trinas Pride LGBT Designs, The Kitten Society, Salt City Consent Squad - Rape Recovery Center, Out Laws, One Of A Kind Tie Dye, Atheists of Utah, Farmers Insurance Group, Log Cabin Republicans, Best Friends Animal Society, Young Automotive Group, Summit Community Counseling, The Art Institutes, Utah Environmental Congress, Eckankar, Utah Gay Fathers, Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Restore Our Humanity - Repeal Amendment 3, Snowbird, Utah Polyamory Society, IHG hotel group, Provo Pride Festival, Postmormons, First Baptist Church, Center for Spiritual Living, OUTreach Resource Center, Recreation Outlet, Pride Socks, Salt Lake County Library, Salt Lake AIDS Walk, Utah AIDS Foundation, PETA, ACLU, AIDS Coalition of Utah, Winder Dairy, KUER, GE Healthcare, Verizon, Century Link, Holiday Travel, Accuracy Automotive, Commitment Rings, Planned Parenthood, Real Caring Integrative Therapy, PFLAG, American Family Insurance, Humane Society of Utah, Home Depot, Equality in the Community, Sears, Convergys, Q Salt Lake, Utah Pride Center, AARP, Public Safety Pride Alliance.
These are the businesses who are participating in the 2nd annual Provo Pride Festival on Saturday,
Sept. 20, 2014: Utah Pride Center, Equality Utah, The Madison (nightclub/afterparty held here), City Limits (gay bar in Provo, pre-party held here), Centro Hispano/Dejelo Ya (Hispanic counseling center), Provo Florist, Noodles & Company, Taylor Maid, Jayde's Rhinestones
Booths and vendors at Provo Pride Festival included BYU's Understanding Same-Gender Attraction club.
Have these corporations been played?Have these smart people bought the phony gay line, all the gay lines, that gays are victims, that homosexuality is equal to heterosexuality, that sodomy and the like is worthy of respect and public legitimization, that the Holy Scriptures are outdated, that God is pretty much dead?
Is it just that they haven't connected the dots?Are they really that stupid?
We think not. Yes, the gay movement has been clever, systematic, manipulative, even fascist. It's loaded and it's powerful. But please, these are grown-ups. They know what homosexuality really is. And you're either for it or against it. You're either encouraging or discouraging it. There's no middle ground.
When confronted with the facts, such as that gay pride parades showcase obscenity, sexual immorality, "gay marriage," disorder, and insanity, some Utah CEOs and community leaders are incredulous, responding with: Hey, we're family people. We go to church. We believe in decency and morality. But man, we're getting so much pressure.There are forces at work. We simply have to support diversity and equality in the workplace.
But of course it's not about diversity or equality and even if it were they've gone way beyond that. These businesses are going out of their way to celebrate homosex. They are furthering the anti-god cause of lawless sexual liberation. They are accomplices in exposing little children to it, which amounts to child abuse. Regardless of what they say, they have become homosexualists. An example is Zion's Bank, an organization people think of as based on traditional values. And yet dozens of brightly t-shirted Zion's Bank employees marched in the obscene SLC gay parade this year with a bright blue Zion's Bank shuttle bus, all emblazoned with "Equality: the heart of the matter, Zion's Bank." Yes, Zion's Bank paid for all of this. It's like this: If you say you're basically against a powerful sociological movement, you might have to go along to some extent, but what in heaven's name is making you actually march in the parade? And pay for the privilege? It doesn't make logical, ethical, religious, or moral sense.
Our guess is that all these leaders have known all along exactly what they are doing. By compartmentalizing their business life (the Lord calls this out-and-out hypocrisy), they made that choice long ago and now are past feeling. Hence, they can march along with the flamboyant trannies and mostly naked gyrating men with no qualms. Hence, our city thoroughfares at least annually become a strange freaky mixture of the ostensibly wholesome marching right alongside the obviously wicked. With your own eyes you can see uniformed boy scouts, high school students, and Mormon parents and children marching with gay strippers and dolled-up transvestites, an incongruous spectacle that our most trusted public, community, and business leaders have no shame in sponsoring and supporting.
Does nobody else think this is really weird? Proud and lawless sexual revolutionaries joyfully teaming up with mainstream banks, department stores, auto dealerships, restaurants, hotels, and airlines, not to mention boy scout troops and Christian churches? This is not diversity. This is not equality. It's just plain old wickedness and debauchery. Evil posing as good. As one parade poster put it, "Every time you see a rainbow God is having gay sex." A sign on the Salt Lake City Library parade entry car said, "Reading is Gay." Really.
No, these leaders and businesses and individuals are not that stupid. What they are is cowardly. What they focus on is expediency. What they worship is their own pride and profit. Please, please, please correct us if we're wrong.
A huge chunk of corporate and mainstream and supposedly Christian America has gone gaily homosexualist, whether we see them marching in gay parades or not. But they never had to. It was their choice. Have they never heard of Chick-Fil-A?
FYI, these are the businesses and organizations who participated in the Utah Gay Pride Parade and Festival this year in SLC which has been held annually for the last 30 years (incomprehensible theme this year "Love Equals Love"):
Sponsors: Salt Lake City, Bud Light, BW Bastian Foundation, Le Croissant Catering, Edge Media Network, Mark Miller Subaru, The Sheraton SLC Hotel, Snow Gear Partners, AAA Utah, Bearfoot Wine, Pinnacle Vodka, Diamond Rental, Macy's, Starbucks, State Farm Insurance, Young Automotive, Part City Television, Q Salt Lake, X96, XFinity, Salt Lake City Weekly, Utah Film Center, KRCL, ADP, American Express, Verizon, Wells Fargo Bank, Petco, Human Rights Campaign, Overstock.com, The Gateway, Hotel Monaco, Ebay, Chase Bank, AARP, US Bank, Doubletree Suites, Adobe, RBS, Goldman Sachs, Sentry West, Slug Magazine.
Additional supporting participants and businesses we saw marching in the SLC Gay Pride Parade this year: SLC Mayor Ralph Becker, SL County Mayor Ben McAdams, U of U, Westminster College, Weber State University, West High School flag twirlers, Mormons Building Bridges, Mormons for Equality, Boy Scouts of America, Zion's Bank, Delta Airlines, American Fork High School Gay Straight Alliance club, SL District Attorney Sim Gill, Jewish congregation KOL AMI, Salt Lake Pagan Society, Community of Christ, Pride Interfaith Community, All Saints Episcopal Church, Jerry Seiner Chevrolet, National Organization for Women, Skin Works, First Unitarian Church, The Leonardo, Planned Parenthood, Salt Lake County Health Department STD/HIV Clinic and Prevention Program, Squatter's Bear, Postmos (an ex-Mormon group), Discover Card,Rowland Hall Episcopal School, Ruby River Steakhouse, PFLAG, Snowbird, YWCA, Salt Lake County Sheriff Winder, Miss Teen Utah, American Cancer Society, Absolut Vodka, Salt Lake County Library, Salt Lake City Library, Home Depot, Salt Lake Valley Buick GMC, The Women's Democratic Club, Utah Gay Fathers Association, Sound Warehouse, and many more.
Entertainment at the festival this year included excerpts from "Saturday's Voyeur," an obscene play by the Salt Lake Acting Company.
We didn't attend the 2014 SLC Pride Festival, but here are the paying vendors we saw at the 2013 SLC Pride Festival: Zions Bank, EBAY, Costo, Home Depot, DirecTV, Ikea, Mormons for Equality, Affirmation - Gay & Lesbian Mormons, Momons Building Bridges, LDS Reconciliation, LDS Family Fellowship, Champion Windows and Doors, Direct Buy, Unity Salon, Aspen Gay Ski Week, Human Rights Campaign, City Weekly, Transgender Education Advocates, Xfinity, SLUT, SLUG Magaine, AAA, Salt Lake City, Bareoot Wine, Scentsy, Amazing Rainbow Lights, Trinas Pride LGBT Designs, The Kitten Society, Salt City Consent Squad - Rape Recovery Center, Out Laws, One Of A Kind Tie Dye, Atheists of Utah, Farmers Insurance Group, Log Cabin Republicans, Best Friends Animal Society, Young Automotive Group, Summit Community Counseling, The Art Institutes, Utah Environmental Congress, Eckankar, Utah Gay Fathers, Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault, Restore Our Humanity - Repeal Amendment 3, Snowbird, Utah Polyamory Society, IHG hotel group, Provo Pride Festival, Postmormons, First Baptist Church, Center for Spiritual Living, OUTreach Resource Center, Recreation Outlet, Pride Socks, Salt Lake County Library, Salt Lake AIDS Walk, Utah AIDS Foundation, PETA, ACLU, AIDS Coalition of Utah, Winder Dairy, KUER, GE Healthcare, Verizon, Century Link, Holiday Travel, Accuracy Automotive, Commitment Rings, Planned Parenthood, Real Caring Integrative Therapy, PFLAG, American Family Insurance, Humane Society of Utah, Home Depot, Equality in the Community, Sears, Convergys, Q Salt Lake, Utah Pride Center, AARP, Public Safety Pride Alliance.
These are the businesses who are participating in the 2nd annual Provo Pride Festival on Saturday,
Sept. 20, 2014: Utah Pride Center, Equality Utah, The Madison (nightclub/afterparty held here), City Limits (gay bar in Provo, pre-party held here), Centro Hispano/Dejelo Ya (Hispanic counseling center), Provo Florist, Noodles & Company, Taylor Maid, Jayde's Rhinestones
Booths and vendors at Provo Pride Festival included BYU's Understanding Same-Gender Attraction club.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Why They're Winning and We're Losing
There are some true hearts out there on the Lord's side who want to fight this culture war out of love of God and for the sake of God's children. But the enemy is winning nevertheless. Here's why.
The devil's side is patient, crafty, cunning, strategic, and willing to give all. The supposed Lord's side is the opposite because of one of more of the following:
Squeamishness. Decent people don't want to think or learn or talk about abortion, homosexuality, pornography, child sex abuse, or anything unpleasant in any detail. (The military term for this is desertion.)
Distracted Positivism: We'd rather uphold something good (like traditional marriage) than face the destructive evil head-on. No battle is ever won using this tactic; it is not even engaged in. And we play right into the enemy's hands.
Fear, Intimidation, and Misinformation: Everybody has been conditioned to accept homosexuality to some degree for reasons of expediency, and very few are doing their homework.
Reputation: People want to be thought well of. They can't stand being disapproved of.
Projection: If we're nice, we think everybody else is basically nice too. They aren't.
Complacency: No one likes to rock the boat. The public will isn't there. People are easily "lulled into carnal security." "All is well in Zion."
Prosperity: Ease makes people comfy and enjoying life. They don't want to sacrifice any of that.
Fence-sitting: People would rather abandon their convictions than take a brave stand on an unpopular side.
Niceness: People think the gospel is just about human relations (love, service). It's not. It's primarily about repentance and divine redemption. People are not turning to the Lord.
Materialism: Most people care most about the least important things: what can be seen, touched, felt, tasted, heard. Ideas and principles are too confrontational and controversial.
Mediocrity: The quest for excellence and virtue has been abandoned in favor of political correctness, humanism, the worship of self.
Benightedness: People don't care about knowledge, history, the wisdom of the ages, accumulated human experience, anymore.
Gospel Ignorance: There is very little understanding of first principles and how to apply them. People are not concerned about spiritual growth. They prefer to go through the motions and rest on our laurels.
Sentimentality: People care more about human stories, feelings, and emotions than rightness, goodness, and truth. Weak self-serving human emotions are held up as spirituality.
Weakness of faith: Many do not care enough about the welfare of immortal souls and trusting in the Lord and where they'll spend eternity. They think they can find heaven on earth so that's where they put their hearts and their treasure.
Idolatry: People worship everything but God.
Flattery: Sycophancy, name-dropping, and the puffing up of others for personal gain has always been and continues to be a prevalent lifestyle choice.
Pride: People puff up themselves up endlessly, too, even in their professed humility.
Surrendering agency: Everyone's a "victim" of something or other. Sin and accountability are not spoken of.
Irresponsibility: There's no burden people would rather shrug off to others than their own religiosity.
Blindness: People cannot be taught by the Spirit because of all of the above and therefore are ineffective at best and adding to the problems at worst.
Yes, we are losing the war for the souls of men and the safety and well-being of our children. The only way to change the direction we are going is to turn back to God, and man up. Robert Bork said it decades ago. The only hope for our debauched society is a robust revival of traditional moral values and religion among the people. Remember, we're not the one's attacking. Yes, we're sick of hearing about the gay agenda, and that's just what they want. Yes, we'd rather focus on positive things, but that doesn't work when you're being attacked. Yes, we hate to confront these evils, but it is our obligation.
It's appropriate that it's September 11. All of the above applies to being defeated by any sort of evil.
The devil's side is patient, crafty, cunning, strategic, and willing to give all. The supposed Lord's side is the opposite because of one of more of the following:
Squeamishness. Decent people don't want to think or learn or talk about abortion, homosexuality, pornography, child sex abuse, or anything unpleasant in any detail. (The military term for this is desertion.)
Distracted Positivism: We'd rather uphold something good (like traditional marriage) than face the destructive evil head-on. No battle is ever won using this tactic; it is not even engaged in. And we play right into the enemy's hands.
Fear, Intimidation, and Misinformation: Everybody has been conditioned to accept homosexuality to some degree for reasons of expediency, and very few are doing their homework.
Reputation: People want to be thought well of. They can't stand being disapproved of.
Projection: If we're nice, we think everybody else is basically nice too. They aren't.
Complacency: No one likes to rock the boat. The public will isn't there. People are easily "lulled into carnal security." "All is well in Zion."
Prosperity: Ease makes people comfy and enjoying life. They don't want to sacrifice any of that.
Fence-sitting: People would rather abandon their convictions than take a brave stand on an unpopular side.
Niceness: People think the gospel is just about human relations (love, service). It's not. It's primarily about repentance and divine redemption. People are not turning to the Lord.
Materialism: Most people care most about the least important things: what can be seen, touched, felt, tasted, heard. Ideas and principles are too confrontational and controversial.
Mediocrity: The quest for excellence and virtue has been abandoned in favor of political correctness, humanism, the worship of self.
Benightedness: People don't care about knowledge, history, the wisdom of the ages, accumulated human experience, anymore.
Gospel Ignorance: There is very little understanding of first principles and how to apply them. People are not concerned about spiritual growth. They prefer to go through the motions and rest on our laurels.
Sentimentality: People care more about human stories, feelings, and emotions than rightness, goodness, and truth. Weak self-serving human emotions are held up as spirituality.
Weakness of faith: Many do not care enough about the welfare of immortal souls and trusting in the Lord and where they'll spend eternity. They think they can find heaven on earth so that's where they put their hearts and their treasure.
Idolatry: People worship everything but God.
Flattery: Sycophancy, name-dropping, and the puffing up of others for personal gain has always been and continues to be a prevalent lifestyle choice.
Pride: People puff up themselves up endlessly, too, even in their professed humility.
Surrendering agency: Everyone's a "victim" of something or other. Sin and accountability are not spoken of.
Irresponsibility: There's no burden people would rather shrug off to others than their own religiosity.
Blindness: People cannot be taught by the Spirit because of all of the above and therefore are ineffective at best and adding to the problems at worst.
Yes, we are losing the war for the souls of men and the safety and well-being of our children. The only way to change the direction we are going is to turn back to God, and man up. Robert Bork said it decades ago. The only hope for our debauched society is a robust revival of traditional moral values and religion among the people. Remember, we're not the one's attacking. Yes, we're sick of hearing about the gay agenda, and that's just what they want. Yes, we'd rather focus on positive things, but that doesn't work when you're being attacked. Yes, we hate to confront these evils, but it is our obligation.
It's appropriate that it's September 11. All of the above applies to being defeated by any sort of evil.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Guess What's Coming to Dinner: How to deal with homosexuality in the family
There are lots of ways to be wicked, but the culture of wholesale wickedness that caused the Lord to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah---a society that was so far gone that ten righteous could not be scraped up to save it, that Lot and his family nevertheless lived alongside---is a national reality today from coast to coast. We're thinking some people may need some specific tactics to keep from meeting Lot's wife's fate. The following suggestions are going to take strength of character, courage of conviction, transcendent love of God, an eternal perspective. And well, it may be the hardest thing you've ever had to do.
Say a cherished adult family member has gone so far as to come out as gay. (We are not referring here to people privately and actively working to conquer unwanted homosexual thoughts, feelings, and tendencies.) Whether or not he has left the church, this family member is obviously acting out, is totally unrepentant, is very public about his lifestyle, hangs out with sexual revolutionaries and has become one himself, and is shouting to the world in every way possible, like a rebellious adolescent, that he is having a gay old time. Say this family member has boldly attended extended family gatherings with children present, bringing uninvited homosexualist friends and/or homosexual sex partners, displaying an alien personality, flaunting his new sexuality. Or maybe this hasn't happened yet but you are certain it could. Now say you are hosting a big family gathering, a traditional holiday party, a reunion, a picnic, or just a dinner. It's your house, your event, your family. Sure you want everyone to come, and you especially want any at-risk or wayward members to feel loved and a sense of belonging to the family. But should you allow homosexuality to attend your party as if it is normal and wholesome, as if it is a perfectly safe and righteous alternative to the heterosexual model? Should you be complicit in enabling and spreading homosexualism among your own family, especially to young and impressionable and perhaps particularly vulnerable children?
Yes, this is what inclusion of homosexualism does. Acting as if nothing is wrong in these situations in any social situation is tacit approval. And gays know it. For all sorts of reasons, unconscious or purposeful, they seek approval and validation, not for they themselves (they have that already as a member of the family) but for what they are doing: for homosex. Not unlike all of us at times, these are people with great inner conflicts, with guilt, with narcissistic, unrealistic fantasies and desires---that have gone shamelessly public and proud. Yes, deep down these are often very neurotic, needy, damaged, prideful, rebellious, past feeling, and/or confused people. And misery loves company. All these are reasons why, ironically, in between their rated X fantasies and behaviors, they make sure to come to rated G family gatherings.
Here's what we suggest for the ultimate good of all. Heads of families, or whoever is in charge of a family gathering should make rules that reflect the principle that the person is always welcome but the homosexuality is not. This should be communicated in a clear, calm, and measured manner, come what may. The truth is, family members should not have to anticipate being met with sexually perverse and immoral identities or behaviors when attending a family gathering. People should not be coerced into such situations. Even more important, people have the right to protect their children from being exposed to cross-dressing, gender nonconformity, and all manner of homosexualism. (Please note the little known fact that the percentage of homosexual child abuse is more than 20 times greater than heterosexual child abuse.) Pro-gay ideology has most certainly infiltrated our media, our schools, our government, our streets, even our churches, but it need not crash our family gatherings.
Here are some specific rules for family gatherings for the unrepentant, gay, family-interested family member:
If the gay family member is highly public about his gay-affirming lifestyle, such as on Facebook, so that it is common knowledge among the family, they should be told that because of this they are not invited to family gatherings. This is because it is unfair and harmful to cause other family members to have to expose themselves or their children in a supposedly safe and wholesome family setting to someone they know is proudly and publicly sinning, as if this behavior is normal and good. If they are not proud and public about their lifestyle they will be invited. People are invited; homosexuality isn't.
At an actual extended family gathering, no sex activists, homosexualist friends, or homosex partners allowed. No cross-dressing allowed. No sex jokes or homosexual stereotyping allowed. No sex talk allowed. No homosexual innuendo allowed. No gay showing off, affectations, or playacting allowed in any degree. No special attention to children or young persons allowed. If these rules are not complied with, the person will be asked to leave. If they do not leave, the entire gathering will immediately be terminated. Family members will have to do their visiting in smaller, private groups and settings for the time being..
Even if the family member is legally "married," their homosexual partner must not be allowed to attend family gatherings. This sounds bad but it's the only right thing to do. Gay marriage is another name for homosexuality, that is, same-sex sexual behavior. This behavior is pornographic, harmful, maladaptive, and sinful, whether done under the cloak of so-called monogamous so-called marriage or not. It does not deserve familiarity and respect. When you treat gay couples as equal to heterosexual couples, you are legitimizing this behavior and setting it up as a model to follow. Would you invite your loved one's drug dealer or pimp to dinner? The modern legitimization of gay marriage does not make it right.
This next rule makes us weep: If the gay family member has acquired a child or children in his or her care, they of course must be included in family gatherings, but the gay parent must be informed that the child has to obey these same rules and will be purposely taught truth, righteousness, and the heterosexual model at these gatherings.
These are our suggested rules. You may have others. And yes, we know they seem harsh. We know it's a sacrifice. It's a disappointment. It's difficult. It's sensitive. It would be much easier to ignore the whole thing or to include the gay family member hoping your influence will win out instead of his. But God does not look upon sin with the least degree of allowance and we mustn't either, our own or others'. It's harsh but it's reality and it's necessary. That is, unless you want to encourage your gay family member in sin, condemn them to destruction, and add more gays and homosexualists to the already dwindling family tree. That is, unless you want your family dinner to be in essence a ripe mini-Sodom. If you don't make and enforce these rules, chances are the gay family member may in effect take over. Or it may be that no matter what you do the gay family member might not be able to keep this effusive interest in family up for long, especially if he isn't making fast enough headway. They are living a highly sensational and addictive sex-based lifestyle that needs constant and increasingly stimulating fuel. Family life is too tame; they'll get bored and perhaps move to more gay-friendly environs. Sad, but it happens.
There's a strange thing happening in Mormon culture,and maybe in some others as well. Our sons and daughters are joining the sexual revolution, at the same time wishing to be active and popular in our families, church culture, and congregations. Proud gays, recruited, conditioned, and transformed, make themselves special favorites of young nieces and nephews, elderly grandparents and, increasingly, easily-persuaded peers, parents, church members and leaders. Simultaneously they immerse themselves in unlimited and perverse gender nonconformity and sexual immorality. They set out to have their cake and eat it too. And because of the great emphasis put on family and church culture, their families are siding with them instead of with God. It appears that more often than not we'd rather flamboyant homosexuality took that empty chair than the Lord himself.
Say a cherished adult family member has gone so far as to come out as gay. (We are not referring here to people privately and actively working to conquer unwanted homosexual thoughts, feelings, and tendencies.) Whether or not he has left the church, this family member is obviously acting out, is totally unrepentant, is very public about his lifestyle, hangs out with sexual revolutionaries and has become one himself, and is shouting to the world in every way possible, like a rebellious adolescent, that he is having a gay old time. Say this family member has boldly attended extended family gatherings with children present, bringing uninvited homosexualist friends and/or homosexual sex partners, displaying an alien personality, flaunting his new sexuality. Or maybe this hasn't happened yet but you are certain it could. Now say you are hosting a big family gathering, a traditional holiday party, a reunion, a picnic, or just a dinner. It's your house, your event, your family. Sure you want everyone to come, and you especially want any at-risk or wayward members to feel loved and a sense of belonging to the family. But should you allow homosexuality to attend your party as if it is normal and wholesome, as if it is a perfectly safe and righteous alternative to the heterosexual model? Should you be complicit in enabling and spreading homosexualism among your own family, especially to young and impressionable and perhaps particularly vulnerable children?
Yes, this is what inclusion of homosexualism does. Acting as if nothing is wrong in these situations in any social situation is tacit approval. And gays know it. For all sorts of reasons, unconscious or purposeful, they seek approval and validation, not for they themselves (they have that already as a member of the family) but for what they are doing: for homosex. Not unlike all of us at times, these are people with great inner conflicts, with guilt, with narcissistic, unrealistic fantasies and desires---that have gone shamelessly public and proud. Yes, deep down these are often very neurotic, needy, damaged, prideful, rebellious, past feeling, and/or confused people. And misery loves company. All these are reasons why, ironically, in between their rated X fantasies and behaviors, they make sure to come to rated G family gatherings.
Here's what we suggest for the ultimate good of all. Heads of families, or whoever is in charge of a family gathering should make rules that reflect the principle that the person is always welcome but the homosexuality is not. This should be communicated in a clear, calm, and measured manner, come what may. The truth is, family members should not have to anticipate being met with sexually perverse and immoral identities or behaviors when attending a family gathering. People should not be coerced into such situations. Even more important, people have the right to protect their children from being exposed to cross-dressing, gender nonconformity, and all manner of homosexualism. (Please note the little known fact that the percentage of homosexual child abuse is more than 20 times greater than heterosexual child abuse.) Pro-gay ideology has most certainly infiltrated our media, our schools, our government, our streets, even our churches, but it need not crash our family gatherings.
Here are some specific rules for family gatherings for the unrepentant, gay, family-interested family member:
If the gay family member is highly public about his gay-affirming lifestyle, such as on Facebook, so that it is common knowledge among the family, they should be told that because of this they are not invited to family gatherings. This is because it is unfair and harmful to cause other family members to have to expose themselves or their children in a supposedly safe and wholesome family setting to someone they know is proudly and publicly sinning, as if this behavior is normal and good. If they are not proud and public about their lifestyle they will be invited. People are invited; homosexuality isn't.
At an actual extended family gathering, no sex activists, homosexualist friends, or homosex partners allowed. No cross-dressing allowed. No sex jokes or homosexual stereotyping allowed. No sex talk allowed. No homosexual innuendo allowed. No gay showing off, affectations, or playacting allowed in any degree. No special attention to children or young persons allowed. If these rules are not complied with, the person will be asked to leave. If they do not leave, the entire gathering will immediately be terminated. Family members will have to do their visiting in smaller, private groups and settings for the time being..
Even if the family member is legally "married," their homosexual partner must not be allowed to attend family gatherings. This sounds bad but it's the only right thing to do. Gay marriage is another name for homosexuality, that is, same-sex sexual behavior. This behavior is pornographic, harmful, maladaptive, and sinful, whether done under the cloak of so-called monogamous so-called marriage or not. It does not deserve familiarity and respect. When you treat gay couples as equal to heterosexual couples, you are legitimizing this behavior and setting it up as a model to follow. Would you invite your loved one's drug dealer or pimp to dinner? The modern legitimization of gay marriage does not make it right.
This next rule makes us weep: If the gay family member has acquired a child or children in his or her care, they of course must be included in family gatherings, but the gay parent must be informed that the child has to obey these same rules and will be purposely taught truth, righteousness, and the heterosexual model at these gatherings.
These are our suggested rules. You may have others. And yes, we know they seem harsh. We know it's a sacrifice. It's a disappointment. It's difficult. It's sensitive. It would be much easier to ignore the whole thing or to include the gay family member hoping your influence will win out instead of his. But God does not look upon sin with the least degree of allowance and we mustn't either, our own or others'. It's harsh but it's reality and it's necessary. That is, unless you want to encourage your gay family member in sin, condemn them to destruction, and add more gays and homosexualists to the already dwindling family tree. That is, unless you want your family dinner to be in essence a ripe mini-Sodom. If you don't make and enforce these rules, chances are the gay family member may in effect take over. Or it may be that no matter what you do the gay family member might not be able to keep this effusive interest in family up for long, especially if he isn't making fast enough headway. They are living a highly sensational and addictive sex-based lifestyle that needs constant and increasingly stimulating fuel. Family life is too tame; they'll get bored and perhaps move to more gay-friendly environs. Sad, but it happens.
There's a strange thing happening in Mormon culture,and maybe in some others as well. Our sons and daughters are joining the sexual revolution, at the same time wishing to be active and popular in our families, church culture, and congregations. Proud gays, recruited, conditioned, and transformed, make themselves special favorites of young nieces and nephews, elderly grandparents and, increasingly, easily-persuaded peers, parents, church members and leaders. Simultaneously they immerse themselves in unlimited and perverse gender nonconformity and sexual immorality. They set out to have their cake and eat it too. And because of the great emphasis put on family and church culture, their families are siding with them instead of with God. It appears that more often than not we'd rather flamboyant homosexuality took that empty chair than the Lord himself.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Pornography: How To Make a Vice Nice
Centuries ago Alexander Pope famously warned mankind about vice and how it becomes acceptable: "First we endure, then pity, then embrace." How? How do you turn a sleazy, despicable, and even deadly abomination like pornography into something nice? We list some tactics for your consideration.
To Make a Vice Nice . . .
You skip over some the primary truths of God's plan and the gospel of Jesus Christ, that is, you rarely if ever talk about the fallen nature of man, that he is prone to wander, prone to sin, prone to do and think and feel the worst the world has to offer. You avoid these words: vice, temptation, pleasure, excitement, orgasm, masturbation, dirty mindedness, sexual sin, iniquity, whoredoms, homosexuality, wickedness, evil, the devil, filth, impurity, immorality, punishment, judgment, condemnation, hell. You also avoid these next list of words we suppose because they are inseparably connected to the above words that you avoided: repentance, mercy, grace, Savior, Atonement, change of heart, salvation, exaltation, love of God, Holy Ghost, agency, responsibility, character, inner purity, motives, spiritual growth.
You never talk about what pornography really is or what it really does to people, that it is material that sexually objectifies human beings and exploits the God-given sexual appetite to get gain, that it incites promiscuous and adulterous lust in ever increasing doses and degrees to the point of sadism, torture, and murder (in what are called snuff films), that it is the fuel for such things as masturbation, fornication, molestation, adultery, divorce, incest, homosexuality, and child sexual abuse and the training ground for rapists and serial killers, that those involved in it are involved in great wickedness.
By the way, the famous serial killer Ted Bundy was raised in an ideal Christian household just like his four siblings and was a model child. The reason he ended up a mass rapist/murderer of more than 30 women? (Some say it was more like 50.) By his own admission: pornography. It was used in secret and the more he used it the more sensation he craved. Eventually he acted the worst kind of pornography out. Yes, there is very little distance between vice and evil.
Again, to make a vice nice don't use words like sin, temptation, pleasure, excitement, masturbation, orgasm, sleaze, adultery, sinner, destruction, hell, Christ, and redemption. Instead, use words like plague, addiction, problem, attraction, understanding, challenge, manage, mistakes, broken, struggle, pain, devastation, burden, support, disclosure, talk, self, recovery, lifted, cope, healing, forgiveness. Make this incredibly lucrative and pleasurable activity into a condition or circumstance or addiction rather than a sin. Make users into victims rather than sinners. Make sin into something more of a spontaneous contagious disease that is forced on people like the black plague rather than a personal choice between good and evil. Turn evil and the devil into a psychological or even physiological condition.
Note: We know that porn is indeed highly addictive and does reshape the brain. We know that professional counseling can be necessary and helpful. However, defining porn as a plague when it comes to the individual shifts responsibility and excuses the wicked selfish disobedient choices that lead to it. The AA-type treatment of this vice, although it may help people in some temporal and temporary ways, is not godly or exalting. It sidesteps or plays down basic truths about man's fallen nature and basic gospel principles such as humility, repentance, loving God first, and becoming a new creature, washed clean, through faith in Christ.
Yes, to make pornography use less of a sleazy, sinful, and selfish vice and more of an innocent, the-devil-made-me-do-it state of being you must continue to avoid the word repentance and continue to emphasize the worldly mediocrity described above. It doesn't matter what else you say about recovery or human relations or forgiveness, just keep softening and prettifying this vice. Voila! Even ostensibly religious people are well on the road to embracing the abomination that is pornography as an inevitable, acceptable part of modern faith and family life worthy of sympathy and respect anywhere on the spectrum of use or former use.
Oh, wait, people are already doing that. Apparently, we as a people are way past enduring and even pitying. By turning pornography into more of a contagious illness that is involuntarily caught and can be coped with happily while going about being outwardly religious rather than a sinful vice individuals decide to seek out and participate in, we have embraced it with both arms. As such, we've decided we don't need much divine redemption at all.
We should know better.
Post Script: A reader pointed out that the LDS ecclesiastical use of the word plague in reference to pornography today needs clarifying. We'll give it a try. In the sense that society's production, distribution, and mainstreaming of addictive sexual material is a disaster, the comparison to a plague seems appropriate. But the analogy soon breaks down when sane individuals with agency begin to seek out pornography. A plague is defined as an infectious disease (such as the bubonic plague) or a disastrous evil or affliction (such as the locusts or frogs or flies in Moses' time), which diseases, evils, or afflictions affect people involuntarily. Society's embrace of pornography is indeed disastrous to many of us (others profit by it by reaping pleasure and money). But if referred to as a plague pornography must be clearly distinguished and characterized not as an involuntary circumstance but as something society has chosen to allow and individuals choose to participate in. Man is a fallen creature prone to sin. Sin is pleasurable, at least for a time. Individuals are pleasurably attracted and later become pleasurably/miserably addicted to porn not because porn is pervasive (although this makes it easier), but because of their sinful natures. If we want to truly eradicate porn use from our families and congregations, we have to start with this gospel truth---that we are inevitably fallen--- which truth, if we wish, can lead us to Christ, our Redeemer.
To Make a Vice Nice . . .
You skip over some the primary truths of God's plan and the gospel of Jesus Christ, that is, you rarely if ever talk about the fallen nature of man, that he is prone to wander, prone to sin, prone to do and think and feel the worst the world has to offer. You avoid these words: vice, temptation, pleasure, excitement, orgasm, masturbation, dirty mindedness, sexual sin, iniquity, whoredoms, homosexuality, wickedness, evil, the devil, filth, impurity, immorality, punishment, judgment, condemnation, hell. You also avoid these next list of words we suppose because they are inseparably connected to the above words that you avoided: repentance, mercy, grace, Savior, Atonement, change of heart, salvation, exaltation, love of God, Holy Ghost, agency, responsibility, character, inner purity, motives, spiritual growth.
You never talk about what pornography really is or what it really does to people, that it is material that sexually objectifies human beings and exploits the God-given sexual appetite to get gain, that it incites promiscuous and adulterous lust in ever increasing doses and degrees to the point of sadism, torture, and murder (in what are called snuff films), that it is the fuel for such things as masturbation, fornication, molestation, adultery, divorce, incest, homosexuality, and child sexual abuse and the training ground for rapists and serial killers, that those involved in it are involved in great wickedness.
By the way, the famous serial killer Ted Bundy was raised in an ideal Christian household just like his four siblings and was a model child. The reason he ended up a mass rapist/murderer of more than 30 women? (Some say it was more like 50.) By his own admission: pornography. It was used in secret and the more he used it the more sensation he craved. Eventually he acted the worst kind of pornography out. Yes, there is very little distance between vice and evil.
Again, to make a vice nice don't use words like sin, temptation, pleasure, excitement, masturbation, orgasm, sleaze, adultery, sinner, destruction, hell, Christ, and redemption. Instead, use words like plague, addiction, problem, attraction, understanding, challenge, manage, mistakes, broken, struggle, pain, devastation, burden, support, disclosure, talk, self, recovery, lifted, cope, healing, forgiveness. Make this incredibly lucrative and pleasurable activity into a condition or circumstance or addiction rather than a sin. Make users into victims rather than sinners. Make sin into something more of a spontaneous contagious disease that is forced on people like the black plague rather than a personal choice between good and evil. Turn evil and the devil into a psychological or even physiological condition.
Note: We know that porn is indeed highly addictive and does reshape the brain. We know that professional counseling can be necessary and helpful. However, defining porn as a plague when it comes to the individual shifts responsibility and excuses the wicked selfish disobedient choices that lead to it. The AA-type treatment of this vice, although it may help people in some temporal and temporary ways, is not godly or exalting. It sidesteps or plays down basic truths about man's fallen nature and basic gospel principles such as humility, repentance, loving God first, and becoming a new creature, washed clean, through faith in Christ.
Yes, to make pornography use less of a sleazy, sinful, and selfish vice and more of an innocent, the-devil-made-me-do-it state of being you must continue to avoid the word repentance and continue to emphasize the worldly mediocrity described above. It doesn't matter what else you say about recovery or human relations or forgiveness, just keep softening and prettifying this vice. Voila! Even ostensibly religious people are well on the road to embracing the abomination that is pornography as an inevitable, acceptable part of modern faith and family life worthy of sympathy and respect anywhere on the spectrum of use or former use.
Oh, wait, people are already doing that. Apparently, we as a people are way past enduring and even pitying. By turning pornography into more of a contagious illness that is involuntarily caught and can be coped with happily while going about being outwardly religious rather than a sinful vice individuals decide to seek out and participate in, we have embraced it with both arms. As such, we've decided we don't need much divine redemption at all.
We should know better.
Post Script: A reader pointed out that the LDS ecclesiastical use of the word plague in reference to pornography today needs clarifying. We'll give it a try. In the sense that society's production, distribution, and mainstreaming of addictive sexual material is a disaster, the comparison to a plague seems appropriate. But the analogy soon breaks down when sane individuals with agency begin to seek out pornography. A plague is defined as an infectious disease (such as the bubonic plague) or a disastrous evil or affliction (such as the locusts or frogs or flies in Moses' time), which diseases, evils, or afflictions affect people involuntarily. Society's embrace of pornography is indeed disastrous to many of us (others profit by it by reaping pleasure and money). But if referred to as a plague pornography must be clearly distinguished and characterized not as an involuntary circumstance but as something society has chosen to allow and individuals choose to participate in. Man is a fallen creature prone to sin. Sin is pleasurable, at least for a time. Individuals are pleasurably attracted and later become pleasurably/miserably addicted to porn not because porn is pervasive (although this makes it easier), but because of their sinful natures. If we want to truly eradicate porn use from our families and congregations, we have to start with this gospel truth---that we are inevitably fallen--- which truth, if we wish, can lead us to Christ, our Redeemer.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Warning: Steer Clear of North Star
"Be constant as the north star," says a beloved Primary song. Some have asked us about North Star, a website and organization run by Mormons (totally unofficially) that purports to offer help and support for gay Mormons, including (quite presumptuously) education for Church leaders. Is the name by which the founders call this organization accurate? Does North Star intend to lead people troubled with sinful tendencies in the right direction? Is it constant and consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ? The unequivocal answer is no.
North Star must be exposed for its blatant inconstancy, harmful sophistries, and pro-gay agenda.With its long history of following such trends, SoL has found North Star full of cleverly-worded, watered-down, but ultimately false and anti-Christ teachings, just another wolf dressed in sheep's clothing, one more attempt to excuse homosexuality and get it accepted, bit by bit, into mainstream LDS culture, policy, and practice.
We cannot find that North Star anywhere in its writings, books, conferences, or associations encourages repentance in thought or deed. As in the writings of Ty Ray Mansfield, a founder of North Star, we do not see that it focuses anywhere on the mighty change of heart, but rather seeks to emphasize acceptance of the sexual gay identity as a permanent part of one's God-given make-up, even as heroic. In Mansfield's book In Quiet Desperation, an apologetic for Mormon same-sex sexual attraction, the author sets himself up as the gay Mormon Moses, describing a personal revelation, "as if the Lord were saying to me, 'Ancient Israel was called to build a tabernacle . . . they heeded my call. You my son have likewise been called to build a kingdom.'" That kingdom, North Star, despite its frequent use of the name of Christ, craftily treats the homosexual identity as a virtue and a blessing and proclaims that one can be fulfilled and happy while openly proclaiming this identity, which obviously includes enjoying lawless sexual lust (otherwise why self-identify?). As for homosexual behaviors, although North Star insists that these are out of bounds, these behaviors are not clearly defined and all sorts of acting out is portrayed by North Star itself.
One example is on North Star's blog where there is a post entitled "Man Crushes, Man Dates, Bromances, and Buddymoons" in which Mansfield, a self-proclaimed homosexual, obsesses publicly about his "intense infatuation" in a "non-romantic or non-sexual way" with not one but several attractive males. This is at best extremely adolescent and at worst, a sick lie. (These trendy terms are used in a joking way by heterosexuals, not homosexuals.) Contrary to his misguided or pretended insistence that these attractions are "big brother"-like (did this grown man never grow out of puberty?), the words crush, date, romance, and honeymoon are not about friendship or masculine idealization, as he insists, but about romance and sexuality. When actual homosexuals, as in same-sex sexual attraction, use these terms, what else can be meant but sexuality? Ty was featured in LDS magazine being applauded for his temple marriage to a woman;according to his insistence that he is continuing to be homosexual he obviously can never love her as a wife. Why is this man the poster child for "faithful" gay Mormons? It's like having a chain smoker be the go-to man for people who need to quit smoking.
David Pruden, associated with NARTH (which we have supported in the past) who used to run Evergreen (an organization perceived by many to be an arm of the official Church on homosexuality although it maintained that it was not) on Jan. 1, 2014 said,"Over the years more and more of the activities of Evergreen and North Star have become redundant as both organizations seek to help members of the Church . . . and their families who are experiencing homosexual attraction. In a world that is increasingly hostile to the message of the gospel and the standards of the Church it is important that those who seek to serve this subset of Church members be united in our shared message of faithfulness. This merger will allow us to consolidate valuable resources and focus the efforts of volunteers . . . under the direction of a single volunteer-led organizational effort. We are excited about the expanded possibilities that this united effort can provide."
Subset? Faithfulness? Again, these are sophistries. When it comes to Christ's gospel of repentance, there are no special subsets or minorities. This is a trendy, worldly view used to promote and excuse homosexuality as something special and exempt, unlike other lustful sexual sins. The truth is we're all sinners and we're all in this together. People publicly embracing (read: flaunting) sinful tendencies as an identity are not faithful to Christ.
On its home page is this statement: "North Star is a community for Latter-day Saints dealing with issues surrounding homosexual attraction who desire to live in harmony with the teachings of Jesus Christ and the values and doctrines of the Church . . . "
Here we point out that the wording "dealing with issues surrounding homosexual attraction" (emphasis ours) shows that North Star is not about individuals overcoming homosexuality or repentance. It's about "issues" related to it, as in changing existing perceptions and norms concerning wholesomeness and sexual purity to include homosexuality. Unrepentant homosexuals are definitely not living in harmony with God's standards for sexual morality.
North Star continues, "The purpose of North Star is to be a spiritually uplifting resource for individuals and families dealing with this complex issue. It is also to empower individuals to help educate themselves, their family, friends, and Church leaders as they strive to become integrated more fully and lovingly into the Church . . . You are not alone . . ."
We at SoL have seen how North Star and others insist that this issue is so complex it cannot be rooted out. This is glaringly false. Reorientation therapy has proved to be unprecedentedly successful for those who truly desire to overcome homosexual tendencies. As for North Star's claim to provide spiritual guidance, this version of "spirituality" is not really about our relationship to the Godhead at all. It's about focusing on temporal comfort and self-satisfaction (all is well in Zion), in other words refitting the Church to one's sins rather than the other way around. This narrow, self-centered mindset is portrayed in Mansfield's Voices of Hope which emphasizes "positive and healthy alternative responses to same-sex sexuality." Along with prideful and rebellious narcissism posing as self-worth, North Star emphasizes sociology (human relations), and piosity (outward performances) rather than any true relationship with God or change of heart. In an obvious effort to sit on the fence (let's not forget that the Lord spews fence-sitters out of his mouth), Mansfield discourages choosing "between extremes." This is relativist, humanist, anti-Christ rhetoric, ancient to modern. Sorry, you're either serving God or you're not. There's no middle ground on certainties. Homosexuality is certainly wrong in any form.
The mission statement of North Star is: "The mission of North Star is to provide a place of community for Latter-day Saints who experience homosexual attraction or gender identity incongruence, as well as their family, friends, and ecclesiastical leaders. North Star serves those who desire the spiritual and social support that strengthens faith, builds character, and empowers men and women to live in joy and harmony within their covenants, values, and beliefs as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." A three paragraph values statement includes: " . . . North Star takes no official position on the origin or mutability of homosexual attractions or gender identity incongruence but supports all efforts consistent with the gospel that help individuals live in more full harmony with their covenants and attain greater peace, fulfillment, and sense of individual worth, while affirming that the most essential and eternal growth and progress come through the power of the Savior and adherence to the teachings of his prophets. . . . .North Star holds that the power and grace of Christ enables each individual to renounce behavior and manage thoughts that will prevent him or her from returning into his presence."
There are so many goofy things about this smarmy mission statement, we hardly know where to begin. At SoL we believe that anyone who refers to the gay "community" has bought into the PC mindset that the vice of homosexuality is a permanent and respectable identity. North Star is presuming to educate us all, including ecclesiastical leaders, and yet it is noticeably lacking on scripture in true context and responsible science. Serious references to real experts on the topic and Church leaders denouncing homosexuality are few and far between, seemingly only for show. What manner of education can this be? We say it's the philosophies of men mingled with bits of truth. North Star uses the word transform but, we repeat, not in the context of reorientation therapy or repentance, rather as a mode of bringing people to accept their current perverse sexual obsessions as perfectly fine. This tactic, although camouflaged in churchy language and even perhaps done unwittingly by some, is exactly in line with the worldly gay agenda, that is, to slowly and systematically bring individuals, families, churches, schools, government, businesses, and the general public around to accepting and celebrating homosexuality. Case in point: See "Reconciling Faith and Feelings" conferences in which Mansfield and others associated with North Star have participated.
Again, don't be distracted by "faithful gay Mormons'" claims of celibacy. This is never defined. Sexual impurity, which includes homosexual lust, takes many forms which include the use of pornography, phone sex, chat rooms, and the list goes on. And the sin of lust has to be constantly fed to thrive. Sex addiction is such that increasing excitement is sought after. Immersion in the homosexual identity includes thoughts and feelings that lead to acting out. We've never heard of anyone whose sin was embraced and who was encouraged in sinfulness (by those who should know better), who then somehow decided to repent. Much as people would wish this expedient method to work, it is false and the antithesis of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
If you learn anything from this article, please note: North Star does not emphasize or explore repentance or reorientation therapy. In fact, North Star publishes articles dismissing reorientation therapy as inappropriate, ineffective, harmful, and even sinful. We quote from a North Star post by Sven Sambunjak," I believe homosexuality is spiritual in its origin and nature, so I argue it is a sin to try to hammer it out of existence." This is the type of material North Star is publishing. Evil being called good and good called evil.
At its core, whatever they say, North Star proves itself to be about helping people feel comfortable in their sinful desires. In favor of some hazy "inclusiveness," unreliable human feelings, false notions, and praise of men, North Star is being guided not by any real unchanging north star (such as comprehensive sexual purity and the unadulterated gospel of Jesus Christ), but by its own constructed set of arbitrary standards.
Sad to say, for many years now SoL has seen that there are members of our Church with great ambition, wrong ideas, and bad intentions who nevertheless gain attention and credibility through flattery and patient cunning. These false teachers have proceeded to win many over, step by step to their evil designs, just as The Book of Mormon Anti-Christs did. Those with good intentions who are deceived by these false teachers need to wake up.
The true views of North Star, given even the the most liberal views of some LDS leaders, are off the charts. We urge all true and humble followers of Christ to get educated for themselves about North Star and its origins and activities before utilizing or referring this organization or anyone affiliated with it.
North Star must be exposed for its blatant inconstancy, harmful sophistries, and pro-gay agenda.With its long history of following such trends, SoL has found North Star full of cleverly-worded, watered-down, but ultimately false and anti-Christ teachings, just another wolf dressed in sheep's clothing, one more attempt to excuse homosexuality and get it accepted, bit by bit, into mainstream LDS culture, policy, and practice.
We cannot find that North Star anywhere in its writings, books, conferences, or associations encourages repentance in thought or deed. As in the writings of Ty Ray Mansfield, a founder of North Star, we do not see that it focuses anywhere on the mighty change of heart, but rather seeks to emphasize acceptance of the sexual gay identity as a permanent part of one's God-given make-up, even as heroic. In Mansfield's book In Quiet Desperation, an apologetic for Mormon same-sex sexual attraction, the author sets himself up as the gay Mormon Moses, describing a personal revelation, "as if the Lord were saying to me, 'Ancient Israel was called to build a tabernacle . . . they heeded my call. You my son have likewise been called to build a kingdom.'" That kingdom, North Star, despite its frequent use of the name of Christ, craftily treats the homosexual identity as a virtue and a blessing and proclaims that one can be fulfilled and happy while openly proclaiming this identity, which obviously includes enjoying lawless sexual lust (otherwise why self-identify?). As for homosexual behaviors, although North Star insists that these are out of bounds, these behaviors are not clearly defined and all sorts of acting out is portrayed by North Star itself.
One example is on North Star's blog where there is a post entitled "Man Crushes, Man Dates, Bromances, and Buddymoons" in which Mansfield, a self-proclaimed homosexual, obsesses publicly about his "intense infatuation" in a "non-romantic or non-sexual way" with not one but several attractive males. This is at best extremely adolescent and at worst, a sick lie. (These trendy terms are used in a joking way by heterosexuals, not homosexuals.) Contrary to his misguided or pretended insistence that these attractions are "big brother"-like (did this grown man never grow out of puberty?), the words crush, date, romance, and honeymoon are not about friendship or masculine idealization, as he insists, but about romance and sexuality. When actual homosexuals, as in same-sex sexual attraction, use these terms, what else can be meant but sexuality? Ty was featured in LDS magazine being applauded for his temple marriage to a woman;according to his insistence that he is continuing to be homosexual he obviously can never love her as a wife. Why is this man the poster child for "faithful" gay Mormons? It's like having a chain smoker be the go-to man for people who need to quit smoking.
David Pruden, associated with NARTH (which we have supported in the past) who used to run Evergreen (an organization perceived by many to be an arm of the official Church on homosexuality although it maintained that it was not) on Jan. 1, 2014 said,"Over the years more and more of the activities of Evergreen and North Star have become redundant as both organizations seek to help members of the Church . . . and their families who are experiencing homosexual attraction. In a world that is increasingly hostile to the message of the gospel and the standards of the Church it is important that those who seek to serve this subset of Church members be united in our shared message of faithfulness. This merger will allow us to consolidate valuable resources and focus the efforts of volunteers . . . under the direction of a single volunteer-led organizational effort. We are excited about the expanded possibilities that this united effort can provide."
Subset? Faithfulness? Again, these are sophistries. When it comes to Christ's gospel of repentance, there are no special subsets or minorities. This is a trendy, worldly view used to promote and excuse homosexuality as something special and exempt, unlike other lustful sexual sins. The truth is we're all sinners and we're all in this together. People publicly embracing (read: flaunting) sinful tendencies as an identity are not faithful to Christ.
On its home page is this statement: "North Star is a community for Latter-day Saints dealing with issues surrounding homosexual attraction who desire to live in harmony with the teachings of Jesus Christ and the values and doctrines of the Church . . . "
Here we point out that the wording "dealing with issues surrounding homosexual attraction" (emphasis ours) shows that North Star is not about individuals overcoming homosexuality or repentance. It's about "issues" related to it, as in changing existing perceptions and norms concerning wholesomeness and sexual purity to include homosexuality. Unrepentant homosexuals are definitely not living in harmony with God's standards for sexual morality.
North Star continues, "The purpose of North Star is to be a spiritually uplifting resource for individuals and families dealing with this complex issue. It is also to empower individuals to help educate themselves, their family, friends, and Church leaders as they strive to become integrated more fully and lovingly into the Church . . . You are not alone . . ."
We at SoL have seen how North Star and others insist that this issue is so complex it cannot be rooted out. This is glaringly false. Reorientation therapy has proved to be unprecedentedly successful for those who truly desire to overcome homosexual tendencies. As for North Star's claim to provide spiritual guidance, this version of "spirituality" is not really about our relationship to the Godhead at all. It's about focusing on temporal comfort and self-satisfaction (all is well in Zion), in other words refitting the Church to one's sins rather than the other way around. This narrow, self-centered mindset is portrayed in Mansfield's Voices of Hope which emphasizes "positive and healthy alternative responses to same-sex sexuality." Along with prideful and rebellious narcissism posing as self-worth, North Star emphasizes sociology (human relations), and piosity (outward performances) rather than any true relationship with God or change of heart. In an obvious effort to sit on the fence (let's not forget that the Lord spews fence-sitters out of his mouth), Mansfield discourages choosing "between extremes." This is relativist, humanist, anti-Christ rhetoric, ancient to modern. Sorry, you're either serving God or you're not. There's no middle ground on certainties. Homosexuality is certainly wrong in any form.
The mission statement of North Star is: "The mission of North Star is to provide a place of community for Latter-day Saints who experience homosexual attraction or gender identity incongruence, as well as their family, friends, and ecclesiastical leaders. North Star serves those who desire the spiritual and social support that strengthens faith, builds character, and empowers men and women to live in joy and harmony within their covenants, values, and beliefs as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." A three paragraph values statement includes: " . . . North Star takes no official position on the origin or mutability of homosexual attractions or gender identity incongruence but supports all efforts consistent with the gospel that help individuals live in more full harmony with their covenants and attain greater peace, fulfillment, and sense of individual worth, while affirming that the most essential and eternal growth and progress come through the power of the Savior and adherence to the teachings of his prophets. . . . .North Star holds that the power and grace of Christ enables each individual to renounce behavior and manage thoughts that will prevent him or her from returning into his presence."
There are so many goofy things about this smarmy mission statement, we hardly know where to begin. At SoL we believe that anyone who refers to the gay "community" has bought into the PC mindset that the vice of homosexuality is a permanent and respectable identity. North Star is presuming to educate us all, including ecclesiastical leaders, and yet it is noticeably lacking on scripture in true context and responsible science. Serious references to real experts on the topic and Church leaders denouncing homosexuality are few and far between, seemingly only for show. What manner of education can this be? We say it's the philosophies of men mingled with bits of truth. North Star uses the word transform but, we repeat, not in the context of reorientation therapy or repentance, rather as a mode of bringing people to accept their current perverse sexual obsessions as perfectly fine. This tactic, although camouflaged in churchy language and even perhaps done unwittingly by some, is exactly in line with the worldly gay agenda, that is, to slowly and systematically bring individuals, families, churches, schools, government, businesses, and the general public around to accepting and celebrating homosexuality. Case in point: See "Reconciling Faith and Feelings" conferences in which Mansfield and others associated with North Star have participated.
Again, don't be distracted by "faithful gay Mormons'" claims of celibacy. This is never defined. Sexual impurity, which includes homosexual lust, takes many forms which include the use of pornography, phone sex, chat rooms, and the list goes on. And the sin of lust has to be constantly fed to thrive. Sex addiction is such that increasing excitement is sought after. Immersion in the homosexual identity includes thoughts and feelings that lead to acting out. We've never heard of anyone whose sin was embraced and who was encouraged in sinfulness (by those who should know better), who then somehow decided to repent. Much as people would wish this expedient method to work, it is false and the antithesis of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
If you learn anything from this article, please note: North Star does not emphasize or explore repentance or reorientation therapy. In fact, North Star publishes articles dismissing reorientation therapy as inappropriate, ineffective, harmful, and even sinful. We quote from a North Star post by Sven Sambunjak," I believe homosexuality is spiritual in its origin and nature, so I argue it is a sin to try to hammer it out of existence." This is the type of material North Star is publishing. Evil being called good and good called evil.
At its core, whatever they say, North Star proves itself to be about helping people feel comfortable in their sinful desires. In favor of some hazy "inclusiveness," unreliable human feelings, false notions, and praise of men, North Star is being guided not by any real unchanging north star (such as comprehensive sexual purity and the unadulterated gospel of Jesus Christ), but by its own constructed set of arbitrary standards.
Sad to say, for many years now SoL has seen that there are members of our Church with great ambition, wrong ideas, and bad intentions who nevertheless gain attention and credibility through flattery and patient cunning. These false teachers have proceeded to win many over, step by step to their evil designs, just as The Book of Mormon Anti-Christs did. Those with good intentions who are deceived by these false teachers need to wake up.
The true views of North Star, given even the the most liberal views of some LDS leaders, are off the charts. We urge all true and humble followers of Christ to get educated for themselves about North Star and its origins and activities before utilizing or referring this organization or anyone affiliated with it.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Three Things Every Gay Should Know Just in Case
You think you're what people today are calling gay or SSA. You've come out to the world. Maybe you use same-sex pornography because it turns you on and thus validates your choices and the decision to come out. You hang out with fellow homosexualists on the internet and in person who praise and flatter you. Most likely, if you've come to this point, you're acting out in many other ways, experimenting with your sexual feelings, with clothes, with entertainment, with alcohol, with drugs, with masturbation, with new relationships, with romance and with sex. You're living it up, thinking life has never been this exciting. Sin is indeed pleasurable, for a time. To validate your decisions further you may even have become an activist, systematically attempting to recruit your family, friends, and church into celebrating homosexuality. Could be you've immersed yourself in the gay culture/lifestyle for years.
If it isn't today, it may be at some future time that you decide this lifestyle---these habits, the homosexual mindset and all the destructive things that go with it (the narcissism, the pride, the deceit, the delusions, the pretending, the porn, the cross-dressing, the sex addiction, the drugs, the promiscuity, the violence, the health risks, the illnesses, the rebelliousness against God)--- is a dead end street. Maybe the sporadic thrills are losing their appeal, maybe you see that you yourself are getting old, and you decide you want a regular, normal, wholesome life after all. Maybe you want to have children and know that they deserve a mom and dad. Maybe you decide it's time to do some maturing. When you reach this point there are three truths you will want to know:
1. You were not born gay. No one is. Your body is biologically heterosexual, that is, made to interact sexually with the opposite sex only. Sex and sexuality are serious business. Anything other than the proper use of sex and sexuality will result in somebody getting hurt. No matter what you have done or what has been done to you, you are not under any obligation or compulsion to self-destruct by way of homosexuality or anything else. For mentally healthy people every thought, feeling, and act is a choice. Getting into homosex was a choice and getting out is a choice, too.
2. You won't go to heaven unless you repent. Like everyone else, you are going to die and be accountable for your thoughts and deeds. People who willfully rebel against God will not want to be in His presence. This means you won't end up in heaven unless you turn back to God and goodness while in this life.It is only because of Jesus Christ that repentance is possible. His arms are always stretched out to you. True repentance requires a measure of selflessness and humility. You must be willing to give up lawless pleasures and pride in order to progress as a child of God. In reality it's a small price to pay and the smart thing to do.
3. You can change. People repenting of their sins and mistakes comprises a great portion of the history of mankind. All the best stories are about people changing for the better. People change their minds and hearts all the time. We live in a culture where many sins, including sexual immorality of all kinds, are falsely considered brave and cool. Society today is conditioning everyone to accept lies about sexual sin. We have to fight it, in our culture and in our own hearts and minds. You have been equipped with this ability. You have a mind and a heart, and these God-given faculties can be woken up and applied to lead you back to reality, health, goodness, inner peace, and improvement.
Lord bless and all good wishes!
If it isn't today, it may be at some future time that you decide this lifestyle---these habits, the homosexual mindset and all the destructive things that go with it (the narcissism, the pride, the deceit, the delusions, the pretending, the porn, the cross-dressing, the sex addiction, the drugs, the promiscuity, the violence, the health risks, the illnesses, the rebelliousness against God)--- is a dead end street. Maybe the sporadic thrills are losing their appeal, maybe you see that you yourself are getting old, and you decide you want a regular, normal, wholesome life after all. Maybe you want to have children and know that they deserve a mom and dad. Maybe you decide it's time to do some maturing. When you reach this point there are three truths you will want to know:
1. You were not born gay. No one is. Your body is biologically heterosexual, that is, made to interact sexually with the opposite sex only. Sex and sexuality are serious business. Anything other than the proper use of sex and sexuality will result in somebody getting hurt. No matter what you have done or what has been done to you, you are not under any obligation or compulsion to self-destruct by way of homosexuality or anything else. For mentally healthy people every thought, feeling, and act is a choice. Getting into homosex was a choice and getting out is a choice, too.
2. You won't go to heaven unless you repent. Like everyone else, you are going to die and be accountable for your thoughts and deeds. People who willfully rebel against God will not want to be in His presence. This means you won't end up in heaven unless you turn back to God and goodness while in this life.It is only because of Jesus Christ that repentance is possible. His arms are always stretched out to you. True repentance requires a measure of selflessness and humility. You must be willing to give up lawless pleasures and pride in order to progress as a child of God. In reality it's a small price to pay and the smart thing to do.
3. You can change. People repenting of their sins and mistakes comprises a great portion of the history of mankind. All the best stories are about people changing for the better. People change their minds and hearts all the time. We live in a culture where many sins, including sexual immorality of all kinds, are falsely considered brave and cool. Society today is conditioning everyone to accept lies about sexual sin. We have to fight it, in our culture and in our own hearts and minds. You have been equipped with this ability. You have a mind and a heart, and these God-given faculties can be woken up and applied to lead you back to reality, health, goodness, inner peace, and improvement.
Lord bless and all good wishes!
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Misguided Compassion vs. The Word of God
"We can't hope to win our child back unless we include him," say desperate LDS families with unrepentant gay family members. "Compassion is the thing."
Our hearts go out to such families. But is this really the way to win loved ones back? First of all, let's define include. Some think including means treating gay family members the same as they always have, pretending like nothing's wrong, welcoming current same-sex sexual partners into their homes and families. But including a person in your life can also mean spending time with them individually, keeping in touch, setting rules for family gatherings that do not promote homosexualism, and holding your ground. Both are inclusive of the person, but the first implicitly shows an acceptance of the bad ideas and behaviors as well.
Next let's define compassion. This word has been hijacked. Real compassion includes caring about a person's long-term well-being. Compassion is not about tolerating sin to keep up appearances. That would be the opposite of compassion, a sort of condemning the person to hell, really. These people are not the total victims they purport to be. Don't be deceived. However much you love and admire them, however wonderful and talented they are, whatever else good they may be doing, they are also deeply involved in risky pleasure-seeking sin, a very old and despicable vice.
About winning the family member back --- to the church, to the way they were taught, to righteousness. We have never seen this happen using the above tactic. It's Burke's famous quote brought home: "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." When Ammon went to preach to the wickedest of Lamanites (wild, ferocious, hardened, murderers, robbers, hearts set on riches) and had much success, it wasn't because he pretended nothing was wrong. It was because he preached sin and repentance and Christ (Alma 17-20). Those whose hearts were changed became a righteous people.
Families who treat this problem by shrugging their shoulders, turning a blind eye, and merely putting up with it may end up being won over themselves, brought along to homosexualism bit by bit. No one is immune. This is obviously what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. The vice spread and people just got used to it. Getting everyone used to homosexuality, even to recruit youth, family supporters, and activists, are stated goals of the gay agenda. Proud out gays have no doubt been trained on how to bring their families along, to flatter, to be very cunning and patient, and to see every inch as a gain. Let's not forget the scriptural warning against complacency, against the all-is-well-in-Zion philosophy (2 Nephi 28:21). Such prideful apathy brings with it slow and steady degradation.
Again, this doesn't have to mean we reject our wayward loved ones. Not at all. Setting boundaries is not the same as cutting a person out of your life, no matter what they say or how they react. There are many ways to show love and concern without allowing proud homosexualism, or any other shameless sinfulness, into our midst. Meet with them one-on-one. Express sincere love and concern often. Write. Call. Educate yourself. Offer facts and help in overcoming homosexuality. Support anything wholesome they are involved in. If the gay family member says they feel rejected in spite of continuing efforts of this kind on the family's part, the problem lies with them. You can't force people to be humble, to confess sin, to repent, to change. In this case, theirs are the hearts that must be softened, not yours.
Most importantly, live your religion from the inside out. The misguided and perhaps self-serving compassion practiced by inclusive families being overrun by homosexualism is not the word of God. It's not only the path of least resistance, it's the devil's way. The word of God is the iron rod in Lehi's dream, more powerful than anything else (Alma 31:5). Preach it. Apply it. Love it. Have faith in it. Be patient. Be humble. Be confident in the Lord. Make Christ the Redeemer your center --- not family, not temples, not missions, not callings, not accomplishments, not service. Love God before all else. Be a living example of applying basic gospel principles such as faith and repentance in every facet of your own life. Seek the Spirit to know when and how to share your beliefs. Love all your family members enough to give them your conviction of the value of morality, health, and truth. Even as you find ways to truly love and safely interact with your wayward loved one, never get used to the sinful vice of homosexuality. Never give it respect. Never get comfortable with it.
This will be difficult. This will be uncomfortable. This is be a rocky road. But as for you and your house, you will be serving the Lord.
Our hearts go out to such families. But is this really the way to win loved ones back? First of all, let's define include. Some think including means treating gay family members the same as they always have, pretending like nothing's wrong, welcoming current same-sex sexual partners into their homes and families. But including a person in your life can also mean spending time with them individually, keeping in touch, setting rules for family gatherings that do not promote homosexualism, and holding your ground. Both are inclusive of the person, but the first implicitly shows an acceptance of the bad ideas and behaviors as well.
Next let's define compassion. This word has been hijacked. Real compassion includes caring about a person's long-term well-being. Compassion is not about tolerating sin to keep up appearances. That would be the opposite of compassion, a sort of condemning the person to hell, really. These people are not the total victims they purport to be. Don't be deceived. However much you love and admire them, however wonderful and talented they are, whatever else good they may be doing, they are also deeply involved in risky pleasure-seeking sin, a very old and despicable vice.
About winning the family member back --- to the church, to the way they were taught, to righteousness. We have never seen this happen using the above tactic. It's Burke's famous quote brought home: "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." When Ammon went to preach to the wickedest of Lamanites (wild, ferocious, hardened, murderers, robbers, hearts set on riches) and had much success, it wasn't because he pretended nothing was wrong. It was because he preached sin and repentance and Christ (Alma 17-20). Those whose hearts were changed became a righteous people.
Families who treat this problem by shrugging their shoulders, turning a blind eye, and merely putting up with it may end up being won over themselves, brought along to homosexualism bit by bit. No one is immune. This is obviously what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. The vice spread and people just got used to it. Getting everyone used to homosexuality, even to recruit youth, family supporters, and activists, are stated goals of the gay agenda. Proud out gays have no doubt been trained on how to bring their families along, to flatter, to be very cunning and patient, and to see every inch as a gain. Let's not forget the scriptural warning against complacency, against the all-is-well-in-Zion philosophy (2 Nephi 28:21). Such prideful apathy brings with it slow and steady degradation.
Again, this doesn't have to mean we reject our wayward loved ones. Not at all. Setting boundaries is not the same as cutting a person out of your life, no matter what they say or how they react. There are many ways to show love and concern without allowing proud homosexualism, or any other shameless sinfulness, into our midst. Meet with them one-on-one. Express sincere love and concern often. Write. Call. Educate yourself. Offer facts and help in overcoming homosexuality. Support anything wholesome they are involved in. If the gay family member says they feel rejected in spite of continuing efforts of this kind on the family's part, the problem lies with them. You can't force people to be humble, to confess sin, to repent, to change. In this case, theirs are the hearts that must be softened, not yours.
Most importantly, live your religion from the inside out. The misguided and perhaps self-serving compassion practiced by inclusive families being overrun by homosexualism is not the word of God. It's not only the path of least resistance, it's the devil's way. The word of God is the iron rod in Lehi's dream, more powerful than anything else (Alma 31:5). Preach it. Apply it. Love it. Have faith in it. Be patient. Be humble. Be confident in the Lord. Make Christ the Redeemer your center --- not family, not temples, not missions, not callings, not accomplishments, not service. Love God before all else. Be a living example of applying basic gospel principles such as faith and repentance in every facet of your own life. Seek the Spirit to know when and how to share your beliefs. Love all your family members enough to give them your conviction of the value of morality, health, and truth. Even as you find ways to truly love and safely interact with your wayward loved one, never get used to the sinful vice of homosexuality. Never give it respect. Never get comfortable with it.
This will be difficult. This will be uncomfortable. This is be a rocky road. But as for you and your house, you will be serving the Lord.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Gay Training
Mark Twain said, "Training is everything. There is nothing training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach or below it. It can turn bad morals to good, good morals to bad; it can destroy principles, it can recreate them . . . "
We at SoL have repeatedly asserted that no one is born gay; it is an acquired taste. Gays are trained into gayness. People turn gay. Activists have done a great job of convincing most everybody that this is not true. But it is, and some have even admitted it. Still, the public sentiment has been won over, and hardly anyone cares or dares to look behind the curtain, even when the health and safety and sanity of their loved ones are at stake.
Again, no one is born gay. Proper healthy sexuality is gradually learned and developed, beginning innocently in adolescence and on into marriage, that is, unless something has interfered with the proper development. This is because sexual feelings are just sexual feelings--everybody has them--and they can get stimulated by anything, or even nothing. They can take a variety of wrong directions or focus on a variety of unnatural, extreme or inappropriate subjects. Unfortunately, in recent years, the correct model for human sexuality has been degraded, muddied up, even replaced. We now have many other models,destructive and dangerous dead ends, that young people can choose from. Immature, foolish, hormonal, narcissistic, sex-addicted, and carefully trained by our permissive, gay-affirming culture, many are making the mistake of crediting the sexual feelings they experience when surrounding themselves with same-sex sexuality with a gay "identity."
For the purposes of this blog post, we've listed some of the highly effective steps we've seen young males take who have been through this process and now proudly declare themselves as gay, that is, following the gay model rather than the correct model. The following list is certainly not comprehensive, nor must the steps listed be followed in any particular order or in total.
Steps in gay training:
Think a lot about sex and the sexual feelings. Allow your emotions to follow those thoughts. Become obsessed with sex. Question your masculinity. Obsess over other males. Envy them. Seek out same-sex porn, gay internet chat rooms, etc. Think of your body as primarily a romantic/sexual object. Masturbate. Decide that since you weren't attracted to this or that girl, you must be gay. Decide that since same-sex sexual material, which is what you are looking at, turns you on, you are gay. Seek out gay affirming materials and groups. Trust that these new people in your life who share your obsession with sex and sexuality care about you as a person. Meet, make friends with, and hang out mostly with openly gay or gay-affirming people. Confide only in those who encourage gayness. Talk about the gay culture and sex a lot. Make and enjoy lewd gay sexual innuendos, jokes, and stories. Go to where gays hang out. Go to gay pride events and parades. Let your thoughts ultimately dwell on sex, gay sex. Make lust a regular mental activity. Leave your church or try to change it. Decide there is no sin in what you are thinking, feeling, and doing. Break covenants you have made with God. Go back on things you have promised or testified to others. Begin smoking and using alcohol/drugs. Lose weight. Become obsessed with your body, physical appearance, clothes, exercise, food, entertainment. Seek constant stimulation, sexual and otherwise. Buy into all the current stereotypes for homosexuality. If you fit any of the gay stereotypes, use them to validate your choices. Construct, nurture, exaggerate, and adopt gay stereotypes for yourself. Adjust your personality, your interests, and the way you spend your time to fit those stereotypes. Listen to and internalize what your liberal college professors tell you about sex and sexuality. Listen to and internalize what uninformed people you met recently say about your being gay. Recharacterize your past to fit the exciting feelings you find pleasure in now. Repeatedly play pornographic thoughts and images through your mind. Reject what your parents modeled and taught you. Change or abandon your former life goals. Become emboldened enough to flaunt your radical choices and phony new personality in front of people who have known you all your life. Use affectations, clothes and accessories, and language to present yourself to others as gay. Fantasize. Pretend. Playact. Be quick to accuse those who know you best of hating and rejecting you as a person and kicking you out if they question your decisions, the radical changes in your beliefs and personality, and your bizarre and risky ideas, behaviors, and activities. Choose your exciting new friends over those who have raised and cared for you all your life. Allow older gays to initiate you in increasingly perverse, unnatural, and dangerous sexual behaviors. Have no qualms about changing or adding same-sex sex partners. Be shallow. Don't think things through. Use sex like a drug. Use drugs with sex. Blame others for the harm you are doing to yourself. Keep up with the gay affectations, stereotypes, and behaviors in order to convince yourself and others that you really are gay. Decide you are smarter and cleverer than those who have gone before and the older, more experienced people around you. Believe you are invincible. Delude yourself that you will always be young and attractive. Get a thrill out of endangering your health. Join gay-affirming groups. Brag about admiring, or being hit on by, other males. Buy all the lies excusing and promoting homosexuality. Become an activist for all things gay. Cruise the gay hotspots. Try anything that might be exciting, rebellious, edgy, escapist. Take no thought for your future, here and hereafter. Care more about your self-absorbed current pleasures than your future posterity, in other words, despise posterity itself. Quit college. Settle for a teenager job or two when you are in your twenties and thirties. Mooch off your parents. Pick a new career that will enable you to promote homosexuality while making a lot of money. Spread homosexualism any way you can. Pretend your parents and other concerned family members are hating and hurting you when you know you are doing the hating and hurting. Decide your pleasures are more important than the harm you are causing to yourself and others.
We have seen that a careful and concentrated adherence to even a few of these steps could turn anybody gay sooner or later. Guaranteed.
The good news? Just as there is a way in, there is a way out. See standardofliberty.org.
We at SoL have repeatedly asserted that no one is born gay; it is an acquired taste. Gays are trained into gayness. People turn gay. Activists have done a great job of convincing most everybody that this is not true. But it is, and some have even admitted it. Still, the public sentiment has been won over, and hardly anyone cares or dares to look behind the curtain, even when the health and safety and sanity of their loved ones are at stake.
Again, no one is born gay. Proper healthy sexuality is gradually learned and developed, beginning innocently in adolescence and on into marriage, that is, unless something has interfered with the proper development. This is because sexual feelings are just sexual feelings--everybody has them--and they can get stimulated by anything, or even nothing. They can take a variety of wrong directions or focus on a variety of unnatural, extreme or inappropriate subjects. Unfortunately, in recent years, the correct model for human sexuality has been degraded, muddied up, even replaced. We now have many other models,destructive and dangerous dead ends, that young people can choose from. Immature, foolish, hormonal, narcissistic, sex-addicted, and carefully trained by our permissive, gay-affirming culture, many are making the mistake of crediting the sexual feelings they experience when surrounding themselves with same-sex sexuality with a gay "identity."
For the purposes of this blog post, we've listed some of the highly effective steps we've seen young males take who have been through this process and now proudly declare themselves as gay, that is, following the gay model rather than the correct model. The following list is certainly not comprehensive, nor must the steps listed be followed in any particular order or in total.
Steps in gay training:
Think a lot about sex and the sexual feelings. Allow your emotions to follow those thoughts. Become obsessed with sex. Question your masculinity. Obsess over other males. Envy them. Seek out same-sex porn, gay internet chat rooms, etc. Think of your body as primarily a romantic/sexual object. Masturbate. Decide that since you weren't attracted to this or that girl, you must be gay. Decide that since same-sex sexual material, which is what you are looking at, turns you on, you are gay. Seek out gay affirming materials and groups. Trust that these new people in your life who share your obsession with sex and sexuality care about you as a person. Meet, make friends with, and hang out mostly with openly gay or gay-affirming people. Confide only in those who encourage gayness. Talk about the gay culture and sex a lot. Make and enjoy lewd gay sexual innuendos, jokes, and stories. Go to where gays hang out. Go to gay pride events and parades. Let your thoughts ultimately dwell on sex, gay sex. Make lust a regular mental activity. Leave your church or try to change it. Decide there is no sin in what you are thinking, feeling, and doing. Break covenants you have made with God. Go back on things you have promised or testified to others. Begin smoking and using alcohol/drugs. Lose weight. Become obsessed with your body, physical appearance, clothes, exercise, food, entertainment. Seek constant stimulation, sexual and otherwise. Buy into all the current stereotypes for homosexuality. If you fit any of the gay stereotypes, use them to validate your choices. Construct, nurture, exaggerate, and adopt gay stereotypes for yourself. Adjust your personality, your interests, and the way you spend your time to fit those stereotypes. Listen to and internalize what your liberal college professors tell you about sex and sexuality. Listen to and internalize what uninformed people you met recently say about your being gay. Recharacterize your past to fit the exciting feelings you find pleasure in now. Repeatedly play pornographic thoughts and images through your mind. Reject what your parents modeled and taught you. Change or abandon your former life goals. Become emboldened enough to flaunt your radical choices and phony new personality in front of people who have known you all your life. Use affectations, clothes and accessories, and language to present yourself to others as gay. Fantasize. Pretend. Playact. Be quick to accuse those who know you best of hating and rejecting you as a person and kicking you out if they question your decisions, the radical changes in your beliefs and personality, and your bizarre and risky ideas, behaviors, and activities. Choose your exciting new friends over those who have raised and cared for you all your life. Allow older gays to initiate you in increasingly perverse, unnatural, and dangerous sexual behaviors. Have no qualms about changing or adding same-sex sex partners. Be shallow. Don't think things through. Use sex like a drug. Use drugs with sex. Blame others for the harm you are doing to yourself. Keep up with the gay affectations, stereotypes, and behaviors in order to convince yourself and others that you really are gay. Decide you are smarter and cleverer than those who have gone before and the older, more experienced people around you. Believe you are invincible. Delude yourself that you will always be young and attractive. Get a thrill out of endangering your health. Join gay-affirming groups. Brag about admiring, or being hit on by, other males. Buy all the lies excusing and promoting homosexuality. Become an activist for all things gay. Cruise the gay hotspots. Try anything that might be exciting, rebellious, edgy, escapist. Take no thought for your future, here and hereafter. Care more about your self-absorbed current pleasures than your future posterity, in other words, despise posterity itself. Quit college. Settle for a teenager job or two when you are in your twenties and thirties. Mooch off your parents. Pick a new career that will enable you to promote homosexuality while making a lot of money. Spread homosexualism any way you can. Pretend your parents and other concerned family members are hating and hurting you when you know you are doing the hating and hurting. Decide your pleasures are more important than the harm you are causing to yourself and others.
We have seen that a careful and concentrated adherence to even a few of these steps could turn anybody gay sooner or later. Guaranteed.
The good news? Just as there is a way in, there is a way out. See standardofliberty.org.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
A Sharp Distinction
Comment and question about post, "Exempt:"
Reader comment: People who experience SSA are subject to the same law of chastity as those who experience opposite sex attraction. Conscious sexual fantasy, looking at pornography, engaging in pre-marital relations, or adultery are in violation of the law of chastity regardless of the gender of the subject of those sins. I'm not clear how you feel this applies differently to people with SSA. What is the distinction you are trying to make?
SoL: First, are you saying SSA is a gender, like male and female? We hope not. There are only two sexes or genders, made immediately obvious by genitalia and DNA.
Yes, we agree that the law of chastity applies to all, but there is a movement to excuse same-sex sexual lust for the same-sex attracted. Activists have done a great job of convincing everyone that this is their "identity," the way God made them, that it's wholesome and nonsexual (seriously?), and anyway they can't help indulging in these thoughts and feelings, that is, temptations. They have adopted as their mantra: the temptations are not sinful, but they do not define temptations or indulging in those temptations, as in fantasizing, lusting, pornography. Yes, some of today's leaders have said same-sex sexual temptations are not sinful, but others have even more strongly said they most certainly are, including what is recorded in the scriptures. To say this ancient destructive vice is not a sin in both thought and deed and does not need repenting of is actually anti-Christ. Certainly it is not okay to have a dirty mind. Certainly a dirty mind fits us for hell. Sad to say, we notice that this softening toward homosexual lust is rapidly extending to all forms of sin. "Those who surrender on one issue tend to surrender on others as well" (D. French, Imprimis).
Again, we agree that in the sense that sexual sins of any kind are wrong and can be forsaken and repented of through Christ, there is no distinction between hetero and homo sin. The distinction that is being passed over and that must be made is that homosexuality and heterosexuality are not equal: not equally important, not equally healthy, not equally productive. By not making this distinction, the door opens wide to same-sex "marriage." But gay marriage is just another name for the sin of homosexuality. Law or no law, monogamous or not, gay marriage can never be healthy or normal or productive or right.
Same-sex sexual attraction is always wrong. It is always selfish lust because it has no other purpose than sex. Same-sex people who are fond of each other and great friends need not sexualize that relationship; that makes it lust. Of course lust is when you experience explicit sexual thoughts and feelings for someone you have no business having explicit sexual thoughts and feelings about. This is a sin. It is always a sin for the same-sex sexually attracted, whether the law allows it, or the law says they are married, or public sentiment says it's fine. Heterosexuals can also be guilty of lust, that is having romantic/sexually explicit thoughts and feelings about someone they have no business having these types of thoughts and feelings about. But opposite-sex sexual attraction can also be properly developed in order for mating, is necessary for reproduction, and is right and good in preparation for and during marriage and family responsibilities. For opposite-sex attracted people it is merely a question of timing, appropriateness, and unselfishness. Sexual thoughts and feelings between a man and woman who intend to marry or are married, who are channeling their sexual feelings unselfishly, properly, and responsibly, are not guilty of lust, whereas the homosexual is always guilty of lust. The scriptures call homosexuality men burning in their lusts toward one another, and even women doing that which is unseemly. It's never right, whereas proper heterosexuality in marriage is pure and right, and necessary to the human race.
Do you not know that LDS gay activism has exempted homosexual lust from the requirements of chastity? See In Quiet Desperation published by Deseret Book, "It Gets Better at BYU," mormonsandgays.org. and Northstar, to name just a few. Nowhere in these materials is purity of heart, mental chastity, or repentance addressed, nor are sex and porn addictions, professional counseling, health risks, personal responsibility, or change of heart mentioned in any applicable way (except to dismiss them). Nowhere do these materials acknowledge that proud coming out is a form of acting out, which it is. Indeed, nowhere is acting out defined. Nowhere is the warning that emotions follow thoughts, and actions follow emotions. Nowhere is there any real concern for the spiritual, mental, emotional, or physical health of the afflicted/deceived sinner or the future of his immortal soul.
For several years now there have been contradictory views and an absence of correction and help being offered for those with SSA or same-sex sexual attraction. Indeed, contrary to scripture, homosexualism has been both watered down and puffed up to sound nonsexual, innocuous, innocent, wholesome, even brave and to be respected. And this is the sin the Lord incinerated two cities for! So far it does not appear that heterosexual porn addiction or heterosexual lust are being treated in quite this way, although we seem to hear less and less about sin, sexual purity, or morality generally. Indeed, people are going soft on all these issues, but in the mainstream homosexuality is a done deal. No criticism allowed. No questions asked. No help needed. And certainly no repentance. We're supposed to believe little kids who say they are gay. We're even supposed to respect the view that sodomy is normal, natural, and fine. There may be some excommunications, but these same people are invited to speak at the BYU counseling center to teach students to accept their homosexuality!
Yes, there's a great difference. Even though sexual sins run the gamut, heterosexuality is good, even necessary, in the one proper circumstance described in italics above whereas homosexuality is always wrong---in thoughts, feelings, and acts. And people publicly identifying themselves as gay or SSA and demanding that homosex be treated equally to heterosex or that homosexuality is good in any way are deep into sin. Heterosexuality, an attraction toward the opposite sex, can be properly and productively channeled; indeed, it's necessary to the human race. Homosexuality, an attraction toward one's same sex, cannot be properly and productively channeled and is a despising of posterity. The former can be sinful but isn't always. The latter is always a sin, a perversion, a maladaptation. We call that a sharp distinction that must be made. Otherwise, hetero and homo are indeed being treated as equal (as the activists want, and all doors become open to gay marriage, which is the legitimization and celebration of sodomy (and the like) by another name.
-Thanks and God bless
revised 9/15
Reader comment: People who experience SSA are subject to the same law of chastity as those who experience opposite sex attraction. Conscious sexual fantasy, looking at pornography, engaging in pre-marital relations, or adultery are in violation of the law of chastity regardless of the gender of the subject of those sins. I'm not clear how you feel this applies differently to people with SSA. What is the distinction you are trying to make?
SoL: First, are you saying SSA is a gender, like male and female? We hope not. There are only two sexes or genders, made immediately obvious by genitalia and DNA.
Yes, we agree that the law of chastity applies to all, but there is a movement to excuse same-sex sexual lust for the same-sex attracted. Activists have done a great job of convincing everyone that this is their "identity," the way God made them, that it's wholesome and nonsexual (seriously?), and anyway they can't help indulging in these thoughts and feelings, that is, temptations. They have adopted as their mantra: the temptations are not sinful, but they do not define temptations or indulging in those temptations, as in fantasizing, lusting, pornography. Yes, some of today's leaders have said same-sex sexual temptations are not sinful, but others have even more strongly said they most certainly are, including what is recorded in the scriptures. To say this ancient destructive vice is not a sin in both thought and deed and does not need repenting of is actually anti-Christ. Certainly it is not okay to have a dirty mind. Certainly a dirty mind fits us for hell. Sad to say, we notice that this softening toward homosexual lust is rapidly extending to all forms of sin. "Those who surrender on one issue tend to surrender on others as well" (D. French, Imprimis).
Again, we agree that in the sense that sexual sins of any kind are wrong and can be forsaken and repented of through Christ, there is no distinction between hetero and homo sin. The distinction that is being passed over and that must be made is that homosexuality and heterosexuality are not equal: not equally important, not equally healthy, not equally productive. By not making this distinction, the door opens wide to same-sex "marriage." But gay marriage is just another name for the sin of homosexuality. Law or no law, monogamous or not, gay marriage can never be healthy or normal or productive or right.
Same-sex sexual attraction is always wrong. It is always selfish lust because it has no other purpose than sex. Same-sex people who are fond of each other and great friends need not sexualize that relationship; that makes it lust. Of course lust is when you experience explicit sexual thoughts and feelings for someone you have no business having explicit sexual thoughts and feelings about. This is a sin. It is always a sin for the same-sex sexually attracted, whether the law allows it, or the law says they are married, or public sentiment says it's fine. Heterosexuals can also be guilty of lust, that is having romantic/sexually explicit thoughts and feelings about someone they have no business having these types of thoughts and feelings about. But opposite-sex sexual attraction can also be properly developed in order for mating, is necessary for reproduction, and is right and good in preparation for and during marriage and family responsibilities. For opposite-sex attracted people it is merely a question of timing, appropriateness, and unselfishness. Sexual thoughts and feelings between a man and woman who intend to marry or are married, who are channeling their sexual feelings unselfishly, properly, and responsibly, are not guilty of lust, whereas the homosexual is always guilty of lust. The scriptures call homosexuality men burning in their lusts toward one another, and even women doing that which is unseemly. It's never right, whereas proper heterosexuality in marriage is pure and right, and necessary to the human race.
Do you not know that LDS gay activism has exempted homosexual lust from the requirements of chastity? See In Quiet Desperation published by Deseret Book, "It Gets Better at BYU," mormonsandgays.org. and Northstar, to name just a few. Nowhere in these materials is purity of heart, mental chastity, or repentance addressed, nor are sex and porn addictions, professional counseling, health risks, personal responsibility, or change of heart mentioned in any applicable way (except to dismiss them). Nowhere do these materials acknowledge that proud coming out is a form of acting out, which it is. Indeed, nowhere is acting out defined. Nowhere is the warning that emotions follow thoughts, and actions follow emotions. Nowhere is there any real concern for the spiritual, mental, emotional, or physical health of the afflicted/deceived sinner or the future of his immortal soul.
For several years now there have been contradictory views and an absence of correction and help being offered for those with SSA or same-sex sexual attraction. Indeed, contrary to scripture, homosexualism has been both watered down and puffed up to sound nonsexual, innocuous, innocent, wholesome, even brave and to be respected. And this is the sin the Lord incinerated two cities for! So far it does not appear that heterosexual porn addiction or heterosexual lust are being treated in quite this way, although we seem to hear less and less about sin, sexual purity, or morality generally. Indeed, people are going soft on all these issues, but in the mainstream homosexuality is a done deal. No criticism allowed. No questions asked. No help needed. And certainly no repentance. We're supposed to believe little kids who say they are gay. We're even supposed to respect the view that sodomy is normal, natural, and fine. There may be some excommunications, but these same people are invited to speak at the BYU counseling center to teach students to accept their homosexuality!
Yes, there's a great difference. Even though sexual sins run the gamut, heterosexuality is good, even necessary, in the one proper circumstance described in italics above whereas homosexuality is always wrong---in thoughts, feelings, and acts. And people publicly identifying themselves as gay or SSA and demanding that homosex be treated equally to heterosex or that homosexuality is good in any way are deep into sin. Heterosexuality, an attraction toward the opposite sex, can be properly and productively channeled; indeed, it's necessary to the human race. Homosexuality, an attraction toward one's same sex, cannot be properly and productively channeled and is a despising of posterity. The former can be sinful but isn't always. The latter is always a sin, a perversion, a maladaptation. We call that a sharp distinction that must be made. Otherwise, hetero and homo are indeed being treated as equal (as the activists want, and all doors become open to gay marriage, which is the legitimization and celebration of sodomy (and the like) by another name.
-Thanks and God bless
revised 9/15