God Can Change Your Heart---If You Want

The gospel of Jesus Christ is all about our hearts. Let us repeat that. The gospel of Jesus Christ is all about our hearts.

Now our hearts are prone to sin, to selfishness, to temptations, to wickedness. That's the human condition, the fallen, natural man. Here is the Good News. God can change that about us if we want him to.Yes, contrary to old Calvinist notions that seem to be so popular these days and pervading every Christian sect, there is something required of us if we wish God to change that proclivity to sin. What is required lies in our hearts. We have to truly and sincerely recognize and hate our sinfulness and give it up to God from the depths of our hearts. We have to want our heart wrenched away from sin and changed. It can be the greatest battle one fights out, all privately, within his own consciousness.

If you miss this you miss the whole gospel of  Jesus Christ. And you also give permission to sin and to love whatever sin you like to yourself and everyone else. You have made God over to suit that sin. You have made yourself a false god.

It's like the man with the red lizard (representing a favorite sin) on his shoulder in C. S. Lewis's book, The Great Divorce.  The angelic being says to the man that if he would like to go to where God is all he has to do is just say okay, take it off my shoulder, that's all he has to say and then the angel will take away the lizard, do the dirty work, destroy it forever. But the man has a terrible time saying that. He finds it extremely painful and difficult to tell the angel yes, take away the lizard. It is the most wrenchingly impossible-feeling thing for him to do. He has gotten used to the lizard on his shoulder running his life. He has grown dependent on it. He has been getting something he wants from it. It is his false idol, his god. He knows it would be good to let it go, but he doesn't really want to let the angel destroy it. He identifies with it. He worships it. He serves it. (We won't spoil what happened. Read the book if you want to know in the end what the man decided to do. )

God won't take away what we won't let him take away. He won't destroy our false gods unless we offer them to him. There is a sacrifice involved, not of blood, like in the Old Testament, but of the inmost heart. It's much harder than sacrificing an animal on an altar. But it's possible and it's real. 

Many people today choose a certain sin, formerly and still Biblically clearly a sin, and decide God wills them to this temptation permanently. And if God wills it, it must be right. This is the case with homosexualism. They insist it is who they or other people are. They further insist that this condition can peacefully co-exist with the worship of God, the God of the Bible. They are simply wrong. 

C. S. Lewis, who lived in a day not too long ago when homosexuality was considered unspeakably depraved, said that if a person has that proclivity he must resist it, even if it persists all his life. Times have changed. Today, homosexuality is accepted, encouraged, celebrated. We know that what is encouraged increases. It has increased and is increasing, expanding, growing more and more preposterous and absurd. The confusing of the two sexes is now all over the place---males are accepted as female athletes, women are accepted as males able to have babies, male sexual criminals saying they are women so they can be incarcerated with women, taxpayer funds being used for "sex transition" surgeries---all of the above for which we have radical feminism and gay marriage to thank. (Yes, radical feminism and homosexualism are all about confusing the two sexes, pretending they are interchangeable. Now suddenly proponents of radical feminism and homosexualism are miffed at the transgender movement, the T in LGBT,  because without the distinction between the two sexes, all their claims and arguments melt away. If they are intellectually honest they will see transgenderism is just an in-your-face form of their own ideologies.) Sure, some form of this depravity has always been around. But the difference now is that while previously this out-of-bounds lust and conflation, was considered depraved, it is now considered decent. Evil is now called good. 

As such, Christians bend over backwards trying to rationalize this sexual temptation. Yes, they say, we can worship God and homosexualism at the same time. It's just the way people are. It's how God made them. It's cruel to put them through such wrenching pain and difficulty, asking them to give it up, even to give it up to God. Really?

Don't we all have something we have to give up to God continually? And those of us who have been truly born again, don't we continually do that? If it isn't one sin, it's another. Some sins we get rid of permanently, like the bank robber who pays his debt to society and never robs another bank, or the alcoholic who permanently quits drinking. Others sins, like irritableness or selfishness or lack of faith in Christ, these may keep popping up. The difference in the false and true Christian is that the false Christian identifies with his sin, he likes that red lizard on his shoulder, he doesn't go before God on his knees and open his hands and beg God to take that proclivity away. Not really. Not truly. Not to the end. No, people who come to the point where they publicly identify themselves as gay have not given God permission to destroy that lizard. If they had, they would never announce their sin to the world as who they are. Does a closet adulterer-at-heart announce to the world that is who he is? No. The truly repentant Christian resists his sins, he hates them, they are abhorrent to him. He continually falls on his knees and opens his hands and gives them up to Jesus. He does that as long as it takes, even if he is resisting and repenting of his heart-deep sinfulness on his deathbed. See the difference? It's a huge difference. It is all the difference between a true follower of Christ and a hypocrite and idolator.

Lots of  otherwise basically well-meaning people have developed this terrible, anti-Christ blind spot. They have been systematically brainwashed into homosexualism. They have bought into the LGBT identity thing, instead of admitting it's merely lust and bad behavior, like a pet red lizard which has been fashioned into a god above God. It's just another thing all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons have made an exception for and have actually put into the place of God, having stooped to love this thing more than they love God.

We know that no man can serve two masters because he will love the one and hate the other. It just isn't possible to hold on to your red lizard and worship God too. Which will you choose? It's up to you. And it all takes place in the deepest inner folds of your heart. 

Merry Christmas and Lord bless.

 

Now--- Who and What is Excluded?

We have said repeatedly, borrowing from the late Robert Bork, in a highly polarized world as we have today, one worldview will be preferred and the other worldview will be harmed. Preferred also means emphasized, and has developed today to mean celebrated and even forced upon. Harmed also means de-emphasized, and has developed today to mean denounced and even punished. 

Whichever worldview is chosen in any given era, the opposing worldview will be harmed, de-emphasized, denounced, and punished. No, it's not about being kind, nice, or inclusive or celebrating diversity. These are lies. In reality, two deeply opposing worldviews cannot peacefully co-exist. One will be celebrated, the other will be harmed. 

In our lifetimes, the preferred worldview has flipped from preferring and encouraging lawful godly traditional biblical family moral values to preferring and encouraging unlawful Godless experimental secular anti-family unlimited-sexuality values. There is no doubt about this development. People, in their power, greed, ignorance, willingness to conform, pretense at enlightenment, desire to belong, bitterness, hatred of God, etc., can pretend this cultural shift is just about diversity and inclusion and kindness but it's not about those things at all, because half the world is being ignored, excluded, and hurt. There is zero diversity, inclusion, and kindness for people standing for God and traditional family values. Yes, granted, before, not long ago, it was the other half being ignored, excluded, and hurt. But which worldview has proven throughout human history to be more beneficial and benevolent toward mankind? God or idolatry? Fidelity or promiscuity? Purity or depravity? Honesty or deception? Sanctity of life or the despising of posterity? Freedom or tyranny? Personal responsibility or victimhood? Truth or lies? The answer is obvious we hope.

Even in most churches, which have historically been the bastions of traditional morality, we are seeing the shift toward the latter worldview described above embraced. This shift is exposed in a new documentary called "Enemies Within: The Church," which highlights the Southern Baptist Church, but mirrors what is happening in many or all of the other denominations as well, large and small. Apparently, even the previously strongest and most conservative, traditional family values churches and leaders have flipped. Apparently, with enough pressure and enough love of the world and money and power and popularity, the most trusted leaders can make deceptive step-by-step compromises until quite rapidly they have sold their souls on and for a dime. And then shun and villainize and fire and even disappear their brothers and sisters who don't go along.

Here is a quote from this upcoming documentary, coming in December 2021, a short version of which can be seen now on YouTube. The film shows a lot of church leaders and scholars full-on buying into the gay agenda, and why this is utterly wrong.

"The truth will come out eventually. People will realize that the gay movement lied and that people are not born gay, people can change. People are going to realize that the Bible is clear and the Bible is right and that it all made sense from the very beginning, that there are two types of bodies designed. There was male and female and that they were made for a certain design and a certain purpose. And so once people realize that truth, ultimately, all of these people who played all of these games to try to minimize it, or to try to camouflage it, or to try to accommodate, or to succumb to it, they all lied. They were all part of the big lie."

This big lie at the moment is having its way in every aspect of our society. The secular, Godless, unlimited sex worldview has won the day, while the biblical, God-fearing, sex-only-in-proper-marriage-relationships is being excluded and punished. That is where we find our culture in all its entities today. But this accomplished sexual revolution is by no means the only outcome of the secularization of our country and our world. Every non-benevolent force, every tyranny man can devise, is descending upon us. 

As far as government, schools, churches, and even families, go today, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, every human institution ends up doing the opposite of what it was originally intended to do. 

O that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men.   Psalms 107:8, a scripture we find throughout the Psalms.

 

 

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Trans is the New Gay

We haven't posted for a long while. There are several reasons for that. One is that many many more voices, although not in the mainstream culture or in churches as we hoped, have finally come out of the woodwork and are now saying at least some of what we have been saying for almost 20 years, people with much more influence and reach and resources. This is something we have been wishing and praying for, and we have felt a bit vindicated and relieved. There is much more truth and common sense and God and Jesus being spoken and shared these days than when we started Standard of Liberty in 2005. People are finally saying there are only two sexes and men and woman are different and the only objective standard for moral human behavior comes from God. There seemed to be no need to keep repeating what these other voices are saying much better and louder than we can. But there's another reason for this post. What we are hearing is too little, too late.

Once our society surrendered to homosexualism, all hell has rapidly broken loose and will continue to wreak havoc with little resistance. And even our friends, whom we so appreciate saying a lot of those good things listed above, have accepted homosexualism, at least to some degree or in some way. Hey, they say, my grandson is gay, my son, my daughter, my friends are gay, my co-workers, my fellow Christians, my fellow LDS. Who am I to judge? Well, Christ asks us to put the truth before even those. But people made their choice and that has made all the difference. That is why we are where we are today.

In the last few decades our modern culture surrendered to homosexualism in all practical ways. The battle against gay marriage was fought weakly and wrongly, emphasizing lovely wonderful happy traditional marriage at the same time completely avoiding any warning against or any condemning of any other type of sexual behaviors, such as same sex, bisex, pan sex, polygamy, child sex abuse, etc. It was a terrible strategy. And it completely and utterly failed.

Regarding the cultural  acceptance of homosexualism, the legalization of gay marriage cinched the deal. Even though the legalization of certain behaviors does not make them morally right or good, practically everybody is tolerant now of  the gay identity and its behaviors, surrendering completely to homosexualism and same-sex sexual relationships, even in churches and elementary schools. They even fool themselves into thinking their gay children, relatives,friends, employees, and coworkers are behaving perfectly morally and are safe and fine, and that they can have a lot in common with them that negates this one discrepancy. The gay identity is now either ignored or tolerated all the way to accepted and celebrated, even to the point of punishing those who speak against it and or those who even support traditional family values. 

We are annoyed with people saying, well, if a man can say he's a woman, if people are insisting men can get pregnant, we've hit bottom! There's no sanity! It's over! Anything goes!

We're tired of that because these are the same people who now for all intents and purposes peacefully co-exist with homosexual behaviors, who either pretend it's who people are (false), or pretend it isn't harmful (false), or pretend it doesn't affect them (false), or pretend there's nothing to be done about it (false).  

So homosexualism has won the day. Even in many of the most conservative, Christian arenas it is winked at. The lies are widely accepted as truth or at least totally accommodated. 

What's interesting (and annoying to us) is that now these same people, who have given in to mainstreaming homosexualism, are all up in arms about the latest trend: transgenderism. And even some honest transgenders are up in arms about how far transgenderism has gone and how it harms women particularly. What a mess.

As males pose blatantly outwardly as false females, stealing everything from government positions, to sports victories, to bathrooms, to virtue from girls and women, to innocence from small children, suddenly the travesty is beyond the pale to anybody with half a brain. Why? Not because it's basically different from homosexualism. It's actually the same sort of thing. In gay relationships one of the couple have to pretend to be the opposite sex. Get it? Whether they trade off or not, they are participating in fake sex, or an imitation of the real thing. They can't do the real thing. Now, take transgenderism. It's just another way of faking sex, this time as a public identity and more, oftentimes with all the superficial trappings. The hair, the clothes, the make-up, even the hormones and surgical manipulation of body parts. But it's all pretend.

Gayness has merely gone from something we could sort of ignore and tolerate, that is the gay thing where people still appeared sort of normal, as male and female, even though they were gay, to something we can't and don't want to ignore and tolerate, that is, people actually dressing up and insisting they are really the opposite sex, not just in the bedroom but in public and in public policies, jobs, sports, schools, everything.

Women were already being harmed by men who chose other men for nonreproductive sexual partners. Women were already being harmed by being abandoned by their husbands who prefer to have perverse sex and then being lauded by the culture for being true to themselves. Now girlhood and womanhood are being mocked and embarrassed and harmed and degraded in more open ways, even though the world is doing its best to disguise it. And only now our friends say that's just going too far?  Where have they been? Where did they think this would go? 

Of course we can go back much farther. Radical feminiism, the acceptance of easy divorce, premarital sex, promiscuity, radial feminism, legalization of abortion, the degradation of motherhood and fatherhood, sex workers, the multi-billion dollar porn industry, perverse sex education in schools, the corruption of language, and on and on. But it is true that once the world accepted gayness, with people keeping the overt fake sexual behaviors mostly in the bedroom, male public bathrooms, bathhouses and the like, trans was just around the corner. Acceptance of outrageous cross dressing came along followed by increased rebellion and/or the more serious gender dysphoria that demands to be taken as health and sanity. 

Remember the movie Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman going to such great lengths to pass himself off as a woman to get a job? We laughed. But in real life these days some men go to even greater lengths and actually can pull it off, for a time anyway. Sometimes voices and the size of hands and feet may still give it away. The funny thing is, while transgenders claim to truly be the opposite sex, they seem to always give the truth away themselves. Right up front and proudly. They don't really want to be a mere female or thought of as a mere female. They want to be a transwoman---a perverse man who pretends he is a woman and demands everyone believes he is too---and everyone has to know. That's their claim to fame. It can only be rebellion and/or mental illness.

We may wonder and sometimes really can't tell anymore which of the two sexes a certain person is. In a larger sense it doesn't matter. But there come times and places when it does matter a great deal. Think about how unkind that may be to others. They don't know what to call you, what pronouns to use, where to direct you. And people now live in fear of getting it wrong and being punished for it. As we wrote in our book, Wild Elephant, the Gospel Truth about Today's Stampeding Sexuality, every male and female has the responsibility to be the least bit courteous to others by presenting themselves as the sex, male or female, they are, most especially when they start growing up and into adulthood. It doesn't take much on your part for people to know immediately what sex you are. It's a most basic courtesy that has been abandoned.

 Transgenderism is actually just a skin deep outward manifestation of all things sexually confused. It's o only the clothes, the make-up, the hair, the absolute nerve of it showing itself in public and demanding compliance, which it is now being given, that is different than mere gayness. Transgenders are actually just fancy gays and lesbians. The transwomen go for men, and the transmen go for women. That is homosexuality by another name. Transwomen (read: crossdressing gay men) are now even demanding that straight men date them or they are called hateful and transphobic. (And of course it can go every other direction too except the one healthy sexuality. It's the whole alphabet soup.)

Now, with the normalization of transgenderism, sexual confusion is now in our faces in every public arena. We can see the nonsense with our eyes, Men obviously dressed as women pretending they really are women is just one example. It's affecting ordinary people's everyday lives, marriages, families, children, goals, interests, jobs, churches, government, medicine, military, education, and well-being. And decent people all the sudden don't like it.  They say, we can't accept it; once we have accepted transgenderism, we'll accept anything. We say, once you accepted the false interchangeability of men and women, as in radical feminism, homosexuality, gay "marriage," gay parenting, etc. you set yourself up to accept transgenderism, the public manifestation of gender bending gayness, and everything else. And don't deny it. Homosexuality is now accepted in every outward, practical way as normal and mainstream everywhere except maybe here at Standard of Liberty and in a few other out-of-the-mainstream groups.

Even the Mormon church doesn't say anything negative about it anymore. Our current bishop refers to LDS lesbian marriage in terms of "the magic of their love," and says gay students are 150 % welcome in his institute classroom. In many ways it's not the same church we knew all our lives. For one thing, it no longer preaches and upholds traditional family values. We have found that those with outspoken strong biblical traditional values are no longer welcome at all. It certainly can't work both ways.

So, friends, please don't get indignant over the transgenderism travesty and all its fallout at this late date; you don't have the right. You surrendered normal sexuality somewhere along the line a while ago. And who knows what's next? 

But is it coming in the future or is it already happening?

A while ago we predicted that the ultimate human wickedness of our day (second to abortion) would be the acceptance of the spontaneous sexual abuse of anyone. Anyone who felt the urge could do anything to anyone sexually anywhere, any time. We thought of how a child or minor walking down the street could be sexually assaulted by a stranger, and anyone complaining about it, such as the victim or bystanders or the parents, would be the ones at fault--arrested, punished, fined, re-educated, have the child taken away, whatever. After all, the powers that be pronounce such preposterous nonsense as: we all need sex all the time, sexuality can never be denied, children need to be initiated--the sooner the better. What dreadful ideas. But is this scenoario coming true today?

Recently a ninth grade girl was forcibly sodomized in her posh Virginia high school's bathroom by a boy in a skirt. This was covered up and denied by school officials who continued to push a transgender bathroom policy. The boy was merely transferred to another school and sexually attacked another girl, this time in a classroom. Guess who got forcibly arrested and put in jail for ten days before the perp was even held accountable-----the father of the first raped girl who insisted on bringing it up at a school board meeting. Here's another incident. You've probably all heard the news lately about the woman who was raped for 40 minutes on a train in Philadelphia while many bystanders did nothing to help. 

A prediction that we hoped was preposterous at the time is now really happening. Sexual predators increasingly realize they can get away with practically anything. And they are and they will. Increasingly.

It's not about gay or bi or trans-identifying people. It's about very bad and harmful behaviors---and those very bad and harmful behaviors not being called out, And then those bad behaviors even being preferred over proper and right and healthful behaviors. 

The only thing to do is repent of all this destructive nonsense, all of it, and seek God's guidance as to what to do about it.

 

The Courage to Oppose Error at Its Roots

In the last 20 years or so, society has blatantly and unashamedly turned itself upside down. Where before, mainstream culture and mores reflected biblical traditional morality in all policies and laws, we now have mainstream culture and mores reflecting an opposite "new morality" in all policies and laws. We think we know one reason this has happened. It has happened because God-fearing, conservative people, of which there are many more than Godless, hedonistic people, refused to call out the bad and harmful ideas as bad and harmful, and instead sidestepped crucial issues by pretending to be in favor of something else, something perhaps thought a tiny bit less controversial.  That was very naive. It's like aiming somewhere else and expecting to hit the target. It's like running away from an enemy bent on destroying you and expecting to survive. Well-meaning people got distracted, fighting merely for good instead of against evil. And lost every time.

Here are several of many examples, the following of which all have to do, interestingly, with the power of procreation. 

Abortion. Instead of saying they are against the destroying unborn human beings at any stage of development is not "pro-choice," the powers that be on our side, took up the banner of being "pro-life." This was a huge mistake. We should have taken the stance that sexual intercourse is where the choice is. Although of course we are for life, the pro-life argument ignores the crux of the problem: personal responsibility for sexual behavior.To this day, even with the huge efforts and strength of the pro-life movement now actually pointing out how human life begins at conception and how barbaric abortion is, personal responsibility for having sex is rarely, if ever, mentioned. And yet it's the underlying cause for the many, many millions of abortions. People decided to have sex and got pregnant. If they had been more thoughtful in making that first decision (whether or not they wanted to have sex knowing they may get pregnant and then would be responsible for that human being, which thought process is certainly possible for every healthy, normal human old enough to have consensual sex), there would be practically no abortion argument. (Cases of abortion because of rape resulting in pregnancy or abortion to save the mother are so very rare and really have nothing to do with arguments such as "my body, my choice" which have resulted in so many millions of unwanted babies being destroyed.)The fact is, when even minimally intelligent people decide to engage in the act that makes babies, they know it, and they know they are taking that risk. With sexual intercourse the choice has already been made: pregnancy, or the conceiving of a new human being, may well be the natural result of this act. This is 10th grade biology. Why have we never heard that argument? Why is that argument not the whole argument? Because society has been brainwashed into believing that isn't the issue, that people can't be held responsible for their sexual choices and behaviors. That is ridiculous. They can be held responsible, and it is the whole argument. Responsibility for individual sexual behavior is one crucial concept that makes people civilized.You do the act, you have to take responsibility for the results of the act, one of which may be pregnancy. We lost the battle because we didn't face the real issue, that people want to free themselves from the responsibilities of their sexual choices and behaviors. The opposition was so clever and so intimidating---focusing on the woman's "rights" and the fact that you can't see the baby developing---while completely distracting minds away from the ultimate problem: sexual irresponsibility, or the trumped up "right" to have sexual relations without having to live out the natural consequences. As a result, over 60 million unique human beings have not been allowed to be born in the United States and experience life here on earth. Destroyed because of and by their own irresponsible, hedonistic, Godless parents.

Pornography. The mainstreaming and availability of obscenity has exploded in the last 25 years or so. Where before, a person had to show ID to purchase pornographic material in person, now a young child can be exposed even accidentally through all kinds of  media (even the books in public school libraries), including the internet available in homes and schools and libraries where every sort of porn can be accessed by the touch of a button or two. This "freedom" has been fought for in our culture and courts in the name of freedom of speech or expression (but really it's about money and controlling people by exploiting human weaknesses) with little or no real concern for the destruction it can and does bring upon human lives, on minors, adults, marriages, and families. Instead of coming out strongly against the existence of the multi-billion dollar porn industry itself, which is not good for anyone, those against it merely swatted at the scourge with a flyswatter. Let's put this control or limit or filter on it, they said.  That was the extent of our societal opposition, which is no real opposition at all, just a management.Hardly ever did we hear the argument that porn is indecent and obscene, that it hurts people, that there is nothing good about it for human beings, that it engenders all sorts of societal ills, that the industry itself should be run out of town and obliterated.

Homosexuality. It is easy to see how the public gave in to this formerly unspeakable tendency and vice. It took some decades and a lot of planning and conditioning and brainwashing and shaming and name-calling and virtue signaling and calling upon Love, as in why can't people "love" (read:sex around with) anybody they want? Legally, they argument was that people should be able to do whatever they want in the privacy of their bedroom. Quite rapidly, because of "the overhauling of straight America," society decided it would no longer reject this behavior, but rather celebrate it. The lame arguments of those who resisted were, well, lame. They went something like this: We aren't anti-gay; we're just pro-family. Lame. Same as the weak and ineffectual anti-gay marriage argument (see below). They completely neglected to point out the many intrinsic and unique health hazards of this behavior. They completely neglected to remind people that deadly HIV/AIDS was spread by this behavior. They completely ignored the sex addiction, drug use, violence, and predatory nature compounded by this behavior. They completely threw under the bus the many confused people experiencing unwanted homosexual tendencies, and those who chose to repent and heal. Now, many states have outlawed any treatment of minors for unwanted homosexuality. And it's going to get worse. They completely failed to see they would reap what they sowed, as in children being taught all manner of sexual licentiousness and sexual behaviors and gender identities in public schools. What is encouraged will increase. All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Failing to stop evil leads to more evil.

Gay Marriage. This one is so very obvious. Instead of saying, hey, sodomy is harmful, it's dangerous, we don't want to mainstream it or legitimize it because it's not good for individuals or society, they said, okay, homosexuality is fine, but we want to conserve the traditional meaning and purpose of marriage. We here at SoL even went to pro-traditional marriage rallies where they had gays speak which was very weird. Did we really need their stamp of approval? We guess the pro-traditional marriage people were rendered desperate to show that they weren't "homophobic!" Sorry, it didn't work, did it? The whole effort was branded bigoted from the start. The well-meaning protestors didn't realize that in the gay worldview there is no leeway allowed anybody. You have to be completely on board or you are a terrible person. Here's the point. Only a man and a woman can do the thing that makes babies. Government and society have a vested interest in that institution so children will be taken care of by their legal parents. Two same-sexed people can never do the thing that makes babies, therefore they should not be able to hijack the God-given marriage institution,which is really what their goal was. Marriage was not the goal. What has happened is that the definition of marriage has been changed so far from its meaning that its meaning is destroyed. In addition,with gay marriage, sodomy became legitimized even for opposite-sex couples; it's another type of sex straight people feel free to engage in. These results and others will continue to negatively impact our culture, as in how the words mother and father are being outlawed and children are being procured and raised by same-sex couples and perverse sexual behaviors and identities are being taught in schools. And people thought they could save marriage by ignoring the evil infiltrating our entire culture! It's an example of not being able to see the whole forest because you're looking only at one tree. The fight for traditional marriage was too little, too late.

Gay Rights. This phenomenon came along with conceding to the gay sexual identity that was clinched by the legalization of sodomy and then gay marriage. Gay people, as people, have the same rights as everybody. Gay rights, so-called, are really about freedoms too far, as in unlimited personal sexual "rights" and the demanding of the public celebration of them.This has turned into the taking away of the legitimate rights of others, such as religious freedom and what should be the rights of children to go to school without being taught sexual revolutionist ideologies. So-called gay rights and the punishments attendant to those who supposedly don't respect them are full of emotion and pretense and arrogance and obsession with hedonistic sex and sexuality. Bakers, photographers, wedding services, printers, churches, adoption agencies, you name it, all have been beaten into submission, punished, fined, even jailed in some places. Our side's last ditch effort at an argument is religious freedom. We believe in God's word, they said, and we have a constitutionally-protected right to live out our consciences. Didn't work, did it? Isn't working, is it? That's because the spirit of the times is preferring sexual freedom over everything else and is pushing a "living constitution" that changes to fit the trends. Many years ago, our friend, the late Richard Wilkins, told us this would be so, that sexual freedom would trump everything. and we let this happen through all the steps leading up to "gay rights" such as the acceptance of  the practice of sodomy. 

Transgenderism. This trend is really just another version of homosexuality. It's about a person pretending to be the opposite sex and behaving sexually in a way that is usually sterile, which is essentially what happens in gay coupling. Transgenderism is actually just more blatant, as the individual posing as the opposite sex actually presents themselves as the sex opposite to what they really are in whatever ways they can or want to, from clothes and hair and make-up, to puberty-blockers and hormone-induced characteristics such as beard growth and voice change, to surgical mutilation and contrivances to healthy body parts. The whole ideology is a blatant despising of  biological human sexuality and human posterity. Some trans people themselves will admit that they are obsessed with themselves, with their sexuality and gender identity, to the exclusion of  any concern for the hurt they are causing, their responsibilities, mental health, physical health, or posterity. And many who had been lured into this experimental concept in the last 10 years or so are now in the process of detransitioning, to the horror of the LGBT activists and the ignoring of mainstream society. Our society is in the middle of bathroom/locker room travesties and  transfemales/males in general being allowed to dominate and destroy girls' and women's sports, and minors being influenced to begin "transitioning" with or without parents' knowledge or consent, but there is even a lot more destructive fallout to come. The exploitation, abuse, and law suits will be off the charts.

We could go on and on. 

Lesson to be learned? Start now to have the courage to stand against the evil thing. Don't make deals with the devil. Don't worry about your "tone" or alienating people on our side. (If that's how they react to the truth, they aren't on our side!) Don't compromise on truth and reality. Don't make up strategies (that's for you, Kristi Noem!) and stances and talking points that benefit you/make you look a little nicer. Just stand directly against the error, come what may. Or else, as can be seen, you will surely lose the battle. You might lose it anyway, but who knows who you influenced for good? And the Lord knows whose side you're on. 

 As we heard Andrew Klavan say the other day, "You can lose a fight, but you can't win a surrender."

And from C.S.Lewis, The Abolition of Man,

"Wherever any precept of traditional morality is simply challenged to produce its credentials, as though the burden of proof lay on it, we have taken the wrong position."

 

Detransitioners -- Living Not By Lies

If you look on YouTube you will find hours and hours of videos featuring very honest and quite sad souls telling their stories about their journeys into transgenderism and their consequent journeys out. They refer to their situation as MtFtM or FtMtF. These are people, still quite young, who now regret living for multiple years as the opposite sex (and perhaps all the fluidity leading up to it). As they explain how they got into transgenderism, such as for various reasons from childhood trauma to pornography to child and adolescent gender confusion to gender dysphoria to mental illness to radical feminism to brainwashing, or to a combination of  some or more of the above, the more it becomes glaringly obvious that these important causes are completely ignored by the trans-affirming community, which now includes practically the whole world. Sad, isn't it, that practically nobody cares what life-shattering causes are behind transgenderism?

You will hear these people speak about how in the beginning they were, not advised to get psychological help, but only encouraged to affirm their delusion by drastically changing their outward presentation of themselves, encouraged by activists, by friends, by professionals, by family, even sometimes by misguided or psychopathic parents. So-called transition to the opposite sex may include opposite sex clothing, hair styles, and make-up, taking opposite sex hormones, face and body hair growth and/or hair loss, voice training, breast removal or implants, and other surgeries to remove or contrive body parts or change facial contours. Some of these procedures are obviously irreversible, including infertility and voice changes. One FtM decided to detransition (FtMtF) when she began losing the hair on her head; her deep bass voice (also from testosterone) is now irreversible. Some detransitioners are faced sur
geries to remove the breasts that formed from estrogen or replace the breasts they had removed. Yes, it is dizzying. 

Heartfelt warnings are given on these videos. These include: Please stop and think before you do anything drastic. Children should not transition. Ask yourself, where did you get these ideas? What are the deeper problems? Don't oversexualize yourself or others. Don't compare yourself to others. Get psychological help first. Stay away from pornography. The transgender/LGBT community does not care about your true well being. Don't get brainwashed by the pro-LGBT culture. You most likely won't be any happier after transitioning. It doesn't solve your deeper problems. Your biological sex can't be changed. It's all a delusion. It's very dangerous. The high rate of suicidality of transgenders is not due to society. Find God. Love yourself as you are and how God made you. 

We here at SoL feel vindicated---although it's been a long time coming and you won't hear any of these warnings hardly anywhere and we wonder how long even these videos will be allowed. Detransitioners report all sorts of  denigration and criticism for their decision to detransition, nevertheless they bravely share they journey, with their regrets and hopes. Some say there are more destrans than trans people online now.  

It can now be seen that the transgender movement is located somewhere prominently on that very slippery slope we have talking about for 15 years. If we pretend that male and female are interchangeable, and homosexuality in all its forms is harmless and laudable, and if we continue to allow unlimited pornography and ignore all the other very real and important issues that hugely affect individuals, families, and society as a whole when it comes to sex and sexuality, there is no end to the potential damage.  

We may not be able to do much about this societal train wreck and the permanent, generational damage it is doing. But one thing everyone can do is what Rod Dreher points out that Solzhenitsyn called "personal nonparticipation in lies." "Let us refuse to say what we do not think." Do not repeat lies. Do not by your silence appear to acquiesce. We suggest checking out Dreher's 2020 book, "Live Not By Lies," which addresses how all sorts of lies are the majority of what we encounter today.

Our hearts go out to homosexuals, ex-homosexuals, transgenders and detransitioners alike, and everyone else involved or touched by these crucial issues, which is everyone. God bless!

 

 

For Straight Couples: A Word to the Wise

In this post we are going to more specifically discuss one compelling reason many straight people (especially millennials but people of all ages too) are readily accepting the gay concept. No, it's not just that they believe people should be able to love (read: be intimate with) whomever they wish, which if you think about it for one minute proves to be a very bad idea. There  is another even more compelling reason there is so much acceptance, even encouragement of gay relaions. And it's much worse than the toleration or acceptance of others' gay behaviors.

 FYI, we are going to try to say the following as carefully as possible, just because some words are just not acceptable or are too offensive to people these days for various reasons. But this is such an important topic, at least public health-wise, that people cannot afford to be squeamish. Still we will try our best to word things in such a way as to not offend, even though people will still choose to be offended. But that's another topic.

One could go about this sensitive topic from a purely factual, scientific, biological, medical standpoint. Or a psychological standpoint. Or a biblical, God-based standpoint. Or a historical experiential standpoint. Or even a common sense standpoint. All come to the same conclusion. But in this upside-down world people are rejecting all of the above in favor of their own egocentric arbitrary "enlightenment" or "wokeness," which is actually the opposite. Yes, people think just because they are young now or living now, today, they are smarter than anything or anyone else, living or dead, without any evidence of or reason why other than they think they are smarter and more enlightened or evolved than others, which they are most certainly not. Human nature in general never has and never will change. But that is another topic also.

Yes, we are stalling. What we are going to try to say isn't fun. But here goes.

Male on male physically intimate relations can in the understood sense culminate in only one way: by utilizing a human being's body orifice that is regularly employed for elimination of body waste. (Of course there are names for this we are not using right now.) They use the word gay, but that is just a ruse. This is a popular practice among a growing number of males because of many reasons. One reason is that the people participating are damaged in various ways. Another is that no courting of the opposite sex is required. Another is because of the pleasurable sensations resulting from the friction and resistance this tight body part naturally supplies, and also the sensations that can be stimulated around this highly sensitized body part. Another reason is the stimulation provided by internet pornography and the readily accessible number of instant partners available through the internet. In other words, it lends itself to promiscuity, without the risk of procreation or expectations of a relationship. Another is human nature. And on and on. But of course in this scenario one male partner gets the better deal and the other male is more directly compromised in many ways including health-wise.

Now that we have carefully navigated our way through that uncomfortable explanation, let's talk about male on female intimate relations relating to this practice. We'll just come right out and say it. One reason straight people today are suddenly so accepting of this male-on-male practice is because they are perfectly capable of doing it themselves and are increasingly doing it. That is, the male can do it to the female, but not the female to the male, which is an important point in this discussion we'll get to later. 

But why? Why, when there is a female body part that perfectly accommodates the corresponding male body part without any risk or harm to either, are male-female couples resorting to using that other body part? Possible answers: another sort of pleasure, variety, no need for consideration of the woman's more tender body part, no danger of pregnancy, thumbing one's nose at God, showing how free and enlightened one is, supporting the gay concept.  More simply, obviously, since in the last half century our society has put its stamp of approval on this behavior, even to the point that it is paraded in our streets and taught to our children, there is no reason in millennials' minds not to try it. 

This makes us rethink that scripture in Romans 1 that we always thought was about woman-on-woman intimate relations, the L in LGBT. Maybe it's not about L but about women allowing men to do the above to themselves as one man does to another. The scripture says,"for even their women did change the natural use [that body part made for elimination of body waste] into that which is against nature." Could be. It makes sense. The women were allowing men to do this to them, to use their bodies in this way. This is one reason AIDS is such a huge problem in Africa. There the practice we are discussing is not particular to male on male, which is fast becoming the case elsewhere, as we are pointing out here.

 Let's talk a little about this practice of utilizing for pleasure that tender human orifice made for elimination of body waste (without which function we would soon die), that is, utilizing this body part for that which is against nature and the ramifications of this practice. (By the way, apparently there are all sorts of ways this body part can be stimulated and stretched in unnatural ways for sadistic physical gratification but we won't get into that here, although it's a slippery slope.)

We refer to the very big book, now being banned, called The Health Hazards of Homosexuality. There are not only very gross chronic health problems directly related to this practice,  but very very high risk of fatal diseases, even between faithful partners. In other words, it's against nature, or the way our bodies work, to use said orifice for purposes of physical gratification. It hurts us. It corrupts us physically. Unspeakable ailments and hideous diseases result, particular to this behavior. 

Now a word to wise straight women faithful to their husband/boyfriend who participate in this practice or are tempted to or are being talking into it by their husband or boyfriend. These chronic and potentially fatal health risks do not apply to your male partner. No, they are risking nothing in practicing this behavior on you. It is your body that tears and bleeds, not his. It is your health that is in great danger, not his. Only yours. Think about it. Is that right or fair? Or in any way loving or caring? Answer: no. Absolutely not.

Women, please note. It usually requires some patience and humility and consideration for the man to wait for the woman to prepare for proper, natural, harmless intercourse. And his rewards for this patience can be very great, in the form of more fulfilling and shared pleasure and true intimacy, trust and love and tenderness. No so with the practice we are discussing. People participating in this practice need have no, shall we say, warming up stage. They don't have to wait for their partner's body to prepare itself. Can you see that this is the same as it is when men force themselves on women or other men in what is still considered a criminal way? Of course here we are talking about consensual relations. But women, ask yourselves, why in the world are you consenting to such disrespectful, unnatural, invasive, irresponsible, and dangerous treatment? It amounts to a terrible form of abuse to your body, even if you find it in some way pleasurable. Lots of pleasurable things are risky and unnatural and harmful. 

But do not despair. If you and your spouse have been lured or tempted into participating in this practice, it is understandable in this highly permissive, eroticized culture of today. This practice is encouraged and celebrated in our world today, even in the most explicit ways in articles and books and workshops, to name a few places, aimed at minors no less. But you can forsake it and repent. This is why we have a Savior. Wives, it may be up to you to tactfully explain these things to your husband so he'll understand. 

Most likely, for those of you participating in this behavior, if you are reading this, it is a mere sin of the flesh. As C.S Lewis said, those sins of the flesh are mere flea bites in comparison to the sin of  pride, or defiance against God. Do you think yourself smarter than nature/God? Are you defying nature and God? That's where you really need to examine yourself. 

The practice we are discussing is hugely on the rise not only between people of the same sex but between opposite sex couples. The word is everybody does it, gay or straight or everyone in between or beyond. So straight couples, ask yourself this: Why, when you have all the body parts between you two required for safe, proper, and pleasurable intimate relations, are you participating in the only thing gays can do that imitates it, which behavior is very dangerous and disrespectful to your bodies and your souls?

Women, your body is not only a highly intricate organism designed to function in its own best interest, it is a temple housing a precious immortal soul. Men, a woman's body and your own, deserve to be treated with the greatest respect, including through proper intimacy.  

We submit that one reason straight couples have become so accepting of the gay concept, their gay friends' behaviors, and gay marriage is that they are participating in that same behavior themselves and this is one way to avoid feeling guilty about it. Because they do feel guilty deep down. They choose to ignore that feeling and in so doing are at risk of becoming past feeling anything good and true.

Dear ones everywhere, "gay" or "straight," we beseech you to think this through.

A Prayer to Feel God's Love

A friend once told us to pray about what is true, and do it all through the day. Our gift to you is this sample prayer written by Janice. Our friend said to read your prayer twice daily. Another idea of his was to set your watch or phone to bling at you every hour throughout the day to remind you to say a short prayer along these same lines. If you are feeling down or stressed, try it for three weeks and see what miracles occur. (Thank you James Cox!)

Dear God,

I am a valued, beautiful, spiritual, perfectly loved child of Thine. My past, my actions, my sins, my age, my looks, my words, my thoughts, my circumstances, and how others think about or treat me have nothing to do with thy great unchanging love for me. As I choose to acknowledge my noble true identity as a beloved child of God I know I will feel more tender love, awe, respect, and true charity for myself and all others. Because of Thy great Love Thy Son Jesus Christ gave his life to save me from my many human sins, or else I would not have a way to Heaven, where all is goodness, truth, and beauty. This is proof, along with all Thy glorious Creation, of Thy wondrous Love for me and all of Thy children. I choose to embrace Thy enduring Love, the grace of Christ, and the guidance of the Spirit of the Lord as the sole source of my feelings of high self-worth and motivation for continual learning, improvement, and spiritual growth. Help me live every day in the warm, calm light of Thy Divine Love, come what may, and do all things out of gratitude and love for Thee.

Short version: I am a beloved child of God. Father, help me to feel it.
 

Happy New Year to everyone from Standard of Liberty