Freedoms at Risk

Incredibly, some people continue to voice the ironic sentiment that we at the Standard of Liberty should not be allowed to speak, blog, send emails, or anything of the sort. This is nothing new. We have been dealing with this oppression and persecution for ten years and it is precisely the reason we chose the name we did for our organization. Yes, we are free, whether certain people like it or not, to practice our religion and speak our minds. As such, there is nothing some people would like better than to shut us up. We wonder if they realize that by hoping to curtail our constitutional liberties (which we utilize within the law and without hurting anyone), they may end up also curtailing their own.

George Orwell, in the 1940s, put it this way. Not only is "the very concept of objective truth fading out of the world,"but "almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships -- an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction." The first things to go in such a nightmare are sexual morality, religion, and free speech, and we are well into making that nightmare a reality. Read: political correctness, hate crimes bills, anti-discrimination laws based on perverse sexual identification and behavior, pressure and punishments given to churches, fines and imprisonment of orthodox Christians, all of which increasingly favor a person's or group's unlimited sexual freedom over all other considerations, including public decency, safety of children, and our still constitutionally enumerated and guaranteed first amendment freedoms.

Who knew through what avenue totalitarianism would actually creep into America, that it could be through something so ordinary and hackneyed as sexual immorality, among other things? Not Orwell, although he did warn that ". . . all societies, as the price of survival, have to insist on a fairly high standard of sexual morality. . . Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice. It has to demand faultless discipline and self-sacrifice, it must expect its subjects to work hard, pay their taxes, and be faithful to their wives, it must assume that men think it glorious to die on the battlefield and women want to wear themselves out with child-bearing."

(Incidentally, isn't it amazing that these very situations Orwell so casually lists in an obscure essay are the very issues being denigrated today? Taken point for point, our culture has been infiltrated with a welfare entitlement mentality, those who think they are above paying their taxes, adultery, homosexuality, and family abandonment, the idea that there is nothing worth dying for, and the belittling of motherhood except perhaps as the least-priority portion of a woman's personal self-fulfillment, as if the obligation to propagate the human race were completely optional, if not evil.)

President Joseph F. Smith knew. He said, "There are at least three dangers that threaten the Church within, and the authorities need to awaken to the fact that the people should be warned unceasingly against them. As I see these, they are flattery of prominent men in the world, false educational ideas, and sexual immorality. But the third subject mentioned -- personal purity, is perhaps of greater importance than either of the other two. We believe in one standard of morality for men and women. If purity of life is neglected, all other dangers set in upon us like rivers of waters when the flood gates are opened." (Improvement Era, Vol. 17, No. 5. p.476. March 1914.)

It is not only the integrity of churches that are threatened by sexual immorality. It is society as a whole and every person's individual freedom.

Still Standing

We have been very busy in recent months (a wedding of one child and triplets born to another!) and have not given attention to this blog. Checking our emails, we found that the publisher and author of No Going Back, the terrible book we recently reviewed, and some other people, are very upset with us. We have received email after lengthy email defending this book to us or because of us.

It turns out these are people with multiple problems. Even though they profess to be latter-day saints, they are passionate about arguing for the sin and weakness and confusion of homosexual lust. Hope for repenting of and overcoming homosexual thoughts and feelings is something they simply are not interested in. In addition, they cannot take criticism, so they demand that we apologize for our views.

This reaction is sophomoric and highly unprofessional. When people organize, write, or publish, they open themselves up to critical thinking and responses. Our response is sincere, well thought out, logical, and orthodox. It concerns ideas and principles. We have not "misrepresented" anyone or anything. But all that aside, it appears that these people have decided that we at the Standard of Liberty are not entitled to our opinion. And some wonder why we call ourselves the Standard of Liberty!

With all the positive feedback being reported by Zarahemla Books about this book, it seems strange that they are spending so much time and effort and words fretting about us. When people are overly defensive like this, their position tends to weaken. All we can surmise is that we have hit a nerve. They are not as confident as they let on. They seem to need everyone's approval. Sounds not only unprofessional but a bit pathological, OCD, or at least high school.

We have nothing more to say about this very bad book. Those who are unhappy about our assessment and our views and demand that we change them are out of luck. We will continue to stand for the truth come what may.