Glaring Omissions, and Why

We have friends at PFOX, that's Parents and Friends of Ex-gays and Gays. They've launched Safe Exit, a program to help churches help free people from unwanted homosexuality. Why do they feel they must help churches do this obvious thing? Why is this offer to overcome sin missing in the very places it should be most available?

We have observed that many churches, including the one we belong to, are increasingly avoiding the obvious: Attitudes toward sexuality are developed; human sexuality develops in a young person; sexuality develops properly if a child is given the one right model and taught correctly and not abused in any way; the culture is teaching new models for human sexuality; kids are being taught by pervasive technology that gay is cool and courageous; sex addiction is rampant; technology is unavoidable and sells sex; internet same-sex pornography is a huge industry available to all ages; sex in any form (lusts and acts) is pleasurable; kids can be turned on by anything, or nothing, and are especially vulnerable; homosexualist activists are specifically targeting kids.

Here's another glaring omission: Any condemnation of homosexuality is no longer spoken, no, not even in most churches.Well, we speak it here. Homosexuality in thought, desire, and deed is an abominable sin, harmful to individuals and society in many important ways, homosexuality mocks the power of procreation and despises posterity. As Marcus Aurelius said, what's bad for the swarm is bad for the bee.

And, even worse, there are also much more important truths, truths that can save souls, that are being soft-pedaled, overlooked, and ignored: There is such a thing as sin, everybody is human, everybody is precious and loved by God, God sent his Son to ransom us from our sins if we humble ourselves and repent continually, the Spirit of the Lord can teach and correct us if we wish it to, people troubled with unwanted homosexual tendencies can change from the inside out and go their way rejoicing in Christ. There is even professional help if needed unless it's been outlawed in your state. All truths, yet not being shared, being resisted, sometimes even censored. 

Why these glaring omissions? Why the unconcern for the souls of God's children? Why the pagan worship of the creation instead of the Creator, why the reliance on the changing philosophies of men instead of on the everlasting gospel? The siren song goes like this: Everybody has good intentions, we have to just love everybody, love them, that's all. That's what we have to do. Not much talk of law, sin, punishment, redemption, Christ, eternal life. It appears that faith in those eternal principles has somewhat evaporated, not just for gays but for everybody in general.

Church-goers may use the Lord's name, they may say a lot of the right words, but they seem to care more for the comforts offered by religion rather than cultivating a relationship with God and rising to His demands on the soul. It's human relationships people seem to talk about and preach about and rely on and emphasize these days. And yet we're worse off than ever. We've never seen mere human relationships change a person's heart in any spiritual way. It's not anywhere in the scriptures. For all the introduction or teaching or testifying or help people may give, it's divine grace that changes people. The job of the person is to desire godliness, to want it, to ask, seek, knock. This work takes place privately in each individual's heart of hearts, that place only God can see and know.

Again, why these glaring omissions? Why the abandonment of plain and precious doctrine when we need it most? It's no mystery to the realist who has observed and thought critically and set aside emotional sentimentality and learned a bit about human nature.

Since the beginning men have always been very willing to hand off their religiosity to someone else, someone with some authority; it's easier that way. Men like to believe in and rely on people and things they can see with their human eyes and touch with their human hands and hear with their human ears. They like those ears tickled. They like those hands praised. They like those eyes to feast on outward pleasantness. And they like to be seen doing things. They like the praise of the world, to be known, to be admired, to be great in the eyes of other men. This works by proxy, too; just some connection with someone or something that excites the praise and admiration of others is very attractive, too.

It's easy to see how this pride of the heart can become institutionalized and begin to blind people to dangers, to rule their perceptions and become most important and render them complacent. It's easy to see that when this happens the things of the spirit are de-emphasized, belittled, and ignored, even resisted, things like the guidance of the Holy Ghost, the ability to discern between good and evil or between the subtle popular philosophies of men and the quiet sacred things of God, the value that must be put on unseen things, the changes that must take place in the heart. It's easy to see how big groups of people can be gradually lulled into carnal security, wound about with the devil's invisible flaxen cords, tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. It's easy to see how such people could even come to be offended by or even come to hate truth. And it all started with the sin of pride deep in the heart.

It's all there in the scriptures. Is anybody reading them anymore? Apparently it's as Nephi said: if they are reading them they are not understanding them. And, from what we have observed here at SoL, this is how these glaring omissions have come to be.

A Red, White, and Blue Celebration of Fake Sex

Today five bad judges on the nation's Supreme Court unlawfully presumed to impose the celebration of a certain type of sexual immorality on 300 million people. Tonight the White House isn't white, but painted in gigantic rainbow lights in a proud celebration of what God's Holy Word refers to as an abomination.

We really don't have much to say we haven't already said since 2005 when we launched Standard of Liberty. But (heavy sigh) we'll continue to practice our constitutional rights to free speech and the free exercise of our religion while we still can without being fined or jailed.

What's the most celebrated of all human ceremonies? It may be marriage. What is marriage? It's two people uniting in a commitment in the only form---male and female---capable of bringing forth children. Of course there is no such thing as marriage between two men or two women. You can call it something , but you can't rightly call it marriage.What has happened is that gay activists, who don't care a thing about marriage, have hijacked this institution in order to further their Godless cause. Most people have been fooled by clever rhetoric and emotional appeal. Did you see all the posters emblazoned with the word love at the U. S. Supreme Court Building today on the news? This word has also been hijacked. Love is not the definition of  gayness. It's about sex. People can love each other to the moon and back without any sort of sexualization going on; in fact most relationships are nonsexual, such as parents and children, siblings, relatives, friends, roommates, comrades-in-arms, colleagues, teachers and students. For all the fondness that gays profess for their partners (of which there are usually many), love is not the thing that makes their relationships unique. The defining aspect of homosexuality is same-sex sex, not love.

But is homosex real sex? Since sex is what married people do, gays have co-opted  marriage, but dishonestly, because gays can never mate. They can lust their hearts out and sex-ish around all they want, but they can't do the thing that makes babies. All they can do is imagine and playact some fake way of mating which satisfies their sexual urges, which sexual urges are just sexual urges that can be satisfied in the one appropriate way or any number of inappropriate ways. So it isn't about love, but what Pope Benedict called fake sex. Why should fake sex be celebrated? Why should a few people decide that the whole country must celebrate fake sex?

Everything sex activists do and say on this issue is done to thumb their noses at God and God's boundaries for human sexuality. In reality, they are the haters. They hate facts. They hate responsibility. They hate goodness. They hate normalcy. They hate contentment. They hate righteousness. They hate posterity. They hate God and religion and that is what they have been aiming at destroying all along.

It's not pity they want. It's not tolerance they want. It's not acceptance they want. They want celebration. They want us all to be forced to celebrate wickedness and distortion and meaninglessness. They want evil called good and good called evil. And anybody standing for their biblical beliefs or speaking the truth on this subject or warning young people about the very particular and inordinate dangers inherent in these behaviors is to be shamed and punished.

These are enemies of God. They may call themselves "regular folks" and make themselves appear wholesome and decent. But they do and promote and encourage things they know are a crime against nature. It's all in the scriptures. There's nothing new under the sun.

No, it's not about love. We see gushing emotional displays between homosexuals, but the fact is people who really love each other don't violate each other's bodies contrary to nature. Sodomy (which decent heterosexuals do not do and what male homosexuals do do) commits violence on the human body; it ruins people's private parts and spreads disease. Ask any doctor who treats these people. Homosexuality is also pornographic and promiscuous by nature. It is sadistic and filthy and is kept alive by lust. Those homosexualists who profess any godly faith are hypocrites. In effect homosexuals desecrate God's word and their own minds and bodies.


What other fake things will we soon be forced to celebrate? Fake education, fake religion, fake science, fake compassion, fake love? Oh wait, that's already happening. The sky's the limit. Without God all things are permitted.

Bruce Jender and TransRachel: Courageous, Calculated, or Crazy?

There's lots of crazy stuff going on, but the recent news can't seem to get enough of the aging male celebrity athlete who has gone to great lengths to playact that he is a, what, 29-year-old woman? (Apparently that's what plastic surgery, designers, and photoshop can do for you.) There is also some white NAACP state executive who has gone to great lengths to present herself as a black person despite her white ethnicity. (That's what continually fake tanning, hair coloring and perming can do for you.)

At this point it would be no big deal to the world if the white woman co-writing this blog post decided she would rather be a black man. All it would take is foregoing make-up, wearing a flattening sports bra, a hair appointment, a lot of fake tanning, and a trip to the thrift store for some men's clothes and shoes. Actually, we don't know why these things have to be done. Apparently all you have to do is tell people who you feel you are. At that moment. Who cares about the trappings? But then again, it seems to be all about appearances, all about the way things look. It certainly isn't about the ways things are, as in biology, facts, genes. Would people buy the notion that Bruce Jenner is "really" a female instead of a man if he didn't go all out to make himself look somewhat like a female? Would people even be seriously asking Rachel Dolezal about her proclaimed "transracial" ethnicity if she didn't have a fake tan and a fake darkish curly afro? You see it's all a trick, slight of hand, an illusion.

It's an illusion, but still, if  this white woman were a public figure, when she presented her new male black self to the world, she would be called brave, courageous. Really? Why? Does mocking God and reality deserve to be lauded as courageous?And if it is courage, so what? Courage is not good or right or virtuous in and of itself. It takes courage to get a tattoo or shoplift or every other silly, selfish, wrong thing. The right kind of courage seems to depend on selfless motives. So why are we applauding a man who makes a public spectacle of himself  pretending he's a woman? Wouldn't it be more courageous to face one's demons privately and work these things out in unselfish ways? When we applaud these people we are teaching kids that what they are doing is good. Is anybody pointing out the fact that transsexuals are 20 times more likely to commit suicide than nontranssexuals?  Johns Hopkins quit doing "sex-change" surgeries because it turned out it didn't help the people to mutilate their healthy genitalia; it only made them more miserable. You see, the problem is deep inside their heads and hearts. It has nothing to do with their gender or their physiognomy or their genitals. It has nothing to do with appearances.

It takes courage to lie. It takes courage to fake around. It takes courage to shock people. But if you are purposely getting something selfish out of it, you are a calculating liar. Maybe people do such things toward some personal advantage. Hasbeen Bruce Jender is certainly in the world spotlight once again, and at age 65 is perhaps more famous than he ever was. He even has his own TV show now. You can bet TransRachel is being offered a reality show, too. Aside from the unhealthy, unnatural obsessions these people seem to have with gender and race to the point that they go to great lengths to act out the opposite of what they really are in their daily personal grooming and appearance, perhaps we should follow the fame and money. Those things are highly addictive for many people. They'll do anything for one or the other or both. Anything. We'd be more inclined to believe in Jenner's sincerity if he had kept all of this embarrassing stuff that has to be hurtful to his family private and wasn't gaining anything by it publicly or financially. He most certainly could have gone that route. So could Rachel. And here's a thought. Isn't a man pretending to be an attractive female the same thing as being transvestite homosexual? Isn't he trying to attract men? Maybe some men use transvestite-ism as an excuse to be homosexual. Maybe it's more acceptable to them that way; after all, a man coupled with a man-costumed-as-a-woman gives the appearance, at least somewhat, of a male with a female. That's what gayness is, you know. A phony contrivance. A false copy of the real thing. An act, a show, a pathetic counterfeit. Everyday is Halloween for these people, at least in public.

By the way, I think women should be outraged at Jenner, and blacks should be outraged at the phony black lady. Jenner never menstruated or gave birth. Rachel was raised white. These fakes are benefiting without paying their dues.

Back to conniving. The NAACP lady's shenanigans were and continue to be calculated. She put on a costume, lied on applications, and gained a college scholarship. Cha-ching. And then, her life based on lies,  landed a big fancy job. Cha-cha-ching. It appears that the powers that be don't care. Apparently, contrary to Martin Luther King's famous words, it's not your character that matters at all---go ahead and lie and cheat---it only matters if we like what you do. The ends justifies the means.

And let's not forget the attention-getting. Yes, being gay and being black can can get you gobs of attention these days. Is anybody getting this? These days, who would want to be a man, or white, or a white man? Or Christian or heterosexual, for that matter? These identities are out of style and have been for quite some time, especially in academia, which seeps readily into the culture. Yes, straight white Christian men ought to be ashamed for all sorts of things. It's no wonder people like Bruce Jender and TransRachel, crazy or not, who have questionable motivation and the means, are "opting out" of things like chastity and whiteness and truth and manhood in one way or another---and then flaunting it.  

Are the above mentioned people crazy, as in mentally ill? Not too crazy, no. There appears to be quite a bit of method in their madness.Machiavellian-like, they have obviously calculated their sensational acts toward great personal advantage. And you have to be somewhat sane to go to all that trouble. But courageous, calculated, or crazy to any extent, these bizarre behaviors make for very bad role models for vulnerable youth having to grow up in a world that actually could drive you mentally ill. And what's worse is how normal, decent people are reacting: either with applause or with a complacent shrug. Now that is crazy.