Stranger Than Fiction---at Deseret Book

We have a four-page letter we received in August of 2005 from a high-up executive at Deseret Book, that pretty much blew our minds. Once admirers of this person, we were very sorry to receive this letter. It seems the right time to make it public.

First a little background. We had prepared and submitted our book My Darling From the Lions (expert endorsements) about resisting and overcoming homosexuality as a counter to DB's quite shocking In Quiet Desperation, Understanding Same-Gender Attraction (no expert endorsements) which was
pretty much an apologetic excusing homosexuality. We stated the hope that DB publish the other side of the issue warning against the self-identification and cultural acceptance of homosexuality, the dangers of same-sex pornography, and the influence of the oversexed gay-affirming environment vulnerable young people today are exposed to. Our book was rejected (no surprise considering what they had published already on this topic), but we made it clear that there were others---experts--- who should write on this and hoped they  would publish the correct viewpoint. Our letter-writer said they disagreed with us but that they'd certainly look into publishing our view. Yeah, right. We immediately formed our own publishing company, Tidal Wave Books, and published our book. Later, our son wrote and submitted his book, Captain of My Soul, endorsed and praised by experts. Again, summarily rejected by Deseret Book. The letter mentioned above was written 10 years ago. In that time, to our knowledge Deseret Book has published no book about homosexuality from a true gospel perspective. On the contrary it has published another dangerous book produced by the same author of IQD filled with the same emotional sociological appeals and dead-wrong emphasis.

Funny, back then DB up and purchased 30 copies of our book, My Darling From the Lions, we assume because we were interviewed by Shelly Osterloh on camera in our home and were supposed to be on KSL TV, although the airing was cancelled at the last minute. "Too controversial," the producers said (no surprise coming from mainstream media). When we were invited along with other authors to buy advertizing in Deseret Book mailers, we worked up our ad, only to be told they would not include our ad. Yes, they censored us. Again. Soon after, our book was pulled from their stores, website and database. We heard that even when people asked for it store clerks said they didn't have it. Those copies they purchased are probably buried in some endless warehouse like where the arc of the covenant ended up on the first Indiana Jones movie.

As far as Deseret Book publishing anything true and politically incorrect about homosexuality today, our hopes are dead. Yes, they've rejected everything we've sent, even with highly expert endorsements. Anyway, we have this letter which we haven't made public until now. A few months ago we posted "How to Make a Vice Nice," or in other words how to call evil good. This letter is a perfect example. By the way, we have been told by a General Authority that Deseret Book is not an official arm of the LDS Church (despite perceptions), so we feel okay about what we're doing here. People need to know what's going on for their own sakes and the sakes of their families. Here's an excerpt from this incomprehensible letter we felt we should dig up:

"There are many challenging and perplexing life conditions, same-gender attraction being just one of them. As one example, I personally know individuals who, through the Atonement, have been absolutely and completely healed from their addiction to pornography. I know others who have pleaded and prayed and sought for that same healing in their lives, but as yet their attraction to pornography has not been lifted from them. In their cases, they draw upon the power of the Atonement to help them cope with a difficult addiction. They believe that their desires will change, but until then they draw upon the Lord's powers to help them cope, stay faithful, and be happy.

All of us have stiff challenges, challenges which come in various packages. Some obtain not only relief for whatever they are struggling with but a complete change of circumstance and a removal of that particular struggle; others do not experience a change in circumstance but are given the strength to deal with their struggles, and thus a measure of relief. All of this comes through the power of the Savior's Atonement."

These sentiments are the same as are communicated in In Quiet Desperation. And there is so much wrong with this smarmy nonsense it still makes our heads spin.

Can you see how this person is arguing for the weakness and has made these hideous vices nice?  They seem to think Jesus Christ is like a  garbage man who in his own good time comes to take away the garbage we haven't even bothered to put out on the curb. The word choices are telling. Apparently these aren't sins anymore, they're "challenges" and "perplexing conditions"  and "circumstances" like psoriasis or bad weather, that have to be "healed" or "lifted." They don't seem to realize that these sexual sins, unlike psoriasis or bad weather, have to do with the appetite and require thoughts, choices, actions. Notice how the the words sin and repentance are not used in this letter. Not anywhere on any of the four pages. Evidently this person isn't interested in encouraging people to overcome these miserable vices, just in  "understanding" them. How is that exalting? What good does it accomplish?  When has mere understanding ever freed anyone of a vice? It's just political correctness with no thought for the well-being and future of the inner person, the souls of God's children. There are no true principles that back up this nonscriptural view. This person isn't interested in being grateful to the Lord for his divine redemption that saves all of us wretches if we desire it (which our books are about). They are only interested in coddling the people who claim their "circumstances" as permanent, who have "difficult addictions" (that are also pleasurable), who haven't overcome their sins and don't plan to, who even identify themselves by them.

Isn't giving up our sins and becoming clean through humility, faith, and repentance what the Atonement of Christ  is all about? How can we overcome our sins we fail to perceive them as sins?

Let's get a few important things straight.  

We are the ones who change our desires or "attractions," not the Lord. It's called agency. People have to want to give up their sinful lusts. Christ won't make you want to do that. Porn users, insist though they might that they want to give it up, don't really want to give it up, and won't give it up until they want to. Maybe most modest decent people don't stop to think that, like a drug, pornography is an escape. It's lustful. It's sexual. It's exciting. It's pleasurable. People masturbate and reach orgasm while using porn. They play it over and over in their minds. They seek out more and more stimulating stuff. It's the same with any kind of sexual lust, such as homosexuality or adultery. There's a thrill to it. As St. Augustine quipped, "Make me chaste, Lord, just not yet." Yes, people like it. They are getting something selfish out of it. That's why they started it and that's why they use it. It may become physiologically addictive but it's still a sin they are responsible for instigating. Addicts are sinners, just like everybody else. They can get help. They can repent. They have to figure out for themselves what they really want, and this process goes on deep in the soul. And they most certainly will know when they experience the mighty change of heart.

No, the Atonement doesn't "heal" us like some miracle medicine. Christ takes away the guilt of our sins and pays the price of justice only if and when we forsake our sines, repent, and trust in him. He cannot take away our sins against our wills. We have to get humble, admit our fallen state, confess our sins, give up these sinful pleasures to Christ, emotional, mental, physical, sacrifice them on the altar of a broken heart and contrite spirit, and only then is the sin remitted through Christ's sacrifice, which takes faith. He said: go thy way and sin no more. Not: go thy way and keep doing what you're doing; in my own time I'll get around to changing your weak wicked selfish filthy heart. Alma was doing terrible things until he realized how bad he was. And boy did he! He was wretched, miserable, incapacitated unto death at the realization of his sinfulness, that is, until his mind caught hold of a thought. That thought was Christ as Redeemer, as Savior, as Deliverer, as Alma's way out of his great guilt and sin. He chose Christ and went his way repentant, changed, rejoicing. The Lord is there to make us clean and forgiven but it's all our choice. It's a conscious selfless sacrifice, not a waiting game.

Funny how our letter-writer doesn't mention any of these things. Indeed, they don't seem to value or understand them. They don't understand sin, and they don't understand repentance, and they don't understand the Atonement. The individuals mentioned in the letter who are addicted to the sleaze called pornography who claim they have pled and prayed and sought for "healing" do not appear to be wretched or miserable or self-condemning; quite the opposite. According to this letter, they are pious, faithful, and prayerful. They are painted as victims, not people with free will who have chosen a wrong path. Apparently this person thinks the Atonement is for giving comfort in sin, rather than what it is: a glorious opportunity for wrenching your heart away from exciting, self-indulgent, entertaining, escapist sins, humbly repenting, and becoming a new creature in Christ. This is not possible for people who enjoy their sins even a little, but it is quite easy for those who truly humble themselves and truly come to hate their sins. Easy. There is no such distinction made in this letter. It's quite incredible.

And what does "coping" with pornography addiction mean? Using it only occasionally? How occasionally?  And that makes it okay? What? That is not how evil works. And what does a porn addict staying "faithful" mean? Faithful to what? Certainly not Christ who is the author and finisher of all purity and goodness. And can a porn addict be "happy?" How can you be happy when you're spiritual sick and wrong, disobedient, in league with the devil, worshiping a false god?  Is "a measure of relief," whatever that is, what we want for people? That sounds like condemning someone to a measure of hell. Why this hideous mediocrity, to put it mildly? Aren't we supposed to be about perfection and exaltation? Hello?

Does this top ranking executive at Deseret Book really not know that people must seek out things like porn and homosexuality? That sexual sin is pleasurable? That it escalates? That it desensitizes people? That it's evil? That it ruins people's lives and kills their souls? That it even kills their bodies? And we're supposed to wait for the Lord to "heal" this type of wickedness, to "lift" it, to take it away? The scriptures never mention any such thing. What we read in the scriptures is: Repent! We certainly do not read anything in the scriptures like the humanist sociological babble coming from Deseret Book. Sorry, using porn, desiring porn, "coping" and "being faithful" while "attracted" to porn/homosexuality (and porn and SSA are most often interconnected) are inconsistent with faith, truth, goodness, decency, integrity, humility, chastity, purity, repentance, holiness, godliness, and belief in Christ.

Deseret Book is producing, approving, publishing, and marketing hopeless, self-serving, self-indulgent books which encourage porn addiction and promote homosexuality. And yet this letter says, " . . . we do go to great lengths to ensure that the books we publish are in harmony with Church doctrine." Somebody needs to do their homework, that is unless LDS doctrine is conveniently changing with the wicked times. It has been said, "Those who surrender on one issue tend to surrender on others as well." (D.French, Imprimis)

Apparently, some of the most pathetic and selfish and politically correct sins are suddenly just too hard to try to overcome anymore so we mustn't call them sins and they don't require repentance. And apparently Deseret Book gets to ignore scripture and decide which those are.

If you are not yet convinced these vices have been embraced by Mormons, go to a 6-minute video somebody at the LDS Church made in 2014 called Overcoming Pornography. Watch and listen with discernment. The words sin and repentance and the like are completely missing. Same with mormonsandgays.org. No sin. No repentance. Just a stiff challenge, a harmless condition, an innate identity. We're supposed to feel really bad for these people and not think about what pleasures they actually lust after and think about and do. Somehow these particular people don't have agency like the rest of us. They aren't accountable like the rest of us. They are just victims apparently. It might make you wonder what other sins are secretly being tolerated, excused, embraced, and will someday soon be published as perfectly acceptable, even as harmless, wholesome, and righteous.

With a little mental and spiritual effort it can be seen that this letter, these words, are how the anti-Christs in the Book of Mormon talked. No sin. No repentance. No Christ---certainly not the Christ who can redeem our sinful selves if we truly wish him to.

What has happened to Desert Book in the last 10-15 years is truly stranger than fiction.

The time is past due when parents must take matters into their own hands and pro-actively teach their children the right attitudes and the one healthy proper channel for their developing sexuality. Here are some helps: two age-appropriate books about God's plan and rules for male-female, romantic feelings, and human sexuality published by Tidal Wave Books which, according to our distributor, Deseret Book was not interested in. FOR FREE read and use the full text of Me Tarzan, You Jane (gently worded for the youngest children) on the SoL website's home page. Chased by an Elephant, the Gospel Truth About Today's Stampeding Sexuality, is for parents to use with their growing kids however they see fit. Discounts for orders of more than one---we just need to cover our costs. These books were labors of love--of God and His children. EVERYONE TODAY NEEDS THESE BOOKS or something like them. You can also get our books at or through BYU Bookstore.

Killing Babies, and Profiting: #1 on the Wickedness Barometer

The worst science fiction horrors are being exposed as reality. According to a video featuring a top doctor and executive made undercover by The Center for Medical Progress, Planned Parenthood is an institutionalized hit man (as in killing for money) and has been for decades. When everybody thought it was only helping women free themselves of responsibility by destroying their unborn babies, now we find it is profiting financially along a different line from its murder and dismembering and gutting of human babies. The federally funded institution has been caught aborting babies in certain ways in order to sell their body parts. Not only is unnecessary abortion itself murderous and savage and gruesome and inhuman in the extreme, now we learn that it is also about greed. This harvesting of baby tissues and organs is also illegal in at least two ways: aborting babies in certain ways for the purpose of  selling body parts, and selling human body parts. Both illegal. It is also a complete contradiction of basic tenets of the Pro-Choice abortion movement. PP eschews ultra sounds, lest the mother see that she is indeed about to murder a human being, but PP uses ultra sounds to help the abortion doctor kill the baby in such a way that its organs can be salvaged intact from the murdered baby. Yes, what has been touted as nonhuman, worthless, nonviable, and belonging to the mother to do with what she will is suddenly in this case totally human, worth a great deal, so viable it is in great commercial demand, and free for the taking and using by anybody clever and evil and inhuman enough to do it. 

There's a difference between Jeffrey Daumer-type individuals doing evil monstrous things like cutting up innocent helpless human beings and freezing their body parts, and institutions funded by the people's government tax dollars doing those same evil monstrous things. This is institutionalized wickedness. It means we are wicked as a people, that as a people we are allowing these things, that "wickedness [does] prevail upon the face of the whole land" (Mormon 1:13).

They say there will be more damning videos released once a week for months to come. Will anything come of this exposure? It definitely should, but when has PP ever been held responsible for doing depraved, despicable, and illegal things? The people at Planned Parenthood are somehow immune from criticism, from legality, from decency, from goodness, from God. But of course not forever.

What Planned Parenthood is doing is a very accurate barometer of how wicked we are as a people today.  Planned Parenthood and their ilk brutally destroy healthy babies while in or partially out of their mothers' wombs, cut them up, and sell their valuable human body parts for money. Images of barbarians placing crying babies on bloody altars and cutting their beating hearts out alive come to mind. The Lord won't protect such a people. For example, Iran hates us. Iran is now free to make nuclear weapons thanks to Obama. We better get ready. Righteous individually or not, we're part of this time, this people, this wickedness. We better keep repenting, keep praying, declare the truth, and put our treasure where God is.

Follow Gays, Boys!

It was two years ago we posted "Follow Me Boys!: Gone With the Wind" about openly gay boys being recognized as gay and on those terms allowed into the Boy Scouts. The BSA's  reasons were so phony it's not surprising that it only took them two short years to go right ahead and include openly gay leaders as welcome into their organization. So much for their weak excuse for allowing openly gay boys in the Boy Scouts: so they could have at least one good influence in their lives. Really? So now gay adult leaders are good influences on gay boys or any boys? Incredibly, one of the most supposed conservative groups in America has now put its stamp of approval on proud homosexuals putting on the uniform and acting as official leaders of young boys. Funny how the BSA isn't keeping its own oath: to be "mentally awake and morally straight." And what about that "duty to God?" Is homosexuality really "trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, clean, and reverent?" Gays may have some of these qualities as people, but not as homosexuals. Homosexuality is the opposite of all these things.

There's only one main reason a proud openly gay man would want to be a boy scout leader: he gets a lot of access to other males, young males, whom he will be free to influence, sexualize, lust after, be aroused by, initiate, and recruit. What an upside-down world. If this had happened to poor Whitey in the movie Follow Me Boys! his chances of getting adopted by Lem, the devoted but childless scout leader and his lovely wife who so longed to be a mother, would have been nil. And he would actually have been put in harm's way.

Let's stop all the lies and excuses. Homosexuality is about sex. Otherwise it wouldn't exist. But it's not about real, natural, healthy sex. It's about perverse, risky, maladaptive sexual ideas and behaviors. It is fed by pornography, is addictive, highly promiscuous, causes horrible chronic health problems and inordinately spreads deadly disease. Percentage-wise, homosexuals are 20 times more likely to sexually molest and abuse minors than heterosexuals are. Male homosexuality is often initiated by older males to younger whom everyone knows are naturally curious about sex and pretty much sitting ducks for this type of thing. Yes, it is often predatory. Those Catholic priests? Ever hear of altar boys? Nobody talks about it, but the adult priests were overwhelmingly (81%) abusing boys, not girls. 

 But there are more uncomfortable truths, and yes, we're so fed up we're going to tell all. Right here.

 Did you know that BSA founder, Lord Baden-Powell, was terribly strange? He made passionate remarks about nude males and is known to have made and kept "nature photographs" of  nude boys. (In those days "nature photographs" were understood to be nudity.) Apparently he required that his scouts should bathe naked outside, enjoyed watching them, and often chatted with them after they had stripped off their clothes for skinny dipping. Who does this? Tom Jeals in The Boy-Man, a 1990 biography, pages 83-109, exposes  Baden-Powell's obsession and probable sexual involvement with teenage boys, even though he was married with children. It seems likely that Baden-Powell would have been listed on a sex offender's registry list today! Jeals writes, "It is not so much that Baden-Powell took male nudity for granted that is noteworthy, but that he consistently praised the male body when naked and denigrated the female." Again, who does this? This is the man who is so praised and adored who founded the BSA. No doubt there are statues and portraits in praise of this person. And yet what decent people would want to affiliate with him? It makes one wonder what is really going on here. Apparently, homosexuality is part and parcel of  BSA's founding. Why is this covered up? Why, when this was known, wasn't the institution investigated or refocused or dissolved or renamed or something? You can bet plenty of homosexuals know all about Baden-Powel and are drawn to the institution because of one of his particular sexual bents.

This is not to say that many many boys haven't benefited from this program over the years in wholesome ways. But apparently perverts have also benefited, and boys have been harmed. Patrick Boyle wrote Scout's Honor: Sexual Abuse in America's Most Trusted Institution, in which he exposes pederast sexual abuse (male adults molesting male youth) in the Boy Scouts. It's hard to believe that decent adults would want to exacerbate an already existing problem by proclaiming that proud open gay men are welcome in the institution as trusted leaders.How many more boys will be harmed in the future now that the BSA, true to its founder, has openly declared homosexuality harmless and welcome, with zero warnings or education attached?You have to admit that the Boy Scouts organization is probably the most perfect setting for recruiting youth into homosexuality.

Did you know that the BSA dropped its warning against masturbation in its handbook way way back in 1947 after quite incredibly seeking the advice of the pervert/child molester/sex revolutionary/militant atheist Alfred Kinsey? Alfred Kinsey himself joined the Boy Scouts at about age 17, shortly after its founding in 1910. Later as a married man, Kinsey continued to wear his scout uniform and be involved with boys in scouting and other boys' clubs, and his motivation doesn't seem to be God and country. For many of his adult years he was very popular and had close associations with boys in a scouting-type leadership situation, "sleeping alongside them in tents,"  taking them on weekend and month-long camping trips. Later in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, pseudo-sexual-scientist Kinsey, who is still quoted and lauded today by sexual revolutionaries and the ignorant, claimed that "'children were sexual from birth,'" that most American boys engaged in some form of sexual activity with other boys, that adolescent homosexuality was 'a common phenomenon,' and that males reach their sexual 'peak' as teenagers." You can make a good guess as to how he got those ideas and came to those conclusions. You can find this and much more info in Judith Reismen's excellent but sad and shocking books, Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud, and Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences.


Is it not obvious that scouting can be a free-for-all for homosexual experimentation and exploitation of impressionable vulnerable boys and that the BSA just gave this a public green light? Apparently they are more concerned about law suits coming from gays crying discrimination than about lawsuits coming from parents of innocent molested children whose whole lives may be ruined.


We at SoL submit that the BSA's pro-gay stance, evidently in hiding since its founding, is not about helping anybody. Perhaps as young boys follow gays, the few mentally awake and morally straight people left on this planet should get wise and follow the history, follow the pressure, follow the positions, follow the money, follow the politics, follow the sex, and get right out of that program.

As John David Michaelis said in 1814, in Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, “If we reflect on the dreadful consequences of sodomy to the state, and on the extent to which this abominable vice may be secretly carried on and spread; we cannot, on the principles of sound policy, consider the punishment as too severe. For if it once begins to prevail, not only will boys be easily corrupted by adults, but also by other boys, nor will it ever cease; more especially as it must thus soon lose all its shamefulness and infamy and become fashionable and the national taste; and then . . . national weakness, for which all remedies are ineffectual, most inevitably follow; not perhaps in the first generation, but certainly in the course of the third or fourth . . . To these evils may be added yet another, viz. that the constitutions of those men who submit to this degradation are, if not always, yet very often, totally destroyed, though in a different way from what is the result of whoredom. Whoever, therefore, wishes to ruin a nation, has only to get this vice introduced; for it is extremely difficult to extirpate it where it has once taken root because it can be propagated with much secrecy . . . and when we perceive that it has once got a footing in any country, however powerful and flourishing, we may venture as politicians to predict that the foundation of its future decline is laid and that after some hundred years it will no longer be the same . . . powerful country it is at the present.”

Hmm. Sodomy. Abominable vice. Secrecy. Spread. Boys easily corrupted by adults and other boys. Fashionable. National taste. National weakness. Men destroyed. Difficult to extirpate. Rooted. Ruin. Decline. After a hundred years.

Sounds like an accurate description not only of the state of our nation but of what's happening in the Boy Scouts of America today.

Becoming Babyon

There is talk that the LDS Church will have to make some adjustments in the near future to accommodate the national legitimization of sexual freedom and equality, that is, in order to remain a going concern, just as it had to make adjustments in 1890 (move current polygamists out of the country, give up the practice of polygamy) in order to remain a going concern.

One may have to read that sentence again. And again. Not because it's a confusing too-long sentence but because so much is wrong about how people think these days that we hardly know where to start. We'll try, in no particular order of importance, to sort it out.

What first comes to mind is C. S. Lewis's astute statement: 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. This is exactly what happened with the Supreme Court case ruling on "gay marriage." In reality what the issue came down to was God's boundary for sexual morality having to defend itself. How did people get so far off track? Bit by bit. Here a concession, there a distraction. Here a watering-down, there an easing up. Here a compromise, there a rationalization. Instead of proclaiming homosexuality the sin it is people went on the defense for traditional marriage. We wonder if well-intentioned people can finally see that this was the wrong position. Of course it failed.

Correct us if we're wrong. Any real church of Jesus Christ should never make adjustments to accommodate current societal wickedness, i.e. homosexuality. If a church makes adjustments to accommodate wickedness so it can remain intact, it will have truly sold its soul. Zion cannot be built using the methods of Babylon. In other words, if a church embraces Babylon, it becomes Babylon. If you want a real Christian church, you have to retain the essentials, one of these being God's rules for sexual purity. Otherwise you aren't a church anymore, at least not the same one and certainly not a Christian one.

There should be no concessions, no equivocations, no compromises with evil, come what may. Come unpopularity, come loss of membership, come financial losses, come persecution, come punishments and fines, and yes, come getting closed down. We thought it was great when Pope Benedict said that if some Catholics didn't like the church's stand against homosexuality then, fine, they'd have a smaller church. This life is not a business deal. It's not about temporal successes. It's not about amassing worldly wealth or popularity or numbers. It's not about ends justifying the means. We can't take any of what's here with us; what we take with us is the kind of person we have become. This life is a test for each individual immortal soul, about choosing the world or choosing God. Churches are supposed to exist to help us do that.

Have we forgotten that the early apostles were martyred? Christians today in the Middle East are being slaughtered. None of these remade their faith in order to get along with the world or even survive.True followers of Christ don't give in and get used to evil. That's what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot's wife actually hesitated to leave the wickedest of all places, and we know what happened to her. No, true Christians keep the faith and take what comes. Sometimes they have to take up arms and fight. In the Book of Mormon, Christians sometimes surrendered to martyrdom, and sometimes fought back. It's difficult to know which of these we must do. But we can know what not to do: take the wrong position, and adjust to accommodate evil. The dire consequences of embracing evil to any degree have been shown to be predictable and certain.
 
But for the sake of argument, what precisely would these adjustments be? Some suggest that churches will have to desist from performing marriages at all. So couples will get married outside the church. In this way, churches cannot be forced to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies. Okay, but no more church weddings? Really? Let's not forget that this "adjustment" would be a gross forfeiture of religious freedom. And for the Mormon Church all this would really do is perhaps stall the inevitable. The gay/secular/feminist/progressive movement isn't really about marriage. It's about thumbing its nose at God, Creation, Righteousness, and Order. It's about Godlessness and power over the mind of man. One way they are accomplishing this is by insisting on gender equality, genderlessness, or what they call nondiscrimination (which means that no distinction and no different treatment according to a person's self-determined "sexual orientation" is to be allowed). In that case, Mormon gay activists (yes, they exist and are allowed a voice within the church) won't put up with allowing temple sealings either unless all manner of same-sex couples can participate in that ceremony also. All it takes is the threat of one law suit.

We at Standard of Liberty have been told that the Church will never put up with homosexual behavior, which of course must include never putting up with gay marriage since gay marriage indicates homosexual behavior. So what can it do to keep its temples? We had an idea that the Church could sell for a token amount, or give, all its properties to well-off private persons. Then when the government said you have to perform same-sex temple weddings/sealings or we'll take away your tax-exempt status and/or your temples, the Church could say, what temples? The private owners could maintain the temples until we voted better leaders in and the government changed its tune and we got our religious freedom back, or until the Lord comes. Just an idea, and it wouldn't hold out for long either seeing as how private individuals are now being targeted too.

Too bad that's not all. This women-holding-the-priesthood thing isn't going away, and neither is a lot of other nonsense most have not even imagined that is on the horizon. We don't think it will stop until mankind has eaten itself up, as C. S. Lewis warned in The Abolition of Man. One quick way to abolish man is to prohibit procreation, which is naturally prohibitive in homosexualism. Look at California always working at prohibiting the words mother and father, male and female, husband and wife, from the public arena. These words, which are indicative of the procreative act essential to reproduction, are being proclaimed outdated and biased. Talk about abolishing mankind!

So what shall we do?When is truth, righteousness, our posterity, our God, and our religious freedom worth fighting for? Where is our Captain Moroni? Where is our title of liberty (also called the standard of liberty)?

Alas, we don't see any of that coming from powers that be. So what if we give in? What's a church like that isn't free to practice and express its tenets, that has to take its orders from the outside, that is governed with an iron hand by the changing whims and philosophies of Godless men whom Lewis called the Conditioners and Huxley called the Controllers? I don't know about leaders, but for those of us in the trenches, this would translate into parents who are true followers of Christ coming home from "church" and having to unteach what their children learned there, instead supplying true and unchanging principles and doctrines. Such a church might remain an institution; it might prosper financially; it might have a rich sociological culture; it might keep itself busy; it might perform its rituals, it might take care of its own and even serve mankind in temporal ways, yes, it may continue to be a going concern in a temporal sense, but it won't be religious or moral or Christian or Godly or holy. Therefore it will be Babylon. Is this what we want? Can we live with it? Should we?Some people think we must. But where will that lead?

If things continue in the direction they are now going, and churches and groups and individuals do not have the awareness and will to turn it around, all truly religious speech and practice will eventually be prohibited, if it hasn't already been forfeited voluntarily. Isn't that what will happen in every congregation when a gay married couple with children moves in? Nobody will want to talk about sexual morality or repentance or sin, or otherwise say anything against this arrangement for fear of being labeled homophobic, bigoted, unwelcoming, unChristlike, and nobody would want to break up what is functioning as a family. With zero resistance to arrest it (the last holdouts were church and family), an uninformed, foundationless, and arbitrary morality will be adopted worldwide and enforced most likely by nonbenevolent totalitarian powers. No, this is not science fiction; it has occurred over and over again throughout human history; it's just that we pampered Americans don't realize it can happen to us.

And let's not forget that churches don't usually survive Godless totalitarian regimes. Church buildings get closed down, boarded up, recycled for other uses. For the few humble followers of Christ left, things may reach the point where we'll have to be like the Nephites that time, and pray and teach and practice our moral and religious beliefs only in the humble privacy of our homes and hearts, which we should primarily be doing anyway. How would that be? No church to go to, no group of people to meet with, no praying as a body, no serving together, no church callings, no administrations, no outward performances, no temple work --- that would be an adjustment. But hey, on the bright side, apparently there will be a whole millennium to make it up, and lo and behold we might learn something in the meantime. Stripped of all our golden calves, souls might actually come to Christ. In all of this mess, isn't that the going concern that should matter most?

The Bakers Who Say, "I Choose to Serve God"

"I am who I am and I want to live my life the way I want to live my life, and, you know, I choose to serve God."

Apparently to some people this is a horrific and discriminatory statement and statements like these must be silenced. It's a quote from Melissa Klein who along with her husband Aaron lost her Oregon bakery business Sweet Cakes by Melissa when the Kleins were court ordered to pay a lesbian couple $135,000 in emotional damages for declining to bake their same-sex wedding cake. Those emotional damages? Here are some---get ready for a good laugh: "acute loss of confidence," " "high blood pressure," "impaired digestion," "loss of appetite," pale and sick at home after work," "resumption of smoking habit," "shock," "stunned," surprised," "uncertainty," "weight gain," "worry." You get money for these things? And a baker who can't bake your cake causes them? It sounds more like a tantrum. What are they, four years old? One of our twins once had a huge long tantrum over wanting a whole piece of cake instead of the last half of a piece. She was four. We have it on video tape. Childishly hilarious.By the way, the lesbians had been served as regular customers at the bakery. It was just the event that the Kleins could not in good conscience participate in.

The Kleins lost their shop. But the judge wasn't done with them yet. He also ordered that the Kleins "cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying . . . any communication, notice, advertisement or sign of any kind to the effect that any of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, services or privileges or a place of public accommodation will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination will be made against, any person on account of sexual orientation." Believe it or not, the above quote from Melissa was one of the communications the judge cited as discriminatory.

It's a clear case of  people's unlimited sexual whims being favored over people's constitutionally guaranteed right to freely exercise their religion. And it's totally outrageous. We have some bad laws and some bad judges. But all that aside, since the Kleins no longer own a public accommodation business, it's unclear how this gag order can be applied or enforced. It appears to be more of an attempt to bully and intimidate outspoken Christians than anything else. 

It's interesting that gays can say the same sort of thing: "I am who I am and I want to live my life the way I want to live my life, and, you know, I choose to act gay." And everyone is supposed to fall all over themselves celebrating their sexual behavior, and of course totally shut up if they don't think it's a good idea. But if a Christian says the same sort of thing they are targeted and sued and lose their business and are ordered never to speak or write or communicate their religious beliefs in any way. That's what this all comes down to: For heaven's sake, don't offend gays because they'll have a huge tantrum. But go ahead and offend Christians all you want.

Why can't we let the public decide? For instance, if a hotel owner publishes his refusal to serve a certain type of customer---interacial couple, gay couple, Christian couple, Muslim couple, whatever, and prospective customers decide he is a real jerk because of that, they go to some other hotel. Simple. He loses business. He might even go out of business. What is all this forcing people to comply with some arbitrary double standard people with authority at the moment have pulled out of a hat? Let people make their own hotel beds and lie in them. And let people eat cake from some other bakery. News flash: It's not a perfect world. Not everybody is going to fit into one mold. Nobody can force people to like everyone and everything. How has it worked in the past? It hasn't. Things only get worse when anyone tries to force people.

Aaron Klein says, "I personally, I am a man of faith and I believe that Jesus Christ is the answer and I have every right to speak on that . .  . It's an affront to the freedom in this country for any government agency to do what they are doing." Amen.

We here at SoL have also been shut up and told to shut up through the years. We've received death wishes and even had what is called a terroristic death threat which was looked into by the FBI. And that's not all. We get every sort of angry accusation and goofy criticism that can be devised by the mind of man. But no tantrums and no emotional damage here (at least not in public). We choose to serve God. 

God's Rainbow or the "gay" rainbow: Pick One

Conservatives lost the abortion fight. Now they've lost the marriage fight. They will utterly and completely lose their newest cause: the fight for religious freedom. Why? Because these issues are only surface distractions, one after the other. We get pushed back and back and back because we insist on focusing on  and spending all our resources on these issues which are mere symptoms arising from the all-encompassing problem: Godlessness. Roger Scruton said, "The triumph of sin comes with our failure to perceive it." And sin has certainly triumphed in our lawless time. Scripture (2 Nephi 27:13) says if there is no law, there is no sin, nor righteousness, nor happiness, nor punishment, nor misery. Nor God. Godlessness is the cause of all these evils. That's the cancer of our time that has turned our world upside down.

We're not saying that people fighting for these causes haven't worked hard and exposed evils and done their homework and had good intentions. What we are saying is it didn't and won't work because when you treat the symptom, the disease is still there, growing and spreading and mutating and metastasizing. It hasn't worked because generally speaking the rising generation doesn't have a clue about how wrong abortion is, what marriage is for, the tantamount importance of religious freedom, what Christianity really is, and who God is. They've grown up surrounded by positive characterizations of  ungodly things and negative or watered-down or de-emphasized characterizations of godly things. Despite parents' best efforts, a humanist, secular, hedonist culture is raising the children of today in large part due to the inevitable technological pervasiveness of anti-Christ communications. 

Even as good people have been striving their hearts out we have lost the culture war. This has happened because even the best-intentioned humans are easily distracted or weak of faith or intellectually lazy or gullible or protective of their own temporal interests or ambitious or prideful or smug  or overconfident, or a combination of these, and more. They have wrongly relied on the arm of the flesh, arguing against these evils using sociology, science, history, convention, and so forth, and nothing has made a dent. They fooled themselves into thinking they can handle these things without God, and in so doing have played right into the hands of the Godless. For instance, at least a decade ago we watched a gay marriage debate on TV between a secular progressive lesbian lawyer and a supposedly religious conservative law professor and it was obvious that he lost the argument. His case was weak. He resorted to human history and human tradition/sociology when he should have resorted to God. God is what this is all about. His rules. His plans. His creations. If we leave God out anything can become a demon, so said C. S. Lewis. If we leave God out all evils are permitted, according to Doestoevsky. As we've said so many times before, God and Godlessness cannot peacefully co-exist. They never have. Today, it's God's rainbow or the gay  rainbow. Pick one. 

Unfortunately, all these supposedly religious, conservative people who have been sticking their necks out have not stuck them out far enough. They've been bullied or have rationalized themselves into keeping God out of their discourse, out of their debates, and out of the public square. But it so happens that when people get this wicked God is the best and perhaps only way to bring them back to their senses. 

And now, as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just---yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened to them---therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God.  Alma 31:5


And what is the word of God? What it isn't is sociological. It isn't primarily about human relations. It's about a relationship that transcends the world. It's about the supernatural, the divine, the Godhead: God the father, Christ the Redeemer, the Holy Ghost. It's primarily and fundamentally spiritual. It's about the reality of human sin, justice, repentance, and divine redemption. But church-going people today have abandoned these truths and instead emphasize the worldly tenets of human relations and self-satisfaction and comfort. As Madeleine L'Engle  wrote almost half a century ago,

"No wonder our youth is confused and in pain; they long for God, for the transcendent, and are offered, far too often, either piosity or sociology [outward performances or human relations], neither of which meets their needs, and they are introduced to churches which have become buildings that are a safe place to go to escape the awful demands of God."

This whole cultural juggernaut is not about equality or respect or kindness or love or marriage or even religious freedom. All those words have been highjacked and redefined and deserve thick black quote marks around them. In fact, the words religious freedom are already being replaced with the cleverly stifling  phrase freedom of worship, meaning keep your beliefs inside your church building, which is more like religious imprisonment than religious freedom. But "freedom of worship" will be surrendered also, evidently quite soon. All that goes on inside the walls of church buildings will be challenged next, and why not? What is to stop the enemies of God if God's people don't publicly acknowledge Him?

Little do God's enemies know, not much goes on anymore in churches which they wouldn't approve of. They needn't feel threatened---our daughter left a church meeting in tears last Sunday when the meeting was taken over by moral relativist/homosexualist congregants who turned it into a gay sensitivity seminar. But wait, it will get much worse. Apparently the Godless are offended even by the sight of a cross, so all such buildings will have to go. And anybody who thinks sex activists will stop at this or that concession made by the churches are fooling themselves.They want to bring the whole house down, as Midge Decter pointed out. They won't rest until all Christian businesses and Christian church buildings are shut down, and after that they'll go after communities, families, and individuals. It's happened before many times, such as in communist and the Nazi regimes. And remember the Nephites who were to be put to death for praying vocally to God (Mosiah 24: 10-12).

Even as conservatives and churches make one compromise and one concession after another, treating the surface symptoms, it's easy to see that what it's about is the forcing of Godlessness on everybody. Yes, they want us abandoning our beliefs and our convictions and participating with them in sin.Most of all, they want our hearts. The wicked want us celebrating sin along with them. They want us caught up in their anti-Christ parade. At its roots it's an anger at God and goodness, a Satanic vengefulness. Read Dante's Inferno or Milton's Paradise Lost and you'll see that revenge is all Lucifer cares about. Apparently it's true that misery loves company.

Even as we must endure what we cannot cure, we mustn't fall in step. We mustn't develop the disease ourselves to any degree. We must choose God, thus we will be the ones out of step now, the ones marginalized, the ones punished. And don't be fooled into thinking we can all get along. One of these views will be punished and the other harmed, warned Robert Bork. The first house of our land, the White House, has shown itself boldly emblazoned with the gay rainbow, i.e. celebrating and promoting sin. Those who put God and goodness and righteousness first are now the ones who will be harmed. In other words, if you are on the Lord's side you will feel very uncomfortable and inconvenienced and alone, to put it mildly, living in this wicked world today.

People who won't wake up to what the real evil is in our day make all sorts of rationalizations and become easily persuaded by the Godless, become deceived themselves, and spread evil deceptions to others. As the scriptures say, there are apparently going to be few who choose God.

God's rainbow or the gay rainbow. You choose.