During the 1980s the entire public, including elementary school
children, was swept up into a propaganda program to scare everyone into
thinking all people were equally at risk to get the horrible deadly
disease called GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) which was quickly changed to AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome).
Now, despite persistent propaganda, even some gays admit AIDS is a gay disease, which by
the way, is still a huge problem among the irresponsible, hedonistic gay
population which spreads it through promiscuous sodomy and tainted drug
needles, fully encouraged and celebrated by the powers that be in society and government.
But back then it wasn't portrayed as a sexually transmitted disease. Oh
no, it was something even school children could easily contract. By sitting on toilet seats. Not.
At the
time we were personally astonished and annoyed at the distorted
reporting, fear-mongering, and encroachment of false information about
this STD into our young children's minds in school. It was completely
out of place and outrageous. We opted our kids out of surveys and assemblies and such, which made them
embarrassed, the opting out which is now something that is no longer
allowed when it comes to homosexualist propaganda being taught at schools. Everyone knows, or should know, that homosexualism is being proudly promoted in schools and libraries and churches and every other societal entity today.
Please
note it was public health experts that made or let that happen and
continue to let it happen, even with health risks for this behavior
worsening all the time. For example, drug use (which makes users forget to take meds), the ease of finding instant, one-time partners on the internet, unprotected group sex, and people who have HIV-AIDS mixing freely with the public---all of the above in some combination are common. In addition, younger and younger people are getting involved in homosex, most likely because of huge societal acceptance, internet porn, encouragement from the gay community, sexual abuse/initiation by sex predators, and the promotion of secularism. The CDC reported in 2017 that the age for the contraction of AIDS has greatly lowered, with a dramatic increase at age 15. Fifteen to 24-year-olds account for half of all new STD infections, including AIDS. Should we fully trust public health experts? Ever?
There
are some similarities happening now to how the AIDS epidemic, which also disrupted the nation in some significant ways such as public campaigns everywhere and blood donations becoming tainted, was
handled. While the current virus is overwhelmingly dangerous to older
people with serious health problems, obese people, and otherwise very sick people, it is increasingly being touted as
dangerous to everyone and proclaimed that all people are extremely
dangerous to each other in casual ways, just as was touted during the AIDS epidemic. This is happening even though it is known that
it is overwhelmingly older/sick people who are most at risk of
fatality, who could easily be isolated, watched, and cared for, while
the rest of the population, some are saying 98 %, is affected not at all, mildly, or
experiences a very bad flu that is completely recovered from without
hospitalization. And yet people in all categories are being
increasingly ordered to shut themselves in their houses indefinitely. Is
propaganda spreading faster than the virus?
Another
question: Why weren't/aren't gays sequestered away from each other in
the face of the terrible disease they pass around through
discretionary sexual pleasures? No one ever told gays to change their
sexual behavior to "slow the spread" or "flatten the curve" while we, who are doing all we can not to
spread the current virus, are urged or ordered to avoid mere social
visits. Meaning nonsexual. The closest they got to suggesting any precaution for spreading AIDS through promiscuous gay sex was the condom campaign, which was decided to be ineffective/undesirable for this type of sex. And they continue to insist that it is the government's job to find a cure for a disease they bring upon themselves.
Gay sexual behaviors, although not as immediately deadly as they used
to be because of new drug cocktails at great cost to the public, still
cause chronic health problems and shorten lives at great cost to the
public. Obviously, gays weren't quarantined because the "right" to have
unlimited sex was deemed without question more important than public
health protocol and all sorts of costs to the not-at-any-risk vast majority of the population. And yet today,
the actual right to pursue happiness, that is, work, associate,
assemble, travel, speak freely, worship is obviously not more important
than the public health and all sorts of costs during the current
crisis. Can you wrap your mind around that? Isn't this a huge double standard?
Should gays be responsible to prevent spreading their horrible disease that causes so much trouble and suffering and expense and early death? Yes. But that is not even a topic of science or even conversation.
Not to actually compare this horrific gay disease that is completely preventable with the current serious virus which people contract through no deliberate act of their own, but there is a similar prevention methodology that should be instigated. It refers to Occam's Razor, meaning that the simplest, most logical, most obvious answer is the right one. But that is the kind of answer people these days refuse to acknowledge or even consider because of political correctness and other nonsense. That obvious answer is for at-risk people to self-isolate like they do whenever there is a bad flu, while the rest of the world
carries on in order for the robust economy to most readily deal with any crisis, treat the sufferers, and save lives, and so there's a vibrant world left for everybody.
The same public
health experts who officiated in the AIDS epidemic are largely in charge of us
today. Is that a problem? Yes.
Friday, March 27, 2020
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Viral Questions
It is our feeling at SoL, and the feelings of many others, that we are not getting the full story about the current virus scare. Notice to free people: When your way of life is interrupted, when a huge number of people's livelihoods are put on hold or lost, when the economy is grossly interrupted, when citizens are panic buying and hoarding, when children can't go to school, when parents can't go to work, when churches are closed down, all of this and more for an indefinite period of time, it is time to use our powers of critical thinking to the best of our ability.
People will hate us for bringing up doubts and questions. They will call us names and accuse us of actually killing people---yes, killing people just for asking questions, for exercising our brains, for keeping calm and carrying on mentally and emotionally. Someone has actually said to us that if we don't blindly obey orders, even suggestions, from the government (some of which are contradictory and arbitrary) we are part of the problem. Yes, we are the contagion itself.
Are people a disease? No. What ever happened to those brave cancer patients who refuse to identify themselves as their illness? We have been told that if we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem, that is, spreading a deadly disease which we most likely don't have and won't endanger anyone with whom we are visiting. This accusation came right off the bat from a New Yorker, single and with one child, who has actually recently left New York for this crisis to live with his girlfriend out of state, leaving his ex-wife and grown child there in NYC. He didn't mention anything about quarantining himself, which has actually been mandated for people leaving NYC. This is the person, much as we love him, warning us not to go near our many extended family members here in Utah and pretty much shaming us for having a large, close family. Really? First of all, he knows nothing about what we are doing. Second, it smacks of hypocrisy, suspicion, know-it-allishness, and a superiority complex. Third, this is a person who has abandoned his own family in the worst danger zone for the relative safety of a tiny midwestern town. Who really needs shaming, if that's what we're supposed to be doing? We mention this to show the extreme herd mentality and double standard being used by leftists/alarmists, which is supposed to keep us all thoughtlessly in line, whatever that line is from day to day.
It is very dehumanizing even during this scare, to automatically treat all people as a contagion, to look from afar with suspicion at anyone with silver hair, to suspect those with large extended families of visiting each other and lecture them for even thinking of it. Unreasonable suspicions aside, whatever happened to people risking their comforts, even their lives, going to help others in whatever need? There are altruistic people who do this all the time, including now, like firemen and policemen and mothers. There could be situations that override a virus scare. (And we learned to wash our hands in kindergarten.) What if our children and their children ran out of food and we had plenty? What if a daughter/mother of young children broke a leg or was incapacitated in some other way? What if that earthquake near us, which we felt, had been many times worse? Would anyone not rush to the aid of their children or their neighbors or anyone in immediate trouble, come what may?We would hope so!
Should this virus scare really take priority over just about everything else, even our humanity? When Utah had the pretty significant earthquake last week nobody around here seemed to care about the virus anymore, at least for one day.
Are some hospitals/emergency rooms more busy than usual? Yes, but this is nothing novel and we don't have to use sensational words like "overrun" even before they are, if ever, actually overrun. The majority of hospitals are not even anywhere near full at this time; the immediate problem is that people are acting like they are full to bursting. Gov. Cuomo is now (3/26-27) reporting the great news that the rate of growth in the hospitalization of NY patients is actually decreasing, contrary to dire predictions. Even so, the wonderful thing is that hospitals adapt. They transport more supplies and equipment and personnel. They find more rooms. They train more workers. They weather the storm. They do their best, which is pretty darn good. Americans figure these things out because we are free and innovative and resourceful and generous.
The alarmism on the news about such things is unwarranted. How much air time has been spent on the pretended false inefficacy or shortage of surgical face masks alone? All that alarmism, instead of simply reporting the need for help in locating, and encouraging the producing of, face masks, which has finally occurred to people. Turns out you can make a serviceable face mask out of ubiquitous t-shirts according to the Center for Disease Control. Yes, you can. Panic and sensationalistic reporting is never good.
An astronomy professor once said to his class, Don't worry about global warming or any other disaster. What we should concentrate on is a good healthy free society and economy. In that way, we can best deal with any crisis that comes along. Right?
More questions.
Is the U.S. anything like China or Italy? No. China is a communist country that is the opposite of America in many ways. China habitually silences truth-tellers, lies to the world to save face, and wants to control the world. Italians smoke like crazy, customarily kiss everybody, live with their aged parents, and have been importing Chinese workers for years who travel back and forth from Italy to China. Italy even started a "Hug a Chinese" policy during this crisis so they won't appear racist,which is actually racist. In addition, Italy's hospitals are not great. Many coddled Americans cannot imagine what such countries are really like.
Should we allow tunnel-visioned public health experts to run every facet of our lives? No. In a time of emergency other types of experts must weigh in equally. Health experts are only experts in one category, and human life has many aspects and priorities. The situation should be continually reassessed from every angle. But it looks for all the world like these particular experts are perfectly patient keeping us in suspense. Are we mere statistics to them? Are they enjoying the spotlight a little too much? Will they ever admit it if they were wrong or alarmist or doing more harm than good? Just asking.
Should this virus scare really take priority over almost everything else? Utah had a pretty significant earthquake last week. Funny how nobody cared about the virus, at least for one day.
Are we wrong in finding almost all virus headlines misleading? For instance, the news continually highlights the rising number of cases but doesn't make a distinction between people who are asymptomatic, people with mild cases, people who are very sick but not hospitalized and recover soon, and people with underlying bad health conditions who need hospitalization, and everyone in between. The headlines are therefore needlessly sensationalized. The reaction they seem to be after is: Oh, no! So many people are going to die! Instead, they could highlight the number of hospitalizations and call them that, which number is significantly less, and actually the reason we are all shut down. Healthy people are weathering this flu, much like the seasonal flu.
Did you know 7,500 people die of this or that, including seasonal flu, every day in the U. S.? We need some perspective. How many will die of this virus on top of that? How many people who are being reported as dying of the virus would have died anyway of all sorts of problems perhaps combined with the seasonal flu within a week? Does anybody really know it was the virus that killed these sick people? Are autopsies done on every person included in the list of casualties? Is it really accurate to say they were COVID-19 victims? Or were they very sick people who were going to die soon anyway based on a primary illness or illnesses they already had?
Should we shut down or ban everything that regularly kills people? Did you know about 100 Americans die in automobile accidents per day. If, as Gov. Cuomo famously said the other day, we should do whatever it takes to save one life, shouldn't we ban cars immediately? Many lives would be saved every day.
If human life is so important (which of course it is), why are so many people and leaders still for killing unborn babies, even born babies? Why are so many all for government-run health care, where government officials get to decide if old people receive treatment, as in death panels? The same progressives who have been pushing the likes of global warming, population control, abortion, and euthanasia are now suddenly greatly exercised about stopping the world to save old, sick people. Why this sudden uncharacteristic concern for the value of human life? Isn't this total hypocrisy? And why are they playing this card? Is it because this experiment in unprecedented overreaching government control of the masses---such as the shutting down of churches and businesses (including gun stores), and the need for mass online schooling that could so easily be centralized and controlled by government---fits into their socialist playbook?
Isn't it telling that half the world of ordinary people are stuck at home where their powers of speech, creativity, worship, innovative talents, and livelihood (read:life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) may well be materially/psychologically oppressed for an unknown period, while at the same time journalists and public health experts and government leaders are enjoying unhampered their full freedoms of thought, speech, mobility, work, pay, and assembly?
Have we been primed for this sort of public treatment in the last century or two? Yes, we have been brainwashed by all sorts of progressive -isms, among them: atheism, Darwinism, secularism, humanism, socialism, communism, fascism, feminism and, yes, homosexualism. How about the AIDS epidemic? You may think this is stretch but it was and still is a huge deal and we should learn from it. See a coming post.
How about this question: Are billionaire churches still requiring tithes and offerings of its members at this time? Are they even stepping up their requests for financial donations? Or are churches with billions suspending tithes and offerings at this time when so many members are being laid off and even losing their employment or business? Are they giving everybody at least some of their own money back in this time of unprecedented worry, uncertainty, and stress? Have they even thought of offering such relief, like the federal government has, and shouldn't state governments offer relief too, that is at least suspend taxes? Aren't a church's own members entitled to some of that famous humanitarian aid it brags so much about? Or some form of it? We have an idea that no matter what is said, there is not much real concern for the well-being of some churches' members.
What about this data business? Have the powers that be been operating on flawed data? For instance, what about this testing effort? We are seeing that the more testing for this virus that is done, the lower the rate of fatality goes. In other words, they are finding out there are many, many more people who have contracted the virus and never knew it or recovered who are not part of the testing data. This makes the predictions of the death rate, or how many people will die, grossly overstated. Why did the experts say the other day that people with no symptoms need not be tested? Shouldn't there be random samples taken in order to get a more accurate understanding of the scope and actual deadliness of this virus? The great majority of people can weather this bad flu. It's the life-threatening deadliness/need for hospitalization that should be the concern. Flawed and incomplete data cannot provide accurate numbers for that. So is every precaution we are taking based on bad information? While it's always good to take precautions against illness, is all the alarm unnecessary? And even harmful?
Here's a funny one. Do news people even know their math, as in their zeros? Just the other week a news report got all sorts of flack for pretty much mistaking one million dollars for one dollar! So why should the public take journalists' word on all these many-zeroed statistics?
We are sure we will have more questions as this many-pronged nightmare continues and will add to this post. Keep reading! Keep using your brains! Lord bless us all!
Excerpt from a previous post that applies to this situation as well:
One result of these above recent developments is that lately we have seen many confused, frustrated, and sad faces, full of pain and suffering [or panic, suspicion, confusion, and uncertainty]. And we have seen some of these same people starting to wake up, starting to think for themselves, starting to let go of their trust in human beings, and turn to God. After all, the scriptures say we are cursed if we put our trust in men, cursed as in stagnated, deceived, harmed, even led to hell, perhaps. Therefore, shifting our religious [and other] responsibilities from others to ourselves and the Lord is one very good thing that is happening. We in the trenches must engage our God-given intellects, seeking the Spirit to discern truth and error, and guide our families.
edited 3/27/20, 3/28/20
People will hate us for bringing up doubts and questions. They will call us names and accuse us of actually killing people---yes, killing people just for asking questions, for exercising our brains, for keeping calm and carrying on mentally and emotionally. Someone has actually said to us that if we don't blindly obey orders, even suggestions, from the government (some of which are contradictory and arbitrary) we are part of the problem. Yes, we are the contagion itself.
Are people a disease? No. What ever happened to those brave cancer patients who refuse to identify themselves as their illness? We have been told that if we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem, that is, spreading a deadly disease which we most likely don't have and won't endanger anyone with whom we are visiting. This accusation came right off the bat from a New Yorker, single and with one child, who has actually recently left New York for this crisis to live with his girlfriend out of state, leaving his ex-wife and grown child there in NYC. He didn't mention anything about quarantining himself, which has actually been mandated for people leaving NYC. This is the person, much as we love him, warning us not to go near our many extended family members here in Utah and pretty much shaming us for having a large, close family. Really? First of all, he knows nothing about what we are doing. Second, it smacks of hypocrisy, suspicion, know-it-allishness, and a superiority complex. Third, this is a person who has abandoned his own family in the worst danger zone for the relative safety of a tiny midwestern town. Who really needs shaming, if that's what we're supposed to be doing? We mention this to show the extreme herd mentality and double standard being used by leftists/alarmists, which is supposed to keep us all thoughtlessly in line, whatever that line is from day to day.
It is very dehumanizing even during this scare, to automatically treat all people as a contagion, to look from afar with suspicion at anyone with silver hair, to suspect those with large extended families of visiting each other and lecture them for even thinking of it. Unreasonable suspicions aside, whatever happened to people risking their comforts, even their lives, going to help others in whatever need? There are altruistic people who do this all the time, including now, like firemen and policemen and mothers. There could be situations that override a virus scare. (And we learned to wash our hands in kindergarten.) What if our children and their children ran out of food and we had plenty? What if a daughter/mother of young children broke a leg or was incapacitated in some other way? What if that earthquake near us, which we felt, had been many times worse? Would anyone not rush to the aid of their children or their neighbors or anyone in immediate trouble, come what may?We would hope so!
Should this virus scare really take priority over just about everything else, even our humanity? When Utah had the pretty significant earthquake last week nobody around here seemed to care about the virus anymore, at least for one day.
Are some hospitals/emergency rooms more busy than usual? Yes, but this is nothing novel and we don't have to use sensational words like "overrun" even before they are, if ever, actually overrun. The majority of hospitals are not even anywhere near full at this time; the immediate problem is that people are acting like they are full to bursting. Gov. Cuomo is now (3/26-27) reporting the great news that the rate of growth in the hospitalization of NY patients is actually decreasing, contrary to dire predictions. Even so, the wonderful thing is that hospitals adapt. They transport more supplies and equipment and personnel. They find more rooms. They train more workers. They weather the storm. They do their best, which is pretty darn good. Americans figure these things out because we are free and innovative and resourceful and generous.
The alarmism on the news about such things is unwarranted. How much air time has been spent on the pretended false inefficacy or shortage of surgical face masks alone? All that alarmism, instead of simply reporting the need for help in locating, and encouraging the producing of, face masks, which has finally occurred to people. Turns out you can make a serviceable face mask out of ubiquitous t-shirts according to the Center for Disease Control. Yes, you can. Panic and sensationalistic reporting is never good.
An astronomy professor once said to his class, Don't worry about global warming or any other disaster. What we should concentrate on is a good healthy free society and economy. In that way, we can best deal with any crisis that comes along. Right?
More questions.
Is the U.S. anything like China or Italy? No. China is a communist country that is the opposite of America in many ways. China habitually silences truth-tellers, lies to the world to save face, and wants to control the world. Italians smoke like crazy, customarily kiss everybody, live with their aged parents, and have been importing Chinese workers for years who travel back and forth from Italy to China. Italy even started a "Hug a Chinese" policy during this crisis so they won't appear racist,which is actually racist. In addition, Italy's hospitals are not great. Many coddled Americans cannot imagine what such countries are really like.
Should we allow tunnel-visioned public health experts to run every facet of our lives? No. In a time of emergency other types of experts must weigh in equally. Health experts are only experts in one category, and human life has many aspects and priorities. The situation should be continually reassessed from every angle. But it looks for all the world like these particular experts are perfectly patient keeping us in suspense. Are we mere statistics to them? Are they enjoying the spotlight a little too much? Will they ever admit it if they were wrong or alarmist or doing more harm than good? Just asking.
Should this virus scare really take priority over almost everything else? Utah had a pretty significant earthquake last week. Funny how nobody cared about the virus, at least for one day.
Are we wrong in finding almost all virus headlines misleading? For instance, the news continually highlights the rising number of cases but doesn't make a distinction between people who are asymptomatic, people with mild cases, people who are very sick but not hospitalized and recover soon, and people with underlying bad health conditions who need hospitalization, and everyone in between. The headlines are therefore needlessly sensationalized. The reaction they seem to be after is: Oh, no! So many people are going to die! Instead, they could highlight the number of hospitalizations and call them that, which number is significantly less, and actually the reason we are all shut down. Healthy people are weathering this flu, much like the seasonal flu.
Did you know 7,500 people die of this or that, including seasonal flu, every day in the U. S.? We need some perspective. How many will die of this virus on top of that? How many people who are being reported as dying of the virus would have died anyway of all sorts of problems perhaps combined with the seasonal flu within a week? Does anybody really know it was the virus that killed these sick people? Are autopsies done on every person included in the list of casualties? Is it really accurate to say they were COVID-19 victims? Or were they very sick people who were going to die soon anyway based on a primary illness or illnesses they already had?
Should we shut down or ban everything that regularly kills people? Did you know about 100 Americans die in automobile accidents per day. If, as Gov. Cuomo famously said the other day, we should do whatever it takes to save one life, shouldn't we ban cars immediately? Many lives would be saved every day.
If human life is so important (which of course it is), why are so many people and leaders still for killing unborn babies, even born babies? Why are so many all for government-run health care, where government officials get to decide if old people receive treatment, as in death panels? The same progressives who have been pushing the likes of global warming, population control, abortion, and euthanasia are now suddenly greatly exercised about stopping the world to save old, sick people. Why this sudden uncharacteristic concern for the value of human life? Isn't this total hypocrisy? And why are they playing this card? Is it because this experiment in unprecedented overreaching government control of the masses---such as the shutting down of churches and businesses (including gun stores), and the need for mass online schooling that could so easily be centralized and controlled by government---fits into their socialist playbook?
Isn't it telling that half the world of ordinary people are stuck at home where their powers of speech, creativity, worship, innovative talents, and livelihood (read:life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) may well be materially/psychologically oppressed for an unknown period, while at the same time journalists and public health experts and government leaders are enjoying unhampered their full freedoms of thought, speech, mobility, work, pay, and assembly?
Have we been primed for this sort of public treatment in the last century or two? Yes, we have been brainwashed by all sorts of progressive -isms, among them: atheism, Darwinism, secularism, humanism, socialism, communism, fascism, feminism and, yes, homosexualism. How about the AIDS epidemic? You may think this is stretch but it was and still is a huge deal and we should learn from it. See a coming post.
How about this question: Are billionaire churches still requiring tithes and offerings of its members at this time? Are they even stepping up their requests for financial donations? Or are churches with billions suspending tithes and offerings at this time when so many members are being laid off and even losing their employment or business? Are they giving everybody at least some of their own money back in this time of unprecedented worry, uncertainty, and stress? Have they even thought of offering such relief, like the federal government has, and shouldn't state governments offer relief too, that is at least suspend taxes? Aren't a church's own members entitled to some of that famous humanitarian aid it brags so much about? Or some form of it? We have an idea that no matter what is said, there is not much real concern for the well-being of some churches' members.
What about this data business? Have the powers that be been operating on flawed data? For instance, what about this testing effort? We are seeing that the more testing for this virus that is done, the lower the rate of fatality goes. In other words, they are finding out there are many, many more people who have contracted the virus and never knew it or recovered who are not part of the testing data. This makes the predictions of the death rate, or how many people will die, grossly overstated. Why did the experts say the other day that people with no symptoms need not be tested? Shouldn't there be random samples taken in order to get a more accurate understanding of the scope and actual deadliness of this virus? The great majority of people can weather this bad flu. It's the life-threatening deadliness/need for hospitalization that should be the concern. Flawed and incomplete data cannot provide accurate numbers for that. So is every precaution we are taking based on bad information? While it's always good to take precautions against illness, is all the alarm unnecessary? And even harmful?
Here's a funny one. Do news people even know their math, as in their zeros? Just the other week a news report got all sorts of flack for pretty much mistaking one million dollars for one dollar! So why should the public take journalists' word on all these many-zeroed statistics?
We are sure we will have more questions as this many-pronged nightmare continues and will add to this post. Keep reading! Keep using your brains! Lord bless us all!
Excerpt from a previous post that applies to this situation as well:
One result of these above recent developments is that lately we have seen many confused, frustrated, and sad faces, full of pain and suffering [or panic, suspicion, confusion, and uncertainty]. And we have seen some of these same people starting to wake up, starting to think for themselves, starting to let go of their trust in human beings, and turn to God. After all, the scriptures say we are cursed if we put our trust in men, cursed as in stagnated, deceived, harmed, even led to hell, perhaps. Therefore, shifting our religious [and other] responsibilities from others to ourselves and the Lord is one very good thing that is happening. We in the trenches must engage our God-given intellects, seeking the Spirit to discern truth and error, and guide our families.
edited 3/27/20, 3/28/20
What Ever Happened to Keep Calm and Carry On?
Here we are again bringing you more stimulating reading in your time of isolation and stress.
A little perspective is always a valuable thing.
One thing that troubles us at SoL during this crisis is that we hardly hear any references at all to similar past crises and what was learned from them. Apparently history, even recent history, is very unpopular these days. Truth is, viruses and diseases (even plagues) are not something new, even highly contagious and deadly ones. Human history is full of them. Daily life is full of them. We find it strange that we have not heard that this is the worse virus that has ever existed, and yet we are supposed to be acting as if it is. We were jauntily walking toward the park the other day and a family with young children we passed as they were leaving the park acted like we were poisonous in every way. They not only gave us an exaggeratedly wide berth but quickly called their children close and looked at us with frightened suspicion. And no, it didn't look at all like they were concerned about us senior citizens. We called out a cheerful hello that got no response.
Here's the thing. Well people used to rush to help sick people, contagious or not. "I must go to them," is the immediate reaction of heroines in Victorian novels. Today people are running away or hiding away from people whom they merely suspect might maybe be sick but who have no symptoms like coughing that would spread it any distance. If a person isn't coughing or sneezing they are not projecting germs into the air around them. Oh the lack of humanity!
The drastic global, national, state, local, and even individual responses to the China virus, especially in how to deal with this thing nobody knows very much about because of skewed and missing data, are astonishingly destructive and unprecedented. From the dust Herodotus reminds us, "Do not try to cure one evil by another." From today's world, see this great article by a Standford professor.
We were reminded of this wonderful passage from C. S. Lewis in an essay, "On Living in an Atomic Age."
Tennis anyone?
A little perspective is always a valuable thing.
One thing that troubles us at SoL during this crisis is that we hardly hear any references at all to similar past crises and what was learned from them. Apparently history, even recent history, is very unpopular these days. Truth is, viruses and diseases (even plagues) are not something new, even highly contagious and deadly ones. Human history is full of them. Daily life is full of them. We find it strange that we have not heard that this is the worse virus that has ever existed, and yet we are supposed to be acting as if it is. We were jauntily walking toward the park the other day and a family with young children we passed as they were leaving the park acted like we were poisonous in every way. They not only gave us an exaggeratedly wide berth but quickly called their children close and looked at us with frightened suspicion. And no, it didn't look at all like they were concerned about us senior citizens. We called out a cheerful hello that got no response.
Here's the thing. Well people used to rush to help sick people, contagious or not. "I must go to them," is the immediate reaction of heroines in Victorian novels. Today people are running away or hiding away from people whom they merely suspect might maybe be sick but who have no symptoms like coughing that would spread it any distance. If a person isn't coughing or sneezing they are not projecting germs into the air around them. Oh the lack of humanity!
The drastic global, national, state, local, and even individual responses to the China virus, especially in how to deal with this thing nobody knows very much about because of skewed and missing data, are astonishingly destructive and unprecedented. From the dust Herodotus reminds us, "Do not try to cure one evil by another." From today's world, see this great article by a Standford professor.
We were reminded of this wonderful passage from C. S. Lewis in an essay, "On Living in an Atomic Age."
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are
we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would
have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London
almost every year, or as you would have lived in
a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your
throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of
cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an
age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our
situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were
already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and
quite a high percentage of us were going to die
in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our
ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly
ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the
scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature
death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which
death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is
to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an
atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and
human things—praying, working, teaching, reading,
listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to
our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like
frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a
microbe can do that) but they need not dominate
our minds.
Tennis anyone?
Monday, March 23, 2020
Who NYC's COVID-19 Sex Guidelines are For
We heard about a very disturbing public document on the Michael Knowles Show. The mayor of New York City and the New York City Health Department have issued this document entitled "Sex and Coronavirus Disease 2019." We will try to soften it down for you. but as Knowles said, be warned.
It talks about how to "enjoy sex" during a quarantine. Well, we are pretty sure decent people don't need any sort of special guidelines about that. In fact, nothing sexual in this document is applicable to anybody but promiscuous perverts, that is, people with no boundaries for their sexual behaviors. But apparently the mayor of NYC and his health dept. think sex addicts do need guidelines, and apparently he thinks everyone in his town is a pervert, because this document is addressed to "all New Yorkers." It kind of makes you think whoever wrote this and sent it out must be perverts themselves, which is becoming more and more obvious in the news.
"Have sex with people close to you." That is one of the bolded headings on this document. Sounds like an order. And like you are supposed to have sex with people plural, meaning more than one person. Sounds like an orgy! New Yorkers are told that "having close contact---including sex---with only a small circle of people helps prevent the spreading" of the virus. Small circle of people "you live with?" Do they mean a family? Aren't only mom and dad supposed to be having sexual relations? This document acts like there is no such thing as family or husband and wife or children. Those terms are completely absent from this document, which is about sex. And yet the heading is about finding safe partners, plural, with "someone you live with" in "your household." They don't limit the having of sex to your spouse or even your one adult partner. Making no such distinction should be troubling to all decent people in a world where incest and domestic child abuse and child sex slavery and sexual promiscuity and sexually transmitted diseases and the like are huge problems which cause huge problems. It shouldn't be taken for granted that of course this document excludes children and minors. The omission should be startlingly revealing. It means there are no boundaries for sex.
Even so, apparently everybody in NYC needs to be told to keep their sexual behaviors within the walls of their home, with whoever lives there, and stop having sex with complete strangers!
Does this sound crazy to you too? Doesn't it sound more like what animals do than civilized humans?
"If you do have sex with others [outside your household], have as few partners as possible."As possible? As if having sex is not under a person's control? As if there is no such thing as a choice in the matter? As if sex is like eating food or you will die? News flash. People can live healthy lives without any sex at all.
There's more. It talks about how you are your own best sex partner (doesn't the word partner mean there are two people involved?), to consider (consider?) taking a break from sex work or finding sex partners online (read: total strangers). Instead, do more video dating, chat rooms, porn, and sexting. In other words, we encourage you to have more virtual sex with perfect strangers. But don't forget to wash the keyboard and touch screen,---because somebody else in the household is using it for that too! Gross! It's all so gross! It suggests that all New Yorkers might want to "take care" about (but still go ahead with) anal contacts of all sorts. And of course no kissing but go ahead and wash hands and keep your sex toys soap-and-water clean. So now we know all New Yorkers have sex toys. Yay.
And above all, says the mayor, make sure you have effective forms of birth control. Make sure you don't get pregnant! (Apparently, that would be the worst thing that could happen, even though it is the main reason sex exists and the best thing that comes of it.)
So let's summarize. What we have here for all the people of this big city is a set of guidelines for the promiscuous/perverted only. NONE of these guidelines apply to healthy, decent, straight, moral, faithful people who are staying at home with their exclusive spouse. NONE. (The document even states, "COVID-19 has been found in feces but not in semen or vaginal fluid.) This document exposes the fact that there are many more sex addicts out there than people think, that people in authority, at least in NYC, who run schools and libraries and government and health organizations, now believe there are zero sex limits.
Please note that this public document comes from the elected leader of the most populated city in America. This is mainstream. This is the country we now live in. This is how the most culturally influential people in the entire nation think generally about sex: that there should be no limits and that NYC sets set no limits. All Americans need to realize this.
Everyone should also notice how even during the 1980s AIDS epidemic (which for all intents and purposes is still going on) gays were never ordered or told or even advised to isolate themselves sexually.As in hold off on sexual partners until we get this under control. NEVER. Instead, everybody was told, even school children, that everybody could get this horrific new sexually--- transmitted disease spread through sodomy and drug needles---through spit and on toilet seats.
And nobody has ever been held to account for this false propaganda.
And yet we are all quarantined today because of a virus whose deadliness rate is falling rapidly as more reliable data is finally known, and which we can catch through no fault or deliberate act of our own. Sex is a deliberate act. Kind of makes a person think what kind of a world we are now living in.
Can there be a more obvious admission that all the LGBT propaganda about sexual inclinations and behaviors being an identity or a minority group is a complete hoax? Every sexual revolution-based movement today---homosex, pornography, abortion, sex work, sex slavery, man-boy love, drag queens, gay marriage, trandgenderism, lowering age of consent, reduction of penalties for child sex abuse, etc.---is about unlimited, meaningless, sterile, promiscuous, dangerous sex. Period.
Sex is serious. If it is not used properly someone gets hurt.
If you are all about accepting and/or celebrating your darling grandson's gayness or your precious brother's transgendering, think again. Think what is at the core of it all.
Isn't it interesting how this bizarre time in which we are living brings out people's true colors? That pretty rainbow flag just got dragged through the mud.
It talks about how to "enjoy sex" during a quarantine. Well, we are pretty sure decent people don't need any sort of special guidelines about that. In fact, nothing sexual in this document is applicable to anybody but promiscuous perverts, that is, people with no boundaries for their sexual behaviors. But apparently the mayor of NYC and his health dept. think sex addicts do need guidelines, and apparently he thinks everyone in his town is a pervert, because this document is addressed to "all New Yorkers." It kind of makes you think whoever wrote this and sent it out must be perverts themselves, which is becoming more and more obvious in the news.
"Have sex with people close to you." That is one of the bolded headings on this document. Sounds like an order. And like you are supposed to have sex with people plural, meaning more than one person. Sounds like an orgy! New Yorkers are told that "having close contact---including sex---with only a small circle of people helps prevent the spreading" of the virus. Small circle of people "you live with?" Do they mean a family? Aren't only mom and dad supposed to be having sexual relations? This document acts like there is no such thing as family or husband and wife or children. Those terms are completely absent from this document, which is about sex. And yet the heading is about finding safe partners, plural, with "someone you live with" in "your household." They don't limit the having of sex to your spouse or even your one adult partner. Making no such distinction should be troubling to all decent people in a world where incest and domestic child abuse and child sex slavery and sexual promiscuity and sexually transmitted diseases and the like are huge problems which cause huge problems. It shouldn't be taken for granted that of course this document excludes children and minors. The omission should be startlingly revealing. It means there are no boundaries for sex.
Even so, apparently everybody in NYC needs to be told to keep their sexual behaviors within the walls of their home, with whoever lives there, and stop having sex with complete strangers!
Does this sound crazy to you too? Doesn't it sound more like what animals do than civilized humans?
"If you do have sex with others [outside your household], have as few partners as possible."As possible? As if having sex is not under a person's control? As if there is no such thing as a choice in the matter? As if sex is like eating food or you will die? News flash. People can live healthy lives without any sex at all.
There's more. It talks about how you are your own best sex partner (doesn't the word partner mean there are two people involved?), to consider (consider?) taking a break from sex work or finding sex partners online (read: total strangers). Instead, do more video dating, chat rooms, porn, and sexting. In other words, we encourage you to have more virtual sex with perfect strangers. But don't forget to wash the keyboard and touch screen,---because somebody else in the household is using it for that too! Gross! It's all so gross! It suggests that all New Yorkers might want to "take care" about (but still go ahead with) anal contacts of all sorts. And of course no kissing but go ahead and wash hands and keep your sex toys soap-and-water clean. So now we know all New Yorkers have sex toys. Yay.
And above all, says the mayor, make sure you have effective forms of birth control. Make sure you don't get pregnant! (Apparently, that would be the worst thing that could happen, even though it is the main reason sex exists and the best thing that comes of it.)
So let's summarize. What we have here for all the people of this big city is a set of guidelines for the promiscuous/perverted only. NONE of these guidelines apply to healthy, decent, straight, moral, faithful people who are staying at home with their exclusive spouse. NONE. (The document even states, "COVID-19 has been found in feces but not in semen or vaginal fluid.) This document exposes the fact that there are many more sex addicts out there than people think, that people in authority, at least in NYC, who run schools and libraries and government and health organizations, now believe there are zero sex limits.
Please note that this public document comes from the elected leader of the most populated city in America. This is mainstream. This is the country we now live in. This is how the most culturally influential people in the entire nation think generally about sex: that there should be no limits and that NYC sets set no limits. All Americans need to realize this.
Everyone should also notice how even during the 1980s AIDS epidemic (which for all intents and purposes is still going on) gays were never ordered or told or even advised to isolate themselves sexually.As in hold off on sexual partners until we get this under control. NEVER. Instead, everybody was told, even school children, that everybody could get this horrific new sexually--- transmitted disease spread through sodomy and drug needles---through spit and on toilet seats.
And nobody has ever been held to account for this false propaganda.
And yet we are all quarantined today because of a virus whose deadliness rate is falling rapidly as more reliable data is finally known, and which we can catch through no fault or deliberate act of our own. Sex is a deliberate act. Kind of makes a person think what kind of a world we are now living in.
Can there be a more obvious admission that all the LGBT propaganda about sexual inclinations and behaviors being an identity or a minority group is a complete hoax? Every sexual revolution-based movement today---homosex, pornography, abortion, sex work, sex slavery, man-boy love, drag queens, gay marriage, trandgenderism, lowering age of consent, reduction of penalties for child sex abuse, etc.---is about unlimited, meaningless, sterile, promiscuous, dangerous sex. Period.
Sex is serious. If it is not used properly someone gets hurt.
If you are all about accepting and/or celebrating your darling grandson's gayness or your precious brother's transgendering, think again. Think what is at the core of it all.
Isn't it interesting how this bizarre time in which we are living brings out people's true colors? That pretty rainbow flag just got dragged through the mud.
Sunday, March 22, 2020
Mormons Primed for Polygamy
We were hesitating to publish this. But since we are all hunkered down for this virus, people need things to read and that is one of our freedoms we still have! So here we go.
History is repeating itself. Polygamy is becoming mainstreamed--right here in Utah first.
Recently a Utah legislature committee unanimously voted to decriminalize the practice of polygamy. The latest step in the sexual liberation juggernaut is moving on backed by what was once the most conservative state legislature in the nation.
We know there is a great deal of denial out there but for what it's worth here are a dozen reasons the Mormon church would reinstate its doctrinal practice of polygamy.
1. The impediment that stopped Mormon polygamy is rapidly disappearing.
Polygamy should obviously be allowed based on that fact that same-sex marriage has been legal for years.The LDS church has been softening toward homosexuality almost parallel to the world's timeline. Brigham Young University just changed its honor code to allow public homosexual behavior (opposite to 10 years ago when a student was expelled for such). Many denied that the mainstreaming of homosex would inevitably lead to legalizing polygamy. But homosexuality is historically much more heinous than polygamy; it's always fake, inordinately risky sex, whereas polygamous opposite sex relationships can involve biologically normal, harmless sexual intercourse. And if it's just about consent and love, then, like homosex, it must be allowed. (By the way, homosexuality is rarely monogamous.) Legalization will do away with the reason for the 1890 Mormon manifesto ordering the cessation of the practice of polygamy, which reason was that it was pronounced illegal by the U.S. federal government and the church was threatened with incarceration of leaders and loss of property. The church still believed in polygamy and practiced it secretly for another several decades, or more as far as we know.
2. The Mormon church has never denounced polygamy as a true doctrine to this day.
The truth is, most aspects of the church are founded in polygamy, although these sordid events have been habitually mischaracterized and hidden from ordinary church members. A man having more than one wife being the only way to the highest kingdom of heavenly glory is still printed in the LDS standard words of scripture, D&C 132. The first seven presidents of the church were polygamists, having had more than one living wife at a time, the last of these presidents dying in 1945. In fact, if you give it some thought, you will realize that the church's most prevalent practices are still based on the principle of women being subordinate to men and of limitlessly less value, which is very similar to Muslim beliefs and practices. (In his day Joseph Smith was actually dubbed the Mormon Mohammad.) One excuse Brigham Young gave for Mormon polygamy was so middle-eastern polygamist converts to the Mormon church would feel at home! No, we are not making this up. The church's particular male priesthood authority, scriptures, temples, and special undergarment wearing were all historically used to reveal, instigate, promote, and elevate the practice of polygamy. Even visiting teaching in Brigham Young's time was instituted to bring all the women around to accepting polygamy. Again, Mormon men being commanded to take more than one wife in order to "live up to their privileges" was only discontinued, with great difficulty, because the U.S. Supreme Court pronounced it illegal.
3. Some men in the church still practice polygamy in a surreptitious way. In other words, the leaders hold the principle in high regard; they believe in it.
Living men can be officially eternally sealed to more than one wife if previous wife/wives are deceased. It is noted that high ranking men in the modern church have taken as multiple wives only women who have never been married/sealed to another man (neither widowed or divorced/virgins). This is more evidence that polygamy remains doctrinal in the LDS church. (Funny, Joseph Smith didn't seem to care about that. He actually took other living men's wives for his own!)
4. Polygamy here and now could exist secretly within the LDS church, just waiting to be spread more widely.
There is a legacy of secrecy in this practice. It was historically carried on in secret while being vehemently publicly denied. It wasn't until Brigham Young led the Mormons into the territories that it became an open practice in 1852. Poor Emma Smith did not even know that her best friends and counselors in the Relief Society (an organization of women she hoped to use to dispel the rumors of her husband's extramarital sexual exploits) and many young women she took into her house over the years were seduced by and sleeping with ("married to") her husband, the prophet. She eventually found out a great deal but probably never knew that full extent of his sexual dalliances. This principle of secrecy has never really changed. Members are just now finding out about Joseph Smith's many, many wives and the true history of polygamy by reading the church's own relatively recently posted, too-carefully-worded essays (see links below) and materials and books the church has always told them not to read. As mentioned above, some Mormon men today are still tallying up wives, living and dead. It isn't talked about except perhaps with a fond, eyebrow-raising chuckle.
5. Leaders have to know there will not be much trouble reinstating polygamy in the church once it is legalized and mainstreamed, especially if beloved leaders are found to be "successfully" doing it.
This is because they know Mormons are relentlessly indoctrinated day after day, week after week, to follow their leaders blindly no matter what. (In church recently a leader told our local congregation that if we didn't accept all the changes happening in the church we "would be wiped out." Really.) If you think about it, as polygamy becomes culturally acceptable and legal, true Mormons should demand polygamy be reinstated as per their belief in Joseph Smith as a true prophet. It could be that fundamentalists have always been the truest followers of Joseph Smith and are not the only ones pushing for legalization these days.
Members who haven't given it much thought, but who blindly swallow everything the church says and does will go along. A regular Mormon, a grandpa, told us just recently that he would take more wives if the prophet said to. In other words, he is prepared to obey the outrageous, unbiblical command of a human being he doesn't know anything about except what he has been told, above all common sense or decency or the feelings of his wife and children and grandchildren. (No, there are no age restraints for men when it comes to polygamy. Twelve-year-old girls are free game for octogenarians!) Even the Marine Corps are taught not to obey an unlawful order. But it is the dangerous, hurtful Mormon perception not to use the brain God gave you. Just obey. For wxample, we are pretty much told to go without a family vacation or feeding your family or even a family at all (infertility treatments cost a bundle) so you can give your hard-earned pittance to a church that has used its member tithes to amass a stash of over 100 billion dollars, and probably a lot more. Sounds crazy because it is. The parable of the widow's mite is about greedy church leaders taking even a widow's last coin to enrich themselves, if you read it in context. To this day this passage of scripture is falsely and cruelly used as a fundraiser. In a recent article an LDS church spokesman admitted that members are taught to pay tithing in place of groceries if it comes down to that. Then you can apply for church welfare.What? They are actually saying you will get more blessings by giving your money to a very, very rich church than by fulfilling your primary responsibility to feed your children. They would rather you were dependent on the church than on yourself. Isn't it chilling?
Back to polygamy, only those who have studied material the church tells you to stay away from and thought the issue out will resist its reinstatement, which is sad because they will be mourning their beloved church. For the rest it's going to be even more sad, especially for women and children. In polygamy, as seen in its true history, it is women and children who suffer most. Also, young men. Modern polygamous communities have been known to expel young men (their own sons!) from among them so the older men can seduce more young women without competition. Some say that women can be convinced into polygamy because they get help with the household and child care. (Usually polygamous wives today also work, providing financially for the family as well.) Maybe they are sometimes quite relieved to pawn off their immature, self-centered, oversexed, power-crazed husband on someone else. But these so-called advantages are pathetic and degrading to women and do not outweigh the terrible neglect, losses, and abuses of the mindset and lifestyle. It's so sad that people don't know or care what a real and right marriage is supposed to look and feel like.These are the people who will accept polygamy without a thought.
6.Generally speaking, men really like sex for its own sake.
Men have all that testosterone, which makes procreation a sure thing. Women like sex too, but are also very interested in things like sharing feelings and being appreciated as a whole person. This is why George Gilder said that proper marriage civilizes men. Alas, men who have never denounced the church's polygamous foundations are totally in charge of the Mormon church. Polygamy exalts men and degrades women, similar to Islam, but it may be worse in at least one aspect. I am thinking about the underwear Mormon women are compelled to wear along with all their other underwear. But I won't get into that here.
Because of the unlimited sex aspect, men are the ones who can be most easily convinced into polygamy. Because marriage is the only human relationship that is traditionally supposed to involve sex, polygamy is a convenient way around monogamy. Mormon polygamy involves a man having sexual relationships with an unlimited number of women. We have never heard anything to the contrary, no limit on the number of wives for any reason. Many Mormon marriages seem to consist of an overbearing, perhaps passive-aggressive husband, and a subservient, mealy-mouthed wife, attitudes historically modeled by the church which persist today. All of these facts and attitudes help to program Mormons for the reestablishment of its historical and doctrinal practice of polygamy.
7. As Brigham Young calculated in his enthusiastic support for women's suffrage, more wives under the thumb of one husband means more votes, that is, political power. Yes, that is why he was all for it. It is the same today. Mormons love being seen and being raised in the public eye as a powerful group.
8.The Mormon church has the power to bring back polygamy in a big way.
The church is sitting on over 100 billion dollars, as has been recently exposed and admitted. That much power and money can control anyone and anything.We don't see it being used to end child sex slavery or abortion or online pornography available to children or any of the horrific abuses of modern times. For all we tithe payers know, the completely nontransparent church could be using our money to lobby for polygamy and who knows what else. So far, Utah is the first state to have a pro-polygamy bill pass through committee and be unanimously voted on by the state senate, the first step toward legalization. For your information, we at SoL have sat in meetings in the Utah capitol building in which veteran, conservative, family-values lobbyists have walked in the room with one standard, been told the LDS church's new stance on some issue, and walked out of that same room with their deeply-held beliefs abandoned. Here comes polygamy!
9. LDS women have always been treated as of lesser importance than men.
For all its protesting, damage control, flattery, and token compromises, the men-run church treats women as second class. Polygamy by its very nature makes any number of women never equal to just one man. Harriet Beecher Stowe called polygamy and slavery the twin barbarisms. Polygamy is an extreme form of exploitation and abuse of women. By the way, it has been noted that the main reason Emma Smith denied to her dying day that her husband instituted and practiced polygamy in God's name may have been because she was desperate that her sons never follow after their father in such an abominable thing.
10. The LDS church has in the last decade quietly published online essays about its history in polygamy, it seems for damage control, because of all the previously hard to find information so readily available now on the internet. (Read the essays here, here, here, and here.) These essays attempt to explain and excuse the polygamic practices of the early church. But for many people who read them the essays are so obviously cunningly and desperately worded to protect the church that they backfire horribly. Joseph had sex with a girl "several months before her 15th birthday"? Then, hello, she was 14. Too bad most members refuse to even look the essays up--perhaps they are afraid. Most of the really bad stuff, like Joseph Smith actually taking up to 40 women to wife in the space of 3 years is relegated to footnotes you have to click on to read. (For example, the essay on plural marriage in Nauvoo reads "The exact number of women to whom he was sealed in his lifetime is unknown because the evidence is fragmentary." You have to click on footnote 24 to read "Careful estimates put the number between 30 and 40.")
11. Leaders in this church don't mind lying to members in order to protect the church and enrich themselves and keep the church a going concern.
Leaders have actually said on record that some truth isn't helpful. This is the nature of propaganda. It distorts the truth and sanitizes history and pounds these falsehoods into as many koolaid-drinking followers as it can. In doing so it infantilizes grown adults who possess God-given powers of thought and choice. This is not what Christianity is supposed to look like. True Christianity is about the free exercise of each individual's conscience and convictions. This legacy of deceit has been passed down from Joseph Smith, a profligate who covered for his sins by lying about God commanding polygamy, and continues to this day. Nowhere in the scriptures does God command any man to take multiple wives or concubines. In fact, God condemned this practice, but the cultures of the times didn't take Him seriously on that topic. Well-meaning but habitually promiscuous men throughout history have tried to justify their bad behavior in the Bible but the honest ones admitted they never could.
12.The 20th and 21st century LDS church has repeatedly rebranded itself to fit the times, and it appears it will continue to do so.
Most recently for instance, it has stopped condemning abortion, accepted homosexuality in all but a few technicalities, and is in support of illegal immigration. It apparently has no qualms about completely ignoring or flipping on or spinning crucial issues. Many have noticed radical changes, omissions, and excuses in the last ten years. Certainly polygamy, with all its historical acceptance in the church could not be more radical than the church flipping on the issue of homosexuality?And if you think the church is still standing strong against same-sex marriage, note that it is always careful to include wording that passes the buck, i.e. that local leaders are to deal with these relationships--remember it's legal--on a case by case basis. In other words, the church is officially against it but we let our local leaders make the ultimate call, that is, whether or not to embrace it into their congregations. How's that for having your cake and eating it? How's that for double speak?
So there you have 12 possible reasons the church would happily reinstate the awful practice of polygamy. It all comes down to certain men imagining some great superiority they hold over women. You'd think mankind would have learned how harmful that idea is by now. But no. Some things never change.
Funny how the LDS church didn't get out of the BSA when it insanely welcomed openly homosexual boys, and then leaders. Well, men gotta do what men gotta do--at least that seems to be the basest male mentality. So what made the church finally get out? The church only got out of the BSA ---when? When the BSA decided to let girls in. Girls equal to boys? Hey now, we can't have that! Anyway, the BSA is now bankrupt because of all the lawsuits involving, no surprise here, homosexual molestation allegations. (For the next few years such litigation has been declared no longer inhibited by time constraints).
Polygamy in the LDS church again? The stage is set, always has been. And the unthinking leaders and members are primed.
We sure wish we were wrong.
History is repeating itself. Polygamy is becoming mainstreamed--right here in Utah first.
Recently a Utah legislature committee unanimously voted to decriminalize the practice of polygamy. The latest step in the sexual liberation juggernaut is moving on backed by what was once the most conservative state legislature in the nation.
We know there is a great deal of denial out there but for what it's worth here are a dozen reasons the Mormon church would reinstate its doctrinal practice of polygamy.
1. The impediment that stopped Mormon polygamy is rapidly disappearing.
Polygamy should obviously be allowed based on that fact that same-sex marriage has been legal for years.The LDS church has been softening toward homosexuality almost parallel to the world's timeline. Brigham Young University just changed its honor code to allow public homosexual behavior (opposite to 10 years ago when a student was expelled for such). Many denied that the mainstreaming of homosex would inevitably lead to legalizing polygamy. But homosexuality is historically much more heinous than polygamy; it's always fake, inordinately risky sex, whereas polygamous opposite sex relationships can involve biologically normal, harmless sexual intercourse. And if it's just about consent and love, then, like homosex, it must be allowed. (By the way, homosexuality is rarely monogamous.) Legalization will do away with the reason for the 1890 Mormon manifesto ordering the cessation of the practice of polygamy, which reason was that it was pronounced illegal by the U.S. federal government and the church was threatened with incarceration of leaders and loss of property. The church still believed in polygamy and practiced it secretly for another several decades, or more as far as we know.
2. The Mormon church has never denounced polygamy as a true doctrine to this day.
The truth is, most aspects of the church are founded in polygamy, although these sordid events have been habitually mischaracterized and hidden from ordinary church members. A man having more than one wife being the only way to the highest kingdom of heavenly glory is still printed in the LDS standard words of scripture, D&C 132. The first seven presidents of the church were polygamists, having had more than one living wife at a time, the last of these presidents dying in 1945. In fact, if you give it some thought, you will realize that the church's most prevalent practices are still based on the principle of women being subordinate to men and of limitlessly less value, which is very similar to Muslim beliefs and practices. (In his day Joseph Smith was actually dubbed the Mormon Mohammad.) One excuse Brigham Young gave for Mormon polygamy was so middle-eastern polygamist converts to the Mormon church would feel at home! No, we are not making this up. The church's particular male priesthood authority, scriptures, temples, and special undergarment wearing were all historically used to reveal, instigate, promote, and elevate the practice of polygamy. Even visiting teaching in Brigham Young's time was instituted to bring all the women around to accepting polygamy. Again, Mormon men being commanded to take more than one wife in order to "live up to their privileges" was only discontinued, with great difficulty, because the U.S. Supreme Court pronounced it illegal.
3. Some men in the church still practice polygamy in a surreptitious way. In other words, the leaders hold the principle in high regard; they believe in it.
Living men can be officially eternally sealed to more than one wife if previous wife/wives are deceased. It is noted that high ranking men in the modern church have taken as multiple wives only women who have never been married/sealed to another man (neither widowed or divorced/virgins). This is more evidence that polygamy remains doctrinal in the LDS church. (Funny, Joseph Smith didn't seem to care about that. He actually took other living men's wives for his own!)
4. Polygamy here and now could exist secretly within the LDS church, just waiting to be spread more widely.
There is a legacy of secrecy in this practice. It was historically carried on in secret while being vehemently publicly denied. It wasn't until Brigham Young led the Mormons into the territories that it became an open practice in 1852. Poor Emma Smith did not even know that her best friends and counselors in the Relief Society (an organization of women she hoped to use to dispel the rumors of her husband's extramarital sexual exploits) and many young women she took into her house over the years were seduced by and sleeping with ("married to") her husband, the prophet. She eventually found out a great deal but probably never knew that full extent of his sexual dalliances. This principle of secrecy has never really changed. Members are just now finding out about Joseph Smith's many, many wives and the true history of polygamy by reading the church's own relatively recently posted, too-carefully-worded essays (see links below) and materials and books the church has always told them not to read. As mentioned above, some Mormon men today are still tallying up wives, living and dead. It isn't talked about except perhaps with a fond, eyebrow-raising chuckle.
5. Leaders have to know there will not be much trouble reinstating polygamy in the church once it is legalized and mainstreamed, especially if beloved leaders are found to be "successfully" doing it.
This is because they know Mormons are relentlessly indoctrinated day after day, week after week, to follow their leaders blindly no matter what. (In church recently a leader told our local congregation that if we didn't accept all the changes happening in the church we "would be wiped out." Really.) If you think about it, as polygamy becomes culturally acceptable and legal, true Mormons should demand polygamy be reinstated as per their belief in Joseph Smith as a true prophet. It could be that fundamentalists have always been the truest followers of Joseph Smith and are not the only ones pushing for legalization these days.
Members who haven't given it much thought, but who blindly swallow everything the church says and does will go along. A regular Mormon, a grandpa, told us just recently that he would take more wives if the prophet said to. In other words, he is prepared to obey the outrageous, unbiblical command of a human being he doesn't know anything about except what he has been told, above all common sense or decency or the feelings of his wife and children and grandchildren. (No, there are no age restraints for men when it comes to polygamy. Twelve-year-old girls are free game for octogenarians!) Even the Marine Corps are taught not to obey an unlawful order. But it is the dangerous, hurtful Mormon perception not to use the brain God gave you. Just obey. For wxample, we are pretty much told to go without a family vacation or feeding your family or even a family at all (infertility treatments cost a bundle) so you can give your hard-earned pittance to a church that has used its member tithes to amass a stash of over 100 billion dollars, and probably a lot more. Sounds crazy because it is. The parable of the widow's mite is about greedy church leaders taking even a widow's last coin to enrich themselves, if you read it in context. To this day this passage of scripture is falsely and cruelly used as a fundraiser. In a recent article an LDS church spokesman admitted that members are taught to pay tithing in place of groceries if it comes down to that. Then you can apply for church welfare.What? They are actually saying you will get more blessings by giving your money to a very, very rich church than by fulfilling your primary responsibility to feed your children. They would rather you were dependent on the church than on yourself. Isn't it chilling?
Back to polygamy, only those who have studied material the church tells you to stay away from and thought the issue out will resist its reinstatement, which is sad because they will be mourning their beloved church. For the rest it's going to be even more sad, especially for women and children. In polygamy, as seen in its true history, it is women and children who suffer most. Also, young men. Modern polygamous communities have been known to expel young men (their own sons!) from among them so the older men can seduce more young women without competition. Some say that women can be convinced into polygamy because they get help with the household and child care. (Usually polygamous wives today also work, providing financially for the family as well.) Maybe they are sometimes quite relieved to pawn off their immature, self-centered, oversexed, power-crazed husband on someone else. But these so-called advantages are pathetic and degrading to women and do not outweigh the terrible neglect, losses, and abuses of the mindset and lifestyle. It's so sad that people don't know or care what a real and right marriage is supposed to look and feel like.These are the people who will accept polygamy without a thought.
6.Generally speaking, men really like sex for its own sake.
Men have all that testosterone, which makes procreation a sure thing. Women like sex too, but are also very interested in things like sharing feelings and being appreciated as a whole person. This is why George Gilder said that proper marriage civilizes men. Alas, men who have never denounced the church's polygamous foundations are totally in charge of the Mormon church. Polygamy exalts men and degrades women, similar to Islam, but it may be worse in at least one aspect. I am thinking about the underwear Mormon women are compelled to wear along with all their other underwear. But I won't get into that here.
Because of the unlimited sex aspect, men are the ones who can be most easily convinced into polygamy. Because marriage is the only human relationship that is traditionally supposed to involve sex, polygamy is a convenient way around monogamy. Mormon polygamy involves a man having sexual relationships with an unlimited number of women. We have never heard anything to the contrary, no limit on the number of wives for any reason. Many Mormon marriages seem to consist of an overbearing, perhaps passive-aggressive husband, and a subservient, mealy-mouthed wife, attitudes historically modeled by the church which persist today. All of these facts and attitudes help to program Mormons for the reestablishment of its historical and doctrinal practice of polygamy.
7. As Brigham Young calculated in his enthusiastic support for women's suffrage, more wives under the thumb of one husband means more votes, that is, political power. Yes, that is why he was all for it. It is the same today. Mormons love being seen and being raised in the public eye as a powerful group.
8.The Mormon church has the power to bring back polygamy in a big way.
The church is sitting on over 100 billion dollars, as has been recently exposed and admitted. That much power and money can control anyone and anything.We don't see it being used to end child sex slavery or abortion or online pornography available to children or any of the horrific abuses of modern times. For all we tithe payers know, the completely nontransparent church could be using our money to lobby for polygamy and who knows what else. So far, Utah is the first state to have a pro-polygamy bill pass through committee and be unanimously voted on by the state senate, the first step toward legalization. For your information, we at SoL have sat in meetings in the Utah capitol building in which veteran, conservative, family-values lobbyists have walked in the room with one standard, been told the LDS church's new stance on some issue, and walked out of that same room with their deeply-held beliefs abandoned. Here comes polygamy!
9. LDS women have always been treated as of lesser importance than men.
For all its protesting, damage control, flattery, and token compromises, the men-run church treats women as second class. Polygamy by its very nature makes any number of women never equal to just one man. Harriet Beecher Stowe called polygamy and slavery the twin barbarisms. Polygamy is an extreme form of exploitation and abuse of women. By the way, it has been noted that the main reason Emma Smith denied to her dying day that her husband instituted and practiced polygamy in God's name may have been because she was desperate that her sons never follow after their father in such an abominable thing.
10. The LDS church has in the last decade quietly published online essays about its history in polygamy, it seems for damage control, because of all the previously hard to find information so readily available now on the internet. (Read the essays here, here, here, and here.) These essays attempt to explain and excuse the polygamic practices of the early church. But for many people who read them the essays are so obviously cunningly and desperately worded to protect the church that they backfire horribly. Joseph had sex with a girl "several months before her 15th birthday"? Then, hello, she was 14. Too bad most members refuse to even look the essays up--perhaps they are afraid. Most of the really bad stuff, like Joseph Smith actually taking up to 40 women to wife in the space of 3 years is relegated to footnotes you have to click on to read. (For example, the essay on plural marriage in Nauvoo reads "The exact number of women to whom he was sealed in his lifetime is unknown because the evidence is fragmentary." You have to click on footnote 24 to read "Careful estimates put the number between 30 and 40.")
11. Leaders in this church don't mind lying to members in order to protect the church and enrich themselves and keep the church a going concern.
Leaders have actually said on record that some truth isn't helpful. This is the nature of propaganda. It distorts the truth and sanitizes history and pounds these falsehoods into as many koolaid-drinking followers as it can. In doing so it infantilizes grown adults who possess God-given powers of thought and choice. This is not what Christianity is supposed to look like. True Christianity is about the free exercise of each individual's conscience and convictions. This legacy of deceit has been passed down from Joseph Smith, a profligate who covered for his sins by lying about God commanding polygamy, and continues to this day. Nowhere in the scriptures does God command any man to take multiple wives or concubines. In fact, God condemned this practice, but the cultures of the times didn't take Him seriously on that topic. Well-meaning but habitually promiscuous men throughout history have tried to justify their bad behavior in the Bible but the honest ones admitted they never could.
12.The 20th and 21st century LDS church has repeatedly rebranded itself to fit the times, and it appears it will continue to do so.
Most recently for instance, it has stopped condemning abortion, accepted homosexuality in all but a few technicalities, and is in support of illegal immigration. It apparently has no qualms about completely ignoring or flipping on or spinning crucial issues. Many have noticed radical changes, omissions, and excuses in the last ten years. Certainly polygamy, with all its historical acceptance in the church could not be more radical than the church flipping on the issue of homosexuality?And if you think the church is still standing strong against same-sex marriage, note that it is always careful to include wording that passes the buck, i.e. that local leaders are to deal with these relationships--remember it's legal--on a case by case basis. In other words, the church is officially against it but we let our local leaders make the ultimate call, that is, whether or not to embrace it into their congregations. How's that for having your cake and eating it? How's that for double speak?
So there you have 12 possible reasons the church would happily reinstate the awful practice of polygamy. It all comes down to certain men imagining some great superiority they hold over women. You'd think mankind would have learned how harmful that idea is by now. But no. Some things never change.
Funny how the LDS church didn't get out of the BSA when it insanely welcomed openly homosexual boys, and then leaders. Well, men gotta do what men gotta do--at least that seems to be the basest male mentality. So what made the church finally get out? The church only got out of the BSA ---when? When the BSA decided to let girls in. Girls equal to boys? Hey now, we can't have that! Anyway, the BSA is now bankrupt because of all the lawsuits involving, no surprise here, homosexual molestation allegations. (For the next few years such litigation has been declared no longer inhibited by time constraints).
Polygamy in the LDS church again? The stage is set, always has been. And the unthinking leaders and members are primed.
We sure wish we were wrong.
Open Letter to Pro-Gay Friends
Dear Friends,
I enjoyed our visit yesterday. But perhaps I need to remind you that we have a son who got caught up in same-sex porn and homosexuality and chose to get some help and repent, who has been living a normal life for 20 years now. As such, we have a different view, one that is not popular, in or out of the church. I am sorry I didn’t mention this during our talk. We have so few opportunities to share our view.
You talked about unconditional love. We always loved our son–enough to support him in the help he eventually desired, which help is now legally banned for minors in our state and others, which ban was supported by the LDS church. So while one of the main reasons you have left the church is because you perceive it as being anti-gay, one of our big troubles with the church is its continual softening toward homosexualism, a thing which we know to be harmful in many ways, which hurt our teenage son (he was initiated by porn, chat rooms, and older men) and our family. We have experienced none of the unconditional love you talked about, either from the world or the church when it comes to our unpopular world view and real life experience. We have been met only with censorship, shunning, and hatred, even death threats.
We currently have family members, 2 nephews and a niece, who are involved or have experimented with same-sex sexual ideas, feelings, and behaviors. This doesn’t mean we don’t love them, neither does it mean we give up our deeply-held values and our very real knowledge of what this dangerous lifestyle really is. We don’t preach at them, but they most certainly know where we stand.
If you are interested, we have a web site, blog, and have produced books for all ages showing a side of this issue that until relatively recently was generally shared worldwide, most probably even by you. Now, because of the very successful and systematic sexual revolution that began in the 1960s, time-honored, healthy family values are now vilified by the world and not even allowed in churches, including the LDS church. Surely you’ve seen the church soften over the last 10 years, even with its incomprehensible flip-flops. The church is leaving this issue up to local leaders and all forms of homosexualism are being preached from local pulpits and modeled in wards and stakes. We have heard there is soon to be an openly lesbian general authority. The narrative is that Mormon gays are not sexual, which is nonsense.
Just letting you know that not all people who become disillusioned with the church believe in the embrace of homosexualism. It does seem to happen often, though, which is troubling. It would seem that people who have come to realize how horrible polygamy was and is would see that homosex is also a form of out-of-bounds sexual ideology and behavior.
Just because you find out the church is bad in many awful ways doesn’t mean God’s order, goodness, truth, and beauty are not timeless. Jesus died for us because we are all sinners. Homosexuality, like all the sexual sins, is an ancient sin, and especially in youth is often a symptom or result of worse problems or abuses or sins. It is strange how people who claim they are so loving do not bother to find out what underlying horrors may well have caused such an unusual preoccupation with sex and sexuality in their loved one. Homosexuality in all its forms is inordinately harmful and sterile and risky and predatory, and shortens lives.
There is no end of human sin and excuses for sin. The embrace of homosexuality has opened the door wide to every other sexual evil. Promiscuity is everywhere. Abortion is a way to escape the consequences for the pleasure of sex. The farce that is polygamy is coming back and with it inevitably comes the societal acceptance of and encouragement of child-adult sex. Why not if it’s all about people being free to feel sexually toward whomever they choose? If we base our reactions to these issues on sentiment and human relations alone we miss out on God’s truths, we deny Christ, and we even abandon plain decency and responsibility.
I could go on and on. But I do want you to know there is lot of gay propaganda out there encouraging youth toward these behaviors. There is also some good information that could really help people who decide they want help, although it may be hard to find because it is now censored and vilified.
Lord bless,
Steve (and Janice)
I enjoyed our visit yesterday. But perhaps I need to remind you that we have a son who got caught up in same-sex porn and homosexuality and chose to get some help and repent, who has been living a normal life for 20 years now. As such, we have a different view, one that is not popular, in or out of the church. I am sorry I didn’t mention this during our talk. We have so few opportunities to share our view.
You talked about unconditional love. We always loved our son–enough to support him in the help he eventually desired, which help is now legally banned for minors in our state and others, which ban was supported by the LDS church. So while one of the main reasons you have left the church is because you perceive it as being anti-gay, one of our big troubles with the church is its continual softening toward homosexualism, a thing which we know to be harmful in many ways, which hurt our teenage son (he was initiated by porn, chat rooms, and older men) and our family. We have experienced none of the unconditional love you talked about, either from the world or the church when it comes to our unpopular world view and real life experience. We have been met only with censorship, shunning, and hatred, even death threats.
We currently have family members, 2 nephews and a niece, who are involved or have experimented with same-sex sexual ideas, feelings, and behaviors. This doesn’t mean we don’t love them, neither does it mean we give up our deeply-held values and our very real knowledge of what this dangerous lifestyle really is. We don’t preach at them, but they most certainly know where we stand.
If you are interested, we have a web site, blog, and have produced books for all ages showing a side of this issue that until relatively recently was generally shared worldwide, most probably even by you. Now, because of the very successful and systematic sexual revolution that began in the 1960s, time-honored, healthy family values are now vilified by the world and not even allowed in churches, including the LDS church. Surely you’ve seen the church soften over the last 10 years, even with its incomprehensible flip-flops. The church is leaving this issue up to local leaders and all forms of homosexualism are being preached from local pulpits and modeled in wards and stakes. We have heard there is soon to be an openly lesbian general authority. The narrative is that Mormon gays are not sexual, which is nonsense.
Just letting you know that not all people who become disillusioned with the church believe in the embrace of homosexualism. It does seem to happen often, though, which is troubling. It would seem that people who have come to realize how horrible polygamy was and is would see that homosex is also a form of out-of-bounds sexual ideology and behavior.
Just because you find out the church is bad in many awful ways doesn’t mean God’s order, goodness, truth, and beauty are not timeless. Jesus died for us because we are all sinners. Homosexuality, like all the sexual sins, is an ancient sin, and especially in youth is often a symptom or result of worse problems or abuses or sins. It is strange how people who claim they are so loving do not bother to find out what underlying horrors may well have caused such an unusual preoccupation with sex and sexuality in their loved one. Homosexuality in all its forms is inordinately harmful and sterile and risky and predatory, and shortens lives.
There is no end of human sin and excuses for sin. The embrace of homosexuality has opened the door wide to every other sexual evil. Promiscuity is everywhere. Abortion is a way to escape the consequences for the pleasure of sex. The farce that is polygamy is coming back and with it inevitably comes the societal acceptance of and encouragement of child-adult sex. Why not if it’s all about people being free to feel sexually toward whomever they choose? If we base our reactions to these issues on sentiment and human relations alone we miss out on God’s truths, we deny Christ, and we even abandon plain decency and responsibility.
I could go on and on. But I do want you to know there is lot of gay propaganda out there encouraging youth toward these behaviors. There is also some good information that could really help people who decide they want help, although it may be hard to find because it is now censored and vilified.
Lord bless,
Steve (and Janice)
Thursday, March 19, 2020
China Virus: A Mom's Open Letter to Her Grown Children
Dear Ones,
How is everyone doing? Does anyone need anything? Food, supplies, home school teacher, cook, housemaid, moral support? Seriously, I really hope no one is hesitating to ask questions or think for themselves or talk to each other. I mean this bizarre and unprecedented thing is happening and it seems we are not talking about it in any serious way. My 88-year-old mom says this feels even weirder than WWII or the polio epidemic which she lived through. She and I are talking about it a lot.
We may feel compelled to isolate ourselves physically to whatever degree, choose for ourselves it is the right thing to do, or be doing it because it is forced on us (such as school and church being discontinued) but we mustn’t give up our God-given faculties and freedoms of reason and critical thinking to communicate and share our thoughts and feelings.We are indeed balancing on a slippery slope. (Note 3/27: For example, in Canada, people are now being fined if patrolling police deem they are not keeping the proscribed social distance from others.) In many instances we are being treated like prisoners or babies or criminals. This may be necessary at times (although I don't think it is now), but it is at times like these that we must exert what freedoms we still possess. In other words, resist tyranny in every way possible. Thoughts, prayers, ideas, principles, words are ways we can resist.
I know you are all busy with kids and everything but this is really important too. Nothing like this has ever happened. It needs to be continually looked at from every angle. We mustn’t be intimidated into not questioning or thinking or talking about it because that is unpopular and people perceive a negative tone or don't like your choice of words. Especially since several of our first amendment freedoms have been suspended indefinitely, we should look at the situation with a wide perspective. Freedoms once given up are very hard to fully regain or fully protect.
There is a great deal of historical human experience when it comes to diseases. For instance, in 2014-16 experts predicted one million Americans would become infected with the deadly ebola. Even with that expert prediction, Americans went about their business. Guess how many got it/died? Eleven, with two deaths. I don’t hear hardly anybody talking about what we can learn from the past. In fact, I don’t hear that much about the actual virus. It’s surrounded by some mystery. Maybe it's different than anything we have ever seen. I just don't know. I am being told it is highly contagious and a very bad virus that people who already have weakened systems are prone to contract and that it will probably do them in, as would any respiratory infection. No one is performing autopsies to know for certain if it was the virus that primarily killed them. You see how the data is not reliable. Anyway, what I hear most about are all the many extreme political and social and economical reactions to it. This is troublesome. Will these extreme precautions result in worse things than if the virus were to generally run its natural course? There are many good questions that need asking.
I only say this because I feel a bit of that forfeiting of freedom happening to me and it’s scary. In a free country there should be no subject that we feel hesitant to discuss. Ideas expressed in words, in whatever tone, are not inherently uncivil. Using words is a key characteristic of a civilized people. Words can be passionate or poorly expressed or even rude or shocking, but speaking and writing are what civilized adults do instead of coming to blows. (This is different than continual verbal and psychological abuse aimed directly at oppressed individuals who can't easily remove themselves from it.) Isn’t online communication actually a lot safer than debating in person? Obviously, yes. By the time, if ever, the debaters meet up, their fires may well have cooled. And they probably won’t ever meet up anyway. Many of the online debating is among strangers who are probably not violent people. Another argument I’ve heard is that you would never say the things you say online to someone in person, and I beg to differ. Look at the English parliament. Look at our various kinds of media interviews and politician debates. Conservatives who speak at universities are shouted down. Protestors and paraders and transvestites carry obscene signs and wear obscene costumes and say every manner of thing in public that are offensive to many. People shout and hurl all sorts of insults and invectives at each other in person. So yes, it happens in person. It always has, but it is becoming violent. This is not because of facebook. It is because of human nature. I think online debating is civilized, and a blessing to ordinary people who feel compelled to call out errors and lies, especially when compared to the lewdness and violence taking place in our streets. And I don’t buy the argument about the bad language used online when our mainstream media and entertainment uses worse language that everybody is getting more and more used to.
Let’s not believe everything we are hearing or reading without a large grain of salt. Right now I don’t agree with some people I usually agree with and find they are changing their minds as things go along. In times like these both the worst and the best comes out in people. There are many, many forces at play, including human nature, making this a very politically charged and fluid situation. Some people take advantage of a crisis or position themselves to impress. There are more potential dangers than meet the eye. I am wondering a lot of things, such as is this going to be the way we deal with every flu that comes along? Should we get used to it? No, we shouldn't.
At a time like this I think we should be talking more, not less, to our family, friends, neighbors, and whoever will listen/read, especially if we are going against the herd. People who dare to speak up online are getting anywhere from threatened, accused, virtue-signaled, or unfriended merely for sharing their differing opinions. At times like these I think the person who goes online to "pick a fight" is actually courageous because they are willing to take flack for raising unpopular questions and sharing differing opinions. Remember, truth is hate to people who hate truth, including people who are unthinkingly going along. "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" (George Orwell). Nobody should be getting shut down. People can listen/talk or not listen/talk to whomever they want. But right now we should toughen up and everyone should be communicating in all possible ways. I like how one pundit put it: we go to the dentist when we have a bad tooth, but we don't give the dentist complete control over our lives forever. I want to keep that in mind.
In many ways, this is a bizarre time. Let’s think and talk freely about it. People may express feelings and ideas we cringe or balk at, but we can take it. We are civilized adults. Ideas, opinions, and words can’t hurt us. We are free to express a contrary idea. We can turn to God and use the brains He gave us, that is, step back, think independently, and discern truth from error and common sense from sentimentality. Let's not be afraid to engage with others in civilized ways, come what may, especially in this time when Godless, distorted, wrong, and alarmist ideas are so easily spread. I am saying this to myself as well as to all of you.
Much love,
Mom
How is everyone doing? Does anyone need anything? Food, supplies, home school teacher, cook, housemaid, moral support? Seriously, I really hope no one is hesitating to ask questions or think for themselves or talk to each other. I mean this bizarre and unprecedented thing is happening and it seems we are not talking about it in any serious way. My 88-year-old mom says this feels even weirder than WWII or the polio epidemic which she lived through. She and I are talking about it a lot.
We may feel compelled to isolate ourselves physically to whatever degree, choose for ourselves it is the right thing to do, or be doing it because it is forced on us (such as school and church being discontinued) but we mustn’t give up our God-given faculties and freedoms of reason and critical thinking to communicate and share our thoughts and feelings.We are indeed balancing on a slippery slope. (Note 3/27: For example, in Canada, people are now being fined if patrolling police deem they are not keeping the proscribed social distance from others.) In many instances we are being treated like prisoners or babies or criminals. This may be necessary at times (although I don't think it is now), but it is at times like these that we must exert what freedoms we still possess. In other words, resist tyranny in every way possible. Thoughts, prayers, ideas, principles, words are ways we can resist.
I know you are all busy with kids and everything but this is really important too. Nothing like this has ever happened. It needs to be continually looked at from every angle. We mustn’t be intimidated into not questioning or thinking or talking about it because that is unpopular and people perceive a negative tone or don't like your choice of words. Especially since several of our first amendment freedoms have been suspended indefinitely, we should look at the situation with a wide perspective. Freedoms once given up are very hard to fully regain or fully protect.
There is a great deal of historical human experience when it comes to diseases. For instance, in 2014-16 experts predicted one million Americans would become infected with the deadly ebola. Even with that expert prediction, Americans went about their business. Guess how many got it/died? Eleven, with two deaths. I don’t hear hardly anybody talking about what we can learn from the past. In fact, I don’t hear that much about the actual virus. It’s surrounded by some mystery. Maybe it's different than anything we have ever seen. I just don't know. I am being told it is highly contagious and a very bad virus that people who already have weakened systems are prone to contract and that it will probably do them in, as would any respiratory infection. No one is performing autopsies to know for certain if it was the virus that primarily killed them. You see how the data is not reliable. Anyway, what I hear most about are all the many extreme political and social and economical reactions to it. This is troublesome. Will these extreme precautions result in worse things than if the virus were to generally run its natural course? There are many good questions that need asking.
I only say this because I feel a bit of that forfeiting of freedom happening to me and it’s scary. In a free country there should be no subject that we feel hesitant to discuss. Ideas expressed in words, in whatever tone, are not inherently uncivil. Using words is a key characteristic of a civilized people. Words can be passionate or poorly expressed or even rude or shocking, but speaking and writing are what civilized adults do instead of coming to blows. (This is different than continual verbal and psychological abuse aimed directly at oppressed individuals who can't easily remove themselves from it.) Isn’t online communication actually a lot safer than debating in person? Obviously, yes. By the time, if ever, the debaters meet up, their fires may well have cooled. And they probably won’t ever meet up anyway. Many of the online debating is among strangers who are probably not violent people. Another argument I’ve heard is that you would never say the things you say online to someone in person, and I beg to differ. Look at the English parliament. Look at our various kinds of media interviews and politician debates. Conservatives who speak at universities are shouted down. Protestors and paraders and transvestites carry obscene signs and wear obscene costumes and say every manner of thing in public that are offensive to many. People shout and hurl all sorts of insults and invectives at each other in person. So yes, it happens in person. It always has, but it is becoming violent. This is not because of facebook. It is because of human nature. I think online debating is civilized, and a blessing to ordinary people who feel compelled to call out errors and lies, especially when compared to the lewdness and violence taking place in our streets. And I don’t buy the argument about the bad language used online when our mainstream media and entertainment uses worse language that everybody is getting more and more used to.
Let’s not believe everything we are hearing or reading without a large grain of salt. Right now I don’t agree with some people I usually agree with and find they are changing their minds as things go along. In times like these both the worst and the best comes out in people. There are many, many forces at play, including human nature, making this a very politically charged and fluid situation. Some people take advantage of a crisis or position themselves to impress. There are more potential dangers than meet the eye. I am wondering a lot of things, such as is this going to be the way we deal with every flu that comes along? Should we get used to it? No, we shouldn't.
At a time like this I think we should be talking more, not less, to our family, friends, neighbors, and whoever will listen/read, especially if we are going against the herd. People who dare to speak up online are getting anywhere from threatened, accused, virtue-signaled, or unfriended merely for sharing their differing opinions. At times like these I think the person who goes online to "pick a fight" is actually courageous because they are willing to take flack for raising unpopular questions and sharing differing opinions. Remember, truth is hate to people who hate truth, including people who are unthinkingly going along. "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" (George Orwell). Nobody should be getting shut down. People can listen/talk or not listen/talk to whomever they want. But right now we should toughen up and everyone should be communicating in all possible ways. I like how one pundit put it: we go to the dentist when we have a bad tooth, but we don't give the dentist complete control over our lives forever. I want to keep that in mind.
In many ways, this is a bizarre time. Let’s think and talk freely about it. People may express feelings and ideas we cringe or balk at, but we can take it. We are civilized adults. Ideas, opinions, and words can’t hurt us. We are free to express a contrary idea. We can turn to God and use the brains He gave us, that is, step back, think independently, and discern truth from error and common sense from sentimentality. Let's not be afraid to engage with others in civilized ways, come what may, especially in this time when Godless, distorted, wrong, and alarmist ideas are so easily spread. I am saying this to myself as well as to all of you.
Much love,
Mom
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