Only the Christian doctrine of creation ultimately stands against the oxymoronic idea of "homosexual marriage". Only an understanding of creation explains why the juxtaposition of "homosexual" and "marriage" is an oxymoron. Like a feline dog, or an infant elder. It's not so much "changing the definition" of marriage" as contradicting it.
Wealthy and weighty forces have brought the public debate to East Africa too. In reply there are responses about tradition. But is tradition ipso facto authoritative? What about the traditional beliefs about the twin curse and the ensuing twin murder? We also hear that 'homosexual marriage' is un-African. When we try to discover what this means, it normally collapses into the tradition response: it's un-African because Africans don't do it.
Consider the ironic situation which may emerge: the West still largely views polygamy as immoral, but sodomy as potentially an expression of love. Africa still largely views sodomy as a sign of extreme depravity, but polygamy as potentially normal.
Who's right? How would we know? How can we calibrate our moral compass?
The doctrine of creation cuts the knot. Marriage is a designed institution, given by a Creator to help fulfil his purposes for creation. He intended the two sexes to complement each other and come together in a complementary union. Bodily union was to express oneness of shared life and purpose. Godly male pursuit and godly female submission were to express realities that have both life-long and cosmic and eschatological significances. Hence homosexual sin is a radical rebellion against the created order and its Maker. And 'homosexual marriage' is a contradiction in terms.
It's right for Christians in public debate to point out the societal consequences and implications of rebellion against this order. It's good to demonstrate that God's way leads to stable societies and homes where others fail. Politics can call for different approaches at different times. But I hope too that we will not forget the foundational fact of God's law and order, and our duty to proclaim this to a world which needs to be convicted of its sin first so that it might then truly experience the grace and forgiveness offered in Jesus Christ. The key fact the West needs to hear from the church is that it is in clear rebellion against its Maker and Judge. We need to know what the ground on which we stand is, and not just point out some of the nice flowers that grow in it.
Showing posts with label Gay rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gay rights. Show all posts
Saturday, 17 March 2012
Monday, 12 March 2012
Saturday, 25 February 2012
Secularism and gay marriage
"Who owns marriage? It’s an interesting question and a pressing one in the debate around equal civil marriage. It is owned by neither the state nor the church, as the former Archbishop Lord Carey rightly said. So it is owned by the people."That settles the question very neatly and easily, of course.
Lynne Featherstone, the Equalities Minister
But it solves it with a blunt assertion of humanistic secularism as if it were a settled fact.
What if humanistic secularism is not a settled fact?
What if marriage is owned by the Creator of marriage?
"it is the Government’s fundamental job to reflect society and to shape the future"As Jim Hacker said, it's my job to find out where my people are going, and lead them there. Does the minister have a sense of irony, or is the Rt. Hon Hacker her role model? Oh dear.
However, if this is her true feeling, then the case is settled: opinion polls keep finding out that people don't want the government to redefine marriage.
I believe that if a couple love each other and want to commit to a life together, they should have the option of a civil marriage, irrespective of whether they are gay or straight.What do the minister's beliefs have to do with it? She's just told us that what matters is the beliefs of the country at large, not her own ones. Is she projecting her beliefs onto everyone else?
This belief also begs the question. If marriage is the God-given lifelong union of one member of the mutually complementary sexes, then the assertion is a nonsense. Marriage is by definition impossible to two members of the same sex.
I want to urge people not to polarise this debate. This is not a battle between gay rights and religious beliefs. This is about the underlying principles of family, society, and personal freedoms.This is political triangulation and double-speak. Those underlying principles are the very ones that we are polarised upon.
Marriage is a right of passage for couples who want to show they are in a committed relationship, for people who want to show they have found love and wish to remain together until death do them part. Why should we deny it to people who happen to be gay or lesbian who wish to show that commitment and share it with their family, friends and everybody else? We should be proud of couples who love each other and a society that recognises their love as equal.This begs the question at several levels. What is marriage? The minister supplies her own definition; which is not the historical understanding. If homosexual activity is perversion, then there is nothing to be proud of. Love can exist between friends of the same gender; but whether it is a true expression of love to jump into bed with them is the matter at issue.
The minister does not engage with the real issues. She simply asserts her set of secularist and humanistic assumptions as if they were indisputable facts. That's not the meaning of "equality", except in Orwell's 1984.
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Individual prejudice?
Here's a story about the last remaining Roman Catholic adoption agency losing an appeal for the right to only place children for adoption with heterosexual couples.
Quote:
Quote:
Deputy chief executive of homosexual activist group Stonewall, Laura Doughty, said: “There should be no question of anyone engaged in delivering any kind of public or publicly funded service being allowed to pick and choose their service users on the basis of individual prejudice. This ruling makes the law in this area crystal clear.”Is this what public discourse has come to? "Individual prejudice?" I am an evangelical Protestant, not a Roman Catholic; I think the Roman Catholic church has erred on fundamental and vital questions of truth. But would it not be honest to at least distinguish between individual preferences and official church teaching stretching back over a millennia, and between prejudice and a considered and reasoned-out opposition? It seems that Stonewall can't...
Wednesday, 15 September 2010
Where is it heading to?
Now that "gay rights" groups like Peter Tatchell's "Stonewall" are part of the establishment, and now that their agenda is driving the agenda for sex education in state schools across the UK, parents have a duty to familiarise themselves with what these people actually believe.
In Peter Tatchell's case, that includes believing that 9-year-olds having sex with adults can be "normal, beneficial and enjoyable by old and young alike", and that it is "courageous" to challenge the "assumption" that such actions are abusive. Read his own words in their full context here.
In Peter Tatchell's case, that includes believing that 9-year-olds having sex with adults can be "normal, beneficial and enjoyable by old and young alike", and that it is "courageous" to challenge the "assumption" that such actions are abusive. Read his own words in their full context here.
Friday, 11 September 2009
History in our own image - Alan Turing
Alan Turing was a mathematician who became famous for his war-time work which helped to crack the "Enigma" codes that enabled coded German messages to be intercepted. He is considered the father of modern computer science. Recently he's been in the press for something else - the British Prime Minister has apologised for Turing's conviction in 1952 for gross indecency; gross indecency which was of the homosexual kind. You can read his apology in the Daily Telegraph, here.
I think this story gives many interesting insights into the contemporary UK. First, a few words about the way in which we look at the past.
To re-make the past in your own image, interpreting according to present (instead of past!) narratives is a universal trait. People with an agenda everywhere like to co-opt figures from the past to their cause. The convenient thing about doing so is that they're normally not around to contradict you. Thus, in the Prime Minister's "apology", above, Alan Turing is a proto-victim of "homophobia", a crime nobody knew existed until recent times. Gordon Brown writes that Turing was, "in effect", prosecuted for being gay. The record book, though, shows that Turing, a man about to turn 40, sodomised a teenager. An act which is morally reprehensible in any circumstances.
This then raises the question for me - who is Gordon Brown apologising on behalf of? Obviously not on behalf of himself, as he was only 1 year old at the time. Is it meant to be on behalf of the British people? Were the British people consulted on whether they agree that prosecuting a man for having sex with another man less than half his age is to be put in the same category as sending people to gas chambers, as Brown does? Or did we somehow license Mr. Brown to decide all such moral questions for us simply by the act of voting his party's MPs into a majority in the 2005 election? Was there something in the manifesto about a mandate to retro-apply trendy-new leftist-morals to previous generations and dish out this kind of thing?
No matter. A petition was presented to the PM asking for him to apologise, and as figures in power tend to do, he was happy to accept it as part of his legitimate domain. So, an apology it is. It's evident, though, that Mr. Brown's agenda in this apology is not really to apologise, but to suck up to the gay rights movement - or at least to persuade them he's on-side enough to keep the attack dogs off. (It's still a sore point for many that there's no homosexual marriage in the UK - the placing of "civil partnerships" for homosexuals only onto the statute books makes it clear that the law still views homosexual partnerships as inferior). Hence, the Prime Minister helpfully litters his arguments with an explanation of the acronym "LGBT" for unaware readers, uncritically re-gurgitates the story of Turing as a victim of "homophobia" (a recently invented word intended to intimidate people with legitimate and considered disagreements, tarring them with the brush of unthinking bigotry instead of giving a respectful hearing to them), flatly asserts that Turing committed suicide because of this "persecution" thus making him into some kind of martyr (though in fact Turing told nobody of any intention to commit suicide, left no note, and there is no actual proof that would stand up in court that he did commit suicide making it only a likelihood and not a certain truth), and then capping it off by including Turing in the same category as the victims of Nazi gas chambers.
Quite flattering to Turing, I'm sure - but a hideous insult to those who were involuntarily executed simply for being of the wrong race. That's the problem with seeking to boost someone's standing by analogy - it can drag down someone else's. If my grandma had been killed for her ancestry, I'd think I'd be quite miffed to have the PM spending his tax-payer funded time on writing about how she was no different to someone who (perhaps) decided to take his own life, which perhaps may have been related to failing to face up to the consequences of a conviction for brutalising a teenager.
It's part of a rhetorical strategy though, and this part of his speech was surely put together by someone with a fine-tuned ear to what the gay rights lobby wants to hear. In the UK today the people who really experience hatred and discrimination in this area are those who reject the position of the gay rights lobby - they're the ones likely to be losing their jobs especially in the public sector, or being pressurised to pipe down, or tarred as bigots ("homophobia!") if they don't. The gay rights people, though, want to forward their agenda by playing the victim card, a very powerful one in Western culture today regardless of how truthful the play is. If you can associate yourselves with those sent off to Belsen - well, then you surely deserve a whole barrel-load of new rights, regardless of the moral perversity of your cause!
Many voters in the UK would be quite interested in hearing Mr. Brown apologise for a few things he might be personally responsible for. But like his predecessor, who famously apologised for the Irish potato famine (!) , Mr. Brown has instead apologised for decisions made by someone else in a different generation. Cheap and easy work, nice if you can get it.
But apologising wasn't really the point - the point is to drag Mr. Turing into the politics of gay rights, tip some hats in the right direction, earn some easy Brownie points (oh, what a pun!) with the opinion-leaders in the secular press, and all this for no personal cost - when you apologise on behalf of the dead there's not even the loss of face of having to admit you were wrong. On that note I'd like to apologise for the decision by Tharg King of Oth for illegally invading the Anglo Saxon kingdoms in 843. Tut tut. Disgusting, and I'm glad you know I've distanced myself from it.
It's safe to say that Mr. Brown, who I should actually call Dr. Brown because he has a PhD in history, won't be winning any awards for historical scholarship for this effort. It's not so much history, as history remade in the contemporary image. I am glad that the verdict of our successors many generations later is not the final judgment; that is still to come, and historical revisionism won't come into play on that day. How much time do we spend trying to tip our hat to the shifting mores of contemporary thought, and how much time thinking about how we'll be seen when the day of reality arrives?
I think this story gives many interesting insights into the contemporary UK. First, a few words about the way in which we look at the past.
To re-make the past in your own image, interpreting according to present (instead of past!) narratives is a universal trait. People with an agenda everywhere like to co-opt figures from the past to their cause. The convenient thing about doing so is that they're normally not around to contradict you. Thus, in the Prime Minister's "apology", above, Alan Turing is a proto-victim of "homophobia", a crime nobody knew existed until recent times. Gordon Brown writes that Turing was, "in effect", prosecuted for being gay. The record book, though, shows that Turing, a man about to turn 40, sodomised a teenager. An act which is morally reprehensible in any circumstances.
This then raises the question for me - who is Gordon Brown apologising on behalf of? Obviously not on behalf of himself, as he was only 1 year old at the time. Is it meant to be on behalf of the British people? Were the British people consulted on whether they agree that prosecuting a man for having sex with another man less than half his age is to be put in the same category as sending people to gas chambers, as Brown does? Or did we somehow license Mr. Brown to decide all such moral questions for us simply by the act of voting his party's MPs into a majority in the 2005 election? Was there something in the manifesto about a mandate to retro-apply trendy-new leftist-morals to previous generations and dish out this kind of thing?
No matter. A petition was presented to the PM asking for him to apologise, and as figures in power tend to do, he was happy to accept it as part of his legitimate domain. So, an apology it is. It's evident, though, that Mr. Brown's agenda in this apology is not really to apologise, but to suck up to the gay rights movement - or at least to persuade them he's on-side enough to keep the attack dogs off. (It's still a sore point for many that there's no homosexual marriage in the UK - the placing of "civil partnerships" for homosexuals only onto the statute books makes it clear that the law still views homosexual partnerships as inferior). Hence, the Prime Minister helpfully litters his arguments with an explanation of the acronym "LGBT" for unaware readers, uncritically re-gurgitates the story of Turing as a victim of "homophobia" (a recently invented word intended to intimidate people with legitimate and considered disagreements, tarring them with the brush of unthinking bigotry instead of giving a respectful hearing to them), flatly asserts that Turing committed suicide because of this "persecution" thus making him into some kind of martyr (though in fact Turing told nobody of any intention to commit suicide, left no note, and there is no actual proof that would stand up in court that he did commit suicide making it only a likelihood and not a certain truth), and then capping it off by including Turing in the same category as the victims of Nazi gas chambers.
Quite flattering to Turing, I'm sure - but a hideous insult to those who were involuntarily executed simply for being of the wrong race. That's the problem with seeking to boost someone's standing by analogy - it can drag down someone else's. If my grandma had been killed for her ancestry, I'd think I'd be quite miffed to have the PM spending his tax-payer funded time on writing about how she was no different to someone who (perhaps) decided to take his own life, which perhaps may have been related to failing to face up to the consequences of a conviction for brutalising a teenager.
It's part of a rhetorical strategy though, and this part of his speech was surely put together by someone with a fine-tuned ear to what the gay rights lobby wants to hear. In the UK today the people who really experience hatred and discrimination in this area are those who reject the position of the gay rights lobby - they're the ones likely to be losing their jobs especially in the public sector, or being pressurised to pipe down, or tarred as bigots ("homophobia!") if they don't. The gay rights people, though, want to forward their agenda by playing the victim card, a very powerful one in Western culture today regardless of how truthful the play is. If you can associate yourselves with those sent off to Belsen - well, then you surely deserve a whole barrel-load of new rights, regardless of the moral perversity of your cause!
Many voters in the UK would be quite interested in hearing Mr. Brown apologise for a few things he might be personally responsible for. But like his predecessor, who famously apologised for the Irish potato famine (!) , Mr. Brown has instead apologised for decisions made by someone else in a different generation. Cheap and easy work, nice if you can get it.
But apologising wasn't really the point - the point is to drag Mr. Turing into the politics of gay rights, tip some hats in the right direction, earn some easy Brownie points (oh, what a pun!) with the opinion-leaders in the secular press, and all this for no personal cost - when you apologise on behalf of the dead there's not even the loss of face of having to admit you were wrong. On that note I'd like to apologise for the decision by Tharg King of Oth for illegally invading the Anglo Saxon kingdoms in 843. Tut tut. Disgusting, and I'm glad you know I've distanced myself from it.
It's safe to say that Mr. Brown, who I should actually call Dr. Brown because he has a PhD in history, won't be winning any awards for historical scholarship for this effort. It's not so much history, as history remade in the contemporary image. I am glad that the verdict of our successors many generations later is not the final judgment; that is still to come, and historical revisionism won't come into play on that day. How much time do we spend trying to tip our hat to the shifting mores of contemporary thought, and how much time thinking about how we'll be seen when the day of reality arrives?
Monday, 1 June 2009
Talking about homosexuality
Ever had this question in a conversation a pro-homosexualist?
What should evangelicals do in the face of this constant pressure to shut up or be unpleasantly abused/smeared/discriminated against? Getting this bit of the response right is very important. We must talk all the more, and all the more clearly. The homosexualist campaign depends vitally upon ensuring that those who disagree keep quiet. It's a fact that the majority, even after so many years of aggressive homosexual propaganda, still believe, as they were wired by creation to do, that to have sex with someone of the same gender is a perverse and revolting act - something against nature, no common crime. That is, and always will be, how most people will think and believe until the final death throes of a society. That's a tipping point that Western civilisation might get to soon, but it's not there yet. For the homosexualists to advance their agenda further towards that end (e.g. compulsary indoctrination of all children and state employees in their malignant teaching) requires that the dissenters are kept quiet. They must become as if they didn't exist - invisible, unspeaking. Then the homosexualists have the stage to themselves and can seem to be the overwhelming opinion of society when they aren't.
Most in society will keep quiet. If they're left in peace, they have no reason to make martyrs of themselves. But Christians are different. We believe in the future - and in a duty to our neighbours in the future (including our children and grand-children). We believe in a final judgment - in which we will have to give an account for our own faithfulness or lack of it. We believe in Christ, who can sustain us through all the miserable insults and petty intimidations of the pro-homosexual lobby. We believe too that those who are determined to take the fast road to eternal damnation can be rescued by the kindness and power of God - if they hear the truth. That of course means the gospel of Christ - but also the law of God so that they might know what the sins that he calls them to repent of are. We believe that telling them the truth is an act of love that can be part of leading them from the miserable trap of seeking fulfilment in perverted sexual pleasure, to the truth of the joy and satisfaction which are in knowing God in Christ - the joy of knowing that the great God is our great God.
Jesus told Christians to be salt and light. But if the salt loses its saltiness, it's useless. A light that is covered is as good as no light at all. Speak, speak clearly and speak now.
Homosexualist: Why are you evangelicals so obsessed about sex? Does your God spend all the time obsessing about what goes on in people's bedrooms?The answer of course is: you started it! Society once had a consensus - man-woman lifelong marriage was part of the created and proper order, binding on everyone. Other sexual activity was wrong, and in the case of homosexuality, definitely depraved. Then came the "sexual revolution", with an agenda to radically change that consensus. The only reason that the homosexual activists want to end the conversation now, is because now they've, through a relentless campaign, succeeded in getting people who agree with them into the key positions in society. And now they'd like to shut the dissenters up. The real conversation went like this:
Homosexualist: Let's talk about sex! Let's talk about sex! You're wrong, and we won't shut up until we've got our way! Let's talk about sex!Actually it's often a bit more menacing than that; there's an "or else" more and more thrown in nowadays. Or else: lose your job because we've implemented a "diversity policy" (diverse enough to embrace everybody except people who don't agree with them!), or if you're in a position of some kind of power be hounded and abused by the media, or if you're a nobody just posting on the Internet be subjected to some kind of unpleasant abuse by e-mail or website, etcetera, etcetera.
.... some years pass ...
Us: Actually, we still object.
Homosexualist: Why are you people so obsessed with sex? Pipe down a bit, for goodness sake!
What should evangelicals do in the face of this constant pressure to shut up or be unpleasantly abused/smeared/discriminated against? Getting this bit of the response right is very important. We must talk all the more, and all the more clearly. The homosexualist campaign depends vitally upon ensuring that those who disagree keep quiet. It's a fact that the majority, even after so many years of aggressive homosexual propaganda, still believe, as they were wired by creation to do, that to have sex with someone of the same gender is a perverse and revolting act - something against nature, no common crime. That is, and always will be, how most people will think and believe until the final death throes of a society. That's a tipping point that Western civilisation might get to soon, but it's not there yet. For the homosexualists to advance their agenda further towards that end (e.g. compulsary indoctrination of all children and state employees in their malignant teaching) requires that the dissenters are kept quiet. They must become as if they didn't exist - invisible, unspeaking. Then the homosexualists have the stage to themselves and can seem to be the overwhelming opinion of society when they aren't.
Most in society will keep quiet. If they're left in peace, they have no reason to make martyrs of themselves. But Christians are different. We believe in the future - and in a duty to our neighbours in the future (including our children and grand-children). We believe in a final judgment - in which we will have to give an account for our own faithfulness or lack of it. We believe in Christ, who can sustain us through all the miserable insults and petty intimidations of the pro-homosexual lobby. We believe too that those who are determined to take the fast road to eternal damnation can be rescued by the kindness and power of God - if they hear the truth. That of course means the gospel of Christ - but also the law of God so that they might know what the sins that he calls them to repent of are. We believe that telling them the truth is an act of love that can be part of leading them from the miserable trap of seeking fulfilment in perverted sexual pleasure, to the truth of the joy and satisfaction which are in knowing God in Christ - the joy of knowing that the great God is our great God.
Jesus told Christians to be salt and light. But if the salt loses its saltiness, it's useless. A light that is covered is as good as no light at all. Speak, speak clearly and speak now.
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
The Pope IS a Catholic...
Here's a report in The Times of an interview of ex-prime minister Tony Blair by the "gay magazine, Attitude". Mr. Blair was rumoured to be a Roman Catholic throughout his period in office, but did not convert until after leaving. (A Catholic prime minister would have been a constitutional problem, as the prime minister is responsible for recommending selections for Church of England bishops. How a hypocritical prime minister is any better in this area is not clear!): http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6055696.ece
Despite making noises about the problems of side-lining "faith" and founding the "Tony Blair Faith Foundation" since leaving office, Mr. Blair was a most aggressively secularist prime minister. (The rhetoric he has used in these post-office "noises" imports the assumptions of secularism even when he thinks he's contradicting it - Christians don't follow a "faith". They follow Jesus Christ, the Son of God - a living person).
To my mind, this interview shows the bizarre and tyrannical contortions of the secular mind. The main thrust that the Times reports on is that:
But I do realise that he is... the Pope. In Roman Catholic teaching that means that he's considered to be the representative of God upon earth, and the ultimate guardian of God's truth. That's not an optional Roman Catholic belief, open to discussion or change. Either you accept this belief, or you reject Roman Catholicism - there's no middle ground. I don't accept it, so I'm not a Roman Catholic. If you are a Roman Catholic, though, then your role is to be taught by the church's teachers, not to teach them. Roman Catholicism is hierarchical. Protestantism holds that every individual believer has the right to search the Bible's teachings for themselves, and that they can be correct in their understanding when a church's official leaders are wrong. Roman Catholicism, though, says the opposite: the hierarchy is God's appointed interpreter, and if your interpretation disagrees with theirs, you're wrong.
A lay member of the church, and especially a very recent convert, such as Tony Blair, speaking off-hand about the ways in which the Pope needs to be re-educated, is the height of secular madness. It shows that Blair's real church is still, as when in office, the church of secularism. On Roman Catholic assumptions, the Pope cannot be wrong on such basic matters as whether man-woman marriage is the only God-ordained context for sexual pleasure or not. If you think he's wrong about that, then really you can't be thinking he's anything that Roman Catholicism has taught about what the Pope is.
Quoth Mr. Blair: "We need an attitude of mind where rethinking and the concept of evolving attitudes becomes part of the discipline with which you approach your religious faith." That's 100% classical secularist arrogance. Note: it's always the person disgreing with some humanist teaching (such as a pro-homosexual position) who is being urged to "rethink" or "evolve" or "be open" or some-such. Mr. Blair, of course, being pro-gay and in-line with humanism, needs to do no such rethinking: rather, his job is to correct the people who haven't yet come in-line. Thus under the guise of open-mindedness and tolerance, you get to dictate your inflexible dogma to... the Pope! Note also the talk about "approach[ing] your religious faith". That's the humanist mindset at work. By the way - in Christianity, we bow humbly before Jesus Christ to be taught by him, through his word. It's not a "faith" which we "approach" to decide how we want to shift and shape it according to contemporary mores.
Continuing: "What people often forget about, for example, Jesus or, indeed the Prophet Muhammad, is that their whole raison d'etre was to change the way that people thought traditionally." Pure secularist arrogance - Mr. Blair merely assumes his humanist position as the correct one, and tells others that they need to change what they think - the dictum of "change" of course doesn't apply to his own thinking. What this piece of secular-speak is about is a Jesus re-made in Tony Blair's image - one whose whole reason for existence was to challenge the "forces of conservatism" and agree with Blair's political ideology. A Jesus re-made in our own image, though, cannot save us from our sins by his death and resurrection - which is he actually came to do. Strictly, speaking of Jesus' "raison d'etre" is blasphemy; actual Christianity holds that Jesus is self-existent; the second person in the Godhead, uncreated, without beginning, existing of himself. The real Biblical Jesus did not come to "change the way that people thought" by taking them away from the Old Testament (which Blair writes off in a very trite way), but to bring them back to it. His own testimony was that he did not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them - and that not a single jot or tittle of them would be taken away until all was accomplished (Matthew 5:17-21). Indeed, to that testimony he added the chilling words that if we teach someone to disobey the least of the commandments given to us there, we will be called the very least in the kingdom of heaven, should we be in it at all. Mr. Blair, though, replaces all this with a nice secularist Jesus who came to persuade us to go with the flow of whatever godless direction society is now flowing in. I've seen quite a lot of newspaper pieces criticising the Pope for being "out of touch" and having a bad PR operation lately. The underlying assumption is that failing to please the secularist press is one of the most unimaginable crimes to commit in the modern world. Well, duh. The Pope's a Catholic. Being out of touch is not an actual crime in his code of Canon Law. Criticising him for not bowing to secularist ideology (popularity! be in touch! agree with the liberal elite!) is not a very penetrating criticism - it's not what the Pope is meant to do.
Here's that write-off of the Old Testament: "When people quote the passages in Leviticus condemning homosexuality, I say to them - if you read the whole of the Old Testament and took everything in that was there in a literal way, as being what God and religion is about, you'd have some pretty tough policies across the whole of the piece." One thing that secularists who try to address the teaching of the Bible can never be accused of, is of being deep or thoughtful. Mr. Blair's point of view is that the Old Testament (and the New, whose strong condemnations of homosexuality aren't mentioned in this piece) is itself fundamentally wrong (and ergo, not revelation from God). To sidestep that with a general comment about (not) taking "everything" in a "literal way", is intellectually foolish. What secularists normally mean by a "literal way" is "some bizarre forced interpretation which I, the great authority, with no Biblical study or interest in the Bible except for cherry-picking it for my own purposes, insist is the 'literal' way". This quote though raises the whole question of authority again. So, please tell us: what other interpretations are there when homosexual activity is called an "abomination"? What does a non-literal interpretation of that mean? Is there actually a route from "abomination" to "good and pleasing to God, equal with marriage"? Note that Mr. Blair does actually concede in this quote that the Old Testament really does condemn homosexuality - he just wants to sidestep the impact of that by telling us not to take too much notice of it.
Actually, if God lays down some "pretty tough policies across the piece" for us to follow, what we ought to do is to follow them. Even if the Pope might be fallible and we might be allowed to disagree with him, I presume that Mr. Blair doesn't presume to re-educate God. If God lays down "tough policies", then the deal is, we get to follow tough policies .He's God, and he made us. The idea that God's role in the universe is to give us a pleasant life, as a kind of super-sized version of the welfare state, is modernist bunk. Again, this is pointing to a conclusion: Mr. Blair's real religion, that of his heart, is secular to the core. God has to be the big Father Christmas in the sky, not a big meanie who is so rotten as to contradict contemporary mores. Mr. Blair passed and sought to pass laws enforcing his pro-gay views on the whole of the country - on pain of being carted off to prison if you didn't obey them. He seemed to believe that the prime minister should have such powers... yet thinks that it's too much if God has similar ones. What's that? That's secular humanism.
Does God intend that all the laws given to the nation of Israel should apply in the same form to all nations today? No. How do I know? Because the Bible says so (Acts 15:10). How do I know that God's disapproval of homosexual activity is not one of those things that was temporary and merely suited to the state of Israel at that particular time and place? Because the Bible says so (Romans 1:24-27, Jude 7, 1 Corinthians 6:9). Later in the piece, Mr. Blair states his disapproval of those who merely quote the Bible as an authority on this subject instead of taking their cue from the modern world. Well, of course. I'm a Christian, so I think that the teaching of Christ and his apostles is the corrective of what's wrong in modern society. Mr. Blair, though, thinks like a secularist, and so thinks that the modern world should correct the teaching of Christ and his apostles. You're either one or the other, and Mr. Blair's making it pretty clear which.
Mr. Blair might not be in any sense an orthodox Catholic. But the Pope is. Criticising him for it passes muster when talking to fellow secularists. Outside of that narrow self-referring and intellectually vacuous circle, it doesn't. Memo to secularists: it's not your conclusions that are the first things we want to disagree with: it's the assumptions you start from. Miss that, and you'll never understand anyone except yourselves.
Despite making noises about the problems of side-lining "faith" and founding the "Tony Blair Faith Foundation" since leaving office, Mr. Blair was a most aggressively secularist prime minister. (The rhetoric he has used in these post-office "noises" imports the assumptions of secularism even when he thinks he's contradicting it - Christians don't follow a "faith". They follow Jesus Christ, the Son of God - a living person).
To my mind, this interview shows the bizarre and tyrannical contortions of the secular mind. The main thrust that the Times reports on is that:
- Mr. Blair thinks that the Pope is wrong on the subject of homosexuality.
- He points to what he sees as the fact that younger generations are right on this subject, and we need to listen to them.
- He thinks that the Pope and others of his mindset should be encouraged to search out other ways of interpreting the Bible, in order to come to a viewpoint more friendly to homosexual behaviour.
But I do realise that he is... the Pope. In Roman Catholic teaching that means that he's considered to be the representative of God upon earth, and the ultimate guardian of God's truth. That's not an optional Roman Catholic belief, open to discussion or change. Either you accept this belief, or you reject Roman Catholicism - there's no middle ground. I don't accept it, so I'm not a Roman Catholic. If you are a Roman Catholic, though, then your role is to be taught by the church's teachers, not to teach them. Roman Catholicism is hierarchical. Protestantism holds that every individual believer has the right to search the Bible's teachings for themselves, and that they can be correct in their understanding when a church's official leaders are wrong. Roman Catholicism, though, says the opposite: the hierarchy is God's appointed interpreter, and if your interpretation disagrees with theirs, you're wrong.
A lay member of the church, and especially a very recent convert, such as Tony Blair, speaking off-hand about the ways in which the Pope needs to be re-educated, is the height of secular madness. It shows that Blair's real church is still, as when in office, the church of secularism. On Roman Catholic assumptions, the Pope cannot be wrong on such basic matters as whether man-woman marriage is the only God-ordained context for sexual pleasure or not. If you think he's wrong about that, then really you can't be thinking he's anything that Roman Catholicism has taught about what the Pope is.
Quoth Mr. Blair: "We need an attitude of mind where rethinking and the concept of evolving attitudes becomes part of the discipline with which you approach your religious faith." That's 100% classical secularist arrogance. Note: it's always the person disgreing with some humanist teaching (such as a pro-homosexual position) who is being urged to "rethink" or "evolve" or "be open" or some-such. Mr. Blair, of course, being pro-gay and in-line with humanism, needs to do no such rethinking: rather, his job is to correct the people who haven't yet come in-line. Thus under the guise of open-mindedness and tolerance, you get to dictate your inflexible dogma to... the Pope! Note also the talk about "approach[ing] your religious faith". That's the humanist mindset at work. By the way - in Christianity, we bow humbly before Jesus Christ to be taught by him, through his word. It's not a "faith" which we "approach" to decide how we want to shift and shape it according to contemporary mores.
Continuing: "What people often forget about, for example, Jesus or, indeed the Prophet Muhammad, is that their whole raison d'etre was to change the way that people thought traditionally." Pure secularist arrogance - Mr. Blair merely assumes his humanist position as the correct one, and tells others that they need to change what they think - the dictum of "change" of course doesn't apply to his own thinking. What this piece of secular-speak is about is a Jesus re-made in Tony Blair's image - one whose whole reason for existence was to challenge the "forces of conservatism" and agree with Blair's political ideology. A Jesus re-made in our own image, though, cannot save us from our sins by his death and resurrection - which is he actually came to do. Strictly, speaking of Jesus' "raison d'etre" is blasphemy; actual Christianity holds that Jesus is self-existent; the second person in the Godhead, uncreated, without beginning, existing of himself. The real Biblical Jesus did not come to "change the way that people thought" by taking them away from the Old Testament (which Blair writes off in a very trite way), but to bring them back to it. His own testimony was that he did not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them - and that not a single jot or tittle of them would be taken away until all was accomplished (Matthew 5:17-21). Indeed, to that testimony he added the chilling words that if we teach someone to disobey the least of the commandments given to us there, we will be called the very least in the kingdom of heaven, should we be in it at all. Mr. Blair, though, replaces all this with a nice secularist Jesus who came to persuade us to go with the flow of whatever godless direction society is now flowing in. I've seen quite a lot of newspaper pieces criticising the Pope for being "out of touch" and having a bad PR operation lately. The underlying assumption is that failing to please the secularist press is one of the most unimaginable crimes to commit in the modern world. Well, duh. The Pope's a Catholic. Being out of touch is not an actual crime in his code of Canon Law. Criticising him for not bowing to secularist ideology (popularity! be in touch! agree with the liberal elite!) is not a very penetrating criticism - it's not what the Pope is meant to do.
Here's that write-off of the Old Testament: "When people quote the passages in Leviticus condemning homosexuality, I say to them - if you read the whole of the Old Testament and took everything in that was there in a literal way, as being what God and religion is about, you'd have some pretty tough policies across the whole of the piece." One thing that secularists who try to address the teaching of the Bible can never be accused of, is of being deep or thoughtful. Mr. Blair's point of view is that the Old Testament (and the New, whose strong condemnations of homosexuality aren't mentioned in this piece) is itself fundamentally wrong (and ergo, not revelation from God). To sidestep that with a general comment about (not) taking "everything" in a "literal way", is intellectually foolish. What secularists normally mean by a "literal way" is "some bizarre forced interpretation which I, the great authority, with no Biblical study or interest in the Bible except for cherry-picking it for my own purposes, insist is the 'literal' way". This quote though raises the whole question of authority again. So, please tell us: what other interpretations are there when homosexual activity is called an "abomination"? What does a non-literal interpretation of that mean? Is there actually a route from "abomination" to "good and pleasing to God, equal with marriage"? Note that Mr. Blair does actually concede in this quote that the Old Testament really does condemn homosexuality - he just wants to sidestep the impact of that by telling us not to take too much notice of it.
Actually, if God lays down some "pretty tough policies across the piece" for us to follow, what we ought to do is to follow them. Even if the Pope might be fallible and we might be allowed to disagree with him, I presume that Mr. Blair doesn't presume to re-educate God. If God lays down "tough policies", then the deal is, we get to follow tough policies .He's God, and he made us. The idea that God's role in the universe is to give us a pleasant life, as a kind of super-sized version of the welfare state, is modernist bunk. Again, this is pointing to a conclusion: Mr. Blair's real religion, that of his heart, is secular to the core. God has to be the big Father Christmas in the sky, not a big meanie who is so rotten as to contradict contemporary mores. Mr. Blair passed and sought to pass laws enforcing his pro-gay views on the whole of the country - on pain of being carted off to prison if you didn't obey them. He seemed to believe that the prime minister should have such powers... yet thinks that it's too much if God has similar ones. What's that? That's secular humanism.
Does God intend that all the laws given to the nation of Israel should apply in the same form to all nations today? No. How do I know? Because the Bible says so (Acts 15:10). How do I know that God's disapproval of homosexual activity is not one of those things that was temporary and merely suited to the state of Israel at that particular time and place? Because the Bible says so (Romans 1:24-27, Jude 7, 1 Corinthians 6:9). Later in the piece, Mr. Blair states his disapproval of those who merely quote the Bible as an authority on this subject instead of taking their cue from the modern world. Well, of course. I'm a Christian, so I think that the teaching of Christ and his apostles is the corrective of what's wrong in modern society. Mr. Blair, though, thinks like a secularist, and so thinks that the modern world should correct the teaching of Christ and his apostles. You're either one or the other, and Mr. Blair's making it pretty clear which.
Mr. Blair might not be in any sense an orthodox Catholic. But the Pope is. Criticising him for it passes muster when talking to fellow secularists. Outside of that narrow self-referring and intellectually vacuous circle, it doesn't. Memo to secularists: it's not your conclusions that are the first things we want to disagree with: it's the assumptions you start from. Miss that, and you'll never understand anyone except yourselves.
Saturday, 22 November 2008
Modern Britain
An instructive insight into life amongst the ruling elite in modern Britain and what things they think are important...
http://www.christian.org.uk/news/20081118/harman-opposed-over-plan-to-boost-gay-mps/
Things to note:
http://www.christian.org.uk/news/20081118/harman-opposed-over-plan-to-boost-gay-mps/
Things to note:
- The press for gay "super rights" - i.e. to make homosexuals a privileged group with rights that trump every other groups - goes on.
- It's possible in 2008 for a government minister to suggest that you should be fast-tracked into parliament merely on the grounds of how you derive sexual pleasure, without that government minister being openly ridiculed, shuffled out of office immediately, taken out by the party whips and shot, or whatever.
- According to the Office of National Statistics, the number of open homosexuals in parliament is already more than double the number required to give the whole homosexual community a proportionate representation.
- The modern political parties don't even bother to pretend any more that MPs are really ultimately chosen by the people - nope, it's a party stitch-up (aided by the media) that decides who's represented in parliament.
- Long live Ann Widdecombe and the few remaining of her ilk who still have enough courage to speak obvious truths in defiance of the elite's canons of politically acceptable speech.
Monday, 30 June 2008
Gay super rights
Homosexual activists are not aiming to have equal rights. They are aiming to have "super rights" - rights which trump those of every other group. They won't rest content until not only are they allowed to do what they want to do, but also nobody else even has the right to express disagreement with them.
Hence this:
Hat tip: http://www.christian.org.uk/news/20080627/force-public-bodies-to-promote-gay-rights/
Hence this:
Public bodies like schools, the police, and local councils should be forced by law to promote ‘gay rights’, says Britain’s leading homosexual lobby group. Homosexual-only shortlists for Parliamentary candidates should also be permitted, Stonewall says.In this brave new world, all people are equal. But if you enjoy perversion, you get to be more equal than others. Even to the extent that those others get to have their taxes spent on educating them to agree with you, and spent on stacking the decks with even lawmakers to pass even more laws of this kind. Neat!
The comments come in anticipation of the Government’s proposals for a vast, over-arching Equality Bill.
Hat tip: http://www.christian.org.uk/news/20080627/force-public-bodies-to-promote-gay-rights/
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
What Is Marriage?
With delicious irony, after my last post extolling the wonders of modern technology, a five-day (so far) Internet outage struck! Ah well...
Marriage
I read in this BBC News article that US presidential candidate Mick Huckabee (former governor of Arkansas) "has been under fire for remarks apparently equating same-sex marriage with bestiality." Quoth auntie,
Two things to note here:
My thoughts:
Huckabee's point is actually pretty logically sound. If the definition of marriage is going to be broadened from its historical one of the covenanted, exclusive union of a man and woman to be something else, then where do we stop? On what grounds can it be modified in one place, and not in another? "Because gay rights activists want to" is not a coherent answer. Paedophiles and all manner of other sexual deviants might want to as well. Never heard of the "man-boy love league"?
Who gave the state the right to re-define the nature of one of society's fundamental institutions? Historically, the role of the state in marriage has been to recognise it where it exists, and to provide the basic necessary regulation, which is a very minimal role. It has not been to declare what marriage is, or to change it when it didn't like it.
If gay rights' activists and their friends in high places are allowed to re-write one part of the definition of marriage, then why cannot other groups do it elsewhere also? Muslims and traditionalist Mormons would like to change the law to allow the practice of polygamy, a practice which is deeply degrading to women. If we're allowed to change the "one-man and one-woman" to "two men", then why not change it to "one-man and four-women" also? Why not, as candidate Huckabee says, have a man and three women - or even three men and three women, or a man and a goat? If marriage is just a nose of wax which can be shaped as society pleases, then why just stop at the preferences of gay rights' activists? Don't other groups have preferences too? I suppose that this is why Mr. Smith has to appeal to what (he believes) is "mainstream" - because the logic to back up his desires is lacking; hence he just makes a subjective appeal to what's popular in his circles.
How to answer those tricky questions?
Once you assume a couple of simple truths, the tricky questions aren't actually tricky at all. At the beginning, God created the human race to be male and female. He made man and woman to relate to one another in lifelong marriage - it was his intention. He made us to be complementary, physically and emotionally, and gave us the drive for sexual intimacy, and for an exclusive relationship, as the right context in which families could both begin and thrive. Who gets to say what marriage is? The one who made both it and us!
Even from the viewpoint of basic biology it's blindingly obvious that man and woman are intended for each other, and not man and man. Homosexuality is completely sterile. It s practice cannot be any kind of basis for a coherent society.
Who has the right to say what marriage is? Our maker. If you don't start there, you have to go wrong. Once you decide that man decides what marriage is for himself, then you lose the right to logically and coherently object to the man-boy love league and those who would enslave women in polygamy - that's just your personal preferences against theirs. We're made for one man, one woman relationships, and all the parliaments and laws in the world can't change what we are. Men will never be complementary to men, any more than they will be to boys or to animals. The fight for "gay rights" is a fight against nature, and its proponents need to repent.
Footnote
Whilst on the subject of the US presidential candidates, yesterday I passed a Nairobi bookshop and saw Senator Obama's face smiling out at me (Obama's father is a Kenyan). I learnt by peering through the window that he has a biography called "The Audacity Of Hope". To my mind, leaders ought to be proven and experienced - especially if we're talking about becoming the most powerful man in the world. Senator Obama, from what I understand, began running for president a mere two years after joining the US Senate, on the back of a well-received party conference speech. The audacity of hope, indeed!
Marriage
I read in this BBC News article that US presidential candidate Mick Huckabee (former governor of Arkansas) "has been under fire for remarks apparently equating same-sex marriage with bestiality." Quoth auntie,
"Marriage has ... as long as there's been human history, meant a man and a woman in a relationship for life. Once we change that definition, then where does it go from there?" he said in an interview for Beliefnet online magazine.
"I think the radical view is to say that we're going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal."
David Smith of the gay rights Human Rights Campaign told CNN that Mr Huckabee, a former evangelist preacher, was "out of the mainstream of American thought".
Two things to note here:
- Candidate Huckabee has, it seems, raised the point that if we're going to redefine what marriage is, then what are the limits on this process?
- In response, a "gay rights" group's speaker charged that Candidate Huckabee's way of thinking wasn't "mainstream".
My thoughts:
- What kind of argument is that? Since when did the gay rights' groups adopt what's "mainstream" as its litmus test of what was right and wrong? Was it after "gay rights" ideas became mainstream, or before?
- I think that Mr. Smith is wrong. Whenever I see a poll, it indicates the opposite. When there have been measures on US state referenda in recent years to address the question, the public have come down against gay marriage. See here.
- If "mainstream" shows us what is right and wrong, why just restrict it to the US? Why just restrict it to the present generation? Why not take a poll of the whole world? Over the last 1000 years? Presumably because the answer wouldn't be what Mr. Smith wanted.
- Seems to me that when Mr. Smith talks about "mainstream", he's talking about the leftie press and university departments where secularism dominates. The lefties love to redefine their preferences as "mainstream", and call everyone else an "extremist". Raspberries to that. From the perspective of history and humanity as a whole, it's actually them who are the extremists.
- Firstly, what is marriage?
- Secondly, who gets the right to define what marriage is or isn't?
Huckabee's point is actually pretty logically sound. If the definition of marriage is going to be broadened from its historical one of the covenanted, exclusive union of a man and woman to be something else, then where do we stop? On what grounds can it be modified in one place, and not in another? "Because gay rights activists want to" is not a coherent answer. Paedophiles and all manner of other sexual deviants might want to as well. Never heard of the "man-boy love league"?
Who gave the state the right to re-define the nature of one of society's fundamental institutions? Historically, the role of the state in marriage has been to recognise it where it exists, and to provide the basic necessary regulation, which is a very minimal role. It has not been to declare what marriage is, or to change it when it didn't like it.
If gay rights' activists and their friends in high places are allowed to re-write one part of the definition of marriage, then why cannot other groups do it elsewhere also? Muslims and traditionalist Mormons would like to change the law to allow the practice of polygamy, a practice which is deeply degrading to women. If we're allowed to change the "one-man and one-woman" to "two men", then why not change it to "one-man and four-women" also? Why not, as candidate Huckabee says, have a man and three women - or even three men and three women, or a man and a goat? If marriage is just a nose of wax which can be shaped as society pleases, then why just stop at the preferences of gay rights' activists? Don't other groups have preferences too? I suppose that this is why Mr. Smith has to appeal to what (he believes) is "mainstream" - because the logic to back up his desires is lacking; hence he just makes a subjective appeal to what's popular in his circles.
How to answer those tricky questions?
Once you assume a couple of simple truths, the tricky questions aren't actually tricky at all. At the beginning, God created the human race to be male and female. He made man and woman to relate to one another in lifelong marriage - it was his intention. He made us to be complementary, physically and emotionally, and gave us the drive for sexual intimacy, and for an exclusive relationship, as the right context in which families could both begin and thrive. Who gets to say what marriage is? The one who made both it and us!
Even from the viewpoint of basic biology it's blindingly obvious that man and woman are intended for each other, and not man and man. Homosexuality is completely sterile. It s practice cannot be any kind of basis for a coherent society.
Who has the right to say what marriage is? Our maker. If you don't start there, you have to go wrong. Once you decide that man decides what marriage is for himself, then you lose the right to logically and coherently object to the man-boy love league and those who would enslave women in polygamy - that's just your personal preferences against theirs. We're made for one man, one woman relationships, and all the parliaments and laws in the world can't change what we are. Men will never be complementary to men, any more than they will be to boys or to animals. The fight for "gay rights" is a fight against nature, and its proponents need to repent.
Footnote
Whilst on the subject of the US presidential candidates, yesterday I passed a Nairobi bookshop and saw Senator Obama's face smiling out at me (Obama's father is a Kenyan). I learnt by peering through the window that he has a biography called "The Audacity Of Hope". To my mind, leaders ought to be proven and experienced - especially if we're talking about becoming the most powerful man in the world. Senator Obama, from what I understand, began running for president a mere two years after joining the US Senate, on the back of a well-received party conference speech. The audacity of hope, indeed!
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