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Thursday, May 28, 2015

The LGBT Agenda and the Triumph of Godlessness

by Christopher Ziegler

Author Christopher Ziegler
can be found @CZWriting on
Twitter 
“Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there—because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.” —Masha Gessen, journalist and homosexual activist, Sydney, Australia, 2013

The LGBT lobby loves to paint their opponents with a broad brush called “The Homophobe.” “The Homophobe” is a cross-eyed dolt, a sheltered house wife, or, everyone’s favorite, a southern yokel.
The stereotype for the "homophobe,"
anyone who opposes same sex "marriage."
 

The homophobe is understood to have a pathological aversion to gays, and this aversion has nothing to do with gays and everything to do with himself. If someone opposes the LGBT agenda, it must be 
 because they hate homosexuals, and this hatred can only stem from a sheltered lifestyle or psychological derangement. 

But here is an inconvenient truth: I am neither cross-eyed nor a house wife. I have lived my whole life in the “blue states.” Yet I am a steadfast opponent of what I see to be the LGBT agenda.

My opposition does not come from a lack of familiarity with people who self-identify as gay. I’ve known or been friends with several  since high school. One of my house mates in England, where I lived for 9 months, self-identified as gay. I even once dated a woman who described herself as  "lesbian." I do not have an aversion to people who self-identify as homosexual. My opposition stems from purely intellectual, not pathological, reasons. 



In my former days as a liberal, I was a supporter of same sex marriage. Actually, it would be more accurate to say I was not an opponent. I was never “fired up” for the cause, but if you had asked me just a few years ago whether I supported same-sex marriage I would have said something like, “Sure, why not?” In other words, I just really didn't see what all the fuss was about.

Ironically, around the same time U.S. President Barack Obama’s views were supposedly  “evolving” to accept same-sex marriage my views were moving in the opposite direction. But even though I saw homosexual acts in a new light, I was still not an opponent of same sex marriage. I figured that even if homosexuality was a sin, legal same sex marriage did little to change that fact one way or another. I was not eager to give my blessing to such unions, but I didn’t see how they could affect me or my faith.

The truth is that I wish I could still feel that way. But the events I’ve seen transpire in this country since 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court's 
United States v. Windsor overturned the federal Defense of Marriage Act, no longer justify that complacency. When I first heard of that decision I was glad because I thought that finally the issue was “settled.” The homosexual lobby had won and gotten what they wanted. “Good,” I thought, “maybe now they’ll shut up.” Whether one was liberal or conservative, we should all agree that there were more pressing problems.

But it was not to be. There was a distinct change in the atmosphere of American culture after that decision. I felt it. Campaigns of bullying and intimidation started against high profile figures like the Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, who was forced to step down after it became public that he had donated $1,000 to support the gay "marriage" ban in California. Suddenly there were lawsuits being filed in several states against family owned Christian businesses, many of which were bankrupted. And the even wackier concept of transsexualism was being forced down our throats. It was evident that public dissent on these issues would no longer be tolerated. I was honestly shocked by this turn of events.

The latest insult came this spring with the utterly hysterical and fact-free outrage over Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. As I watched the disinformation and

sanctimonious propaganda spew from the mouths of celebrities and media figures, I began to ask myself, “Is this what fascism feels like?” It inspired me to write this The Myth of the "Gay Holocaust:" Lessons from the Nazi Experiment.

It is now obvious that the country has been deceived. The LGBT agenda was never really interested in marriage for its own sake. Rather, marriage was a just a trophy for them, a symbol of their normalization. If marriage had been their real cause, then their campaign would have ended there. Instead, it

was immediately wielded as a tool with which to force more compliance and political concessions. It is now clear to me that their real goal is to transform our culture.

In a few weeks, the Supreme Court will hand down another decision. If the court decides that homosexual marriage is a constitutional right, we can be sure that the homosexual activists will not declare victory and go home. Rather, this new “right” will be employed as a weapon to weaken the family, strengthen the federal government, and silence all dissent.


Christian schools and churches, which refuse to bless same sex "marriages," will be in violation of the constitutional “rights” of homosexuals. This will make them easy targets for persecution at the hands of activists. They will be denied tax-exempt status and many will be shuttered. Scripture may soon be branded as “hate speech.”
Ultimately, the LGBT agenda is gunning for nothing less than the triumph of godlessness. But why should this be? Why should gay sex and godless philosophy, or any philosophy, have something to do with each other?

I did not see things this way before, and I’m sure many people still do not understand the connection, including some of those who call themselves Christian. I used to believe that the Biblical prohibitions on homosexual behavior were just arbitrary and based on little more than ancient prejudice. But the condemnation of homosexuality actually runs deeper than this. To understand why, you have to understand how Christians see things.

For Christians, the human body is part of divine revelation. It is the finale of God’s creative work, and is thus the capstone and symbol for all of creation. Ours is the only religion where God took on human flesh. Christ’s bodily sacrifice is essential to salvation and we celebrate this in the Eucharist. The body also serves as a metaphor for the church, which is Christ’s bodily presence on earth today. Finally, we believe in the resurrection of the body and the essential unity of body, soul and spirit. Clearly, the meaningfulness of the human body is integral to Christianity.

So what is the meaning of the body with regard to sex? Every part of the body has a purpose, which is expressed in its function. The purpose of the eye is to see, the ear to hear, and the teeth to chew food, etc. Because we know that every organ has a purpose, we can be sure that our sex organs also have a purpose. The purpose of the genitalia of each sex is found in the genitalia of the opposite sex. Men and women “fit” together.

Because our bodies are complementary in this way, we can say with confidence that the purpose of the male body is the female, and that the purpose of the female body is the male. Each has what the other lacks. Only a man can give what the woman lacks and only a woman can give what the man lacks. The purpose of each sex is found in the opposite sex. In order to be fulfilled, each must give themselves to the other. This mutual self-giving is the meaning of sex, and its fruit is the creation of new life. We can be sure that this form of self-giving is the meaning of the body because it alone can bring a new body into the world.

Christians believe that the basic facts of our anatomy reveal a deeper meaning and purpose. Male and female bodies are complementary; same sex bodies are not. Male and female bodies are capable of generating new life; same sex bodies are not. The homosexual cannot deny these basic facts. His only option is to deny that these facts reveal any meaning or purpose. The meaning here is too restrictive on his appetites to be respected. He wants what he wants, purpose be damned.

He will say: “Yes, I know that opposite sex couples ‘fit’ together in a way the same sex couples never could, but so what? Who cares? We can use our bodies however we wish.” This notion that we can use our bodies however we wish contains an implicit denial that our bodies have a purpose which is meant to be fulfilled. It is in this denial of purpose, in the homosexual’s attempt to rationalize his (mis)behavior, that the battle of philosophies is joined.

The significance of the complementarity of the male and female bodies can only be denied at the cost of denying that the human body can reveal meaning. If the human body has no inherent meaning or purpose, then neither does the rest of creation. This removes any basis for discerning law in nature, which results in the rejection of God’s authority. So, in order to permanently justify his actions to himself, the homosexual winds up embracing moral relativism. But it is not enough for him to adopt this philosophy personally and keep it to himself. Ultimately, everyone in society must accept it, too. 

So long as some people in our society refuse to adopt this view, the homosexual will continue to feel the rebuke of conscience. This is because, if the body expresses a purpose, then the act of sodomy is clearly at odds with that purpose. Anal sex is the elephant in the room. Can we really ever convince ourselves that sodomy can be an act of love? The answer, clearly, is “no.” This is proven by a very simple observation that  proponents of same sex marriage never bring it up.

It is an impressive feat of sleight-of-hand that gay activists have successfully managed to obscure this aspect of their lifestyle during these debates. It is not hard to see why they’ve felt a need to do this. Anal sex greatly increases the risk of rectal prolapse, rectal perforation, chlamydia, microsporidiosis, gonorrhea, viral hepatitis B and C, syphilis, and HIV/AIDS.

According to “Correlates of Homosexual Behavior and the Incidence of Anal Cancer,” published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association, the chance of anal cancer increases by 4,000 percent among those who practice anal sex. As author Robert R. Reilly says, “If one insisted on using a highway exit as an entrance, one would be told that this is

extremely hazardous to one’s health and safety and to that of others. Why is this so difficult to state when it comes to human anatomy?”

Sodomy cannot be an act of self-giving worthy of the dignity of marital love because it is selfish by design. There is something inherently unfair about the act. Of necessity, one partner is always going to be penetrated in a part of his anatomy that is not designed for penetration. Hence, sodomy is always an act of lust and is incapable of the mutual self-giving for which the sacrament of marriage was created.

Lust kills the love for truth in the soul. 
The Bible labels sodomy as an abomination because it is one of the chief acts of lust. Saying this is not hate speech. It is truth. The only real hate speech is the telling of lies. The idea that sodomy is the same as love is a lie. It is a lie about one of the most essential parts of our humanity: the meaning of our bodies. Our bodies were made for fruitfulness, not barbaric pleasures.    

Declaring sodomy to be morally equivalent to coitus, and equal in dignity to marital love (“All love is equal!”) is a lie of grave moral consequence. It puts an act of lust on the same footing as the procreative act, and thus, for the sake of sexual pleasure, obliterates the reality of meaning and purpose in our bodies. It is the triumph of appetite over reason. It is the sacrament of godlessness.

As homosexuals gain more legal recognition their demands become increasingly brazen. This means our culture has a big problem on its hands which many are still refusing to recognize. Christian persecution has suddenly become a reality in our times, and not just in the Islamic world but in the secular west. For if this new philosophy is to prevail, the Christian one will have to be suppressed. 
Widespread sodomy and promiscuity cannot co-exist with the idea that man is created in the image of God. Hence, anyone who persists in holding this idea will be reviled for it. 

   
Until this point the only tool the homosexuals had at their disposal was cultural intimidation. Christians were ridiculed and labeled as bigots and homophobes. This will certainly continue, but if the Supreme Court declares same sex marriage to be a constitutional right they will gain a more powerful legal tool. As philosopher Sergei Levitzky wrote, “The relativization of the absolute leads to the absolutization of the relative.”

Persecution is coming in the United States, and American Christians will have to remain strong. If they do, it will be because of an excess of love, not hate. On this topic, ex-gay porn star and author Joseph Sciambra writes that, “Refusing to partake in the physical and moral destruction of another human being is a basic Christian principle.” In other words, the refusal to bless same-sex unions is an expression of Christian love. To do anything else would be to help perpetuate a lie—to stab a lost soul in the back.


Sciambra, who is the author of the blog How Our Lord Jesus Christ Saved Me from Homosexuality, Pornography and the Occult tells us that there are many “trapped in homosexuality, who cry themselves to sleep every night—they are scared and alone, and they need our help.” He asserts that the best way we can help them is to continue to speak the truth boldly. The worst act of hatred we could commit toward them would be to throw in the towel, lay down our principles, and join the frenzy of selfish hedonism.

Real love means doing the difficult but necessary work. It often means tough love, not the fickle “tolerance” of those who follow the path of least resistance. The charitable work we must do today is to continue to uphold the importance of purity, chastity, innocence, chivalry, and marital love. For doing this we should expect to be ridiculed, but in ridicule lies the promise of reward. As Christ told us, The world will make you suffer. But be brave! I have defeated the world!” (John 16:33)   

Mr. Ziegler returns to the woods
Mr Ziegler has also written: The Battle for the Identity of Man: A House Divided 

On the topic of same sex marriage you might also enjoy: Genderless "Marriage" Threatens the Foundation of Civilization." 

or Same Sex "Marriage," Natural Law and the New Apocalypse   

Don't miss the piece on the U.S. Supreme Decision legalizing same sex "marriage."

Same Sex "Marriage:" Another Chapter in Grimm's Fairy Tales



Monday, May 25, 2015

Braving the Day


by Lawrence Fox 

The air wafting into the room tastes so sweet.
It must have rained while we were asleep.

Please silence the clock and pull up the sheet.
I dread turning my eyes to face the bright;
It must have rained the whole night.

Rain sedates me like an infant cradlesong.
Please silence the clock a few hours long.

And then I will awake as I must
To run and catch the last morning bus;
And you will there remain asleep
And before I leave, I will pull up the sheet.



Did you enjoy this poem? Lawrence Fox has also written: Lament for Western Man, In Memory of James Foley 



Thursday, May 21, 2015

Lessons from the Local Pub: UK Conservatives Savor the Victory

The UK Labour Party forgot, “Thou shalt not steal.” But Brits remembered the 10 Commandments.

by Christopher Woodford, Reformed Socialist
(Don't miss the fascinating discussion on how to vote responsibly in the comment section below. Click on comments)
Watching Election Results from the Local Pub
in Southampton, England:
Christopher Woodford
On Twitter, he can be found @Crimbo51
I love elections. I always book the day off work after a General Election because I'm up all night watching the results unfold. Since 1992 the outcome has been predictable by using calculations based on the earliest results and exit polls. This year May 8 was no different, but the early revelations were shocking.

It was 1 a.m., May 9, and a sudden flash of hope came to me: “YES!”

In that moment I allowed myself to believe we might escape Labour Leader and would-be Prime Minister "Red" Ed Miliband and his ”Borrow against Tomorrow” policies. Our grandchildren might escape the Labour party sell-out of their future for short-term popularity. We might be able to continue the delicate Conservative repair of our economy, destroyed by Labour British Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997-2010 in profligate leftist spending excesses. Goodbye European Union. Sorry, Greece, you will have to pay your own debt.

Dear Chief Secretary, I'm afraid there is no money.
When the Labour party left office in 2010, the Treasury minister Liam Byrne, left a note on his cleared desk for his Conservative successor:




Dear Chief Secretary, 
I'm afraid there is no money.
Kind regards and good luck. Liam


Before May 8, my country (England) had steeled itself for more acts of leftist lunacy. We remembered when Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown stopped tax relief on pension providers in his first budget in 1997, effectively robbing £118 billion ($183 billion) from pensioners. It meant that many older people would have to rely on welfare. Their own savings were stolen!

Also from1999 to 2002 the same Chancellor sold 400 tons of British gold reserves at one fifth of its value.

Now at 1 a.m., I realized we might be spared disaster. 
Infamous and "unsinkable" RMS Titanic departed from the 
City of Southampton, England, where Christopher Woodford lives,
 five days before it sank on  April 15, 1912 in the North Atlantic Ocean
with the loss of over 1500 lives. 
Until this magical moment, all the pundits predicted that another coalition government either between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, or, God forbid, Labour and the Scottish Nationalist Party, was inevitable. The shock on various faces in the TV studio was a joy to behold. British Conservatives won a majority – 331 seats – five seats more than necessary to form a majority administration, and to govern without a coalition or formal agreement with other parties.
  
So why did the left-leaning BBC and Guardian get it so wrong? Why did Obama campaign consultant David Axelrod – after being paid $500,000 by Labour to provide a strategy of economic populism -- get it so wrong?

Maybe it was because the Tory Party Conservatives were getting it right! “Let’s not throw away our progress!”

The English and Welsh voters clearly witnessed the Conservatives fixing the economy with prudent policies not designed solely to foster popularity. As the right-leaning Daily Mail put it, “Middle England rose up to humiliate the pollsters and save the nation from Red Ed.”

The hard-left SNP (Scottish National Party) were the game changers in this election. The pro-same sex marriage party swept aside all opposition in Scotland, which has always been a Labour stronghold. Labour will never get Scotland back again. Everyone expected the SNP to do well, but they took 56 of 59 seats! In the long term, this may lead to Scottish independence. Northern Ireland as always, elected its patchwork quilt of MPs based on local interests.

The other wild card in the election was UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party), the far-right anti-immigration party. They polled nearly 4,000,000 votes nationwide, nearly 10% of the electorate, but, thanks to our “first past the post” system they took only 1 seat. The UKIP believes in controlling our borders and not adding to the national debt. Like many Brits, Americans and Canadians, they feel successive governments have not represented the will of the British people.

Of course, now they have joined the Liberals in whining for Proportional Representation. PR produces weak governments and removes the ability of the electorate to stand the political spectrum on its head every few years; Europe runs like this. Many have forgotten there was a nationwide vote held on Thursday 5 May 2011 on this very PR issue, and it was rejected. Game, set and match.

UK Independence Party is a ”one trick pony” standing on the anti-EU ticket. Its candidates were a motley bunch of extreme characters who, if they established a power base, may have turned nasty, even Nazi.

Conservative Ranil Jayawardena
RobertBlay, UKIP candidate for North East Hampshire, when it was mentioned to him that his rival Conservative Ranil Jayawardena could one day be the first Asian PM said, "If this lad turns up to be our Prime Minister I will personally put a bullet in him. That’s how strong I feel about it. I won’t have this f***** as our Prime Minister. I absolutely loathe him.” His comments were clearly based on Jayawardena’s ethnic origins.

So, how long would it be before peaceful, harmonious Britain is plunged into ethnic cleansing. I have a half-Thai grandson, born in the UK and holder of a British passport. Would they
Chris Woodford's beloved
half-Thai grandson
say about my grandson, ''His eyes are the wrong shape. He has to go''?

Quite a few of those I spoke to who supported UKIP were people who give more thought to football and reality TV than to politics.

The Liberal Democrat party was wiped out simply for getting into bed with the Conservatives after the 2010 election. Good. They are a pro-EU, tax and spend, removal of freedoms party, favoring an increase in income taxes, protecting the Education budget and wasting money guarding against climate change.

Another factor in this election was that for the first time, the electorate and opposition parties knew the date of the election years in advance thanks to the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011. Five years always was the maximum term a government could stay in power, but in all previous elections, the Prime Minister could and would choose a date and spring it upon the nation. The certainty of the date of this election altered the predictability of the 2015 outcome. There was time to ponder!

The Conservatives took 331 seats. It is a slim majority, but it means they don't have to rely on the support of spoilers like the Liberal Democrats as they have for the past five years. Now they can renegotiate our EU relationship and put it to the people in a referendum. They can tighten the noose on benefit scroungers. They can continue with the “austerity” package that has benefited the economy. Unemployment is falling and UK economic growth is faster than our Group of Seven partners, including the world’s richest industrialized countries: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, United States and Canada.

Britain is again a net exporter of cars. Critics say the manufacturing companies are foreign, but it is a sign of confidence in our economy and national stability that these worldwide companies wish to be based here. A myriad industries are thriving and traffic is bad both morning and evening everywhere. That means that people are working.

The Labour Party and its leader,  “Red” Ed Miliband,  would have sold our souls to the EU. Germany and France would have made us the cash cow for the Greek debt. France would have redoubled its policy of shunting the refugees of the world to Calais and moving them across the English Channel.

A minority Labour administration – ably assisted by the left-wing  Scottish National Party -- would have been no different.

Where do we go from here?

The EU referendum will be worth watching. Maybe we can stay in if we can work out some kind of two-tier, arms-length membership. After all, when we joined in 1973, it was a free trade bloc of nine nations, not an undemocratic Soviet style super state.

The 2016 U.S. Presidential election is of huge interest to us. The outcome matters greatly to the UK. Let's not forget David Axelrod, who was hired to advise the UK Labour Party campaign. I expect his $500,000 fee came from the weekly union subscriptions of millions of British workers.

Will the American People confound the pollsters and return a Conservative President? The outcome of our elections certainly rocked the assumptions of the Hilary Clinton
Hillary Clinton: We imagine she said,
"The Conservatives in England did
what!?!"
Campaign for President. It's in American hands to look at the possible outcomes and decide as the UK electorate did, but they must vote with their heads.

The USA has a straight fight between two major parties. The only thing that could muddy the waters is if early primary states, which allow Democrats and Independents to pick Republican candidates, choose a weak conservative. Then – as in the last election – some conservatives could decide in fury to sit out the election, guaranteeing a liberal choice.
  
Will the U.S.  watch through the night to view a future unfolding which restores the values of individual enterprise and freedom, the values which the founding fathers intended?

Or, will they see the new day dawn under an administration that feels it necessary to micro-manage their lives and keep one hand in their pockets.

It has long been said in Britain that what America does follows here. Let's hope the USA follows Britain this time.

Sign in United Kingdom before the May 8 election
And a final sinister point to show that even the victorious Tory Party are not all sweetness and light. I was listening to a program on BBC Radio, which was doing a post mortem on the election. A representative of the BBC's election coverage was repeatedly asked if it was true that his team had been threatened by senior Conservatives in the lead up to the election. The poor man used hundreds of words to cleverly avoid saying “Yes” or “No.”

So, pick the devil you know. Perhaps it's just a matter of picking the least damaging devil. He can be identified as the one who doesn't want to tax and spend the peoples' money. If the devil is dressed like Robin Hood, look out! Robin Hood supported Richard the Lionheart and he taxed England dry to pay his ransom. Sounds familiar.

See fascinating discussion on how to vote responsibly in comment section below!

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Did you enjoy this piece by Christopher Woodford? He has written more! Don't miss History Recalls its Tragedies: Our Job is to Forgive


The United Kingdom prides itself on having multiple political parties, which form changing coalitions over time.

Conservatives (Tory):  UK Center-Right political party believes in more limited government, low taxes, European Union under our terms through an in and out referendum and growth through free private enterprise. Currently largest party in the UK with 331 seats.

Labour:  UK Center-Left political party. It was born of the trade union movement and socialist political parties of the 19th century. It is the second largest party, and has more recently backed down from its stance in favor of common ownership of the means of production. In favor of big government, high taxes, pro-EU, 232 seats.

Liberal Democrat: UK Centrist Party, pro-EU, tax and spend, removal of freedoms party, favoring an increase in income taxes, protecting the Education budget and guarding against climate change. They were the Tories’ coalition partners 2010-2015. They used to be a large liberal party, but Labour eclipsed them in the 1920s. They now have 8 seats, down from 57!

SNP:  Left-wing Scottish Nationalists. Supports same-sex marriage, progressive taxation, government housing, unilateral nuclear disarmament, lowering the voting age to 16. Stands for Scotland's interests only, pro-EU, 56 seats.

UKIP: U K Independence Party is against UK involvement in the European Union. The UKIP believes in controlling UK borders and not adding to the national debt. Like many Brits, Americans and Canadians, they feel successive governments have not represented the will of the British people. 1 seat.

Green:  Stands for the environment. Tree huggers, 1 seat

Sinn Fein: Irish Republicans. Stands for Northern Ireland to reunite with Republic of Ireland. They never take up their London seats as they will not take the oath of allegiance. 5 seats. 

UUP/DUP: 13 seats between several small parties.
Stands for Northern Ireland to stay in UK (N. Ireland British Loyalists) 


Plaid Cymru: Welsh Nationalist Party stands for independent Wales  with close links to Scottish Nationalists. 3 seats

Independent MPS (1 seat)


Speaker of the House of Commons, doesn't vote unless it's a dead heat, and then will usually vote with the government -- 1 seat.