By Douglas Wilson

When two armies happen to meet, the battle is not necessarily over the terrain they are fighting on. Sometimes it is that, of course, but there are also occasions when the place where they are fighting and the place for which they are fighting are two entirely different places.

The current battle is at the place of same sex mirage. It is where we are fighting right now, and may God grant success to us here, holed up in our little gender-normal Alamo. Our God is able to deliver us, but even if He does not, be it known, o king, that we will not consent to applaud the use of a man as though he were a woman.

Homosexual vice is a bad business, one that the apostle Paul describes as the end of the ethical road. But that is simply where the battle is right now, not what the battle is over. And so, since I have raised the point, what is the battle over? The battle is over the right to define the world.
Man wants to be God, and he wants to be able to declare the way things shall be, and then have them be that way. He hates God and wants to replace Him, and wants to replace how the way things stand fast whenever God declares them. Man wants to speak the ultimate and authoritative word.

Some people have asked from time to time, usually with some petulance, why I write about same sex mirage so much. The answer is found in the disputed nouns — the marriage/mirage issue. The issue is not an instance here or there of same sex coupling; the central issue is what we as a culture are going to call it when it happens. We have always had those who were in the grip of this lust; why should Christians raise an uproar about it now?

In which a discordant note is struck between what I wish to be and what I am.

Well, I would say mildly, we are not the ones raising an uproar. You can tell what the real issue is by where the enforcement is. When do the cops show up? When do evangelical bakers get remanded to sensitivity camps? Whenever we refuse to use their vocabulary, the goons come out. That alone, that by itself, should tell you what the real issue is. Under their regime, you do not have to commit homosexual acts. But under their regime, you must agree to pretend that what they have decided to call it has in fact come to pass. But it hasn’t come to pass.

At the end of the day, you have two dudes in bed, with no decent place to put things, or two women there, with nothing real available for either of them. The emptiness, the vanity, the loneliness, the folly, is manifest. And comes now the state, demanding that whatever else we do about this, we must agree to call this state of high loneliness and desperation a state of holy matrimony. I might not be as courageous as I think I am, or as faithful to Jesus as I think I am, and so you might be able to get me to say something like that after pulling out my fifth fingernail. But if you think you can get me to do it by coolshaming me into an approval of round squares, then I guess I had better type a little bit more, in order to make my sentiments clear.

So in a city of one million, I would much rather have a thousand illicit homosexual acts, unrecognized by the public, than to have just one illicit sexual act, covered over with the thin film of all our solons calling it an official marriage. Why? In the former instance, we have a thousand instances of sin. In the latter we have a million. There is a difference between a city with sin in it, and a sin city. In the former, the sin is instances of homosexual sin; in the latter the sin is with our shared language, the currency of all. Both strike at the image of God in man, but the latter is far more serious.

Because the Word was with God, and the Word was God, the latter sin is heinous. You could drop the sexual element out of this altogether, and still have the same problem. I would want to be fighting in the same way if federal judges were declaring that two and two make five, and were applying stiff fines to all born-again mathematicians. We happen to be fighting in the sexual arena because when a people are addled by their lusts, or are grossed out by people so addled, it is far easier to distract them all from the real issue.

The real issue is that man bears the image of God. He is not a god in his own right. He cannot declare, and have it be necessarily so. He must be content to repeat what God has said. Man’s only possible glory and dignity is as God’s vicegerent. And that is dignity enough.

When he sets up shop on his own, everything spirals down into autonomous folly. Revolts against God’s holy order cannot achieve a higher dignity for us. We cannot achieve linguistic independence. God’s gravity is infinite, and there is no escape velocity. We cannot speak the word, and create a new sex — we can only blur the meaning of words, and go out in drag. We can also fine people who refuse to go along with our big pretend.

In a not so “GRRREAT” move, Kellogg’s becomes the latest major corporation to show its true stripes and come out in support of the LGBTQ agenda.

According to the ChristianNews.net,  an advertisement featuring Frosted Flakes icon Tony the Tiger was published in the Atlanta, Georgia pride guide last month to coincide with the Atlanta Gay Pride March and festival. Kellogg’s was one of the sponsors for the event.

The ad states to, “wear your stripes with pride,” going on to say, “At Kellogg, we’re an evolving culture that respects and accepts employees’ sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression so that all employees can be authentic and fully engaged.”

Also featured is the Human Rights Campaign ranks Kellogg’s as one of the “Best places to work for LGBT Equality” with a 100% rating on the “corporate equality index.”

Kellogg’s wants you to buy their product for your family while advancing an agenda that is geared toward indoctrinating children.

Why feed their agenda?

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea.” Mark 9:42

Burger King, Starbucks and Nabisco’s Honey Maid have also revealed their support for gay activism recently. For information on other corporations’ stances on the issues, visit 2ndVote.com.

TAKE ACTION: Make your “RRROAR”known, contact Kellogg’s and express your opposition to their advocacy of immorality in the public square. They can be contacted at 1-800-962-1413 or by clicking HERE.

A veteran-related story by The Associated Press focuses on 92-year-old Rupert Starr, a World War II veteran who was captured by the Germans and earned a Bronze Star. The angle of the story, however, is that the veteran is a homosexual who opposed the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy – a policy that was lifted in 2011, allowing homosexuals to openly serve in the military.

Barbwire.com founder Matt Barber says the article is a slap in the face to veterans – on a day celebrating their heroism.  He tells OneNewsNow:

“To make this about sexual identity politics, and to focus on this individual’s abhorrent sexual proclivities and his lifestyle choices, and to somehow elevate those disordered behaviors as something to be proud of, is really offensive.”

According to Barber, the AP story – which mentions Starr’s homosexual lifestyle or homosexual activism 10 times in the 16-paragraph story – omits an important result of the military’s policy change: the “explosion” of male-on-male assaults in the U.S. military.

“I mean, immediately upon the repeal of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ these homosexual assaults spiked and are even – according to the Pentagon’s own statistics – are utterly out of control right now,” Barber tells OneNewsNow.

A 1,400-page Pentagon report conducted in 2013 reported 26,000 service members had been sexually assaulted; approximately 12,000 were female – 14,000 were male. Seventy-three percent of male-on-male assaults occurred on base, the report found.

The Washington Times reported on the findings earlier this year, quoting a homosexual in the story who claimed the male-on-males assaults weren’t done by homosexuals – that they were more like prison rapes.

Rather than truly honoring veterans in the story, Barber says AP is “acting as activists, in fact cheerleaders, for a radical agenda that has hurt the armed services.”

This article was originally posted at the OneNewsNow.com website.

IFI’s Monte Larrick interviews renowned author, scholar, and radio host, Dr. Michael Brown, about how the gospel relates to homosexuality and how Christians can love those with same-sex attraction. Watch the short video below to gain Biblical insight on this controversial topic.

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*WARNING: some graphic language not suitable for younger readers*

Residents of California’s 52^nd Congressional District were just confronted with the choice between Democratic incumbent Scott Peters and homosexual “pro-choice” Republican challenger Carl DeMaio, whom the GOP establishment vigorously supported. Not only is DeMaio openly homosexual—which is no problem for House Speaker John Boehner who campaigned for him—but according to multiple accusations, DeMaio has a peculiar practice of engaging in semi-public self-pleasuring. According to Slate Magazine, a third man has recently come forward alleging sexually inappropriate conduct on the part of DeMaio:

I was at the urinal, and (DeMaio) came from the stall that was closest to the urinal and was kind of just standing there hovering….I turned around and realized that it was Carl. He had his pants up, but his fly was undone, and he had his hand… grasping his genitals.

Previously, a former colleague of DeMaio’s who served with him on the San Diego City Council told CNN that he had twice found DeMaio self-pleasuring in public restrooms, and a former campaign staffer for DeMaio, who is also homosexual, has alleged that DeMaio both sexually harassed him and engaged in onanism in his campaign headquarters office.

Thanks to the support of the Republican Party, DeMaio came very close to winning, losing by just a hair three days after the election.

A few weeks before yesterday’s mid-term election, Princeton University law professor Robert George made these comments about this California race, comments that are equally applicable to any races with RINO candidates, including Illinois races:

If I were in the district, I could not in conscience vote for the Republican. His election would do greater harm to the causes of life, marriage, and religious liberty than would the election of his Democratic opponent, as bad as that guy himself is on these issues. The question is whether to abstain or to cast a tactical vote in favor of the Democrat. In circumstances like these, I believe that tactical voting is morally permissible, and it would improve the likelihood of the least bad outcome….Abstaining is morally permissible too.

The partisans of abortion and marriage redefinition have a lock on the Democratic Party now. Effective dissent of any type is not possible. Having gained that lock on one party, they are now turning their resources and attention to weakening the pro-life and pro-marriage reality witness of the Republican Party. … I can think of no more urgent priority than preventing that from happening. Maintaining and solidifying the pro-life and pro-marriage reality stance of the Republican Party is critical. That’s why tactical voting, including voting for bad Democrats over bad Republicans, is IN CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES (e.g., where the election of a Democrat does not jeopardize Republican control of a legislative house), morally legitimate and perhaps even advisable. We must not let the pro-abortion and pro-marriage redefinition movements strengthen their positions in the Republican Party. We must make the Republican Party as solid for life and marriage as the Democrats now are for the contrary positions.

The GOP is slowly transmogrifying into the political incarnation of Tolkien’s Gollum:

Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle. “Precious, precious, precious!” Gollum cried. “My Precious! O my Precious!” And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail precious, and he was gone.

Illinoisans should fully expect to hear immoderates and perhaps even dispirited conservatives say, “See, Bruce Rauner/Mark Kirk-type of Republican is the only kind of Republican who can get elected in Illinois.” But soon, they won’t be tacking on “in Illinois.”

Four years ago, the U.S. Senator-elect from Colorado, Cory Gardner, supported the Personhood Amendment and even circulated petitions to gather signatures for it. Then this year, the GOP establishment got to him. Shortly before Gardner announced his candidacy, pro-life activists in Colorado got wind of the news that he would be renouncing his support for the Personhood Amendment.

Karl Rove deceitfully wrote this last May: “in Colorado, tea-party favorite and front-runner Ken Buck stepped aside when Mr. Gardner entered the race, recognizing he was better able to enthuse all the party.” So, in May Rove implied that Buck just freely stepped aside because of his own uncoerced epiphany that Gardner would be the best candidate for “enthusing” the party.

That’s interesting, because late last night on FOX News election coverage, Karl Rove boasted that his Super PAC told the Colorado GOP that no Super Pac money would go to support Ken Buck for U.S. Senate. I’m speculating here, but I suspect that Rove et al told Gardner they would support him as long as he retreated from the Personhood Amendment.

Immoderate Republicans accuse conservatives who agree with Robert George of turning on their Republican brethren and “forming a circular firing squad.” But who really is Cain in this contemporary narrative? Who is Sméagol and who is Déagol?

Well, what’s done is done, and now Rauner, who proudly campaigned on his support for the “right” of women to have their own babies killed, can work the fiscal wonders for which his supporters have been slavering.

Under his mystical, magical management, Illinois should shortly be transformed into a pecuniary powerhouse. Then with fiscal victory securely in their grasp, immoderate Republicans will jubilantly announce the end of the social issues “truce” and the dawn of a new day. They will marshal all their resources—chief among them money—and announce the start of a battle—nay , a war—the likes of which  this state has never seen to protect human life at all stages, to restore a legal definition of marriage that comports with reality, to preserve religious liberty, and to eradicate “progressive” political and philosophical advocacy from government-funded schools.

Yeah, I’m sure with Rauner and Kirk at the helm of the IL GOP that will happen.

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Written by Dr. Wayne Grudem

It is deeply troubling to me to see a repeat of the situation in 1973 when the Supreme Court, by the exercise of raw judicial power apart from any Constitutional or legislative warrant, imposed abortion rights on the entire United States, against the will of the people. That decision remains untouched today, 41 years later.

Now by its October 6, 2014, abdication of responsibility in refusing to take any of the five challenges to same-sex marriage decisions that were sent to it on appeal, the Supreme Court has allowed the judges on the 13 circuit courts of appeals to impose their idea that same-sex marriage is a “Constitutional right” on most of the states in the United States. (Though the Constitution says not a word about same-sex marriage, and the original authors and states who endorsed the Constitution would have strenuously objected that no words in the Constitution meant or implied that.)

Here is the history: so far, 31 of the 50 states have actually voted to amend their state constitutions to define marriage as only between one man and one woman. In only 3 states, the votes in statewide referendums have gone the other way (Washington, Minnesota, and Maine), and in 10 additional states the legislatures have approved same-sex marriage (Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York).

But the votes of the people in the 31 states, and their constitutional amendments, are now being struck down with the stroke of a pen by judges in one state after another.

Here’s how it happens:

(1) Advocates of same-sex marriage can always find some federal judge in every state who will issue a ruling imposing same-sex marriage on the state (there are 678 district judgeships in the United States).

(2) Then these decisions are appealed to a Court of Appeals. It is these Courts of Appeals that have been issuing decisions that overturn state constitutional amendments and impose same-sex marriage on the states, against the will of the people in those states. These decisions of the Courts of Appeals can then be appealed to the Supreme Court, but if it refuses to take the case (as it did five times on October 6), then the decision of the Court of Appeals stands as final law in that judicial circuit, covering several states.

Consequences: the most immediate consequence has been a significant increase in challenges to religious freedom. Last week the mayor of Houston sent subpoenas to several Houston area pastors demanding that they turn over the manuscripts from all their sermons and sermon notes related to homosexuality and gender identity. This is an astounding violation of religious freedom — a city demanding that it be able to inspect (and, presumably, issue legal penalties against) sermons that pastors preach from the pulpit. Such an egregious violation of religious liberty has never before happened in American history, as far as I am aware.

And this week two ordained pastors in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Pentecostals who are ordained with the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, have been told by the city that they must begin performing same-sex weddings or face fines of up to $1000 and jail time – presumably for each time they refuse!

My expectation is this is just a hint of things to come for evangelicals who for conscience’ sake do not feel, before God, that they are morally justified in blessing a same-sex union as “marriage.” So will they have to violate their consciences or go to jail? That is the chilling threat.

Another consequence: I expect that now teachers in public schools will be legally required to teach that homosexual relationships are morally positive choice, one possible “good” choice even for elementary school children. Coming at a time when children’s individual sense of gender identity is in formation, this will result in much gender confusion among children – and, I expect, a significant increase in homosexual activity among adolescents. And what will the millions of evangelical Christians and devout Roman Catholics who now teach in public schools do? Will they be forced to teach as ethically good something that their deeply held moral and religious beliefs proclaim to be ethically wrong? Will they be forced to violate their conscience or abandon their teaching careers?

Another consequence: damage to future generations because of the loss of a societal preference for relationships in which children have both a father and mother. (When a same-sex couple adopts a child, that child is then legally separated forever from either its biological father or its biological mother.)

Another consequence: If we believe that disobedience to God’s moral laws always has negative consequences in people’s lives, then I think we must also expect that there will be significant harm in the lives of those people who engage in a homosexual lifestyle. If we love them, as God’s Word commands us to do, then we should also be grieved at the harmful consequences in their lives that will inevitably follow from their behavior.

Elections matter: When Christians tell me that elections don’t matter much, that God’s work will go on the matter what kind of government we have, I don’t think they have any idea of how oppressive government can become when its leaders are “those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression” (Isaiah 10:1 ESV). In my opinion, this verse surely applies to the judges who impose abortion rights on the whole nation in 1973, and it also applies to the judges who are imposing same-sex marriage on the entire nation in 2014.

And these decisions are the direct result of the election of President Obama in 2008 and again in 2012. When President Obama took office, only one of the 13 appellate courts had a majority of Democratic appointees (liberal judges appointed by Democratic presidents such as Carter and Clinton). Now 9 of the 13 appeals courts have Democratic majorities. These are the liberal courts that have been imposing same-sex marriage on large sections of the nation, against the will of the people in many states. This is a direct result of the 2008 and 2012 elections.

President Obama has now appointed 53 of the 179 appellate court judges in the United States (Edward Whelan, “The Senate and the Courts,” in The Weekly Standard, Sept. 29, 2014, p. 17), and those appellate courts have vast influence (99.9% of their cases are never taken up on appeal by the Supreme Court, but stand as settled law). ​​

I am asking Christians to pray for the outcome of the crucial elections on November 4, especially for the elections of members of the U.S. Senate, because the Senate has to approve all judicial nominations from the president. And please be sure to vote, and to help in any other way you can. This election will also have significant consequences for the nation.

Written by David Daniels

Jackie Hill-Perry considers herself not merely an agent of change, but its embodiment as well.

A Christian spoken-word poet from Chicago, Ms. Hill-Perry professes to be a former lesbian — a change she ascribes to God.

God, she says, “not only changes your affections and your heart, but He gives you new affections that you didn’t have.” Now married to a Christian man, the 25-year-old poet is pregnant with the newlyweds’ first child, which is due Dec. 13.

Her debut spoken-word album “The Art of Joy” will be released for free on Nov. 4 by Humble Beast record label.

Ms. Hill-Perry’s experience runs counter to pronouncements by gay rights groups that exclaim sexuality as an inherent, immutable characteristic. What’s more, her assertions come amid wide-ranging reports about the psychological dangers of so-called “reparative therapy,” which aims to change the orientation of homosexuals.

But she remains steadfast in her belief that anything is possible with God as she meets criticism — and outright contempt — for speaking out about her experience. And thanks to her nearly 65,000 followers on social media, as well as encouragement from famed Baptist theologian John Piper, Ms. Hill-Perry’s story has been far-reaching.

“The word of God itself, apart from Jackie Hill, testifies that people can change,” she said in a July 2013 report on Wade-O Radio, a syndicated Christian hip-hop broadcast based in New Jersey.

She was criticizing a lyric in rapper Macklemore’s Grammy Award-winning song “Same Love” that says “And I can’t change even if I tried, even if I wanted to.”

“I think we’ve made God very little if we believe that He cannot change people,” Ms. Hill-Perry said on Wade-O Radio. “If He can make a moon, stars and a galaxy that we have yet to fully comprehend, how can He not simply change my desires?”

Thousands of people on social media shared her comments — with approving or condemning remarks of their own. She estimates that about 40 percent of the messages she has received have been negative.

“On Twitter, this girl wrote me like 15 different tweets, pretty much saying that I was delusional, in denial and brainwashed,” Ms. Hill-Perry told The Washington Times.

After she married Preston Perry, another Christian spoken-word poet, in March, another Twitter critic accused them both of being gay and marrying to “play God to a bunch of ignorant people.”

Ms. Hill-Perry says she was sexually abused by a family friend when she 5. Around the same time, she experienced gender confusion that had coalesced into an attraction to women when she turned 17. She became sexually active with her first girlfriend, and then another. She became a regular at gay clubs and at gay pride parades in St. Louis.

While lying in bed in October 2008, she reflected on her lifestyle and had an epiphany that she addressed in her spoken-word piece “My Life as a Stud”: “Then, one day, the Lord spoke to me. He said, ‘She will be the death of you.’ In that moment, the scripture for the wages of sin equal death finally clicked.”

“What I had been taught in church until the age of 10 coincided with the truth in my conscious that a holy God and just God would be justified in sending me, an unrepentant sinner to hell,” she said, “but also that this same God sent His son to die on my behalf and forgive me if only I believe.”

She left her girlfriend and returned to church. The next year, she met her future husband at the first spoken-word event where she performed “My Life as a Stud.” Over time, she lost her attraction to women and gained an attraction to Mr. Perry, who she began dating three years later.

Now pregnant with a girl, Ms. Hill-Perry is concerned her daughter will face persecution for sharing her beliefs by the time she reaches 25 years old.

“I think we’re moving toward a time in our society when, in the next 20 to 25 years, Christians are going to see a massive amount of persecution when it comes to the topic of homosexuality, and there will be no such thing as tolerance for Christianity,” she says. “[People will believe that] if you’re a Christian, you are a horrible human being, period.”

“The true church of Jesus Christ will still stick to the Scriptures,” Ms. Hill-Perry says. “Now, those buildings that have people in them where the authority of God doesn’t trump their own feelings and emotions, I see a whole bunch of turning away from the faith — turning away from truth.”

This article was originally posted at the Washington Times website.

Written by S.M. Hutchens & Anthony Esolen

In the July/August 2013 issue of Touchstone, the editors rejected the idea that one could be both “gay” and Christian. The basis of that belief, we said, is exemplified in St. Paul’s assurance to the Corinthian church that what some of its believers used to be—and here he recited a catalog of sins that included arsenokoitai (“sexual perverts”)—they no longer were, because they had been washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God. (There is no creditable reason to believe that St. Paul’s reference here was so narrow that it only applied to those who frequented cult prostitutes in pagan temples, as if homosexual relations occurring in any other venue (cf.Rom. 1) were in his mind categorically different.)

We noted that Paul was speaking in aoristic, teleological terms: he did not say that believers, in this world,

are no longer susceptible to their old sins, nor that these old sins mustn’t be dealt with. . . . Given this apostolic definition, however, we cannot—we dare not—say there is any such thing as a “gay (or lesbian, etc.) Christian,” for the Christian by definition has been cleansed of his homosexuality. He cannot regard himself as [essentially] a homosexual—or idolater, or thief, or drunkard—nor can the Church affirm him . . . as such.

Or we might put it this way: “This is the fashion in which the image of God has been deformed in me, so that I am not myself, and my face, my very identity, is sludged up with sin.” The wayfaring Christian, on the pilgrimage to holiness—on the pilgrimage to gaining his own name and face and soul—may say, “Alas, I am a thief,” but he may never say, “I am a thief,” attributing his kleptophilia to the Creator’s intent. There are Christians who are thieves, because there are Christians who are sinners. But there can be no such thing as a Christian thief. We are ourselves at last when we can say, in glory, “It is not I, but Christ who lives in me.” And Christ is no sinner.

Returning to St. Paul: the apostle was not putting forward the kind of analysis by which moral theologians define sin, asking, for example, whether homosexual orientation is itself concupiscence and therefore sin, or when natural but objectively disordered desire in those with the tendency to sin becomes actual sin. Rather, he was speaking of theidentificationby God, by the Church, and by the person himself, as a member of a class that will not enter the kingdom of God. The Christian with regard to all his sins is a penitent, the actions and intentions of penitence foreclosing identification with a sinful condition now past because he is among the redeemed in Christ.

This needs to be reaffirmed in response to those who are saying that one can be gay and Christian as long as these identifications are combined with celibacy. No, one cannot. Celibacy is in itself no virtue, or aid in denying or overcoming sin. Denial of the desires of the flesh may serve good or evil, tending to confirm the practitioner in one or the other, according to what kind of person he is. Celibacy may be of great value in the life of a penitent—someone who is sorry for his sins and seeks to disengage from them in every way—but whoever persists in identifying himself with a sin is ipso facto not a penitent, for penitence is the active will to depart from sin. Such a person has accepted in himself what God has rejected, and to him celibacy can be nothing more than a deception and a snare. He may be something like a Stoic, or a Gnostic, or a Buddhist, or possessed of a certain class of demon, but he is not a Christian.

When he is put forward as a preceptor—a seminary professor or magazine editor, for example—and with this authority encourages others to believe that one can combine homosexuality—orarsenokoitai, or sodomy, or Aestheticism, or gayness, or whatever one wishes to call it—with Christianity in the catalytic presence of celibacy, what can save him from the “greater condemnation” to which St. James’s Epistle refers?

This article was originally posted at the Touchstonemag.com website.

A recent article in The Telegraph titled “Incest a ‘Fundamental Right’, a German Committee Says” was precipitated by the infamous case of sibling incest in Germany that resulted in four children. The couple had not been raised together, and after they met, they fell in love and started a family.

The German Ethics Council stated that “‘Criminal law is not the appropriate means to preserve a social taboo….The fundamental right of adult siblings to sexual self-determination is to be weighed more heavily than the abstract idea of protection of the family.'”

According to the Council, the increased risk of genetic abnormalities is insufficient to prohibit incestuous marriage since “‘other genetically affected couples are not banned from having children.'”

Further, the Council believes that legalizing incest would allow couples who now are forced to live secret lives to live openly and without fear.

As homosexuals and their accomplices continue to dismantle marriage, questions about whether other marital criterion, like the requirement regarding blood kinship, can long survive.

If marriage is solely about “who loves whom,” as the Left claims, how can we the people justify preventing two (or three) brothers who are in love from marrying? Who are we to judge?

Several years ago William Saletan, writer for Slate Magazine and advocate for the legalization of homoerotic pseudo-marriage, made a strained  effort to explain why incestuous couples should not be allowed to marry while homosexual couples should be.

In his article, “Incest is Cancer,” Saletan argues that allowing, for example, adult siblings to marry would have an “incinerating” effect on families. He believes that if it were possible for close blood relatives to marry when they’re consenting adults, the family structure would be poisoned by confusion and mistrust:

Morally, the family-structure argument captures our central intuition about incest: It confuses relationships. Constitutionally, this argument provides a rational basis for laws against incest. But it doesn’t provide a rational basis for laws against homosexuality. In fact, it supports the case for same-sex marriage.

When a young man falls in love with another man, no family is destroyed….

Incest spectacularly flunks this test. By definition, it occurs within an already existing family. So it offers no benefit in terms of family formation. On the contrary, it injects a notoriously incendiary dynamic—sexual tension—into the mix….Now imagine doing that to your family. That’s what incest does. Don’t take my word for it. Read….what Woody Allen’s son says about his dad: “He’s my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father …”

Just to be clear, I’m with Ronan Farrow, Woody Allen’s son/brother-in-law, but I must admit to being surprised by such moralistic rhetoric coming from the non-judgmental mouth of a liberal. Perhaps if Farrow weren’t so prudish and provincial, he could be happy for the love his father and his sister have found. After all, how has their marriage affected anyone else’s marriage? It certainly hasn’t affected mine. Perhaps Farrow’s moral outrage is the toxic side effect of an outdated taboo that Farrow clings to and uses to feed his hateful bigotry.

Apparently Saletan hasn’t noticed that the intuition he posits as obvious—which is that incest confuses relationships—can just as easily be posited about homosexuality. Homoerotic desire and activity confuse and corrupt intimate relationships between two people of the same sex. Today, close same-sex friendships are ruined by sexual activity or by unexpected homoerotic advances.

Perhaps the Westermarck Effect will put Saletan’s mind to rest—at least about sibling incest. Children raised together during the first few years of their lives experience a psychological effect called the Westermarck Effect, which renders them desensitized to sexual attraction. Allowing siblings who meet for the first time later in life to marry would likely have no “incinerating” effect on any existing families or marriages.

There is another phenomenon called Genetic Sexual Attraction in which closely related adults who were not raised together experience a strong sexual attraction to one another. For liberals, wouldn’t this point to the naturalness of some sibling-attraction—perhaps even to a biological basis for it? (Although sibling-attraction may not correspond exactly to same-sex attraction, it certainly corresponds more closely to homosexuality than homosexuality does to race.)

If the existence of a phenomenon in nature means it is inherently moral, as liberals claim in regard to homosexuality, then surely they must believe—or feel—that incest is inherently moral.

If it is morally legitimate to act upon attractions if they are powerful, persistent, and unchosen, as liberals claim it is, then surely they must believe that it is morally legitimate for siblings to act upon Genetic Sexual Attraction.

Why aren’t liberals condemning the narrow-minded bigotry that keeps loving sibling couples locked in the proverbial closet? Why not expand the definition of marriage to include siblings? Why not extend marriage equality to all without regard to accidents of birth. Why not end discrimination against people based on their consanguinity?

Saletan concludes with this clear moral declaration: “[I]ncest is wrong. There’s a rational basis to forbid it. And we shouldn’t be afraid to say so.”

In Mr. Saletan’s view, the wrongfulness of incestuous marriage that provides the rational basis for prohibiting it derives from the fact that it “incinerates” families. No social science research needed.

Well, the wrongfulness of same-sex pseudo-marriage  that provides the rational basis for legally prohibiting it derives from the fact that it incinerates families by incinerating the bonds between children and their mothers and fathers—bonds which are the only justification the government has for being in the marriage business. If, as Saletan argues, the incinerating effect of different forms of unions on children is a legitimate state interest, then surely the incinerating effect of homosexual pseudo-marriage on the bond between children and their biological parents is a cause for state action.

Homoerotic pseudo-marriage is wrong. There’s a rational basis to forbid it. And we shouldn’t be afraid to say so.

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By Andrew Walker

Hillsong Shifts on Homosexuality

Religion, and maybe Ebola, owned the news this week. From the confusion and public relations nightmare at the Vatican over the Synod’s Relatio, to the Caesarism of Annise Parker and the City of Houston subpoenaing sermons from pastors, it has been a busy week for the religion beat.

Then yesterday, coverage about a Hillsong press conference came out, indicating that the global evangelical enterprise is triangulating on homosexuality, particularly about whether it should publicly hold what the Bible teaches in light of culture’s rapid change on the subject. According to Jonathan Merritt,

At a press conference for the Hillsong Conference in New York City today, Michael Paulson of The New York Times asked Houston to clarify their church’s position on same sex marriage. But Houston would not offer a definitive answer, instead saying that it was “an ongoing conversation” among church leaders and they were “on the journey with it.”

Houston says that he considers three things when evaluating the topic: “There’s the world we live in, there’s the weight we live with, and there’s the word we live by.”

He notes that the Western world is shifting its thinking on this issue, and churches are struggling to stay relevant. The weight we live in (sic), he added, refers to a context where LGBT young people may feel rejected or shunned by churches, often leading to depression and suicide. But when Houston began speaking about the word we live by or “what the Bible says,” he refused to offer a concrete position.

Merritt’s reporting also quotes this gem: “Lentz’s wife, Laura, chimed in: “It’s not our place to tell anyone how they should live. That’s their journey.”

What do we say about this?

First, if I were writing the Art of Cultural War, this is the strategy I’d use to bring the opposing side to heel. The steps look something like this: Relativize the issue with other issues. Be uncertain about the issue. Refuse to speak publicly on the issue. Be indifferent toward the issue. Accept the issue. Affirm the issue. Require the issue. Hillsong is currently on step three. I don’t think they’ll stay there.

Second, a non-answer is an answer. Let’s be very clear on that. It’s also a very vapid answer. What we’re seeing in many corners of evangelicalism is a pliability that makes Christianity an obsequious servant to whatever the reigning zeitgeist is. With non-answers like this, it isn’t Jesus who is sitting at the right hand of the Father. Culture is. Perhaps Hillsong would rather abide by a “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell” policy on matters of orthodoxy. That’s their prerogative. But let’s be clear that this is not the route of faithfulness.

Third, this isn’t an issue over whether gays and lesbians should or should not be welcomed in church. This also isn’t an issue over whether young individuals within the LGBT community have faced bullying. Bullying of all sorts is deplorable and should be condemned, and not because the Human Rights Campaign says so, but because Jesus says so (Matthew 7:12). What this issue is about is whether the church models faithful obedience to Christ in a way that both honors Scripture and loves its neighbor. Hillsong thinks it’s doing both; but is actually doing neither.

Fourth, Hillsong thinks itself a contemporary and culturally relevant church. Perhaps it is. But as Christians, we don’t get to define what “relevant” means in terms that are unquestioning of what our culture means by “relevant.” I submit that Hillsong is a church in retreat. A church in retreat doesn’t give answers. It doesn’t storm the gates of Hell. It settles and makes peace where there is no peace (Ezekiel 13:10). A church in exile (and that’s how I’d describe the current placement of confessional evangelicalism) is one that is faithful amidst the culture, regardless of whether that culture looks more like America or more like Babylon. It knows that it may lose the culture, but that it cannot lose the Gospel. So be it.

This is, as I’ve written elsewhere, a gentrified fundamentalist withdrawal rooted in the belief that the foreignness of Christianity can’t overcome the tired intellectual patterns of cultural decay. At the end of the day, I think Hillsong’s non-answer answer is rooted in an embarrassment about what the Bible teaches and the church has held since the time of Jesus. The good news is that the truth of Christianity outlasts the untruths of man’s applause.

When I read stuff like this, my reaction isn’t anger. It’s an eye-roll. Churches should know better than to believe the myth that accommodation will swell their ranks. The opposite happens.

Following the Apostle Peter, this all means that judgment begins within the household of God, so I’m not writing for outsiders. I’m writing for the church, to the church. I’m writing about Hillsong, a church or enterprise with enormous global influence. What I see, tragically, isn’t a church grappling with a complex issue. What I see is a church exchanging compassion for cowardliness before culture’s consistory.

This article was originally posted at FirstThings.com.

Written by Michael Medved

Insistent media messages claim surging and overwhelming public support for redefinition of marriage but recent numbers from major surveys and the Census Bureau tell a very different story.

In late September, a Pew Center poll found less than half of respondents – 49% to be exact – saying that they “favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally” – a sharp five point drop since February. Without the biased wording of the question, gay marriage might have received even weaker public backing: if a survey asks you if you want to “allow” other people to do something they say they ardently desire, you’d have to be deeply committed to traditional matrimony to say no. Had Pew asked “Do you want your government to redefine marriage so that male-male and female-female couples are treated identically to traditional marriages?” the response to sweeping change could have been still less favorable.

That’s particularly obvious in light of another surprising result in the poll: a full 50% of respondents agreed with the statement that “homosexual behavior is a sin,” including 77% of black Protestants and a crushing 82% of white Evangelicals. Moreover, the overall percentage of those viewing homosexuality as “sinful” has been soaring, not declining: it’s up from 45% in May of 2013. Considering the demographics in the 31 states that have so far resisted the nationwide push for gay marriage, it’s tough to imagine that these electorates, with their heavy concentration of Evangelicals and blacks, will endorse government sponsorship of same sex couples at any time in the near future.

Supporters of gay marriage consider such resistance irrelevant and cite the “tidal wave” of same sex couples who have already legalized their unions in the nineteen states that have changed their laws to back what sloganeers call “marriage equality.” In fact, the Census Bureau recently agreed to begin counting same sex unions as official marriages in their new figures of married vs. single people, and many experts predicted that these freshly minted gay couples would give the institution of matrimony a visible boost. Alas, the incidence of homosexual wedlock remains so rare that the overall percentage of adults who are married continued to decline –to 50.3%, an all time low –according the 2013 American Community Survey. At the same time, “same-sex cohabiting partners made up an even smaller share of 2013 households than in 2012.”

The official government figures suggest that 252,000 households were headed by same-sex married couples in 2013 –less than one-half of one percent of the overall figure of 56,000,000 marriages counted by the Census Bureau. Despite the fact that a majority of the US population and an overwhelming majority of the gay population now live in states that authorize same sex marriage, the numbers suggest that well below 4% of gay adults are currently married. That compares to slightly more than 50% of straight adults – an indication that the nation remains a long way from “marriage equality.” The heavily-hyped gay marriage tidal wave remains in actuality little more than a trickle.

One more aspect of the Pew Center survey similarly suggests that the march toward same sex marriage may not prove as inexorable as its boosters suppose. The pollsters posed the question: “At the present time, do you think religion as a whole is increasing its influence on American life or losing its influence?” Some 72% believed they saw declining influence for religious faith, but by an astonishing margin of 4 to 1 they identified this trend as a “bad thing” rather than “a good thing.” In other words, the American public sees religion with a diminished role in our national culture but they overwhelmingly prefer to see its old power restored or enhanced.

As recently as November, 2001, the figures on religious influence amounted to a virtual mirror image of their status today: in the aftermath of 9/11 and the “turn toward God” that many observers discerned,  Americans saw faith increasing its impact rather than reducing it by a lopsided edge of 78-12%. That advantage quickly evaporated along with the popularity of the Bush administration, while the relentless push toward gay marriage fed the growing perception that traditional faith had lost its clout. The same way that a few big events in the early years of the new century, and shifting political trends since that time caused radical reverses in attitudes toward religion’s role, it’s hardly inconceivable that public impressions could change again.

A few victories for supporters of traditional marriage, in court rooms or at the ballot box, could well convey the idea of resurgent religiosity. A clear majority of church-going Americans, after-all, currently affiliate with denominations that passionately oppose redefining marriage: Catholics, white and black Evangelicals, Eastern Orthodox, Mormons, Muslims, and Orthodox Jews. The great bulk of such believers tell pollsters they want a more vigorous role in public debates for their churches, synagogues and mosques. Just under half of all Americans already oppose gay marriage, 50% consider homosexuality sinful and close to 80% think it’s a bad thing for religion to lose its influence. With those figures in mind, it’s wildly premature to herald the movement to redefine matrimony as a sweeping and unstoppable force, and to write off all resistance as a futile gesture.

This article was originally posted at the TruthRevolt.org website.

Is homosexuality compatible with Christianity? Can you be proudly “gay” and Christian? How do I reach out to my ‘gay’ friends without compromising the Gospel?

“Gay Christianity”—or a new apostasy? Dr. Michael Brown will address the hot topic of “Can you be ‘gay’ and Christian?” as the keynote speaker at Americans For Truth’s dinner-banquet Saturday, Oct. 25, at Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights IL. Doors open at 5:30. To sign up online for just $20/person, go to AFTAH.org/donate/; or mail you check to: AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522. Tickets are $25 dollars at the door. Click HERE for a PDF Flier about the banquet.

[PRINTABLE BANQUET FLIER: for a printable PDF Flier announcing the Oct. 25 banquet with Dr. Brown, click HERE.]

AFTAH Banquet Web page: [Click HERE AFTAH website: AmericansForTruth.org

________________________

Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) is excited to host Dr. Michael Brown to keynote our Oct. 25 “Teaching Banquet” built around the theme of Dr. Brown’s new book, “Can You Be Gay and Christian?: Responding With Love and Truth to Questions About Homosexuality.” Please bring your friends and family to this information-packed event at Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights, IL.

WHO: Dr. Michael Brown, author, “Can You Be Gay and Christian?: Responding with LOVE & TRUTH to Questions About Homosexuality” ; also, ex-“gay” leader Stephen Black and Mission America president Linda Harvey will be speaking.  And AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera will discuss his upcoming “Free Speech” trial in Canada, which almost BANNED him from entering that country on the basis that he would “incite hate.”

This is an excellent opportunity to bring your friends, family and young adults who are confused about homosexuality. They will hear Dr. Brown and the speakers answer such tough questions as:

• Are people ‘born gay’?
• How should I answer when an LGBT advocate says “Jesus never said anything about homosexuality”?
• What do I say when I’m accused of “judging” my friends living a homosexual lifestyle?
• What is the best response when pro-homosexual “marriage” activists say: “How does a loving and committed ‘gay’ couple’s same-sex marriage affect YOUR marriage?”
• What is the best way to reach out in love to my homosexual friends and family members—without compromising the Gospel?

[To read Dr. Brown’s column, ‘No One is Born Gay,” go HERE. To read Brown’s column on Houston lesbian Mayor Annise Parker’s effort to subpoena the sermon notes of five local pastors, see his column: “Mayor Parker, City Attorney Feldman: You Will Not Put Us in the Closet”

ESSENTIALS:

WHEN: Saturday, October 25; doors open at 5:30 PM; dinner served at 6:30.

WHERE: Christian Liberty Academy, 502 W. Euclid Ave., Arlington Heights, IL

COST: Tickets are only $20/person in advance (payment received by Oct. 24) or $25 at the door. Dinner is included. Table Sponsorship: just $200 for a table of 10. Sign up online at www.aftah.com/donate/, or mail your check to:

AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522.

THEME: “Can You Be ‘Gay’ and Christian? A Teaching Banquet on Homosexuality and the Church”

AFTAH Banquet Page: [Click HERE]; PDF Banquet  Flier: [Click HERE]

Phone: 312-324-3787; E-mail to RSVP: americansfortruth@gmail.com; or email Brad Wallace at connops@yahoo.com.

Michael L. Brown holds a PhD from New York University in Near Eastern languages and literatures, and is recognized as one of the leading Messianic Jewish scholars in the world today. In addition to his latest book debunking “gay Christianity,” Dr. Brown is author of “A Queer Thing Happened to America,” a 691-page book on the LGBT agenda. He is the founder and president of FIRE School of Ministry and host of the nationally syndicated talk radio show The Line of Fire. The author of more than 20 books, Dr. Brown is a contributor to The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion and other scholarly publications.

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PDF of Banquet Flier: click this link: AFTAH-Banquet-Flier-Dr-Michael-Brown_2014

** UPDATE**: Former homosexual (ex-”gay”) leader Stephen Black (right) of First Stone Ministries, based in Oklahoma City, will be attending our banquet. Stephen will offer his observations on the downfall of the ex-”gay” umbrella group Exodus International under false teaching–and the rise of Restored Hope Network to take its place as offering the hope of change for men and women struggling with homosexuality.

Also, Linda Harvey of Columbus-based Mission America–a leading Christian expert on the homosexual-bisexual-transgender agenda in schools–will be on hand at the banquet! Harvey will be signing her book, “Maybe He’s Not Gay: Another View on Homosexuality.”

Said AFTAH’s Peter LaBarbera:

“We are thrilled to have these two national pro-family leaders joining Dr. Brown at our banquet to answer your questions about the homosexual activist agenda and the “gay” campaign to subvert Christianity. If you are perplexed about how to respond to ubiquitous media propaganda surrounding homosexual ‘marriage’– and the new ‘gay Christian’ campaign to accommodate homosexuality–come and bring a friend or two to CLA on Saturday, October 25. You will leave better equipped to speak God’s truth in love in the culture!”

Written by Matt Walsh

Some people have accused me of being against marriage equality. This is completely unfair. I’m not against it. I’m not anti-it. I don’t oppose it. I don’t think it should be prevented. I don’t think we should ban marriage equality or make it illegal.

I have no problem with marriage equality — except that it doesn’t exist. It can’t exist. It never has existed. It never will exist. ‘Marriage equality’ — that is, the idea that the union between a man and a man can achieve equality with the union between a man and a woman — is nonsense.

How would I oppose that which cannot be? That’s like trying to pass a law to deny Santa Claus his voting rights.

I bring this up because yesterday the Supreme Court, acting with its usual courage and fortitude, decided to take the ‘gay marriage’ ball and punt it back down the field. In one swoop, they rejected appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin, effectively granting legalization by deferring to the rulings of lower courts, which had already abolished the bans in those states. Now, by my count, the ‘states with gay marriage’ count will rapidly jump from nine to about 30.

This isn’t a surprise, of course. And it won’t be a surprise when there’s something called ‘gay marriage’ everywhere in the country. Sometime between the divorce rate skyrocketing and out-of-wedlock births reaching 40 percent nationwide, it became obvious that our society has very little energy for preserving, defending, respecting, or even participating in marriage. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t bother resisting ‘gay marriage,’ it’s simply to say that we are poorly equipped to do so. And barely interested, it would seem.

Progressives brag that the cultural tide is moving in their direction. They’re right, it is. A society that communicates in emoticons and watches Adam Sandler movies also tends to think liberal ideas are pretty solid. Makes perfect sense, really. They’ve won over fools with foolishness, and I think it’s pretty cute that they’re so proud of it.

But foolish or not, their ideology is winning the day (and the decade, and the last century or so), which is why, at some point, people on the other side better grow enough of a collective brain and spine to oppose it. And if we started precisely with the two issues we’ve gotten so used to avoiding — ‘gay marriage’ and abortion — we would find that the entire progressive house of intellectual cards comes tumbling down rather easily.

‘Gay marriage’ and abortion are the holiest liberal sacraments because they alter the nature of life and of the family. If progressives can reconstitute human life just so they can get laid more frequently, and if they can remodel the family in service of their political agenda, and if these little fine tunes become accepted and promoted in the mainstream, then their agenda can go anywhere and do anything. It has, so it has.

You think you can win an argument about immigration now? Gun rights? Education? Ice cream flavors? Dude, they just waved their magic wand and turned a baby into a lifeless chunk of cells. They snapped their fingers and made the institution of marriage bend to their whim. You don’t stand a chance on any issue when you’re living in a world recreated in their image.

But ‘gay marriage’ and abortion aren’t merely ‘issues.’ They are the bedrock on which all progressive philosophy rests. If we aren’t going to attack the foundation, then we might as well shut up and learn to get along.

And so today, as liberals again trumpet this conflicted notion of ‘marriage equality’ (check out this handy marriage equality map from BuzzFeed!) Despite the compelling case made by the pink Facebook equal sign, I’d like to take it back to the basics and explain why ‘gay marriage’ is not and can never be equal to ‘traditional marriage.’ After the news of the court decision (or lack thereof) broke, Huffington Post declared in big bold letter across their front page: FIVE STATES GET MARRIAGE EQUALITY. Yet marriage equality is a logical and physical impossibility; it can’t be gotten or granted or instated.

To flesh out my reasoning, I’m going to ask myself questions and then answer them, which is either a good way to illustrate a point or an early sign of dementia.

Here goes:

-Is there a basic and fundamental difference between the union of two men and the union of a man and a woman?

Yes.

Here is a list of those differences:

1) One involves people of the same sex, the other does not.

2) In one there is never any possibility of procreation, whereas in the other there is.

These are two solid, objective, observable differences right out of the gate. Before we go any further, we already know that the two things cannot be equal because in order to be equal they would need to be the same. They are not the same, and so they are not equal.

Case closed.

But I’m longwinded, so lets continue.

-OK, but are the differences significant?

It’s interesting that we even have to ask this question.

This is a country where we go out and buy new iPhones because they’re slightly different from the iPhones we bought 14 months ago. We pay for upgraded seats on an airplane because they’re slightly better than the seats three rows back. We cry discrimination and persecution if we find out that our coworker makes slightly more than us, or has a slightly bigger office, or a slightly more comfortable chair. We purchase TVs for a slightly clearer picture. In other words, we find immense, world-shattering connotations in the faintest little cosmetic changes and deviations, yet we struggle to appreciate the difference between heterosexual and homosexual couples; a difference that, if I must remind you, involves the creation of human life.

A man and a woman can get together and make a person. They can, between the two of them, conceive a human child. If I have to put this in terms that my fellow nostalgic millennials will comprehend: a man and a woman can combine their powers, much like the kids from Captain Planet, and bring forth into the world another sentient being. Only this being hopefully won’t be a spandex-clad vigilante who goes around assaulting people for littering in a public park.

Of course, the birth control industry and Planned Parenthood would like for us to see our procreative capacity as some minor and unimpressive little nuisance, but that’s only because they’ve got a product to sell. In reality, we can say what we want about it, but we can’t say that it’s immaterial. A man and a woman can make a baby. This means something. A man and a man cannot. This also means something.

Whatever it means, it means at least that the two relationships differ from one another. They are not equal. One is something, the other is something else. They are not the same. They are not equal.

-Yes, a man and a man can’t make a baby, but not all married heterosexual couples can, either. If two fellas can’t get married for this reason, what about infertile people or people who simply choose not to have kids?

Much like the ancient blogger Socrates, I will answer this question with more questions:

Is it accurate to say that, in principle, human beings have eardrums?

If so, what about a person born deaf or a person who loses their hearing in a tragic accident later in life?

Are they now subhuman?

Do they belong to some other species?

What about teenage girls who choose to ignore the constructive potential of their eardrums by using them to listen to Nicki Minaj or that new Taylor Swift song?

Do any of these examples falsify my “human beings have eardrums” statement?

Or do they simply reflect the fact that abnormalities sometimes occur?

So, yes, some heterosexual couples can’t conceive children. This happens by disability, mutation, disease, defect, or some other physical misfortune, but we call it a defect precisely because we recognize that there is a procreative potential for which these individuals should share in but do not, through no fault of their own.

These people can’t have kids incidentally, whereas two men or two women can’t have kids by the very nature of their union. One is an accident of nature — an aberration — while the other is a crucial element of nature itself.

As for couples who can have kids but choose to remain childless forever: their marriage is perfectly legitimate, but their choice, in many cases (not all), is not.

Fertile, healthy married couples have not only the ability to procreate, but often the responsibility. Few will say this anymore — we’d much prefer to discuss our rights and freedoms than our duties and obligations — but most married couples who are able to have children are also called to that life.

Nowadays we don’t do anything unless we want to do it, and the idea of doing something we aren’t one hundred percent excited about seems abhorrent to us. But in the old days people had kids because they wanted to and because they felt it was their vocation. I think that’s a beautiful mentality, and a rare one in these ‘me first’ times.

-So the marriage between a man and a woman is different from the marriage between two men or two women, and the difference is quite essential. Fine. But should the government codify that difference by awarding the ‘marriage’ title only to heterosexual couples? Why shouldn’t the government just stay out of it entirely?

Great question, Self, but worded wrongly.

The government doesn’t ‘award’ marriage or give it away like a cash prize in Wheel of Fortune. All of the government can do — and should do — is recognize the natural reality of the situation.

If marriage is anything, then it is an institution meant to bind a husband to his wife, a wife to her husband, and both mother and father to their children. If it is something at all, then it is the foundation of civilization. It establishes the context in which families are formed and children are raised.

It is that or it is nothing. It is that or it is what people say it is now: just a temporary and soluble agreement between two people who feel some sort of mutual attraction. And if that’s all it is, then certainly the government shouldn’t acknowledge it or say anything about it one way or another.

Why do we need governments and courts to involve themselves in creating rules and tax codes for some provisional alliance between two (or three or 57) adults who merely wish to live together (or apart, or whatever they want) and ‘love each other’?

You see, if gay marriage is even possible — if marriage can fundamentally be an institution that includes same sex partnerships — then it is, by definition, not solid enough or essential enough to our civilization to warrant any of these legal challenges and ballot measures. You want to love another person? Go. Go love them. Nothing is stopping you. There is no law preventing it. If marriage is only a bond between two (or however many) lovers, why would anyone ask for it to be ‘legalized’? It’s not illegal, and it never could be,

The very fact that we are having this conversation proves that everyone involved sees marriage as something greater than a ‘contract between consenting adults.’ And if it’s something more significant, then we are back to the old definition, which is the only definition that makes sense in the first place.

You can’t argue for gay marriage without arguing against it.

In the end, we find out that I have worded my own arguments wrongly. It’s not that gay marriage isn’t equal to straight marriage, it’s that gay marriage can’t exist, no matter what words we use, but ‘traditional’ marriage does, no matter how progressive we all are.

Then the question becomes: should the government grant any special protections or acknowledgments to the ‘traditional’ marriage institution? Should it be given a special status, or should Uncle Sam just stay out of it?

Obviously. Obviously marriage should be both recognized and, to some extent, protected by the State. The only other options are for the government to pretend it doesn’t exist, or to pretend that it’s something other than what it is.

No matter what the State does, the essence of marriage cannot be changed, and marriage will still be a sacrament bestowed by God through a husband onto his wife and a wife onto her husband. But where is the value in having a government that either ignores this fundamental human institution, or worse, constructs some kind of wild fantasy where the laws of biology and physics are changed so that the love between two men can suddenly be seen as identical to the love between a man and woman?

Generally, if our country sees something as crucial to our very survival as a nation (not to mention as a species) we don’t ask our politicians to rally around a battle cry to overlook it or invent some delusional version of it.

Yes, then, I want the government involved in marriage, in the sense that I want the government to acknowledge its existence and recognize how momentously important it is to our national prosperity. If that makes me forfeit my libertarian credentials, so be it.

Marriage equality does not exist.

Marriage isn’t equal to anything because there aren’t any other versions competing with it.

Marriage is only one particular thing, and it will never be anything else.

We don’t have to like that fact, but we need to accept it.

This article was originally posted at TheBlaze.com website.

U.S. Republican House Speaker John Boehner (OH), who came under fire from conservatives for resisting the creation of a Benghazi select committee until the scandal got too big to ignore, is under fire from conservatives once again. On Saturday he raised funds for Carl DeMaio, a gay Republican congressional candidate at the center of a scandal to turn the GOP into a gay-friendly political party like the Obama Democrats.

DeMaio, charged with sexual harassment and exhibitionism, is one of the Republican “young guns” getting official Republican money and support. But he has also enjoyed the strong support of Fox News personalities, especially Richard Grenell, a Fox News contributor and homosexual activist who advises his campaign.

The Conservative Review calls DeMaio a “deviant” and wonders whether the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC) vetted DeMaio before the Republican Party funneled $1 million into his campaign.

DeMaio probably never anticipated that being labeled “the candidate to watch” in the GOP would turn out this way. His accuser, former staffer Todd Bosnich, said in an exclusive interview with CNN that he came into DeMaio’s office and saw him openly masturbating.

The alleged misconduct went much further than this, however. CNN reported Bosnich said DeMaio “would find him alone and make inappropriate advances, massaging and kissing his neck and groping him.” On another occasion, Bosnich said DeMaio “grabbed my crotch.”

DeMaio, a former member of the San Diego City Council, denies all the charges. But he reportedly had a similar problem when he was accused of masturbating in a San Diego City Hall restroom.

Although House Speaker Boehner is under fire for supporting the controversial candidate, the growing scandal pits two news organizations, Fox and CNN, against each other.

Back in January, Fox News had run a story about DeMaio preparing to “make history” in the congressional race, while Dana Perino, co-host of the channel’s “The Five,” hailed DeMaio for being in a “committed relationship” with another man and the first candidate “to feature his partner in campaign literature.”

“Full disclosure,” said Perino. “I am a former employee of the San Diego City Council, where I worked with Ric Grenell, now again a colleague of mine at Fox News Channel, and who currently consults on the DeMaio campaign.”

Despite this conflict of interest, DeMaio appeared on Fox News with Martha MacCallum and declared, “I don’t think either political party ought to be talking about social issues.”

Yet, his campaign website declares that on social issues:

• Carl DeMaio supports “marriage equality.”
• Carl DeMaio supports medical marijuana…
• Carl DeMaio supports a woman’s right to choose…

Boehner’s fundraising for the controversial candidate comes as prominent San Diego Christians have announced they will cast a “tactical vote” against DeMaio and in support of his Democratic opponent, Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA).

The letter from the Christian leaders, issued before the sex scandal broke wide open, says DeMaio not only supports homosexual “marriage,” but abortion rights. He supports “medical marijuana” and is reported to be open to the idea of legalizing marijuana for recreational purposes.

He also accepts the Obama line on so-called climate change, having declared that “human activity has an impact on the climate,” and that “we must continue to invest in research to determine what is happening, why, and what we can do to mitigate it.”

The Christian leaders declared, “DeMaio is an avowed LGBTQ activist (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning). The LGBTQ movement believes in a genderless society, where God’s order of male and female is denied. Their goal is much greater than that. It is to impose their views upon us, with the intent of abolishing our rights to freedom of religious conscience, coercing us to affirm homosexual practice and to forever alter the historic, natural definition of marriage.”

Despite the sex scandal charges against DeMaio, Boehner and the National Republican Congressional Committee are still in support of this “new generation Republican” candidate.

However, former Arkansas Governor and Republican pro-family leader Mike Huckabee is threatening to leave the GOP over the issue. “If the Republicans want to lose guys like me—and a whole bunch of still God-fearing Bible-believing people—go ahead and just abdicate on this issue, and while you’re at it, go ahead and say abortion doesn’t matter, either,” he said.

CNN’s coverage of the issue has noted the relationship between DeMaio and Fox News contributor Grenell.

After interviewing Bosnich on camera, CNN said it “repeatedly tried to get detailed answers from DeMaio’s campaign,” but that a conference call “was led by hired consultant Richard Grenell, a former Mitt Romney presidential campaign spokesperson and Fox News contributor. Grenell refused to answer questions and accused CNN of being on a partisan witch hunt.”

Grenell is an official of Capitol Media Partners and an open homosexual who appears frequently on Fox News. His areas of expertise include “crisis communications,” and his website declares, “Capitol Media Partners has a proven track record of working with journalists, editors and executives to mitigate developing stories and shape ongoing news coverage. We have extensive contacts and relationships with a variety of national and international reporters across industries and beats.”

But the crisis has been building for DeMaio and Boehner.

CNN noted, “This is not the first time DeMaio has been accused of sexually inappropriate behavior. Last year, a fellow city councilman, Ben Hueso, said he twice caught DeMaio masturbating in a semi-private city hall restroom accessible only to city officials.”

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) had given DeMaio $10,000; Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) contributed $5,000; and Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) had kicked in $1,000.

Meanwhile, national pro-family leaders have sent a letter to Boehner and other Republican officials opposing official GOP support for candidates like DeMaio who are openly homosexual or pro-abortion.

The letter, signed by Brian S. Brown, President, National Organization for Marriage; Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council; and Tom Minnery, President, CitizenLink, said, “The undersigned organizations are writing to inform you that we actively oppose the election of Republican House of Representative candidates Carl DeMaio (CA-52) and Richard Tisei (MA-6) and Oregon U.S. Senate candidate Monica Wehby and will mount a concerted effort to urge voters to refuse to cast ballots for them in the November election.”

Richard Tisei is a homosexual Republican running for the U.S. House from Massachusetts, while Monica Wehby is a GOP Senate candidate from Oregon who has endorsed homosexual marriage.

The letter said:

This decision was reached only after having exhausted all attempts to convince the Republican leadership of the grave error it was making in advancing candidates who do not hold core Republican beliefs and, in fact, are working to actively alienate the Republican base. We believe that Republican candidates should embrace the full spectrum of conservative principles—economic, national security and social issues—that have defined our party since President Reagan led us to a transformative victory. While we acknowledge that a national party must accommodate varying points of view on matters of prudence, we also believe a party must stand for certain core principles that it expects its candidates to defend.

Referring to the National Republican Congressional Committee supporting candidates like DeMaio, Tony Perkins has said it appears that “some of the GOP want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory” this November.

Sounding optimistic, candidates DeMaio and Tisei have formed a joint fundraising committee called the Equality Leadership Fund, and plan to “build a foundation for other gay Republicans to use in their campaigns for office.”

But that depends on Republicans voting for and electing these candidates.

Pro-family advocate Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth says Republican “big shots” have failed to take into account  the number of social conservatives who will “walk away from the GOP or simply not vote,” as result of the party nominating candidates like DeMaio.

This article was originally posted at the Accuracy in Media website.

It’s called Pandora’s Box.

And the Supreme Court just opened it.

Did you actually think the debate over “gay marriage” was about marriage? Have you really come to believe that this cultural kerfuffle has anything to do with “civil rights” or “equality”? Have you bought into the popular premise that this is a legitimate discussion on federalism – that it’s a reasonable disagreement over whether the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause requires that newfangled “gay marriage,” something rooted in same-sex sodomy, a deviant and disease-prone behavior our Constitution’s framers officially declared “the infamous crime against nature,” be made law of the land?

A lot of people have, so don’t feel bad. A lot of reasonable, well-meaning and even, at times, intelligent people have taken the bait.

But that’s all window dressing. It’s superficial. It’s collateral. It’s chaff, a diversion, a squirrel. Don’t chase it.

At its core, this increasingly heated fight over “gay marriage” is about two diametrically opposed and profoundly incompatible views of reality (or lack thereof). It’s the modern manifestation of a millennia-old clash between worldviews. This ugly cultural conflict is, in reality, neither legal nor political in nature, but, rather, is fundamentally a philosophical debate. Ultimately, it derives from, and is illustrative of, deep-seated spiritual warfare. Quite simply, the clash over “gay marriage” is emblematic of the larger, and much older, clash between good and evil.

And it’s reaching critical mass.

On the one hand, on the natural marriage side, we have a worldview that recognizes absolute truth – that acknowledges the fixed moral and natural law, authored and enforced from time immemorial by the sovereign and loving Creator of the universe. This same Creator, incidentally, just happened to design and define the very institution over which we quarrel. Those with this worldview concede that every man, woman and child is accountable to this sovereign Creator and will, one day, stand before Him to face final judgment for what they did or did not do during their infinitesimally short-lived stint here on earth.

This, though not a comprehensive representation, is the biblical worldview.

On the other hand, on the unnatural marriage side (or the “marriage equality” side as these self-styled “progressives” euphemistically prefer), we have a worldview that denies absolute truth. It imagines there are no fixed lines of demarcation between right and wrong – that morality, that reality, is entirely relative and, therefore, the very notion of good and evil, right and wrong, sin and repentance are but false and limiting constructs concocted in the narrow minds of a dull bevy of sheepherders some thousands of years ago.

Since those with this worldview either deny God’s very existence altogether or, alternatively, believe that some version of god, like marriage, can be defined, or redefined, in the mind of the beholder, they claim accountability to no one (except goddess political correctness) and, thus, declare reality to be that which they, the secular-”progressive” intelligentsia, proclaim it to be (e.g., that manmade, credulity-straining, reality-warping and oxymoronic counterfeit called “same-sex marriage”).

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who happens to be both a big fan of unnatural marriage and one of the aforementioned intelligentsia, summarized this worldview neatly when he wrote the following in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. He did so while attempting to rationalize government-sanctioned child sacrifice, the evil twin to “gay marriage”: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life,” he pontificated.

Right. Lay off the ‘shrooms, dude.

In other words, man is the measure of all things. Man is god, and there is no god but man. According to Kennedy, and as was first suggested by a garden snake a very long time ago, truth is defined by man’s “individual concept of existence.”

This, of course, is empirically and manifestly stupid.

And so both of these worldviews cannot be right. It’s impossible. The law of non-contradiction precludes it.

So who is right?

It’s simple. Those who acknowledge objective reality, natural morality and absolute truth are right. Those who recognize that there are fixed biological, moral and natural laws – that despite the rebellious machinations of fallen man, can be neither altered nor ignored – won the debate before the debate even began.

There is no debate.

Yet the debate goes on.

As for the continuing kangaroo courtrooms overseeing and facilitating the destruction of marriage via judicial fiat, I fully expect that additional reality-denying judges will call up down, black white and evil good. They’ll declare a “constitutional right” to sodomy-based marriage.

It’s all the rage right now.

Still, there is no legitimate legal argument to be made in favor of this absurdity. The common law, natural law and reality itself preclude any man, any court, any government, even state governments, from presuming to redefine the institution of marriage to exclude the necessary element of binary male-female complementarity.

Mankind can no more redefine marriage to include same-sex parings than can he suspend the laws of gravity.

Yet these arrogant, godless, black-robed autocrats presume to do just that.

The courts are tossing around spiritual nitroglycerin here. It’s the stuff that brings down entire civilizations. Here’s the bad news: The aforementioned Justice Kennedy is the swing vote in favor of imposing fuax marriage on everyone.

Here’s the good news: God will not be mocked.