I read with amusement a recent Chicago Tribune article about writer Salman Rushdie’s appearance at the Chicago Humanities Festival in which he “railed against censorship.” When asked about censorship, Rushdie waxed irritated about some Duke University students who chose not to read the book selected by the university for all incoming freshmen: Alison Bechdel’s comic book graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. They refused to read it because of its graphic depictions of sexuality which conflict with their religious beliefs.

It’s remarkable that the example that pops into Rushdie’s mind when asked about censorship is of conservatives choosing not to read a novel when the preponderance of censorship found within academia (and public middle and high schools) is perpetrated by “progressives” who censor conservative resources.

Rushdie pontificated that students who chose not to read Bechdel’s memoir don’t belong at elite universities:

Maybe you should just not be at Duke. Maybe you should just step down and make room for people who actually want to learn something.

Just to flesh things out a bit, Fun Home tells the true story of lesbian Bechdel’s childhood and young adulthood. She was raised by a distant, abusive, closeted (but active) homosexual father who sometimes preyed on young boys, and a distant, unaffectionate mother. Her picture book includes cartoon drawings of the author/protagonist masturbating and engaging in lesbian sex. Rushdie risibly suggests that the refusal to read this book constitutes an absence of a desire to learn.

Those who believe Bechdel’s ugly, unwise book belongs in academia, a place which  should be committed to fostering that which is good, true, and beautiful, are lost in spiritual darkness.

Rushdie has a novel understanding of “censorship.” Freely choosing not to read a text that professors—likely Leftist professors—have selected is now censorship. Censorship more commonly understood refers either to prohibiting the publication of a text or refusing to allow it to be read. Censorship is not commonly understood as the voluntary choice not to read a text. Judiciousness and free choice are recast as censorship.

Once again liberals redefine a term to serve their arrogant desire to impose their beliefs on everyone. Read whatever tripe “progressive” professors assign or they will mock you as a censor. Condescension is the last refuge of presumptuous, dogmatic, moralistic scoundrels.

Perhaps one of the reasons it’s easier in academia to find examples of texts that conservatives refuse to read than it is to find examples of texts liberal students refuse to read is that texts that liberal students would refuse to read are not chosen by professors in the first place. The real censorship occurs during the text-selection process.

If professors did choose conservative resources, they would be obliged to provide censorious trigger warnings in advance to avoid giving the vapors to delicate “progressive” students. And then, those students would engage in Rushdie’s form of censorship in order to avoid the trauma of microaggression.

High schools now teach Rent, The Laramie Project, The Book of Mormon, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and yet I have not heard of a single high school having students read, for example, essays or books written by conservative scholars on the nature and morality of homosexuality or marriage. Could that be considered censorship?

Is the free choice not to immerse oneself in a book that presents perversion positively and includes obscene images that violate one’s religious convictions ever justifiable in the incoherent philosophical universe of progressives? In their mad, mad, mad, mad world, do ideas have consequences?

This is not to say that Fun Home, which was made into Broadway musical and won a Tony award last May for Best New Musical, is utterly devoid of value. Through the depiction of her profoundly dysfunctional family, perhaps Bechdel has inadvertently offered insight into the environmental factors that may have contributed to her homoerotic attraction.

I say, kudos to the Duke University students. Moral lives matter.

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No, you haven’t lost your mind.

Yes, America has.

If someone just 20 years ago had said, for starters, that we’d someday elect an anti-American president who would intentionally flood our borders with millions of illegal immigrants and Islamist “refugees,” that we’d soon celebrate as “heroic” a former Olympic champion for mutilating his body and pretending to be a woman, that we’d have five extremist lawyers on the Supreme Court unconstitutionally force the radical redefinition of marriage to mollify people with same-sex fetishes – you might call that person crazy.

Well, crazy is the new normal. America has lost its mind. We’ve snapped. Anyone with eyes to see, ears to hear and a brain to think knows it.

But why? How did it happen? What exactly caused America’s moral GPS to send our nation headlong into oncoming traffic?

And can anything be done to fix it?

Maybe once in a generation are we so graced with a communicator like veteran journalist and best-selling author David Kupelian. His matchless ability to unpack the complicated issues of our day with simplistic precision is nothing short of genius, a gift from God he has shared once more in his latest book, “The Snapping of the American Mind: Healing a Nation Broken by a Lawless Government and Godless Culture.”

As I’ve said before, when David puts pen to paper, it “has the same effect on your brain that yawning has on your ears at high altitude. Things just suddenly pop with crystal clarity.” The closest comparison I can make to David Kupelian is author and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. As a Lewis enthusiast of the first order, I don’t make that comparison lightly.

In, “The Snapping of the American Mind,” Kupelian one ups himself by exploring, in lucid detail, the root cause of our current age of lawlessness and moral anarchy. Yet, somehow, he manages to leave us filled with hope for American revival and renewal. “Snapping” is just the book America needs for a time such a time as this.

In it you will learn:

• How the left has succeeded in redefining not just “marriage,” but the rest of Americans’ core values, from “equality” to “justice” to “freedom”;
• Why America, unquestionably the least racist nation on earth, is now being portrayed as a deeply racist pariah state;
• Why the United States is intentionally being flooded with millions of needy, dependent, Third World immigrants;
• How a group that amputates healthy body parts and has a 41 percent attempted suicide rate is officially declared “normal,” yet new “research” suggests conservatives have malformed brains;
• Which of the two major U.S. political parties has a far higher incidence of mental illness;
• Why Americans today are more stressed-out, confused, conflicted and addicted than at any time in the nation’s history – and where this ominous trend is leading;
• And much, much more …

Kupelian, who is vice president and managing editor of WND and editor of Whistleblower magazine, authored two previous blockbuster bestsellers, “The Marketing of Evil” and its sequel, “How Evil Works.”

“The progressive left under Obama,” he writes of his new book, “is accomplishing much more than just enlarging government, redistributing wealth and de-Christianizing the culture. With its wild celebration of sexual anarchy, its intimidating culture of political correctness and its incomprehension of the fundamental sacredness of human life, it is also, whether intentionally or not, promoting widespread dependency, debauchery, family breakdown, crime, corruption, depression and addiction.”

“Surveying this growing chaos in American society,” notes the book’s summary, “Kupelian exposes both the utopian revolutionaries and their extraordinary methods that have turned America’s most cherished values literally upside down – to the point that madness is celebrated and normality demonized.”

In essence, “Snapping” untangles the modern-day manifestation of the timeless biblical truth found in Isaiah 5:20: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

But unlike the woeful occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Kupelian offers a substantive path forward – real hope and real change that will fundamentally repair what the “progressive” left has “fundamentally transformed.”

“I don’t give up hope,” said Kupelian on the radio show “Coast to Coast AM” with George Noory. “I mean, you could say, if there’s no hope then what do you do? You go off, you drop out, you live for yourself, for your family, and you try to live a good life. No; too many people have fought and bled and died to help this country and to help strangers in foreign lands. There’s still half the country that has not had their mind snapped.”

Which half of the country maintains majority influence over the whole, may determine whether we have any future at all.

“The Snapping of the American Mind” is good medicine for an America gone mad.

Pick it up today. Read. Learn. Plan.

Because America’s time may be running out.

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Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke demonstrated his usual glib condescension yesterday in his ridicule of a Tennessee county commissioner’s odd proposed resolution. What is striking in Huppke’s relentless efforts to mock anyone who believes marriage has an ontology central to which is sexual differentiation is that he studiously avoids engagement with the ideas expressed by the foremost scholars defending the historical understanding of the nature of marriage. Such avoidance smacks of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice.

Does Huppke believe that marriage has no ontology or does he believe it does but that no one apprehended it correctly until homosexual activists did in the late 20th Century. Perhaps if he spent less time mocking those who are easy targets for his attacks—targets that don’t require him to make any actual arguments that he must defend with evidence—and more time engaging with substantive ideas, we would learn more about his beliefs.

For example, does he believe that marriage has a nature that societies merely recognize and regulate, or does he believe marriage is wholly a social construction—a social invention created by a vast, millenia-old, cross-cultural, patriarchal conspiracy?

If marriage is merely a social invention with no inherent nature, why not recognize unions constituted by platonic or storge love as “marriages”?

If marriage is wholly a social construction, then why not expand marriage to include any number of people of assorted “genders” (or no “gender”)?

If marriage is wholly a social construction and, as the Left argues, has no inherent connection to procreative potential, then why prohibit consenting brothers from marrying?

If, on the other hand, Huppke believes marriage has a nature but that nature is devoid of any connection to procreative potential and is solely constituted by love, then why erotic love? Other than procreation, which the Left argues is irrelevant to the nature of marriage, what is so special about erotic love that would render it of interest to the government? If marriage is wholly unrelated to procreative potential, then why is the government involved at all? After all, the government isn’t involved in recognizing and regulating other non-reproductive types of loving relationships.

Here’s an idea, why doesn’t Huppke spend some time reading and writing about the substantive, deeply intellectual ideas of Princeton University law professor Robert George, John Finnis (shared by Notre Dame and Oxford), Ryan Anderson, Michael Brown, Anthony Esolen, Robert Gagnon, and Doug Wilson. Yes, mocking their ideas may be a tad more challenging for Huppke, but his refutations would make infinitely more interesting reading than his ridicule of culturally non-influential people from small Tennessee towns.

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There is a new study from Queen Mary University in London, England, which looked at the words used on Twitter.  Keep in mind that Twitter is an Internet medium that only allows posts of up to 140 characters in length – two short sentences at best.

The study of over 10,000 Twitter users found that “left-wingers” (ya gotta love the Brits’ adjectives) use profanity far more often than “right-wingers” on social media.

The study stripped out all the common words and looked at differentiating words between Republicans and Democrats.  Remarkably, the obscenities that begin with “F” and “S” made the list of Democrats’ top 20 words.  Among Republicans’ top 20 words were “God” and “America.”    They also found that Republicans were more likely to use words “we” and “our” whereas Democrats used the words “I” and “me” more often.  Democrats were more likely to use the word “love” or “like” and to talk about feelings.  Republicans using Twitter mentioned “Obama” or “Obamacare” far more often than Democrats.

This will shock the political establishment as much as it probably shocked CNN. The cable news outlet has a new poll that finds that the importance of social issues to voters has jumped in recent years.  (The political leadership of the party routinely advises Republican candidates and officials to avoid social issues.)

The poll finds that voters care deeply about the culture and they are far more concerned about social issues than they were four years ago.  In 2011, for example, 22 percent of voters said protecting the 2^nd Amendment was “extremely” important.  That number has nearly doubled with 42 percent now saying the protection of gun rights is extremely important.

Four years ago, 20 percent of voters felt so strongly about abortion that they deemed it extremely important.  That number has now climbed to 27 percent. (This may be because of the undercover videos exposing the dismemberment and sale of baby parts.)

Concern over illegal aliens has also jumped from 29 percent who called it extremely important four years ago to 39 percent today.

Senior editor of The American Conservative, Rod Dreher, opposes Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis’ act of civil disobedience. As most adults know—with the possible exception of those interviewed on Watters’ World—Kim Davis is refusing to issue marriage licenses with her signature to couples whose unions are inherently non-marital. After being denied even the teeny tiniest religious accommodation, Davis was thrown in the brig, which is a penalty that liberal government officials who have engaged in far more egregious acts of civil disobedience have not suffered.

In his post, Dreher predicts this parade of hypothetical horribles will result from Kim Davis’ action:

1.) Gay marriage will still be the law of the land.

2.) A huge number of secular and/or liberal people in this country will be far less disposed to listen to anybody talk about religious liberty, and will be more willing to regard all religious liberty claims as Kim Davis-like special pleading.

3.) A non-trivial number of conservatives will lose patience with and sympathy for religious conservatives, because whatever they think about same-sex marriage, they will see this as fundamentally a law-and-order issue.

4.)A huge number of conservative Christians will become ever more alienated from America and angry at the government. This will hasten their exodus from the public square, and the fraying of the social fabric.

Well, Dreher is not arguing that horrible #1 will be a result of her action. Rather, he’s suggesting that since “gay marriage” will still be the law of the land, Davis’ act of civil disobedience is an exercise in futility.

Ending “gay marriage,” however, is not her goal. Clearly she, like many Americans, desires that “gay marriage” not be legal, but that isn’t her goal. Her goal in refusing to issue marriage licenses to those in non-marital unions is simply to have her name removed so that there is not even an appearance of complicity in the absurd and offensive act of recognizing same-sex unions as marriages. It remains to be seen whether she will succeed in achieving that goal.

But with regard to Dreher’s somewhat irrelevant point on the inefficacy of one act of civil disobedience: Did anyone think that Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of the bus would in one fell swoop change Jim Crow laws (and no, I’m not equating the injustice Kim Davis faces with the injustice Rosa Parks faced)? Does the failure of one act of civil disobedience to change laws undermine its value?

I agree with Dreher that following Kim Davis’ action, we will see horrible #2 and #3, because those already exist. Nice bit of rhetorical tricksiness on Dreher’s part to attribute existing cultural phenomena to Kim Davis’ act of civil disobedience. Does anyone think that most secularists and/or liberals are currently disposed to listen to conservative Christians talk about religious liberty when it comes to things sexually deviant? Does anyone think that non-religious conservatives (I assume that’s who Dreher is referring to in that he contrasts “conservatives” with “religious conservatives”) currently have patience with and sympathy for religious conservatives?

With regard to horrible #4: Perhaps a huge number of conservative Christians will become ever more alienated from America and angry at the government, but blaming that on Kim Davis is a bit like heaping blame on the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Kim Davis’ civil disobedience has alerted conservative Christians to the reality that the cultural air we breathe is noxious. Her action has exposed the alienating actions and hostility of those in and out of government who are hell-bent on subordinating First Amendment protections to the pagan sexual revolution that, like the “corpse flower,” is coming into full fetid bloom.

While we’re speculating about the effects of Kim Davis’ civil disobedience, I would like to posit my parade of hypothetical lovelies—or would it be terrifics?

Anyway, here they are:

1.) Her action may spur conservatives of all stripes to read and think more deeply about the separation of church and state, a concept that secularists and/or liberals have successfully perverted almost beyond recognition, persuading people of faith that it is constitutionally impermissible for religious belief to inform political decisions.

2.) Her action may increase the number of people concerned about the usurpation of the rights of citizens to govern themselves.

3.) Her action may motivate citizens to think about the principles that justify civil disobedience.

4.) Her action may lead Christians to think more deeply about what should be rendered unto Caesar and what price they’re willing to pay for holding fast to truth.

5.) Her action may help illuminate the erosion of First Amendment rights that jackbooted “LGBTQQIAP” activists are seeking in their quest to limit the exercise of religion to hearts, homes, and pews

Such a parade of terrifics would be a lovely antidote to both pessimistic parades of horribles and rainbow shame parades.

Dreher concludes his article by claiming that Kim Davis is the political Right’s Michael Brown (the Ferguson, Missouri thug who became a dubious martyr and embarrassment for the political Left). Here’s Dreher’s conclusion: “Kim Davis is the Michael Brown of the Religious Right. Don’t underestimate the political potency of that. You watch, this is not going to end well for religious liberty in America.”

Things are, indeed, shaky for religious liberty–for orthodox Christians–in America, but not because of Kim Davis. Things are shaky because of “LGBTQQIAP” activists, their ideological allies, and the complacency and cowardice of the church.

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If Chicago Tribune columnist and arch-defender of all things sexually deviant, Rex Huppke, had the humility to know that he doesn’t understand the Bible, he might refrain from using it foolishly to mock Christians.

In a column last week, he took a verse from Exodus out of a biblical context which he clearly doesn’t understand in order to ridicule Kentucky County Clerk Kim Davis. In this column, he used Exodus 16:12 as the basis for an analogy intended to indict Kim Davis for her act of civil disobedience in refusing to issue marriage licenses with her name on them to those whose unions are inherently non-marital.

There are two important reasons for responding to Huppke’s “argument”: First, he has a large audience and, therefore, the potential to influence people. Second, his feckless ideas are, unfortunately, not unique to him.

Exodus 16:12 says, “’I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God.’”

After citing Exodus 16:12, Huppke feigned abhorrence at the announcement that McDonald’s will start serving breakfast all day. In his bootless burlesque, Huppke abhorred that McDonald’s would serve the same type of meal all day when God “separates” breakfast from dinner.

Here’s more snark from Huppke, who can’t tell when a metaphor has been extended waaay too long:

I realize my opinion might seem old-fashioned in an anything-goes age when most young people think it’s “A-OK” to eat a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit at 4 p.m….

LeeAnn Richards, an Arizona franchisee who led a task force that studied the all-day breakfast concept, said: “It’s nice when you can give people what they want, what they’ve been asking for.”

Maybe it’s nice for you, LeeAnn Richards of Arizona, but my beliefs cannot be swayed by public opinion, and they certainly won’t be changed by Big Burger’s cavalier redefinition of breakfast or by human belief in the separation of church and steak.

The question is: Will people of faith, the ones charged with serving scrambled eggs at immoral hours, stand up to this assault on religious liberty? I have hope that they might, thanks to the actions of Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky who has refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that makes “issuing same-sex marriage licenses” part of her job description.

On Tuesday, Davis defied a federal court order and again denied marriage licenses to gay couples, saying she works under “God’s authority.”

“It is not a light issue for me,” Davis said through her lawyers. “It is a heaven or hell decision.”

Amen, sister! It’s crucial that you keep the government that pays you from imposing its will on the faith you are willfully imposing on everyone else. (That’s definitely in the Bible somewhere.)

I hope Davis’ resilient belief that marriage is between a man and a woman will inspire McDonald’s workers who share my belief that a breakfast is between 5 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. And I hope those workers will stand strong and refuse to issue Egg McMuffins to customers outside of traditional breakfast hours.

You must stay strong, McDonald’s workers. Let Kentucky’s most famous county clerk be your inspiration. And remember this other verse from the Bible:

“Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother.”

On second thought, forget that one. Just believe that your religious convictions trump everyone else’s rights and don’t give anybody breakfast after 10:30 a.m.

Of course, more literate biblical readers know that multiple literary genres are found in the books of the Bible. The first 18 chapters in Exodus constitute history, and the verse Huppke chose is not a prescription or command regarding what to serve at breakfast and dinner. It is, rather, an historical account of what God did. God provided manna—that is, bread—in the morning and quail in the evening to the Israelites whom he had recently freed from bondage.

In contrast, both the Old and New Testaments tell us what marriage is, and expressly prohibit homoerotic activity.

Literate readers of Scripture also recognize a metaphor when it knocks them upside the head. The manna from Heaven that God promises and provides is also an image and prefigurement of Christ who is the bread of life.

When Huppke cites Romans 14:13 (“Therefore, let us not pass judgment.…”), he exposes his ignorance again. In the book of Romans, Paul is discussing how to unify Gentile followers of Christ with Jewish followers of Christ who came with prior customs, like dietary practices, that are no longer required. Paul is instructing Gentiles not to cause division over these non-essential matters. If this verse were a general or absolute prohibition of all moral judgments, Paul would be guilty of violating his own words because the book of Romans is rife with moral judgments about essential matters.

This verse does not prohibit Christians from expressing a view of marriage with which someone may disagree. And it doesn’t prohibit Christians from expressing moral propositions regarding what constitutes right or wrong behavior. Paul, who condemned homoerotic acts in Romans 1, wrote this to stop conflicts among Christians on non-essential matters.

“Progressives,” displaying the kind of biblical ignorance Huppke displays, often try to play “gotcha” with Christians who believe that Scripture condemns homoeroticism. These “progressives” will cite scriptural passages about slavery, or Old Testament prohibitions of shellfish-eating, or of mixing fabrics in clothes, thinking that they’ve offered foolproof evidence of the Bible’s moral unreliability when actually all they provide is evidence of their own foolishness.

While “progressives” erroneously argue that conservative Christians read every word of Scripture literally, it is actually “progressives” who are guilty of that. No Christian—at least none that I know of—reads every word of Scripture literally.

The Christians I know are able to distinguish, for example, history from poetry. They’re able to distinguish language that should be read metaphorically from language that should be read literally. They’re able to distinguish Old Testament ceremonial laws codes applicable only to ancient Israel from civil laws and both from universal, eternal moral laws that still appertain. They’re able to distinguish prescriptions and proscriptions from descriptions. Finally, they understand that context is king.

Huppke erred in another way. He pointed to the marital failures of Kim Davis as a way to, I guess, suggest that she has no right to make distinctions about the nature of marriage based on Scripture. While Huppke ridiculed Davis’ marital transgressions, he declined to share reports that her marital failings occurred before she became a Christian.

Apparently, Huppke believes only morally perfect humans are entitled to express ontological or moral propositions or try to live in accordance with them. In the service of moral and intellectual consistency then, perhaps Huppke, who quite frequently expresses his moral propositions, should provide evidence of his moral perfection.

Perhaps Huppke could share too what he thinks about Martin Luther King Jr. It is well known that he was unfaithful to his marriage vows and plagiarized significant portions of his doctoral dissertation, and yet most Americans view him as a towering moral leader, who, by the way, advocated civil disobedience when manmade laws fail to conform to God’s laws and the natural law. I’m not suggesting that Kim Davis’ actions are equivalent to the work of Martin Luther King Jr. Rather, I’m suggesting that moral failings don’t necessarily render persons incapable of acting in the service of truth. Just ask Bill Clinton.

In Huppke’s risible attempt at an analogy, he describes the change in McDonald’s menu as an “abomination,” a term that is used in the Bible to refer to homoerotic acts—not to God’s provision to the Israelites of manna in the morning and quail at night. In so doing, Huppke brings into even starker relief not only his biblical ignorance but also his ignorance of the nature and public purposes of marriage.

Marriage has an inherent nature central to which is sexual differentiation. Children have an inherent right to be raised whenever possible by a mother and a father, preferably their own biological parents. And the public good is served in incalculable ways by recognizing and protecting marriage and children’s rights.

So, precisely what was Huppke’s purpose?

Was he mocking the Bible in its entirety—a compilation of texts the meaning of which he seems not to grasp?

Was he mocking Christians for taking Scripture seriously?

If he is offended by Christians who take seriously God’s design for marriage and God’s prohibition of homoerotic acts, is he equally offended by Christians who take seriously God’s prohibition of consensual adult incest and bestiality? After all, the verses that condemn homoerotic acts are the same verses that condemn incest and bestiality.

And what about Christians who take seriously the verse in Exodus 20 that says, “You shall not murder,” or the one that says, “You shall not commit adultery,” or the one that says, “You shall not steal.” Does Huppke think opposition to adultery is analogous to opposition to serving breakfast all day at McDonald’s?

Both conservatives and “progressives” agree that elected government officials, those employed by the government, and citizens in the private sector ought to obey laws. Both sides also agree that civil disobedience is occasionally morally justifiable. The two sides just disagree on which laws (or Supreme Court decisions) are so egregiously unjust and irrational that civil disobedience is warranted or justifiable.

So, when conservatives waxed angry about President Obama’s or Eric Holder’s refusal to defend the duly enacted Defense of Marriage Act, they—conservatives—were not angry about Obama’s, Holder’s civil disobedience per se. Conservatives were angry that they refused to defend a just and rational law—one which, to paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., conformed to both God’s law and natural law.

Let’s imagine that five unelected U.S. Supreme Court justices were to apprehend within the Constitution’s emanations and penumbra a phantasmagorical justification for prohibiting interracial marriages. Would Huppke become incensed if a county clerk were to continue to issue marriage licenses to interracial couples? And what would Huppke think if she, like Martin Luther King Jr., were to cite her religious beliefs as justification for her action?

Regardless of what happens in Kentucky, it’s just a matter of time before another case of civil disobedience arises and perhaps one that will be less fraught with intellectual and moral complexity. Imperious “LGBTQQIAP” activists who demand that even the First Amendment yield to their social and political agenda will brook no dissent. As New York Times lefty Frank Bruni hopes, soon the exercise of religious liberty will be restricted to heart, home, and pew. Dare to trot it out in the public square, and in the brig you will go.

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By Michael Foust

Every time I begin watching a new movie by filmmakers Alex and Stephen Kendrick, a thought crosses my mind.

Will this be the one that bombs?

My fears are always eased after about 10 minutes, at which point I begin contemplating another question.

Have they topped their most recent film … again?

Such questions are inevitable for the Kendricks, who up until this year had four faith-based movies to their credit: “Flywheel” (2003), “Facing the Giants” (2006), “Fireproof” (2008) and “Courageous” (2011) – each of which was widely considered better than its predecessor.

This week the Kendricks release their fifth movie, “War Room,” which is rated PG and stars Priscilla Shirer, T.C. Stallings and Karen Abercrombie, three people you probably don’t remember ever seeing on the big screen but three you won’t ever forget, for all the right reasons.

So, is “War Room” better than “Courageous,” a film that opened in the Top 5? In my view, yes.

“War Room” tells the story of Tony and Elizabeth Jordan, a middle class married dad and mom heading for a likely divorce when a prayer-filled elderly widow – Miss Clara – enters the picture. Elizabeth is the real estate agent trying to sell Miss Clara’s house, but she soon learns that Miss Clara’s abode is not the typical home. Sure, there is a kitchen, a bathroom and a bedroom, but there’s also a room reserved only for one thing: prayer. Dozens of hand-written notes line the walls, listing everything for which she takes to the Lord.

“This is where I do my fighting,” Miss Clara says. “This is my war room.”

And so Miss Clara begins discipling Elizabeth, trying to help save her marriage and encouraging her to pray for Tony even when he’s a jerk (which he is a lot).

“If you give me one hour a week, I can teach you how to fight the right way with the right weapons,” Miss Clara says.

“War Room” succeeds as a film for the same reason that “Fireproof” and “Courageous” did: It has a great story, something that is lacking in so many Hollywood films today that give us multi-million-dollar special effects with 10 cent plots. It succeeds because, unlike those same Hollywood films, it does more than just entertain us. “War Room” moves us, convicts us, inspires us. I walked out of “Fireproof” wanting to be a better husband, “Courageous” wanting to be a better dad, and “War Room” wanting to be a prayer warrior. It also succeeds because it has just enough funny moments to allow you to catch your breath between the emotional scenes.

The Kendricks, you see, get it. They know how to make a great movie because they know that story is king. They also get it because they’re always working to improve their craft. They’re well aware of the “cheesy” label many moviegoers have placed on Christian films, and they understand that even before their next movie hits theaters, a large segment of the Hollywood population already has written it off.

But it’s becoming harder and harder to disregard them. For example, “Courageous” in 2011 finished first among four opening weekend films, outperforming a Universal film that had a $50 million budget (“Dream House”) and a Fox movie that had a $20 million budget (“What’s Your Number?”). “Courageous” had a budget of $2 million – pennies by Hollywood standards. And 2008’s “Fireproof” was the top independent film of the year, opening in the Top 5 and ending its run with a $33 million gross – far beyond its $500,000 budget.

It’s also becoming harder to disregard them because their movies keep getting better. Stallings’ performance in “War Room” is outstanding, and Shirer – who took acting classes for the film — does incredibly well, too. In fact, they’re involved in two of the most powerful scenes I’ve ever witnessed in a movie – scenes that had me in tears.

All five Kendrick movies are the culmination of a life-long dream Alex Kendrick had to make films to impact the church and culture – which they’ve certainly done. He and his brother recently calculated that they would have to preach to 1,000 people every Sunday for the next 100 years to reach the same amount of people they reached with “Fireproof” back in 2008.

“We have been surprised at what God has done, in the midst of all our inadequacy,” Stephen Kendrick told me recently.

That humility perhaps is one reason God has blessed their ministry so much. I’m not sure they’ll ever make a bad movie. But I do know this is another good one.

Entertainment rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Family friendly rating: 5 out of 5 stars.

“War Room” is rated PG for thematic elements. It contains no sexuality or coarse language. Post-movie discussion topics: the power of prayer; the need for a scheduled daily “prayer time;” what Scripture says about prayer; the shallowness of our prayers.

This article was originally posted at www.christianpost.com

If I had a nickel for every time a liberal said it’s a slippery slope fallacy to claim that the legalization of homoerotic marriage would necessarily result in the legal recognition of plural unions, I would be a very rich woman.

The juxtaposition of two recent Chicago Tribune editorials provides an almost-comical illustration of both “progressive” deceit and ignorance about marriage.

Eric Zorn inveighed against conservative claims about the inevitability of legalized polygamy, describing such claims as “desperate” and “sophomoric,” and then a few days later, Steve Chapman made the sophomoric claim that legalized polygamy is “not so scary.”

I guess this is how the Tribune demonstrates diversity. They’ve got far Left columnists and far, far, Left columnists.

Chapman writes that society should “reconsider” bans on plural marriage, arguing that “the case for legalizing polygamy builds on the case for legalizing same-sex marriage.”

He asks, “ If a man is living, procreating and raising children with two or three women, what do we gain by saying he can’t easily formalize his obligations to them?”

In an earlier attempt at deep-thinking about the moral imperative of redefining marriage to serve the desires of homosexuals, Chapman offered a journey through the history of marriage. He was attempting to show that marriage has never had a stable form, but ironically every form of marriage he presented had one constant feature: sexual complementarity.

Much of Eric Zorn’s “argument” consists of a thicket of epithets and generalizations. To him anyone who believes marriage has an ontology central to which is sexual differentiation necessarily regards same-sex couples with “contempt” and “disgust.”

Conservatives in Zorn’s evidently insulated world are “Bible-thumpers and hankie-twisters” who seek to “engage in poisonous debates.” That unseemly crowd includes, I guess, Princeton University law professor Robert George.  Surely, Zorn knows that no defenders of true marriage twist hankies with the kind of vigor that homosexual activists do.

Zorn’s real knee-slapper is his claim that “legalizing plural marriage” would be a “far bigger leap” than the legal recognition of homoerotic unions as “marriages.” He argues that there is a “vast difference between same-sex marriage and plural marriage when it comes to social and legal implications and…civic reverberations.”

That he believes this is astounding.

Jettisoning sexual differentiation from the legal definition of marriage is a leap of far greater enormity than eliminating the criterion regarding numbers of partners. It is, in fact, the most radical redefinition of marriage in history. Its civic reverberations have been already and will continue to be profound, shaking the very foundations of America. At no time in our history have First Amendment religious, speech, and assembly protections been threatened as they are now.

Zorn goes on to spew more foolishness:

[T]his is not one of those rare issues like abortion that will never resolve and fade away no matter what the Supreme Court says. It’s more like the issue of integration of public schools, an idea that was deeply polarizing at the time of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling but opposed today only by the most virulent racists.

There are, indeed, parallels to be found between Brown v. Board of Education and Obergefell. Both Court majorities were wrong. The majority in Brown erred in affirming a false and destructive understanding of race. The majority in Obergefell erred in affirming a false and destructive understanding of marriage.

Zorn predicts that the marriage issue will “fade away.” Other “progressives” predict that the marriage issue will not fade away for the same reason that controversy over abortion has not faded away. Those liberals believe that because the democratic process was usurped and because the legal reasoning was deeply flawed, division over Obergefell will remain.

Both Zorn’s prediction and the other “progressive” prediction are wrong.

The marriage controversy will remain, and it will remain only in part because of the usurpation of the democratic process and lousy legal reasoning in Obergefell. It will also remain because eradicating First Amendment protections tends to provoke conflict.

But more fundamentally, cultural turmoil will remain because the philosophical assumptions that justify the legal recognition of non-marital unions as marriage are wrong. Just as preborn babies have a nature that sophistry can never fully conceal, so too does marriage. As with legalized feticide, opposition to same-sex faux-marriage will continue because the assumptions upon which it depends are false.

Homosexuality is not analogous to race. Zorn continually compares homoeroticism to race but doesn’t explain what constitutes either. Until recently, most people understood that race was a biologically heritable condition that carried no inherent implications regarding feelings or volitional acts. In contrast, homosexuality is constituted centrally–if not solely–by subjective feelings and volitional acts. Moreover, as conservatives learned over the past year, even homosexual scholars assert that “sexual orientation”–unlike race–is fluid.

The post-Dolezal understanding of race as a social construct opens up a can of intellectual worms for “progressives” because if homosexuality is analogous to race and, therefore, merely a social construct, one cannot appeal to biological immutability as a strategic way to condemn moral disapproval of homoeroticism. Clearly not all social constructs—which are self-evidently constructions of flawed humans—can be inherently good.

Oh those darn tangled webs.

So, why oh why do progressives get away with perpetually exploiting race as an analogue for homoeroticism? Why aren’t the Zorns of the world compelled to explain precisely the points of correspondence between race per se and homoeroticism per se? Do they even care if there are no ontological points of correspondence so long as they are winning in the public square?

I think we all know the answer to that. They don’t care any more about intellectual soundness than they do about the natural right of children to be raised by a mother and father.

The cool kids are wrong again.

If only liberals would listen to Pope Francis on marriage.

Plural marriage is a’comin’, folks. No doubt about it. Time to teach your children well.

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about the sanctity of life & importance of marriage in our culture!

A new poll has found that newspapers continue to decline losing revenue, readers, and value. Over the past decade, weekday circulation has fallen 17 percent and ad revenue has fallen more than 50 percent. Change in ownership is more common too, as many struggling papers are like hot potatoes to investors.   Just last year, three different media companies decided to spin off more than 100 newspaper properties, while holding other media divisions.  The San Diego Union-Tribune was the latest example. Last week it changed ownership for the third time in just six years.

Ad revenue for newspapers is now at its lowest point since 1950, when the US population was roughly half what it is today.  For some, going all digital seems to be the last step in trying to stop the fiscal bleeding. Yet digital revenues are slow going compared to print loses.  In 2011, according to Newspaper Association of America, online advertising was up $207 million industry-wide compared to 2010. However, print advertising that year was down $2.1 billion. So the print losses in 2011 were greater than the digital gains by a 10 to 1 margin.

The political editor of a nominally conservative website, Townhall.com, revealed this week that he is a practicing homosexual. Guy Benson will write in a book coming out soon that he is gay and a supporter of marriage based on the “infamous crime against nature.”

In fact, he admits that “from time to time” he may well become an occasional activist on behalf of the homosexual agenda. He also believes that the Republican Party’s embrace of natural marriage, the institution God designed and defined at the dawn of time, is a “barrier to entry to the party,” a barrier which he believes must come down. He seems dedicated to do his part to demolish this barrier and turn the GOP into a sodomy-promoting political machine.

Benson is young, smart, and articulate and often appears on Fox News as a pundit on all manner of political issues. This makes him a particular risk to the conservative cause of defending natural marriage.

Now I don’t know Mr. Benson, and he certainly seems like a particularly nice and friendly individual. But this is not about his personality. It’s about his politics.

Townhall, by the way, is owned by Salem Media Group, which describes its mission as “targeting audiences interested in Christian and family-themed content and conservative values.” To my knowledge, Salem has yet to explain how paying an openly homosexual activist to be the political editor of its main public policy publication is consistent with this mission.

If Salem leadership is to be at all true to its own mission statement, Benson must be replaced. His values on homosexuality are not Christian, family-themed, or conservative.

In truth, the term “gay conservative” is an oxymoron, along the lines of “honest thief.” The first term is flatly and inescapably contradictory to the second.

There is nothing “conservative” about homosexuality or the homosexual agenda. To be a conservative under any understanding of the term means to conserve, protect and defend the values on which America was built. To put it bluntly, those values do not include celebrating, endorsing and promoting unnatural sexual expression.

If the term “conservative” is to have any meaning at all, it must include certain ideals and exclude others. No one can legitimately call himself a conservative if he does not vigorously and robustly defend the institution of natural marriage as the sole relationship in which sexual expression may legitimately be enjoyed and as the optimal nurturing environment for children.

Natural marriage is the first institution God created, before he created the institution of the state or the church. It is the sole foundation on which any healthy, stable, and prosperous society can be built. Every civilization which has abandoned natural marriage and thestandard of monogamy within it has wound up on the ash heap of history. No man can call himself a conservative who does not labor to protect this most precious institution.

Now homosexuals who call themselves conservatives may well believe in smaller government and a strong military, two of the three pillars on which modern conservatism is built. That makes them two-thirds conservative and one-third libertarian.

One website which claims to triangulate on this issue calls itself the “Gay Patriot” and dedicates itself to “freedom, fairness, free speech, privacy and true American values.” What such folks are blinded to is that they have become willing accomplices in supporting an agenda which will in the end refuse to allow any of these values to be honored in American culture. Just ask the Christian bakers in Oregon who are now facing $135,000 in fines for not bowing the knee to the god of gayness.

So a new term must be invented to describe those who share Mr. Benson’s predilection for smaller government and non-normative sexual expression.

Some such individuals call themselves “homocons.” Perhaps “gayservatives” or “gaytarians” or some other such concoction will suffice. Just don’t call them “conservatives,” for that most certainly is not what they are.

This article was originally posted at the AFA website.

It’s strange that the liberals in the media who always complain about Joe McCarthy once having a list of communists in government are so quick to cite the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of so-called right-wing extremists or “haters.”

With the help of the media, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is setting people up for terrorist attacks inside the United States. Pamela Geller is the latest on the list of the SPLC that has now been targeted for death by the jihadists. ISIS says “…we will send all our Lions to achieve her slaughter.”

ISIS is angry that Geller, an opponent of jihad, has defended the First Amendment right of free speech against Islamic Sharia law.

In response, ISIS tried to massacre people at Geller’s Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas on Sunday. Two terrorists were killed and an unarmed security guard protecting the event was shot in the leg.

It’s an open secret that ISIS can get locations for its targets from the SPLC website. That’s how homosexual militant Floyd Corkins discovered the location of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. and showed up at its headquarters, opening fire on a security guard. He had hoped to conduct a massacre of FRC staff.

Indeed, Corkins told the FBI after the shooting that he intended to “kill as many as possible” and smear the 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches he was carrying in the victims’ faces. Chick-fil-A had been in the news because its CEO had defended traditional marriage.

As we noted in a previous column, “The SPLC targets its critics by name…labeling them ‘hate groups’ and running photographs of officers and employees so they can more easily be identified.”

The SPLC sends its “intelligence reports” around the country, listing people and groups by name with their locations. This puts the leaders of these groups and their families at risk of terrorist attack.

Rather than express disgust with this tactic, the media regard the SPLC as somehow a credible source of information.

This brings a human face to the slogan “if it bleeds, it leads,” and makes the media complicit in the planned jihad on American soil and its victims.

The SPLC exercises what journalist James Simpson calls “partisan tolerance,” which means conservatives and Christians must be demonized and destroyed. On the other hand, anyone on the left is acceptable. That’s why the SPLC hailed the “educational” work of Weather Underground terrorist bomber Bill Ayers.

As the leading spear-carrier in the cultural Marxist war on America, the SPLC is one of the most despicable groups on the political scene these days, and yet it is accepted by the media as somehow authoritative and respectable.

No matter how many times the group is exposed for sloppy research and money-making scams, it is still considered a source of legitimate information by some in the media.

That’s why its apparent role in the targeting for death of Pamela Geller has to be highlighted and exposed. News organizations are helping terrorist groups by giving the SPLC unwarranted sympathy and publicity.

ISIS has figured out that all it has to do in order to identify their critics is go to the SPLC website and search its “hate map” and various “lists” of so-called extremists. The SPLC makes it easy for terrorists to wage jihad on American soil.

Yet, for a time, the Obama/Holder Justice Department and its FBI openly collaborated with the SPLC. For example, Judicial Watch discovered that SPLC head Morris Dees had appeared as the featured speaker at a “Diversity Training Event” on July 31, 2012, at the Department of Justice. The FBI has even listed the SPLC as a credible source of information on “hate crimes.”

The SPLC tends to focus its critical attention on opponents of radical Islam and critics of the homosexual agenda.

The media’s reliance on this organization was disclosed publicly by the hapless Bob Schieffer on a recent “Face the Nation” episode when he interviewed Tony Perkins of the FRC and began by noting, “You and your group have been so strong in coming out…against gay marriage that the Southern Poverty Law Center has branded the Family Research Council an anti-gay hate group. We have been inundated by people who say we should not even let you appear because they, in their view, quote, ‘You don’t speak for Christians.’ Do you think you have taken this too far?”

This comment proves that Schieffer has lost it as a newsman. Did he even bother to investigate the SPLC? Was he aware of the terrorist attack on the FRC offices inspired by the SPLC?

Simply because the homosexuals inundated the CBS switchboard, Schieffer felt compelled to take their objections seriously. This is not the usual way journalism is done. But it’s the way liberals in the media operate. Their ignorance is astounding.

Geller understands what is happening and frames the issue this way: “Truth is the new hate speech.”

The media need to educate themselves quickly about how they are playing into the hands of not only the SPLC but the terrorists who are targeting enemies on American soil.

This assumes, of course, that the media do not want to inspire more violence in America.

Typically, the liberal media describe the SPLC as a “civil rights organization.”

For those in the media who want to avoid violence and report the facts, for a change, Jim Simpson’s recent talk on “cultural Marxism” is required viewing.

In a report, Simpson defines partisan tolerance as expressing “partisan hatred for everything non-leftist,” noting that it “seeks to actively muzzle the views of the majority.” This lies behind the labeling of conservatives and Christians as extremists or “haters.”

He notes that the concept of partisan tolerance is associated with cultural Marxist Herbert Marcuse and is based on “an extreme arrogance that assumes they are infallible in their utopian fantasies, and have the right to impose their will on us no matter what we think.” The notion that all positions incompatible with leftist designs can and must be suppressed is at “the heart” of their worldview, Simpson points out.

He adds, “The idea was further developed in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, especially rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Alinsky popularized the tactic, but Marcuse invented the concept.”

In the ISIS message targeting Geller for death, the group said, “The next six months will be interesting…May Allah send his peace and blessings upon our prophet Muhammad and all those who follow until the last Day.”

It’s time for the media to stop encouraging the bloodshed.

Originally published at AIM.org.

President Obama’s interview with The Huffington Post (HuffPost) has been treated as if the on-line publication is somehow respectable and legitimate. The topics of the interview included budget sequestration, the Iran nuclear talks, presidential pardons, overtime pay, athletic scholarships and sleep. But here are some stories from the on-line outlet you may have missed (Be advised these articles may be offensive to some):

• Porn Stars Without Makeup
• This Map Shows Where America Loves ‘Butts’ More Than ‘Boobs’
• These Striking Portraits Of Porn Stars Shine A Different Light On XXX Actors

Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth notes that The Huffington Post’s “Gay Voices” section has run a video of movie scenes with full-frontal male nudity.

In addition to publishing and promoting pornography, The Huffington Post is a “progressive” platform for advocates of abortion, homosexual rights and marijuana legalization. It was named after Arianna Huffington’s ex-husband, Michael Huffington, who was born rich and then turned gay. (In this case, apparently, being gay was a choice). She used his money from a divorce settlement to start the on-line “news” service in 2005.

On foreign policy, the publication is pro-Arab, pro-Muslim and anti-Israel. One report documents how it works hand-in-glove with Al Jazeera.

The blog known as Huff-Watch has documented the publication’s “pathological, malicious incitement of hate against the U.S. military, Israel and Jews, the Tea Party and conservative individuals and organizations.”

A couple examples will suffice. One contrasts a story from The Huffington Post-sponsored World Post, quoting the Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei as criticizing the Senate GOP letter warning against an Iranian nuclear deal. The story quoted the “Supreme Leader” of the world’s number one state sponsor of Islamist terror, “without criticism or skepticism of any kind.” By contrast, The Huffington Post presented the speech that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave to Congress on March 3 as “Bupkis,” a term which means “of little or no value.”

Huff-Watch notes that The Huffington Post has a “longstanding pattern of pictorial bias to ensure that Iranian madmen look as benevolent and kindly as possible, and that Prime Minister Netanyahu looks as sinister and evil as possible.” It notes one photo showing Iran’s chief mullah “looking very grandfatherly,” in contrast to a photo of Netanyahu looking “angry, sinister and malevolent.”

But The Huffington Post really has a love for the homosexual movement. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to separate the “Gay Voices” section from its “Religion” section. Here are some headlines and stories from the religion section:

• “Most Mainline Protestants Embrace Gay Marriage”
• “Presbyterian Church Votes To Allow Gay Marriage”
• “Evangelical Leader Apologizes To Gays”
• “Pope Will Break Bread With Gay, Transgender Inmates”
• “Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Embraces LGBT-Inclusive Definition Of Marriage.”
• “Prominent Megachurch Stops Asking Gay Christians To Be Celibate”
• “Queering the Way of the Cross: Meditations on a Queer Spiritual Journey”

On occasion, however, The Huffington Post reveals a disturbing truth in its rush to promote the “alternative lifestyle.” One such example is the piece, “How Gay Porn Helped Build the Gay Rights Movement.” The piece was actually quite informative.

The author, Mike Stabile, made a film about pornographer Charles M. “Chuck” Holmes titled, “Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story.” He said Holmes and other pornographers funded the homosexual rights movement directly and also lent “their mailing lists to fledgling organizations like the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRC).” He notes that Holmes “was a prodigious donor to the HRC, and later served on its Board of Directors.”

The HRC was a big backer of Obama for president. Obama has spoken at the group’s fundraising events.

You may recall that the Charles M. Holmes Foundation was established after his death from AIDS, based on his assets, and was turned over to Terry Bean, a co-founder of the HRC and a friend of President Obama. Bean has since taken a leave of absence from the Human Rights Campaign after he was arrested on sexual abuse charges involving sex with a minor.

In a story about the Obama administration using tax dollars to celebrate the homosexual riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, I noted that “Bean financed a film called ‘Dream Boy,’ described as a gay, love story about a shy high school kid who gets seduced by his neighbor and school pal.”

We confirmed that the Holmes Foundation, which Bean chairs, lists an investment in Dream Boy LLC in its 2010 income tax return, and that Dream Boy LLC was the registered agent for the film when it was featured at a 2008 “Outfest” homosexual film festival. The film was rated R for sexual content, with some violence, including a rape involving teens.

None of this seems to bother Obama, however, or at least those in the administration who decide who or what publications he talks to.

If you want to study all the tricks of the trade in the matter of a “progressive” media bias that approaches the absurd, The Huffington Post is worth analyzing. One has to wonder if the editors realize how ridiculous their bias makes them look.

Originally published at AIM.org

A viral video titled “Diversity & Inclusion–Love Has No Labels” provides clear evidence to disprove theories of social evolution. The public (dis)service video is an emotionally compelling, intellectually specious, and morally destructive piece of propaganda from the Ad Council:

The ad shows a throng of people at an outdoor mall watching a series of people dancing, hugging, caressing, and/or kissing behind an x-ray screen. Initially, the bewildered viewers can see only skeletons with accompanying text that says “love has no gender,” “love has no race,” “love has no disability,” “love has no age,” or “love has no religion.” Then the fleshy owners of the skeletons emerge revealing different types of relationships. The skeleton image is a visual metaphor for the cliché notion that love is more than skin deep.

By initially obscuring the types of relationships depicted, the ad’s creators cunningly lead viewers to feel that all forms of love are indistinguishable. By adding simplistic captions about gender, race, disability, age, and religion, the video conflates different ontological categories. The ad thereby reinforces both the notion that all forms of love are identical, and that homosexuality is by nature analogous to race, disability, age, and religion. So many falsehoods promoted through captivating images and music with nary a tidbit of intellectual justification.

The ad’s creators assert only one proposition, which they don’t even attempt to prove. They assert in the video’s title that “love has no labels”—which is patently false. Without defining love or proving that “love has no labels,” the ad’s creators knowingly or ignorantly confuse types of love with human conditions. While they claim that love has no labels, they really mean that the categories of gender, race, disability, age, and religion have no relevance to love. They treat all types of human conditions as if they’re irrelevant to an evaluation of the moral legitimacy of a nebulous, undefined thing called l♥ve.

The problem is that there are multiple kinds of love, one of which is centrally concerned with “gender.” While gender, race, disability, age, and religion are irrelevant to relationships constituted by philia, agape, or storge love, gender is essential to the moral legitimacy of relationships constituted by erotic love.

The intellectual and moral incoherence of this mess of a video is revealed if you follow the logic of its “argument” to its icky end.

If amorphous love is all there is—just one big gooey puddle of love—then why not have two caressing, kissing skeletons emerge from behind the universalizing screen in all their fleshly glory to reveal themselves as an adult man and teenage boy?

Perhaps age really does matter after all. Perhaps age like gender matters when it comes to the type of love that’s labeled “erotic.”

Yes, friends, love does, indeed, have labels. Those labels are philia love, agape love, storge love, and erotic love, and the latter is the only form with which the ad creators are concerned. The song they chose to accompany the ad is last year’s anthem to homoerotic love, “Same Love,” which promotes the same feckless ideas as the ad. This is the song that Macklemore and Mary Lambert performed at the Grammy’s when Queen Latifah presided over a wedding for scores of couples, many of whom were same-sex couples. Here’s what I wrote about that last year:

Queen Latifah, long-rumored to be a lesbian, officiated at the “weddings” of 33 couples, many of whom were same-sex couples, while accompanied by the preachy, feckless song “Same Love” by Macklemore….It was a sorry, sick, non-serious ceremony that looked like something from the garish dystopian world of the Hunger Games, replete with a cheering sycophantic audience, faux-stained glass windows, a faux-choir, [and] a homosexual faux-pastorette….It was a non-wedding festooned with all the indulgent gimcrackery of Satan’s most alluring playground: Hollywood.

This new ad is a pernicious yet likely effective cultural tool for a soma-doping nation. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman warns:

Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.

It’s both a tragedy and a travesty that fools now control most of our cultural institutions. For some of these culture-makers, “fools” is too generous. It would be more accurate to describe them as broods of vipers who are hell-bent on destruction.

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