Obama Didn’t Blink. We Can’t Either.

February 2, 2013 By 7 Comments

I’ve found that evil usually triumphs…unless good is very, very careful.

–DR. MCCOY, Star Trek: The Original Series, “The Omega Glory”

I’m going to take my time commenting about President Obama’s recent “compromises” on the HHS Mandate. I want to let the fur fly for a while.

In the meantime, here are a few facts and a couple of opinions that I want you to think about as we winnow through the political/media chaff.

1. President Obama did not offer this “compromise” because he was being a statesman. He was responding to the fact that his administration was under a court order to live up to its promises concerning the mandate. I wrote about this when it happened. You can find that post here.

A Hobby Lobby store. Photo courtesy of the Becket Fund.

2. Hobby Lobby’s attorney made a statement to ProLife News affirming what many people had already surmised: The President’s “compromise” will not help companies like Hobby Lobby. I will put an excerpt of this statement and another link to it below.

Cardinal Dolan addresses the Democratic National Convention, 2012

3. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is taking much the same approach to this “compromise” that I am. They want to read through it and think. Their statement says:

In response to today’s release of revised regulations for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, provided the following statement on behalf of the USCCB.

“Today, the Administration issued proposed regulations regarding the HHS mandate. We welcome the opportunity to study the proposed regulations closely. We look forward to issuing a more detailed statement later.”

4. I gave my initial reaction to the “compromise” yesterday when I wrote HHS Mandate: Did Obama Blink? My feeling then as now is that no, he did not blink. And we shouldn’t, either.

5. My opinion is that President Obama did the least he could do and still give an appearance of cooperating with the federal court order that his administration was under. I also think that his slave dogs in the media will tout this as the “great compromise” that it is not and that members of the public who either (a) worship President Obama, or, (b) hate Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular will follow right along with this obvious lie.

The article published by ProLifeNews about the statement from Hobby Lobby’s attorney says in part:

“Today’s proposed rule does nothing to protect the religious liberty of millions of Americans. The rights of family businesses like Hobby Lobby are still being violated,” Kyle Duncan, General Counsel for The Becket Fund For Religious Liberty, said.

He said, “The Becket Fund continues to study what effect, if any, the Administration’s proposed rule has on the many lawsuits on behalf of non-profit religious organizations like Ave Maria University, Belmont Abbey College, Colorado Christian University, East Texas Baptist University, EWTN, Houston Baptist University, and Wheaton College.” (Read more here.)

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, Catholic, Christian Persecution, Culture, Faith, Following Christ, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Politics, Pro Life, Religious Freedom, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , 7 Comments

HHS Mandate: Did Obama Blink?

February 1, 2013 By 33 Comments

I’ve found that evil usually triumphs…unless good is very, very careful.

–DR. MCCOY, Star Trek: The Original Series, “The Omega Glory”

Franks Weathers, who blogs at Why I am Catholic, posted some interesting news this morning.

There are signs that the Obama Administration is reading the court-ruling tea leaves and has decided to maybe, perhaps, accede on the HHS Mandate — at least to the point of living up to a few of the promises it made in the past.

After misrepresenting the HHS Mandate all the way through the 2012 campaign (“It protects ‘women’s health.’”) and steadfastly ignoring the promises that it made concerning the Mandate, the administration may be backing down just a bit.

As Frank Weathers notes, the probable reason for this move is that the administration has been losing in courts around the land precisely because of these very public promises it made and then failed to keep.

I’m a little chary of this. I expect that the White House will pump out a few “compromises” that are designed to offer as little relief as possible. Then, it will trumpet this action as having satisfied every problem with the HHS Mandate. I then expect the press and the Pavlovian Church haters to follow through by casting these minuscule changes as acts of great statesmanship and a total resolution of the problem.

The trouble I foresee is that the so-called compromises won’t resolve the problems with the HHS Mandate. They will not end the attack it represents to religious freedom. What these grand compromises will effect is to weaken the case of those who oppose the mandate without actually granting them relief.

Of course, I could be wrong. President Obama may actually back down. He might even  decide that attacking the First Amendment clause about the government not interferring with the free exercise of religion is a bridge too far, a legacy he doesn’t want.

The reason I’m cautious in my expectations is that I keep remembering that this president lied to Congressman Bart Stupak and other pro life Democratic Congressmen when he told them that the Affordable Health Care Act would not interfere with freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. Our president is a good gamesman. He plays the public and the press like a harmonica. But he also has a track record on this very issue of promising much and then delivering the opposite of what he promised.

I’m waiting to see what he says he’s going to do. Then, I’ll wait again and see what he actually does.

Frank Weathers has written a great analysis of the current moves by the White House which says in part:

Back in December, I shared thoughts that perhaps the Administration will scuttle this ridiculous rule out of embarrassment alone. I mean, the phony war on women trope worked well enough to secure reelection, but in reality, it isn’t holding up in the courts.

Most likely they won’t scuttle it, but heavily modify it instead. The courts clamping down on the Administration to produce their promised changes certainly puts the HHS under pressure to get this done. CNN has sources who say the modification is forthcoming.

To read more, go to The Administration Rolling Back the HHS Mandate? CNN Thinks Yes.

Also, Elizabeth Scalia has an excellent analysis of the President’s “compromise” here and Frank Weathers posted an update here.  It’s pretty much what I predicted, including the orchestrated hosannas from the press.

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, Christian Persecution, Culture, Faith, Following Christ, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Politics, Pro Life, Religious Freedom, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , 33 Comments

Will Legalizing Gay Marriage in Britain Result in Coercive Attacks on Freedom of Conscience?

January 31, 2013 By 11 Comments


Great Britain’s government will vote soon on gay marriage. Christians have expressed concern that such a change in the law might result in attacks on freedom of conscience.

Supporters of the measure have rushed to assure the public that such fears are groundless.

Now, where have we heard things like this before?

Oh yes. It was President Obama, promising that Obamacare would not infringe on religious freedom and individual rights of conscience.

That was only a few months before a hand-picked committee of the Health and Human Services Department “passed” the HHS Mandate, which the same president who had made these promises signed and then misrepresented to the American people as being about “women’s health care.”

Good luck, British Christians. Judging by what has happened elsewhere, you’re going to need it.

A Christian Post article concerning the upcoming vote on same-sex marriage and freedom of conscience in Great Britain says in part:

UK Government Source: Teachers May Face Firing for Refusing to Teach Gay Marriage
Katherine Weber (“The Christian Post,” January 25, 2013)

As Great Britain’s government prepares to vote on a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, an official from the Secretary of State for Education’s office reportedly has expressed trepidation toward the bill, arguing that primary school teachers in the country could possibly lose their jobs if they do not teach about gay marriage in the classroom.

One unnamed senior source from the office of Michael Gove, who serves as the country’s current Secretary of State for Education, has recently said that ultimately the U.K. government is not in control, should a teacher lose their job for refusing to teach same-sex marriage, and the case would ultimately go to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, where the European Parliament is located.

“We have had legal advice, the problem is that there is this inherent uncertainty about such matters,” the source told The Telegraph in a Jan. 25 report.

“These are all under the control of nine guys in Strasbourg, it is just fundamentally uncertain because Britain isn’t in control of this,” the source added.

Additionally, those critical of the upcoming same-sex marriage bill argue that hospital chaplains and other people in authority may be faced with difficult decisions when their conscience conflicts with their work protocol.

These statements come after human rights specialist Aidan O’Neill of the Queen’s Counsel argued on behalf of the Coalition For Marriage, a group that opposes same-sex marriage legalization, that he believes teachers, hospital or prison chaplains would be negatively affected by the legalization of the bill.

However, in response to these worries, Maria Miller, Secretary of Culture and Great Britain’s equalities minister, recently stated that teachers and the Church of England will not be put in a compromising position due to the same-sex marriage bill.(Read more here.)

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, Catholic, Culture, Family, Following Christ, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Marriage, Politics, Pro Life, Religious Freedom, Same Sex Marriage, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

What’d I Say?

January 31, 2013 By 2 Comments

One of the neat things about writing for Patheos is that there’s no censorship here. I am free to write what I want and say what I think. That goes for the other writers. We go off in different directions all the time. There is no “official” Patheos position on what we say. Our thoughts are our own.

Take, for instance, a post that I recently wrote in which I referred to a small town here in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area called Valley Brook. I’m sure that the various Patheos writers would have taken many different positions on this issue.

Here’s part of what I said,

We have a whole town, called Valley Brook, here in Oklahoma that makes its revenue from prostitution under the guise of strip clubs. Nobody anywhere gets police protection like the strip clubs of Valley Brook. It appears on the outside that the Valley Brook Police work for the strip clubs.

I want to be clear about what I meant. I did not mean that the Valley Brook Police get direct money from the strip clubs that line the main street of Valley Brook. What I meant is that there are people who think that the police may be too zealous about protecting those strip clubs because it appears that the clubs are a major source of revenue for the town.

The Valley Brook police have a history of troubles, including a former police chief who pled guilty to drug charges last November.

While I want to state emphatically that I have no personal knowledge of prostitution occurring in the strip clubs at Valley Brook, and I certainly don’t want to make people think that I do, the town is the subject of jokes and discussion like this, this, this, this, this, and this about what many people say happens there.

There also have been arrests made by the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Department (not the Valley Brook Police, whose offices are a few blocks away from this club) for “lewd behavior” at the clubs in Valley Brook. For that story, go here. Based on these kinds of comments, conversations, and arrests it is my opinion that the stories about Valley Brook are probably true.

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, Culture, Misogyny, Politics, Uncategorized, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , 2 Comments

Real Men Don’t Kill Their Children

January 29, 2013 By 99 Comments

“It’s surprising how human they look.”

My many dealings with pro-abortion liberal males has convinced me over and again that they are at heart unreconstructed misogynists.

I knew this long before I was converted to the pro life viewpoint. I knew it when I was the Oklahoma Director for NARAL. I knew it back when I was killing pro life bills as a young pro choice legislator.

All you have to do is hang out with them for a while, listen to their self-contratulatory talk about how they are the only men on the planet who “support women’s rights” (abortion.) Couple that with the contempt for women, the personal mistreatment they mete out to the women in their lives, the misogynist, sexualizing way they subtly degrade women and support the degradation of women in everything from porn to prostitution to rent-a-womb pregnancy surrogates.

Put the self-proclaimed “feminism” of these men alongside their actual behavior, and what you see is a hypocritical lie. They are misogynists who have been empowered by a corrupted feminist movement that has devolved down to nothing more than a pro abortion movement.

Abortion is the cad’s best friend in his treatment of women. Abortion allows misogynist men to pick and chose which of their children they will cherish and which they will encourage their women to kill. Abortion helps the rapist hide, and encourages the lothario to dump the woman he’s involved with at one of the most vulnerable times in her life; when she is pregnant with his child.

I ran across a video essay on NBCNEWS by Toure Neblett, in which he declaims proudly, “Thank God for abortion.” His reason? Abortion on demand allowed him, along with a woman he describes as “just not the right one,” to kill his first child. Abortion relieved him of the monstrous responsibility of fatherhood at “the wrong time.”

He tells us that he “would not be the person” he is today without this freeing experience of putting his baby to death. You get the feeling that he believes that this would be a loss of incomparable proportions for all humanity.

He goes on to admit that “family building is society building” and claims that the death of his first child has allowed him to go on later with “the right” woman to have “the right” child. He recounts how he accompanied her on her doctor’s appointments and felt a little distressed by the sight of this wanted baby on the ultrasound, by “how human they look.”

But he bounces back from this momentary lapse into something bordering conscience with assurances that it would be “misogynist” for him to regret the fact that he helped murder his own baby.

Watching this video saddens me. This unashamed and absolute lack of empathy by one human being for another human being is mind boggling. This is a man telling us with no doubt or regret that he helped kill his own child and that killing his child was the moral and right thing to do. Why? Because killing the child was the “best thing” for him, his career and his future.

I think he is right when he says that he wouldn’t be the man he is today if he had chosen differently. A man who choses to inconvenience himself by accepting the responsibilities of fatherhood, who actually loves all his children and not just the one who fits the self-indulgent, self-centered, self-deifying game plan he has worked out for his life, would not even resemble the man Toure is today.

“Thank God for abortion,” Toure tells us.

All I can say is Thank God for real men, like my husband and my father, who wanted and loved their children from the moment they began to exist. Thank God for men who do not choose to kill one child and cherish another, but who love, support and raise every child that God gives them.

Maybe I should just shorten that down to the actual point.

Thank God for real men.

If you want to see Toure’s essay, go here.

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, Culture, Family, Health Care, Marriage, Misogyny, Politics, Pro Life, The War on Girls, Uncategorized, Violence Against Women, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , 99 Comments

Don’t Take Government Money. Don’t Kiss Caesar’s Ring

January 28, 2013 By 32 Comments

“Do not take government money.” 

I have said this to every religious ministry who has given me a venue to speak ever since I came back to public office in 2002.

The only people who give you free money are people who love you, like your parents. The government does not love anybody.

Government money hooks you into government policies, including those that are anathema to you. Religious groups that take government money — and it does not matter which party is in power — will eventually face the requirement that they bend their knee to Caesar and kiss his ring.

I’ve seen leaders of whole Protestant denominations abandon things they have fought for like pro life in response to political pressure.

I remember a few years back reading that national Catholic Charities had received a huge grant from the federal Health and Human Services Department.

I was appalled.

I knew that this money would lead to demands that the Church compromise its teachings. Based on what I’d seen Protestant groups do, I assumed that the Catholic Church would accede to these demands. I thought the money would buy the Church’s moral and prophetic voice, the way I’d seen it buy other religious voices.

I knew that you can not be true to Christ and take government money. You. Can. Not. Do. It.

You can not be an authentic Christian leader and toady to secular power. You. Can. Not. Do. It.

I wrote a post Saturday in which I talked about our personal allegiances; our friendships. I said that sooner or later, you have to chose. You cannot maintain deep intimate friendships with anti-God people and follow Jesus. You have to chose.

This is a parallel post addressed to religious leaders. My point is the same. You cannot base your efforts to bring the Kingdom of God on politics and supporting politicians and political parties. You cannot follow a political party and follow Christ.

You have to chose, and I don’t mean sooner or later when the politically powerful rub your nose in the fact that you “belong” to them and demand that you abandon your beliefs for them. I mean from day one. You cannot bend the Gospels to fit the platforms and the behaviors of either political party and preach Christ.

You will either preach politics.

Or you will preach Christ.

But you cannot do both.

Many Catholic priests are just as guilty as their Protestant brethren of bending the Gospels to suit their politics. You find both Republican and Democrat apologists in their ranks.

They will spout Canon Law and attack good people who oppose the death penalty because, somehow, that isn’t being “pro life” enough about abortion. Not, mind you, that the people they attack support abortion, but that they aren’t focused on it to the exclusion of every other possible sin. Others will try to make us believe that ignoring abortion is the necessary price for concern for the poor.

This is bending the Gospels so they don’t discomfit the politics of one political party or the other. It is not preaching Christ. Both types of priest lead people astray from following Christ and teach them to follow politicians, instead.

The Church itself, however, has been amazingly faithful.

It didn’t take long for what went around to come back around concerning those federal grants. Before you could say three Hail Marys, the Church was embroiled in lawsuits and broadsides, demanding that it refer the women it was helping for abortions or lose the money.

“While the Catholic bishops were entitled to their beliefs, freedom of religion does not mean imposing religious doctrines on others with the use of taxpayer dollars,” said Sarah Wunsch, an ACLU staff attorney.

She was referring to a lawsuit to end a federal grant to Catholic Charities for work aiding victims of human trafficking. A few months after this lawsuit, the federal Department of Health and Human Services revised its guidelines for human trafficking grants to require all recipients to refer for abortion.

The Church could have done as so many others have and simply “wink-winked” its way through this. All it would take was a 3×5 card listing “abortion providers” tucked, ever so casually, into a pile of intake forms. Just touch your lips to the ring. It will be over quickly, and it won’t hurt for long.

Besides, “it was the law.”

That’s what the Church could have done. It’s what everyone else has done. It was the wide and easy way.

I’m sure the government coffers would have opened and rained down gold on the Bishop’s heads if they had just done this. It would have been money, money, money for whatever they wanted.

But they said no. They took the narrow road, the hard way.

The price is that the federal government is now attacking the Church with broadsides like the HHS Mandate.

There is nothing in the Gospels that says you must first acquire a government grant to help the least of these. Following Christ’s teachings means, among other things, that the Church must reach out to people like victims of human trafficking, regardless of what the government wants or does.

The Church has responded to this situation with a new ministry called Amistad.

“We lost a contract, but we’ve not gone away,” said Nathalie Lummert, special-programs director at the USCCB’s Office of Migrant and Refugee Services (MRS). “We’re taking a decade of experience and now are rolling out a new program that brings communities directly into the fight against human trafficking.”

I am so proud of my church for standing for the Gospels in the face of the federal government. I am just as proud of them for their concern for trafficked women and children.

The fact that the Catholic Church refuses to kiss Caesar’s ring on the one hand, or abandon the least of these on the other is, in my opinion, the single best hope we have.

A National Catholic Register Article concerning Amistad says in part:

WASHINGTON — A new innovative weapon in the fight against human trafficking and sex slavery is coming this year from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, more than a year after abortion politics led the Obama administration to kill federal funding for the Church’s top-rated outreach effort.

“We lost a contract, but we’ve not gone away,” said Nathalie Lummert, special-programs director at the USCCB’s Office of Migrant and Refugee Services (MRS). “We’re taking a decade of experience and now are rolling out a new program that brings communities directly into the fight against human trafficking.”

The new initiative of the U.S. bishops’ Anti-Trafficking Program is “The Amistad Movement,” an MRS program that puts the USCCB back in the fight against human trafficking in a major way.

Until 2011, the USCCB had directed a highly regarded, $15-million anti-trafficking program that networked victims with services offered by local interfaith groups, including the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities and Jewish Family Services, as well as secular nonprofits.

The USCCB program came to a sudden halt, however, when the Department of Health and Human Services announced that “strong preference” would be given to groups that would refer all victims to family-planning services, including “the full range of legally permissible gynecological and obstetric care.” A Washington Post investigation revealed senior HHS political appointees threw out the strong recommendations of an independent review board to renew the USCCB’s contract and disqualified the USCCB over its refusal to reimburse groups that referred victims for abortion and birth-control services.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/u.s.-bishops-bring-new-weapon-to-human-trafficking-fight?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NCRegisterDailyBlog+National+Catholic+Register#When:2013-01-28%2007:05:01#ixzz2JIFe2mvP

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, Catholic, Christian Persecution, Faith, Following Christ, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Politics, Pro Life, Religious Freedom, Slavery, Uncategorized, Violence Against Women, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 32 Comments

Parsing Killing With Impunity and Manufacturing Monsters

January 28, 2013 By 16 Comments

In case you were wondering, the devil is at work all over the world, not just here in America.

One case in point is a suggested revision to Dutch statutes that I mentioned in an earlier post to allow medical personnel to euthanize minors and Alzheimer’s sufferers. Ironically, these are two groups of people who are considered incompetent to make most legal decisions for themselves. The proposed law was drafted in part by Senator Philippe Mahoux.

Our world is so spiritually sick that we try to parse and channel legalized murder. We have laws that point to one group of people and say in effect, “you may kill them with impunity” then, we have other laws that point to another group of people and say “if you kill them it is an atrocity.”

Well, which is it? Is it an atrocity to kill the innocent, or is it something we may do with impunity?

Maybe it’s time for us as a society to stop allowing the controlled killing of innocents. Maybe we should stop cozying up to killing and making it our pal by calling it a “right.” Maybe we should simplify things and just say that, with the single exception of self-defense, it’s wrong to kill people. Period.

That’s an unsophisticated way to handle things, I know. It’s also bound to make things hard for someone out there who claims that their desire to kill someone else is, in fact, a kindness and their “right.” But it might have the effect of re-erecting that fence around human life once again. You know the one, the fence of law, morality and custom that keeps us safe from one another.

Instead of going out and putting ourselves into tiny prisons and police state boxes in our zeal to be safe, perhaps we should just simplify our thinking and go back to the fuddy-duddy Christian notion that every individual has an inherent right to life because they are a unique and irreplaceable human being made in the image and likeness of God.

I know that’s not a very politically-correct way to approach this. But our recent history of parsing the freedom to kill hasn’t worked so well for us. Our society has become a monster factory. Maybe we should ask ourselves why.

The France 54 International News article describing this proposed law says in part:

AFP - Belgium is considering a significant change to its decade-old euthanasia law that would allow minors and Alzheimer’s sufferers to seek permission to die.

The proposed changes to the law were submitted to parliament Tuesday by the Socialist party and are likely to be approved by other parties, although no date has yet been put forward for a parliamentary debate.

“The idea is to update the law to take better account of dramatic situations and extremely harrowing cases we must find a response to,” party leader Thierry Giet said.

The draft legislation calls for “the law to be extended to minors if they are capable of discernment or affected by an incurable illness or suffering that we cannot alleviate.” (Read more here.)

Filed Under: Calling Evil Good, Christian Persecution, Christianity, Culture, Eugenics, Euthansia, Following Christ, Health, Health Care, Pro Life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , 16 Comments

Strip Club Owner to Nuns: Don’t Impose Your Religious Beliefs on Me

January 27, 2013 By 13 Comments

Standing Against Christian Persecution

The strip club and the nuns story has gone on for a while and it appears it will continue.

Thanks to the city government of Stone Park, Il, the community of the Missionary Sisters of St Charles Boromeo Scalabrinians now have a strip club two feet from their property.

As we all know, the current reply to any request for official consideration or civil rights for Christians is to tell them to “stop putting their religious bigotry on other people.” We are told to keep our faith at home, to practice it at church and then to keep our mouths shut everywhere else.

The owner of the strip club is no exception to this charming behavior. His advice to the sisters? Keep your religion to yourselves, and oh, by the way, I pay taxes and you don’t.

Of course, none of this addresses the question of why the strip club owner wanted to put his “business” next to a convent in the first place. It also doesn’t address why the city planning commission went along with it. Stone Park’s mayor claims that the process was legal, but that does not in any way explain why this permit to build was approved.

We have a whole town, called Valley Brook, here in Oklahoma that some people believe makes its revenue from prostitution under the guise of strip clubs.

Why do elected officials deliberately corrupt and degrade the cities they are supposed to be working to build and govern? What would motivate them to turn their statutes into open doors for the lowest kind of commerce? Why would anyone think that putting these kinds of things into neighborhoods and next to convents is a good idea?

We’ve had to pass laws at the state level here in Oklahoma to keep them from putting these places across the street from grade schools. The upward-looking elected officials in Valley Brook must have used a measuring tape to make sure they built their school as close to the strip joints as they could without going over the line.

It’s an interesting world we live in where elected officials work to further the interests of the lowest common denominator in their society. It’s an even more interesting world when people who degrade and sell women as if they were chattel can lecture a group of nuns and tell them their viewpoints are unworthy because they are Christians.

I would call that world soul-sick and depraved. But then, I’m used to being told to keep my faith at home where it belongs. It no longer bothers me.

The Chicago Sun-Times article describing this situation says in part: (emphasis mine)

Proposed strip club to nuns: Don’t impose your religious beliefs on us
BY STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporter sesposito@suntimes.com

Missionary Sister of St. Charl, Melrose Park, illinois. Sister Marissonia Daltoe, stands near the convent’s garden that shows the new gentleman’s club that is to close to the Sisters Convent. February 7Th,2012 I Scott Stewart~Sun-Times

The owner of a soon-to-be-built strip club in the western suburb of Stone Park has this to say to a group of neighboring nuns who don’t like his plans: Mind your own business.

“As a legal, tax-paying citizen of this community, we ask only to be judged fairly by what we have done and not through the recent religious fervor,” Bob Itzkow, the club’s owner, said in statement released Friday. “In reference to our non-tax-paying neighbors, we ask that you treat us as we have treated you, by not trying to unduly disturb us by imposing your religious beliefs on us or others. All throughout our plans for this project, we’ve followed the letter and spirit of the law.”

The Missionary Sisters of Saint Charles Borromeo, who occupy the property next to the club, have moral objections to the project and have raised questions about whether the rules were followed properly by Stone Park officials during the 2010 approval process.(Read more here.)

Filed Under: Calling Evil Good, Catholic, Christian Persecution, Christianity, Faith, Following Christ, Politics, Religious Freedom, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , 13 Comments

Bill Maher, Prophecy Fulfiller or Just Another Atheist Crank in Love With Death?

January 26, 2013 By 6 Comments

Bill Maher, the aggressive atheist/talk show host, managed to fulfill a prophecy a few months ago.

Even though I doubt very much that this was his intention when he gave this interview, he comes pretty close.

Mr Maher says (jokingly) I love death. Then he goes on to list all the real-world ways that he really does support the Culture of Death.

Proverbs 8 says “Those who hate me, love death.”

That verse may be more of a direct assessment than a prophecy. Mr Maher may not have been entirely serious when he characterized himself as a death lover. But considering his consistent support for legalized murder in any form, it seems like an “if the shoe fits” deal. The shoe does indeed seem to fit. The only death he doesn’t appear to “love” is his own.

One of the points the commenter makes is that there are very few people who are both pro choice and in favor of the death penalty. People have said similar things to me, only in reverse. Mr Maher and I are somewhat mirror images of one another, at least on a few matters. He is an aggressive atheist. I am a Christian and a Catholic. He favors abortion on demand. I am pro life. He favors the death penalty. I oppose it.

Unlike Mr Maher, I don’t fulfill any prophecies, unless you want to include me among those from many nations who will follow Him.

Listen to this YouTube video (it’s a radio broadcast) and see if you think Mr Maher is a prophecy fulfiller, or just another atheist crank attacking the sanctity of human life.

YouTube Preview Image

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, Catholic, Christian Persecution, Christianity, Culture, Eugenics, Euthansia, Following Christ, Pro Life, Scripture, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

Is the Male/Female Sexual Difference Key to Understanding Marriage?

January 23, 2013 By 12 Comments

Is the male/female sexual difference key to understanding marriage?

Not so long ago, that question would have been greeted with confusion. After all, it was questioning the obvious; kind of like asking if gravity is key to keeping us from flying off into space. But times have changed, and today the question is more likely to be greeted with cries of “bigot” and claims about “homophobia.”

Perhaps the real question should be, are we deluding ourselves?

Is the claim that two men together or two women together is the same as the bonding between a man and woman flat-out delusional? Are we using social bullying and name-calling to force people to accede to a lie?

The question is not whether homosexuals are human beings (they are) or whether or not they should be subjected to unjust discrimination (they should not) but whether or not same sex bonding should be treated identically under the law as the bonds that form between a man and woman. The corresponding questions are (1) What would this change in the law do to society, and (2) Is the whole push for “marriage equality” based on a delusion?

Are two men or two women the same as a man and a woman? Do their unions rise to the level of a basic unit for building a society and do they require the same level of legal protection in order to maintain a stable society?

More to the point, is it an elaborate delusion, a hoax, to claim that two men or two women together are the same as a man and woman?

Do the sexual differences between men and women amount to anything real and foundational in human existence, or are they just fashionable social constructs with no basis in the human psyche or biological reality?

A team of professors from Princeton University has taken the position that sexual differences do matter in the marriage debate, that they are essential to understanding marriage. They have written a book, What is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense that I plan to order and read.

A CNA article describing their work and ideas says in part:

Washington D.C., Jan 10, 2013 / 02:13 am (CNA).- Defending the sexual complementarity between men and women in marriage is an essential first step in building up a healthy “culture of marriage” as a whole, say the authors of a new book.

“I really do believe that this is a reasonable debate among reasonable people of good will,” said
Prof. Robert George of Princeton University.

George spoke Dec. 19 at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. Joining him at the promotional event for their book, “What is Marriage,” were co-authors Sherif Girgis and Ryan Anderson.

The speakers explained that while attempts to redefine marriage are based on an understanding of the union as primarily emotional, this is neither the historical nor contemporary definition of the marital union.

Girgis, who is both a second-year Ph.D. student at Princeton and a first-year law student at Yale, observed that marriage, historically and philosophically understood, is a conjugal, comprehensive union on multiple levels.

In marriage, there is a “union of heart and mind but also of the body,” he said, explaining that the physical realities of husband and wife are integral to the conjugal nature of marriage.

It is this bodily union that makes procreation possible and distinguishes marriage from friendships and other human relationships, Girgis explained.

Changing marriage from this definition would be harmful to society, and should therefore be avoided, warned Anderson, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

He stressed that “being for marriage does not mean anti-gay” and said that marriage defenders “should be at the forefront” of efforts to oppose bullying and discrimination against those who are same-sex attracted.

However, he continued, supporters of marriage should not allow their position to be called “bigotry,” and they must explain that their position is not unjustly discriminatory.

Instead, he maintained, supporters of traditional marriage should affirm that there is “(n)othing more important for the future of the nation” than a “healthy marriage culture,” particularly for the benefit of children. (Read more here.)

Filed Under: Calling Evil Good, Child Rearing, Culture, Family, Marriage, Same Sex Marriage, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , 12 Comments