In his January 28th column "Life gets better when a daughter gets married" Bob Kerr sets up the same old tired straw man then knocks it down: "[N]ot once has a married, two-gender couple offered first-hand evidence of damage done to their marital bond by a man marrying a man or a woman a woman."

The problem with government endorsed same-sex marriage is not the damage it inflicts upon present heterosexual marriages.  The problem with legalized same-sex marriage is the further erosion of the institution of marriage that inevitably follows.

There are several liberal scholars who understand and ardently desire this. By their own admission Judith Stacey, Nan D. Hunter, Maria Bevacqua and David Chambers want the institution of marriage to die, and they champion same-sex marriage as a means to that end. 

From 'The Heart of the Matter'

David Blankenhorn analyzes data from 35 nations and demonstrates that support for marriage is weakest in those countries where support for same-sex marriage is strongest. For example, during the 1990s, Norway, Sweden and Denmark legalized same-sex marriage.  Far from a strengthening of marriage, what has ensued is an unremitting decline in marriage rates, and a surge in cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births. 

Not coincidently, the number of polygamous families is increasing in Norway, Canada and, according to the February 1st issue of Bay State Parent, even in Massachusetts.  Polygamy activists are using legalized same-sex marriage as a wedge issue to further their own cause for government endorsement. 

'The Heart of the Matter' by Michelle A. Cretella, MD

I once believed that sexual orientation was equivalent to race. That was before a former lesbian forced me to acknowledge that there is a difference.  I had suggested that she was either denying her true self, or never was gay to begin with.  "You know Dr. Cretella it's not up to me to convince you that I exist. It is up to you to prove that I don't." Her response led me to review the scientific literature and rethink my beliefs. Read the rest of this entry »

In my various exchanges with people on the other side of the fence on this matter, they keep insisting that they want to argue for the Jeffrey John’s model (which is the gay equivalent of ‘traditional marriage’).  There are various problems with this.  In the main, LG people are neither subscribing to nor living by the JJ model (in terms of statistics and surveys). Moreover, LG people who provide secular leadership for and on behalf of the LG communities are not pushing the JJ model.  As well, from what I know of living on LG Christian sites, there are no Christian organizations which are presently providing an apologetic for and promoting the JJ model.

So, the voices we hear are all advocating (or at least not opposing) a much more open approach to relationships.  Contemplating a JJ model makes some relatively conservative Christians feel better about the situation but it does not correspond with gay world realities. 

GAY SINGLES and casual sex. 88% reported having casual sex in the last 6 months.http://www.atypon-link.com/GPI/doi/pdfplus/10.1521/aeap.2009.21.4.340?cookieSet=1 

GAY COUPLES Study – N.I.H. N.Y. Times – Over 50 percent of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/29sfmetro.html?_r=1   Read the rest of this entry »

…Redefining marriage redefines the way in which generations relate to one another. It is ludicrous to believe that we would feel the full impact of such a change in a few years. It will take at least a generation, a full thirty years or more, before the full effects of redefining marriage work themselves out throughout the social system. Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Morse’s testimony to the Rhode Island legislature yesterday re: SSM

The reasons for unbelief are more complex than many atheists let on.

Don't Impose Your Morality on Me!   E. SRI

He was taking an ethics class with a professor who promoted moral relativism – the notion that there is no objective moral truth, no right or wrong. According to a relativist, all truth claims are subjective, merely reflecting one's own feelings, opinions, or desires. A relativist might say, "You can have 'your truth' and I can have 'my truth,' but there is no 'the truth' to which we are all accountable." 

In a relativistic culture like our own, it is quite difficult to talk about morality, especially if one believes in a moral standard that applies to all people. For example, if you try to defend Catholic teaching on moral issues such as abortion, premarital sex, or homosexuality with your coworker Joe during a lunch break, you are likely to be dismissed as rigid, fundamentalist, judgmental, and intolerant: "That might be your opinion, but don't impose your morality on me!"   Read here

This latest series is problematic for various reasons but I focus here on three. And though there is a bit of good material, much is both insidious and alarming.    

Given its trendy but respectable image, it will attract many adolescents.  That it is Channel 4 and not simply a raunchy porn site is cause for worry.  Kids who would steer clear of the latter (because they know it is 'bad') will be damaged by the former.  Its breezy, non-judgemental style is particularly effective in communicating with adolescents.  It claims it gives ‘frank and honest advice’, and lets kids make up their own minds.   

Unfortunately, these kids will not realise what 4 has failed to include in its tips for successful anal and oral sex, piercing genitalia, using sex toys, whipping partners and so forth. They will not realise that sex comes at a price, and that there are various, some serious and permanent, psychological, physical and pathological risks attached to the above.  

Indeed, simply watching this material is heading into the pornographical realm.  How does viewing straight and gay couples copulating in various sexual positions impact kids? For many, ‘Show and tell’ will obviously translate into ‘Go and do’, with the only caveat being to do so when they are ‘safe’ and ready (and hopefully 16).  Read the rest of this entry »

January 24, 2011 (Breakpoint.org) – You have probably never heard of Lothar Kreyssig—I hadn’t until recently. Yet, after hearing his story, I realized Kreyssig was a hero for our times: a man whom, at almost unbelievable risk, stood up for the sanctity of human life.

In October, 1939, the Third Reich created what came to be known as the “Action T4” program. In furtherance of what the Nazis called “racial hygiene,” Reich bureaucrats, working with doctors, were authorized to identify and kill those deemed to be “unworthy of life,” that is, institutionalized patients with “severe disabilities.”

Of course, expressions like “unworthy” and even “severe” are subjective. In reality, they were a license for mass murder. Hitler called for at least 70,000 people to be killed under this program, so doctors and officials set about meeting the Fuhrer’s quotas.  Read Charles Colson here

By Dr L S Nolland, Church of England Newspaper

AM Comment:  We are reposting a revised edition of this item from September 2010 in light of the latest push for gay 'marriage' in the UK. 

i.  Who will really be harmed by gay marriage? Heterosexual married people.

Even now, they are being influenced in their views of what constitutes marriage, and types and levels of commitment to their spouses.  If married gays can allegedly ‘have it all’ — the wedding ring but also sexual freedom — then why can’t married straights as well?   

According to a recent article (New York Times, 28 January 2010) of a ground-breaking survey in San Francisco,  about half of gay couples surveyed operate with a quite different and allegedly improved relational blueprint from that of the traditional heterosexual marriage model (sexual and emotional monogamy, one lover until death, and responsibility for the children produced by their sexual union).

This new paradigm shares much with the old in terms of love and ‘commitment’ etc. but jettisons sexual monogamy in favour of the practice and values of sexual non-monogamy and ‘openness’, which, far from harming the union, is actually said to enhance it! (1)  In fact, Changing Attitudes' own Sexual Ethics document on 'partnerships' does not demand sexual exclusivity (2) . 

In the past sexual non-monogamy was furtive and tended to be practiced by one party at the expense of the other.  It was preached against and socially castigated through being described in terms like ‘cheating’ or The Affair. Now, after a change in the ground rules, it is given an ethical facelift and rebranded, sold to the rest of us as ‘progressive’ and ‘advanced’.

Read here

The fight for civilized values

In 2008 California’s voters reversed the right to gay marriage. The right had been granted just a few months earlier but to the fury of the Gay Rights Movement (GRiM) it was overturned in a referendum held during the presidential election. Now more and more people, who used to be tolerant towards the homosexual fraternity, are becoming increasingly alarmed by their level of aggression towards the traditional family and to question the radical advances in legal rights they have made in the last twenty years. This has been reinforced by a recent widely reported survey of 450,000 people in the UK by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which put the gay/bisexual population at 1.5%. This is far lower than previous estimates which put the level as high as seven percent. It also contradicts the commonly held belief originally asserted by Professor Alfred Kinsey that about one in ten men in the USA was homosexual.[1] Since the 1950s more reliable reports in the USA have also put the exclusively homosexual population at about one percent.[2] To have laws giving extra rights to such a small minority is inordinate, especially when those laws are then used against law abiding individuals for believing homosexuality to be wrong and expressing that belief. This is allowing a very small troubled tail to wag a very large dog indeed!

While some countries like Norway and Sweden have recently granted rights to gay marriage, other countries like Honduras and Latvia have imposed a specific ban on it.  This is in addition to those many countries and indeed states in the USA, with legislation against homosexual acts. These factors as well as moral and religious concerns recently voiced by the Pope have brought into more serious question the legitimacy of sexual orientation to be a proper minority category like race or religion. Read the rest of this entry »

There has been great 'celebration' in gay world recently.  Yesterday was a significant day both in the US and the UK in terms of the active, aggressive promotion and embedding of LGBT rights in the public sphere. 

This news strikes people differently.  Many are still caught up in the past, where gay-as-victim was the dominant narrative, and dreadful things happened to homosexual people. We deplore this, and support the right of all to get on living their lives peacefully.  

However, what is presently occurring is taking the LGBT — and related — cause to a different and far more ominous place.  It is not a 'live and let live' approach, but an insistence now that all will promote LGBT rights in public or tacitly collude by keeping quiet.  

My readers are perhaps aware of how other previously taboo behaviour/minorities are now out.   Of course they clamour for the same legitimacy as the LGBT, and why not?   They note the basis upon which the LGBT succeeded, believe theirs is the same, and respond with 'me too!'       

So, right now, we have the polyamorists and the polygamists up in Canada pushing for the right to engage in plural marriage, and those who engage in adult familial relationships (incest) are saying much the same both in the US and in Switzerland. See here and here.  And this is just the tip of the iceberg, as I have said countless times. 

But how can one respond to the whole host of challenges mentioned above?   May I encourage you on two fronts? Read the rest of this entry »

…Thus I have written often about those pushing for the legalisation of polyamory, or group love. The logic of group marriage is identical to the logic of homosexual marriage. And of course the same logic can be found in the push to legalise incest.

However, whenever I suggest these next steps in the slippery slope, the other side ridicules me and mocks me, claiming no one is arguing for polyamory or incest. That is why I have to keep writing articles like this. There are people all over the world pushing for these very things, and they are happy to ride on the success of the same-sex marriage movement.

Let’s consider another clear cut example of this. Here is how one news item reports the story of a push for incest:

The upper house of the Swiss parliament has drafted a law decriminalising sex between consenting family members which must now be considered by the government.  There have been only three cases of incest since 1984. Switzerland, which recently held a referendum passing a draconian law that will boot out foreigners convicted of committing the smallest of crimes, insists that children within families will continue to be protected by laws governing abuse and paedophilia.

Daniel Vischer, a Green party MP, said he saw nothing wrong with two consenting adults having sex, even if they were related.  “Incest is a difficult moral question, but not one that is answered by penal law,” he said. 

Read here  Read The Telegraph article here

Ron Sider's 'Bearing Better Witness' (FT, 12 2010) makes a series of very important points. I have in mind his understanding that 'the law is a moral teacher' (I heard echoes of Josephine Butler, Victorian feminist, here); his insistence that yes, children do best when they are raised by the two people who loved and created them — their own mothers and fathers; his view that 'straight' sexual misconduct, and the disaster which has been 'no-fault divorce', must be contested, especially for the sake of the children; and his criticism of the judgementalism and double standards present in some churches which make them focus on only certain types of sexual sin.

There are various ways, I think, that the broad case that he is making can be 1) made stronger; 2) taken further and 3) perhaps in minor ways corrected.   

Emerging other sexual minorities

First, though he describes a 2006 publicity event for plural marriage, Ron does not report the hugely significant progress this minority is now making, progress which brings into sharp focus Sider’s point about the generalisability of the gay community’s claim to an honoured place in society for their sexual relationships.

Though gay marriage activists insist there is no 'slippery slope' and continue to deny the existence (and thus threat) of the less-socially-acceptable minorities, it is hard to remain in denial forever.  

We can no longer limit discussion to the LGBT, for other minorities and sexualities now make the same demands and on the same ideological basis:  'This is my identity; I am not hurting anyone; I am being discriminated against and it is unfair!' etc.  These 'others' are keenly aware that a double standard is being practiced against them by gay advocates; their would-be allies keep disowning them and their plight, all the while pontificating against all forms of discrimination. Read the rest of this entry »

Ron Sider is president of Evangelicals for Social Action and professor of theology, holistic ministry, and public policy at Palmer Seminary at Eastern University.

From First Things, December 2010

When even Christianity Today is asking, “Is the Gay Marriage Debate Over?” the issue has become so critical that it demands close attention. Believing (wrongly) that the debate is over, some evangelicals have decided that Christians should let the state define marriage any way I chooses and focus their attention only on what the Church does.  This would be a fundamental mistake.  The debate is one in which we must be involved for the sake of our society itself.  Even as states such as ours, which does not use the law to promote or discourage particular religious beliefs, nevertheless has a huge stake in marriage.  I is not simply a religious issue.  The law is a moral teacher.  Most people assume that if something is legal, it is moral – or at least not immoral.  What is legal soon will become normal.  Every society requires an ongoing supply of babies who grow up to be good citizens.  Every civilisation has known what contemporary sociologists now demonstrate: Children grow best into wholesome adults when they live with their biological mother and father.  Marriage is a crucial way in which the State promotes the sound nurturing of the next generation.

Read here

Examiner.com 

Boston …Meanwhile, members of the CPAA have been compiling evidence in the form of affidavits, which tell the stories of five polyamorous families across Canada from Vancouver to Montreal (scroll down for links to affidavits). Each document unfolds the story of a different polyamorous person and his or her partners, children, and family life, and attempts to present a picture of health, normalcy and loving homes to the court. In this way, Ince hopes to bring the lives of poly people in Canada to public light, and perhaps achieve some normalization. Some are saying that poly is “the new gay,” in the sense that 40 years ago, the laws that made homosexuality a crime in Canada were overturned, and homosexuality has become far more accepted in the larger culture. The hope is that if Section 293 is thrown out, then polyamory will be on the path to greater normalization as well. Read here

Catholic Education Resource Centre

We need to live a certain way because we are designed to live that way.¹ Human nature is not a mishmash, but a design…

To make proper use of a designed thing, we have to know how it works. That involves knowing its purpose — what it's for — as well as knowing how each feature contributes to the fulfillment of that purpose…When you thwart a thing's design, it either works badly, stops working or breaks. Something goes terribly wrong.

The same is true of the human design.

Take the sexual powers. Like everything else in us, they are part of our design. You don't have to be a Christian to see that they have purposes, and you don't have to be a Christian to see what they are: One is to bond men and women; the other is to make new life. Nor must you be a Christian to see that these two purposes go hand-in-hand: Although the bonding of a man and a woman is wonderful in itself, it also motivates them to stay together and raise the new life they have made.

All of the other features of the sexual design revolve around these purposes. The most important such feature is that men and women are complementary. It's not just that they're different — it's that their differences are coordinated in such a way that each contributes what the other lacks. In every dimension — physical, emotional and intellectual — they fit like hand and glove; they "match." This applies to both the procreative purpose of making babies, and the unitive purpose of bonding the partners together.  Read here

From an excellent resource:  Faithful and True   Hat-tip:  Keith Tiller

Patrick Carnes defines addiction as having a pathological relationship with a mood altering chemical or behavior. Simply stated, sexual addiction is the lack of control of some sexual behavior or relationship. Perhaps the most helpful definition is a practical one: sexual behavior that has a negative effect on one’s life.

Like with alcohol or drugs, sex addiction fits the classic, four-component model of what comprises an addiction:

1. Compulsivity – The loss of control over a behavior. An addict continues in the behavior or relationship despite repeated attempts to stop.
2. Continuation despite negative consequences.
3. Preoccupation or obsession.
4. Tolerance – More of the same behavior or an escalation of progressive behaviors is required to get the same “high”.  Read here 

    

   See also here, an interview with Dr. Mark Laaser [who] knows both sides of sexual addiction. For 25 years, beginning as a college student and continuing through his career as a pastor and counselor, he lived a secret life that included pornography, affairs, and encounters with prostitutes. Today, 12 years into recovery and a healed marriage, Laaser heads the Christian Alliance for Sexual Recovery, lecturing and conducting workshops around the world. He has worked with hundreds of addicts and their families and has consulted with many church congregations and pastors after their clerics' sexual sins were exposed.

From Family Education Trust

Bryce J Christensen and Robert W Patterson

When homosexuality was deleted from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association was motivated not by the scientific evidence but by a therapeutic desire to weaken prevailing social attitudes that allegedly damage the self-esteem of homosexuals. Consequently, much of the discussion of homosexuality by public-health officials and professional associations ignores the large body of empirical literature that casts homosexual behavior in an unfavorable light.

Yet the inaugural issue of the journal of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality offers a review of experimental evidence, clinical studies, and empirical research published in peer-reviewed journals over the course of 125 years that leads to a ‘singular’ conclusion:

‘Homosexuality is not innate, immutable, or without significant risk to medical, psychological, and relational health.’ 1

Read the rest of this entry »