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6/27/2015

The Progressive Voice
The Voice of Progress Since 1968
_ June 27, 2015 ____

In a landmark decision, The Supreme Court announced today its ruling against all state bans on gay marriage. The topic of gay marriage has long been a divisive issue among evangelical Christians, though views on this topic are changing significantly among some prominent evangelical leaders. Well known Christian speaker and author Tony Campolo recently announced his affirmation of same sex marriage. In a post on his website Campolo wrote the following:

"I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church...One reason I am changing my position on this issue is that, through [my wife], I have come to know so many gay Christian couples whose relationships work in much the same way as our own. Our friendships with these couples have helped me understand how important it is for the exclusion and disapproval
of their unions by the Christian community to end. We in the Church should actively support
such families."

The Progressive Voice
The Voice of Progress Since 1968
_ June 27, 2035 ____

After President Chelsea Clinton’s Working Women’s Equality Bill passed into law last year, a number of evangelical leaders have been divided over the question of what place prostitutes may have in the life of the Church. Many in the pro-equality movement praised well known evangelical speaker and author Rob Bell yesterday as he posted the following statement of affirmation and inclusion on his website:

"I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian prostitutes into the Church. One reason I am changing my position on this issue is that I have come to know many women who work diligently in the comfort and accompaniment industry. My friendships with these ladies have helped me understand how important it is for the exclusion and disapproval of their type of employment to end. Many women in this industry work long hours, often in difficult conditions, to support their families. We in the Church should actively support anyone who gives of themselves for the betterment of their loved ones. It is deeply hypocritical for Christians to arbitrarily label one line of work as superior to another, and it is a sad day in the life of the Church when the laws of the nation and the views of the popular culture are more sensitive and inclusive than we are.”

The Progressive Voice
The Voice of Progress Since 1968
_ June 27, 2060 ____

After this month’s Supreme Court ruling guaranteeing the civil rights of those of a trans-generational orientation, The President commemorated the event by hosting the wedding of 55-year-old congressman Henry Reid and his 12-year-old bride on the South Lawn of The White House.

Though the issue of marriage equality has divided many evangelical Christians, one prominent evangelical speaker and author has come out in support of equality. The following was posted on his website yesterday:

“I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of trans-generational couples into the Church. One reason I am changing my position on this issue is that I have come to know so many trans-generational Christian couples whose relationships work in much the same way as our own. Christian love is a boundless love, and so should not be restrained by artificial boundaries—not only boundaries of gender, but boundaries of age as well. We in the Church should actively support such families.”

The Progressive Voice
The Voice of Progress Since 1968
_ June 27, 2080 ____

A Portland pastor was arrested for hate crime last month for refusing to allow his church’s sanctuary to be used for the wedding of long-time Portland resident, Steve Wilson, and his German Shepherd, Lefty. The pastor is charged with violating Oregon’s anti-discrimination laws, and has been ordered to pay $75,000 to Wilson and $60,000 to Lefty for emotional suffering.

However, in response to the ruling, the ACLU has filed suit against the state of Oregon for violating the Federal Species Protection Act, claiming the $15,000 difference in compensation caused Lefty mental anguish and was a brazen expression of speciesism and a violation of Lefty’s civil rights.

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Hostility to Heritage?

6/23/2015

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In the wake of the tragedy in South Carolina last week, one story that's dominating this week's headlines is governor Nikki Haley's request to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.

As one who was born and raised in the Deep South, I've thought a lot about the meaning of the Confederate flag. The controversy, of course, centers on whether it is a commemoration of slavery or a symbol of Southern heritage. I've always thought the answer is fairly clear. Honoring one's "heritage" by raising the Confederate flag seems to me a lot like keeping a shot glass in a shadow box to honor the heritage of an alcoholic father.

In any case, there's a brief but enlightening article in the Washington Post (read it here) about the arguments for and against each view. In citing actual quotes from Confederate leaders in the 1860's the piece essentially shows that the idea that the South wasn't really fighting for slavery but rather against big government is a conscience-coddling fiction made up by later generations.

But aside from that, here's a revealing quote from the book cited in the article:

"James McPherson’s study of soldier motivations suggested that most Confederate soldiers did not fight consciously for the preservation of slave property. Confederate soldiers believed they were fighting, above all, to defend their states, their country, and their homes from invasion and to preserve the individual and constitutional liberty that Americans won in 1776. . ."

Well, of course! It's really hard to motivate men to endure the hardships and horrors of war for anything less than the defense of "their states, their country, and their homes." Imagine battle-worn Confederate soldiers on the eve a confrontation with the Union Army. They've seen friends and brothers killed. They haven't been home in months or years. They're sick, exhausted, and starving. But their commanding officer calls them in, and with grit and deep emotion he speaks to their heart:
"I know we're down, but dig deep, men. Muster your courage. With a victory on the field tomorrow, it will all be worth it. We'll have won the right to keep owning blacks like the rest of our barnyard animals." Obviously, this wouldn't work.

It is deeply revealing of human nature that, throughout history, when evil people have sought to get others to fight for an unjust cause, they could only do so by masking it with a just one. As C.S. Lewis explains in Mere Christianity, usually people will do the right thing simply "because it's the right thing to do." But it's extremely rare that a person will do something wrong simply "because it's the wrong thing to do." Usually, when someone commits an evil act, they do it for a perceived greater good. With this in mind, patriotism and an appreciation of "heritage" are often used as a golden gloss to cover horrendous deeds. The Nazi's weren't enacting a genocide of innocent people; they were creating a greater Germany. The soviets weren't systematically murdering millions of peasants and political opponents; they were bringing about an egalitarian utopia, a "dictatorship of the proletariat."

The lesson in this is not for the evil masterminds who instigate atrocities. It is for us common people who are called to follow them. We must learn to discern a hierarchy of good--to see the difference between what's good and what's best. It is good to defend one's country, but not if the leaders of that country are calling its citizens to maintain a way of life that denies the inherent, God-given value of other human beings.

In the closing scene of the movie Gettysburg, after the Confederate defeat at the great battle, Robert E. Lee (played by Martin Sheen) says to one of his fellow officers something to this effect: "When we stand before almighty God, all that will matter is that we've done our duty." This is true, but our most important duty is not to our state or country, or even our family. It is to God who, in light of the example of Christ, expects us to do what's right no matter how much our state, country, or family want us to do wrong.

MM

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Read This Book Before It's Banned

6/19/2015

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I’ve recently been reading Making Gay OK: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Is Changing Everything, by Robert R. Reilly. It’s disturbing, wildly politically incorrect, clearly true, and for all these reasons will likely be despised by many who run our government and shape our culture. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone could go to prison for reading it out loud in some European countries even as we speak.

But (depending on how much effort people put into hiding them) certain illuminating facts have a way of breaking up the fog of fashionable immorality and political correctness. Below are some statistics cited in the book about the health risks of homosexual behavior (as distinct from homosexual orientation). Keep in mind the sources for the data are not right-wing, fundamentalist preachers, but reputable medical institutions and researchers who identify themselves as gay. I’ve highlighted in red the points I found most shocking.

In the past when I’ve expressed my conviction that homosexual behavior (not orientation) is immoral, and a travesty of human sexuality, some people have been quick to let me know how exceptionally mean I am because they have friends or family members who are gay. In light of the information below, if you have friends or loved ones who practice homosexuality, please, please don’t hesitate to show them these stats. How could anyone who loves another person living with this kind of risk fail to warn them?
_______________________

"According to 'Correlates of Homosexual Behavior and the Incidence of Anal Cancer' in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the risk of anal cancer soars by 4,000 percent among those who engage in anal intercourse. At the Fourth International AIDS Malignancy Conference at the National Institutes of Health in May 2000, Dr. Andrew Grulich said that the incidence of anal cancer among homosexuals with HIV 'was raised 37-fold compared with the general population'."

"In 2006 homosexual journalist Simon Fanshawe wrote in the Guardian: 'Hooked on drugs and sex and looks, we call it gay culture. The figures are staggering: 20 percent of gay men in London use the incredibly damaging crystal meth. Studies show that men who do are twice as likely to become HIV positive. Since 1999, the figures for HIV infections have continued to rise in the UK. Syphilis infection rates among gay men have increased by 616 percent in the past five years.' All of this has resulted in a substantially reduced life expectancy for active homosexuals."

“New data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) are over 44 times more likely than other men to contract HIV, and over 40 times more likely than women to contract HIV. Further, MSM are over 46 times more likely to contract syphilis than other men, and over 71 times more likely than women to contract syphilis. According to the CDC, MSM comprised 57 percent of people newly infected with HIV in the United States in 2006, even though MSM are only 2 percent of the adult population.” According to Dale O’Leary, “While MSM make up for only a tiny percentage of the population, they account for 72 percent of primary and secondary syphilis cases, plus 79 percent of HIV diagnoses among men, and a significant percentage of other STDs.”

"Fr. James Schall remarked, 'The purpose of government, as a consequence, is to make whatever we want to do possible for us with little or no cost to ourselves. If our activities cause diseases or derangements of human lives, the solution is not, through self-discipline, to stop the activities that cause the damage but to find a ‘cure’ that will enable us to continue what we want without any consequences to ourselves. We look to technology to substitute for our own lack of self-rule.' This attitude is so manifest that the clearest path to AIDS prevention is ignored or neglected because it does not fit into the liberal sexual ethos.”

"Overall, the authors of Sex in America reported that 90 percent of heterosexual women and more than 75 percent of heterosexual men have never engaged in extramarital sex. This comports more or less, given human frailty, with what one would expect from the natural exclusivity of spousal love. In short, heterosexual couples were 41 times more likely to be monogamous than homosexual couples...fidelity is not typically the case with homosexual couples. He cites The Male Couple, researched and written by two homosexual authors, as 'one of the most carefully researched studies of the most stable homosexual pairs'. He states that 'its investigators found that of 156 couples studied, only seven had maintained sexual fidelity; of the hundred couples that had been together for more than five years, none had been able to maintain sexual fidelity. The authors noted that ‘the expectation for outside sexual activity was the rule for male couples and the exception for heterosexuals.’ ”

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Bruce Jenner and Victimhood

6/15/2015

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A friend suggested I make a post about Bruce Jenner’s blossoming into womanhood and the inconsistency of the gush of media praise this brought forth with the simultaneous disdain of Rachel Dolezal for being a leader in the NAACP without being a CP.

It’s true. There does seem to be a double standard here. What’s the difference between a woman trapped in a man’s body and a black person trapped in a white person’s body? I sense some exclusionary, whitey-wanting-to-be-black-a-phobia going on here. We shouldn’t allow the GLBTQIA community to monopolize victim status. There’s plenty of victimhood to go around, and those who truly care about social justice will not rest until everyone (except Christians) gets their fair share.

On a related note, I had been tempted to make a post about Jenner’s liberation from masculinity. But since it’s been one of the main headlines in the news, that typically means there’s a number of other issues that are far more worthy of our attention. But even so, I had thought of commenting on how ironic it is that Jenner would be praised for his courage and bravery for doing something that would bring instant praise and adoration from millions of people. I also thought of writing about how frightening and demoralizing it is that The President of The United States would commend someone for doing something that, in any sane society, would warrant diagnosis of a profound psychiatric disorder. I also thought about speculating whether or not in ten or fifteen years the science of gender transformation will have developed enough to liberate people from the prison of being one gender and allow them the freedom to impregnate themselves, and how this might lower the divorce rate and benefit kids in making it easier for them to spend more quality time with both parents.

But then I thought all this might make me come across as a non-inclusive, insensitive, unenlightened, transgender-a-phobic hillbilly, so I decided not to write it.

MM

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Actors Acting Like Philosophers

6/11/2015

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For centuries some of the finest minds in the Western world have contemplated what’s often referred to as the problem of evil; how can the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, good God be reconciled with the pervasiveness and magnitude of evil and suffering in the world?

Many of the greatest philosophers and theologians have spent much of their life and life’s work contemplating this question, but those of us who are privileged to live in the early twenty-first century no longer need to trouble ourselves about it. Augustine, Aquinas, Dostoyevsky, C.S. Lewis, all were dunces compared to the intrepid actors and comedians we’ve been blessed with—those like Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais, and Seth Macfarlane, who have come to liberate us with the force of their unprecedented insights from the tyrannous stupidity of believing in God…or so they think.

This came to mind recently when watching one of Father Robert Barron’s excellent Youtube segments. This one is a response to Stephen Fry’s remark that if he found out after dying that atheism was wrong then his question for God would be “What about children with bone cancer?”

In light of Father Barron’s point, I would like to ask Stephen Fry if his indignation with God over children with bone cancer would be any less if, as he faced God, he saw the the cancer stricken child standing next to Him in full vigor with the joy of eternity in his eyes.

Along these lines, in his book 90 Minutes in Heaven (which is not figurative), Don Piper talks about the way his deep grief over the unexpected death of his 19-year-old friend, Mike Wood, instantly resolved upon seeing him in Heaven. Keep in mind this takes place in an hour-and-a-half period during which Piper had been covered with a sheet and presumed dead by professional EMTs.

"We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:
'What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived” --
the things God has prepared for those who love him--
these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.' " (1 Corinthians 2:6-10)

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What Beauty Reveals

6/8/2015

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As my wife and I were driving in central Utah one recent morning, we turned off the highway to get a picture of a formidably beautiful cloud formation. It seemed to reign over the horizon like a celestial citadel. As we turned onto the gravel road in pursuit of the photo op., a stark, vertical rainbow appeared underneath the formation blazing down to the valley floor. The picture above shows it just as it appeared (as much as a two dimensional picture can). Had I not known what astonishment meant, I would have known then. It was heartbreakingly beautiful!

In reflecting on this, I realized that part of the great impact of this kind of experience comes in its power to dispel one of the most ridiculous-but-influential ideas of our time—that we are only matter.

For centuries philosophers have wrestled with the relationship between the mind and the body, or in other words the boundaries between the spiritual and the material. But today there are shocking numbers of people who believe, or at least try to believe (it’s never consistent), that the whole idea of a spiritual reality is a myth, and that all aspects of a human being—our appreciation of beauty, our moral convictions, emotions, desires, loves and hatreds—are ultimately nothing more than the results of complex chemical relationships which have randomly come to be, and which will eventually dissipate the way a tissue left on the ground dissipates in the weather.

But the reality shown in the picture makes those who hold to this view look a lot like a scout leader chastising his troop for being scared by bear myths as he unknowingly stands in the shadow of an upright grizzly.

We can talk all day about how rainbows and cloud formations are actually just odd mixtures of light and water particles in the atmosphere, but the thing that’s obvious as lightning is that it takes something much more than a mixture of particles to be astonished by a mixture of particles.

Beauty is a supernatural mystery. It is to our body chemistry what electricity is to a power line. It comes to it and through it, not from it. And if it’s allowed, it works on the minds of those muddled by the foggy sophistication of materialism (the matter only view) like smelling salts in the face of a punch-drunk boxer. It sobers and clarifies, and makes us more aware of what's truly real.

"It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (John 6:63-64)

MM

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One Good Reason

6/6/2015

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You might be tempted to think that this weird video amounts to a creative cheap shot at a legitimate argument against the Christian view of marriage. But the truth is that even some of the most well educated opponents of Christianity often make arguments which are just as sound and well-researched as the one made by the floating Horus.

The pastor makes the nature of the controversy painfully clear in his response to Horus' question,
"If this is really what Christians believe, then give me one good reason why I've never heard any of this before?"

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Dystopia Now

6/2/2015

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Two of the best dystopian novels ever written are Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s 1984. Both are works of futuristic fiction which include just enough reality from the world in which they were written to make us believe that, if we’re not vigilant, the future could turn out to be something worse than anything in the past. Both stories convey searing illustrations of the fact that apathy in large numbers of people enables tyranny in small numbers of people.

Some of the most memorable images in each story come from aspects of the future dystopia that are as frightening as they are ridiculous. Firemen have an important role in the America of Fahrenheit 451, but instead of putting out fires, their job is to start them, usually by burning down houses whenever books are found within. Books are forbidden in that society because they cause disagreement.

In 1984, Big Brother’s government maintains the Ministry of Truth, where past newspaper articles and other records are either burned or rewritten to corroborate current speeches from government officials which completely contradict earlier ones. Then there’s the Ministry of Love, where suspected opponents of the government are tortured, and the Ministry of Peace, were war efforts are planned.

The subtle consolation that comes in reading these horrifying scenarios is that they are warnings of what could happen, not commentaries on what has happened. The point of dystopian stories is to call us to vigilance now in order to avoid possible horrors in the future.

But…but...as it turns out, dystopia is not as far away as some might think. I know it’s old news now, but last year actor, Zach Galifianakis, and comedian, Sarah Silverman, hosted a “charity telethon” to raise money for groups that make abortion more accessible for women who live in abortion-restricted states like Texas. It was billed as a campaign for “reproductive rights.”

I can’t stop wondering what the donation pleas for the telethon were like? Maybe they could have been something like this:

“Right now there’s a young, underprivileged woman who in just a few months will have to suffer all the inconvenience, all the emotional and physical pain that come with being the mother of a new born child. But you can be the one that makes a difference. A small donation from you can end that child’s life and lift that woman’s burden. You can give her the peace of knowing she can once again have stress free sex with whoever she pleases.”

“Oh we’ve just received a call…a generous donor has agreed to match all pledges for the next hour. Call now and you can turn two potential families of 4 into families of 3!”

{Dramatic music softly in the background: Hostess looks into the camera, teary, with great gravity}

“All over this great nation of ours it’s getting more and more difficult for a woman to kill the child within her womb. Other states are poised to follow Texas in denying women their reproductive rights. Will you join with us in making a difference? Will you join with us in ending children’s lives so that prospective mothers will no longer be burdened with the unjust responsibilities that come with sex. Will you call now and help free these young, underprivileged women from the shackles of prudence and self-control? There are so many children, and so little time. Call now and you can go to bed tonight knowing you helped end a child’s life and set a mother free.”

Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough, but a “charity” campaign to kill children in their mother’s womb is more disturbing to me than firemen who set fires, or a “Ministry of Truth” that propagates lies.

For a staggering number of would-be children, dystopia is now.

MM

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The Progressive Voice
The Voice of Progress Since 1968
_ June 27, 2015 ____

The Progressive Voice
The Voice of Progress Since 1968
_ June 27, 2035 ____

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The Voice of Progress Since 1968
_ June 27, 2060 ____

The Progressive Voice
The Voice of Progress Since 1968
_ June 27, 2080 ____