Tag Archives: anti-discrimination

Education, Family, Sex

WHY A RAINBOW?

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Carlisle, Massachusetts

In many cities, towns, villages and hamlets, churches and synagogues display some form of rainbow flags.  If the congregation and pastor is really “woke,” the top color stripe is black; otherwise ‘red and orange, green and blue, shining yellow, purple, too…’ is enough to advertise how welcoming that church and congregation is to, well, any one.  It is a friendly intention, throwing wide the arms of, umm… it’s not clear, Christianity(?)… to the world. 

Among Christianity’s strengths is its history of reformation.  The best known is the protestant reformation of Martin Luther.  His 95 Theses exposed the sloppiness and politicization of the Catholic Church, it’s corruption and ties to wealthy bankers and corrupt royal families.  There followed a reformation of Christianity, but not of the Catholic Church, particularly.  The world forced “the Church” to adapt, but it always appeared to follow, not lead.  Despite its self-proclaimed heritage direct from Simon Peter, Holy Mother Church retained its worldly flaws and intrigues, descending into sexuality most foul, ruining thousands of lives and families.  It appears incapable of reforming itself.

Rampant homosexuality and pedophilia has caused a reformation never intended, where droves of the faithful washed their hands and feet of the Church, losing trust in the priesthood.  The written and spoken liturgy and the artful back-story Catholics have recited and agreed with for centuries is still the same, but the trust is different.  Despite its self-immolation of recent decades, the Catholic Church is still a pillar of Western civilization – worth our defending.  One hopes the Church will come clean and preach the truth; its power to do and to guide good, is still immense.  It is incapable of defending Christianity, itself, just now, especially in the face of Islam and other anti-Christian forces arrayed against it.  Catholic parishes don’t need to fly the rainbow banner.

“Protestantism” reforms itself by subdividing.  Each new sect, even each new congregation within some sects, keys in on certain tenets of the Bible as the best lessons to learn for how to live a “Christian” life, raise your children and increase charity in the world.  To the degree that each is honestly led, each has a divine function to fulfill.  Everyone is not at the same point in their evolution – evolution of the soul, that is – and each will find the teacher whose teaching he or she is ready to receive.  Each should also be ready to move upwards when it is time for a more profound teacher along the path toward truth.

Lately, however, Protestants are racing to not be the exception in the Rainbow Revolution.  Every church has one: Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, United Churches of Christ, liberal Baptists, even a handful of reform Synagogues.  Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists appear immune to the blandishments of Rainbows, as are Quakers.  The latter three are not caught up with filling the pews for no reason or for any reason.

If the Rainbow symbol were created to bring more people into adherence to Divine Law, it would be a wonderful, actual, reformation.  Church “Reform” ought to improve human distillation of the Word insofar as we have tried to learn and understand it.  If a widespread movement serves, instead, to DEform churches and their ability to spread the Word, then Christians ought to question it, starting with ministers, preachers, priests, rabbis, bishops and deacons. That’s not happening… not that a Prudent observer can detect.

What do interested people believe that banner says?

The first and primary message, beyond all claims of “inclusivity” or unity with those discriminated against racially, is that same-sex activities are equally valid to those of heterosexuals.  Every other meaning of the other 5, 6 or 7 colors, occasionally adding white, is simply claiming identity with every use and delight in the ‘rainbow,’ particularly for children.  If unicorns are made happy by rainbows then so are we, so to speak.  The rainbow flag, originally a symbol of racial inclusiveness, from the late fifties and sixties, is a clever appropriation of thoughtless human sympathies for the unhappy.

Consequently, the banner has become ubiquitous during “Pride” month, which is not ever a celebration of the Word of God, nor does it reflect prayerful meditation on the innate beauty of God’s creation of humankind.  It is a collective demand… against heterosexuality, since true gays and lesbians will never enjoy it or the incredible joy of motherhood and fatherhood and of the nurturing of offspring; and against God and anyone who claims to speak for Him.  The demand translates, both for other humans and for ecclesiastics, that non-heterosexuals deserve both attention and respect based on their different sexuality, unusual emotions and desires, and discordant habits.  Imagine: a group of humans who are not happy with their emotional make-up, so much so that they will flaunt their intention and practice of breaking… no, denigrating, religious dogma and, to the faithful, the Holy Word of God. 

In the chance of there being a God, sneering at His Law and rules for righteousness is a very arrogant move, a Prudent observer might think.  Unfortunately, economics being what they are, churches have been tempering their messages for decades, hoping to fill the pews with charitable attendees.  That is a path along which it is virtually impossible to reverse direction.  Accepting the rainbow flag as a church’s statement of acceptance is to ignore the shift that has occurred in the legal status of the self-proclaimed “LGBTQ” “community.”

One might Prudently inquire of a member of a rainbow-endowed church… or even of a clergy-person, just what he or she means to say with the flag.  Without a doubt the answer would include something about “anti-discrimination” or “inclusiveness” and “all are God’s children,’ and the like.  None would suggest that they displayed the flag with the message that 1) Christians must forsake scripture so that non-heterosexuals won’t feel challenged in their pleasures or beliefs; and 2) By extension, all laws and customs that follow the inherent message of Judeo-Christian scripture regarding same-sex relations and sex activities, must be set aside by law, no matter the damage to our society or civilization.  No, no, no.  “We love everyone,” they might say.

Yet, somehow, their love does not seem to extend to everyone’s beliefs in equal measure.  That is, they have no banners celebrating the strictures and scriptures of the Word of God that underlies the very existence of their church, physically and spiritually.  Adding the rainbow banner to the physical existence of their church would indicate that what the followers of that banner believe is not only equal to the beliefs that built and maintain the church, physically and congregationally, but, to some degree, greater than those of the founders of that church.  “Oh, no,” comes the distressed reply, “we are simply saying they are welcome no matter what they believe right now.  The magic of Christianity will infuse their hearts and cause them to renounce their forbidden practices and join more fully with our beliefs!”  Okaaaay.

That last is a Prudent speculation but doesn’t actually work out in fact.  In fact, the presence of the rainbow flag acknowledges that non-heterosexuals are consistently demanding full “equality” with religious heterosexuals, including full marriage equality, as one example.  Resignedly, most “rainbowed” churches advertise their willingness to perform, and therefore endorse, same-sex “marriages.”  This is a public replacement of parts of scripture that undergirded the creation of their churchly existences.  At this point, parishioners and clerics alike are advertising their desire to accept emotions felt by non-heterosexuals as equal  or even superior  to their previously revered scriptures, teachings and beliefs.  Extraordinary.  By erecting the rainbow banner, all of these have foresworn their existence as churches, in favor of a new existence as social or fraternal clubs, of whose continued existence the countdown to disappearance has begun.  For shame.

Much the same is happening in secular circles, and in government.  Secular society is being forced, jump by jump, to accept a new basis of family, of children and of life’s purposes.  Government, much like churches seeking contributions in their collection plates, is racing to get in front of this heritage-replacing movement so that it might consider itself still the leader of society (in the persons of craven politicians).  Consequently we have commenced to codify the self-declared feelings of non-heterosexuals such that public education and personal privacy have been transformed in the space of two decades, to the point where individuals may be punished by severe professional and economic loss for failing to treat self-declared feelings, even self-declared sexual identities  as the equal of reality.  This is a dangerous weapon aimed at rationality, heretofore the glue of our cooperative society.

Creating laws that grant or reveal new civil rights that can change on an individual basis at individual whim, is extremely sketchy.  Punishing people for failing to respond according to some shifting, individually prescribed way, to the individual declarations of unproveable personal feelings, marks the descent into anarchy, and the end of reason, as well as the end of social cohesiveness: the tyranny of a tiny minority over the vast majority, backed by police powers.  May God save us from folly.

Economics, Education, Family, Governance, Politics 2018, Sex

The Potters of Socialism

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During a recent conversation, Prudence opined on the new trends of “body art” and unusual piercings, increasingly involving the bodies of young women. It has something to do with both feminism and socialism, Prudence suggests, and this view has caused demands for substantial clarification. Indeed. This line of reasoning could lead to a unified theory of wrong directions and unnecessary complexity.

Life is a test… a series of tests: momentary, hourly, daily, situationally – from birth to death. Humans, LIKE ALL LIVING THINGS, become stronger, more honest, more independent, by facing tests and “passing” them. What is the greatest dis-honesty, therefore?

It is denial of the test. It is humans’ penchant for convincing themselves that they might avoid the testing (which is the spiritual aspect of life) coupled with the denial of spirituality, itself. These fundamentals lead to lifetimes of failure, unfulfillment and even to widening circles of tragedy for other humans, particularly people the unfulfilled try to “love.” On the other hand, those tragedies are also tests that may be passed, leading to strength and growth.

Stated more simply, the worst lie is that which one tells to him or herself. We are in an odd time where such lies are celebrated, promulgated, codified and made, legally, into community-wide lies that form the new bases for anti-discrimination criminality. The hot one is trans-genderism. We call it an “ism” because it derives from belief and not from reality. Under it males tell themselves that they are females, in the preponderance of instances, and females tell themselves that they are males. It is the penultimate denial of human testing there could be.

It isn’t the absolute worst, any longer, because here and there are humans who tell themselves that they are not human, and who seek “rights” as this or that animal… often a dog: humans like dogs.

But, declaring oneself to not be what one is requires holding two conflicting ideas at once, ultimately leading, for most, to mental breakdown. This is not to say that some are not “happy” to be living outwardly as the opposite gender, but they are the minority. Still, they deserve their own happiness and other humans should not disrupt it. But the truth is that gender cannot be changed, only masked. Individuals who are emotionally secure may be happier adopting the mask. It is their mask, and by its artifice the individual attempts to avoid or deny the testing that his or her gender would otherwise face.

So, some would ask, what’s wrong with that? Lots of people avoid tests. We have an entire welfare system that purports to “help” them do so. And this shows the intersection of socialism as a construct of lies and the increasing lies of sexuality that some fight for as forms of “progress.” Both are means of test-avoidance, test denial, and both tend to leave the denier weaker spiritually.

What has this to do with tattoos and piercings? Both are forms of masks, are they not? Even homosexuality is a mask. It doesn’t mean individuals are not “happy” living as not being tested as a man or as not being tested as a woman, but it does mean they have made a choice to not face tests of emotion and feelings of one sort, and the growth their passing would provide. Because of anti-discrimination rules, declaring oneself homosexual means avoiding tests as either one’s gender or as one’s new identity.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s a big form of masking was hair. Girls would shave their heads or apply odd colors to their hair, for example, daring others to react to the change. In that way, at least temporarily, they could step out of the role of “woman” and be tested on the most ephemeral aspects of being rather than facing the tests of female growth and honesty. Boys at the same time would grow their hair to great lengths or shagginess, altering their “aura” as it were, too. Any troubles that came their way over rebellious hairstyling were deemed preferable to those that were associated with maturing in the role of “man.” Test denial. It’s what socialism promises to whole populations, inherently including a denial of spirituality.

In the midst of the “sexual revolution” last century, society, institutions and families fairly consistently encouraged the reality of acceptance of one’s role as man or woman. Most youngsters “grew out of” their odd experiments. Not all, though. By the mid-seventies several large trends were underway:

1. Welfare was federalized and entrenched under the “Great Society.”
2. Feminism was aggressively undoing traditional roles and family structures.
3. Leftist media were celebrating their successful castration of the Vietnam War
and all efforts against Communism that it represented.
4. Leftist media were celebrating the destruction of Richard Nixon, a flawed
conservative at best, over relatively minor crimes.
5. Attacks against organized religion were becoming normalized even as churches
themselves were corroding innocence within their ranks.
6. The Federal Reserve was prosecuting economic policies without regard to
elections or even office holders like presidents in the exercise of new powers
elected representatives could not grasp or counter.
7. Homosexuality was exploding in Western societies.
8. Black families were disintegrating with the help of federalized welfare.
9. Faith in the American idea was fading as quickly as American History curricula.

America is reaping the corrupt crops, now, from mutated seeds sown for fifty years. Youth are in favor of socialism, politicians are proud of it while other politicians flail about in their quest for proper rebuttals to socialist mendacity. Just like homosexuality and its ragged cousin, transgenderism, socialism requires believers to hold, and defend, two diametrically conflicting ideas at once.

Socialism intends two conflicting outcomes: 1) People will become better humans by virtue of changes in their physical surroundings and LACK OF RESPONSIBILITY; 2) If people fail to become higher-quality people thanks to socialism, socialists-in-charge will happily control them until they do.

Prudence’s correspondent had recently visited the waiting room of a plastic surgery and facial reconstruction practice and was struck by the number of quite young people, mostly females, who were there for recuperative follow-ups for various procedures. This, too, is a trend: Young people are having one or multiple procedures done to, they, hope, cause fulfillment of a physical image that is more pleasing, more acceptable, more attractive to society. That is to say, they are living out a dream of comparison to others rather than living on purpose.

Just like body arts or fanatical workouts, plastic surgery provides a mask that the wearer believes is more ”beautiful” than the innate self; this work, often painful, is endured in lieu of making ones inner, true self more attractive or charitable or loving. It is a personal dose of socialism whereby the physical or worldly appearance forms its own replacement spirituality and belief structure. There is no surprise that such shallow, literal children are unable to discern the corrosiveness of socialism. It is no wonder that socialists, and most progressives, are not nearly as happy as conservatives whose belief structures are based in spirituality that leads them to accept and pass tests in reality.

Changing ones physique or physiognomy to fulfill the expectations of society is a means of sidestepping true tests in life. Like the long hairs of the ‘60’s, others will deal with the mask rather than the real person and, it is hoped, the tests associated with the original person will never need passing. Growth is avoided.

Perhaps the most anti-spiritual, test-denial of all is abortion. Despite playing a role in conception of new human life, women have been convinced that the tests of motherhood may be avoided and that they will be more happy and fulfilled as a result. Indeed, not only have they the right to avoid those tests, but all of society, through government theft of others’ earnings, ought to support that avoidance. Perhaps there is less stress temporarily, but little happiness obtains.

Instead of accepting the tests of womanhood and motherhood and the concurrent civilizing of more animalistic males, females are encouraged to exist untested and to a degree, unfulfilled and incomplete. Obviously many of these women will see a logic to socialism and to government “nannyism” throughout their lives. Who needs men in that future? Socialism destroys humanity and abject feminism is socialism’s handmaid. How bleak.

The constant undermining and outright attacking of Christianity feeds socialism’s ascension to acceptability. Not the old testament, but the new, defines man’s relationship to God as personal and an individual responsibility – not as one of God’s chosen people, but as God’s chosen person, responsible to him or her self and to God to take the energy of life provided, and to multiply it by learning and following the rules laid out in dozens of religious traditions.

There is no room for the spiritual in socialism. Socialism is based on groups and denies individual greatness. The infection of education by socialism is obvious in the moves to eliminate valedictorians and salutatorians, or to have multiples of each. Another is to avoid “F’s” or other negative marking, to give everyone a trophy, to (claim to) not keep score in youth sports. One can also observe the same rot supplanting historical knowledge resulting in America’s being no more exceptional than literally every other nation. Rampant egalitarianism provides another patine of legitimacy: no one can earn more, be more worthy, honorable or valuable than the rest. Apparently, only government officials are permitted to be smarter than others, or more morally pure.

Ultimately, Socialism is the avoidance of human tests and, essentially, the avoidance of personal growth. Humans become stronger by overcoming adversity – everything from discomfort, to hunger, to tyranny and lack of freedom. We call the triumph over adversity, “freedom,” not the avoidance of it.

Avoiding adversity is a form of self-subjugation, leaving the subject/practitioner in a jail of his or her own making: less and less likely to ever overcome adverse circumstances. Dependence is the only result. Dependents are the most malleable of clays for the potters of socialism who are more than willing to offer ever more complete avoidance of tests, gaining perpetual power for themselves. Perhaps this little essay is testing the reader, right now.