News

Two Christian preachers brutally beaten at Seattle Gay Pride Festival

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Warning: the video above has extremely coarse language and violence.

Fox News reports.

Excerpt:

Two street preachers were brutally beaten — punched and kicked — by a crowd at a gay pride festival in Seattle and the entire melee was captured on video.

The preachers were holding signs reading “Repent or Else” and “Jesus Saves From Sin.” The video shows a group of people initially screaming and threatening the men during Pridefest at the Seattle Space Needle.

Television station KOMO reported that some of the attackers belonged to a group called NOH8

A group of women tried to steal their signs but were unsuccessful. The video then shows a group of men grabbing onto one of the preacher’s signs and dragging him to the ground. At some point he was punched in the back of the head a number of times while others can be seen kicking the man.

Another preacher was sucker punched in the back of the head.

Police arrested two suspects – one of whom has a long rap sheet.

Now the first thing to say, obviously, is that the two Christians are going about their opposition to homosexuality in a wrong way. I don’t think that it is a Biblical approach to expect non-Christians to accept Christian morality because of what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:9-12. If you want to disagree about homosexuality or same-sex marriage with a non-Christian, then you’ll have to go outside the Bible and use evidence that is compelling to a non-Christian. And that’s what I always do in my blog posts because my audience is non-Christians. So that’s the first thing that needs to be said. There is a right way to argue against homosexuality with non-Christians, and these Christians were not doing it. The right way to discuss homosexuality is by using data found in books like “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth” and “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality“. And the right context for presenting this data is probably in written work or in the context of a relationship with the other person. Not holding up signs with flames on it to strangers.

My sexual orientation

Now the point I want to make about this is that I have a sexual orientation, too. My sexual orientation is pre-marital virginity, pre-marital chastity and lifelong faithful married love (if I get married). Now I don’t need to have a parade or get all kinds of government recognition and financial benefits in order to make me feel good about what I’m doing. In fact, even if someone puts down my virginity and chastity, I wouldn’t really care. In fact, the number one place where my sexual orientation is looked down on is in the church. In church, there is a whole group of people who are enamored of compassion and they are opposed to having any boundaries on sex at all, regardless of the harm it causes with things like abortion, divorce, fatherlessness and so on. Their idea is that people should be able to have sex if they are in love, and that they shouldn’t be “shamed” or “judged” for doing so. However, I don’t attack them and violently beat them up just because they disagree with me on my sexual orientation. I just let them say what they are going to say and mind my own business. I don’t need anyone to tell me that what I am doing is right. I have reasons and evidence showing me that my view is right, like the peer-reviewed papers that show that premarital sex causes lower quality and stability in marriage. I know what I’m doing, and disagreement doesn’t bother me.

Anti-chastity people could even hold up signs in front of my house saying “Repent of your chastity, evil virgin, or burn in Hell!” and it still wouldn’t bother me. And that’s because I know that what I believe causes no harm to anyone. It doesn’t impose social costs on others because I need special drugs or health care for my chastity. It doesn’t cause me to make other people sick. It doesn’t break up marriages so I can go off with someone else. It doesn’t leave children fatherless or motherless. It doesn’t expose born or unborn children to harm from strangers. It doesn’t require public schools to teach young people how great my virginity and chastity is. It doesn’t require new school lessons telling everyone the contributions that virgins have made in history. It doesn’t require the Supreme Court to force people to affirm chastity. It doesn’t require anyone to be fired because they disagree with me on premarital sex. It doesn’t require other people to have their freedom of speech or freedom of religion limited so that I can avoid feeling “offended” by what they say and do.

So in conclusion then, I don’t respond with anger, vandalism, coercion or violence when people disagree with me about being a virgin and embracing chastity before marriage.

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Commentary

Charles Krauthammer explains why Obama isn’t going to be able to fix global warming

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In the liberal Washington Post.

Excerpt:

Global temperatures have been flat for 16 years — a curious time to unveil a grand, hugely costly, socially disruptive anti-warming program.

[…]For the sake of argument, nonetheless, let’s concede that global warming is precisely what Obama thinks it is. Then answer this: What in God’s name is his massive new regulatory and spending program — which begins with a war on coal and ends with billions in more subsidies for new Solyndras — going to do about it?

The United States has already radically cut carbon dioxide emissions — more than any country on earth since 2006, according to the International Energy Agency. Emissions today are back down to 1992 levels.

And yet, at the same time, global emissions have gone up. That’s because — surprise! — we don’t control the energy use of the other 96 percent of humankind.

At the heart of Obama’s program are EPA regulations that will make it impossible to open any new coal plant and will systematically shut down existing plants. “Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they’re having a war on coal,” explained one of Obama’s climate advisers. “On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.”

Net effect: tens of thousands of jobs killed, entire states impoverished. This at a time of chronically and crushingly high unemployment, slow growth, jittery markets and deep economic uncertainty.

But that’s not the worst of it. This massive self-sacrifice might be worthwhile if it did actually stop global warming and save the planet. What makes the whole idea nuts is that it won’t. This massive self-inflicted economic wound will have no effect on climate change.

The have-nots are rapidly industrializing. As we speak, China and India together are opening one new coal plant every week. We can kill U.S. coal and devastate coal country all we want, but the industrializing Third World will more than make up for it. The net effect of the Obama plan will simply be dismantling the U.S. coal industry for shipping abroad.

To think we will get these countries to cooperate is sheer fantasy. We’ve been negotiating climate treaties for 20 years and gotten exactly nowhere. China, India and the other rising and modernizing countries point out that the West had a 150-year industrial head start that made it rich. They are still poor. And now, just as they are beginning to get rich, we’re telling them to stop dead in their tracks?

Fat chance. Obama imagines he’s going to cajole China into a greenhouse-gas emissions reduction that will slow its economy, increase energy costs, derail industrialization and risk enormous social unrest. This from a president who couldn’t even get China to turn over one Edward Snowden to U.S. custody.

Now previously I wrote about how there hasn’t been any global warming in the last 16 years. I linked to the New York Times saying that, and to Reuters saying that. So everyone who isn’t a flat-Earther agrees that there has been no global warming in 16 years – those are the facts. This is just Obama’s attempt to change the subject now that everyone knows how badly he’s been screwing up on foreign policy and with the economy.

News

Abortion supporters chant “Hail Satan!” as pro-lifers sing “Amazing Grace”

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Everybody seemed to be posting about this story on Facebook, so I might as well blog about it, for those who haven’t seen it. (H/T Chris S.)

Excerpt:

For several hours between Tuesday and Wednesday, the phrase “Hail Satan” trended on Twitter as word spread that abortion supporters had chanted it at pro-life Christians singing “Amazing Grace” amid mounting tensions over the pending passage of strict abortion laws in the Texas Capitol.

This week, Texas Governor Rick Perry convened a second special session in the Texas Senate after Democratic activism botched the passage of legislation that would have banned abortions in that state after 20 weeks.

The legislation would also require that abortions be performed at ambulatory surgical centers and mandate that doctors obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of their practice. Opponents of the proposal argue that the proposal would virtually shut down abortion clinics in that state and pro-life supporters have no problem with that.

“The world has seen images of pro-abortion activists screaming, cheering,” Republican Gov. Rick Perry noted, in an earlier report in which he vowed that the process would not be derailed a second time. “Going forward, we have to match their intensity, but do it with grace and civility.”

[…]On Tuesday, the pro-abortion supporters went from riotous to sacrilegious when they chanted “Hail Satan” repeatedly in a bid to silence Christian pro-lifers who were singing “Amazing Grace” in support of abortion restrictions in the state.

The extremely unorthodox chant from the abortion supporters triggered a trend of “Hail Satan” on Twitter and many dismissed it as terrible public relations for the pro-abortion movement.

“When your supporters go around yelling ‘hail satan’ you’re likely not gonna have fabulous #’s” tweeted investigative journalist Kerry Picket pointing to poll numbers showing Gov. Perry at a big advantage in a potential face-off with political upstart Wendy Davis.

Other critics of the use of the “Hail Satan” chant like public relations expert Mark Demoss implied it was excessive.

“Do supporters of late-term abortion in TX help their cause by chanting ‘Hail Satan’ (really) over top of pro-lifers singing Amazing Grace?” asked Demoss in a tweet on Wednesday.

“‘Hail Satan!’ was actually the compromise chant. The hot-heads wanted ‘We Know It’s Murder And We Don’t Care!'” tweeted conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg.

Hmmmn. So, I think it’s pretty clear which side of the debate are the good guys, now.