Tag Archives: Education

News

Can same-sex marriage and religious liberty co-exist?

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UPDATE: Welcome readers from 4Simpsons! Thanks for the link Neil!

Maggie Gallagher has written an article in the National Review asking whether same-sex marriage will crowd out fundamental liberties, such as the religious liberty.

First, we need to understand that the public expression of religious convictions is a buffer against fascism, just like free market capitalism and the family unit.

Maggie writes:

Take “religious liberty.” Religious liberty is a deeply American solution to a perennial problem. It means that every individual has a right to pursue ultimate meaning without coercion from the government. Totalitarian governments repress religion because they recognize faith communities as competitors with the state’s power to define — or redefine — human rights.

But a funny thing happened on the way to defeating Communism. Religion has emerged as the sole institution standing in the way of a powerful neo-statist liberalism, in which equality doctrines are used not as a shield but as a sword — to legitimate state intrusion into once-private realms.

In practice, religious voters are the core of resistance to social liberalism, and they empower economic conservatism by providing a much broader base of voters for a center-right coalition government.

How will the left get rid of rights like the right to free speech, and the right of religious liberty, which stand in the way of their socialist road to fascism? Well, they might be able to use same-sex marriage.

Maggie goes on to wonder what the left will do in the USA, given what the left is doing in the UK:

Consider what is happening right now in Great Britain, our closest sister democracy and the one with the strongest free-speech tradition. How does the British government treat religious liberty when it clashes with “gay equality”?

Can the British government force a Catholic school to retain a principal who enters a civil union? Yes, it already has. How can that be, given British religious liberty? Well, the government says that if a religion teacher at a Catholic school enters a gay union publicly, he or she could be fired. But nobody else.

Can the government fine an Anglican bishop who refuses to hire an actively and proudly gay youth minister? Yes, it already has. (How is this justified by the above principle? I don’t know. I just know the government can do it, because it has.)

Consider this story from the UK Telegraph.

Religious groups are to be forced to accept homosexual youth workers, secretaries and other staff, even if their faith holds same-sex relationships to be sinful.

…Maria Eagle, the deputy equalities minister, has now indicated that it will cover almost all church employees.”Members of faith groups have a role in making the argument in their own communities for greater LGBT acceptance, but in the meantime the state has a duty to protect people from unfair treatment.”

But limitations on our rights because of same-sex marriage are already here, because of secularism. The denial of fundamental human rights, (which are illusory if God does not exist), is quite widespread in Canada and the United States. Atheists want to be happy, and they will sweep aside your Constitutional rights in order to get that happiness.

Consider the case of Julie Ward.

Ms. Ward was enrolled in a graduate program at the school and as part of her education was required to enroll in a counseling practicum. In that practicum, she was assigned a case involving a homosexual who needed help. Ms. Ward did not feel that she could affirm the student’s homosexual lifestyle because of her Christian beliefs, so she asked her supervisor what she should do. His advice was to refer the student to a counselor who had no qualms with affirming homosexual behavior. That is what she did, and it was all done before she saw the student. There was no counseling that took place between the two, there was no confrontation between the two, and there was no condemnation of homosexuality — just an honest confession of her deeply held religious belief.

Julea was summoned to appear before a disciplinary hearing and told that if she wanted to continue on with her graduate program, she would have to submit to a “remediation” program so that she could see “the error of her ways.” She refused to be forced into a re-education program designed to convert her from biblical faith, and as a result, she was kicked out of school. There’s your tolerance.

And consider homosexual indoctrination for 5-year olds. (H/T Stop the ACLU)

A California school district seems intent on teaching pre-school children to accept the homosexual lifestyle.

The Alameda Unified School District announced it was considering a supplemental curriculum to eradicate “homophobia” in kindergarten children. Brad Dacus, founder of the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), said the meeting room for the public session earlier this week was overcrowded with angry parents.

“Nowhere at anytime did it give any protection for children being bullied because of their faith, their religion, their size, their race, ethnicity,” he points out. “It is only going to give this special anti-bullying protection for homosexuals and transsexuals.”

…Parents cannot opt out their children from the curriculum.

No wonder men don’t want to marry and have kids, and have the whole thing regulated by the government. If you can’t even pass on your worldview to your kids, or express your beliefs in public, because of all the left-wing cry-babies who are so intolerant that they can’t bear to hear other points of view, then why bother marrying and having children? If single women really wanted husbands and children, they wouldn’t vote Democrat (= anti-family).

Same-sex marriage activists believe in compelling celebration, respect and approval from Christians against their will and in violation of their human rights. If SSM ever became law, our entire society would be re-made so that no public expression of preference for traditional marriage would go unpunished.

Further study

Muddling Towards Maturity linked to two commentaries (one, two) by Chuck Colson listing the many examples of discrimination, including: the coercion of Christian business eHarmony to open up a business to homosexuals, suing people for refusing to facilitate weddings, suing doctors for refusing to provide therapy or in vitro fertalization, forcing adoption agencies to place children with same-sex couples, etc.

I documented the persecution of defenders of traditional marriage here.

Commentary

One of the best things about being a Christian is other Christians

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I wanted to highlight some of the Christian blogs that I’ve discovered since I started blogging.

The top one in the list is definitely Neil Simpson’s blog. I was just reading over there today and he was really hard on poor Dawn Eden, whose book on chastity I have read. I recommend it, although she doesn’t go as far as I would. Anyway, she’s responded in the comments. She is currently taking classes in philosophy and theology, so it should be a good fight between her and Neil! Dawn’s blog is here.

I also noticed this post over on Laura’s blog, but it’s cross-posted on Hot Air. Laura writes about how the left implicitly doesn’t trust parents to make decisions about how they address the topic of sex when talking to their own children. She writes about the left’s view of parents:

Our teens are political pawns for the left.  They’re helpless victims of our prudery, children that the government needs to provide for at every turn with health insurance and free college tuition (but don’t deserve an adequate secondary education except when it’s time to raise taxes),  socially and technologically savvy enough to make their own entertainment and political choices free from our censorship,  mature and wise enough to choose abortion (but not give birth), and 18 year old babies who need to be protected from sneaky military recruiters and beer.   The rallying cry may be “it’s for the children!” but the only really consistent position I see in the left is that parents do not know best; government does.

Over on Muddling Toward Maturity, he links to a Chuck Colson story on how the self-esteem movement in education and parenting has undermined civility in our children. Here is an excerpt from Chuck Colson:

Whether or not today’s kids are actually “ruder than ever,” the article and others like it reflect the sense that something has gone wrong in the way we raise our children. Specifically, it has to do with “popular parenting movements focusing on self-esteem.”

These movements produce parents who “[respond] with hostility to anyone they perceive as getting in the child’s way.” By “getting in the child’s way,” they mean doing anything that might make the child feel less-than-wonderful about him or herself—in the classroom, among their peers, or on the playing field.

Denyse O’Leary takes on the theistic evolutionists here at Post-Darwinist. I love it when she gets mad at them! She gets right to the heart of the issue: is there objective evidence of intelligent agency active in nature? Intelligent design supporters say YES, atheists and theistic evolutionists (but I repeat myself) say NO.

A video of Denyse talking about her book “The Spiritual Brain” here: (H/T Mindful Hack)

She talks about whether faith is good for people, and how people invent genes to explain their bad behavior.

Kreitsauce writes about the importance of self-denial and self-sacrifice in the Christian worldview, which is neglected these days now that the church has bowed to the society at large and reduced Christianity to feelings of happiness.

Discipleship, in contrast to narcissism, brings true satisfaction with life, because life gains a whole new sense of meaning and purpose. We have real freedom to do what is right, to live a life of intimacy with God. This life of discipleship and self-denial does not mean living without desire or without anything that brings pleasure. God does not call us to the monastery but to live life in the world but not of the world.

Chad at Truthbomb Apologetics has a post up that I will be writing about shortly, because it’s that good. He links to an episode of Casey Luskin’s ID The Future podcast featuring a discussion between a Darwinist and Socrates. He has an excerpt from the dialog here on his blog. The entire dialog is in a PDF on his site.

Tough Questions answered has an analysis showing which “Christian” groups swung from Bush to Obama, as well as this post on post-Christian morality in secular-leftist European nations. TQA cites this article from First Things that argues what I have been arguing recently in my series on atheism and morality.

Over time human rights, now almost universally accepted among Europeans, will themselves come to be seen as so many arbitrary constructions that may, on utilitarian grounds, be revoked—because there is nothing intrinsic about human beings such that they are not to be ill-treated or violated or even killed. Even now, many do not want to be bothered with the infirm elderly or damaged infants, so we devise so-called humane ways to kill them and pretend that somehow they chose (or would have chosen) to die. Elderly patients are being killed in the Netherlands without their consent. A new protocol for euthanizing newborns with disabilities is institutionalized in the Netherlands…

The Australian utilitarian Peter Singer predicts confidently that the superstition that human life is sacred will be definitively put to rest by 2040.

…In an interview for a British magazine during the summer of 2005, Singer said that if he faced the quandary of saving from a raging fire either a mentally disabled child, an orphan child nobody wanted, or normal animals, he would save the animals. If the child had a mother who would be devastated by the child’s death, he would save the child, but unwanted orphans have no such value.

Yes, there is consistent, authentic atheist morality: the happiness of the strong trumps the non-existent human rights of the weak.

My buddy Rich and I scrap over whether chastity is better than marriage over at the Pugnacious Irishman. (He’s getting married shortly, and my friend Robb is getting married tomorrow, so it’s a hot topic for me!)

Over on the Western Experience, Jason has a post up on how Dick Cheney is taking on Obama on his lousy policies. Here’s a clip:

Unqualified teleprompter-reader versus qualified statesman. Nice Deb has a complete round-up here, featuring Michelle Malkin and others. I have to tell you, I am really liking what Liz Cheney has to say these days, as well.

By the way, if you’re into Obama versus the evidence, check out this video on the real value of Obama’s health care reforms, which I found at the Christian blog Verum Serum.

If you have not bookmarked this blog, better do it. They are a new blog, but they are producing high-quality videos and getting linked by major blogs.

News

How progressive social policy enlarges the size of government

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Great editorial by Ed West writing in the UK Telegraph. Is it possible to be a social leftist and a fiscal conservative? Or does the former impact the latter negatively? West’s editorial assesses the impact of feminism and sex education on government budgets, which receive much funding from the productive private sector.

First, Britain’s social program for unwanted children is seeing record enrollment:

Last night’s Rageh Omaar programme, Lost in Care, is timely. The number of unwanted children in Britain has reached 80,000, and that figure was calculated before the recent Baby P surge. Of those unwanted kids, 10,000 live in children’s home.

And what are the costs to the taxpayer for this skyrocketing number of unwarranted children?

The show reminded us how awful the statistics are for care home children; only 13 per cent get good GCSEs [high school diplomas] and almost half achieve no qualifications. One in four prisoners were in care, as were one in three homeless. and one in five girls in care are pregnant within a year of leaving. No wonder there is currently a desperate drive to find more foster parents, a calling that is seriously heroic.

Well, I already talked about how leftist domestic policies destroy marriage here (socialism), here (same-sex marriage) and here (no-fault divorce). But the interesting thing is the cost of the anti-family, anti-child policies of the left. They were in such a rush to rebel against social conservatives, that it never occurred to them that those moral rules were in place to protect the interests of all parties.

Recklessly impregnating someone or getting pregnant without the ability or willingness to look after that child ruins another person’s life, and also costs the state £25,000 a year for that matter.

This is the problem with people who enact policies based on the need to feel compassionate and superior, while disregarding the logical consequences. Should we really be voting in people who undermine traditional morality run our government? If we do, it will cost us. To see more about how leftist policies increased the size of government and raised tax rates, see this previous post.

For more news from abroad, check out my recent post on the state of free speech in Canada, the United Kindom and Cuba.

UPDATE: Just noticed this over at OneNewsNow: Obama would ax abstinence-only funding.

Excerpt:

If Congress approves President Obama’s budget requests, there will be no more federal funding of abstinence-only education programs.

Barack Obama has recommended completely zeroing out Title V abstinence programs to states, as well as abstinence education programs to community-based organizations (CBAE) and replacing them with more than $100 million for contraceptive-based sex-education programs. The massive omnibus bill signed by the president had already reduced funding to abstinence programs by $14 million.

And then there is this story from mensactivism.org, entitled “Number of Unwed Moms in the U.S. Rising.

Story here. Excerpt:

‘(AP) The percentage of births to unmarried women in the United States has been rising sharply, but it’s way behind Northern European countries, a new U.S. report on births shows.

Iceland is the leader with 6 in 10 births occurring among unmarried women. About half of all births in Sweden and Norway are to unwed moms, while in the U.S., it’s about 40 percent.

France, Denmark and the United Kingdom also have higher percentages than the United States, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.’

Oh, well. Ideology beats out fiscal prudence, I guess. I don’t think that immorality of the parents is too good for the children who are affected, either. Bible: 1, Atheists: 0.