Harvey Milk

Responding To Political Hatred (Medal of Freedom Edition)

Published by Papa Giorgio

A friend has been noting a couple times that people should stop with the political hate. Posting this:

You see, a lot of people treat their Facebook like another version (private version) of themselves… with no regard to others who may be friends, family, co-workers, or the like.  As I often do, I wonder if they are talking about me… but I post pretty mainstream stuff — nothing from crazy conspiracy sites like Alex Jones, or the like. And when I do post something from Mark Dice or Paul Joseph Watson, I ALWAYS include the following:

  • While I like their rants (Paul Watson, Mark Dice, and others) and these commentaries hold much truth in them, I do wish to caution you… he is part of Info Wars/Prison Planet network of yahoos, a crazy conspiracy arm of Alex Jones shite. Also, I bet if I talked to him he would reveal some pretty-crazy conspiratorial beliefs that would naturally undermine and be at-odds-with some of his rants. Just to be clear, I do not endorse these people or orgs.

But, I do not typically post on others walls unless family or friends start posting incessantly about the following… calling [essentially] me for my vote, one of the following (or any combination thereof): sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted (S.I.X.H.I.R.B.)

HILLARY’S version:

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

When I disagree, I try to keep it civil… like I was talking to someone in a line at the local grocery store, with others (kids) present. As one can see from my CONVERSATION SERIES, I keep it full of facts, evidence, and a modicum of civility. So I realized that the call to civility on a friends Facebook was not about me, as I have never (beyond maybe a birthday wish) really interacted with said “old-school acquaintance/friend.”

And I also know in our current political melee “political hate” is in the eye of the beholder. For instance, I realize that some of the time I am dealing with a person in the following category:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 59% of Likely U.S. Voters disagree with the following statement – “Vote for Donald Trump, and you are a racist.”  Twenty-nine percent (29%) agree with the statement, while 12% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

But a closer look finds that 49% of Democrats think Trump voters are racist, compared to 13% of Republicans and 23% of voters not affiliated with either major party.

(RASMUSSEN)

So often times, someone who virulently believes multiple categories about me as a person as exemplified in the “SIXHIRB” above, is someone who I cannot have a reasonable conversation with. And when I do, it is because a friend invited me to respond or I am showing a reasonable/logical response from an opposing party to help change the minds of others watching said conversation.

But NOW I was curious as a cat. So I read the replies and found one that said: “I post a lot of animal stuff too… so I’m not gonna unfriend you… Because I LOVE YOU!”

To me it sounded like an admission… so I clicked over to this persons wall. NOT that this person was the culprit… but I was merely curious. This is the kinda stuff I found:

All I can say is that the above is one of the reasons why winning in 2020 will be easier than in 2016. People are visiting this person’s wall and saying to themselves, “wow, if this is the state of the party I belong to… I don’t feel like voting.” The up-and-come front runner for the Democrat Party said this of me:

  • “Is it racist to vote for Trump?” CNN’s Jake Tapper asked the South Bend., Ind., mayor [Pete Buttigieg] on Sunday. “Well, at best, it means looking the other way on racism.”

I realize many people BELIEVE this crap. But in a good c-o-n-v-e-r-s-a-t-i-o-n, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. I mean, Rush’s producer, “Bo Snerdly” (pictured to the right) founded an org to (as he put it): “…promises to ‘make Black Americans Republican again'” (WASHINGTON TIMES). So I don’t even wish to respond to the very demeaning and not true KKK meme.

So, I merely wish to post my response to the Scotts Bluff County Democratic Party “Meme” about the Tuskegee Airman. And this is why winning a conversation with the Left is easy.

FIRST, the Medal of Freedom is not one often given to war heroes… it is given to people — who unfortunately — donate to the campaigns of those in office. Or have really made an impact on culture. FOR INSTANCE, Oprah Winfrey created an audience of 20-million viewers and kept it at that number until she retired. So to has Rush Limbaugh done the same, to this day. These are the only people in media to do this. This is an amazing accomplishment. And what Rush has done for the base of the conservative movement and media is summed up well in Hugh Hewitt’s commentary:

SECOND, President Trump DID AWARD a more prestigious award to this Tuskegee Airman. For instance, the U.S. AIRFORCE notes:

Celebrating a 100th birthday is monumental in itself, but for retired Col. Charles E. McGee, shortly after this celebration he would reach yet another milestone in his successful career.

On Feb. 4, he found himself in the Oval Office at the White House being promoted to brigadier general by President Donald Trump.

“At first I would say ‘wow,’ but looking back, it would have been nice to have had that during active duty, but it didn’t happen that way,” McGee said. “But still, the recognition of what was accomplished, certainly, I am pleased and proud to receive that recognition and hopefully it will help me carry on as we try to motivate our youth in aviation and space career opportunities.”

Why give him the lowly regarded “Medal of Freedom” when you can give a more substantive award?

THIRDLY, here are some examples of Obama’s Medal of Freedom recipients — sorry for the LONG excerpt from PJ-MEDIA’S post:

…The Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a president can bestow on a civilian, was instituted by President John F. Kennedy. Obama awarded the most such medals of any president, giving out 123. Many of Obama’s recipients arguably deserved the award, including Bill and Melinda Gates, John Glenn, Stephen Hawking, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Sidney Poitier. Obama also gave the award to Republicans like former President George H.W. Bush.

Yet a surprisingly large number of Obama’s Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients turned out to be campaign donors for both Obama and his hand-picked successor, Hillary Clinton. At least 17 of his donors received the honor, including tennis star Billie Jean King, author Toni Morrison, former President Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, actress Meryl Streep, musician Stevie Wonder, actress Barbara Streisand, director Stephen Spielberg, singer/songwriter James Taylor, actor Tom Hanks, basketball legend Michael Jordan, actor Robert De Niro, singer/singwriter Bruce Springsteen, the aforementioned Gateses, talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, and architect Frank Gehry.

The former president seems to have had a penchant for awarding celebrities. In addition to those previously mentioned, he awarded Robert Redford, Vin Scully, Gloria Estefan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and more.

Obama also awarded Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected leader in America — and a man credibly accused of statutory rape against a 16-year-old boy when he was in his 30s, as Matt Margolis has pointed out, both here on PJ Media and in his book The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama.

Obama awarded America’s highest civilian honor to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2010, five years after her election. Was this just a friendly gesture, or did Obama receive something in return?

It also seems particularly rich for Joe Biden to complain about Limbaugh’s medal when the former vice president received one himself.

Yes, America’s first black president also awarded the honor to his vice president, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. — mere days before Trump’s inauguration! Only one president had previously given the medal to his sitting vice president: Gerald Ford gave it to Nelson Rockefeller after Rockefeller agreed to serve as vice president after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace following the devastating Watergate scandal.

If Obama gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Robert De Niro, Trump can give it to the “oh so offensive” Rush Limbaugh. De Niro has launched into many profanity-laced tirades against Trump, most recently saying he wants to “see a bag of sh*t” in the president’s face. He has called Trump a “white supremacist” and said the president tends toward fascism. His attacks on Trump date back at least as far as 2011, and in 2012 he received a rebuke from Michelle Obama’s staff for a racially-charged joke at a fundraiser, four years before receiving the medal.

Rush Limbaugh is no mere conservative pundit. The trailblazing AM radio personality has influenced talk radio and conservatism for a generation, and millions are indebted to him — even liberal radio hosts who may hate his guts.

Limbaugh also made Trump palatable when conservatives like yours truly stubbornly refused to get on board. As my colleague, Jim Treacher, puts it, “as a RINO cuck traitor who probably wanted Hillary to win,” I was most unhappy with Rush backing the blustering New York billionaire. I am very happy to admit I was wrong — although I had good reasons to distrust Trump until he started fulfilling his promises as president.

Contrary to much liberal gnashing of teeth, Trump did not sully the Presidential Medal of Freedom by awarding it to Rush Limbaugh. As with so many supposed Trump scandals, Obama actually did the thing Trump is accused of doing, and far worse than what Trump did.

Limbaugh is a giant, and his accomplishments deserve to be rewarded. If Obama can use it to reward his donors, his European allies, and his vice president (on one of his last days in office), Trump can use it to honor the radio giant Rush Limbaugh….

Here some other early morning radio peeps talking about Rush:

  • Rush Limbaugh is no doubt, the godfather of talk radio and has been at the top of the pile for decades and decades. So it only makes sense when someone like him drops some major news, he makes the top of the headlines for days. He is conservative broadcasting and single-handedly saved the am band and invented modern talk radio. Watch this clip to hear the gang recall their favorite Rush moments and what he’s meant to their careers.

Born Gay? Immutable vs. Mutable

Published by Papa Giorgio

I wanted to isolate sections of a larger post for both ease of referencing as well as updating and adding a point-or-two. This post deals with the 14th Amendment and peoples use of it to say gay men and women are considered a minority under its clause. I show that far from being “immutable,” there are many factors that play into being gay, and this “self-designation” is fluid. And often times people cease being gay. In contradistinction to someone ceasing being black.

Here is the text of Section I of the 14th Amendment:

  • Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

As we will see, this section used in application to the gay community is misused.

Homosexuality is often times due to trauma early in the person’s life. So, for instance, a woman I knew had met quite a few lesbians throughout her life as an ex hippie/druggy, who now loves Jesus. In her mobile-home park living experience she has become friends, acquaintances with and met quite a few lesbians over the years. She told me that most had been abused by some older man (often a family member) when they were young.

ENVIRONMENT

Similarly, the men I have known well-enough to intimate to me their early lives also have corroborated such encounters (one was a family member, the other not). Which brings me to a quote by a lesbian author I love:

“Here come the elephant again: Almost without exception, the gay men I know (and that’s too many to count) have a story of some kind of sexual trauma or abuse in their childhood — molestation by a parent or an authority figure, or seduction as an adolescent at the hands of an adult. The gay community must face the truth and see sexual molestation of an adolescent for the abuse it is,* instead of the ‘coming-of-age’ experience many [gays] regard it as being. Until then, the Gay Elite will continue to promote a culture of alcohol and drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and suicide by AIDS”

Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values (Roseville: Prima, 2003), 99.

* By the age of 18 or 19 years, three quarters of American youth, regardless of their sexual orientation, have had sexual relations with another person. Gay males are more likely than heterosexual males to become sexually active at a younger age (12.7 vs. 15.7 years) and to have had multiple sexual partners. The ages at the time of the first sexual experience with another person are closer for lesbians and heterosexual females (15.4 vs. 16.2 years).

(New England Journal of Medicine)

Alan Shlemon makes the following point as well:

  • “It’s sad—though not surprising—that many celebrity lesbians like Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Melissa Etheridge, and others have publicly stated they were sexually abused as children.”

You see, much like this man who had a sex operation, lived as a woman for 8-years, and then was forced to deal with his early life after taking some courses to get a degree in counseling via U.C. Irvine, his gender problems came because of trauma at a young age (http://tinyurl.com/b5c9elj). To put a stamp of approval via society on a “choice” that is caused by anothers “choice” in making these relationships equal, is doing more harm to the individual that good (as Walt Heyer also points out in his book, mentioned in the link). Many have changed their sexual orientation from gay to hetero, as shown above. But if this is the case, then it is very UNLIKE ethnic origins (an ex-gay tells his story: http://tinyurl.com/anrvm64; a man raised by lesbians and who’s own early sexuality was in flux tells his story: http://youtu.be/MeNrPJ42Xoo).

…One study followed approximately 10,800 adolescents between the ages of 16 and 22 years old. Of the 16 year-old males who had exclusively SSA, 61% had opposite-sex attraction at age 17. For same-sex attracted females, 81% changed to opposite attraction in just one year.

The study also compared sexual attraction at ages 17 and 22, with similar results. For example, 75% of adolescent males with SSA at age 17 had opposite-sex attraction at age 22.

Dr. Neil Whitehead, a research scientist who worked for the New Zealand government for 24 years and the United Nations for another four years, analyzed this study. He notes that although a small percentage of heterosexual adolescents developed homosexuality, the vast majority transitioned in the opposite direction. Based on the data, 16 year-olds with SSA are “25 times more likely to change towards heterosexuality at the age of 17 than those with a heterosexual orientation are likely to change towards bi-sexuality or homosexuality.” That means that heterosexuality is 25 times more stable than homosexuality. It also seems to suggest that heterosexuality is more of a “default” orientation…

Dr. Michael Brown notes as well two well known gay “civil” rights leaders own stories in his book, Outlasting the Gay Revolution:

That’s why almost no one in the gay community bats an eyelash when they hear about Harvey Milk’s sexual history (yes, I’m talking about the slain political leader who has taken on iconic status in our culture). To be specific, according to acclaimed gay journalist Randy Shilts, at age eleven, Milk began attending performances of the New York Metropolitan Opera, where he met with “wandering hands” and soon was engaged in “brief trysts [with grown men] after the perfor­mances.” While still in junior high, he “dove headfirst into the newly discovered subculture,” and by fourteen, Milk was “leading an active homosexual life.” As he grew older, the pattern reversed itself to the point that, at age thirty-three, Milk hooked up with a sixteen-year-old named Jack McKinley, one of a number of younger men with whom he was intimate.

Has this tarnished his legacy? Not at all. Why? Because it is not that unusual. 

Dr. Brown continues:

As gay journalist and radio host Michelangelo Signorile explained:

[W]e’ve been so focused in recent years on how we’re all the same [meaning as heterosexuals]—we want many of the same things in life, including a job, a home, a relationship—that we’ve obscured some real differences in how we’ve constructed our community and our relationships. Historically, gay men have engaged in inter-generational sexual encounters, brief romances and long-term relation­ships—among consenting adults—probably much more than straight people have.

And those “consenting adults” were often men in their teens. (The situation that Signorile was defending involved Hollywood screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, age thirty-nine, and British diving champion Tom Daley, age nineteen. Other gay leaders were critical of the relationship.) That’s why it was not surprising to hear that Terry Bean, one of the founders of the influential HRC—and a major player in Democratic politics and gay activism—was arrested on November 19, 2014, “on charges of sex abuse in a case involving a 15-year-old boy. [Bean was 66 at the time.]… The arrest comes after a five-month investigation that began with allegations Bean secretly made video recordings of men having sex in his bedroom.”

As argued by conservative journalist and law professor Matt Barber, “The cases of Bean and [Larry] follow a long-established pattern as old as the ancient Greek bathhouse. It’s not just homosexual priestly predators on the prowl in the Catholic Church. From pedophile “LGBT” hero Harvey Milk, to high-profile “gay activists” like Duke University’s Frank Lombard and USC’s Walter Lee Williams, the homosexual lust for young flesh seems insatiable”

In support of this statement, which some would find extreme and unfair, Barber cited Harry Hay, the iconic pioneer of the gay rights movement, who (in)famously said,

“It seems to me that in the gay com­munity the people who should be running interference for NAMBLA [the North American Man/Boy Love Association] are the parents and friends of gays. Because if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world.”

Michael L. Brown, Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), 151-152.

The harm of the recent movement to fully endorse gay-lifestyles harms children in a way never before in history. For example, in California if a young child starts to act out in a way that seems to the school counselor as signs of sexual abuse, the counselor now can be fired for asking questions of a young pre-teen boy about home life. In other words acting “gay” at such a young age more often than not means there is some sexual abuse happening to the child.

Another point made by myself in the past and reiterated by Dr. Brown is that often times the female daughters of lesbians end up being gay at a much higher rate that the general populace. One activist he mentions has three daughters, and they are all gay.

THE LOVING thing to do is to allow society to not make the private actions of individual illegal, but not to normalize these actions when there is another root cause, or a combination of root causes, other than genetics.

A liberal society might, then, find it prudent to ignore homosexuality. It might well deem it unwise to peer into private bedrooms. However, this is not the issue before us. Today the demand is that homosexuality be endorsed and promoted with the full power of the law. This would require us to abandon the standard of nature, the one standard that can teach us the difference between freedom and slavery, between right and wrong. (Source)

100-YEARS OF STUDIES

This was an amazing piece from Alan Shlemon, from his book, The Ambassador’s Guide to Understanding Homosexuality: I highly recommend reading this whole pamphlet/book:

CAN HOMOSEXUALS CHANGE?

For many this is a settled question. The “experts” have spoken. Change is not possible and ex-gays don’t exist. This is a bold assertion, though, since finding just one person who changed would falsify it.

First, note that a two-thousand-year-old report claimed this change actually happened. In 1 COR. 6:9-11, Paul says some of the Christians in Corinth had been homosexual (“Such were some of you…”), suggesting they no longer were.

Some might dismiss this account because they don’t believe the Bible is the Word of God. This is irrelevant to my point, though. Paul’s epistle to Corinth, at the very least, is an ancient letter to a community of people in a city still existing in modern Greece. It testifies to the fact that some people left homosexuality behind.

Recent studies indicate the same thing. An article published in Psychological Reports in 2000 investigated 882 dissatisfied homosexuals. After pursuing some form of therapy, 34% of the participants reported shifting their orientation to an exclusively or almost exclusively heterosexual orientation. They experienced statistically significant reductions in “homosexual thoughts and fantasies” and improvements in their “psychological, interpersonal, and spiritual well-being.”26

One long-term study completed in 2007 by Drs. Jones and Yarhouse was recently published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy.27 It’s been hailed as one of the most methodologically rigorous studies ever designed to investigate the possibility of change. The researchers followed 98 individuals with unwanted same-sex attractions for six to seven years. They found 15% of the participants reported “substantial reductions in homosexual attraction and subsequent conversion to heterosexual attractions and functioning.” The most surprising result, though, was that subjects classified as “truly gay”—the ones with the highest levels of homosexual attraction, fantasy, and behavior—reported the greatest amount of change.

Clinicians and other scientists have reported successes for over a century. Jean-Martin Charcot, the “father of modern neurology,” described how “the homosexual became heterosexual” through his treatments back in 1882. Sigmund Freud reported change in sexual orientation using psychoanalysis in the 1920s. Researchers continued to report simi­lar findings throughout the 20th century: Wilhelm Stekel in the 1930s, Frank Caprio and Albert Ellis in the 1950s, Russell Monroe and Edward Glover in the 1960s, Irving Bieber in the 1970s, Karolynn Siegel in the 1980s, and Houston Macintosh in the 1990s, to name just a few.

Given such convincing evidence, it’s not surpris­ing a recent psychiatry textbook, Essential Psychopa­thology & Its Treatment, concluded that homosexual orientation can change and that therapy isn’t neces­sarily harmful:

While many mental health care providers and professional associations have expressed considerable skepticism that sexual orientation could be changed with psychotherapy and also assumed that therapeutic attempts at reorientation would produce harm, recent empirical evidence demonstrates that homosexual orientation can indeed be therapeutically changed in motivated clients, and that reorientation therapies do not produce emotional harm when attempted (e.g., Byrd & Nicolosi, 2002; Byrd et al., 2008; Shaeffer et al., 1999; Spitzer, 2003).28

Given this clinical data, thousands must have personally experienced this change. Each year, more people publicly declare they are no longer homosexual.

Dr. Nicholas Cummings, past President of the American Psychological Association (APA), was Chief of Mental Health at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco for 20 years. He personally worked with over 2,000 patients with same-sex attraction. His staff (six of whom were gay) saw an additional 16,000 homosexuals. Cummings estimates that hundreds of people under his care changed their sexual orientation. He also notes that approximately 7% of those 16,000 patients experienced some measurable change, many going on to marry and live heterosexual lives. 29

Cummings’s data can’t be dismissed. He’s been a lifelong champion of gay and lesbian rights and was the first leader, while President of the APA, to ap­point the Task Force on Lesbian and Gay Issues.

Given this evidence, how can some still claim that sexual orientation change isn’t possible? They’d have to believe multiple and independent lines of evidence were all mistaken or fraudulent. They’d have to believe that over the last 100 years, hundreds of scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and physicians who’ve treated homosexuals were mistaken or lied about their findings. Therapists who treat homosexuality today would also have to be fabricating their success stories. Religious and secular organizations providing counseling to ho­mosexuals would have to be misrepresenting their results. Thousands of heterosexuals around the world who once lived as homosexuals must be fak­ing. And every friend I know and person I’ve met over the years who has claimed to have changed has been lying to me and everyone around them. As Tiffany Barnhouse, a professor of psychiatry, has said, “The frequent claim by ‘gay’ activists that it is impossible for homosexuals to change their orientation…accuses scores of conscientious, respon­sible psychiatrists and psychologists of falsifying their data.”30

Does this mean change is easy? No. Is everyone successful? Not at all. Does success always entail total transformation? Rarely. Should we try to change people who don’t want to change? Of course not. But is it possible for some homosexuals to expe­rience substantial and enduring change? Absolutely….

A page later he responds to critique of the idea that if a person even has feelings for the same sex… therapy has failed:

… Clinical psychologist Mark Yarhouse criti­cizes researchers who insist ex-gay men who still struggle with occasional temptations are not, in fact, changed. “Continued struggles with same-sex arousal may be expected residual effects from years of homosexual fantasy and behavior. Psychologists certainly refrain from decrying chemical-dependen­cy programs because someone experiences cravings following treatment.”31

Allegedly, the Alcoholics Anonymous success rate is only 25%. Yet few would deny AA works for some people. My point: low success rates or relaps­es are not proof that therapy never works.

DECADES OF TWIN STUDIES

This next bit of info comes by way NARTH, in an audio posted the “genetic” aspect of this debate has been prevalent… so this is a rejoinder to it:

Identical Twin Studies Demonstrate Homosexuality is Not Genetic

Eight major studies of identical twins in Australia, the U.S., and Scandinavia during the last two decades all arrive at the same conclusion: gays were not born that way. “At best genetics is a minor factor,” says Dr. Neil Whitehead, PhD. Whitehead worked for the New Zealand government as a scientific researcher for 24 years, then spent four years working for the United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency. Most recently, he serves as a consultant to Japanese universities about the effects of radiation exposure. His PhD is in biochemistry and statistics.

Identical twins have the same genes or DNA. They are nurtured in equal prenatal conditions. If homosexuality is caused by genetics or prenatal conditions and one twin is gay, the co-twin should also be gay. “Because they have identical DNA, it ought to be 100%,” Dr. Whitehead notes. But the studies reveal something else. “If an identical twin has same-sex attraction the chances the co-twin has it are only about 11% for men and 14% for women.”

Because identical twins are always genetically identical, homosexuality cannot be genetically dictated. “No-one is born gay,” he notes. “The predominant things that create homosexuality in one identical twin and not in the other have to be post-birth factors.”

Dr. Whitehead believes same-sex attraction (SSA) is caused by “non-shared factors,” things happening to one twin but not the other, or a personal response to an event by one of the twins and not the other. For example, one twin might have exposure to pornography or sexual abuse, but not the other. One twin may interpret and respond to their family or classroom environment differently than the other. “These individual and idiosyncratic responses to random events and to common environmental factors predominate,” he says.

The first very large, reliable study of identical twins was conducted in Australia in 1991, followed by a large U.S. study about 1997. Then Australia and the U.S. conducted more twin studies in 2000, followed by several studies in Scandinavia, according to Dr. Whitehead. “Twin registers are the foundation of modern twin studies. They are now very large, and exist in many countries. A gigantic European twin register with a projected 600,000 members is being organized, but one of the largest in use is in Australia, with more than 25,000 twins on the books.”

A significant twin study among adolescents shows an even weaker genetic correlation. In 2002 Bearman and Brueckner studied tens of thousands of adolescent students in the U.S. The same-sex attraction concordance between identical twins was only 7.7% for males and 5.3% for females—lower than the 11% and 14% in the Australian study by Bailey et al conducted in 2000.

In the identical twin studies, Dr. Whitehead has been struck by how fluid and changeable sexual identity can be. “Neutral academic surveys show there is substantial change. About half of the homosexual/bisexual population (in a non-therapeutic environment) moves towards heterosexuality over a lifetime. About 3% of the present heterosexual population once firmly believed themselves to be homosexual or bisexual. Sexual orientation is not set in concrete.”

…read it all…

And just to be absolutely clear, discrimination for the gay segment of society is nothing like other segments have experienced. In fact, the false impression the public has is amazing.

PERSECUTION?

Dr. Brown quotes Notre Dame professor Gerald Bradley as saying:

Gay Americans are afforded all their rights. They can vote, can have almost any job they are qualified for, live where ever they want to, travel unburdened, just like everyone else. Demographics show they are among the wealthiest and best educated people in the United States. No one wants to take anything away from them. But the question becomes, can a tiny sliver of our population change the definition of marriage not only for the 243,000,000 adult Americans alive today, but for all those who will come after us?

Michael L. Brown, Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), 144.

Many years ago the Wall Street Journal noted the same:

Average Household Income:

  • Homosexuals – $55,430
  • African Americans – $12,166

Percentage of College Graduates:

  • Homosexuals – 60%
  • African Americans – 5%

Holding Professional Positions:

  • Homosexuals – 49%
  • African Americans – 1%

Taken Overseas Vacations:

  • Homosexuals – 66%
  • African Americans – 1%

Ever Denied the Right to Vote:

  • Homosexuals – No
  • African Americans – Yes

Ever Faced Legal Segregation:

  • Homosexuals – No
  • African Americans – Yes

Ever Denied Access to Public Restrooms:

  • Homosexuals – No
  • African Americans – Yes

Ever Denied Access to Businesses and Restaurants:

  • Homosexuals – No
  • African Americans – Yes

Wall Street Journal, 7/18/91, B1

Not only is being gay not immutable, being “gay” isn’t harmful to one’s lifestyle… monetarily speaking. It seems to enhance it in fact.

My Thoughts on Milo Yiannopoulos… Post-Script Added

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Jump to the POST-SCRIPT if you wish)

The title could have been called, “Heroes vs. Zeroes” — in other words, if Milo was a Leftist… he very well may be the apple of the Left’s eye.

Milo Yiannopoulos has said some things in the past that has caused consternation (and rightly so). This got his dissented to C-PAC. But honestly, what should have got him NOT invited in the first place is his repeated admission he is not a conservative. (The latest time was his appearance on the Bill Maher Show.) In case you missed it, C-PAC stands for CONSERVATIVE Political Action Conference.

Here is the offending comment from an old documentary:

“This arbitrary and oppressive idea of consent, which totally destroys the understanding that many of us have of the complexities and subtleties and complicated nature of many relationships. People are messy and complex, and in the homosexual world particularly some of those relationships between younger boys and older men, the sort of coming of age relationships, the relationships in which those older men help those young boys discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and, sort of, a rock.”

[….]

“In the gay world, some of the most important, enriching, and incredibly life affirming, shaping relationships between younger boys and older men, they can be hugely positive experiences for those young boys.”

Later Milo tried to correct what he says was his unclear language:

  • I did say that there are relationships between younger men and older men that can help a young gay man escape from a lack of support or understanding at home. That’s perfectly true and every gay man knows it. But I was not talking about anything illegal and I was not referring to pre-pubescent boys. (Young Conservatives)

(See his full apology HERE.)

In the gay community this is an issue. Years ago one of my favorite gay authors I follow and read, Tammy Bruce, noted:

… and now all manner of sexual perversion enjoys the protection and support of once what was a legitimate civil-rights effort for decent people. The real slippery slope has been the one leading into the Left’s moral vacuum. It is a singular attitude that prohibits any judgment about obvious moral decay because of the paranoid belief that judgment of any sort would destroy the gay lifestyle, whatever that is…. I believe this grab for children by the sexually confused adults of the Gay Elite represents the most serious problem facing our culture today…

[….]

Here come the elephant again: Almost without exception, the gay men I know (and that’s too many to count) have a story of some kind of sexual trauma or abuse in their childhood — molestation by a parent or an authority figure, or seduction as an adolescent at the hands of an adult. The gay community must face the truth and see sexual molestation of an adolescent for the abuse it is,* instead of the “coming-of-age” experience many [gays] regard it as being. Until then, the Gay Elite will continue to promote a culture of alcohol and drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, and suicide by AIDS.

Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values (Roseville: Prima, 2003), 90, 99.

* By the age of 18 or 19 years, three quarters of American youth, regardless of their sexual orientation, have had sexual relations with another person. Gay males are more likely than heterosexual males to become sexually active at a younger age (12.7 vs. 15.7 years) and to have had multiple sexual partners. The ages at the time of the first sexual experience with another person are closer for lesbians and heterosexual females (15.4 vs. 16.2 years).

(New England Journal of Medicine)

Some articles I see as connected,

Likewise, another gay commentator/professor noted, without exception every gay person she knows has issues from their childhood. She goes on to say that the natural default is heterosexuality, and that being gay is fighting nature. One commentator goes on to note that,

  • Ms. Paglia reminds us that within homosexual circles there still exist some critics with clear minds, capable of rational thought, and the ability to express such critical thought clearly, coherently, and entertainingly. (iDolphin)

In a gay private group on Facebook for gays, their friends and family to meet and discuss various topics, I asked a question relating to if the men had homosexual encounters as a young, prepubescent boy with an older family member or some other acquaintance. Almost all the me did. One gay man I worked with was very public about it. Another close gay friend was private bout the issue but confirmed that he had an older family member molest him, repeatedly.

George Takei, of Star Trek fame, is very public about a 19-year old molesting him at camp when he was thirteen-years-old.

George proceeded to recall that he was 13 at the time, and he was with “an experienced” counselor who was in his late-teens. When George recalled his counselor’s “blond forearm,” Artie insisted he was still comfortable sitting next to him. George went on to say his counselor came to his cabin while he was alone, and the two began kissing before exchanging “hand jobs.” (Gay Patriot)

Mind you, while this equation may be the norm [abuse of some sort], there are acceptations that I think Camille Paglia’s commentary fits well with:

Every single gay person I know has some sort of drama going on, back in childhood. Something was happening that we’re not allowed to ask about anymore… I can see patterns that are similar in my background to that of other women I know who are lesbians, but the biggest patterns are in gay men. Every single gay man I know had a particular pattern where for whatever reason, he was closer to his mother than to his father, and there was some sort of distance between the mother and the father, so that she looked to her son as her real equal or friend, as the real companion of her soul. Sometimes these women were discreet and dignified. Other times, they were very theatrical and in a sense they drafted their son into their own drama. But now, you are not allowed to ask any questions about the childhood of gay people anymore. It’s called “homophobic.” The entire psychology establishment has shut itself down, politically…

Even the gay Leftist hero, Harvey Milk was a victim of this and continued his victimization of other boys. GAY PATRIOT notes this in his quick response to the Milo thingy, saying that Milk [a hero] actually did what Milo merely mentioned:

One of Milk’s victims was a 16-year-old runaway from Maryland named Jack Galen McKinley. As previously mentioned, Milk had a soft spot in his, um, heart for teenage runaways. Motivated by an apparent quid pro quo of prurience, Milk plucked McKinley from the street.

[….]

Harvey Milk was notorious in his day for preying on teenage runaways in the Castro District in the 1970s. The difference is, Harvey Milk, because he was a left-wing Democrat, is forgiven for being a pederast. He has a holiday celebrated in his honor in California. He is an honored martyr, who even had a US Naval Vessel named in his honor.

Which makes me believe that all the left-wingers who are suddenly up-in-arms because Milo may have said something outrageous about his days as a catamite may be somewhat insincere in their outrage.

Before getting to more about Harvey Milk, I wanted to note that it is the progressive Left that is all about promoting pedophilia. From Obama’s school czar,  Kevin Jennings, to the Left’s marches on Washington — of which, here are a couple examples I note in my post on PEDOPHILIA:

In 1977, Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote “Sex Bias in the U.S. Code” for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. In it, Ginsberg advocated lowering the age of consent from 16 to 12. She writes:

  • “Eliminate the phrase “carnal knowledge of any female, not his wife, who has not attained the age of 16 years” and substitute a federal, sex-neutral definition of the offense. … A person is guilty of an offense if he engages in a sexual act with another person. … [and] the other person is, in fact, less than 12 years old.” (Savage; Schlafly; More)

She was an attorney for the ACLU at the time and later appointed to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton. She remains on the Supreme Court today.

1993 “Homosexual” Platform

  • The implementation of homosexual, bi-sexual, and transgendered curriculum at all levels of education.
  • The lowering of the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual sex.
  • The legalization of homosexual marriage. Custody, adoption, and foster care rights for homosexuals, lesbians, and transgendered people.
  • The redefinition of marriage to include the full diversity of all family structures.
  • The access to all programs of the Boys Scouts of America.
  • Affirmative action for homosexuals.
  • The inclusion of sex-change operations under a universal health care plan.

1972 “Homosexual” Platform

  • Repeal of all state laws prohibiting private sexual acts involving consenting persons, equalization for homosexuals and heterosexuals for the enforcement of all laws.
  • Repeal all state laws prohibiting solicitation for private voluntary sexual liaisons; and laws prohibiting prostitution, both male and female.
  • Enactment of legislation prohibiting insurance companies and any other state-regulated enterprises from discriminating because of sexual orientation, in insurance and in bonding or any other prerequisite to employment or control of one’s personal demesne.
  • Enactment of legislation so that child custody, adoption, visitation rights, foster parenting, and the like shall not be denied because of sexual orientation or marital status.
  • Repeal of all state laws prohibiting transvestism and cross-dressing.
  • Repeal of all laws governing the age of sexual consent.
  • Repeal of all legislative provisions that restrict the sex or number of persons entering into a marriage unit; and the extension of legal benefits to all persons who cohabit regardless of sex or numbers.

You see, this is why Salon Magazine promoted this sickness ~ U-N-T-I-L THAT IS ~ Milo was caught speaking from the truth of a sizable portion of the gay community. Leftists are now stuck between a rock and a hard place. SALON hates Trump soo much that is scrubbed it’s site from previous articles supporting pedophilia in order to clear a path to attack Milo [a perceived conservative]. TWITCHY says it all in their headline:

Will they scrub praises for Harvey Milk, and the many famously gay-Leftists who took advantage of boys? Or icons of the Left that abused underage girls? I somehow doubt it.

Here is more on Milk:

That’s why almost no one in the gay community bats an eyelash when they hear about Harvey Milk’s sexual history (yes, I’m talking about the slain political leader who has taken on iconic status in our culture). To be specific, according to acclaimed gay journalist Randy Shilts, at age eleven, Milk began attending performances of the New York Metropolitan Opera, where he met with “wandering hands” and soon was engaged in “brief trysts [with grown men] after the perfor­mances.” While still in junior high, he “dove headfirst into the newly discovered subculture,” and by fourteen, Milk was “leading an active homosexual life.” As he grew older, the pattern reversed itself to the point that, at age thirty-three, Milk hooked up with a sixteen-year-old named Jack McKinley, one of a number of younger men with whom he was intimate.

Has this tarnished his legacy? Not at all. Why? Because it is not that unusual. 

As gay journalist and radio host Michelangelo Signorile explained:

[W]e’ve been so focused in recent years on how we’re all the same [meaning as heterosexuals]—we want many of the same things in life, including a job, a home, a relationship—that we’ve obscured some real differences in how we’ve constructed our community and our relationships. Historically, gay men have engaged in inter-generational sexual encounters, brief romances and long-term relation­ships—among consenting adults—probably much more than straight people have.

And those “consenting adults” were often men in their teens. (The situation that Signorile was defending involved Hollywood screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, age thirty-nine, and British diving champion Tom Daley, age nineteen. Other gay leaders were critical of the relationship.) That’s why it was not surprising to hear that Terry Bean, one of the founders of the influential HRC—and a major player in Democratic politics and gay activism—was arrested on November 19, 2014, “on charges of sex abuse in a case involving a 15-year-old boy. [Bean was 66 at the time.]… The arrest comes after a five-month investigation that began with allegations Bean secretly made video recordings of men having sex in his bedroom.”

As argued by conservative journalist and law professor Matt Barber, “The cases of Bean and [Larry] follow a long-established pattern as old as the ancient Greek bathhouse. It’s not just homosexual priestly predators on the prowl in the Catholic Church. From pedophile “LGBT” hero Harvey Milk, to high-profile “gay activists” like Duke University’s Frank Lombard and USC’s Walter Lee Williams, the homosexual lust for young flesh seems insatiable”

In support of this statement, which some would find extreme and unfair, Barber cited Harry Hay, the iconic pioneer of the gay rights movement, who (in)famously said,

“It seems to me that in the gay com­munity the people who should be running interference for NAMBLA [the North American Man/Boy Love Association] are the parents and friends of gays. Because if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world.”

Michael L. Brown, Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), 151-152.

GAY PATRIOT hit the nail on the head years back when he VtheK noted that since “marriage is no longer about creating a stable environment for children, and has become (and this mainly the fault of heterosexual liberals) about personal fulfillment, validation, and access to social benefits, there literally is no constraint on how much more broadly it can be redefined.”

If “love-is-love,” then the Professional Left has a Mack Truck with a payload of reality headed their way.

POST-SCRIPT

One last note. The Left has for YEARS denied what everyone knows, that in the gay (esp. male) community, there is an abuse of younger boys… because the male sexual nature by default wants variety, and wants it often. I will explain a bit more with a portion of a letter I wrote to a cyber-friend whom had announced that he was gay (it actually turned out his Facebook was hacked):

We need all the gay conservatarians we can get! Just know, however, I am here for anything you need.

Adult men fight their nature. Typically we fight against lust (men want variety), and anger issues. I have had to fight my anger issues, which are the predominate issue for me, and I saw the same in my father.

With our sexuality, women help temper this in most men. But this is an additional layer a gay man must acknowledge and battle against. If you ever need encouraging in this area or someone to speak to, I can surely stand in if you need it. I realize we are “cyber-friends” and you may have a strong group of allies to help keep you accountable… but if you ever need to bounce something off my chest, feel free to do so. Mind you that I realize that while I am only-now knowing this, you have lived with it much longer obviously.

There are some gay men who have honed their values well that the unrestrained nature found in the Leftist values of men (gay or straight) bewilder them. VtheK is one of them, for instance, he recently noted as such here. [While I do not know V, I suspect religion has had an influence in his life.]

I will add you to my prayer list of men and women in the gay community whom I dig and want the best possible life for….

Yep, mature men need to fight their nature. But this denial of the issues discussed above by the Left has harmful consequences for children. For instance, in a few states now it is against the law for teachers or school counselors to even begin to suspect anything wrong with a young child starting to exhibit behaviors that they are now told they must accept as the child being “gay.” In other words, if a 9-year old (whatever-age) boy starts to show some effeminate activity, this may very well be the boy trying to cope with sexual abuse in the home by a family member or someone the family knows. It is the natural way a male child will act out.

But this type of reasoning, found for instance in California’s Assembly Bill 1266 (as well as Senate Bill 1172), signed into law by Jerry Brown, ties the hands of counselors to deal with an obvious sign of abuse. I gave some links above, but here are some excerpts from a few studies, controlled as well as anecdotal:

But schools are not allowed to ask questions in the most liberal states that start from the idea that a boy (or girl) shouldn’t be acting out like this. If a boy acts out violently because that is how he is internalizing the issue, a counselor can probe… if a boy starts to act effeminately because that is how this particular boy is internalizing it — hands off! In fact, the school must enable such feelings.

THIS is a great example for when Dennis Prager says “everything the Left touches it destroys.” This includes buffers to protect children from the most heinous crimes against them. AGAIN, this puts them [Leftists] between a rock and a hard place… do they acknowledge that such abuse exists and thus through therapy gay men and women can deal with the abuse of their past — and become heterosexual again? Like any therapy helps victims of violence. Or do they wholly reject this idea of childhood abuse in the gay community (while simultaneously speaking about male priests who are gay abusing boys) and cover-up any deleterious affects on all genders who are sexually abused at such a young age?

BTW, dealing with a destructive abusive past works even for transgender persons.

Sick Leftists Influencing Educational Through Czars (Updated)

Published by Papa Giorgio

GatewayPundit reminds us of Obama’s sick idea of education — Kevin Jennings:

(Warning on Content)

In March 2000 the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) organization of Massachusetts held its 10 Year Anniversary GLSEN/Boston conference at Tufts University. This conference was fully supported by the Massachusetts Department of Education, the Safe Schools Program, the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, and some of the presenters even received federal money. During the 2000 conference, workshop leaders led a “youth only, ages 14-21″ session that offered lessons in “fisting” a dangerous sexual practice. During the same workshop an activist asked 14 year-old students, “Spit or swallow?… Is it rude?” The unbelievable audio clip is posted here. Barack Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings is the founder of GLSEN. He was paid $273,573.96 as its executive director in 2007. Jennings was the keynote speaker at the 2000 GLSEN conference.

Barack Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” was the keynote speaker at the GLSEN/Boston Conference at Tufts University in 2000. High school students at the conference learned about fisting and watersports from the GLSEN activists. Jennings is seen here holding the conference program. (Via Mass Resistance)

Unfortunately for GLSEN, undercover journalists with Mass Resistance recorded these outrageous sessions at Tufts University. The audio was later leaked to a local radio station. This created such an uproar that GLSEN leaders were forced to apologize for their disgusting behavior.

Despite the controversy, Barack Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings and his GLSEN organization did nothing to clean up their act. In fact in 2001 activists handed out “fisting kits” to the children and teachers who attended the GLSEN conference.

But that’s not all. The children who attended Kevin Jennnings’ GLSEN 2005 Conference also left with their own “Little Black Book – Queer in the 21st Century”.

GRAPHIC Sexual Nature

By clicking picture it will enlarge, STRONG language warning. Picture is from Dakota Voice. See also Mass Resistance. This book exposes the young teens to–Rimming – Fisting – Water Sports (Pi$$ Play) – Toys It’s what every teen needs to know… The page titled “How safe is dat?” introduces young teens to fisting, rimming, and watersports (pi$$ing on your partner). Shouldn’t every teen know this? (read more)

Sick!

A short biography on two influential gay members of the left:

As gay journalist and radio host Michelangelo Signorile explained:

[W]e’ve been so focused in recent years on how we’re all the same [meaning as heterosexuals]—we want many of the same things in life, including a job, a home, a relationship—that we’ve obscured some real differences in how we’ve constructed our community and our relationships. Historically, gay men have engaged in inter-generational sexual encounters, brief romances and long-term relation­ships—among consenting adults—probably much more than straight people have.

And those “consenting adults” were often men in their teens. (The situation that Signorile was defending involved Hollywood screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, age thirty-nine, and British diving champion Tom Daley, age nineteen. Other gay leaders were critical of the relationship.) That’s why it was not surprising to hear that Terry Bean, one of the founders of the influential HRC—and a major player in Democratic politics and gay activism—was arrested on November 19, 2014, “on charges of sex abuse in a case involving a 15-year-old boy. [Bean was 66 at the time.]… The arrest comes after a five-month investigation that began with allegations Bean secretly made video recordings of men having sex in his bedroom.”

As argued by conservative journalist and law professor Matt Barber, “The cases of Bean and [Larry] follow a long-established pattern as old as the ancient Greek bathhouse. It’s not just homosexual priestly predators on the prowl in the Catholic Church. From pedophile “LGBT” hero Harvey Milk, to high-profile “gay activists” like Duke University’s Frank Lombard and USC’s Walter Lee Williams, the homosexual lust for young flesh seems insatiable”

In support of this statement, which some would find extreme and unfair, Barber cited Harry Hay, the iconic pioneer of the gay rights movement, who (in)famously said,

“It seems to me that in the gay com­munity the people who should be running interference for NAMBLA [the North American Man/Boy Love Association] are the parents and friends of gays. Because if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world.”

Michael L. Brown, Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2015), 151-152.

 

New Ruling Doesn’t Leave Room For People With Religious Objections

Published by Papa Giorgio

…If you look at the way the court ruled, then you see that it opens the door to broader discrimination against churches… I predict there are going to be staged same-sex weddings just to challenge churches to marry same-sex couples, to draw attention to themselves, to get something through the courts, eventually to erode tax exempt statuses…

~ Alexander Marlow, Breitbart’s Editor in Chief

  • [As you guys/gals may know… I am a fan of getting rid of LBJ’s strings attached tax-exempt status. Once a church goes LLC, the pulpit can be truly unleashed.]

Above video:

Gay marriage advocate and author of “Speak Now: Marriage Equality on Trial” said on MSNBC’s “Melissa Harris-Perry” on Saturday that religious people will not have much freedom to discriminate gay marriage due to religious purposes, which is an “important protection for gay rights.”

“With regard to the religious liberties defenses, Chief Justice Robertson pointed out that Justice Kennedy didn’t leave much running room for people of religious objections to same-sex marriages. That’s an important protection for gay rights, that there’s no religious right to discriminate.”

Again, Gay Patriot:

…Does anyone expect the activist left to be satisfied with their political victory?  If you’ve studied the history of the Civil Rights movement, you know they didn’t stop after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. There are plenty of new frontiers for the Lesbian Gay Bullying Totalitarians to pursue and keep the donations to the Sharptons and Jacksons of the HRC and other professional activist organizations rolling in:

  • Banning disagreement or criticisms of gay behavior through “anti-bullying” and “hate speech” legislation
  • Mandating school curricula to include “gay history” as well as museums and monuments to be demanded to gay heroes like Harry Hay, Larry Bruckner, and Harvey Milk
  • Forcing religious institutions to recognize gay marriages
  • Churches must be forced to perform gay marriages or lose tax exempt status. (Mosques, probably not)

No, this is not the end. This is nowhere near the end. This is just another milestone on the road to our social Pyongyang. The Supreme Court has rejected the rule of law twice in two days in favor of the whims of a Judiciary Politburo….

Cathy Ruse likewise has a short list:

  • If your sincere beliefs prevent you from bending the knee, what recourse will you have to publicly speak out in defense of yourself, your family, your beliefs? Will your public protests come to be viewed as hate speech?
  • If you are a Christian baker, florist, banquet hall owner, printer – can you decline to participate in a same-sex wedding? If you are a Christian psychologist, is your license yanked if you help a client suffering because of unwanted same-sex attraction?
  • If you are a religious school, may you decline to house same-sex couples in your married student housing and keep your tax exempt status?
  • If you are a church which declines to perform same-sex marriages, will your property taxes remain exempt? Will the contributions on which you depend diminish because they are no longer deemed charitable contributions?
  • If the power to tax is the power to destroy, the Supreme Court has just given President Obama the power to destroy churches and institutions that do not support his “evolved” position on marriage.

RPT’s Early Thoughts on the Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

Published by Papa Giorgio

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of gay marriage shows just how much trouble American democracy is in.

In a strongly worded dissent, the conservative justice wrote that he did not care that gay marriage was now legal, but he said that the court’s ability to make this decision represented a threat to democracy.

“Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court,” Scalia said.

“This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

The conservative justice railed against his fellow justices, calling the majority opinion “egotistical” and pointing out that the justices were a homogeneous group that didn’t represent the people. As proof, Scalia pointed out that many went to the same law schools, and none were evangelical or protestant Christians.

“To allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation,” Scalia said…

(Business Insider)

Two… yes, the number 2, has now become an objective concept in law over and above millions of years of evolution (Natures Law), or God’s Law (Natural Law) honing [or creating] the ideal that is the “male-female” relation. Both ideas, “Natures Law and natures God” (from the Declaration of Independence), under-girded the philosophy of the moment that wrote the greatest document/contract in human history.

The mission of the church in the West has just changed. Soon the number 2 will fall by the relativistic roadside to plural marriages. All these non-ideal familial structures (according to Nature or natures God) will erode the religious freedom the Founders set up.

But we have a generation that neither looks to history for guidance or to any religious/moral authority outside themselves.

This experiment will eventually fall into the edict of the French (Jacobin) idea of equality in outcome… And to be clear, the guillotine soon followed. Tyranny never follows far behind forced outcomes.

The priority of the male-female relationship is just a larger piece to the puzzle called “deconstructionism.”

“Everything I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition…. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be bearers of an objective, immortal truth… then there is nothing more relativistic than fascistic attitudes and activity…. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.” — Mussolini 

Here is a portion of a short commentary by Gay Patriot:

…Does anyone expect the activist left to be satisfied with their political victory?  If you’ve studied the history of the Civil Rights movement, you know they didn’t stop after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. There are plenty of new frontiers for the Lesbian Gay Bullying Totalitarians to pursue and keep the donations to the Sharptons and Jacksons of the HRC and other professional activist organizations rolling in.

  • Banning disagreement or criticisms of gay behavior through “anti-bullying” and “hate speech” legislation;
  • Mandating school curricula to include “gay history” as well as museums and monuments to be demanded to gay heroes like Harry Hay, Larry Bruckner, and Harvey Milk;
  • Forcing religious institutions to recognize gay marriages;
  • Churches must be forced to perform gay marriages or lose tax exempt status. (Mosques, probably not)

No, this is not the end. This is nowhere near the end. This is just another milestone on the road to our social Pyongyang. The Supreme Court has rejected the rule of law twice in two days in favor of a Judiciary Politburo…

Two short articles by R.R. Reno that have impacted me a lot just reading them through once. It seems that this is the best, considering our current climate, response that is conservative and conservatively libertarian for our [again] current culture.

Government Marriage

A constitutional right for men to marry men and women to marry women is a done deal. That’s how I read the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear cases in which lower courts ruled that marriage laws in various states that recognize unions only of a man and a woman are unconstitutional. Lower courts will continue to draw this conclusion. If portions of the country resist, the Supreme Court will very likely intervene and find a right to same-sex marriage amid the penumbras and emanations of due process or equal protection.

We are thus fast approaching a fundamental distinction between government marriage and church marriage. Government marriage is… well, it’s hard to tell. The courts have studiously ignored traditional arguments about the meaning of marriage. That’s not surprising, because all thick descriptions of marriage end up focusing on the male—female difference, which isn’t very useful if your goal as a judge is to find a constitutional right of same-sex marriage.

Given this new legal reality, what are we to think and’ do? First, we need to recognize how miserably we have failed. We sought to convince our fellow citizens of some simple truths. That marriage is a universal institution found in all cultures. That it properly organizes, regulates, and sanctifies the sexual union of male and female. That to say otherwise is unprecedented, strange, and unwise as a social policy. We tried to speak these truths in many different ways but without success.

Clarity about our failure need not entail giving up on the arguments we’ve made. Sometimes things need to be said because they’re true. But facing our failure should lead us to a keener sense of what we’re up against. It’s very hard these days to speak about men as men and women as women. Last month I wrote about the perverse way in which political correctness prevents us from talking about the problems of date rape and sexual assault in a manner that acknowledges the unique sexual vulnerability of women. We have the same problem when it comes to marriage. Our culture dreams of equality so complete that the male—female difference becomes irrelevant. Why do we need an institution to regulate the union of men and women if there aren’t any real differences between men and women?

Our current culture of the intimate life adds to our confusion. Widespread cohabitation makes marriage seem increasingly irrelevant. Our date-then-fornicate social mores run counter to the traditional claim that we should discipline our sexual instincts in accord with the limitations imposed by the institution of marriage. The fact that this culture shapes a great deal of our lives and those of our children, friends, and relatives makes our situation all the more troubling. How can we speak clearly about marriage if we participate in trends that obscure its proper meaning?

And then there’s the general fear we all feel about being “judgmental.” We take for granted the minute regulation of our economic relations. We accept extensive educational expectations and adopt rigorous regimes of exercise and dieting. But when it comes to sex and sexual “iden­tity,” our culture finds regulation suspect, even odious. This involves more than solicitude for our perennial hedonistic impulses. Anxious efforts to secure “transgendered” rights don’t focus on sexual relations at all. Those rights secure the freedom for a male to think of himself as—and to be treated by others as—a female, and vice versa. Most people I know roll their eyes when talk turns to the rights of the “transgendered community.” But they also shrink from saying anything censorious. To give full voice to traditional moral judgments about sex, sexual identity, and relationships is insensitive, puritanical, or just plain bad manners.

In this respect, Pope Francis is both very right and very wrong. We have not found a way to talk about sex and marriage, at least not one we’re confident will humanize, which is what clarity about moral truth should do. But he’s dangerously wrong to suggest that the way forward is to “obsess” less. The opposite is the case, for as both Roger Scruton (“Is Sex Necessary?”) and James Kalb (“Sex and the Religion of Me”) observe in this issue, our age is already obsessed with sex. If we don’t speak—if our church leaders don’t speak—we’ll be absorbed into our culture’s way of thinking, and our children will be catechized by progressive creeds of sexual liberation.

In the new regime of redefined marriage, we need to think long and hard about what we need to do—or refuse to do. For example, I can’t see how a priest or pastor can in good conscience sign a marriage license for “spouse A” and “spouse B.” Perhaps he should strike those absurdities and write “husband” and “wife.” Failing that, he should simply refuse the govern­ment’s delegation of legal power, referring the couple to the courthouse after the wedding for the state to confect in its bureaucratic way the amorphous and ill-defined civil union that our regime continues to call “marriage.”

More generally, I think we need to make a simple change in the way we talk about marriage. I propose dropping the term civil marriage and adopting the term govern­ment marriage. In the past, the state recognized marriage, giving it legal forms to reinforce its historic norms (or, in more recent decades, to relax them). Now the courts have redefined rather than recognized marriage, making it an institution entirely under the state’s control. That’s why it’s now government marriage rather than civil marriage. On this point I believe in the separation of church and state. The Church may participate in civil marriage. It should not participate in government marriage.

A Time to Rend

Getting out of the government-marriage busi­ness is exactly what Ephraim Radner and Christopher Seitz now urge. They’ve formu­lated a pastoral pledge. It requires ordained ministers to renounce their long-established role as agents of the state with the legal power to sign marriage certificates. I find their reasoning convincing. Easy divorce, prenuptial agreements, a general tolerance of cohabitation, the contraceptive mentality—this de­grades and obscures the meaning of marriage. But rede­fining marriage so that male—female complementarity is irrelevant? That’s a fundamental contradiction of the moss fundamental meaning of marriage.

Here’s the pledge:

In many jurisdictions, including many of the United States, civil authorities have adopted a definition of marriage that explicitly rejects the age-old requirement of male-female pairing. In a few short years or even months, it is very likely that this new definition will be­come the law of the land, and in all jurisdictions the rights, privileges, and duties of marriage will be granted to men in partnership with men, and women with wom­en. As law-abiding citizens, we join in according the ap­propriate legal recognition to these partnerships where and when they are accorded the legal status of marriage.

As Christian ministers, however, we must bear clear wit­ness. This is a perilous time. Divorce and co-habitation have weakened marriage. We have been too complacent in our responses to these trends. Now marriage is being fundamentally redefined, and we are being tested yet again. If we fail to take clear action, we risk falsifying God’s Word.

The new definition of marriage no longer coincides with the Christian understanding of marriage between a man and woman. Our biblical faith is committed to upholding, celebrating, and furthering this understand­ing, which is stated many times within the Scriptures and has been repeatedly restated in our wedding cere­monies, church laws, and doctrinal standards for centu­ries. To continue with church practices that intertwine government marriage with Christian marriage will implicate the Church in a false definition of marriage.

Therefore, in our roles as Christian ministers, we, the undersigned, commit ourselves to disengaging civil and Christian marriage in the performance of our pastoral duties. We will no longer serve as agents of the state in marriage. We will no longer sign marriage certificates. We will ask couples to seek civil marriage separately from their church-related vows and blessings. We will preside only at those weddings that seek to establish a Christian marriage in accord with the principles articulated and lived out from the beginning of the Church’s life.

Please join us in this pledge to separate civil marriage from Christian marriage by adding your name.

For a long time Christianity has sewn its teachings into the fabric of Western culture. That was a good thing. A Christian culture is not the same as a Christian commu­nity. No society is a church, no matter how thoroughly Christian its ethos. But as David Bentley Hart has writ­ten so eloquently, such a society will participate, however imperfectly, in the heavenly civilization of love. But the season of sewing is ending, and we need to separate that which is Christian from cultural forms taken over and reshaped for post-Christian purposes. Now is a time for rending, not for the sake of disengaging from culture or retreating from the public square, but so that our salt does not lose its savor.

We have posted the pledge on firstthings.com. Signa­tures welcome.

R.R. Reno, First Things, December 2014 (Num 248), 3-5.