Considerettes

One person can’t comment on every idea, or every person expressing an idea, which sometimes causes others (who’s particular axe to grind wasn’t touched on by a particular blogger) to say that someone is "strangely silent" on the matter. Sometimes that charge is warranted, especially when the target has been vociferously vocal on the subject in general.

I recently participated in a blog comment thread noting that the same Democrats and pundits, who have been extremely vocal about a supposed Republican "war on women", have been silent on the actual war on women that goes on worldwide, usually in Islamic countries. As I’ve said many times, for the Left, it’s always political. Principle, when it shows up, usually takes a back seat.

Today, however, I want to publicly state that a particular opinion, expressed by a Baptist pastor, is most certainly not what I believe, and am totally against this expression even though I suspect my opinion on the overarching topic is the same as this pastor. I can’t catch every situation like this, but this particular expression has gone viral and needs to be addressed.

A North Carolina pastor’s supposedly vehement anti-gay sermon is making its way around the blogosphere. According to a YouTube description, the man depicted in the clip is named Charles L. Worley and he is the faith leader at Providence Road Baptist Church in the town of Maiden. In his address, the faith leader discussed, among other themes, “a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers.”

In the two-minute video, which appears to be a portion taken from a longer sermon, Worley condemns Obama’s recent endorsement of gay marriage, and makes a shocking statement about homosexuals — that they should be placed inside of an electrified pen until they die off. Call his words mere hyperbole or pure hate — at the least, taken in the minimal context they’re presented in, they are stunning.

“Build a great, big, large fence — 150 or 100 mile long — put all the lesbians in there,” he said in the sermon, which was allegedly filmed on May 13. “Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can’t get out…and you know what, in a few years, they’ll die out…do you know why? They can’t reproduce!”

While both Pastor Worley and I likely have the same view of homosexuality (i.e. that God considers such acts a sin), this is awful, mean-spirited, and unbecoming of a Pastor, let alone a Christian. I find it completely against the idea that we should love the sinner, even if we hate the sin. How does this build up the kingdom of God?

It doesn’t, and should be condemned. I do condemn it.

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Chris Matthews, a Catholic Democrat, isn’t sure, at least about the bishops, and neither was Sister Simone Campbell, executive director at the National Catholic Social Justice Lobby. While discussing the requirements that the Catholic Church must provide insurance for contraception (against its teachings), Matthews asked if the bishops were all aligned with a certain political party, based on their views on this.

MATTHEWS: Do you think they’re all Republican, the bishops?

CAMPBELL: I don’t know if they’re all Republican, but it sure seems that they’re speaking from the, the playbook, sort of possibly as surrogates for the Republican Party, I don’t know. But they certainly are engaged in politics that seem much more aligned with the Right.

Noel Sheppard, covering this for NewsBusters, comes up with the numbers regarding Catholics and political party.

Catholics in this country historically have been solidly Democratic, although this has waned in recent years.

As EWTN News reported in February, a 2011 Pew study found 48 percent of Catholics surveyed said they were Democrat or Democrat-leaning compared to 43 percent claiming to be Republican or Republican-leaning.

As such, it seems absurd to think all Catholic bishops are Republican.

So no, the Pope isn’t necessarily Republican, but he is Catholic. Matthews ought to know that. But for the Left, everything is political. Even religion.

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From CNS News, the gauntlet has been thrown down.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, and 42 other Catholic dioceses and organizations around the country announced on Monday that they are suing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for violating their freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The dioceses and organizations, in different combinations, are filing 12 different lawsuits filed in federal courts around the country.

The suits focus on the regulation that Sebelius announced last August and finalized in January that requires virtually all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that can cause abortions.

The Catholic Church teaches that sterilization, artificial contraception and abortion are morally wrong and that Catholics should not be involved in them. Thus, the regulation would require faithful Catholics and Catholic organizations to act against their consciences and violate the teachings of their faith.

Earlier, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had called the regulation an "unprecedented attack on religious liberty" and asked the Obama administration to rescind it.

“We have tried negotiation with the Administration and legislation with the Congress–and we’ll keep at it–but there’s still no fix," Cardinal Dolan, who is also president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a statement released by the conference this morning.

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Mitt Romney, a real community organizer.

Record-breaking attendance at Canada’s March for Life. Over 19,000 people participated. Support is growing.

Around the world, Obama has become something of a disappointment. He talked a good game, but was a bit short on follow-through.

However, the President has certainly had his share of ‘firsts’ while in office. Doug Ross enumerates 3 dozen of them.

If you personally know thieves that otherwise live their lives with "goodness and holiness", does that mean thieving is, therefore, condoned? This press release from the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC seems to suggest that.

RIP OWS. We hardly knew you (and I think you hardly knew yourself).

After being voted down unanimously in the House, Obama’s budget is unanimously voted down in the Senate. One word: Leadership.

An admission that environmentalists sat on their hands during the BP oil spill because Obama was in the White House. Again, for the Left, it’s always political. Principle always gets the back seat.

And finally, what’s next to "evolve"? (Click for a larger version.)

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Rarely do you get a pair of situations so similar at the same point in time that allows you to compare and contrast the policies used to deal with it. But we have one with California and New Jersey.

In his January 2011 inaugural address, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared it a "time to honestly assess our financial condition and make the tough choices." Plainly the choices weren’t tough enough: Mr. Brown has just announced that he faces a state budget deficit of $16 billion—nearly twice the $9.2 billion he predicted in January. In Sacramento Monday, he coupled a new round of spending cuts with a call for some hefty new tax hikes.

In his own inaugural address back in January 2010, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also spoke of making tough choices for the people of his state. For his first full budget, Mr. Christie faced a deficit of $10.7 billion—one-third of projected revenues. Not only did Mr. Christie close that deficit without raising taxes, he is now plumping for a 10% across-the-board tax cut.

It’s not just looks that make Mr. Brown Laurel to Mr. Christie’s Hardy. It’s also their political choices.

Each had a huge deficit going in, but New Jersey is coming out of this looking far, far better than California.

Hard economic times bring their own lessons. Though few have been spared the ravages of the last recession and the sluggish recovery, those in states where taxes are light, government lives within its means, and the climate is friendly to investment have learned the value of the arrangement they have. They are not likely to give it up.

Meanwhile, leaders in some struggling states have taken notice. They know the road to fiscal hell is paved with progressive intentions. The question regarding the sensible ones is whether they have the will and wherewithal to impose the reforms they know their states need on the interest groups whose political and economic clout is so closely tied with the public purse.

The same goes for the next presidential election.

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In Europe, it is supposedly "austerity" measures that are killing their economy. Now, let me ask you this, does this look like austerity to you?

No, me neither. And yet ballot after ballot in Europe is turning out those who pushed for fiscal responsibility. When you’re in a hole, especially a financial one, stop digging. Call Dave Ramsey and cut up your credit card. But experiments with socialism always sound like the Pied Piper, until the bill comes due. By then, everyone is addicted to the "freebies" and there’s no turning back.

Austerity is the answer, but liberal economists always seem to think that government spending is the answer, not the problem, and that austerity leads to all sorts of problems. Except that, when the United States tried it, against the liberal naysayers’ warnings, it worked.

This is what austerity looks like.

After the huge spending during World War II, the US got seriously austere, with regards to government spending. What happened?

Superstar economist and devout Keynesian Paul Samuelson—later to become the first American to win the Nobel Prize in economics—predicted such shock austerity would cause “the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced.” That dire, disastrous prediction was widely held by his fellow Keynesians, with one even predicting an “epidemic of violence.”

Except the doomsayers were wrong, even though Washington obviously ignored Samuelson’s call for gradual spending reductions. Despite cuts which dwarfed those seen in the EU today—not to mention those Republicans are calling for here at home—the U.S. economy thrived. There was no mass unemployment despite rapid demobilization of the armed forces.

(Yeah, another Keynesian, Nobel-prize-winning economist predicted doom. How much more of a parallel with Paul Krugman do you need?)

Don’t say that austerity won’t work, when you haven’t really tried it, and it’s worked in the past.

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Four days later, and this item is old news, but Obama coming out of the closet and no longer hiding (what we all knew was) his stance on same-sex marriage is going to have political ramifications. I daresay that was the intent. But his religious reasons for his view seem to me to be very flimsy, more of a fig leaf to try to keep goodwill with the majority of Christians and Jews who believe this is wrong.

Here are some of his reasons:

[Michelle and I] are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated.

"Christ sacrificed Himself. We should treat others the way we want to be treated. Therefore, same-sex marriage is good." With that sort of "deep" theological thought, one could rationalize any number of behaviors that the Bible is rather clear on. But once more for emphasis:

Genesis 2:24 - For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

Pretty clear to me. And again, as I have noted before,

• Every time the Bible mentions homosexuality, it is speaking against it.
• Every time the Bible mentions marriage, it is heterosexual.
• Thousands of years of Christian and Jewish thought understand this.

But for Mr. Obama, personal experience trumps all of that.

“I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people, the word ‘marriage’ was something that evokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs and so forth.

“But I have to tell you that over the course of several years, as I’ve talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in in­cred­ibly committed monogamous same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together. When I think about those soldiers or airmen or Marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf, and yet feel constrained even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone because they’re not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

"Some of my best friends are gay. Therefore, same-sex marriage is a good thing." I’m sorry, but quoting the Bible is not the same as following it, especially when it says things in the most definite of terms that are diametrically opposed to what you are suggesting it says.

This may be helping Obama in the short term (he got a surge of donations soon after the pronouncement), but in the long term, this may hurt him with African-American and Latino voters. It’s time to take notice of the actual values of the man you may be voting for.

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The Southern Poverty Law Center, who (supposedly) goes after hate groups, admit, “We’re not really set up to cover the extreme Left.” Once again, it’s all political with the Left. Hate is only hate if it’s right-wing hate.

Life is wasted without Jesus. That’s a pretty benign Christian aphorism. You can agree or disagree, but is it hate speech? It is in Canada.

The Post Office, supposedly, allegedly privatized, is going to cost the taxpayers $34 billion dollars. It could cut costs, but Congress won’t let it.

A 20+ year study proves conclusively that outlawing abortion does not lead to "coat hanger deaths". Bonus: NARAL co-founder admits they made up numbers to garner sympathy for their cause.

Foiled bomb plots: Occupy Wall Street - 1, Tea Party - 0. The same goes for dozens of incidents (enumerated at the link) that, had they happened at a Tea Party rally, would have headlined national news for day. (I know this because charges of racial epithets with no actual proof did just that.)

VP Joe Biden lauds NBC for moving American towards same-sex marriage. How? “I think ‘Will & Grace’ probably did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody’s ever done so far.” The next time someone tells you "It’s just a TV show" or "Just change the channel" for complaining about TV show content, ask them to get a new writer. The old script is a lie.

And speaking of same-sex marriage, Nancy Pelosi seems to think that her religion provides the reason why she must act against her religion on the matter.

For what it’s worth, "An official from Iran has refuted claims of plans to execute imprisoned pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who has been imprisoned for almost three years on accusations of apostasy, a crime where one disaffiliates themselves from a religion." This from a country not even holding to its own laws regarding the case.

Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for Julia.

Extremists? I don’t think that word means what you think it means. And here’s an article I wrote in 1996 regarding another right-wing extremist you’re sure to know.

Looks like Mitt Romney’s school days will be vetted by the media more than Obama’s ever was. Too bad their first attempt failed so badly.

And finally, the recent European elections in perspective. (Click for a larger image.)

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Item 1: North Carolina, as expected, put the definition of "marriage" into their state Constitution, so that judges and legislator alike who seem to have forgotten it could be reminded. When the Left insists on redefining words, don’t be surprised when the Right meets you on that battlefield, with common sense armed and ready.

Item 2: The Tea Party has been tarred with the charge that they are just Republicans mad at having a black, Democratic President. And yet, in Indiana, the Tea-Party-backed candidate for US Senate challenged and handily beat the white, Republican 36-year veteran in the party’s primary. It is not, and has never been, about race or party. It has always been about policy. If it was about party, running the perennial favorite is what they would have done. But Richard Lugar has lost touch with conservatives in Indiana, and with the Tea Party in full swing, they did something about it.

News/Blog items:

Tea Party Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock Wins; Gay Marriage Loses

Mourdock victory = Tea Party victory

A Terrible, No Good, Awful Night for Barack Obama

Six-term Senate veteran Lugar defeated in Indiana primary

N.C. to add marriage amendment to its constitution

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For all of my Christian friends who will be voting on this amendment today, defining marriage as one man and one woman, a couple of verses.

Genesis 2:24 (NIV) - That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Proverbs 14:34 (NIV) - Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin condemns any people.

Righteousness and sinfulness are indeed both personal and corporate. Please consider this.

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For the first time since Mitterrand did it in 1981, the French have elected a  Socialist President, Francois Hollande. But the French, based on some observations I’ve seen, didn’t turn left so much as it didn’t turn right. Sarkozy, a conservative by label, had become something of a "big-government conservative", meaning that, likely, the French didn’t see much difference between him and the Socialists.

There’s a lesson here for American Republicans.

The fiscal measures that France had been working on are now likely going away.  Hollande is quoted as saying, ""Europe is watching us, austerity can no longer be the only option." Socialism, which exists to "spread the wealth around", needs more and more money and more and more vote buying social spending to keep its promises.

Let’s not forget that, upset at their involvement in Iraq, Spaniards voted in Socialists who promised to get them out of the war. They did, but the jihadists still bombed Madrid. And after seeing what the Socialists did to their finances, the voted them out in a crushing defeat 2 terms later.

There’s a lesson there for the French, and Europe in general.

Is anybody listening? It will be too late for the French if they go the way of Greece. Who will bail them out? Germany, again? Us? This will not go well.

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"The nation’s Social Security and Medicare programs are sliding closer to insolvency, the federal government warned Monday in a new report underscoring the fiscal challenges facing the two mammoth retirement programs as baby boomers begin to retire." (And some think that making Medicare required for everyone is the solution. Only in Washington is failing on an even larger scale considered success.)

FALSANI:
What is sin?
OBAMA:
Being out of alignment with my values.
FALSANI:
What happens if you have sin in your life?
OBAMA:
I think it’s the same thing as the question about heaven. In the same way that if I’m true to myself and my faith that that is its own reward, when I’m not true to it, it’s its own punishment.
(What brand of Christianity does this represent?  Honestly, I have no idea. Read the whole interview.)

“Nice work, occupiers,” tweeted Jeremy Tooker, owner of the popular Four Barrel Coffee. “You made me leave my sick kid at home to go clean paint bombs off my windows. That’ll show Wall Street, fellas.” (More May Day Occupy Wall Street madness at Yourish.com.)

"For activists and Christians opposed to the so-called Israeli occupation, two key votes by the United Methodists will certainly serve as a discouragement. On Wed., May 2, the denomination twice voted to reject resolutions that called for a divestment from companies accused of assisting Israel in the ongoing dispute over Middle Eastern lands." (The UMC cares for both the Jews and the Palestinians, and won’t blame one side for violence from both. Good for them.) (Oh, and on May 1st, "A Qassam rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip and exploded in an open area in Ashkelon Coast Regional Council.")

And finally, Economics 101, from Chuck Asay. (Click for a larger version.)

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North Carolina will be voting on an amendment to the state constitution that will define marriage as one man and one woman. It’s too bad that something so engrained in cultures worldwide must now have its obvious definition written into the overarching legal document for states, but since there are those that now wish to redefine it legally, it’s something that must be done.

In Georgia, we saw how, even though there were already laws against same-sex marriage, the same-sex marriage proponents sought to get around this by using the courts to declare the law unconstitutional. To preempt that here, a constitutional amendment was proposed and passed. Now North Carolina is doing the same thing, but those against the amendment are arguing…well, not arguing, really, just casting aspersions. Mark Duffy, writing for Buzzfeed says this:

The state already doesn’t "recognize" same-sex unions. That apparently isn’t a strong enough statement for North Carolina lawmakers.

This is not about statements or posturing. It’s because those promoting same-sex marriage have changed the battlefield from the legislature to the courts. And each time they get met on that battlefield, they whine about it and make assumptions about their opponents. These are not the actions of people appealing to your mind or reason, but to your emotions and, ironically, to hate of those they disagree with.

This is further exhibited by the commenters on the page. I noted the legal reasoning that the NC lawmakers might have, paralleling it with what I had seen here, and was immediately accused of deliberately twisting the facts. Except that the facts are historically verifiable. Nothing was twisted. Check out the comment thread. A very eye-opening read.

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