Culture war

What Would Jesus Cut?

by Mark Tooley –
After any successful election for Republicans, the Religious Left immediately becomes alarmed about supposedly massive federal budget “cuts,” i.e. some reductions in budget increases, for some social welfare programs. In the Religious Left’s ultimate vision of the Kingdom of God, the federal government spends unlimited sums on the nation’s every supposed social need, regardless of result, while spending nothing on national defense, and only increasing taxes.

In 1981, responding to President Reagan’s budget “cuts,” the Religious Left endorsed a huge “Solidarity Day” protest march in Washington, D.C. to deplore the “transfer of billions of dollars from the social needs of people to the production of massive new weapons and strategic defense systems.” One United Methodist bishop explained: “For us to take out of the mouths of the hungry and the poor and the oppressed the funds that will build bombs and bullets and airplanes seems to be terribly incongruous with our understanding and the quality of life in the world in which we live.” [Read more…]

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You Christians Can Believe, Just Don’t Act on It

ACLU vs God assault on Christianityby Robert Knight –
Christians, orthodox Jews or anyone with traditional views of sex and marriage should be barred from state university counseling programs unless they agree to violate their beliefs.

That’s the gist of the amicus brief that the ACLU filed on Feb. 11 in a case in which a Christian student is challenging her dismissal from a graduate counseling program at Eastern Michigan University in 2009.

Julea Ward had asked that another student take the case of a homosexual suffering from depression because, being a Christian, she could not affirm the person’s sexual relationships. Miss Ward was dismissed, and filed a lawsuit charging unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, religious discrimination and compelled speech. On July 26, 2010, a U.S. District Court denied her claim, and she appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The ACLU’s brief to the appeals court contends that compelling someone to act against her beliefs does not violate her freedoms of religion or speech. They quote the university’s finding that Ward had a “conflict between your values that motivate your behavior and those behaviors expected of your profession.” In other words, you’re a conscientious Christian, so get lost. [Read more…]

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Can Truth Prevail in a Culture of Spin?

Truth in Life by Judith Anderson –
The answer is yes. Absolutely! Truth is what is unequivocally true. It is not constrained by ideology, creed, or spin. Crushing debt destroys families and governments. Endless, deceitful war-making destroys republics. U.S. citizens are getting a huge dose of reality as our policies in Egypt are exposed to the light. For years we have borrowed money to prop up despots in the Middle-East who are out of touch with their own people. An insistent, vocal majority of Americans don’t want ObamaCare. They are ignored by politicians who intend to impose it on them against their will. Blatant, naked truth trumps spin.

Specious, false, fraudulent argument by czars, presidents, individuals and speakers for all manner of causes are being swept away in the bright glare of reality. Spin and in some cases outright lies in matters of national security, environmental protection and government spending are failing the smell test for all but the most ardent partisan ideologue. [Read more…]

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The Polygamists Make Their Move

by Peter Heck –
The debate over whether or not those practicing homosexuality should be eligible to obtain the legal status of “married” for their same-sex relationships is persistently mischaracterized by activists on both sides as an attempt to redefine marriage. For those opposing such a move, this is most likely an error of ignorance, while for those favoring, it likely is an intentional tactic of misdirection. To be clear, in order to “redefine” anything, there must be an alternative definition being advocated. To this point, no such proposed substitute has emerged.

In truth then, what is being pursued is not any redefinition of marriage, but rather the “undefinition” of it — an attempt to obliterate any fundamental parameters for what is to be perceived as moral and immoral sexual partnerships. To anyone paying attention over the last several decades, this effort should come as no surprise. [Read more…]

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“Nobody Gets Married Any More, Mister”

Inner City Tragedy by Gerry Garibaldi –

Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children—all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren. Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch.

My first encounter with teen pregnancy was a girl named Nicole, a pretty 15-year-old who had rings on every finger and great looped earrings and a red pen with fluffy pink feathers and a heart that lit up when she wrote with it. Hearts seemed to be on everything—in her signature, on her binder; there was often a little plastic heart barrette in her hair, which she had dyed in bright hues recalling a Siamese fighting fish. She was enrolled in two of my classes: English and journalism. [Read more…]

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A culture exposed

Abortion Culture Liberals by Mike Aquilina –
We’ve come a long way, baby. And we’ve ended up back where we started before the rise of Christianity. In the Church’s infancy, the age of the Fathers, abortion and infanticide were commonplace events, requiring little deliberation. Archeology has yielded us a rare glimpse at the inner life of ordinary people in this time. We have a letter from a pagan businessman in which he wrote home to his pregnant wife, amid the usual endearments: “If you are delivered of a child [before I come home], if it is a boy, keep it, if a girl discard it.”

Indeed, most pagan cultures considered it a duty to place “defective” newborns on the dunghills at the edge of town, where birds of prey could pick them apart. Most families interpreted the word “defective” broadly, to include female children as well as those with disabilities or disfigurement. Plato and Aristotle commended the practice, and the Roman historian Tacitus said it was “sinister and revolting” for Jews to forbid infanticide.

Yet these practices created a crisis for pagans. Abortion and infanticide led to low fertility rates, high maternal mortality, a shortage of marriageable women, and an absence of familial care for the elderly. [Read more…]

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Libeling the Right: The Key to the Left’s Success

Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager
by Dennis Prager –

Last week, following the murder of six people and the attempted murder of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, the American people were given a vivid display of the single most important tactic of the left: libeling opponents.

Most Americans have been naively and blissfully unaware of this aspect of the left’s arsenal against the right. But now, just as more Americans than ever before understand the left’s limitless appetite for political power in an ever-expanding state, more Americans than ever before understand that a key to the left’s success is defaming the right. …

People are awakening to the seminal fact of left-wing success: The only way the left can succeed in America is by libeling the right. Only 20 percent of Americans label themselves liberal, let alone left. How, then, do Leftists get elected? And why don’t more Americans call themselves conservative when, in fact, so many share conservatives’ values? [Read more…]

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Marching on the Right Side of History

Christ, the Author of Life by Jennifer Roback Morse –
Defenders of marriage should draw hope and courage from the pro-life movement’s success.

As an advocate of conjugal marriage, I am often told that I am on the “wrong side of History.” The justice of “marriage equality” is overwhelming; the younger generation favors it; same sex marriage is inevitable. But this analysis is false. Indeed, there is ample reason to think that the March of History storyline will be proven incorrect. The reason? We were told all these same things about abortion.

“You need to accept Roe v. Wade. The unlimited abortion license is nothing but simple justice for women. Besides, the next generation will completely accept abortion. They will grow up knowing nothing else. They will not have all your hang-ups about sex and your squeamishness about scraping a bit of tissue out of a woman’s body. Reproductive freedom is the wave of the future. You are on the Wrong Side of History.”

A funny thing happened on the way to History: the people did not perform as promised. Last year, I took a group of Ruth Institute students up to the West Coast Walk for Life in San Francisco. [Read more…]

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“Now it is the Other Way Around” – The Moral Revolution in Full View

by Albert Mohler –
The breathtaking pace of the moral revolution now transforming Western cultures staggers belief. In the course of a single generation, the sexual morality that has survived for thousands of years is giving way to a radically different moral understanding. Just consider the couple in the United Kingdom who were recently found guilty of discrimination because they allowed only married couples to share a bed at their small hotel.

Peter and Hazelmary Bull own a bed and breakfast hotel in Cornwall. In September of 2008, a homosexual couple requested a single bed and was denied that accommodation by the Bulls. The couple sued, and this week a judge found the Bulls guilty of discrimination under Britain’s Equality Act of 2007. [Read more…]

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