Matt 24 watch, 152b: An update, on why the attempted homosexualisation of marriage (as was just endorsed by US Pres. Obama) is destructive to marriage, family and society

As I sometimes do with key backgrounder posts here at KF, I have updated the post on US Pres. Obama's endorsement of the homosexualisation of marriage. (U/D, May 12:  Republican candidate, Mitt Romney (a Mormon from Massachusetts) has endorsed homosexual adoptions and by implication Civil Unions, which are plainly homosexualised marriages in all but name or just one step short. [Cf. a case in Colorado, here.])

The first key update -- hostile onlookers, kindly note -- is on why I (and many others) hold that the effect of this attempt (if successful) would be the destruction of marriage, not merely opening it up to what many have been naively led to believe are hitherto unjustly excluded classes. Notice, in this respect the utterly telling, toxically loaded but subtle newly invented term now being pushed: "marriage equality."

As a measure of the effectiveness across time of such homosexualist "equality" and "fairness" rhetoric in the USA, let us observe the following chart from Christianity Today:

(On the wider issues and claims used to promote homosexuality, cf here.)

So, let us revisit, in light of the update:

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>> . . . our history will move in one of two ways beyond this point, for good or ill: either we become reconciled now, or soon from now the polarisation being injected into the body politic by the radicals pushing a destructively divisive agenda will create more and more alienation and irreconcilable differences.

*And, what is at stake today is the destruction or survival of marriage, the foundational institution of stable families and communities alike. {U/D, May 12:} As Girgit, George and Anderson observe in the just linked Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy paper:

 [T]he current debate is precisely over whether it is possible for the kind of union that has marriage’s essential fea‐tures to exist between two people of the same sex. Revisionists do not propose leaving intact the historic definition of marriage and simply expanding the pool of people eligible to marry. Their goal is to abolish the conjugal conception of marriage in our law 10 and replace it with the revisionist [--> i.e. homosexualised] conception . . .
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F/N 10: Throughout history, no society’s laws have explicitly forbidden gay mar‐riage. They have not explicitly forbidden it because, until recently, it has not been thought possible . . . [T]raditional marriage laws  were not devised to oppress those with same‐sex attractions. The comparison [to racist anti-miscegenation laws that forbade inter-racial marriages]  is offensive, and puzzling to many—not least to the nearly two‐thirds of black vot‐ers who voted to uphold conjugal marriage under California Proposition Eight. See Cara Mia DiMassa & Jessica Garrison, Why Gays, Blacks are Divided on Prop. 8, L.A. TIMES, Nov. 8, 2008, at A1.

 [Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, & Ryan T. Anderson, "What is Marriage?" Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Vol 34, No. 1, p. 250 of 245 - 287.]

Already, the force of the homosexualist civilisational divide is at work, driving people on opposite sides of the issue farther and farther apart, and creating the perception that those who stand up in defence of marriage as it has historically been established are little better than hateful, racist bigots.

Which, is obscenely slanderous, but is increasingly routine.

Indeed, this smear- and- demonise strategy is not calculated to foster dialogue and build a new consensus, but to shut it down, and to intimidate objectors to the homosexualisation of marriage -- thus the destruction of its essential character. Then, eventually it is intended to crack down on those who insist on objecting, under the colours -- but not the true substance -- of law.  Which, in some jurisdictions, has already begun.

The polarising divide has begun.

So, I am of the view that time is short, and we need to step back from the brink of a division being injected into our civilisation on the core nature of family that once it goes far enough cannot be healed and will do great harm.  Harm, that zealous advocates of "fairness" and "rights" and even "progress" as they imagine them may not even fully understand. 

For instance, a claim to a right is in the end a moral claim that calls for respecting something inherent to our being made in God's image. 

So, rights are not to be equated with political entitlements, and one cannot properly demand a "right" in defiance of the creation order established by God; here, that we are made in two complementary sexes, so that committed marriage is the foundation of family, stable child rearing and a stable community. There is and can be no right to destroy the foundation of a viable society by arbitrarily abusing political power or media and/or academic influence to mislead the public, and backing it up with the organs of state power. That is, there is no such thing as a right to do evil based on falsehoods and then demand approval of evil by force of law . . . 

  [--> and if you imagine that the idea of taking God and the moral order of creation seriously is "obviously" irrational and likely a sign of a right wing, tyrannical, theocratic agenda, your mind has been deeply poisoned by toxic talking points promoted in the end by willful manipulators who know that the easiest way to alienate you from unwelcome truths is to get you angry against those who bring it to you. As a first emergency antidote, I suggest that you pause, and work your way through the discussion here on, in context (and then go to here on, too). If you have been led to think that evolutionary materialism is the only credible "scientific" view, cf. here on in context. And if you think that such materialism is a coherent view of reality, please see here on as well on how it inescapably contradicts itself and so must be false. And,  denizens of NCSE Anti Evo, ATBC, et al, I have every inch as much right to hold, express and share my views as you have to yours. Not to mention, better warrant.]>>

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In short, what is happening here is the sort of destructive moral inversion warned against in  Is 5:20 - 21, backed up by a radical agenda bent on usurping the power of law to suppress those who refuse to go along with the agenda. 

That sort of power play never ends in a good place.

Let us remind ourselves of what such a moral inversion is like:

ISA 5:18 Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit,
and wickedness as with cart ropes . . . .

ISA 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.

ISA 5:21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes
and clever in their own sight. [NIV, '84.]

If we stubbornly insist on folly, we can hardly say we have not been warned.

But -- and, Anti-Evo denizens and others of like ilk looking on, this speaks to you -- why is it that some feel free to make this sort of inversion, where they know or full well should know that this is going to unjustly criminalise millions of Bible-believing Christians?

First, we must not forget that -- as we have already had to point out not so long ago here at KF -- many of this ilk already have been directly comparing such Christians to Hitler and the Nazis, a slanderous act of (frankly) hate and willfully irresponsible polarising deception.

Clipping the Mt 24 watch, 150 post as just linked:

One of the things that astonishes me, is the increasingly commonly encountered New Atheist Internet talking point that "Hitler was a Christian"; an attempt to taint the Christian Faith with the horrors of Nazism.

In initial reply, we may immediately observe that Hitler was the main advocate of the Big Lie propaganda technique of telling huge whoppers that tickle itching ears with what they want to hear and won't -- even, "can't" -- believe that so "credible" a source is lying through their teeth about so important a matter. 
 The United States Office of Strategic Services aptly summed up Hitler's rhetorical and propaganda methods:

[Hitler's] primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it. [Hitler as His Associates Know Him (OSS report, p.51), courtesy Wiki. Resemblance to the web stalking and Internet vandalism  techniques exposed here and here, are NOT coincidental.]

So, if we hear anything from Hitler in public that lines up with the likely sentiments of his audience -- here, largely the German people (reportedly then about 90% "Christian") -- we should be on notice. For more details, we may  cf. responsible replies here and here , with a cluster of useful quotes here. [NB: The irresponsible site Evil Bible that is linked to substantiate the New Atheist smear talking point, is rebutted in general here.]

But all of this requires a fair amount of reading and reasonably balanced thought, precisely what the likes of those inclined to swallow the sort of talking point above are disinclined to do.

We need something far more direct.

Courtesy a Life photo-essay on Nazi era posters [under fair use], we can however see direct, visual positive proof of the actual Anti-christ, demonic, counterfeiting spirit of both Hitler and nazism.

This is immediately obvious, through the following blasphemous echo of the descent of the Spirit as a dove on Jesus and the announcement of the Father that Jesus was the Approved Son, at his baptism in the Jordan:

In the image we see an aura of radiant glory and a descending bat-like, predatory, demonic bird; most certainly not the Holy and peaceful Dove of the Holy Spirit. 

Hitler, here, is plainly being presented as an idolatrous political messiah, a deliberate and demonically twisted echo of Jesus.

Complete with a flag carrying that twisted, broken cross known as the Swastika.

Itself, a highly visible warning.

{Added Jan 18:} Whatever the Swastika once may have been in our civilisation (and with all due respect to those of other cultures and creeds where it may still have a positive meaning), it is now forever tainted by the Nazi abuse, and the horrible meaning and history of their flag:

In Mein Kampf, Hitler described the Nazis' new flag: "In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work, which as such always has been and always will be anti-Semitic." (pg. 496-497)

Because of the Nazis' flag, the swastika soon became a symbol of hate, antisemitism, violence, death, and murder . . . 

 To that list, we must plainly add, also, that it is a symbol of occultic anti-christian sentiment: a twisted, broken cross just as Heine warned against ever so long ago . . . . 

Anyone with even a modicum of spiritual discernment should have instantly spotted these things, on seeing the horribly blasphemous Nazi poster. One look at such sacrilege should have told us all we needed to know about this man to know that we should shun him; and, all we needed to know about the destructive, deceitful nature of the movement that so blindly followed him to ruin.

This is a case where a picture is indeed worth a thousand words.

It is therefore no wonder that we can see here the plan for subverting and destroying the Christian Churches that was exposed through an investigatory document for the Nuremberg war crimes trials.

So, now, let us again hear Heinrich Heine's grimly prophetic warning from the 1830's on what was even then slowly brewing in Germany:

Christianity — and that is its greatest merit — has somewhat mitigated that brutal German love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered [--> the Swastika, visually, is a twisted, broken cross . . .], the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. …

The old stone gods will then rise from long ruins and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and Thor will leap to life with his giant hammer and smash the Gothic cathedrals. …

… Do not smile at my advice — the advice of a dreamer who warns you against Kantians, Fichteans, and philosophers of nature. Do not smile at the visionary who anticipates the same revolution in the realm of the visible as has taken place in the spiritual. Thought precedes action as lightning precedes thunder. German thunder … comes rolling somewhat slowly, but … its crash … will be unlike anything before in the history of the world. …

At that uproar the eagles of the air will drop dead [--> cf. air warfare, symbol of the USA], and lions in farthest Africa [--> the lion is a key symbol of Britain, cf. also the North African campaigns]  will draw in their tails and slink away. … A play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll. [Religion and Philosophy in Germany, 1831.]

After this, let no one even dare to begin to suggest that Hitler was anything more or less than a plainly demonic false political messiah who led his deluded followers into unspeakable evil.

So, yes, the slanderous and hateful polarising wedge has already been pushed in, and there are those who are busily trying to hammer it home to irreconcilably split our civilisation, opening the door to the unjust criminalisation of Bible-believing Christians.

But, why do some advocates of evolutionary materialism and their fellow-travellers feel free to act like that?

Let us hear from one of their own again (this was cited in the main post a couple of days ago), Cornell University History of biology Professor William Provine, in his 1998 University of Tennessee Darwin Day address:

Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent . . .

See , then, why I went on to say:

. . . if there is no objective foundation for ethics, and human free will is non-existent, morality is just a name we have for the conventions imposed on society by the manipulative and powerful. 

Ironically, this also means that there is no foundation for trusting claims and alleged processes of knowledge, reason and logic. 

For these , too, would be produced by accidents of nature, the determinism of our genes and the manipulations of whatever social- or psychological conditioning have influenced us to date. 

That is, the very foundation for science has been undercut. 

Evolutionary materialism -- the institutionally dominant school of thought in our day --   is self-refuting, intellectually and morally bankrupt, and thus destructively absurd. (Cf discussion here on.)

Unfortunately, that does not prevent it from being unduly influential, prestigious and powerful.

Especially when it comes to "pushing" the breakdown of the moral consensus of our civilisation at the points where the radicals want to have their own way.

Yes, the erosion of the moral fabric of our society traces to the imposition of evolutionary materialism in the name -- and under the false colours of  --"science." Between it and the various accommodations some have unwisely made, the doorway has been opened to the sort of destructive nihilistic factions Plato warned against . . . 

 Plato? 

Yes, Plato long ago warned us in The Laws, Bk X, 360 BC; speaking in the voice of The Athenian Stranger. 

Warned us, on how evolutionary materialism opens the door to radical relativism and nihilistic amoral factions that divide in order to usurp destructively domineering power. 

Power, that they will abuse on their notion that "the highest right is might":

[The avant garde philosophers, teachers and artists c. 400 BC say that] The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only . . . .  

[[T]hese people would say that the Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [[Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT. (Cf. here for Locke's views and sources on a very different base for grounding liberty as opposed to license and resulting anarchistic "every man does what is right in his own eyes" chaos leading to tyranny.)] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might [[ Evolutionary materialism leads to the promotion of amorality], and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [[Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles; cf. dramatisation here],  these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [[such amoral factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless tyranny; here, too, Plato hints at the career of Alcibiades], and not in legal subjection to them . . .

(Onlookers, even though the above is all too well-warranted, it is so hard for this to break through -- to cut through what we have soaked in from our general intellectual milieu, that it bears repetition. Please, take time to re-read and follow up the links. Brace for the shocks.)

So, we stand at a civilisational divide.

One that, if left to its natural course, will wreak untold havoc.

So, the question we must all face, is, do we really want to go there?

I think no sane and informed person of good heart, understanding the likely consequences, will.

That is why I am blowing the whistle as loudly as I can, now that the President of the USA has unfortunately clearly decided to lead us down that slope of the civilisational divide.

Let us stop, and turn back from the brink; now, before it is too late.

But, above all -- even when we have to deal with painful and unpleasant matters as above and in the previous post -- let us always  remember, let us never forget,  that we have a hope, a hope that can be shared with those who are desperate and trapped, trapped in life-dominating habits, addictions and sinful bondages:

1 Corinthians 6:9-11

New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)

⁹ Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders ¹⁰ nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹ And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

I am sorry to have to raise matters that are painful, unpleasant and distasteful. However, given who has now spoken in this way, I have but little choice.

Let us turn back from the brink, before it is too late. Please, please, please. What lies down the slope we are beginning to slide down is a horror that we must if at all possible avert.

We face a terrible question: If not now, then when? If not here, then where? If not us, then who?  END

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F/N: I have also, courtesy The Manhattan Declaration, appended a list of key references, as further food for thought:

What is Marriage?
by Sherif Girgis, Robert George, and Ryan T. Anderson
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1722155

Why I'm Optimistic About Natural Marriage
by Andrew Walker
http://www.mereorthodoxy.com/why-im-optimistic-about-natural-marriage/

Why Is Marriage Important? (video)
by John Piper
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd3AmKexugM

Who Needs Marriage?
by Chuck Colson
http://www.breakpoint.org/the-center/columns/colson-files/17606-who-needs-marriage

Marriage in Society: The Generation Clash (pps. 47-57)
by Matthew Lee Anderson
http://issuu.com/thecity/docs/thecitywinter2009/47?mode=embed&layout=http://skin.issuu.com/v/light/layout.xml&showFlipBtn=true

What Would Bonhoeffer Do?
by Eric Metaxas
http://www.breakpoint.org/the-center/columns/call-response/15129-metaxas-what-would-bonhoeffer-do

Dennis Prager Debates Perez Hilton on Same-Sex Marriage (Warning: YouTube contains objectionable content)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTE9zWaQc_Y

Religion, Reason, and Same-Sex Marriage
by Matthew J. Franck
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/05/religion-reason-and-same-sex-marriage

A Marriage in Full
by Gary A. Anderson
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/04/003-a-marriage-in-full-3

On Marriage and the Moral Limits of Human Sexuality
by Metropolitan Jonah
http://orthocath.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/metropolitan-jonah-on-marriage-and-the-moral-limits-of-human-sexuality/