Family Values Republican Politician Hastert in Trouble for Sexual Assault of Kids / On Liberals and Not Having Sexual Standards

Family Values Republican Politician Hastert in Trouble for Sexual Assault of Kids / On Liberals and Not Having Sexual Standards

This politician, Hastert, is now in his 70s and is in poor health. Some of his victims have stepped forward to say he sexually assaulted them when they were kids.

I’ve seen several articles say that he was a “family values” type of Republican.

Below is a report about it – probably by a left winger. I am right wing, but in the last few years, I’ve had some changing feelings about the Republican Party, conservative Christians, and how much they push this “family values” rhetoric.

This author does spend part of her report taking Bill Clinton to task for taking advantage of Lewinsky.

I will be placing more articles about this story below this first link and excerpt.

I’m not terribly fond of how so many right-wing “Family Values” spokespersons and figure heads later turn out to be hypocrites.

On the other hand, I’m not a supporter of the left wing – many of them not only participate in sexually immoral activity or champion sexual hedonism, but they have few to no sexual standards in the first place. And they don’t want any.

Maybe there is something positive to be said in having sexual standards in the first place, even if it means a person (or group of persons) who claim to believe in them occasionally violates them.

Response to Various Cranky Critics Who Have Left Nasty Posts At This Blog From June to August 2014

Response to Various Cranky Critics Who Have Left Nasty Posts At This Blog From Around June to August 2014

If you have even bothered to glance at the heading on this blog, it says,

• this is a blog for me to vent; I seldom permit dissenting views. I don’t debate dissenters.

This disclaimer doesn’t stop cranky people, the occasional troll, or idiot from leaving nasty, vulgar, or negative remarks.

I do not usually read the negative posts that closely. I generally scan the first few lines of a new post, and if I ascertain quickly it’s a troll post, that it contains vitriol, snark, or a rant, I send it to the trash.

In the past two months, I’ve gotten a handful of nasty grams. I sent those posts to the trash can.

Here are summaries of the various nasty grams I have received, and my responses.

In this post, I will be discussing,

• 1. The Bitter Lady
• 2. The Grouchy Be Equally Yoked Lady
• 3. The You’re An Intolerant Homophobe Guy
• 4. The Immature I Am a 40 Year Old Man Who Likes to Pork 20 Year Old Women Lying Creepster Troll

-among others

Lesbian Upset that ObamaCare Forcing Her to Purchase Birth Control

Lesbian Upset that ObamaCare Forcing Her to Purchase Birth Control

Lesbians being forced to buy birth control, and they’re not happy about it.

This was taken from a Fox News Tweet, and the quote is from a Susan Price:

Lesbian upset that Obamacare is forcing her to purchase birth control

“Tune in for more stories from the first year of ObamaCare on ‘Fox News Reporting: Live Free or Die’ tonight at 8p ET.”
————————–
Related links (kind of related):

(Link): Slut Shaming and Virgin Shaming and Secular and Christian Culture – Dirty Water / Used Chewing Gum and the CDC’s Warnings – I guess the CDC is a bunch of slut shamers ?

Adult Singleness and Virginity Ridiculed by Preacher Mark Driscoll from 2000 – and anti Homosexual and Sexist Rhetoric ( Re Driscoll Rant known as Pussified Nation )

Adult Singleness and Virginity Ridiculed by Preacher Mark Driscoll from 2000 – and anti Homosexual and Sexist Rhetoric

More anti-singlness and anti-virginity commentary from perverted, sexist douche bag and pastor Mark Driscoll has come to light. I have blogged about this creep before (see links at the conclusion of this post for more).

I am not a fan of tip toeing around people’s feelings and the extreme political correctness in today’s culture, (as I wrote of in a (Link): previous blog post here), but, I am not a supporter of this other extreme, the one Driscoll presents in the post I excerpt below.

It’s one thing to speak your mind – in a firm but respectful way, even if the majority of popular culture does not like your beliefs – but Driscoll seems to go out of his way to be unnecessarily rude, condescending, and hateful, or as obnoxious as he can be.

In the year 2000, Neo-Calvinist preacher Mark Driscoll, writing under the name “William Wallace II,” I think, wrote a bunch of inflammatory commentary on his church’s forum “Midrash.” In a book he wrote, Driscoll admitted to posting as “William Wallace II” on that forum (some sites linked to below have screen captures taken from online versions of the book that you can view).

In a series of very long posts, Driscoll ranted against women, feminists, homosexuals, men who are not manly-man enough in his view, and all this has drawn the ire and attention of many netizens after this was blogged about recently.

However, the portion of Driscoll’s post that caught my eye seems to subtly mock or ridicule adult singleness, singles ministries, and adult virginity.

Before I get to that, I wanted to mention this:

According to one source ((Link): source) in a Tweet:

Driscoll through Wallace says women need a man to help them select a husband (p. 78). Eastern culture > Biblical example incl Ruth, then.

As I replied on Twtter in regards to that view by Driscoll:

I’m a never married lady over 40, would still like to marry some day – Driscoll can eat my shorts

Yes, Driscoll can take his outdated, sexist views about single women and cram them up his butt.

There was also this (Willam Wallace parody account is quoting Driscoll (Link): Source):

• … I would suggest you are not called to singleness, but you are calling yourself to selfishness. http://lks.gd/PussifiedNation (

Link)

Returning once more to the long rant by Driscoll:

(Link): Mark Driscoll’s Pussified Nation… – Matthew Paul Turner’s blog –
If Turner’s blog becomes unavailable for viewing (which it did earlier today apparently due to a stampede of traffic), you can read the Driscoll penned posts here:
(Link): Posts by Driscoll

Here are excerpts of what Driscoll wrote in 2000, under the name “William Wallace II” – with comments by me below this long excerpt (and additional links by other people about this Driscoll rant):

• We live in a completely pussified nation.

We could get every man, real man as opposed to pussified James Dobson knock-off crying Promise Keeping homoerotic worship loving mama’s boy sensitive emasculated neutered exact male replica evangellyfish, and have a conference in a phone booth.

It all began with Adam, the first of the pussified nation, who kept his mouth shut and watched everything fall headlong down the slippery slide of hell/feminism when he shut his the slippery slide of hell/feminism when he shut his mouth and listened to his wife who thought Satan was a good theologian when he should have lead her and exercised his delegated authority as king of the planet.

As a result, he was cursed for listening to his wife and every man since has been his pussified sit quietly by and watch a nation of men be raised by bitter penis envying burned feministed single mothers who make sure that Johnny grows up to be a very nice woman who sits down to pee.

Apparent Inconsistency at SCCL Group – They’re Repulsed by Sexualization of Some Relationships But Not All

Apparent Inconsistency at SCCL Group – They’re Repulsed by Sexualization of Some Relationships But Not All

Sometimes, I enjoy and agree with some of the views as expressed by S. Drury’s SCCL (“Stuff Christian Culture Likes”) Facebook group, but not always.

Folks who frequent the SCCL group generally despise Christian sexual purity teachings.

Me? Nope.

My position is that the church needs to start upholding sexual purity teachings more, rather than the SCCL group’s preferred option of backing off or halting.

Very few churches and Christians today condemn sexual sin, nor do many Christians support virginity or sexual purity, something I have blogged about on a recurring basis (see links at the bottom of this post for more).

One of the things that caught my attention were a couple of posts at the SCCL group this week.

Warning: This Column Will Offend You – by M. Moynihan (Re: Trigger Warnings in Written Material, Terms such as slut shaming, man-splain, etc)

Warning: This Column Will Offend You by M. Moynihan (Re: Trigger Warnings Before Written Material, Terms such as “slut shaming,” “man-splain,” etc)

(Link): Warning: This Column Will Offend You by M. Moynihan

Should students be warned that reading The Great Gatsby might “trigger” a past trauma? The campus censors think so. But they are only protecting your feelings.

It’s with a twinge of nostalgia that I recall all those incredulous faces. Sometime in the 1990s, I suggested to a group of college friends that it wasn’t exactly right to brand Ian Fleming a hopeless sexist (his deeply held dislike of America, all agreed, was a more agreeable phobia).

This note of dissidence was interrupted by the sound of jaws shattering as they hit the floor, a crescendo of denunciations, and a few dramatic walkouts.

One of those who remained said, with a jabbing finger, that mine was the argument of someone “unaware of his gender privilege.”

It was almost inevitable, regardless of one’s personal politics, to find oneself — with bowed head, like an undergraduate Rubashov—accused of trespassing some previously unknown frontier of offense.

I would soon learn never to object to the charge of privilege: it’s a phantom, something one possesses and abuses without knowing it. And like denying your alcoholism, a denial doubles as an acknowledgement that you’re afflicted with the disease.

Floating in the fog of privilege, all sorts of voguish developments in language control bypassed me.

But through the daily horror of Twitter, where these concepts are released into the non-academic world, I’ve been exposed to all the latest phrases doubling as argument, like the various prefixes affixed to “shaming” and “‘splaining” (the latter so rendered, I assumed, in homage to Desi Arnaz, before realizing this was a vulgar indulgence of Cuban stereotypes).

“Shaming” and “‘splaining” are fluidly defined verbs, though it seems an admonition to people with my biography (boring white guys) that they engage in conversation about race or gender in particular ways, with particular conclusions—and only when speaking to particular people.

Thus, there is the scourge of “slut shaming,” which one can be accused of, for instance, when questioning whether the so-called Duke porn star is indeed “liberated” when shooting videos for defaceherface.com.

And there’s the promiscuous use of “mansplaining,” defined by a fusty man at The New York Times as a condescending chappie “compelled to explain or give an opinion about everything — especially to a woman.”

This midwived the now ubiquitous “whitesplaining,” best demonstrated (Link): in this Atlantic.com polemic upbraiding a member of the indie band The Black Lips for having opinions about—whitesplaining — hip-hop music. Not in a racist way, mind you. It’s just none of his cultural business.

These faddish portmanteaus suffer from overuse, but one can at least see the point: They are polemical words, more pointed and ideological than what we used to call know-it-all-ism and sexist condescension.

Being so behind the times, I only just discovered the neutron bomb of censoriousness masquerading as concern: the “trigger warning.”

This is, roughly, a label that would accompany an article, film, song, book, or piece of art warning potential viewers that the content might make them upset or uncomfortable (often the point of art) and thus trigger memories of a traumatic event.

No Man’s Land – Part 3 – Liberal Christians, Post Evangelicals, and Ex-Christians Mocking Biblical Literalism, Inerrancy / Also: Christians Worshipping Hurting People’s Feelings

No Man’s Land – Part 3 – Liberal Christians, Post Evangelicals, and Ex-Christians Mocking Biblical Literalism, Inerrancy / Also: Christians Worshipping Hurting People’s Feelings

BIBLICAL LITERALISM AND INERRANCY

Another common thread I see on forums for spiritual recovery sites (or ones by ex Christians, liberal Christians, etc), is a rejection of

1. Biblical literalism
2. Biblical inerrancy

This is all so much intellectual dishonesty in another form it makes me want to throw up.

I spent years studying about the history of the Bible, Bible translation, and so forth.

I came away realizing that the Bible is inerrant and yes, we can trust the copies we have today; the Bible is not filled with historic blunders and mistakes, and all the other tripe atheists like to claim.

It is not entirely accurate for critics to paint the Bible as a purely man-made document, that contains mistakes because it was copied and re-copied numerous times over the centuries.

While there is an aspect of truth to that description, the end conclusion, or how that description, impacts the NIV or NASB Bible version you have sitting on your coffee table right now, is not how critics of the Bible paint it.

Atheists and ex-Christians who are critical of the Bible are disingenuous and duplicitous in how they paint some of their arguments against the Bible, and they should be ashamed for it, as some of them claim to be truth lovers.

Not too long ago, an ex-Christian woman at another site was declaring that Christians cannot “trust” the Bible because the originals (called the Autographa) do not exist.

Oh please! I pointed out to her that is not so: as far as the New Testament is concerned, scholars have many thousands of copies of the Autographa (some dating within decades of the originals), and by use of lower textual criticism, they can reconstruct the READINGS of the Autographa.

It is not necessary to have “the biblical originals” themselves to know what they said, as she was dishonestly arguing (but she later accused me of being dishonest!).

I pointed this FACT out to her (about it not being necessary to have the autographa to know what the autographa said), where upon she shot back the falsity that one cannot trust the translations anyway because they are done by “conservatives.”

Oh, but she is willing to grant liberal scholars or liberal theologians the title of un-biased, as though they do not have an ax to grind against the Bible and dating its documents and so forth?

Because the liberal scholars do in fact start out their examinations of the Bible from an anti- Christian bias.

The woman with whom I was corresponding on this matter doesn’t seem to understand that the practice of lower textual criticism is a science – a liberal who uses that methodology would come to the same conclusion as the conservative who uses it.

So here we have an example of one type of ex-Christian I am talking about:

This woman claims she was a Christian at one time, now fancies herself atheist or agnostic (and some kind of expert on the Bible), but who now spews inaccurate or untrue things about the Bible, because she disdains all of Christianity in general.

My view: Do not lie about the Bible’s history, accuracy, and textual evidence just because “Preacher Fred” at your old church was a big meanie to you X years ago (or insert whatever other emotional baggage you carry against Christians that now colors all your other views about the faith and Bible here) – please!

Give me a freaking break.

I am genuinely compassionate towards people who have been hurt by churches, but not to the point I cover for their dishonesty about how they discuss church history, the biblical documents, etc.

Because some of these folks claim to have been hurt by Christians in general, or a particular denomination, or what have you, they feel fine now rejecting biblical literalism and inerrancy.

No Man’s Land – Part 2 – On Post Evangelicals or Ex Christians or Liberal Christians Ignorantly Hopping Aboard Belief Sets They Once Rejected

No Man’s Land – Part 2 – On Post Evangelicals or Ex Christians or Liberal Christians Ignorantly Hopping Aboard Belief Sets They Once Rejected

✹ What follows is actually the heart of my “No Man’s Land” view. This is what prompted me to write it: ✹

✹ TAKING THE OPPOSITE POSITION OF WHAT YOU USED TO BELIEVE BUT NOW HATE – DUE TO EMOTIONAL REASONS OR A KNEE JERK RESPONSE OR FROM SPITE – IS JUST AS WRONG AND MISTAKEN ✹

As to the forums and blogs by ex Christians, liberal Christians, self identifying post-evangelicals, or those still Christian who expose spiritual abuse…

I notice a number of the regular visitors to these sites – the ones who left an abusive or legalistic church or denomination – simply now operate in the reverse in their thinking, which is, IMO, just as bad or wrong as the thinking they are leaving.

There are different types of ex-Christians one must take into consideration when discussing this topic, so I shall present some sketches of them first.

IFBs (Independent Fundamentalist Baptists)

For example, there are ex IFBs (Independent Fundamentalist Baptists).

IFB preachers and churches are ridiculously legalistic. They make up rules that are not in the Bible, or twist or exaggerate the rules already there to the point those rules then become unbiblical.

IFBs are the contemporary, American versions of the Bible’s Pharisees: nit picky, anal retentive, legalists who make up man-made rules but insist they are “biblical” and thus binding on all believers.

IFBs concoct man-made traditions they expect all IFB members to adhere to, just like the Roman Catholic hierarchy does towards Roman Catholic members.

For example, IFB churches are legalistic about secular entertainment and clothing and physical appearance.

IFB churches teach their congregations that women should not wear pants but only skirts. And the skirts should be only so many inches above or below the knee.

According to IFBs, men should not have hair that touches the back shirt collar – not a mullet to be found in IFB, which may be a good thing. Secular music and television is sinful and should always be avoided.

IFBs have other legalistic rules for just about every aspect of life.

IFBs are vehemently anti-Roman Catholicism as well as anti-Calvinism.

No Man’s Land – Between Agnosticism and Christianity / Also: It’s Emotional Not Intellectual (Part 1)

No Man’s Land – Between Agnosticism and Christianity / Also: It’s Emotional Not Intellectual (PART 1)

This will be a series of posts where my thoughts wander in and out and all over, and it rambles, but there is a point or two behind it.

Since I’ve been in a faith crisis the last couple of years, somewhere between being an agnostic and a Christian, I have noticed I don’t fit in anywhere. I reside in No Man’s Land.

(Even before then, when I was a total, committed Christian, and politically, I was, and am, right wing, I still didn’t fit in at most blogs and forums, including political ones, and including ones for right wingers!

I tend to be one of those personalities who annoys or angers everyone, even those on “my side” of an issue, except a small number of people, who are either on my side of a topic or not, who “get me” or who appreciate where I’m coming from – again, this is true for even the ones who disagree with me on whatever topic we are discussing.)

I am in this really weird place now, where I am critical of some aspects of conservative Christianity, and see where conservative Christians get some doctrines and other things wrong, but, too, I am not fully on board with militant atheism (I find the New Atheists to be arrogant, vile, hateful and rude), and I don’t even care for lukewarm atheism.

Nor am I in the camp of anything and all things liberal Christianity, except where I think they get the occasional point correct (such as their rejection of gender complementarianism).

Since drifting away from the Christian faith more the last few years, I more often began frequenting forums or blogs for and by atheists, ones by liberal Christians, ones by ex Christians, or by Christians who were abused by a former church who remain Christian but who dropped out of Church, or who now are on a crusade to expose abuse by preachers or the absurdity and harm of current evangelical gimmicks.

THE MILITANT ATHEISTS

A clarification: when I say I have been visiting atheist forums and blogs more often, I am very picky about which ones I regularly visit.

I do not like the frothing- at- the- mouth, extremely bitter, biased- against- Christians- type atheistic communities.

The bitter atheist groups sound like a bunch of irrational, hate-filled loons who reject Christianity for emotional reasons, but who lie to others and themselves and say, “Oh no, it’s purely intellectual.”

But their unrelenting, insane amount of hatred at any and all things God and Christian, is just a total turn-off to me, so I try to avoid such sites.

These angry, always-ranting atheists are really nothing more than Fundamentalist Atheists or Taliban Atheists. They are just as dogmatic about their atheism as Muslims are in their Wasabi Islam or Baptists are in their Neo Fundamentalism.

Really, those types of atheists are just as bad as the religious groups they claim they hate, but they don’t seem to spot that they are. It’s ironic – and it’s hard to stomach the day in, day out anger and hatred, so I try to avoid their sites.

HYPOCRITICAL CHRISTIANS VS NON HYPOCRITICAL CHRISTIANS

Also, you have to be honest with yourself, which I do not find militant atheists to be, by and large: not every single Christian is a hypocrite, jerk, idiot, dullard, or complete jackhole.

I say this as someone who is very fed up with Christianity and Christian persons myself these days.

But your average militant atheist will never admit that some Christians are in fact okay and not being hypocrites.

I have known and met a few Christians who were sincerely trying to live the Christian faith out, such as my mother, who is now deceased, and her mother before her (my grandmother).

I’ve met a few honest, sincere Christians online who do help people and show compassion to the wounded.

So it’s not fair to completely dismiss the entirety of Christians and their faith or treat them all like jerks because some are liars, mean, or abusive.

Which is not easy for me personally, because at the same time, I do keep noticing that a lot of self-professing believers do NOT live out what the Bible says.

Many self professing Christians today, for example, do not protect victims, such as young church members who have been sexually molested by preachers.

Nor do many church goers today hold accountable preachers who bilk their church goers out of millions to buy big mansions and jets.

These idiots, these lemmings, actually defend their greedy pastors online, which I’ve written about here: (Link): Your Preacher Sucks – and People Have a Right To Say So And Explain Why.

Then you have a conservative or evangelical culture, which claims to care deeply that people preserve sex until marriage, but if you actually find yourself 40 years of age and still single – and therefore still a virgin, such as myself – these same churches and Christians do not offer you any support.

You either go ignored, or preachers and talking heads of such groups “run down” and insult celibacy as well as older, celibate adults. Churches treat single (and especially celibate) adults as though they are flawed, lepers, weirdos, or losers.

Churches wrongly counsel abused wives to return to their spouses – this is particularly true, again, of churches or Christian groups who buy into “biblical womanhood” (aka “gender complementariansm”) or “patriarchy.”

Churches and average Christians also remain ignorant or callous about matters pertaining to mental health issues, from P.T.S.D. to depression and anxiety attacks.

Some Christians wrongly and insensitively teach that “real Christians” can never get depression or other mental health maladies.

Or, some Christians believe and teach that prayer, faith, service to the poor, or Bible reading alone can cure one of mental illness.

Still other Christians (or the same type) will shame and guilt suffering Christians for using anti-depressant medications, or for seeing secular or Christian psychiatrists and therapists (see this link for more, “Over 50 Percent of Christians Believe Prayer, Bible Reading Alone Can Cure Mental Illness (article) – In Other Words Half of Christians are Ignorant Idiots Regarding Mental Illness”).

Yet other Christians are incompetent at, or unwilling, to provide more ordinary, “every day,” run- of- the- mill comfort to other Christians who are hurting, such as a Christian who is stressed out over a job loss, someone who is in mourning for a deceased loved one, etc.

Christians are dropping the ball in numerous ways.

And this failure, this huge failure, causes life long Christians like me to look long and hard at the faith and wonder if it’s true at all.

It causes even someone such as myself to ask if the faith is true, because

• it doesn’t appear to be working,
• it doesn’t make a difference in people’s life who profess it,
• most who claim to follow Christ don’t actually do what he taught,
• and some Christians refuse to hold Christians caught in bald faced sin accountable but excuse them for the sin,

~ and it makes you wonder “what is the point, then.”

I find this discrepancy between confessed belief and actual practice shocking, because I myself sincerely tried living out the faith since childhood.

Also, my Christian mother was a role model for me, and she genuinely, consistently lived out and by biblical teachings, including getting up off her ass and actually HELPING people (giving them money if they were in a bind, cleaning their homes for them when they were sick, listening to them cry and rant about their problems for hours without judging them or interrupting them, etc).

I am not seeing most other Christians do any of this. They say they believe in those things but then they do not do them.

BLOGS AND FORUMS FOR SPIRITUALLY ABUSED OR THOSE HURT BY CHURCHES

Before I actually get into this topic (which I discuss more in Posts 2 and 3), here is some background leading up to it.

As far as the sites I have visited by liberal Christians, ex Christians, atheists, as well as sites by Christians for the spiritually abused:

By and large, these have been wonderful, supportive sites and groups to visit (the ones run by Christians for hurting Christians).

I have noticed, though, that there are problems even within these types of communities, and I don’t entirely fit in at them, either.

Christian World Vision Charity Okay and Dandy With Homosexual Marriage But Not Okay With Singles Fornicating

Christian World Vision Charity Okay and Dandy With Homosexual Marriage But Not Okay With Singles Fornicating

A few days ago, the news reported that charity World Vision, which is apparently Christian-based, announced that they would not prohibit the hiring of homosexual married couples to work for their organization. I have included a few links about this much farther below.

World Vision later reversed this decision when evangelicals had a collective heart attack and threatened to pull funding.

So your emergents, liberal Christians, and ex-Christians then went online to complain and cry about the reversal with chants of “Homophobes!” and so on.

I find both sides of the homosexuality debate annoying, frankly.

While I don’t support homosexuality (or homosexual marriage), I think too many evangelicals and other types of conservatives make much too much of it and should perhaps pipe down about it.

On the other hand, the homosexual rights groups and their hetero fan club can be vicious, hate-filled, Gestapo, running about persecuting and harassing anyone who does not enthusiastically jump aboard the Big Gay Train. So both sides can go take a long walk off a short pier as far as I am concerned.

Now, concerning this World Vision bruhaha, I don’t have a big opinion in and of itself.

The one aspect of this that caught my attention is that initially, World Vision said that while they were (at the time) open to hiring homosexual married people, that they never the less still expected all their staff and employees who were single to remain abstinent.

I assume they meant all singles, not just hetero singles, but who knows?

I really tire of this. I really do. I understand that the Non Christian world will be fine and dandy with all manner of behavior the Bible condemns, such as homosexuality, but I am beyond fed up with a church or groups who claim to be Christian who hold double standards on sexuality.

If you are a Christian who expects me to remain celibate because I am unmarried (I happen to be Hetero), then how can you then turn around and in effect give a stamp of approval to homosexuality vis a vis a nod of approval towards homosexual marriage? Every time Christians take a step towards basically embracing homosexuality, they are chipping away yet some more at any reasons as to why a HETERO adult should remain celibate.

If you are going to let the homosexuals trollop around, you have no grounds upon which to tell hetero singles they must still refrain from sex.

(Link): World Vision’s Gay Compromise

Excerpts:

by Brad Kramer

World Vision, a global Christian anti-poverty nonprofit and one of America’s top ten largest charities, announced yesterday it has changed its policy and will now hire gay employees who are in legal same-sex marriages.

The billion-dollar-a-year organization already requires employees to agree to an evangelical lifestyle code, including abstinence outside of marriage. In an interview with Christianity Today World Vision president Richard Stearns justified the policy shift as an acknowledgement of the diversity of opinions on homosexuality inside the American church.

Stearns argued that World Vision has historically removed itself from contentious theological debates in favor of unity around their core focus on poverty. He also strongly urged supporters not to interpret the change in hiring policy as a salvo in war over gay marriage. With naiveté that boggles the imagination, Stearns hoped that the evangelical world, and in particular the organization’s large evangelical donor base, would also look past this “minor” policy shift and continue their support.

The conservative evangelical blogosphere immediately exploded with condemnation. A who’s-who list of influential conservatives like Franklin Graham (son of Billy) and Russell Moore (political voice for the Southern Baptists) excommunicated World Vision for its capitulation to the dark side. Other notable figures made it clear that the entire Christian faith, and perhaps even Western Civilization itself, is threatened by World Vision and others who profess to be Christian and tolerate gay relationships. Many urged Christians to stop their monthly financial support of third-world children through World Vision (even if it means breaking off relationships between sponsor and child) and supporting alternative organizations who do not employ “unrepentant homosexuals.”

World Vision is arguably the biggest and broadest “parachurch” organization in America, and thus has the unenviable role of trying to please everyone.

(Link): World Vision to recognize gay marriage of employees

(Link): Special Report World Vision Goes Liberal

(Link): Famous Christian charity hiring married ‘gays’

In an effort to encourage “unity” among its church partners, the highly influential evangelical Christian relief and development ministry World Vision has announced it will permit Christians in legal same-sex marriages to be employed.

In an interview with Christianity Today, Richard Stearns, president of the U.S. branch, called it a “very narrow policy change” that should be regarded as “symbolic not of compromise but of [Christian] unity.”

The U.S. branch, based in Federal Way, Wash., has about 1,100 workers. In 2012, Washington became one of the first states to legalize same-sex marriage by a popular vote.

Stearns said the policy still will require employees to confine their sexual activities to within a marriage.

“Changing the employee conduct policy to allow someone in a same-sex marriage who is a professed believer in Jesus Christ to work for us makes our policy more consistent with our practice on other divisive issues,” Stearns told the evangelical magazine. “It also allows us to treat all of our employees in the same way: abstinence outside of marriage, and fidelity within marriage.”

The announcement drew strong criticism from other evangelical groups.

“World Vision president Richards Stearns said they will leave the debate over same-sex ‘marriage’ to the churches where he acknowledges it is tearing them apart,” said Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania. “However, the only reason there is any debate among churches on this issue is because those who accept ‘gay’ pastors or allow same-sex ‘marriage’ or blessings cannot read the plain language of Scripture.

Gramley noted that in Matthew 19, Jesus “defines marriage as only between one man and one woman, and I Corinthians 6:9 includes homosexuals in the list of wrongdoers who will not share in the Kingdom of God.”

“One cannot be a true Christian and be involved in a so-called same-sex marriage, thus World Vision has already wavered on its resolve that all employees be followers of Jesus Christ. Compromise and creating division are at the center of this decision,” she said.

Worse, she said, the decision by World Vision to “empower” the homosexual movement will “continue misleading many who turn to the world, rather than the truth of the Gospel, for answers.”

(Link): World Vision Reverses Decision to Hire Gays

(Link): The apostasy of World Vision

(Link): World Vision will hire those in same-sex marriages

Why People Don’t Go To Church (various links and testimonies March 2014)

Why People Don’t Go To Church

I’m fed up not just with church, but about most of Christianity itself, with many Christians, and with American Christian culture.

I find myself relating to posts about why people have stopped going to church, or why they are reluctant to return, as well as posts by people who used to be Christians who are either considering leaving the faith or who already have.

Here is a selection of such posts.

(Link): I Don’t Worship God by Singing. I Connect With Him Elsewhere.

(Link): Why I Don’t Go to Church Very Often, a Follow Up Blog

(Link): The Other Side of the Donald Miller Post: Church PTSD

(Link): Christian Identity and the Church as Family (by Sara Barton)

(Link): Leaving church to save our souls by Kathy Escobar

Here are excerpts or comments from some of those pages:

(Link): Christian Identity and the Church as Family (by Sara Barton)

So, if people are leaving the church, perhaps we need to avoid defensiveness and ask some hard questions about family. Sometimes individuals leave families of origin because of abuse, because of dysfunction that threatens to overtake the entire family system.

Could it be that many of our friends and neighbors are leaving church because of dysfunction that needs deep introspection?

We can easily cite stories of people for whom the church is functioning.

We should celebrate those stories. But, the church is not functioning for others, to such an extent that they are leaving. Instead of being defensive, maybe what we should do for a while is merely listen.

The author of that also wrote this, and I disagree with this part:

If departure is based on our personal likes and dislikes, personal lifestyle choices such as how to spend our weekends, the idol of busyness, conflict avoidance, or aversion to submission to authority, perhaps our culture is informing identity more than identity in Christ.

I don’t have an issue with people who leave a church for any of those reasons.

Comments by other people on that blog:

by Al Cruise • 8 days ago

“If people are leaving” ” ask some hard questions” The bottom line is, whether it’s being said or not, is the implication that you need to call yourself a Christian and be attending Church in order to be saved, if not, you are going to hell or “Left Behind”.

People can see through this, especially young people. What about all the people born before Christian theology. Born in countries were Christian theology is not present.

According to american evangelicals over a billion Chinese and many other nationalities are consigned to hell simply by their location of birth. The Church doesn’t want to talk about this.

People are leaving, so their playing a new guilt trip card ” you can’t be spiritually healthy unless your in a community of “OUR” definition. People are seeing that this is false and are leaving and will continue to leave.
———-
by Lori Michelle • 10 days ago

I appreciate the thoughts that maybe sometimes people leave church because the church family is abusive.

I appreciate the idea that instead of being defensive and placing blame on the people who leave…saying they are making excuses or being selfish or falling prey to our secular culture…they listen to what the people who are leaving are saying.

I didn’t want to leave [my] church…I feel that my church left me. I was an active member. I volunteered, I served, I participated, I worked. I felt that I was really connected to the “family” and I loved so many of the people. I knew that we weren’t perfect, but I was willing to forgive and continue.

But then I went through a divorce and all of the sudden my children and I were a pariah. We were ignored, gossiped about, and even called names. Even after each of my three children began refusing to go to church, I persevered faithfully.

Then, a couple of years later, a 17 yo girl in our youth group was raped by one of the youth group dads. She was called a liar, and worse, and eventually asked not to participate in youth group anymore. At the time in her life when she needed the most support and love, she was rejected and blamed. As was I…rejected and blamed during the worst time of my life.

So, this is what a family is??

I have no interest in ever submitting myself to that kind of abuse ever again. I won’t. I didn’t leave my church because I was too busy, or because I “fell away” or because I couldn’t deal with conflict. I left because I wasn’t safe, my daughters weren’t safe, and a 17 year old girl in the youth group was not safe in environment of control, and manipulation, and silence.
——————-
by Steve Johnson • 11 days ago

I absolutely believe that the church is a family. Unfortunately, we’ve lost that in so many local expressions of the church.

When our gospel, as Scot talks about often, is how to get into heaven, our church becomes a machine driving to draw people in so that they can be saved. Families are not machines. So much church energy is given to building a vision and conveying the purpose that the leaders chose to market so as to draw more people.

Instead, the church must be the context for the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a loving family that bears the message of the hope. The purpose come through the faith that grows out of this message of hope.

So, yes. People are leaving because the church is dysfunctional. A few years ago, the Willow Creek Leadership Conference featured an interview with Jack Welsh. In the interview he talked about how he turn GE around by, in part, making a habit of firing the bottom 10% of the companies employees.

I witness more than one case where church leader returned home and tried to apply this principle. Staff members lost jobs, church leaders were asked to step down, congregants weren’t fired, but were told if you don’t agree with the leaders’ vision, it would be OK for them to leave.

If that’s the kind of commitment that churches have to one another, no wonder Don Miller and others are leaving.

Excerpts from

(Link): The Other Side of the Donald Miller Post: Church PTSD, written by a female friend of Scot McKnight’s

…. Something that doesn’t seem to be getting addressed at all is this: what if I KNOW I need it, but it has become such a painful, scary, uncomfortable place that I am no longer able to even attempt to participate? What if I WANT the community and the bumping up against different people with different opinions, but I CAN’T, I mean physically CAN’T go? I have usually discovered in life that if I have a feeling, I’m not the only one. So it makes me think there must be others out there like me.

What do I mean by “physically unable”? I shake, I cry uncontrollably, my skin crawls, I am unable to speak. It’s pretty difficult to be a part of a community, broken or not, with all of that going on.

…. A number of years into our time at our third church my husband was diagnosed with depression. After carefully letting the elders know, we were pleasantly surprised at their compassion and understanding.

But the church was in the process of hiring a new senior pastor, and a few months later when he was brought on, I witnessed an unbelievable turn of events that still makes me cringe today.

Two years later, I am left with the memory of so many people I thought were friends telling me to “let it go” since this is “what’s best for the church” and all part of “God’s will”.

….What I think I’m looking for and not finding is something that will give me hope.

At this point, I won’t be persuaded by guilt or by empty platitudes. “You just need to do it because it’s what we all need to do” just isn’t cutting it. Having people tell me that it’s a broken place and I shouldn’t expect anything else from a group of flawed human beings doesn’t make me want to run for the entrance of the nearest church. What happened to me, what happens to a lot of people, shouldn’t happen.

What I’m trying to say is that there is a culture of acceptance in the church today that allows for people to be treated terribly under the umbrella of it being what is “best for the church”.

The Sex Economy – Why Buy The Cow When The Milk is Free – Or, When Sex is Free and Easy Why Should Men Bother to Commit to Marriage

The Sex Economy – Why Buy The Cow When The Milk is Free – Or, When Sex is Free and Easy Why Should Men Bother to Commit to Marriage
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✦ This is one of those posts on my blog that contains strong, adult language. As in the “F” word is used several times, so if you are a dainty, wilting Christian flower who faints at the sight or sound of cuss words, have your smelling salts handy. I do not always issue warnings like this when strong language is in the content.
—————————————————————–
The Sex Economy – Why Buy The Cow When The Milk is Free – Or, When Sex is Free and Easy Why Should Men Bother to Commit to Marriage

It seems like once every year, or every other year or two, a right wing, conservative type of writer comes up with an editorial explaining to women about the sex economy, and why the expression “why buy the cow when the milk is free” still rings true.

Then your secular feminists get angry and write rebuttals to those editorials. I’m not quite sure why secular feminists so deeply object to the concept (though I do have a theory or two), but mainly, I find their objections vague and unmemorable, and I’ve read several of their anti-sex-economy editorials over the years. Despite having read some of their rebuttals, I’ve yet to make sense of why they object.

Here are the links:

✦ 1. The liberal / left wing/ secular feminist perspective ✦

(Link): Sex is Not An Economy And You Are Not Merchandise from the Jezebel site (author unknown; possibly Lindy West)

✦ 2. The conservative position ✦

2A  (Link): The economics of sex: Has the price gotten too cheap? by Naomi Schaefer Riley

2b (Link): Cheap Dates and How the ‘price’ of sex has dropped to record lows

✦ EXCERPTS

✦ 1. The liberal / left wing / secular feminist perspective ✦

(Link): Sex is Not An Economy And You Are Not Merchandise

It’s hard to know what sections of what to excerpt from this liberal essay from Jezebel, because its author (who is perhaps Lindy West?) largely engages in ad hominem and a lot of snark.

For example, after quoting a long portion of conservative Riley’s piece where Riley says:

The “price” [of sex] varies widely. But if women are the gatekeepers, why don’t very many women “charge more” so to speak?

Because pricing is not entirely up to women. The “market value” of sex is part of a social system of exchange, an “economy” if you will, wherein men and women learn from each other—and from others—what they ought to expect from each other sexually.

So sex is not entirely a private matter between two consenting adults. Think of it as basic supply and demand.

When supplies are high, prices drop, since people won’t pay more for something that’s easy to find. But if it’s hard to find, people will pay a premium.

—[end excerpt]—

The Jezebel writer’s response to that view consists only of these words:

Oh, shut the fuck up.

—[end excerpt]—

Seriously. That is all the writer had to say in response.

Go click the link I gave to the page and read it if yourself you don’t believe me.

Much of the rest of the page consists of that sort of rebuttal. Which might be fine on a casual blog such as mine, but Jezebel is a main stream publication which I presume has a wide readership, and if the Jezebel writer is trying to change minds, she is not going to have much success by saying, “fuck you” and not much else.

Here I am, still pretty conservative in regards to sexual ethics, or pretty sympathetic to conservative views about sex, and I’m really, honestly trying to understand her liberal, feminist objections to why she is opposed to the conservative “sex economics” genre of editorial, but how can I arrive at an understanding of her view, when it consists of nothing but a “fuck you” to her ideological opponent?

Here are more excerpts from the Jezebel page (and the only name I see associated with this page is Lindy West, so I assume she is the author, but I may be mistaken about that):

If anything, sex is less commodified now than when my great-grandparents were courting. Before divorce; before reliable, effective birth control; before women’s advancements into the higher levels of the workforce; marriage was ALL about economics.

Now that women are able to leave abusive and unhappy relationships, support themselves financially, and choose when/if to have children, we don’t need marriage anymore.

It’s no longer an economic imperative, which means that people are free to be choosy about who they marry. So you’re damn right marriage rates are dropping and people are marrying later. It’s because we’re getting better at it.

[conservative Riley wrote:]
We now have a split mating market: One corner where people are largely interested in sex, and one corner where people are largely pursuing marriage. And there are more men looking for sex than women, and more women looking to marry than men.

[Jezebel author responds:]
Okay. Wait. So women are banging dudes willy-nilly on the singles scene and it’s lowering their “market value,” but women are also “vastly” outnumbering men “in the marriage market”? Which is it? I’m confused.

—[end excerpt]—

My response to the Jezebel author’s supposed confusion on this point: there are some women, who are celibate and waiting until marriage to have sex, such as me.

And yes, women such as myself, find it harder to get married, as we are virgins and are (or were) waiting until marriage to have sex. We find it more difficult meeting men who respect our celibacy- until- marriage lifestyle.

Many men these days (even a lot of Christian ones) now expect or demand sex prior to marriage, because a lot of other women, women such as yourself, have been too happy to have sex before marriage, which gives the men little incentive to respect my wishes (i.e., no sex before marriage, and I’d like to marry).

A lot of people – the ones who scoff at virginity and sexual purity – have this weird-ass view that you should “test drive” your partner prior to marriage to make sure the two of you are “sexually compatible,” see this post,

(Link): Weak Argument Against Celibacy / Virginity / Sexual Purity by the Anti Sexual Purity Gestapo – Sexual Compatibility or Incompatibility – (ie, Taking Human Beings For Test Spins – Humans As Sexual Commodities) (Part 2)

And yes, views such as that make it very difficult for people who believe in staying a virgin until marriage to get many marital prospects.