Couples Who Marry Due to Family, Social Pressure 50% More Likely to Divorce: Study – reportage by Leonardo Blair

Couples Who Marry Due to Family, Social Pressure 50% More Likely to Divorce: Study – reportage by Leonardo Blair

And what do conservative Christians (who tend to be hyper-pro-marriage-and-pro-parenthood-and-pro-nuclear family) do BUT to highly pressure and shame single, childless adults into marrying.

I did a post here years ago about a woman who says she felt pressured to marry by her church, so she ended up marrying the wrong guy, and she regretted it, and she divorced (link to that is below, under “Related Posts”).

Christians and pro-nuclear family conservatives deify marriage (and parenthood and the nuclear family) to such an un-biblical, absurd degree that they end up alienating, insulting, and marginalizing any adult who doesn’t marry or have kids for whatever reason, and it needs to stop.

And by the way, for single adult women who had wanted to marry but remain single after the age of 30, 40, or older, getting married is not easy, but so many conservatives incorrectly assume that if you want marriage, it is easy-peasy, it’s a total snap, that if you want marriage, it will “just happen”,

(or, conservatives – and sometimes secular liberals, too – incredibly, insultingly, and unrealistically – expect single, adult women to “settle” for marrying stupid, abusive, weird, disturbed, sexist, ugly, fat, or idiot men
– of course, they hypocritically would not expect their own single adult daughter to marry a loser or weirdo (no, they advise their own single adult daughter to hold out for a quality catch),
but they feel fine advising non-family single females they run into to marry ANY GUY with a pulse who they cross paths with – it is so hypocritical and demeaning).

If one is a single, adult woman who desires marriage, it is not easy to find a decent, compatible man to marry – not on dating sites, bars, or in churches, either (most churches lack marrying-age single men, and some of the men who attend are abusive or are pedophiles who want to marry an adult woman to act as a “beard” to hide their sexual attraction to children).

(Link): Couples Who Marry Due to Family, Social Pressure 50% More Likely to Divorce: Study by Leonardo Blair

Excerpts:

Nov 2, 2022
by Leonardo Blair

Couples who get married due to family or social pressure are up to 50% more at risk of having a union that ends in divorce, according to a recent study from the Marriage Foundation in England and Wales.

The study, “Attitudes towards marriage and commitment,” published in October, asked 2,000 adults who had ever married how much they agreed or disagreed with each of 12 reasons presented by researchers for why they got married.

To ensure that the findings were relevant to today’s families, researchers then focused on 905 couples from the sample who married for the first time after the year 2000 when online dating emerged.

“What this research shows conclusively is that the reasons why people get married has a significant material impact to whether they stay together. While this might seem obvious, this has never been quantified,” said Harry Benson, Marriage Foundation’s research director, in a statement about the study shared with The Christian Post. “But the message is clear. Get married for love and your future together and not because it is either expected of you or because of family pressure.”

Drag Queen Pastor Declares ‘God is Nothing’ in Blasphemous Profanity – Laced Video (Hey, Complementarians: The Real Problem is Progressives of Either Sex, and Not Equality For Biological Women in Church, Culture, or Marriage)

Drag Queen Pastor Declares ‘God is Nothing’ in Blasphemous Profanity – Laced Video (Hey, Complementarians: The Real Problem is Progressives of Either Sex, and Not Equality For Biological Women in Church, Culture, or Marriage)

Laughably, Christian gender complementarians continue to depict allowing women – actual, biological women – into preacher roles in the church, via cherry picked, time-sensitive (ie, not- for- us- today) Bible verses as wrong, bad, or unbiblical, when the reality is the actual danger are progressives of ANY sex being in leadership or influential positions.
(Example below – a biological man wearing a flaming hot pink wig and mascara who works as a preacher who spouts off obviously unbiblical nonsense.)

This is a biological man playing dress-up as a woman.

It’s a man wearing mascara, eye shadow and lip stick – and he’s sitting around in a church saying things like, “God is nothing.”

And yet, your average Southern Baptist, or complementarian or patriarchalist of whatever denomination, continues to bray and bleat about women getting into leadership roles, or women gaining equality in marriages and elsewhere in society or the church.

Complementarians and Christian Patriarchalists are aiming at the wrong target.

Caveat: I am not a full supporter of Jordan Peterson, who one of the articles below favorably quotes. (Peterson, like Matt Walsh, is like a broken clock – maybe correct twice a day, but usually wrong quite often on other subjects.)

With its over-emphasis on sex, the far left, when it mentions God, or tries to worm its way into churches, ends up alienating celibates such as myself.

I am not having sex, and I know who I am (I am not under an identity crisis), so far left hobby-horses don’t interest me and are not applicable.

I don’t need these leftist idiots trying to brain wash me into thinking being a “cis” (biological) woman isn’t good enough, or that because I don’t fully fit sexist, complementarian (or secular) tick boxes for the category of “woman,” (nor am I interested in filling them), I must be a “trans-man.”

As I am sexually abstinent and opposed to sexism and am an ex-complementarian, the far left liberal obsession with sex, sexuality, and stereotypical gender roles doesn’t speak to me, doesn’t speak for me, it doesn’t help me, and it’s the flip side of the coin from the conservative Christian complementarian obsession with sex (sex acts) and traditional gender roles.

The Bible teaches that God – God the Father of the Trinity – does not have a physical body, and while God chooses to refer to himself with male pronouns, or as “Father,” and he and/or God the Son sometimes uses female analogies or metaphors to refer to himself (such as, “…as a mother hen gathers chicks to her…” etc),  he doesn’t have a male body.

Jesus incarnate took on a physical male body, but he did refer to himself using female terms at times (again, see Matthew 23:37-39).

However, I believe it is in gross error and very inaccurate for progressives to view such things through a progressive lens of “queering” or “queer theory.”  I don’t think the Bible is teaching that Jesus, God, or the Holy Spirit are advocating for “queering” or supporting that garbage.

(Link): Methodist Church’s First Drag Queen Pastor [Isaac Simmons]:  ‘God Is Nothing’

Excerpts:

by John Knox
June 8, 2022

… Simmons has published a new video of himself performing slam poetry in what may be his most provocative repudiation of traditional Christianity and embrace of queer spirituality.

“God is nothing,” the self-described “dragavangelist” repeats throughout the poem, adding, “the Bible is nothing” and “religion is nothing.” In the end, he concludes God and the Bible are nothing “unless we wield it into something.”

(Link): Drag queen pastor declares ‘God is nothing’ in blasphemous profanity-laced video

by Phil Shiver
June 1, 2022

Isaac Simmons, a United Methodist Church candidate for ordination and associate pastor at Hope UMC in Bloomington, Illinois, recently spewed blasphemy in a new slam poem ode to the LGBTQ+ movement.

The drag queen pastor and self-styled “drag-evangelist” who goes by the stage name, Ms. Penny Cost, declared over and over again that “God is nothing,” “the Bible is nothing,” and “religion is nothing” in the profanity-laced video posted on his website.

Yet while the God of historic Christianity is but a farce, according to Simmons — who repeatedly refers to the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as female — queer spirituality and LGBTQ+ identity are, in fact, the true expression of divinity.

An Assessment of the Article “Why the Religion of Self-Care is Really Sanctified Selfishness” – Christian Author is Indirectly Promoting Codependency, Which is Harmful

An Assessment of the Article “Why the Religion of Self-Care is Really Sanctified Selfishness” – Christian Author is Indirectly Promoting Codependency, Which is Harmful

A link to this article, from a site and Twitter account called “Truth Over Tribe,” came through my Twitter feed today.

I don’t think I am following these guys; this was a suggestion by Twitter that appeared in my timeline. The “Truth Over Tribe” site says on their site that they are “too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals.”

Okay… I’m somewhat in the same place. I’m a conservative who occasionally disagrees with other conservatives, but I sure don’t agree with many positions of progressives.

After having skimmed over some articles on this site – the site owner and author seems to be a Patrick Miller – he seems to lean left of center.

I can tell he’s left of center from some of the commentary and language he’s used – for one, in the article below, he puts his Intersectional Feminism (a left wing concept) on full display by talking about how “self care” was really started by black people, white women love it, and these days, only white woman can (financially) afford it. (Though I didn’t quote those portions of his article below, but they are over on his site.)

(Does Miller realize that left wing darling BLM (Black Lives Matter) is misleading people financially or that they spend more on transgenderism than on race related issues?)

At any rate, let’s get on to the article on this site that alarmed me, and I will provide a few excerpts, and then I will comment on them to explain why I feel this piece goes horribly wrong:

(Link):  Why the Religion of Self-Care is Really Sanctified Selfishness

Excerpts:

by Patrick Miller

“To be happy, you need to leave toxic people behind.” The preaching Peloton instructor continued, “I’m talking about people who take more than they give. People who don’t care about your dreams. People whose selfishness impedes your ability to do what you want to do.”

 Oh crap. She just described my two-year-old. I guess it’s time to cut him off.

This is the gospel of self-care. The notion that the most important person in my life is me, and anyone who impedes my happiness is an existential threat to my emotional and physical well-being. …

… What’s the Religion of Self Care?

The ‘Paralyzed in a Wheelchair’ Analogy – Regarding: Clinical Depression – Also: The Cynical or Victimhood Filter

The ‘Paralyzed in a Wheelchair’ Analogy – Regarding: Clinical Depression – Also: The Cynical or Victimhood Filter

How accurate is it for the clinically depressed, or those who think they are allies to them, to use the “paralyzed and in a wheel chair” comparison to explain how supposedly helpless and incapable the depressed are? I will discuss this topic as this post goes on.

I was diagnosed with clinical depression at a young age by a psychiatrist, and proceeded to see three more psychiatrists until my early 30s.

(I had to move often, which is why I had to change psychiatrists – as to my next- to- last psychiatrist, I dropped her for a new one, because she was terse and grouchy, which I did not like.)

During those years, and even now, I do see a lot of people who have never had depression and who don’t understand what it is.

A lot of mentally healthy people think that clinical depression is the same as regular sadness, and they believe most people can “snap out of” every day, regular sadness within hours or days – which I’d say is probably true.

When people have clinical depression, however, they can’t just “snap out of it” in days or weeks.

Depression doesn’t just dissipate on its own over time, and depression is not always triggered by a single, identifiable event.

If you’d like more background about clinical depression, what it is, how it can be treated, and some information about  its symptoms, I invite you to visit this page about it at the Mayo Clinic:

(Link, from Mayo Clinic): What does the term “clinical depression” mean?

As for me, clinical depression (as well as suicidal impulses) run on both sides of my family, and anxiety is on the maternal side, so I take it that it’s genetic in my case, and not purely situational or due to personal shortcomings, sin, etc.

I lived with clinical depression for 35+ years.

I saw psychiatrists and took doctor prescribed anti-depressant medications for it, which never helped.

During the years I was a devout Christian (I’m not altogether sure what my spiritual beliefs are now), I prayed, read the Bible, had faith God would heal me of the depression and anxiety, but God never did.

Doing good deeds for others, attending church, etc, and so on, never did take the depression or anxiety away.

Surprise! Slate’s Advice Column is Full of Fake Letters

Surprise! Slate’s Advice Column is Full of Fake Letters

(Link): Surprise! Slate’s Advice Column is Full of Fake Letters

by J. Sexton

Slate has an advice column called “Dear Prudence” which has been written by a number of people over the years.

The usual letter is some semi-plausible domestic situation which is always anonymous of course since no one would want their real name associated with these problems in public.

But it turns out that kind of anonymity and the desire for a certain brand of unbelievable, yet morally fashionable, dilemma created another problem.

It left the column open to fakes.

Schoolgirl Drugged and Raped on Her 10th Birthday Was Chopped Up and Burned in Bathtub ‘by Own Family’

Schoolgirl Drugged and Raped on Her 10th Birthday Was Chopped Up and Burned in Bathtub ‘by Own Family’ 

This post contains vulgar language by me. Because I am incensed at what happened to this little girl, and how Christians tend to teach about or react to stories such as this.

-October 2016 update much farther below-

---

Terrible story. I feel so bad for this little girl.

The only consoling thing I can possibly think of is that she was probably so doped up (the mother’s boyfriend injected her with drugs or something before attacking her) that she at least was maybe un-aware of what was happening to her and could not feel any physical or psychological pain (I hope).

The articles say the girl’s mother just sat there and watched passively as her boyfriend doped up, raped, and killed her biological daughter (the man’s cousin, some woman named Jessica Kelley, also assaulted and attacked the girl).

SIDE RANT. Note to my fellow Pro-Lifers in the Abortion Debate:

I have read other news stories that talk about mama cats walking in and out of burning buildings to take their baby kittens out of the raging fire, one at a time, saving them all, and putting their own lives at risk in the process.

You see, there are some ANIMALS who are BETTER PARENTS to their offspring than some HUMANS.

So please, let’s lay off the whiny nonsense about how, “Oh, geepers, the media pay more attention to Cecil the Lion being killed by the dentist than abortions in Planned Parenthood, that’s not right” type stuff.

I’ve read two or three news reports about this so far.

This first one I’m linking to on here says that the girl’s mother met her boyfriend (the guy who killed the girl,) online.  I’m not sure if that means they met on a dating site or where exactly.

Many Christians like to say that being married and/or a parent are necessary to make a person more mature, godly, or responsible or loving. News stories like this show that to be absolute bunk. Parenthood and marriage are not magical panaceas that just cause people to be more ethical and loving. Give me a break.

I have always supported the death penalty – and news items like this is a big reason why.

Teen-Raping Texas Pastor Gets life in Prison After using the Bible to Justify Abusing Women – Equally Yoked is BUNK

Teen-Raping Texas Pastor Gets life in Prison After using the Bible to Justify Abusing Women – Equally Yoked is BUNK

Far below is a link to a page about a pastor who raped girls in and from a church. Notice in the article how other church-goers who went to church with this guy described him as being “very nice” or as being a “good Christian.”

My Christian parents brought me up to think if I wanted to marry, that the best place for me to meet potential spouses would be at a church. I suppose the assumption with that is that the type of men who attend church regularly are going to be “safer” or better moral choices than the type of dude you might meet at a bar.

However, in the last few years of running this blog, I have seen (Link): so many news stories of church-going Christian men who get arrested for abuse or perversion, I now have my doubts about that.

Secondly, single women out-number single men in churches. I know that every church I’ve been to in person, I’ve been one of the few singles there. The only men in attendance and 80 years old, which would be fine if I were 80 too, but I’m not, and May December relationships (Link): make me want to barf. (I do not want to date or marry dudes who are over 5 or 10 years my age.)

I’ve done blog posts before about Pat Robertson, who has criticized women on his Christian TV show, for having married jerks, perverts, or abusers. Robertson seems to think women should be able to instantly spot if a man is a jerk, creep, loser, or abuser from the start. He’s wrong and an idiot about this.

The fact is, as this article below shows, even other adults who go to church with these kinds of deviant men are not aware of what a creep or pervert these guys are.

These are not people who are dating the guy – they are simply sitting next to him in church every week. If they cannot spot the perverts among them easily, why do Christian conservative men like Robertson think women who date men should be any better?

On Not Filtering Every Choice Through the Bible

On Not Filtering Every Choice Through the Bible

This is one of those topics I’m working my way through right now. Maybe a year from now, my opinion will flip on it. But here is where I am now.

I was first made aware of this post from John Piper’s “Desiring God” web site via someone posting to SCCL Facebook group.

Here it is:

(Link):  How to Drink Orange Juice to the Glory of God by John Piper

Excerpts:

• I said that one of my reasons for believing this comes from 1 Corinthians 10:31. “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” I asked, “Is it sin to disobey this Biblical commandment?” Yes.
• …Some of you then asked the practical question: Well, how do you “eat and drink” to the glory of God? Say, orange juice for breakfast?
• ….Orange juice was “created to be received with thanksgiving by those whobelieve the truth.” Therefore, unbelievers cannot use orange juice for the purpose God intended—namely, as an occasion for heartfelt gratitude to God from a truth heart of faith.
• But believers can, and this is how they glorify God. Their drinking orange juice is “sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.”

Yes, it’s an entire post explaining why and how Christians may drink Orange Juice to the glory of God.

This is a part of Christianity that I am glad to leave behind. In my faith crisis of the last few years, there have been some advantages to ceasing turning to the Bible as an authority in decision-making in life in every area.

Remarried couples should abstain from sex, Philadelphia Catholic church says

Remarried couples should abstain from sex, Philadelphia Catholic church says

Are they serious? Are they on crack cocaine?

(Link): Remarried couples should abstain from sex, Philadelphia Catholic church says

(Link):

• Archbishop Charles Chaput also stated that gay Catholics should also ‘live chastely’ in new rules issued after Pope Francis urged more acceptance of others
• Catholics in Philadelphia who are divorced and civilly remarried will be welcome to accept Holy Communion – as long as they abstain from sex and live out their relationships like “brother and sister”.

Women Are More Interested In Sex Than You Think, (2016) Studies Show – Men underestimate their wife’s or girlfriend’s sexual desire; read the signals

Women Are More Interested In Sex Than You Think, (2016) Studies Show – Men underestimate their wife’s or girlfriend’s sexual desire; read the signals

The majority of Christians will disregard this study, because it does not fit their culturally- based gender stereotypes that men are sexual animals and visually oriented while all women are supposedly, basically uninterested in sex and only interested in emotional closeness, weeping at beautiful poetry, and knitting scarves.

It is true: for all their bloviating on how they adhere to “sola scriptura,” many Christians take their secular-cultural based assumptions about women and read them back into the Bible. The Bible no where teaches that “God designed men to be visual” or that “men are more interested in sex than women are.” Christians get those assumptions from their culture or perceived personal experiences – not from the Bible.

(Link): Women Are More Interested In Sex Than You Think, (2016) Studies Show

Excerpts

by E. Bernstein

Men underestimate their wife’s or girlfriend’s sexual desire; read the signals

Rarely are researchers’ findings so satisfying. Women may want more sex than their husbands or partners think.

New research by psychologists at the University of Toronto and the University of Western Ontario, (Link): published earlier this month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that men in long-term relationships often underestimate how often their wives or girlfriends want to be intimate.

The research consists of three studies, following a total of 229 long-term couples, most of whom are heterosexual. (The sample of homosexual couples was too small to be statistically significant, the researchers say.) Participants ranged in age from 18 to 68 years old; the couples had been together six years on average, and they reported they had sex an average of one to two times a week.

….All three studies showed the same thing: Men consistently underestimated their female partner’s desire, while the women had an accurate read on whether or not their partner was interested in sex. And on the days when the men thought their partner was less sexually interested than she actually was, the women reported being more satisfied in and committed to the relationship.

James Dobson’s Flawed Take on Population Decline (no.1: We’re Not in Decline) by T. Grant

James Dobson’s Flawed Take on Population Decline (no.1: We’re Not in Decline) by T. Grant

As this report notes (link is much farther down this blog page), more pressure is placed on WOMEN to marry and have children than is placed on MEN.

I know that culture and Christians can treat single / celibate / childless men like trash, but they are TEN TIMES worse on Christian WOMEN in these regards.

Women get far more pressured to marry and have kids than men do or ever will.

Women get more shamed and insulted by Christians (and at times, secular culture) for staying single, celibate, and childless than males ever are.

Just because most women are capable of carrying a baby inside them, society and churches think it’s their DUTY to have a baby (as though women serve no other purpose in life), and if they choose to opt out (or cannot have a kid), they are still marginalized or insulted for it.

Men don’t face nearly as much insult or pressure to have kids as women do.

I am right of center – but I agree with this left wing (liberal) guy that other right wingers such as Dobson’s real goal is to be against what he perceives as liberal threats to the church or culture. That is one very real motivator some right wingers have, in why they do things like harass women to have children.

I also want to say how utterly moronic I find this approach by Dobson.

Pedophiles Seeking Christian Wives in Churches – Another Reason to be Leery of the “Equally Yoked” Idea and Reconsider Church as a Place to Meet Singles

Pedophiles Seeking Christian Wives in Churches – Another Reason to be Leery of the “Equally Yoked” Idea and Reconsider Church as a Place to Meet Singles

I skimmed over this really long blog post, on Brent Detwiler’s site (link much farther below), about a guy, Caffery, who was jailed for pedophilia. Caffery has more than one victim, if I remember right.

Caffery wrote a book at one point claiming that belief in Christ changed his life for the better, and so on and so forth (amazingly, he was molesting kids while writing this book – during the same time frame).

Caffery also wrote (in a book or a letter to his church elders, I forget which) that he was afraid if his wife gave birth to a daughter, he would molest his own daughter, so he prayed and asked God for sons. His wife went on to give birth to all sons. (I think the blog post says he later had a daughter by his second wife.)

Let me pause here to say: if I were dating or engaged to a guy who told me this upfront, that he is afraid he might molest any kids we had together, I would take him at his word and dump his ass.

(I don’t know if the woman this guy married knew beforehand or not, I’m just saying if this happened to me, I would NOT stay with a guy who confessed such a thing to me.

Never, ever stay with a guy out of pity or a sense of duty – don’t feel sorry for Mr. “I might molest our kids if we have kids together” Pervert. Helping him or redeeming such a deviant is not your responsibility. Part of the reason I got sucked into my last disaster of an engagement was that I felt sorry for the guy.)

The part that really stood out to me in this blog post by DeWiler was when Caffery said after one wife divorced him, he went looking for a new wife at a large Christian church. I found this alarming and creepy.