Don We Now Our Gay Apparel.....

One of the most controversial issues of our time is that of rights for homosexuals. Even fifty years ago, America never had to address this problem because heterosexuality had always "worked" for man-kind from time immemorial.

Thus far, there is no scientific evidence for existence of a "gay gene", which would occupy a parallel basis for homosexual rights, as an inherited and immutable trait similar to skin color, race and gender does. But genetics alone does not form the basis of our Constitutional rights: We have freedom of religion, and yet our religious beliefs are not genetically determined. Furthermore, the U.S. Constitution First Amendment does extend to all citizens a freedom of assembly, which by extension, also means freedom of association.

Homosexuals argue that government has no place in the human heart, to decide whom we can and cannot love. It is on this basis that the traditional Bible-based marriage model of one man for one woman, and one woman for one man, is being challenged. But this argument hinges upon how we define love: Indeed, the Bible does command its followers to love thy neighbor as thyself. The Bible does give several illustrated examples of love being extended to men by other men. The parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, comes to mind. Ostensibly, then, it is the marital relation, and not just "agape" or "filio" love which is under consideration here.

Given the presence of the 14th Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, it would be extremely unwise to outlaw gay marriage--or any other unpopular behaviour--just for reason of its extreme unpopularity, per se. Such prohibition could put America on a slippery slope of outlawing any number of free exercises of constitutionally-legitimate behaviours merely for reason of their extreme unpopularity. We would all do well to remember that most of us are unpopular with somebody else somewhere, for one reason or another. Unpopularity cannot be a valid reason for cancelling out Constitutionally-enumerated freedoms, because these freedoms were and are extended to individuals, to protect them against mob-ocracy. It is to be admitted that the Constitution 14th Amendment in our day is being given extended applications beyond that of the original intent of its authors, i.e. to guarantee equal rights of former slaves with all the rest of the American citizenry. But words are words.

In my earlier BLOG article, "The Limits of Freedom", I stipulated that our exercise of Constitutional rights and freedoms are limited by whether a)said exercise inflicts physical injury upon other persons; b)said exercise inflicts physical damage or destruction upon anybody's property, and c)said exercise constitutes theft or fraud of anyone's money from them. If opponents of homosexual rights(including gay marriage) can come up with objective reasons why the exercise of homosexual rights would inflict physically-measurable damage upon other persons or their property, then indeed, homosexuality deserves no protection under our U.S. Constitution. Otherwise, homosexuals should be entitled to all the same rights under the 14th Amendment to which all other Americans are entitled, and should not be denied said rights merely for reason of their extreme unpopularity. It is true that homosexuals, as a class, have never been denied basic civil liberties, nor have they faced the economic deprivations that certain ethnic minorities have historically encountered. But past history should have no bearing upon our decision to acknowledge the rights of our fellow American citizens today.

Finally, we should also acknowledge that there are thousands of former homo-sexuals who have come out of that life-style, mainly due to the response of God to prayer from His people. What is impossible with man is possible with God.

-LKM

Two Questions About Jesus Christ For My Christian Friends

Christianity is the world's single-most popular religion today. Yet, Jesus Christ warned that the road to destruction is broad, many would go therein; while the road to salvation is narrow, and only few would find it. How do we separate sheep from goats, real Christians from fakes and frauds? (Matthew 7:13-27)

I have two questions to ask, of all who would name the name of Jesus Christ, claiming Him to be their Lord and Saviour.

Question One: If we could transport you back in both time and space to ancient Israel 2000 years ago, you see Jesus Christ alive in the flesh as the Bible New Testament gospels describe Him, and He is just now choosing out His first twelve apostles. He taps you, to be one of them. Would you be willing to accept His call upon your life, knowing there are no other Christians around at the time, and that therefore, to accept Him and follow Him means certain popular villification as a rebel, an "up-start", a trouble-maker, a boat-rocker, etc.? It is always easy and safe, to jump onto popularity band-wagons, and say "me, too". It is always most difficult to swim up-stream against the tide of popular opinion, and be the first in any new socio-political or religious movement proposing major societal change. One of the most popular church hymns today contains the words, "Where He leads me, I will follow....I'll go with Him all the way..." Really? What if He leads you into extreme unpopularity? Because this world is in the hand of Satan the devil, there is always a conflict between what is right and what is popular.

Question Two: If Jesus Christ were to return to us in the flesh now--today--where do you think He would spend most of His time and energies? The Bible describes Him as being a friend of sinners, the socially-outcast, the disgusting and the unpopular. Would He spend any time at all in the churches? Or would He be out in the streets with the homeless, the drunks and the drug addicts, and the prostitutes? Would He spend His time in the night-clubs and red-light districts? How about at the jails? He did say those who are sick need the doctor, while those who are well do not. (Matthew 9:10-13)

Saying and doing what is popular requires no courage at all. Jesus Christ describes these persons as "luke-warm Christians" whom He will spit out of His mouth.(Revelations 3:15-16) Jesus Christ started a movement to turn the entire world--not upside down, but right-side up. It was already turned upside down, when Adam and Eve chose to listen to and obey Satan in the Garden of Eden, and mighty was their fall through their disobedience.

-LKM

What Kind of World.....?

America today does NOT have a race relations problem. What is does have is a culture war, a conflict between two sets of socio-political values, in the which racial identity is being disingenuously exploited as a symbolic "Trojan horse", i.e. a pretext to advance the cause of one camp over the other.

The conflict in question is one of individualism versus group collectivism, of free enterprise capitalism versus Communism and socialism, of a nation whose societal values are influenced by religion versus one in which all religious theologies are absented from the national scene altogether. It is a question of acceptance of individual responsibility for one's own destiny, versus an insistence that society-at-large, acting through government as its agent, owes me a living. It is a question of whether or not the government should rescue me from adverse consequences of my own foolish personal choices.

Suppose we could somehow wave a magic wand, to permanently eliminate all racial differences between us, would this bring about a global Golden Age of peace, justice, love, brotherhood/sisterhood, and prosperity to all? Past history strongly answers with a thunderous "NO!" The historic human experience is replete with examples of nightmarish war between peoples of the same race. The American Civil War and European theaters of two global world wars of the 20th century come immediately to mind. North and South Korea, North and South Viet Nam, race brother against race brother, in mortal combat over questions of socio-political ideology. In Africa, too, protracted civil conflicts in the Congo, Angola, Rwanda, Sudan and former Biafra are reminders that racial similarity is no restraint against wholesale slaughter.

Even the Bible makes a pronouncement on race, in quoting Jesus Christ to say a prophet is not without honor, except in his own country and among his own people. Matthew 13:57, Mark 6:4. Indeed: today, people of multiple nations and races world-wide venerate and honor Jesus Christ as the indisputable Son of God; while in modern Israel, His own homeland, nearly all the people hate and revile His name except for a small remnant of self-named "Messianic Jews for Jesus". Romans chapter 11.

In summary, then, racial homogeneity and solidarity is no guarantee of absence of conflict and strife among men. Race is therefore no more than a convenient pretext by which to "pass the buck" to other people, in allegation of cause for one's own self-inflicted difficulties and misfortunes. It takes a paramount degree of courage to look honestly at one's self in the mirror, and ask:

What kind of world Would this world be
If everyone in it Were just like me?

-Lawrence K. Marsh

Let Us Bring The U.S. Constitution Out of Exile

Reference is made to Judge Andrew Napolitano's book, The Constitution In Exile.

"God is not the author of confusion", wrote the apostle Paul in the Bible, I Corinthians 14:33. The Bible book of Acts quotes the apostle Peter, Acts 10:34, to say God is not a respecter of persons. Thus, the nation's founders, inspired by God's Word, sought to create an ordered society based upon impartial rule of law, in total renunciation of their Old World experience of capricious and arbitrary decree of royalty. "Lex Rex", they declared, not "Rex Lex"--the law is the king, not the king the law. The result of this proposition was the U.S. Constitution, which although initially far from perfect, still represents a work in progress towards the formation of a more perfect union.

The nation's founders also recognized the morally-fallen nature of man, based on the Bible scripture of Jeremiah 17:9, saying "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desparately wicked: who could know it?" No man can be entrusted with too much power, to exercise it equitably and justly. Accordingly, in their design of the U.S. Constitution, the nation's founders left much ruling sovereignty to individual states, wisely assigning to the federal government only those obligations of which individual states are administratively and logistically totally incapable, e.g. carrying on foreign relations, providing for a national military defense, coining and printing a common national monetary currency, and resolving interstate disputes. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments clearly spell out this legal mandate.

Today, however, the states have become virtually subservient vassals of the federal government. The development of this situation was long in coming, at least since the turn of the 20th century if not earlier, caused mainly by crisis situations in the which the federal government seized extraordinary powers in order to deal with national emergencies--usually war. Then when the crises passed, the federal government refused to surrender the usurped powers back to state and local control. Today, the recission of individual Constitutional prerogatives is also based on fear of imagined crises which might occur only--but have not yet occurred--if we allow individuals to exercise as they please their Constitutional civil liberties. Thomas Jefferson once said, "Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty." Unlike the intent of the nation's founders, our basic civil liberties are no longer seen by government as God-given and thus inviolable by human authority. On the contrary, they are granted and rescinded according to the momentary political expediencies of governments. The First Amendment free speech rights are now especially under challenge. For example, George Mason law professor David Bernstein wrote a book called, You Can't Say That!, in the which he copiously illustrates how anti-discrimination laws are killing free speech rights. Then, the DVD Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, featuring Ben Stein, documents how science professors are being fired from their jobs at prominent universities, for having the temerity to suggest, contrary to scientific orthodoxy, that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is flawed, and divinely-created design is a better plausible explanation for the origin of life. (It should be interjected here that, as neither creation nor evolution have ever been observed in actual process, neither can be claimed to be proven scientific facts, but are both merely plausible speculations.)

America was not founded by cowards, and the apostle Paul wrote in II Timothy 1:7, "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." Yet today, the doctrines of political correctness and majoritarian consent silence all but the most brave from speaking their honest minds on those issues of life so greatly important to us all. In the TV series All In The Family of four decades ago, Archie Bunker said out loud the thoughts millions of Americans were thinking, but did not themselves dare to publicly verbalize.

The purpose of Constitutional civil liberties is to protect individual American citizens from either government or majoritarian mob-ocracy. We must bring the U.S. Constitution back from exile, if individual citizen freedom is to survive: it is no test of the strength of Constitutional freedoms, if the only exercise thereof we permit are those with which we all unanimously agree. As Justice Charles Evans Hughes once observed, we must endure the Constitution when it pinches, as well as when it comforts. Otherwise, society will never benefit from the wisdom of the few brave souls courageous enough to say, "vox populi vox humbug!", and tell the nation those inconvenient truths of life we all so desparately need to hear.

-LKM

Government Or Private Sector Free Enterprise?

As long as this writer can remember, the general American public has been strongly imbued with the proposition that private sector enterpreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are wicked and evil conniving villains out to defraud an unsuspecting society, while government is comprised exclusively of "good guys in the white hats" who, without any profit motive, will surely keep those satanic private enterpreneurs toeing the straight-and-narrow line. and society-at-large thus benefits from the legendary and proverbial arrow-straight integrity of government.

The Bible says differently: "There is none righteous; no, not one....for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God..." (Romans 3:10-23). President Theodore Roosevelt agreed, by saying, "Under government ownership, corruption can flourish just as rankly as under private ownership." Man never changes his basic moral character, according to whether he works for government or for the private sector. Can leopards ever change their spots? Again, the Bible speaks: "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he..." (Proverbs 23:7).

-LKM