Wake Up Christians!

By Robert A. J. Gagnon

Sadly, most Christians in the United States, when it comes to recognizing the dangers to their civil and religious liberties, sleep the sleep of ignorance that the disciples slept at Gethsemane before the arrest of Jesus. It ought to be obvious by now how "sexual orientation" laws and "gay marriage" are used to subvert the civil and religious liberties of those who view homosexual practice as sinful, contrary-to-nature conduct.

Our children in the schools are taught (with our tax money, incidentally) that their parents are bigots for opposing homosexual unions. Teachers who don't tow the line are threatened with dismissal. They must teach about "Stonewall" and other occasions of homosexualist advocacy as positive events in history, irrespective of the fact that such readings are at odds with reality. They must lift up people like Harvey Milk, who bedded many an underage boy and lived a sexually promiscuous life, as heroes of history or be fired.

For example (as Mass Resistance reports), "in 2011, California passed Senate Bill 48, the Orwellian-labeled “FAIR Education Act.” It requires that the 'historical contributions' of 'lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans' be included in courses, instructional material, and textbooks in California Public Schools. Furthermore, the law includes prohibition of any 'materials that reflect adversely' on LGBT persons or the movement....This was such an abrupt change that Grades K-8 have been given until July 1, 2015 to comply, but high schools are required to move as fast as possible. Many California high schools are rolling out their new 'gay' curricula this month – September 2014."

Christian colleges like Gordon College in Wenham, Mass., are now being threatened with loss of accreditation and/or loss of federal funds if they have moral standards that prohibit all sexual conduct outside of marriage between one man and one woman, including homosexual intercourse.

Bakers are being fined as much as $150,000 if they refuse to letter a "gay wedding cake" (even if they are willing to sell cakes to homosexual couples, just not specifically design it for a wedding). Photographers are fined for not wanting to contribute their gifts of artistic expression to further what they regard to be immoral sexual unions. Florists unwilling to provide floral arrangements for "gay weddings" are likewise being put of business. A civil rights commissioner has found that a Kentucky Christian T-shirt company that refused to print shirts for a gay pride parade is guilty of discrimination, calling for its employees to attend diversity training, with fines to follow if the violations continue. Religious liberty does not even exempt religiously affiliated associations, like retreat centers connected with denominations that forbid same-sex marriage, from renting its facilities out for homosexual "marriages."

Increasingly, Christians in "white-collar" positions who don't support homosexual indoctrination at the workplace are being fired. Some have been fired simply for expressing the view on Facebook and other social media outside the workplace that "gay marriage" is immoral.

You'll recall how the Obama administration revoked an invitation to a Black pastor to say a prayer at Obama's 2nd inaugural when it was discovered that he had once, a decade earlier, given a sermon where he expressed the view that homosexual practice was sin.

At Dartmouth College, my alma mater, an African Anglican Bishop who was appointed to lead the Tucker Foundation, which oversees all social justice and religious ministries on campus, had his appointment terminated before he even arrived on campus because it was discovered that a decade earlier he had expressed disappointment over the appointment of Vicky Gene Robinson to be the first "gay" Episcopal Bishop. Even though the African bishop protested that he was now affirming of "gay marriage" they terminated his employment because at some point in his life he had expressed opposition to this idolatry of homosexualism. Dartmouth went on to hire as the moral overseer of the campus a lesbian Episcopal minister.

In most mainline seminaries today candidates for faculty positions who are known to have published in favor of the scriptural and orthodox position on male-female marriage will not be hired. It is even less likely that candidates for faculty positions in secular colleges and universities will be hired. After all, institutions of higher learning can tolerate the hiring of "bigots."

Against parental protests and concerns for safety in many jurisdictions "bathroom bills" have been passed that allow boys who identify as female to use girls' rest rooms. Men who identify as women must be allowed to use female changing rooms and rest rooms. In these jurisdictions it is the "civil right" of persons who regard themselves as the sex opposite of the one given to them at birth to force all the rest of us to participate in their sickness for which they should be providing appropriate therapeutic help.

In many states, even if an adolescent and his or her parents wants to receive help in managing homoerotic urges and experiencing some reduction in intensity of urges, that adolescent is forbidden to do so because, allegedly, it confirms the adolescent's "internalized homophobia." So much for the self-determination of the client.

Most recently the lesbian mayor of Houston had subpoenas issued to some Houston pastors compelling them to produce transcripts of every sermon in which they discussed the issue of homosexuality or face contempt of court. Two ministers who for a fee conduct Christian weddings for Christians are being forced by the state to participate in same-sex marriages or face a $1000/day fine until they do comply. A professor of English at a Christian school (Robert Lopez) has been harassed by persons in and outside of his institution simply because he shared the story that his upbringing by two lesbians was less than ideal.

It is not a question of "live and let live" when it comes to a homosexualist agenda. It is a question of homosexualist advocates doing their best to drive out of the public square with abusive rhetoric and the teeth of "sexual orientation" laws anyone who calls into question their agenda.

So, no, I'm not willing to support ridiculous construals of the Constitution that codify me and other believers who adopt the view that Jesus held about marriage and sexuality generally as bigots and the moral equivalent of racists. Surprisingly, I'm not willing to supply the legal bat with which to beat me senseless. Imagine that.

On top of all this is the absurdity of arguing that a "gay marriage" is comparable to an interracial marriage. As someone in an interracial marriage I resent the comparison to an immoral unnatural relationship. Racial differences in marriage do not represent any kind of conflict with nature. Homosexual unions do. If the logic of a heterosexual union is that the two halves of the sexual spectrum reunite to form a single sexual whole, moderating the extremes of a given sex and filling in the gaps of the sexual self, the logic of a homosexual union is that two "half-males" unite to form a single whole male; two "half-females" unite to form a single whole female. That is what Paul referred to as a self-dishonoring, self-degrading act, where it treats one's own sex as only half intact, not in relation to the other sex (in accordance with truth) but in relation to one's own sex (in accordance with falsehood).

It is not "discrimination" to say that such a union is not a true marriage, any more than it is "discrimination" to say that adult-consensual incestuous or polyamorous unions constitute a true marriage. Persons in polyamorous and incestuous relationships today suffer from far more public hostility than persons in homosexual unions. What are you not advocating for their "civil rights"? And, as noted above, in most areas of the country today, Christians who have spoken publicly at some time in their life about the immorality of promoting homosexual relations are more likely to be discriminated against then persons openly expressive of their homosexual behavior. Do you know that most colleges today give an affirmative action bump to applicants who identify as "gay," lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or no gender at all?

The Savage Lands of Islam

by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog

The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia ruled that ten year old girls can be married off, because in his words, "Good upbringing makes a girl ready to perform all marital duties at that age."

The Grand Mufti

The Mufti, who also called for destroying churches in the Arabian Peninsula, is descended from Mohammed Wahhab who gave birth to Wahhabism and whose descendants have controlled the Saudi religious establishment, and through it Islam around the world.

However for all his power and influence, the Mufti is blind and hasn't seen a thing in the last half century years; an apt metaphor for his entire religion.

Saudi Arabia, the heartland of Islam, still tries and executes witches. What sort of religion can come out of a place that marries off ten year old girls and murders old women on charges of witchcraft? The sort that flies planes into skyscrapers, murders teenage girls for using Facebook and bases its entire society on a ladder with Muslim men at the top, Muslim women a few rungs below and everyone else somewhere at the bottom.

The Saudis are not an aberration, they are Islam in its purest and truest form. That is why Al Qaeda was founded by a Saudi and why Saudis, the wealthy citizens of a wealthy kingdom, are its best recruits. It is not poverty or oppression that moves them to kill, but wealth and privilege.

This is where Islam originated, whose brutality and cunning spread it across the world, whose clans killed each other, then killed or enslaved minority groups, and then embarked on a wave of conquest that destroyed countless cultures and left behind the seeds of hate of the wars we are fighting today.

Unlike Egypt or Syria, they were never colonized by European powers and the impact of Ottoman influence was limited. Oil has brought in massive amounts of money, but it has changed very little. There are limousines instead of camels, the slaves have foreign passports, though they are often still slaves, there is still a brisk trade in imported luxury goods, harems for princes and clans staggering under the weight of their indolent progeny.

Religiously, Wahhabism has done its best to recreate the "pure" Islam of its origins. Economically, oil has allowed the Gulf Arabs to prosper without reform or change. And if Mohammed were to ride out of the desert tomorrow, he would have little trouble fitting in, as soon as he developed a taste for Porsches. Anyone who wants to see the world as it was in Mohammed's day can visit Saudi Arabia and see inbred clans, slave labor, veiled women and thugs enforcing the will of Allah on every corner.

But you don't even need to visit Saudi Arabia because diluted forms of it can be found everywhere from Cairo to London and from Islamabad to Los Angeles. A hundred and fifty years after the United States freed its slaves, Muslim immigrants have brought back slavery, importing young girls to live as their slaves. Ninety years after American women won the right to vote, the ghosts of Islam tread the streets in sheets that hide their personhood and mark them as property.

The religious wars of the desert have not stayed there as the immigration Hegira has brought them here and everywhere. And that is the source of the Clash of Civilizations. Immigration has brought Muslims into closer contact with different cultures and religions who don't defer to them or give Islam the privileged status that its adherents are used to enjoying.

To know the truth of this all you have to do is measure the respective tolerance levels of America  against the average Muslim country. There is no comparison with even the more secular Muslim countries, not in law and not in public attitudes. The sole benefit of the Arab Spring has been to expose the fraud of the moderate Muslim country. Egypt's transition to theocracy reminds us that a moderate Muslim state is a completely unrepresentative dictatorship. The alternative is majority Muslim rule.

The endgame of the Arab Spring and the immigration Hegira is to reduce the entire world to the level of Saudi Arabia. And that means eliminating outside influences in a long march to purification.  Islamists know that they cannot enjoy complete cultural dominance over their own people until their rivals in the West are obliterated. To turn Egypt and Malaysia into Saudi Arabia, and to purify Saudi Arabia, the infidels must be brought down, their religions subjugated and their nations replaced with proper Islamic states.

Islamic leaders are under no illusion that religion is a spiritual matter, they know that it is a numbers game. Wage enough wars, terrorize enough nations, marry enough barely post-pubescent girls and use them to crank out an endless supply of babies, intimidate or trick enough infidels into joining up and you win. That was how Islam took over so much territory and spread around the world, that is how it is doing it again now.

Islam is not a spiritual religion, even its paradise is a materialistic place, a fantasy harem where the physical pleasures of life can be enjoyed without restraint. That gives it an advantage over Judaism and Christianity, just as it gives the Saudis and the Pakistanis an advantage over the Americans and Israelis. There is no angst in Islam, no spiritual seeking and no room for doubt. The marching orders are always clear and individual deeds and thoughts matter less than a willingness to always obey.

Islam came out of the desert and it has never left the desert, instead it has brought the desert with it along with its codes, its deep hatreds, its constant deprivation, its deceptiveness and its nomadic expansionism. Where Islam goes, the desert rises, its tents, its red knives and its insecurities. It was backward even at the time of its birth and it has only become more so, but its singlemindedness is an advantage in an age of effete leftectuals and eurocrats dreaming of a transnational world.

While the leftectuals dream of windmills, the Saudis hire foreigners to pump their oil and then sell it to them, the money goes to fund the Hegira, its mosques in every city from Dublin to Moscow to Buenos Aires and Toronto, the fatwas, the bombs, the websites where the masked faithful hold up AK-47's, the Islamic science courses and sessions on learning to love the Hijab and then the Burqa,

The Saudis just want what everyone wants, for everyone to acknowledge their greatness and live like them. They can hardly be blamed for that when the West spends almost as much money promoting democracy and its own way of life to people who still execute witches and blasphemers. They may be savages, but they fell ass backward into enough black gold to fuel a global religious war, and they're using it cleverly and cunningly to transform our societies and wage war against us even while attending dinners at the White House. It's smoother work than our diplomats are capable of.

You can hardly blame the desert bandits for being what they are, but you can blame the apostles of reason for preaching about a golden age of tolerance and enlightenment from every purloined pulpit and then turning away the heartland to a religion that is nakedly brutal and intolerant at home.

An honest look at Saudi Arabia, at its cruelty, its slaves, its intolerance of other religions and even of women, should be enough to tell even the dimmest Eton or Harvard grad exactly what the West is in for. No matter how many specialists in Muslim tolerance show up at universities, there is the Grand Mufti explaining that Mohammed commanded the eradication of Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula, and therefore there can be no churches allowed there.

Even few apologists for Islam will defend Saudi Arabia for the simple reason that it is indefensible. The media will run the occasional story about the House of Saud's commitment to reform, much as Charles Manson keeps committing to becoming a better person, but even they don't really believe it. Yet even though Saudi Arabia is the heartland of Sunni Islam, and its fortunes shape and control mosques and teachings around the world, they insist on treating Islam and Saudi Arabia as two separate things.

It is brutally telling that the two centers of Islam, Saudi Arabia for the Sunnis and Iran for the Shiites, are genuinely horrifying places. Neither can remotely be associated with tolerance or human rights. It is simple common sense that the spread of Islam will make Western countries more like Saudi Arabia and Iran, rather than less like them.

If Saudi Arabia is not an example that we wish to emulate, then why must we bodily incorporate the religion of Mecca and Medina into London and Los Angeles? What other possible outcome do we imagine that there will be but fewer rights and more violence, dead women, abused children, bomb plots and polygamy?

There are two Islams. The real Islam of the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia and an imaginary Islam that exists only in the mosques of air and card table Korans of academics apologists and political pundits who have decided that Islam cannot be bad, because no religion can be bad, not even one which kills and kills, it must just be misunderstood.

But then why not tell the Grand Mufti that he has misunderstood his own religion, the religion that he and his ancestors have dedicated themselves to purifying and reforming back to its roots? Telling him that would be a dangerous thing on his own turf, but it would also be foolish. The Grand Mufti's controversial statements contain nothing that Mohammed had not said.

Can the founder of a religion misunderstand his own teachings?

Islam is savage, intolerant, cruel and expansionistic, not due to a misunderstanding, but an understanding of the worst aspects of human nature. It is what it is and no amount of wishing will make it otherwise.

We have opened the door to the desert and a hot wind blows through into the northern climes. Either we shut the door or get used to living in the Saudi desert.