Malkin: Santorum for President

If you get a chance, check out the latest article from Michelle Malkin in which she lays out her argument in favor of electing Rick Santorum for president. In it she she accurately decribes (IMO) the other candidates in the primary race and highlights way the obvious choice should be Santorum. The article is filled with numerous links supporting her position and you can spend an hour checking them all out.

Mark Steyn summed it up accurately last week in reference to the current crop of candidates running for the GOP nomination. To paraphrase, he basically said that he wished Calvin Coolidge was running for the GOP nomination, but for whatever reason (chiefly among them that he's been dead for 80 years) he has decided not to throw his hat in the ring this time. These are the four candidates we have. These are the ones we have to choose from. Let's get behind one of them and defeat Obama!

Thank You Georgia!

Finally a state has the cahones to stand up to the legal bullies utilized by Obama...

"In the courtroom of Judge Michael Malihi of the Georgia Office of State Administrative Hearings, sworn testimony was delivered rapid-fire over two hours to the effect that Obama is not qualified to have his name on the 2012 presidential ballot because his father was not a U.S. citizen, which precludes him from being a “natural-born citizen,” a clear, unambiguous requirement of the Constitution.

Obama refused to honor a subpoena to attend the hearing, produce records answering the charges or even send legal representation to dispute the evidence. Instead, they sent a letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp suggesting the judge was letting attorneys “run amok.”

In response, Kemp warned Obama and his counsel that if they chose not to participate in the proceedings, “you do so at your own peril.”

The judge is expected to rule in the case shortly. However, he has little choice but to issue a default judgment in favor of the challenge – potentially removing Obama from the ballot in Georgia in November.

That would be an astonishing development to the major media in this country that have collectively scoffed at and caricatured the notion that there is any doubt as to Obama’s eligibility."

Already the blogosphere is abuzz as to whether the excuse of health or family will be offered up for Obama's soon-to-be abrupt exit from presidential politics. I find it particularly hilarious that the supposed 'scientific evidence based' left competely accepted on face value the Obama nativity account without ever asking for solid evidence on the matter. It's particularly side-splitting because they made John McCain jump through hoops to demonstrate his eligibility.

Obama alienating the Catholic Left

Liberal Catholics reliably voted for a complete unknown in 2008 and were hoping for the best. It seems that now some are coming to the realization that they've been had and that the person that they put in office isn't quite so hopey-changey as they desired and instead is ramming mandatory birth control/sterilization coverage by employers down their collective throats. Conscientoius objector? Not allowed in the New World Order of Obama...

"The liberal Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles, blogged that he "cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience"—and he urged people to fight it. Another liberal favorite, Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., has raised the specter of "civil disobedience" and vowed that he will drop coverage for diocesan workers rather than comply. They are joined in their expressions of discontent by the leaders of Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities, which alone employs 70,000 people.

In the run-up to the ruling, the president of Notre Dame, the Rev. John Jenkins, suggested a modest compromise by which the president could have avoided most of this strife. That would have been by allowing the traditional exemption for religious organizations. That's the same understanding two of the president's own appointees to the Supreme Court just reaffirmed in a 9-0 ruling that recognized a faith-based school's First Amendment right to choose its own ministers without government interference, regardless of antidiscrimination law.

A few years ago Father Jenkins took enormous grief when he invited President Obama to speak at a Notre Dame commencement; now Father Jenkins finds himself publicly disapproving of an "unnecessary government intervention" that puts many organizations such as his in an "untenable position."

Here's just part of what he means by "untenable": Were Notre Dame to drop coverage for its 5,229 employees, the HHS penalty alone would amount to $10 million each year.

The irony, of course, is that the ruling is being imposed by a Catholic Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, working in an administration with a Catholic vice president, Joe Biden. A few years back the voluble Mr. Biden famously threatened to "shove my rosary beads" down the throat of those who dared suggest that his party's positions on social issues put it at odds with people of faith. Does he now mean to include Mr. Winters, Cardinal Mahony and Father Jenkins?"

Barry is doing a wonderful job of alienating a core group that supported him in 2008. One thing that liberals never seem to like to admit or are completely oblivious to is the authoritarian streak inherent in alot of liberal policies and ideas. Their ideas aren't popular to begin with and the only way they can implement them is through judicial rulings and presidential orders rather than any sort of debate and subsequent voting by congress.

A day with Senator Rick Santorum

The Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach was the setting yesterday for a visit by presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who attended the morning worship service and delivered about 20 minutes worth of remarks...

"His (Santorum's) remarks there focused on his personal journey as a Christian, which he said infused his overall views.

"Faith plus family equals freedom in America," Santorum said. "So many ways the brokenness that we see in America is the brokenness of the foundational pillars that we see in society…. I'm the candidate who understands the foundation upon which everything else is built, and that's faith and family.

"If you want to fix the economy in this country, let's do something about fixing the families in this country," he said.

He also said many of the nation's ills, including economic difficulties, would be fixed if men and women got married before having children. He has a long history of opposition to issues important to gays and lesbians, and he repeatedly emphasized his opposition to gay marriage.

Santorum, who is strongly anti-abortion, detailed his years-long fight to outlaw the procedure known as partial-birth abortion.

Earlier Sunday, Santorum said he has no intention of dropping out of the Republican presidential race."


The Shark Tank.net has put up a video of Santorum's remarks at the church that I was privileged to attend yesterday. As the field of potential republican candidates now stands at four, it is becoming increasingly clear that Santorum is the best candidate still standing. I agree with Santorum about 90% of the time on a variety of issues. However, he doesn't seem to have Gingrich's long line of extra baggage, seems more firmly grounded in conservative principals than Romney, and doesn't subscribe to the 'Blame America-Isolationist' stance adopted by libertarian Ron Paul that doesn't play very well outside his circle of fervent supporters.

Here's to hoping for a long and fruitful electoral process in which the candidates debate and offer up solutions and a number of states weigh in with their thoughts on the issues rather than just the first few in line.

EDIT: A special shout-out to Tea Party Ft Lauderdale which was well represented at yesterday's service. Such a 'Rainbow Coalition' on public display would be enough to give Jesse Jackson conniptions! HA!

On MLK and Homosexuality

As I have previously mentioned, the Gay Left has done a masterful job at selling people on the fallacy of comparing the drive to redefine 'marriage' to the struggle for civil rights during the decade of the 1960's. While the Pink Hand pushes this faulty comparison, one thing they never seems to be asked is to produce a single person who has ever left behind the 'black lifestyle' to heal emotional pain while the list is nearly endless of those who are no longer homosexual.



A recent Christian Post article takes a look back at the man who was the most iconic figure of Civil Rights era, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and examines in his own words what Dr. King thought about homosexuality. In a letter published in a 1958 edition of Ebony magazine a young reader expresses that he has same-sex attractions and and this was Dr King's reply...

"The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired,” King responded in the 1958 column. “You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it."

So we don't see Dr King telling the young man to embrace a homosexual identity, calls his same-sex attraction a 'problem' and then suggests that he can be delivered from such desires. Somehow I don't think this will go over well with the Wayne Besen/Dan Savage/Lady Gaga crowd, but since when were they ever concerned with facts to begin with?

""I know deep down in my sanctified soul that he [MLK] did not take a bullet for same-sex unions" Rev Bernice King, daughter of MLK

A Refreshingly Honest View of How an Atheist Perceives Morality

For those who are Political Science/Pop Philosophy enthusiasts like myself, today's in-depth article by Robert P. Kraynak is pure gold. In it, Kraynak takes a close look at the writings of American philosopher and atheist Richard Rorty. Kraynak demonstrats brilliantly how atheists are basically moral parasites, absorbing the morality of the culture they live in. For example, check out this quote from Rorty that Kraynak mentions...

"With intentional irony, Rorty describes people like himself as “free-loading atheists.” He also displays exquisite sensitivity to human dignity in making this admission: he imagines “a child found wandering in the woods, the remnant of a slaughtered nation,” and asks if such a lost person should have “no share in human dignity.” He explains:

'..it does not follow that she may be treated like an animal. For it is part of the tradition of our community that the human stranger from whom all dignity has been stripped is to be taken in, to be reclothed with dignity. This Jewish and Christian element in our tradition is gratefully invoked by free-loading atheists like myself.... The existence of human rights, in the sense in which it is at issue in this meta-ethical debate, has as much or as little relevance to our treatment of such a child as the question of the existence of God. I think both have equally little relevance'.

Rorty’s point is that seeing a lost child wandering around as a naked, shivering homeless person inspires in him a strong sense of moral duty to “reclothe” that person with dignity (an elegant phrase), but not because he believes in God or in Kantian moral duties and rights. His justification is that he is part of a community of moral traditions inherited from Judaism and Christianity, which teaches us to care for a homeless person like the Good Samaritan would do. The problem is that our belief in God or rationally grounded moral duties turns out to be relevant after all: we have and need these beliefs, too, because we have been so taught by “the tradition of our community.” Rorty argues that we can subscribe to parts of our inherited traditions simply because they are inherited, but offers no grounds for why we can adhere to some parts and not others. He is thus a “free-loading atheist” because he lives off of the moral inheritance of the biblical tradition without contributing to it, and even while undermining it."

Kraynak goes on to point out the authoritarian streak prevelent in atheism through Rorty's musings..

"..'When we American college teachers encounter religious fundamentalists ... we do our best to convince these students of the benefits of secularization. We assign first-person accounts of growing up homosexual to our homophobic students for the same reasons that German schoolteachers in the postwar period assigned The Diary of Anne Frank....

I do not claim to make the distinction between education and conversation on the basis of anything except my loyalty to a particular community, a community whose interests required re-educating the Hitler Youth in 1945 and required re-educating the bigoted students of Virginia in 1993. I don’t see anything herrschaftsfrei [free from moral authoritarianism] about my handling of my fundamentalist students. Rather, I think those students are lucky to find themselves under the benevolent Herrschaft of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.... It seems to me that I am just as provincial and contextualist as the Nazi teachers who made their students read Der Stürmer; the only difference is that I serve a better cause. I come from a better province.'

Rorty’s technique is to use disarming candor in referring to himself as a benevolent Nazi rather than a rational educator, and in admitting that he is not free of moral authoritarianism. The effect is to shock or lull the reader into overlooking the contradiction between claiming his views are merely contingent on his accidental upbringing (namely, that he comes from a different province than Nazis or his bigoted students) while also claiming that he is “benevolent” rather than “vicious” and serves a “better cause.” In other words, Rorty says that he imposes his political views on others simply because he is more willful, while also claiming that his views are objectively better than Nazi ideology or religious fundamentalism. Yet he feels no obligation to give a rational justification for the moral superiority of his beliefs: he simply enjoys the luxury of imposing justice without foundations."

There is ALOT of information in the Kraynak article and if anyone would like to offer up their thoughts on it, please feel free to do so in the comment box below.

The Blunt Truth Re: The Removal of Homosexuality from the list of Diagnostic and Statistical Mental Disorders by the APA

The sad fact of the matter is that homosexuality was depathologized by the American Psychological Association in 1973 NOT through the results of any sort of research or groundbreaking experiments, but through pressure, intimidation and threats levied at the group by radical gay activists. If anyone is in doubt about the preceding sentence, then they are welcome to cite the specific study (or studies) at the time that the APA based their decision on. I can save you the trouble of looking though, because such studies/experiments simply do not exist. Parents and Friends of ExGays and Gays (pfox.org) has a highly informative and detailed article about those on the front lines of such discussions at the time and I encourage everyone to check it out if they get the chance.

I would like to thank Ryan Sorba for putting together a great entry on the subject. Check it out at his blog if you get the chance. Here's a brief exerpt to whet your appetite...

"Despite being discredited in April of 1993 by the official journal of the American Psychological Association, American Psychologist, ('Life long hard-left political activist, psychologist and UCLA professor Evelyn') Hooker’s is the only study discussed in the APA’s 2003 amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas, the United State Supreme court case which suspended the power of states to enforce anti-sodomy laws. Even today, more than fifty years after its publication, and fifteen years after its being exposed as contrived, her study is the only paper referenced in detail on the main website of the American Psychological Association in its discussion of “Gay” and “Lesbian” issues, as it attempts to make the case that there is no evidence for an association between Same-Sex Attraction Disorder (SSAD), Adult Same-Sex Intercourse (ASSI), and psychopathology.

The controversial claims of Hooker garnered her almost instant recognition within homosexualist circles, and in the wake of the Stonewall riots in 1969, as politics began to trump science, militant activists increasingly relied on Hooker’s study to support their demands that the APA remove homosexuality from the DSM."

It has been said that in the upcoming years, the church will increasingly become leaner and moved more towards the periphery of society as it continues to speak truth to power, no matter how inconvenient said truth is to those who don't wish to hear it. The Gay Left is doing a masterful job in arguing their position from a historical standpoint by comparing the advancement of the extremist homosexual agenda with the civil rights struggles of the 1960's when the comparison couldn't be any more faulty if they tried. All such activists need are people to rally around their cause utilizing emotional rather than factual arguments and they can experience success. Given that the majority of leftist talking points are based on emotion rather than FACTS, such activists already have a built-in audience of uncritically thinking lemmings to peddle their nonsense to and convince that they are somehow advancing 'rights' when nothing could be further from the truth.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that Mike Goeke hit one outta the park with his latest entry over at Baptist Press as to how the church should consider and proceed on the topic of homosexuality. Link

The Faulty Comparison Between Mormonism and Orthodox, Mainstream Christianity

In an online debate not long ago, I was basically asked if I believe in the basic tenets of Christianity, then why not Mormonism. I basically followed up that question with the fact that none of the eyewitnesses to Christ's resurrection and post-mortem appearances ever recanted or changed their testimony and the same cannot be said for the earliest followers of Joseph Smith/Mormonism. If I had thought about it a little more, I would have added that there has been exactly ZERO evidence ever unearthed by archaeologists that supports the Book of Mormon's 'Ancient America' account.

Columnist Mark Shea however, over at the National Catholic Register does a masterful job of delineating where one can have a reasonable faith when it comes to Christianity and the claims made by Mormonism.

"As to the comparison with Mormonism, there are three problems:

First, Joseph Smith is the sole witness to the claims he makes. Everybody else is a true believer, but does not themselves claim to have seen Moroni or the rest of it. In the case of Christ, there are over five hundred eyewitnesses. That’s a lot of opportunity for somebody to crack under threat of torture or murder and spill the beans on how the whole thing was (as it had to be if false) a lie and a fraud. Nobody ever did.

Second, where is the St. Paul of Mormonism? He’s a very anomalous figure and hard to explain apart from an encounter with the Risen Christ.

Finally, the apostles didn’t just die martyr’s deaths, they lived martyr’s lives. Joseph Smith, in comparison, grew in wealth and power (not to mention that manly dream of multiple wives) right up until he went down (guns blazing) in a gunfight with the mob that came to get him. One looks in vain for the traces of the apostolic martyrs hacking away at their persecutors with swords. Indeed, the gospels actually record (again and again) the embarrassing vignette of Peter whacking off Malchus’ ear in order to make clear that this sort of thing was Conduct Unbecoming an Apostle.

It’s one thing to die as a sucker for a lie told by Joseph Smith (as some Mormons did). It’s quite another thing to die for a lie told by oneself (as the apostles did if the Resurrection is false). Joseph Smith, blasting away at his enemies, shows us how liars die. The apostles, going with dignity to a variety of awful deaths, show us how honest men die."

Check out his entire article if you have the time to do so, especially if you have an interest in apologetics. It's so wonderfully written and I didn't even get to quote the parts in it in which he demolishes many of the common arguments raised by the so-called 'New Atheists'.

(Above image: Deseret blue flag)

3:16

GetReligion.org is reporting that in the 2009 BCS Championship Game, quarterback Tim Tebow wore the verse John 3:16 on the black tape under his eyes and Tebow has said that this is his favorite Bible verse. Tebow wearing that particular verse in this all important college game caused approximately 92 million people to google [John 3:16] and eye messaging was soon afterward banned for all players. Can't have people sharing any Good News now, can we?

In last Sunday's highly improbable overtime victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers, quarterback Tim Tebow passed for 316 yards in leading the Denver Broncos to victory. Coincidence? Maybe.

Tebow completed 10 passes in accumulating 316 yards in Sunday's upset win. Not 9 passes or 11 passes, but 10. Thus in the all important important statistic of his average yards per completion, Tebow averaged 31.6 yards per completion. Coincidence? Maybe.

Apparently the the overtime period of the game drew a 31.6 televison rating. Coincidence? Awww, c'mon man!

EDIT: Now Baptist Press is reporting that Pittsburgh's time of possession for the game was 31 minutes and 6 seconds. You can't make this stuff up.

The Mainstream Media's Anti-Christian Template: Catholicism

One of the prevailing templates utilized by the drive-by, mainstream media is to portray Catholic priests as largely prone to pederasty and the sexual abuse of minors. If one is in doubt concerning how effective the media's ongoing Jihad against Christianity has been in stigmatizing Catholic priests, simply read this exchange that Archbishop Timothy Dolan had with a man while waiting at an airport. An article out today contains an interview with author Dave Pierre who as written extensively about the acutely uneven coverage in the media concerning priest abuse scandals when compared to similar stories coming from other professions. Here are some of the highlights from the interview...

• "I would frequently look at the Los Angeles Times. A number of years ago, I noticed that the paper published a very large, 3,800-word piece on the front page about decades-old abuses that were alleged to have been committed by Catholic clergy in remote villages of Alaska. Indeed, many of the stories were heart-wrenching, painful, and tragic. However, months later, the shocking story of a Southern California teacher who may have molested as many as 200 children was buried on page B3. I soon began to notice a trend: the Times was often giving front-page coverage to stories about Catholic priests alleged to have committed abuse decades ago. Meanwhile, arrests of public school teachers for abuse happening today were often not reported or buried in the “news briefs” section. The double standard was glaring.
  



• Just a few years back, 13 administrators at the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) received an office memo stating that police had arrested an assistant principal and were “investigating allegations that he had an unlawful sexual relationship with a minor.” Yet a few months later, the district reassigned this principal to another school—where he raped again. None of the 13 administrators whose names were on that memo lost their jobs, and the local media did not seem too interested in reporting this fact. And in another incident at the LAUSD, two administrators pleaded guilty and no contest, respectively, in a court of law to the misdemeanor of failing to report the suspected rape of a 13-year-old girl at their school. Where are they now? They are still working at LAUSD—with promotions. It is not hard to imagine that if these episodes had involved the Catholic Church, the national media would have had quite a field day. Instead, few people outside of Los Angeles are even familiar these stories."
  

These are just a couple of examples and the cited article contains many more. I don't doubt that clergy should be held to a higher standard than many of us, but so should anyone who is entrusted with caring for children. I doubt such anti-Christian bigotry is going away anytime soon, but kudos to Mr. Pierre for shining a light on the practice of unfairly characterizing Catholic priests.

Is Rick Santorum anti-gay?

It seems that CNN and other news outlets are trumpeting the report that Rick Santorum was booed by some members of the audience while speaking recently at New England College.

"One man asked Santorum about his opposition to same-sex marriage, which is legal in New Hampshire. The candidate quickly picked a fight with the crowd, which seemed to support same-sex unions.

"So anyone can marry anyone else?" Santorum asked, swiftly turning the conversation to polygamy. "So anyone can marry several people?"

The crowd objected and tried to talk over him.

"I tried," he offered reporters as he left the conference center."

I don't really see Santorum's answer as trying to change the subject from gay marriage to polygamy as some outlets are characterizing the exchange. I think that Santorum was merely trying to ascertain from his inquisitors if they thought that there should be any limits whatsoever as to what should define the term 'marriage'. It could be argued then, that if any of them thought there should be at least some level of exclusivity in what constitutes marriage, then Santorum then feels the same way, there being only a matter of degree as to where the terminator line for such exclusivity should be drawn.

Meanwhile, in a refreshingly open and honest exchange with "moronic, liberal ass-clown" Chris Matthews, former Santorum staffer for 10 years and openly gay man Robert Traynham, thoroughly rejected the idea that Santorum is in any way personally against gay people, insisting that he was 'openly out' with Santorum.

"An interesting interview with Robert Traynham, Rick Santorum's former aide of ten years appeared on today's Hardball with Matthews. Traynham tells Chris, "I was openly out to him." and then goes on to defend Rick's character and beliefs. An important interview considering the angle the media and the Democrat Party will take in trying to sink Santorum's campaign."

Check out the 3 minute video on the above links I provided if you have the time. Traynham seems quite passionate in his defense of Santorum and after working with him for 10 years, you would think he would have some idea as to whether Santorum is in any way homophobic and the evidence seems to bear out that he decidedly is not.

Well thought out defense of traditional marriage from Catholic World Report

While browsing the internet today, I came across a well put together piece at The Catholic World Report by Mark Brumley. Among the arguments concerning marriage that I encounter on the World Wide Web are from more Libertarian friends who seem to think that 'government should get out of the marriage business altogether.' I will list some of the better points raised by Brumley (IMO) below...

"Those libertarians and conservatives who argue in favor of so-called privatization of marriage do not adequately consider a key point regarding it: the public interest in government encouraging couples who engage in procreative kinds of acts publically and legally to commit themselves exclusively and permanently to one another and, by implication, to their offspring, should they have any. The legal institution of marriage encourages such commitment between sexually-active heterosexual couples.

Why does government have a stake in this? Because it has a stake in encouraging the parents to provide a stable, loving, committed relationship as the morally best environment for raising children. Government has a stake in encouraging couples together to raise their children and to provide examples for their children of parental relationship. Children, after all, are the future of the state. They provide the foundation for society’s future success or failure, so government has an interest in encourage certain behaviors in relation to children and in discouraging others."

The entire article is a good read and Brumley gets more into the child-rearing aspect further on in it. One of the most important first steps in taking on Leftist bigots who enjoy stifling rational discussion through feel-goody, appeal-to-emotional rhetoric is to immediately take emotional arguments off the table and get down to verifiable, empirical evidence. Once that occurs the anti-free speecher is then diminished to the poorly informed, mindless lemming that they are. That doesn't necssarily mean that they are bad people, just that they swallowed hook-line-and-sinker a poorly thought out position based on emotionalism rather than actually thinking the issue through to it's logical conclusion.

Are atheists mean-spirited?

I'm sure there are plenty of tatheists out there who really could not care less that there are other people out there that believe in God, it's just that I don't run into alot of them on the internet. Much more often, I encounter the snarky know-it-all types who oftentimes refuse to answer hard questions concerning their own, pet beliefs when confronted with serous questions that challenge them.

In a recent article in World magazine, Janie B. Cheaney examines some of the circumstantial evidence that atheists tend to be self-absorbed and mean-spirited...

"Can I prove that atheists tend to hold a low view of mankind? There's plenty of circumstantial evidence. One is the position they stake out for themselves as more intelligent, courageous, and honest than the general run. Two is an argument that pops up frequently in skeptical circles: If God were such a creative genius, wouldn't He have done a better job? Especially with humans? Three is the scarcity of benevolent works founded by atheists. I'm sure there are some, but their names don't spring readily to mind like, say, Samaritan's Purse, Catholic Charities, and the hundreds of hospitals named for a Saint.

Seen on Answerblog.com: "How do atheists express their love for the rest of humanity?" Answer: "You don't need religion to express love, you complete idiot. Why are all your questions so ignorant?" Genuinely warmhearted atheists exist, but warmheartedness is not the first descriptive quality that comes to mind. The more vocal ones betray themselves sooner or later: To reject God is almost always to despise people."

The above quotation reminds me of a past entry by Vox Day who related..

"The atheists with whom I do have a problem, and for whom I regularly demonstrate a great deal of contempt, are the liars, the cheats, the deceivers, and the malicious. If one genuinely believes that religion is a crutch for the weak and psychologically needed, what does it say about those who are so eager to kick that crutch out from under those who clearly need its support? And, as an armchair intellectual, I find their willful ignorance of history, religion, and philosophy to be as astonishing as it is irksome. Intelligent? I don't even consider them to be educated. To claim that religion either causes war or is an important strategic element of war is to be every bit as ignorant as the apocryphal Flat Earth proponents so often cited; the significant difference being that the Religion Causes War Society not only exists but is even willing to expound their ludicrous and historically illiterate arguments in public."

The Ongoing Gayification of Abraham Lincoln

Mark Judge has a fabulous article out today concerning the interesting choice for director of the upcoming Steven Spielberg movie about the 16th president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It seems Mr. Spielberg chose radical gay director Tony Kushner to direct the biopic and let's just say that Kushner's past dealings with supposed 'history' have been a bit slanted to say the least. For instance, Judge mentions that in Kushner's 1993 play Angels in America, he has the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg visit an elderly Roy Cohn on his deathbed and admonishing him, even though history bears out that she and her husband Julius had been truly guilty of espionage.

Judge surmizes what he expects the film to contain concerning Lincoln...

"Kushner, like most liberal fanatics, is a preacher and a zealot. His form of liberalism, like so much liberalism today, is coercive. He won’t be able to stop himself until he has Lincoln in bed with another man and is able to convince the audience that Lincoln’s marriage to Mary Todd Lincoln was a betrayal of his real self and a duet to the virtually Stone Age morality of the 1860s. It will be another version of the hetero-domestic hell of dippy women and screaming toddlers in “Brokeback Mountain.” There will be plenty of other ham-fisted political messaging. We’ll see the ghoulish, toothless redneck Southerners, who will be the Nazis of the film and the stand-ins for the modern GOP. There will be the saintly slaves, whose beatings and misery will be graphic and reinforce our guilt over Evil America. There will be breathtaking battle scenes thanks to Spielberg. And above it all, the first and greatest gay progressive to occupy the White House, Honest Abe."

Let's all hope judge is wrong on this one. However, given Kushner's past record of accomplishments, I'm not holding out much hope that Judge being incorrect will actually wind up being the case.

Is London tilting more Christian?

At least in this more secular part of Europe, there seems to be a trend to move back towards the Church...

"..slowly but surely, the St Mary’s congregation seems to be swelling. Over the last 12 months, attendance at the main Sunday service at the church (where my wife Martine is curate) has risen by nearly 20 per cent, from around 95 to 115. Though much of this is down to Harvey’s hard work and charisma, the growing popularity of St Mary’s is part of a much wider and very striking phenomenon.

Church attendances, in freefall for so long, have started to rise again, particularly in Britain’s capital city. Numbers on the electoral rolls are increasing by well over two per cent every year, while some churches have seen truly dramatic rises in numbers.

Change is afoot. For many years it was accepted that Christianity was all but dead, an anachronistic relic of the past whose foundations had been destroyed by modern science and rationalism, before being left behind by the cultural and sexual revolution of the Sixties. The figures seem to bear this out."

And thank goodness for that. Its sad that one of the premier nations in all of Christendom had to abandon the faith that sustained her for all those years only to begin realizing that secularism is so cold and empty and at least the Church offers hope.