“Western culture is not doing what will bring the wrath of God. Western culture is in the middle of the outpouring every day of the wrath of God.”

I’ve written reams on the issue of homosexual “marriage.” Check out the archives. In light of yesterday’s decision to nullify over seven million votes and declare California’s ban on homosexual “marriage” unconstitutional, I offer these:

• More on the Depravity of Western Culture
• The Amazing Hubris of the Ruling Class Judiciary

One thing has changed since I last blogged about this issue. I’m even more disgusted when people equate skin color with deviant sexual behavior, comparing the crusade for racial equality with trying to force people into accepting homosexual behavior as normal.

Considering that we’re all sinners, even us forgiven ones (including me), I offer you Romans 1: 18-21:

“Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

“For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.”

“Christian” Barack Obama believes the Christian worldview is inferior to the worldview he espoused in his recent Human Rights Campaign speech. The whole thing smells really bad, but I’ll post this excerpt: (emphasis added):

“My expectation is that when you look back on these years, you will see a time in which we put a stop to discrimination against gays and lesbians — whether in the office or on the battlefield. You will see a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women as just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman. You will see a nation that’s valuing and cherishing these families as we build a more perfect union — a union in which gay Americans are an important part. I am committed to these goals. And my administration will continue fighting to achieve them.”

“Gay Americans” who wish to be married have the same rights as the rest of us Americans. What they want, something I’ll always speak out against, is the right to render absurd the very idea of marriage, which is the God-ordained union of one man and one woman. They want to shift the very foundation of the nation in general and families in particular, and some have the shameless gall to equate sex between two men with blacks’ rights to equal treatment.

In a stunning display of irony, Obama signs off with this: “God bless you. God bless America.”

Got it, professing Christians who voted for this man? Obama asked God to bless that which God calls an abomination. To echo Dr. James White, Reformed Christian pastor, apologist, debater, author, webcaster, and blogger, Obama wants us to honor that which sent Christ to the cross. Christians cannot honor it.

I can’t post the video. To watch this “Christian” assuring those in rebellion against God that he hopes their rebellion will be glorified is stomach-churning. Watch at your own risk.

Dr. White offers a wonderfully edifying assessment of Obama’s speech. Download the 60-minute MP3. Follow him on Twitter at DrOakley1689.

In Newsweek? Probably.

Laugh at the “slippery slope” observations of those who oppose homosexual “marriage,” if you must, but I predict that within the next 10 years, a group of shameless tools will file suit claiming equal protection violations because they can’t legally “marry” as a threesome.

Ménage à Twits v. United States.

I’ll go a step farther and predict some shameless pervert will file suit because he can’t “marry” the underage object of his molestation.

Scoffing never hurt anybody. Failing to protect children from harm or provide a stable, mother-father home hurts too many.

Mock on…

Related post:

• Loving the Interracial Marriage Distinction

Heather Mac Donald hits another one out of the park with a parsing of a New York Times article about the “youth crisis” of rising murder rates among blacks. Nothing new. Young black men kill each other and will continue doing so, fueled by factors like fatherlessness and family instability.

Generally speaking, there’s no one around to teach them how to be decent men and take responsibility for themselves and offspring they produce. The women in the family can’t or apparently don’t want to socialize them with the expectation of getting married and making a home of their own for themselves and their wives and children. They don’t learn how to master their impulses or direct their natural aggression to productive pursuits. And on and on.

You know my views on the matter. If not, check the archives. Search “fatherless,” “fatherlessness,” and variations on the theme.

I wanted to point you to Mac Donald’s column. Her critiques are always devastating, from my perspective. Too bad she doesn’t pop up in mainstream publications more often. In her latest City Journal article, “The Times’s Crime Confusions Persist,” she advises President-elect Barack Obama to take a new approach to reducing crime rates. If your time is short today, don’t waste it reading this post. Go straight to the article.

Mac Donald points out something I’m sure a lot of people know: the disparity between white and black homicides (10-to-1) actually is greater than the numbers show. That’s because the government includes hispanics in the “white” crime perpetrator rate category. “Hispanic crime rates are between three and four times that of whites—meaning that if one excluded the Hispanic homicides from the white rate, the black-white differential would be even larger than ten to one,” she writes.

Curiously, hispanic victims of crime are broken out into a separate category. This tactic masks the real horror (substitute sadness, atrocity, whatever works for you) of violent crime among blacks (and hispanics). That’s the point, I suspect.

Mac Donald also gets to the root of the problem, one so many people tend to ignore or downplay: marriage. A stabilizing and civilizing influence on men and boys and the conduit through which values and valuable life/family lessons are passed down, marriage is a rarity among young blacks with children. They don’t even expect to be married. They have sex, make babies and excuses, and pass this sorry and disrespectful behavior on to their children.

But talking about it won’t change anything, It makes for interesting conversation, though. It’s like looking at a train about to wreck. Terrible. Awful. But what can you do to stop it? It’s going too fast, and it’s a lot bigger than you are.

Mac Donald writes:

“Liberal policymakers and pundits have spilled buckets of ink over the years promoting social-service programs as the solution to crime, yet—like the Times’s recent editorial—those opinion-setters cannot squeeze out one word about the most effective anticrime (and antipoverty) strategy: marriage. The marriage imperative civilizes boys. By contrast, in a world where it is unusual for a man to marry the mother of his children, boys fail to learn the most basic lesson of personal responsibility: you are responsible for your children. Freed of the social expectation that they will have to provide a stable home for their offspring, boys have little incentive to restrain their impulses and develop bourgeois habits. In 2005, the national black illegitimacy rate was 70 percent, and it approached 90 percent in many inner cities (compared with a white illegitimacy rate of 25 percent, and as low as 6 percent in some urban areas, like the District of Columbia). The disappearance of marriage from the black community is a social cataclysm.

“Some highly structured, values-based youth programs, like the Boy Scouts, can provide boys a surrogate for the paternal authority that they lack at home; society is right to support these lifelines. But they cannot possibly bring crime down significantly among blacks in the absence of a cultural shift toward marriage. True, no one knows yet how to revive marriage in the black community. But given the imperative of doing so, you would think that somewhere in the flood of recommendations for more useless government social programs, a little space could be reserved for promoting the idea of a marriage movement.”

Mac Donald has and isn’t afraid to use common sense and put her thoughts down on paper for public consumption. Obviously, being called a racist doesn’t intimidate her in the least. Courageous and honest people are needed in a crisis, people, and but too many of us are faint-hearted.

The standard liberal solution to society’s problems in general and social pathology among blacks in particular strays far away from confronting the individual. Well-intentioned but ultimately useless social programs funded by taxpayers make liberals feel like they’re doing something. The truth is, we’re just spinning our wheels like hamsters. The character of individuals, not so much the dynamics of the group, must change.

P.S.: Instead of sending “dissenting” e-mail to me or Heather Mac Donald, send it to the men doing the killing and the men and women dooming black babies to fatherless childhoods. They deserve your scorn. We don’t.

Update (12:12 p.m.): I’ve gotten e-mails, Facebook comments, and tweets about why I’ve closed comments on the blog. Life is just easier without them, and I can focus on other things during the day. When I get three comments on a long post, I spend too much time wondering why. When a post brings out the trolls, I kick myself for opening comments. (It is liberating to say what you’ve got to say “soapbox” style and not wonder about or even expect feedback.) But this topic is worth it, so I’ll open the post up for discussion.

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God, did you bring me all the way to California so I could join the front line of the battle to protect traditional marriage?

Wow. I might be on to something. I was seething last night when I read about a pro-homosexual “marriage” crowd blocking traffic in the Westwood area of Los Angeles near the Mormon temple. Allow me to digress for a moment. I’ve never blogged my view of Mormonism, but here goes: Mormonism is not historic Christianity. [The rest I deleted. Too distracting, and it belongs in a different post.]

With that out of the way, I wholly support Mormons’ decision to support Proposition 8, a measure that amends California’s constitution to define marriage as between only a man and a woman. I will defend and stand with Mormons on this issue.

Back to the point of the post. Last night my sister and I watched a live camera feed on CBS2 of a group of homosexual “marriage” supporters holding up traffic as they “protested” their way to the gate of the Mormon Temple. They claim Mormons spent millions on “deceptive” ads supporting Prop 8, which a spokesman denies. The man wasn’t denying that his church supported the measure. He said the church as an institution didn’t pay for any ads.

The details aren’t overly important. As I watched people blocking traffic, protesting for their so-called right to make a mockery of marriage, my mind flashed to that grainy black-and-white footage from the 1960s. You know what I’m talking about, right? Blacks were fighting to be treated as first class citizens – to be allowed to vote in peace, to sit wherever they wanted to sit on a bus or train, to live where they wanted to live, to take advantage of all the rights and protections everyone else enjoyed. Legal segregation and discrimination were so demeaning that people were willing to pay with their lives, so their children and grandchildren could be FREE.

And to think some homosexuals compare themselves to civil rights-era blacks! It burns me up, man. To calm myself down, I came up with this idea. Let homosexuals experience an authentic “civil rights movement” moment, complete with billy clubs upside the head, firehoses in the face, and attack dogs at the rear. I don’t condone violence for the sake of violence, but if these people want to co-opt a legitimate movement, they ought to experience it in full.

Let’s spit on them and shout nasty things as they march by. Let’s throw things and push and shove. Let’s pour stuff on their heads (the wrath of God?) and pelt them with rocks. Let’s run them off the road, pull them out of cars and do mock-lynchings to scare the…out of them.

But that would be ridiculous, just as ridiculous as homosexuals comparing their so-called plight to what black Americans went through.

As I’ve said before (and I’ll quote myself), homosexuals hear this:

“Two people, three people, four or more people of any sex can do whatever they want to do to each other. I don’t care! And no one is stopping you from marrying. You just can’t marry a person of the same sex. You also can’t marry your sister or your father or a minor or more than one person at a time. You have the same civil rights as the rest of us, but marriage is not a civil right. The civil rights movement was about giving blacks what had been withheld from them for a long time: the right to the same constitutional protections enjoyed by everyone else. Homosexuals, heterosexuals, asexuals, or whatever, are under those same protections. But what homosexuals want are special rights, one of which involves overhauling the institution of marriage. You have no civil right to do that.

Trying to turn your desire for acceptance into a right is clever. We’re big on rights in this country. In California, homosexuals can register as domestic partners, and they’ll have rights, protections, and benefits. But that’s not enough! People warned that once we relented on the domestic partnership issue, homosexuals would be clamoring for marriage. That’s exactly what they’re doing, and they’re willing to nullify the votes of millions of people to do it.

Here’s a slope slippery enough to sicken even the unreasonable: You know the old sayings…give a man a rope, and he wants to be a cowboy…Give them an inch, they take a yard? Just as allowing “civil unions” has given way to a demand for marriage, allowing marriage will give way to such horrors as men “marrying” boys. I can clearly see nutso parents consenting to allow their sons to “marry” some pervert. With homosexual marriage on one end and a lowered age of consent on the other, the kid wouldn’t even need his parents’ permission! Think I’m crazy? You better believe it can and will happen.

Isn’t it ironic that homosexuals, once rebels in a culture that shut them away in a closet, now want to encroach on heterosexuals and make a mockery of the institution of marriage? That’s revenge, my friends. It was nothing to do with so-called rights and “being with my partner forever” and “the right to love who I want to love” and the rest of that nonsense. They seek acceptance for something that appalls most people, something that God calls sin. If you think my opposing homosexual “marriage” means I hate homosexuals, you’re wrong. I hate the sin. I will never accept what is perverse in God’s eyes as normal, and I will continue to speak out against homosexual “marriage” and do what I can to prevent it.

You have to pick your battles in life. Where are my sword and shield?

Checking my Facebook e-mail today, I saw a “vote no on Prop 8″ ad. The measure, which appears on the California state ballot, would define marriage as between only a man and a woman. The irritants who created this ad used a picture of a black man at a “colored” water fountain from the 1950s or 1960s, similar to the one on the right.

Nothing gets me riled up quite like a homosexual, especially a white male, whining about his inability to legally “marry” another male and comparing himself to blacks who were forbidden to sip from “Whites Only” water fountains or made to go through back doors of business establishments like restaurants.

It makes me want to vomit, too.

Imagine traveling back in time and telling some of those church-going folks getting beat upside the head, sprayed with firehoses, attacked by dogs, drenched with soda and food at Woolworth’s during a sit-in demonstration, and called “Niggers” that they’re enduring all this nonsense so that one day, two men could make a mockery of marriage.

Give me a freakin’ break! Two people, three people, four or more people of any sex can do whatever they want to do to each other. I don’t care! And no one is stopping you from marrying. You just can’t marry a person of the same sex. You also can’t marry your sister or your father or a minor or more than one person at a time. You have the same civil rights as the rest of us, but marriage is not a civil right. The civil rights movement was about giving blacks what had been withheld from them for a long time: the right to the same constitutional protections enjoyed by everyone else. Homosexuals, heterosexuals, asexuals, or whatever, are under those same protections. But what homosexuals want are special rights, one of which involves overhauling the institution of marriage. You have no civil right to do that.

It’s maddening, not to mention insulting, when homosexuals co-opt the language and imagery from that turbulent era to push such an agenda. (I’m choosing my words carefully here.)

Lunch.

Marriage: Arizona, California, and Florida will have measures on the ballot to amend state constitutions to define marriage as between only one man and one woman.

Child Killing: Californians will vote on whether “doctors” should be required to notify a parent or guardian 48 hours before killing a minor’s unborn baby.

Colorado voters will weigh in on the Personhood Amendment, which would define “person…as any human being from the moment of fertilization.” Yes, life begins at conception. It’s a shame the issue is up for a vote, but there you go.

No matter what voters decide about the amendment, life still begins at conception.

In South Dakota, voters will choose whether the state may prohibit child killing except in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the mother’s health (which I believe is just a red herring). I don’t agree with such exceptions, as I’ve explained here. People call me an extremist, a label I wear with pride.

More at WORLD Magazine.

Related post:

• Sioux Falls Planned Parenthood Temporarily Shuts Down

By now I’m sure you know about the Connecticut Supreme Court’s Friday ruling. Four of seven judges said homosexuals have a “right” to marry. After being outlawed and stigmatized for thousands of years throughout most cultures and every major religion, sodomy has gone mainstream. An attempt to make respectable that which perverts God’s order of things…it’s a pity. But we are without excuse.

It’s like this: I tell you what God says about it. I pray for you. But I don’t care what consenting adults, homosexual or otherwise, do in private. I really don’t. I don’t want to know or have anything to do with your business. But I’m forced to know and to care, because certain people are pushing to redefine marriage in order to normalize what is abnormal and make acceptable what is abhorrent.

Did you know that in California, homosexuals can register as domestic partners and receive rights, protections, and benefits? But they want much more than mere rights, protections, and benefits. Homosexuals who want to “marry” in the traditional meaning of the word seek a societal stamp of approval. They want us to accept them as normal. They want “dignity” and “respect” for their unions.

At the same time, they want to shake up the foundation and build a new one. They want to strip us of our prerogative to make judgments. Anything we have to say contrary to what they desire is “bigoted” and “intolerant.” They are the only ones allowed to judge.

Not on my watch.

California’s a weird place. It’s a got a raging-liberal reputation, yet 61.4 percent of voters chose to ban homosexual “marriage” in 2000. In June, the California Supreme Court overturned that law 4-3. Four judges said the people’s will was nil. Consequently, over a million Californians signed a petition for Proposition 8, which defines marriage as between only a man and a woman. The measure will appear on the November 4 ballot.

I arrived in California too late to sign the petition, but I will be voting YES on Proposition 8.

Later…As expected, the ballot language presupposes that “same-sex” couples have a right to marry, which they do not:

ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME–SEX COUPLES TO MARRY.
INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t eliminate all instances of bias.

By the way, if you can’t afford a parochial school, homeschool your kids.

Update: Believers for Barack. I just don’t see it.
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On the morning of November 5, 2008, some of us will be disappointed and others pleased. I voted for the first time at age 25. I pulled the lever for Bill Clinton in 1992 and again in 1996. I escaped leftism and voted for George Bush in 2000 and again in 2004.

When it comes to presidential elections, I’ve always been on the winning side. I’ve never had the dreaded feeling of waking up the day after an election and being bitterly disappointed. I hope the streak continues.

(Click on the thumbnail to see larger map.)

I know I’ve said and written that it doesn’t matter to me who’s in the White House. Hey, frustration makes say such things. Of course it matters. America won’t fall apart if Barack Obama is elected president.

But it will become less like the place I know and love.

Pigs, Lipstick, and Illiterates

Despite the fact that election news is everywhere, you’ll notice I haven’t done a daily play-by-play of who said what to and about whom. I keep up with all of it, but I don’t blog about it. I don’t want to read one more retread news story that takes things out of context and quotes every little gaffe or dumb comment, so I certainly don’t want to blog about it.

I think the “lipstick on a pig” headlines and Barack Obama’s inane ad about John McCain being computer illiterate are ridiculous beyond reason. Serious discourse isn’t highly valued, at least not among mainstream media. Then again, the stakes are high, and both camps have hit below the belt. Sensationalism is what people want, but I’m not getting caught up.

If you check this blog every day or every week to find out what I have to say about this latest gaffe or that new ad, you’re probably disappointed. Don’t waste time dissecting every ad and news story and quote. Focus on the bigger picture: which presidential candidate is the best man to lead our country? I believe that for anyone calling himself a Christian and claims to uphold a biblical worldview, the choice is obvious.

A person’s morals and values should trump skin color and sex. I’m not impressed that a black man was nominated for president. I have never supported anyone for anything just because the person’s black or a woman. If this country never elects a black or female president in my lifetime, I won’t lose sleep over it. All I care about is what that person stands for.

As a Christian, I cannot ignore or discount a person’s views on issues I deeply care about. My faith in Christ lives within every thought and informs every decision. A candidate doesn’t have to be a Christian to get my vote, but he must strive to uphold traditional values.

Child Killing and Homosexual “Marriage”

I’m pretty much a two-trick pony. To get my vote, you must be pro-life and you must advocate protecting traditional marriage. Protecting unborn life and the institution upon which civilization depends is crucial.

People complain that politicians try to divide voters with “wedge” issues. It’s what they should do. Conservatives should magnify and reinforce so-called conservative values and expose liberalism for what it is. Opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage are huge components of conservatism. Use these issues to divide and conquer.

These days, McCain is calling himself pro-life. In fact, he’s spoken out quite strongly against infanticide, known euphemistically as partial birth abortion. McCain chastised Republicans in 2004 for voting for a federal amendment to ban homosexual “marriage” because he believes the issue should be left up to the states. In that regard, he supports California Proposition 8 (will appear on the November 4 ballot), which would define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Everything else for me is either a secondary issue or issues I know most Republican candidates support: smaller/limited government, strong national defense, stopping illegal “immigration,” dismantling government preferences based on race, etc.

Barack Obama is not pro-life and has no desire to protect traditional marriage. Sadly, too many Christians will end up voting for him because they hate Republicans, or want to see a black man in the White House, or believe women have a right to kill their babies, or don’t really care that homosexual activity is an abomination to God and “marriages” therein a mockery.

Supreme Court Justices

I wish there were someone other than McCain running on the Republican ticket, but he’s what we have. There’s a possibility in the next four years at least one Supreme Court justice will retire. Because justices have so much power, which they’ve improperly wielded at times (Roe v. Wade), it’s crucial that we elect a president who will appoint someone committed to exercising judicial restraint and applying original intent.

You know the kind of person/people Obama would appoint.

I’ve criticized McCain in the past. He’s not a strong conservative. But I believe getting him into the White House is extremely important if conservatives want to maintain even a slight majority on the court. Let me be up front: I hope I live to see the day when Roe v. Wade is overturned and states begin to severely restrict child killing or ban it outright.

Christians for Obama

Don’t allow a man’s skin color or your hatred for the other side to trump what you know to be right and true. John McCain is no saint (men who cheat on their wives enrage me), and I even question his faith. But his political stances are a better match for Bible-believing Christians. Barack Obama is to be admired for presumably being faithful to his wife, but what he stands for politically is the antithesis of a biblical worldview.

If you are a Christian and plan on voting for Barack Obama, perhaps you ought to take some time to re-evaluate what you believe and whether those beliefs are biblical. If you’re saved, you’re saved. Voting for Obama won’t condemn you to hell. But I urge you to pray about your choice and spend time re-reading the Bible as Election Day approaches.

If you believe marriage should be defined as between one man and one woman, you are divisive and discriminatory, said future President Barack Hussein Obama (Source).

But by his own logic, BHO’s also divisive and discriminatory, because he reportedly said he believes marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman. I don’t get it. Which is it, BHO?

There’s more. Once upon a time, BHO said the issue of homosexual “marriage” should be left to the states. The people should vote yay or nay. He’s apparently changed his mind. Now he believes homosexual “marriage” should be forced on the people by the courts.

You may recall that after the California Supreme Court overturned a law banning homosexual “marriage” last month, the people of California leapt into action, adding over one million signatures to a petition to put the question on the November ballot. Californians will get to decide whether homosexuals can “marry” in their state. But BHO cried foul.

“As the Democratic nominee for President, I am proud to join with and support the LGBT community in an effort to set our nation on a course that recognizes LGBT Americans with full equality under the law…And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states,” BHO wrote in a letter to Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club.

(As I’ve written many times on this blog, homosexuals have the same rights as the rest of us. What they want are superior rights. Subverting the will of the people is what liberals must do to push their agenda. It couldn’t work any other way.)

So many people are mesmerized by this “articulate” liberal who doesn’t like being called a liberal, despite doing and standing for liberal things. People who profess Christ are actually prepared to vote for this “Christian” who voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, a measure designed to protect babies born alive during abortions. He voted against it. In other words, BHO believes babies who managed to survive an abortion attempt should be left to die. Is that registering in your mesmerized brain? I doubt the religious sincerity of anyone calling himself a Christian who intends to vote for BHO knowing that he voted against this life-saving measure, and I’ll say it on the radio, on TV, and to your face.

Ever since I first heard the name “Barack Obama” back in 2004, I’ve been trying to figure out why people seem to be fascinated with him. Is he good looking? A matter of taste, but not according to mine. Perhaps his height is the key to his appeal. No? He wears nice suits. Maybe that’s it. Or perhaps people think he’s cool because he went to Harvard. No, I don’t think so. With race preference policies in place all over the place, getting into Harvard doesn’t have the same cachet.

So tell me, Christian readers, if you’re voting for BHO, why, for the love of God? Why are you voting for a “Christian” who believes unwanted-by-their-mothers infants should be left to die? I am pleading with you to give a biblically sound, coherent explanation. Inquiring hearts want to know.

Update: Commenter edub writes:

“You know Lashawn, a few years ago, I was so against EVERYTHING you wrote, however as I find my way back into the word of God, I begin to understand you more and more and so appreciate your logic and your words…You have no idea how happy I am that you are covering BO as you are one of the few people who refuses to bow down and worship him. I’ve been disturbed by BO for quite sometime and I don’t get the appeal either and I have yet to find an outlet to where I can express my concern.”

You can express yourself at LBC, edub. Thanks for reading.

***Scroll down for clarification***

Over the years, through what I’ve seen with my own eyes and heard from others, I’ve come to believe that deliberately depriving a child of a father is a form of child abuse.

That’s not a popular position to hold. What’s doubly sad is that criticizing people who deprive children this way is worse than actually depriving the children. Why? Please explain.

Losing a father through death is awful, but it’s not the same as losing him through divorce or being born into a fatherless home. In whichever case, a child will feel abandoned, but losing a father through divorce and being deprived of one from birth are deliberate acts of abandonment, worse than death in a sense. When a family loses a father through death, they keep his memory alive. His authority lingers. The children grow up knowing he loved them and their mother, made sacrifices for their well being, and did not walk out on them to pursue his own interests.

Three out of four black babies are born in the United States to women who aren’t married to the fathers. Fatherlessness leads to a multitude of problems, the worst of which is the repeated cycle of fatherlessness. You’ve read the studies. Even if you haven’t, you’ve seen firsthand the effects of fatherlessness on children, especially boys.

Despite what selfish and shameless adults think, children want fathers. They need fathers. They need masculine men in their lives who love them and would do anything to protect them, men who live with them, raise them, and sacrifice for them. Millions of children grow up without being loved or cared for by the men who sired them. It makes me angry, bitterly so.

I reviewed a book called Raising Boys without Men: How Maverick Moms are Creating the Next Generation of Exceptional Men, about lesbians and “single by choice” mothers raising boys. The author is a psychologist and married mother, and I don’t know what possessed her to write a book praising fatherless boys. The book got my blood boiling so much, I wanted to fling it across the room. Read the review.

Anyway, the point is this: No matter how much the author tried to tip-toe around it, the boys she wrote about wanted and needed masculine men in their lives. Fathers. Because the mothers weren’t with the men who impregnated them, they had to seek out inferior “father figures” for their sons.

And that leads me to what prompted this post. James White reminds us that things will get a lot worse before they get better. Society’s permissiveness and selfishness will only increase, and sacrificing for and doing what’s best for children will become relics of a bygone era. In response to an article about homosexual “marriage,” James writes:

“As I stared at the picture [of two 'married' women with a child between them] I could not help but see only one thing: the selfish, self-centered abuse of a beautiful little child by two people committed to the fulfillment of their own desires. I once again immediately thought of the comments of Rosie O’Donnell. She was asked about her ‘son,’ and she said he has asked about where his daddy is. O’Donnell’s response is the very essence of self-centeredness: ‘I tell him Mommy only likes other Mommies.’

“It is a measure of the decay of Western culture that self-deception is the activity of the day. We constantly cry, ‘for the children, for the children!’ while abusing them to no end in the service of ourselves. It is purposefully abusive of a child to consciously deny to them a mother and a father…A father is a man who heads the household and loves his wife as himself; a mother is a female who bears the children and nurtures them, honoring and loving her husband. These role models are never perfect even in the best situations, but the fact that there is failure in true marriage is no excuse for the creation of faux-marriages.”

As James alludes later in his post, perversity will become the norm, and anyone speaking out against it is viewed as the problem. No one wants to be reminded of his sin, so he tries to shut out and shut down criticism. On an individual level, that’s no threat. But when people organize as groups and push their debasement into government policy, that’s a BIG problem.

That’s why I speak out against homosexual “marriage” (and having babies out of wedlock) and will continue to do so, no matter what it costs me. It’s not just because it is a mockery of God’s intentions, it deprives children born into such unions the basic necessity of masculine and feminine love of a father and mother.

Freedom of speech will erode in this country, make no mistake about that. Merely expressing a Christian worldview is illegal in Canada. There is a deliberate effort on our own soil to silence those who call a thing by its name. What do you think so-called hate speech laws are about? So speak now, or forever hold your peace. The children need you.

Do you share my view that deliberately depriving a child of a father is a form of child abuse?

Update: Whenever you think something should go without saying, it’s wise to just go ahead and say it. I do not believe women should stay married to men who smack them around or sexually abuse the kids. This post expresses the general ideas that fatherlessness (through divorce or illegitimacy) harms children and that divorces are based on the selfishness of one or both spouses.

Related posts:

• Slackness
• Abandoned
• Black Marriage

Resources:

• Fathers for Life
• National Fatherhood Initiative
• Effects of Fatherlessness here and here
• Shameful stats from A Portrait of the Black Family 2007 (PDF – emphases added):
  

  • 70% of all black children are born out of wedlock.
  • 65% of never-married black women have children, double that for white women.
  • 22% of never-married black women with incomes over $75,000 have children, 10 times that of white women.
  • 62% of black families with children are headed by a single parent.
  • 85% of black children do not live in a home with their fathers.
  • Only 15-20% of black children born today will grow up with 2 parents until age 16.
  • Over 80% of long-term child poverty occurs in broken or never-married homes.
  • 70% of [black] boys in the criminal justice system come from single-parent homes.

I love this country. I really do. Love it. From a biblical perspective, I shouldn’t love it as much as I do.

You know why I love it? One of the reasons is because the Gospel of Jesus Christ is offensive, and this country gives me the right to “preach Christ crucified.”

Yes, the Gospel is offensive. I mean, telling people they’re straight up sinners with unclean hearts, giving them a “heads up” about being under God’s wrath, and claiming the only way to God is through Jesus Christ? He even said so himself. Talk about bold. What audacity.

The Gospel offends people who don’t believe these things. It’s funny, though, that some who claim not to believe in hell are offended when told they’re going to hell. Never figured that out. Anyway, in America, we have the freedom to offend. There is no freedom to not be offended. Suck it up, as they say.

Christian apologist, debater, pastor, author, blogger, and webcaster James White, a man whose faithful witness and defense of the faith has helped me grow in faith and understanding (he commented on LBC the other day – down, fangirl!), frequently blogs about the suppression of the Gospel in Canada. See Canada Joins those Nations that Prohibit Free Speech and Gospel Preaching.

This morning I read a New York Times article about this topic: American Exception: Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech. An excerpt:

“In the United States, that debate has been settled. Under the First Amendment, newspapers and magazines can say what they like about minorities and religions — even false, provocative or hateful things — without legal consequence… ‘In much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at one’s legal peril, one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic hatred at significant legal risk, and one urges discrimination against religious minorities under threat of fine or imprisonment…But in the United States, all such speech remains constitutionally protected.’”

For now. Even if someone’s expressed opinion “perpetuates and promotes prejudice toward Muslims and others,” the opinion, whether true or not, shouldn’t be suppressed. I think we all agree with that. I certainly wouldn’t want to silence Christian bashers. Truth is revealed, slowly sometimes, in the exchange. The free flow of ideas, even offensive ones, is vital.

Christians in America take this free flow for granted. Some folks thought I was crazy when I wrote in an opinion piece that hate crime laws are a “a slippery slope toward suppressing…the free exercise of religion,” and that one day very soon, preaching from certain passages of the Bible might fall under the definition of “hate speech.” It’s already happening in Canada. Why can’t it happen here? As I wrote in that column, if sharing the Gospel becomes a hate crime, just call me an outlaw.

Hey, if we don’t get a chance to talk again, have a cool weekend. Exercise your precious freedom of speech and start blogging!

Update II (6/4): This just in: “California’s highest court has refused to stay until after the November election its decision legalizing same-sex marriage in the state…Conservative religious and legal groups had asked the California Supreme Court to stop its order from becoming effective until voters have the chance to weigh in on the issue…An initiative that would amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage has qualified for the ballot. Its passage would overrule the court’s decision.” (Source)

Update (6/3 @ 11:35 a.m.): I knew that as a result of this court decision, concerned Californians were trying to get an initiative on the November ballot that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. One of those 1,120,801 signatures belongs to my sister. Way to go, S! I am pleased to report that the initiative will appear on the November ballot. Tip of the beach hat to Randy Thomas.

But Californians already spoke on this issue. In the case I blogged about below, the California Supreme Court overturned Proposition 22, passed in 2000 by 61.4 percent of voters. The people speak, and the court overturns. So the voters will speak again on this issue in November. Make no mistake: this is a war, folks. Round and round and round it goes.

——————————————————————————————————-

Didn’t expect to see a title like that, did you? Read on, read on!

Briefly…

Last month, the California Supreme Court overturned a law prohibiting homosexual “marriage” by a vote of 4 to 3. (Download the 172-page document in PDF) The court declared that homosexual couples have the same “fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship” as heterosexual couples. In California, marriage is considered a fundamental right. Make a mental note of that.

The court reasoned that the designation “domestic partnership,” with all the legal rights it entails, isn’t enough. Calling a heterosexual relationship “marriage” while calling a homosexual relationship a domestic partnership “poses at least a serious risk of denying the family relationship of same-sex couples such equal dignity and respect.”

The court contended that assigning the union of two men a different name than the union of a man and a woman “raises constitutional concerns not only under the state constitutional right to marry, but also under the state constitutional equal protection clause.” Make a mental note of that.

The court contended that “sexual orientation” is a suspect classification, therefore subject to review under a strict scrutiny standard. Under strict scrutiny, it’s almost impossible to justify any classification. For example, race is a suspect classification, and any law that treats people differently based on race will not hold up under review. The California Supreme Court has equated sexual perversion with race. Make a mental note of that.

Incestuous and Polygamous Marriages

As I read this opinion, I kept wondering when I’d run into the inevitable discussion about incest and polygamy. Those of us who oppose homosexual “marriage” often argue, with good reason, that allowing two men to “marry” opens the floodgate to allowing just about anyone to marry. I never found that discussion because there wasn’t one. Instead, there’s a footnote. A footnote. From page 79 (emphasis added):

“We emphasize that our conclusion that the constitutional right to marry properly must be interpreted to apply to gay individuals and gay couples does not mean that this constitutional right similarly must be understood to extend to polygamous or incestuous relationships. Past judicial decisions explain why our nation’s culture has considered the latter types of relationships inimical to the mutually supportive and healthy family relationships promoted by the constitutional right to marry.”

Wait a second. Our nation’s culture has also considered homosexual relationships “inimical to the mutually supportive and healthy family relationships promoted by the constitutional right to marry,” has it not? The footnote continues (emphasis added):

“Although the historic disparagement of and discrimination against gay individuals and gay couples clearly is no longer constitutionally permissible, the state continues to have a strong and adequate justification for refusing to officially sanction polygamous or incestuous relationships because of their potentially detrimental effect on a sound family environment.”

So, a cousin marriage, for instance, or one between a man and three women is “potentially detrimental” to a family, but the “marriage” between two men is not? How did the court reach this conclusion? Anyone’s guess. How does the court justify upholding discrimination against people who wish to enter into incestuous and polygamous marriages?

Implied argument: Well, because we say so.

As the minority noted, the bans against incestuous and polygamous marriages are “ancient and deeprooted,” and so is the ban against homosexual marriage. Why did the California Supreme Court overturn this prohibition but uphold the prohibition against incestuous and polygamous marriages? If the court overturned “the equally deeprooted assumption that marriage is a union of partners of the opposite sex” with this decision, as the minority contends, it can just as easily and without sound reasoning extend the “right to marry” to incestuous and polygamous couples, can’t it? Of course it can!

Talk about a protected class! Not only may homosexuals enter into legally recognized and protected partnerships in California, the California Supreme Court just said that calling these unions anything other than marriages may be unconstitutional!

Additionally, if a court can conclude that sexual orientation is a classification on the level of skin color, can’t it conclude that consanguinity, same-sex or otherwise, also is a suspect classification on the level of skin color and subject to strict scrutiny? Of course it can! How does the California Supreme Court justify upholding discrimination against people who wish to enter into incestuous and polygamous marriages?

Implied argument: Well, because we say so.

I hope you see the point I’m trying to make. Slopes can be slippery stuff.

The minority contends – and I agree – that the four judges simply inserted their own value systems into this decision and expanded the “right to marry” to homosexuals, against the will of the people. Nothing to see here but the same old unconstitutionally decided case.

(On a biblical note to Christians, this decision won’t bring God’s wrath; it is God’s wrath. Listen to James White’s There is No Such Thing as Homosexual Marriage.)

…compared to being slaughtered by a gang thug, that is.

Ever wonder why black folks are wasting time worrying about random nooses when hispanic gangs in Southern California are “systematically” targeting “innocent black civilians” because they’re black? (Source)

(See Media myths about the Jena Six)

As I’ve said time and time again on this blog, raising a ruckus over hispanic-on-black and black-on-black violence is not lucrative to the professional civil rights establishment, not soul-satisfying to blacks who see white racism in every corner, and not sexy enough for jaded liberal journalists to bother covering.

Those fools are too busy fixating on white-on-black violence, or even the mere suggestion of white-on-black violence, as relatively rare as it is.

Where are the Jacksons, Sharptons, and so-called black community leaders? NAACP (dig that splash page!), why the deafening silence? Hey, black readers who send me hate e-mail, are you trying to track down e-mail addresses for these hispanic thugs so you can bravely tell them a thing or two? Are you organizing a protest or a campaign to raise awareness about what’s happening in LA? Those thugs deserve your hate more than I do. But I understand why you won’t. It’s a lot safer and more soul-satisfying to send nasty missives to a blogger, especially one who won’t kill you.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that hispanic gangs are also marking rival black gang members for death. Frankly, I don’t give a darn if thugs kill each other. Do you? Good riddance, I say. Does that make me insensitive? Un-Christian? Whatever.

Pardon the interruption. You may resume your regularly scheduled noose whining…

(Photo credit: Zone Zero)

Related posts:

• Hispanic-on-Black Violence: Protestors, Where Are You?
• Black and Hispanic “Hate” in LA County
• Hispanic Gang in “All-America City” Targets Blacks
• Feds Didn’t Know About Thuggish Illegal Alien
• Efforts to Combat Hispanic Gang Thuggery Go International
• Jaded Journalists Spice Up Black-on-White Rape Story