…and do it a number of times before uttering your views on any of the following: race, sexual orientation, religion, disability status, and transgender identity! Below is an official summary of the our government’s good intentions from the Equality and Human Rights commission.
As Britain’s national equality body, our work is driven by a simple belief: if everyone gets a fair chance in life, we all thrive.
That statement is a myth and its enforcement leads to absurdities and injustices. There was in the past another prescription given for a good and fair society, it goes something like this:
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”
Equality is a myth in human society, and Jesus whose quote is above, understood it very well. There will always be the haves and the have not’s, and there were many factors which determined who fell into which category. The rich were supposed to care for the poor and not centre their lives on feathering their nests. They were to ensure that justice was upheld regardless of a persons position in society. The advantaged were to help the disadvantaged, and there was a hope set before the poor: a kingdom to come. We have largely lost sight of and faith in that consoling vision. A place where there would be no injustice, no tears, no suffering; but this paradise would never be found or established on earth. A true and lasting utopia would never arise through legislation or social gerrymandering or even good intentions, because systems ordering society at the micro level always ends badly, with its objectives enforced by bureaucracies exercising penal consequences to maximum effect: which is exactly what is happening. When it comes to real social justice, all that can be done is establish a rough guide when it comes to equalising the inherent advantages given by nature or genetics to the strong; the practical, the conscientious, the intelligent, the healthy and the talented. Before any of these advantages are seen or established in the new born, the fact is that given normal circumstances these will flourish both in childhood and adulthood. The truth is that whatever commandment is set, whether it be an individual’s decision, a government decree or those written on tablets of stone by God, we humans will find ways of circumventing their effects. The only way to put into full effect the objectives of the Equality and Human Rights Commission is through enforcement; hence hate crime legislation. This is true in many areas where very different worldviews collide. The management of these difficulties have historically formed the basis of a free society. Speech must be freely spoken in the public arena without fear of police action, unless it is so inflammatory it endangers the stability of a society.
Britain had a proud heritage of managing these pressures, while only rarely invoking the police or the law. Give and take and speak your mind were once an admired characteristic of our union of nations. As was a sense of humour and a sense of proportion. No-one in my experience of growing up ever sieved through a remark made by someone else, however demeaning or insulting for any signs of a hate crime. You toughened up and learned from the playground experience up, that bearing the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune was a great way to grow up. The wounds, both physical and mental picked up on the way could be worked through, and would in time build what was once described as, character. The very opposite of the Snowflake generation, who seem to require nursing through life on a feathered rug of affirmation and the avoidance of anything that was challenging: such as an opposing opinion. Sadly the status of self perceived victim has risen from the bottom to the top of the pile. Which is why so many pressure groups have presented themselves as victimised and applied for special status and protection.
Police action and being taken to court was normally a last and not an immediate resort to any perceived slur. Opinions and convictions were argued out both in private and in public without having recourse to law courts. That was our way, and it was admired. What has replaced that old fashioned debating style which has become close to outlawed, is a mean spirited, knit picking, overbearing authoritarian nanny state with penal consequences. Hate crime potential hovers in the air like an unseen drone picking up the tiniest infringement, elevating it into a thoroughly threatening device which makes us all think twice and thrice about making our opinion heard. Hate crime has put the power in the hands of the self proclaimed victim. I have been upset. I have been more than upset, I feel victimised, my very identity threatened. I will make you a pariah and see you in court. The motives and attitudes of the accuser in a hate crime seem not to be questioned. The real hate crime may well reside in the heart, manner and attitude of the accuser. But these are not questioned as to any hidden hatreds for those they may accuse. As the police’s hate crime operational guidance makes clear: ‘Evidence of… hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate incident… the victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief’
The victim’s word is accepted as gospel. How do you become a victim? By feeling like one, by interpreting a remark as malicious or derogatory of your identified group. You cannot defend yourself against another person’s interpretation of your body language, your manner or your words. A Feminist, heavily laden with shopping bags may hate a man who offers her a seat on a crowded train and accuse him of demeaning her sense of herself or sexuality. That in his mind the accused was trying to be kind and considerate may well prove an insufficient defence.To repeat and underline the above; ‘Evidence of… hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate incident… the victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief.’
It is sometimes the role of the state to punish people for what they do to other people or to property, but it should never be the role of the state to punish for what a person may think. We can all agree that many beliefs are false, foul or depraved, but so what? A million people may have between them a hundred thousand different beliefs. Can the State decide and judge between them as to what status should be accorded each one? Is Christ true God and Allah an invention? Maybe one day the State, which is turning against its historic faith will favour the newcomer. The legal protections are piling up in favour of Islam, so who knows? The modern State has become a welcoming filter which channels the best interests of extreme pressure groups promoting the causes of climate change warriors, to LGBT activists, from feminists, to apologists for the protected status of Islam. While those are advanced others are eroded. An ideology once implanted into the state machinery will continue to grind inexorably onwards. It sees a piece of untilled land and wants nothing less than to carve a deep furrow across it, which is why the Law Commission is exploring the possibility of going further. Making misogyny, misandry and even hatred for groups like goths and punks into aggravating factors that can make a crime a hate crime and lead to tougher penalties. This is wrong!
How did we get here? Hate crime is extending into Orwellian thought crime. Hate crime brings in belief-policing by the backdoor. Thought crime should terrify anyone who thinks about it, because with it comes a shadow of things to come that have been seen and experienced before in totalitarian regimes. Dictatorships are not a remote possibility, when you see the first signs of thought crime watch out: a Stalin or a Hitler or a Mao Tse Tung may be waiting in the wings. These things happen when our institutions, hierarchies, bureaucracies etc take powers to themselves which cause every tier of oversight and governance to become corrupt and ultimately self serving. At that point Christian values, like loving your neighbour as you love yourself, and forgiving your enemies, and doing good to those who use you badly are abandoned in favour of rigid laws aimed at designated targets.
Isaiah 59 v 14
“So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, and honesty cannot enter.”
We have been fed a diet of myths concerning nature and its wonders for so long we have developed a taste for them. We gobble them up and fail to spit them out. Life from non life, humankind from bacteria, over billions of years, I must not miss that caveat, since the premise is that time, if sufficient, can achieve almost anything. Richard Dawkins in his book The Greatest Show on Earth spends chapter after chapter promising to explain evolution in all its glory until finally, you get to the Great Reveal, The answer is TIme! Loads of it ! If you want to add the cautionary note, that time without a plan or an idea or an end in view might get nowhere fast, then prepare yourself for derision. In the Dawkins world time is a creator. A benefactor, whereas to most of us, while being a wondrous thing which generates experiences, and gives space for creative works, to produce children, technologies and all manner of other things, there remains a problem. It has a limited span, a lifetime; which is why scientists talk about the ultimate end of the universe. As a physical object powered by energy it must end. Its size is no protection from this inexorable process. Energy is finite and ultimately its capacity to build systems will fail. The final words of its last coherent gasp will be: breakdown, decay and death.
Thermodynamics concerns heat and energy and how it moves around within any given system: an atom, an engine or our galaxy. The first law of thermodynamics describes how energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transformed from one kind to another. The second law is about breakdown and degeneration and decay. I once had a healthy body. I am now 75 years old and have cancer. My body is subject to this second law, and I am not an isolated case. This second law tells us all we do is inherently wasteful, unless of course you have a faith life, in which case it may, following death, take part in the most exciting journey imaginable. There are irreversible processes in the universe at work right now which will eventually bring all things to an end. If you are an atheist, our universe along with all purpose and meaning, has just one inescapably bleak and desolate future: memory loss and extinction!
But back to the vision of nature’s diversity; from its finely tuned laws of physics and chemistry to other incomparable wonders: metamorphosis, the leaping gazelle, the humming bird, bioluminescence, sexual reproduction and photosynthesis to name just a few. According to Dawkins and his cohorts all of which just happened, and without a hint of a plan or an idea.
Here is profound remark. Carl Sagan said: “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
And he was quite right. A universe, its laws, a planet like earth with its unique atmosphere allowing air and colour and life needed to be all in place before your grandmother could bake her famous apple tart. Sagan was an atheist, I am not. He believed everything he saw and appreciated arose from thoughtless atoms without a Creator’s impulse or signature. I believe the reverse to be true. So here is my pitch; without an idea, a plan capable of almost infinite development and the raw materials out of which each creation can be made already in place, plus an Eco system able to support the entire height, width and breadth of it all, then creation is nothing less than a vast multivarigated miracle. And miracles belong in the realm of an Almighty Creator God, not in the world of chance and lucky breaks. To incorporate an atheistic, so called rational view, science in the West has had to unhinge itself from its well established theistic roots. Virtually all the Father’s of modern scientific disciplines were bible believing Christians, not materialists like Dawkins, Hubble, and Hawking. So the question did creation have an apple pie in mind is the great one which deserves an answer. A scientist not so very far behind Sagan regards fame in the world of cosmology, and who provides a voice and reputation of high repute in the scientific world is George Ellis. He has made it very plain that before the universe ever existed there has to be something he calls a “possibility space”. This must as a matter of necessity, not choice, incorporate mathematics, fractals, the laws with uphold physics and chemistry, thought, and therefore mind, and even ethics: a sense of right and wrong. George Ellis is a South African theoretical physicist who is considered to be a world leader in relativity and cosmology. The book he co-wrote with Stephen Hawking, The Large Scale Structure of Space–Time examined general relativity theory that was first investigated by Einstein. He pioneered a study to classify anisotropic solutions of Einstein’s equations, and formalised the analysis of observables in cosmology. He will not admit a Creator God, even though he does come close on occasions.
Take that Creator God out, and you are stuck with stories like this; whales were not created, they evolved from a land based mammal over a very long period of time. This theory is based on unproveable assumptions and pseudo science. In fact thoroughly deceitful science; that is if the two videos below represent the true facts. As both scientists interviewed admit to camera that their work includes some aspects of make believe and extrapolation, this seems to be verified. Evolutionary apologists have little compunction beginning with statements of fact before delivering these “facts” to the public as breakthroughs in scientific knowledge through the medium of museums, scientific publications and the media. When later falsified nothing is said, no apologies and no rectifications. Consequently false information remains around for decades, maybe centuries in some cases, deceiving the credulous and the unwary. Whale evolution is one of the best examples of a belief system that in my view simply beggars belief, whatever criteria you use as a measuring stick. How a did a dog like creature became a whale?
There are candidates proposed for the changes required; for example fossils that could illustrate a land dwelling mammal evolving into a whale. Search the internet for whale evolution and images and you will see the illusion coming to life. Pakicetus is an early example. A doglike, possibly marsh living mammal found in freshwater deposits.. But it had no specialisations of the inner ear for underwater hearing, proving beyond reasonable doubt that it was far removed from any salt water aquatic transition.
‘Pakicetus looked very different from modern cetaceans, and its body shape more resembled those of land-dwelling hoofed mammals. Unlike all later cetaceans ( a marine mammal of the order Cetacea: a whale, dolphin, or porpoise ) Pakicetus had four fully functional long legs, a long snout; a typical complement of teeth that included incisors, canines, premolars, and molars; a distinct and flexible neck; and a very long and robust tail. As in most land mammals, the nose was at the tip of the snout.’
Wikipedia
Further along the supposed evolutionary line from land based mammals to whales there appears another creature, this time, or at least for a time, believed to be a fully qualified sea creature named Rodhocetus. The video below should deflate any expectations or indeed trust in what you will see and read in the evolutionary textbooks or look up online.
Here is a video about the Walking Whale, named Ambulocetus. A whale blowhole is illustrated but its existence is unproved, and its appearance therefore something close to fraudulent. There is nothing to indicate this creature actually had a blowhole beyond the desire to find a fossil that could tick this box. Altogether there is a fine collection of missing parts: flippers, blowholes and flukes. But who cares when an artist or sculptor can fill the voids.
A final word on the subject. Whales are creatures of the open ocean; they feed, mate, give birth, suckle and raise their young at sea. So extreme is their adaptation to life underwater that they are unable to survive on land. Many changes would have been necessary to convert a land-mammal into a whale, including the emergence of a blowhole, with musculature and nerve control, modification of the eye for permanent underwater vision, the ability to drink sea water, forelimbs transformed into flippers, modification of the skeletal structure, the ability to nurse young underwater, the origin of tail flukes and musculature and the blubber for temperature insulation. A truly staggering transformation whatever the timescale. The chances of surviving any of these changes while continuing to successfully locate and mate with an equally adapted partner, reproduce, nurture whatever kind of offspring was possible, hunt, feed and drink is beyond calculation. To conclude a real connection between creatures so far removed from one another by incremental evolutionary steps by cutting and pasting possible fossils intermediates into the story-line is hard to imagine, even after a long day spent on hallucinatory drugs.
The realm of the extreme left and the scars it has engraved into history is all but ignored by documentary makers, the media in general and in the education system. The hard right is a constant theme and rightly red-flagged as a real and present danger to the West. But so is one of equal malignancy on the extreme left, one which still exists and poses a threat to our way of life. It produced something very different to anything which had preceded it: Communism. The masterpiece of the nineteenth century thinkers, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. And despite its history about which it is difficult to find anything to admire, it remains a very modern, up to date and future blight on peace in the West.
Communism and its history gets very little coverage, but its aims and ambitions were well understood during the cold war, but perhaps forgotten by most today. However it is well remembered by those of us who lived through the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties. Who watched from a safe distance the courageous struggle to escape its grip by nations seeking to break the rule imposed by Communist Russia. Leaders like Lech Wałęsa, a retired Polish political leader, pro-democracy activist and union organiser. An electrician by trade, he was a leading dissident in the Polish People’s Republic and became the leader of Solidarity, an independent trade union and freedom-oriented social movement, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. He led a successful nonviolent struggle which eventually brought the end to communism in Europe. He later served as the first democratically elected President of Poland from 1990 to 1995. Other movements of dissent were crushed. On August 21, 1968 the citizens of Czechoslovakia woke to learn that their country had overnight been invaded by Soviet led troops, deployed to crush the Prague Spring reform movement: the invasion began a two-decade long occupation.
All of this history is largely forgotten, unrecorded or just never known. This maybe because intellectuals of the West, largely left leaning in their views, tend to want to excuse the excesses of the extreme Left. Those of the Far right, especially that of Hitler and the Nazis are relayed on documentaries as if on permanent loop system, taught in schools and colleges as if this was the one and only major source of evil to have scarred the face of modern times. Far Right evil spotlit, far left given far less attention. Ask our youth or almost anyone about 6 million deaths and they will all point to the terrors and concentration camps built by the Nazis whose primary purpose was the extermination by genocide of undefended innocents, sheep for the slaughter: the Jews.
But there is another story, by awful coincidence also of six million innocents. The deaths of peasants and farm workers in Ukraine by Stalin in 1932 / 33. And yet scarcely anyone knows anything about this mass kill. The Terror-Famine and Famine-Genocide or the Ukrainian Genocide was part of the wider Soviet famine which affected the major grain-producing areas of the country. Millions of inhabitants of Ukraine, the majority of whom were ethnic Ukrainians. Since 2006, this death by starvation has been recognized by Ukraine and 15 other countries as a genocide of the Ukrainian people carried out by the Soviet government under the rule and orders of Stalin. During the Russian revolution, the label of kulak was used as an epithet for any peasant who resisted handing over his grain to requisitions from the Bolshevik / Stalinist government. During 1929–1933, Joseph Stalin‘s all-out campaign to collectivise the peasantry meant that “peasants with a couple of cows or five or six acres more than their neighbours” were labelled kulaks. That label was as good as a death sentence. Stalin’s policy targeted these farmers who were the most efficient and productive in the Ukraine.Under the dekulakization policy, government officials violently seized kulak farms and killed those who resisted and deported these to labour camps in Siberia. According to the political theory of Marxism–Leninism of the early 20th century, the kulaks were class enemies of the poorer peasants. Vladimir Lenin described them as “bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten on famine”, and he proclaimed the revolution against such class enemies to liberate poor peasants and farm labourers as well as the proletariat: the much smaller class of urban and industrial workers.
There are many good reasons why the Holocaust dominates any other tragedy, and it should, being the greatest crime against humanity ever envisaged, and one carried out with a savagery that is unequalled. But this famine is at least comparable and of interest for this reason. Why is one long and appalling stain on mankind well remembered and the other scarce known about? The answer may well be that the Right when it becomes maddened by an insane, politically, racially, ethnically motivated hatred is thought to be one thing, a horror never to be forgotten, while those atrocities enacted by the Left are buried and allowed to be forgotten. How? By failing to teach recent history. Why? Is it because the media and our intelligentsia is to a great extent protective of and approving of the Left to such an extent that blame is shifted and in part excused. Has it occurred to you that this memory loss and its failure to be flagged up as the product of the extreme left is caused not by good intentions, but rather the instinct to deceive and whitewash history relevant to the rise of the extreme political left. The question is, do we notice, does the lopsided nature of what is reported and what is not matter, and do we care?
Signs of the extreme left are not difficult to discern, not even in the good old safe haven of the UK. The extreme socialist pressure group Momentum has this to say about itself.
‘Momentum is a people-powered, grassroots movement working to transform Britain in the interests of the many, not the few. Together, we’re campaigning locally and nationally to build power in our communities, strengthen our rights at work and elect a socialist Labour government.’
The Interests of Many Not the Few is a Labour Party slogan. It could equally well have been a Stalinist slogan during the purge of the Kulaks and the wreckage of an economy, The Ukraine before Stalin’s Terror was the bread basket of much of Eastern Europe.
Momentum is the power base which holds Jeremy Corbyn in place as leader of the Labour Party. He and they are Communist / Marxist / in their thinking. And where their thinking goes, so will their actions should they find themselves holding the levers of power. At Corbyn’s side is his equally leftist and Stalinist colleague, John McDonnell. The Labour Party is in my view mostly filled by members of Parliament who are decent, moderate men and women wanting to serve the best interests of the country and their constituents. They hold a thin line, and on them may depend how the future of our country works out. If you look at the history of extreme left wing activists when in power, then fear and anxiety are natural responses. This history is not difficult to uncover, but for some reason the media in this country seem reluctant to open up this particular can of worms. Just check out the counties that have fallen under a Soviet type of government. China under Mao, Russia and its empire under the influences of Marx, Lenin. Trotsky and Stalin and all those lesser monsters up to and including Putin. Then there is Cambodia under Pol Pot. Cuba under Castro and North Korea under Kim Jong-un; a country in which some 120,000 people are believed to be imprisoned without due process for political reasons, according to the US-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.
Finally, Venezuela is a current regime in the news under leadership disputed between Juan Guaido and Nicolás Maduro. Here is a report on this country, one admired and supported by Jeremy Corbyn. In the statement below, the organisations involved detail why a UN Commission of Inquiry is the best answer the international community can offer to victims of Venezuela’s spiralling human rights and humanitarian emergency:
“A UN Commission of Inquiry would play a crucial role in addressing the rights to justice, truth and reparation for victims of rights abuses in Venezuela, advancing accountability, and encouraging rights-respecting policies. Such an effort could have an important deterrent effect to prevent additional serious human rights violations and possible mass atrocity crimes during the country’s ongoing crisis”.
That is Corbyn’s example of a Socialist State he admires. But this is nothing in comparison to a really big example, such as that illustrated by the mother of all evils; the rise of the Soviet Union and the teachings of Communism.
Left-wing activists and apologists have a great influence throughout the media and they seem to near inhabit the humanities curriculum in the universities. They hammer a message which warns against the rise of the Far Right. The noise of the Left Wing cabals that largely run our media and lecture our sons and daughters in universities ensure that such warnings as I give are dumped in an incinerator; labelled as far right fantasies. They drown out the few respected voices who do warn us. People like Jordan Peterson, Andrew Murray, Roger Scruton and others, but they are few and far between.This threat is never far away because ideologies do not easily give ground . When forced to, they tend to rise again under a new form: post modernism is one candidate you might like to investigate. If you wonder what is happening to our society you might chance peering under this stone. The video below is a harrowing example of Communism when applied without restraint, as it was under the rule of the dictator Joseph Stalin.
This is a warning to us from the twentieth century. All free peoples should know about, if they did we might value our freedoms more and watch carefully for any indications that these freedoms are coming under threat. Why we do not seem much concerned by the rise in State control of our rights and freedoms is a question worth asking? Communism when seen in the light of history and when implemented without restrain by an ideologue is a death cult. It twists and perverts every human good into evil. The toll? Up to sixty million died in the Soviet Union. Well over a hundred million in China and around six million in Cambodia. The other lesser examples are well established basket cases, there are no cases of Communism enacted in the real world that has not been an example of the worst way imaginable to organise and govern a country. And the UK has never been closer to such a government taking power. The rhetoric will sound progressive, look after the left behind, the poor and the disadvantaged. Government for the many, not the few. The few will be persecuted, and it will not just be the great financiers and investors and the filthy rich and those who have misused power, it could you or me or anyone who stands in the way.
The slogan on the picture above is untrue. It is not all about love, there is much more to it than that. Gay Pride is the noisy, colourful, brazen sharpened edge of a movement to turn a once stable society into something unrecognisable to previous generations. A society in which science and biology are removed from the investigation of what seems to me a crime against humanity; one which sets itself up as an icon of modernity and enlightenment. Offering a tainted choice of lifestyle which cause mutilations of the human body of such gravity, they would be serious crimes in any other context. Transgendering is a medical process which leads to infertility. Those who have chosen this path can form families in many ways, including via donor sperm / eggs, foster care, or adoption. But transgender people who undergo surgical transition can end up infertile. This is often irreversible, depending on the medical processes undertaken. That unhappiness caused by feelings of living in the wrong body is real and deserves sympathy and help is obviously true. There is no doubt about that, but is this confusion a matter caused primarily by disturbances in the mind? Is it psychological?
Dr. Joseph Berger, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada has stated that from “a scientific perspective,” being “transgendered” is a psychological issue, “emotional unhappiness”and “cosmetic surgery” is not the “proper treatment. These were the headline quotes from a statement made before the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. This committee was considering Bill C-279 which was proposing to “include gender identity as a prohibited ground of discrimination.”
On June 15, 2017, the Transgender Rights Bill C-16 passed the third reading in the Senate of Canada, with a 67-11 vote. It certainly defends Transgender rights, making objecting to the transgender ideology a potential hate crime. The proposed legislation prohibits discrimination against the transgendered. In the bill Gender Identity is defined as “the individual’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex that the individual was assigned at birth. The Canadian Human Rights Act protects people in Canada from discrimination when they are employed by or receive services from the federal government, First Nations governments or private companies that are regulated by the federal government such as banks, trucking companies, broadcasters and telecommunications companies. In amending the Act, the Gender Identity Bill would affect all of these industries, in that they would be explicitly prohibited from discriminating against trans people, as well as bear an obligation to proactively ensure that trans people are treated equally. This is the same obligation that such entities already bear based on similar grounds as race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, etc. The Gender Identity Bill would also amend the hate propaganda and hate crime sentencing provisions of the Criminal Code. That last provision means when there is evidence that a crime was motivated by bias, prejudice or hatred based on gender identity, a judge would be required to increase the sentence for the crime to account for this aggravating factor. Another form of discrimination against those that oppose a bill which enforces a doctrine known to be without a shred of actual evidence. Proposing that our sexual identity can be just changed at will, one way or the other on one day and reversed on another. Something known to be false according to the only accurate measures: genetics, biology, and all previous human experience.
During the prior consultation period Dr Berger made the following statement to the Canadian House of Commons in 2013. It obviously went down badly since it was ignored. An example of how expert evidence is always trumped by an ideology.
‘It appears to me that this bill requests that some special allowances or attitudes or possibly even ‘rights’ be given to people who identify themselves as being ‘transgendered’. From a scientific perspective, let me clarify what ‘transgendered’ actually means. I am speaking now about the scientific perspective – and not any political lobbying position that may be proposed by any group, medical or non-medical. ‘Transgendered’ are people who claim that they really are or wish to be people of the sex opposite to which they were born as, or to which their chromosomal configuration attests. Sometimes, some of these people have claimed that they are ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ or alternatively ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’. Scientifically, there is no such a thing. Therefore anyone who actually truly believes that notion, is by definition deluded, psychotic. The medical treatment of delusions or psychosis is not by surgery. On the other hand, if these people are asked to clarify exactly what they believe, that is to say do they truly believe whichever of those above propositions applies to them and they say ‘no’, they know that such a proposition is not true, but that they ‘feel’ it, then what we are talking about scientifically, is just unhappiness, and that unhappiness is being accompanied by a wish – that leads some people into taking hormones that predominate in the other sex, and even having cosmetic surgery designed to make them ‘appear’ as if they are a person of the opposite sex. The proper treatment of emotional unhappiness is not surgery. Cosmetic surgery will not change the chromosomes of a human being. Cosmetic surgery will not make a man become a woman, capable of menstruating, ovulating, and having children. Cosmetic surgery will not make a woman into a man, capable of generating sperm that can unite with an egg or ovum from a woman and fertilise that egg to produce a human child. These are the scientific facts. There seems to me to be no medical or scientific reason to grant any special rights or considerations to people who are unhappy with the sex they were born into, or to people who wish to dress in the clothes of the opposite sex – which I believe is not illegal. I have read the brief put forward by those advocating special rights, and I find nothing of scientific value in it. Words and phrases are used that have no objective scientific basis such as “the inner space”.
The committee examining these proposals should be aware that there are indeed some quite rare examples where the sex of a baby at birth is uncertain. Two particular conditions are well recognized. One is where the child is a boy, but the testes have not descended into the testicular sac, but remain somewhere ‘stuck’ in the abdomen. The other well-recognized condition is where the child is a girl, but because of some abnormal hormonal levels as the baby was growing in the mother’s uterus, the clitoris of the baby girl is unusually large, and might at first be mistaken for a penis. Both these conditions are now diagnosed earlier, chromosome testing to confirm the genetic sex is widely available. They should not nowadays lead to any confusion about the real sex of the baby. Other than these and possibly even rarer abnormalities, the so-called ‘confusion’ about their sexuality that a teenager or adult has is purely psychological. As a psychiatrist, I see no reason for people who identify themselves in these ways to have any rights or privileges different from everyone else in Canada.’
Dr Joseph Berger is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Examiner from 1977-2005 for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in the Board Examinations to become a Board Certified Psychiatrist. Past Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. University of Toronto. Past President. Ontario District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association. Representative for Ontario 2002-2010 to the Assembly (parliament) of the American Psychiatric Association. Distinguished Life Fellow, American Psychiatric Association. Author and Presenter, numerous medical and academic Papers at Conferences, Seminars, and in Medical Journals.
Love does not mean taking a permissive view on all things that now appear under the heading Love. It must have boundaries otherwise all sorts of expressions from sado-masochism to engaging sexually with multiple partners without a thought of commitment falls into what was once a well understood concept, love has rules which if broken breaks relationships, and on the large scale can poison entire societies. The breaking of these boundaries and abandoning any sense of order and restraint is leaving society in a state of bewildering chaos. Children who have little idea of a stable relationship, unsure who their biological parents are, with rising levels of anxiety disorders, health issues and suicides. Loosening the moral order has had catastrophic results which are going to greatly increase when the current generation of our youth begin to have children of their own. These topics are discussed below by a mother speaking about her experiences of loving her daughter through the transgender process. Her grief is apparent throughout. Emotional unhappiness is not confined to a person undergoing the process of transgendering, other members of a family may be hurt, confused and reduced to a state of mental and physical distress of a type hard to comprehend and from which they may never recover.
Take the bible literally and all forms of life are believed to have been created around 6 thousand years ago. Evolutionary dating puts simple life as beginning around 3.5 billion years ago. Dinosaurs 240 million years ago. Can the biblical accounts in Genesis be made to fit? It has been tried, it’s called theistic evolution and is very popular in many churches, but it’s like getting an ugly sisters foot into Cinderella’s slipper. It bursts the seams of biblical history, ruins something beautiful and leaves it in tatters and unusable. Theistic evolution is the idea that God started or directed evolutionary processes. Dinosaurs are an icon and confirmation of evolution. They are the set in stone proof of the theory of millions of years.
According to the well-respected evolutionist and scientist: Douglas Futuyma there are only two possible options regarding the Creation.
Quote: “Creation and evolution, between them, exhaust the possible explanations for the origin of living things. Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from pre-existing species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must have been created by some omnipotent intelligence.”
D.J. Futuyma, Science on Trial.
So if we search written history, what do we find?
SEA SERPENTS!
Declassified files recently released from the National Archives indicate that huge sea serpents were a fact of life for mariners. This account is taken from a captain of the Royal Navy. It.is in no sense legendary and comes from the 19th century. This sea-serpent was seen close to the island of St Helena on May 9, 1830 by the crew of the Rob Roy. Its captain, James Stockdale recorded the encounter in his official log.
“About five p.m. all at once while I was walking on the poop my attention was drawn to the water on the port bow by a scuffling noise. Likewise all the watch on deck were drawn to it. Judge my amazement when what should stare us all in the face as if not knowing whether to come over the deck or to go around the stern, but the great big sea snake! Now I have heard of the fellow before, and I have killed snakes twenty-four feet long in the straits of Malacca, but they would go in his mouth. I think he must have been asleep for we were going along very softly two knots an hour, and he seemed as much alarmed as we were and all taken aback for about fifteen seconds. But he soon was underway and, when fairly off, his head was square with our topsail and his tail was square with the foremast….My ship is 171 feet long overall and the foremast is 42 feet from the stern which would make the monster about 129 feet long. If I had not seen it I could not have believed it but there was no mistake or doubt of its length, for the brute was so close I could even smell his nasty fishy smell….When underway he carried his head about six feet out of water – with a fin between the shoulders about two feet long. I think he was swimming about five miles an hour – for I watched him from the topsail yard till I lost sight of him in about fifty minutes. I hope never to see him more. It is enough to frighten the strong at heart.”
This second report of a sea-monster sighting has been declassified at an official level by the British Government. It describes an 1857 encounter that also occurred in the vicinity of the island of St. Helena. The following is from Commander George Henry Harrington. His ship was the Castilian
“While myself and officers were standing on the lee side of the poop looking toward the island, we were startled by the sight of a huge marine animal which reared its head out of the water within twenty yards of the ship when it suddenly disappeared for about half a minute and then made a reappearance in the same manner again, showing us its neck and head about ten or twenty feet out of the water….Its head was shaped like a long buoy and I should suppose the diameter to have been seven or eight feet in the largest part with a kind of scroll or ruff encircling it about two feet from the top. The water was discoloured for several hundred feet from the head, so much so that on its first appearance my impression was that the ship was in broken waters, produced, as I supposed, by some volcanic agency, since I passed the island before….But the second appearance completely dispelled those fears and assured us that it was a monster of extraordinary length and appeared to be moving slowly towards the land. The ship was going too fast to enable us to reach the masthead in time to form a correct estimate of this extreme length, but from what we saw from the deck we conclude that he must have been over two hundred feet long. The Boatswain and several of the crew, who observed it from the forecastle, state that it was more than double the length of the ship, in which case it must have been five hundred feet”
DINOSAURS / DRAGONS
LIVY 64 or 59 BC – AD 17, was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. He describes an attack by a reptile on the army of General Regulus who was fighting a war against Cartage in North Africa.
Livy writes:
“After many soldiers had been seized in its [the dragon’s] mouth, and many more crushed by the folds of its tail, its hide being too thick for javelins and darts, the dragon was at last attacked by military engines and crushed by repeated blows from heavy stones.”
There is another fuller account of the same event.
The historian PLINY THE ELDER states:
It is well known that Regulus, Imperator during the Wars against the Carthaginians, near the River Bograda assailed a Serpent with his Military Engines, the Balistae and Tormentum, as he would have done to a Town…and when Subdued, the Length of the Serpent was found to be 120 Feet. The Skin and Jaws of this Serpent were preserved in a Temple at Rome until the War of Numantia. And this is rendered the more credible from the Serpents that we see in Italy that are called Boae, which increase to such Size, that in the Days of the emperor Claudius there was one of them killed in the Vatican, within the Belly of which there was found an Infant Child…’
In a work titled The Travels of Marco Polo, published in 1300 AD, he describes a dragon found in a province named Karajan.
“Leaving the city of Yachi, and traveling ten days in a westerly direction, you reach the province of Karazan, which is also the name of the chief city….Here are seen huge serpents, ten paces in length (about 30 feet), and ten spans (about 8 feet) girth of the body. At the fore part, near the head, they have two short legs, having three claws like those of a tiger, with eyes larger than a forepenny loaf and very glaring. The jaws are wide enough to swallow a man, and their whole appearance is so formidable, that neither man, nor any kind of animal can approach them without terror.
If this is real, then a T Rex like creature with its size well described and its very short fore legs was around less than 800 years ago, making evolutionary explanations of the past nothing more than modern myths. There is however a mistake in his account if a T Rex is being described because they did not have three claws, it had only two. However a close relative of T Rex is the Allosaurus, which did have three claws. See the video below. Consequently Marco Polo could have been spot on with his observations. Also the Allosaurus, although very similar in all respects was much less heavy than the T Rex, two tons against twenty tons for the T Rex which would would account for the more modest eight foot girth.
And there is more. Palaeontologist Phil Senter noted structures in dinosaurs that became so reduced in size they could no longer carry out their original functions. His example was taken from the T Rex. Although this species had only two fingers it nevertheless retained a single bone from its third finger: the metacarpal, which was enclosed within its hand. Since many other theropods, like the allosaurus, and including some early tyrannosauroids did have the three fingers described by Marco Polo. In other words the claws like a tiger could have been correct even for a T Rex.
Next is an account by Apollonius of Tyana, a famous Greek traveller and philosopher who was a contemporary of Jesus. Here he speaks of observing a dragon hunt in India.
“Now as they descended the mountain they came in for a dragon hunt, which I must needs describe. For it is utterly absurd for those who are amateurs of hare-hunting to spin yarns about the hare as to how it is caught or ought to be caught, and yet that we should omit to describe a chase as bold as it is wonderful, and in which the sage was careful to assist; so I have written the following account of it: The whole of India is filled with dragons of enormous size; for not only the marshes are full of them, but the mountains as well, and there is not a single ridge without one. Now the marsh kind are sluggish in their habits and are thirty cubits long, ( 45ft ) and they have no crest standing up on their heads, but in this respect resemble the she-dragons. Their backs however are very black, with fewer scales on them than the other kinds; and Homer has described them with deeper insight than have most poets, for he says that the dragon that lived hard by the spring in Aulis had a tawny back; but other poets declare that this kind found in the grove of Nemea also had a crest, a feature which we could not verify in regard to the marsh dragons.
( No writer of myths is concerned about verifying anything, let alone checking observations against previous observations. Myths are evidence free zones )
AND the dragons along the foothills and the mountain crests make their way into the plains after their quarry, and prey upon all the creatures in the marshes; for indeed they reach an extreme length, and move faster than the swiftest rivers, so that nothing escapes them. These actually have a crest, of moderate extent and height when they are young; but as they reach their full size, it grows with them and extends to a considerable height, at which time also they turn red and get serrated backs. This kind also have beards, and lift their necks on high, while their scales glitter like silver; and the pupils of their eyes consist of a fiery stone, and they say that this has an uncanny power for many secret purposes. The plain specimen falls the prize of the hunters whenever it draws upon itself an elephant; for the destruction of both creatures is the result, and those who capture the dragons are rewarded by getting the eyes and skin and teeth. In most respects they resemble the largest swine, but they are slighter in build and ‘flexible, and they have teeth as sharp and indestructible as those of the largest fishes.
Now the dragons of the mountains have scales of a golden colour, and in length excel those of the plain, and they have bushy beards, which also are of a golden hue; and their eyebrows are more prominent than those of the plain, and their eye is sunk deep under the eyebrow, and emits a terrible and ruthless glance. And they give off a noise like the clashing of brass whenever they are burrowing under the earth, and from their crests, which are all fiery red there flashes a fire brighter than a torch.”
OK, now we have a myth like feature appearing right at the end of this otherwise compelling account account.
FIRE BREATHING.
Is it possible? Maybe not just possible, but intentional!
Imagine if you will a dinosaur, probably a herbivore or omnivore that exhales methane gas through an adaption embedded within a crest. The crest provides tubes or passage-ways for the release of air into the atmosphere. Scientists think it could be used for making trumpeting sounds, mating calls maybe. Some mechanism could create a spark, which, when combined with methane could produce a flame thrower effect, providing both a defence system and a spectacular mating display.
Here is just one plausible solution to the problem. I searched the Internet for means of igniting methane and found the following. It relates to an examination of how and why fires or explosions begin during the collapse of mine roofs, tunnels and shafts.
‘When a large area of open gob collapses suddenly, a windblast is produced that can cause considerable damage throughout the infrastructure of a mine….Controlled escape of the air via interconnecting entries limits the build- up of air pressure. However, this same phenomenon causes the potential energy of the falling strata to be concentrated into a diminishing mass of air. Computer simulations predicted that the temperature of the air would increase rapidly as the roof descends, reaching values that are capable of igniting either methane or coal dust.’
If this process of igniting methane can occur under accidental conditions whereby air is compressed and forced through escape channels, then why could not the same occur in a designed system? The effect: something akin to a controlled sneeze in a creature as large as a dinosaur could surely cause the same kind of ignition effect as that described above. Assuming scientists are correct in thinking that these cranial crests were used for trumpeting, then large volumes of air must have been forced through these channels at great speed? This would create a similar effect to the one described above, and possibly an even more efficient way of igniting methane gas. In other words a design feature, similar to all those found in so many diverse creatures: the electric eel and bombardier beetle, to name but two. If this were so then the proliferation of stories relating to fire-breathing would be no stranger than bioluminescence: found in many different creatures. Below is a video describing duck billed dinosaurs which have the kind of crest required for exhaling sound and possibly igniting methane.
If eye witnesses, many of them very reliable sources of information from the ancient world, saw and recorded huge Sea Serpents / Dragons / Terrible lizards and Dinosaurs, then the evolutionary theory of millions of years falls apart at the seams and a biblical timescale becomes probable, if not certain.
Darwin had an agenda and it good to know this.
He stated in the Descent of Man: ”I had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to show that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of change . . . If I have erred in . . . having exaggerated its (natural selection’s) power . . . I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations.”
The “dogma of separate creations” refers to the Creation account of all living creatures in Genesis Chapter 1 being created according to their separate kinds. Darwin’s exaggerations of “natural selection’s power” led to the fact free zone and the myth that kinds of animals, dog kind, cat kind, dinosaur kind, can evolve into anything other than potential variations fixed within their genetically defined borders. Every example given in evolutionary explanations are of variations within kinds. Like Darwin’s famous example: Galapagos Island finches. These may change their beak shapes and sizes according to environmental needs, but they remain fixed in their kind. They have, ever since being first observed by Darwin remained Finches!
If creatures could make this hypothetical change from dinosaurs to birds then surely there should be some examples of this that have been observed and catalogued, but no, nothing! Why have no intermediates types been seen and documented, other than through assumptions made on the basis of the theory. A terrible way to do science unless you critically evaluate every step. Look up whale evolution on the internet and you will see a series of linked creatures which lay out the transitions between a doglike mammal and the ocean dwelling whale. Every link is, in true scientific terms, a “just so story”. The fictitious accounts of how animals like leopards got their spots. Evolutionists pick a fossil, suggest it could be a link to the next required evolutionary step, publish it in a peer reviewed article, and then, if you have funding and a name in palaeontology the chances of your peers supporting your viewpoint are good. All illustrated evolutionary publications and media presentations are full of such speculation. That it is so easily picked up and supported is a commentary on evolutionary science.
Why should Darwin’s processes cease as soon as we get to the point of wanting to discover them? This is not only my question. Darwin asked it and so have other supporters of his theory. Because previously there must have been countless ongoing living examples of transitional or intermediate forms. Why no more fish in the process of evolving mammalian lungs and legs? Why no more mammals preparing for a full life lived in the oceans. As the famous now deceased evolutionist Stephen. J. Gould lamented, all we see in the fossil record is stasis. Stasis means a period or state of inactivity or equilibrium. No significant recorded changes. Gould became so unsettled by this lack that he and his colleague Eldredge invented a super-fast version of evolution called punctuated equilibrium. This theory flared for a while before withering and if not yet dead, can be found in a coma from which it is unlikely to recover.
Darwin had insisted on slow processes. He pictured organisms gradually transforming from one species into another over immense spans of time. Evolution, he believed, had to occur through,”infinitely numerous transitional links” forming “the finest graduated steps.” Darwin was a strict adherent of gradualism and the notion that “nature does not make leaps.” He spelled this out very clearly in his Origin of Species: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” (Darwin, 1859, p. 219).
If this is true then his theory has absolutely broken down. To make matters worse he also wrote this.
On his comments expressed in the Imperfection of the Geological Record he admits:…The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, (must) be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.”
Darwin set about to destroy any belief in fully developed separate creations brought into being by God. He succeeded because he was appealing to the truth of his theory long before it had become a “scientific fact”. Long before it had been tested and validated. long before modern science had proved it to be genetically a bridge much too far. But by then it had become a Truth of Science so foundational to all of science, including even cosmology, that it was too ingrained to be removed. The later version Neo-Darwinism just incorporated a genetic mechanism that that actually does produce novelties: genetic mutations. Unfortunately they are uniformly either neutral in their effects, deleterious or fatal to whatever organism or part of the organism these mistranslated of Dna codes choose to colonise. I have had a personal encounter with this truth: it is called cancer, which is caused by mutations. Evolutionary theory is an ideology long before it is a scientific theory. It absolves its followers from seeking a Designer, a God, a being to whom we, as humans, created and conscious have and often feel an inbuilt responsibility to seek out. Our whole being is naturally formed to wonder about how we came to be, who or what made us, why we are as we are, why is the earth the only life sustaining planet we can discover, and what happens to us following death.
Darwin had an agenda, and so have all his followers. I admit I have an agenda as well. I believe the Bible. I believe God made it all in quick time. And once you come to believe all that, the road opens up to Jesus, who was according to New testament scripture there right at the very beginning. “All things created by him, through him and for him.” And that includes you and me. The full quote is from Colossians chapter 1 verse 15 -17.
“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or authority. All things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
The following is a calm and considered expose of the truth about Islam in the UK. The speaker mostly uses facts difficult to deny and government agency quotes about the power of a minority to turn our culture, our traditions, our history, our legal system, government agencies, our sense of who we are and our former faith into instruments of self harm. It feels to me, a white, male, Christian, as if I was a driver who had got completely lost in a seemingly foreign landscape that is no longer recognisable as the one I once knew, loved and felt safe. As if I were on a dark ever narrowing lane, with the only way back forever cut off. The issue covered below is just one of the reasons for this unease. Other articles highlight many others, equally disturbing.
This talk starts slowly and is measured in tone, no ranting here! But it does tell the story of how far Islam has reached into the fabric of British society. Whether its influence is overall neutral, beneficial or destabilising is the question under consideration.
This article seems like a repeat of an earlier one. It takes a slightly different slant on the topic of hate crime and digs a little deeper.
The fragile broken egg shells and the vulnerable yolk represent the vanishing right to hold an opinion disapproved of by State Law. Hate Law hovers like a threatening raised hammer over free speech and any robust dissent from the prevailing consensus. It is a threat which has not eradicated hate speech; it merely selects between those granted permission to use hate filled language and those who are not. It has not reduced objects of hate, it has increased them. Any dissident voices are effectively silenced by the legal threats imposed by the State. People who oppose this imposition on what can and cannot be said or written are often faced with being labelled, misogynistic, racist, sexist, homophobic or Islamophobic, often with words like “scum” prefacing whomever has become the chosen target. They are to all intents and purposes hated. Many of those who make the above accusations are aggressive left wing activists. These hate filled individuals are allowed to hate their opponents and are protected while doing so as if they were officially employed: like a paramilitary arm of the state machinery. These untouchables and the groups to which they belong have an innate hatred of anything remotely right wing, evangelically Christian or Jewish. Equality is the very last thing we have in this country.
The State apparatus has taken upon itself the right to decide what is to be esteemed and raised up and what it is permissible to loathe and pull down. The ultimate endgame may still be under discussion, but the framework is in place and working to the detriment of those prepared to speak out in opposition. To challenge either the advances of LGBT rights or Islamic culture or religion is to risk severe censure. There seems no realisation that the spread of LGBT rights and their legal enforcement has had a huge effect on the rights of others who are unprotected: those who think this cause is contrary to the limits on variety imposed by nature. That it is a cause with the potential to destabilise the peace of mind of children as they progress through the normal process which affirms their gender is simply ignored.
In our blind rush to abandon the guidance of our former religion, Christianity, we have fallen foul of another much more legalistic and dictatorial. A religion at odds with all our natural instincts and culture. Protections for one religion to follow religious laws abhorrent to even our secular law books, and open season on the one that defined those moral virtues our nation once lived by. As I stated earlier, if you dislike Christian views on homosexuality then at least face the reality that they were, even at their most extreme, comparatively mild in comparison to those that apply under Sharia law in Islamic states.
So how to separate this single word hate from dislike or aversion? If there is little difference, then how can a member of the public expressing an opinion differentiate between them? The accuser in any hate crime issue has every advantage. An accusation once accepted as a legal complaint will be prosecuted by the CPS without cost to the plaintiff. Presumably the accused will have to bear the cost of the defence plus any further financial penalties upon losing the case. This would weigh heavily on anyone contemplating defending against a charge of hate crime. How heavy in terms of financial loss, worry and loss of reputation and embarrassment at becoming an icon of homophobia? An example is the famous Irish bakers case: the Ashers. A Christian married couple who refused to decorate a pro-homosexual message on a cake. This dispute went through a number of court trials, every one of which they lost until finally the Supreme Court ruled in their favour. They endured four-and-a-half years of this pressure and it cost them around £500,000. Proof that a defendant is a sitting duck waiting for the bullet, unless they have a result such as this, which is a rarity. How does anyone with less faith, guts and means than the Ashers mount a defence against a crime based on the perception of the offended person? If I said in the presence of a transgendered individual, that I did not like the idea of going through such surgery when the results were so uncertain, how could I defend myself if that person took it as an extreme comment and declared it a hate crime? Words matter, but in a post truth world, one where the word truth has undergone the same metamorphosis as the words sex and gender, they either lose their true meanings, or in cases of hate crime, assume heightened meaning. Hate can now be construed as a prosecutable criminal act. Gender choice becomes a faux fact in this brave new world. This is astonishing, because hatred for something false, loathsome or unjust is natural and good. Hatred of slavery by a Christian reformer brought it to an end as an officially sanctioned trade. William Wilberforce fought the Good Fight. However, in the current environment hatred by the politically correct of those who hold opposing views is perfectly acceptable, probably even righteous. This is dangerous because it places the doctrine of free speech in a compromised position. It is Orwellian and has the Marxism of Animal Farm written all over it. Yes, you are free to speak, but some are freer than others. You are free to protest until the state police catch up with you, then, in a not so far future world a Gulag or concentration camp may await.
A definition of the word hate is to loathe, detest, dislike greatly, abhor, abominate, despise, execrate, feel aversion towards, feel revulsion towards, feel hostile towards, be repelled by, be revolted by, regard with disgust, not be able to bear/stand, be unable to stomach, find intolerable, shudder at, recoil from, shrink from…. Dare the state tell us what is to be hated and admired, disposed of or protected? Where does its moral authority come from? The modern secular state is nothing more than a great committee when it comes to opinions. A change of state governance or a change of century may well see many of the established opinions vanish overnight. Why is the new true, and the old false when in another few decades what is new today will very likely have become old and false? The binary nature of sex, accepted for millennia as a truth endorsed by both nature and science, along with the rule of marriage as a union between male and female for the purpose of nurturing children and propagating the species overturned! And by what and whom? A rainbow coloured coalition of ideologues who bullied a craven legislature into submission. Who cares about facts when a person can look at himself and proclaim that today I have become female.
It would be good to find an advocate of political correctness and ask why a so called progressive move is being made to change society out of all recognition. A remorseless drive from a source very difficult to identify. It speaks and directs and commands as if it had divine knowledge and authority. It does not accept any counter beliefs or arguments as having validity. Stand against these modern truisms such as gender choice and you will be howled down by Twitter storms long before any government agency has its say. Until recently we had a better foundation on which to stand, but we are rejecting and replacing it without any apparent thought as to the consequences. Western civilisation was based on idea of the transcendent: something beyond and above us. Those beliefs which stated that we humans are not the summit of all things is being lost and buried without so much as a headstone. Hence the title of this blog / website: Here Lies the Truth. We once believed a Creator God had given us intrinsic value, one so high that no individual or state could just take a human life without judging that individuals case in a court of law that upheld high standards of justice and impartiality. It Hitler had been arrested and faced his accusers he would have had every opportunity to defend himself and have legal representation. His chances would have been close to as good as the Ashers in this crazy upturned world in which we live.
The video below illustrates the point. The speaker is not a Christian, but he believes a society or state is in deep trouble if it ever forgets the transcendent foundations which underpin our Western Civilisation.
We are very keen to apply inclusivity to every sphere of society. It is defined as the practise or policy of including people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalised. Does it work fairly, equably? No, the more you try to impose it the worse the favouritism gets and the more often the less favoured gets kicked in the groin. You cannot change society without hurting the deposed. Victim and so called oppressor groups can and do change places with remarkable rapidity.
A newspaper columnist, Allison Pearson recently wrote a piece for the Daily Telegraph. Her theme was the difference between media reports about a right-wing fanatic’s attack on a mosque in New Zealand, and the subsequent retaliatory one by Islamic terrorists in Sri Lanka. The difference is subtle and perhaps of not great interest to some, but it does provide an indicator as to how the liberal / left separate one atrocity from another. As if one has an obvious cause while the other has not. As if one victim group is clearly known and the other is not so easily identifiable.
A man named Brenton Tarrant was the perpetrator of the New Zealand mosque atrocity. Described in media reports as a white supremacist linked to an increase in white supremacism and alt-right extremism globally. The victims were Muslims at prayer. A terrible crime committed by a vile fascist fanatic. Pearson took issue with the reporting of these two events because most of them seemed to avoid using the word Christian to describe the victims in Sri Lanka attacked in their churches. Other equally terrible attacks were aimed at tourists in hotels. Pearson argued that the mosque victims were clearly identified as Muslims by Hilary Clinton. In Sri Lanka, the killed, maimed and wounded are described by her as ‘Easter Worshippers.’ Why? why not state the truth. The killed and wounded were Christians, and the killings in Colombo were inspired by a hatred of Christianity and perpetrated by Muslim terrorists. Christians died: they were not Easter worshippers. Why not call Christians what they are? Because somehow there are left-wing establishment figures who cannot form their lips into a shape that will accommodate the word Christian. Muslim and Islam are words they have no problems with. There is a word associated with hatred of Muslims: Islamophobia. There is no corresponding word for hatred of Christians. Perhaps because there is no protection under hate law for Christians. The reason being, there is no crime of Christianophobia.
People who take a view like mine are I think often seen as bigots: intolerant and potentially hateful to minorities. It may be thought that we are harbouring phobic thoughts, if not as yet, acting upon them. Denying these inferred links seems only to increase the suspicion. I see in the press that Sir Roger Scruton is now accused. The philosopher and author told the BBC there was a “witch-hunt” against figures on the right of politics. He said that he and others were being accused of “thought crimes” in order to exclude them from public debates. He was sacked from an advisory role to ministers two weeks ago following a controversial New Statesman interview. I have read the New Statesman article which cuts and pastes from the interview, and also read what he actually wrote in full. On the basis of that it is obvious that he said nothing even remotely deserving censure, let alone the loss of a job and damage to his reputation. He is a scholar who holds views that do not fit into the agendas being pushed by the left. If that fact can lose you your job then goodbye to justice and hello and welcome to witch-hunts.
It is of course true that when pushed to their extremities, any bias, towards either left or right can produce terrible outrages. An extremist bigot from the right inflicted indiscriminate carnage by shooting into mosques filled with Muslim worshippers. He was immediately called out for what he was, however in this case the word bigot does not do him justice. He went far beyond the dictionary definition of the word: a person who is intolerant towards those holding different opinions. Take that definition and most people who veer anywhere towards the extremes of left or right wings fall into that category. When we defend our position and opinion because we really care about an issue, we are very often going to sound like a bigot, that is if we define the word according to the dictionary. A person who is intolerant of another is a virtual ‘catch all’ definition. To make any kind of judgement about anyone or anything leaves you open to that absurd accusation. However, one person’s bigot may be another’s hero or heroine. It could be an LGBT activist, a Feminist, a Climate Change warrior, a Human Rights advocate, a Muslim, a Conservative politician or a Marxist professor or a Christian rugby player like Billy Vunipola posting his opinions on Instagram. Calling people bigots has become a quick and convenient way to close down a person’s right to hold a contrary opinion to our own. A label stuck to a forehead without a hope of having it removed. You are a bigot simply be being called one. So please can we stop labelling people in order to shut them up. Dictatorships have removed vast numbers of dissidents from the scene by simply labelling them with a stigma, a mark of shame. The Star of David forced to be displayed on the clothing of Jews was the enforcement of a stigma. It was a way to make Jews feel like the lowest of the low. To experience what it was to be a pariah. Anti-Semitism arguably led to the worst crimes against humanity ever visited on a people: the Holocaust: unjust, cruel and ultimately genocidal. In the centuries following the death of Christ Christians were also rounded up by an oppressive regime. That’s how and why Christians were fed to the lions and nailed to crosses. In time Christians became the master race and behaved in much the same way. I am a self appointed Christian apologist; that however does not mean I am unaware or unsympathetic to those who have been killed, abused and stigmatised by the Church over the ages. The Church and Christian nations used and abused Jews shamefully through much of history: ghettos were invented by Christians. We have a lot to answer for, including our uses of scripture. There can be no doubt that some on the extreme right have first imbibed and then perverted biblical scriptures to their own ends. That is the problem with the written word, it cannot cover every possible false or misleading interpretation that can be put upon a text. Which is why a law of any kind is extremely difficult to draft, and why seemingly unaccountable injustices occur because of these difficulties.
There are however many examples of verbal subtleties and downright deliberate misrepresentations used to muddy the ground. Allison Pearson identified one of these. She points out the glaring differences between the reports on the Christchurch mosque attacks and those on the churches in Sri Lanka. In New Zealand the atrocity was immediately described as being motivated by hatred of Muslims. One man’s brutal and distorted agenda was identified as an entire theory of racism founded in the fanatical extremism of the Right. But this was not the act of a group, it was a single hate filled madman on the rampage. It has yet to be proved to be more than that. There will be others of course, but if this becomes organised into groups numbering hundreds or thousands, then you will have a threat like that of the Isis trained terrorists in Sri Lanka. Those that packed rucksacks with explosives, sat in churches filled with worshippers of Jesus and detonated their bombs. Each one, staking his future eternal life on a promised paradise he will have discovered by now is nothing like what his faith and holy book had led him to believe. No maidens fanning his brow or fulfilling his sexual desires. He will find himself staring into the eyes of the God he denies.
Denial can take many forms. Apologists on the left-wing of politics seem to speak the same language. They could, as the following tweets suggest, even share the same speech writers.
Barack Obama: “The attacks on tourists and Easter worshippers in Sri Lanka are an attack on humanity. On a day devoted to love, redemption, and renewal, we pray for the victims and stand with the people of Sri Lanka.”
Three hours later, Hilary Clinton tweeted: “On this holy weekend for many faiths, we must stand united against hatred and violence. I’m praying for everyone affected by today’s horrific attacks on Easter worshippers and travellers in Sri Lanka.”
Clinton misspeaks yet again. It was not a weekend holy to many faiths. It was and is holy to only one faith: Christianity. She mixes Christians in with others; who else I wonder does she include in this celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Are Islam and Judaism and New Age spirituality each included in her version of Easter’s unifying power? If she asked representatives of any of these they would each deny any such close association with the Easter message of the risen God.
The following in italics is a slightly paraphrased account from the Daily Signal: an article written by Denis Prager.
This is critical: Neither of these world famous politicians commenting on the Sri Lanka incidents used the word “Christians.” And in order to avoid doing so, they invented a previously unknown term for Christians: ”Easter worshippers.” Despite the bombing of three churches filled with Christians, Clinton made no mention of church or churches. In a tweet after Muslims were massacred in New Zealand, she wrote that her heart broke for “the global Muslim community.” But in her latest tweet, not a word about Christians or the global Christian community. Obama similarly wrote in his tweet about the mosque killings that he was grieving with “the Muslim community” In his tweet about Sri Lanka, there is no mention of Christians or churches. The reason neither of them mentioned Christians or churches is that the left has essentially forbidden any serious analysis of anti-Christian murders perpetrated by Muslims in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and of all the Muslim desecration of churches in Europe, Africa, and anywhere else. Clinton made sure to condemn “Islamophobia,” but she wrote not a word about the far more destructive and widespread hatred of Christians in the Muslim world, seen in Muslims’ virtual elimination of the Christian communities in the Middle East, the regular murder and kidnappings of Coptic Christians in Egypt, and the murder of Christians in Nigeria.
Christians are the most persecuted people in the world. They are persecuted in North Korea, in China and India and Russia, but the vast preponderance of hatred enacted against Christians comes not from atheist, Communist regimes, nor from the convenient hermetically sealed terrorist box known as ISIS militants, nor from Hindu’s in India. It inhabits Islamic states and countries. To answer the question, which is the pride of lions charged with the vast majority of this persecution of the worshippers of Jesus Christ, it is Islam? Officially ordered or sanctioned persecutions against Christian minorities occur in these countries. Take out those named above, the four or five and the other forty five of the fifty listed below are majority Muslim populations. ISIS are the tiny poisoned tip that attack Christians in the once upon a time correctly called the Christian West. The political left will turn in hatred and with dismissal of this article and in denial continue to ignore the role of Islam in Christian slaughter and oppression across much of the globe. Their complicity in Christian persecution is measured in the hate laws which are being tightened all across the West with the possible exclusion of the USA. Many articles on this website make reference to the oppressive nature of hate laws impacting upon individual Christians.
You may look at a country on this list like Tajikistan and think it part of Russia, but its population is 98% Muslim, approximately 95% Sunni and 3% Shia. There is sadly and tragically no peace for Christians in such a State.
A person says what he believes to be true and is pilloried all over the media and by every individual and group terrified of being found on the wrong side of a P.C. dogma. The picture above illustrates one thing that never happens when a voice is heard saying something politically incorrect on a public forum like Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. Doves do not rise beating their wings, nor do they meet and greet in the air while bearing olive branches, or confer on each other the kiss of peace.
PEACE DOES NOT BREAK OUT WHEN THE GAY LIFESTYLE IS CHALLENGED OR WHEN THE DOCTRINE OF SIN MAKES A PUBLIC APPEARANCE.
Diversity, equality and tolerance tsars paradoxically cannot tolerate voices prepared to speak out and say: “I do not agree” with the gathering consensus. The England rugby player Billy Vunipola liked and approved of Izzy Folau’s post on Instagram seen below. It and the ensuing debate made headline news across the media. Both men are traditional Christians and believe homosexuality is a sin which requires repentance. Australian rugby star Israel Folau had listed numerous sins, one of them being Homosexuals. And it is worth noticing that it was that word which got him into worldwide trouble. Hell awaits! Repent! and Only Jesus Saves was OK for all the rest.
Was the human body designed for sex between two people, and in part for the procreation of the species? If so which combo works, how do the designs match up? Woman on woman, pleasure but no chance under any circumstances of procreation. Man on man, same consequences. Examine the woman and the man and you get a perfect fit, both for pleasure and for procreation. Amongst homosexual men the use of the human body’s refuse and disposal system for sexual enjoyment would seem to be beyond the Maker’s remit: Commandment. This part of the body has a function, but one clearly not designed for the activities enacted in a homosexual sex act. It would seem off limits for many reasons. No natural lubrication and a real possibility of puncturing the thin lining. The nature of this sex act, thrusting up a canal made for the downward passage of excrement opens up the grisly spectre of contamination between waste products and sexual fluids. Another International rugby player Gareth Thomas is in the news concerning the sad fact of having contracted Aids. That is a tragedy, but the possibility was always there, and neither partner could have been ignorant of that possibility. Nothing about this act, which is known to have catastrophic effects in so many areas of life, both mental and physical seems to me to be natural, and taking pride in any part of it is beyond perverse. Gay Pride is a misnomer, it makes no sense other than to conceal something intrinsically wrong beneath a colourful shroud of brash deceit and showmanship. And there is hatred not hidden far below the surface for anyone who points out that it is not a lifestyle to be encouraged, let alone taught to schoolchildren, and presented as a normal choice on the sexual spectrum. If rights are Equal then then let the discussion begin, without deciding in advance that one is right and the other wrong. LGBT proclaim the goodness of their lifestyle. Christians proclaim the truths of the Gospel. The two world views clash, which is OK. So why the assumption that one is to be held as extreme and hateful and not to be borne or expressed while the other is given a free pass. Strange perhaps that the most promiscuous of groups in the animal world are the chimps. We humans are a few streets away from them, but not it seems in sexual lust, which is common throughout nature; and that includes sexual desire between those of the same sex. This should not surprise a bible believing Christian. We humans are attracted to sin, weeds whether found in the garden or in hearts and minds need little encouragement to colonise whatever ground is set before them. In the Genesis account it is not just mankind that fell from grace when Adam and Eve sinned and rebelled. All of nature fell with them.
Here is an LGBT poster, fuelled by rage and just as hard and to the point as Folau’s. However if they can say what is written below without apparent censure then why cannot Billy Vunipola and Izzy Folau be given the same rights? An attack on Christian beliefs is an attack on all Christians.
Thanks for the warning! We Christians know exactly what is coming: injustice, insults and fear of speaking out. Consider the chances of this happening: a Christian Pride event, which wanted nothing more than to celebrate the goodness of God and give praise for the Facts of Life which bring male and female together in a loving union called marriage. Proclaiming on banners in streets closed for the day the Christian context for the birthing and nurturing of children. Making plain from the evidence of biology that sexual identity is decided in the first moments following conception. That this message is not to be confused by any other concept however attractive it may seem to a world gone mad on choice. Such an idea as a Christian Marriage parade sponsored by a city council to march would almost certainly be uniformly denied up and down this land of the free. To be among the favoured is as important now as it was in the 19th century. Those admired and favoured then are brought down and the marginalised and prosecuted at that time have become the new makers of social fashion. Lauded and loved by the easily moved masses, who like a Roman emperors thumb which was turned up for a show approved and down for one that displeased, often a the bidding of a howling mob. The Emperor here, whether council committee or government agency is at the mercy of just such a mob. The oppressors are not necessarily the chosen spokespeople for the group, maybe they are just an ideologically driven minority of the LGBTQ….community. The victims are the few Christians with the courage to stand up in public, or Tweet or comment on social media saying, I DO NOT AGREE AND THIS IS MY VIEW. Its about time our craven political legislators actually looked at the whole matter and came to realise they are being led by the nose in a direction that scarce bears thinking about. Pulling down the only voices that could right the wrongs. Return to ways we had followed for centuries, which for all its many faults, at its root had the care and love and the message which kept us safe from the ensuing madness. One that has confused sexual ethics and practise for an alternative brave new world. Achieved by broadening the meanings of the words gender, identity, equality and diversity until the elastic snapped and society chose to throw aside all restraint.
Imagine for a moment that the reverse was happening. Once a year huge colourful rainbow coloured celebratory marches in the centres of major cities filled with slogans like these: Equal Rights For Christians / Vunipola Has Rights As Well / Man was Made for Woman / Marriage is God’s Plan for Male and Female Only / Best For Children To Have a Biologically Male Father and a Biologically Female Mother / God Hates Sin / Homosexuality Is a Sin / The Rainbow Was Created By and Belongs To God.
I know what Stonewall and Pink News would fill their pages with. This is Incendiary! Provocative! Shameful! Hateful! Bigoted! Inflammatory! Homophobic!
What about Christophobia? Bibleophobia? There are no such words, but why not? Essentially there are no differences between Gay slogans and Christian. The former are open to anyone doing anything, all is love and happiness, so fighting against something is not really relevant or on their horizon. But they do not like being criticised or their lifestyle condemned. That is unreasonable, you put yourself out there and make a big noise about it then you should expect some kind of reaction, some of which will be negative. If you deny well established facts from science and biology and psychology which undermine your claims, and place reasonable question marks over much of your message, then you should expect to be challenged. Christians do not much mind being criticised. We expect it, because we care about the truth and therefore must speak out against what we believe to be wrong or opposed to God’s will and the commandments set out in the Old and New Testaments. Why? Because we believe God made us and gave us rules for living and that breaking those rules and standards opens us up to consequences. Let me make it plain. When I see a Gay Pride celebration broadcast on the news or some other outlet I find it upsetting and threatening. The difference is that Gays have redress under homophobic hate law. People like Billy Vunipola have no legal redress or even the right to comment negatively. And those like myself who support him must keep silent and bite our lip, hide our tears and bury our grief out of sight and sound of those who could and might pursue us into the law courts. Except that I feel I have to speak out because there is a kind of imperative at the root of being Christian that demands taking a stand. God in his word makes his judgement on us very plain.
From 2 Thessalonians. Chapter 2 verse 11.
“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.”
Little wonder then that words like sin and repentance are rarely heard nowadays. It has taken a couple of rugby players from the South Pacific Islands to briefly return the conversation about sin and judgement to the front pages. It will of course soon be forgotten. The Church today is in large part too politically correct to raise more than a limp wristed gesture than to speak a gospel message such as that taught by Paul. Love now incorporates near all things in its embrace of diversity, however repugnant these are to God. Folau and Vunipola are people who take their faith seriously, and this includes heaven and hell and sin and the necessity to repent, while still loving those of all opinions and lifestyles. Personally my understanding of this is that I am commanded to love lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender persons as individuals, but have no equal command to love the group identity of any of these. In the same way as I can in Christ love a Marxist while hating Marxism and love a sinner while hating Sin. The knowledge that I too am a sinner keeps the accuser in me in check.
Take away the concept of sin and all three monotheistic religions, those of the Jews, Christians and Muslims would fade away. With regard to the Judaeo / Christian heritage, had this sin and redemption link been lost it would have swept aside the moral, ethical and legal foundations of Western Civilisation. If we can no longer speak of these things in the modern world then go ahead and celebrate; but realise this, you will pay the cost later when you find freedoms important to you and firmly based on biblical principles, lost beyond recall. The first principle to go will be the value placed on the individual. That your life is important and sacred and unique. That is true whether we like it or not, but modern society has replaced this safeguard on your life with a lesser concept: that of the hive and the ants nest. A kind of group identity social order, embedded in left-wing politics and currently infecting conservatism. This shift in the social order has already becoming apparent. It has legal and moral force and apparent social acceptance, although the cowered silent majority might secretly think otherwise. And it is grossly intolerant, as the Billy Vunipola episode demonstrates. To contradict any part of the status quo is in old currency, a sin: an aberrant thought, a misdemeanour. This turns the tables and people like Vunipola become a type of modern sinner. A strange result in a liberal democracy, because this carries echoes of Old Testament scapegoating. Being made an outcast he is now required to do penance, both privately and publicly. Only then can he can hope to begin rebuilding his reputation.
Billy Vunipola has upset a large contingent of the most easily upset, and is experiencing the enforcement of politically correct opinion levelled at him by rugby’s officialdom. At the forefront of this is his club Saracens, behind that comes the national bulk of the Rugby Football Union. Both of these need to be appeased, after that come the vengeful hordes of social media warriors, mounted on thousands of keyboards tuned in to Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. All of this caused by posting a critical comment on a subject about which you are not allowed to publicly express disapproval; not unless the comment has been self moderated to such a degree it no longer resembles your true opinion. He had chosen to ‘Like’ an Izzy Folau post on the possible fate of homosexuals. A brave but unwise move in the current environment. In the immediate aftermath Vunipola restated his views.
“So this morning I got 3 phone calls from people telling me to ‘unlike’ the @izzyfolau post. This is my position on it. I don’t HATE anyone neither do I think I’m perfect. There just comes a point when you insult what I grew up believing in that you just say enough is enough, what he’s ( Folau ) saying isn’t that he doesn’t like or love those people. He’s saying how we live our lives needs to be closer to how God intended them to be.
“Man was made for woman to procreate, that was the goal no? I’m not perfect, I’m at least everything on that list at least at one point in my life. It hurts to know that.
“But that’s why I believe there’s a God. To guide and protect us and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Interesting he uses the words ‘insult what I grew up believing.’ There is no protection for any insult he feels, or upset he experiences, or legal redress for trespassing on his rights or his dignity due to his belief system. And what is his crime? What did he do wrong? All he was doing was record what he believes God states about sin. And according to that belief he must protest if he feels the impulse to do so comes from his Christian conscience. He is not saying he is better than anyone or that he always gets it right, he is just saying what he believes to be true. God made us to be male and female and told us that sex was only valid within the context of marriage between male and female. The ultimate objective of this union, beyond sharing love for one another is the procreation of children. Such an event is predicated on a union between man and woman, with the former having a functioning penis and the latter a vagina, breasts for milk production, and a womb. These facts of life and procreation are in accord with every cell in every organ of their very different bodies.
Vunipola has been evangelised from birth in his faith. The process has a name, it is to be proselytised. It is a process not confined to Christians. Gay publications like Stonewall and Pink News do exactly the same, they proselytise. A word meaning among other things: to evangelise, promote, advocate, endorse, champion, advance, propagandise, boost…in other words, put into effect what lobbyists of every type from the left, right and centre do on a regular basis. From believers in God to atheists, from political parties to gay activists; they all do this incessantly: promote what they believe. The LGBT lobby are the masters and mistresses of this process, getting their agendas advanced by government organisations like Ofsted, a pliant compromised Church, and through the media, and finally by playing the victimised minority card which ensures the sympathy of nearly everyone. Which is the reason why Vunipola is being so vilified and humiliated. The correct punishment for a big bullying Christian man. What could be worse than such a person? Oh yes, he could be white, which he is not.
Vunipola is clearly a soft hearted man, essentially gentle and humble and much liked. A man brought up to believe in God and the Bible. Is he, a product of a Christian upbringing not permitted to speak out his faith as he understands it? The answer to that is clearly no, certainly not in the manner he chose. Gays however are given every incentive and every advantage in promoting their lifestyle? They have protection and are encouraged to express themselves and state exactly who they are and what they want. Look around you, pay attention and note for example how the major cities around the globe welcome massive Gay Pride celebrations and close their main streets to normal traffic. As to the Billy Vunipola incident, here is another opinion on the matter, from an England teammate, Courtney Laws. He not a Christian, just a person capable of dissociating the contents of a post from its unintended consequences. He was writing to his friend.
‘I don’t have a faith like yourself my brother so I don’t share the same views in this matter but I do believe you should be able to voice your own opinions and beliefs as you see fit.
‘To everyone getting worked up about this post I ask you if you don’t believe in the same things as them then what do these statements matter to you? Can’t we disagree with someone without calling them a bigot or a homophobe…?
‘And by the way If you’re going to say you’re accepting of everyone then be accepting of everyone, not just the people you agree with.’
I could not put it better so I will say nothing more on the matter of Vunipola’s Instagram post and its reaction. We do however live in a society where favoured individuals and groups can terrorise those who express a counter opinion. There is no justice in this country that guarantees rights of free speech for all, and yet nothing is more serious. If you doubt me then just watch those who are going to either fall or be thrown under whatever laws are now being conceived in the parliamentary and judicial pipelines. The grip will be further and further tightened unless there is a reaction, one of a hopefully peaceful nature, when the debate can be opened up so that each side can freely and without censure state their positions.
What about the Gay community? Shouldn’t it be left alone to live as it wants in peace and quiet. The answer to that is almost certainly yes, sexual orientation is an individual choice. Many, possibly most may prefer to keep their lives private, as do most heterosexuals. However, there are parts of the homosexual community who want to parade their lifestyle before the world. OK, they have the right, but do not expect it to please those who find the lifestyle they promote to be detrimental to society at large. This issue is a primary lever in a state sponsored attempt to remove traditional Christian values from every sphere of social influence. It has become an infestation in schooling. Teachers are being removed for the smallest of misdemeanours. Below is a video it is hard to believe could be true. How can this be happening in our country?
A Catholic mother of five in the UK is being investigated by police for “misgendering” the son of a transgender activist who arranged for her 15-year-old son to be castrated in Thailand. The reason being this is an illegal procedure for a child of that age in the UK. Also this month I read story from the website LIFESITE news that parents in the UK who objected when their autistic teenage son was prescribed hormone therapy ran into trouble with the authorities. After their son told his school that his parents wouldn’t allow him to undergo the so-called treatment, the school reported the parents to child services for being “emotionally abusive.” The parents were then warned that if they didn’t support their child, he could be taken away from them and put into foster care. According to The Daily Mail, last year at least three children were taken away from their parents and put into foster care, because their parents objected to their gender transition. This is totalitarian in spirit. An ideology is driving a programmed intrusion into areas once believed to be a parental responsibility, therefore sacrosanct and outside state control.
Finally here is a calm reasoned view from a Christian perspective which lays out the ground upon which we Christians make our assumptions. I recommend this partly because it is so different to the way I tend to express myself. I am not unaware of my faults and sins.
Below is one one of the nastiest put-downs you will ever see done in public, and a vivid demonstration of how to humiliate a young questioner in front of a huge audience. Her vulnerability was made obvious by the grammatical mistake she had made when introducing her perfectly reasonable question. This she had concluded with these five words: what if you are wrong? Richard Dawkins chose not to answer it, probably because it has never occurred to him that he might be wrong. This is to some extent true of us all. We believe what we believe. But we are near idiots if we do not allow the possibility of being wrong. Whether or not our belief can be upheld under close, forensic and hostile examination is a test that should be applied over and over again. In fact it should be welcomed, especially when the subject matter has a global impact. No-one, no movement or pressure group or state should ever avoid answering the following question: what if my opinion which I am seeking to impose on others and society at large is false, or flawed or malicious or dangerous? Richard Dawkins is just a prop, an intro. The target I am aiming at is transgender activism. What if this is wrong both in concept and in its realisation? And what are the consequences of state authorities capitulating before its lobbying blitzkrieg?
The following article appeared in the LIFESITE website. I have paraphrased and shortened it a little. The subject is the power and effectiveness of Transgender lobbying. This has been extremely successful, moving seamlessly between oppressed and oppressor, victim and bully. A double act which has effectively ruled out even the right to ask the question: WHAT IF YOU ARE WRONG? Why? because it may cause upset, injuring a person’s dignity, feelings and self-respect. Read on and be amazed.
‘April 8, 2019 (Human Life International) a “human rights tribunal” in Canada has just ruled that a Christian activist must pay $55,000 to a provincial politician because he referred to this politician as a “biological male” in a political pamphlet. The politician in question, Morgane Oger (born Ronan Oger), is a biological male. However, he has since “transitioned,” and is living his life as a “transgender woman.” According to the decision, Bill Whatcott must compensate Oger for injuring the latter’s “dignity, feelings and self-respect.”
The terrifying precedent set by this case can be illustrated by one fact: The judge in the case refused to allow Whatcott’s lawyer to offer testimony showing that, in point of fact, Oger is a biological male. According to the judge, “the ‘truth’ of ( Whatcott’s) statements in the flyer is not a defence.” As such, said the judge, “evidence is simply not relevant to the legal issue…”
Read that again. Let it sink in. Truth is not a defence. Evidence doesn’t matter. What matters — it would seem — is whether someone’s feelings were hurt. And thus, with a stroke of the pen, the rule of law is replaced with the rule of feelings. But as Whatcott has just learned, and I suspect many more are about to learn, feelings can be far more ruthless and unyielding taskmasters than laws.
Back in 2016, University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson was roundly mocked by so-called progressives for warning that gender ideology is “totalitarian.” Peterson, who has studied totalitarian regimes was accused of seeing bogey-men under every rock, and of projecting his paranoia onto a movement that was only seeking basic human rights for a marginalised group.
And yet, with every passing day more and more stories are emerging showing that, if anything, Peterson’s dire warnings weren’t dire enough. In many cases, gender ideologues (who, I should note, are not the same as transgender individuals, many of whom are suffering profoundly and deserve our compassion, even if we do not necessarily agree with the methods they choose to deal with their pain) are no longer bothering to even try to maintain the facade of humanistic reasonableness, showing themselves willing to bulldoze the basic rights of anyone who gets in their way. Disturbingly, this even includes people belonging to categories that until recently were understood to be themselves in need of special protections.
Two Disturbing Stories
You’d think, for instance, that the right of a woman who has been raped to feel completely safe while seeking treatment is about as sacrosanct as a right can possibly be. Recently, however, the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter lost over $30,000 in city funding. The city’s decision to pull the funding came after a fierce campaign against the shelter spearheaded by Morgane Oger – yes, that’s the same politician named above – and other totalitarian transgender ideology activists, who are furious that the centre refuses to offer its services to “transgender women,” i.e. biological men who now claim to be women.
The centre, reasonably enough, believes that the last thing biological women who have been raped need is to be forced into close quarters with strange men. Oger disagrees. By restricting a women-only rape shelter to biological women, says Oger, the centre is engaging in “systematic, consistent misbehaviour.” The women’s shelter shot back, pithily, that Oger and other city officials are effectively perpetrating “discrimination against women in the name of inclusion.”
To understand how grotesque this decision is, it’s necessary to remember that according to gender ideology, all that is needed for a born man to become a woman is for him to claim that he is a woman. In other words, included among “transgender women” can be men who look like men in every way, including possessing male genitalia. Now, imagine being a woman who has been raped, who goes into the bathroom or joins a group therapy session at the rape shelter, expecting to find the security of a women-only environment. Instead she finds that she has to use the facilities or expose the raw wounds of her trauma – trauma inflicted by a man – in the presence of a man. Thanks to gender ideology, such a woman has no right to complain. If she’s truly “woke,” she will swallow her own trauma, subjugating her right to heal in a safe environment to the latest dogmas of progressive equity.
Another story: Recently, it was discovered that a man who was reading to children at Freed-Montrose Public Library in Houston was a convicted paedophile. Thirty-two-year-old Albert Garza was convicted of assaulting an eight-year-old boy in 2008. But when he applied to read stories to children while dressed as a woman as part of “Drag Queen Story-time” – a truly bizarre indoctrination program which libraries across the nation are falling over themselves to host these days — the library didn’t think it necessary to perform even a basic background check. Now, you’d think that if there’s any place in the world where children should expect to feel absolutely safe, it would be during children’s story-time at a public library. At a bare minimum, you’d think that adults who are arranging for a man who spends his waking hours sexually titillating people for a living to have access to children would ensure that such a man is not a convicted paedophile. But then again, in our topsy-turvy world, gender ideologues are falling over themselves to encourage young children to become drag queens, and even (and it’s enough to make one shudder) applaud when those children perform sexually provocative drag shows in a gay bar. (Yes, this actually happened.)
Clearly, Peterson was right. There is an increasingly naked totalitarian aspect to gender ideology. Anyone who will force raped women to share living quarters with biological men, who will seize children from their parents because the parents express concern about treatments that will render their child permanently sterile, who will pump children full of artificial hormones and mutilate their genitals after the barest pretence of a clinical investigation, who will shrug at throwing a mum of five children into jail for the crime of stating biological facts, and who declare that truth is not a defence and evidence is unwelcome in a trial, all in the name of a recently concocted, scientifically unproven (in many cases disproved) set of dogmas, shares certain obvious commonalities with the perpetrators of some of the worst human rights violations of the 20th century. I see every reason to expect that the more power such people accrue, the more brazen and unjust their exercise of that power will become.
Peterson’s warnings were recently repeated and expanded upon by Nancy Pearcey, an academic who has been focusing on the issue of transgenderism. “Anyone who’s read Solzhenitsyn and his Gulag Archipelago or any book like that knows that totalitarian systems often begin by compelling speech, by telling people what they may and may not say,” Pearcey noted in a recent interview. “And if you can tell or coerce people’s speech, you can eventually control their thoughts.”
“If you’ve robbed [people] of the language to express their true belief, and you’ve required them to give voice to convictions that they do not hold, that eventually messes with your mind,” she continued. “It eventually often changes people’s minds.” In other words, totalitarian transgender ideologues are engaging in what is known as “gaslighting,” a kind of psychological manipulation in which the manipulator seeks to cause the victim to question his or her sanity. By demanding that we change the way we speak – and, indeed, think – about one of the core, and most self-evident categories of reality – biological sex – gender ideologues are undermining the very foundations of reason.
In the interview, Pearcey contrasted totalitarianism with authoritarianism. Whereas authoritarian states want power, “they don’t care much what you do in your private life.” A totalitarian state, on the other hand, “is one that wants to control your thoughts. They want to control your inner life.” This totalitarianism is already present in countries like Canada, she warned, and is “right on our doorstep here in the States.” Given the stories related above – and some of the stories I recounted a few weeks ago – I don’t see how we can possibly argue that Pearcey isn’t right.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Many people who come face-to-face with transgender extremism are tempted to kowtow, because they know that transgender ideologues will not hesitate to make their lives miserable. However, every act of capitulation emboldens the gender ideologues. Caroline Farrow – the mother of five mentioned above – has said that she is willing to go to prison to protect her free speech rights. So has Jordan Peterson. Are we similarly prepared to stand up for the truth?’
This is a massive issue which touches on many others. Collectively they are, when wrapped together and held in a fist by an angry antagonist capable of being used like a flail to whip dissidents into line. A reminder of the totalitarian Gulags perhaps. Ideologies are incomparably dangerous and the activists pushing transgender and other associated issues are ideologues. A member of this class can be described as an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology. Most people alive today have little or no memory of or interest in the malignant forces that ruled much of the world. We know plenty about Nazi Germany. Of China under Chairman Mao, and the old USSR under Marxist Communism we shamefully know next to nothing. We constantly warn against the rise of the far right but fail to see the rise of the extreme left. The reason why is that vicious bigoted racism is obvious; it visibly parades its vile agenda and is too ignorant or careless to hide it. The far left moves under the cover of words like democratic, progressive and liberal. One army manoeuvres loudly and in full colour, the other in stealth and under camouflage. One is so nakedly evil that it must be crushed, the other seems well intentioned, having the interests of the oppressed and the victim at its heart. Read the book Animal Farm and you get an idea of its modus operandi.
We sit comfortably in our homes watching TV and life pass as if modern life were normal; it is not. If we cared enough to study history that is not far distant, we would begin to understand what may be coming and prepare for a future prefigured in George Orwell’s other famous book: 1984. Thought crime is now an existential threat to free speech. It can lead a society into a seemingly endless hell whose only purpose seems to be to demonstrate the power of the State over the individual. The examples in the quoted article are very few in number, but the very fact they exist at all is alarming. They are signs that may be nothing more than oddities and anomalies in the working out of the law, or they could be straws in the wind. An indication of what might happen in the future.
