Tag: tolerance

The War Against Christianity: A Question of Intolerance

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics1 Comment

 

American Christianity 2

There has been a lot of discussion the past couple of weeks, concerning the Constitutional Rights of Christian Americans versus the hypocritical use of the words “tolerance” and “discrimination” by the American Left.

Napp Nazworth, writing for The Christian Post, makes the following observation…

Businesses should not discriminate, liberals proclaimed loudly in explaining their opposition to religious freedom laws. Three recent actions supported by liberals demonstrate that is not true.

1. Bakeries Should Be Able to Refuse Bible Verses

Christian activist Bill Jack was denied service when he went to Azucar Bakery in Denver and asked for two cakes in the shape of open Bibles. He asked for the words, “God hates sin — Psalm 45:7,” “Homosexuality is a detestable sin — Leviticus 18:22,” “God loves sinners,” and “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us — Romans 5:8,” on each of the “pages” of the Bible cakes.

Azucar Bakery is in the same state where the bakery Masterpiece Cake was successfully sued for declining to make a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding.

In a January interview with The Christian Post, Jack explained that he supports Azucar Bakery’s right to deny him service because they oppose the values he wanted written on the cakes. He only made the requests to find out if Colorado would be hypocritical. It was.

In Colorado, if a customer wants a cake with Christian values written on it, bakers are allowed to decline service if they disagree with those values. If a customer wants a cake for a same-sex wedding, bakers are not allowed to decline service if they disagree with same-sex marriage.

2. Pharmacists Should Refuse Death Penalty Drugs

The American Pharmacists Association approved a policy last month discouraging its members from participating in death penalty executions by providing the drugs required for lethal injections.

The move was encouraged by a letter sent to the group signed by 31 anti-death penalty and liberal organizations, including Amnesty International, the NAACP, National Council of Churches, SumOfUs and the United Methodist Church.

Liberal websites, such as The Huffington Post, Democracy Now and Think Progress, wrote positive reports about the move. There were no critics mentioned in their reports arguing that pharmacists should not have the right to decline their customers.

These reactions contrast sharply with liberal reactions to the notion that pro-life health care workers should not be forced to choose between participating in an abortion and losing their job.

3. Businesses Were Right to Boycott an Entire State Because of a Religious Freedom Law

In reaction to a religious freedom law passed in Indiana, Liberals were not only supporting, but praising Apple, Angie’s List and Salesforce for threatening boycotts in the state over the new law.

These liberals appreciated these companies making business decisions based upon their moral convictions. This exposed a glaring contradiction in their position: those companies opposed the law because it could (in some circumstances) let businesses make based upon owners’ religious convictions.

At its core, the issue was about wedding vendors, like Masterpiece Cake mentioned above, who declined service for same-sex weddings due to their religious convictions. Essentially, this means the companies were opposing a law that could (but not necessarily would) give small business owners the right to decline business for a particular event, by declining business with an entire state.

More than that, Angie’s List, Apple and Salesforce were much more extreme in their position than the wedding vendors. While wedding vendors opposed to working same-sex weddings would have no economic impact (because there are plenty of vendors willing to work same-sex weddings), boycotts by large companies would hurt local economies and workers — even those workers who agreed with their position. Yet, to hear liberals tell it, those companies were heroic while same-sex marriage opponents are bigots.

In a Thursday article for The Federalist, The Acton Institute’s Jordan Ballor put it well: “The problem in this instance, then, is not that companies like Angie’s List threaten economic sanction, …. The problem, rather, is that the freedom to discriminate is claimed by such companies for themselves but not extended and recognized for others. Boycotts against discrimination as such thus depend on the very thing they oppose. In this sense, the discriminatory actions of businesses ought to be judged alike, whether they are based on religious convictions or secular morality.”

So, what is it that American Liberals want Christian Americans to do, concerning the fact that our Holy Scriptures, God’s Word itself, condemns homosexuality?

According to Dr. Michael Brown, writing for The Christian Post, one  for the New York Times, believes that there is a simple solution to the “problem.”

Simply rewrite the Word of God.

How can the religious community live in peace and harmony with the LGBT community? New York Times columnist Frank Bruni has the solution. Just rewrite the Bible.

In his April 3rd column, “Bigotry, the Bible and the Lessons of Indiana,” Bruni, himself gay, recognizes that Christian beliefs are not necessarily grounded in hatred. The problem, he claims, is that, “Beliefs ossified over centuries aren’t easily shaken.”

Bruni, for his part, wants to shake us free from our fossilized faith.

According to Bruni, who evidences little or no understanding of how believers view the Scriptures (namely, as God’s inspired Word), if we hold to the view that homosexual practice is sinful, this is our “decision” and “choice.”

So, ironically, whereas homosexuality was once considered a choice, now what we believe about homosexuality is a choice.

After all, he argues, the belief that homosexual practice is sinful “prioritizes scattered passages of ancient texts over all that has been learned since — as if time had stood still, as if the advances of science and knowledge meant nothing.”

So, Bruni thinks he can simply dismiss the Scriptures as “ancient texts,” explaining “all writings reflect the biases and blind spots of their authors, cultures and eras.”

But for devout Jews and Christians, the Scriptures are not just any writings, full of biases and blind spots.

If that were the case, there would be no basis for our faith whatsoever and no absolute moral foundations of any kind.

Forget about homosexuality. We would have no reason to hold to any of the fundamentals of our faith if Bruni’s description was accurate.

Not only so, but Bruni wrongly claims that for those of us who hold to the authority of the Bible, “the advances of science and knowledge” mean “nothing.”

To the contrary, all the scientific advances in the world cannot determine what is or is not moral, and there’s nothing we know today that changes our view that God did not design men to be with men and women to be with women. The new interpretations of Scripture that the “progressive” Christians are touting (and which Bruni applauds) are not based on new textual or archeological or linguistic discoveries. They are based primarily on emotional arguments, since there is nothing in the Bible that supports homosexual practice.

Bruni also repeats the common misconception that there are just a handful of “scattered” texts that deal with homosexual practice.

To the contrary, every law dealing with marriage and family, every positive example and precept, every illustration in the Bible about sexuality morality is based on heterosexual relationships (see, for example, Genesis 2:24; Exodus 20:12; Matthew 19:4-6; Ephesians 5:22-33).

That’s why there was not a need to condemn homosexual practice on every page. Everything in Scripture was against it. (To be perfectly clear, the Bible plainly teaches that God loves every human being, that all of us are fallen and in need of redemption, and that Jesus died for heterosexual and homosexual alike. The issue here is the meaning of marriage and the standard of sexual morality.)

Bruni cannot countenance this for a moment. Instead, he claims that our biblically-based faith “elevates unthinking obeisance above intelligent observance,” which is why “our debate about religious freedom should include a conversation about freeing religions and religious people from prejudices that they needn’t cling to and can indeed jettison, much as they’ve jettisoned other aspects of their faith’s history, rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.”

So, those of us who hold to biblical morality are “unthinking” and “prejudiced” people who need to be “freed” from our antiquated beliefs.

It’s high time, Bruni opines, for us to catch up with the 21st century. How utterly primitive of us to believe that there’s anything wrong with homosexual relationships or acts!

Bruni, however, sees positive trends, pointing to a number of books by Christian authors who advocate a reinterpretation of the Bible, claiming that we have outgrown other biblically based views over time, like the justification of slavery or the nature of gender roles.

…Bruni cites with approval a quote from Mitchell Gold, a furniture maker and gay philanthropist who says, “church leaders must be made ‘to take homosexuality off the sin list.'”

And Bruni means it when he says “made to” – as in pressured to or forced to or coerced to. As he writes at the end of his column, “His [namely, Gold’s] commandment is worthy — and warranted. All of us, no matter our religious traditions, should know better than to tell gay people that they’re an offense. And that’s precisely what the florists and bakers who want to turn them away are saying to them.” (Of course, Bruni misrepresents the positions of these Christian business owners as well, but why deal with truth when caricature is so much more effective?)

So, rather than follow the biblical commandments, which are explicit and unambiguous when it comes to both the heterosexual nature of marriage (“from the beginning,” as Jesus said) and the sinfulness of homosexual practice, we should follow the new “commandment” of Bruni and Gold and simply rewrite the Bible.

Well, here’s a note to Mr. Bruni and The New York Times: A billion years from now, when the names of Frank Bruni and Mitchell Gold and the Times itself are long forgotten, the words of God will still stand (Isaiah 40:7-8; Matthew 24:35), and those florists and bakers whom you ridicule in this world will be highly esteemed in the world to come.

The fact is that churches and denominations and religious groups may come and go, but the Word of God is here to stay.

We do not sit in judgment on the Scriptures; the Scriptures sit in judgment of us. And while they call us to love our neighbors as ourselves, they also forbid homosexual practice.

That is not about to change.

As I wrote earlier this week, the Far Left, have proven that they cannot stand Christian Americans. It is evident from their condescension toward us and derision of our traditional values and ethics in their propaganda. Our Constitution gives us Religious Freedom in its very First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Please note that this amendment does not say “in some circumstances”.

I have said time and time again, that I find it funny that those among us who claim to be the most tolerant are actually the least tolerant of all.

However, this attack on our faith as Christian Americans, is not funny at all.

This Media Blitz, concerning the fact that Christian Americans refuse to support “Gay Marriage”, which was the impetus behind the President’s scolding Christian Americans about “not being loving enough” is not about discrimination, it is about control. Control of American Christians’ daily lives.

It is a rewriting and an attempted negating of God’s Word by those who cannot win a political or spiritual argument and are now trying to win a culture war by claiming that this law is something that it is not, and by rewriting Christianity by leaving out Individual Salvation through repentance of sin.

Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler ‘ s Minister of Propaganda, once said that

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

The current lie that Obama and his sycophants are telling the American Public is that, somehow, the less than 24% of Americans who feel the same way as the Progressives in the Far Left do, somehow outnumber the 74% of Americans who proclaim Jesus Christ as our Personal Savior.

And, that overestimation just doesn’t add up.

Not even in Common Core.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

Attorney General Eric Holder and the Glass House of Liberal Racism

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

RacismThe Attorney General of the United States, speaking on ABC yesterday, keeping in line with the political strategy of his boss, the “First Non-Racial President”, used the excuse of  “racial animus”, i.e., RACISM, in a weak attempt to protect him and the President from well-deserved criticism and opposition.

TheHill.com has the story…

Attorney General Eric Holder said Sunday he and President Obama have been targets of “a racial animus” from some of the administration’s political opponents.

“There’s a certain level of vehemence, it seems to me, that’s directed at me [and] directed at the president,” Holder told ABC. “You know, people talking about taking their country back. … There’s a certain racial component to this for some people. I don’t think this is the thing that is a main driver, but for some there’s a racial animus.”

Holder said the nation is in “a fundamentally better place than we were 50 years ago.”

“We’ve made lots of progress,” he said. “I sit here as the first African-American attorney general, serving the first African-American president of the United States. And that has to show that we have made a great deal of progress.

“But there’s still more we have to travel along this road so we get to the place that is consistent with our founding ideals,” he said.

He also stood by his controversial comments made during Obama’s first year in office, in which he said the U.S. was a “nation of cowards” when it comes to race.

“I wouldn’t walk away from that speech,” Holder said. “I think we are still a nation that is too afraid to confront racial issues,” rarely engaging “one another across the color line [to] talk about racial issues.”

The attorney general also pointed to Republican efforts to enact stricter voter ID laws in southern States as evidence that more needed to be done to protect minority rights. Republicans have maintained the efforts are designed to prevent voter fraud, while Democrats say instances of fraud are exceedingly rare, and far outpaced by the minority population that does not have identification that would be unable to vote.

Holder called the laws “political efforts” designed to make it “more difficult” for “groups that are not supportive of those in power” to “have access to the ballot.”

“Who is disproportionately impacted by them? Young people, African Americans, Hispanics, older people, people who, for whatever reason, aren’t necessarily supportive of the Republican Party,” Holder said, adding that “this notion that there is widespread in-person voter fraud is simply belied by the facts.”

Holder said the Justice Department was planning legal challenges of new voting laws in Ohio and Wisconsin. It has previously filed suit in Texas and North Carolina.

“I’m attorney general of the United States. … I will not allow people to take away that which people gave their lives to give, and that is the ability for the American people to vote,” Holder said.

About this “racial Animus” thing, Mr. Attorney General…nice Glass House you have there.

By the way, you do remember the New Black Panther Party case, don’t you?

During Obama’s first Presidential Election in 2008, it seems like there was a wee bit of “racial animus” going on, but not in the direction you were speaking of on television yesterday.

According to foxnews.com, there was

…an incident at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008 when three members of the party were accused of trying to threaten voters and block poll and campaign workers by the threat of force — one even brandishing what prosecutors call a deadly weapon.

The three black panthers, Minister King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were charged in a civil complaint in the final days of the Bush administration with violating the voter rights act by using coercion, threats and intimidation. Shabazz allegedly held a nightstick or baton that prosecutors said he pointed at people and menacingly tapped it. Prosecutors also say he “supports racially motivated violence against non-blacks and Jews.”

AG Holder, in an article posted on washingtonpost.com, on 1/27/11, Jennifer Rubin summed up what you did and did not do, regarding this example of “racial animus”:

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights came out in December with a draft of its interim report on the New Black Panthers Party scandal. Earlier today a final report was posted on the commission’s website, and with it, a flurry of rebuttals and separate statements from a number of the commissioners. The import of these statements should not be minimized.

The statements indicate several points: 1) the New Black Panther Party case brought by career Justice Department employees was meritorious on the law and the facts; 2) there is voluminous evidence of the Obama administration’s political interference in the prosecution of the New Black Panther Party case; 3) there is ample evidence that the Obama administration directed Justice Department employees not to bring cases against minority defendants who violated voting rights laws or to enforce a provision requiring that states and localities clean up their voting rolls to prevent fraud; 4) the Justice Department stonewalled efforts to investigate the case; and 5) vice chairman Abigail Thernstrom has, for reasons not entirely clear, ignored the evidence and tried to undermine the commission’s work.

Unfortunately, Attorney General Holder, you’re not the only member of the Administration residing in that Glass House of Liberal Racism.

Back in February of 2007, Vermont Senator Joe Biden described his future boss, contender for the Democrat Presidential Nomination, Barack Hussein Obama, in the following manner…

I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” Biden said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.

Speaking of our first “Non-Racial President”, remember Obama’s infamous “bitter clinger” statement about rural Americans at an elite fundraiser in San Francisco in 2008?

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

I have lived in the Memphis Area all of my 55 years. I remember this fellow named Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose words set the town on fire…literally.

On August 28, 1963,  Dr. King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, in which he said,

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

On July 18th, 2012, during the heart of  Obama’s Re-election Campaign, Breitbart.com’s John Nolte wrote the following

…By screaming racism (which is what “birther” really means) and claiming perfectly valid criticism of Obama is “dangerous,” this is how the media protects Obama from effective criticism and spins that criticism around into an attack against Republicans.

In 2008, using this partisan tactic, the media was able to intimidate and cow John McCain into submission. In fact, when Sarah Palin started hitting Obama for his relationship with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, out of whole cloth the media made up the charge that someone at a Palin rally screamed, “Kill him!,” in reference to Obama.

You see, this is how the corrupt media attempts to snuff out criticism Obama can’t weather. If they can’t call the criticism racist they call it dangerous. And if they have to, the media will simply create a narrative based on what they know is a lie.

The corrupt media refuses to vet Obama, because they know that if they did, he would lose. This means that they must also stop Republicans from discussing Obama’s past by any means necessary. And this includes bullying Obama’s critics by declaring their criticism “racist” and “dangerous.”

Today’s Liberals use Racism as both a sword and a shield.

If you attack Obama’s performance as President, or any other Liberal Black Leader’s performance, you’re a RAAACIIIST! 

However, when the subject of removing affirmative action requirements comes up, as it recently did in Michigan, a hue and cry comes up from Liberals, using their cries of “Racism” as a shield against any attempts to remove Uncle Sugar from our day-to-day lives.

While, all the time, as the quotes above show, our “tolerant” Liberal Friends are the most intolerant of all of us.

That is probably why Dr. King was a Republican.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

Liberals: A Study in Intolerance

On By kingsjesterIn Politics11 Comments

I’ve spent the last two days engaging in a “discussion” with an anonymous Moderate/Liberal/Moby, who took offense to my suggestion that the idiot Coney Island Principal who forbade 5 year olds from singing God Bless the USA, should go ahead and leave our country, if she hates it that much.

The anonymous woman (I presume) in question said, that I did not have the right to express my opinion in that way because it was rude.

Oh yeah?  Well, what do you call this, precious?

Noel Sheppard, posted the following at newsbusters.org:

Joy Behar, Al Gore’s new employee at Current TV, said Tuesday in response to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s comments on the need for more police, teachers, and firefighters, “I’d like to see his house burn, one of his millions of houses burning down.”

During an interview with the liberal website Mediaite, Behar added, “It would be kind of cool – the Mormon fire patrol”

MEDIAITE: What would you ask Romney if you could?

JOY BEHAR: I would ask him plenty of questions about, is he planning to endorse the Ryan budget? And I think that would be a terrible mistake. I don’t want to see people on the streets begging for food, thank you. And why does he hate Planned Parenthood? You know, he didn’t used to hate Planned Parenthood. I want to ask him about all the flip-flopping he’s been doing. That’s why he doesn’t want to come on, because he’s afraid of the questions.

MEDIAITE: I saw that you used to be a school teacher. What did you think about what he said about “teachers, firemen, and police?”

BEHAR: What did he say? Tell me what he said.

MEDIAITE: He was making fun of the President for wanting to hire more policemen and firemen and teachers saying, you know, “Didn’t he get the message of Wisconsin that we want less government?”

BEHAR: Oh, less government? That is an idiotic statement. Can I just say that?

MEDIAITE: Yes.

BEHAR: I mean, I’d like to see his house burn, one of his millions of houses burning down. It would be kind of cool – the Mormon fire patrol.

MEDIAITE: Is that a thing?

BEHAR: You know what I mean? Come on. What am I supposed to do if my apartment gets caught on fire? Am I gonna call Mitt Romney to come and put it out? See what I mean?

No, you belligerent Beltway Heifer, I don’t.  

You’ve made a living being an obnoxious loudmouth.  I can’t believe somebody would actually pay a no-talent whiney Lib like you, to express opinions which 80% of the country think are nothing but vacuous vulgarities.

But, that’s the double standard so prevalent in America today.  Liberals can say whatever they want to, about anybody they want to, no matter how vulgar and hurtful it is.

Sometimes, like David Letterman’s failed joke concerning Bristol Palin and a New York Yankee, they wind up having to apologize.  Most of the time, as in the case of all the unfunny oral diarrhea flowing from the walking, talking orifice known as Bill Maher, they don’t have to.

It’s viewed as witty and urbane by those Libs and Moderates on the East and West Coasts.

Those of us here in the Heartland, know the reason why his eyes are brown.

But, I digress…

It’s not just Liberal celebrities who are acting like idiots.

I’ve already written about the idiot principal up in Coney Island. Here’s another very educational example:

Gerald Molen won a best picture Oscar for co-producing Schindler’s List with Steven Spielberg and has produced such Hollywood blockbusters as the first two Jurassic Park films and Twister. He’s a former U.S. Marine and is a sought-after motivational speaker.

So he’s not accustomed to being shunned.

Such was the case, though, when he was invited to speak to the graduating class at a Montana high school. But upon arriving, was told by the principal he would not be allowed to deliver the speech he had prepared.

The reason, he believes, is politics.

Molen is one of those rare conservatives in Hollywood (he’s even making a documentary called 2016, based on the Dinesh D’Souza book The Roots of Obama’s Rage) and because of that, he says, Ronan High School principal Tom Stack decided to disinvite him — and he didn’t tell him so until after Molen made the 90-minute drive from his home in Bigfork, Mont.

Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you: The good news is that the school district apologized to Molen. The bad news is that it was too late for him to speak at the graduation:

The incident as described by Molen “did, in fact, occur,” superintendent of schools for the Ronan district Andy Holmlund told The Hollywood Reporter on Friday.

“It is my understanding that the high-school principal made the decision based on his point of view. It is not the view of the district. That’s not the expectations that the district maintains. That principal will not be serving in this school district for the upcoming school year.”

Holmlund said Stack has accepted a position with a school in Clinton, Mont., though he refused to say when or why that decision had been made. Residents say it was likely unrelated to Stack’s decision to disinvite Molen.

Asked why Stack had not responded to several phone calls, Holmlund said: “I can’t speak to the fact that Mr. Stack isn’t talking.”

Asked about the public’s response to the sudden, nationwide pubicity to the controversy, Holmlund said: “Oh, it’s on fire, sir. Justifiably so. We don’t expect people to be treated poorly.”

Uh huh.  But, just like those 5 year olds up in Coney Island, Mr. Molen was.

Isn’t it funny, how those among us who claim to be the most tolerant, are actually the least tolerant of all?