Days of Noah

Congress Tries to Cover Gays Better

Congress acts to extend hate crimes to cover gays

The House voted Thursday to make it a federal crime to assault people because of their sexual orientation, significantly expanding the hate crimes law enacted in the days after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968.

With expected passage by the Senate, federal prosecutors will for the first time be able to intervene in cases of violence perpetrated against gays.

Civil rights groups and their Democratic allies have been trying for more than a decade to broaden the reach of hate crimes law. This time it appears they will succeed. The measure is attached to a must-pass $680 billion defense policy bill and President Barack Obama – unlike President George W. Bush – is a strong supporter. The House passed the defense bill 281-146, with 15 Democrats and 131 Republicans in opposition.

[…]

Many Republicans, normally stalwart supporters of defense bills, voted against it because of the addition of what they referred to as “thought crimes” legislation.

“This is radical social policy that is being put on the defense authorization bill, on the backs of our soldiers, because they probably can’t pass it on its own,” House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said.

GOP opponents were not assuaged by late changes in the bill to strengthen protections for religious speech and association – critics argued that pastors expressing beliefs about homosexuality could be prosecuted if their sermons were connected to later acts of violence against gays.

[…]

Some 45 states have hate crimes statutes, and the bill would not change the current situation where investigations and prosecutions are carried out by state and local officials.

[…]

Tom McClusky, vice president of the conservative Family Research Council’s legislative arm said the next step likely would be contesting the legislation in court. “The religious protections are pretty flimsy,” he said. He contended that Democrats were trying to move their “homosexual agenda” this year because it would prove unpopular with voters next year.

Orwell and Huxley Revisited

I got this in my email. So I found the site so I could quote it (with customized links added by me):

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. In 1984, Huxley added, “people are controlled by inflicting pain.” In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

–Neil Postman (Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business)

The Berean Call adds as a footnote:

While Orwell and Huxley had competing versions of the ongoing deterioration of humanity, the Scriptures have always pointed out how these times will be. “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy” 2 Timothy 3:1-2.

           

“Nothing Less Than Prophetic”

For those who have taken our religious freedom for granted or have gradually slipped into lukewarmness or even hypocrisy, this book may jolt us back to reality.

The Whirlwind Cometh“Have you read The Whirlwind Cometh?” asked my Arizona friend shortly after noon today.

He just came across the book and is probably done with it by now. He said reading it in the context of what’s going on in the United States these days made chills go up and down his spine.

“It’s nothing less than prophetic,” he said (and I think that’s an exact quote).

He thinks every young man and young woman in our Mennonite churches should read it. “Required reading for” is the way I recall him putting it.

Maybe some day I will get around to posting some excerpts from this novel, set in Canada.

Apparently written by an Amish author who chose to remain anonymous, this inexpensive little book is published by Pathway Publishers. (Maybe this qualifies as one of the few truly profitable amish novels!)

This is an unusual book, a story you will not soon forget. A new Canadian government under Prime Minister John Smith sweeps into power, and at once begins a program to bring reform to Canada. One result is that the historic peace churches are put to a test to see if they are truly nonresistant and if their faith is genuine. The young people must appear before tribunals before they are granted conscientious objector status.

For those who have taken our religious freedom too much for granted, or have gradually slipped into lukewarmness or even hypocrisy, this book may jolt us back to reality. This gripping story is not a history, but a challenge to examine the present and be ready for the future.

Hey — an idea! You could buy your own copy and post your comments here!

Anabaptist Bookstore: The Whirlwind Cometh

PSA to Cows: Eat Grass

Strange and dumb are reasonably mild terms to apply to this:

The British government is sending out a different message: Sex can be fun and healthy, for young and old alike.

In two new leaflets, the National Health Service advises elderly patients that it’s “never too late to experiment” and tells teenagers that sex every day “keeps the doctor away.”

“Urging them to enjoy their own bodies is a bit like encouraging cows to eat grass or birds to fly,” said the Independent newspaper.

Those excerpts come from this WaPo story.

You want my take? No? Then quit reading here.

So you’re still reading. OK, thanks.

Urging them to sin against their own bodies is like encouraging cows to eat tansy or birds to fry…only worse. Much, much worse.

“Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18).

Instead of keeping the doctor away, I thought it brought on the doctors…for treating STDs and for “treating” pregnancy and for delivering babies. But, hey — maybe it doesn’t work in the Mother Country like it does here in the Colonies.

If you think that’s my Victorian morality showing through, that’s OK. I just as well have it (as long as it’s first Christian morality) since Victoria’s offspring seem to have sprung free of it.

Look, I know they’re not legislating anything (yet), but I’ve got a question. If you “can’t legislate morality,” can you legislate immorality?

HT: Emily Belz — “Forget abstinence education!”

Pope: “Charity in Truth”

So he released his latest encyclical:

Pope Benedict on Tuesday called for a “world political authority” to manage the global economy and for more government regulation of national economies to pull the world out of the current crisis and avoid a repeat.

The pope’s call for a re-think of the way the world economy is run came in new encyclical which touched on a number of social issues but whose main connecting thread was how the current crisis has affected both rich and poor nations.

[…]

The pope said every economic decision has a moral consequence and called for “forms of redistribution” of wealth overseen by governments to help those most affected by crises.

Benedict said “there is an urgent need of a true world political authority” whose task would be “to manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result.”

Such an authority would have to be “regulated by law” and “would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights.”

Global economic political authority? No, thanks!

But it’s coming anyway.

The Bible tells me so (as I recall).

Above all, love God!
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