Days of Noah

Eliminating Fear

Do I know my fears better than you know them? (Says who?)

How shall we then not fear…

  • heights?
  • water?
  • death?
  • conservatives?
  • life?
  • government?
  • fire?
  • public speaking?
  • strangers?

Is that how we overcome homophobia as well? (I need a barfing emoticon for that term! Term, OK? Not people.)

Here’s the headline that precipitates such thoughts: Gays, lesbians in worldwide call for end to homophobia

How do I know I suffer from homophobia?

How do I overcome it?

Here’s another headline this morning: Obama urges “fair-minded” abortion debate

Fair-minded — what’s that?

What does it sound like?

What are some fair-minded words?

And now…to connect the first headline to the second:

Mr. President, world citizens, ladies and laddies: I call for an end to life-o-phobia.

Thank you.

SEND: Don’t Be Dumb

Please, please!

Don’t Be Dumb!

Cell phone or email or blog or Facebook or MySpace or Twitter or whatever: Beware the Send Button!

“The moment you push ‘send,’
the damage is done.”

The link will take you to the tragic story about Jessica Logan, who took a non-clothes cell photo of herself and sent it to her boyfriend. In a terrible cascade of forwards and resends, hundreds (if not thousands) of people received it. And Jessica was verbally pummeled face-to-face as well as via phone, text, email, Facebook, MySpace, and who knows what other medium.

Things like this make me mad. And sad.

Our technology allows us to do so much dumb (and worse) stuff on a whim. And regret later.

She did something very foolish in taking that photo of herself. She compounded her error by texting that photo to someone else. At that point, a character flaw or a bad attitude or a wrongly-entered recipient or a wrong key pressed or another foolish choice — and the original recipient sent it on.

And the process was repeated. And repeated. And repeated.

Have you learned the lesson now?

Message to Albert and Cynthia Logan: May you find comforting grace in Jesus Christ. As a dad, father-in-law, and grandpa, my heart aches for your daughter…and for you. I’m sorry. 😥

Life and Freedom Today

The Game of Life

The online version of a popular board game from many Americans’ childhood includes an option for players to choose homosexual marriage and child-rearing as a way of life.

Through the Shockwave.com website, even children can download and play a free trial version of The Game of Life, the first game ever created by Mr. Milton Bradley in 1860.

The player’s first option in the online version is to choose a persona based on pictures that clearly depict men and women. Shortly thereafter, the game invites players to choose a spouse, regardless of the potential spouse’s sex.

So that’s life.

But do they also create the option for skipping marriage altogether and just shacking up with your “significant other” (I despise that expression!)?

And the option to divorce?

Or have an abortion?

For the record, the board version of the game also allows taking a same-sex spouse.

So…add another point to freedom’s score. 🙄

And speaking of freedom….

Freedom in the 50 States

Index of Personal and Economic Freedom

This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on other individuals’ ability to do the same.

[…]

We find that the freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low taxes and government spending and middling levels of regulation and paternalism. New York is the least free by a considerable margin, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, California and Maryland. On personal freedom alone, Alaska is the clear winner, while Maryland brings up the rear. As for freedom in the different regions of the country, the Mountain and West North Central regions are the freest overall while the Middle Atlantic lags far behind on both economic and personal freedom.

As I recall, Oregon ranks #27 overall.

For perspective, I expect many people in the world would say we don’t have anything to fuss about regarding freedom here in the States. Even if they would have to live in New York or Maryland.

That’s a Camel’s Nose!

Socialized and nationalized under the radar screen:

If I told you that there’s someone in my very middle-class neighborhood who, rather than being upset with the high-speed re-direction of our culture toward a socialist mindset, is ready to pour billions of additional dollars into completing that transition, would it bother you?

What if I said that there’s someone just like that in your neighborhood as well? And someone with identical intentions in every neighborhood in America?

You know, if you’re a regular reader of my columns, that I don’t truck in conspiracy theories. So I’m not here to tell you some dark and scary secrets. I will argue, on the other hand, how frightening it is that something can be so very out in the open and still escape our attention. And then I want to propose something of an answer.

The sinister influence is…

He makes a very good point.

Like frogs, we easily boil slowly. But we object to boiling too fast.

Oh…and what do you think I mean with this post’s title?

“A Triumph for Human Rights”

United Nations Population Fund Leader Says Family Breakdown is a Triumph for Human Rights

A leader in the United Nations Population Fund UNFPA has declared that the breakdown of traditional families, far from being a “crisis,’ is actually a triumph for human rights.

Speaking at a colloquium held last month at Colegio Mexico in Mexico City, UNFPA representative Arie Hoekman denounced the idea that high rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births represent a social crisis, claiming that they represent instead the triumph of “human rights” against “patriarchy.”

“In the eyes of conservative forces, these changes mean that the family is in crisis,” he said. “In crisis? More than a crisis, we are in the presence of a weakening of the patriarchal structure, as a result of the disappearance of the economic base that sustains it and because of the rise of new values centered in the recognition of fundamental human rights.”

“Day after day, Mexico experiences a process of this diversity and there are those who understand it as a crisis, because they only recognize one type of family,” one of the speakers on the panel also told the audience.

This must be one of those stories buried by the regular press.

Maybe they just missed it.

HT: The Berean Call

Baby, Beware!

This morning, LifeNews is reporting:

President Obama Starts Process of Removing Doctors’ Protections on Abortions

The White House quietly announced on Friday that President Barack Obama is starting the process of overturning protections President Bush put in place to make sure medical staff and centers are not forced to do abortions.

I checked the White House site but didn’t find any mention of it yet.

Above all, love God!