On Christian Bigotry in Politics

I do not understand why someone who claims to be a Christian would shoot themselves so many times in the foot.

In the world of politics, you have your friends and your enemies. You have to choose them carefully. You’d always like to be on the winning side, somehow, but really, you want to see your agenda get through, no matter who wins. If your friends win, you run the risk of them putting you on the sideline only to call you out when they need your votes. If your enemies win, perhaps they will invite you to the table to see if they can get your vote in the next round.

Either way, you’d like to be an important ally or an important enemy.

In politics, I believe we should be measuring each other politically. That is, compare what you want to get done with what someone else wants to get done. If it’s a close match, you will be a close ally. If it’s a reasonable match, then you will be a reasonable ally. If they don’t match hardly at all, then you have your enemy, but you still have common ground.

As you choose your political allies, you should try to find the group that (a) represents a majority, and (b) aligns most closely with you.

With that in mind, why is there even one degree of separation between Mormons and Evangelical Christians?

Can you name one political issue we disagree on? I can go down the entire list, and you will find nothing, absolutely nothing, we disagree on. Except, of course, keeping Mormons out of power. That seems to be a driving issue for Evangelical Christians.

You see, when Glenn Beck, a political talk show host who is also a Mormon, writes a book that teaches the fundamental doctrines of Christ, you know the whole “Love your neighbor” bit, and when an Evangelical political organization publishes praise for the book, that’s a good thing, since it brings Mormons and Evangelical Christians closer together in the political realm.

Now, if Focus on the Family wasn’t a political organization, but a religious one, and if Glenn Beck weren’t a political talk show host, but a religious leader in the Mormon faith, I can understand why publishing the teachings of that leader would be objectionable. Heck, you won’t find articles by evangelical preachers in our mormon religious publications, at least ones that disagreed with our doctrine.

But this isn’t a religious thing, it’s a political thing. As people who agree on almost everything in politics (except the “keeping Mormons down” bit), we should be working closely together on everything politically. We should be closer than brothers in the political realm.

I mean, there is more difference between a socialist and a communist than there is between a mormon and an evangelical christian in the political realm, and you don’t see them bickering, do you?

Now, if you think it’s a good idea to get all testy whenever you see an evangelical political organization get too close to a mormon politician, then we’ll see where that leaves us: on the sidelines.

Which is exactly where both of us are. See, despite the fact that the social conservatives have the strongest and most resounding message and have experienced the most powerful political victories while the fiscal and foreign relation conservatives have been losing everywhere, we are still not the leaders of the Republican Party. Why? Because we aren’t getting along. If we had, we’d have taken over the party a long time ago. It would be the fiscal and foreign politicy conservatives asking for a handout and begging to get on the ticket every November. But no, it’s us begging, and the losers are in charge.

It’s time we stopped fighting over religion outside of our churches and started cooperating in politics in our government buildings. As a mormon, I can tell you that I, personally, am willing to put everything in the past. Heck, I’ll even go out and write a check to whichever evangelical you want to win. But that’s conditioned with you giving up this stupid fight to keep the mormons out of power and simply embraced us as allies in this all-too-important political fight.

Mind you, of course, I’ll probably never agree with you on core elements of theology, and I don’t ask you to embrace my doctrine either. But I am willing to be your political ally.

Israel Unleashed

The counter-attack on Hamas by Israel, the countless so-called innocents being slaughtered, was a long time in the making.

Israel has claim on her land. At a fundamental level, as long as they can control the territory, it is theirs, and no one else’s. If any disagrees, they are welcome to declare war on Israel and see how Israel reacts. Otherwise, Israel gets to set her own rules about who owns which patches of land. We have no more right to interfere than they do in our territory disputes.

But really, you can’t ignore the blessings of Diety that have been put on Israel. Anyone who has a brain and eyes can see for themselves that Israel’s people have taken that patch of ground which was and still is in many places a wasteland and turned it into a garden. Do you think this is modern science that has conquered that soil, or the blessings of God?

And what of her military victories? How can such a tiny country so isolated from the rest of the world hold back billions of Muslims? Only a miracle could keep Egypt out of that area, and only a miracle has.

In my mind, Israel has done far too much pandering to Europe and their sycophants in the US. Once Israel was granted that land by English law, which the English took by treaty from the Turks, then it was theirs and no one has any right to say anything. But Israel has bent over backwards, suffered countless humiliations, and even today is suffering more. Israel has done enough. Leave her alone to fight her wars in her way.

Israel is no threat to us or our ideals. If anything, she is the most powerful ally we have, even among the European nations. She understands how important it is to be able to stand up and declare her own sovereignty, to be kept separate from nations that once welcomed her but then turned on her, nations which benefitted by her but soon coveted her. She knows like we know that no man is free when someone claims royal heritage to rule over them.

How The Liberal Machine Works

I want you to imagine a machine of sorts. It requires some form of input, operator control, etc. It produces an end product.

The machine I want you to examine today is the machine that produces election victories for liberals. That is, people who want to expand the power of the government by infringing on individual rights and injuring the people. People like Barack Obama and pretty much every Democrat in power, and a whole lot of Republicans who don’t understand why it’s a bad thing to tax the rich and give to the poor.

In a perfect world, a politician would run a campaign like this. “I promise to do whatever it takes to secure the rights of all the people. I promise to keep government well-managed and restrained, incapable of causing injury to any innocent person. I promise to do so at the smallest cost possible, returning what excess it has collected to the people who paid in. I promise to do so no matter what my self-interests are, or the interests of my friends and family.”

That is, of course, the message that everyone wants to have. It is what America is all about. Success despite the government, success without the government, a government below the people.

But the liberal lines look more like this. “I promise to hurt the powerful and help the weak. I will take money from the rich and give it to the poor. I will shut up the powerful and give voice to the weak. I will help you and hurt them.”

But underneath that veneer, there is another system. It is the pay-to-play system that Govenor Blagojevich has no regrets for using to determine the next senator from Illinois. It says, basically, “Give me money or votes, and I’ll give you something in return. Not from my pockets, of course, but from the pockets of our common political enemies.”

The democrat donors give money and votes to the campaign either ignorantly, naively believing in Hope-n’-Change despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary, or knowingly, expecting something in return. I believe the vast majority of the money and power flowing into the Democratic Party comes from those who expect to get something better if a democrat is elected at the cost of another group. This is evidenced by those who believe that Barack Obama will take money from the rich and give it to the poor.

The machine is financed and powered by these donations. In exchange, the politicians do everything they can to help their supporters. Expected returns can be ten or a hundred times the investment for these investors.

I wish the Republican Party were different, but it is not. There, too, there is a machine at work, a powerful one. Those republicans who manage to work the machine or survive it while still holding dear to their principles of limited government and freedom for all eventually get consumed by the machine or destroyed by it.

This machine politic, where people participate expecting to get something better in return at the cost of others, is simply defined as corruption. Our government was never intended to be used as a tool to enrich the few at the cost of others. It was always intended to be a vanguard for liberty, to protect the weak from the strong, not at the cost of the strong. It was intended to keep society well-ordered and maintained, so that people could be free from each other and the government, free to pursue their happiness. You can see how our government is being abused by the number of ways it violates the constitution and its original intention.

How do we destroy this machine and replace it with one where only those who value individual liberties are promoted to power? Unfortunately, the answer is that we are the machine. Unless we change ourselves, we cannot expect a different output.

You, yourself, have to take stock of how you look at government and the people around you. Do you feel comfortable taking one penny from any other person and calling it your own, to spend as you see fit? If so, you are corrupt, as corrupt as Governor Blagojevich, in kind if not magnitude. Do not live your life or think thoughts that would say it is okay to take one thing from another, no matter how small.

That’s what God meant when he talked about coveting. Yes, you can think of it as not wanting what others have, but really the core of it is not wanting to take what others have. For instance, if your neighbor has a nice house, and you want a nice house too, so you work hard to build your own house, that’s not coveting. If you want your neighbor’s house, specifically, to take it from him, that’s coveting.

On the more concrete side, you have laws against theft, or actually taking what other people have. We should look at taxes not as necessary theft, or benevolent theft, but as theft. That is, as evil. Every dime of tax we collect is blood money. It is, quite literally, filthy lucre. This is the kind of money that your grandpa wouldn’t take as payment and wouldn’t spend if he had it. If he found out he was paid with filthy lucre, he would probably return it to sender, with a stamp saying, “you go to hell with your own money, I’m not dealing with you ever again.”

On that note, we should treat those people who feed off of the government coffers as criminals of the worst kind, no better than thieves, but worse since they do it with the force of law. If your salary is drawn from my paycheck, whether you are a teacher or firefighter or elected official, you have been paid with money taken from my by force. Think about that. I didn’t choose you, someone else did and paid you with my money. Yes, I think teachers and firefighters are wonderful, but honestly, teaching and firefighting are things I would pay for voluntarily.

I hope you understand that I am not trying to excuse the evil of government. Government is evil, and will always be. A necessary evil, yes, but evil nonetheless. If we view government and all of its tentacles in this lght, I think we will be more careful before we allow government to reach out and corrupt people through its payment of blood money. Only in the cases where it is truly the only acceptable alternative, such as matters of war and law enforcement or economic situations that can only be handled properly through forced taxes and common property, should we allow it.

We have to change the way we think of government, and then the liberal machine of take-and-give will go away on its own, since there will no longer be anyone willing to bloody their hands in participation. And the way to change that thinking is to think of government funds as filthy lucre, blood money, taken with force through theft.

Arguing Without Logic

Over at Scary Reasoning, scaryreasoner tries to challenge my faith. (link)

Apparently, the thought that logic simply doesn’t enter into the equation of my faith is shocking to Atheists. Isn’t this their whole diatribe against believers? Of course my religion is above or beyond or void of logic. It has to be, since my religion teachers that humanity, mankind, whatever, is below the dust of the earth, incapable of even reasoning with God and considering even the simplest of His thoughts. If so, then logic, human logic that is, cannot have part of religion.

Hence, revelation. The very idea that perhaps God would speak directly to man, of all people, why, you’d think someone would write a book about it or something if it were true? (You have read the Bible, right? If not, I suggest you get started. Know your enemy and all that.)

The only scary part of scaryreasoner’s response is that he is shockingly unfamiliar with the logical proofs of God’s existence, the ones that Bertrand Russell is trying to refute in his speech Why I am Not a Christian.

If you’re going to play the logic game, if you’re going to be a good Atheist, you have to start reading and assessing logical arguments. I’ve had plenty of time to do this myself, formally studying the topics of math, physics, and science in general, and also studying the fields of software engineering and computer science professionally. I’ve also spent quite a few time reading various logical arguments, both in relation to theology and otherwise. You have to understand the rules of the game, and how the game is played.

It looks like scaryreasoner is indeed a scary reasoner since he refuses to even begin considering reason, especially the kind of reason that might challenge his beliefs.

Scaryreasoner, if you cannot refute all of the logical proofs of God’s existence, and then a few more you can come up with on your own, you are not a real Atheist. You are simply a believer in the prophets of Atheism, and no better than a blind Christian who refuses to approach Christ. You are what people call an ignorant fool, a useful idiot, a pawn. If you want to live that way, that’s fine, but you’re still an ignorant fool, a useful idiot, and a pawn.

How to Think Like an Atheist

Having re-read Bertrand Russell’s Why I am Not a Christian, I am reminded of how small-minded his arguments sound. Of course, on the surface, they seem brilliant and insightful. But that’s the surface. Anyone can take almost any argument, polish it up a bit with quick flurries of interesting words, and make them sound brilliant and insightful.

Bertrand Russell does a marvelous job at arguing against God without arguing at all. His formula is simple. First, take an argument that proves the existence and nature of God. Then, misstate it. Third, refuse to argue against it with any substance. Finally, distract your audience with some other interesting fact that sounds like it may be relevant, but it is not.

Atheists take advantage of the human mind to make their arguments. On the outside, they elevate the human mind into something it is not—a wonderful machine of divine logic, reason, and compassion. But our experience reveals to us that the human mind is simply not the machine they describe. While it may have bursts of logic, reason, creativity, beauty, and kindness, the vast majority of the time it is spent in the exact opposite state. The natural state of man and his mental powers is quite pathetic, really. Our society’s rise from the barbaric age where rape, pillage, and robbery where facts of life was done despite the failings of the human mind, not because of it.

(Those bursts of logic, reason, creativity, etc…, and that rise from the ashes, I and other religionists attribute it to the Divine, by the way. We certainly can’t give humanity any credit for it.)

So Atheists take their arguments, muddled by their own illogical reasonings, and polish them up until the point where they become almost reasonable. And then they assault the human conscience with their tirades against the Creator in an effort to steal away what happiness and peace there is in this world.

I can’t emphasize enough at how pathetic our own state is here on this earth. As a programmer, you’d think I of all people, who work in a pristine environment based solely on human logic and reasoning, a sort of castle built from the same stuff as dreams, would appreciate human logic and reason and thus embrace Atheism. The answer is that I do not, because I am most familiar with human logic and reason and quite frankly, I detest it. As a programmer, I voluntarily put shackles around my own logic and reasoning, and encourage other programmers to do the same, because the code we produce is simply better that way than if we allowed our minds to wander freely. (The stuff we use day-in and day-out to build these castles is quite primitive and shockingly simple. If you non-programmers simply understood exactly what we did every day, you’d hold us in far lower esteem, and find comfort in the fact that you chose not to be a programmer.)

The heart of religion is simply this. God exists, He speaks to us in our hearts, and that’s it. You don’t need to bring logic or reason into it, except maybe at the fringes in those areas where God invites you to bring your logic and reasoning into it (with the correct understanding that you’ll likely arrive at the wrong answer at least 57 times before arriving at the right answer, and even then you won’t recognize it as being right.) But the heart of my religion, and I believe the religion of everyone who holds their religion dear, is free from human frailties such as reason and logic.

All the rest of religion comes from this. I read the Bible, and I learn about Jesus and his love for us, and God’s love for his people, all people everywhere, and his desire for us to serve him in faith, and I gain a knowledge of what I am to do in this life not through the letters themselves but the feelings that come as I read and ponder these things. That makes my religion quite resilient to frail human reasoning, just as it should be resilient to every other frail human faculty or passion as well.

To summarize, Atheists put a lot of stock in logic and reasoning, while religionists such as myself understand that human logic and reasoning is flawed at best.

Keynesianism

Here’s the word of the year: Keynesianism (KAYN-zee-an-ism). (link)

John Maynard Keynes was an economist in the 1930′s who advocated a government policy of spending more during an economic downturn to kickstart the economy. Sounds familiar? It’s what President Bush and the Democratic Party and the majority of the Republican Party are trying today. Bottom line: It doesn’t work, never has, and never will.

To understand why, you simply have to consider that the same idiots running our business are the same idiots in office and the same idiots who are employed by the government and are the same idiots as us.

That is, as foolish, mortal human beings, we are simply terrible at making decisions, for several reasons. One, we never have enough information, and what information we do have is often wrong. Two, when confronted with rational information, we often choose irrationally. Three, when we are confronted with the fact that we are ignorant and making poor decisions, we get angry rather than humble.

Given this state of humanity (which always has been and always will be, as long as we live on this earth like we are today), what sense does it make to give any power over your life to anyone else?

With this in mind, our Founding Fathers instituted a government by a constitution that put absolute limits on the power of the government, and no limits on the power of the people. The idea was that the natural evolution of governments tended towards despotism and tyranny, and the natural evolution of societies tended towards charity and economy. So limit government, but leave the people free to do as they thought best.

What Keynesianism does is take power away from the people. It does so by giving the government a big say in what money goes where. Government chooses who gets the bail out and who doesn’t. Government chooses who “gets” to finance the bailout. Right now, the winners are the banks and in the near future, maybe the auto manufacturers. The losers are us and our future.

Milton Friedman and others, including John Maynard Keynes himself, realized that the best economic system is unrestrained free trade among the people. Government’s role was to stay out of the way and clear the ground for a giant marketplace.

The people would turn to government to keep bad actors out of the system, both economic and government. What kinds of bad actors? People such as the donors and politicians of the Democratic Party who commit fraud on unprecedented scales against our retirement accounts. Such fraud includes, but is not limited to, people such as Madoff and the Social Security and Medicare systems. It also includes all of the social programs, programs which are a sham because it steals from us our right to spend our money on the poor and desperate, and at the same time wastes that money in unprecedented scams of unprecedented scale. After all, look at what the social programs have done to those who’ve participated in them. They are destroying our society, and that’s the best we can say of them.

The government would write a set of laws that was fair for all, and then enforce them against those who refuse to keep them. The government would not begin to act as a participant in that economy, for fear that people with baser motives, such as the democrats in congress (as well as corrupt republicans), would try to take power simply to hold the reins of the economy.

Anyway, here’s a brief overview of why Keynesianism doesn’t work both theoretically and practically. This isn’t something you can dispute anymore and be intellectually honest about. In NO PLACE where Keynesianism has been tried has it produced the desired results, even to a lesser degree.

Corruption

What drove Governor Blagojevich to do what he did? In other words, what is the heart of corruption?

Corruption is simply turning something from its original state into something that lacks integrity or virtue. In the governor’s case, it was taking the trust placed with him by the people of Illinois that he would use the power he was vested with in the interests of the people, not himself.

When we have a system that relies on personal integrity, such as the powers that governors and other officials throughout all of our governments have been entrusted with, we have a system that fails when those officials no longer possess personal integrity. Unfortunately, as in the novel 1984, we can’t have a system that works despite dishonesty and corruption. That is, even with the FBI and the federal prosecutors who go after this sort of thing, we can’t eliminate it entirely. At best, we can only hope to expose and punish the more flagrant examples of it. At worst, we have a system where the FBI and federal prosecutors turn the other way when they see corruption in the highest places.

Where does personal integrity come from? Are we born with it? No, the natural state of mankind is to use whatever they have for selfish purposes. It takes something else to drive out corruption, to make a man stand up for someone else before themselves.

And what is that?

Religion.

Why was Governor Blagojevich corrupt? Because he lacked religion. He didn’t have the faith necessary to live in a personal world where corruption was impermissible.

Those who do have strong personal faith view the universe differently than those who don’t. They see at the top a divine Creator, a divine Judge, all-seeing and all-powerful, who demands 100% obedience all the time. They behave according to their beliefs because that is the way they see the universe.

What we need in our society to drive out corruption is not more prosecutors, although they certainly help, provided they are not tainted by the same corruption, but more religion that teaches us to refrain from dishonesty and abuse of power.

Do You Believe in Evolution?

Do you believe in evolution? If so, you’re a fool. And that has nothing to do with science.

It’s funny to see people compare American’s belief of evolution with their belief in God. Why? Because they are two totally separate things. Frankly, I’m proud of the US because it keeps religion and science separated into their appropriate realms. Science doesn’t dictate how we should treat each other, and religion doesn’t tell us how to make sense of the world around us.

Evolution is a theory, an explanation for observed phenomena. That’s all it is. It’s a mechanical thing, really, when you get down to it. Asking someone whether they believe in evolution is like asking them whether they believe 2 and 2 make 4. It’s not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of observation and deduction. When you start mixing belief into it, you leave science behind and start embracing religion.

To illustrate the absurdity of this, let me ask you a few questions.

Do you believe in Newtonian Mechanics, in other words, that momentum changes only under exertion of a net force on a particle?

Do you believe in quantum mechanics, that at the atomic level, matter exists simultaneously as particles and waves, and exhibits behavior in accordnce with the Schrodinger Equation?

Do you believe in the observation of the main sequence of stars?

Do you believe that healthy bacteria divide and multiply?

It’s absurd really. I mean, belief has everything to do with stuff you can’t explain, you can’t understand, and you can’t observe as readily as other things.

It’s the same absurdity that I hear when people try to analyze religion with logic. Can you prove that God exists? Can you prove that what you are experiencing is not a physical phenomena but a supernatural one? Can you prove that such-and-such was a miracle of the divine, or just coincidence?

It’s just as absurd to try and use reason to argue about religion as it is to use belief to argue about science.

Let me put it another way.

In religion, we start with nothing, absolutely nothing, and then we quickly build out into a system of beliefs based on nothing but belief, and then that’s it. That’s it. Sure, we may try to connect reality with those beliefs but oftentimes we are quite satisfied to live our lives blissfully aware of the cognitive dissonance between our observations and our faith. We take it as some sort of test whether we truly believe in God or whether we are going to trust our own mortal abilities. We like to see miracles, for sure, but miracles prove nothing to no one, when they do occur, if they even occur to the satisfaction of everyone.

Religion has its purposes. It is, as its detractors say, a tool to keep everyone in line. It works wonderfully for that purpose, since it is the sole motivating reason why people are nice to each other and put others ahead of themselves, creating a wonderful society we all like to live in. But religion also has answers to questions we ask that we will never fully understand the answers to, answers that give us intangible things like hope and dreams, answers that make us better people than we otherwise would be.

But science, on the other hand, is based on the basic principle, a principle of belief, mind you, that the universe is ordered and it can be understood by people like us, and that if we simply rationally consider all of our observations systematically we can come to an explanation for the variety of phenomena around us.

But science can’t answer certain questions, questions like “Why?” It can’t give anyone hope, except perhaps hope for a better understanding than we have today. Science can’t give us moral codes to live by. The best it can do is help you find the maximumally and minimally optimium behaviors provided certain criteria for grading. But if we choose the wrong criteria, we will get the wrong result. (And what does “right” or “wrong”, “good” and “bad” really mean, anyway?)

I am a trained physicists. I can explain to you in simple terms what Quantum Mechanics is all about, or Newtonian Mechanics, or Special Relativity, or the Main Sequence of Stars, or any number of interesting topics. But none of these are beliefs I hold. I don’t even care much for them, anymore than a carpenter would care for his hammer. I don’t really care that 2+2=4, nor does it give me any meaning in life. Some day, soon I hope, we’ll be able to replace these obviously erroneous theories with better theories, theories that will explain why we see bumps when we should see smooth, or smooth when we should see bumps. Maybe we can use science to obtain greater ability to dominate nature around us, turning this world more and more into a utopia and less and less like the natural world we find around us, full of death, disease, pain and suffering.

There is a certain pleasure from seeing order develop from chaos. I too feel thrills of joy run up and down my spine when I see the basic equations that define so much of what happens around us, or see Feynman Diagrams as what they truly represent. But that isn’t much different that being happy that my room is clean or I can line up all my books in alphabetical order.

Religion, on the other hand, is where my life is. It gives my great joy and satisfaction. It turns the bitterest moments in life to the most savorable. It replaces fear with hope, despair with belief, chaos with not just order but meaning. Maybe my mind—and all of our minds—are simply wired in that way, where we have to have some sort of belief system, and that this can be a great source of happiness when we get it right. It would be interesting to do experiments on the topic, but ultimately, it doesn’t matter. That’s just the way it is.

If you’re one of those sorts of fellows who believes in science, I feel sorry for you, I really do. Does science descend from heaven, below all things, to conquer all sin and death, to rise again from death and open the doorway for all of humanity to follow into a glory of unimaginably limitless, lasting happiness? Does science turn your most miserable moments into triumphs of human compassion over this sick little world we live in? Does science put the weakest among us up as eternal kings in heaven, reigning over the angels themselves? No, science does no such thing. Science is an empty religion, with no hope or faith or charity or anything worth obtaining in this life.

If you’re one of those fellows who has a bitter grudge against religion as a lie, I feel sorry for you as well. Even if you understand that it’s not logical or scientific or explainable, that doesn’t mean the religious phenomena is imagined. No, it is very, very real to me and others who experience it with far more frequency than you imagine. Think of it, if you will, as a sort of super-drug. It requires no money to make. It delievers the highest highs, lasting highs that never end. It is also elevating, in that it takes people from a lower to a higher status, from poverty, misery, or worse, into health and wealth and happiness. The best part is that no man can control the world’s supply of it, making it the ultimate freedom dispenser since it frees us from other men. If religion delivers all this, as we can plainly see, why do you fight it so much? Why do you try to interrupt the happiness of those who are enjoying it so much? Why don’t you join and enjoy the benefits?

Talking Points on the Other Side

This is what I hear as the talking points of the anti-Prop 8 crowd.

(1) Don’t let the mormons play victim yet again. Apparently  when you’re driven out of 3 states by force, with one state instituting an extermination order, you don’t get to play victim. But when you redefine marriage to include something it has never included despite overwhelming opposition, you do get to play the victim.

(2) Mormons are enforcing their religion on us. Never mind the fact that for thousands of years, marriage has been defined as between a man and a woman. Never mind the fact that by a vote of five black-robed justices homosexual marriage was imposed not only on California but on the rest of the union. It’s mormons trying to impose their religion on others, of course.

(3) Don’t let mormons drive the wedge between the blacks and the homosexuals. Because, after all, it was the mormons that persuaded the blacks to vote against the homosexuals on this one. Their churches had nothing to do with it. It’s a Jedi mind trick used to divide the two minorities that should be united.

(4) Soddom and Gomorrah had nothing to do with homosexuality. The reason why God sent down fire from heaven on those two cities (which incidentally, we may have archealogical evidence of) is because they were inhospitable to strangers, or so they say. The scriptures are quite clear on the topic: The reason why the cities were destroyed is because there were none righteous save Lot and his family.

Remember, facts have nothing to do with debate on the left. So I will instead turn to emotion.

First, the vast majority of the people of the United States oppose, wholeheartedly, homosexual marriage. Why? Because it is their faith. The same faith that tells them to love and serve one another also says that sexual relations are reserved only for the institution of marriage because every child deserves one father and one mother. The same religion that brought us freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom to associate, also teaches us that there is a strict moral code that is inalterable by any earthly human.

Second, it is the homosexuals who are imposing themselves on our children and our way of life. We simply want to be left alone, to raise our kids the way we see fit. But the homosexuals have taken over our schools and have taken upon themselves to teach our children that it’s okay to engage in homosexual acts, and not only ok, but proper and acceptable. They have taken over our churches and demanded that we adopt our orphans into their so-called families. They have taken over our churches in the north (Canada) and prevented us from teaching the simple truth that there is no happiness in homosexuality.

Third, this has nothing to do with civil rights. The blacks in the United States were fighting for the right to simply live their lives free from imposition. The mormons were fighting (or more truthfully, busy turning the other cheek) to gain the right to simply worship God they way they saw fit without imposition. The homosexuals, on the other hand, are fighting to change the very fabric of our society so that sick and perverted acts are considered normal and healthy.

Notice that the black community and the mormon community go hand-in-hand since the beginning. Mormons have been abolishionists before it was popular, which is why they were driven from Missouri. Mormons have fought the KKK in vicious battles in the West, which is why the KKK is virtually unknown beyond the Mississippi. Mormons have stood against racism and bigotry wherever and whenever they could, and have a proud and impeccable record of it. Although mormons taught that the blacks were under a curse, they also taught that the Jews, Gentiles, Lamanites, and even mormons were under their own curses, and that only Christ could redeem a single man of any color from their respective curses. The only divide between the communities is a division of misunderstanding, misunderstanding on the part of mormons who don’t fully understand our doctrine, and misunderstanding on the part of the black community based on the lies and rumors they have been told by false preachers.

Are you Surprised?

Is it surprising to anyone that the Illinois governor is now in custody?

It doesn’t surprise me.

The entire political structure of the Democratic Party is based on a “pay-to-play” scheme. Unions, environmentalists, anti-Americans, you name it, can get whatever they want from the Democratic Party if they pay enough money. The Democratic Party is a party where it is winner-take-all. The winner might as well crown himself king of the party, because with all that cash at his disposal, he can dictate the rules.

The FBI investigator was surprised at the depths of corruption in that state. I don’t think there are more than a handful of states where the democrats are not corrupt. Here in Washington State, our governor negotiates on behalf of her campaign, not the state, in negotiations with the Indian tribes. Our governor practically turns the keys of our government over to the union and environmentalists.

I’m not saying that all republicans are perfect. They aren’t. At least in the Republican Party, we don’t hold up our most corrupt members as leaders.