There is that slippery slope which the West is rushing down to its own demise. For instance, making so-called same-sex marriage legal was not the beginning down the slide but it certainly gave a BIG push! Therefore, ‘Let me totally clear at the outset. One of the purposes of this article is to say, “I told you so!” Or, more precisely, many of us have been predicting this moment for years. As reported in the New York Times, “A Massachusetts City Decides to Recognize Polyamorous Relationships.
The city of Somerville has broadened the definition of domestic partnership to include relationships between three or more adults, expanding access to health care. Is anyone really surprised?
After all, if the winning mantras of the same-sex “marriage” movement have been “Love is love” and “Love wins” and “I have the right to marry the one I love,” why limit that number to two? Isn’t that discriminating against love? Isn’t that simply carrying over the outdated, outmoded, limiting ways of the past?
To this day, in all my dialogue and debate with LGBTQ activists and their allies, I have yet to hear a reasonable explanation of why marriage should be limited to two people if any two people can marry. Why limit the union to two people? Based on what? All the solid arguments for limiting marriage to two people are, ultimately, arguments for marriage being the union of a male and a female. All other arguments fall short. Very short. (For a glaring illustration, see here.)
When it comes to polyamory, which can include virtually any combination or number of men and women, on what basis should the government not recognize such relationships? Is not love still love? Does not love still win? And is not love the only thing that matters? So the argument goes.
Today, we’re talking about just one city in Massachusetts extending health benefits to polyamorous families. But one city is all that is needed to begin a trend. That’s also why this is national news, even in the midst of an unrelenting, tumultuous news cycle.
As for warning about this for years, polyamory was mentioned frequently in my book A Queer Thing Happened to America, published in 2011, but with research for the book dating back to 2005.
In fact, in the book I drew attention to a polyamory seminar hosted by the Metropolitan Community Churches – obviously, pro-LGBT churches – back in 2005: “Yes, ‘polyamory’ – in other words, having multiple sexual partners (loving, of course!) – was also a topic of discussion at the MCC conference, and church members were encouraged to come out of the closets with their ongoing, multiple sexual relationships.”
Again, this was at a church conference in 2005. And even then, this trend had been building for years. We told you so!
In the book I also quoted polyamorous advocates who marched prominently in gay pride parades, stating, “We’re 30 years behind the gay activist movement.” They probably underestimated the timeline. (On a different but related front, I could point to articles like, “Here Come the Polygamists,” dating back to 2012.)
In my 2015 book, Outlasting the Gay Revolution, I wrote, “Perhaps we should change the wedding vows to sound more like this (with the man speaking here): ‘I take you as my wife, but probably not for life. I take you as my own, but not just you alone. I pledge myself to you, and perhaps to others too. I take you as my bride, although your name is Clyde.’
“Is this really so farfetched? If you can have a bride and a broom, if ‘husbands’ can be women and ‘wives’ can be men, if you can be married and dating and swinging and swapping, if you live together before marriage and end the marriage whenever it suits you best, then what does ‘marriage’ mean?”
Back in 2015, Stephen Colbert mocked the idea of a slippery moral slope when it came to redefining marriage. The reality of the matter, as he likely knew, was that the mocking predictions he made had already come to pass. I illustrated all that in this video. You can mock, but you can’t deny reality. (Take a minute to watch. You’ll be shocked.)
In saying all this, I am not saying that gay couples do not love each other or that gay couples will inevitably become polyamorous throuples and beyond. I’m simply stating the obvious: if two men or two women can “marry,” then there is nothing sacrosanct about the number two. Any potential number will do, as long as the relationships are based on “love.”
Already in March, 2016, Oliver Bateman wrote on Mic.com, “When it comes to marriage, three is still a crowd. But that might be changing sooner than we think. According to a 2015 Gallup poll, a small-yet-growing percentage of Americans report that they find the concept of plural marriage ‘morally acceptable,’ while polyamorous relationships are increasingly receiving mainstream media coverage. A 2014 Newsweek article even estimates that there are more than 500,000 openly polyamorous families living in the United States today.”
It doesn’t take many smarts to know biologically that there are ONLY two sexes. However, the result of this belief that a boy may be a girl or vice versa is that ‘Keira Bell can never get her childhood back. And her body, a scarred and mangled reminder, tells her every day. “I am living in a world where I don’t fit in as male or as female. I am stuck between two sexes.” Now 23, she’s dedicated her life to stop teenagers from making the same mistake. And suing the clinic responsible is step number one. Keira was just a child when she walked into England’s Tavistock clinic and declared she wanted to be a boy. The staff didn’t blink. Despite just starting her periods and having no other real psychological evaluation or therapy, Tavistock prescribed her the puberty blockers that ultimately ruined her life. “I should have been challenged on the claims that I was making for myself,” Keira told the judges. “And I think that would have made a big difference as well. If I was just challenged on the things I was saying.” If an adult had taken her aside, talked to her about her feelings, maybe none of this would have happened. As soon as she started taking the drugs, Keira said “it was like turning off a tap.” Her development as a young woman just stopped. And nobody warned her. “I had symptoms similar to the menopause when a woman’s hormones drop. I had hot flushes, I found it difficult to sleep, my sex drive disappeared. I was given calcium tablets because my bones weakened. My female hormones had been flushing through my body and, suddenly, a curtain came down on them.” It felt awful she says. Three years later, after having her breasts removed free of charge (courtesy of the government), she was filled with crushing regret. She stumbled on charities and advocates that help young people reverse the damage. Now that she’s gone public, trying to hold Tavistock accountable, Keira says she’s been contacted by “hundreds of young adults” who wish they’d never walked down this path. “The treatment has not solved their problems.”
Here in the U.S., the battle over puberty blockers and transgender advocacy is just as intense. Eight states are trying to impose age limits on the drugs — which would have spared teens like Keira years of horrible agony. But the reason lawmakers have had to step in, the Wall Street Journal’s Abigail Shrier says, is because “scientists aren’t engaging in honesty.” In a powerful conversation with FRC’s Sarah Perry, she told the listeners of “Washington Watch,” “Look, I’m a journalist. I’m not an activist. My job is not to stop people from using puberty blockers on their children. My job is to tell the truth — and on this issue, not enough people are telling the truth. And the truth is… we have no idea what the long-term effects of these drugs will be.” In the Left’s rush to medicalize kids and trap them into this lifestyle, there’s been an explosion of these prescriptions without any thought to the permanent consequences. “We’re going to see a lot of lawsuits,” Abigail predicted. “And the reason is — the doctors are being activists rather than being doctors. I’ve interviewed a lot of doctors on this topic, and they’ll tell you that when they go to conferences, [whenever there’s] a new heart medicine or any other kind of medicine, there’s an open discussion of risks and benefits — because all medications have risks and benefits. But when it comes to transgender medicine… one researcher I interviewed said it was like an infomercial for trans. In other words, no discussion of risks were ever assessed.” That’s a terrifying thought, she says when you consider how profoundly these puberty blockers affect the human body. “They shut down the part of the pituitary that stimulates puberty, so that eight-, nine-, and 10-year-olds will not go through the normal puberty. The sexual organs will remain the size… and the capacity of a small child. They will not have the potential for orgasm, and they may … be permanently infertile.” Not to mention, Abigail goes on, that these hormones flood the brain. “So what’s we’re doing is an experiment that we don’t know the long term effects of. And patients aren’t being advised of that.” And what if there are underlying mental health issues that no one knows about? When you attack the brain with these cross-sex hormones for a child struggling with conditions like depression, bipolar disorder, even high-functioning autism, which is sometimes the case for these girls, “one can only wonder,” Sarah pointed out, “what that kind of medical intervention does.” And yet no one in the medical community seems to have the nerve to call everyone together and demand scientific research on this — something that would be routine on any other treatment. Even more worrisome, Abigail says, America has gone from two gender clinics in the last decade to well over 50. But that doesn’t include groups like Planned Parenthood, who, believe it or not, are now one of the biggest dispensers of cross-sex hormones in the country. So along with killing unborn children, they’re also embracing a separate track to make generations completely infertile. All the while keeping parents — as they usually do — in the dark. Yet, thanks to Obamacare, these pricey drugs and gender transitions are, in some cases, completely free for young people. Or, at the very least, of minimal cost. “So, all of the sudden, these were readily available. You could get these fancy surgeries, and it costs you almost nothing. So, unsurprisingly, you’re seeing a lot greater demand for it.” But that demand must be met by a different demand from parents, citizens, and doctors: for safety, accountability, and caution. It’s time to stop the radical Left from experimenting on our children before, as Keria found out, it’s too late.’ https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=4118
1 Corinthians 3:19 …For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
“Even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.” (Isaiah 43:7)
‘There are three main verbs used to describe God’s work of creation in Genesis. These are “create” (Hebrew bara), “make” (asah), and “form” (yatsar). The three words are similar in meaning but each with a slightly different emphasis. None of them, of course, can mean anything at all like “evolve” or “change” on their own accord.
All three are used in Genesis with reference to humans. “And God said, Let us make man in our image.…So God created man in his own image.…And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground” (Genesis 1:26-27; 2:7).
Although the subject of creation is commonly associated with Genesis, it is mentioned even more frequently by the great prophet Isaiah. The words bara and yatsar are used twice as often in Isaiah as in any other Old Testament book and are applied uniquely to works of God. All three verbs are used together in Isaiah 45:18 in order to adequately describe God’s purposeful work in preparing Earth for humans: “For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.”
God created, formed, made, and established the earth that it might be the home of men and women. But what was God’s purpose for the people who would inhabit it? Our text answers this most fundamental of questions, and once again all three key verbs are used: “I have created him…I have formed him,…I have made him…for my glory.”
Genesis 9:6 Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.
Genesis 18:25 That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
‘Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam wants abortion on demand to be enshrined in the Virginia Constitution.
Now, Northam wants the state General Assembly to approve a constitutional amendment that would guarantee a “right” to abortion, One News Now reports.
Olivia Turner, leader of the Virginia Society for Human Life, warned that the amendment would allow partial-birth abortions again and end a parental consent law that ensures parents are involved before an underage girl aborts her unborn baby.
“The odds are very high that unless there is a huge outcry from the general public, the constitutional amendment to the Virginia Constitution allowing a right to abortion could, in fact, pass,” she told the conservative news outlet. “We don’t have the votes to stop it in the House of Delegates, and it’s questionable whether we’d be able to stop it at the Senate level.”
To be added to the Virginia Constitution, the legislature must approve the amendment in two consecutive sessions and voters must approve it on the ballot.
Right now it may look like Northam and the other baby murderers are getting by BUT there is a Day of reckoning when they will stand before the Judge of all the earth!
Psalm 104:25 “So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.”
‘Some of the strangest creatures you can possibly imagine live around undersea hydrothermal vents known as “smokers” that spew out volcanically heated water and minerals. One of the most unusual creatures is an armor-plated snail that never needs to eat!
The as-yet-unnamed snail was discovered in the Indian Ocean. The sides of the snail’s foot have overlapping scales. Like the rest of the shell, these scales are coated in iron sulfide. This coating is the result of bacteria that, it is thought, deposit the iron sulfide on all outer shell surfaces. Most mollusks have a gland in their esophagus that contain symbiotic bacteria. These bacteria turn sulfides in the water passing through the snail’s gills into nutrition for the snail. However, in all mollusks known until the discovery of this snail, the mollusks must still eat to have enough nutrition to live. This newly discovered snail has a gland that is 100 times larger than any other snail. It provides the snail with all the nutrition it needs, so it never needs to eat.
The West is digging its own grave. ‘In Monday’s ruling inserting “gender identity” into the word “sex” in a 1964 employment law, the U.S. Supreme Court called a man a woman, possibly leading to eventually forcing everyone else to do so also. The ruling will lead to a tsunami of polarizing court cases and further degradation of Americans’ natural rights to free speech, to free association, and to worshipping God as their consciences require. All this in the name of “equality,” a word that has become a totalitarian weapon.
How long will Western Civilization last as we know it?
The 6-3 majority included Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, and Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, appointed by Republican President Donald Trump. These presidents promised voters their justices would uphold the rule of law and the Constitution, and were elected in significant part based on these now-broken promises.
This decision is a disgrace to these bedrocks of Western civilization, our nation built upon them, the voters who vote for them, and to these men’s honor. President Trump ran promising judges who wouldn’t murder America, and Gorsuch just gave him and everyone who voted for him a giant middle finger. The court’s newfound weakness will also be exploited and explored by leftist legal agitators whose goal is the destruction of the American system.
“There is only one word for what the Court has done today: legislation,” writes Justice Samuel Alito in a dissent Justice Clarence Thomas joined. “…A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall.”
Open ‘Sex,’ Insert Queer Theory
“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. Alito torches this argument in numerous ways. Here’s just one:
At oral argument, the attorney representing the employees, a prominent professor of constitutional law, was asked if there would be discrimination because of sex if an employer with a blanket policy against hiring gays, lesbians, and transgender individuals implemented that policy without knowing the biological sex of any job applicants. Her candid answer was that this would ‘not’ be sex discrimination. And she was right.
“Those who adopted the Civil Rights Act might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result… [But] [w]hen the express terms of a statute give us one answer and extratextual considerations suggest another, it’s no contest,” Gorsuch asininely claims: You simply rewrite the “express terms of the statute” as a majority of justices please, just as the Supreme Court did in Roe v. Wade, and reason your way backwards into a politically predetermined conclusion no matter the meanings of the words Congress thought they were writing into law. “Sex” therefore transforms into “sexual orientation and gender identity,” concepts unknown when the 1964 law was passed.
“The precedents set here will have major implications… This will mean that legislators actually won’t know what they are voting to pass—because words might change cultural meaning dramatically between the time of passage and some future court case,” writes Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Courts are not supposed to legislate because citizens cannot consent to legislation imposed by courts, and have no direct means for altering Supreme Court decisions like we can alter laws through our elected representatives. When courts legislate, they disenfranchise the people. They invalidate our votes, our God-given natural right to rule ourselves. By adding words to statute that Congress did not put there, and has repeatedly and explicitly refused to add, these judges are destroying our Constitution, our way of life, the people’s sovereignty, and thus our human dignity.
Making War on Real Rights With Fake Ones
This is a salient example of what Christopher Caldwell calls the United States’ second constitution, which is at war with its first: the identity politics laws and regulations passed largely since the 1960s in the name of “antidiscrimination.”
“Just as assuming that two parallel lines can meet overturns the whole of Euclidean geometry, eliminating freedom of association from the U.S. Constitution changed everything,” Caldwell writes in “Age of Entitlement.” At the time, it wasn’t obvious how “extra rights” could destroy natural rights. But it is now.
As Alito notes, the Supreme Court’s addition of “gender identity” to protected employment classes may cause lawsuits claiming “that the failure to use [transgender people’s] preferred pronoun violates one of the federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination. The Court’s decision may also pressure employers to suppress any statements by employees expressing disapproval of same-sex relationships and sex reassignment procedures.”
In other words, “antidiscrimination” and free speech cannot coexist. Neither can legal identity privileges coexist with freedom of association: “if a religious school teaches that sex outside marriage and sex reassignment procedures are immoral, the message may be lost if the school employs a teacher who is in a same-sex relationship or has undergone or is undergoing sex reassignment. Yet today’s decision may lead to Title VII claims by such teachers and applicants for employment,” writes Alito.
Given all that has happened after Obergefell v. Hodges, which we were vociferously told was ridiculous to forecast — transgenderism immediately going mainstream, pushing religion inside the closet LGBT people were vacating, limiting people’s ability to freely express their faith and ideas, forcing education institutions to promote LGBT politics and behavior — it’s naive to think such scenarios will not quickly become reality as a result of this court decision.
Get Ready for Years of Legal Battles
This decision also cements public schools’ status as social enforcers and subsidizers of far-left politics, as they can have no potential legal defense against a teacher switching genders in front of students, putting boys in girls’ locker rooms and sports, or teaching preschoolers that Heather can have two or even three mommies. Queer theory is now reigning U.S. employment law. This means it must also dominate all institutions of higher education that are not explicitly religious, both public and private.
Religious schools and homeschooling now offer the only potential safe haven to parents who don’t want their children indoctrinated to believe it’s awesome to amputate healthy penises and breasts. Even those options are under threat, and it will take oodles of litigation to work out the details.
Rod Dreher has more on this: “John Bursch of Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented one of the losing plaintiffs in one of the SCOTUS cases, …points out that religious liberty is still very much in play, and will be at issue in future cases. But what SCOTUS has done today is to redefine ‘sex’ to include ‘sexual orientation and gender identity.’ Because of that, he said, ‘there is no end in sight to that kind of litigation.’”
This is litigation LGBT activists are very well-prepared, motivated, and well-financed to pursue. Given Republican politicians’ history of cravenly sacrificing Americans’ constitutional rights to gaslighting from identity politics agitators who don’t vote for Republicans, most notably when Vice President Mike Pence was governor of Indiana, we’d all better redirect any donation from Republican campaigns to legal protection like ADF and The Becket Fund.
We Need Lots More than Judges From Republicans
This is a time to redouble pressure on Republicans to stop helping Democrats shred the Constitution and Americans’ natural rights, withdrawing support from them if they do not. This decision makes Congress irrelevant, unless they decide to make themselves relevant again by eliminating the underlying law on which this decision is based.
The last century of abdicating their responsibilities when in power shows Republicans are not keen on defending our rights. They’d prefer to give rousing speeches about our rights at conventions like CPAC while scapegoating our continued loss of these rights on the judges and the bureaucracy they’re supposed to oversee. That needs to end, and for it to end, all constitutional hypocrites need to be made uncomfortable until they do the right thing.
All elected officials and candidates need to start being asked in public, on videos immediately posted to social media, why they aren’t doing anything to keep naked men from getting access to naked girls in showers, bathrooms, and locker rooms. Republicans need to be asked how they can tell us to vote for them “because judges” when their Supreme Court nominees just passed an LGBT version of Roe v. Wade that will lead to teaching preschoolers the confusing, anti-science lie that “boys can have girl brains.”
They need to be asked on camera whether they support the Constitution’s unconditional guarantees of freedom of association, freedom of speech, and the freedom to worship, and if not, how they can take an oath of office swearing fealty to that Constitution. They should be asked how they can justify not voting to eliminate Title VII now that the Supreme Court has made it a Trojan horse for forcing lingerie shops to hire men to fit women’s bras and female beauticians to wax a man’s genitals. They should be asked what effective steps they are taking to ensure that taxpayer dollars do not finance genital mutilation, and that medical and therapeutic professionals lose their licenses if they mutilate the healthy bodies of underage boys and girls.
They should also be asked these questions in private from major donors, and primaried out of office when they answer the wrong way. Campaign donors’ businesses should be boycotted if they do not withdraw support for Republicans who can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman.
Fighting this may not work. That two-thirds of our nation’s highest court clearly despise the Constitution and the way of life it protects, and which it is their sole job to defend, may be yet another indication that the United States we know and love is heading into a dark night of oblivion, like all empires before it. If that is the case, however, I’m going down fighting as hard as I can.’ https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/16/scotuss-transgender-ruling-firebombs-the-constitution/
‘Race is a social construct. The Bible doesn’t mention race, except the human race, the single Adamic race.
Some have more melanin than others, so their skin is darker to varying degrees with actually very little physical difference between people. The DNA of any two human beings is 99.9% similar in content and identity. God doesn’t care more for someone with more melanin and neither should any person. Skin color identifies and distinguishes. If a crime is committed, race is one means of describing a suspect. I heard Shaquille O’Neil in recent years call himself the black Steph Curry. He brought attention to the variation in their skin color. He did that. For what reason? Enough of that though. Black lives matter and they matter to me too. They don’t matter less than white or yellow or brown or red lives. The meaning and value of human life and lives are wrapped up in their being made in the image of God. This is not any more clear than in Genesis 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” With the first murder, that of Abel, God said (Genesis 4:10): “the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.” The shed blood cried out to God for retribution. The life of the flesh is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11). Life matters to God, so it should matter to us. Black lives matter. When they do matter to someone, how can one tell? How can you tell if black lives matter? People say it, but is it the truth? Should it be that someone types a hashtag for everyone? Is it opting for a blackout Tuesday? Attending a march or anti-racism protest? Is it by facilitating an uncomfortable conversation about race? Through countless memes, videos, and posts about race on social media pages? Instructions on how to educate ourselves? Should it be through an explanation of white privilege? Giving book recommendations about race? Maybe more than any other way, will people know black lives matter to you by your criticism of other non-black people who use language you can label as oppressive? People aim to appear to care. It’s a show — the Pharisee part of this. It signals virtue, which is in fact absent in most cases. Someone who has done nothing for black lives shouldn’t be touting his own compassion with memes. He is a Pharisee praying on the street corner. He poses like picking the most appropriate image is his big sacrifice, seeking the approval from those from which he hungers it. Black lives matter is another hoop to jump through for acceptance or at least, not rejection. Someone should ask, what did Jesus do? What did the Apostle Paul do? They were both concerned about the gospel. This life is very, very short. The Jewish problem with Gentiles was judged by its affect on the salvation of Gentiles through a perversion of the gospel. Jesus didn’t protest slavery in the Roman empire. The gospel would bring the owner and slave together like Philemon and Onesimus in Philemon, now brothers beloved. Our church is heavily pigmented mainly because we don’t target anyone. We don’t pander to any audience, which is the essence of impartiality. We don’t reach out to the blacks, to the whites, to the Asians, to the Hispanics, to the Indians. Hyping race is racism. Ignoring it isn’t. We reach out to everyone regardless of this social construction called “race.” We treat race like it doesn’t exist, because it doesn’t. Since race doesn’t exist, black, white, red, or yellow culture doesn’t exist. It’s only scriptural or unscriptural culture, spiritual or carnal, godly or ungodly, or sacred or profane. There is no black music or white music. The English language isn’t white or black. You can’t “sound black” or “sound white.” You’re either saying it right or saying it wrong. You’re not helped by saying it wrong. Race itself is a lie, so the pressures created around it to cave to wrong behavior are the price of the lie. It’s what turns people into racists. When black lives matter to you, first, you care about the eternal soul of the black person. Instead of accentuating skin color, do you talk about the two ways the Bible categorizes people: saved or lost, sheep or goats, tares or wheat, or light or darkness? When you don’t preach the gospel to black people, don’t tell me that black lives matter to you. They don’t. How many black people have you preached the gospel to, professing Christian? If it’s none, when you have black people all around you, you are a heartless hypocrite with zero compassion. Stop promoting yourself on social media like you care. You don’t. You are a pathetic self-promoter. That’s all you are. When black lives matter, you want black lives to be eternal lives, which has nothing to do with skin color and everything about believing the gospel. If you haven’t done that, and you don’t do it, you hate black people, while saying that you love them. I knocked on every door of the iron triangle in Richmond, California. I skipped no neighborhoods. On many occasions, I played basketball in areas where there were only black people, and afterwards I preached the gospel to them. I knocked on every door in Parchester Village, the Rodeo projects, and North Richmond. When black lives matter to you, second, you make disciples of black people to Jesus Christ. That is very similar, almost identical to evangelizing, except this means you are sacrificing to spend time with at least one black person to teach him to observe all things whatsoever the Lord has commanded. How many black people have you discipled? Some of the loudest at publicizing their own racial virtue, have done zip. It’s most of you reading. Please sit down. Retire your social media from the spread of this lie that black people matter to you. They don’t. The third way to tell if black lives matter to you is your support of missions to black people. It’s not just them, but it’s the whole world, which includes black people. Africa is mainly black. Are you willing to go to Africa out of love for Africans? Actual Africans from the continent of Africa? Our church supports three missionaries to Africa and at one time, four, but now one has gone to Australia to evangelize that country. Do you keep up with missions to Africa? Do you read missionary prayer letters from Africa? More black people live in Africa than any other place. What are you doing to reach Africa? Another way to tell if black lives matter to you is, four, do you sacrificially serve black people? What do you do to help black people? Helping someone means involvement. You work with them directly. You bear their burdens. I’m not talking about a hand out. I’m talking about helping them personally get out of a cycle, maybe by providing free child care, which my wife and I did for years for two black girls, while their mother worked. I would have helped them if they were white or Asian too. Race is a social construct. I stood before a crowd of almost entirely black people every month for eight years, asking if I could take any one of them out to find a job. If someone wanted it, I would meet him at a location in town to try and help. This was my own time, not spending the taxes someone else pays. We have had black people living with us, providing them short term housing, until they could get a place to live. Do black lives matter to you if you don’t oppose black abortion? Between 2012 and 2016 over 136,000 black children were murdered in New York City through abortion. Do these black lives matter? All black lives matter, not just one murdered by a police officer. More black people are killed by abortion than any single means, so, five, you can tell that black lives matter to you if you oppose the abortion of black lives. That is not popular to say. You can’t post that on your social media and receive two hundred likes from the readers. If you are silent about black abortion, then black lives don’t matter to you. Very few black people are killed by white people. It’s difficult to find official statistics, so I go back to 2013. According to the FBI in 2013, 2,491 black people were murdered in the United States, 189 by white people and 2,245 by black people. 409 white people were killed by black people. The biggest danger to black lives are black people. If it is black lives that matter and not just politics, then the biggest threat to murder, besides abortion, are black people killing each other. Six, if black lives really do matter, all of them, then more attention must be given to blacks killing blacks, than whites killing blacks. No murder is justified, but if black lives matter, then the focus should be on what ends the most black lives. That isn’t white people. It’s a very small number of black people who are killed by white police officers. It’s a very large number of black people killed by other black people. Every black person is made in the image of God. Every black person is endowed by the Creator with the right to life. Black lives matter. If it really is black lives matter, then these six above will be heard. Do you first care if black people will be in the kingdom, will be in heaven with you? That’s forever, not just the short life that we live, but all eternity. Do you second care about what ends the most black lives, so that the most possible black people can live? If you do not hear about these, then it isn’t about black lives, but about something else.’ https://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Psalm 139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well
‘The World Wide abortion counters uses one of the more conservative estimates on the number of abortions world-wide since 1980 (40 Million per year for 30years) and this equals 1,200,000 Billion (from Lifesitenews.com)’ http://www.numberofabortions.com/
The days in which one could speak freely within reason are OVER! Now, you can speak foul language of almost any conservative BUT when it comes to the PC speech police you had better walk (speak) right or should I say left?! A radio presenter in the UK found out that only BLM! Yes, ‘Manx Radiotook Stu Peters off air after Wednesday’s programme in which a black caller challenged him for writing “all lives matter” in an online forum.
“I’ve had no more privilege in my life than you have. I’m a white man, you’re a black man,” he told Jordan Maguire.
The 46-year-old African American died after a white police officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes as he pleaded that he could not breathe.
A Black Lives Matter protest is due to be held in the Manx capital Douglas on Tuesday at 12:00 BST.
‘Disturbing’
Speaking on his programme, Mr Peters said he “can understand” why the movement had begun in America, but expressed incredulity at how protests had spread around the globe.
He said: “What I can’t understand is why people around the rest of the world are protesting, and specifically in the Isle of Man. Why you would have a protest outside of Tynwald about it?”
Chief Minister Howard Quayle said the death of Mr Floyd was a “shocking, and a disturbing incident”, adding “we hope that justice will prevail”.
He added: “I have been told that Manx Radio is now investigating what happened, and it would not be appropriate for me to comment any further while that investigation is under way.”
Mr Peters, who was born and grew up in and around Manchester, moved to Douglas in 1997.
He has worked on several Manx Radio shows, most recently including The Late Show: Stu Peters; Late, Live & Unleashed!
Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Matthew 19:4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female
In spite of what Moses wrote and what the Lord Jesus Christ Himself said some continue to question not only the Bible but science. For example; ‘T.L. from the United States writes:
I was in a debate with a friend of mine about the creation of gender. She stated that Adam could not have been created first because women have two X chromosomes. She goes on to address the X deactivation in women, saying that this only occurs because both X chromosomes are the same making it a “female” chromosome in both men and women (she also said that the master “switch” in males is them “switching” from the “default”). She goes on to say that men are “half female” and women are “fully female”, making them superior in that they bare life. She also said males are pretty much useless and that we can see this in other life (bees, the infrequency of male lions, “all female” lizards, etc). So my questions are, is the first X chromosome a “female” chromosome, even in men? And does this mean that God made Adam “half female”(as my friend puts it)?
No, the X chromosome isn’t a ‘female’ chromosome. Everyone needs it. And no, males (including Adam) are not ‘half female’.
First, your friend is wrong on the science. The idea that female is the ‘default’ embryological condition is now known to be false.1 This idea was based on a few studies in the mid-20th century, and it was thought to be reinforced in the early 1990s by the discovery of the SRY gene, a gene on the Y chromosome which plays a crucial role in testis development. Because of this, female sexual development was thought to proceed as a ‘default’ in the absence of SRY.The idea that female is the ‘default’ embryological condition is now known to be false
However, subsequent research overturned this idea. For instance, the absence of SRY isn’t enough to build a functioning ovary; two X chromosomes are needed. Women with only one X chromosome almost always have ovary dysfunction, and the vast majority are infertile. And those (very) few that can conceive and carry a pregnancy to term are at much higher risk of complications both during and after pregnancy.2
Moreover, some genes, if their products are present in high enough concentrations, can stop male development even when SRY is present. For instance, the NROB1 gene on the short arm of the X chromosome codes for a protein named DAX1. This protein plays an important role in the development of the adrenals, hypothalamus, pituitary, and gonads. The protein is also involved in maintaining hormone production in these glands after they are formed.3 People who have XY chromosomes, but have a duplication of the NROB1 gene, produce enough DAX1 to inhibit the products of SRY. This stops male development completely and the person develops female characteristics.4 This is not merely the taking over of a default; this is an abnormality that overrides the normal development of an XY person.
Furthermore, ovaries and testes require ongoing maintenance throughout life. Researchers found that the gene FOXL2 (on the long arm of chromosome 3) suppresses SOX9 (a gene crucial for male development that is found on the long arm of chromosome 17), which prevents certain cells in the ovary from differentiating differently into ‘testis-like’ cells.5 Similarly, the DMRT1 gene (found on the end of chromosome 9) suppresses certain genes involved in ovarian development. 6 If both require ongoing maintenance, then there is no ‘default’ gonad, whether the testis or the ovary. Many of the tools used for building and maintaining both ovaries and testes are found in the genome outside the “sex” chromosomes.
Together, this shows that proper female development is an active process, and it isn’t simply the ‘default’ path an embryo takes. Instead, during development, a set of cells migrates to the outside of the embryo and hangs out on the allantois. At the appropriate time, they chain up and do a conga line, enter the embryo, find the developing gonads, enter them, and get to work. Before these cells arrive, there is no sexual differentiation. As Kim and Capel explain:
“Unlike most developing organs in the embryo that follow a single developmental track, the gonad forms with the potential to develop as one of two alternative organs, an ovary or a testis. For this reason, the gonad primordium is called ‘the bipotential gonad’.”7
Since when is God limited by sex chromosomes in the gender he makes first?
Second, your friend is wrong on theology. Think about it: the all-powerful God couldn’t have created Adam first because of sex chromosomes? Since when is God limited by sex chromosomes in the gender he makes first?
At any rate, from a genetic standpoint, it seems much simpler to make Eve from Adam (as per Genesis 2). Why? All God would have to do to make Eve from Adam’s side is to erase the Y chromosomes in the cells taken from Adam’s body and duplicate the one X chromosome already present (Eve, the rib, and modern genetics). On the other hand, if God created Eve first, he would’ve had to form a Y chromosome de novo to make Adam from Eve. (This is like what God probably did in miraculously creating Jesus’ zygote—i.e. He took one of Mary’s eggs (and the haploid genome in it) and created a second haploid genome within the egg with a brand new Y chromosome.) Of course, neither of these ‘methods’ of creating one gender from the other is a problem for God, since he’s all-powerful.
Third, a woman’s two X chromosomes are not identical (with the possible exception of Eve), since one is inherited from each parent. And one of the pair is deactivated early in embryological development, because only one is needed for gene expression. Having both active would create an excess of many gene products and would lead to all sorts of problems. Nevertheless, as mentioned above and in the linked article, since single-X females are mostly infertile, the presence of a second X chromosome is important for normal female sexual development.
Fourth, comparing us to the rest of the animal kingdom is irrelevant, since sexual differentiation varies across animals. Some can even change their sex in response to environmental conditions (and of course be completely reproductively viable). For example, while some reptiles and fish can perform parthenogenesis (where the females produce young without fertilization from a male), it is generally uncommon and just a ‘fallback’ option in the absence or dearth of males (see ‘Asexual’ lizards and pioneer plants and The weird, wonderfully-designed sawfish). Nor can humans naturally perform parthenogenesis (Was the Virgin Birth non-miraculous?; and should Christians bother with atheists?). Birds sexual chromosomes are the opposite of humans (male birds are ZZ, females are ZW), and platypuses have a system that is unlike anything else.