Christian Monthly Standard

Some Things Said… (June 05)

California defeats ‘gender neutral’ marriage

The California Assembly has defeated a bill to make marriage “gender neutral,” dashing hopes among homosexual-rights groups that lawmakers in the nation’s most populous state would become the first to legalize same-sex “marriage” without a court order.

On Thursday, the last of three votes on the “marriage equality” bill…fell four votes short of the 41 needed to pass the Assembly. –By Cheryl Wetzstein from The Washington Times 06.04.05

Going nowhere

We read wordy books and indulge in windy arguments, thinking we believe this universe needs no God to explain it. Were our contentions true, it would follow life originated out of nothing, means nothing, and proceeds nowhere. –Alcoholics Anonymous, The Big Book, 4th edition.

Speed Reading

I went back and reread the whole New Testament the other day. Nowhere in the three-year ministry of Jesus Christ did I find a suggestion at all, ever, anywhere, in any way whatsover, that you ought to take the money from the poor, the opportunities from the poor and give them to the rich people. –John Kerry

Cultural trends

Cultural trends minimize parents, especially fathers, as ignorant rubes while elevating children as intellectually superior, and surely far cooler. Underpinning these trends is the governing assumption that parents are not competent to raise their own children. Granted there are plenty of bad parents out there — many of them sitting in corporate board rooms and legislative bodies — but most parents have their children’s best interests at heart. They also know that abortion, more than a surgical procedure, is an emotional, often life-altering process that doesn’t end when you cross a state line. Mothers and fathers may be disagreeable at times, but a pregnant girl needs her parents more than she needs a special-interest group or a politician or a lousy boyfriend — none of whom love her as much.” –Kathleen Parker, columnist for The Orlando Sentinel as listed at www.federallist.com

Relativisms load

We made divorce easier three decades ago, casting aside the “absolutist” idea that marriage is a lifelong commitment, and were now raising our second generation of lost children. We legalized abortion at about the same time, deciding the relativist “womans right to choose” should trump the “absolute” principle that all life is sacred, and now were killing the disabled — under court order — because their quality of life no longer suits us. –from an article at Focus on the Family www.citizenlink.com, “Darth Recesses,” by Gary Schneeberger editor

Virtue

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder. –George Washington

Believing anything

When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything. –G.K. Chesterton

Historical equality

It was hard for women to be fully equal in the pre-industrial world of rampant disease and famine, when they were pregnant 15 or so times to ensure that three to four children survived to keep the family alive. In the so-called intolerant past, nine out of 10 Americans worked on the farm until dark just to feed the populace; less than 1 out of 100 do it now. Before dismissing them as hopelessly biased, sexist, superstitious or prejudiced, at least concede that most of us sensitive suburbanites would collapse after a few minutes of scything, threshing, milling and baking to get our daily loaf. –Victor Davis Hanson, 05.10.05 from his article “What Happened to History” at www.victordavishanson.com

Demons

C.S. Lewis commented in “The Screwtape Letters” that people tend to make two mistakes with respect to demons. The first is not to believe in them at all. The second is to believe in them too much. — Exorcism: The Comeback Was Satan behind Bush v. Gore? By John J. Miller, Wall Street Journal editorial page, 06.03.05

Article contributed by Richard Vandagriff and Mark Zaveson