Paedophilia as a Sexual Orientation

I've been reading about certain pressures by certain groups to classify paedophilia (pedophilia) as a sexual orientation, separate from heterosexual, homosexual, etc. This story in The Guardian is the latest.

There are several positives and several negatives to doing this. First, the homosexual community desperately wants this to happen. Whenever an major event of paedophilia happens, like the Penn State incidents, those in the homosexual community feel (rightly or wrongly) like their sexual orientation is to blame for the crimes against children, when in fact there's good evidence such an orientation is not to blame. The perpetrator in the Penn State case was a married man. So how are we to classify his sexual orientation?

Second, some on the far left are very concerned that this not happen.  After all, California just this winter passed a law making it illegal to use reparative therapy to try to change the sexual orientation of minors from homosexual to heterosexual.  If paedophilia was reclassified as a sexual orientation, there's no logical reason that paedophiles should not be protected from evil mental health experts who want to help them change in the same way that homosexuals are now protected. (A judge has put the law on hold for now for medical reasons...but the outcome is pretty well assured.)

So the homosexual community is left in a catch-22 situation where opposite outcomes are both equally harmful.

What isn't being factored into the equation by most at this point is this: we have already passed the point of no return on slippery sexual-moral issues. Thus, without some major intervention in culture, the normalization of paedophilia is already a guaranteed outcome. Woe is us!

So my prediction is this:  look for the homosexual community to begin to distance itself from the idea that got it to legalized gay marriage- that sexual orientation is innate and cannot be changed; and move toward the idea that sexual orientation is a choice, and a valid moral one based on the idea of what is desirable carrying the greatest moral weight in such a decision.  It is this position that will allow that community to continue to lobby for its interests without interfering in the interests of the paedophilia community, or harming itself by being associated with them.  Only after a period of time, when paedophilia is as accepted as any other sexual orientation will they allow any association between the two groups.

Have Some Chicken Today

Chick-fil-a Report: The restaurant on Coulter in Amarillo is a madhouse. It sits in a Lowe's parking lot, and when I got there at 10:55, the CFA lot was full and the Lowe's lot (about 4 acres) was a third full, all parked in the CFA corner. Lines were out the door, but service was brisk and everyone inside was much more friendly and conversational than normal, even for the TX panhandle. Lots of smart-phone cameras...expect to see film from many on the various social media outlets later.

The Amarillo Police Department was present, but so far there wasn't any trouble.  Based on the Twitter traffic I'm seeing, there doesn't seem to be much of a boycott...more of a buycott.  In at least one city (Wake Forest), the crowds are so large, the police are having to direct traffic.

I bought CFA for the entire office. Stand up for the first amendment and go to Chick-fil-a today! 

This isn't about religion folks, it's about free speech.

More on Same-Sex Marriage, and Why It Isn't So Revolutionary After All

A couple months ago, I wrote a blog post about how I don't think same-sex marriage is a re-definition of marriage in our culture at all.

Now, Michael Horton (over on the White Horse Inn blog) is lending some credibility to my claim. He says,

"Both sides trade Bible verses, while often sharing an unbiblical—secularized—theological framework at a deeper level. If God exists for our happiness and self-fulfillment, validating our sovereign right to choose our identity, then opposition to same-sex marriage...is just irrational prejudice.

Given the broader worldview that many Americans (including Christians) embrace—or at least assume, same-sex marriage is a right to which anyone is legally entitled. After all, traditional marriages in our society are largely treated as contractual rather than covenantal, means of mutual self-fulfillment more than serving a larger purpose ordained by God. The state of the traditional family is so precarious that one wonders how same-sex marriage can appreciably deprave it.

Same-sex marriage makes sense if you assume that the individual is the center of the universe, that God—if he exists—is there to make us happy, and that our choices are not grounded in a nature created by God but in arbitrary self-construction. To the extent that this sort of “moralistic-therapeutic-deism” prevails in our churches, can we expect the world to think any differently?"

From either perspective, whether you are pro- or anti-same-sex marriage, we are getting what we deserve.

Which Billy?

Two Billys are in the news this week.  Billy Graham has released a statement supporting North Carolina's Amendment 1, a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

The other Billy, Bill Clinton, has been in North Carolina speaking against Amendment 1.

Here's the simple postulate:  Would you rather take your advice on moral issues from Billy Graham, or Bill Clinton?

Yeah, I didn't think it was that hard either.

Is Homosexual Marriage Really a Re-definition of Marriage?

Is contemporary homosexual marriage a re-definition of marriage in America today? I think not.

Before you start posting nasty replies, let me explain.

Many proponents of traditional marriage in our society have stated as clearly as they can the danger of re-defining 'marriage' to include any other arrangement than a man and a woman in covenant relationship.  I have no problem with that.  I would be among those proponents of traditional marriage.

But is what we have in American today, and for the last few decades, anything resembling a covenant between a man and a woman?  Not even close.  As this author describes it, marriage has become about as disposable as toilet paper.  He (Peter Hitchens, the Christian sibling of the late, famous athiest Christopher Hitchens) says, "Why should we care so much about stopping a few hundred homosexuals getting married, when we cannot persuade legions of heterosexuals to stay married? It is a complete loss of proportion."

My parents were married from December 22, 1953, until May 27, 2012 (the day Dad went home to heaven).  That's 58 1/2 years, if you don't have a calculator handy.  How?  They weren't raised in a culture where marriage had been re-defined to an arrangement of convenience.  Folks like my parents raised their kids with the same ideas, but many have participated in the re-definition anyway.

Why is this so? As Carl Trueman notes on the Ref21 blog, "...if homosexuality is a constitutive part of God's judgment, and not simply a cause of the same, then the advent of gay marriage is part of God's judgment (Romans 1) on the way marriage has been effectively dismantled by heterosexuals, some of whom are among the most loud-mouthed opponents of same-sex unions."

In other words, the re-definition of 'marriage' isn't a re-definition of traditional, covenant marriage at all; rather, it's the re-definition of some post-modern convenience we've created to try to justify ourselves before God and make sex between two uncommitted people legal and shameless.  All the modern homosexual re-definition does is throw off the trappings and vestiges of tradition.

Marriage was re-defined in our culture a long time ago, and what's happening now is really simply the wind blowing the stall door open and shut.  The horse left long ago, and has already died of starvation in the desert. There's no need to even bother shooting the poor thing.

Two Minutes? (Is there really hypocrisy in the gay-marriage debate?)

Every once in a while, a response comes along that is so good (or important) that it needs to be shared, even if the original document to which it is responding wasn't on the radar screen.  We have one here.

In this blog post by Frank Turk (on the Pyromaniacs blog, which I recommend you follow on a regular basis), he responds to an op-ed in the USA Today newspaper early last week.  The piece, by Kirsten Powers, is important only because so many people read USA Today.  (USA Today intentionally writes its stories at the 6th-grade to 7th-grade reading level...that should say something about its value, but that's another story.)

If you want to read the article first, it is right here.  The article is called, "Hypocrisy shrouds the gay marriage debate."  It is a great example of shallow thinking and how to use emotional manipulation and ad hominem attacks to deflect people away from actual thought.  (And people wonder why the print media has fallen on such hard times?)

If you've heard folks throwing around ideas about what's wrong with Christians who oppose gay marriage, and known the arguments were hollow, but you weren't sure how to answer them cogently, then read Powers' article followed by Turk's response.

It is amazing what a little clear thinking can produce, if we try it.