The Gay Agenda and the Loss of Liberty

When the gay agenda gains a foothold, there seems to always be a corresponding rejection of the freedoms of speech and religion. We might suppose that once this agenda has achieved for itself its own liberties that it might assume a live-and-let-live stance. However, this does not seem to be the case. In San Francisco, the gay lifestyle is unrivaled and fully accepted. However, this hasn’t translated into tolerance for other beliefs. Rather, the opposite! Todd Starnes writes:

• The Archdiocese of San Francisco is under fire for demanding that Catholic schools teach Catholic doctrine. It seems the Board of Supervisors is upset over a morality clause that includes language against homosexuality, same-sex marriage and contraceptives. They unanimously passed a resolution rebuking the Catholic Church and demanding the archbishop ignore Catholic doctrine and respect the rights of teachers and students. Supervisor Mark Farrell, who sponsored the anti-Catholic resolution, said the archbishop's policies conflict with the values of San Francisco.

If it is up to SF, no one can hold any other opinion than the opinion of the city Board of Supervisors! This is totalitarianism, and we have seen its fruits in the communistic mass genocides of 100 million in a very short period of time.

Where is the ACLU, the Universities, the mainstream Media? All of these groups not only value but depend on the constitutional guarantees of the freedom of speech. However, they remain silent as long as they are not being threatened.

Instead, they need to learn that the denial of freedom to one group will become denial of freedom to all.

Pastor Martin Niemoller had become one of the leaders of the “Confessing Church” during the Nazi insanity that had taken captive perhaps the most educated nation of the world at that time. He opposed Adolph Hitler and was consequently sent to jail in 1937 and then to a concentration camp for the remainder of the war. Later, Niemoller famously lamented,

• First the Nazis went after the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not object. Then they went after the trade-unionists, but I was not a trade-unionist so I did not object. Then they came after me, and there was no one left to object.

Death of Freedom of Religion: Compelled to Violate Conscience

What happens when the State compels you to allow your customers to have sex with your wife? What would you do? Of course, you would oppose such a move, even if you lived in a society where the “proper” thing to do was to allow this. I know this sounds absurd, but there have been States that have required this, perhaps not for everyone, but at least for those in power.

You would protest that you have an unalienable right to guard your own family and to live by your beliefs. However, reasonable this might sound, what is reasonable no longer applies. Take this example:

• A Kentucky Human Rights Commission examiner has ordered a Christian screen printing company to print t-shirts that bear pro-homosexual messages and undergo diversity training for declining to make shirts for a “gay pride” celebration two years ago.

• The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission issued the recommendations of its hearing examiner on Tuesday, declaring that Hands On Originals–a company that identifies as “Christian outfitters” on the home page of its website–violated the Lexington Fairness Ordinance by passing on the requested order because of its religious convictions.

• The Gay and Lesbian Services Organization of Lexington (GLSO) had wanted the company to print t-shirts for the 2012 Lexington Gay Pride Festival. When manager Blaine Adamson declined the order due to the company’s biblical convictions not to be partaker of another man’s sins (1 Timothy 5:22, Ephesians 5:7), GLSO filed a complaint with the HRC.

• HRC examiner Greg Munson ruled this week that Hands On Originals violated the law by not printing the shirts for the event.

It is one thing to refuse to serve gays because they are gay, but this isn’t the issue here. The owner, Blaine Adamson, explained that he couldn’t partake in sin:

• “I want the truth to come out—it’s not that we have a sign on the front door that says, ‘No Gays Allowed… We’ll work with anybody. But if there’s a specific message that conflicts with my convictions, then I can’t promote that.”

Should a gay shirt-maker be compelled to print shirts for a pro-family conference reading, “God will only sanction heterosexual marriage!”? Of course not! Or should a Jewish owner be compelled to print, “Hitler understood the Jews”? Or a Muslim forced to print, “The Koran is Wrong!”?

No one should be forced to print or utter an oath in contradiction to what they believe. Such a requirement is dehumanizing and can only breed conflict! What is the State’s compelling need to coerce such behavior? Of course, there is none, other than the State’s own ideological militancy to force their ideology on the rest of us:

• In his decision, Munson ruled that Hands On Originals must accept orders to print t-shirts or other products that bear messages advocating for homosexuality, and mandated the company to undergo diversity training.

It is not enough for the State to deprive Hands On Originals of their freedom to practice their faith. They must now adopt the State religion and be sent for indoctrination, “diversity training” – nothing short of a Maoist tactic! How could Munson possibly justify such a decision? By misrepresenting the “offense”:

• “The evidence of record shows that the respondent discriminated against GLSO because of its members’ actual or imputed sexual orientation by refusing to print and sell to them the official shirts for the 2012 Lexington Pride Festival.”

• “The respondent is permanently enjoined from discriminating against individuals because of their actual or imputed sexual orientation or gender identity,” he wrote. “The respondent is ordered to participate in diversity training to be conducted by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission within 12 months of the issuance of this order.”

What! Hands On didn’t discriminate against gays but against the gays’ demand that they violate their faith!

How can such rulings not breed cynicism and contempt for the authorities who bring about such deceptive and prejudicial decisions! How can this nation survive, if it reneges on the basic values and freedoms that have built this civilization!

Thinking about Human Dignity

Ultimately, the way we think about humanity is the way we will treat humanity. The late and renowned Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner, affirmed the impactfulness of our worldview:

• The recent terrible years of the world war and of the preceding totalitarian revolutions have shown us that the understanding of man is the basis of all social order and of all culture…The denial of this dignity is equivalent to the total abandonment of man to the power of the state…The totalitarian state can arise, and is bound to arise, whenever the idea of human dignity has been lost. The idea of human dignity, however, is historically and, in principle, none other than the idea of man’s being created in the image of God. (The Scandal of Christianity, 69-71)

Most embrace an idealistic concept of the dignity of humanity and also acknowledge that, without such a concept, humanity is no more than an animal to be manipulated and used. But are there necessary preconditions for such an idealistic and dignified view of humanity? Brunner thought that there were:

• [The] time of idealism has always been followed by one of materialism in which human dignity was denied. Such was the case after the idealist tide of the nineteenth century, which was followed by a terrible ebb of crudest materialism, which had nothing else to say of man but that he was the most differentiated and developed animal.

Sheer secular humanism cannot long retain this idealism. It lacks the necessary presuppositional underpinning and, therefore, belief in human dignity will eventually erode. If the human is no more than a sophisticated bio-chemical robot, eventually he will be treated in this manner. Robots are esteemed as long as they serve a purpose, and then are thrown on the junk heap.

Brunner concludes:

• [The Christian] doctrine of man, which acknowledges the image of God as well as the depth of sin, is able to create a social order which has room for the dignity of man and at the same time provides for the necessary precautions against the terrible forces of evil which are slumbering in man.

These forces seem now to have been revived with renewed “progressive” vigor.

The West and how it has Turned against its Christian Roots

My letter to a secularist who thinks that the success of the West should be attributed to his form of secularism and not to Christianity, whose roots have supported the West:

While we both have a high regard for the values and contributions of the West, I tend to think that we have different things in mind when the terms “West” or “secularism” are invoked.

While the secularism of our Founding Fathers guaranteed everyone a seat at the table, the secularism of today guarantees such a seat to only those who share its secular values or religion. Here’s an example from something I was reading today. Tufts University Community Union Judiciary voted to “de-recognize” the Tufts Christian Fellowship (TCF), the largest evangelical group on campus. Here's why:

• The student body’s Community Union Judiciary opposed the group’s requirement that its leaders adhere to the “basic Biblical truths of Christianity,” student government members told the Boston Globe on Oct. 26 [2012]. The charges came from Tufts Coalition Against Religious Exclusion, which published an editorial in the student newspaper accusing the TCF of “hate speech” because of its beliefs about homosexuality. (World, Nov. 17, 2012)

This same action is paralleled by many other similar attempts to close down other Christian groups because they fail to fall in line with the secular agenda. Just recently, mayors from three major US cities, including Rahm Emmanuel of Chicago, voiced their unwillingness to tolerate Chick-Fil-A doing business in their towns, simply because of its stance in favor of traditional marriage.

This type of thing is in violation of everything that our Constitution has guaranteed – everything that has made the West great. However, the secular powers are content to remain silent. Closing down Christian groups, after all, is consistent with their own intolerant position.

Are you aware of the shooting last month at a traditional family values institute? Probably not! It was conveniently overlooked by the secular mainstream media, since it didn’t promote their own agenda. A highly-armed homosexual was intent upon killing many there, simply because he didn’t agree with their politics.

Meanwhile, today’s secularism sounds the call for inclusiveness, equality and diversity, but, hypocritically, only among their own. Instead, it is increasingly totalitarian and intolerant of other religions and belief systems – not the stance that had at one time made the West great.

Interestingly, as this virulent form of secularism has proliferated (from the early sixties), so too have our social – crime, suicide, STDs, drug addiction, mental problems - and economic woes. We have become the greatest debtor nation in the world, living far beyond our means, addicted to consumerism and pleasure without any recognition of the depths of our problem or any intent to address the addiction.

Instead, the addict turns his venom against those who warn him.

Thought Control, Propaganda, Repression and the Gay Agenda

Totalitarian regimes reign through the control of the flow of ideas. To control “the nerve centers of the state,” is to control thinking and to secure compliance as one astute politician had put it:

• In every really great revolutionary movement propaganda will first have to spread the idea of this movement. Thus, it will untiringly try to make clear to the others the new train of thought, to draw them over to its own ground, or at least to make them doubtful of their own previous conviction…The organization receives its member from the followers in general won by propaganda. (Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf)

Today, perhaps in slow-motion, the arm of propaganda is sweeping across the West, pushing aside any convictions or human rights that stand in its path. Recently, two women grad students in counseling programs in state universities were expelled because they didn’t believe in gay marriage and refused remediation.

More recently, Mayors Tom Merino of Boston and Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, announced plans to use their powers to prevent Chick-fil-A (CFA) from expanding its business in these two cities. Why? Because CFA has blatantly expressed its support for heterosexual marriage!

Who cares about their oath to uphold the Constitution and its First Amendment guaranteeing free speech if it detracts from one’s political agenda!

In California, State Sen. Ted Lieu, the author of  Senate Bill 1172, seeks to ban sexual orientation conversion therapy (SOCT) for California minors—even if they or their parents want it.

In order to pass such a repressive and discriminatory bill, the propaganda machinery has been ejaculating all manner of negative messages against SOCT:

• Such treatment, which seeks to change a patient's sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual, is widely criticized in the psychological community as scientifically ineffective and even dangerous. It is blamed for depression and suicide attempts in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youths. 

It has just been disclosed that the Colorado shooter had been seeing a psychotherapist. However, I guarantee that no one will begin to accuse this profession of creating maniacal “jokers” out of their hapless patients. The gay lifestyle is filled with enough risk factors without having to blame the counselor who attempts to help his client avoid the well-documented perils of this lifestyle.

Propaganda isn’t satisfied with merely putting forth its own view of things. It also has to discredit, intimidate and silence the opposition using whatever charges work best. Inevitably, it will clothe itself with the banner of pursuing equal rights, human rights, or concern for the masses. Propaganda, like rat poison, must be made enticing – mixing one part poison to four parts appetizing nuggets. Likewise, propaganda makes the claim that it is seeking justice, while it discredits its opponents as forces of repression and injustice.

According to Lieu, SOCT is absolutely illegitimate:

• "The attack on parental rights is exactly the whole point of the bill because we don't want to let parents harm their children. For example, the government will not allow parents to let their kids to smoke cigarettes. We also won't have parents let their children consume alcohol at a bar or restaurant. We have these laws to stop parents from hurting their kids. Preventive therapy hurts children, so this bill allows us to stop parents from hurting their children."

Lieu pleads the righteousness of his case. Counseling children, whose sexual interests are still very fluid, is compared to intoxication and smoking. SOCT hurts children, while magically the endless barrage of counseling that they receive from their secular state schools insures their welfare. Indeed, encouraging them to explore and pursue their sexuality, even if this means adopting the gay lifestyle – and this lifestyle is strongly associated with depression, suicide, STDs, and an abbreviated life-span – carries no associated risks! What madness!

According to this thinking, the secular state is the best overseer of the welfare of the children – even better than their own parents who love and have sacrificed for them. This is central to propaganda – “The State knows best – better than anyone else.” It is this rationale that is used to silence the opposition. After all, the State must gain ascendancy over the influence of the parents. Interestingly, the-State-knows-best philosophy has been tried and each time with horrific results. Think Communism and National Socialism – not very inspiring!

However, there are still those who will stand against the prospect of intimidation.

• A study conducted by Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas compared the “social, emotional, and relational” outcomes for children raised in different family structures, including children raised by heterosexual parents and those raised in homes in which the parents had been in homosexual relationships. It found that the children raised in homes in which parents had had homosexual relationships were disadvantaged in numerous ways.

However, Regnerus is now being punished because of his study. It is one thing for studies to be criticized, and they should be. This is a necessary aspect of accountability. However, criticism isn’t enough for the forces of repression. Two hundred academicians signed a petition demanding that Regnerus be brought up on ethical charges.

Regnerus’ study is certainly not beyond reproach, but neither is any other study, especially in this contentious field. Andrew Ferguson pointed out this fact in the Weekly Standard:

• The limitations of Regnerus’ study compare favorably with the shortcomings found routinely in the same-sex literature. It does no credit to the guild that researchers have choked on Regnerus’ paper while happily swallowing dozens of faulty studies over the last 20 years—because, you can’t help but think, those studies were taken as confirming the “no difference” dogma. “If the Regnerus study is to be thrown out,” wrote the Canadian family economist Douglas Allen in a statement supporting Regnerus, “then practically everything else [in the literature] has to go with it.”

Why didn’t these 200 academicians raise a whisper about these other studies? Unlike Regnerus’, these studies unsurprisingly came to politically correct conclusions. They oiled the gears of the propaganda machine. No surprise!

Consequently, Regnerus is now under investigation for ethics violations. Which academic will now risk his career to put forth a study that contradicts the prevailing dogma? Only the most courageous! Expect only one-sided studies and one-sided news!

However, it gets worse:

• Perhaps you are unaware of the “Commentator Accountability Project” of the powerful Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). It was launched earlier this year to hold media outlets (not commentators) accountable for allowing traditional marriage advocates (including this writer) to have a voice in the public debate.

How is it that the media has so quickly succumbed to these Nazi tactics? You don’t find any anti-gay-marriage arguments in the secular media, do you?

• One of its key concepts for twisting the arms of journalists is the slogan “bias is not balance.” How’s that for simply redefining pro-family opinion out of existence in the newsroom? I personally recall a leader of the Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association years ago state that allowing pro-family people to comment in news stories related to homosexuality was equivalent to letting the Ku Klux Klan have equal time in stories about race.

Therefore, we can forget about balanced reporting. This is becoming equated with “bias.” But then isn’t GLAAD’s stance also biased? Isn’t the idea that the State can prohibit certain forms of counseling – think free speech – also a matter of bias? If we think that pedophilia is wrong, is that too a matter of bias that must be silenced? Why not?

Sadly, propaganda works. Those who control the media and the universities mold the minds. They also determine politics – who can speak and who can’t; who goes to prison and who can exercise power. We will find that as reason and principle succumb to propaganda and politics, power will fill the vacuum and become the final arbiter.

Totalitarianism, Hate Speech and Social Disintegration

In totalitarian Stalinist USSR, criticism of the regime was not tolerated. It represented a threat to the communist revolution and would be addressed with violence or a permanent stay the Gulag. In a sense, criticism of the regime was regarded as “hate speech.”

Remarkably, our re-definition of “hate speech” has a strong totalitarian fragrance. According to Wikipedia:

• In law, hate speech [now] is any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display which is forbidden because it may incite violence or prejudicial action against or by a protected individual or group, or because it disparages or intimidates a protected individual or group. The law may identify a protected individual or a protected group by race, gender, ethnicity, disability, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other characteristic.

Stalin might have gladly used this definition to justify his prohibition of free speech. After all, criticism – “hate speech” - threatened the welfare of all the citizens of the USSR and certainly would “incite violence.”

Interestingly, absent from Wikipedia’s modern re-definition are the elements that we had previously associated with hate. Here’s how Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines “hate”:

• “An intense hostility or aversion usually derived from fear…extreme dislike or antipathy…loathing…”

The Wikipedia understanding means that if you express your legitimate concerns - loving concerns - about an action of a “protected individual or group,” you can find yourself in hot legal water if they claim that you had offended them. It doesn’t matter at all if you had been motivated by love for the “protected individual.” It might not even matter it you in fact offended the “protected individual.” If they simply say you offended them, you can be charged with a “hate crime.” Even if you make an innocent off-color joke, you can find your job threatened.

Consequently, joking with a “protected individual” can land you a lawsuit. Even an inquiry can create offense – “any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display [which may] incite violence.”

The law is now being construed to protect the ones who least need it – the ones most prone to act-out with violence. The lesson: demonstrate that you are willing to act outrageously and the law will now coddle you and enable you to be rewarded for anti-social, violent behavior!

Clearly, this will not create a better society. Instead, it creates imbalance, social disparities, and alienation and concentrates power in the hands of the “protected individual or group” – any bully who wants to claim that he has been offended.

This is not to say that certain forms of discrimination shouldn’t be proscribed. For instance, we shouldn’t tolerate racial discrimination in hiring or housing. Such “intolerance” doesn’t come with a high price tag – a sacrifice of needful individual liberties. Instead, we, as a society, have everything to gain by legislating against racial intolerance.

However, passing laws against “any speech, gesture or conduct, writing, or display [which may] incite violence” is an entirely different matter. Instead of protecting human beings, these laws are designed to protect behaviors and lifestyles, and their cost is astronomical – a significant move towards totalitarianism and the institution of secularly- favored behaviors and speech, in effect, a State-supported religion, promoting certain values and speech and forbidding others. While the law should criminalize racial intolerance, it shouldn’t allow the “protected individual” to throw loud and disruptive parties every night, such that anyone who protests against them is charged with “hate speech” and “inciting violence.” Race and behavior should not be equated!

There is little difference between what is happening here and the blasphemy laws in Muslim nations, where no criticism of Islam is tolerated. Islam is the “protected group.” Islam therefore controls the media, the universities, influential jobs and the government.

Oddly, some of these same nations hope to meld a common national identity – a common glue - among their citizens. The moderate Islamic nation of Malaysia is one of them. However, some years ago, a study conducted by the University of Malaysia found that Muslims, Christians and Hindus students hardly associated.

Ironically, they were surprised by their finding. Clearly, the favored status of Islam had created deep divisions, penetrating into the core of interpersonal relationships. After all, who wants to risk a friendship with someone who has a favored status and has the power to accuse you of “blasphemy” and have you thrown into jail. And what “protected individual” will condescend to associate with one beneath his social status? Besides, ones legally-assigned social position largely determines ones worldview and a greatly attenuates the possible areas of common understanding. Such disparities can only lead to social disintegration.

Western “blasphemy laws” do the same by conferring greater power and privileges on certain “protected individuals or groups.” The creation of inequality bodes poorly for our future.

Propaganda, Silencing the Opposition and Control

If you can control the university, then you can educate the media. If you can educate the media, then you can educate the masses. Politicians have long understand this:

• The most striking success of the revolution of a view of life will always be won whenever the new view of life is, if possible, taught to all people, and, if necessary, is later forced upon them, while…the movement has to embrace only so many people as absolutely necessary for the occupation of the nerve centers of the state involved.

• In every great revolutionary movement propaganda will first have to spread the idea of this movement. Thus, it will untiringly try to make clear to the others the new train of thought, to draw them over to its own ground, or at least to make them doubtful of their own previous conviction. (Mein Kampf)

When “the occupation of the nerve centers of the state” is secured, so too is control. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) understands this and “is launching a new effort today to target 36commentators who speak out against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people”:

• The Commentator Accountability Project (CAP) "aims to educate the media about the extreme rhetoric of over three dozen activists who are often given a platform to speak in opposition to LGBT people and the issues that affect their lives," the media monitoring organization said in a press release. Among those activists are Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council; Bob Vander Platts, the president of The Family Leader; Candi Cushman, an education analyst at Focus on the Family; and Bill Donahue, the head of the Catholic League.

Is GLAAD’s real goal to altruistically educate the public or to control the public by silencing any criticism? One of the 36 commentators on GLAAD’s black-list responded:

• I find it ironic that GLAAD's exclusive goal in all of this seems to be the idea that shutting people's voices down--who oppose them--will somehow make their arguments more sound.

 Sadly, the Mainstream Media has consistently shown itself more than ready to be “educated.” Even now, Facebook has banned me from posting my essays on other groups or sites.

The writer, George Orwell, had proclaimed:

• During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

In this case, please join me in the revolution!

The New Secular Religion and its Opposition to Prayer

Here’s one more story out of thousands on the same exact subject:

• For years, the Vermont town of Franklin near the Canadian border started Town Meeting with a prayer. A lawsuit stopped that from happening this year…Since the town votes from the floor and residents have to attend to be heard, the Vermont Chapter of the ACLU says residents are being compelled to attend religious worship.

What’s the matter with this picture? Well, let me suggest several flaws:

1. Perhaps the main one is that this violates the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…”

2. Historically, prayer had been part of the Congressional meetings of the USA. Evidently, no one then believed that prayer violated the Constitution.

3. There is no compelling reason for the Fed to trump local sovereignty. What if 90% of the community wants prayer in council meeting? Why should the values or religion of the federal government impose itself on a local, popularly chosen practice?

4. All laws and judgments reflect a certain values orientation, and these judgments are necessarily religious in nature. It seems hypocritical of the Federal government to censure the town council for a religious practice, when the Fed’s imposition is also religious. It is also hypocritical for the ACLU to fault the council that it “compelled [residents] to attend religious worship,” while the Fed and the ACLU are practicing their own forms of compulsion.

5. It is therefore hypocritical to discriminate against Christianity and not against other forms of religions. Our public schools have become indoctrination camps for the religions of naturalism, multi-culturalism, moral-relativism, and sexual permissiveness. While it is acceptable to present arguments in favor of sexual license, arguments to the contrary have been deemed “religious” and therefore proscribed.

6. Any public school student is “compelled” to do many things that they don’t want to do. It is therefore not enough to censure a council because it “compelled” its guests to be subjected to a prayer. This is certainly preferable to being compelled to hear the lies and distortions coming out of many meetings. In fact, we are compelled to do many things that go against our values. We have to pay taxes and drive within the speed limits.

7. There is no neutrality. A prayer-less council meeting represents an imposition of another kind – one that can be equally offensive to religious people. This enforced silence conveys the ideas of secular humanism - the belief that prayer is not necessary.

8. A democratic nation must rule by the consent of its people. If it fails to do so, it will loose this consent and thrust the nation into turmoil. There are no vital national at stake to justify squelching diversity and the will of local communities. There are no reasons why the Fed must enforce uniformity. Such enforcement pushes us closer to having a totalitarian state.

We tend to forget that our legal climate wasn’t always this way.  Up until recently, it has been characterized by the understanding that living together required tolerance and the respect for the conscience and free expression of others, even for those with whom we disagreed. For example, in 1940, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case involving Jehovah Witness children who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Justice Felix Frankfurter argued for the majority that our common national interests for patriotic cohesiveness required the Pledge. In response, Justice Harlan Stone retorted that religious liberty argued for,

·             “The freedom of the individual from compulsion as to what he shall think and what he shall say, at least where the compulsion is to bear false witness to his religion.”

According to Stone, our freedom of religion and expression should even take precedence over certain national interests. In contrast, now even the passing fads of political correctness have been elevated over our religious freedoms.

Thankfully, Frankfurter’s decision did not stand. In 1943, in a very similar case, Justice Robert Jackson wrote for the majority and affirmed:

·             “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

Sadly, now an invasive national orthodoxy is attempting to squelch all expressions of religious diversity. In contrast, in 1965, the Court heard a case that directly impacted national security but ruled to grant qualified U.S. citizens the status of “conscientious objector.” However, this designation could only be given to “those persons who by reason of their religious training and belief are conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form.” 

This was a ruling that would certainly be divisive and could actually compromise national security. However, there was still enough respect for religion and the sanctity of the conscience that the court overruled national security concerns. Even the liberal Justice Stephen O. Douglas concurred with the majority:

·              “…any person opposed to war on the basis of a sincere belief, which in his life fills the same place as a belief in God fills in the life of the orthodox religionist, is entitled to exemption under the statute.”

Even in this critical area where there were legitimate concerns about national security, the Court ruled against imposing a uniform solution. Respect for sincerely held faith was deemed more important than the immediate national interests. How far have we come!

The Repressive State and its Religion

 

Repressive, totalitarian regimes are never satisfied with merely controlling the political process. They also seek to control the mind and indoctrinate the youth. Hughes and Mann wrote about the goals of National Socialism:

• From the beginning the Nazis were determined to subvert German youth to their own aims…By the end of 1933 all other youth organizations had been either banned or subsumed into the Hitler Youth…In 1939, two executive orders…made “youth service” compulsory…The Nazis monopolized every free hour and parents dared not object lest they were seen to be troublemakers. Youngsters, living more and more with their comrades, were gradually being weaned away from their families. (Inside Hitler’s Germany, 50-54)

Secular Western nations are quickly following in the steps of National Socialism and its totalitarian cousin – Communism – by indoctrinating children. Even as early as 1973, Dr. W. P. Shofstall, the state superintendent for public schools in Arizona commented that, “The atheists have, for all practical purposes, taken over public education in this country.” The results have been obvious:

• On November 17, 1980, the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law that required the posting of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. The Court said that the Ten Commandments were “plainly religious…and may induce children to read, meditate upon, and perhaps to venerate and to obey the commandments.” (Erwin Lutzer, The Rebirth of America, 82.

Meanwhile, the Court has raised no qualms about the children venerating pornography or another religion – militant secular humanism:

• Secular Humanism would like us to believe that they are broadminded, pluralistic and neutral in moral matters. They are opposed to censorship, sectarianism and intolerance. The media has done a successful job of getting the American people to believe that it is he so-called right wing religious fanatics who are seeking to “impose morality on society”…Secular Humanism is imposing its own morality on the American public. It does so through the media, the schools and the courts. There is a clear intent to keep Christian thinking out of the mainstream. (83)

• As columnist George Will put it so ably, “And it is, by now, a scandal beyond irony that thanks to the energetic litigation of the ‘civil liberties’ fanatics, pornographers enjoy expansive first amendment protection while first graders in a nativity play are said to violate the First Amendment values.” (84)

However, this insipient totalitarianism doesn't just apply to education. James Schall, S.J. describes it is as a full frontal attack:

•  We have been taught to think that “democracy” is automatically “the best regime,” the only alternative to any totalitarian state power. Though it has been coming for some time, within these past couple of weeks, we are seeing clearly that the desire, force, and will to subsume all subsidiary social institutions, especially religion and family, under the control of the state is also endemic in current democratic societies.

Although the Secular West is not seeking to build an empire based upon racial ideals, it is trying to impose its own utopian values – multi-culturalism, moral relativism, humanism, naturalism, sexual-permissiveness - under the guise of neutrality. Interestingly, Secularism, National Socialism and Communism have all attempted to achieve their goals through the neutralization of parental and Christian influences.

Although we don’t have to contend with the Hitler youth, we do have public education which has become increasingly secularized to the point that the Bible is now verboten! Private schools are only an option for those districts that have a voucher system or for those parents who can fork out the big bucks. Consequently, the public system has been awarded a virtual monopoly over the minds of the youth.

Some decades ago, prayer and moral absolutes were rejected and “values clarification” exercises quickly filled the vacuum. These conveyed to the youth that there is no correct moral answer. Consequently, there can be no correct or even incorrect behavior, as long as it didn’t interfere with the schools’ interests. Instead, morality became just a matter of clarifying the subjective and arbitrary reasons that govern our meaningless choices.

In Canada, parents have just sustained an additional blow:

• In the past week we have witnessed the Supreme Court of Canada dismiss the appeal of a Quebec family for permission to exempt their child from that province’s controversial ethics and religious culture course, which critics say is “relativistic,” and teaches that all religious are equally valid. And we have heard a spokesperson for the Alberta education minister state that under the province’s new Education Act even homeschooling parents will no longer be allowed to teach their children traditional Christian sexual ethics. Without the right to educate our children as we choose according to the values we choose, what do we have left? State-imposed orthodoxy. Totalitarianism. These two developments come amidst the ongoing efforts of the Ontario government to impose their “equity” program, “diversity” curriculum, and transparently ideological “anti-bullying” bill on all schools – whether Catholic or public. Already the largest school board in the province has said that parents will not be permitted to exempt their children from parts of the curriculum they deem unacceptable.

This raises an important question that is seldom discussed by our secular establishment. Who should have the primary responsibility for the education of their children? To put it another way – why should parents be denied the right to veto and exempt their children from certain subjects? And why should certain morally objectionable materials be imposed upon private schools and the private and intimate relationship that parents enjoys with their children? What is the compelling national interest, if there is one?

Interestingly, Reich Youth Leader, Baldur von Schirach had expressed more reverence for the authority of the family than do many of our secular institutions:

• The Hitler Youth leader, however, should consider it his duty not only to maintain the best relations with the parents of the youngsters entrusted to him, but also to allow them every possible insight into the work of the organization. [In contrast, our schools are often secretive about the nature of their moral teachings.] He must be ready to answer questions put to him by the parents of his young charges and should try to become the confidant of the family…Every youth movement needs the spiritual cooperation of the parental home…The parental home is in an ever better position to give unqualified recognition to the service of the Hitler Youth, since this service supports the authority of the parents and does not impair it. (Nazi Culture, 296-97)

Ironically, our evolved secular institutions seem unconcerned about the “authority of the parents.” However, both the Hitler Youth [HY] and the secularists win our children by honoring them as “adults.” HY taught the youth the use of weapons, insisting that their youth were vital to their national defense. Similarly, the secularists insist that our children have the same rights as adults. Consequently, they should now report their parents for spanking them. (The communists also manipulated the youth against their parents, encouraging them to report any anti-communist talk or activity.)

While the HY used weaponry, the secularists have used an even more powerful weapon – sex – to convince the youth that their parents are backward and repressive and that the secularists will treat them with more dignity. They have been increasingly insistent that children have a right and even a duty to themselves to explore their sexuality.

No society will last long which turns the youth against their parents, those who truly love them and would sacrifice to protect them. The wise King Solomon realized this, so that when two women came before him – each claiming a certain newborn to be her own – he ordered that the newborn be cut in two, one half for each claimant. This propelled the real mother to cry out:

• "Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don't kill him!" But the other said, "Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!" (1 Kings 3:26)

Our secular institutions are like the second woman. They must have their way despite the mountains of evidence demonstrating that society is faltering under their watch. How odd it is that “even home-schooling parents will no longer be allowed to teach their children traditional Christian sexual ethics” even in the face of unacceptably high levels of out-of-wedlock births, abortions, venereal diseases, and the many resulting social ills.

In the mid-eighties, D. James Kennedy wrote about this irony, claiming that his own Westminster Academy, which had been operating for nine years at that time, had never had an illegitimate birth:

• While the rest of America is marching forward with 600,000 unwanted births among high school students…by innumerable hundreds of thousands of abortions…by epidemic drug use…alcoholism…suicide….while we are marching forward into that brave new world, the Christian schools are teaching people about the moral standards of God…who can read far better than the students coming out of the public schools and are academically superior to them. (126)

What compelling reason does secularism have for its intolerance of home-schooling and Christian education? We tend to think that the proof is in the tasting – the results. However, secularism has proven that their ideology trumps the evidence. Why then is secularism committed to a uniformity in belief and religion – moral relativism, humanism, naturalism - even when this uniformity, this State religion, conflicts with the natural interests of the family and our First Amendment rights?

This brings us back to the question – Who should have the primary say over the education of children? The wise Solomon believed that it should be the biological mother, the one who was willing to surrender the child for his own well-being. Secularism repeatedly casts its vote in favor of State uniformity. But why? Does the secularist/atheist have compelling evidence to justify wrenching the child away from parental authority? Can the secularist/atheist demonstrate that society and its children have clearly benefited from secular indoctrination since the sixties?

All indicators would say, “No” – the highly elevated crime rate, drug rate, abortion rate, divorce rate, venereal disease rate…  What then is the justification for continuing this repressive, totalitarian, religious experiment?