The Myth of Tolerance; or A Nation of Children

When was the last time you heard anyone on TV hollering about “tolerance”?  You do not hear many calls for “tolerance” for this sort of person or that sort of person anymore, do you?  To the contrary, the 1990s and early 2000s are over and there is a new political narrative in this country to talk about.  Let’s go over some events of the past twelve months:

1) December 2013: Duck Dynasty Controversy (with commentary)

2) April 2014: Mozilla CEO resigns, opposition to gay marriage drew fire | Reuters

Someone from the SFist blog reported on the matter at http://sfist.com/2014/04/03/mozillas_anti-gay_ceo_brendan_eich.php partly as follows:

Brendan Eich, Mozilla's anti-gay CEO, made the right decision to step down today. He will resign as CEO of the for-profit Mozilla Corporation as well as a board member of the nonprofit Mozilla foundation.

A comment on this last piece: undoubtedly its author, Brock Keeling, has the well-being of Mozilla in mind when he speaks of the “right decision.”  OkCupid’s opposition to Mozilla’s erswhile CEO obviously would have led to job layoffs at Mozilla and in turn led to a condition of hundreds of miserable, starving children of unemployed former employees of Mozilla if Brendan Eich had not stepped down.

3) April 2014: Magic Johnson on Donald Sterling: "He Shouldn't Have a Team Anymore" | Mother Jones:

“There’s no place in our society for it, and there’s no place in our league. We all get along. We all play with different races of people when you're in sports. That's what makes sports so beautiful. He’s put his own team in a tough situation. So I believe that once Commissioner Silver...does all his due diligence, gets all the information gathered, he’s got to come down hard. He shouldn’t own a team anymore. And he should stand up and say, ‘I don’t want to own a team anymore.’ Especially when you have African Americans renting his apartments, coming to the games, playing for him, coaching for him. This is bad for everybody. This is bad for America.

(...)

He's got to give up the team. If he doesn't like African Americans and you're in a league that is over 75% African Americans...When you've got the president of the United States saying that this is bad. You've got fans around the country—different races of people—saying it's bad, it is time for him to exit.”

“No place in our society”?  Even if your White next-door neighbor and his wife have regular, private discussions among themselves about how they think your new Black neighbors down the street have brought down property values in your neighborhood, how is that per se affecting (to say nothing of harming) Magic Johnson or any other Black person?  Meanwhile, Sterling is right about one thing in life: government has no legal right (except in extraordinary circumstances) to force anyone to sell his or her property.  Contrary to Magic Johnson’s assessment of the matter, Sterling does not have to give up anything, unless “got to give up the team” means I want Donald Sterling to give up the team.

4) May 2014: More recently the news broke concerning HGTV’s decision to render the Benham Brothers relatively jobless: CP | Believers Rally After HGTV Cancels Reality Show Starring Christian Twin Brothers Who Oppose Abortion, Homosexuality, Divorce.  This continuation of a trend, as it turns out, was only the first chapter of a larger story: SunTrust Banks recently broke financial ties with the Benham brothers, before quickly reversing their decision in a manner much like that of the Duck Dynasty incident:  CP | SunTrust Banks Reverses Decision to Drop Benham Brothers Following Strong Backlash From Conservative Customers.

5) May 2014: This last one dawned on me after Thursday, May 15 when for various reasons I had to sit and endure the audio of the Katie Couric Show.  “The Week That Was” was a guest-panel segment that ran on Thursday instead of Friday this time around, and one of the life lessons to be learned of the segment is that “sensitivity training” for Don Jones is a good thing: Michael Sam Kiss Cam & Donald Sterling Controversy – Katie Couric.  The background story is here: Miami Dolphins Fine, Suspend Safety Don Jones for Tweet Against Same-Sex Kiss | Christian News Network.

Never forget that training and education are two different things.  Training is what you do to your muscles and muscle groups.  Training is what you do to ensure that your brain recalls certain actions in a proper sequence.  Training is what you do to force certain results of different systems of the human body.  Education, on the other hand, is what you offer to intelligent beings such that they should make an informed decision on what course of action to take, whether right or wrong.  So if anyone thinks that “brainwashing” is a bad thing, then he should know that sensitivity training is no different and know that there are people in the Western World who approve of brainwashing.

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Even before all this there was the whole matter of the Chick-Fil-A boycott of 2012, not to mention the continued trend of pseudo-obligatory apologies in national American politics.  What all of this suggests is the sum of two possibilities.  On the one hand, it could be that all the people who rhetorically and by propaganda used to beat people over the head to make them “tolerant” of Arabs, or non-Whites, or homosexuals as such were never interested in global tolerance but only particular tolerance--you know, the kind of Tolerance® that they want people to have or, in other words, tolerance for me but not for thee.  On the other hand, it could be that many of today’s liberals are simply hypocrites or children who forget that tolerance in general means exactly that: that people who believe in general tolerance are not exempt from the requirement to put up with people, deeds and beliefs that they do not like.

And let no one attempt to redefine what these people earlier meant in the use of the word “tolerance.”  For it is clear that in yesteryear “tolerance” meant more than simply restraining an urge to beat gay passers-by with baseball bat, but rather precluded various actions such as demands that certain people be punished with a lack of employment.  Despite whatever the word “tolerance” once meant from the mouths of liberals and the Gay Lobby, what it is now is something that should be considered in the light of both Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.  Orwell’s cautionary tales were not written for people who live on a planet other than Earth and they were not written precisely for people who already exist within a societies like communist Cuba or the Soviet Union; they were written because of the innate ability within each of us to morph into that which we used to hate and abhor.

OkCupid: Save the Date

On 3 April 2014 Reuters ran the story that, well, «"Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples," the message said. "We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid."»

So let’s all check back with the staff of OkCupid in five years, after the movement for equal rights of those wanting group marriages or marriages with siblings or with inhuman entities has gained ground and become as strident as the Gay Lobby is.  Should it be discovered that OkCupid is equally old-fashioned and hateful in their dealings with the hyper-celebrated social groups of the next zeitgeist, some of us will remember OkCupid’s hypocrisy and what they did to Mozilla back in 2014.

And now that you are done reading this blog post, go out and find yet another Web browser--besides either IE, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or any other popular one--to use because one thing is certain: there are one or two employees who developed those browsers yet are sexist in their use of insults and slurs; the same people are also unwittingly prejudicial and/or needlessly insulting in their thoughts and dealings with conservatives, Republicans, Southerners, country folk, gun owners, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and really practically any other social group.  (I could pull contemporary anecdotes to support what I am saying here.)  Go ahead and think about drawing up a new Constitution for the United States while you’re at it; freedom of speech per the First Amendment derives from a document written by racist slave owners anyhow.

Re: The Grammys and the Myth of Marriage Equality

HT: to whom you ought to know, by now:

The Grammys and the Myth of Marriage Equality

One comment: it is amazing how the pro-“marriage equality” crowd tends to have no concept of reductio ad absurdum when it comes to this pet issue of theirs.  For we have already seen both that sexual deviants are now calling for marriage equality of their own and that if the logic behind the gay variety of “marriage equality” is merely taken to its logical conclusion--what propositions are implied or entailed by it--then these other sexual deviants really should be allowed to marry as they will: marriages of thruples, siblings, first cousins, etc.  Bear in mind that the people who scoff at the slippery slope arguments are probably some of the same people who refer to “homophobic” beliefs or ideas as “toxic,” with the idea being that one’s merely having certain beliefs or teachings will surely lead to anti-gay violence, slurs, or denial of “rights.”

Friday Links

The weekend is here, which means you might just have time to catch up some stories or events that you might have missed.  So in the meantime:

-Hays’ interaction with cessationists continues further and further over at Triablogue.

-Open theism apparently ends up where logically it should end up: in liberalism and unbelief.

-And to anyone who heard only the initial half of the story about the NJ waitress who reportedly was denied a tip by mean, cheapskate customers who many people presumed to be Christians: you might need to read the following: http://www.lohud.com/article/20131126/NEWS/311260034/Waitress-tip-tale-former-Stony-Point-resident-lies-about-everything-ex-coworkers-friends-say?nclick_check=1 Note also, as a supplemental datum, that WNBC in New York reported yesterday that Morales was dishonorably discharged from the Marines.

-I for one do not care about the Driscoll matter at present.  Why should anyone care about (possible) plagiarism, literary style, context, or minutiae on a rapidly sinking ship anyhow?

Gay Activists Need to Read This Book

Fred Butler suggests that, in light of real life people who say they used to be gay, but are living according to God's plan of sexuality ought to read a book that gives the testimony of one such person. He deals with the lie that there is nothing that can be done to change one's orientation. While this is but one person's testimony, I think many folks who desire to leave the gay lifestyle can though God's grace. Some I think will be healed of their attraction, but many will have to struggle with thoughts and temptations (just like everyone who struggles with sexual temptation or a difficult addiction or any sin) throughout their life, but in both cases, there is hope. It is through the Gospel.

She stands as a trophy of God’s redeeming grace. An living monument of how God not only saves a person, but also supernaturally transforms an individual from a radical lifestyle in rebellion against Him to a radical lifestyle submitted to Him.  For only God can take a homosexual atheist feminist university professor and make her a God fearing, Proverbs 31 woman who is a stay at home wife and mother who homeschools her children. That is amazing grace indeed!

One of the biggest lies spread throughout our popular culture by gay activists and their willing enablers in the media is that homosexual orientation is biologically fixed. So a person is born with their sexual orientation to the same-sex and there is nothing he or she  can do, or should do, to change that.  It is a basic part of who the person is, like dark skin is for the Aborigine.  Anyone, say for instance evangelical Christians, who believes a person’s sexual orientation and same-sex attraction can be “changed” is stupid and essentially uneducated.

This lie has taken such deep root in our society that anyone who even makes an effort with helping a person change his or her sexual orientation is deemed abusive. Counseling therapy that seeks to help “re-orient” a person’s homosexual tendencies to healthy, opposite sex attraction is viewed on the same level as practicing lobotomy and shock therapy. The state of California even recently passed legislation prohibiting professional counselors from offering any therapy for homosexual orientation to anyone under the age of 18.

Gay activists go so far as to deny there is any thing called an ex-gay or former homosexual, because none could possibly exist in their worldview. The crippling problem with their anti-ex-gay narrative, however, is the existence of ex-gays who are now married in healthy husband and wife relationships who renounce their former gay lifestyle.

One such individual has recently published her testimony about coming out of the gay lifestyle and embracing Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  Rosaria Champagne Butterfield was not only a lesbian activist, she was also a tenured associate professor at Syracuse University in the English Department with teaching responsibilities in the Center for Women’s Studies. She was on the cutting edge of gay activism, particularly feminist gay activism.

Then God got a hold of her life. Through the ministry of a Reformed Presbyterian minister and his wife, the two challenged Rosaria and God used their simple evangelism to save and redeem her. Her conversion, she remarks, was like an “alien abduction” which is an apt illustration seeing how it is God alone who totally transforms a person.

Rosaria is now married to a pastor with a family of her own. She tells her testimony in a book entitled, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, a book I first heard about through a book review by Carl Trueman. He and his podcast co-host did a 30 minute program discussing the book which I would recommend downloading and giving a listen.

Rosaria also has a website where other interviews, both audio and video, can be downloaded or watched.

She stands as a trophy of God’s redeeming grace. An living monument of how God not only saves a person, but also supernaturally transforms an individual from a radical lifestyle in rebellion against Him to a radical lifestyle submitted to Him.  For only God can take a homosexual atheist feminist university professor and make her a God fearing, Proverbs 31 woman who is a stay at home wife and mother who homeschools her children. That is amazing grace indeed!