Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

CHRIS RUFO - "THE REAL STORY BEHIND DRAG QUEEN STORY HOUR"

Here's a 10 minute video full of insight and history.  Definitely worth your time.

https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1750177876778143972

ROD DREHER AND THE STATE OF OUR TIMES

It's important to keep reading Rod Dreher.  I do not have time to offer additional or better comments on the three posts listed below, but perhaps I can do so at a later time.  Each is important reading.

 --  Here is a post on Trump's evangelical support and it's pervasive pessimism -- which reflects my own thinking.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/evangelicals-trump-shield-2020/

--  See also this on the religion of the New York Times:  https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/new-york-times-editorial-staff-meeting-racism-oberlin-faculty-senate/

And this on progressive education in California - https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/california-to-become-yugoslavia-ethnic-studies/

SCHOOL IMPERIALISM: ORANGE COUNTY, CA. REFUSES TO ALLOW PARENTS TO OPT THEIR CHILDREN OUT OF LGBT INDOCTRINATION SESSIONS

I find this unbelievable. Parents of children in Orange County, CA have been refused permission to exempt their children from LGBT indoctrination classes.  Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council  writes:

It's every parent's worst nightmare: someone exposes your kids to something harmful -- and you can't stop them. That's exactly the situation in Orange County, California, where the school district has decided that LGBT lessons are too important to let families opt out.

In a story that almost has to be read to be believed, Fox News's Todd Starnes reprints the policy in black and white. "Parents who disagree with the instructional materials related to gender, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation may not excuse their children from this instruction," the memo from the Orange County Board of Education warns.

Todd couldn't believe his eyes, so he called a district spokesman who confirmed that kids would be forced to attend the schools' LGBT indoctrination sessions. Then, in what was supposed to offer some reassurance, he went on to say that while parents may have no authority over what their kids learn in class, they had the district's approval to rebut the materials at home. "Parents are free to advise their children that they disagree with some or all of the information presented in the instructional program and express their views on these subjects to their children." You mean you'll let us make the decisions when our kids are home? How thoughtful.

BILL MUEHLENBERG: "DESTROYING CULTURES: A "HOW TO" GUIDE"

Bill Muehlenberg writes

Wanna know how to destroy a culture? There are many successful means by which we can do this, but one easy way is to target the children. Get them in the schools, attack the values and beliefs of their parents (usually behind their backs) and turn them into amoral and immoral sex perverts. This is a perfect recipe for laying waste a culture.

And it is happening all the time regrettably. The West is becoming one big moral and sexual cesspool where anything goes, and our children are especially the victims. We are killing our kids with all things sleazy and sensual. We are destroying our children with all things putrid and pornographic.

My site has documented this on numerous occasions, and there is never a shortage of new examples of this. Consider just two new shockers coming out of the UK. Both involve pushing the sexual boundaries and attacking mainstream morality.       Me -  Keep reading for truly unbelievable examples of what is happening in UK schools..

FATHER UPSET WITH TERMS ON SCHOOL'S SEX EDUCATION POSTER

Warning: This story contains terms that some may find offensive or inappropriate, reader and viewer discretion is recommended.

GENDER NEUTRAL TOYS IN SWEDEN

I don't think gender-neutral toys have much of a future, personally, but my opinion won't stop the gender equality engineers from attempting to deconstruct "masculine" and "feminine" as qualities that run deeply throughout the created order.   Anna Molin writes in the Wall Street Journal:

This holiday season, how about a toy gun for the girl on your shopping list, and a doll for the boy?

That vision of gender-neutrality in toy-buying is coming to life in Sweden, where Top-Toy Group, a licensee of the Toys "R" Us brand, has published a gender-blind catalog for the Christmas season.

On some pages, girls brandish toy guns and boys wield blow-dryers and cuddle dolls. Top-Toy, a privately-held company, published 12 million catalogs and owns the BR Toys chain, with 303 stores in Northern Europe. . . .   [more . . .]

On the issue of "masculine" and "feminine," the thoughts of C.S. Lewis prove intriguing.  A blogger writes:

Perelandra is the second of his “Space Trilogy” and occurs on the young planet of Venus where a creation story similar to that of Earth’s is transpiring. Near the end of the volume Ransom, the hero of the trilogy, encounters two angels, or eldils, as they are called in the fantasy,

"Both bodies were naked, and both were free from any sexual characteristics, either primary or secondary. That, one would have expected. But whence came this curious difference between them? He found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore. One could try – Ransom has tried a hundred times – to put it into words. He has said that Malacandra was like rhythm and Perelandra like melody. He has said that Malacandra affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre. He thinks that the first held in his hand something like a spear, but the hands of the other were open, with palms toward him. But I don’t know that any of these attempts has helped be much. At all events what Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender. Everyone must sometimes have wondered why in nearly all tongues certain inanimate objects are masculine and other feminine. What is masculine about a mountain or feminine about certain trees? Ransom has cured me of believing that this is a purely morphological phenomenon, depending on the form of the word. Still less is gender an imaginative extension of sex. Our ancestors did not make mountains masculine because they projected male characteristics into them. The real process is the reverse. Gender is a reality, and a more fundamental reality than sex. Sex is, in fact, merely the adaptation to organic life of a fundamental polarity which divides all created beings. Female sex is simply one of the things that have feminine gender; there are many others, and Masculine and Feminine meet us planes of reality where male and female would be simply meaningless. Masculine is not attenuated male, not feminine attenuated female. On the contrary, the male and female of organic creatures are rather faint and blurred reflections of masculine and feminine. Their reproductive functions, their differences in strength and size, partly exhibit, but partly also confuse and misrepresent, the real polarity… Malacandra seemed to him to have the look of one standing armed, at the ramparts of his own remote archaic world, in ceaseless vigilance, his eyes ever roaming the earth-ward horizon whence his danger came long ago. “A sailor’s look,” Ransom once said to me; “you know… eyes that are impregnated with distance.” But the eyes of Perelandra opened, as it were, inward, as if they were the curtained gateway to a world of waves and murmurings and wandering airs, of life that rocked in winds and splashed on mossy stones and descended as the dew and arose sunward in thin-spun delicacy of mist." (Perelandra 200-1)

WINTERY KNIGHT POTPOURRI

I am a fan of Wintery Knight's blog. It should be checked frequently.  In case you haven't done so lately, here are some links to recent posts:

- If Obamacare is so great, then why do so many Democrats get waivers?

- Do pro-lifers care about people who are already born?

- Wayne Grudem defends what the Bible says about same-sex marriage

- Former alarmist scientist admits global warming is a “fiction”

- Does sex education reduce teen pregnancies and sexually-transmitted infections?

- UK Telegraph on Richard Dawkins’ cowardly refusal to debate William Lane Craig

I have referred to Wintery Knight's website many times (e.g. here, here, here, and here)

C. S. LEWIS - RESPONSE TO AN INQUIRY ON MASTURBATION

This is another of the "lost posts" accidentally deleted yesterday.  It's not the same post, which vanished into cyberspace, but the Lewis quote is the same.  In a sex saturated society, it's useful to sample the thought of C.S. Lewis, one of the wisest of men, who is worth consulting on most any subject.  (See his book, The Four Loves, and the chapters "Sexual Morality" and "Christian Marriage" in Mere Christianity).  In answer to an in quiry on masturbation, Lewis writes:

"For me the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back; sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides.  And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman.  For the harem is always

COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE ON THE ROCKS

Update 2/11/15:

   Courting vs. Dating: What's the Difference? - Wyatt Fischer, Psy.D.

Original Post: Chuck Colson weighs in and links to the following:

The End of Courtship - Leon R. Kass

The Good Christian Girl: A Fable
Gina R. Dalfonzo | Christianity Today | July 19, 2010

The Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
"Strengthening Marriage for a New Generation"

The Ruth Institute
"One Man, One Woman, for Life"

Marriage Savers
"Preparing, Strengthening and Restoring Marriages"

 

ARE SEX EDUCATORS SEX-CRAZED?

Yes, judging from the curriculum they are putting out and defending.  It's unbelievable.  The Family Research Council reports that Tuesday night parents in Helena, Montana (not exactly New York City!) will be responding to

an outrageous new K-12 health curriculum (pages 45-50) that's been proposed there. It would teach kindergarteners the names of male and female sex organs, first graders about homosexuality, and fifth graders about "oral or anal penetration." It would also teach sixth graders about sex changes, and high schoolers would be taught to "understand erotic images in art." These lessons aren't age-appropriate, and may result in more confusion than understanding. For example, in elementary school virtually all children like their own sex better than the opposite sex--we should not be planting the idea that this might mean they are "gay." In fourth grade they would learn that "taunting" and "teasing" may be illegal sexual harassment. Sadly, teasing and taunting are sometimes a fact of life for fourth graders, but they have nothing to do with sex. And here's the kicker--the program's implementation may be paid for with federal "stimulus" money. 

If you live in Helena (or even if you don't), let the school system know they should scrap this curriculum. Email Superintendent Bruce Messinger at: [email protected].

Me:  An individual in favor of such a program is either totally nutty, or sex-crazed.  I don't see any middle ground.  Peter Spring and Logan Levkoff square off on Fox & Friends.

FREUD, FREE SEX, AND HUMAN COURTS

Glenn Sunshine's brief essay explains a lot.   The excerpt below is only a small part of the argument.  It is important to read the whole thing.  (HT: Charles Colson) Emphases in the original.

. . . Freud believed that psychological illness was a result of social repression of our sex drive. Although Freud himself had a generally conventional lifestyle and developed psychoanalysis as a means of dealing with problems arising from sexual repression, the implication of his theory was clear: to enable people to live happy, fulfilled lives, society needed to drop restraints on sexual activity. Hence the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies.

This idea is deeply embedded in the American worldview. This explains the vehement opposition to abstinence-only sex education despite the studies that show it is more effective in reducing sexual activity than “comprehensive” sex education. The real object isn’t to reduce sexual activity, but to minimize the consequences. Why would you even want to reduce sexual activity if that’s the route to freedom and fulfillment?

Unfortunately, Freud was wrong. Sexual “freedom” has resulted in an epidemic of depression among young women, an explosion of sexually transmitted diseases, rampant out of wedlock births and the associated poverty that comes from single parent households, a sky-high divorce rate, and on and on and on. And it has not made people happier or better adjusted. None of which makes any difference, of course, because as is all too often the case, ideology trumps evidence.

The primary human right

Since in this worldview salvation comes through sex, and since personal fulfillment and happiness is fundamentally about sexual expression, the freedom to express whatever you think of as your sexual identity is our most essential human right.  (more . . .)

CHUCK COLSON - THE CULTURE OF POLYAMORY IS AT WAR WITH THE CULTURE OF MONOGAMY

Chuck Colson writes:

In Touchstone magazine, Patrick Fagan writes that the culture of the traditional family, based on life-long monogamy, is competing with another culture—one that is polyamorous in nature. “In the culture of monogamy,” he writes, “men are anchored in their families and tied to their children and wives, through the free and deliberate focus of their sexuality.”

By contrast, the culture of polyamory treasures sexual license. In fact, Fagan writes, any attempt to constrain sex “would be the antithesis of the main project of the culture of polyamory”—sexual relations when you want, with whomever you want.

That’s why the culture of polyamory attempts to control childhood education, sex education, and adolescent health programs. This control, Fagan warns, “enables the polyamory culture to reach into the traditional monogamy culture and gradually dismantle it.”

Fagan's article, which Colson quotes above, is MUST READING.  It illuminates the culture we inhabit powerfully and insightfully.  And it's not just about sex.  It touches on government, laws, and the future.  It should be printed out and discussed in small groups throughout the country.

Having said that, Colson's own article centers around the recently-published study on sex education that demonstrated the effectiveness of  abstinence-based sex education.  I have reprinted his article below.

ABSTINENCE EDUCATION EFFECTIVE; COMPREHENSIVE SEX ED A BIG FLOP

Robert Rector, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, writes the following at the Corner:  

A new study released today, shows that abstinence education is highly effective in reducing sexual activity among youth. It also showed “safe sex” and “comprehensive” sex ed programs to be ineffective.

Students participating in an eight-hour abstinence program showed a one-third decrease in rates of sexual activity compared to non-participants. This decrease persisted a full two years after they attended the class.

By contrast, safe sex (promoting only contraceptive use) and comprehensive sex ed (teaching both abstinence and contraceptive use) programs didn’t affect youth behavior at all. Students in these programs showed no reduction in

Disappointing: Bristol Palin Says Abstinence "Not Realistic"

Excerpt from Greta Van Susteren's video interview here.

I WISH I HAD STAYED A VIRGIN

After losing her virginity at 14, youth leader is now committed to abstinence.  Click here.  (HT: VirtueOnline)

On Sex-Ed Ad, McCain Is Right

So says Byron York after careful investigation.   Click through to the article.

SLIMY PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Update 4/3/08 - More Racist Planned Parenthood Clinics Exposed  Audioof phone calls plus YouTube video of Planned Parenthood clinic addresses contacted

Update 4/1/08 - The Billion Dollar Planned Parenthood Empire  Your tax dollars at work.

Update 3/11/08 - Lawsuit - Planned Parenthood of California bilked state out of millions

Also, seven branches of Planned Parenthood caught on tape accepting bigotry-inspired donations.

Update:  Overview of Planned Parenthood from "Discover the Networks."

Also, How Planned Parenthood Uses Religion to Push Its Agenda by Machaeleen Sedlak

- The Family Research Council comments on Planned Parenthood's  "Taxpayer Funded Porn Guide" as follows:

As if parents did not have enough to contend with in protecting their children from the evils for pornography, they now have to face government-funded projects. Unfortunately, that's the "net" effect of Planned Parenthood's online venture, teenwire.com. The site, which is so offensive that FRC's Internet filter blocked it, was supposedly created as a resource for kids seeking "medically accurate" information. According to the nation's biggest abortion merchant, that information now includes normalizing pornography. Although Planned Parenthood is careful to state that it's

Ryan T. Anderson Offers a Useful Discussion on Teens and Abstinence Education

Click here.

Sex and Kids in America's Sex-Saturated Society

Here's a sad and disheartening  report.  The advertising industry, entertainment industry, and the education establishment have a lot to answer for (as do parents). 

Clay Jones of Second Glance Ministries says that even 10 to 14 year olds are becoming sexually active -- so many, the CDC for the first time ever is studying sexual disease rates among girls that age.

"Those young women between the ages of 10 and 14 contracted more cases of chlamydia," said Jones, "than all the women between the ages of 40 and 50 put together."

He said, "We're seeing young people seven, eight and nine years old beginning to act out sexually in ways we've never seen before."

And many Christian young people are succumbing, or at least playing up to the edge.    

. .  .  Clay Jones studies the sexual stats. And he talks a lot to youth pastors.

"Their kids are having sex," he said. "If they're not, they're participating in oral sex. And if they have young people in their groups who aren't sexually active, they're the rarity."

Cantliffe said, "So many parents have

In the Hard to Believe Department: Sex Education in the UK

William Keenan writes:

British authorities promote sex education programmes that would make a sailor blush - and achieve record rates of disease and pregnancy.

We have just learned from a United Nations’ report that Britain is the worst place in the developed world in which to be a child.

. . . Not very long ago the Daily Telegraph ran a whole-page story headlined, Outrage over explicit sex lessons. Education correspondent John Clare described parents’ anger at 12-year-old children being given explicit sex lessons. In these lessons they were taught sodomy, oral sex with reference to “blow jobs” and mutual masturbation.

After carefully investigating the matter John Clare said he had come to three stark conclusions: “First the use of these crude and explicit materials is apparently widespread. Second, the school has not told parents precisely what their 12 year olds are being taught. And third, parents everywhere have virtually no hope of discovering the content of their children’s sex education lessons.”   (more)