Parents' rights and the homosexual agenda

[peter_speckhard]

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/california-assembly-passes-attack-on-parental-rights-bill-banning-sex-orien?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=11ac129787-LifeSiteNews_com_US_Headlines_08_30_2012&utm_medium=email

A bill has passed the California assembly that would make it crime for parents to seek treatment or for a mental health professional to offer treatment for a sexually confused child aimed at bringing the child to sexual health and normalcy. This is the next step; they no longer want toleration for the idea that homosexuality is as healthy and normal as heterosexuality, they are now, predictably, refusing to tolerate the opposing view, to the point of being willing to interfere with parents trying to raise their children with traditional morality.

[Jeremy Loesch]

Government is your parent, and this new parent has all the rights.  And they will ram this agenda through every facet of life.

Jeremy

[cssml]

Thank you Pastor Speckhard.  I suppose this will put these Courage chapters in direct conflict with the state of California and its newly discerned 'truth'.

  http://couragerc.net/United_States_A-L.html

California, East Palo Alto
California, Fallbrook
California, Los Angeles (Hawthorne)
California, Oakland Diocese
California, Orange County (Costa Mesa)
California, Sacramento
California, San Diego
California, San Francisco
California, San Jose
California, Santa Rosa

[Buckeye Deaconess]

This might bring a little bit of hope to some on the subject.

The University of Texas at Austin announced Wednesday that a sociologist who has been excoriated by some in the media over a study showing that parents' homosexual relationships can have negative effects on children is innocent of academic misconduct.

http://www.citizenlink.com/2012/08/30/university-vindicates-mark-regnerus/

[Paul O Malley]

On reading the legislation that was sent to Governor Brown there does not appear to be any restraint on parents' seeking help for their children, rather the bill "only" penalizes health care providers who address sexual orientation problems in minors (those under 18).  Parents at least should be able to take their children out of state (those who have the time and money that is).

The link to the bill (SB 1172) is:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_1151-1200/sb_1172_bill_20120705_amended_asm_v93.pdf

I find a certain irony in the bill's tacit assumption that someone under 18 is unable to voluntarily seek treatment given that the age of consent in California is 16.

[peter_speckhard]

On reading the legislation that was sent to Governor Brown there does not appear to be any restraint on parents' seeking help for their children, rather the bill "only" penalizes health care providers who address sexual orientation problems in minors (those under 18).  Parents at least should be able to take their children out of state (those who have the time and money that is).

The link to the bill (SB 1172) is:
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_1151-1200/sb_1172_bill_20120705_amended_asm_v93.pdf

I find a certain irony in the bill's tacit assumption that someone under 18 is unable to voluntarily seek treatment given that the age of consent in California is 16.

Plus, in many states a minor can get contraception or even an abortion without parental notification or consent, which means a health care professional may kill the child of a minor, but may not help that minor overcome an actual health disorder.

[Daniel Eggold]

Not long ago, I read Peter Hitchens' (not Christopher Hitchens, but his brother), "The Rage Against God." He had a brief section addressing the question, "Is Religion Child Abuse?" He quotes Dr. Richard Dawkins: "What I really object to – and I think it’s actually abusive to children – is to take a tiny child and say 'You are a Christian child' or 'You are a Muslim child'. I think it is wicked if children are told 'You are a member of such and such a faith simply because your parents are.'"

When I first read Peter Hitchens' chapter on this question, I hoped Peter assessment was more reactionary than true--that secularists "are not just an opinion seeking a place in a plural society," but a "dogmatic tyranny in the making." It seems, however, his assessment was not far off. I wonder how long until such treatment descibed in the article above (or even religious instruction generally) becomes codified as "child abuse?"

[RogerMartim]

After reading this thread, I had to walk away from my computer for a good long while to collect my mind.

Now I am back and I am outing myself. I am a Gay man. Having said that though, I try to lead my life in a way that God intended me to lead. I take very seriously God's admonitions that I should live my life responsibly when it comes to a relationship with another person. In my case it would not be with a person of the opposite gender. It's just not in my bones.

At no time in my life did I say to myself that this is where I want to go. I knew that I was Gay from as far back as I can remember, maybe three or four years of age although I certainly couldn't articulate it then. By the time I was 12 or so, I definitively knew that I was Gay and I struggled with it only from the standpoint that there were so few like me. If it were a choice as some of you might be implying, why would I choose the more difficult path in my life's journey. This thing is NEVER EVER a CHOICE. It is hard-wired in us what we are.

This parental intervention in a child's sexuality is as bogus as it can be. What say you that if you had a parent who happened to be a homosexual and wanted to send you as a heterosexual for intervention to change. It would be impossible. You are wired to be straight as I am to be Gay. There is no light switch here.

Yes, homosexuality comprises only a very small majority of the general population -- anywhere from 5 to 10%. Left-handers are hard wired in their brains to be left-handers and at one time in the not so distant past, it was considered to be "not right" and many parents forced them to become right-handers.

My father was as Missouri-Synodish as it was possible with very conservative views. He died in 1993 but just before he died we were talking general stuff. The television was on and there was a news piece about Pat Robertson's newest revelation that God was punishing the Gay people because of some natural disaster. My father said, "Who does this man think he is? God?" He was telling me indirectly that he loved me no matter what I am. I never came out to my mother years after my father died. One day I was at her house having breakfast. We finished and I was getting ready to go. All of a sudden she said to me, "Roger, I know that you are Gay and I don't care. I love you anyway." This from a mother who was then 86 years old. Needless to say, I sat back down and we talked another two hours.

I was fortunate to have had the parents I had who had the wisdom and foresight to know that I couldn't be changed. To be sure, they would have wished otherwise because they both knew I was on a hard journey going through the motions of pretending to be something that I wasn't. I couldn't marry or have children unless I put on a facade which could have destroyed many lives in the process.

The Mormon church tried this tactic on their own Gay members at BYU called Evergreen. They applied electro-shock wired to genitals to change the orientation. Many suicides resulted from it. Some are still mentally messed up from this extreme and very Medieval measure. During Proposition 8 in California of which the Mormon church invested millions of dollars into it, a Gay Mormon blew his brains out in front of his parents' Ward church. Their son's suicide did not change their minds that what they did was wrong. They feel "blessed" that their son killed himself.

All I can say is that this is a very unfortunate thread to bring up. California is right in intervening parents who take measures to change something that just can't be changed. So many lives have been damaged or destroyed by messing with minds as God created them. God created you and he created me. Dare we draw lines that one is better than the other?

[Daniel Eggold]

Roger, 

Thanks for your comments. There are some  points with which I would take issue (and some with which I would whole-heartedly agree). However, many of these issues have been discussed on many other threads; so in order to keep the thread from drifting too far, I will just address one.

If you or anyone else for that matter desires to bring up his or her child believing that homosexuality is normal and God-pleasing, you should be absolutely free to do so. I am confident enough of the rightness of the traditional Christian teaching on sexuality to believe that such a child may well learn later that he has been misled. 

But it is not a morally neutral act--that is, just telling kids the ways things are--to teach a child that homosexuality is always and purely by nature,  that God gives his blessing to homosexual behavior, that marriage can be between persons of the same gender. (Note: I don't know what you would tell your children. I don't intend at all to speak for you.)

I personally think it is wrong to teach a child such thing because I believe it is false and a road to all kinds of ruin. But in a free country, you should be able to do so. In return, I would ask for the same courtesy.

[peter_speckhard]

Roger, I am glad you know your parents' love and certainly agree that yours is hard story. Nevertheless, I think there many things you fail to consider when you share your story in this context. First, I in no way intend to state an opinion one way or the other as to the effectiveness of orientation therapy. I have no first hand experience with it. Certainly there is evidence that it has worked in some cases, which is by no means to suggest that homosexuality is a choice in any or every case. But the issue is that the treatment, if any, is the parents' decision, and the state is taking it away from parents. There are many parenting decisions I can say fairly definitively that are bad for children, at least as I see it, but I still think what is far worse for children is government doing the parenting. When I want a state legislator's opinion on how to raise my children, I'll be sure to ask. Until then, I expect him to recognize his own incompetence when it comes to raising my children the way I want them raised. How he wants them raised is entirely irrelevant. Secondly, even given the fact that in your case it was hard-wired from birth, it does not logically follow that all cases of homosexuality are like yours. It is a leap to assume so. Though I have never felt same-sex attraction, I know of heterosexuals who have dabbled in it or been confused about their orientiation before arriving at their heterosexual self-understanding, so it would be entirely illogical and unfair for me to assume that all heterosexuals are heterosexual the same way I am, just as it is unfair for you to assume that your experience applies to all homosexuals. Thirdly, even if it were hard-wired in every case, that doesn't make it normal, acceptable, or right. It is a fallen world. You can compare being homosexual to being left-handed (which I am) but it can just as easily be compared to having a cleft pallet or crooked teeth or agoraphobia or being near-sighted or some other trait that is indeed (or may be in many cases) inherited, hard-wired, and common enough but which we nevetheless seek to correct with various forms of therapy. Some parents may perfectly legitimately seek to help their children have normal as opposed to abnormal and ineffective procreative desires. It may or may not be possible, but that is their choice. This law is nothing more than an attempt to foist a particular understanding of gender on the populace.   

[John_Hannah]

I'm not a psychologist and don't have the statistics but I should think that there are varying degrees of homosexual orientation. Some may have only a slight attraction to the same sex and therefore be subject to change toward normalcy. Others may be strong enough to be unalterable. Any success with the former should not dictate "failure" for the later.

Peace, JOHN

[Team Hesse]

No one is "normal". We all fall short...

Lou

[George Erdner]

No one is "normal". We all fall short...

Lou

There is a big difference between "normal", in this context, and falling short. We all fall short in our attempts to follow God's Law as we should. That's not to say that some of us are tempted to engage in acts of sin that involve performing acts that are only sinful if conducted in the wrong context while others are tempted to engage in acts of sins that are always sinful, regardless of the context.

Heterosexual activities are only sinful in the wrong context, specifically with a partner other than one's spouse. There's a huge range of contexts where heterosexual activities are wrong, such as with multiple partners, with underage partners, or with partners who are not one's spouse. But there are no contexts in which homoerotic activities are ever not acts of sin. Homoerotic activities are never, ever "normal".

Some people seem to like to pretend that just because they claim they are "born that way", with urges to engage in that sort of activity, that makes it normal. The same could be said for being born autistic, or with any other sort of development disorder. Perhaps we should pass laws against providing eyeglasses or orthodontics to children, because if they are nearsighted or have crooked teeth, that's "normal" because they were born that way.

[Team Hesse]

No one is "normal". We all fall short...

Lou

There is a big difference between "normal", in this context, and falling short. We all fall short in our attempts to follow God's Law as we should. That's not to say that some of us are tempted to engage in acts of sin that involve performing acts that are only sinful if conducted in the wrong context while others are tempted to engage in acts of sins that are always sinful, regardless of the context.

Heterosexual activities are only sinful in the wrong context, specifically with a partner other than one's spouse. There's a huge range of contexts where heterosexual activities are wrong, such as with multiple partners, with underage partners, or with partners who are not one's spouse. But there are no contexts in which homoerotic activities are ever not acts of sin. Homoerotic activities are never, ever "normal".

Some people seem to like to pretend that just because they claim they are "born that way", with urges to engage in that sort of activity, that makes it normal. The same could be said for being born autistic, or with any other sort of development disorder. Perhaps we should pass laws against providing eyeglasses or orthodontics to children, because if they are nearsighted or have crooked teeth, that's "normal" because they were born that way.

"All of our works are filthy rags." (Numerous other citations possible)

Lou

[George Erdner]

No one is "normal". We all fall short...

Lou

There is a big difference between "normal", in this context, and falling short. We all fall short in our attempts to follow God's Law as we should. That's not to say that some of us are tempted to engage in acts of sin that involve performing acts that are only sinful if conducted in the wrong context while others are tempted to engage in acts of sins that are always sinful, regardless of the context.

Heterosexual activities are only sinful in the wrong context, specifically with a partner other than one's spouse. There's a huge range of contexts where heterosexual activities are wrong, such as with multiple partners, with underage partners, or with partners who are not one's spouse. But there are no contexts in which homoerotic activities are ever not acts of sin. Homoerotic activities are never, ever "normal".

Some people seem to like to pretend that just because they claim they are "born that way", with urges to engage in that sort of activity, that makes it normal. The same could be said for being born autistic, or with any other sort of development disorder. Perhaps we should pass laws against providing eyeglasses or orthodontics to children, because if they are nearsighted or have crooked teeth, that's "normal" because they were born that way.

"All of our works are filthy rags." (Numerous other citations possible)

Lou

Which could be interpretted as, "Go ahead and do anything you want, since all our works are 'filthy rags', we might as well just wallow in the filth and never, ever even attempt anything else". Is that what you're saying? Should we just give up and never even put forth the slightest effort to try? Should we all just become antinomians?