Marriage vs Pornography

Consider these two pictures.  The first picture is of a man who has set himself toward a commitment to sexual purity and is living in sexual integrity with his wife.  In order to fulfill his wife’s rightful expectations and to maximize their mutual pleasure in the marriage bed, he is careful to live, talk, lead, and love in such a way that his wife finds her fulfillment in giving herself to him in love.  The sex act then becomes a fulfillment of their entire relationship, not an isolated physical act that is merely incidental to their love for each other.  Neither uses sex as a means of manipulation, neither is inordinately focused merely on self-centered personal pleasure, and both give themselves to each other in unapologetic and unhindered sexual passion.  In this picture there is no shame.  Before God, this man can be confident that he is fulfilling his responsibilities both as a male and as a man.  He is directing his sexuality, his sex drive, and his physical embodiment toward the one-flesh relationship that is the perfect paradigm of God’s intention in creation.  

By contrast, consider another man.  This man lives alone, or at least in a context other than holy marriage.  Directed inwardly rather than outwardly, his sex-drive has become an engine for lust and self-gratification.  Pornography is the essence of his sexual interest and arousal.  Rather than taking satisfaction in a wife, he looks at dirty pictures in order to be rewarded with sexual arousal that comes without responsibility, expectation, or demand.  Arrayed before him are a seemingly endless variety of naked women, sexual images of explicit carnality, and a cornucopia of perversions intended to seduce the imagination and corrupt the soul.  This man need not be concerned with his physical appearance, his personal hygiene, or his moral character in the eyes of a wife.  Without this structure and accountability, he is free to take his sexual pleasure without regard for his unshaved face, his slothfulness, his halitosis, his body odor, or his physical appearance.  He faces no requirement of personal respect, and no eyes gaze upon him in order to evaluate the seriousness and worthiness of his sexual desire.  Instead, his eyes roam across images of unblinking faces, leering at women who make no demands upon him, who never speak back, and who can never say no.  There is no exchange of respect, no exchange of love, and nothing more than the using of women as sex objects for his individual and inverted sexual pleasure.

These two pictures of male sexuality are deliberately intended to drive home the point that every man must decide who he will be, whom he will serve, and how he will love.  In the end, a man’s decision about pornography is a decision about his soul, a decision about his marriage, a decision about his wife, and a decision about his God.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of Sexual Tolerance,” pg.39-41

God Has the Right To Do Anything

If God exists as the Bible describes him, he is the giver of life and has complete authority to take it when and as he wills.  He could destroy the world by a flood or eliminate Sodom and Gomorrah by fire in a way that no human has the right or the power to do.  If in the judgment of God the Jews were to be placed in a certain land so that they might prepare the way for the Messiah, he had the right to give them that land, as the earth is his.  If the original inhabitants had to be removed, both as punishment for their wickedness and to ensure that the Jews would be permanently established in the land, God had the right to make that judgment.

Joseph Keysor, “Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible,” pg.45

We Have Become A Culture of Wimps

Our ancestors lived through wars and privations unimaginable to us--without resorting to an overdose of labels and an overuse of pills.

Allen Frances, M.D, "Saving Normal," pg.105

Government As Parents Is the Goal

A mother and father are the first and most primal gift any child has. They desperately need that bond to be reinforced, not attenuated. But statists rightly see family bonds as an obstacle to their control of society. They understand there are basically two ways to manage children. One is for parents to be the primary caretakers and decisionmakers. The other is for the state to be the primary caretaker and decisionmaker. This division is as old as ancient Sparta, which took children from parents at an early age (and dissuaded adults from younger marriage) because the leaders there considered all children property of the state whose upbringing had to be directed to the state’s service. Plato advocated even wackier parent-child separation to serve his centralized state.

Right now, our society is choosing which of these two kinds of family arrangements we uphold. We may not think we are deciding, but we are. Public policy either strengthens families, or it strengthens the state. Culture either strengthens families, or it strengthens the state. Myriad little niggling annoyances and regulations that attenuate family life also strengthen government power.

Joy Pullmann, Parents, It’s Time To Realize Big Government Is Your Enemy 

Freudianism and Irresponsibility

A second major liability of Freud’s theory has been its promotion of irresponsibility.  This evolved logically from the belief that individuals are governed by powerful unconscious forces, arising from early childhood experiences, which thereby usurp their freedom of action.  It has led, in the words of one writer, to the “golden age of exoneration. . . . Almost nobody can really be held accountable. . . .  Bonnie and Clyde came along too soon.  Nowadays they could settle for a year at the Betty Ford Clinic as victims of compulsive bank-robbing addiction.”

It is the areas of child rearing and criminal behavior in which Freudian theory has had the most profound effect and in  which traditional concepts of responsibility have been challenged.   In the Freudian scheme, men and women are seen increasingly as puppets of their psyches governed primarily by the edicts of their egos.  The corollary of “don’t blame me” is “blame my parents,” expressed clearly from the earliest days of the Freudian movement, as in this 1926 rendition:

Mental hygienist are stressing one great point, namely, that in most cases of nervousness, in many cases of delinquency, in some cases of insanity, and almost all cases of child behavior or conduct disorders, the trail leads inevitably and directly back to the home and the parents. [Emphasis in the original.]

In the Freudian schema, mother, father, family, social circumstances, and culture become the causal agents for whatever is wrong.  The ripple of personal irresponsibility spreads slowly outward to cover ever-greater areas until the very terms “good” and “bad” seem to no longer have meaning.

E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., "Freudian Fraud: the Malignant Effect of Freud's Theory on American Thought and Culture," p.249

Evolutionism and "Races"

Evolutionists talk about the different races of people in the world today.  The term “races” can be used in various ways depending upon the definition you accept.  Sadly, evolutionists have used the term in the sense that some groups of humans have not evolved as far as others.  When they use the word “races” they are really talking about different levels of human beings dependent upon the point to which they have evolved.  Due to evolutionary teaching through the educational system and the media, many in the general public tend to think of the term “races” as applied to the human race in an evolutionary sense.  Because of this situation, it is probably better for Christians to talk about one race in regard to humans, not different races.

Ken Ham, “The Lie,” pg.17-19

The Anointed Don’t Believe In Personal Responsibility

The vision of the anointed is one in which such ills as poverty, irresponsible sex, and crime derive primarily from “society,” rather than from individual choices and behavior.  To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by “society.”  Since no society has ever treated everyone fairly, there will always be real examples of what the anointed envision.  The fatal step is to make those examples universal explanations of social ills—and to remain oblivious to evidence to the contrary.

Thomas Sowell, "The Vision of the Anointed," pg.203

An Anti-God Culture Is Full of Problems

Today knowledge of God is one of the most conspicuous Berlin Walls dividing our cultural landscape.  In religious schools and universities, in traditional synagogues and churches, and in the hearts and minds of the majority of Americans, knowledge of God is considered crucial to proper education.  On the other end of the tug-of-war rope is found the educational bureaucracy that expects the state to accommodate every possible bizarre cultural mutation and lifestyle, but finds prayer at graduation an intolerable and fatal compromise of state neutrality toward religion. . . .

The problems we encounter invariably result from the switch in policy over the past three decades from pro-God to secular.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.160, 161

They Want Us to Pay for Their Sin

Why do gays push for special legislation in their favor when it comes to employment benefits?  (Remember that for the most part any "family policy discrimination" applies to heterosexual singles and couples as well as to gays.)  The only answer can be to press for the legitimacy of their lifestyle--fully subsidized by the rest of society.

"Not only do we want to live in sin," gays are telling us, "but we want you to pay for it!"

F. LaGard Smith, Sodom's Second Coming, pg.203

Hoisted On Their Own Petards

For several decades now our once-vaunted establishments of higher learning have been run by liberal academics who loathe everything that made America great. They preach America's sins without extolling her virtues, and they infect students with the idea that America is an evil, imperialistic nation founded by rich, slaveholders for their own enrichment. They teach these young, impressionable minds that they are either victims of oppression, racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia, or they're guilty of perpetuating those sins. The problem for the Dr. Frankenstein's of liberal academia is that they can no longer control the monster they created. It was all fine and good when their weak-minded little whelps were turned loose on the world of business and politics, where they would be good little warriors for liberal causes. It is another thing entirely when their perpetually offended little howling hobglobins of heresy turn on them and find offense in every innocuous word, look or gesture. Once that Pandora's Box of liberal victimhood lunacy is opened, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to close.

Louis DeBroux, Racists, Tigers and Chickens Come Home to Roost — Oh My!

Keep Subjective Preference Out of Law

The side that supports same-sex marriage asserts that the state ought to prefer a view of human nature in which human institutions are artificial social constructions ruled by personal subjective preference.  The side that supports traditional marriage asserts that the state ought to prefer the view of human nature in which certain human institutions are natural and good and ought to be proffered and encouraged by the state over personal subjective preference.

Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,” pg.128

Keep Psychology Out Of the Courtroom!

When the law welcomes the astrologer into the courtroom as possessing the same status as the astronomer; when the court listens to the priest with the same critical judgement it applies to the testimony of the physicist, then and only then will the testimony of clinical psychologists about the formation and functioning of the human mind in general or in particular individuals make sense as expert testimony.  When the concept of expertise itself is debased to nothing more than personal opinion, then the clinicians should take the stand along with the rest of the opinionated.  Why not?  Until then, throw them out of the courts.

Margaret A. Hagen (Boston University Psychologist), Whores of the Court: The Fraud of Psychiatric Testimony and the Rape of American Justice, p.301.  Cited by Dr. Tana Dineen in, Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People, pg.156

Degradation of Marriage

If we allow any other sexual relationship to have the same status as natural marriage -- be it man-man, woman-woman, man-daughter (incest), man-woman-man, or whatever-whatever -- we will degrade marriage itself (just like we degrade the MVP award by giving it to everyone).  When we degrade marriage, we will get less of it.  When we get less of it, we will further weaken our civilization.  Children will be hurt the most.

Frank Turek, Correct, NOT Politically Correct, pg. 45

Speak Against Homosexuality and Go to Prison

Only months after legalizing same-sex “marriage” in Canada, activists there successfully passed C-250, a bill criminalizing  public statements that could be deemed “hateful” to homosexuals, punishable by up to two years in prison!  Say the wrong thing; go to jail.  Churches in Canada cannot speak against homosexuality without fear of punishment.  The same could happen here.

Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, “Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting,” pg.42

True Love vs Counterfeit Love

Just as true love displays love for the whole person, counterfeit love in the form of premarital sex is detrimental to the whole person (perhaps to a greater degree than anything else).  Sexual immorality harms the emotions.  It clouds both the intellect and our ability to make godly decisions.  It causes social uneasiness.  It wreaks spiritual havoc.  It can have permanent damaging repercussions physically.  Nothing is safe from the damage it can do.

Josh McDowell and Dick Day, "Why Wait?" pg.199

Make Them Think

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you: but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.

Don Marquis, cited by Ravi Zacharias in "The Real Face of Atheism," pg.159

Why Pay For Indoctrination Centers?

Why do parents pay big money, often at a considerable sacrifice, to send their children to places where small groups of other students can disrupt their education and poison the whole atmosphere with obligatory conformity to political correctness?

Why do donors continue to contribute millions of dollars to institutions that have become indoctrination centers, tearing down America, stifling dissent and turning group against group?

There is no compelling reason for either parents or donors to keep shelling out money to colleges and universities where intolerant professors and student activists impose their ideology on academic institutions. Too often these are campuses with virtually no diversity of viewpoints, despite however much they may be obsessed with demographic diversity.

Thomas Sowell, “A Resurgence of Intolerance,” Townhall, 12/1/15

Wealth and Poverty: Marriage vs Cohabitation

Married people typically earn and save more than their unmarried counterparts--cohabiting or single. ...

Research from Purdue University finds that wealth accumulation in cohabiting situations is far below what is typical in marriage, with cohabitors -- again -- more closely resembling the earnings and savings rates of singles.  The National Marriage Project reports that while the poverty rate for children living in married households is about 6 percent, it jumps to 31 percent for children with a cohabiting mother and father--much closer to the 45 percent rate for children in single parent families.

And while there might be the possibility of two earners in a cohabiting relationship, these informal partners experience less sharing and pooling of resources than married couples.  This can reduce the very real "two can live as cheaply as one" factor when the two are living more as a set of distinct ones.

Cohabitors act financially more like roommates than a team, as married couples do.  In fact, very recent research shows that among low- and moderate-income people, married couples were more likely to be able to buy a home -- and do so faster -- than cohabiting couples.  The researchers found the "stability and commitment" of marriage is what boosted a couple's increased ability to purchase a home.

Glenn T. Stanton, The Ring Makes All the Difference, pg.48, 49

The Harm Caused by Prejudice

The harm that is done by prejudice is incalculable.  It is always based on ignorance, of course and the lack of clear thinking.  But it is a terrible thing because it is deep and it is emotional and it can do great damage.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Experiencing the New Birth: Studies in John 3,” pg.13

Day Care Children Have High-Risk for Illness

Children in day care, especially infants and toddlers , are at increased risk for acquiring and spreading infectious diseases, compared to children not in day care.  They have more respiratory, gastro-intestinal, skin and epidemic childhood infections, e.g., meningitis, than are children in home care.  Infectious diseases are more common and more severe and more complications occur in the younger ages.  Important also is the fact that day care-related illnesses, e.g., hepatitis A, may be spread to members of the household and to the community at large.

Reed Bell, M.D., “Health Risks From Daycare Diseases," cited by  Gregg Jackson, Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies, p.160

Redefiners of Marriage

Okay, so it isn't a quote.  But it IS accurate.

Husbands, Earn Access To Your Wife

Consider the fact that a woman has every right to expect that her husband will earn access to the marriage bed.  As the apostle Paul states, the husband and wife no longer own their own bodies, but each now belongs to the other (see 1 Corinthians 7:4).  At the same time, Paul instructed men  to love their wives even as Christ has loved the church (see Ephesians 5:25).  Even as wives are commanded to submit to the authority of their husbands (see verse 22), the husband is called to a far higher standard of Christlike love and devotion toward his wife.  Therefore, when I say that a husband must regularly "earn" privileged access to the marital bed, I mean that a husband owes his wife the confidence, affection, and emotional support that would lead her to freely give herself to her husband in the act of sex.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of Sexual Tolerance, pg.38

Without God's Law, Nothing is Ultimately Wrong

Sin has little meaning as an abstract concept.  It has meaning only relative to God’s eternal and unchanging standards of holiness as revealed in Scripture, and it consists of rebellion against those standards.  Without God’s law, nothing is finally and ultimately wrong—everything is only relative.  One man thinks slaughtering Jews is right and proper, another thinks it is evil—who can say which is right?  Conscience is inadequate.  We need standards and we need rules.  Those rules are derived from God, and sin resists them, rejects them, and puts false concepts of good and evil in their place.

It is this sin that underlies all of the various manifestations of evil in the entire history of the human race.  Walking in darkness, enslaved to sin, wicked men imagine that their evil deeds are right, and in some cases even pleasing to God.  In reality, however, far from pleasing God, they are treasuring up unto themselves wrath “against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man accruing to his deeds…” (Romans 2:5-11).

Joseph Keysor, “Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible,” pg.19

Antipsychotic Drug Abuse

The biggest puzzle is the huge success of antipsychotic drugs.  Despite their dangerous side effect and narrow indications, they are being given out like candy.  Antipsychotics have proven usefulness only in treating the disabling symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but this has not stopped drug company seduction promoting their general use for anyone having trouble sleeping, or run-of-the-mill anxiety, or depression, or irritability, or eccentricity, or the temper tantrums of youth, or the crankiness of old age.  More than 3 million Americans are already on board, with a (shareholder satisfying) growth rate of 20 percent a year.  The number of prescriptions for antipsychotics has doubled in ten years, up to 54 million and counting.  Off-label use has also doubled—undeterred by the big fines that don’t seem so big when you consider the ill-gotten gains they enable.  How could this happen?  Big bucks.  An advertising budget of $2.4 billion per year spent on Abilify and Seroquel has catapulted these two very so-so and not-so-safe drugs to fifth and sixth place as revenue producers among all of the many medications sold in America.  The full court press on primary care doctors as them inappropriately prescribing an antipsychotic for 20 percent of all their anxiety disorder patients.  This massive misuse of antipsychotics is crazy and shameful—a triumph of marketing might over common sense and good medical practice.

Allen Frances, M.D, "Saving Normal," pg.105

Psychotherapy Promotes Narcissism

The core of Freud’s theory and therapy are both fundamentally narcissistic in assuming that one’s happiness is the greatest good.  This was clearly described in 1956 by Alfred Kazin, who wrote, “The overwhelming success of Freudianism in America lies in the general insistence on individual fulfillment, satisfaction and happiness. . . .  The insistence on personal happiness represents the most revolutionary force in modern times.”

The narcissism inherent in Freudian theory and therapy is equally applicable to many of its psychotherapeutic offshoots.  FromAdlerian psychotherapy to Zaraleya psychoenergetic technique, the main ingredient in the alphabet soup of American psychotherapies is “Me.” . . . 

Indeed, the focus of virtually all psychotherapy systems, many of which come and go in America like cerebral fall fashions, is not some higher ideal, not one’s fellow man, but merely oneself.

E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., "Freudian Fraud: the Malignant Effect of Freud's Theory on American Thought and Culture," p.247-248

Evolutionists’ Imaginations Run Wild

Fossil bones do not come with little labels attached telling you how old they are.  Nor do fossils have photographs with them telling you what the animals looked like as the roamed the earth long ago.

When people visit a museum they are confronted with bits and pieces of bones and other fossils neatly arranged in glass cases.  These are often accompanied by pictures representing an artist’s impression of what the animals and plants could have looked like in their natural environment.  Remember, no one dug up the picture, just the fossils.  And these fossils exist in the present.  For example, in Tasmania there is a sandstone bed containing millions of pieces of bones, most of which are no larger than the end of your thumb.  The evolutionists have placed a picture at one particular excavation so that tourists can see how the animals and plants lived in the region “millions of years ago.”  You can stare at those pieces of bones for as long as you like, but you will never see the picture the scientists have drawn.  The picture is their story of their own preconceived bias, and that, ultimately, is all it ever can be.

Ken Ham, “The Lie,” pg.17-19

Should We Lower Standards to Prevent People From Being “Excluded”?

Performance Standards are often depicted as mere subjective barriers reflecting the biases of those who create them.  Thus Professor Stanley Fish of Duke University charges “insincerity” to opponents of affirmative action who want everyone to compete by the same rules by saying that “the playing field is already tilted” in favor of the majority because “the skills that make for success are nurtured by institutions and cultural practices from which the disadvantaged minority has been systematically excluded.”  With the word “excluded” being used in very elastic senses today, it is hard to know how this statement differs from saying that people from different cultural backgrounds have the prerequisites for various activities to varying extents.  In a similar vein, former Harvard president Derek Bok said that to apply the same admissions standards to minority students as to everyone else would be to “exclude them from the university.”  Among other things, this ignores the fact that blacks were receiving both college and postgraduate degrees from Harvard in the nineteenth century, when it was very unlikely that they were being admitted under lower standards.  The more fundamental fallacy, however, is in using ex ante words like “exclude” to describe ex post results.

Thomas Sowell, "The Vision of the Anointed," pg.199

Teach the Textbook of God.

I often think that the depression which has become endemic in our teenage population is another consequence of the secular world view with which we have indoctrinated our young people.  We teach the textbooks of science, medicine, and plumbing; it is baffling to me that we would decline to teach the textbook of God.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.117

Why Pay Attention to Evolution?

If all ideas are products of evolution, and not really true but only useful, then evolution itself is not true either.  And why should the rest of us pay it any attention?

Nancy Pearcey, “Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity,” pg. 217

Destroy Family for Government Power

The destruction of the family is often simply one tool for increasing government power over individuals by eliminating competing loyalties, in an attempt to create total allegiance to the state.

Nancy Pearcey, “Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity,” pg.131

Welfare Can Make Things Worse

Government aid can actually make things worse.  By handing out welfare checks impersonally to all who qualify, without addressing the underlying behavioral problems, the government in essence “rewards” antisocial and dysfunctional patterns.  And any behavior the government rewards will generally tend to increase.  As one perceptive nineteenth-century critic noted, government assistance is a “mighty solvent to sunder the ties of kinship, to quench the affections of family, to suppress in the poor themselves the instinct of self-reliance and self-respect—to convert them into paupers.”

Nancy Pearcey, “Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity,” pg.61

Public Dole Can Be Harmful

There are certainly times when the poor do require help in the form of cash and non cash benefits in the present, in the short run.  But a system of “aid” that encourages people to become dependent on the dole, that robs the poor of any incentive to seek ways of helping themselves, that leads the poor into a poverty trap, is hardly a model of genuine compassion or of wise public policy.

Ronald Nash, Poverty and Wealth: The Christian Debate Over Capitalism, pg. 167.  Cited by David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times, pg.709

The Problem With "School"

HT: J.L. Pattison

Hammer in Truth to the Point of Death

A man who knows that the earth is round but lives among men who believe it to be flat ought to hammer in his doctrine of the earth’s roundness up to the point of arrest, imprisonment, or even death.  Reality will confirm him, and he is not so much testifying to the world as it is—which is worth nothing—as to Him who made the world, and Who is worth more than all things.

Hilaire Belloc,  cited by George Grant, "Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood," pg.291

How to Harm the Souls of Citizens

A culture whose institutions do not prize intrinsic value but rather seek justification by appealing to an instrumental value such as desire, want, pleasure, or personal autonomy, harms the souls of its citizens.

Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,” pg.127

Purpose and Pleasure of Sex

Sexual intercourse can be an intense and pleasurable experience, but it is more - much more.  Sexual intimacy triggers the strongest and deepest, most exhilarating passions in life.  Its purpose is to bond a man and a woman into "one flesh" in the deepest intimacy that human beings can share.  Further, sex is designed to both create life and build a strong relationship to protect and provide for that life.  Little wonder that the Creator fashioned the means of creating life in such a way that it is one of the most awesome forces in our lives and then linked it to marriage so as to signify to us, "Priceless.  Handle with great care." 

Janice Shaw Crouse, “Straight Talk About Casual Sex”

Casual Sex Leads to Depression

Casual sex leaves young people alone and lonely.  Counselors tell us that sexually active girls are three times more likely to be depressed than their abstinent peers.  Among the boys, sexually active ones are depressed twice as often.  Sexually active teens are more likely than their abstinent counterparts to attempt suicide (girls 15 percent to five percent and boys six percent to one percent).  But the most telling fact is that the majority of teenagers, 72 percent of the girls and 55 percent of the boys, acknowledge regret over early sexual activity and wish that they had waited longer to have sex.  So much for the cultural mantra that "sex is no big deal!"

Janice Shaw Crouse, “Straight Talk About Casual Sex”

Casual Sex Harms Bonding

Casual sex impairs the ability to establish a lasting emotional bond.  When natural human emotional responses are repeatedly denied, the person is hardened and the capacity to bond is weakened.  Dr. Donald Joy published groundbreaking research in the early 80s and has updated it periodically in the intervening years.  He chronicles the ways that intimacy produces bonding.  His research indicates that human beings respond to sexual intercourse by bonding, and they are driven to make that bond permanent and exclusive.

Dr. Joy reported on the work of a researcher at a hospital clinic in Detroit who worked with 1,000 couples for 10 years studying their marital problems and recording their sexual histories.  He concluded that sexual intercourse is constructive only within marriage.  His evidence is overwhelming that one or the other of the partners in casual sex (usually the girl or woman) experiences immediate emotional pain even in the absence of acknowledged injury.  The experience of casual sexual intimacy produces memories that can contaminate future relationships and create lingering problems later on, when the person eventually marries.  When the married couples in his research had problems, he said, "The pain in the marriages was rooted in their promiscuity."

Janice Shaw Crouse, “Straight Talk About Casual Sex”

Marriage Mythbusters

One of the common myths about marriage in America is that “50% of all marriages end in divorce.”  But that figure is derived not from long-term analysis but from the fact that the raw number of new divorces each year is roughly 50% of the raw number of new marriages.  These numbers are distorted by the fact that people with successful marriages usually marry only once, while people with failed marriages have often married and divorced multiple times.  Fortunately, new data from pollster George Barna included a more meaningful statistic.  Of all Americans who have ever married, only one-third have ever been divorced.  This two-to-one ratio of marital success should encourage young people who may actually fear the “50-50” marriage myth.  

Another misconception is that a person’s religion and values have nothing to do with marital success.  Barna found that the percentage of people who have been divorced after marrying is lower among Catholics, evangelicals, and conservatives than it is among non-Christians and liberals.  That’s not to mention the fact that more born-again Christians (84%) have been married in the first place than atheists and agnostics (65%).

Family Research Council e-mail news, 4/1/08

Cohabitation Steals Romance From Marriage

Cohabitation leeches a good deal of the romance out of marriage.  The breathless excitement a young married couple feels about setting up house together and sleeping in the same bed is one of the great joys of life.  Looking back on it later cements the sense that marriage is something sacred and precious.  But if the male/female living arrangement becomes a matter of convenience rather than commitment, if crossing a threshold is not accompanied by thrown rice and silver gift packages, it does become more hollow and more brittle.

Mona Charen, “Living together: Test run for loneliness,” Conservative Chronicle 3/31/99, pg.12

The Spirit of this Age Makes No Moral Demands

The emerging, dominant spirit or our age is not the skeptical one that denigrates all religion, but rather a profoundly and perennially religious spirit that stands opposed to the ethical monotheism of the Christian faith and of Orthodox Judaism.  The tenets of this newly emerging religion, whether articulated deliberately or merely at work tacitly in the background, are coming swiftly to dominate our public morality.  But the religion itself is not really new, neither are its theological beliefs.  It is simply the reemergence of paganism, and its beliefs are gnosticism. …

Clearly this reemerging paganism is not merely a belittling of religion.  Nor is it merely the religion of humanism, even though humanism is a visible and prominent aspect of it.  For its followers the pagan spirit offers not only a meaningful answer but a better answer than Judaism or Christianity to the crisis of meaning that has followed the rise of the materialistic, scientific worldview.  Part of paganism’s appeal stems from the fact that pagan spirituality makes few moral demands on the individual, and is thus more “tolerant” of human differences—that is of “diversity.”  (In Joseph Campbell’s words, “Follow your bliss.”)

Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, pg.230

Books Are Essential

HT to J.L. Pattison

The "Experts" Don't Know About Child Care

The creation and dissemination of knowledge on how to raise children now appears to be one of the greatest academic hoaxes of our times.  Judging from the accumulated evidence, it appears probable that the intelligent, intuitive parent knows as much, or more, about child care as the child educator, the parent-child expert, the psychologist, the social worker or the psychiatrist.

Martin L. Gross, The Psychological Society, pg.267.  Cited by Dr. Tana Dineen in, Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People, pg.154

Education Teaches Values

At times a debate has raged about whether education should be concerned with values.  It is an idiot debate in that form, on a hopelessly archaic question.  As well ask whether religion should deb concerned with the problem of the Godhead.  Every actor in the educational drama -- teacher, student, family, administrator, media, peer group -- is up to its neck in values.  Like it or not, education is values drenched.


Max Lerner, cited by Earl J. McGrath in "Relating Faith and Learning," Private Higher Education: The Job Ahead, vol.12, American Association of Presidents of Independent Colleges and Universities, 1983, pg. 25.  Referenced by Robertson McQuilkin in An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, pg.489

Are You Intrepid Enough?

It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.

Archibald Alexander Hodge, cited by Bill McKeever, 10/7/06, in a tribute to Jerald Tanner upon his death.

Divorce Is Not An Argument for Fake Marriage

The fact that heterosexuals have degraded marriage through divorce is not an argument for same-sex marriage.  In fact, the recent history of the law and divorce actually argues against same-sex marriage.  The vast social problems we are experiencing since the liberalization of divorce laws should help us realize just how important the law is to the health of the family.  When you pass laws that weaken the family, the entire nation gets sick.  This should cause us to protect marriage, not weaken it further.  When a patient has a disease, giving him another disease is not a prescription for wellness.

Frank Turek, Correct, NOT Politically Correct, pg. 41

Family Benefits Promote Social Stability

Rather than being intended as a penalty to homosexuals, family benefits have always been meant as an incentive for the glue that holds society together: the family.  Family benefits provided by both government and private industry have always been part of a conscious social policy for the encouragement, support, and affirmation of the traditional family.  Why?  Because the traditional family represents and fosters social stability, strength, and continuity.

F. LaGard Smith, Sodom's Second Coming, pg.202

Same-Sex Unions Are Harmful to Children

Not only do the social sciences show that fatherless and motherless families are harmful to children (which every same-sex home suffers from), but they also show that stepfamilies where a child's mother or father is replaced by a stepmother or stepfather (which constitute many -- if not most -- same-sex homes) are some of the most troubling family forms for children.

Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting, pg.37

Performance Based Relationship?

Nothing is more condemning and degrading in a relationship than to be put on a performance basis.  When one of the partners says, "You have to do certain things or I won't love you," that person no longer has an honest and unconditional love for the other.  The one being made to perform will spend the remainder of the relationship jumping through hoops.  For now it's sex; later, there will be other requirements.


Josh McDowell and Dick Day, "Why Wait?" pg.175-176

Love Is Not Free

They have invented a new phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words -- "free love" -- as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free.  It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word.

G. K. Chesterton, "As I  Was Saying," pg.267, cited by Ravi Zacharias in "The Real Face of Atheism," pg.125

Infidelity Is Common Among Cohabiting Couples

Numerous studies consistently show that cohabitors have much higher levels of sexual infidelity than married couples.  According to research done at the University of California-Irvine, "The odds of a recent infidelity were more than twice as high for cohabitors than for married persons."  This held true even when researchers controlled for issues such as permissive values about extramarital sexuality.  They concluded that the "commitment mechanisms" of marriage were the likely reasons for the difference.

The highly reputable National Sex Survey found an even greater divide, reporting that live-in boyfriends are nearly four times more likely than husbands to cheat in the past year.  And while women are generally more faithful, cohabiting women are eight times more likely than wives to cheat.  It seems that if you want to give someone the experience of sexual opportunism with other partners, cohabitation is what you are looking for.  But if a faithful partner is your desire, then, cohabitation is not your thing.  

Glenn T. Stanton, The Ring Makes All the Difference, pg.47

More Day Care Dangers

Psychologist J. Conrad Schwarz, who with his colleagues studied three- and four-year olds, concluded that children who spend excessive time in day care as infants are more physically  and verbally aggressive with other children and adults, as well as being more physically active.  They're also less likely to cooperate with adults.

Gregg Jackson, Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies, p.159

The Trap of Pornography

Medical research has documented the increased flow of endorphins, hormones that create sexual pleasure in the brain, when sexual images are viewed.  Given the law of reduced effect, greater stimulation is needed to keep a constant flow of endorphins to the brain's pleasure centers.  Without conscious awareness of what is happening, men are drawn into a pattern of deeper sin, more and more explicit pornography, and never-ending rationalization.  And it all started when the eye first began its perusal of the pornographic image and sexual arousal was its product.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of Sexual Tolerance, pg.31-32

Without God There Are No Limits

True belief in God imposes limits -- the rejection of biblical values and the lowering of man to the level of a beast open the door to the most hideous and unbridled atrocities.  That the human mind once freed from the restraints of God's law is capable of devising bizarre ideologies and inflicting merciless cruelties; that there is innate evil in the human soul which does not need to be encouraged but which rather needs to be limited and restrained -- these are truths which many will reject.  Nevertheless, it should be evident, and will be evident to an impartial observer, that it is not the fault of the Bible if secular human reasoning without divine revelation comes to the conclusions that life is only a pitiless struggle in which the strong survive and the weak die; that this struggle is the most fundamental law of life, the very source of our being; that heaven and hell are useless deceptions; . . . that kindness, forgiveness, and mercy are vices, while cold and pitiless cruelty is a virtue, and healthy; that man is only an animal, nothing more....

Joseph Keysor, Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible, pg.12

Psych Field Diagnostic Inflation

In the early 1980s, about a third of Americans qualified for a lifetime diagnosis of mental disorder.  Now [2013] about half do.  And Europe is catching up fast at well over 40 percent.  Some people think these are underestimates--more carefully done prospective studies actually double the lifetime prevalence.  If you believe the results, our population is almost totally saturated with mental disorders.  One study found that by age thirty-two, 50 percent of the general population had already qualified for an anxiety disorder; more than 40 percent for mood disorder; and more than 30 percent for substance dependence.  Another study moved even closer to the proposition of almost ubiquitous sickness--by the tender age of twenty-one, more than 80 percent of young adults had already met criteria for a mental disorder.  The trumpeting of inflated rates has fueled drug company claims that we are underdiagnosed and undertreated--keeping the vicious cycle spinning.

Evidence of diagnostic inflation is everywhere.  There have been four explosive epidemics of mental disorder in the past fifteen years.  Childhood bipolar disorder increased by a miraculous fortyfold; autism by a whopping twentyfold; attention deficit/hyperactivity has tripled; and adult bipolar disorder doubled.  Whenever rates skyrocket, some portion of the rise represents previously missed true cases--people who really need the diagnosis and the treatment that follows from it.  But more accurate diagnosis can't explain why so many people, especially kids, suddenly seem to be getting sick.

Allen Frances, M.D, "Saving Normal," pg.103-104


This is a perfect example as to the problem with the psych field and their collusion with the drug industry.  FALSE DIAGNOSIS!

Freudian Destruction of American Culture

Perhaps the most fundamental change in American culture wrought by Freud’s legacy has been the popularization of counseling and psychotherapy.  In on other nation in the world have these become so much a part of the culture as they have in America.  While it is acknowledged that an increasing proportion of counseling and psychotherapy is not directly Freudian, most of it is indirectly Freudian insofar as it assumes that adult problems are a consequence of childhood experiences and that talking about or understanding the childhood experience will help solve the adult problems.  It seems likely that the immense popularity of counseling and psychotherapy in America is a direct consequence of Freud’s greater popularity here compared to other countries. …

Thus one of Freud’s contributions to American culture has been the popularization of counseling and psychotherapy in general, but Freud’s psychoanalysis has not proven to be more efficacious than any other technique.

E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., "Freudian Fraud: the Malignant Effect of Freud's Theory on American Thought and Culture," p.246/247

Evolution Is A Religion

All the evidence a scientist has exists only in the present.  All the fossils, the living animals and plants, the world, the universe—in fact, everything, exists now—in the present.  The average person (including most students) is not taught that scientists have only the present and cannot deal directly with the past.  Evolution is a belief system about the past base on the words of men who were not there, but who are trying to explain how all the evidence of the present (that is, fossils, animals, plants, etc) originated.  (Webster’s Dictionary defines religion as follows:  “ . . . cause, principle or system of beliefs held to with ardor or faith.”  Surely, this is an apt description of evolution.)  Evolution is a belief system—a religion!

Ken Ham, The Lie, pg.12

Bizarre SCOTUS Rationale

The Supreme Court in its landmark Miranda decision…argued that to fail to give everyone the same information already possessed by the more sophisticated would be to “take advantage of the poor, the ignorant, and the distracted.”  Note what this taking advantage consists of: a failure to provide grater means of escaping punishment for crimes committed by criminals who fall below the state of the art in criminal evasions of the law.

Thomas Sowell, "The Vision of the Anointed," pg.193

Judging Evil?

Rights Are NOT Created by Government

Homosexuality Is About Sexual Immorality -- Period!

Homosexuality is about sexual immorality. Period. All of the propaganda circulated by the LGBT proponents is aimed at obfuscating that simple fact. It is a grievous distortion of what God created as something good. Scripture couldn’t be any clearer in its opposition to homosexual acts as seen both in its words and phrases. The New King James version of the Bible underscores the Bible’s disdain in contemporary language: “uncleanness,” “lusts,” “dishonor their bodies,” “vile passions,” “exchanged the natural use for what is against nature,” “committing what is shameful,” “receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due,” “a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting.”

T.A. MacMahon, The Berean Call, October 2015

College is NOT a Right

The idea that college in particular should be free is not only absurd and unworkable but incredibly offensive to any self-sufficient adult (a small minority, I admit). I’ve got news for you, my fellow young people, college isn’t a human right. It’s also not a necessity. I pay a mortgage and support a family of four by myself, with no government handouts, and I do it without a college degree. It is possible. If you can’t afford college — and God knows it’s obscenely expensive and not worth the investment for most people — don’t go. Forge your own path. Think for yourself. Do something different with your life. You really want to drive down college costs? That’s how you do it. You can eliminate your own college expenses by simply choosing not to take on any college expenses. Crazy how that works, isn’t it? But that’s not what liberals want to hear. They want to hear about the crusty old socialist genie who will make free stuff appear out of thin air.

Matt Walsh

Human Rights Commissions Are Kangaroo Courts

One Canadian columnist gives his perspective: “For more than twenty years…I have been writing against the human rights commissions, which have quasi-legal powers that should be offensive to the citizens of any free country. They are kangaroo courts, in which the defendant’s right to due process is withdrawn. They reach judgments on the basis of no fixed law. Moreover [in addition to heavy fines], ‘the process is the punishment’ in these star chambers—for simply by agreeing to hear a case, they tie up the defendant in bureaucracy and paperwork, and bleed him for the cost of lawyers, while the person who brings the complaint, however frivolous, stands to lose nothing.”

Cited by T.A. McMahon, The Berean Call, October 2015

America is Dying

This country has held a unique position in the world as a place where all could worship freely, while becoming complete Americans.  Ironically, that is only because America had a strong sense of who she was.  Immigrants learned the language and the culture, and in doing so integrated themselves into American society.  When we dictate that American society must fit itself into each citizen's culture and religion so as to offend no one, we have signed the death certificate for this country.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.117

Equal Opportunity

Equal opportunity means not that everyone must start with the same skills and social contacts, but that no one must be prohibited by law from attempting something morally legitimate in the marketplace.

David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times, pg.702

Marriage Is A Promise

Mary Engelbreit

Beliefs Are Not Time-Bound

An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another.  Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth.  You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays.  You might as well say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not suitable for half-past four.  What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century.

G.K. Chesterton, cited by George Grant, "Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood," pg.227

Do 'Homosexuals' Engage in Real Sex?

Since the purpose of sexuality is derived from our natures as men and women, homosexuals in the strictest sense are no more engaging in sex if they stimulate each other to orgasm than is an ashtray “food” and the act “eating” if one consumes it.

Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,” pg.123

The Talmud and Sexual Immorality

On the basis of the Pentateuch, the Talmud treats all sexual activity outside of marital relations, including masturbation, unequivocally as sins, though it makes careful distinctions concerning their varying severity.  Lesbianism, for example, is treated as a less severe sin than male homosexuality; the various Talmudic discussions concerning lesbianism view it as less of a threat to family formation and stability than the always potentially rogue male sexuality.  As unmodern as this asymmetry may appear, it is indeed accurately reflected in the many families tragically being torn apart by the decision of (chiefly) husbands to leave their families and enter the “gay life.”  It is also seen in the lower incidence of lesbianism than male homosexuality in America (1.4 percent versus 2.8 percent) and in the more severe medical consequences of male homosexuality, primarily related to anal intercourse and secondarily to the exchange of fluids in male to male sex.

Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, pg.212-213

Creating “Mental Illness”

Ironically, mental health education, which aims to teach people how to cope more effectively with life, has instead increased the demand for psychotherapeutic help.  By calling attention to symptoms they might otherwise ignore and by labeling those symptoms as signs of neurosis, mental health education can create unwarranted anxieties, leading those to seek psychotherapy who do not need it.

Jerome Frank, Persuasion and Healing, p.8.  Cited by Dr. Tana Dineen in, Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People, pg.151