We are a spiritually lost, logically challenged, perpetually confused people manipulated by a small group, aided by the media, that seeks to impose even greater evil upon us in the name of equality. I am unaware of any other sinful practice that has been so successfully foisted on this nation as that of homosexuality. Abortion, of course, is far worse in its consequences because of the stark fact that every abortion is a murder of an innocent child. Yet abortion hit us in one fell swoop via Roe v. Wade in 1973. We hardly saw it coming. The homosexual rights bandwagon, however, has been gaining momentum one step at a time for the past forty years. Now we find ourselves in a heretofore unimaginable position, on the verge of legalizing same-sex “marriage” nationwide.

I’m not usually all that surprised at the depths to which man’s depravity can sink, but I admit to amazement at the way this abomination has come to the forefront all of a sudden. One could say it began with Joe Biden’s public support, followed soon after by Obama’s. Now, nearly everyone on the Democrat side of the political spectrum is falling over themselves to voice their “evolved view.” The rest of the country, prepared for this like the proverbial frog in the pan of boiling water, having become accustomed to watching one television program after another showcase “normal” homosexuals who are being “bullied” by the rest of society, now seems to be calmly accepting what they consider to be inevitable.

I had thought the law might be one bulwark against this invasion of decency and common sense, but that is deserting us as well:

Even more disturbing is the erosion of moral principle on the conservative side of the political divide. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, a Republican, recently came out in favor of same-sex “marriage” because his son has declared himself to be homosexual. Is that how we are to make decisions in life, tossing aside morality to accommodate a family member’s sinful lifestyle? This was followed by the Republican National Committee telling fellow Republicans not to push disagreement with the gay agenda so as not to lose votes. I have news for the RNC—you are going to lose a whole lot more votes with that stance.

Even erstwhile conservative commentators are wobbly on the issue, as can be demonstrated by a political cartoon from someone who normally understands morality. Note how people who support Biblical moral stands are depicted in this one:

Rush Limbaugh intoned this past week that the battle on this issue is lost. He says it was lost as soon as we allowed homosexuality any legitimacy in our discourse. I agree with that last part. When we allowed civil unions, we gave it legitimacy. When we even gave in to the “marriage” talk, we gave it legitimacy. That’s why I’ve put quotation marks around that word in this post—same-sex marriage is an oxymoron of the highest caliber. Yet we now have serious debate about it, as if there is some ground for debate. There is not.

We have been swept along on a tidal wave of popular opinion, a popular opinion based mostly on emotion and misleading political rhetoric. Inevitability may be too strong a term, but we are dangerously close to it.

Meanwhile, where are the Christians? Some are fighting valiantly for the truth. Others who call themselves Christians have given themselves over to the emerging consensus. Anyone promoting sin cannot be a genuine Christian. A sin-promoting Christian may be the greatest oxymoron of all.

Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi will be present today in Rome for the celebratory mass to be held by the new pope, Francis I. They were chosen as part of the delegation because they are Catholic. Never mind that their beliefs are anything but Catholic. Both favor the pro-abortion stance and have come out in support of same-sex marriage. What I wouldn’t give to see the following scenario unfold:

Biden and Pelosi, like too many of their fellow Catholics, are Catholic in name only. It’s a cultural thing, brought up in the church believing that since they have more or less followed the outward rules and they go through the motions of religion, that they are accepted in the sight of God. Forgive the old cliché, but I must repeat: going to church makes one a Christian no more than going into a garage makes one a car.

We see the same thing in the Protestant world. The mainline denominations have pretty much abandoned Biblical truth. They maintain the name of Christian, but their doctrines have consistently strayed from orthodoxy. Being a Methodist, for instance, back in the early nineteenth century, meant you were a serious disciple of Christ. Now such denominational labels are worthless. They’re like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: you never know what you’re going to get when you enter a mainline Protestant church.

Evangelicals are supposed to be the torchbearers for scriptural fidelity, but modern evangelicalism has often succumbed to the latest trendiness, both theologically and culturally. Send your child to what you think is a conservative, evangelical college or university, and you may be surprised by the return on your money. All too frequently they are taught to question the authority of Scripture. Now, I believe in testing all things and I understand we are to lead students into critical thinking rather than simple indoctrination, but that should be carried out with a dependence on God’s leading and a basic trust in the integrity of His communications with man. There remains a framework within which we explore. The so-called “open mind” of secular education is often so open it accepts anything—similar to a sewer.

Some of our evangelicals are being lured by the siren song of social acceptability as basic Biblical beliefs are junked. Take the trendy author/pastor Rob Bell as an example. Last year he wrote a book that subtly, yet clearly, denied the doctrine of hell. Now we learn he believes in same-sex marriage. How many young people will he lead into a spiritual abyss, all in the name of the love of God?

I’m reminded of a passage in the book of 2 Timothy, as the apostle Paul writes about the characteristics of individuals who are to be shunned, noting they will be “holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power.” He then instructs Timothy to “avoid such men as these.”

Why avoid? I’m not just talking about theological differences here; it goes much deeper. Outward forms of godliness are powerless against sin. Only through the genuine gospel message will a person be set free from the bondage of sin. When we water down that message—removing a thorough understanding of the absolute destructiveness of sin—no one is set free. Any gospel that omits teaching about sin and the necessity of heartfelt repentance is a false gospel that leaves people lost in their sins.

I am grieved by the prevalence of superficial spirituality. I am disturbed by those who have little concern for eradicating sin, both in ourselves and in society at large. Outward forms will never suffice. We must truly become new creations in Christ.

As I said yesterday, I’ve been meditating on just how foolish we have become as a people. It’s as if our common sense has left us. Another area where this foolishness is on display is with this new round of gun-control mania. New York passed new legislation making it the strictest state against gun ownership, but California is now making a run for the title. According to a recent article, Democrats there have unveiled a new package of legislation that even goes so far as to allow potential confiscation of the state’s 166,000 legally registered semi-automatic rifles.

All of this has been pushed from the top, of course, with Obama’s Biden-led commission. Yet it’s all based on the assumption that guns are the problem, a typical assumption from those who don’t recognize the real problem—the sinfulness of man. External “solutions” don’t solve internal problems. And there are all sorts of contradictions and hypocrisies to point out, such as . . .

Even in the wake of the Newtown killings, there is resistance to posting armed guards at schools. What if teachers could defend themselves? Would a shooter think twice about carrying out his deed? Or would political correctness prevail?

Right now, mass murderer Christopher Dorner is loose in California. Would a disarmed populace feel safer or more threatened in this circumstance? Do I really have to answer that? Have we lost our minds to that extent? There’s a popular picture making the rounds on Facebook that makes the point quite succinctly:

Why is it so hard to understand that criminals don’t really care that a legislature just passed a law putting more restrictions on gun ownership? Every time one of those laws passes, they rejoice. Every time one of those laws passes, we are less safe. You don’t need a Ph.D. to figure that out.

Tomorrow’s topic: immigration.

President Obama yesterday put forward his executive orders for curbing gun violence. There were twenty-three of them. I read through all twenty-three carefully. While I’m somewhat relieved that he didn’t go beyond the regular misuse of such executive orders—no sweeping new mandates this time—he nevertheless stepped over the constitutional boundary that separates the executive from the legislative. His orders, while not establishing new laws, which would be unconstitutional in itself, still added new spending in the billions. Unless that money already was authorized by Congress, he unilaterally contributed to the growing debt burden of the country. Historically speaking, I’ve seen this before:

No, Mr. President, you are not the state. You are merely the one charged with the responsibility of carrying out the executive functions of the state in conjunction with a duly elected Congress and an independent judiciary. Neither do you have the authority to change the Constitution; only an amendment can do that. My dread over what he might do in the current situation is based on what he already has done. The HHS mandates via Obamacare have trampled on the First Amendment’s religious liberty guarantees. If he’s willing to do that, the Second Amendment guarantees won’t faze him either. A couple of cartoonists have captured that concern pretty well:

Many critics of the president have been quick to point out the hypocrisy of his pronouncements on the gun control issue:

And that comment Joe Biden made about curtailing guns to save even one life sounds a little silly if you carry out the logic to its natural end:

The government cannot protect every person at all times. Life comes with risks. If the government tries to achieve that goal, it will cost more lives in the long run when individuals are not allowed to defend themselves effectively against those who seek to do them harm.

For me, the greatest hypocrisy that came to the forefront yesterday was Obama’s use of children at his public signing of those executive orders. Supposedly, this is all for the sake of saving children. Yet his heart is hardened and his conscience seared when it comes to the most unprotected, innocent children of all:

When Obama changes his position on abortion and begins to protect those who need protection the most, then I’ll begin to have some respect for him.

We seem to be in a theater of the absurd. First, it was Romney’s dog on the top of his car. A couple of weeks ago the cry was “Save Big Bird.” Now Romney is condescending to women because he talked about seeking out women to fill some of his cabinet posts when he was governor of Massachusetts and as he collected resumès, he said he had a binder full of women. How awful! How insensitive! Actually, how surreal that anyone would make a big deal of this. He obviously meant a binder full of women’s resumès from which to choose the best to serve in his administration. The whole point of his comment at the debate was to show how eager he was to give key, responsible positions to women who have demonstrated their competence. Somehow, the Left seeks to turn this into a scandal of monstrous proportions. 

Guy Benson, a commentator at Townhall, believes this “may represent the pettiest and most trivial chapter of this entire campaign.” He thinks it shows the kind of desperation that emanates from a campaign that is beginning to panic. He continues,

As a person who enjoys at least a modicum of brain activity, I’m not exactly sure how to react to this. It’s so trifling, so frivolous that it shouldn’t merit any discussion whatsoever. But here we are. The leader of the free world and his campaign have decided to elevate it as an issue.

I know why. Some new polls are showing Romney closing the gap for the women’s vote.  In some states, he has overtaken Obama for the allegiance of women voters. Democrats thought they had that wrapped up, what with their “war on women” theme. Now they are running scared. Apparently all they can think to do is to be ridiculous and hope it somehow resonates. Well, it is resonating all right, but not in the way they hoped:

So many things seem to be going wrong for them all at once. Rumors are now swirling that they are thinking seriously of shifting funds away from states like Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia, seeing them as trending Romney and unlikely to reverse direction in the last two weeks of the campaign. And the Libya situation is the albatross that seems to keep growing. As I mentioned yesterday, when asked at the debate about the security problems at the consulate, he didn’t answer, but instead went into a diatribe of accusation: how could anyone think he and his people would ever politicize the murder of diplomatic personnel? He was absolutely indignant over the suggestion. Yet to many, there is a sneaking suspicion—which is becoming less sneaking and more than a mere suspicion—that politics rules even in a tragedy like that:

I must return also to the vice presidential debate. I’ve already chronicled some of Joe Biden’s most hilarious moments that evening, but there was one I apparently missed. I remember hearing it in the background while I was reading commentary on the computer, but it didn’t hit me at the time that he said Syria was five times larger than Libya. Hmmm.

This comedy of errors represents the executive branch of our government. But it doesn’t have to much longer:

Considering the current polling trends, that wish may come true.

The Libya questions won’t go away, and for good reason. The timeline has gone something like this:

Shortly after our consulate was attacked with rather sophisticated weaponry, the administration’s line was that this was a spontaneous protest fueled by an obscure video trailer for a movie about Mohammed. All the blame was focused on that movie, and there was even some comment that it was a shame we couldn’t clamp down on such people because our First Amendment right of free speech got in the way:

Then that explanation began to unravel. Cameras on the scene revealed there was no spontaneous demonstration that morphed into an attack; rather, it was a full-scale, prepared act of terrorism. The administration tried to deflect attention away from the date of this act—September 11. No, they said, it was not done to commemorate September 11, 2001. And, by the way, we have taken Al Qaeda out of the picture. Bin Laden is dead; the organization has lost its teeth. At least that was the brave face put on it, as the Obama team didn’t want their candidate to appear impotent during his reelection campaign. However, that theme also began to fray at the edges when it became more obvious that Al Qaeda was indeed behind the attack, followed by the revelation that the people on the ground in Libya had repeatedly sought more security and had their request just as repeatedly denied. The intel was indicating that something was brewing, but the administration ignored the looming threat.

Hope that things would change was not enough. There was one thing that did change, though.

During presidential campaigns, we have gotten used to what the analysts have called “The October Surprise,” where one candidate comes up with something at the last moment to bolster his chances. The opposite seems to be happening this time around:

The latest installment in this tragic drama was the statement by Vice President Biden in last week’s debate when he said “we” had no knowledge of those requests for added security. The spin since then is that when he said “we,” he meant he and Obama hadn’t been informed about it. All the Obama people are now throwing the State Department—and by inference, Hillary Clinton—under the very familiar Obama bus, where others have been thrown in the last four years whenever anything threatened to expose the man at the top as ideologically radical, uninformed, or incompetent.

First, I don’t accept that definition of “we.” In context, it seemed pretty clear Biden was talking about the administration as a whole. For him to say nobody knew about the security request is ludicrous. But let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say the White House, per se, had not been informed. Why not? Why was the president and his national security team in the dark about this? What does it say about the nation’s leadership? What does it say about a president who has failed to attend nearly 60% of his daily intel briefings and who, on the very day the attacks were carried out and our ambassador was slain, flew to Las Vegas to meet with the Beautiful People for a fundraiser? Is this man even thinking about his day job?

Consequently, the administration has found itself in an unusual position: the press—or some of them, at least—are finally doing what the press is supposed to be doing—asking the right questions.

Since they’re not used to being held accountable for either their words or their actions, they seem more than a little befuddled as to how to respond. May I suggest a novel approach? How about telling the truth?

I normally take a blogging break on Saturdays, but I thought I might be performing a public service if I at least drew attention to the spate of political cartoons depicting the essence of the VP debate on Thursday evening. Therefore, without further comment, I present the following for your edification and enjoyment.