Released on Good Friday, no less
Michelle and I join the American people in expressing our horror and sadness at the reports coming out of Garissa, Kenya. Words cannot adequately condemn the terrorist atrocities
Committed by whom?
that took place at Garissa University College, where innocent men and women were brazenly and brutally massacred.
Targeted because?
We join the world in mourning them, many of whom were students pursuing an education in the pursuit of a better life for themselves and their loved ones. They represented a brighter future for a region that has seen too much violence for far too long. We also commend the heroism of the responders who lost their lives in the selfless protection of the students and faculty.
I know firsthand the extraordinary resilience and fundamental decency of the people of Kenya. So I know that the people of Garissa and all of Kenya will grieve, but their determination to achieve a better and more secure future will not be deterred. And neither will the resolve of the United States. We will stand hand-in-hand with the Kenyan Government and people against the scourge of terrorism and in their efforts to bring communities together. This much is clear: the future of Kenya will not be defined by violence and terror; it will be shaped by young people like those at Garissa University College – by their talents, their hopes, and their achievements. This is a message I will relay to the Kenyan people when I visit Kenya in July. Even at this difficult hour, the Kenyan people should know they have an unwavering friend and ally in the United States of America.
Contemptible beyond words.
i don’t think it’s really all that super-clear that the future of Kenya will not be defined by violence and terror
we’ll just have to wait and see i guess
But . . . The Crusades!
“
BTW, any bets on whether the word “Christian” is use by this administration to describe a non-Islamic militia which gets accused of some sort of atrocity, regardless of whether the accusation is accurate?
Speaking of straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel, I’ve answered the question “Would Jesus cater a gay wedding?” at length at my old blog.
Trigger Warning: Lots of God-talk and taking the Scripture at its word. If that’s not your bag I’m cool if you don’t click over. I just thought I’d link it for the interested.
would Jesus join with Indiana to ask congress to take a close look at robustly expanding the FDA’s regulatory reach and scope?
excellent di!
The idea that because Jesus socialized with sinners meant that He ignored the sinning or celebrated is either ignorance or malice.
…cuz it ain’t Jesus.
As I mentioned at a different site, what the Left refuses to acknowledge is that many Christians view marriage as a sacrament ordained by God as institution involving one man and one woman. Weddings are worship services. Forcing a person to participate against his will is completely at odds with the very civil and human rights these people espouse. To involve money as part of the transaction is even worse. See, e.g. the story of Balaam There is no difference between forcing me to participate in a wedding religious service and celebration that is contrary to my religious belief and me rousting all these Progressives tomorrow morning at 4:00 AM to attend a sunrise Easter Celebration. And, oh yeah, if I believe you’re not singing the hymns with appropriate enthusiasm, you lose your job and I threaten your kids.
Dear Keen-jans,
Beloveds:
Oprah sends her greetings.
She urges you: “Go to war on they-asses who kill you unbidden. Keep in min’, Jesus saves”.
Oh, and then she added: “. . . thems who saves themselves. ‘Nnihilate ’em, copiously.”
God love Oprah me i just can’t
what the Left refuses to acknowledge is that many Christians view marriage as a sacrament ordained by God as institution involving one man and one woman.
And that when you eliminate one of the sexes, you’ve created at best an absurdity and at worst a sacrilege, an open mockery of God.
Imagine that hipsters decided to create their own version of the Hopi/Navajo kiva ceremony, which for the Hopi/Navajo is a sacred rite of passage for tribe members only.
But the hipsters like to get all spiritual and primitive and junk by spending time in a smoke-filled simulacrum of the womb of the earth, beating drums and inhaling the smoke of your choice, emerging all earthy and in touch with Gaia. Who’s to say they can’t? Rites of passage are totes universal throughout human history, and hipsters are all about Teh Primitive.
Well, the Navajo and Hopi aren’t at all impressed and voice their objections. Are they a bunch of sticks in the mud? Party poopers? Bigots? Do they need to just get over it and get with the program?
Worse, the hipsters decide that their kiva ceremony is the equivalent of the natives’, so they start showing up on the reservation, claiming to be members of the tribe in full fellowship and insisting they have every right to descend into those kivas, having been duly initiated.
Is the law really going to force the natives to accept the hipsters’ claims to having been initiated? Is it really going to require that the natives supply the accoutrements for the hipsters’ kivas, For The Authenticity?
Of course in real life, the Hopi and Navajo are not designated Untermenschen, so nobody is going to side with the hipsters, who will be seen as base interlopers and Cultural Appropriators, which is only slightly less bad than bigotry.
And with a kiva ceremony, you don’t get government bennies and insurance coverage and hospital visitation.
But you do get status and privileges in the tribe. And what kind of exclusionary, prejudiced, xenophobic racists do the Hopi and Navajo have to be to insist that the hipsters knock it the hell off?
Yeah.
Without the double standards, they have none at all.
Also, if you’re looking for religious or philosophical justification for sexual license, Jesus ain’t your guy.
He’s all about the forgiveness, sure, but his first word is repent. Stop what you’re doing. Stop breaking the commandments of God. Set your heart right with the God of Abraham, who makes strict ethical demands of his worshipers. Don’t modify the rites and the practices and the ethics to avoid the mockery of the unbelievers or to accommodate your favorite sins.
Some say that religion is a crutch to avoid the Cold Hard Realities of life.
Some crutch.
many Christians view marriage as a sacrament ordained by God
but like 99% of gays are married in civil services
civil services
been around forever
always been understood to be “as opposed to a religious service”
but don’t tell the drama queens
they’re on a fucking roll
We’re being required to accept the distorted versions as equal to the original ones, similarly to the hipsters insisting their kiva ceremony is as legitimate as the Navajos’ and further forcing the Navajos to accept that.
I’m aware that marriage is a social institution that religions support and value. If marriage were a strictly religious thing, atheists would have no use for it — prayer, communion, baptism — those are strictly religious things.
Marriage has social value apart from religious implications or tax law.
However.
Not any old thing that you cobble together and call “marriage” will function the same way as the one society has been using for millennia. If there were alternative versions that worked, they’d still be in use today, somewhere, in some cultures. Polygamy is one example, but because it leaves lots of single males wandering the streets, many societies abandoned it where it was tried.
Gay marriage conspires to deprive children of a father or mother and then makes it impossible to admit that the kids suffer significantly from that deficit. We can’t even say that a single, artificially inseminated woman is being every bit as irresponsible as a woman who smokes crack during pregnancy.
Marriage isn’t about the happiness of the adults but the welfare of the children.
Our society is too narcissistic and sexually careless to embrace that. Besides, the Boomers would have to admit they were wrong, and We Can’t Have That.
Besides, the Boomers would have to admit they were wrong, and We Can’t Have That.
I’m a Boomer and piss on those of my generation that won’t.
Only because Barakhenaten Obazymandias has not yet decreed that churches must submit. Or rather, because his decree hasn’t been ratified by SCOTUS.
i’m so over him
he thinks he’s SOOOO cool
From a secular standpoint, society has the right, like any other living thing, to survive and defend itself to the best of its ability, and further, it has the right to continue to exist by encouraging its constituent members to have children* and train them up in the traditions and ethos of that society. Note that in order to have children, society must be able to encourage people to get together in manners that actually CREATE children. And accepting that laws are written for the majority of cases, not for the outliers (which tromps any “well, since seniors can’t have kids any more, they shouldn’t be allowed to be married, either, right?” sort of arguments), society doesn’t care what you WANT, only what you DO. And that is one reason why race was eliminated as a condition (because people don’t get to choose to be one race or another, with the possible exception of Michael Jackson) (or maybe LaToya).
Society had decided that one man, one woman was the form of marriage that seems to work most smoothly, with legal exceptions having to do with previous state of marriage (preventing polygamy), age (kids cannot get married), consanguinity (mothers and sons, or siblings, cannot get married), mental health (both parties must be of sound mind) and willingness to enter into that state (you cannot be forced to marry). Once you meet those minimal standards, no one can stop you, and your sexual preference is never an issue.
As the argument goes, Nathan Lane could have married Rosie O’Donnell or Kevin Spacey could marry Jodie Foster, and other than a few raised eyebrows, no one could say anything against it.
Society has the right to continue to exist, and religion has nothing to do with that.
* – By any means considered appropriate and legal, such as tax breaks or direct subsidies or special privileges.
Drum, I just tweet-linked your comment.
Is some commensurable basis for a non-equivocating use of the term secular to be found between and betwixt the Jewish, Christian, Muslim or other believer on the one hand, and on the other hand either the agnostic or atheist non-believer when using this same term? Somehow or other, I think we have reason to be skeptical as to this, if our intention is the preservation of a genuinely liberal society.
The professed agnostic or atheist may claim to take in every respect a non-religious or non-sacramental attitude to the imposition of their personal moralities upon others with differing and overtly sacramental attitudes in theirs, yet we may properly be suspicious of that professed “non-religious” morality claim of the agnostic or overt atheist, posing in the guise of some virtuous neutrality, all the while smuggling into power no less an unexplained faith in unarticulated mysteries (Progress! Science!) than would the recipient of divine revelation. Just saying.
Deeply religious people can be part of a secular situation. The sense in which militant atheists, etc., use the word is meant to marginalize the religious and haze them from all parts of public life.
I’m trying to figure out if the fictional tyrant on “House of Cards” is more or less destructive than the actual tyrant we are enduring.
I’m thinking less. Much less.