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When I was a kid in Sunday School, we used to sing the chorus from the book of Nehemiah, “The joy of the Lord is my strength. Oh, the joy of the Lord is my strength.”

The Bible says, “Consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2).

Trials like COVID-19, social unrest, hurricanes, rancorous politics, economic slowdowns, wildfires.

Sorrow, pain, fear, disappointment, discouragement or depression?  Joy in the face of this?

Yeah, right. I can’t do that.

But that’s the point. We can’t do that, not on our own. We need the Lord to deal with God-sized trials.

The Bible says, “Cast all your anxiety on him” (1 Pet. 5:7), and “find grace to help us in our time of need” (Heb. 4:16). 

Then there’s this promise:

“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you but will rejoice over you with singing” (Zeph. 3:17).

One fruit of the Spirit is joy. God’s joy in us becomes our joy in him.

How do we survive and thrive even in the midst of trials? 

The joy of the Lord is our strength (Neh. 8:10).

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020    

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.    

We've been hearing, or seeing on placards, "No justice, no peace."
 
But there is a precursor to this that the wisest political philosophers understood. "No law and order, no justice no peace." It is impossible to have the latter without the former.
 
No less than Pope John Paul II said the American Founding Fathers “clearly understood that there could be no true freedom without moral responsibility and accountability."
 
So people who work outside the law to tear down society tear down their opportunity for what George Washington called "ordered liberty," and thus for justice and peace.
 
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters," Benjamin Franklin
 
Embrace lawlessness, jettison moral virtue for the "prevailing acceptable narrative" du jour, and risk losing liberty and justice for all.

 

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020    

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.    

We’ve heard a lot of talk and watched protests and riots these past few weeks re race, injustice, and avoidable, senseless, and unnecessary police killing of Black people.

And indeed, there are serious racial issues in the US that warrant social discussion, and change.

But the preborn are the most forgotten, marginalized human beings today.

Since Roe vs Wade (1973), abortions continue at a pace that should boggle the mind and sicken the heart of any sane, moral person. 

Abortion infanticide, a redundant phrase, is a travesty of epic proportions in the US, “nearly 2,400 every day. Ninety-eight babies every hour. About one baby every twelve seconds. Innocent human beings are dismembered, poisoned, crushed, harvested for organs, put in trash cans, and disposed of in the name of ‘women’s rights’ and ‘the right to choose.’”

Since the legalization of abortion in the U.S., more than 61 million babies have been slaughtered.

Reported abortions have been on the decrease, according to USAFactsdropping from 817,906 in 2004 to 638,169 in 2015. The plurality of abortions – about 44% – occur in the first 8 weeks of pregnancy.” This is good news. It means the US is killing about 180,000 people fewer per year than it did. Still, hundreds of thousands of lives are being snuffed out.

This happens day after day, week after week, and the church largely remains silent.”

One would think religious people, Christians in particular, would be demanding change. But “according to Pew Research, one third of evangelical protestants, sixty percent of mainline protestants, and forty eight percent of Catholics believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.” 

The Church, the religious, and avowed Christians, are largely silent. It’s what Francis A. Schaeffer warned us about before he passed in 1984, that people in the West would trade their liberties and just about anything else for “personal peace and affluence.” As long as abortion doesn’t affect us, then it doesn’t affect us. We go along our peaceful affluent way.

I should also note that Planned Parenthood continues its masquerade, killing babies, especially minority babies, in the name of women’s health. “Black babies are aborted at a higher rate than they are born. No other race comes close to the abortion rate of Black Americans.” 

Abortion is the number one killer of African Americans in the US. This is injustice. This is racism. This is sin. 

Partial birth abortion and post-delivery or born-alive abortions continue, as does “abortion on demand.” Oregon became the first state to offer free abortions to all, including illegal aliens.

Abortion is not about women’s rights or health. Both can be thoroughly and effectively addressed without taking another person’s life, and of course babies come from somewhere, which is to say the sex in which a woman and man chose to engage – that’s where I am “pro-choice.”

Abortion is barbaric, no less so simply because we don’t see pictures of the body dismemberment or baby-in-the-womb writhing away from the suction device. 

Abortion is a direct rebuke of the fundamental constitutional value of a person’s right to Life, in this case an innocent and helpless baby. This is the quintessential definition of injustice.

Abortion is systematically and disproportionately killing Black Americans. This is the definition of racism.

Abortion ruthlessly kills human beings made in the image of God. This is sin.

Every adult who can vote should vote for candidates who support and protect life, who are consistently and without apology anti-abortion, who will work to overturn Roe vs Wade, who believe in the precious and ultimate value of Life.

If unborn lives don’t matter, no lives matter

 

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020    

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.    

 

Since 2015, Drag Queen Story Hour, DQSH, has been offered at public libraries for children ages 3-11. Local Drag Queens dress in their regalia and read stories to children, ostensibly for the purpose of encouraging a love of reading, self-love, and respect for others different from themselves. 

DQSH events are now being scheduled across the countryAustralia and the UK have their own versions.

The DQSH founder in the US, Michele Tea, launched the initiative because she felt local libraries were “heteronormative.” 

As another leader described it, “The program strives to “instill the imagination and play of gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models.” In NYC, the purpose included being sure the queens could talk effectively about gender identity.

A Tennessee organizer said, “There is no hidden agenda or meaning behind it. We are not trying to breed drag kids.” But you’d be hard-pressed to believe that if you read DQSH’s own words.

Drag Queen Story Hour has its own website. They say its purpose “captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real.” 

Promoters of this immoral child sex abuse can be found in the mental health profession. One sex therapist said, “The real problem, as I see it, lies not in exposing children to the reality of diverse sexualities and gender identities—those who do not fit the typical definitions of masculinity or femininity—but rather not providing gender-nonconforming kids with other templates as they begin to sort out their feelings about who they authentically are.” For him, the real reason some people do not want these kinds of events to occur is simply their homophobia or misogyny, their desire to bully, or that somehow their masculinity is threatened. He believes Drag Queen costumes are no more harmful than Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and other Disney characters.

DQSH is unbelievable and offensive on the face of it, yet the events are being embraced by library directors and boards even in the face of sometime local opposition. One question is why do these professionals and boards believe this is necessary, appropriate, and good? Another greater question is why would parents send their little children to hear stories read by Drag Queens? 

I do not hate Drag Queens or any other LGBTQ+ person. I don’t want to deny them jobs or their civil liberties as American citizens. I don’t endorse or support in any way the bullying and assaults some of them have at times endured. I don’t wish them ill and harm.

I do, however, strongly disagree with their moral choices regarding their lifestyle. The same way I disagree with heterosexuals who participate in affairs or adultery outside of marriage. In fact, I don’t believe one kind of sexual sin is any more egregious than any other kind of sexual sin. Sin is sin. Sexual sin is sexual sin. 

I know the Church responded poorly to the early Gay Rights Movement, often with condemnation based upon truth but absent any love or offer of God’s forgiveness and reconciliation. But this does not change the moral truths taught in Scripture. LGBTQ lifestyle choices, Drag Queens included, are not something Christians who believe the Word of God can support much less promote.

Gender fluidity is a social construct, not biological sex. God created male and female (Genesis 1:26-27). There is no sexually, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically happy ending for LGBTQ lifestyles.

So, I see DQSH as a morally unwise, indeed immoral, development being foisted upon innocent little children incapable of processing any of it. Whatever the motive claimed, this is child abuse.

 

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020    

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.

 

Sex education was once something parents shared with their children when they thought the time was right. Now it’s considered the province of public education.

But what’s being taught to children as young as 4-5 in Kindergarten is not simply, “Where do babies come from?” or what used to be called “the facts of life” or “the Birds and the Bees.” What’s now being taught is a long list of adult sexuality in graphic terms, re “sex positivity,” “sexual rights,” and “inclusivity.”

Sex education materials used in public schools, K-12, contain descriptions and pictures of anatomy including adult genitalia, the sex act vis-à-vis positions and practices, condoms and how to shop for them or lubricants, information about HIV and STDs, discussions of gender identity, gender expression, “harmful gender stereotypes,” and sexual orientation, the dangers of “heteronormativity,” how to give sexual consent, erections, orgasms, ejaculation, masturbation, tips on foreplay, how to “come,” how to “come out,” LGBTQ+, same-sex sexual activity, normalization of kinky and perverse sexuality, attacks on masculinity, femininity, and the traditional family structure, gender vocabulary lessons, i.e., third gender, trans, queer gender, non-binary, gender fluid, gender neutral, agender, bigender, two-spirits, anal sex, pederasty, sex trafficking, and non-conforming students, videos of how to pleasure partners, how to get secret abortions, BDSM (bondage, domination, sadomasochism), body fluid (urinating on each other) or blood play, fisting, various methods of intercourse, sex toys, same-sex role playing, and other sexual debauchery, all in the name of student sexual health.

One sex education book “teaches kids they can be a boy, a girl, both, neither, gender queer, or gender fluid, etc. and that adults guess a child’s gender based on body parts.” 

As one school observer put it, “The LGBTQ movement demands that homosexual relationships be presented to children as good, healthy, and equal in every way to heterosexuality within man-woman marriage. Many sex ed developers and providers are all too happy to comply.”

Abstinence or marriage rarely appear in sex education curricula. Some states like California forbid the teaching of “abstinence-only” sex education, as opposed to “comprehensive” sex education curriculaStates vary widely in what sex education is currently promoted or allowedPlanned Parenthood is the single largest provider of sex education.

All this while some studies indicate failure rates as high as 87% for school sex education programs.This is why public school sex education can be more accurately described as sex propaganda.

Corporations are selling sexual propaganda too. Hasbro developed then retracted a troll doll that opponents said promoted pedophilia, a doll with a special button between its legs that when pushed caused the doll to giggle and even “gasp.” This was to be marketed to little girls.

It boggles the mind that any mature, sane adult, particularly parents on the outside and school professionals on the inside of education would endorse much less implement this kind of intentional sexual tsunami for American children and youth.  But it’s happening in schools across the country and now state legislatures are getting into the act passing laws mandating this kind of “sex ed porn.”

Where are the parents? Why are they tolerating this? Even more, why are many of them embracing and endorsing it? What happened to schools being the place where students learned reading, writing, and arithmetic? 

Surely it is not difficult to make a Christian moral case – “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality,” (Gal. 5:19) – against this kind of child and youth sexual abuse, because that is what it is. Children and even youth, though they are growing up in a highly sex-saturated culture, still are not prepared emotionally or otherwise to deal with this onslaught. Yet many parents, teachers, and politicians are energetically promoting immoral sex education in the false belief they are helping children toward sexual maturity and fulfilment. 

Sex propaganda masquerading as sex education in public schools is now a central challenge of our times.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020    

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.    

 

Governors have never met an Executive Order they don’t like. Now they’re using the word “indefinitely” on the end of mask mandates, lockdown restrictions, and social distancing requirements.

Mayors, public health officials, and several city councils have done the same. 

34 states now have statewide mask mandates in effect, including Republican strongholds like Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. Of the holdouts, many are less populated rural ones, although there are notable exceptions. Arizona, Florida, and Georgia have all resisted statewide mandates thus far despite suffering sizable outbreaks, although in AZ and TX the governor has allowed local jurisdictions to issue their own orders, which means many state residents are under a mask mandate anyway. And in Georgia it looks like Brian Kemp is about to drop his lawsuit to prevent cities from issuing mandates, so lots of state residents there should soon be under orders to wear one as well…86 percent of Americans are now wearing masks indoors around other people according to Gallup.”

Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer adopted a different take on “indefinitely,” expanding her power by declaring racism a “public health crisis,” meaning she is now free to use state emergency powers to engage in whatever limitless meddling she wishes to force state employees and perhaps citizens to do her bidding du jour. 

Tyranny, what some call “corona fascism,” comes in many forms and apparently in the United States today its best suit is “public health.” It goes like this. 

  • Identify a virus, 
  • Scare the public via hysterical media, 
  • Opportunistic politicians then issue draconian executive public health orders qua restrictions, shutting down the economy and increasingly everyday life, 
  • Keep changing the goalposts: flatten the curve, have enough beds in hospitals, avoid a second spike, until we get a vaccine, till everyone is safe, so that state and local officials continue to have a reason, in their view, to issue “orders,’
  • Use chaos created by race riots to advance governmental power and control, not over the rioters but over citizens, 
  • Point to science constantly but then ignore science or any consistency by approving, even encouraging, protests for “racial justice” even while continuing to restrict houses of worship, businesses, and more.
  • Insert the word “Indefinitely” to assure the government executive stays “in charge.”

Sports, fairs, concerts, and other public events have now been cancelled well into 2021. Schools and universities are in a condemned if you do, condemned if you don’t scenario with students caught in the middle. 

Ambiguity not confidence is the watchword for our economy if not ever day life.

Meanwhile, we’ve yet to hear reasonable explanations:

  • why COVID-19 is worse and more threatening than a host of other viruses and illnesses that continue to infect people,
  • why lockdowns and cancellations must continue if indeed wearing masks and social distancing are effective, or vice versa,
  • why unilateral actions re COVID-19 somehow do not create a host of collateral damage, some more serious than the virus threat,
  • what the real endgame looks like, other than “Indefinitely.”

Fear is not a worthy substitute for Freedom.  Lockdowns should cease, schools should reopen, sports seasons should be rescheduled, and people should get on with their lives.

Ronald Reagan said, “Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”  I agree, wholeheartedly.  

 

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2020    

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.