That's incredible!!!!!

Every week, I intend to try to bring forth some of the unbelievable stuff that spews from the mouths of so-called "liberals."
Yeah, I know that would be a full-time job for a dozen people (at least), but I don't make enough money to quit my job and hire 11 folks to help me gather all the inanity/insanity.
The topper of the week beats anything that our dear friends north of the 49th parallel have been coming up with. It comes instead from the first openly gay Episcopal bishop in the US of A, Rev. Gene V. Robinson. From the Washington Times' Jon Ward comes this report:
Planned Parenthood should target "people of faith" to promote abortion rights and comprehensive sex education, the Episcopal Church's first openly homosexual bishop told a gathering in the District yesterday.
"In this last election we see what the ultimate result of divorce from communities of faith will do to us," New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson said during Planned Parenthood's fifth annual prayer breakfast.
"Our defense against religious people has to be a religious defense. ... We must use people of faith to counter the faith-based arguments against us," he said. ...
And there's more:
"We have allowed the Bible to be taken hostage, and it is being wielded by folks who would use it to hit us over the head. We have to take back those Scriptures," he said.
And more yet:
"We need to teach people about nuance, about holding things in tension, that this can be true and that can be true, and somewhere between is the right answer. It's a very adult way of living, you know.
"What an unimaginative God it would be if God only put one meaning in any verse of Scripture," he said.
For the whole story, here's the link: http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050415-102359-6226r
Now, the Irrev. Mr. Robinson appears to be at odds with his church's teaching on abortion, which is not as severe as the Roman Catholic ban, but stresses that it should be used only in "extreme circumstances."
And his attempt to define God as having an ambiguous message looks a lot more like an act of self-service than a faithful description of the Almighty.
It seems to me -- someone who is not a Biblical scholar by any means -- that God had this thing about ambiguity. It wasn't part of his vocabulary. Shades of grey? Hardly.
In fact, in most of the pronouncements attributed to God in the Bible, the statements tend to make the blatantly obvious perfectly clear. Nuance? Is that anything like an old ance?
Is it any wonder that much of the rest of Episcopaldom is at odds with their North American brethren?

Do you have Canadian values?

About a year ago, I recall Paul Martin, leader of the Liberal Organized Crime Family of Canada (hereinafter referred to as The LOCF), railing against his opponents, saying they lacked "Canadian values."
So, let us examine -- based on what has transpired over the past 12 months -- what Canadian values, Paul Martin style, mean...
1. Dishonesty. The LOCF has lied repeatedly. Led by Don Paul, they have lied about the LOCF involvement in Adscam; they have lied about their commitment to health care; they have lied about their commitment to the military.
2. Theft. See Adscam. Say no more.
3. Disloyalty. The LOCF has in many respects turned its backs on the U.S. of A., even in matters of defending its own territory.
4. Immorality. See gay marriage and the plans (now scuttled) to go to Europe to check out the legalized prostitution businesses there. [And do you think they were going to sample the wares while they were there?]
5. Censorship. See Bishop Henry and the latest flap in Calgary over the silencing of a Web site.
6. Corruption. See Adscam and Earnscliffe.
Are those your values, Canadians?
Responses welcome.

a whale of a good time

Seems that there's a beluga whale in the Delaware River above Philadelphia.
TV reports indicate that the whale is from Quebec.
Could it be that the whale is trying to hide from the Liberal organized crime family? Does this whale carry some of Godfather Paul's secrets? Or maybe Godfather Chretien's secrets? Does it think that hiding in New Jersey is a safe bet?
Stay tuned.

"Gay marriage" can never be marriage

The debate over "gay marriage" continues. It's mostly being debated by our friends in Canada, but it still continues here in the U.S. of A.
There should be no debate. Gays can never marry.
Of course, I base this upon a definition of marriage that has been in place since shortly after men and women began to create new life upon this hungry planet. It is not a "religious" definition -- even atheist nations hold to it. Marriage is the union of a man and a woman.
Those who advocate "gay marriage" have a distorted view of what marriage really is. They view it as a psychological-sexual union and an economic partnership. They are missing the third dimension... the dimension of the procreative nature of the male-female bonding and the accompanying responsibility of rearing those offspring that come from such a bonding. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read Sex for Dummies. I'm sure it's out there; there are guides for dummies for just about everything else.)
Technology can do wondrous things, but this is a case where technology cannot trump biology. The elements aren't there for two men to create new life, nor are they there for two women in sexual congress.
Those who argue for "gay marriage" say that they are discriminated against because they are not allowed to marry. I would submit that they can never take on the full nature of marriage. Even though they may have, at earlier points in their lives, fathered/given birth to children, and even though they may be quite competent and dedicated as parents, their same-sex union cannot bring new life into the equation without outside help. That is a special burden that has been placed upon the male-female marriage by the forces of biology. No declaration can change that.
Should there be some way for truly committed same-sex couples to achieve recognition of their commitment to each other? Probably. I'm just not sure how to do it without further undermining marriage as we have known it.
Marriage provides a structure for the larger society, so the larger society can function better.
Aaahhhh... there's the rub. Structure.
The radical left among us have this thing about structure. They hate it. They'll do anything to destroy it. Any imperfection, no matter how arcane, is cause for dismissal.
Is marriage perfect? No. Are the people in it perfect? No. (As far as I know, there was only one perfect person ever to exist on this planet, and He was killed for it.) But is there a better way to provide structure for a society? Would you trust a government to do it? Hardly.
Just because marriage is now limited to male-female partnerships doesn't mean discrimination against male-male and female-female partnerships because of the special burden the male-female partnership assumes.
Just because that doesn't please certain far-far-far-far-leftists among us, they would prefer to render marriage unrecognizable -- and therefore, no longer definable by past standards.
That would, to me, be like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Oh, you say we do that now? It's called abortion?
Well.
Never mind.

The wall doesn't work both ways

Much has been made about the “wall” separating church and state.
Yet, it appears that the “wall” applies only to church informing state.
The more worrisome thing is the separation of state and church. If you accept the Jeffersonian principle, you must accept that the state has no business telling a religion what it can and cannot preach. Yet, there are those who profess to be “liberals” who have no qualms about trying to muscle their way into influencing the teachings of a church.
Such a battle is going on now in Canada, where twice in the past year, a Roman Catholic bishop has run afoul of the liberal establishment. The reaction to Bishop Frederick B. Henry of Calgary is very instructive.
Last spring, prior to the Canadian elections, Bishop Henry was critical of Liberal Party leader Paul Martin’s stance on same-sex marriage. This earned him the wrath of Revenue Canada. A bureaucratic functionary called the bishop and, according to reports, threatened the have the charitable tax status of the church examined (read: revoked) if the bishop didn’t, in effect, shut up. Almost a year later, the church still has its charitable status. However, the functionary still has his job, despite promises that he would be at least disciplined, if not terminated. Kevin Steel reported on this in The Western Standard: http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/index.cfm?page=article&article_id=527
Now, the bishop is in further trouble with the elites. In pastoral letters, he has stood up against the proposal before Canada’s Parliament to legalize same-sex marriage. In being true to the tenets of his faith, he reiterated his opposition to the proposal on the Diocese of Calgary Web site and in his recurring column in the Calgary Sun http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Calgary/Bishop_Fred_Henry/home.html . What that has earned him is a pair of complaints filed by gay activists. Two weeks ago, Bishop Henry held a news conference to discuss the complaints. The Canadian Press reported http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1112231085323_10/?hub=Canada
"Those that support same-sex marriage want to shut the churches out of this important debate," the bishop said. “Those who favour same-sex marriage have been given a full opportunity to state their views on the issue. But now they are saying anyone who speaks out against same-sex marriage is discriminating against homosexuals."
The bishop says he will not be silenced. “We have filed our response (documentation equivalent to two moderately-sized telephone books,” he wrote in an exchange with this blog.
For all the noise, it is a relatively simple matter. Bishop Henry cannot stand by and endorse same-sex marriage by remaining silent on the issue. It contravenes one of the most fundamental teachings of his church. If a person cannot speak to his faith’s beliefs, then he cannot speak at all. And if that person, acting on the tenets of his or her faith, can be penalized to the extent that the charitable status of the church is lifted for failure to agree, then you have a situation -- right here in North America -- where the churches are only allowed to preach what the state allows them to preach. Freedom of religion is, for all intents and purposes, shot to hell. Bishop Henry noted that in his letter…
"The proposed legislation does not offer protection to faith groups from being penalized with respect to their charitable status if they do not agree with the proposed redefinition of marriage."
This is not unlike what we all witnessed (and still witness) in the Communist world. There are the “official” churches, which toe the Party line. A defeat for Bishop Henry may well mean that in supposedly free and “liberal” Canada, religion is no better off than it is in Communist China.
And don’t think that the anti-faith forces in the U.S. of A. aren’t watching.
Bishop Henry wrote to this blogger that the debate is not about him, but about marriage. I agree... with the caveat that he now stands as the symbol of the forces of freedom of religion... a freedom which includes the right, duty and responsibility to speak out when the larger society is careening away from the principles of that faith. As a bishop, he has an especial responsibility to teach his flock -- and, indirectly, all of us -- about the tenets of the faith. Any movement to limit that expression is a limit on freedom of religion.
The wall separating church and state, a wise one conceived in the early days of the U.S., has to work both ways. Otherwise, there is no wall... and no freedom of religion, for that matter.

greetings and salutations

Sorry to disappoint those of you who expected a hockey-oriented blog. Though I will at times comment upon what is my favorite sport (the NHL's absence pains me deeply), I will be looking at a variety of topics as strike my fancy at a given moment.
In point of introduction, I am basically an educated redneck, a practicing Christian who hopes that some day he'll get it right, a decrier of the statism (and I'm opting for politeness there) that passes for liberalism these days, and a whole lot of other things. I believe in humor and wit and sometimes even attempt it myself with varying degrees of failure (and the odd success).
As I progress with this project and become more technically astute, I will offer links to other blogs and writers who offer legitimate food for thought... even some with whom I tend not to agree. Until then, you're likely to see a lot of URLs here. Sorry to have to make you copy and paste.
Any thoughts, suggestions, etc. will be welcomed -- except those who would tell me to go to Hell. I've already been there and intend someday to go back. It's a quiet village about an hour west of Detroit along the Hell Creek. They've got a restaurant, a fishing supply shop and a party store.
Until then, pax.