Contributor Doug writes: The sage old adage succinctly reminds us, “Actions speak louder than words.” How true. I watched an interesting documentary on TV last night about reading body language, specifically, facial expressions. In the 3,000 known types of facial expressions, trained analysts can detect “hot spots” which do not necessarily indicate lying, but do tell the analyst to keep studying the subject of observation to see a possible pattern that would indicate lying. To paraphrase one analyst who simply but wisely noted, “When trying to find the truth from a facial expression or the spoken word, always go with the facial expression.”
Of course, there are always two sides to every argument. But like with facial expressions, follow the actions over the words. Don’t trust what politicians tell you, and don’t even look at their record a year or two before the election, but look at their record farther back to see their true beliefs and stances. I wish such was not the case, but sadly, it usually is nowadays.
Violence vs. peace is a no-brainer. In the 60’s blacks and the whites who supported them peacefully protested to attain their duly deserved civil rights and equality, such as in public accommodations, transportation, education, and last but not least, at the polls on Election Day. For their peaceful efforts, they were savagely beaten, knocked down with fire hoses and had dogs set on them. Churches were burned and some blacks terrorized and even murdered. Who do you suppose was right and wrong in that argument?
The Minutemen is a civilian based organization that simply observes illegal border crossings into the US and notifies the US Border Patrol. It is really just a large block watch organization. Minutemen are allowed to be armed, but only for their own personal self defense. They have no arrest powers, any more than the right to citizen’s arrest that we all have, and they are sternly instructed to not even approach or interact with invading illegal immigrants. Their only duty and authority is to observe and report. The Minutemen have received countless death threats and vile hate mail for their efforts. And yet these Minutemen have also been credited with saving countless lives by rendering and summoning emergency medical assistance to illegal immigrants found in the desert severely ill, injured, unconscious, or suffering from severe dehydration, starvation, and heat exhaustion. In many cases, Minutemen saved the lives of these law-breaking individuals. There are countless reasons, both for the sake of our own nation, as well as the sake of other, law-abiding immigrants who are trying to enter our country the proper way, that our borders and immigration laws should be enforced. But that would take a whole other essay to even begin to delve into all that subject matter. For now, suffice to say that Romans, Chapter 13 admonishes us that God put our government in place, and as such, the government’s laws must be obeyed. But I ask you, your own personal views on this controversial subject aside, who are the real bad guys, the ones (presumably illegal immigrants and/or those who support them) making death threats and sending vile hate mail, or the ones who only call law enforcement officials when they see a federal crime being committed, and only physically intervene when the violator is in dire need of lifesaving food, water, shelter, and medical aid?
Connecticut’s preeminent pro-life/pro-family organization, the Family Institute of Connecticut (FIC), has also received vulgar, vitriolic hate mail and threats because of its strong and ardent stance against those who endanger the sanctity of life, traditional marriage (defined as between one man and one woman), and the family in general. A quick perusal of FIC’s blog during controversial discussions will often display the anger and vitriol from some members of gay advocacy. FIC’s response: numerous peaceful and even prayerful protests in various public areas, usually at or near the State Capitol in Hartford. Having now been placated by unconstitutional judicial activism in this state, Connecticut gays are not only peaceful; they’re down right joyous. And why shouldn’t they? They won, even if unconstitutionally so by a biased court that usurped the rights of the electorate in a matter that should have been decided by legislation, or better yet, referendum if we can ever some day get to have one. And why we can’t now is another long story. Look, however, 3,000 miles to our west and see the violence, rioting, chaos and anarchy now going on in California by gays and gay activists. Churches are being raided during services, one elderly peaceful protester was viciously and physically attacked and had a crucifix knocked out of her hand. By the way, this tactic for gays is nothing new. In the early 70’s they also raided the convention of the American Psychiatric Association in San Francisco, and eventually literally bullied the cowering and politically correct APA into capitulating and removing homosexuality as a mental disorder from its clinical texts in rushed, hushed hearings, and despite protest of many of its own professional members in 1973, ironically, the same pivotal and abhorrent year that gave us Roe vs. Wade. Again, your own personal views on this controversial subject aside also, who do you suppose are the good guys and bad guys in this argument?
A witty friend of mine at work once quipped, “Have you ever noticed that in an argument in which two people are both yelling and screaming at each other, you can’t tell which one is the (expletive deleted)?” True enough, but when we observe lions mixing it up with lambs, the real picture is much clearer.
I saw one particularly disgusting, although not at all uncommon photo in my morning newspaper today. It was a (presumably) a gay male protester in California, dressed in “drag” (as a woman), and displaying a of sign blathering on about civil rights for gays, saying “Civil rights for all.” They just don’t get it. And most of them won’t.
Again, just peruse FIC’s blog and see the defiant, belligerent, hateful and enraged posts that come from gays and their proponents whenever the issue of religion is ever even inferred. Much like when Dracula sees a crucifix, it simply makes them go “batty”! (Sorry, I just couldn’t resist that one!) The fact is that many, if not most gays are either non-religious, or worse yet, despise religion, especially if it interferes with their gay agenda. Thus, those who so bristle at faith can never truly understand the genuine definition of “civil rights.” What blacks protested and bled for in the 60’s were legitimate civil rights. Gays have no civil right to marry each other or to engage in gay sexual conduct. And by the way, the flawed law of Roe vs. Wade aside, mothers, contrary to popular but erroneous secular belief, have no so-called “reproductive rights” or “right to choose” when it involves killing their baby in the womb, and for that matter, now in the era of Obama, outside of the womb, an atrocity I thought I would never see in my lifetime, and in my beloved country.
Government does not give anyone civil rights. Free and just governments only articulate and hopefully defend civil rights. Civil rights are given to each person by God. When I was a kid and protested about this or that, my father, the benevolent dictator that he was, didn’t want to hear it, and always gave the same reply, “My house, my rules.” True enough. He or she who pays the bills, including the rent or mortgage, gets to dictate the rules. Likewise, He (God) who creates the people gets to decide what rights they shall and shall not have. For all the hot air about separation of Church and State (another often misused concept that I currently don’t have time or space to expound upon), our country and our government were also formed by God, as recognized by our founding (human) fathers in our Declaration of Independence. So like it or not, our country is steeped in God, as are our civil rights and those who cannot or will not first accept God as He is cannot and will not be able or willing to grasp the next concept in that logical sequence.
Once we recognize that God is the root of our civil rights, only then can we grasp that He wishes us to be treated equal in most aspects of our lives, such as in restaurants, on buses, in schools and in the voting booth. But He does not want us to abuse and profane His wonderful, loving and sacred gift of sexual pleasure, intended only as a means of procreation and as an act of expressing love, by engaging in it outside of the bounds of the sacrament of marriage. He also does not wish us to engage in homosexual behavior, or defile marriage by entering in what only secularists accept as same sex marriage. He also angrily detests infanticide, and I offer no apology for my intentional and unabashed absence of a soft, deceptive, flowery, trendy euphemism. It is what it is, and I refuse to sugarcoat what it truly is like some others do. Enough of that double-talking, politically correct nonsense. We need more truth, and as a culture and society, we are literally dying because of our abandonment of truth.
Speaking of absolute truth, Archbishop Fulton Sheen once keenly observed that truth is still the truth, regardless if everyone believes it, only some people believe it, or nobody believes it. God’s word is absolute truth, a concept difficult to fathom for many people in our secularist world, which increasingly embraces a moral relativist viewpoint, conveniently molded to the whims and desires of each person who engages in such shallow and fallacious introspection. We even have certain churches that also encourage such baseless and feel-good moral relativism. On the crowded highway to Perdition, these stray clergy members will be rightly positioned in the very front of the traffic jam, and the very first ones to feel the heat and smell the sulfur for the countless souls they are leading to unnecessary destruction. Gays have no civil rights to act gay or to engage in so-called same sex marriage. Some, if not all gays never chose to be gay, and they very legitimately need our sympathy, understanding and most of all, our prayers for their unsolicited suffering. We must also always bear in mind that we are called to hate the sin, but love the sinner. Gays are called to be celibate, and as each of us has our own individual crosses to bear and to offer up to God as His Son suffered and languished on the cross for us, so must gays also bear and offer this cross to God. That is an absolute truth. There simply is no getting around that. The commonly used analogy that compares the civil rights struggle of blacks in the 60’s to the so-called civil rights struggle of gays today is abjectly false and utterly absurd. The two causes have nothing at all in common, and in fact, are as worlds apart as are Heaven and Hell. One struggle was of a true moral virtue, and the other is a grave and intrinsic evil.
In another photo in my morning newspaper today, I saw a five year-old little girl napping on the ground during a California gay protest. Next to this adorable and purely innocent little child, someone placed a sign in front of her saying, “Mommy & Mama, Please make the scary bigots go away!” Such an opportunistic manipulation of a child is a serous sin that enrages God (“…but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea” Matthew 18: 6), and just one minor example of how gays corrupt children, as gay propaganda and subtle indoctrination in some public schools has already been foisted upon vulnerable and impressionable children as young as the one depicted in the news photo. Also, notice the commonly used tactic of gay protesters, the manipulation of innocuous emotions, words and phrases, twisted around to falsely focus guilt on the innocent and away from the truly guilty. Thus, dissenters of the gay agenda are “homophobes,” “bigots,” and in some cases even worse. This is an evil but cunning strategy. For someone weak in faith and/or fact, he or she could be easily duped to believe the intentionally deceptive and false illusion that the dissenters of the gay agenda are the bad guys, after all, what decent person would ever agree with someone with such an ugly label as a “homophobe” or a “bigot”? Father John Corapi of EWTN, an Army veteran himself, often says that Satan is a masterful tactician. Indeed, and so are his followers, who are clever and dangerous wolves in sheep’s clothing. As Jesus taught us, only good trees will bear good fruit, and the rest of the trees will be burned in the fire. Our Blessed Mother at Fatima strongly urged us to pray and do penance to avoid the needless wrath of God and subsequent destruction that we now seem to be inevitably and cavalierly bringing upon ourselves, and in the belief of many, including yours truly, much sooner rather than much later.
There is absolute truth, and popularity and agreement don’t even enter the equation. Another sage, succinct and common phrase tells us “Talk is cheap.” Often, it is. In the old western movies, good guys and bad guys were readily detectable by the unwritten but generally understood rule of who wore the white hats and who wore the black hats, even before the shoot-out scenes commenced. But in our real and modern day life, where hats are now, in most regions, an obsolete fashion, their color-coded messages are also no longer necessary. Don’t necessarily ignore the talk (except for maybe of most of our modern day politicians), but don’t solely rely on it either, kind of like what President Reagan recommended in our foreign policy with the then Soviet Union, “Trust, but verify.” Trust the words, but only when you can verify them with actions. Such analysis will be helpful in separating the chaff from the wheat, fact from fiction, wolves from sheep, and in the end, the discernment of absolute truth, which is the only true measure by which we can define and detect good and evil, and thus accordingly know for which causes to support and to oppose.
And as another absolute truth bluntly teaches us, in the end, there is either Heaven or Hell for all of us.
(Recommended reading: Matthew 5: 13-17, 7: 15-21, and 12: 33-38.)
-Doug-
