Friday, December 16, 2011


Another degraded branch of the Church of England

As well as mocking the Christmas message, they also are pro-Palestinian and pro-homosexual, unsurprisingly



St. Matthews-in-the-City Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand, may be spreading a fair share of holiday drama this season with its controversial Christmas billboard. The church, which has a history of posting provocative signs during the holiday season, has put up a billboard that shows Mary holding a positive pregnancy test (yes, that Mary).

According to 3News, the church hopes that the billboard will “avoid the sentimental [and] trite” and that it will spark thought and lead to conversation. What’s so odd about this reasoning is the fact that Christmas is all about tradition. The holiday, regardless of how people choose to celebrate it, is a reminder of the birth of Jesus Christ, the central figure of the Christian faith.

The new billboard is devoid of any text, and it was purposefully made that way. “We hope to do so with an image and no words. We invite you to wonder what your caption might be,” explains Glynn Cardy, a pastor (“vicar”) at the church. Cardy says that the house of worship wanted people to focus on what it’s like to be a real mother with a real child (it’s not entirely clear how a positive pregnancy test conveys this message — perhaps the look of surprise on Mary’s face?).

The church’s 2009 billboard was arguably more offensive, as it featured an image of Mary and Joseph in bed together. The caption under it read, “Poor Joseph, God was a hard act to follow.”
The most recent billboard was placed outside of the church this week and will remain there until Christmas Day.

SOURCE






Black British watchdog head attacks 'bonkers' use of Human Rights Act

Trevor Phillips, the head of Britain’s equality watchdog, has attacked the “thoroughly bonkers” misuse of the Human Rights Act - and warned that it must not become the “exclusive property of minorities”.

Mr Phillips, who supports the Act, claims that it has “fallen into disrepute” – blaming “grandstanding lawyers” as well as politicians.

The chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission called for the application of the law to be refocused to protect victims rather than criminals.

In a newspaper article, he said the Act had “come to mean the defence of the rights of unpopular minorities – of criminals, terror suspects and illegal immigrants – at the expense of everybody else”.

Mr Phillips said the legislation when used properly could be the “last line of defence” for elderly and vulnerable people who are “at the mercy of people who mistreat or neglect them”.

But he blamed lawyers for using it in other situations as a “combat weapon” in court and also said parliament had set the “pattern of misunderstanding and trivialisation”.

He described one example of how secularists wanted to use the Act to prosecute town councillors for saying prayers before meetings as “nonsense on stilts”.

In the article for the Sunday Times, Mr Phillips wrote: “Almost every morning I am confronted with examples of how the Human Rights Act is being used which any reasonable person would describe as thoroughly bonkers.

“Prison service vans that travel 90 miles to take a prisoner 90 yards; paedophiles free to leer at children in the very parks where they have committed horrific crimes.

“Human rights are not worthy of the name if they do not protect the people we don’t like as well as those we do. “But they must not become the exclusive property of minorities. In a good society, human rights should be about balance and fairness for everyone.”

It comes after earlier this year Mr Phillips’s own organisation came under fire for promoting a culture of “false and petty” complaints about injustice.

A report in August by think tank Civitas claimed the EHRC wasted millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money a year on “slighting” British society, contributed “very little” to creating a fairer society, and ought to be abolished.

SOURCE





When Will Discrimination Against Christians be Banned?

On Dec. 6, the White House released a memorandum instructing the heads of U.S. executive departments and agencies abroad to join in the “struggle to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons” around the world.

In the memorandum, President Barack Obama expressed his concern over a broad swatch of matters in this arena, from “laws that criminalize LGBT status” to “beating citizens simply for joining peaceful LGBT pride celebrations, or killing men, women, and children for their perceived sexual orientation.” At the same time, the president also said, “Under my Administration, agencies engaged abroad have already begun taking action to promote the fundamental human rights of LGBT persons everywhere.”

With all due respect to the president, perhaps this is an all-too-obvious attempt to garner votes from a group that wasn’t that impressed with his performance until he successfully imposed homosexual behavior on the military earlier this year. Yet while he’s doing his best to appeal to that group, Christians around the world continue to be persecuted—to be hunted like animals, then tortured and killed when captured—yet we are still awaiting a serious White House memorandum on their behalf.

Perhaps Christ’s famous words, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first,” are applicable here, for it seems that the president, who long ago abandoned a defense of our nation’s Judeo-Christian underpinnings, is basically abandoning Christians altogether.

The most obvious and recent example is that there is no word of sorrow offered up for the Coptic Christians who have been beaten and shot in Egypt.

Nor is there any noticeable attempt to pressure India into overturning the anti-Christian legislation it has in place—legislation that makes it illegal to convert from Hinduism to Christianity. It is a fact that Hindu fundamentalists emboldened by this legislation have actually begun to bully and aggressively pursue Christians in their country.

Why isn’t the plight of Christians around the world today worthy of a White House memorandum, Mr. President?

SOURCE






New York Rabbi: A Tim Tebow Win Will Cause Christians to Burn Mosques, Bash Gays

By Warner Todd Huston

**UPDATED** Hammerman removes paragraph from story

In the category of bigotry and hatred spares no religion, we find such hatred hiding behind religion in one "Rabbi" Joshua Hammerman of New York City. Hammerman has indulged his inner Father-Coughlin-in-reverse by proclaiming that if Tim Tebow wins the Super Bowl, why, Christians will go on a rampage that will result in the burning of mosques and the bashing of gays. Now, are you ready for some football?

Hammerman disgorged his absurd claims at his New York Jewish Week blog posted on December 12 titled, "My Tim Tebow Problem." It is instead Hammerman’s civility problem. Tim Tebow has nothing to do with this neer do well's extreme hatred of Christians.

Calling Tebow the "poster boy of the Christian right," Hammerman is disgusted by the fact that the footballer -- oh the horrors -- "thanks Jesus after every game." It all makes the "rabbi" expound upon his "fear" about "what will happen if the hulky Denver Bronco quarterback wins the Super Bowl."

And what will happen you might ask? Let's let this so-called rabbi take it from here:

If Tebow wins the Super Bowl, against all odds, it will buoy his faithful, and emboldened faithful can do insane things, like burning mosques, bashing gays and indiscriminately banishing immigrants. While America has become more inclusive since Jerry Falwell’s first political forays, a Tebow triumph could set those efforts back considerably.

Rabbi Coughlin is serious, here. He really thinks that Christians will riot in the street because Tim Tebow is part of a Superbowl winning team. Yeah, because there is such a long contemporary history of Christians taking to the streets and rioting because they are jubilant over football.

He goes on to hyperbolically wonder if "legions of Southern Baptist missionaries" will "hit the college campuses the very next day, spreading this new gospel of Tim?" And he laments that already there is a “Jews for Tebow” Facebook page. This nut will even hate fellow Jews just for admiring the inoffensive Tebow.

But it shouldn't surprise that this anti-Christian bigot might come to these conclusions. The key to this is in how he mischaracterizes Tebow's belief in his God and in himself. Hammerman claims that Tebow is, "absolutely confident that God is on his side." I can see why he might be worried that Tim Tebow might be a new, destructive sort of charismatic leader if he thinks that.

But this is not what Tebow has ever said or even intimated. Tebow has said that God has guided his career but he has not placed himself as equal to God's interests. Only a supremely arrogant man would think God has taken sides with him as opposed to simply being there for him. The arrogance to assume God reveres the man and his goals enough to "side" with him is not what Tebow has displayed. Tebow simply has never exhibited this kind of arrogance. In fact, just the opposite. Hammerman is just wrong in his characterization of Tebow’s Christian character.

This yutz winds up his anti-Christian screed claiming that he doesn't fear Christians -- a claim hard to square with the other ten paragraphs of his piece so chock full of loathing, mistrust, and hatred. Instead he claims he "fears people of certainty."

This is probably the most ignorant part of Rabbi Hammerman's muddled thinking. It isn't "certainty" that causes the problem, rabbi. It is what people do with that certainty that causes the problem. Thomas Aquinas was probably one of the most certain Christians in history yet he is responsible for some of the most loving and peaceful explications of Christian belief in human history. No one is rioting after football games because of Thomas Aquinas!

In this, though, Hammerman proves that he employs a prosaic modernist’s lack of critical thinking. He displays the sort of empty, nihilistic, modernist's blather that assumes that there can be no right or wrong, that everything is relative and anyone who believes in something with anything approaching certainty, then they must be dangerous, unstable, and prone to violence.

But, the problem with this sort of modernist's "thinking" is that it is logically untenable. Hammerman is sure "certainty" is dangerous… yet he is certain that this is a fact! By his empty thinking, then, he is just as dangerous as those rampaging Christians that infests his fevered imagination because, well, he's certain of something, isn't he?

He is hoisted on his own petard with his lack of critical thinking. But his is a perfect example of why most universities and modern liberalism is both dumbing down our nation and growing hatred everywhere its baneful influence appears.

I don’t fear Tim Tebow winning the Super Bowl. I do fear morally deficient cretins like this rabbi infesting in others his rabid hatred of others.

**UPDATE**

Since my criticism of Hammerman's Tebow anti-Christian screed, he's gone into his post and edited out the paragraph I reported here. Hammerman did not note on the story that he edited the piece to remove offensive material. So, down the memory hole goes the truth once again.

I have a screen shot of the original, though. CLICK HERE to see it.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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