Li'l Big Lies
These are relatively short li'l essays on a broad range of topics, all designed to topple some portion of the pile of rot that is THE BIG LIE! There's a lot of cluttered thinking going on out there, so check back again some time soon for more commentary on it...
Inborn Homosexuality
The New Millenium
NEA-Part 1
NEA-Part 2
Fed-Ed
Guns Kill
Environmental Extremism
The Crayola Menace!
Somehow it has become accepted general knowledge that one is born homosexual when such is not the case. I've stood and argued with supposedly intelligent, educated people who will cite a couple of flawed studies to back up their feelings on the subject. To them the matter is closed, but I beg to differ!
It may be cliche, but there is truth to the saying "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" One should have the brains to see that the opposite sexes are, by nature, suited for reproduction with each other, the organs and plumbing functional for that purpose if the owner of the equipment chooses to use it that way.
Often the study (Simon LeVay, 1991) finding that homosexuals' hypothalamus size is smaller compared to heterosexuals' is cited by those that claim homosexuality is innate. The study is pointed to as indicating that homosexuality is caused because their hypothalamus is small, but neglects to follow up on the possibility that the hypothalamus is small because the subject was gay. Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling of Brown University said of LeVay's findings, "My freshman biology students know enough to sink this study." Much of the data and studies done attempting to point to a genetic cause for homosexuality are flawed in one way or another. Improper use/lack of controls, small sample size, and lack of accounting for different causal factors mar the majority. For example, the study using sets of homosexual twins (Drs. Bailey and Pillard, 1991) neglects common environmental factors, as opposed to genetics, as a possible explanation. In fact, one of the doctors (Bailey) went so far as to argue that the 48% of the twin brothers studied that WEREN'T gay like their siblings must have had an ENVIRONMENTAL reason NOT to be! I will predict that the more that is discovered through gene mapping, the less it will look like our chromosomes have anything to do with it if the job is done by objective people. What are the terms "alternate lifestyle" or "sexual preference" if it's an inborn trait? Why do so many homosexuals actively recruit others if they are born that way? How is the "gay gene" passed along when homosexuals generally produce no progeny? Is there a "bisexual gene"? The whole search for hereditary causes for every flaw (from alcoholism to being overweight) is nothing but an attempt to absolve everyone of all personal responsibility.
I'm against quotas for anyone, but especially for homosexuals. Homosexuality is not a civil rights issue. It truly boils down to a matter of what they do as opposed to what they are. Being gay is not an immutable characteristic like being black or a woman. Homosexuality is defined by one's actions.
Hey, everybody has their kinks...Why aren't we looking for a genetic predisposition in people who have sex with farm animals and latex inflatable dolls?!?
If we're going to make special allowances for someone's homosexuality it's only a matter of time before pederasts and other perverts (polygamists, sado-masochists, etc.) demand special privileges and group rights. Should you scoff, consider the notion that NAMBLA (The North- American Man-Boy Love Association), a group that actively seeks to push acceptance of pedophilia, marches regularly with "gay pride" groups, and has a welcome place in their parades and organizations. How long will it be before we start demanding state sanctioned marriage between the foot-fetishist and his beloved pair of pumps?!?
Many accuse Christians of hating homosexuals because we believe that the bible is clear in naming the homosexual act as a sin. William Donohue of the Catholic League points out that nobody accuses Christians of hating heterosexuals because we teach that adultery is a sin! Even some well-meaning but erroneous Christians will accuse their brethren of hate-mongering when they decry homosexuality. They say that because God is love, we shouldn't criticize any aberrant behavior. A truly loving Father, however, will tell his children when they are doing something wrong and try to correct them when they are engaging in things that will cause them harm. God is also a just God. We, as He does, should attempt to hate the sin but love the sinner. We are called to exercise judgment, not to be judgmental. There is a big gap between tolerance and acceptance, though.
Because it's contrary to popular opinion, the truth that homosexuals can change if they are willing caused much anger from the left when advertised recently. "Hate speech," they cried! There are many who live their lives as evidence of the truth of 2 Corinthians 5:17 which says, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." That "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:22) is a reality for homosexual and heterosexual sinner alike, and believing on the Lord Jesus Christ is the remedy for us all!
For some time before and after January 1, 2000 there have been references to Y2K being the first year of a new century/millennium...I'm not sure if this counts as a big lie or simply massive ignorance, but it irritates the daylights out of me! The year 2000 is the last year of the Twentieth Century, not the first year of the Twenty-First Century!!!
Even Bill Clinton reveled in the stupidity on New Year's Eve 1999 with a big millennial (you should pardon the expression) blowout, though perhaps he knew better and just didn't want to crush the impression that he was the president that led us over "the bridge to the Twenty-First Century".
This should not be that hard to figure out. When you have ten eggs, you begin counting with 1 and proceed until you've counted the last one as ten. There is no egg number "0". From the front of the egg to the back of the egg it is counted as one egg. You are not done counting the first ten eggs until you have counted that last egg. The same principle would hold true if you were counting a hundred eggs or two thousand! After the first two thousand eggs, you would begin counting the next thousand with the number 2001.
Now, let's think of the eggs as years. The monk who designed the current A.D. (anno Domini, or Year Of Our Lord) calendar may have been off a few years in his attempt to start it at the time of Christ's arrival on Earth, but the fact remains that he started counting them with the first being the year 1. There was no year zero (In fact, as Thomas Sowell so rightly points out in one of his columns, the idea of zero was a concept imported to Western civilization from the Hindus, there being no "0" in Roman numerals in use at the time the calendar was instituted). From January 1 to December 31 it was still considered the year 1. Year 2 didn't begin until January 1 and it ran until December 31 of that year, through 10, 100, and so on, right up until the year 2000. We won't finish counting the two-thousandth year until December 31 of the year 2000. The first year of the next hundred, let alone the next thousand (millennium, if you will), won't start and can't be counted until January 1, 2001!!!
If you won't believe me, ask England's Royal Greenwich Observatory...In a formal response to a flood of inquiries, they stated that "It is clear that the start of the new millennium will be 1 January 2001." The end!
This shouldn't be that difficult to figure out...Will you people that insist on referring to the year 2000 as the beginning of the new millennium first learn to count to ten then work your way up from there before you open your mouths again on the subject?!? YEESH!!!
The NEA, Parts 1 & 2
As a full-time art teacher in the public school system for 13 years (God help me!), I think I have a right to an opinion on both of the NEA's (National Endowment for the Arts and the National Education Association). Here in NEA-Part 1 and NEA-Part 2 I will endeavor to put out my two cents on each.
The National Endowment for the Arts should be abolished, plain and simple. Art produced should be determined by the free market or by an artist's pure creative drive to make it. Whatever happened to the cliche of an artist suffering for his art? I'll tell you what became of the starving artist...He's suckin' at the government TIT!!!
That liberals and certain artists cry "censorship" every time congress threatens to cut or eliminate NEA funding is ridiculous. Am I censoring Hillary Clinton because I refuse to plunk down good money for her piece of statist pap "It Takes a Village"? Of course not! In the free market, she's allowed to put out any kind of crap she wants. That doesn't mean I should have to buy it or like it! As a taxpayer, when my tax dollars go to pay for things that cut across my grain (photos of bull whips in anuses, crucifixes in urine, performance artists wasting good chocolate and throwing AIDS tainted blood at the audience, etc.) I have every reason to be outraged. Let the twisted beings enamoured of such things pay for it themselves.
When government, funded by the taxpayers, spends money, it has the responsibility to oversee how the money is used. This on the face of it invites censorship when government supports the arts. Using its supporters' "logic", the NEA itself is guilty of censoring certain artists (i.e. anyone who's not a flaming liberal with an ax to grind) by NOT choosing them for grants! Anyone who is seriously against censoring the arts and for freedom of speech should not want to see government's hand in the arts AT ALL!!!
Our national teacher's union (National Education Association) has no other purpose than to propagandize and indoctrinate children in the ideological orthodoxy of the extreme liberal left. Our state association is bad enough to the point that it's almost a baby N.E.A., but at least it's local enough to be of use and provide some protections/services to it's members. I resent paying a large part of my union dues to an organization like the NEA that does absolutely nothing but promote political activity diametrically opposed to my philosophy.
I first became aware of this early in my teaching career when I got a directive from my union in my mailbox telling me I should oppose the confirmation of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. I was following the hearings quite closely back then, and can remember that time as my personal awakening to an interest in politics. I was appalled that a supposedly non-political appointment was being turned into a political three-ring circus, and when I realized that my money was being used to support the idiocy I was apoplectic! Since then, I've been treated by the NEA to phone calls on behalf of various favored liberal candidates, other voting directives in my mailbox, and liberal propaganda littering up the teacher's lounge. My mandatory union dues go toward the production of a publication called "NEA Today". I wanted to toss my cookies when I got a copy of this rag in the mail and opened it up to Bill Clinton's big huge face on the cover prior to his first election as president. The lovefest in the ensuing article made me want to scream!
Our national conventions are shrines to gay advocacy, multiculturalism, extreme environmentalism, abortion "rights", historical revisionism, moral relativism, and goofy, trendy, counterproductive educational theories designed to keep bored teachers happy and keep students ignorant and ripe for voting Democrat! If only they'd devote as much time and energy to teaching kids to read, write, and do math. The N.E.A. does not operate in the best interest of teachers, students, or education in general, and I'm tired of paying for it (Try getting a job as a non-union teacher. Try being a teacher who bucks the union system...Talk about an ostracized pariah). Somebody stop the wheel; I wanna get off!!!
The federal government has no place at all in the public education business. Local school districts and the states are in a better position to know what the needs of their students are.
The Department of Education at the federal level was created as a way for Jimmy Carter to scratch the backs of the teacher's unions for scratching his prior to his election. Beyond being bloated, it is redundant, most of its functions already being performed in overlapping fashion by other agencies.
I overheard a woman at work saying she didn't know about "that partial-birth abortion thing", but that she was going to vote for Bill Clinton because Bob Dole was going to "gut education". It said much that she'd choose a federal bureaucracy over the life of an almost-born baby, but beyond that, she, like many squishy thinking liberals, apparently doesn't see the big picture.
When we make and feed a top-heavy educational (or any kind, for that matter) bureaucracy, what we are in effect doing is sending ALL our money to Washington and letting them send it back to us (whatever of it that isn't eaten up in administrative costs) at the local level in drips-and-drabs with strings attached. Even if the tenth amendment to our constitution didn't exist, you'd think the ninnies that think throwing more money at education is the way to fix it could understand that the money would be better off to just stay here locally to begin with! One of the best things we could do for our constitution and education all around is to do away with the Department of Education altogether.
Every time there's a new shooting tragedy in a school or elsewhere, the same mantra goes up from the gun-control crowd (which obviously includes the media) for measures that incrementally would lead to a total ban on guns. In the mind of these people, it is the gun that is evil, and if we'd just get rid of them all, there'd be no more killing.
Guns are inanimate objects. They are tools. They have no motive beyond that of their user, any more than a chair does. If one is tired and chooses to sit on a chair to rest, it is being used toward a good end. If one decides to pick that same chair up and bash somebody over the head with it, it loses its benign capital! At that point, it is not the chair that is evil but the person who uses it with evil intent. Every day, people are killed with baseball bats, rocks, kitchen knives, and other objects. Why do we not hear calls for banning these things?
Guns (even scary-looking "assault rifles") may be used to feed or defend one's family. Our founding fathers intended that the citizenry be armed not only for our common defense, but as a bulwark against tyranny from our own government. This is the clear meaning to the second amendment, which states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Samurai and Nazis both disarmed the populace before oppressing them. If the mere existence of guns is the real problem, why isn't the rate of gun deaths sky-high in Switzerland where everyone able to hold one is expected to own and use one as part of its militia? Why does the murder rate go down in those states where conceal/carry laws are enacted (See University of Chicago professor John Lott's book "More Guns, Less Crime")?
"Reasonable", "common sense" initiatives for gun registration or licensing gun owners (driving a car is a privilege, having a gun is a right) is just a hop, skip, and jump away from confiscation. Instead of passing more laws restricting guns, let's enforce the ones already on the books. There is much truth to the cliche that "if guns are outlawed, outlaws will have them". Anyone willing to commit a crime with a gun is not going to abide by any law telling them not to have the gun in the first place. All such laws do is disarm the honest, law-abiding citizen, leaving them vulnerable to predatory scoff-laws. Let's leave the poor, misunderstood guns alone and try just punishing the criminals who misuse them for a change!
"Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen." (Romans 1:25)
Back when I was young and foolish, I was quite the ecological nut! I was awash with angst and despair that man was a cancer upon the Earth, and that if we didn't wise up, there'd be big trouble. We were taught that because of pollution we were headed for another ice age, and that we had only ten years worth of fossil fuels left at the rate we were going. Well, that was back in the 70's, and here it is the year 2000. More sophisticated detection and retrieval methods have yielded more than enough usable deposits of coal and oil, but we're now being informed that global warming is the threat du jour. Now which is it: freeze or fry?!?
There is, despite what you might hear in the national media, far from a consensus in the scientific community on the conclusion that global warming is a fact, as opposed to a half-baked theory. It's even been proposed that an increase in overall climatic temperature could even be beneficial. I have news: according to scripture, the Earth will burn, but not because of a depleted ozone layer or the greenhouse effect (See 2Peter 3:10)! The Kyoto treaty is not so much a tool for radical environmentalism as it is a Marxist's means of imposing penalties on producing nations, placing the economic burden for compliance on industrialized countries (China and other communist nations that won't comply will have an edge over us), and generally promoting socialistic wealth redistribution on a global level! It should not be ratified. Let Al Gore pout all he wants.
Recycling is all the rage now-a-days. The only problem is that most programs cost too much and use up more resources than they save. Besides all the messing around sorting and washing your garbage being a pain in the butt, when they soak, mulch, crush, compact, melt, chemically treat and reconstitute your paper, glass, metal and plastic it amounts to cutting off a leg to save a toe!
Guilt and fear are wonderful brainwashing agents, a beautiful means of control. The programs in schools that aim hysterical environmental dogma at children are ways to indoctrinate them with the liberal ideology in general, and make them easier to dominate as adults. When they are scared with doomsday scenarios as a kid, they'll be less likely to put up a fuss when they loose their farm, get a huge fine, or end up in jail because they accidentally ran over a kangaroo rat with their tractor while they were plowing their field.
Feelings are no substitute for common sense and logic. I know it makes a person FEEL good to FEEL concerned about the environment, but concern doesn't always help put bread on someone else's table. I remember how morally superior I felt considering my high school sweetheart (She was head of the school's show-corp and a real disco queen) shallow because of her lack of overwhelming anxiety that our planet was in danger of ecological disaster...All she wanted to do was dance! I've since come to the conclusion that her's was the healthier attitude.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not for hunting truly endangered species to extinction for their pelts and feathers to suit man's vanity, but when men lose their jobs or property (including the free use of it) because of a spotted owl or some insect, then something's a little out of balance! I'm not for gutting the rain forest, but by not letting the natives of that area use and develop the land keeps them poor and underdeveloped, and again is basically an attempt by the left to control economic circumstances. The rain forest (formerly known as the jungle) is not some mystic place where the delicate balance of its eco-system will tremble and fall as a single living organism if somebody wants to clear some land and better himself there, any more than any other piece of property on Earth. It's there for and is meant to be subdued and enjoyed by man. The notion of the Amazonian rain forest as the "lungs of the Earth", pumping out oxygen and using carbon dioxide, is ridiculed by top eco-scientist Philip Stott, who says, "because the trees fall down and decay, rainforests actually take in slightly more oxygen than they give out...It's only fast-growing young trees that actually take up carbon dioxide...In terms of world systems, the rainforests are basically irrelevant. World weather is governed by the oceans-that great system of ocean atmospherics." Besides, Patrick Moore, a founding member of Greenpeace, says, "We found that the Amazon rainforest is more than 90% intact."
Meanwhile, all our own federal government's regulations on private property amount to the government controlling/ taking the land without just compensation. The bureaucratic labyrinth of environmental agency mandates amounts to a form of tyranny not accountable to the people, and violates the property rights of individuals.
Al Gore, the Unabomber, and others frightened of technology want to return us to pre-industrialized conditions, but the "good-old-days" were not so great! The American Indian (A recent labor department survey says that a majority of American Indians prefer that term to "Native American", so I'll go with that until I hear otherwise [the same survey said that a majority of blacks prefer that term to "African-American", and hispanics prefer that over "latino"]) is sometimes romanticised, portrayed as spiritually in touch with the planet, and living in harmony with it, the first ecologists. More often they would roam as nomads, use up the available resources in a certain place, stripping the land bare, and then move on. They would stampede whole herds of buffalo over cliffs. They would start fires to make for easier hunting, or sometimes just for kicks! Things were not all hunky-dorey before the white man got here! There are more trees on the north American continent today than there were before the European settlers arrived. Forest fires that once raged out of control when lightning would strike are now confined/extinguished before they go very far, and new trees are planted to replace the ones that are damaged through fire or used for lumber.
At its root, the extreme environmental movement is born in spiritual deception. It's a cry to the goddess, the Earth-Mother, a sacrifice to the ball of mud that supposedly gave birth to us in some Primordial Soup. As a Christian, I believe it's my responsibility to be a wise steward of the planet (By the way, why are conservatives in general and Republicans in particular accused of wanting to poison the air and pollute the water? We have to drink and breathe like everyone else...We just don't want to go along with idiotic extremist measures that produce governmental tyranny, cost too much for the supposed benefit, and may do more harm than good), but I also believe that I'm just visiting here. My true home is the heavenly mansion in which I'll be living with God someday!
Idiotic hysteria personified, there was recently a brief flap over an ABC t.v. news report claiming that the independent tests done by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer had found trace amounts of "asbestos-like fibers" in the talc used by certain large art supply companies (Crayola, Prang, Rose Arts) to manufacture crayons. Crayola did its own study to show there was no asbestos in its product, then the network volleyed back again. The last I've heard about it, all three companies concerned have bent to pressure and agreed to reformulate their crayons without talc (which helps to keep them from breaking), even though definitive tests have determined that there was no asbestos in the crayons to begin with. Regardless, to do any harm, asbestos fibers have to be inhaled in fairly large quantities. As an art teacher in a public elementary school (a crayon "pusher", if you will), I've seen kids do some mighty strange things with art supplies, but inhaling crayons is not one of them! To my knowledge, not one of the little yard-apes has gotten one past his nose and into a lung at any rate, even if there was asbestos in them. The best argument that could be made for any concern would be the crumbs from their use somehow accidently being ingested, though by their nature they are not air-borne particles.
Liberals love a good crisis. If one can give the people something to panic about, they become so much more pliable! The network's only reason for even wondering about there being asbestos in crayons, much less making an issue of it, was to use your concern for your kids safety in yet another attempt to punish, bring down, or hog-tie successful companies that make a consistently fine product, and make them replace it with something made from wheat germ and cow poop! It's not like Crayola and others haven't bent over backwards with politically-correct butt-kissing to make the liberals happy, changing the names of colors (Indian Red, for example), making sets of "multicultural colors" to presumably represent various skin tones, and pandering to the environmentalists. Liberals just hate the free market, opting instead for a monolithic, tyrannical nanny state. The same liberal news media that constantly refers to killing baby humans in the womb as a "choice" or "abortion rights" is not above using children outside the womb as pawns in the furthering of this end. Anything it takes to get and keep power goes with these Chicken Littles, and nothing short of total control is ever going to be enough for them.
The Crayola Menace is the Alar Apple Scare all over again. "Look out kid! Some evil capitalist has poisoned your fruit and now he's come for your crayons! I bet he drives an SUV and is a conspicuous user of chlorine! I hear he's buddies with Bill Gates!" The busy-bodies and health-Nazis got bored and gave up quickly on this one after they got their way. They're still in business elsewhere, though. You may even think they're on your side when they're going after something you don't like (non-smokers often applaud their attacks on "big tobacco" and smokers, for example), but wait until they target one of your vices/pleasures...They're coming for YOU next!
Entire written contents copyright© 2000 by Ed DeVore
Here are some links pertinent to some of the topics discussed herein:
*Exodus International North America
*National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality
*CLICK HERE TO GO TO LI'L BIG LIES, Pg.2
*CLICK HERE TO GO TO LI'L BIG LIES, Pg.3
*CLICK HERE TO GO TO LI'L BIG LIES, Pg.4