How to Sexualize Children

Posted on May 31, 2022 by Matt

Refusing to teach school children about LGBTP perversions is a no-brainer for anyone with a shred of humanity. So is not teaching children anything behind their parents’ backs and against their wishes. There is absolutely no reason to subject children to such things unless you’re looking to take advantage of them.

Yes, we are burdened with a swarm of individuals who do lack that shred of humanity–LGBTP activists who are becoming utterly unhinged. Yes, their social program depends on corrupting children at a young age. Yes, there are too many people in high places who want to make it easier to molest children. Nevertheless, the more important question is why so many other Americans are willing to follow such people into the mouth of Hell.

The average American knows intuitively that something is horribly wrong with this sort of thing but also lacks a sound moral framework with which to describe why. They usually express their concerns about this issue in terms of not “sexualizing” children. That concern is absolutely legitimate, but unfortunately, not particularly clear.

You don’t have to be a biologist to recognize that we are all either male or female from birth and, at least in that sense, sexual already. Those differing natures do inform our childhoods in certain respects. Boys and girls tend to have different interests, different behavior patterns, and so forth. They also relate to one-another differently. Some kids do have crushes at that age. Others think the opposite sex is weird. The details differ from child to child, but the constant is that there is a difference.

Apart from a handful of woke-scolds, nobody has a problem with these innocent expressions of sexuality in children. On Easter, parents will dress up Jimmy in a suit and tell Susie to wear a dress. They’ll buy them different toys that reflect their divergent interests. They’ll teach Susie to be ladylike and Jimmy to be a gentleman. Such expressions of masculinity and femininity are all part-and-parcel of a normal and healthy childhood.

These things are not what typical Americans mean when they object to the sexualization of kids. However, these things do cultivate a child’s inherent sense of sexuality—the recognition of differences between boys and girls and boundaries regarding how those differences ought to play out. So when predators accuse such parents of being hetero-normative and demand equal representation, “sexualization” isn’t a particularly good objection. At least, not in the moral vacuum which most Americans inhabit. On the contrary, an amoral sense of fairness attempts to silence the screams of conscience and urges them to accommodate the predator instead of driving it off.

To a point, the average Americans could object to the prospect of imposing mature sexuality on immature people. This is what Florida’s law is attempting to prohibit schools from doing. Even moral intuition reliably informs normal humans that there are some sexual behaviors which children should not be exposed to. They are weaker and more vulnerable in virtually every respect than the adults who prey on them. There are intricacies and consequences of sexuality which they are not yet psychologically or emotionally equipped to understand. There’s nothing uncertain about any of this, but it only goes so far. As much controversy as activists generated around Florida, the reality is that 4th grade children and older are still fair game for the groomers.

That mindset is woefully insufficient for protect children from LGBTP predators. Average Americans must go beyond this and learn to consider sexual maturity in a moral sense. LGBTP activists aren’t merely approaching children before they’re ready, but actively damaging their ability to properly become ready. They’re damaging their prospects for healthy sexual maturity.

The difficulty is that Americans cannot speak clearly about sexual maturity in this sense without committing to a clear idea of what it is and isn’t. They need to understand what “normal” means. For that, we need to refer them to precisely what today’s activists are trying to obscure: biology.

Sex makes babies. It’s so good at making babies that even our many methods to achieve sterility end up failing on a regular basis. All the nuts and bolts of sexuality, from our bodies, to the dynamics of attraction, to our desire for permanent relationships are all oriented around successfully procreating. Yes, there are many deviations from that in practice. Any complex system has many points of failure, and some people seem determined to find all of them. But failure doesn’t change what our reproductive systems are for: reproduction.

Long before we were pretending that boys were girls or that two men could be married, we were pretending that children were an accidental byproduct of sex. We pretended that divorce and adultery didn’t hurt children because we decided our feelings were more important than their well-being. We pretended that premarital sex was fine because exploring our feelings was more important than securing a father for our babies. We pretended the child growing in her mother’s womb was no such thing because we wanted sex without raising one. Long before the LGBTP lobby was on the scene, we already had a long tradition of ignoring biological reality simply so we could do whatever we felt like. In short, we decided to become sexually immature, and we can’t blame the rainbow lobby for that.

That is what needs to change in America. It’s not really that we must avoid sexualizing children; it’s that we must sexualize them well instead of poorly–taking not only their age, but their humanity into account. Anything less is simply throwing our children to wolves who are all to happy to fill the void we’ve left with degeneracy and perversion.

A healthy and moral society is going to direct the sexuality of its members towards marriage and family because that’s what genuine sexual maturity looks like. Doing this well is what the virtue of chastity is all about. Chastity doesn’t hide sexuality. After all, even telling your son or daughter, “you’ll understand when you get married and have kids of your own someday” overtly recognizes their inherent sexuality. However, it does so in a an age-appropriate way because rather than forcing them into details which they aren’t ready for, it merely gives them a glimpse of the fruits of sexual maturity. It nurtures rather than undermines.

Parents need to help their children prepare for mature sexuality, just like they do for every other kind of maturity. Sexuality has the awesome power to create life and should be treated accordingly. Anyone with children has had to say, “that’s not a toy” for a variety of things they would hurt themselves with. Sex shouldn’t be an exception.

But LGBT ideology interferes with sexual maturity. Fornication interferes with sexual maturity. So does pedophilia. So does pornography. So does divorce. So do many of the things that both young and old do these days. Such behavior might come “naturally” in the sense that people do it because they feel like doing it. But that doesn’t make it healthy or mature anymore than eating whatever food you feel like is healthy and mature. Feeding children a steady diet of unhealthy sexuality through schools and mass-media makes stable marriages and families a whole lot harder and a whole lot rarer.

When LGBT activists and pedophiles use public schools and media corporations to groom and recruit children, they use tolerance and non-discrimination as their excuse. Hence their “don’t say gay” label on Florida’s law. That tactic has been so effective precisely because so few Americans are willing to admit that sexual morality cannot really be a neutral topic. Nobody wants teachers talking about sex or their personal lives in the classroom, but it’s hard to imagine a childhood where words like mother, father, and marriage never come up in school. Nevertheless, we have rendered ourselves unable to discriminate on the matter.

But parents who understand and embrace chastity—even despite their past failures to live up to that virtue—have no such disability. Because they know that the telos of sexuality is marriage and family, they cannot help but recognize that the endless identities and orientations our culture has invented are not all morally equivalent. They won’t feel the need to be neutral about drag queens at the library and pornography at school because they know perversion doesn’t deserve the same honor due to chastity. No amount of rainbow flags shoved in their faces will deter those who know how to discriminate between right and wrong. They can and will protect their children. They will prepare them for genuine sexual maturity.

The only thing standing in our way is an unwillingness to acknowledge our own wrongdoing and turn away from it. God knows I have my own sins, as most of us do. But we have to step up and admit that we were and/or are wrong. It’s no longer a matter of youthful indiscretions, personal preferences, or feeling ashamed. It’s a matter of whether or not your children are getting groomed by pedophiles.

We stand at the brink of an abyss. Will you turn back for your children’s sake? Or will you push them in to cover your own sins? The choice is yours, America.

Posted in Chastity, Christian Nationalism, Culture, Ethics, Family, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Revisiting Sodom

Posted on May 25, 2022 by Matt

One of the amazing things about Holy Scripture is that no matter how many times you might read a particular book or passage, there’s always more that slipped by you the first time. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been enjoying teaching through Genesis this past year. It’s full of stories anyone who grew up in the Church has heard since childhood. But looking at those same stories more closely with older and wiser eyes is always edifying.

This past weekend, we covered Sodom and Gomorrah–from Abraham’s intercession with God to the fate of Lot’s family. It had been a long time since I had looked closely at this text. But Hubris Month is right around the corner, and we can look forward to mega-corps and the perverts who run them celebrating at least two of the seven deadly sins everywhere we look. So it was timely to revisit the original gay pride celebration that gave us the term “Sodomite.”

I of course remembered how the men of Sodom surrounded Lot’s house so that they could gang rape the two angels who visited the city disguised as men in order to see if it was really as bad as people say (spoiler: it was.) I also remembered how Lot unsuccessfully attempted to dissuade them by offering his two virgin daughters to be violated by the mob instead. What I had never really dwelt on before was the Sodomites’ response to Lot: “This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.”

The modern and incoherent judgment of “DON’T JUDGE ME” is, of course, old and tired, but I hadn’t realized it was millennia old. Genesis portrays the same kind of sensitivity to judgement we see today–even in a community where every adult male other than Lot shared their perversions. Lot even tried to be indirect by calling them out about guest right rather than broaching the subject of unchastity. He was even quite “winsome” by offering them a way to address their felt needs. None of that availed, of course. A reproach is a reproach, and the Sodomites’ reflexive response was a threat to rape Lot as well–just to silence the voice of judgment they could never quite shake off even in a city completely dominated by perversion.

One of the common lines from Theological Liberals is that the story of Sodom & Gomorrah does not represent homosexuality as we know it today. In other words, it has nothing to do with the “scientific” category of sexual orientation that lies behind the LGBTP movement. There is a shallow sense in which they’re correct; the gay men I know aren’t the types to show up en masse when fresh meat comes to town. But as usual, the fact that theologically liberal heretics have replaced their religion with fashionable politics had made them myopic to the deeper reality of sin at work.

The men of Sodom were unhinged in a way that most people we encounter are not. They refused any restraint by nature, obviously. They refused any restraint by judgment, as their response to Lot demonstrates. They even refused restraint by local custom–Lot’s appeal to the high value placed on guest right in that culture was meaningless to them. This exceptional universality of their corruption is perhaps why God chose to smite them so dramatically while He’s content to leave the destruction of other corrupt cultures to more mundane means.

But what exactly is the LGBTP movement working for if not the removal of precisely these kinds of restraints? Release from judgment is the most obvious, of course–they cannot abide anybody repeating God’s proclamations regarding their sin. Release from nature is also becoming increasingly obvious. If a man feels like a girl, nature itself must be bent to his whim as surgeons carve a vague resemblance into his flesh. Meanwhile, everyone else is coerced into affirming the charade that men can be women or that men can be married to each other. And in service to that end, culture itself must become a slave to homosexual desire. Even the idea of “mothers’ and “fathers” must be erased from media. School must cease to be a place of learning and become a place where children are abused until they provide the affirmation perverts crave. Even a custom like free speech which was used to give the movement a foothold must be repealed insofar as it could be used to speak out against them.

So no, Sodom isn’t where today’s homosexuals are. Nevertheless, it is precisely the place at which they will stop at nothing to arrive. Sin is not tame; it never learns to sit still.

But there is one other part of the story of Sodom that we ought to reflect on–and it is a much brighter part. Incredibly enough, God invited Abraham into His counsel as he set off to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And Abraham famously appealed to God’s justice–that He would not destroy the righteous with the wicked–and secured God’s agreement that if even 10 righteous people were found in Sodom, for their sake, He would not destroy it. As it turns out, there were not even 10 righteous in Sodom, but there were four: Lot, his wife, and his two daughters. God did not spare Sodom for their sake, but neither would He allow His angels to destroy it until they had been brought out of the city.

But let’s consider those four righteous people for a moment.

Not only did Lot offer up his own daughters to be raped by a mob, his addiction to Sodom’s mammon was such that he continually drug his feet when the angels urged him to escape for his life. He even begged them to spare a small town that would have otherwise been destroyed with the region just so that he wouldn’t have to literally flee for the hills. They finally had to drag him out by the hand to get him out of Dodge. Lot’s wife was even more reluctant to leave such a wicked home. She rejected the angels’ warnings about looking back and was caught up the destruction as a result.

And then there are the daughters. In a decision I can only chalk up to having been raised in Sodom, they decided that the only man in the world who could give them a baby was their father. So they each got him drunk and got pregnant by him. But they were actually proud of this sin. One named her son Moab, which means “From father,” and the other named her son Ben-Ammi meaning “son of my people.” They commemorated the evil they had committed for posterity.

My point is this: these are not what we would call “good” people. They were not righteous in the sense of being decent and moral. And yet, God counted them as righteous–sparing them from the destruction he visited on the Sodomites. Lot journeyed from his home with Abraham on account of the Promise God had made to his uncle. Like Abraham, he believed and God counted it to him as righteousness.

Like Lot’s family, American Christians live in an increasingly wicked culture. Time and again, it’s proven that we are not immune from its influence as worldly Christians end up professing the same demonic message as the thralls that surround them. Those who do not realize they have to fight against it will be lost; some of those who do realize fight harder than others; but none of us are immune. Nevertheless, God’s grace is still there for us–for all who yet believe.

America does not have to be destroyed like Sodom or like so many of Lot’s descendants who also met with divine judgement. In God’s longsuffering, we have an opportunity to resist evil and repent of our own involvement in it. So seek grace while it may yet be found.

Lord God,

Have mercy on my nation, for our sins are great. Put an end to our wickedness and turn us away from the evils to which we’ve enslaved ourselves and out children. But just as you would not destroy Sodom for the sake of but ten righteous men, I pray for mercy for the sake of your people amongst us. Do not cut us off from the land as we deserve, but reserve a place for Christian America where we might govern ourselves in peace and righteousness according to your Word.

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen

Posted in Chastity, Christian Nationalism, Culture, Law, Musings, Paganism, The Modern Church, Theological Liberalism | 2 Comments

Sex is About Making Babies

Posted on May 11, 2022 by Matt

Now that the left is trying to cope with the possibility that sex may result in a child–without the option of using murder as a do-over–it seems our culture needs a refresher on one of the basics: Sex is (and always has been) all about making babies.

It’s a strange time to live in when such a simple and obvious contention seems so ridiculous to so many. But then, I remember a time in my life when I thought the same. Like most of my generation, I was trained to think that knowing how to avoid pregnancy was the most important thing to know about sex. Having children didn’t exactly come to mind otherwise in pursuit of it in my younger years. And because I imbibed the mechanical thinking of modernism, I presumed that even by the standards of chastity, the exceptions (e.g. barren married couples) unequivocally disproved the rule.

But just as gravity still pulls you to the ground even if you don’t believe in it, so too does the procreative nature of sex exert its influence regardless of our errant thoughts.

It persists in how attraction works. Physically speaking, most of what men and women find attractive has to do with fertility in one way or another. Men, for example, generally appreciate youth and health in women because that’s where the fertility window lands. Women generally appreciate strength and fitness in men because they need support in the long time it takes to bring children to maturity.

The same holds true psychologically. Women tend to be sexually repulsed by weak & insecure men because their instincts are telling them that if they were to have a child with such a man, it would die. Likewise, men prefer debt-free virgins without tattoos because they want to be able to trust that their mate’s children are also their own.

Even when such impulses aren’t part of our conscious deliberations, they remain active. Women generally put on blush because they think it makes them look good, not because they think it makes them look aroused. And yet, simulated arousal is ultimately why blush makes them look “good.” Young men generally work out because they want to be strong & healthy and to look good, not because they think it will make them a better father. And yet, their strength and health are important to their household, which it why being fit looks “good.” And because so much of this takes place instinctively, it doesn’t go away if we decide not to have children. The successful career woman who wants wine & cats instead of children doesn’t suddenly find weak and insecure men attractive just because she doesn’t really need their provision anymore.

But what our psychology whispers subconsciously, our biology screams. Sex makes babies; that’s it’s biological purpose. It’s so obvious that a society like ours which hates children has to come up with an unprecedented variety of potions, pills, equipment, and techniques to try and subvert that purpose. And despite all of that effort, sex is so good at making babies that millions of them are murdered in the womb by those who falsely believed sex wasn’t about making babies.

Recognizing that the reproductive system is for reproducing shouldn’t be any more controversial than recognizing that the respiratory system is for breathing or that the circulatory system for circulating blood. And yet it is. Because behind that harmless and clinical word, “reproduction” lies the awesome power to create new human beings. And with that great power comes the great responsibilities of caring for them and remaining united to the one whose flesh and blood you now share in your children.

For those with no faith even in Providence, these responsibilities are too terrifying to behold. And so, they desperately try to make reality go away and leave them in peace. Accordingly, many people work hard to come up with objections that will give them the authority to have sex without the responsibility to care for their own children. Let’s look at just a few of them:

“Sex isn’t about making babies because 99% of sex acts don’t result in conception!”

This one is the “missing the forest for the trees” objection. They look at sex too granularly–as a collection of discrete “acts” rather than a living whole–because they’re too narrow-minded to appreciate that whole.

It’s akin to saying that gardening isn’t about growing plants because most acts of gardening don’t result in germination. So what? Planting and watering result in germination; tilling, weeding, fertilizing, and pruning don’t. But all of them are done for the sake of growing plants well. Plants have a life cycle that would not exist without germination but encompasses far more than that.

Humans also have a life cycle–and it’s a long one. It takes about 18 years for sex to finish coming to fruition. While only one specific sex act resulted in a child’s conception, the process doesn’t stop there. The child still needs to gestate for nine months. After that, he or she still needs to learn to walk, to speak, to work, and so forth. And throughout all that time, the mother and father need to maintain their relationship because children need both parents. Sure a child can survive with only one, just like they could survive with only one lung or a faulty heart or with brain damage. But there’s a reason the outcomes for single-parent households are so dismal.

Children need their parents’ marriage. A mother and father are bound forever by their flesh & blood even if they refuse to live as husband and wife. But a good parent will do absolutely everything in their power to fulfill that unity and make their marriage work. Marriage is a sexual relationship. And because humans take so long to mature, that relationship needs to persist throughout the various natural fertility changes in life: a woman’s monthly cycle, pregnancy, breastfeeding, menopause, and so forth. Accordingly, there will always be many sexual events that don’t result in conception. Nevertheless, sex is still about having babies because just like gardening revolves around growing plants, marriage revolves around creating a family.

And by the way, there have been many Christian theologians through the centuries who made this same mistake in the opposite direction. They’ve tried to forbid certain sexual activities between husbands and wives because they can’t result in conception. But even though they come to the opposite conclusion of a pagan looking for sexual license, they’re making that same error of missing the forest for the trees. Marriages should be fruitful, yes. But marriages in which the husband and wife actually enjoy one-another are going to be more fruitful in the long-run. Kissing your husband before work or playfully smacking your wife’s bottom don’t result in conception by themselves, but things like that build and maintain a loving relationship which will result in not only conception, but joyfully raising a family together. Same goes for sexual acts in the bedroom that don’t result in conception.

“Sex isn’t about having babies because the barren and the elderly get married and have sex even though they *can’t* have kids”

In engineering, one often goes by Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s famous saying, “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” By that rationale, this argument makes sense. Children can be taken away, therefore they are irrelevant to the design. The trouble is, humans aren’t machines, and we aren’t engineered like them. You don’t reach the essence of humanity by stripping away parts. Many people have lost arms and legs, for example, but we don’t therefore conclude that limbs are irrelevant to the human condition. Likewise, losing the ability to have children doesn’t mean they are irrelevant to sex and marriage.

One could ask why the barren get married in the first place, and the answers wouldn’t be too surprising: love, companionship, sex, partnership in life, and so forth. Those are all good reasons. But the next inquiry should be why marriage provides these things. And the answer is something we just covered: All of these things which develop a husband’s and wife’s relationship also serve to provide children with the parenting that they need.

Those who are involuntarily barren are already keenly aware of this fact.  They usually mourn that they cannot fill this place in their lives which nature has already prepared for them. Many such couples end up adopting children instead so that they may have a family related by love if not by blood. It is similar for those who marry later on in life–past the age of bearing children. They may not grow their families through new births, but they tend to become step-mothers, grandfathers and so forth to the families their spouse raised earlier in their lives. It still revolves around family.

When all is said and done, marriage isn’t only about creating a family, but it encompasses those other things because marriage is about creating a family. So even in these cases, sex is still all about having babies.

“Sex isn’t about having babies because gay sex isn’t about having babies!”

It does seem that way at first glance. Gay sex is certainly sterile by its nature, after all. But that’s only because in certain respects, gay sex has more in common with masturbation than with the real thing.

The word sex implies male & female. That’s why, when organisms reproduce solo, we call them asexual–without sex. Likewise with homosexuality, we’re talking about a couple that only possesses one sex between them. It’s incomplete; only half of the human reproductive system is present. Sure, that half is stimulated in ways that vaguely resemble what happens when both halves are present, but it’s ultimately a simulation.

Well, simulated sex is usually called masturbation. Maybe it’s a simulation with half the reproductive system plus a hand and an imagination. Maybe it’s a simulation with half the reproductive system plus pornography. Maybe it’s a simulation with half the reproductive system plus a sex toy. Maybe it’s a simulation with half the reproductive system plus another instance of that same half. But anyway you slice it, it’s incomplete. There’s still a void where the opposite sex should be.

But even so, it’s still a simulation of something that’s about having babies, and that’s abundantly clear even among homosexuals. The push to pretend two men or two women can be married should make that obvious enough–an enforced layer of pretense to make that void seem a little less empty. Or look at the photoshoot that Pete Buttigieg and his partner had for the babies they acquired. They’re laying there in hospital beds they had no need of and holding babies they purchased rather than delivered. It’s a deliberate simulation of motherhood minus the mother. So even in the extreme perversion of homosexuality, the echo of sex’s true nature is still very apparent.

Sex is all about having babies. That is a brute fact of human nature. What we do with that fact comes down to a simple question: Do you love your humanity or hate it?  Those who hate their humanity will try to dissect it and keep only what they like. But in doing so, they’re only cutting away swaths of who they are. Attacking one’s own nature is inevitably an act of self-hatred whose logical conclusion is suicide.

But those who love their humanity have an opportunity to live and to grow instead. They know it is a gift of God, so they will learn to love sex precisely because He designed it to offer life instead of death. They will also learn to respect it according to the awesome power of creation inherent in it. In other words, they will learn to be chaste. And in learning to love that part of human nature, they will learn to love themselves as well–not according to selfish and sinful desire, but according to what God has created and called us to be in the first place.

Posted in Abortion, Chastity, Ethics, Family, Natural Law | 6 Comments

Overturning Roe Will Breed Conflict; Embrace It and Win

Posted on May 3, 2022 by Matt

“We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Inscribe these words on your heart, Christian. And understand that they are not an aphorism–a vague statement that things generally work out for the best for the good guys. As Luther recognized, these words are fate. They are destiny. Pain, suffering, an evil world, and even Satan himself cannot help but work on your behalf. No matter what you may suffer, it will work to your benefit. The forces arrayed against us are not only helpless to prevent it, they are your involuntary allies.

That will be important to keep in mind, because with this potential overturning of Roe v. Wade, the demons are going to rage. They will react to the prospect of losing their blood sacrifices the way we would react to being unable to breathe: thrashing about and desperately attempting to get air again. Some of it will make sense. Some of it won’t. All of it will be aimed at our destruction. None of it will truly harm us in the end.

So don’t lose your nerve.

Republicans are going to want to cuck on this because that’s what Republicans do. Some are terrified of being called extremists. Others think that if they actually deliver on abortion, no one will need them anymore. Others worship the same demons as the Democrats. Either way, they will attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by seeking some kind of compromise. They may even succeed. Our job is to make sure that it’s career suicide for every last one of them who does. Yes, even if it means that the Democrats win the seat for awhile. It’s better to fight the enemy in front of you than contend with an enemy stabbing you in the back. If elections matter at all, then refusing to vote for the traitors is an effective use of them. Even a loss would be an opportunity to clean house.

Democrats are going to throw a fit on this because that’s what Democrats do. Prepare for an even bigger round of mostly peaceful protests. Prepare for false flags to defame and vilify pro-lifers. Prepare for sob stories. And as they suddenly become biologists who know what a woman is and wax poetic about the sanctity of bodily autonomy, remember that they are neither idiots nor hypocrites. They are inveterate liars who operate with zero good faith. You cannot reason or compromise with them. Respect means treating someone as though they are what they are]. So in the case of SJW’s, respect means treating them with pure contempt. Respect means treating them as hostile enemies. Stand firm, concede nothing, let the ree-ing wash over you, and punch back twice as hard at every opportunity.

America’s divisions are going to deepen because of this because we obliterated any common ground sufficient to bridge the gap. If the ruling is delivered more-or-less as written and the Republicans fail to cuck effectively, the issue will go back to the States. Some will ban abortion. Some will try and extend the window past birth. Some will try to find some compromise with evil. An issue like this may actually be sufficient to trigger relocation to other states. Some Americans will flee to jurisdictions that allow them to put off facing the consequences of their debauchery. Other Americans will flee to jurisdictions that are less likely to suffer God’s wrath over the shedding of innocent blood. Others will just want to get away from the rioting.

The Balkanization of America is tragic, so it’s tempting to fight against it to maintain the Union. But the Union is finished–even if it’s not official yet. American civil government is beginning to fail across the board because those under its jurisdiction cannot agree on how to govern. But if relocation means the inevitable breakup can happen along cleaner geographic lines, it will be less bloody. That’s the best America can hope for at this point.

These and other consequences to this upcoming decision mean a whole lot of pain headed our way. There will be no easy victory handed down by the Court. So rejoice and celebrate this decision, but don’t be daunted by the imminent fallout or let it distract you from your vocation. Remember: Americans have been murdering tens of millions of innocent children for several generations. There are few prices that aren’t worth paying to end that. And if it only means an end to America as we know it rather than America as such, then God will have been unfathomably merciful to us.

Posted in Abortion, Christian Nationalism, Politics | 1 Comment

Reflecting On My Pro-Human Bias

Posted on April 26, 2022 by Matt

So puberty is apparently pathological now:

I increasingly hear phrases like “the mask is slipping” and “saying the quiet part out loud” in response to statements like this, and I can’t help but wonder if Satan and his minions are getting careless lately. But I suppose that’s just my bias slipping out. So let’s set aside the presumption that medicine is magic that can indefinitely transmute the human body into any desired state and examine that bias of mine for a moment. Why do I see puberty blockers as more pathological than puberty?

Because unlike the devil, I do not hate human nature.

It’s been a privilege to raise my sons–to both watch them grow up and help them grow up. I often have to remind myself to slow down and cherish these times when they’re young because they’ll never be that age again. Growing up is permanent. I’m sure every parent has had moments when they look into an uncertain future and wish their child could stay this age forever. And although I’m not there yet, I occasionally hear parents of teenagers wish they could have their adorable little children back.

Desires like these are just musings, though. If someone actually offered me a potion that would indefinitely freeze my boys in childhood, I would be horrified. It’s not their nature to remain children forever; it’s their nature to mature. I want them to grow in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. I want them to build lives of their own. And if God so calls them, I want them to marry and have families of their own so that they themselves can know the joy I now have in them. I want them to grow more and more into who they are. Helping them do so is part of my responsibility as their father.

But as every parent knows, children don’t always want that help. Sometimes novelty is exciting; other times it’s scary. Trying new foods, using a real toilet, getting on a bike for the first time, reading a new book… parents encounter resistance to all these things and more. Sometimes we accept that resistance as a personal quirk, but other times we insist. Why? Because their nature is to grow and mature, which cannot be fulfilled without trying new things. Likewise, there can be resistance when leaving old things behind. Sometimes growing out of baby toys, clothes, diapers, behaviors and so forth is easy; something there is resistance. But oftentimes, it’s a father’s job to insist. It’s their nature to grow and mature, which cannot be fulfilled without leaving some things behind–even permanently.

Puberty is just one more step in that fulfillment of their nature. There is a lot that is new. There is a lot that is left behind. It is suffused with both excitement and trepidation. It can be difficult and confusing. All these things are the warp and the woof of maturity.

Of course, puberty is particularly difficult today for several reasons. Most obviously, our society is one of sexual anarchy. The novelties of sexual maturity often proceed without the normal rules, expectations, and rites of passage which are there to promote healthy growth. Americans basically toss their children to the wolves and expect them to swim. (Yes, I mixed those metaphors on purpose; our customs are flat-out insane.) We shouldn’t be surprised at resistance that goes far beyond the normal uncertainty about new things. We shouldn’t even be surprised when children start hating their bodies which are “forcing” them into this sexual free-for-all.

The other big problem is that adulthood is no longer treated as something to look forward to. What do we hear about adulthood today? Well, many people proclaim college as the best time of their lives. In other words, it’s all downhill after 4 years of that extended playtime with adult freedoms but no adult responsibility. Others tell the youth, “you can do whatever you want when you grow up” and think it’s inspiring. In reality, what most children want is to play–and adulthood inevitably provides fewer opportunities for that. And the greatest blessing of adulthood–marriage and family–is routinely trashed by our culture as something to be avoided. In short, too many Americans failed to grow up properly themselves, and so they cannot present a clear picture of why growing up is in any way desirable.

Well, given all those modern difficulties, wouldn’t it be better if we could control puberty? Wouldn’t it be better if it came at our chosen time and in our chosen way to help navigate?  Absolutely not. We don’t procrastinate to become more adept at a task, but to avoid it. Failing to confront our problems makes them worse, not better. Words like “temporary” and “reversible” give an illusion of control, but it’s nothing of the sort.  With or without puberty blockers, there is not a single moment of our lives that can be undone or rolled back.

Deliberately stunted growth and healthy maturity are fundamentally at odds with one-another. Peter-Panning someone into oblivion will not help them grow up. For humans, happiness comes from embracing human nature and making the most of it–not by desperately trying to avoid it.

It’s amazing how many of the most important things in our lives are completely outside of our control. Our parents are determined for us before we’re even conceived. Our genetics are determined as we’re conceived without any input from us. We’re born into family and nation alike without our consent. We cannot help but need food, water, oxygen, and sleep continually. From beginning to end, life passes one second at a time–a pace which is sometimes frighteningly quick and sometimes frustratingly slow. We start out young and become older no matter what choices we make. And sooner or later, every last one of us will die.

In short, each of us has been made irrevocably human without any option to have been made a dolphin or a flea instead. Likewise, we live in this universe rather than any other kind of universe which might have existed. We have a nature which we can neither choose nor change.

What we can choose is whether we see that nature as a gift or a curse. Did God give us these specifications to provide us with a life we can live and enjoy? Or did He instead give us a prison we must endure until we can break free? Gnosticism is back in fashion as droves of people choose the latter.

The problem is that your nature is not something distinct from you. If you hate your nature, you ipso facto hate yourself. Likewise, wishing to undo your nature is nothing other than wishing suicide. G. K. Chesterton pointed that out over a century ago: “Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called ‘The Loves of the Triangles’; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular.”

Turban asks whether we consider trans people at all when forming our opinions. A better question is whether Turban considers trans people to be people at all when forming his. Escaping human nature is always suicide–whether quickly with a noose around the neck or slowly with drugs and vivisection (or both as so often happens with trans people.) Likewise, stealing another’s human nature is always murder.

Puberty blockers are fundamentally an attempt to make someone less than human. Those of us with a pro-human bias will always recognize how pathological that is. Self-loathing haters of humanity will not. It’s as simple as that.

Posted in Chastity, Culture, Ethics, Family, Politics | Leave a comment

OK Groomer – The Ethics of Inflammatory Rhetoric

Posted on April 19, 2022 by Matt

Perverts and degenerates are getting more and more brazen in their attempts to groom our children. And it’s good to see the right-wing beginning to embrace calling a spade a spade on this matter. Nevertheless, there’s a certain kind of conservative–of whom David French is probably the most quintessential example–whose tender constitutions simply cannot stomach such harsh rhetoric. They shrink from battle with the LGBTP lobby and their sycophants just as they do every other relevant battle in the culture wars. If they attack anyone at all, it is only their own side from whom they expect gentler treatment.

Nevertheless, no man likes to think of himself as a coward, and these conservatives are no exception. Accordingly, they attempt to dress up their pusillanimity in more noble attire. And because they borrow the language of morality, strategy, and even theology to weave their costumes, they often sow confusion alongside fear. So let’s sow some clarity instead and learn how to see through some of the common objections these cravens offer up about groomer/pedophile language.

Objection 1: Groomer/pedophile rhetoric is too harsh/impolite/uncivil

First, just pause to appreciate the lack of proportionality here. There’s a movement seeking to not only pathologize healthy sexuality, but actively seeks to vivisect unstable children until they bear some vague resemblance to the opposite sex. So on one hand, you have a nightmare out of a hyper-sexualized version of the Island of Dr. Moreau, and on the other hand you have… manners. Straining a gnat while swallowing a camel doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Second, I’ve engaged with the meat of this kind of objection elsewhere, so I’ll just sum it up. Manners and civility are social contracts, not moral absolutes. While a person ought to do good though the heavens fall, there is no nobility in merely upholding your end of a clearly broken contract. If your employer refuses to pay your wages, you aren’t “sinking to their level” or “repaying evil for evil” by refusing to work.

I would love to return to a traditionally polite world with clear lines of propriety. But social norms are imposed by the winners of culture wars, not the losers. And I refuse the kind of “manners” the current winners are forcing on us that forbid testifying to the truth.

Objection 2: Groomer/pedophile rhetoric is impractical because this kind extremism just alienates the moderates.

I can’t help but wonder what planet those with this objection have been living on. By-and-large, those who self-identify as moderates are unprincipled sheep. They are repelled by extremism only insofar as extremism is used to drive them in one direction or another. Have you noticed how extreme the left has become in the past few decades? Have you noticed how they’ve gotten their way on virtually everything? Have you noticed how today’s moderates would have been considered radicals only a decade or two ago? Clearly, extremism isn’t the practical detriment you think it is.

The real desire behind this objection is to avoid being labeled as extremists by the left. They’re addicted to the approval of our cultural institutions and desperate to stay in their good graces, be invited to their parties, and be published in their magazines. But simping for the left isn’t different from any other kind of simping. Being super-duper nice will not return them to reason and make them like you. All you are doing is enabling the abuse they give you.

Objection 3: Groomer/pedophile rhetoric is a sin because it’s false. Most of its targets aren’t really pedophiles and groomers.

At least this objection finally touches on an aspect of morality: honesty. But while it is true that we shouldn’t slander even our enemies, those who make this objection mistake accuracy for precision.

Let’s consider the degenerates who are pushing LGBTP lies onto children at younger and younger ages. It is true that there’s a diversity of motivation at work. Some of them really are doing it because they’re evil and want to diddle kids. Some of them are doing it because creating a society that flatters their own preferred perversion requires corrupting subsequent generations. Some of them are doing it because they see people lionized for flattering perverts and want to create opportunities to receive that same worldly acclaim. Some of them have a sense of empathy that’s become so uncivilized that they think compassion requires it.

But no matter their motivation, the action is always the same: They’re deliberately inducting children into a highly sexualized ideology behind their parents backs and against their parents’ wishes. That is undeniably grooming. It doesn’t stop being grooming if they’re doing it for someone else rather than for themselves. It doesn’t stop being grooming if they don’t see it as grooming. “Groomer” is therefore an accurate label.

The same is true of “pedophile.” The motivation may or may not be personal sexual gratification. Nevertheless, they are absolutely trying to elicit sexual responses from children. That is unquestionably in service to pedophilia regardless of why they want those responses. On that score, the motive doesn’t matter anymore than the motive for murder changes the nature of what was done. These people love to call themselves “allies.” Very well; we ought to treat them as allies–ipso facto complicit.

Does “Ok, Groomer” truly capture all the nuance in the situation? No. But good rhetoric isn’t supposed to do that. If you read this blog, I can only assume you appreciate mountains of thoughtful text. But most people don’t, and you can’t make them. And yet, they still have their vocations. Parents and citizens alike still need to be aware of what is going on according to their ability and decide how to react according to their wisdom. They need accurate but imprecise rhetoric rather than precise dialectic to do their jobs effectively. Giving that to them is no sin, and calling LGBTP activists and their sycophants groomers and pedophiles is no slander.

Objection 4: Groomer/pedophile rhetoric is a sin because it is inflammatory and could result in violence.

This one is actually half-right. It is inflammatory and it could result in violence. The mistake here is in thinking that violence is always a sin.

This is another topic I’ve written about extensively, so I won’t labor the point. Sometimes violent self-defense is permissible because of Christian freedom. Sometimes violent self-defense is mandatory because of our God-given vocations. As a father, I have an obligation to protect my children from harm. If they come under violent attack and they need me to violently defend them, doing so is my job.

The same holds true with inflammatory rhetoric. I have been subject to a lot of that over the years. I’ve been called “Nazi” and “Hitler.” I’ve been called “bigot” and “white supremacist.” The list goes on & on, and it goes to some weird places–I’ve even been called a serial killer once. Sometimes these things were said generically by progressive politicians, talking heads, and the like talking about “my kind.” Sometimes they were said personally by strangers who read something I wrote. Sometimes they were said personally by people I’ve known my whole life–even family members.

All of it is slander, of course, but my present point is that all of it is clearly inflammatory. The whole point of calling people on the right “Nazis” is that violence against Nazis is socially acceptable. Antifa and all their murder and destruction is the natural conclusion of typical leftist rhetoric.

Just as it is often appropriate to defend yourself and your family against violence with violence, it is often appropriate to defend yourself and your family against inflammatory rhetoric with inflammatory rhetoric. Scripture says, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” That provision includes protecting my children from groomers, pedophiles, and anyone who would sacrifice them for woke points.

And that final point is what all the pearl-clutching by craven conservatives is ultimately about. They just want to be left alone and enjoy what they have. They don’t want to lose it all in a culture war. That desire, at least, is quite appropriate. In Romans, Paul writes “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all” and in 1 Thessalonians, he says “aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you.” What they forget is, “so far as it depends on you.” They would not risk culture war, but war is upon us whether we would risk it or not. They’re all-to-willing to lie to the themselves about the current state of America if it means they can hold onto their comforts.

This is the fundamental failure of American conservativism. They can bloviate all they want to try and turn “ok groomer” into a sin. But the real sin at play here is a refusal to protect those who have been entrusted to you. First and foremost, that means protecting your family, but it includes your community and your nation as well. If you will not even take up rhetorical arms according to your God-given vocation, then you have abandoned it. And if you will not accept those basic responsibilities that even pagans and unbelievers understand, don’t be surprised when God cuts you off from the land.

Posted in Chastity, Culture, Ethics, Politics, Vocation | 1 Comment

Cultural Doggie Bag: The Mary Sue Done Right–Adol Christin (Ys)

Posted on April 11, 2022 by Matt

Hollywood has been giving viewers a lot of reasons to use the term “Mary Sue” over the past few years. In case you’re unaware, it refers to a certain type of character in fiction–one which can be female or male (although the male is sometimes called a ‘Gary Stu’.) The Mary Sue is a hyper-idealized figure meant to be a kind of totem by which the author and/or viewer can insert themselves into a story and live vicariously. She has no real personality that might interfere with that of the viewer/reader, so she remains a blank slate. She has an abundance of superficial virtue, but it’s entirely unearned as she has no meaningful flaws to overcome. She is at the heart of every narrative conflict, but so perfect she need not struggle through any of them. Every good guy loves her while every bad guy respects, envies, or wants her.

The Mary Sue isn’t always a terrible thing in some kinds of stories, but it’s never really a good thing either. The best example I can think of is John Matrix from 80’s Schwarzenegger cheesefest, Commando. When his daughter gets kidnapped, it’s his job to curb stomp those bad guys one by one until his daughter is safe and his well of one-liners is bone dry. That’s the whole movie. He has no character arc, only a series of challenges to let the viewer revel in what an invincible badass he is. Commando is fine, but it’s a popcorn film that’s in no danger of being considered great cinema. It works on exactly one level: childish wish fulfilment that provides 90 minutes of escapism. It’s the fast food of movies: occasionally it hits the spot, but it’s not exactly nourishing.

So if they’re not uncommon in Hollywood, why is the myriad of contemporary Mary Sues even a topic of controversy? The short answer is feminism.

The most obvious difference between the John Matrices of yesteryear and the Mary Sues of today is that Commando is escapist fantasy for men, but today’s films are engineered to provide escapist fantasy for women. Now, that’s not actually a problem in itself. Different films have always had different target audiences, and nobody’s ever really cared. Men don’t expect women to like Commando, and women don’t expect men to like The Notebook. Each sex may roll its collective eyes at the details of the other’s fantasies, but for the most part, neither takes any offense.

Feminists, however, are experts at taking offense. It would be insufficiently vindictive for Hollywood to simply provide more content for women. Instead, it had to ‘fix’ the content for men, and that’s why it’s suddenly controversial. Many contemporary Mary Sues are a result of Hollywood taking established properties and reimagining them as female empowerment fantasies.

Rey from the Disney Star Wars trilogy has been the quintessential example of this. She hits literally every note from the first paragraph. But the problem isn’t that Disney made a series of female empowerment fantasies. The problem is that they consumed Star Wars, which had been our most popular modern mythology, in order to do it. It’s controversial because Mary Sues don’t belong in some properties.

A similar issue can be seen in what they did with Masters of the Universe: Revelation.  Unlike Star Wars, which for better or for worse had managed to elevate itself above mere escapist empowerment fantasy, He-Man had no such lofty aspirations. It was a kid’s show that was what it was. The “problem” is that it was what it was for boys. Instead of creating something new for girls, Kevin Smith had to turn He-Man into a show about Teela discovering how much better she is than everyone else. It’s controversial in this case because its stolen.

The other issue is that, as I already mentioned, Mary Sues appeal to a fairly narrow audience. What’s more, that audience is pretty sex-specific because men and women tend to have different fantasies. Captain Marvel, for example, is yet another female empowerment icon whose only character arc was rediscovering her own latent super-special-awesomeness. So most men did what was natural and disliked that particular Marvel property just like they did Disney Star Wars, Master of the Universe: Revelation, and the various other vehicles for female empowerment.

But because feminists are driven by vindictiveness towards men rather than a desire to provide something positive to women, they cannot tolerate such narrow appeal. They pulled out all the stops to pretend that these franchises were beloved by every normal person and that there was something morally wrong with anyone who deviated from that party-line. But that’s as ridiculous as condemning women for not liking Schwarzenegger movies enough. So contemporary Mary Sues are also controversial because feminists demand they be universally adored.

So those are some of the big issues with the Mary Sue. Some of them are fundamental. Some of them are rooted in contemporary politics. All of them make the trope something to be avoided by anyone interested in quality.

Or do they? The reason I’ve been giving this thought is because I recently finished playing through Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. This one’s a deep cut, but it’s the latest entry in a very long-running series of games from developer Nihon Falcon.

For almost 4 decades, the Ys games have centered on protagonist Adol Christin. Adol is a Mary Sue. He may even be the Mary Sueiest Mary Sue who ever Mary Sued. He’s a self-proclaimed “adventurer” who roams the world getting involved in various epic struggles of good vs evil. He shows up in the midst of a crisis, conquers the dungeons, slays the dragons, defeats the wizards, rescues the girls, and makes them swoon. He never enters into any kind of relationship with them, though, because he’s already married–to adventure.

He’s a classic silent protagonist with no real personality to speak of. He exists as a proxy for the player who wants to play through epic fantasy quests as a great hero. Narratively speaking, he’s essentially a perfect human being who always does the right thing and always wins.

Now, that’s all pretty typical for games from the era in which Ys originated. The technical limitations of the time severely restricted storytelling. But even as technology has advanced and the Ys games have become more sophisticated with respect to plot & character, Falcom has only doubled-down on Adol being Adol. In-game characters have now added “master cartographer” to his list of accolades because the new games have auto-mapping. There are also in-game logs/journals now, so he’s described as a highly skilled writer who records his own adventures with both modesty and precise analysis. Normal people love or respect him while quasi-divine beings routinely recognize him as the best humanity has to offer.

Although Adol remains silent, he has developed some small amount of personality through frequent character interaction–whether by the player choosing dialog or other characters reacting to what he “said.” But that personality is essentially that of someone who’s really having fun playing an Ys game. Adol is eager for every side quest even as the other characters more realistically see them as tedious or distracting from their mission. He’s excited at the prospect of delving into a deadly labyrinth while the rest of cast experiences the normal trepidation. From a narrative perspective, he’s patient, forgiving, and optimistic almost to the point of insanity because he has faith everything is going to work out for the best just like a player who expects to win.

So basically, everything I said negatively about Rey or John Matrix, I could say even more about Adol. But for Ys, it totally works. The games in the series are, for the most part, simple but excellent.

The difference is the medium–the shift from movies or literature to video games. The two biggest problems with the Mary Sue are the blatant self-insertion and the absence of meaningful struggle. Movies aren’t about the viewer, but the player always inserts themselves into a video game to some extent. Guiding the action in some way is what makes it a game, so it doesn’t feel hokey in the same way.

As for struggle, that’s something the player himself brings to the table. Sure, from a narrative perspective, Adol simply fights the huge monster, sheathes his sword and moves on–maybe panting a little if it was a particularly important boss, but otherwise without struggle or sacrifice. Nevertheless, the player knows he died 12 times before finally killing the thing after using his last health potion. The player spent 20 minutes grinding extra levels to be able to do it. The player did the extra work of tracking down the best equipment to improve his chances.

The end result is that unlike a literary Mary Sue, Adol’s legendary status, virtue, and success actually feel earned. Accordingly, rather than providing mere escapism, the Ys games actually manage to crystalize ideals like hope and (secular) faith developed through hard work and perseverance. In short, Adol routinely hits the same notes that an icon like Superman does on his best days: optimism and inspiration.

At the end of the day, Ys games are unquestionably simple and straightforward, but that doesn’t stop them from being great games. Likewise, their protagonist is undoubtedly a Mary Sue, but it doesn’t stop him from being a good protagonist after his own fashion. It seems that even the Mary Sue can be elevated if you get the medium and the details right.

Posted in Culture, Feminism | 4 Comments

The Face of Low-Trust Education

Posted on April 4, 2022 by Matt

As I’ve written elsewhere, it’s great to see parents taking back their authority and responsibility for their children. Florida’s new anti child-grooming law is the most high-profile of these attempts at the moment. And though that step is miniscule, the rancor from the pedophile side of the political aisle is a testament to how important those first small steps really are.

But it’s hardly the only little step being proposed. And like many first steps, some of the proposals I’ve seen are somewhat awkward. For example, my own state has considered legislation to put classrooms on constant video/audio surveillance for parents to access and to make teachers post all curriculum and assignments 6 months in advance for parental review. These kinds of policing measures demonstrate a core problem in America’s public education–a complete breakdown of trust between parents and educators. The problem is that measures like these do nothing to resolve that problem–at least, not the way people expect.

Whether justified or not (and considering what goes on in public schools, I do think such policing is completely justified), are policies like these actually going to rebuild trust? From the parental perspective, if you have to be able to surveil people to this extent to know whether your children are safe with them, why on earth are you entrusting your offspring to them in the first place? The same can really be said of Florida’s law. Yes, K-3 educators are forbidden from teaching about anal sex and genital mutilation now, which is great. But your children are still being educated by people who want to teach them about  it whenever they have a chance. Constant surveillance doesn’t build trust; it only deepens the mistrust which birthed it.

And from the teachers’ perspective, this is an awful way to work. Parents become a gaggle of disorganized supervisors. All of them have different preferences and agendas–many of which are legitimately outside the teacher’s wheelhouse. There was a time when educators acted in loco parentis, but American diversity killed that possibility. There is no perceivable standard of what a generic parent would reasonably want. And if you doubt that, consider that there are parents who want to mutilate their children’s genitals for woke points. All these measures do is ratchet up the pressure in an already volatile relationship.

Now here’s why these awkward and unhelpful baby steps are still good and helpful: These measures don’t solve the distrust at the heart of the problem, but they do bring it out into the open. Parents have absolutely excellent reasons to distrust public educators. I daresay no group of people has ever had such good reasons for distrust as American parents today. And I daresay that no group of people are as oblivious to this fact as educators.

The only way trust can be restored is a long process that starts when teachers admit they have a problem. But I’ve generally found teachers to be extremely tribal with powerful in-group preferences. I know of no profession that engages in such a degree of constant self-praise and circling the wagons whenever someone in their tribe comes under fire. The closest I can think of are police officers, and I don’t think it’s coincidence that both groups are dominated by public-sector unions. The incestuous political relationship that develops when you vote for the people you negotiate with produces nothing but poison.

When parents raise concerns about things like CRT and LGBTP indoctrination/grooming, it seems that half the teachers just call us bigots and go about their filthy business. Meanwhile, the rest assure us that “Not all teachers are like that!” before going on and on about the good work they do, how hard their jobs are, how underappreciated they are, and so forth. And I’ll admit, these latter teachers aren’t exactly wrong. There are many good teachers out there. Teaching well is a very difficult job, and a good teacher is providing something absolutely priceless.

But here’s the problem: when the children are the ones under such a severe threat from educators, who exactly are these teachers defending? It seems like even the teachers that aren’t actively involved in corrupting children are only interested in protecting the reputation of educators. Are parents the only half of the relationship interested in protecting children from the predators?

So yes, these policies do nothing be ratchet up the pressure in the increasingly antagonistic relationship between parents and teachers. I even think it’s fair to say that they’re fundamentally destructive to public education. But there’s no other course of action when half of the relationship thinks nothing is wrong. Either teachers are going to admit they have a problem and repent of their relentless push of “the message,” of the public education system is going to completely collapse. Either of these would be preferable to the current state of affairs.

So parents, keep up the pressure. If you can, get out of this toxic relationship altogether by homeschooling or private schooling. That’s why school choice policies will do more to solve the real problem than cameras. But if you can’t, that only means you have to fight harder. You have been obligated by God to both educate and protect your children. And if teachers start striking and quitting en masse and the schools shut down… well, you already went through that during the pandemic. You know you can handle it.

Parents cannot back down without abandoning our God-given responsibilities, so teachers need to. If they do not, then burning the whole enterprise down so we can build something better is the appropriate course of action.

Posted in Culture, Family, Politics | Leave a comment

Not A Private Sin

Posted on March 17, 2022 by Matt

The most liberal I’ve ever been on the issue of homosexuality was supporting civil unions back in my libertarian phase–an obnoxious part of growing up that many young men have to struggle through. I still knew sodomy was sinful, but by my reckoning at the time, it was an entirely private sin. It wasn’t my business. It wasn’t the government’s business. So “live and let live” seemed like the appropriate course of action.

Even then, I wasn’t willing to grant the marriage label because that’s not what marriage is. But being libertarian, I foolishly presumed that marriage fell into the same legal category as sodomy–a wholly private matter that wasn’t the business of myself or government. Legally equivalent civil unions therefore seemed like an appropriate stop-gap for the sake of fairness until government could be removed from the marriage business altogether.

Thankfully, it’s been about two decades since then, and I’ve come to realize how dreadfully wrong I was on several points. The most obvious is my stupid idea of marriage being a wholly private matter. Sex is literally where the public comes from, and marriage is unequivocally the most important earthly institution for cherishing those new lives. We can argue about how government could effectively recognize and support that institution, but a just and effective government simply cannot be marriage-neutral in any broad sense. The social atomization that renders libertarians so myopic on that subject is one of the philosophy’s greatest weaknesses.

But there’s another fatal error I made that has been slowly gnawing on me for the past few years. If marriage and chastity aren’t private matters, then neither are sins of unchastity.

It was LGBTXYZ nonsense that finally woke me up to this. Tolerance of a “private” sin seemed like a reasonable idea back in the day. But let’s check in on tolerance and see how that’s working out for us: drag queen story hours at public libraries, LGBT indoctrination at public schools, forcing individuals to publicly pretend two men can marry, criminalizing parents who try to protect their children from being vivisected to vaguely resemble the opposite gender. The list goes on, and there’s nothing private about any of it. Making it illegal and/or shameful to discriminate between right and wrong was not what I had in mind, but it’s what we got.

It shouldn’t have been surprising. One cannot expect sin to obediently remain in the abstract space we assign to it. That’s not it’s nature. We’re either actively struggling against it, or its growing. There is no middle ground. Unchastity is no exception.

But the reaction to Florida’s anti-grooming law should be a wake-up call to anyone who hasn’t already realized this. There are an insane number of influential people who actually think it’s controversial. Literally all the bill does is 1) forbid schools from teaching K-3 children about sexual orientation & gender identity and 2) ensure that parents have access to their own children’s records, curriculum, surveys, and so forth. That’s it; read it for yourself. You’d have to be either a pedophile or a deliberate enabler thereof to knowingly oppose measures like that.

But what is everyone calling it? The “don’t say gay” bill. They say it infringes on the rights of supposedly gay and trans children and puts them back in the closet! That’s not just fringe activists, that’s literally every news program, politicians at the highest levels, and millions of ordinary people willing to toss children to predators so that they can be seen as “affirming.”

Now, if I were a “good conservative,” I’d take this opportunity to say that the way progressives are associating gays with grooming children makes them the real homophobes.  But I’m not a good conservative. So instead of owning the libs, I’ll tell you the truth: Progressives are not “associating” gay with grooming. They are openly revealing an association that’s always been there and of which they are no longer ashamed: Advocating for sodomy largely depends on sexualizing, corrupting, and molesting children.

I remember a bunch of “crazy radical right-wing Christians” pointing that out decades ago, and I remember thinking they were, at best, overstating their case. After all, there was a logical progression–if valid, most rationalizations for sodomy would apply to pedophilia as well.  But that abstraction was as far as it went, right? Well, LGBTP advocates and their accomplishments have changed my mind. The crazy right-wingers were correct; I, the idiot libertarian, was wrong. Apparently, “Live and let live” was never really on the table.

But while the effects of sodomy affirmation programs on children should be a wake-up call, it’s a fruit of the problem rather than its root. It’s such an extreme form of unchastity that it can only become normalized after countless other lines have been crossed–not by 2% of the population, but by the rest of us.

Genuinely chaste societies have been pretty rare historically, but the normalization of chastity is not rare. For any society to remain functional in the long-term, it needs to honor marriage and child-rearing rather than deviancy and perversion.

While I’m not old enough to remember it, it wasn’t that long ago that divorce was weird in America and the term “pre-marital sex” actually implied marriage (as in, it meant you had sex before the wedding night with someone you intended to marry.) But I am old enough to remember when sex in marriage-less “long-term-relationships” was the norm, hookups & homosexuality were weird, and transgenderism was really weird. It seems that even a few short decades is sufficient to demonstrate that the Slippery Slope is by no means a fallacy. We are no longer slouching towards Gomorrah, but sprinting.

But the slippery slope does have its mechanisms–a thousand tiny rocks sliding out from under foot. And it’s not hard to come up with examples: 40 years ago children’s books were telling us that there’s no real difference between boys and girls. 60 years ago, my own denomination was already teaching that romance rather than marriage legitimizes sex. Novelties like these which we now take for granted laid the groundwork for our contemporary pedo-state. And you can go as far back as you like–to Romanticism, to Chivalry, to Rome, or to the Fall itself–for history always proceeds from what came before. But my point is that the reason so many Americans are so sanguine about sexualizing kids is because of how poorly we ourselves were sexualized.

As we stand teetering at the brink of this abyss, there are two imperatives before us. And I do mean us–people who know better and are willing to admit it. Nobody else is going to pull America back from the edge.

The first is to repent of our sins before God.  We need to struggle to disentangle ourselves from both our own vices and our foolish misconceptions about sex, marriage, men & women, etc. We aren’t in this mess because of “those people” but because of what “normal” people including ourselves have willingly done.

I don’t placard it, but I’ve admitted in the past that I have not lived chastely. There are many times in my life in which I’ve done what was normal rather than what was right. In service to those sins, I’ve both repeated the world’s lies and invented new ones as cover. So I myself have contributed to the very thing I now condemn. Accordingly, I can only condemn it at all insofar as I can admit that God is right and I am wrong. And I can only accept that shame because Christ has already borne my sins on the Cross. But condemn it I must because God is right, and He is quite clear about those who call evil good. Refusing to engage the issue now would only compound my sin.

The second imperative is to rebuild the groundwork of civilization with respect to chastity. The whole point of civilization is to curb outward expressions of sin so that we can make that slope less slippery. Some kinds of unchastity need to be included on that list of gross outward sin to be deliberately inhibited.  And the list can’t stop at consent.

We must be willing to apply both social and legal pressure where appropriate–two things modern conservatives are scared of imposing for these kinds of sins. We actually think we’re morally superior to our ancestors because we don’t prosecute things like adultery anymore. We even congratulate sodomites for renting wombs for children they intend to deprive of a mother. Conservatives should be ashamed rather than proud. Neither law nor society can be neutral on the issue of sexuality. Marriage and family need to be held up as true sexual maturity. When deviancy becomes a matter of public knowledge, it should earn contempt. Gross deviations need to be criminalized. When we fail to do this, we inevitably teach and promote perversion instead.

Talk of imposing this on a large scale is mostly just talk. Christians simply do not have that kind of hold on American culture. But doing so on smaller scales is not beyond our grasp. We should enforce these things wherever we have dominion. That includes our own households at a minimum, but everyone reaches outside of the home to some extent or another. For example, SJWs have already shown how powerful codes of conduct can be in radically altering private institutions. As for public ones, laws against many of these behaviors are still on the books. When the “large scale” in the West finally finishes collapsing, we’ll be grateful for any healthy local governments and institutions we’ve managed to build or maintain.

Christians have labored too long under the Enemy’s contention that sins of unchastity are private matters between consenting adults which are closed off from the rest of everyone’s lives. They’re not, and our children cannot afford for us to pretend otherwise. Chastity and degeneracy each have a powerful impact on the rest of society. We are fools for having forgotten this. It’s time for Christians to remember and act accordingly.

Posted in Chastity, Culture, Family, Law | 8 Comments

Regular Posts Will Resume Soon

Posted on March 10, 2022 by Matt

I just realized that it’s been almost a month since I’ve posted anything on the blog, so I wanted to give my regular readers a vague idea of what’s going.  The last couple months have presented me with some serious challenges in my health, my personal life, and my work all at the same time.  Finding points where free-time and motivation-to-write intersect has been extremely difficult.  But I am working on a couple of pieces, and I’m hoping to have one of them up next week.  In the meantime, I would appreciate your prayers for recovery, for defense against the Devil, and for order in the midst of chaos.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments