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Burning At the Stake, 2015

A last report, for awhile, from Ireland. The Republic is much agitated right now over “The Referendum,” a national vote scheduled for May 22, ostensibly for or against “Marriage Equality.” YES and NO signs, advertisements, handbills, lapel buttons, billboards, and colored balloons infest the normally Spring-green landscape. Speeches, sermons, television ads, comedy routines, and chat-show conversations have addressed little else of late. Almost every lamppost in Dublin city has signs, almost every street corner in little Leixlip village has proponents who accost pedestrians.

It is widely predicted that the YES vote will prevail, granting even more liberal “rights” (or removing existing “wrongs”), at a level of 60-70 per cent.

This campaign, for all its inherent issues, is a subset of Ireland’s recent obsession with joining the 21st century in a variety of ways. Long a depressed economy, it enjoyed the “Celtic Tiger” of rapid growth not long ago, only to crash in major fashion, due in part to over-expansion and the worldwide depression seven years ago. It climbs back, aiming toward a voice in European and world affairs. In civil matters it is taking a quantum leap to join societies with permissive policies on sex, drugs, abortion, and such.

It is a rather startling social revolution for this formerly traditional and traditionally Catholic country. Only in 2013, for instance, anti-abortion restrictions were modified; and recently even the sale of contraceptives was not allowed.

Much of the attitude adjustment largely is deemed to be part of a seismic reaction against the Catholic Church, its hidebound activities and dominance in Irish life. More than its counterparts in Latin European nations, or as with “state churches” in the Protestant north, the Catholic Church permeated every aspect of social and political life, and institutions like the educational system. When the fossilized church and especially the multitude of appalling sex and pedophilia scandals reached critical mass, the critical Mass became irrelevant to millions of Irish.

Church attendance and membership drastically is down; local churches have merged or closed; and the voice of the clergy suddenly is reviled. Traditional Protestant and new independent Christian fellowships have gained adherents, but not at a rate that mirrors Rome’s loss.

This is the background of the scene in Ireland, and the details surrounding the Referendum vote. But I would not be addressing it here except for its role as a manifestation of the larger profile of my recent and frequent concern, the post-Christian West. The “Marriage Equality” referendum is about marriage in the same manner as “birth control” is about birth. Ireland already permits civil unions, and the perceived flaws in pertinent codes could be addressed by simple, even bureaucratic adjustments.

No, the discussions about marriage equality, so-called, are not designed to guarantee or preserve so much as to attack and destroy. The YES proponents immediately and continually refer to LSMFT, or whatever, classifications, as well as Q for Queer… in fact, 41 various sexual classifications (a bureaucratic word for deviations). Surely some of these orthographical gymnasts comprise microscopic populations, their bizarre practices not merely obscene but obscure. I am civil libertarian enough to maintain that rights do not depend upon numbers.

Lord knows, when practicing Christians themselves have been reduced to small numbers, we likewise will seek basic protections.

But the advocates of the New World Order have something else in mind than being champions of women with wieners. Like the crazies of the French Revolution, who sought to abolish calendars and ordinary social constructs, the moral sociopaths in our midst want to re-write the Pledge of Allegiance; supersede Mr, Mrs, and Ms with honorifics reflecting peoples’ sexual pastimes; outlaw men’s and ladies’ toilets; and criminalize the reading of most Bible passages.

It constantly astonishes me that our generation of nitwits thinks than they know better, in every area, than hundreds of previous generations and scores of world cultures, and all the perceived and inherited wisdom of civilizations’ evolution. The advance of years does not automatically result in “progress” in morals, arts, and other fields of human endeavor. In truth, the human race has regressed except in a few areas like medicine and industry.

Our toys are shinier, but they are hollow and quickly grow obsolete. The human race, instead of reverting to our great theology, or great traditions, or great standards of creativity, chases more and more chimeras and wills-o’-the-wisps. Instead of an increase in moral clarity, we are, as the Bible says, like dogs returning to our own vomit.

The things that astonish me, just mentioned, pale in comparison to my amazement at the number of Christians who allow or even promote the current and ongoing lunacy. The Bible, for instance, is clear about God’s disapproval of “abominations.” It is obvious (alert for professional loophole-hunters) that Scripture nowhere describes, except disapprovingly, homosexual sex.

Yet many Christians defend “marriage equality” on the basis of collective guilt for unknown and various folks who insulted homosexuals. Is the rape and pillage of biblical standards, Western traditions, and the foundations of our national life justified – worth it – because of ancient nastiness? If Christians are confronted by God in judgment and asked why they condoned and promoted deviancy and abominations as He proscribed, and if their only answer is “a desire not to hurt peoples’ feelings,” can that meet a requirement of a just God?

Pastors: is your desire to be politically correct, your need to attract new members (never mind the ones who will desert you), your denial of biblical commands, so strong that you think, in 2015, that your wisdom is superior to Almighty God’s?

This is not Ireland’s challenge alone: this crisis faces all of the Christian West, all of the rotting corpse of post-Christianity. The Trojan Horse of “Marriage Equality” is emblematic of the wide range of history’s second Revolt of the Angels – man thinking he knows more than God (if a God there be in their eyes), choosing time after time after time death over life, degeneracy over decency.

For it is an assault on our families and our future, as much as on “unfairness” or the Church Triumphant, when homosexuality assumes the mantle of a protected species. When deviancy is promoted in state-run schools. When the traditional family is demoted and supplanted. When expressing opinions such as here will be a crime that would send me to prison. When the Sexual Whatevers are no longer content with being allowed civic protections but must attack the word and the concept of Marriage (a Sacrament, an Ordinance, to the religious).

If this be hate speech, make of it what you will. The lunatics have been running the asylum for some time, actually. Soon they will staff the Thought Police, the Conscience-Gulags, the Gas Chambers of Freedom. In the year of our Lord 2015 the prophets and apostles of the New World Order have set fire to the stakes on which are lashed our heritage and our futures. Soon, believers themselves will feel the flames too.

“Eighty and six years have I served him, and He never did me any injury. How then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?” — Polycarp, a Disciple of John the Apostle and Bishop of Smyrna, before he was burned at the stake for his faith.

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... Rick Marschall is the author of 74 books and hundreds of magazine articles in many fields, from popular culture (Bostonia magazine called him "perhaps America's foremost authority on popular culture") to history and criticism; country music; television history; biography; and children's books. He is a former political cartoonist, editor of Marvel Comics, and writer for Disney comics. For 20 years he has been active in the Christian field, writing devotionals and magazine articles; he was co-author of "The Secret Revealed" with Dr Jim Garlow. His biography of Johann Sebastian Bach for the “Christian Encounters” series was published by Thomas Nelson. He currently is writing a biography of the Rev Jimmy Swaggart and his cousin Jerry Lee Lewis. Read More