By Steve Tanner
Bonners Ferry
Thank you for producing 9B News and printing letters you disagree with and not limiting open discourse, as the Herald does (one per 30 days); right and truth will prevail.
Your rebuttal is based upon a false premise and draws a false conclusion. You wrongly associate race with the ‘plight’ of the LBGT+ agenda. Jefferson’s quote pointed to the source of “inalienable rights coming from our Creator.” The recognition of the Creator affirms two additional self-evident truths, that there is right and truth and we are accountable to Him for our conduct.
Civil rights are not based upon “sexual preference,” “what you feel like” or “who you think you are,” but upon being created. You may not believe in the history of Sodom+ but it was consumed for their misconduct, ending their efforts to rape the angels; a barren landscape evidences their remains. No nation or society has been built on the foundation of the LBGT+, yet history demonstrates many have ended with like agendas.
To claim an inalienable right for men to “identify” as a girl and access athletic events, setting new “records” is nothing to be proud of and wrong. For this “gendered” person to access the girl’s locker and bath rooms is wrong and those supporting such actions are at war with life and community.
This LBGTQ+ agenda is a digression from acceptance of sodomy, to same sex “marriage,” to “transgenderism,” to 100+ genders and what kind of an animal do they feel like. The “+” will continue the destruction of our families, community, nation and heritage as they proudly in-your-face push us into the bottomless dark abyss.
No inalienable right exists for such wrong actions.
In a five to four vote, 2015 SCOTUS in error ruled same sex marriage is a fundamental right, i.e. an inalienable right guaranteed by the Constitution. All four dissenting justices wrote options critical in the extreme to the majority’s opinion.
Justice Thomas, a black man who experienced prejudice, does not concur with your likening the LGB+ agenda with civil rights. “The Court’s decision today [same sex marriage] is at odds not only with the Constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built … This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic. I cannot agree with it.”
Justice Scalia wrote. “… But what really astounds is the hubris [pride] reflected in today’s judicial Putsch [violent attempt to overthrow a government]. The five Justices …concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification and Massachusetts’ permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003. They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment a “fundamental right” overlooked by every person alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since…. [marriage defined as a man and woman] These Justices… know that an institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in history until 15 years ago, cannot possibly be supported by anything other than ignorance or bigotry. And they are willing to say that any citizen who does not agree with that, who adheres to what was, until 15 years ago, the unanimous judgment of all generations and all societies, stands against the Constitution.”
“…The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning… to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”
To support the + agenda is to support proudly the violent overthrow of the family and just government. Sanity is reasonable and sensible behavior; supporting LBGT+ pride is the opposite.
Mr. Tanner, I really appreciate your comment. It is a rare thing these days for a man to stand up for the things of God and the rule of law our country stands for being not a democracy but a Republic, a nation of laws built upon a Constitution grounded in our faith. We live in a nation that has lost its way, where every man does what’s right in his own eyes disregarding our Constitution and our Lord, or worse yet distorting and taking out of context the words of our Constitution and our Bible. You’re a refreshing blessing to my wife and I standing up for the True Truth. Blessings, Ron & Kathy McCollum PS: Here’s what is sad, nobody remembers or considers the words of our Pledge of Allegiance anymore. “and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God.”
https://www.history.com/news/pledge-allegiance-under-god-schools>>>> I still remember<<<<On June 14, 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill to insert the phrase “under God” into the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance that children recited every morning in school. Previously, the pledge—originally written in 1892—had contained no reference to religion…..*&* I am thankful for the exchange of ideas.
Again, I have to disagree.
Thomas Jefferson was a deist, valuing the application of reason and logic over religious revelation and mysticism. Rather than proclaim knowledge he didn’t possess, he advocated religious freedom, tempered by a separation between church and state. While President, Jefferson was accused of being a non-believer and an atheist. He was likely both, but he didn’t think so highly of his own acumen that he wasn’t willing to accept the possibility that he might be wrong.
To attribute to him the assertion that his words affirm dogma is self-serving at best.
Those who profess to know the mind of their chosen God scare me when they insist on scripture, speculation and conjecture rather than evidence in the scientific sense. Such people can watch a loved one die of a previously unknown ailment and eschew the best advice of those trying their damndest to save them, mistaking, “we’re not yet certain, but preliminary indications are that masks can save lives,” with, “if you wear a mask you will live,” with, “he wore the mask and didn’t live … we’ve been lied to.”
No sir, Steve, I don’t think I wrongly associate race with the plight of the group you first refer to as LGBTQ + and end with just a + … diminished as they are, I assume, by their deviant sexual preferences.
Inalienable rights are not based upon “sexual preference,” “what you feel like” or “who you think you are,” but solely on the fact that you are.
It wasn’t so long ago that it was common to refer to races by pejoratives that are not acceptable today largely because the people so referred stood up. It was common practice in this nation to enslave a race and to strive to exterminate another by declaring them subhuman or savages. It was common to reference the Bible to defend the indefensible, to choose one or two passages to bolster our notion of absolute truth even if we had to overlook a hundred that refuted our contention of superiority.
For the most part, those of our race now concede, some grudgingly, that we are all equals, equally entitled to the rights we claim as inalienable, but it took a lot of harsh and painful lessons and by our actions we are still not accepting of the evident.
In so doing, we formed a slightly more perfect union, though too many think otherwise and feel we’ve regressed.
As I wrote in our earlier exchange, “I know you believe your Bible tells you that being possessed of the sexual inclination for anything other than the purpose of procreation is sinful, and your Bible may be correct, though I doubt it. By all means, live by the compass of your moral code. But the fact is that there are and always have been people of varying sexual preference, and it’s equally clear that their predilections are not by choice. Were I religious, I would be compelled to say they are as God meant them to be.”
If some transgress by breaking the law, prosecute them as individuals. If some take unfair advantage, say, to compete unfairly in sports, legislate to prevent the abuse. But if they are law abiding United States citizens, they have rights that are inalienable, they can’t be taken nor given away.
Well said Mike,
I’m pretty sure we have a separation of church and state for a reason, and that reason is to protect the citizens from, people like Mr. Tanner, who believe his religious should be injected into the government, and those who don’t believe his teachings should be persecuted. Mr. Tanner is a prime example of why I left the Republican Party. Their cause appears to be nothing more, than an extension Hitler’s Final Solution.
Love Unites, Hate Divides and the beauty as well as ugliness is in the eyes of the beholder.
Jesus said:
I am in them, and You are in me. May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that You sent me and that You love them as much as You love me. “
John 17:23
Greeting Mike,
Again, thank you for your open forum, you write well but your facts, reason, and logic are in error. You open with: “Jefferson was accused of being a non-believer and an atheist. He was likely both,…’’
Jefferson regularly attended Christian worship services held in the U.S. Capital during his presidency, he was raised and baptized a Christian and said:
“I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he [Jesus] wished anyone to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others;…” Similarly, at one point he seemed to endorse “deism,” but only after defining the term as simply a belief in one god, more accurately “monotheism.” https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/jeffersons-religious-beliefs/
We, in the West, swim in Christian waters. No matter who we think we are or if we agree or disagree, the foundations of our society are Biblical. Western law and society are set upon this book, and we should be grateful for it.
If we lived in Muslimville there would be no debate. In China and other communism countries (atheists’ religion is based upon the faith theory of evolution) they murdered 100 ++ millions. None should support corrupt political process, nor corrupt religious practices. As yet, we do not see the corruption exposed in churches and other institutions ‘proudly’ in your face paraded through the streets. Murder is wrong and those committing it should be executed timely, not because I say so, but because real law says so. If someone believes they are a bird, then jump off a tall building and end the illusion. Pride comes before a fall.
Mike, we are not debating verses but empirical facts and reality. Do you really think it is an ‘inalienable right’ for a guy claiming to be a woman to compete in girls’ sports and be proud about it? Do you really think it’s an ‘inalienable right’ for a 20-year-old, claiming to be 10, to complete with 10-year-olds? What about the rights of every other person who operates on empirical facts. Do you really believe a society can prosper based upon imagination and “fortune cookie law’?
The Pilgrims came to America fleeing oppression, imprisonment and death (sounds like the civil rights movement); so did many others, often giving all they had, including their lives, to be a ‘light upon a hill’ to spread the good news to all nations. This movement was and is based upon law, justice, and reality that included the fear of God, i.e. knowing a day of accountability and judgment was ahead for all men.
I concur with Jefferson: “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever…”
Steve Tanner
And again, Steve, I contend my beliefs are just as valid as yours regardless of what sort of waters we swim in and that despite our polar opposite points of view on the great mysteries, we are both of us endowed with the self-same inaliable rights afforded all other men and women with whom we share this planet.
You are absolutely free to believe in the veracity of a series of scrolls purported to be written by men of Muslimville a couple of thousand years ago on a planet 6,000 or so years old, just as I am absolutely free to believe that evolution is the correct theory, than man has inhabited this planet for around two million years, still but a blink on a planet that’s about 15 billion years old, and that you don’t need a book written by men to explain a god … a god who, I might add, is but one of many worshipped on this planet that evolved from untold pantheons of gods, most of them followed by men with the same fervent certitude that the god(s) they worshipped were the sole true god(s) and the source of all creation and all salvation.
I don’t profess to be learned or a scholar … I confess freely I know a little about a lot of things but I don’t know a whole lot about anything. But to my mind there’s but one purpose behind those pacts that are ethics and morality and law, and that is to foster a functioning society as free of stress and strife as possible. It is a nearly impossible task, as there will always be those who dwell outside the constraints of morality, those who consider themselves superior and above the constraints and those unable to carry the responsibilities required of a participant in a society, forcing others to carry another’s fair share of the load.
To my way of thinking, man invented religion in hopes of making that impossible task a little easier and the results have been abysmal.
Based solely on my own observation and experience, it’s vindictive men who want vindictive gods. Wiser men of every persuasion steer more closely toward an adage found in similar form in multiple religions — “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
You don’t have to love thy neighbor as thyself, just give him the same liberty you demand to live and pursue happiness.
Enact laws and penalties applicable to all to preclude those egregious acts that hinder a functioning society such as murder and claiming pronouns to get you on the girls team, and prosecute equally those who break them. Forgive those whose trespass doesn’t break the law but doesn’t comport to your higher moral standards, recognize that high moral standards aren’t a measure of superiority but of self perfection.
Live and let live.