IN DEFENSE OF CHILDREN'S RIGHTS

 Yesterday, Fri. 25Feb2011, I received the following notice:
       "President Barack Obama informed the nation that his administration will no longer defend the institution of natural marriage - or the law that protects it.

      DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) was passed in 1996 with significant bi-partisan majorities in both houses of Congress, and was signed into law by President Clinton. DOMA defines marriage in federal law as the union of one man and one woman.

      The president said yesterday that he has instructed his attorney general not to defend this law in court, where it is currently being challenged." http://www.capwiz.com/afanet/issues/alert/?alertid=30650501&type=CO

      The following is a letter I sent to my Congressman, Jason Chaffitz:

      I am distressed to hear that President Obama has made a decision that his administration will no longer defend the institution of natural marriage, and will allow the Defense of Marriage Act  (DOMA) to go undefended in court, where it is currently being challenged.
      DOMA was passed with significant bi-partisan majorities in both houses of Congress in 1996. President Bill Clinton signed it into law. It correctly defines marriage in federal law as the union of one man and one woman.
      The institution of man-woman marriage, the covenant of LOVE between man and woman, is the FOUNDATION upon which ALL SOCIETY is built. It MUST BE DEFENDED RIGOROUSLY AT ALL COST.  

      Without natural marriage children end up having no parents upon which they can rely.  Orphan children become uneducated, unskilled men and women who CANNOT build a thriving economy, knowing nothing but how to live from hand to mouth.  ALL FROM THE LOSS LOVING EDUCATED PARENTS.
      PLEASE URGE Speaker John Boehner to use all the resources at his disposal to VIGOROUSLY DEFEND the Defense Of Marriage Act. Our nation deserves no less.. Our nation needs that foundation.
      In addition, PLEASE CALL THE PRESIDENT and urge him to support DOMA and natural man/woman marriage by which he, himself, has had his own children. REMIND HIM THAT WITHOUT NATURAL MARRIAGE ALL SOCIETIES HAVE FALLEN APART.

      I haven't personally known very many "gay" people. Those I've known have been very nice people, good at their work, normally loving to their families and friendly to neighbors and strangers. I have no beef with "gay" people having the same human rights as any other people. All people deserve the rights defined by our Founding Documents here in the USA (may they be defended and preserved in perpetuity) and personal protection under just Laws. If "gay" people want to kiss and love other people of their own gender, please do it without a lot of PDA (Public Displays of Affection), just as "straight" couples should keep PDA to a minimum because so many people find it somewhat offensive. You've heard the call, "GET A ROOM!"
        Public Displays of Affection should just be kept at a minimum by all people in our society for the reason cited.
      Marriage, however, is different from mere attraction and "getting together". Marriage is a long term agreement, a sacred contract. It should be an Holy Covenant between two people to Love, Help and Support the other from the time of the Covenant onward until the stated end of the term, normally " Until death do us part." In some religious teachings the Covenant is for Time and all Eternity! Now that's a long term contract!
      Marriage STATES long term union. Marriage IS where two individuals become one new unit called a Family. Marriage IMPLIES building and growing together as one Family, not just two individuals living together.
      In our society a part of that building and growing together implies the increase in the number of people within the family unit by bringing children into the world. You know one of the natural outcome of making Love is conceiving children. This is how our society and nation grows and most of us want that growth. Here is where the major difficulty of the "gay" lifestyle emerges.
      How is it possible for two of the same gender to create a baby? It is impossible.
      Obviously, two "gay" people could obtain someone else's baby, whom they may want to adopt to raise. So now a potential orphan has two parents. Good?
     No. There is still a problem. How is it possible for two of the same gender to teach that child about how to live joyfully with another of the opposite gender to their own? Two women raising one girl, for example. Should the girl not turn out to be homosexual and want to have children with a man, how will the homosexual (HS) women teach the girl about living with a man? Men are so different from women by nature. How will the two HS women accurately teach the girl about husbands?
      Perhaps HS women should only adopt boys so they could teach about living with a wife?
      Should HS men only adopt girls for the same reason? I can just hear the hue and cry from society about the danger of that situation: one teenage girl in a house of HS men! "She's safe because they are only attracted to men," right? Whewee! I don't think so.
      No, this man's opinion is that each child has rights to receive her or his due from the parents, namely, love, food, shelter, protection, and education. It is also the considered opinion of this man that one of the Providential Rights of every child is to have a loving, supporting male Father and a loving, supporting female Mother. I believe the reasons to be obvious. If not, I'll briefly explain: 
      An important part of every child's education is how to properly communicate with, love, protect and support a member of the opposite sex in no matter what type of association and particularly in such close association as in marriage. How does one communicate with, work with and support a member of the opposite sex, who is naturally so very different from self, while raising a new generation, some of whom are of the opposite sex? You, dear reader, know the troubles YOU have in this matter. Be assured others have similar, perhaps greater troubles, because of the inherent differences between genders and the training, good or bad, received from parents (or no parents, perhaps?) while growing up. Life ain't easy. Now throw a man (or woman) into the mix! Right?
      It boggles my mind to think of two men, who love each other to the exclusion of living with and dealing with women in a marriage situation, trying to teach a girl  about womanly matters, or two women similarly trying to teach a girl about how appreciate and support a man as a husband. 
      Because of, in my opinion, this God-given Right of each child to have a loving, supporting male Father and a loving, supporting female Mother, adoption of a child by an HS couple should be disallowed by law, again, to protect the rights of the child. The LAW must protect the child's rights if the parents will not. This has nothing to do with the HS couple being good, kind, honest, loving or whatever. It has solely to do with inherent personal gender characteristics and the Providential RIGHTS of the child.

      Again, I have nothing against the HS people themselves. They are good people, I'm sure, loving and caring for each other as so many of them do declare. I do not have anything against their living with each other if they choose to. If they want to privately sexually please each other, it is none of my business. 
      Protection and defense of my society and my nation IS a part of my business, as it should be of everyone in every society. If HS people want to alter the legal definition of the term "Marriage" to include their union, I believe there will be some major troubles BECAUSE OF THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILDREN that would likely be abridged or even overridden completely. 
      This has nothing to do with how we worship God. It has everything to do with the rights of the children and the effect denial of those rights will have upon them and my great-grandchildren's society and the nation. It takes about two generations for today's decisions to be fully manifested in a society unless those decisions are forcibly backed up as in the Nazi regime preceding WWII in the 1930's and '40's. 
      Now, I haven't studied every society in the history of the world, but from what I have read I've noticed that, historically, it seems that homosexuality has been a large factor in the downfall of every HS-supporting nation because the children become instilled with "I am looking out for #1 - ME!" characteristics instead of the normal hetrosexual marriage mind-set of "I am looking out for #1 - MY FAMILY, namely my spouse and my children and my parents, my siblings, etc." 
      The latter mindset is considered a Providential characteristic  which supports and protects the Providential rights of all other people starting with one's immediate family. Check the old records, not the newly re-written histories, and you'll see the events that show that hetrosexual families build nations, homosexual unions do not and governments that change laws to promote HS unions fall. They don't fall specifically because of HS support but they still fall. This is what I have seen.

      Marriage is a sacred institution because of those reasons. Such a marriage can only be, in my considered opinion, between a man and a woman who are hopefully individually Providentially minded and who are individually committed to living up to his and her promises/covenants. 
       With this kind of marriage our nation will continue to strengthen. Without it, our nation will fall apart.

Repentance is Sweet!?!

We had a great sunday school lesson this last week in which I had an epiphany. I love those! I find discoveries in the Gospel more exciting than a good day of downhill skiing. Truthfully. Spiritual/Gospel epiphanies are much more fulfilling and longer lasting by far.

Well, we were discussing the principles surrounding the time when John baptized the Lord, one of which is repentance, which, of course, the Lord needed none of, we are told. 

(As a side note, I'm not so sure about that thought, that the Lord didn't need to repent, because I consider that He, being totally repentant at all times, submissive to His Father's will 100%, never faltered enough to take him out of the classification of being sinless. Did he ever make any errors of ignorance that may have hurt someone else, that he should repent of? Wasn't it sort of an error to have remained in Jerusalem without telling his parents, making them panic for his safety for two and a half terror-filled days? I would have considered that error of pain provoking thoughtlessness to be somewhat on the side of being at least a mistake, maybe even a transgression of some eternal nature. He, of course, being the one to pay the price of all sins and transgressions would pay for his own as well, but I would think he would have immediately repented from having hurt his parents in that thoughtless manner and resolved to never do anyhting like that again.)

Back to the point about repentance that was my epiphany:

Repentance is sweet, even joyful.

In my youth I got the idea that repentance is, by it's nature, painful. Period. If you have to repent, you are in for a lot of pain. School mates who attended other churches shared how they would be told to kneel on rice while praying for forgiveness and that sort of thing, to increase the pain of repentance in order to make the lesson stick, I suppose. Even in our own Sunday School, Mutual and Priesthood classes the idea of repentance was, to me at least, always attached with the idea that it required suffering or it was not repentance. This Sunday I learned I missed the real truth until now.

The real truth is, and truly is, that it is the pain of guilt from sin that hurts, whether one is repentant or not. Guilt hurts. That guilt is even the sting of death for without guilt death is sweet to the soul even though it may be physically painful getting up to it.

When a person feels the pain s/he can either 

1.     grit teeth and try to ignore it while continuing in the sinful, pain producing activities, or 

2.     s/he can cry, weep and moan and curse God for making the illicit activities "sin" and pain producing, or 

3.     s/he can cry and weep and moan until s/he sincerely looks to Chist and humbly, sincerely requests forgiveness and help.

Instantly, upon that sincere request, forgiveness, healing and joy sweep away the guilt and that pain is forever gone, assuming the sin is truly forsaken. Forgiveness is free for the asking, humble and sincere asking only. Gratis. No cost. No upbraiding. Just peace and hope and joy.

Has repentance taken place at this point? No, not all, not yet. What has taken place is confession to Christ and activation of His Atonement covering that person with mercy and hope and joy. The remainder of repentance is still required: "fruits meet for repentance", as labeled in the Scriptures. Those fruits are confessing to the hurt parties, restitution of that which was damaged, lost, destroyed, etc., and never repeating the sin but instead serving, blessing, loving others. Those actions, the actions of repentance are sweet, fulfilling, joyful, even exciting sometimes. 

To reiterate: the pain of guilt is what hurts. 

Repentance: giving up the sin and asking for forgiveness while in that pain and receiving joy in return is not painful. It is JOYFUL! Confessing our sin to others, even though it can dredge up the feelings of guilt, if done while feeling the joy of the Lord's loving forgiveness still is not all that painful, and again joy of returned friendship, strengthened bonds and increased love are sweet fruits of this repentance process. The labor of restitution yields increases of all the good living Gospel truths brings. Again, the fruits of repentance are are sweet. 

We can expect the Law of Return to always work; it is one of God's laws, it is a Law of Gods - "That which ye send out will return unto you again", "pressed down, shaken together and overflowing", as the scriptures say. God is a multiplier whose rate of return is hundreds and sometimes millions to one, in other words 1000's of percent return. Knowing all of this can make even hard physical labor of repentance pleasant with the expectation (hope) of sweet returns from the labor. 

What an epiphany! I love it. I am eager to repent, knowing this. And then, knowing that I can avoid a lot of the pain part by being as repentant as possible as much as possible, in other words, meek and teachable, eager to learn and improve, easy to entreat and instruct, life just gets better and better. When I sin in ignorance, humbly ask forgiveness RIGHT AWAY, get to the pleasant part fast. Christ is eager to forgive those who truly are eager to bring forth fruits worthy to be called repentance. The pain is gone fast and we can get to the good part right away: repentance which brings friends, love and joy. Ain't it great!

One thing I thought I'd share with you, Jon, regarding God's commandments. To obey "because they are commandments" used to irritate me, too, but for different reasons other than just wanting to obey in other than ignorance, in other words intelligently obeying. I used to chafe at being commanded. You know: Obey my command or you'll get another whiplash, slave! Not for me! But... this is God's commandment, we are talking about. He loves us, right? I was confused. "I guess I had just obey because they are His commandments and for my own good, mystery or not."

Then I read (again) D&C 82:8-9 and this time noticed the definition of a commandment: instructions on how to act (before him or while in communication with Him and in His service blessing others) so things will turn to our salvation ... even the bad things that Satan or Nature turn our way.

Commandments are instructions. He is teaching for our good, not just commanding. We can come up with  a hypotheses or a question and likely have already in the form of a prayer over a problem. The commandment instructs us or gives us the roadmap to the answer so we can recognize the answer when we arrive at it. In the traveling meanwhile, just follow the map, drive safely and enjoy the view. Take frequent rest stops, i.e. Church meetings, temple visits, scripture/prayer hours, etc.

I truly love the scriptures, feasting from the ideas banquet found therein. I love the restful Sabbath sabbatical taken weekly. I love the rest found in the temples and the reminder that the reason for this whole earthly experience is so we "may fulfill the measure of [our] creation and find joy" and rejoicing therein. What a purpose! What a Plan!

Life isn't easy. That's ok because, knowing what we know, life is GOOD!