Law

Boulder has better churches than St. John's Episcopal Church attended by President Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. Their rector is a priestess and the congregation is committed to embracing sodomites and lesbians as full members with sacramental privileges.

On abortion, CNN reports:

"Despite Trump's pledge to pick a 'pro-life' justice, Leonard Leo, who advised the president on Supreme Court nominees, said the issue was never explicitly raised during their discussions. 'Judge Gorsuch wasn't asked about it, and he's not going to make a commitment on it,' said Leo, who has taken a leave from his job heading the Federalist Society while he shepherds Gorsuch's nomination through the Senate."

This is the man who made it worthwhile to vote for Donald Trump? Seriously?

Were Vice-President Mike Pence and the Federalist Society unable to find and recommend any nominee whose work is inspired by his orthodox Christian faith?

PS: Please click through for some criticisms of this post and my responses...

ADDED 02/11/17:

ONE READER WROTE: "While I agree with the basic theological point of your post, and it is important to have the discernment to see the stitches on the fastball in our rapidly decaying culture, I am not sure after reading the article you linked to that the judges were being permissive toward bestiality. It seems to me that the point was that they could not prove the case via physical evidence. Given how many fraudulent convictions have been overturned - including people who were sentenced to death only to be exonerated before the execution - I am certainly sympathetic to that argument. If he didn't rape the animal, then he obviously shouldn't be punished for the crime. He should get psychiatric treatment for confessing to a crime he didn't commit, because if he is not guilty he is clearly mentally ill. And even if he is guilty, that guilt has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. I think the decision was that the prosecutors didn't prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, not that what he allegedly did was permissible."

I RESPOND: Independently of each other, two wise Christian attorneys saw this action of the Indiana Court of Appeals to be one more "horrible" example of our unelected judges assisting our culture's bondage to sexual perversions. I think we should take Christian attorneys' word for it concerning what this ruling means. Further, one of these attorneys pointed out that the judges who signed on to Judge Sharpnack's opinion were Republican appointees, one given us by Daniels and one by Pence. He then commented, "An unelected judiciary has been a malignant force pushing sexual perversion for decades now. No surprise that the elected county judge doesn't buy the corpus delicti argument." I will only add that it would be almost incredible for any appellate ruling overturning a conviction for bestiality anywhere in our nation, today, NOT to be hard evidence of a growing sympathy for the zoophile perversion caused by our embracing of the adultery, lesbian, and sodomitic perversions.

Indiana Court of Appeals points the way backward to the horrors of Canaan.

A man confessed to having sex with his roommate's dog, but Indiana's Court of Appeals overturned the man's conviction by abusing the legal principle of corpus delicti.

The dog had suffered no visible damage.

Next it will be babies. They can't testify and they show no damage, so we may expect Indiana's Court of Appeals to overturn the conviction of any man who testifies against himself that he raped a baby.

So now, will our famous Reformed celebrities start promoting the zoophile orientation? Will they tell us the Bible nowhere commands same-species sex? Will they begin to publicize the new section for celibate zoophiles on LivingOut.org? Will Covenant Seminary begin matriculating and providing an M.Div. to those who claim to be "zoophile Christians," but promise they aren't doing it?

If you are angry that I'm asking these questions, you've drunk the Kool-Aid rich and famous Christians are selling you. 

Neither the slaughter of one-quarter of our children we liltingly refer to as "abortion," nor the promotion of sodomy and the denial of First Amendment rights of Christians who object to it, will be repealed in our courts. Any remedy will have to be legislative.

Legislation, though, depends upon the will of the people and at this point we, the people, do not have the will to stop either of these obscenities. Nor very many others.

How might this change?

The history of the early church shows the way. The men who knew Jesus went out preaching, and in time the Roman Empire turned away from effeminacy, sodomy, female rebellion, and child slaughter that was characteristic of their pagan religion.

Now, though, Christendom is in its death throes. Seventy-five years ago, J. Gresham Machen said America was living...

This is a talk given by ruling elder Ken Patrick at a conference held this past Saturday at his church, Trinity Presbyterian Church (PCA), in Ludlow, Kentucky. Titled "Maintaining a Christian Witness in an Increasingly Pagan Culture," the conference's other speakers were Trinity's pastor Chuck Hickey and an attorney from the Alliance Defending Freedom, Jeff Shafer. I attended the conference with my son, Joseph, and his fellow pastor Paul Belcher (both serving Christ Church in Cincinnati). Hope you find this talk as wise and helpful as Joseph, Paul, and I did.

* * *

Maintaining a Christian Witness in an Increasingly Pagan Culture

by Ken Patrick

Before we begin, let me talk about my qualifications to divine the future: I’m not a prophet; I don’t have a “word from the Lord” in the sense that I’m about to share any divinely sourced revelation with you; God didn’t appear to me in a dream.

What I’m going to share are simply observations on what may come to pass if current trends continue, and what I would do if I were in charge. If you find yourself disagreeing with what I say, hopefully you’ll stay until I’m finished. We’ll have a Q&A session where you can ask a question, and of course you can pigeon-hole me afterward.

So, to answer my own question right up front—is there a Christian ghetto in our future?—I think the most likely answer is “of course, yes” at least in an intellectual sense and perhaps in a real, physical way as well. I think it’s very possible that we’ll see both. Before I begin describing what these Christian “ghetto” scenarios might look like, let’s establish why many of us think...

This post was a private e-mail sent to me by a friend who thinks Joe Sobran went sour as his age advanced. My friend was responding to a couple recent posts (first and second) and comments made under those posts. I thought the e-mail worth posting on the blog given the movement of many young Reformed into libertarianism of a toxic sort (although I myself believe libertarianism is intrinsically toxic)

It's true that Joe's libertarianism went toxic, tending towards anarchism. A friend who serves as a civil magistrate remonstrated with Joe about this, personally, but seemingly to no avail. Joe remains our hero, but listen to these good warnings from a wise young man.

* * * 

I'll take this opportunity to identify myself as the "young man" with whom Tim corresponded. I agree with about 90% of what he's written about Joe Sobran—maybe more. Joe Sobran’s essays in defense of the faith were rare gems. "Is Darwin Holy?", one he wrote toward the end, is another one that stands out in my mind.

I started reading Sobran on the recommendation of a high school teacher when I was about 16. Reading him disabused me of the notion that a young man could make a good living writing truth. It's one of the reasons I decided to become an engineer, instead. Call me cynical if you wish, but I wanted to be able to support a wife and children...

Everyone is congratulating each other over the NBA's supercilious Adam Silver yanking the All-Star Game from Charlotte. He was taking a stand against North Carolina legislators who had passed a law against sexual predators posing as women and using women's bathrooms. People who matter had been Hoosiering the state over its law for a while, now. It took a little longer than expected but sexual debauchery won the day and the NBA canned Charlotte. The scuttlebutt is New Orleans will be the new host city.

People are morally indignant that a man isn't allowed to pee in the Lady's Room in Charlotte so they send their game over to the city where Lent is celebrated by women baring their breasts. This is our country, today—a nation filled with Christians like Steph Curry.

Turns out Charlotte is Steph's hometown... 

Addition not subtraction. Triangulation. The Third Way. These are terms of political tradecraft. They signify the politician's transcendence above the liberal-conservative divide. Working in government, I see this principle in constant operation. 

A politician can triangulate in the mix of policies he adopts. For example, an "all-of-the-above" energy strategy means the politician supports traditional oil and gas exploration as well as ethanol subsidies, all while paying lip service to renewable solar and wind power. This strategy lowers the decibel level from environmentalist opponents if not neutralizing them entirely. 

A politician also triangulates with rhetoric. He need only strike the right pose and emit the proper buzzword. From illegal drugs to education to welfare, a politician can navigate beyond any seemingly binary framework by talking of and emoting compassion. If he's really sophisticated, a politician utters certain phrases that are seemingly insignificant and benign to almost everyone while being fraught with meaning when decoded by a special interest group. This is what the political class calls...

Yesterday, a female federal judge appointed by President Obama subverted the will of the people of Indiana by issuing a temporary injunction against our new state law outlawing the murder of certain unborn children. House Enrolled Act 1337 passed by our legislature and signed by our governor says a woman may not pay a doctor to murder her child because she doesn't like the child's sex, race, or handicap. The law also requires mothers and the doctors they pay to murder their child to dispose of the child's body respectfully, by cremation or burial. No longer will they be allowed to throw their murdered children into the dumpster or down the sewer.

Indiana's attorney general issued a statement telling citizens to respect Judge Tanya Walton Pratt's decision because the ability to "question the constitutionality of the statutes is an important safeguard in our system of checks and balances."

No, I will not respect this decision, nor the judge who made it, nor the President who appointed her, nor the law school profs who trained her, nor the family members who eat dinner with her each evening. She is a moral monster. She is also a judicial poser operating entirely outside the rule of law. The rule of law begins with the protection of those at the margins of society who are unable...

So the Supreme Court has ruled against restrictions on abortion passed into law by the legislature of the state of Texas.

So what? We're supposed to be interested in what these bloody ghouls vote and write? One could be thirty years deep into a persistent vegetative state and still correctly predict the court would overrule any effort to slow down their slaughter. It's the central narrative of our nation's political life.

Joe Sobran used to point out that...