Light Engaging Darkness – A weekly look at understanding the times.
It’s been an interesting week at a personal level for me. A Cybernat threatened to sue me because he didn’t like my mentioning his review of Dunkirk. I was assaulted in a minor way by a man high on drugs and ended up in the Dundee Courier. It was interesting to receive complaints from people that I used the word ‘junkie’ – they didn’t seem to be too bothered that I had actually been attacked!
As for all of us, our personal lifes are set against the backdrop of what is happening in the wider world. To be honest there are two subjects that our society (or at least the chattering classes, the liberal elites) seem to be obsessed with. One is Brexit. Every day we get a new scare story – planes won’t fly, there will be famine and a plague of locusts. I am seriously concerned about the number of intelligent people who apparently treat the EU like a religion or a God. There are good and bad things about the UK leaving the EU – not that you would know it from the one-sidedness of so many comments.
Its All About Sexuality
But that is nothing compared with the endless talk and obsession with homosexuality. All week the BBC in particular have had programmes celebrating the fact that 50 years ago homosexuality in England and Wales was decriminalized. It took another 13 years for that to happen in Scotland. To the BBC and others this is clearly the most important event to have happening in the history of Britain, since the Romans first arrived. It has been ridiculous – not just a series of Gay Britannia programmes, but every arts programme, news, culture has focused on it. I half expect to tune in to ‘Gay Gardeners Questiontime’
Of course the politicians were falling over themselves to prove that they were the most gay friendly. Prime Minister May went through the whole repentance for the ‘nasty’ party thing again. Not to be outdone Corbyn gave an interview to Pink News which promised more action to tackle homophobia.
The Transgender Madness continues.
There has been some excellent writing on this, The best of all coming from our friend Brendan O’Neill –
Here is one quote from his superb article:
“But perhaps the worst thing is the green light the government is giving to memory-holing, to the erasure of publicly recorded facts. To okay the rewriting of birth certificates is to nurture a new Orwellian era in which past events can be altered upon the whim of contemporary prejudice or hysteria. Just as Big Brother sanctions the shoving of inconvenient historical documents into a memory hole and their replacement with ‘improved’ versions of history – so that ‘the lie passed into history and became truth’ – so the Tories are proposing a system in which key documents, the very registry of life in Britain, could be edited. Forever. A document that once told us a boy was born on 18 August 1985 would now tell us a girl was born on that day. It would lie to us, and to future generations. Shouldn’t this concern us, this official approval of misinformation?
The authoritarian implications of the government-backed trans agenda are chilling. People should be free to identify as anything they like – male, female, black, white, rabbit, handsome, clever, the Second Coming, Napoleon Bonaparte. Whatever. But the rest of us should be free to say: ‘You are not that thing you claim to be. But good luck to you.’ The problem with the gender-recognition tyranny is that it doesn’t only say ‘identify however you please’ – it also cajoles public institutions, and by extension the public at large, to accept an individual’s self-identification. And it cannot be long before we will face punishment for refusing to do so. In New York, employers who ‘intentionally’ misgender the man who identifies as a woman can be fined $250,000. Soon we might all find ourselves forced under pain of financial retribution to say something we consider to be a lie. Speaking the truth, or what a huge number of people consider to be the truth, could become a criminal act. As I say, we’re going full Orwell.”
This excellent article from the Catholic Herald
“Right now, and up to now, each and every one of us finds ourselves thrown into existence. We did not choose to be the people we are, or the sex we are, or to be born of the parents we were born of, or to be born in the country we were born in. Some of these things we can change. A British subject can apply for American citizenship, for example, and he or she can choose to become American. You can change your name, if you do not like it; you can change the way you speak, through speech therapy. But the truth is that there are certain things you cannot change – the year you were born, for example, or the sex you were born in. This latter is a scientific fact because every cell in your body is sexed, and sex does not rely on outward appearance, which can be changed. So, we find ourselves, in certain important aspects of existence, thrown into the world, and there is nothing we can do about it – except morally, which is an important freedom. We are male or female, and how we live as men and women is a matter of moral choice for us. Moral freedom is perhaps the greatest of all freedoms.
The government proposal about gender reassignment seems to indicate that gender is purely a matter of human choice. If I, born a man, declare myself to be a woman, then I become a woman. In other words, I am the sole arbiter of my fate, and my will is the absolute legislator. There is no need for my choice to have any reference to objective fact. In other words, biology and nature, and the structure of the world, must, in this important matter, be utterly malleable to my will.
This idea is troubling and dangerous, because it is simply not true. The world is not infinitely malleable. There are laws that we did not make but discover, and those laws cannot be abolished or set aside.What the gender proposals reveal is the way the government had made a Nietzschean turn in its thinking. From now on, the will is supreme. Nothing else matters. We all know where that idea led us in the past. “
And this from the Federalist Papers-
These harms constitute nothing less than institutionalized child abuse. Sound ethics demand an immediate end to the use of pubertal suppression, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgeries in children and adolescents, as well as an end to promoting gender ideology via school curricula and legislative policies.
It is time for our nation’s leaders and the silent majority of health professionals to learn exactly what is happening to our children, and unite to take action. Dr Michelle Cretella – A paediatrician who focus’s on child behavioural health.
Here’s a gay Tory saying that it is mad
Thanks to all who have written re An Open Letter and Plea to Justine Greening, Minister of Education on her Gender Identity Proposals – I’m still waiting for a reply!
The death of Liu Xiaobo –
Chinese Political Prisoner Dies
He was a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who was locked up for advocating democracy in China. His ending was horrific. He died of liver cancer aged 61, after being refused 
Only Guardian Readers Need Apply to the C of E?
This is an interesting comment from Archbishop Cranmer on the C of E advertising for a social and public affairs advisor only in the Guardian and the Economist! It says a great deal.
The Cult of Trudeau
“Then there are his socks. Even North Korea’s enforced fawning over Kim doesn’t stretch to gabbing hysterically about the Supreme Leader’s footwear. Trudeau drove people wild by wearing NATO socks to a NATO meeting. Gay-flag socks to a Pride flag-raising event in Ottawa. ‘Eid Mubarak’ socks to Pride itself in Toronto. I can’t be the only person who would love to see him wear gay-pride socks to a Ramadan event. In Saudi Arabia, perhaps. That really would be everything. I can’t even. Well, he couldn’t even, that’s for sure. A writer for the New York Times hailed his ‘sock diplomacy’. I wish I was making this up. His socks always contain ‘a message of solidarity’, she said, and ‘rarely have a man’s ankles said so much.’ Times like this I wish I was illiterate.”
Alice in Wonderland
Alice Cooper found an Andy Warhol canvas worth up to $10 million rolled up in a storage locker alongside a collection of his 1970s stage props. He had completely forgotten about the artwork, given to him by a girlfriend some 40 years ago. What many people do not realise is that Alice Cooper is now a Christian.
The End of the Car?
New diesel and petrol cars are to be banned in the UK from 2040. apart from the fact that this announcement is not new – given that the government had already signed up to the climate change agreement promising that, it will be interesting to see if cars are in use at all in 25 years time!
The Chalke Slide Continues
Steve Chalke is at it again – this time denying original sin. I have known for years that Steve Chalke is a heretic, denying the most basic Christian truths, whilst claiming to 
Jer. 23:1 “Woe to the shepherds who are destroying and scattering the sheep of my pasture!”declares the LORD…….
And among the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen something horrible: They commit adultery and live a lie. They strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that not one of them turns from their wickedness. They are all like Sodom to me; the people of Jerusalem are like Gomorrah…..
This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. 17 They keep saying to those who despise me, ‘The LORD says: You will have peace.’ And to all who follow the stubbornness of their hearts they say, ‘No harm will come to you.’ 18 But which of them has stood in the council of the LORD to see or to hear his word? Who has listened and heard his word? ……..
21 I did not send these prophets, yet they have run with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied. 22 But if they had stood in my council, they would have proclaimed my words to my people and would have turned them from their evil ways and from their evil deeds.d 23 “Am I only a God nearby,” declares the LORD, “and not a God far away? 24 Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?” declares the LORD. “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” declares the LORD. Jer. 23:25 “I have heard what the prophets say who prophesy lies in my name. They say, ‘I had a dream! I had a dream!’
26 How long will this continue in the hearts of these lying prophets, who prophesy the delusions of their own minds? 27 They think the dreams they tell one another will make my people forget my name, just as their ancestors forgot my name through Baal worship. 28 Let the prophet who has a dream recount the dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?” declares the LORD. 29 “Is not my word like fire,” declares the LORD, “and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces? Jer. 23:30 ……….’ 34 If a prophet or a priest or anyone else claims, ‘This is a message from the LORD,’ I will punish them and their household. 35 This is what each of you keeps saying to your friends and other Israelites: ‘What is the LORD’S answer?’ or ‘What has the LORD spoken?’ 36 But you must not mention ‘a message from the LORD’ again, because each one’s word becomes their own message. So you distort the words of the living God, the LORD Almighty, our God.”
This IS the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.