Continue reading »]]>  This is the last weekend when you can join Christian Voice and get our informative, faith-building, child-defending briefing A Generation Betrayed, free.

 In February we have focussed on the danger of homosexual propaganda coming into schools (February has been designated ‘LGBT History Month’).  This is on top of the normal condoms-plus-promiscuity sex education which is leaving so many young people infertile through STI’s. 

 So many Christians and Christian groups moan about sex education, but we show parents, pastors, young people and youth leaders what they can actually do.  A Generation Betrayed gives masses of information and practical points on how to protect our children, and for young people, shows the benefits of old-fashioned virtues such as modesty and chastity.  It is a valuable resource for all the faithful, especially parents and those in leadership or youth ministry.

 Let’s be blunt.  Condoms do not protect against STD’s.  So even at a humanitarian level, we should be showing Christian young people that just one sexual encounter could leave them never able to have children of their own.  Add in the Scriptural imperatives to live lives of holiness and purity, and this subject becomes possibly the most important thing we can discuss with Christian young people.

 For just five more days, when you join Christian Voice, you get A Generation Betrayed absolutely free, along with Britain in Sin, which lays bare the anti-Christian legislation of the last fifty years and the appalling social consequences, and our information-packed briefings Understanding Islam and Labelling Halal all by return of post.  You won’t want to miss any of those!

 We always give thanks to God for the support of every faithful believer who joins us, and by joining Christian Voice you will benefit in targeting your prayer and action through the vital information we provide.

 Jesus Christ is the crucified, risen, ascended King of kings and we are called into his service.  I believe the Lord is calling out those who will really stand four-square on his word, tell the truth and ask him what action to take.  We are going to do exploits for the Lord and see His miracle-working power in answer to our prayers!

 So join Christian Voice by clicking here and I’ll send you our February newsletter and all the other resources, including A Generation Betrayed, by return.

 God’s word says:

Malachi 3:16  Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name.

Let’s do it!

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Continue reading »]]> By now all Christian Voice members should have received the January edition of our monthly newsletter. In it we have given an update of the horrendous situation in North Korea, where Christians are treated more severely than in any other nation on earth.

Building on this month’s report, our March newsletter will feature a review of Kang Chol-Hwan’s chilling exposé of the concentration camp system, The Aquariums of Pyongyan: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag.

Kang Chol-Hwan came from one of the many Korean families who had come there from Japan in the mid 20th century. Throughout the 1950s there was a large contingent of Koreans living in Japan who had fled to the island to escape the horrors of the Korean war. These refugees had a good life in Japan. Many of them held lucrative jobs, and they were surrounded by friends and family who had also immigrated to the island. Yet many of these Koreans decided to return home to start a life for themselves in the communist North.

These Korean refugees in Japan had been listening with eagerness to news of the revolutionary struggle occurring back in the north of their homeland. They heard how the “people’s struggle” had culminated in the establishment of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea under the faithful leadership of Kim Il-sung (1912–1994).

Reports continued to flood into Japan through the communist organizations about what a paradise North Korea was becoming. While there were some dissenting voices, warning that North Korea was far from being a communist utopia, the pro-North Korean political groups in Japan dismissed these warnings as anti-communist propaganda.

Thus it was that throughout the late 50s, thousands of Korean families living in Japan decided to immigrate back to their homeland. Leaving behind friends, family and wealth, tens of thousands took the journey, almost ecstatic to be part of Kim Il-sung’s “Paradise on Earth.”

Those who were left behind in Japan waited anxiously to receive news from their family and friends. Often they were met with only silence, or else letters with an unclear meaning. Assuming this must mean things were fine, many other Koreans sailed over.

What the returning Koreans stepped ashore, what they found was not a communist paradise but a prison. Some new arrivals who were loyal to communism were arrested immediately upon arrival, never knowing why and spending the little that remained of their lives in utter confusion and despair. Most were allowed to integrate into North Korean society (little better than a prison itself), but only after the wealth they had brought over from Japan had been systematically confiscated.

Kang Chol-Hwan, author of The Aquariums of Pyongyang, was born into a family whose grandparents were among these immigrants. Kang’s his grandparents’ stepped ashore on North Korean soil, one of his uncles recalled seeing several Koreans who had immigrated a few weeks earlier come up to some of the immigrants and say, “What happened? We sent our friends and family letters warning people not to come! Why didn’t your family listen?” The reality is that their letters had never been allowed to reach Japan.

After listening to this ominous exchange, Kang’s uncle looked around him. “It was like the city was dead – the strangest atmosphere” he recalled. “The people all looked so shabby and aimless in their wandering. There was a feeling of deep sadness in the air, and no movement betrayed the slightest hint of spontaneity.”

By the time Kang’s grandparents realized their mistake, it was too late. They would never be allowed to go back to Japan.

Kang’s parents and grandparents actually had it good. They were allowed to live in the capital city, Pyongyang, and because they had brought over so much wealth, they were favoured by the party leaders. Kang’s grandfather was even able to keep a Volvo he had brought over from Japan, in which he took his children and grandchildren on drives in the country. (Every outing had to be authorized, usually requiring a hansom bribe to a party bureaucrat).

Moreover, because his grandfather worked in food distribution, there was always plenty to eat. Since Kang had never experienced his family’s other life in Japan (his father married in 1967, after the family had already immigrated) he had nothing with which to compare and led a genuinely happy childhood, or as happy as one can realistically expect to be in that totalitarian state.

The trouble began in 1977 when Kang was nine and his grandfather simply disappeared. No one was ever told what he had done, but it was supposed that someone must have reported him for being disloyal. In North Korea there are never any trials, and the mere suspicion that a person is disloyal to the communist party can be enough to send him and his entire family to a labour camp.

Not long after this, agents showed up at the family’s house and abruptly informed the household that they were being transferred. No explanations were given, but the hardest part about it for Kang was that his mother was not allowed to accompany them. Since she was descended from an ‘heroic family’ she was not allowed to join her children even though she begged to be able to.

Nine-year old Kang, along with his seven-year old sister Mi-ho, his father, grandmother, uncle and aunt, were taken to a camp in Yodok, South-Hamkyung Province. For the next ten years Kang remained in the camp, without ever being told what his grandfather had allegedly done to warrant this treatment.

Kang’s account of his time in the North Korean Gulag gives us unique insight into the camp system and the totalitarian regime that sustains it. We also learn about his exciting escape to China and finally to South Korea, where he was converted to Christianity and became one of the chief advocates for human rights in North Korea.

Next month’s Christian Voice newsletter will contain a review of the book, including a detailed description of the horrors witnessed by Kang in the camp – conditions which are still a reality for the thousands of Christians imprisoned in these camps.

In the following video, Kang Chol-Hwan uses satellite imagery to show the horrors of the concentration camp system.

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British law needs to support marriage, not encourage promiscuity and divorce

In a Jubilee Centre report from last December, author and therapist Guy Brandon demonstrated that the economic ramifications of our permissive society are almost beyond reckoning.

Moral Hazard

Mr Brandon, the author of Just Sex: is it Ever Just Sex?, used quantitative cost-analysis to disprove the notion that “sex between consenting adults is no one else’s business”, a mantra that has been repeated by both Ken Livingstone and Max Mosley.

By using the category of ‘moral hazard’, he showed that British society has created a system that incentivizes promiscuity.

“‘Moral Hazard’, he explains, “occurs when a contract or financial arrangement creates incentives for the parties involved to behave against the interest of others’ – typically because one party is insulated from risk.”

One of the ways British society does this is through a system in which the financial consequences of promiscuity are not carried by the people directly involved but diffused throughout society collectively.

The British Government has also created a moral hazard when it began to allow the welfare safety net to be exploited in ways which incentivise family breakdown. “At present,” Brandon writes, “the tax and benefits system makes it economically more favourable for some parents to live apart – the so-called couple penalty. Ending this must be a priority.”

Why Free Sex is Never Free

The Jubilee Centre article, titled ‘Free sex: Who pays?: Moral hazard and sexual ethics’, suggests that while “the costs of sexual freedom and relationship breakdown to the taxpayer and wider economy are complex and difficult to calculate… £100 billion annually is probably a reasonable starting point: about twice as much as alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity combined.”

The following are some the areas where the costs of sexual licence are felt the strongest in our economy:

The entire society is forced to cover the cost of promiscuity

• Promiscuity often leads to STI’s, which cost the British taxpayer more than £1 billion per year.
• Promiscuity often leads to HIV. The estimated 83,000 cases of HIV in the UK at the end of 2008 represent a total lifetime cost of £26 billion.
• Promiscuity leads to teenage pregnancy which cost the NHS £63 million per year, and a further £29 million for infertility and other complications arising from chlamydia alone.
• Promiscuity often leads to abortions, and 96% of abortions are carried out on the NHS at a cost of £650 each, or £118 million.
• Promiscuity often contributes to separation from marriage and cohabiting relationships (including promiscuity prior to entering such relationships), which entails huge increases in tax credit payments, lone parent benefits, housing benefits, in addition to the health, crime and educational impact of relationship breakdown. Altogether this totals about £42 billion a year.
• In contributing to relationship breakdown, promiscuity leads to Absenteeism. The loss of working hours following relationship breakdown costs the economy at least £20 billion a year.
• In contributing to relationship breakdown, promiscuity can lead to domestic violence which costs the British taxpayer around £3.4 billion a year, and around £21 billion today in ‘human and emotional costs.’
• The effect of relationship breakdown on children leads to educational underachievement which results in an estimated £40,000 for each child, reducing GDP by £6 billion. Much of this cost can be directly attributable to the promiscuous activity which contributed to the relationship breakdown.

These facts, all of which Brandon meticulously documents, helps to undermine the common narrative that sex is a choice made only by the couple most directly involved with only limited consequences beyond the two of them. This narrative has found expression in phrases such as ‘recreational sex’ and ‘casual sex’, which obscure the reality that the entire society picks up the bill for promiscuity.

Mr. Brandon contrasts our system with that of ancient Israel which put institutional and legal parameters in place to limit moral hazard. His discussion of Old Testament law provides a helpful framework that our own law-makers would do well to glean from.

The Jubilee Centre report is not as strong in laying out a solution to the problem, although Mr Brandon does make some suggestions on how Government policy makers can limit the degree of moral hazard that is operative.

The first step is simply for the British Government to recognize the full scope of the economic problem. Up to now Government has focused considerable attention on discouraging teenage pregnancy and encouraging ‘safe sex.’ However, promiscuity itself has received scant attention, and is even actively discouraged by much Government policy. As Mr. Brandon has said,

“The UK Treasury does not make the link between the vast costs of relationship breakdown and its drivers, David Cameron’s emphasis on the family notwithstanding. Public policy barely acknowledges the existence of the problem, let alone the scale.”

From an economic point of view, it is not enough to merely encourage safe sex and discourage teenage pregnancy. Until promiscuity itself is adequately addressed, the economic problem will only increase.

WRITE: to your MP and share some of Mr. Brandon’s concerns. You may even want to print out a copy of the Jubilee Centre report to mail to your MP. Ask for your comments to be forwarded to the appropriate minister. Make the point that

• Parliament needs to abolish the ‘couple penalty.’
• No-fault divorce on demand must go.
• The entire culture of sex education must be abolished, since this encourages promiscuity and rarely, if ever, teaches the virtues of chastity. (See our article ‘Ferrari Condemns ‘state-sanctioned child abuse.‘)
• Government must take more responsibility to limit the amount of nudity that occurs in the public spaces of the television airwaves. This is because there is evidence that such nudity (especially when it involves sex) contributes to promiscuity at younger ages.

The Wider Context: Marriage as a Social Institution

I would like to spend a few minutes setting Guy Brandon’s concerns within the wider context of how our society approaches the institution of marriage in general.

The disintegration of the institution of marriage in our society is obvious. However, those things which are often seen to be the sources of this – the rise in promiscuity, divorce, the push for gay ‘marriage’, etc. – are only the symptoms.

The roots of the breakdown of marriage as a social institution actually occurred in the mid 20th century when it began to be assumed that marriage is sustained by an individual relationship that two people participate in, rather than it being understood that the institution of marriage is what sustains and gives integrity to the relationship.

In the latter approach, marriage is bigger than the two people involved. Under this understanding, marriage is an institution that ushers a man and woman into an entire ecosystem of obligations, responsibilities and priorities. Historically this ecosystem has been sustained by numerous factors that people used to take for granted, ranging everywhere from how we think of the home to the role of the extended family, to legislation regarding the place of illegitimate children within society.

It is this larger ecosystem that has been lost today. Those who get married today are not immediately surrounded by a broader web of social obligations, responsibilities and priorities. Indeed, if Brandon’s research is to be taken seriously, our social ecosystems often actively work against the integrity of the marriage as an institution. The result is that our society has evacuated marriage of almost everything except the relationship.

Marriage is Bigger than the Couple

In an interview for Volume 51 of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, David Blankenhorn pointed out that “The current conception of marriage is that the couple is now bigger than the marriage. To put it in religious terms, the couple is the god of their marriage. They define it. They give it all its meaning. Marriage is a private religion that the couple defines…. The couple becomes bigger than the marriage rather than the other way around.”

Blankenhorn, who is the founder and president of the Institute for American Values and author of The Future of Marriage, pointed out that a marriage cannot so easily be disposed of when a society treats the institution as being bigger than the two individuals involved, rather than visa versa.

Mr. Blankenhorn explains how a society that has a high regard for the institutional integrity of marriage surrounds the couple with an entire network of laws, taboos, traditions and expectations that place the marriage relationship in a larger context. (See ‘Marvin Olasky Interviews David Blankenhorn‘)

David Blankenhorn is the founder and president of the Institute for American Values and author of The Future of Marriage

The sense of marriage as an institution that is bigger than the participating couple was embodied in the practice of having the couple recite marriage vows that were given to them by the society. These vows represented fixed standards external to the couple to which they promised conformity.

By contrast, today it has become increasingly normative for the couple to compose their own vows. For my own wedding I wrote the entire service (using bits of the Book of Common Prayer according to my inclination) for precisely this reason: to reinforce the personalized and individualistic nature of the contract.

Consequences

Under the older framework, marriage was seen to be an objective institution first, and a subjective relationship second. The consequences in a society that has reversed this are legion.

One immediate ramification is that couples are no longer encouraged to conform to the expectations of marriage, but are in many respects discouraged from doing so, as Brandon revealed in his discussion of moral hazard.

It is becoming increasingly popular for couples to write their own wedding vows

Or, we might legitimately ask, if marriage is pretty much little more than a close relationship, then why is marriage even necessary if cohabiting couples think they can enjoy this same level of relational closeness?

There have also been more subtle and less obvious ramifications, affecting our very concept of marriage itself. Think about it: if the relationship between two people is bigger than the marriage, and if the relationship is what keeps the marriage alive rather than the marriage being what keeps the relationship alive, then once the relationship turns sour does marriage suddenly lose its integrity? The answer given by our ‘no fault divorce’ laws is yes.

Or again, if marriage is a private relationship that the couple defines (as embodied in the practice of the couple composing their own wedding vows), then are there any limits to what can be encompassed in that definition? Can anything count as marriage? This is a question that has been explored here, although the implications this has for current debates about ‘gay marriage’ should be immediately apparent.

Marriage Sustains Love

The institutional importance of marriage was encapsulated by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a wedding sermon he wrote in May 1943 for a young relative on her wedding day. In the sermon, titled ‘A Wedding Sermon from a Prison Cell,’ and later collected in the volume Letters & Papers from Prison, Bonhoeffer wrote that:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God’s holy ordinance, through which he wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory, and calls into his kingdom….

Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal – it is a status, an office….

A little later in the sermon, Bonhoeffer wrote a wonderful line that gets at the heart of the issue: “It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.”

READ: “And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” Matthew 19:4-6

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Nick Ferrari

Even as Christians throughout the UK prepare to observe Valentine’s Day as a Day of Purity, our nation is reeling from last week’s revelations of the astonishing scope of Government complicity in the contraceptive trade.

Throughout Southampton special NHS nurses have been visiting nine schools and colleges to offer contraceptive implants to thousands of girls behind their parents’ back.

The full measure of the scandal emerged last week when it was disclosed that a staggering 7,400 girls aged 15 and under were given the implants and jabs, in what amounts to a six-fold increase in just five years.

Writing in yesterday’s Sunday Express, Nick Ferrari suggested that the practice “sounds like a relic from Stalinist Russia or Hitler’s Germany.” He pointed out the inconsistency in a system that prohibits school nurses from even applying a sticking plaster to children in case they have an allergic reaction and yet sends out a special army of nurses to pump underage schoolgirls full of hormones so they can have risk free sex. Mr Ferrari commented,

This is as close to state-sanctioned child abuse as we’ll ever sink….

It is unimaginable that this would be accepted in any other area where we try to educate and discipline children ourselves. If the state were offering teenagers free alcopops or joints, there would be a deafening outcry. Yet when it comes to sex we seem to just shrug and accept it. the pressure on girls from boys who know they can get the implants or injections will be huge. You can hear the shrill whining of “If you loved me, you’d get them” and “Mum and Dad will never know” as the girls are forced to give in.

Of equal concern is the risk of infertility brought about by the Government’s policy. Ferrari writes,

Even if you’re deluded enough to support this, as depressingly many campaigners are, no one seems to think of the massive risk of picking up sexually transmitted infections as girls can swap partners as easily as they change their pop socks. The risk of a girl being left unable to ever conceive is considerable, but to these warped advocates that’s probably seen as a bonus as the girl can have even more sex without even needing the jabs.”

While Government has a teenage pregnancy unit, they have no teenage infertility unit. No one in Government knows how many girls are being made infertile through state-sanctioned promiscuity and, frankly, nobody cares. Nick Ferrari has hit the nail on the head. An infertile girl will not figure into the pregnancy statistics and will actually help to decrease the surplus population, as they see it.

 If you are concerned about this and would like information on what you can do to help foster a culture of Chastity, join Christian Voice and get a free copy of our booklet ‘A Generation Betrayed.’ Also visit the Day of Purity website to find out how Christians throughout the UK can spend Valentine’s Day supporting chastity.

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Continue reading »]]> A preacher has been found not guilty of a public order offence after a complaint from two homosexuals.

Michael Overd, from Taunton, was part of a street witness and was preaching from 1Cor 6:9-11 in October 2010 when two homosexual men, Craig Nicholl and Craig Manning, passed him holding hands.  Hearing the word ‘homosexual’ in the passage, they turned round, went up to Mr Overd and began shouting at him, using despicable foul language.  The Court was told Mr Nicholl spat at the preacher.

On a second occasion, 16th July 2011, Michael Overd was preaching alone when the two approached him.  In full flow, he said, ‘Even these two dear men, whom I’ve met before, caught in the sin of homosexuality, can have forgiveness of their sin.’

The two Craigs, who recently entered into a ‘civil partnership’, again began screaming at the preacher and making, he told Taunton Deane Magistrates Court, all kinds of homosexually-charged comments and allegations at him.  Not satisfied with that, they called the police, but so aggressive did they become, it was Mr Overd who was glad to see the boys in blue.

Michael Overd was prosecuted under Section 4a of the Public Order Act 1986:

Section 4A – Intentionally causing harassment, alarm or distress:
‘A person is guilty if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress, he
‘a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
‘b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,
‘thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.’.

But the Court found that Michael Overd did not have any such intent and found him not guilty.

Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, heard the evidence in court and said after the verdict:

‘Coming on a day when both the Bulls and Bideford Council lost their cases in the High Court, this verdict is welcome news.  Christians find themselves today in an environment where they can be insulted, sworn at, threatened with violence, even spat at, and then themselves charged with a public order offence.  Clearer instructions and better training need to filter down to police officers so that cases like this do not waste the time of the court.  This case should never have been brought and the verdict is a victory for Christian liberty and for freedom of speech.’

Messrs Nicholl and Manning, who described each other in court as ‘my husband’ , alleged that Michael Overd told them they would ‘burn in hell’ but this turned out to be as much a figment of their imagination as the idea that they are in any way ‘married’ to each other.  Four witnesses told the court that they had never heard Mr Overd use such language.

An amusing moment happened when the prosecutor tried to explore the defendant’s view on certain subjects as heaven and hell, abortion, fornication and homosexuality.  Time after time, Mr Overd referred the lawyer to the Bible, saying that he believed what was in it.  In the end, the chairman of the magistrates lost patience, and said to the prosecutor, ‘I think we have established that his beliefs are based on what he reads in the Bible.’

By the end of the evidence, the Court was left in no doubt as to who would not inherit the kingdom of God.  In the King James Version: 1Cor 6:9  ‘Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?  Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10  Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.’

Michael Overd was represented in court by Paul Diamond of counsel instructed by Michael Phillips, solicitor.

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Continue reading »]]> In our recent article warning parents about LGBT History Month, we referenced the fact that the American College of Pediatricians has published research showing that over 85% of school students with same-sex attractions will ultimately adopt a heterosexual orientation if not otherwise encouraged. The problem, we pointed out, is that the types of issues that children in the UK are being exposed to during LGBT History Month often have the effect of pushing them towards a homosexual orientation. One homosexual activist we quoted actually made it quite clear that he wants to recruit children to turn them into homosexuals.

But there is another issue, and one which we should all be able to agree on regardless of our views on homosexuality. I refer to the way homosexual curriculum, not least the resources UK schools use during LGBT month, overload young children with adult issues that are beyond their cognitive and psychological capacity to process.

To expect a child who has not even reached puberty to understand about transgenderism, cross dressing, gender reassignment surgery, etc., is to introduce categories into their thinking that are well beyond their ability to adequately process and can be deeply confusing. These concepts are confusing for adults, let alone 6-year olds!

That is exactly what Dr. Grossman argued in the following video when testifying last year to the State of California legislature about homosexual curriculum. Her expertise in the field of child psychology and pediatrics gives her a valuable perspective on this debate that the propagators of LGBT History Month would do well to heed.

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Taking a risk - Bristol Social Services

Our misgivings about child protection social workers were pretty-well confirmed last Monday 30th Jan 2012 with a fly-on-the-wall documentary following a child welfare case in Bristol.  You can catch the next episode on BBC2, Monday night at 9.00pm (not Scotland) and/or view episodes HERE.

Called ‘Damned if they do, damned if they don’t’, last Monday’s progranmme followed a seemingly inexorable chain of events in which an uneducated couple lost their son, and then their newly-born daughter, to the care system.  The couple went to Bristol Social Services for help, as many do. 

We realised afterwards that, except for a hand-out of a bed for their son, there was no help from Bristol SS, only a series of directives and ultimata which the inadequate parents would always be hopeless at fulfilling.  These lost souls needed a training course in nutrition and house-management for a start, and a basic all-round education would not have come amiss either.

On ITV’s This Morning yesterday, towards the end of the programme, two high-ranking Bristol social workers, including the one pictured, said they were ‘taking a risk’ by allowing the programme to follow them around.  They were right.  Even though the family in the programme were an obvious ‘hard case’, the outcome still left a bad taste in the mouth.

They reminded us of the source of their philosophy, which appears to be: ‘If in doubt, take the child out’.  It all stems back to the Children Act 1989.  This Act made the ‘welfare of the child’ the paramount consideration of the family Court.  Keeping a family together is not remotely a consideration.  For those who believe the Family has equal status with the State as social institutions of Almighty God, this approach takes some getting used to.

Even knowing what we know about the dangers of the Care System (with apologies to all you good Christian foster parents out there) the Court will still have a default position that the child’s welfare is best served by being in care. 

So if they are ‘Damned if they do, damned if they don’t’, why do they not lean towards ‘Don’t’ rather than ‘Do’?  (This was a question that the naive Eamonn Holmes was never going to ask.)

The answer is that if they ‘Do’ take a child and get it wrong, then owing to the secrecy of the family courts (in the ‘best interests of the child’ of course) no-one ever gets to hear of it.  If they ‘Don’t’ take a child and it all goes sour, the child’s fate ends up on front pages of the newspapers and social workers lose their jobs.

Afterwards,

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Continue reading »]]> Douglas Wilson has some good things to say here about some of the issues upstream of the modesty debate, which echoes some of the concerns we raised in the July 2011 Christian Voice newsletter when we covered the ‘slutwalks.’

Wilson also helpfully reminds us that when a woman reveals too much flesh, it is often not because she has too much sexual security but too less. Wilson writes,

One of the most striking things about these flesh parades is how unattractive it all is. As in, gekkk. … There are clearly numerous young ladies who have no one in their lives willing to speak to them truthfully. And when women don’t have someone who loves them like they ought to, they become susceptible to any number of fads, so long as someone — most likely a peer with the same emotional problems — is willing to tell them it is “cute.” Well, it isn’t. Sorry to break it to you. There also appears to be an inverse relationship between the class of the person and how many square feet are covered by the tattoo.

The problem here, at least within the church, is that hints don’t get you anywhere, no effect at all, and if you state the problem plainly, it flattens the poor girl for months, like somebody took a pastoral mallet to her. By “hints,” I mean general references in sermons to modesty and decorum, and by “stating plainly” I mean suggesting that she come to church next week with the mammalian pride dialed back just a skosh. The problem is not that she is secure in her sexuality — it is just the reverse. You can tell this because women who want to be “secure” in their sexuality in this way at the same time do not want men around them who are secure in their sexuality in a comparable way. 

When Wilson suggests that the problem with women who parade their flesh is not that they are too secure in their sexuality but that they are too insecure in it, I thought of the recent controversy over Lara Pulver’s nude scene in the pre-watershed BBC1 Sherlock Holmes.

Actress Lara Pulver commented that it was "really empowering" to go completely naked in the new Sherlock Holmes series

Significantly, after appearing completely nude in front of Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock) and Martin Freeman (Dr Watson) for eight hours during the shooting (to say nothing of the more than 10 million viewers who were able to see sustained footage of Pulver in her birthday suit), Mrs. Pulver commented that “something really empowering takes over.”

This echoes many of the comments made by those women who participated in the slutwalks, who said that they felt “empowered” when they paraded down the streets of London in various stages of nudity.

If Douglas Wilson is right, a woman who is secure in herself and in her sexuality does not need to take off all her clothes to feel empowered. Indeed, when women think it is empowering to undress in front of men, that is often evidence that our society in general, and fathers in particular, are not giving them the respect and dignity they deserve. Lacking an inherent sense of their own worth, they feel compelled to prove themselves by parading their flesh. Sadly, this often gives women a false empowering that acts as a substitute to genuine female dignity.

(To read more about nudity in films and the implications this has for how we view the body, see the article recently published by the Chuck Colson Center titled ‘Nudity and the Christian worldview.’)

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Judith Schilling manned a resource stall for the European Commission at the Education Show in Birmingham.

Last week we reported on the way homosexual activists are actively trying to recruit school children, with some openly admitting it.

The ‘gay’ lobby is not the only group that has fixated on school children. A report in the Express last week showed how the Brussels’ propaganda machine is introducing resources designed to teach children about the benefits of the EU.

A film was taken at an Education Show in Birmingham in which Judith Schilling was interviewed about her display of resources from the European Commission.

In the film Mrs. Schilling commented, “…everybody has now picked up the idea that we will never succeed in convincing people about the value of being a member of the European Union if we do not start early enough with the young people, before they form prejudices and are misinformed by other sources.”

The free literature for teachers included a resource titled, “The EU: What’s in it for me?” explaining “how we benefit from membership of the EU in our daily life, everything between lower roaming charges and cleaner bathing water.”

Robin Phillips, press secretary for Christian Voice, commented, “The EU is getting desperate because they know that the majority of people in Britain, as well as many of the other states, are not in favour of continuing EU membership. Thus, the EU’s only hope is to try to raise up a new generation that accept the European Union as not only normal but beneficial. To do that, however, they have to start when the children are very young.”

Further Reading

Eurocrats Prop up Dagon

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