I am open to the possibility of a sea change in my reality. I had a conversation with a good friend on Saturday. A new, good friend.
He is gay.
This is what I wrote after talking to him.
I pretend I know the truth about being gay when I don't. The result is that I don't have anyone close to me that is gay. I am keeping myself from the access of one way I can find out what is real about being gay. About what the word marriage means in connection to those that are gay.
Wow. This floored me. I am not yet willing to accept this statement. I am willing to try it on. Consider it. Investigate such that my tests for truth will bear out if it is true or not.
The phrase "bear witness to the truth" has always been confusing to me. Shouldn't it be bare witness of the truth? Meaning exposing my witness of the truth?
I think I found where it came from. Sterling Dictionary of Idioms lists this.
bear witness to provide evidence of the truth His evidence bore witness to my case.
It seems to me that "bear witness to the truth" is just a shortening of this phrase. That makes so much more sense.
Types of consequences
- Marriage itself. It will be hard to say that fathers are essential when Justice Kennedy has redefined marriage to make fathers optional... [Same sex marriage] is both a symptom and a cause. Societies that have depreciated marriage tend to redefine marriage; which in turn accelerated the depreciation of marriage.
Same-sex marriage institutionalizes missing parents.
Children who were raised in a divorced family, divorced and remarried, adoptive families, single parent families. Those children were all allowed to say, "Hey I'm struggling because my dad's missing or my mom's missing". Same-sex marriage will make it so that children being raised by same-sex couples will be told, "The problem is not with objective reality. The problem's with you. You are interpreting your reality falsly."
- Unborn human life. Redefining marriage redefines parenthood. It redefines the obligations that adults have to children. It will also increase the use of assisted reproductive technologies. Which leave in their wake many frozen embryos and embryos that will never be implanted.
- Religious Liberty. We've seen the cases of the bakers, the florists, the photographers, adoption agencies, Christian schools and Universities, have all come under threat or even government fines and penalties because of their belief about marriage.
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The free exercise of religion is not just the freedom of worship. So, there's a chapter in the book that talks about religious liberty as a natural human right. It's not what the Obama administration has been saying, "freedom inside your chapel to do what you want to do", it's freedom Monday through Saturday as well; to live out your faith in the public square.
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Take heart from the pro-life movement. "My parent's generation did the hard work of bearing witness to the truth. And now, today, we get to reap those fruits. The same thing needs to take place in the marriage issue."
Three particular lessons from the pro-life movement:
- Rejected Roe v Wade: Roe v Wade is a wrong court ruling. It got the constitution wrong and it got unborn children wrong. It told a lie about the constitution. It told a lie about unborn children.
- Protected its freedom: It made sure that no pro-life American would ever have to pay for or perform an abortion.
Make sure that no pro-marriage American will ever be forced to violate their beliefs about marriage.
- Committed themselves to the long haul of bearing witness to the truth:
I am committed to the long haul for both life and marriage.
The Population Bomb is a book written by Paul R. Ehrlich in 1968. "It warned of the mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth." (Wikipedia Page)
What Ehrlich famously got wrong was the planet’s carrying capacity. Sure, global population doubled. But thanks to the Green Revolution, per-acre grain yields went up much faster than that. The inflection point in global agricultural productivity, in fact, came just as Ehrlich was finishing his book. ("Why 'The Population Bomb' Bombed", Justin Fox, Jun 1, 2015)
We all have the inherit right to produce life. Technology has proven that we, as a whole, will be able to take care of them. Parents also have the responsibility to care for their children physically, emotionally and socially.
I generated more electricity with my sunpower.com panels in April than I did in June.
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I am not sure why. I think we must have had more cloudy days in June than in April. I was expecting more in June than April because the sun is up longer and is more directly overhead. It is also possible that the panels are getting dirty from the dust storms.
May does not help much because the system went offline on May 18 and did not come back on until part way through June 1. I look forward to the promised email notification system they have promised will come.
