Say Anything: Reader Blogs

Can, or should, homosexuals try to change their sexual orientation?

gustave776 — 2009-10-15T20:56:02+00:00

“Balancing Truth & Grace Conference: A Christian Response to Homosexuality,” will be led by Melissa Fryrear and Jeff Johnston, nationally known speakers on the issue who are affiliated with Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, Colo. It’s sponsored by the North Dakota Family Alliance.

The topic illustrates deep divides in American culture, including over religion and science, often evoking sharp debate.

The American Psychological Association, which four decades ago saw homosexuality as a disorder, now opposes attempts to change sexual orientation.

“To date, there has been no scientifically adequate research to show that therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation (sometimes called reparative or conversion therapy) is safe or effective,” said the APA on its Web site. “Furthermore, it seems likely that the promotion of change therapies reinforces stereotypes and contributes to the negative climate for lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals who grow up in more conservative religious settings.”

Johnston argues that the APA’s statement is not based on scientific studies itself and is a kind of absolutist position that can be disproven by even one case of a homosexual who happily changes his or her sexual orientation.

He knows of many such stories, including his own, Johnston said.

Johnston is 48 and married with three children. He travels the country speaking for the “Love Won Out” ministry of Focus on the Family, the Colorado-Springs-based evangelical ministry where he does research and writes on homosexuality.

Johnston was raised in a Christian home. But by the time he was in junior high, he had become involved

in homosexual pornography and fantasy, according to a biography in a Focus on the Family magazine. In his 20s, Johnston began pursuing homosexual relationships.

“I wanted to follow God, I believed what the Bible said about God’s design for marriage and I wanted to have a family,” he said in the article. “But here I was, stuck in sin and deeply ashamed of even having these struggles.”

He found little help in the church community in which he grew up.

“I think the biggest issue was just the silence,” he said. “I was looking for Christian books and articles about homosexuality and trying to figure out why I had the feelings I had, and I couldn’t find any help. At church, people weren’t talking about change or about deep sexual issues.”

He went to a conference on people who had left homosexuality and was impressed by the personal testimonies of how God changed people’s lives, Johnston said.

He did the same, met a woman. They have been married about 16 years. Johnston says others who want to leave homosexuality can and should do it and that’s why he speaks and writes about it.

Fryrear is the gender issues analyst on legislative and cultural affairs for Focus on the Family. She has a master’s degree in divinity from Asbury Theological Seminary. She lived as a lesbian as a young woman and says the love of Jesus Christ transformed her life and speaks nationally on the issue.

The conference is a first for the Family Alliance, a Fargo-based evangelical Christian nonprofit that works in lobbying and educating on social and moral issues of interest.

“This is an issue that is an important one, that’s on the minds of many people,” said Tom Freier, executive director of the alliance, a nonprofit that lobbies the Legislature on social issues. “We want to address it from a Christian perspective, in truth and grace, knowing we want to reach out in grace but also that it’s necessary to get the facts that tell the truth.”

This is why I am leaving the ELCA Lutheran Church.

gustave776 — 2009-08-22T18:26:05+00:00

This human sexuality study being conducted by the ELCA church has been going on for several years has been driven by a few that have a deranged agenda and the study has deadened the senses of the population to be tolerant to the point they do not care about what the bible really teaches. As for the rest of the heterosexuals that think as I do, too many are too spineless to stand up to what is right and have ignored the issues at hand. These people do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings for fear they might lose membership in their Church. Now we have started the snow ball rolling downhill and the lessons learned by the Catholic Church, have not been acknowledged by the ELCA Lutherans. The people for this policy change will call my actions and this statement as being bigoted. This could not be further from the truth. I have friends living in the Gay community and they lead very respectful lives and are leaders in our community and really do make a positive impact in our communities as being citizens, however I do not condone their actions due to the fact that I believe in repentance and when one sins and asks for forgiveness, they should refrain from the sin they asking forgiveness for. Having the homosexual tendencies is one thing, but acting on them is another, and asking the community to accept them as leaders in our church has been the slippery slope started down, and now we are asking good descent people to look the other way for political reasons and put these people into mentoring positions where they are molding young minds into people who would want to be just like them and I feel this is WRONG. The leaders in the community set an example for others to follow (like it or not) and our youth do not need to be brought up to acknowledge practicing homosexuality or premarital sex is OK in the eyes of GOD.
I am not without sin and fully recognize this. I have my own issues, down falls and faults and I am currently trying to work through these. With the help of God and my hard work and the patience of family and friends, I will overcome these, and being human, I will develop more issues needing to be worked on. But asking forgiveness and turning around and fully intending to repeat this sin is blatantly thumbing your nose at the Lord.

Leviticus 18:22-You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.

Romans 1:26-27 - For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.

I Corinthians 6:9(NIV) - Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

The Importance of Marriage

gustave776 — 2009-08-02T00:44:06+00:00

It’s important to point out that the term “marriage” and the benefits of
marriage should be reserved for the union of a man and a woman because
it’s the best family structure in which to raise and nurture children. The
government should put its seal of approval on one-man, one-woman marriage
because it’s society’s most pro-child institution. I’m sure you’ll agree
that we should do everything we can to give our kids the best chance to
have both a mom and a dad.

http://links.mail-family.org/ctt?kn=5&m=2594090&r=MTYwMTc1MzI4MzcS1&b=2&j=NzM3NDE3NDIS1&mt=1&rt=0
This was taken from a Focus of the Family article. http://links.mail-family.org/servlet/MailView?ms=MjU5NDA5MAS2&r=MTYwMTc1MzI4MzcS1&j=NzM3NDE3NDIS1&mt=1&rt=0

We already have a model of Government run Healthcare in the U.S.

gustave776 — 2009-06-15T20:56:56+00:00

Indian health service problems sometimes kill patients
On some reservations, the oft-quoted refrain is, “don’t get sick after June,” when the federal dollars run out. It’s a sick joke, and a sad one because it is sometimes true. Indian Health Service officials said they have about half of what they need to operate, and patients know they must be dying or about to lose a limb to get serious care.

By: Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press

Our fearless commander and host

gustave776 — 2009-05-25T18:42:25+00:00

Our ever so pleasant leader and mediator of the world is now looking for sanctions to instill upon NK to punish the leader who does not care how many of his own people suffer do to economic sanctions. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1187228/North-Korea-explodes-Hiroshima-bomb—20-times-powerful-nuke.html

North Korea already is so isolated there is little left with which to punish an autocratic government that has long been willing to take dealings with the outside world to the brink.

The EU demanded a ‘firm response’ to the test from the international community which it was said was a ‘flagrant violation’ of a U.N. Security Council resolution.

Japan - which lies in range of North Korean rockets - also condemned the action.

North Korea’s nuclear test poses a grave challenge to nuclear non-proliferation and clearly violates U.N. Security Council resolutions,’ Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso said in Tokyo. ‘We are not tolerating this at all.’

How long is he (Obama) going to play nice in the big sand box before we are hurt by his trustfulness????

Obama can’t hold a candle to the relentless work done by Dick Cheney

gustave776 — 2009-05-21T15:49:32+00:00

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/21/raw-data-text-dick-cheneys-national-security-speech-aei/

Obama sounded defensive and Cheney came off as being sure of himself in the National Security speeches made today. Obama is playing the blame game rather than taking up from where the last administration left off. Bush has the record for keeping us safe after the 9/11 attack on us.

Have the activists gone too far?

gustave776 — 2009-04-10T20:26:01+00:00

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Bidens-Puppy-Breeder-Never-never-never-again.html?yhp=1

This breeder is a victim of “cause and effect” of people targeting others at the expense of the innocent. Is the media to blame? You tell me.

Ben Stein: Half of Stimulus Goes to Unions

gustave776 — 2009-02-02T04:34:28+00:00

Sunday, February 1, 2009 1:01 PM

Columnist Ben Stein has taken a close look at President Barack Obama’s proposed $820 billion stimulus package, and made some eye-opening discoveries.

Writing for Spectator.com and NYPost.com, Stein calculates that:

# The House of Representatives debated the bill for eight hours, or roughly $102 billion per hour.

# Only 10 percent of the stimulus funds would be spent in 2009.

# Almost half of the $820 billion would end up in the pockets of Democratic-controlled unions, such as the Service Employees International Union, and federal, state, and municipal employee unions.

# At 680 pages long, neither Obama nor any member of the House had enough time to read the entire bill before the House voted.

# The $820 billion would be enough to give every unemployed American $75,000.

Says Stein: “There has been pork-barrel politics since there has been politics, but the scale of this pork is beyond what had ever been imagined before—and no one can be sure it will actually do much stimulation. ... This has been a punch in the solar plexus to the kind of responsible, far-seeing, mature government processes that are needed to protect America.”

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

We need to be more vigilant of how our money is being spent.

Obama’s Gregg Pick Worries GOP

gustave776 — 2009-02-02T03:44:22+00:00

Newsmax article.

The Perfect Storm of the Economy

gustave776 — 2009-01-17T19:07:01+00:00

This recession is media driven,(Scare tactics) telling everyone lies about how bad everything is in the eyes of the liberal mind rotting, doom and gloom specialists. This scared the Wall Street people to start doing some profit taking and then the world was showing our paranoid liberal friends the sky is falling which left less confidence in the stock market. Never mind the liberals were twisting the arms of the banking industry to loan out mortgages to irresponsible trailer trash who can’t pay rent on time let alone pay on a mortgage and keep the power turned on. This sparked the action of the banks to foreclose on the people who were ignorant enough to take adjustable rate mortgages and try to stay in a house which was way more expensive than they could afford if the rate adjusted itself upward and it did just that.

I am blaming the libs for this one. Auto makers are driven by mandates from the feds to fail by forcing them to sell cars people don’t want to buy.

During the presidential campaign, it was no wonder when Wall Street rallied, Obama was down in his lead at the polls. When Wall Street was loosing ground by leaps and bounds, Obama was gaining in the polls.

The price of gas went up due the law of supply and demand. Supply was way down due to a number of things all went wrong at the same time. RUNNING OUT OF OIL wasn’t one of them. Aging refineries can’t keep up and the oil companies cannot build new more efficient one due to the environmentalists special interest groups have hog tied our politicians and make it almost impossible to get around all the federal red tape to get these up and running.

Our political majority has held the American people hostage, refusing to legislate laws permitting drilling off shores and I could go on and on.

By raising the price of gas at the pumps, this reminded the consumer they could tighten their belt, plan their trips and still manage to keep moving using less gas and this raised the supply and lowered the price of a barrel of oil.

The prices of commodities were going through the roof due to the high energy prices. Not only the price of producing went up, but transportation cost went up, feed price went up, and then corn and soybeans had pressure driving their costs up when the government decided to subsidize the production of BIO-FUEL such as ethanol and Bio-diesel.