There’s a fellow over at a website – rather outspoken chap – who has posted a very …. penetrating… commentary about Gay Pride marches.

Did I say “outspoken?” ummmm yes, I do believe I did. Doesn’t spare the language, that fellow – points out that only gays have to force their “private business” into everyone’s faces, reducing themselves to their “preferences” –

Points out that heterosexual people do not make political issues over what we do in our beds (or couches or floors or wherever we happen to… thingy … that we do not reduce ourselves to a genital identification in everything else we do…

It’s actually a very good post – and I have to confess I roared with laughter several times… but I am not going to post the link here lest someone think I’ve … contributed to lustful thoughts by male readers, or approved non-marital thingy amongst the ladies who read here….

but if you drop me an email, I might send you the link…

It seems rather obvious, doesn’t it? Or ought to be –

I woke up from a nap a little while ago, and I must have been dreaming about the paper I have to write for one of my courses, because I had this general topic, spiritual warfare, on the brain, and my first really conscious thought was –

But the place spiritual warfare begins is with our own conversion.

duh!

I’ve been told (by my ex-husband, you understand) that I have a maddening habit of over-stating the obvious, so I apologize to all of you who saw it before I did. But it’s so easy to pick up causes and dream grandiose dreams and see magnificent visions… while buried to our knees in the muck that is the worldly world. We really do have to ground our sense of living counterculturally in our conversion.

The initial conversion is like going into the recruiter’s office and enlisting in the army – the rest of our time is going through various trainings and being sent on various missions. They don’t let you stay still in the Army; they keep you moving forward – once you finish this rotation of duty, you go serve this other place, or you’re assigned to this other location for more training in a particular skill.

Spiritual warfare is simply part of being part of the Church Militant.

Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis has been appointed to the Roman Curia – as Prefect of the Apostolic Signature.

He goes out with a bang, publicly disciplining a Sister of Charity for her participation in services to “ordain” to women “priests.

God bless the man for his faithful service to Christ’s Church in the U.S. – Since his appointment to St. Louis, he has served as the example we all longed for, in our own dioceses.

Pray for his successor in St. Louis

Mrs Obama has committed her husband to work for gay rights, according to this AP article – to work for “a world as it should be.”

According to whom???

Since when did Christian people get off abandoning Christian moral values and all the identifying hallmarks of their name, and still clamor to be called by that name? A Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim… you don’t see THEM trying to revise the definition of their ideology.

But suddenly it’s “not Christian” to oppose “gay rights.”

Okay – in the first place, I still don’t get why people should be demanding rights based upon where they put their… privates. (I’m trying very hard not to be crude, here, but I’m irked enough something might need to be edited later.) One Quaker gentleman said to me a number of years ago, “Why do we have to make an issue of what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms with their genitals?”

If only the gay lobby would leave it to the privacy of their bedrooms – but, no – they have to hijack the American Psychiatric Association to force them to re-write the DSM in 1973, removing homosexuality from the list of disorders. This was a decision based not on science, but on political pressure from the gay lobby.

The rhetorical cacaphony surrounding the gay rights debate is noteworthy for its disregard of fact. Despite the fact that ancient Greece was a culture dominated by homosexuality and pederasty – actually, the ancient and modern pagan world routinely practiced all sorts of sexual license – modern-day homosexual radicals deny the link between homosexuality and pederasty, treating them as two separate issues. However, even a casual reading of Plato reveals that the two are irrevocably connected.

The fact that many of the world’s civilizations, excepting the ancient Hebrews, were so licentious, would seem to indicate that homosexuality is in fact a matter of cultural imprinting, rather than biological orientation.

If we’re going to talk about “sexual preferences,” that polite code word among the gay lobby, we have to take an honest look at what that phrase means. Strictly and simplisticly translated, it means, “one’s preferences in sexual matters.”

WELL – right there we have ourselves a quandry, Ladies and Gentlemen! Because by calling it a PREFERENCE we immediately acknowledge the reality of CHOICE in the matter.

Furthermore (and I have to quit soon because a storm is brewing close by and I might lose internet connection) – if it’s to be a simple matter of preference, then what is to be our rule for which preferences are “normal” and which violate all sense of human dignity and decency? All statutory sexual limitations – polygamy, incest, age limits, etc. – can be casually toppled by the “innocuous” label of “sexual preference.”

Okay – storm getting closer. We need the rain. More rant later.

So – I’m jealous as heck that she’s svelte and blonde and drop-dead gorgeous. The woman has a brain, and she knows stuff – and she shows a wee bit of it here.
For those of you who don’t like to read Ann Coulter – it’s just a well-documented demonstration of how Bush has kept his word since 9/11. Nothing really impressive – (yes, Dear, that is sarcasm)

If the Massachusetts high school students didn’t have a pact to become pregnant together –

Then who wants to bet there was a Comprehensive Sex Education program in place?

Check out this video for a very good look at what that can accomplish – Very discreetly presented…

I’ve done this once before – it’s intense, but powerful. The 54-day novena is 54 days of the Rosary for a particular Intention. There are additional prayers that can be offered – I’ve seen them provided but I have to admit – I didn’t stick with them diligently, since most of my rosary-praying is in the car (there’s a reason for that, chaps).

The first 27 days – we offer up our Intention to God and Our Lady – I found it helpful to be very specific with what I was looking for.

The second 27 days – we thank God for hearing and answering our prayers.

It’s not a magic trick – it’s an intensive school of deliberately putting ourselves and our Intentions before God. I haven’t thought of this devotion in MONTHS – then found it coming to my consciousness earlier today. Feels like a Prompting –

Starting today. I’ll finish on August 15 – the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

I’ll write my thoughts on this later – maybe after a couple cups of coffee? My hyperlink thing isn’t working – so I’ll just…
http://catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0166.htm

We need to be very very careful about this PP/ACLU invasion of our local schools –

When Horton Hears a Who, he declares to all who ridicule him for protecting a speck of dust! for cryin’ out loud –

A person’s a person, no matter how small!

Horton wasn’t talking about the pre-born, was he???

Unfortunately, it appears not. I just did a Google search, and Wikkipedia, that dubious resource but a good starting point, reports that the good Dr Seuss and his widow both found the appropriation of such a very obvious comment to an “agenda” to be abhorrent.

Still, it’s true – a person is a person, whether he’s been born or not, or a child (the phrase could be used in the war against child abuse) – or how oddly big (Andre the Giant would have appreciated being treated like a regular person, I suspect) –

Why does it seem so difficult to grasp what ought to be an elementary-level truth? A person’s a person….

Thanks to “Dove” for sending me this link about migrating crime waves across America.

I’m horrified to see Charlotte-Mecklenburg as one of the worst cities in America for crime; but I have a feeling that my own community won’t be far behind, per capita. We see evidence of this – I can only identify it as nihilism among the black and Latino youth at our high school.

What’s the remedy?