Neil Oliver: Nothing less than our way of life is under threat now. A population distracted by propaganda about one existential threat after another – pandemics, nuclear war, climate crisis – is being herded into an unrecognisable future.
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Saturday 21 January 2023
Conservative Inc and The Deal With The Daily Wire Devil
Conservative Inc and The Deal With The Daily Wire Devil
By Andrew Torba
This week Steven Crowder made headlines for turning down a 50 million dollar term sheet offered by The Daily Wire. The term sheet, which would have forced Steven to sign over his email list, social media accounts, and revenue streams from his Mug Club, among other things from his life’s work, raised concerns about censorship and the gatekeeping of content creators by large conservative media companies and their owners.
The point of this article is to open your eyes to why your favorite conservative media outlets are not on our side and help you understand that they exist to keep you from discussing ideas that threaten the power of the Regime. These types of exploitative gatekeeping deals are not the outlier; they are the norm. Unlike most of the talking heads I have no gatekeeping contracts and thus can speak freely on these matters and tell you the unfortunate truth that you need to hear.
The Daily Wire is currently trying to gaslight Crowder and make this issue about money or greed when anyone paying attention knows that is not the case. This is a projection on their part because money is indeed what they care about here and in general. They can’t imagine that someone would reject that much money, and it “offends” them. They cry out in pain as they strike Crowder with a terrible one-sided deal for his soul.
It’s not about money, it’s about controlling the narrative.
Clearly, money is not an issue for a man willing to turn down $50 million and go public to dispute the predatory practices of a very large conservative media company. It’s also noteworthy that Steven claims to have been friends with everyone involved for the past decade, so this likely wasn’t an easy decision on his part from any angle. He’s burning bridges here in a big way.
It’s difficult for many people to wrap their heads around what appears on the surface to be a large sum of money. Most of us could never imagine turning down that sum to make Youtube videos. Still, for a creator as big as Crowder with an already established large audience and revenue-generating business, that amount of money over a multi-year period isn’t all that large. Likely, Crowder is already generating millions of dollars annually with his business.
Crowder’s business is worth a significant amount of money between his successful Mug Club monetization strategy, his established audience, and the potential for advertiser deals. Remember, the Daily Wire deal is not just for Steven himself, but for the entire operation he has built up over the past decade, including his library of content, the talent of his team, and the various revenue-generating business models he built. The money would be used to continue funding and expand the operational costs of his business.
The bigger picture here is that some things are worth more than any amount of money—things like dignity, principles, and the ability to speak freely without asking permission from Ben Shapiro.
One of the main issues with the term sheet was that it would have required Steven to censor himself to avoid being banned by Big Tech platforms or face steep financial penalties from The Daily Wire. In other words, Steven would have had to compromise his principles in order to maintain his operational income and continue to reach his audience. He would be beholden to the gatekeeping whims of Ben Shapiro and Big Tech.
He would be, as Jeremey Boring said in a recorded call with him, a “wage slave.”
Crowder made the right choice in rejecting the deal with The Daily Wire. He has set an important example for other content creators and media figures and exposed the dark underbelly of exploitative contracts in media companies like the Daily Wire, who put on a facade of “fighting back against the Regime,” when in reality, they are the controlled opposition that operates on behalf of it. Still, there is much more to this story.
Gatekeepers of the Regime are not our friends.
We live in a time when the Friend/Enemy Distinction is essential to understand. This may be difficult for many of you to accept, but Ben Shapiro and The Daily Wire are not our friends. Nor are Fox News, Prager U, The Blaze, Charlie Kirk, and many others in the “conservative” media landscape. Not even Crowder himself, for that matter, but hopefully, that is about to change.
These people are working on behalf of our enemies. They aim to keep you within a tightly controlled narrative box of what the Regime deems “acceptable oppositional discourse.” Anyone who steps outside that line is blacklisted, smeared, and banned by these “conservative” media outlets for daring to speak the Truth.
Ask yourself why in a culture of censorship unlike anything ever seen before in this country, has Ben Shapiro, The Daily Wire, and all of the other “popular” conservative media outlets I mentioned never faced any modicum of censorship over the past seven years? Why is Ben Shapiro “shadow-boosted” into Facebook and YouTube feeds while the rest of us are banned, demonetized, and shadowbanned?
You may think that it’s because he is paying Facebook millions of dollars, and that would be a very logical assumption, but what is going on here is much bigger than that. Ben Shapiro, The Daily Wire, and the rest of Conservative Inc. exist for one reason and one reason only: to keep you from entertaining forbidden opinions. They are a release valve that herds those who would otherwise be genuinely right-wing (and thus a threat to the Regime) into bland, “acceptable” conservatism that threatens nothing.
That’s why they are not only allowed on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter by our enemies but also boosted and promoted by them. They pose no real threat to those in power; instead, they are an asset to them. They give the illusion of opposition to the totality of the Regime’s grasp on government, media, entertainment, banking, and technology.
Shapiro is boosted artificially so much by Big Tech that he consistently appears in the top shared links on Facebook, not because his content is novel, interesting, or good, but rather because our enemies are inflating him on purpose. That purpose is to corral the conversation and prevent you from listening to anyone with ideas that legitimately threaten the existing power structure. For the life of me, I can’t understand how people could possibly listen to his annoying nasally speed talking for hours, but I digress.
Control the media, control the narrative, control the world.
The Daily Wire and Conservative Inc aren’t interested in free speech. They are interested in Controlled Speech. That’s their job. They rope you in by giving off the appearance of cultural resistance, and when it really matters, they sideswipe their conservative Christian audience with Regime-approved narratives. There are many examples of this – too many to count. Christians need to wise up to what is going on here.
Ben Shapiro was notoriously anti-Trump in 2016 when it mattered. He called the January 6th political prisoners’ evil’ and said they should “end up rotting in prison.” He made a case in front of his audience for “mandatory vaccinations” when people were losing their jobs and businesses for refusing to be lab rats. He has repeatedly shilled for endless foreign wars on behalf of Israel. The list goes on and on.
Conservative Inc lures you in with culture war distractions, convincing you that they share your values and are fighting back against the Regime. The reality is they exist to pull a bait and switch on you and force Regime-approved narratives about critical issues down your throat from a “right-wing” perspective. Big Con is conning you, and many of you don’t realize it yet, but hopefully, with what Crowder is exposing here, you are starting to get the picture. Conservative Inc is not your friend.
What happens when you sell your soul to Conservative Inc?
Let’s look at what happens when someone signs on the dotted line with a Conservative Inc company like The Daily Wire. Jordan Peterson did just that several months ago. The first videos Peterson released after joining The Daily Wire chastised Muslims and Christians with criticism and scolding. Noticeably he provided none of the same complaints and scolding to people of the Jewish faith. Instead, he is now making trips to Israel, crying on stage, praising them, and doing glowing interviews with Benjamin Netanyahu. This is what it looks like to sell your soul for money and become a dancing clown for Ben Shapiro and Israel.
Last fall, Ye came under scrutiny from the media for expressing similar concerns to Crowder with certain music industry contracts that were equally exploitative. Ye was then promptly banned from social media, bank accounts, and much more for criticizing the group of people behind these contracts.
As it turns out, the same group of people are behind Steven Crowder’s exploitative term sheet offer from The Daily Wire. So, it appears Ye indeed had a point about exploitative contracts from Jewish media moguls. These are the facts, and the gatekeepers at Conservative Inc don’t want you to discuss these uncomfortable truths. It’s not Christians running these companies and making these deals. Ye told you who is running them, and they destroyed him for it.
When Ye’s friend Candace Owens, who works for The Daily Wire, went to bat to defend him, Ben Shapiro quickly put her in her place to stop it. Signing on the dotted line with The Daily Wire means you are forbidden from discussing topics that make Ben Shapiro uncomfortable. Topics that are essential to breaking down the problems in our society and that are culturally, spiritually, and politically relevant. Taking the deal with the Devil means you must shut your mouth about these topics and must leave your friends and principles hanging under the bus.
Money can be a powerful motivator for many people, but there are some things that no money can buy. You cannot serve God and money (Matthew 6:24). The Bible tells us:
A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.
For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the Lord upholdeth the righteous.
Psalms 37:16-17
It’s easy to see the appeal of making a deal like this for Crowder, Jordan Peterson, Candace Owens, and others. Many on the right are making a point about the “large sum of money,” but are missing the bigger picture about this deal: no amount of money is worth being a “wage slave” and selling your life’s work to Ben Shapiro. None. Not $50 million.
Big Tech companies have a huge influence over the distribution of information and content. We must support and protect the rights of creators to produce content freely and without censorship. That’s what we have been doing here at Gab for over six years now, and it’s what we will continue to do going forward. Why do you think none of the Conservative Inc personalities and media companies are on Gab? They can’t control the narrative here. It’s that simple.
We Need to Support Christian Leaders At Christian Media Companies. Period.
Last summer, I said that to be a leader or influencer on the right, you need to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and be a Christian. I said in no uncertain terms that people like Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson have no place in any serious right-wing movement and resistance to the Regime unless they become Christians. I got a lot of flack for this from the media and many people on the right, but I stand by it, and now you see why.
This Daily Wire situation with Crowder is a great example. Christians don’t act the way Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing act. They don’t refer to themselves as “god-kings.” They don’t write soul-buying exploitative contracts. They don’t refer to employees as “wage slaves.” They don’t force people to throw their friends under the bus. These people don’t act like Christians because they aren’t Christians, and the Christians who do work for them and have made a deal with the Devil–people like Matt Walsh–should be ashamed of themselves. If they had any self-respect and cared about the truth and fighting the Regime, they would move on to bigger and better things.
When you support The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro, and Conservative Inc, this is the behavior you are endorsing and making possible. This is why we need to explicitly support Christian businesses, creators, media companies, and leaders only. Period.
I wish Crowder all the best with whatever comes next and pray that he starts speaking a little more boldly, stops punching right, and remains independent from the Conservative Inc machine.
Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus Christ is the King of kings
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Friday 20 January 2023
A Turn to the Dark Lord - Irreverend Episode 109
The Birth of a New Religion, Part 3
The Renovationist “Orthodox”
The Birth of a New Religion, Part 3
For Part 1, see The Pro-Abortion “Orthodox” (The Birth of a New Religion, Part 1)
For Part 2, see: The Pro LGBTQP “Orthodox” (The Birth of a New Religion, Part 2)
Renovationists are people who see that the Church is out of sync with the modern world, and rather than conclude that the world needs to repent and come into line with the teachings of the Church, instead assume that the Church is what needs to be fixed. To them, the solution to this problem is to make the Church more like the world, rather than to make the world more like the Church.
In any given time or place, one can certainly find problems within the Church, and see a need to do something about those problems. And so a desire to see things change within the Church is not necessarily a bad thing. One could point to the example of the Kollyvades Fathers, or even to St. John Chrysostom, as people who saw spiritual deficiencies within the Church, and spent their lives trying to raise the general spiritual level of those around them. But the big difference between people like the Kollyvades Fathers, St. John Chrysostom, and the Renovationists is where they look for answers to problems and where they want to take things. The Kollyvades and St. John Chrysostom embraced the authentic Traditions of the Church and the teachings of the Scriptures and Holy Fathers who came before them. Renovationists look outside the Church for answers.
When Renovationists see that the Church is out of sync with the mindset of the modern world, they are embarrassed that the Church is “backward,” or “old fashioned,” or “stuck in the past.” They do not approach things by seeking to better understand the Orthodox Tradition, or to come closer to the mind of the Fathers. They have a worldly mindset, and their solutions are worldly. They do not have a belief in what the Church teaches, but perhaps have a sentimental attachment to the Church, or they may simply see using the Church to promote worldly agendas as advantageous.
Renovationism first began to appear in the Orthodox Church in the early 20th century. It was most obviously embodied in the “Living Church” in Russia, but it was also behind the agenda of Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis as seen in his 1923 “Pan Orthodox Congress,” and this also explains why he later recognized the “Living Church” schismatics as the legitimate Church in Russia, and threw the authentic persecuted Russian Church under the bus. What was their agenda? They wanted to switch to the New Calendar. They wanted to shorten the fasts, shorten the services, allow bishops and monks to marry, and priest to remarry, and to marry widows. They also wished to introduce liturgical innovations. The Living Church died off in Russia, because the faithful in Russia rejected it, but Renovationism has continued to exist elsewhere, and while all of the aforementioned issues are still on the table for them, they have added quite a few since then.
Renovationism is closely related to Protestant liberalism and its “Social Gospel.” Advocates of the Social Gospel, having lost faith in anything like the actual Gospel, seek to hitch their wagons to anything current in the culture that might make them relevant. Unfortunately, they usually are about 10 years behind the culture, and so by the time they hitch their wagon to an issue, the culture in general has moved on to the new “current thing.”
Some more current examples of renovationism are the push for the acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism in the Church, the push for ecumenism and religious syncretism, the acceptance of abortion as an acceptable option for Orthodox Christian, the ordination of women, and pretty much any other “current thing” that is being pushed. The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s acceptance of the schismatics in Ukraine is in many ways similar to the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s entering into communion with the Living Church in Russia. The Schismatics in Ukraine are concelebrating with Uniates, and are open to the acceptance of homosexuality — which makes the Living Church look like conservative traditionalists by comparison.
Just to cite a few recent examples of renovationism at work, we have Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Ecumenical Patriarchate baptizing the children of a homosexual couple (produced with surrogate mothers) and using the occasion to celebrate the acceptance of both homosexuality and using poor women to produce surrogate children for homosexual men. Archbishop Elpidophoros also felt the need to align himself with Black Lives Matters and to march with them in a protest, despite the fact that the organization is headed by self-described Marxists who want to destroy the family, and even while he had essentially shut down Church services in his Archdiocese due to concerns about the COVID virus.
And then you have Metropolitan Nathaniel of Chicago ordaining a gaggle of women readers, and challenging them to press forward and demand that they be allowed to fill even more roles in the Church.
And if you have ever seen a proper ordination of a reader, you will note that what happens here bears very little resemblance to what is found in the service books of the Church. Many more examples could be cited, but the point is, it is not a question of what the “current thing” happens to be, the issue with renovationism is the felt need to keep up with the “current thing.”
The problem for renovationists, however, is that people don’t get up early on Sunday morning, to go to stand in a service for a couple of hours, just so they can be like the world. They can stay home, and drink their coffee, and be like the world. What motivates people to actually go to Church is their hunger for something that the world can’t provide them, and that is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6). The world can only point to the wrong way, promotes lies, and lead to death.
This is the third part of an ongoing series by Fr. John Whiteford, reposted with his permission.
Fr. John Whiteford is the pastor of St. Jonah Orthodox Church (ROCOR) in Spring, Texas. He is the author of Sola Scriptura: An Orthodox Analysis of the Cornerstone of Reformation Theology, published by Conciliar Press, and the general editor of the St. Innocent Liturgical Calendar.
More from Bold Christian Writing
Thursday 19 January 2023
World Economic F*ck'em
World Economic F*ck'em
Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance at Zero Hedge
Among the many wretched, slimy and odious things that are increasingly giving me the creeps as the sands of my life’s hourglass continue to fall is the World Economic Forum: a collective of self-righteous global elites handing down virtues, values, lessons, lectures and political initiatives to us peons out here in the rest of the world.
The “Forum” is increasingly starting to resemble a globalist government, stocked with globally unelected turbo-douchebags, who have been assembling quietly in the background while no one has noticed.
One minute you’ve never heard of them - did you know the WEF has been around for about 5 decades? - the next, the “Forum” is harboring incredible influence, mostly with “useful” bureaucratic idiots on the left who are happy to take their cues on how to napalm individual rights for betterment of advancing their agendas from anyone who will help, regardless of their motivation.
WEF Founder Klaus Schwab, either giving or receiving some bullshit “Global Citizen Award”, which no normal person has ever heard of or cared about.
That’s right: gone are the days of joking about The Great Reset, owning nothing and liking it and shifting to a diet of mealworms and crickets.
I’ve arrived at a point past that - a point of being sickened by watching people that in no way, shape or form represent me or the people in my life, yammer on about what my future will or won’t look like and what things I stand for are “right” or “wrong”.
It’s right in the WEF’s mission statement:
The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
The truth is no matter how much each narcissistic and likely psychotic guest would love to speak on behalf of millions, or even billions of people, they simply don’t.
I don’t expect these people to understand the consequences of painting with a broad brush, nor do I think they care about them. Take the Covid vaccines as an example. Isn’t the idea of jabbing every single person on Earth, regardless of age, health status and lifestyle (lest we forget whether or not they consent to it) wildly reckless?
Of course it is. But it doesn’t matter - because someone wanted it to be done…and, with that, it was put into action.
Source: NY Times
Wild, right? This unilateral implementation of mandates during Covid, regardless of what the individual may want for themselves and their families, was authoritarian catnip to the dingleberries that assemble at the World Economic Forum every year. I’m certain it has enabled many participants to think: we did it with vaccines - we cut them off from travel, we put their jobs and their livelihoods on the line and we even arrested and jailed them - now we can do it with anything else.
I don’t need to be in Davos this week to understand how little I have in common with the people of the World Economic Forum. I know this because I was recently in Washington DC during the International Monetary Fund’s most recent circle jerk world conference.
Anybody that thinks that these are gatherings of people who live like them and represent them are sorely mistaken: I’ve never seen so many Rolexes, Bentleys, hundred thousand dollar outfits and, most importantly, armed security, as I saw within the 10 square block radius of the IMF that week.
It was a festival of global “ambassadors” that collectively looked like an amalgam of every corrupt Bond villain you’ve ever seen.
With that in mind, let’s have a look at what high quality ideas the Forum…has put forth this year to “shape global, regional and industry agendas”.
Everybody knows that fear is the best way to get people to listen up and do what you say (see: vaccinations, Covid, Fauci et. al pgs. 1-∞). With that being said, the Forum led off with some lighthearted banter, including the proclamation that “we are now facing…mass extinction” and “humanity’s future is at risk.”
But that's only where the craziness began, there was way more...(READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE, FREE, HERE).
The Pro LGBTQP “Orthodox” The Birth of a New Religion,
The Pro LGBTQP “Orthodox”
The Birth of a New Religion, Part 2
For Part 1, see The Pro-Abortion “Orthodox” (The Birth of a New Religion, Part 1)
The fact that today we have people openly promoting the LGBTQP agenda in the Orthodox Church is something that was unthinkable less than a dozen years ago. But here we are. They are a vocal minority to be sure, but like most leftists, they try to convince people that their opponents are the minority, and they are only motivated by hate.
The tactic that the Pro-LGBTQP “Orthodox” have generally taken to promote their agenda is to pretend that the only people concerned about what they are pushing are “fundamentalist” converts. The suggestion being that somehow prior to the time when Americans began to convert to Orthodoxy in large numbers, everyone in the Orthodox Church was fine with the idea that homosexuality was an acceptable lifestyle. Back then, they would have us believe, no one would have objected to embracing transgenderism, or any of the other limitless “sexual preferences” and “gender identities.” This is of course complete nonsense. Not only was no one pushing for the acceptance of homosexuality in the Orthodox Church prior to 2009, no one in the Orthodox Church was even contemplating the acceptance of transgenderism, and most had never even heard of it.
Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association until 1973, when activists pushed the organization to change this designation. It was only in 1987 that homosexuality was completely removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It was in the wake of the AIDS epidemic, which began in 1981, that the acceptance of homosexuality in the wider culture began to increase from something which previously had been close to non-existent.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann is not usually thought of as a fundamentalist convert, and yet one of his students told me that around 1981, he made the statement “I refuse to be the dean of a seminary of pot-smoking homosexuals.” This was in the context of him having actually kicked a pot-smoking homosexual seminarian out of the seminary, and so these were not idle words.
If you look at the views of the Orthodox in traditional Orthodox countries even today, you don’t find them embracing homosexuality or transgenderism either — this is true of their populations as a whole, but it is all the more true when you consider those who actually go to Church.
I have been blogging since 2004, and the first article I have in which I felt a need to respond to the push for gay marriage was in 2009, and this was completely without reference to any dispute within the Church, because at that time, there was no such dispute. I suspect that this began in 2009 because prior to that, George W. Bush had successfully used the issue to win his second term, by ensuring that there were ballot measures in swing states that banned gay marriage. But after Obama was elected, apparently people on the left felt emboldened, and so the push began. And it was only in 2011 that I began to see Orthodox Christians who were pushing for the acceptance of homosexuality. Initially, this was mostly done anonymously, or in private discussion groups.
2013 was the year that the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, and forced every state to allow for gay marriage. Many dismissed the significance of this at the time, but two things happened almost immediately as a result of it — this strengthened the general push for the acceptance of homosexuality, and no sooner had gay marriage been forced on the country did the push for the acceptance of transgenderism begin in earnest.
2014 was the first time to my knowledge that an Orthodox priest began to publicly push for the acceptance of homosexuality. In November of 2014, Fr. Robert Arida posted an essay to the official OCA website. After being overwhelmed with complaints, the OCA removed the essay, though you can still read it via the Internet Archive. Among the many statements which responded to this essay, the Orthodox Clergy Association of Houston and Southeast Texas wrote a rebuttal, which was signed by almost of all the clergy in the Association (and was signed by all who were present at the meeting which discussed it). This rebuttal was reposted on the Greek Archdiocesan website at the time.
In 2015, the City of Houston tried to push through an ordinance which would have forced churches and businesses to allow men who identify as women to use women’s restrooms. Again, the Orthodox Clergy Association issued a statement against it. The ordinance was overturned by a referendum, and it was mostly Black and Hispanic churches in Houston that led the fight against it. Houston is about 44% Hispanic, 24% White (Non-Hispanic), 22% black, and 7% Asian, and so it was not a bunch of racist White people who overturned this ordinance. The vote was not even close: 61% opposed to 39% in favor.
Onto the scene came George Demacopoulos and later, Public Orthodoxy. George wrote an essay attacking those he termed Orthodox Fundamentalists on January 29th, 2015. I wrote a reply, and we later had a sort of debate hosted by Kevin Allen on Ancient Faith Radio. Since then, George has made attacking anyone who is not ready to embrace homosexuality, transgenderism, modernism, and a whole host of other perversions a career through his website Public Orthodoxy, which is a part of the Fordham University Orthodox Christian Studies Center, which has been formally endorsed by the Greek Archdiocese.
If you look over the archives of Public Orthodoxy, you will see that it has produced a steady stream of articles that defy almost every aspect of Orthodox Christian morality, and as a matter of fact they regularly argue that while dogmatic issues (which they define as being limited to strictly theological matters) are beyond debate, moral issues are not dogmatic, and therefore up for revision. This is a completely novel approach, and one that is heretical and contrary to the clear Tradition of the Church.
Most recently, the former Chancellor of the OCA, Fr. John Jillions gave a lecture for the Orthodox Theological Society in America, in which he bemoaned those Orthodox “fundamentalists” who are unwilling to dialogue on matters such as homosexuality and transgenderism. He argues that we cannot judge such matters “before the time,” which will apparently only come when (so they hope) they finally wear everyone else down with their endless pressing of their agenda and we let them have their way. The problem is that these issues are not up for debate. Not only are the Scriptures clear on these issues, we have numerous canons from Ecumenical Councils, and the clear and unified testimony of the Fathers and Saints of the Church which leave no room for doubt as to what the Church has always taught on these subjects. In this lecture, you see the same kind of mealy-mouthed argumentation that we found in the essay by Fr. Robert Arida, but as time goes on, they are becoming more emboldened. One has to wonder how long their respective bishops will put up with this, but I think at this point, we have to conclude that at least some of the bishops in question allow this to go on because they agree with it.
Now if people like Fr. John Jillions wanted to dialogue about how to deal pastorally with people who are struggling with these sins, in order to help them overcome their sins, that would be a dialogue worth having. But you can’t have that dialogue with people who are unwilling to concede that we are talking about actual sins. That has to be the starting premise. And to be clear, this is the point that they refuse to concede. In fact, they will almost never provide a direct answer to a direct question on whether or not these things are inherently sinful — and that is for the simple reason that to say what they actually believe would put them in an indefensible position, and would force their bishops to do something about it.
We are not opposed to the LGBTQP agenda because we hate those who have been sucked into going along with it. We are opposed to it because this agenda is destructive to these people. As St. Paul tells us, these things are contrary to God’s created order, and as such, they can only lead to great misery and the destruction of souls. St. Paul tells us that homosexuals and the transgendered (i.e. effeminate) will not inherit the Kingdom of God:
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate [malakoi], nor sodomites [i.e., homosexuals, arsenokoitai], nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
Not inheriting the Kingdom of God is a pretty big deal, if you actually believe in God, and so if you love the people struggling with these issues, you would want to help them to repent and overcome them, rather than affirm them in a choice that will lead to their spiritual deaths.
I hope I am wrong, but I believe we are witnessing the unfolding of a full-blown schism. It will not just be over abortion, or over the LGBTQP agenda, or over the other issues we will be looking at, but each of these are pieces to the larger puzzle. If a schism is to be averted, it will only be averted because bishops begin to find their backbones, put their collective foot down, and put a stop to the spreading of these false and destructive teachings.
This is the second part of an ongoing series by Fr. John Whiteford, reposted with his permission.
Update:
Someone has put together a very useful video that provides an overview of what has been going on in terms of the push for the acceptance of LGBTQP ideology in the Orthodox Church, particularly in the English-speaking world:
The same channel has a 4-part video series that covers the same ground, but provides some additional footage that is very helpful.
Update 2: This is a film that focuses on who is funding the groups promoting the LGBTQP Agenda in the Orthodox Church: The Secret Subversion of American Orthodoxy
Fr. John Whiteford is the pastor of St. Jonah Orthodox Church (ROCOR) in Spring, Texas. He is the author of Sola Scriptura: An Orthodox Analysis of the Cornerstone of Reformation Theology, published by Conciliar Press, and the general editor of the St. Innocent Liturgical Calendar.
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