Categories
Abortion Divorce Family Gender Gene-editing Marriage Polygamy

Issues of morality

Transexualism

I have for a long time objected to the superficial propaganda word “homophobe” which implies those who believe homosexual practice is wrong are afraid of homosexuals. But now we have the equally superficial propaganda word “transphobe” to describe those who have genuine concerns about aspects of the promotion of transexualism.

It is important to keep a sense of proportion about the number of homosexual, bisexual and transgender people. The Office for National Statistics discovered that 1.3% of people say they are homosexual or lesbian and 0.7% say they are bisexual. The Equality and Human Rights Commission research found that 1.3% of British people are in some way transgender or gender variant. In the US the Williams Institute found in 2011 that 0.3% of the population are transgender. Yet, the dominance of concern for the rights of transgender people as of homosexual people, seems to be seriously out of proportion.

Nevertheless, the fact these groups are a tiny minority of the population does not mean that their needs are unimportant. For example, in 2014 a survey showed that 48% of transgender people under 26 had attempted suicide compared with 6% of all 16-24 year olds. They can face discrimination, bullying and violence.

However, the cause of transsexualism is well-advanced. Transgender men have given birth to babies in the UK and the US. Senior NHS doctors have said that male transsexuals should be given womb transplants so they can have children. The Scottish government are considering allowing people to identify as neither male nor female in the next census. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn thinks people should be able to self-identify their gender. The World Health Organisation has removed a page from its website which outlined the biological differences between men and women.

“Transgenderism is a mental disorder”

One serious area of concern is the way that the issue of transgender people is becoming very dominant in our schools.

Dr Joanna Williams, Senior Lecturer in Higher Education at the University of Kent warns:  “In doing more than just supporting transgender children, and instead sowing confusion about gender identity, schools do neither boys nor girls any favours.” If a child is genuinely transgender then, of course, that child needs careful support. But the overemphasis on the problem raises serious concerns for the welfare of children.

Dr Paul McHugh, Professor of Psychiatry at John Hopkins Medical School, Baltimore, Maryland, states that transgenderism is a mental disorder. He says it has two aspects: “The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.” He continues “The transgendered suffer a disorder of ‘assumption’ like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists” such as “anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight. With body dysmorphic disorder, an often socially crippling condition, the individual is consumed by the assumption ‘I’m ugly.’”

He pointed out that “When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings.” He added that John Hopkins University was the first American medical centre to carry out “sex-reassignment surgery” – in the 1960s. Then in the 1970s it carried out a study “comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not. Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as ‘satisfied’ by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn’t have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a ‘satisfied’ but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.”

More significant, research carried out by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden in 2011 “revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription.”

He concludes: “‘Sex change’ is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.”

Understandably, Dr McHugh is strongly criticised by the transgender lobby. He laments the fact that several America states have passed laws barring psychiatrists, even with parental permission, from striving to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor.

We should support an understanding approach to the very small percentage of people struggling with their sexuality and disapprove of them being “persecuted.” But there are real dangers in the approach of the very dominant transgender lobby. It seems clear that people, especially children, can be seriously harmed by that approach.

Abortion

The important moral issue raised by abortion is when the embryo becomes fully human. I remain thoroughly unconvinced that an embryo suddenly becomes human at some stage after conception. I’ve not come across convincing evidence for this and I first addressed the issue publicly in 1980.

Of course, the lesser of two evils argument is relevant. So, for example, if an abortion would save a mother’s life it would be morally justified. But the 1967 Abortion Act has opened the floodgates to virtually abortion on demand up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. Now there is a strong feeling – expressed by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists – that abortion should no longer be subject to legal sanctions. That would effectively open the way to abortion at any stage in pregnancy.

It is interesting that almost two-thirds of British people interviewed for a recent ComRes survey said the upper limit for abortion should be lowered from the current 24 weeks to 20 weeks – with a fifth saying it should be reduced to 12 weeks.

Abortion is legal up to 24 weeks of pregnancy but recently a baby was born at 17 weeks, weighing just 1lb 1oz and 11 inches long, and survived. A baby’s heart and nervous system are forming at 5 weeks of pregnancy. At 6 weeks, sometimes the heart can be seen beating. At seven weeks the brain is growing rapidly. It is convenient to regard the embryo as a blob of jelly but at an early stage it looks remarkably human.

In the UK some 9 million babies have been aborted since 1967, and about 200,000 per annum currently. Most people tend not to think about it but, unless we are sure those babies were not fully human, that is an extremely serious issue. If they were fully human (even though tiny and out of sight) that would be mass killing.

Polygamy

Some people have been ridiculed for saying that same sex marriage and related liberal sexual attitudes would result in practices such as polygamy or group marriage. But three men (a “throuple”) were ‘married’ this year in Colombia. They have received legal support although not a full marriage certificate.

Hadar Aviram, Professor of Law at the University of California, said of group marriage “The movement is absolutely going to develop if the activists so choose.” She said she found little appetite for marriage among polyamorous groups when she first started her research in 2004 but she began to see a change around 2012. She added: “Perhaps in the 1970s, same-sex marriage was as unimaginable as group marriage is today.”

Development such as this are all part of an attack on marriage and the family which will lead to chaos and serious harm to individuals.

Divorce

The British divorce rate is the lowest for 45 years. In 2015 101,055 couples divorced, the lowest number since 1971. The number of couples divorcing fell by over a third between 2003 and 2015 and by 9.1% between 2014 and 2015, the biggest drop in more than 40 years.

However the major cause for this is that fewer couples marry. The number of couples cohabiting more than doubled from 1.5 million to 3.3 million between 1996 and 2016. The problem is that cohabitation is less secure than marriage.

Harry Benson, of the Marriage Foundation, said Britain “continues to lead the developed world in family instability.” He added “Cohabiting parents now account for one in five parents yet more than half of all family breakdown.  The stability that marriage brings protects couples against splitting up, protects health and well-being, and supports children’s education.”

Baroness Hale, the President of the Supreme Court has long been calling for the introduction of no-fault divorce. This would allow marriages to be ended quickly without fault, and without the consent of one spouse. However on average over 10,000 divorces are dropped every year in England and Wales. No fault divorce would mean that many more marriages would be irretrievably ended.

Gene-editing embryos

The production of designer babies is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Professor Hank Greely, the director of Stanford’s Law School’s Center for Law and the Biosciences, believes that within 30 years parents will be choosing from a range of embryos created in a lab with their DNA. It can already take place but is very expensive.

Human Genetics Alert (HGA) is a secular group (which, incidentally, supports abortion rights) which warns of the dangers of genetic manipulation, sex-selective abortion, and the use of hybrid embryos for research. (A hybrid embryo is created artificially by combining human and animal DNA, in various proportions, for the purposes of medical research). It has called on the British Government not to legalise human genetic manipulation techniques for fear that it would “eventually lead to a eugenic designer baby market.” They are not against genetic research but point out that it could lead to genetic discrimination (discrimination based on a person’s genetic make-up) and cloning (producing genetically identical individuals). They also warn of a possible resurgence of eugenics (although accept some danger of hysteria on the subject). Eugenics is the attempt to improve the human species by discouraging reproduction by people with genetic defects or undesirable traits and encouraging reproduction by people with desirable traits. The “three-parent IVF technique” has already been approved and used in the UK.

Jennifer Doudna is Professor of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Moelcular Biology at The University of California. She pioneered CRISPR-Cas9, a technology that enables geneticists and medical researchers to edit parts of the genome by removing, adding or altering sections of the DNA sequence. However she has said: “I have to admit that I feel personally uncomfortable with the idea that there could eventually be factories pumping out lots of human embryos for the purposes of experimentation. I can’t put my finger on why but it feels like it cheapens something about human life.” It keeps her awake at night.

Conclusion

We live in a society where unborn human beings can be deliberately killed and where there are real dangers of the production of designer babies. Also marriage is being increasingly undermined which damages the family. Then there are serious dangers associated with the new ‘orthodoxy’ of transsexualism, which are not being taken seriously. The potential damage, including to children, is very serious.

 

Categories
Homosexuality Sexual Morality

Update on societal decline July 2017

The Sexual Revolution – a grave danger to society

We live in a time of sexual revolution but we seem to be largely unaware of its very serious implications. The main impact will be the undermining of (heterosexual) marriage and the family which the Bible teaches is fundamental to human society. Gender theory supports people (including children) choosing to identify as male, female, both or neither, whatever their biological gender. There are moves to undermine the idea of fidelity in marriage. Same sex marriage will undermine the complementarity of male and female which has undergirded the family. It implies that children do not need both a father and a mother. And all this is in addition to longer term problems such as the emotional effect (particularly on children) of widespread divorce.

One question is: what effect will this have on children in the long term? Pope Francis said that gender theory is part of “a global war out to destroy marriage.” This threat to marriage and the family has been around for 100 years but has accelerated remarkably in the last 20 years or so.

The Marxist attack on marriage and the family

The pope’s comment is appropriate to the aims of the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School, now the Institute for Social Research, which emerged from the Russian Revolution. It became clear to Lenin after World War I that there would not be a communist revolution in the West and so a different approach was required. He encouraged the undermining of the family as a means of undermining capitalist societies. Lenin is credited with saying: “Destroy the family and you destroy society.” Whether or not this is an actual quotation, it does sum up Lenin’s opinion that undermining the family would undermine Western culture and pave the way for alternative views of society.

The Marxists saw the family as supporting capitalism and encouraging children to accept the authority of their parents unquestioningly. It promoted the idea of private property and so could be open to the pressure to “Keep up with the Joneses,” becoming even more capitalist. It facilitated passing on private property to descendants rather than sharing it with the wider community. Engels wrote in favour of the care and education of children being “a public affair”. That way children could be educated in communism rather than in religion and traditional family structure.

He also spoke in favour of “the gradual growth of unconstrained sexual intercourse and with it a more tolerant public opinion in regard to a maiden’s honour and a woman’s shame.” Instead of private relationships everyone should belong to everyone. So premarital and extramarital sex and adultery would cease to have the same meaning. In 1919 sex education for school children was introduced in Hungary, with the clear aim of undermining the traditional family and morality by destroying children’s innocence. The first Director of the Frankfurt School, Georg Lukacs, promoted sex education for young children (encouraging sexual experimentation), pornography, free love, easier divorce and access to contraception. Now all those things are widely accepted in our society.

Homosexuality was first decriminalized in the Soviet Union in 1922. No-fault divorce was introduced for the first time in the Soviet Union in 1918 and abortion was decriminalized for the first time by Lenin, in 1920.

Marxists clearly intended that sexual anarchy and social disorder would lead to demands for ‘strong’ government and the loss of democratic freedom.

What other factors are behind the modern sexual revolution?

There are, no doubt, many individuals who support gay liberation who have no ulterior motives. They simply want to see homosexuals treated with respect, like heterosexuals. I believe that homosexuals, as people, should be treated with the same respect as heterosexuals. But we would be very naïve to believe this is the whole story. The modern sexual revolution is bigger than both gay liberation and Marxism. As Christians we should recognise a demonic strategy which will do enormous damage to society and will open the way to oppressive political rule. The relevance of this to biblical prophecies about the End Times is clear.

It is instructive to examine the Gay Liberation Front Manifesto published in 1971 and revised in 1978.[i] It is very similar to the Marxist aim of undermining the family and, in the Marxist case, subsequently society, preparing the way for political oppression.

It states: “The oppression of gay people starts in the most basic unit of society, the family, consisting of the man in charge, a slave as his wife, and their children on whom they force themselves as the ideal models. The very form of the family works against homosexuality.” It criticises schools which, at that time, reflected the pro-family, anti-homosexual values of society. It also criticises the church “whose archaic and irrational teachings support the family and marriage as the only permitted condition for sex.” It adds “The press, radio, television and advertising are used as reinforcements against us, and make possible the control of people’s thoughts on an unprecedented scale. Entering everyone’s home, affecting everyone’s life, the media controllers, all representatives of the rich, male-controlled world, can exaggerate or suppress whatever information suits them.”

The Manifesto then goes on to say: “Gay liberation does not just mean reforms. It means a revolutionary change in our whole society.” It describes society (in the 1970s) as sexist and built around the patriarchal family “in which one’s biological sex determines almost all of what one does and how one does it … we will not be freed … so long as each succeeding generation is brought up in the same old sexist way in the Patriarchal family.”

It finally states its aim: “The long-term goal of Gay Liberation, which inevitably brings us into conflict with the institutionalised sexism of this society, is to rid society of the gender-role system which is at the root of our oppression. This can only be achieved by eliminating the social pressures on men and women to conform to narrowly defined gender roles. It is particularly important that children and young people be encouraged to develop their own talents and interests and to express their own individuality rather than act out stereotyped parts alien to their nature.”

Current events

Sex education

One of the most disturbing factors is sex education in schools. Children as young as 4 are to be given compulsory sex education in school about safe and healthy relationships. There are moves to require all pupils to “learn the importance of respect, tolerance and commitment in all types of healthy relationships.” This covers any kind of sexual relationship so long as there is no coercion. Tory MPs are pushing for all schools, including primary schools, to be compelled to endorse same sex marriage.

Children as young as 5 have been alleged to have carried out sexual offences at school. The youngest victims were 5 years old. The number of allegations of sex crimes in schools rose from 719 in 2011-12 to 1955 in 2014-5.

The Victoria Derbyshire programme on BBC TV reported that since 2015 three pre-school children have been referred to the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. They are among 167 children under 10. The Tavistock Clinic is a gender identity clinic for under 18s. In 2009 there were 96 referrals (40 girls and 56 boys). In 2014 there were 697 and in 2015 1398 (913 girls and 485 boys). Consultant Clinical Psychologist Dr Bernadette Wren commented: “It’s not really for us to approve or disapprove. … in the end, we maybe have to see through this social revolution and see how it transpires.” In 2016 a Church of England primary school in Hartfield, Sussex held a ‘transgender day’ event to “empower lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans young people.” The head commented: “As part of the national curriculum, we spend time talking to the children about British values of tolerance, respect and celebrating differences.”  Schools have begun to introduce “gender neutral” uniform rules.

Other examples

Over 50% of teachers have become aware of incidents of children sexting (sending sexually explicit messages) at school, some of them as young as 7.

Nearly all Europeans accept premarital sex. Countries vary as to the percentage believing that adultery is morally wrong: US 84%, Greece 79%, UK 76%, Spain & Italy 64%, Germany 60%, France 47%.

In Italy the Senate and it Judiciary Committee have voted to remove the word “fidelity” from marriage contracts as faithfulness in marriage is seen as “outdated and obsolete.”

A recent survey by Grazia and Onepoll found that a quarter of heterosexual women have had sexual experience with another woman. The press commented: “young women are increasingly having more fluid attitudes towards gender and sexuality … women are increasingly breaking away from traditional attitudes about gender, sexuality, marriage and family life.”

Conclusion

It may take a generation before the very serious effects of the sexual revolution are recognised by society. But it is very instructive to look back at how things have changed in the last 20 years or so. Some early 20th century attitudes to sexual morality, namely that sexual intercourse should be confined to heterosexual marriage, are now are seen as antediluvian. The media have, of course, been a major factor – effectively brainwashing the population into a radically different approach to sexuality.

The sexual revolution is not the most important challenge facing us. The fact that most people ignore or marginalise God is more important. But the sexual revolution is a catalyst guaranteed to transform society in a way contrary to the teaching of God’s Word and the church.

The only hope for our society is another Revival on a level with that which happened in the time of the Wesleys.

OTHER ISSUES

Abortion

British MPs have voted by 172 to 142 in favour of totally decriminalising abortion up to 24 weeks. They were backed by the Royal College of Midwives and the British Pregnancy Advisory service. Cathy Warwick, head of the Royal College of Midwives stated that abortion was never wrong but is a mother’s choice. In 2015 Fiona Bruce MP tried to make sex-selective abortion illegal but MPs rejected that by 292 to 201 votes.

The Global Life Campaign has researched over 100 nations, territories and regions up to 2015. They discovered that one billion babies have been aborted since the Soviet Union legalised abortion in 1920. It says that “current worldwide reported abortions are about 12.5 million per year”. One factor is the availability of on-line abortion pills.

The Evangelical Alliance commented: “Decriminalisation grants the unborn protection only in so far as it’s the property of its mother. Now, women holding the power of life or death over their children is framed as a victory for equality.”

Euthanasia

There have been moves to legalise euthanasia in the UK. It already is legal in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg. The number of Dutch people killed by medical euthanasia has more than doubled in the 10 years since it was legalised, rising 13% to 4,188 in 2016.

Dr. Robert G Twycross, emeritus Clinical Reader in Palliative Medicine at the University of Oxford commented: “Dutch journalist Gerbert van Loenen shows in his book ‘Do You Call This a Life? Blurred Boundaries in the Netherlands’ Right-to-Die Laws’ that, although euthanasia activism begins with the wish to help suffering people of sound mind to achieve control in ending their torment, it never stops there. In both the Netherlands and neighbouring Belgium, once the barrier of legislation is passed, medically assisted dying takes on a dynamic of its own and extends beyond the original intent, despite earlier explicit assurances that this would not happen. As a disillusioned former member of a Dutch regional euthanasia review board has said: ‘Don’t go there!’”

Racism

Events such as Brexit and the rise of leaders like Donald Trump have raised the issue of national independence and control of immigration. Sadly, though, this has also encouraged racism. The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance recorded a sharp rise in Islamophobic, anti-semitic and xenophobic assaults in 2016 including in Britain. It condemned David Cameron for describing asylum seekers hoping to reach the UK as a “swarm.” Some of the British media, especially tabloid newspapers were condemned for “offensive, discriminatory and provocative terminology.” An article in The Sun likened refugees to “cockroaches.”

In the US Rick Tyler, standing as a candidate for Congress, designed a billboard stating “Make America white again.” He wanted America to be like it was (according to him) in the 1960s: “It was an America where you didn’t have to lock your doors. You didn’t have to worry about carjacking and home invasions. You didn’t have to worry about Muslim sleeper cells down the street. You didn’t have to worry about Islamic mosques radicalising people. It was an America that was far superior to the America that we live in today, and – not coincidentally – it was an America whose demographic was 85 per cent plus Caucasian.”

Lack of concern for Poverty and Human Rights

When the Archbishop of Canterbury one Christmas asked people to pray for the poor, hungry and homeless, Nigel Farage responded: “Merry Christmas! Ignore all negative messages from the Archbishop of Canterbury and have a great day!”

UK government plans to cut sickness and disability benefits were condemned by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission which said the cuts will “exacerbate, rather than reduce, existing inequalities” as well as disproportionately affecting disabled people.

The UK has come in for criticism for its positive relationship with countries like Saudi Arabia which have a poor human rights record. S Arabia bombed various hospitals run by Médecins Sans Frontières in Yemen. They also destroyed schools. The UN criticised S Arabia for contributing to a humanitarian disaster in Yemen. A few days after the EU voted for an arms trade embargo on S Arabia, David Cameron praised British companies that have traded with that country. The UK government says it raises human rights issues with countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain privately but that means it is not possible to assess if that approach is adequate. In 2015 the most senior Foreign Office civil servant told MPs that human rights was “not one of our top priorities” and that the “prosperity agenda is further up the list.”

 

Christians need to wake up to the radical and very damaging changes taking place in our society and to pray for the Lord to bring a powerful revival of the Christian faith.

[i] http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/glf-london.asp