Orthodox Editors

Obama: Sermon on Mount Justifies Same-Sex Unions

CNSnews.com | Terence P. Jeffrey | Mar. 3, 2008

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told a crowd at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sunday that he believes the Sermon on the Mount justifies his support for legal recognition of same-sex unions. He also told the crowd that his position in favor of legalized abortion does not make him “less Christian.”

“I don’t think it [a same-sex union] should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state,” said Obama. “If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans.” St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans condemns homosexual acts as unnatural and sinful. [Read more…]

Alaska Today – Despotic Tyranny of Bishop Nikolai (Soraich) of Sitka

OCANews.org | Fr. Michael Oleksa | Feb. 22, 2008
…
Obedience is the chief concern and the most often preached topic in Alaska, for it is in obedience that we are being asked, no forced, to accept the “corrections” and “guidelines” as well a the decrees periodically issued by the bishop and chancellor. Obedience in itself is, first of all, not a spiritual gift. The Holy Spirit brings love, joy, peace, self-control, but not obedience. Obedience is a means to an end, and a very useful, even essential means, provided one has found a loving spiritual father whose guidance one freely accepts in full confidence that all that whatever the elder commands is not for the elder’s benefit or satisfaction, but for the one’s own salvation. [Read more…]

Guns Save Lives

Townhall | John Stossel | Feb. 27, 2008

Criminals have the initiative. They choose the time, place and manner of their crimes, and they tend to make choices that maximize their own, not their victims’, success. So criminals don’t attack people they know are armed, and anyone thinking of committing mass murder is likely to be attracted to a gun-free zone, such as schools and malls. [Read more…]

A Lesson From Venezuela

Townhall | Thomas Sowell | Feb. 27, 2008

People on the left often use other countries as examples of things that we should do. If other countries have a government-run medical system, then we should have one too, they say. If other countries control prices, then we should control prices — or so the reasoning goes.

Almost never is there any suggestion that we should first find out whether the actual results of the policies we are supposed to imitate are better or worse than what we already have. [Read more…]

Five Questions about Shootings at Universities

Townhall | Dennis Prager | Feb. 19, 2008

Question 2: Which of these three options is more likely to prevent further murderous rampages: a) making universities closed campuses and increasing the police presence on campus (as the president of NIU has promised to do); b) making guns much harder to obtain; or c) enabling specially trained students and faculty to carry concealed weapons on campus?

Because political correctness has replaced wisdom at nearly all universities, colleges are considering options a and b. But the only thing the first option will accomplish is to reduce the quality of university life and render the campus a larger version of the contemporary airport. And the second option will have no effect whatsoever since whoever wishes to commit murder will be able to obtain guns illegally. [Read more…]

The Church of Global Warming

FrontPageMag | Mark D. Tooley | Feb. 21, 2008

The imploding National Council of Churches (NCC) is always flailing about for a new raison d’etre. This month, it took its Global Warming alarmism to Northern Ireland , where it hopes that fears about a climate catastrophe will “inform the peace and reconciliation process.” Even First Minister Ian Paisley, the once firebrand Ulsterman who is now an elderly pillar of the Ulster peace settlement, met with the ecclesiastical busybodies. [Read more…]

Warming Hysteria is Fake Religion, Not Science

Error Theory | Alec Rawls | Feb. 18, 2008

Every climate scientist in the world has known beyond any doubt, for at least several years now, that late 20th century warming was driven almost entirely by the very high levels of solar activity between 1940 and 2000 (details below). They also know the corollary: that when solar activity drops into a down phase, the earth will get cold, possibly even precipitating the next ice age (due any century now). [Read more…]