Gay Right?

I think we are all born with natural tendencies to experiment. I also think we are all born with natural abilities (although highly undeveloped) to control our tendencies. I believe the gay lifestyle is a moral issue because the God of the universe who writes the rules is a God of an objective reality. (Kinda implied in the title "GOD", don't you think)? Many of us don't like that idea because that requires that God not condone everything. We call that narrow-minded and unloving. God is all about unconditional love, right? The answer is yes by God's definition and, possibly, no by ours. God understands a truth that a lot of us tend to overlook (possibly because it's...eh...uncomfortable). Unconditional love requires that you reprimand and discipline and lay down a system of absolutes as a means of protection. The height of insensitivity and selfishness toward another person is to value your own good feelings so much that you're not willing to suspend those feelings in order to correct another person and allow that person to get hurt in the long run. We don't want God to be that way, anyway. If He's going to exist and be a part of our lives, we want Him to be consistent and reliable, not given to all of our whims, right? And He clearly points out(at least if you have a respect for the Christian Bible) that having "unnatural relations between a man and another man" is one of the "7 things that are detestable to Him". Having said all that, He also believes in giving someone free choice in moral issues because He knows that true love cannot be forced upon someone. The problem with a lot of us is that we don't even want to concede that there IS a need for a choice to choose the moral side because that implies that there is a right and a wrong and that we might be in the wrong. Why do we have a problem with that? Because it's uncomfortable to be confronted with that idea. And most of our generation, when it all boils down to it, prays at the altar of personal comfort and satisfaction. Tolerance is what we call it but it really has a lot more to do with our feelings than the feelings of the other person. It's more selfish than selfless. Nevertheless, on the basis that God--the Author of Truth and therefore, absolutes--has the nature to give people freedom of choice, I agree with extending that same freedom of choice when it comes to choosing a life of homosexuality. I still love a homosexual independant of their choice and can develop a friendship regardless of their sexual preference. But that very love is precisely why I don't agree with the lifestyle...why I can't afford to. Because I recognize a Higher Authority that makes the rules and countless reasons why He chose the rules as well as some only He is aware of. I support people's God-ordained right to make choices based on their own values instead of his own, to the point of even convincing themselves that these values are correct. I, however, do not support those who would confuse the God-ordained right to believe and choose with a moral endorsement by God of their choice.

MTV Whipping Post

I wrote this response to an MTV agent on Nov. 2nd, the day of the 2004 Presidential election. I decided to put this letter on the blog. Be forewarned: A different tone from much of the posts.


Dear MTV:
I am a 24 year old recent college grad raised in the progressive MTV culture and now working in the entertainment industry in the southeast. Thank you for the reminder to vote. I appreciate your efforts to encourage the young voter but I am deeply concerned about the underhanded partisan leanings in your campaign. Using scare tactics concerning a "back door draft" which have been denied by both candidates during repeated debates and campaign rallies and incenuating that the draft will be more readily supported by the Republican incumbent is misleading. Your representation of the facts on the MTV Rock the Vote "Why Should I Rock the Vote" section are very partisan in their support of Kerry and misleading in that they present only one side of the equation. The scare tactics used by your "awareness" campaign do not promote a bi-partisan education of the young voter near as much as a mobilization of the young voter and many young adults such as myself, hopefully, see through this. The repeated use of celebrity endorsements by artists such as Eminem and Samuel L. Jackson on drafts and the war, Cher, Bruce Springsteen and Brad Pitt on stem cell research and countless others such as Usher and the band members of R.E.M. and Green Day to promote a definite partisan appeal is very irresponsible. The agendas of these artists is never discussed. The continual challenges by the FCC to encourage art that is more socially responsible is seen by many of these artists as an effort to undermine their creative energies. They decry much of this Administration as a suppressor of free speech. In reality, free speech is not freeing to a sociey when it irresponsibly and unabashedly promotes a one-sided leftist view of reality that never concedes the possibility of an absolute and objective code of ethics by which one may live. I know that doesn't sell as well as the whole "free yourself" and "do what feels good with no realistic thought to the implications of your actions" ideal that the MTV network and culture promotes to young America who is psychologically looking for that free license to live without restraint. These are entertainers (not individuals with a career or a lifetime of following socio- political issues and the many complexities of foreign policy and other foreign engagements) who are held in high esteem by many in a young audience of impressionable youth. Choose or Die might just as readily be used as a slogan for the moral fallout in young America. I doubt many of us would even recognize that fallout.
Sincerely yours,
Joel A. Foster