How concerned should I be?

As regular readers and my friends probably know, I am a Christian. You probably also know that the Bible says homosexual activity is wrong. With that in mind...

When Canada introduced gay marriage nationwide a couple years ago, I wasn't thrilled but I wasn't very concerned. On one hand, I don't think every sinful activity needs to be illegal, but on the other hand, this seemed to be giving society's blessing to a sinful activity, not just allowing it. But on the other hand, I just didn't see how gay marriage would harm our society. The Supreme Court said churches couldn't be forced to do gay marriages because that would violate religious freedom, so one of my biggest concerns was allayed.

A couple years later, for the most part I don't see problems in our society stemming from allowing gay marriage. In the legal world it gets kind of tricky though. First there's the issue of forcing marriage commissioners to perform gay weddings (which I already addressed here and here). Then there's the issue of forcing organizations that own buildings to rent out their buildings for gay weddings. I heard about this happening with the Knights of Columbus. But then I searched for an article, and I found out the BC Human Rights Tribunal decided that because Knights of Columbus is a Christian organization, they can refuse to rent out their buildings for gay weddings. They only got in trouble because they cancelled a booking after first accepting it. I have heard that businesses like Bed & Breakfasts can't turn away couples for being gay though. I'm not sure where I stand on that one. I can see that B&B owners would be concerned that they're facilitating sin if they have to rent to gay couples, but then how far should the law go in allowing businesses to discriminate in serving customers?

I think my biggest concern about this issue right now is about freedom of speech. Some people get in trouble for speaking out against homosexuality. I may not fully agree with everything the people mentioned in this article wrote, and I would prefer if they said it in a less inflammatory way. But I'm not a big fan of "hate speech" laws. Don't get me wrong, I think encouraging violence should be illegal and I think any form of hateful speech is deplorable. I just think the line between legitimate criticism of a group and hate speech is too murky. No group should be immune to criticism. I'm not sure exactly where the law should stand on this issue, but I suspect it's going too far now.

Throwing one more link and monkey wrench into this: I have seen arguments that it is okay for Christians to be in committed homosexual relationships. There's a page here that talks about that perspective. I think they make a good argument about Sodom, but I'm not so sure about their arguments about Paul's references. Their interpretation of Romans 1 certainly isn't the most obvious, from my reading. As for the other references to homosexuality in the New Testament, they base their arguments on the original Greek, which I haven't studied. Do any Greek scholars want to comment?

The Map

Sometime in the very near future you may notice that most of the red dots on the map (on the right hand side of this page) have disappeared. That's because ClustrMaps (the service that provides the map) archives and resets the map every year, to prevent it from become a big red splotch. If you want to see a map that covers the last year or so, click on the map, then click on "Maps Archive."

Better than Hasselhoff?

(By the way, I put a couple of links to David Hasselhoff videos in this previous post.)

Update (May 16, 2012): It appears that this copy of The Urkel Dance has been removed from YouTube. You'll have to find a different copy yourself.

Reminiscing about politicians

The years 1993 to 2003 were special years for Canada and especially for Alberta. No, I'm not saying this because of economic growth or paying down the government's debts. One reason I miss those years is this: we had hilarious political leaders at both the federal and provincial levels. I've seen Jean Chrétien (Prime Minister of Canada from 1993 to 2003) and Ralph Klein (Premier of Alberta from 1992 to 2006) on TV in the last two days, and it's had me reminiscing.

Chrétien was known for trying to strangle a protester, defending himself against an intruder with an Inuit carving, and most of all, for bungling the English language. Hardly a week went by without a gem in the news. Like the time someone asked him about the increased drug traffic across the border and he said, "It's more trade." (He thought they'd asked him about increased truck traffic.) Or the time some protesters got pepper-sprayed and he said, "For me, pepper, I put it on my plate."

Ralph Klein was known for his drinking (which he cut back on after the infamous homeless shelter incident that most Albertans probably remember) and for speaking without thinking. He accused eastern creeps and bums of driving up the crime rate in Calgary. He said dinosaur farts caused the ice age that killed the dinosaurs.

Stephen Harper and Ed Stelmach just aren't that funny.

(In case you're wondering, Jean Chrétien was on TV having lunch with Rick Mercer, and Ralph Klein was on TV giving horse racing advice to Lynda Steele, a local news anchor. If you want to see the Jean Chrétien clip, click here, navigate to Season 5, Episode 7, and click on "Mercer: At Harvey's with Chrétien.")

"I'm telling you, it feels good to get up without a hangover."
--Something Ralph Klein learned in his third term as premier

A Recent Weekend

The weekend before last I had a guest in town, so we visited a few places like the rodeo:
Elk Island Park:

and we took a quick detour to Toronto while we were at it:

Eskimos

Last year I attended one regular season football game. It happened to be the game where the Edmonton Eskimos got mathematically eliminated from a playoff spot for the first time in more than thirty years. For the first time in my life, just one year after winning the Grey Cup, they missed the playoffs. Coach Danny Maciocia wasn't a very popular person around Edmonton, despite winning a Grey Cup in his rookie year. (Some people claimed he just inherited a great team and got lucky.) Although I'm no expert on when coaches should be fired, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope that hiring an offensive coordinator would help.

A year later, the Eskimos have missed the playoffs again and Danny Maciocia is keeping his job. After two years in a row of doing what no Eskimos team has done since the 1970s, I thought it was time to let him go. Like many things I say on this blog, this isn't a strong opinion. But they need to do something different.

Baptisms

I go to a church that doesn't baptize babies. We baptize people after they personally make a decision to follow Jesus. Last Sunday eight people were baptized. Seven of them are in our youth group and the other one is a youth leader (who was in the youth group until recently). Being a youth leader myself, I've had the privilege of getting to know all of these people better over the last few years. It was really special to hear each of them talk about why they're getting baptized, each in their own unique way. I think I learned something new about each of them too.

Amid my doubts about God and my questions about what God really expects of us, here's one thing I'm pretty sure of: if the God that the Bible tells us about is real, there is nothing better than living a life devoted to him. Congratulations to everyone who was baptized. I think you've made a great decision.