Children say such funny things. One of ours, many years ago, had the idea that there were three sexes – male, female and email.
It’s worth a chuckle now. But it’s very far from funny that an increasing number of people in our society seem to think that there are four sexes – male, female, gay and lesbian. Or maybe it’s six sexes, if you count bisexual and transgender. Even professing Christians have been caught up in this tragic folly and are insisting that God made us all just the way we are, whether male or female, gay or straight.
It’s an urgent reminder of the need to teach our children to think logically. Rational thinking is largely a matter of putting things in the right categories. Children begin to teach it to themselves when they get out the blocks and suddenly decide to sort them into separate piles by colour or shape, or when you let them play in the button tin and they pick out all the ones with two holes or four holes. As we get older, we learn to put more sophisticated things like ideas and concepts into categories too. We learn what criteria to use to separate one concept from another. And if we learn that successfully, we should never be taken in by the clever double-speak of social engineers. Remember, whoever defines the terms wins the debate. We saw this in the so-called debate over the so-called anti-smacking law, whereby the family was made an illegal institution in this country while we were all sidetracked into a gigantic blabberfest about ‘smacking’.
So it is with the present debate over same-sex ‘marriage’, which is being twisted into a campaign for equal rights for people of all sexual orientations. Those who are succeeding in defining the terms of the debate are those who put gender, race and sexual orientation into one category, and insist that none of them should be the basis for discrimination.
Well, you see, they’re putting three blocks in the same pile that don’t belong together at all. Bear with me while I plod through this:
People come in two varieties, male and female, having similarities and differences which it would be tiresome to discuss here. Which one we are is written into our DNA, physically determined from the moment of conception, and with us for life. This is the only unchangeable and absolute distinction among all of humanity.
As for race, there is only one race: the human race. The idea of ‘the races of man’ is based more on culture and prejudice than any absolute difference between populations. There is more genetic variation within any one so-called ‘race’ than there is between one ‘race’ and another.
And as for sexual orientation, it is a will-o’-the-wisp. As Ian Wishart has argued in his powerful book Eve’s Bite, the idea that everyone is born with an immutable sexual identity is largely the construction of politically-correct, heterosexual liberals. The homosexual literature is open about the fact that there is no real cut-off point between promiscuity, adultery, homosexuality, trans-sexuality, paedophilia, or anything else all down the line. It’s just a question of how far you want to go.
So let’s not be fooled by slippery words. Let’s not let others define the terms of the debates we engage in, whatever they may be. Let’s teach ourselves first, and then our children, to put the blocks in the right boxes in our heads.
normal education 
wow!!! zohar and i just read this post… and it’s WOW!!!
excellent… WOW!!!
praise God for your voice! xoxo
this is a really good post! but i don’t quite understand it, i think i am just too young for this subject… but you are a really good writer! :)
Yes, you probably are, dearie. However intelligent they are, most people can’t really begin to understand logic until they’re about thirteen. Up to the age of twelve, however, we have an almost unlimited capacity for learning languages and vocabulary. So, since you are blessed to be growing up in a bilingual home with lots of good books, make the most of it!
Okay, that child wasn’t me, right? :) Keep it up, Mum!
Interesting thoughts. Thanks for sharing! (here from Titus Tuesday!)
Excellently said!
I firmly believe that the most important “life skill” we can teach our children, after the ability to read, is the ability to think logically. The inability to do so is costing us our churches and our culture, as people can no longer recognize a bad argument when they see one.
Too true. We all need to do that brain work.
Our schools have “dumbed” down our youth so much that they don’t know what “thinking logically” is!
The Bible is very clear, Male and Female created he them. Those who believe otherwise have been programed either by an experience, rape, not being loved by parents, or teaching to convince them differently.
Yes, there’s a lot of that brainwashing going on.
So much could be said about this topic. This is an emotionally-charged topic. Teaching our children how to be rational thinkers in response to the messages being taught in society is important. All too often, we don’t realize we are being “schooled” while watching a movie or see a billboard. Guiding our children is key.
I found you at Friendship Friday.
Teaching our children how to think is an important skill. The topic of gender is emotionally charged, but it needs to be addressed with our children. Otherwise, they won’t know how to sort through the messages they are hearing in our society.
I found you at Friendship Friday. I love the “male, female, and email” comment from your child. Too cute.
Thanks for visiting! It’s hard work thinking through all these issues, isn’t it?
I loved your intro line…email as a third sex : )
Perhaps parents in the 70’s didn’t need to teach these things until a child was in high school, but those times are long gone.
A Christian friend recently told me that her 11-year old niece (raised in a non-Christian family) was calling herself bi-sexual and hanging out with a bi-sexual group of friends in jr. high school. When the aunt talked with her, she didn’t really understand what it meant, but imagine labeling yourself in this way at that age.
We live in a very mixed up world. What would we do without God’s Word and Spirit?
It’s sad, isn’t it? The only hope is to have that “anchor for the soul”.
I’m sorry to say that even some raised in Christian families are thinking this way; many Christian adults seem to be “coming around” to believing that homosexuality, gay marriage, etc. is fine and okay with God. Our children are being taught this in public schools from nursery schools on up – if we Christians are not counter-acting what they are being taught, they grow up believing it all normal and within God’s plans. In our womens’ Bible study last week we talked about the fact that “God has a plan for our lives” and “Satan also has a plan for our lives” … we need to choose which plan we want to follow. If we are not diligent, as Christians, in teaching our children, from a young age, to think logically and as Christians, then Satan’s plan will be winning out. My heart goes out to Christian parents of today: they seem to have so much more evil to battle against than when our own four were children.