Ten Years of 'The River Is Always Waiting' (01/15/2024)

Review: 'Irreversible Damage' (10/11/2022)

Bisexuality Is a Self-imposed Problem (01/17/2022)

The Freedom to Not Believe (07/17/2021)

Freedom From Super-Religion (03/24/2021)

An Onramp to Nowhere (02/20/2020)

The End of a Common "Family-Friendly" (12/21/2019)

Why Do We Help Make Sin Inevitable? (11/27/2019)

Role Models and Sexuality (09/07/2019)

The Religious Evangelism of the Rainbow Flag (06/15/2019)

Dear College Students (08/27/2016)

How Anti-Discrimination Laws Are Used to Discriminate Against Religion (05/21/2016)

I Am the Absence of Homophobia (03/28/2016)

Soft yet Steady Resistance (12/31/2015)

Identity Shells and How They Are Used Against You (12/03/2015)

The War Between Identity and Behavior (11/23/2015)

Why It's Worse (11/11/2015)

What If That 'When' Had Never Happened? (11/09/2015)

The Reality of the Situation (09/24/2015)

Our Halfway State of Absurdity (09/21/2015)

Some Connected Thoughts about Religion (09/18/2015)

When the Ship Enters Rough Waters (01/10/2015)

On Genetics (11/29/2014)

Why I Write about this Topic (11/28/2014)

Why the Comparison Fails (11/26/2014)

Identifying What Just Bloodied Your Face (11/03/2014)

On Identity - Again (10/18/2014)

20 Truths about Same-Sex Attraction and Same-Sex Marriage (08/07/2014)

On Words (07/22/2014)

On Perspective (07/10/2014)

On Intellectualism (06/25/2014)

On Identity (06/18/2014)

The World Does Not Revolve Around You (07/19/2023)

Expecting your “identity” or “self-expression” to be treated by others as reality is incredibly arrogant and self-centered.

The world does not revolve around you.

Identities Are Not Innate (07/17/2023)

Identity is neither innate nor immutable. It is a personal belief and is capable of change.

Identities can only legitimately be granted protected class status if they are claimed as religious because religious freedom is the only protection available for unprovable beliefs.

Provable Reality, Cold and Indifferent (02/17/2023)

Provable reality is cold and indifferent. It doesn’t care about your happiness, your mental health, or what makes you more or less likely to commit suicide. Provable reality simply is. It doesn’t care about you at all, or about me, or about anyone else. As content to rule over a barren rock drifting silently in the void of space as it is to reign over a warm planet teeming with life and intelligence, provable reality simply doesn’t care.

Warmth, love, mercy; purpose and meaning—seek those elsewhere. But if you want that which holds sway in our secular neutrality, that which all can be compelled to accept, then you have met your cold mistress; acquaint yourself with her indifferent grip.

Psychology and Provable Reality (02/10/2023)

If psychology is not based on provable reality, then it is indistinguishable from religion.

A Secular Right (12/10/2022)

We have a secular right to not treat unprovable beliefs (like gender identity) as true.

Downstream From Sexual Identity (11/30/2022)

Same-sex marriage is downstream from sexual identity. If you dislike the way our society thinks and talks about same-sex marriage, then change the way our society thinks and talks about sexual identity.

Self-Identity Is Inherently Unprovable (09/17/2022)

If a truth claim about reality relies on self-identity, then it is inherently unprovable. Believing in it, therefore, is an exercise of faith.

This applies to both gender identity and sexual identity. Both are based on self-identity and therefore are faith-based, not secular.

Progressivism, You Gullible Fool (07/05/2021)

Oh Progressivism, you gullible fool. In 2016 a woman claims she is a lesbian. Then in 2021 she claims she is a man (and therefore “straight”). And there you are in both cases, nodding your head right along like an idiot, demanding no proof, just taking her word for it. And when 2026 rolls around, what will she claim to be then? What truth claims will she demand you blindly accept? It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, you’ll believe it, you gullible fool.

Oh Progressivism, you gullible fool. You display such faith in something that doesn’t even bother to call itself a religion, like a girl putting out on a date without even being taken to dinner first. “But he loves me! He said he loves me!”

You gullible fool.

Organized Religion vs a State-Backed Faith-Based Movement (03/09/2021)

The reason why the LGBT movement has proven such a challenge to organized religion is because the conflict has wrongly been interpreted as religion vs secularism when it is actually religion vs religion.

Gender identity is a faith-based belief that contradicts provable reality and as such it has no business being anywhere near secularism. Sexual identity, on the other hand, does not currently contradict provable reality because it is only an interpretation of it, so believers in sexual identity have the right to argue for its usage within secular society*, but organized religion has an equal right to be part of that conversation.

This is not creationism vs evolution in early 20th-century America. This is the Huguenots vs the Catholics in 17th-century France. The Huguenots stood little chance against the state-backed religion in their day, and we stand as little chance today unless we correct our understanding of what is actually going on. Organized religion can coexist with science, no problem; but organized religion cannot coexist with a religious movement that misrepresents itself as science in order to gain the official support of the state and effectively become the state-backed religion. We’ve seen this conflict before. We know how it will end.

* [Update 06/16/2021] I went too far in this prior statement. Yes, sexual identity is less egregious a violation of secularism than gender identity because at least it doesn’t directly contradict provable reality like gender identity does, but sexual identity is still an attempt to create an invisible construct that people are expected to believe in based on nothing more than faith in someone else’s words. Yes, you have the right to try to persuade our culture to treat the presence of same-sex attraction as a meaningful part of someone’s being, just like I, in contrast, argue that its presence should be treated as meaningless (because it is). However, you do not have the right to demand everyone believe a truth-claim about yourself that you cannot prove, and sexual identity therefore can never be legitimately used as a way to categorize people within secularism unless empirical evidence is discovered to prove its existence and thereafter that empirical evidence is used to identify everyone’s sexual identity instead of self-identity. But that will never happen because sexual identity, like vampires and werewolves, doesn’t actually exist in provable reality. It is nothing more than a faith-based interpretation of that reality, and everyone, therefore, is justified to reject it in favor of a better interpretation.

Secularism Needs to Protect Us From Faith-Based Non-Religion (02/27/2021)

Secularism, as it is commonly understood today, is only capable of protecting us from control by organized religion. It isn’t capable of protecting us from control by faith-based non-religion.

This is very troublesome given that we live in a world where an increasing amount of people are abandoning organized religion yet obviously not abandoning faith-based beliefs entirely (Exhibit A: gender identity). Our society, clearly, must reconsider what it understands secularism to be.

Secularism is not non-religion. Secularism is proof. It’s time for society to drop any expectation of antagonism between secularism and organized religion specifically and replace that expectation with a general preference within secularism for proof over faith. Only that principle can protect us from control both by organized religion and also by faith-based non-religion. Only that principle can allow secularism to truly be secularism.

Nature Doesn't Care If It Offends You (03/07/2020)

Nature doesn't care if it offends you. Nature doesn't care if you wish it were different. Nature simply is. It has been such since long before you were here, and it will continue being such long after you are gone. You can shout, you can cry, you can scream your entire life away, and then, when your end comes, nature will assimilate your body back into itself, completely oblivious to a single complaint. Or, alternatively, you can accept the reality of nature as it is, even if it isn't exactly the way you wish it were, and you can find the beauty, the peace, and the joy it contains for you in the finite time you have here.

It's your choice.

Suicide Is a Tragic Mistake, Not a Weapon (02/01/2020)

Suicide is a tragic mistake, not a weapon.

We should never use someone's suicide as a weapon in the fight for our point of view because doing so creates an incentive for others to repeat that same tragic mistake.

Suicide is a tragic mistake, not a weapon, never a weapon.

The Dishonor of Breaking Your Commitment (01/18/2020)

There is no honor in leaving your spouse of years because you want to chase something that attracts you more. It doesn't matter what gender that something is. The choice is selfish and dishonorable.

And it's morally repugnant for society to cheer when sexual identity is used as an excuse for dishonorable choices like this. Would they cheer as loudly if a man left his wife for another woman? Then they shouldn't cheer when he leaves her for men either. A commitment is a commitment, and a betrayal is a betrayal.

It's Depressing ... (12/27/2018)

There is more than one way to view the circumstances of our lives, more than one way to think about ourselves; and the narrative we choose to believe about ourselves has a powerful impact on how we will navigate life's circumstances. That's why it's so depressing when a fellow believer chooses to identify as "gay". The declaration itself is technically ambiguous (Are they talking about attraction, or are they talking about action? There is an eternity of distance between the two), but their unfortunate choice to embrace same-sex sexuality as a core part of their identity rather than to regard it simply as a wrong behavior they desire yet reject, puts them on a path that almost inevitably will lead to their rejection of the truths we once shared.

Related essays:
The War Between Identity and Behavior
Identity Shells and How They Are Used Against You

Religious Freedom and Sexual Identity (09/13/2016)

Religious freedom and sexual identity are incompatible. Religious freedom requires the ability to treat a behavior as wrong, but sexual identity declares that some behaviors are so intrinsic to one's identity we should not have the freedom to treat them as wrong. Our society can have either religious freedom or it can have sexual identity. It cannot have both.

Related essay:
How Anti-Discrimination Laws Are Used to Discriminate Against Religion

Discrimination Against Moral Beliefs (03/25/2016)

Self-righteous activists, who claim to oppose discrimination, are advocating for laws and policies that discriminate against those who hold different moral beliefs.

Behavior Identities (02/20/2016)

Behavior identities (also referred to as identity shells) are manipulative, artificial labels placed around behaviors to force us to accept what we otherwise wouldn't. When you see a behavior identity being used, replace the false label with the behavior it is hiding and notice how much clearer the situation becomes.

You are being manipulated. Doesn't that bother you? Because, frankly, it pisses me off.

The Discouragement of Wrong Behavior (02/06/2016)

Everyone treats wrong behavior differently from right behavior. There's nothing remarkable about that. All of us do it, each following our own definition of right and wrong. Whether the personal disapproval of individuals or the legal consequences of government, the effect is the same: a discouragement of behavior we consider to be wrong.

There are, unfortunately, some who try to hide certain behaviors behind a facade of identity in an attempt to place those behaviors out-of-bounds for disapproval; but that manipulative tactic is a topic for another day.

Anti-Discrimination Laws (01/12/2016)

Anti-discrimination laws, which in the past were used to protect the equality of people, are now being used to impose the acceptance of ideology. "Thou shalt not discourage this behavior"—that is the message of anti-discrimination laws today. It's time for such laws to be relegated to the past. As long as we allow them to remain, they will continue to become more and more corrupted.

Society's Roles (01/06/2015)

If a society wants to survive, then one of the most important roles of its men must be that of a father, and one of the most important roles of its women must be that of a mother. If a society recognizes this and has any common sense, then the most important role of its men will be that of a husband, and the most important role of its women will be that of a wife.