(Due to the length of the submitted letter, it was split into two parts. This is part one. –Ed.)
Hank and I have lived in the Bulkley Valley for 41 years. We love its scenery, its climate, its people, its community, talent and spirit. But one of the things we love most is that our people think with their brains and then use that framework to stream their emotional responses through.
When I was a girl my father used to say that sometimes society wants to be so open minded it’s brains fall out. Have we reached that point in our world? Where have logic, common sense and truth gone?
Where is the logic in a society that is excited because women have been given safe injection sites that are “for women only, because it is safer and less intimidating that way.” But they deny they need to have “safer” washrooms and locker rooms for the average women and their little girls. They should speak to women who have been sexually assaulted and to the mothers of young children who have been assaulted for a truly valid assessment of need.
And now we have the curtain being drawn back to expose the horror of sexual assault and abuse, for which there is NEVER an excuse. Zero tolerance for physical and sexual abuse, and exploitation of men, women, and children must be ingrained into our society. But our society glorifies the exploitation in its porn industry, movie and TV industry, literary industry, music industry, advertising industry, kids beauty competition industry — and the list goes on. Sex is used to sell everything from gum to guns. Good is portrayed as old fashion and bigoted while evil is heralded as exciting and progressive. Healthy family units are scorned.
We give injections to young people to avoid STDs, whose numbers are exploding, so they can experience “friendship with benefits.” And we hand out condoms in schools so rather than learning about self control and respect for their bodies boys and girls given band-aid solutions from a society that is itself not really wanting to change. It’s hard to teach our children about living a moral lifestyle when our society has become amoral. It’s somewhat like saying we realize that alcohol is dangerous but because we don’t want to quit we will give out coupons for counseling and put more money into research.
What about a society that wants to increase the number of gambling casinos, recognizing the addictive effects and consequences to individuals and families — but then says “it’s okay, we will put a percentage of the profits back into counseling.” We want to make our own choices but we forget that we cannot choose the consequences. Proverbs 19:3 NLT says, “People ruin their lives by their own foolishness and then are angry at the Lord.”
And about those telling us that we should not be so intolerant of the livestyle choices of others — as they are aggressively intolerant of the lifestyle choices and voices of followers of Christ. Intolerant people are not those peacefully voicing opinions differing from a segment of society — intolerance is not allowing people to voice those opinions freely and safely. Look how often our pro-life sign has been defaced.
Respectfully submitted,
Jenny de Jong
Smithers