REMINDER: Check out this week's"Truth That Transforms" broadcast at truthinaction.org which this week discusses the importance of having a Biblical worldview. It also includes a special feature about how the concept of truth is under siege in our society.”
URGENT PRAYERS/PETITIONS:Same -Sex "Marriage"- PLEASE PRAY WITH ME (every day untill the decision is revealed in the next 2 weeks) THAT THE SUPREME COURT WILL VOTE TO UPHOLD THE 2 LAWS REVIEWED SUPPORTING A TRADITIONAL DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE.. PRAY that the Court will resist any pressure to MAKE new law based on "cultural trends." PRAY as though the very future of the institution of the family is at stake because it is. PRAY! - for the sake of possibly millions of children, and for our country if it is to continue to be shown any more favor by our Heavenly Father, who I promise you will be very displeased if homosexual marriage is legalized; "GOD IS NOT [TO BE] MOCKED..." - (Gal. 6:7) - Stan [Be sure to check out my brief essay at post #478.]
"Prayers from Prison: American Pastor Held in Iran Releases Letter," May 22, 2013; http://www.presidentialprayerteam.com/Prayerwatch?pw=1458"...Abedini has been held at the brutal prison for 238 days, enduring long stints in solitary confinement, and, according to his supporters, beatings and torture at the hands of his jailers and fellow inmates. For months, he has been suffering from serious injuries, including internal bleeding from beatings with no proper medical attention, according to his family and attorneys."(Sources: Fox News, Assemblies of God website) As the Lord leads, please PRAY: =1) For the imprisoned Pastor Abedini, and for those Iranians who tend to his needs in prison to treat him more humanely. 2) For his family in Boise, Idaho. and their efforts to involve the U.S. State Department in securing Pastor Abedini’s release. And 3) For the impact of his witness upon believers and non-believers, in America and across the world. And if you have not yet, join the over 600,000 worldwide who have signed the petition asking for his release at www.SaveSaed.org
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"Placing Women in Combat Is a Move Against Women," May 22, 2013 http://www.truthinaction.org/index.php/2013/05/why-women-in-combat-is-a-move-against-women/
[NOTE: One significant thing not mentioned in the article below is that it was announced in January that women would now be eligible to serve in combat, it was also ominously stated that if it was found that women could not meet the standard set to qualify for combat, that standard might be lowered. The obvious danger is that if that standard was set to esnure to safety of those in every combat unit, does not lowering that standard in the name of "gender equality" subsequently mean lowering the level of safety our troops will serve in combat. ie endangering their lives for the sake of "political correctness?" This has led me to continually PRAY that the women who apply for combat positions will have the integrity NOT to insist on qualifying at the expense of endangering the lives of the others she serves with.- Stan]
Service in our Armed Forces is still voluntary. Nevertheless, according to the Center for Military Readiness (CMR), both President Obama and Secretary of Defense Hagel are “on the record in favor of equal Selective Service obligations for women.” The worry that young women might one day have to register for Selective Service is not as far-fetched as we might think. When former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced last January that women can now serve in combat, he opened up that possibility, says the CMR, an independent public policy organization devoted to military/social issues.
One group has already piggy-backed on Panetta’s announcement. The National Coalition for Men has filed a lawsuit in a California U.S. District Court to challenge the male-only Selective Service policy. The Coalition asked the court to “end the sex-based discrimination in its military draft registration program and to treat men and women equally.”
Exemption of women from the draft rests on a 1981 Supreme Court decision in which the Court determined that the purpose of Selective Service registration is to prepare for the contingency of a future draft of combat troops. Because women were exempt from combat at the time, the Court held that they were exempt from Selective Service, stating: “Men and women...are not similarly situated for purposes of a draft or registration for a draft.” Now, however, Secretary Panetta has in effect made women “similarly situated” to men in the military, and so the Court’s decision is open to challenge.
Canada has allowed women in combat since 1989, but the Wall Street Journal reported, (1/24/2013), “For years, Canada has found it difficult to fill combat roles with women in the first place. Women account for about 14% of all military positions in the Canadian Forces but just 2.4% of combat jobs, according to government data.” Karen Davis, a defense expert at the Canadian Forces Leadership Institute in Kingston, Ontario, told the Journal that “women considering a combat role are more likely than men to cite concerns about the effect on their families.” WSJ also reported that one former senior Canadian commander in Afghanistan affirmed that women performed well in combat roles, but that didn’t mean that their male colleagues wouldn’t often have a “counterproductive desire” to protect them on the battlefield. Also, Army Corp. Donald Hookey, a military truck driver with the Canadian forces in Afghanistan, told the Journal, this tendency to “protect” women soldiers in combat is hard to escape. “That brother-sister protective thought was always in the back of your mind,” he said.
As the Canadian experience suggests, there are some aspects of human behavior that are so much a part of our inborn, God-designed tendencies, that no matter what social policies we put in place to try to change them, they will still manifest themselves. The desire of women to care for their families; the need men feel to protect women: are these dispositions and desires that we would want to see erased by training or social engineering in our Armed Services?
According to the CMR, reports of sexual misconduct “reveal disastrous consequences of many years of social experiments with human sexuality in our military.” The Pentagon admits there is a growing epidemic of sexual assaults across the military. Fox News reported (www.foxnews.com/us/2013/05/15) that the Defense Department estimates that as many as 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted last year and a 2013 report shows that sexual assaults of military personnel have increased by 129 percent since 2004. Those assaults also include abuse of men as well as a rising number of unfounded allegations.
Assigning women to direct ground combat would increase, not reduce sexual assaults, says the CMR and would aggravate sexual tension and the associated problems of inappropriate relationships, pregnancy and non-deployability. It would affect the military readiness of the troops, and not just because men tend to assume “protective roles” toward their female counterparts. According to the CMR,
What we do see in the Bible is Eve, the mother and help to her husband, and numerous other women who played key roles throughout redemptive history. The wives of the patriarchs; the mother and sister of Moses; Rahab, who hid the spies; Deborah, who judged Israel; Esther, who saved her people; Mary the mother of Jesus; Anna the prophetess; Lydia the seller of purple—these women and many more carried out their specific callings and responded to God’s design for their lives so that His purposes could be fulfilled.
But we don’t see women being numbered for battle as the children of Israel prepared to enter the Promised Land. Nor did women join Nehemiah in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem with a sword on their side. God’s design for us as women takes into account our strengths, our abilities, our native proclivities, as well as our weaknesses and our limitations.
Rather than succumbing to pressure to make the Armed Services a “gender free society,” let us pray that our military leaders will consider both the evidence from the experience of other countries like Canada, as well as the facts of numerous studies such as those cited by the Center for Military Readiness. Let us also pray that they will seek the welfare of both the women and the men who are serving their country, and not put them unduly at risk when they enter combat. And let us also pray for our military men and women—and their families—both those who are serving and those who have served our nation. Their decisions to serve have protected us and our freedoms. Their willingness to endure hardships has allowed us to enjoy the many comforts and privileges that we have in this great land.
One group has already piggy-backed on Panetta’s announcement. The National Coalition for Men has filed a lawsuit in a California U.S. District Court to challenge the male-only Selective Service policy. The Coalition asked the court to “end the sex-based discrimination in its military draft registration program and to treat men and women equally.”
Exemption of women from the draft rests on a 1981 Supreme Court decision in which the Court determined that the purpose of Selective Service registration is to prepare for the contingency of a future draft of combat troops. Because women were exempt from combat at the time, the Court held that they were exempt from Selective Service, stating: “Men and women...are not similarly situated for purposes of a draft or registration for a draft.” Now, however, Secretary Panetta has in effect made women “similarly situated” to men in the military, and so the Court’s decision is open to challenge.
Canada has allowed women in combat since 1989, but the Wall Street Journal reported, (1/24/2013), “For years, Canada has found it difficult to fill combat roles with women in the first place. Women account for about 14% of all military positions in the Canadian Forces but just 2.4% of combat jobs, according to government data.” Karen Davis, a defense expert at the Canadian Forces Leadership Institute in Kingston, Ontario, told the Journal that “women considering a combat role are more likely than men to cite concerns about the effect on their families.” WSJ also reported that one former senior Canadian commander in Afghanistan affirmed that women performed well in combat roles, but that didn’t mean that their male colleagues wouldn’t often have a “counterproductive desire” to protect them on the battlefield. Also, Army Corp. Donald Hookey, a military truck driver with the Canadian forces in Afghanistan, told the Journal, this tendency to “protect” women soldiers in combat is hard to escape. “That brother-sister protective thought was always in the back of your mind,” he said.
As the Canadian experience suggests, there are some aspects of human behavior that are so much a part of our inborn, God-designed tendencies, that no matter what social policies we put in place to try to change them, they will still manifest themselves. The desire of women to care for their families; the need men feel to protect women: are these dispositions and desires that we would want to see erased by training or social engineering in our Armed Services?
According to the CMR, reports of sexual misconduct “reveal disastrous consequences of many years of social experiments with human sexuality in our military.” The Pentagon admits there is a growing epidemic of sexual assaults across the military. Fox News reported (www.foxnews.com/us/2013/05/15) that the Defense Department estimates that as many as 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted last year and a 2013 report shows that sexual assaults of military personnel have increased by 129 percent since 2004. Those assaults also include abuse of men as well as a rising number of unfounded allegations.
Assigning women to direct ground combat would increase, not reduce sexual assaults, says the CMR and would aggravate sexual tension and the associated problems of inappropriate relationships, pregnancy and non-deployability. It would affect the military readiness of the troops, and not just because men tend to assume “protective roles” toward their female counterparts. According to the CMR,
Thirty years of studies and reports in the U.S. and the United Kingdom have provided abundant empirical evidence of profound physical differences between men and women. It is not realistic to expect tougher male-oriented training would be retained in Army Ranger, Marine infantry, Special Operations Forces/Navy SEALs.Feminists argue that the only way women can achieve true equality is by receiving “equal pay for equal work” and that means women must also have access to equal work. In the military, that translates into women in combat. But looking at this issue from a biblical viewpoint, we should ask, “Is this God’s design for women?” Nowhere in biblical accounts do we see anything like the Amazon women warriors of Classical antiquity. Nor is there any suggestion that God’s design includes a “gender free” or “unisex” society, which is the ultimate goal of secular feminism according to Jack Cottrell, the author of Feminism and the Bible.
What we do see in the Bible is Eve, the mother and help to her husband, and numerous other women who played key roles throughout redemptive history. The wives of the patriarchs; the mother and sister of Moses; Rahab, who hid the spies; Deborah, who judged Israel; Esther, who saved her people; Mary the mother of Jesus; Anna the prophetess; Lydia the seller of purple—these women and many more carried out their specific callings and responded to God’s design for their lives so that His purposes could be fulfilled.
But we don’t see women being numbered for battle as the children of Israel prepared to enter the Promised Land. Nor did women join Nehemiah in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem with a sword on their side. God’s design for us as women takes into account our strengths, our abilities, our native proclivities, as well as our weaknesses and our limitations.
Rather than succumbing to pressure to make the Armed Services a “gender free society,” let us pray that our military leaders will consider both the evidence from the experience of other countries like Canada, as well as the facts of numerous studies such as those cited by the Center for Military Readiness. Let us also pray that they will seek the welfare of both the women and the men who are serving their country, and not put them unduly at risk when they enter combat. And let us also pray for our military men and women—and their families—both those who are serving and those who have served our nation. Their decisions to serve have protected us and our freedoms. Their willingness to endure hardships has allowed us to enjoy the many comforts and privileges that we have in this great land.
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