You know what troubles me? It seems like we have given up on having, at the very least, a pretense of normality. That was my thought after seeing an article about some church in Michigan installing the first transgender priest.

Growing up I had heard that some priests were celibate. I never personally asked any priest that question. My own minister was married with children, so I figured he wasn’t. He did teach you should wait until you are married to engage in such activity. I can’t say with certainty how he felt about gay people and I don’t think trans people were a thing back then.

The thing about all that was a question of normality. It really wasn’t a big topic of discussion. There were men and women. Everyone understood that was the natural order of things. We did learn that sometimes people engaged in other than the normal things, we called them perversions.

Today they have a different name for all of that. Well, actually a string of letters to describe the various perversions practiced. They even call it a community. All pretense of normalcy is being abandoned! I find it quite troubling when even churches begin to embrace any of that. I call that paganism!

The pendulum does swing both ways, no denying the facts, and it seems it is reaching the extreme left. The day will come when it reaches the far right as well. All religious groups have experienced that. We think of Jihadists and crusaders in that way. Morals are foundational to the establishment of government. Morality establishes normalcy.

Much as a religious text directs the actions of the followers, a nations laws attempt to do the same. Then, there are those that want to modify the text. In our Republic we thought to not establish a religion as a moral code reenforced by government. Let the people decide!

Well, that is a fine idea, a great idea and a very bold experiment. It is one I have enjoyed my entire life. And all my life those around me followed an unspoken moral code based in Christian traditions. At least in public they did! And that is where pretense was involved.

It just appears to me we have now decided to just throw all of that to the wind. Everything goes! Complete transparency! We aren’t even going to pretend anymore, we know it is wrong and we don’t care. It’s a descent into anarchy. When you decide to not even try anymore, that’s the first steps.

Yes, I know there have been no perfect Christians, Jews or Muslims. As to other religious groups I couldn’t say, perhaps they did have a few. The thing is, at least people used to try, they did maintain some pretense of that.

There has always been wrong in the world, people make those choices. Generally speaking, the vast majority of the people attempt to hide their wrongdoing. At least they used to. Just admitting to the wrongdoing doesn’t make it right!

In the end there is right and wrong. Yeah, it’s a binary world! I find it extremely troubling when so many refuse to accept a simple truth like that. There are no other options!