Small Things Are Bigger Than They Appear

There are so many big things going on in the world, it’s hard to focus on a small-ish issue. But because of all that it means, I think this is something to pay attention to.

There’s a German family, the Romeike family, that I’ve written about several times. They came here seeking asylum 15 years ago, based on persecution in Germany. They were not allowed to homeschool there. This was based on a law from the late 1930s, during which time the Nazi regime did not tolerate any child being out of the control of their indoctrination. The law continues for reasons the German people will have to answer to. But the Romeikes report that the schools were changing their children in ways they didn’t like. The schools, by the way, while not still pro-Nazi, are atheist, and the family is evangelical Christian. They considered private schools, but those schools are required to use the same curriculum, and they found the environment there even worse. So the parents pulled the children out of school for their safety and best interests. But the state had other ideas. They threatened fines and imprisonment. Ultimately they would threaten to take the children from the parents. It was untenable, so the family sought asylum here, in 2008.

The Romeike family, homeschooling in Tennessee in 2010
photo from NY Times article March 1, 2010

In 2010 a US circuit judge granted their asylum, along with a strong statement about parents having a right to make decisions regarding education and religion for their own children. This was during the Obama administration. Out of the blue (no apparent request from Germany), the DOJ insisted on overturning the ruling and kicking this law-abiding family out of the country.

I wrote about the family in 2011, and updated a couple of times in 2013. The links are below. I hadn’t heard much in a long time. The family was staying as long as appeals were making their way through the courts. HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association), their legal counsel, show on their timeline that, in 2013, the 6^th Circuit heard oral arguments and then didn’t grant a rehearing. So there was an appeal to the US Supreme Court. Again, the Court didn’t grant a rehearing. That final word came down March 2014. The very next day DHS, under public pressure, decided to let Romeikes stay under order of supervision and "indefinite deferred action status."

Although nothing changed on the Romeike’s part, the Biden administration—the very ones determined to let anyone, criminal or not, flood in at the southern border—now use their ICE discretion to pluck out this family. In September the Romeikes were given four weeks to vacate the country, but October 11 they were given a delay of one year.

Why target this family? They have been in no trouble during the 15 years they have lived here. They have supported themselves (i.e., no government aide; some of their court costs, I believe, have been helped with donations). They have been contributing community members. They have not violated any agreements. They aren’t terrorists or drug dealers. So, again, it is out of the blue that the administration decides to target this family—and the family has not been told the reason.

The Romeike family in 2008 when they came here, and a recent family photo.
Photos are screenshots from their interview on the Glenn Beck program.

What happens with a family over 15 years? They have two more children—born here as Americans, according to current law. (I believe they had five when they came here.) Their children have grown up. Two are married to American citizens, and one has an American-born citizen baby, just a month old.

The administration nevertheless wants the Romeike parents to return to Germany, where they face both hefty fines and imprisonment. They have no home there and no means to make a living—which means they will be imprisoned, and the state will take custody of the minor children. The American-born children can stay in the US, but without parents or family or means of support, so that’s not going to happen. The married adults are expected to return to Germany without spouses and children (or they can all immigrate and subject themselves to German laws), and that’s not going to happen either. The minor children, except the American-born ones, are expected to return to Germany and submit themselves to state custody. Some of them may not even remember the language or recall ever living in Germany.

In an interview with Glenn Beck, the parents aren’t sure what to do. As law-abiding people, they are willing to leave the US if ordered. But they are not willing to return to Germany and lose their freedom and their family. They may be searching for another place to land, but at this point they say they don’t know where to go.

Why is this a bigger issue than it appears? It is a travesty. It is wrong. But it also shows the risk to all of us. The ruling power goes out of its way to wield power against regular people—like us. This appears to be persecution because of religious belief, possibly also simply the assertion that we the people—not government—have certain inalienable rights, which include the parental right and responsibility to direct the care and upbringing of our own children.

As Lenin said, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” Tyrants want control over the ideas being taught to children, to perpetuate their control over the next generations.

There’s a point I remember Jordan Peterson making (I don’t have the reference right now) where he talks about a question people ask him, about what a person should say to a Nazi official who asks if you’re hiding Jews in your home. Do you lie, when telling the truth would lead to their death? He says a better question is, how many times did you—and the rest of the community—fail to tell the truth or speak up prior to the Nazis coming to your door to find the Jews you have to hide? Why did you let it get to this point?

So, with this one family’s case, is there something we can do? Yes, some small things:

·        Contact your representative to support H.R. 5423, a bill proposed in September to give relief to the Romeike family. (Info about the bill here.)

·        We’re past an October 11 deadline, but still, there is a petition at HSLDA where you can sign your name in support of the Romeike family. (Pressure from the public is what led the Obama administration to give them “indefinitely deferred action status” back in 2014.)

·        Donate, if you’re able, to the defense fund for the Romeike family at HSLDA.

·        Let your friends know about this family. Let it be part of your conversation about school board races and parental rights. While there are people of both parties who don’t care much about homeschooling, only one side's administration is persecuting them.

Maybe, if we do whatever we feel capable of doing in a small issue like this—along with a whole lot of other people stepping up and speaking up—maybe the bigger issues will also get solved. Whether that outcome happens or not, at least we will have placed ourselves on the side of good and right.

 

Where I’ve Written about the Romeike Family

·        Parental Rights, October 26, 2011 

·        The Parental Right to Educate, March 22, 2013 

·        You Might Be Living Under Tyranny If... Part II, May 17, 2013 

 

Other Resources

·        “Judge Grants Asylum to German Home Schoolers,” New York Times, March 1, 2010. 

·        “Meet One Family Biden Wants to Deport,” Glenn Beck Special, episode 309, October 4, 2023. (This may be behind a paywall; I wasn't able to also find it on YouTube.)  

·        “Romeike Case: History and Timeline,” HSLDA, September 18, 2023. 

Perceiving What Is Real

Sunday morning, while I was getting ready for church, I had BYU Radio playing, and there was a short clip of a 2014 talk by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. I looked up the whole thing later, but here’s the transcript of the clip I heard[i]:

It was less than a century ago that most astronomers assumed that our Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy in the universe.[ii] They supposed all that lay beyond our galaxy was an immense nothingness, an infinite void—empty, cold, and devoid of stars, light, and life.

screenshot from here

As telescopes became more sophisticated—including telescopes that could be launched into space—astronomers began to grasp a spectacular, almost incomprehensible truth: the universe is mind-bogglingly bigger than anyone had previously believed, and the heavens are filled with numberless galaxies, unimaginably far away from us, each containing hundreds of billions of stars.[iii]

In a very short period of time, our understanding of the universe changed forever.

Today we can see some of these distant galaxies.[iv]

screenshot from here

We know that they are there.

They have been there for a very long time.

But before mankind had instruments powerful enough to gather celestial light and bring these galaxies into visibility, we did not believe such a thing was possible.

The immensity of the universe didn’t suddenly change, but our ability to see and understand this truth changed dramatically. And with that greater light, mankind was introduced to glorious vistas we had never before imagined.

He then introduces the main question of his talk:

It seems to be a trait of humanity to assume that we are right even when we are wrong. And if that is the case, what hope is there for any of us? Are we destined to drift aimlessly on an ocean of conflicting information, stranded on a raft we have poorly pieced together from our own biases?

Is it possible to find truth?

He then uses the earlier telescope observation as a metaphor:

Scientists were struggling to understand the breadth of the universe until instruments became sophisticated enough to gather in greater light so they could understand a more complete truth.

The Apostle Paul taught a parallel principle regarding spiritual knowledge. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God,” he wrote to the Corinthians, “for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" [1 Cor. 2:14]

In other words, if you want to recognize spiritual truth, you have to use the right instruments. You can’t come to an understanding of spiritual truth with instruments that are unable to detect it.

That got me thinking. Because I am able to perceive spiritual things even when many in the world don’t—and further, claim that I don’t.

I was thinking of another analogy. We had some books when our children were young, called Magic Eye. There would be a picture of apparently chaotic color. But if you stared at it long enough, and relaxed your eyes a certain way, suddenly a three-dimensional image appeared.

It took some practice. For us,, in our family after we’d figured out how to see the image on one page, we’d get quicker at seeing it on the next.

Not everyone can manage to see the image. But it’s there, whether a person perceives it or not. As an aside, there’s a half-decade-old lecture by Jordan Peterson, called “Reality and the Sacred,” in which he discusses how miraculous it is that we can perceive anything. Sight, for example, is so far impossible for artificial intelligence; there’s too much complexity involved in perceiving and understanding what we see. 

Anyway, it’s hard to explain the process of seeing that extra-dimensional picture exactly. You stare. You relax your eyes a bit, let go. And it happens. That’s not very exact. And it’s not very helpful to those who are struggling to see and cannot.

Those of us who have spiritual experiences, who can see the metaphorical additional-dimension image, encourage the non-see-ers. There are methods and steps that work for many of us:

·        Suspend disbelief and be open to the possibility of something beyond your five senses.

·        Pray.

·        Read spiritual texts that have record others’ spiritual experiences and lead many to have spiritual experiences from reading them.

·        Listen to the thoughts, ideas, impressions, or feelings that come in answer to prayer, or as inspiration even in between prayers.

·        Act on these promptings.

·        Record the promptings and results.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time listening to debates between believers and atheists. The atheists are not persuasive to me, because they dismiss my experience simply because they have not had those experiences. [Writing on this theme is adding up. See here, here, here, and here, for example.] 

I don’t know why they don’t get them and I do. Sometimes it might be due to willful blindness on their part. Sometimes they’re decent people just not looking at things in a way that allows them to see the extra dimension that I see. But their not seeing something I’ve experiences doesn’t convince me that I’m somehow mistaken. The evidence is in my favor.

image from Wikipedia

Remember the children’s story Horton Hears a Who, by Dr. Seuss? This elephant, with enormous ears and excellent hearing, and a kind heart, hears the sounds of the people on a world that exists on a dust speck on a clover. He knows they’re there, and so he protects them. But the non-hearers all around him, while they could simply ignore him and let him do his thing, are determined to stop him from believing he hears something. They threaten, and connive, and work to destroy. Why? Does Horton’s belief (knowledge that they can’t perceive) harm them?

In the end, Horton is able to convince the Whos down in Whoville, the people on the speck, that they need to rally and make enough noise to be heard. The final addition of one small child is enough to make them heard by the ears of all the others in Horton’s world—similar to the development of telescopes so we could see distant galaxies.

What if the Whos hadn’t been able to muster enough noise? Would they have still been there? Yes, Horton knew it, whether the others knew or not. (It’s fiction, I know, and therefore not actually real. I’m talking within the realm of this story.)

The inability to perceive does not determine whether something exists. This is particularly evident among believers in God and those who don’t.

It is not limited to our day; this has happened many times in history. But today, again, there is a vocal segment of nonbelievers that act like those conniving bullies in the Horton story. If believers commit to live better lives than they otherwise would—more honest, more committed to family, more hardworking, getting rid of corruption and trying to remove evil tendencies from their hearts—why should that garner the ire of nonbelievers?

Yet that’s what is going on when the attack companies like Chick-fil-A, or Hobby Lobby, or small business owners like florist Baronelle Stutzman or baker Jack Phillips.

Then there’s this story about a Christian charter school in Maryland that was eliminated from the voucher program for holding biblical views on sexuality. 

There’s this story about Amazon discontinuing selling books by a Catholic psychologist, with a large body of work spreading over decades, because of pressure from LGBT lobbyists. 

This isn’t confined just to America. Canadians, a supposed freedom of religion nation, just passed a law prohibiting public employees from wearing religious symbols or clothing at work—no Christian crucifix, no Jewish yarmulke, no Sikh turban. 

Further in that same story, the Ontario Court of Appeals has ruled that all doctors must give up their religious beliefs or get out of medicine:

Doctors must abort, euthanize, provide transgender interventions or any other legal medical procedure—or find a doctor who will, called an “effective referral.” In other words, Ontario forces doctors to take human life or provide services he or she might consider mutilating, even if the doctor considers it an egregious sin—either that, or be ghettoized into areas of practice such as podiatry in which no such requests are likely to be made. And if they don’t like that, as one judge put it, they can get out of medicine altogether.

Elsewhere in the world, such as Syria, Christians are persecuted to the brink of extinction, making everything I talk about here seem minor. Still, I believe we need to address the relatively minor attacks while that is what they are.

We mentioned Chick-fil-A above. They’ve been persecuted for years. Recently, during a gay pride parade in New York, a Chick-fil-A restaurant was vandalized, and the vandals ironically accused Chick-fil-A of being the haters. 

There are sparks of goodness, still, because so many people want to be good and are trying to figure that out for themselves. One man tweeted this response to the Chick-fil-A attack: "I’m gay. I eat Chick-Fil-A. I love Chick-Fil-A. They have different beliefs than I do. We can agree to disagree on things. Doesn’t mean I hate them. Not seeing tolerance. Not seeing love."

Another good story is that the near-century-old Bladensburg WWI Veterans Memorial, in the shape of a cross, is being allowed by the Supreme Court to stand.

Bladensburg WWI Veterans Memorial
image from here

The odd question is why there would be so much hatred against a religious symbol in a country that is founded and dedicated on Godly principles—including, and maybe especially, the freedom to believe as we choose.

Like those bullies in the Horton story, I’d like them to stop with their screed long enough to explain why they are so desperate to stamp out the possibility that other people perceive something they have not.

---

[i] The entire talk is here, with both video and transcript. There’s an additional video within the text of a shorter clip, with illustrations, which I used for screenshots.

[ii] See Marcia Bartusiak, The Day We Found the Universe (2009), xii.

[iii] See Moses 1:33,35 in The Pearl of Great Price, and note that this was revealed in June 1830, nearly a century before Edwin Hubble announced his discovery of distant galaxies.

[iv] See, for example, the Hubble Heritage Image Gallery at heritage.stsci.edu/gallery/gallery.html.

Getting It Wrong, Part II

The sad news of the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling came out on Friday.

Normally on controversial rulings, I go through the opinions in this blog and consider the legal ramifications. But we’ve been through much of this already. Kennedy’s opinion ignored the law and came down to something about him personally not wanting homosexuals to feel lonely--not kidding. (He ignored his own recent ruling that marriage law was up to the states, not the federal government.)

The irony of the day was Chief Justice Roberts’ dissent about the majority ignoring the law—after he had done exactly that the day before on the King v. Burwell decision. All four dissenting judges wrote their own dissents—all worth reading. Again, Justice Scalia’s is the essence of clarity and truth.

Justice Kennedy is at fault—moreso than Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor—because the others are partisan hacks, but Kennedy swings, so the decision was his. He is like the independent voter, going by some personal list of criteria mysterious to those of us with real principles, with the hubris to believe that his mind workings are more evolved than the rest of us.

That single unelected person in a black robe decided for all of America that there is, somewhere hidden in the 14^th Amendment, a heretofore unknown right for homosexuals to marry. Because he knows more than God.

He doesn’t actually know more than God. Reactions to the ruling seem to forget that.

The people's house, with a small sub-group's flag
superimposed on it, photo from WhiteHouse.gov

The White House cheered by changing the white lights to be a rainbow. They were able to accomplish that lighting change that very day. One might think that was planned for way ahead of time, almost as if they had control over the ruling. Author Brad Thor pointed out that this was practically the first time the White House wasn’t surprised by the news; practically everything else they claim to learn about as we did, on TV news broadcasts. 

We might note that the White House is the people’s house, not the Obamas’. Their “gay pride” in the face of more than half of Americans is intentionally offensive. No other flag has been represented in colored lights on the White House—not even red, white, and blue on the 4^th of July. The LBGT flag gets special privileges, just as homosexuals insisted on special privileges concerning marriage.

In addition, the president gave a speech (also likely prepared well in advance of the ruling, as if he knew the outcome). Apparently forgetting that he deceptively campaigned in 2008 as a supporter of traditional marriage, he said,

Opposition in some cases has been based on sincere and deeply held beliefs…. All of us who welcome today’s news should be mindful of that fact. Recognize different viewpoints. Revere our deep commitment to religious freedom.

But today should also give us hope that on the many issues with which we grapple often painfully real change is possible.…

Shifts in hearts and minds is [sic] possible…. And those who have come so far on their journey to equality have a responsibility to reach back and help others join them.

Let me translate: “You bitter clingers need to give up your religious beliefs; we’re right and you’re wrong, and we’ll force you into compliance. We might go easier on you if you submit to our superiority now.”

Here’s the thing: the president of this country is not more powerful or more all-knowing than God. Neither are any black-robed judges.

Contrary to popular belief, marriage—real marriage—didn’t change on Friday. Real marriage is older than all earthly governments, and it won’t change because people change their opinions.

It predates this earth. But on our planet it was instituted by God to our first parents. He gave Adam and Eve a covenant—between each other and the two of them together with Him—to sanction the behavior that they would need to experience (and hopefully enjoy) in order to multiply and replenish the earth, so that they would experience the joy of having posterity.

Marriage was a blessing to them from the beginning, and to all of us who have come after. Saving that sexual act until it is sanctioned by covenant offers many blessings: knowing who a child’s parents are, committing both parents to the raising of their children, economic stability, absence of sexually transmitted diseases, and more. There is nothing instituted in any culture at any time that is better for building civilization.

Marriage provides care for children during the years before they are productive. It provides support for women during childbearing and raising small children when they would otherwise struggle to be self-sustaining. It motivates men to more productivity in order to meet their family obligations. And it connects men and women permanently, to work together for the economic and social well-being of their family unit.

There is a detail about this that has been ignored in today’s society. Marriage is to sanction the procreative sexual act—before it takes place. It legitimizes no sexual act other than the procreative one. And it is understood that extramarital participation in that act is illicit: i.e., outside the law, not sanctioned by law.

In religious terms, any sexual acts outside of marriage is a sin. It is outside the covenant. God has not approved it. That’s why the terminology includes phrases like “illegitimate child,” “living in sin,” or “making an honest man (or woman) out of me.” 

Governments, which usually support the covenant, refer to the specific procreative act. This procreative act requires a male and a female. If you don’t believe this, your biological education is sorely deficient. A marriage isn’t consummated until the man and woman engage in the act. Failure to engage in it is grounds for annulment.

Homosexuals never, ever, world’s without end, engage in that act with someone of the same sex. It isn’t a physiological possibility. What they do is sexual, but it isn’t what is required for marriage. The Supreme Court can’t make it so; all SCOTUS can do is confuse the law, and take away the honor from real marriage that it has always had because of its benefit to society.

Furthermore, homosexuals are not entering marriage in order to place within the law any sexual act they have been refraining from; you may not find, in the entire history of homosexuality, a couple that keeps themselves pure and virginal up until the moment their government deems them married. They aren’t insisting on their alignment with God; they are insisting that society ignore what marriage is and honor their sexual act as equivalent to the procreative act—just because they want the honor.

Society has been duped.

This has been the result of a media campaign. If truth were given even half as much media, beliefs wouldn’t have been manipulated.

The issue has been framed as about fairness and tolerance. There may have been times, a century ago, when people were prevented from making a living or getting housing because of their homosexual lifestyle. That mostly disappeared long ago. Long before judicial activism stepped in to “help.” But the media campaign has portrayed anyone who points out the obvious—that real marriage is best for children, families, and societies as a whole—as bigoted homophobes. Name calling. As well as some sticks and stones in the form of ostracism and business ruin intended to instill fear.

What we’ve seen on social media this past weekend is a lot of bandwagon jumping. People want to pat themselves on the back for not being bigoted, so they put a rainbow on their profile photo. They think they’re meaning, “I’m open-minded; I’m a good person. Because I don't hate gays.”

But they’re actually falling into the trap of another meaning: “I don’t want to be seen as something the loud media calls bad, so I’m labeling myself the way the media wants. And I think we media-go-alongers know better than God. Those people who don’t go along with us will be labeled negatively and will be persecuted, as they should be, for not giving in with us.”

If you’re a go-alonger, you seem to have fallen for some things that are not true. Such as, homosexuality is a genetic reality; a person is made homosexual and cannot change or even refrain—and shouldn’t.

Let’s look at what this means to a Christian, since actual Christian believers are to be the target of the persecution. You go-alongers are saying that, while God requires obedience to His commandments for all heterosexuals, He made homosexuals exempt to His law, because no homosexual should be expected to refrain from sexual acts God’s law forbids. You are saying God must have made a mistake—because science (not real science, but pseudo-science) says homosexuality is natural, and inborn, and unchangeable—and that means they have no free will to control their behavior.

You are saying, either God has to change His law, or else He is unfairly excluding an entire group of people who haven’t done anything to keep themselves out of heaven except that sexual sin thing that you think shouldn’t apply to them. So God is just a big unfair meanie. According to you. Because you know better than God.

Can a real Christian be wrong on such an issue? Yes, we can all be wrong on a lot of things. But God is not wrong. So if you’re out of harmony with God, it is up to you to correct yourself. Christians who are in harmony with God on family and marriage will not persecute you; we will use persuasion, example, and patience. That’s what Christians do. That is what tolerance looks like. Not giving in, not celebrating sin. But with love trying to persuade all people to come unto God.

Tolerance does not look anything like coercing Christians to use their talents and abilities to celebrate what God has clearly declared to be a sin. So if you’re one of those who says, “Just go ahead and bake the cake already, you troglodyte bigot,” you’re on track to support tyranny. We’ve seen it before. Everywhere there has been tyranny.

Taking the side of tyranny for temporary safety from persecution might seem like a good idea to you now, but you will answer for it before God.

I call you to repentance, with gentle invitation, but firmly. I’ve taken a stand. And experience tells me I’m better off siding with God than with Obama, or Justice Kennedy, or even friends who put pro-homosexual flags on their profile photos.
______________

PS: Son Political Sphere reminded me of an additional point. Justice Scalia has pointed out that every time Kennedy writes that something is safe, the next ruling he writes endangers that very thing. This time his opinion assured us that our First Amendment guaranteed freedom of religion is safe. That means the next thing you can expect from Justice Kennedy will be his explanation of why we do not have that right. We'll be watching.