The Toronto District School Board has denied that the poster below, which is to be placed in their schools, promotes polygamy even though it plainly does.
Employing Newspeak as the preferred refuge of last resort of beleaguered bureaucrats, a spokesman from the board said: “…the board does not support polygamy. The images in question were meant to support an individual’s right to choose whom they love, regardless of gender. For example, the reason for depicting two women and one man was meant to show that a person can be attracted to more than one gender.”
Of course the board is promoting polygamy: if people have the right to choose whom they love, i.e. have sex with, and there are three people at it, you have – yes, you’ve guessed it – polygamy if they are “married”, polyamory if they are not.
Perhaps the board would be more comfortable if they were known as the school of polyamory rather than polygamy.
From here:
TORONTO — The Toronto District School Board is denying claims it’s promoting polygamy — just illustrating it exists as a family dynamic — with a poster campaign for gender-based violence prevention.
The school board’s website depicts a series of five posters — one of them has the message “Love has no gender” in big white capital letters. Surrounding the slogan are various hearts containing different stick-figure people. In one of them there is an image of a man with two women; in another, two women with one man.
If the poster does not promote polygamy than perhaps it promotes adultery.
Frankly, it is not very “inclusive”. They forgot to include the following:
MMM
FFF
MMFF
And let’s not forget the transsexual/transgender either, although I am not sure how a “T” person would be depicted in a poster such as this.
Seriously however, this is nothing short of a bunch of school board officials trying to impose their political/sexual beliefs unto the children of other people, all done under the disguise of “education”. These people are out of control! Until and unless parents are given a real choice of sending their children to private schools this kind of thing will only get worse. But for private schools to be a viable option we must be able to direct funding of education to said private schools. And this was soundly defeated in a recent provincial election. And here I thought that my tax dollars were supposed to be for the education of our children, and not for a bloated out of touch with reality bureaucracy.
School boards have a captive, very suggestable audience, good for social engineering experiments.
The Toronto School Board seems to be putting much more of their effort into this than into offering a high-quality academic program. Academics take a far backseat at present.
There are many people who have been rallying for a school voucher system, in Ontario at least, for a fairly long time. There are scores of us who are more than disenchanted with seeing the school boards use our kids as experimental subjects for all of their most inane social theories, and having the pleasure of paying for this through our taxes.
This is a little bit too much
I think it only adds more confusion as to what defines a marriage and family
Polygamy could be quite and exhausting and confusing family dynamic.
There were some stories in the Old Testament about polygamous marriages.
By reading the Old Testament notice that polygamous marriages are not too common anyways.
Perhaps, not too many persons were interested?
Why?
How practical would a polygamous marriage be verses a marriage with just one husband and one wife.
My take is that it’s worse than that. Polygamy assumes a commitment between the parties. I’m not seeing that kind of morality here. It seems to me that they are saying that love has “no boundaries” and therefore no messy restrictions.
Children need a structured loving environment that they can count on to grow to their potential, not some amorous free-for-all.
Teach RRR, let parents deceide morality (or lack of it)
Wishing to open a can of worms here, but I feel the same way in which society and the church shrugs off divorce. When the unrepentent Pharisees approach Jesus on the queston of divorce in Mark 1:1-12, a careful reading of the text shows that Jesus did not answer “yes” to their question. Clearly, divorce is not lawful. Jesus directed them to the law of Moses. The Pharisees stated that Moses allowed divorce. Jesus counters their excuse by telling them that Moses reluctantly permitted divorce, only allowing it because of the wicked hardness of their hearts. It couldn’t be any clearer that Jesus was completely against divorce.
So in answer to the Pharisee’s question, of whether divorce is “lawful” or not, we can see that Jesus did not permit divorce. Moses didn’t want to permit divorce either, but the people gave him no choice. Divorce only happens because of people’s rebellion against God.
How ridiculous that so many people today, even professed Christians, are misquoting the Bible in a selfish attempt to justify the sin of divorce. It cannot be accomplished. Try as they may, sin is still sin, and divorce will always be a horrible sin just like homosexuality, and adultery.
Most people who file for divorce attempt to claim that Jesus allows for divorce in situations of adultery; but that is not what Jesus taught. What about all the other sins that one’s spouse may commit? Does that provide a grounds for divorce? No, not according to the incarnate Son of God. Jesus taught in Matthew 18:22 to forgive, 70 times 7. Divorce is the sin of hate, unforgiveness and hypocrisy. So many people are woefully ignorant of the Scriptures.
It is not ignorance, too many have become intolerant of Scripture because it does not suit them.
He did allow for it in cases of adultery. (Matthew 19:9). Paul allows for it under limited circumstances as well. I do believe that many churches don’t do enough to make sure that a person’s divorce was legitimate before a remarriage, but that’s not the same thing as saying that all divorce is completely unbiblical.
Hello Kate,
I did a quick comparison of Matthew 19:9 as it is in the ESV (looks like this site somehow automatically links to when a passage is referenced) and the KJV. Here is what I saw:
ESV
9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”
KJV
9 And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
I can’t help but wonder why the ESV leaves out the last sentence.
It doesn’t, it’s footnoted:
Footnotes:a.Matthew 19:9 Some manuscripts add and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery; other manuscripts except for sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery
Perhaps I am being a bit of a nit-picket about this.
From my perspective the sentence in question is either the Word of God or it is not. If it is than it should be fully included in the body of the passage and not be a footnote. If it is not than it should not be in the Holy Bible at all, not even as a footnote.
Perhaps I should make known that it is my belief that the Holy Bible is the very Word of God which He has freely given to everyone through the prophets. That it is not a collection of religious writings created by mere mortals. In which case something like the sentence in question either is or is not something that God has said, and should be either fully included or fully excluded.
If a person believes that the Holy Bible is just a collection of mortal writings than it should be nothing more than a “bible” and footnotes would be appropriate.
Divorce is a thorny issue. I refer you to Hosea and Gomer.
Amp
I appreciate building one’s faith on a sure foundation (rock). The tricky part is tin ying it to one translation or another.
You and I both like the King James translation. But what about those Christians who believed before the translation was ever made? Is their faith less “correct”, diminished or wrong? I don’t think so. Just like today, they explored their faith the best they could.
I read regularly from several translations. Does that mean that I am neglecting my faith by not reading exclusively from one “true” text?
Hello Jim,
I do appreciate your reply, and that you ask a very legitimate question.
In response let me say that it is not a question of KJV vs. all others, but a question of Received Text vs. Alexandrian Text.
As I have come to understand things, the Received Text, aka the Majority Text, has always been with the Christian Church, whereas the Alexandrian Text, that includes both the Vatican Text, the Sinai Text, and the Critical Text (which is really a forcing together of the VT and ST) has not. We have God’s promise, found in both the Old and New Testaments that His Word will never be taken from us. With this in mind, how than can we accept any legitimacy of the AT?
Add into consideration that the AT has an extremely limited geographic area, whereas the RT has been found throughout all of the early Church from as far West as Spain to as far East as Iran and all points between. Furthermore, the AT, aka the Minority Text, really consists of only two manuscripts. Just two! That’s it. Whereas the RT consists of hundreds of manuscripts (some complete, many partial) giving evidence that it was the RT that was in fact used by the early Church. Also, we have literally thousands of letters written by early Christians (not copies but the actual letters), in which the Holy Scriptures are quoted. So much so that from these letters alone we can replicate the entire Holy Bible! And these letters are obviously quoting from the RT and not either of the AT manuscripts. This is very weighty evidence that it was the RT and not the AT that has been the accepted Word of God since the very beginning of Christianity.
Now I have heard that the AT documents are “older” and therefore closer to the “authors” (original documents) and thus presumably more accurate. But this argument ignores the warnings in the Holy Bible that even as God’s Holy Word was being recorded that false writings were being created and distributed. I think it very likely that the AT manuscripts are some of these false writings.
The KJV Holy Bible was translated from the RT. So to the Bishops Bible and the Geneva Bible were translated from the RT, however practically every translation for the past one hundred years has been translated from the AT.
It should also be noted that God has told us in His Holy Bible that He gave His Word to us “freely”. Why than do the publishing companies, these profit motivated businesses, feel that it is ok for them to have copyrights on the “bibles” that they sell? For a copyright gives “ownership” of the words that are in these books. I can’t help but feel extremely offended that anyone, profit motivated business or otherwise, would think for one second that they could claim “ownership” of something that was “freely” given by God.
Kindest regards,
AMP
“Why than do the publishing companies, these profit motivated businesses, feel that it is ok for them to have copyrights on the “bibles” that they sell?”
Because it is the translation that is copyright. Translators have to eat, therefore must be paid. It costs money to print books, ship them, etc etc.
Hello Kate,
I have no issue with people being reimbursed for expenses incurred.
I do have a problem with people claiming to own something that they do not and than trying to make a profit from it. And this is exactly what has been happening with books such as the NIV, NRSV, NASB, CEV, etc, etc.
Regarding the issue of copyrights, there arrises a very basic problem. Any “new” book cannot be worded the same as any other already copyrighted book. Thus, all new books must have sufficienly enough differences in order to not violate someone elses copyright. But what if someone elses translation is simply the best? What if someone else “got it right”? It must be abandonded in order to not violate their copyright, and consequently the “new” versions drift further and further away from being accurate. Honestly, I see no way of getting around this fundamental problem.
“From my perspective the sentence in question is either the Word of God or it is not. If it is than it should be fully included in the body of the passage and not be a footnote. If it is not than it should not be in the Holy Bible at all, not even as a footnote.”
Some ancient manuscripts have it, some don’t. Not all the ancient manuscripts are identical. They were copied by hand over and over again, and over the years some copyists made errors. It makes sense to me to include all versions, as the ESV translators do.
Translation is more art than science – it’s why it makes sense to read more than one translation, and why I want to learn Koine Greek one day.
Also, I just took a look at the introduction to the ESV, and it says that the 1971 RSV was the ‘starting point’ for their work, but that all of it was carefully compared to the original languages. The RSV is in the same ‘stream’ as the 1526 Tyndale (the Psalms in the prayerbook are the Tyndale translation, not the KJV), the KJV, the English Revised version of 1885, the American Standard version of 1901, and the RSV of 1952 and 1971). So the editors and translators started with the 1971 RSV which traces its roots back to the KJV, but went back to the original languages and made a translation that works better in modern English and is more understandable to the modern person.
Besides, on major doctrine the ancient texts all agree – most of the differences are on the order of ‘he said’ vs ‘Jesus said’.
Hello again,
Within the MT there are some variances, but these are very few and almost always involve a difference of a single word. For example the word walked vs. the word strolled, synonyms which mean essentially the same thing. Considering the quantity of MT in existence there is a remarkable degree of consistency. However, as I already mentioned, there are only two AT, the Vatican Text and the Sinai Text. These two manuscripts have literally thousands of differences between them!
Translation might be considered more art than science when the “thought to thought” method is used, which is highly subjective and dangerously prone to the bias of the translator. As I understand things it was this method that was used to produce practically all of the recent versions. However, the “word to word” method (or even the “sentence to sentence” method) is more science that art. This is simply because almost every word in one language has a corresponding word with the same meaning in another language. The “word to word” method leaves no room for the bias of the translator, and is completely objective. It was the “word to word” method that was used for the KJV.
The books you list (ESV and RSV) will of course have introductions that make them sound good. What profit motivated company is going to put into its product anything that makes it product sound bad? I find that statement “carefully compared to the original languages” very curious. The Critical Text, produced the men Westcott and Hort, was a forcing together of the Vatican Text and the Sinai Text (and the VT and ST differ from each other in thousands of passages). The CT is written in the original language of Greek (perhaps this is how the publisher of the RSV can make its claim) but the Critical Text is not a manuscript. Literally, there is not so much as a single ancient document that says the same thing as the Critical Text says. Therefore all, and I mean all, recent versions that have been affected by the Critical Text have a built in error. Whether or not a recent version can trace any of its origins back to the KJV or earlier English versions is a mute point. Once a version has been influenced by the CT it has errors within it.
“This is simply because almost every word in one language has a corresponding word with the same meaning in another language.”
I’m sorry, but that is just not true. A simple example off the top of my head:
English: I’ve a frog in my throat
French: J’ai un chat dans la gorge.
The ‘word for word’ translation is ‘I’ve a cat in my throat’ – which in English is nonsense, and does not convey the meaning of the original French.
(And the ESV is ‘word for word’, “at the same time taking into account differences of grammar, syntax and idiom between current literary English and the original languages.”)
I’ve thought of an even better example – online translation services use a computer programme to do straight word for word translations. Here’s an example of what Bing translate did to a Dutch Facebook comment:
Those are good messages. Very good. Pamper him but delicious greetings.
I don’t think that’s exactly what the commenter meant to say.
Strict word to word translation is impossible, if you want to actually convey the meaning of the original language. There is always art involved – otherwise all translations could be done by computer programmes.
Boy did we ever get off topic in this conversation. Has anyone now heard that the Toronto public school board wants to create a gay-student only high school? It’s madness I tell you, madness!