This Scripture verse is very appropriate to read before the following sad article:Romans 1:18-32
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them..."
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Mardi Gras, Carnival Goers Feel Call Of Dionysus
RAIDERS NEWS UPDATE - By Thomas Horn - February 12, 2006
- The Associated Press reported this week that Louisiana's battered residents are putting their "months of heartache, frustration and anger on parade, in effigies, blue-tarp trailers and themes like 'Fridge Over Troubled Water,'" and giving themselves the first of many desperately needed Mardi Gras laughs.
Mardi Gras has long been an occasion for the city to laugh at tragedy and aim barbs at authorities, the AP said, "and given all the pain New Orleans has suffered in the past year the irreverence should reach new heights this season."
This year there is a particular edge in the Big Easy as clubs that historically staged Mardi Gras parades "are targeting Hurricane Katrina and the politicians they blame for the chaotic response to the catastrophe."
Does this mean, perverts beware!? Are the topless muses and nude dancers giving way to more political caricatures as masked revelers stumble home following dusk-to-dawn parties?
Never fear, the mood is different across the world in Rio de Janeiro, where organizers have started parades they plan will lead up to the four-day, pre-Lenten festival, opening Feb. 25. The over-the-top, anything-goes celebration of feathers and bare flesh promises that, unlike Louisiana's battered citizens, sun, fun and samba -- not politics -- will remain the messages of Rio de Janeiro's famed Carnival, despite socialist President Hugo Chavez's sponsorship of one of the top dance groups.
The Brazilian government even plans to distribute 25 million free condoms to promote sex during the country's Carnival, but the city's seamy underbelly may provide darker moments that some people are prepared for. Angry Brazilian police officers demanding higher pay are warning tourists not to rely on the crime-ridden city's cops to save them.
In Australia, the rainbow remains bright as the 2006 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Party races toward Saturday, March 4, where at the Moore Park Entertainment Precinct (formerly Fox Studios) the world's "biggest queer gathering" is already selling out some of the planned events. Past Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras have seen attendance as high as 700,000 participants.
Some may be wondering, with so much uncertainty in the world today, why do we continue the need to cast off inhibition and to party? Is the deep compulsion purely psychological, or is another, unseen force pulling at us, compelling us to don 'the mask'?
Errol Laborde investigated the masquerade tradition in his book, Mardi Gras! (Picayune Press). He wrote "Roman aristocracy of the time preferred debauchery and licentiousness to legality and morality. Men donned women's clothing, the better to abandon themselves to orgy; thus the masquerade tradition began."
Professor Fred Koening of Tulane University supported conclusions of Laborde, saying, "Masks are a way of being anonymous, and if you wear a mask, you take on a different persona. You can be a little drunker, a little wilder, a little more primitive. Furthermore, at Carnival people will be more tolerant of you. Normal rules are gone. Traditional routines are put on hold."
In ancient times, the Greek god Dionysus was depicted as the inventor of such revelry. Followers of Dionysus believed that he was the presence that is otherwise defined as the craving within man that longs to "let itself go" and to "give itself over" to base desires. What Christians might resist as the lustful wants of the carnal man, the followers of Dionysus embraced as the incarnate power that would, in the next life, liberate the souls of mankind from the constraints of this present world and from the customs which sought to define respectability through a person’s obedience to moral law. Until then, worshippers of Dionysus attempted to bring themselves into union with the god through a ritual casting off of the bonds of sexual denial and primal constraint by seeking to attain a higher state of ecstasy.
The uninhibited rituals of ecstasy (Greek for "outside the body") employed wine, abandon, and perversion to bring the followers of Dionysus into a supernatural condition which enabled them to escape the temporary limitations of the body and mind and to achieve a state of enthousiasmos -- outside the body and "inside the god."...
http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/mardigras2.htm
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PS - We are not Homophobic, fearful of Gays. We ARE however concerned about the sexual perversion that is contrary to nature, medicine, heterosexuality, human physiology, good mental health, healthy bodies, norman living, etc. Statistics PROVE beyond any shadow of a doubt that sexual perversion, promiscuity, sex outside of heterosexual marriage, etc, is damaging to human beings in many more ways than one. Caveat Emptor!
Let those who think otherwise study the demise and destruction of over 20 past civilizatiosn who have been given over to Witchcraft, Homosexualtiy and Child Sacrifice.
