7.2% of U.S. adults identify as LGBTQ, Gallup Poll finds On Mar 03, 2023 07:30 am

Facebook Twitter KEEP the FAITH website Contact Us share on Twitter Like 7.2% of U.S. adults identify as LGBTQ, Gallup Poll finds on Facebook ABC News, by Jo Yurcaba: The percentage of adults in the U.S. who identify as LGBTQ increased slightly year over year, to 7.2% last year, according to a Gallup Poll released Wednesday. While that’s just a slight increase from 7.1% in 2021, it’s more than double what it was a decade ago, when Gallup found just 3.5% of the U.S. population identified as something other than heterosexual in 2012. Gallup asked more than 10,000 adults nationwide how they identify in telephone interviews last year. For the first time, the organization recorded the identities of LGBTQ people who said they are something other than lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. It found that about 5% of LGBTQ adults identified outside those terms. Most of them — about 0.1% of all U.S. adults — said they are queer, pansexual or asexual. “Queer” is an umbrella term that generally refers to people who aren’t heterosexual or cisgender, meaning they don’t identify with their assigned sexes at birth. “Pansexual” means someone experiences sexual or romantic attraction regardless of sex or gender identity. “Asexual” describes someone who doesn’t experience sexual attraction to others. Bisexuals continue to make up the majority of LGBTQ adults, at 58.2% (or 4.2% of all U.S. adults), Gallup found, while 20.2% identify as gay, 13.4% identify as lesbian, and 8.8% identify as transgender. Those who said they are straight or heterosexual made up 86% of respondents, while 7% chose not to answer the question. Continuing previous trends, Generation Z, or those ages 19 to 26, are the most likely to identify as LGBTQ, at 19.7%, compared to 11.2% of millennials, who are 27 to 42; 3.3% of Generation X, who are 43 to 58; 2.7% of Baby boomers, who are 59 to 77; and 1.7% of the Silent Generation, who are 78 or older. Gallup found that younger generations are much more likely to identify as bisexual than older generations. For example, 66% of LGBTQ people in Generation Z and 62% of LGBTQ millennials identify as bisexual, compared to 48% of Generation X, 26% of baby boomers and 35% of the Silent Generation. LGBTQ respondents in the two oldest generations are most likely to identify as gay (37% of baby boomers and 47% of the Silent Generation) and lesbian (26% of baby boomers and 12% of the Silent Generation). Gallup noted that the share of LGBTQ adults in the U.S. is expected to continue to grow but that the growth “depends on younger people who enter adulthood in future years continuing to be much more likely to identify as LGBT than their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.” Prophetic Link: “Is there not enough taking place about us to show us the dangers that beset our path? Everywhere are seen wrecks of humanity, neglected family altars, broken-up families. There is a strange abandonment of principle, a lowering of the standard of morality; the sins are fast increasing which caused the judgments of God to be poured upon the earth in the Flood and in the destruction of Sodom by fire. We are nearing the end. God has borne long with the perversity of mankind, but their punishment is no less certain. Let those who profess to be the light of the world depart from all iniquity. We see the very same spirit manifested against the truth that was seen in Christ’s day.” Testimony to the Church, Vol. 5, page 601.1.

Love, March 3

Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. 1 John 3:1. John says, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.” No language can express this love; we can describe but a faint degree of love that passeth knowledge. It would require the language of the Infinite to express the love that has made it possible for us to be called the sons of God. In becoming a Christian, a man does not step down. There is no shame in having connection with the living God. Jesus bore the humiliation and shame and reproach that justly belonged to the sinner. He was the Majesty of heaven, He was the King of glory, He was equal with the Father; and yet He clothed His divinity with humanity, that humanity might touch humanity, that divinity might lay hold of divinity. Had He come as an angel, He could not have been a partaker with us of our sufferings, could not have been tempted in all points like as we are, He could not have sympathized with our sorrows; but He came in the garb of our humanity, that as our substitute and surety, He might overcome the prince of darkness in our behalf, and make us victors through His merits. [As we stand] under the shadow of the cross of Calvary, the inspiration of His love fills our hearts. When I look upon Him whom my sins have pierced, the inspiration from on high comes upon me; and this inspiration may come upon each one of you through the Holy Spirit. Unless you receive the Holy Spirit, you cannot have the love of God in the soul; but through a living connection with Christ, we are inspired with love and zeal and earnestness. We are not as a block of marble, which may reflect the light of the sun, but cannot be imbued with life. We are capable of responding to the bright beams of the Sun of righteousness; for as Christ illuminates our souls, He gives light and life. We drink in the love of Christ as the branch draws nourishment from the vine. If we are grafted into Christ, if fiber by fiber we have been united with the living Vine, we shall give evidence of this fact by bearing rich clusters of fruit.—The Review and Herald, September 27, 1892.

Mayor Of Beast in NYC: No Separation of Church & State. Minister Of Beast: God & Gomorrah Are One

Repentance, the First Fruit, March 2

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. Psalm 51:1, 2. Repentance is one of the first fruits of saving grace. Our great Teacher, in His lessons to erring, fallen man, presents the life-giving power of His grace, declaring that through this grace men and women may live the new life of holiness and purity. He who lives this life works out the principles of the kingdom of heaven. Taught of God, he leads others in straight paths. He will not lead the lame into paths of uncertainty. The working of the Holy Spirit in his life shows that he is a partaker of the divine nature. Every soul thus worked by the Spirit of Christ receives so abundant a supply of the rich grace that, beholding his good works, the unbelieving world acknowledges that he is controlled and sustained by divine power, and is led to glorify God.—God's Amazing Grace, 138. There are those who, notwithstanding all the gracious invitation of Christ, continue to reveal ungodliness in their lives. To such ones God says: “How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? ... Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you” (Proverbs 1:22, 23).—Signs of the Times, June 28, 1905. Repentance for sin is the first fruits of the working of the Holy Spirit in the life. It is the only process by which infinite purity reflects the image of Christ in His redeemed subjects. In Christ all fullness dwells. Science that is not in harmony with Him is of no value. He teaches us to count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord. This knowledge is the highest science that any man can reach.—The SDA Bible Commentary, 6:1068, Ellen G. White Comments.

After Cyclone Gabrielle, New Zealand wonders how – and if – to rebuild

On Mar 01, 2023 07:30 am share on Twitter Like After Cyclone Gabrielle, New Zealand wonders how – and if – to rebuild on Facebook The Guardian, by Cyclone Gabrielle: “It was a tsunami from the hills. It was bigger than the tides. The noise – it was like Huka Falls.” Rikki Reed gazes at the wall for a moment, and you get the impression he can still hear the sound of water flooding into Esk Valley. His five-year-old son Parker sits nearby, quietly playing. Reed was part of a night-time road crew that came in to help when Cyclone Gabrielle struck – blocking off parts of the state highway, where huge trees had fallen. At around midnight, as waters started rising fast, they began evacuating people – but then he realised the truck he was in was stranded. “There were waves over the highway. The rapids were on both sides,” he says. He saw the road itself start to ripple, as the water forced its way underneath the asphalt. Sitting in the marooned truck, he took a moment to write a message into his iPhone notes app, farewelling Parker. As the truck filled with water, he climbed out, into the branches of a nearby tree. Water roared through the valley. The first tree snapped in half, but Reed grabbed on to another. He clung to that trunk for hours, up to his neck in water, knowing if he climbed any higher the trunk might be too thin to bear his weight, and he would be carried away. “I just held on there all night thinking about him, his smile,” he says quietly, nodding toward Parker. Reed’s home was flooded, and he doesn’t yet know when he can return or what its future will be. As a worker on drainage infrastructure and catchments, he has thought about the valley’s vulnerability to flooding, and the changes that might be needed to protect it. “We definitely have to rethink. If you look at the way the valley’s shaped, that’s where water has been – so it’s not the first time.” Then again, he says. “I don’t want to leave – it’s my home. Once I can get back here, I’ll get back out there.” That combination: the keen desire to preserve a home, and awareness that some of those homes are critically vulnerable to future floods – is now in the minds of tens of thousands of New Zealanders, and a government that faces extremely tough questions in the coming weeks. Reed is one of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who lives in a region at ongoing risk from flooding and extreme weather events. As people begin to dig their houses from the silt and assess the damage, the country faces looming questions about where and how to rebuild, and whether it even should, with the knowledge of a climate crisis that will bring more storms, flooding and extreme weather in the years to come. ‘We need to adjust our societies’ “There are difficult conversations ahead for New Zealand about exactly where we all live,” finance minister Grant Robertson said on Sunday, shortly after walking through the remains of a ruined power station. “And the infrastructure that’s required to get us to and from all of that.” As the climate heats, scientists agree that extreme weather events – including flooding and cyclones – will happen more frequently, and with greater intensity. According to the government’s national adaptation plan, one in seven New Zealanders, or 675,000 people, live in areas prone to flooding, and another 72,065 live in areas projected to be subject to extreme sea level rise. Some of those areas can be protected by extensive mitigation measures – sea walls, stop-banks, stilts, early warning systems for flooding. In others, however, those measures will be cripplingly expensive, or simply impossible – leaving an intolerable risk to the lives of any who live there. “If those communities go back and rebuild today, are we responsible for letting them do that?” Robertson said in a television interview on Sunday. “Two words New Zealanders are going to get used to hearing over the next few years are: ‘managed retreat’.” While some may be forced into retreat in a haphazard way – as insurance companies refuse to cover flood-prone properties – it is a question that will also fall to the central government, which must decide what level of risk to life is tolerable, and whether to continue funding and rebuilding the crucial infrastructure that sustains those towns. “If we’re going to build back quickly, some tough calls will need to be made,” prime minister Chris Hipkins said on Sunday. Some of those calls need to be made extremely quickly, says Prof Ilan Noy, chair of the Economics of Disasters and Climate Change at Victoria University – before people start to repair and rebuild. “As painful as it is – it’s much less painful in this kind of situation where your house has already been destroyed [to be] told: we think it’s not viable for you to remain there,” he says. “It’s less painful to do that than to take someone who has a beautiful house and no damage to tell them: you know what, the science is suggesting that this is no longer safe.” New Zealand’s government has forced communities to retreat from natural hazards before. After Christchurch’s earthquake, about 8,000 houses were “red-zoned” – the land they were built on designated too unstable to ever sustain residential development. The government bought out the land, converting much of it into public parks. Noy says that this could offer a kind of model to the response to Cyclone Gabrielle. “It’s painful to ask people to leave. Especially from areas that potentially they’ve lived in for a very long time, maybe generations,” Noy says. “But we live in a world which is changing. We cannot ignore the fact that the climate is changing and we need to adjust our societies to those changes.” For New Zealand’s government, other question marks hover – over a vast network of public-owned infrastructure shattered by the storm. At Redclyffe electrical substation’s control centre buildings, water is still pooling in some of the buildings. The control room has been drained of water and mud, revealing its innards: vast twisting ropes of black wires, which typically control distribution of power to almost all of the city of Napier and Hawke’s Bay. The substation lies at the centre of a Napier flood plain, and during Cyclone Gabrielle, the storm sent metres of water and silt through its buildings, shorting its transistors. When the first worker arrived to check on it, the sludge was at hip height. In terms of returning power to capacity across the region, “We are talking weeks,” says Ken Sutherland, chief executive of Unison, which runs much of the network. “It’s extensive damage – trees in lines, flooding, access issues. This is a long game. You have areas [where there’s] just devastation – weeks to get through to them, months to get everything up and going.” An asset of state-owned enterprise Transpower, the substation is just one fragment of a vast network of infrastructure, spread across the North Island, that has been catastrophically damaged. State highways have crumbled into fragments, roads blocked by enormous landslides, traffic bridges washed away in pieces, drains cracked, powerlines snapped and wrapped into tangles around piles of debris. On Monday afternoon, the government announced an initial $250m for emergency repairs to the road network, and $50m for immediate business support. Robertson stressed that both figures were only for initial, emergency work, and the government would be making rolling assessments and new financial commitments. He expected the costs to be in the billions. “This is only the beginning. There is a massive programme of work required,” Robertson said. “We’ve got enough gear to rebuild,” says Transpower chief executive Alison Andrews. “But we need to have a cup of tea and think … what is the long term plan?” Prophetic Link: “While appearing to the children of men as a great physician who can heal all their maladies, he will bring disease and disaster, until populous cities are reduced to ruin and desolation. Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hailstorms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast. “The earth mourneth and fadeth away,” “the haughty people … do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.” Isaiah 24:4, 5. Great Controversy, page 589.3.

Harlot Exalted While Virgin Marginalized. More Train Wrecks. Flee To Wilderness. Hungry & Homeless.

A Holy Fragrance, March 1

Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. John 15:16. In order to bear much fruit, we must make the most of our privileges and opportunities, becoming more and more spiritually minded. We must put away all commonness, all pride, all worldliness, and daily receive divine aid. If you grow spiritually, you must employ all the means which the gospel provides, and be prepared to gain in piety by the influence of the Holy Spirit; for the seed is developed from blade to full corn by unseen and supernatural agencies. The promise with which Jesus consoled His disciples just before His betrayal and crucifixion was that of the Holy Spirit; and in the doctrine of divine influence and agency, what riches were revealed to them; for this blessing would bring in its train all other blessings. The Holy Spirit breathes upon the soul who humbly rests in Christ as the author and finisher of his faith; and from such a believer fruit will come forth unto life eternal. His influence will be fragrant, and the name of Jesus will be music in his ears, and melody in his heart. The Christian will be a savor of life unto life to others, although he may not be able to explain the mysteries of his experience. But he will know that when clouds and darkness compassed him about, and he cried unto the Lord, the darkness was dispersed, and peace and joy were in the temple of the soul. He will know what it is to have the pardoning love of God revealed to the heart, to experience the peace that passeth all understanding, to have praise and thanksgiving and adoration welling up in the soul unto Him who has loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood. He has peace through Jesus Christ, and joy in the Holy Ghost. One with Christ, his soul is filled with submission to His will, and heaven is enshrined in his heart while he is enfolded in the bosom of infinite love. Christians of this order will bear much fruit to the glory of God. They will rightly interpret the character of God, and manifest His attributes unto the world.—The Signs of the Times, April 3, 1893. Step by Step to Victory, February 29 I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. 1 Corinthians 9:26, 27. God leads His people on step by step. The Christian life is a battle and a march. In this warfare there is no release; the effort must be continuous and persevering. It is by unceasing endeavor that we maintain the victory over the temptations of Satan. Christian integrity must be sought with resistless energy and maintained with a resolute fixedness of purpose.... There is a science of Christianity to be mastered—a science as much deeper, broader, higher than any human science as the heavens are higher than the earth. The mind is to be disciplined, educated, trained; for we are to do service for God in ways that are not in harmony with inborn inclination. There are hereditary and cultivated tendencies to evil that must be overcome. Often the training and education of a lifetime must be discarded, that one may become a learner in the school of Christ. Our hearts must be educated to become steadfast in God. We are to form habits of thought that will enable us to resist temptation. We must learn to look upward. The principles of the Word of God—principles that are as high as heaven, and that compass eternity—we are to understand in their bearing upon our daily life. Every act, every word, every thought, is to be in accord with these principles. The precious graces of the Holy Spirit are not developed in a moment. Courage, fortitude, meekness, faith, unwavering trust in God's power to save, are acquired by the experience of years. By a life of holy endeavor and firm adherence to the right the children of God are to seal their destiny. We have no time to lose. We know not how soon our probation may close. Eternity stretches before us. The curtain is about to be lifted. Christ is soon to come. The angels of God are seeking to attract us from ourselves and from earthly things. Let them not labor in vain.—Testimonies for the Church 8:313, 314.