SocietyWatch
Prince further damages royal family
A November interview with Britain’s Prince Andrew has worsened a crisis within Britain’s royal family. The BBC asked Prince Andrew, the brother of heir-apparent Prince Charles, about his previous friendship with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of committing and facilitating pedophilia.
One of Epstein’s alleged victims has claimed that she was told to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was 17 years old. The prince repeatedly said he had no recollection of meeting the girl, and when asked about an infamous photo of him with his arm around her declined to say whether it was faked and repeatedly said that he had no recollection of it being taken. When asked, “Do you regret the whole friendship with Epstein?” Prince Andrew responded: “Now, still not, for the reason being is that the people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn either by him or because of him were actually very useful.”
The accusations, and the interview, ignited a media firestorm. The Queen has removed the prince from public duties, but the damage to the royal family’s reputation is ongoing.
The history of the royal family’s throne traces back to King David of Israel (request your free copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy.) But its members long ago forgot the God of David and are mired in sin, along with their people. For more on why the scandals involving the royal family are so much more than just a “celebrity scandal,” read Gerald Flurry’s free book The New Throne of David.
Even more unmarried couples are living together
A Pew Research report published Nov. 6, 2019, found that since 1993, the share of American adults living with a romantic partner who is not their spouse has more than doubled. The survey shows that 7 percent of American adults are currently living with an unmarried partner, and that 59 percent of American adults ages 18 to 44 have lived with an unmarried partner, while only 50 percent have ever been married.
Between 1995 and 2018, the proportion of married adults fell from 58 to 53 percent, while the share of cohabiting adults rose from 3 to 7 percent. Of those surveyed, 85 percent said it is acceptable for unmarried couples to live together.
The Seventh Commandment (Exodus 20:14) protects the most vital human relationship, marriage, not only for the sake of husband, wife and children, but also for the sake of the nation and the sake of human beings’ incredible purpose and potential. To learn more, request your free copy of Herbert W. Armstrong’s booklet Why Marriage—Soon Obsolete?
GLAAD: One in five TV characters must be lgbtq
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) released its annual “Where We Are on TV” report on Nov. 7, 2019, and advocated for “20 percent of series regular characters on primetime scripted broadcast series” to be lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transgender or queer by 2025. Over the last two years, broadcast television has already included this percentage, but the group now wants it to also apply to cable and streaming services.
GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said this should be done so that “entertainment reflects the world in which it is created and the audience who consume it.” The group’s report cites a Harris Poll survey claiming that 20 percent of Americans age 18 to 34 and 12 percent of the total population are lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transgender or queer. Yet a Gallup survey found that only 8.2 percent of young adults and 4.5 percent of the total population identifies this way. The Harris Poll sample size was 2,037 people: The Gallup Poll sample size was 340,604.
In three Gallup polls in 2011, 2015 and 2019, the average respondent estimated that the population of sexual deviants was between 23.2 and 24.6 percent. Only 8 percent guessed, correctly, that the actual figure is below 5 percent. GLAAD activists do not want entertainment to reflect society: They want it to change society.
Minority of evangelicals are pro-life
Only 47 percent of self-identified Evangelical Christians in the United States identify as “pro-life,” according to a poll published Nov. 14, 2019, by Save the Storks, an anti-abortion organization. This poll was based on online interviews with 1,000 adults nationwide ages 18 to 69. It found that 78 percent of Evangelical Christians polled believe life begins at or before a fetus’s first heartbeat, but only 25 percent believed abortion should be illegal in all cases. Willing to identify as pro-life were 47 percent of evangelical Christians, 33 percent of mainline Protestants and 27 percent of Catholics.
The Sixth Commandment prohibits murder (Exodus 20:13), and the Bible shows that God considers the murder of an unborn baby equal to the murder of an adult (Exodus 21:22-23). More than 60 million babies have been murdered in the U.S. since 1973, and many Christians seem to think that many of these deaths were acceptable.
