Yes, AFTAH ‘Discriminates’ …

AFTAH banquet’s Married Couples Discount not available to counterfeit homosexual “marrieds”

New York City homosexual activist blogger Jeremy Hooper (right) and his boyfriend/"husband" can attend AFTAH's banquet Saturday, but they will not get our $50 Married Couples Discount, even though they went through a legal "marriage" ceremony in Connecticut.

When:  Saturday, Nov. 13, 2010; 6:00 PM; doors open at 5:30.

Who/What: Pastor Ken Hutcherson, keynote speaker. Catering by Maggiano’s Little Italy. Hutch is founder of the “Mayday for Marriage” rallies, a former NFL linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys and Seattle Seahawks, and pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, WA. [More info on Hutch HERE.] There may also be a testimony by a former lesbian who now helps others change through the Gospel of Christ.

Where:  Christian Liberty Academy, 502 W. Euclid Ave., Arlington Heights, IL 60004.

Tickets:  $75 per person (after Nov. 8) and at the door. Married couples discount (one man/one woman only!): $100 per couple, no matter when you sign up.  Pay online at www.americansfortruth.com/donate. Or mail your check to: AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522. Pastors attend FREE; sponsor a pastor with your extra gift of $50!

_____________________________________________________

Yes, AFTAH Discriminates…in Favor of Real Marriage

By Peter LaBarbera, President of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality:

Dear Readers,

It struck me yesterday as I was reviewing my recent e-pitch for our AFTAH banquet — this Saturday, Nov. 13^th at Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights — that I wasn’t quite clear about the “discriminatory” intent of our invitation. Well, I wouldn’t actually use that word, but our fanatical homosexual activist opponents certainly would. You see, AFTAH is offering a Married Couples Discount for the banquet of $100 per married couple – a savings of $50 off the cost for last-minute registrants (and those at the door), who normally would have to pay $75 per person (or $150 per couple).

Here’s what I forgot to mention in the e-mail: our Married Couples Discount is available only to legitimately married couples (one man, one woman) – not homosexual “couples” playing house and pretending to be “married” as they practice a changeable and destructive lifestyle that defies their loving Creator and mocks the bedrock institution that they’ve politically appropriated in the name of “equality.”

And no: we will absolutely NOT give our discount even to those coupled homosexuals possessing legal “marriage” certificates from the following states: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire and California. Those pieces of paper – though efficacious to garner marriage-like benefits and status in those corrupt states — are bogus in the eyes of God and in light of America’s Judeo-Christian moral tradition – as they make a mockery of the very institution they are meant to “equalize.”

So to the ACLU I say: go ahead and sue us, because unlike those sorry states, Americans For Truth will not incentivize blasphemous and phoney “marriages.” (As Clint Eastwood said, Go ahead, make my day. We’ll count on our good friends at Liberty Counsel to defend us.)

Homosexuals welcome

This is not about “hate,” as so many (hateful) homosexual activists allege, but principle. A little discrimination can be a good thing, to quote my friend and Wisconsin pro-family advocate Ralph Ovadal (who has been brutally assaulted by “tolerant” pro-“gay” activists while defending truth on this issue). We all “discriminate” (definition: use good judgment) in healthy ways — e.g., choosing where to send our children to school —  and that’s exactly what the current societal effort to preserve marriage in our profane culture is all about.

If I and AFTAH hated homosexuals, we wouldn’t welcome (non-disruptive) people practicing homosexuality to come to our banquet. (A radical, lying Marxist homosexual group, the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network, is leading a protest outside of the event.) I want them to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ as presented by our keynote speaker, Pastor Ken Hutcherson. [Listen to my recent interviews with Ken on the Americans For Truth Hour Here: Part 1; Part 2; and Part 3.] But homosexually-joined couples will have to fork over the extra 50 bucks if they choose to come.

‘Gay equality’ vs. true liberty

Election results for three Iowa Supreme Court judges who supported "gay marriage" and then were rejected Nov. 2 by the state's voters. Thankfully, Iowans showed "discriminating" judgment in favor of preserving real marriage. Click on graphic to enlarge.

Consider this a lesson in how homosexual “marriage” laws destroy the freedom of religious- and moral-minded Americans to live out their faith. Say you are an orthodox Jew and you own a business in Iowa (where in 2009 seven arrogant and socially left judges imposed counterfeit “marriage” on that state’s citizens; three of those judges were denied retention on Nov. 2!). You are a family-oriented guy trying to recruit good workers, so you offer generous employee benefits to all your married employees. Then one of your female homosexual employees takes advantage of the outrageous 2009 Iowa Supreme Court ruling by “marrying” another woman.

Under Iowa’s new marriage law, if you offer marriage benefits to your other employees, you must now extend those benefits equally to your homosexually “married” employees. So you face a choice: either get rid of the benefits for all married employees or join the Sin Subsidizing business with your hard-earned entrepreneurial profits. Fearing lawsuits and the well-heeled “Gay” Lobby, I’m afraid that most employers will probably go for the second option.

Note that in any state where the government rewards homosexual “domestic partners,” “civil unions” – or counterfeit “marriages” – the taxpayers, too, become subsidizers of homosexual misconduct.

Nature discriminates against homosexuality

Healthy, God-honoring societies do not subsidize and encourage destructive behaviors – especially through noble institutions like marriage. Yet that’s where America is heading, thanks to the work of revolutionary homosexual activists and their liberal allies.

The charter for the United States of America – our Declaration of Independence – references the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” Nature, created by God, obviously discriminates against homosexuality (who can doubt this—can two men make a baby together?). That is because homosexuality is not part of God’s plan — unlike marriage, His wonderful design for a man and a woman to “become one” and unite to make a family.

In fact, our true rights come from God and are consistent with His natural, created order – not sexual perversion! Liberty was never intended to advance unnatural sin, but the godly good. As England’s Sir William Blackstone –the father of English common law, and hence American law – wrote (emphasis added):

By the absolute rights of individuals we mean those which are so in their primary and strictest sense; such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy, whether out of society or in it . . . . Human laws define and enforce as well those rights which belong to a man considered as an individual, as those which belong to him considered as related to others.

For the principal aim of society is to protect in the enjoyment of those absolute rights, which were vested in them by the immutable laws of nature; … Hence it follows that the first and primary end of human law is to maintain and regulate these absolute rights of individuals . . . .

The absolute rights of man, considered as a free agent, endowed with discernment to know good from evil, and with power of choosing those measures which appear to him to be most desirable, are usually summed up in one general appellation and denominated the natural liberty of mankind. This natural liberty consists properly in a power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, unless by the law of nature; being a right inherent in us by birth, and one of the gifts of God to man at his creation, when he endued him with the faculty of free will.

It is fascinating that with the growing acceptance of homosexuality and other sexual sins in our increasingly decadent, post-Christian culture, we once again face the very threat that Thomas Jefferson feared – and which inspired our First Amendment: governments encroaching on Americans’ free exercise of religion. The homosexual activists’ desperate push for affirmation, lately aided by the State, has driven them into the realm of persecuting others by arguing that their newfound “right” to practice homosexuality (in all its manifestations, including homosexual-led families) supersedes the natural liberty of others NOT to accept, much less subsidize, ungodly conduct.

We must not allow government to suppress our natural, God-given liberties for the pursuit of an egalitarian agenda that posits a false “equality” between two things — real, man-woman marriage and counterfeit homosexual “marriage” — that are anything but equal.