AFTAH Protests Gov. Quinn, Who Degrades Office by Invoking Lincoln in Signing Homosexual ‘Marriage’ Bill into Illinois Law

Americans For Truth About Homosexuality

News Release

November 20, 2013

Contact: Peter LaBarbera: 312-324-3787; americansfortruth@gmail.com

CHICAGO—Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) will be protesting Gov. Pat Quinn’s elaborate signing ceremony for Illinois’ “gay marriage” law at the UIC Forum in Chicago today – and condemns his shameful exploitation of Abraham Lincoln to advance this immoral legislation.

Michael Sneed of the Chicago Sun-Times reported yesterday that Gov. Quinn has shipped the desk that President Lincoln used to craft his First Inaugural Address to UIC for the homosexual “marriage” bill-signing. Quinn and other Democrats have evoked the noble Black civil rights movement and even emancipation from slavery as parallels for passage of SB 10, which legalizes same-sex “marriage.”

AFTAH will be outside the UIC Forum (725 W. Roosevelt Rd, in Chicago) under a banner evoking the American Declaration of Independence: “Homosexual ‘Marriage’: Against Nature & Nature’s God.” To contact AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera, call 312-324-3787, or e-mail americansfortruth@gmail.com.

Said AFTAH’s LaBarbera: “It’s bad enough that homosexual extremists for years have been promoting the preposterous lie that Lincoln was ‘gay.’ Now we see his noble legacy on behalf of Black Americans appropriated by the Left to justify homosexual ‘marriage’ – which has nothing to do with civil rights and everything to do with normalizing a changeable sexual sin.

“Abe Lincoln had a great respect for the Bible as the Word of God, and he encouraged others to read it to better their lives. It is inconceivable that Lincoln would set himself against clear Scriptural truth – such as Romans 1, which condemns homosexual practice – or align himself with the bizarre notion that two people of the same sex can get ‘married.’

“(In fact, it would be more faithful to history to picture Lincoln coming up with a good joke – even a saucy one — illustrating the folly of homosexuality-based ‘marriage.’)

“Homosexual practice today is as immoral as it was in days of Lincoln; as it was in the days of Washington and Jefferson before him; as it was in the days of Jesus Christ; and as sinful as it was in the days of Moses,” LaBarbera said. “Today’s ‘progressives’ have as much contempt for the history they twist to rationalize public-policy madness like ‘gay marriage’ as they do for their own religious professions, which they regularly defy. (Quinn, like House Speaker Mike Madigan, is a self-described Catholic; Roman Catholic teaching strongly condemns homosexual practice and Church leaders like Cardinal Francis George actively opposed the Illinois “gay marriage” bill.)

Based on the experience in other states, the effects of legalized homosexual “marriage” in Illinois are quite predictable:

• Lawsuits will proliferate against wedding-oriented businesses, such as florists and bakers, whose owners refuse to use their creative talents to celebrate homosexuality-based “marriage” (such lawsuits already followed enactment of Illinois’ “civil unions” law);
• Everyday religious- and moral-minded businesspeople will be forced by the law to subsidize the immoral (“married”) relationships of homosexual employees;
• Liberal teachers, especially in public schools, will be emboldened to promote homosexual relationships as normative, and teach “gay marriage” as a good thing, in the name of “social justice”; very young children will be taught that they can marry someone of the same sex some day if they choose.
• Opponents of homosexuality-based “marriage,” including pastors and Bible-believing churches, will be further demonized by secular ‘progressives’ as the moral equivalent of racists. Already, hateful extremists like the Chicago-based “Gay Liberation Network” are protesting outside Catholic cathedrals and smearing Christian leaders – including African Americans! — as “bigots” merely for opposing “gay marriage”;
• Homosexual adoptions will be made easier under the law – creating more households where children are intentionally denied either a mom or a dad;
• As in Massachusetts and California, LGBT activists will use the “gay marriage” law as a catalyst to push for more extreme legislation, such as laws promoting transgenderism in schools;
• The public, including impressionable children, will be exposed more and more to the activist “norming” of homosexuality – with the excuse being that now that homosexual “marriage” is legal, how can (public) homosexuality be unacceptable? Already, faith-conscious parents can’t even go to a Cubs game without risking exposure to pro-homosexuality messages and behavior.

“The normalization of homosexuality, which God calls an abomination, is one of the most amazing marketing stories of our age. Illinois and national homosexual activists reportedly spent $2 million in the final months of their lobby effort for homosexual ‘marriage’ bill,” LaBarbera said. “But we also saw the growth of a powerful coalition of Black, White and Latino Christians mobilizing against SB 10. Though they were ultimately ignored by pro-LGBT politicians, I believe that if this misguided law were put up to a statewide vote in Illinois, it would lose.

“Every homosexual triumph is a Pyrrhic victory because it elevates a destructive and immoral perversion to the realm of noble-sounding ‘civil rights,’” he said. “But God is not mocked, no matter what prostrating politicians like Gov. Quinn or Speaker Madigan do or say to justify their selling out to a powerful Sexual Sin Lobby with lots of money. We urge the people of Illinois to keep standing for Truth and not to capitulate to the forces responsible for enactment of this very bad law.”

Peter LaBarbera is president of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH.org), a group devoted to opposing and exposing homosexual activism. E-mail: americansfortruth@gmail.com.