And once again, we see evidence of how the Homosexual and Abortion Lobbies work hand in hand, with the nation’s largest homosexual pressure group (Human Rights Campaign) fighting the pro-life Stupak-Pitts amendment. One would think that homosexuals — with seemingly no interest in normal sex and its consequences — would not have much interest in the abortion issue. But here they are crusading for a bill change that will result in federal subsidies for abortion under the rubric of “health care” and “fairness.” (HRC President Joe Solmonese was once a senior staffer at the pro-abortion pac EMILY’s LIST.)

Click HERE for a copy of the Senate health care bill, HR 3590, and HERE for a Table of Contents page — with actual page numbers! — for the same bill, that was written by a Texas citizen.  (Apparently Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) didn’t have time to put one in as he rushed the monstrous bill to the floor.) A vote on cloture for the Senate bill is planned for tomorrow, Saturday.)  Click here for an excellent Family Research Council alert on Saturday’s cloture vote. – Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

From the Coral Ridge Ministries’ website:

WASHINGTON, D.C.  Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009 — As the Senate works behind closed doors to combine the newly passed House health care takeover bill with two Senate versions that have already passed separate committees, special interest groups are rallying their members to lobby for favored provisions. The House bill, the Affordable Health Care for America Act (3962), passed on Nov. 7 by a vote of 220 to 215. The Senate’s timetable is unclear, with Majority Leader Harry Reid pledging to complete a bill before Christmas, but many observers say that this is unlikely because of the sheer immensity of the proposal and the growing opposition.

Among the biggest winners in the House version were homosexual activists. According to the Human Rights Campaign, the largest “gay” pressure group, the House bill contains several key elements that “have been part of HRC’s legislative agenda as free-standing bills for many years,” says the group’s Website, which boasts that HRC lobbied hard to have them included. The only negative aspect in HRC’s eyes is the Stupak-Pitts amendment barring federal funding for abortions, which passed 240 to 194. HRC pledges to “work with our pro-choice coalition allies to help see that it is removed or revised as health care reform moves forward.” That’s a good bet, since President Obama promised Planned Parenthood that abortion subsidies would be part of health care reform.

Key pro-homosexual provisions highlighted by HRC include:

• Special treatment: A section designating “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as special categories would open up “health data collection and grant programs focused on health disparities related to sexual orientation and gender identity.” The “gay” lobby, which has been promoting the fiction, especially among schoolchildren, that homosexual behavior is natural and poses no health risks, admits here that the behavior involves unique health problems. Unmentioned are astronomically higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS among homosexual males, and increased rates of domestic violence, suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, and mental illness among both sexes.
• Domestic partner tax benefits: HR 3296 incorporates the language of the proposed Tax Equity for Health Plan Beneficiaries Act, which would apply marital-type tax advantages to same-sex couples. Currently, employer-provided health insurance costs for a married couple are excluded from gross taxable income. This is a way that companies and the tax code historically have supported marriage, which is regarded as a key factor in attracting the most stable, loyal employees. Under the bill, employees who have domestic partners would be treated the same as those with spouses.
• More HIV funding for the states: The bill incorporates the Early Treatment for HIV Act, which, according to HRC, “would permit state Medicaid programs to provide HIV treatment to individuals before they develop AIDS. The act would amend Title XIX of the Social Security Act to provide states with the option of covering low-income, HIV-positive people as ‘categorically needy.’ States taking advantage of this option would be provided with an enhanced federal Medicaid match.” This is the only provision that might make some sense—getting aid to people before they develop full-blown AIDS. But it needs more examination in light of its impact on Medicaid, etc.
• Pro-homosexual, comprehensive sex education: HR 3962 provides funding for comprehensive condom-focused sex education programs, while leaving out abstinence programs, which HRC dismisses as “discriminatory” because they don’t facilitate “safe” gay sex. Given that after three decades of “comprehensive” sex ed, that homosexual males are still by far the largest category of AIDS cases and deaths and represent the lion’s share of syphilis and other STDs, the claim to be able to teach “safe” gay sex should be regarded as an oxymoron. The HRC also does not like the emphasis that abstinence programs put on delaying sex for marriage and supports programs that sexualize children at younger and younger ages.
• Non-discrimination: The bill “prohibits consideration of personal characteristics unrelated to the provision of health care.” HRC sees this as elevating “sexual orientation” to a civil rights category within the health care system.

The two Senate versions so far “do not contain the important provisions for LGBT people incorporated in the House-passed bill,” HRC notes, promising to lobby for final inclusion of its list.

TAKE ACTION: Please contact your two U.S. Senators and urge them to oppose HR 3962 and the two Senate health care takeover bills, S1796 and S1679. Click here for an excellent Family Research Council alert on Saturday’s cloture vote. The Capitol switchboard is (202) 224-3121 [you can also call 202-225-3121 or write your representatives through www.congress.org].

Robert H. Knight is Senior Writer and Washington, D.C., Correspondent at Coral Ridge Ministries. He is the author of Fighting For America’s Soul (Coral Ridge Ministries, 2009).

The following is reprinted from Gary Bauer’s “End of Day Report” put out by the Campaign for Working Families [sign up for Bauer's excellent email report HERE]:

President Misleads Again

By Gary Bauer

President Obama ran into a problem from an unlikely source yesterday during his television marathon of five Sunday talk shows. ABC host George Stephanopoulos confronted the president on whether the large penalties in the bill ($3,800 per family) for those who refuse to buy health insurance constitute a tax. The president, understandably, was adamant in denying it was a tax. If it is a tax, then he is violating his pledge not to raise taxes on middle class families –– a political disaster.

As Stephanopoulos pressed the point, Obama said, “No. That’s not true, George.” A few minutes later, he objected again, and said, “No, but, but, George, you – you can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase.” Stephanopoulos then cited a Webster’s dictionary, which defines “tax” as “a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.” Obama objected again, and told Stephanopoulos that by looking up tax in the dictionary, he was “stretching a little bit right now.” Stephanopoulos gave up and asked, “But you reject that it’s a tax increase?” President Obama responded, “I absolutely reject that notion.”

The president may reject that notion, but right about now Congressman Joe Wilson might again need to yell “You lie!” Several news outlets took a look at the Senate bill to see what it called the penalties. There it was in black and white on page 29: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.” According to Politico, the legislation goes on to state that the tax would be collected: “through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of federal tax owed.”

So what should we conclude? Does the president not know what is in the bill he is pushing? Did he know, but chose to intentionally mislead Stephanopoulos and the millions of people watching the interview? Does President Obama think he can still get away with distortions and half-truths?

By the way, HERE is another $1,800 middle class tax increase the administration is pushing and trying its best to deny.

Sen. Kennedy: Hero of Homosexual Agenda: after his death, a homosexual activist reveals that Ted Kennedy used his massive influence in Massachusetts to pressure legislators to deny the state’s citizens a chance to vote on “same-sex marriage.” After the 2007 vote that blocked a traditional marriage amendment in his state, Kennedy congratulated a leading “gay” activist with these words: “What you accomplished for the people of Massachusetts is tremendous.” What about “the people’s” right to decide whether marriage should be radically redefined? At left is a cartoon published in the Boston homosexual newspaper Bay Windows.

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Dear AFTAH Readers,

Now that the eulogies are over, it’s time to tell the truth about the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s unprecedented anti-pro-life and anti-family legacy. Last week I heard FOX’s Bill O’Reilly describe the late Kennedy as a “committed Catholic.” (His guest, talk show host Laura Ingraham, a conservative Catholic, was taken aback.) Certainly, Kennedy was committed, but not to the social positions of his own church. He was a leading crusader for abortion-on-demand — after flip-flopping from being pro-life (so much for compassion and helping the “little guy”). And he used his considerable power to advance the full, radical homosexualist agenda; click HERE to read the praise he received from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, an extremist homosexual organization if there ever was one. Kennedy was one of just 14 Democrats to vote against the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA), which President Obama is now trying to undo.

Tragically, Ted Kennedy was a central figure in helping set American liberalism and the Democratic Party on their current trajectory of celebrating a culture of death and deviance in the form of state-sanctioned abortion and homosexuality.  In fact, so egregious were Kennedy’s departures from Church teachings that many Catholics, to quote Fr. Thomas Euteneuer of Human Life International, were upset that he was being extolled “with the full honors of a public Catholic funeral and all the adulation that attends such an event.” Also read the Catholic Action League press release: “Kennedy Funeral Mass a ‘Scandal,’ Says Catholic Action League of Massachusetts.”

Oddly, after his passing, we are learning that Kennedy was even more extreme than most conservatives knew. In 1983, he even secretly approached Soviet Communist dictator Yuri Andropov with a traitorous quid pro quo offer to help Andropov confront U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy; the media dutifully ignored Kennedy’s treachery when it was exposed by a British researcher in 1992. And now self-described “queer” activists are revealing the full extent of Kennedy’s efforts to advance their God-defying agenda. How strange that a Catholic would be so committed to denying the people of his own state a chance to vote on whether marriage should be redefined to accommodate homosexual relationships, which his own Catholic Church describes as sinful and disordered. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

MassResistance reports:

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August 28, 2009

Major homosexual activist reveals Ted Kennedy’s crucial role in defeating Marriage Amendment in Massachusetts Legislature

By Brian Camenker

Sen. Ted Kennedy was the secret critical force in the background that caused the Massachusetts Legislature to deny the people the right to vote on the Marriage Amendment, it was revealed this week.

Less than 48 hours after Kennedy’s passing, the homosexual newspaper Bay Windows published an article by Marc Solomon, who at that time ran MassEquality, the main homosexual lobby group trying to stop the amendment.

Ted Kennedy personally pressured enough conservative Democrats (and even “libertarian-leaning” Republicans) who the homosexual lobby was targeting, to change their votes on that the measure to allow a public vote would be defeated. Kennedy also worked on the overall strategy to defeat it. Without Kennedy’s involvement, it would likely not have been defeated the Legislature — and the people would have been able to vote.

Here’s what Solomon told Bay Windows:

Our cause was lining up the votes to defeat an anti-gay constitutional amendment that would strip same-sex couples of the right to marry. A final vote was scheduled for July 14, 2007. Our opponents needed the votes of only 25 percent of the legislature to advance a citizen-led amendment to the ballot. We had lined up two-thirds of the legislature through fieldwork, lobbying, media, literally everything we could think of. But getting those last 15 legislators-those conservative Democrats from working class Massachusetts communities and a few libertarian-leaning Republicans-was very tough. We needed all hands on deck to keep a Massachusetts version of Proposition 8 off the ballot. We needed Ted Kennedy.”Could you get me a list of your targets?” one of Kennedy’s key staffers finally asked me. “Don’t tell anyone I’m asking you for this,” he said. He meant it, and I didn’t.

A few days later, as I was doing my rounds in the State House, a bewildered conservative legislator stopped me. “You’ll never guess who left me a message about gay marriage,” he said. “Ted Kennedy.” And then I started to hear similar refrains again and again. We’d get word that he’d spoken to the Governor, the Speaker of the House, the Senate President, the chair of the Democratic Party, asking for updates, strategizing, figuring out exactly what he could do and how he could be most helpful.

In the end, on that July 14, we won. We won what many thought was an impossible victory, by a vote of 151 – 45, keeping our opponents just below the 25 percent threshold. We shocked our opponents. They were sure they had the votes. Just the kind of come-from-behind, unexpected victory for the little guy that Kennedy relished so much.

Later that day, after rallies, celebrations, and parties, I sat down at my desk and listened to voice messages of congratulations, one after the next. One moved me to my core.

“Marc, Ted Kennedy calling from Washington, DC. Congratulations on what you did today. What you accomplished for the people of Massachusetts is tremendous. Good work, my friend.”

Click HERE to read the entire Bay Windows article

Kept secret until now

It’s interesting — and pretty shameful — that Kennedy obviously wanted to keep this a secret. If he was so proud of his “principled” stands, why not make them public? The truth is that Ted Kennedy was much more radical than most people realized (on this and other issues). A lot of insiders knew that. But if the public found out it’s pretty clear that there would be a backlash that would be very unnerving, even for Kennedy.

Flood of praise in Boston media

In the Boston media it was a week of nonstop Kennedy adulation. Interestingly, the Boston Herald, which Kennedy once tried to shut down by passing a special federal law, out-did the Globe in gushing coverage.

Obama likes to play basketball, and the head fake is an important part of the game. You try to get your defender to commit with a head or body fake, throwing him off balance so you can move in to take the real shot (or get a clear shot at the basket). “Both Sides” Barack, the candidate, made some pretty good head fakes on abortion and homosexual “marriage” during the campaign, and many Americans were fooled. He said he wanted to “reduce the number of abortions” and pretended to be a strong supporter of preserving traditional marriage. (Remember the Saddleback Church debate moderated by Rick Warren?)

Then the real Obama went to the hoop: he championed the radical Freedom of Choice Act to rally his pro-abortion base as a candidate, expanded taxpayer-funded abortions worldwide as president, and now is moving to destroy DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act (signed into law by Democrat Bill Clinton in 1996). But the double-game is getting much tougher for Obama: a growing number of Americans are seeing him for what he is: the most radically left president ever to occupy the Oval Office. Shame on the gullible Christians and religionists who went for his head fakes. We’d be fools to rely on them again to “defend” life and marriage. — Peter LaBarbera

P.S. I wonder if Obama is aware of Planned Parenthood’s racist origins.

[This YouTube video had only 85,371 hits as of Aug. 30, 2009.]

You know, it’s pretty hard to play the victim when propagandistic “gay” images and characters saturate the airwaves. But leave it to GLAAD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) to try. I wonder though: what about Hollywood and EX-”gays”? (GLAAD fails to see the hypocrisy of its ongoing “defamation” of them.) It took decades after Roe v. Wade for Hollywood to produce movies like Juno that are unapologetically pro-life. How long will it take for the entertainment industry to catch up with reality and cast a sympathetic former homosexual character who is content with his sexuality? — Peter LaBarbera

P.S. A reminder to Mr. Link: five percent exceeds the homosexual population in society.

——————————–

David Link writes for the Independent Gay Forum:

We’re Here, We’re Queer, We Were on Primetime Network TV 647 Hours Last Year (Not Counting Cable)

Posted on IGF: July 26, 2009

I’m really wondering whether we need GLAAD anymore.  They’ve just released their Network Responsibility Index for 2008-09 to “serve as a road map toward increasing fair, accurate and inclusive LGBT media representations.”  ABC led the pack among networks; of its 1,146.5 total hours of primetime programming, 269.5 hours (24%) included LGBT impressions.  The CW came in second with 138 LGBT-inclusive hours, or 20% of its primetime offerings.  CBS gave us the back of their hand, devoting only 60 hours — 5% of its schedule — to us.  For shame.

In 1985, when GLAAD was a startup, this kind of monitoring was not only valuable, but necessary.  Back then, the New York Times had a specific editorial policy against use of the word “gay,” to describe us.  GLAAD is the reason that changed, and they can claim credit for much more.  They’ve helped us change the world.

But now we are in the position where we can complain when one network only shows us five percent of the time — a number pretty close to our actual percentage in the population.  Anyone tuned only to ABC would have had to put up with 269.5 hours of us.  How helpful is it, really, that we know, to the decimal point, total network hours, percentages (subdivided by race, as well; Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives lose serious GLAAD-cred on that point) and year-over-year differentials of GLAAD-approved achievement?  Are we studying stuff now, not because we need to, but just because we can?

I don’t know how much it cost to do all this monitoring, and slicing and dicing of the data, nor how much was spent to produce the 39-page, very glossy report.  But in a world where we have some important and expensive political work to do in (for example) Maine, New York and possibly Washington (and let’s not forget California), is this really the best use of $11 million?  Do we really need GLAAD as an institution any more?  More important, if we ever decided we didn’t, would it be possible to get rid of them?

Folks, I will be speaking on the defense of marriage in Illinois at the Americans For Life rally in downtown Chicago on Friday, May 22nd, at the State of Illinois Building, from 11:30-3:00. The rally is being organized by my friend Dick Walsh, a tough, veteran cultural warrior if there ever was one. WYLL’s Sandy Rios — another great friend of life and marriage — will be emceeing the event. Come to the rally, stand up for the unborn, whose lives are slaughtered for convenience. Bring your family and have a wonderful time standing up with fellow pro-life and pro-marriage Americans! — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.com

Here are the details:

Please join Americans For Life at the May 22, 2009 March for Life
11:30 a.m.  to 3:00 p.m. in downtown Chicago

11:30 am to 12:15 pm    Rally at the State of Illinois Building 100 West Randolph Street (between LaSalle and Clark Streets):

Speakers:

• Dick Walsh, Chairman, Americans For Life
• Sandy Rios, FOX News contributor and Radio Host from Chicago radio station WYLL
• Mary Anne Hackett, Illinois Right to Life Committee
• Tom Morrison, Illinois Family Institute
• Jim Finnegan, License Plates For Life (fighting for Illinois to approve “Choose Life” license plates)

12:15 p.m. to 1:00 pm    March For Life from the State of Illinois Building to the Federal Building Plaza

1:00 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.   Rally in the Plaza north of the Federal Building at 50 West Adams:

Speakers:

• Joe Scheidler, Pro-Life Action League
• Jill Stanek, Born Alive Infant Protection Act; see www.jillstanek.com
• Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality

… and religious leaders for pro-life causes.

This rally is being co-sponsored by WYLL Radio AM 1160 and WIND AM 560. For information on co-sponsorship opportunities, please contact Bea Sutkis at WYLL at 708 256 2851 or by email at bea@salemradiochicago.com.

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See our adjoining story: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Talks of ‘Moral Leadership’ while Honoring Homosexual S&M Pornographer

Rea Carey of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force says her movement shows “moral leadership” to the nation — even as the Task Force presented its “Leather Leadership Award” to a homosexual pornographer. The Task Force’s “Creating Change” conference in Denver ran supportive workshops on: transsexuality; prostitution (“sex workers’ rights”), “polyamory/nonmonogamy”; and – most disturbing – pushing a “sexual freedom” (read: sexual license) agenda on youth.

Dear AFTAH Reader,

If you are reading this website, you are seriously concerned about the homosexual activist agenda.  So I have an assignment for you.  Please print out the enclosed “State of the Movement” speech by the Rea Carey, the new executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and read it all the way through (it’s about 8 printed pages with my introduction).  Now, why would a Christian pro-family organization send out a speech by a radical homosexual activist?  Because we need to know what our Culture War enemies are saying and this speech is very instructive for OUR cause of defending traditional morality and marriage in America.

If you can’t find time to read the whole “Creating Change” speech, at least read the parts of it that we have bolded below.  Note how Ms. Carey talks about “moral leadership” even as the Task Force gave its ‘Leather Leadership Award” to a hard-core homosexual pornographer at the same “Creating Change” conference.  (Talk about chutzpah!)  And note also how she refers to the Bush administration as the “Evil Empire” – Ronald Reagan’s famous description of expansionist Soviet Communism – just as Iraqi citizens were preparing to vote in another free election made possible by the U.S. liberation of their country from the grip of dictator Saddam Hussein.  Nobody lies like the Left, yet the liberal media rarely challenge groups like the Task Force on their many falsehoods and slanders.

Several observations about Carey’s speech:

• The sheer organization of the anti-Christian Left:  thousands of left-wing, grassroots activists attend these annual “Creating Change” conferences; there is no parallel on the social Right for this scale of people and groups working closely together toward common goals.  There are precious few organizing and political “how-to” conferences for pro-family conservatives.  The Left eats and breathes politics; the Right is more distrustful of government, worse at politics, but more oriented toward God, family and church (the latter is obviously a good thing).  All this helps explain why so much destructive social “change” has come to America, where political organization is rewarded in our democratic system.  (That said, we would not see such a progression of evil in our nation were our culture not so deceived, and its once-Christian character so worn down by faithless secularism.)  In the coming days, we will shed more light on the extremist Task Force agenda, which now includes sadomasochism, prostitution (“sex workers’ rights”), “polyamory/nonmonogamy,” and – most disturbing – pushing a “sexual freedom” (read: sexual license) agenda on youth;
• We must acknowledge homosexual-agenda “victories” before we can move forward:  the pro-family movement must take a sober look at where we are in the battle over homosexuality, and it’s not pretty.  While it is tempting to point to pro-marriage victories in November (California, Florida, Arizona) as evidence that our movement is healthy, underneath the surface we are losing the critical public-policy and cultural argument over the legitimacy of and government endorsement of same-sex relationships.  Homosexual activists are making steady, incremental advances, often with little pro-family opposition – e.g., passing “domestic partner” legislation like the bill currently moving through New Mexico’s legislature – as part of a longterm strategy for bigger victories ahead.  Many of the “gay” gains came in states targeted by homosexual moneymen like Tim Gill, who has successfully knocked out pro-family state legislators in Iowa, Colorado and other states.  This begs the question: why do such hardball efforts seem to succeed only on the Left and not the Right?  When will the pro-family Christian “Tim Gill” step forward to help our side?
• The dedication of evil:  if Christians were as devoted to defending God’s truth about sex and marriage as homosexual and transsexual activists are to promoting their destructive lies, we would be in a much better place.  The sad reality is that many Christians remain opposed to engagement in politics and public policy and are ambivalent about this cultural battle.  Some Christian leaders have made key concessions to pro-homosexualist ideology – or declared their neutrality on the issue – while they point judgmental fingers at the few groups that are trying to resist the “gay” juggernaut.  Meanwhile, there are no corresponding doubts on the Secular Left, which works unapologetically to radically redefine family and marriage and destroy the Judeo-Christian moral consensus that helped make this country great.  Ultimately, if the Left succeeds, Christians could see their faith-based freedoms to disagree with sexual sin disappear.
• Stealing “morality” (why not? The homosexual activists already stole the word “gay” and are trying to redefine “marriage,” “family,” “equality,” and “civil rights”):  Homosexual activists realize that to achieve total victory, they must separate Christianity from traditional (Christian) morality.  They aim to redefine right and wrong apart from God’s will for people’s lives, as clearly revealed in Scripture and nature with God’s beautiful, complementary design for man and woman united sexually in marriage to produce children.  “Queer” theologians are busy redefining the Bible and now brazenly claim that homosexuality is a “gift from God.”  The homosexual militants’ game plan is to reinvent Christianity by spouting religious-sounding yet subversive ideas for a nation that is still very religious, but largely ignorant of the Bible;
• The progression and unity of sexual sin … Face the evil:  at Americans For Truth, we’ve come face-to-face with homosexual extremism and have no problem labeling the overall GLBT movement as evil.  But many people are in denial about the nefarious homosexual agenda.  We need to admit that the media “soft sell” of homosexuality does not match what the GLBT Lobby has in store for our nation.  We ask: why does Rea Carey advocate for abortion (seemingly a non-issue for homosexuals) and against “useless” abstinence-focused education?   Why does the Task Force – which receives lots of corporate support — give an award to a purveyor of hard-core homosexual porn?  Why do they teach gender confusion (“transsexuality”) and “sexual freedom” to youth?  (The latter is a code term for no-limits sexuality including S&M.)  Why does the Task Force champion “nonmonogamy” even as it seeks to homosexualize “marriage”?  Because the Left unites around “mainstreaming” perversion and an anti-life, anti-nature, anti-God agenda.  Homosexuality.  Abortion.  Pornography.  Casual and deviant sex outside marriage.  The Task Force supports them all in its decidedly anti-moral quest.  This isn’t about “civil rights” but using the government to promote destructive, immoral and changeable behaviors.

Christians and moral traditionalists need to wake up: the other side is dead serious about “transforming society,” to quote Carey, and “imposing its morality” on us all.  It’s time for us to get serious in the Culture War, too.  God bless you.

Sincerely in Christ,

Peter LaBarbera
www.americansfortruth.com

________________________________________________________

THE FOLLOWING IS THE SPEECH BY REA CAREY, HEAD OF THE HOMOSEXUAL “TASK FORCE”:

Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009
Subject: State of the Movement Address by Rea Carey, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
From: “The Task Force”  …

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey delivers State of the Movement address at 21st National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change

DENVER, Jan. 30 — National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey presented the annual State of the Movement address today at the 21st National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, where 2,000 activists have gathered to strategize on how to advance LGBT equality in this new political climate. What follows below is the text of her speech:

I know many of us may be questioning the state of our movement, and I’ll get to that in a bit, but first, I can’t resist saying that we now live in a country with a community organizer in chief and since the Task Force literally has the trademark on Creating Change, we know that our moment has arrived!

I am honored to serve as the executive director of the Task Force following my friend Matt Foreman. In fact, pretty much since I came out at the age of 16 here in Denver I have watched, learned from and been inspired by the Task Force, so I consider myself to be incredibly fortunate to be part of it. I have come up through this movement and many of my teachers are here with us today, including a couple of former Task Force executive directors — Urvashi Vaid and Lorri Jean.

You’ve already met Russell Roybal, and I want to call up to the stage my other new partner in running the Task Force — a woman who you will be hearing a lot from — our new deputy executive director, Darlene Nipper.

I want to thank each and every one of you for being here. These are incredibly tough economic times and the fact that you have spent your precious time and limited dollars to be here — to gather with your fellow activists and allies from across the country and others who have joined us — speaks to your commitment to social change, to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality, and most importantly, to each other.

This gathering is the public square of the LGBT movement and our time together is made richer and more valuable because each of you is here.

First, let’s talk about the past year. You know, there are years when our movement for full equality jumps by leaps and bounds and other years when we toil to gain every inch of ground. This year has been a bit of both in which we made progress on the local and state level and our country elected its first person of color to the presidency! Yet our love for each other was attacked again by the majority at the ballot box; our right to marry was taken away in California; our transgender brothers and sisters were denied much needed protections; and federal policy continued to elude us under the evil empire — I mean the Bush administration.

It has been a bittersweet year, but the state of our movement is engaged!

This year, we made many gains — gains made because of your hard work, your strategic thinking, your long hours, and your dollars funding state and local efforts. With all of the attention paid to marriage, it would be easy to miss the progress made at the local and state level that improves the lives of LGBT people. And so much of this progress has happened not on the coasts, but in the middle part of the country.

This weekend we will invite you to text to screen all the accomplishments you’ve had this year but I will mention just a few of the many achievements for LGBT people in 2008:

Here in our host state of Colorado, Amendment 46, a Ward Connerly initiative that would have ended affirmative action in public employment, public education or public contracting was defeated.

In Arizona, voters rejected Proposition 202, which would have penalized businesses that hire undocumented workers. And in Oregon, voters rejected an English-only proposal.

In three states — California, Colorado and South Dakota — voters considered initiatives related to reproductive freedoms. And we won in every state.

Also, here in Colorado we expanded progress by passing a law protecting LGBT people from discrimination in housing and public accommodations.

Eight localities passed and held onto nondiscrimination laws: Gainesville and Broward County, Fla.; Columbus and Oxford, Ohio; Kansas City, Mo.; Detroit, Mich; Columbia, S.C.; and Binghamton, N.Y.

We also — with incredibly hard work — successfully defended one of our victories from last year: a transgender rights ordinance that passed in Montgomery County, Md., where the combined efforts of the Task Force, Equality Maryland, Lambda Legal and a host of other organizations came together to defeat the referendum and prevent it from even reaching the ballot.

In the area of family recognition, Connecticut joined Massachusetts in becoming a freedom-to-marry state and then beat back efforts that would have threatened it. Those of you from Connecticut and our great partners Love Makes a Family and Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, congratulations and thank you.

We won marriage in California and over 18,000 couples are now legally married — and we plan on keeping them married. Even though we lost that right temporarily, our community and allies rose up in the days after the election to say, “Enough!”

We have with us today one of the founders of Join the Impact, Willow Witte, who along with her fellow organizer Amy Balliett, used the power of online organizing to fill the streets! We’re proud that some of the Join the Impact crew cut their organizing teeth at Creating Change in Portland, Ore., a few years ago and are now sharing their skills with thousands across the country.

Cities and towns in many states including Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and Utah, established domestic partnership or similar registries in 2008. There were domestic partnership expansions in Washington state and Washington, D.C. Maryland established limited domestic partnership recognition and New York has decided to respect out-of-state same-sex marriages. Maine had an unprecedented year of victories in 2008 culminating in an Election Day action that surpassed their wildest dreams. After waiting in line for an hour to vote, voters were waiting in line to sign pro-marriage postcards. When EqualityMaine ran out of 30,000 postcards, voters signed scraps of paper, jotting their names and addresses down on anything they could find.

Building on the momentum, EqualityMaine and its coalition partners recently introduced a marriage bill and they have a solid plan for winning marriage in the Legislature in 2009 and then protecting it in the inevitable referendum campaign.

And finally, this last year’s accomplishments include a record 450 out [homosexual] elected officials serving in local, state and federal offices including Colorado’s very own Jared Polis, who became the first openly gay man to run for and be elected to Congress, joining Reps. Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin in the House.

For each and every one of you in this room who contributed to any of those victories and the many others we had, thank you!

What we continue to accomplish as a movement is electrifying. And, yet, some of this year’s results were bitter — extremely bitter — pills to swallow.

At the outset, let me say that I tend to be a glass-half-full person, so I can’t help but see this year’s anti-marriage and anti-family ballot measures as deeply painful but temporary defeats that demonstrated just how far we’ve come. But, it isn’t just my gut feeling that this is temporary, it is based on the concrete progress we have made. For example, just four years ago, we lost 13 anti-marriage ballot measures by huge margins — by an average of 67 percent, and as high as 86 percent. In California alone, the last time we faced a similar anti-marriage measure, we lost by over 20 points. This year, we lost by less than four. I know it doesn’t feel like it sometimes, but this is progress.

However, this was a particularly painful year because we lost the fundamental right that we had worked so hard to secure — the right to marry in California.

In the days and weeks after the election, so many in our community were searching for a quick answer as to why we lost in four states. My fellow activists, there is no easy answer.

The days and weeks after the election were some of the most painful I’ve experienced in my 24 years in this movement. I know they were painful for many of you and for our colleagues around the country, particularly in California, Arizona, Florida and Arkansas.  It was hard and painful enough to have lost four statewide ballot measures. But pain turned the corner into agony when we all started lashing out at each other, our allies and our would-be allies and didn’t let up.

Did the other side run excellent, although lie-filled campaigns? Yes it did. Could we all have done more or done things differently that might have moved us closer to defeating the four measures? Certainly. We at the Task Force are a particularly analytical and reflective group and we’ve been taking a hard look at what we could have done better to fight against these measures.

But our winning on any of the four statewide measures was always far from being a slam dunk. We need to learn what we can from this last year and we must move forward, as we have before in times far worse than this.

I want to specifically address the blaming of African-American voters for the passage of Prop. 8.

Sadly, shamefully, an incorrect statistic was put forth in the media and many people both in and outside of our community ran with it. I want to be clear — the blaming of African-American voters was wrong, despicable and inexcusable.

The Task Force released a study with authors Ken Sherrill and Pat Egan that included actual voting data that showed that party affiliation, conservative ideology, frequent church-going and the voter’s age trumped all other factors in the Proposition 8 vote — including race. The Task Force was criticized by some for being “politically correct.”

It is not politically correct to conduct sound research. It is not politically correct to challenge racism.

Have we done enough as a community to deal with our own racism and to make sure that our movement is one that reflects the true diversity of LGBT people? We sure haven’t. But the finger pointing and scapegoating was an affront to the many people of color and others who worked on and with the campaign and to our allied organizations. Furthermore, it avoids the complexity of the work we still have to do to win equality.

I have had enough. WE have had enough. Let us dig deep in ourselves and show others that we will not stoop to scapegoating, we will not turn our backs on our allies, and we will not give up.  There is a big difference between blaming and learning. Let us be learners so that we may be leaders.

As we look back on this year, our confidence has been shaken and our anger has been roused — but now is the time to turn our anger into action and our action into long-lasting change. We must now refocus on regaining marriage equality in California and winning across the country. But we need to remember that these anti-marriage ballot measures are fundamentally about the larger right-wing assault on the ever-expanding diversity in the United States, our freedom to live openly and to create and define our sexuality, our selves and our families.

I urge us not look at our movement as if it is only about this last election or only about marriage equality. Let us recall that our movement for liberation and equality has created much change since the police brutality in New York and other cities gave rise to the Stonewall riots, the activism of black and Latino gay men, and the birth of the modern LGBT movement.

If we do not come together again to fight another day, we can’t win our full equality. As the magnet on my grandmother’s fridge says, “Fall down seven times, get up eight!”

The state of our movement is resilient and we will win!

So, where are we headed as a movement? In order to take a look at where we are headed as a movement, we must first take a look at the broader social and political context in which we work for full equality. This context has now shifted radically.

The most obvious change is that for the first time in our nation’s history, we have as president, a black man, Barack Obama.  Candidate Obama recognized and affirmed a grassroots hunger for change. This year saw record numbers of young people, people of color and progressive people coming out to vote and we are now a better country for it.

This does indeed feel like a new political era for our country and our movement.  I believe the power of this historic moment is the seismic shift in this country from a culture of “I” to a culture of “We.” Obama ran with a mantra of “Yes we can!” Obama didn’t say, “Yes I can” or “Yes YOU can.” He said, yes WE can.

This mantra, of course, carries on the organizing legacy of the United Farm Workers and Dolores Huerta. This unifying WE invites each of us into the work ahead; into the reclaiming of a government that has turned its back on so many; into challenging the long held beliefs and practices of who holds power; how power is used; and who benefits from the use of power.

Obama’s “WE” challenges the culture of “I” that has been so core to this country’s identity — the image of rugged individualism, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. This imagery has been bolstered and perpetuated by scenes like Ronald Reagan riding his horse and by George Bush clearing brush on his ranch. This iconic imagery is finally being challenged. We are now off the ranch and have moved back into the WE of urban energy and creativity, the WE of close family ties and community in rural areas, the WE that has been at the center of the farm workers, civil rights, feminist and labor movements.

We are only just beginning to see the manifestations, the benefits of this cultural shift. And, our community — the LGBT community — is expert at showing the nation just what is possible when WE come together. This historic moment plays to our strengths.

After all, our community built an entire infrastructure of service and support for people with HIV when our own president did not have the decency to speak the syndrome’s name.  Our community overturned sodomy laws in a nation that possesses an intense fear of sexuality.  And our community put gender identity legislation and family protections on the political map.  WE have much to offer this country.

So, now it is our time to contribute again — to express moral leadership and creative fortitude. It is our time to hold steady as we are attacked at the ballot box and on the streets. To hold steady as we share our talents and ideas and are pushed back. To hold steady as we assert how we create family.

The state of our movement is expansive.  In fact, the success of our aspirations will only be limited by the expansiveness of our vision and the assertion of what is in our hearts. There are a few things we must do to make the most of this moment in history and to navigate the waters of this new era.

First, this moment calls for a new kind of leadership in the LGBT movement — not the leadership of one, but the collaborative leadership of many. Don’t get me wrong, the Task Force and I will assert leadership — but at the Task Force, we believe that strength comes not from hoarding power but by building power and sharing power and using power for good. It is why so much of our work is done through coalitions or convenings like Creating Change.

We are leaders in what is good and right and just in this country.  When we insist that LGBT people be involved in the policy conversations about the economy, about health benefits, about tax policy, about immigration — as we have been doing with the Obama transition team and administration — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we win marriage equality in Maine, Iowa, New Jersey and other states — and we will — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we pass a gender identity-inclusive ENDA — and we will — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we continue to work to get rid of useless abstinence only education, we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we stand shoulder to shoulder with our friends in labor and women’s groups as the Task Force did yesterday morning at the White House for the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we promote, sustain and maintain people of color leaders — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

The second thing we must do is to think differently about who our playmates are. I was a Girl Scout when I was growing up and there was this song “make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold.”

We will certainly keep our LGBT organizational friends. But, it is time for us to make new, substantive and strategic friendships with non-LGBT organizations with which we share common concerns. The time for isolating ourselves as a movement is over. We will never win on our own.

So, in the coming years, you will see the Task Force partnering with some perhaps surprising organizations. We will ask them to show up for us and we will show up for them, as we have in our work with AARP on national policy and with Planned Parenthood and NAACP on ballot measures.

Third, so many of our straight friends and family are with us and we must find ways for them to make a difference in our pursuit of equality. They are near and dear to us. They’re willing to work with us; they’re wanting to work with us; they’re waiting to work with us. Among the most striking experiences for me in the last year have been my conversations with straight people across the country, not the least of which was with my own 92-year-old grandmother who has been my cheerleader and was crushed when she was not able to make it to our wedding.

Next week the Task Force will be a partner in launching a new campaign called, “Tell 3″ headed up by the ACLU and Join the Impact, along with other organizations. This campaign is simply about talking to the people in our lives about issues that matter to us as LGBT people.

We ask each and every one of you to go to our Web site next week and take part in what could be — with your help — the most massive friends and family education effort ever launched. If every one at Creating Change has meaningful, real conversations with three people about our lives, about the things we care about, we will have made progress in changing the hearts and minds of thousands of people — people who will be voting on our rights next year and the years after that.

Finally, organize, organize, organize — however you do it, walking door to door, talking to friends, going to meetings, sending tweets — I just did — connecting on Facebook or MySpace, or getting people elected.

Just organize!

For 35 years, the Task Force has been the home for people like you, like me, like hundreds of thousands of people across this country who know that we are part of a larger community of people reaching for full equality.

As you experience the Creating Change conference, you can’t help but see and hear and feel and know in your heart that the state of our movement is engaged, it is resilient, it is expansive and expanding, and it is stronger and more inspirational than ever before!  With all of us together –

We will win complete equality!
We will protect and defend our families!
We will change our communities and
We will transform society!

Thank you.

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I stumbled upon this interesting seminar about American evangelicalism on the Ethics and Public Policy Center website. The event was put on last year by the Pew Forum. A brief excerpt is below and the full transcript is HERE. Note Michael Lindsay’s dichotomy — not “left vs. right” but “cosmopolitan vs. populist” evangelicals.

The question with regard to homosexuality is this: insofar as acceptance of homosexuality (or, in politically correct jargon, the “gay and lesbian community”) has become a defining feature of modern big-city culture, how will the “cosmopolitan evangelicals” react as they seek to retain their influence in “elite” circles? So far we have seen left-leaning evangelicals like Jim Wallis embrace a “rights” framework regarding the pro-homosexual agenda — while still claiming fealty to the Bible. (Wallis favors “civil unions” laws for homosexual couples.) Homosexual activists have applauded the leftward evangelical shift, but Christians who take the Bible’s proscription of homosexual acts seriously view the Evangelical Left’s posturing on this issue as a capitulation to worldly forces, and a violation of Scripture.

Given the media’s unprecedented subservience to the homosexual activist movement, pressures will only grow on “elite”-sensitive evangelicals to water down their opposition to homosexuality as a sin — thus chipping away at a longstanding assumption of Bible-believing Christians. But can they do that and keep their evangelical “brand”? After all, evangelical Christianity is defined to a great extent by a strong allegiance to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God and even most “gay”-affirming evangelicals do not try to argue biblically that homosexual sex is not sinful (not yet, anyway).

Will a more “gay”-friendly “Christianity” coming out of younger and “emergent” Christian quarters have staying power, or will orthodox views on sexual morality regain strength — just as pro-life momentum is on the rise after many cultural and political observers began writing off that virtuous movement over a decade ago (how wrong they were)?

Politically speaking, if you factor in a Republican Party with a very strong strain of libertarianism that naturally butts heads with “religious right” moralism, and it appears likely that the internal battles over homosexuality within evangelicalism (and the GOP) will only grow more intense in the coming years. — Peter LaBarbera

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[Click HERE for full transcript of the seminar]

Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
Publication Date: May 6, 2008

Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2008 for the Pew Forum’s semi-annual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life.

TRANSCRIPT: American Evangelicalism New Leaders, New Faces, New Issues By Michael Cromartie

Posted: Sunday, June 1, 2008

EVENT TRANSCRIPTS Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life; publication date: May 6, 2008

Some of the nation’s leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2008 for the Pew Forum’s semi-annual Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life. D. Michael Lindsay, author of Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, described eight fallacies or misconceptions he held as he began his book. In the three years of his extensive research, he made surprising discoveries about the true power brokers and centers of power in American evangelicalism. He also found that the deep divisions in this movement are not between the political left and right, not between young and old, but between “cosmopolitan” and “populist” evangelicals. Lindsay discussed the implications of his findings for this election year as well as the future of the evangelical movement. David Kirkpatrick, Washington Correspondent for The New York Times, added some history about “old-school” evangelicalism and ways of categorizing the changes that are occurring within the American evangelical movement.

[Michael Lindsay:]

And I began to realize that there is a whole segment of the evangelical movement –many of those folks who are in the elite — who were trying to distinguish themselves from the rest of the evangelical subculture. And so I began to think more about this and pay more attention to it. And the real divide, in my opinion, in evangelicalism is not between the left and the right; it’s not between the young and the old. It is between a group that I call the “cosmopolitan” evangelicals and “populist” evangelicals. And these are very, very significant divisions.

You see, populist evangelicals are what we oftentimes think about evangelicals. These are the folks who are culture warriors, who say that they want to take back the country for their faith. They see themselves as embattled against secular society. They are very much concerned that they are in a minority position, and they’ve got to somehow use very strong-arm tactics to win the day.

So that populist evangelicalism is alive and strong, especially in the evangelical subculture: the music, the publishing, the entertainment segment of the evangelical subculture. But there is a whole other segment. The people who I interviewed, by and large, fit more this cosmopolitan outlook. They are less interested in taking back the country for their faith. They really are more interested in their faith being seen as authentic, reasonable, and winsome. So they still have an evangelistic impulse, but their whole modus operandi looks quite different. Because of that they have different ultimate goals of what they are actually trying to achieve. They want to have a seat at the table. They want to be seen as legitimate. They are concerned about what The New York Times or TIME magazine thinks about evangelicals because they [the cosmopolitan evangelicals] are concerned about cultural elites. They want legitimacy. Legitimacy is actually more important to them than necessarily taking back the country. And so that cosmopolitan-populist divide I find to be quite significant.

President Ronald Reagan demonstrated his true pro-life credentials by instituting the Mexico City policy. Obama demonstrates his anti-life phoniness by eviscerating the policy. Some more pro-life reaction can be found in this report by the Catholic News Agency. And we reiterate our point about the link between the abortion and homosexuality agendas: where there is a war against life, there is usually one against traditional marriage. — Peter LaBarbera

National Right to Life Committee issued this statement yesterday:

Friday, January 23, 2009

Obama Abortion Agenda Launched Today with Order Promoting Abortion in U.S. Population-control Program

WASHINGTON – President Obama today signs an order that will put hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into the hands of organizations that aggressively promote abortion as a population-control tool in the developing world.

Obama’s order overturns the “Mexico City Policy,” under which funds in the U.S. “population assistance” program go only to overseas organizations that pledge not to “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.”

Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), commented, “This is the first in an anticipated series of attacks on longstanding pro-life policies, as the new administration pushes Obama’s sweeping abortion agenda. That agenda includes repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which would result in tax-funded abortion as a birth control method in the U.S., and imposition of sweeping pro-abortion mandates on private employers through health-care reform legislation.

“One effect of Obama’s order will be to divert many millions of dollars away from groups that do not promote abortion, and into the hands of those organizations that are the most aggressive in promoting abortion in developing countries. President Obama not long ago told the American people that he would support policies to reduce abortions, but today he is effectively guaranteeing more abortions by funding groups that promote abortion as a method of population control.”

Contrary to some misunderstandings, enforcement of the Mexico City Policy did not reduce the amount of money spent on the program, nor will Obama’s order increase the amount (which is $461 million in the current fiscal year). Rather, the policy affects what type of groups qualify for grants under the program. “Obama’s order will predictably result in a redirection of funds to groups such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which are ideologically committed to the doctrine that abortion on demand must be universally available as a birth control method,” Johnson said.

Although Obama’s order will result in major subsidies for organizations that promote abortion overseas, the direct use of the U.S. funds to perform abortion procedures will remain unlawful under the Helms Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act. “The Helms Amendment can be changed only by an act of Congress, but because the Obama Administration is joined at the hip with the abortion lobby, we will be watching carefully for any evidence that the Administration is failing to enforce the Helms Amendment,” Johnson said.

The details of the Mexico City Policy are spelled out in an official handbook issued by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is available on request from NRLC (in PDF format). Basically, the policy required grantees to refrain from performing abortions (except to save the life of the mother, or in cases of rape or incest), or lobbying to legalize abortion, or otherwise promoting abortion as a family-planning method. The policy explicitly allowed responding to questions about where abortions may be obtained, in countries in which abortions are legal.

The National Right to Life Committee is the nation’s largest pro-life group with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide. National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

For more information: Derrick Jones, (202) 626-8825; mediarelations@nrlc.org

Below are policies favored by the Obama Administration dealing with abortion and embryonic stem cell research, taken from the new White House website. To contact President Obama and the White House on this and other matters, go to: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/.

I apologize for the mistake. Thank you. — Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth
____________________________________________

From the White House website:

Supporting Stem Cell Research: President Obama and Vice President Biden believe that we owe it to the American public to explore the potential of stem cells to treat the millions of people suffering from debilitating and life-threatening diseases. Obama is a co-sponsor of the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007, which will allow research of human embryonic stem cells derived from embryos donated (with consent) from in vitro fertilization clinics. These embryos must be deemed in excess and created based solely for the purpose of fertility treatment.

Reproductive Choice: Supports a Woman’s Right to Choose: President Obama understands that abortion is a divisive issue, and respects those who disagree with him. However, he has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority in his administration. He opposes any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in that case.

Preventing Unintended Pregnancy:  President Obama was an original co-sponsor of legislation to expand access to contraception, health information, and preventive services to help reduce unintended pregnancies. Introduced in January 2007, the Prevention First Act will increase funding for family planning and comprehensive sex education that teaches both abstinence and safe sex methods. The Act will also end insurance discrimination against contraception, improve awareness about emergency contraception, and provide compassionate assistance to rape victims.

Joe Solmonese (left) went from helping to elect pro-abortion-on-demand Democrats at EMILY’s List to advancing the pro-homosexuality/ -transsexuality agenda as president of the Human Rights Campaign. The twin evils of homosexuality and abortion share a common foundation: the elevation of self over transcendent truth and God’s revealed will for men and women. Homosexual activists have been in the forefront of “defending” abortion centers against pro-lifers whose aim is merely to save innocent babies from destruction and persuade women NOT to make a decision that will haunt them the rest of their lives. Below is a photo of a fetus’ feet at 10 weeks.

Folks, the issues of defending life and sexual morality are joined at the hip: each of the evil movements they oppose — the abortion and homosexuality lobbies — elevates mankind’s selfish desires over God’s will. Is it any wonder that the two greatest sin lobbies of today have as their sworn enemies the preservation of life and natural marriage and the God-ordained family? And this is not just theoretical: front-line, pro-life veterans such as Joe Scheidler tell me that over the years homosexual activists have been in the forefront of defending abortion “clinics” (killing centers) — to block the life-saving efforts of people trying to witness the truth about life to pregnant girls and women going into the death-centers to abort their own children.

Curiously, homosexual groups like Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force have incorporated abortion-related advocacy in their agendas. In fact, HRC’s president, Joe Solmonese, is the former CEO of EMILY’s List, described by Wikipedia as “one of the nation’s prominent pro-choice Democratic political action committees.” After helping to advance abortion, homosexuality and gender confusion, I don’t know what’s next on Joe’s career path — perhaps Chairman of the Board for a major porn distribution company?

The life issue is close to my heart, as my younger brother, Jimmy, has Down syndrome –placing him in a group of people who are singled out for extinction in the womb by doctors because they are, well, not perfect. Thankfully, my mother never even considered the prenatal test that could have been the prelude to an abortion, and Jimmy has blessed the lives of me and my extended family, and many others, for decades.

Below is a note from Mark Harrington, executive director of Center for Bioethical Reform (CBR) Midwest. one of the many pro-life heroes in America who works tirelessly and bravely to speak up for the unborn — who cannot speak for the themselves against the violence of abortion. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

P.S. President Obam[a is reportedly preparing to sign a pro-abortion Executive Order that overturns a 1984 pro-life policy implemented by President Ronald Reagan, thus allowing U.S. taxpayer dollars to be used to provide and promote abortions oversees. [We mistakenly reported that he was signing the order today, January 22; he did not.] I find this hard to reconcile with Obama’s campaign pledge to reduce the number of abortions. Also, Obama has promised that he would sign the radical “Freedom of Choice Act,” which would codify the wicked “Roe” decision and eviscerate pro-life reform laws across the nation.

_______________________________

CBR Midwest writes:

On Roe Anniversary: Think Abe Lincoln

Columbus, OH – January 22, 2009 – Today, America remembers the inestimable loss of unborn human life on this 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision of Roe v. Wade. Many pro-life advocates are in despair that we have not succeeded in protecting the pre-born. There is much to grieve today; however, this is also a time of hope.

Today, all across America citizens are raising their voice like a trumpet. At state houses, at our nation’s capitol, on the streets, and in our churches men and women who believe in the God given principle of the sanctity of human life gather together to make a difference for the defenseless.

The truth is, after thirty long years, “we have not grown weary in doing good.” The fact is we will never give up as long as babies are dying.

Many believe the battle is lost. It would serve us well to read the words of another great social reformer Abraham Lincoln who wrote in July of 1858:

“I have not allowed myself to forget that the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain was agitated a hundred years before it was final success. Remembering these things I cannot but regard it as possible that the higher object of this contest may not be completely attained within the term of my natural life. But I cannot doubt either that it will come in due time.  Even in this view, I am proud, in my passing speck of time, to contribute my humble mite to that glorious consummation, which in my poor eyes may not last to see.”

Legal protection for the pre-born will come. Press on!

CLICK HERE TO HELP CBR MIDWEST CONTINUE THE BATTLE

For more information contact Mark Harrington at  614-759-5195  or mark@cbrinfo.org
Mark Harrington is the Executive Director of CBR Midwest, and President of Pro-Life Institute.

Who could not have been moved by FOX News commentator Juan Williams (left) tearing up as he described how he never thought he would see this day when a fellow African American would rise to the highest office in the land? President Obama is a testimony to America as a land of freedom and opportunity, but he is wrong to oppose pro-life laws restricting abortion and to equate his radical pro-homosexual agenda — already posted on the White House website — with genuine “civil rights.” 

By Peter LaBarbera

Today we get back to dealing with policy but yesterday we celebrated America. Our differences with President Barack Obama are significant [read AFTAH Board Member Matt Barber's statement on Obama's newly published, radical "LGBT" agenda HERE]– and many of the claims being made about him are ridiculous, such as when one TV commentator said yesterday that Obama “transcends the culture wars” — but in this moment we cherish what is good and great about the United States.

It is astonishing to behold — in a nation that once allowed the shipment of slaves from Africa, bound in shackles and shipped across the Atlantic like cargo, then sold in auctions like cattle — the induction of the first man of African ancestry as President of the United States. Who can doubt that this is truly a land of freedom and opportunity, where anyone who works hard can succeed and where goodness (in this case, the triumph over centuries of racism) can prevail through struggle and democratic reform?

We don’t walk in their shoes, so it is impossible for white people to understand the joy of Blacks in seeing history made yesterday. Who could not be moved by FOX News commentator Juan Williams tearing up as he described how he never thought he would see this day when a fellow African American would rise to the highest office in the land? It was a patriotic moment.

On Election Day 2008, I served as a Republican poll-watcher in Aurora, Illinois, and I will never forget the beaming faces of African Americans, especially older people voting for the first time. One woman who appeared to be in her late thirties or early forties excitedly inquired as to how to cast her ballot; she was a first-time voter and could barely contain her happiness and pride. Later, a black man stepped in front of the election judges and proclaimed: “I’m here to vote for BARACK OBAMA!” For a moment ideology went out the window and my heart was warmed by these citizens of color seeing their American dream fulfilled in a way they never thought possible.

Most of us have seen racism in action and many have also experienced it. Yes, racism is a two-way street, but whites who are occasionally treated rudely or otherwise mistreated by Blacks cannot compare that to the history of institutional oppression that Blacks have had to overcome in America. (That’s no excuse of black racism.) In college, one of my roommates, who is white, fell in love with a beautiful African-American girl. On his wedding day, his best man boycotted the ceremony because of her skin color. Today, my college buddy and his wife have a wonderful family — and they would reject the notion that somehow their interracial marriage should in any way be compared to or used to rationalize homosexual “marriage.”

Are we like past racists?

This brings me to the argument — or we should say a slander — put forth by the Social Left that opponents of homosexual agenda (i.e., the “Religious Right”) are the “racists” of today — as if pro-family advocates would be defending Jim Crow in an another era. (Occasionally in moments of weakness and doubt, some on our side buy into this nonsense.) One liberal publisher of a magazine that purports to promote corporate “diversity” even equated this writer with a 19th Century preacher who used the Bible to justify slavery. This is a calumny against people of faith, including African Americans, who favor the natural, created moral order — based upon the complementarity of the sexes.

We’ve said it many times and will keep on saying it: homosexual behavior — changeable, sinful and unhealthy — has nothing whatsoever to do with race. Racial/ethnic diversity is good; sexual “diversity” is wrong when it attempts to legitimize unnatural sex and sex outside of marriage. If the race-homosexuality (or racist-”homophobe”) analogy were correct, how does one explain my great satisfaction in that portion of Obama’s ascendancy that thrusts a spear into the heart of racism? And I am not alone; in my 20-plus years as a conservative activist, I have only rarely met a fellow conservative or Christian (or religious person) for whom race — rather than ideology or policy — is a deciding factor in assessing politicians. In fact, if anything, most pro-family friends I know are eager to support Black conservatives.

As a kid growing up in mostly white middle-class suburbs of Chicago and then Detroit, I came to hate racism — due partly to being educated on slavery, Jim Crow, and the civil rights movement but also due to a type of “liberal white guilt.” By that I mean the part of me that cheers racial progress and roots for the underdog. I became, like many educated whites, a bit of a bleeding heart on race. One of our family’s favorite movies is “Remember the Titans,” starring Denzel Washington, which uses football to teach about racial harmony. It’s embellished history, but I love it. There is a terrific scene where the two defensive stars in a forcibly integrated Virginia school — one black, one white — finally put their racist attitudes aside and gel as a defensive unit. Ultimately, they become close, lifelong friends. In another scene, Washington, playing the black coach, lectures his white assistant coach for coddling the black players but not the white ones. Thus, even this movie makes the point that true equality will come only when Blacks do not receive special treatment but are treated like everybody else.

We’re probably not even close to living in an America where race doesn’t matter. Surely race affected the liberal media’s coddling of Obama, but much of their love affair with the Obama derives from his liberal agenda. (His “coolness” helped, too.) The question in my mind is: when will the media and liberals get over their own biases and bigotry and give black Christian conservatives a fair shake? Can you imagine a Republican black conservative candidate for president getting the kid glove treatment from media that Obama received? Remember how the media savaged Clarence Thomas?

Homosexuals grab the “civil rights” mantle

The American maturation on race — e.g., the growing acceptance of interracial couples — is a good thing. So it’s no surprise that homosexual activists would seek to grab the “civil rights” mantle for themselves. But there is a key difference between their cause and the genuine civil rights movement: the latter strove against a sin: racism; the former promotes sin — i.e., the acceptance of homo-sexual behavior (which God calls “detestable”) — and radically redefining marriage and family.

But what about “gays”? Don’t they experience discrimination? The problem arises when homosexual activists falsely claim that — like skin color — their sexual desires are unchangeable and the basis for government-backed rights. The whole concept of “sexual orientation,” which seeks to take responsibility away from people for their sinful choice to embrace homosexual practice, violates Scripture, natural law, and thousands of years of Judeo-Christian history. And now we are facing a battle between “gay rights” and the rest of Americans’ freedom of religion, which includes the right to act on one’s belief that homosexual behavior is wrong.

It’s so uncool to say so in the Age of Obama, but it’s still true: a healthy society “discriminates” against homosexuality and other destructive sins; a deteriorating culture promotes sin. Thankfully, thousands of men and women have successfully abandoned the homosexual lifestyle, giving true hope to men and women struggling with this sexual sin.

Egalitarian “gay” activists demand that their (relationships be treated exactly like normal marriages. Give us “marriage equality!” they cry. Problem is, there is no “equality” between the natural family and traditional marriage — and the homosexual variety, which is missing one of the sexes. Homosexual sex, especially between men, is much riskier than normal sex — so much so that our federal government bans blood donations from men who’ve engaged in gay sodomy — and even women who have had sex with a ‘man who has had sex with a man.’ To pretend that homosexuality is equivalent to civil rights in the law only encourages men and women to embrace this destructive and immoral lifestyles. To do so in our schools only leads impressionable children into immoral and risky behaviors.

Thus, it is entirely consistent from a moral, justice and faith perspective to both oppose racial injustice and support the primacy in law and culture of the natural, mother-father family and God-ordained marriage.

It is not consistent with Christianity, however, to equate racism with “homophobia,” as the Left in its arrogance and ignorance now does as a matter of faith (in much the same way that it marches in lockstep for unrestricted killing of unborn babies abortion-on-demand). That activst term “homophobe” has become a catch-all to demonize anyone who opposes the homosexual political and cultural agenda — including African Americans, who surveys and election results show have a greater moral opposition to homosexuality and “gay marriage” than whites.

So I am happy that Barack Obama shattered the presidential color barrier and I will be praying for him. But in the spirit of true racial equality I am going to fight his no-hope campaign to repeal pro-life laws restricting abortion and his administration’s attempt to enact the homosexual lobby’s bogus “civil rights” agenda — in exactly the same way I would if Obama were a white liberal.

Obama hagiography courtesy of the left-leaning Rolling Stone. It seems that many people who voted for Obama had no idea of his radical positions on abortion and “gay marriage.” Click on image to enlarge.

The following column first appeared on the Republicans For Family Values website and ran toward the end of the campaign. It seems as if the Obama camp did an effective job of hiding their candidate’s radical social agenda. Since Obama’s election victory, I have conducted an informal survey by asking several people who voted for the Democrat if they knew of his position on two critical “culture war” issues: his call to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and his pledge to sign the pro-abortion “Freedom of Choice Act.” Not one Obama voter I have spoken with (about 10) had any clue of either stance, and most were surprised to learn of both. (Try this experiment on your friends and coworkers.) This does not necessarily mean that they would have voted against Obama had they known, but it does suggest that Obama can claim no popular mandate from the election to press forward on these radical goals. Perhaps I overstated the effect (as some AFTAH friends suggested), but here’s a piece I wrote suggesting that John McCain could have fared better by not downplaying these social issues: “McCain Lost because He Failed to Expose Obama’s Far Left Record on Abortion and Homosexual ‘Marriage.’” — Peter LaBarbera

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Obama is For ‘Gay Marriage’ even as He’s Against it

By Peter LaBarbera

As a social conservative, one of the most troubling aspects of [the recent] presidential campaign has been the media’s (and John McCain’s) failure to flesh out Barack Obama’s “audacious” doublespeak on the issue of same-sex “marriage.”

Here’s the question Obama was lucky enough to have never been asked in this campaign: What does it mean to say you support traditional marriage (one man, one woman) – when you do so much to advance the pro-“gay marriage” cause, including denouncing state marriage-protection amendments like Prop 8 in California as “discriminatory and divisive”?

Did you know that Obama has promised homosexual activists that he will work to fully repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act? DOMA was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996 and protects states from being forced to recognize out-of-state “gay marriages.” It was passed overwhelmingly by the Senate, 85-14, with Sen. Biden joining 28 other Democrats in voting yes. How liberal is Obama’s anti-DOMA scheme? Hillary Clinton, a trusted gay ally, pledged to repeal only part of DOMA.

Neither McCain nor Gov. Palin has made an issue of Obama’s extreme anti-DOMA sop to the homosexual crowd even though they had a clear opening. (One 2007 Quinnipiac poll revealed that a homosexual group’s endorsement of a candidate would be a net electoral loser among voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.) The result is that Obama’s DOMA Destruction Plan never surfaced in the debates and barely in the major media.

The Democratic spin on marriage has fooled a lot of voters. If you watched the presidential debates, including the Saddleback Church event with Pastor Rick Warren, you might have concluded that Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, pretty much agree with McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin on same-sex “marriage.”

That is a precisely what the savvy strategists at the Obama/Biden campaign want you to think, as they strive to hide their candidates’ radical pro-gay agenda and portray themselves as reasonable moderates on this wedge issue. Truth is, the gulf between the tickets is the difference between saying you support marriage and actually doing something to protect it – and NOT favoring policies like repealing DOMA that are completely in line with the homosexual activists’ goal of radically redefining this sacred institution.

McCain is a strong DOMA supporter who will embrace a Federal Marriage Amendment if he sees activist judges forcing “gay marriage” on the states. Obama, on the other hand, went from supporting DOMA in 2004 to calling it “abhorrent” as part of his radical promise to homosexual groups to overturn it. Obama is setting the stage for nationalizing “same-sex “marriage” (perhaps under the guise of “civil unions”), while reporters dutifully provide him cover by repeating his alleged opposition to same.

If only one major media reporter would ask Sen. Obama: how can you say you support traditional marriage and yet “abhor” a popular law (DOMA) that helps states to preserve it? Alas, we mere mortals have to choose sides – and most politicians flip and then flop — but apparently Obama, The One, is allowed to embrace both sides of an issue simultaneously and get away with it.

Consider the following Obama policies and rhetoric and ask yourself if this sounds like a man who supports traditional marriage:

• Obama congratulated homosexual activists for “getting married” at a San Francisco Democratic gay event;
• Though Obama says he “personally” opposes “gay marriage,” he creates a distinction without a difference by supporting federal “civil unions.” Obama told the nation’s leading homoseuxal lobby group: “I believe civil unions should include the same legal rights that accompany a marriage license.” Interestingly, this stance has led Obama to support a bill to allow homosexual partners to immigrate to the United States just like married spouses;
• Obama promises gay activists that he will use the bully pulpit to advocate for homosexual adoption of children. Thus Americans may have to endure the absurd spectacle of a President Obama using the prestige of the White House to defend placing children in homes that are motherless or fatherless by design;
• Obama said he “respects” the California supreme court’s 4-3 decision earlier this year forcing “gay marriage” on that state, even though it wiped out a previous statewide ballot vote by Californians to preserve marriage as between a man and a woman;
• Obama denounced the Federal Marriage Amendment as a mere “political ploy”;
• Obama dismisses a key passage in the New Testament Book of Romans and distorts Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount to justify his pro-homosexuality agenda.

Considering the above, is it asking too much of the media to stop repeating the distortion that Obama and Biden support traditional marriage?

Appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres show, Sen. Biden eagerly told Ellen, a “gay-marriage” activist, that if he were a California voter he would vote “no” on Prop 8 in California. How strange, since Prop 8 does nothing but reinstate the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. (It does not affect same-sex “domestic partners,” who already receive the same benefits as married couples under California law.) Of course, earlier, in the vice-presidential debate, Biden claimed to oppose gay “marriage” — creating the false impression that he and Palin essentially agree on the same-sex-”marriage” question.

John McCain blew it by not calling out his opponents on their “gay marriage” deception and their plans to do in DOMA. All he needed to say was that the Illinois Senator doesn’t have the guts to tell the truth — that Obama’s “personal” opposition to “gay marriage” is meaningless because his pro-gay pledges would greatly advance the spread of homosexual “marriage” across the land. With friends like Obama and Biden, McCain could have said, the beleaguered institution of marriage really doesn’t need enemies.
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Peter LaBarbera is founder and president of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality and Republicans For Family Values (www.rffv.org).

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV)

Modern-day liberals – or “progressives” as they more discreetly prefer – labor under an awkward misconception; namely, that there is anything remotely “progressive” about the fundamental canons of their blind, secular-humanist faith. In fact, today’s liberalism is largely a sanitized retread of an antiquated mythology – one that significantly predates the only truly progressive movement: biblical Christianity.

While visiting the Rivermont Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Va., a few weeks back, I heard a troubling, albeit thought-provoking, sermon. Pastor John Mabray addressed the ancient Canaanite practice of Baal worship and, though he didn’t reveal it by name, connected the dots to its present-day progeny: liberalism. Baal, the half-bull, half-man god of fertility, was the focal point of pagan idolatry in Semitic Israel until God revealed His monotheistic nature to Judaism’s forebears.

In his sermon, Pastor Mabray illustrated that, although they’ve now assumed a more contemporary flair, the fundamentals of Baal worship remain alive and well today. The principal pillars of Baalism were child sacrifice, sexual immorality (both heterosexual and homosexual) and pantheism (reverence of creation over the Creator).

Ritualistic Baal worship, in sum, looked a little like this: Adults would gather around the altar of Baal. Infants would then be burned alive as a sacrificial offering to the deity. Amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh, congregants – men and women alike – would engage in bisexual orgies. The ritual of convenience was intended to produce economic prosperity by prompting Baal to bring rain for the fertility of “mother earth.”

The natural consequences of such behavior – pregnancy and childbirth – and the associated financial burdens of “unplanned parenthood” were easily offset. One could either choose to engage in homosexual conduct or – with child sacrifice available on demand – could simply take part in another fertility ceremony to “terminate” the unwanted child.

Modern liberalism deviates little from its ancient predecessor. While its macabre rituals have been sanitized with flowery and euphemistic terms of art, its core tenets and practices remain eerily similar. The worship of “fertility” has been replaced with worship of “reproductive freedom” or “choice.” Child sacrifice via burnt offering has been updated, ever so slightly, to become child sacrifice by way of abortion. The ritualistic promotion, practice and celebration of both heterosexual and homosexual immorality and promiscuity have been carefully whitewashed – yet wholeheartedly embraced – by the cults of radical feminism, militant “gay rights” and “comprehensive sex education.” And, the pantheistic worship of “mother earth” has been substituted – in name only – for radical environmentalism.

Quasi-christianity

But it’s not just self-styled “progressives” or secular humanists who have adopted the fundamental pillars of Baalism. In these postmodern times, we’ve also been graced, regrettably, by the advent of counter-biblical “emergent Christianity” or “quasi-Christianity,” as I prefer to call it.

This is merely liberalism all dolled up and gratuitously stamped “Christian.” It’s a way for left-wing ideologues to have their “religion” cake and eat it too. Under the guise of “social justice,” its adherents often support – or at least rationalize – the same pro-homosexual, pro-abortion and radical environmental policies pushed by the modern-day Baal worshiper.

Though the “Christian left” represent what is arguably a negligible minority within larger Christianity, the liberal media have, nonetheless, embraced their cause and seized upon their popularity among elites as evidence that the so-called “Christian right” (read: biblical Christianity) is losing influence – that Christianity is, somehow, “catching up with the times.”

Because emergent Christianity fails the authenticity test whenever subjected to even the most perfunctory biblical scrutiny, I suspect it will eventually go – for the most part – the way of the pet rock or the Macarena. But this does not absolve leaders within the evangelical community from a duty to call leaders of this counter-biblical revolution on their heresy. It’s not a matter of right versus left; it’s a matter of right versus wrong – of biblical versus non-biblical.

Nonetheless, the aforementioned pillars of postmodern Baalism – abortion, sexual relativism and radical environmentalism – will almost certainly make rapid headway over the next four to eight years, with or without help from the Christian left. The gods of liberalism have a new high priest in Barack Obama, and enjoy many devout followers in the Democratic-controlled Congress, liberal media and halls of academia.

Both Obama’s social agenda and that of the 111th Congress are rife with unfettered pro-abortion, freedom-chilling, pro-homosexual and power-grabbing environmentalist objectives. The same kind of “hope, action and change,” I suppose, that was swallowed up by the Baalist Canaanites of old.

So, today’s liberalism is really just a very old book with a shiny new cover. A philosophy rooted in ancient pagan traditions, of which there is naught to be proud.

There’s “nothing new under the sun,” indeed.

Matt Barber is an attorney concentrating in const itutional law. He serves as Director of Cultural Affairs with both Liberty Counsel and Liberty Alliance Action. He is also a Board Member with Americans For Truth. Send comments to Matt at jmattbarber@comcast.net.