Star Parker, founder and president of CURE, says legalizing homosexual "marriage" is like offering a glass of wine to a drunk.

Folks, I wish more conservative leaders: a) understood the truth about government-celebrated homosexuality as Star Parker does; b) had the guts to take a strong public stand on the issue like the column below. We encourage you to check out Star’s organization, CURE (Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education) at www.urbancure.org. — Peter LaBarbera

Parker writes (emphasis and web links added):

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Sodom in the nation’s capital

There is a centrality of the traditional family to the American dream of opportunity and a centrality of family breakdown to poverty

At a time when our country is sick, it shouldn’t surprise that one our sickest places is our nation’s capital.

The poverty rate of Washington, D.C., almost 20 percent, is one of the highest in the nation. Its child poverty rate is the nation’s highest..

D.C.’s public school system, with a graduation rate of less than 50 percent, is one of the worst in the country.

According to D.C.’s HIV/AIDS office, three percent of the local population has HIV or AIDS. The Administrator of this office notes that this HIV/AIDS incidence is “…higher than West Africa…on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya.” And the principal way that HIV is transmitted continues to be through male homosexual activity.

Amidst this dismal picture, the D.C .City Council, perhaps on the theory that serving up another glass of wine is the way to help a drunk, is scheduled to vote on December 1 to legalize same-sex “marriage” in America’s capital city.

Looking at realities in Washington, D.C. should make clear why George Washington said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

But the America that our first president had in mind was very different from the vision of our DC government officials.

George Washington’s America was one in which the point of freedom is to allow Man to rise to what he can become. To do this, the greatest challenge he faces is conquering himself. To rise above his baser instincts, to rise above the many temptations that lead him astray. And to achieve this end, as Washington said, “religion and morality are indispensible supports.”

In left-wing America, of which the D.C. government is a poster child, freedom means to indulge every instinct that the tradition and religion of George Washington would have us overcome.

Where does it lead? Well, look at D.C.

It is tempting to look at D.C.’s realities and just call this a black thing. And by and large it is.

DC is largely black — almost 60 percent. Its poverty is black poverty. Its public school system serves mostly black children. And its AIDS crisis is mostly among blacks.

But the pathologies that strike the weakest parts of our population most brutally are nonetheless pathologies of the nation.

The Brookings Institution is one of our oldest policy institutes and certainly no bastion of conservatism. But in a recently published volume, Brookings scholars Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill point out the centrality of the traditional family to the American dream of opportunity and the centrality of family breakdown to poverty.

Reporting data showing the general breakdown of the traditional American family, they say, “Some claim that anyone who is concerned about these trends is simply out of touch with modern culture; we respond that, if that be the case, then, “modern culture is out of touch with the needs of children.”

The Catholic Archdiocese of D.C. announced that legalization of same sex marriage would make it impossible to continue its relationship with the D.C. government and require termination of the social services it provides to some 68,000 of the city’s poor — including about one third of its homeless. The reaction of D.C. Council member David Catania was essentially “so what.” According to him, “their services are not indispensable.” [Editor's note: Catania is one of two open homosexual activists on the Council.]

Is Catania out of touch with the needs of D.C.’s poor?

No. He just has different priorities. More important to him, and more important to D.C.’s left-wing city council, is advancing moral relativism and the indulgences it feeds.

This is more important to them than feeding the poor or recognizing the values that would get them out of poverty.

It should concern every American as we watch our nation’s capital city transform officially into Sodom.

Star Parker is founder and president of the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C.  Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.

How can black Christians allow race and color to trump Christian principles in driving their support for a leader?

President Obama hosted a reception at the White House celebrating LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Pride month. Black Christians should take note and learn a few things about our black President.

As they say, we are what we do.

It tells us something that Mr. Obama had no time to host an event for the National Day of Prayer.

Nor did he have time to accept the invitation to convey greetings and a few remarks to the couple hundred thousand who came to Washington, as they do every January, for the March for Life.

However, the LGBT Pride event did make it onto the president’s busy schedule.

Here are parts of his remarks I think noteworthy for black Christians.

First, we now know that Mr. Obama buys into reasoning equating the homosexual political movement to the black civil rights movement: “….it’s not for me to tell you to be patient any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African Americans who were petitioning for equal rights a half century ago.” Perhaps Obama can extend some of his famous empathy to a black Christian woman, Crystal Dixon, who lost her University of Toledo job for writing a column in her local paper challenging this premise. Dixon was fired for being uppity enough to write “….I take great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are ‘civil rights victims’ …I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a black woman.”

Considering our president’s priorities, I recall a song popular during the civil rights movement: “Which Side Are You On?”

Second, Obama sees the black community as being a little slow on the uptake to grasp that homosexuality and same sex marriage are okay. There still are those, according to him, “who don’t yet fully embrace their gay brothers and sisters…” He deals with this, he said, by talking about it in front of “unlikely audiences,” such as, “in front of African American church members.”

Maybe a lot of us black folks, still readin’ our Bibles, just haven’t had enough of that Harvard learnin’.

And, third, Obama talked about HIV/AIDS but didn’t bother to mention that it’s overwhelmingly blacks that this scourge is killing.

Why would our black president discuss HIV/AIDS and not mention that although blacks represent 12 percent of our population, they account for 50 percent of HIV/AIDS cases and half of HIV related deaths? Or that the incidence of HIV/AIDS infection per every 100,000 people is 9 times higher among blacks than whites?

Of course, it would have been bad form for Obama to sour the punch bowl at the LBGT Pride month festivities by mentioning the disproportionate toll this lifestyle takes on blacks.

Blacks, of course, made the difference in getting Proposition 8 passed in California, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. They then switched over and voted for Obama.

Obama has said he opposes same sex “marriage.” Can this really be so? He said at the White House event that he’s called for Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA is the main obstacle to nationalizing legalization of same sex marriage.

Black Christians have a lot of soul searching to do. We know the pain of black history. But we also must retain clarity that these many injustices were the result of race and color trumping Christian principles.

How can black Christians do this to themselves? How can black Christians allow race and color to trump Christian principles in driving their support for a leader?

Particularly as sexually transmitted diseases kill our people, when a third of all abortions are black babies, and the only hope for future black prosperity is restoration of the black family?

Star Parker is founder and President of the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), based in Washington, DC. Telephone: 202-479-2873; www.urbancure.org. CURE is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Column distributed by Scripps Howard News Service