Help defend AFTAH against latest example of homo-fascism

Click on graphic to enlarge. Homosexual web activist website "All Out" lobbies PayPal to drop AFTAH and other pro-family groups as alleged "anti-LGBT extremists." The petition reads, "PayPal must act immediately to shut down their accounts and ban all sites that promote anti-LGBT hate."

TAKE ACTION NOW: a new homosexual web campaign is urging the internet payment company PayPal to drop AFTAH and other pro-family organizations as so-called “extremists” that “promote anti-LGBT hate.” Please help defend Americans For Truth from being dropped by PayPal in response to this anti-Christian pressure campaign.

1) Go to PayPal’s website and make a much-needed gift to AFTAH to support our work. Or do so through the AFTAH website at www.americansfortruth.com/donate/. Mail a check to AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522.

2) Write or call PayPal and urge them to STAND FOR FREEDOM and NOT give in to this intolerant pressure campaign by homosexual activists; use PayPal’s online “Comment Card” HERE, or post a note to the PayPal blog.  Or use their Contact Page HERE (note, the latter seems to favor comments by people holding a PayPal account).  Here is the Contact Page for PayPal’s parent company, e-BAY Inc.

Please THANK PayPal for initially siding with religious freedom so far [as reported HERE by the homosexual website Pink News] and not abruptly caving to All Out’s demands.  Urge them NOT to punish Christian and pro-family advocates – which could potentially alienate millions of potential PayPal customers.

3) Also, sign the LifeSiteNews petition to PayPal defending AFTAH and other pro-family targets by going here: http://www.profamilyfreedom.net/

4) Send this message to your friends and contact list to educate them on the anti-Christian and censorious nature of the homosexual movement. “Gay” activists no longer want “Tolerance”; now they want Dominance even if it means smearing pro-family people as “haters” and destroying our cherished religious freedoms.  

__________________________________________

By Peter LaBarbera

Dear AFTAH Reader,

Every day brings more evidence that the Homosexual Lobby is all about kicking pro-morality people (mostly committed Christians) who disagree with homosexual behavior OUT of the public square. More and more observers are seeing this for what it is: homo-fascism. Last week we learned of a homosexual web campaign called “All Out” that is targeting the payment service company PayPal for doing business with Americans For Truth and nine other groups — which it smears as ”extremists” who “promote anti-LGBT “hate.” Here is the wording of their All Out petition:

Read the rest of this article »

"The Stoning of Sally Kern: The Liberal Attack on Christian Conservatism -- and Why We Must Take a Stand"

This is the first of a Two-Part interview with Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern (R) [click HERE to listen]. It was pre-recorded August 31 and aired September 3, 2011. Sally Kern is Christian conservative Republican lawmaker in Oklahoma who was deluged with hate-mail and hate-calls after the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund (GLVF) published excerpts from a secretly-recorded 2008 speech she gave in which she said, among other things, that “the homosexual agenda is destroying this nation,” and that it’s a bigger threat to America than terrorism. [Listen to GLVF's SELECTIVELY EDITED video excerpting Kern's speech HERE.]

Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern

Sally talks about her new book, “The Stoning of Sally Kern,” [available from AFTAH at the discounted price of $20 including postage; send check specifying "Kern book" to: Americans For Truth, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522.] She describes the day, March 7, 2008, that changed her life forever — when thousands of hostile homosexual e-mails flooded her inbox. (Angry phone calls jammed her office phone system, and then started coming to her home.) Ironically, homosexual militants who denounced Sally’s alleged “hate” subjected her and her family to the sort of vicious attacks that most Americans could hardly conceive of — including publishing false reports that her son Jesse was a homosexual — and smearing Sally’s husband, Pastor Steve Kern, as a past member of the KKK. Sally discusses the role of her and her family’s Christian faith in sustaining them in the face of the hate-campaign, and AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera praises Kern for not backing down in the face of such evil attacks.

HOW TO LISTEN: This is an mp3 file, supported in most operating systems by Windows Media Player, Quick Time and/or I-Tunes.  Real Player is not supported and there may be difficulty when attempting to listen with it.  Left click once on the link below to play. (Please be patient, depending upon the speed of your internet connection it may take a moment or two to load.)  OR right click the link then “save target as” to download the whole show.

9-3-11, Sally Kern, Part One

Dr. Michael Brown, author of "A Queer Thing Happened to America," and one of the world's leading Jewish Christian scholars.

Here is Part One of my interview with Mike Brown [click HERE to listen], perhaps one of the most politically incorrect leaders on the planet. This was pre-recorded and aired April 23rd. Brown, the director of the Coalition of Conscience, based in Charlotte, N.C.,  is author of “A Queer Thing Happened to America,” a new book about the amazing rise in power of organized homosexuality in the United States. Brown, as a Jewish man who believes in Jesus Christ, is also one of the world’s leading authorities on Jewish Christianity. He has engaged in numerous debates with rabbis about the divinity of Jesus, and authored many books on the subject. In this first segment of our in-depth interview, Brown discusses how he came to faith in Jesus Christ after rebelling as a teenager and getting into very heavy drug use. It is a fascinating testimony and a witness to the awesome, redemptive power of God. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

HOW TO LISTEN: This is an mp3 file, supported in most operating systems by Windows Media Player, Quick Time and/or I-Tunes.  Do Not Use Real Player.  It is not supported and there may be difficulty when attempting to listen with it.  Left click once on the link below to play.  (Please be patient, depending upon the speed of your internet connection it may take a moment or two to load.)  OR right click the link then “save target as” to download the whole show. 

4-23-11, Michael Brown

Politically correct media abets ‘homo-fascist’ drive to squelch Christians’ voice

Apple Inc. has dropped two pro-family "apps" from its iPhone following protest campaigns by homosexual activists.

TAKE ACTION: Contact Apple Inc regarding its open hostility to faith-based customers defending traditional morality and its capitulation to homosexual activists. Call 408-996-1010.

Apple Inc.
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
408-996-1010

By Peter LaBarbera

On Wednesday, Apple Inc. succumbed to a web-based homosexual lobbying blitz demanding that it drop an “app” for the ex-”gay” ministry Exodus International from its iPhone. This capitulation is only the latest to reward a creeping ’homo-fascism’ that is spreading across America and the world — and which is integral to the wider LGBT activist strategy of demonizing and marginalizing religious people opposed to homosexuality. We don’t use this term lightly — the Homosexual Lobby’s hardball strategy is built on lies, intimidation and even bullying of well-meaning, compassionate Christians and religious people who simply disagree with the practice of homosexuality.

Incredibly, a tiny Sexual Sin Lobby–  purporting to represent perhaps 1-2 percent (or less) of any given population — presumes to dictate to the rest of us what is and is not acceptable speech, ideas, and conduct with regard to homosexuality and same-sex “marriage.” (They even claim to be the arbiter of what is ”love” and “hate.”) The failure of the national media — stuck in “gays-as-victims” mode – to question the growing pro-LGBT intolerance, demonization, and oppression of adherents to Judeo-Christian  moral teachings, itself contributes greatly to the persecution of people of faith.

Read the rest of this article »

Biased, leftist SPLC has never reported hateful homosexual groups like ACT UP

The SPLC's Mark Potok oversees the organization's de facto "campaign of defamation" painting groups like AFTAH that oppose homosexuality as "hate groups." Potok admits that the SPLC has never identified a single "gay" group as hateful even though militant homosexual organizations like ACT UP and Bash Back! have targeted churches with vicious attacks.

TAKE ACTION: Contact the Senate Judiciary Committee (members listed HERE; Senate Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121) — and the House Committee on Homeland Security (202-226-2616; members listed HERE; House Switchboard: 202-225-3121) and urge them to investigate the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) working relationship with the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. The leftist SPLC is now slandering conservative, Christian and Tea Party groups by mislabeling them as “hate groups” on a par with genuine, fringe hate groups like the KKK.  American taxpayers should insist that the federal government have no role in legitimizing the SPLC, which has politicized “hate” and turned it into a fund-raising business to demonize conservatives – including mainstream pro-family groups that oppose homosexual activism. To read an in-depth report exposing the SPLC’s unethical practices, go HERE.

_______________________________________________

Below is a useful article by Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute — on the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) preposterous smear-job against mainstream pro-family groups (including AFTAH, IFI, Family Research Council, and AFA) as “hate groups” because we oppose homosexuality and LGBT (“gay”) activism. Technically, the SPLC would argue that AFTAH and the other groups opposed homosexuality in the wrong way, but let’s be honest: ideologically speaking, the SPLC is so deeply committed to pro-”gay” advocacy that it considers suspect any organization that opposes pro-LGBT activism. Predictably, the left-wing, pro-homosexual echo chamber is using the SPLC’s “findings” to discredit pro-family groups.

Indicative of the SPLC”s tendentious and polemical “hate reporting” is its description of this writer as a “longtime gay-basher.” Using such semantics, that would make SPLC staffers like Mark Potok “longtime Christian bashers.” To read an excellent set of reports on the SPLC’s escalating “campaign of defamation” against conservatives and traditionalists, read this special Social Contract Journal edition.

As Barb Anderson of the (potential future “hate” group?) Minnesota Family Council and I discussed in Part One of our AFTAH Radio Hour interview [click HERE to listen], the SPLC’s cynical “hate” dragnet is growing so wide that we have almost reached the point where if a pro-family group is NOT INCLUDED on the SPLC’s “hate” list, it must be slacking off in resisting the destructive homosexual agenda. I write “almost” because some of our good friends such as Liberty Counsel and Campaign for California Families have not yet officially been designated “haters”; their time will come. Of course, the truth is, nobody “hates” like the American Left — especially militant homosexual activists.

I like Laurie’s reference to the “Morality Police”; how ironic that the Left has become the mirror of what it hates:  the societal “moral” scold. Remember that the dogmatists on the Left once screamed against the “Religious Right”: “Don’t impose your morality on the rest of us!” Now it’s the pro-”queer” Left that works diligently to “impose its immorality” on America using every dirty tactic ever conceived by Saul Alinsky (e.g., “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it”; see this piece). I half expect Potok or SPLC co-founder Morris Dees to show up in Wheeling, West Virginia, claiming to “have in my hand the names of 57 newly designated anti-gay hate groups….”

Read the rest of this article »

The following is a reprint of an editorial in The Daily Targum, the student newspaper for Rutgers University (and one of the longest-operating student newspapers in the country). Clearly, those (non-homosexual-activists) closest to the scene recognize that “gay” groups are cynically exploiting this tragedy — even before all the facts are in – to advance their political and cultural agenda. Per the usual, it’s all about the Homosexual Lobby (see this shockingly arrogant release redefining morality by the homosexual lobby Human Rights Campaign). Even homosexual- and “nonmonogamy” advocate Dan (‘Three-Way”) Savage [his blog HERE] is in on the act. (God help us if the twisted, Christian-hating Savage becomes a role model for America’s youth.) Stay tuned as we address Exodus International’s stunning and incredibly ill-timed capitulation on the Day of Truth. – Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

_________________________________

Media exploits University tragedy

Editorial
By The Daily Targum
Published: Tuesday, October 5, 2010

The death of University student Tyler Clementi might have been properly mourned if it were not for the massive rallies and aggressive news coverage that altered the nature of the situation. The truth is that an 18-year-old boy killed himself – he was a student just like the rest of us, someone just trying to receive an education. Yet people’s relentless agendas took his death and turned it into a cause based on false pretenses.

Read the rest of this article »

The Gay Liberation Network's Bob Schwartz celebrated U. of Illinois' firing of Catholic professor Kenneth Howell (above) -- strange behavior for a group that crusades against "discrimination."

The homosexual hate group Gay Liberation Network (GLN) — whose co-leader Bob Schwartz celebrated the University of Illinois’ recent firing of Catholic professor Kenneth Howell — has announced that it will protest the AFTAH Truth Academy, which will be held Aug. 5-7 at the Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

GLN is a Marxist-oriented street protest group that attempts to equate Judeo-Christian opposition to homosexuality with “hate” — and which uses its protests to intimidate businesses from hosting pro-family events. For its extreme anti–Christian bigotry and hateful rhetoric — including vicious ad hominem attacks against pro-family critics (e.g., calling AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera “Satan’s Lover”)  – we label GLN a homosexual hate organization.

GLN, formerly the Chicago Anti-Bashing Network, once smeared the historic Moody Church in Chicago as a “House of Hate” because Moody’s revered pastor, Erwin Lutzer, wrote a book critical of “same-sex marriage.” GLN has repeatedly pilloried Chicago’s Catholic leaker Cardinal Francis George with similar accusations because George defends Catholic teachings on sex and marriage.

Beyond that, Schwartz once told LaBarbera — who was protesting a “gay youth” rally in downtown Chicago as then-executive director of Illinois Family Institute – that if it weren’t for the police standing nearby, he would push him into the busy street. (Schwartz has never denied making this comment after it was reported by IFI.) LaBarbera maintains that had such a veiled violent threat been made against a homosexual by a conservative or Christian, it could have been the basis for a criminal charge under Chicago’s ”hate crime” law.

Read the rest of this article »

Dr. Kenneth Howell, Adjunct Associate Professor of Religion, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, was fired after a liberal student complained about an e-mail he sent to his students explaining Natural Moral Law.

By Peter LaBarbera

The University of Illinois has fired Dr. Kenneth Howell, a Catholic adjunct religion professor who was doing his job of teaching a class on Catholicism — after a liberal student complained to the university about an e-mail Howell sent to his students explaining Natural Moral Law. (The professor’s instructive e-mail and the student’s complaint e-mail are reproduced below.)

TAKE ACTION: Contact Michael Hogan, the University of Illinois’s new president, and urge him to reinstate Prof. Howell immediately: phone: (217) 333-6400; Fax: (217) 333-5733. Tell President Hogan that Howell’s firing is a nationwide advertisement that the University of Illinois is bigoted toward and intolerant of people of faith — giving lie to U-I’s mission statement to be “inclusive” and to ”treat each other with dignity and respect.” Board of Trustees: contact the U. of Illinois Bd. of Trustees at 217-333-1920 or write: UIBOT@uillinois.edu.]

The U. of Illinois’ “religion department’s website says Howell was recognized for excellent teaching in the spring and fall semesters of 2008 and 2009,” the Champaign News-Gazette reports.

Howell’s terminatioin draws attention to the emerging, cold reality of modern, politically correct America: in cosmopolitan areas and certainly in academia, you are more likely to be terminated, punished or persecuted on the job for opposing homosexuality than for “being gay.”

Here we are — on the verge, with our Democrat-controlled Congress, of creating federal employment “rights” based on homosexuality (and transgenderism), and people are being fired merely for expressing their sincere religious beliefs — which, in Howell’s case, was his job. Even as homosexual activists falsely claim that thousands of homosexuals face job losses because of “who they are,” the number of anti-Christian firings is piling up: remember the Allstate firing of Matt Barber? Crystal Dixon?

As you can see from below, Dr. Howell is a clear thinker who was doing what he was paid to do – teaching Catholic morality to his students. The complaint e-mail that got him terminated dismissses Howell’s e-mail as “absurd…It sickens me to know that hard-working Illinoisans are funding the salary of a man who does nothing but try to indoctrinate students and perpetuate stereotypes.”

If you want to know about the homo-fascist impulse that dominates so many institutions of “higher learning” (hah!) today, here are the key paragraphs from the News-Gazette story:

In a series of e-mail exchanges between [Robert McKim, head of the U-I religion department] and UI administrators about how to proceed regarding Howell’s teaching and his appointment as an adjunct professor, McKim states he will send a note to Howell’s students and others who were forwarded his e-mail to students, “disassociating our department, College, and university from the view expressed therein.”

In another e-mail, Ann Mester, associate dean for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, wrote that she believes “the e-mails sent by Dr. Howell violate university standards of inclusivity, which would then entitle us to have him discontinue his teaching arrangement with us.”

Inclusivity? What about U. of Illinois’ “inclusion” of traditional Catholic students and students who adhere to historic Judeo-Christian morality? ‘Diversity” has become a code-word for punishing those who dissent from liberal, pro-homosexuality groupthink. Please read the excellent e-letter below on Natural Moral Law by Prof. Howell. And  take action to urge the University of Illinois to correct this injustice. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

______________________________________________

Dr. Kenneth Howell’s Teaching E-mail to Students:

The following is the e-mail to students that U. of Illinois religion professor Ken Howell sent to his students, as reported by the Champaign News-Gazette:

From: Kenneth J. Howell

Date: Tue, May 4, 2010 at 9:45 PM

Subject: Utilitarianism and Sexuality (for those in 447 FYI)

Dear Students:

Since there is a question on the final exam about utilitarianism (see the review sheet), I thought I would help with an example. I realized after my lectures on moral theory that even though I talked about the substance of utilitarianism, I did not identify it as such and so you may not have been able to see it.

It turns out that our discussion of homosexuality brings up the issue of utilitarianism. In class, our discussion of the morality of homosexual acts was very incomplete because any moral issue about which people disagree ALWAYS raises a more fundamental issue about criteria. In other words, by what criteria should we judge whether a given act is right or wrong?

Before looking at the issue of criteria, however, we have to remind ourselves of the ever-present tendency in all of us to judge morality by emotion. The most frequent reason I hear people supporting same-sex marriage is that they know some gay couples or individuals. Empathy is a noble human quality but right or wrong does not depend on who is doing the action or on how I feel about those people, just as judging an action wrong should not depend on disliking someone. This might seem obvious to a right thinking person but I have encountered many well-educated people who do not (or cannot?) make the distinction between persons and acts when engaging moral reasoning. I encourage you to read the final essay editorial I sent earlier to reflect on this. In short, to judge an action wrong is not to condemn a person. A person and his/her acts can be distinguished for the purposes of morality.

So, then, by what criterion should we judge whether sexual acts are right or wrong? This is where utilitarianism comes in. Utilitarianism in the popular sense is fundamentally a moral theory that judges right or wrong by its practical outcomes. It is somewhat akin to a cost/benefit analysis. So, when a woman is deciding whether it’s right to have an abortion, the utilitarian says it’s right or wrong based on what the best outcome is. Similarly, a man who is trying to decide whether he should cheat on his wife, if he is a utilitarian, will weigh the various consequences. If the cheating side of the ledger is better, he will conclude that it’s okay to cheat. If the faithful side is better, he will refrain from cheating.

I think it’s fair to say that many, maybe most Americans employ some type of utilitarianism in their moral decision making. But there are at least two problems. One is that to judge the best outcome can be very subjective. What may be judged good for the pregnant woman may not be good for the baby. What may be judged good for the about-to-cheat-husband may not good for his wife or his children. This problem of subjectivity is inherent in utilitarianism for a second reason. Utilitarianism counsels that moral decisions should NOT be based on the inherent meaning of acts. Acts are only good or bad relative to outcomes. The natural law theory that I expounded in class assumes that human acts have an inherent meaning (remember my fist vs. extended hand of friendship example).

One of the most common applications of utilitarianism to sexual morality is the criterion of mutual consent. It is said that any sexual act is okay if the two or more people involved agree. Now no one can (or should) deny that for a sexual act to be moral there must be consent. Certainly, this is one reason why rape is morally wrong. But the question is whether this is enough.

If two men consent to engage in sexual acts, according to utilitarianism, such an act would be morally okay. But notice too that if a ten year old agrees to a sexual act with a 40 year old, such an act would also be moral if even it is illegal under the current law. Notice too that our concern is with morality, not law. So by the consent criterion, we would have to admit certain cases as moral which we presently would not approve of. The case of the 10 and 40 year olds might be excluded by adding a modification like “informed consent.” Then as long as both parties agree with sufficient knowledge, the act would be morally okay. A little reflection would show, I think, that “informed consent” might be more difficult to apply in practice than in theory. But another problem would be where to draw the line between moral and immoral acts using only informed consent. For example, if a dog consents to engage in a sexual act with its human master, such an act would also be moral according to the consent criterion. If this impresses you as far-fetched, the point is not whether it might occur but by what criterion we could say that it is wrong. I don’t think that it would be wrong according to the consent criterion.

But the more significant problem has to do with the fact that the consent criterion is not related in any way to the NATURE of the act itself. This is where Natural Moral Law (NML) objects. NML says that Morality must be a response to REALITY. In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same. How do we know this? By looking at REALITY. Men and women are complementary in their anatomy, physiology, and psychology. Men and women are not interchangeable. So, a moral sexual act has to be between persons that are fitted for that act. Consent is important but there is more than consent needed.

One example applicable to homosexual acts illustrates the problem. To the best of my knowledge, in a sexual relationship between two men, one of them tends to act as the “woman” while the other acts as the “man.” In this scenario, homosexual men have been known to engage in certain types of actions for which their bodies are not fitted. I don’t want to be too graphic so I won’t go into details but a physician has told me that these acts are deleterious to the health of one or possibly both of the men. Yet, if the morality of the act is judged only by mutual consent, then there are clearly homosexual acts which are injurious to their health but which are consented to. Why are they injurious? Because they violate the meaning, structure, and (sometimes) health of the human body.

Now recall that I mentioned in class the importance of gaining wisdom from the past. One part of wisdom we gain from such knowledge is how people today came to think of their bodies. I won’t go into details here but a survey of the last few centuries reveals that we have gradually been separating our sexual natures (reality) from our moral decisions. Thus, people tend to think that we can use our bodies sexually in whatever ways we choose without regard to their actual structure and meaning. This is also what lies behind the idea of sex change operations. We can manipulate our bodies to be whatever we want them to be.

If what I just said is true, then this disassociation of morality and sexual reality did not begin with homosexuality. It began long ago. But it took a huge leap forward in the wide spread use of artificial contraceptives. What this use allowed was for people to disassociate procreation and children from sexual activity. So, for people who have grown up only in a time when there is no inherent connection between procreation and sex –- notice not natural but manipulated by humans –- it follows “logically” that sex can mean anything we want it to mean.

Natural Moral Theory says that if we are to have healthy sexual lives, we must return to a connection between procreation and sex. Why? Because that is what is REAL. It is based on human sexual anatomy and physiology. Human sexuality is inherently unitive and procreative. If we encourage sexual relations that violate this basic meaning, we will end up denying something essential about our humanity, about our feminine and masculine nature.

I know this doesn’t answer all the questions in many of your minds. All I ask as your teacher is that you approach these questions as a thinking adult. That implies questioning what you have heard around you. Unless you have done extensive research into homosexuality and are cognizant of the history of moral thought, you are not ready to make judgments about moral truth in this matter. All I encourage is to make informed decisions. As a final note, a perceptive reader will have noticed that none of what I have said here or in class depends upon religion. Catholics don’t arrive at their moral conclusions based on their religion. They do so based on a thorough understanding of natural reality.

Kenneth J. Howell Ph.D.

Director, St. John’s Institute of Catholic Thought

Adjunct Associate Professor of Religion, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

_________________________________________________

U of I Student’s Complaint E-mail about Religion Prof Ken Howell:

The following is the e-mail complaint from student about U-I religion instructor Ken Howell, as reported by the News-Gazette:

Prof. McKim,

This past semester, a friend of mine took RLST 127: Introduction to Catholicism. Throughout the semester, he would consistently tell me how the teacher [Ken Howell], who I believe is a priest at the Newman Center, would preach (not teach) his ideology to the class. Many times, my friend (whom I wish to remain anonymous) said the instructor would say things that were inflammatory and downright insensitive to those who were not of the Catholic faith–it should be noted that my friend and I were both brought up Catholic. Anyways, my friend informed me that things got especially provocative when discussing homosexuality. He sent me the following e-mail, which I believe you will agree is downright absurd once you read it.

I am in no way a gay rights activist, but allowing this hate speech at a public university is entirely unacceptable. It sickens me to know that hard-working Illinoisans are funding the salary of a man who does nothing but try to indoctrinate students and perpetuate stereotypes. Once again, this is a public university and should thus have no religious affiliation. Teaching a student about the tenets of a religion is one thing. Declaring that homosexual acts violate the natural laws of man is another. The courses at this institution should be geared to contribute to the public discourse and promote independent thought; not limit one’s worldview and ostracize people of a certain sexual orientation.

I can only imagine how ashamed and uncomfortable a gay student would feel if he/she were to take this course. I am a heterosexual male and I found this completely appalling. Also, my friend also told me that the teacher allowed little room for any opposition to Catholic dogma. Once again, he is guilty of limiting the marketplace of ideas and acting out of accord with this institution’s mission and principles.

I have Cc’d Leslie Morrow, director of the LGBT Resource Center, on this e-mail as well as (name redacted), former features editor at the Daily Illini (I’m sure they’d like to hear about this), and Siobhan Somerville, a former teacher of mine and the founder of the queer studies major.

I didn’t go to Notre Dame for a reason,

(name redacted)

___________________________________________

Bio of Kenneth J. Howell, Ph.D. from the St. John’s Catholic Newman Center at the U. of Illinois

Kenneth J. Howell
Director & Senior Fellow, Institute of Catholic Thought
kenneth.howell@sjcnc.org

In addition to being the Director and a Senior Fellow of the Institute of Catholic Thought, Dr. Howell is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Program for the Study of Religion in the University of Illinois. Dr. Howell studied theology at Westminster Theological Seminary where he concentrated in biblical languages and systematic theology.

In 1978, he was ordained a Presbyterian minister and served parishes in Florida and Indiana. After completing his Ph.D. in linguistics at Indiana University, he taught Greek, Hebrew, and Latin at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. His teaching duties involved theological research which led to his conversion to Catholicism in 1996. During this time, he obtained another Ph.D. in the history of Christianity and Science from the University of Lancaster (U.K).

Dr. Howell is the author of four books and numerous articles. God’s Two Books: Copernican Cosmology and Biblical Interpretation in Early Modern Science (University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), Mary of Nazareth: Sign and Instrument of Christian Unity (Queenship Press, 1998) is a scriptural study of Marian doctrine. Meeting Mary Our Mother in Faith (Catholic Answers Press, 2003), Questions College Students Ask…about God, Faith, and the Church (co-authored with Christine Pinheiro) (Champaign, IL: The St. John Institute of Catholic Thought, St. John’s Catholic Newman Center, 2006), The Eucharist for Beginners: Sacrament, Sacrifice, and Communion (San Diego: Catholic Answers, 2006).