Kathleen Parker

Folks, when even self-styled “conservatives” like Kathleen Parker (left) boast about how they teach their children to be accepting of homosexuality (she would use the PC parlance “gays and lesbians”), you know that those of us who believe in timeless moral standards have our work cut out for us.  I don’t know what led to Parker sellout out, but I’ve had it up to here with “conservatives” who no longer see the need (or have the guts) to conserve Judeo-Christian moral values. Funny how the likes of Parker talk a good game about not being “judgmental” but they have little problem judging the “Christian Right.” — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

P.S. Would it have killed Chris Matthews to include an actual opponent of homosexuals in the military in his MSNBC talkfest — or was the psuedo-conservative Parker his idea of “diversity”?

TAKE ACTION: Contact your Congressman and both Senators (202-224-3121; 202-225-3121; www.congress.org) and urge them NOT to allow open homosexuality in our military. Urge them to OPPOSE H.R. 1283, the Homosexualize Our Military Act (aka the ”Military Readiness Enhancement Act” ), which would establish a pro-homosexual “non-discrimination” code in the military — thus turning the conservative culture of our Armed Forces into a de facto “gay pride” zone where homosexuality — destructive, immoral and changeable conduct — is affirmed as a “civil right.” If H.R. 1283 becomes law, tradition-minded servicemembers would be “re-educated” to adhere to the new, twisted definition of ”tolerance.”

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Homosexuals in the Military 

By Laurie Higgins, Illinois Family Institute, Feb. 17, 2010

The issue of homosexuals serving openly in the military is so complex that writing about it seems overwhelming.

First, there is the problem of reconciling both Article 125 of the Military Code of Justice and U.S. Code – Section 654 that strictly prohibit those who engage in homosexual acts or those who state that they are homosexual from serving in the military with the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy that serves as a defacto law superseding actual law.

“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” implicitly says homosexuals can serve as long as they don’t openly acknowledge that they are homosexual. That’s like saying that company policy strictly bans the use of company computers to view porn, but employees can view porn as long as they don’t tell anyone. Either it’s permitted or it’s not.

Despite what some advocates of homosexuals serving openly in the military claim, military prohibitions against homosexuals serving in the military no more encourage deceit, than do laws prohibiting stealing encourage deceit. To claim that laws that prohibit certain behaviors encourage deceit is another way of saying people are always going to break laws. In this twisted logic, all laws encourage deceit because those who don’t want to abide by them willfully engage in deceit in order to do what they want without incurring the consequences.

We can’t always prevent lawbreakers from breaking the law, but that unfortunate reality should not compel society to repeal laws. In other words, society ought not repeal laws in order that those who refuse to obey them are freed from the consequences of lawbreaking. The fact that throughout history there have been homosexuals who enlisted in the military in violation of military law that prohibits them from serving should not compel the military to rescind the law.

Removing the prohibition against allowing openly homosexuals from serving in the military will result in a whole host of other problems, among which are the following:

• It will result in discomfort among some soldiers with engaging in private activities like showering with men who admit to being sexually attracted to other men. Yes, throughout history homosexual men have served in the military, but heterosexual men are unlikely to be uncomfortable showering with homosexual men when they don’t know they’re homosexual.
• If military law is changed to allow openly homosexual men and women to serve, there will undoubtedly be an increase in homosexual activity in the military. To argue otherwise is either disingenuous or naïve.
• Coercion between openly homosexual military officers and their subordinates will likely increase.
• Some men may choose not to enlist or re-enlist if they will be compelled to serve with openly homosexual men.
• Romantic affiliations will develop which will likely affect combat decisions.
• The military will eventually have to provide military housing for same-sex couples.

(For more on the potential impact of allowing openly homosexual men and women to serve in the military, click HERE to read an editorial by Richard H. Black, retired chief of the Army’s Criminal Law Division, who as a marine pilot flew 269 combat missions in Vietnam.)

Political commentator Chris Matthews made yet another silly statement on his Sunday morning program on Feb. 7 when he said that anyone who wants to serve in the military should be allowed to do so. Apparently, neither the mission of the military nor its needs must be allowed to supersede the almighty desires of any particular individual. His statement reflects the troubling thinking of so many Americans who now believe that any good or desirable thing constitutes the object of a right. If they see something they want or something they want to do, many people believe they have a Constitutional right to have it or do it.

Homosexual couples want to participate in the heterosexual institution of marriage, so same sex “marriage” is now their “right.” Homosexual couples who are designed to be sterile want babies, so having babies is now their “right.” Men who are sexually attracted to other men want to serve in the military, so now serving in the military is their “right.”

Homosexuals, and increasingly “transgenders,” are compelling society through erroneous and unproven ontological assumptions to radically redefine foundational societal institutions. All of their efforts are based on acceptance of the deceit that homosexuality is ontologically equivalent to skin color or other immutable conditions that have no behavioral moral implications open to moral assessment.

Homosexuality is not by nature equivalent to skin color, nor is it morally equivalent to heterosexuality. Conservatives especially need to recognize how much they have appropriated the absurd proposition that homosexuality is akin to race, and they need to stop treating it as if it were.

After reading about a recent poll that reveals that the opinions of both civilians and younger military personnel are shifting in favor of allowing openly homosexual men and women to serve in the military, I found myself wondering why the views are changing so dramatically. Chris Matthews posed that question to his guests MSNBC correspondent Norah O’Donnell, New York Times writer Andrew Sorkin, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker, and Time Magazine assistant editor Michael Duffy, and received surprisingly insubstantial, question-begging answers.

In response to Matthews’ question, “Why have attitudes (on homosexuals serving in the military) changed since Bill Clinton confronted that issue back in ‘93?” O’Donnell said “I think there’s greater acceptance.”

Sorkin said, “The world’s changed, but I’m going to say it’s about social networking, it’s about the Internet. I think so many people are so much more open in a whole new way than they’ve ever been, and therefore people who were unaccepting before now see it in a whole different way.”

Kathleen Parker said, “we parents have raised our kids to not be judgmental and to be accepting of gays. We all know more gay people than we used to, or think we didn’t know before.”

Duffy said, “the reason is that our teenagers are just 100 times more tolerant than their parents about everything.”

What these responses brought to mind was one of Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts: “One day one of my little nephews came up to me and asked if the equator was a real line that went around the Earth, or just an imaginary one. I had to laugh. Laugh and laugh. Because I didn’t know, and I thought that maybe by laughing he would forget what he asked me.”

Parker responded by saying that children have been raised to be less judgmental, which really means that many have switched their judgment from homosexual acts are immoral to the judgment that homosexual acts are moral. Does Parker really want people to stop judging between right and wrong, or does she want people to make moral judgments with which she agrees. Does she want people to be non-judgmental when it comes to racist behavior, or adult consensual incest, or corporate malfeasance?

What none of Matthews guests did was to offer an account of the reasons why society’s judgments are changing, which is the crux of the matter. Has it happened through careful study of the best thinkers writing on the subject of morality, sexuality, the needs of the military, or the place of institutional disapproval in maintaining a healthy society?

Or have other factors and forces altered the judgments of society:

• Have judgments shifted through the relentless spate of images and ideas promulgated through music, films, novels, plays, essays, the news media, advertising, and public education that implicitly and explicitly affirm unproven assumptions about homosexuality?
• Have judgments shifted as a result of the absolute censorship in public schools of the writing of scholars who offer thoughtful, erudite expositions of conservative perspectives on the nature and morality of homosexuality?
• Have public judgments shifted as a result of relentless ad hominem attacks on anyone who dares to say publicly that volitional homosexual acts are immoral?
• Have public judgments shifted as theologically orthodox churches cowardly retreated from engaging in this public debate and from equipping their members to engage in it?

The tragic reality is that the affirmation of openly homosexual men and women serving in the military reflects not only society’s acceptance of the fallacious claim that homosexuality is analogous to skin color/race, but also of society’s rejection of any standards regarding sexual morality:

• Marriage has been severed from sex, and from procreation, and from childrearing, and increasingly from “gender.”
• Sex has been severed from marriage, procreation, childrearing, and “gender.” Polyamory-or as polyamorists like to call it, “ethical non-monogamy”-is increasingly visible and likely increasingly practiced.
• Fornication and co-habitation are not merely accepted; they’re expected.
• Homosexuality is everywhere promoted as normal and good.
• Exhibitionism is common on reality shows, primetime comedies and dramas, films, music videos, and college campuses.
• And paraphilias, also known as fetishes, are played for laughs on sitcoms.
• Even lighthearted references to and depictions of incest have appeared in television programs and films.

Why wouldn’t a generation weaned on positive images of sexual perversion and immorality support openly homosexual men and women serving in the military?

What society needs to think seriously about is whether some forms of institutionalized disapproval of sexual immorality through laws or policy serve a good and necessary social function.

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).