New York Times resident "conservative" David Brooks says it is hard to take Sarah Palin seriously, yet he relied on specious "queer" theology in an attempt to justify legal homosexual "marriage" as a supposed moral cause that conservatives should support. Turning the Bible on its head, Brooks says NOT allowing homosexuals to get married is an "abomination."

By Peter LaBarbera

New York Times columnist and TV pundit David Brooks is a liberal’s kind of conservative. The other day, Brooks made news deriding Sarah Palin as a “joke” on a Sunday talk show. Liberal Palin-haters couldn’t be more pleased, as they always are when “moderate” (read: socially liberal) Republicans deride pro-family conservative Republicans.

Said Brooks about the former Republican Governor of Alaska and GOP vice-presidential candidate:

“She’s a joke. I can’t take her seriously,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me, it will never happen. Republican primary voters are not going to elect a talk show host.”

I agree with conservative media critic Bernard Goldberg in explaining the dominant elite media’s contempt for Palin: she is a popular, pro-life, conservative, Christian woman — a mix that smug west- and east coast liberals don’t like and certainly not the kind of woman they want to see succeed, much less be President. Surely they are incredulous and envious of her popularity and power, which is far bigger than theirs will ever be (Brooks included).

But what about Brooks? His arrogant, rapid-fire put-down of Palin epitomizes the disdain that RINO (Republican In Name Only) Republicans have for the true, blue, pro-family conservatives who are the collective backbone of the GOP. Socially liberal Republicans whine about “tone” and “tenor” and the alleged harshness of the “religious right,” but I find that it is often the “moderates” who are cutthroat and even nasty in their dealings with religious conservatives in the party.

I don’t know who I will support for the GOP nomination in 2012, or even if Sarah Palin is running.  I hope she does. Palin has earned respect for her accomplishments and her generally principled, conservative positions and she should not be written off as some Republicans like Brooks are doing. Besides, anyone who has taken the hits that she has from the Left deserves a certain degree of appreciation — something the tone-deaf Brooks might have considered if only to keep from losing his truly conservative readers.

Yes, Palin certainly has all the right enemies — including snotty New York Times opinion writers who cheerlead for homosexual “marriage” as a moral — even a “sacred” — cause.

Brooks Backs Buggery

It’s funny. Just before I learned of Brooks’ rash and gratuitous slam on Palin, I stumbled upon a quotation of his that appeared in a booklet put out by the Human Rights Campaign — a powerful homosexual lobby organization — titled, “Answers to Questions about Marriage Equality.” HRC identifies Brooks as a “conservative columnist,” but no true “conservative” worth his salt gets cited favorably by a “gay” activist group that traffics in the worst kind of hateful, anti-Christian bigotry — and that spends millions of dollars every year electing mostly pro-homosexual-agenda and pro-abortion-on-demand Democrats. (HRC also backs a few socially left Republicans like Illinois’ Congresswoman Judy Biggert to create the appearance of bipartisanship.)

Here’s the Brooks’ quote cited by HRC (on page 13) from his November 22, 2003 column in the New York Times, “The Power of Marriage”:

We shouldn’t just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.

Below is the full context of that quotation from Brooks’ 2003 column; this excerpt follows the contrast that he commendably draws between the noble “culture of fidelity” and the selfish “culture of contingency,” in which men flake out of their marital pledge like some “easily canceled contract.” He writes (emphasis added):

Still, even in this time of crisis, every human being in the United States has the chance to move from the path of contingency to the path of marital fidelity — except homosexuals. Gays and lesbians are banned from marriage and forbidden to enter into this powerful and ennobling institution. A gay or lesbian couple may love each other as deeply as any two people, but when you meet a member of such a couple at a party, he or she then introduces you to a ”partner,” a word that reeks of contingency.

You would think that faced with this marriage crisis, we conservatives would do everything in our power to move as many people as possible from the path of contingency to the path of fidelity. But instead, many argue that gays must be banished from matrimony because gay marriage would weaken all marriage. A marriage is between a man and a woman, they say. It is women who domesticate men and make marriage work.

Well, if women really domesticated men, heterosexual marriage wouldn’t be in crisis. In truth, it’s moral commitment, renewed every day through faithfulness, that ”domesticates” all people.

Some conservatives may have latched onto biological determinism (men are savages who need women to tame them) as a convenient way to oppose gay marriage. But in fact we are not animals whose lives are bounded by our flesh and by our gender. We’re moral creatures with souls, endowed with the ability to make covenants, such as the one Ruth made with Naomi: ‘‘Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.”

The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn’t just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.

When liberals argue for gay marriage, they make it sound like a really good employee benefits plan. Or they frame it as a civil rights issue, like extending the right to vote.

Marriage is not voting. It’s going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage. Not making it means drifting further into the culture of contingency, which, when it comes to intimate and sacred relations, is an abomination.

Here Brooks, though ostensibly on the right, evinces the Social Lefts’ disdain for biblically-based morality — and its penchant for stealing religious terminology and using sloppy, politically driven exegesis to advance a man- (not God-) centered agenda in the name of piety.

Not bound by our gender? Is Brooks a guest-lecturer in the Women’s Studies Department at Smith College? Whatever  happened to the truth of Genesis — of man and woman as God’s distinctive and complementary creations — as echoed by Jesus Christ:

“And He answered and said to [the Pharisees], ‘Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said,  ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and  the two shall become one flesh’? — Matthew 19:4 (NKJV)

Yes, God created two “genders” (sexes) — not five or seven or whatever the number claimed by radicals is these days.

Homosexualizing Holy Scripture?

And why did Brooks’ choose the biblical example of Ruth and Naomi for his dubious proposition, anyway?  In the biblical account, Naomi was Ruth’s mother-in-law, and the devoted Ruth (a “woman of excellence”) went on to marry Boaz — so what does this noble relationship between two women have to do with homosexual “marriage”? In fact, although Brooks lacked the guts to come right out and say so, his allusion to the Book of Ruth is a mischievous sop to activist, homosexuality-affirming theologians who twist the Bible to claim that Ruth and Naomi were lesbian lovers [see the Human Rights Campaign's self-serving "Out in Scripture" interpretation of Ruth and Naomi's relationship HERE].

Thus Brooks joins the homosexualists in sexualizing and perverting a wonderful story about selfless love and faithfulness in a desperate attempt to legitimize sinful behavior. By including this nonsensical, “queer” theological misinterpretation of Scripture — which is rejected by the vast majority of serious Bible scholars — Brooks demonstrates his profound ignorance of theology and insensitivity toward pious Jews and Christians. He owes all Bible believers an apology, but as a mere Christian in flyover country (who doesn’t hate Sarah Palin) I’m not holding my breath.

Sacred Sodomy?

Brooks continues in his sophistic folly. He views the prohibition of homosexual “marriage” as scandalous when an intellectually honest reading of Scripture would lead us to declare it “scandalous” to attach marriage — the model of the relationship between Jesus Christ and his Church — to deviant relationships whose “love” is expressed by acts of homosexual sodomy clearly condemned as “detestable” by our loving Creator.

God created sex as the sublime expression of love, unity and commitment between husband and wife, for the purpose of procreation — that is, filling the earth with humankind. In contrast, two men attempting a sexual union produces … disease. The plain truth of the Bible is that secular liberals hate is that homosexual (erotic) love is always illegitimate — the outworking not of “sexual orientation” but the sinful orientation with which each human being struggles. The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah’s words about our deceitful hearts are relevant here. Tough love dictates that we uphold God’s truth about homosexual sin while reaching out with the love of Christ to those who struggle with this sin.

Nature clearly discriminates against homosexuality and, by extension, the oxymoronic notion of “gay marriage.” What larger purpose does anal sodomy serve — with its many health hazards? Can two women produce children without borrowing from heterosexuality? (So much for “equality” — and please, don’t even go there with the silly analogy between homosexual and normal, albeit infertile, couples: the latter do not model aberrant, immoral conduct. Rather, they only seek the blessing of children that their opposite-sex union would normally provide.)

Moving toward his dramatic conclusion, Brooks cavalierly implies that homosexual “intimacy” can be “sacred.” But such a claim begs the question: who defines sacred and what is sacredness? Who determines moral right from wrong?  Christians believe that a holy God defines moral truth and reveals it to man through his divinely inspired Word, the Bible. The Bible is the gold standard of moral authority and Truth — which is why the Homosexual Lobby, as the latest in a long line of rebels, is working so hard to undermine it and distort its teachings. (One HRC staffer, Harry Knox — who also sits on President Obama’s  “Faith Advisory Council” — defiantly declares that “being gay or lesbian is an immutable, unchangeable gift from God, one for which I am very grateful. And it would fly in the face of my respect for God to give that gift back.”)

Harry is playing with fire and needs to repent: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20).

Here we must go to Noah Webster’s original 1828 “American Dictionary of the English Language” definition of “sacred,” which avoids the liberal corruption that associates the word with anything “spiritual” (including homosexualized religion):

SACRED, a …from L. sacer, sacred, holy …The sense is removed or separated from that which is common, vulgar, polluted …

1. Holy; pertaining to God or to his worship; separated from common secular uses and consecrated to God and his service.
2. Proceeding from God and containing religious precepts …;
3. Narrating or writing facts respecting God and holy things ….

Note that far from keeping the truly sacred things separate from the corruption of the world, Brooks and other fellow travelers with the “Gay” Lobby are intentionally corrupting the sacred by attempting to fuse it with sin. In their pride, they seek to create a New Morality based upon their own foolish ideas (of which “gay pride” is one). Insidiously, the most radical manifestation of “queer” activism is not the high-heeled drag queens marching down city streets every June — but the “conservative,” domesticated version of homosexual activism that redefines and dumbs down noble institutions like marriage and family — and Truth itself — to the point where words have no meaning.

Besides, even in their gut most people recognize that there’s something deeply wrong with homosexual acts: why else would we cringe at the thought inspired by this question: How do two men consummate their “same-sex marriage”?

Yuck. Behavior — not politically charged abstractions like “gay identity,” is the issue.

Sodomy is not sacred. Sodomy is sin. Homosexual behavior cannot be “sanctified” because it is directly opposed to God’s revealed will and His moral law, as confirmed by thousands of years of Judeo-Christian tradition. Thankfully, many men and women have found freedom from this destructive lifestyle through the healing power of Jesus Christ — but something tells me that David Brooks will not be writing a sympathetic column about happy and successful former homosexuals anytime soon. (If he did, would the Times run it?)

One last turn of the knife

But wait. It’s not over: Brooks saves his most obnoxious “gotcha” assault on biblical morality for his final sentence — proclaiming it an “abomination” for conservatives NOT to make the “moral” case for “gay marriage.”

What is it about secular, big-city elitists like Brooks that they are driven not only to redefine historic morality, but in so doing they appropriate the language of the divine to define deviancy up (to quote Charles Krauthammer)? Is it because — even though they regard ancient moral norms like keeping sex limited to marriage as quaint anachronisms –  they understand the power of traditional religion to define right and wrong authoritatively, even in this jaded modern era?

My Open Bible (Nelson: 1985; NASB) lists passages about “abominations” as “things utterly repulsive.” Is David Brooks really suggesting that it is “repulsive” to God for his followers to resist cloaking detestable behaviors like homosexual sodomy — which God condemns — in the beautiful robe He created called “marriage”?

Indeed, he is, but cheap rhetorical gimmicks make bad theology. The New Liberal “Morality” is bankrupt and has no compelling, divine authority — I’d use an Emperor-Has-No-Clothes reference but it hits too close to home. Therefore it must steal the words of holy revelation to feign legitimacy. Just as two domesticated homosexual lovers with their adopted child are playing house (to quote my ex-”gay” friend Steve Bennett), social liberals like Brooks who exploit holy words of old to promote trendy sins are playing church.

And boy do they love to “preach” their hollow, false “gospel” without boundaries to Americans, even as they ridicule our appeals to a Higher Authority for moral guidance.

So my message to Sarah Palin and all victims of Christian-bashing is this: don’t let social leftists — even those on the “Right” — get you down. Wear their derision as a badge of honor. In fact, take the fight to them and aggressively defend the old truths while tearing down their rootless, fake “morality” that preposterously elevates sin as “sacred.” You can even quote your Bible if you really want to drive the elitists nuts! Because, to paraphrase Brooks, when secularized liberals, libertarians and media pundits attempt to redefine moral Truth by manipulating and distorting the language of faith, it’s really hard to take them seriously.

Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
Let all that you do be done in love. (1 Corinthians 16:13-14; NASB)

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Peter LaBarbera is president of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality and an evangelical Christian.

Here’s the YouTube of the ABC “This Week” episode in which David Brooks attacks Sarah Palin:

P.S.  Why would parents entrust their children to adults who proudly call themselves and their sexual agenda “queer”?  And are we surprised that such a movement actually has spawned groups built around such vile perversions as “fisting”?

[WARNING: Very Graphic Sexual Language; sex acts and perversions described just as they were in group conversations between adults and underage youth at the GLSEN-sponsored conference in Boston in 2000]

“What’s Fisting?”: That’s the question that a teenager asked an adult at a Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN)-sponsored conference at Tufts University in Boston in 2000. (GLSEN was founded by Kevin Jennings, President Obama’s pick to head up the “Safe Schools” wing at the Department of Education.) What followed from this perverse question was a detailed explanation of this disgusting perversion, including “how-to” advise on how to “fist” (hand/arm-anal and -vaginal penetration) “correctly.” At left is the logo of the Chicago group MAFIA, Mid-America Fists in Action, Inc., a homosexual club that holds “fisting parties” for men into this vile and dangerous perversion. (MAFIA holds “fisting” parties every year at Chicago’s International Mr. Leather.)

TAKE ACTION: Kevin Jennings wants to use schools to “promote homosexuality.” His group has repeatedly exposed children to harmful and promiscuous “gay” sexual behaviors and exhibited a recklessness toward youth that should disqualify him and GLSEN from working in any school anywhere. Call your Congressman and Senators (202-224-3121) and urge them to call for the withdrawal of Jennings as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Education for Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Also call or write President Obama (202-456-1414) and Education Secretary Arne Duncan (arne.duncan@ed.gov; 202-401-3000) and urge them not to reward Jennings and GLSEN with this influential appointment.

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The following affidavit is reprinted from the Lambda Report newsletter (April 2000), published by Peter LaBarbera, which preceded Americans For Truth About Homosexuality. On April 18, 2000, Scott Whiteman submitted an affidavit, excerpted below, describing the March 25 conference of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in Boston to the Hon. Martha Coakley, District Attorney for Middlesex County, Mass.

LaBarbera and Massachusetts pro-family advocate Brian Camenker had advised Whiteman to secretly tape the “What They Didn’t Tell You About Queer Sex & Sexuality In Health Class” youth panel – presuming that: 1) highly inappropriate discussions would occur; 2) homosexuality advocates likely would deny that the controversial talks actually took place; and 3) the subject matter would be so shocking and outrageous that nobody would believe Whiteman unless he provided proof of the actual GLSEN workshop. Those predictions proved to be right on the money as Whiteman’s “undercover” audiotape –– the basis of what came to be known in conservative circles as “Fistgate” –– provided the most damning evidence to date of homosexual activists’ breathtaking irresponsibility toward children in their care.

Homosexual activists ended up suing Whiteman and Camenker for making the secret recording — incredibly citing the “privacy” rights of the students in the “Queer Sex & Sexuality” workshop. For an even more detailed report on the GLSEN “Fistgate” seminars, see MassResistance’s website.

Following is Whiteman’s affidavit (emphasis added in bold):
_____________________________________

It is my belief that three public servants should be investigated for their involvement in the corruption of minors at a recent student/teacher conference in Medford. Additionally, as the conference was supported by several publicly funded and private groups and the Department of Education, I believe that they may have some liability for the corruption of children.

On the weekend of March 25, 2000, I attended the tenth annual “GLSEN/BOSTON & Project 10 East Teach Out!” conference at Tufts University. GLSEN is a national Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, led by Kevin Jennings a former Massachusetts teacher. GLSEN works with teachers and students throughout the nation and claims to fight what they deem “homophobia.” GLSEN/BOSTON is headed by Wallace Bachman and receives some funding from the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth and the Massachusetts Department of Education through the Safe Schools Program.

I attended two workshops while at the conference that should be brought to your attention. In the first workshop, entitled “What They Didn’t Tell You About Queer Sex & Sexuality In Health Class: A Workshop For Youth Only ages 14-21,” the three homosexual presenters acting in their professional capacities coaxed about 20 children into talking openly and graphically about homosexual sex. The three presenters were:

• Margot E. Abels, Coordinator, HIV/AIDS Program, Massachusetts Department of Education, self-proclaimed lesbian
• Julie Netherland, Coordinator, HIV/AIDS Program, Massachusetts Department of Education, self-proclaimed lesbian
• Michael Gaucher, Consultant, HIV/AIDS Program, Massachusetts Department of Education, self-proclaimed “gay” man

The workshop syllabus was a follows:

This workshop for youth addresses what is different for glbt (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, transsexual) youth when it comes to sex, dating, relationships, HIV etc. Come and discuss the questions you couldn’t or didn’t ask in health class. What’s it like to be young, queer and beginning to date? Are lesbians at rick for HIV? What does it to identify as queer and still be sexually active with the opposite sex? Who can you talk to about these things? And, why aren’t queer issues addressed in Sex Ed classes? We will address the information you want about queer sexuality and some of the politics that prevent us from getting our needs met.

The workshop opened by the three public employees asking the children how they know, as gay people, whether or not they’ve had sex. Questions were thrown around the room about whether oral sex was “sex,” to which the Department of Public Health employee stated, “If that’s not sex, then the number of times I’ve had sex has dramatically decreased; from a mountain to a valley, baby.” Eventually the answer presented itself, and it was determined that whenever an orifice was filled with genitalia, then sex had occurred. In coming to that conclusion, one student, egged on by the Department of Public Health employee, said in response to the question, “What orifices are we talking about?”:

Michael Gaucher: “Don’t be shy, honey; you can do it.”
Student: “Youth mouth.”
Gaucher: “Okay.”
Student: “Your ass.”
Gaucher: “There you go.”
Student: “Your pussy. That kind of place.”

By my estimation, that child was just about 16 years old.

But since sex occurred when an orifice was filled, the next question was obviously whether lesbians could “have sex.” At one point, Margot Abels asked whether a dildo [fake penis] had to be involved; could one be too big or too small; and where would students go to get these questions answered?

The children were asked to role play at this point. The scene was set up like this: One student was a “young lesbian who’s really attracted to another woman, and it’s really coming down to the with and you’re thinking about having sex.” The other student played the “hip GSA (gay, straight alliance) lesbian advisor, who you feel you can talk to.” In effect, Michael Gaucher was telling these high school aged children that they should be talking about lesbian sex, oral-vaginal contact, or “carpet munching,” as one student called it, with a teacher. The student asked whether it would smell like fish.

“What’s Fisting?”
At one point in the session, there was a five-minute break so that all of the teenagers could write down their questions for the homosexual presenters. The first question was read by Julie Netherland: “What’s fisting?”

A student answered this question by informing the class that “fisting” is when you put your “whole hand into the ass or pussy” of another. When a few of the students winced, Gaucher, the Department of Public Health employee, offered, “A little known fact about fisting, you don’t make a fist, like this. It’s like this,” forming his hand into the shape of a tear drop rather than a balled fist. He informed the children that it was much easier [this way].

Margot Abels told the students that “fisting” is not about forcing your have into somebody’s “hole, opening or orifice” if they don’t want it there. She said that “usually” the person was very relaxed, and opened him or herself up to the other. She informed the class that it is a very emotional and intense experience.

At this point, a child of about 16 asked why someone would want to do that. He said that if the hand were pulled out quickly, the whole thing didn’t sound very appealing to him. Abels responded by pointing out that although fisting “often gets a really bad rap,” it usually isn’t about the pain, “not that we’re putting that down.” She informed the student and the class that “fisting” was “an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be that close and intimate with.” Thus Gaucher provided the “how-to” of this lascivious act, and Abels the incentive. When a teen asked the question, “why,” Margot Abels provided comfort to the children, to “put them into an exploratory mode.”

Gaucher then read the students’ next question: “Do lesbians rub their clits [clitorises] together?”

Gaucher and Abels asked if it was possible, and whether someone would do a “hand-diagram” for the class. No one volunteered, but a girl who I estimate was 15 or 16 stepped up to the board and draw a three foot high vagina, and labeled each of the labia, the clitoris, and “put up inside the ‘G’-spot.” While drawing, Gaucher told her to use the “pink” chalk, to which Abels responded, “not everyone is pink, honey.” All of the youths laughed.

After the chalk vagina was complete, the children remarked about the size of the “clit,” and the presenters stated that that was a gifted woman. Then, Abels informed all of the young girls that indeed, you can rub your “clitori” together, either with or without your clothes on, and “you can definitely orgasm from it.” Gaucher told the entire class that “these is a name for this: tribadism.” Which he wrote on the board, and told one girl who I estimate was 14 years old to bring that vocabulary word back to Bedford, where she apparently went to school. Julie Netherland, the other Department of Education consultant, informed the children that this lesbian sex act wasn’t too difficult, because “when you are sexually around, your clit gets bigger.”

Gaucher then read the following from a card: “Cum [semen] and calories: Spit versus swallow and the health concerns.” He informed the children that although he didn’t know the caloric count of male ejaculation, he has “heard that it’s sweeter if people eat celery.” The public employee thereafter asked, “Is it rude not to swallow?” Many of the high school boys mumbled, “No,” by one, about the age of 16, said emphatically, “Oh no!” Another student, against about the age of 16, offered his advice on avoiding HIV/AIDS transmission while giving oral sex: do not brush your teeth or eat course food for four hours before you “go down on a guy…because then you probably don’t want to be swallowing cum.”

Another question submitted to the presenters was whether oral sex was a better with tongue rings. A 16-year-old student murmured, “yes,” to which all of the children laughed. Gaucher said, “There you have it,” and said something to the effect that the debate on that issue had ended.

Advising the Teachers
The second session which I attended was far less graphic, but potentially more dangerous. This session was presented by the same three public employees in their professional capacity and was titled, “Putting the ‘Sex’ Back Into Sexual Orientation: Classroom Strategies for Health & Sexuality Educators.”

The workshop syllabus read as follows:

What does it mean to say “being gay, lesbian and bisexual isn’t about sex?” Where do queer youth get their information about sex and sexuality? How can we deny that sexuality is central for all of us? How do we learn to address the unique concerns of queer youth? What about the epidemiology and risk behavior data concerning sexual activity, HIV and pregnancy for queer kids? This workshop is for educators to examine strategies for integrating sexuality education and HIV prevention content specific to gay, lesbian and bisexual students into the classroom and GSA’s. Data will be presented, exercises from the GSA/HIV Prevention Project will be shared and additional strategies will be discussed.

These three presenters who had just instructed a group of 14- to 18-year-olds on how to properly position your hand for “fisting” now assumed the task of teaching teachers how to facilitate discussions about “queer” sex with their students. Several of the attending teachers asked to review the questions which the students had submitted earlier.

Margot Abels opened by telling the room full of teachers (and two high school students), “We always feel like we are fighting against people who say publicly, who say privately, that being queer is not at all about sex…We believe otherwise. We think that sex is central to every single one of us, and particularly queer youth.”

Abels, Julie Netherland and Michael Gaucher reviewed a few “campaigns” that have been used to demonstrate to homosexual youth how to best “be safe.”

The campaign, “Respect yourself, protect yourself,” was praised as effective in getting the message to kids that they should use protection, but since it made children who didn’t protect themselves feel bad, ultimately it was judged a poor message.

Gaucher asked if children [are] “with an older partner, [whom] they are not feeling they can discuss things with, does that mean that they don’t respect themselves?” My question is why does Gaucher not consider boys having sexual relations with men, either with or without a condom, to be a problem. Let me put this into perspective. If I, a 26-year-old man, were to approach a 16-year-old girl for sexual intercourse, wouldn’t I end up in trouble? Yet public employees, who are bound by law to report abuse under [Massachusetts] rule §51(A), are concerned more with how the young sodomized boy feels that whether he is being sodomized at all. This is absolutely outrageous.

The campaign, “No sex, no problem,” was ridiculed, as it assumed that children could opt not to have sex. Additionally, it made those children who had already had sex feel bad, or think they had a problem, since they had sex.

After reviewing a few of the campaigns, Abels described the project she works on. The “Gay/Straight Alliance HIV Education Project” goes around five different schools each year conducting up to eight HIV prevention sessions in that school’s gay club. These same presenters who just told a group of children how to properly position their hands for “fisting” were now telling a room full of educators that they would visit their schools and conduct their workshops for their students.

One participant remarked halfway through that Abels just wasn’t “talking to” her, since she, the participant, was a lesbian-middle school teacher. She wanted to know specifically what she could do to facilitate discussions about homosexuality in middle school. After I left that session, I met a few people and we compared notes. I was told of another session entitled, “Struggles & Triumphs of Including Homosexuality in a Middle School Curriculum.” Christine L. Hoyle, Special Education Teacher and workshop presenter, told the story of how she turned the Holocaust portion of her curriculum into a gay affirming section. Ms. Hoyle allowed the group at the conference to watch a video which she had her students produce and which was narrated by a seventh grade girl. This girl told the audience that ancient Greeks “encouraged homosexuals; in fact, it was considered normal for an adolescent boy to have an older, wiser man as his lover.” In effect, this teacher informed her adolescent students that it is okay if an older man approaches them for sexual gratification.

I have a compendium of resources and information which I obtained at the conference encouraging young children to become actively engaged in homosexual activities. I approached the Sidney Borum Community Health Center table to obtain a cassette sized “pocket sex” kit, which included two condoms, two antiseptic “moist” towelettes, and six bandages, which were for when the sex got really rough according to the high school-aged volunteer behind the desk. I now have a countless supply of condoms supplied by both Sidney Borum and Planned Parenthood, all of which was for the taking by any child who wanted them…

I am extremely troubled by what I learned at the GLSEN conference, and even more troubled…that it was led largely by Department of Education employees and was supported by Commissioner [David] Driscoll and the Department of Education, which is demonstrated by [Driscoll’s] attached letter [of support] to participants as well as the Department’s endorsement of the conference by offering six Professional Development Activities hours for teachers attending the conference.

The specific areas in the law I am asking for you to investigate are the abrogation of Massachusetts General Laws, ch. 272, § 2, 4, and 28: Enticing away a person for prostitution or sexual intercourse; Inducing person under 18 to have sexual intercourse; and Matter harmful to minors, dissemination; possession; defenses, respectively…

I swear under oath and the pains and penalties of perjury that everything written within this letter, to be best of my knowledge and recollection, is true and factually accurate.

Scott T. Whiteman
Peabody, Massachusetts

From an article yesterday in the conservative CNSNews.com, “Obama: Homosexual Relationships ‘Just as Real and Admirable’ as Heterosexual Marriage”:

Tuesday, October 13, 2009
By Pete Winn, CNSNews.com Senior Writer/Editor

(CNSNews.com) – President Obama delivered an unprecedented message to the Human Rights Campaign Saturday night. Sounding more like a homosexual activist than a sitting president, Obama went well beyond his expected message of “I’m here with you” on the homosexual agenda.

“My expectation is that when you look back on these years, you will see a time in which we put a stop to discrimination against gays and lesbians — whether in the office or on the battlefield,” Obama told an estimated audience of 3,000. “You will see a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women as just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman.”

Even Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese was stunned at the breadth of  Obama’s statement, calling it “something quite remarkable.”

“This was a historic night when we felt the full embrace and commitment of the President of the United States,” Solmonese said in a post-speech statement. “It’s simply unprecedented.”

But Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, called the president’s remarks “appalling.”

“Barack Obama is … declaring that these relationships are basically equal to the real thing,” LaBarbera told CNSNews.com. “I think this is the ultimate Obama audacity play –– for him, just declaring it seems to make it so.”

The president pointedly used the pronoun “we” – not “you” –– throughout much of his speech.

“Do not doubt the direction we are headed and the destination we will reach,” Obama said at one point….

LaBarbera said Obama’s comments went far beyond using the presidency as a bully pulpit.

“The condescension is glaring,” LaBarbera said. “He’s really putting down millions and millions of faithful, moral-minded citizens and dismissing traditional beliefs with such arrogance, it is almost indescribable. It really is amazing.”

“It’s just hateful rhetoric,” LaBarbera added. “It’s a different kind of hate, to be sure, but it is hate –– he hates our Judeo-Christian tradition.”

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
__________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                                        October 10, 2009

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN DINNER

Walter E. Convention Center
Washington, D.C.
8:10 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, everybody. Please, you’re making me blush. (Laughter.)

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We love you, Barack!

THE PRESIDENT: I love you back. (Applause.)

To Joe Solmonese, who’s doing an outstanding job on behalf of HRC. (Applause.) To my great friend and supporter, Terry Bean, co-founder of HRC. (Applause.) Representative Patrick Kennedy. (Applause.) David Huebner, the Ambassador-designee to New Zealand and Samoa. (Applause.) John Berry, our Director of OPM, who’s doing a great job. (Applause.) Nancy Sutley, Chairman of Council on Environmental Quality. (Applause.) Fred Hochberg, Chairman of Export-Import Bank. (Applause.) And my dear friend, Tipper Gore, who’s in the house. (Applause.)

Thank you so much, all of you. It is a privilege to be here tonight to open for Lady GaGa. (Applause.) I’ve made it. (Laughter.) I want to thank the Human Rights Campaign for inviting me to speak and for the work you do every day in pursuit of equality on behalf of the millions of people in this country who work hard in their jobs and care deeply about their families — and who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. (Applause.)

For nearly 30 years, you’ve advocated on behalf of those without a voice. That’s not easy. For despite the real gains that we’ve made, there’s still laws to change and there’s still hearts to open. There are still fellow citizens, perhaps neighbors, even loved ones — good and decent people — who hold fast to outworn arguments and old attitudes; who fail to see your families like their families; who would deny you the rights most Americans take for granted. And that’s painful and it’s heartbreaking. (Applause.) And yet you continue, leading by the force of the arguments you make, and by the power of the example that you set in your own lives — as parents and friends, as PTA members and church members, as advocates and leaders in your communities. And you’re making a difference.

That’s the story of the movement for fairness and equality, and not just for those who are gay, but for all those in our history who’ve been denied the rights and responsibilities of citizenship — (applause) — for all who’ve been told that the full blessings and opportunities of this country were closed to them. It’s the story of progress sought by those with little influence or power; by men and women who brought about change through quiet, personal acts of compassion — and defiance — wherever and whenever they could.

It’s the story of the Stonewall protests, when a group of citizens — (applause) — when a group of citizens with few options, and fewer supporters stood up against discrimination and helped to inspire a movement. It’s the story of an epidemic that decimated a community — and the gay men and women who came to support one another and save one another; who continue to fight this scourge; and who have demonstrated before the world that different kinds of families can show the same compassion in a time of need. (Applause.) And it’s the story of the Human Rights Campaign and the fights you’ve fought for nearly 30 years: helping to elect candidates who share your values; standing against those who would enshrine discrimination into our Constitution; advocating on behalf of those living with HIV/AIDS; and fighting for progress in our capital and across America. (Applause.)

This story, this fight continue now. And I’m here with a simple message: I’m here with you in that fight. (Applause.) For even as we face extraordinary challenges as a nation, we cannot — and we will not — put aside issues of basic equality. I greatly appreciate the support I’ve received from many in this room. I also appreciate that many of you don’t believe progress has come fast enough. I want to be honest about that, because it’s important to be honest among friends.

Now, I’ve said this before, I’ll repeat it again — it’s not for me to tell you to be patient, any more than it was for others to counsel patience to African Americans petitioning for equal rights half a century ago. (Applause.) But I will say this: We have made progress and we will make more. And I think it’s important to remember that there is not a single issue that my administration deals with on a daily basis that does not touch on the lives of the LGBT community. (Applause.) We all have a stake in reviving this economy. We all have a stake in putting people back to work. We all have a stake in improving our schools and achieving quality, affordable health care. We all have a stake in meeting the difficult challenges we face in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Applause.)

For while some may wish to define you solely by your sexual orientation or gender identity alone, you know — and I know — that none of us wants to be defined by just one part of what makes us whole. (Applause.) You’re also parents worried about your children’s futures. You’re spouses who fear that you or the person you love will lose a job. You’re workers worried about the rising cost of health insurance. You’re soldiers. You are neighbors. You are friends. And, most importantly, you are Americans who care deeply about this country and its future. (Applause.)

So I know you want me working on jobs and the economy and all the other issues that we’re dealing with. But my commitment to you is unwavering even as we wrestle with these enormous problems. And while progress may be taking longer than you’d like as a result of all that we face — and that’s the truth — do not doubt the direction we are heading and the destination we will reach. (Applause.)

My expectation is that when you look back on these years, you will see a time in which we put a stop to discrimination against gays and lesbians — whether in the office or on the battlefield. (Applause.) You will see a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women as just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman. (Applause.) You will see a nation that’s valuing and cherishing these families as we build a more perfect union — a union in which gay Americans are an important part. I am committed to these goals. And my administration will continue fighting to achieve them.

And there’s no more poignant or painful reminder of how important it is that we do so than the loss experienced by Dennis and Judy Shepard, whose son Matthew was stolen in a terrible act of violence 11 years ago. In May, I met with Judy — who’s here tonight with her husband — I met her in the Oval Office, and I promised her that we were going to pass an inclusive hate crimes bill — a bill named for her son. (Applause.)

This struggle has been long. Time and again we faced opposition. Time and again, the measure was defeated or delayed. But the Shepards never gave up. (Applause.) They turned tragedy into an unshakeable commitment. (Applause.) Countless activists and organizers never gave up. You held vigils, you spoke out, year after year, Congress after Congress. The House passed the bill again this week. (Applause.) And I can announce that after more than a decade, this bill is set to pass and I will sign it into law. (Applause.)

It’s a testament to the decade-long struggle of Judy and Dennis, who tonight will receive a tribute named for somebody who inspired so many of us — named for Senator Ted Kennedy, who fought tirelessly for this legislation. (Applause.) And it’s a testament to the Human Rights Campaign and those who organized and advocated. And it’s a testament to Matthew and to others who’ve been the victims of attacks not just meant to break bones, but to break spirits — not meant just to inflict harm, but to instill fear. Together, we will have moved closer to that day when no one has to be afraid to be gay in America. (Applause.) When no one has to fear walking down the street holding the hand of the person they love. (Applause.)

But we know there’s far more work to do. We’re pushing hard to pass an inclusive employee non-discrimination bill. (Applause.) For the first time ever, an administration official testified in Congress in favor of this law. Nobody in America should be fired because they’re gay, despite doing a great job and meeting their responsibilities. It’s not fair. It’s not right. We’re going to put a stop to it. (Applause.) And it’s for this reason that if any of my nominees are attacked not for what they believe but for who they are, I will not waver in my support, because I will not waver in my commitment to ending discrimination in all its forms. (Applause.)

We are reinvigorating our response to HIV/AIDS here at home and around the world. (Applause.) We’re working closely with the Congress to renew the Ryan White program and I look forward to signing it into law in the very near future. (Applause.) We are rescinding the discriminatory ban on entry to the United States based on HIV status. (Applause.) The regulatory process to enact this important change is already underway. And we also know that HIV/AIDS continues to be a public health threat in many communities, including right here in the District of Columbia. Jeffrey Crowley, the Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy, recently held a forum in Washington, D.C., and is holding forums across the country, to seek input as we craft a national strategy to address this crisis.

We are moving ahead on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. (Applause.) We should not be punishing patriotic Americans who have stepped forward to serve this country. We should be celebrating their willingness to show such courage and selflessness on behalf of their fellow citizens, especially when we’re fighting two wars. (Applause.)

We cannot afford to cut from our ranks people with the critical skills we need to fight any more than we can afford — for our military’s integrity — to force those willing to do so into careers encumbered and compromised by having to live a lie. So I’m working with the Pentagon, its leadership, and the members of the House and Senate on ending this policy. Legislation has been introduced in the House to make this happen. I will end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. That’s my commitment to you. (Applause.)

It is no secret that issues of great concern to gays and lesbians are ones that raise a great deal of emotion in this country. And it’s no secret that progress has been incredibly difficult — we can see that with the time and dedication it took to pass hate crimes legislation. But these issues also go to the heart of who we are as a people. Are we a nation that can transcend old attitudes and worn divides? Can we embrace our differences and look to the hopes and dreams that we share? Will we uphold the ideals on which this nation was founded: that all of us are equal, that all of us deserve the same opportunity to live our lives freely and pursue our chance at happiness? I believe we can; I believe we will. (Applause.)

And that is why — that’s why I support ensuring that committed gay couples have the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country. (Applause.) I believe strongly in stopping laws designed to take rights away and passing laws that extend equal rights to gay couples. I’ve required all agencies in the federal government to extend as many federal benefits as possible to LGBT families as the current law allows. And I’ve called on Congress to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and to pass the Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act. (Applause.) And we must all stand together against divisive and deceptive efforts to feed people’s lingering fears for political and ideological gain.

For the struggle waged by the Human Rights Campaign is about more than any policy we can enshrine into law. It’s about our capacity to love and commit to one another. It’s about whether or not we value as a society that love and commitment. It’s about our common humanity and our willingness to walk in someone else’s shoes: to imagine losing a job not because of your performance at work but because of your relationship at home; to imagine worrying about a spouse in the hospital, with the added fear that you’ll have to produce a legal document just to comfort the person you love — (applause) — to imagine the pain of losing a partner of decades and then discovering that the law treats you like a stranger. (Applause.)

If we are honest with ourselves we’ll admit that there are too many who do not yet know in their lives or feel in their hearts the urgency of this struggle. That’s why I continue to speak about the importance of equality for LGBT families — and not just in front of gay audiences. That’s why Michelle and I have invited LGBT families to the White House to participate in events like the Easter Egg Roll — because we want to send a message. (Applause.) And that’s why it’s so important that you continue to speak out, that you continue to set an example, that you continue to pressure leaders — including me — and to make the case all across America. (Applause.)

So, tonight I’m hopeful — because of the activism I see in this room, because of the compassion I’ve seen all across America, and because of the progress we have made throughout our history, including the history of the movement for LGBT equality.

Soon after the protests at Stonewall 40 years ago, the phone rang in the home of a soft-spoken elementary school teacher named Jeanne Manford. It was 1:00 in the morning, and it was the police. Now, her son, Morty, had been at the Stonewall the night of the raids. Ever since, he had felt within him a new sense of purpose. So when the officer told Jeanne that her son had been arrested, which was happening often to gay protesters, she was not entirely caught off guard. And then the officer added one more thing, “And you know, he’s homosexual.” (Laughter.) Well, that police officer sure was surprised when Jeanne responded, “Yes, I know. Why are you bothering him?” (Applause.)

And not long after, Jeanne would be marching side-by-side with her son through the streets of New York. She carried a sign that stated her support. People cheered. Young men and women ran up to her, kissed her, and asked her to talk to their parents. And this gave Jeanne and Morty an idea.

And so, after that march on the anniversary of the Stonewall protests, amidst the violence and the vitriol of a difficult time for our nation, Jeanne and her husband Jules — two parents who loved their son deeply — formed a group to support other parents and, in turn, to support their children, as well. At the first meeting Jeanne held, in 1973, about 20 people showed up. But slowly, interest grew. Morty’s life, tragically, was cut short by AIDS. But the cause endured. Today, the organization they founded for parents, families, and friends of lesbians and gays — (applause) — has more than 200,000 members and supporters, and has made a difference for countless families across America. And Jeanne would later say, “I considered myself such a traditional person. I didn’t even cross the street against the light.” (Laughter.) “But I wasn’t going to let anybody walk over Morty.” (Applause.)

That’s the story of America: of ordinary citizens organizing, agitating and advocating for change; of hope stronger than hate; of love more powerful than any insult or injury; of Americans fighting to build for themselves and their families a nation in which no one is a second-class citizen, in which no one is denied their basic rights, in which all of us are free to live and love as we see fit. (Applause.)

Tonight, somewhere in America, a young person, let’s say a young man, will struggle to fall to sleep, wrestling alone with a secret he’s held as long as he can remember. Soon, perhaps, he will decide it’s time to let that secret out. What happens next depends on him, his family, as well as his friends and his teachers and his community. But it also depends on us — on the kind of society we engender, the kind of future we build.

I believe the future is bright for that young person. For while there will be setbacks and bumps along the road, the truth is that our common ideals are a force far stronger than any division that some might sow. These ideals, when voiced by generations of citizens, are what made it possible for me to stand here today. (Applause.) These ideals are what made it possible for the people in this room to live freely and openly when for most of history that would have been inconceivable. That’s the promise of America, HRC. That’s the promise we’re called to fulfill. (Applause.) Day by day, law by law, changing mind by mind, that is the promise we are fulfilling.

Thank you for the work you’re doing. God bless you. God bless America. (Applause.)

END 8:35 P.M. EDT

Obama’s Expanding Anti-Christian Agenda: Photo of President Obama appearing on the website of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the world’s most powerful homosexual lobby group. Obama was the keynote speaker at the group’s annual fundraising dinner. He echoed HRC’s talking points by claiming that homosexuality-based relationships are “just as real and admirable” as normal and natural relationships between a man and a woman.

CHICAGO, Illinois — President Obama used the bully pulpit tonight to defy the Creator, by brazenly declaring before a homosexual activist audience that homosexuality-based relationships are “just as real and admirable” as normal relationships between a man and a woman.

Here is how influential one homosexual activist — Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign, whose annual fundraising dinner Obama keynoted tonight — reacted to the president’s unprecedented endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle:

“Finally, we heard something quite remarkable from the President:  ‘You will see a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women as just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman.’

“This was a historic night when we felt the full embrace and commitment of the President of the United States. It’s simply unprecedented.”

Americans For Truth About Homosexuality President Peter LaBarbera issued this response:

President Obama has taken his ‘audacity’ to new levels tonight, equating sin-based ‘relationships’ to the normal and natural male-female relationship that finds its best fulfillment in God-ordained, procreative marriage.

During the presidential campaign, Obama once punted on an abortion-related query as to when life begins, saying that was above his “pay grade.” Too bad he didn’t attempt a similar evasion on  homosexuality. The president has gone way over his pay grade on this one. Homosexual practice is a moral issue, settled by the Creator and His clear design of nature since the beginning of time. Obama can no more declare with any authority that abnormal, homosexuality-based relationships are as “admirable” as normal relationships than he can proclaim that each day will now have 30 hours instead of 24 to increase American productivity.

The president could not be more wrong. Homosexual relationships are not to be admired, they are to be pitied, as immoral “unions” that can only pretend to copy real marriage. Moreover, when the government treats such aberrant relationships like marriage, it risks placing hundreds of thousands of children in homes that are motherless or fatherless by design, through “gay adoption” — another misguided homosexual demand advanced by Obama.

Perhaps the president needs to meet at the White House with some “ex-gays” — former homosexuals who now live in natural, man-woman marriages — people like Steve Bennett, Yvette Schneider, and Alan Chambers — to see the error of his ways.

We have yet to analyze Obama’s entire speech, but his declaration about admiring immoral homosexual relationships alone is the latest in a series of acts of spectacular hubris that have marked his political career. But Obama has a problem: he sold himself to the American electorate as a moderate Christian who believes deeply in traditional marriage between a man and a woman. Yet the more he panders and postures to his impatient homosexual allies, the more Obama’s supposed embrace of husband-and-wife marriage becomes a farce — one apparently designed to fool voters who knew next to nothing about his real, radically pro-homosexual and pro-transsexual agenda.

We don’t blame Obama’s “queer” allies for asking: if you truly believe same-sex relationships are as “real and admirable” as male-female relationships, then why NOT support “gay marriage”? Equal is equal, right? The truth, of course, is that homosexuality-based relationships are anything but equal to the real thing: they cannot produce children; they are based on destructive and changeable behavior that has been condemned by Christianity and other major religious throughout most of civilized human history; and in celebrating their particular sin and attaching it to the noble institution of marriage, they force the teaching of homosexuality and counterfeit “marriage” as normative to schoolchildren in the name of tolerance and equality.

Barack Obama is a man whose “audacity” and pride seem to know no bounds — he even distorts the Bible to justify his “gay” advocacy. In his mind, he knows better than God, or so it would seem. Yet in this respect Obama is not unlike other pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality politicians — mostly Democrats but some Republicans — who take it upon themselves to redefine right and wrong based on their subjective “feelings.” As the prophet Isaiah said long ago, they call good evil and evil good (Is. 5:20).

We hope that Obama’s cynical habit of talking out of both sides of his mouth on the homosexual issue (like other issues) will be his undoing. Now it is time for moral-minded Americans — especially those who voted for Obama  — be they Christian, Muslim or Jew; black, white or brown — to let the White House and Congress know that they will oppose all of the Obama Administration’s legislative efforts to create a bogus “civil right” out of the human wrong of homosexuality.

NOTE TO READERS: the following Americans For Truth transcript, derived from an audiotape recording of a speech made at a 1997 GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network) conference, is at the source for the current “Harry Hay-NAMBLA” controversy surrounding GLSEN founder Kevin Jennings — President Obama’s “Safe Schools” deputy at the Department of Education. (The left-wing group Media Matters cites it HERE.) This transcript was provided by Brian Burt, then a volunteer writer/reporter for the Americans For Truth publication “Lambda Report.” We will endeavor to provide the tape to the public to counteract the absurd attempts to discredit this and other first-hand AFTAH reports on Jennings and GLSEN simply because AFTAH is a conservative organization. — Peter LaBarbera, President, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, www.aftah.org

P.S. It would seem fairly easy for Jennings to clarify his position on NAMBLA — all he has to do is issue a clear statement of his opposition to this evil “man-boy love” organization. Homosexual activist groups and leaders similarly denounced NAMBLA — which marched in early “gay pride” parades and whose “right” to do so was enthusiastically defended by “gay” icon Harry Hay –  when they perceived that being tied to the notorious pederasty group was an impediment to their progress.

__________________________________

Have Kevin Jennings and GLSEN almost won? Obama Department of Education appointee Kevin Jennings looked forward to the day when people would shrug their shoulders at the news that “gay” groups like the one he founded (GLSEN) are “promoting homosexuality” in schools. Has America become so corrupt and decadent that this “queer” activist’s twisted vision has become true?  TAKE ACTION: write Education Secretary Arne Duncan (arne.duncan@ed.gov) or call him (202-401-3000) with the message that you do not want your tax dollars spent on “promoting homosexuality” in schools. Also, urge your Senators and Congressman (202-224-3121) to call on Duncan to withdraw the appointment of Jennings — an anti-religious bigot who said (in a church) “[F**k] ‘em” and “Drop dead” to religious traditionalists — as “Safe School” Deputy Assistant Secretary at the Department of Education. Photo at left is from MassResistance’s coverage of the 2009 homosexual “Youth Pride” parade.

The following transcript of a 1997 speech by Kevin Jennings is reprinted from the Lambda Report, Jan.-Feb. 1998 [LR, published by Peter LaBarbera, preceded Americans For Truth About Homosexuality]:

______________________________

GLSEN’s Jennings: ‘That is our mission from this day forward’

The following is a transcript of GLSEN founder and executive director Kevin Jennings’ comments before “Looking to the Future” panel at GLSEN’s Mid-Atlantic conference, held October 25, 1997 at the Grace Church School in New York City. A few incidental words and phrases have been removed for clarity:

Two years ago, one of our board members, one named Ann Simon, was called to testify before Congress when they had hearings on the promotion of homosexuality in schools. And we were busy putting out press releases, and saying, ‘We’re not promoting homosexuality, that’s not what our program’s about. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.’ And my best friend, who’s a straight women who lives in London, e-mailed me…and she said, ‘So what if you are?’ And I thought of how I can get so wrapped up in my own defensiveness, and…the day-to-day struggle, and stuff, that being finished might some day mean that most straight people, when they would hear that someone was promoting homosexuality, would say ‘Yeah, who cares?’ because they wouldn’t necessarily equate homosexuality with something bad that you would not want to promote. And when we were talking there, and Mike said, ‘You know, and I’d like five years from now—right now let’s face it, for large swells of people they think of GLSEN and kids, and they think, ‘GLSEN is bad for kids.’ They do because of their stereotypes and misinformation—I’d like five years from now for most Americans when they hear the word GLSEN to think, ‘Ooh, that’s good for kids.’’

I’d like you to step back for a second if you can, and I know that many of you here are going to return to meetings on Monday where the euphoria of today will dissipate quite quickly…But if you could just close your eyes for a second. I know this is very Californian. Close your eyes for a second and think, ‘What would the world look like if we were through with our work? If we were done. If we could close the doors on 27th street [GLSEN’s New York City headquarters], and shut down the chapters, and disband the board. What would be happening?’… [Audience responses]

…As the son of a Baptist preacher from North Carolina…I can remember a time when having a conference like this, for me, certainly as a teenager, seemed completely impossible. And I would see in certain people’s faces when people would say certain things, or this visioning part, and we’d get little snickers, like,  ‘Yeah, [bulls--t].’ This is the only thing that can stop us, is if we believe that our dreams cannot come true.

One of the people that’s always inspired me is Harry Hay, who started the first ongoing gay rights groups in America. In 1948, he tried to get people to join the Mattachine Society [the first American homosexual “rights” group]. It took him two years to find one other person who would join. Well, [in] 1993, Harry Hay marched with a million people in Washington, who thought he had a good idea 40 years before. Everybody thought Harry Hay was crazy in 1948, and they knew something about him which he apparently did not—they were right, he was crazy. You are all crazy. We are all crazy. All of us who are thinking this way are crazy, because you know what? Sane people keep the world the same [sh*tty] old way it is now. It’s the people who think, ‘No, I can envision a day when straight people say, ‘So what if you’re promoting homosexuality?’ Or straight kids say, ‘Hey, why don’t you and your boyfriend come over before you go to the prom and try on your tuxes on at my house?’ That if we believe that can happen, we can make it happen. The only thing that will stop us is our lack of faith that we can make it happen. That is our mission from this day forward. To not lose our faith, to not lose our belief that the world can, indeed, be a different place. And think how much can change in one lifetime if in Harry Hay’s one very short life, he saw change from not even one person willing to join him to a million people willing to travel to Washington to join him. You can see the same changed happen in your lifetime if you believe you can.’’

– Brian Burt, Lambda Report, Jan.-Feb. 1998

Kevin Jennings, founder of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network and President Obama’s new Deputy Assistant Secretary for Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

Promoting Human Wrongs in the Name of Human Rights: HRC and its president, Joe Solmonese, love to smear defenders of traditional marriage and the Bible’s teaching on homosexuality (including preachers) as “haters” and “extremists.” Barack Obama demeans the office of the presidency of the United States by celebrating this radical and profoundly anti-Christian organization.

President Barack Obama is telegraphing his left-wing sympathies and defiance of America’s historic, Judeo-Christian-based morality to the world. The same man who didn’t have time for the National Day of Prayer has worked into his busy schedule a keynote address at a fundraiser Saturday for the world’s largest homosexual lobby group — one that glories in its anti-religious bigotry (masquerading as tolerance, of course). Yes, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is really all about Human Wrongs — whether it’s demonizing as “extremists” Americans who are simply trying to protect the age-old definition of marriage; crusading for legislation that denies our First Amendment right to defend normalcy and Judeo-Christian mores; lobbying for taxpayer funding of transsexual “sex-change” mutilations operations; or its ongoing attempt to redefine the clear Word of God to serve the sinful cause of “proud” homosexuality. (HRC’s Harry Knox — an Obama “faith council” appointee — outrageously calls his own homosexuality a “gift from God.”) At bottom is the HRC press release below highlighting Obama’s address Saturday evening.

Obama’s friend, HRC President Joe Solmonese (above left), is to true respect and “tolerance” what John Edwards and Mark Sanford are to “family values.” Solmonese revels in his role as D.C.’s top homosexual power-broker. A former exec with the pro-abortion PAC EMILY’s List, he embodies the spirit of the age that elevates subjective feelings and libertine, godless ideologies over timeless revelation of right versus wrong. Moreover, Solmonese and fellow “queer” advocates arrogantly behave as if there is no legitimate “other side” to their homosexual movement. He has no problem castigating religious foes of the homosexualist agenda — including pastors, who he accuses of “preaching hatred from the pulpit” for merely agreeing with God about homosexual sin. (Much as they hate religious “fundamentalists,” those homosexual activists sure do have their own set of absolute “fundamentals” down pat, huh?)

Solmonese even has the chutzpah to accuse the Vatican of having a “truth” problem when the Catholic Church tries to deal with its crisis caused by homosexual priests (you know, the ones with a sexual preference for adolescent boys). What he and fellow “gay” activists call a witch-hunt was actually an attempt by the church to prevent further man-boy predations that have badly damaged its reputation. When the pope condemns same-sex “marriage,” HRC and Solmonese dismiss him as “anti-gay” and say he is out to divide “faithful Catholics.” (Last I heard, people who champion sins are not called “faithful.”)

I remember way, way back when HRC joined other “gay” organizations in blacking out its websites following the murder of college student Matt Shepard — and shamelessly used the tragedy as an opportunity to promote “Hate Crimes” legislation. They cynically demonized Christian pro-family groups as somehow having a role in the crime. This is a profoundly anti-Christian organization, so when President Obama celebrates HRC and helps it raise funds, he honors their particular brand of animus and bigotry, which equates genuine, God-fearing Christians (and orthodox Jews, and traditional Muslims) with “hatred” and vile prejudice. That makes this a hateful act by Mr. Obama, and one that demeans the office of the presidency of the United States. Pray for Obama — he cannot serve both God and a Bible-distorting sin group. You can contact the White House HERE. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

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HRC’s press release follows:

President Barack Obama to Deliver Keynote Address at the 13th Annual Human Rights Campaign Dinner

U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy will also present first Edward M. Kennedy National Leadership Award to Judy and Dennis Shepard

10/5/2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, announced today that President Barack Obama will deliver the keynote address at the 13th Annual National Dinner on Saturday, October 10th, in Washington, D.C.  U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy will also present the first-ever Edward M. Kennedy National Leadership Award to Judy and Dennis Shepard.  The award is named in honor of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), a champion in the fight for LGBT equality.

“We are honored to share this night with President Obama, who has called upon our nation to embrace LGBT people as brothers and sisters,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese.  “It is fitting that he will speak to our community on the night that we pay tribute to his friend and mentor Senator Edward Kennedy, who knew that as president, Barack Obama would take on the unfinished business of this nation – equal rights for the LGBT community, and for every person who believes in liberty and justice for all.”

The event will begin at 7 p.m. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.  All media planning to attend the Human Rights Campaign National Dinner must pre-register by Thursday, October 8.  ….

The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.

P.S.  We understand that the Christian-bashing, Marxist radicals over at Gay Liberation Network will be protesting IFI’s banquet. Now we know IFI must be doing something right.

 “Well, boys aren’t supposed to kiss boys and girls aren’t supposed to kiss girls.” – Kindergarten student in East Hartford, CT, responding to lesbian teacher and GLSEN activist Geraldine Burke revealing to the class that she kisses her girlfriend. Burke later compared her lesbian kisses to affectionate kisses between family members.

GLSEN Corrupts Children: the organization founded by Kevin Jennings, GLSEN, advocates teaching very young children — who don’t even know what sex is yet — one-sided lessons about homosexuality and transsexuality.

The following story is reprinted from The Lambda Report, the now-defunct printed flagship publication of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality. It is the first part of a story about 1999 GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian Straight Education Network) conference held that year in Atlanta. Kevin Jennings — whose appointment as Barack Obama’s “safe schools” czar in the Department of Education is now embroiled in controversy — founded GLSEN, which promotes the acceptance of homosexuality, bisexuality and transsexuality to children in K-12 schools. We found some updated information on Burke on two homosexual activist websites, which follows the article below.

The following is based on AFTAH’s firsthand attendance at the 1999 GLSEN conference:

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How One Teacher Defended Her Lesbianism to Kindergartners

GLSEN panelist compares lesbian kiss to parental love

By Peter LaBarbera, Lambda Report, Fall-Winter 1999

ATLANTA — A lesbian gym teacher who told her kindergarten students  that kissing her female partner was like a father lovingly kissing his son or an affectionate kiss between sisters was applauded for her “honesty” at a national conference for pro-homosexual educators, held here October 1-4 [1999].

“I will tell you that your heart tells you who to love,” retired elementary school teacher Geraldine Burke said she told her young students, after one of them started the discussion by asking if she had a husband. Burke–who taught gym class for 30 years in East Hartford, Connecticut — related the story as a panelist at the third annual conference of the Gay, Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a fast-growing homosexual activist group. Her workshop was titled, “Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, except What to Do When I Hear the Word ‘Fag’ or ‘Dyke’ in Class.”

Burke’s was one of several panels at the GLSEN conference devoted to advancing homosexuality-positive attitudes among elementary school children — the most controversial part of GLSEN’s agenda. In recent years, “gay” education activists have championed the “right” of teachers to discuss their homosexuality in the classroom, as Burke did with her young charges.

She explained that at her school she was “out” as a lesbian to the principal and to most of the teaching staff, and that it was important for her to be “authentic” about her sexual identity. According to Burke, one day a student in her gym class asked if she had a husband. She said no, and then another student asked if she had a boyfriend. Burke said no. “As a matter of fact … I have a girlfriend.” After some of the children said, “Ohhhh!” as if shocked, they asked her if she kissed her girlfriend. Burke said that she did.

The kids responded again, “Ohhhh!” When she asked what was wrong, one of the students said, “Well, boys aren’t supposed to kiss boys and girls aren’t supposed to kiss girls.”

Burke then responded,” Some people think it’s OK, and some people think it’s not OK,” speaking of homosexuality.

Then the gym teacher asked one of the boys in her class,” Do you ever kiss your father goodnight?” He replied, “Yes.” She then asked one of the girls, “Do you ever kiss your sister to show her that you love her?” “Yes,” the girl responded. Burke then used the analogy between those kisses and her lesbian kisses as she told the children, “Some people will tell you that you shouldn’t love some people [but] … your hearts tells you who to love.” She said the next question was: “When is gym?” as the students moved on to other matters.

Burke said that she informed the school principal about how she “outed” herself to the students in class. She said that neither she nor the principal ever heard back from any parents about the sensitive conversation.

“This was a very, very important teachable moment … I was not in any way going to lie to my students,” Burke said of her conversation with the kindergarten gym class. “At the elementary level, the teachable moments are the really critical ones.”

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More Information about Geraldine Burke:

We found some more current information on Geraldine Burke online in a newsletter of PFLAG (Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) Hartford (CT). The March-April 2009 PFLAG-Hartford newsletter reports:

Geraldine Burke is a retired elementary physical education teacher. She taught in East Hartford at the preschool through sixth grade level for most of her career. She has been an activist for LGBT civil rights since 1989, serving on the boards of GLSEN CT; True Colors, Inc.; Stonewall Speakers; and CT Stonewall Foundation, Inc.

Upon her retirement as a public school educator, in 1999, she expanded her passion to be a change agent and became more involved as a Stonewall Speaker and served as State Coordinator of Engagements from June 2001 until February 2006. She recently stepped down from the board of directors after serving for four years and continues to participate as a panelist. … Geraldine lives her woman-loving self openly and as an equal in the world.

(PFLAG newsletter: http://www.pflaghartford.org/caring/caringV18N2.pdf)

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From the conference, “True Colors XV: A Global Perspective on Sexual and Gender Minority Youth,” March 13-15, 2008, sponsored by True Colors, Inc. (”True Colors works to create a world where youth, adults and families of all sexual orientations and gender identities are valued and affirmed. We challenge all forms of oppression through education, training, advocacy, youth leadership development, mentoring and direct services to youth and those responsible for their well-being.”)

A Successful Model for Effecting Change in School Climate for Middle & High School Students, Faculty, and Administration: LGBT Personal Stories with Q & A

Same and different gender loving, pan sexual, and transgender people, and supportive allies from the Stonewall Speakers will present the model used when speaking at schools, colleges, workplaces and communities of faith. The goal of this group is to educate the community at large regarding sexual orientation and gender identity and expression. This program is informative to the general population and at the same time supports the mostly closeted queer students, families, and teachers in our schools and workplaces. This model has been presented for almost twenty years in more than 100 high schools in CT through integration into Health, Psychology, Current Issues and Human Sexuality classes as well as Diversity and Teen Awareness days.

Geraldine Burke is a member of the Board of Directors of the CT Stonewall Foundation, which provides funding and direction for the Stonewall Speakers program. She formerly served on the Boards of GLSEN and True Colors and was Stonewall Speakers state coordinator from 2001 – January 2007. As an activist for the civil rights of same gender loving, pan sexual, transgender, and intersex people, Geraldine finds her involvement with Stonewall Speakers both rewarding and fulfilling.

Source: http://www.ourtruecolors.org/cfs/TC15/TC15Guide.pdf

WARNING: Offensive photos depicting San Francisco’s perversion of “tolerance”

Me: Naked Black Slave on leash; You: White Master: Is this what big city liberals and pro-”gay” activists mean when they extol “diversity” and “sexual freedom”? (Note the two cops in the background who took no action against this public nudity.) We covered up the exposed genitals of the African-American man at left, who with his white, female “master” (holding leash) attended the 2009 Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco Sunday afternoon. Despite the SFPD’s promises earlier this year to crack down on public nudity at such events, police and city (and state) authorities again “tolerated” full frontal nudity at Folsom. (More firsthand Americans For Truth photos to come from our man on the scene.)

Consensual “master-slave” “relationships” are just one of the demented perversions that fall under the sadomasochistic (”leather”) umbrella.  Powerful homosexual groups like the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force promote such deviance — see our stories HERE and HERE on the Task Force’s annual “Leather Leadership Award.” The same Task Force — which purports to support “monogamous” values for homosexuals as it injects itself into Maine’s current battle over  “same-sex marriage” — manages to vilify Christian pro-family groups as “extremists” despite its own promotion of twisted and dehumanizing “S&M” perversions.

Daddy “Master,” Boy “Slave”:  Below, another “master-slave couple,” this one homosexual, poses for the camera at Sunday’s Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco. Note that the “slave” — who appears to be considerably younger than his “master” — is bound by a leash to the older man. We had to cover it up, but the younger man also is wearing a “sex toy” contraption that hangs from his shoulders and attaches to the base of his testicles. 

Ironic Indignation: will Speaker Pelosi work use her unprecedented influence to stop the anti-Christian intolerance and gross incivility toward people of faith in her own congressional district?

Recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) accused Americans protesting Obama-care at congressional townhall meetings of engaging in “un-American” conduct. Wrote Speaker Pelosi August 10: “These disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views — but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task [health care reform] for decades.”

Speaker Pelosi, representing the intolerant glass house of San Francisco, should hardly be throwing stones with her selective outrage designed to discredit Americans opposed to expansive government. In her city, “shouting down” opponents has become an art form for the Left. Below is a video by veteran homosexual activist Michael Petrelis, founding member of the homosexual extremist group ACT UP, in which Petrelis shouts down an Americans For Truth-led coalition protest last year condemning San Francisco’s allowance of public nudity and sex in the streets (i.e., at the annual deviance sex-fest known as the Folsom Street Fair). Note in this homosexual activist video how the police officer ignores my plea for speech rights and allows Petrelis to disrupt our press event. — Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth

In future posts, we’ll have more on Pelosi’s subsequent ironic pleas for civility. Note the vulgar Petrelis’ simulation of a sex act on a banana and his enthusiastic defense of public sex and nudity in his city. In most other cities, police put a distance between opposing sides so that each can exercise its right to speak out. Shown in the video are AFTAH’s Peter LaBarbera (asking police to prevent Petrlelis from disrupting the press conference), Diane Gramley of American Family Association of Pennsylvania, and Linda Harvey of Mission America. The coalition press conference occurred September 27, 2008, a day before the perverse “Folsom Street Fair,” which again “tolerated” public nudity.

The FBI today announced child-pornography charges against four men from Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, accusing them of operating a ring that distributed pornographic images and videos and referred to themselves by the name “Boy Lovers.”

Charged are Jose Carlos Garcia, 22, of Schererville, Ind.; Neal Maschke, 40, of West Chicago; Corey Stinefast, 27, of Kenosha, Wis.; and Mark McGill, 24, of Crest Hill.

According to the complaints, the FBI began investigating the men in June after arresting one in their group. That man admitted to “possession, receipt, distribution and manufacture of child pornography,” the complaint said. The man “also stated he had contacts with many other child pornography enthusiasts, some of whom were molesting children.”

The man became a cooperating witness and may still face federal child-exploitation charges himself, according to the complaints.

In several recorded conversations — in person, via phone and Internet chat — the witness and Garcia allegedly discussed child pornography, and he and Garcia arranged to meet to exchange and view images and videos together.

In one phone exchange on July 11, Garcia allegedly told the cooperating witness that he had traveled to St. Louis and met with a man whom he filmed engaging in sexual activity with a young boy, the complaint against Garcia states.

On Aug. 25, the witness, Garcia and Stinefast allegedly went to a local amusement park, the complaint states. During the trip, Stinefast allegedly gave Garcia a computer disk containing child pornography that the witness later turned over to federal investigators.

The witness and undercover FBI investigators met with Garcia and Maschke in a hotel room in Skokie on Saturday night to exchange pornographic computer images and videos. Those two defendants were arrested at that time and were found to have child pornography with them, according to the FBI. Stinefast was arrested in Kenosha the same night.

McGill was taken into custody this morning. Officials say he gave a USB drive to the witness on Aug. 29 that contained over 3,500 images and 60 videos of child pornography.

If convicted of the charges against them, Garcia, Stinefast and McGill face between five and 20 years in federal prison, while Maschke faces up to 10 years in prison.

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.

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From the archives of Concerned Women for America’s online “Culture and Family Institute” newsletter (Oct. 30, 2002):

Father of ‘Gay Rights’ Dies; Media Ignore NAMBLA Connection

Harry Hay Was Sexualized Early, Defended Pedophiles to the End

By Peter J. LaBarbera, CWA, 10-30-2002

In noting the passing of Harry Hay — the man who first organized homosexuals as a political minority — no mainstream media outlets reported that Hay was an advocate of pedophile rights and the notorious group NAMBLA.

NAMBLA is the North American Man/Boy Love Association, a group that advocates for the legalization of sex between men and boys, and an end to all “age of consent” laws.

Hay, who died on October 24, at age 90, formed the first American homosexual activist group, the Mattachine Society, in 1950. He conceived of the idea of organizing homosexuals at a time when most were afraid to even be discovered as such. Hay was also a committed Communist who married to hide his homosexuality so that he could join the Party.

He went on to found The Radical Faeries, a shamanistic spirituality movement for homosexual men. “Gay pride” parades frequently include local contingents of “Faeries” — semi-naked men prancing and dancing in variations of Native American rituals.

Hay strongly opposed the notion that “gays” should assimilate into larger “straight” culture. Thus, in the eighties and nineties, when homosexual activists began banning NAMBLA from “gay pride” parades to clean up their public image, he and other “gay” liberationists were outraged.

In 1994, Hay, then in his eighties, was among the signers of a “Spirit of Stonewall” proclamation that argued that efforts to ban NAMBLA from the New York “pride” parade violated the spirit of the original Stonewall “rebellion,” which is revered by homosexual activists as the spark of the modern “gay rights” movement. (In 1969, homosexuals and others then regarded as deviants rioted in response to a police crackdown of the Stonewall Inn in New York City.)

The Spirit of Stonewall (SOS) declaration read in part:

Stonewall was the spontaneous action of marginal people oppressed by the mainstream — of teenaged drag queens, pederasts, transsexuals, hustlers, and others despised by respectable straights and “discreet” homosexuals. …

SOS is an ad hoc committee of lesbian, gay and other individuals and groups formed to bring Stonewall 25 [celebrating the 25th anniversary of the riots] back to the principles of gay liberation. We focus on one of the most glaring departures from those principles: the attempt to exclude [NAMBLA] . …

NAMBLA’s record as a responsible gay organization is well known. NAMBLA was spawned by the gay community and has been in every major gay and lesbian march. … NAMBLA’s call for the abolition of age of consent is not the issue. NAMBLA is a bona fide participant in the gay and lesbian movement. NAMBLA deserves strong support in its rights of free speech and association and its members’ protection from discrimination and bashing.

In 1986, Hay’s pro-NAMBLA activism had a role in what became known in homosexual circles as the “Harry Hay incident.” As part of a protest against the Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade, Hay taunted organizers for excluding the North American Man/Boy Love Association by wearing a sandwich board that read, “NAMBLA Walks with Me.” This event is chronicled by Hay’s biographer, homosexual writer Stuart Timmons, in The Trouble with Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement. The book includes a photo of Hay in the NAMBLA sandwich board.

More recently, Hay wrote an essay for the pederasty magazine GAYME, according to a “queer” magazine Web site. GAYME is a magazine for men who are sexually “into boys,” according to one Web reviewer. It is produced by former NAMBLA Bulletin editor Bill Andriette.

Timmons’ sympathetic biography of Hay reveals that he had his first homosexual sexual encounter at age nine, with another boy. At age 14, in a grove of trees, he “discovered his first [homosexual] lovemaking” with a 25-year-old sailor named Matt. Hay refused to describe the experience as “molestation,” according to Timmons, “to make the point of how sharply gay life differs from homosexual norms.” The account continues:

“As a child,” [Hay] explained, “I molested an adult until I found out what I needed to know.” … Far from being an experience of “molestation,” Harry always described it as “the most beautiful gift that a fourteen-year-old ever got from his first love!”

A Nexis database search of Harry Hay obits in over 30 print news outlets — including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Associated Press and Time Magazine — turned up no mention of his pro-NAMBLA advocacy.

TAKE ACTION: Call and write your U.S. Congressman and Senators (202-224-3121; 202-225-3121; www.congress.org) and urge them to oppose the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA; HR 2981) as a Big Government bill that would empower the federal government to force small businesses to subsidize homosexual and gender-confused lifestyles. 

By Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.com

Dear AFTAH Readers,

Just in case you are still relying on establishment liberal media like the Associated Press (AP) to get your news, here are some startling photos and links documenting the mammoth, conservative “Tea Party Express” march in our nation’s capital Saturday, September 12th. This was a grassroots taxpayers’ protest of historic proportions — not in the “tens of thousands,” as AP misreported, but between one and two million people coming to make their voice heard in Washington.

I have been to a few big marches on Washington — including the annual March for Life and (as a critical observer) the homosexual activists’ March on Washington in 1993 (Click HERE to watch a very revealing YouTube video about that radical event). Based on the photos of Saturday’s tea party in D.C., this march appears to have dwarfed those past mobilizations. And try as the liberals will to paint Saturday’s marchers as a bunch of extremists, these are regular Americans, many of which had never attended a D.C. mass rally before. (But try this for a glimpse of the extreme 1993 “gay” rally, which had much smaller numbers.)

The Left is already moving to discredit the massive conservative turnout — jumping all over a false claim that ABC News reported the march as drawing between 1 million and 1.5 million. (We hope the Park Service will come up with a fair estimate, but even if they don’t aerial photos tell the story.) When even the left-wing MSNBC (NBC reporter Tom Costello) goes off script and reports that “hundreds of thousands” took part in the rally, you know something very significant has happened in Washington [watch Costello's MSNBC report HERE]. The New York Times reported:

“Many came on their own and were not part of an organization or group. But the magnitude of the rally took the authorities by surprise, with throngs of people streaming from the White House to Capitol Hill for more than three hours.”

Here are some important websites that tell the real story about this huge rally in D.C.:

• Obviously moved by the enormity of the 9/12 march, the British newspaper Daily Mail  — hardly sympathetic to American conservatives — reported (emphasis added): “A million march to US Capitol to protest against ‘Obama the socialist.’” However, the Daily Mail’s original headline was: “Up to two million march to US Capitol to protest against Obama’s spending in ‘tea-party’ demonstration” (it appears that the DM’s editors made some politically correct revisions);
• Michelle Malkin’s original story on the 9/12 march: “Yes, the picture is real, nutroots” [see photo at right]
• Malkin’s follow-up web article: “Celebrating the 9/12 rallies; Turnout estimated at 2 million” ;
• WorldNetDaily.com story on 9/12: “A million or more rock Washington: Taxpayer march could be biggest rally ever in capital”;
• WND founder Joseph Farah’s column: “The shameful non-coverage of 9/12″;
• 9/12 elapsed-time footage of D.C. protesters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sjvc6baor8
• Glenn Beck web page with more photos of 9/12 march: http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/30493/

It deserves remembering that smug, out-of-touch media types like Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s resident lesbian leftist,  her über-obnoxious fellow MSNBC talker Keith Olbermann, and CNN’s Anderson Cooper viciously mocked the initial mass “tea party” protests with smirking jabs attaching them to “teabagging” — which, as it turns out, is a twisted oral sex act popularized by homosexual activist filmmaker John Waters’ movie “Pecker.” It was certainly a low point in the history of U.S. media to watch highly paid TV celebrities airing their inside dirty joke that compared decent, concerned Americans to a modern perversion. (Thankfully, most normal Americans didn’t know what “teabagging” was.)

Perhaps the liberal media elite’s snide condescension toward everyday Americans simply voicing their discontent — including suggestions that the protesters are racist because President Obama is black — accounted for an extra few hundred thousand protesters arriving in D.C. Saturday to make their presence felt. And that they did: even Maddow, Olbermann and the Huffington Post will have a tough time explaining away these seven-figure crowd numbers.

What does all this have to do with the fight against the Homosexual Lobby? Well, for one, beyond the health care debate, the Obama Administration is pushing to enact a comprehensive “gay” agenda that would greatly expand the government’s power to effectively force businesses and individuals to approve of or subsidize immoral homosexual and “transgender” lifestyles. The Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) — slated for a House hearing Wednesday, Sept. 23 — would create federal homosexuality- and transsexuality-based “rights” for employees. This would invariably circumscribe the liberties of business owners who oppose homosexuality as a matter of conscience. Our religious and First Amendment freedoms are at stake in this debate.

We trust that the same people who oppose Big Government intruding into our lives will resist the idea that the Government should be forcing businessmen and businesswomen to support homosexual behavior and gender confusion or risk getting sued.

NBC reporter Tom Costello reported that “hundreds of thousands” took part in the rally; the actual number was likely over a million.

 The AP photo above belies the news organization’s own reportage that numbered the massive crowd in the mere “tens of thousands.”

Folks, we have been slow to comment on all the Harvey Milk hype in our liberal-dominated popular culture — hype that is driving this push for an outrageous California bill that would effectively force students to celebrate a man famous for … being the first “out and proud” practitioner of homosexuality to win public office. (Oh boy: another marker for America’s Moral Meltdown.) The more one reads about Milk (see Dan Flynn’s excellent City Journal piece HERE) and the real story about his murder at the hands of Dan White (see caption above), the more preposterous becomes the idea of heralding him as a “civil rights” martyr.

For the media, Hollywood and academic establishments, the fix is in on championing Milk as an American hero. For the rest of us (the silent majority), he was a just a man with a sexual problem who achieved a political first in a city — San Francisco — that devolved into a Mecca for others with the same sexual sin problem. Had he not practiced deviant and unhealthy sex, nobody would care about the name Harvey Milk. Incidentally, this epitomizes what is wrong with “gay” history: it’s mostly written by those with a vested interest in normalizing aberrant and immoral sexual lifestyles.

And now, if Arnold wimps out, California children will learn some more skewed history. They will be taught to associate heroism, nobility and justice with a politician who not only crusaded for a misguided cause — state-enfored “rights” based on homosexuality — but who lied to advance that cause and his career. See my friend Randy Thomasson’s Save California website for more background on Milk, and information on how to urge Schwarzenegger (916-445-2841) to do the right thing by vetoing this bill. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.com

The following is excerpted from Baptist Press (emphasis added); click HERE to sign up for BP alerts.

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‘Harvey Milk Day’ heads to Calif. gov’s desk

Baptist Press, Sep 9, 2009

By Michael Foust

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (BP)–A bill that would encourage California public schools to observe “Harvey Milk Day” and to remember the deceased homosexual leader with “commemorative exercises” passed the state Senate Tuesday and is heading to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who hasn’t taken a position on it.

Schwarzenegger actually vetoed a similar bill last year but is under more pressure this year in light of President Obama recently awarding a Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Milk, the nation’s first openly homosexual person elected to public office. Milk was a San Francisco city supervisor who was assassinated in 1978 by another supervisor. The fact that the biographical movie “Milk” was released last year only adds to the pressure on the governor.

The bill (S.B. 572) would commemorate Milk with what the state calendar calls a day of “significance.” The only other such days are the Day of the Teacher (second Wednesday of May), John Muir Day (April 21) and California Poppy Day (April 6). Harvey Milk Day would be his birthday, May 22.

Schwarzenegger actually referenced the bill on his Twitter account days ago, writing, “Give me your thoughts on the water package, Harvey Milk Day, and the prison reform bill.”

It passed the Senate, 22-14, and the House, 46-28, along party-line votes with Democrats in the majority….

Individual schools and teachers could decide on their own whether to mark the day, although many certainly would. The text of the bill says “all public schools and educational institutions are encouraged to observe.” The bill says it would be appropriate to have “exercises remembering the life of Harvey Milk, recognizing his accomplishments, and familiarizing pupils with the contributions he made to this state.”

State Sen. Mark Leno, a Democrat and the bill’s sponsor, told The San Francisco Chronicle, “It should be kept in mind that he [Milk] literally gave his life so I and others can serve in public office and that every generation of LGBT Californians can pursue their every hope, dream and aspiration.”

But Randy Thomasson, an opponent of the bill and the president of SaveCalifornia.com, said Milk’s sexual escapades make him unfit to be pushed as a role model. For weeks, Thomasson’s press releases have quoted from “The Mayor of Castro Street,” a popular biography about Milk. Milk was 48 when he died but always had a desire for teen boys and men in their early 20s, the book says. He also advocated having multiple partners, it says….

Thomasson said in a [statement:] “Reputable biographies demonstrate that Milk was a sexual predator of teens, a homosexual sex addict who advocated polygamous relationships, and a public liar who justified his deceit. Harvey Milk was and is a terrible role model for kids, including kindergarteners who would be affected by this very bad bill.”

Close down the gay sex clubs? Homosexual sex is dangerous — the CDC says “gay” and “bi” men are 50 times more likely than other groups to have HIV. And yet homosexual sex clubs flourish across the country. At left is Steamworks, a Chicago homosexual bathhouse where men go for anonymous sex with other men. This is a photo taken at the 2005 “Market Days” street fair, at which Steamworks advertises itself like any other business. Why doesn’t the government move to close down such perversion centers as public health hazards, given the overwhelming evidence of the dangers of male homosexual sex? 

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So much for gay “equality.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — the U.S. government agency tasked with guarding Americans’ health — has finally put a number on the massively increased HIV risk associated with “men who have sex with men” (MSM): “gay” and “bi” men are 50 times more likely to have HIV. This does not mean that the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, will take some tough, politically incorrect steps necessary to prevent AIDS — like closing down homosexual bathhouses and gay (male) sex clubs in major cities, and educating teenagers on the hugely disproportionate health risks associated with homosexual sex. The relentless pandering by federal, state and local governments to “gay” activists even as these same agencies fight diseases specifically linked to homosexual sex is one of the greatest public policy follies of our time — indeed, of history itself.

The issue in this ongoing “culture war” is not the cause of homosexual “orientation” — or merely the legality of “same-sex marriage.” It’s homosexual behavior itself — and whether government should promote it or discourage it, or be neutral. I say discourage it, since the evidence keeps pouring in that conduct which has been proscribed as immoral down through centuries of Judeo-Christian tradition is also highly dangerous. Now if the CDC will only stop blabbering on about “homophobia” and start telling the truth — that the rectum is not a sexual organ, after all, and that we must take tough measures against “gay” promiscuity — America will become a healthier place. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.com

The following is excerpted from the homosexual newspaper Washington Blade:

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Gay, Bi Men 50 Times More Likely to Have HIV

CDC reports hard data at National HIV Prevention Conference

By DYANA BAGBY, Washington Blade
Aug. 28, 2009

ATLANTA — Gay and bisexual men account for half of new HIV infections in the U.S. and have AIDS at a rate more than 50 times greater than other groups, according to Centers for Disease Control & Prevention data presented at the National HIV Prevention Conference this week in Atlanta.

Dr. Amy Lansky of the CDC presented research at the Aug. 24 plenary in which the CDC estimated in the U.S. there were 692.2 new HIV cases in 2007 per 100,000 men who have sex with men.

While the CDC data has continually reported gay and bisexual men and other MSM of all races as the groups with the highest numbers of new HIV cases each year, AIDS activists said this was the first time the CDC clearly stated with a concrete rate how the disease is impacting gay and bisexual men. Gay and bisexual men are also the only risk group in which new infections are increasing.

“They have never converted the numbers into a rate,” said Walt Senterfitt of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project. Senterfitt is an epidemiologist.

“It’s not like this is totally new information. But they are saying now that gay, bisexual and other MSM are 50 times more likely to have AIDS than women and non-gay or bisexual men. This is a new statement. We weren’t able to make that equivalent before. We can now compare apples to apples. We represent the largest proportion.”

The CDC estimates gay and bisexual men make up about four to six percent of the population. When the CDC reports on African-American women, it says black women have an HIV infection rate that is nearly 15 times higher than that of white women. And Hispanics, who make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, account for 17 percent of all new HIV infections in the U.S. each year, according to the CDC.

According to a 2006 CDC report, 13,230 white MSM were estimated to be newly infected with HIV, followed by African-American MSM at 10,130 and then black heterosexual women at 7,340 new infections. The CDC estimates more than 56,000 Americans become infected each year; throughout the HIV Prevention Conference, the CDC stressed that number represents one person every nine-and-a-half minutes.

“If you ask 10 people in this room,” Senterfitt said at the conference with hundreds of people in attendance, “it’s likely only one person will answer correctly [that white MSM are the hardest hit by HIV].

“I think the CDC is finally trying to put out accurate information so the community can collectively respond — and these numbers help to show that HIV/AIDS never left the gay community.”

Kevin Fenton, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD & TB Prevention at the CDC, said in opening remarks at the conference Aug. 23 that “gay and bisexual men account for half of new infections and are at greatest risk.”

But Fenton, who is gay, also noted that just 20 percent of gay and bisexual men report hearing of HIV prevention campaigns.

President Barack Obama’s new Office of National AIDS Policy has the mission of putting HIV/AIDS in the U.S. back on the radar after, as many speakers said at the conference, the country has become complacent about the disease. …. [continued on Blade website]

Click HERE to read the entire article in the “gay” newspaper, Washington Blade

“San Francisco is a microcosm of the illness called liberalism. It’s the least tolerant city in the country. It’s the meanest city in the country.”

– Conservative talk show host Michael Savage, on his radio program “Savage Nation,” August 25, 2009. Savage is based in San Francisco.

Above is the twisted 2009 promotional poster for the annual Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco — a huge outdoor event celebrating sadomasochism and various perversions — at which hundreds if not thousands of men walk the streets fully or partially naked. At Folsom (scheduled for Sunday, Sept 27), it is commonplace to see men being publicly whipped and flogged to the delight of onlooking crowds. Nothing illustrates Savage’s quotation better than San Franciscans’ double standard on “tolerance.” Even many straights in the city take pride in its laissez faire embrace of Folsom and other perverse spectacles that to date have been coddled by the police, who do not enforce decency laws.

Curiously, even as they enable public nudity, the SFPD does a poor job of protecting dissenters’ rights in the city. Last year, the police failed to use their authority to allow a small Americans For Truth-led pro-family press conference condemning Folsom to go on civilly outside City Hall. Our outdoor press conference was shouted down in classic leftist fashion by veteran “queer” militant Michael Petrelis — as police ignored our request to give our free speech a forum to be heard. (In most big cities, police separate opposing protesters so that each side can exercise its free speech rights.) As you can see, Petrelis and fellow “queer” activists were allowed to shout over our press event with impunity; note his immature mimicking of oral sex and emphatic endorsement of nudity and sex in San Francisco’s streets.)

Proceeds from Folsom go to the anti-Catholic hate group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence — which doubles as a pro-homosexual “charity” in San Francisco. The “Sisters” are homosexual men painted in drag who call themselves nuns (with perverted names) and who are insulted when you don’t treat them as a serious “religious order”; see photo of “Sister” at right and click HERE for more on the notorious church-bashing “charity.”

Let’s review … “Tolerance” for open-air perversions and public nudity — but none for peaceful, pro-family dissenters. Mean, sadistic sex in the streets, as cops stand idly by and politicians look the other way. Mean and intolerant activists like Michael Petrelis. Heck, even the “charities” are mean and blasphemous in the City by the Bay. (That includes the shocking, annual “Hunky Jesus Contest” mocking Jesus Christ every Easter Sunday.)

Michael Savage is right: San Francisco epitomizes all that is wrong with modern liberalism. — Peter LaBarbera, www.afthah.com

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The 2007 Folsom promotional poster (below) pushed the envelope even by jaded San Francisco standards in mocking Da Vinci’s painting of Christ’s Last Supper with his disciples. Those are “sex toys” on the table including a red fist representing the bizarre and dangerous sadistic act of “fisting.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D), a Catholic, couldn’t bring herself to denounce this blasphemous artwork in her own congressional district — much less the annual Folsom Fair itself that represents the worst of those much-derided “San Francisco values.” Click on photos to enlarge.

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.

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“For those who support the hotel in this, imagine that the tables were turned. Suppose it was a homosexual group that had been turned down by the hotel because of ‘negative publicity.’ Would you still support the hotel’s right to discriminate in this fashion? Sauce for the goose…”

– Comment by “Springer” posted at Daily Herald article (reprinted below), “Anti-gay group sues Naperville hotel, alleges discrimination”

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Anti-Christian Discrimination OK? Imagine the hue and cry that would have erupted had the Holiday Inn Select hotel (left) in Naperville, Ill., canceled a “gay” organization’s scheduled banquet after its leader told the hotel that some Christians might protest the event.

Dear AFTAH Readers,

Below are two local articles on AFTAH’s just-filed lawsuit against a Naperville, IL Holiday Inn hotel for canceling our banquet two years ago out of fear of “gay” protests.

We hope you can make it to this year’s AFTAH banquet on Sat., Oct. 24 at Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights, IL — featuring culture warrior and former professional heavyweight boxer Matt Barber, who was fired by Allstate Insurance Co., after writing an article against homosexual “marriage” on his own time. Tickets are $50 each. A table of 10 is $500. More information here: http://americansfortruth.com/news/matt-barber-to-keynote-aftah-banquet.html; book your seat now at www.americansfortruth.com/donate.

Also, don’t forget our the dinner-lecture at our Carol Stream office Thursday, Sept. 17 featuring Michael Brown, who is going to talk about how to walk that fine line of reaching out to homosexuals with the Gospel of Christ while resisting the radical “gay” political/cultural agenda. I am really looking forward to this talk. Click HERE for more info. RSVP to aftahangela@gmail.com or americansfortruth@comcast.net. (Donations will be accepted at the event to cover costs.)

Lastly, AFTAH has now crossed the half-way mark in our goal of matching a generous donor’s $20,000 grant. Please help us go all the way with your tax-deductible donation to AFTAH at www.americansfortruth.com/donate or by mailing your gift to: Americans For Truth, P.O. Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522.  Thank you!

Peter LaBarbera
Americans For Truth  About Homosexuality
www.aftah.org

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(Suburban Chicago) Daily Herald story:

Link: http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=316820

Anti-gay group sues Naperville hotel, alleges discrimination

August 27, 2009

By Christy Gutowski | Daily Herald Staff

Peter LaBarbera said he was just being honest when he told the Naperville hotel event planner to expect protesters outside his anti-gay group’s upcoming banquet.

His truthfulness, though, may have led to his own undoing.

Americans For Truth About Homosexuality recently filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against Holiday Inn Select, 1801 N. Naper Blvd.

The Carol Stream-based group alleges its Oct. 6, 2007 fundraiser was canceled by the hotel six weeks earlier because of the group’s religious beliefs against homosexuality.

LaBarbera did not have a written contract, and no money was exchanged, but he said organizers verbally worked out details of the 100-person event, including the menu, during two meetings.

LaBarbera said hotel management told him the reservation was canceled due to “potential negative publicity.” AFTAH filed its discrimination suit Aug. 21.

“It’s always easy to come up with excuses,” said LaBarbera, AFTAH’s executive director, “but the real truth is they didn’t like our message. If you allow this sort of hecklers’ veto, you’re sanctioning discrimination.”

The banquet was planned at the hotel on the same night as a couple’s wedding. The Naperville Holiday Inn Select is independently owned and operated. Managers there said they had not been served with the lawsuit, and could not comment.

Georgia-based InterContinental Hotels Group owns the Holiday Inn brand. AN IHG spokeswoman said the cancellation decision was made solely by local hotel management. “IHG is very concerned about any claim of discrimination at any hotel bearing the Holiday Inn name,” said Sarah-Ann Soffer, media relations manager, in a statement. “IHG condemns unlawful discrimination in all of its forms. Since this matter is the subject of pending litigation, we have no further comment at this time.”

The national AFTAH organization, which is devoted to countering the gay agenda, ended up holding its banquet one day earlier at a Lombard hotel. Activists with the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network often protest AFTAH events, LaBarbera said.

The suit seeks an unspecified amount from the hotel in damages and attorney fees.

“We simply want to send a message that it might be easier to discriminate against a small Christian group, but it’s no less acceptable,” said Jason R. Craddock, AFTAH’s attorney. “We don’t want corporate America to continue in its belief that it’s OK to discriminate against unpopular points of view.”

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Naperville (IL) Sun story:

Link: http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/napervillesun/news/1739100,Christian-group-sues-Naperville-hotel_na082809.article

Christian Group Sues Naperville Hotel

August 28, 2009

By KATHY CICHON [kcichon@scn1.com]

Even though two years has passed since the incident occurred, a conservative organization has filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against a Naperville hotel.

“Ultimately it would be easy just to ignore it and walk away,” said Peter LaBarbera, president and founder of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. “(But) it’s really not right to succumb to this sort of hecklers’ veto.” ….

On Friday the Carol Stream-based Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, which describes itself as “a group dedicated to exposing the homosexual activist agenda,” filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Holiday Inn Select, 1801 N. Naper Blvd., Naperville.

The lawsuit stems from the cancellation of a banquet Americans For Truth planned to hold Oct. 6, 2007, at the Holiday Inn Select. While working on the menu several weeks before the event, LaBarbera told the hotel the banquet may draw protesters from the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network, which describes itself as “a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered direct action group.” According to LaBarbera, a Naperville resident, the group frequently protests Americans For Truth activities.

According to a 2007 Sun article, that information led the Holiday Inn Select to reconsider. With a wedding in the other ballroom, the hotel canceled the Americans For Truth event.

“For the safety and security of all of our employees and guests, we decided that it is not a function that we wanted to have based upon the potential of having a protest,” said general manager Dennis Igoe at the time.

There was no written contract for the banquet, LaBarbera said Thursday.

When contacted Thursday, the Holiday Inn Select said it has no comment at this time. Atlanta-based InterContinental Hotels Group, which owns the Holiday Inn brand, issued the following statement:

“InterContinental Hotels Group, owner of the Holiday Inn brand, is very concerned about any claim of discrimination at any hotel bearing the Holiday Inn name. IHG condemns unlawful discrimination in all of its forms. The Holiday Inn Select Naperville hotel is independently owned and operated. IHG does not dictate local hotel operating policy for such franchised properties other than to require all hotels bearing its trademarks to comply with all applicable governmental requirements. In addition, IHG expects every Holiday Inn hotel to make every reasonable effort to promptly resolve all guest complaints. The cancellation decision in this matter was made solely by the local hotel. Since this matter is the subject of pending litigation, we have no further comment at this time.”

Saying it was unfairly treated because of its religious beliefs, LaBarbera said the group felt compelled to take action to prevent similar situations in the future and send a message to other hotels.

“We want something to come of it so hotels like Holiday Inn think twice before succumbing to anti-Christian (sentiment),” LaBarbera said.

LaBarbera said Naperville prides itself on tolerance, and that a “pro-family, pro-marriage” group deserves the same as other groups. If his group had been a gay rights or other organization, the situation never would have happened, he said.

“Tolerance is a two-way street,” LaBarbera said.

The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of damages.

“We don’t really have a dollar amount at this time,” said Jason Craddock, a New Lenox-based attorney representing Americans for Truth. “The most important thing is the message.”

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