Americans for Truth about Homosexuality

Thanks to Julie Roys of Moody Radio and WMBI in Chicago for her gracious words in this audio commentary today about the dual missions of Christians on the homosexual issue: ministry and truth-telling. The original conversation on Moody Radio to which Roys refers occurred April 15 on WMBI’s popular morning show. Morning host Mark Elfstrand interviewed Andrew Marin of the Marin Foundation and Moody Bible Institute Professor of Urban Studies John Fuder about their shared ministry of “immersion” evangelism in Chicago’s “Boystown” homosexual neighborhood; LaBarbera called into the program.

Two Sides of the Same Coin
By Julie Roys

Andy Marin and Peter LaBarbera.  They’re two very different men pursuing two very different missions.  But both serve the same God.

Andy Marin serves as president of the Marin Foundation; Peter LaBarbera, as president of Americans for Truth.  The Marin Foundation builds bridges with the gay and lesbian community.  Americans for Truth erects fences to contain the influence of that community. Some may see them as opponents.  But in reality, Marin and LaBarbera simply represent two sides of the same coin.  Marin emphasizes God’s love; LaBarbera stresses God’s truth. But both do God’s work.

Read the rest of this article »

Dave Smith

Kudos to Dave Smith and the Illinois Family Institute, an independent family group, which led the charge against this misguided legislation to create “domestic partner” benefits for Chicago teachers. Pro-family lobbyists Ralph Rivera and Rev. Bob Vanden Bosch also deserve credit for their hard work against this bill in Springfield.

Illinois still faces “civil unions” bills in the House and Senate that would put the state’s authority foursquare behind extramarital relationships — heterosexual and homosexual — which is the last thing that children and the beleaguered institution of marriage need in the Land of Lincoln. A roll call of the vote is available HERE. — Peter LaBarbera

Here is the IFI report:

IFI Update: Good News! Homosexual Teachers Bill Falls Short in the Illinois House;

How did they vote?

By David E. Smith, Illinois Family Institute

You made a difference! Thank you for taking action on this bill!

Thanks in part to your phone calls and emails, the Illinois House of Representatives in Springfield voted 43 to 67 (with 1 voting ‘present’) yesterday, defeating HB 4731, a bill that would have allowed homosexual partners of public school teachers to qualify as surviving spouses for purpose of survivor and death benefits.

Look at the chart below to see how your State Representative voted, or you can also download it by clicking HERE.

If your State Representative voted ‘NO’ — please call to thank him/her. You can look up your elected officals HERE, or you can call the IFI office at 630-790-8370, and we will be happy to look them up for you.

“Same-sex marriage” in Massachusetts has opened up the door to pro-homosexuality lessons for young children in public schools. Illinois is a prime target of homosexual activists. To get involved in the Protect Marriage Illinois referendum drive, click on www.protectmarriageillinois.org. At left is one of the first pro-homosexual picture books, “Daddy’s Roommate.”

TAKE ACTION: Today is Homosexuals Re-defining Marriage Lobby Day in Springfield (at least that’s what we’re calling it). Homosexual activists are targeting Illinois — with the goal of turning us into the “Massachusetts of the Midwest” — and we need your help to stop their radical agenda. If you are an Illinois resident:

1) Call your State Representative and your State Senator at 217-782-2000 and urge them to oppose HB 1826, the House homosexual “civil unions” bill, and SB 2436, the Senate version. While you’re at it, ask your legislators to oppose the pro-homosexual “domestic partnership” bill, HB 4731, which would expand the definition of spouse for some Chicago teachers’ benefits to include homosexual “partners.” Illinois (and every state) needs to reward and provide incentives for real marriage and the natural family, not destructive and immoral homosexual behavior. If you don’t know the names of your representative and state senator, call Illinois Family Institute at 630-790-8370 or go to this IFI web page: http://www.votervoice.net/Core.aspx?AID=728&APP=GAC&screen=Address&.

2) Join Protect Marriage Illinois‘ (PMI) effort to defend marriage in Illinois! Go to PMI’s website, www.protectmarriageillinois.org, and download a pro-marriage petition sheet for the county you live in. PMI is working to get signatures to place an Advisory Marriage Protection referendum on the ballot to call on Illinois legislators to pass a constitutional amendment to preserve the sacred institution of marriage as between a man and a woman. The deadline is very near — April 30th — to get the necessary 269,000 signatures on the ballot, so please act now and encourage YOUR CHURCH to do a petition drive. All petitions must be notarized. Call PMI’s Acting Director Joetta Deutch at 217-377-6017 or email her at info@protectmarriageillinois.org for more information and for help in doing a petition drive at your church. More details on PMI below.

Read the rest of this article »

SURELY TO THE DELIGHT OF ‘GAY’ PORNOGRAPHERS EVERYWHERE, homosexual activist Tony Kushner’s pornographic, sodomy-celebrating and blaspheming play, “Angels in America,” has made it into a high school classroom (in Deerfield High School north of Chicago). You simply will not believe it after reading some crude excerpts below from the play. Take action by clicking HERE.

WARNING: Pornographic and Highly Offensive Excerpts Follow

Note to Readers: the following are sample excerpts from what surely is one of the most disturbing selections ever to be used or considered as a literary resource for use in a high school — or any — classroom. We understand that most readers will be shocked by this material and some offended that it has even found its way onto our website, but please consider that this will be made available to underage (teenage) children in a classroom setting.

Parents MUST be aware that the public schools are becoming pro-homosexual indoctrination and desensitization centers. How did America get to this point where outright perversion is introduced to students in the guise of studying literature? –Peter LaBarbera

Click HERE to take action by emailing or calling DHS and District 113 authorities and read the North Shore Student Alliance’s news release.

Read the rest of this article »

By Peter LaBarbera 

NOTE TO READERS: When we made our initial comments on our story, we were relying on what turned out to be a sloppy and erroneous Chicago Tribune story (see bottom), and we had not seen the Chicago Sun Times story on this crime, which conflicts with the Tribune account. I apologize for reporting this so quickly and for foolishly relying on a single Chicago media story for accurate news (not a good idea).

Here are the essential details from the Sun-Times article, “Alleged gay advance cited in rape” (emphasis added):

Felipe Rivera, 43, is charged with a hate crime as well as aggravated criminal sexual assault and other offenses, said a spokesman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. If convicted, he could face more than 30 years in prison, a source said.

 

According to a spokesman for Cicero police, Rivera and the victim encountered each other at a party Friday night in the 1200 block of South 50th Avenue.

 

“Mr. Rivera got upset apparently because he believed the victim, No. 1, didn’t respond to a female and then, No. 2, somehow winked at him — made what he perceived as a sexual advance,” said Cicero police spokesman Dan Proft.

 

30 years possible
Rivera then punched the victim in the face, Proft said, and was asked to leave the party. He allegedly waited outside for the victim. According to Rivera, the victim, 37, then propositioned Rivera for a sex act — a claim the victim denies, Proft said.

 

Rivera followed the victim to the outer staircase of a basement apartment, where he removed the victim’s pants and raped him, authorities said. Afterward, Rivera punched the victim in the head, leaving him semi-conscious, then inserted a metal broom handle in the victim’s rectum, sources said.

 

Rivera gave police these details in a videotaped statement, according to Proft. When asked why he did it, Rivera allegedly said it was “because he hates f – - – - – s, and this is what they get,” according to Proft.

 

A spokesman for the state’s attorney said Rivera also shouted “sexually oriented derogatory comments” during the rape.

 

After the alleged attack, Rivera went to his mother’s residence nearby. Because she has an order of protection against him, she called the police, Proft said.

I just spoke with Cicero spokesman Dan Proft, who says that the Sun-Times story is the most accurate he’s read.

In our original commentary (below), I relied on the Trib account which appears to have mangled Proft’s statement so as to assert that the violent assailant propositioned his male victim for sex. According to the Sun-Times, however, the assailant claims that his victim did the propositioning (which the victim denies actually happened). 

Read the rest of this article »

Wows Americans For Truth Audience with Testimony of Leaving Behind 29 Years of Lesbianism 

___________________________ 

Get a DVD of Cothran, Parker Speeches at AFTAH Banquet!

All proceeds will go to help the work of Americans For Truth 

To order a complete DVD (or CD) of both Charlene Cothran’s and David Parker’s outstanding talks, make an online donation of at least $25 postpaid to Americans For Truth (please use the online form to specify ’2007 Banquet DVD’. You can substitute an audio CD but you must request this specifically. To order by regular mail, send your check or money order specifying ”2007 Banquet DVD” (or CD) to: Americans For Truth, P.O. Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522. 

Bulk Orders available (all postpaid): 2 for $40; 3 for $55; 4 for $70; add $10 for each additional DVD or contact us (630-717-7631) for large bulk order pricing. 

____________________________ 

NOTE:  What better occasion than the homosexual activists’ misguided “National Coming Out Day” (October 11th every year) to publish Charlene Cothran’s testimony — representing a “coming out” story that we who agree with God on homosexuality can get behind? To contact Charlene, write editor@venusmagazine.org.

By Peter LaBarbera

Folks, Americans For Truth’s banquet Friday night was a wonderful event that exceeded our expectations. We packed out our banquet room at the Embassy Suites Hotel – which was actually a fallback location for our event after another hotel had abruptly cancelled our reservation – and everything went smoothly, despite the small “gay” protest outside.

(Click HERE to read about how Gay Liberation Network and other homosexual activists – obsessed as they are with smearing Americans For Truth – are now lying about our banquet numbers, saying that as few as 30 people attended our banquet (do I hear 20?…) when our room was actually packed out with more than 110 attendees.)

Our two keynote speakers, Charlene Cothran and David Parker, were riveting and held the audience in rapt attention until the evening’s end – as I have rarely seen at such an event. Charlene’s heartfelt testimony (portions of which are excerpted below) about how God drew her from her (very “successful”) lesbian lifestyle had so many wonderful lessons to teach: the faithfulness of God; the answered prayers of a faithful mother; the possibility of radical change in the life of even a longtime homosexual (Cothran had lived 29 years as a lesbian); and the need of loving Christians to reach out to homosexual strugglers trying to leave the lifestyle.

Charlene had the Americans For Truth audience laughing right off the bat when she said:

If you had told me two years ago that I would be a featured speaker at the Americans For Truth about Homosexuality banquet, I would have laughed in your face! Because I was one of those girls who would have been outside across the street with the gang trying to prevent this from happening. But God has a way of bringing us full circle, doesn’t He?  

Full circle, indeed. As a leading African-American homosexual activist and the most successful minority publisher in the “gay” world with her Venus Magazine – which she now uses to spread the Gospel of Christ – Cothran once partnered with a host of homosexual activist groups to advance that cause: Human Rights Campaign (back then it was called Human Rights Campaign Fund); the National Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum; the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force; and PFLAG (Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays), to name a few.

Many of those groups do everything they can to hide the truth from the public that men and women like Charlene are walking away from homosexuality.

Cothran continued:

“It was right here in Chicago … back in 2003 at a ‘gay pride’ event – out in Bryant Park, on a sunlit afternoon where I should have been the proudest lesbian out there….At any other pride event, I was always very proud to be there. … But on this day a shame fell on me, and something spoke in my spirit and said: ‘This is that road that’s leading to destruction, and you are on it.’ And it was such a loud voice that I could no longer ignore that what I was doing and how I was living was wrong.

Read the rest of this article »

 The same Gay Liberation Network that lied about Americans For Truth’s banquet numbers and tried to pressure the Embassy Suites Hotel to drop our reservation once called Chicago’s historic Moody Church (in background) a “House of Hate” – because Moody pastor Dr. Erwin Lutzer wrote a book critical of “same-sex marriage.” The anti-Christian GLN claimed that ”40-50″ people attended AFTAH’s banquet, when in truth over 110 showed up, packing the room. Photo courtesy Illinois Family Institute. 

By Peter LaBarbera 

The same homosexual activist group, Gay Liberation Network (GLN), that led a pressure campaign to oust Americans For Truth from the hotel where it held its successful banquet Friday night, is now spreading lies about the number of attendees — saying that “40-50″ people came when in actuality over 110 people packed out the banquet room at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Lombard for the successful event.

GLN’s lie has surfaced on lesbian blogger Pam Spaulding’s site and presumably others as well. (We’re anxiously awaiting ”The Pam’s” correction….) As you might imagine, the prodigious Gay Fib Machine is quite busy when it comes to smearing Americans For Truth, about which they are quite obsessed.

The GLN’s Andy Thayer — who led a contingent of what looked like about 10 or fewer scruffy protesters at our event Friday, somehow determined that “There were only about 40-50 people in attendance” at our banquet. But Thayer and his small band of followers were kept off the Embassy Suites property; they were forced to hold their protest signs (one slammed the “Bigot Banquet”) on the nearest big road (Butterfield Rd.), at least 50 yards from the hotel — so we’re not sure how they got their curious crowd estimate.

A couple of homosexual men did come to the banquet room to harass us after the event had ended and many people had left, so maybe that explains it.

The Gay Liberation Network has some warped priorities, to be sure: while it crusaded against the “hateful” Americans For Truth — even trying to knock us from our hotel – it recently praised Miller Beer for sponsoring the deplorable, sadomasochistic “Folsom Street Fair,” at which hundreds of men walked around totally nude and where orgies on the streets and various “consensual” beatings went undisturbed by San Francisco police.

Here’s more falsehoods from GLN’s Thayer, as relayed by Spaulding:

I doubt they were getting anywhere near $50/person from their paltry attendance, as one of our people went in to scope it out and was told by a person at the door that all that was needed to get in was a free reservation.  No way they covered their overhead, let alone raised any money.  

Truth be told, all of our guests paid their $50, and many much more, so thankfully we had a good night raising funds for our cause of answering “gay” activist lies in the culture.  

I did have an interesting conversation with one GLN protester. As I was in the parking lot, a woman popped out of her car, hugged me and proclaimed — smirk on her face — that she loved me. I hugged her back and told her that I loved her, too. But when I touched her, another woman (perhaps her partner?), still sitting in the car, called out: “Don’t touch him, he’s diseased.”

Diseased? I wish that poor, deluded woman would have come in to hear Charlene Cothran’s wonderful presentation about overcoming homosexuality rather than stand outside with the GLN’s ridiculous signs: she’s welcome to call me any time and I’ll put her in touch with Charlene, who once, too, let anger and ideology keep her from the truth.

 Charlene Cothran addresses Americans For Truth banquet Friday.

Folks, the homo-fascists over at the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network are cheering Miller Brewing Company for sponsoring the recent San Francisco perversion-fest known as the “Folsom Street Fair.” At the same time, they engaged in a (failed) grassroots lobbying campaign to cancel Americans For Truth’s reservation with the Embassy Suites Hotel in Lombard, Illinois — where we held a very successful banquet Friday, Oct. 5.

So let’s review the GLN’s position:

• Nudity-filled, sex-in-the-streets Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, where men masturbated themselves and other men in public, and whipped and spanked one another for the crowds, where Christianity-mocking “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” drag-queen “nuns” welcomed attendees: GOOD EVENT, WORTHY OF SUPPORT, KUDOS TO MILLER BEER! 
• Peaceful Americans For Truth banquet attended mostly by Christians; our first speaker, Charlene Cothran, described how God took her out of her past life as a homosexual activist, and how she now has the peace of Christ and wants to help others find it; our second speaker, David Parker, described his legal campaign to have public schools inform parents before their young children are exposed to pro-homosexuality-themed books and curricula: HATEFUL, EVIL EVENT, MUST BE PROTESTED; SHOULD BE BARRED FROM HOTEL!

We hope you get a sense of the folly of homosexual activist “tolerance” and the irrationality and hatred of the Left in general. Perhaps if we publicly embraced nudity and perversion like Folsom, GLN would have called off its protest of our event. Anyway, here’s GLN’s and Schwartz’s September 28 e-mail letter commending Miller Beer for financing the sick San Francisco Folsom Street Festival (emphasis added):

“Thanks for Backing Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco” 

 

Julian Green
Miller Lite Beer
 
Dear Sir:
 
It has come to my attention that your company is under attack for sponsoring the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco.  The attack is emanating from such outfits as the Catholic League and Americans for Truth.  The Catholic League has as one of its directors, the laughable Alan Keyes, who embarrassed Illinois Republicans when he lost by the widest margin of any Illinois senatorial election.  Americans for Truth is a gang of far-right bigots who attack gays by saying we all ought to change into straight people through Jesus, and who would deny us equal civil rights.  Both groups portray themselves as victims as they go about preaching hate and discrimination.
 
The Catholic League and Americans for Truth want to impose one standard of behavior on everyone, a standard divined from ancient texts and a mythical “natural law, a standard that denies women control over their bodies and gay people the rights due to all citizens.
 
Please ignore these strident voices of intolerance and bigotry.
 
BOB SCHWARTZ
Gay Liberation Network, Chicago