Sign for 'Gender Neutral Restroom" at the recent "Creating Change" conference in Minneapolis for homosexual-bisexual-transsexual grassroots activists, put on by the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force. The signs covered "Male" and "Female" restrooms on the main floor of the conference. Photo: Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth

News Release

www.aftah.org

March 21, 2011; contact: Peter LaBarbera: 630-717-7631; americansfortruth@gmail.com

Truth Academy in Columbus Examines New Liberal Trend Labeling Christians as ‘Haters’ for Opposing Homosexual Agenda

CHICAGO— Americans For Truth about Homosexuality (AFTAH) is joining with Mission America to co-sponsor an educational “Truth Academy” April 1-2 in Columbus, Ohio, on how to respond to the aggressive homosexual-bisexual-transsexual agenda.

The theme is: “The Hate Labeling of Christians: Why It’s Happening and What We Can Do.” Key details follow:

When:  Friday, April 1 (1:00 – 9:00 PM) and Saturday, April 2 (9:30 AM-3:30 PM); Truth Academy doors open Friday at noon; Friday evening dinner-lecture by award-winning journalist David Kupelian, WorldNetDaily editor and author, “The Marketing of Evil,” and “How Evil Works,” (Dinner is included in registration; see full hourly schedule HERE]

Other Featured Speakers: Matt Barber and Prof. Rena Lindevaldsen, Liberty University Law School; Greg Quinlan, PFOX; Prof. Rob Gagnon, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.

Where:  Columbus, OH. Discover Christian Church, 2900 Martin Rd., Dublin, OH 43017; near intersection of Sawmill Rd. and Rt. 161.

Cost: $75 if payment received by midnight Monday, March 28; $99 at the door; make payment online at www.americansfortruth.com/donate/ (using Paypal or your Visa or MasterCard); or send your check for $75/attendee made out to “Americans For Truth” to: AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522.

Special Pastors/Student Discount: $25 for all pastors and youth (college and below); sponsor a pastor or young person to attend with your donation to: www.americansfortruth.com/donate/

RSVP: americansfortruth@gmail.com or info@missionamerica.com; or call: 630-717-7631 or 614-442-7998

Said Americans For Truth president Peter LaBarbera: “This is the second of dozens of Truth Academies that we hope to hold across the country. I recently went undercover at a huge homosexual grassroots conference attended by over 2,000 ‘LGBT’ activists – promoting the most radical sexual/gender agenda imaginable (including sadomasochism and multiple-partner relationships). ‘Gay’ militants are not slowing down in the Culture War, so neither should Christians and conservatives. If the homosexual activists win, religious freedom to defend normalcy will be destroyed.”

Mission America president Linda Harvey said: “Every Christian should be concerned about the trend toward defamation and discrimination at the hands of intolerant LGBT activists. From the defense of traditional marriage being labeled ‘hate,’ to the homosexual agenda infiltrating our schools, their goal is to transform our culture. If they are not stopped, the results will be devastating for daily life and religious liberty.”

Truth Academy schedule HERE.

To Whom It May Concern:

I will no longer be dining at any one of your company’s restaurants.  I have learned that Chili’s is a [National Corporate Partner] of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.  They are shown on the Task Force website as a sponsor: http://www.thetaskforce.org/

I will not have my money go to sponsor such an organization, so I will no longer be dining at Chili’s or at any of your restaurants until you cease that sponsorship.  I hope you’ll reconsider your sponsorship of this outrageous, reprehensible organization so that I can return to Chili’s in the near future.
 
Thank you,
Karen Grube
San Diego, California

_______________________________________________

From today’s AFTAH e-newsletter; go HERE for contact info for Chili’s and parent company Brinker International — which is a “National Corporate Partner” of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force:

Dear Readers,

This is not just another e-mail about boycotting yet another irresponsible corporation.  It’s about educating the nation on the incredibly extreme and unhealthy agenda of the pro-Homosexuality-Bisexuality-Transsexuality Lobby — and holding company executives accountable for financing that agenda.  Last week in Minneapolis, I and a few other pro-family advocates went undercover at the annual “Creating Change” grassroots homosexual conference put on by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.  There were more than 2,000 LGBT activists in attendance!  Some of the “change” we heard advocated in the various workshops, and which we will document in the days and weeks ahead, was shocking.  Yet this agenda is one that the left-leaning media refuse to examine, much less expose. So AFTAH will do the media’s job for them by laying out the Gay Task Force’s extremist vision, which includes:

• Taxpayer-financed “sex change” operations for transsexuals (not to do so is “discrimination” against “transgenders”);
• Using polling, focus groups and emotional arguments to persuade evangelical Christians to ignore Scripture and accept homosexuality-based “rights”;
• Using the tragedy of homosexual youth suicides to shame Christians into stop calling homosexuality sinful;
• Celebrating sadomasochism (consensual sexual violence and degradation) and “kinky”/fetish sexual behaviors
• Pro-homosexuality lessons for grade school kids (because waiting until middle school is too late to reach them); 
• “Non-judgmental condom advocacy for young men in the name of HIV prevention — and even being non-judgmental in “safe sex” training when it comes to bizarre/disgusting “fetish” behaviors
• Predicting not just a future “gay” president of the United States but also a “bi” and a “transgender” president! (I’ll withhold the jokes…);
• “[F--k--g] with gender,” and celebrating bisexuality and “genderqueer” lifestyles (see this definition for latter: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genderqueer);
• Using “gender identity” laws to pressure businesses to bend to the transgender agenda of “Gender-Neutral Restrooms” — to replace the old-fashioned variety with an “M” or an “F” on the door.

There is much, much more — the homosexual Task Force puts the “D” back in “Deviance,” that’s for sure.  Stay tuned as we lay out the “change” that this high-powered organization and “Friend of Barack Obama” is promoting for America — with help from Chilis restaurants, Wells Fargo, Southwest Airlines, and other major corporations.  God bless you and thanks for standing with us! – Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth, www.aftah.org; americansfortruth@gmail.com. 

Chili's, owned by Brinker International, is a "National Corporate Parter" of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, which celebrates gender confusion and sadomasochism.

TAKE ACTION: Contact Chili’s Restaurants M-F 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Central Time at: 800-983-4637; or use the Chili’s contact page or that of their parent company, Brinker International. You can call Dallas-based Brinker 8:00-5:00 Central at 972-980-9917, or through their Guest Relations line at 800-983-4637. (Brinker also owns Maggiano’s Little Italy and Romano’s Macaroni Grill restaurants.)

__________________________________________

Reprinted from One News Now, the news website of the American Family Association; to listen to this report, click the “play” arrow next to the audio icon at the upper right of the story on the ONN site:

By Charlie Butts – OneNewsNow – 2/4/2011 4:45:00 AM

Christian activist Peter LaBarbera is calling attention to a popular restaurant chain’s association with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Homosexual activists called for a boycott of Chick-fil-A restaurants after a Pennsylvania franchise provided box-lunches for a recent seminar encouraging traditional marriage (see earlier ONN article). The national chain and many of its franchise owners across the U.S. have pledged to contribute to everything from marriage seminars to retreats and counseling for its employees.
 
LaBarbera, founder of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, argues that Chick-fil-A is a fine Christian company and suggests that a boycott of the company is absurd. But he points out that another popular restaurant — Chili’s — supports the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which he says promotes polyamory, the practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time.
 
“[That group] holds an annual ‘Creating Change’ seminar with some of the most deviant workshops you’ve ever seen,” says LaBarbera. “They promote so-called ‘sexual freedom,’ which basically wants to do away with all sex-oriented laws in the United States such as limiting adult industries near neighborhoods.”
 
According to the family advocate, NGLTF is a left-wing organization — and Chili’s supports it.
 
“And so we’re calling on people to stop going to Chili’s because it supports this radical, leftist, deviant agenda promoted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force,” he remarks.
 
LaBarbera concludes with this admonition: “…If you want to take a small step to stand up for family and marriage, take your family out to Chick-fil-A — and drive right by when you see a Chili’s.”

____________________________________________

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:

Veterans Day 2010: End ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ now

WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 — Thursday is Veterans Day, a federal holiday honoring our country’s military veterans. On this occasion, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force reiterates its call for the immediate repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military ban on openly lesbian, gay and bisexual service members.

Statement by Rea Carey, Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

“Veterans Day is a time to remember and honor veterans who have served our country, including thousands of qualified and patriotic lesbian, gay and bisexual service members who have been drummed out of the military under the discriminatory ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy. These courageous men and women were forced to become veterans before their time. Let this be the last Veterans Day where this irrational and costly policy is in effect. We urge the Senate to move swiftly to pass a defense authorization bill and repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ during the lame duck session. It’s long past time to end 17 years of witch hunts that have led to the discharge of thousands of skilled, competent service members and failed to make America stronger. Three-quarters of Americans think ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ should end, as do top military leaders and others. It’s now time for the Senate to step up and do its part to end this unjust policy.”

This gender-confused man who identifies as a "woman" ("Donna") deserves our pity, but does he also deserve special job protections based on his extreme gender confusion? Should he be given the "right" to be your child's teacher? See his YouTube interview below.

TAKE ACTION: contact your U.S. Representative and Senators to OPPOSE ENDA (“Employment Non-Discrimination Act”; HR 3017; SB 1584) — which would put the United States government behind the reckless idea of granting special employment “rights” and protections based on extreme gender confusion, as well as homosexuality and bisexuality. Contact Congress at 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121 or through www.congress.org. Pass on this e-mail to your network of friends and co-workers; ask them to watch the short (1:21) YouTube video below and to contact Congress on ENDA. Also ask them to oppose the homosexualization of our Armed Forces (through the repeal of “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell”), another goal of liberals and President Obama.

Dear Readers,

The homosexual-bisexual-transsexual push for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is in “full-court press” mode. Homosexual groups are furiously pushing the House Democratic leadership to bring ENDA to the floor for a vote — and one “queer” website (Queerty) quotes House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as promising that ENDA will be called very soon, followed by an attempt to homosexualize the U.S. military with a repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, a homosexual pressure group, 38 states do not protect employment “rights” based on “gender identity” (read: gender confusion). So the question is: if you live in one of the 38 states that does NOT grant special  “‘transgender” protections, should you be forced by the federal government to hire this severely confused man…

• as a child care worker?
• as a “hostess” at a restaurant?
• as a teacher at your public grade school?

Here is the definition of “gender identity” under ENDA:

GENDER IDENTITY- The term ‘gender identity’ means the gender-related identity, appearance, or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, with or without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.

ENDA represents the most radical departure from a traditional understanding of “civil rights” that this nation has ever seen. Help stop this misguided transformation of America’s employment landscape by contacting Congress today 202-225-3121; 202-224-3121; www.congress.org.

To view the above video on the YouTube website, go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW8ngJ6qIU&feature=player_embedded#!

By Peter LaBarbera

"Young and Poly" workshop description for 2010 "Creating Change," the annual conference for LGBT activists put on by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

The above is taken from the program guide (p. 73) of the 2010 National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s “Creating Change” conference, held in Dallas, Texas, February 3-7, 2010.  Miriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines “Polyamory” as “the state or practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time.” Urban Dictionary’s top definition of “Polyamory” states:

‘The practice, state or ability of having more than one sexual loving relationship at the same time, with the full knowledge and consent of all partners involved.’

Here is one youth-oriented “Poly” activist website: Young Metro Poly. Here is adult “poly” activist Jenny Block’s speech at a “Poly Pride” rally in New York City in 2008 (“Before writing Open, I went to my daughter’s soccer practice with my husband and our then girlfriend, Lisbeth….”). And here is an AFTAH article, “Poly Pride Follows Gay Pride.”

The presenter’s organization, BAGLY, is the Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Youth, a pro-homosexual youth organization that lays claim to sponsoring “the worlds first and largest LGBT youth prom,” in Boston. (BAGLY is headed by a male-to-female transgender activist, Grace Sterling Stowell.) Presenter Daunasia Yansey is also an activist with the Boston Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP), affiliated with SWOP-USA, which advocates for the decriminalization of prostitution.

“Sexual Freedom” is a track at the Creating Change conference denoting the latest stage in the Sexual Revolution: rights and recognition for various “alternative lifestyles” beyond homosexuality-bisexuality-transgenderism, including sadomasochism, “swingers,” and polyamory and fetish “communities.”

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) was founded in 1973 and is the oldest national homosexual “rights” organization in the United States.

_____________________________

Text of “Young and Poly” Task Force “Creating Change” 2010 workshop description:

Young and Poly
Sexual Freedom

Polyamory being one of the more marginalized identities of our community, young people need a safe space to be validated within their truths. Being young and poly even in the “queer” community is impacted by a hetero-normative model of family and relationships. This caucus is not designed as a poly 101 but is designed for young people that identify on the poly spectrum to voice shared experiences and learn from one another.

Presenters: Daunasia Yansey, BAGLY [Boston Alliance for Gay and Lesbian Youth], MA

______________________________

Other AFTAH articles on the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:

• “Creating Change,” Corrupting Children: the ‘Gay’ Task Force’s Evil Agenda
• National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Talks of ‘Moral Leadership’ while Honoring Homosexual S&M Pornographer
• ‘Consensual Slavery’ Advocate Accepts Task Force ‘Leather’ Award
• Democrat Party Helps Gay Task Force Honor Sadomasochistic Slavery Advocate Guy Baldwin
• ‘Transgender Etiquette’ at Creating Change 2009 in Detroit – ‘Each of Us Can Decide for Ourselves in which Bathroom We Belong’
• Look Who’s Talking Morality Now … Observations on Rea Carey’s ‘Creating Change’ Speech
• AFA-Michigan, AFTAH Welcome Gay Task Force Admission: ‘HIV Is a Gay Disease’
• Another Fake “Gay” Hate Crime? Gary Glenn Asks Task Force to Apologize for Blaming Him for Death of Anthony Anthos
• ‘Gay’ Agenda … What ‘Gay’ Agenda?

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is using this sticker and a national "Queer the Census" campaign to turn the U.S. Census into a homosexual visibility project.

TAKE ACTION: Ask your Congressman and Senators to stand against Barack Obama’s executive imposition of the homosexual activist agenda — in spite of U.S. laws. The Obama administration is flouting DOMA and the homosexual exclusion law for the U.S. military. Call 202-224-3121; www.congress.org

Dear Readers,

Our imperious Panderer-in-Chief, Barack Obama, continues to undermine DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act — which, like the military’s homosexual exclusion policy, is still the law of the land. Homosexual activists led by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force demanded the “Queering” of the U.S. Census — and Obama complied. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

American Family Association’s One News Now reports:
________________________________

Census used as ‘gay gimmick’

Jim Brown and Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow -

Traditional marriage proponents are warning that homosexual activists and the Obama administration are once again working in concert to “manipulate” federal law.

The Associated Press reports that the Census Bureau plans to count same-sex couples who say they are married, regardless of whether they have a marriage license (see AP article). Even though only five states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex “marriages,” the Census Bureau says same-sex couples should feel free to check the “husband” or “wife” boxes on the census form, rather than “unmarried partner.”

Peter LaBarbera, executive director of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, argues that the Bureau is clearly violating the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which does not recognize same-sex “marriages.”

“What they’re obviously trying to do is magnify the numbers of homosexuals in the society,” he suspects.  “This dates way back in the gay movement.  There was a time when homosexual activists just lied and said that ten percent of the public was gay — that was a bald-faced lie.  It took decades to finally disprove that lie, but here again we see them calling themselves married because they want to be called married.  Well, that’s not what the law says.”

LaBarbera believes homosexual activists are using the census as their latest “gimmick” to seek affirmation of their lifestyle, and he challenges Congress to “step up” and prevent the Obama administration from promoting the “gay” agenda by dictate.

Marriage by opinion is not marriage by law

Similarly, Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs at Liberty Counsel, believes the source for the Bureau’s instructions can perhaps be traced as far as the White House. (Listen to audio report)

Matt Barber”It’s a shame that the Census Bureau, in tangent with radical homosexual activists, are choosing to use the census, which is supposed to provide objective, quantifiable information relative to varying demographics around the country, that they’re using this as a tool for political activism,” Barber laments.

He notes that just because a homosexual couple might call their relationship a marriage, that does not make it so. “It is directly contrary to probably the letter, at least the spirit, of the Defense of Marriage Act,” he adds.

The federal law recognizes marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and the cultural affairs director believes the purpose in the census campaign is to “create an impression in the minds of the American people” that the movement for legalizing homosexual marriage has more steam behind it than it actually does.

Bruce LaVallee-Davidson

Once again we are confronted with the unparalleled deviance of a Sexual Perversion Movement that masquerades as a “civil rights” cause. As we’ve said many times, truth really is stranger than fiction when it comes to the “gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender/sadomasochist” (GLBTS?) lobby.

Just four days after attending a sadomasochistic party where he shot a fellow homosexual, Fred Homer Wilson, who “got a thrill out of using a loaded gun as a sex toy,” Bruce LaVallee-Davidson testified for “gay marriage” with his homosexual lover Buck at a public hearing.

Had such a bizarre situation emanated from the “religious right,” Maine’s liberal media would have had a field day with it and used it to discredit pro-family ideas. Here’s a description of the sex-party shooting from WorldNetDaily:

The defense in the case said there were three men participating in the sex party, and they were consenting adults and were aware of the risks. The defense also said no one was at fault, because Wilson was an ultimate thrill seeker and wanted the gun to be loaded to maximize the sexual experience.

We aren’t surprised that homosexual activist groups are silent about the LaVallee-Davidson scandal. After all, powerful “gay” groups like the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force — which was heavily involved in Maine’s recent plebiscite on same-sex “marriage” — promote sadomasochism as part of their overarching “sexual freedom” agenda.  Kudos to the Maine Christian Civic League for their good work in bringing this to the public. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org [Christian Civic League press release follows jump]
__________________________

The Christian Civic League of Maine has issued the following press release in response to the manslaughter conviction of (Malcolm) Bruce LaVallee-Davidson for the killing of South Portland resident Fred Homer Wilson (emphasis added):

In January last year, the homosexual rights lobby used State Senator Dennis Damon (Democrat – Hancock County) to introduce a bill to legalize same-sex “marriage.”  Not only did the bill legalize same-sex “marriage,” it made all terms pertaining to the family, words such as ‘husband and wife’, ‘father and mother,’ gender neutral.  It was a travesty to introduce such a bill at a time of deep economic crisis, a fact acknowledged by Democrat Governor John Baldacci, the most liberal governor in Maine history.

The bill was shepherded through the Maine Legislature by State Senator Larry Bliss (Democrat – Cumberland County), a homosexual activist from California, now head of the Judiciary Committee.  During the campaign to repeal the law, the ‘No on 1′ side offered a sanitized view of same-sex “marriage,” marketing their product with commercials which showed “married” homosexual couples and their children, all smiling, healthy, and content in a typical Maine setting.

It took an act of brazen hypocrisy for the truth to be revealed.  The public discovered that one of the proponents of same-sex “marriage” testified in person in favor of gay “marriage” shortly after killing a man during a night of drug and alcohol-fueled debauchery. During the public hearing on same-sex “marriage” at the Augusta Civic Center, Bruce LaVallee-Davidson stood alongside his homosexual partner ‘Buck’ and claimed he was “already married in the eyes of God.”

Some independent observers, including those who support same-sex” marriage,” have claimed LaVallee-Davidson’s remarks taint the entire same-sex “marriage” movement, and that the leadership of that movement must move quickly to disown his call for gay “marriage.”  We at the Christian Civic League of Maine agree.

We wish to give the leaders of the same-sex “marriage” movement a fair chance to explain why they have not already publicly repudiated the remarks of Bruce LaVallee-Davidson.  Let them step forward and state forthrightly why they have been reluctant to call LaVallee-Davidson’s  actions by their right name — perversion.

The Christian Civic League of Maine calls on EqualityMaine, Senator Larry Bliss, Senator Dennis Damon, Senate President Libby Mitchell, the Maine Civil Liberties Union, and Jesse Connolly, to take this opportunity of the news of the manslaughter conviction of LaVallee-Davidson to clear the air.  Let them explain how LaVallee-Davidson could state he was “married in the eyes of God” after a night of  tenfold depravity — tenfold because his actions that night involved two guns, five drugs, and three men — one of whom is dead.

Let the leaders of the same-sex “marriage” movement in Maine use the opportunity of the news of the manslaughter conviction of LaVallee-Davidson to explain why sadomasochistic bondage-and-discipline homosexual organizations march in their parades, namely the Harbor Masters of Maine and Blackstones bar, under the name of Pride.  Let them also explain the extent and prevalence of illegal drugs and AIDS infection in their homosexual community, as all three men involved used illegal drugs and were AIDS-infected at the time of the killing.

Absent such explanations, the public will be left with the impression that the call for ‘gay marriage’ by these groups and individuals is nothing more than a sinister ruse.  Convicted violent felon LaVallee-Davidson’s own claim to marriage, like the claim to marriage made by many other homosexuals, is built on a foundation of appalling homosexual perversion and sodomistic deviancy.

Worse, the failure to speak out publicly against such perversion by these groups and individuals will be seen as a tacit admission that such behavior and practices are not an aberration in their community, but rather, a normal and accepted part of everyday homosexual life.

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. 

Below we reprint the first of an excellent three-part series on the “Hate Crimes” bill (S. 909) by Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor Robert Gagnon (left), probably the world’s foremost expert on the Bible and homosexuality from an orthodox (Bible-believing) perspective. S. 909 could be voted on as early as Thursday in the U.S. Senate. (So says the extremist National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.) For those who can’t wait on AFTAH for Parts II and III, go to this page on Gagnon’s website and scroll down for the full series.

TAKE ACTION: call or write your U.S. Senators (202-224-3121 or 202-225-1321; www.congress.org) today and urge them to oppose the “hate crimes” bill, which is likely to be tacked on as an amendment to the defense appropriations bill for a vote as early as Thursday. Federal “hate crimes” legislation including homosexuality and gender confusion will lay the groundwork for the persecution of religious Americans or anyone who acts on the belief that homosexuality is wrong — as well as pro-life activists working to save unborn babies and those who fight jihadist Islamo-fascism. Every red state with no “sexual orientation” laws will instantly be affected by this federal power-grab that guarantees unequal treatment in the law by awarding homosexuals, bisexuals and the gender confused specially protected “civil rights” status.

_____________________________

Gagnon writes:

Why a Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity “Hate Crimes” Law Is Bad for You

Part 1: Promoting hatred of people opposed to homosexual practice and transgenderism

by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.

May 28, 2009

To print a clean copy with proper formatting and pagination go to the pdf version HERE.

The so-called “Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act” (H.R. 1913), passed by the U.S. House of Representatives along party lines on Apr. 29 and introduced into the U.S. Senate shortly thereafter by Ted Kennedy (S. 909), is improperly named. The bill is really a hate-promotion bill as regards the inclusion of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” among the groupings slated to receive special protection.

Supporters of this bill who rightly believe homosexual practice to be unnatural and sinful have been duped into thinking that this bill is primarily about protecting homosexual and transgendered persons from violence. They hear the rubric “hate crimes” and think: Who can be for violence toward homosexual and transgendered persons?

The real objectives of the “hate crimes” bill (hint: it’s not about crime)

Supporters of this bill who believe homosexual practice to be immoral rarely stop to consider that all necessary laws are already in place protecting everyone from violent physical attacks or verbal threats to do bodily harm, including persons who engage in homosexual and transgendered behavior. Even homosexual columnist Andrew Sullivan has recently commented: “The real reason for hate crime laws is not the defense of human beings from crime. There are already laws against that—and Matthew Shepard’s murderers were successfully prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in a state with no hate crimes law at the time.” There is absolutely no evidence that state prosecutors are systematically ignoring genuine crimes against homosexual and transgendered persons, once reported to law enforcement officials.

So why pass “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” so-called “hate crime” legislation? The reason has more to do with foisting an expansive homosexualist agenda on the nation than with concerns about crime. The bill serves the following vital aims of that agenda:

• It gets the federal government to enshrine in federal law “sexual orientation” (i.e. homosexuality and bisexuality) and “gender identity” (i.e. transsexualism and cross-dressing) as identity markers worthy of special protection and promotion alongside racial and gender diversity.
• This in turn gives federal backing to hatred of all persons who express opposition to homosexual practice and transgenderism as the moral equivalent of racists and misogynists (sexists), no matter how loving that expression of opposition may be.
• It also lays the foundation for a litany of future “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” bills that will markedly abridge the civil liberties of all who express moral disapproval of homosexual practice and transgenderism.

The foot in the door

This “hate crimes” bill is the proverbial foot in the door or camel nose in the tent that makes possible —— indeed inevitable —— all future laws involving “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” By simply placing “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” alongside of “race,” “color,” “national origin,” “gender,” and “disability,” this “hate crimes” bill does most of its damage. It ensconces in federal law the principle that homosexuality, bisexuality, and transsexuality are as benign as race, gender, and disability —— an aspect of human diversity that must be affirmed and celebrated. Those who refuse to go along with this principle then become encoded in law as hateful, discriminatory bigots.

Note that while “religion” (an identity marker involving choice) is one of the protected categories of this “hate crime” bill, the bill mainly makes a connection between “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” on the one hand and a host of benign innate conditions on the other (i.e., the five other protected categories of the bill). I’ve never heard an advocate for homosexual practice and transgenderism make the connection between these behaviors and religious belief. The analogy is always made with race and gender.

The thought crime of “prejudice” against homosexual and transgender behavior

Make no mistake about the fact that this is an Orwellian thought-crimes bill. Suppose a young man and a 70-year-old grandmother push each at roughly the same time. The man does so after shouting out “You bigoted homophobe!” while the grandmother does so after responding “Well then, you are a sexual pervert!”

This “hate crime” bill would apply only to the grandmother and would do so solely on the basis that she believed that homosexual practice was a perversion of the natural sexual order. For the bill establishes this conviction to be a “prejudice,” stating that the federal government can intervene when “a crime of violence … is motivated by prejudice based on the actual or perceived … sexual orientation [or] gender identity … of the victim” (emphasis added). The bill effectively (but wrongly, go HERE) declares this conviction to be a hate that society must prosecute vigorously by enhancing penalties and calling for massive federal intervention.

However, the bill shows no concern for classifying as hateful prejudice the alternative conviction; namely, that advocates of a male-female requirement for sexual relations are hateful, ignorant bigots. Rather, the bill promotes this alternative conviction to society at large. It essentially declares to all sectors of society that it is “open season” on hating and ostracizing persons who find homosexual behavior and transsexualism to be morally repugnant, much as society hates and ostracizes members of the Klu Klux Klan or skinhead Nazi groups.

Recent cases in point are the widespread intimidation tactics employed by homosexualist opponents of California’s Proposition 8 against its supporters (for example, go HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE) and the smear campaign against Miss California, Carrie Prejean, for daring to disagree with a homosexual pageant judge’s affirmation of “gay marriage” (note that the point holds whatever Prejean’s deficiencies may be as a role model for Christian sexual modesty). Why shouldn’t those opposed to homosexual practice or transsexualism get special protection from the federal government? The reason is simple: They’re bigots.

The analogy of other sexual orientations

This bill thus goes beyond protection of homosexual, bisexual, and transgendered persons (who are already protected) to promotion of hatred —— hatred toward those opposed to homosexual and transgendered behavior. If you have any doubt about that, consider whether adding pedophilia (‘pedosexuality’) to the list would imply promotion of pedophilic behavior by the state and antagonism by the state toward perceived opponents of pedophiles. Surely it would.

Sadly, this may not be the best example since Rep. Steven King unsuccessfully introduced an amendment to the “hate crimes” bill in the House that would have excluded pedophilia from the definition of “sexual orientation.” If you can believe it, the Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee defeated the amendment along party lines, 13-10. To be sure, the Democrats are right that both “pedosexuality,” sexual desire for children, and “polysexuality,” sexual desire for more than one person concurrently, are “sexual orientations.” Where the Democrats err is in failing to recognize that this is a good reason for not having a “sexual orientation” provision.

Conclusion

So don’t fall for the line that, if you really love “gay,” lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons, you will support this “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” “hate crime” bill. No, support for this bill does not mean that you oppose hateful, violent acts against persons who self-identify as homosexuals, transsexuals, and cross-dressers. Existing laws already make that point. Rather, it means that you support stigmatizing, marginalizing, and penalizing people who, lovingly or not, oppose homosexual practice and transgenderism. This is a hate-promotion bill.

Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D. is associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Abingdon Press) and co-author of Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Fortress Press). See www.robgagnon.net for more information.

TAKE ACTION: call or write House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office and urge her to denounce this blatant attack on the family coming out of her district: 202-225–4965 or 202-225-0100.

By Peter LaBarbera

Folks, take a look at what the sadistic pervs over at Folsom Street Fair came up with for their promotional poster this year. And to think that in all their “leather pride” they think of themselves as “progressive.” (PETA might disagree.) The good news is that thanks to the efforts of Americans For Truth and others who have exposed the open-air perversions that have been allowed to take place year after year at Folsom and at another San Francisco “street fair,” police are finally promising to crack down on the nudity and public sex [see this report in California Catholic Daily]. Will House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) denounce this new attack on the natural family, or will she continue to pander to her homosexual base– as she did by refusing to condemn a version of the above that mocked the Last Supper? Few Americans have any clue about just how deviant America’s Queer Mecca is.

Now here’s another reality about Folsom, International Mr. Leather (coming up this Memorial Day weekend in Chicago), and the über-depraved poster above: such vileness could only emerge from a “GLBT” (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender”) movement that celebrates sexual deviance in the first place. Homosexual sodomies have more in common with the above picture than they do with natural family and marriage. In other words, domesticated homosexuality (Heather Has Two Mommies) is itself a revolutionary assault against God and Nature. And that is why sadomasochists, “genderqueers” and she-males (transsexuals half-way through their “transition”) are all welcome under the self-described “queer” umbrella. They’ll tolerate Folsom, but they won’t tolerate Californians voting in Prop 8 to defend marriage.

It’s the behavior, stupid. And it’s awfully tough for a “Sexual Liberation” movement to boot out any “perverted” group or lifestyle when homosexuality itself is a perversion that was once universally taboo. (Which makes the concept of homosexuality-based “marriage,” well, about as ridiculous as calling what is depicted in this poster a “family.”) We’re talking gradations of immorality — how utterly foolish for “conservatives” to embrace “same-sex marriage” (or “civil unions”) in the name of commitment, monogamy and tradition — or Christianity. Did you know that NAMBLA (the pedophilic North American Man/Boy Love Association) once marched in “Gay Pride” parades?

So don’t hold your breath waiting for the Human Rights Campaign or the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force or PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) to denounce this sick display. They can’t, and we doubt Speaker Pelosi will either, even though it might help her politically to do so. Privately the “gay” activists may be upset at how Folsom hurts their cause strategically, i.e., from a PR perspective. But outwardly they’re far more apt to attack Carrie Prejean than their comrade-cousins on the Leather fringe.

Folsom Street Fair’s press release announcing the new twisted poster follows:

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http://www.folsomstreetevents.org/fair-info.php

May 15, 2009

FOLSOM STREET EVENTS® LAUNCHES POSTER DESIGNS FOR ANNUAL FAIR AND EVENTS SEASON
Folsom Street Fair poster image draws inspiration from 1950’s style household

San Francisco, CA – May 15, 2009 – Folsom Street Events has released its latest poster designs for the annual events: Bay of Pigs™, Up Your Alley®, Magnitude®, and Folsom Street Fair®. This year, the official Folsom Street Fair poster was inspired by a classic 1950′s “nuclear family” photo. In light of the passage of Proposition 8 last fall, the organization felt it was important that the Folsom Street Fair – and San Francisco – take a stand about what family is and how we experience those similar bonds in our community. Folsom Street Events wanted to juxtapose the traditional and iconic imagery from that “era of innocence” against the irreverent diversity of the fetish community.

According to Demetri Moshoyannis, Executive Director, “We are extremely pleased with the outcome of this poster, and we are looking forward to a particularly inspirational event season. The poster is an attempt to portray an alternative to the archetypal image of the family; it’s our way of saying: ‘This is our family.’ It is a distinctive representation of leather and fetish diversity with people of all genders, sexual orientations, ages, interests, etc.”

According to Russell Brown, Administration and Special Projects Manager, who managed the creative process of producing the poster, “I really wanted a fun poster, maybe a little bit lighter than what Folsom has produced in the past with the hope of attracting some potential new fair-goers who may have been reluctant before. Especially with the downturn of the economy, I wanted the poster to reflect the three tenants of Folsom Street Fair: Fun, Frolic and Fetish.”

The poster was made possible in part by Brian Mills of Titan Media who brilliantly photographed the images. Titan Media generously volunteered their studio for the photo shoots. Additionally, all of the models volunteered their time, including: Troy Weakley (“dad”), Bianka Stevens (“mom”), Tony Buff of TitanMen.com (“son”), Sparkly Devil (“daughter”), Trevor Wayne (“younger son”) and Justin Morgan (“family dog”), all of whom brought energy and life to the picture.

Posters for Bay of Pigs, Up Your Alley, and Magnitude as well as Folsom Street Fair are available online at www.folsomstreetevents.org . The Bay of Pigs and Up Your Alley posters were illustrated creatively by Axel and Rob Clarke, accordingly. The Magnitude poster features TitanMen.com models Eduardo and Korben, and it was also photographed by Brian Mills.

The graphic below is a question (one of 70) from the “National Survey on Transgender Experiences of Discrimination in the U.S.,” sponsored by the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Sort of makes you yearn for the good old days when people were either “male” or “female.” Come to think of it, they still are. You would practically need a PhD., to keep up with the ever-expanding array of gender identities that fall under the “T” umbrella in the “GLBT” (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) equation. Check out this mind-numbing Wikipedia entry attempting to define “Genderqueer.”

Note that the choices offered below do not comprise a comprehensive list of identities associated with GLBT movement, leading to an expansion of that acronym to “GLBTQQ” (the “QQ” stands for “Queer” and “Questioning”) and even longer combinations of letters. (Check out this Unitarian Universalists document, which on its front page also encourages sadomasochistic, prostitution and “non-monogamous” identities for young “queers.” Pure evil.) Here is the NCTE survey question:

The report states, “The results of the survey will be part of an important report on discrimination against transgender people by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to help create better opportunities for transgender and gender non-conforming people. We are grateful to Penn State University’s Center for the Study of Higher Education for hosting the survey and maintaining the integrity of our data.”

The survey will be used to support pro-”transgender” legislative goals, including “hate crimes” legislation and “working to include transgender provisions in a federal bill to protect lesbian, gay and bisexual workers from discrimination in employment.” The latter refers to including “gender identity” provisions in the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) bill, which would federalize “sexual orientation” law for businesses and organizations.

See our adjoining story: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Talks of ‘Moral Leadership’ while Honoring Homosexual S&M Pornographer

Rea Carey of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force says her movement shows “moral leadership” to the nation — even as the Task Force presented its “Leather Leadership Award” to a homosexual pornographer. The Task Force’s “Creating Change” conference in Denver ran supportive workshops on: transsexuality; prostitution (“sex workers’ rights”), “polyamory/nonmonogamy”; and – most disturbing – pushing a “sexual freedom” (read: sexual license) agenda on youth.

Dear AFTAH Reader,

If you are reading this website, you are seriously concerned about the homosexual activist agenda.  So I have an assignment for you.  Please print out the enclosed “State of the Movement” speech by the Rea Carey, the new executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and read it all the way through (it’s about 8 printed pages with my introduction).  Now, why would a Christian pro-family organization send out a speech by a radical homosexual activist?  Because we need to know what our Culture War enemies are saying and this speech is very instructive for OUR cause of defending traditional morality and marriage in America.

If you can’t find time to read the whole “Creating Change” speech, at least read the parts of it that we have bolded below.  Note how Ms. Carey talks about “moral leadership” even as the Task Force gave its ‘Leather Leadership Award” to a hard-core homosexual pornographer at the same “Creating Change” conference.  (Talk about chutzpah!)  And note also how she refers to the Bush administration as the “Evil Empire” – Ronald Reagan’s famous description of expansionist Soviet Communism – just as Iraqi citizens were preparing to vote in another free election made possible by the U.S. liberation of their country from the grip of dictator Saddam Hussein.  Nobody lies like the Left, yet the liberal media rarely challenge groups like the Task Force on their many falsehoods and slanders.

Several observations about Carey’s speech:

• The sheer organization of the anti-Christian Left:  thousands of left-wing, grassroots activists attend these annual “Creating Change” conferences; there is no parallel on the social Right for this scale of people and groups working closely together toward common goals.  There are precious few organizing and political “how-to” conferences for pro-family conservatives.  The Left eats and breathes politics; the Right is more distrustful of government, worse at politics, but more oriented toward God, family and church (the latter is obviously a good thing).  All this helps explain why so much destructive social “change” has come to America, where political organization is rewarded in our democratic system.  (That said, we would not see such a progression of evil in our nation were our culture not so deceived, and its once-Christian character so worn down by faithless secularism.)  In the coming days, we will shed more light on the extremist Task Force agenda, which now includes sadomasochism, prostitution (“sex workers’ rights”), “polyamory/nonmonogamy,” and – most disturbing – pushing a “sexual freedom” (read: sexual license) agenda on youth;
• We must acknowledge homosexual-agenda “victories” before we can move forward:  the pro-family movement must take a sober look at where we are in the battle over homosexuality, and it’s not pretty.  While it is tempting to point to pro-marriage victories in November (California, Florida, Arizona) as evidence that our movement is healthy, underneath the surface we are losing the critical public-policy and cultural argument over the legitimacy of and government endorsement of same-sex relationships.  Homosexual activists are making steady, incremental advances, often with little pro-family opposition – e.g., passing “domestic partner” legislation like the bill currently moving through New Mexico’s legislature – as part of a longterm strategy for bigger victories ahead.  Many of the “gay” gains came in states targeted by homosexual moneymen like Tim Gill, who has successfully knocked out pro-family state legislators in Iowa, Colorado and other states.  This begs the question: why do such hardball efforts seem to succeed only on the Left and not the Right?  When will the pro-family Christian “Tim Gill” step forward to help our side?
• The dedication of evil:  if Christians were as devoted to defending God’s truth about sex and marriage as homosexual and transsexual activists are to promoting their destructive lies, we would be in a much better place.  The sad reality is that many Christians remain opposed to engagement in politics and public policy and are ambivalent about this cultural battle.  Some Christian leaders have made key concessions to pro-homosexualist ideology – or declared their neutrality on the issue – while they point judgmental fingers at the few groups that are trying to resist the “gay” juggernaut.  Meanwhile, there are no corresponding doubts on the Secular Left, which works unapologetically to radically redefine family and marriage and destroy the Judeo-Christian moral consensus that helped make this country great.  Ultimately, if the Left succeeds, Christians could see their faith-based freedoms to disagree with sexual sin disappear.
• Stealing “morality” (why not? The homosexual activists already stole the word “gay” and are trying to redefine “marriage,” “family,” “equality,” and “civil rights”):  Homosexual activists realize that to achieve total victory, they must separate Christianity from traditional (Christian) morality.  They aim to redefine right and wrong apart from God’s will for people’s lives, as clearly revealed in Scripture and nature with God’s beautiful, complementary design for man and woman united sexually in marriage to produce children.  “Queer” theologians are busy redefining the Bible and now brazenly claim that homosexuality is a “gift from God.”  The homosexual militants’ game plan is to reinvent Christianity by spouting religious-sounding yet subversive ideas for a nation that is still very religious, but largely ignorant of the Bible;
• The progression and unity of sexual sin … Face the evil:  at Americans For Truth, we’ve come face-to-face with homosexual extremism and have no problem labeling the overall GLBT movement as evil.  But many people are in denial about the nefarious homosexual agenda.  We need to admit that the media “soft sell” of homosexuality does not match what the GLBT Lobby has in store for our nation.  We ask: why does Rea Carey advocate for abortion (seemingly a non-issue for homosexuals) and against “useless” abstinence-focused education?   Why does the Task Force – which receives lots of corporate support — give an award to a purveyor of hard-core homosexual porn?  Why do they teach gender confusion (“transsexuality”) and “sexual freedom” to youth?  (The latter is a code term for no-limits sexuality including S&M.)  Why does the Task Force champion “nonmonogamy” even as it seeks to homosexualize “marriage”?  Because the Left unites around “mainstreaming” perversion and an anti-life, anti-nature, anti-God agenda.  Homosexuality.  Abortion.  Pornography.  Casual and deviant sex outside marriage.  The Task Force supports them all in its decidedly anti-moral quest.  This isn’t about “civil rights” but using the government to promote destructive, immoral and changeable behaviors.

Christians and moral traditionalists need to wake up: the other side is dead serious about “transforming society,” to quote Carey, and “imposing its morality” on us all.  It’s time for us to get serious in the Culture War, too.  God bless you.

Sincerely in Christ,

Peter LaBarbera
www.americansfortruth.com

________________________________________________________

THE FOLLOWING IS THE SPEECH BY REA CAREY, HEAD OF THE HOMOSEXUAL “TASK FORCE”:

Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2009
Subject: State of the Movement Address by Rea Carey, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
From: “The Task Force”  …

National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey delivers State of the Movement address at 21st National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change

DENVER, Jan. 30 — National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey presented the annual State of the Movement address today at the 21st National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change, where 2,000 activists have gathered to strategize on how to advance LGBT equality in this new political climate. What follows below is the text of her speech:

I know many of us may be questioning the state of our movement, and I’ll get to that in a bit, but first, I can’t resist saying that we now live in a country with a community organizer in chief and since the Task Force literally has the trademark on Creating Change, we know that our moment has arrived!

I am honored to serve as the executive director of the Task Force following my friend Matt Foreman. In fact, pretty much since I came out at the age of 16 here in Denver I have watched, learned from and been inspired by the Task Force, so I consider myself to be incredibly fortunate to be part of it. I have come up through this movement and many of my teachers are here with us today, including a couple of former Task Force executive directors — Urvashi Vaid and Lorri Jean.

You’ve already met Russell Roybal, and I want to call up to the stage my other new partner in running the Task Force — a woman who you will be hearing a lot from — our new deputy executive director, Darlene Nipper.

I want to thank each and every one of you for being here. These are incredibly tough economic times and the fact that you have spent your precious time and limited dollars to be here — to gather with your fellow activists and allies from across the country and others who have joined us — speaks to your commitment to social change, to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality, and most importantly, to each other.

This gathering is the public square of the LGBT movement and our time together is made richer and more valuable because each of you is here.

First, let’s talk about the past year. You know, there are years when our movement for full equality jumps by leaps and bounds and other years when we toil to gain every inch of ground. This year has been a bit of both in which we made progress on the local and state level and our country elected its first person of color to the presidency! Yet our love for each other was attacked again by the majority at the ballot box; our right to marry was taken away in California; our transgender brothers and sisters were denied much needed protections; and federal policy continued to elude us under the evil empire — I mean the Bush administration.

It has been a bittersweet year, but the state of our movement is engaged!

This year, we made many gains — gains made because of your hard work, your strategic thinking, your long hours, and your dollars funding state and local efforts. With all of the attention paid to marriage, it would be easy to miss the progress made at the local and state level that improves the lives of LGBT people. And so much of this progress has happened not on the coasts, but in the middle part of the country.

This weekend we will invite you to text to screen all the accomplishments you’ve had this year but I will mention just a few of the many achievements for LGBT people in 2008:

Here in our host state of Colorado, Amendment 46, a Ward Connerly initiative that would have ended affirmative action in public employment, public education or public contracting was defeated.

In Arizona, voters rejected Proposition 202, which would have penalized businesses that hire undocumented workers. And in Oregon, voters rejected an English-only proposal.

In three states — California, Colorado and South Dakota — voters considered initiatives related to reproductive freedoms. And we won in every state.

Also, here in Colorado we expanded progress by passing a law protecting LGBT people from discrimination in housing and public accommodations.

Eight localities passed and held onto nondiscrimination laws: Gainesville and Broward County, Fla.; Columbus and Oxford, Ohio; Kansas City, Mo.; Detroit, Mich; Columbia, S.C.; and Binghamton, N.Y.

We also — with incredibly hard work — successfully defended one of our victories from last year: a transgender rights ordinance that passed in Montgomery County, Md., where the combined efforts of the Task Force, Equality Maryland, Lambda Legal and a host of other organizations came together to defeat the referendum and prevent it from even reaching the ballot.

In the area of family recognition, Connecticut joined Massachusetts in becoming a freedom-to-marry state and then beat back efforts that would have threatened it. Those of you from Connecticut and our great partners Love Makes a Family and Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, congratulations and thank you.

We won marriage in California and over 18,000 couples are now legally married — and we plan on keeping them married. Even though we lost that right temporarily, our community and allies rose up in the days after the election to say, “Enough!”

We have with us today one of the founders of Join the Impact, Willow Witte, who along with her fellow organizer Amy Balliett, used the power of online organizing to fill the streets! We’re proud that some of the Join the Impact crew cut their organizing teeth at Creating Change in Portland, Ore., a few years ago and are now sharing their skills with thousands across the country.

Cities and towns in many states including Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio and Utah, established domestic partnership or similar registries in 2008. There were domestic partnership expansions in Washington state and Washington, D.C. Maryland established limited domestic partnership recognition and New York has decided to respect out-of-state same-sex marriages. Maine had an unprecedented year of victories in 2008 culminating in an Election Day action that surpassed their wildest dreams. After waiting in line for an hour to vote, voters were waiting in line to sign pro-marriage postcards. When EqualityMaine ran out of 30,000 postcards, voters signed scraps of paper, jotting their names and addresses down on anything they could find.

Building on the momentum, EqualityMaine and its coalition partners recently introduced a marriage bill and they have a solid plan for winning marriage in the Legislature in 2009 and then protecting it in the inevitable referendum campaign.

And finally, this last year’s accomplishments include a record 450 out [homosexual] elected officials serving in local, state and federal offices including Colorado’s very own Jared Polis, who became the first openly gay man to run for and be elected to Congress, joining Reps. Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin in the House.

For each and every one of you in this room who contributed to any of those victories and the many others we had, thank you!

What we continue to accomplish as a movement is electrifying. And, yet, some of this year’s results were bitter — extremely bitter — pills to swallow.

At the outset, let me say that I tend to be a glass-half-full person, so I can’t help but see this year’s anti-marriage and anti-family ballot measures as deeply painful but temporary defeats that demonstrated just how far we’ve come. But, it isn’t just my gut feeling that this is temporary, it is based on the concrete progress we have made. For example, just four years ago, we lost 13 anti-marriage ballot measures by huge margins — by an average of 67 percent, and as high as 86 percent. In California alone, the last time we faced a similar anti-marriage measure, we lost by over 20 points. This year, we lost by less than four. I know it doesn’t feel like it sometimes, but this is progress.

However, this was a particularly painful year because we lost the fundamental right that we had worked so hard to secure — the right to marry in California.

In the days and weeks after the election, so many in our community were searching for a quick answer as to why we lost in four states. My fellow activists, there is no easy answer.

The days and weeks after the election were some of the most painful I’ve experienced in my 24 years in this movement. I know they were painful for many of you and for our colleagues around the country, particularly in California, Arizona, Florida and Arkansas.  It was hard and painful enough to have lost four statewide ballot measures. But pain turned the corner into agony when we all started lashing out at each other, our allies and our would-be allies and didn’t let up.

Did the other side run excellent, although lie-filled campaigns? Yes it did. Could we all have done more or done things differently that might have moved us closer to defeating the four measures? Certainly. We at the Task Force are a particularly analytical and reflective group and we’ve been taking a hard look at what we could have done better to fight against these measures.

But our winning on any of the four statewide measures was always far from being a slam dunk. We need to learn what we can from this last year and we must move forward, as we have before in times far worse than this.

I want to specifically address the blaming of African-American voters for the passage of Prop. 8.

Sadly, shamefully, an incorrect statistic was put forth in the media and many people both in and outside of our community ran with it. I want to be clear — the blaming of African-American voters was wrong, despicable and inexcusable.

The Task Force released a study with authors Ken Sherrill and Pat Egan that included actual voting data that showed that party affiliation, conservative ideology, frequent church-going and the voter’s age trumped all other factors in the Proposition 8 vote — including race. The Task Force was criticized by some for being “politically correct.”

It is not politically correct to conduct sound research. It is not politically correct to challenge racism.

Have we done enough as a community to deal with our own racism and to make sure that our movement is one that reflects the true diversity of LGBT people? We sure haven’t. But the finger pointing and scapegoating was an affront to the many people of color and others who worked on and with the campaign and to our allied organizations. Furthermore, it avoids the complexity of the work we still have to do to win equality.

I have had enough. WE have had enough. Let us dig deep in ourselves and show others that we will not stoop to scapegoating, we will not turn our backs on our allies, and we will not give up.  There is a big difference between blaming and learning. Let us be learners so that we may be leaders.

As we look back on this year, our confidence has been shaken and our anger has been roused — but now is the time to turn our anger into action and our action into long-lasting change. We must now refocus on regaining marriage equality in California and winning across the country. But we need to remember that these anti-marriage ballot measures are fundamentally about the larger right-wing assault on the ever-expanding diversity in the United States, our freedom to live openly and to create and define our sexuality, our selves and our families.

I urge us not look at our movement as if it is only about this last election or only about marriage equality. Let us recall that our movement for liberation and equality has created much change since the police brutality in New York and other cities gave rise to the Stonewall riots, the activism of black and Latino gay men, and the birth of the modern LGBT movement.

If we do not come together again to fight another day, we can’t win our full equality. As the magnet on my grandmother’s fridge says, “Fall down seven times, get up eight!”

The state of our movement is resilient and we will win!

So, where are we headed as a movement? In order to take a look at where we are headed as a movement, we must first take a look at the broader social and political context in which we work for full equality. This context has now shifted radically.

The most obvious change is that for the first time in our nation’s history, we have as president, a black man, Barack Obama.  Candidate Obama recognized and affirmed a grassroots hunger for change. This year saw record numbers of young people, people of color and progressive people coming out to vote and we are now a better country for it.

This does indeed feel like a new political era for our country and our movement.  I believe the power of this historic moment is the seismic shift in this country from a culture of “I” to a culture of “We.” Obama ran with a mantra of “Yes we can!” Obama didn’t say, “Yes I can” or “Yes YOU can.” He said, yes WE can.

This mantra, of course, carries on the organizing legacy of the United Farm Workers and Dolores Huerta. This unifying WE invites each of us into the work ahead; into the reclaiming of a government that has turned its back on so many; into challenging the long held beliefs and practices of who holds power; how power is used; and who benefits from the use of power.

Obama’s “WE” challenges the culture of “I” that has been so core to this country’s identity — the image of rugged individualism, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. This imagery has been bolstered and perpetuated by scenes like Ronald Reagan riding his horse and by George Bush clearing brush on his ranch. This iconic imagery is finally being challenged. We are now off the ranch and have moved back into the WE of urban energy and creativity, the WE of close family ties and community in rural areas, the WE that has been at the center of the farm workers, civil rights, feminist and labor movements.

We are only just beginning to see the manifestations, the benefits of this cultural shift. And, our community — the LGBT community — is expert at showing the nation just what is possible when WE come together. This historic moment plays to our strengths.

After all, our community built an entire infrastructure of service and support for people with HIV when our own president did not have the decency to speak the syndrome’s name.  Our community overturned sodomy laws in a nation that possesses an intense fear of sexuality.  And our community put gender identity legislation and family protections on the political map.  WE have much to offer this country.

So, now it is our time to contribute again — to express moral leadership and creative fortitude. It is our time to hold steady as we are attacked at the ballot box and on the streets. To hold steady as we share our talents and ideas and are pushed back. To hold steady as we assert how we create family.

The state of our movement is expansive.  In fact, the success of our aspirations will only be limited by the expansiveness of our vision and the assertion of what is in our hearts. There are a few things we must do to make the most of this moment in history and to navigate the waters of this new era.

First, this moment calls for a new kind of leadership in the LGBT movement — not the leadership of one, but the collaborative leadership of many. Don’t get me wrong, the Task Force and I will assert leadership — but at the Task Force, we believe that strength comes not from hoarding power but by building power and sharing power and using power for good. It is why so much of our work is done through coalitions or convenings like Creating Change.

We are leaders in what is good and right and just in this country.  When we insist that LGBT people be involved in the policy conversations about the economy, about health benefits, about tax policy, about immigration — as we have been doing with the Obama transition team and administration — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we win marriage equality in Maine, Iowa, New Jersey and other states — and we will — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we pass a gender identity-inclusive ENDA — and we will — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we continue to work to get rid of useless abstinence only education, we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we stand shoulder to shoulder with our friends in labor and women’s groups as the Task Force did yesterday morning at the White House for the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we promote, sustain and maintain people of color leaders — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

The second thing we must do is to think differently about who our playmates are. I was a Girl Scout when I was growing up and there was this song “make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold.”

We will certainly keep our LGBT organizational friends. But, it is time for us to make new, substantive and strategic friendships with non-LGBT organizations with which we share common concerns. The time for isolating ourselves as a movement is over. We will never win on our own.

So, in the coming years, you will see the Task Force partnering with some perhaps surprising organizations. We will ask them to show up for us and we will show up for them, as we have in our work with AARP on national policy and with Planned Parenthood and NAACP on ballot measures.

Third, so many of our straight friends and family are with us and we must find ways for them to make a difference in our pursuit of equality. They are near and dear to us. They’re willing to work with us; they’re wanting to work with us; they’re waiting to work with us. Among the most striking experiences for me in the last year have been my conversations with straight people across the country, not the least of which was with my own 92-year-old grandmother who has been my cheerleader and was crushed when she was not able to make it to our wedding.

Next week the Task Force will be a partner in launching a new campaign called, “Tell 3″ headed up by the ACLU and Join the Impact, along with other organizations. This campaign is simply about talking to the people in our lives about issues that matter to us as LGBT people.

We ask each and every one of you to go to our Web site next week and take part in what could be — with your help — the most massive friends and family education effort ever launched. If every one at Creating Change has meaningful, real conversations with three people about our lives, about the things we care about, we will have made progress in changing the hearts and minds of thousands of people — people who will be voting on our rights next year and the years after that.

Finally, organize, organize, organize — however you do it, walking door to door, talking to friends, going to meetings, sending tweets — I just did — connecting on Facebook or MySpace, or getting people elected.

Just organize!

For 35 years, the Task Force has been the home for people like you, like me, like hundreds of thousands of people across this country who know that we are part of a larger community of people reaching for full equality.

As you experience the Creating Change conference, you can’t help but see and hear and feel and know in your heart that the state of our movement is engaged, it is resilient, it is expansive and expanding, and it is stronger and more inspirational than ever before!  With all of us together –

We will win complete equality!
We will protect and defend our families!
We will change our communities and
We will transform society!

Thank you.

____________________________________________________________

Help Support Americans For Truth!

Will you help Americans For Truth stand as boldly for the Truth as homosexual activists do for their lies?  We appreciate your support:

TO GIVE TO AFTAH: Go to our user-friendly giving page — www.americansfortruth.com/donate/ — to make your tax-free donation using PayPal or your MasterCard or Visa.  Regular mail: AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567.

TRUTH TEAM MEMBERSHIP:  To sign up as a Truth Team member by pledging $25, $50, $100, $250 or more per month to sustain AFTAH’s critical work, go HERE or copy http://www.americansfortruth.org/membership.php on your web browser.

_____________________________________________________________

Leather Leadership, “Moral Leadership”? At its annual “Creating Change” conference for grassroots homosexual and transsexual activists, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force gave its “Leather Leadership Award” to Graylin Thornton, co-owner of a homosexual hard-core pornographic video company (see covered-up covers of videos below). Above is announcement in the Creating Change program. At the same conference in Denver, Task Force director Rea Carey extolled the “gay” movement’s “moral leadership.” The Task Force is heavily involved in promoting homosexuality and other deviancies to youth in the name of “sexual freedom.” Click on graphics to enlarge. 

By Peter LaBarbera

Homosexual activist “morality” is a strange concept indeed. At the same “Creating Change” conference where the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) presented a homosexual S&M pornographer with its “Leather Leadership Award,” Task Force Exective Director Rea Carey extolled the “moral leadership” of her  movement.

The Task Force presented Graylin Thornton, the co-owner of a company that sells homosexual porn videos, with its “leather” award at Creating Change, an annual conference for grassroots activists advocating the following sexual misbehaviors: male homosexuality; lesbianism; bisexuality; transsexuality; sadomasochism and other fetishes; prostitutes (“sex workers”); and “polyamory/nonmonogamy” (multiple-partner and open relationships).

Thornton runs Grey Rose Video Productions, which states on its website: “As active members of the BEAR, LEATHER, and AFRICAN AMERICAN communities, both Graylin and [business partner Chris Meister] are dedicated to continuing a standard of excellence in the production of videos featuring the hot, hung, hunky and hairy ‘real men’ that represent those communities.”

The porn company is selling videos with the following titles:

• Jake Mitchell’s [F--k] Buddies;
  
• JC Carter’s Sex Tape;
  
• This Bear Likes em Black;
  
• Beefy Boyz on the Road;
  
• Skin Tight and Busters Rubber Romp;
  
• Semenhole, Texas;
  
• Black, White and Hot
  

In her “State of the Movement” address Friday at Creating Change — which this year featured the innuendo-laden slogans “Power Is Sexy” and “Action Is Hot” — Carey touted the homosexual movement’s “moral leadership” (emphasis added):

We have much to offer this country.

So, now it is our time to contribute again — to express moral leadership and creative fortitude. … We are leaders in what is good and right and just in this country. When we insist that LGBT people be involved in the policy conversations about the economy, about health benefits, about tax policy, about immigration — as we have been doing with the Obama transition team and administration — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we win marriage equality [homosexual "marriage"] in Maine, Iowa, New Jersey and other states — and we will — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we pass a gender identity [transsexual]-inclusive ENDA — and we will — we assert our community’s moral leadership.

When we continue to work to get rid of useless abstinence only education, we assert our community’s moral leadership….

George Bush’s “Evil Empire”?

By giving a “leader leadership” award for “social justice” work to a homosexual porn entrepreneur, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is continuing its tradition of pushing the envelope as the most radical and leftist major homosexual organization. And not just on sexual issues: Carey jokingly referred to the George Bush administration as the “evil empire” – the words Ronald Reagan famously used to describe expansionist Soviet Communism. (Meanwhile, Iraqi citizens, benefiting from the American liberation of their country from despot Saddam Hussein, were preparing to vote in an another free election the day after Carey’s speech.)

Last year, Americans For Truth reported how the Task Force’s 2008 “Leather Leadership Award” recipient, Guy Baldwin, was an advocate of (consensual) “master-slave” sexual relationships — one of the bizarre subcategories within the BDSM (“bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadism/masochism”) movement. One year, the NGLTF conference featured as a workshop speaker the webmaster of a “Cruising for Sex” website that lists places where men find anonymous homosexual “public sex.”

The trend towards ever greater perversions and gender radicalism continues. The Denver “Creating Change” conference featured the following workshops and caucuses:

• Fostering Communication with the Fetish Community;
• Sex Worker [prostitutes] Caucus;
• What a Pisser! The Politics of Transgender Bathroom Use
• Sexuality Education as a Tool for the Movement

Even so, the Task Force draws major corporate givers and political supporters, including the Democratic National Committee. Several Colorado VIPs including Senator Mark Udall (D) wrote welcoming letters that appear in the front of the Creating Change program.

Talking Sex with Youth

The conference also included workshops directed at youth, including some focused directly on sex:

• Gaydar 101: a Queer Teens guied to dating;
• A Dialog with Youth: Talking about Sex and Sexual Freedom;
• Mentoring Queer Youth
• Quit Passing Notes: Let’s Talk about Sex … in the Classroom

AFTAH will be writing more about the Task Force’s extreme agenda, especially that part of it that involves confused GLBT youth.

Honoree’s Perverse Press Release

Task Force “Leather Leadership Award” honoree Thorton’s pornographic company posted this perverted press release on its website. Note the sex allusions:

Grey Rose Productions Teams With Mack Studios

Gay Porn Titans Jake Mitchell And Mack Manus Hook Up … Literally

Great teams aren’t just born, they are formed. Take Abbott & Costello. Laurel & Hardy. Martin & Lewis. Perhaps the funniest of all, McCain and Palin. Okay, scratch the last one, but still — the point is two talented people coming together can form an unbeatable, winning combination.

Just such a combination — the meeting of two of gay porn’s most popular actors-turned-producers — has been established to take two strong entities, namely Grey Rose Productions and Mack Studios, to create an even stronger product.

Jake Mitchell is beyond excited about the new business arrangement. “I couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with Mack Manus. He is a visionary; he knows how to make a truly hot product. We share a similar style.” Plus Mitchell adds, with a laugh, “He is one [f--king] hot stud!”

That Mack is a hot stud aside, and one of the hottest commodities in European porn, the business arrangement makes complete sense. The studios have similar audiences. And their videos are similar in that they can feature scenes that range from rape to romance, without skipping a beat. Or [an erection]. Guys who like hot, sweaty, tough, hard core, dominant, passionate man-on-man action … daddy scenes, leather, body hair, bears. Both of these companies, of course, are considered at the top of their genres, Mitchell Stateside and Manus across Europe.

To that end, a great teaming is born. Says Mitchell, “We are going to start selling the terrific and very hot Mack Studios videos on the Grey Rose web site and we are also going to have his scenes available for members on my Jake Mitchell site, too.”

Mack Manus is equally happy to be working with Jake Mitchell. Through a translation of his sexy French accent with traces of his native German tossed in, he says: “I’ve watched and enjoyed the Grey Rose brand for some time. Jake and I both started our companies about the same time. We share a very similar philosophy about the men we hire.”

True that. Both companies have earned praise from critics and fans alike for not hesitating to hire hot men, regardless of age or physical appearance. No wussy, fem, straight, gay-for-pretend guys for these studios. Manus says he does not hesitate to cast actors of any age or physical appearance for a role. That was one of the reasons Mitchell also created his company in 2002: more diversity in porn.

Mitchell met Manus, this being the Internet age, via the Web. They started chatting (which is kind of difficult because Mitchell’s French is rusty and Manus doesn’t speak much English.) Still, a little language barrier can’t keep a great team from coming together. Mitchell was planning a trip to Paris and decided they should meet. Mitchell says, “Once he arrived at my flat — and I saw his sexy smile and eyes, wavy hair and beefy body — I knew that we would be able to get past our language barrier.”

Sounds like Mitchell and Manus did more than discuss business. Laughs Mitchell “Well, let’s just say before we signed on the dotted line we had to see if we were compatible in all ways!” That sounds pretty hot. “Me trying to speak French, and him trying to speak English, well, it’s also hysterical at times! But, definitely hot.”

Not only do Mitchell & Manus have similar styles, studios and video product, they also have similar taste in men. Look for their first scene together (they tag team hunky J.C. Carter) soon.

Mitchell & Manus did a meet-and-greet together at the recent IML [International Mr. Leather] in Chicago. Their respective fans are already salivating at the possibilities. It’s truly a great partnership…and just getting started!

We’ve covered up the photo of this fellow — apparently one of Gay Task Force honoree Graylin Thornton’s porn actors — found in the “gallery” section of his company’s website. How this for “moral leadership”?

Joe Solmonese (left) went from helping to elect pro-abortion-on-demand Democrats at EMILY’s List to advancing the pro-homosexuality/ -transsexuality agenda as president of the Human Rights Campaign. The twin evils of homosexuality and abortion share a common foundation: the elevation of self over transcendent truth and God’s revealed will for men and women. Homosexual activists have been in the forefront of “defending” abortion centers against pro-lifers whose aim is merely to save innocent babies from destruction and persuade women NOT to make a decision that will haunt them the rest of their lives. Below is a photo of a fetus’ feet at 10 weeks.

Folks, the issues of defending life and sexual morality are joined at the hip: each of the evil movements they oppose — the abortion and homosexuality lobbies — elevates mankind’s selfish desires over God’s will. Is it any wonder that the two greatest sin lobbies of today have as their sworn enemies the preservation of life and natural marriage and the God-ordained family? And this is not just theoretical: front-line, pro-life veterans such as Joe Scheidler tell me that over the years homosexual activists have been in the forefront of defending abortion “clinics” (killing centers) — to block the life-saving efforts of people trying to witness the truth about life to pregnant girls and women going into the death-centers to abort their own children.

Curiously, homosexual groups like Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force have incorporated abortion-related advocacy in their agendas. In fact, HRC’s president, Joe Solmonese, is the former CEO of EMILY’s List, described by Wikipedia as “one of the nation’s prominent pro-choice Democratic political action committees.” After helping to advance abortion, homosexuality and gender confusion, I don’t know what’s next on Joe’s career path — perhaps Chairman of the Board for a major porn distribution company?

The life issue is close to my heart, as my younger brother, Jimmy, has Down syndrome –placing him in a group of people who are singled out for extinction in the womb by doctors because they are, well, not perfect. Thankfully, my mother never even considered the prenatal test that could have been the prelude to an abortion, and Jimmy has blessed the lives of me and my extended family, and many others, for decades.

Below is a note from Mark Harrington, executive director of Center for Bioethical Reform (CBR) Midwest. one of the many pro-life heroes in America who works tirelessly and bravely to speak up for the unborn — who cannot speak for the themselves against the violence of abortion. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

P.S. President Obam[a is reportedly preparing to sign a pro-abortion Executive Order that overturns a 1984 pro-life policy implemented by President Ronald Reagan, thus allowing U.S. taxpayer dollars to be used to provide and promote abortions oversees. [We mistakenly reported that he was signing the order today, January 22; he did not.] I find this hard to reconcile with Obama’s campaign pledge to reduce the number of abortions. Also, Obama has promised that he would sign the radical “Freedom of Choice Act,” which would codify the wicked “Roe” decision and eviscerate pro-life reform laws across the nation.

_______________________________

CBR Midwest writes:

On Roe Anniversary: Think Abe Lincoln

Columbus, OH – January 22, 2009 – Today, America remembers the inestimable loss of unborn human life on this 36th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision of Roe v. Wade. Many pro-life advocates are in despair that we have not succeeded in protecting the pre-born. There is much to grieve today; however, this is also a time of hope.

Today, all across America citizens are raising their voice like a trumpet. At state houses, at our nation’s capitol, on the streets, and in our churches men and women who believe in the God given principle of the sanctity of human life gather together to make a difference for the defenseless.

The truth is, after thirty long years, “we have not grown weary in doing good.” The fact is we will never give up as long as babies are dying.

Many believe the battle is lost. It would serve us well to read the words of another great social reformer Abraham Lincoln who wrote in July of 1858:

“I have not allowed myself to forget that the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain was agitated a hundred years before it was final success. Remembering these things I cannot but regard it as possible that the higher object of this contest may not be completely attained within the term of my natural life. But I cannot doubt either that it will come in due time.  Even in this view, I am proud, in my passing speck of time, to contribute my humble mite to that glorious consummation, which in my poor eyes may not last to see.”

Legal protection for the pre-born will come. Press on!

CLICK HERE TO HELP CBR MIDWEST CONTINUE THE BATTLE

For more information contact Mark Harrington at  614-759-5195  or mark@cbrinfo.org
Mark Harrington is the Executive Director of CBR Midwest, and President of Pro-Life Institute.

Homosexual Episcopal Bishop V. (Vicki) Gene Robinson addressing the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a radical pro-homosexual, -transsexual, -bisexual, -sadomasochism organization. To watch the five-part YouTube video of Robinson’s speech at the Task Force, click HERE. Click on photo to enlarge.

The following is a statement by Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel. Note: Barber is a Board Member of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality.

Contact Barber at jmattbarber@comcast.net.

DATE: January 14, 2009; FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

LYNCHBURG, Virginia – Matt Barber, Director of Cultural Affairs with both Liberty Alliance Action and Liberty Counsel, released the following statement today in response to news that Barack Obama has invited openly homosexual Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson to deliver the invocation at an inaugural event on Sunday:

“It’s a shame that President-elect Obama apparently has so little regard for his Christian constituents that he would give such a high place of honor to a self-styled man of God whose only claim to fame is that he abandoned his wife and children to enter, ‘loudly and proudly,’ a sexually deviant lifestyle expressly condemned by the very Bible he’s ironically called ‘holy and sacred.’

“None of us are without sin; and certainly none are less valuable in God’s eyes than any other.  But Christ did command us to repent of our sins and to ‘go and sin no more.’  Not only has Robinson refused to repent of his homosexual behavior, which is unequivocally condemned throughout both the Old and New Testaments as sexual sin, he has further rebelled against God by leading astray countless of his flock who suffer from similar temptation.

“A fancy white robe and tall priestly hat does not a man of God make,” continued Barber.  “Robinson may or may not be a believer as he claims; only he and God know that for sure.  But what we do know is this: based upon his frequent association with homosexual anti-Christian hate groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and in light of his ongoing counter-Christian sexual crusade, Gene Robinson is little more than a radical homosexual activist in a clergyman’s clothing.  In fact, his heretical rebellion against God’s express natural order, coupled with his selfish refusal to surrender his pulpit, has almost single handedly devastated the U.S. Episcopal Church,” said Barber.

Robinson has indicated he will not use the Bible at the event, saying, “While that is a holy and sacred text to me, it is not for many Americans.  I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer.”  Barber responded, “Unfortunately, Robinson is not especially Christian in much of what he does. After that comment, I wonder if he heard a rooster crow.”

While addressing his aberrant sexual appetite for men, Robinson said, “I believe in my heart that the church got it wrong about homosexuality.”  Answered Barber, “That’s why Christ admonishes us to place His word above that which we feel in our hearts.  As Scripture warns: ‘The heart is deceitful above all things.’”

“As Gene Robinson prays for Barack Obama on Sunday, I would encourage all Bible believing Christians to pray for Gene Robinson.  Pray for the wife and children he left for a lie.  Pray that he will repent, ‘go and sin no more,’ bringing others with him to the salvation only Christ can offer.  A salvation we all – our nation and our world – so desperately need.”

###

Americans For Truth Press Release

January 13, 2009

Contact: Peter LaBarbera: 630-717-7631; americansfortruth@comcast.net

AFTAH: Obama’s Choice of Homosexual Bishop (Vicki) Gene Robinson to Pray at Inaugural Event Is a Slap in the Face to Christians

NAPERVILLE, Ill. – Peter LaBarbera, President of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality (AFTAH), issued the following statement regarding President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of V. (Vicki) Gene Robinson, the openly homosexual Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire, to deliver the invocation at an official inaugural event Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial:

“President-elect Obama has signaled a tragic departure from America’s godly, Judeo-Christian heritage with his choice of a defiant homosexual activist, (Vicki) Gene Robinson, to recite a prayer at an official Inaugural event Sunday. Choosing Robinson — who supports homosexual ‘marriage’ and compares his agenda to mainstream sinful and changeable homosexual behavior to the noble Black civil rights struggle — is a sop to ‘gay’ activists who blasted Obama’s for picking evangelical pastor Rick Warren to say an Inauguration Day prayer.

“By choosing Robinson, who left his wife and family to embrace homosexuality – and who claims to revere the Bible as ‘holy and sacred’ while defying its clear teachings on sex and marriage – Barack Obama has given his first indication of how he could use the bully pulpit to undermine biblical values. (Obama promised homosexual activists that he would work to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents states from being forced to recognize out-of-state same-sex ‘marriages.’ He pledged that as President he would advocate for homosexual adoption, and has distorted the Bible to justify his support for homosexual relationships.)

“Bishop Robinson is a radical sexual activist masquerading as a man of God. He is an affront to faithful Christians and religious defenders of morality everywhere, and needs to repent and turn away from homosexuality. His selfish defense of sin literally has helped destroy and divide a denomination. Robinson – who was given the female name ‘Vicki’ at birth because his parents were hoping for a girl — has become a ‘gay’ celebrity: last year he gave a keynote speech praising the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a far-Left, anti-Christian organization that annually honors sadomasochists with its ‘Leather Leadership Award.’

“Robinson personifies the prophet Isaiah’s admonition to Israel (Is. 5:20): “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” Christians and traditionalists – especially those who helped elect Obama – should urge him not to use his bully pulpit to undermine marriage and the biblical morals that helped build this blessed nation.”

How Many More eHarmony “gay” sellouts under ENDA? Neil Clark Warren, founder of eHarmony.com, lost his courage and settled rather than fight a homosexual lawsuit filed under New Jersey’s “sexual orientation” law. So now Warren and eHarmony.com are facilitating immoral homosexual unions. If a federal ENDA bill becomes law, it will greatly enhance the power of homosexual activists to force businessmen and employers to accommodate and subsidize homosexual relationships against their will. The very freedom of Christians, Muslims and other moral-minded citizens to disagree with homosexuality hangs in the balance. 

TAKE ACTION: Answer the pro-homosexual lobby campaign! Call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and have them connect you to your Representative (based on your zip code). Tell them: “I am a constituent and I would like you to please tell Representative _______ that I strongly OPPOSE the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) — which threatens Americans’ basic freedom to live out their faith and disagree with homosexual behavior. I also oppose expanding federal “hate crimes” law to add “sexual orientation” and opening up our Armed Forces to open homosexuality — especially during a time of war. Then, call back and leave messages with your two Senators too! Contact their local offices, which you can find through www.house.gov and www.senate.gov. 

__________________________________

By Peter LaBarbera

OK, everyone, vacation is over. Americans For Truth is back on the beat, fresh from being denounced and mocked by various pro-sodomy “queer” blogs at the end of 2008 (what an honor — more on that later). Below, please read an appeal for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) from a major homosexual activist group — and then DO THE OPPOSITE by calling your U.S. Congressman and Senators and urge them to vote AGAINST the ENDA bill.

We’re calling ENDA — a top priority for the Homosexual and Transsexual Lobbies — the “ENDA’ Our Freedom” Bill because it poses a severe threat to Americans’ First Amendment freedom to disagree with homosexuality. ENDA would be used to force small- and medium-sized businesses to subsidize immoral homosexual unions — and that’s un-American!

Here’s a paper I wrote for AFTAH on ENDA, but if you’re too busy or too lazy to read that, here’s how to think of ENDA:

Remember the recent outrage over eHarmony.com’s sellout to homosexual activism — when evangelical Christian founder Neil Clark Warren agreed to create a “gay” dating website under the auspices of eHarmony? Well, that sellout, unnecessary and misguided as it was, came at the point of a gun. And the “gun” was New Jersey’s state version of ENDA: a pro-homosexual “nondiscrimination” law. That very same New Jersey “sexual orientation” law was used to launch the legal assault against the Boy Scouts of America’s fundamental right to live by its own creed and NOT allow homosexual (or atheist) Scoutmasters.

Thankfully, the Boy Scouts (unlike eHarmony.com) did not capitulate and the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately preserved their freedom of association in a 5-4 decision that surely would have gone the other way if just one more liberal justice of the sort favored by President-elect Obama (and many other powerful Democrats) were seated on the Court.

Like the Boy Scouts’, our freedom to disagree with sexual immorality hangs in the balance. We must work hard against ENDA and the entire “queer” legislative agenda in Washington, D.C. The other side sees this as their moment and is engaged heavily in the fight to make homosexuality and gender confusion a “civil right.” And they have a new, pro-homosexual president, the liberal media and increased Democratic strength in Congress on their side. But never forget what they lack: the truth.

Let’s be blunt: the effort to mainstream homosexuality in American law and culture is evil, destructive to faith, marriage and the natural family and — like abortion-on-demand — part of an anti-God agenda. President-elect Obama is a deeply conflicted man on the homosexual issue — or at least he should be if he’s not. Obama professes Christianity but he has distorted Scripture (or minimized its importance) on the sin of homosexuality. However, he was elected with the overwhelming support of religious African Americans and many others who profoundly disagree with the homosexual “civil-rights” paradigm. (In California, Blacks carried both Obama and Prop 8 to victory.) Always remember: there are zero “former” African-Americans or “ex-Hispanics”; there are lots of happy ex-”gays” and former “lesbians” — evidence that homosexuality is about changeable behavior, not some inborn identity. (See former lesbian Charlene Cothran’s heartwarming testimony HERE.)

I was a poll-watcher on Election Day and I saw the tremendous pride of Blacks voting for the man who would become the first African-American president to lead these United States. One Black woman in her late-thirties was beaming as she voted for the first time. A tall African-American man came in and pronounced to the whole room (standing in front of the befuddled election officials): “I’m here to vote for BARACK OBAMA!” I did not vote for Obama due to his liberal agenda (I’d vote for a Black conservative in a heartbeat) but applauded in my heart the symbolic shattering of the idea — stoked by the Left — that America is a racist nation. We are not.

But racism and homosexual conduct do have something in common: they are both destructive sins, yet changeable through God’s grace.

Now we at AFTAH call on all Obama supporters — especially people of faith — who disagree with the notion that homosexuals’ supposed “right” to be affirmed supersedes the liberty of the rest of America to live by their our own moral and religious beliefs — please make your voices heard! Let President Obama know that the oppressive homosexual activist and “gay marriage” is not part of the “change” you wanted.

The clear reality is this: the homosexual agenda is more about AFFIRMING HOMOSEXUALITY and UNDERMINING JUDEO-CHRISTIAN VALUES than correcting injustice. There is no epidemic of homosexuals being fired; in fact, they are increasingly being courted by major corporations –  while it is faith-based employees like Matt Barber (an AFTAH Board Member, fired by Allstate in 2005) who face reprisals for opposing homosexuality and who are forced to endure faith-assaulting, pro-homosexuality/pro-transsexual “diversity” propaganda on the job.

_____________________________

TAKE ACTION: PLEASE DO THE OPPOSITE OF THIS “GAY” ACTIVIST ALERT FROM THE RADICAL LEFTIST “NATIONAL GAY AND LESBIAN TASK FORCE”:

Congress Swears In Today! Let them know you care about ENDA!
Filed by: Guest Blogger
January 6, 2009 12:00 PM

Editors’ Note: Guest blogger Rea Carey is Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund.

Today, January 6, Members of Congress raise their right hand and swear to uphold the Constitution as they begin the new legislative session.

Let’s make sure the first thing they hear about is the importance of an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that protects all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

In DC, make their phone ring! Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and have them connect you to your Representative (based on your zip code). Tell them: “I am a constituent and I would like you to please tell Representative _______ that I strongly support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would ban discrimination against all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”

Then, call back and leave messages with your two Senators too!

At home, set up a visit!
Request an in-person meeting for you and other community members with your two Senators and your Representative (or their staffs) in their home district offices. You can call the district offices to request these meetings but they often want you to fax a meeting request. To find contact info for district offices, go to www.senate.gov and www.house.gov.

Sample meeting request letters, and other talking points and resources for your meetings, are available in the following toolkits [Note: the following are pro-homosexual resources]:

The Task Force ENDA Grassroots Toolkit [pdf]
National Center for Transgender Equality’s Making Your Voice Heard [pdf]
PFLAG’s Bringing the Message Home

Let us know!

Let us know how your meeting went. Go to unitedenda.org and fill out the Lobby Report Form to tell us whether your Representative and Senators expressed support.

ALL GAY, ALL THE TIME: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force leader Rea Carey urged fellow homosexuals to promote “gay marriage” to family and friends over the Thanksgiving holiday. Carey is wrong: homosexual unions are NOT equal to real marriage — as proven by the fact that homosexual couples cannot produce children without help from heterosexuality.

Dear AFTAH Readers,

I suppose if you are a pro-homosexuality activist, there’s never a time that’s not appropriate to promote the acceptance of your lifestyle. In the e-message below, the new head of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, Rea Carey, presses her group’s followers to turn Thanksgiving into a persuasive moment for homosexual “marriage” and same-sex “equality.” If only Christians were this “evangelistic”!

Carey’s letter is wrong and troubling on many levels. First, note how she chalks up as a Task Force “accomplishment” that the California Supreme Court is reviewing a ballot amendment voted in by the citizens of that state on November 4. The Task Force spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to defeat Prop 8 and lost — even after the California Attorney General changed the ballot language to make it more favorable to the homosexual side. Now the Task Force and other “gay” organizations are fighting democracy itself and undermining the integrity of a statewide vote. If they prevail and a few judges overturn the people’s expressed will, there will be a constitutional crisis in California that reverberates across the country.

Second, let’s address the misleading “gay” mantra of “equality.” Carey and fellow LGBT activists — and straight fellow travelers like libertarian Margaret Hoover (who masquerades as a conservative commentator on FOX) — like to plead for “marriage equality” for homosexuals. But it is easy to demonstrate that whatever homosexual “marriages” are, they are NOT equal to natural, God-ordained marriages. For one thing, there is the simple, indisputable fact that same-sex unions cannot produce children on their own. They can acquire children only with the help of heterosexuality and procreative-enhancing science, but they can’t reproduce or “have children,” as homosexual activists like to say. In contrast, normal marriages produce children and families without any help from homosexuality.

In their desperation to answer this obvious point on marriage and procreation, “gay” activists point to infertile hetero couples, who also need the help of science and adoption to create a family. “Should conservative commentator Pat Buchanan and his wife Shelley be denied marriage because they are childless?” they ask. But this is a silly argument. For one, infertile normal couples meet the basic requirement of marriage: a man and a woman. Secondly, when they seek to adopt children or benefit from reproductive science, they are merely mimicking the natural, complementary, mom-and-dad family — not creating intentionally motherless or fatherless homes and subjecting children to a radical reinvention of “family,” with two “dads” or two “moms.” Lastly, such straight, infertile couples desiring children turn to bountiful, procreative heterosexuality — not homosexuality, or apple trees for that matter — to fulfill their dream of a family.

So here’s a challenge to our homosexual critics: prove that same-sex “marriages” are EQUAL to the real deal given their procreative deficit, or stop this nonsense about “marriage equality.” (I understand that this is an unrealistic request;  if homosexuals and their liberal allies cared about the real meaning of words, they wouldn’t have called homosexual unions “marriage” in the first place.) As my friend John Shepard writes, “Aristotle may have been the first in recorded history to say in his Politics, ‘It is unjust to treat unequal things as equal.’ This is why it is patently unfair to treat homosexual sex as marriage. Heterosexuality is intrinsic to marriage. Marriage is consummated by heterosexuality, not sodomy.”

But back to Thanksgiving Day, which was established for Americans to give thanks to God for all His blessings in our uniquely blessed nation. That same God — the God of the Bible — opposes homosexual behavior as a sin (see Leviticus 18:22 in the Old Testament and 1 Timothy 1:10 in the New Testament). And He celebrates when someone trusts in Him and leaves sin behind (the sin of homosexuality, or any sin). Conversely, the advance of sin (e.g., the pro-homosexuality, -abortion, and -pornography agendas) in the United States or any society is not a “blessing” but a repudiation of our loving God. To use Thanksgiving as a homosexual lobbying day is a symbolic act of defiance appropriate to a movement that elevates its same-sex feelings and errant sexual desires over the revealed wisdom of our Creator.

One more point: people are tired of hearing pro-homosexuality messages all the time — at home, at work, during the holidays, on TV, at the movies — it’s “all gay, all the time” as we are bombarded with anti-God, anti-nature messages that equate a sexual relationship between two people of the same sex with “civil rights.” (The youth have it worse: now MTV is marketing a reality TV dating show involving beautiful bisexual female twins who each will choose their partner from a bevy of male and female contestants.) Enough already: the ubiquitous promotion of deviance is obnoxious and homosexuality is not a civil rights issue — as 70 percent of African American voters in California affirmed loudly and clearly by casting Yes votes for Prop 8.

The next time you are confronted with immoral homosexual advocacy, hold your ground, defend God’s wonderful created order of man and woman uniting in marriage — and if you are a Christian, defend your Savior. The God who made the universe can help people overcome sexual addictions and gender/sex confusion — but they have to humble themselves, lose that selfish “gay pride,” and repent of their sins as part of receiving God’s miraculous gift of transforming grace.

I hope you had a blessed Thanksgiving as we enter the season that celebrates Jesus Christ’s birth.

Peter LaBarbera
Americans For Truth about Homosexuality
www.aftah.org
______________________________________

Here’s is Rea Carey’s “Thanksgiving Gay” message:

Dear [Task Force Follower],

It’s amazing what we’ve accomplished together these last few weeks.

The California Supreme Court has agreed to review the legal challenges to Proposition 8, and the protests and the actions of thousands in our community have forced the public eye on the inequality that LGBT people face every day.

But our fight is far from over. In fact, there’s one thing you can do this week to help move the needle even further.

Talk.

Talk to your family and friends when you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner. Talk to your co-workers when they ask what you are doing for the holiday. Talk to your neighbors when you stop to chat outside your apartment or home.

Tell them about your life, your relationships, how you feel about the state constitutional amendments. It seems simple, but far too many of us know how hard it can be to talk honestly about our lives. Telling our stories is what will make a difference in our pursuit of equality. Hearing from you, hearing about your life is what will change the hearts and minds of every American, one by one — starting with those closest to you.

So take the time this week to talk. Your story is important to this movement and it truly matters.

From all of us at the Task Force, I’d like to wish you and your loved ones a Happy Thanksgiving and thank you so much for your ongoing support.

Sincerely,

Rea Carey, Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund