Sen. Kennedy: Hero of Homosexual Agenda: after his death, a homosexual activist reveals that Ted Kennedy used his massive influence in Massachusetts to pressure legislators to deny the state’s citizens a chance to vote on “same-sex marriage.” After the 2007 vote that blocked a traditional marriage amendment in his state, Kennedy congratulated a leading “gay” activist with these words: “What you accomplished for the people of Massachusetts is tremendous.” What about “the people’s” right to decide whether marriage should be radically redefined? At left is a cartoon published in the Boston homosexual newspaper Bay Windows.

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Dear AFTAH Readers,

Now that the eulogies are over, it’s time to tell the truth about the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s unprecedented anti-pro-life and anti-family legacy. Last week I heard FOX’s Bill O’Reilly describe the late Kennedy as a “committed Catholic.” (His guest, talk show host Laura Ingraham, a conservative Catholic, was taken aback.) Certainly, Kennedy was committed, but not to the social positions of his own church. He was a leading crusader for abortion-on-demand — after flip-flopping from being pro-life (so much for compassion and helping the “little guy”). And he used his considerable power to advance the full, radical homosexualist agenda; click HERE to read the praise he received from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, an extremist homosexual organization if there ever was one. Kennedy was one of just 14 Democrats to vote against the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA), which President Obama is now trying to undo.

Tragically, Ted Kennedy was a central figure in helping set American liberalism and the Democratic Party on their current trajectory of celebrating a culture of death and deviance in the form of state-sanctioned abortion and homosexuality.  In fact, so egregious were Kennedy’s departures from Church teachings that many Catholics, to quote Fr. Thomas Euteneuer of Human Life International, were upset that he was being extolled “with the full honors of a public Catholic funeral and all the adulation that attends such an event.” Also read the Catholic Action League press release: “Kennedy Funeral Mass a ‘Scandal,’ Says Catholic Action League of Massachusetts.”

Oddly, after his passing, we are learning that Kennedy was even more extreme than most conservatives knew. In 1983, he even secretly approached Soviet Communist dictator Yuri Andropov with a traitorous quid pro quo offer to help Andropov confront U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy; the media dutifully ignored Kennedy’s treachery when it was exposed by a British researcher in 1992. And now self-described “queer” activists are revealing the full extent of Kennedy’s efforts to advance their God-defying agenda. How strange that a Catholic would be so committed to denying the people of his own state a chance to vote on whether marriage should be redefined to accommodate homosexual relationships, which his own Catholic Church describes as sinful and disordered. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

MassResistance reports:

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August 28, 2009

Major homosexual activist reveals Ted Kennedy’s crucial role in defeating Marriage Amendment in Massachusetts Legislature

By Brian Camenker

Sen. Ted Kennedy was the secret critical force in the background that caused the Massachusetts Legislature to deny the people the right to vote on the Marriage Amendment, it was revealed this week.

Less than 48 hours after Kennedy’s passing, the homosexual newspaper Bay Windows published an article by Marc Solomon, who at that time ran MassEquality, the main homosexual lobby group trying to stop the amendment.

Ted Kennedy personally pressured enough conservative Democrats (and even “libertarian-leaning” Republicans) who the homosexual lobby was targeting, to change their votes on that the measure to allow a public vote would be defeated. Kennedy also worked on the overall strategy to defeat it. Without Kennedy’s involvement, it would likely not have been defeated the Legislature — and the people would have been able to vote.

Here’s what Solomon told Bay Windows:

Our cause was lining up the votes to defeat an anti-gay constitutional amendment that would strip same-sex couples of the right to marry. A final vote was scheduled for July 14, 2007. Our opponents needed the votes of only 25 percent of the legislature to advance a citizen-led amendment to the ballot. We had lined up two-thirds of the legislature through fieldwork, lobbying, media, literally everything we could think of. But getting those last 15 legislators-those conservative Democrats from working class Massachusetts communities and a few libertarian-leaning Republicans-was very tough. We needed all hands on deck to keep a Massachusetts version of Proposition 8 off the ballot. We needed Ted Kennedy.”Could you get me a list of your targets?” one of Kennedy’s key staffers finally asked me. “Don’t tell anyone I’m asking you for this,” he said. He meant it, and I didn’t.

A few days later, as I was doing my rounds in the State House, a bewildered conservative legislator stopped me. “You’ll never guess who left me a message about gay marriage,” he said. “Ted Kennedy.” And then I started to hear similar refrains again and again. We’d get word that he’d spoken to the Governor, the Speaker of the House, the Senate President, the chair of the Democratic Party, asking for updates, strategizing, figuring out exactly what he could do and how he could be most helpful.

In the end, on that July 14, we won. We won what many thought was an impossible victory, by a vote of 151 – 45, keeping our opponents just below the 25 percent threshold. We shocked our opponents. They were sure they had the votes. Just the kind of come-from-behind, unexpected victory for the little guy that Kennedy relished so much.

Later that day, after rallies, celebrations, and parties, I sat down at my desk and listened to voice messages of congratulations, one after the next. One moved me to my core.

“Marc, Ted Kennedy calling from Washington, DC. Congratulations on what you did today. What you accomplished for the people of Massachusetts is tremendous. Good work, my friend.”

Click HERE to read the entire Bay Windows article

Kept secret until now

It’s interesting — and pretty shameful — that Kennedy obviously wanted to keep this a secret. If he was so proud of his “principled” stands, why not make them public? The truth is that Ted Kennedy was much more radical than most people realized (on this and other issues). A lot of insiders knew that. But if the public found out it’s pretty clear that there would be a backlash that would be very unnerving, even for Kennedy.

Flood of praise in Boston media

In the Boston media it was a week of nonstop Kennedy adulation. Interestingly, the Boston Herald, which Kennedy once tried to shut down by passing a special federal law, out-did the Globe in gushing coverage.

TAKE ACTION: Call or write Nettelhorst Elementary’s principal, Cindy Wulbert, at Cw1411@gmail.com or (773) 534-5810.

I send the following note to Rex Huppke of the Chicago Tribune, reporter who wrote the article: “Chicago School to March in Pride Parade” (reprinted below):
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Mr. Huppke, have you ever been to a Gay Pride parade?…

… If you had, you might have covered the issue of rampant and inappropriate sexual misbehavior that goes on at such events.  In the past few years observing Chicago Gay Pride parades as a critic of the organized homosexual movement, I have witnessed:

• in 2004, a disgusting gay (oral-anal) sex act that was allowed to go on in the middle of the street (children were seen nearby) — right in front of a row of Chicago cops — involving two guys who were trying to get under the skin of a group of Christian protesters whom the cops were protecting; see http://www.illinoisfamily.org/informed/contentview.asp?c=26650;
• in 2007, a male transvestite (?) going topless with “his” breasts exposed for block after block as cops and parade organizers did nothing; see: http://americansfortruth.com/news/angry-mob-assaults-peaceful-christians-at-chicago-gay-pride-parade.html
• lewd acts (e.g., simulated sodomy) and gyrating sexual dances on floats — including one by an apparent lesbian cop who appeared to be drunk or high, riding atop a Chicago PD float;
• a contingent of sadomasochists marching in the parades as they do every year;
• blatant anti-religious and anti-conservative bigotry on display — usually equating Christianity or the Catholic Church with “hate”;
• after the 2007 parade, homosexual “pride” celebrants assaulted two peaceful men giving a Christian street witness in opposition to homosexuality; see http://americansfortruth.com/news/angry-mob-assaults-peaceful-christians-at-chicago-gay-pride-parade.html;
• a homosexual bathhouse called “Steamworks,” which fields a float every year at the parade.  Steamworks is a 24/7 sex club on Halsted Street in Boystown where men go for anonymous sexual liaisons with other men; see http://www.illinoisfamily.org/informed/contentview.asp?c=33904.

You get the picture. How does a parent answer the question: “Daddy, what’s Steamworks?” or, regarding gender-bending “transgenders”: “Mommy, is that a man or a woman?”  Or how about: “Why does that man have hardly any clothes on?” Do you think this is an appropriate, nurturing environment for young children?

Couldn’t you have at least gathered an opposing comment from a critic (rather than paraphrasing opponents in one paragraph without actually quoting them)?  “Gay” cheerleading is just that.  A modicum of balance on your part might have turned your piece into journalism, or at least something like it.  Such propaganda masquerading as reporting is one of the reasons why print journalism — with its arrogant disregard for common-sense and traditional viewpoints (not to mention historic Judeo-Christian mores) — is dying, in Illinois and across the country.

I can assure you that a large majority of Chicagoland residents would be appalled at the idea of placing young children in an atmosphere filled with the sexualized celebration of homosexual and transsexual behaviors. But what do they know? They’re just a bunch of homophobic “transphobes” out of step with elite, “progressive” Chicago values.

Perhaps you and the Tribune could balance your one-sided “gay pride” article with a thoughtful piece shedding light on how a massive outpouring of grassroots opposition across Illinois thwarted “gay” activists’ and the ACLU’s dream of turning Illinois into a “civil unions” state (see http://americansfortruth.com/news/civil-unions-decisively-defeated-in-illinois-a-pro-family-victory-with-national-significance.html).

Sincerely,

Peter LaBarbera
President
Americans For Truth About Homosexuality
www.aftah.org
Cell: 630-546-4439

Cc: Fran Eaton, IL Review; David Smith, Kathy Valente and Laurie Higgins, Illinois Family Inst. (IFI); Mary Anne Hackett, Catholic Citizens of IL; Arlene Sawicki, longtime pro-family advocate; John Biver and Jack Roeser, Champion News; Joe Morris, Lincoln Legal Foundation; Bruce Tincknell, Dr. John Koehler and Jim Finnegan, Board Members, IFI; Jill Stanek, pro-life advocate; Tom Brejcha, Thomas More Law Society; Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, Media Research Center; Cal Skinner, former IL State Rep., Protect Marriage IL Bd. Member and McHenry Co. blogger; Robert Unruh, WorldNetDaily.com; Jim Brown, OneNewsNow.com; Dan Zanoza, Republicans For Fair Media; Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media; Robert Knight, Coral Ridge Ministries; Matt Barber, Liberty Counsel; Wendy Wright, Concerned Women for America (CWA); Janice Crouse, Beverly LaHaye Inst and CWA; Robert Peters, Morality in Media; Karen Hayes, CWA-Illinois; Peter Sprigg, Family Research Council.
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Chicago Tribune article:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-gay-pride-parade-25-jun25,0,3925455.story

Chicago school to march in Pride Parade

Nettelhorst Elementary School to show solidarity with surrounding gay community
By Rex W. Huppke | Tribune reporter
June 25, 2009

Nettelhorst Elementary School parent Amy Goodman prepares a wagon for the 40th annual Pride Parade with daughter Sadie Blade, 3, while son Ben Blade, 6, plays in their home. (Tribune photo by Phil Velasquez / June 24, 2009)

The black metal fence in front of Nettelhorst Elementary School is obscured by thousands of strips of dyed fabric — yellows giving way to greens, then blues, purples and reds — each one tied on by the small hands of a student.

The ruffled, waist-high rainbow is a symbol of the school’s solidarity with its east Lakeview community, and a sign hanging by the gate trumpets that Nettelhorst this year “will be the first Chicago public school to march in the city’s gay pride parade.”

“We believe family means everybody,” the sign reads.

Amy Goodman agrees with that. She’ll be in the parade at noon Sunday with her husband, towing their 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter in a wagon bedecked in rainbows.

Brad Rossi agrees as well. He’ll be there with his partner and their 7-year-old daughter, along with more than 50 other families from Nettelhorst whose presence marks the latest expansion of a parade that began in the 1970s with drag queens and gay activists and has grown to reveal the full spectrum of the city’s diverse gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

In this, the 40th annual Pride Parade, there will be gay Democrats and gay Republicans, gay business people and gay artists, seniors and teens and Christians and veterans — and, as always, drag queens and activists.

“We’ve never had a grammar school, or a school for that matter,” said Richard Pfeiffer, who has coordinated the parade since 1974. “The remarkable thing about the gay pride parade is that it’s the one day that you get that full cross-section of the GLBT community. We’re young, we’re old and a growing portion of our community now has children. And I think that has often gone unnoticed.”

That’s why the Nettelhorst contingent will be near the front.

“I love that my kids will understand that there are all different kinds of families,” Goodman said. “When it comes to any kind of differences, I think the only way to really realize how much we have in common is to celebrate and acknowledge our differences.”

Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman Monique Bond stressed that Nettelhorst was not “officially involved” with the decision to enter the parade. Parents, both gay and straight, organized the school’s entry, viewing it as an important statement to make in a community with a large GLBT population.

“One of the fundamental tenets of being a community school is that you bring the community in,” said Jacqueline Edelberg, author of a book about Nettelhorst — “How to Walk to School: Blueprint for a Neighborhood School Renaissance” — and a straight mother of two Nettelhorst students.

More than 500 students attend the elementary school. While there’s no official number, Rossi and other parents say they know of at least eight same-sex couples with children enrolled at the school, which suggests that most of the Nettelhorst people marching will be straight.

“For the vast majority of parents who have come up to me, people have been really excited about it,” said Marcia Festen, a lesbian whose eldest daughter attends Nettelhorst. “I had one parent come up and say, ‘Oh my God, I don’t think the school should be doing this and it’s not a proper venue for kids.’ But it’s actually been a little shocking that the conversation has been so positive.”

One conservative blogger from Rogers Park denounced the school’s parade plans, and a group of Baptist protesters set up one day outside the school. But many parents, both straight and gay, say the reaction has been surprisingly muted.

Modesto Tico Valle, executive director of the Center on Halsted, a GLBT community center, said each year more and more of the gay and lesbian community has felt comfortable showing its face. Now seeing families from a public school join together as a single parade entry doesn’t surprise him.

“It’s like a domino effect,” Valle said. “Once this parade had picked up some clout and became very large, the politicians decided, ‘Oh, maybe I need to pay attention to this constituency.’ Then we started having news stations involved. The more we advance in our movement, the more people wake up and say, ‘These are human beings just like you and I. Let’s give them some respect and attention.’ ”

Rossi finds the support of other families from his child’s school heartening. Taking a break from painting parade banners this week, sitting not far from the fabric-covered fence at Nettelhorst, the 44-year-old thought back on his youth and how differently gays and lesbians were viewed.

As much as things have changed, he still worries that his daughter, Maria, could get picked on because her family is different:

“We can sit around and wait, and if something happens, we jump up and down and say, ‘This is an outrage.’ Or we can let people know we’re out here, so it eventually isn’t even a thing.

“So Maria has two dads? Big deal.”

rhuppke@tribune.com

November 5, 2008
Contact: Peter LaBarbera: 630-717-7631; americansfortruth@comcast.net

NAPERVILLE, Ill. – Peter LaBarbera, President of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality, issued the following statement on the election of Barack Obama:

We at Americans For Truth join millions of pro-life and pro-family advocates in expressing our profound sadness that America has just elected the most pro-homosexual and pro-abortion presidential candidate in our nation’s history: Barack Obama. However, President-elect Obama has no clear mandate on those issues because they were largely ignored by John McCain and the media in this race.

While we celebrate the transcendence of race as a dominant issue in U.S. politics – and the expiation of America’s past racial sins represented by Obama’s triumph — the truth is that Obama is a far-left ideologue on abortion and homosexuality. Incredibly, McCain largely avoided the life issue and failed to raise Obama’s hypocritical, confused stance on same-sex “marriage.” Had he run aggressively on these and other conservative issues, McCain could have won – as demonstrated by the victories of pro-natural-marriage amendments in California, Florida and Arizona yesterday.

Liberal Republicanism loses elections. The GOP must return to its pro-family roots if it wants to start winning again.

Most Americans have no idea how extreme Obama is on abortion and homosexuality, due to Obama’s clever obfuscations and McCain’s refusal to educate Americans on the Democratic candidate’s social record, which includes:

• Obama’s support of federal “civil unions” legislation that mimics “gay marriage” – and his promise to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents states from being forced to recognize out-of-state same-sex “marriages”;
• Obama’s vow, in a time of war, to open up the U.S. military to open homosexuality;
• Obama’s promise to Planned Parenthood to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would override pro-life reform laws across the nation;
• Obama pledge to homosexual activists to use the White House “bully pulpit” to advocate for homosexual adoption – placing children in homes that are motherless or fatherless by design;
• Obama’s support of the most extreme, pro-transsexual version of ENDA, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act – which has severe implications for Americans’ religious and First Amendment freedoms. ENDA would dramatically expand federal power by forcing businessmen to factor in employees’ sexual habits and gender confusion in hiring and firing decisions;
• Obama’s distortion of the Bible and historic Christianity to justify his support for abortion-on-demand and homosexuality as a “civil right.”

September 26, 2008; Contact: Andre Traversa: 847-318-6413

SAN FRANCISCO, Cal. – In remarks prepared for a press conference this morning at San Francisco’s City Hall, Americans For Truth President Peter LaBarbera said that – like homosexual “marriage” — the public perversions and nudity allowed to go on at the annual “Folsom Street Fair” in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district represent America’s deepening moral crisis.

The 25th annual “Folsom Street Fair” will be held this Sunday, Sept. 28, in San Francisco.  Details of today’s and Monday’s press conference follow:

WHAT:  Two press events exposing Folsom and the politicians who enable it;
WHERE:  San Francisco City Hall
WHEN:  Friday, Sept. 26, 11:00 AM – pre-Folsom; and Monday, Sept. 29, 10:00 AM – post-Folsom;
WHO:  Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH; Linda Harvey, Mission America; Diane Gramley, American Family Association of Pennsylvania; Anthony Gonzalez, St. Joseph’s Men’s Society

Pelosi has refused to condemn the debauched Folsom Fair in her district, which features:

• Rampant public nudity including men walking the streets in nothing but their socks and sneakers; police refuse to enforce decency laws and even recruit at the fair;
• Public street orgies in which men engage in homosexual sex acts – as depicted on enlarged photos at the press events — as thousands of fairgoers walk by;
• Blatant anti-Christian bigotry – e.g., the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” — transvestite mock “nuns” who work closely with Folsom; and religious-themed “sex toys” sold by vendors;

In prepared remarks, LaBarbera states: “As our nation deals with a severe economic crisis … America faces an equally grave moral crisis that flies under the politically correct media’s radar. In the name of ‘tolerance and diversity,’ we are casting aside all boundaries, some dating back to the beginning of recorded time. In that sense, redefining marriage outside its natural male-female state — and Folsom’s shocking, police-protected public perversions — are mere markers of a nation in steep decline, a nation that is leaving God behind.

“It is no coincidence that the man who took it upon himself four years ago to illegally and radically redefine marriage – Mayor Gavin Newsom – now enthusiastically welcomes the Folsom Street Fair with its public depravities – an event that makes San Francisco a subject of ridicule and opprobrium the world over,” LaBarbera said.

Concerned Women for America’s Martha Kleder writes:

The California legislature is considering a bill that would create a state holiday honoring Harvey Milk, the first openly “gay” city supervisor for San Francisco who was gunned down in 1978. Peter LaBarbera, President of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, introduces us to Gerard Dols, a man who both knew Harvey Milk and who now knows the Lord. Dols was befriended by Milk when he was a youth, struggled with rejection by the greater homosexual community following Milk’s murder, and later accepted Christ and left the homosexual lifestyle. Dols shares his testimony and his thoughts on “the mayor of Castro Street.” Listen HERE ; Download HERE.

There is no precedent in history for such myth-driven “democratization” of a disease, nor for the abominable unfairness in allocating funds away from so many curable illnesses. — Michael Fumento

The full New York Post column by Michael Fumento appears HERE. Emphasis added below:

A Myth that Kills

By Michael Fumento

New York Post, July 3, 2008 –THE Senate is near to passing a massive $50 billion Emergency Plan for HIV/ AIDS Relief — a bill whose priorities are based on myth, just like virtually all anti-AIDS efforts worldwide.

The world’s top AIDS bureaucrat recently admitted the truth: “It is very unlikely that there will be a heterosexual epidemic” outside Africa, Kevin de Cock, director of the World Health Organization, told London’s Independent newspaper. His bosses at the United Nations issued an official denial — but couldn’t truly challenge his science.

The effort to “democratize” AIDS dates back to the mid-1980s, when the media and health officials began a desperate and concerted effort to divert attention and make it seem everyone was at risk. The 1985 Life magazine cover, blaring “NOW NO ONE IS SAFE FROM AIDS” in huge red letters, represents this effort. Surgeon General Everett Koop coined the term “heterosexual AIDS explosion” in 1987, while in 1993 HHS Secretary Donna Shalala told Congress that AIDS may leave “nobody left.”

Even today, the Centers for Disease Control’s HIV/AIDS Web site refuses to acknowledge any difference in the risks of AIDS between anal, vaginal or oral sex.

Peter Piot, now executive director of UNAIDS, warned as late as 1997 that “HIV will cut through Asian populations like a hot knife through cold butter.” UNAIDS’s 2001 estimate had 30 million infected adults in sub-Saharan Africa.

Last year, the UN had to cut that Africa figure by almost half — and drop its Asia number by 38 percent from just the year before. Dr. James Chin, a former top AIDS epidemiologist at the World Health Organization, has long declared the UN figures to be to too high and insists they still are.

In fact, there was never any indication AIDS had or would “break out” from the well-defined risk-behavior groups, as I was writing as far back as 1987 and in my 1990 book “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS.”

I’m no Nostradamus. I merely analyzed public data and studies showing how terribly difficult the disease is to transmit vaginally or orally. But the myths are still the basis for AIDS policy.

The group Fair Allocations in Research compiles statistics on federal spending to fight various diseases, compared to how many Americans each disease kills. Measured that way, we spend 21 times as much on AIDS as cancer — and 78 times what we spend on coronary artery disease, 97 times anti-stroke spending.

Plus, the Ryan White Act mandates taxpayer handouts to HIV/AIDS victims of about $1.2 billion a year. We have no remotely similar program for victims of any other disease.

The same official grotesque distortion holds internationally. Chin charges that the United Nations puts HIV/AIDS victims on a pedestal while other disease victims stay submerged in deadly muck.

Robert England (who heads the charity Health Systems Workshop) recently made the same point in the British Medical Journal: “Although HIV causes 3.7 percent of [worldwide] mortality, it receives 25 percent of international health-care aid.” …

Consider: A 2008 WHO/UNAIDS/UNICEF report demands AIDS drugs for every victim worldwide, requiring spending hikes from $8.1 billion now to $35 billion by 2010. Yet AIDS remains incurable. Conversely, an African with non-resistant tuberculosis is curable with merely $25 of drugs.

“Easily preventable diseases are still killing millions of children each year, while billions of dollars are being squandered annually by AIDS programs . . . who are not at risk,” says Chin. (Yes, the Senate bill funds anti-TB and -malaria programs – but not anything like its anti-AIDS spending.)….

There is no precedent in history for such myth-driven “democratization” of a disease, nor for the abominable unfairness in allocating funds away from so many curable illnesses. Says England: “We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake.”

CLICK HERE to read Fumento’s entire New York Post column.

Michael Fumento is director of Education and Research for the American Security Council Foundation in Washington, DC.

By Brian Fitzpatrick

Culture & Media Institute, June 10, 2008

Thank God for the alternative media.

Unlike the big newspapers and TV networks, small conservative online news sites are reporting the growing threat posed to religious liberty by the burgeoning homosexual rights movement.

Two indispensable Web sites, Canada’s LifeSite News and [American Family Association’s] One News Now, have carried a stunning series of articles in the past few days about critics of homosexuality being attacked by the governments of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Belgium and Canada.

• Britain’s Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor Will Defy Law Forcing Homosexual Adoption
• Northern Ireland MP Investigated for “Homophobic” Remarks
• Belgian Bishop Cleared of Charges for Church Teaching on Homosexuality

No country is harder on religious believers than Canada, where a modern-day star chamber called the Canadian Human Rights Commission is cracking down on Christian preachers who dare to repeat what the Bible says about homosexuality.

• Alberta Pastor Fined $7,000 and Ordered to Publicly Apologize and Remain Silent on Homosexuality
• Canadian Catholic Priest Accused of Hate Crime

The homosexual rights movement is not really an effort to win civil rights for a supposedly oppressed minority. It’s a war against Western civilization’s Judeo-Christian moral order, joined now by many non-homosexuals who support rewriting society’s moral code. The goals are to win social acceptance of alternative sexual “lifestyles,” especially homosexuality, and to make room for a revolutionary new sexual code that glorifies self-indulgence and embraces promiscuity.

Hedonism and homosexuality cannot be legitimized without displacing the Bible’s restrictions on sex and God’s design for the family. The revolutionaries are going about it the obvious way, in our litigious society—through the courts. By redefining traditional sexual morality as bigotry, the sexual revolutionaries are using the law to assail the rights of speech, association and religion of anyone who disagrees with them. Using “sexual orientation” statutes and hate crimes laws, they are attempting to silence anybody who believes that homosexuality is a sin, not an acceptable alternative “lifestyle.”

A Canadian Catholic magazine editor, Father Alphonse de Valk, warns in his editorial, “Fascism Has Come to Canada”:

So we move from [former Canadian Prime Minister] Trudeau’s 1967 slogan “there is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation” –– falsely used to destroy traditional morality – to the new slogan that the state will determine people’s moral thinking.

Why aren’t the liberal newspapers and broadcasters reporting these stories? As politically savvy secular institutions that back homosexual rights, they may be reluctant to publicize religious victims of the movement. They appear to be following in the footsteps of Walter Duranty, the New York Times foreign correspondent who won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Stalin’s Soviet Union.

In the 1930s, Duranty downplayed the realities of the Soviet gulag, where 10 million or more people died. He lied about Stalin’s deliberate starvation of millions of people in the Ukraine. Even though his deliberate misreporting has been thoroughly documented, the Times has never removed Duranty from its list of staff who have won Pulitzers. Nor has the Pulitzer committee withdrawn the award.

For Duranty, loyalty to political ideals trumped journalistic ethics. Rather than expose Stalin, Duranty defended him: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.”

The current journalistic cover-up of the homosexual activist movement’s assaults on freedom is not the same in degree as covering up the Gulag, but it’s the same in kind. It is an abdication of responsibility and a professional disgrace. And it is one more reason that alternative media that report honestly are rapidly growing.

Brian Fitzpatrick is Senior Editor at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center.

JUDICIAL ACTIVISM AT ITS WORST: This will always be immoral. California’s highest court has created a “fundamental” marriage right out of behavior — homosexuality — that is fundamentally wrong and destructive. At left is a homosexual male kissing scene as it appeared on the CBS soap “As the World Turns.” Everywhere Americans turn — TV, media, schools, in corporations and the courts — this unhealthy and immoral behavior is being promoted.

California’s highest court has just invalidated California’s Proposition 22, creating a legal “fundamental” right to homosexual so-called “marriage” out of thin air, under the guise of equal protection. We’re reading the 172-page decision — available at http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S147999.PDF — now, but as we suspected, the court’s majority made use of the fact that in California, homosexual couples already have been given most of the same rights as normal couples — including the right to adopt children.

Footnote 72 on page 117 of the California decision is key:

Contrary to the contention of the Proposition 22 Legal Defense Fund and the
Campaign, the distinction in nomenclature between marriage and domestic partnership cannot be defended on the basis of an asserted difference in the effect on children of being raised by an opposite-sex couple instead of by a same-sex couple. Because the governing California statutes permit same-sex couples to adopt and raise children and additionally draw no distinction between married couples and domestic partners with regard to the legal rights and responsibilities relating to children raised within each of these family relationships, the asserted difference in the effect on children does not provide a justification for the differentiation in nomenclature set forth in the challenged statutes.”

In other words, by creating an expanding array of rights based on immoral and unnatural behavior, California’s politicians paved the way for this arrogant ruling. We must return to principled public policy opposing the creation of ALL newfangled rights based on changeable, immoral and deviant sexual behavior. Homosexual so-called “marriage” is wrong because homosexual behavior is wrong. To illustrate how far afield our culture has drifted — from God, decency and common sense — consider this question:

How will homosexual California couples — say, two men — consummate their “marriages”?

Click here to read a previous AFTAH article: “Homosexual Activist Wayne Besen Makes a Strong Case for a Federal Marriage Amendment,” pointing to the chaos that could ensue from this ruling and why America needs a strong Federal Marriage Amendment that protects more than just the word “marriage.”– Peter LaBarbera

Here are links to Concerned Women for America’s and National Organization for Marriage’s press releases on the California Marriage ruling:

NOM: California Supreme Court Overturns Prop 22

CWA: California Supreme Court Betrays “We the People” on Marriage

http://www.afaofpa.org

NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 14, 2008

CONTACT: Diane Gramley 1.814.437.5355 or 1.814.271.9078

Too Many PA Legislators Bow to Pressure from 2.9% of the Population

(Harrisburg) On April 30th the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a Washington, D. C. homosexual lobby group, released a study entitled, “Findings from the Hunter College Poll of Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals,” which was commissioned by the HRC Foundation. The findings of 2.9% of the adult population identifying as gay, lesbian or bisexual once again expose the lie that homosexuals make up 10% of the U.S. population. The American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA of PA), a statewide pro-family organization, is providing this information as well as additional information to each Pennsylvania legislator.

The additional information includes the bogus claim that a ban on same-sex “marriage” is the same as the laws against interracial marriage, the need to retain the ‘functional equivalent’ language in S.B. 1250 to prevent the legalization of civil unions, clarification of Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern’s remarks and the negative impact of homosexual “marriage.”

“As the stalemate on the Marriage Protection Amendment continues in the PA Senate, all the legislators who oppose this amendment need to realize that they are representing a very small percentage of people who want to redefine marriage and family. The majority of Pennsylvanians believe marriage should be between one man and one woman and expect their legislators to take steps to protect traditional marriage,” noted Diane Gramley, president of the AFA of PA.

The Hunter College poll found that 2.9% of the adult population in the United States identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual (LGB). It also found that these individuals were more highly educated than the average American and were more likely to consider themselves Democrats and liberal than the general population. These recent findings were from a poll in which seven hundred sixty-eight responded, but in a 2002 Centers for Disease Control National Survey of Family Growth 12,571 interviews with men and women ages 15-44 years of age took place. That study revealed that only 2.3% of the population considered themselves homosexual.

“Interesting that even though the 10 percent myth has been debunked years ago, the myth continues to be perpetuated by many. Homosexual activist groups have long known this figure was not accurate and even included that information filed in a legal brief in the Lawrence v Texas sodomy case,” further noted Gramley.

The March 26, 2003 Friend of the Court brief filed before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of 31 homosexual and pro-homosexual groups stated in footnote 42 on page 16 of this legal brief the following: “The most widely accepted study of sexual practices in the United States is the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS). The NHSLS found that 2.8% of the male, and 1.4% of the female, population identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. See Laumann, et al, The Social Organization of Sex: Sexual Practices in the United States (1994). This amounts to nearly 4 million openly gay men and 2 million women who identify as lesbian.”

“Legislators need to decide whether they are representing the small ‘squeaky wheel’ segment of their constituents or the majority which support traditional marriage. Will it be the desires of a small special interest group which wants to redefine marriage and family or will it be those who know marriage is between one man and one woman? Who will Pennsylvania legislators represent? What will they do with the truth?” further questioned Gramley.

Will “gay” militants sacrifice Brett VanAsdlen to advance their agenda?

TAKE ACTION: 1) E-mail or call Champaign Co., Illinois State’s Attorney Julia Rietz and ask her to drop the government’s one-sided felony “hate crimes” prosecution against 18-year-old student-athlete Brett VanAsdlen. Email: jrietz1@gmail.com or statesatty@co.champaign.il.us

2) Listen to CWA’s online audio interview on the trumped-up VanAsdlen “hate crime” case with AFTAH’s Peter LaBarbera, Bob Knight of the Culture and Media Institute and CWA’s Matt Barber. Click HERE for the AFTAH link or HERE to listen online:

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By Peter LaBarbera

I sent homosexual activist blogger Tim Kincaid this note after reading his latest fulmination on the pages of Box Turtle Bulletin (the first paragraph of which we’ve reprinted below):

“[T]hanks for your nasty little piece on [Box Turtle Bulletin], Tim. Par for the course. The issue isn’t David Duke (whose website I only saw for the first time Friday) or Ted Pike (no, I wouldn’t use the phrase “Jewish media” [as Pike does]) but whether this kid, [Brett VanAsdlen], is being railroaded. If you called me a “breeder” and then we got in an argument ending in you pushing me down (perhaps after I aggressively got in your face after you hurled your insult), NO, I definitely would not want you to face a felony “hate crimes” charge. It’s ridiculous — especially if accounts are true that the prosecution has already dropped the aggravated battery charge [against VanAsdlen].”

I cited Ted Pike in my original article on this case because, as one who has crusaded against “hate crimes” laws, Pike was the first to bring the VanAsdlen story to national attention (in a mass email) — not because I agree with the thrust of his website (or Duke’s). Like most evangelicals, I abhor anti-Semitism and in fact am quite the hawk on defending Israel. I also decry racism and, of course, white nationalism, “white pride,” etc.

In their continuing effort to steal the legacy of the real civil rights movement, homosexual activists and their allies posit an analogy between racism and “homophobia” — their smear term of choice to denigrate traditionalists. It is a deeply flawed comparison: what does unchangeable skin color and ethnicity have to do with aberrant, immoral and changeable sexual behavior?

Nothing, unless you can produce an ex-African American.

Moreover, the homosexualists are in the uncomfortable position of making actual descendants of slaves — like Pastor Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church and ex-lesbian Janet Boynes (pictured at right) — the target of their opprobrium. Men and women of color (like Crystal Dixon, a Black woman who recently was suspended from the University of Toledo after publicly making points similar to these) are mere “religious anti-gay bigots,” according to the homo-fundamentalists’ warped formulations.

And even as the Box Turtle Boys rail against “hate,” they evince their own special brand of prejudice and animus against religious people — blacks, whites, Christians, Jews and Muslims who agree with God on sexual sin — giving the lie to the “gays’” self-righteous mantra of “tolerance.”

The Left knows hate

Being lectured on intolerance by anti-Christian bigots like Tim Kincaid and Barney Frank — or run-of-the-mill leftist hate sites like Daily Kos — is like the USA being scolded for human rights violations by North Korea. If you think I jest, check out the hate-filled comments and vile anti-Christian insults that flow liberally on lesbian Pam Spaulding’s blog (try doing a search on “Jeebus” — a substitute for “Jesus” that secular snobs use to mock Christians).

Pam’s and Tim’s sites are further proof that nobody hates like the Left. And few on the Left hate like the homosexual activists (with radical pro-abortion-on-demand feminists a close second).

Here’s the first paragraph of Kincaid’s piece on the homosexual website Box Turtle Bulletin (emphasis added):

World Net Daily has now joined the alliance of racist David Duke, anti-Semite Ted Pike, and homophobe Peter LaBarbera in defending a “strapping, clean-cut, All-American looking young man” who first verbally insulted and then reportedly physically assaulted a young gay man.

Note the lack of context above. The key word is “reportedly,” and Kincaid knows it. He ends his piece as follows:

I’m amazed at the blatant sense of entitlement that directs this story. There’s such indignation that VanAsdlen, a white Christian heterosexual baseball star, should be called to answer for an assault on an insignificant godless homosexual with brown skin.

And all of VanAsdlen’s supporters agree that hate crimes laws unfairly stop people like him from doing what a “typical [white Christian heterosexual] 18 or 19-year-old kid” just does naturally. You know, assault those unlike himself.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised at how anti-gays aligned so quickly with racists and anti-Semites on this common cause. Hate is hate. Scratch a homophobe, find a bigot.

Yes, Tim, hate is hate. And yours is as obvious and repugnant as the worst of the true bigotry you oppose (discounting your equation of Biblical morality with prejudice). From your writings it is clear that you hate Christians because they disagree with your homosexual lifestyle choice.

Scratch a homosexual activist, find an anti-religious bigot.

Brutal attack?

I return to the comments made by Rod Lovett, Brett VanAsdlen’s athletic director at Parkland College, who told me: “[Brett] didn’t set out to have conflict” that evening … “Regardless of what it was, it was never a brutal attack.” Lovett knows far more about this case than either Tim or I do.

We’ll see how this story plays out as Tim, ExGayWatch, BTB, Pam and the rest of the “queer” spin machine so eagerly paint a false picture of young Brett as a violent “gay basher” to further their misguided crusade.

After all, the cause of tolerance must be advanced.

Click HERE to listen online to the CWA broadcast, and HERE to download it. Click here for AFTAH’s original story on the case: “Illinois Teen Faces Three Years Jail Sentence for Potentially Fraudulent ‘Hate Crime.’”

In the interview, Knight calls Champaign TV station WCIA-3’s initial story on the incident — in which reporter Amanda Evans interviewed only one side of the dispute — a “classic case” of media bias. More from Knight:

The message here is that there’s a special class of victim. If a homosexual is involved in this equation at all, the media and the legal system are supposed to presumably come to the aid of the homosexual every time. And it’s that selective victimization that you’re talking about, Matt, that’s so frightening.

Folks, the irony of this latest Soulforce gimmick is that most of these mega-church pastors (Harry Jackson being the key exception) are not known for confronting the homosexual agenda. For example, Bill Hybels’ Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL, did not even participate in the Protect Marriage Illinois (www.protectmarriageillinois.org) referendum campaign in 2006. But Soulforce’s activism may force them to take a more public stand on this seeming ’special sin’ that has its own well-funded and extremely powerful lobby. Targeted churches with contact pages are listed below the press release. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

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News Release

Americans For Truth
www.americansfortruth.org

May 9, 2008

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

Americans For Truth Condemns Soulforce’s Politicized ‘Dialogue’ with Mega-Churches

NAPERVILLE, Illinois — Americans For Truth President Peter LaBarbera today accused the homosexual activist group Soulforce of “politicizing Sunday worship” to further its anti-biblical agenda — by calling for (quasi-forced) “dialogue’ with mega-churches like Joel Osteen’s and Rick Warren’s “at the point of a potential protest.”

Soulforce is leading an activist event called the “American Family Outing” in which they seek “peaceful dialogue” (on their terms) with Lakewood and five other mega-churches across the country each Sunday between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. This Sunday they are targeting Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston.

LaBarbera issued the following statement on Soulforce’s American Family Outing gimmick:

“In a letter to Lakewood Church, Soulforce claims that its proposed ‘dialogue’ is designed to ‘lift up the conversation about faith, family and homosexuality to a national level and bring a new tenor of respect to the issue.’ The truth is that Soulforce is trying to convince Bible-believing churches that their Scriptural teachings against this particular sexual sin are wrong.

“You don’t achieve good-faith dialogue by announcing that you will be arriving at a church on a specified Sunday with ‘several dozen’ homosexual-led families. In the same way, Soulforce sent homosexual activists demanding ‘dialogue’ to Christian colleges: those that refused were hit with media-hyped protests.

“It is no more appropriate to ‘dialogue’ over homosexuality than it is to dialogue over any other sin. What if a traveling band of incest advocates – or perhaps a Gossipers’ Task Force — announced that it would be arriving at Lakewood Church on Mother’s Day demanding ‘dialogue’ about their special interest? This is pro-‘gay’ political theater, nothing more.

“Soulforce and its allies (including Peggy Campolo, wife of Tony Campolo) claim they are ‘deeply committed to respect for the authority of Biblical teachings.’ That is not true, as evidenced by Soulforce’s twisting of Scripture to advance the notion that homosexual behavior is acceptable. Soulforce founder Mel White has recklessly accused Christian pro-family leaders who defend Biblical orthodoxy of ‘spiritual violence’ –– playing to the vicious caricature of traditionalists as violent ‘homophobes.’

“Christians don’t negotiate with God over homosexuality or any sin. Rather, we reach out with truth in love to people with the hopeful Gospel message that God can help them overcome any sin, including homosexuality, through faith in Jesus Christ.”

TARGETED MEGA-CHURCHES AND THEIR CONTACT PAGES:

Lakewood Church, Houston, TX (Rev. Joel Osteen)

The Potter’s House, Dallas, TX (Bishop T.D. Jakes)

Hope Christian Church, Beltsville, MD (Bishop Harry Jackson)

New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, Lithonia, GA (Bishop Eddie Long):

Willow Creek Community Church, South Barrington, IL (Rev. Bill Hybels): (write to info@willowcreek.org)

Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, CA (Dr. Rick Warren): (write to info@saddleback.net)

Brett VanAsdlen

TAKE ACTION: 1) Urge Champaign County, Illinois State’s Attorney Julia Rietz (phone: 217-384-3733) to drop the government’s one-sided felony “hate crimes” prosecution against 18-year-old student-athlete Brett VanAsdlen — based on the inconsistent and likely exaggerated claims of Steven Velasquez, a homosexual University of Illinois (U of I) student who may have initiated physical contact with VanAsdlen. Already, Brett is being smeared as violent “gay-basher” by Velasquez and pro-homosexual activists in the media. Pray for Brett and his family.

2) Call or write WCIA-3 TV, the local CBS affiliate, and urge them to be fair in their coverage of this unfortunate story. Call (217) 373-3650 and ask for Producer Nancy Foreman. WCIA reporter Amanda Evans has led the TV coverage of the story, but her reporting appears to heavily favor Velasquez. It is wrong to smear the reputation of young man by airing all the accusations against him without presenting the other side of the story.

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By Peter LaBarbera

CHAMPAIGN-URBANA, Illinois — Two young men — one homosexual, one heterosexual — tell very different stories about an argument that occurred late on a Friday night (April 11) in this college town, but only one — the straight student-athlete — faces a felony “hate crime” conviction with a maximum penalty of up to three years in prison.

Brett VanAsdlen faces a Class 4 felony hate crime after originally being charged with aggravated battery following an incident in which he pushed 20-year-old homosexual University of Illinois student Steven Velasquez to the ground. The critical question is: why did he push Velasquez and who was aggressor? VanAsdlen’s family says it was Velasquez who — after Brett made a comment about Velasquez and his homosexual partner — first “got in Brett’s face,” to which Brett responded by pushing Velasquez away. Velasquez claims that Brett attacked him unprovoked because of his homosexuality.

You can read and watch WCIA-TV’s initial, one-sided account of the incident featuring an interview with Velasquez HERE — which set the tone for those seeking to portray VanAsdlen as a violent hate criminal.

Obviously, it is difficult ascertain the facts about this case because we lack direct access to the principals. AFTAH has not been able to acquire a police report of the incident, but we have learned the aggravated battery charge has been dropped. Velasquez is getting his version of events out in the sympathetic media, and it is being trumpeted as a vicious “hate crime” by various homosexual and leftist websites including Daily Kos, but Brett’s side of the story is not getting out. We did speak with Brett’s mother, as did pro-family advocate Ted Pike, who first alerted the nation to the story. Here is an excerpt from Pike’s original account, based on his phone conversation with Rona Lee VanAsdlen (emphasis added):

The police department of Champaign, Illinois is reported to be under pressure from higher authorities to increase its quota of hate crimes convictions. Brett VanAsdlen, an 18 year-old Christian college student on a baseball scholarship, didn’t know this. On April 12 he and a friend saw two homosexuals leaning on each other and holding hands, walking toward them on the sidewalk. “Look at those two guys holding hands,” Brett said to his friend and walked past them. According to Brett’s mother, the next thing he knew, one of the homosexuals (whom he perceived to be drunk) had grabbed him by the shoulder, putting his face up to Brett’s and repeatedly shouting, “What did you say?” Brett told him to go away several times and then pushed him. The homosexual fell over backwards. On his back, the homosexual told his partner to call the police. In eight minutes, four officers arrived. Two interviewed Brett and his friend and assured them there would be no problem. Brett had been physically accosted and detained, clearly an assault. The other two officers interviewed the homosexual, who was taken to the hospital.

Note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy of this account, which of course is coming from a source (Brett’s mother) very sympathetic to the young man now charged with a “hate crime.” It is conceivable to this writer that young VanAsdlen might have made an untoward or derogatory comment about the homosexual couple, sparking the confrontation. But there is no law against speech critical of homosexuality (yet) and if it is true that Velasquez grabbed Brett, then perhaps he was the real (i.e., physical) aggressor.

Brett’s mother, Rona Lee, confirmed the account above to Americans For Truth, although she did not say what exactly Brett said to the homosexual couple. She did say that Brett did not initiate physical contact with Velasquez but that the homosexual “grabbed” Brett first — and then badgered him about the comment he had made. She said Velasquez was yelling at Brett and “in his face” and that Brett told him twice to get away from him before pushing him away. She and others familiar with the encounter said that Velasquez never lost consciousness.

Rona Lee described her son as a “happy, good natured” kid who “never dreamed that something like this could happen to him.” She said he did not take the arrest as seriously as he should have — especially after police told him it would be no big deal — and that Brett may even have neglected to state in the official police report that Velasquez was the first to make contact — a critical point in the story.

The VanAsdlen family is Christian and attends the nondenominational Minooka Bible Church, in Minooka, Illinois. Rona Lee says her son Brett, her oldest child (he has two brothers and a sister), is a “people person” — a conservative Christian but “not straight-laced” — who is “so naive it’s scary. … he had no idea what was in store for him.”

Rona Lee said she was very thankful that one of Brett’s teammates, Kevin Crane, was with him when the incident occurred, and can serve as a witness to what truly happened that night. She said neither she nor her husband have seen a police report of the incident.

Athletic Director says Brett is no hater

Brett transferred from Purdue University to Parkland College, a junior college in Champaign, after receiving a baseball scholarship and assurances that he would get more playing time than if he had remained at Purdue. After the alleged “hate crime” April 12, Brett was suspended from the baseball team pending the outcome of his court case.

Parkland College Athletic Director Rod Lovett told AFTAH that VanAsdlen’s removal from the team was handled as an “internal matter” for violating the college’s athletic code of conduct. He said Brett will have a right to appeal to be returned to the team following the resolution of the court case, and hoped it will be resolved by this summer so that Brett can train with the team in August. Lovett was skeptical of the trumped-up “hate crime” aspect of the case and said he hopes for a speedy resolution of the matter.

Lovett said he is aware of “both sides of the story” and sympathetic to Brett’s plight. “He didn’t set out to have conflict” that evening, he said. Asked if while on the Parkland baseball team, Brett ever exhibited irrational hatred of the type associated with “hate crimes,” he said no, and that he saw no “ongoing issue” in Brett’s life of “brewing” animosity toward any particular group.

“He’s a typical 18- or 19-year-old kid,” Lovett said, granting that young men that age can an do act immaturely. Lovett said he “wasn’t particularly thrilled” by WCIA’s coverage of the incident, including one story in which an activist accused VanAsdlen of a “brutal attack” against Valasquez.

“Regardless of what it was, it was never a brutal attack,” he said, adding that WCIA is the only TV station in Champaign giving major attention to the story.

I attended yesterday’s brief preliminary hearing, where Brett VanAsdlen — a strapping, clean-cut, All-American looking young man — and his family members learned that his next court appearance (another preliminary hearing) will be July 1, when Brett turns 19. Afterward, Amanda Evans, the WCIA reporter, interviewed Brett VanAsdlen’s attorney, Steve Beckett, who said that this case is about “two kids who ran into each other on the streets,” and that the facts are disputed.

He said, he said

So this is a case of “he said, he said” — but the special treatment of it thus far illustrates why conservatives and traditionalists oppose “hate crimes” laws as fundamentally unfair and open to abuse:

• Brett VanAsdlen’s name and reputation are being sullied by the media and “gay” and leftist blogs without regard to any objective record of the incident;
• With all the late-night altercations that happen in a college town, why does a young man face a felony conviction because of this one? (If convicted, Brett would be banned from voting for life and his record would be stained permanently; his mother noted that it would hinder his ability to be hired as a teacher or coach, one of his goals);
• If it is true that the aggravated battery charge against VanAsdlen was dropped, why are prosecutors continuing to pursue the felony hate-crimes charge against the young man?
• Are Champaign police are under pressure to make “hate crimes” arrests?
• If it is true that the alleged homosexual victim, Stephen Velasquez, is distorting what happened the night of April 12 to further an agenda — there have been many examples of fake “hate crimes” reported across the country — it is fascinating how much mileage he has gotten from it, all at the expense of Brett VanAsdlen. When you are at the top of a politically correct hierarchy of victims, much injustice can occur whether there is a trial or not to sort it all out.

Selective prosecution

The true danger of hate-crimes laws is selective prosecution and unequal protection under the law. If a homosexual were to push an obnoxious Christian onto the ground, or things got out of control after a verbal spat, would he be facing a felony hate-crime conviction and possible jail time in Champaign, Illinois right now? I think most readers know that answer to that question, and it speaks volumes.

In 1996, pro-family activist and Pilgrims Covenant Church pastor Ralph Ovadal, then with Wisconsin Christians United, was punched in the left ear from behind by a pro-homosexual activist while protesting a pro-homosexual event in Madison, Wisconsin. Ovadal was knocked unconscious and taken to the hospital with serious injuries from the blind-side assault. Although police first charged the attacker with “substantial batter,” Dane Country prosecutors did not even secure a misdemeanor conviction against Ovadal’s assailant.

According to Ovadal’s website, “The day before the trial of Pastor Ovadal’s assailant, the D.A. calls to inform Ovadal that there will be no trial because his attacker’s charges are being dropped from substantial battery to an ordinance violation because he ‘does not want to have a criminal record.’ Pastor Ovadal continues to suffer neck and leg pain from the brutal attack which is fully documented with police reports.”

Clearly, Ralph Ovadal’s case was not treated as a “hate crime” because he was the wrong type of victim. If it were the other way around and Ovadal had beaten a homosexual activist, Ralph would probably still be in jail today.

Now, here in Illinois, we see a case in which a boy has words with a homosexual, who then apparently became so agitated that he got in Brett’s face until the boy pushed him away. (We do not know; they may have shared guilt in causing the conflict.) Now this young man, Brett VanAsdlen, faces a felony conviction and jail time — not to mention that his good name is being destroyed by “gay” activists and the sympathetic media and that he will miss the baseball season after transferring to the team to make the most of his talents.

And Mrs. VanAsdlen worries that legal costs to defend her son may rise to $20,000 or $30,000. AFTAH will be following this case closely. Meanwhile, please pray and take action:

TAKE ACTION: 1) Urge Champaign County, Illinois State’s Attorney Julia Rietz (phone: (217) 384-3733) to drop the government’s one-sided felony “hate crimes” prosecution against 18-year-old student-athlete Brett VanAsdlen — based on the inconsistent and likely exaggerated claims of Stephen Velasquez, a homosexual University of Illinois (U of I) student who may have initiated physical contact with VanAsdlen. Already, Brett is being smeared as violent “gay-basher” by Valasquez and pro-homosexual activists in the media. Pray for Brett and his family.

2) Call or write WCIA-3 TV, the local CBS affiliate, and urge them to be fair in their coverage of this unfortunate story. Call (217) 373-3650 and ask for Producer Nancy Foreman. WCIA reporter Amanda Evans has led the TV coverage of the story, but her reporting appears to heavily favor Velasquez. It is wrong to smear the reputation of young man by airing all the accusations against him without presenting the other side of the story.

Our survival as a democracy is in our hands. We too must come out of the closet of cloistered Christianity and come to the rescue of our constitutional rights.

By Lee Taylor

Gay pride was not born in a vacuum. Timing and social upheaval formed the vortex in which it was born and bred. Hanging from the shirttails of the Civil Rights, women’s liberation, and anti-war movements, it exploited the vulnerability of a nation in turmoil. Fueling its fraudulent claims and outrageous demands from our national guilt complex and introspective conflict of values, the Gay Liberation Front exploded onto the American scene. The soul-searching ‘60’s exposed a nation fraught with self-doubt, self-recrimination, anxiety, addiction and ideological conflict, a nation at odds with itself. The sexual revolution accelerated the erosion of both marriage and the family as we struggled with the values and priorities of our national identity.

We were still recovering from the Viet Nam War and had only begun to realize the implications of racial integration when homosexual opportunists executed a strategically timed and targeted blitzkrieg on American society. We were caught napping, and the initial homosexual coup was a resounding success. Adopting the Civil Rights, anti-war and women’s liberation movements as its own, forming its political platform by drawing heavily from each, the Gay Liberation Front took aim at our Christian values and democratic institutions.

Beginning with the 1970 Annual Convention of the American Psychiatric Association, held in San Francisco, exploiting the guerrilla theater tactics of disruption, threats and verbal abuse, the storm troopers of the Gay Liberation Front established a political beachhead within the medical arena, which, in 1973, eventuated in the “normalizing” of homosexuality. Through meticulous design and systematic orchestration, the Gay Liberation Front quickly expanded its political base by enlisting the services of the public media in establishing a new, politically ingenious, homosexual vocabulary. Designed to eliminate all negative connotations and supply its arsenal with symbolism more seductive in the promotion of its agenda, gay semantics discovered respectability for a terminal life style. Capitalizing on the potent political clout of the public media and entertainment industry, the homosexual campaign expanded to include federal, state and regional politics, legislative, judicial and executive branches of government, government health agencies, institutions, research centers and foundations, the military, mainstream religion, and the politicizing/dogmatizing of science and education, subsidized by federal and state tax revenue in the war against American institutions. Within less than a quarter of a century, one per cent of the population had taken the rest hostage, a politico-moral coup unprecedented in the history of this country.

Gay pride history, methodology, alliances, agenda, political conquests and ultimate goals are no secret. This information has been made available in abundance from both sides of the battlefield, easily accessed, extensively researched and documented. The baffle cry of gay pride is blatantly clear: “We’re here! We’re queer! And we’re going to win!” We can read it in the gay, secular and religious press. Homosexuals are out of the closet and parading their perversion in the streets. They are highly motivated, well financed, politically astute, effectively organized, and dedicated. To underestimate the capacity or goal of this enemy is to guarantee defeat. They have thrown down the gauntlet, hurling their deadly agenda directly in the face of this nation’s democratic institutions, constitution and family values. We are under attack and will not survive unless we fight! We have been ambushed on all major fronts and our ability to prevail has already been severely sabotaged. How did this happen? In what way have we nurtured the enemy we now must defeat? We are a young, adolescent nation, and the chapter we are now writing has been written before by much older nations, nations which no longer exist. They too danced to their demons and were buried by them. Is it too late for us to learn from history, or will we follow this diabolical trail to our own demise?

There are laws which govern everything in our universe, absolute laws, waiting to be discovered and respected, designed by the Creator for the unfolding of creation. These laws are immutable, in noncompliance with the reckless egoic ultimatums of any political, religious or moral invention. These laws work with or without our approval. They are completely reliable. To the extent that we understand and follow them, we live and are fulfilled. We have been far more successful discovering and obeying the laws of physics than the laws of our souls. We have become far more familiar with outer space than inner space. The values and priorities taught and lived by the Son of God have all but died on the back burner of American culture, quite predictably leaving us all but dead. Our blind, pretentious egos may come dressed in religious rhetoric from either the right or the left, but the laws of God don’t bow to politically correct values and priorities. The mandate of Jesus Christ was not to appear successful or sound dedicated. It was to follow Him. If we had been following the values and priorities which we’re so fond of claiming in our Judeo-Christian patriotism, over half our marriages would not have ended in the divorce court, and our families would not be suffering the tragic fragmentation, dysfunction and alienation they now suffer. These two institutions were in major trouble long before we first heard the word “gay.”

It wasn’t the integrity and social responsibility of followers of Jesus Christ who created the need for a Civil Rights movement in America. It was the hypocrisy of those who claimed freedom and justice for all but their Black brothers and sisters. For that rejection of our democratic and Christian values we paid and continue to pay a very painful price. We were forced to confront our pious, patriotic pretense, to choose between our “omnipotent” egos and God’s laws for our survival.

There is a yawning chasm between the values and priorities we piously claim as our national heritage and those we have chosen to live by. We have a time-honored tradition of moral schizophrenia, a hero-worshipping, egoic, success cult, which we have traditionally concealed within the garment of Judeo-Christian patriotism. We raise our hymns of God and country to the sky, but the laws of God, which govern our existence and chance of survival, remain constant in spite of our ‘holy” gestures. Possibly we are just beginning to discover that our hi-tech goddess is not worthy of worship, that we are being forced to choose between success and survival, between the profit margin and the preservation of our race. We live in an image culture where nothing fails like success. It was into this moral schizophrenia that the gay pride movement most effectively opened fire, establishing an appealing rationale for its momentum.

It is much too late for the hermeneutics of pious patriotism. This has failed to convince Native Americans, Blacks, Mexican Americans, or any minority group experiencing the violence inherent in our pretense. Gay activists have made political hay out of such empty semantics. The sacred institutions of marriage and family have been under attack for decades, and born-again Christians and those at the opposite end of the politico-religious spectrum have not been exempt from the consequences. Our banner may be a different color, our politics a different stripe, our semantics a different sound, but we have played the success cult game to the edge of a national abyss, and it has been our self-serving egos, not the Spirit of God, who have been in the driver’s seat. To blame gay activists for destroying marriage and family values is tantamount to blaming a sinking ship on the rats which desert it. We, by default, share in this blame game.

Borrowing from over four centuries of politico-religious suffering in Northern Ireland, the 1993 Seattle Gay Pride Parade declared a Holy War on all who opposed their agenda. Quite consistent with the all too familiar political strategy of piggybacking much older, historically significant struggles for justice, implying legitimacy and power through association, the gay pride movement now demands a complete restructuring of American institutions and ideology in compliance with its agenda. The tactics of tyranny are in place. The values and institutions essential for the survival of American democracy are the target. As Christian people with a mandate to follow Jesus Christ, we are challenged to move quickly beyond our religious rhetoric and walk our talk. We have no other choice. Our options are being systematically eliminated. We must become strategically and aggressively involved at the local, state, and national level in every political organization, every government institution, agency, bureau and lobby. We must consistently impact our local school board meetings, city council, precinct caucuses and health services. We must recognize religious organizations which have become advocates for the gay agenda and cut off all forms of support. We must counterattack the public media and entertainment industry, demanding an end to their pro-gay agenda, boycotting their sponsors. We must act out of educated awareness, integrity and compassion in this war. The most socially responsible and compassionate way to defeat this enemy is to destroy its agenda and treat its disease. Our survival as a democracy is in our hands. We too must come out of the closet of cloistered Christianity and come to the rescue of our constitutional rights, our democratic form of government, our family values and our diminishing freedom. We must follow the mandate of God’s laws and ACT.

Lee Taylor is a Bellingham, Washington-based writer who was once a United Church of Christ minister who was forced to resign for refusing to perform “same-sex marriages.” He can be reached at leetaylor411@comcast.net.

Contact: Kevin McVicker, 703-739-5920, 800-536-5920, kmcvicker@sbpublicaffairs.com

WEST MONROE, La., April 24 /Christian Newswire/ — One year after his passing, Jerry Falwell’s wife of forty-nine years, Macel Falwell, gives a candid and heartfelt look at the life of one of America’s most influential religious and political leaders.

In Jerry Falwell: His Life and Legacy (Howard Books, May 2008), Mrs. Falwell describes Rev. Falwell in a way that the mainstream media never would. She details his unfailing optimism, his deep generosity, his vision as the founder of Liberty University and the Moral Majority and as a loving husband and father.

The book paints a portrait of a passionate man determined to spread the Gospel. We see the Falwells establish their Thomas Road Baptist Church in an old soda bottling plant in 1956. Rev. Falwell prayed for new members and went out and knocked on every door in town to invite his neighbors to Sunday services. Continued HERE …

Click HERE to read the entire Christian Newswire release

So Chelsea Clinton partied with 2,000 boys (can we call them men?) in dresses at Portland’s annual “Red Dress Party” on April 12? Can’t say I’m surprised given the polling data on how “gay-friendly” youth are these days. But instead of the usual shock and outrage, let’s dwell for some moments on what these photos say about the social movement that so accurately calls itself “queer.” (See Willamette Week excerpts from the Portland event at bottom.)

Homosexual Men in Dresses

According to this article in the Willamette Week, the Red Dress Party “started years ago as a way for gay guys to wear girlie gowns and get stinkin’ drunk.” Like they needed an excuse. Why is it so easy to get homosexual guys in a dress anyway? Could it be because they are confused about their God-given masculinity to begin with? Sorry, my digression has taken me into overlapping phobias: I don’ t know which I’m more guilty of: homo- or trans-phobia? (Both, you Bible Bigot! I’m reporting you to the Thought Police.)

Sometimes you just have to laugh at a homosexual world that is so utterly lacking in seriousness. We’re dealing with a movement that is filled with overgrown adolescents who still have the gall to compare themselves to the Black civil rights movement. (Shhhh! — don’t tell anyone about the annual Aspen “Gay Ski Week” or how homosexuals travel abroad more (”especially for leisure purposes”) than straights — they’re VICTIMS — VICTIMS OF DISCRIMINATION, I tell you!)

Perhaps even a few non-activist homosexuals might agree with me that it’s silly — from a grown-up standpoint — for:

• men to party until all hours of the night — many high on stimulant drugs to keep them awake and …. enabling them to … well, uh … perform multiple and untold sexual perversions — at massive parties that double as “fund-raisers” for AIDS research and prevention! … Apparently, the Red Dress Party that Chelsea attended serves as a fund-raiser for AIDS prevention and “queer youth” support groups; isn’t that special?
• men to engage in sodomitic sex in public bathrooms and parks … facilitated by porn-financed homosexual websites that get millions and millions of hits per month …
• homosexual activists like Human Rights Campaign’s Joe Solmonese to demand that the ban on homosexual male blood donations be lifted (he’s crying discrimination) when the FDA has said: “Several scientific models show there would be a small but definite increased risk to people who receive blood transfusions if FDA’s MSM [men who have sex with men] policy were changed and that preventable transfusion transmission of HIV could occur as a result”; turns out a little discrimination is a good thing….
• transvestite men with their burly arms and legs (and Adam’s apple — can’t cut that off) trying to “pass” as women ….
• lesbian “drag kings” doing their own pathetic imitation of the real deal (men) at shows across the country — yes, the gender-confused lesbians, too, try to “pass” as men, “packing” fake penises, etc. … Add to that the specter of lesbians using sex toys to simulate male anal sex (who could make this stuff up?) …
• one of the most intolerant and bigoted (anti-religiously speaking) movements in the world lecturing everyone else about … tolerance and bigotry …
• homosexual activists to scold Pope Benedict about his “sins”: the following is from the website “PinkNews” (now that’s serious): “The Rainbow Sash Movement [RSM] said it is calling on ‘Catholics of good will’ to take the Papal visit as an opportunity to shower the Pope-mobile with ashes instead of confetti. Ashes are an ancient and appropriate greeting for a sinner who has caused the Church so much division and pain,’ RSM said in a statement.”
• transgenders of all persuasions using opposite-sex restrooms and demanding same as their “civil right” (talk about dragging down MLK’s movement …);
• self-described “queer” theologians to pretend that they are Christian or have something to teach the Church when their real goal is to undermine Biblical truth on the subject to justify their lifestyle choices …
• activists to promote homosexuality and gender “nonconformity” in schools — even for young children — in the name of safety, of course …
• for one member of a homosexual household to play the “husband” and the other the “wife” in the relationship — at least they admit there is a standard of normalcy;
• pro-homosexual advocates to pretend that HIV/AIDS is not a predominantly “gay” disease in America — and teaching kids in school that AIDS “does not discriminate” when it clearly does (the homosexual Task Force’s Matt Foreman went off the “gay” taking points here when he declared that “HIV is a gay disease”) …
• smug homosexual academicians and activists to claim that same-sex parents are actually better for kids than traditional mom-and-dad households … Hitler would be proud: always go after the Big Lie….
• for GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination) and other same-sex whiners to complain that the movies and TV are not sufficiently pro-”gay” when everyone knows Hollywood is largely run by homosexuals (and straights who are strongly pro-”gay”) …
• leftist and “queer” bloggers like Pam Spaulding to feign outrage over Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern for saying the homosexual agenda is a greater threat than terrorism when they compare groups like AFTAH and pro-family leaders DIRECTLY to terrorists all the time. (I write this as a one-time designated member of the “American Taliban”; the subtle, judicious Spaulding now says she’s tired of the term — preferring a new putdown: “The Peter” — a phallic slang reference I used to hear as a kid; now that’s doing your Duke University employers proud, Pam!);
• men to say that they are really a lesbian trapped in a male’s body, and vice versa, and all the perverse permutations associated with the “T” in the “GLBT” movement: transsexualism, transvestism, etc.
• women to stay married to their husbands for decades and raise children to adulthood — and then leave their husband for a woman, only to claim that they were “always lesbian” and are just living out “who they really are” …
• the city of San Francisco to allow the sadistic Folsom Street Fair to go on every year with its rampant full nudity and even orgies in the streets — while the cops stand idly by doing nothing;
• homosexual activists to scold the Roman Catholic Church for harboring pedophiles when it was homosexual men who entered the Church after seminary standards were lowered — and then who engaged in so many of the predations on boys that brought dishonor to the Church in the first place. Have homosexual activists no shame?

The list could go on and on. Answer to the last question: no. So why are we losing to a movement this “queer,” again? Perhaps because most people don’t take it seriously. But mostly because the activists on their side care about their agenda (and, ultimately, their perversions) — more than most Americans care to stop them. Apathy and politically correct silence rule the day — at least for most straights and, to our shame, for most religious people.

Unfortunately for all of us, the dangers that the homosexual activist movement poses to America — to our religious and First Amendment freedoms, the corruption of youth, the sanctity of marriage, etc. — are very real indeed, and not funny at all.

___________________________

Below is an excerpt from the Willamette Weekly article:

Party Girl: Chelsea Clinton Cuts Loose With 2,000 Gay Men in Red Dresses

…

Yes, Chelsea Clinton made it to the infamous “Red Dress” Party.

Not to be confused with that other annual “Red Dress” fundraiser, this is the “Red Dress Party,” a mondo-alcohol-fueled dance party where nearly 2,000 gay men in various states of red dress undress (and several nearly naked straight men as well as one very colorfully decorated naked woman) invade a warehouse in Northeast Portland and dance their collective asses off to pounding disco music and the incredible Storm Large and her Balls (they were beyond fabulous).

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL Willamette Weekly STORY

News Release

Americans For Truth
www.americansfortruth.org
April 12, 2008

[Note: in our original release, we erroneously identified Eve Ensler, creator of "The Vagina Monologues," as a lesbian; Ensler reportedly is bisexual.--AFTAH]

Contact: Peter LaBarbera: 630-717-7631; Donna Miller: 910-308-7619

CHICAGO, IL – Americans For Truth today launched its “Stop the Monologues Project,” to expose Eve Ensler’s radical feminist play, “The Vagina Monologues” (TVM) — which includes a chapter in which Ensler, a reported bisexual, asks a six-year-old girl several questions about the girl’s vagina. A host of celebrities, including Oprah Winfrey and Faith Hill, are joining Ensler in celebrating the tenth anniversary of her play this weekend in New Orleans.

On pages 103-104 of the 10th-anniversary edition of The Vagina Monologues, in a chapter titled, “I Asked a Six-Year-Old Girl,” Ensler asks the following questions based on an interview with an unnamed girl (only the answer to the last question is provided below):

• If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?”
• If it could speak, what would it say?”
• What does your vagina remind you of?”
• What’s special about your vagina?”
• What does your vagina smell like?”
• [answer:] “Snowflakes.”

Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth and father of five children, said it is astonishing that Ensler and her vulgar play are being celebrated given TVM’s past and current promotion of adult predatory behavior against minors:

“Imagine if an adult homosexual man were to quiz a six-year-old boy about his penis — or a straight man were to ask a little girl silly questions about her private parts – for use in a play! Would such men be praised by the media and famous personalities?”

Stop the Monologues Project Director Donna Miller, the mother of a teenage girl, said, “I find it horrifying that an author would sexualize a six-year-old girl –– particularly when that same author has a record of writing favorably about adult/child sex, at least for lesbians.”

Miller noted the hypocrisy of a movement whose stated goal is to “stop the violence against women and girls,” while it celebrates a lesbian rape-seduction, underage drinking, and a bisexual adult asking highly inappropriate sexual questions to a six-year-old.

The Vagina Monologues book, on pages 80-82, tells of a lesbian rape-seduction in a story titled, “The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could.” In the monologue, a 24-year-old woman plies a 16-year-old girl with alcohol before seducing her (statutory rape in many states).

The original ‘Monologues’ play included the same segment except the victimized girl was just 13.

QUESTION: How do we get back on the offensive in the Culture War battle against homosexual activism and gender confusion? Send your ideas to americansfortruth@comcast.net

Dear AFTAH Readers,

My friend Laurie Higgins below has hit on a microcosm of why our movement is on the brink of an astounding cultural defeat — the triumph of immoral same-sex behavior as a “civil right.” In the last decade, some of our leaders, and many conservatives, chose to “downplay” the very force — homosexualism — that was leading the assault on marriage, normalcy and children in our culture.

About three years ago, I sat in a roomful of evangelical leaders at a major ministry where it was taught that you should not criticize homosexual behavior in advocating against “same-sex marriage.” The “expert” speaker cited poll data and negative audience reaction to the issue being raised.

Meanwhile, with each passing year, the other side CELEBRATES homosexual and gender-confused lifestyles with ever greater fervor, and happily promotes the same to kids, as if they are doing God’s work (when it is actually Satan’s). Their play book is simple: always stay on the offensive, even when it comes to advocating “transgender” identity/behavior to children (e.g., the 2nd-grade Colorado boy who was encouraged to come to school in a dress). We moral-minded express the requisite shock and horror; they continue to move forward.

Tell me: which side is destined to win the Culture War according to these lopsided Rules of Engagement?

In the public policy arena, many on “our side” have already conceded “civil unions,” at least in blue states (the California Marriage Amendment that may get on the ballot expressly allows “civil unions”). Most GOP politicians are reluctant to even discuss homosexuality at all, which only emboldens the Democrats to be more pro-homosexual-agenda. You cannot win a debate if you are afraid to discuss the main issue — homosexuality. That’s like being pro-life but refusing to discuss the humanity of the unborn baby! (Please note the parallels: there was a time when the opinion polls favored pro-abortion feminists; now they favor pro-lifers — defeat is NOT inevitable, and Truth is more important than polls.)

In the corporate world, McDonald’s (phone: 1-800-244-6227) is hardly alone: like so many dominoes, companies are capitulating to the homosexualists — who continue to aggressively DEMAND “same-sex marriage” as a “civil right” with outrage in their voices. (See HRC’s report: http://www.hrc.org/documents/HRC_Corporate_Equality_Index_2008.pdf.) Meanwhile, a new book on youth attitudes published by Christian pollster George Barna accuses the Church of having an “anti-homosexual” image problem (see www.unchristian.org). Do you get it? WE’RE the problem, or should I say God’s Holy Word is, because, you know, our Lord is so embarrassingly “anti-gay” ….

Although I completely sympathize with the “soft” Christians’ desire to reach homosexuals for Christ, they seem to be saying that God can’t do that unless the Church becomes more worldly: “Give me a Gay-Tolerant Jesus so I won’t be hated by my liberal friends and the media.” To plead their case, they use pious-sounding arguments — and cite surveys correctly showing how homosexual-friendly today’s (brainwashed) youth are — but they are utterly Chamberlain-esque when it comes to the Culture War.

How strange: when the Homosexual Lobby is at the zenith of its power, some Christian leaders are calling for a retreat and scolding the “Religious Right,” which at least has tried to slow down the homosexual activist juggernaut. Whoever said Christians are called to surrender in the battle of good versus evil?

We must reject such defeatism and get back to the basics of why we are in this fight — explaining, in Christian love in line with Biblical truth:

• WHY homosexual behavior is always wrong, and often dangerous;
• WHY homosexual relationships — even those rare long-term, truly monogamous ones — are immoral, disordered, against God, and harmful to children (”gay adoption”);
• WHY it is public-policy madness to grant civil rights status based on changeable sexual behavior and gender identity disorders;
• WHY corporations should get out of the business of promoting ALL extra-marital relationships;
• WHY homosexualism is not “gay” but destructive to children; and
• HOW “sexual orientation” laws are fundamentally incompatible with religious and moral freedom.

And of course: how no man or woman — or teenager — has to be “gay” (positively homosexual): that’s a lifestyle choice which can be overcome with God’s help; see Stephen  Black’s wonderful testimony HERE.

We at AFTAH, or the other pro-family organizations, don’t have all the answers — that’s for sure. So please let me hear your thoughts on how our movement can regain the offensive in the ongoing battle against homosexualism. Write americansfortruth@comcast.net. Thank you and God bless.

Peter LaBarbera
Americans For Truth
www.americansfortruth.org
E-mail: americansfortruth@comcast.net

Below is Laurie Higgins’ e-mail:

——————————————————————————–

From: Laurie Higgins
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 8:35 AM
To: [pro-family allies]
Subject: Why I refuse to “downplay” homosexuality

A parent who objects to Angels in America suggested that those who object to the [homo-erotic] play should “downplay” the issue of homosexuality, to which I responded as follows:
_________________________________________________________________________

“The homosexual piece is downplayed at our great peril. At the Saturday meeting, I think I was the only person who addressed the homosexuality. I will not retreat from this because virtually everyone else is. Almost everyone I talk to says that they don’t care about the homosexuality; it’s the language and sex they care about. I think that’s both a strategic and moral error. If Angels is pulled from the curricula just because of the graphic sex and obscene language, then the faculty is free to continue to introduce resources that normalize homosexuality as long as the resources aren’t graphic and obscene.

“If no one stands with me, I will stand alone because, to borrow shamelessly the words of Martin Luther, ‘I can do no other. God help me.’”

_________________________________________________________________________

Christians need to understand that their cowardly retreat from expressing the view that homosexual conduct is wrong carries with it devastating consequences for individual lives, public education, parental rights, speech rights, and religious rights–let alone truth.

Those parents who refuse to address the presence of pro-homosexual resources and activities in public schools will be partly responsible when Illinois follows in the footsteps of Massachusetts and California in requiring the teaching of pro-homosexual material in kindergarten through high school with no parental notification and no opt-out. Yes, that means picture books about homosexuality for kindergartners.

Laurie Higgins is a writing instructor at Deerfield High School, north of Chicago.

More arrogance from the liberal media below — in this case, on online voiced editorial by Daily Oklahoman Editor Ed Kelley. Of course, Kelley is free to leave journalism and become a political activist — which does not seem like much of a transition after reading this. Perhaps he could even run for office on the “real issues” he talks about below. That would take a lot of work, especially if he’s as out of touch with Oklahoma’s voters as it appears.

Nope, it’s much easier for Kelley to whine about the people whom his newspaper is supposed to serve and respect. On the day that the “Rally for Sally” drew 1,500 or more people to the capital — to defend a decent, Christian woman who was the target of a national homosexual campaign — Kelley’s paper ran a condescending (and inaccurate) editorial that ended, “Perhaps constituents ought to hold a rally of their own, urging this one-trick pony to put her tiresome personal agenda aside and work to do something constructive.”

We think it would be very “constructive” for Kelley and fellow Fourth-Estaters to embark on a serious study of the Sally Kern “controversy” and their own reporting practices — so they could learn how they got the story so wrong. I’ll give them lesson number one: don’t take your editorial cues from left-wing activists — especially if you’re in a red state. That’s a good way to lose subscribers. — Peter LaBarbera

_________________________

Transcript of Ed Kelley’ Online Editorial

[You can listen to the voiced editorial by clicking HERE]
April 4, 2008

Hi, I’m Ed Kelley, editor of the [Daily] Oklahoman.

So, more than a thousand people showed up at the State Capitol for the so-called “Sally Rally,” to support Representative Sally Kern and her rantings against gays in America. By all accounts, it was a boisterous bunch that lined up way outside the Capitol so they could come in and praise old Sally.

But what if? What if instead of a thousand people gathered to praise her, a thousand people, smart law-abiding people who really cared about Oklahoma and it’s future, came instead to insist that our State can and must send legislators to the Capitol, who will focus on real issues that affect Oklahoma?

In other words, a thousand voices that said, “We’ve had a hundred years of people like Sally Kern and a hundred years of that is enough.”

What if, a thousand people came to the Capitol and proclaimed Kern’s running mate, Representative Randy Terrill, to be the biggest political liability on our state early in the Twenty-First Century for his ramming the toughest anti-immigration law in the country down the throats of his fellow Oklahomans?

In other words, a thousand voices that said they were going to stand up to this man, for moral reasons if nothing else, even when the leadership in the Capitol is too cowardly to do so.

What if, a thousand people came to the Capitol and expressed outrage over the precious time wasted in the legislative session on bills that don’t make a hill of beans, like English as the official language, or designating a state rock ‘n roll song, or creating some more car tags as if we don’t have a jillion of them already.

In other words, a thousand voices that said Oklahoma’s future as a state of importance and creativity is in jeopardy unless our elected representatives take on an air of urgency before it’s too late.

What if all these scenarios happened? They could. They could happen. And if they did, how different our image would be. Not just to the world outside our borders, but to the thousands of young Oklahomans growing up in our state — who deserve a serious discussion of a better Oklahoma than what they’re getting now at 23rd and Lincoln.