From our good friends at Mission America…

An eyewitness describes the “Healing the Hurt“ GLSEN conference for youth held two weeks ago in White Plains NY:

“On Nov.14, I attended the 8th Annual Healing the Hurt Conference, in White Plains, NY. What I thought was a bad situation in our schools, I observed to be worse than I could have imagined.

“Over 500 kids, gay and straight, were given a day off from academics to be indoctrinated with an agenda that clearly normalizes homosexuality, undermines parental control, and encourages in some subtle and not so subtle ways, rebellion against traditional religious beliefs and governmental laws that do not propagate the homosexual agenda.

“The theme of Dani Newsum‘s keynote address was the ‘Ally’ concept, getting straight kids to support and fight for homosexual ‘rights.’ She states that heterosexist thinking (that all people are born heterosexual) is ‘sick, unhealthy, not accepted.’ She called Colorado’s Amendment 2- ‘obscene violence to the Constitution.’ She added, ‘Southern Baptists will apologize in 100 years to LGBTQ people.’

“In a later workshop, ‘Seeking the Inclusive Spirit – Journeys into Faith,’ an ordained, openly homosexual minister, stated, ‘I am not waiting 100 years,’ referring to an apology. He called Jesus a ‘felon,’ in his attempt to encourage rebellion against existing authorities, and states he will not settle for civil unions but only marriage for gays. He says he was ordained not to be ‘part of an institution,’ but to change it. And this was the underlying message of the conference: a rally for students to take up the cause to change the laws.

“Another workshop,‘Youth speak out on being LGBT in School,’ was an open mic format where I discovered that many of the students attending this workshop were there and their parents did not know it. One girl confessed to forging the permission slips, and many students laughed and clapped for her determination to attend the conference.

“The LGBT current events and activism workshop, ‘Red Cross, ROTC, and Rainbows, Oh MY!,’ promoted activism for gay issues and called for the high school kids to rally with college kids for the cause of homosexual ‘rights.’ The moderator stated, jokingly, ‘I do not want to turn you into anarchists, but cheers.’ The kids were told, ‘Canada is a good place to be’ and to push for DASA (Dignity for All Students Act) and gave the website: Empire State Pride Agenda.

“Parents, be aware of this presence in your schools and beware of its influence. Conservativism is viewed as homophobic. Parents, you are a bigot and a heterosexist if you do not agree with them.

‘Malicious and cultural bigots injecting their bigotry into our lives’ — Dani Newsum

Hence the push for a ‘cultural shift.’ They call for the students to be ‘freedom fighters,’ but lead them into bondage. And they have an elementary and middle school agenda already in a school near you. Confer, speak up and do something before it is too late.

“The Lord, He is still good.”

Jeanne S.

Published Nov 21, 2006:

Mr. Stone importunes Illinoisans in his commentary “Gays Kept Separated” (Nov. 19, 2006) to legalize same-sex marriage, arguing that maintaining sexual complementarity as an essential criterion for marriage represents discrimination and the imposition of faith practices.

My understanding is that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was intended to prevent the establishment of a state religion, not to prevent religious values from informing political decisions. Since people from many religious faiths and no religious faith have long agreed upon the essential place of sexual complementarity in the nurturance of the next generation, laws that reflect those convictions hardly seem a violation of the Establishment Clause. One could argue that those who attend houses of worship that support legalized same-sex unions are similarly attempting to enshrine in law their religious beliefs.

The idea of a separation of church and state no longer points to the importance of protecting religious freedom from the intrusive power of the state but instead refers to coercively eradicating religious expression from the public square. Only secularism, a worldview as shaped by myopic, dogmatic, unproved assumptions (as some argue religious views are), will be tolerated.

Mr. Stone expresses concern with what he perceives as discrimination. Illegitimate discrimination refers to unfavorable treatment of others based on ignorance. Discrimination, however, can also refer to discriminating between right and wrong, in which case it is an essential personal and civic activity. Conflating the two meanings of discrimination, or asserting that all negative judgments reflect prejudice, represents demagoguery. Principled opposition to homosexuality no more embodies illegitimate discrimination than does principled opposition to polyamory or adult consensual incest.

The analogy between race and homosexuality is specious at best. Science has in no way proved that homosexual attraction is biologically determined. Even “queer theory” which emerges from the homosexual community denies that sexual orientation is inherent and immutable. But most important, the contribution of biological influences to the development of an impulse is irrelevant to a moral evaluation of consequent conduct.

Clearly, Mr. Stone has no compunction against imposing morality in that he seeks to impose his moral view that gender is irrelevant to marriage, which leaves age, consanguinity, and numbers of partners as the remaining criteria. But why should he or anyone else be allowed to impose those particular moral strictures on all of society? If I love and am attracted to my brother or five people of assorted genders, why should an intolerant, prejudiced society be permitted to impose those moral views on me?

Historically, society has determined that since marriage is fundamental to the health of society, it is the right and responsibility of society collectively to define marriage. That society has made mistakes and included criteria that were not fundamental to marriage (as with anti-miscegenation laws) does not mean that society has been wrong on all criteria. Tradition, sociology, biology, psychology and, yes, religion have held that both men and women are crucial to the fulfillment of children’s needs. The importance of both sexes points to their fundamental differences which even homosexuals acknowledge when they express a preference for their own gender. Since there is almost universal agreement that men and women are fundamentally different, heterosexual unions must be of a different character than homosexual unions. And throughout history, societies have embodied in law the belief that heterosexual unions contribute something essential to civic health unmatched by homosexual unions.

Laurie Higgins
Deerfield, Illinois

TAKE ACTION – E-mail Richard Peddie, President of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, to express your concern.

Excerpted from Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey Sponsors Gay Movie Featuring Homosexual 11 Year-Old, by Hilary White, published Nov 24, 2006, by Lifesite News:

The Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team announced today that they have lent the team’s name and logo to a film depicting a homosexual Leafs player. The film portrays a Leafs player who wants to “come out” as a public homosexual, his live-in partnership with the team’s lawyer and their adopted “son,” described as “a budding queen of an 11-year-old boy.”

The film is based on the book of the same title about an 11 year-old boy who is described in an Amazon.com book review as “mincing” and “swishy,” and who has to be prevented from wearing pantyhose, eyeliner and perfume to school.

“Breakfast with Scott”, now being shot on location in Toronto and Hamilton, will go ahead with the willing cooperation of the team’s management. The Toronto Star reports that actor Tom Cavanaugh who depicts the fictional player, Eric McNally, was “shocked” that the Leafs management agreed to allow the team to be depicted in a homosexual propaganda film.

Cavanaugh remarked to the Star on the significance of using the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team, one of the icons of Canadian culture as the background for a story about open homosexuals and endorsing child homosexuality. “There’s something instant to the viewer when you put on a Leafs jersey or any Original Six jersey.”

Olympic swim champion Mark Tewksbury, a board member of the Gay and Lesbian Athletics Foundation, said, “I think it’s really great that (the team management) are supporting it. I know it’s an iconic team, but I think it makes sense this is happening in Canada because we’ve been far ahead on these issues.”

Excerpted from Israeli High Court Orders ‘Gay Marriage’ Recognition, by Michael Foust, published Nov 21, 2006, by Baptist Press:

The land where Jesus once walked soon will recognize “gay marriage.”

In a landmark 6-1 decision, Israel’s Supreme Court Nov. 21 ordered the government to begin recognizing “gay marriages” from other countries, such as Canada. Although the decision doesn’t give homosexual couples the ability to “marry” within Israel’s borders, it nonetheless puts Israel at odds with countries such as Great Britain and the United States, neither of which recognizes foreign “gay marriages.” In fact, the U.S. government doesn’t even recognize “gay marriages” that occur within its borders in Massachusetts, the lone state where it is legal.

Four countries — Canada, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands — have legalized “gay marriage,” and a fifth one, South Africa, is expected to do so within days.

The ruling by the High Court of Justice — the name for Israel’s highest court — gives homosexual couples the same legal benefits as traditional couples, including tax breaks and the ability to adopt, The Jerusalem Post reported. The decision forces the government to register the “marriages” like it does any other marriages.

“We don’t have a Jewish state here. We have Sodom and Gomorrah here,” lawmaker Moshe Gafni told Israel’s Army Radio, according to the Associated Press. “I assume that every sane person in the state of Israel, possibly the entire Jewish world, is shocked, because the significance is … the destruction of the family unit in the state of Israel.”

By Peter LaBarbera

When it comes to chutzpah, homosexual activists have it in spades. They work their lavender tushes off revolutionizing the age-old Judeo-Christian definitions of marriage and family; fight for “gay/straight” clubs in middle- and high schools, and homosexuality-affirming lessons for all students–even toddlers; lobby for open homosexuality in the armed forces; oppose marriage-preference adoption laws based on the absurd proposition that a child having two “gay daddies” is no worse off than one having a mother and a father; make outrageous claims that esteemed historical figures like Abe Lincoln were “gay”; and radically reinterpret the Bible to change homosexuality from an abomination to a “gift from God.”

Then they turn around and ridicule the idea that there is a “gay agenda.”

Here’s an entry from lesbian blogger Pam Spaulding:

“The Homosexual Agenda is an elusive document. We’ve been looking around for a copy for quite some time; the distribution plan is so secret that it’s almost like we need a queer Indiana Jones to hunt the master copy down. The various anti-gay forces are certain that we all have a copy and are coordinating a attack to achieve world domination.” –Pam Spaulding

Memo to Pam: you don’t have to risk being chased by a giant boulder in the Amazon to find a copy of that elusive agenda; just click this link for the 1972 Gay Rights Platform. Note the last two demands under “States” in the 1972 document: “Repeal all laws governing the age of sexual consent” and “Repeal all legislative provisions that restrict the sex or number of persons entering into a marriage unit.”

Or try this link for the 1987 (Homosexual) “March on Washington.” No agenda here, other than the calls for:

• “The government should provide protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, public accommodations and education just as protection is provided on race, creed, color, sex, or national origin”;
• “Anti-homophobic curriculum in the schools”;
• “The government should ensure all public education programs include programs designed to combat lesbian/gay prejudice … Institutions that discriminate against lesbian and gay people should be denied tax-exempt status and federal funding.”
• “A massive [federal] AIDS education and prevention program that is explicit, culturally sensitive, lesbian and gay affirming and sex positive”;
• “Public and private institutions should support parenting by lesbian or gay couples”;
• All people must have access to free abortions and contraceptives on demand regardless of age.” (Strangely, abortion advocacy has long been part of the homosexual activist agenda.)

Gary Morella is a Catholic member of the research faculty of Penn State University, and a father and grandfather who is concerned whether there will be a recognizable faith left to his children and grandchildren. He is also a friend (although we have never met in person) and a bold critic of inane political correctness, especially at his own university. While as a non-Catholic I do not concur with every theological assertion herein, I have the utmost respect for Morella as one who applies faith, reason and courage in debunking the sophistries of the day. — Peter LaBarbera, AFT

By Gary Morella

Thoughts on: Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care

The main problem with this document is the mindset since Vatican II that no longer condemns a sin that cries out to Heaven for vengeance but rather condemns those who remind the world of that fact, the latter being called charity by those in the modern Church who are unrecognizable as Catholic. This document is written in “gayspeak” in the same manner that the horrendous Always Our Children was. The biggest concern of the USCCB is homophobia, not helping those inclined to homosexual acts to leave, as opposed to live, lifestyles that are an abomination before God, or resist temptations to same.

The comparisons between the traditional Church teaching on sins against nature vs. the post-conciliar attitude is striking when one uses Sacred Scripture and Tradition in the form of statements from the Popes, Councils, Saints, and Apologists combined with the tradition of civil legislation to show the moral chasm that has resulted when the language of “pseudo charity” replaces the language of “tough love” for salvation’s sake. The result being that the necessary feelings of revulsion toward those proudly trumpeting their sodomite tendencies are no longer there opening the door for a misplaced compassion that such individuals do not deserve. There is a huge difference between an ontological dignity to which all are entitled by virtue of being made in the image and likeness of God, and a moral dignity as a function of being endowed with an intellect and will whereby good can be accepted and evil rejected. Moral dignity does not exist for those having no problem with inclinations to homosexual acts, a distinction that the post-conciliar Church never makes using language that would have us erroneously believe that there exists something called the homosexual person, a concept which turns Christian anthropology on its head making God, Who is Perfect Good, out to be a liar in creating man with a built-in one way ticket to hell in complete ignorance of the effect of the concupiscence due to Original Sin.

Words have consequences with a litany of saints to include St. John Chrysostom telling us that “A murderer only separates the soul from the body, whereas these (sodomites) destroy the soul inside the body” vs. the post-conciliar attitude of Cardinal Basil Hume who was quoted as saying “The particular orientation or inclination of the homosexual person is not a moral failing …. Being a homosexual person is, then, neither morally good nor morally bad; it is homosexual genital acts that are morally wrong.”

By reducing moral culpability only to acts, Cardinal Hume (and the entirety of the post-conciliar Church) appeared to legitimize sinful thoughts and words. However, such concessions incur culpability with regard to the vice of homosexuality like any other vice, as Catholic doctrine has ALWAYS taught.” The rest is history as Hume opened the door for the condemnation of homosexuality in the post-conciliar Church to be needlessly qualified, if at all, something that Saints Peter, Jude, Pius V, Basil of Cesarea, Augustine, Aquinas, John Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, Peter Damian, Albert the Great, Bonaventure, Catherine of Sienna, Bernardine of Sienna, Peter Canisius, and the councils of Ancyra, Toledo, Nablus, and Third Lateran did not suffer.

Excerpted from Liberals Aim to Push Ideas Through Congress, published Nov 16, 2006, by Associated Press:

…The president of the largest national gay-rights group, Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign, said he has high hopes for two long-pending proposals that failed to get through the GOP-controlled Congress. One would outlaw employment discrimination [ENDA] against gays, lesbians and transgender people; another would include them among the groups protected in federal hate-crimes legislation.

Gay activists also would like to see Congress repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that prohibits gay members of the military from being open about their sexual orientation – but a push for this may come somewhere down the road.

“Everyone remembers the fight President Clinton had when he made this his first major political issue in 1993,” said Aaron Belkin, director of a University of California, Santa Barbara think tank that studies gays and the military.

“While opinion on letting gays serve has moved leaps and bounds since then, the new Democratic Congress is not likely to come out strongly on this one from the get-go,” Belkin said.

Solmonese indicated that leading gay-rights groups will be patient with the new Democratic leadership, not pushing to have their issues be at the very top of the 2007 agenda.

“What we’ve got is a new and respectful Congress that’s open to our community, to learning the specifics of our issues,” he said. “To stress right now – ‘This is what we want and this is when we want it’ – would be premature.”

Continue reading at MSN…

By Linda Harvey of Mission America:

These incidents–vandalism, assault, intimidation–are ALREADY crimes under existing law. Adding extra punishment for “sexual orientation” incidents only makes homosexuals receive more protection than others. Is this fair?

“Hate crimes” have DECREASED in recent years, including those for sexual orientation…Check out the FBI’s web site on hate crimes, and read the stats for yourself.

These laws are a back door way to “bless” homosexuality, because they imply that it’s wrong to oppose the behavior.

We have had a law (since 1990) that enables law enforcement to count sexual orientation among hate crimes, but not to give extra punishment. Those extra penalties are what is currently being sought.

But just based on the 1990 federal law, some school districts started “anti-bias” lessons that included sexual orientation along with race and religion. Kids through curricula like the anti-Christian “Healing the Hate” middle school program, are indoctrinated to not only approve homosexuality, but to believe anyone who opposes it is evil and potentially violent. This classic propaganda is sure to escalate if a federal law is passed that gives offenders in incidents involving “sexual orientation” extra punishment.

The laws we have now are fine for protecting all citizens against crime. The new proposal is based on the lie that homosexuals are an unchanging minority who are “born that way,” which is not supportable by research or observed sexual practices of U.S. adults.

It also threatens the religious liberty of those who believe this is a harmful and sinful lifestyle. Hate crimes laws that include sexual orientation are being used in other countries to indict and fine Christians, even pastors, who publicly oppose homosexuality. Given the aggressiveness and ceaseless demands of “gay” activists,do we want to lose that right?

For the protection of our children against indoctrination and for the protection of our freedom to oppose homosexuality and to believe the whole Gospel, we must make Congress understand our opposition to adding “sexual orientation” to hate crimes laws.