Dec 12, 2006, press release from ALLIANCE DEFENSE FUND:

Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Glen Lavy will address the media Wednesday [Dec 13, 2006] after filing a lawsuit against members of the Massachusetts Legislature. The suit alleges that the lawmakers have acted illegally by refusing to vote on a citizen initiative that would define marriage in the commonwealth’s constitution as the union between one man and one woman.

“Elected officials should be held accountable when they deliberately violate the law,” Lavy said. “The legislators have a constitutional duty to vote on citizen initiatives. Some members of the legislature have even admitted publicly that they are deliberately violating their constitutional duty. This flagrant violation of the constitutional right of the citizens to amend their constitution must be stopped.”

Also participating in the press conference is Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute.

“All we are asking is that the legislature fulfills its responsibility to the voters of Massachusetts,” Lavy said. “These legislators will face no liability if they vote on the amendment, but it appears that the Legislature is only going to stop their illegal behavior when they understand they’ll be held accountable for it.”

ADF is a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.

Excerpted from Lesbian Couple Married in Massachusetts Seeks Divorce in Rhode Island, by Josh Montez, published Dec 11, 2006, by Family News in Focus:

Since RI doesn’t recognize gay marriages, gay divorce seems pointless. Could it be the couple wants another way to legitimize same-sex unions?

The divorce-seeking lesbian couple is working their way through the Rhode Island court system. A family court refused the case, referring it on to the State Supreme Court. Kris Mineau with the Massachusetts Family Institute believes this is a ploy to get the legal system to recognize gay marriage, through divorce.

“Isn’t that bizarre? They’ll seize at any opportunity, whereas in New Jersey and Maryland, they are seeking to marry, and suing through the courts. Here they’re seeking to divorce and suing through the courts.”

Attorneys for the gay couple say they aren’t asking Rhode Island to recognize same-sex marriage, just same-sex divorce. But Peter LaBarbera with Americans for Truth doesn’t buy that argument.

“I think if you recognize same-sex divorce, you’re recognizing same-sex marriage. It’s amazing how political the activists are. The problem here is we’re dealing with a very political movement and Americans on the side of decency and truth just aren’t as political as the gay activists.”

LaBarbera says this is more than a gay couple trying to make headlines; it’s an attempt to change the law.

“The modus operandi of the homosexual activists is to use anything possible, even divorce, to win approval of their lifestyle. That’s what the main agenda is. They are desperate for approval of their lifestyle and even if it means recognizing gay divorce as opposed to gay marriage, they’ll do that.”

The Rhode Island Supreme Court has yet to decide if it will take the case.

Excerpted from Pastor at Senate Invocation curses ‘Spirit’ of Gay Marriage, published Dec 12, 2006, by Star-Ledger (New Jersey):

A pastor delivering the invocation at the opening of yesterday’s Senate session included in his prayer a condemnation of gay marriage.

“We curse the spirit that would come to bring about same-sex marriage,” the Rev. Vincent Fields, pastor of Greater Works Ministries in Absecon, prayed as lawmakers listened, heads bowed. “We ask you to just look over this place today, cause them to be shaken in their very heart in uprightness, Lord, to do that is right before you.”

Earlier yesterday the [NJ state] Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation to allow gay couples to form civil unions with the same rights as married couples.

Continue reading in Star-Ledger…

Excerpted from The Undercover Agent Comes in from the Cold, by Robert K Elder, published Oct 16, 2006, by Chicago Tribune:

While buying surface-to-air missiles and counterfeit $100 bills from Chinese nationals, he facilitated offshore trysts for pedophiles and scored crystal meth from a Los Angeles gang.

But Wallace had a secret: His name wasn’t Wallace at all.

“Robert William Wallace” was a front, a name taken by undercover FBI agent Robert Hamer…

The final sting

In Hamer’s final undercover sting, in 2005, the bureau targeted the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), an organization that advocates sex with children.

For most of that career, he posed as tough guys, gentlemen thugs. Transforming into a homosexual pedophile wasn’t easy. Hamer found the group’s appetites repulsive and worried about blending in.

“When I first started posing as a boy lover, I thought I looked too much like a cop. I was a little too macho,” he says. “I thought, ‘What am I going to do to throw them off?’ It was almost like the heavens opened up
and said, ‘Handicapped.’ And that’s what I did.”

Hamer went to the Salvation Army, bought a cane for $5 and hobbled his way to eight convictions. Over three years, Hamer became part of the association’s inner circle, eventually helping to facilitate a boat trip
to Mexico for men to have sex with boys.

Prosecutors said that David Mayer, a Chicago flight attendant and psychologist, suggested the trip to Mexico at a NAMBLA convention in 2004. On a surveillance tape, Mayer said he kept his job as a flight
attendant so he could travel overseas to places where underage sex for hire was commonplace.

In February 2005, the FBI arrested Mayer and two colleagues on a San Diego dock for alleged interstate travel for the purpose of illicit sex. To keep his cover, Hamer pretended to faint when his fellow agents
carted him off. Mayer received a sentence of more than three years in federal prison.

From Man-Boy Love Association Member Stung By FBI, by Matt O’Connor, published Aug 21, 2006, by Chicago Tribune:

A flight attendant from Chicago…David C. Mayer, 51, was about to board a boat to Mexico when he was arrested last year. He and six others snared in the FBI investigation thought they were traveling to a bed-and-breakfast that provided boys for their sexual pleasure, authorities charged.

A federal judge in San Diego sentenced Mayer to 37 months in prison on Aug. 11.

Mayer had pleaded guilty to the sex offense on the condition he be allowed to appeal the judge’s refusal to dismiss the charge on 1st Amendment grounds.

The defense alleged the government had over-reached after an undercover FBI agent infiltrated the North American Man/Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA, secretly tape-recording discussions at annual conventions in 2003 and 2004.

Within half an hour of meeting the FBI agent at the 2004 convention, Mayer expressed frustration at the group’s political agenda, authorities said. The organization, formed in 1978, is dedicated to eliminating age-of-consent laws.

Mayer wanted advice on traveling abroad to have sex with young boys, according to court records.

“I don’t know who’s lying to who or if … they’re lying to themselves and saying, ‘This is all political. This is all to change society,'” Mayer said of conference organizers in the tape-recorded conversation. “[Expletive], it’s like, bring on the boys.”

A spokeswoman for American Airlines confirmed that Mayer, formerly of the 1200 block of North Sandburg Terrace, had worked for the airline for almost 20 years until his arrest last year.

Mayer was also a licensed clinical social worker until late 2003, according to state regulatory authorities, but he had never been the subject of disciplinary action.

Dec 7, 2006, press release from Real Women for Canada:

The Canadian political system does not serve the voters well, it only serves the interests of the politicians.

The vote today on same-sex marriage, with two of the political parties, the Bloc and the NDP requiring their members to vote along party lines on one of the most significant issues of this generation, is a disgrace and a blemish on democracy.

The Liberal leader Stéphane Dion was not much better.  Begrudgingly, he allowed a free vote for his MPs , but he gravely misled his MPs and the public on the issue by claiming same-sex marriage was a “fundamental” right under the Charter.  Either Mr. Dion was deliberately misrepresenting the situation or he is ignorant about the fact that the Supreme Court of Canada has never at any time ruled that traditional marriage was unconstitutional and that same-sex marriage was a “fundamental” right.  Canadians and the Liberal party members deserve better leadership than that.

The debate is not over.

The egregious behaviour of politicians on the same-sex marriage issue necessitates that the public have a say on the issue, having been effectively ignored by the self-important politicians. There is no longer any doubt that a referendum on the issue must be called by the Conservative government.

From the Dec 8, 2006, issue of “Washington Update by Tony Perkins, Family Research Council:

For the last three days, media outlets from across the country have flooded FRC with calls on our reaction to the news that Vice President Cheney’s daughter, who has a lesbian partner, is expecting a child. We have purposefully declined to comment on the story, in order to maintain FRC’s focus on policy discussions. However, when an event such as this is used by some as a catalyst for advancing a political agenda or promoting public policy that attacks traditional marriage or parenting, I have no reservations about stepping forward and defending morality and the family — regardless of who is involved. Today’s Washington Post features such an attempt by editorial columnist Ruth Marcus. With an air of noble tutelage, Marcus writes, “Whether she intends it or not, [Mary Cheney’s] pregnancy will, I think, turn out to be a watershed in public understanding and acceptance of this phenomenon.”

Unlike Marcus, authorities on child and family health do not use anecdotes as the basis for public policy. Their analysis is fact-driven, not emotion-driven. And those facts have seldom changed. Marcus writes that “To be a badly wanted child… in a home with two loving parents is no tragedy. If they’re worried about ’emotional devastation,’ they would do better to reserve their lamentations for children in poverty, those who are abused or neglected, or for children in families splintered by divorce.” Children’s needs, however, are more than the sum of the wants in the lives of the adults who reside with them. Study after study demonstrates that no amount of care or financial privilege can compensate for the missing physical and emotional benefits experienced by children who enjoy the lifelong love and presence of a married mother and father.

Comprehensive studies published in the peer-reviewed journals Archives of General Psychiatry, Interpersonal Violence, Social Service Research, Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Nursing Research, Developmental Psychology, Adolescence, and others too numerous to list here, all cite the devastating effects of domestic violence, increased substance abuse, mental health problems, sexual identity confusion, depression, and suicide associated with the homosexual lifestyle. A child fortunate enough to escape those realities still faces a distinct disadvantage throughout childhood — the irreplaceable influence of the missing biological parent. In rearing children, the complementary contributions of a mother and father are rooted in the innate differences of the two sexes, and can no more be arbitrarily replaced than can the very nature of male and female.

But besides dismissing science, Marcus misrepresents the reality of Virginia law. In her eagerness to exploit the circumstances, she asserts that the state’s new marriage protection amendment “casts doubt on the ability of Cheney and Poe to write binding medical directives and wills.” The law casts no doubt on the matter. It implicitly allows individuals to engage in private contracts. Here Marcus succeeds in personalizing her argument but not substantiating it. She concludes, “[This] high-profile pregnancy will help the Republican party come to grips with [the] facts of life. If not, [Mary Cheney] will have to explain to her child what mommy was doing trying to help a party that doesn’t believe in fairness for families like theirs.” What is at stake in these debates, however, is ultimately not the fate of political parties or the lateral “fairness” adults seek, but what is fair and favorable for children, all of whom have a stake in whether our nation stands by the ideal of homes embraced by, and embracing, a mother and father, a husband and a wife.

Excerpted from Catholic Bishops’ ‘Gay’ Guidelines ‘Gravely Flawed’, by Mary Jo Anderson, published Nov 9, 2006, by WorldNet Daily:

“Gravely flawed” – that’s the dire warning of medical experts who have seen copies of the proposed guidelines for “Ministry to Persons with Homosexual Inclinations,” to be released by the Catholic Bishops of the United States at their annual conference in Baltimore next week.

Catholic psychiatrists and physicians have quietly sent selected bishops detailed memos outlining their objections to the document in advance of the Nov. 13-16 meeting. Among the chief objections to the document, the critique notes, is that a truly charitable ministry includes “the truths that medical/psychological science has discovered about homosexuality … In particular, the health risks inherent in the lifestyle and the real grounds for hope of recovery and healing are never mentioned in the [proposed] document.”

The memo summarizes key points from medical and psychological literature on homosexuality that these experts had hoped the bishops would acknowledge, including:

• no genetic basis [for same-sex attraction] was found in last year’s [human]genome study
• fluidity of sexual attractions, with people spontaneously moving out of the lifestyle
• rampant promiscuity
• inability to maintain commitment

Richard Fitzgibbons, M.D., a contributor to the Catholic Medical Association’s statement on “Homosexuality and Hope,” was explicit:

“Persons with SSA (Same-Sex Attraction) suffer real physical and emotional physical illness in this lifestyle. There is no mention [in the document] of the deleterious effects of homosexual behavior on the person; the abuse, the diseases and the psychological pain that accompanies that lifestyle.”

Continue reading at WorldNet Daily…