The following is excerpted from LifeSiteNews.com, a must “go-to” site for pro-family advocates and citizens no matter what country you live in. Needless to say, you would have heard a lot more about this huge Italian rally had it been an “anti-Bush” protest against the war, or maybe a pro-“gay marriage” protest. The people “get it” regarding marriage and family; the secular media are obsessed with political correctness. One wonders how the political/cultural equation over homosexuality would be different if the media’s coverage were anything close to being fair rather than overwhelmingly pro-“gay”-activist as it is in most of the West today.— Peter LaBarbera  

1.5 Million Italians Turn Out in Massive Rome Protest Against Homosexual Civil Unions
Oraganizers Were Expecting Only 100,000

By Gudrun Schultz, LifeSiteNews.com

ROME, Italy, May 14, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Italians from across the country poured into Rome May 12 to join in a demonstration against a law that would give legal recognition to homosexual couples–reports showed up to 1.7 million people overflowed the St. John Lateran piazza. Organizers initially expected to draw about 100,000.

The proposed legislation would give homosexual couples–and unmarried heterosexual couples–similar rights to those of married couples, stopping just short of legalizing homosexual marriage.

“Living together is not family,” protester Anna Manara told the Associated Press.
“A commitment such as marriage cements the bond, while other models make it easier to be together and therefore end up making it less valuable.”

While the pro-family demonstration was backed by the Vatican and Italy’s Catholic bishops, it was organized by lay people independently of the Church. The “mind-blowing” success of the event is an outstanding example of the power held by ordinary citizens when sufficiently mobilized in support of traditional values, said Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, a priest in Rome who is the moderator of the Catholic Online Forum (see blogsite: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2007/05/winners-and-losers).

“The importance of this event is not merely that when left to their own devices the Italian people will support traditional values in great numbers, giving the lie to the script presented by the intellectuals in the press. It also means in concrete terms that the traditional values laity can organize and achieve results.”

“The success of “Family Day” also highlights a now deeply entrenched trend not only in Italy, but in the West: the marginalization of the Church from the public square,” Fr. Zuhlsdorf said. “Nearly everywhere the Church’s is being denied its right to speak freely. Committed Catholic and other religious politicians and public figures are pressured never to make reference to their religious convictions. The constant mantra is that religion should be a purely private matter than has no influence on public policy. Be religious, fine. But you may never act outwardly on your interior opinions.”

By Peter LaBarbera 

 Publicity shot for Brokeback Mountain: not appropriate for adults, much less for young kids in the classroom

WARNING: offensive descriptions of unnatural acts that should NEVER be promoted to children 

CHICAGO (AP) – A girl and her grandparents have sued the Chicago Board of Education, alleging that a substitute teacher showed the R-rated film “Brokeback Mountain” in class.

 

The lawsuit claims that Jessica Turner, 12, suffered psychological distress after viewing the movie in her 8th grade class at Ashburn Community Elementary School last year….

Alas, more corruption of youth at the hands of pro-homosexual activists. The movement that once asked just to be left alone is now pushing homosexuality on middle school students. In Chicago, a substitute teacher — no doubt a liberal “change agent” hell-bent on advancing her version of “tolerance and diversity” — showed the homosexual propaganda film “Brokeback Mountain” to her 8th-grade class (see full story below). Now the school is facing a $500,000 lawsuit. Let’s hope and pray that Jessica Turner’s grandparents prevail and that their legal action sends an expensive lesson to liberal educators nationwide — one that future Tolerance Tyrants (like Ms. Buford) seeking to manipulate young minds cannot ignore. 

But that’s just one abuse in a single school. The leftist Southern Poverty Law Center, through its publication “Teaching Tolerance,” is now advocating the formation of student homosexual clubs (innocently called “Gay/Straight Alliances”) in middle schools. Yes, that’s right: we’re talking pre-pubescent and pubescent boys and girls in grades six through nine, depending on the school. We will have more on that outrage later.

I saw Brokeback Mountain in the theater because I had to. It is a highly effective propaganda film well-suited to exploit today’s widespread confusion over “sexual orientation” and “same-sex love.” The film is about two male cowboys who “fall in love,” and features a sudden sodomitic encounter in a tent that is, well, let’s just say, biological and medical fantasy. The film, of course, seeks to advance the fiction that “gay” romantic love is just like the normal variety except with different genders. But that ignores, for one thing, the terrible damage that sodomy (i.e., anal sex) exacts on the body. That’s why many male initiates into homosexual sex get high on drugs or alcohol first — to dull the pain (and the shame) of this unnatural and sinful behavior.

If Brokeback were honest, one of the guys involved in the scene depicting the crime against nature (how sodomy was once regarded back when men were men) would be howling in pain louder than a coyote, rather than just rolling over and going to sleep. But, hey, we wouldn’t want to spoil the cultural elites’ pro-“gay” party by telling Americans about the pain and consequences stemming from homosexual behavior, would we?

 

It’s sort of like how many schools nowadays teach kids about HIV/AIDS without mentioning the “inconvenient truth” that this awful disease in America is strongly linked to “men who have sex with men” (MSM). (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that through 2006, “MSM account for approximately 45% of newly reported HIV/AIDS diagnoses and nearly 54% of cumulative AIDS diagnoses.”)

Predictably, in Brokeback, one of the male lovers is savagely murdered by homosexual-hating hetero cowboys — another lesson I’m sure the militant Chicago teacher wanted to impress on her captive audience: if you disagree with the homosexual lifestyle, you are a “hater” and mean-spirited “homophobe.” Never mind that the vast majority of people who oppose homosexual behavior do not hate people but merely agree with God about harmful and changeable behaviors that do not define a person; and decent people are rightfully outraged at the idea of promoting this dangerous homosexual lifestyle to impressionable children.

TAKE ACTION:  If you are an adult, dedicate yourself to educating the young people in your sphere of influence about the truth about homosexuality. Tell them about former homosexuals like Charlene Cothran and Steve Bennett. Visit NARTH’s (National Association for Research and Therapy on Homosexuality) excellent website. Show them Professor Rob Gagnon’s site, which ably refutes the nefarious “gay theology” that seeks to negate the Bible’s clear proscriptions against homosexual acts. 

We have no choice but to be aggressive with the truth, because our foes are so aggressive in promoting their lies — even to innocent kids in the classroom. I’m afraid that in our society, even children brought up well by moral-minded parents will have drunk some of the pro-“gay” Kool-Aid by the time they reach adulthood — so saturated is our culture with politically correct, activist nonsense on this issue.

Here’s the May 13 AP story on Brokeback Mountain being shown to 8th-graders in Chicago:  

Lawsuit over Brokeback Mountain in Class

 

CHICAGO (AP) – A girl and her grandparents have sued the Chicago Board of Education, alleging that a substitute teacher showed the R-rated film “Brokeback Mountain” in class.

 

The lawsuit claims that Jessica Turner, 12, suffered psychological distress after viewing the movie in her 8th grade class at Ashburn Community Elementary School last year.

 

The film, which won three Oscars, depicts two cowboys who conceal their homosexual affair.

 

Turner and her grandparents, Kenneth and LaVerne Richardson, are seeking around $500,000 in damages.

 

“It is very important to me that my children not be exposed to this,” said Kenneth Richardson, Turner’s guardian. “The teacher knew she was not supposed to do this.”

 

According to the lawsuit filed Friday in Cook County Circuit Court, the video was shown without permission from the students’ parents and guardians.

 

The lawsuit also names Ashburn Principal Jewel Diaz and a substitute teacher, referred to as “Ms. Buford.”

 

The substitute asked a student to shut the classroom door at the West Side school, saying: “What happens in Ms. Buford’s class stays in Ms. Buford’s class,” according to the lawsuit.

 

Richardson said his granddaughter was traumatized by the movie and had to undergo psychological treatment and counseling.

 

In 2005, Richardson complained to school administrators about reading material that he said included curse words.

 

“This was the last straw,” he said. “I feel the lawsuit was necessary because of the warning I had already given them on the literature they were giving out to children to read. I told them it was against our faith.”

 

Messages left over the weekend with CPS officials were not immediately returned.

By Peter LaBarbera 

We have only skimmed the surface as to how destructive liberal (distorted) notions of “tolerance” and “diversity” will be to children. Below is the beginning of a Southern Poverty Law Center online article advocating homosexual (“gay/straight alliance”) clubs for middle schools. All students can and must be protected regardless of their behavioral traits/”orientations” — and bullies must be dealt with severely — but encouraging “proud” homosexual clubs for children in grades 6-9 who are still far from adulthood is breathtakingly reckless.

These GSA clubs certainly promote just ONE SIDE of the homosexual issue, and engage in propagandistic activities to the rest of the school. Studies show that kids’ “sexual identities” are fluid, so why on earth would we want to encourage any boy or girl in the idea that they are “gay” before they are fully developed? (Gee, I wonder if I even thought about sex, much less had a sexual ‘identity,’ when I was in 6th grade!)

At this point I can already hear some “gay” activists saying how “they knew they were different” at some ridiculously young age, say five years old — which always makes me suspicious that they weren’t victimized in some way as a child. Because normal people simply did not contemplate their sexual nature as young children. But I digress: the point is: liberals are taking public schools into very dangerous territory by ENCOURAGING even pre-adolescent children to self-identify as GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender) — particularly since the one thing we can be sure about is that they will NOT effectively communicate the massive health risks of homosexual behavior to these impressionable kids. This is educational malpractice at its worst and it must be stopped.

The following is the beginning of the Spring 2007 “Teaching Tolerance” article advocating homosexual clubs for middle schoolers: 

‘THIS is Why We Need a GSA’
Gay-straight alliances are taking hold in middle schools, where homophobia and anti-gay harassment may be the most rampant. 
 

by Carrie Kilman 
 
For several weeks last spring, fliers announcing Sennett Middle School’s Gay-Straight Alliance were torn from the hallways, revealing a hidden message to the culprits about why the club was important in the first place. Safe spaces can be hard to come by when you’re a middle school student, especially if you’re lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. For the past 10 years, GSAs have helped high school students fight anti-gay harassment. Experts say middle school is where GSAs might be needed most — and their numbers are starting to grow.

 

To read the entire “Teaching Tolerance” article, click HERE

  The following is reprinted with permission from the website of the Family Taxpayers Network, a terrific organization based in Carpentersville, Illinois. (FTN runs “TheChampion.org website, which is loaded with good stuff on education reform, and where you can look up any public school teacher’s salary on their School Salary Database.)

Same old story regarding the GOP’s dalliance with the Log Cabin Republicans, whose “gay” agenda pretty much parallels that of other homosexual organizations. We’ve said it once, we’ll say it a thousand times: the Republican Party cannot be “pro-family” and pro-homosexual-activist at the same time.

The Log Cabin Republicans in Illinois are lobbying hard for House Bill 1826, which would force the state’s businesses to recognize and therefore subsidize homosexual “civil unions.” (So much for freedom of conscience.) HB 1826 is a same-sex “marriage” bill by another name. Peraica strongly supported last year’s Illinois Marriage Protection advisory referendum (which has been relaunched by Protect Marriage Illinois for 2008), so why is he now seeking the support of a group whose radical agenda is 180 degrees in the opposite direction?

With the Democrats nationally the party of abortion-on-demand (including “partial-birth infanticide) and mainstreaming homosexuality, the GOP needs to decide: is it going to mimic the Democrats’ social leftism or present voters with a conservative, pro-life, pro-family alternative? That’s up to them, but they would do well to heed the words of the true “log cabin” president, Abe Lincoln, who said — repeating the words of Jesus (Matthew 12:25): “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” — Peter LaBarbera

Cozying up with a homosexual, anti-Bush group
 
Tony Peraica and Christine Radogno can be seen HERE happily being welcomed at a recent private reception hosted by the Log Cabin Republicans (photo courtesy of the Windy City Times, the newspaper which proudly hails itself as “The Voice of Chicago’s Gay, Lesbian, Bi and Trans Community since 1985.”)
 
The Log Cabin Republicans is of course a group that’s dedicated to advancing the homosexual agenda in America. But putting that aside, just how “Republican” is the group? Well, the Log Cabin Republicans were always a key backer of Judy Baar Topinka, and each year members of the Chicago Chapter were among the most enthusiastic marchers with her in Chicago’s Gay Pride Parade.
 
But while Topinka was welcomed, the group snubbed our Commander in Chief. In 2004 the organization refused to endorse President Bush due to his defense of traditional marriage. The organization even ran television ads in 2004 attacking Bush for his support of a fundamental plank of the Republican Platform.
 
Further, last year the Chicago Chapter of the Log Cabins assisted other gay activists in preparing the legal challenge to the Protect Marriage Illinois petitions – those hundreds of thousands of signatures that so many dedicated Republicans worked so hard gathering across Illinois.
 
How hypocritical that a group that preaches about the “Big Tent” turns on the President and the base when they don’t get their way on THEIR single issue.
 
Peraica’s and Radogno’s support of the Log Cabins is a poke in the eye to every Republican who believes in the Republican Platform –– and especially to the thousands who worked so hard gathering signatures for the Protect Marriage Illinois initiative.

We are cheered by the following e-notice from the Family Institute of Connecticut Action, but this victory is bittersweet. That’s because, as you will learn from the link to the Hartford Courant in this story, Connecticut’s legislature passed “civil unions” (“gay marriage” by another name) in 2005. (Connecticut was “the first state in the nation to pass a civil union or same-sex marriage law voluntarily through the legislature and without judicial intervention,” Wikipedia notes.)

When the pro-family movement is reduced (in blue states) to proclaiming as a “massive victory” the mere stalling of a legislative vote for actual “same-sex marriage” — legislation that would have been laughed off just a few years ago — you know the hour is late in the struggle to preserve sexual sanity in this nation. Does that mean we give up? No, but it’s best that we view the present reality clearly.

Christians, conservatives, and traditionalists, let’s be honest with ourselves and the public: preserving “the word” marriage is only a minor — and many would say symbolic — victory, and no victory at all if we lose all else in the “culture war” over homosexuality. This small battle in Connecticut may have been “won,” but the war was almost lost two years ago when the Democrat-controlled legislature voted for a bill — which a Republican governor then signed into law — to give government approval to relationships based on homosexual perversion. — Peter LaBarbera

Family Institute of Connecticut Action writes: 

Massive Victory For Marriage!

 

Earlier today the Family Institute of Connecticut asked you, our supporters, to call your legislators and ask them to oppose holding a vote on same-sex “marriage.” That battle has now been won:

 

Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, and Rep. Mike Lawlor, D-East Haven, said Friday afternoon they do not intend to push for a vote on same-sex marriage this legislative session, saying the bill does not have enough votes to win…

 

Opponents of the bill were cheered by Lawlor and McDonald’s decision. “The Family Institute of Connecticut is thrilled that the legislature has heeded the majority of voters in the state who do not want to see marriage radically redefined,” said Peter Wolfgang, the institute’s public policy director.

 

This is a massive victory for marriage protection and it happened because of you: the pro-family citizens of Connecticut who heeded FIC’s call to make your voices heard at our state capitol. Thanks to you, our Feb. 21st lobby day was a tremendous success, turning out twice as many people as our opponents on a day picked by them. Thanks to you, FIC provided the outstanding testimony of Maggie Gallagher, Dawn Stefanowicz, Brian Brown-and over 40 pro-family activists like you-for the most successful public hearing on same-sex “marriage” we have ever had. And thanks to your phone calls and e-mails-whose effectiveness was grudgingly acknowledged even by our opponents-we have today’s massive victory for marriage protection.

 

Today’s victory came about because of your hard work. But our opponents have vowed to try again, which is why we need your support to continue to defend marriage from their attacks.

 

Our May 23rd Rally and Lobby Day for Marriage will go forward-beginning at 10 a.m. on the steps of the state capitol in Hartford. We need as many pro-family state residents as possible to attend.

 

And, even for this year, a radical redefinition of marriage is still possible. The state Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments Monday in a case brought by activists seeking a judicial imposition of same-sex “marriage.” FIC and other pro-family groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs. And FIC’s Peter Wolfgang will be appearing with pro same-sex “marriage” Rep. Mike Lawlor the following morning (May 15th at 9:00 a.m.) to discuss the case on WNPR’s “Where We Live” program.

 

Congratulations to all of you who stood with us and helped bring about today’s marvelous victory for families and children. May there be many more.

 

Your support for marriage protection made the difference! But the battle is far from over and your help is urgently needed. Please click here to double your donation to our matching grant campaign.

Press Release, Concerned Women For America (www.cwfa.org), May 11, 2006  

Washington, DC –– With much fanfare, liberals in Congress — led by openly homosexual congressman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) — recently introduced H.R. 2015, the ironically-titled “Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2007” (ENDA).  According to proponents, this bill merely seeks to insulate people who choose to engage in homosexual behaviors (“sexual orientation”) or who suffer from gender confusion (gender identity) against employment discrimination.  But regrettably this legislation would effectively codify and encourage the very thing it purports to prevent — workplace discrimination. 

ENDA would apply to any business with 15 or more employees.  The bill’s language states that, “it shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer…to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to the compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment of the individual, because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.”      

Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural Issues with Concerned Women for America (CWA), warned, “This bill would force Christian, Jewish or Muslim business owners to hire people who openly choose to engage in homosexual or cross-dressing behaviors despite a sincerely held religious belief that those behaviors are dangerous, sinful and not in keeping with basic morality.  ENDA would essentially force employers to check their First Amendment protected rights to freedom of religion, speech and association at the workplace door.  It’s absurd!  For instance, female employees would have to endure both systematic sexual harassment and a hostile work environment by being forced to share bathroom facilities with male employees who get their jollies from wearing a dress, high heels and lipstick.     

“Over the years, the homosexual lobby has done a masterful job of co-opting the language of the genuine civil rights movement in their push for special rights.  This bill represents the goose that laid the golden egg for homosexual activist attorneys,” concluded Barber.   

Shari Rendall, CWA’s Director of Legislation and Public Policy, said of ENDA, “This bill would unfairly extend special privileges based upon an individual’s changeable sexual behaviors, rather than focusing on immutable, non-behavior characteristics such as skin color or gender.   Its passage would both overtly discriminate against and muzzle people of faith.  Former Secretary of State Collin Powell put it well when he said, ‘Skin color is a benign, non-behavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of human behavioral characteristics. Comparison of the two is a convenient but invalid argument.’”  

CWA asks Congress to protect the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech, religion and association for all Americans by voting NO on ENDA. 

Concerned Women for America is the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization.

The Other Dark Exchange: Homosexuality, Part 1

To listen online to this sermon, click HERE; to read the entire sermon, go HERE. To learn more about John Piper, visit HERE.

By John Piper October 11, 1998  

Romans 1:24-28

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. 28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.

Astonishing Relevance
In our exposition of Paul’s letter to the Romans, we come now to this astonishingly relevant section in 1:24-28 where Paul touches on the reality of homosexuality. It is relevant for many reasons. For example, yesterday there was conference called “Here I Stand” to address the issue of homosexually active clergymen in the ELCA (Star Tribune, 10/10/98). On the front page of the Star Tribune there was the story of what appeared to be a hate crime against a homosexual student at the University of Wyoming who was in critical condition after being tied to a fence and beaten. In August, 641 Anglican bishops from around the world gathered for the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England, and voted overwhelmingly to affirm that homosexual practice is “incompatible with Scripture.”

Full-page ads were recently [in 1998] taken out in USA Today and the New York Times and the Washington Post showing some 850 former homosexuals who gathered last summer at the Exodus conference and who declared there is power in Christ to be changed. Here in Minnesota, legal cases continually crop up about child custody and adoption of children by homosexual people. And most immediate of all, here in our church there are people who have homosexual desires and many more people among us who have people in their families whom they care about very deeply who consider themselves homosexual. The reality of homosexuality is inescapable today, and this would come as no surprise to the apostle Paul, and therefore should not to us.

One of the things that makes matters unusual today is the effort on the part of some people to defend the legitimacy of homosexual behavior from the Bible. Most common, for example, is the claim that the denunciations of homosexuality in the New Testament are not references to committed, long-term homosexual relations, which these people say are legitimate, but rather refer to promiscuous homosexual relations and to pederasty, which are not legitimate. To use the words of one scholar, “What the New Testament is against is something significantly different from a homosexual orientation which some people seem to have from their earliest days. In other words, the New Testament is not talking about what we have come to speak of as sexual inversion. Rather, it is concerned with sexual perversion” (Paul Jewett, Interpretation, April, 1985, p. 210).

To read Piper’s whole sermon, click HERE.