Prof. Rena Lindevaldsen is an instructor at AFTAH's Truth Academy Aug. 5-7.

This is Part One of our (pre-taped) interview with Liberty University School of Law Professor Rena Lindevaldsen, who will be giving three lectures at our upcoming Truth Academy Aug. 5-7, 2010, at the Christian Liberty Academy outside Chicago. This interview aired July 31, 2010. Lindevaldsen offers a fresh perspective not often heard in the legal profession — that there is a transcendent basis for the law in our nation’s biblical heritage. She discusses the Prop 8 legal trial in this interview.

HOW TO LISTEN: This is an  mp3 file.  Left click once on the link below to play.  (Please be patient, depending upon the speed of your internet connection it may take a moment or two to load.) OR right click the link then “save target as” to download the whole show.

7-31-10, Rena Lindevaldsen, All

Prof. Rena Lindevaldsen is an instructor at AFTAH's Truth Academy Aug. 5-7.

[NOTE: this pre-taped interview will air on WYLL AM-1160 in Chicagoland on Sat., Aug. 7 at 11:00 PM]

This is Part Two of our (pre-taped) interview with Liberty University School of Law Professor Rena Lindevaldsen, who will be giving three lectures at our upcoming Truth Academy Aug. 5-7, 2010, at the Christian Liberty Academy outside Chicago. Lindevaldsen offers a fresh perspective not often heard in the legal profession — that there is a transcendent basis for the law in our nation’s biblical heritage. She describes as a “joke” President Obama’s non-defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which homosexual activists are trying to have declared unconstitutional.

HOW TO LISTEN: This is an  mp3 file.  Left click once on the link below to play.  (Please be patient, depending upon the speed of your internet connection it may take a moment or two to load.) OR right click the link then “save target as” to download the whole show.

8-7-10, Rena Lindevaldsen, All

Questions remain about secular, pro-“gay” bias at Champaign-Urbana

Dr. Kenneth Howell will continue to teach at the University of Illinois.

We are relieved that Prof. Kenneth Howell has been reinstated at the University of Illinois, but serious questions remain about the U. of I.’s secular bias against people of faith and in favor of aggressive homosexual activism. There needs to be an independent, outside investigation into how this travesty happened at a taxpayer-funded university — and the department heads and administrators who put political correctness above academic freedom and basic fairness should pay a price. If the larger problem persists of celebrating homosexuality at the expense of others’ fundamental rights, there will be many more Kenneth Howells in Illinois and across the nation.    — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

The following is a LifeSiteNews article about Prof. Howell’s reinstatement:

By Kathleen Gilbert

URBANA, Illinois, July 29, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Dr. Kenneth Howell, the professor barred from teaching after a student complained about his explanation of the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality, in a class on Catholicism, has been reinstated by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

News spread rapidly of the censure earlier this month of Dr. Howell, whose scheduled classes next fall had been cancelled based on one student’s complaint that an email from the professor to students in the class explaining how homosexuality is incompatible with the natural moral law amounted to “hate speech.”

The university was soon deluged with opposition from within UIUC and beyond. Even the school’s Atheists, Agnostics, & Freethinkers group expressed outrage at the professor’s silencing. Howell, who had taught “Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought” at the university’s Department of Religion since 2001, had also taught at the school’s diocesan-run Newman Center for 12 years.

The following is adapted from our exchange with a “gay” reader who wrote to AFTAH urging us to abandon what he calls the “losing battle” over homosexuality:

Dear Marcus, you could apply your note, with a slight rearrangement of words, to numerous “losing battles” of the past, e.g., the fight against Communism or the ongoing struggle against legalized abortion-on-demand. Somehow those causes turned around (who dared to think 20 years ago that blatantly pro-life films would grace the big screen?). I do not know if the same will happen with organized homosexuality, but regardless, to my mind, the fight for truth — on any issue — is necessary, right and the appropriate guiding compass for good living.

This is not about the “social outcasting of gays,” but telling the truth about homosexuality — which is:

• behavior- (not identity-) driven;
• changeable (as proved by thousands of ex-lesbians and ex-gay men);
• unnatural (two men or two women cannot produce a baby without borrowing from heterosexuality, that is, normalcy);
• unhealthy: witness the astonishingly disproportionately high rates of sexual diseases among “men who have sex with men”; and, lastly
• immoral (according to many religious traditions, especially America’s own Judeo-Christian heritage).

I urge you to abandon your soulless, utilitarian way of thinking and return to principle. Ideas and the pursuit of Truth stir men’s hearts, and will always matter more than political or cultural trends.

Sincerely,

Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth, www.aftah.org

Prof. Robert Gagnon, the world's leading authority on the Bible and homosexuality, will be giving three lectures at the Truth Academy.

The ‘Truth Academy: Chicago 2010’ begins in one week, Thurs., Aug. 5 – Sat., Aug. 7, at the Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights, IL. See complete Academy info and speakers schedule HERE. RSVP at americansfortruth@gmail.com. Sign up and pay online at www.americansfortruth.com/donate.
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From the wonderful, must-read pro-family news site, LifeSiteNews [click HERE to subscribe to their daily e-mails]:

How to Fight the Gay Agenda: Pro-Family Group Organizes Three-Day Conference

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

July 27, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The pro-family organization Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) has scheduled a three-day conference on fighting the homosexual political agenda in the United States.

The Americans for Truth Academy will be “probably one of the most comprehensive pro-family conferences on homosexuality ever to occur in the United States,” according to Peter LaBarbera, the organization’s founder and president.

LaBarbera told LifeSiteNews (LSN) that he decided to organize the conference to counteract the large number of similar events held by homosexualist activists.

“I have a little Irish blood but I’m also Italian, and when political correctness and the thought police tell you what not to do it only makes me want to do more of it, and so in this case the gay thought police are basically saying the issue is over and there is no other side, and so I thought we have to start educating people on the agenda,” said LaBarbera.

Julea Ward

From the Alliance Defense Fund website:

ADF to appeal ruling that allows Eastern Michigan U. to expel Christian students for holding to beliefs
University banished graduate counseling student for not affirming homosexual behavior

DETROIT — Alliance Defense Fund attorneys will appeal a problematic federal court decision issued Monday in a lawsuit filed on behalf of student Julea Ward against Eastern Michigan University after it kicked out the Christian student for holding to her beliefs.  EMU dismissed Ward from its graduate counseling program in March 2009 for not affirming homosexual behavior as morally acceptable.  Ward would not agree to change her religious beliefs about homosexual behavior or express a message contrary to them during counseling sessions as a condition to receiving a degree.

“Christian students shouldn’t be expelled for holding to and abiding by their beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel David French, who argued before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan last month.  “To reach its decision, the court had to do something that’s never been done in federal court:  uphold an extremely broad and vague university speech code.”

Jennifer Keeton

Here’s the latest victim of the Pro-Gay Thought Police (PGTP): Jennifer Keeton. Her predicament is further evidence of the “zero-sum game” in the Culture War between pro-“gay” policies/laws and religious liberty. It’s incredible that this public institution, Augusta State U,, is requiring this principled young woman to alter her beliefs and even attend a “gay pride” parade as a condition for completing the program. (Imagine the outcry if a public university required a committed, secular “gay” student to go to a Bible-believing church as part of a remediation plan.)

Will authentic Bible-believing Christians (as opposed to the compromised, homosexuality-affirming variety) be boxed out of the counseling profession? If so, faithful Christians will have to support alternative counseling institutions, because unrepentant homosexuality will never be compatible with Christianity. And there are way too many happy ex-gays and ex-lesbians out there for sexually struggling people not to be given this healthy option.

Modern “diversity” is to genuine diversity as Marxist-Leninist “People’s Democratic Republics” are to true democracy. Wouldn’t true “diversity” allow people to exercise their own choice to see either a pro-homosexual counselor or one that adheres to traditional moral views? I guess that’s asking too much of left-wing academics and the pro-“GLBTQ” movement.  — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org 

P.S. Check out this Queety blog post on the Keeton case. It contains a video of Keeton giving her side of the story. Note the nasty and irrational pro-homosexual comments that follow the Queerty post, including this one:

Imagine if a KKK member became a firefighter and said “If a black person is in a fire I’m not going to save their life. It’s against my beliefs.” Rubbish.

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LifeSiteNews reports [Click HERE to subscribe to LifeSite’s daily e-mails.]:

Augusta State Univ. to Counseling Student: Change Beliefs or Get Out

AUGUSTA, Georgia, July 22, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) filed suit against Augusta State University Wednesday on behalf of a counseling student who was allegedly told that her Christian beliefs are unethical and incompatible with the prevailing views of the counseling profession. The student, Jennifer Keeton, says she has been told to stop communicating her beliefs and that she must undergo “training” to accept homosexuality in order to graduate from the counseling program.

Augusta State ordered Keeton to undergo a re-education plan, in which she must attend “diversity sensitivity training,” complete additional remedial reading, and write papers to describe their impact on her beliefs. If she does not change her beliefs or agree to the plan, the university says it will expel her from the Counselor Education Program.

Here is Part Two of our interview with Wayne Lela (founder of H.O.M.E.) and John McCartney, two Chicago men who for years have reached out to college youth in the Chicagoland area with facts about homosexuality that the liberal media and pop-culture ignore. This interview aired July 24, 2010. (Listen to Part One HERE.) In this interview they discuss the four themes they stress in their interaction with students, including the severe health risks of male homosexuality. Both Lela and McCartney will be attending our Truth Academy: Chicago 2010 next week (Aug. 5-7) at the Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights, IL. You can access the archive of Americans For Truth interviews HERE.

HOW TO LISTEN: This is an  mp3 file.  Left click once on the link below to play.  (Please be patient, depending upon the speed of your internet connection it may take a moment or two to load.) OR right click the link then “save target as” to download the whole show.

7-24-10, Wayne Lela & John McCartney, All