Excerpted from European Transgender Groups Unite, published Jan 16, 2007, by the pro-homosexuality 247Gay:

A new coalition of European Transgender and Transsexual Groups, TransGender Europe, has received recognition by the Austrian authorities this week.

Hear Americans For Truth president Peter LaBarbera on Janet Folger’s “Faith2Action” radio show over the WVCY network. After Faith2Action founder Folger, author of “Criminalizing Christianity,” asks LaBarbera what he would say to Christians who want to drop out of the Culture Wars, he answers that in reality, many Christians want to “cop out” of the fight against the radical “gay” agenda, often employing bogus theological excuses. He urged listeners to “grow up” and defend their American freedom — including the freedom to disagree with the intolerant homosexual agenda — even if “it’s hard.”

Click HERE to listen to the program online. LaBarbera’s segment is in the second half of the hour-long program.

What the NEA (National Education Association) refuses to admit as it (again, below) recommends pro-homosexual “anti-harassment training” is that such training invariably undermines the firmly-held beliefs of Christian and other students who believe homosexual behavior is wrong. “Anti-bias” and “gay”-inclusive “bullying” programs rely on the very jaundiced work of groups like GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network), which have a long track record of assailing and distorting Christian and conservative teachings on homosexuality.

Why can’t schools simply ban all “bullying” or abuse of ANY students without getting into the homosexuality promotion business? — Peter LaBarbera

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From NEA’s website:

Rights Watch

Teaching Tolerance or Attacking Religion?

How far can schools go in teaching tolerance for gays and lesbians? Two federal courts tackle this thorny question.

It’s the latest battleground in the culture wars. In the wake of several high-profile cases holding school districts liable for failing to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) students from peer harassment, many schools have adopted training programs intended to reduce harassment and promote acceptance of GLBT students.

Some parents find these programs objectionable because they conflict with their deeply held religious belief that homosexuality is sinful, and they don’t want the schools to undermine their parental authority by teaching a contrary lesson.

Federal courts in Maryland and Kentucky recently struggled to resolve this conflict, with differing results.

In a dispute that is still ongoing, the Montgomery County (Maryland) Board of Education last year adopted a health education curriculum designed to teach tolerance of gays and lesbians. Among other things, course materials described as a “myth” the belief that “homosexuality is a sin” and characterized certain Christian religions as “intolerant and Biblically misguided” because they are “opposed to homosexuality.”

In a lawsuit filed in May 2005 by two groups of parents and citizens, a federal district court issued an injunction prohibiting the Maryland school district from implementing the curriculum. The court found that the course materials violate the Constitution by attacking the views of certain religions, while promoting the views of other religions that “are more friendly towards the homosexual lifestyle.”

The school district has agreed to revise the controversial curriculum. That process is still underway.

In the Kentucky case decided in February, a federal district court ruled that parents don’t have the right to have their children opt out of mandatory “student diversity training” designed to stop the harassment of GLBT students.

The program adopted by the Board of Education of Boyd County, Kentucky, consists of a one-hour video, followed by comments from an instructor and questions from students. Students who refuse to attend receive an unexcused absence.

Excerpted from The Intolerance of Tolerance, by Greg Koukl, published Dec 14, 2006, by Townhall:

Probably no concept has more currency in our politically-correct culture than the notion of tolerance. Unfortunately, one of America’s noblest virtues has been so distorted it’s become a vice.

There’s one word that can stop you in your tracks. That word is “intolerant.”

…The modern notion of tolerance is seriously misguided.

The Tolerance Trick
As it turns out, by the modern definition of tolerance no one is tolerant, or ever can be. It’s what my friend Francis Beckwith calls the “passive-aggressive tolerance trick.” Returning to the classic understanding of tolerance is the only way to restore any useful meaning to the word. Let me give you a real life example.

Earlier this year I spoke to a class of seniors at a Christian high school in Des Moines, Iowa. I wanted to alert them to this “tolerance trick,” but I also wanted to learn how much they had already been taken in by it. I began by writing two sentences on the board. The first expressed the current understanding of tolerance:

“All views have equal merit and none should be considered better than another.”

All heads nodded in agreement. Nothing controversial here. Then I wrote the second sentence:

“Jesus is the Messiah and Judaism is wrong for rejecting Him.”

Immediately hands flew up. “You can’t say that,” a coed challenged, clearly annoyed. “That’s disrespectful. How would you like it if someone said you were wrong?”

“In fact, that happens to me all the time,” I pointed out, “including right now with you. But why should it bother me that someone thinks I’m wrong?”

“It’s intolerant,” she said, noting that the second statement violated the first statement. What she didn’t see was that the first statement also violated itself.

I pointed to the first statement and asked, “Is this a view, the idea that all views have equal merit and none should be considered better than another?” They all agreed.

Then I pointed to the second statement—the “intolerant” one—and asked the same question: “Is this a view?” They studied the sentence for a moment. Slowly my point began to dawn on them. They’d been taken in by the tolerance trick.

If all views have equal merit, then the view that Christians have a better view on Jesus than the Jews have is just as true as the idea that Jews have a better view on Jesus than the Christians do. But this is hopelessly contradictory. If the first statement is what tolerance amounts to, then no one can be tolerant because “tolerance” turns out to be gibberish.

A press release from Christian Civic League of Maine, published Jan 9, 2007:

Before the 2006 elections, Maine’s foremost civil and religious rights group, the Christian Civic League of Maine, filed suit in federal court to allow the League to run a grass-roots lobbying ad, urging Maine’s two Senators to vote for the federal marriage amendment. The suit was necessary because the League was prohibited by a law sponsored in Congress by Senator Olympia Snowe which prohibited citizens groups from running broadcast ads before an election which mention the name of a federal candidate.

The suit was ultimately dismissed by a federal court and is now on appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

However, this same law has now been declared unconstitutional by another federal court. In a case brought by Wisconsin Right to Life, a federal court has declared that Snowe’s law is unconstitutional as applied to grass- roots lobbying. The League’s attorney, James Bopp, Jr., is quoted in the Kennebec Journal saying that the ruling is a vindication for the League.

The League also defended free speech in the early 1990s. “Gay” activists wanted to keep their issue from being voted on. The result of that two year long legal ordeal was a strong affirmation of the League’s position. The judge even forced the state to pay the League’s legal fees.

Excerpted from NEA Releases Controversial Statement on Website, published Jan 3, 2006, by Family News in Focus:

A ‘school safety’ link for the National Education Association says “a great public school is a fundamental right of every child, free from intimidation and harassment, and safe for all students, including those who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered.” Linda Harvey with Mission America says the site uncovers an agenda.

“If anyone ever had a doubt before that there is a deliberate and well-funded and highly influential gay agenda in schools, then this should convince them that there is indeed that going on.”

She says the NEA is essentially saying in order to have safe schools we need to approve of homosexuality.

“That’s their recommendation, and it’s a false one; it’s a misleading one and one that is very likely to endanger millions of students.”

Finn Laursen with the Christian Educators Association agrees with the anti-bullying message, but says the NEA is treading into unsafe waters with its pro-gay, safe-school message.

“As parents and educators we ought to say, ‘No, we won’t tolerate harassment or bullying. But we shouldn’t be promoting something to our children that we know has major medical, psychological implications and as a Christian, we believe is sin.”

Laursen says the NEA can promote safe schools without promoting a political agenda.

This was just too entertaining to pass over (pardon the pun)…

Excerpted from Bleating Hearts, by Mark Steyn, by Jan 8, 2007, at Washington Times:

As part of this column’s ongoing commitment to in-depth coverage of the issues that matter, we’re pleased to present the first of a new series: Sheep In The News. Here are two headlines from the last week.

From The Wall Street Journal: “Ritual sacrifice? Not on my street, some Belgians say.” And from The Sunday Times of London: “Science told: Hands off gay sheep.”

The first story is about the 25,000 sheep in Brussels who a few days ago found themselves pointed toward Mecca and then slit through the throat and bled to death.

Muslims do this to celebrate Eid al-Adha, which commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son to God and God’s willingness to settle for a ram in lieu. The Belgian Muslim population has grown so fast that there aren’t enough places in the city to perform the ritual sacrifice, and come Eid it’s like sheep drivetime at every Brussels slaughterhouse, with rams backed up ram-to-ram as far as the eye can see.

As reported by the Journal, Mohamed Mimoun grabbed his sheep, took a number and realized he was in for a two-hour wait. Even worse, en route to the slaughterhouse, he was stopped by a cop and fined for having the sheep in the trunk of his Toyota. By law, the sheep is supposed to ride in the rear passenger seats. Baa, baa, back seat.

On which note, let us turn to the gay sheep. Apparently, researchers at Oregon Health and Science University and Oregon State University have been experimenting with ovine hormonal balances to persuade homosexual rams of the error of their ways. It seems they’ve had “considerable success” with injecting hormones into the rams’ brains. Suddenly the lads are playing the field and crooning a couple of choruses of “Embrace me, my sweet embraceable ewe.”

Gay groups (human gay groups, that is: Even America does not yet have a 24/7 gay sheep lobby group with offices on K Street) are not happy about this. Martina Navratilova, the nine-times Wimbledon champ, has called for the project to be abandoned and for scientists to respect, as the Sunday Times put it, “the right of sheep to be gay”…

Continue reading at Washington Times…