Excerpted from N.Y. Plans to Make Gender Personal Choice, by Damien Cave, published Nov 7, 2006, by The New York Times:

…Under the rule being considered by the city’s Board of Health, which is likely to be adopted soon, people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates by providing affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex, and asserting that their proposed change would be permanent.

Applicants would have to have changed their name and shown that they had lived in their adopted gender for at least two years, but there would be no explicit medical requirements.

“Surgery versus nonsurgery can be arbitrary,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner. “Somebody with a beard may have had breast-implant surgery. It’s the permanence of the transition that matters most.”

If approved, the new rule would put New York at the forefront of efforts to redefine gender…

Transgender advocates consider the New York proposal an overdue bulwark against discrimination that recognizes an emerging shift away from viewing gender as simply the sum of one’s physical parts…

“They should not change the sex at birth, which is a factual record,” said Dr. Arthur Zitrin, a Midtown psychiatrist who was on the panel of transgender experts convened by the city…

The change would lead to many intriguing questions: For example, would a man who becomes a woman be able to marry another man? (Probably.) Would an adoption agency be able to uncover the original sex of a proposed parent? (Not without a court order.)…

Continue reading at The New York Times…

The following is excerpted from Bath Time: An Old Bus Depot Gives Way to Homo Heaven, by Joe P. Tone, published May 3, 2006, in Cleveland Scene (owned by The New York Times):

Charles Fleck’s money-colored eyes dart around the dusty old bus depot, searching for something new to show off. Here’s where he’ll put the Russian sauna. There, a eucalyptus-vapor room. Over there, the 18-man Jacuzzi…

He’s just giddy about his creation. Building the country’s coolest bathhouse apparently has that effect.

Fleck is a millionaire real-estate investor from South Florida… But upscale bathhouses are his passion. The West Side native built his first bathhouse near Detroit Avenue on West 32nd Street in the 1960s. He now owns the Flex bath chain, with clubs in Atlanta, Phoenix, New Orleans, Columbus, and Los Angeles.

But he saved his most ambitious project for his hometown.

The former Greyhound depot near East 26th and St. Clair will be 48,000 square feet of unfettered opulence — a blue-tiled funhouse of private cabanas, steamy saunas, food, entertainment, and men. Lots and lots of men…

Some view bathhouses as little more than legalized brothels. Many were shut down in the ’80s, with the explosion of AIDS. And they remain the targets of conservatives, health officials, and others who blame them for spreading sexually transmitted diseases.

In Atlanta, after he was denied his spa and liquor licenses, Fleck battled the city all the way to the Georgia Supreme Court. New Orleans also tried to deny his spa license, unsuccessfully arguing that he was running a sex club. He’s still in court in Phoenix, where he was accused of running an illegal entertainment venue…

And there’s another advantage to Cleveland: He doesn’t expect much opposition. When he opened his Columbus Flex near a library, he endured protests from conservatives, who gasped at what would go on in the private “cabanas.”…

Customers will come in through the original depot entrance and immediately be greeted by (no doubt strapping) receptionists. From there, they’ll head into a spacious locker room — Greyhound’s original driver/mechanic locker room, Fleck says.

Beyond that will lie every imaginable way to relax. Fleck turned the depot’s mechanic pits — formerly used to service buses — into an 18-man jacuzzi and a sizable indoor pool. Near that, shrouded by tropical plants, will be the shower area, its automatic shower heads spouting perfect-temperature water.

The club also will boast a cedar-lined Russian sauna, a eucalyptus vapor room, and a cavernous steam room. A full-service kitchen will provide food. And Fleck envisions a sprawling lounge and stage, which he hopes to use for live music or even Sunday church.

Twenty small “resting rooms” will be available for rent…

Your local Y, this ain’t…

Fleck expects 40 percent of his business to come from outside the metro area. And with the amenities he offers, he hopes to draw from beyond the standard horny gay-guy clientele.

“With the mix we get,” he says, “I hardly know who’s doing what to who.”

Continue reading in Cleveland Scene…

From Gay Culture and the Riddle of Andrew Sullivan, by Dr. Albert Mohler, published Oct 27, 2006:

Andrew Sullivan is a man of ideas. In recent years, Sullivan has emerged as one of the most influential intellectuals in American public life. Furthermore, he has been identified with some of the most controversial issues of our times–a fact that is hardly surprising given his libertarian view of morality, conservative views of politics, Roman Catholic views of Christianity, and the fact that he is a prominent homosexual advocate…

In the October 24, 2005 issue of The New Republic, Sullivan writes about “The End of Gay Culture.” Of course, Sullivan’s perspective on homosexuality and gay culture is deeply rooted in his own homosexuality and his ardent embrace of his own homosexual lifestyle. He is anything but a dispassionate observer…

As he reviews the impact of the HIV crisis, Sullivan points to some patterns that emerged in its aftermath–patterns that would likely be missed by those outside the gay subculture. The emergence of lesbians as leaders of the major gay rights organizations was, Sullivan suggests, largely due to the fact that the gay male leaders were largely dead…

“Gay marriage is not a radical step,” Sullivan insisted…

But, even as Sullivan argued for the acceptance and legalization of same-sex marriage, more radical homosexual theorists were dismissing marriage altogether. As Sullivan explained,

“Marriage of all institutions is to liberationists a form of imprisonment; it reeks of a discourse that has bought and sold property, that has denigrated and subjected women, that has constructed human relationships into a crude and suffocating form. Why on earth should it be supported for homosexuals?”

Sullivan’s 1995 book, and his most recent article, must be read in light of his 1998 testimonial, Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival. This book was written after Sullivan had been diagnosed as HIV-positive. As he recalled:

“I contracted the disease in full knowledge of how it is transmitted, and without any illusions about how debilitating and terrifying a diagnosis it could be. I have witnessed first-hand a man dying of AIDS; I have seen the ravages of its impact and the harrowing humiliation it meant. I had written about it, volunteered to combat it, and tried to understand it. But I still risked getting it, and the memories of that risk and the ramifications of it for myself, my family, and my friends still forced me into questions I would rather not confront, and have expended a great deal of effort avoiding.”

When a high school friend asked Sullivan how he had contracted the virus, Sullivan informed him that he had no idea which sex partner had been the source of the viral transmission. “How many people did you sleep with, for God’s sake?,” his friend asked. Note Sullivan’s answer carefully:

“Too many, God knows. Too many for meaning and dignity to be given to every one; too many for love to be present at each; too many for sex to be very often more than a temporary but powerful release from debilitating fear and loneliness.”

In other words, the public Andrew Sullivan emerged as a major proponent of responsibility, stability, and self-control, while the private Andrew Sullivan was deeply involved in homosexual promiscuity.

All this broke into public view in 2001, when a homosexual columnist discovered that Sullivan had been posting advertisements for unprotected homosexual sex at internet web sites. The ensuing controversy within the gay community was vitriolic, even as it was revealing.

“The End of Gay Culture” is an eye-opening essay. As an exercise in cultural analysis, it demonstrates genuine insight and an insider’s perspective. More than anything else, Sullivan’s article should awaken thinking Christians to the fact that homosexuality is being normalized in the larger culture. This surely represents a matter of urgent missiological concern, for the normalization of sin represents a progressive hardening of the nation’s heart against the Gospel.

At a more personal level, this article reminds me to pray for Andrew Sullivan. I say this even as I realize that he may be more offended by my prayer than by anything else. In most of his writings, Mr. Sullivan demonstrates a consistent and ardent determination to celebrate homosexuality as central to his own self-discovery and personhood. Yet, he also reveals significant doubts. When he explains that he “never publicly defended promiscuity” nor publicly attacked it because “I felt, and often still feel, unable to live up to the ideals I really hold,” I detect a glimmer of doubt. I have faced Mr. Sullivan in public debate on issues related to homosexuality. I consider him to be among the most gifted, thoughtful, and unpredictable intellectuals on the current scene. More than anything else, I want Mr. Sullivan to find his self-identity and deepest passions in the transforming power of Christ–the power to see all things made new. Without apology, I pray that one day he will see all that he has written in defense of homosexuality, and all that he has known in terms of his homosexual identity, as loss, and to find in Christ the only resolution of our sexuality and the only solution to the problem we all share–the problem of sin.

Andrew Sullivan has been a focus of my prayer since I first learned of his HIV-positive status. I do pray that God will give him strengthened health and the gift of time. After all, our Christian concern should be focused not only on the challenge of homosexuality in the culture, but the challenge of reaching homosexuals with the love of Christ and the truth of the Gospel.

Continue reading at Albert Mohler…

From the homepage of Concerned Women for America:

State Referendums
Issues facing voters this election

Strengthening marriage is one of the top priorities for strengthening America. When the radical feminists, the gay lobby, and the Hollywood culture assault the family, they are destroying the foundation of a free society. Democracy cannot long survive if its citizens have not internalized the Judeo-Christian values that make freedom and liberty possible. It is the traditional family that provides the good soil in which these moral values take root. — Janice Shaw Crouse

Sandy Rios, president of Culture Campaign, explains what is wrong with homosexual behavior, whether it is Gerry Studds, Barney Franks, or Mark Foley.

Not That There’s Anything Wrong with That [Mark Foley and the GOP]

Originally broadcast Oct 5, 2006, on Moody Radio

From NAE and All Evangelicals Must Seek The Lord — Haggard Failure May Explain Liberal Drift of NAE, a press release from Rob Schenk, president of the Evangelical-dominated National Clergy Council in Washington, DC, and chairman of the Committee on Church and Society for the Evangelical Church Alliance:

The moral failure of recently resigned president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Rev. Ted Haggard, may explain in part the leftward drift of the organization over the last several years. It has been a mystery to many of us who watched this venerable institution shake lose of its once secure foundation and slide onto the shifting sands of political correctness, postmodern jargon and social trends. Whether its immediate past president’s troubles came before or after this slide is not as important as what its board of directors does next. The NAE has an opportunity to make a critically important course correction.

I recommend NAE leadership call all of us who label ourselves Evangelicals to a time of humble repentance, contrition and seeking the Lord and His will. Instead of concerning ourselves with what rock superstar Bono thinks we ought to do, let’s instead inquire of the Lord and His Word. Let’s repair the Temple, as King Josiah did, and bring out the Book instead of the polls. Let’s read God’s Holy Law and forget the New York Times.

The NAE will need a leader who holds God’s Word above all else, who is keenly aware of our human predilection toward rebellion against God and His moral will and who sets the organization’s agenda only by the time-tested dictates of the Book. Being a Christian has never been a popularity contest. Jesus said, “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

We are all deeply saddened to see a brother fall, a family suffer, a church injured and reproach of the ministry of the Gospel. We must pray for the repair of the Haggard family, for the accuser to find salvation and deliverance, for the New Life Church to be restored and the NAE to find solid biblical direction. As we do, we must look inward to see our own failings and bring to the Lord the fruit of repentance.

As Evangelicals are once again put in the spotlight this Tuesday, Election Day, let’s tell the reporters at the voting stations, “I don’t take my cues from Ted Haggard, or party leaders or pollsters and pundits. I prayed today, read my Bible and asked the Lord alone to help me. Then, I cast my vote. Now, I pray, ‘thy will be done.’”

Let’s see this episode as a gift from our Heavenly Father who chastens those He loves.

“And now for a little while grace has been shown from the LORD our God, to leave us a remnant to escape, and to give us a peg in His holy place, that our God may enlighten our eyes and give us a measure of revival in our bondage.” (Ezra 9:8)

Apparently Wal-Mart failed to take note of the decline in Ford sales and stock value after they determined to openly support homosexual activism.

Excerpted from Commentary & News Briefs, published Nov 3, 2006, by American Family Association:

Wal-Mart is projecting no improvement in sales this month, meaning it will mark the retail company’s worst sales performance in ten years. According to the Bloomberg News Service, Wal-Mart officials blame the poor showing in receipts on such things as disappointing clothing sales and disarray from store renovations. Wal-Mart has also been the target of recent protests from pro-family leaders over the company’s decision to partner with a homosexual chamber of commerce group. Wal-Mart recently joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) and announced that it would give two large grants to the organization. According to American Family Association sources, the retail giant was rewarded with a position on the board of NGLCC. Wal-Mart has also announced its intention to give preference to homosexual-owned businesses in purchasing products. [Fred Jackson]

Continue reading at AFA…

Excerpted from Halifax Teacher Marshalls ‘Pride’ Parade, published Jul 22, 2006, by Canadian Press:

…DevaStation and DynaMight, a pair of drag queens who wore go-go boots, shiny miniskirts and headdresses about a half-metre tall, said the day is just about having a good time.

“We’ve been here for the last six years and people almost expect us to go crazy now,” said DevaStation. “We just like to have fun — strut ourselves down the road and make everybody take notice.”

Scott Brison, an openly gay MP who is also a candidate for the federal Liberal leadership, shook hands with people lining the streets as he walked in the parade.

“This is not just a celebration of rights for gays and lesbians and bisexual and transgendered Canadians, it’s a celebration of Canadian rights and our Charter (of Rights and Freedoms),” Brison told CTV News.

Continue reading at CTV…