If you don't want to miss anything posted on the Americans For Truth website, sign up for our "Feedblitz" service that gives you a daily email of every new article that we post. (This service DOES NOT replace the regular email list.) To sign up for the Feedblitz service, click here.
Americans For Truth is excited to hear about the formation of this Christian “ex-gay” alternative to ExodusInternational, which has lost the trust of many pro-family advocates and Christian leaders due to the perceived unbiblical and erroneous statements by Exodus leader Alan Chambers. See this paper by Bible-and-homosexuality expert and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Prof. Robert Gagnon as the best critique of Chambers’ liberal tilt. Also see former homosexual DL Foster’s blog, Gay Christian Movement Watch. We will have more on the Exodus and Chambers controversy in future posts. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
________________________________
Announcing the Formation of Restored Hope Network and Its First Annual Conference
Contact: David Foster, 615-507-4166
FRANKLIN, Tenn., Aug. 23, 2012 /Christian Newswire/ — Restored Hope Network (RHN) has recently been formed by leaders from throughout North America who seek to minister to homosexuals and other sexually broken individuals according to the historic doctrines of the Christian faith. We seek to be honest about the need for repentance in the life of believer and nonbeliever alike and we seek to communicate the many ways that God brings about real and lasting change in the life of anyone who turns to Him and allows Him to take them through a life-transforming process.
One of RHN’s founding leaders is Frank Worthen, who was the key figure in the founding of Exodus International in 1973. Of this new network, Frank writes:
“I am feeling inexpressible joy that the Lord has brought together a group of people who will not allow the message of hope and change to die in a sea of misguided social/cultural relevance. Restored Hope Network will now carry the torch of freedom from the sin and degradation of homosexuality and the transforming power of Jesus Christ.”
Restored Hope Network will be holding its inaugural conference this coming September 21 & 22 at Sunrise Community Church in Fair Oaks, CA (Sacramento area). Speakers will include Frank Worthen, Andy Comiskey (Desert Stream Ministries), Dr. Robert Gagnon (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) and others.
Mission Statement for “Restored Hope Network”: Restored Hope is a membership governed network dedicated to restoring hope to those broken by sexual and relational sin, especially those impacted by homosexuality. We proclaim that Jesus Christ has life-changing power for all who submit to Christ as Lord; we also seek to equip His church to impart that transformation.
Homosexual activist Wayne Besen — shown here shouting through a bullhorn into the window of a Boston church — which was hosting a meeting of ex-homosexuals — is curiously called upon by the media to discuss tolerance and “hate.” Many pro-family advocates see Besen as one of the most mean-spirited militants in the LGBT movement. Besen works closely with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Dear AFTAH Readers,
God willing, the last few weeks could go down as a turning point in the struggle against the intolerant, aggressive — and often very hateful — Homosexual Lobby in America. First, as many of you know because you participated in it, Americans rallied by the hundreds of thousands behind Chick-fil-A in what I’m calling the first national repudiation of pro-“gay” political correctness in a long time. Then, those of us whose news was not filtered by the liberal media [see this report by Media Research Center] learned of the anti-Christian (politically motivated) “hate crime” at the Family Research Council — which might have been a bloodbath had hero Leo Johnson not stopped “gay” activist Floyd Corkins from going on a shooting spree.
I used to work at FRC, in the same building at 8th & G Streets NW, in Washington, D.C., where gunman Corkins walked in carrying 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches and 50 rounds of ammunition. It lends a whole new meaning to the term “Culture War” to realize that people you know — wonderful Christian advocates like Peter Sprigg [interviewed recently by AFTAH: see Part 1; Part 2; and Part 3]– could have lost their lives at the hands of a sexually-confused, homicidal hatemonger. (Corkins volunteered at a D.C. “gay” center — a fact conveniently left out in some major media reports of the attack.)
As you can imagine, this story hits close to home for those of us engaged in cultural battle against self-styled “queer” militants. Just last October, AFTAH, Christian Liberty Academy, and our pro-family honoree Scott Lively were targeted with a brazen brick attack by pro-homosexual activists, accompanied by a bizarre, al Qaeda-like threatening manifesto published on a left-wing Chicago website. But what happened at FRC takes it up a notch and shows the truly dangerous implications of the Gay Lobby’s fanatical propaganda campaign to redefine historic, Judeo-Christian sexual morality as “hate.” Of course, Floyd Corkins is responsible for this crime, but homosexual activists, the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and the “gay”-cheerleading media are responsible for indulging a preposterous and evil narrative that equates Christian pro-family groups like FRC and AFTAH with racist fringe groups like the KKK.
The following is excerpted from Dana Milbank’s August 16 column in the Washington Post. Naturally, as a Post columnist, Milmank is careful to affirm his pro-homosexuality pedigree. But at least he recognizes the ludicrousness of putting the Family Research Council — and by extension other pro-family groups like AFTAH and AFA smeard by Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) “hate group” charge — in with racist fringe groups. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
___________________________
Hateful speech on hate groups
By Dana Milbank, Published in the Washington Post [full column HERE], August 16, 2012
Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights organization, posted an alert on its blog Tuesday: “Paul Ryan Speaking at Hate Group’s Annual Conference.”
The “hate group” that the Republicans’ vice presidential candidate would be addressing? The Family Research Council, a mainstream conservative think tank founded by James Dobson and run for many years by Gary Bauer.
…
Human Rights Campaign isn’t responsible for the [FRC] shooting. Neither should the organization that deemed the FRC a “hate group,” the Southern Poverty Law Center, be blamed for a madman’s act. But both are reckless in labeling as a “hate group” a policy shop that advocates for a full range of conservative Christian positions, on issues from stem cells to euthanasia.
I disagree with the Family Research Council’s views on gays and lesbians. But it’s absurd to put the group, as the law center does, in the same category as Aryan Nations, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Stormfront and the Westboro Baptist Church. The center says the FRC “often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science.” Exhibit A in its dossier is a quote by an FRC official from 1999 (!) saying that “gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.”
Offensive, certainly. But in the same category as the KKK?
Imagine if anti-FRC gunman Floyd Corkins had been a conservative, and sought to terrorize a “gay” or left-wing organization. The media outrage would be much greater, say MRC’s Brent Bozell.
The following is excerpted from an article published by Media Research Center August 16, 2012:
NBC And CBS Aiding and Abetting Anti-Conservative Hatred
Completely Omit LGBT Activist Gunman’s Motive
ALEXANDRIA, VA – Late yesterday morning [Aug. 15], an armed LGBT activist allegedly opened fire at the Family Research Council (FRC) headquarters in Washington, DC with the intent to kill FRC staffers. He was subdued by a heroic FRC security officer who was shot in the arm by the alleged gunman. The FBI has classified the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism.
Neither NBC Nightly News nor CBS Evening News produced a full story on the FRC shooting, instead committing only 17 and 20 seconds respectively for anchor briefs that omitted the shooter’s motive. Only ABC World News produced a full report on this politically motivated act of violence.
Sources say the gunman walked into the FRC and said, “It’s not about you, it’s about the policy” and shot the guard. The FRC’s mission statement reads, in part, “FRC shapes public debate and formulates public policy that values human life and upholds the institutions of marriage and family.” [It was soon learned that the suspect, Floyd Corkins, had volunteered at the D.C. Center for the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Community.]
The NBC and CBS omissions are merely the latest in a long pattern of the liberal media minimizing or spinning acts of hate and violence perpetrated by liberals. …
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell reacts:
The liberal media have repeatedly and deliberately turned a blind eye to the violent, hateful culture of liberalism, particularly their vicious attacks against those who advocate traditional Christian values and conservative principles. We saw it during their deceptive, romanticized coverage of Occupy Wall Street. We saw it again during their sneering, anti-Christian coverage of the Chick-fil-A controversy. And now we’re seeing it through NBC’s and CBS’s dismissive coverage of this senseless shooting at the FRC, which the FBI has classified as an act of domestic terrorism.
The Washington, D.C. affiliate of ABC, WJLA-TV, reports:
Andrea Lafferty of Traditional Values Coalition
WASHINGTON – The head of a second Christian conservative organization said Friday she was told by authorities that a note containing her group’s contact information was found in the pocket of a man charged with opening fire at the Washington offices of another such group, wounding a security guard.Traditional Values Coalition President Andrea Lafferty said FBI agents visited her group’s Capitol Hill offices hours after the Wednesday morning shooting as part of their investigation. The next day, she said, members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force came by and confirmed that “our information was in his pocket,” including the location of the group’s offices.
…The accused shooter, Floyd Lee Corkins II, of Herndon, Va., was ordered held without bond Thursday on accusations he opened fire in the lobby of the Family Research Council in downtown Washington.
Corkins, whose parents said he strongly supported gay rights, had a backpack full of Chick-fil-A sandwiches and a box of ammunition when he said words to the effect of “I don’t like your politics” and shot a security guard, authorities said.
Says leftists’ “paranoid rhetoric” has “created a monster”…
This large paver brick with threatening hate-message, “Shut Down Lively,” was thrown through the glass doors of the Arlington Heights, IL-based Christian Liberty Academy, in the early morning of October 15, 2011, the day that the school was scheduled to host an AFTAH banquet honoring Scott Lively. Click on photo to enlarge.
The following open letter by our friend Scott Lively was first published August 19, 2012 as a DefendTheFamily.comAlert. I have worked with Scott for decades. Like few others in the world, Lively has experienced the wrath, lies and outright viciousness of the pro-homosexual lobby (which includes fanatically pro-“gay” straights) — yet he has never backed away from biblical truth on this issue. For that reason, AFTAH presented Scott with its 2011 American Truth Teller Award. And as he describes below, because of that we were greeted with our own “domestic terrorism” in the form of two paver bricks thrown through the glass doors of the Christian Liberty Academy (see photo at right), coupled with a threatening manifesto published on a left-wing Chicago website.
There is no reasoning with the radically pro-homosexual, leftist ideologues running Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), who have included AFTAH on their spurious “hate group” list [see our listing among lllinois groups on their “Hate Map.”] But their manipulative “hate” gambit, enabled by the liberal media, is finally being questioned by voices outside the pro-family movement. With last week’s shooting by a “gay” activist at FRC, following the massive outpouring of support for Chick-fil-A, the public is seeing homosexual intolerance and hate in action — and seeing through the pro-LGBT Left’s crass propaganda of portraying civil opponents as “haters,” “bigots,” and “homophobes.” — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
____________________________________
Hey SPLC, Take Me OFF Your Hate, I Mean Hit List!
by Pastor Scott Lively
Scott Lively
This is an open letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center demanding that you CEASE and DESIST labeling me as a “hater,” and viciously lying about me on your website and through your other communications to third parties.
Ever since you put me on your hate list I have been under rhetorical attack from every leftist nut job and “progressive” journalist in America. In 2011 that campaign escalated to terroristic threats backed by vandalism when incensed leftists tried to stop my appearance at Christian Liberty Academy near Chicago to receive the 2011 Truth Teller Award from Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. The night before my speech about the biblical view of homosexuality they smashed out a glass door with a chunk of pavement emblazoned with the demand “SHUT DOWN LIVELY” and then posted a warning on the Internet (a la Al Queda) of more violence to come if the church refused to comply. The local Arlington Heights police department, no doubt influenced by your nationwide “educational” efforts encouraging law enforcement to define only conservatives as “hate groups,” refused to define this attack as a “hate crime.” (See americansfortruth.com/2011/10/15/breaking-brick-throwing-vandals-attack-aftah-banquet-host-christian-liberty-academy/)
In 2012 your Communist fellow-travelers at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed a ridiculously frivolous federal lawsuit against me for “Crimes Against Humanity,” as if I were Adolf Hitler, claiming that my preaching against homosexuality in Uganda led to the murder of Ugandan “gay” leader David Kato. Prominent in the Complaint is your “certification” of me as a hate group and a repetition of the charge you leveled against me in your Summer 2011 “Intelligence Report” Issue # 142 under the title “Murder of Ugandan Again Focuses Spotlight on U.S. Gay-Bashers — Temporarily” stating:
“David Kato Kisule, the leading gay-rights activist in what may be the world’s most virulently anti-gay nation, Uganda, was beaten to death with a hammer in his home outside Kampala on Jan. 26. The murder happened just three months after a local magazine, Rolling Stone, published the names of 100 “homos” under the banner “Hang Them!” — with Kato’s photo prominently displayed on the front page. Scornful attention immediately turned to the contingent of American anti-gay religious crusaders led by Scott Lively, who made a widely criticized visit to Uganda in March 2009 to stir up support for a proposed law that would impose the death penalty or life in prison for certain homosexual acts.”
Demands SPLC end ‘hate group’ list in wake of FRC shooting; chides media for echoing SPLC smear
Family Research Council hero Leo Johnson likely prevented a bloodbath by subduing apparent “gay” activist Floyd Corkins, who shot him in the arm. Johnson is recovering from the gunshot wound.
This column first appeared in WND August 17, 2012By Matt Barber
To borrow from President Obama’s Black Nationalist mentor, Jeremiah Wright, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate-baiting chickens “have come home to roost.” The hard-left group has become everything it presumes to expose.
On Wednesday, homosexual activist Floyd Corkins entered the Washington-based Family Research Council (FRC) armed with a gun and a backpack full of ammunition. He also had 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches (FRC recently defended the food chain’s COO Dan Cathy for pro-natural marriage statements).
The only thing standing between Corkins and mass murder was FRC facilities manager and security specialist Leo Johnson. As Corkins shouted disapproval for FRC’s “politics,” he shot Johnson who, despite a severely wounded arm, managed to tackle Corkins and disarm him (of course, this is all impossible as it’s illegal in Washington, D.C., to carry a concealed weapon).
Of Johnson’s actions, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said, “The security guard here is a hero, as far as I’m concerned.”
I agree.
Upon hearing of Leo’s selfless act of heroism, I was reminded of John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
But according to the SPLC, Leo’s heart is, instead, full of hate. In fact, everyone at FRC is hateful. After all, in 2010 the SPLC, with much fanfare, “officially certified” FRC as a “hate group” for its orthodox Christian positions on marriage and family.
Alongside violence-charged photos of actual hate groups like the Aryan Brotherhood and the KKK, the SPLC lists on its website the decidedly mainstream and always peaceful FRC. [Editors Note: Americans For Truth About Homosexuality is also listed on the SPLC’s spurious “hate map.”]
The following is Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins’ appearance on FOX News’ “America Live with Megyn Kelly” (August 16, 2012). Perkins correctly states that the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) agenda with regard to pro-family groups like FRC that oppose the homosexualist agenda is to marginalize these organizations. AFTAH, American Family Association, Mission America and a host of other pro-family organizations have been similarly smeared as “hate groups” by the SPLC:
Americans For Truth is excited to hear about the formation of this Christian “ex-gay” alternative to Exodus International, which has lost the trust of many pro-family advocates and Christian leaders due to the perceived unbiblical and erroneous statements by Exodus leader Alan Chambers. See this paper by Bible-and-homosexuality expert and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Prof. Robert Gagnon as the best critique of Chambers’ liberal tilt. Also see former homosexual DL Foster’s blog, Gay Christian Movement Watch. We will have more on the Exodus and Chambers controversy in future posts. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
