From Can One Be a “Gay Evangelical”?, by Dr. Robert Gagnon, published Dec 16, 2006:

On 11/29/06, Neela Banerjee, religion reporter for The New York Times, emailed me to ask my views on “gay evangelicals” and about whether I thought “such a term can be honestly used.” On the same day I emailed my response. She took two quotes from my response for her article in the Times on Tuesday, Dec. 12, entitled “Gay and Evangelical, Seeking Paths of Acceptance” (front page, continued on p. 18; temporarily available on the web here). She was pleasant in her email. However, her handling of my response merits some comment and qualification. Here is the excerpt from the article that quotes me, along with the immediate context of her article and with boldface added to the quotations of my words:

From Stop Blaming Theology For Your Apathy, by Chuck Baldwin, published Dec 15, 2006, by Chuck Baldwin Live:

It is more than interesting to observe how professing Christians will use their own understanding of doctrine to either justify themselves or blame others. However, the truth is, regardless of one’s personal view of eschatology, there is absolutely no room for fatalism or apathy. Whether one has a dispensational, covenant, or reform ideology, our responsibility as Christians is the same. We are commanded by our Lord to be “faithful unto death.”

I know dispensationalists who will excuse their apathy by saying, “It’s the last days, and there is nothing we can do about it.” Or, “This is just prophecy being fulfilled; we can’t stop it.”

On the other hand, I hear reformers excuse their apathy by saying, “Everything is pre-determined. We have no say in the matter.” Or, “What will be, will be; we can change nothing.”

Therefore, does it really matter from what theological perspective one comes, if apathy, indifference, and inactivity is the result? Regardless of one’s personal view of theology, if the result of one’s belief system produces apathy and fatalism, what good is it?

As Christians, we are plainly instructed to be “light” and “salt” amidst a crooked and sinful world. We are clearly commanded to remain “steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.” Regardless of worldly circumstances or theological nuances, we are told to be diligent, active, fruitful, and aggressive in both our promotion of right and our opposition to wrong.

Beyond that, as Americans, there is another important lesson we need to heed. That is the warning by Christ, who said, “To whom much is given, of him much shall be required.”

We Americans have been given much. We were bequeathed a free and independent nation, a nation founded on Biblical principles, a nation founded on the Christian faith. This legacy did not come without price. Our forebears suffered long and hard to give us-their posterity-this free land.

Are we now going to sit down in apathy and indifference and allow this country to be overtaken by the forces of secularism, socialism, and globalism? Are we not willing to fight for right? Are we so weak and cowardly that we would surrender our freedoms and liberties without a struggle?

This surprising news just in: God the Creator knows best.

Excerpted from Abstinence Alone Protects Fully Against HIV, Ugandan First Lady Tells Youth, by Gudrun Schultz, published Dec 6, 2006 by LifeSite News:

Janet Museveni, First Lady of Uganda, has continued her strong support for the country’s successful abstinence campaign against HIV/AIDS with a statement encouraging youth to live lives of “love, faith and purity,” New Vision reported December 2.

“I would not be caught advising you to take any shortcuts or compromise your lives by using any device invented by man, such as condoms, in order to facilitate any desire to go against God’s clear plan for your life,” Mrs. Museveni told students at the Uganda Christian University, Mukono, for World AIDS Day.

“God’s plan for your life is that you should honour your body because it is His temple.”

Warning the young people that they should not be complacent as HIV infection rates rise, Mrs. Museveni asked them to encourage other students to abstain from premarital sex.

Ugandan President Museveni and his wife introduced a program encouraging sexual abstinence before marriage and fidelity afterwards, in an attempt to combat the scourge of HIV/AIDS.

The program has been harshly condemned by international organizations promoting condom use, but in fact Ugandan HIV transmission rates dropped by as much as 75% in some regions after the program was introduced, down to 5-7% from a high of 18%.

Continue reading at LifeSite News…

“We curse the spirit that would come
to bring about same-sex marriage …

We ask you to just look over this place today,
cause them to be shaken in their very heart
in uprightness, Lord, to do [what] is right before you.”

–– Rev. Vincent Fields’ prayer in the New Jersey senate chamber

By Peter LaBarbera

In case you hadn’t noticed, there is a war between good and evil going on in this country, between those who agree with God and those who fight for worldly and immoral agendas — homosexuality, abortion, pornography — that He opposes.

On Monday, the Rev. Vincent Fields (pictured above), having been invited to give the honorary invocation for the New Jersey State Senate, acted on a prompting from the God he serves. For that reason, this preacher will not be invited back to pray in an official capacity for New Jersey lawmakers.

Rev. Fields, (pictured above), pastor of Greater Works Ministries in Pleasantville, N.J., said that when he arrived Monday, he didn’t plan on praying against “gay marriage,” but “the Holy Spirit took over, and I had to pray what He said.”

Here is Rev. Fields’ prayer: “We curse the spirit that would come to bring about same-sex marriage … We ask you to just look over this place today, cause them to be shaken in their very heart in uprightness, Lord, to do [what] is right before you.”

After offense was taken at Rev. Fields’ too-truthful prayer, New Jersey’s Senate President Richard Codey (D) told the Newark Star-Ledger that Rev. Fields will “not be back” to pray in the Senate. The reverend needn’t fret; he is in good company: I doubt that the real, holy God of the Bible has been welcome in that chamber for quite some time. Yesterday was a case in point, as the New Jersey legislature passed a bill legalizing “civil unions” — counterfeit “same-sex marriage” in everything but the name — with an ease that makes one wonder if the Church in the Garden State is in hibernation.

Blue state New Jersey has become a bastion of officially-sanctioned secular immorality: you may recall that the state’s highest court voted 4-3 to mandate that the legislature pass either “gay marriage” or “gay marriage lite” (civil unions) — and the three dissenters were upset only that the court didn’t go all the way and require FULL “gay marriage.” In other words, not a single justice on the New Jersey Supreme Court — including several appointed by Republican governor Christine Todd Whitman — had a problem with giving marital-type rights and privileges to homosexuals.

Getting back our passion

Too often in the cultural debate over homosexuality, the debate is reduced to secular studies and research (e.g., how studies show that it’s better for children to have a mom and a dad). These are worthy pursuits because secular research validates divine truth, and many Americans have closed their minds to the Bible.

That said, appeals to God, the Bible and morality are the most powerful motivators in this struggle because they cut to the heart — at least for Christians. The less often Scripture is spoken in public debates, the less relevant it becomes to society. Surely the vast majority of serious Christians and religious people in the United States would agree with Rev. Fields’ prayer: there IS an ungodly spirit that surrounds the promotion of homosexuality. It is manifested in all aspects of the movement — from the hyper-promiscuity in the “gay” male world to the latest in “queer” theology, which twists the holy Scriptures to claim that homosexuality is a “gift from God.”

And, yes, this ungodly spirit is also found in the quest for domesticated, monogamous homosexuality that merely “regularizes sin,” to quote Rob Gagnon, while still mocking and radically redefining God’s perfect design for marriage and family.

Many of us are intimidated against speaking out on God’s behalf, but the “gay” lobby is quite willing to fill the void — “preaching” at us with its slick but morally bankrupt message that “being gay” is naturally “who they are,” and demonizing Christians as “haters.” They can redefine words all they want, but homosexual behavior will always be wrong, and “gay pride” is direct rebellion against God.

Truth is, homosexual sin is so egregious that the Bible calls it an “abomination” — crying out for judgment by all those who agree with God. If it is not wrong for men to commit sodomitic perversions with other men, and women with women — what Noah Webster termed a “crime against nature” in a wiser age — then nothing is wrong. Sterile public policy debates often fail to convey the moral outrage of legitimizing this destructive lifestyle, as do religious compromisers like Peggy Campolo who seek to make an accommodation with homosexuality, often out of pity for friends or relatives trapped in this lifestyle.

An America where you can’t judge anything as wrong — except Bible-believing Christians and “intolerant” religious people — is a banal and spiritually lifeless America, its moral energy sapped out of it. This is liberalism today. Behold how quickly social liberals like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) moved from considering homosexual “domestic partnership” (and eschewing “gay marriage”) to now embracing homosexual “marriage” as a civil right. And why not? They have no moral absolutes, or at least they don’t share God’s: if you can rationalize the legalized slaughter of innocent unborn life and call it a “choice,” why not let two guys or two ladies “playing house,” to quote ex-homosexual Stephen Bennett, call their arrangement a “marriage”?

Most Americans still call themselves Christian in this country, but when Christianity tolerates everything, it means nothing. There IS such a thing as “God’s side” of some core issues, and those who embrace homosexuality, abortion and pornography ain’t on it.

This is the season to remind ourselves that Jesus Christ came to save men from their sins. The Bible says that those who reject Christ stand condemned (John 3:16-18), but that He offers forgiveness and spiritual rebirth to all, including repentant homosexuals (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). (Yes, there were “ex-gays,” so to speak, in Bible times.) If there is no sin, then there is no need for Christ. Pro-family advocates are often accused of arrogance for “judging” homosexuality as wrong, but the real arrogance comes from those who would effectively pronounce God (and His Word) a liar, because they — frail, created humans on this earth but a moment in the vast scope of time — know better than He does about what’s right and wrong.

In New Jersey, it’s easy to despair as homosexual activists claim yet another court-assisted victory, and all we have for inspiration is Rev. Fields’ Holy Spirit-led prayer. But the faithful pastor actually points the way back for our nation. Secular studies and catchy sound-bites will not bring a return of God’s blessing, but spiritual revival and repentance will — by bringing about godly humility and a desire to obey His moral laws, and creating a newfound wonder at His marvelous creation, including marriage and the family.

To bring about that repentance we need many more like Vincent Fields, men and women who are willing to cast off the shackles of Political Correctness and speak God’s truth to a dying culture. Some will say that Rev. Fields is only the latest casualty in America’s Culture Wars. To me, he is a loyal soldier who refused to squelch the voice of God to please men.

Peter LaBarbera is the president of Americans For Truth.

Excerpted from Pastor at Senate Invocation curses ‘Spirit’ of Gay Marriage, published Dec 12, 2006, by Star-Ledger (New Jersey):

A pastor delivering the invocation at the opening of yesterday’s Senate session included in his prayer a condemnation of gay marriage.

“We curse the spirit that would come to bring about same-sex marriage,” the Rev. Vincent Fields, pastor of Greater Works Ministries in Absecon, prayed as lawmakers listened, heads bowed. “We ask you to just look over this place today, cause them to be shaken in their very heart in uprightness, Lord, to do that is right before you.”

Earlier yesterday the [NJ state] Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation to allow gay couples to form civil unions with the same rights as married couples.

Continue reading in Star-Ledger…

Dr. Albert Mohler discusses the New York Times article on “transgender” children and also interviews Rabbi Bruce Ginsberg, cantor for the Congregation Sons of Israel in Woodmere, NY, regarding the controversy within conservative Judaism over interpretations of Scripture regarding homosexuality.

Click HERE to listen.

Excerpted from When the Gender Line Isn’t Clear?, by Dr. Albert Mohler, published Dec, 2006:

As a society, we are falling (or diving) deeper and deeper into gender confusion. A considerable percentage of the policy-making elite has bought into the ideology of fluid gender and absolute self-expression. Once that idea takes hold, the reality of cross-dressing kindergartners becomes inevitable.

This is where the Christian worldview runs into direct collision with the new sexual ideologies. Christians see the reality of biological identity as a gift–one important way the Creator has told us who we are and how we are to glorify Him with our lives.

Continue reading at Albert Mohler…

Contact:
Peter LaBarbera (630) 717-7631
Linda Harvey (614) 442-7998

CHICAGO, Ill. —Today, World AIDS Day, a coalition of pro-family and Christian leaders is asking “Purpose-Driven Life” author Rick Warren to address head-on the issue of homosexuality and “gay” promiscuity as prime contributors to the spread of HIV in the United States, as Warren leads a “Global AIDS Summit” at his Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California.

The “AIDS Truth Coalition” is asking Warren and other leaders in the AIDS-fighting community — including the new U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, Mark Dybul (who identifies as “gay”) — to call for the closure of all commercial homosexual bathhouses and sex clubs to help slow down the disease’s spread in the United States.

“While Christians and churches mobilize to fight the HIV pandemic on far away continents, let us not neglect the major catalyst for AIDS here in the United States of America: homosexual promiscuity, tolerated and encouraged by pro-‘gay,’ ‘safer-sex’ advocates,” said Peter LaBarbera, President of Americans For Truth and member of the AIDS Truth Coalition. “It’s time to acknowledge the pink elephant in the room: fighting AIDS without talking against homosexuality is like fighting lung cancer without talking against smoking.”

Noting that the response of “politically correct AIDS organizations” is to distribute condoms, even at homosexual bathhouses, LaBarbera said, “Passing out condoms at sex clubs designed specifically to facilitate men having reckless, anonymous sex with other men is preposterous. Wouldn’t it make more sense to mobilize all government agencies — federal, state and local — to close down these disease-spreading centers to save men’s lives?”

Even homosexual leaders are “reclaiming” the link between homosexuality and HIV/AIDS. Lorri Jean, CEO of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, which recently launched an ad campaign built around the message, “HIV is a Gay Disease. Own it. End it,” said:

“In Los Angeles County, gay and bisexual men make up less than 7% of the population but account for more than 75% of the people living with HIV/AIDS … The men in our community continue to get infected at an alarming rate, continue to get sick, and continue to die. Most alarmingly, a new generation of young gay men has grown up accepting the epidemic as a community norm. That must change.”

Linda Harvey, president of Mission America, said: “We call on Rick Warren to get real about HIV and AIDS in this country. Males having sex with other males is the single largest cause of HIV in the U.S. Will Warren get to the heart of what’s really at stake here? Will he say, flat out, that people who are practicing homosexuality need to get out of that lifestyle? Will he tell his millions of followers that being an open and unrepentant homosexual is incompatible with the Gospel?”

Harvey said even more critical is the need to strongly direct youth away from homosexuality, and encouraged him to work for the closure of homosexual school clubs that lead students to embrace unhealthy “gay” and “transgender” identities.

“The Saddleback Church web site says they believe that ‘the Bible is God’s perfect guidebook for living;’” said Harvey. “Scripture calls homosexuality an ‘abomination,’ and the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 1 describes how homosexual sex is an affront to God’s beautiful creation. The outcome of unnatural sex is the death of thousands of people in this country. We ask Pastor Warren to step out courageously and call for an end to the misguided endorsement of homosexuality and ‘gay marriage’ (and its twin, ‘civil unions’) by those in positions of influence.

San Diego Christian activist and former homosexual James Hartline issued the following statement:

While Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church is doing a noble service for the people of Africa by holding a global summit on AIDS, I must ponder in my mind where pastors like Rick Warren were those many years when I was struggling to get out of homosexuality. For thirty years, I struggled with homosexuality and it was not until I was finally infected with AIDS at a homosexual bathhouse in San Diego, California that the physical consequences of that sin finally began to lead me away from that destructive lifestyle.

Like me, hundreds of thousands of young men have been infected in the death chambers of the gay bathhouses in California and across America. Sadly, most of them are now dead from the HIV that they caught in these establishments. … It is noble that Rick Warren cares so much for the Africans living 10,000 miles away from his church who are infected with AIDS. It is tragic, though, that he and others like him have not spoken out forcefully against the holocaust of homosexuality and the dozens of bathhouses in California where so many men are getting sick and dying. Not to mention the millions of families that are forced to pay for the financial costs of caring for all of those sick and dying from homosexuality and the gay bathhouses where they were infected with AIDS.

Stephen Bennett, a man who once engaged in the homosexual lifestyle for over 11 years and is now happily married to his wife of 13 years and father of the couple’s two children, said:

“The spread of HIV and AIDS worldwide CAN come to an end ONLY when the promotion, acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality worldwide comes to an end. Pastor Rick Warren knows that truth—yet does he have the courage to proclaim that? Warren chose the noble battle to end HIV and AIDS. Well, homosexuality is a big part of that package. Rick Warren should make it his ‘purpose’ in his ‘driven life’ to drive home the truth about the destructive and deadly alliance between homosexuality, HIV and AIDS. To do anything less is hopeless, ‘purposeless’ and simply a waste of time.”

All members of the AIDS Truth Coalition said the Bush administration sent the wrong signal about fighting AIDS when Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice officially “blessed” the homosexual relationship of Mark Dybul, the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, at his swearing-in ceremony Oct. 10. With the First Lady present, Ms. Rice publicly recognized Dybul’s male partner, Jason Claire, and referred to Claire’s mother as Dybul’s “mother-in-law,” thus radically redefining the family and helping to mainstream homosexual behavior.

The following pro-family leaders and organizations are part of the HIV Truth Coalition:

Peter LaBarbera, Americans for Truth

Linda Harvey, Mission America

James Hartline, James Hartline Report

Phil Burress, Citizens for Community Values

Brian Camenker, Mass Resistance

Sandy Rios, Culture Campaign

Michael Heath, Christian Civic League of Maine

David Smith, Illinois Family Institute

Stephen J. Bennett, Stephen Bennett Ministries Worldwide

Dr. Vic Eliason, VCY America Radio Network

Randy Thomasson, Campaign for Children & Families

Diane Gramley, American Family Association of Pennsylvania

Joe Glover, Family Policy Network

Cathie Adams, Texas Eagle Forum

Anthony Verdugo, Christian Family Coalition

Christopher Long, Ohio Christian Alliance