Not the Right Kind of “Hate” Victim.  In 1996, pro-family activist and pastor Ralph Ovadal was punched in the left ear from behind by a homosexual activist while protesting a pro-“gay” school event in Madison, Wisconsin. Ovadal was knocked unconscious and taken to the hospital with serious injuries from the blind-side assault. Although police first charged the attacker with “substantial battery,” Dane Country prosecutors did not attempt a “hate crimes” conviction and Ovadal’s assailant ultimately was not even charged with a misdemeanor (he received a mere ordinance violation). Pastor Ovadal continues to suffer neck and leg pain from the brutal attack, which is fully documented with police reports. Now imagine that the circumstances were reversed and Ovadal — a vocal opponent of organized homosexuality — had assaulted a well-known “gay” activist. Most likely he would have been charged with a “hate crime,” the media would have lavished coverage on the case, and Ovadal would have served jail time. To paraphrase George Orwell, in the politically correct world of “hate crimes,” some victims are more equal than others. Call Congress at 202-224-3121 to protest two “Thought Crimes” bills, HR 256 and HR 262 today. Click on photo to enlarge.

From our good friend and youth advocate Linda Harvey, founder of Mission America. TAKE ACTION by calling your Congressman and U.S. Senators at 202-224-3121 or through www.congress.org; politely urge them to oppose all new “Thought Crimes”(Hate Crimes) legislation.

HATE CRIMES BILLS predicted to move fast in U.S. House

There are two bills now in U.S. House of Representatives on so-called hate crimes, and both need to be OPPOSED for lots of reasons but the most egregious element is the “sexual orientation” language and opportunities for violation of religious freedom and further legitimizing of ‘gay’ behavior. They are also  pork-laden, social engineering bills that are unnecessary in a time of what should be budgetary conservatism.

Just remember,the key problem with hate crime legislation is that the crimes supposedly only covered through such bills are, in fact, already crimes, and can already be prosecuted under current laws. All the “sexual orientation” category does is add extra penalties if opposition to homosexuality (the “wrong” attitude) is determined to be a factor.

“We are leaders in what is good and right and just in this country,” boasts “gay” leader of group that presents “leather leadership” award to homosexual pornographer

See our adjoining story: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Talks of ‘Moral Leadership’ while Honoring Homosexual S&M Pornographer

Rea Carey of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force says her movement shows “moral leadership” to the nation — even as the Task Force presented its “Leather Leadership Award” to a homosexual pornographer. The Task Force’s “Creating Change” conference in Denver ran supportive workshops on: transsexuality; prostitution (“sex workers’ rights”), “polyamory/nonmonogamy”; and – most disturbing – pushing a “sexual freedom” (read: sexual license) agenda on youth.

Dear AFTAH Reader,

If you are reading this website, you are seriously concerned about the homosexual activist agenda.  So I have an assignment for you.  Please print out the enclosed “State of the Movement” speech by the Rea Carey, the new executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and read it all the way through (it’s about 8 printed pages with my introduction).  Now, why would a Christian pro-family organization send out a speech by a radical homosexual activist?  Because we need to know what our Culture War enemies are saying and this speech is very instructive for OUR cause of defending traditional morality and marriage in America.

If you can’t find time to read the whole “Creating Change” speech, at least read the parts of it that we have bolded below.  Note how Ms. Carey talks about “moral leadership” even as the Task Force gave its ‘Leather Leadership Award” to a hard-core homosexual pornographer at the same “Creating Change” conference.  (Talk about chutzpah!)  And note also how she refers to the Bush administration as the “Evil Empire” – Ronald Reagan’s famous description of expansionist Soviet Communism – just as Iraqi citizens were preparing to vote in another free election made possible by the U.S. liberation of their country from the grip of dictator Saddam Hussein.  Nobody lies like the Left, yet the liberal media rarely challenge groups like the Task Force on their many falsehoods and slanders.

School chief is poor role model for boys; has special interest in promoting acceptance of immoral lifestyles to students

Chicago Public Schools’ new CEO Ron Huberman.

Our friend Laurie Higgins at Illinois Family Institute has done an important thing below in rationally discussing the implications of new Chicago schools chief Ron Huberman’s public embrace homosexual conduct (politically correct media translation: he’s “gay”). By questioning Huberman as a role model because he “affirms sexual deviance and … in his personal life volitionally engages in immoral conduct,” Higgins has departed from the popular Newspeak (Gayspeak?) of our age that posits “gays” as a minority and homosexuality as an innocuous trait completely irrelevant to morality and character. This is embodied by the popular phrase that such-and-such person “happens to be gay.” Let’s apply our “substitute-another-sexual-sin” test to see if this makes sense: “Jane, who happens to be an adulterer, is a terrific teacher”; or “Joe, who happens to be into incest, is a really great guy.”

Just like those other destructive sexual sins, homosexual behavior is never morally justifiable.

It is one of the modern treacheries in our spiritually shallow society that even advocates of (traditional) marriage have taken behavior “out” of the debate over homosexuality. During the Prop 8 campaign in California, one spokeswoman FOR the pro-marriage ballot measure even went out of her way to affirm Ellen DeGeneres and “gay” couples in general. How absurd that we should have to promote one evil  — the acceptance of homosexual behavior and relationships — in order to fight another: homosexually-redefined “marriage.”

Lisa Miller and her daughter, Isabella.

Matt Staver of Liberty Counsel writes:

January 29, 2009; www.LC.org

Thank you for your prayers for Lisa Miller. Yesterday Liberty Counsel presented oral argument in Lisa’s case in a Vermont court. At the hearing, an individual who was appointed by the judge to make recommendations in the case gave her opinion that changing custody would be harmful to Isabella. The judge allowed Lisa to retain custody, but ordered unsupervised visitation for four days in March, over the Memorial Day holiday and for five weeks in the summer.

Lisa has been involved in a long battle in Vermont and in her home state of Virginia, to keep an unrelated woman from being given parental rights over Lisa’s daughter Isabella. Before becoming a Christian, Lisa entered into a Vermont Civil Union with Janet Jenkins during a visit to Vermont. Lisa Miller left her former lifestyle and became a Christian when Isabella was 17 months old. Since then, Janet has sought full custody of Isabella, claiming she was a parent even though she was not biologically related to Isabella and never sought to adopt her. Read more about her case on [the Liberty Counsel] website.

I’ve only read a couple chapters of this book, which I should have read when it came out in 2007, but I heartily recommend Dale O’Leary’s One Man, One Woman: A Catholic Guide to Defending Marriage, for anyone needing to become conversant in the arguments in defense of marriage and God-ordained (which is to say normal) sexuality.

This book is a must for any social conservative’s library. (Order it HERE.) I’ve known Dale for over a decade, and few in the pro-family movement have demonstrated the diligence, courage, dedication and intelligence that she has in answering the various propaganda myths and lies emanating from the radical feminists and their homosexual and gender-confused (“transgender”) allies. Here is a typically sensible quote from One Man, One Woman (p. 217):

It’s true that human beings can be weak, selfish, and sinful, and not every married couple will be good parents. But a male/female married couple nonetheless has built into it all the things children need for healthy development: a mother and a father to fulfill parenting roles and to model gender identity; a vowed bond of permanent commitment between two persons with sexual complementarity; and freedom from the stigma and distractions that accompany “experimental” family forms.

How will ‘cosmopolitan evangelicals’ handle the homosexual issue?

I stumbled upon this interesting seminar about American evangelicalism on the Ethics and Public Policy Center website. The event was put on last year by the Pew Forum. A brief excerpt is below and the full transcript is HERE. Note Michael Lindsay’s dichotomy — not “left vs. right” but “cosmopolitan vs. populist” evangelicals.

The question with regard to homosexuality is this: insofar as acceptance of homosexuality (or, in politically correct jargon, the “gay and lesbian community”) has become a defining feature of modern big-city culture, how will the “cosmopolitan evangelicals” react as they seek to retain their influence in “elite” circles? So far we have seen left-leaning evangelicals like Jim Wallis embrace a “rights” framework regarding the pro-homosexual agenda — while still claiming fealty to the Bible. (Wallis favors “civil unions” laws for homosexual couples.) Homosexual activists have applauded the leftward evangelical shift, but Christians who take the Bible’s proscription of homosexual acts seriously view the Evangelical Left’s posturing on this issue as a capitulation to worldly forces, and a violation of Scripture.

The following is a adapted from my response to “Kyle,” a self-proclaimed “gay Catholic” who wrote us through the AFTAH website. Kyle misinterprets Catholic teaching and theology on homosexuality, to be sure [see Catholic pro-family activist Gary Morella’s piece HERE, which also explains how homosexual acts violate Natural Law]. But Kyle’s rationalizations beg the question: do any of us know where our sinful inclinations — whatever they are — come from? Each of us is born into sin in this world, and the Bible teaches that our hearts are naturally “oriented” toward deception (hence young children do not need to be taught to be envious and selfish). Every one of us has done evil things, or thought evil thoughts — yes, not just wrong thoughts but evil ones (such as questioning God’s existence, or His goodness). That’s why we need Jesus Christ. Please pray for Kyle, whose letter is printed below mine. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

___________________

LaBarbera response to “Kyle”:

Kyle …

…I don’t know where my feelings of lust, etc., came from.  So should I join the Lust Pride Movement and rationalize the embrace of that sin. (I’ll call myself a “Luster,” which is analogous to you calling yourself “gay.”) Grow up, Kyle. This is the cop out of the century –– and then you go on to support “gay marriage” –– an incredible blasphemy against God, who created man and woman for each other.  You are responsible for your behavior –– period. Sodomy and all homosexual acts are deeply sinful, the Bible teaches (see Romans 1), so what does it mean to say your “orientation” is “gay”?  Repent and believe Jesus Christ as so many FORMER “gays” – now born again of God — have done. (See Steve Bennett’s wonderful story at www.sbministries.org.)  Are you born again? Do you deny Jesus Christ has the power to help you heal or at least help you remain out of homosexual sin?  There is NO way a faithful Christian can embrace homosexuality.  You are deeply deluded, but there is hope in the Lord, and He WILL forgive you if you humble yourself and seek him like a child, and repent and accept Jesus’ death on the cross as the penalty for your sin. I suggest you start by reading the Gospel of John.

‘Shocking that homosexual bishop was asked to pray at all’

WorldNetDaily.com; posted January 21, 2009

By Judge Roy Moore

Barack Obama, who campaigned on “Change We Can Believe In,” was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States yesterday, Jan. 20, in the most expensive inauguration in the history of our country. Despite a bleak economy and a rising unemployment rate, Obama and we the taxpayers are estimated to have spent over $150 million. That is a lot of “change,” to be sure.

While many in the country were welcoming the Obamas, the incoming president was busy putting out the welcome mat for the homosexual agenda. At the “We are One” gathering at the Lincoln Memorial on the Sunday before the Inauguration, Obama invited Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly “gay” bishop ordained in the Episcopal Church, to give the opening prayer. It seems rather strange that an event to celebrate “unity” would begin with prayer by an individual whose homosexual conduct is responsible for one of the deepest divisions in the Episcopal Church in its history, as various dioceses have severed ties with the Episcopal Church to join the more conservative international Anglican community.

But even more shocking is the fact that Bishop Robinson was asked to pray at all. When questioned about the upcoming event by the Associated Press, Robinson assured them that he would “be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer,” and – not surprisingly – that he would not use a Bible. If that is the accepted view of our new president and those attending the event, then we are indeed in for a “change,” but one actually contrary to our beliefs and very destructive of our national morality. Historically, there has never been a time when Christianity has been so openly shunned and homosexuality so expressly promoted.