“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3: 16-18)

“This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” (Romans 3:22)

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Nativity scene in Chicago’s Daley Plaza. An atheists’ display sits nearby — offering a contrast between God and secularism, and good and evil.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and Blessed Holiday, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the World!  Yesterday I had planned to bring you another AFTAH story that illustrates the depravity of man and the evil of organized homosexuality – but since it grotesquely blasphemed Jesus I could not bring myself to post it just days before Christmas.  (I will do so December 26.)

The other day I was reading a Christian book and the author named these as the most important words ever spoken:

“Jesus answered [Thomas], ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.  Nobody comes to the Father except through Me.’” – John 14:6

As C.S. Lewis wrote, the man who uttered those words is either a lunatic, a liar, or the Son of God (Lord).  I believe He is the latter – and I want to know Him better and become more like Him through His grace in 2014.  I hope you do, too.

America is in dire straits, as we all know.  Good has become evil and evil good (Isaiah 5:20), and apparently believers in Christ are the only group in society that it is OK to ridicule and malign.  (See our release on Phil Robertson, and read what the Duck Dynasty patriarch actually said about sexual sin.)  So many Americans are “wise in their own eyes,” and as a nation we have not just kicked God to the curb – but are in many quarters defiantly celebrating evils like abortion-on-demand, pornography, fornication and homosexual “marriage.”

And then there is the rise of the Religious Left (e.g., see the mischievously-named Faithful America), which promotes sin in the name of God.  Somehow we think that even while blatantly disobeying God’s moral law or relegating Him to the role of sentimental prop, America can remain “the greatest nation on earth.”  (We can’t.)

Perhaps like many of you, when I watch those some of the old Christmas movies like It’s a Wonderful Life, I am struck by how America was more innocent as a nation and more good – despite our many shortcomings – than we are today in all our supposed sophistication.  I realize that each generation says this about the one before, but no American generation ever approached the rebellion against Nature and its Creator of calling homosexualism “marriage”!

 “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death,” wrote the Psalmist (14:12).  This is as important a verse for homosexuals – and all of us dragged down by our sinful “orientation” – as Romans 1:24-27. For as the Apostle John wrote about Jesus: “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.” (John 3:19)

Politics cannot save us (yet we must resist calls to pull away from it).  More conservatives won’t do it (especially when so many are secularists, libertarians – or worse, atheists like S.E. Cupp who crusade for homosexual “marriage”).  Republicans, too, fall short — how instructive is it that it is precisely God’s moral dictates that many in the GOP want to jettison (to win elections, they claim)?!

So what will save America?  More of Jesus, who turns lives around – lives like Michael Glatze, who went from being an up-and-coming “gay” activist to a maturing Christian and pastor who just married his bride Rebekah in October.  The Christ of Christmas is our hope!  Join me in making the pledge to get into your Bible in 2014 to pursue a righteousness that can only come from heaven above.

Thank you for standing with AFTAH!  We are so blessed to fight for God’s Truth alongside countless Americans like you who value God’s revealed wisdom on sexual morality over the sin-stained ideas and formulations of men.  Please pray for AFTAH, and help us with a year-end donation as you are able.

—  Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH.org

PS. Your gifts to AFTAH are tax-deductible; to receive a tax deduction for 2013, your gift must be received [i.e., online donations] and/or postmarked before midnight on December 31.  Mail your donation to: AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522.  Give online HERE.

From de-criminalization of the “great moral evil” of homosexuality to a “powerful, clamouring, threatening, vengeful” Homosexual Lobby

“Thus we began by attempting to right what was felt an ancient injustice and we ended up with a monster in our midst, powerful and clamouring, flexing its muscles, threatening, vengeful and vindictive towards anyone who challenges its outrageous claims, and bent on making fundamental – and to most of us horrifying – changes to civilised patterns of sexual behavior.” – British historian Paul Johnson, The Quest for God

Corrupting Children: As opposed to jaded Americans, Jamaicans are still shocked by the radical homosexual agenda — including pro-homosexual “children’s” picture books like the above, “King & King,” about a “gay” prince who “marries” another prince rather than a princess. Historian Paul Johnson describes how what began in the U.K. in the name of “compassion” for homosexuals (rescinding anti-sodomy laws) morphed into a vengeful “monster in our midst” — the powerful Homosexual Lobby. Today’s homosexual activists will even corrupt the minds and souls of the very young in their desperate quest to rationalize their sinful behavior, which God condemns.

By Peter LaBarbera

Folks, when I was in Jamaica I took time in my presentations to share this compelling passage from British historian Paul Johnson, from his book, The Quest for God: A Personal Pilgrimage. (Hat tip to Paul Cameron of Family Research Institute for bringing this to light.) I have found nothing that better explains the inevitable slippery slope of indulged pro-homosexual activism — from the repeal of anti-sodomy laws (motivated by well-intended but misguided compassion toward homosexuals as “victims”); to demands for “tolerance” of homosexuality; to the steady growth of a “gay rights” movement winning passage of laws granting affirmative “rights” based on sexual perversion (and gender confusion); to homosexual and transgender advocacy in schools (targeting even the very young [see book photo]); and ultimately, to the rise of a powerful, well-heeled Homosexual/Transgender Lobby that achieves dominance in society at the expense of biblical truth, religious tradition, public health and the rights of others to disagree.

Note that Johnson correctly calls homosexuality a “great moral evil” – something I think even many committed Christians – neutered by political correctness and decades of “gay” propaganda – today would have a hard time admitting (to their shame). Johnson, writing in 1996, had not yet experienced the attachment of this moral evil to the noble institution of marriage itself (as is now legal in the U.K and in 16 American states). Sin’s advance – like an insatiable, devouring monster — destroys people and cultures, and displaces virtue with man-centered notions of wrong as right (Isaiah 5:20).

But God’s Truth – our Creator’s standard of righteousness – is unchanged – despite fanatical efforts by religious homosexuals to co-opt even Christianity itself. Like homosexual (mis)behavior, the ideology of homosexualism – proud homosexuality aggressively defended as a “civil right” and moral good – is an egregious sin before God. (For if, as the Word of God teaches, homosexual practice is detestable and always sinful in God’s sight, how can a movement based on condoning and celebrating it be any less so?) [See Leviticus 20:13 (note the context), Jude 7 (a verse liberals conveniently ignore in distorting the meaning of Sodom and Gomorrah), Romans 1:26-27, and 1 Corinthians 6:7-11.]

Of course, we in America have our own arrogant and vengeful “gay” (LGBT) “monster in our midst” — and I warned the Jamaicans that they, too, will have one if they give in to Western powers by opening up the Pandora’s box of homosexual “rights” in their country. The smart and resolute Jamaican leaders and pastors whom I encountered understand the tragic lesson from Britain and the United States: all attempts to appease this self-justifying Sin Movement are doomed to fail, as each concession leads only to further, and more radical, demands.

Jamaican Pastor Rev. Everal Edwards (left) of Church of the Open Bible in Kingston, with AFTAH’s Peter LaBarbera, who was a guest speaker at the church. “Right is right, and wrong is wrong,” said Edwards, in response to international pressure on Jamaica to repeal its anti-buggery law banning homosexual conduct. The law is largely unenforced but repealing it is only the first in a long chain of homosexual activist demands in the island nation.

It was the Irish statesman Edmund Burke who famously said: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” Let us hope and pray that the Jamaicans (and Russians, Czechs, Poles, etc.) succeed at stopping the LGBT juggernaut and avoiding our tragic fate. Please pass on this excerpt to others – especially those who naively – or cravenly – counsel “compromise,” retreat or surrender in the face of escalating homosexual activist demands.  – Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality

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Johnson “Monster in our Midst” Passage:

Excerpt from The Quest for God: A Personal Pilgrimage, by Paul Johnson (pages 28-29) [emphasis is added, and for readability I have also broken in half the paragraph beginning, “I believe…”]:

…after a section in which Johnson discusses radical, worldly movements – race, sexual, environment and health politics — that collectively present an alternative to God and traditional religion:

“The radical agenda …with its strong appeal to the idealistic, as well as the materialistic, instincts of mankind, especially among young people, does constitute an alternative religion. Like any other form of humanism, it replaces God by man, and the welfare – or supposed welfare – of man, rather than the worship of God and obedience to his commandments, as the object of human existence and the purpose of society. That, of course, is its defect. The Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner once argued that it is the consciousness of God, the acceptance that there is power outside and above ourselves, to whom we owe allegiance and whose guidance we must follow, which essentially distinguishes mankind from other creatures. If belief in God were ever to fade completely from the human mind, we would not, Promethean-like, become masters of our fate; on the contrary, we would descend to the status of very clever animals, and our ultimate destiny would be too horrible to contemplate.

I believe this argument to be profoundly true, and corroborated by history, and what worries me about the new radical agenda is the danger that it will dehumanise man just as the totalitarian alternatives did, though no doubt in rather different ways. But there are further, related objections. All the items on the agenda lend themselves to extremism. Take, for instance, the issue of homosexuality, an important part of the sexual politics item. There were many of us, in the 1960s, who felt that there were grave practical and moral objections to the criminalisation of homosexuality, and who therefore supported, as happened in most Western countries, changes in the law which meant that certain forms of homosexual behavior ceased to be unlawful. Homosexuality itself was still to be publicly regarded by society, let alone by the churches, as a great moral evil, but men who engaged in it, within strictly defined limits, would no longer be sent to prison. We believed this change to be the maximum homosexuals deserved or could reasonably expect.

Paul Johnson

We were proved totally mistaken. Decriminalisation made it possible for homosexuals to organise openly into a powerful lobby, and it thus became a mere platform from which further demands were launched. Next followed demands for equality, in which homosexuality was officially placed on the same moral level as standard forms of sexuality, and dismissal of identified homosexuals from sensitive positions, for instance in schools, children’s homes, etc., became progressively more difficult. This was followed in turn by demands not merely for equality but privilege: the appointment, for instance, of homosexual quotas in local government, the excision from school textbooks and curricula, and university courses, passages or books or authors they found objectionable, special rights to proselytise, and not least the privilege of special programmes to put forward their views – including the elimination of the remaining legal constraints – on radio and television. Thus we began by attempting to right what was felt an ancient injustice and we ended up with a monster in our midst, powerful and clamouring, flexing its muscles, threatening, vengeful and vindictive towards anyone who challenges its outrageous claims, and bent on making fundamental – and to most of us horrifying – changes to civilised patterns of sexual behavior.

Here indeed we have sexual politics in action. And, as with other alternatives to God, the result is not human happiness, but human misery. The homosexual community, as they now styled themselves, by their reckless promiscuity during the 1970s and 1980s, helped to spread among their members the fearful scourge of AIDS, a killer disease of a peculiarly horrible nature, for which there is no cure, and no immediate likelihood of a cure….

AFTAH in the News – Urge Gov. Walker to reconsider support for ‘Big Gay Government’ ENDA bill

“If Christians are already being persecuted under state and local gay rights laws, why would you support a federal gay rights law which is only going to give the homosexual lawyers more power to oppress people of faith?” — Peter LaBarbera, to One News Now, 12/10/13

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TAKE ACTION: Contact Gov. Scott Walker and urge him to rethink his misguided endorsement of ENDA (the Employment Non-Discrimination Act) — which will only add to the burdens on small business owners and make it easier for government to punish businessmen who oppose “gay marriage” and the the agenda to normalize homosexuality and transgenderism.  1) Call the Governor’s Office at 608-266-1212 (or you can leave a message at his campaign office, “Friends of Scott Walker,” at 608-441-1640); 2) E-mail the governor through his office at govgeneral@wisconsin.gov; or 3) contact Gov. Walker through online Contact Page.

Great Heritage Foundation ENDA resource: go HERE for an excellent report by the Heritage on ENDA [get a printable PDF of the report HERE].

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Dear AFTAH Readers,

Like many of you, I’m a big fan of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (Republican). He fought off the Left in that state and enacted some key fiscal reforms that have turned Wisconsin around. But I was stunned to see a Bloomberg Report where the Governor backed ENDA — the pro-homosexual, pro-transgender Employment Non-Discrimination Act — which will vastly grow homosexual/transgender activist power in the United States if it passes the House. (ENDA already passed in the Senate with the help of 10 Republicans; see vote tally HERE.)

There is a powerful push by LGBT activists and “moderate” Republicans to make the Party pro-homosexual. Every conservative I have told about Walker’s statement has been shocked by it — yes, “change” is coming fast and hard in the GOP. All Christians and pro-family Americans (even non-Republicans) should fight those working to erode the Party’s values. Please read this short report from our friends at American Family Association’s “One News Now” and TAKE ACTION TODAY to let the governor know that — perhaps without giving it much thought — he just endorsed a bill, ENDA, that is:

1) Anti-conservative
2) Anti-freedom
3) A major threat to religious liberty and freedom of conscience in America
4) Big Government liberalism in action.

Follow the “Take Action” steps above and urge Gov. Walker (phone: 608-266-1212) to rethink his position on ENDA! Thank you. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH.org

Read it on One News Now: http://www.onenewsnow.com/politics-govt/2013/12/10/enda-plus-traditional-marriage-healthy-balance-of-rights#.UqnTOfRDuHg

One News Now reports [subscribe to O.N.N. Daily News Briefs HERE]:

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ENDA + traditional marriage = ‘healthy balance’ of rights?

Gov. Scott Walker

A pro-family activist who works to expose the truth about homosexuality is deeply disappointed in Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s recent statement in defense of his state’s Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

United States, European Union use foreign aid to pressure small Caribbean nation to make pro-homosexual change

Folks, this is a well-done video by the Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society, which is co-sponsoring a pro-family conference in the capital of Kingston tomorrow. Jamaica is being pressured — by pro-homosexual forces worldwide (including the United States, which supports the main LGBT group in the country) — to rescind its laws against homosexual behavior. I will be speaking for AFTAH at tomorrow’s event, titled “International Law and the Welfare of the Family.” The U.K.-based Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship (affiliated with Christian Concern) is the other co-sponsor. I cannot help but think that millions of American young people — and their parents! — would benefit greatly by watching this 55-minute video. — Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth

‘Gay’ activists use Thanksgiving to be “thankful for” homosexual advances

“[I]t is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.” — George Washington, in his Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, Oct. 3, 1789

The ACLU and secular leftists would seem to be at war with the Thanksgiving Day Proclamation of our nation’s first President, George Washington, who declared that “it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.”

By Peter LaBarbera

As we enjoy Thanksgiving Day tomorrow with our families, we should remember that the original purpose of Thanksgiving was to thank God for our blessings as Americans. This is clearly demonstrated by two of the “founding documents” of Thanksgiving (reprinted below) – George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Day Proclamations. Both pay homage to God (so much for ACLU’s vision of separating God from State).

As secularism and – dare I say – godlessness deepen in these United States, many are leaving God out of Thanksgiving Day. Language always follows the heart: have you noticed the habit that has crept in of people being thankful for this and that – without being thankful to God?

Now homosexuality advocates (and others) have taken this regrettable phenomenon a step further: using Thanksgiving as an opportunity to be “thankful for” developments that are decidedly ungodly – e.g., the advance of out-and-proud homosexualism, including “same-sex marriage,” in the United States.

I came upon this homosexual website article timed for Thanksgiving about homosexuals being thankful for various “gay rights” achievements, including more lesbians on TV! We know as Christians and Bible-respecting Jews that Our Heavenly Father is not smiling on that: here is some eternal, unchanging biblical truth on the sin of lesbianism and homosexuality:

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. (Romans 1: 24-27)

And here is some eternal, unchanging Good News for lesbians and all sinners [emphasis added]:

Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a] 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) 

Thanking God for sin?

And so, we have come full circle: citizens of a nation founded “under God” use our annual day of gratitude — conceived to humbly give thanks to God — to celebrate sin. How insidious is the “Progressive” Left’s radical redefinition of everything noble – patriotism, liberty, equality, and now even God Himself – to advance their destructive agendas?

The following is Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s (D) elaborate signing ceremony for the legalization of homosexual “marriage” in Illinois. This occurred at the UIC Forum at the University of Illinois-Chicago, on November 20, 2013. Quinn’s main speech, in which he invokes the Apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 13) begins around the 56 minute mark. (This is not the place to address the folly of Quinn’s actions, nor his shameless appropriation of God and Christianity to celebrate immorality; for a great website on the Bible and homosexuality, see our friend Prof. Robert Gagnon’s site at www.RobGagnon.net):

Americans For Truth About Homosexuality

News Release

November 20, 2013

Contact: Peter LaBarbera: 312-324-3787; americansfortruth@gmail.com

CHICAGO—Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) will be protesting Gov. Pat Quinn’s elaborate signing ceremony for Illinois’ “gay marriage” law at the UIC Forum in Chicago today – and condemns his shameful exploitation of Abraham Lincoln to advance this immoral legislation.

Michael Sneed of the Chicago Sun-Times reported yesterday that Gov. Quinn has shipped the desk that President Lincoln used to craft his First Inaugural Address to UIC for the homosexual “marriage” bill-signing. Quinn and other Democrats have evoked the noble Black civil rights movement and even emancipation from slavery as parallels for passage of SB 10, which legalizes same-sex “marriage.”

AFTAH will be outside the UIC Forum (725 W. Roosevelt Rd, in Chicago) under a banner evoking the American Declaration of Independence: “Homosexual ‘Marriage’: Against Nature & Nature’s God.” To contact AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera, call 312-324-3787, or e-mail americansfortruth@gmail.com.

Said AFTAH’s LaBarbera: “It’s bad enough that homosexual extremists for years have been promoting the preposterous lie that Lincoln was ‘gay.’ Now we see his noble legacy on behalf of Black Americans appropriated by the Left to justify homosexual ‘marriage’ – which has nothing to do with civil rights and everything to do with normalizing a changeable sexual sin.

“Abe Lincoln had a great respect for the Bible as the Word of God, and he encouraged others to read it to better their lives. It is inconceivable that Lincoln would set himself against clear Scriptural truth – such as Romans 1, which condemns homosexual practice – or align himself with the bizarre notion that two people of the same sex can get ‘married.’

“(In fact, it would be more faithful to history to picture Lincoln coming up with a good joke – even a saucy one — illustrating the folly of homosexuality-based ‘marriage.’)

“Homosexual practice today is as immoral as it was in days of Lincoln; as it was in the days of Washington and Jefferson before him; as it was in the days of Jesus Christ; and as sinful as it was in the days of Moses,” LaBarbera said. “Today’s ‘progressives’ have as much contempt for the history they twist to rationalize public-policy madness like ‘gay marriage’ as they do for their own religious professions, which they regularly defy. (Quinn, like House Speaker Mike Madigan, is a self-described Catholic; Roman Catholic teaching strongly condemns homosexual practice and Church leaders like Cardinal Francis George actively opposed the Illinois “gay marriage” bill.)

By Peter LaBarbera

“I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. [big audience applause] For me as a Christian it’s also a sacred union, you know, God’s in the mix….I am not somebody who promotes same-sex marriage.” — Barack Obama, Saddleback Church debate moderated by Rick Warren, August 20, 2008 [see video below]

According to new polls, more Americans than ever believe that their President lied to them about Obama-care. That is, he engaged in a calculated deception, repeatedly and emphatically asserting that Americans could keep their health insurance plans, period. Rush Limbaugh and others state the obvious in explaining why Obama lied: to get his controversial health-care bill passed in Congress. (Then later we could start reading it to find out what’s in it….)

Now it is time to think back to other Obama deceptions and crafty manipulations. Check out President Obama’s recent tweet below celebrating Illinois’ House vote in favor of legalizing homosexual “marriage”:

Obama went from being a pensive, faith-minded advocate of traditional marriage as “sacred” in 2008 — (after previously backing “gay marriage” as a 1995 state senate candidate) — to the full-out champion of homosexuality-based “marriage” he is today. Was Obama’s “Christian” opposition to this key homosexual agenda item just a charade? If it was an act, it was a good one; with the help of the media, it fooled a lot of Americans. [See 2008 video below.]

To put Obama’s radical metamorphosis on marriage in perspective, let’s go back to his famous, pious-sounding answer to mega-church pastor Rick Warren’s question, “What is marriage?” during his 2008 run for the presidency. It occurred at the August 16, 2008 debate with GOP candidate John McCain hosted by Warren’s Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California — the ideal setting to burnish his “religious” credentials. (I should emphasize here that Obama is hardly unique among politicians in playing to religious people — and fibbing and deceiving — to get votes.) Below is a YouTube video of Obama in the Saddleback debate (his anser is excerpted at the top of this article);

A little context: Obama’s marriage contradiction

[Note: ever since this debate, this writer has faulted Warren for not following up on his question to Obama — who though professing loyalty to natural marriage was already actively undermining efforts to protect it in California. By letting Obama’s smooth, faith-oriented response rest (after Obama voiced his opposition to a federal Marriage Amendment) and moving on to the next question, Warren left the impression — widely repeated thereafter by the media — that Obama and McCain essentially agreed on same-sex “marriage” (both were “against” it). Sure, it was occasionally noted by the press that Obama backed “civil unions” and opposed a federal marriage amendment, the opposite of Sen. McCain — but the typical, simplistic media soundbite in the election was that both Obama and McCain “opposed gay marriage.”