Earlier this week Michael Medved noted that one “tolerant” homosexual who wrote on the Garden Guy website said the Farber children should be sodomized.  Absolutely appalling.

Excerpted from Firm’s Anti-gay E-mail Sparks Online Fury, published Nov 9, 2006, by Reuters:

A U.S. landscaping firm has been inundated with hate mail…

The forum on Garden Guy’s Web site has received 26 pages of postings since the e-mail was made public, many of them criticizing the owners’ stance and urging a boycott. One accused the company of “hate and discrimination.”

Garden Guy co-owner Sabrina Farber said her family had also received verbal attacks and murder threats.

Continue reading at Reuters…

Excerpted from Agenda Targets Free Speech, by Phyllis Schlafly, published Nov 6, 2006, by Townhall:

Same-sex marriage is not the only goal of the gay rights movement. It’s becoming clear that another goal is the suppression of Americans’ First Amendment right to criticize the gay agenda.

The gay lobby tried a broadside attempt to censor criticism by passing a national “hate crimes” law. Fortunately, Congress didn’t pass that law, but gay activists are obviously trying to achieve much the same effect through political pressure and intimidation.

Scott Bloch, the head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel in the Bush administration, has been targeted for termination because he removed “sexual orientation” from the list of anti-discrimination laws protecting employment at federal agencies. Bloch discovered that his Clinton-appointed predecessor, Elaine Kaplan, had unilaterally inserted “sexual orientation” in the list without any statutory authorization, so he removed it.

The gay lobby retaliated, instigating five investigations against Bloch. After all five cleared him of any wrongdoing, the response by the gay lobby was to initiate a sixth investigation.

Reportedly, Bloch has been told privately to resign, twice suggesting that he might be fired if he doesn’t. Letters from supporters caused the White House to back off before the election, but it is apparent that the Bush administration has no stomach for this fight and hopes Bloch will go quietly.

Excerpted from Casey Ran as “Pro-Life”; His First Act Seeks “Sexual Orientation” Hate Crime Law, by Meg Jalsevac, published Nov 14, 2006, by LifeSite News:

Within 24 hours of winning the bitter Pennsylvanian Senate race against incumbent Republican Rick Santorum, Democrat Senator-elect Bob Casey, Jr. let his real agendas show through. Citizenlink.org has reported that, the very day after the election, Casey announced that he would work in support of legislation to increase the scope of federal hate crimes law to encompass sexual orientation and gender identity as a victim group.

…Casey was immediately and unabashedly backed in his election bid by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a pro-“gay” activist group. On the HRC website, it claims “HRC flexed its political muscle and launched an extensive and strategic campaign in partnership with local organizations that resulted in a clear victory for fair-minded candidate Casey.”

According to the website, HRC raised over $375,000 for Casey’s campaign. It also claims that it supplied 4 office staffers and hundreds of volunteers to encourage Pennsylvanians to vote.

Casey thanked HRC the day after the election saying, “HRC got behind my campaign early and has been a tremendous help. I look forward to working with HRC’s incredible staff and membership, especially to advance hate-crimes legislation in the Senate.”

Excerpted from My New Job at Missouri State University, by Dr. Mike Adams, published Nov 7, 2006, by Townhall:

…I wouldn’t have expected it either – not until I heard about the case of MSU Social Work student Emily Brooker. Emily’s trouble began when she was forced by Social Work Professor Frank G. Kauffman to write a letter to the Missouri State legislature urging representatives to pass legislation that would allow gays to serve as foster parents and even to adopt children.

When Emily refused to do the assignment – because of her religious objections to homosexuality – she was punished. Her complaint about the assignment led to a formal disciplinary hearing.

The hearing was typical of those at most universities. Emily was given no lawyer nor was there any written record of what happened. But she reports that she was asked very personal questions about whether she believed that homosexuals are sinners. And then she was written up for openly confessing her religious objections concerning homosexuality.

Even though the Alliance Defense Fund has decided to represent Emily in a First Amendment lawsuit, I’ve decided to take the job at MSU. This decision is the result of my opinion that MSU is going to stand firm and defend Professor Kauffman.

Accordingly, during my first week at MSU, I plan to assign students to the following projects with assignments depending on important demographic variables:

Continue reading at Townhall…

Excerpted from Court Halts N.C. School District Policy Used to Prohibit Student from Distributing “Day of Truth” Cards, published Nov 2, 2006, by Alliance Defense Fund:

A federal judge today issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Sampson County Board of Education and Midway High School officials from enforcing two policies used to prohibit a student from distributing “Day of Truth” message cards to other students. Officials prohibited the student, represented by attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund, from distributing the cards outside of class time during the event April 27 and suspended him from school.

“Christian students are entitled to the same First Amendment rights as other students. No student should be suspended for exercising those rights,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel David Cortman. “The court’s ruling today prohibits the school district, while the case moves forward, from censoring a student flyer simply because it has religious content.”

“It’s clearly unconstitutional when students participating in the Day of Silence, which supports the homosexual agenda, observe their event by distributing flyers and so forth, but a student with an opposite perspective is prevented from communicating it during non-instructional time,” Cortman added.

Continue reading at Alliance Defense Fund…

David French, attorney for MSU social work graduate Emily Brooker, is blogging at National Review Online about the Brooker v Missouri State University case:

There is a good article in this morning’s USA Today regarding the Alliance Defense Fund’s lawsuit against Missouri State. I have been giving several interviews about the case, and I am consistently asked two things: (1) are you saying that students can refuse assignments?; and (2) is this case “just” an academic-freedom dispute, or is it more than that?

First — to clear up any confusion — this is not a case about a student who is merely asked to play “devil’s advocate” in a classroom exercise. Of course teachers can ask you to debate and discuss various ideas from all sides of a dispute. During law school, several of my professors presented hypothetical cases and then asked us to write the majority opinion and the dissent in the case. The plaintiff, Emily Brooker, was not merely asked to think about all sides of an issue or argue different sides in class, she was asked to make an ideological argument in a contentious cultural issue to the state government. Moreover, she was supposed to argue for a position that violated her religious beliefs.

And this gets us to the real heart of the case: the magnitude of the constitutional violation. This is not “just” an academic-freedom dispute but instead represents an attempt by an academic department to pass into the “final frontier”…of university indoctrination. For more than 20 years now, conservative, libertarian, and even many liberal critics of the academy have decried the tendency of universities to silence dissenters. Many of these same critics have also decried one-sided course instruction and a faculty culture that leans overwhelmingly left. By silencing dissent and ensuring that only one side is heard, the university certainly “indoctrinates” students (as that term is commonly understood). But this case is something more. Here, the university goes beyond censorship, beyond one-sided instruction, and invades the student’s most basic right to freedom of conscience. It is not enough to silence students. Instead, the department must force individuals to voice their agreement with the governing ideology.

It is no exaggeration to call this system “Orwellian.” At the end of 1984 (spoiler alert for those who haven’t read the book), Winston Smith not only says that he loves Big Brother; he means it. Missouri State was going to force Emily Brooker to publicly support the campus’s reigning leftist ideology, and the punishment that resulted from the Star Chamber hearing was entirely designed to make sure that she meant it. After all, how could Emily follow the university’s command to “lessen the gap” between her own beliefs and the so-called “ethics” of the social-work profession but by changing her mind and heart?

Excerpted from School ‘Ethics’ Group Punishes Student for Opposing Homosexual Adoption, by Jim Brown, published Nov 1, 2006, by Agape Press:

…According to news reports, Dr. Frank Kaufman — an assistant professor in MSU’s School of Social Work on the Springfield campus and a member of the Faculty Senate at MSU — assigned his students a project promoting homosexual foster homes and adoption. The students were required to write and individually sign a letter to the Missouri legislature in support of homosexual adoption. Emily Brooker says she refused to sign the letter because of her religious convictions, and alleges she was punished for taking that stand.

Brooker says the school subjected her to a grievance hearing where school officials told her she had violated three of the “Standards of Essential Functioning in Social Work Education”: diversity, interpersonal skills, and professional behavior. The social work student is now suing the university for a violation of her First Amendment rights. Her attorney, David French with the Alliance Defense Fund, claims his client was interrogated for two-and-a-half hours by faculty members about the matter.

“She was brought into a hearing where she was denied any access to a recording of the hearing, any advocate in the hearing, and subjected to a grilling,” says French. The attorney says Brooker was asked questions like “Do you think I’m a sinner?” and “Do you think gays and lesbians are sinners?”

French describes the entire situation as “really an amazing case.” He explains that at the December 2005 hearing she was “punished, forced to undergo close monitoring for the rest of her career at the university, and forced to write things, again, that she disagreed with in order to graduate.”

The ADF attorney says many public universities are requiring student to adopt leftist positions in order to obtain a social work degree. “The social work programs are saying that, in order to be a social worker, in order to get a degree, you’re going to have to agree with the university’s stance on various issues,” he shares, “including issues regarding homosexual ‘marriage,’ including issues regarding the entire diversity-tolerance agenda.”

Continue reading at Agape Press…

From LifeLeague (UK):

The Advertising Standards Agency have investigated and upheld LifeLeague’s complaints against the Gay Police Association for their disgusting advert (below) that appeared in The Independent, 29.09.06.

(Click on image to enlarge and read the ad.)

The advert violated ASA guidelines on the grounds of decency, truthfulness and substantiation.

They declared that The Gay Police Association had:

[1] admitted the advert’s wording was structured in such a way as to represent non-criminal behaviour as ‘homophobic incidents’;

[2] failed to substantiate their claims about homophobic incidents;

[3] wrongly implied that Christians perpetrated the reported incidents;

[4] wrongly suggested that all of the reported incidents involved physical injury.

The Gay Police Association subsequently announced that they do not intend to use this ad again – yet they still remain unapologetic. The Independent however, did apologise for ‘offence caused’.

Continue reading at Pro-Life E-Newsletter…