ENDA VOTE TALLY: Total was 235-184; bill passed and moves to U.S. Senate

By Party:
Democrats 200-25
Republicans 35-159

Republicans Voting in Favor

Biggert (R-13, IL)
Bono (R-45, CA)
Campbell (R-48, CA)
Castle (R-DE)
Davis, Tom (R-11, VA)
Dent (R-15, PA)
Diaz-Balart, L (R-21, CA)
Diaz-Balart, M (R-25, CA)
Dreier (R-26, CA)
English (R-3, PA)
Flake (R-6, AZ)
Fossella (R-13, NY)
Frelinghuysen (R-11, NJ)
Gerlach (R-6, PA)
Gilchrest (R-1, MD)
Hobson (R-7, OH)
Kirk (R-10, IL)
Knollenberg ((R-9, MI)
Kuhl (NY) (R-29, NY)
LoBiondo (R-2, NJ)
McCotter (R-11, MI)
McCrery (R-4, LA)
McHugh (R-23, NY)
Miller (R-10, MI)
Platts (R-19, PA)
Porter (R-3, NV)
Pryce (R-15, OH)
Ramstad (R-3, MN)
Reichert (R-8, WA)
Ros-Lehtinen (R-18, FL)
Ryan (R-1, WI)
Saxton (R-3, NJ)
Shays (R-4, CT)
Tiberi (R-12, OH)
Walden (R-2, OR)

Democrats Voting Against ENDA

Barrow (D-12, GA)
Berry (D-1, AR)
Clarke* (D-11, NY)
Cramer (D-5, AL)
Davis (D-7, AL)
Davis, Lincoln (D-4, TN)
Edwards (D-D-17, TX)
Gordon (D-6, TN)
Holt* (D-12, NJ)
Lampson (D-22, TX)
Lipinski (D-3, IL)
Marshall (D-8, GA)
McIntyre (D-7, NC)
Melancon ((D-3, LA)
Michaud* (D-2, ME)
Nadler* (D-8, NY)
Rahall (D-3, WV)
Ross ((D-4, AR)
Shuler (D-11, NC)
Skelton (D-4, MO)
Tanner (D-8, TN)
Taylor ((D-4, MS)
Towns* ((D-10, NY)
Velazquez* (D-12, NY)
Weiner* (D-9, NY)

* indicates that “no” vote was likely because “gender identity” (pro-transgender) language was not included

 Today’s corporate employees are more likely to be fired or punished for OPPOSING homosexuality than for “being gay.” In 2005, Matt Barber was fired by Allstate in 2005 after writing a column opposing homosexuality. A staffer at Human Rights Campaign, the powerful homosexual group now crusading for the federal ‘ENDA Our Freedom’ bill, “reported” Barber’s column to an Allstate staffer, leading to Barber’s firing. Call Congress today at 202-224-3121, or go to www.congress.org, to urge your Representative to oppose ENDA, HR 3685.

NOTE TO READERS: Proposed amendments to H.R. 3685, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) approved by the Rules Committee for a vote on the House floor — probably tomorrow — do little to address the bill’s core problem: it tramples on the rights of Christian and moral-minded businessmen by creating new federal employment rights based on aberrant sex (or at least the inclination toward homosexuality/bisexuality). AFTAH released the following media advisory today:

Americans For Truth
http://www.americansfortruth.org/

November 6, 2007

Contact: Peter LaBarbera: 630-717-7631

Americans For Truth Says ENDA, H.R. 3685, Would Lead to Religious Persecution

Christian Newswire. NAPERVILLE, Illinois — Americans For Truth President Peter LaBarbera today urged Christian, Muslim and other moral-minded Americans to “wake up to the tremendous threat that the ‘ENDA Our Freedom’ Bill, H.R. 3685 (Employment Nondiscrimination Act), poses to their religious and First Amendment freedoms.” H.R. 3685 could be debated on the House floor today. [It now appears the vote will be Wednesday, Nov. 7.]

See Americans For Truth’s paper, “14 Good Reasons to Oppose HR 3685, the ‘ENDA Our Freedom’ Bill.”  Call Congress at 202-224-3121 or go to www.congress.org.

“In an era when homosexuals are being hired – not fired – for “being gay” — and when Christians are already being punished or fired by corporations like Allstate for opposing homosexuality, ENDA would lead to further harassment of faith-motivated employees by creating federal ‘rights’ based on homosexuality and bisexuality,” LaBarbera said.

He offered this example as to how ENDA would codify discrimination: “Take an orthodox Jewish entrepreneur who owns a large day care center. He can now factor in his morality about homosexuality as a sin. (He rejects the idea of innate, innocuous “sexual orientation.”) Under ENDA, if his company were to grow to 15 or more employees, he would lose his right to consider his own religious and moral beliefs in hiring/firing decisions. A bisexual with good credentials who does not get hired might sue him for “discrimination.” (If he’s an outspoken pro-marriage advocate, he might be targeted for a “gay” lawsuit.) The government’s politically correct view of homosexuality could force this man, and hundreds of thousands like him, to violate their conscience. It’s Big Government with an amoral twist and, incidentally, a homosexual activist lawyer’s dream.”

To understand the inherent conflict between “gay rights” and religious freedom, LaBarbera pointed to lesbian Georgetown professor Chai Feldblum’s 2005 Beckett Fund presentation, “Moral Conflict and Liberty: Gay Rights and Religion.” Unlike most homosexual activists, Feldblum at least recognizes that religious citizens have a valid moral claim in opposing homosexuality, yet she asserts that homosexuals also have a “moral” claim for their “civil rights” (including same-sex “marriage”). She calls the conflict between those two claims a “zero-sum” game.

“Feldblum says her ‘morality’ outweighs that of traditionalists. I would strongly disagree, seeing that this nation was founded by people seeking religious freedom. ENDA would take away Christians’ and others’ right to stand up for Biblical morality and live by the dictates of their own moral conscience,” LaBarbera said. 

 After AFTAH’s report that White House officials gave advice on crafting the religious exemption language in homosexual Rep. Barney Frank’s radical ENDA bill, H.R. 3685, the Administration moved to publicly distance itself from the special-privileges-for-homosexual-employees legislation. Call Congress (202-224-3121; www.congress.org) to oppose H.R. 3685 and call the President to urge a veto (202-456-1111; www.whitehouse.gov/contact). See our paper, “14 Good Reasons to Oppose H.R. 3685, the ‘ENDA Our Freedom’ Bill.”

By Peter LaBarbera 

In a manner similar to what it did regarding the “hate crimes” bill, the White House has issued a “Statement of Policy” raising constitutional and policy objections to H.R. 3685, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), sponsored by homosexual Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). The Administration statement states, “The bill raises concerns on constitutional and policy grounds, and if H.R. 3685 were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”

REMAIN VIGILANT: please keep those calls and letters coming to the White House (202-456-1111 or -1414; www.congress.org), urging President Bush to do so — regardless of the form the bill takes.

Also, even some key Republicans are supporting ENDA, so call Congress today (202-224-3121; www.congress.org) and urge your U.S. Representative and both Senators to oppose ANY form of ENDA. A House vote on H.R. 3685 could come tomorrow. Homosexuality is not a “civil right” — period, and H.R. 3685’s “religious exemption” wording in ENDA is still very weak, as this memo from the Alliance Defense Fund asserts. See our paper, “14 Good Reasons to Oppose H.R. 3685, the ‘ENDA Our Freedom’ Bill.”

Americans For Truth’s revelation that a White House official had boasted to pro-family leaders that the White House had helped craft ENDA’s religious exemption language raised concerns among pro-family groups counting on an Administration veto of ENDA. It also touched off a flurry of blog posts on the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) side, where there is a ferocious battle taking place over ENDA. Barney Frank’s decision to back a version of ENDA that does not include “transgenders” has infuriated the pro-transsexual groups. Meanwhile, Human Rights Campaign, the country’s leading homosexual lobby group, is playing both sides of the fence — backing Frank’s compromise while publicly supporting Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s pro-transsexual amendment to H.R. 3685 to shore up its pro-“T” (transgender) credentials.

Traditional Values Coalition lobbyist Andrea Lafferty, who with father Lou Sheldon has done more than anyone in America over the years to keep the homosexual agenda in check on Capitol Hill, told Americans For Truth that at a recent pro-H.R. 3685 press conference called by Rep. Frank, the various homosexual/trans groups favoring a more radical (they say “inclusive”) ENDA were kept out in the hall, while HRC staffers were allowed in the room. Lafferty said that the homosexual newspaper Washington Blade played down the GLBT infighting.

Regardless, savvy homosexual activists (led by HRC) understand that passage of ENDA in any form is a huge advance for the homosexual cause — which is why we raised concern over talk of Christian leaders looking to craft “acceptable” exemption language in the bill, with White House input.

__________________________

Here is the White House’s statement on ENDA (emphasis added):

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20503

    October 23, 2007    (House Rules)

STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICY

H.R. 3685 – The Employment Non-Discrimination Act

(Rep. Frank (D) MA and 9 cosponsors)

H.R. 3685 would extend existing employment-discrimination provisions of Federal law, including those in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to establish “a comprehensive Federal prohibition of employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.”  The bill raises concerns on constitutional and policy grounds, and if H.R. 3685 were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.

H.R. 3685 is inconsistent with the right to the free exercise of religion as codified by Congress in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).  The Act prohibits the Federal Government from substantially burdening the free exercise of religion except for compelling reasons, and then only in the least restrictive manner possible.  H.R. 3685 does not meet this standard.  For instance, schools that are owned by or directed toward a particular religion are exempted by the bill; but those that emphasize religious principles broadly will find their religious liberties burdened by H.R. 3685.

A second concern is H.R. 3685’s authorization of Federal civil damage actions against State entities, which may violate States’ immunity under the Eleventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The bill turns on imprecise and subjective terms that would make interpretation, compliance, and enforcement extremely difficult.  For instance, the bill establishes liability for acting on “perceived” sexual orientation, or “association” with individuals of a particular sexual orientation.  If passed, H.R. 3685 is virtually certain to encourage burdensome litigation beyond the cases that the bill is intended to reach.

Provisions of this bill purport to give Federal statutory significance to same-sex marriage rights under State law.  These provisions conflict with the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the legal union between one man and one woman.  The Administration strongly opposes any attempt to weaken this law, which is vital to defending the sanctity of marriage.

Below is an American Family Association E-Alert responding to the latest example of callous liberalism — the City of “Brotherly Love’s” outrageous act of charging the Boy Scouts $200,000 to use their city-owned headquarters:

AFA: Philadelphia punishes Boy Scouts because of their beliefs

Dear Reader,

The city of Philadelphia has decided to punish the Boy Scouts of America because it will not allow homosexuals to serve as Scout Leaders. City officials said they will charge the Cradle of Liberty Scouts Council $200,000 a year to use the city-owned headquarters. The Council was paying $1 per year (since 1928). The city owns the land on which the Council’s 1928 Beaux Arts building sits.

The city says it is charging the scouts $200,000 a year because the scouts discriminate against homosexuals. But the city finds nothing wrong with their discrimination against the scouts because of the scouts’ belief.

The action by city officials means that 30 new Cub Scout packs won’t be organized, and that 800 needy kids will not be going to the Council’s summer camp if the city charges them $200,000.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the scouts, as a private group, have a First Amendment right to bar homosexuals from membership. Philadelphia officials, in an effort to appease the homosexual activists, began searching for a way to punish the scouts. The rent increase was the vehicle to do that.

The Cradle of Liberty Council serves about 64,000 scouts in Philadelphia and its suburbs.

Take Action

Send an e-mail to Philadelphia officials protesting their discrimination against the Boy Scouts. Forward this to friends and family and ask them to send the e-mail.
   
Thanks for caring enough to get involved. If you feel our efforts are worth supporting, would you please make a tax-deductible donation to help us continue? Click here to make a donation [to AFA].

Sincerely,

Don Wildmon

P.S. Please help us get this information into the hands of as many people as possible by forwarding it to your family and friends.

Breaking News: White House helped craft religious language for pro-homosexual ENDA bill; AFTAH urges Bush to pledge to veto bill in any form

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was written in 2007. Four years later, passage of the ENDA bill — now HR 1397 — is a high priority of the Obama administration. Go HERE for a GovTrack report on the 2011 version of this dangerous bill. — Peter LaBarbera, May 16, 2011. 

AFTAH has learned that White House staffers helped negotiate the new religious exemption language for the radical homosexual employment bill ENDA, H.R. 3685. Will that make it harder for President Bush to veto ENDA should it pass Congress? Call or contact the President (202-456-1111; www.whitehouse.gov/contact) and urge him to veto ENDA in any form should it pass Congress.

By Peter LaBarbera 

BREAKING NEWS/URGENT UPDATE: Americans For Truth has learned that a White House official has boasted to pro-family leaders attending a private Administration briefing that White House staffers were involved in the negotiations to craft expanded religious exemption language for the new ENDA bill, H.R. 3685 (discussed below). Call President Bush at 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414 (www.whitehouse.gov/contact) to urge him to publicly pledge to veto the dangerous ENDA (Employment Nondiscrimination Act) bill, H.R. 3685 in ANY form should it pass.

At the briefing, the White House official did not commit to the assembled evangelical leaders that the President would veto H.R. 3685, saying that they will wait to see the bill’s final language, according to our source. This is troubling in that vetoing ENDA in any form is regarded as a “no-brainer” by pro-family activists, who are counting on Bush to stop it. Failure to veto ENDA would be a devastating defeat for pro-family forces and a huge gift to homosexual lobbyists. Call the President (202-456-111) and urge him to “please publicly pledge to veto ENDA, H.R. 3685, in any form if it passes Congress.”

Some religious leaders take comfort in ENDA’s exemptions; we do not (see Points 8 and 13 below).  White House involvement in negotiations over ENDA is problematic in that makes it more difficult for President Bush to veto the bill. As you can read below, H.R. 3685’s current religious exemption will hardly affect the many ways in which ENDA would erode and destroy the freedom of Americans to act on their deeply-held moral beliefs about homosexuality.

Also, CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN and SENATORS today and next week to oppose H.R. 3685, which is a watered-down version of a more radical version of ENDA, H.R. 2015 (see Point 10 below). Like H.R. 2015 — for which homosexual and transsexual activists are still crusading — H.R. 3685 has tremendous potential to criminalize Christianity in the United States by creating federal “rights” based on wrong and destructive lifestyles.
 
Yesterday, H.R. 3685 was voted out of the House Education and Labor Committee by a vote of 27-21 (some Democrats voted “no” because it wasn’t liberal enough; see Point 10 below). It is now headed for a House floor vote, possibly early next week. Call 202-224-3121 or go to http://www.congress.org/ to reach your Representative and U.S. Senators.

Here are 14 good reasons to oppose the revised ENDA, H.R. 3685:

1. ENDA and H.R. 3685 would create federally-protected “rights” based on immoral, unhealthy and changeable homosexual/bisexual behavior — masquerading as “orientation” — setting a dangerous legal, moral and spiritual precedent. Homosexuality is not a “civil right”; it is a human wrong — one that is redeemable as proven by thousands of contented former homosexuals and ex-lesbians. Our Founding Fathers, infused with a Biblical view of fallen man, created limited government that sought to restrain the sinful outworking of men’s hearts (including the lust for power, hence our system of checks and balances). The law once punished sin (e.g., sodomy and anti-abortion laws), so it is preposterous to say that homosexuality-affirming laws are necessary to uphold basic, “constitutional rights.” ENDA represents the complete rejection of the Judeo-Christian Western legal tradition by creating newfangled legal “rights” that actually reward errant lifestyles and sexual misbehavior.
2. ENDA/H.R. 3685  would be used to defend the placement of openly homosexual and bisexual teachers in our nation’s public schools in ALL localities (see # 7). For the more activist-minded homosexual teachers who are already in schools, H.R. 3685 could lead them to more boldly promote and discuss their lifestyle in the classroom, as schools could be sued for discrimination if they dared to discipline activist “gays.”
3. ENDA/H.R. 3685 would punish Christians and religious traditionalists by leading directly to the loss of freedom for tradition-minded business owners with 15 or more employees. Take the example of an Orthodox Jewish owner of a for-profit day-care business who would NEVER hire an avowed homosexual, lesbian or bisexual as a supervising adult care-giver, because he believes Scriptural teachings that homosexual practice is immoral and reflects poorly on one’s character. This religious man would qualify for the exemption to ENDA if he has 14 or less workers. But God forbid that his business grows to 15 or more employees, because then, under ENDA, he could no longer apply his religious and moral beliefs about same-sex sin in his hiring and firing decisions . It must be remembered that top homosexual strategists now assert that their “moral” claim (the right not to be treated differently based on their “sexual orientation”) trumps our religious/moral obligation to oppose homosexuality.
4. ENDA is unnecessary: there is no outbreak of homosexuals getting fired; in fact, it is Christians defending their faith in the public square who are getting fired  and mistreated  — like Matt Barber, who was terminated by Allstate Insurance in 2005 after writing an online article on his own time critical of homosexual “marriage.”  Moreover, private companies are racing to create pro-homosexual policies on their own: Kodak now gives special preference to homosexually-owned subcontractors as one of several “minorities” receiving favored consideration. We strongly disagree with these “gay”-affirmative-action-type policies, but corporations have the right to pursue them. However, with the proliferation of such corporate programs, there is no need for the heavy hand of government to act as a corporate Big Brother, forcing all companies to affirm homosexuality in their hiring and firing decisions. Let the free market decide this issue.
5. ENDA/H.R. 3685 would dramatically expand the power of the federal government and would put it behind ONE SIDE of the homosexuality debate: the politically correct and unbiblical claim that homosexuality is about “rights” and innocuous “orientations.” Therefore it would override traditional understandings of homosexuality as a changeable sin. Federal authority will be asserted to enforce homosexual “rights” over traditional Americans rights to operate their business according to their moral beliefs. At the very least, with half the nation still believing that homosexual behavior is wrong, the government should be neutral on this issue.
6. ENDA is a “gay” lawyer’s dream: it would be abused by litigious homosexual activists, who seem to have a special gift for lying about conservatives and exaggerating their own victim status. If history is a guide, ENDA will lead to “gay” harassment lawsuits against people like the theoretical day-care entrepreneur above. Homosexual activists have already used dirty tactics to harass and take down pro-family leaders like Larry Cirignano, Scott Lively, and Gary Glenn — all victims of trumped-up “gay” charges. Glenn was falsely accused by a homosexual activist group, the Triangle Foundation, of favoring the murder of homosexuals (this writer has also been falsely accused of this). Cirignano recently had “civil rights” charges against him dropped after a lesbian invaded his Catholic group’s rally and then claimed that he assaulted her. Lively, founder of Abiding Truth Ministries, was hit with a highly-publicized lawsuit in 1991 based on similar trumped-up charges. Oregon Republican writer Betty Freauf describes what happened: “At one of the O.C.A. meetings, a photo journalist and homosexual-rights activist by the name of Catherine Stauffer attended the [pro-family] meeting uninvited. When asked to leave, she refused. Scott Lively then O.C.A. [Oregon Citizen’s Alliance] executive director, escorted her out of the meeting. She then had her frivolous assault and battery lawsuit which had been the plan all along. Judgments were granted to the plaintiff Stauffer in the amount of $30,000 each against O.C.A. and Scott Lively.”    Certainly, some homosexual activists will not be able to resist using frivolous, ENDA-inspired lawsuits to intimidate conservative business owners into submission — especially those who speak out publicly against “gay marriage,” or oppose the homosexual lobby. Is it really hard to imagine homosexual activists sending “plants” into conservative-owned companies and then suing when the person is not hired, or is fired? Of course, the same might be attempted by apolitical yet greedy “gay” employees and lawyers seeking to manipulate the system through “discrimination” lawsuits.
7. ENDA would trample on the rights of the 30 states without homosexuality-based “sexual orientation” laws — including conservative “red” states like Oklahoma and Texas where there is little voter interest in passing such laws — by turning the whole nation, including all public schools (see #2), into a “special-protections-for-homosexual-workers” zone.
8. ENDA’s “religious exemption” is extremely limited and narrowly tailored: of course, it does NOTHING to protect the freedom of moral-minded small businessmen to hire and fire based on THEIR values system, not the government’s. But beyond that, ENDA’s “religious exemption” is also carefully circumscribed so as to box in non-church, religious-oriented groups, rather than liberate them (see points 12 and 13). Here is how H.R. 3685 defines “religious organization”:
    
   RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION – The term `religious organization’ means–
   (A) a religious corporation, association, or society; or 
   (B) a school, college, university, or other educational institution or institution of learning, if– 
   (i) the institution is in whole or substantial part controlled, managed, owned, or supported by a particular religion, religious corporation, association, or society; or
   (ii) the curriculum of the institution is directed toward the propagation of a particular religion
    
   Now think of all the businesses, associations and schools that would NOT be covered by that definition: private, non-church or non-religious schools, day-care centers not directly tied to a church; small secular businesses (15 or more employees, including part-timers) owned by Christians; etc.               Moreover, Matt Barber (see #4), Policy Director for Cultural Issues at Concerned Women for America and AFTAH Board Member, makes this excellent point on the constitutionality of ENDA’s religious exemption: “For any religious exemption to pass constitutional muster, [it] would have to follow the individual business owner.  The First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion which applies to all individual citizens, not just to a church, religious organization or corporation.  It is unconstitutional to prevent, by force of law, an individual business owner from considering his sincerely held religious beliefs while determining how to best own and operate his private business.”
9. Even though ENDA proscribes quotas, H.R. 3685 would create de facto preferential status for “gay” employees – or those who claim that status (which is another issue: how does a company “prove” that an employee is or is not “gay”?). Especially for corporations and businessmen who fear lawsuits, ENDA would create a new category of “affirmative action” – for a group of people who, far from demonstrating a history of being disadvantaged economically, rank among the more affluent and privileged groups in society (for example, “gays” travel internationally at rates far higher than other groups) . (See #4 on existing private “gay affirmative action.”)
10. H.R. 3685 is merely the camel’s nose under the tent: even though homosexual Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) “threw tranny off the train” as it were – by backing a watered-down ENDA that does not explicitly cover transsexuals (“gender identity”) – the GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender) lobby is united in pushing for the even more radical version of ENDA, H.R. 2015, which fully covers “transgenders.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has agreed to bring that bill to the House floor for a vote if the bill’s sponsors can show they have enough votes to pass it.  Passage of H.R. 3685 would make passing H.R. 2015 — what we’re calling the “Transgender Bathrooms for Business” bill — easier.
11. H.R. 3685 would advance the “same-sex marriage” agenda. It would be cited by activist judges as evidence that America is moving towards pro-homosexual “equality” (read: state-sponsored “inequality” for people of faith). The homosexual agenda always advances incrementally, but federalizing “sexual orientation” law is a long-sought goal of “gay” activists and liberal social engineers seeking to break down our Judeo-Christian traditions by normalizing homosexuality through the law.
12. H.R. 3685’s exemption for “religious organizations” would divide society further by effectively creating a two-tiered system of rights.  Some Christians and religious people operating in exempted religious groups would get the “special right” to factor in their opposition to homosexuality in their hiring and firing decisions — but morality-conscious secular groups and business owners would lose their freedom to similarly defend heterosexual norms. This is not fair. Many nonreligious people oppose homosexual behavior and creating “rights” based on immoral, aberrant sex: why should they have any less freedom to act on their beliefs than religious citizens?
13. ENDA/H.R. 3685 will lead to further compromise in the Church: its religious exemption would mollify pastors and make them LESS likely to stand on principle and fight the aggressive homosexual agenda, since they would be “protected” (for now) from ENDA’s oppressive mandates. Of course, homosexual activists would later seek to tighten or eliminate religious- and church-based exemptions (there’s that incrementalism again). If homosexual activists truly respected people’s freedom to oppose homosexual behavior, would they constantly be complaining about “religious-based discrimination”? Would they be relentlessly attacking the Boy Scouts and have tried to make it illegal for the Scouts not to hire homosexual (and atheist) scoutmasters? Many “gay” advocates view Christian opposition to hiring homosexuals as simply another form of invidious discrimination to be overcome through law, academia and cultural mobilization.
14. ENDA confuses the issue of civil rights in America and trivializes African Americans’ struggle against discrimination. H.R. 3685 insults African-Americans and confuses the civil rights equation considerably by taking the 1964 Civil Rights Act — designed with the noble goal of redressing institutional racism in America — and refitting it to put the U.S. Government officially behind the false concept of homosexuality as a “civil right.” Blacks cannot change their skin color. Homosexuals can leave that lifestyle behind, as many have. (Conversely, people can become “gay” by embracing that ideology and lifestyle. Nobody can “become African American”; that’s how you are born.) Being black is not a moral issue. Embracing sinful and destructive homosexual behavior is. It has long been the goal of “gay” activists to exploit the noble Black civil rights movement — even appropriating its language of “equality” and drawing bogus analogies between ending legal bans on interracial marriage (a good and just reform) and the campaign to legalize homosexual “marriage” (a revolutionary attack on a sacred institution). ENDA would put government muscle behind this exploitation, and make it much easier to teach schoolchildren that homosexuality is a civil rights issue, not a moral one.

The following is excerpted from the homosexual newspaper Washington Blade. For the full story, click HERE:

GOP Reps save ENDA in close committee vote
Kucinich, others vote ‘no’ citing lack of trans protection
By LOU CHIBBARO JR., Washington Blade | Oct 18, 8:14 PM

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) cleared a pivotal hurdle in committee today after four gay-supportive Republicans joined the Democratic majority to save the bill from defeat.

Four pro-gay Democrats, including [a presidential candidate and Congressman], voted against the bill, saying they did so because a provision protecting transgender persons had been removed.

The bill passed in the House Committee on Education and Labor by a vote of 27 to 21, with 23 Democrats and four Republicans voting for the measure, which calls for banning job discrimination based on sexual orientation, a category that includes gay men, lesbians and bisexuals. Seventeen Republicans and the four Democrats voted against the bill.

If the Republicans voting for the measure had voted the other way, it would have lost by a vote of 23 to 25.

“We have never been able to pass a gay rights bill with only Democrats,” said gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), one of the lead sponsors of ENDA. “We’ve always known we need some Republicans.”

The bill is scheduled to go to the full House for a vote next week.

Click HERE for the full Blade article

WARNING: NOT FOR CHILDREN; GRAPHIC IMAGES — DESPITE OUR EFFORTS TO CLEAN UP THESE PHOTOS DOCUMENTING RAUNCHY SAN FRANCISCO ‘FOLSOM STREET FAIR’

All Folsom Street Fair photos by Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth; permission to reprint given provided that credit be given to “Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, www.americansfortruth.org”; contact us at americansfortruth@gmail.com.

PART ONE

By Peter LaBarbera and Allyson Smith, Americans For Truth exclusive

 S Man bares all at Folsom Street Fair (he was wearing sneakers); right, entrance sticker given to attendees (by Christianity-mocking, drag-queen “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence”) reproduces blasphemous, sadistic “Last Supper” photo that drew national attention to Folsom.

SAN FRANCISCO — How do you describe the most depraved public event in the most depraved city in America? Well, we’ll let the pictures do the talking — with our strategically-placed black boxes so as not to reward the perverted exhibitionists who invaded the city’s streets Sunday for the “Folsom Street Fair.” The Fair is an annual street party for BDSM enthusiasts (meaning bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism — or domination/submission) held on several blocked-off city streets here, that reportedly draws hundreds of thousands of “leather” practitioners and curious spectators every year. All frontal nudity is blocked below.

 At left, a young boy looks on at a booth sponsored by Steamworks, a local bathhouse (in Berkeley) where men go to engage in anonymous sodomies with other men. Organizers warned that Folsom was an event for adults, but parents were allowed to bring their young children. Steamworks also has branches in Chicago, Toronto, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Keep in mind as you look at these documented public acts of perversion that San Francisco police took a very passive, “hands off” role at the Fair — despite the national outrage and unprecedented media attention on Folsom following revelations that organizers used a perverted mockery of Da Vinci’s Last Supper painting as their promotional artwork. (The Last Supper rip-off adorned the small stickers given to every person who paid the $5 to get into Folsom; see photo above.)

Indeed, we watched as police standing on the street or just outside the blocked-off perimeter of Folsom did nothing as men walked by baring their genitals (only the men did this; some women bared their breasts). One extended orgiastic scene we witnessed involving several men (see photo below) took place on crowded Folsom Street as hundreds if not thousands of people walked by — yet police took no action.

We spoke with several policemen and security guards and the consensus was that rampant nudity and public sex are expected every year at Folsom Street (this was the event’s 25th year) and that it is the city’s politicians — from the Mayor on down — who are to blame for allowing it.  (Mayor Gavin Newsom greeted Folsom Street attendees in a letter published in the Fair’s program, warmly telling them to “have a great day and enjoy this wonderful and exciting event.”) It seemed to us that the police, as law “enforcers,” were put in the very awkward position of overseeing sexual anarchy and general lawlessness, as clearly there was no expectation that laws would be enforced to stop the public sex and nudity — assuming such anti-lewdness laws exist in San Francisco and California.

In addition to the nudity and public sex acts, there were public whippings and spankings. Some were held at booths: the AIDS Emergency Fund was hawking charity spankings for $5 each — and others apparently occurring spontaneously, if you can say that about an act of consensual, “erotic” violence. We witnessed one man whipping his “partner” on a sidewalk, the “whippee’s” back becoming a brighter red with each round of punishment — done out of love, we are told by the sadists.

 The annual Folsom Street Fair takes place in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) San Francisco district. Speaking to a local “gay” newspaper through her spokesman, Pelosi refused to condemn the blasphemous Folsom 2007 promotional logo — which mocked Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” painting by substituting “leather” men and women for Christ and His disciples. Click HERE to view the blasphemous ad, which was reproduced on Folsom’s stickers for paid attendees. 

And we witnessed many “master-slave” “couples,” one leading the other around with a dog collar, of both the homosexual and heterosexual variety. The Folsom Street Fair began as an event mainly for homosexual sadomasochists, but it now attracts many straights, as evidenced by the thousands of women visible at this year’s event.

Gawkers and photo-takers were everywhere at Folsom, adding to the surrealness of the experience. Twice we witnessed people posing for photos with totally nude men, one who had been masturbating at a curb, as if the latter were celebrities. The fair/freak show was truly an exhibitionists’ dream, made possible by San Francisco’s moral and legal laxity.

So pervasive was the public (mostly male) nudity that it seemed the more “modest” homosexuals were the ones wearing only underwear or leather chaps exposing their behind.

 Man gets flogged at the “Mr-S-Leather” booth in the center of Folsom Street Fair as crowd watches and a man snaps a photo. Note the recipient’s red back.

After a day of walking through this bizarre and hellish “fair” — with occasional “normalcy breaks” to restore our sanity — what struck us was a sense of “tolerance gone wild” in the City by the Bay. If you can tolerate men having sex in the streets, then you can tolerate just about anything. During one respite, when I (Peter) complained to a San Francisco resident about the public sex and nudity going on at Folsom just a block or two away, he grew cold and said, “To each his own.”

To each his own? “I don’t prefer to have sex in the streets, but if that’s your thing, go for it”? San Francisco is a lesson in the evils of liberal, open-ended “tolerance.” On the one hand, the city’s supervisors and left-wing activists harass and condemn Christian youth who seek to promote virtue and a godly lifestyle to San Francisco teenagers. Then the same city leaders welcome with open arms — and emasculated law enforcement — the most perverted public street festival imaginable, with a strong dose of anti-Christian bigotry to boot.

More important than what Folsom says about sadomasochists — after all, those were proud perverts out on Sunday — is what it says about (mostly straight) social liberals and libertarians. Quick to bash — that is, judge — the “religious right,” they are deathly afraid of criticizing or “judging” anything homosexuality-related, even heinous perversion festivals where human beings are walked around with collars like dogs! How troubled are you that Speaker Pelosi has carefully couched her words so as not to offend those who would reconfigure the Last Supper to include sex toys and deviant “fetishists”?

More photos and incredible scenes we witnessed below:

 Naked “leathermen” fondle each other in a public sex scene as passers-by stop to watch and take pictures. This scene (see next photo) went on for at least a half hour, as new men would come and join in the mutual masturbation. The smell of marijuana was in the air. And, yes, that is a baby stroller at the left of the photo. It occurred on the street directly in front of Weiss Welding (“since 1930”) at 1237 Folsom Street. At one point the man at left yelled out, “I’m seeing too many cameras and not enough dicks!” “Tolerance” has run amuck in San Francisco. Of course, it’s one-way: the same “Sisters” (see below) who welcomed the sadomasochists into Folsom Sunday protested vehemently against the Christian teen outreach group BattleCry, which held an evangelistic rally in San Francisco last year.

 Man performs oral sodomy on another man in the same orgiastic street scene at 1237 Folsom Street above. When there is no law, perversion and lawlessness fill the void. The same principle applies toward sin and godlessness in the spiritual and moral realms. How can such open (and illegal) debauchery be allowed to go on year after year by the city supervisors and the mayor? One policeman said the city takes a laissez-faire approach just for Folsom, once a year, but other long-time San Francisco citizens said that public indecency is tolerated on other “special” days, like Halloween.

 Hard-core pornography was easy to find, and buy on sale, at Folsom.

 Man leads bare-breasted female slave “partner” around by a dog collar. It appears that in recent years, heterosexual perverts have joined their “gay” brethren at the “fair” in increasing numbers. Talk about a setback for women’s rights … On the flip side, women were also seen leading around their male “slaves” at the twisted “fair” (see photo below).

  “They invent ways of doing evil” (Romans 1:30); “pony play” perversion on walking display at Folsom. What kind of movement — and city — celebrates human degradation of this sort? (And where is PETA when you need them?)

 Miller’s full-page ad in the Folsom Street Fair’s program states: “Miller Brewing Company Proudly Sponsors the 2007 Folsom Street Fair.” That was until they got caught and hit with a boycott by the Catholic League — and now the company is rethinking its marketing strategy. Miller’s booth, above, was centrally located at Folsom.

 We’ll end this segment with one of the “Sisters” … of Perpetual Indulgence, that is, since they greeted Folsom’s comers and goers. (At least one “Sister” was at every entrance.) The rabidly anti-Catholic and Christianity-mocking group — they’d deny that but trust us on this one — was a major beneficiary of this year’s Folsom Fair. The “order” of male drag queen “nuns” has now spread across America and abroad. This burly “novice” is Sister Mary Margaret MayHam of the “Missionary Order of the Grand Canyon Sisters,” in Arizona. The Sisters’ motto is, appropriately, “Go forth and sin some more!”

The raunchy, nudity-filled Folsom Street Fair occurs every year in San Francisco, which is in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) Eighth Congressional District.

The following news release was issued September 28 by Concerned Women for America. the statement by the Speaker’s press secretary was given to the Bay Area Reporter, a homosexual newspaper:

Pelosi Refuses to Denounce Hateful, Anti-Christian Ad

Washington, D.C. — Concerned Women for America (CWA) broke the story on Tuesday about an anti-Christian promotional advertisement put together by organizers of San Francisco’s partially taxpayer-funded and hedonistic Folsom Street Fair–sponsored by Miller Brewing, Co.– which will take place this Sunday. More than 400,000 people are expected to attend. The ad replaces Christ and his Disciples with homosexual sadomasochists in a twisted portrayal of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

“As if the ad itself isn’t offensive enough,” said Matt Barber, CWA’s Policy Director for Cultural Issues, “we have photographic evidence that the San Francisco government suspends indecency and child abuse laws for a day, allowing fair goers to parade the streets of San Francisco fully nude, engaging in illegal public sex while taxpayer-funded police stand by and do nothing. Children are allowed to – and do – attend this event and are exposed to this activity, which is illegal child abuse. We’re a nation of laws, and we’re calling on Mayor Gavin Newsom to enforce the law and for San Francisco police to arrest lawbreakers on Sunday.”

“Furthermore,” continued Barber [who is a Board Member of Americans For Truth], “on Tuesday we requested that California’s elected officials, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, publicly condemn this anti-Christian, anti-Catholic ad. Instead, Nancy Pelosi responded to our request with a condescending and dismissive quip.”

Media are reporting that Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s press secretary, responded to CWA’s request by saying, “As a Catholic, the speaker is confident that Christianity has not been harmed.”

Pelosi, who is a major supporter of the “gay” lifestyle, will be receiving an award from the radical homosexual group, Human Rights Campaign, on October 6th.

(Click Here to View “Gay” Last Supper Advertisement)