Excerpted from When Nancy Met Harry, by Jeffrey Lord, published Oct 5, 2006, by The American Spectator:

The Pride Parade.

That’s what it’s called in San Francisco when the community gathers for a parade during the annual San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Pride Celebration. It is, by all accounts, a wingding of a celebration, too. As the San Francisco Chronicle, the media sponsor of the Pride Parade,…bursting with civic pride, was also pleased to publish the marching order of the parade and all its celebrants. It’s quite a list. A who’s who of San Francisco. Then Supervisor and now Democratic mayor Gavin Newsom, members of two Democratic Clubs, California Democratic legislators, the police, sheriff and fire departments and even the director of the Golden Gate Bridge were marching right alongside celebrants from Vulva University [which offers “Sex Wisdom Classes”], The Stud Bar [“a queer establishment since 1966”], and Leather Pride.

It is, in short, the San Francisco political establishment whooping it up with its constituents…

Celebrant number 31 was the late Harry Hay [photos]…famous not only as a founder of the gay rights movement, for his one-time relationship with actor Will Geer (who played Grandpa Walton on The Waltons TV series,) he was also known for being featured in the 1976 documentary film of gay life titled Word Is Out. When he died the following year after the parade, at 90, the New York Times Magazine featured him in “The Lives They Lived,” its annual pictorial salute to famous Americans who had passed away during the preceding year. In addition to laudatory obits in both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, the Chronicle did a considerably flattering obituary. “Harry Hay, gay rights pioneer, dies at 90.” The paper favorably notes a number of things in Harry’s life, including his left-leaning politics, his connection with the Communist Party in the 1930s and his founding of “The Mattachine Society,” a group the Chronicle calls “the first sustained homosexual rights organization in the United States.”

…The Chronicle, however, left something else out of the obituary entirely…

Harry Hay was a fierce advocate of man/boy love. While The Chronicle simply ignored Harry’s views, the North American Man/Boy Love Association was only too delighted to put up a collection of Harry’s views on the need for young boys to have older men as sexual partners.

Excerpted from Foley’s Fall Spotlights Growing Velvet Mafia Influence in GOP, published Oct 9, 2006, by WDC Media:

Amid the fallout of the Mark Foley scandal, one consequence appears to be an increasing exposure of the influential role homosexuals have within the Republican party. As the New York Times reported Sunday, homosexuals in the Republican Party — sometimes known by insider slang terms including the “velvet mafia” or the “pink elephants” — are a well-established force in the GOP.

According to the Times, many of these homosexual Republicans “have held crucial staff positions for decades,” and this has been even more the case in recent years…

Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth believes the media have taken great pains to avoid using the words “homosexual” or “gay” in coverage of the Foley scandal. “There’s clearly an effort here to make this somehow a pedophile issue or something that’s separate from the homosexual issue,” he asserts, “and, of course, this is right up the homosexual alley.”

There is a well-documented history of homosexual men pursuing underage boys, LaBarbera says; but homosexual activists are getting help in burying this fact. “What we’re seeing here,” he contends, “is another effort by the media, working with the gay lobby, to separate out Foley’s predations on a teenage boy from the homosexual issue.”

The media is not being intellectually honest about the Foley situation or the pattern that it illustrates, the pro-family activist insists. “There’s a long history of homosexuals being predators on teenage boys,” he says.

“The fact is, if you go all the way back to the days of ancient Greece, there were homosexual relationships between adult men and teenage boys; so it’s really ridiculous to say this has nothing to do with homosexuality,” LaBarbera notes. He says the media’s reporting of the Foley scandal has been marked by a great deal of political correctness, while the media have actually helped homosexual activists bury the truth.

Continue reading at WDC Media…

Excerpted from Congressional Page Scandal Takes on Anti-gay Bent as Details Emerge, published Oct 6, 2006, in the pro-GLBT Dallas Voice:

As the Republican Congressional leadership scrambled to determine the true scope of the sex scandal surrounding former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley and at the same time distance themselves from the Florida Republican, GLBT and progressive activists condemned what they characterized as the anti-gay bent of the response from both office holders and right-wing leaders…

Many gay rights and progressive activists, while criticizing Republicans’ handling of the situation, are even more incensed at efforts by the GOP and right-wing leaders to deflect attention from Republican officials by linking pedophilia to homosexuality.

Ralph G. Neas, president of People for the American Way, said “right-wing leaders have wasted no time in turning the Foley-Hastert scandal into an attack on gay Americans and advocates for equality.”

He pointed as examples to comments such as those by Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, who said, “When you hold of tolerance and diversity, this is what you end up getting. … [neither Republicans nor Democrats] seem likely to address the real issue, which is the link between homosexuality and child abuse.”

Linda Harvey, writing in World Net Daily, described Foley’s behavior as “typical behavior for homosexuals,” and Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans For Truth, said the scandal “illustrates the dangers of the GOP’s growing flirtation with pro-homosexual policies,” according to a report on the Christian Newswire.

LaBarbera listed Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., former Rep. Gerry Studds, D-Mass., and former Rep. Bob Baughman, R-Md., as “outed or openly homosexual male Congressmen” who have been caught in sex scandals in the past.

“Three homosexual Congressmen have been involved in sexual seductions of minor boys, yet ‘gay’ activists ridicule anyone who suggests there is a predatory component to male homosexuality,” he told the Christian Newswire.

Frank’s former boyfriend had used the congressman’s Washington, D.C.-apartment as headquarters for a male prostitution ring, without Frank’s knowledge. Studds was censured by the House for having consensual sex with a 17-year-old boy. Bauman was charged with soliciting a 16-year-old boy for sex in 1980.

Studds and Frank were both re-elected after the scandals broke.

Continue reading at Dallas Voice… 

Excerpted from Speculation Flies on Fallout from Foley, by Douglas Turner, published Oct 4, 2006, by The Buffalo News:

… “This is a story that people can understand,” Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute told The Buffalo News. “Other issues, like the conviction of [lobbyist] Jack Abramoff and two congressmen, may have gone over people’s heads. This is about the welfare of young people. For that reason I think this will have a very, very significant effect on the election.”

…Peter LaBarbera, spokesman for Americans for Truth, an evangelical lay organization, denounced what he called “the GOP’s growing flirtation with pro-homosexual policies.”

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said, “When a party holds itself out as the guardian of values, this is not helpful.”

Continue reading in The Buffalo News…

Excerpted from The Road to Nowhere? Middle Church, by Dr. Albert Mohler, published Oct 3, 2006, by Crosswalk:

Bob Edgar wants to rescue America from the religious right. In his new book, Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right, Edgar intends to reset the nation’s agenda when it comes to matters of Christian concern.

…Edgar could have offered a careful, exegetical, historical, and theological engagement with moral issues. Instead he offers irresponsible generalizations such as this: “The Bible mentions abortion not once, homosexuality only twice, and poverty or peace more than two thousand times. Yet somehow abortion and homosexuality have become the litmus test of faith in public life today.”

How can an intelligent reader, armed with even the slightest knowledge of the Bible and the Christian tradition, take such a statement seriously? The Bible does not mention abortion only in the sense that it does not make direct reference to the practice of surgical abortion as is common today. The Bible speaks clearly to the sanctity of human life and to the priority of protecting unborn life. Furthermore, to state that the Bible mentions homosexuality “only twice” indicates that Edgar has redefined homosexuality as something other than that which the Bible addresses in numerous passages.

There can be no doubt that the Bible’s consistent judgment is that homosexual acts are inherently immoral and sinful. The Christian church in all of its major branches has understood this for two thousand years. This has been a true ecumenical consensus until recent years when some more liberal churches in the West have abandoned the Christian tradition in order to endorse homosexual practice.

Thus, it is an act of intellectual dishonesty for Edgar to claim to speak for “classic historical Christianity.”

Just in case we might miss his point, Edgar offers this assessment of Scripture: “The far religious right is fond of condemning homosexuality because they say the Scripture is immutable and its words are literal.” Again, Edgar identifies the scriptural consensus that homosexuality is sinful as an example of the radical nature of the “far religious right” [italics his]. Once again, one need not be very conservative to end up in Edgar’s category of the far religious right…

In an amazing passage, Edgar asserts: “People of faith must be able to conduct a respectful and open conversation about all aspects of sexuality including homosexuality. God has a lot to say on all these topics, and if we skip the listening and rush straight to the judging–an enterprise in which we’re not supposed to be involved anyway–we can’t hope to make serious progress in our discussion.”

Statements like this must leave us wondering if this author actually means to be taken seriously. His book is filled with moral judgments–judgments about ecology, justice, racism, and a host of other issues. But when it comes to sexuality, Edgar offers the facile suggestion that moral judgment is “an enterprise in which we’re not supposed to be involved anyway.”

In other words, when Edgar makes moral judgments, he’s not being judgmental. But when others moral judgments, they are being judgmental. The Bible does not say that we are not to make moral judgments, or that we are not to judge moral behavior. Indeed, the Bible makes absolutely no sense if that is the case. The Bible–in both Old and New Testaments–is filled with moral judgment and with advisement on how we are to make such judgments. Of course, the judgments we are to make concern behavior, not the heart. We are expressly forbidden to judge another’s heart. That distinction is missing from Edgar’s analysis.

…What separates Bob Edgar and biblical Christianity is the fact that God has told us how He is going to judge humanity–and the crucial issue in that judgment is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

When it comes to matters of public policy, evangelicals surely do not have all the answers. Furthermore, evangelicals are well served by a reminder that our moral agenda needs to be broader than the issues of the daily headlines.

Nevertheless, conservative Christians did not decide to make abortion, homosexuality, and stem cell research front-line issues. It is nothing less than intellectual dishonesty to suggest that evangelicals prompted the national debate on those issues. On all of these fronts, evangelicals are simply calling on the Christian church to stand by its historic convictions and moral wisdom.

Continue reading at Crosswalk…

By Peter LaBarbera

(Published Oct 9, 2006, in Post Chronicle)

Note the excerpt below from homosexual writer Andrew Sullivan, from his October 2nd blog post entitled The Vatican and the RNC.

If the Foley incident is not about pedophilia, it is also not, it seems to me, about homosexuality. It’s fundamentally about the closet. The closet is so psychologically destructive it often produces pathological behavior. When you compartmentalize your life, you sometimes act out in one compartment in ways that you would never condone in another one. Think Clinton-Lewinsky, in a heterosexual context. But closeted gay men are particularly vulnerable to this kind of thing. Your psyche is so split by decades of lies and deceptions and euphemisms that integrity and mental health suffer. No one should excuse Foley’s creepy interactions; they are inexcusable, as is the alleged cover-up (although we shouldn’t jump to conclusions yet about who knew what when). But there’s a reason gay men in homophobic institutions behave in self-destructive ways.

Or think of it another way: what do the Vatican and the RNC have in common? Here’s one potential list: entrenched homophobia, psychologically damaged closet cases, inappropriate behavior toward teens and minors … and cover-ups designed entirely to retain power. The parallels are looking a little creepy. And the source is the same.

After decades of cultivating a victim mentality ad nauseam, homosexual advocates are reduced to this argument: Foley’s predatory behavior was, ultimately, OUR fault. Society (read: Bible-believing Christians and churches) is to blame. Once again the circular logic of what I call “gay fundamentalism” is exposed: whatever deviance, whatever threats to health, children and morality–all is laid at the door of “homophobic” society because of the “shame” we cause “gays” by not celebrating or at least not accepting their lifestyle choice. How convenient for them.

The truth is Mark Foley, like the rest of us, is a sinner in need of a Savior. As fallen human beings, our hearts are bent toward sin. God spoke through the prophet Jeremiah: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9, KJV) It’s tough to own up to that truth: each of our hearts is so bent toward “wickedness” (now there’s a word you don’t hear very often) that we can’t even know our own potential for self-deception!

If Foley was molested as a youth as his lawyer states, then he joins the legion of sexually victimized men and women who have gone on to perpetuate their abuse, as adults, on others. But Foley, like all people caught up in the modern cult of homosexuality, IS responsible for his behavior before God. (Besides, why would it follow that his natural “orientation” is “gay” if a major contributing cause to his current state of sexual confusion is that he was abused as a teenager?)

Repressed homosexuality (the “closet”) did not put those male congressional pages at risk; active, practicing (albeit furtive) homosexuality did. Pederasty – sexual “relationships” between adult men and adolescent boys – is as old as the ancient Greeks, and to this day homosexual men pursue sex with teenage boys. In the early days of “gay liberation,” they callously called these boys “chicken.” Yet somehow the media and professional talkers are behaving as if this current scandal has nothing to do with homosexuality.

While many are in shock, Peter LaBarbera, President of Americans for Truth, says that Congressman Foley’s sexual orientation was no secret in Washington, D.C. LaBarbera uncovered this news for CWA in 2003.

Listen to Americans for Truth President Peter LaBarbara, interviewed by Martha Kleder of Concerned Women for America!

Click HERE to listen online.

AN AMERICANS FOR TRUTH PRESS RELEASE

CHICAGO, Illinois–The scandal of disgraced homosexual pederast and former Rep. Mark Foley illustrates the dangers of the GOP’s growing flirtation with pro-homosexual policies, said Americans For Truth President Peter LaBarbera.

“For years, we have seen some Republican Party leaders drift in a pro-homosexual direction,” LaBarbera said. “Their rationale is winning the votes of ‘moderate’ swing voters, but they forget that there is a price to pay among values voters when you abandon principle on a core moral issue.”

“Top Republican leaders knew about Foley’s homosexuality and his reckless behavior with underage boys, yet they did not act,” he said. “How long were they prepared to keep this dirty secret from the public? Is winning elections now more important to Republicans than protecting children? Is it more important than letting constituents know about a Representative’s immoral conduct, which of course influences his votes (Foley had a pro-“gay” record)?

Meanwhile, noting that the homosexual Log Cabin Republicans quickly erased a photo of Mark Foley from their website,” LaBarbera said. “Too bad Foley’s teenaged victims and their parents won’t be able to erase the effects of his twisted behavior from their minds so easily.”

He said it is telling that most of the tiny number of “outed” or openly homosexual male Congressmen have been caught in sex scandals:

• Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts), who let his male lover run a prostitution ring out of his D.C. apartment;
• Retired Massachusetts Rep. Gerry Studds (D), who had sex with a 17-year-old boy and then turned his back on fellow House Members during the censure vote against him. The defiant Studds even put the boy forward at a press conference to announce that their “relationship” was “consensual”;
• Bob Bauman (R-Maryland), who in 1980 was charged with soliciting a 16-year-old boy for sex.

“Three homosexual Congressmen have been involved in sexual seductions of minor boys, yet ‘gay’ activists ridicule anyone who suggests there is a predatory component to male homosexuality,” LaBarbera said.

Noting the re-elections of Democrats Studds and Frank after their sex scandals, he added, “Maybe Foley could make a comeback if he moves to Massachusetts and runs as a Democrat.”