Will the Church of England be forced to hire John Reaney, a homosexual man, as a youth worker despite its beliefs about sex and marriage?

We’ll have much more on this case and other cases evincing the growing threat of homosexual legal activism to basic religious freedoms:

Bishop Loses Gay Employment Case

BBC, July 18, 2007 

A gay man has won his case for unlawful discrimination after he was refused a youth official’s job by a Church of England bishop.

The employment tribunal said John Reaney, 42, was discriminated against “on grounds of sexual orientation” by the Hereford diocesan board of finance.

Mr Reaney, from Colwyn Bay, Conwy, said he was “delighted” at the decision.

The Bishop of Hereford, the Rt Rev Anthony Priddis, said he was “naturally disappointed” and may appeal.

During the tribunal in Cardiff in April, Mr Reaney said he was questioned by Bishop Priddis on his previous gay relationship during a two-hour meeting on 19 July 2006

It came after he was told he had emerged as the outstanding candidate for the job during an eight-man interview, the hearing heard.

Mr Reaney, whose case was supported by Stonewall, also told the tribunal he was left “very embarrassed and extremely upset” following the meeting and said he felt like “a total waste of space”.

During his evidence, Bishop Priddis said he had made clear to Mr Reaney that a person in a committed sexual relationship outside of marriage, whether they were heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual or transgender, would be turned down for the post.

But the tribunal found that the bishop should only have considered the present lifestyle of Mr Reaney, who is single, and he should have not questioned his future relationships.

Delivering the judgement, the tribunal said the case would now be listed for a remedy hearing.

“The respondents discriminated against the claimant on the grounds of sexual orientation,” said the judgement.

To read the full BBC story and watch related BBC videos on the case, click HERE

TAKE ACTION:  Call your Senators at 202-224-3121 or e-mail them at www.congress.urg and ask them to reject the “Hate Crimes” amendment that Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) cynically added to the National Defense Authorization Act.   

 Mary Stachowicz: not the right kind of victim to the media

We favored the death penalty for alleged homosexual Nick Gutierrez for murdering Mary Stachowicz — and then effectively blaming her for “attacking” him (see story below) — just as we called for the death penalty for Matthew Shepard’s killers. But isn’t it interesting how the media have devoted so much coverage over the years to the heinous crime against Matthew, and so little to that against Mary? (Associated Press failed to even cover Gutierrez’s trial.)

How can reporters, producers and editors justifty their double-standard? These days it can be presumed that the Fourth Estate will lavish coverage on “gay” victims, while pious victims like Mary often get ignored. And it seems the media have even less interest in the latter when the murderer is a homosexual — imagine AP ignoring a story about a ‘christian’ who killed a lesbian and stuffing her in his crawl space? I cannot.

In a way, the media’s blatant pro-homosexual bias in covering terrible crimes shows the perils of the “hate crimes” concept in general — both affirm a politically correct hierarchy of victims that is unjust and un-American, no matter how well-intended. Surely, press bias also helps to perpetuate the lopsided prosecution of “hate crimes” against approved classes of victims (like Shepard) by mobilizing government resources through the pressure-generating power of the media spotlight. 

The homosexual lobby named its “thought crimes” bill the “Matthew Shepard Act” — even though he wasn’t killed “just because he was gay,” as the liberal myth goes. But there will never be a “Mary Stachowicz Act” because in the eyes of the same liberals, she was not the right kind of victim.

Call your Senators at 202-224-3121 or e-mail them at http://www.congress.urg/ and ask them to reject the “Hate Crimes” amendment that Sen. Ted Kennedy tacked on to the Naional Defense Authorization Act.  — Peter LaBarbera

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Nicholas Gutierrez, murderer of Mary Stachowicz, deserves death penalty but gets life in prison 

By Allyson Smith, Americans For Truth

CHICAGO — Nicholas Gutierrez, who in November 2002 gruesomely murdered Mary Stachowicz, a devout Chicago Catholic mother of four, was sentenced July 3 to life in prison, even though his crime made him eligible for the death penalty. The sentence was handed down by Cook County Circuit Judge William Lacy following sentencing arguments made by defense and prosecution attorneys the previous week.

“I think the judge was fair, but as the daughter of the victim, knowing what he [Gutierrez] did to my mother, he absolutely, 100 percent deserved the death penalty,” Angie Ruffolo, Mrs. Stachowicz’s daughter, told the Chicago Tribune.

Last November, Gutierrez, who had worked with Mary Stachowicz at the F. J. Sikorski Funeral Home on Chicago’s Northwest side, was convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering her. Days after her murder, authorities found Stachowicz’s raped, battered, stabbed and strangled body in a crawl space beneath the floorboards of Gutierrez’s apartment above the mortuary.

From American Family Association’s OneNewsNow news. Click HERE for a link to OneNewsNow where there is an audio link to this story:

A pro-family activist says the frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination are “pandering to the gay lobby” by agreeing to take part in a televised debate moderated by homosexual activists.

The top three Democratic presidential candidates … plan to take part in a one-hour debate August 9 devoted solely to “gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender” (GLBT) issues. The debate will be televised live from Los Angeles on the Viacom-owned homosexual television network “LOGO.”

According to Peter LaBarbera, director of Americans for Truth Action, Joe Solmonese — president of the Washington, DC-based Human Rights Campaign, one of the country’s most powerful homosexual activist groups — will be moderating the debate. HRC is coordinating the debate through a partnership with LOGO.

“The whole thing is structured to be pro-homosexual — and one wonders what candidates are doing to be sensitive to the pro-family people who still believe homosexuality is wrong,” exclaims LaBarbera.

The family advocate notes that polls that are “probably politically correct” show that half the country still believes homosexual behavior is wrong. “[The percentage is] probably much higher than that,” LaBarbera says, “but this is just astonishing that this development is happening and it’s being treated as a serious debate.”

The White House hopefuls will be asked questions by a panel that includes Solmonese and lesbian singer Melissa Etheridge. Questions will reportedly cover topics such as same-sex “marriage,” “hate crimes” legislation, and the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. One news report indicates individuals will also be able to submit questions online.

LaBarbera calls the debate “one of the most extraordinary developments in our country’s history.” He laments the societal mindset from which such an event would even occur.

“A debate framed from a pro-homosexual perspective — when homosexual behavior, for centuries, [for] thousands of years, was regarded as deeply sinful by Christians and people who believe in God,” he says. “It’s just astonishing. I’m waiting for the adultery presidential debate or maybe the pro-drug use presidential debate.

“Who ever heard of framing a presidential debate around a sin?” he asks.

We hope that openly lesbian Detroit News Columnist Deb Price is correct and that her homosexual activist comrades have much to fear in the direction of the Supreme Court. However, it is frightenng to think that so much is riding on decisions of swing Justice Anthony Kennedy — who in his opinions (e.g., Lawrence v. Texas) has often seemed more interested in pleasing the editorial writers at the New York Times than being faithful to the Constitution.– Peter LaBarbera

From Price’s column July 16:

Court threatens to burn fragile protections

In 1992, vacationing on the big island of Hawaii, I walked toward a river of blood red lava shooting over a cliff and into the sea. I recall looking for a sign, rope or “Hawaii Five-O’s” Steve McGarrett to warn me to stop.

But a giant caution sign wasn’t necessary. The instant I knew not to step a hair’s breadth farther was when I felt the soles of my tennis shoes starting to soften.

A similarly red hot warning — “Tread closer at your own peril” — poured out from the U.S. Supreme Court this term to gay Americans.

The Roberts court — whose votes in nongay cases strongly signaled that Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito can be expected to join Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in opposing almost any imaginable gay-rights plea — is moving frighteningly close to having the five votes it would need to weaken the groundbreaking rulings of 1996 and 2003 acknowledging that gay Americans are protected by the Constitution….

“This term confirmed a lot of our fears,” says Jon Davidson, legal director at Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.

What alarmed gay rights litigators? A string of 5-4 decisions against the powerless or minorities: Rulings blocking workers from suing over sex discrimination if it’s not discovered immediately; ignoring public school students’ free-speech rights, and hampering efforts to create racially diverse schools.

To read Price’s full column, click HERE

Fox News reports the following:

Deductive Reasoning

 

A 63-year-old Boston resident is suing the IRS because it is refusing to allow a $25,000 deduction — for a sex-change operation.

 

Rhiannon O’Donnabhain was a married father of three — when he underwent the operation at age 57. The IRS rejected the write-off — saying the tax code does not allow deductions for cosmetic surgery unless it is medically necessary. O’Donnabhain says the surgery follows a medical diagnosis of gender identity disorder, and advocates say it should be treated like other medical procedures. They say the IRS ruling is motivated by politics and prejudice.

 

O’Donnabhain’s case could set a precedent for the up to 2,000 people a year who undergo sex-change surgery in the U.S.

 

—FOX News Channel’s Martin Hill contributed to this report.

 Russell Groff, 1978-2004

Russell died at age 26 of HIV/AIDS after living in a homosexual relationship. How many future men will die young if the politically correct silence on homosexual health risks is not broken? Groff’s mother wants to use his life to warn other parents and children about the perils of embracing a “gay” lifestyle.

By Peter LaBarbera

We live in a cowardly and confused age, so perhaps it was too much to expect that Dr. James Holsinger, President Bush’s nominee for U.S. Surgeon General, would defend his own writings outlining the immense health risks of (male) homosexual behavior.

Unfortunately, on Thursday at his Senate confirmation hearing, Dr. Holsinger succumbed to the Bush Administration’s spin-doctors, Sen. Ted Kennedy’s bluster — and, evidently, his own lack of conviction — and said not one word in defense of his 1991 paper, “Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality,” which was written to shore up the faithful against forces in the Methodist Church seeking to undermine the church’s historic Biblical teachings on sexual sin.

Here is an account of the telling exchange between Sen. Kennedy and Dr. Holsinger, from the homosexual Washington Blade newspaper (emphasis added):

Holsinger’s critics have questioned the credibility of the studies he cites in his paper, saying most experts in public health agree that gays and straights are equally susceptible to sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. Critics have said the determining factors for transmission of sexually transmitted diseases are unprotected sex and the frequency of unprotected sexual encounters, regardless of whether such encounters are between same-sex or opposite-sex couples.

Kennedy said he received a letter from nine doctors with knowledge in human sexuality who denounced Holsinger’s paper as “wholly unscientific, biased and incredibly poor scholarship.”

“Dr. Holsinger’s paper cherry picks and misuses data to support his thesis that homosexuality is unhealthy and unnatural,” Kennedy said at the hearing…

…Holsinger said his paper was an unpublished review of the medical literature on health-related issues pertaining to male homosexuality nearly 20 years ago.

“I did not attempt to write a definitive scientific paper,” he said.

He said he now believes the paper is outdated.

“First of all, the paper does not represent where I am today,” he said. “It does not represent who I am today.”

So what are Dr. Holsinger’s views on whether homosexual acts are unnatural and unhealthy? We don’t know.

It seems that between 1991 and 2007, Dr. Holsinger went from defending truth to evading it, with some help in recent weeks from Bush Administration bureaucrats. (From the moment his nomination became national news, Holsinger’s White House handlers were pushing the idea that he’d moved on from his 1991 views: in the words of Health & Human Services spokeswoman Holly Babin, “Over the last 20 years, a clearer understanding of these issues has been achieved.”)

Meanwhile, homosexual activists threw everything but the kitchen sink at the doctor’s 1991 paper, but the nub of their opposition came down not to medical points — after all, the “gay” movement has made HIV/AIDS the most politically protected disease in American history — but to variations on this argument from homosexual activist Jim Burroway, critiquing the 1991 paper:

…Holsinger made the fatal error of ignoring the bonds of affection and devotion that arise in gay and lesbian couples. He reduced the rich complexity of their relationships to pipe fittings and how they interlock with each other.

In other words, Dr. Holsinger’s “fatal error” 16 years ago was that he agreed with God, not “gays,” about homosexual behavior. (Memo to God: consult with Jim Burroway ASAP re: your condemnation of same-sex practice; study up on the “rich complexity” of modern homosexuality and re-write your moral law and the Bible accordingly.)

Homosexual activists love bashing the “religious right,” but they are hyper-fundamentalists when it comes to defending their core ideological myth: that homosexuality and “same-sex relationships” are a “normal variation of human sexuality” — i.e., that they are NOT morally wrong (changeable sin) in the historic Judeo-Christian tradition.

So desperate are pro-“gay” advocates to force their Bible-rejecting myth on the culture that they downplay even serious health risks that result from embracing behaviors that a loving God proscribes. The result is that children in schools across the country are NOT being taught that there are special dangers, including HIV/AIDS, associated with homosexual behaviors. (See Dr. John Diggs’ paper, “The Health Risks of Gay Sex,” for more information.)

By Peter LaBarbera 

The following are two e-mail reports and analyses from Matt Barber of CWA, who attended yesterday’s Senate hearings on the confirmation of Dr. James Holsinger for U.S. Surgeon General. We agree with Matt’s assessment: while we are disappointed that Dr. Holsinger did not forthrightly defend his 1991 paper laying out how homosexual behaviors are unnatural and unhealthy — he did not fully recant his previous views as the media (including FOX News’ Brit Hume) are inferring and reporting in their coverage. (Here is Lifesite.net’s story on the hearing.)

Dodging questions and providing artful non-answers is an old Washington pastime. Also, it should be noted that since Dr. Holsinger’s nomination became news, his Bush administration handlers have sought to distance themselves from his 1991 paper (see our story on an ABC report about his nomination). Just as the Bush administration failed to strongly defend Gen. Peter Pace when he said homosexual acts are immoral, they now are running from Holsinger’s opposition to homosexual behavior.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if the nominee for the nation’s top doctor actually looked Sen. Kennedy in the face and laid out the truth about the health hazards of homosexual behavior?  He could start with the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) June report that finds, “MSM [men who have sex with men] accounted for 71% of all HIV infections among male adults and adolescents in 2005.”  Sadly, that won’t happen in this administration.

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Matt Barber e-mail July 13 to pro-family leaders: 

I want to clarify my previous assessment of the hearing so there’s no confusion.  Holsinger was definitely slipping and sliding all over the place.  He came across as a regular Washington insider.  In his 1991 paper he stood firm in his position.  In the hearing he completely abandoned that firm stance by giving a bunch of non-answers and playing dodge ball… (Not at all impressive).  I hope I didn’t give the impression I was defending his performance or his current position on homosexuality (which now nobody except for Dr. Holsinger apparently knows), because I definitely wasn’t.  I was very much hoping he would display courage and stand firm on his prior position (which happens to be the correct position).  He didn’t.  And yes, his non-answers could be construed as “disavowing” his previous stance.  But I think the MSM [mainstream media], including Fox, have grossly exaggerated his statement.  They’re reporting what they wanted to hear, not what he actually said.     

The leftist National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is attacking Surgeon General nominee Dr. James Holsinger’s because the church he founded believes in helping “gays” leave the homosexual lifestyle.

By Peter LaBarbera
 
Dear AFTAH Reader,
 
The pro-homosexuality Left is working hard to take down another good Christian man — this time it’s Dr. James Holsinger, President Bush’s nominee for U.S. Surgeon General.  Holsinger’s first confirmation hurdle is tomorrow, July 12th, when he appears before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension (HELP) Committee.  Enclosed is the text of an “Action Alert” from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) — a far-left organization that promotes a reckless “sexual freedom” agenda harmful to youth. Some helpful background links:

• Americans For Truth’s original story on Dr. Holsinger — the ugly attacks against him have only escalated since;
• Dr. Holsinger’s 1991 paper describing the serious health risks of male homosexuality (MUST READ);
• AFTAH’s shocking undercover report on last year’s NGLTF “Creating Change” conference in Kansas City (with enemies like this, the good doctor must be doing something right!)

TAKE ACTION:  Please do the opposite of the the homosexual “Task Force” says below and voice your support for Dr. Holsinger.  Call the Congressional Switchboard tomorrow morning at 202-224-3121 or go to www.congress.org and e-mail both of your U.S. Senators — especially if they are on the Senate HELP Committee (see list at bottom).  Ask them to use their influence to:

• Defend Dr. Holsinger’s right to receive a fair hearing and a vote by the full Senate on his confirmation (a  veteran Capitol Hill source told us that nominees are rarely rejected by committee); and
• Speak out against the un-American idea of PUNISHING a nominee for government service because he or she is a committed Christian.

Lastly, send an e-mail to or call (202-224-5754) Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) — a medical doctor and respected pro-family advocate who sits on the Senate HELP Committee. Ask Sen. Coburn to represent the vast majority of Americans who do not want to see Dr. Holsinger get “Borked” simply for being a faithful Christian, or because of the church he belongs to.