The following is excerpted from LifeSiteNews.com, a must “go-to” site for pro-family advocates and citizens no matter what country you live in. Needless to say, you would have heard a lot more about this huge Italian rally had it been an “anti-Bush” protest against the war, or maybe a pro-“gay marriage” protest. The people “get it” regarding marriage and family; the secular media are obsessed with political correctness. One wonders how the political/cultural equation over homosexuality would be different if the media’s coverage were anything close to being fair rather than overwhelmingly pro-“gay”-activist as it is in most of the West today.— Peter LaBarbera  

1.5 Million Italians Turn Out in Massive Rome Protest Against Homosexual Civil Unions
Oraganizers Were Expecting Only 100,000

By Gudrun Schultz, LifeSiteNews.com

ROME, Italy, May 14, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Italians from across the country poured into Rome May 12 to join in a demonstration against a law that would give legal recognition to homosexual couples–reports showed up to 1.7 million people overflowed the St. John Lateran piazza. Organizers initially expected to draw about 100,000.

The proposed legislation would give homosexual couples–and unmarried heterosexual couples–similar rights to those of married couples, stopping just short of legalizing homosexual marriage.

“Living together is not family,” protester Anna Manara told the Associated Press.
“A commitment such as marriage cements the bond, while other models make it easier to be together and therefore end up making it less valuable.”

While the pro-family demonstration was backed by the Vatican and Italy’s Catholic bishops, it was organized by lay people independently of the Church. The “mind-blowing” success of the event is an outstanding example of the power held by ordinary citizens when sufficiently mobilized in support of traditional values, said Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, a priest in Rome who is the moderator of the Catholic Online Forum (see blogsite: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2007/05/winners-and-losers).

“The importance of this event is not merely that when left to their own devices the Italian people will support traditional values in great numbers, giving the lie to the script presented by the intellectuals in the press. It also means in concrete terms that the traditional values laity can organize and achieve results.”

“The success of “Family Day” also highlights a now deeply entrenched trend not only in Italy, but in the West: the marginalization of the Church from the public square,” Fr. Zuhlsdorf said. “Nearly everywhere the Church’s is being denied its right to speak freely. Committed Catholic and other religious politicians and public figures are pressured never to make reference to their religious convictions. The constant mantra is that religion should be a purely private matter than has no influence on public policy. Be religious, fine. But you may never act outwardly on your interior opinions.”

By Peter LaBarbera 

 Publicity shot for Brokeback Mountain: not appropriate for adults, much less for young kids in the classroom

WARNING: offensive descriptions of unnatural acts that should NEVER be promoted to children 

CHICAGO (AP) – A girl and her grandparents have sued the Chicago Board of Education, alleging that a substitute teacher showed the R-rated film “Brokeback Mountain” in class.

 

The lawsuit claims that Jessica Turner, 12, suffered psychological distress after viewing the movie in her 8th grade class at Ashburn Community Elementary School last year….

Alas, more corruption of youth at the hands of pro-homosexual activists. The movement that once asked just to be left alone is now pushing homosexuality on middle school students. In Chicago, a substitute teacher — no doubt a liberal “change agent” hell-bent on advancing her version of “tolerance and diversity” — showed the homosexual propaganda film “Brokeback Mountain” to her 8th-grade class (see full story below). Now the school is facing a $500,000 lawsuit. Let’s hope and pray that Jessica Turner’s grandparents prevail and that their legal action sends an expensive lesson to liberal educators nationwide — one that future Tolerance Tyrants (like Ms. Buford) seeking to manipulate young minds cannot ignore. 

But that’s just one abuse in a single school. The leftist Southern Poverty Law Center, through its publication “Teaching Tolerance,” is now advocating the formation of student homosexual clubs (innocently called “Gay/Straight Alliances”) in middle schools. Yes, that’s right: we’re talking pre-pubescent and pubescent boys and girls in grades six through nine, depending on the school. We will have more on that outrage later.

I saw Brokeback Mountain in the theater because I had to. It is a highly effective propaganda film well-suited to exploit today’s widespread confusion over “sexual orientation” and “same-sex love.” The film is about two male cowboys who “fall in love,” and features a sudden sodomitic encounter in a tent that is, well, let’s just say, biological and medical fantasy. The film, of course, seeks to advance the fiction that “gay” romantic love is just like the normal variety except with different genders. But that ignores, for one thing, the terrible damage that sodomy (i.e., anal sex) exacts on the body. That’s why many male initiates into homosexual sex get high on drugs or alcohol first — to dull the pain (and the shame) of this unnatural and sinful behavior.

If Brokeback were honest, one of the guys involved in the scene depicting the crime against nature (how sodomy was once regarded back when men were men) would be howling in pain louder than a coyote, rather than just rolling over and going to sleep. But, hey, we wouldn’t want to spoil the cultural elites’ pro-“gay” party by telling Americans about the pain and consequences stemming from homosexual behavior, would we?

 

It’s sort of like how many schools nowadays teach kids about HIV/AIDS without mentioning the “inconvenient truth” that this awful disease in America is strongly linked to “men who have sex with men” (MSM). (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that through 2006, “MSM account for approximately 45% of newly reported HIV/AIDS diagnoses and nearly 54% of cumulative AIDS diagnoses.”)

Predictably, in Brokeback, one of the male lovers is savagely murdered by homosexual-hating hetero cowboys — another lesson I’m sure the militant Chicago teacher wanted to impress on her captive audience: if you disagree with the homosexual lifestyle, you are a “hater” and mean-spirited “homophobe.” Never mind that the vast majority of people who oppose homosexual behavior do not hate people but merely agree with God about harmful and changeable behaviors that do not define a person; and decent people are rightfully outraged at the idea of promoting this dangerous homosexual lifestyle to impressionable children.

TAKE ACTION:  If you are an adult, dedicate yourself to educating the young people in your sphere of influence about the truth about homosexuality. Tell them about former homosexuals like Charlene Cothran and Steve Bennett. Visit NARTH’s (National Association for Research and Therapy on Homosexuality) excellent website. Show them Professor Rob Gagnon’s site, which ably refutes the nefarious “gay theology” that seeks to negate the Bible’s clear proscriptions against homosexual acts. 

We have no choice but to be aggressive with the truth, because our foes are so aggressive in promoting their lies — even to innocent kids in the classroom. I’m afraid that in our society, even children brought up well by moral-minded parents will have drunk some of the pro-“gay” Kool-Aid by the time they reach adulthood — so saturated is our culture with politically correct, activist nonsense on this issue.

Here’s the May 13 AP story on Brokeback Mountain being shown to 8th-graders in Chicago:  

Lawsuit over Brokeback Mountain in Class

 

CHICAGO (AP) – A girl and her grandparents have sued the Chicago Board of Education, alleging that a substitute teacher showed the R-rated film “Brokeback Mountain” in class.

 

The lawsuit claims that Jessica Turner, 12, suffered psychological distress after viewing the movie in her 8th grade class at Ashburn Community Elementary School last year.

 

The film, which won three Oscars, depicts two cowboys who conceal their homosexual affair.

 

Turner and her grandparents, Kenneth and LaVerne Richardson, are seeking around $500,000 in damages.

 

“It is very important to me that my children not be exposed to this,” said Kenneth Richardson, Turner’s guardian. “The teacher knew she was not supposed to do this.”

 

According to the lawsuit filed Friday in Cook County Circuit Court, the video was shown without permission from the students’ parents and guardians.

 

The lawsuit also names Ashburn Principal Jewel Diaz and a substitute teacher, referred to as “Ms. Buford.”

 

The substitute asked a student to shut the classroom door at the West Side school, saying: “What happens in Ms. Buford’s class stays in Ms. Buford’s class,” according to the lawsuit.

 

Richardson said his granddaughter was traumatized by the movie and had to undergo psychological treatment and counseling.

 

In 2005, Richardson complained to school administrators about reading material that he said included curse words.

 

“This was the last straw,” he said. “I feel the lawsuit was necessary because of the warning I had already given them on the literature they were giving out to children to read. I told them it was against our faith.”

 

Messages left over the weekend with CPS officials were not immediately returned.

By Peter LaBarbera 

We have only skimmed the surface as to how destructive liberal (distorted) notions of “tolerance” and “diversity” will be to children. Below is the beginning of a Southern Poverty Law Center online article advocating homosexual (“gay/straight alliance”) clubs for middle schools. All students can and must be protected regardless of their behavioral traits/”orientations” — and bullies must be dealt with severely — but encouraging “proud” homosexual clubs for children in grades 6-9 who are still far from adulthood is breathtakingly reckless.

These GSA clubs certainly promote just ONE SIDE of the homosexual issue, and engage in propagandistic activities to the rest of the school. Studies show that kids’ “sexual identities” are fluid, so why on earth would we want to encourage any boy or girl in the idea that they are “gay” before they are fully developed? (Gee, I wonder if I even thought about sex, much less had a sexual ‘identity,’ when I was in 6th grade!)

At this point I can already hear some “gay” activists saying how “they knew they were different” at some ridiculously young age, say five years old — which always makes me suspicious that they weren’t victimized in some way as a child. Because normal people simply did not contemplate their sexual nature as young children. But I digress: the point is: liberals are taking public schools into very dangerous territory by ENCOURAGING even pre-adolescent children to self-identify as GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender) — particularly since the one thing we can be sure about is that they will NOT effectively communicate the massive health risks of homosexual behavior to these impressionable kids. This is educational malpractice at its worst and it must be stopped.

The following is the beginning of the Spring 2007 “Teaching Tolerance” article advocating homosexual clubs for middle schoolers: 

‘THIS is Why We Need a GSA’
Gay-straight alliances are taking hold in middle schools, where homophobia and anti-gay harassment may be the most rampant. 
 

by Carrie Kilman 
 
For several weeks last spring, fliers announcing Sennett Middle School’s Gay-Straight Alliance were torn from the hallways, revealing a hidden message to the culprits about why the club was important in the first place. Safe spaces can be hard to come by when you’re a middle school student, especially if you’re lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. For the past 10 years, GSAs have helped high school students fight anti-gay harassment. Experts say middle school is where GSAs might be needed most — and their numbers are starting to grow.

 

To read the entire “Teaching Tolerance” article, click HERE

  The following is reprinted with permission from the website of the Family Taxpayers Network, a terrific organization based in Carpentersville, Illinois. (FTN runs “TheChampion.org website, which is loaded with good stuff on education reform, and where you can look up any public school teacher’s salary on their School Salary Database.)

Same old story regarding the GOP’s dalliance with the Log Cabin Republicans, whose “gay” agenda pretty much parallels that of other homosexual organizations. We’ve said it once, we’ll say it a thousand times: the Republican Party cannot be “pro-family” and pro-homosexual-activist at the same time.

The Log Cabin Republicans in Illinois are lobbying hard for House Bill 1826, which would force the state’s businesses to recognize and therefore subsidize homosexual “civil unions.” (So much for freedom of conscience.) HB 1826 is a same-sex “marriage” bill by another name. Peraica strongly supported last year’s Illinois Marriage Protection advisory referendum (which has been relaunched by Protect Marriage Illinois for 2008), so why is he now seeking the support of a group whose radical agenda is 180 degrees in the opposite direction?

With the Democrats nationally the party of abortion-on-demand (including “partial-birth infanticide) and mainstreaming homosexuality, the GOP needs to decide: is it going to mimic the Democrats’ social leftism or present voters with a conservative, pro-life, pro-family alternative? That’s up to them, but they would do well to heed the words of the true “log cabin” president, Abe Lincoln, who said — repeating the words of Jesus (Matthew 12:25): “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” — Peter LaBarbera

Cozying up with a homosexual, anti-Bush group
 
Tony Peraica and Christine Radogno can be seen HERE happily being welcomed at a recent private reception hosted by the Log Cabin Republicans (photo courtesy of the Windy City Times, the newspaper which proudly hails itself as “The Voice of Chicago’s Gay, Lesbian, Bi and Trans Community since 1985.”)
 
The Log Cabin Republicans is of course a group that’s dedicated to advancing the homosexual agenda in America. But putting that aside, just how “Republican” is the group? Well, the Log Cabin Republicans were always a key backer of Judy Baar Topinka, and each year members of the Chicago Chapter were among the most enthusiastic marchers with her in Chicago’s Gay Pride Parade.
 
But while Topinka was welcomed, the group snubbed our Commander in Chief. In 2004 the organization refused to endorse President Bush due to his defense of traditional marriage. The organization even ran television ads in 2004 attacking Bush for his support of a fundamental plank of the Republican Platform.
 
Further, last year the Chicago Chapter of the Log Cabins assisted other gay activists in preparing the legal challenge to the Protect Marriage Illinois petitions – those hundreds of thousands of signatures that so many dedicated Republicans worked so hard gathering across Illinois.
 
How hypocritical that a group that preaches about the “Big Tent” turns on the President and the base when they don’t get their way on THEIR single issue.
 
Peraica’s and Radogno’s support of the Log Cabins is a poke in the eye to every Republican who believes in the Republican Platform –– and especially to the thousands who worked so hard gathering signatures for the Protect Marriage Illinois initiative.

We are cheered by the following e-notice from the Family Institute of Connecticut Action, but this victory is bittersweet. That’s because, as you will learn from the link to the Hartford Courant in this story, Connecticut’s legislature passed “civil unions” (“gay marriage” by another name) in 2005. (Connecticut was “the first state in the nation to pass a civil union or same-sex marriage law voluntarily through the legislature and without judicial intervention,” Wikipedia notes.)

When the pro-family movement is reduced (in blue states) to proclaiming as a “massive victory” the mere stalling of a legislative vote for actual “same-sex marriage” — legislation that would have been laughed off just a few years ago — you know the hour is late in the struggle to preserve sexual sanity in this nation. Does that mean we give up? No, but it’s best that we view the present reality clearly.

Christians, conservatives, and traditionalists, let’s be honest with ourselves and the public: preserving “the word” marriage is only a minor — and many would say symbolic — victory, and no victory at all if we lose all else in the “culture war” over homosexuality. This small battle in Connecticut may have been “won,” but the war was almost lost two years ago when the Democrat-controlled legislature voted for a bill — which a Republican governor then signed into law — to give government approval to relationships based on homosexual perversion. — Peter LaBarbera

Family Institute of Connecticut Action writes: 

Massive Victory For Marriage!

 

Earlier today the Family Institute of Connecticut asked you, our supporters, to call your legislators and ask them to oppose holding a vote on same-sex “marriage.” That battle has now been won:

 

Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, and Rep. Mike Lawlor, D-East Haven, said Friday afternoon they do not intend to push for a vote on same-sex marriage this legislative session, saying the bill does not have enough votes to win…

 

Opponents of the bill were cheered by Lawlor and McDonald’s decision. “The Family Institute of Connecticut is thrilled that the legislature has heeded the majority of voters in the state who do not want to see marriage radically redefined,” said Peter Wolfgang, the institute’s public policy director.

 

This is a massive victory for marriage protection and it happened because of you: the pro-family citizens of Connecticut who heeded FIC’s call to make your voices heard at our state capitol. Thanks to you, our Feb. 21st lobby day was a tremendous success, turning out twice as many people as our opponents on a day picked by them. Thanks to you, FIC provided the outstanding testimony of Maggie Gallagher, Dawn Stefanowicz, Brian Brown-and over 40 pro-family activists like you-for the most successful public hearing on same-sex “marriage” we have ever had. And thanks to your phone calls and e-mails-whose effectiveness was grudgingly acknowledged even by our opponents-we have today’s massive victory for marriage protection.

 

Today’s victory came about because of your hard work. But our opponents have vowed to try again, which is why we need your support to continue to defend marriage from their attacks.

 

Our May 23rd Rally and Lobby Day for Marriage will go forward-beginning at 10 a.m. on the steps of the state capitol in Hartford. We need as many pro-family state residents as possible to attend.

 

And, even for this year, a radical redefinition of marriage is still possible. The state Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments Monday in a case brought by activists seeking a judicial imposition of same-sex “marriage.” FIC and other pro-family groups have filed friend-of-the-court briefs. And FIC’s Peter Wolfgang will be appearing with pro same-sex “marriage” Rep. Mike Lawlor the following morning (May 15th at 9:00 a.m.) to discuss the case on WNPR’s “Where We Live” program.

 

Congratulations to all of you who stood with us and helped bring about today’s marvelous victory for families and children. May there be many more.

 

Your support for marriage protection made the difference! But the battle is far from over and your help is urgently needed. Please click here to double your donation to our matching grant campaign.

Press Release, Concerned Women For America (www.cwfa.org), May 11, 2006  

Washington, DC –– With much fanfare, liberals in Congress — led by openly homosexual congressman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) — recently introduced H.R. 2015, the ironically-titled “Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2007” (ENDA).  According to proponents, this bill merely seeks to insulate people who choose to engage in homosexual behaviors (“sexual orientation”) or who suffer from gender confusion (gender identity) against employment discrimination.  But regrettably this legislation would effectively codify and encourage the very thing it purports to prevent — workplace discrimination. 

ENDA would apply to any business with 15 or more employees.  The bill’s language states that, “it shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer…to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to the compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment of the individual, because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.”      

Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural Issues with Concerned Women for America (CWA), warned, “This bill would force Christian, Jewish or Muslim business owners to hire people who openly choose to engage in homosexual or cross-dressing behaviors despite a sincerely held religious belief that those behaviors are dangerous, sinful and not in keeping with basic morality.  ENDA would essentially force employers to check their First Amendment protected rights to freedom of religion, speech and association at the workplace door.  It’s absurd!  For instance, female employees would have to endure both systematic sexual harassment and a hostile work environment by being forced to share bathroom facilities with male employees who get their jollies from wearing a dress, high heels and lipstick.     

“Over the years, the homosexual lobby has done a masterful job of co-opting the language of the genuine civil rights movement in their push for special rights.  This bill represents the goose that laid the golden egg for homosexual activist attorneys,” concluded Barber.   

Shari Rendall, CWA’s Director of Legislation and Public Policy, said of ENDA, “This bill would unfairly extend special privileges based upon an individual’s changeable sexual behaviors, rather than focusing on immutable, non-behavior characteristics such as skin color or gender.   Its passage would both overtly discriminate against and muzzle people of faith.  Former Secretary of State Collin Powell put it well when he said, ‘Skin color is a benign, non-behavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of human behavioral characteristics. Comparison of the two is a convenient but invalid argument.’”  

CWA asks Congress to protect the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech, religion and association for all Americans by voting NO on ENDA. 

Concerned Women for America is the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization.

H.R. 2015 Would Force a Gender Confusion Revolution on U.S. Businesses

By Peter LaBarbera

For once we agreed with Barney Frank (sort of), at least before he sold out to the “transgender” lobby. 

“There are workplace situations — communal showers, for example — when the demands of the transgender community fly in the face of conventional norms and therefore would not pass in any Congress. I’ve talked with transgender activists and what they want — and what we will be forced to defend — is for people with penises who identify as women to be able to shower with other women.”

—Homosexual Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), BEFORE he changed his mind and embraced including “transgenders” in the Employment NonDiscrimination Act (ENDA)  

“Technically, you cannot truly change one’s sex. That’s why the procedure is not really called ‘sex change surgery’ but ‘sex reassignment surgery.’ The idea is to alter the physical appearance of a person’s anatomy to approximate as nearly as possible the anatomic arrangement of the other sex.”

— Melanie, “Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS), the Nuts & Bolts,” a “Transgender Support Site” 

*          *          *

Employment NonDiscrimination Act (H.R. 2015) Language: 

“EMPLOYER PRACTICES.—It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer—

(1) “to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise discriminate against any individual with respect to the compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment of the individual, because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity; or

(2) “to limit, segregate, or classify the employees or applicants for employment of the employer in any way that would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment or otherwise adversely affect the status of the individual as an employee, because of such individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.”

*          *         *

TAKE ACTION:  Call the Congress (202-224-3121) or use e-mail to urge your Representative and Senators to reject ENDA (H.R. 2015) and the insanity of forcing business across the nation to accommodate and subsidize gender confusion in the name of “civil rights.” Also, call President Bush (202-456-1414) or e-mail him at comments@whitehouse.gov to urge him to veto the “trans”-affirming ENDA, along with the “Hate Crimes” bill (H.R. 1592) that his aides have indicated will likely be vetoed. 

Fast on the heels of the “Hate Crimes” bill (H.R. 1597, recently passed by the House) is the second of two top homosexual activist priorities: ENDA, the “Employment Nondiscrimination Act,” H.R. 2015, recently introduced by homosexual Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Please read at the bottom of this story the homosexual newspaper Washington Blade’s analysis of the “transgender” provision of this radical bill.

To read about ENDA’s dubious “religious exemption” provision, click HERE.

Veteran observers of the “gay” movement will recall that Frank himself once strongly criticized the idea of including transsexuals in the ENDA bill (see above quote). But like most “progressives,” Frank has seen the light, or maybe he just heard the shouts — from radical “trans” activists who have skillfully adapted militant “gay” tactics to their own misguided cause, including calling their outspoken critics “transphobes.”

Several giant corporations have already settled on pro-“transgender” bathroom and dress policies — probably the same companies who would subject their employees to biased, pro-homosexual “diversity” lectures — but can you imagine inflicting these “transgender” regulations on small and mid-level companies through federal law via ENDA?

This is one of the most perverse applications of “civil rights” to date — and it’s headed straight for your business if you have 15 or more employees. What female employee wants to share the company restroom with a big-boned man claiming to be “transitioning” to “womanhood”? Will companies have to build “transgender male” and “transgender female” restrooms (or “Designated GLBT Restrooms”) to accommodate the various “orientations” and avoid government prosecution?

 

Churches and religious-oriented groups are quasi-exempt under ENDA but secular businesses owned by Christians or religious Americans are not. ENDA is a “gay” and “trans” lawyer’s dream. What about jobs such as a teacher in which the employer might not want the “transitioning” employee to model his newfound “gender identity” to children? Or service jobs (say a maitre d’) in which the employer may not want the newly “gender variant” employee to be in such a public role?

Imagine a male employee, John, who since he became employed at XYZ Corp., about a decade ago, has used the men’s restroom. Then one day he informs his boss that in a week he will come to work in a dress as “Joanna” and begin his MTF (“male-to-female”) metamorphosis into “womanhood.” (According to widely accepted regulations within the “transgender” world, he must “live” full-time as Joanna, taking female hormones, for a full year before he becomes eligible for “sex-reassignment surgery,” which will turn his healthy sex organ into a makeshift female sex organ. If you have the stomach to read what is actually done to a man’s body in “sex reassignment surgery,” click HERE, but be warned: it’s horrifying stuff. We must pray for these poor souls who are so confused that they would destroy their healthy, God-given bodies to assuage their inner conflict.)

Isn’t it a bit much to expect of normal, female XYZ employees to all of the sudden welcome “Joanna’s” presence in the ladies’ restroom? In fact, as I read the Blade account below, under ENDA’s proposed regulations, John/Joanna would be able to use the female restroom BEFORE his “sex reassignment” surgery. Indeed, the website “e-transgender,” quoting the homosexual/transgender group Human Rights Campaign, advises corporate human resources managers as follows:

“Employers should grant restroom access according to an employee’s full-time gender presentation.”

Read: if John “lives” (identifies) as Joanna full-time, he should be able to use the female restroom. Biologically-born ladies, beware!

What about the privacy rights of John’s female co-workers? Don’t they have the right not to feel personally invaded as they go to the restroom at their job? Will businesses have to put out new bathroom policies and undergo company-wide bathroom-usage training to explain the new policies?

 

But the situation becomes a crisis when the federal government — aided by politically correct activist judges — forces businesses to advance this Gender Confusion Revolution in the name of “civil rights.”

Is this really an area in which the federal government should even be involved? It’s bad enough that big business is rolling over to the bizarre “T” (Transgender) agenda — with some even subsidizing horrifying “sex-reassignment surgeries” that destroy men’s and women’s healthy bodies. (I once attended a conference for FTM (“female to male”) “transgenders” in which young women proudly showed off their flat chests — the result of “chest surgery” operations in which their healthy breasts were removed to make them look like the “men” they wanted to be.)

Of course, the larger goal here — shared by the “gay” and “transgender” lobbies — is to change your mind and heart regarding gender-confused conduct. The law is merely a tool in their never-ending quest to overturn America’s Judeo-Christian norms regarding family, sex and marriage.

We predict that businesses will deal with this very sad and strange “transgender” issue by building special restrooms and/or shower facilities for their “transgender” or alternatively “gendered” employees — spending countless millions to subsidize mentally disordered, deviant behavior. (Gender Identity Disorder, or GID, is a recognized mental disorder.) This corporate spending would accelerate dramatically should ENDA become law, as businesses would fear lawsuits if they failed to honor “trans” rights.

Call Congress (202-224-3121) or use e-mail to urge your U.S. Representative and Senators to reject ENDA, H.R. 2015. Also, call President Bush (202-456-1414) or e-mail him at comments@whitehouse.gov and ask him to veto the pro-“trans” ENDA, along with the “Hate Crimes” bill (H.R. 1592) that his aides have already indicated will likely be vetoed.

By Peter LaBarbera 

TAKE ACTION:  Call the Congress (202-224-3121) or use e-mail to urge your Representative and Senators to reject ENDA (H.R. 2015) and the insanity of forcing business across the nation to accommodate and subsidize gender confusion in the name of “civil rights.” Also, call President Bush (202-456-1414) or e-mail him at comments@whitehouse.gov and urge him to veto the “trans”-affirming ENDA, along with the “Hate Crimes” bill (H.R. 1592) that his aides have indicated will likely be vetoed.  

At bottom is the religious exemption language for H.R. 2015, ENDA, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, which would use federal government powers to ban “employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.” (Emphasis is added below.) ENDA would apply to businesses with 15 or more employees.

We at Americans For Truth generally oppose the concept of religious exemptions to pro-homosexual laws because religious people alone should not be able to exercise their freedoms to oppose aberrant sexual behavior. What about secular-minded citizens who also believe that homosexual acts are immoral and unhealthy and shouldn’t be promoted as OK to kids?

Regardless, note the careful circumscription of the religious “exemptions” under ENDA. According to paragraph “b” below, the law would not apply to employees in a religiously-oriented business whose job is linked to “doctrine.” So, then, can we assume that in “partially exempt” religious organizations, the law WOULD apply to employees (e.g., a secretary) whose jobs are NOT directly linked to teaching religion or doctrine?

In my state of Illinois, the ACLU used similar language to argue along these lines: a Bible-believing church would have full freedom to hire and fire its pastors but it COULD fall under the state’s “sexual orientation/gender identity” law (our state’s version of ENDA) if it fired a janitor who announced he was homosexual — because the janitor’s job does not deal with church “doctrine.”

Can you see the immense capacity for “gay” troublemaking and harassing lawsuits under this proposed legislation? Even the threat of federal lawsuits, especially in states like Illinois that have their own “sexual orientation” laws, could inhibit morality-based groups from acting on their belief that homosexuality is wrong.

 

I suppose that is precisely the goal of the homosexual and “transgender” lobbies with regard to ENDA.

And remember: the discussion above is only for explicitly religious organizations. Under ENDA, an orthodox Jew who owns his own secular-oriented business (with 15 or more employees) would be out of luck if he endeavored to not hire homosexuals or transsexuals based on his own personal religious beliefs. Once again, “gay” (and “trans”) rights would supersede religious freedoms.

The following is ENDA’s (H.R. 2015) language pertaining to religious exemptions:

SEC. 6. EXEMPTION FOR RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS.
(a) In general.—This Act shall not apply to any of the employment practices of a religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society which has as its primary purpose religious ritual or worship or the teaching or spreading of religious doctrine or belief.

 

(b) Certain employees.—For any religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society that is not wholly exempt under subsection (a), this Act shall not apply with respect to the employment of individuals whose primary duties consist of teaching or spreading religious doctrine or belief, religious governance, supervision of a religious order, supervision of persons teaching or spreading religious doctrine or belief, or supervision or participation in religious ritual or worship.

 

(c) Conformity to religious tenets.—Under this Act, a religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society may require that applicants for, and employees in, similar positions conform to those religious tenets that such corporation, association, institution, or society declares significant. Under this Act, such a declaration by a religious corporation, association, educational institution or society stating which of its religious tenets are significant shall not be subject to judicial or administrative review. Any such declaration made for purposes of this Act shall be admissible only for proceedings under this Act.