International

Higgins Defends and Explicates Russian Law Banning Homosexual Propaganda Among Minors

Tuesday, January 21st, 2014
Homosexual activists have used a law designed to protect the innocence of children to make themselves the victims -- engaging in wild distortions in the process (such as referring to the "pogrom" in Russia).

Homosexual activists have used a law designed to protect the innocence of Russian children to make themselves the victims — engaging in wild distortions that demonize civil opponents of homosexualism. See, for example, the homosexual pressure group Truth Wins Out’s screeds against the “anti-gay pogrom” in Russia. (TWO is known for its vicious and dehumanizing attacks against ex-“gays” and pro-family advocates.)

Laurie Higgins cuts through the hyperbole surrounding Russia’s law banning homosexual propaganda directed at minors:

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Russia’s Anti-Propaganda Law Riles Pro-Homosexuality Crowd

By Laurie Higgins

This article first appeared on the Illinois Family Institute website on Jan. 6, 2014

The cacophonous voices of homosexual activists and their ideological allies are getting louder as the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia approach. They’re protesting Russia’s new federal law pertaining to homosexuality. Surely, this law must be draconian, reasonable people think, to generate this degree of heat from the ever-fevered “LGBTQQIAA” (that is, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Ally”) community.

What is often reported in the mainstream press is simply that the law is “anti-gay” followed by reports of anti-“gay” brutality. Few articles include any details of the text of the law and its inoffensive—some would argue wholly appropriate—content. The omission of the text of the law with the concomitant reporting on already illegal physical attacks is a strategic decision intended to distract attention from the actual intent of the law.

In order to put into perspective this newest manifestation of outrage from homosexual activists, let’s look at the pertinent parts of the actual law (emphasis added):

The Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offences… shall be amended as follows:

Propaganda of homosexualism among minors

is punishable by an administrative fine for citizens in the amount of four thousand to five thousand rubles; for officials –forty thousand to fifty thousand rubles; for legal entities – four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand rubles”;

EXPLANATORY NOTE
…Propaganda of homosexualism in Russia took a wide sweep. This propaganda is delivered both through the media and through active social actions that promote homosexualism as a behavioral norm. It is especially dangerous for children and youth who are not yet capable of a critical attitude to the avalanche of information that falls upon them every day. In this regard, it is necessary to primarily protect the younger generation from the effects of homosexual propaganda, and the present bill pursues this goal.

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Paul Johnson ‘Monster in our Midst’ Passage Describes Homosexual Activist Slippery Slope in U.K.

Wednesday, December 18th, 2013

From de-criminalization of the “great moral evil” of homosexuality to a “powerful, clamouring, threatening, vengeful” Homosexual Lobby

“Thus we began by attempting to right what was felt an ancient injustice and we ended up with a monster in our midst, powerful and clamouring, flexing its muscles, threatening, vengeful and vindictive towards anyone who challenges its outrageous claims, and bent on making fundamental – and to most of us horrifying – changes to civilised patterns of sexual behavior.” – British historian Paul Johnson, The Quest for God

Jamaicans are still shocked by the radical homosexual agenda -- including pro-homosexual "children's" picture books like the above, "King & King," about a "gay" prince who "marries" another prince rather than a princess. In America and the U.K., even many Christians are so beaten down by the homosexualist agenda that they so longer feel the need to fight it.

Corrupting Children: As opposed to jaded Americans, Jamaicans are still shocked by the radical homosexual agenda — including pro-homosexual “children’s” picture books like the above, “King & King,” about a “gay” prince who “marries” another prince rather than a princess. Historian Paul Johnson describes how what began in the U.K. in the name of “compassion” for homosexuals (rescinding anti-sodomy laws) morphed into a vengeful “monster in our midst” — the powerful Homosexual Lobby. Today’s homosexual activists will even corrupt the minds and souls of the very young in their desperate quest to rationalize their sinful behavior, which God condemns.

By Peter LaBarbera

Folks, when I was in Jamaica I took time in my presentations to share this compelling passage from British historian Paul Johnson, from his book, The Quest for God: A Personal Pilgrimage. (Hat tip to Paul Cameron of Family Research Institute for bringing this to light.) I have found nothing that better explains the inevitable slippery slope of indulged pro-homosexual activism — from the repeal of anti-sodomy laws (motivated by well-intended but misguided compassion toward homosexuals as “victims”); to demands for “tolerance” of homosexuality; to the steady growth of a “gay rights” movement winning passage of laws granting affirmative “rights” based on sexual perversion (and gender confusion); to homosexual and transgender advocacy in schools (targeting even the very young [see book photo]); and ultimately, to the rise of a powerful, well-heeled Homosexual/Transgender Lobby that achieves dominance in society at the expense of biblical truth, religious tradition, public health and the rights of others to disagree.

Note that Johnson correctly calls homosexuality a “great moral evil” – something I think even many committed Christians – neutered by political correctness and decades of “gay” propaganda – today would have a hard time admitting (to their shame). Johnson, writing in 1996, had not yet experienced the attachment of this moral evil to the noble institution of marriage itself (as is now legal in the U.K and in 16 American states). Sin’s advance – like an insatiable, devouring monster — destroys people and cultures, and displaces virtue with man-centered notions of wrong as right (Isaiah 5:20).

But God’s Truth – our Creator’s standard of righteousness – is unchanged – despite fanatical efforts by religious homosexuals to co-opt even Christianity itself. Like homosexual (mis)behavior, the ideology of homosexualism – proud homosexuality aggressively defended as a “civil right” and moral good – is an egregious sin before God. (For if, as the Word of God teaches, homosexual practice is detestable and always sinful in God’s sight, how can a movement based on condoning and celebrating it be any less so?) [See Leviticus 20:13 (note the context), Jude 7 (a verse liberals conveniently ignore in distorting the meaning of Sodom and Gomorrah), Romans 1:26-27, and 1 Corinthians 6:7-11.]

Of course, we in America have our own arrogant and vengeful “gay” (LGBT) “monster in our midst” — and I warned the Jamaicans that they, too, will have one if they give in to Western powers by opening up the Pandora’s box of homosexual “rights” in their country. The smart and resolute Jamaican leaders and pastors whom I encountered understand the tragic lesson from Britain and the United States: all attempts to appease this self-justifying Sin Movement are doomed to fail, as each concession leads only to further, and more radical, demands.

Jamaican Pastor Eric Edwards of Word of Life Church in Kingston, with AFTAH's Peter LaBarbera. "Right is right, and wrong is wrong," said Edwards, in response to international pressure on Jamaica to repeal its anti-buggery law banning homosexual conduct.

Jamaican Pastor Rev. Everal Edwards (left) of Church of the Open Bible in Kingston, with AFTAH’s Peter LaBarbera, who was a guest speaker at the church. “Right is right, and wrong is wrong,” said Edwards, in response to international pressure on Jamaica to repeal its anti-buggery law banning homosexual conduct. The law is largely unenforced but repealing it is only the first in a long chain of homosexual activist demands in the island nation.

It was the Irish statesman Edmund Burke who famously said: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” Let us hope and pray that the Jamaicans (and Russians, Czechs, Poles, etc.) succeed at stopping the LGBT juggernaut and avoiding our tragic fate. Please pass on this excerpt to others – especially those who naively – or cravenly – counsel “compromise,” retreat or surrender in the face of escalating homosexual activist demands.  – Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality

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Johnson “Monster in our Midst” Passage:

Excerpt from The Quest for God: A Personal Pilgrimage, by Paul Johnson (pages 28-29) [emphasis is added, and for readability I have also broken in half the paragraph beginning, “I believe…”]:

…after a section in which Johnson discusses radical, worldly movements – race, sexual, environment and health politics — that collectively present an alternative to God and traditional religion:

“The radical agenda …with its strong appeal to the idealistic, as well as the materialistic, instincts of mankind, especially among young people, does constitute an alternative religion. Like any other form of humanism, it replaces God by man, and the welfare – or supposed welfare – of man, rather than the worship of God and obedience to his commandments, as the object of human existence and the purpose of society. That, of course, is its defect. The Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner once argued that it is the consciousness of God, the acceptance that there is power outside and above ourselves, to whom we owe allegiance and whose guidance we must follow, which essentially distinguishes mankind from other creatures. If belief in God were ever to fade completely from the human mind, we would not, Promethean-like, become masters of our fate; on the contrary, we would descend to the status of very clever animals, and our ultimate destiny would be too horrible to contemplate.

I believe this argument to be profoundly true, and corroborated by history, and what worries me about the new radical agenda is the danger that it will dehumanise man just as the totalitarian alternatives did, though no doubt in rather different ways. But there are further, related objections. All the items on the agenda lend themselves to extremism. Take, for instance, the issue of homosexuality, an important part of the sexual politics item. There were many of us, in the 1960s, who felt that there were grave practical and moral objections to the criminalisation of homosexuality, and who therefore supported, as happened in most Western countries, changes in the law which meant that certain forms of homosexual behavior ceased to be unlawful. Homosexuality itself was still to be publicly regarded by society, let alone by the churches, as a great moral evil, but men who engaged in it, within strictly defined limits, would no longer be sent to prison. We believed this change to be the maximum homosexuals deserved or could reasonably expect.

Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson

We were proved totally mistaken. Decriminalisation made it possible for homosexuals to organise openly into a powerful lobby, and it thus became a mere platform from which further demands were launched. Next followed demands for equality, in which homosexuality was officially placed on the same moral level as standard forms of sexuality, and dismissal of identified homosexuals from sensitive positions, for instance in schools, children’s homes, etc., became progressively more difficult. This was followed in turn by demands not merely for equality but privilege: the appointment, for instance, of homosexual quotas in local government, the excision from school textbooks and curricula, and university courses, passages or books or authors they found objectionable, special rights to proselytise, and not least the privilege of special programmes to put forward their views – including the elimination of the remaining legal constraints – on radio and television. Thus we began by attempting to right what was felt an ancient injustice and we ended up with a monster in our midst, powerful and clamouring, flexing its muscles, threatening, vengeful and vindictive towards anyone who challenges its outrageous claims, and bent on making fundamental – and to most of us horrifying – changes to civilised patterns of sexual behavior.

Here indeed we have sexual politics in action. And, as with other alternatives to God, the result is not human happiness, but human misery. The homosexual community, as they now styled themselves, by their reckless promiscuity during the 1970s and 1980s, helped to spread among their members the fearful scourge of AIDS, a killer disease of a peculiarly horrible nature, for which there is no cure, and no immediate likelihood of a cure….

AFTAH Urges Jamaicans Not to Bend to United States/E.U. Pressure on Buggery Law

Tuesday, December 10th, 2013

AFTAH in the News: LaBarbera tells Jamaicans to ignore U.S. scoldings on homosexuality

The Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society is fighting against the absurd idea that repealing the country's anti-buggery law will make it easier to control the spread of HIV in Jamaica.

The Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society (JCHS) is fighting against the misguided idea — advanced by the United States, U.K., and international organizations — that repealing the country’s anti-buggery law will make it easier to control the spread of HIV in Jamaica. This is a slide from a new video, “Sex, Lies and Rights,” released by  JCHS. (MSM stands for “men who have sex with men.)

Folks, I was blessed and energized by my trip to Jamaica, in support of a wonderful conference put on by Christians working under the name Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society . [See their outstanding educational video on the anti-buggery law (which is not really enforced) HERE; see also the Jamaica Gleaner article reprinted below about the conference.]

I loved the moral clarity of the Jamaican family advocates whom I met. Contrast that with the U.S. State Department and the European Union (EU), which along with the U.N. are backing the country’s main LGBT group, J-FLAG.

My message to the the Jamaicans was that the United States government has nothing to teach you about sexual morality but you, Jamaicans, have a lot to teach us. We should support the Jamaican Christian majority and expose the new US/EU imperialism that uses foreign aid to undermine biblical morality in sovereign nations. More coming on this story. — Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth About Homosexuality

PS. All this this UN, EU, and international propaganda has a LOT more influence in a tiny nation like Jamaica than it does in the US. Below is an article on the conference from the Jamaican Gleaner, one of country’s two major newspapers:

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‘Don’t Bow To Gay Pressure’ – Crusaders Urge Jamaicans To Stand By Buggery Law

Published: Monday | December 9, 2013 46 Comments

Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, speaks to the audience during a presentation at the Jamaica Conference Centre on Saturday. - Photo by Gladstone Taylor

Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, speaks to the audience during a presentation at the Jamaica Conference Centre on Saturday. – Photo by Gladstone Taylor, Jamaican Gleaner

Jodi-Ann Gilpin, Gleaner Writer
Folks,

Peter LaBarbera, president of the Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), in the United States of America (US), has encouraged Jamaicans to be grounded in their Christian beliefs and not to be lured by other countries in repealing the buggery law.

“The United States has no business lecturing anybody about sexual morality. America has rampant abortions, rampant promiscuity, and I stand wholeheartedly with Jamaicans and encourage you all to hold to your beliefs, ” LaBarbera told The Gleaner.

LaBarbera made the comments Saturday following The Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society International Human Rights conference at the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston.

“We are all watching Jamaica to see what happens [regarding the buggery law], and I believe if Jamaica can stand up and not bow to the pressure, you can be an example to the world. There is no need to follow anybody,” LaBarbera said.

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Update on Leftist SMUG ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ Lawsuit against Scott Lively

Tuesday, September 24th, 2013
Judge Michael Ponsor

Judge Michael Ponsor once opined that “judges are the unelected legislators of mankind.”

Liberal Clinton-appointed judge allows case to proceed

Folks, our friend and culture war hero Scott Lively sent out the following Alert yesterday regarding the outrageous “Crimes Against Humanity” lawsuit against him. (We’ve have added emphasis and a few web links to the original.) For more information on the “Center for Constitutional Rights” (CCR), the far-left group that Lively labels as “Cultural Marxists,” see this excellent report by the conservative Capital Research Center. (And yet somehow, Grove City College Assistant Professor and pro-family-advocate-turned-homosexuality-defender Warren Throckmorton — who finds time to stringently critique various conservatives like David Barton and Lively — curiously describes CCR as a “human rights” group.”) Please pray for Scott Lively and support his group, Defend the Family International. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH

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DefendTheFamily.com E-mail Alert, September 23, 2013

By Scott Lively

Friends,Today Federal Judge Michael Ponsor denied my motion to allow me to appeal his denial of my Motion to Dismiss the outrageous SMUG lawsuit. Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) has sued me for “Crimes Against Humanity” for preaching against homosexuality in Uganda. (But it is not the Africans that are at fault in this travesty, the real scoundrels are a coalition of Cultural Marxists led by the Center for Constitutional Rights.)

I am being judged according to a European legal standard in my own federal court system for speech that is 100% protected in both America and Uganda. The Alien Tort Statute (ATS) which allowed this abomination into our U.S. court system was recently stripped of its power to hold Americans accountable for their conduct in foreign countries by the United States Supreme Court in the Kiobel case. Since then every case which had been filed under the ATS has been dismissed except for two. One which had unusual facts was not dismissed but the judge in that case certified it for immediate appeal on his own initiative.The other is my case. Today, Judge Ponsor denied my motion to appeal the part of his recent ruling (against my Motion to Dismiss) that dealt with the ATS. I am thus the only defendant in America still being sued under the ATS.

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Scott Lively’s Fact Sheet on Uganda and Homosexuality

Thursday, September 5th, 2013
Scott-Lively-Uganda-graphic-2

Click on the above graphic to go to a printable PDF of Scott Lively’s “Fact Sheet on Uganda.”

Click on the link below or the graphic at right for a PDF “Fact Sheet on Uganda and Homosexuality,” by pro-family advocate Scott Lively — who has been sued by the Ugandan homosexual group SMUG (Sexual Minorities Uganda) — working with the far-left American group Center for Constitutional Rights — for “Crimes Against Humanity” for his Christian advocacy in that African nation. We’ve also reprinted the Fact Sheet below (after the jump).

Scott Lively – Uganda Fact Sheet–PDF link 

Scott_Lively

Scott Lively

Few people in the world have been lied about and demonized by homosexual activists as much as Lively. This Fact Sheet is merely the beginning of what must become a comprehensive effort to set the record straight. Clearly, the nefarious goal the CCR and its leftist/LGBT comrades in its legal harassment of Lively is to intimidate pro-family advocates everywhere from speaking out against the aggressive homosexual-bisexual-transgender agenda. In the Left’s playbook, the ends justify the means — but even for the Hard Left, charging a decent, Christian man like Scott Lively with “Crimes Against Humanity” — for his public advocacy — is beyond outrageous. In fact, it is evil and profoundly un-American. And yet, Clinton-nominated federal District Judge Michael Ponsor has allowed the SMUG lawsuit to proceed. We will be following this case closely. Please pray for Scott Lively. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH

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Good News for Scott Lively against SMUG: Supreme Court Ejects Foreign Lawsuits from U.S. Courts

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013
Scott Lively

Scott Lively

The following release was sent out today by Liberty Counsel:

April 17, 2013

Supreme Court Ejects Foreign Suits from U.S. Courts

The Supreme Court today held that the federal Alien Tort Statute (ATS) cannot be used to challenge foreign conduct in United States courts. In Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, the High Court held that the ATS does not “reach conduct occurring in the territory of a foreign sovereign.”

The decision is a severe blow to foreign entities and individuals that have sought to use the ATS – with alarming success in the last three decades – to bring foreign disputes in U.S. courts. Liberty Counsel currently represents Pastor Scott Lively [founder of Abiding Truth Ministries] in one such case brought against him by Sexual Minorities Uganda, which calls itself “SMUG.” In its lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, SMUG claims that Mr. Lively violated “international law” when he criticized homosexual conduct while visiting Uganda.

The Supreme Court has now accepted Liberty Counsel’s argument and has made it the law of the land. On the basis of the just-issued decision in Kiobel, Liberty Counsel has again asked the Massachusetts federal court to dismiss SMUG’s lawsuit.

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Bill Whatcott Responds to Canadian Supreme Court Declaring his Anti-Homosexual-Agenda Flyers ‘Hate Speech’

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013
bill-whatcott-3

Bill Whatcott says he will go on distributing his pro-family and pro-life flyers despite the Canadian high court’s outrageous “hate speech” ruling against him.

Folks, as bad as things are in the United States with regard to Political Correctness, it seems they are always worse in Canada. Below, Christian pro-family activist Bill Whatcott comments on an outrageous Supreme Court of Canada ruling declaring his anti-homosexual-agenda fliers as “hate speech.” AFTAH is cited in one of the flyers, which can be viewed at the end of the court decision HERE.

Shocking as it may seem, Whatcott — a fearless pro-family advocate — might end up in jail simply for passing out flyers warning fellow Canadians about the aggressive agenda to normalize homosexual behavior.

This Orwellian ruling should be studied as a lesson in the incompatibility of “group rights” — especially those based on homosexuality — with true liberty. Whatcott cites this incredible bit of judicial doublespeak from the ruling:

“Truthful statements can be presented in a manner that would meet the definition of hate speech, and not all truthful statements must be be free from restriction.”

Stunning as that is, I find the most amazing claim in the ruling that supposed “hate speech” like Whatcott’s deserves to be banned because it could “silence” its target. Really? The homosexual activists are a lot of things, but “silent” sure isn’t one of them.

In an excellent piece analyzing the Whatcott decision, Canadian columnist Rory Leishman summarizes:

In short, with this Whatcott ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada has held that nothwithstanding the ostensible guarantees of freedom of expression and freedom of religion in the Charter, a Canadian can be found guilty of violating the prohibition on hate speech in a human rights code by making a statement even if (a) the statement is true; (b) the speaker did not intend to express hatred; (c) the speaker was expressing his or her honestly held religious conviction; and (d), there is no proof that the statement has caused any harm.

The United States, unlike Canada, has a First Amendment. But it is important to remember that Americans’ freedom to oppose homosexuality has already been greatly abridged — through our own Supreme Court decisions like the 1996 Romer v. Evans ruling striking down Colorado’s Amendment Two (through which citizens were attempting to block the very sort of “sexual orientation” rights that lead to discrimination against Christians).

Protecting homosexuality as a right and a “minority” erodes true liberty and historic Judeo-Christian morality. Please support Bill Whatcott in any way you can. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

Here is Bill’s response to the ruling:

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Massive Rally in France against Same-Sex ‘Marriage’ Draws at Least 340,000; Poll Support for ‘Gay Marriage’ Plummets

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013
Paris_Rally-huge-crowd-2

This photo showing the massive scope of the Paris rally is from the Facebook page of organizing group “La Manif Pour Tous” (“The Demonstration for All”). Click on photo to enlarge, and see additional photos and video below.

Who would have thought that an anti-“gay marriage” rally in France would draw at least 340,000 people and possibly much more — and that support for homosexual “marriage” would drop precipitously in the polls? (French support for same-sex “marriage” reportedly fell from 65 percent to 52 percent — though I don’t trust polls and suspect that most surveys overstate support for the pro-homosexual agenda.) Check out these photos and a video of this amazing and historic rally — held in Paris on Sunday, January 13. Beneath the YouTube video (after the jump) there is an excerpt from an AP report on the rally, which includes a police estimate of 340,000 people attending the massive rally (organizers claimed 800,000 marchers).

Note too that the organizers of the rally folded a message of opposing “homophobia” into their pro-natural-message campaign (e.g, see the marcher holding the “Friend of Marriage Not Homophobia” sign at 1:09 of this 3-minute video). This viewpoint is far from one that AFTAH would put forward, but nevertheless the rally shows how unpopular the dominant LGBT goal of homosexual “marriage” is even in highly secularized countries like France. — Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth

PS. The huge rally in socialist-run France and the plummeting “gay marriage” poll numbers speak volumes about the “gay” activist propaganda line that LGBT victories are “inevitable.” They are not.

YouTube URL: http://www.youtube.com/embed/LUeFZcCdpGE

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