TAKE ACTION: read our adjoining pictorial story about the Palmer House Hilton’s hosting of “International Mr. Leather” and contact Hilton Hotels Corporation World Headquarters in Beverly Hills California. Call or write  Hilton CEO Stephen Bollenback (stephen_bollenbach@hilton.com; 310-278-4321) and politely express your dismay that Hilton would allow its good name to be associated with the sadistic sexual perversion-fest known as “International Mr. Leather.” If you feel so led, tell them that you will certainly never stay at the Palmer House Hilton — who would knowing that disgusting homosexual orgies have gone on in their rooms? — and you also will not be staying at other Hilton hotels while this deviant association continues. [ALSO SEE PHOTO-STORY BELOW FOR MORE ACTION ITEMS.]

By Peter LaBarbera 

The photo at top, taken from the Chicago ABC affiliate’s online video of the city’s Memorial Day parade Saturday, speaks volumes about the Windy City’s moral meltdown. Note the message on the marquee of the legendary Chicago Theater: “Welcome, International Mr. Leather 29,” due to the Theater’s participation in this sadistic, pornographic celebration, now in its 29th year.

Rather than honoring the spirit of the parade by paying tribute to our troops, veterans and past generations of American fighting men, the Chicago Theater’s management opted instead to welcome one of the most purely evil perversion-fests ever invented by mankind. International Mr. Leather (IML) serves as an annual excuse for “leathermen” — mostly homosexual men but some “straight” SM couples — to engage in vile orgies that would make Sodom blush. For our pictorial story about the sadistic “Mr. Leather” gatherings this year and last year at the Palmer House Hilton Hotel, click HERE (WARNING: disturbing images).

Chicago: Sadism Mecca

Pro-homosexuality activism is largely a big-city phenomenon. The City of Chicago has the “queer” distinction of being a favorite city of sadomasochists, people who would have once been known, in saner times, as what they are: perverts. Proceeds from International Mr. Leather’s vendor registration went to a place called the Leather Archives Museum — a “museum” for sexual sadists, again, located in Chicago. I visited this “museum” last year and was stunned by its audacious chronicling of the most repulsive perversions (see pictorial story on IML), e.g., “fisting.” The sheer horror and weirdness of the place makes it difficult to describe to a normal audience.

How sad that this great city and so many of its leaders have given themselves over to celebrating sexual depravity. How bad is it?

• Several years back, Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley, despite professing Catholicism, endorsed “same-sex marriage” at a press conference held on Ash Wednesday. There was the mayor (who is also pro-abortion-“rights”), with the ashen cross on his forehead (signifying repentance before God), advocating the radical redefinition of marriage — a position strongly condemned by his own Church.
• Three homosexual bathhouses operate with impunity in the city — putting at risk not just promiscuous “gay” men but women whose straying husbands or boyfriends engage in anonymous sexual encounters (often condomless) with other men. Illinois’ top “gay” activist, Rick Garcia — telling a lie that is bold even by “gay” activist standards — claimed in an interview not to know what goes on in one of the disease-spreading bathhouses, Steamworks, from which Garcia’s group, Equality Illinois, has received donations.
• Openly homosexual judges march annually in the city’s massive “gay pride” parade — to which Chicago’s Christian community has yet to offer an effective response or Gospel outreach;
• The city was the first in the United States (and perhaps the world) to officially designate a homosexual community (zone), “Boystown,” demarcated by rainbow-colored kiosks;
• The city proudly played host to the 2006 “Gay Games” (Daley celebrated this event and served as “honorary chair“) — and ended up being taken to court for violating the free speech rights of Christian counter-protesters.
• The pro-homosexuality bias of Chicagoland’s news media is so overwhelming that the local TV networks and some other media cast objectivity aside every year and march in the annual “gay pride” parade. (ABC covers it and airs it in June.) Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Richard Roeper thinks audiences just have to “get over” our objections to seeing two men kiss in the movies. (I think Roeper and other media elites have to get over their obnoxious obsession with promoting homosexuality.) A female writer for the Chicago Tribune wrote a puff piece about how the movie Brokeback Mountain is a turn-on for women, who supposedly like to see men engaged in sexual situations with other men. Hmmm.

And so it goes. Will Christians emerge from their “closet” to do something to stem the tide of evil and sexual perversion in Chicago? Click HERE for our pictorial story on IML at the Palmer House Hilton in 2006 and 2007 (the hotel will be hosting “International Mr. Leather” through 2009). WARNING: disturbing images.

By Fran Eaton, Illinois Review

At the risk of sounding like a real ogre and with all pause, I’m going to have to give a thumbs down to this weekend’s box office hit, “Shrek the Third.”

The lovable Shrek debuted the third in a series this weekend, and while the big guy is taking unfair hits for American children’s skyrocketing obesity problem, there was another issue raised in the movie that I’ve seen no one yet address.

For me, it wasn’t the monstrous size of the lead character Shrek that was the problem with this newest release. Shrek and his sweet wife Fiona are what’s right with the story. They are large positive role models of common sense, compassion and honesty in a bizarre world of revengeful, evil fairy tale characters.

Shrek’s personal dilemma of overcoming the fears of becoming a father for the first time endears us all the more to the big guy. The ending is happy and prolife, which is great for kids and their fathers to see.

Shrek’s not the problem. It’s the awkward inclusion of a travestite and the uselessness of the character himself (herself?) in the story that is troubling.

Right in the midst of a warm “traditional family” setting, the film writers place a man dressed as a woman in with Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White (the good gals). The crossdressing character simply doesn’t make sense, except as a ploy to desensitize children and parents to transgenders.

Homosexual activists now are careful to not only use the term “LGBTs” as a unit, they are more boldly now declaring lesbians-gays-bisexuals-transgenders as a unit pushing together as one for civil rights. Those confused about their sexual roles are pushing for equal rights to be free to publicly demonstrate their odd sexual behavior. For transgenders, appearing to be a different sex in public is their particular turn on. We need to understand that acceptance of this sexual behavior is just another step moving our world toward sexual chaos.

It’s disturbing there’s not more outcry about this sly tactic being used in a movie made for children. But I suppose after being reminded recently of Jerry Falwell’s concern about the Teletubbies characters’ sexual orientations and the post-heaven going ridicule and hatred those who dare to question LGBTs tactics are likely to endure in the mainstream media after their passing, some have shyed away from publicly tackling the topic. That’s understandable.

But well-meaning parents who plan to take their kids to see a movie that grossed $122 million in the opening weekend should be aware . . . it’s the subtlety of the movie makers’ agenda to desensitize that could be more harmful to your children than encouraging them to eat sugary cereals in the morning.

Fran Eaton is editor of Illinois Review, a conservative blog.

By Sonja Dalton

What better gift for our military on Memorial Day Weekend: Disney-ABC has announced an early departure from The View for Rosie O’Donnell. Perhaps now this moronic daytime television program will return to obscurity and irrelevance, where it belongs.

By now, nearly everyone is aware of the blowout on Wednesday’s episode. Joy Behar (former high school teacher and alleged comedienne) opened with a list of complaints against President Bush which, in her view, merit impeachment and a vigorous beating with wet noodles. We’re talking serious offenses like “choking on a pretzel” and being incapable of pronouncing “nuclear.”

That last one has always annoyed me, too, almost as much as when I heard it from Jimmy Carter, who was actually supposed to be a “nucular” engineer (not just a Yale history grad with a Harvard MBA). Back then, my frustration was assuaged by working for Reagan in the 1980 election. Ronnie knew how to pronounce “nuclear” and he knew how to deal with radical Islamic fascists and communists, too. But I digress…

Joy suggested that Al Gore is just the man to lead us out of Iraq, which raised the issue of the Iraq War, which opened the door for Rosie (high school graduate) to confront Elisabeth Hasselbeck (Boston College alumnus). On May 17th, Rosie attacked Elisabeth for using the word “terrorists” and posed a question that offended many Americans (even liberals):

O’DONNELL: … 655,000* Iraqi civilians are dead. Who are the terrorists?
HASSELBECK: Who are the terrorists?
O’DONNELL: 655,000 Iraqis — I’m saying you have to look…
HASSELBECK: Wait, who are you calling terrorists now? Americans?
O’DONNELL: I’m saying if you were in Iraq, and the other country, the United States, the richest in the world, invaded your country and killed 655,000 of your citizens, what would you call us?…
O’DONNELL: I believe there is government-sponsored terrorism by every nation in the world, including ours.

* Rosie’s casualty figure is preposterous, much like Joy’s list of President Bush’s capital offenses.

Shockingly, the media interpreted Rosie’s remarks as an indictment of our troops. Rosie still doesn’t know how they got that idea. (Hint: Elisabeth asked her three times “Who are the terrorists?” but Rosie never answered.)

Somehow Rosie was hurt and angry because she expected Elisabeth, as her “friend,” to defend her against “those crappy cable shows — the ones Elisabeth watches.” As her “friend”? Let’s review a sampling of the “friendly” remarks Rosie made to Elisabeth in the last ten months:

Sept , 2007 — “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam…”
Feb 18, 2007 — “”You’re very young, and you’re very wrong.” And later in the conversation: “I know, but it’s the way that I’m able to be on this live broadcast and love and support you in spite of the fact that I disagree so abhorrently with most of the things you believe, so it is what I tell myself in order to not get into the RAGE I feel at at some of the IGNORANT comments, so that’s what I have to do!”
May 21, 2007 — “Are you not able to hold two concepts at once?”
May 23, 2007 — “You’re going to double-speak…” and later “…that was cowardly.”

Is that the way you talk to your friends?

At long last, Elisabeth had enough of the insults and finally stood up for herself: “Defend your own insinuations!…Defend your own thoughts!…”

Why would Rosie want to be defended by someone she characterizes as a nitwit? Why does she think she can verbally abuse a friend over and over, and still have one?

“Like most bullies, Rosie is clueless how to respond when she is challenged.”

After provoking and degrading Elisabeth for months, Rosie did what bullies always do when someone has the courage to fight back: She took her Barbies and went home to pout (while her chief writer, Janette Barber, being equally mature and professional, stayed behind to draw mustaches on all the photos of Elisabeth). And Rosie won’t be back because she doesn’t have a punching bag anymore.

Rosie O’Donnell was once a light-hearted and funny entertainer, but after years of living in sexual depravity (first with a man and now as a lesbian), she is consumed by rage. The emptiness and misery which result from wickedness are evident in her countenance. It is a very sad thing to watch a precious human being self-destruct. (And what is the impact on children of a “mother” so angry, so combative, constantly arguing and striving and attacking?)

The Bible says that those who persist in homosexuality are given over by God to a debased mind. Do you wonder how Rosie can possibly believe that our own president helped destroy the World Trade Center? Are you perplexed at her insistence that her own understanding of physics is superior to those “ignorant” engineers at Popular Mechanics? Answer: Because her mind is not healthy. And it won’t be as long as she lives in defiance of the Almighty.

But where I lose patience with Rosie and others like her, God does not. Peter says that our Father does not want anyone to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance. In her deep unhappiness, Rosie may yet humble herself and acknowledge God’s divine power and authority over her and repent. Rosie has a generous heart that could be used to glorify Christ — so let us pray that an epiphany is at hand.

But don’t stop there… Look around at your church, at your child’s school, in your neighborhood. Where you see a child missing a mom or a dad (whether through illegitimacy, divorce, or death), you have an opportunity — and an obligation — to fulfill James 1:27. Greet them with a smile and a hug and ask them what they’re up to, how school is going. Ask their parent if you could take them shopping for a new outfit or a pair of school shoes or help them with a school project — because that will accomplish two goals: It will help the single parent and it will begin to build a relationship with the child whereby you may become a powerful influence for righteousness.

Imagine how much comfort a compassionate Christian woman might have provided to Rosie O’Donnell during her adolescent and teen years. How sad that she was neglected when she needed love — the love she is still desperate for but will never find in lesbian sex. Every child has sinful inclinations; every child faces challenges as he/she matures. Kids need godly, trustworthy adults to care about them, guide them, and correct them from time to time. If you aren’t there when a vulnerable child is dealing with self-consciousness, confusion, sexuality, and temptation, homosexual activists and their “allies” at school will be glad to fill your shoes and drag an innocent child to hell.

The following piece was published Saturday by Illinois Review editor Fran Eaton: 

Falsani Takes a Break to Suck her Thumb 

Cathleen Falsani (cfalsani@suntimes.com) apparently is taking the weekend off from blogging to suck her thumb.    She deserves a rest.  She actually should take more than a weekend off.  Her employers at the Sun-Times should mercifully give her a l-o-n-g time off. 

This morning on her blog, she lists all the nasty things Christians called her while defending Rev. Jerry Falwell after they read her vicious column this week.  Falsani’s wallowing in a self-pity pool this weekend, sucking her thumb and contemplating how mean “Jesus followers” are to her.

Okay, Cathleen didn’t call Jerry Falwell a “nappy-headed ho” like Imus.  She didn’t joke about sexually assaulting public officials as others did.  Cathleen merely celebrated the Rev’s passing with a chorus of “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead,” and mocked the life ministry of an evangelical leader.  She still should be fired.

Maybe Cathleen doesn’t understand that her comments are akin to the Westboro Baptist Church clan picketing a military funeral.  Maybe she doesn’t see that her hatred has blinded her own ability to value those who don’t view the world through her eyes.  Maybe she absolutely doesn’t tolerate those who believe in absolutes. 

I would fight for her right to say and write what she wants.  But she broke all forms of civil decorum with her rude and disgusting disrespect of the fallen Falwell.  And it wouldn’t be so appalling if it hadn’t come from the keyboard of someone who claims to have a special interest in writing about religion. 

Do us all a favor, and move on to entertainment or cooking or interior decorating if you must write, Cathleen.  We turn our backs on the Westboro Baptist Clan’s tactics and we turn our backs on yours.

Robert Knight is a hero in the culture wars and is director of the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center. Here he briefly lays out the truth behind the infamous “Tinky Winky” smear against Rev. Jerry Falwell. The “Tinky Winky” story is a textbook study in how the media discredits and ridicules religious conservatives: 

Getting a Kick out of Falwell’s Death 

By Robert Knight
Culture and Media Institute
May 18, 2007

In many of his talks to Liberty University students, the Rev. Jerry Falwell emphasized the importance of “finishing well.”

Last Tuesday, he was at the top of his game when he unexpectedly died in the college office where he was planning more expansions of the fast-growing university that he founded in 1971.

The Rev. Falwell did a lot of things well, ticking off liberals right up to the end. How else would he have garnered the kind of tribute from a major newspaper’s religion writer that was headlined, “Sigh of relief over Falwell death.”

To make sure no one mistook her, Chicago Sun-Times Religion Writer Cathleen Falsani’s May 18 column explains her reaction to the news about Dr. Falwell on May 15:

“…My very first thought upon hearing of the Rev.  Falwell’s passing was: Good.  And I didn’t mean ‘good’ in a oh-good-he’s-gone-to-be-home-with-the-Lord kind of way. I mean ‘good’ as in ‘Ding-dong, the witch is dead.’”

Falsani, who claims to be a Christian, learned of this apparent good news in the airport departure lounge in Key West, a place where Jerry is not held in great esteem.

She went on to compare the good reverend to the foul-mouthed TV mobster Tony Soprano, and accused Falwell of saying “insensitive, mean-spirited, sometimes downright hateful things …in the name of Christ.”  She did do a bit of backing up, saying that maybe, in his own way, God used Jerry so that “lives were changed for the better by his ministry, his college, and the flip side of the endeavors he made in Jesus’ name.”

Meanwhile, she informed readers of her own apparent spiritual superiority, noting that “not all of us are that self-righteous, judgmental and holier than thou.”

I guess that openly enjoying the death of a fellow Christian and utterly distorting his Christian message into a caricature of hate is the mark of the nonjudgmental. I think it’s somewhere in the Sermon on the Mount.

Of course, Falsani is not the only journalist to use Rev. Falwell’s death as one more opportunity to cast fiery darts at him.

Virtually every major news outlet made sure that Falwell’s controversial comment following 9/11 and his notorious “outing” of the “gay Teletubby” Tinky Winky got ink and airtime.

The New York Times noted that it was an article in the National Liberty Journal, which Falwell published, that touched off the Teletubbies ruckus.  But the article failed to mention that the Liberty Journal piece quoted The Washington Post’s outing of Tinky Winky, and that the gay press and several other mainstream outlets had cheered openly for a year that the boy in the purple suit, carrying a purse and bearing the homosexual symbol, an upside down triangle, on his head, was clearly the first openly “gay” character in a children’s program.

I recall faxing The Washington Post article to the National Liberty Journal back in February 1999.  I had also faxed an article from a gay newspaper in which one of Teletubbies’ creators boasted openly that Tinky Winky’s character, which combines a deep daddy’s voice and mommy’s handbag, was a deliberate attempt to make children think differently about gender.  The Liberty Journal editors decided to stick with the Washington Post as the main source, which seems like a wise thing to do.  But in the end, it didn’t matter.

In the 10 years since, the press magnified and sustained the myth that Jerry Falwell “outed” Tinky Winky with no apparent evidence. He just did it for the heck of it, to be mean to gays.  As smears go, it made him easy to ridicule. Try as they might, that was the best they could do, since they unearthed no hint of scandal involving his integrity. In March 1999, Liberty Journal Senior Editor J. M. Smith pointed out the media’s distortions, but the myth continued to gain strength. Dr. Falwell himself took it in stride, even placing a stuffed Tinky Winky on top of his computer as a joke. Given his own generous spirit and lack of vitriol, he didn’t seem to understand the damage that was done to his reputation.

Click HERE to read the rest of Bob Knight’s column on the Culture & Media Institute website

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.

The Other Dark Exchange: Homosexuality, Part 1

To listen online to this sermon, click HERE; to read the entire sermon, go HERE. To learn more about John Piper, visit HERE.

By John Piper October 11, 1998  

Romans 1:24-28

Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. 28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.

Astonishing Relevance
In our exposition of Paul’s letter to the Romans, we come now to this astonishingly relevant section in 1:24-28 where Paul touches on the reality of homosexuality. It is relevant for many reasons. For example, yesterday there was conference called “Here I Stand” to address the issue of homosexually active clergymen in the ELCA (Star Tribune, 10/10/98). On the front page of the Star Tribune there was the story of what appeared to be a hate crime against a homosexual student at the University of Wyoming who was in critical condition after being tied to a fence and beaten. In August, 641 Anglican bishops from around the world gathered for the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England, and voted overwhelmingly to affirm that homosexual practice is “incompatible with Scripture.”

Full-page ads were recently [in 1998] taken out in USA Today and the New York Times and the Washington Post showing some 850 former homosexuals who gathered last summer at the Exodus conference and who declared there is power in Christ to be changed. Here in Minnesota, legal cases continually crop up about child custody and adoption of children by homosexual people. And most immediate of all, here in our church there are people who have homosexual desires and many more people among us who have people in their families whom they care about very deeply who consider themselves homosexual. The reality of homosexuality is inescapable today, and this would come as no surprise to the apostle Paul, and therefore should not to us.

One of the things that makes matters unusual today is the effort on the part of some people to defend the legitimacy of homosexual behavior from the Bible. Most common, for example, is the claim that the denunciations of homosexuality in the New Testament are not references to committed, long-term homosexual relations, which these people say are legitimate, but rather refer to promiscuous homosexual relations and to pederasty, which are not legitimate. To use the words of one scholar, “What the New Testament is against is something significantly different from a homosexual orientation which some people seem to have from their earliest days. In other words, the New Testament is not talking about what we have come to speak of as sexual inversion. Rather, it is concerned with sexual perversion” (Paul Jewett, Interpretation, April, 1985, p. 210).

To read Piper’s whole sermon, click HERE.

The world is turned upside-down. I challenge “Mike/Christine” to do a column describing, in detail, “sex-reassignment surgery” — whereby a penis is turned into a makeshift “vagina” — assuming he is one day going to go that route. (“Transitioning” people are required to live one year as the opposite sex before undergoing the horrifying operation.) Then we’ll see just how “natural” all of this is.

Transsexualism is perhaps one of the most extreme manifestations of the modern philosophy of “I feel, therefore I am.” Just because men (and women) caught up in gender confusion FEEL that society should “respect” their gender-twisting choices, doesn’t mean that it is healthy for society to do so. Nor should taxpayers and corporations be forced to subsidize the radical “sex-change” operations — another goal of many in the “trans” movement. Granting newfangled “civil rights” based on “transgender” identities has it completely backwards: a healthy society would discourage gender confusion as much as possible, rather than celebrate it. And we haven’t even started talking about supposed “transgender” children, the “T” in the “GLBTQ” (“Q” is for “Questioning”) acronym tossed around by pro-homosexual activists and educationists who work with youth. — Peter LaBarbera

FIRST PERSON
Old Mike, new Christine
By Mike Penner, Times Staff Writer
April 26, 2007
During my 23 years with The Times’ sports department, I have held a wide variety of roles and titles. Tennis writer. Angels beat reporter. Olympics writer. Essayist. Sports media critic. NFL columnist. Recent keeper of the Morning Briefing flame.

Today I leave for a few weeks’ vacation, and when I return, I will come back in yet another incarnation.

As Christine.

I am a transsexual sportswriter. It has taken more than 40 years, a million tears and hundreds of hours of soul-wrenching therapy for me to work up the courage to type those words. I realize many readers and colleagues and friends will be shocked to read them.

That’s OK. I understand that I am not the only one in transition as I move from Mike to Christine. Everyone who knows me and my work will be transitioning as well. That will take time. And that’s all right. To borrow a piece of well-worn sports parlance, we will take it one day at a time.

Transsexualism is a complicated and widely misunderstood medical condition. It is a natural occurrence — unusual, no question, but natural.

Recent studies have shown that such physiological factors as genetics and hormonal fluctuations during pregnancy can significantly affect how our brains are “wired” at birth.

As extensive therapy and testing have confirmed, my brain was wired female.

A transgender friend provided the best and simplest explanation I have heard: We are born with this, we fight it as long as we can, and in the end it wins.

To read the rest of the column in the L.A. Times, click HERE.