‘Gay and Lesbian Outreach’ group set to march in bawdy Chicago ‘gay pride’ parade

UPDATE: We learned June 26 from a Catholic, pro-family advocate who contacted the Chicago Archdiocese that AGLO has now been denied permission to march officially in this year’s homosexual “pride parade.” Stay tuned for more on this story.

[Click on photo to enlarge.] Topless transsexual bares his (presumably hormone-induced) breasts at last year’s (2007) Chicago “gay pride” parade. The “man” rode exposed like this for blocks along the parade route, as the crowd lining the streets cheered him on. Faithful Catholics in Chicagoland are outraged that a church-affiliated group called AGLO (Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach) may march in this year’s homosexuality-celebrating parade. (AGLO is listed as #114 in the parade line-up.) Photo: AFTAH. Click HERE to contact the Archdiocese of Chicago regarding AGLO.

Folks, I cannot help but commend this brilliant response from my friend Gary Morella to the news that Chicago Cardinal George is allowing (at least for now) a so-called “gay Catholic”-oriented group called AGLO (Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach) to march in this Sunday’s “Chicago Gay Pride” parade. (AGLO is listed as #114 in the parade line-up.) Morella is a Catholic pro-family, pro-life activist and research mathematician at Penn State, who catches enormous flack for his stubborn insistence on proclaiming truth at that academic den of iniquity.

Gary as a Catholic and I as an evangelical disagree on some points of theology, but we are completely in accord on the need to combat all worldly attempts to transform the sinful yet changeable behavior of homosexuality into some kind of inherent and innocuous “identity.” — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

P.S. I learned from my friend Susan Jordan, a Chicagoland Catholic, that AGLO has marched in other Chicago “gay pride” parades.

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Gary Morella (left) writes:

In regard to the report of a Chicago “AGLO” group marching in a “Gay Pride” parade, some seminal Catholic truths apply in regard to the “bottom line,” not the least of which is the following. The Chicago Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach is misnamed. There is nothing “gay” about being inclined to unnatural acts that are so revolting as to cause extreme revulsion when accurately described! We are talking about sexual perversion that has not evolved to sexual deviance to sexual preference to sexual orientation, which is the politically correct lie of those practicing same in order to anesthetize society that they must accept the vices of a radical fringe under force of law – to heck with the common good! Rather, we’re talking about aberrant behavior that remains sexual perversion, regardless of the devil’s packaging! Accordingly, there is nothing Catholic about celebrating such perverse behavior that is condemned by traditional Catholic teaching rooted in Sacred Scripture, PERIOD! This truth should be obvious to anyone who is Catholic in more than name only in the recognition that the common good leads ultimately to a supernatural good in accord with God’s Divine Plan for His Creation. To thwart the common good is to do the work of the devil!

This lesbian couple traveling with Soulforce — the “Rasmus-Ford family” — says, “God created us [as lesbians] exactly as we are with purpose and intention.” Should mega-churches like Willow Creek have agreed to meet with a homosexual activist group whose goal is to “cut off homophobia at its source – religious bigotry”? Sonja Dalton (below) says NO and Michael Brown says YES (under certain conditions).

This is a Point/Counterpoint on the question of whether Willow Creek Community Church (in South Barrington, Illinois) and other mega-churches should have met with the pro-homosexual activist group Soulforce, which aims to “cut off homophobia at its source – religious bigotry.” Below is a commentary by my good friend Sonja Dalton, who argues AGAINST such meetings. Click HERE to read an opposing column by Dr. Michael Brown, who says they can be used — with proper discernment — for Christian outreach.

We will allow each writer to respond to the other’s arguments, and welcome input from our readers, too; write us at americansfortruth@comcast.net. (Sorry, but we’re not interested in publishing pro-homosexuality pieces — there are plenty of “gay” websites for that.) Footnotes are at bottom:

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Willow Creek Church Should Not Have Met with Soulforce

Point/Counterpoint [to read Michael Brown’s opposing column, click HERE]

By Sonja Dalton

A fundamental question has been lost amid the sensation over the recent meeting between Willow Creek leadership and pro-homosexuality activists affiliated with the group Soulforce:

Did Pastor Bill Hybels have Biblical authority to welcome, meet with, and dine with Jay Bakker and Soulforce?

First, let’s examine who these Willow Creek “guests” [1] were…

Jay Bakker (right) is the cigarette-puffing, tattooed, punk-rocker son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker; he’s the star of the Sundance Channel series “One Punk Under God” and “pastor” of the “gay”-affirming Revolution NYC [2]. He is quoted as having said:

“…I felt like God spoke to my heart and said ‘[homosexuality] is not a sin.’” [3]

(You might want to pencil that into your Bible, somewhere near Leviticus 18:22 or I Corinthians 6:9-11. Or not.)

Americans For Truth Press Release
www.americansfortruth.org

Contact: Peter LaBarbera: 630-717-7631.

TAKE ACTION: Contact WTTW online or through their main switchboard at 773-583-5000; ask for WTTW CEO/President is Dan Schmidt and/or Programming Director Dan Soles. Or you can call WTTW’s “Member Services” phone number at 773-509-1111, ext. 6 (between 9-5:00 Central); hit “6” and you will get a live person; kindly communicate your opposition to WTTW’s pro-homosexual programming and the blatant anti-Christian bigotry that is part of it. Click HERE to find the PBS TV station in your area to check if they are engaged in the same “Gay Pride Month” biased programming and let us know what you find: americansfortruth@comcast.net.

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AFTAH Condemns WTTW, PBS for Airing Anti-Christian Programming Celebrating Homosexuality During ‘Gay Pride Month’

NAPERVILLE, Illinois — Americans For Truth President Peter LaBarbera today accused the Chicago public TV station WTTW, and by extension the Public Broadcasting System, of using taxpayer monies to celebrate homosexuality and worse, air programs that displays flagrant anti-religious bigotry during “Gay Pride Month.”

“It is unconscionable that WTTW would show such blatant disregard for its faith- and tradition-minded viewers that it would use anti-Christian programs celebrating homosexuality for its fund-raising telethons,” LaBarbera said. “Public television must be impartial on controversial moral issues. We call on WTTW and PBS to balance their pro-homosexual programming with faith-based educational material from the other side, or stop it altogether.”

Last night (and apparently on June 1), WTTW used the documentary, “The Power of Harmony,” featuring the Dallas-based Turtle Creek Chorale, as a fund-raiser. It included:

• The homosexual men’s choir singing the song, “I Ain’t Afraid,” which contains the following refrain denigrating faithful Christians, Jews and Muslims: “I ain’t afraid of your Yahweh, I ain’t afraid of your Allah, I ain’t afraid of your Jesus, I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your God”;
• Repeated assertions that God made homosexuals that way and that portray Christians who disagree as hateful, ignorant or prejudiced. Said one homosexual man’s mother: “God created homosexuality. It’s just part of a person.” Historic Christian teaching holds that homosexual acts are sinful but that this behavior pattern – like other sinful lifestyles – can be overcome through faith in Christ;
• Testimonies by bitter “gay” men who despise and attack the religion of their upbringing because it does not sanction their lifestyle;
• A homosexual male couple adopting a Guatemalan baby.

Steve Bennett, a former homosexual, and his wife Irene, with their two beautiful children, are a wonderful testimony to the possibility of healthy change for homosexuals. So if we already know that men and women can leave homosexuality behind, why isn’t this phenomenon studied in the academy? What are “queer” activists and liberal researchers afraid will be discovered?

Check out this fascinating nugget from a near-three-decades-old Time Magazine article on (pro-“gay”) sex researchers William Howell Masters and Virginia Johnson. Note the high success rate of homosexuals seeking change. This begs the question: why isn’t the potential for change for homosexuals studied in the academy today, or the environmental factors common in the development of homosexual identity? Instead, all we hear about are studies — many funded through taxpayer dollars — seeking to prove that homosexuality is genetic.

Willow Creek Community Church’s chief of security (the man pointing and talking to police in the photo) became belligerent as he tried to deny Americans For Truth our First Amendment freedom to stand on a public sidewalk outside the entrance to the church grounds. Police informed him that he was wrong and that indeed we could stand with our banner on a public sidewalk. Our message responding to the homosexual activist (non-) “christian” group Soulforce was: “Homosexuality Is Sin. Case Closed — God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). Photo: Dan Musick.

NOTE: we’ll have more on the Willow Creek-Soulforce story in upcoming posts. The following was posted on the Chicago Tribune religion reporter Manya Brachear’s blog, “The Seeker,” which contains a report on Willow Creek’s meeting last weekend with Soulforce homosexual activists.

By Peter LaBarbera

I wonder: is transcendent truth conditional on the age of the person receiving it? Either homosexual behavior is a changeable sin or it is not — 1,000 years ago, today, and 1,000 years in the future. The Word of God is clear that it is. I have met far too many EX-gays to believe that homosexuality is some fixed identity (“orientation”) into which people are born — and most of these FORMER gay men and ex-lesbians testify to the power of Jesus Christ in setting them free from homosexuality.

LaBarbera says Jay Bakker needs to repent for undermining the Word of God

This lesbian couple traveling with Soulforce — the “Rasmus-Ford family” — says, “God created us [as lesbians] exactly as we are with purpose and intention.” They are taking that false message to mega-churches across the country.

Press Release, Americans For Truth about Homosexuality

June 8, 2008; Contact: Peter LaBarbera: 630-717-7631; americansfortruth@comcast.net

NAPERVILLE, Illinois — Americans For Truth President Peter LaBarbera today accused the homosexual activist group Soulforce of intimidating mega-churches like Willow Creek Community Church into a bogus “dialogue’ to further its goal of persuading faithful Christians to reject age-old Biblical teachings that homosexual behavior is a changeable sin.

Soulforce activists are leading a pro-“gay” campaign called the “American Family Outing” in which they seek “peaceful dialogue” (on their terms) with five mega-churches across the country each Sunday between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. This weekend they are targeting Willow Creek in South Barrington, Illinois.

Concerned Women for America Press Release, June 6, 2008:

Washington, D.C. — The Virginia Supreme Court temporarily avoided locking horns with the state of Vermont today. The Commonwealth’s highest court did not rule on the merits of a case which would have determined whether Virginia will respect the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Virginia’s Marriage Affirmation Act (MAA), and Virginia’s own constitution, or whether it will allow the state of Vermont to redefine marriage and family in the Commonwealth.

The Vermont Supreme Court had granted Janet Jenkins, the former lesbian partner of Lisa Miller, parental rights over Miller’s daughter Isabella, even though Jenkins has no relationship to the little girl and is neither an adoptive nor a biological parent.

Celebrating homosexual “pride” and legal rights based on homosexuality and gender confusion are now “core” Democrat Party values. Photo at left is from a homosexual male kissing scene as it appeared on the CBS soap “As the World Turns” [contact CBS here]. You can contact the Democrat Party HERE.

By Peter LaBarbera

Here is Americans For Truth’s politically incorrect translation of the Democrat Party’s 2008 homosexual “PRIDE Proclamation,” issued June 3 and found HERE on the Democrat Party’s website. Of course, practicing homosexuality or bisexuality, or embracing gender confusion (transgenderism) is nothing to be “proud” of. Our comments are in black and red; the Democrats’ “Pride Proclamation” is in blue:

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Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean today joined Massachusetts Democratic Representative Barney Frank and Wisconsin Democratic Representative Tammy Baldwin in issuing the following Proclamation marking PRIDE Month:

“Today, on behalf of Democrats across America, we join together in celebrating the contributions that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans and their families make to our society ….

“Today, on behalf of Democrats across America, we join together in celebrating the contributions that the following Americans — women who engage in (immoral) sex with other women, men who practice (unnatural and destructive) homosexual behavior, men and women who have sex with both men and women, and men who feel they should have been born as women (even though they have male sex organs) and who like to dress, grow breasts and act like they are women — and their families make to our society ….

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