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.)

Christian Anti-Defamation Commission asks for a retraction and an apology

Soulforce founder Mel White, pictured here with his homosexual lover Gary Nixon, accused Christians who adhere to historic Church teachings on the sinfulness of homosexuality of “spiritual violence” against homosexuals. Despite his and Soulforce’s manipulative tactics, God’s Word is not negotiable.

Folks, in reading this release by Gary Cass, I cannot help but wonder if the several churches that agreed to meet with the homosexual activist group Soulforce — including Willow Creek Community Church in Illinois — were naive about its radical agenda. Soulforce and its founder, Mel White, have always used manipulative and deceptive strategies (including the wordsmith White’s calculated accusation that faithful Christians are guilty of “spiritual violence” against homosexuals).

Soulforce is a nefarious organization that seeks to undermine Biblical truth about one particular sexual sin — homosexuality. Their pleadings for “dialogue” with Christians are merely a tactic — the camel’s nose in the tent, as it were — part of their larger goal of duping believers into compromising on God’s Word. We ask again: would Willow Creek Church or other mega-churches enter into (forced) “dialogue” with a “Christian porn” group? We hope not. Pray for White and the entire Soulforce crew — including “straight allies” like Jay Bakker, who claims to have received a special pro-homosexual revelation from God.

Christians must minister the Gospel in love to sinners in need of Christ’s forgiveness and healing power. But unless we are open to “dialoguing” with advocates of other sins, we shouldn’t do so with activists who twist the Bible to accommodate homosexuality. God’s Word is not negotiable.—Peter LaBarbera

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Christian Anti-Defamation Commission

News Release

June 13, 2008

In an outrageous example of sloppy journalism, Newsweek’s Lisa Miller defamed Pastor Rick Warren, the best-selling Christian author and mega-church pastor. Miller reported Warren compromised on the matter of homosexuality.

The bogus claims originated with a homosexual activist group, Soulforce. It issued a press release stating they were meeting with Rick Warren for a “conversation” and that Warren was inviting homosexual fathers to come to church on Father’s day.

Timothy Egan of The New York Times furthered the lie. Neither major news outlet fact checked the story.

Rick Warren responded: “Newsweek quoted a Soulforce press release headline that was 100% false. We did not invite this group and I will not be meeting with them. They invited themselves to draw attention to their cross country publicity stunt.”

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.

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.

Folks, this is an excellent piece on the escalating pro-homosexual totalitarianism abroad by my good friend Brian Fitzpatrick of the Culture & Media Institute (a branch of Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center). I like to think that here in America, we would not tolerate such lunacy, but that doesn’t mean that our Boy-Scout-hating “gay” militants won’t try. For a sampling of the bureaucratic language underlying Canada’s anti-Christian oppression, click HERE to read the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission’s information sheet on the Alberta Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Act’s “sexual orientation” code — Peter LaBarbera

By Brian Fitzpatrick

Culture & Media Institute, June 10, 2008

Thank God for the alternative media.

Unlike the big newspapers and TV networks, small conservative online news sites are reporting the growing threat posed to religious liberty by the burgeoning homosexual rights movement.

Two indispensable Web sites, Canada’s LifeSite News and [American Family Association’s] One News Now, have carried a stunning series of articles in the past few days about critics of homosexuality being attacked by the governments of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Belgium and Canada.

• Britain’s Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor Will Defy Law Forcing Homosexual Adoption
• Northern Ireland MP Investigated for “Homophobic” Remarks
• Belgian Bishop Cleared of Charges for Church Teaching on 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.

By Peter Jones, reprinted by permission of CWIPP

Gov. Arnold Schwarzegger (R) chose to elevate political correctness over truth in responding to the California Supreme Court’s arrogant ruling for homosexual “marriage.”

The Dead Kennedys punk rock band prophetically sang in 1979:

Your kids will meditate in school!
Zen fascists will control you…
Now it is 1984
Knock-knock at your front door
It’s the suede/denim secret police
They have come for your uncool niece…California über Alles.

Whether people recognize it or not, we live not in a California-created world but in a divinely-created world, where government gets its binding authority (the sword) from God to promote good conduct and disallow bad. This is why the state governor is introduced as “his Excellency.”

We now observe a “brave new world” of radical, “cool” diversity, where the word “excellence” is politically incorrect. It’s everywhere. Last week, the British government okayed the creation of animal/human embryos, legalized, for the sake of lesbian maternal desires, the elimination of the father as an essential part of a family, and the European Court on Human Rights agreed to hear a case brought by a chimpanzee (actually its handlers). By increments, our modern world abandons all belief in human dignity as bearing the image of God. In the same week, not to be outdone, California legalized gay “marriage.”

Click on photo to enlarge. I highly commend this terrific piece by Prof. David Carlin, first published by InsideCatholic.com, which succinctly states an important truth. You can read the interesting reader comments to Carlin’s column at the InsideCathlic.com. Neurotic ‘heterosexist’ that I am [heterosexist is another putdown term in the ever-expanding “Gayspeak” lexicon; see this navel-gazing entry in Wikipedia], I took the liberty of adding quote marks around same-sex “marriage” below. On that point, I just learned that the Washington Times (where I once worked as a reporter) and its new editor, John Solomon, recently stopped putting homosexual “marriage” in quotes, to their discredit. They also replaced “homosexual” with “gay.” More on the Times‘ PC semantic slide later. — Peter LaBarbera P.S. Isn’t truth, well stated, wonderful?

Pro-Gay, Anti-Christianity

by David R. Carlin

May 21, 2008, InsideCatholic.com

The trouble with “liberal Christianity” is that it isn’t Christianity. It is something else — a new and ever-changing religion that attempts to hijack the old and revered name of Christianity.— David Carlin

A learned friend of mine recently wrote an op-ed piece for a newspaper in which she argued that the drive for same-sex “marriage” is not simply about same-sex “marriage”; it is also about winning moral approval for homosexuality. If society, acting through the state, tells us that homosexuals can marry one another, then it is by the same token telling us that there is nothing morally objectionable about homosexual conduct.

My friend is, of course, correct. But I’ll add to this that the drive for same-sex “marriage” is not simply about same-sex “marriage” or the moral legitimization of homosexual behavior; it is also about the de-legitimizing of Christian morality. More, it is about the de-legitimizing of Christianity itself.

The taboo on homosexual conduct is as old as Christianity itself (pace the late gay historian John Boswell, who argued — absurdly — that the taboo didn’t appear until many centuries after the foundation of Christianity and is therefore not an essential part of Christian morality). And it is older even than that. It clearly goes back to Old Testament times. And if there is such a thing as natural law, the taboo is rooted in natural law; for nature (or God as author of nature) seems to have designed the anatomy and physiology of human beings in such a way that sex between men and women is sex “according to nature.” Sex between men and men or between women and women, though it can be accomplished in an unnatural manner, doesn’t seem to be what nature/God had in mind.