We agree with Christopher Leighton, rector at St. Paul’s Church in Darien, who called Smith a ”perpetrator of false teaching” and said his decision defies ”Scripture and worldwide Christianity.”

Excerpted from Episcopal Bishop in Connecticut OK’s Same-sex Blessings, published Oct 24, 2006, in the pro-homosexuality newspaper The Advocate:

Episcopal parishes in Connecticut may bless same-sex couples, the state’s bishop announced over the weekend in Hartford. Bishop Andrew Smith‘s decision does not create an official prayer service for the blessings and does not allow Episcopal clergy to officiate at civil unions. But it allows parishes to acknowledge gay and lesbian couples who have had a civil union granted by the state.

”What I have permitted is a pastoral ministry of blessing, which does not mimic a wedding ceremony,” Smith said Saturday after the diocese’s two-day annual convention ended.

…At the heart of the matter is whether the church will ”bless persons who are homosexual and partnered as cherished and fully accepted members of the body of Christ,” Smith told the convention.

Continue reading in The Advocate…

Excerpted from Bishop Tobin Says Same-Sex Marriage Is ‘Spiritually Harmful’, published Oct 18, 2006, by Catholic News Agency:

Same-sex marriage is not an issue of civil rights, said Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence in a recent letter to the editor.

“There’s never a right to do something wrong,” he said. “Human freedom is not unbridled license; it must be grounded in truth.”

The bishop’s letter was published Oct. 14 in the Providence Journal, Rhode Island’s largest daily newspaper, after a Rhode Island lesbian couple — Wendy Becker and Mary Norton — was legally married in Massachusetts on Oct. 8, reported NBC 10.

In the letter, the bishop said same-sex marriage is “spiritually harmful to individuals and families and erodes the foundation of society”.

“Homosexual acts are contrary to the law of nature and gravely immoral,” the bishop wrote. “The state has no business encouraging immoral behavior or ratifying illicit unions.”

Excerpted from Gender Confusion in the Kindergarten?, by Dr. Albert Mohler, published Oct 18, 2006:

Some cultural developments represent massive shifts in consciousness and worldview. These developments can only be explained by a dramatic reshaping of our moral sense and understanding of basic reality.

Such is the case with news coming from both coasts indicating that “transgendered children” are now enrolled in kindergarten programs…

Let’s be honest here — these stories represent a breathtaking shift in the way human beings view sex, sexuality, and gender. The whole transgender issue, now a major focus of public interest, is proof of this. But the fact that these two articles deal with “transgender children” diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” at the age of 5 represents something altogether more shocking. “Gender fluid” children in kindergarten?

Continue reading at Albert Mohler…

To order Engel’s book, click HERE.

Former priest and Loyola Professor Emeritus Eugene C. Kennedy broke the silence surrounding the controversial book The Rite of Sodomy – Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church by Randy Engel with a scathing commentary on Religion News Service in Washington, D.C. on August 31, 2006.

Engel says that the Kennedy’s attack on her book, which documents 100 years of intergenerational homosexuality and pederasty in the American Catholic hierarchy, was specifically aimed at Engel’s disclosure of the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin’s role in securing a stronghold for the Homosexual Collective within the Catholic Church in America (AmChurch).

…“What I do claim,” says Engel, “is that the Homosexual Collective to date has successfully infiltrated, colonized and metastasized the Catholic priesthood and religious orders in the United States as well as the Catholic hierarchy.” “Indeed, the main focus of my 1312-page book is the identification of homosexual prelates in AmChurch starting at the turn of the 20th century with William Cardinal O’Connell and Francis Cardinal Spellman and ending with Cardinal Bernardin and other American prelates,” Engel explains.

According to Engel, “The ongoing sex abuse scandal in AmChurch, that includes the systematic cover-up by members of the American hierarchy of criminal acts of Catholic priests and religious who prey on young boys, takes on new meaning when viewed within the context of a long-existing network of homosexual bishops and cardinals in AmChurch.”

Excerpted from For Gays, a Loud New Foe, by Rone Tempest, published Oct 14, 2006, in Los Angeles Times:

Organizers of the annual Rainbow Festival [sponsor list]were prepared for trouble.

The Q Crew, a local “queer/straight alliance,” distributed cards telling people what to do if approached by hostile demonstrators. Sympathetic local church groups formed a protective buffer along the festival ground’s cyclone fence. Mounted police were on patrol.

Jerry Sloan manned a table for Stand Up for Sacramento, a recently formed gay self-defense organization.

“So far, so good,” he said. “No Russians.”

The festival, held last month amid the gay bars, restaurants and shops of midtown’s “Lavender Heights” neighborhood, went off without conflict. But the elaborate security preparations reflected growing tensions between Sacramento gays and the city’s large and vociferous community of fundamentalist Christians from the former Soviet Union.

Over the last 18 months, Sacramento Russian-language church members have picketed gay pride events, jammed into legislative committee meetings when gay issues were on the agenda and demonstrated at school board meetings.

Incited by firebrand Russian Pentacostal pastors and polemical Russian-language newspapers, the fundamentalists turn out en masse for state Capitol protest rallies.

Last June, urging readers to attend a massive rally, the Russian newspaper the Speaker told them:

Make a choice. It’s your decision.

Homosexuality is knocking on your doors and asking:

“Can I make your son gay and your daughter lesbian?”

…The Sacramento community…s overwhelmingly evangelical — Baptist and Pentecostalist. The charismatic Pentacostal church, introduced in the Ukraine in the 1920s by missionary and martyr Ivan Efimovich Vornaev, includes speaking in tongues and washing of feet. The churches’ social views are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible.”The main issues in the Russian community here,” said Vitaly Prokopchuk, a Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy, “are gay issues, abortion issues and family-definition issues. To these people, these issues are very cut-and-dry in the Bible.“…Leaders of the religious right…celebrate the Russian efforts as a revival.

“My hope and my prayer,” said Mark Matta, a former legislative aide who heads the Christian Public Awareness Ministries, “is that they will become a voice in the wilderness for the rest of the country.”

“It’s not only about homosexuality. It’s also about drinking, about premarital sex and about drugs,” Prokopchuk [Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy]said. “Some of these people even regret coming here because they have a feeling they are losing their kids.”

“Honestly, I’m scared for the kids,” Bugriyev [a mother] said. “We have a 5-year-old and a 1-year-old. I’m scared that when they go to school they will be in a class where they are taught it is OK for a man to sleep with another man. We are thinking that after another five years, we will move back to Moldova.”

“We feel the American church already lost the battle 20 years ago by remaining silent,” said Victor Chernyetsky, 47, a Soviet-trained engineer who serves as administrator for the Bethany Slavic Missionary Church. “We can’t remain silent. There are a lot of sins.”

Continue reading in Los Angeles Times …

Listen to this 1 minute audio from Dr. Albert Mohler, citing examples of public (taxpayer supported) universities promoting homosexuality.

Click HERE to listen.

A woman who grew up with a same-sex-attracted father has launched an effort to help similar people deal with the pain they experience.

Excerpted from New Website Offers Support For Adult Children of Homosexuals, by Gail Besse, published Oct 8-14, 2006, in National Catholic Register:

She had every daughter’s natural need for affirmation,
but that was something her homosexual father just couldn’t give his little girl.

Now in her 40s, Dawn Stefanowicz knows there are others like her — others who as children ached with silent hunger for that missing connection. To help them, she has set up the first website that specifically addresses the impact of homosexual parenting from the adult child’s perspective.

“It pierces the inside of you when you know the truth. Men who struggle with their own masculinity cannot affirm femininity,” she said. “Six-year-olds cannot tell you how they’re being impacted. We can’t comprehend what we went through until we’re adults.

“People aren’t comfortable sharing this, but keeping it hidden hurts children,” she said. “The secular media is not carrying the message that this impacts children long-term.”

Now an accountant and home schooling mother of two, Stefanowicz and her husband of 22 years live in Ontario.

Her website, http://www.dawnstefanowicz.com, went online in early September. It outlines her childhood story, which includes being exposed to nude beaches, “gay cruising” sites and sexually transmitted diseases. The website lists scientific studies and news articles, secular and religious support groups, and confidential contact information.

Her Christian faith and counseling helped Stefanowicz come to terms with her past and with the biological father whom she loved but lost to AIDS.

In the past three years, she has testified in the United States and Canada on behalf of marriage protection laws, and she appeared Sept. 21 on EWTN’s “Life on the Rock.” Her autobiography, Out from Under: Getting Clear of the Wreckage of a Sexually Disordered Home, will be out in 2007.

She went public because children’s voices were one dimension missing from the same-sex “marriage” debate. Adults who as children had first-hand experience of the “gay” lifestyle could speak for them…

A host of parental problems can challenge children raised by those who act out same-sex attraction, according to Dale O’Leary, a writer and researcher for the Catholic Medical Association and author of ­ The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality. For example, boys reared by two “mothers” face hostility toward their masculinity within the lesbian community.

“Same-sex attraction is the tip of the iceberg,” O’Leary said. “Many such people were victims of sexual child abuse themselves and have multiple problems. Many have suicidal impulses, anger management issues, drug and alcohol abuse, a high level of partner change, serious depression and mental illness. The scary thing is, when children are raised by dysfunctional parents, they often think the problems are their fault,” she said.

Even adult children hesitate to discuss their pain for fear of hurting their parents, Stefanowicz said. Some become promiscuous, when they are really seeking love. Others become perfectionists, seeking a sense of identity through their profession.

She hopes her website will be a vehicle for mutual support and healing, and a resource to uphold marriage as the union of a man and a woman for the sake of all children.

Continue reading in National Catholic Register…

Excerpted from The Road to Nowhere? Middle Church, by Dr. Albert Mohler, published Oct 3, 2006, by Crosswalk:

Bob Edgar wants to rescue America from the religious right. In his new book, Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority from the Religious Right, Edgar intends to reset the nation’s agenda when it comes to matters of Christian concern.

…Edgar could have offered a careful, exegetical, historical, and theological engagement with moral issues. Instead he offers irresponsible generalizations such as this: “The Bible mentions abortion not once, homosexuality only twice, and poverty or peace more than two thousand times. Yet somehow abortion and homosexuality have become the litmus test of faith in public life today.”

How can an intelligent reader, armed with even the slightest knowledge of the Bible and the Christian tradition, take such a statement seriously? The Bible does not mention abortion only in the sense that it does not make direct reference to the practice of surgical abortion as is common today. The Bible speaks clearly to the sanctity of human life and to the priority of protecting unborn life. Furthermore, to state that the Bible mentions homosexuality “only twice” indicates that Edgar has redefined homosexuality as something other than that which the Bible addresses in numerous passages.

There can be no doubt that the Bible’s consistent judgment is that homosexual acts are inherently immoral and sinful. The Christian church in all of its major branches has understood this for two thousand years. This has been a true ecumenical consensus until recent years when some more liberal churches in the West have abandoned the Christian tradition in order to endorse homosexual practice.

Thus, it is an act of intellectual dishonesty for Edgar to claim to speak for “classic historical Christianity.”

Just in case we might miss his point, Edgar offers this assessment of Scripture: “The far religious right is fond of condemning homosexuality because they say the Scripture is immutable and its words are literal.” Again, Edgar identifies the scriptural consensus that homosexuality is sinful as an example of the radical nature of the “far religious right” [italics his]. Once again, one need not be very conservative to end up in Edgar’s category of the far religious right…

In an amazing passage, Edgar asserts: “People of faith must be able to conduct a respectful and open conversation about all aspects of sexuality including homosexuality. God has a lot to say on all these topics, and if we skip the listening and rush straight to the judging–an enterprise in which we’re not supposed to be involved anyway–we can’t hope to make serious progress in our discussion.”

Statements like this must leave us wondering if this author actually means to be taken seriously. His book is filled with moral judgments–judgments about ecology, justice, racism, and a host of other issues. But when it comes to sexuality, Edgar offers the facile suggestion that moral judgment is “an enterprise in which we’re not supposed to be involved anyway.”

In other words, when Edgar makes moral judgments, he’s not being judgmental. But when others moral judgments, they are being judgmental. The Bible does not say that we are not to make moral judgments, or that we are not to judge moral behavior. Indeed, the Bible makes absolutely no sense if that is the case. The Bible–in both Old and New Testaments–is filled with moral judgment and with advisement on how we are to make such judgments. Of course, the judgments we are to make concern behavior, not the heart. We are expressly forbidden to judge another’s heart. That distinction is missing from Edgar’s analysis.

…What separates Bob Edgar and biblical Christianity is the fact that God has told us how He is going to judge humanity–and the crucial issue in that judgment is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

When it comes to matters of public policy, evangelicals surely do not have all the answers. Furthermore, evangelicals are well served by a reminder that our moral agenda needs to be broader than the issues of the daily headlines.

Nevertheless, conservative Christians did not decide to make abortion, homosexuality, and stem cell research front-line issues. It is nothing less than intellectual dishonesty to suggest that evangelicals prompted the national debate on those issues. On all of these fronts, evangelicals are simply calling on the Christian church to stand by its historic convictions and moral wisdom.

Continue reading at Crosswalk…