CWA Release, November 8, 2007

[Call your senators at 202-224-3121 or go to www.congress.org; call President Bush and urge him to veto ENDA if it passes at 202-456-1414 or 202-456-1111, or www.whitehouse.gov/contact.]

Washington, D.C. — On Wednesday, lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives passed — largely along party lines —  H.R. 3685, the so-called Employment Non-discrimination Act (ENDA), by a vote of 235–184. [Click HERE for the Roll Call and HERE to see which Congressmen voted against their party’s majority.] 

Matt Barber, CWA’s Policy Director for Cultural Issues, said, “By passing this Orwellian piece of legislation, the Democrat-controlled House has displayed exceptional arrogance.  Congress apparently believes it has carte blanche authority to nullify any constitutional provision which it finds bothersome.  In this case, they’ve drawn a black line through the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.”  

ENDA contains an extremely weak religious exemption which might partially protect some religious organizations but would leave many others — such as Bible bookstores and many Christian schools — entirely unprotected.  It would additionally crush individual business owners’ guaranteed First Amendment rights.   

 NOTE: Rep. Blunt penned a column on the majority’s ENDA legislation this week for Human Events, available HERE. His speech on the floor of the House can be viewed on YouTube by clicking HERE. Call 202-225-6536 or go to his website HERE to thank Congressman Blunt for standing up for religious freedom and educating the nation on how ENDA will undermine it. If we had more Congressmen like Blunt, our freedoms would not be in jeopardy.

Majority’s ENDA Bill Takes Dead Aim at Religious Freedom

Legislation creates conflict between one’s right to religious freedom, and another’s right to sue you for exercising it

WASHINGTON – House Republican Whip Roy Blunt (Mo.) issued the following statement today after Democrats failed to secure a veto-proof majority on the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would erode one’s right to religious freedom by strengthening another’s right to sue you for practicing it:

“The structure of the bill before us today is eerily similar to legislation we’ve seen from this majority all year: a favorable, purposefully misleading title applied to a bill that’s poorly assembled and oblivious to its own consequences. 

“In this case, the so-called ‘Employment Non-Discrimination Act’ creates a legal quagmire for employees who practice, or even acknowledge, their religious beliefs – depending on where they happen to work, and subject to judicial interpretation. In the process, it erodes a basic, fundamental right bestowed upon us by our Creator – and a right guaranteed to every American under the U.S. Constitution.

“As a former president of a Baptist college in Missouri, supporters of this bill have been quick to assure me that its most onerous provisions would not apply to that school. But no such exemption is available for Christian bookstore owners, as an example, or any other small business in which people of faith and deep religious conviction are relied upon as an integral part of the workforce.

“Thankfully, Republicans secured the votes necessary this afternoon to uphold a presidential veto. It’s my hope now that this Congress can move forward on the real priorities affecting American families. Though a clear boon to trial lawyers, this bill does not meet that standard.”

NOTE: Rep. Blunt penned a column on the majority’s ENDA legislation this week for Human Events, available HERE. His speech on the floor of the House can be viewed on YouTube by clicking HERE.

Americans For Truth received the following two e-mails via our website after our recent posts mentioning Matt Barber’s firing by Allstate in 2005. Note the crude, concocted e-mail address in the first hate message, which we redacted below (AFTAH regularly gets emails from cowardly, “insult-and-run” activists who block the reply to their message):

From: Illinois Resident [mailto:wouldntyouliketoknow@[f–k]you.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 9:40 PM
To: americansfortruth@comcast.net
Subject: [AFT Web Site] Bigots

 

I read through your hate speech filled website and saw that some bigot was fired for gay bashing. GOOD! Let this send a message!

________________________

—–Original Message—–
From: Non scrivetemi [mailto:nonscrivetemi@pboxmix.winstonsmith.info]
Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 10:41 PM
To: americansfortruth@comcast.net; peterlabarbera@comcast.net
Subject: Matt Barber DESERVED to be FIRED by ALLSTATE INSURANCE

 

Allstate is a reputable company, Matt Barber is an IDIOT.
Peter please quit distorting the Truth!

Victim of harassment lawsuit tells his story

 Larry Cirignano (right) in courtroom with Michael Gilleran, the attorney who helped him beat bogus charges by ACLU activist Sarah Loy that he assaulted her after she disupted his pro-marriage rally. Click HERE for more on the case, and HERE to read about a Worcester, Mass. reporter who helped smear Cirignano but who refuses to recant his discredited story. For MassResistance’s comprehensive account of Cirignano’s trial and Sarah Loy’s fraud, click HERE.

By Larry Cirignano

This week we celebrate All Saints Day and All Souls Day.  The Catholic Church venerates saints as role models for all of us to emulate, and to encourage us to strive to defend our faith and principles as they did, despite each of them being a sinner.

In early American history, back in 1597, five Franciscan friars were martyred, in what is now Georgia, for standing up against polygamy and defending marriage.

In early church history St John the Baptist, St John Fisher and St Thomas More were all beheaded for standing up for marriage. 

If we are going to continue as a society, we need to stand up for marriage as these brave saints did, by promoting families raising children, and by protecting our children as our most precious resource.

The family is an essential building block for society.  Families are the first protectors of children as the first providers of food, shelter, health care and education. The home is the domestic church and serves as the first hospital, school and restaurant that most kids will know.

 Steve Meriwether of San Francisco’s pro-homosexual “Most Holy Redeemer” church.

This open letter below (emphasis added) was delivered to San Francisco Archbishop Niederauer on October 29.

It is a request to publicly excommunicate the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and other similar groups and to remove the pastor of Most Holy Redeemer Parish, Fr. Steve Meriwether.

(If you’re not familiar with this event, please take a few minutes to check these links: http://americansfortruth.com/news/more-san-francisco-nuttiness-catholic-archbishop-gives-communion-to-sisters-of-perpetual-indulgence.html (Americans For Truth was the first to report that Archbishop Niederauer gave Communion to members of the blasphemous, drag-queen-“nuns” group, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence; he later apologized);
http://www.qdomine.com/Morality_pages/MHR.htm and http://romancatholicblog.typepad.com/roman_catholic_blog/2007/10/bill-oreilly-di.html
 
or Google “Niederauer Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence”  or “Niederauer homosexual” for pages and pages of documents, photographs, videos, interviews and commentary about this event that occurred 3 weeks ago and is STILL being reported on from Canada to Germany.  The latest: an interview with an openly “gay” member of Most Holy Redeemer Parish Council with other historical facts here:
http://www.tfp.org/TFPForum/TFPCommentary/san_francisco_article.htm

Please call the archbishop’s office (don’t talk to a voicemail – make your request to a human). Fax and email them asking the archbishop to excommunicate these groups and their members and to replace Fr. Steve Meriwether as pastor:

Contact info here:
Phone:   Chancery Office: 415 614 5500
Lori Miller, Secretary; John North, Pastoral Ministry xt 5504; Barbara Lordi, Pastoral Outreach ext. 5506 and Maury Healy, Dir. of Communications.

 

email : (with a personal note)
info@sfarchdiocese.org
 
Also fax to: 415 565 3679

Please consider forwarding to the nuncio at nuntiususa@nuntiususa.org, and Pope Benedict XVI at benedictxvi@vatican.va

____________________________
 
Open Letter delivered to the archbishop, Oct 29, 2007

St. Joseph’s Men Society 

15732 Los Gatos Blvd. #303, Los Gatos, California 95032

October 29, 2007

Most Reverend George H. Niederauer 
Archbishop of San Francisco
One Peter Yorke Way
San Francisco, CA 94109-6602

Your Excellency: 

During your first visit to Most Holy Redeemer parish on Sunday October 7th, 2007, you gave Our Lord in Holy Communion to members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI) a homosexual activist group widely known for its attacks upon and mockery of the Catholic Faith.  Your subsequent October 11th apology notes that you did not recognize these “strangely dressed persons” as members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and that these individuals should not have received Holy Communion, nor should the minister of the Church administer the Sacrament to them. 

First: For the sake of their souls and the souls of those Catholics worldwide who have been scandalized, your office requires you to state this formally, according to the teachings of the Church.

 MSNBC’s Dan Abrams recently sought to make a fool of Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Media Institute, in an interview about Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling’s “outing” of the beloved Dumbledore character. But Abrams’ overwrought attempt to mock Knight backfired, with Abrams himself looking like the fool. It’s painful, but click HERE to listen to the segment. You can also watch it by going to the homosexual website Queerty (WARNING: vulgar language: on many “queer” and lefty websites, commenters can’t seem to make a point without cussing or alluding to sex or male anatomy). 

We commend Knight (my former boss) for keeping his composure: how many of us could calmly withstand the over-the-top pummeling from the smug (and very unfunny) Abrams like Bob did on this broadcast? We don’t know about “homophobia,” but it seems more and more liberals are coming out as “homo-snobs”: those so committed to supporting all things “gay” that they won’t acknowledge that there are any rational arguments against homosexuality. (And of course there is no need to marshal arguments to defend homosexuality since that is self-evidently “true.”) To the committed homo-snob, any attempt to defend traditional sexual mores or protect children from moral corruption is just a big joke. — Peter LaBarbera

 Fred Phelps has expanded on his obnoxious “God Hates Fags” message to now protest U.S. soldiers’ funerals, “thanking” God for terrorist killings of our troops as punishment for America’s embrace of homosexuality. Above, “IEDs” stands for “improvised explosive devices,” of the sort used to bomb American military vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans For Truth condemns Phelps’ unbiblical messages and his grotesque targeting of soldiers’ funerals for his clan’s protests. (In 2005, the Kansas ‘minister’ said then Illinois Family Institute Executive Director Peter LaBarbera was going to hell after LaBarbera condemned his “God Hates Fags” protests.) Phelps’ military pickets like the above have led to enactment of a federal law and state laws restricting protests at military funerals; he is challenging the constitutionality of such laws. As Gary Glenn writes below, Phelps also has a history of denying the power of Jesus Christ to change the lives of people caught up in homosexual behavior (although he now seems to at least grant that possibility on his website, http://www.godhatesfags.com/).  Americans For Truth commends Gary Glenn’s excellent statement on Phelps below.

______________________________

The following statement was issued by Gary Glenn, president of American Family Association of Michigan in May 2006, upon learning that Fred Phelps of “God Hates Fags” notoriety was planning to stage a protest at a military funeral in Michigan (emphasis added):

Fred Phelps and Homosexual Activists Both Wrong
By Gary Glenn

The American Family Association of Michigan believes that homosexual behavior is harmful and wrong.  Without apology, we oppose attempts by the Triangle Foundation [a Detroit-based homosexual organization] and other homosexual activist groups to force their political agenda onto our children, our public schools, and society at large.

We approach the public policy debate surrounding homosexual behavior with sincere Christian care and concern for individuals who we believe put themselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually at risk by engaging in such behavior, and with a spirit for protecting children and others put at risk by those who promote and enable such behavior.

We personally know parents who in 2004 helped gather signatures to enact a Marriage Protection Amendment to our state constitution — reaffirming marriage as only between one man and one woman — not because they “hate” their children who are involved in homosexual relationships, but because they love them.

The sincere Christian compassion which motivates our stand is marked by warning against — and protecting those we love from — harmful self-destructive behavior, not by the false compassion of enabling or passing special laws to protect such behavior. 

That’s in sharp contrast to the self-described, expressly hate-motivated message of the Kansas “reverend” who plans to picket a local military funeral this weekend.

Fred Phelps insists that individuals who engage in homosexual behavior are beyond hope or redemption, a false doctrine that — while at odds with the true Christian gospel of repentance and forgiveness available to all — is much closer to that of homosexual activists who echo Phelps’ insistence that individuals involved in homosexual behavior have no hope of abandoning that lifestyle. 

We strongly disagree.  The false gospel preached by Fred Phelps and the Triangle Foundation is proven wrong by the life experience of individuals who through faith, with God’s help, have abandoned homosexual activity and now live their lives in normal loving relationships between a man and a woman, many married with children.  In four Michigan cities, counseling services are available staffed by individuals who themselves abandoned homosexual behavior and are compassionately committed to giving others hope and help in doing so.  (For example, see http://www.corduroystone.com/ in Lansing or http://www.recmin.org/ in Sterling Heights, [Michigan].)

This is a wonderful piece by Scott Lively, founder of Abiding Truth Ministries and Defend the Family International, and one of the early pro-family leaders opposing the homosexual activist agenda. — Peter LaBarbera

By Scott Lively

Hate has a pretty bad name in the world today. No one wants to be called a hater, especially Christians, which is probably why we get accused of it all the time by our opponents. Homosexuals are especially fond of calling people haters. They even invented the word homophobia, which means hate and fear of homosexuals, envisaged as a mental illness (a phobia is an anxiety disorder).

I hate being called a homophobe. It has such an ugly connotation. Its especially unpleasant because, as a Christian, I’m supposed to have a reputation for loving people, not hating them. So I’ve worked really hard over the years to try to get the homosexuals to stop calling me a homophobe.

I’ve pointed out the difference between hating people and hating their behavior (loving the sinner but hating the sin). They hated that. Then I tried “walking my talk” by taking an ex-“gay” man who was dying of AIDS into my family. My wife and I and our children loved and cared for him during the last year of his life. They hated that even more.

Then I began asking for guidance from homosexuals themselves: “Tell me, where is the line between homophobia and acceptable opposition to homosexuality?” I asked. “What if I just agree with the Bible that homosexuality is a sin no worse than any other sex outside of marriage?”

“No, that’s homophobic,” they replied. “Suppose I talk only about the proven medical hazards of gay sex and try to discourage people from hurting themselves?” “No, you can’t do that,” they said. “How about if I say that homosexuals have the option to change if they choose?” “Ridiculous” they answered. “Maybe I could just be completely positive, say nothing about homosexuality, and focus only on promoting the natural family and traditional marriage?” “That’s really hateful,” they replied.

After I while, I realized that the only way I could get them to stop calling me a homophobe was to start agreeing with them about everything. But here’s my dilemma: I honestly believe the Bible which says that homosexuality is wrong and harmful and that all sex belongs within marriage. I’ve also read the professional studies and know that “gay” sex hurts people because it goes against the design of their bodies. And I’m friends with a number of former homosexuals who are now married and living heterosexual lives. Do I have to give up my religion? Ignore scientific facts? Betray my friends? Is that the only way to avoid being called a hater and a homophobe?

There’s no escape. A homophobe is anyone who, for any reason, disapproves of homosexuality in any way, shape, manner, form or degree. This leaves me with just two choices: agree that everything about homosexuality is natural, normal, healthy, moral and worthy to be celebrated OR be labeled as a mentally ill, hate-filled bigot.

Am I wrong? Is there any way to openly disapprove of homosexuality without being a homophobe? “Gay” leaders, please set me straight on this.

Because if I’m right, that means the “gay agenda” is to stop everyone from following the Bible regarding sexual matters. It is, after all, their stated goal to “stamp out homophobia.” No more religious freedom. It’s also to suppress scientific research that has reached conclusions they don’t like, especially if it helps people to change their homosexual orientation back to a heterosexual one (ask the doctors and scientists at narth.com what they’ve had to endure). If it discourages homosexuality, even by implication, it’s homophobic and can’t be used.

There’s a queer reasoning behind all of this. Homosexuals call me names like bigot and homophobe, condemn my religion, mock my rational conclusions about social issues, impugn my motives, display intense hostility toward my actions, and curse my very existence, all under the justification that I’m a “hater.” But if I’m a “hater” for civilly opposing what they do, why aren’t they haters for uncivilly opposing what I do? Such a double standard, in the context of a public debate on “civil rights,” is not just hypocritical, it is surreal.

I admit I have some hate. I hate watching people kill themselves with preventable diseases like AIDS. I hate seeing children being steered toward unhealthy lifestyles. I hate having my pro-family views distorted by dishonest journalists, politicians and academics. And I hate seeing my God being treated like a homophobe for what He teaches in His Bible.

So if you’re not going to stop calling me a “hater” for wanting homosexuals to be saved and healed, or for opposing their political agenda, let’s at least see a little more of that famous “American sense of fair play” in the public debate on this issue. Hatred of “haters” is hateful too.

Scott Lively, J.D., Th.D.
Defend the Family International
PO Box 891023
Temecula, CA 92589
www.defendthefamily.com