…and 61% still oppose homosexual “marriage.”

From The Culture and Media Institute:

The National Cultural Values Survey
America: A Nation in Moral and Spiritual Confusion
March 7, 2007

The Culture and Media Institute (CMI) unveiled its first Special Report,
“The National Cultural Values Survey: America: A Nation in Moral and Spiritual Confusion,” at a press conference today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
The survey reveals that 74 percent of Americans believe the nation is in moral decline, and that a culture war is indeed occurring in America.

From page 24 of the 32 page pdf:

Thought Question: How many of San Francisco’s elected officials object when nudity and perverted acts take place in public, with children present, in their city — for instance, during Folsom Street Fair — a sadistic sex celebration in which several city blocks are cordoned off — or the annual “gay pride” parade? Interesting that these men find committed Christian teenagers more offensive than public indecency, homosexual bathhouses, etc.

“San Francisco has found the limit of its tolerance in BattleCry’s morning worship service.” — Tony Perkins, Family Research Council

Excerpted from A Youth Ministry Some Call Antigay Tests Tolerance, by Jesse McKinley, published Mar 8, 2007, by The New York Times:

…When the group in question is a Christian ministry from Texas that condemns homosexuality, and the place is San Francisco, often referred to as “the gayest city in America,” the civic welcome wagon collapses pretty quickly.

A two-day event called BattleCry starts Friday at AT&T Park, the downtown baseball stadium. Organizers say the gathering…is a way for young Christians to speak out against what they view as destructive cultural elements, including sex on television, obscene music and violent video games…

But several prominent San Francisco political leaders say Mr. Luce’s group is the one doing the damage, using its young members as a conduit for a message of intolerance.

“They are being fed, spoon-fed, hate,” said Tom Ammiano, a member of the city’s Board of Supervisors, who is gay. “And it is incumbent on any group receiving that hate, particularly gay people, to speak out.”

Aaron Peskin, the board’s president, called BattleCry “reckless and irresponsible.”

“We need to increase understanding of our human differences, not teach our kids to be suspicious and hateful towards people unlike them,” Mr. Peskin said in a statement.

…The dispute may come to a head on Friday afternoon when hundreds of Christian teenagers are expected to congregate on the steps of City Hall to pray and “raise their voices on behalf of their generation,” organizers said. A group opposing BattleCry plans to protest alongside.

Opponents have said that the rhetoric used onstage during these events is overtly antigay and subtly militaristic…“imposing their biblical fundamentalist worldview on the country.”

…Mr. Luce [said] his group loves gay people, but does firmly believe their sexuality is sinful.

“We see homosexuality like a lot of other things that do harm to us, like lying, or cheating, or stealing,” he said, adding that he said he had seen studies suggesting that many gay people are depressed or unhappy. “And it’s not very loving to leave them in that state and not show them another way.”

…Joe D’Alessandro, the president of the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau…said its organizers should be allowed to hold BattleCry nonetheless.

“I think we have to practice tolerance, whether or not they practice tolerance,” Mr. D’Alessandro said. “I’m gay myself, and I find their beliefs very offensive. But they have a right to come to our city.”

Continue reading in The New York Times…

Excerpted from Can Religious Freedom Survive Gay Liberation?, by David Frum, published Mar 9, 2007, by National Review:

…The movement for gay equality has rapidly evolved into movement to restrict personal freedoms, including freedoms of religion and conscience. The British example is not a special case. What is being done there today will be demanded here tomorrow…

Update: Andrew Stuttaford raises an excellent point on the Corner.

The more interesting question however is the extent to which religious belief should be privileged above all others. You can, quite legitimately, question the range and definition of anti-discrimination laws, but once a democracy has put those laws in place, I can think of no particular reason why some people should be exempted from that law, simply on the grounds of religion. To do so is to say that religious belief is somehow more deserving of special protection than other (perhaps no less deeply held) ideologies, an idea that, however well-intentioned, is irrational at best, dangerous at worse.

And of course he is right! When general laws are passed, they must apply to all.

That is precisely why the gay rights movement is inherently an illiberal one. When you decide to extend your nondiscrimination principles to behavior condemned by your society’s majority religion, you are embarking on a course that will sooner or later require the state to police, control, and punish adherents of that religion.

That was (or should have been obvious) from the start.

Continue reading at National Review…

The deconstruction of the biblical God and biblical sexuality as a philosophical and ideological program is already deeply embedded in our collective unconscious. Some powerful leaders see the future as the brave new global world of sexual and spiritual pluralism, where liberty of self-expression in these areas is the essence of human progress. One could even imagine a society of pagan religious syncretism where bi-sexuality and homosexual androgyny would be the spiritual and social ideal, the sexuality of choice for those in power, while heterosexuality would be tolerated, considered inferior, and strictly controlled — for it has happened before. — Dr. Peter R. Jones

This is a long, but scholarly and informative, article that we encourage you to read in its entirety.

——————————

Excerpted from Androgyny: The Pagan Sexual Ideal, by Dr. Peter R. Jones, published Jan 2000 by Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society:

1 Introduction

Like the ancient pagan Sodomites pounding on the door of Lot’s house millennia ago, the modern gay movement is gathering at the doors of our churches, our academies and our once traditionally “Christian” culture, demanding entrance and full recognition. Notable scholar, David A. J. Clines, professor of Old Testament at Sheffield University, for one, appears ready to lay down the welcome mat. He wrote in 1998: “…[though] queer theory has yet to show its face at the SBL [Society of Biblical Literature], gayness is challenging…all that we hold dear. When we begin to redraw the alterity map, the boundaries between same and different…we find ourselves having to think through everything, and not just sexuality, from scratch.” Clines, who not long ago was known for his conservative theological position, illustrates how far acceptance of the gay movement has come in recent years, even among those from strongly biblical backgrounds.

This movement has come a long way fast. It will not go away soon, I believe, because it is so intimately tied to deep changes in modern society, in particular, those associated philosophical Postmodernism. Because in the Postmodern hermeneutic all meaning is socially generated, queer commentary has little methodological difficulty finding a place in the contemporary religious and theological debate. In cooperation with feminist biblical interpretation, which has “destabilized normative heterosexuality” by alleging “sexist” bias, queer readings merely seek to take one more step in the hermeneutics of suspicion and expose the “heterosexist bias” of the Bible and Bible interpreters. Identifying exegesis as an exercise in social power, queer theorists reject the oppressive narrowness of the Bible’s male/female binary vision, and boldly generate textual meaning on the basis of the “inner erotic power” of the gay interpreter. What could be more Postmodern? Employing such a widely accepted methodology, and with “straight” Bible scholars now ready “to redraw the alterity map,” gay theology appears to have a bright future everywhere.

The theoretical progress is mirrored in popular society where resistance to the gay life-style is more and more impugned as anti-democratic and un-American. But the urgency of the situation for Bible-believing scholars is not merely the pressing need for a scholarly ethical response to an unfortunate moral aberration. The contemporary appearance of a homosexual movement says something about the particular times in which we live, granted both that pagan spirituality is enjoying a popular revival, and that throughout the Bible, Sodom and Gomorrah have always served as the symbol for endtime pagan idolatry, ultimate moral disintegration and eschatological divine judgment. The subject, in its spiritual, religious and even eschatological dimensions, needs to be treated and debated among us, not simply as an unfortunate social deviation or ephemeral social fad, but as a cutting-edge component of a rising, all-encompassing, religious world view that is diametrically opposed to the world view of Christian theism.

One fruitful way to approach this pressing issue is to consider the religious roots of homosexuality. The recent radical changes in our society, include, simultaneously, both the liberation of sex and the rediscovery of pagan mystical spirituality. Is such a pairing pure coincidence or is it the result of a necessary organic relationship? Has there always existed an ineluctable connection between pagan religion and pagan sex? For instance, while radical pagan feminists speak of the need of a “change of [religious] consciousness,” such spiritual transformation is always proposed by way of a radical recalibration of our perceptions of sexuality. In other words, sexuality appears central not peripheral to the spiritual quest. This, I believe, will become more and more evident in the homosexual movement, namely, that this particular sexual life style will be the promoter of a particular kind of religion. Thus, while sexual liberation in its popular, successful, government-financed versions, strategically associates itself with “civil rights,” with pro-choice civic values and with politically-correct tolerance, often studiously avoiding any obvious religious dimension, its ultimate legitimization [since all human beings are religious] proceeds from the age-old dogmas of paganism, which, unlike their modern equivalent, never tried to hide behind a thin veil of temple/state separation. If everything is indeed political, as the radicals often proclaim, everything is also spiritual, and thus the spiritual is also sexual. Charles Pickstone, a pagan believer in Anglican orders, affirms this in his recent book The Divinity of Sex: “…sex is the spirituality that reveals the sacramental richness of matter.”

The thesis of this paper is that to understand the contemporary sexual revolution, we need to see the “new sexuality,” [particularly in this paper in its homosexual expression], as an integral expression of age-old religious paganism. In our response, we cannot follow Lot, who would have sacrificed his daughters to placate the aggressors. Nor can we claim personal moral superiority. We must always hear, in the clamor for acceptance and recognition, the cry of divine image-bearers, however marred and broken. However, we must not shrink back from seeking to do justice to the whole Christian, biblical dimension of the problem. In a time of moral confusion and politically correct intimidating “tolerance,” we owe such clarity to our culture, to our sons and daughters, and to God, Creator and Redeemer, for whom all things exist.

The following letter is one couple’s effort to motivate their church leaders to become aware of the pro-GLBT indoctrination our kids are facing in the public schools:

Although you will read about this in Sunday’s bulletin, we thought we should personally ask you to consider coming to College Church in Wheaton this Sunday night. You will learn about the “gay” indoctrination that children you know and care about in this church — and this would include your own children — are encountering on a regular basis at area schools…

My 16-year-old daughter, who goes to [name deleted] ministries with your kids, has told me that there are a number of kids at our church — right now — who don’t know if they are “gay” or not because of the homosexual speakers who have come into the local schools challenging them with such questions as, “How do you know you’re heterosexual?”

My daughter has said to me,

“Mom, our church needs to be talking about this. There are a lot of confused kids at our church over this issue. It is because of the ‘gay’ speakers who come into their schools and talk about homosexuality. Nothing is being taught about it at church, and they really need to be doing something.”

…You, as church leaders, will not minister as effectively as you could if you understood what is creating this new area of counseling… When people walk through your office door, you’re encountering the fruit of this propaganda. By coming to this meeting, you will gather information to instruct you about the root of the problem. With knowledge comes understanding, and with understanding comes help. From a professional standpoint, you need to come Sunday night.

Watch this clip (posted at MLive/Jackson City Patriot) of John Nemecek and his wife explaining his experience with “Gender Identity Disorder” — and then read Gary Glenn’s Biblical response below.

From John to Julie
Spring Arbor University prof John Nemecek decides
to be true to his inner woman.

——————————

From Good and Noble Intolerance, by Gary Glenn of AFA Michigan, submitted Mar 7, 2007, to Jackson City Patriot:

In Sunday’s editorial regarding Spring Arbor’s praiseworthy refusal to legitimize and enable the obvious mental and emotional illness of a male college professor who thinks he’s a woman, the Citizen-Patriot commented,

“Individual reactions may incline toward the good and noble, or the critical and intolerant.”

If your first concern is protecting the welfare of teenage college students, the only good and noble reaction is to be firmly critical of the bizarre political agenda embodied by Mr. Nemecek’s demands and immovably intolerant of the threat that harmful agenda poses to young people.

Mr. Nemecek’s DNA is that of a male. Hormone treatment or even surgical self-mutilation will not change that immutable biological fact.

One obviously disturbed individual’s delusions to the contrary, and their effects on him and his family, may warrant our sympathy and prayers, but certainly not our complicity in socially or legally enabling and legitimizing such delusions. If homosexual and transgender political activists have their way, it certainly will not end with Mr. Nemecek’s demand to wear a dress and makeup on campus.

Openly homosexual Congressman Barney Frank, D-Mass., explained why he initially refused, until being attacked by transgender activists himself, to include in his federal “gay rights” legislation the creation of a new federally protected class based on so-called “gender identity”:

“There are workplace situations — communal showers, for example — when the demands of the transgender community fly in the face of conventional norms and therefore would not pass in any Congress,” Frank said. “I’ve talked with transgender activists, and what they want, and what we will be forced to defend, is for people with penises who identify as women to be able to shower with other women.” (Paragraph 102, page 25)

By Peter LaBarbera

Ann Coulter has been roundly denounced for using the “F-word” (six letters) — see this article by Matt Barber of Concerned Women for America and this article by Albert Mohler). I’m a Coulter fan, but she crossed the line on this one.

There are larger issues at stake here for American freedom: today it’s the F-word, which has been banished as the sexual equivalent of the N-word. Tomorrow it could be certain applications of the G-word: G-A-Y. Many students use “That’s so gay” to connote something that they think is stupid or weird: should they be forced to undergo sensitivity re-education — or perhaps attend a “Gay Pride” parade?

Where will the PC “hate speech” enforcement stop? AP recently reported:

“When a few classmates razzed Rebekah Rice about her Mormon upbringing with questions such as, “Do you have 10 moms?” she shot back: “That’s so gay.”

       “Those three words landed the high school freshman in the principal’s office and resulted in a lawsuit that raises this question: When do playground insults used every day all over America cross the line into hate speech that must be stamped out?”

The AP story points to the threat that official speech codes pose to Americans’ most fundamental freedoms. Homosexual activists routinely and outrageously blame Christian pro-family groups for violence against homosexuals, and there are many on the Left who will go to extraordinary lengths to turn any derogatory use of ‘gay” into an opportunity to spread their pro-homosexual ideology. 

Coulter was joking. These activists are dead serious. Students and parents, take note.

As a rule we do not, like Fred Phelps, use the term “fag.” Coulter’s stunt was childish and, despite her protestations, she was clearly calling family man John Edwards a “faggot” — even as she also poked fun at the Left’s quirky “hate” formula by which they vilify their foes, then jump up and down when their own PC speech taboos are violated. (Example: saying George Bush is like Hitler — NOT HATE; saying we should love people practicing homosexual behavior but hate their sexual sin — HATE.)  Coulter’s reference point was Grey’s Anatomy star Isaiah Washington, who, after publicity grew about his calling a homosexual co-star a “faggot,” apologized and checked himself into rehab for a “psychological assessment.”

People involved in homosexuality should not be the object of taunts or hatred, and Christians, especially, are called to apply the Biblical command to speak the truth in love. We are called even to love our enemies so name-calling simply is not an option. (I confess that I once called homosexual blogger Joe Brummer, who is obsessed with AFTAH, a “twit,” but you might too if you read the tripe that he puts out on an almost daily basis. (A recent Brummer blog entry accuses Sonja Dalton and me of being “extremely responsible [sic] for the climate of violence that plagues gays and lesbians.”)

“That’s So Gay” 

The reality we face is that many on the pro-homosexual side, even as they recklessly smear committed Christians as bigots and haters (and murderers for what we believe!), want to define any negative use of the word “gay” as evidence of “hate speech” requiring punitive and corrective action. The AP story continues:

Testifying last week about the 2002 incident, Rice, now 18, said that when she uttered those words, she was not referring to anyone’s sexual orientation. She said the phrase meant: “That’s so stupid, that’s so silly, that’s so dumb.”

 

But school officials say they took a strict stand against the putdown after two boys were paid to beat up a gay student the year before.

 

“The district has a statutory duty to protect gay students from harassment,” the district’s lawyers argued in a legal brief. “In furtherance of this goal, prohibition of the phrase ‘That’s so gay’ … was a reasonable regulation.”

Excerpted from While Critics Blame Catholic Church for AIDS Deaths Stats Show Just the Opposite, by Hilary White, published Mar 5, 2007, by LifeSite News:

…The available statistics show that countries with a large Catholic percentage population, show significantly lower rates of HIV/AIDS infections than countries with mostly non-Catholic populations.

2003 statistics from the World Factbook of the US Central Intelligence Agency, shows Burundi at 62% Catholic with 6% AIDS infection rate. Angola’s population is 38% Roman Catholic and has 3.9% AIDS rate. Ghana is 63% Christian, with in some regions as much as 33% Catholic and has 3.1% AIDS rate. Nigeria, divided almost evenly between the strongly Muslim north and Christian and “animist” south, has 5.4% AIDS rate.

Strongly Christian Uganda continues to frustrate condom-pushing NGO’s by maintaining its abstinence and fidelity AIDS prevention programs and one of the lowest rates of AIDS in Africa, at 4.1%. Uganda’s population is listed by the CIA Factbook as 33% Roman Catholic and 33% Protestant.

Of African countries with low Catholic populations, Botswana is typical with 37.3% AIDS, one of the highest in Africa, and 5% of the total population Catholic. In 2003, Swaziland was shown to have a 38.8% AIDS infection rate and only 20% Catholic population.

Continue reading at LifeSite News…