Excerpted from Catholic Bishops’ ‘Gay’ Guidelines ‘Gravely Flawed’, by Mary Jo Anderson, published Nov 9, 2006, by WorldNet Daily:

“Gravely flawed” – that’s the dire warning of medical experts who have seen copies of the proposed guidelines for “Ministry to Persons with Homosexual Inclinations,” to be released by the Catholic Bishops of the United States at their annual conference in Baltimore next week.

Catholic psychiatrists and physicians have quietly sent selected bishops detailed memos outlining their objections to the document in advance of the Nov. 13-16 meeting. Among the chief objections to the document, the critique notes, is that a truly charitable ministry includes “the truths that medical/psychological science has discovered about homosexuality … In particular, the health risks inherent in the lifestyle and the real grounds for hope of recovery and healing are never mentioned in the [proposed] document.”

The memo summarizes key points from medical and psychological literature on homosexuality that these experts had hoped the bishops would acknowledge, including:

• no genetic basis [for same-sex attraction] was found in last year’s [human]genome study
• fluidity of sexual attractions, with people spontaneously moving out of the lifestyle
• rampant promiscuity
• inability to maintain commitment

Richard Fitzgibbons, M.D., a contributor to the Catholic Medical Association’s statement on “Homosexuality and Hope,” was explicit:

“Persons with SSA (Same-Sex Attraction) suffer real physical and emotional physical illness in this lifestyle. There is no mention [in the document] of the deleterious effects of homosexual behavior on the person; the abuse, the diseases and the psychological pain that accompanies that lifestyle.”

Continue reading at WorldNet Daily…

A Plea to Pastors and Christian Leaders

By Linda Harvey of Mission America

The conflict in our culture over homosexuality is heating up at an astonishing pace. The battle now needs to be waged on many fronts simultaneously: in the media, in our schools, in the courts, on campus, and within the medical profession. Most tragically of all, the battle over sexuality threatens to divide Christianity as nothing has since the Reformation.

It is in this last arena where I entered the fight to begin with, and where I believe our central focus should be. We are in a fight to determine who we are created to be. God is our Creator, so the battlefield always ends up at the foot of the cross.

So why isn’t this issue of immediate concern to more confessing Christians? Homosexual activists and their allies are, in case one hasn’t noticed, the torch-carriers for a movement to destroy biblically-oriented Christianity and its positive influence on our culture. They won’t be able to reinvent Christianity, of course. Christ’s authentic Church of true believers will remain steadfast even if we’re stripped of all we have in this world. But they could destroy our culture.

The bigger point is, how will Christians account to God for how we responded to this challenge, and the people whose souls, health and lives could have been salvaged?

I am increasingly convinced that much of the Church will have a lot of explaining to do. Why did most pastors allow evil to be “sold” to our young people with barely a whimper of protest? Why did you allow this tragic behavior to become a chic cause celebre in the media without trying to take a stand against it? Why did you let seminaries teach this blasphemy? Why did you spend little or no time in the pulpit dealing with this and all the related sexuality issues – promiscuity, pornography, adultery, fornication – sins that are tearing apart the families and personal lives of even Bible-confessing Christians? Why did you constantly decry “political involvement” when this is a deeply moral issue, one for which there are ready arguments to be made in the public square had more Christian leaders been willing to make them?

And the big question is: why do you let the world define what’s right to do? What will be “accepted” or not? What is “hate” or not? This defense of inaction completely undermines who Christ is and what God is able to do. Such cowardice should make us tremble. For God would not only be with us if we tried to talk some sense into the world, He is just as able to judge each Christian and the society we live in for our disloyalty and cold-heartedness. I believe right now, He is doing just exactly that.

The moral decline in our world — the violent images that are the daily bread of our children, the school shootings, the acceptable treason of our elected leaders — will not stop until the Church is willing to be politically incorrect and cry out loudly in protest to proclaim what is good, instead of meekly retreating in the face of evil. With all the hope that is in the Gospel, why do so many remain silent?

We win the argument in the end, of course. Homosexuality will eventually be seen for the lie it is, a lie against all that God created a person to be; a lie about how people are best to love and relate to one another; a lie of omission about the health hazards involved, the sinful origins of homosexual desire and the real possibility of change. It will be seen for a lie that invalidated the authenticity of Scripture for many, leading them to believe in false gods and goddesses, creating worship of a “Jesus” that does not exist. They will realize that the defenders of homosexuality were wolves masked by this false worship, leading many of Christ’s sheep to be fed in fields fertile with enticing poison.

But it will be too late for America as we know it when “experts” and “authorities” — and even the Church’s leaders — finally realize their error. My fear is that we’ve already crossed a line where Pandora’s box cannot be closed. These practices are well-established already in the lives of many teens and young adults, and we are soon to live in a society of sexual barbarians where all types of unspeakable practices are accepted.

Violence, as in Sodom and Gomorrah, accompanies widespread sexual license, already evident in the millions of abortions performed each year. Why are we surprised when violence emerges from behind the closed doors of clinics, and into our schools and eventually, our streets and homes? Decline will be swift and painful and Christians will not escape the trauma in this world. We can look forward to eternity, which in all its glory will be a blessed aftermath. But tribulation here and now is coming unless we turn our society around. Only Christians can do this, for we are the only ones willing to stick it out.

Or so one would think.

There aren’t many folks in this fight, but this is why we are. It simply represents the essence of who people are, and who Christ is. We don’t know how much impact we can have, but we know we are called to try. It would be encouraging to have more Christians join us.

Preach the word!
Be ready in season and out of season.
Convince, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and teaching.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine,
but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears,
they will heap up for themselves teachers;
and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables.”

–2 Timothy 4:2-4 NKJV

Excerpted from Anti-Gay Christians ‘Out of Touch’, by Marc Shoffman, published Nov 26, 2006, by the pro-homosexuality Pink News:

[After various actions opposing homosexuality by the Catholic church, the North Carolina Baptist State Convention, and the US Presbyterian Church…]

Mr Solmonese (pictured right) described these leaders as “out of touch.“

He said: “It’s a sad commentary that these religious leaders are out of step with most Americans of faith in terms of equality and fairness for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of faith.

“The real story is that more Americans of faith understand that God’s love is expansive, not exclusionary. In fact, church programmes welcoming GLBT people are on the rise and have in the last year experienced a growth of between 10 and 20 percent. ”

Continue reading at Pink News…

Dr. Albert Mohler discusses the New York Times article on “transgender” children and also interviews Rabbi Bruce Ginsberg, cantor for the Congregation Sons of Israel in Woodmere, NY, regarding the controversy within conservative Judaism over interpretations of Scripture regarding homosexuality.

Click HERE to listen.

Excerpted from When the Gender Line Isn’t Clear?, by Dr. Albert Mohler, published Dec, 2006:

As a society, we are falling (or diving) deeper and deeper into gender confusion. A considerable percentage of the policy-making elite has bought into the ideology of fluid gender and absolute self-expression. Once that idea takes hold, the reality of cross-dressing kindergartners becomes inevitable.

This is where the Christian worldview runs into direct collision with the new sexual ideologies. Christians see the reality of biological identity as a gift–one important way the Creator has told us who we are and how we are to glorify Him with our lives.

Continue reading at Albert Mohler…

Listen to the full Dec 2/3, 2006, MassResistance radio show here.

Download the podcast.

Internationally-known writer, teacher, and activist Scott Lively of Abiding Truth Ministries (aka Defend the Family) is interviewed by our good friend Brian Camenker.

• Learn how to identify and respond to the sophistry (the subtly false reasoning) of the homosexual movement’s arguments.
• Reason through the question: Is homosexuality an “orientation” that is changeable or unchangeable?
• Understand the causes of homosexual attractions.
• Consider the impact of the emasculization of the church in America.

This is an excellent dialogue and we highly recommend it to you.

Excerpted from In Culture War, Newsweek Tells Evangelicals – Bring the Troops Home, by Don Feder, published Nov 23, 2006, by GrasstopsUSA:

…Even if evangelicals are prepared to leave politics alone, politics won’t leave them alone.

The left is on a mission against God. It correctly perceives Christianity (more broadly, the Judeo-Christian ethic) as the principal obstacle to the attainment of its utopian vision. Thus, it is determined to stigmatize, marginalize and ghettoize Christians — to increasingly circumscribe their influence and to confine their values to a designated building on a chosen day of the week.

The left has declared war on Christians. Even if evangelicals laid down their arms, the fighting would continue. Besides 1.3 million abortions a year in this country, and the relentless push for gay marriage (mandated by an imperial judiciary) the left is:

• Sexualizing children (including those from Christian families) in the guise of sex education — teaching teen-aged girls to put condoms on bananas and offering how-to training on acts the average prostitute would refuse to perform
• Teaching kids (starting in kindergarten) that homosexuality is a normal, healthy and perfectly acceptable lifestyle. Try it; you’ll like it.
• Distributing condoms to adolescents
• Working to ensure that 14-year-old girls can get an abortion without the knowledge — let alone the consent — of their parents
• Pushing taxpayer-funded embryonic stem-cell research — cloning-to-kill
• Moving toward assisted suicide and euthanasia
• Fighting any attempt to counter the torrent of filth and graphic violence pouring out of Hollywood to inundate the nation in visual sewage
• Using the news and entertainment media to demonize Christians — hence movies like “V for Vendetta,” “Saved” and “The DaVinci Code” — ergo smears like talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell’s recent charge that “Radical (Bible-believing) Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like the United States.”
• Passing hate crimes laws which will criminalize speech — especially speech that’s critical of homosexuality
• Getting Christian groups thrown off college campuses because they’re “non-inclusive” — i.e., won’t allow homosexuals in leadership positions
• Laboring diligently to keep our borders open and pass another amnesty — thus facilitating new waves of illegal immigration with the ultimate goal of deconstructing America
• Purging the public sector of religious manifestations, including banning stand-alone Ten Commandments displays and removing “One nation under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance
• Working to adopt an anti-terrorism policy which will consist of sensitivity training, multiculturalism and inculcating an appreciation for the religion of peace.
• Assuring the eventual destruction of Israel with a Palestinian state
• Undermining democracy. Replacing popular sovereignty with judicial autocracy — making elections irrelevant. Having civilizational issues like the definition of marriage decided by unelected officials, answerable to no one — a law (pardon the pun) unto themselves.

A November 17th Associated Press story (“Liberals Aim To Ram Measures Past Congress”) is coming attractions for a horror movie of epic proportions — “Nightmare On Capitol Hill”.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council summed it up nicely in a National Review piece, “Anticipate the fiercest assault of our time against abstinence, marriage, life, good judges and religious freedom.”

Is this a fight evangelical Christians want to abandon? Is it a fight they can afford to abandon?

Continue reading at GrasstopsUSA…

Excerpted from US Jewish movement moves to allow gay rabbis, published Nov 30, 2006, by Reuters:
The Conservative Jewish movement, the faith’s American-based middle ground between liberalism and orthodoxy, is nearing a leadership decision that seems likely to permit openly gay rabbis and same-sex unions…

While the topic may be couched in gay rabbis and same-sex unions, the crux of the issue really is “how one views homosexual behaviour,” Meyers said in an interview…

Rabbi Kula, author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life,” said the move toward liberalisation among Conservatives “is not something that came down from the top. It came from Jews in the pews … Jews who had homosexual children and wanted them to be rabbis.”

Continue reading in New Zealand Herald…