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I have two observations about this excellent piece by my friend, Barbwire.com founder, and AFTAH Board Member Matt Barber: 1) I wish all Christians could possess Matt’s resolve in defending Truth; and 2) only a tiny minority of believers understand what is coming down the pike, persecution-wise, from the combination of treating homosexuality as a “civil right” and the court-imposed legalization of “gay marriage.” This is Big Government imposing immorality on us all, and we must fight it with great vigilance. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH.org
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The Coming Christian Revolt
By Matt Barber, July 21, 2014
From behind a smoking sniper rifle high atop his ivory tower peers the secular “progressive.” He surveys his many victims, strewn across the American landscape below and mockingly sneers, “War on Christianity? What war on Christianity?”
He then resumes shooting, all the while insisting that those uncooperative Christians who scatter for cover behind the Word of God and the U.S. Constitution somehow suffer from a “persecution complex” (the baker, the photographer, the florist, the innkeeper, the Christian school administrator, etc.).
Though there are many, it is plain for all to see that abortion and “sexual liberation” remain the two principal theaters in the ongoing culture war battlefront.
To fully advance the causes of radical feminism, abortion-on-demand, unfettered sexual license, gay marriage and the like, the pagan left must do away with religious free exercise altogether. Under the guise of “anti-discrimination,” Christians today face discrimination at unprecedented levels.
Let’s see if we can make this abundantly clear. Christians, true Christians—regenerate, Bible-believing Christians who strive their level best to maintain fidelity to the word of God and honor His commands—will not—indeed cannot—participate in, approve of, facilitate or encourage certain behaviors deemed by the Holy Scriptures to be immoral or sinful.
NOT A GOOD ROLE MODEL: AFTAH blocks homosexual kisses because they are indecent. God never intended men to be sexual with other men, nor women with women. This fundamental reality is confirmed by Nature, which clearly discriminates against homosexual conduct (intercourse between two people of the same sex cannot produce life). Michael Sam is doing a great disservice to young people by promoting the idea that immoral and destructive homosexual behavior is natural and acceptable. Pray for Michael Sam that he will one day join the many men and women who have left homosexuality behind.
The following open letter to Michael Sam–who has gained fame as the first openly homosexual NFL draftee–is adapted from a printed version written and distributed by AFTAH Board Member John McCartney, who has devoted many years to the critical study of homosexuality. I recommend reading this CDC report on HIV and Black MSM (men who have sex with men)–though it is tinged with politically-correct bias–for more background on this aspect of HIV crisis linked to homosexual behavior.–Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
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An Open Letter to Michael Sam
Michael, do we have to tell you that, especially with your current publicity, you are a role model because of your athletic prowess, but since “coming out” you are also modeling a lifestyle that the cost for those living it, has been unpublicized but appalling—as it has for society. The troubling fact is minorities are suffering most and in growing numbers. The evidence:
Black youth–your fans among them–ages 13-24 are twice as likely to get HIV/AIDS than those of other ethnic groups.
94-95 percent of all HIV cases in 2011 among boys and young men ages 13-24 were linked to homosexual sex, the CDC reports.
Youth 13-24 incur 26 percent of new HIV/AIDS infections each year.
An estimated 60 percent of 13-24 year-olds are unaware that they’re infected with HIV; such ignorance can be a death sentence.
Black men having sex with men (MSM) accounted in 2010 for 39 percent of all HIV/AIDS diagnoses.
Secondary to the toll in pain and death among MSM is the drain on U.S. medical and financial resources; for example, anti-viral drugs, which can prolong MSM life about 20 years, cost over $24,000 per year. They do prolong life but must be taken scrupulously or the MSM becomes infectious. To treat an HIV/AIDS victim costs from $400,000 to $600,000 from infection to death. In total, the HIV/AIDS epidemic costs the country about $5 billion per year, says CDC Director Dr. Tom Freiden.
Believe it or not, no one is born “gay”; molestation, emotional deprivation, parental or peer rejection, or other traumatic factors can foster same-sex attraction–but many men and women have managed it, diminished it, or eliminated it altogether. [See these heartwarming ex-“gay” testimonies.] Many accomplished this through Reparative Therapy and counseling, despite the relentless, unwarranted condemnation of and campaign against both by self-serving “gay” activists.
What we hope for from you, Michael, is that you don’t make your feelings, well-publicized as they have been, your claim to fame. Your achievements on the football field will earn you a legacy you can be proud of; your “coming out” as one celebrating homosexuality as normative can earn you only regret, as well as notoriety among millions of us.
Peter LaBarbera
President, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH)
Court’s defense of religious liberty for profit-making companies could help Christian small businessmen oppressed by “gay rights” laws
Current U.S. Supreme Court: left to right in back: Sotomayor, Breyer, Alito, Kagan. Front, left to right: Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg. Alito wrote the Hobby Lobby decision, and Kennedy is lionized by “gay” activists for writing last year’s decision striking down DOMA. Click to enlarge.
By Peter LaBarbera
It’s easy to understand why hard-core feminists with their frenzied, overblown “War on Women” rhetoric would be outraged by the Supreme Court upholding Hobby Lobby’s right as a Christian-run corporation not to be forced to provide abortifacients to its employees through an Obama-care mandate. (See Hillary’s misinformation on the decision HERE.) But why are liberal “gay” activists freaking out over the Hobby Lobby ruling?
The case was never about denying women birth control, but you wouldn’t know that from the “reporting” by liberal media and hyperventilating “progressive” bloggers. Hobby Lobby still provides 16 forms of birth control as a health benefit to its employees, but its founders—along with another Christian-owned corporation, Conestoga Wood Specialists—sued HHS over being forced to provide four contraceptive methods that could terminate a fertilized egg.
Hobby Lobby’s founders, David and Barbara Green, are committed Christians who believe that life begins at conception and should be protected. To quote the Court decision, “Hobby Lobby’s statement of purpose commits the Greens to ‘[h]onoring the Lord in all [they] do by operating the company in a manner consistent with Biblical principles.’” So strong is the Greens’ commitment to Jesus Christ that they have lost countless millions of dollars in profits over the years by closing their 500 craft stores nationwide on Sunday.
Now, one would think that obtaining cheap, subsidized contraception would be low on the priority list for homosexuals, seeing that two men or two women by themselves cannot produce a child. Nevertheless, Big Gay Inc is in a tizzy over the Supreme Court decision—because Burwell vs. Hobby Lobbyisn’t really about contraceptives but rather whether Americans like the Greens will be free to live out their religious convictions.
Immediately after the decision, feminists flew into a rage, circulating crude versions of Justice Ginsburg’s dissent and distortions about women being denied birth control by their “male bosses.” Too bad most Americans will never read the actual Hobby Lobby decision—which lays out two diametrically opposed, competing visions about freedom of conscience and the role of government in these United States.
Freedom of conscience vs. Big Government
Hobby Lobby’s owners, David and Barbara Green, seek to use their business to glorify Jesus Christ. Their 500 stores across the country are closed on Sundays, costing the Greens many millions of dollars in profits.
On the side of preserving and even expanding Americans’ religious liberty were five judges: Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas. In his concurring opinion Kennedy writes:
“In our constitutional tradition, freedom means that all persons have the right to believe or strive to believe in a divine creator and a divine law. For those who choose this course, free exercise is essential in preserving their own dignity and in striving for a self-definition shaped by their religious precepts. Free exercise in this sense implicates more than just freedom of belief….It means, too, the right to express those beliefs and to establish one’s religious (or non-religious) self-definition in the political, civic, and economic life of our larger community.”
On the other side—of Big Government overriding citizens’ religious beliefs, restricting conscience exemptions to federal mandates, and putting federal power behind expanded access to entitlements–were Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Breyer and Kagan. In fact, Ginsburg spends nearly two pages in her dissent [see pp. 24-25] defending the idea that Obama-care’s provision of subsidies for IUD’s (intrauterine devices) –one of the four contraceptives resisted by Hobby Lobby as a potential abortifacient—is a “compelling government interest.”
As much as Ginsburg believes the majority’s “immoderate” reading of Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) is too broad, hers is too narrow: she ends by arguing that exemptions under the RFRA should be limited to explicitly religious organizations—leaving for-profit Christian businessmen like the Greens unprotected.
The bigger government gets–in both its “social justice” mission and the amount of goodies it gives out as “entitlements”—the greater the threat to Americans’ right to freely exercise their faith. This is precisely why homosexual activists are nervous about Hobby Lobby’s victory. If the nation’s highest court grants that even very large “closely held” family businesses like Hobby Lobby (which has more than 13,000 employees) possess a religious liberty claim under RFRA, then surely small family businesses like Elane Photography in New Mexico—owned by Jonathan and Elaine Huguenin—should have the right not to use their creative talents to serve homosexual “weddings,” which violate their Christian faith.
I just talked with our lawyer Michael Weber (part of Tom Schuck’s NSWB lawfirm). The trial date for Peter LaBarbera and I for witnessing at the University of Regina will be October 29, 2014. We were charged with Mischief after we set up abortion signs and one sign saying “Sodomy is a sin,” on the public walkway at the University of Regina back on April 14th. Approximately 20 or so pro-abortion and pro-homosexual protesters set up a counter protest across from us. Notwithstanding that I have two Court of Queen’s Bench decisions affirming my right to protest on public university campuses, Peter and I were arrested and charged and the pro-abortion/pro-homosexual protesters were allowed to continue with their demonstration unmolested.
No ray of sunshine, no warm ocean breeze rustling through the palm leaves can bring cheer to Isla Vista. A cloud of sorrow covers the picturesque college town and seeps though every fastened gate, through every locked and bolted door, and pierces every bewildered heart.
Nothing is more precious than the life of a young woman who eagerly awaits the joys of life. And no hurt exceeds the pain of a father or mother who sees a cap and gown replaced by a funeral shroud.
America should weep bitter tears over this. America must. Like the Prodigal Son who abandoned his father’s ample table to feed on the husks of swine, America has exchanged traditional views on marriage and the family for an unworkable code of sexual liberation. Under this dubious code, each man and woman becomes a law unto himself. If anyone doubts this, let him contemplate the words of the perpetrator. In his final message to society, Elliot Rodger declared himself to be beyond the commands and prohibitions of any law, human or divine.
Elliot Rodger’s understanding of human existence and sexual morality was gleaned at random from pop culture, lurid movies, and violent video games. Far from regarding women as a helpmate, life-long companion, and future mother of his children–which is the Christian view of marriage–Rodger saw women as a potential sexual conquest, a sort of prey.
In my 30-year battle for the family and marriage, insofar as God gave me the strength and wisdom to do so, I warned of the extreme danger which results from a wrong understanding of human sexuality. My warnings were rejected, both by society at large and by the pro-family movement, as alarmist, intolerant, and divisive.
This interview with America’s Survival President Cliff Kincaid aired on AS’s Roku channel April 24, 2014. In discussing homosexuality and pedophilia, Kincaid references a video by homosexual Walter Lee Hampton complaining about seeing so many homosexual men in thir 30’s, 40’s and even 50’s in sexual relationships with minor boys [go HERE to view]. At about 17:45 the discussion shifts to LaBarbera recounting his run-in with Canada’s homosexuality-affirming “hate” politics, culminating in his arrest for protesting peacefully with Bill Whatcott at University of Regina, in Satchatchewan. [Go HERE to watch this on YouTube.] America’s Survival writes:
Pedophiles Exposed! Peter LaBarbera on Gay Media Power
The mother of the alleged victim of a powerful Hollywood pedophile ring says she tried for years to interest the media in the story. Michael Egan’s mother Bonnie Mound said, “I wrote every news channel, every magazine, every talk show host, everybody, from Oprah to ‘20/20‘ to ‘60 Minutes‘…. Nobody wanted to do anything because of the high-profile people involved.” Although Egan attorney Jeff Herman said the suits are not about homosexuality, but rather pedophilia and child abuse, Peter LaBarbera of the group Americans for Truth notes that the founder of the modern gay rights movement, Harry Hay, was a communist who supported the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). LaBarbera was recently arrested and jailed in Canada for distributing pro-family values literature on the campus of the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada.
Crude effort to block pro-family speech in Canada not unlike GLAAD/SPLC crusade to censor pro-family voices opposed to homosexuality in media
“I would like for him to be turned away from our border….Peter LaBarbera should not be allowed to enter our country. His sole purpose of entering Canada is to spread his message of hate and intolerance.”–Bailey Ashton Brookes, Intolerance Free Weyburn, in a public letter to Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, Steven Blaney
“Tolerance,” Canadian Style: Canadian pro-life and pro-family activist Bill Whatcott poses for photo with adversary and anti-“intolerance” activist Bailey Ashton Brookes, who is lobbying the State to keep AFTAH’s Peter LaBarbera out of Saskatchewan, Canada, where he is scheduled to give a talk Oct. 11-12.
By Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
Folks, below is the verbatim copy of a Facebook letter by “Intolerance Free Weyburn” [Saskatchewan] activist Bailey Ashton Brookes. She is urging others to write Steven Blaney, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, to bar my entry into Canada, where I am scheduled as a speaker at the Saskatchewan Pro-Life Association (SPLA) conference in Weyburn, October 11-12. [see original AFTAH story HERE; see letters by Joe Scheidler and Mary Anne Hackett defending me as a speaker].
“I would like for him to be turned away from our border,” Brookes writes.
Despite the Left’s history of censorship and totalitarianism, I am a bit taken aback to be the target of such an outrageous attempt to intimidate SPLA’s leaders into jettisoning me as a speaker–and then lobbying the State to ban me as a supposed purveyor of “hate.”
It’s one thing to write and poke fun at the “pro-Gay Thought Police,” and quite another to be in its crosshairs.
Here we have an object lesson on the inevitable end-result of political correctness–in the form of leftist “thought control” fused with State power. For years now, the far-left-biased Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has maliciously smeared my group, AFTAH, as well as dozens of other pro-family organizations like American Family Association and Family Research Council as “hate groups.” Then fellow travelers on the Left, led by LGBT activists, circulate the SPLC’s lie as if it is some kind of authoritative evidence that AFTAH and this writer are truly “hateful.”
In Canada, bereft of a First Amendment, mischievous “progressives” can cause more trouble faster than in the U.S., by citing legal bans on “hate speech” that have been upheld by the country’s highest court. Canadian Bill Whatcott, a brave pro-life and pro-family activist who will be speaking at the conference next week, has been victimized by such “hate speech” prosecutions. So have many good Canadians like Stephen Boissoin, who have been dragged through preposterous “human rights tribunals” merely because they voiced opposition to the Sin of Sodom.
SPLC smears go worldwide
SPLC’s One-Sided “Hate” Scam: Remember this leftist brick attack on AFTAH’s banquet in 2011? The Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network (GLN) publicly refused to condemn it–demonstrating actual hatred. Yet the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has never labelled GLN–or any homosexual organization–a “hate group,” while slandering dozens of pro-family organizations like AFTAH with that false smear. The words on the paver brick thrown through the glass doors of the Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights, IL, refer to AFTAH banquet speaker and honoree Scott Lively.
The SPLC’s corruption and radical pro-homosexual bias is illustrated by the fact that it has never designated an LGBT organization as a “hate group.” In fact, the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network (GLN), which took great pride in “reporting” AFTAH to the SPLC as a potential “hate group,” later publicly refused to condemn a brick attack against the school, Christian Liberty Academy, that hosted our 2011 banquet! [See AFTAH original story on the pro-homosexual brick attack.]
That’s real hate as opposed to ideologically-defined “hate.” Yet the SPLC has yet to designate GLN as a “hate group.” The good news is that many Americans and pundits finally are seeing through the SPLC’s “hate” scam.
Most activists on the Left are not as brazen as Ms. Brookes and her husband in pressing the censor card, but these two “morality-phobic” individuals are merely applying a more extreme and crass version of the pro-LGBT Left’s hardball tactics. Homosexual activist groups like GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation)–working with others like the SPLC–continually and falsely equate opposition to homosexuality with “hate.” They also throw around the ominous-sounding charge of “homophobia”–implying that their opponents are filled with irrational fear as opposed to disagreeing with immoral and unhealthy sexual behavior.
Then this Coalition on the Left pressures the media not to give a voice to the haters, homophobes and bigots. In recent years, they have expanded their crusade to include the enemy of “religious-based bigotry.” In their pride, they possess little regard for the sincerity and motives of Christians and others who genuinely seek to defend God’s moral order (“righteousness” in the Bible)–while holding out the hope of healthy change as personified by the many men and women who have left homosexuality (“gayness”) behind.
Since these illogical arguments and self-serving tactics can easily be defeated by pro-family advocates, pro-LGBT militants would rather just shut groups like AFTAH down in the Public Square. Endlessly playing their “anti-hate” card, they plead with the media to stop including the “other side” in their stories–stoking the ridiculous notion that no legitimate opposition to homosexualism (“gay rights”) exists. I’m afraid this is how countless cowed and ill-informed Western journalists think about homosexuality today. The arrogance and injustice of deciding for everyone what supposedly constitutes “hate,” “intolerance” and appropriate arguments in this Culture War debate apparently is lost on these liberal Speech Police and their media accomplices.
This video was just released by Alliance Defending Freedom., on the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case of the New Mexican Christian photographers Jon and Elaine Huguenin, who were were sued because they declined to take a job shooting photos at a lesbian “commitment ceremony.” ADF has a Fact Page on the case HERE, and also a press page on the case HERE. The decision lets stand a New Mexico Supreme Court ruling that effectively neutered Jon and Elaine Huguenin. Go HERE to read AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera’s in-depth report, “Gay Power vs. Religious Liberty,” for WND.com on other victims of the escalating pro-homosexual tyranny:
