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With polls showing more evangelicals — especially younger evangelicals — warming to the idea of voting Democratic (despite the party’s rigid pro-abortion-on-demand and pro-homosexuality agendas), we found this item of interest: this coming Tuesday, Wheaton College will be hostng liberal evangelical advocate Jim Wallis as a featured speaker at the college’s Center for Applied Christian Ethics (CACE). See the CACE announcement here: www.wheaton.edu/news/events/events_07_08/02.19.08_CaceWallis.html
This follows on CACE last September inviting homosexual “gay christian” activist Harry Knox to speak at a panel discussion on “HIV and Morality,” as a representative of the (traditional-Christian-bashing) homosexual activist group Human Rights Campaign. You may recall that it was Knox who, in a TV debate with CWA’s Matt Barber (watch it HERE), called his homosexuality an “unchangeable gift from God, one for which I am very grateful. And it would fly in the face of my respect for God to give that gift back.” (We insensitive Bible-thumpers at AFTAH called that “Satan’s Talking Points.”)
If I’m not mistaken, Harry talked about his relationship with his male partner at the Wheaton panel discussion, which was titled, “Thy Kingdom Come: Christian Moral Engagement in the World.” I don’t believe there was much if any critical “engagement” of Knox when he brought up his homosexual relationship. What a pity. (You can listen to the discussion by going HERE and clicking on the “HIV and Morality Panel” links; there is Part One and Part Two.)
I’m reading Wallis’ new book, “The Great Awakening” (introduction by pro-abortion-rights, pro-homosexuality Jimmy Carter), and I’m not quite sure how Wallis can square his own “applied Christian ethics” with the inspired and authoritative Word of God, which is hardly nuanced on the sin of homosexual behavior. Of course, Wallis, as a leading light of the Religious Left, has plenty of his own criticisms of us on the “Religious Right.”
It would seem appropriate that Wheaton College — as one of the most respected and Biblically faithful Christian colleges in the United States– would at the very least allow equal time for an orthodox evangelical spokesman who is more in line with Christian conservatives on moral issues– perhaps even a stellar representative like Rev. Al Mohler, who surely will not be voting for the Democrats this November.
Matt Foreman, outgoing National Gay and Lesbian Task Force executive director admits, “HIV is a gay disease.”
URGENT ALERT TO HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVIST “FACT CHECKERS” AND “ANTI-HOMOPHOBIA” BLOGGERS EVERYWHERE: somebody straighten out homosexual activist Matt Foreman, outgoing executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, who had the temerity to admit the obvious: “HIV is a gay disease.” Next thing you know, Foreman — who is actually one of America’s most strident anti-Christian bigots … er, “gay” leaders — will be acknowledging that men and women practicing homosexuality can leave the lifestyle and lead contented lives outside the “gay” fold.
Government’s fault?
The Gay Thought Police need not be too alarmed: pro-family stalwart Gary Glenn of AFA-Michigan subsequently informed us that Foreman, talking to a Detroit homosexual newspaper, added this caveat to his statement about HIV and homosexuality: “I dont blame our community for the fact that MSM [men who have sex with men] still account for nearly three quarters of men living with HIV. I hold our government accountable.”
Whew, I’m glad Foreman straightened that out! For a moment there, I thought were were going to witness a major homosexual leader actually encouraging “gay” men to take responsibility for their own sexual (mis)behavior.
In a future post, we’ll address some of Foreman’s other remarks at Creating Change — which might cause conservatives consternation but which should have a sobering effect on the pro-family movement. (Here’s a clue: they’re gaining; we’re losing.) — Peter LaBarbera
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wed., Feb. 13, 2008
CONTACT: Gary Glenn 989-835-7978
National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Admits: “HIV is a Gay Disease”
Michigan family values group welcomes admission,
urges lawmakers to block homosexual “rights” legislation
DETROIT, Mich. — A Michigan family values organization Wednesday welcomed the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s startling admission that homosexual activity is predominantly responsible for the spread of the HIV virus in the U.S. and called on Michigan legislative leaders to block pending legislation that would give special “protected class” status to individuals who engage in such behavior.
Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force — in an address Friday to the National Conference on Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender Equality [“Creating Change”; see AFTAH article HERE] in Detroit — shocked attendees by calling HIV “a gay disease.” Despite medical data identifying homosexual activity among males as by far the largest single source of HIV infection in the U.S., homosexual activists have routinely have condemned conservative and public health organizations for characterizing the disease as being predominantly associated with and spread by homosexual behavior.
Foreman further shocked attendees by himself referring to such data, saying that “with 70 percent of the people in this country living with HIV being gay or bi[-sexual], we cannot deny that HIV is a gay disease. We have to own that and face up to that.”
TAKE ACTION: Watch the incredible CNN video below and click HERE to give feedback to CNN Headline News. See our comments on CNN’s bias beneath the YouTube video.
It is simply mind-boggling that CNN chose not to include another viewpoint on this story about the Colorado elementary school encouraging gender-confusion in an eight-year-old (biological) male student who thinks he’s really a girl. (Click HERE for the One News Now story citing AFTAH on this.) You will note that CNN interviews only the parent of another gender-confused child — a girl whom the mother refers to as “he” on the CNN video.
Interestingly, the mother (CNN caption: “parent of transgender child”), Kim Pearson, describes how her daughter “pretty much lived like a boy growing up … He [editor: she] was just … all around very masculine, and I didn’t discourage that. I just let him [editor: her] — I just went with it. And so he [she] didn’t have a lot of discomfort around it because he [she] was freely expressing himself. It wasn’t until his [her] body started changing that he [she] started having a lot of difficulty.”
Could it be that permissive parenting plays a major role in encouraging a gender-confused identity in a child? Pearson says she felt “relief” on hearing that her daughter claimed to have a male identity. Relief? A wiser parent might have sought professional help from someone not beholden to “transgender” activist ideology — to guide the troubled girl into accepting the wonderful body and sex that God gave her.
In the case of the eight-year-old boy, to what future are the politically correct adults — parents and school authorities included — consigning him with their “caring” embrace of deviance? Could a body-mutilating “sex change” operation be down the road — funded by the taxpayers if the “GLBT” Lobby gets its way? In a saner era, it would be clear to all that the child — not society — has the problem. But what do we know? We’re just “trans-phobes.”
Also note that the Colorado school principal frames this as an issue of “diversity” — showing the elasticity of that term to include extremely disordered behavioral choices among even the youngest students. This story and the way it is being reported is a microcosm of America’s deep moral crisis.
Perhaps one day when historians write about the decline of the once-great American civilization, they will include this story about school authorities encouraging gender confusion in the life of a second-grade Colorado boy — and thereby helping to mainstream it to all his classmates. (Click HERE for WorldNetDaily’s story on the subject.) Here is the incredible story as reported by American Family Association’s One News Now (go HERE to listen and click “Hear Report”):
Colorado school encourages gender confusion in second-grader
Pro-family activist Peter LaBarbera says the case of a second-grade boy in one Colorado school who wants to be identified as a girl shows that the country has normalized deviance.
Staff at a public school in Highlands Ranch are preparing to accommodate the second-grader, who wants to attend classes dressed as a girl and be addressed with a girl’s name. The school will allow the boy to use a unisex bathroom, and they are giving parents packets of information on transgendered people.
Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth, says the real victims of the supposed “diversity policy” are the young man’s classmates. “If the parents are so misled to encourage their child in this gender-confused behavior, they should not be allowed to teach that same behavior to all the other students in the school,” argues LaBarbera. “I think it’s a terribly sad situation. This boy needs help, the parents need help, obviously.”
The pro-family advocate says it is also troubling that the pro-homosexual group “Trans-Youth Family Advocates” has been working with the school district. He says such groups are “in the business of mainstreaming gender confusion” — but somehow manage to work their way into the schools under the guise of being “consultants.”
New law ‘mainstreams sexual deviance among children’
Feb 7, 2008
Contact: E. Ray Moore, Jr., Chaplain (Lt. Col.) USAR Ret, Director of Exodus Mandate or Dr. Bruce Shortt, 803-714-1744. California Exodus contacts: www.Californiaexodus.org, press@californiaexodus.org
COLUMBIA, South Carolina, Feb. 7 /Christian Newswire/ — California Governor Schwarzenegger signed legislation mandating that public school children be indoctrinated to accept as normal the homosexual lifestyle and other forms of sexual deviancy. In the wake of the failed effort to obtain a referendum to repeal this legislation, a broad coalition of Christian grassroots organizations have endorsed the Campaign for Children and Families’ call for California families and churches to rescue their children from California’s public schools.
Creating Change or Creating Confusion? (This is a woman.) Radical author Patrick Califia embodies the “transgender” chaos at the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s annual activists’ “Creating Change” conference, to be held in Detroit Feb. 6-10. The biologically female Califia once considered herself a butch lesbian, but then opted for a “female-to-male” transgender identity, ending up as a self-described “gay man” — which would make her a ‘gay man trapped in a lesbian’s body.’ In order to minimize “transphobic situations,” the Task Force is warning Creating Change attendees that “a person’s external appearance may not match their internal gender identity.”
Folks, it simply doesn’t get any loonier on the Left than the National Lesbian & Gay Task Force’s annual “Creating Change” conference for grassroots LGBTIQQ (which I think stands for “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer and Questioning” — but it’s hard to keep track). This year’s “Creating Change” event is being held in Detroit Feb. 6-10 [2009].
How loony, you ask? Well, on page 17 of this year’s Creating Change program is this advisory piece on “Transgender Etiquette,” as the Task Force endeavors to snuff out “transphobia” within its activist ranks. If you gathered 20 witty foes of homosexuality in a room and instructed them to make up something to embarrass the “gay” movement, they couldn’t come up with anything this bizarre. And yet, Creating Change is a serious affair — funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Ford Foundation alike — where sexual revolutionaries learn how to work the political system to break down America’s traditional sexual and gender norms.
Reading the notice below, is it any wonder that when the Homosexual ‘Task Force’ comes to town, simple “Male/Female” restrooms won’t do? We’ll have more on Creating Change in future posts.–Peter LaBarbera
Adapted from The 2002 Portland Creating Change™ Host Committee
There are many transgender people at Creating Change™. To be inclusive and improve the quality of life for transgender people here, please read and act upon the following.
Please do not assume anyone’s gender, even people you may have met in the past. A person’s external appearance may not match their internal gender identity. You cannot know the gender or sex of someone by their physical body, voice, appearance or mannerisms. Pay attention to a person’s purposeful gender expression. We consider it polite to ask: “What pronoun do you prefer?” or “How do you identify?” before using pronouns or gendered words for anyone. When you are unsure of a person’s gender identity and you don’t have an opportunity to ask someone what words they prefer, try using that person’s name or gender-neutral phrases like “the person in the red shirt,” instead of “that woman or man.”
One way of acknowledging transgender people’s needs is to designate restrooms gender neutral. In bathrooms, many transgender people face harassment that can lead to anything from deep discomfort to arrest or death. Regardless of what bathroom you are in, please let everyone pee in peace. Each of us can decide for ourselves in which bathroom we belong.
Please listen to transgender people’s needs and stories when they are volunteered; yet please respect people’s privacy and boundaries and do not ask unnecessary questions. Educate yourself through books, web sites, and transgender workshops. Then please join the many hardworking allies who are working to respond appropriately to transphobic situations. Respectful allies, who learn from and with transgender people and then educate others, are important for successful transgender liberation.
Thank you for your help and have a great conference!
Appeals Judge issues outrageous ruling embracing homosexual ‘tolerance’ lessons, ignoring Constitutional religious guarantees; links ‘same-sex marriage’ to homosexual instruction
Judge Sandra Lynch
Folks, it is astonishing how far the “gay agenda” (which some homosexual activists say doesn’t exist!) has come in the last 30 years. From defending homosexual bars to opposing parents who merely want to be informed about pro-homosexuality lessons in their young child’s class, the agenda moves on. Massachusetts and California are the states to watch to see where the homosexual youth- and school agenda is headed.
Judge issues outrageous ruling embracing homosexual “tolerance” lessons; uses notorious “1999 Curriculum Frameworks” in argument; Parker’s lawyers already preparing to appeal case to US Supreme Court
Federal Appeals Judge Sandra L. Lynch, a Clinton appointee, wrote the opinion
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS (JAN. 31, 2008) www.massresistance.org — A three-judge federal appeals panel issued a bizarre and horrific ruling today denying the recent appeal by David Parker, his wife Tonia, and Rob and Robin Wirthlin in their federal Civil Rights case against the Lexington school system. The ruling, written Judge Sandra L. Lynch, upholds the dismissal of the case by Federal Judge Mark Wolf, agrees with his reasoning (with some minor exceptions) and even goes a bit further.
Strange legal reasoning
Judge Lynch shows little interest in the major point made by Parker attorney Rob Sinsheimer that the basic Constitutional protections of religious belief are being trampled on by the school. Instead, she attempts to show how Massachusetts law makes it necessary. She digs pretty deep to do that. In her ruling references 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act as mandating that standards “be designed to inculcate respect for the cultural, ethnic and racial diversity of the commonwealth.”
Lynch then uses the extremely controversial Massachusetts 1999 Comprehensive Health Curriculum Framework to justify homosexual-oriented “tolerance” lessons in the lower grades. She quotes from its “measurable goals” in the lower grades, such as “define sexual orientation using the correct terminology.” But Lynch completely ignores the fact that that document was clearly intended as a non-mandatory, informal set of guidelines. That is why Planned Parenthood has filed bill H597 this year to make that document a legal guideline, not informal. (Even the resources listed in the document are from the radical fringe.)
Lynch also presents an interesting analysis of the state Parental Notification Law (Ch. 71, Sec. 32A) which succinctly explains that it is so watered down — and is particularly compromised by the Department of Education’s “advisory rulings” — that it is essentially useless in this situation.
Lynch then observes that the 2003 Goodridge decision held “that the state constitution mandates the recognition of same-sex marriage” and therefore, she implies, the schools must recognize it also.
Most of the rest of Lynch’s reasoning consists of a merry-go-round of excerpts from various “case law” decisions going back several years. That is always suspicious, as we’ve seen throughout this case, because one can cherry-pick language from past decisions (often out of context) almost forever.
This is an oldie but a goodie from the brilliant, politically incorrect (lesbian) feminist Camille Paglia, from her 1998 online Salon Q&A column “Ask Camille.” Now, before you think we’ve sold our conservative souls and are ready to join the Wayne Besen Homosexual Hysteria Club so we can start smearing ex-gays, ridiculing common sense, and destroying traditional marriage — no, we are not sanctioning lesbianism by posting this piece. (Personally, my hope would be that Paglia would outgrow lesbianism, but that’s another essay.) She just makes some refreshing observations that, frankly, we wish more traditionalists would make. (And Paglia has always opposed the Gay Left’s totalitarian impulse by defending the free speech righs of opponents of homosexuality.)
Of course, the problem Paglia addresses below has only grown exponentially worse in the decade since she wrote this.– Peter LaBarbera
Emphasis is added below:
Dear Camille:
I am a black, conservative female. I am proud to say that you are one of my heroes. I would like your opinion of the following press release, which I am forwarding to you. It’s regarding the Gay Youth Pride Day. Now, according to some, I may have no right to have an opinion about this, because of my heterosexuality. However, I think some in the so-called “gay community” take this pride thing a bit too far. As a 19-year-old, openly straight female, I really don’t understand the need for the self-anointed leaders of the gay rights movement to draw gay youngsters into their self-indulgent politics. Am I misguided or insensitive in my approach to the “young gay dilemma”?
Your conservative admirer in Va. Dear Conservative:
The psychological turmoil of adolescents at sexual awakening cannot be underestimated. Everything is in flux — impulses, fears, dreams, with simultaneous longings for independence and for protection by adults. What I dislike about the push of organized gay activism into high schools is that it imposes a rigid political paradigm on a stage of life that is in rapid, painful transition for everyone, gay or straight.
As an equity feminist, as well as an open lesbian, I oppose special protections for any group, including my own. Teachers and administrators should obviously not permit physical harassment of any kind on school property, but verbal epithets, however offensive or hurtful, have First Amendment protection. The PC thought police, having been defeated on college campuses after the court-ordered banning of the fascist speech codes, are now oozing their way into high schools. “Hate” cannot be stopped by authoritarian manipulation but by slow social change, which may take generations.
The Internet has been a boon to lonely gay teens in geographically remote areas — but, of course, computers still remain largely a white middle-class luxury. I find very suspicious the statistics about teen suicides with which gay activists badger the media. If gay teens are indeed attempting suicide at a higher rate than straight teens, perhaps more questions need to be asked about the genesis of homosexuality. The intolerable sense of isolation may precede the homosexuality, rather than vice versa.
I have written repeatedly about my theory that homosexuality is an adaptation, rather than an innate trait, and that it is reinforced by habit. With its cant terms of “oppression” and “bigotry,” gay activism, encouraged by the scientific illiteracy of academic postmodernism, wants to deny that there is a heterosexual norm. This is madness. We need more art and history and less politics in primary education. Art gives the young the psychological and spiritual tools for authentic self-discovery. And art is where sexual dissenters have contributed the most to the human record.
In short, I agree with your concern about the Trojan Horse of gay activism, which is being dragged into high schools under the false flag of compassion. Young people who oppose homosexuality for any reason have a constitutional right to express their views, in or out of the classroom. Whatever they may privately believe as individuals, educators have a professional obligation toremain ideologically neutral in their treatment of students.
Wheaton College speaker Jim Wallis says affirming homosexual couples is a “justice issue.” See the Wheaton announcement here: www.wheaton.edu/news/events/events_07_08/02.19.08_CaceWallis.html 
