Here’s a great column by Matt Barber, who sits on AFTAH’s Board. To listen to Part One of AFTAH’s interview with Trail Life USA Founder and Board Chairman John Stemberger, go HERE. To listen to Part Two of the interview — in which Stemberger relates that he was told be a high-ranking Boy Scout official that the BSA’s new “gay”-affirming policy will result in more boy-on-boy sexual contacts through Scouting — go HERE. And here is the link for Trail Life USA; please promote this Christian alternative to the BSA far and wide. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH

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By J. Matt Barber, September 15, 2013

It was Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 6, 2013. The huge hall was overflowing, the convention sold out. Over 1,200 attendees, with many spilling out into the foyer, eagerly awaited the announcement. What would this safe, moral and non-sexualized alternative to the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) look like? With a stirring introductory video came the answer: “Trail Life USA” would now endeavor to “be the premier national character development organization for young men, which produces godly and responsible husbands, fathers and citizens.”The reveal, eagerly anticipated by hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of Americans was met with rousing cheers. “Our mission is simple and clear,” came the official mission statement, “to guide generations of courageous young men to honor God, lead with integrity, serve others and experience outdoor adventure.”

A brief summary from the new scouting-like organization’s website (TrailLifeUSA.com) reads as follows:

“Most guys want exciting outdoor adventure with their friends. We’ve got that! Trips and travel? That, too. Camping. Check. Physical and mental challenge? Yep. And awards? Of course!

“Trail Life USA is a Christian adventure, character and leadership movement for young men. The K-12 program centers on outdoor experiences that build a young man’s skills and allow him to grow on a personal level and as a role model and leader for his peers. Living the Trail Life is a journey established on timeless values derived from the Bible.”

Countless men and boys who once called themselves “Boy Scouts” will now proudly bear the title of “Trailman.”

Back in May, millions of Americans were shocked and saddened when the BSA inexplicably bowed to left-wing political pressure and became something it had never before been: a hyper-politicized, aberrantly sexualized petri dish for social and sexual experimentation.

Created in 1910 to “prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes,” the BSA, on May 23, 2013, tragically voted to welcome into its ranks “open and avowed” homosexuality (boy-on-boy sexual attraction and behavior), thereby disavowing the “morally straight” Scout Oath its members have been sworn to uphold for over a century.

Even worse, and in so doing, the BSA effectively waived the only legal defense it once had to preclude openly homosexual Scout leaders and gender-confused girls from its ranks: religious and moral conviction. It’s only a matter of time until the BSA is forced to capitulate to sexual extremists’ political demands and allow homosexual adults – men who define their identity based upon carnal appetites for other males – to take your boys on overnight camping trips.

This interview with John Stemberger [click HERE to listen], founder of OnMyHonor.net, was recorded today, July 18, 2013. Stemberger describes the formation of a new boys organization that will provide a wholesome alternative to the pro-homosexual Boy Scouts of America (BSA). [Watch an introductory video HERE.] The new boys organization [later named “Trail Life USA”] will be devoted to building good character among boys, centered on biblical principles. The new group holds its first national convention this September after holding a recent planning meeting of national pro-family leaders in Louisville, Kentucky. Stemberger, who is also president and general counsel of the Florida Family Policy Council, led the grassroots coalition effort to stop the Scouts’ tragic cave-in allowing openly homosexual youth members. (He explains how the BSA voting process on the proposed pro-“gay” change was weighted heavily in favor of the Scouts, in part because BSA leaders would not reveal who was voting.)

Stemberger clarifies the membership requirements for boys — saying that no immoral sexual behavior or advocacy of any kind will be tolerated in the new organization. He said if a boy struggles with same-sex issues (or other issues), it will be seen as a “ministry opportunity” in the organization — which, unlike the Scouts, will be explicitly Christian. (Membership will be open to boys of all religions and backgrounds.) Regarding the BSA, he said that within a couple of years, it will be driven by the courts to allow openly homosexual adult Scoutmasters, which will further cripple that once-noble organization. Stemberger said the BSA was done in by the paid “professionals” who ran the organization, who ultimately were not dedicated to upholding the BSA’s principles. Click HERE for Part Two of this interview. [Click HERE for Matt Barber’s column on the opening convention of Trail Life USA.]

HOW TO LISTEN: This is an mp3 file, supported in most operating systems by Windows Media Player, Quick Time and/or I-Tunes.  Real Player is not supported and there may be difficulty when attempting to listen with it.  Left click once on the link below to play.  (Please be patient, depending upon the speed of your internet connection it may take a moment to load.)  OR right click the link then “save target as” to download the whole show.

7-18-13, John Stemberger

The column (excerpted below) by stellar pro-family advocate Robert Knight was published Jan. 14, 2013 in the Washington Times. Knight is Senior Fellow for the American Civil Rights Union and a Times columnist:

By Robert Knight

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has a well-earned reputation as the hippiest, dippiest, most-reversed appellate court in these United States.

It’s where the Pledge of Allegiance gets scrutinized for possible eradication, at least, the “under God” part. But every so often, the Court gets something right.

On December 22, a unanimous Ninth Circuit panel reversed a federal district judge’s order to evict the Boy Scouts from their longtime camp and local headquarters in San Diego’s Balboa Park. The ruling came in a case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 2001 on behalf of a lesbian couple and an agnostic couple, who basically accused the Boy Scouts of holding traditional values.

In 2003, federal District Judge Napoleon A. Jones Jr. ruled that the Boy Scouts were a religious organization that discriminates and therefore were ineligible for a public lease. Judge Jones somehow ignored the Supreme Court’s Dale decision in 2000 upholding the Scouts’ right to their own moral standards. He also ignored the First Amendment’s religious freedom guaranty.

The Boy Scouts expelled Rhode Island assistant troop leader William Lazzareschi after he forced a 12-year-old Scout boy to perform oral sex on him.

Male homosexual predators (pederasts) go where the boys are, which is why see the Boy Scouts of America being forced to deal publicly with an issue it would rather shove behind close doors: adult male Scout leaders molesting innocent boys. It goes without saying that the Homosexual Lobby and its media apologists will strive to divorce this crisis from homosexuality itself:  they conveniently insist that “pedophiles” — and “ephebophiles” (adults who sexually desire adolescents) — are separate categories unto themselves. But this academic legerdemain is self-serving and amounts to the glorification of semantic technicalities designed to obscure common sense.

And common sense implicates male homosexuality (which of course is not to say that all or even most “gay” men are pedophiles or into sex with minors). The Catholic League gets it right below, especially their observation: “whenever there is an overrepresentation of any demographic groups with deviant behavior, it bears scrutiny.”

We must return to the question: If practicing homosexual/bisexual men represent a mere a sliver (1-3 percent) of American society — why is there such a big problem of boys being seduced into sex or raped by adult male predators like Jerry Sandusky? Wouldn’t only a tiny percentage — and not double digits — of victims be boys, since 97 percent or more of men are straight?

In other words, assuming very few boys are molested by women, why are there so many boy victims of pedophilia?

Americans For Truth rejects “civil unions” as a capitulation, not a compromise

Conservative Capitulation Cometh? Homosexual activist Mike Signorile tells FOX’s Laura Ingraham that she and everyone who opposes same-sex “marriage” will be supporting it in five years because “the world is changing.” Some influential conservatives like talk show host Mike Gallagher are selling out on the homosexual agenda by embracing “civil unions.”  Americans For Truth rejects such false compromises. We know that the more you give in to homosexual activists, the more they demand. Signorile himself has championed legalized homosexual “marriage” as a “a chance to wholly transform the definition of family in American culture … [and]  the final tool with which to …  get education about homosexuality and AIDS into public schools.”

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 Help Americans For Truth … and Get a Free Book

If you will help Americans For Truth with a tax-deductible gift of $25 or more, we will send you a free copy of the hard-cover book Homosexuality: A Freedom Too Far, by the late Charles Socarides, a man who dedicated his life to understanding homosexuality and helping people overcome it.  Will you consider a gift of $25, $100, $500 or even $1,000 or more to help Americans For Truth fight the powerful, well-financed Homosexual Lobby?  You can make your gift online at www.americansfortruth.com/donate, or mail your gift to: Americans For Truth, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522. 
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A Special Appeal from AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera:

Dear Readers,

I am writing to ask your help to lift Americans For Truth about Homosexuality (AFTAH) out of a financial crisis, but also to you to do your part to lift America out of her moral crisis.  If you support Americans For Truth, it’s probably because you appreciate our direct approach to the problem of homosexual activism.  We at AFTAH don’t play politically correct games by trying so hard not to offend anyone that we water down Truth.  No, we just tell it like it is, and the homosexual activists hate us for it.

Every day, I receive vicious letters like this from an e-mail containing the name Seth Yatovitz (who gave his e-mail name as “Jesus”) [WARNING: VULGAR]:

Thank You ….For letting me know who you are so I can ream you in your ass even though I am straight. Burn in Hell Father [F–ker]! God loves everyone, even gay people like Jesus! I will be saying prayers for your enlightenment even though you disgust me more than any deviant sexual act ever could. Gays are NOT child molesters, they are the children of God.

Boy Scouts face eviction by the city over no-homosexuals policy.

By Robert Knight
Culture and Media Institute
May 29, 2008

Let’s pretend we’re news editors at the TV networks and major newspapers.

This just in: The Boy Scouts of America have filed a lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia for threatening to evict the Cradle of Liberty Council from their headquarters in a city park.

If the Scouts don’t prevail, they face eviction from their 80-year-old building by Saturday, May 31.

Shouldn’t this be a national news story? It’s not.

None of the networks has mentioned the lawsuit, which was filed on May 23, and major newspapers have devoted as little as a couple of sentences to it based on wire reports. The only significant coverage has been in the local Philadelphia papers. And none of them gives readers any inkling as to why the Scouts (and parents) might not want to put children at risk by permitting homosexual men to serve as Scoutmasters….

The Scouts are fighting what amounts to an attempt at extortion. Given that tens of millions of American men have been in the Boy Scouts and that this story brims with David and Goliath drama, why is it being ignored? ….

Click HERE to read the rest of Bob Knight’s CMI piece, “Media Shove Boy Scout Story under a Tent”

Surely the homosexual (and atheist) lobby’s vindictive, selfish and shameless campaign against the Boy Scouts of America is one of the cruelest ever orchestrated by the Left. They could care less about this wonderful organization for boys, which they are helping to destroy and bankrupt through endless legal harassment.

Do you still have a problem saying that organized homosexuality is a force for evil in our society? Thank God that the Philadelphia Scouts’ Cradle of Liberty Council, which initially sought a politically correct accommodation with the city, is now fighting back. To sign up for Family Research Council’s terrific “Washington Update” and other e-mail publications, click HERE. — Peter LaBarbera

Scout Oath

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

Scout Law

A Scout is: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient,Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent

Philly Rocks the Cradle of Liberty

By Tony Perkins, Family Research Council, “Washington Update,” May 28, 2008

Eight days shy of the eviction deadline imposed by the city of Philadelphia, the Cradle of Liberty Boy Scout Council is striking back. On Friday, Scout officials filed suit in federal court to end a longstanding struggle with the city over a building that the council built and has occupied since 1928 for $1 a year. In a public war over the Scouts’ membership policy which bars homosexuals from joining, Philadelphia’s leaders have threatened to pull the rug out from under the Cradle’s headquarters. City officials say their demands are entirely justifiable under a 26-year-old city ordinance that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.

 Which homosexual activist(s) got AFTAH’s “Gay Grinch” award for 2007? Hint: it involves the Boy Scouts. Listen online to find out.

By Peter LaBarbera 

Click HERE to listen to the first hour, and HERE to listen online to the second hour of my guest-hosting appearance Dec. 17 on WYLL (a Christian station outside Chicago, Ill.) for the Sandy Rios Show. Sandy is a dear friend, president of Culture Campaign, a commentator on FOX News, and — I almost forgot — a Great American.

The show features (in the first hour) some great exchanges with my friends, African Americans Rev. Al Cleveland of Rehoboth Empowerment Christian Church and Charlene Cothran, discussing DiversityInc publisher Luke Visconti’s nutty comparison of me to a 19th Century slavery advocate.

The second hour features: an interview with Dan Zanoza of Republicans For Fair Media on CNN’s “political ambush” using a supposed “gay general” at its YouTube Republican Presidential Debate to promote homosexuality in the military; a short but sweet exchange with AFTAH Board Member Mike Heath of the Christian Civic League of Maine on getting men back involved in the “culture war”: and a short interview with Dave Smith of the Illinois Family Institute on his campaign to get the NFL to stop allowing bawdy ads during football games.

You can also listen at the end for AFTAH’s first annual “Gay Grinch” award for 2007. Hint: it involves the Boy Scouts of America.

There’s one big problem with the broadcast: I don’t think I said “um” enough…. Oh well, practice makes perfect. Thanks to Sandy for the opportunity. — Peter LaBarbera