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Changed Life: Stephen Black of First Stone Ministries and Restored Hope Network once lived his life as a “gay” man [see his powerful video testimony HERE]. Now he helps others leave the homosexual lifestyle. Stephen will give four presentations on understanding homosexuality and reaching out to those trapped in sexual sin and gender confusion—in the love and truth of Jesus Christ. Full banquet details HERE. Sign up for just $25 for both days HERE.
Dear AFTAH Supporters,
Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) is holding its annual banquet this Friday, Oct. 20, followed by a “Teach-in” Saturday, Oct. 21. There will be a total of four presentations by our keynote speaker, my friend Stephen Black, a godly Christian man who came out of homosexuality and now helps others do the same. [See his powerful video testimony HERE.] We also have an “all-star” Q-&A panel Saturday featuring: Denise Shick, whose father told her he wanted to be a “woman” when she was a young girl; stellar writer Laurie Higgins of Illinois Family Institute; and AFA-Pennsylvania pro-family warrior Diane Gramley.
This Teach-in is ideal for anyone with loved ones trapped in homosexual and/or transgender lifestyles. Like all our events, it will be highly educational and spiritually uplifting—loaded with information that you can put to use in your life and relationships. It is only $25 for both days and will be held at Grace for Life Bible Church in Naperville, Illinois, Oct. 20-21. Full details are HERE.
WHEN: Banquet with casual dinner (catered by Portillo’s) is Friday, Oct. 20, 6:00-9:30 PM. Doors open at 5:30 PM Friday, and 8:30 AM Saturday. Teach-in seminars led by Stephen is Saturday, Oct 21, 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM. A casual lunch will be served Sat., and the Q&A panel begins at 1:30 Sat.
WHERE:Grace For Life Bible Church, Naperville, Illinois (west of Chicago), 7S201 S. River Rd., Naperville, IL. [at the corner of River Rd. and Aurora Ave.; entrance is on River Rd. across the street from “Safety Town” and the Naperville PD.]
COST: Just $25/person to attend either or both events. Table of 10 at banquet for $250. Separate gift offerings will be taken both Friday and Saturday. Mail check to: AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522 — or pay online HERE
RSVP and AFTAH contact info: americansfortruth@gmail.com, or call 312-324-3787.
AFTAH Reboot
This year’s banquet is a little different from past ones in that it launches what is essentially AFTAH’s “reboot” as an organization. For the last year, I have been writing full-time for LifeSiteNews.com, an excellent pro-family news site for which I will continue to write blog articles. But my Americans For Truth work in the last year has been limited mainly to doing dozens of interviews on conservative and Christian media relating to LGBTQ issues [see HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE]. Moral-minded conservatives are big fans of AFTAH because we are direct and honest in speaking the truth about homosexual-bisexual-transgender activism, in the love and grace of Christ.
Beginning at the Friday banquet [casual dinner catered by Portillo’s], I will again be devoting my full energies to AFTAH, which I formed more than two decades ago (an offshoot of my “Lambda Report”) and has always been my first love when it comes to opposing Big Gay and its cheerleading media enablers. (We veterans of the fight against the LGBTQueer lobby could tell Donald Trump a few things about “fake news.”)
Our website will return to doing that for which AFTAH is known (and which drives LGBT militants and the Left crazy): telling the hard truths about homosexuality and “transgenderism” that so many others—even people on our side—are often unwilling to tell. Yes, that includes publishing disturbing (albeit boxed-out) photos of unsavory “gay” events that remind us why, for centuries, homosexuality has been regarded as deeply immoral and an unnatural perversion.
Denise Shick’s father told her he wanted to become a “woman” when she was just nine years old. Now she runs the Help 4 Families Ministry, which reaches out to families dealing with “transgender” issues. Shick will be speaking on a panel at the AFTAH Teach-in Sat., Oct. 21, following our dinner-banquet with ex-“gay” Stephen Black Oct. 20. Black also will give three presentations on Saturday.
Folks, I’m excited to announce that Denise Shick, founder and executive director of Help 4 Families Ministry, will be speaking at the AFTAH Teach-in Oct. 21, which follows our banquet with former homosexual Stephen Black Oct. 20. Help 4 Families describes itself as “a Christian ministry that compassionately reaches out to family members and brings understanding of the emotional and spiritual issues that families face when a loved one is gender confused.”
As you can read in the essay by Denise below, Shick’s father revealed to her when she was just nine years old that he wanted to become a “woman,” then asked her not to tell her own mother. Her ministry today was birthed by her many years of dealing with the pain and trauma of such emotional abuse at the hands of her own gender-confused dad; read more about her harrowing personal story HERE.
Denise is author of three books dealing with “transgender” issues (see below). She will be on our Q-and-A panel Saturday afternoon, following three presentations on homosexuality by Stephen Black, who has lived 35 years free of the “gay” lifestyle that he once thought defined him. Black also speaks Friday evening, Oct. 20, with a casual dinner served. Tickets are just $25 for both days of outstanding teaching. My friend and pro-family leader Diane Gramley of American Family Association of Pennsylvania will also appear on the final Saturday panel.
Banquet & Teach-in sign up: More information HERE; sign up with your safe payment online HERE. — Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth
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The ‘Transgender’ Lobby Is Weaponizing Children as Pawns in the Culture War
By Denise Shick, Oct. 1, 2017
I’ll never forget the first time I heard of warlords such as Uganda’s Joseph Kony turning little boys into killer soldiers and little girls into sex slaves. My heart ached at the thought. It still does. It seemed like a horrible war movie—but it was real, with real children as casualties.
War is always horrible, but in some sad cases it is necessary. But children should be—to the greatest degree possible—shielded from violent conflicts. They should never be forced to kill or do violence. Innocent, impressionable children are malleable. They can be sculpted into persons of deep character, guided by transcendent principles. Or they can be turned into weapons, as Joseph Kony and many other evil men have done.
Folks, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my tax dollars spent on transsexual “male-to-female” “vaginoplasty” “surgeries” that attempt to turn a severely gender-confused man’s healthy penis–which God designed to bring forth new life–into a makeshift “vagina.” Nor do I want to subsidize through my government the surgical removal of a woman’s healthy breasts so she can have a flat chest to help fulfill her disordered “transgender” fantasy of becoming a “man.” Ex-transsexual Walt Heyer of SexChangeRegret.com is right: your DNA does not lie and you cannot change your sex.
The mutilations are revolting and tragic, yet YOU and I are paying for them. Recently, the U.S. House narrowly rejected the Hartzler Amendment to the main defense spending bill–designed to stop taxpayer funding of such grotesque operations in the U.S. Armed Forces. Amazingly, 23 Republicans joined the unified Democrats in voting it down.
The following graphic is excerpted from a larger description of a “vaginoplasty” by the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery. Beneath the graphic (after the jump), we have reprinted the Center’s full “Vaginoplasty Methodology” description. Let’s put an end to this tax-funded madness; call your U.S. Congressman at 202-225-3121 and your Senators at 202-224-3121. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH; Twitter: @PeterLaBarbera [click on graphic to enlarge]
‘First, Do Great Harm’: The American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) is now officially partnering with the anti-Christian homosexual-transgender lobby organization Human Rights Campaign.
I’ve read umpteen times that the 66,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) supports the use of opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms in schools by gender-dysphoric students. Wowzer! 66,000? That’s a lot of pediatricians.
A few weeks ago I got to ruminating on that mind-boggling claim. It seemed implausible that all 66,000 pediatricians could believe something so radical. So, I set off on a quest to dig into this claim, and what I learned is surprising.
Fortunately for me and my quest, there’s another medical organization that has sprung up precisely because of the radical positions taken by the AAP: the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds). You may have heard of ACPeds because the very name sends shivers of revulsion (or is it fear) up the spines of liberals everywhere. Why? Is it because ACPeds is composed of charlatans and snake oil salespersons who received their medical degrees from Rufus T. Firefly’s University of Freedonia?
Nope.
ACPeds is ridiculed because it holds different positions on the treatment of gender-dysphoria in minors. Leftists are reluctant to discredit ACPeds based solely on disagreement about treatment protocols because that argument becomes circular: “You can’t trust ACPeds because it doesn’t support ‘gender affirmative’ protocols, and we all know ‘gender affirmative’ protocols are right.”
So, how do liberals attempt to discredit ACPeds which was founded just 15 years ago? They do so by citing the fact that ACPeds’ membership numbers are lower than those of the AAP, which was founded 87 years ago. Still a fallacious argument (i.e., appeal to popularity), but it works as a soundbite and it works for ignorant school board members.,
This amazing couple is returning to their God-given male and female identities after years of trying to “transition” to the opposite sex
“Life isn’t about me, it’s about others.” — Paul Lopez, “detransitioning” ex-transsexual
From Lies to Truth: Paul Lopez in his old, gender-confused life as “Lynna” (left) with Maritza Cummings (then calling herself “Mark”), back in 2015 before they each began “detransitioning”–i.e., reversing their unnatural “gender transitions” to return to their God-given biological sex. See the 2015 video here. To read the uplifting story of ex-“transman” Maritza, who is detransitioning back to her natural female self, go here. Paul and Maritza are married. And watch the video below to see where Paul is today in his healthy transformation.
I was so touched watching this YouTube video (h/t Daniel Erline) of “detransitioning” Paul Lopez cleaning out his apartment of all the female clothes and wigs worn by his former, false “transwoman” self, “Lynna.” Paul and his wife, Maritza Cummings–a former female-to-male “transgender” activist who is also detransitioning–have drawn the attention of the “gay” press for coming out against the gender-transitioning process. [See this 2014 article about Maritza in the homosexual magazine The Advocate when she still was going by the name Mark Angelo Cummings.]
Embracing unnatural “gender identities” is all the rage these days — especially since the media/pop culture frenzy over Bruce (“Caitlyn”) Jenner. Political correctness has overtaken reason as societal elites recklessly promote gender confusion (rebellion) and body-disfiguring hormone therapies and surgeries–like healthy breast removal–even to impressionable teens and young adults. They’re even using drugs to “suppress puberty” for pre-teens so the child can “explore the gender identity he or she feels is the correct one”! Utter madness.
What the media are definitely not inclined to report are the wholesome stories of ex-“trans” people like Paul and Maritza who are returning to sanity, most, it seems, with the help of God. Yes, Jesus Christ is the world’s greatest change agent, and thanks to alternative media millions of people can see how He is working in people’s lives–despite the Orwellian oppression of LGBTQ-affirming groupthink. For decades homosexual activists have loved to talk about “visibility”: “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” was one “gay” activist slogan. But now that tactic is boomeranging on them as people come out of false, disordered and self-obsessed LGBTQ identities.
Believe me, the last thing Big Gay/Big Trans Inc activists like GLAAD want is this kind of visibility: the return to normalcy. (Rule for the Left: all “coming out” stories are good–except when people come out of homosexual and transsexual deviance.)
Note Paul’s common sense observations about the difference between men’s and women’s bodies (shoe size, panties, etc.). How dare we confirm minor children–whose minds and bodies are not even fully developed–in the dangerous world of drug-induced and surgical “gender transition”! If you’re too busy to watch all 15 minutes of the video, skip ahead to around the 13:00 mark, where Paul observes that what undergirds gender transitioning is hatred of self. Check back to AFTAH as we’ll be bringing you other heart-warming stories like this in the days and months ahead. — Peter LaBarbera, Americans For Truth; @PeterLaBarbera; AFTAH Facebook Page
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Here’s Paul’s description of the video:
Hi I’m Paul and I used to be a transwoman, that I am no longer. Thanks to God, grace and the unconditional love of a good woman, my Maritza. (Published Sept. 12, 2016)
Warning: This report contains some offensive descriptions and graphics
Self-Delusion, Self-Destruction: This is a young Massachusetts woman who had her healthy breasts surgically removed to live out her “transgender” fantasy that she is a “man.” The homosexual-transgender lobby is advocating such body-mutilating surgeries even for “trans” minors–and at taxpayers’ expense through the military and government-subsidized health care. Photo: MassResistance.org.
This special report by AFTAH president Peter LaBarbera for Accuracy in Media was first published by AIM on August 19, 2016; we have taken the liberty of adding several photos with captions to the original article.
The purpose of this report is to expose and refute some of the longstanding statistical lies and propagandistic myths of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) activist movement. With media support, homosexual and leftist activists now openly campaign to banish dissenting conservative voices. This dangerous dynamic gives the homosexual-transgender lobby nearly full rein to advance its agenda, which now includes:
Levying large fines to punish Christians and traditionalists who do not want to participate with their small business in homosexual “weddings”;
Criminalizing pro-heterosexual change therapy for sexually confused minors;
Using the government to force schools and businesses to allow “transgenders”—e.g., men who think they are women—to use public female (opposite-sex) restrooms and locker rooms;
Using LGBT “nondiscrimination” laws to mandate that public schools and businesses punish anyone who does not adhere to politically-correct transgender-inclusive language—such as using “zir” instead of “her.” New York City now demands “respect” for 31 “gender identities,” including “genderqueer,” “third sex” and “pangender”;
Taxpayer-funding for horrifying, body-disfiguring “sex reassignment surgeries,” e.g., a woman having her healthy breasts surgically removed to look like a flat-chested “man,” or a man having his penis surgically destroyed to craft a makeshift “vagina”;
Allowing transsexuals into the U.S. military, and paying for their destructive, gender-bending “surgeries” in the name of “health care”;
Encouraging young people to adopt opposite-sex “gender identities”—even going so far as encouraging underage children to take hormones to offset puberty—in a futile attempt to “become” the opposite sex—or worse: allowing minor boys and girls to have their sexual organs surgically mutilated to appear like the opposite-sex; and
Teaching very young children—even kindergartners—to accept homosexuality and the radical “transgender” idea that they can choose a “gender identity” that does not match their biological sex.
So awash is the public in pro-homosexual propaganda that a 2011 Gallup poll found the average American “guesstimated” that a whopping 25 percent of the population is “gay.” (Women and people under 30 put the number even higher, at around 30 percent.) The actual percentage of homosexual men, lesbians and bisexuals in the U.S. population is just 2.3 percent (see below).
The 10 Percent Myth
This ’10 Percent’ Lie Helped Grow “Gay” Power: For decades homosexual activists promoted the myth — started by a homosexual activist — that a full 10 percent of the populace is “gay.” Reality finally caught up with the LGBT Lobby: a major U.S. government survey found that only 2.3 percent of those polled in 2013 identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual. Above is a book by homosexual activist Kevin Jennings claiming that one in ten teachers is homosexual.
The “10 percent” myth is one of the most enduring propaganda claims of the homosexual activist movement. Concocted in the late 1970s by Bruce Voeller, founder of the National Gay Task Force (predecessor of today’s National LGBTQ Task Force), it was accompanied by the slogan, “We Are Everywhere.”
Thus, just as “gay” militants pressured and bullied America’s mental health professionals to remove homosexuality from the list of mental disorders in 1973, they greatly exaggerated the homosexual population to expand their political power in subsequent years. And the media duly cooperated by promoting the statistical sham. For decades American reporters treated the 10 percent claim—a misreading of deviant, pioneering “sexologist” Alfred Kinsey’s discredited research—as fact, using it to “report” huge numbers of alleged homosexuals in society.
The 10 percent myth served its purpose of projecting enormous “gay” political strength when the movement was still weak. But study after study came up with estimates of the homosexual-bisexual population under 5 percent. A massive 2014 survey of 35,557 Americans by the federal National Center for Health Statistics dealt a death blow to the Ten Percent claim. It found that only 1.6 percent of those polled identified as “gay or lesbian,” while 0.7 percent said they were “bisexual.” In 2011 the pro-LGBT Williams Institute at UCLA estimated that 0.3 percent identified as transgender. Thus a combined estimate for homosexuals, bisexuals and transgenders in America is around 3 percent.
Born Gay?—No Way
Another popular “gay” activist myth is the notion that homosexuals are “born that way.” This convenient narrative—stoked for many years by LGBT advocates—takes morality out of the homosexual debate by suggesting that homosexuals are not responsible for their sexual behaviors because “being gay” is a genetic part of “who they are.”
From a scientific perspective, however, the “born gay” myth—like its bogus “10 Percent Gay” counterpart—has fallen on hard times. In the 1990s, talk of a “gay gene” was all the rage after then-closeted homosexual researcher Dean Hamer published a media-ballyhooed 1993 study in the journal Sciencepurporting to find a “genetic marker” for male homosexual “orientation.” But Science could not replicate its own study, and other attempts failed as well. Now genetic homosexuality is no longer in vogue, although the possibility of a “gay gene” still excites reporters.
Even minors are seeking body-disfiguring operations–as “progressives” promote gender confusion to kids
Linda Harvey of Mission America is a leading Christian, pro-family expert warning of the destructive impact of the homosexual and transgender agenda on America’s youth. Harvey is the keynote speaker at the annual AFTAH dinner-banquet on Friday, October 28, at Grace Gospel Fellowship Church in Bensenville, IL. She is speaking on: “How the Gay and Transgender Lobbies Are Selling Gender Deviance & Body Mutilation to America’s Youth.” The banquet is just $25/person or a Table of 10 for $250; pay online HERE or send your check to: AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522.
Note: Pay at the Door: doors open at 5:00 PM, Friday, Oct. 28 and dinner will be served at 6:30. Linda’s presentation begins at 7:30. Tickets are just $25 and you can pay at the door. See Basic Info below.
Hey all, please reserve the date of Friday, October 28, 2016 for AFTAH’s annual Chicagoland banquet. This year we’re very excited to have as our keynote speaker my good friend, Linda Harvey–the founder of Mission America, a WND columnist, and one of the world’s leading pro-family experts on the aggressive agenda to corrupt youth with homosexualism and transsexualism.
On Friday, Oct. 28 we will have our annual dinner-banquet, only at a different location than usual: Grace Gospel Fellowship church in Bensenville, Illinois, pastored by my friend John Kirkwood. Linda will lead an in-depth discussion on radical transgender youth activism. Doors will open at 5:00 pm and our dinner will be served around 6:30. We will have a Q&A period after Linda’s talk, which has this theme:
“How the Gay and Transgender Lobbies Are Selling Gender Deviance & Body Mutilation to America’s Youth.”
The AFTAH dinner-banquet event costs just $25 but if you are able, please consider buying a Table of 10 for $250. You can sign up online using our special banquet sign-up form HERE. Or mail your check to:
AFTAH
PO Box 5522
Naperville, IL 60567-5522
NOTE: If you cannot make the banquet, please send a gift to AFTAH anyway to help us fight the anti-Christian, anti-freedom, pro-corrupt-the-children Homosexual-Transgender Lobby: give online HERE.
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Basic Facts:
What: Annual Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) Dinner-Banquet fundraiser
When: Friday, October 28, 2016; doors open at 5:00; dinner served at 6:30
Who: Linda Harvey, founder of the Christian, pro-family group Mission America and WND.com columnist
Where:Grace Gospel Fellowship church in Bensenville, IL (near Route 83 and I-290). Address: Grace-Gospel Fellowship, 4 North 220 Route 83 (Frontage Road), Bensenville, IL 60106; church phone: (630) 834-0550. The church is a red barn-like building with abortion-victim crosses in the yard: it is on the west side of Rt. 83, about a mile north of I-290. In Google Maps, the church is listed as “Grace Gospel Center.” Park behind the church and enter through the lower level.
Cost: Just $25 per person or $250 for a Table of 10; pay online using our Banquet Form, or mail your check to: AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522 [to give a general donation to AFTAH, go here]
About the Table of 10: we also encourage YOU to help Americans For Truth by purchasing a Table of 10–just $250 for the dinner-banquet. Even if you can’t fill your entire table, you will help us fill those spots with students and others who otherwise couldn’t afford to come.
AFTAH annual banquets are special. Ask anyone who’s been to one! They are not about celebrity but are highly informative and ALWAYS focused mainly on the mission of educating people about homosexualism and transsexualism. You won’t want to miss this exciting opportunity to learn from and interact with a modern-day pro-family hero, Linda Harvey.
In an age of utter confusion and sexual/gender anarchy, Truth is even more precious and we must defend it vigorously. Please save these days and make it a point to be there! — @Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH [an important P.S. on “Why We Fight” after jump]
Saner Days: The Bruce Jenner of old, when America–despite all of her problems–was a much saner nation than today.
In a way, Bruce (“Caitlyn”)* Jenner’s pitiable attempt to become a “woman” is symbolic of the precipitous moral and spiritual decline of our nation. The America of just a few decades past–when Jenner won the Olympic Decathlon (1976)–did not honor gender confusion and sexual deviance. But the new America, Obama’s and the Democrats’ America, not only celebrates both perversions here in the U.S. but uses American foreign aid dollars to push them on unwilling nations abroad. (Kenya’s political leaders are warning President Obama not to lecture them on homosexual “rights” and “gay marriage” in his upcoming visit to their country.)
Below, Jenner accepts ESPN’s “Arthur Ashe Courage Award”–not for any athletic achievement but because he fits the media’s and the Left’s upside-down redefinition of “courage.” Defying God and Nature in the most radical way imaginable–attempting to change your own God-given sex–is a lot of things–tragic, impossible, rebellious, confused, irrational, self-deceived–but it is not ‘courageous.’ And yet powerful opinion-makers guide us in a daily exercise of mass-lying as they push this and other politically correct myths on an increasingly dumbed-down culture.
AFTAH has urged Americans and people worldwide to pray for Bruce Jenner, but keep in mind that in his now-public role as a “transgender” change agent, he goes from being one who struggles with gender confusion to an ACTIVIST who promotes the extreme transgender agenda, even to young people and children. As such, like the entire LGBTQueer movement that seeks to impose its warped “morality” on the country, Jenner must be fought at every turn. Americans possessing common sense, morals and biblical faith lack the media’s power–notice ABC’s shameless championing of Jenner as a hero–but we possess the Truth. And Bruce’s distinctly male voice, the hardest thing for male-to-female transsexuals to change, stubbornly reveals that Truth, too. Close your eyes and listen; as my daughter said, “That’s a guy.”
Watch this ABC broadcast and weep–for Jenner, for the death of journalism and for our nation–which is undergoing a “transition” as godless, as destructive and as revolutionary as this poor man in a dress. –Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH; Twitter: @PeterLaBarbera
*As a matter of policy and principle, Americans For Truth will not refer to Bruce Jenner by his chosen female name, “Caitlyn”–especially considering his assumed role as transgender change agent, using his influence to confirm other men and women–even boys and girls–in similar gender confusion.
