Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Let the Porn Flow, Says Public Library

While pornography itself doesn't "shoot the bullet" for sex crimes, it does "cock the trigger," and Sacramento officials who supervise their public library system have told porn addicts to go ahead and get loaded.

The Sacramento Public Library Authority Board has decided against protecting library users from explicit pornography, a move lawyers at the Pacific Justice Institute had asked them to take, and which may, in fact, violate the library's own Internet guidelines.

"The present policy is to require filters on the computers," Brad Dacus, chief of the PJI, told WND. "However, all that is needed to have access to pornography is for an adult to request that the filters be removed."

He said then anyone in the library, including young children, would be able to see the most explicit porn the Internet can offer.

"People know all too well that the pornography doesn't shoot the bullet, but it definitely cocks the trigger," he said. "We were asking [the library board] to minimize this risk."

Matthew McReynolds, a staff attorney with the PJI, a non-profit 501(c)(3) legal defense organization specializing in the defense of religious freedom, parental rights, and other civil liberties, appeared at the library board meeting to encourage restrictions on access to pornography on the publicly-funded computer resources.

"There was an investigation report done recently in Chicago … and the results were extremely disturbing," he told WND. "They had things like 33 confirmed sex crimes committed at one library branch over a period of three years, and beyond that, just numerous calls to police."
He said the software must be installed on the computers under the federal Children's Internet Protection Act, but it does little good if librarians turn the filters off for any reason at all.

"They don't see it as their place to question what's going to be accessed," he said. But the result is that pedophiles and sex offenders are "mingling with young children" in the library facilities.

Read more at WorldNet.Daily

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Good News! Choose Life License Plates Win in Court

Illinois Choose Life adoption specialty license plates has won its case in federal civil court case against the Secretary of State's office!

The Secretary of State's office may try to appeal this case. Pro-life supporters want to try to take the steam out of that plan by getting at least 300-400 people from across the state to call or email their office.

Whether or not you plan on purchasing the plate, please contact Secretary of State Jesse White's office and inquire about the Choose Life plate.*

Contact Information

Jesse White
213 State Capitol
Springfield, IL 62706

Call toll-free within Illinois: 1-(800) 252-8980

*It's very easy. Ask when and where it will be available. Or just tell them how thankful you are that such a worthwhile cause will be getting its own license plate.

Read more Lifesite

Three States Seek to Abolish No-fault Divorce

Under no-fault divorce -- the law in all 50 states -- all that's required is one unhappy spouse. He or she doesn't need a reason to end the marriage. Since no-fault divorce swept the nation in the 1970s, 38 million marriages have dissolved, according to Mike McManus, cofounder of Marriage Savers.

"(No-fault divorce) has destroyed or . . . scarred the lives of 35 million children who are now, as they grow up, finding it very difficult to bond with someone of the opposite sex," he told Family News in Focus.

While 27 states have passed constitutional amendments affirming marriage as being between one man and one woman -- efforts McManus applauds -- he wonders why divorce isn’t being addressed as well.

Three states want to change that. Michigan, Wisconsin and Virginia are considering mutual-consent divorce proposals; meaning both spouses must agree to split, if there are children involved. The proposals include exceptions for abuse and adultery.

Read the rest of this article at CitizenLink


37% of Births Now Out of Wedlock: 3/4 of them to women age 20 and older

Officials at the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the birth rate among girls ages 10 to 17 dropped in 2005 to the lowest level on record. But births among unmarried mothers in their 20s rose dramatically, the center found. Nearly four in 10 babies born in the United States in 2005 were born to unmarried mothers, an all-time high for out-of-wedlock births.

“A lot of people think of teenagers and unmarried mothers synonymously, but they are not driving this,” Stephanie Ventura, a co-author of the report, told the Associated Press.

Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for American had this to say:
Planned Parenthood and other leftist, pro-abortion organizations have succeeded in painting a picture of unwed motherhood as that of an ill-fated teenager who — from ignorance, impulsiveness, lack of “protection,” or emotional vulnerability — “finds” herself pregnant. But is this correct? Planned Parenthood also conveys the idea that most of the babies being born out of wedlock are unintended and unwanted. Is that correct?

When more than 3/4 of the 1.5 million unwed births are to women age 20 and older, these results cannot be blamed on youthful immaturity.

These post teen behaviors can only be characterized as reckless and irresponsible given what is well known about (a) the skyrocketing incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among sexually active, unmarried women (b) the abysmally high rates of poverty among children living in female-headed families and (c) the well documented risks of children living in father absent households...
Read more of this article at CWFA.org

Osama & Gore: Too much hot air

According to experts at a London conference on "Climate Change: the Global Security Impact" we can add increased terrorism to the long list of catastrophic consequences of global warming...

John Mitchell, chief scientist at Britain's Met Office, noted al Qaeda had already listed environmental damage among its litany of grievances against the United States.

Noted climatologist Osama bin Laden had this to say...

"You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries," al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden wrote in a 2002 "letter to the American people."

Ummm . . . when you find yourself on the same political platform as the leading terrorist . . .

Come hear the other side as Culture Campaign presents:

Global Warming: Hysteria or Reality?

with Dr. Jay Richards

Is global warming a reality?
Is it God vs. Gore?

Sunday, Feb. 11th
7:15 PM

College Church Commons
332 E. Seminary Ave.
Wheaton, IL

Part of the God, Sex, and Culture War Education Series

Land: Church Bears 'Some Responsibility' for Abortion tragedy

Jan 23, 2007
By Dwayne Hastings
Baptist Press


People of faith are at least somewhat complicit in the massacre of millions of unborn babies by abortion, Richard Land said January 21 at a pro-life rally, noting an estimated one out of three babies conceived since 1973 have been aborted.

“That could never have happened without at least the acquiescence of people in our churches -- Protestant and Catholic alike,” said Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

“We bear some responsibility for allowing this to continue and not insisting it should stop. It is time that we demand it stop and stop now.”


Read the rest of this article at bpnews.net

Monday, January 22, 2007

Review: 'A Tasteful Movie about Men Fornicating with Horses'

Bestiality doc premieres at Sundance
The world of "Zoo" makes some go "Ewww."
By Kenneth Turan, Times Staff Writer
January 22, 2007

PARK CITY, Utah — "Zoo" is a documentary about what director Robinson Devor accurately characterizes as "the last taboo, on the boundary of something comprehensible." But remarkably, an elegant, eerily lyrical film has resulted.

"Zoo," premiering before a rapt audience Saturday night at Sundance, manages to be a poetic film about a forbidden subject, a perfect marriage between a cool and contemplative director (the little-seen "Police Beat") and potentially incendiary subject matter: sex between men and animals. Not graphic in the least, this strange and strangely beautiful film combines audio interviews (two of the three men involved did not want to appear on camera) with elegiac visual re-creations intended to conjure up the mood and spirit of situations. The director himself puts it best: "I aestheticized the sleaze right out of it."

[Devor said,] "I thought the marriage of this completely strange mind-set and the beauty of the natural world could be something interesting."

In the end, Devor ended up agreeing with the Roman writer Terence, who said "I consider nothing human alien to me."

"It happens," the filmmaker said, "so it's part of who we are."

They love horses, don't they?
January 22, 2007
Geoff Pevere, Movie Critic

PARK CITY, UTAH — It was merely the latest perversity in an opening weekend full of them that possibly the darkest of the Sundance Film Festival's entries – a strangely poetic non-fiction movie about men who have sex with horses – had its packed press screening on a brilliantly sunny afternoon yesterday.

On the contrary, Devor – a three-time Sundance invitee and graduate of Southern Methodist University at Dallas, Texas – treats the subject with a formally sophisticated and almost dreamy beauty.

Using audio interviews with both cult participants (some who appear in filmed re-enactments playing themselves) and actors reading from a script, the movie attempts to get inside both the minds and the desires of these men who feel what they do is simply an expression of their (albeit extreme) love of animals and sincere need to commune with the natural world.

While the movie never asks us to buy that rationale, it does successfully put bestiality in a disquietingly humane and even quasi-spiritual context. And, considering how sparingly the movie both alludes to and depicts the acts involved, that may be Zoo's most perverse aspect.

[Concerning the variety of movies at the festival:]

Yet, if the discrepancy between subject and treatment in Zoo is especially dramatic, it must also be noted that most of these movies tackle subjects like violence, sexual deviance and military atrocity in anything but sensational or exploitative fashion.

To varying degrees, they're describing forms of social sickness with an eye toward understanding and enlightenment. They want to know why it is that people can do the evil they so often do and whether there's any hope that anything might stop it.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Give Thanks to God: Free Speech Preserved for Grassroots Groups...

43 out of 50 Democratic Senators Vote Against Bennett Amendment protecting free speech - including Senator Barack Obama

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) - Pro-life groups are delighted with a Senate vote on Thursday that removed the concerns they had about bill that would have made it difficult for them and others to lobby members of Congress on por-life issues. The measure, before the amendment, would have imposed strict reporting requirements.

The restrictions would have been in place for any group conducting the smallest amount of lobbying and local pro-life advocates who didn't comply properly would face fines and jail sentences for noncompliance.

The groups, including National Right to Life, Family Research Council, American Family Association, and others, were worried about bill S. 1.

However, the Senate voted 55-43 for an amendment offered by pro-life Senator Robert Bennett, a Utah Republican, to strip the so-called "grassroots lobbying" provision (Section 220) from the ethics reform bill.

The provisions it fixed were so onerous that even the pro-abortion American Civil Liberties Union sided with pro-life groups in opposition to them.

Leaders of the new Democratic majority in the House of Representatives are expected to soon propose their own version of an omnibus "ethics" bill, which is also expected to contain the same problematic language, according to a National Right to Life statement LifeNews.com obtained.

Pro-life advocates will likely seek an amendment on the House side as well.

Under Senate bill before the Bennett amendment was adopted, anyone who is paid by any organization that encourages more than 500 people to contact Congress on any matter or anyone who has called a Congressional office more than two times urging a vote on legislation must register as a lobbyist.

Also, any paid individual who spends more than $25,000 in a three-month period on "paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying" would also be required to register and report expenditures as a "grassroots lobbying firm."

While the bill purports to reform special interest lobbying, the pro-life groups say it would put significant and complex hurdles in front of smaller, local groups.

Any pro-life advocate who runs afoul of the complex requirements of Section 220 of the bill could be subjected to crushing civil penalties, raised from $50,000 to $200,000 per infraction. Punishment could also include as much as up to 10 years in prison.

Read the rest at LifeNews.com

Madison Wisconsin Aldermen Add Oath to Work Against State Constitution

This from ADF's blog, constitutionallycorrect.com

They did it - and by a landslide. The Madison City Council voted overwhelmingly to allow city officials to take a special oath of office. As I explained in an earlier post, public officials in Wisconsin are required to take an oath pledging to uphold the federal and state constitutions. The requirement is, in fact, set forth in the Wisconsin Constitution itself (Article IV, section 28). Section 19.01 of the Wisconsin statutes requires that, with certain exceptions that are not pertinent here, "every official oath" shall be substantially adhere to a statutorily prescribed form:

I,...., swear (or affirm) that I will support the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of Wisconsin, and will faithfully and impartially discharge the duties of the office of.... to the best of my ability. So help me God.
By a vote of 14-4, the Madison city alders (as one local blogger calls them) voted to allow those assuming office to add to the official oath a statement that they took it under protest and promise to "work to eliminate [the state's marriage amendment]" and work to prevent any discriminatory impact from its applications.

The Madison City Attorney thinks that this is all right and that is not surprising. He breathes the air there. But it is far from clear that a statement that says, in effect, I took the oath and didn't mean it and will work to undermine a provision of the constitution that I do not like meets either the statutory or constitutional requirements. In endorsing this type of nullification, the City echoes John Calhoun and twentieth century southern segregationists. That must hurt.

There may be a bright side. If those who can only take the faux-oath are, indeed, ineligible to assume office, some measure of common sense may return to Madison city government.


If a house is divided against itself, it cannot stand.
- Jesus Christ, Mark 3:25

Amen.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Maryland County Teaches ‘Sexual Variations’

By Daniel de Vise
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 16, 2007; B01

Montgomery County's overhaul of its sex education curriculum, which has inspired a lawsuit, petition drives, national news coverage and the formation of fiercely polarized community groups, was itself inspired by two words buried deep within the regulatory code of Maryland, which advises school systems to teach "sexual variations."

The county school system invoked those regulations in defense of disputed new lessons that introduce students to sexual orientation and transgenderism in grades eight and 10.

Neither Maryland nor Virginia requires school systems to teach about sexual orientation, state officials said. Maryland's stipulation that schools teach sexual variations as one of several "areas of emphasis" in health classes is open to broad interpretation.

Montgomery's new curriculum, approved last week for field tests this spring, goes deeper into sexual and gender identity than most other Washington area school systems have dared, judging by an informal survey. Some Northern Virginia systems don't teach about sexual orientation, and Maryland systems generally broach the topic in less detail or at the request of a curious student. Information from D.C. schools was not available.

"Everyone's watching Montgomery right now, in no uncertain terms," to see whether the new curriculum survives an expected legal challenge, said Jean-Marie Navetta, spokeswoman for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, a national nonprofit organization. If the lessons emerge intact, they could be replicated.

Read the rest of this article at Washingtonpost.com

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Gov. Mitt Romney Responsible for the Creation of Same-sex Marriage in Massachusetts

Nearly four dozen pro-family leaders and activists have made public their direct challenge to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has assembled a committee to explore a run at the presidency in 2008, to document his opposition to homosexual marriages.
And they say he ignored them.

According to the organization MassResistance.org, the leaders hand-delivered a letter to the former governor on Dec. 20, before he left office, documenting why they believe he voluntarily instituted directives that created homosexual "marriages" in that state, even though he did not have to.

They asked him to act in response, and they say he didn't even acknowledge the letter.
Among those challenging Romney were Paul Weyrich, of the Free Congress Foundation; Sandy Rios, of Culture Campaign; Robert Knight, who drafted the federal Defense of Marriage Act; Linda Harvey, of Mission America; Rev. Ted Pike, of the National Prayer Network; Randy Thomasson, of Campaign for Children and Families; Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for Truth; David E. Smith, of the Illinois Family Institute; Joe Glover, of the Family Policy Network; Paul Cameron, of the Family Research Institute; John Haskins' of the Parents' Rights Coalition, and others.

The group's letter cited state constitutional provisions and court rulings, showing that while the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered the creation of homosexual marriages, it did not have the authority to order the governor to institute them or the legislature to create them.

Read more at WorldNetDaily.com

New Congress Proposes Drastic Legislation to Curtail Free Speech

Nancy Pelosi hasn’t been Speaker of the House for two weeks yet and there is already proposed legislation which would be the most significant encroachment ever into the affairs and ability of churches and other organizations to communicate.

Under the guise of lobbying reform, Speaker Pelosi and others have proposed legislation greatly expanding the scope of lobbying regulation which would have a significant impact on churches, pastors, religious denominations, public interest organizations, civic organizations and other nonprofit groups. Even private individuals who voluntarily pay for media to distribute important messages to the general public on political matters would be impacted.

So draconian is the proposed Lobbying Reform Bill that it would actually impose registration and reporting requirements on churches and other nonprofit organizations. This is because the definition of “lobbyist” and “lobbying firms” includes specifically grassroots-organizing efforts. Under this broad-based regulatory scheme that Nancy Pelosi is advocating, many churches, especially larger churches with TV and radio ministries, would be subject to registration as a lobbying organization.

Failure to comply with these lobbying requirements could result in fines and even criminal sanctions. Churches and their pastors who address the social issues of the day and encourage members and non-members alike to mobilize for action, including communications with Congress, would be required to make certain initial and quarterly disclosures to the United States Congress about their activities...

Call your senators and tell them you want the grassroots provision of SB-1 removed!

Call the Congressional Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask for your senators' office.

Read the rest at the American Center for Law and Justice

Lawsuit Seeks to Discriminate Against Christian Beliefs in Funding Marriage Education

In another legal challenge to faith-based funding, a secular watchdog group is suing the Bush administration for allegedly bankrolling "Bible-based" marriage counseling.
The lawsuit was filed by a Muslim activist and liberal attorney working for Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C. Ayesha N. Khan is legal director for the nonprofit group.

If successful, the suit could have a chilling effect on faith-based funding.
At stake are more than $750 million in marriage-related education and research grants the federal government plans to spend over the next five years.

The case "has the potential to be quite significant," George Washington University law professor Robert Tuttle said in a recent interview. He is an expert on President Bush's initiative to allocate more federal dollars to faith-based organizations.

Specifically, the potentially landmark suit seeks to block current and future funding for the Northwest Marriage Institute, which allegedly advocates religious beliefs that "derive from a specific form of biblical literalism particular to fundamentalist Christianity," according to pages 14 and 15 of the lawsuit, filed last year in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington state.

Read more at WorldNetDaily.com

Note: The one man, one woman, faithful for life, ideal came from Christianity. In the ancient world polygamy and adultery were well accepted. It was God's Law given through the Bible which greatly elevated marriage.

Anachronism from a day gone by: Adultery still a felony in MI

In a ruling sure to make philandering spouses squirm, Michigan's second-highest court says that anyone involved in an extramarital fling can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison.

"We cannot help but question whether the Legislature actually intended the result we reach here today," Judge William Murphy wrote in November for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel, "but we are curtailed by the language of the statute from reaching any other conclusion."
"Technically," he added, "any time a person engages in sexual penetration in an adulterous relationship, he or she is guilty of CSC I," the most serious sexual assault charge in Michigan's criminal code.

No one expects prosecutors to declare open season on cheating spouses. The ruling is especially awkward for Attorney General Mike Cox, whose office triggered it by successfully appealing a lower court's decision to drop CSC charges against a Charlevoix defendant. In November 2005, Cox confessed to an adulterous relationship.

Read more at freep.com

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Navy Dismisses Chaplain who Prayed in Jesus Name


By Bob Unruh
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

A U.S. Navy chaplain who prayed "in Jesus' name" as his conscience dictated is being ejected from the military service "in retaliation" for his victorious battle to change Navy policy that required religious rites be "non-sectarian."

"This fight cost me everything. My career is over, my family is now homeless, we've lost a million dollar pension, but Congress agreed with me and rescinded the Navy policy, so chaplains are free again to pray in Jesus' name," Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt told WND. "My sacrifice purchased their freedom. My conscience is clear, the fight was worth it, and I'd do it all again."

Klingenschmitt, as WND has reported, has fought an extended battle with the Navy over its restrictions on religious expression by its chaplains. He appeared and delivered a public prayer "in Jesus' name" at a White House rally last winter and was court-martialed for that. The Navy convicted him of failing to follow a lawful order because his superior didn't want him praying "in Jesus' name."

He's also launched a legal battle that he said he hopes eventually will result in his reinstatement, alleging the Navy assembled a "civic religion" by ordering its chaplains to pray in a certain way.

"There's a Unitarian system of religion that's aimed at Christians," John Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, told WND. "It boils down to that. We're seeing it all across the country, with council prayers, kids wanting to mention Jesus. What's going on here is it's generally a move in our government and military to set up a civic religion."

"I think the Supreme Court's going to have to look at the idea of can the government in any of its forms tell people how to pray, set up a basic religion and say you can only do it this way," he said.

Read the rest of this article at WorldNetDaily.com

...we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."-Daniel 3:17-18

A Rabbi's Warning to U.S. Christians

By Rabbi Daniel Lapin

I am certainly not a Churchill. I am not even a Revel. I am having enough trouble just trying to be a Lapin. But I am issuing a very serious warning about deep consequences, just as they did. It is a warning about the earliest stages of what could become a cataract of disasters if not resisted now.

I am not going to argue that what is happening now is on the same scale as the examples I cite above, but a serious war is being waged against a group of Americans. I am certain that if we lose this war, the consequences for American civilization will be dire.

Phase one of this war I describe is a propaganda blitzkrieg that is eerily reminiscent of how effectively the Goebbels propaganda machine softened up the German people for what was to come.

There is no better term than propaganda blitzkrieg to describe what has been unleashed against Christian conservatives recently.

Consider the long list of anti-Christian books that have been published in recent months. Here are just a few samples of more than 30 similar titles, all from mainstream publishers:

"American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America"

"The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right's Plans for the Rest of Us"

"The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason"

"Piety & Politics: The Right-wing Assault on Religious Freedom"

"Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism"

"Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America"

"Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right"

What is truly alarming is that there are more of these books for sale at your local large book store warning against the perils of fervent Christianity than those warning against the perils of fervent Islam. Does anyone seriously think America is more seriously jeopardized by Christian conservatives than by Islamic zealots? I fear that many Americans believe just that in the same way that many pre-World War II Westerners considered Churchill a bigger threat than Hitler.

Some may say that today's proliferation of anti-Christian print propaganda is nothing to become worried about. To them I ask two questions:

First, would you be so sanguine if the target of this loathsome library were Jewish? Just try changing the titles in some of the books I mention above to reflect anti-Semitism instead of rampant anti-Christianism and you'll see what I mean...


Read the rest of this article at WorldNetDaily.com

Thursday, January 04, 2007

The Real Skinflints

By Chuck Colson
BreakPoint Commentaries
January 4, 2007

Are conservatives and Christians becoming too narrow and selfish? Are we hypocritical skinflints, indifferent to the suffering of the needy?

The liberals say so. But is it true? Do conservatives and Christians really love their money more than they do the poor?

A new book by an expert on charity says: absolutely not. The real skinflints, he writes, are secular liberals.

Arthur Brooks, professor at Syracuse University, writes in his new book, titled Who Really Cares, that he grew up in a liberal home and accepted one of the liberal political nostrums: that the political left “is compassionate and charitable toward the less fortunate, but the political right is oblivious to suffering.”

“If you had asked me a few years ago to sum up the character of American conservatives,” he writes, “I would have said they were hard-headed pragmatists who were willing to throw your grandmother out into the snow to preserve some weird ideal of self-reliance.”

But his own research forced him to change his mind. Religious conservatives give more, and do more, for the poor than anyone else. By contrast, liberals, who tend both to be irreligious and to believe that government can and should redistribute income, tend to be far stingier.

Brooks invites us to consider two people: one who goes to church every week and rejects the idea that it’s the government’s job to redistribute income. The second person never attends church and believes the government should reduce income differences. “Knowing only these [two] things,” Brooks writes, “the data tell us that the first person will be roughly twice as likely as the second to give money to charities in a given year, and will give away more than one hundred times as much money per year”—that’s right, one hundred times—and give it to both religious and non-religious causes.

Read the rest at Breakpoint Commentaries

Same-Sex Marriage is Just the Beginning...

Homosexual activists finally admit what they really want and it is appalling...

When GLBT activists released a manifesto called Beyond Marriage this last July, they weren't kidding. The manifesto, endorsed by a prestigious number of mainstream gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgender activists, calls for legal recognition of polygamy, unmarried polyamorous groups and "queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple, in two households" - among other things...

In case you are tempted to dismiss this document as a pipe dream of the far, far, far left, please don't. The manifesto has been signed on to by large numbers of mainstream GLBT (gay, lesbian, Bi-sexual, and transgender activists) and professors (even law professors) from top schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, Brown, Cornell, Williams, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, the University of Pennsylvania, NYU, Dartmouth, and U.C. Berkeley. In other words, the manifesto represents the aspirations of mainstream GLBT activists...

Matt Foreman, President of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, commented about the manifesto that “Of course we share its values, and I think its values and aspirations are something that gay and straight people can embrace because our nation needs to find ways to protect the reality of the American family, which is far beyond one man and one woman, or two men and two women.”

Did you catch that? "...the reality of the American family, which is far beyond one man and one woman, or two men and two women." The blog post below, 'Ontario Court Rules Five-Year Old Has Three Legal Parents - Father, Mother, Lesbian Partner' is a frightening illustration of what Mr. Foreman is talking about. In the circles in which Mr. Foreman travels, the 'family' has taken on dimensions never dreamed of by average Americans supportive of same-sex marriage out of sympathy for homosexual friends and relatives...

Stanley Kurtz, of National Review Online, has written extensively on this, and if you are one of the apparently few brave souls willing to face the ugly truth about where the GLBT rights movement wants to take us, please read The Confession and The Confession II.

It has received shockingly little attention.

If nothing else, GLBT activists are to be commended for their honesty. Do those of us who realize that this vision for the future is not progress, but regress into darkness, have the courage to speak out as honestly as they have? Or will we continue to stand idly by, wrapped in the comfortable cocoon of our indifference?

Ontario Court Rules Five-Year Old Has Three Legal Parents – Father, Mother, Lesbian Partner

By Gudrun Schultz
LifesiteNews.com

TORONTO, Ontario, January 3, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Ontario Court of Appeal, in another major Ontario judicial activist decision, has ruled that a five-year-old Ontario boy has three legal parents. The Appeals Court, overturning an emphatic lower court ruling, granted the boy’s father, biological mother and the mother’s lesbian partner equal rights and responsibilities under law, in a decision released yesterday.

“This ruling clearly shows the extent to which the homosexual activists will pursue their agenda regardless of the welfare of children,” said Jim Hughes, National President of Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), in a press release today.

A lower court ruling on the case in 2003 said the Ontario Children’s Law Reform Act could not be interpreted as recognizing more than two persons as parents by birth or adoption. In his ruling, Justice David Aston said at the time that allowing more than two parents ““might open the floodgates to similar claims from step-parents or members of the child’s extended family.”

“If a child can have three parents,” Aston wrote, “why not four or six or a dozen? What about all the adults in a commune or a religious organization or sect? Quite apart from social policy implications, the potential to create or exacerbate custody and access litigation should not be ignored.”

While the Appeal Court agreed, the Court also found that the existing law did not take into account changes to Canadian society which affected parenting, leaving a sufficiently serious “gap” to require the intervention of the court. The lower court ruling was overturned and all three persons in question were granted parental rights.

“The courts must not continue to acquiesce to the homosexual agenda, but rather, must consider the fact that a child deserves a father and a mother in a stable relationship for the child’s nurturing,” said Mary Ellen Douglas, National Organizer of Campaign Life Coalition, in response to the decision. “Attacks on the family unit will ultimately lead to the destruction of our society. Where will the line be drawn on such multiple parent rulings, and what is the future environment for our children?”

The Catholic Civil Rights League, which participated in the case as an intervenor as part of the Alliance for Marriage and Family, spoke out against the Appeal Court decision yesterday.

"It is clear that courts will be asked to fill in many gaps that exist in traditional understandings of family, as a result of changes to the definition of marriage, and parent, in Canadian law," said League President Phil Horgan.

"Canadian courts have recognized lesbian parents on birth certificates to the exclusion of any father in the past year. The Court of Appeal has now expanded the number of recognized parents to three in this case. Future cases can be expected to ask to expand that number. In this case, the obvious question is that if a child can have three parents, who is to say three is the limit?"

The effect of such triple-parent arrangements on children is entirely unknown, the League said, nor is there any clarity as to what will happen to the children if the adults’ relationships should break down.

The Court of Appeal’s decision was written by Justice Marc Rosenberg on behalf of Justice Jean-Marc Labrosse and activist Justice Roy McMurtry, whose ruling in 2003 on the Halpern case effectively opened the door to homosexual “marriage” in Canada.

See previous LifeSiteNews coverage:

Not Recusing Himself For Conflict, Activist Judge Pushes Way Into Three Parent Case
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/oct/06102403.html

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Church of England: More than 50 priests have 'married' same-sex partners

by Christopher Morgan
The Sunday Times
December 31, 2006

THE Church of England is facing a new rift over homosexual clergy with the disclosure that more than 50 gay or lesbian priests have "married" in civil partnership ceremonies.

Traditionalists and evangelicals opposed to gay clerics said this weekend they would force open debate of the issue at February's meeting of the General Synod. Campaigners have criticised bishops for shying away from enforcing the church's policy of ensuring gay clergy are celibate before they are given authorisation to enter civil partnerships.

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is also likely to face criticism from primates of the Anglican communion at a meeting in Tanzania in February. The summit was called to mend splits caused by the ordination of Gene Robinson, a gay bishop, in America in 2003.

The figures on clerical civil partnerships come from Changing Attitude, a gay campaigning organisation in the Church of England. The figures show that at least 51 priests, including four lesbians, are now in partnerships. Colin Coward, director of Changing Attitude, said: "Civil partnerships have helped to increase the stability of same-sex relationships and reduced the social exclusion to which lesbian and gay people are often subjected."

Read the rest of this artice at VirtueOnline.

Massachusetts Supreme Court Admits It Exceeded its Authority in Legalizing Same-sex Marriage in MA


January 2, 2007
By Bob Unruh
, WorldNetDaily.com


A leader of the Parents' Rights Coalition in Massachusetts says he believed all along that Gov. Mitt Romney chose to implement "gay" marriages in that state, and now a court has confirmed that it did not have the power to order that change.

John Haskins, associate director of the family-support organization, told WND that three years after the Goodridge decision by the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts, "Americans merely have to note that the judges admit now … that they have no power over the other branches of government, and that the state constitution says that only the legislature can suspend laws."

His reference is to last week's ruling that concluded the state legislature is bound under the state constitution to vote up-or-down on voter initiatives presented to the lawmaking body. That group so far has defied that responsibility on a proposal signed by 170,000 Massachusetts residents calling for that up-or-down vote on an initiative that would allow voters to define marriage in Massachusetts.

The lawmakers voted to recess until today, the last day of the current legislative session, without voting on that measure.

That Supreme Judicial Court opinion noted that the vote is a constitutional requirement, even though the court held no power to force a vote.

However, when that same court three years ago ruled that "gay" marriages must be recognized by the state, the governor began implementing those rules changes, even though there was no such requirement, Haskins said.

Read the rest of this article at WorldNetDaily.com

The Intolerance of Tolerance

Excerpted from a commentary by:
Greg Koukl, Stand to Reason
Thursday, December 14, 2006


...Earlier this year I spoke to a class of seniors at a Christian high school in Des Moines, Iowa. I wanted to alert them to this "tolerance trick," but I also wanted to learn how much they had already been taken in by it. I began by writing two sentences on the board. The first expressed the current understanding of tolerance:

"All views have equal merit and none should be considered better than another."

All heads nodded in agreement. Nothing controversial here. Then I wrote the second sentence:

"Jesus is the Messiah and Judaism is wrong for rejecting Him."

Immediately hands flew up. "You can't say that," a coed challenged, clearly annoyed. "That's disrespectful. How would you like it if someone said you were wrong?"

"In fact, that happens to me all the time," I pointed out, "including right now with you. But why should it bother me that someone thinks I'm wrong?"

"It's intolerant," she said, noting that the second statement violated the first statement. What she didn't see was that the first statement also violated itself.

I pointed to the first statement and asked, "Is this a view, the idea that all views have equal merit and none should be considered better than another?" They all agreed.

Then I pointed to the second statement—the "intolerant" one—and asked the same question: "Is this a view?" They studied the sentence for a moment. Slowly my point began to dawn on them. They'd been taken in by the tolerance trick.

Read the whole commentary at Stand to Reason


Monday, January 01, 2007

Certainly, Certainty has a Place in Life

By Jonah Goldberg
Townhall.com
December 28, 2006

Have you heard the news? Belief is bad.

Pick up an eggheady book review, an essay in Time magazine or listen to a thumb-suck session on National Public Radio for very long and you'll soon hear someone explain that real conviction--dogmatism!--is dangerous.

Andrew Sullivan, in his new book "The Conservative Soul," declares a jihad on certainty, by which he means the certainty of fundamentalist "Christianists"--the allusion to Islamists is deliberate. The New Republic's Jonathan Chait proclaims that liberalism is the anti-dogmatic ideology. Sam Harris, a leading proselytizer for atheism, has declared a one-man crusade on religious certainty. Intellectual historian J.P. Diggins writes in the latest issue of the American Interest that there's a war afoot for "the soul of the American Republic" between the forces of skepticism and infallibility. And so on.

Much of this stems from the popularity of Bush hatred these days. President Bush's alleged "messianic certainty"--to use Sen. Barack Obama's (D-Ill.) words--is dangerous and evil in the eyes of supposedly meek and nuanced liberals.

Longtime New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis captured the thought nicely a few years ago when he said that a primary lesson of his entire career was that "certainty is the enemy of decency and humanity in people who are sure they are right, like Osama bin Laden and John Ashcroft."

Whenever I hear people say such things, I like to ask them, "Are you sure about that?" When they say yes, which they always do, I follow up by asking, "No, no: Are you really, really certain that certainty is bad?" At some point even the irony-deficient get the joke.

But they still don't understand that the joke is on them. Virtually every hero in human history has been driven by certainty, by the courage of their convictions. Sir Thomas More and Socrates chose certain death, pun intended, over uncertain life. Martin Luther King Jr.--to pick liberalism's most iconic hero--was hardly plagued with doubt about the rightness of his cause. A Rosa Parks charged with today's reigning moral imperative not to be too sure of herself might not have sat at the front of the bus. An FDR certain that certainty is the enemy of decency and humanity might have declined to declare total war on Nazism for fear of becoming as bad as his enemy.

The fact is that unless you know where you stand, it's unlikely you'll have the courage to understand where someone else is coming from.

Read the whole article at Townhall.com