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Tom Emmer, the former Republican state legislator who lost his bid for Minnesota governor last year to Democrat Mark Dayton, today was named chairman of the state chapter of the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Ralph Reed launched the FFC to be a new and improved Christian Coalition with a special emphasis on linking tea party activists to the Religious Right. Emmer’s gubernatorial bid gained national attention after he indirectly received support from corporations like Target, BestBuy and 3M, who financed a pro-Emmer group, and for his zealous anti-gay beliefs. Emmer donated to the extremist group You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, led by right-wing extremist Bradlee Dean, and even opposed bullying-prevention legislation because it would address anti-gay bullying. He also showed his “support” for “family values” when he proposed legislation that would reduce the penalties for drunk driving, and Emmer himself was ticketed twice for driving under the influence:

The Faith & Freedom Coalition is pleased to announce that it has named Tom Emmer as the organization’s Minnesota Chairman.

Emmer joins the Minnesota Faith & Freedom Coalition amidst a distinguished law career of over 20 years, during which time he grew his firm to over 20 employees. That business combined with his legislative time in the Minnesota state house will serve the Minnesota Faith & Freedom Coalition well. “I’m excited about this opportunity to work with the Minnesota Faith & Freedom Coalition toward building a stronger conservative grassroots movement in Minnesota as we seek to restore America’s greatness and founding principles.” said Emmer.

The Minnesota Faith & Freedom Coalition is committed to educating voters on how new tax increases would impact family budgets as well as the bottom-line of small businesses. Minnesota FFC seeks to empower voters to express their views about what is best for Minnesota families at every level of government. The Minnesota Faith & Freedom Coalition believes strongly that Minnesota state legislators should hear from their constituents who are closest to the grassroots; not from the bullhorns of special interest groups and public employee unions.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech and the new Obama administration directive on protecting rights for LGBT people abroad set off a firestorm among right-wing activists, who have done everything from defending the criminalization of homosexuality to dismissing rampant violence against gays and prophesying God’s harsh and imminent judgment on America.

You will be stunned to learn that Americans For Truth About Homosexuality president Peter LaBarbera isn’t happy either, asking, “Who knew that when President Ronald Reagan spoke idealistically about America becoming a ‘shining city on the hill,’ that city would turn out to be Sodom?” LaBarbera said that Obama and Clinton are putting America in a position of “defiance toward her Creator to a new level” and endorsing an “affront to our Declaration of Independence”:

With their new escalation of promoting homosexual behavior to other nations through U.S. foreign policy, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have raised America's defiance toward her Creator to a new level -- while needlessly alienating nations less morally compromised than our own. Not content to keep our decadence between our shores, the United States -- through aggressively pro-"gay" Democratic administrations -- now demands that other countries sink to our level by embracing homosexuality as a "human right."

Who knew that when President Ronald Reagan spoke idealistically about America becoming a "shining city on the hill," that city would turn out to be Sodom? Hillary earned plaudits from the Left with her U.N. speech on international "gay rights," but her words were an affront to our Declaration of Independence, which appeals to "Nature and Nature's God."

By redefining "human rights" to include the normalization of same-sex behaviors and gender confusion, Obama and Clinton have turned God's natural moral order on its head. There are many countries -- including Muslim-dominated nations and major powers like Russia -- that reject homosexuality. By pushing sexual deviance on these nations, we only confirm their perception of America as a corrupt and declining -- and very arrogant -- superpower.

…

Homosexuality -- once widely regarded as a Crime Against Nature -- is no more a "fundamental human right" than any other sexual sin. Moreover, its practice is linked disproportionately to sexual diseases like HIV, anal cancer, hepatitis, gonorrhea and syphilis. Culturally and politically speaking, what makes this perversion unique is that it has a powerful and well-funded ("gay") movement behind it. (There are no "Adultery Pride Parades" or "Porn-Users Pride Months.") However, that does not make it right. All Americans who love God and respect His wonderful design for mankind should be ashamed of Obama's and Hillary's campaign to force a deeply flawed sexual ideology on innocent nations that do NOT want to emulate American decadence.

The American Society for Tradition, Family and Property is out with a new report on “pro-homosexual clubs” at Catholic colleges and universities. By report, we mean a lengthy chart naming the student clubs or resource centers for LGBT students and allies and citing other objectionable material, including supposedly objectionable material, including the “pro-homosexual film” Brokeback Mountain in the campus library at the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University.

The anti-gay group is aiming to have 100,000 people sign a petition demanding the leaders of Catholic colleges to “disband” the organizations that “favor the homosexual agenda” and “push for the mainstreaming of unnatural vice”:

Why are pro-homosexual clubs allowed to promote anti-Catholic behavior on Catholic campuses?

After examining the official web sites of 244 Catholic universities and colleges in America, TFP Student Action found that 107 – or 43% – recognize student clubs that favor the homosexual agenda. Many of these clubs promote same-sex “marriage,” open homosexuality in the military, and push for the mainstreaming of unnatural vice.

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“Students are getting immoral messages from these clubs,” observed TFP Student Action Director John Ritchie. “A sort of dictatorship of tolerance is slowly squeezing out the truth, silencing Catholic teaching right on Catholic campuses. More and more Catholic college students are confronted with visible, active and well-funded pro-homosexual clubs that openly contradict natural law and undermine moral values. To see this happening at Catholic institutions of higher learning is particularly disturbing.”

“TFP Student Action is rushing to collect 100,000 petitions, urging the presidents of Catholic universities to uphold authentic Catholic doctrine,” Ritchie said. “It’s time to correct the scandal and disband these 107 pro-homosexual clubs.”

As we noted in our earlier post, Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber joined Janet Mefferd to rail against the Obama administration for attempting to defend the rights of gays and lesbians abroad. But Barber’s appearance on Mefferd’s radio program was notable for another reason. Mefferd has used her show to speak about the dangers of dominionism, while Barber claims that dominionism does not exist and anyone who worries about it is “no different than 9/11-truthers, global-warmers or Holocaust-deniers.”

As we’ve noted, many of the dominionists’ biggest critics are other conservative Christians, including Mefferd, who invited Robert Bowman of the Institute for Religious Research to discuss the movement on her program and the ties between dominionists and Rick Perry’s The Response prayer rally. On the program, Mefferd and Bowman outlined dominionists’ beliefs, the New Apostolic Reformation and the “Seven Mountains” ideology, warned against Christians participating in events like The Response that are affiliated with dominionist leaders and groups, and claimed that traditional Religious Right groups working with dominionists represented an unfortunate and “strange turn of events” for the conservative movement.

One group that has worked with dominionists includes Barber’s Liberty Counsel, who sponsored the “2010 Sovereignty and Dominion conference - Biblical Blueprints for Victory!” with American Vision, and hosted figures associated with the dominionist movement including Lou Engle, Cindy Jacobs and Rick Joyner at their Awakening conference.

But since Mefferd is actively criticizing the dominionist movement, surely Barber will include her with the likes of Rachel Maddow, Michelle Goldberg and RWW’s own Kyle Mantyla, whom Barber called out in an article attacking people who, just like Mefferd, are speaking out against dominionism:

Now, you may laugh. You may think these anti-Christian “Dominioners” like Maddow, Goldberg and Mantyla – these fearless progressives risking all to sound the alarm on the rising threat of Christian Dominionism – are just a bunch of liberal, tinfoil hat-wearing kooks.

You might believe they’re merely a left-wing gaggle of tattooed, body-pierced pot-brownie pies in pajamas, no different than 9/11-truthers, global-warmers or Holocaust-deniers.

Oh, you may suppose these liberal Dominioners – daring beyond measure – are simply a batty band of anti-Christian bigots and Daily-Kos-, MSNBC-types looking to smear Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and other GOP presidential hopefuls as a bunch of clandestine theocrats bent on Christian world domination.

Maybe Barber will next time use his platform on The Janet Mefferd Show not to attack gays and lesbians but instead to chastise Mefferd for investigating and warning against dominionism.

The Religious Right erupted against the Obama administration’s new policy to protect the rights of LGBT people around the world with warnings that God will punish America and calls for urgent prayers against the initiative. Yesterday, Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber joined Janet Mefferd to attack not only the administration’s directive to support LGBT-rights abroad but also to dismiss the ample evidence of violence against people as a result of their sexual orientation and gender identity.

Both Barber and Mefferd earlier defended countries that criminalize homosexuality, and while speaking together they both claimed that violence against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is not a problem. Apparently, Barber and Mefferd do not believe that arresting, imprisoning and punishing people because they are gay are forms of violence, and choose to ignore the overwhelming evidence of persecution of LGBT people throughout the world.

Barber dismissed concerns about violence against the LGBT community as “nonsense” and said that efforts to protect the rights and dignity of LGBT people are “unconscionable” and “disgusting.”

Barber: You don’t force other nations to put their stamp of approval, the official government stamp of approval, on disordered, sinful behavior.

Mefferd: Here’s a question I had too. In all the stories I was reading yesterday about this directive, in none of them did I see any break down of statistics on the number of homosexuals and transgenders worldwide who are being tortured, persecuted and killed for being gay, have you seen any statistics like that?

Barber: Of course not, it’s nonsense. It’s Orwellian New Speak.

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Barber: His latest actions I think bring shame upon this nation that he has pledged to serve in that again he’s embarrassed us in the eyes of nations around the world by pushing this radical—and it is a radical sexual anarchist agenda—and telling other nations ‘you will sign off on this radical sexual anarchist agenda or you will get no U.S. foreign aid.’ That is extortion, it is unconscionable, it is disgusting but it is in keeping with this radical president’s M.O.

The United Nations has consistently pointed to the “abuses that target LGBT people, including killings, torture, rape, violence, disappearances, and discrimination in many areas of life” and Lutheran Social Services found that violence against the LGBT community in the developing world is “horrific” as “people from the LGBT community are beaten, killed, tortured, psychologically tormented, or jailed because of their sexual orientation.” The group also notes that the government is often responsible for promoting anti-gay attacks, as many times “the police will not protect individuals and may be the worst perpetrators of the violence.”

According to the ILGA’s 2011 report [pdf] on “State-Sponsored Homophobia,” 76 countries criminalize homosexuality, five of which have the death penalty. The ILGA noted that for many LGBT people, particularly in Africa, the situation has “worsened” with increases in “harassment, humiliation, extortion, arbitrary arrests, judicial violence imprisonment, torture, hate crimes and honor killings.” Corrective rape against lesbians is also on the rise in countries like South Africa and Jamaica.

Rather than do actual research, Barber and Mefferd are so committed to their anti-gay ideology that they even try to whitewash the unmistakable cases of violence against LGBT people throughout the world.

After exalting James Dobson on his show Family Talk yesterday, today Michele Bachmann credited antifeminist luminaries Phyllis Schlafly and Beverly LaHaye, along with Dobson and his wife Shirley, for motivating her to become a conservative activist. Bachmann has previously called Schlafly, who has endorsed her presidential campaign, her “hero” and “the person that I hope to be someday,” and said that LaHaye is “an extraordinary woman of God.” In fact, Bachmann said that LaHaye’s warnings “on the threats to the family” riled her enough to join LaHaye’s organization Concerned Women for America:

Bachmann: As a young woman I read a lot, I was a big reader my whole life, and I loved reading Phyllis Schlafly, she is just smart as a whip.

Ryan Dobson: Who started off as a homemaker and a mom, and then had a law career.

Bachmann: And who also taught her children how to read at home, she did that, she was self-taught in many ways and she was very interested in national security, as I am, and defense issues, but also very cognizant on financial issues.

And also Bev LaHaye, Marcus and I were brand new newlyweds and I got in our mailbox a cassette tape back in the cassette tape days from Bev LaHaye, talking about where our nation was at. I listened to it, and she was trying to pull the alarm on the threats to the family, like Dr. Dobson was doing, so I joined Concerned Women for America, that was the inception, and started getting materials from her, from Phyllis Schlafly, from Dr. Dobson. Over the course of the years, I’ve poured all of these great women and Dr. and Shirley Dobson into my life, and they’ve really been my teachers.

LaHaye, whose husband Tim is best known for writing the Left Behind series and for his attacks on gays, Roman Catholics and “the Illuminati,” still chairs CWA and has a long history of Religious Right activism. She started CWA because she “knew the feminists’ anti-God, anti-family rhetoric did not represent her beliefs, nor those of the vast majority of women,” and also outlined the “biblical worldview” in politics that Bachmann often talks about: “America is a nation based on biblical principles. Christian values dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the Bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.” According to LaHaye, conservative Christians need to enter politics in order to “stand up against the wiles of the devil.”

Not only does LaHaye have harsh words for feminists and people “who do not use the Bible to guide” their political lives, but also doesn’t take kindly to gays and lesbians, writing in a CWA mailer: “[Homosexuals] want their depraved ‘values’ to become our children’s values. Homosexuals expect society to embrace their immoral way of life. Worse yet, they are looking for new recruits!”

With her role models holding such extreme views, it is no wonder Bachmann turned out to be one of the most far-right figures in contemporary politics.

Yesterday Family Research Council senior fellow Peter Sprigg attacked the Obama administration’s call to protect LGBT people abroad from violence as an “unconscionable” promotion of “the radical ideology of the sexual revolution.” Today, the FRC is now even asking people to pray that God will urge Congress “to reject this Obama directive and all who carry it out,” citing the biblical story of Sodom (Gen 19:4-7) and Gibeah’s Crime (Judges 19:21-28). The group also encouraged Republicans to stop the reappointment of Ambassador Mari Carmon Aponte because she penned an op-ed in support of gay rights:

Exporting Homosexuality by Extortion -- Senate Republicans say they will block the reappointment Mari Carmen Aponte as Ambassador to El Salvador because of her insensitive public promotion of homosexuality in a nation whose culture rejects the practice. Yesterday, President Obama issued a directive making official what insiders say is already been the norm in practice -- using foreign aid to advance the homosexual agenda in all countries that reject the practice. Insiders say the State Department has privately been withholding aid from countries that will not go along with the LGBT agenda (Obama Directive, Aponte).

May Congress step up to reject this Obama directive and all who carry it out (Gen 19:4-7; Judges 19:21-28; 1 Kg 14:24; Pr 4:14-17; Ec 8:11; Is 57:20; Eze 22:6-12).

Mat Staver appeared on Crosstalk yesterday with Vic Eliason to discuss the firing of a Macy’s employee who refused to follow company policy on transgender customers. Staver’s Liberty Counsel is now representing the employee, who would not let a transgender woman use a woman’s fitting room, and he has launched a campaign to pressure Macy’s to alter store policy by adding “a third dressing room for transgender individuals.” During the interview, Eliason asked Staver what would happen “if I envision myself as being a kangaroo” or “a monkey or a walrus,” and Staver claimed that rights for transgender people would mean that adults can identify themselves as children and therefore “go and use the little kiddies restroom.”

Listen:

Staver: This was a man, everyone recognized it’s a man, going into the women’s restroom. Now whether that person has good or ill intentions towards women, no one knows, but the fact of the matter is when you defy common sense and when it says ‘women’s fitting room’ and you allow people other than women in that fitting room, you’re just asking for trouble. This is just an absurd policy, this is the so-called LGBT sexual anarchist agenda gone awry, I mean this is the absurdity to which this agenda goes when you ultimately follow it to its logical conclusion.

Eliason: If I envision myself as being a kangaroo, I mean let’s go outside of the gender of humanity, somebody might think I’m a monkey or a walrus, you’d say ‘Vic if you said that they would send you to the nut house, they would send you to the insane asylum.’

Staver: Well what happens if someone says, ‘I’m an adult but I identify myself as a child, I can go and use the little kiddies restroom,’ or silly things like that. But that’s where it goes to.

Secretary Hillary Clinton’s speech on defending LGBT rights abroad and the new Obama administration policy to protect people around the world who are jailed, beaten and executed for being LGBT have been met with intense uproar from the Religious Right.

Pat Robertson on The 700 Club today said that the policy was “appalling” shows that America is willing to “violate God’s principles and to make a mockery of His laws.” Robertson even warned that God will not tolerate it and “when the blow comes, it’s going to be horrible”:

Robertson: Isn’t it appalling that the United States of America would try to force the acceptance of homosexuality on other nations but at the same time we would not force them to take care of their religious minorities and they would permit discrimination and persecution of Christians? What kind of a country have we got? You know, there is a God in heaven and He is just. Thomas Jefferson, ‘I tremble when I remember that God is just.’ He is just, he is not going to allow this kind of thing to go on forever. This country cannot continue to violate God’s principles and to make a mockery of His laws and think we’re going to get away with it. And when the blow comes, it’s going to be horrible.

On Crosstalk yesterday, Vic Eliason of Voice of Christian Youth America argued that the new policy shows that “the inmates have taken over the asylum” and Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver said it confirms the administration’s support of the “radical sexual anarchist agenda”:

Janet Mefferd yesterday defended Nigeria’s right to have a law criminalizing homosexuality and a bill that would crack down on gay couples, and even dismissed concerns about persistent violence against gays and lesbians in Africa:

Mefferd: Let’s get our priorities straight here, in other words, why are we even focusing on this? Other than the fact that you have African countries that have policies like Nigeria, criminalizing homosexuality, are they not a sovereign nation? Can’t they make up their own minds about these things? If they want to pass a law we’re going to play bully over this issue? I can understand countries where people are being flagrantly persecuted for their faith but this one; I don’t see that this is something that the United States has to jump in on because it’s such a huge global tragedy. It’s crazy. They’re saying it’s all homophobia in Nigeria, according to the law I guess in Nigeria not only is gay marriage a crime punishable by a fourteen year jail term but any person who registers, operates or participates in gay organizations faces a decade in jail, a clause that specifically targets the many active sexuality-rights advocacy groups in the country. Alright, but they’re not killing them are they? Are they going to go to jail?

What do you say about this? For another country to make the decision that anybody who violates a standard that they want to uphold in their society to go to jail, where do you draw the line on that? If you have a culture that had a lot of Christians who say we cannot as a society look upon homosexuality as a good thing for all of us, but in that case you’ve got to gather together the global community and bully them out of it.

Today, Michele Bachmann and her husband Marcus joined James Dobson on Family Talk. The congresswoman described her career in politics, which started with her working against the public education system up to today as a presidential candidate. Bachmann told a familiar story where she took on two of the institutions most opposed by the Religious Right, public schools and the federal government. She said she entered politics when she became troubled about “what came home in the backpack” from her foster children who attended public schools, and diligently worked until she “overthrew” the “national standards” that public schools followed, which she called “politically correct, dumbed down standards, in many ways they were against the Christian values that a lot of parents hold.”

Bachmann also gushed over Dobson for helping her and Marcus lay “the foundation brick by brick in our life” and credited Francis Schaeffer with leading her to develop “the concept of biblical worldview, that God has something to say every aspect of life, because He’s the creator of life.” Schaeffer’s series, How Should We Then Live?, blames increasing secular humanism and moral relativism for social decay and calls on Christians to fight back and put biblical precepts into law in order to curb society’s unraveling. The film series, along with Schaeffer’s other works such as A Christian Manifesto and Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, had a tremendous role in shaping the modern Religious Right, a movement that Bachmann isn’t just courting but is also a part of.

Bachmann: To be with Jim and Shirley Dobson and your family is a thrill. Marcus and I have known about you since the very earliest days that you went on your show, there’s hardly a show that we ever missed and we almost committed to them to memory.

Dobson: Are you exaggerating?

Bachmann: Not at all, you and Shirley have been tremendous mentors for us. You’ve been a wonderful example, a teacher, a preacher for us in a lot of ways. And we knew of you before we got married and we’ve listened through our early married years as we had our children and you’ve really pricked our hearts on many different subjects and you laid the foundation brick by brick in our life growing up, maturing in our own family life, and we want to thank you for that.

…

Bachmann: You asked us before about ‘pro-life,’ when Marcus and I were nineteen in college we had gone to see the film series by Dr. Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live, and when we saw that film series it changed our lives forever. We understood the concept of biblical worldview, that God has something to say every aspect of life, because He’s the creator of life. And Dr. Schaeffer said in that series that the abortion issue is the watershed issue of our time, that struck a chord of recognition with us. And we started reaching out to women in unplanned pregnancies, we got married right after college, and we started inviting women into our home, and informally we counseled them, we took them to pro-life centers, I went through childbirth classes with women, I held their hands as they gave birth to babies, because we didn’t want to just talk the talk, we wanted to walk the walk.