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After a Maryland school district decided to reconsider its flyer policy after the “ex-gay” group PFOX distributed material promoting the discredited and dangerous reparative therapy, Family Research Council senior fellow and PFOX board member Peter Sprigg responded with a furious op-ed in the Washington Times and an appearance on Today’s Issues with FRC president Tony Perkins. During the interview, Perkins said that “the homosexual community” is trying to stop children from getting “the options or the help that’s available for them if they’re struggling with [sexuality] issues” by opposing the distribution of ex-gay material, and lamented that “government officials [are] increasingly becoming really patsies for the homosexual activists.” Sprigg said that unless the ex-gay “message gets out in the schools,” then more and more confused kids who “would end up being perfectly heterosexual” would be “told by their teachers and guidance counselors, ‘well you are probably gay.’”

Perkins: When you look across the board in different incidences where the homosexual community is involved, they simply want to shut down any discussion, they don’t want children to be aware of the options or the help that’s available for them if they’re struggling with these issues, and now you see government officials increasingly becoming really patsies for the homosexual activists.

Sprigg: Right. It’s especially important that this message gets out in the schools because it’s normal for young people, adolescents to experience some confusion about their sexual identity. An important statistic that I read once was that there’s a survey done of 12 year olds that found at age 12, 25 percent of the students were unsure of their sexual orientation. But we know from surveys of the adult population that only maybe 2 to 3 percent of the adult population will actually identify as homosexual or bisexual. So you have this population of young people that left to themselves, 9 out of 10 would end up being perfectly heterosexual, but now with the politically correct environment in the schools, those kids are being told by their teachers and guidance counselors, “well you are probably gay, you were born that way, you just have to accept it and embrace it.”

Last month, the War on Women reached a new level when every single Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted against a reauthorization of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). VAWA has been reauthorized with broad bipartisan support twice since its original passage, but this year, Republicans objected to the inclusion of new provisions to protect LGBT people and immigrant women.

On her radio show last week, Janet Mefferd discussed the battle over VAWA reauthorization with Concerned Women for America’s Janice Crouse.

Crouse charged that VAWA – which grants funds to local communities to develop programs combatting domestic violence – mostly funds “reeducating programs for judges to try to train them in the principles of feminism and so-called ‘women’s rights.’”

Crouse and Mefferd were especially scornful of new provisions protecting immigrants and LGBT people and an eliminated provision making it easier to combat date rape on campuses, with Crouse warning that women would just abuse the system to get green cards and make false accusations of date rape.

Crouse: Quite frankly, much of the Violence Against Women funds reeducating programs for judges to try to train them in the principles of feminism and so-called ’women’s rights.’

Mefferd: Wow, that’s what we need, we need more indoctrination of judges, right?

Crouse: Right. [laughs]

...

Mefferd: So they’ve expanded this to cover more subgroups, but why can’t it just, if you’re going to have a domestic violence piece of legislation, why can’t it just cover anyone who’s affected by domestic violence? Is this just another one where they’re trotting out their typical liberal ways and, you know, ‘We’ve got to emphasize non-discrimination against sexual orientation, etc. etc.’ Is that just kind of the agenda here again?

Crouse: Exactly right. Plus, you have a number of women from other countries who marry Americans to come to this country, and then they want out of the marriage. Well, VAWA provides a way for them to get out, a very easy way for them to get out.

One of the things that I found particularly troubling, and thank goodness the Republicans stood up against this, was the effort to change dating rape to not require clear and convincing evidence, and that’s a legal term, clear and convincing evidence, but instead to require preponderance of evidence, which is a much lower standard and is not clear and convincing. So a girl the next morning could just say, ‘Well, I really made a mistake,’ and accuse a guy of date rape, or have any kind of regrets and accuse a guy of date rape.

Mefferd: Well, isn’t that unconstitutional, to lower the standard there on crime?

Crouse: Well, I’m not a constitutional specialist, but in terms of legal ramifications, it’s disastrous.

Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern garnered national attention, and notoriety, in 2008 for maintaining that homosexuality is “the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam,” and last year doubling down on her claim by arguing that while homosexuality is “more dangerous” than terrorism because “it will tear down the moral fiber of this nation” and is something people “have to deal with every day” as “fortunately we don’t have to deal with a terrorist attack every day.”

Kern has also warned that greater rights for gays and lesbians will lead to approval of bestiality and pedophilia and is nostalgic for the time when homosexuality was illegal.

With such a severely anti-gay record, it comes as no surprise that she has endorsed Rick Santorum right before the Oklahoma primary, and that the Santorum campaign is promoting her endorsement.

But Kern isn’t Santorum’s only radical backer.

The Santorum campaign is also playing up his support from Bobbi Radeck of Concerned Women for America Ohio, whose claim to fame is working against the “homosexualists” behind the anti-bullying, anti-suicide Day of Silence:

The Day of Silence, which is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), is only two days away. GLSEN's Day of Silence, which began on college campuses and has now infiltrated middle schools, exploits anti-bullying sentiment to undermine the belief that homosexual acts are immoral. GLSEN shamelessly exploits teen suicide in order to create a climate of hysteria which they can then exploit to falsely impute culpability for teen suicide to conservative moral beliefs. GLSEN's end game is the eradication of conservative moral beliefs and the creation of a social and political climate in which it is impossible to express them. Their cultural vehicle of choice for this radical social experiment is public education. What a strategic coup for homosexualists: use our money to capture the hearts and minds of our children.

And we do virtually nothing. Our complacence makes us complicit in the damage done to our children and our culture. Moreover, we teach our children by example to be cowardly conformists. It's time to resist and there's no easier way to resist than to call your children out of school on the Day of Silence.

Parents and Guardians: Call your children's middle and high schools and ask if students and/or teachers will be permitted to refuse to speak during class on Friday, April 15. If your administration allows students and/or teachers to refuse to speak during class, call your child out of school. Every student absence costs school districts money. When administrators refuse to listen to reason and when they allow the classroom to be exploited for political purposes, parents must take action. If they don't, the politicization of the classroom and curricula will increase.

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Please call your children out of school if your administration permits students to refuse to speak on the Day of Silence. For further information, including parental instructions and a sample calling out letter, click here.

The Media Research Center criticized everyone from Perez Hilton and Gossip Girl to the cast of Jersey Shore for using the word “slut,” but after right-wing talk show host tagged law student and women’s rights advocate Sandra Fluke as a “slut” and a “prostitute,” the group that claims to stand up for “people and institutions that hold traditional values” has repeatedly come to Limbaugh’s defense. MRC’s Scott Whitlock said NBC’s depiction of Limbaugh’s sexist remarks as “ugly” represented “a left-wing attack” and Brent Baker dubbed coverage of Limbaugh’s rant a “left-wing effort to impugn and silence Rush Limbaugh.” The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer and Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber even tweeted in defense of Limbaugh, Barber even saying that Limbaugh “showed class.”

Apparently, the word “slut” is only acceptable when it is used by a right-wing ally.

Concerned Women for America, which describes itself as committed to promoting “decency” in the media, has been completely silent about Limbaugh’s tirade. But the group is happy to post a statement regarding the talk show host’s praise for CWA, along with claims about the supposedly sexist treatment of Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin by the media.

Focus on the Family considers the word “slut” a profanity and blamed “hip-hop/rap culture” for making it “become acceptable and even in vogue to be called a ‘slut,’” and urged people to stop buying music with words like “slut” that “objectify women.” But the organization still hasn’t commented on Limbaugh’s misogynist rants. In 2009 the group defended Limbaugh with a video, “When the liberals came for Rush.”

While these so-called “pro-family” organizations love to claim that they promote decency and values on the airwaves, they are either unwilling or uninterested in criticizing a prominent conservative who spent four days straight calling a student a “slut” on national radio

Another day, another tirade from Chuck Colson about the supposed destruction of freedom in America. On his Breakpoint radio bulletin, Colson warned that Secretary Hillary Clinton’s pledge to fight for gay rights around the world is a threat to religious liberty and, once again, falsely maintained that she and other administration officials never use the phrase “freedom of religion.” In fact, the State Department just over a week ago released a statement calling the “freedom of religion” a “universal human right.” He said that gay rights, along with the President’s support of funding for non-abortion related health care by Planned Parenthood clinics and the mandate for contraception coverage in health insurance plans, are putting freedom in jeopardy. “Whether it’s ‘gay rights’ or ‘reproductive rights,’ Colson said, “the forces of secular liberalism are choosing sexual license over our religious liberty regarding human sexuality.”

For some time I have been warning you that the Obama administration has elevated so-called “gay rights” at the expense of religious liberty.

That may sound like an extreme statement, until you remember that Secretary of State Clinton has said “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” And she and other officials repeatedly use the term “freedom of worship” (a private act) versus “freedom of religion,” (which the Constitution protects, which is the freedom to live out one’s faith in public).

Administration officials have also said that in a contest “between religious liberty and sexual liberty,” sexual liberty triumphs. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, seeing this trend, is predicting “a national conflict between church and state of enormous proportions and to the detriment of both institutions.”

Friends, I wish I could tell you that gay rights were the only front in this threat to religious liberty. But as you know, the second front was opened up by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who decreed that, under ObamaCare, Catholic institutions will have to violate their religious beliefs and pay for contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs for their employees.

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In one of his first acts as president, he rescinded the Mexico City policy, allowing federal dollars to go to organizations that promote abortion overseas, like Planned Parenthood. In the budget showdown with Republicans last summer, the president warned House Speaker John Boehner that he would allow the government to shut down rather than cut Planned Parenthood’s funding. And now, of course, the right to a contraceptive is being advanced over religious liberty.

Again, the question is why? I think Catholic scholar George Weigel has put his finger on it: “What began as a movement to liberate sexuality from the constraints of moral reason, custom, and law,” Weigel says, “has become a movement determined to use the instruments of law to impose its deconstruction of human sexuality and its moral relativism on all of society.” I urge you to read Weigel’s piece.

Friends, this is a clash of worldviews. Whether it’s “gay rights” or “reproductive rights” the forces of secular liberalism are choosing sexual license over our religious liberty regarding human sexuality.