Anti-Gay

American Family Association’s Buster Wilson yesterday warned that gays and liberals are trying to “elevate hate speech [laws] above the freedoms of our precious first amendment,” citing a case in Canada where he says a “pastor spent 18 months in jail for a sermon he preached against homosexuality.”

As we think about the basics of Biblical morality, today we will discuss the issue of hate speech and the first amendment’s guarantee of freedom of Speech.

While most Americans refuse to believe anyone could ever be imprisoned simply for something they said, the examples of it actually happening are abundant.

In our neighbor to the north, Canada, a local pastor spent 18 months in jail for a sermon he preached about homosexuality. A member complained to the hate speech council and he was found guilty and jailed.

Now for certain, that’s in Canada. But the hate speecher’s in this country are modeling their efforts on those successful hate speech laws in Canada.

The left wants to control the speech of the right, and if left to themselves, they will find a way to elevate hate speech above the freedoms of our precious first amendment!

If a pastor was sentenced to jail for eighteen months in Canada, don’t you think there would be a single news story about it?

We couldn’t find a single one, but Wilson seems to be citing a decision by the Alberta Human Rights Commission which fined a pastor over an anti-gay letter to the editor which preceded an attack on a gay youth. But the ruling was overturned because it violated Canada’s constitutional protection of free speech. Even Canadian Baptist leaders have rebuffed claims that pastors in their country can go to jail over their stance on homosexuality.

So basically, a Canadian judge tosses out a fine against a pastor and reaffirms his free speech rights, but Wilson claims that he “spent 18 months in jail” and therefore hate speech laws are coming to the U.S.!

Anti-gay activist Linda Harvey of Mission America on her radio show this weekend decried a recent LGBT youth conference, PrideWorks, in Westchester, New York, which she said is part of an effort to corrupt children with “pro-homosexual, graphic, explicit, distorted and bizarre information.” “It’s a huge lie from the pit of hell,” Harvey said, insisting that it is “heartbreaking” about how gay rights supporters “are leading our children into sin” and effectively “killing our children.”

The homosexual movement is pitching their movement to our kids. They for some reason are very anxious to sell our children on this. I think part of it is they believe this is the future of their movement if they sell people with misinformation, which is what it largely is at this point, and put conservative values on the defensive, then they will turn a whole generation around. And they are doing it because the hearts of the fathers are not where they need to be, we need to be getting in there and fighting for the truth for our kids. We need to be horrified that busloads of middle schoolers, for instance, are taken to an all-day program in Westchester County, New York sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network and hear an entire day that they take off school and the school sponsors this of pro-homosexual, graphic, explicit, distorted and bizarre information and it’s government sponsored now.

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It’s a huge lie from the pit of hell, folks. We need to tell our children the truth, all of our children, the ones who are so sadly distorting themselves at this point in their lives; they’ve listened to these lies. They are not being told anything about another side, another beautiful, positive, life-enhancing, life-prolonging side and that’s traditional values. It’s not hateful; it is being misportrayed by those who are desperate to hang on to their sin and want to drag children, contrary to what Jesus wanted people to do with children, to drag children into it with them.

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We are killing our children, we’re killing their hearts, their spirits, their sensitivity to other people, we are giving them the tools to make it highly likely they will never have a happy, productive marriage in the future if they are already so hardened in their hearts to the beautiful, God-designed function of their bodies. This is heartbreaking, this is absolutely heartbreaking, I get choked up every time I think about how we are leading our children into sin. Jesus said do not lead little ones into sin, and why are we doing this? Why are we not out there fighting for our kids? I urge you to search your hearts and find a way to find it in your time to make a call, make a call on the Heartbeat Bill, make a call to your school and your school board president and make sure they are not allowing pro-homosexual programs in their schools.

Televangelist Joni Lamb of Daystar last week hosted Janet Boynes, an ardent ex-gay activist who has made a career telling Religious Right audiences about the Satanic and “ugly” nature of homosexuality. Boynes is also a favorite author of Rep. Michele Bachmann and her book was on display at Marcus Bachmann’s pseudo-clinic.

Lamb opened the program by maintaining that the “thousands” of people “who have come out of homosexuality” and “may be the most discriminated people in the world today.” She went on claim that homosexuality is “ungodly” and “God cannot bless you and you cannot fulfill your destiny while you are operating within the realm of homosexuality.”

The two went on to agree that homosexuality a “trap that the Enemy has set,” and Boynes claimed that gays and lesbians are “walking right into the Enemy’s trap.”

Watch:

Televangelist Pat Robertson mourned the news that a same-sex couple had their wedding at West Point’s Cadet Chapel, asking, “what have they done to our cherished institution?” After the 700 Club’s Lee Webb reported on the story and called it a “sad day,” Robertson said that General Douglas MacArthur, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee must each be “rolling over in his grave” over the wedding.

Watch:

Pastor Kevin Swanson yesterday on Generations Radio saluted Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni for publicly repenting for the nation’s sins. Swanson also praised the notorious Anti-Homosexuality Bill which is advancing in the Ugandan Parliament and would make homosexuality a criminal offense punishable by life imprisonment or the death penalty.

He argued that while Uganda’s future is looking up, America is “heading back into cannibalism, vampirism, tattooing, body mutilation and every form of fornication, homosexuality.” Buehner added that the Southern Poverty Law Center’s lawsuit against a discredited ex-gay therapy group is a sign of America’s decline.

Swanson: Yeah there’s a lot of problems in Uganda, there’s the Muslim influence, there’s dishonesty and graft and the sort of things that this guy was trying to repent of, and you know you got all of this stuff and I think America is actually wealthier and America’s got more of a Christian heritage and America’s got more of this and this and this. But the trajectory is radically different. Our trajectory is going right down back into paganism. Our people are heading back into cannibalism, vampirism, tattooing, body mutilation and every form of fornication, homosexuality, etc. They are trying to get out of it, that’s the difference.

Buehner: They are trying to go for some kind of unity under some sort of banner of truth; we’re going for tribalism under multiple banners, pick your own truth. They are trying to talk about repentance; we’re actually trying to say there’s nothing wrong with you. In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center is representing some people who went to some therapists who tried to deal with their issues of same-sex desires and they are saying: you’re treating them like there is something wrong with them, can’t you just let them be in their sin and so forth? In Uganda, they are trying to repent; in America, we are trying to protect people from having to repent.

Swanson, who once hailed the Pilgrims’ laws against homosexuality (death penalty), explicitly praised Uganda for “bringing Biblical law to bear in the area of homosexuality,” while criticizing the “socialist[s]” in Washington for deriding Uganda’s anti-gay actions while supposedly admiring North Korea. He also criticized American evangelicals who have also come out against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and joked that they may regret trying to “translate Leviticus into Ugandan,” which they probably do since “Ugandan” is not a language.

Swanson: He certainly would not enjoy the respect and appreciation of the United Nations or the United States or Hillary Clinton or the others, I mean Uganda is pretty much at the bottom of the barrel in the estimation of the average socialist, humanist, atheist person in Washington today. Wouldn’t you say? If North Korea is up here somewhere, Uganda is way down here because they are talking about bringing Biblical law to bear in the area of homosexuality. Apparently, somebody made the mistake of opening up the Bible in Uganda and found something about a civil penalty towards homosexuality, you know, big mistake. Now you’ve got everybody up in arms in the United States, especially those who attend evangelical churches.

Buehner: There’s another irony for you.

Swanson: The ironies are everywhere, we are up to our elbows in ironies.

Buehner: You know what will happen is that the evangelical churches will say we need to be more careful about the missionaries we send because some of them are telling people to read the Bible and then they are going to legislate.

Swanson: Surely they didn’t translate Leviticus into Ugandan.

Peter LaBarbera and John Kirkwood hosted the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios on the Americans For Truth About Homosexuality Radio Hour to respond to the victories of marriage equality activists and Neal Boortz’s post-election rant against the Religious Right. Rios said that Boortz was just one of many conservatives trying to push the GOP to abandon social issues like abortion rights and gay equality in order to win elections. According to Rios, it isn’t that most people don’t oppose the gay rights movement anymore; it’s just that they simply don’t understand how horrible it is!

She said that “education elites” are using gay rights to push “the most horrible trash down our children’s throats” and that even the child abuse scandal at Penn State is part of the “whole fabric” of gay rights. Rios went on to say that she wouldn’t want her family to have gay neighbors just as she wouldn’t like to live next door to a brother or an abortion clinic.

Rios: They find themselves totally shocked when a coach like Jerry Sandusky comes after little boys, that’s shocking, and yet that’s the very thing, the whole fabric of gay marriage is part of that issue of where we draw the lines on sexuality. We have very good reasons for feeling the way they do and they aren’t just scriptural, Scripture is the basis but all truth is God’s truth, we can make our case without Scripture. Most people naturally speaking abhor the things that homosexual activists really working towards, they just don’t know about them. So Neal Boortz is just speaking out of ignorance.

Kirkwood: You’re talking about a movement and activists but you like to be challenged so here’s my challenge to you. I’m going to put it in his leading words…he said he’s going to be waiting for a year for somebody to tell him one reason that the gay couple down the street from Sandy Rios will have any effect on your life.

Rios: Because I have children and grandchildren in school, at least not yet but I will, but I have kids that are going to be in school and because I know how the National Education Association and the education elites have been pushing, pushing, pushing the most horrible trash down our children’s throats in the guise of mainstreaming homosexuality and gay marriage is just a part of that. It may be that a couple next door to me doesn’t affect my life but on the other hand if I’m raising children and I care: do I want to live next door to a brothel? Do I want to live next door to an abortion clinic? There are things that we morally object to and we don’t want our children to consider as normal.

Rios also repeated her claim that the success of abortion rights and gay equality at the ballot box is proof that America is under divine judgment, warning that God is using a “a veil of deception” to confuse people and lamenting that the Republican Party is no longer “a champion of moral values.” She concluded by warning LaBarbera and Kirkwood that they may soon face jail time or a fine for preaching against homosexuality.

Rios: The confusion and the people that we look up to failing us and being confused themselves, I see God’s supernatural hand in this. I really do think that there is a veil of deception and I think that it’s kind of like the way we see God, the way he works in the Old Testament, how when people have chosen to be rebellious he eventually says okay, go for it, you can have it. I think the American people are getting what we want.

We want licentiousness, we do not want moral restraint, whether its homosexuality or living together or abortion or birth control so we can have all the sex we want without consequence. We desperately want that so badly, women want it so badly, it’s all that matters to them on the left, that’s all they can think about, is not having to give up abortion and birth control. Of all the issues it really does drive them and I think God is going to give it to them.

I think He is going to give us homosexual marriage; I don’t see it stopping. I don’t see the Republican Party surviving in any form or fashion in the way it has been. I don’t see it being a champion of moral values; it gave up that ground a long time ago. You’ve seen it happen in Illinois and certainly we’re seeing the death, like the last gasps of death, here in DC. I believe God is bringing judgment.

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Kirkwood: Regarding homosexuality then, it is going to be transformed from a marriage issue, which it has been, to don’t you think the transformation is now that activism is going to center around religious freedom?

Rios: Absolutely, you better believe it. Pastors like you, you will be fined or jailed like they have been in Canada, that’s coming.

Scott Lively dropped in on "Focal Point" today, mostly to discuss developments in Uganda, but also to provide some insights on his plan to run for Governor of Massachusetts, which he apparently thinks he can win by creating a third party coalition by merging anti-gay Religious Right activists with "the grassroots of the progressive movement": 

On his blog, Lively has posted a manifesto explaining how this new coalition would work as Religious Right activists leave the corporate GOP and set about "plundering the 'Progressive' base" by winning over Blacks, Hispanics, libertarians, environmentalists, and labor unions: 

Why will ethnic minorities join us in the first place, before we’ve been able to prove ourselves champions of true social justice? We will make a simple appeal to the thing we most share in common. “Our Bond Is Family!” There’s our pitch and strategy in bumper-sticker simplicity. The typical African American or Hispanic person is generally more Christian and pro-family than the average American (as are the Russian, Eastern European, East Indian, African and Asian immigrants). RINO Republicans could never build a bridge to these minorities because they don’t share these values. But we can and should.

The illegal immigration issue has unfortunately distracted both conservatives and Hispanics from the interests we hold in common, but from my experience I think most Hispanics who are legal citizens would gravitate naturally to the Republican Party and not the Democrats if our agenda were centered on family rather than fiscal matters (especially if we had our own social justice platform). Frankly, I’d happily trade any number of pro-abortion, hate-America White liberal suburbanites for the equivalent number of pro-life, pro-family working class Hispanic citizens. We’d be a much stronger country for it.

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We should reach out to moderate and conservative-leaning environmentalists as well. Environmentalism is another movement we should rescue from the Marxists and rebuild on a Christian foundation. Our responsibility to be good stewards of the earth is a central tenet of Christianity, and we are certainly much more capable of fulfilling this duty in a balanced manner than the Marxists are. (Not to mention that we would do the world a great service to steer at least some portion of this powerful movement away from power-grabbing globalist goals such as Agenda 21 and “global warming” and toward authentic environmental needs.)

One key point in this arena that deserves immediate, urgent advocacy is opposition to genetically-modified foods. RINOs would never take this position for fear of alienating agri-business and mega-corporations like Monsanto, but we conservatives should.

Environmentalists might at first seem to be an impossible constituency to recruit, but Christians share an important common ground with them: an embrace of the natural and rejection of the unnatural. The most important concepts in environmentalism — bio-diversity, eco-systems, and the inter-dependence of species — rest on the clear “natural law” presupposition (central to Christianity as well) that there is an existing order in nature that should be protected by human beings. We also share a distrust of the corporate giants whose myopic pursuit of ever greater profits represents the greatest threat to the environment.

If we craft an appeal based on our common preference for the “natural” over the “artificial,” and frame this as a logical basis for deciding social policy in every area, we suddenly have a powerful unifying theme for our entire slate that could win every intellectually honest environmentalist to our side: the natural value of life vs the unnatural termination of unborn babies, natural marriage vs. un-natural homosexual unions, God-given liberty vs. man-made Statism, commerce among real persons vs. that with artificial corporate “persons,” natural foods vs. genetic experiments, a return to family farms and rejection of agri-business, a return to natural remedies and rejection of Big Pharma, etc..

While we’re plundering the “Progressive” base, lets not forget the labor unions. There’s nothing inherently evil or unbiblical about labor unions. The evil comes from the Marxist ideologues and organized crime elements who control them. Union members were the heart and soul of the so-called “Reagan Democrats” who crossed party lines in droves for Reagan because he sincerely espoused Christian values. This is a natural constituency for a newly Bible-centered GOP. The only reason we don’t have them now in any significant numbers is that the corporate giants don’t like them (for obvious reasons) and continually foster hostility against them among the Republican rank and file.

Last time talk show host Steve Deace talked to an ex-gay activist, he brought Greg Quinlan of PFOX onto his show to warn that gays and lesbians engage in “sexual cannibalism” and are “recruiting” kids “to behave as homosexuals.” Yesterday, he interviewed Debora Barr, the author of All Things New: A Former Lesbian’s Lifelong Search for Love, who writes that after joining a church her “same-sex attraction diminished.” Deace told Barr that he believes the “huge surge in homosexual behavior” in society is a result of the “collapse of the family unit,” while Barr claimed that gays and lesbians are really seeking to repair broken relationships with their parents. “The problem with that is two hurting women can never get what they need from each other, the same as two hurting men can never get what they need from each other;” Barr said, “it’s just a distortion of love.”

Deace: It’s no coincidence we have seen a huge surge in homosexual behavior at the same time we’ve seen a collapse of the family unit. Because without those traditional roles of a mom and a dad represented in a home and that healthy balance that produces a healthy sexual identity in children, which is collapsing in our culture in the last thirty, forty years, that balance if that’s not modeled and witnessed, it’s going to create confusion in young people, particularly if you throw in anything like a betrayal or an abuse. Really, the surge in this lifestyle is not just about propaganda from popular culture but it really is about people that are literally trying to find meaning and purpose in their life when they come from an environment growing up that didn’t offer them that.

Barr: That is so, so true. I believe that a child’s upbringing is so important and when they don’t get they need—for me, my relationship with my mother got broken at a critical stage in my development, I needed that mother figure in my life and all of the sudden that relationship was broken. So what I was trying to get from other women was that thing that I needed, that piece of female—I don’t even know how to describe it. But it seemed when I was in relationships with women, I was in three serious long-term relationships of five or six years, one of them was seven years, these women were all older than me, and it wasn’t until I got out of this life and could look back over my life and see these patterns that I realized that what I was seeking was that mother figure in my life. The problem with that is two hurting women can never get what they need from each other, the same as two hurting men can never get what they need from each other; it’s just a distortion of love.

Talk show host Janet Mefferd invited Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality onto her program on Friday to mourn the recent string of electoral victories of openly gay candidates and gay rights measures. While we continued to hear over and over again from conservatives that President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality greatly undermined his support among minority voters, it turned out that Obama performed just as well—if not better—among minorities. Now, Mefferd and LaBarbera wondered if millions of more white voters would have turned out if only the Romney campaign had promoted his anti-gay stances more vigorously.

Mefferd: Seven million white voters stayed home, everything was about this minority group and we should’ve been more pro-amnesty etcetera, and there was a lot of discussion about how the GOP needs to be for amnesty now, needs to do this and that to reach the particular Latino group or what have you, and in fact you wonder how many of those white voters who stayed home actually would’ve come out if they would’ve had a candidate who had a backbone on issues that are culturally important to them.

LaBarbera: Let’s talk about the homosexual issue Janet, of course Romney barely, I don’t know in the general election, was it raised at all?

Mefferd: No.

LaBarbera said that he will pray that Senator-elect “Tammy Baldwin leaves the lesbian lifestyle as so many women have,” and lashed out at the media’s treatment of officials like Baldwin as historic milestones, wondering if the media would have similar reports on the “first alcoholic” to win an election. He went on to rail against the Huffington Post for “celebrating homosexuality” and claimed that “homosexuality and abortion” are now “the sacraments of liberalism.” “That’s what it’s all about for liberals now and it’s just so sad to see, especially with Obama’s triumph, it’s sad to see that this won in America,” LaBarbera lamented. “America it seems is just falling apart right before our eyes.”

LaBarbera: We’re talking about a sin movement here. Would we be ticking off any other collective group of public representatives who had another sin problem: ‘Say Janet boy did you hear the first alcoholic just got elected in Colorado’? It’s preposterous, the whole movement is preposterous, and we got to retain our thinking as Christians. This is not an achievement. Homosexuality is a problem and the good news is people can overcome it. I hope and pray that one day Tammy Baldwin leaves the lesbian lifestyle as so many women have. The big achievement decades ago was to acknowledge homosexuality as some kind of minority, it’s not really a minority, it’s about behavior and behavior that can be changed. I’m sorry to offend the homosexual lobby but that’s what it is to us. This is not a great achievement and it’s nothing to be proud of.

Mefferd: They are really crowing though. I can’t even count how many stories I saw on the Huffington Post where they were just jumping for joy, how exciting this is. The other issue that came up were these four marriage amendments—

LaBarbera: By the way Janet, that’s the same Huffington Post which I believe in today’s Huffington Post about how Abraham Lincoln might’ve been gay. The Huffington Post is now celebrating homosexuality, they can’t get enough of it, they have a whole section called “Gay Voices” which is all about homosexuality. This has become one of the sacraments of liberalism: homosexuality and abortion, we should add to that maybe promiscuity for heterosexuals. That’s what it’s all about for liberals now and it’s just so sad to see, especially with Obama’s triumph, it’s sad to see that this won in America. America it seems is just falling apart right before our eyes.

Mefferd: I agree.

Later in the show, Mefferd called the gains of the gay rights movement a “rejection of God” while LaBarbera appeared nostalgic for the days when states had anti-sodomy laws on the books. He said that the legalization of same-sex marriage will turn the government into “a promoter of evil” and make homosexuality more “popular,” just as Roe v. Wade supposedly increased the abortion rate (actually, abortion rates are higher in countries where it is illegal).

He even said that the kiss between two gay characters on “Glee” was a sign that America is in “big, big trouble.” “When you saw two teenage boys in a romantic set-up kiss, making out, during primetime TV and it didn’t engender mass outrage among Americans, you know we are pretty far gone,” LaBarbera said.

Mefferd: What we’re really seeing here is the unfolding of the attack against God’s authority and God’s creation, and I think for that reason it’s really a much bigger fight than just what we’re saying , it’s not just even about homosexuality, it’s about a view of God and a rejection of God and how He has created this world to operate.

LaBarbera: The fact is a lot of Americans don’t care about God anymore, they don’t care about what God thinks about this issue or other issues. I think it is much deeper, when government goes from dissuading people from committing a sin, that’s why we had sodomy laws in all the states, anti-sodomy laws, until 1961 I believe, maybe I have that wrong, but the point is we used to discourage sin. Now when you turn it around and government actually promotes sin and ultimately homosexual so-called marriage, that’s the ultimate promotion of what God calls detestable behavior as even noble, there are a lot of repercussions when government changes complete opposite and becomes a promoter of evil and a promoter of sin and that’s what we’re seeing. It’s the same with abortion, look at how many more abortions happened because it became legalized, so many millions of babies would not have been killed had the law not made it popular. I’m afraid we’re going to see that happen with homosexuality as well.

Mefferd: I don’t know if you heard John MacArthur’s great sermon on this but he was talking about how now we have a party in the United States that has the sins of Romans 1 as its party platform. It’s stunning in our lifetimes to see something that egregious going on.

LaBarbera: Yes and the homosexual movement if you look back, it is fascinating how it was marketed. I don’t know if it was last year or the year before with the “Glee” kiss. That showed me that America was in big, big trouble. I think we are probably ten years behind understanding how bad it really is. When you saw two teenage boys in a romantic set-up kiss, making out, during primetime TV and it didn’t engender mass outrage among Americans, you know we are pretty far gone. Nobody wants to talk about what happens when you practice homosexuality, all the higher rates of disease, especially for men who have sex with men, these are statistics you can get by just going to the CDC website, obviously it’s a very dangerous and immoral behavior.