Fighting the Right

The American Family Association’s monthly magazine, AFA Journal, has a story this month about a movie written by the group’s research director Ed Vitagliano called “Accidental Activist”:

Ted and Lynn Murphy lead a simple life. They have three wonderful children, their own small business, and a good relationship with friends and neighbors.

But that life is turned upside down when Ted signs a petition advocating traditional marriage. It is a small act of civic duty in his mind, but in the minds of others in the community it is viewed as an act of heartless bigotry.

Ted and his wife become the focus of a local protest that threatens not only to destroy their business but suffocate their religious freedom as well.

AFA Journal interviewed Vitagliano about his “friendships with people who are homosexual or have been, and have left that lifestyle when they became Christians.”

Vitagliano laments that a gay person, even the “the ordinary homosexual non-activist,” for some reason may not want to maintain a friendship with someone who opposes his or her right to marry: “I don’t know how many homosexuals would want to be friends with a Christian who signs what we would call a pro-marriage petition.” He says he wants gay people to “see that in the culture war, Christians are victims as much as they see themselves as victims.”

What happens when an ordinary Christian family is “accidentally” thrown into the fires of a heated culture war battle?

American Family Association’s new movie, Accidental Activist, follows the trials of Ted Murphy and his family as their reputations, friendships and even livelihood are threatened after he signs a petition supporting traditional marriage.

The story is propelled by the friendship of Ted who, along with his wife, runs a custom T-shirt business, and Ron who owns a nearby popular coffee shop. Ron is a homosexual.

…

Ed Vitagliano: I tried to portray Ted as an ordinary Christian who reacts in a very human way to his trials. Ted wants to know where God is in the midst of his troubles. Earlier in my Christian walk I sometimes felt like that. I wasn’t yet at a place to understand that stressful circumstances are often used to glorify His name. As I grew older and more experienced with my walk with the Lord, I realized that God doesn’t have to explain to me what He’s doing in my life. Ted faces the same dilemma.

Over the years, I've had friendships with people who are homosexual or have been, and have left that lifestyle when they became Christians. Some still struggle with it. For me, those relationships humanize the struggles of gay men and women. Admittedly, I’ve had limited experience; however, I realize they are human beings made in God’s image.

I wanted to make sure that Ron represented what I think is the ordinary homosexual non-activist who is just trying to live his life and find happiness. I wanted him to be seen as someone with whom a Christian could have a friendship. At the same time, I wanted to make it clear that there was an important disagreement between Ted and Ron.

AFAJ: Do you think such a friendship is possible?

EV: I think Christians would want to maintain friendships with people who have beliefs that are outside Christian belief – atheists, for example.

On the other hand, I don’t know how many homosexuals would want to be friends with a Christian who signs what we would call a pro-marriage petition. But if there are homosexuals who watch the movie, I hope they might give Christians a chance.

…

On the other side, I’d like for those in the homosexual rights movement to see that just because we Christians see marriage in a way that excludes homosexuals, that doesn’t mean we are motivated by hate. I want them to see that in the culture war, Christians are victims as much as they see themselves as victims.

Rep. Trent Franks, Republican of Arizona, joined Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and anti-choice activist Lila Rose on an FRC webcast yesterday  on “exposing America’s late-term abortion industry.” Franks, who recently introduced a bill that would institute a national ban on the rare practice of abortion after 20 weeks, compared his fight against reproductive rights to the ending of the Holocaust and the abolition of slavery. “We are the ones that rushed into Eastern Europe and arrested the Holocaust, we are the ones that said no more to slavery after thousands of years, and by the grace of God,  we’re going to be the ones that say that we’re going to protect our own children,” he said.

When Perkins asked him to elaborate on the stakes of his bill, Franks answered that if it fails, “I would suggest to you that we undermine everything that America was ever dreamed of to be and we step into that Sumerian night where the light of compassion has gone out and the survival of the fittest finally prevails over man…If we turn our backs on this, I’m afraid we’ve broken the back of what America really is.”

On last night's program, while discussing relief efforts in Oklahoma, Glenn Beck challenged faith leaders to step up and put their faith into action, challenging them to ask themselves "what have I done that atheists can't or won't?"

Of course, atheists can do pretty much anything that believers can do (except maybe bring people back from the dead or stop tornadoes) but Beck was urging people of faith need to make their light shine in a way that atheists can't. 

In particular, Beck cited an interview between CNN's Wolf Blitzer and a survivor of the Oklahoma tornado who turned out to be an atheist ... which Beck is convinced was a set-up by a CNN producer who wanted to promote atheism "or just doesn't like Christians."

"We are not fighting against flesh and bone," Beck said. "We are fighting the forces of spiritual darkness and it doesn't matter what people's intent are, but I will tell you that that was there for a reason":

In her latest column, Ann Coulter laments the 1965 immigration bill that ended a racist quota system which favored immigrants from northern and western Europe. She said that “Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act was designed to boost the number of immigrants from the Third World,” and now “we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel by holding ourselves out as the welfare ward of the world.”

Just in case it wasn’t clear already, Coulter is talking about Latino immigrants, warning that the “Gang of 8” immigration reform bill will “turn the country into Mexico” and expand the welfare state.

“Was there a vote when the country decided to turn itself into Mexico?” Coulter asked, arguing that if “Rubio’s amnesty goes through, the Republican Party is finished.”

Meanwhile, Sens. Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and John McCain are working feverishly to turn the country into Mexico.

So now I think all the scandals are intended to distract from Rubio’s amnesty bill.

For decades, Mexicans have been about 30 percent of all legal immigrants to the United States, while only a smidgen more than 1 percent come from Great Britain. Is that fair? Granted, their food is better, but why is it the norm is to have nearly 30 times as many Mexican as British immigrants?

We have been taking in more immigrants from Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and Colombia, individually, than from England, our mother country. There are nearly twice as many immigrants from El Salvador as from Canada, and 10 times as many as from Australia.

Why can’t the country be more or less the ethnic composition it always was? The 50-1 Latin American-to-European ratio isn’t a natural phenomenon that might result from, say, Europeans losing interest in coming here and poor Latin Americans providing some unique skill desperately needed in our modern, technology-based economy.

To the contrary, it’s result of an insane government policy. Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 Immigration Act was designed to artificially inflate the number of immigrants from the Third World, while making it virtually impossible for anyone from the nations that historically provided our immigrants to come here.

Pre-1965 immigrants were what made this country what it was for a reason: They were the pre-welfare state immigrants. From around 1630 to 1966, immigrants sank or swam. About a third of them couldn’t make it in America and went home – and those are the ones who weren’t rejected right off the boat for being sick, crippled or idiots.

That’s why corny stories of someone’s ancestors coming here a half-century ago are completely irrelevant. If their ancestors hadn’t succeeded, their great-grandchildren wouldn’t be here to tell the story because no one was given food stamps, free medical care and housing to stay (and vote Democrat).

Now we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel by holding ourselves out as the welfare ward of the world and specifically rejecting skilled immigrants.

As Milton Friedman said, you cannot have open borders and a welfare state. The reason a country’s average immigrant matters is that the losers never go home – they go on welfare. (Maybe if they had to work, immigrants wouldn’t have as much time to build bombs.) Airy statements about wanting to end welfare aren’t going to change that implacable fact.

It should not come as a surprise that a majority of recent immigrants are following a path that’s the exact opposite of earlier immigrants. The immigrant story of lore is that the first generation is poor but works hard, then the second, third and fourth generations soar up the socioeconomic ladder.

But innumerable studies have shown that Mexican first-generation immigrants work like maniacs – and then the second, third and fourth generations plunge headlong into the underclass.

By now, Mexicans are the largest immigrant group in America, with about 50 million Hispanics living here legally.

Marco Rubio’s amnesty bill will soon make it 80 million. First, there are at least 11 million illegal immigrants, a majority from Mexico, who will be instantly legalized. Then we’ll get their entire extended families under our chain migration system.

I wouldn’t want that many Japanese! I wouldn’t want that many Dutch (not that there are that many Dutch)! Why do we have to become a different country? Was there a vote when the country decided to turn itself into Mexico? No other country has ever just decided to turn itself into another country like this.

The nation’s plutocrats are lined up with the Democratic Party in a short-term bid to get themselves cheap labor (subsidized by the rest of us), which will give the Democratic Party a permanent majority. If Rubio’s amnesty goes through, the Republican Party is finished. It will be the “Nancy Pelosi Democratic Party” versus the “Chuck Schumer Republican Party.”

Glenn Beck spent much of today's radio broadcast talking about the IRS scandal, which eventually merged with his apparent belief that there is some sort of all-encompassing government surveillance apparatus in operation that records literally every email, phone conversation, and electronic communication and stores them all in a massive database in Utah.

As such, Beck wants to know why Congress is even bothering holding hearings or launching investigations when all they have to do is go and get the records from that database and find out exactly what happened on everything from the IRS to Benghazi.

"America, it is time we turned the security state against itself," Beck said. "Why ask for it?  Just go into the system that we paid for and you built for our quote 'protection.' You want to find it? Why are you waiting? The more you wait, the more time they have to delete.  Go in and get it.  You have it.  Or is that security system you've built for our protection not really for our protection?  The American people have just been raped; why are you asking the rapist to hurry up with the swab test?"

For some reason, Matt Barber and Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel have decided to take some time away from their normal anti-gay activism to weigh in on Benghazi by delivering petitions demanding a Congressional investigation into the attacks.

Why such an investigation would even be necessary is beyond us, since Barber has already made up his mind and decided that the entire thing is "Watergate on steroids." But unlike Richard Nixon, Barber said, neither President Obama nor Hillary Clinton have the dignity or "character" to "recognize that it is over" and resign for office for the role they supposedly played in this "vicious, horrible cover-up":

A coalition of Tea Party and other right-wing activists sent a letter to the Senate yesterday calling the Gang of Eight’s bipartisan immigration reform plan “unsalvageable” and urging senators to scrap it altogether. While the media has focused on better-known signers of the letter – including right-wing talkers Erick Erickson, Michele Malkin and Laura Ingraham – many of the letter’s signers were all too familiar to us here at RWW.

Here are eight other pieces of advice on immigration reform from signers of the Tea Party letter.

1. “No one is immune to the illegal who drives wildly drunk, or the wanna-be gang-banger who needs to machete innocent citizens to gain entry and respect into the Latino or other gangs. We have uncovered the fact that Americans are under assault, a fact under-reported by the press, and unconnected by our elected leaders at all levels of government…. Insist that our elected officials remember that ‘We, the People,’ not the illegal aliens, are their constituents. And that the racism perpetrated by illegal invaders upon Americans of all ethnic backgrounds is real.”  
   -- Maria Espinoza, director of a project linked to the nativist Numbers USA intended “to honor and remember Americans who have been killed by illegal aliens”


2.  “Native-born Hispanic Americans, who make up most Hispanic voters, have a majority of the children that are born to them are illegitimate, very high rates of welfare use. So this is a description of an overwhelmingly Democratic voter group. Not all of them, obviously, because there’s a big group and there’s a lot of differences among them. But generally speaking, Hispanic voters are Democrats, and so the idea of importing more of them as a solution to the Republican Party’s problems is kind of silly.”
   -- Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian on why Republicans shouldn’t bother appealing to Latino voters


3. “Having this amnesty is suicide for the Republican Party because they’re going to vote Democratic, and that’s why the Democrats are pushing it. And the reason is because they come from a country where there’s no tradition or expectation of limited government…. They think government should be there to give orders and solve their problems and give them a handout when they need it.”
   -- Phyllis Schlafly, who has also expressed nostalgia for the days of “Irish, Italian, Jewish” immigration


4. “If this country becomes 30 per cent Hispanic we will no longer be America."
   -- Vision America's Rick Scarborough, who also contends that AIDS is divine punishment for homosexuality


5. “This British Conservative Party has watered down traditional conservatism to such an extent that some conservatives have formed an alternative, the English Defense League (EDL), which has spawned the British Freedom Party. This group has been strongly attacked in the media, here and abroad, as “far-right” or worse. But I had the opportunity to meet their leaders, Kevin Carroll and Tommy Robinson, at the 9/11 conference in New York City sponsored by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer which was designed in part to organize resistance to global Islam and safeguard our right of free speech against the advance of Sharia, or Islamic law. … Carroll and Robinson want a patriotic alternative to the British Conservative Party that will promote traditional values.”
   -- Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid, recommending that the Republican Party emulate the English Defense League, a violent, radical nativist group


6. “And sadly, what we’re seeing in many of these populations – and I don’t mean to pick on the Somalis, they just happen to be worth picking on – is that they are in fact sort of ghettos in places like Minnesota, where they contributed substantially to the election of the first Muslim Brother – oh, excuse me, first Muslim – to the United States Congress. Keith Ellison from Minnesota. But the concern that I have is that this group is not simply establishing itself and over time becoming a force to reckon with politically in this country. It’s also incubating two things: jihadists…and the other thing is they’re incubating Sharia.”
   -- Anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney, birther and the originator of Michele Bachmann’s smears against Muslim civil servants


7. “Is this one of those backdoor opportunities to allow people in the next five months to get the opportunity to vote? Will we see Janet Napolitano and the president come out with a new edict that says since we allow these people to be here legally, we’re now going to allow them to vote? How far down the rabbit whole will it go?”
   -- Former congressman Allen West


8. "I know the solution. Take a plane load of them and dump them in Somalia. Make no secret of it and tell the illegals, every time we catch them, that is where they are going. 99% of them will head back to the border on their own."
   -- Judson Phillips, prominent birther and head of Tea Party Nation

Other signers of the letter include Gary Bauer, who has warned that gay rights and pro-choice policies will lead to “God taking his hand of protection off of our country”; Elaine Donnelly, one of most hyperbolic opponents of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; Ken Eldred, a top financier of the Seven Mountains Dominionism movement; Brigette Gabriel, who warns that elementary school classrooms are becoming “recruiting ground[s] for Islam”; David Horowitz, who thinks that conservative activist Grover Norquist is a secret Muslim who has “infiltrated” the Republican Party; and the American Family Association's Sandy Rios who said last month of President Obama, “I don’t think he loves the country like people who were born and did grow up here.”

Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin yesterday chatted with Frank Gaffney for an entire program about the forthcoming “Islamic Republic of America” where Boykin’s granddaughters are forced to wear burkas. After his usual anti-Muslim ramblings, Boykin explained that the Islamic conquest of America can only take place once people lose “traditional American values.” He argued that the Obama administration is trying to get rid of such values by repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the ban on women in combat, which he linked to an increase in reported sexual assaults.

It’s important to understand that this administration in particular has sexualized the army, I mean there’s been so much of this social engineering that all revolves around gender and sexual behavior. What we’re doing though is we are setting ourselves up for absolute failure. Yes, sexual assault is at an all-time, unprecedented high. But then when you look at the fact that we have repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell so that we’ve mixed people of the same sex with same-sex attraction at a time when our military is under great stress, that’s a problem; now we’re trying to put women into ground combat roles where you cannot violate the laws of nature, plain and simple, and we’re going to put women into units where there is absolutely no privacy, where you are inviting exactly what is occurring already, and that is sexual assault, sexual attraction and all of these things.

What is this all about? Why are we doing this? Well the answer is the people that are making these decisions do not care one thing about military readiness; in fact I would say most of them don’t even understand military readiness. They have an agenda and they are fulfilling that agenda by going after the military, which at the end of the day still maintains very traditional American values. While we’ve got people in the military that do some bad things from time to time, at the end of the day we still have the uniform code of military justice and it still finds, for example, adultery to punishable under the uniform code of military justice; at one time sodomy was punishable under the uniform code of military justice. It has maintained very traditional American values and what this is is an assault on the last bastion of traditional values in America because you can’t change this society until you change the military.