Fighting the Right

After comparing the “radical homosexual agenda” to the iceberg that sank the Titanic, Truth in Action Ministries yesterday discussed how homosexuality results from a “deep pathology” and deficient “biblical” parenting and today went into how gays and lesbians are stealthily using anti-bullying programs to turn kids gay. The claim is common in Religious Right circles, and Jerry Newcombe told host Carmen Pate on Truth that Transforms today that gay rights supporters want to “indoctrinate children” into “a deadly lifestyle” through anti-bullying programs.

Pate: As we talk about the radical homosexual agenda and their attempts to take their agenda into the public school, we see evidence day in and day out in the news, in activities that are coming up in public schools, activities that are put together by an organization called Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. They seem to be set on taking their agenda and teaching our children that their lifestyle is actually an inherent identity. How do you see this infiltrating our children’s school systems?

Newcombe: It’s something where they are basically taking a legitimate concern, which is that of bullying, and they are using that serious problem that does happen as an opportunity by which they will then promote and essentially indoctrinate children and expose children to the acceptability of the homosexual lifestyle. Now bullying is wrong but so also is indoctrination into a deadly lifestyle and frankly homosexuality is a deadly lifestyle and that fact is withheld from the children.

Later in the program, Newcombe suggested that it may not be a coincidence and is “ironic” that the anti-bullying Day of Silence takes place on April 20th, Adolf Hitler’s birthday. While the Day of Silence last year took place on April 15th, as the date has changed over the years, Newcombe sees something more sinister:

Newcombe: It’s sad to see groups like GLSEN be accepted by the teacher's establishment and then allow the platform to go into the public schools and try and indoctrinate children. For example, they have something called the Day of Silence. Now they chose April 20 of all days to be the Day of Silence, I looked that up, I was like, ‘isn’t that Adolf Hitler’s birthday,’ I looked it up and sure enough it is Adolf Hitler’s birthday. I don’t think there’s a link there but how ironic. But they are using this day as a means by which to promote their lifestyle as if it is a positive thing.

Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of the Catholic diocese of Peoria, Illinois, likened President Obama to Adolf Hilter and Joseph Stalin, along with past French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, on Sunday while condemning Obama’s “radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda.” He said that Catholics in America are in a “war” as a result of the administration’s mandate for religiously-based institutions to cover contraceptives, and compared politicians who back the mandate to Judas Iscariot.

Listen:

For 2,000 years the enemies of Christ have certainly tried their best. But think about it. The Church survived and even flourished during centuries of terrible persecution, during the days of the Roman Empire.

The Church survived barbarian invasions. The Church survived wave after wave of Jihads. The Church survived the age of revolution. The Church survived Nazism and Communism. And in the power of the resurrection, the Church will survive the hatred of Hollywood, the malice of the media, and the mendacious wickedness of the abortion industry.

The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate.

May God have mercy especially on the souls of those politicians who pretend to be Catholic in church, but in their public lives, rather like Judas Iscariot, betray Jesus Christ by how they vote and how they willingly cooperate with intrinsic evil.

As Christians we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, but as Christians we must also stand up for what we believe and be ready to fight to defend our faith. The days in which we live now require heroic Catholicism, not casual Catholicism. We can no longer be Catholics by accident, but instead be Catholics by conviction.

In our own families, in our parishes, where we live and where we work – like that very first apostolic generation – we must be bold witnesses to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We must be a fearless army of Catholic men, ready to give everything we have for the Lord, who gave everything for our salvation.

Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like those first disciples before the Resurrection locked together in the Upper Room.

In the late 19th century, Bismark waged his “Kulturkamf,” a culture war against the Roman Catholic Church, closing down every Catholic school and hospital, convent and monastery in Imperial Germany. Clemenceau, nicknamed “the priest eater,” tried the same thing in France in the first decade of the 20th Century.

Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care.

In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, President Obama – with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.

Now things have come to such a pass in our beloved country that this is a battle that we could lose, but before the awesome judgement seat of Almighty God this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral.

Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, yesterday took up a defiant tone against charges that he used racially-insensitive language during his radio show in his attack on President Obama and civil rights activists over the Trayvon Martin case, saying that he is being “mugged” by the media for simply “criticizing this rush to judgment.” Land on his show had said that “it was Mr. Obama” who turned the Trayvon Martin shooting into a national issue” by pouring “gasoline on the racialist fires” in order to help “gin up the black vote” for his re-election with the aid of “race hustlers.”

But black SBC pastors, including the incoming-president of the convention, criticized Land’s comments and one threatened to introduce a resolution condemning Land at an upcoming meeting, and other Baptists commented that it was reminiscent of Southern Baptists’ past work against the civil rights movement and helped feed “the deep-seated resentment toward people of color held by some white Southern Baptists.”

Land’s problems didn’t end there.

Baptist author and blogger Aaron Weaver found that Land not only plagiarized his controversial rant from a Washington Times column by Jeffrey Kuhner, but also that Land has repeatedly plagiarized editorials verbatim from other right-wing publications like the Washington Examiner and Investor’s Business Daily.

Not a good move for the SBC’s “chief ethicist,” who used his title as ethicist while defending his comments about the Trayvon Martin case: “defending people who are being lynched in the court of public opinion is part of my job as an ethicist.”

Rather than apologize for the two incidents, Land instead said he is simply sorry that others have “misunderstood” his comments on Martin or his blatant plagiarism.

First, Land admitted to failing “to provide appropriate verbal attributions” during his show but not to plagiarism, saying he regrets “if anyone feels they were deceived or misled”:

On occasion I have failed to provide appropriate verbal attributions on my radio broadcast, Richard Land Live!, and for that I sincerely apologize. I regret if anyone feels they were deceived or misled.

…

While I do not use a script, listeners familiar with the program know that both the audio of the program and material I reference during the program are posted on the program’s Web site during or immediately following the broadcast.

However, Weaver notes that Land unmistakably tried “to pass off Kuhner’s words as his own” and even “attempted to make Kuhner’s words his own by adding extra comments and using different adjectives,” pointing out that while Land includes a link to Kuhner’s article on his website no author can “write a 500-word essay, pull 250-300 words verbatim or nearly verbatim from someone else and simply include a short footnote at the bottom.”

Land kept up with his “sorry if you misunderstood” mantra in a letter to SBC president Bryant Wright posted late on yesterday where he again offered a non-apology about the “misunderstanding” regarding his comments, complaining that he “overestimated the progress” the country has made on issues involving race:

I am writing to express my deep regret for any hurt or misunderstanding my comments about the Trayvon Martin case have generated. It grieves me to hear that any comments of mine have to any degree set back the cause of racial reconciliation in Southern Baptist or American life. I have been committed to the cause of racial reconciliation my entire ministry. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister has been a personal hero of mine since I surrendered to the ministry in 1962.

…

Clearly, I overestimated the progress that has been made in slaying the ugly racist ghosts of the past in our history. I also clearly underestimated the extent to which we must go out of our way not to be misunderstood when we speak to issues where race is a factor.

Please know that I apologize to any and all who were hurt or offended by my comments. I will certainly recommit myself to seeking to address controversial issues with even more sensitivity in the future.

We reported yesterday on inflammatory remarks made by longtime NRA board member Ted Nugent at the group’s national convention on Saturday. Nugent was trying to rally attendees for Romney, who addressed the convention a day earlier, but he shot himself in the foot instead with extreme and violent rhetoric. 

Our President and Attorney General, Vice President, Hillary Clinton, they’re criminals, they’re criminals. […]

 

It isn’t the enemy that ruined America. It’s good people who bent over and let the enemy in.

 

If the coyote’s in your living room pissing on your couch, it’s not the coyote’s fault. It’s your fault for not shooting him. […]

 

We’re Americans because we defied the king. We didn’t negotiate or compromise with the king. We defied the emperors. We are patriots. We are Braveheart.

 

We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November. Any questions?

As is tradition, the Florida Family Association is raising money to hire a plane to fly over Orlando with a banner “to warn families” about “same-sex revelry” at Disney World. The FFA claims that Gay Days at Disney in June, which last year brought approximately 150,000 people to the theme park even though it is not an official Disney event, led to steep declines in attendance as families fear witnessing “thousands of same-sex couples holding hands, hugging, kissing and wearing tee-shirts that promoted their lifestyle.” “Just like activists’ attempts to gain access to youthful minds through LGBT characters in video games,” referring to the group’s fervent protests of Star Wars: The Old Republic for allowing users to enter same-sex relationships, “they also want to impact a captured audience of tens of thousands of children during the first Saturday of Summer Break”:

How would you feel if you entered the Magic Kingdom anticipating a normal day of fun with your family only to witness thousands of same-sex couples holding hands, hugging, kissing and wearing tee-shirts that promoted their lifestyle?

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender) activists converge on the Magic Kingdom the first Saturday of every June for an event called Gay Day at Disney.

…

Just like activists’ attempts to gain access to youthful minds through LGBT characters in video games they also want to impact a captured audience of tens of thousands of children during the first Saturday of Summer Break.

Last year Florida Family Association hired an aircraft company to pull a banner for ten hours the day before and ten hours the day of to warn families about this offensive event before they arrived at the park on Saturday.

The airplane banner influenced mainstream family attendance at Disney during Gay Day to DROP between 50% to 60%. We believe this aircraft banner warning to families SPARED TENS OF THOUSANDS of children from the unexpected exposure to this coming out party. This airplane banner is the most cost effective manner to warn families before they:

• Expose their children to same-sex revelry.

• Spend hundreds of dollars on tickets.

• Pay for parking.

• Commit a day for fun now ruined.

• Purchase food and novelties.

Erick Stackelbeck, the sports reported turned terrorism analyst for the Christian Broadcasting Netowrk, hosted a segment on the 700 Club today looking into how “political correctness takes over in mainstream reporting on Islamic terrorism.” Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) told Stackelbeck that “our media is refusing to tell the story” about Islamic extremists because the media “come from a decidedly leftist worldview and a secular—almost an anti-secular in a way—because they’ve embraced such a radical worldview and they impose that filter through every subject they touch.”

Following the segment, 700 Club host Pat Robertson, who routinely compares his anti-Muslim politics to the fight against the Nazis, echoed Bachmann's view, saying that today the media is afraid to call out Muslim extremists, unlike in the past when the media was eager to ridicule Nazis and Communists and even “these fierce evil Japs.”

Watch an excerpt of Bachmann’s appearance on the 700 Club and Robertson’s commentary here:

Bachmann: The world is being turned upside down because of radical Islam and our media is refusing to tell the story…. They come from a decidedly leftist worldview and a secular—almost an anti-secular in a way—because they’ve embraced such a radical worldview and they impose that filter through every subject they touch.”

…

Robertson: In World War II we didn’t have any trouble identifying the Nazis, no problem at all, Adolf Hitler was a bad man, the Nazis were bad people, same thing later on with the Communists, of course there was a third column here that was trying to make Joe Stalin look like a folk hero. Certainly in World War II look what we did with Hirohito and the Japanese and the cartoons that came out and the ridicule that we had, these fierce evil Japs, well so you say, ‘that was a little bit over the top,’ well not really if they’re trying to kill you. The same thing is true with these others; they want to destroy Western civilization. They want to bring us back to the Arabia of the 7th and 8th centuries, that’s what you find in the Qur’an.

In recent weeks, we've been focusing a lot on the difficulty that David Barton has accurately reporting on contemporary issues that are easily verifiable and we have been doing so because it demonstrates his utter unreliability, especially as it pertains to the niche he has carved out as the Religious Right's favorite historian. 

After all, if Barton cannot even tell the truth about things that happened just last year that can be verified with a quick Google search, why should anyone believe anything he has to say about the Founding Era, especially when many of his claims are based on rare documents that very few have ever seen? 

On today's episode of "WallBuilders Live," Barton and co-host Rick Green were discussing the Religious Right's on-going crusade against openly gay Houston Mayor Annise Parker.  During the discussion, Barton lamented that out of some five million people in Houston, nobody was willing to step up to offer a serious challenge to Parker during the last election and that a firefighter who did run against her came within 800 votes of defeating her despite only spending $50,000:

Five million people in Houston and she ran and was elected mayor two years ago. At that time, a whole bunch of churches and pastors got together and said this is unacceptable, not in Houston, not where we've got this kind of vote and so they started recruiting two years ago to get a candidate to take her out, because that was the problem they had two years ago, just not a good candidate. So they worked for two years and they come to this year and still nobody is willing to step up. So a fireman stepped up ... I think the fireman spent like fifty thousand dollars and he came within eight hundred votes of beating her.

The fireman that Barton cites was Fernando Herrera and he was actually just one of five opponents that Parker faced in her last election ... and he came in third ... and Parker received over 42,000 more votes than he did: 

Houston Mayor Annise Parker won a second term Tuesday, but she faced fierce competition from five opponents.

Parker was challenged by Kevin Simms, Amanda Ulman, Dave Wilson, deputy fire chief Fernando Herrera and Jack O'Connor.

Parker received 58,939 of 115,881 votes. O'Connor had 17,153 votes, Herrera had 16,646, Wilson was fourth with 13,589 votes, Simms had 7,733 and Ullman had 1,821 votes.

It is honestly getting to the point where we now have to check nearly every factual assertion that Barton makes because so many of them turn out to be fundamentally false.