Fighting the Right

As Brian noted in the last post, the Religious Right is hard at work trying to link the abuse scandal at Penn State to homosexuality and it is no surprise to see the AFA's Bryan Fischer making the connection as well, declaring that the lesson to be taken from the Freeh Report is that gays must be kept out of the Boy Scouts: 

Leave it to Mission America president Linda Harvey to claim that LGBT-inclusive Gay Straight Alliances and anti-bullying programs are creating a child abuse epidemic in public schools. “The unreported molestations facilitated daily by the ‘gay’ lobby’s insistence on access to children must surely dwarf anything done by Jerry Sandusky,” Harvey writes in World Net Daily, arguing that educators and gay rights advocates are “grooming” children “to become victims of homosexual pedophilia” and sending an “engraved invitation” to “untold numbers of pedophiles and pederasts”:

An investigative report has found that Penn State President Graham Spanier, head football coach Joe Paterno and others at Penn State turned a blind eye for years to Jerry Sandusky’s molestation of boys.

They were not the perpetrators, but their cover-up allowed Sandusky’s assaults to continue. When grown-ups who are in a position to prevent predatory behavior fail to do so, the message to the victims is, “This must be OK with them.” That further betrayal adds to bodily assault, the rape of the spirit.

Yet we have turned a blind eye to the same betrayal happening every day to thousands of children in our schools and communities. We should be outraged at the routine “grooming” of children in our schools to become victims of homosexual pedophilia. How are our kids being blithely set up to accept victimization when it happens?

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So, the engraved invitation has been sent to untold numbers of pedophiles and pederasts. School “non-discrimination” policies on “sexual orientation” keep that door open and all protectors of children at arm’s length. The National Education Association has numerous policies supporting the “safe” (read: unchallenged) expression of homosexual behavior by children in schools. These are often pushed by its “GLBT” Teachers’ Caucus.

Schools feel the increasing presence, whether they like it or not, of advocacy groups like the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, and the Human Rights Campaign. The newest campaigns of both these groups is to reach elementary students. If we cooperate, it’s easy for some children to become targets.

Adults may approach them, and they won’t realize it’s not only outrageous, but illegal. It may be a coach or assistant coach. It may be the college student who was the invited speaker at your school’s “gay-straight alliance” meeting. It may be a 24 year old you met as a 12 year old when your school’s homosexual club marched in the town’s pride parade, carrying the school banner to support “LGBT” youth.

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And we complain about Penn State? The unreported molestations facilitated daily by the “gay” lobby’s insistence on access to children must surely dwarf anything done by Jerry Sandusky, horrific as his actions were.

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As bad as heterosexual molestation is, it isn’t being packaged as the natural outgrowth of a “right,” an element of “social justice.” Same-sex molestation has always been easier to facilitate in venues for children, since children and adults of the same sex do sometimes use the same restrooms, go on camp outs and – as we saw with Sandusky – shower in the same facilities. Access is easier, and the blind eye we are turning due to the repositioning of truth by the “gay” lobby is making the risk greater than ever.

On Wednesday, Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families attempted to tie the Obama administration’s support for gay rights…to violent crime. Bauer said that the escalating crime rate in the city of Chicago is due to children growing up in fatherless homes, which he maintained is a result of Democratic policies that have “made it comfortable for many women to not have husbands in the home” and even same-sex marriage. “Obama and the Democrats have embraced the radical idea of men marrying other men,” Bauer sneered, “How is that going to help the black family?”

I'd like to go to Chicago for a second. I about fell out of my chair watching a recent CBS interview with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. He was lamenting the values, or lack of values, of Chicago's gang culture, as nearly three hundred people have been killed in Chicago this year, many of them little kids. That's higher casualties than we're suffering in Afghanistan. Here's what Mayor Rahm Emanuel said:

"It is about values. As I said then [referring to when a 7-year-old girl was shot and killed last month], who raised you? How were you raised? And I don't buy this case where people say they don't have values. They do have values. They have the wrong values. Don't come near the kids -- don't touch them."

Well, thanks for speaking up Mr. Mayor, you're asking the right questions, but sadly you can't come up with the right answers. Certainly these kids aren't getting their values from their fathers because they don't have fathers in their households. For the past fifty years, Rahm Emanuel's party, the Democratic Party, has made it comfortable for many women to not have husbands in the home. Now Obama and the Democrats have embraced the radical idea of men marrying other men! How is that going to help the black family?

When Emanuel worked in the Clinton White House, the response to gang violence, do you remember this, was midnight basketball programs. It didn't work, midnight basketball programs don't replace fathers. And, of course, it was around that time when Democrats and their media allies did their best to convince us that values really didn't matter. Even the disgusting values demonstrated in the Oval Office with a White House intern.

The fact is that values do matter. There is no government program dreamed up by Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or Rahm Emanuel that can make up for the breakdown of the family. And this election be about more than just about economics.

Recently, the "ex-gay" organization Exodus International shocked the Religious Right when it announced that it would no longer promote so called "reparative therapy" which claims to help gays change their sexual orientation.

The announcement has, not surprisingly, angered professional anti-gay activists and today Linda Harvey lashed out at Exodus president Alan Chambers, saying that his admission that he still struggles with same-sex attraction demonstrates "very poor judgment" and blasting the idea that gays can be Christians because the Christian Church would never welcome  a "compassionate pedophile":

The group's president, Alan Chambers, has been under a firestorm of criticism lately because of several statements he has made lately that reflect poorly on his understanding of the basics of Christian faith.

For one, Chambers has said he doesn't believe a person can change his or her so-called sexual orientation. Now, there's not anything like this invented term called "sexual orientation" in Scripture in the first place, but then he also says that he still struggles himself with sexual feelings for other males. This shows very poor judgment as the leader of this ministry to, first of all, be experiencing this and secondly, to announce it to the whole world.

Of course a person can leave homosexuality; there are thousands of people who have done it and God's word clearly states that he can deliver us from sin. And the proud, open sinner who is publicly proclaiming it as good in defiance of God's word? It is highly questionable that such a person is saved.

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We would not be making this exception for well-adjusted adulterers would we? How about a compassionate pedophile? What about incest like two brothers involved in homosexuality? Why not just defy God's word on this?

This is plain old rebellion and worship of self and our own impulses, not the worship of our Creator and Savior. Please join me in praying for Alan Chambers and Exodus, but also in praying for Alan's influence to diminish unless he recants this untruthful misrepresentation of the Gospel.

Ron Crews, the executive director of the Chaplains Alliance for Religious Liberty and a former Republican politician, appeared alongside Family Research Council president Tony Perkins today on Washington Watch Weekly to push back against reports showing that only a small number of chaplains say they have been negatively impacted by the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. While the Religious Right’s prediction that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would have catastrophic consequences on the military and national security contradicts nearly all of the evidence, Crews insisted that President Obama and his appointees are “turning our military into a social experiment to promote the cause of the homosexual agenda in this country” at “the expense ultimately of what our military is intended to do and that is to provide for the protection of this country, to defend this nation.” Later, Crews said that the military may experience a significant decline in “retention and recruitment” because parents will not want their children to serve in a “two-man barrack, a two person barrack, where they may be placed with a homosexual soldier.”

Perkins: The Department of Defense is kind of suppressing these differing views, only kind of giving a platform to those who are embracing this new policy, where do you think that pressure is coming from within the Department of Defense?

Crews: It’s coming from the very top. The senior leaders of the military are all presidential appointees, the senior attorney, Jeh Johnson, of the military is a presidential appointee. So these senior leaders fall in line with the president and his policy, who is turning our military into a social experiment, I believe, at the expense ultimately of what our military is intended to do and that is to provide for the protection of this country, to defend this nation. The current administration is turning our military into a social experiment to promote the cause of the homosexual agenda in this country. I am very concerned about the direction that the current administration has been leading our military over the last couple of years.

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Crews: The jury is still out. I’m concerned about long-term retention and recruitment. How many moms and dads are going to want their children to go into a military where their son or daughter may be in a barrack that they have no control over, in a two-man barrack, a two person barrack, where they may be placed with a homosexual soldier and they have no recourse, so we’re concerned.

As we noted last month, the Religious Right and their allies in Congress are very angry about a decision by the Defense Department to no longer allow publication of editions of the Bible carrying the official emblems of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard.

Now, Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-MS) has sent a letter to the Defense Department on behalf of himself and several other members of Congress demanding to know "how the decision to revoke this trademark permission was made and what the Department of Defense is doing to ensure that the religious freedom of the members of our military is preserved and protected."

This morning, Nunnelee was on "Today's Issues" with Tony Perkins where we asserted that "this is just another example of government assault on religion" while voicing his outrage over the whole thing because "to say that you can't link your service in the United States Military and the comfort that you find in the Word of God is just absurd." 

And it is absurd ... but that is not what anyone is saying, of course; the Defense Department is not telling members of the Armed Forces that they can't take comfort in the Bible, but merely that B&H Publishing no longer has permission to publish editions of the Bible that bear official military emblems. In fact, a B&H spokesman told Fox News that the company had merely "replaced the official seals with generic insignias [and the Bible] continue to sell well and provide spiritual guidance and comfort to those who serve.”

But for Nunnelee, it is proof that there is clearly an "assault on religious liberty practiced by Christians" which is designed to undermine the Bible:

Doug Mainwaring of the National Capital Tea Party Patriots took to the Washington Times today to ridicule Rep. Barney Frank’s recent same-sex wedding, asserting that marriage equality for gays and lesbians is an effort by the left to enlarge the role of government. “For them, it’s not about homosexual rights, nor is it about equality, fairness or freedom,” Mainwaring writes. “It is about the weakening of the two most hallowed structures of civil society - family and faith - which often stand in the way of government making further inroads into our lives.”

He said that Rep. Frank’s wedding was “skewering the very concept of marriage” and represented a “mockery, a parody, a staggering caricature of the most fundamental and towering of American Institutions.” Mainwaring concluded that same-sex marriage is nothing but a “joke” to the left and just another sign “of the contempt our liberal establishment harbors for Main Street America.”

Most Americans - yes, even those who may have a divorce in their past, view marriage as something sacred. It’s a solemn moment of commitment before God or, if not God, in front of their families and the community. Clearly, the intelligentsia in attendance were not most Americans.

An irreverent display, this was a scene from a cheesy comedy movie, skewering the very concept of marriage. No one would mistake this for a solemn moment when two souls are joined together for eternity. Instead, it was an absurd frolic, an “Alice in Wonderland” moment.

The politicos and pundits who aggressively promote same-sex marriage, many of whom were present at this event, have revealed something about themselves they perhaps didn’t intend to show: Same-sex marriage is a joke to them. It’s nothing more than political opportunism, straight from the liberal Democrats’ timeworn, dog-eared playbook - an attempt to corral and cordon off yet another minority group for the Democrats, adding yet another square to their patchwork AstroTurf quilt.

Putting their personal seal of approval on this act of contempt toward marriage by virtue of their attendance were House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, former Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry and House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer.

Mr. Frank’s vows are emblematic of the problem with the same-sex marriage lobby in this country: For them, it’s not about homosexual rights, nor is it about equality, fairness or freedom. It is about the weakening of the two most hallowed structures of civil society - family and faith - which often stand in the way of government making further inroads into our lives. The ideal world for liberals would be one where we all became like “Julia” on BarackObama.com - individuals deprived of the influence and support of family and faith. In that way, government can more easily have its way with us.

The New York Times wrote, “Ms. Pelosi said at the reception on Saturday that it was appropriate that a landmark same-sex wedding take place around the Fourth of July. ‘It’s about expanding freedom.’ “

Far from a cherished milestone in the advancement of American freedom, the Frank-Ready wedding was a mockery, a parody, a staggering caricature of the most fundamental and towering of American Institutions.

If this is how Washington’s political class views marriage, we should run - not walk - from its counsels.

The boisterous laughter and snickers among the 300 gathered guests evoked by Mr. Frank’s frivolous vows were a display of the contempt our liberal establishment harbors for Main Street America.