Brian Tashman's blog

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) is latching onto a chain email conspiracy theory about the CSCOPE curriculum, which according to detractors promotes Islam, Communism and anti-Americanism.

Of course, the charges are completely baseless, but the Texas congressman is following Glenn Beck and WorldNetDaily in attacking CSCOPE and even linking it to President Obama.

Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network got his hands on Stockman campaign literature asking members to stand with Stockman “to fight stop [sic] President Obama’s radical take over [sic] of our Texas Schools.”

That’s right; Stockman’s education-themed letter includes two typos:

As Quinn notes, CSCOPE was designed by Texas teachers and has nothing to do with the Obama administration.

But then again, this is Steve Stockman after all.

Furious over President Obama’s speech to Planned Parenthood, William Murray took to WorldNetDaily today to compare Obama to the idolatrous and evil king Manasseh for having “crossed God’s red line by petitioning Him to bless abortionists.”

“No president has stood for death and the destruction of the true church of Christ as has Barack Obama,” Murray writes. He goes on to imply that Obama is a Muslim, arguing that only in Islam do people ask God “to assist in murder.”

No president has stood for death and the destruction of the true church of Christ as has Barack Obama. He is a modern-day Manasseh. Barack Obama has supported the takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood of several nations, and the result has been the brutal treatment and murder of Christians. In Syria his administration has supported Islamist fighters who have bombed schools and slaughtered women and children. It is no surprise then that he would take to the stage and ask God to bless abortionists who kill the most helpless and innocent among us – as he did at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser last week.

President Barack Hussein Obama seems to love the death of others, and he seems to believe that God should bless those who murder the innocent. Not since Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, has a national leader asked for blessings through the sacrifice of babies. Manasseh sacrificed his own son to the Canaanite god Moloch, who was worshiped with the burning of children. Barack Obama has crossed God’s red line by petitioning Him to bless abortionists. Barack Obama now rivals Manasseh.

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The focus of the Religious Freedom Coalition, of which I am chairman, is the persecuted church. A national leader asking God to bless abortionists is more than an attack on the church; it is an attack on God Himself. In his closing remarks at the Planned Parenthood convention, Barack Hussein Obama petitioned God to bless baby killers.

There is only one modern religion in which God is openly petitioned to assist in murder, and that can be heard in the cry of “Allahu Akbar” by Muslims as they slaughter Christians in Nigerian villages or set off bombs at the Boston Marathon. Perhaps if Obama had paid more attention at church as an adult, and less attention at mosque as a child, he would not ask God to bless those who kill the innocent.

Mike Huckabee today brought far-right activist Don Feder on to his show to address Feder’s latest column, which argues that the Obama administration is intentionally ignoring threats from Islamic extremists while trying to increase the country’s Muslim population.

Feder told Huckabee that while Obama condemned people who slander Mohammad in his 2012 remarks to the United Nations he never mentioned slanders against Jesus Christ, and Huckabee agreed.

Of course, Feder and Huckabee are wrong, as in the very next sentence of his address, where he condemned blasphemy laws, Obama said “those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.”

Feder claimed Obama is “about as pro-Islam as it is possible for a non-Muslim to be” and “will do anything to protect Islam.”

After Huckabee asked him why “liberals are very defensive of Islam,” Feder argued that liberals have “allied themselves with Islam” over their shared “anti-American” and “totalitarian” worldviews, along with the left’s supposed bias towards “Third World people over Western people.”

Feder: I think as a devout leftist, if I can put it in those terms, I think our President is about as pro-Islam as it is possible for a non-Muslim to be. The reason that he keeps telling us: don’t jump to conclusions; don’t be logical; don’t follow the train of evidence; don’t stigmatize Islam. Remember when he went to the United Nations last year and he said the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam, he didn’t say the future must not belong to those who slander Jesus.

Huckabee: No.

Feder: This is his mindset. He will do anything to protect Islam and to protect the reputation of Islam. That’s why after the Fort Hood massacre by a man who used to hand out business cards that said ‘Soldier of Allah,’ who shouted ‘Allah is Great’ while he was gunning down his fellow soldiers, who attended a radical mosque, and the President said, ‘gee, I don’t know why he’d do a thing like this.’

Huckabee: It is utterly bizarre. Don, you’ve been following this kind of thing for a long time, you’ve been writing about it for years and years and years, I don’t understand and maybe you can enlighten me, liberals are very defensive of Islam, very defensive. They never want to assume that somebody connected to Islam would do something radical and horrible, and yet liberals will excoriate Christians for believing in traditional marriage. But Islam, they’re not just anti-gay marriage, they believe basically in executing people who are homosexual. And women certainly don’t have any rights within the moral extreme radical Islamic cultures like Saudi Arabia where they are not going to be able to drive or get ta full education, run a company, there are going to be a lot of limitations on women. So how do liberals justify and how do they reconcile their pro-women’s rights, pro-abortion, pro-same-sex marriage, with an Islamic culture that they so want to protect that is far harsher on any of those things than any Christian I’ve ever known could possibly be?

Feder: Well I think you’ve hit the nub of the question, as they say. You are right, it seems counterintuitive. The left should be scared to death of Islam. Frankly, I think everybody should be scared of Islam; political Islam, at least. So why have they allied themselves with Islam? Two reasons: The first is, our mutual friend Gary Bauer says, they are both totalitarian movements, they both advocate unified control of humanity, one group on a religious basis, the other group on an ideological basis. Beyond that, they are both anti-American. I think that is what unites them more than anything else. That is why the left will go to ridiculous extremes to defend Islam because if an organization, if an entity, if a religion is anti-American then the left will naturally support it, as Islam is. That’s the trump card, anti-Americanism. That and the fact that I think the left views Islam as a Third World religion and of course as you know the left is very big on supporting Third World people over Western people.

The American Family Association’s Buster Wilson yesterday took issue with changes in the Boy Scouts of America and lamented the success of gay rights advocates in general.

“When we went to sleep it was sort of understood around the world that homosexuals are out there and homosexuals want to be accepted and they’re pushing for some things and that’s the reality of the world we live in,” Wilson said. “But when we woke up it was like everybody who is not homosexual-supportive is the bad guy.”

“It’s like somewhere between 1998 and 2005 we fell asleep, we went into some sort of slumber, it was like some sort of magical spell over all of us and when we woke up we were a different place” and by President Obama’s inauguration the “world was upside down” and America became one big gay society.

‘They hate gays, they won’t let known gays be scout leaders, so if you don’t stop supporting them we’re going to tell the world that AT&T and UPS and all these other groups, we’re going to tell the world that you’re anti-gay yourself.’ Of course, AT&T and UPS are pushing the screws on the Boy Scouts because they don’t want to get labeled by the Human Rights Campaign as bad boys. I want to tell you something, this is, what has happened to us? It’s like somewhere between 1998 and 2005 we fell asleep, we went into some sort of slumber, it was like some sort of magical spell over all of us and when we woke up we were a different place. Actually it wasn’t 2005, actually it was 2008; it started in 2008 and it was culminated on January, 20, 2009, and if you’re smart enough you can figure out what I’m talking about there.

We woke up and it was like all of the sudden the world was upside down and respected godly men like Franklin Graham and Greg Laurie are no longer respected, they’re hatemongers, they’re filled with hate. When we went to sleep it was sort of understood around the world that homosexuals are out there and homosexuals want to be accepted and they’re pushing for some things and that’s the reality of the world we live in. But when we woke up it was like everybody who is not homosexual-supportive is the bad guy. I mean if I believe the Bible and what the Bible says about homosexuality I’m a hate monger.

Last week, Frank Gaffney spoke to Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) to discuss immigration reform and the government’s response to the Boston Marathon attack. Gohmert, who has cited the bombing as a reason to oppose comprehensive immigration reform, told Gaffney that “millions” of immigrants will be “rushing in” over the border if Congress is poised to pass legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship.

He even said that President Obama is “not going to ever secure the border” until Congress gives legal status to people who will “vote Democrat.”

It is time to slow down and make sure we do things properly so that we don’t bring in and legalize millions of people who will come rushing in as soon as there is a bill before the borders can be secured they’ll come rushing in. Instead we’ll have the President say, ‘gee I’m going to hold my doing my job for ransom, you either give me all these people that I think will vote Democrat and make them legal so they can vote Democrat or I’m not going to ever secure the border.’ That’s ridiculous. We all ought to stand firm. You secure the border so only legal people can come in and then we’ll have a deal done in a week, no more than a month.

While addressing the FBI’s work in Boston, Gohmert said that it was “amazing” that the FBI was able to do any investigative work at all because, according to Gohmert, they are being advised by “Muslim Brotherhood members.”

He said that the Obama administration is promoting “radical Islam” and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and in the US, maintaining that “Muslim Brotherhood advisers” have made it “virtually impossible to properly and adequately investigate and defend this country.”

The FBI did an amazing job, really terrific job, considering as how they virtually and figuratively bound their own hands and blindfolded themselves while they are trying to investigate something involving radical Islamists. We know that most Muslims are moderate; I continue to have people approach me that I’ve never seen or met that identify themselves as being from Egypt, some still having family there and some not, and pointing out that we’re helping the wrong people, you’re helping the radicals, you’re helping the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt would you please stop, you’re hurting those of us who don’t want radical Islam running our country, we want our Egypt back. But that’s what we’ve been doing.

The FBI, on the same token, they have brought as you know what the Dallas federal court and the fifth circuit court of appeals identified as the two largest Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in America, CAIR and ISNA, and so you know they have been working with them, they have been advised by CAIR. They finally suspended their so-called partnership with CAIR but you have Muslim Brotherhood members who have advised the FBI and have been telling them things that just simply make it virtually impossible to properly and adequately investigate and defend this country. The job they did was really amazing considering the fact that they have purged their lexicon of any words that Muslim Brotherhood advisers have told them that they find offensive.

Ohio Republican congressman Jim Jordan is joining Sen. Jim Inhofe in endorsing the conspiracy theory that the government is buying up bullets in order to limit their availability to gun owners during an interview yesterday with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who was the guest host on Sandy Rios In The Morning.

During the program, Perkins praised people for “buying bricks of ammo” and “buying gold” — even though the price of gold is collapsing — adding that he is “buying my kids ammo instead of saving bonds.” Jordan said that “Americans rightly understand that freedom is under attack in this country,” specifically religious liberty and the Second Amendment.

Jordan agreed with Perkins’ contention that the Department of Homeland Security is “hoarding ammunition” as a “way for the President to keep Americans from having ammo by having the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies buy it all up” and commended Americans for “purchasing a record level of firearms and ammunition.”

Jordan: The reason so many Americans are concerned is, this agency, the Department of Homeland Security, under the leadership — or I would say, lack of leadership, frankly — of Secretary Napolitano, they just don’t have any credibility, Americans don’t trust them. There have been a number of instances over the last several years and several months that have led to that lack of trust and lack of credibility and that’s why you see the concern and frankly that’s why we had the hearing.

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Perkins: We’re talking about a hearing that took place last Thursday with the Department of Homeland Security and their kind of some are saying hoarding ammunition.

Jordan: Yep.

Perkins: That’s part of the concern is that this is another way for the President to keep Americans from having ammo by having the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies buy it all up.

Jordan: Yep. Too things are happening, you are exactly right, Americans are purchasing a record level of firearms and ammunition. I think it points to just the lack of trust they have in this administration and this administration’s attack on our Second Amendment liberties and our Second Amendment rights and Americans are justifiably concerned about that.

Jerry Newcombe of Truth In Action Ministries is upset that ex-gay leader John Paulk has renounced the movement and announced that his marriage to his wife is ending. While Newcombe didn’t explicitly name Paulk, the former poster boy of the ex-gay movement made news recently for recanting his past activism.

Newcombe said that Paulk is like an “ex-ex-smoker” who “for whatever reason, they lit up again, and they no longer try to fight these urges,” adding that the rejection of the ex-gay movement is nothing short of “blasphemy.”

Well, it’s happened again. Another prominent person in ministry has apparently fallen away from the faith, and he renounces what he once was a part of.

This isn’t a story like the supposed apostasy of Joel Osteen. That was a false story foisted on the world through computer hacking. What a strange time we live in, where such hackers could invade the Associated Press’ website and plant a false story about the president getting injured---causing the stock market to temporarily drop, until the truth came out.

The moral of the story is: Don’t believe everything you read or hear in the news, until firmly established by two or three witnesses, to use the biblical standard.

But this story about a prominent man in ministry falling away is verified from multiple sources. His particular sin happened to be homosexuality, to which he has now returned.

As Christians, how are we to understand it when people seem to get converted but fall away, presumably for good? Like they say, the Bible will keep us from sin or vice versa.

Perhaps this man will eventually get back right with the Lord. Perhaps not. When people say, “Once saved, always saved,” I prefer to add two qualifiers: “Once truly saved, always truly saved.” Obviously, temporary setbacks are on a different level than permanent ones.

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What’s interesting about this fallen away man who is currently in the news is that he claims he never was changed. Fair enough, because only he and God know his own heart. But what he now says is that you can’t change---that is, no one with such a struggle can change. Excuse me?

As the wife of an ex-gay once told me in an interview, “To say that people can't be transformed is to say that God cannot transform people, and that's blasphemy. Nothing less.”

Granted, some sinful backgrounds may be harder to work through than others. But God can and will transform those willing to submit to His will. He wants us to be free more than we do.

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I actually know some ex-ex-smokers. They gave up smoking---for a while. In some cases they became fanatical against smoking. But eventually, for whatever reason, they lit up again, and they no longer try to fight these urges. Does that mean that no one can quit for good? Of course not. Yet that’s sort of implied in some of the media stories about our fallen away friend. …

Every Christian is described by Paul as a “living sacrifice.” The problem is that sometimes we living sacrifices can crawl off the altar. We should pray for such people to crawl back. When they do, they’ll see that God waits for them with open arms, like the father of the Prodigal Son.

After writing a column for WorldNetDaily reprimanding the Boy Scouts of America for proposing a policy to lift the ban on gay members under the age of eighteen, Linda Harvey of Mission America took to the airwaves today to warn Scout leaders that such a move will “betray children” and engender “destructive psychological dynamics” within the organization. She alleged that homosexuality is a “high-risk and sinful lifestyle” and that gay scouts will inevitably try to have “physical and sexual contact” with their “fellow troop members who may not welcome this attention.”

The fiction of a fixed homosexual identity has no basis in fact and is terribly harmful, especially so to children. Why would a youth organization betray children so terribly to establish a regulation like this affecting over two million boys in America, leading them to condone a high-risk and sinful lifestyle? Then there’s the adult portion, of course open homosexuals should not be allowed as leaders, as with the president policy but if it’s wrong for adults why wouldn’t this be just as wrong for kids if not more so?

The people proposing this policy are not weighing the most pertinent factors. What exactly do they think boys who are bold enough to label themselves as gay to their fellow troop members will do? Not all but many of these will be middle or high school aged boys open to or actively seeking other boys to have a relationship with. Attraction means attraction; it’s not just a theoretical thing. That will most likely include confessing attraction to fellow troop members who may not welcome this attention followed by possible physical and sexual contact.

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If this is voted in, those casting the votes will demonstrate an ignorance of basic facts that there is no science supporting an inborn gay identity for kids or adult. They will ignore health risks, especially to boys, and the destructive psychological dynamics of same-sex attraction within a small group of children of the same sex.

Charisma news editor Jennifer LeClaire, who has been freaking out about the prospect of an openly gay player in the NFL, today responded to the news that NBA player Jason Collins came out of the closet by calling on him to begin “declaring war on homosexual tendencies” and “repent before it’s too late.”

LeClaire writes that homosexuality is “a choice” and claims that Collins is “in bondage to a sin,” hoping that “Christian NBA players—and fans—will reach out to him in love and pray for him.”

I am a huge basketball fan, and I admire Collins’ on-the-court skills. Throughout his career, the seven-footer has been a difference-maker for his teams, averaging nearly 4 rebounds per game and adding a few points for good measure. He can take a charge with the best of them and has been dubbed “the pro’s pro.” Indeed, he’s made a much-appreciated contribution to the game of basketball.

Yet as I read Collins’ 33-year struggle over his sexuality, my heart breaks for this basketball giant. In the Sports Illustrated article, Collins admits to wrestling with envy and fear. He talks about not sleeping well. He shares about his years of misery and what it was like to “live a lie.” He even opens up about the battle with “insane logic” in the context of suicide.

As I read his article, I found a sincerity in his words, but I was also disturbed. Collins says he feels free now that he’s come out. He says he feels blessed. He says his parents instilled Christian values in him. He says he enjoyed lending a hand when they taught Sunday school. He says he takes the teachings of Jesus seriously.

It’s heartbreaking. Collins, bless his soul, has not made himself free by coming out. Not truly. He just feels relieved because he doesn’t have to wear the "mask" he referenced in his article anymore. But he’s not free at all. He’s in bondage to a sin that doesn’t line up with the Christian values or the Sunday school teachings he heard as a child. Collins may feel free because he confessed, but he won’t truly be free until he repents. I pray that Christian NBA players—and fans—will reach out to him in love and pray for him.

Collins wants to keep his personal life private, but he just opened himself up to all manner of attention for his lifestyle. Some will celebrate his decision. Others will follow him out of the closet. Still others will be confused or hurt. Collins says he doesn’t mind if fans heckle him. I hope they don’t. Heckling anyone isn’t appropriate, much less someone who has struggled his whole life and continues to struggle—very publicly. Collins says he’s walked a tough, lonely road. And he will continue walking a tough and lonely road without Jesus, who is the only one who can truly set anyone free from envy, fear, misery, living a lie, suicidal thoughts, homosexuality—or any other sin.

God bless you, Jason. I admire your courage. I know how hard it must have been to take this step. Keep banging the boards! Keep setting those hard picks. Keep being the pro’s pro. But, please, consider that acting on gay tendencies is a choice, and repent before it's too late. The freedom you feel from confessing Jesus as Savior and declaring war on homosexual tendencies is far greater than the freedom you feel from coming out as gay to the sports-loving masses.

American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer is joining other anti-gay activists in attacking Jason Collins, the NBA player who today came out as gay. Fischer said that NBA players and their wives would loudly resist being on a team with Collins out of fear that he will be “eyeballing” them in the shower.

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