Keith Fournier

Lisa Miller Gets More Support From The Anti-Gay Right

Submitted by Kyle on January 8, 2010 - 1:43pm

It has now been more than a week since Lisa Miller disappeared with her daughter Isabella rather than abide by a court order transferring custody to her former partner, Janet Jenkins, due to Miller's consistent refusal to abide by custody arrangements, and still her attorneys at Liberty Counsel remain "unavailable for comment."

But others on the Right are weighing in and they seem utterly unwilling to condemn Miller's actions. Take, for instance, this blog post by Victoria Cobb of the Virginia Family Foundation:

The circumstances of this case are as heart wrenching as they are frustrating. It is our belief that the courts have failed to apply the law correctly, relying on Vermont’s civil union statute over Virginia’s constitution and the federal Defense of Marriage Act that is supposed to protect Virginia’s marriage laws. Instead, judges at nearly every turn have ignored our law in favor of Vermont’s.

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One thing is for certain, the homosexual lobby’s attempts to portray civil unions as something less than marriage have been destroyed by their own words.

It’s interesting to note that I was asked over and over again by CNN about Lisa’s decision to “violate the court order,” but I was never once asked about the judges in this case who over and over again violated Virginia law. Instead of asking about Lisa’s actions, we should ask how judges simply can ignore the parts of the law and constitution they don’t like in favor of other parts.

Finally, we need to continue to pray for Lisa, Janet — and perhaps most importantly Isabella — in this entire mess. It’s difficult to predict the effect this situation will have on Isabella’s future, but it’s hard to believe that it will be positive.

Instead of condemning Miller for violating court orders and disappearing with her daughter, Cobb lays the blame entirely on the judges.

But that is nothing compared to this truly remarkable screed by Deacon Keith Fournier in Catholic Online in which he blames everyone and everything but Miller for the current situation:

This tragic case sets up what is called a conflict of laws issue, pitting the law of one State against another. This specter hangs over many such homosexual relationships as the patchwork of court enforced schemes of calling them a “marriage” unfolds. It is a deliberate result of the strategy of cultural revolutionaries in the Homosexual Equivalency movement who are setting up what they hope will be their vehicle for enforcing their cultural revolution Nationally through the Courts ... These activists are advancing their Cultural Revolution not by vote of the people but by judicial and legislative fiat in a kind of new alchemy ... These new Caesars call a relationship which is constitutively incapable of accomplishing the ends of marriage to be a marriage ... They have developed a verbal strategy and a legal strategy. Their goal is to use the Police Power of the State in order to force a new social and legal order whether we all want it or not.

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Lisa Miller is a mother who could no longer stand to see her child force fed what she contended was poison. She felt that after each visit the harm that was being inflicted on her daughter was increasing. The record indicates that even though Lisa asked the Vermont Judge to listen to evidence of the violent reactions of Isabella after each of these few visitations, the Judge refused. He treated this case like an ordinary domestic breakup between a husband and a wife. After all, that is what happens when a State treats such living relationships in a manner equivalent to marriage.

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The Lisa Miller Case brings together the misuse of fertility technology, the new Cultural Revolution, the threat of Judicial Tyranny and the assault on the authority of the Family in a case of monumental societal implications. It sounds a clear warning which must be heard before it is too late.

It seems that the unrelenting opposition to all things gay is rendering those on the Right fundamentally incapable of so much as acknowledging that disappearing with your child might be a rather improper reaction to a court ruling that you do not like.

Amazingly, anti-gay groups are simultaneously trumpeting a story about an Illinois woman who wants to take her children to live with her partner in Oregon, calling it "radical, subversive, insidious, pernicious, and stupefying."

Unbelieveable.

Kyle's blog

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ELCA Decision on Gay Clergy "Heresy"

Submitted by Kyle on August 24, 2009 - 7:32am

Last week, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to lift its ban against gays and lesbians serving as ministers and, not surprisingly, the response from the Religious Right has been decidedly negative.

Al Mohler:

The claim that these two contradictory understandings of the Bible's teachings on human sexuality can coexist and be recognized as being equally faithful to the Scriptures is nonsense. Those pressing for the normalization of homosexuality must put the Scriptures through hoop after hoop of theological acrobatics. The claim that a church can both condemn and bless homosexual relationships with equal faithfulness falls false on its face. Worst of all, it sows a disastrously deadly confusion about the nature of sin -- a confusion that subverts the Gospel and brings eternal consequences. Should homosexuals repent of their sin, or come to the church for the blessing of their homosexual unions? There can be no multiple-choice answer to that question. The actions in Minneapolis will reverberate far into the future. Woe unto those who cloak such decisions with the disguise of faithfulness.

Deacon Keith Fournier:

The media is filled with reports concerning the slide of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ECLA) [sic] into heresy. Yes, that is exactly what occurred when the leadership of that community “voted” to abandon Christian orthodoxy. The Associated Press in an article entitled “Lutherans’ gay clergy vote hints at major shift”, led with these loaded words “In breaking down barriers restricting gays and lesbians from the pulpit, the nation's largest Lutheran denomination has laid down a new marker…. The ELCA — the nation's seventh-largest Christian church — reached its conclusion after eight years of study and deliberation. That culminated Friday when the church's national assembly in Minneapolis struck down a policy that required any gay and lesbian clergy to remain celibate.”

What really happened is that representatives of the ECLA succumbed to heresy. Oh, I can hear it now, “how dare he say such a thing?” Because… it is true, and there is nothing compassionate about failing to help fellow Christians to reject error. Christians abandoning the clear teaching of the Sacred Scriptures and the unbroken Christian Tradition is not a new phenomenon in the 2000 year history of the Christian Church. What is new is the massive support that such a sad turn of events receives from this kind of media report. There is a “fifth column” at work, determined to present the matter as a battle between orthodox Christians (who are disparaged with labels such as “right” or “conservative” or “fundamentalist”…) and those who this kind of media report favors, the promoters of heresy and advocates of a new paganism.

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Viva La Resistance!

Submitted by Kyle on November 17, 2008 - 12:53pm

If anyone thought that right-wing anti-choice groups were going to spend any time licking the wound inflicted by the last election in which they saw several states reject their efforts to restrict the right to chose, think again:

"The election forces the pro-life movement to go back to what we do best — local grass-roots organizing," said the Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition. "We will not go silently into the night."

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The overall outcome "brings about feelings of great disappointment, of anger," said the Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life. "But that disappointment and anger are forms of energy. ...I believe a lot of people on the sidelines for last eight years will now get engaged."

Pavone predicted that activists would stage more mass demonstrations and abortion-clinic vigils. He also said the election results shed light on the movement's weak points, and would prompt new efforts to register anti-abortion voters and mobilize clergy to be more outspoken in future campaigns … "We will do everything to be sure [the Freedom of Choice Act] fails — the damage it would do to the pro-life movement would be immeasurable," said Mahoney. "On the scale of 1 to 10, that's No. 11 of what our job is."

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"Any time you have a loss like that, you have an opportunity to reassess and come back stronger," said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life. "If they want to see this as a big loss that will set us back, that's OK. Our people are very energized, and ready for Round Two."

This sentiment seems to be sweeping the Religious Right, with Students for Life of America pledging to be unstintingly vigilant and Deacon Keith Fournier vowing to be a part of a “massive resistance” that will not only fight reproductive choice but will end the “culture war” through mass conversion:

We seem to be at war within when we need to join together as one strong voice for life. The real source of the hatred of life is the Devil Himself. The challenge which those whom the late Servant of God John Paul II called “the people of life” face at this crucial time in the history of the West is nothing new. We have been here before in our 2000 year history. The Christian Church goes into Cultures of death and transforms them from within. We can – and we must – do it again in the Third Millennium. Ours is not really a call to a “Culture War” but rather a call to the Conversion of Culture through the conversion of minds, hearts, and lifestyles which will then lead to a transformation of the social structures of governance and way we live our lives together.

In fact, it looks as if the Right is almost welcoming the new Obama administration, sensing it will provide an opportunity for them to mobilize and energize their base as part of new “resistance movement”:

Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, said, "I knew, moments after the election results came in, that I was now part of the resistance movement." As part of its "movement," CWA has launched a nationwide telemarketing advertising campaign. In the ad, Wright says, "We face a president and Congress more hostile to unborn children, to marriage, to religious freedom, to free speech, to protecting our country than has ever existed in our history." According to Wright, the ad generated an immediate response of calls from religious conservatives asking "what they could do" to help, NPR reports.

Religious conservative leaders also have been scrutinizing Obama's speeches from the campaign trail for messages they can use to rally their base, NPR reports. In particular, they have publicized a speech Obama made last year to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in which he said, "The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act." The act -- which would need congressional approval before Obama could sign it -- would eliminate most federal and state restrictions on abortion. Gary Bauer, president of American Values, said of the speech, "I found myself thinking, 'My goodness, I can't believe he's going to make it this easy for us to rally our troops to get off the mat and get back to work.'"

And Clenard Childress, founder of BlackGenocide.Org, goes so far as to declare that the election of Barack Obama was the best thing to ever happen to the anti-choice movement:

With the election of Barack Obama, we now have a face to put on the abortion plague and a link to the leader of the abortion industry, Planned Parenthood. Despite our efforts, in reality, the time to make this connection was clouded by the notoriety of the first black president and a failing economy. The result is: people still don't know who Barack Obama is and many are now looking deeper into the president elect's life and associations. The truth is: knowing his defeat would only minimize this exposure to America, God has now set it up for a global impact of astronomical proportions.