For all the flag-waving Tea Party placards accusing the Obama administration of unconstitutional acts and treason, it seems that threats of revolution against the constitutional republic of the United States are coming mostly from the right wing – and not just from fringe militia groups.
We recently noted that Religious Right activist Chuck Colson has launched an effort to bully the Supreme Court into opposing marriage equality by threatening that a pro-equality ruling would result in “cultural Armageddon.” And we have noted the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer’s repeated warnings that the federal government’s “tyranny” will lead to “civil unrest.” Speakers at last year’s How To Take Back America conference suggested “Second Amendment” responses to health care reform and urged participants to buy more guns and ammunition.
Now we see that the National Organization for Marriage, whose director Brian Brown has been claiming on his anti-equality road trip that it is an organization grounded in love, is picking up on the theme as NOM’s Maggie Gallagher writes in an op ed that "American politics are in a quasi-revolutionary phase":
The people, symbolized first in the eruptions of Tea Parties, are rebelling against elites who believe they can ignore our voices and our values….
Rush Limbaugh had his finger on the truth. In the nearly half-hour speech he gave after the Proposition 8 ruling ("the American people are boiling over!"), Rush said that Walker "did not just slap down the will of 7 million voters. Those 7 million voters were put on trial -- a kangaroo court where everything was stacked against them. ... Those of you who voted for Prop 8 in California are guilty of hate crimes. You were thinking discrimination. That's what this judge has said! Truly unprecedented."
Yes, it is. We are entering into a new phase in the battle not only for marriage, but for self-government, for the legitimacy of the views and values of the Ameircan people.
This is a fight we cannot dodge, and must and will win.
Buckle down, it's going to be a ride!
Of course, this isn’t the first time a NOM leader has suggested possibly deploying a revolutionary response to judicial rulings recognizing marriage equality. When Mormon author Orson Scott Card joined NOM’s board last year, we and others drew attention to his own threats, which he made in writing in a Mormon newspaper:
How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn….
American government cannot fight against marriage and hope to endure. If the Constitution is defined in such a way as to destroy the privileged position of marriage, it is that insane Constitution, not marriage, that will die.
We have our own question: why is it that the standard right-wing response to votes in Congress or court decisions that they don't like is to threaten revolution against the U.S.?
I'm quite confident that, as serious as the threat from gay marriage is, it is not going to triumph in the end because political regimes that base themselves on lies about human nature cannot last in the end.
Ladies and gentleman, what are we facing? The homosexuals want to destroy the church and they want to destroy marriage. That's what it amounts to. It doesn't matter how sacred an institution is and how important it is to society as long as there can be confirmation that this lifestyle is acceptable. That's what they want.
For weeks now I have been writing regular posts on the increasing intersection between the "mainstream" Religious Right and Dominionist prophetic intercessors like Lou Engle, Cindy Jacobs, Rick Joyner and others.
But I have always beencareful to note that just because the more "mainstream" leaders have been joining forces with these self-proclaims prophets and apostles, it didn't mean that they necessarily shared their Dominionist agenda.
But I think it is fair to say that I no longer need to be so careful, as the leaders of the Religious Right have now openly embraced Seven Mountains Dominionist theology, which is described thusly:
First, human beings are blessed by God. Secondly, these blessed human beings are given a mandate to take dominion of the earth for the purpose of blessing it. ... The first advent of Christ was for the purpose of creating a blessed seed upon the earth - the church. The second coming of Jesus will take place after this blessed seed has completed the Dominion Process upon the earth by making disciples of all nations.
In short, Dominionist theology believes that Christians are called to take "dominion" over every aspect of our culture and use them to create God's kingdom on Earth in order to bring about the return of Jesus Christ. And their method for gaining "dominion" is through something called the "Seven Mountains Mandate," which seeks to place Christians at the top of seven distinct spheres that shape our culture: (1) Business; (2) Government; (3) Media; (4) Arts and Entertainment; (5) Education; (6) Family; and (7) Religion.
One of the leading authorities on the Seven Mountains Mandate among the new apostles and prophets is a man named Lance Wallnau, and here is a video of him explicitly explaining how it is to work:
Most believers on the Earth are more frightened at the prospect of taking on the insurmountable giants represented by the mountains near them in their nations. They're more intimidated by trying to take possession of what is an opposition that has strength and fortification in the natural, from the IRS, to Hollywood, to whatever. Most believers are afraid, so they create a theology that eliminates the responsibility for having to take territory and rather focuses on just getting people saved so that when Jesus comes back he can repopulate the Earth with people that are followers and let him take over the planet.
There is just a little problem with that: the little problem is Heaven is his throne and the Earth is the footstool of his feet and he was told that he was to sit at the Father's right hand until God made his enemies a footstool for his feet, which means He doesn't come back until He's accomplished the dominion of nations.
The point is this: God wants to have the tabernacle at the top of every one of these spheres. You want to know what the spheres are that shape a nation? This is how you take a nation: you have to get into the family - that is why same-sex marriage such a demonic agenda ... because who ever shapes the family mountain shapes the idea of what culture is for a man and wife. You got to get into the education mountain, you know why? Because whoever's ideology is shaping that little kid when he's a child, by the time he's 19, hey for all you know he could become part of the Hitler Youth movement and die for the Fuhrer. Hitler basically knew that if he educated them as kids, he'd have them as sons to go fight for him. Government mountain where your laws get legislated. Media mountain where the truth is debated. And the arts mountain which is where sports and creativity come along, and we've got business and finance. Is it possible that there are seven sovereign spheres of authority?
By the way, that's how you take nations. It's the only way you take nations. There has never been a nation taken as the result of an evangelism harvest. Shocking but true. Believers don't know these things, which is why we get in trouble.
You realize that when you have 8% of a population, that's the key. 8%, that's all it takes. 8%, according to the Center for Religious and Diplomacy, practice Jihad. 8%, according to the research of James Davidson Hunter, are doing the same sex marriage initiative, You've got 80% Jews, Catholics, Protestants, 35% of Evangelicals, even Mormons - you have a very broad constituency of 85-90% of the American population is not for same-sex marriage. How is it that 7% can impose their agenda on the other 90%? It's not because we don't have enough converts to an idea - it's because when Satan is shrewder in his own generation than the Sons of Light, he makes sure that he has his prophets of Baal at the high places. So what you have is a well-positioned 8% whose agenda is working with the will of Principalities and Powers while Christians are in pursuit of the supernatural or glory or prosperity, but they're missing the apostolic assignment. They're to take over spheres and administer them for the glory of God.
It is exceedingly clear that the Seven Mountains is a Dominionist theology that carries with it the ultimate goal of creating God's kingdom on Earth so as to create the conditions needed to bring about Christ's return.
And amazing, it is something that just about every Religious Right leader has now officially embraced.
Last week, Lou Engle was featured on Focus on the Family's "Friday Five" where he announced his latest political endeavor: a groups called Pray and A.C.T. The acronym A.C.T stands for "Affirming the Basics, Conforming our Lives, and Transforming the Culture," and the "basics" which they are affirming are those values set out in The Manhattan Declaration, the document produced by the Religious Right earlier this year vowing to give their lives to withstand President Obama's attempts to set himself up as a Nazi-like dictator.
For these reasons, we call on all faithful Christians to join us in the fight to defend life, protect and revitalize marriage, and preserve religious liberty and the rights of conscience. We must work tirelessly in all the “seven spheres of cultural influence:” (1) the home, (2) the church, (3) civil government / law / military, (4) business / technology, (5) education, (6) media, and finally (7) arts / entertainment / professional sports.
Jim Garlow, Skyline Church & Renewing American Leadership
Chuck Colson, Founder Prison Fellowship & BreakPoint
Che Ahn, Harvest International Ministry
Vonette Bright, Co-Founder, Campus Crusade for Christ, International
Bishop Keith Butler, Founding Pastor, Word of Faith International Christian Center
Kristina Arriaga, Executive Director, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty
Jim Daly, President & CEO, Focus on the Family
Lou Engle, TheCall to Conscience, TheCall
Father Joseph Fessio, Editor in Chief, Ignatius Press, San Francisco
Maggie Gallagher, National Organization for Marriage
Professor Robert George, Princeton University
Professor Timothy George, Dean, Beeson Divinity School
Jack Hayford, Founder and Chancellor, The King's College and Seminary
Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas & Host, The Mike Huckabee Show
Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., High Impact Church Coalition
Alveda King, Silent No More Awareness Campaign
Richard Land, The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission
Ron Luce, Founder, Teen Mania & Battle Cry
Bishop Richard Malone, Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland (Maine)
Eva Muntean & Dolores Meehan, Co-Founders, West Coast Walk for Life, San Francisco
Penny Nance, Concerned Women for America
Tony Perkins, Family Research Council
James Robison, Life Outreach, International
Samuel Rodriguez, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
Alan Sears, Alliance Defense Fund
Chuck Stetson, Let’s Strengthen Marriage Campaign
Pray and A.C.T is planning a series of Call-like events leading up to the 2010 election; events that are explicitly rooted in a theology which seeks to place Christians in complete "dominion" over every aspect of this nation ... and this effort is now being supported by the heads of highly influential "mainstream" Religious Right groups like Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, National Organization for Marriage Concerned Women for America, the Southern Baptist Convention, and even a potential Republican presidential candidate in Mike Huckabee.
A few months ago, Janet Porter of Faith 2 Action lost her radio program because of her growing support for this sort of Seven Mountains Dominionism, and today this very same theology is being embraced by the Religious Right as a whole ... and I don't think it is possible to overstate just what a radical transformation the movement appears to be undergoing.
In her latest column, the National Organization for Marriage's Maggie Gallagher openly declares that, having met Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio at a Council for National Policy event over the weekend, she is now madly in love:
I met Marco Rubio in Naples, Fla., this weekend, where he gave the keynote speech at the Council for National Policy.
Never fall in love with a political candidate, I tell myself; they will break your heart. Besides, expecting more than one Reagan in a lifetime is just plain greedy. Not to mention stupid.
And then I heard Rubio in Naples, and what can I say? I fell in love.
Now that is kind of creepy ... but not as creepy as the final paragraph in which she warns Gov. Charlie Crist that he had better not sully her fantasies about Rubio:
I don't know what dirt he has on Rubio -- or thinks he has -- but, Charlie, I'm telling you: Don't kill our dream. The political blood on the floor will be yours.
When she said she had fallen in love with Rubio, I didn't realize that she meant that literally.
By now, we are all used to out-of-state Religious Right groups descending on places like Maine, Washington, DC, and elsewhere in order to set up shop in their nonstop effort to fight marriage equality ... but I have to admit that I never expected them to start exporting their efforts abroad.
In response to a move to institute same-sex marriage in the Federal District which includes Mexico City (on March 4), more than 120 pro-family/pro-life leaders from 35 countries have signed the "World Congress of Families Leadership Petition To Save Marriage In Mexico City."
The Petition notes that "Mexico's Constitution defines marriage as between a man and a woman." Further, that all social ills begin with the decline of the family. Also "marriage substitutes ... undermine marriage and the family." The Petition observes that "children need both a mother and a father" and that those raised by two men or two women are "psychologically and socially disadvantaged."
The Petition calls on the government of Mexico City to refrain from implementing same-sex marriage and demands that the issue be decided at the national level, "with due regard to the nation's religious traditions, the wishes of the Mexican people and the needs of children and families, and consistent with Mexico's Constitution." Click here (www.worldcongress.org/special/wcf.mexpetsig.1002.pdf) to access the full Petition along with a list of signers.
U.S. signers (signing as individuals) include: Gary Bauer (American Values), Allan Carlson (World Congress of Families), Tom DeLay (former Majority Leader, U.S. House of Representatives), Joseph Meaney (Human Life International), Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Michele Velasco (Priests for Life), Don Wildmon (American Family Association), Wendy Wright (Concerned Women for America), Maggie Gallagher (National Organization for Marriage), Dr. Paige Patterson (Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary),Yuri Mantilla (Focus on the Family) and Dr. Jerry Newcombe (Coral Ridge Ministries).
I have spent over a decade analyzing and monitoring the Religious Right and I have to say that I have never seen anything like this upcoming "Next Great Awakening Tour," which is a $4000, 12 day right-wing tour of the East Coast hosted by David Barton, Jim Garlow, and David Lane in which participants will visit "the sites of the 1st and 2nd Great Awakening, while praying for the 3rd." [PDF]
The "Great Awakenings" of the past have been times of nationwide religious revival and it is sites that played important roles in previous religious and political awakenings throughout Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC that participants will be visiting:
We welcome you to a truly great tour. Jim has led several church history tours in Europe and some in the US and David Barton has led over 200 tours in Washington, DC and others on the East Coast. We believe this NEXT GREAT AWAKENING TOUR is the most significant tour we have ever led or heard of. When you consider the line-up of speakers, this is the finest tour of its kind. This is a most unique tour.
But, of course, this is not a strictly spiritual journey, but rather a political one judging by the special speakers the event has lined up [PDF], including Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Tony Perkins, Maggie Gallagher, Harry Jackson, and others:
Special lectures by
Governor Mike Huckabee (NY) “Overcoming Obstacles to an Awakening”
Newt Gingrich (DC) “Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation’s History and Future”
Scott Rasmussen (NJ), nationally known founder of the Rasmussen Poll, “My Spiritual Odyssey”
Congressman Bob McEwen (DC) “Biblical & Timeless Foundations to Civil Government: Renewing the ‘Mind’ of Government”
Senator Rick Santorum (DC) “The Moral Foundations for Our Nation”
Tony Perkins (DC) “Spiritual Renewal & Public Policy”
Dr. Robby George (Princeton) “The Manhattan Declaration: A Blueprint for Spiritual Renewal”
Dr. Ken Minkema (Yale) “Jonathan Edwards & the 1st Great Awakening”
Billy Wilson (Philadelphia) “Practical Steps for Awakening America”
Gabriel Joseph (DC) “A Conversation About Indicators for Spiritual Renewal – Data and Survey Results”
Lance Wallnau (Philadelphia) “Strategizing Cultural Transformation”
Dr. Joseph Mattera (NY) “Components of Cultural Transformation”
Christopher West (DC) “Sexuality, Marriage & Spiritual Awakening”
Maggie Gallagher (DC) “The Importance of Marriage in America’s Needed Spiritual Awakening”
Bishop Harry Jackson (DC) “Renewing a Nation through High Impact Leadership”
Christopher Anderson (Madison, NJ) “National Awakenings Under John Wesley and Francis Asbury”
What do Olson and Boies think they are doing? Watching accounts of this trial unfold this week I had a big “aha” moment. It’s now clear: Ted and David think they are conducting the Scopes trial!
When this trial began I told you: gay marriage activists were putting 7 million Californians on trial. (Ed Whelan over at National Review has a brilliant series “Judge Walker’s Witch Hunt“ . . . explaining how intellectually absurd it is to conduct a “trial” into the subjective motivations of 7 million voters, constitutionally speaking.). But this week it got worse: They are clearly putting Christianity itself on trial. Why else have an expert read statements of Catholic and Southern Baptist doctrines into the record?
And why put a Stanford Prof. named Gary Segura on the stand to testify “”religion is the chief obstacle for gays’ and lesbians’ political progress.”
Could the zero-sum nature of the game be any clear? Rights for gays and lesbians, in their minds, depends on invalidating the voting rights of religious people when it comes to gay marriage, because their votes are influenced by their religion–i.e. bigotry.
Here’s their brilliant legal strategy: Ted and David want the Supreme Court to rule that Catholicism and Southern Baptism and related Christian denominations are bigotry.
Yesterday, the judge allowed Boies and Olsen to submit e-mails they obtained between the director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the bishops. Allowing such communication in a trial is unusual enough, but the purpose was even more invidious: to show that Catholics played a major role in passing Proposition 8. The lawyers did the same thing to Mormons, offering more e-mail “proof” of their involvement.
...
Their goal is not to contest the First Amendment rights of Catholics and others—their goal is to put religion on trial. What they are saying is that religious-based reasons for rejecting gay marriage are irrational, and thus do not meet the test of promoting a legitimate state interest. That is why they have trotted out professors like Gary Segura of Stanford and George Chauncey of Yale to testify to the irrationality of the pro-Proposition 8 side. Chauncey was even given the opportunity to read from a Vatican document that rejects homosexual marriage.
Society cannot exist without families; families cannot exist without reproduction; reproduction cannot exist without a sexual union between a man and a woman; and every society in the history of the world has created an institution called marriage to provide for this end. In short, it is nothing but irrational to challenge such a timeless verity. No matter, what is going on in the courtroom smacks of an animus against religion.
The National Organization for Marriage's Maggie Gallagher has made no secret of the fact that she has "a suspicion of men who want to get close to children while depriving them of mothers."
In a Monday e-mail to CNA, Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, made general comments about the case.
"I have sympathy for the pre-eminent claims of natural parents versus legal parents, when the natural mother is a fit parent (which nobody has denied in this case). But we have to be a nation ruled by laws, even when those laws may be unjust.
“Let this act as a warning call: Don't enter civil unions with people if you do not want to give them legal rights over your children. And do not give much faith in the ‘best interest of the child’ standard to protect your child. If the best interest of the child conflicts with fashionable legal norms, courts will not care what is in your child's best interest.
“It cannot be in Lisa's daughter's interest to be forcibly moved to Vermont away from the only mother she has ever known. This case is a tragedy all around. I cannot endorse what Lisa Miller has done, but I understand it, and pity both women and most of all this child. I wish Lisa's partner had the wisdom of Solomon, but I cannot blame her either," Gallagher told CNA.
Maggie Gallagher says that those who fought for marriage equality in Maine wasted their time and money because the voters in the state were smart enough to know that it is gays who are the real bigots and haters:
The $4 million spent to pass gay marriage in Maine was wasted. Even Americans in liberal states do not believe that two guys pledged to a gay union are a marriage. Politicians can pass a bill saying a chicken is a duck and that doesn't make it true. Truth matters.
Americans have a great deal of goodwill toward gay people as friends, neighbors and fellow citizens. Most of us do not want to hurt them or hate them or interfere with anyone's legitimate rights to live as they choose. But we do not believe gay marriage is a civil right; we think it is a civil wrong. And we do not appreciate the increasingly intense efforts to punish people who disagree with gay marriage as if we were racists, bigots, discriminators or haters.
Case in point: Don Mendell, a school guidance counselor at Nokomis Regional High School in Maine, now faces ethics complaints for his decision to appear in a TV ad for the Yes on One campaign in the closing days of the contest. If substantiated, the ethics complaint could lead the government to yank his license as a social worker and, therefore, threaten his livelihood. What kind of movement spurs people to act like this? Meanwhile, a teacher of the year who campaigned for gay marriage faces no such threat to her livelihood. Is gay marriage really about love and tolerance for all?
The people of Maine are certainly entitled to wonder.
Yesterday, Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, Brian Camenker of Mass Resistance, and Paul Madore from the Maine Grassroots Coalition hosted a press conference in Maine designed to "expose the hidden aspects of the radical homosexual agenda" at work in the state.
Opponents of same-sex marriage on Wednesday warned that “radical homosexual” groups concealing their true agendas were behind efforts to keep Maine’s gay marriage law on the books.
Those charges were denounced as “hate-filled speech” by the campaign defending gay marriage in Maine, however. And leaders from Stand for Marriage Maine, the organization behind the Nov. 3 ballot initiative to overturn Maine’s same-sex marriage law, quickly distanced themselves from the event.
“We disavow anything said today as being in any way connected to the Stand for Marriage Maine campaign,” said spokesman Scott Fish. “Whatever was said today was simply the words of the people speaking at the press conference.”
In a wide-ranging media event in the State House, three representatives from the Maine Grassroots Coalition, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality and Mass Resistance charged that “extreme groups” with agendas far outside the mainstream were supporting the No on 1 campaign. A small group of supporters also attended the event.
Speakers suggested that enactment of Maine’s gay marriage law will lead to “homosexual indoctrination” in schools as part of a bigger agenda that threatens families and society.
Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth, described the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force — one of the nation’s most active gay rights groups — as having “one of the most radical sexual agendas ever conceived.” He also sought to link the group to efforts to legalize public sex and prostitution, claiming this is part of a larger agenda.
“Very clearly there is already a very aggressive agenda in the schools,” said LaBarbera when discussing a news report of a teacher answering a student’s question about her relationship with her partner. “Homosexual so-called marriage only fuels that agenda. It institutionalizes it so that there can be no difference in how this aber-rant form of ‘marriage’ is compared to the real thing.”
NOM is Stand for Marriage Maine's largest donor and has "bankrolled more than 60 percent of the campaign to ban same-sex marriages in Maine," so why is Stand for Marriage Maine so eager to distance itself from LaBarbera and his associates even though Gallagher is appearing with him on right-wing radio programs?
