CitizenLink

• There is an election coming, so that means we will be seeing various Religious Right coalitions organizing redundant prayer efforts.
• CitizenLink thinks a video of President Obama talking about the importance of religious liberty is really an effort to use religion as a wedge issue.
• Tommy Thompson says he'll make a great Senator because "who better than me, who's already finished one of the entitlement programs, to come up with programs to do away with Medicaid and Medicare?"
• Newt Gingrich says Obama "is like the substitute referees in the sense that he’s not a real president. He doesn’t do anything that presidents do, he doesn’t worry about any of the things the presidents do."
• Apparently, illegally uploading copies of "2016" is part of an effort to "to drive viewers away from the theatrical showing of the successful documentary." So I guess illegally uploading copies of "The Avengers" is an attempt to keep people from seeing "The Avengers"?
• Finally, Cindy Jacobs says prayer alone isn't enough; it must be accompanied by action, which is they are calling for "prayer activism" ahead of the election.

On this day last year, the military certified the repeal of the discriminatory Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy after Congress overturned the policy. Religious Right activists warned that the military will suffer as a result, however, their ominous predictions failed to materialize as studies show that the new policy is working and benefiting the military.

Consequently, it wasn’t a surprise that anti-gay groups were largely quiet today on the anniversary as their warnings about an exodus of soldiers, a drop in enlistments and a return of the draft were clearly wrong.

Ron Crews of the Chaplains Alliance for Religious Liberty released a statement that the “radical sexual agenda in our military” is leading to significant “negative consequences,” citing one example of possible sexual harassment, same-sex ceremonies on bases and the supposed “silencing” of chaplains and DADT supporters:

No Cause for Celebration: DADT Repeal Immediately Creates Major Problems for Service Members

Approaching the first anniversary of the repeal of the so-called DADT policy, mounting evidence demonstrates the negative consequences of implementing a radical sexual agenda in our military.

“The American armed forces exist to defend our nation, not as social experiment lab in which our troops serve as human subjects,” said Chaplain (Colonel Retired) Ron Crews, ED of CALL. ”While many will ignore the negative impacts, or pretend that they don’t exist, threats to our troops’ freedom are mounting.”

…

“This list of problems and incidents that have arisen mere months after this administration imposed its will on the armed forces is disturbing to say the least, and we know it is only the beginning,” said Crews. “Compounding the outrage, service members are not free to speak out about these matters. This ensures that distrust in the ranks will increase and morale will decrease as the number of silenced victims grows.”

Focus on the Family’s political arm CitizenLink also said in a post quoting Crews and calling for Congress to pass a GOP-backed bill banning same-sex ceremonies on military property, which they said would preserve religious freedom by barring all chaplains from performing such ceremonies:

Crew said that a military religious freedom act introduced in January, House Resolution 3828, would help military personnel greatly.

“It’s a right-of-conscience clause that would provide protection to military personnel, so they would not be affected by their opposition to the repeal,” he explained.

If passed, H.R. 3828 would protect members of the Armed Forces who hold religious or moral convictions concerning “the appropriate and inappropriate expression of human sexuality” from discrimination or punishment for their beliefs.

The bill seeks to protect chaplains from being ordered to perform any services or ceremonies contrary to their faith, while preventing any same-sex marriage ceremonies from being performed on military posts, in accordance with the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, who predicted an increase in rape if the policy was repealed, pivoted away from his group’s hysterical claims to instead focus on possible same-sex marriages in the military, a result of the “radical sexual and social agenda” pushed by “homosexual activists.” Sprigg also cited a survey from the Military Times, but didn’t mention that the same poll found negative views of the repeal among service members are declining.

He also dismissed claims that the military would have “completely collapsed in the first year after repeal” since “our service members are too professional to allow that to happen,” but FRC president Tony Perkins did in fact predict the reinstitution of the draft and that congressmen who voted for the repeal will have “blood on their hands.”

Since eight servicemembers reported harm from both circumstances (a homosexual “coming out” and one joining their unit), a total of 36 separate individuals reported such harm. The Palm Center chose to emphasize that this was only 4.5% of all those surveyed—failing to mention that it represents twenty percent of those who had a homosexual “come out” or join their unit. Twenty percent represents a significant risk of harm for the units involved—merely to advance the goals of the sexual revolution. Damage to good order, discipline, morale, and unit cohesion need not be universal to be unacceptable.

In the same Military Times survey, 8.4% of respondents said that repeal made them less likely to remain in the military, while only 3.3% said it would make them more likely to remain.

The Palm Center report almost completely ignores the most significant harms that have become immediately apparent in the first year since repeal. Predictions that the use of the military to advance a radical social/sexual agenda would place us on a “slippery slope” have clearly come true. Furthermore, assurances given in the November 2010 report of the Pentagon’s Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG) regarding the limited impact of repeal have not been fulfilled. Since the CRWG report was to a large extent the basis for the Congressional vote for repeal in December of 2010, it can even be argued that repeal was adopted under false pretenses.

…

Has America’s military completely collapsed in the first year after repeal? Of course not—our servicemembers are too professional to allow that to happen. The military is clearly being used, however, to advance a radical sexual and social agenda. The Palm Center cited one individual who stated that repeal “will help facilitate the slow cultural change towards greater acceptance” of homosexuality.

The purpose of our armed forces, however, is not to “facilitate cultural change.” It is to fight and win wars. By demanding that it do more than that, homosexual activists have undermined the single-minded focus that is necessary for military effectiveness.

 

Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink, the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly Alliance Defense Fund), the Family Research Council and the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values are planning six seminars in Ohio over the coming months to train Culture Impact Teams and “answer the cry of a culture that needs help.”

While FRC’s Tony Perkins and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson won’t be attending in person, they have sent messages, including this one from Dobson condemning an effort to repeal the state’s ban on same-sex marriage by referendum in 2013:

Traditional marriage is on the line. Will your church help guarantee its future?

Will you help us organize and mobilize your county to answer the cry of a culture that needs help?

Will you join a growing network of Ohio Pastors, church staff and laymen to be a witness in a hurting culture and defend issues that threaten our families, our faith, and our freedom?

SIX, FREE training seminars for pastors, church staff and laymen to launch a Culture Impact Team (CIT). Learn alongside other church leaders how to defend family, faith and freedom during this critical election year.

Confirmed guest speakers include: Attorney Matt Rawlings (Alliance Defending Freedom, formerly Alliance Defense Fund), former Congressman Bill Redmond (Focus on the Family), and National Field Director Randy Wilson (Family Research Council), Pastor J. C. Church, former Representative Seth Morgan and CCV President Phil Burress.

Additional perks: Hear about Watchmen on the Wall, an FRC ministry that supports the local pastor. –Access to sermon starters and research on the issues facing our families and culture. –CIT

Manual to multiply your leadership and influence in your church and community-A Voter Impact Toolkit DVD, containing 12 high quality videos you can pick from to encourage your church, as well as all you need to do a Christian Citizenship Sunday.

A number of top Religious Right figures over the last few years have been trying to rally support among conservatives for comprehensive immigration reform, arguing that Hispanics are potential allies in their anti-choice and anti-gay advocacy work while warning that if the Right continues to alienate and demonize Latino voters then they will be writing their own political death sentence. As a result, it wasn’t a surprise to see Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and Sam Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference enthusiastically applaud the Obama administration decision to stop deporting undocumented immigrations who are under the age of 30 and arrived in the U.S. before they were 16 years old, and Republican activist Adryana Boyne endorsed the move at the stage of the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s national summit on Saturday.

However, not all social conservatives are on board.

Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, who earlier this month signed onto the pro-reform Evangelical Immigration Table, called the announcement partisan and divisive. Minnery even suggested that the decision to stop deporting some young migrants is bad for families because they won’t be deported with their parents:

Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family’s senior vice president for government and public policy, said he was disappointed with the president’s actions.

“A quick fix in a contentious issue seems designed only for partisan advantage and will divide the country even further,” he said.

Minnery noted that the action will serve to break up families by targeting parents for deportation, while leaving young people behind to fend for themselves.

“Teenagers just out of high school, without intact families, are more likely to wind up dependent on the government,” he said. “This is no solution at all.”

American Family Association’s Buster Wilson attacked the decision by revisiting a debunked conspiracy theory that the Department of Homeland Security thinks that people “who believe in pro-life issues and the second coming of Jesus should be watched as potential terrorists vote,” and then went on to wonder whether Obama is going to allow the young people impacted by the decision to vote, even though they won’t be granted citizenship:

It’s so interesting to me that these people who are, whether they were brought here as children by fault of their known or not, they are still in the process of violating US immigration law. Janet Napolitano will work with her president to do whatever she can to honor those folks while first thing she did in this position, right out of the shoot back in 2009, was issue a white paper to all law enforcement saying that people like you and me who believe in pro-life issues and the second coming of Jesus should be watched as potential terrorists. Incredible; I continue to ask every day now what country am I living in? It is not the America I grew up in.

…

Another thing that was suggested by some, and I have tried to be fair about this and to try to ascertain how this could happen. I don’t know what the process would be to make this happen, but some have suggested that 800,000 young but old enough to get work permit illegals that the president is throwing out the welcome mat to, giving them basically a soft, backdoor amnesty, could this be his way in an election year, in just months before the election, of adding 800,000 plus votes to his side of the ledger in November? Good question to ask.

This weekend Tom Minnery, the head of Focus on the Family’s political arm CitizenLink, announced that the group will be withdrawing a so-called “Religious Freedom Amendment” from consideration in the upcoming election, citing what he deemed cumbersome rules on petitions. Zack Ford of Think Progress points out that the amendment effectively would give certain groups or individuals “veto power over all policy decisions,” as pharmacists could cite “a sincerely held religious belief” not to fill prescriptions like birth control, teachers could refuse to teach evolution, and employers could have free rein to discriminate against LGBT employees.

The Denver Post reports that Minnery is considering “another attempt at a ballot measure in the 2014 election cycle or look at a legislative push next year”:

Focus on the Family senior vice president Tom Minnery said Friday the conservative Christian advocacy group soon will withdraw its ballot initiative for a constitutional amendment prohibiting state interference with the religious freedom of a person or organization.

The draft language of the ballot measure said government may not directly or indirectly burden a person or organization by withholding benefits, assessing penalties or excluding a person or group from government programs or facilities.

"There's a tangled thicket of regulations that make it difficult to negotiate our way through the process," Minnery said. "When you think of a genuine grassroots effort by volunteers, (some rules) are a wet blanket in that process."

Minnery said there is pending federal litigation — the Independence Institute, Jon Caldara et al. vs. Bernie Buescher — challenging many aspects of state rules governing the initiative process. It could result in removing some of the worst thorns, Minnery said.

Minnery said one drawback in the process as it now stands is that anyone can file a civil lawsuit alleging fraud against ballot-petition circulators if any petition signers falsify information.

Colorado Springs-based Focus would consider another attempt at a ballot measure in the 2014 election cycle or look at a legislative push next year, Minnery said.

Focus also withdrew a similar measure in 2010.

Yesterday the US Senate voted 51-48 to kill the Blunt Amendment to the transportation bill that would have given employers the right to deny insurance coverage for any treatment that they objected to for any reason, representing a major setback for Religious Right groups who urged passage of the extreme amendment.

Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink called the vote an affront to the First Amendment, although it is hard to see how anyone’s First Amendment right to free exercise of religion is being violated:

“Today the government, this time via Congress, again told Americans they must ‘conform or pay a price’ when it comes to their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion,” he said. “Americans are speaking out because they understand that they should not be forced to fight to protect what the Constitution already grants them under the First Amendment.”

National Right to Life Committee claimed that the mandate was part of an “abortion-expansionist agenda, even though neither abortions nor abortifacients are included in the new rule:

The Obama Administration has issued an initial mandate that requires nearly all employers to purchase plans that cover all FDA-approved methods of birth control. NRLC has pointed out that the same authority could be employed by the Administration in the future to order virtually all health plans to cover all abortions. The focus now shifts to the House, where the same legislation, introduced as H.R. 1179 by Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-Ne.), currently has 220 cosponsors (more than half of all House members). In addition, numerous lawsuits have been filed by religiously affiliated employers, challenging the Obama mandate as a violation of constitutional rights and of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

"National Right to Life will continue to challenge the Obama Administration's abortion-expansionist agenda on Capitol Hill, and we will encourage millions of like-minded Americans to remember this issue when they cast their ballots in November," said Carol Tobias, National Right to Life president.

Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly said that contraceptives “are not really medical care”:

"The contraceptive mandate is an introduction to the real ObamaCare, whereby a handful of leftists in D.C. impose the views of their big-money donors on more than 300 million Americans," said Schlafly. "If the Obama Administration's contraceptive mandate remains intact, then liberals will continue to demand that Americans pay for objectionable items and services that are not really medical care."

Tony Perkins of FRCAction warned that the Constitution has been “sacrificed”:

"Today, 51 senators, led by Sen. Harry Reid, sacrificed the Constitutional right of religious liberty on the altar of the Obama administration's radical big-government agenda. They turned a deaf ear to the very real religious and moral objections of millions of Americans and the First Amendment rights of all.

Concerned Women for America’s Penny Nance maintained that the mandate was part of a growing “oppressive federal bureaucracy”:

"America's women refuse to accept this unconstitutional government order," said Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America. The Obama Administration's HHS Mandate demolishes our constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion and conscience rights."

"Churches, religious organizations, and people of faith and conscience must have the right to choose their own health care and make their own moral decisions without having to submit to the one size fits all policies of President Obama and Secretary Sebelius' oppressive federal bureaucracy," Nance said.

The conspicuous absence of the two Mormon presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, from Saturday’s Thanksgiving Family Forum was not lost on the Religious Right. Tom Minnery, head of Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink, one of the sponsors of the debate, speculated earlier this month that flare-up of the “Mormon issue” at the Values Voter Summit made Romney “hesitant to come back into an evangelical atmosphere like this.”

After the debate, American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer penned a pitiful column claiming that the “liberal media” is set to level any number of anti-Mormon attacks against Romney….and then helpfully spelled out exactly what those future attacks would be.

While Fischer is claiming that liberals will be the ones to attack Romney’s faith, in fact it was right-wing pastor Robert Jeffress who leveled the first prominent attack on Romney’s religion this year. Jeffress not only attacked Romney’s faith implicitly in his speech at the Values Voter Summit, but also on Fischer’s own show, where Fischer agreed with Jeffress that Romney is not a Christian.

Minnery himself, who lamented Romney’s non-appearance at the Thanksgiving forum, said in a 2009 interview with Iowa talk show host Steve Deace that Romney’s “faith is not a Christian faith”:

While Fischer enjoys thinly veiling his attacks on Romney’s faith by laying out the arguments the “liberal media” might make in the future, his American Family Radio colleague Alex McFarland is tackling the subject head-on. On his show Exploring the Word last month, McFarland devoted an entire segment to explaining how Mormons are not Christian, and that Mormonism is actually more like Islam:

Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family’s political arm CitizenLink appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show yesterday to preview the Thanksgiving Family Forum, the “family discussion with the Republican Presidential Candidates” that CitizenLink is hosting in Iowa on Saturday along with The Family Leader and the National Organization for Marriage. Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum are all slated to appear at the forum moderated by Minnery and Republican pollster Frank Luntz.

Minnery told Mefferd that the moderators will ask questions about what a president will do if “we end up with a welter of different definitions [of marriage] in different states,” and what the candidates think about “the last words in that oath of office…‘so help me God.’” In fact, the oath does not include the words, “so help me God,” but the phrase has been used according to tradition.

We have decided that wouldn’t it be wonderful for at least one presidential debate to have the candidates respond to questions of the heart, questions of the soul. For example, I’ll just give you one of the questions we’ll be asking them: If you are elected president you will be taking the oath of office, the last words in that oath of office will be ‘so help me God,’ what will that mean to you? We’ll be asking them how much they believe that the institution of marriage as one man and one woman is important to the country and what will they do if we end up with a welter of different definitions in different states, is that the realm of action for a president to take or will he leave a bunch of different definitions around the country, he or she, so those are the kind of questions we’ll get at.

However, “questions of the heart” and “questions of the soul” apparently do not pertain to multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault.

Later in the interview, Minnery said that there is even “room for people who do not hold an orthodox Christianity,” referring to the two candidates who are not attending the forum: Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, who both just so happen to be Mormons. He said that if Christians “prize Thomas Jefferson,” then it is possible that they can vote for a presidential candidate who is not a Christian but at least has a Christian “worldview.”

Just saying one is a Christian is not sufficient, one has to understand: what is your worldview? How do these moral and soul-matters play out in the policies that you will support when you are in the White House? There is room for people who do not hold an orthodox Christianity, we prize Thomas Jefferson, but I don’t think anybody would say he was an orthodox Christian in his beliefs. He did so much because he understood freedom, he understood the nature of a Creator and the blessings of a Creator as beneficial to the country, so people have to look beyond simply the response to the question, ‘is someone a Christian,’ because I would say, for one thing, I cannot remember an election cycle in which there were so many people trying to get the nomination for one party who professed to be Christians. So just saying you’re a Christian is not enough.

Next Saturday, most of the leading Republican presidential contenders will be gathering in Iowa for a "Thanksgiving Family Forum" that will be moderated by Republican pollster Frank Luntz.  The event is being sponsored by The Family Leader, the National Organization for Marriage, and CitizenLink, the political arm of Focus on the Family.

Since CitizenLink is one of the co-sponsors, Executive Director Tom Minnery will be assisting Luntz in asking questions of the candidates and explains that the purpose of this forum is different from all of the debates that have been held so far:

We’re well into the presidential primary election debate season and I suspect that the candidates are as frustrated as those of us in the viewing audience, with “gotcha” questions, testy squabbles, and your-national-defense-strategy-in-30-seconds-please time limits.

Those of us in the social conservative realm have noticed something else-the virtual absence of intelligent and probing questions on the enduring values of faith, family, and society’s responsibilities to its children, both born and preborn. These are the messier and many times controversial issues that derive from the soul and for which sound bites simply won’t do.

In a recent CitizenLink video, Minnery explained that while Mitt Romney will reportedly not be attending, all of the others will, including Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Herman Cain. 

But when it comes to Cain, Minnery says that he will not be asked about the myriad of sexual harassment/assault allegations that he is facing:

Stuart Shepard: One of people who will be there has been in the headlines a lot over the past week and a half, and that is businessman Herman Cain. Are you going to hit him with tough questions about what has been in the headlines?

Minnery: Well, that itself is a tough question but I'm glad you asked it because, actually, no. Every person in every press outlet that I'm aware of wants to get to Herman Cain on these questions about sexual harassment from years ago and they're having ample opportunity to do that. There are issues that we want to know that don't happen to deal with that and we're not going to take up our time dealing with that issue because, as I say, everybody else is doing that. That's the one thing about Herman Cain that's in the press daily now.

So there you go:  the Religious Right will be hosting the forum designed to find out where the Republicans candidates stand on issues regarding the "enduring values of faith [and] family," but they are "not going to take up our time" asking the frontrunner about the multiple allegations of sexual harassment he is facing.