Cornerstone World Outreach

Cary Gordon of Iowa’s Cornerstone World Outreach has continued to make waves with his anti-gay diatribes. Gordon was heavily involved with the successful effort to remove three Iowa Supreme Court justices who ruled in favor of marriage equality in 2009, and just last week he told a rally hosted by Bob Vander Plaats that like Rome, “we too will be extinguished from the earth” as a result of civil rights for gays and lesbians. While Gordon’s political maneuvers through his “Project Jeremiah” drove his church into bankruptcy. After failing to pay back the construction company that worked on Gordon’s church, the county sheriff is now putting the church on the auction block. But severe fiscal problems haven’t stopped Gordon from targeting gays and lesbians, and criticizing secular government. Tyler Kingkade of the Iowa Independent reports:

Gordon, pastor at the Sioux City-based Cornerstone World Outreach church, claimed secularists want to throw God out of our public policy decisions.

“The natural problem that causes is an overt immorality. The crime rates go up, people suffer, people are stealing and murdering and [doing] all the things morality tells you not to do,” Gordon said in an interview with The Iowa Independent, although he clarified that he did not mean same-sex marriage is the direct cause of all these things.

…

Gordon often referred to France’s government and society and noted an “objectum sexualist” who married the Eiffel Tower. Gordon said he believed the secular path he saw America’s society as being on would lead beyond legalizing same-sex marriages to polygamy, “whole villages getting married,” or grandparents marrying their own grandchildren. “There’s always been this fight of can you have a free country without God?” Gordon said.

“There has been a tendency leaning backwards towards secularism. And so what my point was that gay marriage or any other issues that are detached from the moral foundations of the teachings of Christianity are the result of a vacuum created by secularism.”

…

Gordon told The Iowa Independent his outspoken opposition to same-sex marriages is “not about hate, it’s about natural law.” Although he didn’t say how he felt about two men or two women being able to receive the same legal benefits if they were not legally married.

“I didn’t make gravity, no board of three against two on a board of five voted and said ‘let’s have gravity now,’” Gordon said. “And so there are natural laws that men did not make and we don’t have the power to overrule. One of those laws is it takes one man and one woman to make a baby. I didn’t make that law … and that is the logical definition of family.”

He then called children the innocent bystanders of the situation, and said a same-sex couple could never raise a child as well as a heterosexual couple.

“When two men say to the world we can raise a child just as good as any heterosexual couple, I think that’s offensive to women, because you’re saying that a woman, a female, does not bring a unique contribution,” Gordon said.

Earlier today we noted that Cornerstone World Outreach Church in Sioux City, Iowa was playing a leading role in right-wing effort to remove three Supreme Court Justices over the ruling in favor of marriage equality.

And nothing quite demonstrates the extremism of Cornerstone's so-called "Project Jeremiah" effort to overturn the "ungodly decisions of the Iowa Supreme Court" like bringing in disgraced "Ten Commandments" judge Roy Moore on behalf of the effort:

On October 16-18, 2010, Judge Roy Moore, former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice, will speak to pastors and others across the State of Iowa about the need for Christians to become involved in upcoming elections. Specifically, three Appellate Court Justices on the Iowa Supreme Court are on the Nov. 2 ballot and are being opposed for their recent vote to extend civil marriage rights to same-sex couples.

Judge Moore will speak at rallies and meetings in Oskaloosa, Sioux City, and Perry, Iowa and will be a guest on WHO Radio in Des Moines with Steve Deace. WHO Radio, where President Ronald Reagan once served as host, is a strong conservative voice in Iowa.

Judge Moore's speaking events:

Saturday, October 16th

7:00 p.m. Public Rally at William Penn University in Oskaloosa , IA

Sunday, October 17th

10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon Cornerstone World Outreach morning church services in Sioux City , IA

6:00 p.m. Evening Church Service at Abundant Life Fellowship in Jefferson , IA

Monday, October 18th

4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. on the air across Iowa with Steve Deace, WHO Radio, Des Moines , IA

Apparently, right-wingers in Iowa think the best person to make the case for removing three sitting Supreme Court Justices is a former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice who was himself removed from office for "willfully and publicly" defying federal court orders.

In an interview with Christianity Today, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney addresses the questions some readers may have about a Mormon candidate. But Romney apparently blames the media and those “who would like to establish a religion of secularism in this country to replace all others”:

[Q.] How do you think relations between Mormons and Trinitarian Christians have changed during your lifetime?

I don't know that there's been a significant change relating to doctrine. [But] several months ago, not long before he died, I had the occasion of having the Rev. Jerry Falwell at our home. He said that when he was getting ready to oppose same-sex marriage in California, he met with the president of my church in Salt Lake City, and they agreed to work together in a campaign in California. He said, "Far be it from me to suggest that we don't have the same values and the same objectives."

[Q.] Have you seen changes between 1968, when your father ran for President, and now?

In terms of the relationship between the faiths, I don't see any particular differences. I know the media today focus far more on people of faith. In some circles, the bias against believers is pronounced. There are some people who would like to establish a religion of secularism in this country to replace all others. So people of faith are routinely scrutinized in a way they were not when my dad ran in 1968.

Blaming the media for questions about Romney’s religion is something we’ve seen before (although blaming people who want to “replace all religion” with “secularism” may be a newer one). But if Romney is looking for someone to blame, perhaps he should start with the religious-right activists he’s been trying hard to court. As we posted before: