Liberty Counsel

The Religious Right has been predictably outraged over a new transgender-inclusive policy in Massachusetts that is designed to prevent gender identity-discrimination in schools and so it was only a matter of time before Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber weighed in, which he did on a recent radio program where he compared being transgender to a Caucasian child deciding that he is really an Asian child or a person deciding that they are a horse and wanting to run in the Kentucky Derby.

"The [LGBT] chain is only as strong as the weakest link," Barber declared, and "this transgender notion is absolute absurdity.  It's a weak chain to begin with, but it's the weakest link in this LGBT alphabet soup of nonsense":

Is this really the sort of bigoted rhetoric with which Tim Tebow wishes to associate himself?

Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum on Friday warned that the Obama administration has estimated that the average family will pay a minimum of $20,000 for health insurance once the health care reform law goes fully into effect.

The only problem with Schlafly’s claim is that the government never issued such an estimate.

The IRS simply used the $20,000 figure as an example for calculating the “shared responsibility payment,” or penalty, for a nonexempt family that does not acquire health insurance.

As the Annenberg Center’s FactCheck.org notes:

The IRS used $20,000 in a hypothetical example to illustrate how it will calculate the tax penalty for a family that fails to obtain health coverage as required by law. Treasury says the figure “is not an estimate of premiums.”

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[T]he regulations weren’t a “cost analysis” at all. A spokesperson for the Treasury Department confirmed to FactCheck.org in an email that the IRS wasn’t making any declarations or projections about what prices will be.

“[Twenty thousand dollars] is a round number used by IRS for a hypothetical example,” the official wrote. “It is not an estimate of premiums for a bronze plan for a family of five in 2016.”

Schlafly wasn’t the only conservative leader to fall for the false story, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel also wrote an article arguing that a government “cost analysis based on ObamaCare regulations show[s] that the cheapest healthcare plan in 2016 will cost average American families of four or five members $20,000 per year for the so-called ‘bronze plan.’”

The Obama Administration is now estimating that by 2016 the minimum annual cost of health insurance for an average American family under ObamaCare will be $20,000. And there is no guarantee that the health insurance will actually cover all the medical treatments that the family wants and needs. $20,000 is merely the minimum annual cost; many families could face even higher premiums. Millions of Americans will be faced with the choice of buying this expensive health insurance, or paying hefty penalties to the IRS. Those who choose not to buy health insurance will be slapped by the IRS with thousands of dollars in additional taxes. Is this what Americans really want? Certainly not. $20,000 is many times more expensive than what most Americans pay for health insurance today.

It's not only families who will be hit by these enormous price increases under ObamaCare. One study predicts that a 27-year-old non-smoking male in Texas will go from paying $54 a month in health insurance premiums to a whopping $153 per month as soon as ObamaCare goes into full effect. That will be on top of the massive student debt that so many young people are already struggling to pay off. The real result may be that many Americans will choose to drop their health insurance simply because they cannot afford it. But that is the opposite of what ObamaCare was supposed to achieve.

None of this is a surprise to those who have criticized ObamaCare for years. Not a single Republican voted for this costly injection of federal bureaucracy into the American health care system, which has been the finest the world has ever known. Many businesses are decreasing the number of hours that their employees can work in order to fall below the threshold requiring employers to buy this costly insurance for their employees.

On today's "Faith and Freedom" radio program, Mat Staver and Matt Barber discussed the decisions by the Boy Scouts to delay the vote on lifting the ban on gay scouts and scout leaders as they wondered what the organization could even be thinking by contemplating such a change, saying there is no way that boy scouts can remain "morally straight" if "you have adults modeling for children what every major world religion and thousands of years of history have held to be immoral behavior."

As Staver said, "it makes no sense to have a Jerry Sandusky as your scout master and essentially that's what this policy would open up the doors to" while Barber asserted that gay activists are demanding access to your children, so "what father in his right mind" would let his son join the scouts if he knew that a gay man was serving as scout leader, especially since all gay men define themselves by the fact that they "sexually crave sex with other males" because they are "hyper-sexual":

Mat Staver and Matt Barber were discussing the two amicus briefs that Liberty Counsel has filed with the Supreme Court for the hearings on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8, claiming that it is "absurd" to think that the Constitution guarantees any right to same-sex marriage because at the time the Constitution was written, homosexuality was widely considered to be a "crime against nature."

As Barber explained, "the aberrant sexual behavior, the twisting of normal human sexuality that would be involved in order to consummate a so-called same-sex marriage" carried a punishment of death at the time the Constitution was written, so "there is now way that they would have ever intended that they would twist and deconstruct the fundamental cornerstone institution of marriage in order to put the government's official stamp of approval on a crime against nature":

The American Family Association’s Sandy Rios today continued to press the Boy Scouts of America against opening the organization to gay members on her radio show. She said that opponents of the ban like AT&T CEO Randall Stevenson, Ernst & Young CEO James Turley and Mitt Romney (!) who are affiliated with the BSA should be forced to pay for any future settlements of all the child abuse cases that Rios claims will be a consequence of having openly gay Boy Scouts.

I think I have a solution, I just thought of it this morning. I think these guys, let’s put Mitt Romney in there, and let’s put the guy with Ernst & Young whose name is James Turley, and let’s put Randall Stevenson the CEO of AT&T, and any of the other organizations or corporate sponsors who are pushing the Boy Scouts for this policy change. I think actually we might let this go through with the stipulation that whatever lawsuits are brought from now until the end of time against Boy Scout leaders who have sexually molested their Scouts, that they personally are responsible to pay them. Let’s go after Mitt Romney, let’s go after the guy at Ernst & Young, let’s go after Randall Stevenson at AT&T, let them write a check and just say, ‘I believe in this so much that I am willing personally to cover any costs on the outside, ridiculous chance that some Boy Scout should be molested by a gay Scout leader or seduced. If there is any harm then I’ll pay, I will pay.’ If they are willing to sign that statement, go for it. While we’re at it, we should have AT&T and all the other organizations like Ernst & Young that are pushing for this put their corporate—just think of all the money, the potential of lawsuits.

The AFA has even called for Stephenson to resign from the BSA board for “using his corporate influence to bully the BSA into gay assimilation,” and joined a whole host of Religious Right groups demanding that both Stephenson and Turley step down.

Along with the AFA, the coalition includes ex-gay groups like the Restored Hope Network and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) in addition to Mat Staver’s Liberty Counsel; Rick Scarborough’s Vision America; Scott Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries; Linda Harvey’s Mission America; Peter LaBarbera’s Americans For Truth About Homosexuality; Brian Camenker’s MassResistance... and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which apparently still exists.

Back in 2010, when a federal district court in California heard the first legal challenge to the anti-gay Proposition 8, the judge asked the attorney defending Prop 8 how marriage equality would hurt the ability of straight couples to bear and raise children. The attorney sputtered and answered, “I don’t know.” A key witness for Prop 8’s supporters had the same answer, and later changed his mind to support marriage equality.

Four years later, the case is coming before the Supreme Court, and marriage equality opponents are still struggling to answer that question. In an amicus brief [pdf] filed with the court last week, the anti-gay Liberty Counsel took a shot at it. If marriage equality is achieved, Liberty Counsel argues, “Many boys will grow up without any positive male influence in their lives to show them what it means to be a man, and many girls will grow up without any female influence to show them what it means to be a lady.”

Not only does Proposition 8 further the state’s interest in steering childrearing into the husband-wife marriage model, but it furthers the important interest in providing male and female role models in the family. Male gender identity and female gender identity are each uniquely important to a child’s development. As a result, one very significant justification for defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman is because children need a mother and a father. We live in a world demarcated by two genders, male and female. There is no third or intermediate category. Sex is binary. By striking down Proposition 8, this Court will be making a powerful statement: our government no longer believes children deserve mothers and fathers. In effect, it would be saying: “Two fathers or two mothers are not only just as good as a mother and a father, they are just the same.”

The government promotion of this idea will likely have some effect even on people who are currently married, who have been raised in a particular culture of marriage. But this new idea of marriage, sanctioned by law and government, will certainly have a dramatic effect as the next generation’s attitudes toward marriage, childbearing, and the importance of mothers and fathers are formed. By destroying the traditional definition of marriage, the family structure will be dramatically transformed. Many boys will grow up without any positive male influence in their lives to show them what it means to be a man, and many girls will grow up without any female influence to show them what it means to be a lady.

The repercussions of this are incalculable and will reshape the culture in which we live. Many children learn appropriate gender roles by having interaction with both their mother and their father and by seeing their mother and their father interact together with one another. By redefining marriage to state that this is not a family structure that the state wants to foster and encourage, this Court will be overturning centuries of historical understandings of family and the home.

To give you an idea of the kind of parenting that Liberty Counsel supports, its lawyers Mat Staver and Rena Lindevaldsen, who are named on its brief, are also representing a woman accused of kidnapping her daughter rather than let her have contact with her other mother (the woman’s former same-sex partner).
 

Conservative leaders are continuing to rally opposition to a proposed plan to end the national ban on gay members in the Boy Scouts of America with warnings about pedophilia and “indoctrination.”

Family Research Council vice president Rob Schwarzwalder told Janet Mefferd yesterday that fathers cannot trust their sons to be around gay people.

Mefferd called gay rights advocates “totalitarian” for opposing the ban and lamented that the “violins are playing full blast” in the media when they cover stories about gay youths kicked out of the Boy Scouts.

Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel said in a statement that “people like Jerry Sandusky” would be “permitted to be Scoutmasters” if the policy changes, adding, “To allow homosexual Scoutmasters or homosexual Scouts will put young boys at risk.”

Concerned Women for America started a letter-writing campaign against the move before gays attempt “to infiltrate the next generation.” The group even claimed that if gays are allowed to join the Boy Scouts, it would mean that “our religious liberties are being taken away”…somehow.

The Texas Pastors Council called on parents to “defend our children” and not “allow our boys to be targeted by those who believe there is no moral code and no definition of gender” and stop those who are bent on “forcing their immorality on society.”

Pastors, if the scouts fall, the church is next in the sights of the activists committed to forcing their immorality on society – WILL YOU COME?

Fathers, if we allow our boys to be targeted by those who believe there is no moral code and no definition of gender – WHO WILL DEFEND OUR CHILDREN?

Mothers, your voice of courage and protection of the virtue of our children is desperately needed – WILL YOU STAND ALSO?

Florida Family Policy Council president John Stemberger went on another anti-gay rant, alleging that the BSA will “open a can of worms that would cause a mass exodus” and “devastate the Boy Scouts permanently.”

If the BSA departs from its policies on allowing openly homosexual scoutmasters and boys in the program it could destroy the legitimacy and the security of this iconic institution.

As an Eagle Scout, former Scoutmaster and a Vigil Honor Member of the Order of the Arrow, I have a deep personal interest in passing on the rich experience of Scouting to my two sons and I pray that the BSA does not open a can of worms that would cause a mass exodus from a program that America needs now more than ever to train boys to become responsible men. A change of this policy could transform and devastate the Boy Scouts permanently. Additionally, the vast majority of Americans do not support changing the policy to allow openly homosexual scout leaders, so this proposed change makes no sense on many levels.

2000 presidential candidate Alan Keyes in WorldNetDaily warned of “homosexual indoctrination” and “idolatry” in the Boy Scouts if they change the policy:

The simple words of the Scout Oath were meant to encourage boys in the habit of walking this straight path; hence the endeavor to be “morally straight.” But the oath first of all made it clear that the Scout looked first of all to God as the standard of moral rectitude. Try as they might, the present-day trustees of the Scouting movement will never fit the square peg of God’s standard into the round hole of homosexual sin. Moreover, though they begin by admitting practicing homosexuals into the ranks, they must end in acknowledging homosexual activity as morally correct, else they will involve the whole movement in the perjurious administration of an oath openly violated in practice. For in that moral sense, it is not possible to be gay and morally straight at the same time. Thus what the present trustees of the BSA reportedly may do involves rejecting God’s standard for male sexual behavior. And it involves doing so in a way that willfully abandons the straight path blazed by the footsteps of Christ.

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By accepting a humanly fabricated redefinition of the moral standard, the BSA will fall prey to the inevitable logic of such idolatry. “Their idols are … the work of human hands … those who make them become like unto them; so do all who trust in them.” (Psalm 115:8) It will speedily become evident that what masquerades as tolerance is actually indoctrination, seeking to mold boys according to the standard the BSA trustees will have raised above God’s standard. For if homosexual activity is morally acceptable as an expression of love and good fellowship, then those who express their love accordingly do what is right.

But the aim of Scouting is to encourage young men to do what is right in various ways. Therefore, once the moral prejudice against homosexuality is regarded as a violation of right, doing things that habitually assault and break down this prejudice becomes part of “moral training.” Just as, on many campuses now, refusal to experiment with homosexuality is frowned upon as a sign of bigotry, so henceforth in Scouting braking down this prejudice would be recognized as a meritorious activity. Though camouflaged in different words there will be a merit badge for this experimentation as part of the regime of homosexual indoctrination. God knows what that will lead to; and given now widely publicized possibilities, so should the BSA Inc.

• The Family Research Council and Liberty Counsel are urging activists to contact the Boy Scouts and voice their opposition to the possibility of lifting the ban on gay scouts and scout leaders.
• In case that is not enough, FRC is also asking God to intervene: "Thanks be to God for keeping the Scout Program strong till now. May He intervene to prevent this travesty against righteousness and justice from taking place! May God give the BSA leaders courage and understanding NOT to forsake their own laws by BOWING to those behind this immoral shakedown. May those within who are behind this resign or be removed! May Scout parents across America rise up to say 'NO' to this evil and may they prevail in preserving this great institution!"
• Gary Cass also opposes any possible change because it will only lead to sexual abuse.
• Bart Gingerich of The Institute on Religion & Democracy says the Boy Scouts are being pressured by a gay "mafia": "Let's not just call it the LGBT agenda; it's almost like an alphabet mafia, really. It's very thuggish."
• Why is the AFA broadcasting live from the Super Bowl?
• Finally, Kenneth Miller will remain in jail as he refuses to cooperate in the kidnapping investigation involving Lisa Miller.

As Brian noted last week, anti-Islam activists are gearing up to oppose John Brennan, President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, for supposedly being too sympathetic to Islam.  Not only is Brennan's ability to speak Arabic of concern to them, but so are comments he made stating that his travels in Islamic countries have taught him about "the goodness and beauty of Islam" and "helped to shape my own world view."

And that sort of attitude is unacceptable to people like Mat Staver who suggests that Brennan's experience with Islam will make him unwilling to go after terrorists, warning that "if our CIA Director has had his worldview shaped by this kind of radical ideology, that should be concerning to every American":