Liberty Counsel

On the "Faith and Freedom" radio program, Matt Barber and Mat Staver warned that the Second Amendment was under attack, which was no surprise since the Left is always "drooling [and] can hardly contain themselves" over opportunities to exploit tragedies like Sandy Hook in order to "completely disarm" America.

But taking away guns won't stop school killings, Staver stated, because then people would just resort to knives or to constructing massive fertilizer bombs like Timothy McVeigh. 

The real problem, Staver and Barber insisted, is that we've removed prayer and the Ten Commandments from our schools and so America is in a "moral crisis" and "sick to the core":

As Liberty Counsel continues its crusade against the California law that bans the use of sexual orientation conversion therapy on minors, it remains a frequent topic of discussion on the "Faith and Freedom" radio program, despite the fact that Mat Staver and Matt Barber essentially just keep making the same points over and over again.

But they do add new twists every now and again, like when Staver recently declared that this law ought to serve are a "wake-up call to America" that gay activists are on a mission to "abolish morality": 

Forgive us for not buying Liberty University law dean Matt Barber’s attempt to lecture everyone about the Civil Rights Movement in an attempt to smear gay rights advocates. Barber, who is also the Director of Cultural Affairs for Liberty Counsel, on The Janet Mefferd Show yesterday said it is “so offensive to me” and his many African American friends that “sexual anarchists” have “cynically co-opted and hijacked the language of the very, very noble civil rights movement and applied it to their disordered lifestyle.”

“The civil rights era, the true civil rights fight is pretty much over,” Barber later agued, rather astoundingly.

“So people want to be part of something bigger than themselves, they want to feel like they’re doing something important, so they cynically manipulate people and use the language of civil rights in order to dupe well-meaning young people into a cause that is contrary to freedom and facilities a lifestyle that is emotionally, spiritually destructive and doesn’t do society any good either.”

Listen:

Maybe it’s just me, but does anyone else find it problematic that a person whose idol is Jerry Falwell, the founder of Liberty University, is now using the civil rights movement in a harangue against gay rights? Falwell was a fierce opponent of the Civil Rights Movement and a proponent of segregation.

He preached against Brown v. Board of Education, which banned racial segregation in public schools, telling his church, “When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line. The true Negro does not want integration.”

Falwell kept his private Christian school segregated to help families avoid integration in public schools and opposed the Carter administration’s attempt to challenge the tax status of segregated schools. He also subscribed to the belief that black people were under “Noah’s curse on Ham” and argued that school “facilities should be separate.”

“If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God's word and had desired to do the Lord's will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made,” he said, warning that integration and interracial marriage will “destroy our race.”

Sound familiar?

He condemned the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a “civil wrong” and attacked movement leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr., as “Communists” who sought to “bring about violence and bloodshed.” The televangelist even opposed sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid government and said that anti-Apartheid protests were “instigated primarily by Communist-sponsored people.”

Falwell’s rhetoric against the Civil Rights Movement are actually remarkably similar to Matt Barber’s own anti-gay diatribes, as Barber seemed to have taken a page from Falwell in warning that gay rights advocates are inspired by Karl Marx and that radicals “trying to impose a globalist, Communist structure” are the real culprits behind the gay rights movement. He claimed that “homosexual activism, undermining the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic and doing away with it, that is the ice breaker that breaks the ice so that the bigger Communist ships and the redistributionist ships.”

While surely Barber would distance himself from Falwell’s harsh condemnation of the Civil Rights Movement, he is not afraid to use the same harsh and demagogic rhetoric of the late televangelist in order to attack supporters of gay equality.

One has to wonder just how many episodes of their "Faith and Freedom" radio program Mat Staver and Matt Barber are going to dedicate to railing against the California law that bans the use of sexual orientation conversion therapy on minors since, at this point, these programs have become absurdly redundant as they just keep making the same points over and over.

But somehow they are still managing to come up with increasingly ridiculous claims about the dangers posed by this law, warning that it will require therapists to tell victims of sexual abuse that they are now transgender:

Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show this week to report on his group’s so far unsuccessful lawsuit against California’s new law prohibiting the use of ex-gay therapy on minors. Barber asserted that “anecdotal, unsubstantiated, politically motivated claims of suicidal thoughts” that frequently result from the unsafe and degrading therapy techniques “have nothing to do with science.” “Simply on the science alone they just don’t have a leg to stand on,” Barber said.

But as we’ve reported before, the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, National Association of Social Workers and American Psychiatric Association have all found that sexual orientation conversion therapy is a dangerous sham.

Barber, who just yesterday he claimed that nearly half of all gay people are victims of sexual abuse as children, doesn’t really care about the findings of the country’s leading medical organizations, he just cares about preserving extremely harmful practices under the pretense of defending children against the supposed gay menace.

“The homosexual activist lobby is an insatiable beast” intent on “throwing children under the bus,” Barber claimed. He warned that gays are working to “turn our public schools into indoctrination centers” and “using these kids as pawns in a dangerous and selfish political game of chess.”

Barber: I know from personal experience dozens and dozens of former homosexuals, typically it’s through a relationship with Jesus Christ that they are able to come to a full and complete freedom from their unwanted same-sex attractions. We know the untold thousands of people who have left homosexuality, those results speak for themselves. You match that up against these anecdotal, unsubstantiated, politically motivated claims of suicidal thoughts and so forth, we see that this is clearly a political move; it has nothing to do with science or helping these children. They are using these kids as pawns in a dangerous and selfish political game of chess.

…

Barber: We’ve seen, as I mentioned before, thousands of people who have left homosexuality but they have to be able to establish that it’s fixed for legal purposes so that’s what it all boils down to, it’s all about the legality. We’re confident even the Ninth Circuit will hold that clearly this is an overreaching law that is politically motivated, intended to silence opposition to homosexuality and that simply on the science alone they just don’t have a leg to stand on.

Mefferd: You look at how the LGBT activists are operating in California and it just seems like there is no limit to what they want, it’s just one thing after another out there, they get one thing and then they move on to the next thing and they move on to the next thing and with great vigor.

Barber: That’s right. The homosexual activist lobby is an insatiable beast, as I’ve often said before. They do want everything that we’ve said that they wanted and that is not just affirmation of homosexuality but celebration of homosexuality under penalty of law, they absolutely want to turn our public schools into indoctrination centers and the narrative that people can and do leave homosexuality does not align with their political, cultural and legal goals so they are throwing children under the bus here—in order to try ends justifies the means agenda here.

Matt Barber is quite fond of likening organizations that dare to disagree with Liberty Counsel's radical right-wing agenda to bullies who just need to be punched in the mouth.  And that is exactly the remedy he suggests people use when dealing with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, since the group is trampling the Constitution while engaging in "religious cleansing" and needs to be taught a lesson:

Yes, of course he merely means it "metaphorically" ... because everyone knows that nothing teaches a bully a message like being "metaphorically" punched in the mouth.

Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Staver appeared on VCY America’s Crosstalk yesterday to discuss his so far unsuccessful legal challenge to California’s law banning ex-gay therapy practiced on minors, where host Vic Eliason commended his efforts and said that affirming a gay person’s sexual orientation is “like saying to the pyromaniac: go ahead and try it again.”

Staver: These clients who have a right to receive the kind of counseling that they want and is benefiting them, they will be told ‘no you can’t have that anymore.’ The only kind of counsel that you can get is that these confused feelings that you have and that you don’t want, don’t worry about them, just act on them, let’s change your religious and moral views instead.

Eliason: That’s like saying to the pyromaniac: go ahead and try it again. Inflaming emotions and passions….

Staver argued that the law will hurt survivors of child abuse because they will begin to “have feelings towards somebody of the same-sex because that’s how he was abused, that’s how he was dominated,” saying that gays are “abnormal” and have a “risky” lifestyle. He added that sometimes sexual orientation conversion therapy isn’t even needed because the orientation can “go away spontaneously” and “without any intervention at all.”

The likes of a Jerry Sandusky, the monster that he has been on the media and around the country, molest a young boy. That boy then begins to have anger and identity issues and it affects his relationship with his classmates and with his parents, then begins to act out or have feelings towards somebody of the same-sex because that’s how he was abused, that’s how he was dominated. That’s a normal response for someone going through something like this where they’ve been sexually dominated.

…

There are studies that show that some minors for example that might develop these same-sex sexual attractions, they go away spontaneously, they go away without any intervention at all, they just simply go away. Now, what happens if you have situations like that where someone just says, ‘hey it’s natural and normal, go ahead and act on it.’ Well no it’s not natural and normal, in fact it’s abnormal, it’s risky.

As more conservatives argue that Religious Right groups need to take a more aggressive stance against the gay community in the wake of a disastrous election cycle, Liberty Counsel has come out with a meme maintaining that the government should treat gays and lesbians just like drug addicts. The group goes on to claim that gays cannot be Christian or find love in their “unhealthy interactions” as “their actions are damaging both to themselves and to society as a whole.”

This should really swing the debate!

Conservative organizations have come out strongly against the UN Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities, with Rick Santorum leading the charge. The groups are upset about the treaty ensuring that people with disabilities have equal rights because they claim it is “pro-abortion.”

Article 25 of the Treaty reads in part: 

States Parties recognize that persons with disabilities have the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health without discrimination on the basis of disability. States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure access for persons with disabilities to health services that are gender-sensitive, including health-related rehabilitation. In particular, States Parties shall:

(a) Provide persons with disabilities with the same range, quality and standard of free or affordable health care and programmes as provided to other persons, including in the area of sexual and reproductive health and population-based public health programmes;

Anti-choice activists are angry about the inclusion of the phrase “reproductive health” in the nondiscrimination clause, according to LifeNews:

Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, has previously noted the pro-life concerns, saying abortion advocates put language in the treaty in Article 25 that requires signatories to ‘provide persons with disabilities… free or affordable health care including in the area of sexual and reproductive health and population-based health programs.’” “Translation: the global community could force America to sanction sterilization or abortion for the disabled–at taxpayer expense” he said. “Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) tried to neutralize the threat during the mark-up in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Unfortunately, his amendment (which would have stopped the treaty from forcing abortion policy on countries that sign) was thwarted by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) after a debate.”

Several pro-life groups are on record opposing the treaty, including Eagle Forum, Family Research Council Action, CitizenLink, Concerned Women for America, Liberty Counsel, and others.

In addition, the Home School Legal Defense Association and the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) have also came out against ratification.

But Perkins’s claim that the treaty “could force America to sanction sterilization or abortion for the disabled-at taxpayer expense” is simply false.

The State Department makes clear that the treaty “does not include abortion” and the phrase “reproductive health” in Article 25 “does not create any abortion rights, and cannot be interpreted to constitute support, endorsement, or promotion of abortion.”

The Convention is firmly rooted in the principles of equality and non-discrimination. As the Chairperson and many other delegations, including the United States, have noted on countless occasions over the course of negotiations, the treaty reinforces existing rights and is aimed at assuring that persons with disabilities will be treated on an equal basis with others.

This approach was reflected in oral statements and in various places in the written travaux preparatoires, including in a footnote to the draft text of Article 25 that appeared in the report of the Seventh Ad Hoc Committee.

In this regard, the United States understands that the phrase "reproductive health" in Article 25(a) of the draft Convention does not include abortion, and its use in that Article does not create any abortion rights, and cannot be interpreted to constitute support, endorsement, or promotion of abortion. We stated this understanding at the time of adoption of the Convention in the Ad Hoc Committee, and note that no other delegation suggested a different understanding of this term.

Even the National Right to Life Committee reported after the text was adopted that no delegate interpreted “reproductive health” to mean abortion and that “delegates from pro-life nations ultimately accepted this language.” “The committee responsible for enforcing compliance to this treaty would be going way beyond their mandate if they were to interpret the term ‘reproductive health’ to include abortion,” the NRLC said:

The legally undefined and controversial term "reproductive health" remains in the document despite the fact that the term has never appeared in any other UN treaty. However, all parties maintained that the term does not include abortion and that its inclusion in this treaty cannot be interpreted to create any new rights such as a right to abortion.

The final version of Article 25 (a) on health states that nations signing and ratifying the treaty shall: "Provide persons with disabilities with the same range, quality and standard of free or affordable health care and programmes as provided other persons, including in the area of sexual and reproductive health. . . . ."

Delegates from pro-life nations ultimately accepted this language because they were assured and became confident that it does not include abortion or create any new human rights such as a right to abortion.

For example, during the debate the Treaty Chairman, Ambassador McKay of New Zealand, stated repeatedly that the use of the term "reproductive health" in this treaty does not create any new human rights such as abortion. He even added a non-binding footnote to the record of negotiations, not the treaty itself, which he claimed would preclude any such misinterpretation of the term.

Numerous delegates from nations throughout the world including the European Union agreed with Chairman McKay that the term "reproductive health" does not include abortion. No delegate from any nation stated that it does.

In light of all these statements and the language of the treaty, the committee responsible for enforcing compliance to this treaty would be going way beyond their mandate if they were to interpret the term "reproductive health" to include abortion. It is crucial that they do not because nations that sign and ratify a treaty are required to change their laws in order to comply with the treaty.

But for the Religious Right, even definitive evidence that the treaty’s language does not refer to abortion doesn’t change their mind that the Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities must be defeated.