Truth In Action Ministries

Truth In Action Ministries, which last year produced a film warning that the “radical homosexual agenda” will destroy America like an iceberg hitting the Titanic, is out with a new short film opposing gay members in the Boy Scouts. Featuring Religious Right leaders like Bob Knight of the American Civil Rights Union, Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, the anti-gay activists warn that gays pose a physical and spiritual danger to children and do away with morality.

Watch highlights here:

Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family appeared with John Rabe and Carmen Pate on Truth that Transforms, the flagship radio program of Truth in Action Ministries, to argue that same-sex marriage is an oppressive and satanic ploy. After Rabe asked him why opponents of same-sex marriage sometimes have problems explaining “why redefining [marriage] is deadly,” Stanton claimed that the marriage debate “goes deep into not just our own faith but humanity itself.”

He argued that resistance to same-sex marriage is necessary because “throughout the world if you look at how cultures do marriage, every single culture throughout time has done marriage as a union between men and women, God has given it to us this way.” “Every human culture needs marriage and we redefine it at our own peril,” Stanton said.

Later, Stanton repeated his assertion that homosexuality “is a really pernicious lie of Satan” because it denies “the distinct God imaging in each of us as males and females.” He went on to warn that gay equality leads to the “persecution” of Christians and will “redefine not only marriage but the family itself if not humanity completely.”

Stanton: This is a really pernicious lie of Satan to say that the gender part of humanity doesn’t really matter because the gender part of humanity is really denying the distinct God imaging in each of us as males and females. We need to understand that as Christians. That’s the biggest thing. The other is that, ‘you know kids don’t really need a mom and a dad they just need any configuration of loving adults who care for them,’ in fact, and this has already been in the case, we all know about what hate speech is, the fact of saying a child needs a mother and a father will be deemed hate speech because that is a statement against same-sex marriage and parenting. That’s a radical thing. The other thing is religious freedom, I mean we’re already seeing that on a vast, vast scale; the other side really in a pitiful way goes, ‘oh we’re not going to violate religious freedom, you’re not going to have to marry same-sex couples in your church,’ but it goes far beyond that. But it goes far beyond that. Doctors refusing to inseminate a lesbian couple because it violates his conscience, people like that have and will be hauled into court and prosecuted and persecuted because of their long held and deeply felt convictions about what is right and what children need.

Rabe: That’s a major point. The way that this has been portrayed societally and how it’s gotten so much traction is via the idea, ‘well if two people love each other, who are we to say that they shouldn’t be together and that they shouldn’t be able to get married?’ That very simple idea has a lot of persuasive power with people as it turns out and yet when you really break it down you start to get the sense that that’s really not what this is about. It’s not so much that people want to be able to have that long-term commitment to each other as it is being able to redefine what society is about and being able to silence people who disagree.

Stanton: That is exactly it. As a good friend of mine says, ‘you know a lot of these people advocating for same-sex marriage, I’ve been in the marriage work for decades, I’ve never seen these people come to the stump to advocate for marriage, the only time they are for marriage is when it has same-sex in front of it.’ Think about that. These are not advocates of marriage; they’re advocates for redefining marriage. They know that making gender any irrelevant part of the equation really does redefine not only marriage but the family itself if not humanity completely.

• Rob Boston @ Wall of Separation: You’ve Got (Stupid) Mail!: Texas School District Debunks Religious Right Curriculum Claims.
• Noah Rothman @ Mediaite: Glenn Beck And S.E. Cupp Agree That GOP Must Accept Gay Marriage, But How?
• Alvin McEwen @ Pam's House Blend: ‘One Million Moms’ abandoning failed Ellen DeGeneres protest.
• Andy Kopsa: Mississippi Teen Pregnancy Faith Based Summit: Sales Pitch for Truth in Action Ministries.
• Towleroad: Manhattan Declaration Promotes Vague, Forgettable Decal.
• Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Virginia Foxx spends too much time in elevators.

Truth in Action Ministries has released their “2012 Issues Guide for Christian Voters” [PDF], which argues that federal spending on social services “goes against what the Bible says about caring for one’s own and others” and pushing for bans on abortion rights, stem cell research and emergency contraception. The group also warns of “radical judges” and an “out-of-control judiciary,” the “dangerous and destructive” health care reform law and the “false religion” of environmentalism.

But of course, no Religious Right voter guide goes without a section on gay rights, and Truth in Action Ministries tells members that END will “impose the homosexual political agenda on the workplace” and that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has started “Maoist-style ‘re-education’ in ‘diversity.’” The group also claims the repeal law will “violate the rights of those serving by forcing them to cohabit and shower with people who may desire them sexually” and “jeopardize the military’s health and blood supply, since homosexual men are far more likely to be promiscuous and to have STDs, including HIV/AIDS”

In 1996, Congress overwhelmingly enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). But in 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck down the state’s marriage law, and the state began issuing same-sex “marriage” licenses six months later, despite no change in the law. And in May 2012, a federal appeals court in Boston declared DOMA unconstitutional.

All candidates should be asked how they will defend marriage from this radical assault. It’s not enough to say they favor marriage if they also support same-sex “civil unions,” “domestic partnerships,” or “sexual orientation” laws, all of which incentivize homosexual relationships and devalue marriage. They should also be questioned about:

• The proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would impose the homosexual political agenda on the workplace;

• A constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union only of one man and one woman;

• New policies giving marital benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

Servicemen and women put their lives on the line. They deserve policies that ensure maximum military readiness and the best chance to win wars and return home alive. That’s why Congress overwhelmingly passed a law in 1993 incorporating as policy the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s ban on homosexual sodomy. But now the federal government has overturned “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” We believe this is profoundly immoral on several levels. It would:

• Hurt unit cohesion, morale, retention, and recruitment;

• Violate the rights of those serving by forcing them to cohabit and shower with people who may desire them sexually;

• Jeopardize the military’s health and blood supply, since homosexual men are far more likely to be promiscuous and to have STDs, including HIV/AIDS;

• Force chaplains to resign or to jettison God’s Law in favor of political correctness;

• Subject all personnel to Maoist-style “re-education” in “diversity.”

Likewise, Congress should resist any effort eliminate women’s combat exemption.

Last night, a gunman shot and killed at least 12 people and injured dozens more at a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises" in Aurora, Colorado.

And already Jerry Newcombe of Truth in Action Ministries is out with a piece blaming it on the fact that Americans have no fear of God or of going to Hell:

I can't help but feel that to some extent, we're reaping what we've been sowing as a society. We said to God, "Get out of the public arena." Lawsuit after lawsuit, often by misguided "civil libertarians," have chased away any fear of God in the land -- at least in the hearts of millions.

...

Recently, I wrote on the subject of Hell and how our society has generally lost its cognizance of it.

We've lost this cognizance to the point that a recent bestseller was a book by an "evangelical pastor," who for all practical purposes denied Hell (or the import of it). (It exists, but don't worry -- supposedly nobody's going there.) When the book was first published 16 months ago, it made the cover of TIME magazine. This month it was republished as a paperback.

This makes me think. "Wow, what the heck happened to Hell?" What -- was there some new revelation that changed what the Lord warned about? To me, what He said 2,000 years ago is still worth heeding: What does it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your soul?

Tens of millions of young people in this culture seem to have no fear of God. It's becoming too commonplace that some frustrated person will go on a killing spree of random people. If they kill themselves, they think it's all over. But that's like going from the frying pan into the fire. Where's the fear of God in our society? I don't think people would do those sorts of things if they truly understood the reality of Hell.

Truth in Action Ministries has released yet another short film chronicling America’s supposed moral decline and spiritual collapse. In Losing Liberty, hosts Jerry Newcombe and Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy, daughter of late televangelist D. James Kennedy, insisted that America is a “Christian nation” but that secularists are “working day and night to unmoor of us from our Christian foundations.” According to the film, America is turning into a dystopian society much like The Hunger Games, the trilogy about a dictatorial regime which forces children to fight to the death each year. “One can’t help but wonder, will our future will be similar if our nation continues in the direction we are headed,” Carmen Pate asks.

After activist Dee Wampler insisted that America was much better off in the 1950s and 1960s, South African evangelist Peter Hammond said there is a “secular humanist assault on our Christian heritage” that is leading to tyranny. “It’s the Christian foundation of our foundation that brought us freedom,” said John Rabe, who hosts the organization’s radio show Truth that Transforms alongside Pate, “to turn away from that would take what’s already disastrous and make it infinitely worse.”

As Hammond discussed “everything that is evil in this world,” the film displayed images of the September 11 attacks, bombings, drug abuse, Adolf Hitler…and a married lesbian couple and the kiss between characters Kurt and Blaine on Glee!

Much like American Religious Right activists who reminisce about the 1950s, when much of the country had legal segregation, Hammond asserted that the 1994 election in South Africa, the first free election following the fall of Apartheid, demonstrated the “disastrous” impact of “evangelical apathy.”

Evangelicals “refused to vote because they didn’t like what was happening in our country at that time,” Hammond said, “all that happened is less Christian candidates got elected and more anti-Christian candidates got elected, and the country got more anti-Christian and soon they legalized abortion and pornography, homosexuality and before we knew it we had desecration of Sundays to a massive increase of crime.” He then went on to blame the Obama administration for having “encouraged” anti-Christian persecution and violence abroad.

Watch highlights here:

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) appeared today on Truth that Transforms, the flagship radio program of Truth in Action Ministries, to push his Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act, which the Interfaith Alliance notes would allow houses of worship to engage “in partisan politicking,” such as endorsing candidates from the pulpit, “without losing their tax-exempt status.” Truth in Action Ministries recently produced a film likening the rule to Nazism, and Jones told host John Rabe that the tax provision is like “communism” and “socialism.”

The congressman also conflated the risk of forfeiting tax-exempt status with losing civil rights, saying that the IRS has eroded the “freedom of speech” in the U.S.  Jones also said that unlike liberals, “those on the conservative side believe in freedom of speech and therefore they’re not reporting anyone.”

The last church to have lost its tax-exempt status was Randall Terry’s church which took out an advertisement opposing the election of Bill Clinton in 1992.

Rabe: In reality it also seems that in some ways the threats have outstripped the actual actions, no one should be threatened with the loss of their tax exemption for speaking freely but it seems like this is something that the ACLU and Barry Lynn and groups like that use to get churches to self-censor as well, it might be helpful for pastors to understand that if they stand up and are bold and speak the truth anyway, they may find that the IRS has their hands full trying to do anything about it.

Jones: I think you are right on that, John, I think it’s a law that is very difficult to enforce and in fact the Internal Revenue Service will tell you and they testified to this that they are dependent on a third party to report. Is that communism? Is that socialism? What is that?

Rabe: Yeah, it’s spying on each other.

…

Rabe: It does seem that this provision has been somewhat selectively enforced is it just my perception or is it reality that those on the conservative side of the spectrum seem to face more sanctions on this sort of thing than those on the liberal side of the spectrum.

Jones: Well if I can answer you this way I think those on the conservative side believe in freedom of speech and therefore they’re not reporting anyone. But I will say that to me, left or right, this should not be part of America, this should not be the intimidation of some law that was never debated that a group or an element can use this law to intimidate. John, that’s not America, you know that, I know that, you’ve been saying that, I’m just telling you this is one of those issues that ought to be repealed, let’s get it off the books and let’s return this country to freedom of speech.

The outcry from the Religious Right over President Obama’s endorsement of legalizing same-sex marriage continues, with the American Civil Rights Union’s Robert Knight attackig Obama for trying “to invoke Christ when doing the devil’s work” and creating “the sinews of tyranny”:

After having done everything in his power to undermine marriage, President Obama has come out of the closet, so to speak, with his announcement that he’s now for brideless or groomless “marriage.” But he didn’t come out alone. He brought Jesus with him, citing Christ as his inspiration for directly attacking God’s moral order. It’s one thing to be a hypocrite, which Mr. Obama has been for years. Since he began pretending to oppose the redefinition of marriage but refusing to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act while homosexualizing the military. It’s quite another thing, however, to invoke Christ when doing the devil’s work.

Forget the voters. Mr. Obama’s going to have to answer to God for this one. Wednesday’s announcement even might sober up the people who voted for Mr. Obama simply to show that America has overcome racial division. Someone should survey pastors who support Mr. Obama and ask: Which is more important - electing a man on the basis of race or upholding the integrity of the faith and what the Scriptures say about marriage? Citing Genesis 2:24, Jesus said in Matthew 19:5: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

This actually is about much more than marriage. It’s about truth. Mr. Obama is asking us to put into law a requirement for us to recognize as a marriage something that is not a marriage. When you do that, you create the sinews of tyranny, which stretch out to strangle freedom of speech, freedom of association and, eventually, freedom of religion. The virtue of tolerance is strangled, too, morphing into the vice of mandatory celebration.

With this wicked move, Mr. Obama is insisting that we bow down and worship the false idol of sexual anarchy. That’s what his wealthy supporters in Hollywood demand. On Thursday, they ponied up a reported $15 million to his campaign at George Clooney’s pool party. When you accord more respect to liberal film stars and gay billionaires than you do to the Creator of the universe, you’re not leaving much doubt about what you really worship.

Jerry Newcombe of Truth in Action Ministries said that Obama’s announcement is “another nail in the coffin of the American Family”:

With this statement, America’s self-proclaimed Christian leader has professed a clearly non-biblical belief that further weakens the moral fiber of our nation. “This could be another nail in the coffin of the American Family, if we don’t stand up now” says Jerry Newcombe, spokesman for Truth in Action Ministries. “Same sex marriage is wrong on many fronts—especially by codifying immorality into law. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the president’s position is to put the government’s sanction on something God has clearly revealed to be sin. Thankfully thousands of homosexuals have been freed from their sin through the power of Christ and continue to be freed every day.”

Christians in America must speak the truth on this issue— before it’s too late. Please help us make a difference. We, as God’s people, must speak out against anything that contradicts His Word — including the radical homosexual agenda. We must oppose it now — or apologize, in the years to come, to the children and grandchildren whom we have left to be its victims.

Ken Hutcherson reaffirmed his pledge to the Christian Post to “take back” the word “gay”:

"The most important thing is that there is no way in the world that I would vote for, regardless who it is, regardless how white they are, regardless how black they are, there is just no way I am ever going to vote for someone who believes in same-sex marriage and abortion," Hutcherson said in an interview with The Christian Post on Thursday.

…

"God hates the killing of innocent life, and God hates divorce, and God hates the whole effeminate aspect of man going after man or woman going after woman. You can't get around that – it's in the Bible. And what we need to understand as Christians, is that this is America. We stand on our biblical views regardless," he noted.

…

"We have given up so much territory; we are confused about how to take things back. Just like the word 'gay.' I am not homosexual, but I am gay – I am happy. And we've lost that word – we've given it up. We need to take back the rainbow, and we need to take back the word of God," the pastor concluded.

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins stars in a video produced by the FRC and Truth in Action Ministries where he warns that same-sex marriage “contradicts God’s will as revealed in the created order, violating God’s law only brings pain and heartache.” Perkins says that in society today, “right is called wrong; evil is called good,” and “all of society suffers” as a result of legalizing marriage equality.

Watch:

For nearly a generation we’ve neglected marriage, leaving it nearly defenseless to homosexual activists who are now trying to redefine marriage out of existence. Same-sex marriage, it contradicts God’s will as revealed in the created order, violating God’s law only brings pain and heartache. Right is called wrong; evil is called good, it is because we have wielded moral authority to the demands of special interests or the ruling of some aberrant judge. As a result, all of society suffers.

…

The future of marriage is up to you, your vote can determine the language of your state constitution and the people we elect in our representative form of government will pass the laws and appoint the judges who may decide the final outcome. Get involved, vote your values, your biblical values, and make a difference.