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On her radio program today, Mission America’s Linda Harvey continued to stun, rolling out a new anti-gay claim: that it would have been better if Christians in the LGBT community and those who support equality had “simply walked away from Christianity.” Discussing One Wheaton, a group of LGBT and allied allumni of the evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois, Harvey reprised her theory that God couldn’t possibly make people gay, bisexual or transgender. She also repeated her earlier argument that LGBT people don’t exist, saying, “There’s no evidence there are different humans called LGBTQ people.” Towards the end of the broadcast, Harvey said that LGBT-identified Christians and their supporters should actually abandon their faith in Christ rather than “try and stay and change” Christianity:

Harvey: To try to slither around sin is not a novel idea, but to organize a group of folks to proudly renounce the teaching of Scripture is fragrantly defiant. They have bought the idea that there are people who are born to be homosexual or bisexual or in the wrong-sex body, it defies not just the teaching of Scripture but common sense, what kind of a Creator puts someone in the wrong-sex body? Or creates people destined to mate with just the same-sex, never being able to create new life together and always having problems making the anatomy work. Well, there’s a simple answer: our loving and all powerful Creator did not do this. This is the foolish and wandering heart of man.

Once you buy into the ‘born that way’ idea then self-delusion is not that far behind. There’s no evidence there are different humans called LGBTQ people, these are sinful behaviors, not in-born identities. And people do not have to cower in fear or depression or shame, if you truly love God you accept His will knowing it’s best for your life and it’s His design that will make you happy. God’s grace can and will help anyone who resolves to go beyond these feelings, to put them aside, and decide that He is sovereign.

But One Wheaton has apparently decided they are sovereign. They would be more respectful if they simply walked away from Christianity. But to try and stay and change it is worse than hypocrisy—it’s deception.

Last week, Bryan Fischer weighed in on the Viki Knox controversy with a column declaring that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was the charter member of "American Association of Religious Bigots" [a group Fischer just made up] because of Christie's concerns about Knox's comments.

Fischer discussed the controversy and his column on his radio program yesterday, where he said that the entire thing was set off by a display honoring Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender History Month  and asking if the display honored "all the homosexuals that had an enormous impact on history" ... like Adolf Hitler and John Wayne Gacy:

This whole thing is about Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender History Month. So my question again, if this is about homosexual history month, are they going to feature all the homosexuals that had an enormous impact on history?

Are they going to feature John Wayne Gacy? He's the homosexual pedophile, remember, that killed thirty-three young boys and young teenagers and buried them under the crawlspace in his house. He was a homosexual. Is he going to be a part of their display?

Adolf Hitler had a record as a homosexual prostitute in the streets of Vienna in the 1910s. He was denied promotions in the German military in World War I because of his homosexual behavior. He formed the Nazi Party in a homosexual bar, a gay bar, in Munich. All of his enforcers, almost every one of the Brownshirts; all the officers and almost all the Brownshirts were homosexuals. Is that going to be a part of Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender Month? We will wait to see.

Several weeks ago, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins hosted a press briefing at the National Press Club to discuss just what it is that the Religious Right is seeking in a Republican presidential nominee.

During the Q&A, Perkins was asked to discuss the idea that the very positions that make a candidate appealing to the Religious Right are the same positions that make such candidates unappealing to the general voting population.

Not surprisingly, Perkins took issue with that assessment and asserted instead that without the support of the Religious Right, no Republican candidate can hope to win the general elections and pointed to John McCain as proof:

This idea that a candidate that would be supported by social conservatives that would win the Republican nomination would be unacceptable to the general populace is just not true. I think the opposite it true; we saw that in the last election cycle. There was a Republican nomination that was not acceptable to social conservatives. He did not have the enthusiastic support of social conservatives and, as a result, the Republicans lost the general election.

Now, obviously McCain and the Religious Right had a rather contentious history, but to say that the McCain campaign did not receive the "enthusiastic support of social conservatives" requires one to completely ignore the rapturous lovefest that exploded when McCain announced the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate, which we chronicled at the time:

James Dobson, Focus on the Family: "A lot of people were praying, and I believe Sarah Palin is God's answer.”

Tony Perkins, Family Research Council: “Senator McCain made an outstanding pick.”

Connie Mackey, FRCAction: “I am elated with Senator McCain's choice.”

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel: "Absolutely brilliant choice.”

Richard Land: “Governor Palin will delight the Republican base.”

Rick Scarborough, Vision America, “I’m elated. I think it’s a superb choice."

Ralph Reed: “They’re beyond ecstatic. This is a home run.”

Gary Bauer, American Values: "[A] grand slam home run."

Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum: “She is the best possible choice.”

Janet Folger, Faith2Action: “[T]he selection of Sarah Palin is more than ‘Brilliant!’ ‘Electrifying!’ and ‘Energizing!’ The selection of Sarah Palin will lead to words like: ‘Rejuvenating!’ ‘Victory!’ and ‘Landslide!’"

Wendy Wright, Concerned Women for America: “Governor Palin will change the dynamics of the entire presidential race.”

Janice Shaw Crouse, CWA's Beverly LaHaye Institute: “She is an outstanding woman who will be an excellent role model for the nation's young people.”

David Barton, Wallbuilders: "The talk won't be about, 'look at Sarah Palin' as much as 'look at what McCain's choice of Palin says about McCain's core beliefs.”

Jonathan Falwell: “John McCain made it very clear that his administration was going to be a pro-life administration, and he proved that’s his belief and his passion today with the choice of Sarah Palin.”

Jerry Falwell, Jr.: “I think it’s a brilliant choice.”

Charmaine Yoest, Americans United for Life: “And then when [Palin] was announced — it was like you couldn’t breathe. [We] were grabbing each other and jumping up and down.”

Gary Marx, Judicial Confirmation Network: "I can tell you that this pick tells millions in the base of the party that they can trust McCain. More specifically that they can trust him with Supreme Court picks and other key appointments’"

David Keene, American Conservative Union: “The selection of Governor Palin is great news for conservatives, for the party and for the country. I predict any conservatives who have been lukewarm thus far in their support of the McCain candidacy will work their hearts out between now and November for the McCain-Palin ticket."

If social conservatives were unenthusiastic about the McCain ticket last time around, some apparently forgot to tell all of these social conservatives who were gushing about just how thrilled they were. 

Randy Thomasson of Save California joined Janet Mefferd on Friday to discuss the Queer Studies minor at Cal State Fullerton, and the anti-gay activist called the program an “oxymoron.” According to Thomasson, a sincere academic discussion of the LGBT community would show that no one is born gay and that people can simply change their sexual orientation and become ex-gays, “but they are dishonest so they are indoctrinating college students to think that homosexuality, bisexuality and transexuality is good and natural, maybe even for them.” He went on to warn that the minor could spread like an “infection” through academia and will be “training up an army to become intolerant activists” who will work to undermine and extinguish “free speech” and “religious freedom.”

Listen:

Mefferd: So we discovered recently Cal State Fullerton recently became the fourth Cal State to create a Queer Studies minor. It’s an interdisciplinary concentration that pulls courses from a variety of fields. Program coordinators say the minor focuses on norms and how they’ve changed over time and throughout different cultures, but they do acknowledge also that non-normative sexualities are a large part of the curriculum. Here with us for some reaction is Randy Thomasson, he’s president of SaveCalifornia.com. I didn’t know we had to study norms Randy, I thought norms were just something we all understood, I guess I’m just behind the times here.

Thomasson: No you’re not, they say they can call themselves queer but you and I can’t; it’s amazing.

Mefferd: What do you think about this new program? Obviously it’s not the first college to do this and I know there are lots of lgbt programs all over the place. Queer Studies, what do you make of that?

Thomasson: It’s an oxymoron, it should be called the promotion of homosexuality, bisexuality, transexuality. They’re not studying it, if they studied whether it was normal or not they’d have to hold a news conference or tell all the students, you know what, ‘there’s no “gay gene,” we’ve never found it, nobody has found it, Hamer didn’t find it, LeVay didn’t find it, we have noted there are thousands and thousands of former homosexuals and they’ve got families to prove it, they’ve got testimonies to prove it, we’ve seen that a huge amount of those of us in this lifestyle were sexually molested or had very bad relationships with our fathers or our mothers, and we see that this is something that can be changed, certainly with bisexuality. We acknowledge that transexuality, cross-dressing is not normal, cutting off healthy body parts is not natural, it takes a scalpel, and we have no evidence at all that this is a natural thing that people are born homosexual actually and it is a behavior. So we have to announce that as the findings of our study.’

If they were honest, that’s what they would do, but they are dishonest so they are indoctrinating college students to think that homosexuality, bisexuality and transexuality is good and natural, maybe even for them, but more so because the students that are interested in this are already relativistic because of the government school mentality they’ve been in through kindergarten through twelfth grade, probably. They are sitting ducks to become activists. So this is training up an army to become intolerant activists who want to trample parental rights, religious freedom, marriage, the Boy Scouts, property rights, business rights, medical doctorate rights, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, free speech, religious freedom. This is very dangerous, it is on several campuses in California, and yes I do believe that this is a wave. Because what do we have on most college campuses? Liberal administrators who allow this, so this is a fertile bed for an infection of Queer Studies that will not be studying anything that’s true but will be promoting a lie.

In an interview yesterday with Janet Mefferd to promote his book Suicide of a Superpower, Pat Buchanan reminisced about the national unity and common culture that existed…during segregation. Buchanan warned that America will soon look like California, where he claims religious faith is obsolete, gangs roam and the English language is marginalized. Buchanan added that America was “created” by whites and lamented that “we will have a country in 2041 that will consist of entirely of minorities.” He went on to say that while segregation was “wrong,” African Americans and whites shared a “common culture” during the segregation era that is now nonexistent.

Listen:

Buchanan: It’s going to be 2041 when white Americans of European descent will be a minority in the country their ancestors created, and what will that mean? I tried to, the article in The Atlantic celebrated it as I said and I tried to take a look at it and I’m more apprehensive because the things that held us all together, even though we’ve had conflicts, racial conflicts and others, were you know a common faith, a common culture, a common history we all loved, literature and poetry, all these things we learned in schools, all of us in the public and parochial schools. This doesn’t exist anymore, all these things are breaking down and we will have a country in 2041 that will consist of entirely of minorities.

And if you take a look at the state of California, for example, where that already exists, you see a state that is de-Christianized, or perhaps the most de-Christianized of the American states, you find that a situation where there’s a black-brown war among the underclass among these gangs which are proliferating and in the prisons. You find a state that is bankrupt or not exactly bankrupt but whose bond-rating is the worst in the United States, who was issuing script. You have something like 23% of the folks there are illiterate and you have half the people in Los Angeles County speaking a language other than English in their own homes. All of America is going to look like this in 2041 and my question is, what holds us together? How do we survive as one nation and one people if we can’t even understand each other?

I grew up in Washington, D.C. when it was 400,000 black folks and 400,000 white folks and segregation was wrong and that existed there, but we had a common religion, a common culture, we read all the same newspapers, we listened to the same radio, we cheered the same ball teams, we read the same history, we celebrated Christmas, Easter, Columbus Day, all the rest of it. And all these things are going out and the problem is once this common ground where you rise above, if you will, diversity that has always been a problem, if you a rise above that to the common ground upon which we can all agree and stand, that’s where you achieve the unity.

John Stemberger earlier this week appeared on a conference call for Champion the Vote and warned that the future of the country relies on the Religious Right. Stemberger, the head of the Florida Family Policy Council and the past chairman of the campaign to have a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality in Florida, was promoting the One Nation Under God event with Newt Gingrich, David Barton, James Dobson, Sam Rodriguez and Lila Rose which focuses on boosting right-wing activism and learning about “God’s fingerprint all over the founding of our country”:

While Champion the Vote is technically nonpartisan, Stemberger warned that America is being “fundamentally transformed into a different type of culture, a different country” and that “we will lose this beautiful thing we call America.” According to Stemberger, only Christians are capable of creating a free society. “As only the Christian presuppositions of theology created this country,” Stemberger said, “only Christians can save it and unless the church rises up, we’re done.” He went on to say that without the resurgence of the church, “our country’s going to slip away into something we don’t even recognize”:

Stemberger went on to say that Christian conservatives are facing extreme “hostility” in American society and warned that their opponents want their anti-gay views “expunged from the marketplace”:

Liberty Counsel Chairman Mathew Staver floated a boycott of Starbucks today on Freedom’s Call, Staver’s daily news alert. Staver was addressing the controversy over Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s cancelled appearance at the Global Leadership Summit at Willow Creek church, which in the past had ties to the ex-gay group Exodus International.

Staver alleges that Schultz was “intimidated” by “homosexual activists” into withdrawing from the conference, falsely arguing that the petition to Schultz was about the church’s view on marriage while it was actually regarding Willow Creek’s connections to the ex-gay ministry. In fact, marriage is nowhere mentioned in the petition. Staver also claimed that “Schultz and Starbucks have routinely been pro-abortion in their policies and actions” and that Schultz is beholden to “his homosexual constituency.”

“Since Starbucks is so pro-homosexual,” Staver said, “probably the people that buy Starbucks ought to consider patronizing another place”:

Liberty Counsel previously endorsed a boycott against McDonalds for allegedly working with “militant homosexual activists” and pressure campaigns against schools that permit students to participate in the “Day of Silence,” which protests anti-gay bullying.

Staver’s weighing of a Starbucks boycott is especially ironic because his deputy at Liberty Counsel, Matt Barber, accused gay rights advocates of “economic terrorism” for protesting companies that were part of the CGBG, a commercial group that allowed customers to grant proceeds to the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and Liberty Counsel.

But for Religious Right groups, pressure campaigns are only tolerated when they are the ones organizing them.

During her Saturday radio show, Linda Harvey of Mission America called on parents to rise up and “stop homosexuality in our schools.” Harvey warned that “homosexual activism” in public schools is endangering the health of children:

Homosexual activism is very, very destructive. It is creating—while taking in the moral high ground or trying to and saying it’s all about rights and so on—no, they’re undermining sanity, morality, security for our kids. They are undermining of course religious liberty for believers.

Reflecting the Religious Right’s adamant opposition to anti-bullying programs, Harvey described anti-bullying initiatives as a “Trojan Horse” for gay-rights advocates who do not use the efforts to “deal with bullying.” Harvey denied that there is widespread bullying problem, mocking “sympathetic” kids and saying that the real tragedy is that there are kids who identify with the LGBT community:

Big, big issue out there now is bullying. The homosexual activists are using this as a wedge to not deal with bullying, because it can be dealt without dealing with homosexuality at all, you don’t have to embrace homosexuality and cross-dressing to end bullying even if the people involved, the victims of the bullying, are identifying or sadly and tragically—at this point in their lives, maybe they’ll change—involved in those lifestyles or drawn to that. No you don’t have to deal with this issue at all, you just deal with insults, punish insults. If there’s physical assault you deal with that in the appropriate way.

No, what’s happening more and more is that that’s being used as a Trojan Horse to bring in all aspects of retraining everybody’s thinking to accept homosexuality in the schools. You got to watch out for that because it’s very slick, plays on people’s sympathies, our kids are all over this, ‘oh so sympathetic’ you know. There is not an epidemic of bullying for homosexual kids, there is simply not, that’s going unpunished. There is plenty of bullying incidents are getting punished every day around the country. The hard facts are simply not there.

While speaking today with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council on his radio show Washington Watch, Congressman Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA) accused “the homosexual lobby” of pushing for a “military takeover by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community” at the expense of heterosexual soldiers. Hunter was one of the staunchest opponents of the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and told Tony Perkins that he predicted such a “takeover.”

Perkins: Let’s talk about this issue here, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, we knew a lot of this was going to happen, you’ve been pressing this issue from the very beginning. But just, I mean, days after this is signed into law, first we had the transvestites wanting to be allowed to come into the military, but now we have chaplains being ordered, or at least given the permission and of course we know what that means it means they’ll be pressured, to do same-sex weddings on military bases. Are they moving faster than you thought they would?

Hunter: No, in fact this is exactly what we knew would happen. We’re not especially clairvoyant, we can’t see into the future, but the homosexual lobby isn’t simply pressing to have equal status in the military with people that are heterosexual. They would like a military takeover by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community, and that’s what they’re going to keep pushing for until it happens.

The congressman also didn’t have kind words for the U.S. Navy, contending that they were more supportive of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’s repeal because they were only “involved in the peripheral countries in Africa and Libya” rather than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

Hunter: I think that the Navy particularly has a problem with this because I think they’ve been lost since 9/11, except for the Navy SEALs, they don’t have anybody really that are in this fight that we’ve had in Iraq and Afghanistan directly. They’re more involved in the peripheral countries in Africa and Libya. I think that they were trying to become accepted, frankly, at the highest levels to the administration, and that’s one reason why they pressed forward with the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell so quickly and gave instructions to their chaplains to be able to marry same-sex people, once more in direct contravention of federal law.