Harry Jackson

In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, anti-gay pastor Harry Jackson said conservatives can win their fight against marriage equality if they succeed in convincing Americans about gay marriage’s dire consequences, such as the “automatic” legalization of polygamy.

“If same-sex marriage is allowed to be mandated by fiat,” Jackson warned, “then right behind it, polygamy and many other forms of marriage will automatically sweep the land within just a matter of a few years.”

Watch:

Harry Jackson is out with a column today accusing gay rights supporters of seeking “to hijack not only the moral authority of the Civil Rights Movement, but also the legal arguments which liberated minorities from centuries of legalized oppression and discrimination.” He specifically takes issue with the fact that marriage equality supporters cite the Fourteenth Amendment and Loving v. Virginia, which found anti-miscegenation laws to be unconstitutional.

Jackson explains that same-sex couples don’t have a right to marry because “‘marriage’ means what it has always meant in America: the union of one man and one woman,” and cites a Nevada ruling which argued that marriage laws aren’t discriminatory because a gay person has the right to marry someone of the opposite sex.

Ironically, those two arguments were exactly those used by supporters of laws banning interracial marriage.

Peggy Pascoe in “What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America” writes that up until the 1960s white society and the white-dominated legal system “believe[d] that the interracial marriage was unnatural” and “assumed that the marriage of one White man to one White woman was the only kind of marriage worthy of the name.”

Not only did they not consider interracial marriage to be a “marriage,” but they also argued that anti-miscegenation laws were not discriminatory because they applied to people of every race and did not target one race in particular.

Despite this history about marriage laws, Jackson concludes his column by insisting that “the notion that homosexuals are being denied equal protection under the law becomes absurd.”

From the very beginning, homosexual “marriage” activists have sought to hijack not only the moral authority of the Civil Rights Movement, but also the legal arguments which liberated minorities from centuries of legalized oppression and discrimination.

After decades of aggressive activism, the common sense understanding of marriage has become almost hopelessly mired in incomprehensible legal terminology. It becomes difficult for everyday observers to navigate the convoluted logic homosexual activists employ as they attempt to remake one of civilization’s oldest institutions. The argument that redefining marriage to include homosexual couples is only “fair” rests on a specious interpretation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The clause reads as follows:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

As most of us know, the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted just before the end of the Civil War in response to the Black Codes of the South. The Black Codes were various state laws which, among other things, prevented blacks from owning property and imposed harsher penalties for crimes on blacks than on whites. The Fourteenth Amendment clarified that these laws were unconstitutional, and that the government was obligated to protect the rights of all citizens equally.

So what about the “right” to marry? Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) activists argue that the state is abridging their privileges, often citing Chief Justice Earl Warren’s words in Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 decision that overturned state bans on interracial marriage: “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

I agree with Justice Warren that marriage is a central ingredient in the pursuit of happiness. I disagree with LGBT activists about what “marriage” is. And it is very hard to have a reasonable or productive discussion when the two sides cannot agree on the definition of a central term. You and I may agree that it should be legal to walk a dog in a particular public park. But you may think that the term “dog” includes only domesticated members of the Canis lupus familiaris species, and I may think that the term “dog” can include large gray wolves. You may argue that “dog” should be defined by the laws and traditions that have governed dog ownership for generations, and I may feel that such an approach in unfair to people who want to walk wolves in the park. The point is that we cannot get anywhere until we agree on what a “dog” is.

Homosexuals are not being denied “marriage” rights any more than wolf enthusiasts are being denied dog-ownership rights. Last November, a federal appeals court in Nevada pointed out homosexuals are not, in fact, being denied the right to marry, as the term “marriage” has been long understood. A lesbian couple had sued the state, seeking to overturn Nevada’s ban on gay marriage under the Fourteenth Amendment. Wrote Judge Robert Jones:

Like heterosexual persons, they [homosexuals] may not marry members of the same sex. A homosexual man may marry anyone a heterosexual man may marry, and a homosexual woman may marry anyone a heterosexual woman may marry.

Judge Jones went on to point out that homosexuals have little cause to identify with historically oppressed minorities in the United States, observing that, “Homosexuals have not historically been denied the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, or the right to own property.” Judge Jones starts with the assumption, as we all should, that “marriage” means what it has always meant in America: the union of one man and one woman. If we begin with that reality, the notion that homosexuals are being denied equal protection under the law becomes absurd.

• Marco Rubio says that being a senator is "a form of worship in terms of how I dedicate it to God and make Him the purpose of my service."
• Oh good, Rick Warren is starting a radio show.
• Things are not getting any better for Eddie Long.
• What on earth is Harry Jackson is talking about? "Gay rights activists may be threatening to expose historic improprieties within the [Boy Scouts]. I also believe that behind the scenes, 'secret files' dug up in previous legal actions have created an urgency for these groups to attempt to affect the Supreme Court’s sense of 'societal swing'—just before the Supreme Court rules on the issue of gay marriage. You can bet the timing is connected."
• Kirk Cameron is partnering with Liberty University in order to "help train a new generation of filmmakers who share his values."
• Finally, the quote of the day from Burt Prelutsky: "After watching Barack and Hillary billing-and-cooing for 30 minutes, I suspect that by the time he got home, Michelle was waiting with a rolling pin and a ton of attitude, wanting to know where he got off cozying up to that honky b–ch."

Under President Obama’s leadership, the Pentagon revived plans for the Iron Dome rocket defense shield in Israel, which played a critical role in the recent Gaza crisis. “Despite initial Pentagon misgivings, President Barack Obama has given $275 million to the project since 2010” after the Bush administration turned down requests to fund the project, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Now, anti-gay activist Harry Jackson is trying his best to act as an expert on the Middle East (just as he styles himself to be a health care and energy policy analyst) by attacking the Obama administration for supposedly mistreating and deserting Israel. He says that while Obama shows an “affinity with the Islamic world,” he has abandoned America’s alliance with Israel. But then Jackson goes on to praise the Iron Dome for preventing rocket attacks, either not knowing or caring that Obama secured the necessary funding to build the defense system. Unfortunately, for the Religious Right, no matter what Obama does he will always be portrayed as a stealth Muslim adversary of Israel.

Why was there such a disconnect with young Israelis? Perhaps their apprehension can be attributed to our leader’s affinity with the Islamic world and the numerous perceived slights senior Israeli leaders have received from him.

In addition, Obama did not visit Israel as president, although he did travel there as a presidential candidate in 2008. After winning a large percentage of the Jewish American vote—as Democrats traditionally do—his seeming ambivalence or lukewarm treatment has given heartburn to both Jews and evangelical Christians.

…

Only the providence of God and Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system has miraculously prevented major casualties. It is little wonder that Israel is preparing for a ground invasion of Gaza. A year ago last spring, during my first trip to Israel, I was shocked at how close Gaza is to Israel.

The American public remains largely unaware of the magnitude of the conflict due to the general failure of the mainstream media to report accurately concerning the wrongs suffered by Israel. Instead, any measure Israel takes to defend itself is decried as brutal and over the top.

In the meantime, Israel’s enemies have boasted about its impending destruction. Most vocal today are the threats we hear from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is known to be supplying Hamas with their weapons.

On President Obama’s watch, the United States has gone from being a staunch ally to the only democracy in the Middle East to something like a silent peer. But Israel will not wait for our approval to defend itself, nor should it.

Harry Jackson was the guest on "WallBuilders Live" today where the topic of discussion was "the difficulty immigrants have in gaining citizenship, which encourages illegal immigration." During the interview, Jackson rolled out a truly incomprehensible theory about how President Obama was only enforcing immigration laws in order to make Republicans look bad ... or something; we honestly have no idea what he was trying to say:

Now, one perversion of the immigration process would be that since the President and the current administration took office, they have enforced deportation and rounding people up in various places more than they had during George Bush's time. And while they will not actually enforce the Defense of Marriage Act - DOMA - and think that's unconstitutional, on the other hand, they have had more raids on immigrants to put them out of the country. And then they come down on the people in Arizona for being too hard on folks, and now, just weeks ago, there's some legislation that let's people stay, by executive order, let them stay in the country without going through a process.

So my concern is that the administration is playing a game of saying "hey guys, be afraid because you know the Republicans are not your friends and I only did what I did because I've got to enforce the law." But it was really a process of demonizing one party versus another in an attempt to win an unfair advantage at the polls.

But one thing that was unmistakably clear was the point Jackson made later when he said that if we do not reject President Obama's "ungodly agenda" by electing Mitt Romney, America will remain "under the chastening hand of God":  

Since 9/11, I believe America has been under the chastening hand God and the Lord is saying "I want to provide protection, provision, and freedom from plague or disease but you the Christian church within the nation have to return to me." So I believe that if we go on four years more with the current administration, because our economic problems are spiritual and moral at root, that God's displeasure is being manifest through the lack of finance and the lack of these things that we shared with you, the plagues and rejection are manifestations of chastening, the church has to vote the best it can our values, stop the onslaught of an ungodly agenda in America. And I think that if we do that, it will be the beginning stages perhaps of God saying "okay, I'm going to stop the process and bring you back to the place of blessing."

 Religious right leaders spent months promoting “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” and signing up pastors who would agree to endorse or denounce candidates from the pulpit.  On Sunday, Harry Jackson showed us how it’s done, unleashing a diatribe explaining why he could not vote for Barack Obama.  Warning that a vote for Obama would be a vote to bring “divine vengeance” on America, Jackson had particularly blunt words for Black Christians.

Listen to me Black Christian. You are foolish enough to vote against the God that brought you out of slavery, the God that brought you out of the civil rights thing. Just because somebody’s skin is black, you’re gonna support an anti-God, anti-Gospel agenda -- no wonder you can’t get a job.  If you celebrate your race over grace you ought to do badly. God is spanking you right now. And I got news, you heard it right here, the folks that sign onto this now and support the president right now in this will find that their best days are behind them….Four more years of Barack Obama will ensure an aggressive anti-Christian spirit that has currently grabbed hold of the administration and this country.  Beware my Christian friend, you should not vote for Barack Obama

All sorts of Religious Right activists are stressing the importance of prayer heading into this election and now Harry Jackson has produced a four-minute video on the need for "40 Days of Prayer for our Nation" in which he urges Christians to pray that their local churches as well as those around the nation will "speak to us and give us direction; they need to tell us who to vote for":

Trying to boost his campaign to generate a voter rebellion against Democrats over the issue of marriage equality, Harry Jackson wrote in his column today that legalizing same-sex marriage would harm children. He asserts that gay couples who seek to become parents “put their own fleeting desires ahead of the God-given rights of their children,” whose children he says are more likely to be gay, depressed, unemployed or drug users. Jackson cited the work of Walter Schumm of Kansas State University to back up his claims, but Schumm’s work has been roundly criticized and he is closely tied to anti-gay crackpot Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute. Later, Jackson mentioned the notorious Mark Regnerus study as part of his warning against gay parenting. What Jackson fails to mention, however, is that even the journal that published his report recently admitted that it was severely flawed, noting that just two of the respondents actually “lived with a lesbian couple for their entire childhoods, and most did not live with lesbian or gay parents for long periods, if at all.”

The reason that legally defined marriage is important is because of children. It takes a mother and a father to conceive a child, and children have a God-given right to have a relationship with both their biological mother and their biological father. Children also have a God-given right to have both a male role model and a female role model in their homes. There are certainly times when tragedy takes a parent from a child, but what about the much more frequent times when adults put their own fleeting desires ahead of the God-given rights of their children? Desires change, as the breakups of both heterosexual and homosexual relationships testify.

As our nation continues to wrestle with the meaning and precise definition of marriage Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered activists consistently dismiss the issue of children. Same-sex marriage advocates insist that children of homosexual couples have the same or better outcomes than children of heterosexual couples. Unfortunately for them these assertions are based more on philosophy than hard science. For example, a 2010 study by Dr. Walter Schumm of Kansas State University confirmed that adult children raised by homosexual couples are (unsurprisingly) two to five times as likely to identify themselves as homosexual as children of heterosexuals. But the nation is divided as to whether that is an important outcome or not.

More specifically, whenever the topic of children reared by gay parents is raised: the assertion is made that there are no special problems or disadvantages because of their parents’ choices of “partners.” But this image (if remotely true) represents a tiny, disproportionately wealthy fraction of the gay population. Most of the scientists who have researched the children of such families admit as much.

Common sense would remind us that the results of any particular study depends both on how one defines a household headed by an LGBT couple, and what factors one evaluates when looking at “outcomes.” Dr. Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas, Austin, recently set out to hear the stories of the adults living in America today who were raised by parents in homosexual relationships. LGBT activists have fought vigorously to malign and suppress his findings. In short, he learned that, on 25 of 40 different outcomes evaluated, the children of women who’ve had same-sex relationships fare quite differently than those in stable, biologically-intact mom-and-pop families, displaying numbers more comparable to those from heterosexual stepfamilies and single parents.

This study included controls for age, race, gender, and the impact of being bullied as a youth, or the gay-friendliness of the state in which they live. Yet the respondents of same-sex parents were more apt to become unemployed, be less healthy and more depressed. They also were more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, have more male and female sex partners, experience more sexual victimization, and were more likely to reflect negatively on their childhood family life. Those raised by same-sex couples also were more likely to smoke marijuana and have trouble with the law.

At this point in our nation, no one is debating the right of consenting adults to do what they wish with each other in private. But redefining the ancient institution of marriage is an entirely different matter. This will set the stage for more and more children to grow up without a mother or a father, simply to placate the desire of adults. We must fight to preserve the traditional definition of marriage for the sake of these children.