Rena Lindevaldsen

Recently, New York Jets backup quarterback Tim Tebow pulled out of a scheduled appearance at Robert Jeffress’ megachurch “due to new information” he received regarding Jeffress' view. While he never specified what the “new information” was, Tebow was almost certainly referring to Jeffress’ virulent attacks on gays and lesbians, Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, Islam and President Obama.

Yet just weeks after withdrawing from speaking at Jeffress's church, Tebow is now set to address Liberty University later this month at a conference geared towards men’s issues in a speech that is closed to the public.

The school was founded by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell — it is now run by his son — who has blamed gays and liberals for the September 11 attacks, supported racist laws in the U.S. and abroad and attacked the Teletubbies for “modeling the gay life style.”

Liberty University bans gay students and shut down its College Democrats chapter over the party’s views on gay rights. The university has hosted multiple anti-gay conferences and their law school is being sued over its alleged role in helping Lisa Miller disobey a court order and kidnap her daughter to Central America in order to avoid transferring custody to the girl's other mother, her former partner.

Liberty University’s Vice President and law school dean Mathew Staver has defended the criminalization of homosexuality in Malawi, promoted the dangerous ex-gay therapy and warned that President Obama supports “forced homosexuality.” Furthermore, Staver has claimed that gay rights laws are part of an Antichrist spirit that lead to crime, child molestation and death, along with the destruction of America.

Staver’s fellow Liberty University dean Matt Barber has defended a Nigerian law outlawing homosexual relationships, described the gay rights movement as “Satanic,” claimed that gay youth who committed suicide took their own lives because they “know what they are doing is unnatural,” accused gay rights advocates of supporting pedophilia (along with fascism and Communism) and defined homosexuality as “one man violently cramming his penis into another man’s lower intestine and calling it ‘love.’” He has also maintained that liberals are like Baal worshippers who hate God and are working with Islamists to destroy Christianity and that Obama should be impeached for backing same-sex domestic partner benefits.

Another professor, Rena Lindevaldsen, has claimed that Satan makes people gay and is behind the LGBT rights movement .

If Jeffress’ anti-gay remarks were too extreme for Tebow, they pale in comparison to the things regularly said by representatives of Liberty University.

Perhaps it is time for Tebow to take another look at some of this “new information” about Liberty.

Yesterday Kenneth Miller was convicted of aiding an international parental kidnapping for the role he played in helping Lisa Miller (no relation) flee the country with her daughter rather than abide by a court order transferring custody to her former partner, Janet Jenkins.

But that was not the only interesting development in the case, as Jenkins has now filed a civil RICO lawsuit [PDF] against Kenneth Miller and several others who allegedly played a role in helping Lisa Miller kidnap her daughter and leave the country, including Liberty University Law School and Thomas Road Baptist Church:

 41. Unbeknownst to Plaintiff Janet Jenkins, in 2009 Victoria Zodhiates (now Hyden) was an employee of Response Unlimited, Inc., and also a "student worker" at Liberty University School of Law. On information and belief, Victoria Zodhiates sent an email during this time period to her co-workers at the law school requesting donations for supplies to send to Lisa Miller to enable her to remain outside the country. Lisa Miller's attorney, Matthew Staver was the Dean of the Law School and Ms. Zodhiates's boss. Matthew Staver and Philip Zodhiates were also personal
acquaintances at this time. On September 20, 2009, both Philip Zodhiates and Victoria Hyden called Lisa Miller's father, Terry Miller in Tennessee to assist in arranging her and Isabella's transportation from a Walmart parking lot in Lynchburg, Virginia, to Waynesboro, Virginia, from whence they would depart for Canada and Nicaragua the next day.

42. In early November, 2009, elders of the Thomas Road Baptist Church packed up the personal belongings of Lisa Miller in two bags. These bags were picked up from Lynchburg, Virginia by Philip Zodhiates who arranged to have the bags transported to Nicaragua by sending them with his son's school teacher who was taking some children on a mission trip to Managua. Philip Zodhiates arranged for the teacher, John Collmus, to deliver the bags at the airport to Timothy Miller. The bags also contained some supplies for Lisa Miller, such as peanut butter.

...

47. Lisa Miller's attorneys Mathew Staver and Rena Lindevaldsen also routinely instructed their Law School students that the correct course of action for a person in Lisa Miller's situation would be to engage in "civil disobedience" and defy court orders.

48. Also in 2009, TRBC Head Pastor Jonathan Falwell was among several religious leaders who made a call for "Christian civil disobedience" and published a public declaration, known as The Manhattan Declaration stating that they:

"will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family."

49. Hence, Defendants TRBC and its related ministry Liberty University School of Law encouraged its agents to disregard state laws governing parental rights, particularly Vermont's law giving rights to members of same-sex families. The TRBC and Liberty University School of Law through its public declaration promoted, condoned and explicitly ratified its agent's tortious, racketeering activity. These agents and employees have followed this direction, making TRBC and Liberty University School of Law liable in respondeat superior for the consequences.

...

57. At the trial of Kenneth Miller in August 2012, a number of Lisa Miller's friends and supporters testified, including Defendant Wright, and several members of the PIC. When asked if any of them had met or heard of Philip Zodhiates, the answer was no. At the trial, the government introduced phone records that showed phone calls made from Philip Zodhiates's cell phone between 1:28pm and 1:30pm on September 22, 2009, to a cell phone with an Orlando area code that is registered to Liberty Counsel, a landline registered to Liberty Counsel, and a landline registered to Liberty University School of Law. Mathew Staver, Dean of the Liberty University School of Law, splits his time between Lynchburg, Virginia and Orlando, Florida. At the time that the calls were made, Philip Zodhiates was still en route back to Virginia after depositing Lisa Miller and Isabella near the Canadian border.

58. Lisa Miller's attorneys, Matthew Staver and Rena Lindevaldsen have at all times maintained that they did not know their client's location to various courts in Vermont (including in sworn testimony of Rena Lindevaldsen) and Virginia, and to the press that she simply stopped communicating with them and disappeared.

59. Meanwhile, Matthew Staver's acquaintance, Philip Zodhiates, and his daughter Victoria, an assistant in the Law School knew of Lisa Miller's whereabouts and solicited donations from other Law School employees for her aid. Upon information and belief, other law school employees who spoke to Victoria about Lisa Miller's whereabouts were too intimidated to come forward to law enforcement for fear of angering Dean Staver and losing their jobs. During the time that Lisa and Isabella were missing, Dean Staver fired several members of the admissions and financial aid department who were under his supervision. To this day, Victoria Hyden is still an employee of the law school, even though her tortious conduct involving Isabella Miller-Jenkins has been in public court records for over a year. Also, while Lisa Miller and Isabella were missing, Lisa Miller's attorneys continued to press appeals on Lisa Miller's behalf until the last appeals were exhausted in November 2010 (more than a year after she was missing), stating that they had advance instructions from Lisa Miller as to her wishes for the ongoing litigation.

...

62. Based on the foregoing, all of the Defendants named herein, in both their individual capacities and as agents of TRBC, Liberty University Law School, Response Unlimited, Inc., and CAM are liable for conspiring with Lisa Miller and with each other to kidnap Isabella Miller-Jenkins, assure her continued detention outside the State of Vermont, and for conspiring with Kenneth Miller to participate in the affairs of the Beachy Amish-Mennonite Brotherhood through a pattern of racketeering activity .. Defendants are also liable for conspiring to violate Janet Jenkins' and Isabella Miller-Jenkins' rights to a parent-child relationship on account oflsabella having two mothers instead of a mother and a father, and Defendant Wright is liable under 42 U.S.C. 1986 for failing to prevent the violation of Plaintiffs' civil rights.

Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s Peter LaBarbera continued his discussion with Liberty University Law School’s Rena Lindevaldsen on Friday. The two revisited the topic of openly gay judges, specifically the Virginia prosecutor who was rejected from a judgeship simply because he was gay. That discrimination was ok, Lindevaldsen said, because “if you’re engaged in a lifestyle of immorality, whether that be a homosexual lifestyle or an adulterous relationship or fornication, that’s not the type of moral character that I believe should be someone who’s being appointed to become a judge”:

Lindevaldsen: I think we can equate this not only with the judiciary, but the same debate is taking place, you know, who we want to serve as our schoolteachers, for example. We want moral, upstanding individuals to serve as judges, and this debate’s taking place with schoolteachers too. So if you’re engaged in a lifestyle of immorality, whether that be a homosexual lifestyle or an adulterous relationship or fornication, that’s not the type of moral character that I believe should be someone who’s being appointed to become a judge.
…
I think it goes to fit moral character and I think that the necessary qualification of any judicial appointment. And therefore it is relevant, based on your conduct, to judge and decide whether you should be allowed to sit in the judiciary.

Immediately after Lindevaldsen and LaBarbera made the case that gay judicial nominees should be defined by and excluded for their sexual orientation, they changed the rules when it came to another prominent example of an openly gay person in public life. Lindevaldsen and LaBarbera heaped scorn on gay rights activists who have had the nerve to call the late Sally Ride, who lived for 27 years with her same-sex partner, a gay pioneer. Emphasizing Ride’s sexual orientation, LaBarbera said -- expanding on a tweet from shortly after her death --would be like defining her as an alcoholic if she had a drinking problem:

LaBarbera: They’re always using opportunities to promote what their version of reality on homosexuality. And really quickly, Sally Ride, another great example. Sally Ride was the first female astronaut, the first…and she had many amazing accomplishments. Unfortunately she also fell into lesbianism and left her husband, she was married, she ended up living in a lesbian lifestyle. She was not public about it. Now gay activists, like Michelangelo Signorile, are using her homosexual, you know, the fact that she practiced the homosexual lifestyle, to say, ‘Hey, this is another gay hero.”

Kirkwood: She was a female astronaut, now she’s the ‘lesbian astronaut.’

LaBarbera: Now she’s the lesbian astronaut, and you better believe in textbooks like in California where they’re teaching gay history now, there’s going to be Sally Ride. So people are going to learn Sally Ride as a, and we’re going a bit over here, they’re going to learn Sally Ride, Rena, as a gay hero, even though she wasn’t even public about it in her life.

Lindevaldsen: Yeah, because they need to contort our history to show that we’ve accepted this all along and that it’s perfectly normal, and see you too can do this and become great things. And you can, you can accomplish things, but that’s not who she was, that doesn’t define who she was and what she accomplished.

LaBarbera: And Rena, I tweeted, and I knew this was going to get me in trouble, but I tweeted, ‘Did she have a drinking problem too?’ In my tweet, I said that she made great accomplishments. But she should not be, and I didn’t, of course she doesn’t, I don’t know if she had a drinking problem or not, but my point was the fact that she practiced homosexuality would be about as relevant as saying, ‘Sally Ride, hey people who drink can be great.’ I mean it’s still immoral behavior, it’s very sad to me that she was involved in that lifestyle. The fact that she was in that lifestyle doesn’t take away from the great accomplishments that she had. But the point is gay identity politics now wants to seize her as a hero.

Rena Lindevaldsen was the guest again today on Liberty Counsel's "Faith and Freedom" radio program as she continues to promote her book about Lisa Miller, an "ex-gay" former client of Lindevaldsen's who kidnapped her daughter and fled the country rather than allow her former partner to gain custody.

During the discussion, Mat Staver praised Lindevaldsen's book for highlighting the aggressive nature of the gay agenda as the two warned that if it is not stopped, young children are going to be pushed into gay relationships:

Staver: I don't think most people realize the aggressiveness and zero-sum game that really is part of the homosexual agenda. And it is very anti-liberty, very anti-religious, they literally would rather have you be shut down in your employment, in your business, in your licensing, in anything that you do if you do not accept the lifestyle. Just simply saying that you believe marriage is the union of one man and one woman is considered by some to be very hateful. It is incredible the extent to which there is an attempt to shut down and I think people need to be aware of the implications of the homosexual agenda.

Lindevaldsen: Yeah, and if you're not aware of that, the two chapters detail specifics and with references of what's taking place around the country, in our schools, and the agenda to get our kids. Because if they get the kids and get them on-board with the message that you're born this way and you can't change and this is normal, you're going to change our future for the negative.

Staver: Well, especially when you have, say, boys that typically go through the development of maleness and they typically bond more with boys and not girls early on. And eventually, as they grow, they become attracted to the opposite sex. But during that time where they're really bonding with each other and boys hanging around boys, if you now start to suggest to them that there's some kind of sexual component or orientation to that, you can literally push them, as Lisa was pushed, into a homosexual relationship.

Lindevaldsen: And you deprive them of that necessary positive bonding experience with other boys at that age so you've done harm in two different ways by pushing them into a homosexual lifestyle.

Staver: And the same thing with girls. You see girls hugging, holding hands that boys won't do, just as friends, nothing sexual about that. Now if you start to sexualize that and eroticize that , you can ultimately push them into a situation where they don't want to be and should not be.

Over the weekend, the Liberty Counsel's Rena Lindevaldsen was a guest on "Richard Land Live!" where she and Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, discussed her new book chronicling the case involving her client, ex-gay kidnapper Lisa Miller.

During the program, Land warned that gay rights activists seek to "reduce [Christians] to the level of the Ku Klux Klan" so that they will be ostracized by society and went on to assert that gays are "recruiting" children, which is a form a child abuse, while claiming that homosexuality is "incomprehensible."  In the end, Land claimed, gays really just want to destroy the institution of marriage in order to bring about the "full-blown paganization" of America:

They're recruiting down in the grade school levels. They're recruiting people for homosexual clubs and it's really child abuse is what it is.

You need to find out what's going on in your school. You need to ask your children what's going on, you need to see what books their reading, you need to know what the teacher is talking about because, I'm telling you, they are trying to brainwash our children in the public schools.

It's the one sin that I know about that I find totally incomprehensible. But obviously some boys do find it comprehensible, because otherwise there wouldn’t be any homosexuality.

Even if you take out AIDS, male homosexuals die much earlier than heterosexual males do because of the inherently dangerous - health dangerous stuff that they engage in. But I don't think that's the big issue - I think that's a side issue. I think the real issue is they want to destroy marriage.

The alternative is not live and let live - it is the marginalization and the ostracizing of people of traditional faith. And it will be the full-blown paganization. You know, they have already started talking about polyamory and pedophilia. They're going to start talking now about lowering the age of consent - they are already starting to talk about it, saying who are we to deprive a child of his or her sexuality? And we’re going to end up like Greece and Rome. If this dam breaks, the tidal wave will be just an outright sexual paganization of society.

Last week we mentioned that Rena Lindevaldsen had written a book about the case of her Lisa Miller, who kidnapped her daughter and fled the country rather than abide by court ordered custody arrangements that conflicted with God's law.

We ordered a copy and have been reading through it and Lindevaldsen dedicates the entire second chapter to explaining how people become gay.  She begins the chapter by admitting that she is not trained as a doctor or psychologist ... and then proceeds to explain how people become gay due to poor relationship with their parents and/or sexual abuse:

For men with temperaments that predispose them to same-sex attractions, two key factors are (i) the lack of a strong father-son bond, and (ii) same-sex abuse as a child. For women, two key life factors are (i) the lack of a healthy relationship between mom and dad and (ii) sexual abuse (primarily opposite-sex) as a child ...

Picture for a moment, a boy who is artistic, sensitive, talkative, and, as is frequently the case, not very athletic. Now imagine that his father has made clear that he had dreamed of having a boy that would be a star athlete. At some point, in some way, the father conveys his disappointment to his son, either expressly or implicitly - perhaps the father doesn't spend time with this son or takes no interest in his son's more artistic interests. The son soon realizes that he hasn't lived up his father's expectations and that he's different (since the kids at school also make fun of his interests and personality.) It doesn't take long before the son wishes he could be more like his father. Soon, the desire to be more like his father leads to the son idolizing other boys and men who have all the characteristics he believes that he is lacking. In essence, he idolizes all that he thinks he is not. As he gets older, the feeling change from idolizing to a longing to be close with men - to be attracted to them. From the son's perspective, he hopes that having a sexual relationship with a man he perceives to be all that he is not will fill the void in his life, will make him feel whole, but it does not ...

You can change the fact pattern many ways, including a loving father who works such long hours in an attempt to provide for his family that he doesn't take the time, or even know how, to express signs of affection for his son. Unfortunately, the boy misperceives the lack of attention as feelings that his father does not love him, that he does not measure up to what he should be. If a boy who is dealing with these feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt is sexually abused by an older man, it could send him more quickly down the path of struggling with same-sex attractions - finally he has a man in his life who cares for and loves him; finally, he feels wanted. To a young boy dealing with self-esteem and identity issues, same-sex sexual abuse only compounds the struggles with same-sex attractions.

Lindevaldsen goes on to explain that women become lesbians because of domineering mothers and abusive fathers, coupled with a society that celebrates things like Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl."

We've only made it about half-way through Lindevaldsen's book, but there are surely more good excerpts to come as future chapters on "Helping Others Make The Choice To Leave The Homosexual Lifestyle," "How Homosexuality Impacts Our Children," and "Understanding How The Homosexual Rights Movement Affects You And Your Loved Ones" seem to contain lots of promising material.

Oh, and it is probably worth pointing out that Lindevaldsen maintains a blog at OnlyOneMommy.com.

Last month, Peter LaBarbera used his radio show, Americans for Truth Hour, to highlight a speech given by Liberty University law professor Rena Lindevaldsen, who serves as Lisa Miller's attorney in her position with Liberty Counsel. Lindevaldsen, speaking against marriage equality, declared that Christians can’t compromise on the issue of LGBT rights because that would mean “deny[ing] the truth of the scripture” and “Satan obviously doesn’t want us to look at the truth of scripture.” This is just the latest in a long line of anti-gay statements from Liberty University and the affiliated Liberty Counsel, which in the past has claimed gay marriage is a fight against an "Antichrist Spirit" and would like to see President Obama impeached for extending leave to domestic partners. 

To accept homosexuality as healthy and normal necessarily means we as Christians deny the truth of the scripture. There is simply no sound biblical position of neutrality on this issue. As Christians we have to treat the Bible as our action plan, therefore we have to refuse to legitimate [sic] any actions that the Bible calls sin.

And that’s one reason as Christians we hear we should compromise on the marriage battle. Let’s allow civil unions. Let’s allow domestic partnerships. When we do that, however, we compromise on scripture by calling what God says is sin, good.

Our only options as Christians, if we’re going to adhere to scripture, is to fight for marriage and everything that’s included in that. We don’t want to give up all the rights of marriage and simply protect the name of marriage because that’s not what the Bible is about when you hear about marriage.

That’s also why we shouldn’t get out of the marriage business all-together which is what some Christians say. “Let’s just give it over to churches, let them marry who they want and government gets out of the business.” That’s not the way the government works though. Government in all areas of life seeks to steer people into conduct it thinks is good, and is helpful to society. And that’s why it is involved in marriage, because time and again marriage between one man and one woman has shown to be the most optimal environment for raising godly children who are productive citizens.

And so to get out of the marriage business, as I like to call it, altogether simply means there’s going to be a void. There’s going to be a vacuum. Something fills that void. In essence, evil will sweep in and run rampant on the issues of marriage, relationships, and homosexuality.

Satan obviously doesn’t want us to look to the truth of scripture. The truth of scripture is that God has a different plan than same-sex sexual conduct for your life.  And so if Satan and those who are essentially advancing his agenda do not what to shed light on the truth, we have to.

As we noted last week, there had been a break in the Lisa Miller saga with the arrest of a man accused of having helped her flee the country with her daughter rather than abide by court ordered custody arrangements with her former partner. 

As we wrote, according to the FBI affidavit Miller and her daughter lived rumored to have lived in a home in Nicaragua owned by the father of a woman who worked as an Administrative Assistant at the Liberty School of Law, which just so happens to be where Miller's Liberty Counsel attorneys - Mat Staver and Rena Lindevaldsen - just so happen to serve as Dean and Associate Professor, respectively.

Last time Miller was in the news was when she disappeared and Liberty Counsel steadfastly refused to comment and, instead, tried to wash its hands of the hole thing. 

But this time around, Liberty Counsel is far less reticent and is insisting that it had absolutely nothing to do with, and knew nothing about, her disappearance:

Some have suggested that organization was involved with hiding Miller, but that's a charge attorneys flatly deny.

"It's absurd to try to suggest Liberty Counsel had anything to do with the whereabouts or the disappearance of Lisa Miller," Mathew Staver, Dean of Liberty University's School of Law and Chairman of Liberty Counsel.

Staver served as Miller's attorney through 2009. During that period, Miller was living in Forest and attending services at Thomas Road Baptist Church.

Staver says Miller was looking for a job and gave no indication she was planning to leave the Lynchburg area when she abruptly ended all contact with Liberty Counsel.

"She simply stopped communicating by phone, by e-mail, by letter," said Staver. "We have no idea where she went."

...

But some believe Liberty had another motive and took part in hiding Miller - a claim Staver says is 100-percent false.

"None of us would be stupid enough to place our careers and our futures and our law licenses on the table to try to help someone violate the law," said Staver.

It was over a year ago that Lisa Miller kidnapped her daughter and disappeared in order to avoid a court order to hand over custody to her ex-partner, Janet Jenkins.

Miller quickly became a hero to the Religious Right, thanks largely to the Liberty Counsel's long crusade to make Miller out to be the victim of a capricious legal system ... a crusade that abruptly came to an end when Miller disappeared and everyone started trying to cover their tracks.

Since her disappearance, bits of information have trickled out suggesting that Miller disappeared several months before the court imposed deadline and had help fleeing the country.

Today it was reported that a man named Timothy David Miller has been arrested for helping Miller and her daughter flee the country. And the criminal complaint [PDF] contains a wealth of information ... most notable for our purpose an assertion that Miller and her daughter are staying at a home owned by a man named Philip Zodhiates and that Zodhiates' daughter just so happens to work at the Liberty University Law School: 

66. Sarah Star, an attorney who represents Janet Jenkins, has told me that she received a call on or about June 21, 2010. The caller provided the following information:

a. Philip Zodhiates is a wealthy man and a "Liberty Leader" who has a beach house in Nicaragua. Lisa Miller and Isabella Miller have been staying at the home of Zodhiates.

b. Victoria Hyden is the daughter of Zodhiates. Zodhiates asked Hyden to disseminate a request to get Lisa Miller supplies.

67. The "Faculty/Staff Directory" listed within the Liberty School of Law website lists "Victoria Hyden" as an "Administrative Assistant" within the "Admissions and Financial Aid" section.

68. A website printout dated July 7, 2010 from the Vacationrentals.com website lists Philip Zodhiates as the owner of a vacation rental in Nicaragua.

And indeed she does - that is her in the front row, third from the left:

It is quite a conicidence that Mat Staver, head of Liberty Counsel, happens to also be Dean of the Liberty School of Law and that Rena Lindevaldsen, Miller's attorney at Liberty Counsel, is also an Associate Professor of Law at LU, don't you think?

And why is it that every employee listed on this Liberty Law School "Faculty/Staff Directory" has a link to their own individual biography page ... except for Victoria Hyden?

How it is that Liberty Counsel's most high profile client kidnaps her daughter and flees the country and the organization insists for more than a year that it has no idea where she is ... only to have it turn out that she is reportedly living in a home owned by the father of an admin assistant in Staver's very own office?