Rick Scarborough

Last week's Tea Party Unity call ended with host Rick Scarborough announcing his hope that God will confuse the minds of the Supreme Court justices so that they will "punt" on the Proposition 8 and Defense of Marriage Act cases they will soon be deciding in order to give America one last chance to get "our politics right" before God's judgment rains down on us.

Saying that homosexuality and abortion are "the twin towers of evil," Scarborough declared that homosexuality is actually far more dangerous before warning that it will only be a matter of time before pastors are rounded up and imprisoned:

The twin towers of evil in America, I believe are abortion on demand and the homosexual movement ... I believe that of the two great sins of our country, the one that's the most grievous is this whole more toward the legalization of homosexuality.

In 2002, as you recall, in Lawrence v Texas the Supreme Court struck down the prohibitions in the state of Texas and applied it across the land that no longer could the citizenry declare that sodomy was a sin. You can take a position however you like on that but that law was based on a moral fabric in the country, a belief in biblical rights and wrongs. The reason I said at the time that that was a more dangerous precedent than even Roe v Wade is because of the following: I believe, as a Christian and as a pastor,  that as horrible as abortion is - and there's just no way to describe the horror of abortion - the only ray of sunshine is that at least the baby that was aborted, which is a living human being, suddenly finds itself in heaven. 

But with sodomy, it's a different sin altogether because what you do is you allow children now to be adopted into these families.  Those children are raised in the normalization of homosexuality; if they live like that and die like that and you have a biblical understanding you find yourself with children that are basically rejecting biblical truth and that has eternal implications.

Now I am fully aware that the Left monitors our calls and I have no doubt that I likely will be the subject of derision for saying something like this, but I'm praying at best God will confuse the minds of our Supreme Court that they'll simply, as Bob alluded, punt on the issue of standing and give you and I a little more time to start getting our politics right.

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The very first thing Obama did when he got elected president was pass hate crimes legislation inclusive of sexual orientation.  The laws are now on the books to prosecute preachers who have the audacity to say in public what I just said from their pulpits.

You will find them armed with this Supreme Court ruling, if its adverse, then rounding up anyone who says otherwise and prosecuting, perhaps with fines at first but finally with jail and imprisonment.  And the laws are now, at least the foundation of laws through hate crimes legislation is in place to bring fill-scale persecution on those of us who stand for truth.

• It looks like the Religious Right is threatening to leave the GOP ... again.
• Happy Anniversary, David Barton.
• Sen. Rand Paul says America needs a “spiritual cleansing of the people.”  If we were like the Religious Right, we'd freak out because that kind of sounds like "ethnic cleansing" and start warning that Paul wants to kill all non-Christians.
• Apparently Rush Limbaugh thinks "the onus is on the black population" to realize the GOP is not racist.
• Finally, Rick Scarborough says "the goal of Obamacare has always been to drive everyone into a single-payer, government system.  Once that goal is achieved – and it is about to be achieved – Big Brother Government will control every citizen who wills to live and find medical care."

Like Rep. Louie Gohmert, Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage also participated in pastor Rick Scarborough’s Tea Party Unity conference calls back in March, where he made the “libertarian” argument against legalizing same-sex marriage.

Brown commended his anti-gay organization for having been able to “motivate a lot of the Tea Party groups” along with “African American and Hispanic folks” around their shared fear that gay marriage will undermine the Constitution and jeopardize “the future of Western civilization.”

After discussing how NOM is “working with leaders like Senator [Marco] Rubio or Ted Cruz,” he warned that marriage equality will grow the size and scope of government. If the state recognizes same-sex unions, Brown claimed, then public officials will “use the power of the state to punish, repress and marginalize” anti-gay activists.

He said that NOM’s opposition to marriage equality rests on the “libertarian argument” that if the state refuses to “recognize the truth that marriage is by its nature the union of a man and a woman” then “you’re giving the power to the state to call black white and white black, to put a falsehood into the law and a state that can do that is a state that pretty much can do anything.”

This is an issue where we can get new blood to support the Constitution, I mean that’s what’s at stake, Constitutionalism. When you have African American and Hispanic folks stepping up and saying that we will stand up for traditional marriage, we can make inroads there. I think the local Tea Party groups that have helped us with marches, helped us in any way they can, they’ve understood that this is about marriage, this is about the future of Western civilization, but this is also about our Constitution and whether judges can willy nilly create law out of thin air and I think that that has helped motivate a lot of the Tea Party groups.

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We need leaders and we’re working with leaders like Senator [Marco] Rubio or Ted Cruz, or whoever they may be, who understand what’s at stake and will really lead the party and sort of counter some of these arguments. The second part of this is this false libertarian argument that somehow the state should just get out of marriage altogether. That is not going to happen. There is really one or two outcomes that’s going to happen in this: either we’re going to have the state embrace this new definition of marriage and use the power of the state to punish, repress and marginalize those of us that know that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, or we’re going to have the state recognize the truth about marriage.

Ours is actually a libertarian argument. We’re not arguing that the state create marriage, the state does not create marriage, but the state has to recognize the truth that marriage is by its nature the union of a man and a woman. When it abandons that truth, you’re giving the power to the state to call black white and white black, to put a falsehood into the law and a state that can do that is a state that pretty much can do anything.

Brown also fielded a question from notorious ant-gay activist Brian Camenker of MassResistance, who asked why NOM is not taking “a hard stance” against same-sex relationships and openly calling homosexuality “perverse” and “unnatural.”

Brown said that NOM tries to avoid making those arguments outright simply for tactical reasons as they are trying to sway Justice Anthony Kennedy and “it’s not likely that a stronger argument about homosexuality is really going to shift Kennedy.”

However, Brown said that other groups should continue “taking a harder line in focusing more on homosexuality.”

“Different groups need to do different things, not all groups have to do the same thing,” Brown explained. “So folks that are taking a harder line in focusing more on homosexuality, there need to be different groups doing different things.”

Camenker: It’s concerning to a lot of people that the arguments being used in the various court cases concede that homosexual relationships are legitimate and not a perversion or what have you, we just don’t like them, and we wonder if there was more of a hard stance that they are not legitimate, that it is perverse, unnatural and what have you, that we might have some better success in some of the cases.

The second part of the question is I understand that you’re at CPAC, what is it like being virtually the only pro-family, pro-marriage guy there? I’m very disturbed at the way CPAC is being run this year.

Brown: Whenever I’m asked about what I think about homosexuality, I’m very clear, I believe and as a Catholic I believe in the traditional teaching of our church. I think that sex is reserved for marriage, period. As far as the legal arguments go we may differ. I think a lot of the legal arguments have been made in the Prop 8 case especially have been made to speak to [Justice] Kennedy and Kennedy has already found in the Lawrence case, for example, that states can’t ban sodomy. So it’s not likely that a stronger argument about homosexuality is really going to shift Kennedy.

I know some people think we need to focus more on homosexuality. All I’ll say is that when asked I state what I believe and many of the religious supporters that we’ll have at the march clearly will stand up and proclaim biblical truth on marriage, but I’m not sure whether legally that is the best strategy. Also, different groups need to do different things, not all groups have to do the same thing. So folks that are taking a harder line in focusing more on homosexuality, there need to be different groups doing different things.

• For all you thespians out there, Tea Party Patriots wants you to star in their latest movie as someone either standing “in line at the Food Distribution Center to receive your ration of food” or witnessing “SWAT team arrests some member of the resistance who are protesting the big government control.”

• Rick Scarborough of Vision America is angry that “we’ve got an administration that has progressed at lightning speed to an all-out militant assault on marriage.” 

• Family Research Council is thrilled that Rick Perry and Texas Republican lawmakers have called on the Boy Scouts of America not to lift its ban on gays.

• Jeffrey Kuhner of the Washington Times argues that Obama is a weak president who is “asleep at the wheel” while at the same time a powerful “socialist autocrat.”

• Alan Keyes warns American elites will not be satisfied “until all are burning in the lake of fire, nourished with bitter ashes.”  

• We have the sneaking suspicion that Ronnie Cohen of Reuters did not want his article titled: “Poll Shows Sodom and Gomorrah Traits in Calif.”

In the latest email alert from the "40 Days to Save America" campaign, Rick Scarborough says it is time for Americans to wake up and realize that the attack in Benghazi, Libya was just the latest proof that God has lifted his hand of protection over this nation because America is mired in sin: 

In Isiah 5:5, God warns Israel of the punishment which will befall the disobedient nation: “Now I am going to tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard, I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed. I will break down its wall and it will be trampled.”

And again in Deuteronomy 28:25: “The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: Thou shalt go out one way against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth.”

Like Biblical Israel, America is mired in sin – 1.2 million abortions a year, the assault on God’s institution of marriage, an explosion of pornography, children robbed of their innocence, skyrocketing rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births, the Church persecuted – need I continue?

And yet we blithely go on as if there was no connection between this and the way we violate God’s commandments? Too many Americans act as it the Bible’s prophecies are charmingly poetic, but bear no relation to today’s events?

How many more 9/11 attacks, how many more wars, how much more turmoil – how many more Benghazis – will it take before we finally begin to make the connection between our behavior as a nation and the horror unfolding before our eyes?

The hedge is being taken away, leaving us naked and exposed to our enemies. And that is precisely why our 40 Days call to prayer is vital to our survival as a nation.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) joined the fervently anti-gay, anti-Latino pastor Rick Scarborough of Vision America for his “40 Days to Save America” conference call today, and delivered a somber message to participants about how America is on the verge of collapse if their prayer efforts to shift the election don’t work. “The truth is if you look at great nations, great civilizations, great powers throughout recorded history, when they’ve passed some of the milestones we have as a nation, that was the sign that they were toward the end of their existence,” Gohmert said. He stated that “the only reason I continue to run for Congress is because I still have hope" as he urged Americans to “follow the rule book as to what blesses a nation” and join Scarborough’s prayer initiative.

The congressman argued that our Founders “followed biblical teachings” and therefore gave us “more liberties, more individual freedoms and values, ease of living, quality and standard of living than even more than Solomon’s Israel.” Gohmert went on to claim that the U.S. is in a state of such spiritual disrepair that the country is even worse off than during slavery, arguing that while “Andrew Jackson’s time was not a great time, at different times slavery was a blot on our existence,” America has “never as an entire nation overall been so far away from God’s teaching and so openly rebelling, even from the top, against God’s teaching in the Bible.”

There is so much that is so critical to whether or not this country continues, the greatest gift of a country to any people in history: more liberties, more individual freedoms and values, ease of living, quality and standard of living than even more than Solomon’s Israel. No explanation as to why we’ve been so blessed other than the people who went before us were blessed, they followed God’s rule book, in our founding they followed biblical teachings. We strayed away at different times, Andrew Jackson’s time was not a great time, at different times slavery was a blot on our existence, but the trouble is we have never as an entire nation overall been so far away from God’s teaching and so openly rebelling, even from the top, against God’s teachings in the Bible.

New York City councilman Fernando Cabrera has become the favorite Democrat of far-right groups like the American Family Association and Family Research Council, and even the virulently anti-gay, anti-Muslim, birther Rick Scarborough of Vision America. Cabrera is apparently comfortable working with Scarborough even though he is known for his notorious views on immigration and ethnic minorities, including Latinos. Scarborough is fervently opposed to immigrant rights, called Justice Sonia Sotomayor a “disaster,” and told a Tea Party Nation event that if the US was “become 30 per cent Hispanic we will no longer be America…that would be a bad thing.” He recently said that the increasing minority birth rate is bad for America and will lead to a decline in Christianity.

Now we are witnessing more babies being born out of wedlock than in wedlock, leading to escalating social problems. That brings us back to this latest revelation on the growing influence of minorities in America. The sad reality is that more non-white families will also mean an America with more fatherless families.

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The increasing polarization of the races is an additional cause for concern. Politicians and self-styled community leaders urge blacks and Hispanics to see themselves as members of a race first and foremost, and not as Americans or Christians.

On a conference call today with Scarborough’s 40 Days to Save America campaign to energize anti-Obama voters, Cabrera thanked Scarborough for his “prophetic call” to pray before the election and called for God to take “dominion over our lives” and fight back against “the grip of darkness that is trying to take over our land.”

Scarborough used the call for pray to God to stop abortion and gay rights, just as God ended slavery, and to “deliver us as a nation from the throes of secularism.”

This is our time; this is our opportunity to make a difference in America. We look around it seems bleak, I find pastors who are discouraged who don’t believe that even God can change America. But the good news is He did it once and gave us America, the first great awakening; He did it a second time and expunged the nation of slavery; He can do it a third time and deliver us from abortion and division and the advancement of gay rights, the Lord Jesus can do that.

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Father deliver us as a nation from the throes of secularism and the encroaching secularist mindset that is seeking to stifle Christianity as a whole, give us a rebirth Lord of love for You, Lord cleanse us personally, cleanse us societally, Lord give us an outpouring of revival such as we have not seen in our lifetime, Father we do repent of the sins of complicity of allowing the culture to grow so coarse and so far from what You intended.

During his conference call with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Vision America’s Rick Scarborough hailed Perry’s The Response prayer rally, which occurred in August of last year, for supposedly ending the state’s extreme drought that began in October, 2010. However, according to StateImpact Texas, "in 2011, Texas endured the worst single-year drought in its history" and while “the situation has improved recently, the drought is far from over — and the conditions that caused it aren’t going away anytime soon.” Scarborough, who made the claim before while speaking to pseudo-historian David Barton, credited The Response with leading to “record rainfalls” months later and a speedy recovery.

Let me just say this, a lot of folk were aware that Texas had the worst drought in our history two years ago into last year, Governor Rick Perry called a statewide season of prayer and fasting and more than 30,000 people showed up personally at Reliant Stadium in downtown Houston where our football team plays. He led that complete day in prayer and fasting for God to break the drought, a lot of people criticized him in the press. But what a few people failed to take note of is a drought everyone said would take Texans years to get over, we began getting rain, it actually rained a bit that very day, but a few months later it began to rain, we had seasons where we had record rainfalls for a period of time and even now we are having rain. I attribute the breaking of that drought and the renewal of our resources as a state to the godly leadership of a governor who was not ashamed to humble himself before the world and become a part of leading our state in prayer.

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A lot of folk criticized the calling of that prayer event and they missed the understanding that God didn’t answer the breaking of the drought that day but within six months our lakes were back up to normal, our farmers were harvesting hey, cattle crops were saved, the fires across the state subsided. I am privileged to live in a state that is covered by a governor like Governor Rick Perry.

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I had mentioned while you were waiting for you to get on the call about the impact of our Response at Reliant Stadium and how the press was willing to mock the calling of the prayer and fasting but had failed to document that what everyone thought would take years to replenish our lakes and streams almost happened in three months. It began raining, this year our farmers had a record year of harvesting their hey and I take all of that back to a courageous call of a governor of a state to the people to pray and fast, and the fact that you led in that day which I was certainly in the audience and participating in.

Over the weekend, Peter LaBarbera interviewed Vision America's Rick Scarborough about the "40 Days to Save America" prayer and fasting effort that he is organizing leading up to the election.

During the discussion, LaBarbera asked Scarborough to explain what it meant that America was supporting "the blasphemous idea of homosexual so-called marriage," to which Scarborough replied that by doing so, America was literally slapping Jesus in the face and it will eventually lead to tyranny and the imprisonment of Christians:

LaBarbera: Tell us the significance of America, the American institutions, our government getting behind what I call the blasphemous idea of homosexual so-called marriage. What is the significance of that for our country and for our people spiritually?

Scarborough: Well, we have literally slapped the face of the only hope we have and that is the Lord Jesus. We officially have taken positions now as a country that are [antithetical] to the Bible and [antithetical] to a God who gave us our liberties and guaranteed our rights. If we don't hasten to repent of that, then the God who gave us freedom is also the God who will allow tyranny to take it away from us. God is our greatest hope, but He's also our greatest threat. And God help us if we forget that.

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Had you twenty years ago said homosexuality would become commonplace, people would have said you were crazy. If you'd have said five years ago we would legalize homosexual unions and homosexual activity in our military, people would have said no way. But now all of those things are the norm and you and I and what we believe are becoming increasingly marginalized and soon we will be imprisoned if this trend continues. We've got to stand up, speak up and refuse to shut up.