choice

Right Wing Round-Up

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 6/1/2011 5:52 pm

Reed: Cain and Bachmann Will Be The Religious Right's Candidates of Choice

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 6/1/2011 11:49 am

Ralph Reed's "Faith and Freedom Conference & Summit" kicks off on Friday and, as today's New York Times reports, it serves as proof that Reed has been able to shrug off his deep ties to Jack Abramoff and regain his prominence and prestige as a leading Religious Right organizer:

As with the Christian Coalition, this group’s conference roster includes nearly all the likely contenders for the presidential nomination, including former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Herman Cain, a retired businessman, and Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, as well as a famous almost-candidate, Donald Trump. There will also be evangelical leaders like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, and establishment Republicans like Speaker John A. Boehner and Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman.

...

Many of the retirees gathered here could not even recall who Ralph Reed was, let alone ponder his past. But they loved his message. Weaving together themes of the Tea Party and evangelical Christians, he called the debt crisis a sign that the country has lost sight of its founding moral principles. He said that by working together, fiscal and cultural conservatives can “begin the process of turning the country around.”

Yesterday Reed appeared on The Jordan Sekulow Show to discuss the upcoming conference, during which he predicted that Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain would be the Religious Right's candidates of choice:

Sekulow: Ralph, let me ask you about the field. Has anyone caught your attention that maybe is a name that people aren't talking about enough or that is really exciting social conservative voters?

Reed: It's awfully early, but there are two that I'm hearing on the ground that are really getting a close look. One is Herman Cain, who is a terrific speaker and has a compelling personal testimony in addition to his conservative credentials. And the other is Michele Bachmann.

I think if they both go - and Cain's in and Bachmann looks like she's going to get in - they're both going to do extremely well among this constituency.

Reed then went on the predict that this event was not only going to change the lives of those in attendance, but the life of the nation as well ... which is the same thing he said last year:

Today In Right Wing Music Videos

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 5/31/2011 11:12 am

Herman Cain released a country music video about how proud he is to have “left that Democrat plantation” and is now running for President. The video also features endorsements from tea party hero “Joe the Plumber” (3:10) and anti-choice leader Alveda King (3:36):

Pastor John Hagee, who is already ensuring his influence in the GOP primary, made his very own music video for Memorial Day. Hagee laments that Americans have let government “become the master of your children and grandchildren” and calls on people to “take America back to God and the Constitution”:

Radical Anti-Choice Activists Put Scarlett Johansson In Klan Robe

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 5/24/2011 2:36 pm

Last month we noted that Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition and other radical anti-choice activists held a protest outside Speaker John Boehner's office to demand the defunding of Planned Parenthood in which used white sheets to link the organization to Planned Parenthood.

In response to the Religious Right campaign against Planned Parenthood, the organization released videos of featuring celebrities announcing that they stood by the group and its mission.

Scarlett Johansson was among those who shot such a video ... and now Mahoney and Troy Newman of Operation Rescue have released their own "parody" video showing Johansson clad in a Klan robe:

Ms. Johansson recently did a national television video supporting Planned Parenthood.

Sadly, Scarlett Johansson did not mention that Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, a racist who supported the Ku Klux Klan, spoke at their rallies and encouraged the elimination of African-Americans.

"Defund Klanned Parenthood" is a national campaign encouraging members of Congress to stop giving billions of tax dollars to an extremist organization founded on racist principles.

Here is the video:

Gary Cass: "It Doesn't Get Better"

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 5/19/2011 4:23 pm

Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission weighs in on the "It Gets Better" campaign to let young people know that, if you are gay, it does not, in fact, get better ... it actually gets worse:

Cass has also written a piece for his website to accompany this video:

The campaign to legitimize homosexuality in our society is based on lies that are designed to manipulate public opinion and relies upon fraudulent science and suppression of opposing views. (Source: Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, “The Trojan Couch: How the Mental Health Associations Misrepresent Science,” www.NARTH.com <http://www.narth.com/>)

It is a lie that people are born homosexual and that the incidence of homosexuality is unaffected by influences from culture, family, peer socialization, and incremental choices. (Sources: Brad Harrub, Ph.D.,Bert Thompson, Ph.D. and Dave Miller, Ph.D., “This is the Way God Made Me: A Scientific Examination of Homosexuality and the ‘Gay Gene,’” www.trueorigins.org <http://www.trueorigins.org/> , see also www.NARTH.com <http://www.narth.com/> , www.exodusinternational.org <http://www.exodusinternational.org> ) (Långström N, Rahman Q, Carlström E, Lichtenstein P (February 2010). "Genetic and environmental effects on same-sex sexual behavior: a population study of twins in Sweden". Arch Sex Behav 39 (1): 75–80.

It is a lie that homosexual conduct is not a choice. Although same-sex attraction may be involuntary, one’s response to it is completely voluntary. All sex is voluntary except rape. Further, all people have the obligation to resist temptations, no matter how strong, that lead to personal and social harms.

It is a lie that homosexuality is equivalent to heterosexuality. We are all heterosexuals by definition, but each of us has the choice to indulge in any number of types of sexual behavior that deviate from the way we are made. That’s why it is called “sexual deviance.” (Source: Dr. Charles King, "The Meaning of Normal." Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 18, 493-501)

It is a lie that homosexuality is equivalent to race or skin color. General Colin Powell said it best: “Skin color is a benign, non-behavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of all behavioral characteristics. Comparison of the two is a convenient but invalid argument.” (Source: Colin Powell, My American Journey, 1995, p. 533)

It is a lie that disapproval of voluntary homosexual acts is equivalent to racism. The specious equating of moral disapproval with racism is based on the erroneous and baseless comparison of homosexuality to race.

It is a lie that opposing homosexuality equals hate. The accusation of hate is a cynical tactic designed to intimidate conservatives from speaking the truth about a form of conduct that spreads disease and is linked to numerous physical and psychological disorders. We all have a stake in this issue, and most of us care about homosexuals as people even while opposing their actions, just as we do with alcoholics, bulimics and others who suffer from behavioral disorders. (Source: Dr. Scott Lively, Redeeming the Rainbow: A Christian Response to the “Gay” Agenda, 2009, Introduction)

It is a lie that homosexual parenting is harmless to children. (Source: “Study: Gay Parents More Likely to Have Gay Kids,” AOL News, October 17, 2010)

It is a lie that homosexuality is not linked to pedophilia. (Source: Steve Baldwin, “Childhood Molestation and the Homosexual Movement, “Regent University Law Review, Vol. 14:267)

It is a lie that AIDS is primarily a heterosexual disease. "While CDC estimates that MSM [males who have sex with males] account for just 4 percent of the U.S. male population aged 13 and older, the rate of new HIV diagnoses among MSM in the U.S. is more than 44 times that of other men (range: 522–989 per 100,000 MSM vs. 12 per 100,000 other men)." (Source: www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/FastFacts-MSM-FINAL508COMP.pdf <http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/FastFacts-MSM-FINAL508COMP.pdf>)

It is a lie that “gay” youth suicide can only be prevented by forcing the rest of society to affirm homosexual conduct. (Source: “Cornell professor: Gay suicide rates not abnormal,”www.studentfreepress.net <http://www.studentfreepress.net/>)

It is a lie that homosexuals are a powerless victim group that needs vast public resources to protect it from its “enemies.” (Source: “The Growing Power of the Gay Rights Movement,” The Atlantic, 12/14/2010)

It is a lie that the acceptance of homosexuality brings harmony and peace to the individual homosexual. (Source: www.exodusinternational.org/resources/real-stories/ <http://www.exodusinternational.org/resources/real-stories/> )

Fischer: Gays Are Nazis

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 5/18/2011 11:43 am

There is no more openly bigoted Religious Right leader active today than the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer ... and yet that doesn't stop Republican members of Congress and presidential hopefuls from appearing on his radio program on a regular basis.

Last year, Fischer made news when he asserted that Adolf Hitler surrounded himself with gay soldiers because "he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders." 

Yesterday, he went even further (if such a thing is possible) and asserted that gays are literally Nazis and that they will "do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany":

The homosexual agenda is just like Islam: there is no room for dissent, there is no room to leave, once you're in, you can't leave. Muslims won't let you leave, homosexuals won't let you leave - if you leave, they claim you're faking it, so there's no way out. There's no freedom of choice, there's no freedom of religion - if you have religious views about homosexual behavior, you are squashed.

I mean, ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Homosexual activists, when it comes to freedom of speech, are Nazis. When it comes to freedom of religion, they are Nazis. There is no room in their world for dissent, there is no room in their world for disagreement, there is no room in their world for criticism. You criticize homosexual behavior, they tag you as a bigot and a homophobe and then they got to work to silence you just like the Roman Catholic Church did in the days of Galileo - it's no different; it's the Spanish Inquisition all over again.

Ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Do not be under any illusions about what homosexual activists will do with your freedoms and your religion if they have the opportunity. They'll do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany.

2012 Candidates Weekly Update 5/17/11

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 5/17/2011 9:48 am

Michele Bachmann

2012: More likely to run for president following Mike Huckabee's decision against running (CBS News, 5/16). 

Constitution: High school student challenges her to a debate on the Constitution as a result of her record of making incorrect statements (Minnesota Independent, 5/13). 

Herman Cain

Georgia: Wins praise for speech at Georgia GOP convention (Southern Political Report, 5/16). 

Florida: Tops field in Fort Lauderdale Tea Party straw poll (Sunshine State News, 5/16). 

Mitch Daniels

Reproductive Rights: Signs law defunding Planned Parenthood that costs thousands their health care, state millions of dollars (The Faster Times, 5/16).

2012: Members of Indiana Republican Party encourage Daniels to run during state convention (AP, 5/13).

Religious Right: Anti-choice activists upset Daniels weighed Condoleezza Rice as a running mate because she is pro-choice (Life News, 5/13). 

GOP: Reports say that Governors Haley Barbour, Chris Christie and Scott Walker would endorse Daniels (CBS News, 5/12). 

Newt Gingrich

Religious Right: Denies advisers' links to Dominionist theology (RWW, 5/16).

Medicare: Describes Paul Ryan's plan to privatize Medicare as "right wing social engineering" but previously said he would've voted for it (Think Progress, 5/16). 

Health Care: Makes inconsistent remarks over his past support for health care insurance mandates (Politico, 5/16). 

Iowa: Will make swing through Iowa this week following official announcement (Dubuque Telegraph Herald, 5/15). 

Jon Huntsman

Religious Right: Set to address Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition (RWW, 5/16).

South Carolina: Huckabee's former state campaign chair announces his support for Huntsman (Politico, 5/16). 

Florida: Meets with key donors in Florida (St. Petersburg Times, 5/11). 

Roy Moore

Religious Right: Claims President Obama is "pushing his own immoral values without regard to what the people think or believe" (WND, 5/16). 

Campaign: Launches website for exploratory committee (RoyMoore2012.com).

Sarah Palin

PAC: Embarks on new direct mail campaign with focus on 2012 election (WaPo, 5/16). 

2012: Supporters hope that Huckabee's announcement will create an opening for Palin (Commentary, 5/16). 

Tim Pawlenty

South Carolina: Hires political director for South Carolina primary (The Hill, 5/17). 

Environment: Continues to apologize for past support of ‘cap and trade’ system (Minnesota Post, 5/17).

Mitt Romney

Fundraising: Raises over $10 million on Monday call-day in Las Vegas (WaPo, 5/17). 

Health Care: Defends state health plan that is analogous to federal health care law (NYT, 5/13). 

Rick Santorum

Medicare: Criticizes Gingrich for attacking Paul Ryan’s Medicare privatization proposal (The Hill, 5/16). 

Health Care: Knocks Romney for defending his Massachusetts health care law (The State Column, 5/13).

Focus On The Family Wants To Turn Abby Johnson's (Doubtful) Story Into A Movie

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 5/12/2011 4:41 pm

Jim Daly, the president of Focus on the Family, thinks that the Hallmark Channel should make a movie about Abby Johnson, the Planned Parenthood clinic worker turned anti-choice leader. Johnson, who now works with Lila Rose’s Live Action, has received plaudits (and earnings) from Religious Right activists for her book deal and speaking tour. At the center of Johnson’s experience is a purported account where she saw a fetus on the ultrasound machine move away from the doctor during an abortion, and she abruptly quit and joined a 40 Days for Life protest outside the clinic.

While Daly says that nobody “has ever questioned her haunting description,” it is quite likely that the event never happened.

Nate Blakeslee Texas Monthly found out that on the day Johnson claims to have assisted the doctor with an abortion, the “physician on duty told the organization that he did not use an ultrasound that day, nor did Johnson assist on any abortion procedure.” The only time he used an ultrasound that month was two weeks prior.

The exposé also discovered that the details of Johnson’s story simply don’t add up with the official records the clinic presented to the state of Texas’s Health Services Department: “Johnson has consistently said that the patient in question was thirteen weeks pregnant, which is plausible, since thirteen weeks is right at the cusp of when physicians will consider using an ultrasound to assist with the procedure. Yet none of the patients listed on the report for that day were thirteen weeks pregnant; in fact, none were beyond ten weeks.”

Johnson claims that the woman undergoing the abortion was black, but the only black woman who had an abortion at Planned Parenthood that day “was in the sixth week of her pregnancy. There would be no medical reason for a doctor to use an ultrasound to guide an abortion performed on a woman at such an early stage. Even if one was used, it’s hard to imagine how Johnson, who said she has seen hundreds of ultrasound pictures in her career, could mistake a one-quarter-inch-long embryo for a three-inch, thirteen-week fetus.”

But while Johnson appears to have manufactured her conversion story, Daly believes that Johnson can motivate other Planned Parenthood clinic employees to quit their jobs:

If the producers of Hallmark Hall of Fame were looking for a thoughtful script that both inspires and convicts, they needn’t look any further than the story of Abby Johnson.

…

Abby’s decision was met with scorn and suspicion from abortion activists, with some even accusing her of a “cover-up” to conceal the real reason behind her resignation and orchestrating a campaign of half-truths to embarrass her former employer.

Nobody, however, has ever questioned her haunting description of a baby’s reaction when he or she is about to be aborted.

…

As such, please join me in praying that more Planned Parenthood workers will, like Abby, come forward and publicly resign from their positions. We will continue to utilize every legal means at our disposal to help overturn Roe vs. Wade, as we continue to work to change hearts and minds about abortion. At the same time, can you imagine the magnitude of the practical impact should more Planned Parenthood employees turn from supporting death to promoting life?

Right Wing Round-Up

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 5/11/2011 5:51 pm

Heck: DC Mayor Vince Gray Wants To Punish Kids Who "Survive The Abortion Holocaust"

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Monday, 5/9/2011 4:41 pm

During the heated fight over the federal budget, Republicans won a compromise that stopped the city of Washington D.C. from using its own tax dollars to help low-income women access reproductive health services and added more funding to a DC private school voucher program opposed by local officials. Strongly objecting to the House GOP’s blatant encroachment on home rule, which included financing an ineffective voucher program while taking away crucial funding for women’s family planning, DC Mayor Vince Gray and a number of Council members were arrested during a protest. Anti-choice leaders harshly criticized Gray, deriding him a proponent of black genocide who wants to destroy the city’s African American population.

Indiana right-wing commentator Peter Heck, who called President Obama a disgrace to his ancestors over his pro-choice views, is out with a new column charging Gray with supporting the “slaughter [of] innocent children” while punishing those “who survive the abortion holocaust”:

But beyond the blatantly obvious flip-flops which the Obama-loving mainstream press find a way to excuse as just part of the president's remarkably nuanced mind, this behavior fits a much larger pattern of inconsistency that has come to define the liberal mind in America. Inconsistencies that should bring great embarrassment when exposed, and that rationality would demand be confronted and resolved, are systematically embraced and welcomed in the land of left-believe.

How else can one explain the recent protest that took place in Washington, DC? There, over 40 liberals (including the city's mayor and several councilmen) took to the streets to complain that the budget deal recently passed by Congress would deprive the nation's capital city of federal tax dollars to fund abortions. In the name of choice, these left-wing activists blocked the streets until being detained by police. On its own, seeing a group of liberals championing the right to choose to kill children in the womb is nothing new.

But that wasn't all they were protesting. Another part of the budget deal that had raised their ire was the reinstatement of the Opportunities Scholarship Program. This school-choice program provides poor families the chance to move their children from failing inner-city schools to higher performing ones, allowing future generations of predominantly minority students the opportunity to escape the cycle of poverty that engulfs them. This protest, then, is the perfect embodiment of modern liberal thought: rally in the streets to continue facilitating the choice to slaughter innocent children in the womb while simultaneously demanding that those children who survive the abortion holocaust be given no choice to break free from their deplorable surroundings.

American Family Association Goes To War With Glee

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Monday, 5/9/2011 2:09 pm

In April, Right Wing Watch first reported on Bryan Fischer’s interview with Houston’s Fox affiliate, where he sharply criticized the television show Glee for “glamorizing homosexual behavior,” comparing it to promoting drug abuse. Fischer, who is the Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association, is escalating his attacks on Glee and the AFA recently launched a boycott campaign.

One Million Moms, a “project of American Family Association,” called on activists to urge advertisers to drop Glee. “Ryan Murphy, an open homosexual and the producer of GLEE, is pushing political correctness and his lifestyle choice on teens. Teenagers are being desensitized, but parents can do something about this hidden agenda,” the group says, “Please send Burger King, Boost Mobile, Subway and Taco Bell an email letter asking them to pull their support from GLEE and no longer sponsor this program through advertising.”

On Friday, Monica Cole of One Million Moms joined Fischer on his radio show Focal Point to criticize Glee for featuring music from Lady Gaga and Madonna, having “vulgar” choreography, and including a gay couple:

Fischer and Cole also agreed that Glee promotes “deviant sexuality,” “normalizing homosexual behavior,” idolatry, and anti-Christian views, with particular animosity towards the openly gay, atheist character Kurt:
  

Cole: We were really offended by the choreography, it’s very vulgar, it looks like its pretty much imitating strippers, and they have music by Lady Gaga and Madonna, which if you’re familiar with any of their, let’s just say their role-playing or their lyrics, it’s not wholesome entertainment, it’s a far-stretch from anything that you would want you child singing in a school musical or a school class.

Fischer: So you’ve got choreography as well as lyrics in the songs that are sexually provocative, sexually explicit, and yet the idea here is this is supposed to be some kind of high school music club getting ready to put on theatrical productions. And, this came up when I had the debate at the Fox Houston affiliate that it aired at 7:00; I mean that’s right in the heart of what’s supposed to be family-friendly viewing time.

Cole: That’s what you would think, and that’s right. And there’s a lot of other content though, Bryan, that is just really offensive and inappropriate, when you have mockery of Christianity, there’s mockery of the Katrina victims, and the we also had three individuals going on dates, insinuating a three-some, and then you have the homosexual couples on the show, I mean there’s kissing on the show with same-sex couples. And they also have made several homosexual references in the show that we feel like that even though kids may not be seeing this, parents are not oblivious to what is going on, there is not a hidden agenda, it’s to me it’s very blatantly obvious what they are portraying as a normal lifestyle for a teenager.

…


Fischer: This program Glee is not only mocking Christianity but is promoting deviant sexuality, and Monica I’m looking at the alert that you sent out, the head of the piece, I’d like you to grab it if you got a copy of it: Glee Mocks Christianity. It’s interesting to me, if you’ve got there, maybe rehearse for us some of the content, I’m looking just at the second and third paragraphs about some of the explicitly anti-Christian content that was in Glee that prompted you to way in on this, this was back in October.

Cole: On October 5th, the episode had different quotes and dialogue saying God is a Santa Claus for adults, and it’s wrong to tell people to believe in a fantasy, they also have an openly gay student that says that he is an atheist and he doesn’t believe in God more than one time. And they also talk about God as a jerk because He made me gay and then His followers told me I chose to be this way and then I’m mocked every day, so he called God a jerk.

Fischer: That’s interesting to me because his character is an atheist who claims he doesn’t believe in God but then he calls God a jerk for making him like this.

Cole: So there’s this name-calling and, you know teenagers are watching this show, and you have other teenagers on the show saying ‘I fall asleep when I pray’ and ‘I see God every time I make out with a new chick,’ and we had one scene in the show that had a student burn a grilled cheese and it was in the image of God, or it was in the image of Jesus actually, so he prays to this grilled cheese and calls it Grilled Cheesus, and he makes this twisted idea of a relationship with this grilled cheese because they win the football game so he keeps going back and back to this grilled cheese, saving it, being very protective of it. So he pretty much having this idol thinking this is why he’s winning his football games. But the end of the program does say that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe in something.

Fischer: Even a grilled cheese sandwich.

Cole: That’s right, and that was very disturbing as a parent.

Fischer: Let’s go back to the program last week because that’s why the Fox affiliate invited me on to debate this gay activist because that night there was particular focus, particularly focused emphasis on normalizing homosexual behavior. What was the content of the program that night?

Cole: Well the episode was named ‘Born This Way,’ and so we had many opportunities we were hoping there could be a lesson learned in this particular episode, saying you know how you’re physically born, how someone may look, and just being accepting and happy of the way you were born. That could’ve been a good lesson learned. But then they had the homosexual student saying how you’re born homosexual, you’re born gay, and there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s not a lifestyle choice. So instead of having tolerance there, they were actually wanting to bring the point of acceptance and affirmation of this lifestyle choice.

Newman Warns That Obama Is Turning America Into Communist China, Will Ban Easter

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Monday, 5/9/2011 10:00 am

Operation Rescue’s Troy Newman charges President Obama with turning the US into a “draconian, tyrannical” country over the Department of Justice’s prosecution of militant abortion clinic protesters who violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. According to the Associated Press, “the Obama Justice Department has filed six lawsuits under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, mostly to seek injunctions and fines,” including a lawsuit against “a Pennsylvania man who posted on the Internet the names and addresses of abortion providers and extolled his readers to kill them.”

Newman, who has rejoiced at the death of abortion doctors and leads one of the most radical groups in the anti-choice movement, tells the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow that he expects the government under Obama will eventually prosecute Christians for celebrating Easter:

"It's chilling in the fact that the administration is solely going after good, peaceful pro-life individuals who have sidewalk counseled in front of abortion clinics for decades, in order to silence their ability to reach women and children in their most desperate hour," Newman laments.

So he stresses that Americans should realize that the Obama administration is singling out peaceful Christians for their belief in life. They should also recognize, he says, that the administration is attempting to prosecute them.

"This is a draconian, tyrannical sort of system that is being put in place," the Operation Rescue president contends. "If we don't take note and stop it now, we can only project forward a few more years, and it's going to look like communist China, where an expression of an Easter celebration is going to land somebody in jail."

Childress: Gay Equality Is A Sign Of The End Times

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 5/6/2011 12:28 pm

Clenard Childress Jr. is a fervent anti-choice leader who believes that legal abortion is intended to bring about black genocide and Obama wants to destroy the African American community. He founded BlackGenocide.org and is a leader in rabidly anti-choice groups like the Genocide Awareness Project and the Life Education And Resource Network, and helped organize Priests for Life’s “Freedom Rides” against reproductive rights. But Childress isn’t only a militant opponent of abortion-rights, as he penned a column today attacking gays and lesbians and gay rights. Childress criticized religious leaders and people of faith who support equal rights for gays as “false prophets” and that increasing acceptance of gays is a sign of the End Times:

Amazingly enough, and in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, there are clerics today — false prophets, as it were — who say the Bible does not repudiate homosexuality. When Jesus was threatening a group of religious hypocrites, and said to them it was going to be worse for them than Sodom and Gomorrah, all those of the Jewish culture understood and knew of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah which was destroyed by "fire and brimstone" and why it was destroyed. As Christians, should we suppose and can we believe that all of a sudden, God has changed his perspective on homosexuality as these false prophets would have us believe? Are we that stupid? Remember, Jesus said in the last days it would be as the days of Lot.

So, what was it like it the days of Lot? Homosexuality was demanding and imposing itself upon the righteous to capitulate, to yield, to give way to its predominance where Lot lived. Genesis 19:1-5 says,

1 It was evening when the two angels came to Sodom. Lot was sitting at Sodom's [city] gate. Seeing them, Lot rose up to meet them and bowed to the ground.

2 And he said, My lords, turn aside, I beg of you, into your servant's house and spend the night and bathe your feet. Then you can arise early and go on your way. But they said, No, we will spend the night in the square.

3 [Lot] entreated and urged them greatly until they yielded and [with him] entered his house. And he made them a dinner [with drinking] and had unleavened bread which he baked, and they ate.

4 But before they lay down, the men of the city of Sodom, both young and old, all the men from every quarter, surrounded the house.

5 And they called to Lot and said, Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know (be intimate with) them.

'Bring the men outside that we may know (be intimate with) them...' Jesus said prophetically that in the last days the homosexual community will demand their lifestyle be accepted as a right in society. And now we are even seeing homosexuality bandied about as a "Civil Right" that should be guaranteed under the Constitution similar to some of the rights being sought through the modern "Civil Rights Movement." They are not the same, but be that as it may be, the same Jesus condemned Sodom and Gomorrah for their lifestyle.

Fact Checking Barton Part III: First Amendment

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 5/5/2011 3:24 pm

Towards the very end of the televised portion of David Barton’s interview on The Daily Show, Barton said that one of the cases he “did at the US Supreme Court was rabbi Leslie Gutterman was asked in Providence Rhode Island to give a prayer at a graduation, and he wasn’t allowed to, now tell me how “Congress should make no law’ means that a rabbi cant say the word ‘God’ at a prayer.” He claims that this poses that the first Amendment is misused by putting a restriction on individuals, rather than government.

He referred to the case of a Rhode Island rabbi who was invited to deliver a prayer at a public school graduation to demonstrate that the Constitution is being misapplied to stifle religious expression. But it was the public school, not the rabbi (Gutterman), that was the defendant in the Supreme Court case Lee v. Weisman. Robert Lee was the principal of the school who invited the rabbi and Daniel Weisman’s daughter was the graduating student at the school who objected to the prayer service.

In the following section, that was posted only online, Barton dismisses fears that people could be coerced into prayer in schools, saying, “there’s coercion, you have to pull on your big boy pants and do something” and “look at all the pressure that goes to school anyway, there’s drugs and everything else and we don’t rule that unconstitutional.”

Barton misconstrues the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which is incorporated to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment (see Everson and Cantwell), and calls the ruling a “pretty strange parsing of the Constitution” and places a “restriction on the rights of people to say the word God in public.”

As Justice Kennedy writes in the majority opinion, which decided that the school is barred from holding a prayer service during the graduation ceremony, the First Amendment has been interpreted to prevent the government from sanctioning or endorsing religion:

The First Amendment’s Religion Clauses mean that religious beliefs and religious expression are too precious to be either proscribed or prescribed by the State. The design of the Constitution is that preservation and transmission of religious beliefs and worship is a responsibility and a choice committed to the private sphere, which itself is promised freedom to pursue that mission. It must not be forgotten, then, that, while concern must be given to define the protection granted to an objector or a dissenting nonbeliever, these same Clauses exist to protect religion from government interference.

As Stewart notes, Barton completely neglects the rights of the students whose beliefs are compromised by the school-sanctioned prayer by putting the burden on the student to just put up with it. Kennedy writes that such thinking “turns conventional First Amendment analysis on its head. It is a tenet of the First Amendment that the State cannot require one of its citizens to forfeit his or her rights and benefits as the price of resisting conformance to state-sponsored religious practice.”

Barton grounds his beliefs that the majority should trump the rights of the minority in his view that the First Amendment actually doesn’t prevent the state from endorsing religion. Lauri Lebo writes in The Devil in Dover that in Barton’s book The Myth of Separation,

Barton argues in his book that the First Amendment only refers to the establishment of a specific Protestant denomination. In other words, Barton claims that Christian founders were saying they couldn’t endorse Lutheranism, for instance, over Presbyterianism. But in Barton’s view, forcing Christian beliefs on the nation’s citizens has always been fair game.

But the drafters actually rejected proposed amendments that only stopped governmental recognition of denominations or sects. Warren Throckmorton, a professor at Grove City College, a Christian school, pointed to James Madison’s speech during the debate over the First Amendment where he makes clear that “Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law” for otherwise they could pass laws that “might infringe the rights of conscience and establish a national religion.”

By ignoring the meaning behind the First Amendment and opposing the First Amendment’s incorporation to the states under the Fourteenth Amendment, Barton pushes a radical version of the Constitution. If “taken to logical conclusion,” Throckmorton notes, “this argument would establish Christianity as the religion of the nation, something the Founders specifically did not do.”

Religious Right Groups And Chamber of Commerce Fail To Block District Court Nominee

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 5/4/2011 3:20 pm

Religious Right and pro-corporate groups failed today to block President Obama’s nominee for U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, John McConnell, from receiving an up-or-down vote in the Senate. The Senate invoked cloture on McConnell’s nomination in a 63-33 vote, defeating the filibuster against McConnell. Filibusters against district court judges are extremely rare—only a handful of District Court nominees have ever faced cloture votes, and none have ever been blocked—and many Republicans previously vowed they would never filibuster a judicial nominee.

Today’s vote came after a long wait for McConnell: according to The Providence Journal, the delay caused by the concerted right-wing effort to block McConnell forced Rhode Island’s chief federal judge to “take the unusual step of reassigning more than two dozen civil cases to judges in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.”

Why the tough fight? McConnell faced virulent opposition from the Chamber of Commerce over his role fighting big tobacco companies and lead paint manufacturers. The Chamber and other groups that oppose corporate accountability found allies in the Religious Right groups that decided to fight McConnell as well.

The Conservative Action Project made McConnell a top target of their efforts. The group includes pro-corporate organizations like the 60 Plus Association, National Taxpayers Union, Americans for Limited Government, Citizens United, and American Tax Reform, along with social conservatives such as the Family Research Council, Traditional Values Coalition, Heritage Action, American Values, Liberty Counsel Action, and Eagle Forum. The Conservative Action Project’s Memo to the Movement [PDF] claimed McConnell was unqualified to serve in the judiciary because he was a trial lawyer with a history of challenging big business.

Eagle Forum derided him as a “pro-choice, anti-business, pro-judicial activism nominee” who “has made numerous anti-business statements.” The Family Research Council slammed McConnell for his ties to the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the country’s most prominent civil rights organizations, and Phillip Jauregui’s Judicial Action Group said that his link to the SPLC and the American Constitution Society shows he “supports organizations who support homosexual marriage and oppose conservative politicians.”

While the Corporate Right and the Religious Right of the McConnell nomination failed, many of these organizations will continue to work together to block other qualified judicial nominees and aggravate the country’s burgeoning judicial vacancy crisis.

Harvey And LaBarbera Accuse LGBT Community And Glee Of Using "Demonic Manipulation" To Make Kids Gay

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 4/20/2011 9:31 am

Linda Harvey of Mission America talked to Peter LaBarbera about Friday’s Day of Silence, a day for students to protest anti-gay bullying and harassment in schools. As detailed in People For the American Way’s report “Big Bullies: How the Religious Right is Trying to Make Schools Safe for Bullies and Dangerous for Gay Kids,” the Religious Right has been leading a campaign against anti-bullying programs, and Harvey is one of the most outspoken critics of bullying-prevention programs. Harvey, who co-hosted the rabidly anti-gay Americans for Truth Academy with LaBarbera, has urged parents to make sure their child doesn’t have gay friends, blamed gay-rights advocates for suicide among LGBT youth, and dubbed the Day of Silence a “Hitler Youth product.”

On LaBarbera’s radio show, Harvey concludes that the acceptance of gay youth will lead to “God’s judgment” and calls on parents to remove their children from public schools immediately. Harvey goes on to claim that gay-rights advocates are using “demonic manipulation” to turn children gay, and LaBarbera said Glee is also promoting homosexuality by featuring a kiss scene between two openly gay characters, asking, “how many young men and boys decided right there that they’re gay?”

LaBarbera: You’re promoting homosexuality to middle school boys. Now, if that can go on in America, without consequence, then it’s over. Then we as a country are going to go straight downhill because you’re getting to the point where you are promoting perversion to boys who should be so innocent still.

Harvey: Innocent and when you think about Scripture and you think about history, the male culture of any society is the backbone, the strength, the honor, the nobility, the future, the vitality of the society. What are we doing with our young males? It is a symptom, I think its part of God’s judgment on us that we’re doing this and that people are not ripping their kids out of these schools by the thousands daily, they should be. Because there’s no reason for people to be in these schools if you have any other choices at all, not everybody does, but I really recommend it if people have a choice, they get their kids out of these schools.

…

Harvey: These people are masters at demonic manipulation; I mean I have to put it that way, because that is what the homosexual agenda directed to that age group does. Kids don’t know what they’re going to turn out to be, kids can be secretly wondering and doubting if they are homosexual without a parent ever knowing. Because of A) what they get in schools, and B) what they get on the Internet.

LaBarbera: And then Hollywood, I talked about at our conference about this Glee kiss which is just, as I said at the conference, it shocked my soul. This romantic Glee kiss between two teenage boys depicted on the show, popular characters, one of the most popular if not the most popular TV show that young people watch, and here they had a romantic kiss between two teenage boys, I thought, what, how many young men and boys decided right there that they’re gay?

Chuck Norris’s New Project: Fighting Creeping Sharia

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Monday, 4/18/2011 10:03 am

After railing against Obama’s purported attempts to wean Christianity out of public life, Chuck Norris now is warning of the supposed threat of religious involvement in government. Of course, in this case the threat comes from Islam. In his WorldNetDaily column “Holy Week, Holy Sharia? Part 1,” Norris begins his investigation into “creeping Sharia law.” He recommends the book Muslim Mafia, which alleges that radical Muslims are infiltrating the government through the congressional internship program, and says he plans to write at least four more articles as part of his exposé into the menace of Sharia.

Norris’s only evidence of creeping Sharia is a Florida judge’s ruling upholding a religious arbitration scheme (make sure to read Sarah Posner’s thorough debunking), an Alabama bill to ban Sharia law whose chief sponsor admits that he doesn’t even know what Sharia law is, and an Obama adviser’s statements on misconceptions about Sharia law:

The main point here is this: Where Muslim religion and culture has spread, Shariah law has shortly followed.

Of course, many Americans watch on video a Middle Eastern woman allegedly caught in adultery, buried in the ground up to her head and being stoned to death, and think, "That could never happen in America." But they fail to see how Shariah law has already been enabled and subtly invoked in our country, and that any such induction like it is brought about by understated lukewarm changes, like a frog boiled in a kettle by a slow simmer.

For those who don't believe in that Shariah simmer, consider in just the past few months that:

• A Florida judge ruled that a dispute between Muslim parties could proceed under Shariah law. "This case," the judge wrote, "will proceed under Ecclesiastical Islamic Law."

• Alabama is joining a growing list of states that are considering outlawing the use of foreign and religious laws, specifically Muslim Shariah law, in their courts.

• President Barack Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, appeared on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist group to talk about Shariah law. Miss Mogahed said the Western view of Shariah was "oversimplified" and that the majority of women around the world associate it with "gender justice." Does she really think that Shariah is the ideological bastion of gender equality?

In the end, it seems to me we have a choice to believe that Shariah law is, or is not, a pro-Islamic system of civic, religious, moral and social laws, which is being used to run other countries and governments but is not being (nor ever will be) invoked to run ours, based upon the belief that our constitutional republic and Bill of Rights is inferior.

Anti-Choice Leader Claims Obama Supports Black Genocide

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 4/15/2011 9:49 am

While one anti-choice group is using President Obama’s image to attack legal abortion as black genocide, others are coming out saying that President Obama is advocating the extermination of African Americans because he is pro-choice. The abortion as “black genocide” myth is gaining increasing prominence in the anti-choice community, and the Family Research Council even asserted that Planned Parenthood was responsible for Washington D.C.’s shrinking black population.

Jim Sedlak of the American Life League, a champion of the radical personhood laws, argued that statistics showing that black women have a disproportionate number of abortions is proof that the black community is targeted by abortion providers. After D.C. mayor Vince Gray was arrested for protesting the budget deal that prevented the city from using local tax dollars to help low-income women access reproductive healthcare, Sedlak said that that “Margaret Sanger would be proud of her elitist black disciples” like Obama and Gray, asking, “with leaders like the president and the DC mayor, is it any surprise this black genocide continues?”:

With those statistics in mind, the American Life League said it is surprised that “America’s first black president drew a bizarre line in the sand declaring he would shut down the government of the United States to keep federal funding for Planned Parenthood, the organization that aborts over 125,000 black children nationwide each year.”

“The president of the United States champions aborting over one-third of the next generation of African-Americans as empowerment,” said Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League. “We do not. We see it as the worst bigotry of low expectations. Margaret Sanger would be proud of her elitist black disciples. We are not.”

Based on its calculations, ALL says Planned Parenthood is responsible for the death of at least 126,601 black unborn children each year.

“With leaders like the president and the DC mayor, is it any surprise this black genocide continues? It needs to stop and the place to start is with the total defunding of the organization where it began: Planned Parenthood,” Sedlak concluded.

AFA: Obama Should "Repent Before God Almighty" For Supporting Planned Parenthood

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 4/13/2011 11:00 am

Upon hearing the news that the budget compromise includes funding for Planned Parenthood, the reactions from anti-choice groups have ranged from resigned to resistant as there will only be a separate vote on defunding the women’s health group that is likely to fail in the Senate. The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer likened Speaker John Boehner to Pontius Pilate and Nazi apologists over the deal, and now the AFA’s President Tim Wildmon said Boehner “failed pro-life Americans.” In an email message to members, Wildmon urged activists to demand their representatives and senators vote to defund Planned Parenthood. But he also asked members join him “in praying for Barack Obama” because “this man should repent before God Almighty” for his pro-choice views. Wildmon writes:

With the budget compromise including funding for Planned Parenthood, There is still time to let your congressman know how you feel about the budget deal struck between President Barack Obama, Sen. Harry Reid and Speaker of the House John Boehner which DID NOT exclude Planned Parenthood (PP) and National Public Radio (NPR) from receiving federal tax dollars. The AFA believes that it is long past time to defund Planned Parenthood, an organization that receives $350 million in taxpayer funds while aborting 324,000 babies a year.

On behalf of AFA, I have expressed to Speaker Boehner's office how disappointed we are that he gave in to Obama on the matter of tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood. The decision was Boehner's to make and -- for whatever reason and for whatever good he may have accomplished in this deal otherwise -- on the insistence that Planned Parenthood be defunded, he failed pro-life Americans. There is no other way to put it.

…

P.S. For Barack Obama's part, this man should repent before God Almighty for defending and advancing the evil practice of killing unborn babies. He is by far the most pro-abortion president America has ever had. Will you join me in praying for Barack Obama today?

FRC: Washington DC Losing Black Population Because Of Planned Parenthood

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 4/13/2011 10:07 am

Washington DC Mayor Vince Gray along with a number of City Councilmen were arrested on Monday for protesting the budget deal which eliminates the city’s right to use local tax dollars to help low-income women access reproductive healthcare. The Family Research Council responded by saying that Gray and other pro-choice officials were actually responsible for the falling black population in the city. The Washington Post reports that recent census data shows that African Americans will soon make up less than 50% of the city’s population, “with the city’s black population dropping by about 1 percent a year.” Analysts point to rising unemployment and the city’s rapid gentrification with “rising rents and soaring property taxes” pushing much of the working class black community out of the city.

But the Family Research Council says the real reason is legal abortion. Adding to the anti-choice movement’s strategy of claiming that abortion providers are trying to commit genocide against African Americans, the FRC said in an email alert to members that the city’s declining black community is because “the local Planned Parenthood clinics are doing their job.” While the FRC uses no evidence to back up its claim that Planned Parenthood “actively targets African-Americans” and is responsible for the city’s loss of black residents, the group also spews out false, discredited claims that the women’s health organization is tied to “child prostitution, sex abuse, [and] statutory rape”:

According to pundits, this was supposed to be the year that social issues took a backseat to the economy. Apparently, Democrats didn't get the memo. If the last six weeks proved anything, it's that the culture war is alive and well--and lurking in the halls of Congress. When the dust finally settled from last week's budget talks, Americans learned that it wasn't conservatives with a one-track mind. It was the White House and Senate leadership, who thought it was worth putting more than 800,000 people out of work to satisfy the single-issue abortion supporters in their ranks. "Thanks to the way this deal was struck," the Wall Street Journal says, "we have a reminder that it was the Democratic President--and not the Republican Speaker--who stood on ideology." To those inside the Oval Office, "...it was 'chilling' to see how inflexible Mr. Obama was." But as far as liberals are concerned, an attack on abortion is an attack on the Democratic Party. D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray (D) obviously thought so. He was so angry about the ban on taxpayer-funded abortion in the District that he and 41 others plopped down in the middle of Constitution Avenue yesterday to protest. "The District restrictions that were part of the budget deal reached Friday were unacceptable," Gray said, after he was hauled away by Capitol police. "It's an outrageous position... All we want is to be able to spend our own money." Like his party, the Mayor was willing to stand in the way of progress at a major crossroads to protect taxpayer-funded abortion.

And for what? According to the latest D.C. census, the number of African-Americans in the city is alarmingly low. In one decade, "the black population dropped by more than 39,000." Experts say the percentages haven't been this low since World War II. Do liberals think that's a coincidence? Obviously, the local Planned Parenthood clinics are doing their job. So while Vincent Gray rages on about taxation without abortion representation, he should stop and consider where his city would be in another 10 years without the legislation. If you thought that black children were endangered before, imagine if the city could continue promoting free abortions to local women.

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood, the group that most actively targets African-Americans, is awaiting its federal funding fate. As part of the budget compromise, President Obama agreed to give the Senate a vote on language to zero out Planned Parenthood's tax dollars. "Surely it tells you something about who the real extremists are that an up-or-down vote is deemed a 'concession,'" William McGurn wrote. Help your members take advantage of the opportunity. Contact your Senators and remind them that there are plenty of legitimate health clinics out there that will provide services to women other than abortion. And 99% of them probably haven't been implicated in child prostitution, sex abuse, or statutory rape!
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choice Posts Archive

Porter's Israel Coalition Promotes Claim That September 11 Attacks Represented God's Judgment
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Friday 09/16/2011, 10:45am
While right now Janet Porter is focused on using spiritual warfare to persuade the Ohio State Senate to pass her anti-choice ‘Heartbeat bill,’ she continues to lead the Christian Zionist group ‘Israel: You’re Not Alone.’ Porter was able to bring together an impressive list of supporters including well known conservative leaders Mike Huckabee, James Dobson, Mat Staver, and Tim Wildmon, and during the group’s introductory press conference accused President Obama of carrying out “ethnic cleansing.” On September 11th the organization released a... MORE
Personhood USA Sets Sights On Ohio
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Thursday 09/15/2011, 1:00pm
Mississippi is set to vote this November on a patently unconstitutional personhood amendment that would criminalize abortion in their state, and ‘personhood’ advocates now strive to put a similar amendment on the ballot in Ohio in 2012. Personhood laws would not only prohibit abortion in all cases but also ban certain forms of birth control and the treatment of ectopic pregnancies by giving legal rights to zygotes. The anti-choice activists hope that Ohio will vote on it at the same time as the swing state’s closely contested presidential election. Right now Ohio is on the... MORE
Financial Scandal Rocks Priests For Life
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Wednesday 09/14/2011, 10:31am
Frank Pavone, the head of the prominent anti-choice group Priests for Life, has been suspended from his position because of concerns over financial improprieties. Pavone is a priest in the Roman Catholic diocese of Amarillo, Texas, but has used his position in Priests for Life to be a full-time political activist. He garnered national attention during the Terri Schiavo case when he called her husband Michael “a murderer.” He gained more notoriety after bringing in Alveda King to Priests for Life, when he launched “Freedom Rides” in the South in an attempt to connect... MORE
Right Wing Leftovers
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Tuesday 09/13/2011, 5:46pm
How long before the GOP gives Oregon Republicans the boot for removing anti-gay language for their platform? Rick Perry will be speaking at Liberty University tomorrow. Mat Staver has been appointed to something called The Commission on Accountability and Policy for Religious Organizations. Apparently the Hubble Telescope discovered proof of God. Finally, quote of the day from Bryan Fischer: "This is not behavior that any rational society should condone, endorse, subsidize, reward, promote or sanction in domestic policy or in the marketplace. It’s a choice... MORE
Porter Bringing In The Prophets To Pray For Passage Of Heartbeat Bill
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Tuesday 09/13/2011, 11:48am
Janet Porter has, in many ways, been at the center of the merger between the "mainstream" Religious Right and the Dominionist prophets and apostles of the New Apostolic Reformation.  In fact, it was through Porter's participation in the "Convergence 2010" event, where she prayed that Christians would take control of the media, that we first became aware of the likes of Cindy Jacobs.  Since then, Porter has gotten progressively more involved with the movement - so much so that she lost her radio program due to her embrace of Seven Mountains Dominionism. But now... MORE
Right Wing Leftovers
SUBMITTED BY: Kyle Mantyla, Monday 09/12/2011, 5:33pm
Tim Pawlenty endorses Mitt Romney while Bobby Jindal is set to endorse Rick Perry. Hey, what do you know?  The Religious Right is mobilizing pastors to get active in the 2012 elections. On a related note, a coalition of anti-choice groups are mobilizing to register voters. James Dobson suffered several broken bones in a horse-riding accident. The man charged with helping Lisa Miller to flee the country wants his statements quashed and his trial moved out of Vermont. MORE
Concerned Women for America: Real Feminism Is Serving Your Husband
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Monday 09/12/2011, 2:00pm
With conservative politicians and groups trying to ‘reclaim feminism’ for the Right, it is no surprise to see the notoriously anti-feminist Concerned Women for America jumping on the bandwagon. Concerned Women for America claims it was founded by Beverly LaHaye, whose husband is Religious Right leader Tim LaHaye, to counter the National Organization for Women because “She knew the feminists’ anti-God, anti-family rhetoric did not represent her beliefs, nor those of the vast majority of women.” LaHaye has said, “Feminism is more than an illness. It is a... MORE