human rights

Wendy Wright, who left her job as president of Concerned Women for America under mysterious conditions, is continuing her right-wing activism by taking the fight to the Girl Scouts of the USA. Wright joined Janet Parshall yesterday on In The Market to discuss their shared antipathy to the Girl Scouts and what parents can do to fight the Girl Scouts.

Wright, who previously argued that the Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood were “working together to steal children's innocence and make them vulnerable to the negative consequences of promiscuity thereby creating clients for their abortion and STD services,” highlighted claims by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute that the Girl Scouts advocated for abortion rights and distributed a Planned Parenthood sex-ed brochure at a private United Nations panel. However, Girl Scouts of the USA categorically denied the group’s claims, saying that the brochure was never distributed at the event (where only 30-35 teenage girls were present) and that their organization “does not take a position on family planning.”

On Parshall’s show, Wright said parents should call for an investigation into whether the money from Girl Scout cookie sales goes to teaching “young girls to be activists and advocates for a radical sexual agenda.” She blamed the Girl Scouts leadership for supporting a “radical, feminist, pro-abortion form of activism and training these girls up to be feminist activists.” Wright urged parents instead to have their daughters join a “wholesome, pro-God, alternative to the Girl Scouts” called the American Heritage Girls. The American Heritage Girls was founded by Patti Garibay, who, according to CNS News was “motivated to leave the Girl Scout organization when the group decided it would take no position on homosexuality” and to encourage instruction in “traditionally feminine skills, such as sewing, cooking and laundry.” American Heritage Girls bills itself as a “Christ-centered” group that denounces “moral relativism.”

Listen:

Well they need to be contacting the national leadership and encouraging them to cut-off any ties to groups like Planned Parenthood that advocate abortion on demand, that actually encourages young girls to be sexually active, thereby creating more clients for Planned Parenthood. And I think we need to probably take a look as well to where the funding to those Girl Scout cookies go to. I love those Thin Mint cookies and I love the other cookies they have as well but it’s disturbing enough for me to think that if I were to buy those cookies that they would end up fueling and funding campaigns like this one at the United Nations where young girls are trained to be advocates and activists for a radical sexual agenda.

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This turnover in the national leadership is one toward activism, a radical, feminist, pro-abortion form of activism and training these girls up to be feminist activists. And so I think parents need to be on the lookout for anything that is being taught their girls through the Girl Scouts to turn them into activists. But I’d also like to make people aware of another organization, an alternative organization, called the American Heritage Girls. In which it was created in order to be a wholesome, pro-God alternative to the Girl Scouts. It was started by parents who were very disturbed by seeing the direction the Girl Scouts were taking so I encourage people to look into the American Heritage Girls as an alternative to the Girl Scouts.

Mission America’s Linda Harvey is siding with a radical Muslim group in Pakistan who is protesting an LGBT-pride event hosted by the US Embassy in Pakistan. According to the AP, an extreme Islamist political party led a protest with signs declaring “Death to America” and “Americans, we will not allow you to spread your vulgar and ugly civilisation in Pakistan,” with one speaker saying gays and lesbians “should be immediately deported out of Pakistan.” Harvey says she is “on the same side” as the protesters, criticizing the State Department for claiming that LGBT rights are human rights and accused the embassy of celebrating a “deviant lifestyle, something that should be a disgrace to our nation.” Later in her radio show, Harvey chides Secretary Hillary Clinton’s “radically liberal social views” and for inviting Lady Gaga to a concert in Italy, dubbing the State Department an “agent for Lady Gaga.”

Recently there was a rare instance where outspoken Muslims and I were on the same side of an issue. In Pakistan as part of Gay Pride month, US State Department employees, those at the embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, held a gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pride event. Can you imagine? The utter foolishness here is beyond belief. But they got what could’ve been predicted as a reaction, outrage from the local Muslim community. Of course, one is left to wonder if this wasn’t the goal: rebellion and more of the perpetual in-your-face antics of homosexual activism all to stand up for this deviant lifestyle, something that should be a disgrace to our nation.

In a brief statement on the State Department website they justified their actions; they said it was to demonstrate support for “human rights, including LGBT rights in Pakistan at a time when those rights are increasingly under attack from extremists elements throughout Pakistani society.” Well, homosexuality is not a human right, folks. God has already told us about this behavior and it’s always a sin.

Alex McFarland of the American Family Association, the group hosting Texas Governor Rick Perry’s The Response prayer rally, said that Perry’s event is needed more then ever after marriage equality passed in New York. During his radio show on the AFA’s American Family Radio with Marvin Sanders, McFarland lauded the Perry/AFA rally as “a very wonderful thing” to help America “turn back to God.” McFarland, who last said that homosexuality is “a learned response to emotional pain and sometimes molestation,” went on to say that the marriage equality vote in New York was a warning sign for the nation, noting: “righteousness exalts a nation, lifts up a nation, blesses a people, but sin is a reproach, and literally means an undoing, and we need to pray and I think Governor Perry.”

While cautioning that “our dear friends at Right Wing Watch are probably watching,” McFarland claimed that the world is now in The Latter Days and that we shouldn’t “confuse” LGBT rights with “human rights” because LGBT equality means that “immorality [will] become the law of the land,” McFarland warning that we now “live in that time that people call Evil Good and Evil a Good.”

Watch:

Every week, the Family Research Council issues a list of "prayer targets" which usually consist of political issues in the news that members of its "prayer team" should focus on for that week.

This week's list of targets includes the White House proclamation recognizing June as "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month":

Homosexual Agenda -- Tuesday, President Obama proclaimed June "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month." In the Proclamation, he boasts of his administration's achievements to advance the homosexual agenda: opening the Armed Forces to openly practicing homosexuals "for the first time in our Nation's history;" adding rules to eliminate discrimination against LGBT's in federal housing programs; giving federal rights to LGBT's to visit partners in the hospital; appointing homosexuals to top federal executive and judicial positions; targeting foreign laws that discriminate against LGBT's; leading a campaign to put "sexual orientation" in a U.N. resolution -- the first, ever, to specifically mention LGBT people. He further touted implementing and enforcing the Hate Crimes Prevention Act; efforts to reduce bullying and discrimination in schools; promoting the "It Gets Better" video; and his recommitment to increase funding for AIDS awareness and prevention.

Also Tuesday, homosexual activist Joe Salmonese of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) announced his organization's "Call it Out" Campaign, a nationwide "effort to expose hatred -- not just on national TV, but in communities." HRC is creating a website where activists can register their accusations and complaints to silence any American who makes a public statement perceived as being "hostile" toward homosexuals or their agenda.

Meanwhile, U.S. efforts to promote homosexuality worldwide march on. FRCAction Senior V.P. Tom McClusky writes, "we are spending tax dollars on a Gay Bulgarian Film Festival (flyer here) [and] an "after show party... [W]hile the Administration is slow to defend oppressed Christians in Muslim and communist countries that are being killed for their beliefs, they took less then one day to condemn the Russian government for barring a homosexual pride parade in Moscow... [N]ew guidelines issued on Saturday...for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program... tax dollars will now be available to force acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle in [recipient] countries, with little regard for the beliefs in the targeted countries... [recipients are required to] endorse the behavior that leads to AIDS. When President Bush started PEPFAR it was probably one of the most effective international outreach programs in decades, largely due to the effort to work with the targeted countries on the best way to solve AIDS crisis. President Obama's colonialist approach is likely to lead to more countries rejecting U.S. aid..." (Proclamation; "Call it Out," International Gay Outreach).

* Pray that God will protect America from the spiritual effects of this evil Presidential Proclamation. May Christians -- who will be targeted by HRC's smear campaign -- enjoy God's protection. And may this administration's efforts to promote homosexuality overseas be resisted and defeated at home and abroad!

Concerned Women for America has led the fight against the U.S.’s ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women since Jimmy Carter first signed it in 1980, and is now ramping up pressure against ratification following a Senate hearing on the treaty. Thanks to pressure from CWA and other Religious Right groups, the U.S. joins Iran, Somalia and Sudan in not ratifying CEDAW, which works to end political, economic and healthcare gender disparities, sex trafficking, and violence and discrimination against women.

In an email to members, Bevery LaHaye writes that ratification will mean that a “twisted ideology of extremist feminism rebelling against God and His law” will allow communist China and North Korea to dominate American society:

Would you trust your children or grandchildren to be raised by Hugo Chavez, the brutal dictator of Venezuela?

Or Hu Jintao, the Communist president of the People's Republic of China?

Maybe Kim Jong-Il, the deranged "Supreme Leader" of North Korea? Of course not! And you and I must act NOW to stop President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and their allies from doing exactly that!

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Simply put, CEDAW would give foreign thugs and tyrants dictatorial power over American laws related to:

• The legal rights of wives and mothers,
• the protection of life,
• the definition of marriage,
• and the education of your children!!!

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CEDAW backers like Obama, Clinton, and Reid disagree. They mouth high-sounding language about "equality" and "empowerment" as a fog to cloak their dark plans.

But when I read CEDAW, I see anger, bitterness, the breeding ground for generations of conflict, and the twisted ideology of extremist feminism rebelling against God and His law.

Harold Hongju Koh, a State Department aide who is a past Dean of Yale Law and Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, testified in 2006 that allegations from opponents like CWA were “preposterous” and “flatly untrue.” CEDAW is neutral on the issues of legal abortion and same-sex marriage, and many CEDAW-ratifying countries have outlawed both, and the treaty would not lead to international bodies enforcing their laws on the US.

“Our nonratification has led our allies and adversaries alike to challenge our claim of moral leadership in international human rights,” Koh said, “Ratification of the CEDAW by the United States would similarly make clear our national commitment to ensure the equal and nondiscriminatory treatment of American women in such areas as civil and political rights, education, employment, and property rights.”

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) has intensified his defense of the deposed president of the Ivory Coast. Laurent Gbagbo, the country’s Roman Catholic president, lost a December election to opposition leader Alassane Ouattara, who is Muslim. While the country’s electoral commission and the international community, including African nations, recognized Ouattara as the winner, Gbagbo’s appointed national council threw out the results (saying Ouattara won through voter fraud) and Gbagbo declared himself the winner. Gbagbo’s wife, an evangelical Christian, even declared that “God has given us this victory.” Earlier this week forces loyal to Ouattara removed Gbagbo from power, clearing the way for Outtara to become president.

But the Religious Right in the U.S. has become one of Gbagbo’s biggest cheerleaders, even though the International Criminal Court wants him charged with crimes against humanity for human rights abuses. Pat Robertson defended Gbagbo, saying he’s “a Christian, he’s a nice person, and he’s run a fairly clean operation in the Ivory Coast” and accused Outarra of “building up that ring of Shariah law around the Middle East.”

In Congress, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) has been one of the leading apologists for Gbagbo, who he knows through The Family/C Street. After unsuccessfully trying to soften the Obama Administration’s approach to Gbagbo in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said that Gbagbo’s arrest “sends a strong signal to dictators and tyrants throughout the region and around the worlds,” Inhofe is now ripping the administration’s handling of the crisis and utilizing Gbagbo’s talking points about the purported voter fraud and violence of Ouattara’s force in an interview with the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow:

Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) publically supported Laurent Gbagbo from the floor of the Senate Tuesday afternoon. In a 30-minute speech, Inhofe claimed massive vote fraud took place during the monitored election of the West African nation. The congressman from Oklahoma says France, the United Nations, and the U.S. State Department were instrumental in toppling Gbagbo.

"They rigged the election, [they] stole the election, and then they sided with...the Muslim rebels from up north to come in and try to seize control, which they've now done, of the government in Ivory Coast in Abidjan," the lawmaker tells OneNewsNow.

Forces loyal to Ivory Coast U.N.-sanctioned president Alassane Ouattara on April 6 stormed the presidential palace of incumbent leader Gbagbo, who has refused to cede power.

"[The rebels] killed thousands of people; they tortured the Gbagbos," says Inhofe. "We're now trying our best to get some kind of an arrangement where they can get either an exile to a country or something -- [we're] trying to save their lives."

As Kyle noted in March, Religious Right activist Scott Lively is keeping up his attacks on gays despite a lengthy Boston Globe profile on how Lively is “toning down his antigay rhetoric.” Writing for his organization Defend the Family International, Lively discusses how his review of historic religious and political documents has corroborated his fierce opposition to gay-rights, and goes on to argue that gay-rights is simply “the ‘right’ to spread sexual disease and dysfunction” and is the “antithesis of genuine human rights.”

Reading these documents one is struck by the continuity of several basic themes, central among them the protection religious freedom and family values. Equally striking in today’s context is the total absence of protection for homosexual practice or identity. Rather, we find express condemnation of homosexuality in several documents, and implied hostility to it through the remainder. Indeed, the most reasonable assumption of human rights jurisprudence is that so called “gay rights” are the antithesis of genuine human rights because they both undermine the sexual order on which family values depend, and contradict the fundamental tenets of the major world religions.

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Consider the magnitude of what our generation is witnessing. Neither the four millennia of legal precedent, nor the opinions of the vast majority of the people of the world, nor the power or the authority of the worlds religions across the globe, nor the painful lessons of secular history of the consequences of sexual perversion to civilizations have proved sufficient to stop a relatively tiny group of sodomites from taking the reins of Western power and creating new rights for themselves at the world’s expense.

It is insanity, and I am afraid that it may be terminal. When the “right” to spread sexual disease and dysfunction supersedes the right to discourage such things in the courtrooms and legislatures of the world’s ruling powers their end is likely near.

Just as Lively warned that a “relatively tiny group of sodomites” is attempting to take “the reins of Western power,” he told OneNewsNow that gay-rights activists in California have “consolidated power entirely” in order to accomplish the “overthrow of the biblical model of family”:

"They're really the driving force behind all the different elements of what we call 'the culture war,'" he shares. "They haven't been visible in doing this, but they've been the driving force -- because their essential goal as a movement is the overthrow of the biblical model of family."

Lively explains that the city of San Francisco has a high concentration of homosexual power, and the city has taken direct action against the Catholic Church and against businesses that do not support homosexuality. He expects the same radical agendas to be prevalent throughout the state in the near future.

He points out that during the signature collection process for Proposition 8 -- a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman -- those who penned their support for the initiative were openly targeted. "They posted [the names of supporters] on the Internet," he exclaims. "They encouraged all their activists to go after those people -- and that's before they even have consolidated power entirely."

A leading House Republican is pledging to follow-through on his promise to force a referendum on the District of Columbia’s 2010 marriage equality law. In January, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Religious Right activists demanded that the rights of gays and lesbians to marry in D.C. be put to a popular vote after the Supreme Court rebuffed an attempt by Harry Jackson to compel a referendum. Jordan is head of the Republican Study Committee, the principal caucus for House conservatives, and wants to take advantage of Congress’s disproportionate power over District affairs in order to push his opposition to marriage equality. CQ reports (subscription only):

Jim Jordan, chairman of the 176-member Republican Study Committee, is leading an effort by conservatives to press House leaders for floor votes in opposition to gay marriage.

Jordan’s first project is a draft proposal that would set up a referendum to overturn a year-old District of Columbia law recognizing marriages of gay and lesbian couples. The move comes as conservatives express a desire to move beyond a focus on spending cuts and expand the House majority’s legislative agenda to include social issues.

The Supreme Court declined in January to take up a case aimed at clearing the way for a referendum to ban gay marriage in the nation’s capital. City officials have blocked the referendum on the grounds that it would violate a city human rights law.

Jordan said he expects the draft measure to draw strong support from House Republicans. He and other conservatives say they are weighing how best to promote the vote as an example of Republicans fulfilling a campaign promise. The GOP’s 2010 Pledge to America vowed that a Republican majority would “honor families, traditional marriage, life and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values.”

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Jordan says he will press for a floor vote to allow fellow conservatives to make clear their opposition to gay marriage. “We want to advance marriage. That’s the pledge. Our party should be all about defending marriage as it has always been defined,” he said.

Reps. Steve King of Iowa and Vicky Hartzler of Missouri have also been calling for floor action to demonstrate opposition to gay marriage. Hartzler has gathered 98 cosponsors for a resolution condemning the Obama administration’s decision to stop defending restrictions on gay marriage.

On Monday, the State Department issued a joint statement in the UN’s Human Rights Council opposing the criminalization of homosexuality. Currently, well over 70 countries impose criminal penalties for gays and lesbians, and the statement has the support of 84 countries. According to the Family Research Council, however, the US is committing a great injustice by condemning the criminalization of people because of their sexual orientation. The FRC dubs it “Operation International Tolerance,” complete with a picture of Obama wearing a rainbow helmet:

The FRC claims that the resolution will “force acceptance of the world’s gays and lesbians,” and defended countries that criminalize homosexuality or “any behavior they think is harmful to society”:

While American forces bomb away at Libya, the Obama administration is launching another global offensive: Operation International Tolerance. As he looks on from South America, the President put troops on the ground today for a meeting of the U.N.'s Human Rights Council, where his diplomats plan to strong-arm other countries into embracing homosexuality. In a major U-turn from the Bush years, the Obama administration is actually initiating an "anti-discrimination" resolution to force acceptance of the world's gays and lesbians. As recently as 2008, the United States refused to sign a similar declaration because President Bush thought it conflicted with the states' rights to pass things like marriage amendments.

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Obviously, FRC believes that homosexuals and transgenders shouldn't be subjected to violence. But this resolution goes well beyond that to endorsing a behavior that dozens of member nations oppose. No binding document of international law has ever recognized a universal "human right" to engage in sex with a person of the same gender. And although even the U.N. admits that "resolutions" like this one "aren't legally binding," they do help to create a legal norm. We've seen this similar approach with respect to abortion, where countries like the U.S. have tried to insinuate a "right" under international law where there is none. Our global neighbors have the freedom to believe that homosexuality is wrong--just as they have the freedom to legislate against any behavior they think is harmful to society. That freedom--and their very sovereignty--would be threatened by this effort.