Legal

• Apparently the National Religious Broadcasters is releasing a report about how companies and the internet are censoring Christians.
• The fact that Mat Staver's lawsuit against healthcare reform was tossed out of court is apparently evidence that healthcare reform's days are numbered.
• On a related note, Liberty Counsel has produced a new video explaining just how important it is.
• The Oregon state Republican Party may have removed some anti-gay language, but that  doesn't mean much.
• Shockingly, FRC's Peter Sprigg opposes gay characters in "Archie" comics.
• Finally, quote of the day from FRC's latest prayer update: "Father, restrain protesters in each of these cities. May all their plans be exposed and fail! Give those in authority safety and wisdom to do their jobs. Cause the news media accurately to report the events. Please prevent all efforts by anti-American ideologues to influence the 2012 elections as ACORN and others did in 2008. Please advance patriotic, God-fearing candidates for public office and help them to defeat those who foster socialism, anarchy and immorality."

Yesterday on American Family Radio’s Today’s Issues, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and American Family Association head Tim Wildmon agreed that God is going to judge the U.S. over the issue of abortion and marriage equality. “God is going to hold us accountable for the death, the destructive policies of this country that have devalued human life and are redefining marriage,” Perkins said, and Wildmon concurred that as long as abortion continues to be legal in America “we will be judged and held accountable for it, as a country.”

Listen:

Perkins: You and I Tim as Americans have been given a very unique role in the history of mankind to be a part of that process and choosing our leaders, but with that opportunity comes a responsibility and an accountability. I think we’ll give an account for who the leaders of this nation, who the leaders are, and the policies that they adopt. We can’t simply wash our hands and say ‘oh just because we have a pro-abortion president, a Democratic president, we don’t have anything to do with that.’ No my friends, we do. When only fifty percent of the church-going population is registered to vote and only half of them are actually voting, I have some really somber news: I believe God is going to hold us accountable for the death, the destructive policies of this country that have devalued human life and are redefining marriage.

…

Wildmon: Folks keep in mind the overarching principle here we need to look at is a Biblical one, in that it is immoral, it is evil, it is wrong in the eyes of God to kill unborn babies.

Perkins: And as long as it’s happening in the United States we’re a party to it.

Wildmon: We’re a party to and we are being and we will be judged and held accountable for it, as a country.

Roll Call reports today that four Republican congressmen sent staffers to the Indiana Family Institute with funding from their congressional office accounts. “The April payments of $500 from Indiana GOP Reps. Larry Bucshon, Dan Burton and Todd Young and $1,000 from Rep. Todd Rokita to the Indiana Family Institute stand out because it is rare for Congressional offices to make direct payments to political organization,” Paul Singer writes, adding that “the Members also offer their time to the IFI for the training sessions.”

The Indiana Family Institute is the state affiliate of the Family Research Council, and led the push the defund Planned Parenthood in Indiana and for the legislature to place a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the ballot. The group also claimed it successfully defeated an anti-bullying bill because it would “allow homosexual activists to silence free speech.”

According to its manual Ignite: An Enduring Cultural Transformation, the IFI describes its political goals of fighting the “radical liberal agenda” and training leaders “grounded in a biblical worldview”:

You see, Indiana Family Institute (IFI) is unique. Strategically, IFI works at the state level to unite a coalition of allied national and local organizations. Operationally, IFI works effectively in all three areas – education, legislative, accountability – required to truly transform the culture. Philosophically, IFI works on a wide range of culture-defining issues. Organizationally, IFI works to engage churches, pastors, and their members in their government. God has blessed IFI with the unique opportunity to be a catalyst for cultural transformation.

…

Cultural transformation begins with leadership. Leadership of all ages and backgrounds. Leadership grounded in a biblical worldview. Leadership armed with the information and skills to influence others. IFI’s educational programs work to identify, train, and activate these leaders across Indiana both in the home and the public square.

IFI’s political goals include: Pass the Marriage Amendment. Pass a bill to stop tax dollars from going to Planned Parenthood, Indiana’s largest abortion provider. Oppose Indiana Equality, Planned Parenthood, ACLU, etc. efforts to push their radical liberal agenda.

…

IFI’s legislative programs provide a strong and respected voice for values in the legislature.

In the last several years alone, IFI has actively engaged on numerous critical pieces of legislation. By God’s grace and thanks to the generous support of loyal donors, IFI was successful in many of those battles – including working to pass the Marriage Amendment through the Indiana House once and the Indiana Senate five times (though former House Speaker Pat Bauer ultimately stopped it from being placed on the ballot) and defeating multiple bills by Indiana Equality, Planned Parenthood and other radical leftist groups that would have diminished religious liberty, used the government as a tool to promote homosexuality and expanded abortion in Indiana.

• Rick Perry says the Ten Commandments are "good policy and at the end of the day ... probably good politics."
• It looks like Janet Porter's Heartbeat Bill is heading to Kansas.
• The folks at Personhood Mississippi who are seeking out outlaw abortion insist that "obviously ... we're not taking away any rights."
• Bryan Fischer has re-worked his "Muslims are using 9/11 to celebrate" column in light of the fact that he completely got the day wrong.
• Finally, the Liberty Counsel's lawsuit against healthcare reform lost in court, but LC vows to appeal because the "ruling goes against every court in America that considered this case."

It is hard to imagine how Bryan Fischer can think that anyone would ever believe that all of the anti-gay rants he unleashes on an almost daily basis could be driven by anything other than bigotry ... but yesterday on his radio program he attempted to convince everyone that he is really motivated by love and that it is those who support gays who are the true bigots:

That’s the reason we oppose the normalization of homosexuality, it’s not because we don’t like homosexuals it’s because we love them. I mean listen to me, if you love people, if you care about people, if they matter to you, their well-being is important to you, do you want to encourage them, do you want to support a lifestyle, do you want to subsidize and reward and provide special legal protections for behavior that’s gonna make them more likely to experience depression, suicidal ideation, homelessness and domestic violence? I mean that is cruelty to me, that’s the mark of somebody that does not care about human beings. Well, we care about human beings. We do not want human beings to get depressed, we don’t want them to commit suicide, we don’t want them to wind up homeless in the street, and we don’t want them to be victims of domestic violence. And we haven’t even talked about HIV-AIDS. That’s why we oppose homosexuality, because we are for homosexuals; we are for homosexuals, and that’s why we are against homosexuality and the normalization of homosexual behavior.

…

It’s bigotry to be against people that want people to be protected from suicide and depression and killing themselves and winding up on the street. I mean, how much more bigoted can you get than that to try to stop people that want to save folks from a self-destructive lifestyle? To me that is cruel and inhumane.

Fischer then proceeded to demonstrate just how much he loves gay by going off rant about how gay activists must be stopped and comparing them to his attention-obsessed cat and the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah:

One of the things we said about the homosexual lifestyle is it's never enough with them. We've got a cat, her name is Emma and she always wants to be combed, she always wants to be stroked when we come in the door and she will pester us, she will hound us, she will whine, she will moan, she will complain until you follow her into the little room where her food bowl is and her water bowl is and you comb her. She's a pest and it's never enough. You leave the room one time and come back, she wants another comb even though you just did it. And she does not seem to be receptive to my efforts to correct her expectations on this subject.

Now homosexuals are like that. It is never, ever, ever enough with them. You go all the way back the Genesis 19, Lot's got the two men as guests in his home; what do the homosexuals in town do? They surround his house - it says they pressed hard against his house trying to break the door down. I mean, they're unstoppable, they are relentless and they have to be stopped. The cannot be reasoned with, homosexual activists - not talking about homosexuals in general, I'm talking about those that are pushing the homosexual agenda - they must be defeated, they must be stopped, they cannot be accommodated, they cannot be reasoned with. They must be stopped.

So, to recap:  It is the people who criticize people like Fischer for wanting to criminalize homosexuality who are the real bigots because Fischer actually loves gays ... whom he compares to his attention-starved cat that he clearly hates and the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah who sought to rape God's angels.

Several years ago, Tony Mauro wrote an article for The Legal Times entitled "The Secrets of Jay Sekulow" which examined how "through the ACLJ and a string of interconnected nonprofit and for-profit entities, [Sekulow] has built a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle -- complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia."

The article went on to note how "Sekulow's wife, brother, sister-in-law, and two sons have been on the boards or payrolls of organizations under his control or have received generous payments as contractors" ... but none of the revelations in the article seemed to have diminished Sekulow's reputation among his Religious Right allies in any way, as he remains a recognized and respected leader in the movement to this day.

So presumably this new article revealing that all the money donated to the ACLJ actually goes to a Sekulow-controlled organization called Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism won't raise any eyebrows among Sekulows' Religious Right allies either:

Sekulow, a celebrity among conservative Christians, now sits as the principal officer of two closely related multimillion-dollar legal charities: Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, which he founded in San Francisco, and the better-known American Center for Law and Justice, founded by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson and based in Virginia Beach.

...

Since 1998, the two charities have paid out more than $33 million to members of Sekulow's family and businesses they own or co-own, according to the charities' federal tax returns.

One of the charities is controlled by the Sekulow family — tax documents show that all four of CASE's board members are Sekulows and another is an officer — an arrangement criticized by a nonprofit watchdog group.

...

Sekulow was running CASE before he became involved in ACLJ in the 1990s. Today both charities operate under the name American Center for Law and Justice. When supporters send donations to ACLJ, the funds actually go to CASE, which handles the fundraising for both groups, tax records show.

According to the article, the ACLJ asserts "that Sekulow has taken no salary since 2002."  Of course, that might have something to do with the fact this little tidbit that Mauro reported in his earlier article:

Sekulow outsourced his own legal services from the ACLJ, shifting from a position with a publicly disclosed salary to that of a private contractor that requires no public disclosure. He acknowledged to Legal Times that his salary from that arrangement is "above $600,000" a year.

Ron Baity of Return America, the group behind the campaign to pass an amendment to North Carolina’s constitution that would ban same-sex marriage, which is already barred by statute, joined right-wing radio host Janet Parshall yesterday on her show In The Market. Parshall said that marriage equality efforts come from “the Father of Lies and the Accuser of the Brethren,” two names for Satan (John 8:44; Revelation 12:10). She said that Satan has marriage in his “crosshairs” because he wants “to tear down the idea of Christ’s unconditional love for us.”

Baity agreed with Parshall’s analysis and warned that government will be changed for the worse if same-sex marriage becomes legal. “I’m afraid defense is down in our country,” Baity went on to tell Parshall, “Rght now in our economy and everything else we’re experiencing in our nation I don’t think is anything less than God trying to get our attention”:

Parshall: But as a pastor do you ever stop and think, of course it makes sense that marriage is under attack. It’s the first institution that God created in a place of perfection, it’s emblematic of the love that Christ the bridegroom has for his bride, the Church, so if you were the Father of Lies and the Accuser of the Brethren, boy I tell you marriage would be in my crosshairs, I would go after that with every bit of energy I’ve got because I would want to tear down the idea of Christ’s unconditional love for us and what he’s done for us and that message is repeating in the model of marriage. So from a biblical vantage point doesn’t it make sense that marriage is under attack?

Baity: Absolutely, and it’s been well stated that as the home goes so goes the government. Because the home is the theater for the government and what happens there in that basic institution will eventually determine what happens in that next generation. You know to a great degree it will determine who sits in the Oval Office and who sits in the halls of Congress and in our local legislatures. Our forefathers would not recognize our nation today, we have moved so far. And you know I’m afraid defense is down in our country Janet and I’m afraid that we are right now in our economy and everything else we’re experiencing in our nation I don’t think is anything less than God trying to get our attention.

For the last several weeks, the Religious Right has been hyping allegations from Kelly Shackleford and his Liberty Institute claiming that the Department of Veterans Affairs has instituted a ban on "the use of Christian words or phrases at veterans’ funerals."

Liberty Institute has even launched a website called "Don't Tear Us Down" which claims that "Jesus is not welcome at gravesides" and the campaign is receiving support from other Religious Right groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association.

Today the New York Times took a look at the controversy and discovered - shockingly - that the claims being made by the Religious Right are totally misleading.  As the NYT explains, the Bush administration instituted a policy in 2007 that "prohibits volunteer honor guards from reading recitations — including religious ones — in their funeral rituals, unless families specifically request them." 

In essence, the policy states that volunteer groups are not allowed to attend military funerals and inject their religion in to it unless their presence is requested by the family.  Conversely, if a family does want to included such prayers in the service, they have that right as well.

But to the Religious Right, preventing outside groups from attending funerals and offering prayers at services where they are not wanted or requested is a violation of the religious freedom of the volunteers:

The plaintiffs, aided by a conservative legal group, the Liberty Institute, contend they should be allowed to use a Veterans of Foreign Wars script dating from World War I that refers to the deceased as “a brave man” with an “abiding faith in God” and that seeks comfort from an “almighty and merciful God.” The institute has broadcast the dispute nationwide with slick videos and a Web site declaring that “Jesus is not welcome at gravesides.”

...

The lawsuit, which alleges religious discrimination by the government, and videos have generated angry letters and Internet commentary against the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as demands from members of the Texas Congressional delegation, mostly Republicans, that the Obama administration fire the Houston cemetery director, Arleen Ocasio.

Department of Veterans Affairs officials say that the original policy, enacted under President George W. Bush, resulted from complaints about religious words or icons being inserted unrequested into veterans’ funerals. They noted that active duty military honor guards, including the teams that do funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, say almost nothing during their ceremonies.

“We do what the families wish,” said Steve L. Muro, the under secretary for memorial affairs. “I always tell my employees we have just one chance to get it right.”

Though two of the largest veterans organizations, the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, have criticized the Houston National Cemetery, some veterans’ advocates have risen to the department’s support. Those advocates say that families who want prayers can have them and assert that the Liberty Institute has blown the dispute out of proportion to embarrass the Obama administration.

Lawyers with the Liberty Institute deny that ... The Department of Veterans Affairs said that funeral directors, rather than the veterans themselves, should tell families the details of the V.F.W. or other rituals, to give those families room to make their own decisions on what is recited.

“If the family wants prayers, the family will get them,” said John R. Gingrich, the department’s chief of staff.

Lou Engle and Rick Joyner will be working together in September to promote The Call: Detroit, Engle’s prayer rally on November 11. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since both are closely involved in the New Apostolic Reformation, or the movement which believes that God is ordaining a new generation of prophets and apostles. Both have prophesied that America is turning into Nazi Germany and have claimed to know the reasons behind natural disasters, with Joyner calling Hurricane Katrina God’s judgment for homosexuality and Engle asserting that the Joplin, Missouri tornado was God’s punishment for legal abortion. Engle and Joyner, who leads MorningStar Ministries and The Oak Initiative, are also strong proponents of Seven Mountains Dominionism, which posits that fundamentalist Christians should take control over the seven most influential sectors of society: government, family, media, business, education, arts and entertainment, and the church.

Engle and Joyner are hosting the 'Mobilization Conference for The Call Detroit' on September 9-10, where the two “will be sharing a message that evening on the seasons of time we are in and the importance of the upcoming gathering at Ford Field in Detroit.”

The Call has previously won endorsements from Republican and Religious Right leaders including Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Tim Wildmon, Harry Jackson and Mat Staver. The rally is intended to use “spiritual warfare” to make abortion illegal and ban same-sex marriage. Engle has said that The Call: Detroit will also focus on converting Muslims to Christianity along with the usual anti-choice and anti-gay efforts. Engle also released a new video publicizing the prayer rally:

Another figure running the ‘Mobilizaiton Conference for The Call’ with Engle and Joyner is self-proclaimed apostle Barbara Yoder. Yoder says she is a follower of Peter Wagner, who is seen as the architect of the New Apostolic Reformation, and her biography lists her as a: “Member of Eagles’ Vision Apostolic Team led by Drs. Peter and Doris Wagner; Michigan State Coordinator Global Apostolic Prayer Network under Dr. Peter Wagner and Dr. Chuck Pierce; Member of the core faculty for Wagner Leadership Institute; Member of the International Coalition of Apostles under the direction of Dr. Peter Wagner.”

In her book Taking on Goliath: How to Stand Against The Spiritual Enemies in Your Life and Win, Yoder warns of the loss of America’s white majority and the rampant bisexuality unleashed after Britney Spears and Madonna kissed at the MTV Video Music Awards:

In terms of spiritual beliefs, pluralism means that there is no single path to God. Buddhism, Hinduism, New Age, or whatever someone thinks is ‘the way’ will work as long as we end up with ‘god’—and ill-defined god at that. Pluralism rejects the Bible as the source of absolute truth. Many Americans prefer pluralism as the most plausible belief system.

In terms of human cultural mix, American culture is increasingly formed from multiple cultures. Hispanics or Latinos have emerged as the leading minority group, Latinizing the national culture. The Caucasian majority, who came from European roots, is aging and cannot compete with the fertility rates of the minorities. Asian and Middle Eastern nations are sending a flood of immigrants to American shores. This has a noticeable effect on the Judeo-Christian underpinnings of our national character.

…

It seems as if there are no boundaries anymore. Adultery and fornication are rampant, not only in the society at large but in the church as well. Television and Internet ads are sexualized. Previous taboos have been eliminated, and television programs include sex acts.

It is now ‘normal’ to be homosexual or bisexual. When Madonna and Britney Spears were photographed kissing each other, a forbidden boundary was removed. Now it is the rage among junior high and high school girls to take pictures of themselves kissing each other and post them on their Myspace.com pages. Anything goes.

Yoder’s warning of the deleterious consequences of Madonna and Britney Spears kissing has already been addressed at The Call, when self-proclaimed Prophet Cindy Jacobs preached against it at The Call: Sacramento last year: