Marriage Equality

Following the passage of his state’s marriage equality law, Minnesota Republican state representative Glenn Gruenhagen is urging constituents to “resist the implementation of the gay agenda in public and parochial schools.” The blog Bluestem Prairie noticed Gruenhagen’s letter to the editor of the McLeod County Chronicle Wednesday, in which he claims that in Massachusetts there have already been cases where “citizens who would not succumb to politically correct speech have been charged with hate crimes.”

He cites the anti-gay group MassResistance as the source of his information and links to their website.

Of course, there are no such cases of people being “charged with hate crimes” for not using “politically correct speech.”

What is more troubling is that a state lawmaker is citing an organization whose leader Brian Camenker suggested gay marriage led to a rise in homelessness, crime, poor air quality and domestic violence, denies that gay people died in the Holocaust, likened pro-gay rights educators to “Nazi concentration camp guards” and compared gay rights efforts to Jim Crow laws.

Under this legislation, children could be chided and corrected for using gender specific terms like “mother and father” and instead will be told to use gender neutral terms like “parent and spouse” so as not to offend certain groups.

This may be difficult to believe, but as a long-term school board member, I do not make this statement lightly. I have personal experience as a board member, where state statutes were changed and eventually school curriculum and speech had to conform. I was then chided for public comments on school issues when I used terminology that was not politically correct.

In other countries and in the state of Massachusetts, where gay marriage has become the law, we have observed that citizens who would not succumb to politically correct speech have been charged with hate crimes and their parental rights infringed upon. (Seewww.massresistance.com for more information.)

When signed, this bill will become the law of our state. We are a nation of laws, however we still have the right as citizens, parents and school officials to passively resist the gay agenda coming into our schools. …

During these past several months, Lutheran and Catholic organizations were key groups opposing the gay marriage bill. As your state representative, I am very thankful for their help in opposing the passage of gay marriage.

I plan to introduce legislation next session in an attempt to strengthen parental rights and school official rights to resist the implementation of the gay agenda in public and parochial schools. I will also introduce legislation to strengthen protection for our religious freedoms.

The Family Research Council’s Watchmen on the Wall conference is an annual gathering for pastors and other church leaders to hear from a panoply of right-wing speakers and get motivated to “transform America.” Our coverage of last year’s event highlights speakers’ attacks on evolution, secularism, Islam, LGBT people, and other tools of Satan.

This year’s conference, which takes place in Washington DC May 22-24, has been promoted by FRC for months.  In April, FRC sent an excited alert that Sen. Ted Cruz, a Tea Party and Religious Right favorite who is reportedly mulling a 2016 presidential bid, had confirmed.

Based on other confirmed speakers, it seems likely that there will be two major themes to this year’s gathering: 1) religious liberty in America is under attack by Obama and his gay allies; and 2) only the church – led by uncompromising fired up pastors – can save freedom and America.

A notable addition to the cast of conservative evangelicals is William Lori, Archbishop of the Diocese of Baltimore and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty. Lori has led the bishops’ attack on the Obama administration’s proposed regulations requiring insurance coverage of contraception.  Lori, who believes that “aggressive secularity” is “becoming the established ‘religion’ in our country today,” will be right at home with his friends at the Family Research Council. A typical FRC Action mailing from Tony Perkins earlier this year said President Obama is out to “crush freedom.” The same letter warns about “death panels” under Obamacare, which Perkins calls “the tip of the tyranny-iceberg.”

Also entertaining the Watchmen will be Rep. James Lankford, who earlier this year blamed gun violence on “welfare moms” overmedicating their kids with psychiatric drugs because they “want to get additional benefits.”  At FRC’s Values Voter Summit in September, Lankford said of the dispute over contraception coverage, “this is not a war on women, this is a war on people of faith.” 

Also confirmed is Ergun Caner, who lost his position at Liberty University after Muslim and Christian bloggers, and then journalists, began to expose the falsehoods in the Jihadi-to-Jesus life story that Caner had used to make a name for himself in the post-9/11 evangelical universe. Caner will probably echo his remarks at the 2009 Values Voter Summit, where his message to Christians who were not being outspoken enough on the issues of the day: “You need to preach, teach, and reach, or just shut up and get out of our way.”

Anti-gay activist Harry Jackson is quick to invoke Satan and other demonic powers as the forces behind the gay rights movement, which he portrays as an enemy of religious freedom. He has charged that a “radical” gay element is trying to “close down every church in America.” In fact, one of his columns was titled,” Why do Gays Hate Religious Freedom?”  Jackson’s apocalyptic anti-Obama rhetoric did not convince many Black Christians to vote against Obama, but Jackson thinks they’ll be sorry. God, he says, will “take out” those who chose “race over grace.” Jackson is a long-time FRC ally; he and Perkins co-authored Personal Faith, Public Policy, which calls Supreme Court rulings on church-state issues “assaults” on Christianity.

Jim Garlow, a California pastor who led church backing for Prop 8 in California and was then tapped by Newt Gingrich to run one of his political groups, had warned before the election that an Obama reelection would destroy the country.  During an FRC post-election special Garlow said that Christians should expect massive persecution from the government.  At last year’s Watchmen on the Wall conference, Garlow spoke at a press conference attacking President Obama’s use of religious language to describe his support for marriage equality. Evoking the words of a colonial preacher, Garlow said, “if necessary, here we die.” In an FRC DVD promoting Watchmen on the Wall, Garlow says an FRC-produced video was crucial to the Prop 8 win.

Richard Land is retiring in October after 25 years as head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty commission; he was dogged by controversy during the past year over plagiarism charges and racially inflammatory remarks he made regarding the Trayvon Martin killing.  Land has charged that the only reason the Obama administration proposed regulations on contraception coverage was to "set the precedent of ramming this down our throats and forcing us to surrender our First amendment freedom of religion." Land says God will unleash judgment on America for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Watchmen will also hear from Jacob Aranza, whose 1983 book Backward Masking Unmasked warned that rock music was encoded with satanic messages that would entice teens into drug use and abnormal sexual behavior. Aranza says he burned “hundreds of thousands” of albums in those days. More recently, Aranza was an endorser of Rick Perry’s “Awakening” and participated in Religious Right strategy sessions convened by James Robison to try to prevent Obama’s re-election. In 2011, Aranza and Perkins appeared together on Robison’s television show, and Aranza gushed about Perkin’s work to mobilize pastors:

Tony Perkins is one of the great heroes in America today. He is a hero because it is unseen. He is uniting and equipping the most important people in America, and that's the pastors in America. If the local church is the hope of the world then pastors are the hope of the local church. Tony Perkins exists to encourage them and to equip them and to empower them. He's taking regular pastors -- the average church in America, James, as you know is less than 200 people; 80% of the churches in America are 200 or less -- and he is taking men like that and he is turning them into absolute heroes, just like pastors in Maine who are literally changing the moral fiber of an entire state because he has equipped them and empowered them and told them they're the people that are supposed to be the hedge of builders, and he is encouraging them to do just that.…I believe that as you speak you are literally trumpeting a sound that is encouraging pastors across America and families across America that are Christians to unite together to see God once again bring spiritual awakening to our nation.

JC Church is one of FRC’s pastor leaders “networking churches in Ohio to answer the call on moral issues.”  His 3 Cord Alliance, which is affiliated with FRC, teaches pastors “how to bring sound scripturally based influence and change to your community.” Church has been praised by Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values: “I believe that if all the pastors in Ohio were like Pastor Church, we would have an army that Satan could not stop. He understands that America is led by the pulpit and we count on him to unite fellow pastors and their congregations to be the salt and light we so desperately need in the world today.”

Jack Hibbs is a California-based preacher who also pushed Prop 8; in 2011 he helped lead an unsuccessful effort to overturn the state’s SB 48, which he charged would lead to public schools indoctrinating students.  In a video urging pastors to get involved, he said it is not enough to teach and preach the word of God, pastors needed to be “culture changers for Christ.” Leading into the 2012 election Hibbs was outspoken about the fact that Christians should vote for Romney over Obama. In a radio show the day after the 2012 elections, He says he was on the phone with Tony Perkins on election night and they had both believed that the outcome was up to the church: “The answer wouldn’t be determined in the White House or the statehouse….the answer for righteousness or unrighteousness, for light or for darkness, for liberty or tyranny, would be decided by the pastors.” Given the way things turned out, Hibbs says “I believe the responsibility, the outcome, and the fallout falls into the hands of the pulpits of America’s pastors who did not speak up….” Hibbs also echoes Mitt Romney’s infamous “47 percent” remarks: “those who are looking for handouts, they don’t want to work, they want the government to give things to them, overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama.” Hibbs said he was disappointed but not discouraged, because “God’s on the throne” and therefore “God has appointed him to be our president for God’s purposes – OK that means God has got some pretty gnarly purposes coming for America.”

There’s a special role at the conference for FRC’s executive vice president, retired Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin.  Boykin retired from the military after being reprimanded by then-President Bush for making speeches depicting the war on terrorism as a Christian holy war against Islam. FRC hired Boykin last year after he was disinvited from speaking at West Point after faculty and cadets objected.  Boykin and his Religious Right allies portrayed his mythical martyrdom as an attack on freedom of speech and religion. At last year’s Values Voter Summit, Boykin invoked Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler in denouncing what he said is an effort to move Americans away from belief in a sovereign God.  He says everything President Obama is doing is right out of the” Communist Manifesto.”

Perkins seems to be counting on Boykin to strong-arm pastors at the conference into making a concrete commitment to political activism. In an insert in a packet mailed to pastors, Perkins says Boykin will offer the “concluding challenge” – and he insists that pastors book their flights home no earlier than 4pm so that they can stay.  “During the Briefing, we will share details of the strategic plan the Lord is using to bring revival and renewal in communities around the nation through the engagement of pastors. At the end, we have a ‘call to decision’ or ‘invitation’ sort of like many of you do in a worship service. Just as you want those attending your worship service to stay and respond, we would respectfully ask the same of you.” Perkins has some leverage – FRC picks up most of the tab for one pastor from each church.

FRC launched Watchmen on the Wall in 2004. A 2010 promotional DVD said the group was up to 14,000 pastors; it said Perkins’ goal was to have 40,000 Watchmen pastors by 2015. Pastors who sign up get access to regular briefings, model sermons, and other toolkits for mobilizing their congregations and communities.  The same promotional video contains a clip of “historian” David Barton quoting 19th Century preacher Charles Finney saying, in effect, that if the country is going to hell, it’s pastors’ fault.  The notion that America can only be saved by more aggressive preachers is a recurring theme at Religious Right gatherings, including Liberty Counsel’s recent Awakening conference.

In a column yesterday, Rev. Mark Creech of the North Carolina-based Christian Action League warned that marriage equality will lead to “a flood of religious persecutions” and can only be stopped by reversing America’s “rapid decline into paganism.”

Writing for Alan Keyes’ Renew America, Creech argues that Christians will face “serious bouts with persecution” and be forced to “bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's image” if same-sex marriage is legalized.

These events of late prove, without question, that the normalization of homosexual behavior in the culture and the legalization of same-sex marriage will inevitably usher in a flood of religious persecutions for Christians who dare say homosexuality is a sin. Touting as they have that gay rights are about civil rights, the LGBT community deceives the public into believing every born-again, God fearing, Bible-believing, follower of Jesus Christ is worse than an prejudiced Archie Bunker type idiot.

…

Unfortunately, very few people understand why such persecution is inevitable for those who would reject same-sex marriage. The reason is because the legalization of gay marriage doesn't simply facilitate the ability of homosexuals to marry along-side of heterosexuals; instead it legally redefines the institution of marriage for everyone. No longer is marriage between a man and a woman, but between two adults – regardless of gender. Therefore, this presents a radically different paradigm resulting in a myriad of societal conflicts that government uses its broad enforcement authority to resolve. In other words, if citizen Christians with small businesses or Christian organizations and ministries are unwilling to comply with this new legal orthodoxy on marriage, then such are outside of the law and vulnerable to the government's coercive powers to bring them into compliance.

For many years, Christians in this country – one largely based on Christian values – have had it relatively easy and not experienced serious bouts with persecution. But that may soon change if America continues its rapid decline into paganism.

Don't be fooled. True Christianity is in no way compatible with homosexuality. And same-sex marriage is in no way compatible with religious liberty.

This writer is not conceding to the so-called inevitability of gay marriage. But his point is that regardless of what happens on that front, every genuine believer must always like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, purpose in his heart that he will not bow down to Nebuchadnezzar's image.

The claim that American Christians are facing horrible persecution for their religious beliefs – and are on the verge of being rounded up and thrown into jail by tyrannical secularists – has been a staple of Religious Right groups’ rhetoric for decades. And as conservative evangelicals’ anti-gay views have lost popular support, they’ve doubled down on their claims that gay rights are incompatible with religious liberty. In recent years, conservative Catholics have joined in crying “religious persecution” in response to the advance of marriage equality for same-sex couples and the Obama administration’s requirement for insurance coverage of contraception.

On CNN’s Belief Blog, correspondent John Blake has given voice to these claims in a post titled “When Christians become a ‘hated minority.’” That headline hinted that this piece would be problematic. And that was confirmed with the opening sentence, which cites the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg, who goes on to say that anti-gay Christians are victims who are being forced into the “closet.”

Where to begin?

We could start with the problem of Peter Sprigg being a spokesperson for tolerance. In Blake’s story, Sprigg is quoted saying “Maybe we need to do a better job of showing that we are motivated by Christian love” and “Love is wanting the best for someone, and acting to bring that about.” It’s hard to square Sprigg’s assertion that he is motivated by the best interests of gay people, given that he:

• has called for the criminalization of homosexual conduct both in the U.S. and abroad;
• said he would like to “export” gays from the U.S. rather than support legislation to give same-sex couples equal treatment under immigration law;
• dislikes the idea of a gay judge, because he says gays don’t make good role models;
• opposes making children raised by a same-sex couple eligible for social security benefits if a parent’s spouse dies;
• dismisses anti-bullying and safe-school programs as attempts to indoctrinate impressionable children
• has suggested that schools should be allowed to fire openly gay teachers and coaches;
• has cheered the kidnapping of a child by a mother who refused to abide by a court’s order to share custody with her former partner.

Sprigg says the “real goal of homosexual activists” is not protection from discrimination or marriage equality, but is “to create a society in which it is unacceptable for anyone, ever, anywhere to say that homosexual conduct is wrong, or that homosexual relationships are anything other than fully equal to heterosexual ones.” The CNN piece also cites Bryan Liften, a professor at Moody Bible Institute, saying Christians should be able to publicly say that God designed sex to take place within a marriage between a man and a woman.

Should be? If you haven’t noticed, plenty of Christians have been saying that loudly and proudly and with millions of dollars they have used to enshrine that belief into a majority of state constitutions. People like Sprigg and his boss Tony Perkins, Brian Brown from the National Organization for Marriage, and any number of conservative evangelicals and Roman Catholic bishops have pretty much an open invitation to say so on national television and before state legislative and congressional committees. Not to mention through their own radio and television networks and vast church networks. Or from the platform of the Republican convention.  Freedom of expression, including anti-equality expression, is alive and well.

The CNN post does include Christians with differing views on gay rights, and who acknowledge that simply claiming religious backing for one’s beliefs does not insulate those views from criticism in the public arena. Neither does disagreement equate to discrimination or persecution. Conservative Christians did not see it as a form of religious discrimination to enshrine their view of marriage into laws and state constitutions; but as public opinion shifts and more states make equality the law, they warn of dire threats to their freedom.

Among the Religious Right horror stories linked to in the CNN piece are complaints about pastor Louie Giglio’s withdrawal from President Obama’s second inaugural ceremony in the face of criticism about anti-gay remarks that surfaced online. Criticism of those remarks – even anger and disappointment among pro-equality Obama supporters over Giglio being given a place of honor at the inaugural – does not mean, as some pundits claimed, that people of faith are no longer welcome in the public square. Anyone who heard the prayers, music, and speeches at the inaugural would see that such claims are ludicrous.

It should be noted that Religious Right groups made similarly shrill claims that the addition of sexual orientation to federal hate crimes laws would result in preachers being thrown into jail for quoting scripture on homosexuality. And they claimed that allowing gay members of the armed forces to serve openly would destroy the military. Those claims have been proven to be not just wrong but ridiculous.

Baker quotes evangelical blogger Joe Carter (who used to work at Family Research Council), warning that young people will abandon anti-gay churches “for fear of being called haters.” What is far more likely is that many young Christians will leave anti-gay churches because they have gay friends and disagree with both the anti-gay theology and anti-equality policy positions of the Religious Right. And some may continue to hold traditional theological views on homosexuality while supporting legal equality as a civil matter. Polling shows that the generation gap on LGBT issues is huge within as well as outside the evangelical community – and that many young Christians are disillusioned with the anti-gay fixation of many church leaders.

The CNN piece finishes blogger Carter saying “he foresees a day when any church that preaches against homosexuality will be marginalized. Just as many churches now accept divorce, they will accept sexual practices once considered sinful.”

So let’s end with a consideration of divorce. The Catholic Church denies its religious blessing to divorced couples who get remarried without obtaining a religious annulment of their previous marriage. Many evangelical churches also frown on divorce. But all marriages – first, second, third, or fourth – are treated equally under civil law (good news for Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh!).  Yet no one is arguing that the status quo on divorce amounts to an attack on religious freedom – or that Christians who oppose divorce have been marginalized or hounded out of the public square. Their religious beliefs about divorce coexist with public policy that reflects societal reality and the opinions of a religiously diverse America. 

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah today promoted his 9/11 National Day of Prayer event by warning that a Supreme Court decision in favor of marriage equality will mean that the high court is “legally destroying the very building block of our civilization.” Farah claims that such a ruling will make America fall “into oligarchy and tyranny” and eventually “the dustbin of history like so many empires before it.”

In a few weeks, the U.S. Supreme [sic] will make rulings in two cases that will determine whether America continues as a self-governing nation under the rule of law and will of the people or it goes the way of most other countries and descends into oligarchy and tyranny.

That is what the stakes are in rulings the justices will make on the definition of marriage.

There hasn’t been a more important Supreme Court ruling since Roe v. Wade. Not even Obamacare was this big. Both of those went very badly because of the rulings of justices named to the high court by Republicans. In this case, it will take a straight flush by justices named by Republicans to save America from legally destroying the very building block of our civilization.

…

I know I have been asking for prayer frequently during these trying days. I’m encouraged by the feedback I have received from thousands to my plea for a 9/11 National Day of Prayer and Fasting.

But I am convinced that without it, this country is headed for the dustbin of history like so many empires before it.

This is no idle request. It’s our only chance for survival. Government is broken. Politics is broken. The culture is broken. God is simply waiting to hear our fervent cries of repentance and deliverance.

In an email to members of his Pray In Jesus Name Project yesterday, Gordon Klingenschmitt said that Religious Right activists must become “the voice” of the “abused kids” raised by same-sex parents, who he says are “not only recruited into but used as pawns for the homosexual agenda.”

Klingenschmitt responded to Justice Kennedy’s statement about the need to remember the “voice of those children” who “live with same-sex parents” while hearing the Proposition 8 case by arguing that “those abused children really wanted one mom and one dad, they just didn't know better having been misled by California Judges who impose homosexual parents upon innocent kids, against their will, and against the will of California voters.”

He also claimed that Christians cannot support politicians who favor legalizing same-sex marriage and warned that gay rights advocates are bent on “taxing heterosexuals more to pay homosexuals to engage in immorality” and “reward their acts of sodomy.”

Now 51 of 55 Democrat Senators are now openly pro-homosexual (all but Pryor, D-AR; Johnson, D-SD; Manchin, D-WV; and Landrieu, D-LA) compared to just 2 of 45 Republicans(Portman, R-OH; Kirk, R-IL). [Dr. Chaps' comment: Never again can any Bible-believing Christian support them, if Christ is still Lord of your heart.]

Shocker: Last week Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) literally blamed Jesus Christ for creating homosexual "marriage." Really Senator? Jesus made you vote for sin?

…

If you saw how the left-wing major media (including Fox News) reported today's Supreme Court arguments, it appears all but a foregone conclusion that 5 of the 9 justices will vote to homosexualize "marriage" this week, and release their decision in June.

For example, here's a quote from Justice Kennedy, supposedly the 'conservative' but open-minded swing vote, who today voiced concern about the estimated 40,000 children in California with homosexual 'parents': "They want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case," Kennedy said.

No, Justice Kennedy, those abused children really wanted one mom and one dad, they just didn't know better having been misled by California Judges who impose homosexual parents upon innocent kids, against their will, and against the will of California voters.

…

But here's some good news. 15,000 Christians marched on the Supreme Court today, demanding we define marriage as only valid between one man and one woman, for the sake of the kids, because every child deserves a mom and a dad. Let's petition with them, and let's be the voice of those abused kids, not only recruited into but used as pawns for the homosexual agenda, as proven in today's court arguments by Justice Kennedy himself.

…

While the national media covers only the debt crisis, Democrats in the Senate are attacking traditional marriage between one man and one woman, by attempting to repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Not satisfied with homosexualizing the military, or forcing gay "marriage" in states like New York, radical homosexuals testified on Capitol Hill today demanding homosexual "bonus pay" with more than 1,100 federal benefits that reward their acts of sodomy in all 50 states, taxing heterosexuals more to pay homosexuals to engage in immorality.

On Tuesday Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced, and President Obama quickly endorsed a new bill S.598 to promote homosexual marriage, mislabeled the "Respect for Marriage Act" (RFMA) to end federal law that defines traditional marriage between one man and one woman. White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday "President Obama is proud to support the Respect for Marriage Act," which disrespects traditional marriage by enforcing homosexual marriage upon all 50 states. His views are no longer "evolving" rather Obama is now fully out of the closet promoting gay marriage nationwide.

Phyllis Schlafly wants America to get “back to basics.” And when it comes to preventing “marriage mayhem,” that means talking about sodomy, which is “a central feature of same-sex marriage.”

Specifically, it means talking about sodomy in the “Anglo American legal tradition,” from its criminalization in English common law as early as 1533 through the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Bowers v Hardwick upholding state sodomy laws.  In Schlafly’s April 15 Eagle Forum missive she admiringly quotes from Chief Justice Warren Burger’s concurrence in Bowers, in which he quotes 18^th Century commentator William Blackstone to the effect that sodomy is worse than rape:

English Common Law’s opposition to sodomy goes to the bottom of the tradition’s taproot. This progenitor of American law criminalized sodomy as early as 1533. And Sir William Blackstone, the late Eighteenth Century commentator foundational to American law, was quoted by Chief Justice Warren Burger in his concurrence in the Court’s Bowers decision: “[sodomy is] ‘the infamous crime against nature,’ an offense of ‘deeper malignity’ than rape, an heinous act ‘the very nature of which is a disgrace to human nature,’ and ‘a crime not fit to be named.’”

Schlafly doesn’t say that sodomy was punishable by death in Blackstone’s time; Burger's concurrence did note that it was a capital offence under Roman law.  But all this grand history was upended, Schlafly complains, with the Supreme Court’s “anti-tradition” decision in Lawrence v Texas, which overturned state sodomy laws and upheld the privacy and sexual freedom of consenting adults.  And that, she says, has led to the marriage equality cases currently being considered by the Court. Not surprisingly, Schlafly has strong opinions on those cases:

If the pro-homosexual rights forces win, that which is natural to the human race —marriage — is destroyed, and our venerable Constitution and legal tradition are slammed by Humanistic forces wanting to reconstruct American law and society on an anti-Judeo-Christian foundation.

Of course, Schlafly has her own “traditional” views about rape.  She has repeatedly denounced the concept of marital rape, saying that “when you get married you have consented to sex. That's what marriage is all about.” Last year Schlafly helped rally Religious Right support for Todd Akin when his remarks about “legitimate rape” were dooming his Senate campaign. 

As the Supreme Court debated the Prop 8 and DOMA cases, Alan Keyes argued that gay rights are incompatible with both the Constitution and even the Declaration of Independence, calling marriage equality the “archetype of all crimes against humanity.”

His core argument is that the government can only recognize rights that are compatible with God’s law. Since he believes homosexuality is an affront to divine law, it cannot be approved of in the US.

Paul Fidalgo today noticed a speech Keyes delivered at a college in Michigan, where he made the case that the government can’t recognize gay rights, reproductive rights and the separation of church and state, just as we shouldn’t recognize the right of a person to pick their nose and eat their boogers.

MLive.com reports:

Just because something “feels right” doesn’t mean it is a “fundamental right” in God’s eyes.

That’s what former presidential candidate Alan Keyes said while speaking to a group of 100 people Wednesday, April 10 at Spring Arbor University as part of the university’s Thomas H. Cobb President’s Leadership Speaker Series.

Keyes passionately spoke on the topic of basic fundamental rights that were first laid out in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution of the United States, he said.

“The Republic is near death and it will die if we don’t wake up," he said. "But wake up to what?”

He answered his own question when talking about fundamental rights, where they came from and how the country needs to recognize that rights come from God.

Abortion, same-sex marriage and separation of church and state are not fundamental rights, Keyes said. If God does not recognize them, they do not exist.

…

Keyes said while abortion, same-sex marriage and separation of church and state are not basic human rights there are leaders who are trying to “fabricate” rights.

“People who sit on the U.S. Supreme Court take it among themselves to argue that somehow there should be separation of church and state,” he said. “Nothing in the Constitution requires separation, nor could it because we cannot separate the country from its finding premise without destroying it.”

When arguing what a fundamental right actually is, Keyes gave an offbeat example of a young child who had a habit of “picking in their nostrils and “eating what came out.”

As the child grew up they noticed others were disgusted and did not want to be near him. As an adult the individual argued if others have the right to eat what they want, the individual should be recognized as having the same right.

“How many think that is a fundamental right?” he asked the audience. No one raised their hand.

“Nobody in their right mind would suggest it was,” Keyes said. “What makes something a fundamental right that actually trumps the Constitution of the United States? It can’t just be because you feel like it, or want to do it. It can’t just be that you feel badly about what you do because of the opinions of others, these are not arguments of rights...rights come from God.”

Tony Perkins hosted embattled Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema yesterday on Washington Watch to defend his anti-gay Facebook posts that cited, among others, Holocaust denier Frank Joseph and Paul Cameron, an extremist and activist who poses as a researcher.

Agema told Perkins that the church should help gays and lesbians “get out of” their “lifestyle,” and tell them “about all the diseases you get, how it gets you into drugs, gets you into all these other things that you don’t want to be in.”

He said gay people should be treated no differently than alcoholics: “if you saw your friend for example dying of alcoholism would you just stand quietly by and watch it happen? Or would you speak up and say hey I want to help you.”

Agema lamented that wealthy and powerful gay activists are suppressing the facts and making the truth-tellers “shut up,” to which Perkins agreed and added that homosexuality is “personally destructive and harmful to the society as well.”

Agema: There’s definitely hate, they call you every name in the book. What I’d like to have the homosexual community know is I don’t hate them, as a matter of fact when Jesus caught the woman in the act of adultery when they brought her to him he said I don’t condemn you but go and sin don’t more. That ought to be the church’s goal here. We ought to be saying to these people: hey, we don’t agree with your lifestyle and we’ll help you get out of it, but we want you to know the facts of what’s going to happen to you if you stay in this lifestyle.

Study after study after study talks about all the diseases you get, how it gets you into drugs, gets you into all these other things that you don’t want to be in. So if you really love someone, if you really were concerned about someone, if you saw your friend for example dying of alcoholism would you just stand quietly by and watch it happen? Or would you speak up and say hey I want to help you. That’s what we should be doing. But the problem is the homosexual community is very organized, they got a lot of money behind them, as a matter of fact the average homosexual makes more than the average person does, has better education and they are very good at shutting anybody down and embarrassing him so they will shut up. So when this happened to me this time just like when it happened to me before I thought, I’m not going to keep quiet on them. It’s starting to backfire on them.

Perkins: I could not agree with you more. I think probably the most profound display of hate would be silence in the face of people making choices that are personally destructive and harmful to the society as well. I want to thank you for standing up because you are absolutely right, a lot of people have self-censored themselves because of the intimidation, they’ve simply backed away and said I don’t want people saying that stuff about me because that’s not who I am, and we’re not haters.

The Republican leader argued that marriage equality and LGBT-inclusive curriculum in school may eventually turn kids gay and make parents and churches victims of hate crime laws. He called on schools to teach kids that gay people “live twenty years less than the average person” and tell gay students about “all the diseases you’re going to contract.”

Perkins also told Agema that he agreed with his Facebook post and is only in trouble for “presenting the truth.”

Agema: I think what the people have to know is if this passes, what will happen is it is just a progression of events that will occur. First of all, what will happen to your school kids when they are in school, it’s already being taught in a lot of places that it is an accepted lifestyle. Then the next thing that will occur is your kids will come home and say I think this is a good thing and I think I want to be one, and if you as a parent stand up and say this is against my moral beliefs and my biblical beliefs, then the next thing you’re going to get into is hate crimes because you’re speaking against something that’s been sanctioned by the state. If you look at Denmark and others then the state also tells the churches you have to marry homosexuals and if you don’t what may happen in the United States is you might lose your tax exempt status.

So this all blew up and so I made a web page here listing several other studies that show the harmful effects of the homosexual lifestyle. Just imagine this, if our kids are in school instead of being told that this is an acceptable and OK lifestyle we are actually briefed and taught the ramifications of this lifestyle, that you’re going to live twenty years less than the average person, you are going to die younger and here’s all the diseases you’re going to contract, there’d be a totally different philosophy here instead of basically telling the kids that this is good. So I think we got to go into this with our eyes wide open and what the 2 or 3 percent of homosexuals what they are doing in the United States today is trying to get the courts to do what they can’t get the individual states to do, and that’s dictate that all states will accept homosexual marriage.

Perkins: I’m joined by Dave Agema; he is the Republican National Committeeman from the state of Michigan. We’re talking about a post that he put on his Facebook page citing facts, statistics regarding the homosexual lifestyle during the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on same-sex marriage. What is troubling to me is that your post has been called a form of hate but simply what you are doing is having a conversation presenting the truth. These are documented facts. I looked at what you put up there and some of it is the same information we have on our website, some of it comes from the CDC, comes from other medical sources, it’s all footnoted, there’s nothing hate in here it is just talking about the facts. This is troubling that you can’t even have a conversation about what’s in the best interest of our society without being a bigot or a hater.

Agema: That’s exactly how they get you to shut up.