Written by Victoria Cobb

For more than 60 years, the IRS has used the “Johnson Amendment” to censor what churches and pastors preach from the pulpit. Under the Johnson Amendment, pastors’ First Amendment rights have become bargaining chips to be exchanged for a tax status. Pastors who share truth on biblical issues – like the sanctity of life and marriage – could risk intrusive IRS audits, incur steep fines, and even jeopardize their church’s tax-exempt status.

It’s time to fix the Johnson Amendment. Right now, we have the opportunity to restore free speech to all nonprofits, including churches and their leaders, through the Free Speech Fairness Act sponsored by Oklahoma Senator, and former youth pastor, James Lankford.

The FSFA is the culmination of nearly 10 years of advocacy to fix the Johnson Amendment and put an end to IRS intimidation and censorship of America’s pulpits. Unfortunately, a small, but vocal, group of religious organizations is petitioning Congress to keep the Johnson Amendment. We need to ensure that Congress hears from the rest of our religious leaders, who overwhelmingly believe that pastors and churches should be free to apply Scripture to every aspect of life—including candidates and elections—as their conscience requires.

If you are a pastor, please read the letter and consider signing your name in support of this important bill. If you’re not a pastor, please encourage your pastor to sign today.

By signing your name to the letter, your voice will join a nationwide movement of pastors calling on Congress to pass the Free Speech Fairness Act and restore freedom of speech to America’s pulpits. Visit www.pulpitfreedom.org to learn more.

Victoria Cobb is President of The Family Foundation of Virginia. She also serves as the organization’s spokesperson and is regularly in demand as a speaker and commentator on family issues in the media. She has been with the pro-family organization since 2000.

This article was originally published at The Family Foundation blog.

Written by Bob Kellogg

An attorney says evidence indicates a teacher’s instructions in class were clearly a violation of students’ freedom of religious expression.

A seventh-grader in Texas has told officials her teacher gave her an assignment requiring her to say God is a myth – or receive a failing grade. Jordan Wooley told her story before the West Memorial Junior High School Board (see video below). She said students in the class who argued in favor of saying God is real were threatened with punishment.

Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute contends Jordan’s and the other students’ free-speech rights were violated.

“For any teacher in any public school to require a seventh-grader to disavow their belief in God is a clear violation of not only the First Amendment, the Establishment Clause, the Exercise Clause, and the Free Speech clause – but it’s a clear breech of public trust,” he states.

School officials contend they couldn’t find anyone to back up Jordan’s story, but parents say that’s because they weren’t trying hard enough. As Dacus notes, Jordan wasn’t alone in her accusation.

“The school district reportedly is denying that this took place, yet there was more than one student in the classroom. There were other students – and another girl went home crying to her parents,” the attorney explains.

“The school district can pretend it didn’t happen and they can pretend the exam didn’t exist, but the evidence is compelling to the contrary.”

Superintendent Alton Frailey has since apologized to Jordan. Governor Greg Abbott has invited her to the governor’s mansion this Saturday to share her story.

This article was originally posted at OneNewsNow.com

WARNING: Not for younger readers

They used to arrest middle-aged perverts who get their jollies from talking dirty to children. Today, they get a television show, a nationally syndicated column, a lecture circuit and multiple visits to the Obama White House.

You know: “Forward.”

The irony is palpable. Dan Savage, sex columnist and founder of the LGBT anti-bullying “It Gets Better” campaign, has been outed. Not as a homosexual. He’s out and proud in that regard. In fact, Savage pushes his “anything goes” brand of sexual anarchy on kids worldwide. MTV has even given the sex-obsessed radical his own show, “Savage U” – a moral-relativist platform from which to corrupt the kiddos.

Creepy stuff.

No, Savage has finally managed to publicly discredit himself as the anti-Christian bigot and bully he’s always been. Never again will this guy be taken seriously as an anti-bullying crusader.

Savage lectures teens in high schools and colleges around the country on the benefits of “non-monogamy,” the occasional “three-way” tryst and any other disease-spreading sexual impulse that might cross their impressionable, hormone-charged young minds (and many they can’t yet imagine).

Well, recently, rather than just shocking his teenaged audience with vulgar, sophomoric psychobabble as usual, Savage apparently thought it’d be fun to bully the kids with whom he disagreed.

While addressing a crowd of hundreds of high schoolers at the National High School Journalism Convention, Savage launched into an unhinged anti-Christian diatribe. He advised the teens to “ignore the bulls*** in the Bible” about sexual morality. “We ignore bulls*** in the Bible about all sorts of things,” he barked.

He then walked through a list of the same tired left-wing talking points about the Bible – long ago discredited – covering shellfish, virginity, etc. “The Bible is a radically pro-slavery document,” he said (anti-Christian trash we’ve come to expect from the secular left).

But when a hundred or more kids got up and began to walk out on Savage’s anti-Christian rant, the 47-year-old tough guy turned his hostility toward them. “It’s funny to someone who is on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the Bible how pansy***** people react when you push back,” he mocked. Some of the young girls were seen leaving in tears.

“It took a real dark, hostile turn, certainly, as I saw it,” teacher Rick Tuttle told CNN. “It became very hostile toward Christianity, to the point that many students did walk out, including some of my students.

“They felt that they were attacked … a very pointed, direct attack on one particular group of students. It’s amazing that we go to an anti-bullying speech and one group of students is picked on in particular, with harsh, profane language.”

But the only thing surprising is that anyone is surprised. Dan Savage is known in Christian circles at “the gay Fred Phelps.” Phelps, of course, is the similarly cartoonish Westboro Baptist “preacher” who gained notoriety by protesting military funerals with his incestuous brood of pseudo-Christian haters. Savage is Phelps’ photo negative. Whereas Phelps’ hateful mantra is “God hates fags,” Savage’s central message is “I hate God and anyone who loves Him.”

Savage’s primary claim to fame is that he formed the website “Santorum.com,” to create a “Google bomb” that would smear the good name of former senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum. On the site he redefined the senator’s last name, Santorum, using language so vile and repulsive that I won’t repeat it. When Christian advocate and Americans for Truth founder Peter LaBarbera asked Savage to take down the website, Savage responded, “I’m asking Peter LaBarbera to go f*** himself.”

Savage also once bragged that he licked the doorknobs at former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer’s campaign office in hopes of giving Mr. Bauer the flu.

Savage told the Daily Pennsylvanian in 2006 that Carl Romanelli, a U.S. senate candidate he didn’t like, “should be dragged behind a pickup truck until there’s nothing left but the rope.” In the same interview, he opined: “Mr. Romanelli should go f*** himself.” He also once said on HBO that he “wished all Republicans were f***ing dead.”

Yep, this deviant troglodyte is the face of the left’s anti-bullying efforts. I’ve often said that those wonderfully “tolerant” liberals – the self-styled opponents of “hate” and “bigotry” – are the most intolerant, hateful bigots among us.

Thanks for proving my point, Dan.

WARNING: Not for younger readers

With Bill Clinton-esque rhetorical slipperiness, Dan Savage responds to my criticism of his anti-Christian hate speech by citing a video from which I did not quote and to which I did not provide a link in either of my two articles this week. About that video, he asks the following:

[S]ee if you can detect hate speech, ‘virulent anti-Christian bigotry,’ or ‘language so hateful’ that I make ‘Reverend Fred Phelps look like a choir boy’ in my advice to gay kids with evangelical Christian parents.

Dan Savage claims that the video I was referring to when providing evidence that he exhibits virulent anti-Christian bigotry using hateful language was the video about homosexuals coming out to their Evangelical families. Of course, that is an offensive video, but it isn’t the one from which I quoted this week.

The video  (now removed) from which I quoted and to which I provided a link was a video from a speaking engagement of Savage’s at Rhodes College.

By directing attention to a video that I did not quote from or link to in either of this week’s articles, Savage maladroitly attempts to divert attention away from the adjectives he used to describe orthodox Christians and which I quoted several times in this week’s articles.

The question Savage needs to answer is: Did he describe orthodox Christians (i.e., those who hold traditional, historical biblical views on the nature and morality of homosexuality) as “bat sh*t, a**h*le, dou**ebags” while speaking at Rhodes College?

One final note: Savage reports that the video production service he uses, Hypomania Content, removed six of his videos purportedly due to their “poor quality” rather than their “content.” It’s completely understandable that Hypomania Content would want only “high quality” obscene and perverse videos from Dan Savage gamboling about the Internet. 

Last week, I wrote about an article by Sabrina Rubin Erdely that appears in the Feb. 6, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone magazine. More digging into her story reveals additional problems with her account of teen suicides in the Anoka-Hennepin School District outside of Minneapolis.

Erdely wrote about a cluster of teen suicides that she attributes to two causes:  Evangelicals and a school district policy that requires faculty to remain neutral on the controversial topic of “sexual orientation.” She makes her case primarily through the use of logical fallacies.

Illinoisans should pay close attention to what’s happening in the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota because the irrational arguments and manipulative tactics used by homosexual activists and their allies, like Erdely, are being used in every state to corrupt public education.

Erdely identifies nine teens who committed suicide over a two-year period. Five of the teens whose names Erdely mentions, however, were neither homosexual nor were they the victims of homosexual epithets. This seems rather like writing an article about deaths caused by smoking and doubling the number of deaths by including deaths wholly unrelated to smoking.

If her article had been about teen suicide in general, then the inclusion of all nine names would be justifiable, but then she should have discussed all the teen suicide risk factors. Since her article was titled “One Town’s War on Gay Teens,” it’s clear that the subject was not teen suicide in general. Readers should be asking why in an article about a purported “war on gay teens” being waged by Evangelicals, Erdely even mentions teens whose suicides were completely unrelated to homosexuality.

It should be equally clear that conservative community members are not at war with “gay teens.” They’re at war with the efforts of homosexual activists and their allies to promote their ontological, moral, and political beliefs in public schools while censoring all dissenting voices.

Erdely’s article depends on accepting her unproven assumption that moral opposition to volitional homosexual acts constitutes hatred of persons. This is a feckless but politically expedient argument that few liberals apply consistently. They never argue that their moral opposition to certain types of behavior constitutes hatred of those who engage in it.

What I’ve learned subsequently is that one of the teens Erdely mentions,TJ Hayes, was enrolled in a “progressive” charter school that was not covered by any of the school policies on which Erdely blames the suicides.

Another of the students Erdely names was Kevin Buchman who was not enrolled in any Anoka-Hennepin high school. He was, in fact, a student at the University of Minnesota.

Kevin, a bright, good-looking, popular athlete, had graduated from an Anoka-Hennepin high school  8 1/2 months before his suicide.  He committed suicide during the second semester of his freshman year at the University of  Minnesota. His family wrote this about Kevin’s suicide:

A situation happened his first year of college, that caused Kevin to question his character. He began a spiral downward into the dark cave of suicidal depression.   He treated with a doctor [sic], was on medication, and seemed to be doing better.  He kept his despair hidden and ended his life.

Depression is a treatable illness.  It is not invited or wished for.  It is a disease that ravages the mind as cancer ravages the body.  It is difficult to recognize, diagnose, and to treat.  Our son died from suicidal depression.

In order to understand the big picture implications of what’s taking place in Anoka-Hennepin, taxpayers need to consolidate the opinions expressed by liberal teachers and opponents of  school policy that require faculty neutrality on topics related to homosexuality. Although the rhetoric of liberal educators sounds superficially reasonable, the implications of their policy demands are destructive to the legitimacy of public education.

1. Anoka High School teacher, Mary Jo Merrick-Lockett, asserts that “If you can’t talk about [homosexuality] in any context, which is how teachers interpret district policies, kids internalize that to mean that being gay must be so shameful and wrong. And that has created a climate of fear and repression and harassment.”
2. Teachers’ union president, Julie Blaha, stated that teachers should be able to express their opinions on homosexuality.
3. The Anoka-Hennepin school board is poised to pass a proposed “Respectful Learning Environment Curriculum Policy,” that states the following:

Curricular discussions of such issues shall be appropriate to the maturity and developmental level of students; be of significance to course content; and be presented in an impartial, balanced and objective manner, allowing respectful exchange of varying points of view. Lessons shall be designed to help students think critically and develop decision-making skills and techniques for examining and understanding differing opinions.

In the course of discussions of such issues, district staff shall affirm the dignity and selfworth [sic] of all students, regardless of their race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex/gender, marital status, disability, status with regard to public assistance, sexual orientation, age, family care leave status or veteran status. (emphasis added)

Some questions and concerns to consider:

• What is Merrick-Lockett’s evidence for her claim that silence creates fear, repression, and harassment?

• Will the freedom to express their views on homosexuality be extended to all teachers, including conservative teachers? If Merrick-Lockett believes that silence creates a climate of fear, repression, and harassment, what would liberal teachers, administrators, and school board members think about the expression of the belief that volitional homosexual behavior is not moral, or that marriage is the union between one man and one woman, or that children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and a father?

• What precisely does the school board mean when they assert that “district staff shall affirm the dignity and self-worth of students regardless of sexual orientation?”  It is decidedly not the job of teachers to affirm students’ sexual attractions or their volitional sexual acts or their romantic relationships. Teachers, as government employees, should not affirm subjective, non-factual, and controversial ontological, moral, or political beliefs. Teachers should teach their subject matter. They should interact civilly with students. That’s it.

• If a teacher were to express conservative views, would they be found in violation of school board policy that appears to mandate affirmation of liberal assumptions about homosexuality?

• Since the new policy would require that “lessons be designed that help students think critically and develop decision-making skills and techniques for examining and understanding differing opinions,” will those teachers who present pro-homosexual resources (e.g., plays, novels, magazine articles) to students be required to present resources that espouse opposing views?

• If conservatives are not permitted to express their opinions and if teachers are not required to present resources from both sides of this contentious debate, is sound pedagogy compromised? Liberals are stacking the deck: First, they say that in order to prevent bullying and suicide, public schools must talk about homosexuality, and in order to prevent bullying and suicide, public schools must talk about homosexuality in exclusively positive terms. But that corrupts the entire educational enterprise.

• If silence creates a climate of fear and harassment, then how will conservative kids feel if their ontological, moral, and political beliefs are censored, while others are permitted?

• Who decides if curricular discussions are “appropriate to the maturity and developmental level of students?” Does this statement refer to emotional maturity, intellectual maturity, or moral maturity?

• Who decides if a curricular discussion is of “significance to course content?” Is that decision made at the sole discretion of each individual teacher? English teachers in particular are notorious for finding virtually any topic they want to discuss “significant to course content.”

• Merrick-Lockett suggests that homosexual acts are not shameful or wrong, but those are unproven, non-factual, a-historical, arguable moral beliefs that no public school teacher — in his or her official role — has a right to express to students. Many believe that homosexual acts are, indeed, shameful and wrong, and efface human dignity. If Merrick-Lockett or any other teacher wants to tell students that homosexual acts are not shameful or wrong, they should go teach in a private school. Public school teachers, whose salaries are paid by the public, have no right to teach controversial moral beliefs as objective truths.

Any school policies that treat homosexuality and heterosexuality as equivalent are not neutral policies. They are Leftist policies built on prior acceptance of Leftist assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality. It is only those on the Left who believe that homosexuality is ontologically and morally equivalent to heterosexuality. It is those on the Left who believe that homosexuality is the morally neutral flip side of the sexuality coin.

Conservatives believe that homosexuality represents a disordering of the sexual impulse;  that homosexual acts efface human dignity; and that heterosexual acts are the only moral form of sexual expression.

The only school policy that is truly neutral is the policy that either prohibits resources that address homosexuality, or the policy that mandates equal time be spent studying resources from both sides of the debate.

The public has likely heard that the ironically — or deceptively — named “Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act” has resulted in the state of Illinois engaging in religious discrimination by refusing to renew its contract with Catholic Charities adoption agencies. The reason for this travesty is that Catholic Charities refuses to capitulate to homosexual tyrants who seek to compel them to contravene their religious beliefs by placing children in the homes of men and women who affirm homosexual “identities.”

What many do not yet know but should have expected is that the state is discriminating against another religious foster care agency, refusing to renew its contract with the Evangelical Child and Family Agency (ECFA), which has done commendable work for children since 1950, for the same reason.

Homosexuals and their ideological allies are feebly trying to assert that the central problem is that these agencies receive state funds. Somehow that wasn’t a problem in 1965 when the state first asked ECFA to partner with the Department of Children and Family Services to help place needy children in good homes.

Nor was it a problem every year thereafter — at least not until the civil union law was passed. This is the law that during the floor debate in Springfield, State Senator David Koehler (D-Peoria), the bill’s sponsor, stated would not affect child welfare agencies. Homosexual activists have made a liar out of him.

Like Catholic Charities, ECFA is steadfastly adhering to its religious commitments. Unlike Catholic Charities, however, ECFA has chosen not to oppose the outrageous DCFS decision, thus allowing the state to abrogate religious freedom.

ECFA’s decision not to oppose this assault on religious freedom may reflect their troublingly evasive approach to the entire imbroglio. During sixty minutes of discussion over the course of a two-day interview with ECFA director Ken Withrow, he carefully parsed his words in response to all direct questions regarding ECFA’s obvious position that they will not place children in the homes of homosexuals because ECFA believes homosexuality is sinful.

When asked if he thought the civil union law is connected to DCFS’s decision to sever relations with ECFS, he paused and then said “yes.” When asked specifically how it was connected, he said “DCFS needed to look at policies and practices to make sure all organizations that they partner with are in compliance.”

When asked, “In what specific way does ECFA fail to be in compliance with DCFS practices and policies?” Withrow said “ECFA’s policy is to recruit, license, and place with Evangelical families, and DCFS wants anyone who fulfills DCFS requirements to be considered.”

Multiple times in multiple ways I attempted to engage Withrow directly on the salient issue of homosexuality, but he studiously evaded any discussions of the rainbow-colored elephant in the room. In fact, it was clear that he became annoyed with the questions. When asked directly about placing children in the homes of homosexuals, Withrow responded repeatedly with the well-rehearsed talking point: “We recruit, license and place only with evangelical families.”

And this folks is one of the reasons we are in the cultural mess we’re in today. When leaders in distinctly Christian organizations and churches steadfastly refuse to courageously, unambiguously, and publicly affirm truth on the issue of homosexuality, they become part of the problem.

Withrow explained that ECFA offered to refer people in whose care ECFA would not place children (e.g. homosexuals) to other adoption agencies. But is this something that any Christian organization should do? If a group of polyamorists were to seek to adopt, would it be morally permissible for any Christian to direct them to an agency that would place children in such a household?

Or imagine a Christian crisis pregnancy center telling a woman who seeks an abortion, “We don’t perform abortions because they offend God, but we can tell you where you can get one.”

We either believe homosexuality is a grave moral offense against a righteous, holy God — or we don’t. And if it is, we have no business facilitating it in any way.

When I asked Mr. Withrow why ECFA is not fighting DCFS’s decision, he stated that “DCFS has the right to determine the practices and policies of the agencies with which they contract.” But, I asked, “Should the state be permitted to engage in religious discrimination?”

In a recent CNN debate among candidates running in the Republican primary, Princeton law professor, Robert George asked the following important and illuminating question and in so doing, told Illinois Congressmen and women what they should do:

In Illinois, after passing a civil union bill, the state government decided to exclude certain religiously affiliated foster care and adoption agencies, including Catholic and Protestant agencies, because the agencies, in line with the teachings of their faith, cannot in conscience place children with same-sex partners.

Now, at least half of Illinois’ foster and adoption funds come from the federal government. Should the federal government be subsidizing states that discriminate against Catholic and other religious adoption agencies? If a state legislature refuses to make funding available on equal terms to those providers who as a matter of conscience will not place children in same-sex homes, should federal legislation come in to protect the freedom of conscience of those religious providers?

Now, that didn’t seem so hard to say. Quite publicly and with apparent ease, Professor George managed to say exactly what Mr. Withrow refused to say: ECFA lost their contract with the state because they will not place children with homosexual couples.

IFI’s hope is that some courageous Illinois Congressman or Congresswoman will propose such federal legislation. Such legislation may help stop federal legislation proposed by far left U.S. Congressman, Pete Stark (D-CA) that calls for prohibiting “discrimination in adoption or foster care placements based on the sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status of any prospective adoptive or foster parent.” Stark’s bill, the “Every Child Deserves a Family Act,” would prohibit federal funds from going to any states that allow adoption/foster care agencies — including religious agencies — to refuse to place children in the homes of homosexuals or cross-dressers.

It’s remarkable that homosexuals who constitute less than 3 percent of the population are capturing virtually all of our cultural institutions. They couldn’t do it without the complicity of conservatives who only rarely, awkwardly, and self-consciously defend their beliefs in the public square. If we would proclaim our beliefs with the conviction, boldness, and tenacity that homosexuals proclaim theirs, we could protect our religious liberty and help create a better culture for the next generation.

TAKE ACTION: Contact your U.S. Representative and ask him/her to sponsor legislation to prohibit federal funding to state agencies that engage in religious discrimination, like Illinois’ DCFS. Tell him/her that state sponsored discrimination against people of faith, or faith-based organizations should not be subsidized by federal tax dollars.

A week ago, the Chicago Tribune celebrated — again — the passage of the civil union bill as well as Obama’s decision to order the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

On Feb. 23, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that President Barack Obama has divined that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional and has ordered the Justice Department (DOJ) to cease defending it. President Obama ordered the DOJ to stop defending DOMA in court even though the DOJ is specifically charged with the responsibility of defending federal laws.

However did DOMA’s unconstitutionality escape the notice of the 85 senators and 342 representatives who voted for it in 1996? And however did its unconstitutionality escape the notice of the man who signed it into law: President Bill Clinton, attorney and Rhodes Scholar?

The intellectual vacuity of the Tribune’s position is best illustrated in the claim that “the sky didn’t fall” following the passage of the civil union bill. What they mean is that Illinois has seen no cultural cataclysm since the bill was signed into law. The Tribune? wins this sophistical skirmish: I will concede that the bill that was signed into law six weeks ago and doesn’t take effect until June has not resulted in climatic catastrophe.

It has, however, darkened the sky for Jim Walder, a bed and breakfast owner in Paxton, Illinois who is being sued by a homosexual couple for not renting his facility to them for their civil union and reception. (Read more about this HERE.) And it seriously threatens the religious liberty of Christian organizations that seek to live out the tenets of their faith. (Read more about this HERE.)

But most of the cultural damage will not be seen for years to come. Any thinking person understands that cultural change rarely happens instantaneously. For example, Stanley Kurtz has documented the destructive impact same-sex “marriage” has had on heterosexual marriage in Scandinavia — changes that did not appear in a period of weeks or even months.

The Tribune editorial board continues its assault on marriage without ever feeling the need to address the fundamental and fundamentally flawed analogy upon which the entire homosexuality-affirming movement, including the effort to radically transform marriage and family, is built. The entire house of cards is built on a specious comparison of race to homosexuality, and yet, I cannot recall reading a single editorial defending with evidence the ways in which race and homosexuality are ontologically analogous or equivalent.

I also can’t recall the Tribune editorial board wrestling intellectually with the fundamental question that Princeton Law Professor Robert George recently debated with homosexual journalist Kenji Yoshino, which is: What is marriage?

Homosexual activists emboldened by Illinois’ civil union law are attempting to force Christian agencies that receive state funds to license foster families either to place children with homosexuals or lose state funding, which would jeopardize the placements of thousands of children.

The Chicago Tribune reports that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Gov. Pat Quinn and the Department of Children and Family Services are investigating these Christian foster care agencies for discrimination because of their religiously based decisions not to place children in the homes of homosexual partners.

If homosexuals were centrally concerned for the welfare of children, they would leave religious agencies to act according to the dictates of their faith traditions. But as usual the ignoble desire of homosexuals to compel the entirety of society to affirm their attractions, volitional acts, and moral and political beliefs takes precedence over all else. It supersedes the rights of parents, speech rights, religious liberty, and even the welfare of children. It’s astonishing to witness such monumental narcissism and selfishness in the service of normalizing perversion. Of course, the real motivations are speciously papered over with “civil rights” rhetoric to deceive the gullible.

They justify this effort by claiming that the refusal to place children in homes of homosexuals violates laws that prohibit discrimination based on “sexual orientation.” This points to the disastrous cultural consequences that will continue to accrue because homosexual activists and their ideological allies were allowed to add the term “sexual orientation” to anti-discrimination laws and policies. Of course, they were aided by the ignorance, cowardice, and silence of conservatives who failed to fight vigorously against such a feckless inclusion. 

Individuals and organizations have a moral right to discriminate among volitional behaviors. That is to say, they have an inalienable right to make judgments about what constitutes moral behavior. Homosexuality is not equivalent to race, and disapproval of homosexuality is not equivalent to racism. Homosexuality is a condition centrally defined by subjective feelings and volitional acts, and as such, should never be included in policy or law with conditions that are objective and non-behavioral.

What are the essential criteria for evaluating the suitability of families seeking to foster or adopt children? They must have the financial means to support them and be able to provide a clean, nurturing environment. If it is a couple, they must demonstrate that they have a stable, committed relationship. But is that all? If so, then we as a society should cheerfully turn over suffering children to the care of loving, committed, stable incestuous couples who are able to provide a safe, nurturing environment.

And we should cheerfully and comfortably relinquish suffering children to the care of loving, stable, committed polyamorous families who are able to provide a safe, nurturing, environment.

And what about lesbian sisters who demonstrate similar relational qualities and can provide the same material security that a heterosexual married couple demonstrates and provides?

Love, commitment, stability, safety, and support are, indeed, essential factors when evaluating the appropriateness of a family seeking to foster or adopt, but so too is the moral nature of the relationship of the family. Those who recoil at the idea of incestuous couples or polyamorous partners fostering or adopting do so out of the same kind of moral evaluation of the nature of incest and polyamory as others do out of a moral evaluation of homosexuality. Those who would prohibit loving, stable incestuous couples or polyamorous partners from fostering or adopting do so for the same kind of reason that those who would prohibit loving homosexual couples from fostering or adopting do: a belief that these kinds of relationships are morally flawed.

Some argue that the belief that homosexual conduct is morally flawed is a prejudice and cannot be imposed on all of society. But then one could reasonably argue that the belief that adult consensual incest and polyamory are immoral is an ignorant, antiquated, provincial, bigoted, hateful prejudice that ought not to be imposed on all of society.

One could also make an effective case that gender complementarity occupies such a central place in both marriage and parenting that incestuous and polyamorous partnerships are in some ways more defensible than homosexual couplings.

Moreover, incestuous couples could make the case that their desire to adopt reveals their sense of responsibility in that procreation could result in serious birth defects. Shouldn’t loving incestuous couples be allowed to have children? Is it fair to allow society’s prejudice to prevent them from this basic right?

And what about all the hard to place children waiting for loving homes? Doesn’t opposition to adoption or fostering by incestuous or polyamorous partners (to borrow the fatuous words from Chicago Tribune columnist Stephen Chapman), “mainly serve to harm children in dire need of stable, loving families”?

The Tribune points out that there are 57 other private agencies with “non-restictive” policies to which homosexual couples can apply for fostering licenses, but according to ACLU attorney Benjamin Wolf, “‘We don’t know for sure if a loving lesbian or gay family turned away from a discriminatory agency is necessarily going to go to another agency because of the disruption and harm caused to them.'” Perhaps those homosexual couples who are that emotionally fragile are not constitutionally suited for the arduous task of fostering.

Wolf also said that “limiting the pool of prospective foster care parents because certain religious traditions believe same-sex relationships are sinful is irresponsible when children are in need.” Homosexuals constitute between 2-4 percent of the population; the number of those who are in stable relationships is smaller; and the number of homosexuals in stable relationships who want to foster is smaller still. By allowing a few Christian agencies to prohibit homosexuals from fostering–homosexuals who may foster through other agencies–will result in a negligible impact on the pool of foster care parents.

Compare that to the impact on the pool of prospective foster care parents that will result when all theologically orthodox Christian agencies are forced to cease operations. Who’s really being “irresponsible”?

If we measure harm only in concrete, measurable ways — dirty house, lack of food, untended infections, emotional detachment — then we ill-serve the children we purport to care so deeply about. When organizations make decisions regarding the placement of children in families, it is not only appropriate but critical that they take into account the moral nature of the relationships of the potential caretakers.

Two controversies recently highlighted by the mainstream media underscore the urgent need for people of faith and moral conscience to vigorously oppose the homosexual political agenda. Twenty years ago, these stories would never have been reported, but today, activists within the liberal media are doing their level best to fabricate, mold and promote emotionally manipulative storylines designed to demonize traditional Judeo-Christian teaching and practices.

Christian Adoption Organizations
The first story is about a Christian adoption and family agency that denied an adoption request by homosexual partners from Chicago. Lutheran Child and Family Services of Illinois (LCFS) — which is affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod — has a policy that forbids applicants who self-identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or questioning from adopting or fostering.

No one should expect a Christian adoption agency to place a child into a home of adults who openly and proudly practice what the Bible clearly identifies as sin.

Fox Chicago News ran an “investigation” story this past Monday (Nov. 8, 2010) regarding this issue, asking if this is “a case of blatant discrimination, or religious freedom?” By their own admission, their “investigation” has “both government and civil rights leaders scrambling to settle the law.”

In their story, Fox Chicago reported that the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) confirmed that the Illinois Human Rights Act exempts religious-based adoption agencies from the anti-discrimination rules that non-religious agencies and organizations must follow.

Camilla Taylor, the senior staff attorney for Lambda Legal (a pro-homosexual legal organization with a $20+ million annual budget), disagreed. Taylor told FOX Chicago News that state contractors are prohibited by law from discrimination, and suggested that several similar state and federal court rulings set a clear precedent. So I guess the religious exemption in the Illinois Human Rights Act is worthless. This simply means that the LCFS and other conservative faith-based organizations (and businesses) cannot make biblically based decisions about the morality of homosexuality and must abide by the godless anti-discrimination doctrine of the government — First Amendment notwithstanding.

As a result of this “investigation,” the DCFS provided Fox Chicago with this statement:

DCFS and the Illinois child welfare system have a proud history of tolerance and inclusiveness. We have licensed tens of thousands of foster and adoptive parents without regard for sexual orientation, and we know from experience and research that sexual orientation does not affect parents’ abilities to provide a safe, loving home for children. DCFS met last week with Lambda Legal, along with the Governor’s Office and Attorney General’s office, to begin to resolve these very complex legal issues. We all share a commitment to shape Illinois law and policy to respect the rights of all Illinoisans, and we will continue working together toward that goal.

For good measure, Fox Chicago pointed out that LCFS, Catholic Charities and Evangelical Child — all of which uphold the biblical ideal of family — received more than $23 million in state funding in fiscal year 2010. This constitutes a not-so-subtle hint to policy-makers to defund these religious groups.

Open Lesbian Fired at Catholic University
The second story is about Springfield, Illinois’ Benedictine University. This Catholic school recently fired school administrator Laine Tadlock after her Iowa “marriage” announcement was published in the State Journal-Register.

In a Sept. 30 letter to Ms. Tadlock’s attorney, Benedictine President William Carroll wrote

…By publicizing the marriage ceremony in which she participated in Iowa she has significantly disregarded and flouted core religious beliefs which, as a Catholic institution, it is our mission to uphold.

Ms. Tadlock was offered early retirement Aug. 27. According to published reports, Ms. Tadlock met that day with Carroll and Mike Bromberg, dean of academic affairs. Ms. Tadlock said Carroll told her he had consulted three Catholic bishops about the situation, including Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Springfield diocese. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Paprocki said the school “is to be commended for its fidelity to the truth in upholding the faith and morals as taught by the Catholic Church.”

Bottom Line
What is at stake here is the freedom for people and organizations of faith to be able to operate by the dictates of the faith they profess — free of governmental coercion and/or direction. Homosexual activists groups, the biased dominant media and liberal lawmakers (including many so-called “moderate” policy makers) are willing to sacrifice our First Amendment’s guarantees in favor of unofficial state beliefs — including unproven humanistic beliefs about sexual orientation.

IFI’s Laurie Higgins has pointed out in a number of her articles that Georgetown University lesbian law professor and current member of the EEOC Chai Feldblum publicly stated that when same-sex “marriage” is legalized, conservative people of faith will lose religious rights.

This is not a theory. It’s happening right before our eyes. Increasingly we are seeing this play out. Traditional Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims are not able to make faith-based decisions about the morality of homosexuality and are being forced to abide by the godless anti-discrimination doctrines imposed by legislators and activist judges.

It is only a matter of time before these government-imposed mores are imposed on pastors, priests, rabbis, and imams. When will they be forced either to perform homosexual weddings and hire homosexuals or face costly legal action and fines for making legitimate judgments based on their moral views of sexual behavior?

Illinois citizens and Americans across the nation must begin to understand what is happening and oppose this radical political agenda that seeks to force all of us to set aside our faith, traditions and beliefs in order to honor immoral sexual behavior.

People of faith and people of moral conscience must speak up in the public square about this dangerous political agenda. A good place to start would be with the current push for same-sex “civil unions” in Illinois. This legislation (SB 1716) is everything that homosexual “marriage” is, except for the name.

SB 1716 gives all the rights, benefits and privileges of marriage. This will be the basis for many lawsuits against religious organizations, churches and people of faith.

In Massachusetts and California, the public schools have used the “legalization” of “same-sex marriage” as a mandate to teach children as young as kindergarten to affirm homosexual acts, homosexual relationships and “diverse family structures” as morally equivalent to heterosexuality, heterosexual relationships and the traditional family structure.

The bottom line is that we can’t have both government protections for religious liberty and government protections for homosexual behavior, and, therefore, which will it be?

Do you think that homosexual activists will be content with getting same-sex “civil unions?” 

Listen to two leading gay activists:

More Great IFI Resources:

• IFI Position Paper
• IFI Talking Points
• Eroding Religious Liberties

This past weekend, Pope Benedict XVI visited Spain where approximately 100 homosexual activists intentionally staged a kiss-in protest in front of the Barcelona cathedral.

This obnoxious and in-your-face protest was well covered by international press. But no where have I read or heard it referred to as anti-Catholic or Christianphobic — which it obviously was. While protests or dissenting comments against the political agenda of pro-gay leaders and politicians are routinely labeled “anti-gay” and “homophobic” by the press, for the dominant pro-gay media, this type of hate simply doesn’t fit into their narrative.

This kiss protest was intended to offend the Pope, the attending bishops, priests, as well as traditional Catholics and bible-believing Christians everywhere. It was utterly disrespectful, insensitive and entirely intolerant. I have to wonder why these gay activists never target a Caliph outside a mosque.

While the homosexual “rights” movement started by appealing for privacy in the bedroom for consenting adults, it has now moved brazenly to the public square demanding that we accept and even celebrate their sexual proclivities.

And if that isn’t enough, pro-gay groups like the Human Rights Campaign — which has a $40+ million annual budget — and Lambda Legal — which has a $20 million annual budget — seek to legislate and adjudicate gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual choices as civil rights, as if their sexual choices are equal to skin color, to the detriment of those of us who hold moral and religious objections to this lifestyle.

These homosexual activists who proclaim the virtue of tolerance are thoroughly intolerant of conservative people of faith and moral conscience.

Throughout civilization, there have been those who have attempted to find humor at the expense of others. This has been the case in American history as well. People who are different because of their social class, skin color, ethnic or religious backgrounds have often been the butt of the most vile so-called humor.

However, supposedly, we now live in a time of tolerance. Yet it is clear there are certain groups who apparently are fair game to be the recipients of mean-spirited attacks which have little to do with levity.

Recently, an episode of South Park — a cartoon which airs on the Comedy Channel–fanned the flames of controversy by insulting those who practice the Islamic faith. The same episode insulted Christianity by presenting an image of Jesus Christ which also was defamatory in nature.

It has often been said it is a losing proposition to take on contentious issues which result from cartoons or comic strips. But though it may not be politically prudent to question the appropriate nature of such satirical venues, the First Amendment provides the right to do so.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the Creators of South Park, have made a living off of their irreverence with the series. Christianity has often been their target. Of course, Stone and Parker will deny this fact. They will say South Park is only satire, not meant to demean or be hurtful to anyone.

Unfortunately, American society has bought into this notion in recent decades. Jokes that were once told in backrooms are now appropriate in public venues, depending on who or what the subject is. It is obvious Christianity does not fall within the boundaries protected by political correctness or tolerance.

To say South Park has been the only source to assail those of the Christian faith through the so-called use of humor would be unfair and inaccurate. But Stone and Parker were only criticized for their irreverence by the mainstream media for the episode which depicted Muhammad in a bear costume which is contrary to Islamic doctrine that the prophet never be drawn. However, Stone and Parker needed attention due to the fact that in today’s culture conflict results in controversy, and controversy leads to fame.

The problem is those on the far left–which dominate the mainstream media–either do not understand or do not care whether what they do is hurtful. This mindset hardly follows the definition of tolerance. According to Webster’s Dictionary, tolerance is defined as “a tolerating or being tolerant, esp. of views, beliefs, practices, etc. of others that differ from one’s own”. The term is not selective. The meaning of the words is not subject to political correctness or the fad and fashions of the times.

When Stone and Parker depict Jesus Christ in an unflattering way, a vast majority of Americans take offense. They do so because they believe Christ is their Savior who suffered the most grievous of pain, before being hung on a cross to die for the sins of mankind. Is it possible the creators of South Park do not truly understand the tenets of Christianity and Christ’s sacrifice? To the contrary, the opposite is most likely the case. Stone and Parker fully understand because irreverence has been a means to their success.

Perhaps South Park and its creators don’t deserve all the blame for their irreverence. Our society has given them the license to be hurtful.

But there are dangers we should take from history which result from this lack of sensitivity. In Nazi Germany, propaganda films depicted the Jews as rats which infested the Third Reich. These images did not suddenly appear. They began incrementally with baby steps which led to the creation of the final solution to the “Jewish problem”.

South Park is an infantile, poorly illustrated cartoon which carries an inordinate amount of social significance. The program truly reflects the intolerance of our times which stems from an underlying motive, some self-serving, some sinister.

There is good advice that comes from the left regarding such so-called artistic expression. Americans can change the channel. They can also send letters to sponsors who pay the bills which allow cartoons like South Park to remain on the air. Perhaps those who are offended most can take equal blame by staying silent and doing nothing–while their faith or culture is insulted.

In a recent article, Chicago Sun-Times’ columnist Neil Steinberg criticizes the Illinois Family Institute’s website for not “addressing what an individual could do to improve his own family.”

While Mr. Steinberg would love to see our organization relegated to self-improvement, family entertainment and leisure activities, IFI is a public policy organization that addresses policy issues that are substantial and consequential to the families of Illinois. If Steinberg bothered to look past the home page of our website to the “About Us” section, he may have understood our mission and purpose.

The Illinois Family Institute is a nonprofit research and education organization committed to protecting and defending the family by influencing policy and promoting timeless values consistent with Judeo-Christian teachings and traditions.

Disagreeing with our mission and our positions on these issues is fair. Mr. Steinberg obviously disagrees with our position on homosexual behavior and specifically our statement that “volitional homosexual acts are immoral,” calling them “superficial, silly, ad hominem non-arguments.” He is right: that statement is not an argument. It is a moral claim for which there are both religious and secular justifications. Similarly, the view that homosexual acts are moral is not an argument. It is a moral claim that requires justifications.

Unfortunately, Mr. Steinberg offers nothing to substantiate his criticisms other than name-calling. While he waxes poetic about tolerance, Mr. Steinberg describes opposition to so-called same-sex marriages and civil unions as “sick,” “twisted sexual” obsessions, “creepy, fixated” fundamentalism, “religious prejudice,” “intolerant,” and “inhuman.”

He compares opposition to the radical, subversive, a-historical effort to jettison the central defining feature of marriage — sexual complementarity — to teeth flossing and clean underwear checks.

In his anti-IFI article, Mr. Steinberg points out that he doesn’t want to impose his values on other people or “write an amendment into the Illinois constitution” to impose his beliefs. Since he feels so strongly about the immorality of imposing values on others, will Mr. Steinberg write a column critical of the efforts of homosexuality-affirming organizations to impose through public education and legislation their unproven ontological claim that homosexuality is equivalent to race and their unproven moral claim that gender is irrelevant to marriage?

And in his self-righteous advocacy of absolute moral neutrality in the public square, will he defend polyamorists’ right to marry?

Mr. Steinberg ends his tirade with an emotional appeal saying that our country “is a vast, varied place where people from all sorts of races, religions, creeds and, yes, differing sexuality, dwell together in harmony…” I guess this sentiment applies to everyone except religious conservatives.

“It is amazing to watch the venom and hatred that is being directed at Tim and Pam Tebow and Focus on the Family by the National Organization of Women (NOW) for a Super Bowl ad that they have not seen,” said Dr. Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission. “This backlash exposes the irrational hatred of NOW who apparently despises any hint of a positive Christian message. CBS is to be commended for their willingness to not censor a wonderful story of a mother’s courage and love.”

Tim Tebow is a Heisman-winning, University of Florida quarterback and NFL prospect. The ad tells the story of his mother Pam in the ad funded by Focus on the Family. They tell of her high-risk pregnancy when she and her husband were missionaries in the Philippines. Although advised by her doctor to have an abortion, she chose to risk her own life and Tim Tebow was born.

Erin Matson of the National Organization for Women said, “This ad is frankly offensive. It is hate masquerading as love. It sends a message that abortion is always a mistake.”

“Pam Tebow personifies virtues that everyone admires- faith, courage and sacrifice. Ironically, NOW attacks a woman for doing a very brave and virtuous thing because they will not look past their ideological blinders,” said Cass. “NOW should be ashamed. Their disproportionate overreaction against the ad exposes their irrational anti-Christian bigotry.”

by Christian Anti-Defamation Commission

During the Roman Empires secularist era those who acknowledged the deity of Christ were frequently fed to the lions to entertain for lack of a better word the progressive elites of the day. Theres little doubt that if many of todays secular-progressives (more accurately: moonbat liberals) had their way, Caesar Obama would call out the lions once again.

Nothing makes the left lose its collective noodle like an open proclamation of Christian faith. You don’t see it when Muslims proselytize in government schools; the ACLU doesn’t sue when Wiccans share their witchy ways; militant gay activists don’t picket Buddhist temples with bullhorns while inhabitants grasp at Zen. No, theres something about Christianity that just drives em nuts. Always has. Always will.

Case in point: Recently, on two separate occasions, Fox News veteran Brit Hume both publicly pronounced his own faith in Jesus Christ and boldly suggested that Tiger Woods might find forgiveness and redemption for his serial philandering should he turn to the Christian faith.

Hume first offered Tiger the advice on Fox News Sunday and then reiterated his sage, though decidedly non-PC council on The OReilly Factor the following night. When asked by host Bill O’Reilly what kind of response he’d received for his comments, Hume replied, in part: Its always been a puzzling thing to me. The Bible even speaks of it. You speak the name Jesus Christ and all hell breaks loose.

Yes indeed.

After Hume made his comments, and as if on cue (Lord forgive them for not knowing what they do or why they do it) liberals went apoplectic. Heres a small sampling:

As reported by CNSNews.com: Tom Shales, media critic for the Washington Post, in a Tuesday column, demanded that Hume apologize and called his Christian remarks even only a few days into January, as one of the most ridiculous of the year.

MSNBCs reliably raspy Keith Olbermann accused Hume of attempting to threaten Tiger Woods into converting to Christianity and demanded that his Fox News ratings superior keep religious advocacy out of public life (back in the closet, Brit old boy).

Olblubberman then compared Hume to a terrorist, suggesting that the worst example of this kind of proselytizing are jihadists. Finally, he betrayed the lefts typical anti-Christian bigotry, suggesting that Jesus may have been a homosexual and wondering aloud: WWJDIHS: What would Jesus do if hes straight?

While the mainstream media’s rage was clumsily managed (or masked), unbridled hate boiled over in the left-wing blogosphere.

On the sexual anarchist site, JoeMyGod, poster QScribe suggested that Brit Humes deceased son had been gay and viciously accused Hume of being responsible for the young mans suicide: Brit Hume still hasn’t repented for trashing his gay son and driving him to suicide. When I want moral guidance from a pig like that, I’ll be sure to ask. Until then, he really ought to STFU. (Hume has publicly shared that his sons heartbreaking suicide played a large role in his acceptance of Christ.)

The next commenter went so far as to cruelly imply that Hume had sexually molested his own child and further mocked the tragic suicide, writing: Dead victims don’t tell on their molesters.

Commenting on the Huffington Post, Kandaher bypassed Hume altogether and aimed his vitriol directly at his Creator: anyone (sic) watched The passion of Christ? I thoruhgly (sic) enjoyed it. Nothing like watching this bloke getting beaten up! He deserved what he got and more!

You get the idea.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I very much enjoy watching liberals go goofy when the light of truth pierces that shadowy void called moral relativism. When the lefts religion of choice secular-humanism is challenged through exposure to the gospel message, they almost universally and instinctively react with such visceral, knee-jerk spasms. You can set your clock to it.

But believe it or not, there’s actually something rather delightful about such hateful lashing about. These poor souls to be pitied and prayed for fail to realize that, manifest within their own unwittingly bizarre behavior, is certain affirmation of the very words of Christ on the subject.

Jesus addressed this peculiar and deeply spiritual phenomenon on more than one occasion over two thousand years ago. In John 15:18-20 (NIV), for instance, He reminds His followers: If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

Now, I’m real sorry that most progressives and other non-believers feel that Christianity is deficiently tolerant or inclusive of various man-made religions and lifestyle choices. But it’s just not our call. Christ Himself reveals over and again that the pathway to heaven is a very narrow one, requiring membership in a rather exclusive club– a club wherein belief in Him and repentance from sin are the only membership requirements.

Christ said: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) Note that, rather conspicuously, He did not say: “No one comes to the Father except through me, the Buddha, Muhammad, Ganesh, and on Tuesdays L. Ron Hubbard.”

But lest you have any doubt, consider John 3:36, which warns every man, woman and child on earth past, present and future: “Whoever believes in the Son [Jesus] has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for Gods wrath remains on him.”

So, Brit Hume had it right, didn’t he? I mean, it is kind of an all or nothing proposition, isn’t it?

As my favorite author and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis famously pointed out in his blockbuster book Mere Christianity, Christ could only have been one of three things: A lunatic, a liar, or, as Jesus oft claimed and as billions have believed, the sovereign Lord and Creator of the universe.

Noted Lewis:

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. –C.S. Lewis

So, what does this all mean? Well, and please take this in the spirit (little ‘s’ intended): Brit Hume’s woolly, wily, wandering critics really ought to just un-knot their knickers; mudra, mantra or something; and seriously reflect upon the man’s words and heart.

Perhaps they should (being all tolerant, diverse and whatnot) consider, if only for a moment, the very Spirit (big ‘S’) from which came those words and were formed that heart.

In the meantime, to Mr. Hume: Well done, good and faithful servant.

On Monday night, I joined approximately 80 to 90 other concerned citizens in Arlington Heights to listen to pro-family advocate Peter LaBarbera talk about the homosexual agenda and our diminishing freedom of conscience. Peter is the President of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, an organization dedicated to exposing the homosexual activist agenda.

He did a fantastic job! (Listen to it online or download it HERE.)

As usual, there was a tiny group of homosexual protestors from the Gay Liberation Network. These activists follow LaBarbera to many of his speaking engagements in order to harass and intimidate anyone who dares to disagree with their pro-homosexual propaganda.

Ironically, some in the group chanted “love thy neighbor” while one of their compatriots carried a sign that said “LaBarbera is Satan’s lover.” (See the photos on the right.)

This is the same small group of intolerant, anti-Christian radicals who stood outside Bishop Larry D. Trotter’sSweet Holy Spirit Church on Chicago’s South Side, yelling, “BORN AGAIN BIGOTS, GO AWAY” and other slogans designed to demonize people of faith who, like Trotter, stand up for God’s design for marriage.

This is the same small group who protested Moody Bible Church and Catholic Cardinal Francis George’shome as “Houses of Hate.” Defending biblical sexual morality is not prejudice, and defending natural marriage is not “hate.”

Make no mistake, radical, anti-Christian groups like the Gay Liberation Network would like nothing more than to use the heavy hand of government to censor LaBarbera’s work. They and other leftist groups are working to quash our First Amendment rights to freely exercise our religious faith.