It’s official. The Mormons have finally figured out that they can’t do business with the devil. Bully for them.

More specifically, the Salt Lake City-based denomination is flipping off the demonic forces assigned by Beelzebub to wage war on God’s creation of male and female.

That’s where the minions of Hell have been concentrating their firepower in recent years.  It’s not for nothing that we’ve been told, over and over, that male-female differences are irrelevant and reality is entirely subjective.

But, be of good cheer. Resistance to the cultural insanity is growing.  Last Tuesday, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints announced a parting of the ways with what used to be the Boy Scouts of America.

The Mormons have tried to look the other way since 2013, when the Scouts permitted gay members.  But it just got worse.  The Scouts’ century-old moral code, itself derived from Biblical morality, was pummeled from within and without.  The coup de grace was ordered by liberal corporate donors and performed by quisling BSA board members.  I bet none of them can tie a decent knot, but they sure can sabotage a great American institution.

Well, as noted, the Mormons have had enough.  Last year, the LDS pulled 185,000 boys aged 14 to 18 out of the Scouts.  When the remaining 425,000 boys depart for Mormon youth organizations, it will represent a nearly 20 percent decline in Scout membership, which is now at 2.3 million and falling from a high of 4 million back in the 1960s.

The Boy Scouts were never a genderless service organization like 4-H or other youth groups.   Boy Scouts were taught to be strongly masculine gentlemen guided by timeless values, such as respecting girls and women instead of identifying with them.  They molded millions of boys into modern-day knights, not just “persons.”

Despite winning every single court challenge to their policies, the Boy Scouts had been doing a duck and hide.  They abandoned public defense of their values and embraced only freedom of association, which any bone-headed group could claim.

In May 2015, BSA National President Robert Gates said that keeping out openly gay leaders “cannot be sustained.”  Sure, it could have.  But that would have meant actually fighting the bullies.  So, instead, the BSA National Executive Board voted to overturn the common-sense policy that had protected boys since 1910.  For some reason, this craven stunt did not settle things down.

Mr. Gates was not exactly new to this.  He was the Secretary of Defense under Barack Obama who orchestrated the end of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy against open homosexuality.

He has since gone on to be chancellor at the College of William and Mary, which was chartered in Williamsburg, Virginia in 1693 and named after the British royal couple.  As far as we know, neither William nor Mary ever got confused as to who was king and who was queen.

But back to the Organization Formerly Known as the Boy Scouts of America.  Following Mr. Gates’s lead, the Scouts announced on January 30, 2017, that girls who think they’re boys could enroll in previously boys-only programs.  On May 2, they finally took “Boy” out of the Boy Scouts and changed the name to Scouts BSA.

I wonder if the Girl Scouts, who are decidedly peeved at the brazen poaching of their potential recruits, will follow suit and excise “girl.”  They kicked God out of their oath long ago and have welcomed transgenders, so why not?

When the Boy Scouts began caving in 2013, Mormon leaders and some Protestants and Catholics tried to finesse it, extracting a promise that their troops could keep their own values.

More and more people are finding out the hard way that there is no placating Leftist bullies who mean to remake America into a socialist version of Sodom and Gomorrah.

That’s why some farsighted former Scout leaders founded Trail Life USA in 2013 to pick up the mantle. Now chartered in 48 states, Trail Life, while unabashedly Christian, welcomes all boys who abide by their standards. They work right alongside the American Heritage Girls, founded by former Girl Scout leaders for similar reasons.

I’ve met with Trail Life’s leaders, and they are stand-up guys.  As an Eagle Scout, I’d be proud to see boys in our family benefit from what Scouting used to offer and Trail Life USA still does.

This article was originally published by Townhall.com

It’s probably too much to hope for, but perhaps the day of reckoning for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has come. Perhaps the shooting last week at the Family Research Council headquarters in Washington D.C. will bring scrutiny to and condemnation of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s pernicious “hate group” list on which the Family Research Council (FRC), American Family Association (AFA), and we, the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), are included.

All three organizations are included on the SPLC’s ever-expanding list of hate groups that also includes “neo-Nazi” groups, ”racist skinhead” groups, and the Ku Klux Klan. FRC, AFA, and IFI are listed as “anti-gay hate groups.”

News reports revealed that shortly after the FRC shooting, the FBI contacted the Traditional Values Coalition, another conservative Christian organization on the SPLC’s “anti-gay hate group” list to notify them that the shooter, Floyd Corkins, had its address in his backpack. The Traditional Values Coalition is so small that very few conservatives have even heard of it, so where might Corkins have learned about  it? Hmmmm, let’s see… Could it be from the SPLC’s hate group list?

In an interview following the shooting, FRC President Tony Perkins said, “I believe the Southern Poverty Law Center should be held accountable for their reckless use of terminology.” While Mark Potok, editor-in-chief of the SPLC’s ironically named “Intelligence Report” and “Hatewatch” blog continues to spew defamatory lies, he takes umbrage at this criticism of the SPLC’s ethics.

Countless liberal bloggers, political pundits, and the mainstream press repeat the SPLC’s specious designation of conservative Christian groups as “hate groups.” But one wonders how many of those who repeat the SPLC’s fallacious claims bother to read the criteria that the SPLC uses to determine who goes on its “hate group” list. Do any journalists, law enforcement agencies, or gullible acolytes of the SPLC bother to analyze the soundness of the evidence the SPLC provides for the inclusion of groups on their “hate group” list?

And do disciples of the SPLC know that it included groups on its “anti-gay hate group” list prior to the establishment and publication of any criteria to determine which groups would go on it?

SPLC’s “hate group” criteria center on social science research and policy speculation with which the SPLC disagrees.

The SPLC has been harshly criticized for its anti-religious bias, even—irony of ironies—its hatred of orthodox Christians. In an obvious attempt to distract attention from the truth of that criticism, Potok and his accomplices Heidi Beirich, Evelyn Schlatter, and Robert Steinback manufactured a set of criteria in 2010 that would enable them to include groups like the FRC, AFA, and IFI on their “anti-gay hate group” list. They apparently counted on Americans not noticing that their criteria bear no resemblance to actual hatred: no expressions of hate, no calls for violence, no claims that those who identify as homosexual are less valuable as human beings.

What the SPLC has done is create an elastic definition of hatred that centers on social science research,  facts, or propositions that the SPLC doesn’t like.

One criterion that the SPLC uses to establish “hate group” status is whether an organization makes any predictions that the SPLC doesn’t like about the potential legal consequences of law or policy related to homosexuality.

The SPLC claims that groups warrant inclusion on its “hate group” list if they propagate “known falsehoods” about homosexuality. I’m not sure if Potok and his compeers actually understand what a “known falsehood” (also called a lie) is. A known falsehood is a statement that is objectively, provably false and is known to be false when made.

The SPLC has said, for example, that if an organization argues that hate crime legislation may result in the jailing of pastors who condemn volitional homosexual acts as sinful, the organization is guilty of “anti-gay” hatred and will be included on the SPLC’s “hate group” list.

And any organization that argues that allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military will damage the military in some way merits inclusion on its “anti-gay hate group” list.

How can Potok sensibly claim that speculating that hate crimes legislation may lead to the jailing of pastors who condemn homosexuality is a known falsehood? It is a prediction of possible future events that may result from the logical working out of a law. This prediction may not come to fruition, but at this point it cannot reasonably be deemed a “known falsehood.”

And how can a prediction about the effects of allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military be a known falsehood. Certainly, there are differences of opinion on the effects of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but liberal speculation that such a change will not damage the military is not a known truth.

Another criterion used by the SPLC to determine whether an organization is a “hate group” is whether the organization cites any social science research that the SPLC doesn’t like.

According to the SPLC, if an organization says that “gays are more prone to mental illness and to abuse drugs and alcohol,” it goes on the SPLC’s hate groups list. I’m sure this is not news to Potok, but there is a lot of research showing just that.

The SPLC engages in some tricksy rhetoric to defend this intellectually and ethically bankrupt criterion. Schlatter and Steinback argue that mental health organizations no longer consider homosexuality a mental disorder, which is true, but has no relevance to the fact—which even the SPLC concedes—that homosexuals experience much higher rates of mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse.

What really sticks in the craw of the SPLC is that conservative organizations don’t agree with the unproven speculation by the  SPLC and some social scientists that the reasons for the increased incidence of mental disorders and drug use are social stigma and “discrimination.”

The SPLC deems hateful the claim that same-sex parents harm children. Of course, Potok and his minions don’t feel any obligation to define harm and apparently reject a whole body of social science research that claims that children fare best when raised by a mother and father in an intact family. Even President Obama in his Mother’s Day and Father’s Day proclamations argued that both are essential to the welfare of children.

While homosexual activists revel in even the most poorly constructed social science research if it reinforces their presuppositions, they reject better constructed studies that undermine them. The truth is that if organizations don’t accept the ever-fluid, controvertible, and highly politicized social science research that the SPLC favors, they go on the “hate group” list.

“Hate group” designation relies on the redefinition of terms

In addition to marshaling only that social science research that fits their subversive sexual worldview, the SPLC does what virtually every homosexuality-affirming organization does, which is redefine terms to silence dissent and enable them to promote fallacious charges of hate with carefree abandon.

Among the many terms that homosexuality activist organizations like the SPLC have redefined are “hatred,” “tolerance,” “acceptance,” “bias,” “discrimination,” and “safety.” What the new definitions share in common is their utility in humiliating, intimidating, and silencing those who believe that same-sex attraction is disordered, that homosexual acts are immoral, and that  marriage is the inherently procreative union between one man and one woman.

The SPLC is continually telling people who identify as homosexual that those who believe homosexual acts are immoral hate them. The tragic effect of propagating that ugly lie is not only that it may lead unstable people to commit acts of violence. The truly tragic effect is that it undermines the potential for relationships between people who hold diverse moral views and effaces the potential for dialogue.

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Once again, Barack Obama has affirmed his commitment to radical, subversive change; his sycophancy to the homosexual lobby; and, implicitly, his embrace of heresy. He has already signed into law the dangerously flawed “Hate Crimes” bill, declared his intent to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act, and committed to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Then on May 28, 2010 Obama issued the following proclamation

LGBT Americans have enriched and strengthened the fabric of our national life. From business leaders and professors to athletes and first responders, LGBT individuals have achieved success and prominence in every discipline. They are our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters, and our friends and neighbors. Across my Administration, openly LGBT employees are serving at every level….

I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2010 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month.

Joe Carter writing on the First Things blog seeks further clarity from Obama:

Perhaps he could explain how bisexuals-because of their bisexuality-have enriched America and how transgendered-because or their transgendered orientation-have have strengthened the “fabric of our national life.” In other words, maybe he could explain why alternative forms of “gender identity or sexual orientation” are something we should celebrate at the national level.

Also, I’d really love to see a few names of the transgendered folks-people who may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, or asexual-who are “serving at every level” of his administration. By my count he has exactly one example.

Obama wants all Americans to “recognize the immeasurable contributions of LGBT Americans,” insisting that “LGBT Americans have enriched and strengthened the fabric of our national life.”

No sane person would ever argue that homosexuals have contributed nothing to society. That’s as absurd as claiming that adulterers, porn users, or gossips have contributed nothing to society.

But the sexual impulses and sexual behavior of homosexuals and cross-dressers are irrelevant to their contributions. Therefore, making irrelevant characteristics the central focus of “Pride” month as Obama did is absurd. More important, the particular irrelevant characteristics that Obama has chosen to highlight are, in the view of many, disordered and immoral.

Those who experience, for example, selfish, vain, greedy, gluttonous, deceitful, promiscuous, incestuous, sadistic, pederastic, gossipy, philandering, or polyamorous impulses and engage in behaviors impelled by such impulses have also contributed to society. How would Americans respond if the president were to proclaim June “Polyamory Pride Month”? Substituting another irrelevant and morally questionable characteristic for homosexuality brings into sharper relief the dubious nature of Obama’s proclamation.

Joe Carter emphasizes this point:

Presumably all of these Americans who have “enriched and strengthened the fabric of our national life” have other characteristics besides their sexual orientation. They are men and women, black and Asian, right-handed and left-handed, etc. So what is the purpose of using their sexual identification as a marker if it has no bearing on their accomplishments?

Imagine if we swapped out “LGBT” for “left-handed white people” in his proclamation: “Left-handed white Americans have enriched and strengthened the fabric of our national life. From business leaders and professors to athletes and first responders, left-handed white individuals have achieved success and prominence in every discipline. They are our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters, and our friends and neighbors. Across my Administration, openly left-handed, white employees are serving at every level.”

Now if Obama has said this you’d probably say it was a bit silly, even a tad bit racist. Why in the world would we need to praise people for traits that have no bearing on either their achievements or their worth as individuals?

All mature people understand that fallen, sinful humans also do good acts and make positive contributions to society because fallen, sinful people are all that the world has. There exists nothing but fallen, sinful people who experience disordered impulses and engage in immoral behaviors. We don’t honor our fellow men and women for those impulses and behaviors; we honor them for their good deeds.

It is justifiable to single out for special attention the accomplishments of a group defined by characteristics that carry no behavioral implications open to moral assessment and whose contributions are overlooked because of society’s ignorance or bigotry, like African Americans or the disabled. But homosexuality is not ontologically equivalent to race or disability, and volitional homosexual conduct is a legitimate object of moral assessment.

Obama is using his power, his position, and this proclamation to make a fallacious association between good deeds and homosexuality. It is an exploitative stratagem to normalize homosexuality. Associate homosexuality with something positive like creativity, compassion, or self-sacrifice, and eventually the good feelings society has for creativity, compassion, or self- sacrifice will be (irrationally) transferred to homosexuality or cross-dressing.

It’s critical to understand the fallacious assumptions embedded in Obama’s declaration because these assumptions are promoted in many societal contexts, including public education. Homosexuals are not a category of humans in the same sense that racial minorities are a category of humans. Homosexuality is a sin disposition–not a morally neutral condition like skin color. When homosexuals have contributed something of value to society, those contributions should be noted. Their sexual predilections, however, are worthy of neither honor nor mention.

My sense and the sense of those who are similarly engaged in the cultural debate about homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder is that far too many conservatives refuse to participate in this critical debate for a number of reasons, including an unbiblical and selfish unwillingness to experience persecution (aka cowardice); an unbiblical unwillingness to experience righteous anger; and a (perhaps willful) ignorance of the cultural implications of their indefensible passivity even as perversion is promoted as righteousness through our public schools, courts, legislatures, news media, entertainment industry–and even the highest elective office in the United States.

Let your members of Congress know that allowing open homosexuality in the US military is bad public policy.

On January 27th, President Barack Obama delivered his first State of the Union address. Conservative pundits were hoping that the President would signal a move toward a more centrist platform. That hope was not realized.

Instead of a reconciler who could govern from the center, he seemed to insist on radical Leftist ideology. Obama’s pledge to overturn the Military Eligibility Law of 1993 — known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — (a policy that governs homosexuals in the military) is desperately irresponsible. It would place the military in the strange position of actively recruiting personnel who intend to violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice (which prohibits certain forms of immoral sexual behavior).

The Washington Times reported on a poll conducted by the Military Officers Association of America in which it found support for the current “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy (16 percent) or an even stronger law excluding homosexuals from the military (52 percent). The same combined percentage, 68 percent, expressed the belief that repeal of the 1993 law would have a very negative effect (48 percent) or a moderately negative effect (20 percent) on troop morale and military readiness.

Take ACTION:  Send an email to President Obama and our Illinois U.S. Representatives and U.S. Senators, and ask them to NOT allow open homosexuality in the military.

Please forward this email to all of your friends.

Thank you for taking action.