The Obama Administration has announced that it is abandoning a controversial new “end-of-life” policy recently incorporated into new Medicare regulations. The Administrations says it is setting aside the plan, which would have reimbursed doctors for holding “advance care planning” discussions during annual “wellness” visits.

The policy was similar to language originally inserted by U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) into President Obama’s recently passed health care legislation. That language, which was developed by the pro-euthanasia group Compassion and Choices, was also abandoned after critics charged it would create federally funded “death panels.”

The New York Times reports that the Administration decided to eliminate the new “advance care planning” regulation because more people needed to have the opportunity to comment on it before it went into effect.

Obviously that wasn’t the original plan. Congressman Blumenauer, who is a supporter of assisted suicide, had sent a memo to his allies urging them to help keep the public in the dark.

“We would ask that you not broadcast this accomplishment out to any of your lists because e-mails can too easily be forwarded,” he stated in his memo. “Thus far, it seems no press or blogs have discovered it. The longer this regulation goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”

The pro-life community has been greatly concerned about federally funded end-of-life “counseling” because of the stridently anti-life philosophy of President Obama and his advisers. Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, a man known as the President’s “health care alchemist” and a chief architect of the President’s health care plan, has been an outspoken proponent of health care rationing for the elderly and the disabled. Dr. Emmanuel is also the older brother of former White House Chief of Staff and candidate for Chicago Mayor, Rahm Emanuel.

Dr. Emmanuel has stated in the past that government-managed health care should not provide services to individuals “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.” Dr. Emmanuel has included patients with dementia and children with learning disabilities on that list.

In the midst of the latest ruckus over senior citizen health care, the White House has announced that Dr. Emmanuel will be leaving his post as health adviser in the Office of Management and Budget.

Unfortunately, he is not leaving the Administration, but is returning to his former job as the Director of the bioethics department in the National Institutes of Health.

According to the New York Times, the infamous “death panels” that were removed from President Barack Obama’s final 2,000+ page Government Health Care bill have been revived stealthily by government bureaucrats. The restoration of these “death panels” is coming in the form of a Medicare policy that will “pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forego aggressive life-sustaining treatment.”

The reason why this is possible, as the New York Times puts it, is because “the laws [in ObamaCare] were so broad and complex that executive-branch regulators have wide leeway in determining what the rules should say and how they should be carried out.”

According to our friends at Liberty Counsel, the “voluntary advance care planning” language was hidden on page 238 of a nearly 700-page document, the implementation of which began on January 1, 2011. The language comes from U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), the author of the original end-of-life proposal. The New York Times reported an email from his office saying, “Thus far, it seems that no press or blogs have discovered it, but we will be keeping a close watch and may be calling on you if we need a rapid, targeted response. The longer this goes unnoticed, the better our chances of keeping it.”

For more information on the revival of the “death panels,” read “The ObamaCare Nightmare Before Christmas” by Jason Mattera and “Return of the Death Panel” by John Hayward.

Times are tough economically. I know you are careful where every penny is spent these days, as are we. Please know that the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) greatly appreciates every gift we receive — no matter the size.

In light of the current economic climate, and to help meet our financial needs, I’d like to encourage you to consider becoming an IFI Sustaining Partner.

If you have never given on a regular basis to our ministry, would you please consider a small monthly gift — as little as even $15, $25 or $50?

Thank you!!!

The United States Congress delivered a most unwelcome Christmas gift to the U.S. military when it voted to open the ranks of America’s Armed Forces to active homosexuals. The lame-duck session of Congress voted to repeal a federal law adopted in 1993 that declared that homosexual conduct is incompatible with service in the military.

The law overturned by Congress stated that a person who “engages in, attempts to engage in, has a propensity to engage in, or intends to engage in homosexual acts” is ineligible for service in America’s military branches. That law had codified military policy that has existed since the time of George Washington and the Continental Congress.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid rammed the repeal legislation through Congress in the final days before Christmas with the help of numerous lame-duck Congressmen who had just been repudiated by the voters. In so doing, they helped PresidentBarack Obama fulfill his campaign pledge to the homosexual community to reshape America’s military culture to accept homosexual conduct.

The repeal legislation was approved in the House by a vote of 250-175. The Illinois Congressional Delegation voted 13-5 in favor of this bill, including U.S. Representatives Bobby Rush, Jesse Jackson Jr., Daniel Lipinski, Luis Gutierrez, Mike Quigley, Danny Davis, Melissa Bean, Jan Schakowsky, Debbie Halvorson, Jerry Costello, Judy Biggert, Bill Foster, and Phil Hare voted in favor of the repeal.

The U.S. Senate approved the repeal bill by a vote of 65-31. Illinois’ two U.S. Senators, Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk voted in favor of allowing avowed homosexuals to serve in the Armed Forces.

How exceedingly tragic it is that our nation’s uniformed fighting forces, long known for high moral standards and personal integrity, have been politically coerced to embrace and endorse an immoral, unhealthy, and perverse lifestyle. How disturbing it will be to watch our nation’s young enlisted men and women compelled to participate in “retraining” and indoctrination in the supposed virtues of homosexual affections.

Pat Buchanan, in a recent commentary on Townhall.com, offered a telling perspective: “The least respected of American institutions, Congress, with an approval rating of 13 percent, is imposing its cultural and moral values on the most respected of American institutions, the U.S. military.”

Buchanan branded the Congressional action as a victory in the culture war for the “new morality of the sexual revolution of the 1960’s.” “While this new morality may be orthodoxy among our elites in the academy, media, and the arts, Middle America has never signed on and still regards homosexuality as an aberrant lifestyle, both socially and spiritually ruinous. Behind these beliefs lie the primary source of moral authority for traditionalist America: the Old and New Testaments, Christian doctrine, and natural law.”

Congress voted to homosexualize the U.S. military over the objections of the leaders of most military branches. Congressional leaders also chose to ignore the results of a survey of U.S. service members that revealed the damaging consequences of a change in military policy. Nearly a third of service members said that the presence of active homosexuals in the U.S. military would have a negative or very negative impact on morale and unit cohesion. Those numbers were much higher among combat forces, where soldiers are called upon to live in close personal quarters.

It would seem that the introduction of more sexual tension into U.S. service ranks is the last thing the military needs. A recent Defense Department study found that reports of sexual assaults at the three U.S. military academies rose 64 percent in the 2009-2010 academic year. Anuradha Bhagwati, the director of the Service Women’s Action Network, says the report “signals a lack of any real dedication by our military leadership to change an environment that is weakening our military.”

The survey of active service members also revealed that the forced change in the military culture could lead to a huge exodus of current service members. Nearly a quarter of those responding to the survey said the acceptance of homosexuality in the military would cause them to leave the service or seriously consider leaving. That number was as high as 38 percent among Marines. If the responses are correct, that could amount to as many as half a million service members looking for an early exit.

Richard Eubank, the National Commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, expressed dismay at the Congressional action. “The majority of the fighting and dying in our nation’s wars has always been done by the infantry, and if those at the tip of the spear have a problem with repeal, then it would behoove everyone to pay more attention to their concerns. Repeal advocates are focused primarily about pushing a social agenda about individual rights. National security, unit cohesion, and morale are the farthest things from their mind.”

Eubank also voiced concern about the impact of repeal on the volunteer nature of the U.S. military. “If implementation is to occur, it must be done cautiously and with the interests of the military and nation first and foremost; otherwise this social experiment could spell the end of America’s all-volunteer military, which is not a price this nation appears to be willing to pay.”

One of the gravest concerns about the change in the spiritual climate of the Armed Forces is the impact it will have on the service of military chaplains. Daniel Blomberg, litigation counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, asks, “What happens if a soldier confides to a chaplain that he is a homosexual? What happens when the chaplain responds according to the dictates of his faith and says that type of behavior — like other types of sexual immorality — is sin and therefore not in accordance with God’s will? It is likely that the chaplain will be open to a charge of discrimination based on ‘sexual orientation.”

Blomberg adds, “None of our troops, and certainly not our chaplains, should be forced to abandon their religious beliefs to continue their military service. None of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines should ever be made to choose between serving their country or obeying their God as a result of this damaging policy decision.”

The conscience rights of all members of the U.S. military will be under attack, and it appears that no member of the service, whatever their rank, will be immune. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is calling for the dismissal of the Marine Corps’ leading officer, Commandant GeneralJames Amos, because Amos dared to challenge President Obama’s crusade to homosexualize America’s military forces.

The strategy of homosexual activists to normalize homosexual behavior in America’s most respected institution is part of a larger campaign to radically subvert all social institutions, most particularly the institution of marriage. Within days of the repeal, the Washington Post wrote in an editorial: “Activists are hoping that the repeal gives them significant new leverage. For the first time they can argue that if the Army trusts gay men and women with rifles, why shouldn’t society trust them with wedding rings?”

It does not seem a coincidence that Vice-President Joe Biden celebrated Christmas Eve by pontificating that so-called “gay marriage” is inevitable in this country. Biden stated recently on Good Morning America that the Administration’s next goal is to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

The issue of homosexuals serving openly in the military is so complex that writing about it seems overwhelming.

First, there is the problem of reconciling both Article 125 of the Military Code of Justice and U.S. Code – Section 654 that strictly prohibit those who engage in homosexual acts or those who state that they are homosexual from serving in the military with the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy that serves as a defacto law superseding actual law.

“Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” implicitly says homosexuals can serve as long as they don’t openly acknowledge that they are homosexual. That’s like saying that company policy strictly bans the use of company computers to view porn, but employees can view porn as long as they don’t tell anyone. Either it’s permitted or it’s not.

Despite what some advocates of homosexuals serving openly in the military claim, military prohibitions against homosexuals serving in the military no more encourage deceit, than do laws prohibiting stealing encourage deceit. To claim that laws that prohibit certain behaviors encourage deceit is another way of saying people are always going to break laws. In this twisted logic, all laws encourage deceit because those who don’t want to abide by them willfully engage in deceit in order to do what they want without incurring the consequences.

We can’t always prevent lawbreakers from breaking the law, but that unfortunate reality should not compel society to repeal laws. In other words, society ought not repeal laws in order that those who refuse to obey them are freed from the consequences of lawbreaking. The fact that throughout history there have been homosexuals who enlisted in the military in violation of military law that prohibits them from serving should not compel the military to rescind the law.

Removing the prohibition against allowing openly homosexuals from serving in the military will result in a whole host of other problems, among which are the following:

• It will result in discomfort among some soldiers with engaging in private activities like showering with men who admit to being sexually attracted to other men. Yes, throughout history homosexual men have served in the military, but heterosexual men are unlikely to be uncomfortable showering with homosexual men when they don’t know they’re homosexual.
• If military law is changed to allow openly homosexual men and women to serve, there will undoubtedly be an increase in homosexual activity in the military. To argue otherwise is either disingenuous or naïve.
• Coercion between openly homosexual military officers and their subordinates will likely increase.
• Some men may choose not to enlist or re-enlist if they will be compelled to serve with openly homosexual men.
• Romantic affiliations will develop which will likely affect combat decisions.
• The military will eventually have to provide military housing for same sex couples.

(For more on the potential impact of allowing openly homosexual men and women to serve in the military, click HERE to read an editorial by Richard H. Black, retired chief of the Army’s Criminal Law Division, who as a marine pilot flew 269 combat missions in Vietnam.)

Political commentator Chris Matthews made yet another silly statement on his Sunday morning program on Feb. 7 when he said that anyone who wants to serve in the military should be allowed to do so. Apparently, neither the mission of the military nor its needs must be allowed to supersede the almighty desires of any particular individual. His statement reflects the troubling thinking of so many Americans who now believe that any good or desirable thing constitutes the object of a right. If they see something they want or something they want to do, many people believe they have a Constitutional right to have it or do it.

Homosexual couples want to participate in the heterosexual institution of marriage, so same sex marriage is now their “right.” Homosexual couples who are designed to be sterile want babies, so having babies is now their “right.” Men who are sexually attracted to other men want to serve in the military, so now serving in the military is their “right.”

Homosexuals, and increasingly “transgenders,” are compelling society through erroneous and unproven ontological assumptions to radically redefine foundational societal institutions. All of their efforts are based on acceptance of the deceit that homosexuality is ontologically equivalent to skin color or other immutable conditions that have no behavioral moral implications open to moral assessment.

Homosexuality is not by nature equivalent to skin color, nor is it morally equivalent to heterosexuality. Conservatives especially need to recognize how much they have appropriated the absurd proposition that homosexuality is akin to race, and they need to stop treating it as if it were.

After reading about a recent poll that reveals that the opinions of both civilians and younger military personnel are shifting in favor of allowing openly homosexual men and women to serve in the military, I found myself wondering why the views are changing so dramatically. Chris Matthews posed that question to his guests MSNBC correspondent Norah O’Donnell, New York Times writer Andrew Sorkin, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker, and Time Magazine assistant editor Michael Duffy, and received surprisingly insubstantial, question-begging answers.

In response to Matthews’ question, “Why have attitudes (on homosexuals serving in the military) changed since Bill Clinton confronted that issue back in ’93?” O’Donnell said “I think there’s greater acceptance.”

Sorkin said, “The world’s changed, but I’m going to say it’s about social networking, it’s about the Internet. I think so many people are so much more open in a whole new way than they’ve ever been, and therefore people who were unaccepting before now see it in a whole different way.”

Kathleen Parker said, “we parents have raised our kids to not be judgmental and to be accepting of gays. We all know more gay people than we used to, or think we didn’t know before.”

Duffy said, “the reason is that our teenagers are just 100 times more tolerant than their parents about everything.”

What these responses brought to mind was one of Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts: “One day one of my little nephews came up to me and asked if the equator was a real line that went around the Earth, or just an imaginary one. I had to laugh. Laugh and laugh. Because I didn’t know, and I thought that maybe by laughing he would forget what he asked me.”

Parker responded by saying that children have been raised to be less judgmental, which really means that many have switched their judgment from homosexual acts are immoral to the judgment that homosexual acts are moral. Does Parker really want people to stop judging between right and wrong, or does she want people to make moral judgments with which she agrees. Does she want people to be non-judgmental when it comes to racist behavior, or adult consensual incest, or corporate malfeasance?

What none of Matthews guests did was to offer an account of the reasons why society’s judgments are changing, which is the crux of the matter. Has it happened through careful study of the best thinkers writing on the subject of morality, sexuality, the needs of the military, or the place of institutional disapproval in maintaining a healthy society?

Or have other factors and forces altered the judgments of society:

• Have judgments shifted through the relentless spate of images and ideas promulgated through music, films, novels, plays, essays, the news media, advertising, and public education that implicitly and explicitly affirm unproven assumptions about homosexuality?
• Have judgments shifted as a result of the absolute censorship in public schools of the writing of scholars who offer thoughtful, erudite expositions of conservative perspectives on the nature and morality of homosexuality?
• Have public judgments shifted as a result of relentless ad hominem attacks on anyone who dares to say publicly that volitional homosexual acts are immoral?
• Have public judgments shifted as theologically orthodox churches cowardly retreated from engaging in this public debate and from equipping their members to engage in it?

The tragic reality is that the affirmation of openly homosexual men and women serving in the military reflects not only society’s acceptance of the fallacious claim that homosexuality is analogous to skin color/race, but also of society’s rejection of any standards regarding sexual morality:

• Marriage has been severed from sex, and from procreation, and from childrearing, and increasingly from “gender.”
• Sex has been severed from marriage, procreation, childrearing, and “gender.” Polyamory-or as polyamorists like to call it, “ethical non-monogamy”-is increasingly visible and likely increasingly practiced.
• Fornication and co-habitation are not merely accepted; they’re expected.
• Homosexuality is everywhere promoted as normal and good.
• Exhibitionism is common on reality shows, primetime comedies and dramas, films, music videos, and college campuses.
• And paraphilias, also known as fetishes, are played for laughs on sitcoms.
• Even lighthearted references to and depictions of incest have appeared in television programs and films.

Why wouldn’t a generation weaned on positive images of sexual perversion and immorality support openly homosexual men and women serving in the military?

What society needs to think seriously about is whether some forms of institutionalized disapproval of sexual immorality through laws or policy serve a good and necessary social function.

Take ACTION:  Contact President Obama, our Illinois U.S. Reps. & Sens., and ask them to NOT allow open homosexuality in our military.