David E. Smith, Executive Director of the Illinois Family Institute, denounces the enactment of “civil unions” by a lame duck session of the Illinois General Assembly which is already affecting the civil rights of others, specifically people of faith opposed to homosexuality. 

For the first time in Illinois’ history, on June 1, 2011, 2 men or 2 women will be able to unite in a “civil union” and be officially recognized by the State of Illinois. “Civil Unions” are, in reality, same-sex marriages. Thirty or more homosexual couples will converge on Grant Park in celebration on June 2nd. 

“What is happening here in Illinois is a tragic attempt by radical forces to advance a political agenda by using the authority of the government to validate wrong and unhealthy relationships,” said Smith. “Unfortunately, this social experiment will have a ripple effect on our culture that will touch every American and, most tragically, our children:

• Homosexuality will be taught as normal behavior to children in schools; 
• Political lawsuits and administrative actions will be used to intimidate, silence, and coerce individuals and organizations that object to special legislation for those who self-identify as homosexuality; 
• Disrespect for real marriage will grow as politicians embrace the “civil unions” compromise, and straight couples will exploit these laws as a substitute for marriage.

At a time when our state government and nation should be upholding natural marriage as the ideal and healthiest environment for raising children, it is a travesty that our elected officials chose instead to create a marriage-like institution that legally redefines the very meanings of “spouse” and “family.” 

“The government has no reason to provide affirmation or benefits to relationships that do not serve the public good; and relationships based on same-sex attraction and volitional homosexual acts do not per se serve the public good. Lawmakers should be looking at ways to strengthen the natural family, not undermine it.

“The state of Illinois has a compelling interest to recognize, protect and promote the God-ordained institution of marriage through legal benefits, as it is the best environment to raise the next generation,” said Smith. “The state has no compelling interest in legally recognizing homosexual relationships.” 

For more information, contact Illinois Family Institute at 708-781-9328

This should be a Saturday Night Live skit, but, oh no, this is real life in the mixed up, muddled up, shook up world of “Lola” and Cook County.

Chicago’s homosexual newspaper the Windy City Times reports the following:

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart announced that Cook County Jail has instituted a policy for housing transgender detainees based on their gender identity, rather than birth sex.

The policy became effective on March 21. It is thought to be the first of its kind in the United States.

Particularly with this issue, we wanted to do it right,” Dart told Windy City Times, adding that “medical and sociological” concerns for transgender people “even superseded security issues.”

The seven-page policy mandates that transgender detainees be allowed to consult with a “Gender Identity Panel” of physicians and therapists before being placed into male or female housing. It also directs correctional staff to allow transgender people to wear clothing/ own hygiene products consistent with their gender identity. Further, it requires that corrections staff, physicians, and therapists undergo gender-related sensitivity training administered by the sheriff’s department….

[T]he new policy includes clinical information on gender identity disorder, a glossary of terms and, most significantly, a recommendation that transgender people be placed in accordance with their identity (as opposed to genitalia). Dart hopes the policy will be adopted elsewhere and said it will be featured on the Department of Justice website… .

So who, pray tell, is footing the bill for the “Gender Identity Panel” with whom the gender-confused detainees get to consult? And who is footing the bill for the mandatory sensitivity training administered to corrections staff, physicians, and therapists?

Here’s another pragmatic thought: Does anyone actually believe that women who wish they were men will want to be detained in the men’s facility at Cook County Jail? Doubtful. What we’re really talking about then is housing men who wish they were women in the women’s facility at Cook County Jail. Men who wear women’s cosmetics and women’s clothing are, in reality, men. Even men who take female hormones and have their penises amputated are, in reality, men. Why should female detainees have to room with seriously confused men?

Owen Daniel-McCarter, attorney with the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois, objects to the use of the term “Gender Identity Disorder” in the new policy, arguing that it is offensive to label “transgender people has (sic) having a disorder,” even though this is the clinical designation assigned by the American Psychiatric Association. No matter. To radicals like Daniel-McCarter, doctrinaire ideology takes precedence over reality and truth. Sexual anarchists seek to manipulate language in an attempt to convince the public that cross-dressing and elective amputations of healthy body parts are not signs of disordered thinking. These rhetorical stratagems must be opposed at every turn, whether they occur in anti-discrimination and anti-bullying laws and policies, comprehensive sex ed, or fatuous, costly jail policies.

Beware of the schoolyard – jihad, not so much

When I was a kid, I got bullied fairly frequently because I was short. So my parents enrolled me in a judo class. After a few unexpected flips in the hallways, the bullies left me alone. Confronting bullies helps build character.

There are times, of course, when judo won’t work and the best strategy is to avoid the jerks or sic a teacher or principal on them. Almost everybody has a story. But now, bullying has become a federal issue.

Rep. Jackie Speier is on a crusade to use the U.S. government to stamp out bullying in America. The Northern California Democrat wants to deny federal funds to schools that won’t keep a tally of bullying incidents against special-needs children. In other words, the federal government is going to whip local schools into line using its vast fiscal powers. It’s a politically correct form of bullying. To oppose this abuse of power implies you actually want these poor kids to be harassed.

I’m not sure where the Constitution legitimates such a sweeping directive, but it’s probably in one of the penumbras emanating from the Preamble’s General Welfare Clause. Once you create giant Washington bureaucracies, you can use the clause to justify almost anything – from forcing poison light bulbs down our throats to dictating schoolyard behavior.

Every so often, this power is put to good purpose, as when Sen. Jesse Helms used a similar threat to prevent schools from kicking out the Boy Scouts. But he was defending the Scouts’ constitutional rights, not creating a vehicle for social engineering. The real solution is to get rid of the oxymoronic Department of Education, not to empower this Jimmy Carter creation in hopes of advancing conservative ideals. It creates too many bullies.

Ms. Speier’s new school-bullying idea mirrors President Obama’s recent interest in the subject. On March 10, he held an “anti-bullying” conference at the White House. Besides “safe schools czar” Kevin Jennings, invitees included anti-Christian homosexual activist Dan Savage, who attained some fame in 2000 for claiming to have licked the doorknobs of pro-family Republican candidate Gary Bauer’s office in hopes of giving Mr. Bauer the flu. Now that’s the kind of participant we should have at every anti-bullying conference, if only as a role model.

As Illinois Family Institute writer Laurie Higgins relates, “Savage said the conference was ‘of tremendous symbolic importance’ but also complained, ‘What was never addressed is when the parents are the bullies.'”

Coming next: federal mandates for “parent education”?

The government, under the auspices of three federal agencies, has created a website dedicated to ending bullying. Paraphrasing Mrs. Higgins, here’s the site’s underlying philosophy: 1) Homosexual behavior is equivalent to race, 2) any kind of sex is morally positive, and 3) expressing any conservative moral beliefs leads to bullying. What a neat formula for suppressing dissent.

Speaking of bullying, Ms. Speier was in rare form along with other Democrats on March 10 at Rep. Peter King’s Homeland Security Committee’s hearing on radicalization of U.S. Muslims.

She rebuked the committee for focusing on Islamic terror instead of expanding it to “Christian” terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or the violent anti-abortion group Army of God, and she assailed some witnesses.

Melvin Bledsoe, whose son Carlos was recruited into Islam and has been charged with murdering one soldier and wounding another on June 1, 2009, at a U.S. military recruiting center in Arkansas, was having none of it. He shot back:

“I’m wondering how did [the lawmakers] get on the commission to speak about some of the things they’re speaking about.” As for radical Muslims, he added, “We’re worried about stepping on their toes, and they’re talking about stamping us out.”

The day before the hearing, Ms. Speier laid into Mr. King, calling him a racist.

“This is one member’s bias that he is now putting forth as the policy of this country, and there are going to be many of us who will shout out and call him out on abusing his role as chair and abusing the Congress of the United States for whatever his personal bias is,” Ms. Speier told the San Francisco Chronicle. “To pinpoint Muslims as if they’re the only category – it’s wrong, it’s discriminatory, it’s racist and inappropriate.”

Then she delivered this non sequitur: “Hearings aren’t supposed to be judged before they’re held. They’re supposed to be illuminating.”

Say what? Well, as an editor friend of mine often said, “Why does everything have to make sense?”

Given Ms. Speier’s fiery demeanor toward anyone who conveys the idea that radical Islam is more of a threat than, say, a Baptist ladies knitting club, it’s no wonder Los Angeles County Sheriff Leroy D. Baca almost fell over himself praising Islam as a religion of peace and unloading nuggets like this:

“The Muslim community is no less or no more important than others, as no one can predict with complete accuracy who and what will pose the next threat against our nation.”

As I said, watch out for those ladies and their knitting needles. OK, that’s not fair. Ms. Speier and Sheriff Baca were talking about groups that actually commit violence. But given the threat we face, the moral equivalence is still stunning.

Another witness Ms. Speier bullied was moderate Muslim Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, chairman of the American Islamic Forum, who at considerable personal risk warned the committee that most Americans are unaware of the extent of homegrown Muslim extremism.

Ms. Speier questioned Dr. Jasser’s right to speak for Muslims and noted that although she attended a Catholic church every Sunday, she herself would not be qualified to address the church’s pedophile priest scandal. Yes, she said that. You can’t make this stuff up. Liberals will outdo your wildest stereotypes.

In the space of a few minutes, Ms. Speier trashed her own church, assailed brave witnesses and committed moral equivalence by invoking “Christian” terrorism as if it were as big a threat to America as the ongoing jihad.

She probably means well. Bullies are bad business. And perhaps she is well-qualified to take on the school bullying issue. It takes one – well, you know the rest.

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?

Illinois Family Institute has written a number of columns over the years about the liberal bias of the news media — especially the media in Chicago. This left-wing, anti-Christian bias was never more apparent to me than on Monday as our well-publicized press conference was snubbed by all but one major news outlet. Any doubt about the Chicago media’s lack of journalistic integrity and fairness has been removed.

More than 40 African-American religious and political leaders gathered on Monday, January 17, 2010, Martin Luther King Day, to decry the misrepresentation of King’s legacy and the noble civil rights cause. With the recent passage of the “civil unions” bill in Springfield, one would think that this was a fairly big story. We do, and that is why IFI hired a videographer to record the entire event.

Click HERE to watch the video segment of Pastor Al Cleveland of Rehoboth Empowerment Christian Church in Bensenville. Pastor Al also serves on IFI’s Pastoral Advisory Council.

Sadly, the only major secular news outlet in Chicago that covered this important event was WBBM radio and television (CBS). While Univision and WGN News attended the press conference, apparently the producers decided it didn’t fit their messaging on the issue of so-called “gay rights.”

None of Chicagoland’s major newspapers covered the event:

Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Daily Herald, and the Southtown Star

Neither did the following local television news networks:

NBC, ABC and Fox Chicago

We should not be surprised by this mainstream media blackout, after all, most of these same corporations participate in Chicago’s annual “gay pride” parade — as debauched a public event as there is in the city — so it is no secret which side they are on in this contentious issue.

While their profession exhorts them to journalistic integrity, their political, social and emotional inclinations pull them in the opposite direction, and it is the people of Chicago and Illinois who have suffered from this media irresponsibility. The Chicago media have become part of the homosexual lobby through their servile pandering to this immoral and medically dangerous agenda.

We’ve known for years how dismissively the Chicago media covers conservatives — especially Christian conservatives — and the moral issues that concern and motivate us. Their bias when covering the issues of abortion, homosexuality, decency, and true Christian faith is painfully clear and consistent. Despite the fact that the state and nation are clearly divided on these controversial issues and that a large percentage of news consumers hold conservative opinions, the media smugly continue to operate as if there is only one credible side to report: the liberal side.

The lack of objectivity and fairness is oppressive, and we must not allow ourselves to become victims to the media’s leftist agenda. That’s why I’ll be asking for your help to disseminate this wonderful event and the message it proclaims to all corners of the state.

Even when the media do squeeze in a few seconds or a few sentences that present the conservative, pro-life or pro-family side of a debate, negative adjectives and descriptors are often used to describe our position. Words like “anti-abortion” and “anti-gay” negatively frame our side of the debate while those on the other side are regularly referred to as “pro-choice” and advocates of “gay rights.” A few weeks ago, political reporter Mike Flannery went so far as to call those of us who opposed SB 1716 “foes of civil unions.” (How about proponents of natural marriage, Mike.)

One of our post-press conference speakers was my good friend Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, who said:

Monday’s Martin Luther King day press conference — which was more of a pastor’s rally affirming God’s design for marriage and family — was one of the most uplifting and heartwarming events I have ever attended. To hear truth affirmed so passionately by so many pastors — who are sick and tired of politicians bending to the demands of homosexual activists — was good for the soul!

I heartily commend Dave Smith and Illinois Family Institute for putting together this wonderful event. And I hope and pray that it will bear fruit for years to come. To that end, I’m going to do all I can to make sure as many of my fellow Illinois citizens see the tape of this pastors’ event — because I’ve had it with the secular liberal media deciding for us what is news and what’s not!

I hope you will join Peter and me in circumventing the media by getting this information out far and wide.  Please stay tuned as we finalize the editing of the event.

“Civil Unions” Bill Not Analogous to Civil Rights Movement

For years, homosexual activists and their allies have manufactured and exploited an absurd and offensive analogy between homosexuality and race in order to advance their moral and political agenda. Homosexualists use the heroic battle to end racial discrimination as a Trojan Horse to eradicate moral judgments about homosexual conduct. All civilized persons — particularly African-Americans — should be outraged. Regarding this analogy, homosexualists have no ethical commitments to either logic or evidence, and they have no regard for the black family in America that already experiences tremendous struggles.

Homosexualist organizations have one goal that reigns supreme over all others: the eradication of the true moral belief that homosexual acts are profoundly immoral. And they are willing to exploit the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement in order to achieve their morally dubious and intellectually vacuous goal.

Illinois State Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago) cited Dr. Martin Luther King’s description of “the long arc of the moral universe that bends toward justice,” saying that jettisoning the most enduring criterion of marriage -sexual complementarity- is the moral equivalent of “ending Jim Crow segregation laws.”

State Senator Michael Noland (D-Elgin) continued by saying dishonestly that “We have come far on this issue of Civil Rights and today good men and woman on both sides of the aisle should be able to unite behind this very straightforward issue.” This is dishonest in that the legalization of civil unions for homosexuals is anything but a “straight forward issue.”

Both State Representative Careen Gordon (D-Morris) and openly homosexual State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago) further exploited the flawed analogy by comparing same sex marriage to interracial marriage. They are in essence saying that opposition to discrimination based on an immutable, non-behavioral, morally neutral condition like race is equivalent to homosexuals’ fight to normalize and institutionalize deviant sexual relations. Rep. Gordon expressed a radical and heretical notion in her plea for civil unions, which is merely a more publicly palatable term for same sex marriages. She described the passage of the civil union bill as doing “God’s work.”

If our elected leaders truly hold as ignorant an understanding of the nature of homosexuality as evidenced in these statements, then they don’t deserve their positions. These statements reveal the utterly foolish, erroneous, and offensive idea that homosexuality is equivalent in nature to race. There is no evidence or justification to warrant such an analogy.

Race or skin color is 100 percent heritable, absolutely immutable and carries no behavioral implications whatsoever. Homosexuality, on the other hand, is defined by desire and voluntary sexual acts that are open to moral assessment. There is no research proving that homosexuality is immutable or biologically determined. In addition, homosexuality carries inherent behavioral implications that all societies throughout history have deemed immoral.

Homosexual activists and their allies are advancing their subversive moral and political goals by hijacking the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy. They seek to intimidate philosophical conservatives into silence by associating them with racism and bigotry. Volitional homosexual acts are not equivalent to race. And morals beliefs regarding volitional homosexual conduct are not equivalent to racism.

Philosophical conservatives and all people who are committed to rational argument need to openly, courageously, and persistently challenge the flawed analogy that suggests that homosexuality is equivalent to race, for this is the assumption upon which the entire homosexual-normalization house of cards is built.

We should not allow the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to be exploited for the destructive purposes of the movement to normalize homosexuality and demonize traditional moral beliefs.

By now many have read about the incident that took place in a suburban Detroit high school. Teacher Jay McDowell expelled a student from his economics class because the student said that due to his Catholic faith, he does not accept homosexuality. This took place during one of the many homosexuality-affirming events that take place in public schools. This one, “Ally Week,” is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, as is the Day of Silence.

Not only did McDowell expel the student from his class, but according to written student accounts to the administration, McDowell shouted at the student; slammed the classroom door; called an administrative office in front of the entire class to say that the expelled student had engaged in “discrimination”; spent class time expressing his personal philosophical, political, and moral beliefs; and showed an “anti-bullying” film, rather than use his period to teach economics.

As a result of his actions, McDowell was disciplined.

So, what does discrimination, harassment, and bullying look like to the teacher of tolerance, Jay McDowell?

According to an Associated Press (AP) report, McDowell is filing a complaint with the district over his discipline, saying “I want to force adults to look at what situation we’ve created…I would really like us to be more aggressive in our policing of harassing and bullying.”

There, McDowell has said what those of us who are familiar with the beliefs and goals of the Left have been trying to warn the public about: Homosexual activists and their ideological allies in public schools believe that expressing conservative moral beliefs about homosexual acts is harassment and bullying.

As a result of their expansive view of harassment and bullying, they presumptuously and self-righteously believe they have the right to try to change the moral beliefs of other people’s children and to censor the expression of them.

Here is what McDowell had to say on a Detroit television program regarding free speech:

I think it was a teachable moment. And it was a teachable moment to show that you can have whatever religious views you want, which is very important, but there are certain things that we don’t say in the classroom. And there a certain things that we still don’t say in the public sphere.

Although this a remarkable thing to hear from anyone, from a government-employed educator who is supposed to foster critical thinking, respect for diversity, and the free exchange of ideas, it is also deeply troubling.

And it’s a view so extreme that even the ACLU disagrees. According to the same AP report, “Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) Legal Project” says that “‘those statements (of the expelled student)…were protected speech….The only way we’re going to create a better environment in schools is to start talking about this.'”

McDowell’s apparent belief that homosexual acts are moral is neither factual nor proven. His apparent belief that homosexuality is a condition analogous to race is neither factual nor proven. His apparent belief that disapproval of homosexual acts is equivalent to racial bigotry is neither factual nor true. And his belief that conservative beliefs should not be spoken in the “public sphere” is frightening.

Is it all expressions of moral disapproval that have no place in the public sphere or just those with which Jay McDowell disagrees? In Mr. McDowell’s moral universe, do expressions of disapproval of polyamory constitute discrimination, harassment, and bullying? Do expressions of disapproval of Catholic beliefs constitute religious discrimination and bullying of Catholic students? Perhaps Mr. McDowell could enlighten the rest of America as to which moral statements can be spoken in the public sphere.

In educational contexts, the study and free exchange of ideas is essential. Advocacy of personal beliefs on controversial topics by teachers must be explicitly prohibited. And discipline, ridicule, or excoriation of students who express beliefs with which teachers disagree must be punished. If anyone is guilty of harassment, discrimination, and bullying as well as unprofessionalism, it is Jay McDowell. McDowell’s punishment, a one-day suspension without pay, is insufficient.

Mr. McDowell and many other activist ideologues in public schools all around the country, including here in Illinois, should have mandatory training regarding how to demonstrate respect for intellectual diversity; how to foster critical thinking by having students spend equal time studying the best writing from the best scholars on both sides of controversial topics; and how to demonstrate professionalism by concealing personal values, beliefs, and biases.

Moreover, taxpayers should demand that school districts write policy that requires all of the above.

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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

Story link: MyFoxCHICAGO.com (The video has been moved to Fox’s archives)

This “news” report from Chicago Fox News is typical of how the bias of the dominant media trumps journalistic objectivity and balance. While I think Fox’s Political Editor, Mike Flannery has some good political insights and I am sure he is a nice enough fellow personally, the segment above is indicative of how the media play to one side of a debate instead of remaining neutral.

To his credit, Flannery interviews our good friend and pro-family attorney Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society. But notice that Flannery challenges Breen to clarify his objection to the pending “civil unions” bill in Springfield.

Next, Flannery interviewed three pro-gay politicians (four if you add Gov. Quinn’s sound bite), including the sponsor of the same-sex “civil unions” bill — openly gay State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago). Harris argues that homosexual partners should not be denied hospital visitation rights for sick or dying loved ones. Where was Flannery’s challenge on this one? While I personally believe this to be a straw-man argument, the fact is earlier this year (April 15th to be exact), President Barack Obama issued an executive order mandating that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of gay men and lesbians and respect patients’ choices about who may make critical health-care decisions for them. It is a non-issue.

So why didn’t Flannery challenge Rep. Harris on this highly emotional and specious appeal?

Lastly, you will note that Flannery refers to religious and pro-family opposition to this legislation as “foes.” This choice of language is purposeful and intended to communicate a negative connotation about our opposition to this radical political agenda. We are the enemy? Ironically, this label could be used to describe the pro-gay side of this debate — but I doubt that you will hear a main street media type refer to homosexual activists as “foes” of traditional marriage and morality anytime soon.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was at least one dominate news outlet that would uphold true journalistic standards?

The past year has seen the tragic suicides of five young men who identified as homosexual or who were taunted with homosexual epithets. I shouldn’t need to say this, but no one should be harassed or bullied — ever. Children should report bullying to their parents and school authorities; bullying policies should be strictly enforced; and if those who bully continue to bully despite disciplinary measures, they should be removed from schools.

As of the writing of this article, the circumstances surrounding the suicide of one of these young men, Raymond Chase, are still unknown. This account from The Daily Beast, however, seems to contradict the narrative that homosexualists like to spin:

Chase did not seem to struggle with his gay identity — he was out to his friends and family, and to a much larger and accepting social circle. [Ivonne] White (Chase’s best friend) described him as the life of the party, loved by many and hated by none; “Straight guys fist-bumped him. Everyone just wanted to be around him,” she said.

“This is something I want to say to everyone about Ray: He was never, ever bullied, and nobody was ever mean to him,” said White, who thinks Chase could have been a comedian he was so funny. Some of the world’s most beloved comedians, of course, are famous for concealing pain and depression with the Teflon of good humor.

White speculates that her friend might have been upset over a crush he had on a straight boy, a good friend, to whom Chase confessed his affection this summer. Though any romantic feelings were unrequited, the crush treated Chase with utter dignity and respect, before and after the admission. Still, Chase seemed haunted by his feelings, staying up until 4 a.m. the night before his suicide to talk to his roommate about that crush.

The most recent suicide took place at Rutgers University — not known as a bastion of conservatism — where freshman Tyler Clementi was secretly taped engaging in a homosexual act. The video was streamed live on the Internet and the public humiliation proved too much for Tyler: he leaped to his death off the George Washington Bridge.

Despite what homosexualists immediately pronounced, there is no indication that the taping was motivated by anti-homosexual animus. It seems at least possible that the students who engaged in this unconscionable act would have done likewise even if it had been a heterosexual act.

This heartrending tragedy raises many thorny issues that will not likely be addressed or addressed properly by the mainstream media:

• Perhaps it wasn’t the moral views about homosexuality of the students who filmed Tyler that were the problem, but rather that they have grown up in an invasive, obscene culture that has turned sexuality into a public spectator sport and kids into exhibitionists. Just look at the television shows and films that our children watch and the photos that teens post on their Facebook pages to understand better how they view sexuality and modesty.
• Perhaps Tyler felt justifiable shame for both engaging in a shameful act and then having this act made public — and was offered no help in dealing with his impulses, his actions, or his shame. Christian apologist, Ravi Zacharias argues persuasively that a society that no longer feels shame is doomed. The question is not whether shame is good and necessary for quite obviously it is both. The question is, for which actions should we feel shame.
• Perhaps if Tyler had not been taught the bleakly deterministic view that he was “born” homosexual, he would have had more hope for the future and would have been more likely to resist homosexual temptation.
• Perhaps if the culture had not filled Tyler’s head with titillating homosexual images and fallacious ideas, his conscience would have been stronger than his impulses.
• Perhaps if university life were not so decadent and hedonistic, students would not be engaging in sexual acts — heterosexual or homosexual — with the ease and frequency with which they do.

And now, homosexualists are exploiting this tragedy to push even more ferociously for “enumerated” anti-bullying resources in all public schools, including even elementary schools. As I wrote about here, “enumerated” anti-bulling resources, policies, and laws are those that specifically mention “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” (properly known as Gender Identity Disorder). The problem with these kinds of resources, policies, and laws is that they implicitly and explicitly affirm a number of controversial ideas regarding the nature and morality of homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder. In addition, they communicate the illogical idea that since bad feelings result from bullying and bad feelings result from hearing conservative moral beliefs, conservative beliefs must constitute bullying.

I asked a prominent homosexual activist and blogger if he would accept enumerated anti-bullying resources that made clear the distinction between moral disapproval and bullying. In other words, would he accept anti-bullying resources that explicitly stated that bullying refers to homosexual epithets and physical harassment, and that bullying does not refer to the belief or the expression of the belief that homosexual practice is immoral? He adamantly rejected such resources.

Ellen DeGeneres’ comments on a recent show reveal common homosexualist views: “There are messages everywhere that validate this kind of bullying and taunting and we have to make it stop.”

Someone should ask her what kinds of ubiquitous messages validate bullying and taunting. I suspect she would include orthodox Christian messages about homosexuality as the kind of message that validates bullying.

And here’s what Dr. Cindi Love writes on the Huffington Post:

The parents of these boys could not get school officials to do anything to protect them. This makes sense when you look at the community climate that is pervasive in much of our nation, where intolerance and exclusion and rejection are status quo for young people (and most adults) who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. These climates are fed most often on Sunday mornings in local pulpits where fundamentalists serve parishioners a steady diet of homophobia and bigotry that is sanctioned by the some of the largest churches in the world, notably Mormon, Catholics and Evangelical mega-churches that fund anti-gay programs….

That’s where we are in our country right now — schools and churches full of unbridled bullying and homophobic rhetoric leading to violence. The outcomes are actually very predictable. Children and teenagers are going to die. Grownups are going to die. Some will take their own lives in despair. Others will be killed by people who identify as Christians who believe the Bible tells them it is ok to rid the world of homosexuals and abortionists.

I believe that most of the murderers will have grown up in schools and Sunday School classes where it was ok to call Asher a faggot in gym class or on the way to Communion. One of the young boys who tormented Asher was a “born-again Christian” who performed mock gay sex acts on Asher while observed by his peers and his teacher.

Dr. Love provides no quotes from Mormon, Catholic, and Evangelical mega-church leaders as evidence for her scurrilous claims. I know many Christians who believe homosexual acts — along with all other non-marital sex acts — are immoral. I am familiar with the writings of a fair number of theologians, all of whom believe that God condemns homosexual practice. And yet I don’t know a single one who would sanction “unbridled” or bridled bullying, violence, or ridicule. Those who truly love God abhor evil.

I know of no Mormon or Catholic churches or Evangelical mega-churches that preach homophobia and bigotry, unless by “homophobia” and “bigotry,” Dr. Love is referring to Old Testament and New Testament proscriptions regarding homosexuality. I wonder if Dr. Love believes moral disapproval of polyamory constitutes “polyphobia” and bigotry. And I wonder if her disapproval of Christian orthodoxy constitutes “Christophobia”?

Even closer to home, Chicago’s homosexual newspaper, the Windy City Times, recently criticized IFI for opposing homosexuality affirming propaganda in public schools:

Part of the climate making ISSA (Illinois Safe Schools Alliance) and other groups’ efforts toward protecting youth more difficult is pronounced opposition from conservative groups like the Tinley Park-based Illinois Family Institute (IFI). When IFI learned of plans for an LGBT-inclusive development program sponsored by ISSA at Beye Elementary School in Oak Park earlier this year, the group initiated an e-mail campaign criticizing both Beye administrators and the ISSA.

Laurie Higgins, director of the IFI’s Division of School Advocacy, wrote a scathing criticism, dated Jan. 14, of Sullivan’s (the director of ISSA)development program on the group’s website.

“Concerned taxpayers, parents, future parents, and especially fathers, need to respond to this insidious attempt to capture the hearts and minds of children,” Higgins wrote. “‘Safe schools’ initiatives are the Trojan horse for getting subversive theories on the nature and morality of homosexuality into our schools.”

This is where our silence and cowardice have led us: To homosexual activists, an effort to warn parents about the presence of homosexuality affirming resources in elementary schools constitutes a “scathing criticism.” That should be a shocking cultural change.

Further, Dr. Kelly Ducheny, director of behavioral health services for the Howard Brown Health Center, “one of the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) healthcare organizations,” believes that opposition to pro-homosexual resources in elementary schools “contributes to the troubling environment LGBTQ youth face.” In other words, in the view of Dr. Ducheny, public schools should actively work to change the moral beliefs of all students.

Public schools must never be permitted to teach either implicitly or explicitly that homosexual attraction is normal, good, or healthy, nor must they be permitted to teach that homosexual acts are moral. Those are subjective, non-factual, unproven beliefs, and as such, government employees have no ethical or pedagogical justification for teaching them. Something is terribly wrong when elementary school children are told that perverse behavior and families led by homosexuals are things to be celebrated.

If students who identified as paraphiliacs, or apotemnophiliacs, or polyamorists, or pedophiles were being bullied, no public educator would ever consider combating the bullying problem by affirming their impulses and behaviors. Public educators would seek ways to end bullying that do not affirm disordered impulses and immoral acts. The fact that some believe homosexuality is the ontological equivalent of race and the moral equivalent of heterosexuality does not justify government schools endorsing those beliefs.

Tragedy and conflict are inevitable when public educators and the mainstream media relentlessly foist images of deviance on the public and attempt to coerce everyone to accept their moral assumptions or remain silent.

It’s curious that while positive images of homosexuality have flooded American culture for decades and while countless public schools propagate liberal messages about homosexuality, disapproval of and despair about homosexuality persists. Could it be that no amount of homosexuality affirmation can eradicate the belief that homosexuality is wrong because that belief is written on man’s heart and woven into the fabric of man’s physical being?

It’s sad that anyone experiences same-sex attraction. It’s sadder still that society tells them it’s okay to act on such feelings. But what is saddest of all is that young people suffer despair so unbearable that they end their own lives when real hope is within their grasp.

It’s not orthodox biblical views that harm children and teens. What harms them is that too few Christians have sufficient love and courage to offer them the only real path to truth and freedom. The answer to shame and bullying is not affirmation of sin. The answer is Christ: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1).

We’re all sinners. We all experience disordered desires that impel us toward immoral — that is, sinful — acts to which we often succumb. The good news is that the work of Christ on the Cross provides forgiveness of and freedom from bondage to sin. No, all sinful impulses won’t be eradicated in this life, but we are given power to resist them, and we are offered forgiveness which lifts the burden of shame. And in the body of Christ, we are given brothers and sisters whom God will use to strengthen us and pray for us as we seek to live holy lives of submission to a holy and loving God.

I wonder if anyone shared this with Tyler Clementi?

On Sunday, June 27th, one of the largest “Gay” Pride Parades in the country took place in the city of Chicago. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, supposedly 450,000 people lined the streets in the city’s Lakeview neighborhood for the 41st annual parade. The Chicago Tribune in its hard news section wrote, “While maintaining its reputation as a lively, often flashy event, the parade has also come to reflect broader acceptance of gays and lesbians. Marching politicians were followed by dancers from gay nightclubs and floats filled with employees of major corporations.” See complete article HERE.

The Tribune comments were more appropriate as commentary because the failing newspaper suggests the homosexual lifestyle is receiving “broader acceptance” from the general public. In reality, homosexuality and the alternative lifestyle represented by those who participated in and supported the parade is not a demonstration of wider support by the American people.

The truth of the matter is, if the establishment media, including the Chicago Tribune, related all the facts concerning homosexuality’s impact on our culture, the public would look at this behavior from a perspective other than something seen through rose-colored glasses.

For example, one of the major issues facing Illinois in 2010 concerns the $13 billion budget shortfall. Homosexuality is a very unhealthy lifestyle which costs taxpayers literally hundreds of millions of dollars in added health care costs. Yet you would be hard-pressed to find a story in the mainstream media in any major metropolitan area and especially Chicago which provides information on how homosexuality is taxing our economic system in a time of deep recession.

Would such a story be appropriate in a discussion of the unhealthy alternative lifestyles represented in the “Gay” Pride Parades held across the nation? In contrast, the establishment press goes out of its way to give the impression those who practice homosexuality live a carefree life, filled with boundless joy and “gaiety”.

To illustrate my point, the homosexual characters in nearly every television series are portrayed as happy, well-adjusted individuals who have a true grasp of the meaning of life. In reality, the homosexual lifestyle is very painful for those who are caught up in it. Studies conducted by the Center for Disease Control say male same-sex partners often die early. Rampant infidelity among those who practice this type of decadence leads to a hollow existence, compounded by the moral judgments this group applies to themselves.

Both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times say the police estimate 450,000 people lined the parade route in support of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals. However, many of those who looked upon the parade were there for prurient interest. Often the event features what a majority of Illinois residents would refer to as obscene behavior which is in clear violation of the city of Chicago’s obscenity and decency laws. The Chicago Police look the other way while parade participants and on-lookers perform simulated and actual sex acts in public and flaunt their nudity, all in the attempt to either titillate those along the parade route or draw the ire of innocent members of the public who are subjected to an x-rated display of the most vile and perverse behavior. And it is behavior. If every human being on the planet Earth suddenly became a homosexual, the human race would die out within a generation. In addition, there is evidence, as with any addictive behavior, individuals can and do overcome the curse of homosexuality, contrary to claims by gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals who assert they are “born that way”.

Holy Scripture tells us we are to love the sinner, but hate the sin and we are all sinners in God’s eyes. But if not for the precious gift of Christ’s salvation because of the blood He shed on the cross for the remission of sins, all of us, homosexual or not, would be without hope.

Many homosexuals claim their existence and purpose for living is more than simply a choice concerning how they have sex. Yet the image presented to the public by the establishment media and those who supported and participated in “Gay” Pride Parades–not only in Chicago, but across the country–sent a very different message. So, if it is not about the sex, what was the purpose for the parades? The clear message is that homosexuality is all about the sex. And it has to be. After all, it’s the “Gay” Pride Parade.

A blogger, called Red Blooded American, put it most succinctly when replying to a Chicago Sun-Times article by writing:

They certainly hurt themselves every time they dress up in @$$less chaps and a Speedo and scream to the top of their lungs “I’m no different from you”. If you want your lifestyle to be accepted as normal, then act normal. Until then, you will struggle with acceptance.

An excellent column was written by David Smith, Executive Director, Illinois Family Institute, prior to the parade. For complete article, click HERE.

Smith lists which politicians, corporations and media organizations supported the “Gay” Pride Parade by either marching or having a float in the parade or simply financially supporting the day’s activities. Those who support the pro-family agenda should take special note of this list. Are these politicians and groups representing all of us? Or do they have a politically correct agenda which is in stark contrast to the Judeo-Christian ethic which a vast majority of Americans still embrace?

The media is supposed to be a neutral observer, reporting on the facts. However, in recent decades, commentary has blended its way into the hard news sections of news entities which cross the lines of journalistic integrity. The media’s coverage of Chicago’s “Gay” Pride Parade, by some members of the press, was a perfect illustration of tainted journalism. Sadly, when this occurs, we are all losers.

Much to the chagrin of Bible-believing Americans, President Barack Obama officially proclaimed June “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month” month.

In Chicago, as in many other big cities in America, pandering politicians and so-called “news” organizations quickly line up to show their approval and support for those who identify themselves by their sexual behavior. Specifically, they march in Chicago’s “Gay Pride” Parade. This year, the parade is scheduled for Sunday, June 27 at noon in the Lakeview neighborhood.

Please note the public officials and the government agencies that are participating in this event: each entry costs taxpayers $175 plus the costs of the float and displays.

Aside from the celebration of perverse sexual behavior and the blatant disregard for obscenity and decency laws, the most disturbing aspect of this yearly event is the presence of children, both as participants and spectators. This year, the Chicago Pride Parade lineup includes not one, but two Chicago Elementary Schools.

In the past, adults have attempted to shield children from accidental exposure to immoral behavior: things their minds are too young to comprehend. Protecting their innocence was a priority. But now adults are purposely exposing children to degenerate conduct and celebrations of sexual perversity.

Don’t expect Chicago’s media to blow the whistle. No, they will be too busy dancing on their official floats in the parade. The dominate media in Chicago (and elsewhere) have given up on the idea of neutrality when it comes to issues as important and contentious as homosexuality, the meaning of family and marriage, and traditional religion. They have taken the side of homosexual activists and will not dare to challenge parade organizers in fear of being called intolerant, or worse, a bigot.

The media has intentionally discarded any notion of journalistic integrity when it comes to the divisive issue of homosexuality and counterfeit marriage and have, in turn, become fierce advocates.

Here is the list of those participating in the 2010 Gay “Pride” Parade:

Politicians and Political Groups

U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley
U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky

Gov. Patrick Quinn/staff
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan
State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (Candidate for U.S. Senate)

State Sen. President John Cullerton
State Sen. Jeff Schoenberg
State Sen. Heather Steans
State Sen. Harry Osterman

State Rep. Sara Feigenholtz
State Rep. Greg Harris
State Rep. Deborah Mell
State Rep. David Miller (Candidate for Illinois Treasurer)

Mayor Richard Daley’s Advisory Council on LGBT Issues
Mayors Bicycle Ambassadors
Chicago Alderman Tom Tunney
Chicago Alderman Scott Waguespack
Chicago Alderman Helen Shiller
Chicago Alderman Toni Preckwinkle (Candidate for Cook County Pres.)
Chicago Alderman Joe Moore
Chicago Alderman Roberto Maldonado
Chicago City Treasurer Stephanie Neely

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart
Cook County Clerk Dorothy Brown
Cook County Recorder of Deeds Eugene Moore
Cook County Democrats
43rd Ward Democratic Committeeman Michele Smith

Metropolitan Water Reclamation District

Alliance of Illinois Judges

Candidate Joel Pollak (9th Congressional Dist.)
Candidate Scott Lee Cohen (Independent for Governor)
Candidate Ann Williams (11th Dist. State Rep.)
Candidate Robyn Gabel (18th Dist. State Rep.)
Candidate Don Nowotny (Alderman of Chicago’s 46th Ward)
Candidate James Cappleman (Alderman of Chicago’s 46th Ward)

Illinois State Bar Association
Illinois Green Party
ACLU of Illinois
Log Cabin Republicans
Planned Parenthood

Government Agencies

Chicago Police Superintendent Jody P. Weis
Chicago Commission/Human Relations
Nettelhorst School (Chicago Public Elementary School)
Chicago Waldorf School (Chicago Private Elementary School)
Chicago Public Library
Oak Park Pub. Library
Gerber Hart Library (Chicago Public Library)
CTA
Chicago Dept. Public Health
Amtrak
Illinois Lottery
Anti Cruelty Society

Sports Organizations

Chicago Cubs
Chicago Force Football

Media

Chicago Public Radio
ABC7 Chicago
WLEY-FM
WGN-TV
KISS-FM
WGN-AM
WXRT
JACK-FM
WCPT
WLIT-93.9
WCIU-TV
WBBM-FM/B96
Chicago Tribune’s RedEye Newspaper
Chicago Grab Magazine

Local Businesses

ComEd
BMW Sherreville
Grossinger Auto Group
Cricket Communications
Old Town School of Folk Music
Royal Service Realty
Threadless.com
Fields Infinity
Paninos Cafe
Bill Jacobs Volkswagen
Fletcher Jones Volkswagen
Windy City Movers
New Town Alano
Saugatuck
Chicago OUtfit
Advocate Illinois Masonic Hospital
Alcala’s Western Wear
Mi Tierra Mexicana
Greenhouse Theater
Yoga Now
Nuns for Fun/Late Nite Catechism
Northside Toyota
Club Escape
Horizon Hospice
Campit Outdoor Resort
Chicago Apartment Finders
Brown Elephant
Chi-Town Squares
Standard Bank
John Baethke Plumbing
Maneuvers
Molitor Financial Group
Pretty Boy Enterprises
Animal Ark Vet Clinic
Fusion Radio Chicago
Evanston Subaru
Core Center
Le Passage
Pivot Point Academy
Broadway in Chicago
Sidetrack Nightclub
Barely Standing Rock Band
Hydrate Nightclub
Baton Show Lounge
Williams Inn
Jeffrey Pub
Miss Foozie
Resnick Auto
Robert Jeffrey Hair Salon
Folia Brasil
Lakeview East Chamber of Commerce
Chicago Smelts
Hunters Nightclub
Club Krave
Pop Goes the Gio
Chicago History Museum
Looking Glass Theatre
Bailiwick Theatre
Velvet Rope
Berlin Bar
PDQ Construction
After Dark
Marbles Brain Store

Corporations

United Way
Chipotle Mexican Grill
Holiday Inn Express
Orbits
Northrop Grumman
Google
MB Financial
Restoration Salon
Office Max
Astellas Pharma
Domicile Furniture
Chase Bank
Sears Holding
Bank of America
I-Go Car Share
Exelon Corp.
Frito-Lay
PepsiCo
LA Tan
Blue Cross/Blue Shield
Caribou Coffee
Miller Lite
Sara Lee
KPMG
Wrigley Co.

Pro-gay Organizations

Anti-Defamation League
Civil Rights Agenda
Ride for AIDS
Tree House Humane Society
Fillipino Pride
Just Married
GayMatchChicago.com
Active Transportation Alliance
Ram/Leather/Cupid/Banana
Chicago Gender Society
New Town Alano Club
Spin Nightclub
Gay Liberation Network
Lambda Legal
Windy City Black LGBT Pride
Dignity Chicago
Human Rights Campaign
PFLAG
Dykes on Bikes
Equality Illinois
Chicago NOW

Schools & Professional Organizations

University of Illinois
University of Illinois at Chicago
Illinois Bar Association
Indiana University GLBT Alumni
Unite Here
Chicago Boyz (University of Chicago)
Harrington College
Hoosier Honeys
Indiana University GLBT Alumni
Columbia College
ROTC Chicago
Roosevelt University
SEIU Council
Beta Gamma
Dartmouth Club
Harrington College

Religious Organizations

Chicago Theological Seminary
St. James Cathedral
Holy Convenant United Methodist Church
Countryside Unitarian Universalists
Chicago Coalition of Welcoming Churches
Congregation Or Chadash
Bodhi Spiritual Center
Night Ministry

Misc. 

Technosexual
TransAction
Mercy for Animals
Gay McHenry
Chicago Spirit Brigade
Howard Brown Health Center
Yelp.com
Asians & Friends Chicago
Windy City Cowboys
Chicago Prime Timers
Puerto Rican Cultural Center/VIDA SIDA
Howard Area Community Center
Join the Impact
Center on Halsted
Chicago Gay Hockey
Jane Addams Hull House

President Barack Obama is sold out to the radical homosexual agenda. One needs no more proof than his most recent pro-homosexual gesture, recognizing homosexual partners raising children in the official White House Proclamation on Father’s Day:

Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a step father, a grandfather, or caring guardian.

Yes, you read that right. The President of the United States of America went out of his way to pander to the homosexual community by recognizing two-daddy homes (read motherless) on Father’s Day.

What the President refuses to acknowledge is that the family is God’s idea. It is a sad fact that in this fallen world children are sometimes raised by single parents or grandparents, but being raised in a climate of homosexuality by two men — or two lesbian women — subjects children to a cruel social experiment and denies the real need and benefit of having both a mother and a father. It wasn’t too long ago that this type of a household would have been considered the ultimate in dysfunction. Today, our radically liberal president embraces this dysfunction as just another form of “family”. We really shouldn’t be surprised, this is part of the “change” he promised on the campaign trail in 2008.

Obama also used this cherished American holiday honoring fathers and fatherhood to make a statement about his views of when life begins. In the first few words, the Obama proclamation declares a father-child bond commencing “from the first moments of life.” In so doing, Obama refuses to acknowledge that life begins at the moment of conception, when a unique human life with unique human DNA, begins. Nor does he acknowledge the fact that millions of fathers view their unborn children in ultrasound pictures well before they are born.

It is also interesting to note that Pres. Obama and his leftist friends aren’t observing Gov. Mitch Daniel’s foolish call for a truce on the social issues. Instead the Left is happy to shove them in our face.

While so-called “moderates” and fiscal conservatives shrug their shoulders, the morality of the people and nation suffer.

Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration and member of Continental Congress warned us:

“Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure, which insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.”

Reject the morality of Christian conservatives and get instead the morality of the godless Left.

Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn asserts that the “stench of history” lingers in the air following the cancellation of a high school prom in Mississippi. It isn’t the “stench of history” but rather the stench of Zorn’s ignorance that hangs over his diatribe and pollutes both thought and discourse.

By suggesting that the virulent racism of the South in the 1960’s is morally equivalent to societal disapproval of homosexuality, Zorn perpetuates the ludicrous and offensive assumption that race is ontologically (i.e., by nature) equivalent to homosexuality. Zorn conveniently omits any discussion of this unproven assumption upon which his analogy depends. By omitting any such discussion, he frees himself from the burden of providing evidence or justification for the proposition that homosexuality is by nature analogous to race or for the proposition that disapproval of homosexuality is analogous to racism.

The only thing racism shares in common with the belief that volitional homosexual acts are immoral is that Zorn hates both. If that’s all that’s required for Zorn to see equivalence, then I guess in Zorn’s strange moral universe, disapproval of polyamory, adult consensual incest, or paraphilias is equivalent to racism, which in turn would make polyamory, adult consensual incest, and paraphilias ontologically equivalent to race. In reality, race or skin color is ontologically equivalent to biological sex–not to homosexuality.

The racist belief that African Americans were inferior and ought not to have interacted socially with whites was a malignant falsehood that needed to be exposed and eradicated. In contrast, the belief that boys ought not to have sex with boys or girls with girls is true and should be both publicly expressed and affirmed. This moral belief has nothing whatsoever to do with ignorance, bigotry, or hatred.

There are, broadly speaking, two categories of conditions: immutable conditions with no behavioral or moral implications, like race and sex; and conditions that are centrally defined by behaviors that are legitimate objects of moral assessment even if biological factors influence impulses. Such conditions would include polyamory, promiscuity, selfishness, drug use, aggression, pedophilia, Body Integrity Identity Disorder, Gender Identity Disorder, and homosexuality. From the behavioral/moral category, Zorn has plucked out homosexuality and decided to treat it like conditions from the immutable, non-behavioral category with no justification for doing so.

Implying an analogy between traditional beliefs on homosexuality and racism is specious in that the latter reflects negative judgments based on 100% heritable, immutable conditions that carry no behavioral implications. In contrast, it is widely debated, even within the homosexual community, whether homosexuality is immutable. Indeed, “queer theory” holds that sexuality is a fluid social construction. In addition, there is no research proving that homosexual attraction is biologically determined. Finally, homosexuality inherently involves acts that can be justifiably deemed immoral. Such moral conclusions do not constitute hatred of persons or bigotry.

Zorn errs not merely in assuming without proof that homosexuality is ontologically analogous to race, but in suggesting that the racist act of secretly relocating a prom in Birmingham, Alabama in 1965 in order to exclude an African American girl is analogous to openly canceling a prom because one student sought to violate morally legitimate policy regarding homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors.

Zorn concludes his commentary by deeming school policy that prohibits homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors as hatred of persons. Even identifying people as “homosexual” reveals ontological and moral assumptions. For those who share Zorn’s unproven assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality, identifying someone as homosexual means not only that same-sex desire and homosexual acts are experienced, but that they are central to and affirmed in his or her life.

In contrast, for those who hold conservative assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexuality, stating that someone is homosexual would mean only that someone experiences same-sex attraction and perhaps engages in homosexual acts. Traditional ontological and moral assumptions about homosexuality would not, however, suggest that those attractions are central to identity or worthy of affirmation.

Most people believe that polyamorous attractions, though unchosen and likely shaped by biology, should not be considered either central to identity or worthy of affirmation. And just as it would not constitute hatred of persons to prohibit polyamorous behavior at a school dance, it does not constitute hatred to prohibit homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors at a school dance.

Kathleen Parker is the “conservative” columnist liberals can count on to bash conservative personalities and causes. This is why her column is syndicated by the Washington Post and why she is featured on the Chris Matthews show.

Now, Parker has done her best imitation of lesbian MSNBC-TV commentator Rachel Maddow by writing a column bashing Uganda’s Christian majority for considering passage of a bill to toughen laws against homosexuality. This has been a Maddow cause for months, and Parker is now on the bandwagon.

When the MSNBC-TV host isn’t attacking Christians here and abroad for opposing homosexuality, she is promoting homosexuality in the U.S. military, as Post media critic Howard Kurtz was recently forced to acknowledge in a story about her preoccupation with this matter. But it’s really not surprising. Maddow’s show is an extension of her lesbian lifestyle. She is gay and proud and given free rein at MSNBC because of her role as the first “out” lesbian to host a show on a national cable news network.

It’s another “first” for the homosexual lobby and the media, which seem to go together.

Parker’s interest in the issue is not as clear but it may stem from her eagerness to please those who syndicate her column and quote her approvingly in the liberal press. This is how “conservatives” become mainstream media stars. However, her column is even worse in its accusations and charges than what we can find in the hysterical gay press. Parker finds those Christians opposed to homosexuality in Uganda and who base their opposition on the Bible to be in favor of “genocide.”

Losing complete control of her senses, Parker states that a proposed law against homosexuality constitutes “state genocide of a minority [that] is proposed in the name of Christianity…”

Once again, as we have documented on so many occasions, the death penalty in the bill is only one provision and is for “aggravated homosexuality” or serious crimes mostly involving homosexual behavior targeting children and spreading disease and death.

The potential genocide in Uganda is the AIDS epidemic that the government and Christian leaders are successfully combating. They understand, although Parker apparently does not, that homosexual behavior promotes the spread of AIDS.

There is a myth that AIDS in Africa has been spread exclusively through heterosexual conduct. But the internationally acclaimed medical journal The Lancet last August published the first scientific study showing that male homosexuals are more often than not infected with HIV than the general adult population in sub-Saharan Africa. The study is titled, “Men who have sex with men and HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Here, all of this is out in the open and well-known. Indeed, the Cato Institute held an event on Wednesday in which HIV-positive writer Andrew Sullivan strode to the podium during a conference on “gay conservatives” with ashes on his forehead from having attended a Catholic Church Ash Wednesday service. Sullivan was caught soliciting a partner for dangerous “bare-backing” sexual practices and has since “married” another man. This is “conservative?”

Like Kathleen Parker, he is still considered a “conservative” by some and was introduced by Cato executive David Boaz, a member of the Independent Gay Forum and pro-marijuana activist. Like Sullivan, Cato is also misleadingly described in the media as “conservative” too many times to mention.

Today, as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gets underway in Washington, D.C., participants will find a literature table established under official CPAC auspices from a homosexual Republican group calling itself GOProud. CPAC organizer David Keene, whose lobbying activities have been an embarrassment to the conservative movement, approved letting the gay rights organization officially attend the conference, despite complaints from traditional conservative groups such as Catholic Families for America.

Talk of tolerance and diversity aside, male homosexuals constitute most of the HIV-AIDS cases and they are still prohibited from donating blood because of their propensity to come down with various life-threatening diseases. Facts are facts. But don’t expect to see this information analyzed and reviewed by the mainstream media when considering such issues as allowing active and open homosexuals into the Armed Forces and into close quarters with normal heterosexuals.

Gay activists complain that thousands have been forced out of the military because of their homosexuality. The evidence, in the form of opinion polls and letters from former military officers, suggests that many thousands more will leave if the military brass force acceptance of homosexuality-and the diversity training that will inevitably go along with it-on the military rank and file.

The purpose of the Ugandan bill, quite clearly, is to keep homosexuality in the closet, where it used to be in this country. The country’s literal survival may depend on passage of this legislation, after it undergoes hearings and some revisions.

The bill will likely have more of a deterrent effect than anything else. Some of the controversial passages, such as restrictions on “touching,” are included for the purpose of defining homosexual behavior. It may sound strange to Americans who are accustomed to in-your-face homosexuality on national television and almost everywhere else in society, but Uganda is serious about avoiding a return to the time when a notorious homosexual king was ruling the country and tortured and killed young Christian men who resisted his homosexual advances.

Ironically, Parker makes reference to this terrible period, but only to contrast it with a frightening future in which she speculates that gays will be offered up by authorities in Uganda as martyrs for the gay rights cause. To drive the point home, a gay rights group recently held a news conference in Washington, D.C. featuring an alleged gay rights activist from Uganda wearing a paper sack over his head. It was a good publicity stunt, designed to generate sympathy and attention for people who only want the “right” to celebrate a behavior that is a documented public health hazard.

Hedge fund manager George Soros, who is behind the campaign to homosexualize Uganda, doesn’t wear a bag over his face and doesn’t need to. He operates mostly out in the open, in the name of promoting his version of an “open society” here and abroad. The problem is that most of the liberal media agree with his policies and proposals and therefore don’t shed light on what he is doing in terms of interfering in the affairs of not only the U.S. but other nations of the world.

In fact, the Ugandan legislation seems designed to send a message to Soros and his minions in the foreign homosexual lobby to keep their hands off Uganda’s families and kids. Soros funds efforts to legalize homosexual behavior and prostitution in Uganda and other African nations. It’s too bad Parker didn’t notice and condemn that. But such a reference might provoke criticism from the left, and she wants to avoid that so she can keep going on the Matthews show.

The eminent historian Paul Johnson, who was recently on C-SPAN taking questions from viewers, has something to say about this. His book The Quest for God  laments that Western society made a huge mistake by decriminalizing homosexuality and thinking that acceptance of the lifestyle on a basic level would satisfy its practitioners. Instead, he wrote, “Decriminalization made it possible for homosexuals to organize openly into a powerful lobby, and it thus became a mere platform from which further demands were launched.” It became, he says, a “monster in our midst, powerful and clamoring, flexing its muscles, threatening, vengeful and vindictive towards anyone who challenges its outrageous claims, and bent on making fundamental-and to most of us horrifying-changes to civilized patterns of sexual behavior.”

Today, this monster makes even more demands and inroads, especially into our government, as President Obama appoints subversives such as homosexual activist Kevin Jennings to the Education Department, and some poor mixed-up “transgendered” person to a post at Commerce. Plus, adding to our health care problems, he has lifted the ban on AIDS-infected foreigners from traveling to and living in the U.S.

His gays-in-the-military proposal would not only make the Armed Forces a laughingstock but would end its value as a fighting force capable of defending us against foreign threats. Indeed, a homosexualized military could itself become a threat, just like it was in the Nazi period.

Instead of finding a “monster” in a gay rights movement that wants to impose itself on all of us, including our children in the schools, Kathleen Parker finds the monster to be the Christians in Uganda who want to spare their children from a lifestyle that too frequently ends in premature death. She accuses them of “genocide” for being patriots and good parents. Shame on her.

Parker’s “conservatism” is a farce and a fraud. But it seems to be in fashion at CPAC this year.