According to an Associated Press report, the U.S. Senate voted to approve a $602 billion defense bill which also mandates that our daughters register for Selective Service and a possible future draft.  This gender blind, biologically indifferent proposal was sponsored by U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who also happens to chair the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.

Both Illinois U.S. Senators, Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk, voted in favor of this irresponsible legislation.  The over all vote was 85 in favor, just 13 opposed.  U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) also voted for this atrocity.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) spoke out in opposition to the measure, saying in an official statement that this political correct bill “is being used as a vehicle to further agendas that have nothing to do with actually defending America. Despite the many laudable objectives in this bill, I could not in good conscience vote to draft our daughters into the military, sending them off to war and forcing them into combat.”

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (S. 2943), if passed by the U.S. House and signed into law by President Barack Obama, would require:

(1)  The duty to register imposed on male citizens and persons residing in the United States by subsection (a) shall apply to female citizens of the United States and female persons residing in the United States who attain the age of 18 years on or after January 1, 2018.

(2)  The responsibilities and rights of female registrants under this Act shall be the responsibilities and rights of male registrants under this Act, and shall be subject to such terms, conditions, and limitations as are applicable under the provisions of this Act to similarly situated male registrants.

(3)  Any reference in this Act to a registrant or other person subject to the duties, responsibilities, and rights of a registrant under this Act shall be deemed to refer to female citizens of the United States and female persons residing in the United States registering pursuant to this subsection.

The bill now heads over to the U.S. House.

A troubling video has emerged in which a college student was asked if it should be morally permissible for an impoverished family to kill their 2-year-old or 5-year-old if doing so would improve the family’s condition. He answered that if society were to approve of this type of act, logic dictates it should be permissible, and he would be okay with it:

Feckless minds think alike. Here is another ethically-challenged Millennial:

It’s odd, “progressive” men seem to be allowed carte blanche to express their views on women’s “right to choose,” while conservative men are continually harangued by feminist harpies that they have no such right. Curiouser and curiouser.

Of course, neither logic nor morality dictates such a position, but this kind of utilitarian, relativistic anti-moral code is not unusual among Millennials or within our increasingly “sub-pagan” anti-culture:

About 15 years ago, when I was substitute teaching in a Senior Advanced Placement English class at Deerfield High School, a conversation arose regarding absolute truth. The majority of students asserted that there exist no absolute, transcendent, eternal moral truths. (This was especially troubling within a heavily Jewish community in which the Holocaust is more than a historical footnote.) The rest of the students remained silent.

The notion that there are no absolute moral truths informs the controversial work of Peter Singer, Princeton University bioethics professor, who argues the following:

When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the haemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him.

…

Regarding newborn infants as replaceable, as we now regard fetuses, would have considerable advantages over prenatal diagnosis followed by abortion. Prenatal diagnosis still cannot detect all major disabilities. Some disabilities, in fact, are not present before birth; they may be the result of extremely premature birth, or of something going wrong in the birth process itself. At present parents can choose to keep or destroy their disabled offspring only if the disability happens to be detected during pregnancy. There is no logical basis for restricting parents’ choice to these particular disabilities. If disabled newborn infants were not regarded as having a right to life until, say, a week or a month after birth it would allow parents, in consultation with their doctors, to choose on the basis of far greater knowledge of the infant’s condition than is possible before birth.

Though Singer has a more, shall we say, limited and nuanced defense of child-murder than the Millennial stars of the above videos, the implication of the idea that older, more developed humans have the right to kill younger, less developed, innocent humans is evidenced in the increasing comfort with both infanticide and euthanasia that is spreading within our sickening culture.

It’s worth noting that every year the anti-ethics ethicist Singer is invited to the far-Left Chicago Humanities Festival, which runs from Oct. 24-Nov.8, 2015,  and speaks to sold-out crowds.

Singer’s views have metastasized not merely to the ignoramus-on-the-street but to academicians like Dr. Alberto Giulibini and Dr. Francesca Minerva who in a 2012 article published in the Journal of Medical Ethics defended the right to kill newborns who, in the doctors’ views, are  merely “potential persons”:

If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the foetus and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.

While these views may seem anomalous, remember President Barack Obama and Senator Mark Kirk opposed bans on partial-birth/late-term abortions, which are just inches or days from infanticide.

Divers social and intellectual shifts, including widespread embrace of apostasy and heresy, relativism, subjectivism, radical autonomy, and post-modernism, collude with the institutional forces of Hollywood, academia, and the mainstream press to dismantle and destroy culture. And who suffers most? Children, always children.

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In the wake of yet another video linking Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, to the sale of organs from aborted babies, lawmakers in the U.S. Senate are planning to vote to defund the inhumane organization that profits from carefully dismembering preborn babies and harvesting their organs and other tissues.

We now have a chance to do something about it.

On Monday, the U.S. Senate may vote to prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving taxpayer funds. According to their 2013-2014 annual report, Planned Parenthood received more than $500 million of taxpayer money.

U.S. Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA), Rand Paul (R-KY), and James Lankford (R-OK) are the lead sponsors of Senate Bill 1881 (S.1881), which currently has 21 cosponsors. S. 1881 bill was announced during a July 29th press conference.

This legislation would do the following:

• Prohibit federal funding of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and any of its affiliate organizations.
• Protect federal funding for health services for women, including diagnostic laboratory and radiology services, well-child care, prenatal and postnatal care, immunizations, cervical and breast cancer screenings, and more.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email or fax to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk, urging them  to defund Planned Parenthood. They both need to hear from you — their Illinois constituents — that Planned Parenthood shouldn’t receive a dime of taxpayer money.

More ACTION:  Please pray that our state and nation will repent from supporting this moral, political, and financial evil. Pray that your “pro-choice” family members, friends, and neighbors will finally understand that abortion is barbaric and indefensible in every situation — not just when tax dollars are being spent to support it. Pray that our state and nation will mourn the legalization of abortion, which has eradicated 60+ million innocent lives.

Spread the word! Tell your friends to contact their U.S. Senators by forwarding this email or by posting it on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #DefundPP.

The undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood has given us a rare opportunity of which we must take advantage. Now that Americans have been exposed to Planned Parenthood’s pernicious practices, it is our chance to cut off their federal funding, thereby saving lives.

Download a Planned Parenthood Fact Sheet or a Church Bulletin Insert.

National Day of Protest against Planned Parenthood
Saturday, August 22, 9:00 to 11:00 A.M.
Planned Parenthood, 3051 E New York St, Aurora (map)
Lead by the Pro-Life Action League

The U.S. Congress has given final approval to a comprehensive bill that would strengthen federal laws banning the sexual trafficking of women and children.

The bill, known as the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (S. 178), was adopted by the U.S. House last week by a nearly unanimous vote of 420-3.  The entire Illinois Congressional Delegation voted in favor of this bill.  It had been previously been approved by the U.S. Senate, and now moves on to the President’s desk for his expected signature.

Included in the final bill was legislation introduced by U.S. Representative Ann Wagner (R-MO) known as the SAVE Act (for Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation).

Wagner’s proposal amends the federal criminal code to prohibit the online advertising of minors for purposes of commercial sexual activity.

The major targets of the legislation are slimy websites that advertise the availability of individuals for sexual encounters.  Human trafficking enterprises use these sites to market the sexual “services” of women who are enslaved in the sex trafficking trade.

“Online classified services have become the vehicles for advertising the victims of the sex trade to the world,” Representative Wagner said during testimony on similar legislation in the Missouri State Capitol.

“Online customers log onto websites and order a young girl into their hotel room as easily as if they were ordering a pepperoni pizza,” Wagner explained.  “Online sex customers have a lower risk of being caught due to the relative anonymity inherent in internet-based solicitation.”

U.S. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois was the sponsor of similar companion legislation in that chamber.  “This bill protects our most vulnerable and punishes those who profit from selling children online for sex.”

“I urge President Obama to swiftly sign this into law so that those websites … and their advertisers can finally be held liable for aiding in human trafficking.”

Representative Wagner praised the education components of the bill to combat the underage sex trade.  “Young people must be warned about the devious and manipulative strategies employed by traffickers to ensnare them in the trap of sexual slavery.”  Most often the lure is the supposed prospect of a modeling career.

“The children at risk are not just high school students,” Wagner added.  “Traffickers are known to prey on victims as young as nine years old.  They target their minor victims through social media websites, after-school programs, at shopping malls and in clubs, or through friends or acquaintances who recruit students on school campuses.”

The Illinois Family Institute is completely dependent on the voluntary contributions of individuals just like you.  Without you, we would be unable to fight the radical agenda being pushed by the godless Left.

To make a credit card donation over the phone, call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.

Only six of 54 Republican members of the U.S. Senate signed a pro-traditional marriage legal brief to the U.S. Supreme Court that was submitted on Friday. USA Today noted, “By contrast, 44 Democratic senators and 167 Democratic House members filed a brief last month urging the court to approve same-sex marriage. The brief included the full House and Senate [Democratic] leadership teams.”

These developments strongly suggest that while the homosexual movement remains solidly in control of the Democratic Party, the tactics of harassment and intimidation that we saw wielded against the religious freedom bill in Indiana last week are taking their toll on the Republican Party as a whole.

In the Indiana case, a conservative Republican governor, Mike Pence, abandoned the fight for religious freedom in the face of homosexual and corporate pressure.

It appears that more and more elite or establishment Republicans are simply deciding to give up on the fight for traditional values and marriage.

While this may seem politically expedient, this dramatic move to the left by the GOP could result in millions of pro-family conservatives deciding to abandon the Republican Party in 2016, a critical election year.

USA Today also noted that “…while some members of the 2012 Republican National Convention platform committee filed a brief against gay marriage Friday, it notably did not include GOP Chairman Reince Priebus.”

The Republican senators signing the brief included:

• U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas
• U.S. Senator Steve Daines of Montana
• U.S. Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma
• U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma
• U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
• U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina

Fifty-one members of the House of Representatives signed the brief. But U.S. House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) name was not on it.

Taking the lead for traditional marriage in the House was U.S. Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), who not only signed the pro-marriage brief but has also introduced U.S. House Joint Resolution 32, the Marriage Protection Amendment, to amend the United States Constitution to protect marriage, family and children by defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman. The resolution has 33 co-sponsors and has been referred for action to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary.

Huelskamp is the only Member of Congress who has authored one of the 30 state constitutional amendments that prohibits homosexual marriage and polygamous marriage. In 2005, when he was a state senator, 71 percent of Kansans voted for the state constitutional amendment that he authored.

In reintroducing the federal marriage amendment, Huelskamp said, “In June 2013 the Supreme Court struck down section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which had defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, but upheld the right and responsibility of states to define marriage. Since then, though, numerous unelected lower court judges have construed the U.S. Constitution as suddenly demanding recognition of same sex ‘marriages,’ and they struck down state Marriage Amendments—including the Kansas Marriage Amendment—approved by tens of millions of voters and their elected representatives.”

However, on April 28 the U.S. Supreme Court will review the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which upholds marriage laws in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. A ruling is expected in June.

USA Today noted that scores of prominent Republicans last month joined a brief on the homosexual side filed by former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, a former lieutenant to Karl Rove who came out of the closet and announced in August of 2010 that he was a homosexual. He has since launched a “Project Right Side” to make the “conservative” case for gay marriage.

Big money Republican donors such as Paul Singer, David Koch, and Peter Thiel have either endorsed homosexual rights and same-sex marriage or funded the homosexual movement. Thiel is an open homosexual.

A libertarian group funded by the Koch brothers, the Cato Institute has been in the gay rights camp for many years and its chairman, Robert A. Levy, wrote a “moral and constitutional case for a right to gay marriage.”

Other signatories to the Mehlman brief included Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, U.S. Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois, and former presidential candidates Rudolph Giuliani and Jon Huntsman.

The signers of this brief at the U.S. Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage were described as “300 veteran Republican lawmakers, operatives and consultants.” Some two dozen or so had worked for Mitt Romney for president.

One of the signatories, Mason Fink, who was the finance director of the Mitt Romney for president campaign, has signed on with a super PAC promoting former Florida Republican governor Jeb Bush for president. In another move signaling his alignment with the homosexual movement, Bush has reportedly picked Tim Miller, “one of the most prominent gay Republicans in Washington politics,” as his communications director.

A far-left media outlet known as Buzzfeed has described Bush as “2016’s Gay-Friendly Republican,” and says he has “stocked his inner circle with advisers who are vocal proponents of gay rights.”

But some conservative Christians are fighting back against the homosexual movement.

A brief to the court filed by Liberty Counsel notes that, in the past, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld marriage as “a foundational social institution that is necessarily defined as the union of one man and one woman.” It cites the case of Skinner v. Oklahoma, in which marriage was declared to be “fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race,” and Maynard v. Hill, in which marriage was declared “the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.”

Liberty Counsel said the court is being asked to affirm a false notion of marriage based upon fraudulent data about homosexual activity in society. It said, “For the past 67 years, scholars, lawyers and judges have undertaken fundamental societal transformation by embracing Alfred Kinsey’s statistically and scientifically fraudulent ‘data’ derived from serial child rapists, sex offenders, prisoners, prostitutes, pedophiles and pederasts. Now these same change agents, still covering up the fraudulent nature of the Kinsey ‘data,’ want this Court to utilize it to demolish the cornerstone of society, natural marriage.”

The homosexual movement has long maintained that Kinsey validated changes in sexual behavior that were already taking place in society. In fact, however, the evidence uncovered by Dr. Judith Reisman shows that Kinsey deliberately exaggerated those changes in a fraudulent manner by using data from pedophiles and prisoners.

Commenting on the impact of the acceptance of the fraudulent Kinsey data, Accuracy in Media founder Reed Irvine noted, “Gradually over the years, acceptance of the Kinsey morality has grown to the point where premarital and extramarital sex raise no eyebrows, where, in some communities, out-of-wedlock births are in the majority, homosexuality is glorified and aggressively promoted in our schools and the last taboo—adults having sex with young children—is now under attack in some of our institutions of higher learning.”

The Mattachine Society, a gay rights organization started by communist Harry Hay in 1950, cited the flawed Kinsey data in an effort to convince the public that homosexual behavior was widespread in American society.

The book, Take Back! The Gay Person’s Guide to Media Action, said the Kinsey Report on male sexuality “paved the way for the first truly positive discussion of homosexuality in the mainstream media.”

Today, this same Kinsey data is being used to convince the Supreme Court to approve homosexual “marriage” as a constitutional right.

This article was originally posted at the Accuracy in Media website.

*WARNING: some graphic language not suitable for younger readers*

Residents of California’s 52^nd Congressional District were just confronted with the choice between Democratic incumbent Scott Peters and homosexual “pro-choice” Republican challenger Carl DeMaio, whom the GOP establishment vigorously supported. Not only is DeMaio openly homosexual—which is no problem for House Speaker John Boehner who campaigned for him—but according to multiple accusations, DeMaio has a peculiar practice of engaging in semi-public self-pleasuring. According to Slate Magazine, a third man has recently come forward alleging sexually inappropriate conduct on the part of DeMaio:

I was at the urinal, and (DeMaio) came from the stall that was closest to the urinal and was kind of just standing there hovering….I turned around and realized that it was Carl. He had his pants up, but his fly was undone, and he had his hand… grasping his genitals.

Previously, a former colleague of DeMaio’s who served with him on the San Diego City Council told CNN that he had twice found DeMaio self-pleasuring in public restrooms, and a former campaign staffer for DeMaio, who is also homosexual, has alleged that DeMaio both sexually harassed him and engaged in onanism in his campaign headquarters office.

Thanks to the support of the Republican Party, DeMaio came very close to winning, losing by just a hair three days after the election.

A few weeks before yesterday’s mid-term election, Princeton University law professor Robert George made these comments about this California race, comments that are equally applicable to any races with RINO candidates, including Illinois races:

If I were in the district, I could not in conscience vote for the Republican. His election would do greater harm to the causes of life, marriage, and religious liberty than would the election of his Democratic opponent, as bad as that guy himself is on these issues. The question is whether to abstain or to cast a tactical vote in favor of the Democrat. In circumstances like these, I believe that tactical voting is morally permissible, and it would improve the likelihood of the least bad outcome….Abstaining is morally permissible too.

The partisans of abortion and marriage redefinition have a lock on the Democratic Party now. Effective dissent of any type is not possible. Having gained that lock on one party, they are now turning their resources and attention to weakening the pro-life and pro-marriage reality witness of the Republican Party. … I can think of no more urgent priority than preventing that from happening. Maintaining and solidifying the pro-life and pro-marriage reality stance of the Republican Party is critical. That’s why tactical voting, including voting for bad Democrats over bad Republicans, is IN CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES (e.g., where the election of a Democrat does not jeopardize Republican control of a legislative house), morally legitimate and perhaps even advisable. We must not let the pro-abortion and pro-marriage redefinition movements strengthen their positions in the Republican Party. We must make the Republican Party as solid for life and marriage as the Democrats now are for the contrary positions.

The GOP is slowly transmogrifying into the political incarnation of Tolkien’s Gollum:

Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle. “Precious, precious, precious!” Gollum cried. “My Precious! O my Precious!” And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail precious, and he was gone.

Illinoisans should fully expect to hear immoderates and perhaps even dispirited conservatives say, “See, Bruce Rauner/Mark Kirk-type of Republican is the only kind of Republican who can get elected in Illinois.” But soon, they won’t be tacking on “in Illinois.”

Four years ago, the U.S. Senator-elect from Colorado, Cory Gardner, supported the Personhood Amendment and even circulated petitions to gather signatures for it. Then this year, the GOP establishment got to him. Shortly before Gardner announced his candidacy, pro-life activists in Colorado got wind of the news that he would be renouncing his support for the Personhood Amendment.

Karl Rove deceitfully wrote this last May: “in Colorado, tea-party favorite and front-runner Ken Buck stepped aside when Mr. Gardner entered the race, recognizing he was better able to enthuse all the party.” So, in May Rove implied that Buck just freely stepped aside because of his own uncoerced epiphany that Gardner would be the best candidate for “enthusing” the party.

That’s interesting, because late last night on FOX News election coverage, Karl Rove boasted that his Super PAC told the Colorado GOP that no Super Pac money would go to support Ken Buck for U.S. Senate. I’m speculating here, but I suspect that Rove et al told Gardner they would support him as long as he retreated from the Personhood Amendment.

Immoderate Republicans accuse conservatives who agree with Robert George of turning on their Republican brethren and “forming a circular firing squad.” But who really is Cain in this contemporary narrative? Who is Sméagol and who is Déagol?

Well, what’s done is done, and now Rauner, who proudly campaigned on his support for the “right” of women to have their own babies killed, can work the fiscal wonders for which his supporters have been slavering.

Under his mystical, magical management, Illinois should shortly be transformed into a pecuniary powerhouse. Then with fiscal victory securely in their grasp, immoderate Republicans will jubilantly announce the end of the social issues “truce” and the dawn of a new day. They will marshal all their resources—chief among them money—and announce the start of a battle—nay , a war—the likes of which  this state has never seen to protect human life at all stages, to restore a legal definition of marriage that comports with reality, to preserve religious liberty, and to eradicate “progressive” political and philosophical advocacy from government-funded schools.

Yeah, I’m sure with Rauner and Kirk at the helm of the IL GOP that will happen.

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The Left is wasting no time responding to the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 30th ruling upholding religious liberty. U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Mark Udall (D-CO) have introduced legislation to undo the protections of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)–the very law that the Court used to rule in favor of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties.

Unfortunately, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin has co-sponsored this ominous legislation.

The Protect Women’s Health from Corporate Interference Act (S. 2578) could be used to further undermine all existing federal protections of conscience and religious freedom regarding health coverage mandates. According to our friends at the American Family Association (AFA), “it specifically strikes at the heart of religious liberty by nullifying the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” which would affect even those organizations “run by Christians with deeply held convictions about abortion.“

U.S. Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) Reid has promised to bypass all committees to put this on the “fast track.” This means a vote could take place as early as this week. (Read about Sen. Reid’s racist comment about the Supreme Court.)  

This bill dictates that employers cannot interfere in their employee’s decisions about contraception and other health services through discrimination by (from Sen. Murray’s website):

• Banning employers from refusing to cover any health coverage–including contraceptive coverage–guaranteed to their employees and dependents under federal law.
• Stating that all federal laws do not permit employers to refuse to comply with the ACA requirement, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
• Including the exemption from the contraceptive coverage requirement for houses of worship and the accommodation for religious non-profits.

This is a very pointed attack against conservative people of faith everywhere. Please take a few moments now to ask U.S. Senator Mark Kirk to oppose the misleadingly titled “Protect Women’s Health From Corporate Interference Act of 2014.” This liberty-quashing bill runs contrary to the religious liberty that Americans hold dear and the ruling the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a few weeks ago.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send and email or a fax to U.S. Senator Kirk urging him to reject S. 2578. 

Eric Metaxas at the IFI Annual Banquet
Sept. 19th in Rolling Meadows!  
Click HERE for details.

On Saturday evening (Feb. 8, 2014), U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) was presented with the “Freedom” award by Equality Illinois, the state’s leading homosexual pressure group, at a swank fundraising banquet in Chicago. You can watch a video of the presentation below [or on YouTube HERE].

Senator Kirk has become one of the most liberal Republicans in Washington D.C. on homosexual-related issues with ever greater acts of pandering to the LGBTQ Lobby. (He came out for homosexual “marriage” and is pushing for passage of ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act [see homosexual activists release on Kirk and ENDA HERE], 

Read more about ENDA in the Heritage Foundation’s report on the ENDA bill HERE.

You might recall how Senator Kirk – in a capitulation whose cowardice was eclipsed only by its pettiness – recently blocked the respected pro-family organization  World Congress of Families (WCF) from securing a meeting room on Capitol Hill. This towering act in defense of “freedom” (sarcasm) came after the Senator heard complaints against WCF from some homosexual activists. World Congress, affiliated with The Howard Center, is based in Rockford, Illinois.

Thus it appears that Senator Kirk’s conception of “freedom” matches that of his intolerant homosexual activist allies. In 2012, Equality Illinois launched a vicious and slanderous campaign to deny Chick-fil-A restaurants the “freedom” to operate in Illinois. As you can see below, EQ falsely accused C-f-A of “discriminatory policies” because the latter’s Chief Operating Officer, Dan Cathy, had spoken out publicly against homosexual “marriage” as tempting the judgment of God. The Chicago “gay” group launched this “Flick the Hate” petition campaign designed to boot the Christian-owned chicken fast food franchise out of several college towns:

As you can see, Equality Illinois’ malicious campaign smeared Chick-fil-A and its COO, Dan Cathy, as representing “hate”–merely because Cathy disagreed publicly with “gay marriage.” EQ sought to petition stakeholders into cancelling their rental leases to the 19 Chick-fil-A restaurants then operating in Illinois. (Thankfully, they failed; there are now 32 C-f-A franchises in Illinois, according to the company’s website.) The EQ page reads, in part (emphasis theirs):

Chick-fil-A has 19 restaurants across Illinois, mostly on university campuses and in shopping malls.This petition will be give to key stakeholders in Illinois who lease, rent or allow Chick-fil-A to continue to sell their hate-filled homophobic “Chiken,” asking them to cut ties….

That kind of hate has no place in a business, especially in Illinois. It is a shame to be associated with such extreme intolerance and hate.

[Petition:]

…We urge you, as business and institutional leaders in Illinois, to challenge the discriminatory policies of this fast food chain and end all relationships that enable the Chick-fil-A brand to operation on your premises.

This kind of hate has no place in a business, especially in Illinois. It is a shame to be associated with such extreme intolerance and hate. 

I urge you to sever your ties immediately and “Flick-the-Hate!”

Background on Chick-fil-A

It is important to remind the reader that Chick-fil-A as a corporation never “discriminated” against homosexual customers or employees. In fact, one homosexual C-f-A franchise owner defended the restaurant chain and a New Hampshire Chick-fil-A restaurant owner supported a  “gay pride” event. What ignited the LGBT-obsessed Left was that Dan Cathy actually spoke out publicly against counterfeit “gay marriage.” The pro-homosexual/liberal campaign against Chick-fil-A also involved political opposition to proposed restaurant openings in Chicago and Boston–with liberal politicians seeking to banish C-f-A in the name of “tolerance.”

The Left’s opposition to Chick-fil-A led to a massive Christian pro-family backlash in the form of “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” organized by Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate. Americans by the hundreds of thousands nationwide went to their local Chick-fil-A to support the restaurant chain.

Thankfully, the homo-fascists at Equality Illinois–and their Democratic political allies who used their offices to attempt to deny Chick-fil-A the right and opportunity to expand and do business (e.g, in the economically-struggling State of Illinois) did not prevail. In fact, they succeeded only in generating more support for Chick-fil-A among many, many consumers.

As you can see below, Sen. Kirk is still recovering from the stroke he suffered in 2012. We wish him a continued and speedy recovery. Politically speaking, however, we at AFTAH are appalled at Kirk’s pandering to Hard Left activists of the sort usually associated with Democratic politics, and we plead with him to return to supporting the pro-family principles of the Republican Party Platform.

Take ACTION:  Call or write Senator Mark Kirk R-IL)  at his Washington D.C. office (202) 224-2854; or at his Chicago office (312) 886-3506; or through his online Comment Form HERE] and urge him to stop rewarding anti-Christian bigotry. Ask him to return this “Freedom Award” from the hateful anti-Christian homosexual group, Equality Illinois–which in 2012 launched a failed pressure campaign to kick Chick-fil-A restaurants out of Illinois.

More ACTION:  Call or write the Republican National Committee [Contact Form HERE] and its Chairman, Reince Priebus [202-863-8500; choose ext. “1”], and urge them to stand firm against the aggressive Homosexual Lobby, which is targeting Christian leaders and businesses like Chick-fil-A for demonization. Tell Priebus that when Republicans like Senator Mark Kirk embrace Democratic-type social liberalism, it only deflates the pro-family GOP grassroots. Lastly, urge Priebus to PUBLICLY oppose ENDA, the radical Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Thank Chairman Priebus for being publicly pro-life–but urge him also to make the case against “Big Gay Government” (e.g., ENDA)–and Obama’s push to nationalize “same-sex marriage”–as part of the RNC’s regular public Talking Points. 

You can watch the YouTube video of the Equality Illinois presentation of the “Freedom Award” to Sen. Kirk HERE

This article was originally published at the AFTAH.com blog.

Last week, the Family Research Council (FRC) issued a press release in which they publicly ask Illinois’s U.S. Senator Mark Kirk to apologize for his bigoted decision to cancel a U.S. Senate office building room reservation for our friends at the Rockford-based Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society,  a decision Kirk made at the behest of radical homosexual activists.

According to Kirk’s press secretary, Kirk cancelled the meeting because he “will not host groups that advance a hateful agenda.” The so-called “hateful agenda” was a discussion titled, “[W]hat might conservative Americans learn from Russia, Australia, and other nations about rebuilding a pro-family policy?”

Despite the out-pouring of calls and emails from his own constituents and the public appeal from FRC, Kirk has not responded.

In response to Kirk’s narrow-mindedness hostility toward pro-family conservatives, IFI’s Laurie Higgins wrote an article in which she points out:

Sen. Kirk thinks that it’s hateful to believe that marriage is inherently sexually complementary, but not hateful to kill the unborn. To Kirk, cross-dressing and perverse sexual acts are moral goods and fighting for the rights of children to survive the womb and be raised by a mother and father are moral evils. What kind of man thinks like this? C.S. Lewis calls men like this “men without chests,” and Isaiah warns, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

FRC President Tony Perkins also had a strong statement in response to this foolishness:

Sen. Kirk’s decision is true discrimination, silencing anyone who doesn’t adhere to a politically correct view of sexuality.

We welcome open debate about policy differences on social issues. However, Sen. Kirk’s decision to cancel the event signals that he wants to silence those who disagree with him. We are encouraged by the many Illinois residents who have stood up in support of the Howard Center and its right to free speech and freedom of assembly.

Holding a different view of marriage and sexuality is not discriminatory – especially when all the social science research demonstrates the benefits of the natural family.

Sen. Kirk should respect our faith and our views, even if he doesn’t agree with them – instead of literally closing the door to any debate or discussion.

Take ACTION: Don’t let him off the hook! Please click HERE to contact Senator Kirk to express your opposition to his endorsement of homosexual “marriage,” his engagement in religious discrimination, and his subordination of the wishes of Illinois conservatives to the desires of homosexual activists.

You can also call his office in these locations:

(202) 224-2854  —  Washington D.C.
(312) 886-3506  —  Chicago
(217) 492-5089  —  Springfield

Click HERE to make a tax-deductible donation to support IFI.

Last week, U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) confirmed my reasons for vehemently opposing his election.  His obamaniacal act of hubris last week also reminded me of the emails I received chastising me for what some perceived as my wrongheaded, doctrinaire naïveté in opposing Kirk’s election.

Last Friday, Kirk, in league with homosexual activists, abruptly cancelled access to a U.S. Senate meeting room that had been reserved months ago by the Rockford-based Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society.  According to Sen. Kirk’s press secretary, Kirk cancelled the meeting because he “will not host groups that advance a hateful agenda.” And what is the “hateful agenda”?  The question posed on the meeting’s invitation was” [W]hat might conservative Americans learn from Russia, Australia, and other nations about rebuilding a pro-family policy?”  

The discussion panelists were Austin Ruse, President of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute; Allan Carlson, former professor of history at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan and president of the Howard Center;  Stephen Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute and an advocate for human rights in China; and Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, Senior Fellow at The Beverly LaHaye Institute, the think tank of Concerned Women for America.

If Kirk considers these scholars hate-promoters, then logically he must call all orthodox Christian theologians hate-promoters for every contemporary orthodox theologian and every theologian in the history of Christendom has held the same views on the nature of marriage and the nature and morality of homosexuality as these panel participants.  

If Kirk’s Democratic opponent in the U.S. Senate race had won, the Republican Party would be working feverishly to find a candidate to challenge him. Of course, with the Illinois GOP polluted by the corruption and ignorance that plagues much of the Democratic Party, who knows what dubious character they may have trotted out and insisted Republicans support. The designation “Republican” is no guarantee of integrity, wisdom, or humility.

But with Kirk ensconced in the corridors of the U.S. Senate, (where he works tenaciously for every pro-homosexual bill including Illinois’ recent same-sex “marriage” bill), the Illinois GOP has little motivation to dethrone him. They couldn’t care less if he abuses his position to normalize sexual deviance while trampling the conscience rights of untold numbers of people. 

“Moderate” Republicans (hereafter referred to as immoderates) caterwaul that social conservatives are exclusive, narrow-minded, parochial voters who just don’t get the bigger picture. That bigger picture is centrally shaped, in the exclusive, narrow-minded, parochial view of immoderates, by “electability” and fiscal issues. Their big tent is really not so much big as it is blue-tinged. They don’t really want social conservatives to expand their scope of interests beyond the issues of prenatal rights, marriage, religious liberty, and the post-natal rights of children. They want social conservatives to abandon wholly those issues.

Conservatives, move to the back of the big immoderate purple circus tent and shut your flapping jaws about those irrelevant issues pertaining to sexuality, the First Amendment, and children’s rights—none of which (in the view of immoderates) have any substantive bearing on the public good.

In the meantime, the immoderates unctuously ooze that social conservatives should just let the big daddies who know best—people like Mark Kirk who solicited support from the baby-killing  industry when running for the U.S.  Senate—to run the country for them.

Sen. Kirk thinks that it’s hateful to believe that marriage is inherently sexually complementary, but not hateful to kill the unborn. To Kirk, cross-dressing and perverse sexual acts are moral goods and fighting for the rights of children to survive the womb and be raised by a mother and father are moral evils. What kind of man thinks like this? C.S. Lewis calls men like this “men without chests,” and Isaiah warns, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

Don’t you fret, oh ye of little conservative minds, your time will come—the immoderates hiss.  Just wait until men without chests have solved our debt problem and then they’ll end the forfeit—I mean, truce—on the “social issues.” Yessiree, once we get out of this $17 trillion debt, our lawmakers will work to restore the proper marriage laws, religious liberty, and children’s rights that they’re allowing to be trampled or, in the case of Kirk, actively and jubilantly trampling.

But does anyone really believe that in the future conservatives will be able to restore marriage laws or repeal the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) so that business owners will have the right to refuse to hire cross-dressers if men like Senators Mark Kirk and Rob Portman (R-OH) have been in Washington D.C. for decades using their power and friendships to shape the votes and views of colleagues?

If right-thinking Americans would spend just a little less time thinking about clever political strategies and just a little more time thinking about truth and courage, we might have a shot at preserving America.

Take ACTION: Please click HERE to contact Senator Kirk to express your opposition to his endorsement of homosexual “marriage,” his engagement in religious discrimination, and his subordination of the wishes of Illinois conservatives to the desires of homosexual activists.  You can also call his Washington D.C. office at (202) 224-2854.

As you know, the Illinois Family Institute is completely dependent on the voluntary contributions of individuals just like you.  Without you, we would be unable to fight the radical agenda being pushed by the godless Left.  Please consider chipping in $5 or $10 to help us promote family-friendly laws and policies. 

Click HERE to make your tax-deductible donation.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is poised to rear its ugly and dangerous head again in the U.S. Senate in the next few weeks. The controversial Democrat-sponsored bill (S. 815) currently has 55 co-sponsors, only two of whom are Republicans: U.S. Senator Susan Collins (ME) and our very own, perpetually irksome U.S. Senator Mark Kirk, who has a particular fondness for all pro-homosexual legislation (don’t say we didn’t warn you). U.S. Senator Dick Durbin is also a co-sponsor.

ENDA “[p]rohibits employment discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity by covered entities (employers, employment agencies, labor organizations, or joint labor-management committees).” If passed, no public elementary school or small business owner will be permitted to refuse to hire a man masquerading as a woman.

Every decent human opposes illegitimate discrimination based on objective characteristics that carry no behavioral implications, conditions, for example, like race, sex, or nation of origin. Many people, however, believe that making distinctions among behaviors is not only a legitimate human activity, but an essential one—essential, that is, for any moral society, particularly one in which religious liberty is jealously guarded.

ENDA will curtail religious liberty by prohibiting Americans from making distinctions between right and wrong actions even when those distinctions reflect deeply held religious convictions of orthodox Christians, orthodox Jews, and Muslims.

Our founding fathers knew that religious liberty was essential to a free society. It must never be subordinated to a manufactured civil liberty to engage with absolute unfettered freedom in acts of sexual perversion. And it is not unconstitutional to allow one’s religious beliefs to shape either business or political decisions. The Left does it all the time.

It is true that ENDA has a provision that says employers have the right to require an “employee to adhere to reasonable dress or grooming standards.” It would be foolish, however, for Americans to believe that this language will help employers who don’t want to hire cross-dressers because such perverse behavior violates their religious beliefs and will harm their business.  It would be foolish because progressives believe it is unreasonable to require gender-confused men and women to dress in accordance with their actual, objective sex. To a “progressive,” prohibiting a gender-confused man from wearing lipstick, falsies, and a dress to work as a first-grade teacher or toy store clerk is unreasonable. No young child should ever see cross-dressing (or even hear anything about gender confusion or homosexuality as is happening now in our public schools).

Every homosexuality-affirming policy and bill is based on the conflation of objective conditions with no moral/behavioral implications like race, sex, and nationality, with homosexuality, which is constituted by subjective feelings and volitional behaviors that many consider immoral. Are our foolish lawmakers willing to provide special protections to other conditions similarly constituted—conditions like polyamory, paraphilias, or incest? I can hear the howls of indignation from homosexual activists that their sexual proclivities and theirs alone constitute a morally positive identity. But others will stake that claim for theirs as well. And when “identity,” which in common usage is merely the aggregate of those feelings one chooses to act upon, becomes unassailable, we’re left with a society in which moral judgment is either wholly eradicated or left exclusively to those in positions of power.

Decent people should have compassion for those who are afflicted with gender confusion, gender dysphoria, or Gender Identity Disorder. But decency, compassion, and love do not require people to affirm disordered thinking as right thinking. Quite the opposite. And compassion and love do not require people to set aside their true beliefs about what behaviors are perverse and harmful to their livelihood. Real love requires that we first know what is true. This bill is based on false, destructive assumptions and must be defeated along with any lawmaker who supports it.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send your U.S. Senators in Washington D.C. an email or a fax asking them to please vote ‘NO’ on ENDA!
(Click HERE to read the current text of this bill.)

 Click HERE to support the work of IFI.

Taken from a HSLDA alert:

The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is scheduled to hold a hearing on the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on Thursday, July 12. Phone calls and emails are needed to our two U.S. senators to urge them to oppose this dangerous treaty.

HSLDA Founder and constitutional attorney Mike Farris has written a short memo on the dangers to U.S. sovereignty, family freedom, and homeschooling if the U.S. Senate votes to ratify the CRPD. You can read his memo online.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email to U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk asking them to oppose CRPD.  You can also call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.  Your message can be as simple as the following:

“Please oppose ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. As our nation gathers to celebrate Independence Day, it is outrageous that U.S. senators would support a treaty that surrenders U.S. sovereignty to unelected UN bureaucrats. Our nation already has laws to protect disabled Americans. This treaty is unnecessary and will hurt families.”

The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed by Congress to specifically protect disabled Americans. There is no need for the U.S. Senate to ratify the CRPD, as our nation’s state and federal laws already protect these precious citizens. Sadly, this treaty — if ratified by the U.S. Senate — would do great harm to disabled children and adults by subjecting parents, families, and caregivers to UN oversight, regulation, and control. 

In addition to calling your two U.S. Senators, we urge you to visit their Facebook pages and leave your comments about this treaty. Please also forward this information to your family and friends and encourage them to oppose this treaty. Families, not the United Nations, are best suited to care for their loved ones with disabilities. We don’t need unelected international bureaucrats to tell us how to do that.

Liberal lawmakers in cahoots with homosexual activists and the Obama Administration will not rest until they’ve perverted every significant cultural institution in ways that will hasten America’s decline.

Pro-homosexual “agents of change” masquerading as “educators” have usurped government schools through curricula and deceitful anti-bullying programs. Pro-homosexual activists have set in motion radical changes in the military through the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And now pro-homosexual activists are going after marriage through the oxymoronically titled “Respect for Marriage Act” (ROMA), which, if passed, would overturn the “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA).

ROMA embodies absolute ignorance of and disrespect for marriage, and lawmakers who support it expose their own ignorance of and disrespect for marriage.

On November 10th, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to advance ROMA (S. 598) to the full Senate. Illinois’ senior U.S. Senator, Dick Durbin, is a co-sponsor of this anti-marriage legislation. In the U.S. Senate, however, Democrats are expected to have a more difficult task mustering the votes to overcome an expected Republican filibuster.  Illinois’ junior U.S. Senator, Mark Kirk, will be a critical vote in maintaining a filibuster. Serious questions about Kirk’s commitment to conservative values continue to abound. The ROMA vote will be a key opportunity for Kirk to reassure Illinois conservatives that he stands squarely for natural marriage.

The assault on marriage is virtually relentless. Currently, there are no fewer than 11 challenges to the federal marriage law in the U.S. court system, and now liberals in the U.S. Senate are seeking the repeal of DOMA in order to compel the federal government to recognize same-sex “marriage.”

Furthermore, if DOMA is repealed, all 50 states would have to recognize homosexual “marriages” from other states, essentially making this counterfeit form of marriage the law of the land.

Despite what homosexual activists and foolish legislators claim, marriage is not solely a private institution concerned with the subjective feelings of those seeking to marry. Marriage — as a government-recognized institution — is a public institution that affects the public good. Government does not create marriage. It merely recognizes a type of relationship that exists and serves the public good. That type of relationship is a sexually complementary relationship between one man and one woman that may result in children. It would be no more legitimate for the government to jettison the criterion of sexual complementarity than it would be for the government to jettison the criterion of numbers of partners by legalizing plural marriage.

The cowardice and ignorance of conservative Americans, including our lawmakers, on virtually every issue related to homosexuality have facilitated the usurpation of public education and the military for the pernicious purpose of normalizing homosexuality. And these successes have emboldened an already arrogant homosexual movement that has turned its anarchic efforts toward radically redefining marriage. With a Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate, their chances for success are better than they’ve ever been.

Let’s hope and pray that there are enough conservatives with wisdom and spines of steel to prevent homosexual activists and their ideological allies from winning another corrosive victory, this time in the U.S. Senate.

Take ACTION:  Contact Senator Kirk’s office to urge him to to support DOMA and oppose any effort to repeal it.  You can also call his D.C. office at:  (202) 224-2854.

Homosexual activists are again pushing radical legislation known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) — H.R. 2981 & S. 1584. It has already been introduced in both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate and is currently in committee. President Barack Obama is on record supporting ENDA.

Take ACTION: Please contact your Congressman and ask him/her to vote NO on ENDA. You can also call your U.S. Representative and U.S. Senators at (202) 225-3121 and provide your zip code to be connected to your House member’s office.

Co-sponsors from Illinois are U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D), Roland Burris (D) and U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-10th).

Background
The Illinois Family Institute opposes ENDA, in part because it will elevate self-identified homosexual and gender confused indivuals to protected class status in the workplace. If passed, this will force religious employers to hire and promote homosexual employees even if they find that lifestyle to be morally objectionable. Other federally protected classes are determined by the following criteria:

1) an obvious immutable (not capable of change) characteristic; 
2) a history of discrimination evidenced by economic disenfranchisement; and 
3) political powerlessness.

“Sexual orientation,” “transgenderism” and “gender identity” fail to meet any of the above criteria.

The underlying purpose of ENDA, contrary to its disingenuous title, is to discriminate against anyone opposing homosexuality and transgenderism in the workplace. It is another effort to normalize homosexuality in the culture. ENDA will establish “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes in the workplace, equivalent to unchangeable characteristics of race and gender and constitutionally protected religious beliefs. 

Under ENDA, employers will be forced to make decisions that run contrary to their religious beliefs — a violation of their First Amendment rights. Employees will be forced to remain silent regarding their views on homosexuality in order to avoid “hostile work environment” claims. Many real-life examples attest to the negative impact ENDA-type policies have in the workplace.

ENDA, at the very least, is a serious threat to the religious liberty of Christians in the workplace.