While many Republicans are celebrating Tulsi Gabbard’s exit from the destructive Democrat Party, Illinois Family Institute is taking a wait-and-see approach to yet another political incarnation of Gabbard. While rejecting the Democrat Party and its baleful policies is always a good thing, not every exit from the Democrat Party constitutes an embrace of conservative principles.

Two decades ago, Gabbard rightly opposed the legal recognition of homosexual relationships as marriages. Later, as a Democrat, she issued not one but two groveling apologies for her prior conservative views on marriage. Here is her most recent apology released in Jan. 2019 when she began her failed quest to be the Democrat candidate for president:

In my past I said and believed things that were wrong, and worse, they were very hurtful to people in the LGBTQ community and to their loved ones. Many years ago, I apologized for my words and, more importantly, for the negative impact that they had. I sincerely repeat my apology today. I’m deeply sorry for having said them.

My views have changed significantly since then, and my record in Congress over the last six years reflects what is in my heart: a strong and ongoing commitment to fighting for LGBTQ rights. …

I … grew up in a socially conservative household where I was raised to believe that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. … While many Americans may be able to relate to growing up in a conservative home, my story is a little different because my father was very outspoken. He was an activist who was fighting against gay rights and marriage equality in Hawai‘i, and at that time I forcefully defended him and his cause.

…

When we deny LGBTQ people the basic rights that exist for every American, we’re denying their humanity denying that they are equal. We’re also creating a dangerous environment that breeds discrimination and violence. Because when we divide people based on who they are, or who they love, all we’re doing is adding fuel to the flames that perpetuate bigotry and hatred. I’m so grateful to my friends, my loved ones, both gay and straight, who have patiently helped me see how my past positions … were causing people harm. I regret the role that I played in causing such pain, and I remain committed to fighting for LGBTQ equality.

Again, for the dull of mind, homosexuals always had the right to marry, just as polyamorous people, sibling lovers, and “minor-attracted persons” have a right to marry today. Homosexuals were legally unable to marry people of the same sex, just as consensual non-monogamists can’t marry multiple people, sibling lovers can’t marry their siblings, and pedophiles can’t marry minors. What homosexuals sought was the unilateral right to redefine in law the parameters of marriage. (And now, polyamorists are doing likewise.)

Does Gabbard want to “divide people based on” their love for multiple people, or close blood relatives, or minors? Does she want to add “fuel to the flames that perpetuate bigotry” against consensual non-monogamists, incestuous couples, or adults who love children? Does she want to deny that they are equal? Does she want to hurt them and their loved ones by continuing to exclude them from legally marrying the person or persons they love?

Someone should pose those questions to Gabbard.

In addition to throwing her father under the political bus driving her ambition, Gabbard said that by opposing the legal redefinition of marriage, conservatives deny “LGB” and “T” people their humanity and that conservatives create a dangerous, discriminatory, violent, bigoted, and hateful environment. Now that she’s no longer a Democrat, let’s see how she zigs and zags her way out of that rhetorical ugliness aimed straight at conservatives.

From the website Vote Smart, Americans can learn a boatload of information about Gabbard that may surprise them.

For example, they will learn that Gabbard is a strident advocate for abortion who said,

The very real possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned terrifies me. I am sick of women’s bodies being used as pawns so politicians can score cheap political points at the expense of their freedom and safety. I am wholly committed to abortion remaining safe, legal and rare. We must commit to defending a woman’s right to choose.

Vote Smart cites Gabbard’s office boasting about her human slaughter bona fides:

Tulsi has a 100% voting record with both Planned Parenthood and NARAL. Tulsi is committed to defending a woman’s right to choose, which government has no place infringing on.

More questions for Gabbard:

If humans in the womb are fair game for extermination, if they have so little intrinsic worth that powerful humans can order their deaths for any or no reason, then why should abortion be rare?

If, on the other hand, humans in the womb are, indeed, humans with, therefore, intrinsic worth, why should abortion be legal?

And if the right of a woman to control her reproduction comes into direct conflict with a less-developed human’s right to exist, which right does Gabbard believe is a right of a higher moral order?

Gabbard’s compassion and sense of justice don’t seem to extend either to the unborn or to citizens and illegals who are suffering on our southern border due to our de facto open border. Vote Smart reports that Gabbard opposes the construction of a wall along the Mexican border and opposes requiring illegal immigrants to return to their country of origin before becoming eligible for citizenship.

Conservatives may want to ask Gabbard if her views on gun issues have changed since her office released this statement in 2018:

Tulsi … has long called for reinstating a federal ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, requiring comprehensive pre-purchase background checks, closing the gun-show loophole, and making sure that terrorists are not allowed to buy guns. Tulsi has an F-rating from the NRA, a 0% rating by the Hawaii Rifle Association, and a 100% rating by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Then there are Gabbard’s troubling statements on energy production, which would put a smile on the clucking faces of climate Chicken Littles everywhere—if chickens could smile:

I also support a ban on fracking, ending the $26 billion/year in fossil fuel subsidies, ban offshore drilling … and ban all subsidies or waivers to the nuclear power industry.

Gabbard’s political shapeshifting may point more to the presence of political ambition than to principled conservative convictions. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Maybe you once thought that the left wanted tolerance and diversity, but in reality, tolerance and diversity have never been the goals of the left, especially the radical left. Instead, it wants to suppress and silence opposing views, and the further left you go, the more extreme the intolerance.

For those who have still not come to grips with this, let these recent examples jar you.

It is bad enough that states have been passing legislation banning counseling for minors struggling with same-sex attraction, even if they have their parents’ backing. But now, there are reports that some states are considering banning such counseling for people of any age. (I was informed of this last week by a Christian counselor in California.)

In other words, it could be illegal for a 30-year-old man with unwanted same-sex attractions to go for professional counseling that focuses on helping him deal with and even overcome these attractions. This is a monstrous violation of individual freedom, not to mention a serious misrepresentation of scientific data, as if all “conversion therapy” was harmful.

Taking things one step farther, “A church in Michigan has come under intense attack this month [meaning, February] after posting on Facebook that it was holding a workshop at the church for girls who are struggling with essentially LGBT thoughts.”

So, not even a church is allowed to help its young people who struggle with unwanted same-sex thoughts. I guess freedom of religion and, even more fundamentally, freedom of self-determination only goes so far. How dare a church do such a thing!

The pastor Jeremy Schossau, stated that, “‘It is hard to believe how much vile filth has been sent our way,’ adding that many of the emails contained gay pornography. ‘We’re talking 10,000 emails and posts and messages and phone calls. It’s just been virtually nonstop.’”

Ah, the sweet, gentle voice of tolerance and diversity!

On a very different front, Pamela Geller explained to Milo Yiannopoulos that, “Google has scrubbed all internet searches . . . of anything critical of jihad and Sharia. So, if you Google jihad and you Google Sharia and you Google Islam, you’re going to get Islamic apologetics, you’re going to get ‘religion of peace.’ Whereas my site used to come up top, page one for jihad and Sharia or Islam, or JihadWatch did, you can’t find it now. They scrubbed 40,000 Geller posts of Google.”

She continued, “You know what? It’s Stalinesque.”

Geller wasn’t exaggerating, and her example is just one of many.

But all you have to do is label something as “hate speech” these days, and you can get it removed from social media in a hurry.

A friend of mine had his Facebook page shut down for sharing Bible verses about homosexual practice – I mean verses without commentary.

Another friend had his Facebook page shut down for posting medical data about the health risks associated with homosexual practice.

These are just two examples out of many more, where colleagues have been warned, if not censured and then censored.

Even Joe Rogan, hardly a conservative activist, noted how “squirrely” things have become with “hate speech” labelling on social media. (The context of his comment was his interview with Douglas Murray, himself anything but a conservative activist, noting how Murray’s discussion with atheist Sam Harris was somehow labelled hate speech, thereby in violation of Twitter’s community guidelines.”)

Over at Harvard University, a Christian club has been penalized for daring to live by its biblically-based code for leaders. As reported by Todd Starnes, “A well-respected Christian student organization at Harvard University has been placed on probation after they allegedly forced a bisexual woman to resign from a leadership position for dating a woman.

“The Crimson reports that Harvard College Faith and Action was put on ‘administrative probation’ for a year. The group is largest Christian fellowship on campus.”

So, a Christian club cannot require its leaders (not its members) to live by Christian standards, which begs the question, Could the leader of a campus Islamic club be a professing Christian? Or could the leader of a campus PETA club be a meat-eater? Or could the leader of the campus atheist club be an Orthodox Jew?

By why ask logical questions? The left wants to enforce its intolerant groupthink on everyone else. Leftist tolerance is a myth.

Just consider the recent debate on gun control in the aftermath of the tragic shooting in Parkland, Florida. Regardless of which side of the debate you’re on, was any tolerance shown to Dana Loesch (representing the NRA) at a CNN-sponsored town hall? Not only was she called a murderer and bad mother, but Jake Tapper actually asked her if she and her husband had security to escort them out of the building.

Is it stretching things to imagine that there could have been physical violence against Loesch? We’ve already seen how violent the left can get at places like Berkeley, where “punch a Nazi” becomes the rallying cry.

This doesn’t mean that we respond with violence and anger. God forbid.

But it does mean that we start speaking up more loudly, clearly, fearlessly, and persistently. And in the appropriate ways, as with the new “Internet Freedom Watch” initiative announced by the NRB (National Religious Broadcasters), we fight back.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org

They say that lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Not true. It does if you stand high atop a cliff’s edge waving a lightning rod above your head during a thunderstorm. In fact, in the unlikely event you survive the first strike, it’ll keep right on striking until you climb down.

So-called “gun-free zones” are lightning rods for mass murder. It’s time we climbed down from the cliff’s edge.

America mourns yet another needless and preventable mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. When will gun-grabbing liberals learn?

In a blunt and provocatively titled, though well-reasoned post, submitted shortly after Wednesday’s shooting, Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft charged: “Obama Is Responsible for Latest Fort Hood Murders – Still a Gun-Free Zone.”

Wrote Hoft:

“In 2009 Islamist killer Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Army major and psychiatrist, fatally shot 13 people and injured more than 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas. Fort Hood was a gun-free zone.

“Hasan reportedly screamed, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ as he committed his mass murder. …

“Barack Obama termed this Islamic terrorist attack ‘workplace violence.’ Complete lunacy.

“After the first mass killing nothing changed. Fort Hood is still a gun-free zone. President Bill Clinton’s gun-free policies are still in place.

“Today there was another mass shooting at Fort Hood. Soldiers were told to take cover and hide like cowards as a crazed gunman shot at least 14 Americans on base. The shooter, Ivan Lopez, then shot himself in the head.

“These deaths are the result of failed policies. These deaths are the result of a dangerous ‘gun free zone’ policy.

“The Obama administration is responsible for this mass shooting. They witnessed this before. They didn’t learn a thing. Gun-free zones are death zones,” concluded Hoft.

Of course, no one but Ivan Lopez is responsible for his own horrific crimes. Still, this Obama administration is likewise responsible for its own criminally horrific incompetence.

By maintaining his demonstrably failed “gun-free zone” policy at Fort Hood (and anywhere for that matter), Obama may as well have beckoned: “Hey, would-be mass murderers, we’ve still got some unarmed soldiers here. Come and finish ‘em off!”

This president is undeniably culpable. His reckless insistence upon preserving this obtuse, liberal – but I repeat myself – gun-grabbing policy rendered defenseless, once again, the fine servicemen and women of Fort Hood. It kept in place the same mass-murder-rich environment in which Nidal Malik Hasan committed the first Fort Hood “fish-in-a-barrel” soldier hunt.

And the only people surprised are you gun-control nutters.

Here’s the thing about liberalism, which is really cultural Marxism, euphemistically tagged “progressivism”: It’s never worked and it never will. It can’t. It’s a material impossibility. “Progressivism” can no more work than can one answer a nonsense question like, “How big is blue?” As with all similar such humanistic efforts to achieve a man-made earthly utopia, “progressivism” is a hopeless non-starter.

Why? Because “progressivism” is utterly detached from reality. There’s truth, and then there’s “progressivism.” Central to every single “progressive” policy, without exception, is the fatally flawed denial of the existence of sin – of man’s fallen nature. There’s also a stupidly stubborn refusal to acknowledge the reality of moral absolutes. “Progressivism” is built upon a utopian, relativist house of cards; and when that house comes crashing down, the results are often deadly.

This past Wednesday America witnessed liberalism’s deadly results first hand. A public policy that intentionally disarms American citizens – much less American soldiers – is a policy that creates a pond full of sitting ducks; this, whether we have a terrorist behind the trigger, or a government with designs on tyranny.

Notice a trend here? What do Sandy Hook Elementary, Aurora, Colorado’s Century 16 theater, Columbine High, Fort Hood No. 1 and Fort Hood No. 2 all have in common? They’re all “gun-free zones.”

Oh, if only, rather than “gun-free zone” signs, each of these terror Ground Zeros had had a sign reading: “Staff heavily armed and trained. Any attempts to harm those herein will be met with deadly force.”

Might some of those beautiful souls have still died before one or more well-armed good guys could take out the well-armed bad guys? Perhaps. But how many precious lives could have been saved?

Albert Einstein famously quipped that the definition of “insanity” is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In that sense, “progressives” are insane.

Or, if not exactly insane, they’re certainly no Einsteins.

I’ll admit that many “progressives” are generally well-meaning and decent people. I even have a handful of “progressive” friends who’ve yet to see the light. I love ‘em, but they still want what they can’t have, at least not until that glorious last trumpet sounds.

They want heaven on earth.

It’s not for lack of sincerity that “progressives” are destroying America and putting lives at risk.

It’s for failure to grasp reality.

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