From Michael Farris, Home School Legal Defense Association

On November 21, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held its second and likely final hearing on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). You can watch the first hearing on November 5, and the November 21 hearing.

U.S. Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) deserve high praise for asking tough questions of Secretary of State John Kerry about the dangers posed by the treaty. Secretary Kerry was clearly not expecting the questions.

At times he struggled to give a satisfactory answer about how the Obama administration was planning to ensure that the treaty did not affect U.S. sovereignty, home school freedom, or the abortion debate in the U.S.

Reason to Hope 

Coupled with the excellent questions asked of witnesses by U.S. Senators Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) in the first hearing, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) is cautiously optimistic about the chances of once again defeating the UNCRPD.

The U.S Senate will be on recess for Thanksgiving until Monday, December 9. It is absolutely crucial that your two senators hear from you that the Senate must not ratify this United Nations treaty. President Barack Obama has mobilized top officials from across the federal government—including the Department of Defense and the State Department—to lobby the Senate and urge senators to ratify this UN treaty.

The only way we will defeat this coordinated attack against U.S. sovereignty and parental rights is by overwhelming the Senate with phone calls, emails, and letters from We the People.

We believe that supporters of the UNCRPD will try to approve it in the committee the week of December 9, and then try to have the full Senate vote on the UNCRPD before Christmas. 

This treaty surrenders U.S. sovereignty to unelected UN bureaucrats and will threaten parental care of children with disabilities. Our nation already has laws to protect Americans with disabilities. This treaty is unnecessary and will hurt families by giving bureaucrats the power to decide what is in the best interests of a child with disabilities, not the child’s parents.”

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kikr, urging them to oppose this unnecessary international treaty that will harm families and undermine U.S. sovereignty.  

The magnitude of this Obama administration’s “progressive” radicalism becomes more evident with each passing day. In recent months, there has been a drastic spike in acts of both anti-Christian and anti-conservative discrimination and intimidation on military bases across the country. This mounting harassment is not being carried out at the hands of regular enlisted folk but, rather, at the hands of high-ranking officials who, in their official capacity, are targeting Christian and conservative organizations and individuals in an effort to silence them.

It has long been suspected that the Obama administration is using propaganda circulated by the roundly discredited Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a left-wing extremist group that, in recent years, has adopted two primary goals: 1) raising truckloads of money and 2) smearing as “domestic hate groups” dozens of mainstream Christian ministries like the Family Research Council (FRC), the American Family Association (AFA), and local groups like Illinois Family Institute (IFI).

This suspicion has now been verified.

The problem on military bases has gotten so bad, in fact, that the U.S. Congress is demanding answers from the Pentagon. Recently, the AFA-affiliated OneNewsNow.com newsgroup reported that “Congressman Alan Nunnelee (R-Mississippi) is 1 of 38 members of Congress signing off on a letter to the Secretary of the Army – especially about an incident last month at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, in which the Tupelo-based American Family Association was labeled in Army training material as a ‘hate group.’ The Army initially claimed it was an isolated incident.

“‘But as we looked into it, [we found] this is not an isolated incident,’ Nunnelee [told] OneNewsNow. ‘There are a number of cases where the Army has singled out the American Family Association and other Christian organizations as hate groups, and service men and women have been threatened with sanctions if they support these groups.”

After a tremendous public outcry – and in an embarrassing slap to the face of the SPLC – the Pentagon quickly backpedaled, later apologizing about the Camp Shelby incident and publicly admitting that, despite the SPLC’s absurd claims to the contrary, the AFA is not a “hate group.”

Still, rather than distancing itself from the anti-Christian SPLC as one might expect, the Obama administration has, instead, strengthened ties to the hard-left outfit. Even after this string of military scandals.

For instance, I recently learned that on its official website, the FBI lists as one of its primary “hate crimes resources,” the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This is especially mysterious when you consider that the FBI’s own verified hate crimes statistics are completely at odds with numbers put out by the SPLC in its fundraising propaganda. Whereas the FBI indicates that there was a sharp 24.3 percent decrease in hate crimes from 1996 to 2010, with racial hate crimes dropping by 41.9 percent, the SPLC incongruously claims that since 2000, the number of “hate groups” has somehow increased by 67.3 percent.

So send your money right away!

The FBI’s empirical data doesn’t track with the SPLC’s political propaganda. Consequently, by partnering so closely with this discredited organization, the Department of Justice significantly undermines its own credibility.

Still, while the SPLC has proven utterly unreliable in its actuarial acumen – as well as intentionally dishonest – it has also proven demonstrably dangerous in its prolonged campaign of anti-Christian agitation.

You may recall that it was the Southern Poverty Law Center’s somewhat clever, yet patently dishonest and reprehensible strategy of juxtaposing, as fellow “hate groups,” mainstream Christian organizations like the FRC and the AFA alongside violent extremist groups like the Aryan Brotherhood and the Skin Heads that, on Aug. 15, 2012, led to an actual act of domestic terrorism.

On that date, “gay” activist Floyd Lee Corkins II – who later confessed in court that he was spurred-on by the SPLC’s anti-Christian materials – entered the lobby of the Washington-based Family Research Council intending to kill every Christian within.

Corkins was armed with both a gun and a backpack full of ammunition. He also had 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches that he intended to rub in the faces of his would-be victims. (FRC had recently defended the food chain’s COO Dan Cathy for pro-natural marriage statements he made.)

The only thing standing between Corkins and mass murder was FRC facilities manager and security specialist Leo Johnson. As Corkins shouted disapproval for FRC’s “politics,” he shot Johnson who, despite a severely wounded arm, managed to tackle Corkins and disarm him.

Of Johnson’s actions, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said, “The security guard here is a hero, as far as I’m concerned.”

I agree.

Upon hearing of Leo’s selfless act of heroism, I was reminded of John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

But according to both the SPLC and the FBI (by virtue of its close ties to the group), Leo’s heart is, instead, full of hate. Everyone at FRC is hateful.

In fact, if you happen to be a Bible-believing Christian, you too are hateful.

You get the drill.

The Obama administration has absolutely no business partnering with this extremist organization – and it’s an outrage that it does. If this troubles you as much as it does me, please contact the FBI at (202) 324-3000 and respectfully voice your concern. Then call or email your local FBI office. (Click here to find that location.) It’s critical that freedom-loving Americans light-up the FBI’s phone lines and demand that all facets of government completely disassociate from the SPLC and disavow any further use of its anti-Christian propaganda.

The Southern Poverty Law Center must be held accountable for its inflammatory and potentially deadly anti-Christian bigotry.

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.

“Disaster,” “embarrassment,” “humiliating” and “train wreck” are just a few of the colorful terms being used to describe it. The Obama administration’s incompetent half-billion-dollar rollout of its incompetent multi-trillion-dollar signature achievement is but a tragic metaphor for this man’s entire presidency. (It’s not hyperbole when it’s true.)

Nearly three weeks in and the utopian promise of “affordable care” for all has yielded but a handful of folks who’ve even been able to sign up for this clinic in socialism.

That Obamacare – something billed as a health-care panacea for the collective – is something that the collective neither asked for, nor wanted, is now the back story. That it has failed so fantastically in every respect, has taken center stage.

Reuters reports: “In its third week of operations, the [Obamacare] website continues to experience problems, which government officials say they are working day and night to repair. Even allies of the Obama administration have been highly critical, with former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs calling it ‘excruciatingly embarrassing’ and calling for ‘some people’ to be fired.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT.), was both a sponsor of – and cheerleader for – Obamacare. He saw this coming. Once he read this 2,400-page regulatory monstrosity, he came to the same conclusion as did anyone else with two synapses to rub together. He called the implementation of Obamacare “a huge train wreck” and announced that, rather than resulting in his re-election, Obama’s pet government health-care albatross would sink him into retirement.

Still, the few who have somehow managed to enroll in Obamacare are discovering, to their dismay, what many of us have warned all along: There is nothing “affordable” about the paradoxically named “Affordable Care Act.” Though government geeks may be “working day and night” to fix the website, no amount of work will fix Obamacare itself. It’s unfixable. The only solution is to total-out this jalopy.

Even the Obamanistas are waking up. Just days before its launch, Politico lamented, “The Obamacare that consumers will finally be able to sign up for next week (they weren’t) is a long way from the health plan President Barack Obama first pitched to the nation.

“Millions of low-income Americans won’t receive coverage. Many workers at small businesses won’t get a choice of insurance plans right away. Large employers won’t need to provide insurance for another year. Far more states than expected won’t run their own insurance marketplaces. And a growing number of workers won’t get to keep their employer-provided coverage.”

The president’s like-minded base – the hardcore left – has also become restless. In a recent “End of Day” report, Gary Bauer, founder of Campaign for Working Families, gives one example from the left-wing Daily Kos.

Bauer writes: “Obamacare’s continued horrendous rollout (See next item) will likely cause the scales to fall from many eyes. Even some liberals are questioning Obamacare. [Warning: Graphic language.] We need to make sure that friends and family members who bought into the hype about hope and change know that it doesn’t have to be this way. We can do better.”

The good news – if you can call it that – is that Obamacare is non-discriminating. It’s putting the screws to every American – rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, liberal and conservative.

In the above-referenced Daily Kos piece, headlined “Obamacare will double my monthly premium (according to Kaiser),” liberal blogger “Tirge Caps” captures the shock experienced by most Americans – even “progressive” Americans – over the promise of Obamacare vs. the reality of Obamacare:

My wife and I just got our updates from Kaiser telling us what our 2014 rates will be. Her monthly has been $168 this year, mine $150. We have a high deductible. We are generally healthy people who don’t go to the doctor often. I barely ever go. The insurance is in case of a major catastrophe.

Well, now, because of Obamacare, my wife’s rate is going to $302 per month and mine is jumping to $284.

I am canceling insurance for us and I am not paying any f***ing penalty. What the hell kind of reform is this?

Oh, OK, if we qualify, we can get some government assistance. Great. So now I have to jump through another hoop to just chisel some of this off. And we don’t qualify, anyway, so what’s the point?

I never felt too good about how this was passed and what it entailed, but I figured if it saved Americans money, I could go along with it.

I don’t know what to think now. This appears, in my experience, to not be a reform for the people.

What am I missing?

I realize I will probably get screamed at for posting this, but I can’t imagine I am the only Californian who just received a rate increase from Kaiser based on these new laws.

Not only will you get screamed at, Mr. Caps, but you may want to prepare for an unexpected IRS audit. America feels your pain, my friend.

The proof is in the Obamacare pudding.

And Obamacare is poison pudding indeed.

Since March 2010 when President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, (one of the most misnamed pieces of legislation ever passed by the US Congress), his administration has published 109 new federal regulations detailing how Obamacare will be implemented.
 
The $2.6 trillion health care plan has already increased American’s health care premiums by an average of 29%.  It has killed countless potential jobs altogether and forced millions of existing ones into part time positions as companies move to avoid penalties and costs associated with the program, which contains $819.3 billion in taxes.
 
The new government regulations published in the Federal Register take up 10,516 pages.  These pages carry an average of 1,000 words, or around 10.5 million words total according to a recent CNS News report.   Those regulations cover everything from tanning bed excise taxes to new hospital payment systems.
 
For perspective of the amount of new governmental regulations in place so far from this one law, these regulations are more than eight times as many pages as were in the Gutenberg Bible (1,286 pages) which was the first major work printed in the western world with a moveable type press in 1455 AD.

Another possible comparison to the Bible was revealed in a recent non-partisan study by The Kaiser Family Foundation.  As with the Bible today and rampant ignorance of what it says, the Kaiser study from May found that more than 40 percent of Americans did not even know that Obamacare was in place.  Many thought it had been repealed by Congress or overturned by the US Supreme Court. Others (23%) were more honest in admitting that they didn’t know enough to even predict the status of the law.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative him/her to support the effort to defund Obamacare.  You can also call the U.S. Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your congressman by name. Urge him/her to co-sponsor H.J.RES. 62, a CR that does not contain a single penny of funding for ObamaCare. 

U.S. Representative Tom Graves (R-Georgia) has authored a Continuing Resolution, the Security, Stability, and Fairness Resolution (H.J.RES. 62), that will defund ObamaCare in its entirety for the coming fiscal year. His bill will fund the rest of government with the sole exception of ObamaCare.

This means that if there is a shutdown of government, it will be done by those who want to continue to fund ObamaCare.

Congress must pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) by September 30 to avoid a government shutdown. The House may vote AS SOON AS TOMORROW on whether to continue funding for ObamaCare or cut it off.

This law is so bad that congressional staff have exempted themselves from it.

This is the best chance we may ever have to defund the gargantuan and hopelessly misguided piece of legislation that is ObamaCare.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative him/her to support the effort to defund Obamacare.  You can also call the U.S. Capitol Hill switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask for your congressman by name. Urge him/her to co-sponsor H.J.RES. 62, a CR that does not contain a single penny of funding for ObamaCare.

Remember that according to the Constitution all appropriations bills must start in the U.S. House. This means that the House can stop ObamaCare in its tracks this week. No money, no ObamaCare.

ObamaCare:

• Is so bad that congressional staff have exempted themselves from it
• Violates freedom of religion and conscience by requiring Christian businesses to pay for abortifacients
• Will send your tax dollars to health care providers who perform abortions
• Is the leading job-killer in America, as companies lay off workers because of its mandates and its costs
• Forces companies to shift workers from fulltime to part-time positions
• Drives up the cost of health care premiums
• Reduces the availability and affordability of health care

It is very important that you forward this alert to your friends and family members.

Read more HERE.

Written by Laurie Higgins and David E. Smith

Our federal lawmakers are back in their districts as the U.S. Congress has adjourned for a five-week recess. But that doesn’t mean that all is quiet on the national front. In fact, there is a battle shaping up in the U.S. Senate over whether Obamacare will be defunded. 

U.S. Senators  Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) are spearheading an effort to oppose any budget than includes funding for Obamacare, which would result in a government shutdown. Though their effort is unlikely to succeed, particularly with the weak-willed, flip-flopping, non-leadership of Republicans like Senator Mark Kirk who supported the Rubio/Lee/Cruz effort before he opposed it, there are very good reasons for conservatives to vigorously support it.

While the inestimable Charles Krauthammer calls the Rubio/Lee/Cruz plan “nuts,” the equally inestimable Steve Hayes, senior writer for The Weekly Standard, writes  (more persuasively, in our humble opinion):

It was a bold move. And if ever there were a time for being aggressive, it’s now.

For years, health-policy experts, economists, and Americans with basic math skills have understood that the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t work as advertised. It simply wasn’t going to be possible to (a) provide insurance to 30 million more Americans, (b) improve the quality of care, and (c) save money.

In the years since the law passed, the contradictions of the undertaking created a growing number of fissures in the foundation of Obamacare—obvious to those looking closely but largely unnoticed by the masses. That has changed in recent weeks. With longtime supporters openly questioning the viability of the reforms and the administration itself tacitly acknowledging major flaws, the edifice of Obamacare has begun to crumble. It’s a big moment.

The arguments against the Rubio/Lee/Cruz plan are that it won’t get passed and that the effort will backfire against Republicans who will get blamed for even the possibility of a government shutdown. (Of course, rational people would see that a government shutdown would be equally the fault of Obama for his refusal to compromise on a budget unless it funds his pet health care project.)

Concerns about blame are not unreasonable concerns, but they reflect the all too common short-view mindset of too many conservatives.

Look at the strategic plan of homosexual and gender-confused activists. For years, decades even, they recognized their goal of normalizing homosexuality and its attendant issues (same-sex adoption, civil unions, same-sex “marriage,” and laws permitting cross-dressing men to use women’s bathrooms) seemed but a hopelessly doctrinaire pipedream, and yet they proposed policies and laws that had no immediate chance of passing. They recognized that these seemingly extreme efforts serve a strategic purpose—multiple strategic purposes, in fact.

Steve Hayes articulates one of those purposes:

…it’s not enough to point to polls showing that Obamacare is unpopular or to highlight news articles demonstrating the many problems with the implementation of it. [Sen. Lee’s] efforts may succeed in pushing Republican leaders to come up with an actual strategy to stall Obamacare.

In a must-read National Review article about Obama’s arrogant lawlessness, Kevin Williamson points to the dramatic systemic changes that Obamacare will help institutionalize:

[Obamacare] amounts to that fundamental transformation of American society that President Obama promised as a candidate: but instead of the new birth of hope and change, it is the transformation of a constitutional republic operating under laws passed by democratically accountable legislators into a servile nation under the management of an unaccountable administrative state. The real import of Barack Obama’s political career will be felt long after he leaves office, in the form of a permanently expanded state that is more assertive of its own interests and more ruthless in punishing its enemies. At times, he has advanced this project abetted by congressional Democrats, as with the health-care law’s investiture of extraordinary powers in the executive bureaucracy, but he also has advanced it without legislative assistance — and, more troubling still, in plain violation of the law. President Obama and his admirers choose to call this “pragmatism,” but what it is is a mild expression of totalitarianism, under which the interests of the country are conflated with those of the president’s administration and his party.

Americans have a troubling willingness to acclimate or inure themselves to that which they should never acclimate or inure themselves. It frees them from engaging in icky political action and from the epithet-hurling of the left that inevitably follows such action. Perhaps this dire warning from Williamson will nudge Americans to the supposedly too dramatic action urged by U.S. Senators Rubio, Lee, and Cruz.

Illinois Family Institute and virtually every pro-life activist and organization in the nation are very concerned about Obamacare’s HHS Mandate, which requires employers to provide insurance coverage that includes abortifacients and contraception coverage. This requirement violates many Christian employers’ rights of conscience by requiring them to provide that which their faith tells them is morally wrong.  

Thankfully, our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom are heavily involved in the fight to defend these Christian business owners’ right to make business decisions that accord with their. We must hold them up in prayer and ask God to allow them to prevail in the courts for the sake of religious freedom. 

Moreover, defunding Obamacare would send President Barack Obama and his administration a clear signal that we the people do not want this particular health care reform, including the abortion pill mandate. It also would prevent the Obama Administration from implementing other potentially dangerous provisions of Obamacare, including the funding of abortion and euthanasia-lite “death panels,” or what Howard Dean euphemistically refers to as Obama’s “health care rationing body.”

While defunding Obamacare will not end our fight against the HHS Mandate, since that mandate does not rely on appropriated funds, it would be an important step in the right direction for the defense of life and religious liberty.

According to a World Magazine article on this issue, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) says, “‘The only way we win this fight is if the grassroots rise up and demand of our elected representatives that they stand up and do the right thing…. Success depends upon hundreds of millions of Americans standing up and demanding this.’”

If conservatives cared a wee bit less about being called “extreme” by the extreme left mainstream press, perhaps we could accomplish more.  So let’s do our part here in Illinois. 

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk to ask them to stand with the 12 U.S. Senators who are opposing funding Obamacare. 

Read more:

Defund Obamacare Now  (National Review Online) 

Durbin Dismisses Cruz’ Effort to Defund Obamacare (Illinois Review)

The Case Against Obamacare  (Heritage Foundation)

Obamacare Threatens Very Life of Republic (Family Research Council)

Defunding Obamacare: Worth a Try (Cato Institute)

 Three Important Upcoming Events:

–>  September 14th – IFI’s 3rd Annual Fun. Run. Walk in Joliet 
(Click HERE for more info)

–> October 4th — IFI’s Fall Banquet with Dr. Benjamin Carson in Northlake 
(Click HERE for more info)

–> October 23rd — IFI’s Defend Marriage Lobby Day in Springfield  
(Click HERE for more info)

U.S. Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) has introduced the Marriage Protection Amendment (H.J. RES. 51). This amendment to the U.S. Constitution would make marriage legal only between a man and a woman. The amendment states:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

So far, the bill has 52 co-sponsors.  That means 383 representatives have taken a pro-gay marriage stance by not signing on as a co-sponsor of natural marriage as between one man and one woman.

As you know, the U.S. Supreme Court has opened the door for marriage redefinition. Their recent rulings on DOMA and Prop 8 have emboldened homosexual activists to push even harder.

A Federal Marriage Amendment will finally put an end to activist judges tampering with the will of the people. Rep. Huelskamp needs co-sponsors for H.J. RES. 51. Please contact your Representative and ask him to co-sponsor H.J. RES. 51. Homosexual activists are determined to force homosexual marriage on America by using activist liberal judges, like those on the Supreme Court.  

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email or a fax to your Congressman to ask him/her to please co-sponsor H.J. RES. 51.  U.S. Representative Randy Hultgren (R-Geneva) is currently the only Illinois Congressman co-sponsoring this important legislation.

Facebook Users – Tell your friends by posting this message to your Facebook page.

Twitter Users – I support the Marriage Protection Amendment  #MarriageProtectionAmendment

This is urgent — please act today! This is very important: Please forward this to all your family and friends. They are probably unaware of H.J. RES. 51 because the media hasn’t reported on it.

In a case of what seems to be a case of anti-religious discrimination and bigotry, U.S. federal officials have informed a local sheriff in Louisiana that he must remove the word “God” from the oath of a local Young Marines chapter, or forfeit federal funding.

Julian Whittington, the Sheriff of Bossier Parish (County), Lousiana, says he received notice from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that he must eliminate any and all religious elements from his department’s Young Marines chapter.  An attorney for the Justice Department’s Office of Civil Rights told Whittington that he must prohibit the Young Marines from participating in voluntary prayer and must excise the word “God” from the oath taken by the members.

The Young Marines’ oath reads as follows: 

I sincerely promise I will set an example for all other youth to follow and I shall never do anything that would bring disgrace or dishonor upon God, my Country and its flag, my parents, myself, or the Young Marines.

Whittington says that because he refused to submit to the religious cleansing of his Young Marines chapter, the DOJ has defunded a $30,000 grant supporting the youth diversion program.

“I flat said, ‘It’s not going to happen,”  Whittington said.  “Enough is enough.  This is the United States of America.  The idea that the mere mention of God is prohibited is ridiculous.”

U.S. Representative Dr. John Fleming (R-LA) condemned the Department of Justice action.  “There is a very wide effort coming out of this Administration that seeks to stamp out religious freedom of expression–particularly freedom of Christian expression.”

“They are willing to throw the youth overboard and remove the funding just in the name of making this an atheist, agnostic, secular organization,”  Fleming continued.   “It’s inconsistent with the framers of the Constitution.” 

Click HERE to support Illinois Family Institute.

Today in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, is unconstitutional. This decision compels the federal government (i.e. taxpayers) to provide  federal benefits to homosexual couples who have “married” in states that have jettisoned sexual complementarity from the legal definition of marriage. This decision does not require states to legalize same-sex “marriage.”

In a scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia excoriated the presumptuousness (and incomprehensibility) of the majority opinion:

This case is about power in several respects. It is about the power of our people to govern themselves, and the power of this Court to pronounce the law. Today’s opinion aggrandizes the latter, with the predictable consequence of diminishing the former. We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation. The Court’s errors on both points spring forth from the same diseased root: an exalted conception of the role of this institution in America.

…

[S]etting aside traditional moral disapproval of same-sex marriage (or indeed same-sex sex),there are many perfectly valid—indeed, downright boring—justifying rationales for this legislation. Their existence ought to be the end of this case. For they give the lie to the Court’s conclusion that only those with hateful hearts could have voted “aye” on this Act. And more importantly, they serve to make the contents of the legis­lators’ hearts quite irrelevant….By holding to the contrary, the majority has declared open season on any law that (in the opinion of the law’s opponents and any panel of like-minded federal judges) can be characterized as mean-spirited. 

The majority concludes that the only motive for this Act was the “bare…desire to harm a politically unpopular group.”…Bear in mind that the object of this condemnation is not the legislature of some once-Confederate Southern state…but our respected coordinate branches, the Con­gress and Presidency of the United States. Laying such a charge against them should require the most extraordi­nary evidence, and I would have thought that every attempt would be made to indulge a more anodyne expla­nation for the statute. The majority does the opposite—affirmatively concealing from the reader the arguments that exist in justification. It makes only a passing mention of the “arguments put forward” by the Act’s defenders, and does not even trouble to paraphrase or describe them….I imagine that this is because it is harder to maintain the illusion of the Act’s supporters as unhinged members of a wild-eyed lynch mob when one first describes their views as they see them.

The unconstitutionality of Sec. 3 of DOMA must come as a surprise to the 342 representatives (including 118 Democrats) and 85 Senators (including 32 Democrats) who voted for it in 1996. And it must really come as a surprise to Rhodes Scholar, attorney, and former president, Bill Clinton, who signed it into law. IFI understands that people’s positions on an issue can “evolve.” What is baffling is that scores of attorneys could be so mistaken on the constitutionality of this law. In fact scores of Democratic attorneys didn’t notice the unconstitutionality of DOMA, including Senators Joe Biden, Dick Durbin, Harry Reid, Max Baucus, Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy, Carl Levin, and John Dingell, and Representatives Bob Menendez and Chuck Schumer, all attorneys who voted for DOMA.

Even though this decision reflects only a limited constitutional question, it will likely fuel the intellectually and morally vacuous state efforts to legalize so-called same-sex “marriage”—an oxymoron, if ever there was one. Intellectually lazy lawmakers who have no idea what marriage is or why the government is involved in the marriage business will use it for political cover.

The U.S. Supreme Court also decided with uncharacteristic voting alliances that the Proposition 8 case had no standing and to vacate the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Prop 8 decision.

Prop 8 was the ballot initiative in California that established marriage as the union of one man and one woman. After the people of California through Prop 8, in effect, overturned the same-sex marriage law, a lawsuit followed challenging Prop 8. A closeted homosexual activist judge, Vaughn Walker, voted against Prop 8 in a widely ridiculed decision (in which he potentially had a personal stake), after which he popped out of the closet and retired.

Today’s Prop 8 decision, though having the destructive result of allowing same-sex “marriages” to resume in California, did not decide on the merits of Prop 8 or Judge Walker’s infamous judicial reasoning. It merely decided on the jurisdictional issue of who has legal standing to defend Prop 8.

Today’s decisions will not contribute to a strengthening of marriage or an advance for equality or movement toward smaller government or a victory for justice or increased protection for children. Quite the opposite.

And while the red cape of this decision is fluttered in front of the charging marriage-destruction bull, Americans will continue to avert their gaze from the essential questions of whether homosexuality is really analogous to race; whether same-sex marriage is really analogous to interracial marriage; why marriage should be limited to two people; why the government is involved in marriage; and whether children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and father, particularly their own their biological mother and father.

Marriage has a nature that the government merely recognizes and regulates. The state does not create something called “marriage” out of whole cloth. And the reason the state is involved in marriage is to protect the needs and rights of any children that may result from the particular type of sexual union that is marriage.

If marriage is solely constituted by intense loving feelings with no connection to sexual complementarity or procreative potential, there is no reason to prohibit government recognition of plural unions as marriages and, indeed, no reason for government involvement at all.

These are two more sustenance tubes yanked from the dying body that is marriage in America. It’s truly a sad day for America, and most especially America’s children.

Click HERE TO SUPPORT Illinois Family Institute.

From World Net Daily

A coalition of Christian organizations is warning that the U.S. Supreme Court does not have the power to redefine the institution of marriage, which predates government, churches and even religion.

The statement comes just as the court is expected to release its ruling on the Proposition 8 case in California and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

In the Proposition 8 case, a homosexual judge in California ruled that the state’s voters did not have the right to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Voters approved an amendment in 2008 defining marriage only months after the state Supreme Court established same-sex marriage.

DOMA, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, states that for federal purposes, only marriage between one man and one woman is recognized. Homosexual activists challenged the law, and President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder announced that they simply would refuse to defend it, even though it is the law of the land and they are charged with enforcing it.

The coalition today released a statement that left no doubt about the intention of its members should the Supreme Court step rule against traditional marriage.

“As Christians united together in defense of marriage, we pray that this will not happen. But, make no mistake about our resolve. While there are many things we can endure, redefining marriage is so fundamental to the natural order and the true common good that this is the line we must draw and one we cannot and will not cross,” they say.

The group includes Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant clergy and leaders.

The statement was drafted by Deacon Keith Fournier, editor of Catholic Online, and chairman of Common Good Alliance, as well as Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel Action.

It was approved by pastors and other leaders who collectively represent tens of millions of Christians.

While the church leaders candidly admit they have differences on matters of doctrine and practice, they proclaimed solidarity on the issue of marriage.

“Marriage and family have been inscribed by the Divine Architect into the order of creation. Marriage is ontologically between one man and one woman, ordered toward the union of the spouses, open to children and formative of family. Family is the first vital cell of society; the first church, first school, first hospital, first economy, first government and first mediating institution of our social order. The future of a free and healthy society passes through marriage and the family,” it states.

The statement says that the since marriage “predates government,” it cannot be redefined by civil institutions, “including the United States Supreme Court.”

“Redefining the very institution of marriage is improper and outside the authority of the state,” it says. “The Supreme Court has no authority to redefine marriage.”

For more of the story, click here. For the full statement, click here.

This week America is poised at the edge of a moral cliff. This week, the United States Supreme Court will decide two cases that ask it to redefine marriage to include homosexual couples. We do not know whether the Court will declare homosexual marriage to be a constitutionally guaranteed right or will leave the definition of marriage to be decided state by state. Neither of those options are a clear victory for the institution of marriage as God created it.

The cases:

Hollingsworth v. Perry – Proposition 8
U.S. v Windsor – Defense of Marriage Act

The question is: Does a law that defines marriage to be only between a man and a woman deny homosexual couples the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of “Equal Protection of the Law?”

We are at a crisis point similar to the weekend before the Roe v Wade decision was announced, which declared abortion a constitutional right. It is a horrible time to face, but a good time to pray.

AFA asks you to pray this weekend for our country and especially for the Supreme Court. A sample prayer is printed below. Please forward this call to prayer request to your praying friends and family.

Prayer for the Supreme Court and the Nation

Heavenly Father, we praise You for Your unchanging truth, holiness, righteousness, mercy and grace. You have given us a nation founded upon the principles of Your word. You have blessed us, but we have squandered Your grace and turned away from Your principles. So we come to You to plead for our nation.

Specifically, we pray for the pending Supreme Court decision on same sex marriage. We pray that next week the Court would not impose a false definition of marriage on our nation. Father, we confess that we in the Church have already sinned against You and have not been good stewards of the gift of marriage through our own issues with unfaithfulness, selfishness, pornography, homosexuality and divorce. Forgive us, Lord. Now our nation is following our imperfect example and seeks to redefine and corrupt the gift of marriage in order to satisfy its own lusts.

We acknowledge that through Jesus Christ we can repent and turn to You. So help the people of this nation to turn to You with repentant hearts, that we all may be covered in Your grace. Lord, have mercy on us. Lord, let Your purity and truth shine in this situation. Help us to proclaim to those enslaved by homosexuality, and any other sin, that liberty and identity is available in Jesus Christ. Help us to lovingly embrace the repentant.

Fill us with Your Spirit so that our thoughts, words and actions reflect Your love and not our judgment. Help us to trust in Your plan, and to act justly throughout it. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, Your Son and our Savior. Amen.

God is faithful to His Word and shall accomplish that which He has spoken.
(Isaiah 55:11)

Please forward this to others who will also pray.

Originally posted at AFA.net.  

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote this week on a bill sponsored by U.S. Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ) and co-sponsored by 180 House members which will protect unborn babies after 20 weeks.

The bill is called “The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” (H.R. 1797) because we now know from medical science that an unborn baby can experience pain at least as early as the 20th week of gestation.

This is why doctors administer anesthesia to babies who are operated on in utero at this stage of development.

In fact, medical science tells us the pain they experience in gruesome late-term abortions may be more intense than the pain adults experience because of the way our nervous system develops. Dr. Paul Ranalli, a neurologist at the University of Toronto, says that 20 weeks is a “uniquely vulnerable time, since the pain system is fully established, yet the higher level pain-modifying system has barely begun to develop.”

“Knowingly subjecting our innocent unborn children to dismemberment in the womb, particularly when they have developed to the point that they can feel excruciating pain every terrible moment leading up to their undeserved deaths, belies everything America was called to be. This is not who we are.” ~U.S. Rep. Trent Franks

As Dr. Robert J. White, a neurosurgeon at Case Western Reserve University says, “Without question, [abortion at 20 weeks] is a dreadfully painful experience for any infant subjected to such a surgical procedure.”

There are at least 300 abortion providers in the United States who will perform abortions after the 20th week. It’s time to put an end to this savagery in our land.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email to urge your representative TODAY to vote to end the barbaric practice of abortions performed on unborn babies who can feel pain.

Originally posted at AFA.net. 

The National Women’s Liberation, “a feminist group for women who want to fight back against male supremacy and win more freedom for women,” recently convinced a federal judge to rule that Plan B emergency contraception must be made available over-the-counter without restrictions, including age.

President Barack Obama and his administration announced earlier this week that it will not appeal the ruling. Critics argue that this is one more attack on a young girl’s ability to resist pressure to become sexually active. No longer can a teen girl say she doesn’t want to have sex because she may get pregnant. Manipulative men will now have a convenient solution to that natural concern. What’s more, parents will be further removed from providing critical input in a young girl’s decision-making process regarding sexual activity.

To view a copy of the radical National Women’s Liberation website and their declaration of victory, click HERE.

To view legal documents concerning the morning after court battle, click HERE.