Openly homosexual New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni has announced his generous support for the right of people of faith “to believe what they do and say what they wish—in their pews, homes and hearts.” (emphasis added).

Wow, thanks, Mr. Bruni.

The hubris of “progressives,” particularly “progressives” of a particular rainbow-hued stripe, seems to know no bounds. According to Bruni, conservative Christians must relinquish their constitutionally protected right to the free exercise of religion on his altar to the god of homoeroticism.

A peevish Bruni starts his screed by moaning that he feels “chafed” by claims that homosexuals like himself are a threat to religious liberty and then proceeds to argue for a breathtaking limitation of religious liberty to only pews, homes, and hearts—which is actually no liberty at all. In so doing, Bruni reveals his lack of understanding of both the history of religious liberty and of what faith entails for followers of Christ.

The First Amendment was intended to protect the right of people of faith to practice their religion unencumbered by government, which has the unruly tendency to intrude into areas of human life into which it ought not intrude. The Free Exercise Clause was intended to provide broad protections for the exercise of religion—which is not limited to pews, homes, and hearts, and not abrogated by homoeroticism.

Homosexuals and their “progressive” ideological allies who condemn orthodox Christian beliefs are trying to arrogate to themselves the right to determine what the free exercise of religion for orthodox Christians entails. For true followers of Christ, the practice of religion is a holistic endeavor—at least as holistic as homosexuals claim their romantic and erotic desires are. Imagine someone saying that he supports the right of homoerotically-oriented men and women to believe what they do and say what they wish only in their churches, homes, hearts, and maybe the Center on Halsted.

Or imagine if those homosexuals who attend churches that embrace late 20^th Century, heterodox theology and as a result support legalized same-sex faux-“marriage” were told that they could believe what they wish and say what they wish only in their pews, homes, and hearts. In other words, they should lose the right to affect public policy or allow their business practices to reflect their religious beliefs.

In a hyperbolic rhetorical flourish, Bruni asks, “why should a merchant whose version of Christianity condemns homosexuality get to exile gays and lesbians?” Exiling gays and lesbians? Wow again.

The inconvenient truth for Bruni is that Christian florists and bakers are seeking neither to exile homosexuals nor to refuse to serve customers who affirm a homoerotic identity. Rather, they’re refusing to use their time, gifts, and labor to make a particular product that celebrates an event that the God they serve abhors. In reality, these same florists and bakers have actually served on multiple occasions the very homosexuals who are suing them for not making products for their “weddings.”

Bruni then digs in with his floppy shovel, suggesting that not making a cake or floral arrangement  for a same-sex “wedding” is analogous to a Muslim store-owner refusing to serve a woman whose head is not covered or a Mormon hairdresser turning away clients “who saunter in with frappuccinos.”

In other words, Bruni suggests that when a baker chooses not to make a particular product for a particular type of event—and a type of event for which this baker has never made a product—it is analogous to a business-owner demanding that a customer adopt the owner’s religious practices in order to be able to purchase a product or service.

But of course, no Christian florist or baker has demanded that customers adopt his or her religious practices or beliefs in order to purchase a product or receive a service. Conservative Christian bakers sell their cookies and cupcakes to homosexuals. Christian photographers take photos of homosexuals. Christian florists sell flowers to homosexuals. No Christian has turned away customers who saunter in wearing a PRIDE t-shirt. And Christian business-owners do not demand that customers wear crucifixes or take Communion in order to be served.

It’s important to note this critical distinction: A ceremony that celebrates the union of two people of the same-sex is not identical to a ceremony that celebrates the union of two people of opposite sexes. Such a ceremony is the antithesis of a marriage, which is why many orthodox Christians will not use the terms “wedding” or “marriage” to describe the union of two people of the same-sex.

Calling a homoerotic union a “marriage” does not make it a marriage in reality. Just as legally construing a human as 3/5 person would not make him in reality only 3/5 a person, the foolish decision of foolish people to recognize legally a homoerotic union as a “marriage” does not make it in reality a marriage.

So, the request of homosexuals for a cake for their “wedding” is not the same as a request from a heterosexual couple for a cake for their wedding. Homosexuals are seeking to compel bakers to make a product for an entirely different type of event, and one which the bakers believe mocks real marriage and offends God.

Bruni trots out and beats the dying but still useful homosexuality = race horse: “As these lamentations about religious liberty get tossed around, it’s worth remembering that racists have used the same argument to try to perpetuate segregation.” It’s also worth remembering that the fact that one group of people with a gross misunderstanding of Scripture appealed to religious liberty to defend evil practices does not mean all groups who appeal to religious liberty are guilty of engaging in evil practices or of grossly misinterpreting Scripture.

Moreover, it makes no rational sense to compare a condition like race that has no inherent connection to either feelings or volitional acts to homoeroticism which is constituted solely by feelings and volitional acts.

Since Bruni is busy declaring the boundaries in which people of faith may exercise their religion, maybe Bruni can help us out by answering these questions:

• Should a male Muslim massage therapist whose faith prohibits him from touching unrelated women be required to give massages to unrelated women?

• Should a Mormon hairdresser whose faith teaches that polygamy is profoundly sinful be required to use her skills to style the hair of brides in a polygamist’s commitment ceremony?

• Should a Christian whose faith teaches that racism is sinful be required to bake a cake decorated with a white supremacy message for a Neo-Nazi event?

• Should a baker who identifies as a “gay Christian” and attends a theologically heterodox church—perhaps a Metropolitan Community Church or a Dignity USA chapter—be compelled to make a cake for a National Organization for Marriage event?

Bruni makes clear the error in his thinking when he says that Christian bakers, photographers, and florists “are routinely interacting with customers who behave in ways they deem sinful. They don’t get to single out one group of supposed sinners. If they’re allowed to, who’s to say they’ll stop at that group?”

Bruni’s rendering of the plight of Christian owners of wedding-related businesses is backwards. Christian owners of wedding-related businesses are not singling out and refusing to serve a particular group of sinners. Rather, some members of a particular group of sinners are trying to force Christian owners of wedding-related businesses to participate in their sin.

Bruni presumptuously proclaims that “Baking a cake, arranging roses, running an inn: These aren’t religious acts…”

Well, God may beg to differ with Bruni:

• “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).

• And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col. 3:17).

• “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men…” (Col. 3:23)

• “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness…” (Jer. 22:13).

• “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).

• “For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.  Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.  Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.  For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret” (Eph. 5: 5-12).

Due to the astonishing influence of homosexual and “trans” activism and the unbiblical cowardice of Christians—including especially Christian leaders—we’re going to see the government increasingly making demands on Christians with which Christians ought not comply. It is during those times that Christians should remember that we are commanded to “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

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Written by Walt Heyer

The political Left, usually fanatical defenders of tolerance, diversity, freedom of expression, and choice in all things sexual, is in high dudgeon about a one-hour TLC television special titled My Husband’s Not Gay scheduled to air Sunday night (1/11/2015).

The show profiles four Mormon men who admit they are attracted to men but have chosen to pursue relationships with women. Three of the men are married, at least one of whom is raising children in a normal family structure. There is no reason to doubt these men’s claims that they love their wives, because even men who feel erotically attracted to men are capable of loving women.

In an almost comical display of irony, homosexual activists—those fanatical of tolerance, diversity, choice, anti-censorship, and “narrative” variety—are calling for the cancellation of the program before it even airs.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) claims the show “sends the wrong message.” Near as I can tell, the men in this series are saying that they choose not to place their same-sex attraction at the center of their identity. They’re saying that there are other values and beliefs that shape how they construct identity and determine their actions. They’re saying that they personally believe that homoerotic activity is wrong and that they seek to affirm only those feelings that are consonant with their religious beliefs. Are representatives from GLAAD claiming that such beliefs are objectively wrong?

According to the Associated Press, GLAAD views the show as “a sad reminder of so-called gay conversion therapy.”

How do the claims of men who admit to being sexually attracted to men remind GLAAD of “conversion therapy”?  I guess both “conversion therapy” and the decisions of these men reflect a rejection of the Left’s assumptions about the moral status of homoerotic activity, but that’s about it. Perhaps these men’s decisions are sad reminders to GLAAD that not everyone has acquiesced to the imperious ideological commands of GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

Like GLAAD, “bi-sexual” Eliel Cruz writing for Rolling Stone magazine is consumed by a fear that impels them toward oppression and suppression. They fear that if Americans hear the stories of men who freely choose not to affirm as good their unchosen, unwanted same-sex attraction, Americans may reject the Left’s perverse mischaracterization of all counseling efforts that may help men and women reconcile their faith and sexual predilections in ways that the Left doesn’t like.

Here’s what Cruz offers as evidence that this one-hour special is “dangerous”:

These men use the same verbiage and framework that’s been taught by decades by those in the so-called “ex-gay” movement. Using words like “same-sex attracted” in lieu of saying one is gay is ex-gay training 101. The show will most likely avoid using the term “reparative therapy” as it’s become known for being deeply harmful. But whether it’s explicitly said or not, that’s what this show is about.

So, using the term “same-sex attracted”—as opposed to “gay”—is common within the “ex-gay” movement, and some within the “ex-gay” movement practice “reparative therapy,” and some forms of “reparative therapy” have been found harmful by some within the highly politicized mental health community, therefore, this one-hour special is dangerous. Wow. Where is George Orwell when we need him.

In the dystopian novel 1984, George Orwell named the practice which homosexual and “trans” activists now fervently embrace: Newspeak. Here is how Orwell explained Newspeak:

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of IngSoc, or English Socialism….

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all…a heretical thought…should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever….

[T]he special function of certain Newspeak words… was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them….

[W]ords which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them.

Leftists hate the term “same-sex attracted” because it focuses (rightly) on feelings and does not carry the extra, Newspeakian connotations of “gay.” “Gay” is a rhetorical invention of the Left created to communicate that same-sex attraction is inherently good, that it’s absolutely immutable in all cases, and that fulfillment can come only if such attraction is affirmed. In other words, “gay” embodies a Leftist view of “identity.”

It’s not just the term “same-sex attracted” that our aberrancy advocates seek to obliterate. They also seek to strip pronouns of any connection to objective biological sex because objective biological sex is foreign to the new sexuality orthodoxy.

Here is risible reason #2 that Cruz offers as evidence that TLC’s one-hour special is dangerous: “TLC is giving a fringe narrative a platform.” Since when do sexual subversives object to fringe narratives? Haven’t Leftists extolled all things fringy for decades? Let’s not forget that until very recently homoeroticism, same-sex faux-“marriage,” and “transgenderism” were uber-fringy phenomena.

Cruz also objects to “Perpetuating the idea that changing one’s sexuality is possible through prayer.” First, Christians certainly believe that an omnipotent God is fully capable of changing sexual feelings and that prayer is powerful. This is not to say, however, that all people who experience same-sex attraction will see their feelings eradicated. Most Christians will experience sinful inclinations until the next life.

But, more directly relevant to the show, there’s no evidence from the trailer that the four men profiled in the TLC program are suggesting that their same-sex attraction has changed or will change. They simply don’t want to act upon it or affirm it as central to their identity.

GLAAD president and CEO, Kate Ellis, stated that “No one can change who [sic] they love, and more importantly, no one should have to.” Ellis seems to be making the breathtakingly presumptuous claim that the men in the TLC show do not love their wives and more broadly that those who experience same-sex attraction are incapable of loving people of the opposite sex.

Ellis asserts that “no one should have to” change whom they love. Why would Ellis make such a claim in response to a show in which men explain that they have freely chosen to marry women—whom they love? From all the reports, there is no indication that these men have been compelled to change whom they love. They have freely chosen the sex of the persons with whom they will be emotionally, spiritually, and erotically partnered.

The men profiled in this show evidently reject homosexual activists’ definition of “identity.” Homosexual activists believe that powerful, seemingly intractable feelings that emerge early in life must be affirmed as central to one’s identity.  Well, probably not all feelings, just homoerotic feelings and the desire to be the opposite sex must be affirmed.

For many people, however, “identity” consists in, among other things, only those feelings they affirm as good and properly ordered.  Identity for them is not merely the aggregate of feelings they experience. Therefore, those people will reject as central to their identity feelings that they believe are disordered and which if acted upon will result in illicit conduct. While the Left believes that unchosen homoerotic attraction is good, properly ordered, and must be affirmed as central to identity in order to live a happy fulfilled life, their beliefs are not objective facts, and no one has an obligation to accept them as true.

While the Left claims to value tolerance, they are intolerant of any and all public expressions of views regarding volitional homoerotic activity or relationships with which they disagree.

While claiming to value diversity, they want to censor the kinds of stories the public hears.

While claiming to value choice, they loathe and condemn the choices the men on this TLC show make.

In increasingly Orwellian efforts to purge the cultural landscape of the expression of ideas that undermine their dogma, censorious homosexual activists violate the very ideas they exploit: choice, diversity, tolerance, and freedom of expression. TLC should not cancel My Husband’s Not Gay in response to the demands of censors and ideologues. These stories offer rarely seen glimpses into the lives of people who construe homoerotic attraction, marriage, family, identity, and fulfillment differently than do homosexual activists. Their lives are part of the variegations in this diverse American life. And there may be someone out there who sees in these lives hope for a future different from the bleakly deterministic picture offered by the likes of GLAAD and Rolling Stone.

The Truth Project

First Annual IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details

Tragically, three days after Christmas, 17-year-old Joshua Alcorn committed suicide by stepping into the path of a tractor-trailer. Josh suffered from both gender dysphoria and depression. He left behind a suicide note that lays the blame for his pain on those in society who reject the assumptions of the Left about gender confusion, including his Christian parents.

Josh was particularly upset that his parents did not support his decision to start “transitioning,” which is yet another deceitful Leftist term because it suggests that one can transition from one sex to the opposite sex—a claim the Left implicitly acknowledges is impossible. Their implicit acknowledgement comes in the form of changing the name of the surgical procedure that mutilates healthy bodies from “sex reassignment” surgery to “gender confirmation” surgery. Though such surgery does, indeed, provide confirmation of the presence of a serious delusion or disordered desire, it does not confirm any objective existential reality.

But perhaps Josh was wrong. Perhaps his parents, motivated by love, were right in standing firm for the truth that he was in reality a boy. Perhaps they had read  in The Guardian that “There is no conclusive evidence that sex change operations improve the lives of transsexuals, with many people remaining severely distressed and even suicidal after the operation, according to a medical review….of more than 100 international medical studies of post-operative transsexuals by the University of Birmingham’s aggressive research intelligence facility.”

Perhaps they had read about the study of 324 “sex-reassigned” men and women published in 2011 which found that they “have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.”

Or perhaps Josh’s parents had heard about the deep regret some men and women experience following their sex “reassignment” butchery.

The Left attributes to conservatives blame for the depression and suicidal ideation of both those who identify as “transgender” and those who identify as homosexual, and in so doing overlook other possible causes for the depression that these girls, boys, men, and women experience.

Perhaps the depression and suicidal ideation that gender-confused teens, post-op “transsexuals,” and homosexuals experience results in part from societal disapproval,* but perhaps their anguish results at least in part from apprehension of the truth that God has written on their hearts regarding homoerotic activity, cross-dressing, and bodily mutilation.

Or perhaps both depression and disordered desires related to sexuality are symptoms of other underlying problems.

Unfortunately, homosexual and “trans”activists are making it impossible to explore such possibilities. They vehemently oppose such exploration even if it may result in less suffering for those who experience same-sex attraction or gender confusion.

Homosexual and “trans” activists are not interested in finding ways to mitigate suffering unless such ways include promoting their assumptions about homoerotic activity and gender confusion. They will tolerate no discussion of theories regarding causation that may undermine their social and political goals of compulsory affirmation of their non-factual beliefs. The promotion of their self-serving sexuality ideology supersedes everything, including the welfare of others.

Since the Left dominates academia, the arts, and the mainstream press, we all know what they believe about homoerotic attraction, gender dysphoria, and the depression that often accompanies both, but here are some other ideas that are worthy of consideration:

• Perhaps teaching teens who experience same-sex attraction or gender confusion the politically expedient lie that all conservatives hate them contributes to their anguish.

• Perhaps the anguish of homosexual or gender-confused teens is exacerbated when they’re told that their only hope for a fulfilling life depends on the affirmation of their same-sex attraction or desire to be the opposite sex.

• Perhaps telling homosexual or gender-confused teens that their desires will never change contributes to their despair.

• Perhaps the refusal of “progressives” to tell teens who experience same-sex attraction that childhood molestation can contribute to what homosexual therapist Howard Fradkin refers to as “sexual orientation confusion” does a disservice to them.

• Perhaps early exposure to images and depictions of homoerotic activity contributes to the development of homoerotic desire and to homoerotic experimentation. Children are being exposed at ever younger ages to images of homoerotic activity through novels, magazines, advertising, music, television, movies, online porn, and public school teachers. It seems at least possible that such exposure may lead to questioning the moral status of homoeroticism, to sexual arousal, and to homoerotic experimentation, particularly among young boys whose bodies are awash in testosterone.The Left has long promoted the fiction that they know with certainty that same-sex attraction is biologically determined, which may lead conservatives to the grave error of believing that only some children are biologically vulnerable to being aroused by homoerotic images. But can anyone say with certainty that exposure at young ages to homoerotic images or early experimentation with homoerotic activity due to exposure to such images will not create a persistent desire for such activity?

• In regard to gender confusion, the Left often claims that “God doesn’t make mistakes,” meaning that if a girl or boy feels they were born in the wrong body, they actually must have been born in the wrong body. End of story. But if it’s true that God doesn’t make mistakes, why would anyone assume that healthy properly functioning sexual anatomy is a mistake that requires barbaric medical interventions, some of which result in sterility? Virtually no one makes a similar claim about those who experience Body Integrity Identity Disorder.

Acknowledging the profound suffering of Josh Alcorn should not lead other parents of similarly suffering teens to affirm their desires or to blindly accept that Josh’s posthumously published words reflect the real cause of his suffering. Most teens at some point or many points blame their parents for their suffering in matters great and small.

With nothing but the words of a deeply depressed, confused, and despairing teen for evidence, the vicious, foolish, and supremely arrogant homosexual activist and bully extraordinaire Dan Savage heaped more pain upon grieving parents by writing that Josh’s “parents threw ‘her’ in front of that truck. They should be ashamed—but 1st they need to be shamed. Charges should be brought.”

There is no evidence that Josh Alcorn’s parents abused him or even rejected him. They rejected his belief that his desire to be a girl signified something true and good. They rejected Josh’s belief that his desire to be a girl should be affirmed as central to his identity. And they rejected his request to pursue bodily mutilation. Despite the claims of Dan Savage to the contrary, reports indicate that Josh’s parents loved him deeply and expressed that love to him.

Apparently homosexual and “transgender” activists like Savage hold the peculiar view that in order to properly love teens, parents must affirm all of their beliefs, feelings, and volitional acts. But wiser minds understand that parental love for children who experience unchosen same-sex attraction or gender confusion is not demonstrated through affirmation of disordered desires.  Genuine love is inseparable from truth. Parents of children who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria must learn how to communicate their love while always affirming truth about sexuality, gender, embodiment, and human flourishing.

If Christians hope to alleviate the suffering of children and adults who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, they must guard against the lies that now devour them. Don’t believe the lie that speaking truth in love causes death. And don’t believe the false accusations of those who do not know truth.

Instead, remember these words from Jesus who accuses rightly:  ^“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). It is the Father of Lies who deceived Josh and then falsely accuses all those who follow Christ for Josh’s suffering.

*The fact that disapproval of a particular behavior causes distress in those who desire to engage in such behavior does not mean that disapproval is wrong.

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“For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him.” Philippians 1:29

Defense of God’s design for natural marriage – along with the God-given, constitutional freedom of conscience to decline participation in and, thereby, endorsement of, its unnatural and sin-based counterfeit, so-called “gay marriage” – is now among America’s premier civil-rights struggles. I know from whence I speak, as 10 years ago I was fired from a major fortune 100 company for writing, on my own time and on my home computer, an op-ed acknowledging the requisite binary male-female nature of authentic marriage and human sexuality.

Rather than rolling over and accepting this injustice, I sued in federal court. God used that situation not only to bless me and my family with a significant monetary settlement, but to place me on the front lines in the fast-escalating war against religious liberty. I share this not to boast, but, rather, to encourage you – to illustrate God’s marvelous faithfulness in my own life.

As Christians, we are called to stand our ground, in love, against all wickedness. We do so not because we are righteous – we are not – but because of Christ’s righteousness in us. As Christ followers, we are to follow Christ. We are to stand for His truths. When we do, and while we may face persecution, He will ultimately honor our faithfulness for His own glory and purpose.

It’s getting ugly out there, and it will only get worse. The cases are piling up. We’ve now seen dozens of bakers, photographers, florists, inn keepers, magistrates, county clerks and other people involved in various vocations surrounding marriage suffer persecution for merely declining to become complicit in sin. Christians are being financially ruined and even facing jail time for refusing to lend their time, talents, gifts and abilities to sanction unnatural marriage rituals.

Let us be abundantly clear. Same-sex “marriage” is evil. It is sin. All good things come from God the Father, and all wickedness comes from the father of lies. If God designed biblical marriage and natural human sexuality, and He did, then we are left no doubt as to who designed its counterfeit – as to who fabricated counter-biblical “gay marriage” and otherwise perverted God’s perfect purposes for human sexuality.

As faithful Christians we cannot, indeed we must not, endorse or participate in that which God calls evil. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (see Isaiah 5:20). We must reject sin.

There have been a number of good and well-intentioned folks who, rather than participating in these pagan “gay marriage” rituals, have either resigned employment or, if business owners, closed their doors altogether. While this is admirable, I submit that, if and when you, dear Christian, are placed in a situation that compels you to choose between obedience to God’s just laws or man’s unjust laws, that you not only refuse to obey the unjust laws, but refuse to quit.

Stand your ground.

I suggest that when any Christian business owner, magistrate or county clerk is told that he must participate in a sinful “gay marriage” ceremony, that he not only refuse to do so, but that he refuse to step down. Do not resign your post. Force the government to overtly persecute you – to take punitive action against you for your righteous stand. Even if you face chains.

Pray for courage, and God will provide it.

The Apostle Paul set the example when, while chained to a wall in a Roman prison, he wrote the following to the church in Philippi: “Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.” (Philippians 1:12-14)

Not only did Paul supernaturally face anti-Christian persecution without fear. He faced it with great joy.

“Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:18-21)

After several magistrates in North Carolina recently stepped down rather than being forced to preside over same-sex “marriage” rituals, Mat Staver, chairman and founder of Liberty Counsel, one of America’s fastest-growing civil-rights law firms, pledged the following: “I appreciate the conviction of these magistrates, but rather than resign they should remain at their post. Liberty Counsel will represent them, but once they resign there is not much we can do to help.”

Staver noted that in 2004, after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unconstitutionally imposed same-sex “marriage” on the Commonwealth, Catholic Charities ceased its adoption ministry because it refused to place children in same-sex households.

“The commitment to Church teachings and conscience is commendable,” said Staver, “but Catholic Charities should not have voluntarily ceased its adoption ministry. If the government wants to impose an intolerant agenda on people of faith and trample their religious convictions, then let it happen in public for all to see. I cannot believe the American people will long tolerate this intolerant agenda.”

“Where would the civil-rights movement be if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. voluntarily went home when he faced opposition?” asked Staver. “Where would we be today if Rosa Parks had voluntarily moved to the back of the bus? The quest for religious freedom was the reason American was born. We cannot voluntarily give up this unalienable right,” he said.

As Paul concluded, “Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ … without being frightened in any way by those who oppose you. This is a sign to them that they will be destroyed, but that you will be saved – and that by God. For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him.” (Philippians 1:27-29)

When standing for truth, be not ashamed. Be of great courage and great cheer no matter what trials you may face.

And be blessed for the opportunity.

In a recent essay for The Spectator, Brendan O’Neill argues that the political movement to legally recognize non-marital homoerotic relationships as marriages undermines freedom and liberty:

[E]verywhere gay marriage has been introduced it has battered freedom, not boosted it. Debate has been chilled, dissenters harried, critics tear-gassed…. The double-thinking ‘freedom to marry’ has done more to power the elbow of the state than it has to expand the liberty of men and women.
There are awkward questions the ‘freedom to marry’ folks just can’t answer. Like: if gay marriage is a liberal cause, how come it’s been attended by authoritarianism wherever it’s been introduced?

…

[T]he gay marriage campaign is so contradictorily illiberal, so hostile to dissent, and so attractive to petty-authoritarian politicians: because it isn’t about expanding liberty at all; it’s about unilaterally overhauling the moral outlook of the traditionalist sections of society.

O’Neill argues that the legal destruction of marriage is the “final act in a pink-tinged tyranny kickstarted by the new authoritarians of the modern West.”

Unfortunately, there are yet more edicts to come from the sexually transgressive, this time from “transgenders.” Their tyrannical demands include changing the legal and grammatical landscape so that neither legal documents nor pronouns reflect the objective reality of biological sex (i.e., male and female) but rather the subjective world of disordered feelings about one’s biological sex.

In the perversely malleable, subjective universe of the gender-confused, all dimensions of culture must accept and submit to their desires and the ideology they have concocted to serve those desires. Now even the law must submit. Confused men who choose to have their healthy penises amputated, faux-women’s breasts affixed to their chests, and to cross-dress demand that their birth certificates be changed. No longer will birth certificates indicate objective biological sex at birth but, rather, the biological sex adults wish they were. Birth certificates and all other legal documents that indicate sex will no longer reflect objective reality but subjective desire.

In the service of promoting the perverse sexual ideology created to normalize gender-confusion, “progressives” resolved to gain access to the impressionable hearts and minds of other people’s children through government schools. The newest public school scandal has emerged in California where parents are angry that staff from Planned Parenthood were brought in without parental knowledge to teach their 9^th-grade children about sexuality, including gender confusion. Of course, that’s not the term “progressives” or public school “educators” use, which reveals one of the problems: the materials and language related to gender confusion (and homosexuality) are Leftist materials and language, which promote Leftist assumptions as facts to children.

One of the resources distributed to children in the Lafayette, California class was a colorful diagram with the twisted holiday title “The Genderbread Person” (see above), which makes this preposterous statement:

Gender is one of those things everyone thinks they understand but most people don’t….Gender isn’t binary. It’s not either/or. In many cases, it’s both/and. This tasty little guide is meant to be an appetizer for understanding. It’s okay if you’re hungry for more.

Leftists may believe there are infinite genders, but their feckless beliefs are not facts, and the government has no right to promote them as objective, inarguable truths or facts.

Advocacy of Leftist assumptions includes the pernicious practice of requiring teachers to refer to gender-confused students by pronouns that correspond to the sex they are not. Pronouns denote objective biological sex—not “gender identity”—which is a rhetorical invention as deceitful as the elaborate but futile efforts of gender-confused men and women to conceal their biological sex. So, public schools (i.e., arms of the government) are requiring teachers to lie.

It’s difficult to figure out what to do about the absurd legal changes lawmakers have enacted that make a mockery of the law by embracing the incoherent and insalubrious assumptions of the “LGBT” movement. It is not, however, difficult to figure out how to respond to the demands of the gender-confused community that ordinary citizens accept their false assumptions about biological sex, language, and compassion.

Here are some truths that conservatives must remember:

• Biological sex (i.e., being male or female) is inherently and always good.

• Maleness and femaleness are biologically determined and immutable.

• Biological sex is central to human wholeness and flourishing.  The Left’s fanciful notion about embodiment reflects a false mind-body distinction that suggests mind and body are separable.

• It is profoundly unloving to facilitate gender-confused men and women in the rejection of their biological sex. Lost in spiritual darkness, they desire that others affirm the fiction they are attempting to create, but such affirmation of confusion and disorder is the antithesis of love.  All sin is infused with confusion and disorder, and sinners desire that others affirm their sin as normal and good. But it is truth that will set the confused free from bondage to sin. Gender-confused children need counseling and compassion—not lies.

• It is good for society to reinforce sexual differentiation (e.g., through clothing, jewelry, hairstyles). Males and females are different (as both the homosexual and “transgender” communities affirm). Those differences are substantive and meaningful, and reinforcing them is inherently good. The Left argues that the cultural reinforcement of sexual differentiation is harmful except of course for gender-confused persons for whom cultural artifacts that reinforce sex differences are profoundly important.

• No public school teacher has the ethical right to introduce the topic of gender-confusion to elementary school children, and no public school teacher has the right to teach Leftist assumptions about gender-confusion to other people’s children as objective truths.

• No one should capitulate to the imperious and arrogant commands of LGBT activists that everyone use pronouns to denote “gender identity” rather than biological sex. No one is morally obliged to accept such a revolutionary grammatical shift.

A special note to public school teachers:  Referring to a boy as “she” or a girl as “he” constitutes lying. The government has no right to compel teachers to lie, and teachers have no right to lie. For a Christian teacher to facilitate or participate in a lie of such profound magnitude is indefensible. And yes, refusal to facilitate or participate in such a lie will be costly. Discipleship in America is becoming costlier.

The enemy is now attacking a truth about God’s created order at least as fundamental as (and inextricably linked to) marriage: maleness and femaleness.  This attack calls for courageous, bold, and steadfast opposition. If we love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, we will not allow such lies to go unchallenged. And we must not be deceived by the sophistry of those who argue that affirming the essential goodness and integrity of biological sex is hateful. We acquiesce to our own fear at great peril.

Please support the work of Illinois Family Institute.

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), SJRCA 75, has reared its ugly head once again in Illinois and your state representative needs to hear from you right away.

The Illinois General Assembly voted down the ERA thirteen times in the 70’s and 80’s. Since then, the sponsor files the bill and works the legislature to gather additional support. The support is too close for comfort.

Take ACTION: Please CLICK HERE to contact your state representative to ask him/her to vote AGAINST the ERA, SJRCA 75. It’s essential for us to let our state representatives know that this amendment harms women, their families and our society.

Your calls and emails are vital tools for fighting this outrageous proposal. You can also call your state representative to ask him/her to vote NO to SJRCA 75 by calling the Capitol switchboard number at: (217) 782-2000.

No one is opposed to “equal rights,” but the ERA is not about “equal rights” as proponents want you to believe. The ERA will remove all legal distinctions between sexes in at least 800 federal laws. This is according to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her report titled Sex Bias in the U.S. Code.  (For more information please click HERE.)

In other words, all federal, state and local laws, policies and regulations favoring women would be ruled unconstitutional under ERA. Laws including marriage, divorce, family-property law, child custody, adoptions, abortions, alimony, some criminal laws, age limits for marriage and the age of consent, gender specific bathrooms, single-sex private schools, prison regulations, lower insurance rates for women, veterans benefits, boy and girl scouts, and tax exemptions for single-sex schools are just a few laws that would be challenged if the ERA is passed.

SJRCA 75 passed the State Senate on May 22^nd, 2014, with a vote of 39 – 11 – 6.  State Representative Lou Lang (D-Skokie), the sponsor in the Illinois House, may call it for a vote as early as Wednesday.  He claims he’s very close to having the votes.

This lame duck veto session is scheduled to run through Thursday December 4^th. Please take a few minutes to make a call or send an email message to your state representative today to urge a NO vote on ERA.

Today many Americans are celebrating Giving Tuesday, a national event calling Americans to take action to better the lives of others.  This is a great way for us to celebrate the work and ministry of Illinois Family Institute. On this national day of giving, would you be willing to make your most generous tax-deductible contribution? Please donate to IFI today – on National Giving Tuesday..

The inmates are running the asylum in Indy.

Until recently I had not heard of the National Federation of State High School Associations, or NFHS. This Indianapolis-based organization has, since 1920, developed and published playing rules for high-school sports in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Like so many other national organizations charged with establishing curricula, policies and practices for primary and secondary education (consider the NEA), the NFHS has become completely overrun by radical leftists and sexual extremists. It has placed political correctness and the adult “LGBT” political agenda above the welfare and safety of the boys and girls it purports to serve.

Last week, I received an email from a concerned public educator. He is also an NFHS member and high-school sports announcer: “I wanted to pass along to you an advisory that the National Federation of State High School Associations recently released on ‘Developing Policies for Transgender Students on High School Teams,’” he wrote, adding that, “in light of [his] positions,” and the threat of near-certain employment termination, he wished to remain anonymous.

And so I clicked on the link provided. It led me to an NFHS advisory penned by University of Massachusetts “social justice education” professor emerita Pat Griffin. (In other words, “Dr.” Griffin has a PhD in BS and has made a good, taxpayer-funded living shoveling it into that expansive black hole known as the “collegus craniumus.” As I have addressed before, “social justice” is simply code for “social-ism,” or, more precisely, cultural Marxism.)

Writing on behalf of the NFHS, Griffin advises every high school administrator in America that, according to the Federal Office of Civil Rights, Title IX requires that boys pretending to be girls, and girls pretending to be boys, must be permitted to compete on, and share locker room and showering facilities with, the sports teams of the opposite sex.

This is a bald-faced lie.

Griffin then lays the fantastical foundation for her entire “advisory”: “It is important for policy-makers to understand that transgender girls (who were assigned a male gender at birth) are not boys.”

This, of course, is objectively, “I am Napoleon,” house-full-of-kitty-cats cray cray. (Figure out a way, Ms. Griffin, to do a full override of a “transgender” kid’s reproductive system, give him a fertile uterus, vagina, birth canal and the like, preform a complete DNA/chromosome reversal, and we might at least have a place to begin a discussion. Until then, seek therapy. Your Huxleyan delusions are hurting, not helping, the sexually confused children you claim to serve. Besides, it makes you look nuttier than squirrel poop.)

Griffin then states the obvious, complaining, “School officials often see transgender students’ interest in participating in sports according to their affirmed gender identity as disruptive.” She further objects, “[P]ractices such as requiring them to use locker rooms and bathrooms that correspond to their gender assigned at birth discourage participation.”

“Gender assigned at birth.” Get that? Orwell would be proud. As if a person’s immutable, biological sex is both subjectively determined and arbitrarily “assigned” to them by our “heteronormative” American patriarchy.

You’re assigned homework, Ms. Griffin. You’re not assigned “gender.”

Therefore, administrators have a “responsibility,” she demands, “to ensure that transgender athletes have access to athletic teams according to their affirmed gender identity and that these students are safe in locker rooms and on the playing field.”

Girls playing boys’ football, boys playing girls’ basketball and coed showers – what could possibly go wrong?

Griffin then acknowledges, and promptly dismisses, “four major concerns” raised by mentally stable parents and school administrators. To the person who even dabbles in objective reality and speaks English only, the following will appear as gibberish. Fortunately, I speak fluent Moonbat and have translated accordingly.

“These concerns,” she writes, “are: 1) transgender girls [meaning boys pretending to be girls] are really boys [meaning real boys] despite their affirmed gender identity as a girl; 2) fear that non-transgender boys [meaning boys not pretending to be girls] will pretend to be girls [like ‘transgender girls’ do, only, in this case, just pretending to pretend to be girls] to win championships or get more playing time on girls teams; 3) transgender girls [meaning boys pretending to be girls] pose a safety risk for non-transgender girls [meaning real girls] in some sports, like basketball or field hockey; and 4) transgender girls [meaning boys pretending to be girls] have a competitive advantage over non-transgender girls [meaning real girls].”

“The belief that transgender girls are not ‘real’ girls is sometimes expressed as a concern,” she adds.

Ya think?

What a tangled web of gender identity disorder and “progressive” pathology we weave. Note that all of the “concerns” Griffin rejects happen to be 100 percent legitimate and fact-based. It is not a “belief” that “transgender girls are not real girls.” It is an empirical, biological fact that “transgender” girls are not real girls. They are, have always been and always will be boys, no matter how deep-seated their sexual confusion.

Still, the main issue here, the one that exposes the NFHS as nothing more than a dangerously reckless vehicle for radical “social change,” is the issue of safety.

Continues Griffin: “Some sports leaders and parents express concerns that allowing transgender girls [meaning high school boys] to participate on girls teams will pose a safety risk for non-transgender girls. This concern is based on an assumption that transgender girls are bigger, stronger and unable to exercise adequate body control resulting in an increased risk of injury to other participants.”

Again, this is utterly surreal. It is not an “assumption” that post-pubescent boys are “bigger” and “stronger” than girls, it is an irrefutable fact that they are. Girls, with the rare exception, are physically weaker, slower and less aggressive than boys. They have far less testosterone, muscle mass and a skeletal frame that is smaller, less dense and, therefore, more frail by comparison.

Pumping kids full of dangerous hormones or mutilating their genitalia changes none of this.

It’s easy enough to dismiss Ms. Griffin as the left-wing extremist she is. It’s not so easy, however, to dismiss the NFHS, which has both authorized her to represent the organization and to develop highly dangerous policies that will be adopted by high schools nationwide.

As a licensed attorney, and having once worked for years in the insurance industry, I can tell you that if a high school permits a sexually confused boy to play on a girls’ sports team, and that boy hurts a female player, that school has exposed itself to tremendous liability.

My suggestion to parents? If your high school allows boys to play on your daughters’ sports teams, sue, sue, sue.

And if, God forbid, one of those boys actually injures your daughter, then don’t just sue the school – sue the NFHS and Pat Griffin.

They’re ultimately accountable for this foolishness.

Please support the work of Illinois Family Institute.

Note: now that rogue and renegade federal judges have struck down amendments that protect natural marriage in Mississippi and Arkansas, passed with 86 percent and 75 percent of the vote respectively, it’s time once again to review the solution: courageous governors.

There is one and only one short range solution to a runaway judiciary on the issue of sodomy-based marriage: a governor with the testosterone to stand up and just say no.

Governors take an oath of office to uphold the federal constitution and the constitution of their own state. Any governor in any state with a marriage amendment as a part of his constitution has the right, nay, the duty, to refuse to comply with any judicial order to recognize same-sex marriage.

The Constitution is utterly silent on the topic of homosexuality and marriage, which means, according to the Constitution the Founders gave us, this is an issue reserved exclusively to the states.

Any ruling from any federal court that imposes domestic policy on a state is by its very nature unconstitutional, and no governor has any obligation to obey it. In fact, quite the opposite. He must refuse to comply with it, for to comply would mean he must violate his own sacred oath of office.

A governor’s oath is to defend the Constitution of both the federal government and his own state. Defending something by definition means protecting it when it is under attack, regardless of where that attack comes from — even if the attack comes from a federal judge, a federal court, or the Supreme Court itself.

Governors have been meekly capitulating to judicial tyranny, one after the other, and timidly abandoning their posts.

Americans have no understanding of how little power the federal judiciary actually holds. It was designed by the Founders to be the least powerful branch of the federal government, with its jurisdiction limited to settling matters of dispute between individual states and matters of international controversy. The Supreme Court met in a closet for the first several decades of its existence, a sign of the lowly stature it occupied under the Constitution as written.

But the federal judiciary has mutated into a gargantuan beast, looming over liberty, freedom and the Constitution itself, and imposing its own benighted and twisted version of morality on the entire country with no legal, statutory, constitutional or moral authority.

But it has no police force it can order to arrest or detain anyone. If its unconstitutional rulings are ignored, what will the Supreme Court do? It can issue an arrest order, I suppose, but if a governor will not allow it to be executed, what can the Court do? The answer is nothing.

President Andrew Jackson once said, of a decision handed down by the chief justice of his day, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”  What happened in the face of this defiance from a co-equal branch of government? Precisely nothing.

The truth is the federal judiciary is impotent apart from the good will of the American people. Once the American people realize that the Supreme Court is a co-equal branch of government, not the superior branch of government, they can get back to governing themselves rather than deferring to black-robed oligarchs to make all the important decisions for them.

For a governor to stand up and refuse to cower to a federal court would not be civil disobedience at all. It would be constitutional obedience — obedience to the Constitution and its provisions in the ninth and 10th amendments, obedience to his own state constitution, and obedience to the oath he took before Almighty God.

Governors do not take an oath of allegiance to the Supreme Court. They take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution. It’s time they started acting like it.

Yet another high profile “gay” activist has been arrested for homosexual assault on a child. This time authorities caught one of the big fish (a rainbow trout?). Terrance Patrick Bean founded the “Human Rights Campaign” (HRC), which is one of the world’s largest, wealthiest and most powerful anti-Christian organizations. To this day he remains on the board of directors. HRC was developed for the sole purpose of pushing the extremist homosexual political agenda. Bean is also a major player for the DNC and a big Obama supporter.

The Oregonian reports:

Detectives from the Portland police Sex Crimes Unit arrested Portland developer Terrence Patrick Bean on Wednesday on a Lane County indictment stemming from alleged sex abuse involving a teenage boy in 2013.

Bean, 66, a prominent gay rights activist and major Democratic Party fundraiser, was arrested at his home in Southwest Portland and booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center at 10:12 a.m.

The indictment charges Bean with two counts of third-degree sodomy, a felony, and one count of third-degree sex abuse, a misdemeanor, police said.

Bean, who bailed out of jail by late Wednesday afternoon, will be arraigned on the indictment in Lane County. …

The alleged incident involved a sexual encounter in Eugene with a 15-year-old boy. …

Bean has been one of the state’s biggest Democratic donors and an influential figure in gay rights circles in the state. He helped found two major national political groups, the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, and has been a major contributor for several Democratic presidential candidates, including Barack Obama. He’s also a close friend of former Gov. Barbara Roberts. …

Bean’s Flickr account shows him talking with Obama at several events, posing with first lady Michelle Obama and numerous other political figures, including former President Bill Clinton.  A blog post from his sister, Sue Surdam Bean, detailed her brother’s work on a July 24, 2012 Obama fundraiser in Portland.  She included three photos of Terry Bean’s ride on Air Force One with Obama to a subsequent event in Seattle.

Just two years ago 68 year old Larry Brinkin, another high profile and similarly respected (at least among Democrats) homosexual activist, was arrested in San Francisco for possessing and distributing reams of child pornography.

CNS News Reported at the time:

Police said that Brinkin, a former city employee, apparently had photos of children, as young as 1- or  2-years-old, performing sexual acts and being sodomized by adult men in attachments linked to the email address, reported The Chronicle. The email account was also linked to Yahoo discussion groups involving sexual exploitation of young people.

Concerning Brinkin, Theresa Sparks, director of the Human Rights Commission, told the Huffington Post, “It’s almost incredulous, there’s no way I could believe such a thing.”

“He’s always been one of my heroes, and he’s the epitome of human rights activist,” she said. “This is [the] man who coined phrases we use in our daily language. I support Larry 100 percent; hopefully it will all come out in the investigation.”

Brinkin later plead guilty to the charges.

Yep – These monsters are “heroes” to the HRC and the larger “gay” activist community.

Ever wonder why?

The cases of Bean and Brinkin follow a long-established pattern as old as the ancient Greek bathhouse. Of course, not every “gay” man – self-identified or otherwise – is a pedophile, but studies indicate demonstrably that homosexual assaults against boys occur at an alarmingly disproportionate rate when compared to heterosexual assaults. The very act of a man molesting a boy unquestionably involves both same-sex attraction and homosexual behavior (a “gay” by any other name…).

Consider, for instance, a study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, of over 200 convicted pedophiles. It found that “86 percent of offenders against males described themselves as homosexual or bisexual.” This demonstrates, as noted by Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, that “homosexual or bisexual men are approximately 10 times more likely to molest children than heterosexual men.”

But don’t repeat these facts out loud or you might find yourself on the hard-left Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) “hate group” smear list.

Let the HRC damage control begin…

This article was originally posted at the BarbWire.com website.

From ChristianPost.com

Southern Baptist ethicist Russell Moore and megachurch pastor Rick Warren, both speaking at a Vatican conference Tuesday, warned that Christians should not succumb to the current sexual revolution or waver on the Biblical truth about sexuality and marriage.

“Western culture now celebrates casual sexuality, cohabitation, no-fault divorce, family redefinition, and abortion rights as parts of a sexual revolution that can tear down old patriarchal systems,” said Moore in a prepared statement given during the “Complementarity of Man and Woman” colloquium convened by Pope Francis.

“The Sexual Revolution is not liberation at all, but simply the imposition of a different sort of patriarchy,” he continued. “The Sexual Revolution empowers men to pursue a Darwinian fantasy of the predatory alpha-male, rooted in the values of power, prestige, and personal pleasure … We see the wreckage of sexuality as self-expression all around us, and we will see more yet. And the stakes are not merely social or cultural but profoundly spiritual.”

Moore, who is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, argues that every culture has recognized that there is something about sexuality that is “more than merely the firing of nerve endings” and that there is “something mysterious here, the joining of selves.”

“In the evangelical Christian perspective, this is because there is no such thing as a casual sexual encounter at all, when we are speaking in spiritual terms,” he said.

Warren, who said he agreed with much of what was said from the many speakers before him during the three-day conference, focused his message on action steps for the church.

“In many ways, the debate over the definition of life, of sex, and of marriage is, in reality, a question of leadership,” said Warren, the author of The Purpose Driven Life—What On Earth Am I Here For? He continued (in his notes forwarded to The Christian Post) by asking, “Who is going to lead? Will the church follow the crowd, or will the church lead the crowd?”

He explained, “The church cannot be salt and light in a crumbling culture if it caves in to the sexual revolution and fails to provide a counter-culture witness. It is a myth that we must give up Biblical truth on sexuality and marriage in order to evangelize.”

Pope Francis declared during the conference on Monday that marriage is by definition a union of man and woman, defying past claims by some that the Church was considering a change in its views on same-sex unions and sexuality.

“It is fitting that you have gathered here in this international colloquium to explore the complementarity of man and woman,” stated the pontiff. “This complementarity is at the root of marriage and family, which is the first school where we learn to appreciate our own and others’ gifts, and where we begin to acquire the arts of living together.”

Francis also stated in his remarks at the colloquium that “marriage and the family are in crisis.”

Additional excerpts from speeches below.

Russell Moore: Many would tell us that contemporary people will not hear us if we contradict the assumptions of the sexual revolution. We ought to conceal, or at least avoid, the conversation of what we believe about the definition of marriage, about the limits of human sexuality, about the created and good nature of gender, and speak instead in more generic spiritual terms. We have heard this before, and indeed we hear it in every generation. Our ancestors were told that modern people could not accept the miraculous claims of the ancient church creeds, and that if we were to reach them “where they are,” we should emphasize the ethical content of the Scriptures—the “golden rule”—and deemphasize the scandal of such things as virgin births and empty tombs and second comings. The churches that followed this path are now deader than Henry VIII.

It turns out that people who don’t want Christianity don’t want almost-Christianity. More importantly, those churches that altered their message adopted what Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen rightly identified as a different religion. The stakes are just as high now. To jettison or to minimize a Christian sexual ethic is to abandon the message Jesus handed to us, and we have no authority to do this. Moreover, to do so is to abandon our love for our neighbors. We cannot offer the world the half-gospel of a surgical-strike targeted universalism, which exempts from God’s judgment those sins we fear are too fashionable to address. Full transcript here.

Rick Warren (Notes): Paul explained it this way: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her – to make her holy… and to present her as beautiful bride to himself, a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or blemish, but holy and pure.

“In this same way, husbands must love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds it, and cares for it, just as Christ does his church– for we are members of Christ’s body! It is for this reason that man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and his church! So, each of you must also love your wife as your love himself, and you wife must respect your husband.” Eph. 5:23-33 (NIV)

THIS is the deepest meaning of marriage! THIS is most profound purpose of marriage! THIS is the strongest reason marriage can only be between a man and a woman.

No other relationship, including the parent-child relationship, can picture this intimate union. To redefine marriage would destroy the picture that God intends for marriage to portray.

We CANNOT cave on this issue!

“Remember what I told you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.” ~John 15:20

Christians, pastors, take heed. In case you haven’t noticed, times are a-changin’. Whether at home or abroad, if you follow God’s command to speak biblical truth in all things, most especially, it seems, on matters of sex and sexuality, you will be persecuted.

“A servant is not greater than his master.”

I don’t presume to compare my friend Scott Lively of Abiding Truth Ministries to Jesus Christ. None of us can compare, even remotely, to the one and only God-man – to the Lord of the universe and exclusive path to eternal salvation. That said, Pastor Lively is one of the most “Christ-like” people I’ve had the honor to know.

As did Christ, Scott Lively speaks absolute truth, in absolute love, with absolutely no fear of personal destruction or even death. He loves everyone, whether friend or foe, Christian or pagan, straight or “gay.”

For example, Scott and his family took into their home and nursed, both physically and spiritually, the late Sonny Weaver, a former homosexual who died, as so many have, from AIDS – a natural consequence of unnatural behavior. Sonny became homosexual after being raped at 7 years old by a “gay” man in a local YMCA. He became a former homosexual after accepting Jesus as Lord of his life.

Lively loves those who seek to defend him just as he loves those who seek to destroy him – and, make no mistake about it, precisely because Pastor Scott Lively has chosen to both obey and emulate Jesus Christ, there are people, very powerful people, who seek to destroy him. These people, unless and until they come to know, accept and surrender to the Lord Jesus, are, and will remain, enemies of God.

And so Scott Lively prays for them.

Remember those pastors in Houston who were told to turn over their sermons to radical lesbian-activist mayor Annise Parker? Remember the national outrage over this blatantly unconstitutional act of governmental abuse?

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Pastor Lively, you see, has, in the spirit of Saul Alinsky, been “Hitlerized” by a left-wing extremist group ironically calling itself the “Center for Constitutional Rights” (CCR). CCR is a George Soros-funded organization with, I kid you not, the beastly street address of 666 Broadway, New York, NY.

Because Lively exercised his God-given First Amendment rights, as well as his free-speech rights afforded by the laws of Uganda, and spoke biblical truth about homosexual sin after having been invited there by a number of Ugandan pro-family groups, homosexual activists set-out to make an example of him.

In March of 2012 CCR sued Lively in a Massachusetts federal court for “crimes against humanity” – the same charge filed against Nazis who stood trial in Nuremberg – on behalf of another moonbat organization called “Sexual Minorities Uganda,” which, and again, you can’t make this stuff up, prefers the moniker “SMUG.”

And so Lively enlisted the pro-bono legal services of Liberty Counsel, one of America’s fastest-growing civil rights organizations.

Lively explains: “With full knowledge that these are bald-faced lies, SMUG asserts that 1) I masterminded the 2009 Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, which they call the ‘Kill the Gays Bill’ [in fact, Lively publicly opposed the bill, which has since been struck down by Ugandan courts], 2) inflamed passions against homosexuals in Uganda by characterizing all homosexuals as irredeemable genocidal child molesters, and 3) introduced to Uganda the heretofore unknown strategy of criminalizing public promotion of homosexuality as a means of opposing the rise of a homosexual movement in Uganda. The proof that these are lies is found in the very same documents they misuse against me.”

CCR and SMUG also tried to blame Lively for the murder of Ugandan homosexual David Kato, a murder he also publicly condemned, making it the centerpiece of their lawsuit until, and as was noted in Liberty Counsel’s Motion to Dismiss, it was revealed that, as Lively predicted, Kato was actually murdered by his “gay” lover who confessed to the crime, was convicted and is now in prison.

But all of this is incidental. It’s a smokescreen. Keep in mind; we’re talking about protected speech here. Lively is being tried for “crimes against humanity” for merely uttering, publicly, millennia-old biblical orthodoxy relative to sexual morality.

So how could such an Orwellian lawsuit – clearly designed as a weapon to both harass and intimidate Lively and anyone else who might dare challenge the global homosexual activist political agenda – even make its way into a U. S. federal court?

Well, CCR and SMUG’s angle was to circumvent that pesky ol’ First Amendment, as well as Ugandan free-speech laws, through a gross misapplication of the Alien Tort Statute. Normally, this would have been laughed out of court and, in fact, just last year, even as this case was ongoing, the U.S. Supreme Court unequivocally ruled this very tactic to be unlawful.

But there’s nothing normal about this case.

Meet federal Judge Michael Ponsor. Ponsor, who thumbed his nose at the Supreme Court and denied Liberty Counsel’s slam dunk Motion to Dismiss, is the textbook example of a judicial activist. He has admitted as much, once saying in another context that, “At some point I realized that judges are the unappointed legislators of mankind, and what we do is just as creative.”

But for this judicial activist, the case would seem personal. At his inauguration to the federal bench he crowed, for instance, “We have a proud, vibrant gay and lesbian community.” Presumably he knows this because one of his ex-wives reportedly later “married” another woman, while his daughter once revealed publicly on social media that she, too, was a lesbian.

And so, to keep afloat the demonization of Scott Lively (of all Christians, really) despite the Supreme Court’s torpedo, and to keep alive this judicial abuse, harassment and intimidation – Ponsor, as promised, got “creative.”

Still, the case will eventually be tossed. It’s inevitable. But in the meantime, and as Harry Mihet, Pastor Lively’s lead attorney, points out, “Because the Court denied Mr. Lively’s Motion to Dismiss, we are now forced to go through many months and years of expensive and protracted discovery on two continents. Literally thousands of pages of documents are changing hands, and dozens of depositions will be taken. This makes the subpoenas to Houston pastors look like small potatoes.”

“SMUG’s and CCR’s end game is clear: Make war criminals out of anyone who encourages any legislative body to pass any legislation upholding the traditional family. If Scott Lively is guilty of the Crime Against Humanity of Persecution, then so are the Houston pastors and anyone who has ever tried to influence legislation against the homosexual juggernaut. There is no limiting principle,” concluded Mihet.

Yet, either way, for these anti-Christian extremists, the damage is done. The process is the punishment.

This was never about winning or losing.

It was always about intimidation.

**Caution: Not For Younger Readers**
Includes Some Graphic Content and Links

Parents of 5th grade students at Andrew Jackson Language Academy, a West Side Chicago Public School (CPS) magnet school,  were stunned and repelled by the binder of sex ed material that they were shown recently during an after-school presentation about the upcoming sex ed class.

The binder included the following PowerPoint slides:

1. A picture of Homer Simpson with the words, “Lube, Lube, Lube. Use more lubrication, increase pleasure…”
2. A slide which appears to come from the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, a homosexual activist organization(slide#5): “Once you pop, you won’t have to stop! FCs [female condoms] don’t require an erect penis, so your partner doesn’t have to pull out right after ejaculation. Feel the heat! FCs adjust to body temperature, so both you and your partner can feel the heat. Oh! Oh! The two rings of the FC double the pleasure for you and your partner.”
3. A slide that reads “Female condoms are for everybody: men, women, transgender folk, gay straight, any position, any time.”
4. And a slide that says “Where YOU can get female condoms…,” with a list of places where 11-year-olds could presumably access female condoms.

A mother interviewed by a local news station was clearly irritated with material pertaining to anal intercourse, saying that it is not “appropriate” for the school to tell her 5^th grade daughter that “it’s okay to have safe anal sex.”

CPS parents shouldn’t expect sex ed to improve for 6^th graders. Here are two videos that the CPS “Sexual Health Education Grade 6” curriculum recommended,  the first one of which was produced by Planned Parenthood (The CPS “Sexual Health Education for Grade 6” website was available Monday morning and early afternoon but was taken down by late afternoon Monday, November 17, 2014. Click here for a cached version):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdSq2HB7jqU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjmoQlAQP4Y

The narrator in the Planned Parenthood video says to students who use condoms, “Congratulations! You just prevented a pregnancy, a sexually transmitted infection, or both.” This is a false statement that will create in adolescents a false sense of security. A properly used condom will reduce the risk of conception and reduce the risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted infection, but condoms do not prevent either.

The CPS “Sexual Health Education Grade 6” curriculum also includes this activity for 11-12 year-olds in co-ed classes:

Activity #1 – Contraceptive Relay

Break students into small groups. Provide each group with “Steps to Using a Male Condom” activity sheet and “Steps to Using a Female Condom” activity sheet (cut and shuffled). Student teams should work together to assemble “Steps to Using a Male Condom”. Once they have achieved the correct order they will move on to “Steps to Using a Female Condom.”

The first team to assemble both activity sheets correctly receives bragging rights.

Sex education classes should not be co-ed. Among the myriad, diverse, expanding, and protean objectives and “values” to which public school administrators and teachers claim they are committed, you will never see modesty. With a culture as coarse and immodest as ours, schools should stand as a bulwark against immodesty and vulgarity. Our literature, our sex ed curricula, our classes, and our government employees (i.e., teachers) should do nothing to undermine whatever vestige of modesty our children and teens are able to retain as they move through our crass culture which tells them there are no aspects of human life that are private and that objective, immutable biological sex (i.e.,  maleness and femaleness) is meaningless.

CPS spokesman Bill McCaffrey stated that “The objectionable material presented at Andrew Jackson Language Academy this week is not and never was part of the student sexual education curriculum. It was mistakenly downloaded and included in the parent presentation, and we agree with parents it is not appropriate for elementary school students.”

But the CPS also said that only teachers were supposed to see the material. If teachers were supposed to see the material, then the material was not “mistakenly downloaded.” The material was deliberately downloaded. The mistake that CPS employees made was to show the deliberately downloaded material to parents.

If parents of CPS students think that all CPS teachers share Mr. McCaffrey’s publicly stated view that this material is objectionable, M.I.T. economist Jonathan Gruber has some healthcare to sell you. Many teachers, rather, share the sexuality ethos of Planned Parenthood and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. It’s not moral indignation that rattled the CPS cage. It was that parents had their consciousness and dander raised by some inadvertent truth-telling from CPS teachers. Parents accidentally found out, and they responded with unselfconscious and justifiable outrage. That’s what led to the CPS apology (and website-scrubbing).

In order to conceal the identity or identities of those government employees who were responsible for downloading the  controversial material, McCaffrey conveniently used the passive voice saying,  the “objectionable material….was mistakenly downloaded.” Parents and other taxpayers are entitled to know specifically who downloaded these materials. And who told the person printing and assembling the binders what to print and include in the binders?

Taxpayers in every community are entitled to know specifically which teachers and administrators are choosing controversial, age-inappropriate supplemental and curricular resources. And the press should be naming names. These government employees should be required to defend publicly the choices they make for other people’s children with other people’s money rather than being shielded by PR spin masters.

It gives me no pleasure to say to CPS parents that we tried to warn them in this article.

Taxpayers in every community should take this CPS imbroglio as a warning because the Common Core of sex ed is coming. An unholy alliance of feckless organizations committed to the boundary-free,  morality-free early sexualization of children has created the National Sexuality Education Standards  intended to promote their dogmatic ideology through the nationalization of  sex ed.

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Finally, some common sense from appellate court judges.  In a 2-1 decision, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decided that state laws in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee that define marriage as the union of one man and one woman do not violate the Constitution.

What is the government’s interest in marriage?

Homosexuals assert that marriage is constituted solely by love and has no inherent connection to sexual differentiation or the children who may result from conjugal coupling. Further, homosexuals believe that it is the presence of love that not only makes a union a marriage but that justifies government involvement in it.

But is that true? Has the government ever been involved in marriage because of marriage’s inconsistent connection to love? Has the government ever had a vested interest in the subjective feelings of those who seek to marry?

Judge Jeffrey Sutton writing for the majority in the Sixth Circuit Court’s decision states that “One starts from the premise that governments got into the business of defining marriage, and remain in the business of defining marriage, not to regulate love but to regulate sex, most especially the intended and unintended effects of male-female intercourse.”

If marriage were constituted solely by love and the government were in the odd business of recognizing and affirming love, then why not recognize and affirm all forms of love by granting marriage licenses even to those in loving non-erotic relationships? What possible relevance to the government is inherently sterile erotic activity? What is the relevance of private, subjective, romantic feelings and inherently sterile erotic activity to any public purposes of marriage and therefore to the government’s involvement with marriage?

When “progressives” argue that marriage is constituted solely by love and commitment and that it has no inherent connection to procreation, then they have to explain why two brothers should not be permitted to marry. Why shouldn’t five people of assorted genders (or no gender) who love each other be permitted to marry? Why shouldn’t the non-erotic relationship between BFF’s be considered a “marriage”?

Dissenting judge liberal Martha Craig Daughtrey argued that in the nineteen states where homoerotic unions are now recognized as marriages “‘it doesn’t look like the sky is falling in.’” So, that’s her legal rationale? As long as legal change doesn’t result in a rapid, dramatic atmospheric calamity, it’s hunky dory? One wonders if Daughtrey thinks the sky would fall in if plural or incestuous unions were to be legalized.

Liberals can’t appeal to history, tradition, or children in their defense of marriage as inherently binary, or non-consanguineous, or related to erotic activity, because they have already shredded the notions that history, tradition, or procreation have any relevance to marriage.

But if reproductive-type sexual activity (i.e., coitus) is irrelevant to government interest in marriage then surely non-reproductive-types of erotic activity are equally irrelevant. And if all sexual/erotic activity is irrelevant to the government’s interest in marriage, then logically those in relationships constituted by any and all forms of love must be permitted to “marry.”

As homosexuals continually and rightly assert, men and women are objectively and substantively different, and those differences are anatomical, biological, emotional, and psychological. A homoerotic union is as different from a heterosexual union as men are from women. A heterosexual union is different from a homoerotic union in objective ways pertaining to the procreation, needs, and rights of any children that may result from the type of sex act in which only men and women can engage. This type of union matters to government.

When conservatives argue that the government is involved in marriage because of the connection between male-female coitus and procreation, the Left says, “Aha, but infertile couples and those who intend to remain childless are allowed to marry.” What they’re saying is that the government neither compels procreation nor attempts to ascertain fertility. This liberals see as a flaw in conservative arguments. They believe that the government’s establishment of general objective marital criteria as opposed to intrusive government involvement in individual relationships is a weakness as opposed to a strength.

But what about the Left’s revisionist view of marriage as being constituted only by love? Are liberals similarly troubled by the fact that the government will never demand proof of the presence of love or attempt to compel couples to love one another? Will the unwillingness of the government to demand proof of love suggest a flaw in liberal arguments for redefining marriage?

Do governments create marriage?

According to the homosexual newspaper the Washington Blade, “When state attorneys made the arguments that bans on same-sex marriage had a rational basis because the purpose of marriage was procreation, Daughtrey took them to task, repeatedly asking them why excluding same-sex couples from the institution was necessary when opposite-sex couples can procreate with or without marriage.”

Daughtrey reveals both her ignorance and her liberal view that government creates reality.

A man and woman who engage in reproductive-type sexual activity (i.e., coitus) and conceive a child are in reality married because the central defining features of marriage are sexual differentiation and coitus. Marriage has a nature that predates the existence of formal legal institutions. Opposite-sex couples aren’t married because the government issues them a license. The government issues them a license to formalize marriage, which becomes actualized through conjugal unions—not through inherently sterile mutual masturbatory activity. Couples who engage in conjugal activity prior to acquiring a marriage license are in reality married. It isn’t the government that creates marriage. Government merely recognizes and regulates a type of union that in reality exists. We call that type of union marriage.

Since government does not create marriage, it cannot un-create it or recreate it. Thus, legally allowing two people of the same-sex to “marry” does not mean they’re married in anything other than a legal (de jure) sense. They are not married in reality because in reality marriage has a nature central to which is sexual differentiation, and without which a union is not marital.

If some silly government officials decided to issue dog licenses to cats because both dogs and cats have fur and four legs, some citizens—it is hoped—would recognize that dogs are in reality not cats because cats have natures that don’t change because the government issues a license.

Harm to children

The Left claims that children are “harmed” by not having their same-sex parents married. Since the Left worships at the woefully unstable altar of social science research, have liberal judges asked attorneys for homosexual couples to provide conclusive, incontrovertible sociological research demonstrating the ways these children are measurably harmed. Are children being raised by unmarried homosexual parents scoring lower on standardized tests? Are they abusing drugs and alcohol at higher rates than are children whose homosexual parents are married? What are the statistics on mental illness? Are their peer relationships more unstable?

If there is research demonstrating that these children suffer, have researchers controlled for all the factors that may contribute to their suffering? Is it the legal marital status of their parents that causes the harm or might it be the absence of either a mother or a father? Even President Barack Obama has publicly stated that both mothers and fathers are critical to children’s lives, and all children have both a mother and a father—even though some children are being deprived of relationships with them through the purchase of their DNA. Does it make sense that the marital status of homosexual parents would cause harm but being denied either a mother or father would not?

Some homosexual couples appeal to the self-consciousness their children feel about their parents not being legally married as evidence that same-sex “marriage” should be legalized. What does it mean then when children being raised by homosexuals feel self-conscious about not having a mother or a father?

Ironically, while the Left has been effective in selling the redefinition of marriage by asserting that marriage has nothing to do with procreation, William Harbison, attorney for the Tennessee same-sex couples in the Sixth Circuit Court case, complained that traditional marriage laws exclude “same-sex couples from anything related to procreation.” So, procreation matters in marriage law but only in so far as it satisfies the procreative desires of those who choose to be in inherently non-procreative relationships. While arguing that marriage is solely constituted by love and has nothing to do with procreation, “progressives” then use children’s needs, desires, and rights as a justification for changing the legal definition of marriage.

Let’s follow the logic of this revised revisionist view of marriage. If it’s love, commitment, and the presence of children (though not the begetting of children) that constitute “marriage,” then plural unions, incestuous unions, or any relational contexts in which children are being raised must logically be recognized as marriages.

Once the public becomes persuaded that love is all there is when it comes to marriage, they will start clamoring for the legalization of plural and incestuous unions. Once the notion that any adults raising children are entitled to have their relationships recognized as “marriages,” then judges will be obliged to find legal rationales to jettison requirements regarding monogamy and consanguinity from the legal definition of marriage—oh, unless doing so would cause the sky to fall in, which we won’t know until decades after platonic, plural, and incestuous marriages are legalized.  Once marriages are no longer restricted to erotic/sexual unions, the minimum age requirement too becomes irrelevant.

And at long last, we will arrive at the end game for the far Left: the destruction of marriage. Once society concludes that marriage is wholly a social construct with no objective nature, and once all criteria that define marriage are jettisoned so that any persons or number of persons can “marry,” marriage ceases to exist. Once marriage is anything, it’s nothing, with no relevance to the public good.

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