After a hiatus, AFTAH is back on the air. This podcast [click HERE to listen], recorded May 16, 2013, is Part One of our interview with Mormon pro-family activist Stephen Graham, founder of Standard of Liberty, a group based in Pleasant Grove, Utah. Graham discusses the Mormon Church’s (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) retreat on the homosexualist agenda — especially after the LDS Church was hammered by the pro-”gay” Left for funding and supporting the Prop 8 constitutional amendment to protect marriage in California as one-man, one-woman. At about the 8:18 point on this audio, Graham cuts to the root of the Mormon pullback in resisting the overarching ”gay” agenda (including “same-sex marriage”): a fear that bad publicity will limit the ability of its farflung missionaries to engage potential converts.
Graham describes his disappointment with Mormon Church leaders for failing to stand resolutely against the liberalization of the current Boy Scouts of America (BSA) policy prohibiting openly homosexual Scouts. AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera, co-host John Kirkwood and Graham agree that had LDS leaders done so — given the Mormons’ huge sway with the Scouts — the potential for BSA capitulation on the homosexual issue would have been greatly diminished. LaBarbera references a Mother Jones article about the LDS Church cuttin back on funding anti-”homosexual marriage” state ballot measures in 2012, and Graham says the MJ article is accurate. The discussion ends with a focus on how the fear of losing corporate funding led to the Scouts’ proposed policy change — and how pro-family companies like Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby should step in and offer to make up any lost corporate grants to the BSA.
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AFTAH’s Peter LaBarbera speaking at IFI rally against homosexuality-based “marriage.” He is holding a “children’s” book, “King & King,” that promotes same-sex “marriage” to innocent children. The book is about a prince who “marries” another prince, rather than a princess. A man disrupted the speech, yelling out to LaBarbera and demanding to know if he wanted to “round up” homosexuals and put them in camps. Photo: IFI. Click on photos to enlarge.
The following is adapted from a speech I gave Saturday (May 11, 2013) at a rally in Western Springs, Illinois, home district to State Rep. Jim Durkin (R). The rally was one of several sponsored by the Illinois Family Institute to educate citizens on the threat of “same-sex marriage” legislation in Springfield. Despite Democratic super-majorities in both House and Senate, the homosexual “marriage” bill (SB 10} has stalled in the Illinois General Assembly. A coalition of Christians — Black, White and Latino — is leading the charge against SB 10, against a far better funded pro-homosexual opposition in Springfield. IFI is to be commended for holding back the media-backed push for same-sex “marriage” against much-better funded pro-homosexual opponents. Click HERE for their Resource Page on homosexual “marriage.” — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
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Good afternoon, thank you for coming and thanks to IFI for sponsoring these marriage rallies.
I have a question for you today: do you fear God or do you fear man? If you fear God, you will shudder at the thought of attaching the noble, life-giving, God-ordained institution of Marriage to a deviant sexual lifestyle – homosexuality – that God Himself condemns as sin.
But if you fear man, you will worry about being Politically Incorrect – or being called a “bigot” or a “homophobe,” simply because you believe Marriage is what it is: a sacred union between a man and a woman.
I stand before you today as one who fears God. But I also fear for this once-great State of Illinois – that more and more kicks God to the curb. Yes, the Land of Lincoln has become the Land of Liberals, and liberals are destroying this state, and this Nation.
We’re here today to fight against the secular progressives’ latest social experiment – marriage (so-called), based on homosexuality, which God calls an abomination. Liberals and homosexual activists call this “Marriage Equality,” but we know there’s nothing “equal” about it. Two men or two women cannot produce children without the assistance of heterosexuality, so enough about “Marriage Equality.” It’s just not equal.
But it’s not just liberal Democrats promoting this bad idea, it’s liberal Republicans like Pat Brady, who finally stepped down as Chairman of the Illinois GOP. Let’s be clear: when Mr. Brady – a close friend of Representative Jim Durkin – came out for homosexuality-based “marriage” (so-called), he did not just come out against the clear language of the Illinois Republican Platform (which calls for a state constitutional amendment to preserve Marriage as one-man, one-woman). No, Brady came out against God’s natural plan for Marriage.
Our Declaration of Independence speaks of “Nature and Nature’s God.” Attaching unnatural and wrong behavior to marriage is an offense against Nature and Nature’s God. And when you defy Nature, bad things happen. Listen to this shocking quote from the federal Centers for Disease Control last December: CDC estimates that MSM – that’s “Men who have Sex with Men” – “represent approximately four percent of the male population in the United States, but male-to-male sex accounted for more than three-fourths (78 percent) of new HIV infections among men and nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of all new infections in 2010 (29,800).”
Our government should be warning against the dangers of homosexuality, not trying to call it “marriage.”
Coach notes rapid desensitization of Americans toward homosexuality
Folks, Coach Dave Daubenmire of Pass the Salt Ministries is one of a kind. It was a pleasure to be interviewed by the Coach — a man’s man whose old-fashioned moral frankness may be out of step with today’s culture but is so much more refreshing than the pablum coming from some “Christians” and “conservatives” these days. I love Coach’s point — as politically incorrect as it is true – at around the 22:25 mark regarding what parents fear most. Also note:
Coach’s comments on TIME magazine’s indecent “gay kiss” cover and what it says about desensitization in the USA (10:30);
my comments on Larry Kramer and “gay” men who look back “fondly” on their own molestation (27:35); and
the section on the sinister pro-pedophilia “B4UAct” website (“NAMBLA with a PhD”), which mimics homosexual activist talking points to advance the agenda of the “Minor Attracted People” movement.
Give me just 100 pastors like Coach Daubenmire scattered across America and you wouldn’t recognize this nation! Please support the Coach and his ministry. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
PS. Let me anticipate a homosexual activist criticism of my comments – which of course will be distorted – around the 14:00-15:00 minute mark. I am not “reassured” (14:40) that homosexual men contract so many diseases related to their perversion, in the sense of taking some sort of heartless satisfaction from their suffering. Rather, I am reassured that Nature and the practical realities of the homosexual lifestyle affirm God’s revealed truth about this sin. As I say in the interview, “The real world is backing up what the Bible says about homosexuality.” This should further motivate Christians to lovingly share God’s free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ to people caught up in homosexual behavior. More information follows the interview….
This interview was published by NewsWithViews.TV on Apr 11, 2013. Coach writes:
“Peter LaBarbera of www.AmericansForTruth.org joins Coach Dave for an in-depth discussion of the homosexual agenda and how ‘marriage’ is just their latest assault on traditional values. Listen to this riveting, no-holds-barred discussion.”
AFTAH defends natural marriage at Illinois Republican Party Central Committee meeting Saturday. Pat Brady is the outgoing head of the IL-GOP who angered the Party’s grassroots by outrageously embracing homosexuality-based “marriage.” Click on photo to enlarge.
By Peter LaBarbera
Hey folks, for half the day Saturday I stood inside the Tinley Park Convention Center with about 50 pro-family conservative Republicans — to protest at the quarterly Central Committee meeting against elitist corruption within the Illinois Republican Party. We were united against IL-GOP Chairman Pat Brady, who endorsed the (stalled) “same-sex marriage” bill despite the clear and principled IL-GOP platform stance affirming REAL marriage (see language below). Pro-family stalwart Karen Hayes and I held high an AFTAH banner that read, “Pat Brady Must Go; Marriage: One Man, One Woman,” and distributed an information Alert on “Why the IL-GOP Must Never Abandon its Pro-Natural Marriage Platform.”
It was exhilarating to stand with so many Illinois patriots, yet exhausting and aggravating as we were forced, like disobedient children, to wait three hours for a chance to make our voices heard to the assembled Committeemen. [Click HERE to watch a video of the exiled conservatives featuring activist Bill Kelly.] After the long wait, I and few others were finally allowed to make public comments (for just two minutes per person). But after fewer than 10 people had spoken Brady suddenly ended the session — again silencing the voices — if not the spirits — of some of the hardest-working Republicans in the state. They deserved much better.
As you can read from the Chicago Tribune account below, Brady was not voted out Saturday, but apparently he is being eased out within six weeks. After the meeting, a Central Committeeman told a group of us that “everybody got the message…There wasn’t a vote [on Brady] but there was a vote.” Translation: even GOP VIPs as notoriously out-of-touch with the grassroots as the men and women running Illinois’ Republican Party realize they can’t keep Brady at the helm for long.
And that is the best news I take away from Saturday’s dysfunctional GOP gathering: even in Illinois, where conservatives are as beaten down and disrespected as in few other states, principled Republicans and citizens (many Tea Partiers) are calling out their political “leaders” for abandoning time-tested moral values. And not just Republicans: don’t forget that it is pressure from pro-natural-marriage Democrats that has kept the Democrat-dominated General Assembly in Springfield from voting in counterfeit “gay marriage.”
One of the high points at the Tinley Park meeting occurred when a Republican official was reading from resolutions and actions just enacted by the Republican National Committee (RNC). The final RNC resolution he read was one reaffirming the national Republican Party plank defending natural marriage – and instantaneous and sustained applause erupted in the room. Clearly, supporting marriage as God ordains it — one man, one woman — is a very popular, foundational plank for Republicans. Ditching it would be a mistake of incalculable proportions — like the Party becoming “pro-choice” on abortion.
Grassroots Illinois Republicans stand behind AFTAH banner urging the dismissal of IL-GOP Chairman Pat Brady, who shocked the state’s Republicans by coming out for homosexuality-based “marriage.” Dozens of conservative Republicans, including elected officials, were forced to wait three hours as Brady’s future was decided in private at the meeting. When they were finally let back in, comments were limited to only a minute per speaker and then — after a few critical speeches including one by AFTAH’s Peter LaBarbera — the meeting was suddenly cut short by Brady.
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TINLEY PARK, Illinois — Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) delivered the following informational Alert yesterday at the quarterly meeting of the Republican Party of Illinois (IL-GOP) Central Committee. AFTAH, a non-partisan 501(c)3 organization, educates about the implications of homosexual activism to all institutions and all political parties. We’ll have more on Saturday’s bizarrely dysfunctional Central Committee meeting in another post [read Illinois Review editor Fran Eaton's account of it HERE].
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Americans For Truth ** ALERT **
Putting Principles First: Why the IL-GOP Must Never Abandon Its Pro-Natural-Marriage Platform
Homosexual “marriage” will accelerate the promotion of homosexuality and gender confusion as ‘normal’ in public schools. In Massachusetts, 2nd graders were required to read this book, “King & King,” about a prince who falls in love with and “marries” another man instead of a princess. Parents in Mass. effectively lost their right to guide their own children’s moral values if they keep them in public schools.
TINLEY PARK, Illinois – Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) urges the Republican Party of Illinois to stay true to its own conservative Platform and reaffirm marriage as between a man and a woman.
AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera said that by embracing homosexuality-based “marriage,” IL-GOP Chairman Pat Brady and the state’s most powerful Republican, Sen. Mark Kirk, have recklessly undermined the GOP’s conservative “brand” as a pro-family party and hurt the Party’s outreach prospects — especially among minority voters.
The family is society’s central building block… Our children need secure and nurturing environments, which are best found within the traditional family. No law should be enacted nor policy implemented without fully contemplating the effect it would have on children and their families…. [T]he ideal, best environment for children is within a two-parent family based on the principle of marriage between one man and one woman.
The Republican Party endorses a constitutional amendment protecting our Defense of Marriage Act and enshrining in constitutional law marriage as it is defined in our “DOMA.”
Our laws should strongly support and celebrate the loving commitment a man and a woman make to each other in marriage….
LaBarbera urged the divisive Brady to step down as IL-GOP chairman and offered the following as among the reasons NOT to undermine the Party’s historic defense of natural marriage:
If homosexuality-based “marriage” is legalized, religious liberty and freedom of conscience will be further repressed by the state in the name of “gay equality”; this is already happening in Illinois under our “Civil Unions” law. In Paxton, IL, Jim and Beth Walder – owners of a bed-and-breakfast – were forced to go to court to defend their constitutional right to live by their own Christian beliefs (they declined a homosexual “civil union” ceremony on their own property). Republicans must stand for liberty – yet too often pro-homosexual libertarians are silent on the growing threat to First Amendment freedoms justified in the name of “gay rights.”
George Harasz (l) and Douglas Wirth (r) are accused of raping two of the nine boys they adopted. The Glastonbury, CT men are “married.” Now three more of the children have come forward charging sexual abuse. Photo courtesy Glastonbury Police Department.
Although these two homosexual men (“married” in Connecticut) are innocent until proven guilty, this case has not received the media coverage that it deserves. It recalls another horrific homosexual adoption/molestation case: Frank Lombard, the North Carolina man and Duke University official who molested his own infant adopted boy and then offered up the five-year-old online for others to rape. Here’s a 2011 YouTube of a local TV news report on the shockingly evil Lombard case.
The following is from the New York Daily News (April 7, 2103) on the Connecticut story:
Gay Connecticut couple accused of raping adopted children will face trial
By Eric Ortiz, New York Daily News
The case of a same-sex Connecticut couple accused of repeatedly raping and abusing two of their nine adopted boys is headed for trial.
Married couple George Harasz and Douglas Wirth of Glastonbury were supposed to be sentenced Friday in Hartford Superior Court under a plea deal, but instead withdrew from their agreement with prosecutors. The men had already pleaded no contest in January to one felony count each of risk of injury to a minor — a reduction from even more serious charges related to sexual assault.
But in a surprise turn, the couple’s attorneys pulled them out of the plea in a bid to fully clear their names, according to CBS affiliate WFSB-TV.
If Harasz, 49, and Wirth, 45, had continued with the deal, they would have been given suspended prison sentences and probation, WFSB-TV said.
But more allegations came to light Friday in the explosive case, and prosecutors said they also want to go to trial.
Michigan RNC Committeeman Dave Agema was charged by fellow Republicans with “hate” for raising the public health risks of the homosexual lifestyle.
This is an important piece by Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins, reprinted from his April 2 “Washington Watch” newsletter. Republican Party politicians (they’re not behaving like statesmen) are on a suicide mission if they think they can stab their most faithful constituents in the back on the homosexual agenda and still come away strong enough to beat the radically pro-”gay” Democrats. (A Democrat will usually beat a “Democrat-lite.”)
You are like me if you’re ready to yell at the TV or radio every time you hear a Republican or some libertarian-leaning pundit assert, with robot-like efficiency, that we need to be “focusing on the issues that really matter.” That’s code for the fiscal issues — rather than social issues like homosexual “marriage,” which I suppose, by extension, “don’t really matter” much to these Republicans.
Seems to me the moral disintegration of America and the preservation of marriage should be at the top of the list of issues that matter. Too bad we don’t have a STRONG pro-family, pro-life, God-fearing conservative party that could give both of our corrupt major parties a run for their money. – Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
P.S. While I (like Perkins) will not vouch for the accuracy of each of Agema’s citations (e.g., it was not NAMBLA but another pedophile group that invented the sick motto, ”Sex before eight or it’s too late”), it is preposterous to assert that homosexuality is somehow above criticism. Even more absurd is the idea — repeated in this Daily Koshit piece against FRC — of blaming the well-documented, highly disproportionate disease rates linked to homosexual sex (HIV, syphilis, hepatitis, etc.) on “the stress which comes from having to deal with homophobia and discrimination.” Right, it’s our fault….
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From Tony Perkins’ April 2 “Washington Watch”:
RNC Makes Values a Mute Point
“Wishful thinking.” That’s how MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough described the GOP’s supposed shift on same-sex “marriage.” During a segment on yesterday’s show, Scarborough tried to put the media’s spin into perspective. “This rush to marriage equality is–at least among the Republican base–a mirage.” Anyone who believes otherwise, he said, has a fundamental misunderstanding of the political realities in America:
“I wonder how many of these people [who] support it from Washington or New York, or from state capitals across the country, have ever campaigned in western Iowa, have ever campaigned in South Carolina in the Greenville-Spartanburg area, have ever campaigned across north Florida. … What [Republican presidential] candidate can win in western Iowa, can win in the Greenville-Spartanburg area, can win in north Florida if they come out and support gay marriage nationally?”
“Gay” activists have been promoting the acceptance of homosexual relationships — even to young children – for decades. (This is a page from the 1991 “children’s” book, “Daddy’s Roommate.”) For conservatives to now claim that the debate over “same-sex marriage” is NOT about homosexuality is disingenuous and actually helps normalize the sin of homosexual behavior. Sentence at bottom of page reads, “Being gay is just one more kind of love.” (Click to enlarge.)
“Moral judgment undergirds the entire structure of laws and is necessary for the rational structure of any significant statute. The idea that our laws can stand independent of moral foundation is senseless. We do not think that driving under the influence of alcohol is simply risky, in terms of statistics. We believe that it is wrong, in terms of explicit moral judgment.” –Al Mohler
This is an important piece by Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and we applaud him for writing it. To say that the struggle to preserve marriage from being homosexualized requires “no judgment about the morality of homosexuality” is pure folly and a recipe for defeat. It is a negation of common sense, like telling pro-lifers not to make the case for the humanity of the unborn in arguing against pro-abortion laws.
By pretending that the homosexual “marriage” debate is not really about homosexuality, well-intended people are actually advancing the godless crusade to normalize immoral same-sex behavior and relationships in society. (A neutral response to sin — or a reluctance to confront it — by religious people who know better actually propels sin forward.) We need to rebuild the moral consensus against homosexual behavior, but you cannot do that by running away from the issue.
Substitute another (less politically correct) sexual misbehavior and this formula make no sense: Imagine if conservatives were to carefully avoid discussing, say, the morality of adultery (or worse, talk about respecting the “needs” of adulterous “couples”); would that not be cheered by sexual anarchists and the “open marriage” crowd?
In other words, to fight one evil (homosexual “marriage”), some of our Best and Brightest are effectively lending aid to another, by undermining the moral/spiritual/practical case against homosexuality — a perversion that just a few decades ago was so widely deplored that it was barely mentioned in polite society. We conservatives and people of faith need to talk more about the immorality and tragic realities of homosexuality, not less. – Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
Bracketing Morality — The Marginalization of Moral Argument in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate
By Albert Mohler
Monday, April 1, 2013
“Somewhere along the way, standing up for gay marriage went from nervy to trendy.” This was the assessment offered by Frank Bruni, an influential openly-gay columnist for The New York Times. Bruni’s column, published just as the Supreme Court was poised to hear oral arguments in the two same-sex marriage cases now before it, is a celebration of the fact that, as he sees it, same-sex marriage is soon to be the law of the land, whatever the Court may decide. “The trajectory is undeniable. The trend line is clear. And the choice before the justices is whether to be handmaidens of history, or whether to sit it out.”
Bruni may well be right, given the trajectory and the trend-line he has described. Of course, Bruni, along with his fellow columnists, editors, and reporters for The New York Times will, along with their friends in the larger world of elite media, bear much of the responsibility for this. They are certain that their work is the mission of human liberation from irrational prejudice.
In the most important section of Bruni’s column, he writes: “In an astonishingly brief period of time, this country has experienced a seismic shift in opinion — a profound social and political revolution — when it comes to gay and lesbian people.”
That is a powerful summary of what has happened. Bruni is undoubtedly right, and he has helped to make it so. But there is something missing from Bruni’s analysis, and this is something that he has helped to cause as well. The “seismic shift” on the issue of homosexuality is a profound moral revolution as well.
And yet, what makes this moral revolution so vast in consequences and importance is this: the moral dimension has virtually disappeared from the cultural conversation. This is true, we must note, even among the defenders of heterosexual marriage.
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