Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category

If you’re opposed to the idolatrous cult of the Messianic Nanny State, beware…the Obama administration has you in their cross-hairs.

John Boyle writes at The Citizen-Times:

In a blistering letter to President Barack Obama, the Rev. Franklin Graham said the IRS targeted the two non-profits he heads with an audit last year after the organizations took out ads urging people to support biblical principles on marriage and in choosing political candidates.

In the letter, dated Tuesday, Graham said in light of recent revelations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, he does not believe the audit was “a coincidence — or justifiable.” Graham, son of famed Christian evangelist the Rev. Billy Graham, now heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association based in Charlotte, N.C., and Samaritan’s Purse, a worldwide relief organization headquartered in Boone.

“I am bringing this to your attention because I believe that someone in the administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us,” Graham concluded in the letter. “This is morally wrong and unethical — indeed some would call it ‘un-American.’”

Read more at The Citizen-Times

Steven Ertelt writes at Life News:

James Dobson, the pro-life family advocate disclosed today that he was a victim of IRS discrimination, in a revelation that adds to the growing Internal Revenue Scandal.

Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, says he faced discrimination from the federal agency when trying to start a new group.

Family Talk Action Corporation is a Christian ministry that was formed for the purpose of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ; of providing Christ-oriented advice and education to parents and children; and of speaking to cultural issues that affect the family. Dobson is the president and CEO.

On September 2, 2011, Family Talk Action filed a Form 1024 with the Internal Revenue Service requesting § 501(c)(4) status. The attorney completing this form had submitted scores of similar applications over his 26 year career with none being rejected.

In January and February 2013, Family Talk Action’s counsel called the IRS reviewing agent, R. Medley (ID no. 52402), to inquire regarding when there would be a determination of the application. Her voice mail box was full on each of these calls so no message could be left. On March 6, he called Ms. Medley again and got routed to her voice mail again. This time, he was able to leave a voice mail message and requested a return call.

Medley did not call back until March 19. Family Talk Action’s attorney asked her when the IRS would issue its determination letter. Ms. Medley responded saying, I don’t think your Form 1024 (application for exemption) will be granted because Family Talk Action is “not educational” because it does not present all views. She continued, saying that Family Talk Action sounded like a “partisan right-wing group” because, according to Ms. Medley, it only presents conservative viewpoints.

She then added, “you’re political” because you “criticized President Obama, who was a candidate.”

Read more at Life News

Dobson and Graham weren’t the only targets during the 2012 campaign:

The Biblical Recorder, the official news journal for North Carolina Southern Baptists, found itself in the same situation in March – audited for the first time since the Baptist newspaper was founded in 1833.

The newspaper garnered national attention last summer after Editor Allan Blume published an interview with Chick-Fil-A president Dan Cathy. In reference to his support of the traditional family, Cathy said he was “guilty as charged.”

The Biblical Recorder also published the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s ads affirming traditional marriage.

And then – came the telephone call from the Internal Revenue Service.

“It raised some red flags and made me wonder why we were being targeted for an audit when we have been around since 1833 and have never been audited before,” Blume told Fox News. “Putting it all together made me wonder.”

Blume said the timing may have been coincidental – but “it didn’t seem that way.”

“There seems to be a very anti-Christian bias that has flowed into a lot of government agencies – oppression literally against Christian organizations and groups,” he said. “It makes you wonder what’s going on.

Blume said the newspaper was eventually cleared, but the audit consumed time and money.

“It was a lot of time and energy that we didn’t have,” he said. “It took some of our staff literally several weeks of doing nothing but that (the audit),” he said.

Read more at Red State

It’s also come to light that the IRS was targeting pro-Israel groups and pro-life groups:

IRS officials refused to grant tax exempt status to two pro-life organizations because of their position on the abortion issue, according to a non-profit law firm, which said that one group was pressured not to protest a pro-choice organization that endorsed President Obama during the last election.

“In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent ‘Ms. Richards’ told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood,” the Thomas More Society announced today. “Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved.”

Planned Parenthood endorsed Obama in 2008 and 2012.

The IRS also pressured another pro-life group about its religious activities. “The IRS withheld approval of an application for charitable tax-exempt recognition of Christian Voices for Life, questioning the group’s involvement with ’40 Days for Life’ and ‘Life Chain’ events,” according to the law firm. “The Fort Bend County, Texas, organization was subjected to repeated and lengthy unconstitutional requests for information about the viewpoint and content of its educational communications, volunteer prayer vigils, and other protected activities.”

Read more at the Washington Examiner

With this much coordination against his “enemies,” there’s NO WAY Obama didn’t know about it.

“Very Frightening”: Prominent Catholic Professor Claims IRS Audited Her After Speaking Out Against Obama And Demanded To Know Who Was Paying Her

Why Would the IRS Target Billy Graham?

Surprise!  Director of IRS Tax-Exempt Determinations Office Is Obama Donor

IRS Admits To Targeting Conservative Groups For Harassment

IRS Tried to Swing 2012 Election Towards Obama

Why is the IRS Regulating Speech In The First Place?

Benghazi Hearing Obama Admin Lied & People Died

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Joel Pollack breaks down the five key points made by the Benghazi whistleblowers in the congressional hearing:

1. Two “stand-down” orders were given while the Benghazi attacks were in progress.

2. The “protest” about a YouTube video was a complete fabrication by the Obama administration.

3. Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s lawyer at the State Department, told witnesses not to speak to House investigators.

4. The diplomatic personnel on the ground acted with incredible, unheralded heroism.

5. Democrats came to rebut the eyewitnesses with talking points.

Read more at Breitbart

Other important points…

They knew from the first moment that it was a terrorist attack, not a protest.

Multiple requests for help were refused.

The Obama administration blocked a rescue effort after the attack began, knowing American lives were in danger:

Eyewitnesses to September’s deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya told a congressional committee Wednesday that State Department officials had blocked efforts to aid Americans under fire and later tried to conceal al Qaeda’s involvement.

Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the State Department, told the politically charged hearing that on the night of the attack he was stopped from mobilizing a foreign emergency support team that was specially equipped and trained to deal with emergencies like the one in Benghazi.

Read more at the Washington Examiner

Hicks: “Lt. Colonel Gibson was Furious. He Wanted to Bring Our People Home.”

Former deputy chief turned whistleblower Gregory Hicks was demoted after he challenged the State Department over their bogus talking points.

The media is already going into overdrive in an attempt to smear and discredit the Benghazi whistleblowers.

Benghazi Whistleblowers: Obama Admin. Threatened Us

Grieving Benghazi Mom Seeks Answers, Obama Admin. Tells Her To ‘Shut Up,’ Says She’s ‘Causing Problems’

The Damning Dozen: Twelve Revelations from the Benghazi Hearings

Blow-by-Blow: How Obama & Hillary Left Americans to Die

The big Benghazi mystery: Where was Obama while 4 Americans perished?

Dereliction of Duty: Obama Did Nothing to Save American Lives in Benghazi–and Lied About It

Rep. Chaffetz: “There Was Never An Intention” To Rescue U.S. Personnel In Benghazi

Who Is Lt. Col. Gibson and Does He Hold the Key to Who Gave Stand Down Order in Benghazi?

Benghazi Whistleblower Chokes Up During Hearing: ‘It Matters to Me’

Greg Hicks: I briefed Hillary on Benghazi that night; Clinton continued to blame video

I Was Told Not to Talk to Congressional Investigators, Second Benghazi Whistleblower Testifies

Reminder: Hillary Clinton lied about Benghazi while standing in front of the victims’ caskets

Mother of Benghazi victim: Hillary and Susan Rice told me “nose to nose” that video was to blame

AP Labels Official House Benghazi Hearings as ‘GOP Hearing’

NBC’s Chuck Todd: Obama administration actions on Benghazi ‘very rational’

Susan Rice Honored With ‘Great American’ Award The Night Before Benghazi Hearing

False Benghazi narrative unravels, but scapegoated anti-Islam filmmaker still in prison

2012 Testimony: Lack of Budget Not a Factor in Benghazi Security Decisions

Hillary Clinton’s Shameful Intimidation Of Gregory Hicks

Matthew Vadum: Obama’s Benghazi Propagandist

After Benghazi hearings, lawmakers want more ‘whistle-blowers’ to step forward

Recently, the Pentagon hired a rabid, anti-Christian fanatic to advice them on how to make the military more “tolerant.”    His first recommendation has been to court-martial Christians who dare to share their faith with another service member.

Ken Klukowski reports at Breitbart:

“Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.”

Those words were recently written by Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), in a column he wrote for the Huffington Post. Weinstein will be a consultant to the Pentagon to develop new policies on religious tolerance, including a policy for court-martialing military chaplains who share the Christian Gospel during spiritual counseling of American troops.

[...]   Many media outlets are silent on this disturbing new alliance between fanatical secularists and leaders in the Pentagon appointed by President Barack Obama and Secretary Chuck Hagel, under which the U.S. military would officially consult with someone with such foaming-at-the-mouth passionate hostility toward traditional Christians, including Evangelicals and devout Catholics. The military—America’s most heroic and noble institution—includes countless people of faith, and this represents a radical departure from the U.S. military’s warm embrace of people of faith in its ranks.

Yet the little coverage this story is getting is positive, such as thisWashington Post column that somehow manages not to carry any of these frightening quotes from Weinstein and instead actually endorses the Pentagon’s meeting with him. Sally Quinn’s Postcolumn also approvingly quotes MRFF Advisory Board member Larry Wilkerson as saying, “Sexual assault and proselytizing, according to Wilkerson, ‘are absolutely destructive of the bonds that keep soldiers together.’”

Did you get that? They say having someone share the Christian gospel with you is akin to being raped. Weinstein makes sure there are no doubts, being quoted by the Post as adding, “This is a national security threat. What is happening [aside from sexual assault] is spiritual rape. And what the Pentagon needs is to understand is that it is sedition and treason. It should be punished.”

Read more at Breitbart

Now, it appears that the military is preparing to court-martial anyone who tries to share the Good News:

The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: “Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense…Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis…”.

The statement, released to Fox News, follows a Breitbart News report on Obama administration Pentagon appointees meeting with anti-Christian extremist Mikey Weinstein to develop court-martial procedures to punish Christians in the military who express or share their faith.

This regulation would severely limit expressions of faith in the military, even on a one-to-one basis between close friends. It could also effectively abolish the position of chaplain in the military, as it would not allow chaplains (or any service members, for that matter), to say anything about their faith that others say led them to think they were being encouraged to make faith part of their life. It’s difficult to imagine how a member of the clergy could give spiritual counseling without saying anything that might be perceived in that fashion.

Read more at Breitbart

Ironic that the very men and women who volunteered to defend liberty are now watching their most basic, unalienable rights being stripped away, all in the name of “tolerance.”   Is this what they fought for?

Sign the Petition to Protect Religious Freedom in the Military

Pentagon Recruits Anti-Christian Extremist To Help Craft Tolerance Policy

Religious Groups Fear Christian Purge From Military

Secular Crusader Advises Pentagon: Christians are ‘Monsters.’

Religious Freedom in Our Military: This Is What Intolerance Smells Like

Pentagon: Religious Proselytizing is Not Permitted

Rear admiral vows to continue sharing fait

Army Labels Christians as Religious Extremists, Potential Terrorists

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood government that Obama arms, funds and supports is violently persecuting religious minorities, using our tax money to do it:

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood’s governing majority, is not actually crucifying the nation’s Christians. But they are nonetheless actively persecuting Coptic Christians who are said to be one-tenth of the population of the largest Arab country. A photograph of two young men set afire during recent demonstrations is pretty striking.

Demonstrations have turned into riots as Egypt’s police cracked down on the Copts. The Copts were protesting against increasing sectarian violence directed at the country’s Christian minority.

Typically, what has been happening is the Copts protest against Islamist violence directed at them and their churches. St. Mark’s Cathedral has been the target of Muslim extremists in recent week. When the Copts face police, they get tear gassed. And then they are the ones arrested. The Muslim Brotherhood authorities will pick up Coptic youth—hopefully the ones not yet set on fire—and jail them.

Then, the police grab some of the Islamists perpetrators and jail them. Later, following a much-ballyhooed “reconciliation,” the authorities release all—perpetrators and victims alike.

Read more at Townhall

In Syria, the rebels that the U.S. is supporting – who are trying to overthrow Assad – are Islamic extremists who are threatening to exterminate any Christians left behind who don’t convert to Islam:

Syria’s Christians fear an Islamist takeover should the current government be overthrown. During the ongoing civil war there has been a well-documented rise in the number of salafi-jihadist groups operating in Syria that pose a direct threat to Syria’s Christian community. These militant opposition forces espouse an Islamist ideology, which incorporates elements of Wahhabism and Salafism and whose stated goals and objectives are by definition hostile towards Christians. Firsthand accounts from Syrian Christian refugees in Lebanon reported by award winning investigative journalist Nuri Kino detail the horror in which they described kidnappings, rapes, harassment, theft and other violent reprisals at the hands of Islamist groups.

Those who survived reported “just being Christian is enough to be a target,” disproving theories that violence and kidnapping directed towards Syrian Christians is purely incidental or for economic reasons.

Read more at Weasel Zippers

Once again, our taxpayer money is going towards funding Islamic extremism and the suppression of religious liberty.

Islam’s Collective Punishment of Christians

Brutal Sharia Law Now Official Law Of Egypt

Syrian Rebels Attack Christians, Impose Sharia law

Christian Massacres Are Result Of Disastrous U.S. Foreign Policy

Obama Complicit In The Persecution of Christians?

How did we get to the point where we not only murder innocent children, but use tax dollars to pay the hit men?

“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Dave Boyer reports at The Washington Times:

President Obama offered a defiant defense of government funding for Planned Parenthood Friday and urged the group’s members to help his administration sign up more women for benefits under his besieged health-care law.

The first sitting president to address Planned Parenthood, Mr. Obama accused conservative politicians of trying to “roll back the clock” on abortion rights and health-care services for women.

“They’ve been involved in an orchestrated and historic effort to roll back basic rights when it comes to women’s health,” Mr. Obama told the group’s annual convention in Washington. “When politicians try to turn Planned Parenthood into a punching bag, they’re not just talking about you, they’re talking about the millions of women who you serve. And when they talk about cutting off your funding, let’s be clear, they’re talking about telling many of those women, ‘You’re own your own.’

That is a bold-faced lie.  Pro-life groups do more to support and provide services for women in crisis pregnancies than anyone else.   And those services don’t involve murdering a child and scarring a woman for life!

Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said Mr. Obama should have reproached Planned Parenthood officials for not doing more to stop the alleged violations at the clinic of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. Planned Parenthood officials in Philadelphia said they encouraged patients who complained to them about the clinic to report it to state authorities.

“President Obama blatantly ignored this inconvenient truth about the abortion industry’s horrific lack of oversight, and disparaged the pro-life advocates who wake up each morning with the goal of saving the lives of unborn children and women from the pain of abortion,” Ms. Dannenfelser said in a statement.

Instead, the president decried efforts across the country to limit women’s access to abortion services.

Read more at The Washington Times

As he ended his speech, Obama blasphemously called on God to “bless” the largest child murder organization in the country.

“As long as we’ve got to fight to make sure women have access to quality, affordable health care, and as long as we’ve got to fight to protect a woman’s right to make her own choices about her own health, I want you to know that you’ve also got a president who’s going to be right there with you, fighting every step of the way,” said Obama. “Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you.”

Murdering children is NOT health care, and the choice to kill a child is NOT a choice about one’s one health, but to end the life of another human being.

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” ~ Isaiah 5:20

Steve Deace observed:

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, referred to blacks as “human weeds” and “reckless breeders.” Ironic the first black president is the first president to speak to a child killing organization founded by a racist who targeted blacks. KKK should be applauding Obama’s speech today, for they had the same goals as Sanger.

Ironic, indeed.

Obama takes swipe at pro-life activists, ignores Gosnell during Planned Parenthood speech

Obama’s Twisted, Symbiotic Relationship With the Abortion Industry

Obama’s War on the Pro-life Movement

Obama’s 5 Most Controversial Comments About Abortion,’Women’s Rights’ During Planned Parenthood Speech

Every Ninety-Four Seconds Planned Parenthood Aborts a Life – Obama Asks God to “Bless” Their Work

Obama Attacks Pro-Lifers: They Want To Turn Clock Back To 1950′s

Obama Asks Planned Parenthood To Help Him Implement Obamacare

Planned Parenthood Awards ‘Margaret Sanger’ Award to Short German Offering Final Solution for Undesirable Children

Obama Gives Millions In Taxpayer Dollars To Planned Parenthood After States Defund Them For Medicaid Fraud

Federal government refers women to Planned Parenthood, sites condemning pregnancy resource centers

Gay activists have been putting pressure on the Boy Scouts for years, but they finally started to get results when they targeted BSA’s large corporate donors and infiltrated the National Executive Committee with members willing to undermine the BSA from within.   Fearing losing their funding, the Boy Scouts have now partially caved to allow gay scouts, but not Troop Leaders.  It’s obvious that won’t be far behind.  The  wall has been officially breached, and the bullies of the gay lobby won’t be satisfied until they’ve been brought down completely.

Becket Adams reports at The Blaze:

If ever there was a week to quietly announce a major organizational change, this is it.

A spokesman with the Boy Scouts of America on Friday announced that the 103-year-old organization is set to lift its long-standing ban on openly gay youth members but will continue to exclude gays as adult leaders.

However, as Reuters notes, the group’s board “still has to vote in May on whether to ratify the resolution.”

If the vote goes through, “no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone,” Deron Smith, the organization’s spokesman, told Reuters.

Read more at The Blaze

Former Eagle Scout John Stemberger writes at the Washington Times:

Virtually every news story on this topic erroneously frames this issue as the Boy Scouts “bans gays” or “discriminates against gays.” This is simply not true. Contrary to what the media might report, the Boy Scouts do not discriminate against homosexuals. The BSA membership application does not even ask about sexual orientation.

[...]  The fact is that veterans of Scouting will tell you there are currently Scouts and adult leaders in uniform who have same-sex attractions and who are in good standing with the program. They are discreet, though; they are private, they are discerning, and most of all, they conduct themselves appropriately in front of other young boys. Further, there has never been a witch hunt in the BSA to find or remove its members with a same-sex attraction.

So if homosexuals are already allowed in Scouting, then what is the national controversy about?

The real issue is this: Homosexual-rights activists are not satisfied with membership in good standing and being allowed to fully participate like everyone else. They want to be able to openly promote homosexuality. They want to promote a gay-rights political agenda. They want to act out publicly and be “loud and proud.” They want to inappropriately inject sex and politics into the BSA program, where children as young as six years old are involved. Not on this dad’s watch. This behavior and open homosexual conduct is exactly what the current BSA policy prohibits, a prohibition that we as parents demand that the program reaffirm if it wants our continued support.

[...]  Former U.S. Rep. Richard T. Schulze, Pennsylvania Republican, a recipient of the rare Distinguished Eagle Scout Award, recently commented, “What kind of a message are we sending to our young people if the very leaders who are teaching Boy Scouts to be brave cannot even find the courage to stand firm and avoid caving in to peer pressure from Hollywood and political activists?”

I could not agree more.

Read more at the Washington Times

It’s sad that an institution which has taught boys to stand up for moral principles and against the tide of moral relativism has allowed themselves to be compromised for the sake of money.   That’s exactly what this boils down to – and it will destroy them.   They may keep their big donors, but thousands of churches and other charter organizations will simply dissolve their charters rather than risk the wrath of gay bullies and potential lawsuits.

The Enemy Within: The Homosexual Assault from within the Boy Scouts of America

The Scouts – a ‘jewel of American culture’ in jeopardy

Opposition to Boy Scouts’ compromise on gays grows on both sides of issue

Boy Scouts Consider Ending Ban on Gay Troop Leaders, Scouts

Say No to Girl Scout Cookies

Krauthammer Warns: Gay Marriage Case Could Lead to All-Out ‘Assault on Religion’

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Last summer, lesbian journalist  and activist Masha Gessen admitted in a radio interview that the purpose of pursuing gay marriage is to destroy the institution of marriage entirely:

“It’s a no-brainer that (homosexual activists) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. …(F)ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.

The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist. And I don’t like taking part in creating fictions about my life. That’s sort of not what I had in mind when I came out thirty years ago.

I have three kids who have five parents, more or less, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t have five parents legally… I met my new partner, and she had just had a baby, and that baby’s biological father is my brother, and my daughter’s biological father is a man who lives in Russia, and my adopted son also considers him his father. So the five parents break down into two groups of three… And really, I would like to live in a legal system that is capable of reflecting that reality, and I don’t think that’s compatible with the institution of marriage.”

Read more at the Illinois Family Institute

George Neumayr warns at American Spectator:

The end point of liberalism is a coercive secular state in which the religious have no meaningful rights. American church leaders are kidding themselves if they think the gay-marriage juggernaut is going to stop at civil marriage. It won’t. It will quickly travel past court houses to churches, demanding that all religions bless gay marriages.

Denmark casts a shadow of this future, where the gay-marriage juggernaut has smashed through church doors. Last year the country’s parliament passed a law requiring all Lutheran churches to conduct gay marriage ceremonies. “I think it’s very important to give all members of the church the possibility to get married,” said Manu Sareen, Denmark’s minister for gender equality. Reluctant bishops have to supply ministers to satisfy the right whether they like it or not.

Iceland and Sweden have similar arrangements. Since many of the bishops are in the tank for gay marriage anyways and since these churches are “state” churches, this pressure generates little news. But it is instructive nonetheless. Where gay marriage exists, religious freedom gradually disappears, to the point where ministers have to choose between serving as secularism’s stooges or facing societal oblivion.

In America, this pressure will take the form of “discriminatory” churches losing government grants, permits, and participation in programs. It will be the death of religious freedom by a thousand little cuts here and there: canceled speeches of religious figures at state universities, lost HHS grants, the refusal of city governments to recognize churches that don’t permit gay marriages, “hate crime” legislation that extends to opposition to gay marriage, and so on. All of this will have the effect of pressuring churches into blessing gay marriages. A law forcing priests and ministers to preside at gay marriages won’t need to be passed; the invisible law of indirect governmental pressure will do the trick.

[...]  The goal of the gay-marriage juggernaut is to make Christians pariahs, as irrelevant to public life as racists. It doesn’t have to pass a Denmark-style law to force churches to conduct gay marriages; it can achieve the same end through punitive political correctness.

Read more at American Spectator

Gay Marriage Is Merely The Vehicle For Left’s Ultimate Goal: Destroying the Church

‘Don’t Care’ About Gay Marriage?  The Left Will Allow No Fence-Sitting.

“Marriage” Mayhem: Religious Freedom Being Trampled in the Scuffle

Adam Carolla: Gay Marriage Inevitable, So is Left’s March to Force Churches to Comply

Forces of Cultural Change: Explaining the Shift in Public Attitude on Same-Sex Marriage

What You Can Do About Same-Sex Marriage

Canada Offers Sobering Warning Of What Happens To Religious Liberty When Gay Marriage Is Legalized

Christians Targeted For Beliefs on Gay ‘Marriage’ – Is The Church Responsible?

The Dark, Intolerant, And Abusive Nature Of The Gay Agenda

The Agenda to Silence Christians

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev seen walking away from the explosive-laden backpack he left only feet away from the 8-year-old boy who was killed in the explosion.

And so it begins….a local station just aired an entire report making excuses for the bomber because he’s “young” and “misguided.” Claimed that it’s his age that’s the problem. Claimed that his motive is “unknown.” Totally ignored the fact that the pedophile butcher that he worships as a prophet encouraged his followers to follow his violent example. I’m SO sick of the media in this country bending over backwards to give violent radical Islamists a pass!

Mark Steyn sure called this one:

On Rush Limbaugh’s Friday program, fill-in host Mark Steyn reminded listeners of Limbaugh’s Tuesday comments predicting the media would “circle the wagons” for Islam if it turned out that the suspects in Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing Muslims, saying that the prediction will come true.

As it turned out, the suspects Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were indeed Muslims, and Steyn, author of  “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” said the media wagon-circling would begin “any moment now.”

“As we now know, these guys are Muslim,” Steyn said. “One of them was Muslim. He’s dead — he died in the early hours this morning. The other guy, still on the lam, is Muslim — Muslims from Chechnya. And so, as usual, any moment now we’ll start to hear, ‘Oh well, these are just lone wolves,’ as Rush said. ‘They’re not typical of anything.’ None of these guys are ever typical of anything.”

Read more at the Daily Caller

Daniel Greenfield writes at Front Page Mag:

“Why would Chechen refugees, who’ve been locked for nearly two decades in a bitter, violent conflict against the Russian government, harbor such anger against the United States that they’d want to carry out a terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon?” Politico asks.

“The answer is far from obvious,” it concludes.

Those few lines sum up the whole problem with our war on terror. A Muslim terrorist attack by Muslim terrorists? Why? The political establishment has spent decades choosing to ignore the basic facts. Then each time it’s baffled when the obvious happens.

The motives are obvious enough.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s YouTube channel had a playlist titled “Islam” and another playlist titled “Terrorists”. That should be obvious enough even for Politico.

Read more at Front Page Mag

Bruce Thornton observes:

This disconnect between our alleged bad behavior and the motives of the jihadists is starkly obvious in the case of the Boston terrorists. If Chechen Muslims have a beef with anyone, it’s the Russians. When jihadist terrorism became a problem in Chechnya, there were no “hearts and minds” campaigns, no solicitous outreach, no infusions of foreign aid, no apologies for past sins, no careful adherence to the laws of war, the Geneva conventions, or human rights, no courting of imams to provide insights into the wonderfulness of Islam. The Russians employed torture, assassination, group reprisals, and in the end ringed Grozny with artillery and left it in ruins. In the two Chechen wars the Russians killed around 150,000 people. In fact, Russia has been killing Muslims since the 18^th century, and occupied Muslims lands in Central Asia for 80 years under the Soviet Union. So tell me, Senator Rand Paul or Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, if our foreign policy misbehavior explains jihadist hatred, how is that two centuries of Russian violence against Muslims is ignored, and all our blood and treasure spent to liberate and help Muslims count for nothing?

No more convincing are the other rationalizations for Muslim violence. Lack of education and economic opportunity exist all over the world, but African Christians and animists, or Indian Hindus and Buddhists don’t commit acts of terrorism with anywhere near the same frequency as Muslims. Plenty of people across the globe live under oppressive dictators who routinely violate human rights, and they don’t turn to terrorism against distant strangers in response. Tibetans aren’t donning suicide vests or bombing marathons. Millions and millions of impoverished everywhere don’t kill innocent people in random attacks in countries far from their homes. Every excuse for Muslim violence collapses beneath the weight of such facts. Meanwhile, the one factor all these killers––rich or poor, educated or not, politically oppressed or otherwise––have in common, Islam, is preemptively rejected as the explanation for the violence.

This “willful blindness,” as Andy McCarthy calls, has become dangerous. It reflects the arrogance of secular materialism, which has discounted religion as a mere life-style choice, usually benign––unless you’re talking about gun-toting, racist, misogynist, homophobic evangelical Christians, or racist, land-grabbing Zionist Jews. No, it’s about psychological trauma caused by globalization, or Islamophobia, or insensitive insults to Mohammed, or Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, or anything and everything other than the numerous passages in the Koran, hadiths, and 14 centuries of Islamic jurisprudence and theology, which clearly and consistently set out the doctrine of violent jihad against infidels.

So expect in the coming weeks the same old commentary about foreign-policy blowback, or two-bit psychological analyses of personal trauma, or Israel’s sins and Bush’s wars, or American intolerance and xenophobia, or our need to “reach out” and “engage” and “respect” and “understand” the fanatics who don’t want our outreach, tolerance, or respect, but our deaths. In short, expect more public reasons for the jihadists to believe we are weak and corrupt and thus deserving to die.

Read more at Front Page Mag

Jihad in Boston

Boston bombs: Obama lulled America into false confidence over terror threat

Political Correctness Hamstringing Anti-Terror Efforts In US?

Boston Bombers Revealed As Chechnyan Islamic Radicals, Media Disappointed It’s Not Right-Wingers

Irresponsible Media Outdoes Themselves With False Reports, Baseless Suppositions

Muslims Celebrate Boston Terror Attack, Leftists Blame Conservatives And Republicans

Chechen President Says American Upbringing to Blame

Thanks to one of the bombing victims, the suspects were quickly identified, and their photos posted for a state-wide manhunt:

Minutes before the bombs blew up in Boston, Jeff Bauman looked into the eyes of the man who tried to kill him.

Just before 3 p.m. on April 15, Bauman was waiting among the crowd for his girlfriend to cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon. A man wearing a cap, sunglasses and a black jacket over a hooded sweatshirt looked at Jeff, 27, and dropped a bag at his feet, his brother, Chris Bauman, said in an interview.

Two and a half minutes later, the bag exploded, tearing Jeff’s legs apart. A picture of him in a wheelchair, bloodied and ashen, was broadcast around the world as he was rushed to Boston Medical Center. He lost both legs below the knee.

“He woke up under so much drugs, asked for a paper and pen and wrote, ‘bag, saw the guy, looked right at me,’” Chris Bauman said yesterday in an interview.

Those words may have helped crack the mystery of who perpetrated one of the highest-profile acts of terror in the U.S. since the 2001 assault on New York City and the Washington area, one that killed three people and wounded scores.

Read more at Bloomberg Businessweek

They were identified as two Muslim brothers of Chechnyan origin.  Chechnya is known as a hotbed of Islamic terrorism:

[C]ongressional researchers and foreign policy analysts have long tracked a connection between the Chechnya region and Islamic extremists sympathizing with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. If the suspects are indeed Chechen, analysts told Fox News they may represent part of a jihadi network which has made its way to American soil.

“The Chechen jihadi network is very extensive,” Middle East analyst Walid Phares said Friday. “They have a huge network inside Russia and Chechnya.”

Read more at Fox News

The older brother, 26, was killed in a shoot-out with police on Thursday night, after killing a police officer.   The younger brother was finally taken into custody on Friday night, after the entire city of Boston and outlying areas had been on lock-down for most of the day in search of him.

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour admitted that she had “hoped beyond hope” that the perpetrators were right-wing extremists instead of Muslim radicals.   But alas, her fellow Americans remain innocent.

She wasn’t the only media back who was openly hoping it was a white “right winger,” because that would fit the narrative they’re trying to use to smear good, decent American citizens who happen to disagree with them politically. For them, it’s not about the truth, the victims or justice. It’s all about politics, and how they can exploit any tragedy to advance their agenda and smear their opponents.

After the Chechnyan revelation, the Left finally stopped blaming right-wingers.   How big of them, after baselessly smearing their fellow Americans for a week.

Irresponsible Media Outdoes Themselves With False Reports, Baseless Suppositions

Muslims Celebrate Boston Terror Attack, Leftists Blame Conservatives And Republicans

Boston Terrorist Were Not Right-Wing Americans

The Chilling Chechen Connection

Boston Jihadi Bombers members of Wahhabi cell funded by Saudi Al Qaeda

Photo: Suspect #2 Put Backpack Down Right Next To 8-Year-Old Martin Richard

Boston suspect’s Web page venerates Islam, Chechen independence

Boston Terrorist Had ‘Terror Links’ on YouTube

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s Favorite Song: “We Will Dedicate Our Lives to the Jihad”

One bombing suspect loved pot and Obama, the other was married

Bombing suspect’s mosque hosted author who criticized US, UK for ‘war against Islam’

Bomb Suspects’ Uncle: ‘Somebody Radicalized Them Here’ in America

So Who Inspired Tamerlan Tsarnaev?

Obama Refused to deport Muslim Boston Bomber after 2009 criminal conviction violated immigration rules

Boston Bombers’ Uncle: You Are Losers! You Brought Shame to Our Family!

How the Left Yearned for a White American Bomber — on The Glazov Gang

Explosions at the Boston Marathon

View on YouTube

NBC News reports:

With thousands of runners still on the course, two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, killing three people, injuring at least 113 and turning the city’s most celebrated event into a grisly spectacle of shattered glass, blood and screams.

President Barack Obama said authorities did not know who carried out the attack but vowed to render “the full weight of justice” against those responsible. Minutes later, law enforcement officials said that an 8-year-old child was one of the dead.

Video from the scene showed two blasts about 20 seconds apart just off the course at the finish. White smoke rose, barriers flew, and throngs of people who had gathered to cheer the runners turned and fled in terror. They later reported seeing horrific injuries that included blown-off limbs and bodies thrown to the asphalt.

Read more at NBC News

In his official statement, President Obama urged Americans not to jump to conclusions and refused to use the term “terrorism.”    The FBI still refuses to call it a terrorist attack.

All this, despite the fact that authorities are reportedly holding a Saudi suspect in custody, and Islamic radicals across the globe are celebrating.

However, the Left isn’t necessarily opposed to jumping to conclusions, so long as the people they wish to target are being  blamed. The bodies weren’t even cold before Leftists began exploiting tragedy to attack political opponents.

Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce noted that today was “Patriots Day” in Massachusetts, and suggested it might be the work of the Tea Party, whom he compares to Timothy McVey.

Wolf Blitzer speculated the same, live on the air.

CNN’s Peter Bergen claimed it must have been “right wing extremists.”

Nicholas Kristof at The New York Times blamed Republicans, claiming their blocking Obama’s radical ATF nominee was the culprit.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews posed the question of whether or not the bombing was motivated by the fact that April 15th was tax day.

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” ~ Rahm Emanuel

After all that’s happened today, it can be difficult to remember that there are still good people in this world.   For that reason, Business Insider has made a list of “People Being Awesome After The Attack On The Boston Marathon.”

The Left Agenda – Connect The Right To Evil, Regardless Of The Facts

Top Five: Media’s History of Falsely Blaming the Right for Mass-Murder

CNN: Pressure Cooker Bomb ‘Right-Wing’ Signature

Cable News: Let The Mindless Speculation Begin

CNN’s Nat’l Sec Analyst Speculates ‘Right-Wing Extremists’ Could Be Behind Marathon Bombing

HuffPo Blogger: ‘My First Thought Was All These Anti-Gov Groups’

Chris Matthews, Democratic congressman suggest Tax Day tie to Boston attacks

Chris Matthews: ‘Normally’ Domestic Terrorists ‘Tend to Be on the Right’

Compare And Contrast: Obama’s Benghazi Vs. Boston Terror Attack Statements

Flashback: Obama Declares “War On Terror” Is Over

West Point Terrorism Center Warns of Danger of Limited-Government Activists and ‘Far Right’

National Guard Conducts Terror Drill That Portrays ‘Disgruntled’ 2nd Amendment Supporters As The Attackers

Army Preps for Tea Party ‘Terrorists’

Citizens Opposed To Taxes And Regulations, Concerned About Online Privacy Now Classified As Potential Violent ‘Extremists’

How the Obama Administration Defines “Terrorist”

The Moral Relativist Left in Canada isn’t outraged by the practices of murdering women and sexually mutilating children.  But they are outraged if someone dares to call these abuses “barbaric”:

Michael Kravshik reports at Front Page Mag:

Cultural relativism has reached a new point of absurdity in Canada when the “barbarity” of female genital mutilation and honor killings is questioned and becomes a controversy.

A recently introduced manual by the Government of Canada intended to teach newcomers about Canadian values and Canadian society has been met with ongoing hostility from left-wing Canadians and politicians over the choice of words in describing female genital mutilation and honor killings. Jinny Sims, the immigration critic of the opposition New Democratic Party of Canada, suggested the word “barbaric” might “stigmatize some cultures.”

[...]   Taking up the relativist banner was also none other than Justin Trudeau, front-runner for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, and son of the infamous Canadian Prime Minister who brought multiculturalist policy to Canada. He attacked the Conservatives for using the term “barbaric,” and suggested that the term was a “pejorative” and that “there needs to be a little bit of an attempt at responsible neutrality.”

Read more at Front Page Mag

“Neutrality” on murder and sexual mutilation?  Are you kidding me???

Now, Amnesty International, which supposedly exists to fight for human rights, is objecting to calling a spade a spade:

Recently, I penned an article about  an Amnesty International initiative: an art project for which the organization had commissioned artists and designers to address the devastating problem of female genital mutilation, or FGM – using 8,000 paper rose petals.  The petals had been gathered as part of a petition action to bring attention to – and to end – the practice of FGM, and were each signed by a member of the public who participated in the petition.  It was a laudable project, and I said so.

Amnesty responded with great appreciation for my story – but took exception to one detail.  I had  called FGM “barbaric,” and, said an Amnesty official, “we try not to use this word.”  In an e-mail, she explained, “The use of the word ‘barbaric’ suggests that the people who do this are less than human, which isn’t so because they are being led by social pressure which is what needs to be fought. So we avoid using this word to not judge the people.”

Overlooking the fact that “barbaric,” which means simply “uncultured,” “uncivilized,” or “uneducated,” does not quite suggest “less than human,” I could not help but wonder about the “not to judge them” part.  After all, if you set out to change a thing – a behavior, a place, a custom  (and especially if you set out to end it) – haven’t you already implicitly expressed a judgment?  And how is calling a custom, a practice, “barbaric,” conferring a judgment on the people who perform it?

[...]   If, say, a Park Avenue Protestant family carried out FGM on their daughter, that, too, after all, would be barbaric. And anyone would be right to say so.  But barring the use of that word, should we use another one, like “different?”  But wait – isn’t “different” somewhat alienating, as well? Does it not imply a judgment?

And so on. At this rate, the only workably acceptable term would seem to be “normal” or “okay.”

And it is not.

These are the times I worry that we stand upon a precipice, and fear for the ideas and the ideals that form the fundament of civilization and democracy.  We censor words and language, as Howard says, bending our knee to the tyranny of political correctness, concerning ourselves more with the sensitivities of the perpetrators than the lives and safety of the victims.

Read more at the Clarion Project

Some things are just EVIL, and SHOULD be called “barbaric!” There’s no other way to describe them!  But according to the Left, the only thing that’s “barbaric” is criticizing the EVIL practices of an EVIL “religion” that glorifies misogyny and child abuse!

Islam and Sexuality, a Presentation by Ann Barnhardt

Women Under Islam: Female Genital Mutilation

The Violent Oppression of Women in Islam

Violent Sexual Obsession and Rape as Expression of Islamic Spirituality

A Complete Guide to Pedophilia in Islam

When was the last time a Christian strapped on a suicide bomb or flew an airplane into a building?  Hmmm…..let me think…..

Oh, that’s right.  NEVER!

AWR Hawkins reports at Breitbart:

A U.S. Army training instructor giving a training brief on “extremism” to an Army Reserve unit in Pennsylvania has labeled Evangelical Christianity and Roman Catholicism as examples of religious extremism right alongside Al Qaeda.

In addition to Al Qaeda, the instructor also equated Evangelical and Catholic “extremism” with that of Hamas, Sunni Muslims, the Nation of Islam, and the Ku Klux Klan.

Read more at Breitbart

This wasn’t an accident.  The Left loves to throw out extreme positions and see what they can make stick.   They’ll back down temporarily from the inevitable uproar, but they also know that Americans are forgetful and easily desensitized, so they’ll continually push a point until it is no longer considered extreme.

Todd Starnes writes at Townhall:

“We find this offensive to have Evangelical Christians and the Catholic Church to be listed among known terrorist groups,” said Ron Crews, executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty. “It is dishonorable for any U.S. military entity to allow this type of wrongheaded characterization.”

[...]   The incident was made public by a soldier who attended the briefing. He asked for copies of the presentation and sent them to the Chaplain Alliance.

“He considers himself an evangelical Christian and did not appreciate being classified with terrorists,” Crews told Fox News. “There was a pervasive attitude in the presentation that anything associated with religion is an extremist.”

The Archdiocese for the Military Services was shocked to learn that the Army considered Catholicism to be an example of extremism.

“The Archdiocese is astounded that Catholics were listed alongside groups that are, by their very mission and nature, violent and extremist,” the Archdiocese said in a statement.

They want the Dept. of Defense to “ensure that taxpayer funds are never again used to present blatantly anti-religious material to the men and women in uniform.”

“In the notes it was clearly stated that the presenter was not a subject matter expert, and produced the material after conducting Internet research,” Wright said.

So if the presenter was not an expert, what were they doing presenting the material, Crews asked.

He said he had a chance to speak with the officer who conducted the briefing and she told him that she got her information from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“Why is there such dependence upon the work of the SPLC to determine hate groups and extremist groups,” Crews said. “It appears that some military entities are using definitions of ‘hate’ and ‘extreme’ from the lists of anti-Christian political organizations. That violates the apolitical stance appropriate for the military.”

Read more at Townhall

If you want to talk about extremist groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center certainly qualifies.   Originally founded to combat racism, now they smear any organization that doesn’t agree with their radical leftist ideology – such as Focus On The Family – as a “hate group.”

It is not a legitimate source for the military to be using to study domestic terror threats.

Army Email Labels Christian Ministries as “Domestic Hate Groups”

Army smears of Christians NOT an “isolated incident”

West Point Terrorism Center Warns of Danger of Limited-Government Activists and ‘Far Right’

National Guard Conducts Terror Drill That Portrays ‘Disgruntled’ 2nd Amendment Supporters As The Attackers

Army Preps for Tea Party ‘Terrorists’

Homeland Security Labels Pro-Lifers, Conservatives As ‘Terrorists’ Again

Children Subjected To Realistic ‘Terror’ and ‘School Shooter’ Drills Where Homeschoolers, Christians Are Portrayed As Terrorists

Citizens Opposed To Taxes And Regulations, Concerned About Online Privacy Now Classified As Potential Violent ‘Extremists’

Debunking the Left-Wing Myths About ‘Right-Wing, Extremist Christians’

U.S. government now views protesting Americans as terrorists – You’re either with us or against us

The Year of Right-Wing Terrorists?

How the Obama Administration Defines “Terrorist”

Obama deliberately chooses these kinds of radical, extremist religious leaders to guide his family and his faith.   That tells you a lot about how radical his core beliefs really are.   Obama doesn’t hide the fact that he’s a follower of the “Social Gospel,” which teaches collective salvation through good (government) works, not individual salvation by grace.

Madeleine Morgenstern reports at The Blaze:

The pastor at the Washington, D.C. church where the Obama family celebrated Easter on Sunday said members of the religious right want blacks “in the back of the bus,” women “back in the kitchen” and immigrants “back on their side of the border.”

“It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back…for blacks to be back in the back of the bus…for women to be back in the kitchen…for immigrants to be back on their side of the border,” Rev. Dr. Luis Leon said in his sermon, according to the White House press pool report.

Reuters reporter Jeff Mason tweeted that Leon also said the religious right wants gays in the closet.

Read more at The Blaze

What a classy, uplifting sermon for Resurrection Sunday.

This isn’t the first time his nut-job pastor has said something like this, either. Where does he find these crazies? I’ve grown up in different church across the denominational spectrum all my life, and NOT ONCE have I ever a pastor give sermon that specifically bashed political opponents.

White House refuses to denounce Easter Sunday attack on conservatives

Obama’s Pastor Calls Republicans ‘Enemies,’ Prays For ‘Battle,’ Chants ‘Forward!’ During Church Service

Obama Claims Jesus Would Support His Socialist Policies

New Obama Campaign Ad Claims His Policies Based On Faith, ‘Following God’s Command’

It’s not just Catholics. They’re doing it to Protestants, as well.

Be prepared.

John Nolte warns at Breitbart:

If anyone wants to argue that the same government currently forcing religious institutions to purchase the abortion pill through ObamaCare will not eventually use civil rights violations in order to attempt to force the Church to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies — good luck with that.

But this would have been unthinkable five years ago.

It was just three months ago that the White House and media piled on a reverend for preaching the Bible’s teachings on homosexuality. The result was his invitation to speak at Obama’s inauguration being rescinded.

This would have been unthinkable five years ago.

With the election of Pope Francis, we have news anchors openly clamoring that the Church is out of step on same-sex marriage.

This would have been unthinkable five years ago.

Fifteen years ago, the same leftists and media assuring us today that same-sex marriage won’t be imposed on the Church were telling us that civil unions (which I’ve always supported) would never lead to gay marriage.

With all that in mind, am I really supposed to buy that, within five years (maybe five days), the left and the media won’t be incessantly asking this question: “If the Church cannot legally refuse to marry an interracial couple, how can it legally refuse same-sex couples?”

Read more at Breibart

Erick Erickson correctly concludes at Red State:

As long as there are still Christians who actually follow Christ and uphold his word, a vast amount of people around the world — never mind Islam — will never ever see gay marriage as anything other than a legal encroachment of God’s intent.

So those Christians must be silenced. The left exerted a great deal of energy to convince everyone that the gay lifestyle is an alternative form of normal. It then has exerted a great deal of energy convincing people that because the gay lifestyle is just another variation of normal, gay marriage must be normalized.

Meanwhile, those Christians are out there saying it is not normal and are refusing to accept it as normal because of silly God dared to say marriage is a union between a man and woman.

Any Christian who refuses to recognize that man wants to upend God’s order will have to be driven from the national conversation. They will be labeled bigots and ultimately criminals.

Already we have seen florists, bakers, and photographers suffer because they have refused to go along with the cultural shift toward gay marriage. There will be more.

Once the world decides that real marriage is something other than natural or Godly, those who would point it out must be silenced and, if not, punished. The state must be used to do this. Consequently, the libertarian pipe dream of getting government out of marriage can never ever be possible.

Within a year or two we will see Christian schools attacked for refusing to admit students whose parents are gay. We will see churches suffer the loss of their tax exempt status for refusing to hold gay weddings. We will see private businesses shut down because they refuse to treat as legitimate that which perverts God’s own established plan. In some places this is already happening.

Christians should, starting yesterday, work on a new front. While we should not stop the fight to preserve marriage, and we may be willing to compromise on civil unions, we must start fighting now for protections for religious objectors to gay marriage.

Churches, businesses, and individuals who refuse to accept gay marriage as a legitimate institution must be protected as best we can. Those protections will eventually crumble as the secular world increasingly fights the world of God, but we should institute those protections now and pray they last as long as possible.

Read more at Red State

Religious Liberty in Peril If Prop 8 Isn’t Upheld by Supreme Court?

Christians Targeted For Beliefs on Gay ‘Marriage’ – Is The Church Responsible?

The Dark, Intolerant, And Abusive Nature Of The Gay Agenda

The Agenda to Silence Christians

‘Gay’ Jihad

Canada Offers Sobering Warning Of What Happens To Religious Liberty When Gay Marriage Is Legalized

If the Supreme Court Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage, What Next?

Back in the 1920′s, women began fighting against a clear double standard when it came to sexuality. Promiscuous men were given a wink and a “boys will be boys” excuse, while promiscuous women were frowned upon. Women were right to fight against this double standard, but they chose the wrong solution.

Instead of working to ensure that sexual purity was expected from BOTH sexes, they fought for the “right” to violate God’s design with equal impunity, believe that would be “freedom.” It wasn’t freedom – it was slavery. It led to rampant STD’s, broken families, and illegitimate and aborted children. It paved the way for the sexual revolution of the ’60′s and the total breakdown of the family.

40 years ago, with ”no fault” divorce, we redefined marriage as a relationship based solely on the romantic feelings of the participants. We allow the contract to be dissolved for no other reason than diminished feelings, completely ignoring the fact that children’s rights are thrown aside and their lives destroyed at the mere whim of their parents.

Ronald Reagan is one of my heroes.  But I’ll be the first to say that on this one, he blew it BIG TIME.  I can understand his reasoning.  A victim of divorce himself, he wanted to prevent abandoned spouses from being trashed with false accusations by the spouse who was looking for any excuse to leave.

Instead of protecting abandoned spouses, “no-fault” divorce actually made them powerless to protect their family.  Reagan later regretted signing the law and called it one of his biggest mistakes.  That mistake is what laid the foundation for the battle we are now facing over marriage, 40 years later.

Whenever you are tempted to think that compromising “just this little bit” won’t hurt or change anything, think again.  The Left are experts at using incrementalism to push their agenda, one inch at a time.

Damon Linker argues that the foundation was first laid with the introduction of birth control, which removed procreation as the primary purpose for getting (and staying) married:

Permitting gay marriage will not lead Americans to stop thinking of marriage as a conjugal union. Quite the reverse: Gay marriage has come to be widely accepted because our society stopped thinking of marriage as a conjugal union decades ago.

Between five and six decades ago, to be precise. That’s when the birth control pill — first made available to consumers for the treatment of menstrual disorders in 1957 and approved by the FDA for contraceptive use three years later — began to transform sexual relationships, and hence marriage, in the United States. Once pregnancy was decoupled from intercourse, pre-marital sex became far more common, which removed one powerful incentive to marry young (or marry at all). It likewise became far more common for newlyweds to give themselves an extended childless honeymoon (with some couples choosing never to have kids).

In all of these ways, and many more, the widespread availability of contraception transformed marriage from a conjugal union into a relationship based to a considerable degree on the emotional and sexual fulfillment of its members — with childrearing often, though not always, a part of the equation. And it is because same-sex couples are obviously just as capable as heterosexual couples of forming relationships based on emotional and sexual fulfillment that gay marriage has come to be accepted so widely and so quickly in our culture. (If marriage were still considered a conjugal union, the idea of gay marriage could never have gained the support it currently enjoys. On the contrary, it would be considered ridiculous — as it remains today among members of religious groups that continue to affirm more traditional, conjugal views of marriage.)

Read more at Yahoo!

Once marriage was reduced to a mere partnership of convenience, destroying what was supposed to be a life-long commitment became much easier, and the results were devastating:

In the inaugural edition of National Affairs, W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, pointed out: “In [September] 1969, Governor Ronald Reagan of California made what he later admitted was one of the biggest mistakes of his political life. Seeking to eliminate the strife and deception often associated with the legal regime of fault-based divorce, Reagan signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce bill.”

After California, every state followed suit.

No-fault divorce answers the Pharisee’s question to Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” with a resounding, “Yes!” Then it adds that it is also lawful for a woman to divorce her husband for any and every reason. In the U.S., wives initiate approximately two thirds of divorces.

It permits unilateral divorce, that is, one spouse can decide “for any and every reason” that the marriage is over giving the other spouse no recourse.

Children of divorce are “two to three times more likely to suffer from serious social or psychological pathologies.”

The result, says Wilcox, was that, when added to the sexual and psychological revolutions of the ‘60s and ‘70s, the number of divorces doubled between 1960 and 1980.

Divorce became acceptable even among Christians, easier to rationalize, and far easier to obtain. People who were unhappy and found their marriages unfulfilling, says Wilcox, “felt obligated to divorce in order to honor the newly widespread ethic of expressive individualism.” Children, everyone felt certain, were resilient and would do just fine.

But children of divorce, says Wilcox, are “two to three times more likely than their peers in intact marriages to suffer from serious social or psychological pathologies.”

Beyond children, divorce often has devastating social, psychological, spiritual, and financial consequences for at least one spouse. And others’ divorces effect all of us by calling every marriage into question. “[W]idespread divorce,” writes Wilcox, “undermined ordinary couples’ faith in marital permanency and their ability to invest financially and emotionally in their marriages—ultimately casting clouds of doubt over their relationship.”

Children of divorce lose their faith in marriage and are less likely to marry themselves. As a result, cohabitation rates have skyrocketed, which is bad news for adults, children, and marriage since, as Michael and Harriett McManus report in Living Together, cohabitation carries a whopping 80 percent failure rate.

Read more at The Institute on Religion & Democracy

In the beginning, the argument was made that divorce wasn’t really harmful to children, and that it would be more harmful if their unhappy parents stayed together.    That has since been entirely debunked.  The damage to multiple generations of divorce-scarred children is incalculable.

Sadly, proponents of gay marriage assure us that there is no harm in denying children either a mother or a father, but that social experiment, like so many others that try to substitute the nuclear family, will fail.   And innocent children will be hurt in the process.

Maggie Gallagher writes at First Things:

“What good excuse would keep a person in an unhappy, unrewarding relationship?” asked one respondent, a woman who left a twenty-five-year marriage because she was “tired of trying to please, gain love, do the ‘right thing.’“ “Would it be denial of a problem?” she asked. “Would it be financial gain, would it be ‘for the children,’ would it be for all the wrong reasons? My question—why would an unwanted spouse wish to stay in a marriage? What is, therefore, wrong with no-fault divorce?”

This is a common sentiment among Americans, one strategy we employ to resolve the moral conflict between two spouses, one of whom wants a divorce and the other does not: You want to hold onto someone who doesn’t want you any more? What kind of loser are you?

On the other side, another woman wrote to tell me of her husband’s decision to divorce her: “At age fifty-seven, he announced he would seek a divorce. All my dreams, hopes, and looking forward to some well-earned ‘golden time’ were dashed and smashed to smithereens. Our thirty-seven-year marriage was to be erased. My former standard of living was obliterated and can never be reached again.” “Our laws,” she complained, “do not differentiate between four months or forty years.”

Nor do they differentiate between a woman who wants to leave an abusive husband and a man who wants to trade in an aging wife. Our laws make no distinctions at all, because no-fault’s primary purpose is to empower whichever party wants out, with the least possible fuss and the greatest possible speed, no questions asked.

The right to leave ASAP is judged so compelling that it overwhelms the right to make (and be held responsible for) our commitments. For twenty-five years we have talked and written and legislated about no-fault divorce as if it represented an increase in personal choice. As the letters I received from divorcees suggest, this is a simplification and a falsification of our experience with no-fault divorce. For in most cases, divorce is not a mutual act, but the choice of one partner alone. “We might expect that both partners would be ready to end the relationship by the time one leaves,” note family scholars Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr. and Andrew J. Cherlin in their book Divided Family. “But the data suggest otherwise. Four out of five marriages ended unilaterally.”

No-fault divorce does not expand everyone’s personal choice. It empowers the spouse who wishes to leave, and leaves the spouse who is being left helpless, overwhelmed, and weak. The spouse who chooses divorce has a liberating sense of mastery, which psychologists have identified as one of the key components of personal happiness. He or she is breaking free, embracing change, which, with its psychic echoes of the exhilarating original adolescent break from the family, can dramatically boost self-esteem.

Being divorced, however (as the popularity of the movie The First Wives’ Clubattests) reinforces exactly the opposite sense of life. Being divorced does not feel like an act of personal courage, or transform you into the hero of your own life story, because being divorced is not an act. It is something that happens to you, over which, thanks to no-fault divorce legislation, you have no say at all.

The spouse who leaves learns that love dies. The spouse who is left learns that love betrays and that the courts and society side with the betrayers. In court, your marriage commitment means nothing. The only rule is: Whoever wants out, wins. By gutting the marital contract, no-fault divorce has transformed what it means to get married. The state will no longer enforce permanent legal commitments to a spouse. Formally, at least, no-fault divorce thus demotes marriage from a binding relation into something best described as cohabitation with insurance benefits.

Read more at First Things

Is it any wonder, with the decades of damage that has been done to the definition and purpose of marriage in our society, that people begin to assume that redefining it further is no big deal?

Stephen Baskerville observes:

[H]omosexuals did not destroy marriage, heterosexuals did. The demand for same-sex marriage is a symptom, not a cause, of the deterioration of marriage. By far the most direct threat to the family is heterosexual divorce. “Commentators miss the point when they oppose homosexual marriage on the grounds that it would undermine traditional understandings of marriage,” writes family scholar Bryce Christensen. “It is only because traditional understandings of marriage have already been severely undermined that homosexuals are now laying claim to it.”

Though gay activists cite their desire to marry as evidence that their lifestyle is not inherently promiscuous, they readily admit that marriage is no longer the barrier against promiscuity that it once was. If the standards of marriage have already been lowered, they ask, why shouldn’t homosexuals be admitted to the institution?

“The world of no-strings heterosexual hookups and 50% divorce rates preceded gay marriage,” Andrew Sullivan points out. “All homosexuals are saying C9 is that, under the current definition, there’s no reason to exclude us. If you want to return straight marriage to the 1950s, go ahead. But until you do, the exclusion of gays is simply an anomaly—and a denial of basic civil equality.”

[...]  Conservatives have completely misunderstood the significance of the divorce revolution. While they lament mass divorce, they refuse to confront its politics. Maggie Gallagher attributes this silence to “political cowardice”: “Opposing gay marriage or gays in the military is for Republicans an easy, juicy, risk-free issue,” she wrote in 1996. “The message [is] that at all costs we should keep divorce off the political agenda.”

No American politician of national stature has seriously challenged unilateral divorce. “Democrats did not want to anger their large constituency among women who saw easy divorce as a hard-won freedom and prerogative,” writes Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. “Republicans did not want to alienate their upscale constituents or their libertarian wing, both of whom tended to favor easy divorce, nor did they want to call attention to the divorces among their own leadership.”

In his famous denunciation of single parenthood, Vice President Dan Quayle was careful to make clear, “I am not talking about a situation where there is a divorce.” A lengthy article in the current Political Science Quarterly is devoted to the fact—at which the author expresses astonishment—that self-described “pro-family” Christian groups devote almost no effort to reforming divorce laws.

This failure has seriously undermined the moral credibility of the campaign against same-sex marriage. “People who won’t censure divorce carry no special weight as defenders of marriage,” writes columnist Froma Harrop. “Moral authority doesn’t come cheap.”

Read more at The American Conservative

A blogger named Cindy made these interesting observations about the hypocrisy of Christians who supported “Amendment 1″ in North Carolina:

As long as we’ve still got easy, no-fault divorce, and a culture that excuses and applauds all sorts of “straight” perversion, I’m afraid I just can’t get myself all worked up about a mere one or two percent of the population wishing to do what the rest of us have been doing for a couple of generations now—have a temporarily monogamous life with the person of their choosing, along with all the privileges that the State has chosen to attach to that temporarily monogamous lifestyle.

Let’s face it, Christians, we’re not having this conversation because homosexuals pose some kind of threat to our way of life. (They don’t.) We’re having this conversation because we’re finally at the bottom of a slippery slope that we polished to a glossy finish for ourselves when we separated marriage, sex, and procreation from each other, making the union of matrimony about our own happiness rather than about familial and social stability. Now we’re just trying to stop the slide before we fall off the cliff entirely. But we’re not much interested in doing the hard work of climbing back up to marital sanctity ourselves!

[...]   This amendment seems to me to be nothing more than a far-too-late moral panic, with very little thinking behind it at all. Our culture is in a state of sexual anarchy, and most of us—I’ll wager even most of those who voted yes on Amendment One—kinda like it that way! But gay marriage is where we draw our arbitrary line, because the majority of people don’t like that sin the way we like our own.

We seem to hold the superstitious belief that stopping gay marriage at the ballot box will appease the wrath of the God whose opinion we stopped consulting on these matters generations ago.

Wake me up when we’re interested in using marriage for its intended purpose. Until then, I don’t think this amendment is going to amount to a hill of beans, and I’m not going to waste a lot of breath trying to defend it.

Read more at Get Along Home

I disagree with her belief that gay marriage poses no threat to religious liberty (the multiple incidents of discrimination lawsuits against Christians who decline to provide services for same-sex weddings is just one example).   But her assessment of the hypocritical double standard is spot-on.

The solution is not to degenerate marriage even further, but to admit our own culpability in the destruction of marriage, and to fight for its total restoration as it was 50 years ago – not the “status quo.”

I don’t blame gays for hating the current double standard in the churches, where homosexuality is condemned and those who struggle with it are often ostracized, while straight sexual sin is often  justified, and straight sinners are treated with grace and understanding.  In God’s eyes, gay sexual sin is no different than straight sexual sin - both need God’s grace and forgiveness, and neither can be overcome in our own strength, without the power of the Holy Spirit.

In all honesty, I believe the church is going to lose the gay marriage battle, because we deserve to (just as God allowed Israel to be carried off into Babylon, because they had become no different than their pagan conquerors). We have failed to keep our own house in order.  The church has not been salt and light with our righteous behavior – we have become hypocritical finger-pointers.

Of course, going back to seeking sexual purity as a nation can’t be achieved by laws – it has to happen through revival and repentance, beginning with the church.

Marriage and the Conscience of a Nation

No-Fault Divorce a Greater threat to Marriage than Gay ‘Marriage’

Is It Time to Repeal ‘No Fault’ Marriage Laws?

Fewer Than Half of American Children Growing Up In Intact Families, Survey Finds

Married vs. Single Parents: The Divide That Affects Children, Financial Health and Votes

Why We’re Losing the Gay-Marriage Debate

The Perils of Following Public Opinion Instead of Principles

When Did Idolatry Become Compatible with Christianity?

Rush Limbaugh Says Gay Marriage Fight ‘Is Lost’ for Social Conservatives: ‘It Is Now Inevitable’

On Gay Marriage, Politicians Sell Their Souls for Political Gain

Pimped: Republicans going gay for cash

Are Republicans Caving On Same-Sex Marriage?