Tag Archives: Abortion

News

Coalition of African American Pastors launches national pro-marriage campaign

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Here’s some good news from CNS News.

Excerpt:

The Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP) announced at the National Press Club on Tuesday that  the grassroots group – comprised of the more than 3,000 members – is a launching a national campaign to support marriage between one man and one woman and to oppose the Obama administration’s efforts to advance same-sex marriage.

“The time has come for a broad-based assault against the power that be that wants to change our culture to one of men marrying men and women marrying women,” CAAP President William Owens said at the press conference, held to announce the Marriage Mandate campaign, which includes a petition seeking 100,000 signatures pledging support for traditional marriage.

“Mr. President, I’m not going to stand with you, and there are thousands of others across this country that are not going to stand with you with this foolishness,” Owens said.

In a press release announcing the campaign, Owens encouraged black pastors and the black community to “withdraw their support for [Obama].”

“Today we will be launching a nationwide campaign rallying black pastors and African Americans to voice their opposition to the president’s position on same-sex marriage, and withdraw their support from him,” said Owens, who told reporters he voted for Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

“We will see that the black community is informed that the president is taking them for granted while pandering to the gay community,” Owens said.

Bishop Janice Hollis, presiding Prelate of the Covenant of International Fellowship of Churches, called Obama’s support of gay marriage a “travesty” and said it reflects the “disorder in the highest office in the land.”

Owens said CAAP sent a letter to Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder in May asking for a meeting to discuss the gay marriage issue.

“We wrote the president and Mr. Holder May the second, requesting an audience with him to discuss this very issue,” Owens said. “He has not given us the courtesy of any reply.

“The Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP) consists of 3,742 African American pastors, and he has totally ignored us,” Owens said.

He said Obama is ignoring the black community “because he feels that he has us in his pocket.”

“Well, we are not in his pocket,” Owens said.

In the 2008 election, black Protestants voted overwhelmingly for the pro-abortion and pro-gay-marriage Obama. (He had a radical pro-abortion record and had come out for gay marriage earlier, so this was all known then).

Which religions supported Obama most in 2008?
Which religions supported Obama most in 2008?

So 94% of African-American Christians voted for an abortion and gay marriage radical. NINETY-FOUR PERCENT.

I actually believed, based on this voting data, that American black Protestant churches were officially pro-abortion and pro-gay-marriage. I just considered them to be apostate denominations the same way that denominations like the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church United States of America are apostate. (Note: this does not apply to non-American black churches, which are conservative).

These voting numbers confirm my experiences. For example, I remember one African American woman at work who was interested in me who could not understand why I would not join her in working on The United Way workplace partnership initiative. I took her aside in the hallway and told her that the United Way supported abortion and opposed the Boy Scouts, and she was like “So what?“. She attended church weekly and she supported Barack Obama. So I just figured based on these voting numbers and my personal experiences that most African-American churches were pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage, pro-socialism, etc.

This action by the 3,742 black African-American pastors shocks me as much as if those gay bishops in the Episcopal church had suddenly came out in favor of defending traditional marriage. Maybe these 3,742 pastors will be able to begin to educate their flocks about what the Bible actually says on these issues so that these voting numbers change. I did know about the good African-American pastors like Harry Jackson and Ken Hutcherson who are pro-life and pro-marriage, but I just thought that there were only a handful of faithful black pastors. I guess I was wrong, at least on the marriage issue, and that’s a good thing. Color me surprised.

News

Meet the Chinese woman who saved more than 30 abandoned babies

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Here’s an inspiring article from the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Dina)

Excerpt:

A woman has been hailed a hero after details of her astonishing work with abandoned children has emerged.

Lou Xiaoying, now 88 and suffering from kidney failure, found and raised more than 30 abandoned Chinese babies from the streets of Jinhua, in the eastern Zhejiang province where she managed to make a living by recycling rubbish.

She and her late husband Li Zin, who died 17 years ago, kept four of the children and passed the others onto friends and family to start new lives.

Her youngest son Zhang Qilin – now aged just seven – was found in a dustbin by Lou when she was 82.

‘Even though I was already getting old I could not simply ignore the baby and leave him to die in the trash. He looked so sweet and so needy. I had to take him home with me,’ she said.

‘I took him back to our home, which is a very small modest house in the countryside and nursed him to health. He is now a thriving little boy, who is happy and healthy.

‘My older children all help look after Zhang Qilin, he is very special to all of us. I named him after the Chinese word for rare and precious.

‘The whole thing started when I found the first baby, a little girl back in 1972 when I was out collecting rubbish. She was just lying amongst the junk on the street, abandoned. She would have died had we not rescued her and taken her in.

‘Watching her grow and become stronger gave us such happiness and I realised I had a real love of caring for children.

‘I realised if we had strength enough to collect garbage how could we not recycle something as important as human lives,’ she explained.

‘These children need love and care. They are all precious human lives. I do not understand how people can leave such a vulnerable baby on the streets.

There are lots of pictures and more to read! It’s a very, very touching story of self-sacrificial love.

Commentary

Tea Party conservatives and social conservatives endorse Ted Cruz in Texas primary

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Republican Senate candidate Ted Cruz
Republican Senate candidate Ted Cruz

There is a Republican primary on Tuesday for Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s Senate seat, and my candidate is Ted Cruz. Tea Party leader Sarah Palin recently endorsed him.

Excerpt:

Sarah Palin told a cheering crowd late Friday that America needs to get back to its “clinging to God and guns” roots, as the tea pea party’s biggest names made a series of last-minute, high-profile appearances around Texas to support insurgent conservative U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz.

The former Alaska governor and 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate spoke to more than 1,000 boisterous and sweating Cruz supporters gathered under a mercilessly early-evening sun on a grassy knoll in The Woodlands, a well-to-do Houston suburb. She told them that “to make America great, we don’t need a fundamental transformation, we need a fundamental restoration.”

“Fighters like Ted Cruz can lead the charge for us,” Palin said.

Cruz, the former Texas Solicitor General, is locked in a fierce and increasingly nasty battle with the mainstream Texas GOP choice, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, for the Republican nomination to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. The pair face a runoff Tuesday because neither won a majority in a nine-Republican senatorial field during the state’s May 29 primary.

The conservative Club For Growth is backing Ted Cruz:

And social conservative leader James Dobson likes Ted Cruz, too.

Excerpt:

Today, we are excited to announce that national pro-life, family values leader Dr. James Dobson is endorsing our Senate campaign.

In his endorsement announcement, Dr. Dobson said: “I’m pleased to endorse Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate because he’s exactly the kind of candidate we need to turn this country around. Religious freedom is under assault every day. We need leaders with the courage to stand strong for conservative values in this battle. Ted Cruz is such a leader—one who will not only vote his convictions in the Senate, but will also lead the fight to defend life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty.”

Dr. Dobson added: “Ted Cruz stands out among conservative leaders across the country today. He has a consistent record of standing up for faith, family, and freedom, and winning values battles on a national level….I urge all Texans who love life, family, faith, and freedom to not only vote for Ted Cruz, but to work hard for his campaign.”

Even moderate conservative George Will thinks that Republican candidate Ted Cruz is the man to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison in Texas.

Excerpt:

For a conservative Texan seeking national office, it could hardly get better than this: In a recent 48-hour span, Ted Cruz, a candidate for next year’s Republican Senate nomination for the seat being vacated by Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, was endorsed by the Club for Growth PAC, FreedomWorks PAC, talk-radio host Mark Levin and Erick Erickson of RedState.com.

For conservatives seeking reinforcements for Washington’s too-limited number of limited-government constitutionalists, it can hardly get better than this: Before he earned a Harvard law degree magna cum laude (and helped found the Harvard Latino Law Review) and clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Cruz’s senior thesis at Princeton — his thesis adviser was professor Robert George, one of contemporary conservatism’s intellectual pinups — was on the Constitution’s Ninth and 10th amendments. Then as now, Cruz argued that these amendments, properly construed, would buttress the principle that powers not enumerated are not possessed by the federal government.

[…]At age 14, Cruz’s father fought with rebels (including Fidel Castro) against Cuba’s dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Captured and tortured, at 18 he escaped to America with $100 sewn in his underwear. He graduated from the University of Texas and met his wife — like him, a mathematician — with whom he founded a small business processing seismic data for the oil industry.

By the time Ted Cruz was 13, he was winning speech contests sponsored by a Houston free-enterprise group that gave contestants assigned readings by Frederic Bastiat, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. In his early teens he traveled around Texas and out of state giving speeches. At Princeton, he finished first in the 1992 U.S. National Debate Championship and North American Debate Championship.

As Texas’s solicitor general from 2003 to 2008, Cruz submitted 70 briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court, and he has, so far, argued nine cases there. He favors school choice and personal investment accounts for a portion of individuals’ Social Security taxes. He supports the latter idea with a bow to the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who said such accounts enable the doorman to build wealth the way the people in the penthouse do.

Regarding immigration, Cruz, 40, demands secure borders and opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants but echoes Ronald Reagan’s praise of legal immigrants as “Americans by choice,” people who are “crazy enough” to risk everything in the fundamentally entrepreneurial act of immigrating.

You can find out more about Ted Cruz on his positions page. I was interested in his stance on social issues, in particular.

Excerpt:

Ted Cruz has fought to protect innocent human life. He played a leading role in several important cases, including defense of the partial-birth abortion ban, parental consent laws, and prohibiting state funds from going to abortion. These cases have all been part of the ongoing effort to ensure that every child in America  receives the protection and respect he or she deserves.

  • Authored an amicus brief for 13 states, successfully defending the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. The ban was upheld 5-4 before the U.S. Supreme Court;
  • Authored an amicus brief for 18 states, successfully defending the New Hampshire parental notification law. The law was upheld 9-0 before the U.S. Supreme Court [note: this brief was awarded the Best Brief Award from the National Association of Attorneys General for U.S. Supreme Court briefs written in 2005-06];
  • Successfully defended Texas’s Rider 8, which prohibits state funds for groups that provide abortions, winning unanimously before the Fifth Circuit court of appeals.

Ted Cruz has worked hard in defense of traditional marriage, including his intervention in a case protecting Texas marriage laws. In addition, he has fought on the federal level to defend marriage between one man and one woman as the fundamental building block of society.

  • When a Beaumont state court granted a divorce to two homosexual men who had gotten a civil union in Vermont, Cruz, under the leadership of Attorney General Greg Abbott, intervened in defense of the marriage laws of the State of Texas, which successfully led to the court judgment being vacated;
  • Worked with Attorney General Abbott to send a letter to Congress in support of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

He has a solid recordconservative policies on that page: energy production, voter fraud prevention, border security, legal firearm ownership – you name it, this guy has been fighting for conservative principles. Like Michele Bachmann, he has actually tried to do pro-life and pro-marriage things. We don’t just have to take his word for it, he has the actions to prove his words.