Tag Archives: Gay Rights

In Ohio, faithful Jews and Christians can no longer serve as judges

Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign
Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign

For the past few decades, we have been able to see what happens when the Christian church decides that piety and feelings are more important than truth and evidence. Gradually, pastors decided to eliminate any discussion of apologetics as well as any integration between the Christian worldview and other areas of knowledge, e.g. – economics, politics, science. What were the consequences of this emotionalization of Christianity? Well, we basically handed the commanding heights of the culture to the secular left – including furnishing them with new soldiers from our own pious families.

Consider this article in The Stream about a recent decision by the Ohio Supreme Court.

It says:

The court’s Board of Professional Conduct was responding to a request submitted by several lawyers and judges, including C. Allen McConnell, a municipal court Judge whose predicament we addressedin “The ‘Soft’ Beginning of the Post-Obergefell Persecution.”

Judge McConnell said that as a Christian, he could not officiate at same-sex weddings. The Board of Professional Conduct of the Ohio Supreme Court said he must. In other words: Christians, check your faith at the bench or you may not serve as a judge in the state of Ohio.

It is helpful to go through the board’s opinion because it reveals how they will treat complaints filed against judges in the future. If a judge is the subject of a complaint filed by a lawyer, fellow judge or member of the public, the board reviews the complaint. They will apply the strained analysis of this opinion in determining whether to sanction, suspend or remove the judge from the bench.

In Ohio, judges are elected by the people, at every level, municipal, circuit court, appeals court or state Supreme Court. In many other states they are appointed. Where they are appointed there are growing efforts to weed out Christians. This advisory opinion presents a new way of removing Christians from the bench after the people have elected them to office.

In this seven-page opinion the Board claimed that there is a “self-evident principle that the personal, moral and religious beliefs of a judicial officer should never factor into the performance of any judicial duty.” In other words, Christians must check their faith at the bench if they serve as a judge in the state of Ohio.

So what we have now is a kind of “religious test” for judges. If you are a devout Christian or a devout Jew, then you can’t be a judge in Ohio. Only people reject the Judeo-Christian ethics that founded this country can be judges.

So, if we go back 50 years, what were the churches doing to stop this? Were they educating people in apologetics? Were they encouraging people to stay married? Were they educating people about feminism, the sexual revolution and no-fault divorce? Were they paying attention to cosmology and fine-tuning discoveries and making them known to the flock? Were they teaching people about how to think Christianly about economics, foreign policy, free enterprise, and so on? Were they steering young people towards areas that are related to apologetics? Were they steering young people towards careers that would place them in positions of influence? No. We had other priorities – making people feel good, and avoid controversy and conflict.

Brett Kunkle, who works for Stand to Reason, posted an interesting commentary that I tweeted earlier this week. He talks about grilling a bunch of Christian parents by pretending to be an atheist professor.

He writes this:

There was no surprise factor. The parents knew who I was and the Christian organization I represented. Indeed, I told the audience what I was about to do, turned my back on them for just a moment, and then turned round again in full atheist character. I jumped into my role and they jumped into theirs, attempting to defend the faith against atheist professor “Dr. Kunkle.” Sadly, they were ill-equipped to handle my challenges. I was glad to see their fighting spirit, but their responses were only vigorous in style, not substance. After half an hour, many parents were exasperated and I ended the role-play.

“How was that for you?” I asked. “Extremely frustrating,” was the immediate parental consensus.

“Why was it so frustrating?” I pressed. One mom blurted out, “Because I didn’t have any good answers.” As soon as the words left her mouth, tears began streaming down her cheeks. It was a painful recognition of her own inadequacy and she knew what was at stake. As I glanced around the room, other parents were nodding in agreement, eyes moist with their own tears.

Caught off guard, I began to tear up, too. I felt such compassion for these good-hearted yet unequipped parents. Quickly gathering my emotions, I looked that mom in the eyes and gently replied, “I know exactly how you feel. I felt that way, too, when Dr. David Lane was dismantling my Christianity in front of my peers, in my college philosophy class.” I told the parents my story and encouraged them to prepare themselves so, in turn, they can prepare their own kids.

Afterward, parent after parent thanked me. They expressed their deep appreciation for the wake-up call, despite the accompanying painful realizations. And the mom who burst into tears? She walked up and gave me a big hug. Then she shared how her 21-year-old son, a student at Duke University, had turned his back on Christ while at college. She was convicted to begin a dialogue with him, as well as with her second son, a junior at Village Academy. I encouraged her, shared some resources, and gave her my email address with an open invitation to contact me anytime.

Christian parents: we need to do what it takes so that OUR sons and daughters get on the Ohio Supreme Court. We need to be the ones making these decisions, not the people on the secular left. If you send your kid off to Duke University unprepared, you’re not doing a good job at parenting.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prioritized gay rights and abortion over national security

I want to be President! Because I'm a girl! It's my turn!
National security was never a priority for Hillary Clinton, but gay rights and abortion were

First, the very-leftist Reuters explains how little Hillary cared about national security.

Excerpt:

For months, the U.S. State Department has stood behind its former boss Hillary Clinton as she has repeatedly said she did not send or receive classified information on her unsecured, private email account, a practice the government forbids.

While the department is now stamping a few dozen of the publicly released emails as “Classified,” it stresses this is not evidence of rule-breaking. Those stamps are new, it says, and do not mean the information was classified when Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner in the 2016 presidential election, first sent or received it.

But the details included in those “Classified” stamps — which include a string of dates, letters and numbers describing the nature of the classification — appear to undermine this account, a Reuters examination of the emails and the relevant regulations has found.

The new stamps indicate that some of Clinton’s emails from her time as the nation’s most senior diplomat are filled with a type of information the U.S. government and the department’s own regulations automatically deems classified from the get-go — regardless of whether it is already marked that way or not.

In the small fraction of emails made public so far, Reuters has found at least 30 email threads from 2009, representing scores of individual emails, that include what the State Department’s own “Classified” stamps now identify as so-called ‘foreign government information.’ The U.S. government defines this as any information, written or spoken, provided in confidence to U.S. officials by their foreign counterparts.

This sort of information, which the department says Clinton both sent and received in her emails, is the only kind that must be “presumed” classified, in part to protect national security and the integrity of diplomatic interactions, according to U.S. regulations examined by Reuters.

“It’s born classified,” said J. William Leonard, a former director of the U.S. government’s Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). Leonard was director of ISOO, part of the White House’s National Archives and Records Administration, from 2002 until 2008, and worked for both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

“If a foreign minister just told the secretary of state something in confidence, by U.S. rules that is classified at the moment it’s in U.S. channels and U.S. possession,” he said in a telephone interview, adding that for the State Department to say otherwise was “blowing smoke.”

Being able to recognize classified information is part of the job of all people at the State Department, especially people at the top. The bottom line is that Clinton created this private e-mail server to hide her e-mails from her employer, the American people. She didn’t care about the security of the most powerful nation in the world. She had other priorities.

Now, you might be wondering about what Hillary Clinton prioritized when she was Secretary of State instead of national security. And the answer is simple: she promoted gay rights and abortion abroad.

Here’s an article by radical leftist Jackie Kucinich in the radically leftist Daily Beast that explains it:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not openly support gay marriage in 2009, but according to a new set of emails released by the State Department, she was dedicated to expanding gay rights both domestically and abroad from the beginning of her term.

From March to December 2009, Clinton received several emails from her staff on the issue detailing Clinton’s own successes expanding gay rights inside the State Department, as well as her concerns about the treatment of LGBT individuals abroad.

The 2009 emails offer a look at how Clinton and her staff began to make LGBT individuals part of their mission—culminating in her 2011 United Nations speech declaring, “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.”

The changes within the State Department started in May 2009, when Clinton was able to extend benefits to the same-sex partners of diplomats.

This was the center of her foreign policy efforts:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday put the Obama administration clearly on the opposite side of Christians seeking religious freedom in the debate over human sexuality, prompting praise from gay rights activists and criticism from GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry.

In remarks on Tuesday in Geneva to the United Nations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said religious and cultural beliefs are standing in the way of homosexual human rights worldwide.

“Now, raising this issue, I know, is sensitive for many people and that the obstacles standing in the way of protecting the human rights of LGBT people rest on deeply held personal, political, cultural, and religious beliefs,” said Clinton.

Called a “landmark” speech by the homosexual community, Clinton announced that the U.S. would spend $3 million in aid and the full strength of their diplomacy to expand the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people worldwide.

That’s taxpayer money being used to do that – money from people like you and me. If there’s a conflict between religious liberty and gay rights, Hillary Clinton sides with gay rights. But it’s not just gay rights that is more important than national security – it’s also abortion.

CNS News explains:

Despite her longstanding and vocal support for adoption, Clinton’s State Department also sends tens of millions of dollars to African countries each year for family planning and reproductive health services, including abortion.

The largest recipient is the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), which received $50 million from the State Department in 2010, the most recent year for which figures are available.

UNFPA has a history of supporting abortion services in Africa, most notably in 2005 through its Maputo Plan of Action.

The plan, adopted by the health ministers of the African Union, calls for the implementation of another UNFPA-drafted document known as the Continental Framework on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, which calls on African countries to “[p]rovide safe abortion services to the fullest extent of national laws, and where appropriate provide legal framework for safe abortion services.”

In both the Continental Framework and the Maputo Plan, discussion of abortion is couched in terms of reducing “unsafe” abortions, providing “safe” abortions, and promoting access to family planning in Africa.

Through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department also sends millions of dollars to Africa to help with population control and family planning programs.

Clinton on Monday cited six countries – Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, and Uganda – which had partnered with the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s The Way Forward Project to increase care for children in their countries.

Combined, those six countries received a $90.5 million for “family planning” in 2010.

If there’s a conflict between religious liberty and abortion, Hillary Clinton sides with abortion.

Well, what about the rights of Jews and Christians in Muslim countries? Is that a concern for Hillary Clinton? Apparently not. If you’re a Christian voter, and you would like to see the government prioritize religious liberty in other countries, then Hillary Clinton is not your candidate. Her twin priorities are abortion and gay rights.

Christian man stabbed by pro-LGBT woman after sharing his beliefs on homosexuality

Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign
Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign

A friend shared this story with me that appeared on Life Site News.

Excerpt:

A 26-year-old Mennonite missionary was violently stabbed in the back on Friday by a pro-LGBTQ woman who became aggressive after he shared with her his Christian beliefs regarding homosexuality.

“The confrontation was about the idea of homosexuality…if that’s OK, if that’s acceptable, and whether God loves somebody who is in that state. And we assured her that he does,” said Eric Brubacher, a member of the Mennonite community who was present during the attack, to CTV.

The unnamed victim was rushed to the hospital where he was treated for non-life threatening injuries and then released. The attacker fled the scene of the crime.

The stabbing occurred in the Byward Market area three days prior to the opening of Ottawa’s “Pride Week” where homosexuality is celebrated and promoted openly with parties and a parade.

The Maranatha Conservative Mennonite Church had traveled to Ottawa from Drayton, Ontario for three days of evangelization through singing and handing out Gospel literature. Friday was the community’s first day.

[…]Ottawa Police are looking for the attacker, who is described as  white, 22 years of age, of slim build, and sporting blond hair with pink highlights.

An Ottawa Police spokesperson told LifeSiteNews that as of Monday morning the attacker had not yet been apprehended. The investigation is still ongoing.

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, and it is in the very liberal province of Ontario.

Now I know that most people on the left like to talk a lot about tolerance, critical thinking, and diversity. Might I suggest that they go back to the drawing board and re-think what those words mean. I am seeing more and more stories come out every day where gay activists are going after the livelihood of people who disagree with them or even just refuse to celebrate what they are doing. It may have started non-violently, but now I am seeing it escalate into violence. I would like to see the leaders of the gay rights movement step forward and take responsibility for their inflammatory rhetoric, and dial down their persecution and violence against those who disagree with them. I don’t see any coercion, vandalism and violence coming from the traditional moral values side. Maybe the other side needs to take a lesson in civility and tolerance from us. Disagreement – yes. Violence – no way.

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