Tag Archives: Religious Liberty

Safe schools czar says respect for homosexuality begins in kindergarten

Story here at CNS News.

Excerpt:

The Obama administration’s safe schools czar, Kevin Jennings, has accused the Baptists, the Boy Scouts and sports fans of anti-gay bias, and he has advocated a special high school for gay teens as well as gay-straight alliance clubs for every high school in America.

Jennings, who was a prominent homosexual activist before being named director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools at the U.S. Department of Education, also has called for kindergarteners to be taught to respect all sexual orientations, while insisting that “ex-gay messages” and “Christian values” are ‘misused to isolate or denigrate lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people” and have no place in the nation’s public schools.

Recent controversy surrounding Jennings’s role in the Department of Education has revolved around a 1988 conversation in which Jennings told a high school sophomore in a relationship with an older man that he hoped he used a condom–rather than reporting the possible case [of] statutory rape to authorities.

Jennings explains how he gets pro-homosexual messages into the schools:

In a 2000 speech at a GLSEN event Iowa, Jennings argued that students as young as kindergarten should be taught to respect people “regardless of sexual orientation.” The Washington Times has posted an audio of this speech on its Web site.

“Our curriculum at kindergarten, and first grade, and second grade–every grade until students have graduated should be ‘you must respect every human being regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of gender identity, regardless of race or religion or any arbitrary distinctions we make about people,” Jennings said in the 2000 speech. “If we cannot teach this very basic lesson in our schools we will be very surprised at how hard it is for these students to learn French or English or math.”

In a February 2000 speech, Jennings predicted at a GLSEN conference that the cause of making homosexuality acceptable would succeed in elementary school. “Homosexuality will become more acceptable to students, especially elementary ones,” he said, according to an article in The Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y. “We are at a new moment in our history.”

And he opposes publicly-expressed Christian convictions:

On Nov. 19, 2000, Jennings wrote an op-ed in the Charlotte Observer that was critical of the North Carolina Southern Baptist Convention’s position on homosexuality.

“As a native Tar Heel and a former high school history teacher, I watched in amazement last week as the North Carolina Southern Baptist Convention passed a policy excluding gay people (and anyone who welcomes them) from the denomination. All I could think was of the old aphorism ‘Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it,’” Jennings wrote.

He compared the denomination’s stance on homosexuality with racism during the days of slavery and segregation.

“The same pious members who nodded in agreement as our preacher talked about ‘loving your neighbor’ seemed to believe that this meant loving your white neighbors. Our fellow churchgoers expressed a visceral hatred of blacks (except they didn’t say ‘blacks’), resisted the integration of schools in Winston-Salem, and generally were pretty ‘unChristian’ on the whole subject of race,” the Jennings op-ed continued. “The Southern Baptists of the 1970s were, in fact, just following the traditions and history of our denomination, which had been founded because Southern Baptists wanted to defend the institution of slavery and thus formed their own convention in the 1840s. In 1996, about 150 years after it mattered, the Southern Baptist Convention formally apologized for its role in upholding slavery and racism. Better late than never, I guess.”

This article is long and detailed, and the rest is really good. This not a typical news article, it’s comprehensive and filled with quotes of Jennings own words.

Why did “Christians” vote for Obama?

Some people I know who call themselves “Christian” voted for Obama. (See breakdown here)

Remember that the support of left-wing Christians for the political left led to the loss the loss of free speech and religious liberty rights in Canada. And Obama is already working on that here.

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Canadian Human Rights Commissions continue war on Christians

Story from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

The Alberta Human Rights Commission has accepted a complaint brought against an Edmonton-area Catholic school board by a substitute teacher who was let go after she announced she was ‘becoming’ a man.

Janet Buterman, 39, had been employed by the Greater St. Albert Catholic School Board for about four months when, in June 2008, she informed deputy superintendent Steve Bayus that she was undergoing a ‘sex change’ and now wished to be treated as a man.

[…]Buterman maintains that she has a legitimate medical condition – gender identity disorder – and that the board has discriminated against her because of it.

[…]In Buterman’s opinion, the Catholic board does not have the right to let their beliefs enter decisions about employment.  “It appears to me they think they have a right to make employment decisions based on claims, tenets of faith,” she told the Edmonton Journal. “From my perspective, as a public employer, they do not.”

Buterman filed the complaint on October 1st, and the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission has accepted it on the grounds of medical disability, physical disability, and gender.

and one more:

The Alberta Catholic school board is not the only one coming under fire for upholding its Catholic faith.  An Ontario board was the subject of a human rights complaint last month because of its decision not to hire a non-Catholic.  In that case, the school board is asserting its right to hire teachers that espouse the Catholic values they are aiming to instil in their students.

Similar to what Obama is doing down here to Catholic schools.

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Some good news for the two jailed Iranian Christian women

Update to the story from the Christian Post.

Excerpt:

An Iranian judge charged two jailed female converts with “crimes” of apostasy and propagation of the Christian faith, a human rights group reported.

Washington D.C.-based International Christian Concern said it has learned from Elam ministries in Iran Wednesday that Maryam Rustampoor and Marzieh Amirizadeh were unexpectedly taken to appear before the court Tuesday morning and were formally charged by the judge.

[…]However, in a positive development, the report said, the judge had dropped the earlier charge of anti-state activities. Their case has now been transferred from the revolutionary court to the regular courts. The women and their lawyer are pleased with this development, it stated.

The two converts were arrested on March 5 for leaving Islam and embracing Christianity. They were placed in a solitary confinement in the infamous Evin prison, deprived of medical attention and often blindfolded during interrogations for several hours over the course of five months without being charged.

Iranian officials accused them of “anti-state activities” following their conversion from Islam to Christianity. After five months, they were tried on August 9 by the revolutionary court and ordered to recant their faith in Christ which they said they will never do. The women remained in prison until they appeared again in court on Tuesday when they were finally charged.

Elam ministries said both of them are in poor health. On October 4, Rustampoor suffered severe food poisoning and was given medical attention after much insistence.

In an interview with the Voice of America Persian News Network, Rustampoor and Amirizadeh’s lawyer said, “My clients are not prepared to lie about their faith under any condition.”

Please pray for these two brave women as often as you can, and don’t forget to pray for Rifqa Bary, as well.