Activists Make Racket, Not Sound Arguments

Dr Jennifer Roback Morse, PhD

In my work as a social conservative, I have been puzzled by some of the rhetorical strategies of my opponents. Sometimes I feel my head spinning, as if I have been going around in circles, with no obvious conclusion in sight. I have been seeking the key to understanding them, a Rosetta Stone that will allow me to translate what otherwise appears to be mere hieroglyphics.

I think I am finally getting a handle on it. The lifestyle left doesn’t actually make arguments. They just make noise.

Over at Think Progress, there is a case in point, involving Yours Truly.

The occasion for this particular episode is my response to being included in the GLAAD “Commentator Accountability Project.” Evidently, the folks at GLAAD feel a need to inform the media that I am not worthy of being interviewed. In response, I wrote an article entitled, “Why Opposing the Gay Lobby is Not Anti-Gay.” The folks over at Think Progress came up with this headline “NOM: Opposing Gay Rights Doesn’t Make Someone Anti-Gay.”

Do you see what they have done? They have slipped in an unstated assumption that the “gay lobby” = “gay rights.” Anyone who disagrees with the gay lobby automatically, always and everywhere, opposes gay rights. Put it another way: they have turned an important and debatable question into an unquestionedassumption.

Actually, they have papered over a whole series of questions: what is marriage? What is the social purpose and meaning of marriage? What is equality? What is the context of equality in this particular situation: who is being made equal to whom, for what purpose and in what context? Will there be any down-side to redefining marriage?

They do not answer these questions. They assume them away by asserting that “marriage equality” is a slam-dunk, open and shut civil rights issue. They change to subject to me and my character. As long as the topic is me and whether I am a big meanie, they don’t have to refute my arguments, or even make any arguments of their own.

The subject of my original article in The Blaze was my claim that removing the gender requirement from marriage would result in the state insisting that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. I believe that this will impact men and women differently, and that the net result will be the further marginalization of fathers from the family.

I still believe that to be true. I still believe it will be a very bad thing for society. I am not ashamed of this belief, in spite of GLAAD’s rather ham-handed attempt to shame me about it.

The most telling point though is that Think Progress did not even bring up the question of whether redefining marriage will marginalize fathers from the family. They just changed the subject.

“The war against women” is another example. The so-called “feminists” presume to speak for the entire female sex. Anyone who disagrees with their preferred policies is making war against women. The HHS mandate requiring every employer to provide contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs is, in their fantasy world, part of the “war against women”.

Do you see the assumptions they have slipped in? Every woman values zero-cost contraception more than anything else. No woman anywhere in America has the slightest moral qualms about abortion-inducing drugs. No woman in America has any loyalty to any religious body. There are no social conservative women.

Ahem. Most women are surviving just fine paying for their own contraception or using natural methods that don’t cost anything. Many women are deeply troubled by abortion-inducing drugs. Evidently the self-proclaimed champions of the female sex have not seen the inside of a church in a long time, since many, many congregations are dominated by women. And, by the way, the social conservative movement is filled with women, including the pro-life movement, the abstinence education movement, and the movement to popularize natural family planning.

Once again, the lifestyle left has turned a whole series of important questions intoassumptions: pregnancy is an illness that ought to be prevented; women want sex to be a sterile recreational activity, and religion is unimportant to women.

This is the Rosetta Stone: the point of the racket from the lifestyle left is to distract the reader or listener from the substance of the discussion. Keep changing the subject so no one has a clear picture of what is at stake in the argument. Keep making nasty-sounding attacks on people, so that a) no one wants to get involved in an argument with the lifestyle left, be they feminists or gays, b) people become willing to concede whatever the lifestyle left is asking for, just to make the annoying clamor go away, and c) people will start to shun the victims of the attack, thinking that they must be at fault somehow for bringing this on themselves.

So think of this tactic as a noise-bomb. Once the noise starts, you are deafened and can’t think straight. You’ve got to be prepared with ear protectors. Or think of it as a smoke bomb. Once your eyes are burning, it is too late: you can’t see and you are stumbling around in the dark. The only defense is to put on your goggles as fast as possible.

Recognizing this tactic quickly is the equivalent of putting on your ear protectors or your goggles. Once you are on the look-out, you will see beyond any shadow of a doubt that this change-the-subject strategy is very common. The entire lifestyle left uses it, not only the gay left, but radical feminists, the pro-abortion crowd, the whole lot of them.

Forewarned is forearmed: once you can identify the diversionary tactic, you will not be victimized by it anymore.

Dr Jennifer Roback Morse, PhD, is the founder and president of the Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage.

Madrid's Harassment of Moroccans Continues

(IFJ/IFEX) - 10 November 2010 - The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) backed its Moroccan affiliate, the Syndicat national de la presse marocaine (SNPM), which condemned Spanish officials in the city of Melillia over the treatment of two Moroccan journalists who were briefly detained on the border, questioned and denied entry in the city.

"Restricting movement of journalists on duty without a valid reason is a violation of their rights," said Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. "The events in Melillia matter to the Moroccan public and Spanish authorities should avoid unnecessary action which hinders the work of media covering the events in the city."

According to the SNPM, two cameramen of la Société nationale de radiodiffusion et de télévision (SNRT), Abderahim El Bouhedioui (2M) and Rachid Laâtabi (Al Oula), were arrested by border guards in Melillia and questioned at the police station on the reasons for their visit to the city. Three other journalists, Badiaâ Zekhnini (SNRT), Azzedine Lamrini (Al Ahdat Al Maghribiya newspaper) and Said Youssi (MAP press agency) had their passports confiscated by Spanish police. The group was later refused entry and returned to the Moroccan city of Nador.

One SNPM board member in the city reportedly said the actions of Spanish officials were designed to "frustrate the work of Moroccan journalists, particularly broadcast reporters, following their coverage of the Spanish forces' recent clampdown on the Moroccan population living in Melillia."

The IFJ says there is a need to facilitate media access to information in order to prevent rumors and distrust among the public. It also called on journalists' communities in both countries to work together in sharing information and mobilise their efforts to achieve greater press freedom for their members.

"We call for a thorough investigation into the police action in Melillia," added White.


For more information:

International Federation of Journalists
International Press Centre, Residence Palace
Bloc C, second floor, Rue de la Loi, 155
1040 Brussels
Belgium
Phone: +32 2 2352207
Fax: +32 2 2352219
http://www.ifj.org/

A Divided Jerusalem?

JERUSALEM, Sept. 1 (UPI) -- In the framework of a peace deal with the Palestinians, Israel is willing to partition Jerusalem, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said.

In an interview with Haaretz newspaper Wednesday, Barak said while the gaps remain wide and are of a "fundamental nature," he believes there is a real chance to achieve peace with the Palestinians, based on a two-state solution and the division of Jerusalem.

"I'm not saying that there is a certainty for success, but there is a chance. This chance must be exploited to the fullest," he told the newspaper.

Read it all here.

Anglo-Catholic Bishops: "We cannot rejoice"

To the priests and deacons who signed the Open Letter

Dear Brothers and Sisters, July 2010

‘God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you, but I will tell you the good and proper way.’ (1 Samuel 12:23)

These are grave times in the Church of England especially for those of us unable in good conscience to accept that any particular church has the authority to admit women to the episcopate. While we certainly accept the good faith of those who wish to make this change believing it to be God’s will, we cannot rejoice with them, not least because of the disastrous cost to Catholic unity.

Our concerns are not only about sacramental assurance though that is of profound importance. If the legislation now proposed passes, it will not provide room for our tradition to grow and flourish. We will be dependent on a Code of Practice yet to be written, and sadly our experience of the last almost twenty years must make us wonder whether even such an inadequate provision will be honoured in the long term.

Neither the Report of the Revision Committee nor the legislation itself shows a proper understanding of our reservations, however carefully these have been presented through the consultation process and in the College and House of bishops. It remains a deep disappointment to us that the Church at large did not engage with the excellent Rochester Report and paid scant attention to the Consecrated Women report sponsored by Forward in Faith.

We must now accept that a majority of members of the Church of England believe it right to proceed with the ordination of women as bishops, and that a significant percentage of those in authority will not encourage or embrace with enthusiasm the traditional integrity or vocations within it. Nor is it their intention or desire to create a structure which genuinely allows the possibility of a flourishing mission beyond this generation.

However, the closeness of the vote on the Archbishops’ amendment for co ordinate jurisdiction, concerns though there are about its adequacy, suggest at least a measure of disquiet in the majority about proceeding without a provision acceptable to traditionalists. The Catholic group fought valiantly on the floor of synod and we are grateful for that, and while many in the Church and press are speaking as if the legislation is now passed, final Synodical approval is still some way off.

Whatever happens in the Synod, there are some Anglo Catholics, including in our own number, who are already looking at, indeed are resolved to join the Ordinariate as the place where they can find a home in which to live and proclaim their Christian faith, in communion with the Holy Father, yet retaining something of the blessings they have known and experienced in the Anglican tradition. Of course the Ordinariate is a new thing, and not all of us are trailblazers or can imagine what it might be like. Some will undoubtedly want to wait and see how that initiative develops before making a decision.

Yet others will make their individual submission and find their future as Roman Catholics.

Were the present proposals not to be substantially amended or defeated, many more of us will need to consider seriously these options.
 
Source:  Forward in Faith

Sane Provincetown Parents Revolt Against School Board

When the school board in Provincetown, Mass., voted unanimously on June 8 to provide free condoms to all students in the district without parental notification, no one in the audience objected.


In fact, no one thought much about it.

That’s the real story here. No one thought much about it. The local community was so deeply inside the Bubble that it never even occurred to anyone that this might be problematic.

Surely, the responsible parents of enlightened P Town must have had some sort of vague sense that all was not well?

No one objected. In fact, no one thought much of it, says Beth Singer, the school superintendent.

Even after passage, she said, she had only one phone call—from a parent who wanted to know when it would go into effect so she could talk to her kids about it.

One wants to be a fly on the wall when it comes time for discipline in that house. “Honey, I know you feel that you and your other friends in second grade are old enough to smoke, so I just want to encourage you to come and ask me any questions you might have! Most of all be sure to practice safe smoking by using filtered cigarettes the nurse provides. No need to check with me. Just do whatever feels right. The pleasure of tobacco is a beautiful, natural thing that God created and you don’t need to feel ashamed at all as you take your first step into this more adult way of living. Yes, there are health risks, but so long as you do it in moderation, lots of adults live rich, full lives with tobacco as a very important part of the pleasure! You deserve that pleasure! Love you, honey!”

Eventually the story hit the national media and normal people from outside the Bubble began to react. School officials are “shell-shocked”. P-Town parents who hadn’t hear about this mad scheme began to revolt. It turns out lots of people aren’t nearly as enlightened as P-Town school social engineer and actually think there may be some other way of dealing with the problem than encouraging pre-adolescent to get jiggy. All sorts of barbarisms are being proposed, such as “parental notification” and “not giving condoms to kindergartners”. If this keeps up we might even see some wahoo suggesting that sexualizing elementary school kids is a bad thing, not a thing to be facilitated by bureaucratic dunces.

That’s what happens when you start placing the rights of parents above the brilliance of technicians and specialists and “respected studies”. Next thing you know, we’ll be hearing that chastity is a virtue. Very out of step with P-Town culture.

From here.

Consultation on PSED Ends Tomorrow

Christians in the UK are being urged to complain about a new public service requirement which they say will effectively silence traditional Christian views on homosexuality.

The campaigning group Christian Concern for Our Nation is now calling on Christians before the consultation period ends next Wednesday (Sept 30).

At the centre of their concerns is the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) in the Equality Bill, which is to be extended to cover age, pregnancy and maternity, sexual orientation, religion or belief, and gender reassignment.

A spokesman for the CCFON said they objected in principle to this extension because it would compromise Christian groups who took a conservative view on sexuality and would effectively bar them from receiving public funding for their work.

The spokesman said: “Under the proposed provisions public bodies such as local authorities, schools and health bodies will be able as part of their core business, to promote equality. As is so often the case, what is presented as tolerance and inclusiveness will in reality have the effect of shutting Christian groups out of publicly funded services.”

Read it all here.

Standing for Marriage in Maine

Tim Drake

The battle for the institution of marriage is in full swing in the state of Maine. Voters there were denied the ability to vote on same-sex “marriage” when legislators passed a law (LD 1020) this spring granting homosexuals the “right” to marry.

Voters there, however, gathered more than 100,000 signatures to have a “citizen’s veto” placed on the statewide ballot in November. That measure asks voters whether they would like to repeal the law, restoring the state’s understanding of the definition of marriage as the union between one man and one woman.

Portland Bishop Richard Malone has publicly supported the repeal of the law.

“We oppose attempts to grant the legal status of marriage to a relationship between persons of the same sex,” said Bishop Malone. “A same-sex union can never realize the unique and full potential that the marital relationship expresses.”

The organization Stand for Marriage Maine, which is fighting for the repeal of the law, released its first television ad last Tuesday, featuring Boston College law school professor Scott Fitzgibbon. Their “Yes on 1” campaign billboards and yard signs are beginning to appear around the state.

Meanwhile, the homosexual lobby is pouring money, resources, and people from California and elsewhere to fight to retain the law. Equality California is sending field operatives to Maine and providing direct mail and e-mail solicitations for contributions and volunteers. A spokesman for Equality California said that a victory in Maine would be a sign that the “gay marriage tide is turning.”

Early polling has shown that those who want the law repealed currently have a slight lead over supporters of the law.

From here.

Democratic Party Shuns Catholic Faith

The Shrivers represented the old Democratic Party—economically liberal and culturally conservative. They were routed by the new Democratic Party—economically liberal and culturally libertine—of which Ted became the poster boy. The tortured relationship of the Catholic Church with the Democratic Party mirrored that cleavage. Eunice was the ideal of the Catholic in public life—passionately committed to the poor, defender of the weak, pro-life, morally upright and a woman of faith and family. But the party followed Ted.

The Shrivers were devout Catholics who lived their faith with integrity privately before bringing its implications to the public square. Before Alzheimer’s took its toll on Sargent, he was a daily communicant, attending Mass either in Maryland or in Hyannis, Mass., a well-worn rosary often in hand.

Read more here.

Sex Educators: Nice People Who Lie

In You’re Teaching My Child What? Miriam Grossman exposes sex education and the problem of parental ignorance. Miriam Grossman, M.D., is a board certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist.

Sex educators may be very nice people but they stand on a social-political platform that can be yanked from under them if they don't spin the liberal party line. They twist medical facts into dangerous propaganda.

In You’re Teaching My Child What? Dr. Grossman presents what sex educators don’t want parents to know:

• Why the discredited founder of "sexology"—dead for half a century—has more influence on sex education than today’s most eminent neurobiologists.
• How information your child gets about common infections like herpes, warts, and Chlamydia is whitewashed.
• When "safe sex" isn’t safe; why condoms won’t protect your teens from some of the most serious sexually transmitted diseases.
• How sex educators try to normalize fringe behaviors—ignoring the health risks to your children.

Sex educators want parents to accept them as the "authorities" and to surrender parental responsibility for training a child in the path of rightness. The epidemic of sexually transmitted infections in young people and the increase in teen pregnancies indicate that the "education" is a failure.

To learn more, check out Dr. Grossman's website and read her book!

Liberals Who Think Like Stalin

The first adjective that comes to mind for "liberal" may be "touchy-feely." The best adjective for a Stalinist might be "murderous." That's a pretty big difference. I would never want to mistake a well-meaning liberal for a nasty Stalinist. At the same time, I hope we don't fail to spot any Stalinists who might be looking for mischief and pretending to be liberals. Certainly the mainstream media aren't interested in the difference.

The term "Stalinist" is historically justified by undeniable evidence, including testimony from thousands of former Stalin collaborators. So this is not a question to take lightly, as long as we are careful to separate undeniable facts from mere allegations.

I've started to gently question the beliefs of the liberals I know, without getting into any loud argument. Much to my surprise, some of the gentle-sounding people I know actually talk murderously at times. I wouldn't have believed it, because these are people I like a lot. They have a warm side. In their own minds they all believe they are driven by love and compassion. And yet, some of them -- certainly not most -- seem ready to hang the current media scapegoat from the nearest gallows.

I also know a lot of really sweet, dumb liberals, people who are so desperate to be loving that they rationalize all the nonsense they are fed by our media.

Read it all here.

Francis S. Collins: Science not Fiction

"The New York Times recently warned its readers about a wacky scientist in the Obama administration. But the fish wrap of record let the real nut job off the hook.

Reporting last week on the president's choice to head the National Institutes of Health, Times writer Gardiner Harris noted that praise for Dr. Francis S. Collins "was not universal or entirely enthusiastic." The geneticist is causing "unease," according to the Times, because of "his very public embrace of religion." Stomachs are apparently churning over a book Collins wrote describing his conversion to Christianity.

It's called -- gasp! -- The Language of God. Harris intoned: "Religion and genetic research have long had a fraught relationship, and some in the field complain about what they see as Dr. Collins' evangelism." And...that's it. Yes, the mere profession of Collins' faith is enough to warrant red flags and ominous declamations. A quarter of all Americans identify themselves as evangelical Christians and "publicly embrace their religion." But to the Times, Collins' open affiliation with 60 million American believers in Christ is headline news.

The rationality police in the newsroom have not, however, seen fit to print the rantings of a radical secular evangelist now serving as the White House "science czar." John Holdren, Obama's director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, co-authored the innocuously titled Ecoscience in the 1970s with population control extremists Paul and Anne Ehrlich.

Read all of Michelle Malkin's column here. And you don't want to miss this piece!

Who's Afraid of Sarah Palin?

Answer: The progressive elites who run Washington (and our economy into the ground), especially 'PE' women. And liberal journalists who think they make the news. And leftists with their various agendas.

Consider these barbed statements:

"It's easy to look at the soon-to-be-former governor of Alaska as an iconic feminist, a path-breaking working mother, or noble rabble-rousing populist. But when the dust settles, the lesson may be that she was simply a woman who made no sense." -- Dahlia Lithwick (from here).

Maureen Dowd in the New York Times wrote of Palin using these derogatory terms "Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy."

Mike Murphy, writing for the New York Daily News, says of Sarah Palin that she "is the political train wreck that keeps on giving."

Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal writes, 'She makes the Republican Party look inclusive.' She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated."

Here is what Victor David Hanson has to say (and I agree with him):

"In the End, What is Wisdom?" Euripides asked that in the Bacchae? So who is the better one to sit down across from Putin? What training is critical to size up a Chavez, or say ‘no thanks, bud’ to Iran?

Does it require brains to manage a family with five kids, live on a limited budget, get elected to local office, fish, hunt, go to sea, cook your own food, navigate in politics with no money, without an influential dad and powerbroker husband-or is real wisdom finishing prep school, doing B+ work at Yale, and writing a novel, column or short story? (A little of both, you say? That’s why I started this piece off with my suggestion she take her new time to read and digest.)

In all seriousness at last, I’ve found it was harder to calibrate an old spray rig (without getting Parquat ['liquid death' we used to call it] up your nose and Simazine down your pants), with a shot roller pump and worn nozzles. It took some skill to put one pound (and only one pound) of Parquat and Simazine per acre on a two-foot-wide vineyard berm, correcting for tractor speed, wind, leaks, pump idiosyncrasies, soil conditions-knowing that too much preemergent herbicide gives you sick vines, and too little, weeds–than it was to do an apparatus criticus of 200 lines of the Greek text of Aeschylus’s Suppliants-all things, of course, being considered.

Sorry for the ‘either/or’ reductive binary: but I saw more stupid people in graduate school and three decades in academia than I ever did who ran 100 acres without going broke-and more of the latter whom I’d trust not to bankrupt the country and let down our defenses than of the former.

While we rightly argue that the Sarahs of the world, if they are to be taken seriously as leaders, must read and study more, why do we not also suggest that the Baracks of the world could do a little more chain-sawing, run a coffee shop for a summer, or drive a Winnebago cross-country? (Who knows, he might meet a fellow woodcutter who knew there were 50 states or that it was dumb to make fun of the Special Olympics.)

After all, a lot of geniuses are now calling for a 'second stimulus' to borrow another trillion or so still, but I don’t think they come from Wasilla.

So I am afraid right now, but not of Sarah Palin."

Obama: Homosex and the Civil Right Era

A conservative black pastor and former NFL linebacker says he's highly offended that President Obama would compare the plight of homosexuals to that of blacks during the Civil Rights Era.

On Monday, President Obama told a gathering of homosexuals at the White House that he is aware that many of them "don't believe progress has come fast enough," and compared their struggles to those of blacks during the Civil Rights Movement.

Ken Hutcherson, the senior pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, Washington, says the comments are especially disturbing from an individual who is supposed to be familiar with "the black experience."

"But I guess we...have to ask, 'Even though he is black because his father was, what is his "black experience"?' He doesn't have any. He was raised by a white mother and a white grandmother, so this man has about as much black experience as my Doberman Pinscher -- and I guarantee [that] my Doberman Pinscher doesn't have any," he points out. "There is nothing, nothing that compares between what the Afro-Americans went through and what homosexuals are going through now."

Read it all here.

Susan Russell's God-Politics

"The folks that are gathering in Texas represent a small, conservative fringe within the Episcopal Church," says Susan Russell, a minister at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif., and a leader in the church's gay rights movement.

"Their goal has been to vote the American Episcopal Church off the Anglican island," she says. "They failed at that over and over again, and now they're trying to re-create a new province in their own image."

Russell believes they won't succeed this time, either. For one thing, she says, they would probably need the approval of two-thirds of the 38 Anglican leaders around the world to create a separate Anglican province in the United States. Currently, only a handful of those leaders have signed on publicly. Plus, she says, leaders of the breakaway faction would need the recognition of the archbishop of Canterbury — and that hasn't happened.

"It would be as if Sarah Palin were to take a small, but vocal, percentage of very conservative Republicans and decide that they were going to create a parallel United States without having the White House at the center," Russell says.

Read more here.

Susan Russell is a "priest" in the Episcopal Church and an activist for homosexual rights. Her view of reality and her reasoning are filtered through her personal preferences. Rights and social justice, as she defines them, rank as her highest priority. Her God-politics is about her agenda, not about truth. This is evident from her first sentence about the people gathering in Texas representing "a small, conservative fringe within the Episcopal Church."

No, Susan, this isn't a small gathering. And you can't paint all these people with the same brush as "conservative" (whatever that means in your God-politics). And many are not "within the Episcopal Church" and haven't been for some time. What's more, those TEC bishops and clergy who are attending are working for a return to orthodoxy within your dying denomination. They are strong supporters of the Covenant and have been very involved in its development.

Finally, Susan's statement that the Archbishop of Canterbury is not on board with the newly formed Anglican Church in North America is simply false. Rowan Williams sent the Rt. Rev'd Santosh Marray, retired bishop of the Seychelles (2005-2008) in the Province of the Indian Ocean, as his official pastoral visitor to the Anglican Church of North America Provincial Assembly.

Anglican Corruption: Follow the Money Trail

The Rev. Marta Weeks, a retired Episcopal priest from the diocese of Southeast Florida, has donated $1.5 million to fund the entire project through 2011. Weeks and her late husband have supported a wide variety of causes and educational institutions. As noteworthy as her gifts are, her beliefs on the issues the Anglican Communion is dealing with are even more significant. In January of 2000, she signed the Religious Declaration on Sexuality, Morality, Justice, and Healing which calls for a "sexual ethic focused on personal relationships and social justice rather than particular sexual acts. All persons have the right and responsibility to lead sexual lives that express love, justice, mutuality, commitment, consent, and pleasure." This sexual ethic "applies to all persons, without regard to sex, gender, color, age, bodily condition, marital status, or sexual orientation." It calls for "full inclusion of women and sexual minorities in congregational life, including their ordination and the blessing of same sex unions" as well as "a faith-based commitment to sexual and reproductive rights, including access to voluntary contraception, abortion, and HIV/STD prevention and treatment." [emphasis added]

After questions arose about the source of the funding, the ACO admitted the gift came from Weeks and issued a disclaimer from her that the funds were given without any strings attached. But subsequent contradictory and confusing statements by the ACO, Weeks and the Satcher Institute raise serious questions about the influence associated with this gift and the institution administering it.

Who is in charge?
According to the ACO, the Continuing Indaba Project will be led by the Rev. Canon Philip Groves of the ACO and the Rev. Canon Flora Winfield of Lambeth Palace. Groves is the facilitator of the "Listening Process," begun in 1998 to seek a "common mind upon the issues which threaten to divide us," according to an ACC-14 publication.

But Weeks told the American Anglican Council that she was approached and asked to fund the project by the Satcher Institute, not by the ACO or its staff. Weeks said her association with staff members of the Satcher Institute's Center of Excellence for Sexual Health (CESH) goes back to their leadership of another organization she supported, the Center for Sexuality and Religion (CSR), which merged with Satcher's CESH in 2008.

We contacted Christian Thrasher, Satcher's Director of the CESH and certified sexuality educator, to find out what role CESH will play in facilitating the Anglican Communion's Continuing Indaba Project. He insisted that CESH will not be consultants or facilitators for the project. He went on to assert that the funding had no strings attached.

However, Canon Groves told this reporter that the Satcher CESH will exercise some control of the process by monitoring project spending to ensure the funds are being used "as intended." Groves added that CESH will also conduct an ecumenical study of the project to evaluate its effectiveness and suitablity for use by other faiths and denominations.

The public attempts by leaders of the Satcher Institute to minimize their delegated role in the Anglican Communion's Listening/Continuing Indaba process are disturbing and suggest an agenda that is neither objective nor benign.

Blueprint for Changing Society's View of Sexuality and Abortion
The primary funder of the CESH, the Ford Foundation, is a wealthy independent grant-making organization devoted to progressive causes. The Ford Foundation's website lists "sexuality and reproductive health rights" as one of its core funding areas. The Ford Foundation gave Morehouse School of Medicine more than $3 million to establish and operate the CESH.

Read it all here.

UK: Gag Bible-Based Speech on Sex

CHRISTIANS across the UK have been urged to sign a petition calling on the Prime Minister to abandon plans to prevent Christians from openly explaining what they believe the Bible says about sexual conduct.

The Christian Legal Centre, which has represented many Christians in high profile cases where employers have denied Christians the right of freedom of speech on moral issues, has placed a Petition on its website for individuals to sign on-line, or download and encourage fellow church members to sign up to before posting on to CCFON, which will hand collated petitions to the Queen, Prime Minister and Leader of the House of Lords. CCFON believes there will be “devastating consequences” to Christian witness if the Coroners and Justice Bill goes through Parliament as it stands.

Andrea Minichiello Williams, barrister and founder of the CLC says few Christian leaders or individuals realize that buried deep within the Bill is a clause which could prevent any Christian openly stating what the Bible says, and Christians have believed for 2,000 years, about issues such as homosexual conduct or even marriage.

She said: “No-one would imagine that a Bill to do with Coroners could contain anything about free speech and with all the media attention on MP expenses, this vital issue is going unreported by the media. If it got through as it stands, it would have devastating consequences for Christian witness and integrity in the UK. Church leaders and individuals Christians answering questions about their faith could well find themselves the subject of a police investigation and arrest just for speaking and living according to the Bible’s teaching on sexuality and marriage.”

Read it all here.

This gag would have to apply to teachers who present as historical fact the binary worldview of the Afro-Asiatic peoples.

This gag would have to apply to Islamic teachers who teach that homosex is aberrant and impure.

This gag would have to apply to conservative rabbis who teach Bible-based views on sex and marriage.

Somehow, I don't see the law being applied evenly. I appears to be a concession to gay activists.

The Failure of Ideological Materialism

Materialists view religion as a human invention and regard those who believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God as deluded or naive. Their confidence rests on the assumption that this Gospel is invented. Their confidence is easily shaken because nothing in Reality supports this assumption.

Reality supports the view that everything exists by the Word of God and that the Word of God has fulfilled all things in the Son of God, Jesus Christ. St. Anthony the Great articulated this philosophically when he wrote: "God’s providence controls the universe. It is present everywhere. Providence is the sovereign Logos of God, imprinting form on the unformed materiality of the world, making and fashioning all things. Matter could not have acquired an articulated structure were it not for the directing power of the Logos, who is the Image, Intellect, Wisdom and Providence of God.”

Reality shakes the confidence of Materialists so thoroughly that they must escape into fantasy. They fantasize about a universe governed by randomness. They invent creatures to fit their convergence evolution theory but have no physical evidence for such creatures since they never existed. They attribute Christianity to the Jews and then illogically insist that the Jews corrupted Jesus' true religion by shunning the Gnostics.

Read it all here.

Totalitarian England?

BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.

There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.

Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal tasks was "to alter people's actual psychology". Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people's psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.

The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the "global baggage of empire" was linked to soccer violence by "racist and xenophobic white males". He claimed the English "propensity for violence" was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were "potentially very aggressive".

In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.

Read it all here.

Gay Activists Want More than "Equal" Rights

Even the ancient Greeks, many of whom held the opinion that a homosexual relationship was superior to a relationship between a man and a woman, never imagined calling a homosexual relationship "marriage". Marriage can only be between a man and woman because only a man and woman can produce offspring. We have laws that govern marriage because human societies have always seen the importance of identifying who a child's parents are (DNA testing is a very recent phenomenon), and what responsibilities the parents have to each other, to the children and what responsibilities children have to their parents. We have spousal benefits, because of the fact that having children and raising them requires that certain accommodations be made to facilitate that.

Two gay men do not need spousal benefits, because they can both work. If one becomes disabled, there are disability benefits available for him. There is no need to define their relationship legally, because they cannot produce children. If they want to provide for property rights for their gay lovers, there are legal means available for them to do so.

Most people are not in favor of being mean to other people... including gay people. Most people do not think gays should be beaten up, or otherwise mistreated. However, Gay Activists are not happy with being tolerated -- they want everyone to approve of their lifestyle. But you know what? This is America, and we don't have to approve of their lifestyle... and we certainly do not have to change the meaning of marriage that has existed for all of time to make them feel better about themselves. Aside from everything else, redefining marriage will not make them feel better about themselves, and they will have to move on to some other means of being obnoxious in their never ending pursuit of the elimination of any opinion about their lifestyle that does not coincide with their own.

Read it all here.

Parting of Ways at Notre Dame

Because of President Obama's appearance and speech at Notre Dame this Sunday, some seniors will not attend their own graduation ceremony and instead join a University prayer service on the grounds at Notre Dame. No indication yet as to how many seniors will forgo the graduation ceremony.

The student group behind this effort, ND Response, has made this wild hollywood style video showcasing their displeasure with Notre Dame and the President. I must say the production value is extremely high and I feel like I'm watching a trailer for some sort of hollywood blockbuster movie. Watch it here.

Read below as to what will be taking place this Sunday at Notre Dame:

The meditation, which will be led by Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, is part of a two-day rally that has been officially sanctioned by the university.

Read it all here.