Today's Cultural Warfare Update

Oh, hey, look, I was wrong about the fundamentalist movement taking the week off. How unfortunate. "Faith and Freedom Network," our very own local theocrats, are not taking the week off, and instead have sent out a position paper and pastor's letter and announcement about how they're going to fight any form of "spousal equivalency" legislation this coming year, saying, of course, that they "redefine marriage." The interesting part about this how they have their position paper, their announcement, and then a third thing that they're sending specifically to preachers and pastors which outlines their specifically religious core opposition to any recognition of same-sex partnerships. Quoting their Pastor's Letter:

That is, sexually active partners who are not married are in direct conflict with biblical principles. Government incentives to promote these activities may lead many to defy God’s Word and fail to recognize the threat of their eternal salvation.

[Bold as in original. I also presume they meant "to their eternal salvation" rather than "of their eternal salvation," but I'm not fixing their errors.]

Not only is it explicitly theocratic in nature, they even say outright that they're leaving it out of their position papers, presumably to avoid charges that they're implementing religious law.

Neat.

Oh, I've also noticed - tho' I haven't been repeating their posts - that FFN has been doing a lot of reposting of Focus on the Family material. It's mostly just reprints, or link-tos with some small amount of additional commentary. They're well connected into the James Dobson network. He's built quite the theocratic empire... which leads us to Canada, where Focus on the Family is busily putting together their extended network of front-groups as part of their effort to export American theoconservatism. There are several news stories from Canada here today, too.

And now, today's news.

Faith and Freedom Network's official position paper opposing any form of "reciprocal benefits," no matter how minour, for GBLT couples;

FFN's "Pastor's Letter" wherein they explain that the real reason for opposing these benefits is because they think it'll encourage more people to violate God's Law; includes ACTION ITEM to pastors to preach against reciprocal benefits and have their congregations write in against any such legislation;

Washington State Senator Dan Swecker's opposition paper, as adopted by FFN - slightly different than the first link;

Institute for Canadian Values claims they are neither "surprised nor disappointed" by the overwhelming free vote not to reconsider marriage rights in Canada, say it wasn't what they wanted anyway;

Canada Family Action Coalition vows to keep fighting GBLT marriage rights, proclaims it wasn't "really" a free vote because the Bloc Quebecois and NDP didn't release their MPs to vote against their own party positions; also snipes at the Liberal party, despite the Liberals allowing their MPs free votes; also lists a bunch of unsourced statistics popular in the theocon movement - about how queers are diseased, have lower lifespans, are incapable of stable relationships, and so on;

Focus on the Family Canada story about the free vote not to reconsider marriage rights; note that this "story" is in part about the "Institute of Marriage and Family Canada" report, which they quote as if it were a completely separate entity, rather than a Focus on the Family project in Canada. This is, again, how they recycle material endlessly to make it look like it's coming from many different sources - the "echo chamber" effect;

Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (a Focus on the Family project) press release saying "this ain't over," will continue to fight GBLT marriage rights;

Institute of Marriage and Family Canada (a Focus on the Family project) newsletter: C-38 (allowing marriage between lesbian and gay people) is a "fundamental re-engineering of parenthood" and is "gender under construction";

Focus on the Family's Institute of Marriage and Family Canada seems to be trying to revive an abortion debate in Canada - they got an op-ed by one of their people in the Ottawa Citizen last month.

( Articles and excerpts below )