Today's Cultural Warfare Update

Big news today includes the Canada Family Action Coalition's strong swing towards explicit Dominionism (if not Christian Reconstructionism) via their endorsement and promotion of a book explicitly calling for Christian government in Canada, published by a (new?) organisation apparently dedicated to that and which also calls for crushing secular humanism. Fun! (ETA: If someone on dark_christian could let them know about this, I think they'd appreciate that. As always, I encourage forwarding.) Also, an organisation I mentioned for the first time in the previous CWU, the National Non-Sectarian Council of Pro-Family Activists, says most civil rights are bad, blacks were better off under slavery, and women should get married and stay married and stop being men, presumably by being seen outside the house. Oh, and they don't like queers. Yeah, we know.

And here's today's news.

Faith and Freedom Network column saying that they don't gaybash, they're just following God's Law, and the media is all on the side of the queers and hopefully there will be a big fundamentalist upsurge in the 2008 elections (they've been trying to organise one with their Change the State in '08 campaign);

Focus on the Family condemns Chicago GBLT community centre;

FotF says that abortion will be a an important issue in 2008; that's pretty safe; clearly, they want it to be the biggest issue, instead of things like Iraq;

FotF: "Pro-Lifers Need to Spread the Word on Embryo Adoption," to keep them out of the hands of evil scientists who want to use them "for preliminary, general research and then it goes the next step to cloning";

FotF applauds Supreme Court decisions, specifically the "Bong Hits for Jesus" case, happy that schools can suppress anti-drug-war speech, and a ruling that the Freedom from Religion Foundation did not have standing to sue Mr. Bush's "faith-based" programmes, specifically "because it rejects the theory of taxpayer standing," meaning the idea that taxpayers automatically have standing to sue regarding expenditure of tax dollars;

Concerned Women for America ACTION ITEM to oppose override of Chief Executive Bush's veto of the stem-cell research act;

CWA on-hand at the White House for Mr. Bush's veto of the legislation;

CWA ACTION ITEM condemns comprehensive sex-ed, calling it "Rated X," and calls for contacting Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) to reauthorise "Title V" abstinence-only sex education;

Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) reintroduces bill to remove the loser-pays-legal-fees clause in religious-establishment lawsuits; the explicit intent is to make it more difficult to sue governments for religious discrimination and/or endorsement; the specific target is the ACLU;

Some Deerfield, Illinois parents took out an ad condemning freshman high school panel discussion which included GBLT topics (a Gay-Straight Alliance-sponsoured panel, it turns out); you get a lot of quotes from Concerned Women for America's Matt Barber condemning t3h qu33rs;

The Christian Examiner placed the text of the ad online; it condemns students "BEING USED TO FURTHER THE CAUSES OF GAY ACTIVISTS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL" (CAPS as in original), and compares anti-bullying programmes including GBLT students to encouraging illegal drug use;

Concerned Women for America condemns woman-led anti-war group "Code Pink" as too masculine; the only thing that could make this story funnier is if they had Matt Barber or Robert Knight delivering the condemnation;

Melinda Henneberger calls for the Democrats to abandon their pro-abortion-rights positions in a New York Times op-ed;

Canada Family Action Coalition promotes book condemning secular government;

Canada Family Action Coalition links to christiangovernment.ca as part of their book promotion, a theocratic organisation explicitly calling for - I imagine you can see this coming from the domain name - Christian government;

christiangovernment.ca calls for the imposition of religious government, stating that, "Secular Humanism is a threat that must be suppressed for the good of all Canadians"; remember, this is the site and book linked to by Canada Family Action Coalition, so I think it's safe to move CFAC into the explicitly Christian Reconstructionist and/or Dominionist movement(s);

Institute for Canadian Values brings up WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah; also speaking will be Tristan Emmanuel of ECP-Centre, Joseph Ben-Ami of the Institute for Canadian Values, and - get this! - Dr. Charles McVety of Canada Family Action Coalition, which is now endorsing Christian Reconstructionist books and organisations. Does this make the ICV at least Dominionist-friendly?

George Will claims that "marriage" is a "hate crime" now;

Peter Sprigg condemns GBLT marriage, benefits to same-sex couples, in USA Today, saying that gay unions cannot benefit society by producing children;

Family Research Council's Tony Perkins sends out a letter: Wal-Mart is now dropping all support for all GBLT organisations, specifically in response to theoconservative pressure against it for joining the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. This is part of the theoconservative effort to wedge GBLT people out of the economy, if possible; they also applaud the "bong hits for Jesus" and "taxpayers can't sue over tax dollars" decisions mentioned above;

Family Research Council ACTION ITEM against including GBLT people in Federal hate crimes legislation;

"Ex-gay" Exodus International head Alan Chambers, caught admitting that "ex-gay" doesn't actually stop you from being, you know, gay, backtracks furiously to the Christian Post;

New Jersey school district apologises for blacking out gay student kissing in a yearbook filled with straight students kissing; it was on a "special personal tribute page" in the high school yearbook, and was some sort of paid-for feature;

National Non-Sectarian Council of Pro-Family Activists, which includes Robert Knight (Concerned Women for America wonk) and Scott Lively (author of The Pink Swastika, holocaust revisionism blaming gay men instead of good Germans), says blacks were better off under slavery ("every group protected by civil rights has suffered terribly and in certain serious ways deteriorated. Black authorities have noted the terrifying situation with black youth today that never existed in America even during slavery"),women were better off "married and stay[ing] married," because "they have been trained to be big mouthed men and no man they want, wants them," and condemning civil rights for queers, too, of course.

( Articles, press releases, and excerpts below )