Today's Cultural Warfare Update
May. 11th, 2005 12:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdSkim this if you want, but for the love of god, read the last item. Seriously. Play the .wav file. But not at work. It's unbelievably funny.
In "BRING IT, POPTART" news, Eastside pastor Hutcherson promises "action" against Microsoft for re-endorsing anti-discrimination legislation;
Swedish study indicates possible biological basis for homosexuality in males;
Transcription of speech talking about something I've noticed before; some subsets of fundamentalism seem to be clustering around the idea that conservation is unchristian, and that god will provide in all cases until Jesus returns;
Focus on the Family launches into any attempt to compromise on the judicial rules change issue - anything less than a rules change is unacceptable (includes action item);
FotF attacks Kraft for helping sponsour the Gay Games - includes action item;
Focus on the Family congratulates Rev. Hutcherson for getting Microsoft to back off from HB1515; Hutcherson notes that they now know Microsoft can be "pushed around;"
FotF action item against GBLT-protections in medical treatment in Nebraska; quotes Hutcherson, again, who may now be a rising star in the fundamentalist movement;
Today's Family News in Focus includes story (in theory) on the pheromone study talked about above;
Concerned Women for America launches Harry Reid over the judicial issue;
CWA says judicial nominee blocking is racist and sexist;
Traditional Values Coalition has three articles, which includes link to action items, on "their" California anti-marriage-rights initiative;
Anti-abortion activist Neal Horsley, of the "Nuremberg Files" website listing home addresses and photographs of doctors who perform abortions, defends having sex with mules when growing up as "normal" and something everyone does. NO, I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.
----- 1 -----
Eastside Pastor Planning New Action Against Microsoft
KIRO 7 News
POSTED: 8:14 am PDT May 9, 2005
UPDATED: 11:02 am PDT May 9, 2005
http://www.kirotv.com/money/4466224/detail.html
REDMOND, Wash. -- An Eastside pastor who pressured Microsoft to take a neutral stand on gay rights legislation said he is planning action against the company now that it has changed its position, KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reported.
The Rev. Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church said Microsoft backed off supporting a gay rights bill when he threatened a boycott.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent employees an e-mail last week saying it would support gay rights legislation in the future on the state and national level to promote diversity in the workplace.
Hutcherson told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News last Friday that Ballmer "just goes the way the wind is blowing."
"You get enough pressure on him, he's gonna change,'' Hutcherson said. "He's just proved to everybody that if you put enough pressure on Microsoft, they'll bend."
Hutcherson said he is planning a new round of pressure against Microsoft, but wouldn't say exactly what those plans are.
"They're not a business for diversity," he said in an interview with KIRO 7 Eyewitness News on Sunday. "Microsoft is a business for homosexuals."
[More at URL]
----- 2 -----
Brain responses differ in gay, straight men
Study: Homosexuals react to male sex hormones like women
The Associated Press
Updated: 5:19 p.m. ET May 9, 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7791888/
WASHINGTON - The brains of homosexual men respond more like those of women when reacting to a chemical derived from the male sex hormone, new evidence of physical differences related to sexual orientation.
The finding, published in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows differences in physiological reaction to sex hormones.
Researchers led by Ivanka Savic at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, exposed heterosexual men and women and homosexual men to chemicals derived from male and female sex hormones. These chemicals are thought to be pheromones, molecules known to trigger responses such as defense and sex in many animals.
Whether humans respond to pheromones has been the subject of debate, although in 2000 American researchers reported finding a gene that they believe directs the human pheromone receptor in the nose.
Biological basis to sexual orientation?
In the Swedish study, when sniffing a chemical from testosterone, the male hormone, portions of the brains involved in sexual activity were activated in gay men and straight women, but not in straight men, the researchers found.
[More at URL]
[Ed Note: Also, a BBC story which is more complete:]
Sniffing out potential partners
Last Updated: Tuesday, 10 May, 2005, 09:24 GMT 10:24 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4532029.stm
BBC News
Humans are highly skilled at sniffing out suitable sexual partners, research has found.
Scientists have shown that natural body scent plays a key role in determining whether we find somebody attractive.
Gay men were found to be particularly good at detecting the scent of other gay men.
The research, by the Philadelphia's Monell Chemical Senses Center, will be published in the journal Psychological Science.
They found that homosexual men and lesbian women prefer different body odour from heterosexual men and women.
In a second study using brain scans, researchers showed a chemical in male sweat stimulated the brains of homosexual men and heterosexual women in the same way.
Natural scents, or pheromones, often do not register on a conscious level - but it has long been thought they probably have a big impact on behaviour.
The Monell team asked a group of 82 straight and gay men and women to sniff underam sweat collected from 24 donors of different gender and sexual orientation.
The preferences of gay men were strikingly different from those of heterosexual men and women, and lesbian women.
Gay men preferred the odours of other gay men, and heterosexual women.
The smell of gay men were the least liked by heterosexual men and women, and lesbians.
[More at URL]
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On Receiving Harvard Med's Global Environment Citizen Award
By Bill Moyers
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 01 December 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120504G.shtml
I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom you never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and just plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.
The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill McKibben. He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the environment. His bestseller "The End of Nature" carried on where Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" left off.
Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we journalists routinely cover - conventional, manageable programs like budget shortfalls and pollution - may be about to convert to chaotic, unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment, creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is causing the melt of the arctic to release so much freshwater into the North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of changes that could radically alter civilizations.
That's one challenge we journalists face - how to tell such a story without coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most want to understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and hear.
As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers, there is an even harder challenge - to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."
Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right - the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.
[More at URL]
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DOBSON: LOTT-NELSON FILIBUSTER COMPROMISE 'A DISASTER'
Deal would still allow Dems to block nominees under
"extreme circumstances."
Focus on the Family
by Pete Winn, associate editor
http://www.family.org/cforum/feature/a0036504.cfm
SUMMARY: A deal may be in the works to allow up-or-down
Senate votes for four of President Bush's stalled judicial
nominees. But pro-family leaders stand opposed.
Mainstream media reports indicate that Sens. Trent Lott,
R-Miss., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., are heading up private
efforts to broker a so-called "compromise" in order to
move past the impasse in the Senate over the president's
judicial nominees.
Under the proposal, six unidentified Democrats would
refuse to join with other Senate Democrats in
filibustering four court nominees. In turn, six
Republicans would agree not to support Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist when he "pulls the trigger" and invokes
the constitutional option -- a measure that would lower
the threshold for breaking filibusters on judicial
nominations from 60 votes down to 51.
The plan would also reportedly allow Democrats to retain
the right to filibuster nominees under "extreme
circumstances" -- language that is being met with
skepticism.
Focus on the Family Action Chairman Dr. James Dobson was
incensed that any deal was being brokered which would
evade filibuster reform -- labeling it "a disaster."
"For Monopoly players, that is like offering to trade Park
Place and Boardwalk for Baltic and Mediterranean," Dobson
said. "If the Republicans consent to this disaster,
they'll not only be abandoning the men and women who put
them in office, they'll be demonstrating that they do not
deserve the leadership entrusted to them.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., told CitizenLink he doesn't
like the compromise idea at all.
"I appreciate the effort to try to break through the
logjam," Brownback said, "but it still requires this
arbitrary throwing overboard of qualified nominees instead
of an up-or-down vote. I just don't think that's a
constitutional way that the body was meant to operate."
A spokesman for Sen. Frist said the majority leader would
not accept any compromise which did not include
restricting the use of filibusters on judicial nominations
-- and a vote on the constitutional option is still in the
offing.
Bruce Hausknecht, legal issues analyst at Focus on the
Family, explained why the Lott-Nelson plan doesn't even
qualify as a "compromise."
"To call this a 'compromise,' " Hausknecht said, "is to
call what Gen. Lee did at Appomattox a compromise. It just
isn't.
"The plan would, in effect, prevent both the
constitutional option and the filibusters from occurring,
at least for just those four nominees," he said. "But it
doesn't cover all seven of the current filibustered
nominees, and it also doesn't cover future Supreme Court
nominees."
Basically, though it isn't stipulated, Hausknecht said the
likelihood is great that the three nominees to be
sacrificed are the three federal appeals court nominees
whom conservatives support the most -- Priscilla Owen,
Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor. Sen. Democrats have
vilified each of them for making rulings as state judges
or officers which did not side with the pro-abortion
agenda of Senate liberals.
The idea that Democrats would be able to continue to
filibuster judicial nominations especially irks Don
Wildmon, president of the American Family Association
located in Mississippi, which makes him a constituent of
Sen. Lott.
"I feel betrayed," Wildmon said. "The Democrats have
promised that they won't do it, except under 'extreme
circumstances,' and we don't know what (that means). We
figure it is somebody that Ted Kennedy or Hillary Clinton
doesn't like."
"This would ensure that only liberal judges will be able
to serve on federal courts," he said. "And that's
precisely what the liberals wanted. And that's precisely
what Sen. Lott and the other Republicans betrayed their
own party and gave to the liberal Democrats."
Tom Minnery, vice president of government and public
policy at Focus on the Family Action, is at a loss to
explain the motivations for why Lott might try to broker a
compromise.
"Who knows why Trent Lott is doing this? Maybe he's trying
to be kingmaker," Minnery said. "But what he's creating is
a disaster of the first order for the campaign to restore
common sense to the federal judiciary. He's selling out
conservatives who want to see common sense restored to the
federal courts. He's playing into the hands of the
leftists in the Senate, and he must be stopped."
"We have reason to believe that this is a huge worry in
the Senate today," Minnery added, "that's why everybody
needs to call of both of their U.S. Senators and say they
support the constitutional option to give every judge
nominee an up- or-down vote."
TAKE ACTION: Family advocates have identified several key
GOP senators -- and one Democrat -- who particularly need
to hear from their constituents that the new deal being
proposed to end judicial filibusters must be rejected.
[More at URL]
----- 5 -----
Kraft Sponsors Gay Event
Focus on the Family
[Received in email: no URL]
Kraft Foods, maker of popular products such as Oreo
Cookies, Ritz Crackers and Maxwell House coffee, has
agreed to be a corporate sponsor for the 2006 Gay Games in
Chicago, essentially a "Gay Olympics." The Kraft logo
appears on the sponsor page of the event Web site --
gaygameschicago.org.
"This is really a crazy move for a company like Kraft,
whose advertising seems to target the traditional family,"
said Peter Brandt, senior director of issues response at
Focus on the Family. "I think a move like this can only be
damaging. We can only hope that management will listen to
consumers and pull out of the sponsorship role."
TAKE ACTION: Kraft is reportedly ignoring direct e-mail
contacts regarding the controversy. Please call the
company's toll-free number at 800-323-0768 and ask them to
drop their corporate sponsorship of the 2006 Gay Games in
Chicago.
In addition, you may use the company's online contact
form. Visit the Kraft Foods Web site:
http://www.kraftfoods.com/main.aspx?m=contact_us/cu_form1
----- 6 -----
MICROSOFT BLINKS; WASHINGTON GAY RIGHTS BILL FAILS
A gay rights bill fails thanks, in part, to efforts by a
pastor.
CITIZENLINK FEATURE:
----------------------------------------------
Microsoft Blinks; Washington Gay Rights Bill Fails
by Pete Winn, associate editor
http://www.family.org/cforum/feature/a0036491.cfm
SUMMARY: Legislation fails in the Washington Legislature
thanks, in part, to efforts by a Seattle-area pastor who
stood up for truth -- and stood face-to-face with a
corporate giant.
A bill gay lobbyists championed for 30 years failed to
garner passage in the Washington Legislature. The
involvement of evangelicals appears to have at least
played a role in its most recent failure.
Robert Higley of Washington Evangelicals for Responsible
Government said a bill which would have given minority
status to "sexual orientation," died on a 24-25 vote. It
appears to be dead until 2006 at the earliest.
Higley said the legislation passed the Washington House of
Representatives with "a good majority," then went to the
Senate, where it was sidetracked in committee. Pro-gay
lawmakers, however, used a parliamentary procedure to
bring it to the floor of the Senate.
Gay activist publications have been quick to attribute the
defeat to Microsoft -- one of Washington's largest
employers -- and to the fact that the giant software
company withdrew its long-time corporate support for the
bill after a Seattle-area pastor challenged the company on
its position.
Higley said, indeed, some of the credit for the bill's
demise this time should go to Dr. Ken Hutcherson, pastor
of the Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, Wash., who
testified against the bill before the state Legislature in
Olympia and then took on Microsoft.
On Friday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer issued a statement
saying the corporate giant had changed its mind and would
now support the bill, but for the two weeks since the
vote, the company has been under fire from gay activists
over the fact it had "caved in" -- and withdrawn its
support.
Though Hutcherson's involvement wasn't the only factor in
the bill's demise, Higley said he played a prominent and
inspired role.
"We had hearings in both the House and the Senate, and . .
. Ken Hutcherson's testimony was good and effective,"
Higley said.
Hutcherson, an African-American, organized Seattle's
Mayday for Marriage rally last October, in which thousands
of people came to stand up for traditional marriage.
He told CitizenLink recently he decided to confront
Microsoft in person when he heard the arguments being
advanced for the bill.
"I went down (to the Legislature in Olympia), and that's
when I heard the representatives from Microsoft that were
giving testimony for the bill," Hutcherson said. "They
were giving such strong testimony that even the chairman
of the committee had to ask whether they were representing
Microsoft as a company."
Technically, they may not have been representing the
company, according to Higley, but the witnesses did speak
as if they were conveying the company's endorsement. In
fact, Hutcherson said, the Microsoft representatives
specifically told the committee that the company liked the
bill -- "that it was great for the state, it was great for
their business, it helped recruit people because they were
a 'fair and open business' and that this bill should be
passed."
That made Hutcherson upset.
"It was fine that Microsoft had that as their personal
policy," he said. "But stepping outside of their four
walls and trying to make their policy my policy was not
going to go."
Why did he feel so strongly?
(To read the rest of this story, click on the link below)
http://www.family.org/cforum/feature/a0036491.cfm
FOR MORE INFORMATION: To learn more about the homosexual
agenda for America, and how Christians can counter the gay
movement, CitizenLink recommends the book, "The Homosexual
Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom
Today," by Alan Sears and Craig Osten.
http://www.family.org/resources/itempg.cfm?itemid=4215&refcd=CE05ECZL&tvar=no
[More at URL]
----- 7 -----
Citizenlink
Focus on the Family
STATE ISSUE ALERT:
----------------------------------------------
Nebraska Eyes Protections for Sexual Orientation
by Erin Blad, senior constituent communications
coordinator
[Received in email; no URL]
SUMMARY: Cornhuskers could find protected status for
sexual orientation in unexpected places.
Liberal legislators in Nebraska are considering extending
special protections to homosexuals.
The method they're pursuing is to amend legislation that
would otherwise benefit Nebraskans to include protection
for sexual orientation -- a maneuver that puts the entire
bill in jeopardy of failing. This has already happened to
a recent medical research bill.
The problem with what liberals are doing is that protected
status is traditionally granted based on unchanging
characteristics such as gender and ethnicity. Adding
sexual orientation to the list neglects research
indicating that sexual orientation is not an immutable
characteristic. Thousands of homosexuals who have walked
away from their unwanted same-sex attractions are walking
testaments to the truth that sexual orientation can be
changed.
Dr. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church in
Kirkland, Wash., is outraged that sexual orientation -- in
Nebraska and across the country -- could soon receive the
same protection African-Americans fought for.
"Sometimes, we had to come back two or three days to the
hospital to get seen, as sick as I was as a little boy,"
he said. "How many times have you ever heard of
homosexuals not being able to be treated in the hospital
until all the heterosexuals were taken care of? Never."
TAKE ACTION: If you live in Nebraska, it is important that
you call your senators today and ask them to actively
oppose any attempts to attach sexual orientation to
current legislation. For contact information for your
senator, visit the CitizenLink Action Center and type your
ZIP code into the space provided.
http://www3.capwiz.com/fof/legdir.tt?command=statedir&state=NE
For more information on this topic, please call Family
First at (402) 435-3210.
----- 8 -----
Family News in Focus
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Focus on the Family
Bob Ditmer
* Capitol Hill compromise to end showdown over president bush’s judicial nominees gets criticism
1. Trent Lott negotiating with Ben Nelson - allowing some of Bush's nominees to get a vote, Democrats would let several through, but not all, and would preserve filibuster rules. Nelson says the deal is done on his side. Tim Minnery of FotF calls it "a disaster for the Republicans" and "doesn't do anything to permanently correct... an abuse of the legislative process." Demands that no compromises be considered. Minnery and FotF demand calls in immediately. "It's horrifying to think senator lott would sell out the senator and his nominees." At the end of the story, a third plug asking for calls.
* Will there be a position change in the administration's position on embryonic stem
2. Bush promised "no new human embryonic stem cells will be harvested for research." "Pro-abortion congressmen, however, are trying to force the president to do otherwise." National Right to Life says push for Federal funds - "serious danger this legislation could pass Congress." "There is a hidden agenda on the political stage." "There is an agenda here that, unless it's checked, will result in a commodity based on the marketing of humans." Includes action item to call in and oppose any stem cell legislation.
* Hotels that avoid porn channels are being rewarded
4. Web site lists hotels that don't have PPV porn channels. Plug for Best Western, which doesn't carry PPV porn. "This is a fight back against the pornographers, and I think we have to support this move." - Family Research Council. URL: cleanhotels.com
* Plan has been introduced on Capitol Hill to permanently do away with the death tax
5. Wayne Allard, Colorado and Jeff Sessions, Alabama jointly introduce legislation to end the inheritance tax completely, permanent, and immediately. "The death tax also costs the economy thousands upon thousands of jobs." Claims that all small businesses are affected by the inheritance tax, claims that half their jobs are lost because half of
* Several military Chaplains are suing the Navy for religious discrimination.
7. Family Research Council claims the complaints against religious discrimination from evangelical Christians in the military are "Christophobia" and calls it an illegal crackdown.
* Study says homosexual men react to some scents differently than heterosexuals
3. "Do homosexual men react differently to some scents than heterosexuals?" Warren Throckmorton says the study doesn't tell us anything. "It doesn't say anything about how the men's brains got that way."
** NOT IN SUMMARY: Pflag allowed to show materials at nation PTA meeting.
6. Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays is outraged, claims they weren't allowed a booth. The PTA is "supporting a homosexual agenda, and denying all information to children that people are not born homosexual and can be changed." Claims that the PTA will soon be "as pro-homosexual as the NEA."
----- 9 -----
CWA Says, ‘We’re Not Wild About Harry’
5/10/2005
Concerned Women for America
http://www.cwfa.org/articles/8093/MEDIA/nation/index.htm
Washington, D.C. – Concerned Women for America (CWA) reacts to Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nevada) recent statements about Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist’s (R-Tennessee) intent to end the Democrats’ refusal to give President Bush’s judicial nominees a vote in the Senate.
“Maybe if Sen. Reid listened to his own statements about the log jam he’s causing, he’d get a clue about why he’s the minority leader instead of the majority leader,” said Jan LaRue, CWA’s chief counsel.
According to the Los Angeles Times on May 10, Reid said, “A number of Democrats will vote against confirmation on the floor. But we know the difference between opposing nominees and blocking nominees. We will oppose bad nominees, but we will only block unacceptable nominees. …One reason why the White House won’t send new judges to the Senate is that they don’t want to give Senate Democrats a chance to continue to demonstrate that we are reasonable.”
CWA’s LaRue: “Maybe one reason the White House won’t send any ‘new’ judges to the Senate is because they can’t stop laughing long enough to figure out why ‘bad’ nominees are separate from ‘unacceptable’ nominees. Or maybe it’s because they’re not going to subject any more excellent nominees to such shameful and unreasonable behavior.”
According to U.S. News and World Report (May 16 issue), Reid’s spokesman’s response to this week’s push by conservative groups to end the phony filibusters is: ‘The Republicans are going to know the difference between a cooperative minority and an uncooperative minority.”
LaRue said: “Priscilla Owen will no doubt be surprised to hear that Harry and company have been ‘cooperative’ during the four years she’s been denied a vote on her confirmation.
“Reid’s spokesman also said, ‘Senate Democrats are united in their belief that the U.S. Senate will not be turned into a rubber stamp for the president.’
“A no vote on a nominee is the antithesis of a rubber stamp and Reid knows it, but refuses to give the majority of senators who want to vote a chance to do so. If Reid doesn’t end this sham, he and his fellow Democrats will take the blame and the heat when Republicans do,” LaRue concluded.
----- 10 -----
CWA Says, Politics, Sexism and Racism Behind Phony Filibusters
5/11/2005
Concerned Women for America
Washington, D.C. – Concerned Women for America (CWA) says sexist politics and exploitive racism are the real reasons the Democrats are refusing to permit votes on President Bush’s judicial nominees.
The Democrats’ memos show that Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) conspired with special interests to block Miguel Estrada’s confirmation. Why? Because as the memos (online at fairjudiciary.com and in Mark Levin’s new book, Men In Black) explain, “he is Latino” and they did not want President Bush to elevate a Latino. Kennedy then pitched it to his caucus and told them that they did not want “to have another vote like Clarence Thomas.”
“The Democrats willingly sacrificed a stellar minority nominee in a blatant attempt to hold on to a segment of their political base,” said Jan LaRue, CWA’s chief counsel.
At a press conference on May 9, Kennedy again expressed his refusal to confirm Janice Rogers Brown, an African-American woman, to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
This nation will never be America until we free ourselves from all forms of discrimination. It is a continuing, ongoing march to progress, and we are not going to turn back by appointing judges to lifetime positions who will bring us and return us back to those days of discrimination and prejudice. And that is what we believe the decisions of two of the nominees that are coming before the United States, Janice Rogers Brown, as well as the Terrence Boyle decisions, will bring us.
“Kennedy’s pretense as a heroic advocate for the civil rights movement while refusing to allow an up or down vote on Judge Rogers Brown is hypocrisy on steroids,” LaRue concluded. “Democrats can’t stand to lose their traditional hold on the black vote. They’re trashing the reputations and distorting the records of excellent nominees and failing miserably to fulfill their constitutional duty in the process. It’s also why they’re attacking Priscilla Owen. Democrats lost the married women’s vote in the last election and they fear losing the rest of female voters in the next, if they allow the president to appoint a woman to the bench.”
----- 11 -----
Hearings Begin On TVC’s California Marriage Protection Amendment
For Publication On Or After May 10, 2005
By Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition
Traditional Values Coalition
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=2262
Washington, DC – The California Assembly and Senate began debate on May 10 on a marriage protection amendment proposed by the Traditional Values Coalition. The amendment is being sponsored by Assemblyman Ray Haynes and Senator Bill Morrow.
The amendment is designed to take California’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed as Proposition 22 in 2000 and embed its language into the state constitution. The amendment, however, does more. It also bans homosexual civil unions or domestic partnerships that provide the same legal benefits as traditional marriage.
The need for this amendment is clear. Radical homosexuals in the California legislature are currently trying to amend the state’s family code to remove references to men and women from statutes dealing with marriage. And, an activist judge in San Francisco has recently declared Proposition 22 “unconstitutional.”
The only way to defend marriage from homosexuals and activist judges is to do what 17 other states have already done: embed a traditional definition of marriage in the state constitution. The same must be done at the federal level if we are to protect marriage as a union of one man and one woman.
It is encouraging to me that opposition to same-sex marriage is growing in the U.S. As more and more Americans become aware of the serious cultural consequences of legalizing homosexual marriages, they are taking a position that comes down squarely on the side of traditionalism.
A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows that 68% of those surveyed are against homosexual marriage—up from 55% just one year ago. In addition, 57% favor a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a one man, one woman union.
The cultural and emotional dangers of legalizing same-sex marriage are legion. Dr. Stanley Kurtz has written extensively on the devastating consequences that homosexual marriage is having in Scandinavian countries that have legalized it. In Sweden, the idea of homosexual marriage has separated the idea of marriage from parenthood. In addition, Dr. George Rekers, Professor of Neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, has recently published a lengthy paper on the serious psychological dangers facing children who are reared in same-sex households.
In his paper, Dr. Rekers deals specifically with an Arkansas regulation that banned homosexuals from becoming foster parents. He defended the Arkansas law, but it was eventually overturned by a liberal judge. Rekers observed: “Replicated research evidence clearly demonstrates that homosexually-behaving adults have substantially higher rates of psychological disorder and substance abuse. Further replicated research demonstrates that parenting by adults with psychological disorders produces emotional and behavioral maladjustment in children.”
Dr. Rekers’ study chronicles a whole range of problems associated with the homosexual lifestyle—including unstable relationships, rampant sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse, potential for sexual molestation, and more.
Do we really want to legalize a relationship that is fraught with severe psychological problems, substance abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, domestic violence, and unfaithful relationships? Is this the kind of household in which children should be reared?
The well-being of children is a primary reason why California and other states without marriage protection amendments need to pass them. Children are the future—and what kind of future are we giving them if we put them into unsafe home environments? We must defend traditional marriage and protect children from being thrust into environments that endanger their emotional and physical safety.
----- 12 -----
Anti-abortion activist Neal Horsley: "When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."
News Hounds
As reported on FOX News Radio
The Alan Colmes Show
May 6, 2005
http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/randirhodes/content/audio/051005/alan_mule.wav
http://www.newshounds.us/2005/05/06/bizarre_sex_habits_of_the_extreme_rightwing.php#more
Bizarre Sex Habits of The Extreme Right-Wing
Last night, anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley was a guest on The Alan Colmes Show, a FOX News radio program. The topic was an interesting one - whether or not an internet service provider should allow Horsley to post the names of abortion doctors on his website. Horsley does that as a way of targeting them and one doctor has been killed. In the course of the interview, however, Colmes asked Horsley about his background, including a statement that he had admitted to engaging in homosexual and bestiality sex.
[Ed. Note: the transcription here is a little condensed and loose, but is substantively accurate. Verify it with the .wav file if you want, I did.]
At first, Horsley laughed and said, "Just because it's printed in the media, people jump to believe it."
"Is it true?" Colmes asked.
"Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I..."
AC: "You had sex with animals?"
NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."
AC: "I'm not so sure that that is so."
NH: "You didn't grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?"
AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"
NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm..."
Colmes said he thought there were a lot of people in the audience who grew up on farms, are living on farms now, raising kids on farms and "and I don't think they are dating Elsie right now. You know what I'm saying?"
Horsley said, "You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You're naive. You know better than that... If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it."
In addition to Horsley, Colmes has recently interviewed Randall Terry another radical anti-abortionist and anti-gay activist. In the middle of an otherwise serious interview, Terry began joking - apropos of nothing - that he and Colmes were ex-lovers.
Another extremist interviewed by Colmes not too long ago was Rev. Fred Phelps who stated on the show that he thought the death penalty should be given for those who engage in "sodomy." When Colmes asked Phelps if he had ever engaged in gay sex, Phelps blustered but never said no.
Hmm, I'm beginning to sense a pattern here. Come to think of it, Ann Coulter is reputed to have an unusually, er, wide-ranging sex life, too, though as far as I know it's just confined to men. Still, it doesn't exactly match the profile of an ultra-conservative.
In "BRING IT, POPTART" news, Eastside pastor Hutcherson promises "action" against Microsoft for re-endorsing anti-discrimination legislation;
Swedish study indicates possible biological basis for homosexuality in males;
Transcription of speech talking about something I've noticed before; some subsets of fundamentalism seem to be clustering around the idea that conservation is unchristian, and that god will provide in all cases until Jesus returns;
Focus on the Family launches into any attempt to compromise on the judicial rules change issue - anything less than a rules change is unacceptable (includes action item);
FotF attacks Kraft for helping sponsour the Gay Games - includes action item;
Focus on the Family congratulates Rev. Hutcherson for getting Microsoft to back off from HB1515; Hutcherson notes that they now know Microsoft can be "pushed around;"
FotF action item against GBLT-protections in medical treatment in Nebraska; quotes Hutcherson, again, who may now be a rising star in the fundamentalist movement;
Today's Family News in Focus includes story (in theory) on the pheromone study talked about above;
Concerned Women for America launches Harry Reid over the judicial issue;
CWA says judicial nominee blocking is racist and sexist;
Traditional Values Coalition has three articles, which includes link to action items, on "their" California anti-marriage-rights initiative;
Anti-abortion activist Neal Horsley, of the "Nuremberg Files" website listing home addresses and photographs of doctors who perform abortions, defends having sex with mules when growing up as "normal" and something everyone does. NO, I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.
----- 1 -----
Eastside Pastor Planning New Action Against Microsoft
KIRO 7 News
POSTED: 8:14 am PDT May 9, 2005
UPDATED: 11:02 am PDT May 9, 2005
http://www.kirotv.com/money/4466224/detail.html
REDMOND, Wash. -- An Eastside pastor who pressured Microsoft to take a neutral stand on gay rights legislation said he is planning action against the company now that it has changed its position, KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reported.
The Rev. Ken Hutcherson of Antioch Bible Church said Microsoft backed off supporting a gay rights bill when he threatened a boycott.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent employees an e-mail last week saying it would support gay rights legislation in the future on the state and national level to promote diversity in the workplace.
Hutcherson told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News last Friday that Ballmer "just goes the way the wind is blowing."
"You get enough pressure on him, he's gonna change,'' Hutcherson said. "He's just proved to everybody that if you put enough pressure on Microsoft, they'll bend."
Hutcherson said he is planning a new round of pressure against Microsoft, but wouldn't say exactly what those plans are.
"They're not a business for diversity," he said in an interview with KIRO 7 Eyewitness News on Sunday. "Microsoft is a business for homosexuals."
[More at URL]
----- 2 -----
Brain responses differ in gay, straight men
Study: Homosexuals react to male sex hormones like women
The Associated Press
Updated: 5:19 p.m. ET May 9, 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7791888/
WASHINGTON - The brains of homosexual men respond more like those of women when reacting to a chemical derived from the male sex hormone, new evidence of physical differences related to sexual orientation.
The finding, published in Tuesday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows differences in physiological reaction to sex hormones.
Researchers led by Ivanka Savic at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, exposed heterosexual men and women and homosexual men to chemicals derived from male and female sex hormones. These chemicals are thought to be pheromones, molecules known to trigger responses such as defense and sex in many animals.
Whether humans respond to pheromones has been the subject of debate, although in 2000 American researchers reported finding a gene that they believe directs the human pheromone receptor in the nose.
Biological basis to sexual orientation?
In the Swedish study, when sniffing a chemical from testosterone, the male hormone, portions of the brains involved in sexual activity were activated in gay men and straight women, but not in straight men, the researchers found.
[More at URL]
[Ed Note: Also, a BBC story which is more complete:]
Sniffing out potential partners
Last Updated: Tuesday, 10 May, 2005, 09:24 GMT 10:24 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4532029.stm
BBC News
Humans are highly skilled at sniffing out suitable sexual partners, research has found.
Scientists have shown that natural body scent plays a key role in determining whether we find somebody attractive.
Gay men were found to be particularly good at detecting the scent of other gay men.
The research, by the Philadelphia's Monell Chemical Senses Center, will be published in the journal Psychological Science.
They found that homosexual men and lesbian women prefer different body odour from heterosexual men and women.
In a second study using brain scans, researchers showed a chemical in male sweat stimulated the brains of homosexual men and heterosexual women in the same way.
Natural scents, or pheromones, often do not register on a conscious level - but it has long been thought they probably have a big impact on behaviour.
The Monell team asked a group of 82 straight and gay men and women to sniff underam sweat collected from 24 donors of different gender and sexual orientation.
The preferences of gay men were strikingly different from those of heterosexual men and women, and lesbian women.
Gay men preferred the odours of other gay men, and heterosexual women.
The smell of gay men were the least liked by heterosexual men and women, and lesbians.
[More at URL]
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On Receiving Harvard Med's Global Environment Citizen Award
By Bill Moyers
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Wednesday 01 December 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120504G.shtml
I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom you never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and just plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.
The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill McKibben. He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the environment. His bestseller "The End of Nature" carried on where Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" left off.
Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we journalists routinely cover - conventional, manageable programs like budget shortfalls and pollution - may be about to convert to chaotic, unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment, creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is causing the melt of the arctic to release so much freshwater into the North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of changes that could radically alter civilizations.
That's one challenge we journalists face - how to tell such a story without coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most want to understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and hear.
As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers, there is an even harder challenge - to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."
Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right - the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.
[More at URL]
----- 4 -----
DOBSON: LOTT-NELSON FILIBUSTER COMPROMISE 'A DISASTER'
Deal would still allow Dems to block nominees under
"extreme circumstances."
Focus on the Family
by Pete Winn, associate editor
http://www.family.org/cforum/feature/a0036504.cfm
SUMMARY: A deal may be in the works to allow up-or-down
Senate votes for four of President Bush's stalled judicial
nominees. But pro-family leaders stand opposed.
Mainstream media reports indicate that Sens. Trent Lott,
R-Miss., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., are heading up private
efforts to broker a so-called "compromise" in order to
move past the impasse in the Senate over the president's
judicial nominees.
Under the proposal, six unidentified Democrats would
refuse to join with other Senate Democrats in
filibustering four court nominees. In turn, six
Republicans would agree not to support Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist when he "pulls the trigger" and invokes
the constitutional option -- a measure that would lower
the threshold for breaking filibusters on judicial
nominations from 60 votes down to 51.
The plan would also reportedly allow Democrats to retain
the right to filibuster nominees under "extreme
circumstances" -- language that is being met with
skepticism.
Focus on the Family Action Chairman Dr. James Dobson was
incensed that any deal was being brokered which would
evade filibuster reform -- labeling it "a disaster."
"For Monopoly players, that is like offering to trade Park
Place and Boardwalk for Baltic and Mediterranean," Dobson
said. "If the Republicans consent to this disaster,
they'll not only be abandoning the men and women who put
them in office, they'll be demonstrating that they do not
deserve the leadership entrusted to them.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., told CitizenLink he doesn't
like the compromise idea at all.
"I appreciate the effort to try to break through the
logjam," Brownback said, "but it still requires this
arbitrary throwing overboard of qualified nominees instead
of an up-or-down vote. I just don't think that's a
constitutional way that the body was meant to operate."
A spokesman for Sen. Frist said the majority leader would
not accept any compromise which did not include
restricting the use of filibusters on judicial nominations
-- and a vote on the constitutional option is still in the
offing.
Bruce Hausknecht, legal issues analyst at Focus on the
Family, explained why the Lott-Nelson plan doesn't even
qualify as a "compromise."
"To call this a 'compromise,' " Hausknecht said, "is to
call what Gen. Lee did at Appomattox a compromise. It just
isn't.
"The plan would, in effect, prevent both the
constitutional option and the filibusters from occurring,
at least for just those four nominees," he said. "But it
doesn't cover all seven of the current filibustered
nominees, and it also doesn't cover future Supreme Court
nominees."
Basically, though it isn't stipulated, Hausknecht said the
likelihood is great that the three nominees to be
sacrificed are the three federal appeals court nominees
whom conservatives support the most -- Priscilla Owen,
Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor. Sen. Democrats have
vilified each of them for making rulings as state judges
or officers which did not side with the pro-abortion
agenda of Senate liberals.
The idea that Democrats would be able to continue to
filibuster judicial nominations especially irks Don
Wildmon, president of the American Family Association
located in Mississippi, which makes him a constituent of
Sen. Lott.
"I feel betrayed," Wildmon said. "The Democrats have
promised that they won't do it, except under 'extreme
circumstances,' and we don't know what (that means). We
figure it is somebody that Ted Kennedy or Hillary Clinton
doesn't like."
"This would ensure that only liberal judges will be able
to serve on federal courts," he said. "And that's
precisely what the liberals wanted. And that's precisely
what Sen. Lott and the other Republicans betrayed their
own party and gave to the liberal Democrats."
Tom Minnery, vice president of government and public
policy at Focus on the Family Action, is at a loss to
explain the motivations for why Lott might try to broker a
compromise.
"Who knows why Trent Lott is doing this? Maybe he's trying
to be kingmaker," Minnery said. "But what he's creating is
a disaster of the first order for the campaign to restore
common sense to the federal judiciary. He's selling out
conservatives who want to see common sense restored to the
federal courts. He's playing into the hands of the
leftists in the Senate, and he must be stopped."
"We have reason to believe that this is a huge worry in
the Senate today," Minnery added, "that's why everybody
needs to call of both of their U.S. Senators and say they
support the constitutional option to give every judge
nominee an up- or-down vote."
TAKE ACTION: Family advocates have identified several key
GOP senators -- and one Democrat -- who particularly need
to hear from their constituents that the new deal being
proposed to end judicial filibusters must be rejected.
[More at URL]
----- 5 -----
Kraft Sponsors Gay Event
Focus on the Family
[Received in email: no URL]
Kraft Foods, maker of popular products such as Oreo
Cookies, Ritz Crackers and Maxwell House coffee, has
agreed to be a corporate sponsor for the 2006 Gay Games in
Chicago, essentially a "Gay Olympics." The Kraft logo
appears on the sponsor page of the event Web site --
gaygameschicago.org.
"This is really a crazy move for a company like Kraft,
whose advertising seems to target the traditional family,"
said Peter Brandt, senior director of issues response at
Focus on the Family. "I think a move like this can only be
damaging. We can only hope that management will listen to
consumers and pull out of the sponsorship role."
TAKE ACTION: Kraft is reportedly ignoring direct e-mail
contacts regarding the controversy. Please call the
company's toll-free number at 800-323-0768 and ask them to
drop their corporate sponsorship of the 2006 Gay Games in
Chicago.
In addition, you may use the company's online contact
form. Visit the Kraft Foods Web site:
http://www.kraftfoods.com/main.aspx?m=contact_us/cu_form1
----- 6 -----
MICROSOFT BLINKS; WASHINGTON GAY RIGHTS BILL FAILS
A gay rights bill fails thanks, in part, to efforts by a
pastor.
CITIZENLINK FEATURE:
----------------------------------------------
Microsoft Blinks; Washington Gay Rights Bill Fails
by Pete Winn, associate editor
http://www.family.org/cforum/feature/a0036491.cfm
SUMMARY: Legislation fails in the Washington Legislature
thanks, in part, to efforts by a Seattle-area pastor who
stood up for truth -- and stood face-to-face with a
corporate giant.
A bill gay lobbyists championed for 30 years failed to
garner passage in the Washington Legislature. The
involvement of evangelicals appears to have at least
played a role in its most recent failure.
Robert Higley of Washington Evangelicals for Responsible
Government said a bill which would have given minority
status to "sexual orientation," died on a 24-25 vote. It
appears to be dead until 2006 at the earliest.
Higley said the legislation passed the Washington House of
Representatives with "a good majority," then went to the
Senate, where it was sidetracked in committee. Pro-gay
lawmakers, however, used a parliamentary procedure to
bring it to the floor of the Senate.
Gay activist publications have been quick to attribute the
defeat to Microsoft -- one of Washington's largest
employers -- and to the fact that the giant software
company withdrew its long-time corporate support for the
bill after a Seattle-area pastor challenged the company on
its position.
Higley said, indeed, some of the credit for the bill's
demise this time should go to Dr. Ken Hutcherson, pastor
of the Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, Wash., who
testified against the bill before the state Legislature in
Olympia and then took on Microsoft.
On Friday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer issued a statement
saying the corporate giant had changed its mind and would
now support the bill, but for the two weeks since the
vote, the company has been under fire from gay activists
over the fact it had "caved in" -- and withdrawn its
support.
Though Hutcherson's involvement wasn't the only factor in
the bill's demise, Higley said he played a prominent and
inspired role.
"We had hearings in both the House and the Senate, and . .
. Ken Hutcherson's testimony was good and effective,"
Higley said.
Hutcherson, an African-American, organized Seattle's
Mayday for Marriage rally last October, in which thousands
of people came to stand up for traditional marriage.
He told CitizenLink recently he decided to confront
Microsoft in person when he heard the arguments being
advanced for the bill.
"I went down (to the Legislature in Olympia), and that's
when I heard the representatives from Microsoft that were
giving testimony for the bill," Hutcherson said. "They
were giving such strong testimony that even the chairman
of the committee had to ask whether they were representing
Microsoft as a company."
Technically, they may not have been representing the
company, according to Higley, but the witnesses did speak
as if they were conveying the company's endorsement. In
fact, Hutcherson said, the Microsoft representatives
specifically told the committee that the company liked the
bill -- "that it was great for the state, it was great for
their business, it helped recruit people because they were
a 'fair and open business' and that this bill should be
passed."
That made Hutcherson upset.
"It was fine that Microsoft had that as their personal
policy," he said. "But stepping outside of their four
walls and trying to make their policy my policy was not
going to go."
Why did he feel so strongly?
(To read the rest of this story, click on the link below)
http://www.family.org/cforum/feature/a0036491.cfm
FOR MORE INFORMATION: To learn more about the homosexual
agenda for America, and how Christians can counter the gay
movement, CitizenLink recommends the book, "The Homosexual
Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom
Today," by Alan Sears and Craig Osten.
http://www.family.org/resources/itempg.cfm?itemid=4215&refcd=CE05ECZL&tvar=no
[More at URL]
----- 7 -----
Citizenlink
Focus on the Family
STATE ISSUE ALERT:
----------------------------------------------
Nebraska Eyes Protections for Sexual Orientation
by Erin Blad, senior constituent communications
coordinator
[Received in email; no URL]
SUMMARY: Cornhuskers could find protected status for
sexual orientation in unexpected places.
Liberal legislators in Nebraska are considering extending
special protections to homosexuals.
The method they're pursuing is to amend legislation that
would otherwise benefit Nebraskans to include protection
for sexual orientation -- a maneuver that puts the entire
bill in jeopardy of failing. This has already happened to
a recent medical research bill.
The problem with what liberals are doing is that protected
status is traditionally granted based on unchanging
characteristics such as gender and ethnicity. Adding
sexual orientation to the list neglects research
indicating that sexual orientation is not an immutable
characteristic. Thousands of homosexuals who have walked
away from their unwanted same-sex attractions are walking
testaments to the truth that sexual orientation can be
changed.
Dr. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church in
Kirkland, Wash., is outraged that sexual orientation -- in
Nebraska and across the country -- could soon receive the
same protection African-Americans fought for.
"Sometimes, we had to come back two or three days to the
hospital to get seen, as sick as I was as a little boy,"
he said. "How many times have you ever heard of
homosexuals not being able to be treated in the hospital
until all the heterosexuals were taken care of? Never."
TAKE ACTION: If you live in Nebraska, it is important that
you call your senators today and ask them to actively
oppose any attempts to attach sexual orientation to
current legislation. For contact information for your
senator, visit the CitizenLink Action Center and type your
ZIP code into the space provided.
http://www3.capwiz.com/fof/legdir.tt?command=statedir&state=NE
For more information on this topic, please call Family
First at (402) 435-3210.
----- 8 -----
Family News in Focus
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Focus on the Family
Bob Ditmer
* Capitol Hill compromise to end showdown over president bush’s judicial nominees gets criticism
1. Trent Lott negotiating with Ben Nelson - allowing some of Bush's nominees to get a vote, Democrats would let several through, but not all, and would preserve filibuster rules. Nelson says the deal is done on his side. Tim Minnery of FotF calls it "a disaster for the Republicans" and "doesn't do anything to permanently correct... an abuse of the legislative process." Demands that no compromises be considered. Minnery and FotF demand calls in immediately. "It's horrifying to think senator lott would sell out the senator and his nominees." At the end of the story, a third plug asking for calls.
* Will there be a position change in the administration's position on embryonic stem
2. Bush promised "no new human embryonic stem cells will be harvested for research." "Pro-abortion congressmen, however, are trying to force the president to do otherwise." National Right to Life says push for Federal funds - "serious danger this legislation could pass Congress." "There is a hidden agenda on the political stage." "There is an agenda here that, unless it's checked, will result in a commodity based on the marketing of humans." Includes action item to call in and oppose any stem cell legislation.
* Hotels that avoid porn channels are being rewarded
4. Web site lists hotels that don't have PPV porn channels. Plug for Best Western, which doesn't carry PPV porn. "This is a fight back against the pornographers, and I think we have to support this move." - Family Research Council. URL: cleanhotels.com
* Plan has been introduced on Capitol Hill to permanently do away with the death tax
5. Wayne Allard, Colorado and Jeff Sessions, Alabama jointly introduce legislation to end the inheritance tax completely, permanent, and immediately. "The death tax also costs the economy thousands upon thousands of jobs." Claims that all small businesses are affected by the inheritance tax, claims that half their jobs are lost because half of
* Several military Chaplains are suing the Navy for religious discrimination.
7. Family Research Council claims the complaints against religious discrimination from evangelical Christians in the military are "Christophobia" and calls it an illegal crackdown.
* Study says homosexual men react to some scents differently than heterosexuals
3. "Do homosexual men react differently to some scents than heterosexuals?" Warren Throckmorton says the study doesn't tell us anything. "It doesn't say anything about how the men's brains got that way."
** NOT IN SUMMARY: Pflag allowed to show materials at nation PTA meeting.
6. Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays is outraged, claims they weren't allowed a booth. The PTA is "supporting a homosexual agenda, and denying all information to children that people are not born homosexual and can be changed." Claims that the PTA will soon be "as pro-homosexual as the NEA."
----- 9 -----
CWA Says, ‘We’re Not Wild About Harry’
5/10/2005
Concerned Women for America
http://www.cwfa.org/articles/8093/MEDIA/nation/index.htm
Washington, D.C. – Concerned Women for America (CWA) reacts to Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nevada) recent statements about Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist’s (R-Tennessee) intent to end the Democrats’ refusal to give President Bush’s judicial nominees a vote in the Senate.
“Maybe if Sen. Reid listened to his own statements about the log jam he’s causing, he’d get a clue about why he’s the minority leader instead of the majority leader,” said Jan LaRue, CWA’s chief counsel.
According to the Los Angeles Times on May 10, Reid said, “A number of Democrats will vote against confirmation on the floor. But we know the difference between opposing nominees and blocking nominees. We will oppose bad nominees, but we will only block unacceptable nominees. …One reason why the White House won’t send new judges to the Senate is that they don’t want to give Senate Democrats a chance to continue to demonstrate that we are reasonable.”
CWA’s LaRue: “Maybe one reason the White House won’t send any ‘new’ judges to the Senate is because they can’t stop laughing long enough to figure out why ‘bad’ nominees are separate from ‘unacceptable’ nominees. Or maybe it’s because they’re not going to subject any more excellent nominees to such shameful and unreasonable behavior.”
According to U.S. News and World Report (May 16 issue), Reid’s spokesman’s response to this week’s push by conservative groups to end the phony filibusters is: ‘The Republicans are going to know the difference between a cooperative minority and an uncooperative minority.”
LaRue said: “Priscilla Owen will no doubt be surprised to hear that Harry and company have been ‘cooperative’ during the four years she’s been denied a vote on her confirmation.
“Reid’s spokesman also said, ‘Senate Democrats are united in their belief that the U.S. Senate will not be turned into a rubber stamp for the president.’
“A no vote on a nominee is the antithesis of a rubber stamp and Reid knows it, but refuses to give the majority of senators who want to vote a chance to do so. If Reid doesn’t end this sham, he and his fellow Democrats will take the blame and the heat when Republicans do,” LaRue concluded.
----- 10 -----
CWA Says, Politics, Sexism and Racism Behind Phony Filibusters
5/11/2005
Concerned Women for America
Washington, D.C. – Concerned Women for America (CWA) says sexist politics and exploitive racism are the real reasons the Democrats are refusing to permit votes on President Bush’s judicial nominees.
The Democrats’ memos show that Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) conspired with special interests to block Miguel Estrada’s confirmation. Why? Because as the memos (online at fairjudiciary.com and in Mark Levin’s new book, Men In Black) explain, “he is Latino” and they did not want President Bush to elevate a Latino. Kennedy then pitched it to his caucus and told them that they did not want “to have another vote like Clarence Thomas.”
“The Democrats willingly sacrificed a stellar minority nominee in a blatant attempt to hold on to a segment of their political base,” said Jan LaRue, CWA’s chief counsel.
At a press conference on May 9, Kennedy again expressed his refusal to confirm Janice Rogers Brown, an African-American woman, to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
This nation will never be America until we free ourselves from all forms of discrimination. It is a continuing, ongoing march to progress, and we are not going to turn back by appointing judges to lifetime positions who will bring us and return us back to those days of discrimination and prejudice. And that is what we believe the decisions of two of the nominees that are coming before the United States, Janice Rogers Brown, as well as the Terrence Boyle decisions, will bring us.
“Kennedy’s pretense as a heroic advocate for the civil rights movement while refusing to allow an up or down vote on Judge Rogers Brown is hypocrisy on steroids,” LaRue concluded. “Democrats can’t stand to lose their traditional hold on the black vote. They’re trashing the reputations and distorting the records of excellent nominees and failing miserably to fulfill their constitutional duty in the process. It’s also why they’re attacking Priscilla Owen. Democrats lost the married women’s vote in the last election and they fear losing the rest of female voters in the next, if they allow the president to appoint a woman to the bench.”
----- 11 -----
Hearings Begin On TVC’s California Marriage Protection Amendment
For Publication On Or After May 10, 2005
By Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition
Traditional Values Coalition
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=2262
Washington, DC – The California Assembly and Senate began debate on May 10 on a marriage protection amendment proposed by the Traditional Values Coalition. The amendment is being sponsored by Assemblyman Ray Haynes and Senator Bill Morrow.
The amendment is designed to take California’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), passed as Proposition 22 in 2000 and embed its language into the state constitution. The amendment, however, does more. It also bans homosexual civil unions or domestic partnerships that provide the same legal benefits as traditional marriage.
The need for this amendment is clear. Radical homosexuals in the California legislature are currently trying to amend the state’s family code to remove references to men and women from statutes dealing with marriage. And, an activist judge in San Francisco has recently declared Proposition 22 “unconstitutional.”
The only way to defend marriage from homosexuals and activist judges is to do what 17 other states have already done: embed a traditional definition of marriage in the state constitution. The same must be done at the federal level if we are to protect marriage as a union of one man and one woman.
It is encouraging to me that opposition to same-sex marriage is growing in the U.S. As more and more Americans become aware of the serious cultural consequences of legalizing homosexual marriages, they are taking a position that comes down squarely on the side of traditionalism.
A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows that 68% of those surveyed are against homosexual marriage—up from 55% just one year ago. In addition, 57% favor a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a one man, one woman union.
The cultural and emotional dangers of legalizing same-sex marriage are legion. Dr. Stanley Kurtz has written extensively on the devastating consequences that homosexual marriage is having in Scandinavian countries that have legalized it. In Sweden, the idea of homosexual marriage has separated the idea of marriage from parenthood. In addition, Dr. George Rekers, Professor of Neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, has recently published a lengthy paper on the serious psychological dangers facing children who are reared in same-sex households.
In his paper, Dr. Rekers deals specifically with an Arkansas regulation that banned homosexuals from becoming foster parents. He defended the Arkansas law, but it was eventually overturned by a liberal judge. Rekers observed: “Replicated research evidence clearly demonstrates that homosexually-behaving adults have substantially higher rates of psychological disorder and substance abuse. Further replicated research demonstrates that parenting by adults with psychological disorders produces emotional and behavioral maladjustment in children.”
Dr. Rekers’ study chronicles a whole range of problems associated with the homosexual lifestyle—including unstable relationships, rampant sexually transmitted diseases, drug abuse, potential for sexual molestation, and more.
Do we really want to legalize a relationship that is fraught with severe psychological problems, substance abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, domestic violence, and unfaithful relationships? Is this the kind of household in which children should be reared?
The well-being of children is a primary reason why California and other states without marriage protection amendments need to pass them. Children are the future—and what kind of future are we giving them if we put them into unsafe home environments? We must defend traditional marriage and protect children from being thrust into environments that endanger their emotional and physical safety.
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Anti-abortion activist Neal Horsley: "When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."
News Hounds
As reported on FOX News Radio
The Alan Colmes Show
May 6, 2005
http://www.therandirhodesshow.com/randirhodes/content/audio/051005/alan_mule.wav
http://www.newshounds.us/2005/05/06/bizarre_sex_habits_of_the_extreme_rightwing.php#more
Bizarre Sex Habits of The Extreme Right-Wing
Last night, anti-abortion extremist Neal Horsley was a guest on The Alan Colmes Show, a FOX News radio program. The topic was an interesting one - whether or not an internet service provider should allow Horsley to post the names of abortion doctors on his website. Horsley does that as a way of targeting them and one doctor has been killed. In the course of the interview, however, Colmes asked Horsley about his background, including a statement that he had admitted to engaging in homosexual and bestiality sex.
[Ed. Note: the transcription here is a little condensed and loose, but is substantively accurate. Verify it with the .wav file if you want, I did.]
At first, Horsley laughed and said, "Just because it's printed in the media, people jump to believe it."
"Is it true?" Colmes asked.
"Hey, Alan, if you want to accuse me of having sex when I was a fool, I did everything that crossed my mind that looked like I..."
AC: "You had sex with animals?"
NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."
AC: "I'm not so sure that that is so."
NH: "You didn't grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?"
AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"
NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm..."
Colmes said he thought there were a lot of people in the audience who grew up on farms, are living on farms now, raising kids on farms and "and I don't think they are dating Elsie right now. You know what I'm saying?"
Horsley said, "You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You're naive. You know better than that... If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it."
In addition to Horsley, Colmes has recently interviewed Randall Terry another radical anti-abortionist and anti-gay activist. In the middle of an otherwise serious interview, Terry began joking - apropos of nothing - that he and Colmes were ex-lovers.
Another extremist interviewed by Colmes not too long ago was Rev. Fred Phelps who stated on the show that he thought the death penalty should be given for those who engage in "sodomy." When Colmes asked Phelps if he had ever engaged in gay sex, Phelps blustered but never said no.
Hmm, I'm beginning to sense a pattern here. Come to think of it, Ann Coulter is reputed to have an unusually, er, wide-ranging sex life, too, though as far as I know it's just confined to men. Still, it doesn't exactly match the profile of an ultra-conservative.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-11 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 01:20 am (UTC)MULES??????????????????
dude has issues!
no subject
Date: 2005-05-12 01:32 am (UTC)