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solarbirdCitizen Magazine guide to "getting good judges on the bench";
Concerned Women for America decries failure of Bolton cloture vote as evidence that Democrats cannot be trusted, treating it as a violation of the judicial filibuster agreement;
Washington Times quotes CWA wonks - not always identifying them as such - a lot in an article about "reclaiming schools";
Denver Post article on fundamentalist plans to target Senators who compromised on the judicial issue;
CWA links to an article on "Godspy: faith on the edge" condemning gender reassignment;
Traditional Values Coalition attacks the transgendered, includes a Congressional action item;
TVC asks whether the APA has "gone insane" by considering endorsing marriage rights;
TVC "report" showing that homosexuality, feminism, and "sexual immorality" cause the collapse of civilisation;
Portland, ME paper talking about the "real battle" in the Senate still ahead.
----- 18 -----
Get Good Judges on the Bench
Citizen Magazine
Focus on the Family
http://www.family.org/cforum/citizenmag/departments/a0036741.cfm
One reason we have judges like George Greer—who issued Terri Schiavo's death sentence and was re-elected in 2004—is that nobody's "forcing judges to declare their positions on things important to pro-family voters," said Chuck Hurley of Iowa Family Policy Center Action.
"The party's over when the judges start answering questions," he said. "But until then, they are going to hide behind this Wizard-of-Oz veil." Help end the silence by:
1. Distributing judicial voter guides
First, find out if your state has judicial elections. Then call your state family policy center or other local conservative groups to find out how you can support voter-guide efforts.
2. Forcing judges to answer questionnaires
The U.S. Supreme Court has given us a great tool: In Republican Party of Minnesota v. White (2001), the Court ruled that the First Amendment allows judicial candidates to discuss political issues.
[More at URL]
3. Calling your senators
At presstime, Democrats were still filibustering President Bush's conservative court nominees, so U.S. Senate Republicans were proposing the "Constitutional Option"—changing the Senate rules so that Democrats would be forced to give court nominees an "advice and consent" vote, as stipulated in the U.S. Constitution. Democrats had threatened to shut down the entire Senate in retribution.
[More at URL]
4. Calling your congressmen
Congress also can withdraw courts' jurisdiction over areas they've mishandled. At presstime, legislation was being proposed to end federal courts' control over public acknowledgements of God, like the Ten Commandments and the Pledge of Allegiance phrase "under God." Ask your U.S. congressmen to support that legislation (see CitizenLink for contact information).
[More at URL]
This article appeared in Citizen magazine. Copyright © 2005 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
----- 19 -----
CWA Says, You Can't Trust the Trust-Busters
Concerned Women for America
5/27/2005
http://www.cwfa.org/articles/8260/MEDIA/nation/index.htm
Washington, D.C. – Concerned Women for America (CWA) said Thursday night’s failed 56-42 cloture vote on John Bolton, President Bush’s nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, shows that Democrats who’ve been hailing this week’s Senate sell-out as an end to destructive partisanship and a show of trust cannot be trusted. (Some of the seven voted for cloture.)
“Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut), Sen. Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), and Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colorado) voted against cloture for John Bolton, and Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) didn’t vote at all, only three days after signing onto the agreement on judicial nominees that claims to symbolize bipartisan trust,” said Lanier Swann, CWA’s director of legislative affairs. “Their refusal to allow John Bolton an up or down vote on the Senate floor shows that their feigned ‘heroism’ in reaching an agreement based on ‘mutual trust and confidence’ earlier this week was an empty publicity stunt. The Democrats would rather bring Senate business to a screeching halt than give an up or down vote on a nominee they don’t like.”
“It’s time to end this circular debate on John Bolton and give him the up or down vote he deserves,” said Wendy Wright, CWA’s senior policy director. “In the face of scandals like Oil-for-Food and Sex-for-Food, in which the guilty have yet to be punished, the time for tough talk and shaking things up is long past due. ‘Diplomacy’ can be used as an excuse for not demanding accountability. Bolton is exactly who the U.N. needs from the United States: someone who will demand ethical reform and responsibility. Sometimes people’s feelings get hurt when their views are opposed. But it is in the best interest of the innocent and law-abiding, in order to foster good relations throughout the world, to have a reliable system that respects the rule of law and ethical standards.”
“Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) agrees that Bolton is the right guy for the U.N., but he apparently sees no connection between bowing the knee to the trust-busters earlier this week and their current refusal to give Bolton an up or down vote,” said Jan LaRue, CWA’s chief counsel.
----- 20 -----
Sex-ed opponents part of movement to reclaim schools
By Jon Ward
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://washingtontimes.com/metro/20050526-102945-6200r.htm
Parents who stopped a new sex-education curriculum in Montgomery County, Maryland are at the nexus of a national trend in parental activism in school matters.
"Montgomery County has become a symbol for parental activism," said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America.
Warren Throckmorton, a psychology professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, said parents "are beginning to take matters into their own hands and are looking for ways to collaborate with other like-minded parents to protect their kids."
Mr. Throckmorton works with former homosexuals and wrote a 51-page critique of the Montgomery County sex-ed course. He said he has heard from parents in Fayetteville, Ark.; Pleasant Valley, Iowa; and Toms River, N.J., who have found objectionable material in school libraries and are challenging their school boards to remove the books.
The Montgomery County school board voted 7-1 Monday to dissolve the curriculum and the citizens committee that approved the course. In November, the board had voted 6-0 to adopt the course.
Curriculum supporters said the course taught tolerance for homosexuals and included factual instruction on how to deal with homosexual feelings.
[More at URL]
----- 21 -----
Religious right vows payback for brokers of filibuster pact
By Eric Gorski
Denver Post Staff Writer
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_2755930
This week's compromise over Senate filibusters greatly disappointed Focus on the Family and its allies, who believed November election victories would help fulfill their long-held wish for a conservative makeover of the federal judiciary.
But representatives from conservative Christian groups who made the filibuster their signature issue suggest a severe price might be paid by the 14 Democrats and Republicans who brokered the last-minute deal.
"Any of them who have White House aspirations should get used to living in the doghouse," said Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America.
James C. Dobson, founder of the Colorado Springs-based Focus, urged supporters to flood the Senate switchboard with calls to do away with the filibuster.
"We share the disappointment, outrage and sense of abandonment felt by millions of conservative Americans who helped put Republicans in power last November," Dobson said in a statement. "I am certain that these voters will remember both Democrats and Republicans who betrayed their trust."
For many evangelical Christians, the courts have become a battleground in the wake of rulings on school prayer, abortion and gay marriage. The desire to do away with the filibuster - a prolonged debate that prevents votes on nominees - was motivated by the likelihood of Supreme Court vacancies during President Bush's second term.
The fact that seven maverick Republicans crossed party lines to keep the filibuster alive angers social conservatives who for years supported GOP candidates, even those not strong on moral issues, said Mark Rozell, a public-policy professor at James Madison University.
"This is a real defeat for the religious conservative groups," said Rozell, who studies evangelical politics. "They went all out on this issue. They didn't frame it as procedural issue but as a moral-values one. They did a significant amount of work to rally their activists to press GOP senators not to compromise."
Religious right vows payback for brokers of filibuster pact
By Eric Gorski
Denver Post Staff Writer
This week's compromise over Senate filibusters greatly disappointed Focus on the Family and its allies, who believed November election victories would help fulfill their long-held wish for a conservative makeover of the federal judiciary.
But representatives from conservative Christian groups who made the filibuster their signature issue suggest a severe price might be paid by the 14 Democrats and Republicans who brokered the last-minute deal.
"Any of them who have White House aspirations should get used to living in the doghouse," said Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America.
James C. Dobson, founder of the Colorado Springs-based Focus, urged supporters to flood the Senate switchboard with calls to do away with the filibuster.
"We share the disappointment, outrage and sense of abandonment felt by millions of conservative Americans who helped put Republicans in power last November," Dobson said in a statement. "I am certain that these voters will remember both Democrats and Republicans who betrayed their trust."
For many evangelical Christians, the courts have become a battleground in the wake of rulings on school prayer, abortion and gay marriage. The desire to do away with the filibuster - a prolonged debate that prevents votes on nominees - was motivated by the likelihood of Supreme Court vacancies during President Bush's second term.
The fact that seven maverick Republicans crossed party lines to keep the filibuster alive angers social conservatives who for years supported GOP candidates, even those not strong on moral issues, said Mark Rozell, a public-policy professor at James Madison University.
"This is a real defeat for the religious conservative groups," said Rozell, who studies evangelical politics. "They went all out on this issue. They didn't frame it as procedural issue but as a moral-values one. They did a significant amount of work to rally their activists to press GOP senators not to compromise."
Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss., said social conservatives are indeed frustrated by the actions of breakaway Republican senators.
"You would think to the victors go the spoils," he said.
[More at URL]
----- 22 -----
SURGICAL SEX
godspy.com
When I became psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins, I realized that by doing sex-change operations the hospital was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness. We would do better for these patients, I thought, by concentrating on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia.
By Paul McHugh
http://www.godspy.com/issues/Surgical-Sex-Sex-Change-operations-by-Paul-McHugh.cfm
When the practice of sex-change surgery first emerged back in the early 1970s, I would often remind its advocating psychiatrists that with other patients, alcoholics in particular, they would quote the Serenity Prayer, "God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Where did they get the idea that our sexual identity ("gender" was the term they preferred) as men or women was in the category of things that could be changed?
Their regular response was to show me their patients. Men (and until recently they were all men) with whom I spoke before their surgery would tell me that their bodies and sexual identities were at variance. Those I met after surgery would tell me that the surgery and hormone treatments that had made them "women" had also made them happy and contented. None of these encounters were persuasive, however. The post-surgical subjects struck me as caricatures of women. They wore high heels, copious makeup, and flamboyant clothing; they spoke about how they found themselves able to give vent to their natural inclinations for peace, domesticity, and gentleness—but their large hands, prominent Adam's apples, and thick facial features were incongruous (and would become more so as they aged). Women psychiatrists whom I sent to talk with them would intuitively see through the disguise and the exaggerated postures. "Gals know gals," one said to me, "and that's a guy."
The subjects before the surgery struck me as even more strange, as they struggled to convince anyone who might influence the decision for their surgery. First, they spent an unusual amount of time thinking and talking about sex and their sexual experiences; their sexual hungers and adventures seemed to preoccupy them. Second, discussion of babies or children provoked little interest from them; indeed, they seemed indifferent to children. But third, and most remarkable, many of these men-who-claimed-to-be-women reported that they found women sexually attractive and that they saw themselves as "lesbians." When I noted to their champions that their psychological leanings seemed more like those of men than of women, I would get various replies, mostly to the effect that in making such judgments I was drawing on sexual stereotypes.
[More at URL]
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Transgender Madness Goes Prime Time & Gets A Boost From Radicals In Congress
Traditional Values Coalition
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=2298
The Sundance Channel is airing a special in September featuring four college students who under go so-called sex change operations. Radical homosexuals in Congress are also helping normalize a serious Gender Identity Disorder.
May 27, 2005 – The Sundance Channel, in cooperation with LOGO, a homosexual-themed cable network created by VIACOM is airing an eight-part series on so-called sex change operations in September, 2005. LOGO launches on June 30.
The show, “TransGeneration” will follow the lives of four sexually confused college students who believe they are the opposite sex. Each of them undergoes a so-called sex change operation.
According to male-to-female transgender Denise Leclair, executive director of the International Foundation for Gender Education, he/she hopes this show “breaks down some barriers for the transgender community…. There is a lack of visible role models, and the transition is a difficult thing, especially for younger people.”
“TransGeneration” is being produced by World of Wonders (WOW) Productions, which plans an advanced showing of the show in San Francisco on June 23. WOW’s Jeremy Simmons directs the series. Simmon’s latest credits include “Inside Deep Throat” and “Party Monster.” World Of Wonder has also produced several shows about homosexuality, including “Gay Hollywood.”
WOW’s online manifesto states: “We at World of Wonder pride ourselves on being champions of the eccentric, the bizarre, the kooky, the outlandish, the subversive, the outcast, and all things that exist on the fringe of society. We believe that the underground of today is the mainstream of tomorrow, and that the true innovators of the present are found not at the crest of pop culture, but lie just underneath, creating the groundswell for the next great wave. It is our goal to bring into the spotlight those people and ideas that now reside at the edge of civilization.”
“TransGeneration” is yet another attempt by homosexuals and their allies to normalize what is a serious mental health issue. Individuals who believe they are the opposite sex are in need of deep therapeutic help, not societal approval for this Gender Identity Disorder. The surgical mutilation of a person’s body is not the way to deal with what is a mental problem.
The Insanity Spreads
In May, 2004, the International Olympics Committee ruled that so-called transgendered individuals could compete in opposite sex events if they could prove they had taken hormones for two years and they had their “new” sex officially recognized. This insanity will make it more difficult for women to compete in events where male-to-female individuals are involved.
And in New York City in April, 2005, Pauline Park, a man who is a transgender activist but has not had a sex change operation, won the right to use women’s restrooms in that city. Park describes himself as a “male bodied woman” and heads the New York Association of Gender Rights Advocacy. He claims that his biological sex is different than his “gender identity” so he should be free to use women’s restrooms.
This kind of insanity will only spread if Congress passes legislation that adds “gender identity” as a protected class.
Congress Joins The Rush To Normalize Gender Identity Confusion
On May 26, Democrat homosexual legislators and their Republican allies in the U.S. Congress introduced the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2005. This legislation will add “gender identity” as a newly protected class if a federal crime is committed based on someone’s perceived gender identity (cross dresser, drag queen, and transsexual).
The legislation was sponsored by homosexual Representatives Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank as well as Reps. Ileanna Ros-Lehtinen, John Conyers, and Christopher Shay.
The Hate Crimes Prevention Act will be used by homosexual and transgender activists to embed “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” into federal law as protected classes. It is likely that this legislation is simply a Trojan Horse to get these behaviors protected under federal law.
This legislation is a rehash of previous legislation introduced every year for the past decade by Ted Kennedy and other pro-homosexual legislators. In 2004, this legislation was called the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act (LLEEA) and was allegedly designed to help local officials deal with “hate crimes.”
The LLEEA was reintroduced as the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2005 in January, 2005 by Texas liberal Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee. Now, it is being reintroduced again, but now includes federal protection for individuals who believe they are the opposite sex.
TVC’s report, “Hate Crime Legislation: Unequal Protection Under The Law” describes the dangers of all pro-homosexual hate crime bills. Hate crime laws criminalize thought, threaten free speech, freedom of association, and freedom of religious belief.
The U.S. Senate published a lengthy report on the dangers of federal hate crime laws in 2003: http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/CRIMEcr071503.pdf.
In addition, sexual behaviors do not deserve federal protection any more than smoking deserves federal protection. These deviant behaviors are not genetically based and can be controlled and cured. Likewise, a person who is confused about his gender needs counseling, not federal protection under hate crime laws.
TVC’s report, “A Gender Identity Disorder Goes Mainstream” details the political and social agenda being pushed by transgender/homosexual activists. Download and distribute this important document.
During the past five years, both the House of Representatives and the Senate have passed hate crime legislation in some form giving special class status to homosexual sodomy and “gender identity.” In the House it was a non-binding vote. In the Senate, the language was removed in conference committee before being sent to the President for his signature.
Help Is Available
Those who suffer from the Gender Identity Disorder known as transvestism, can get help. Reality Resources is an American-based counseling service to those who are sexually confused about their gender. Gender Menders is an Australian counseling service that helps individuals overcome gender confusion. The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) also publishes materials dealing with gender confusion and the reality of change for individuals struggling with same-sex attractions.
TAKE ACTION: Contact your U.S. Representative and ask that he or she vote NO on the Hate Crimes Prevention Act Of 2005. This legislation is a threat to freedom of religion, speech, and association. It also normalizes mental illness/gender confusion and gives federal protection to sexual behaviors that are treatable through counseling. Send copies of TVC’s reports and the Senate report on Kennedy’s hate crime bill to your Representative. This legislation must be defeated once again.
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Has The American Psychiatric Association Gone Insane?
By Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition
For Publication On Or After
June 1, 2005
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=2299
Washington, DC – A little more than a week ago, the delegates to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) convention in Atlanta voted to endorse homosexual marriage. They claim they did so in order to promote the “mental health” of homosexuals. The APA vote is to be finalized before the board of trustees in July of this year.
What about our mental health? Do the majority of Americans who think homosexuality is abnormal have to bow to the wishes of a small fraction of the population who engage in sodomy? Must the institution of marriage be redefined to cater to the sexual desires of these troubled individuals? I think not.
This latest action by the American Psychiatric Association makes one wonder if the leadership of this organization has gone insane. Or has the APA become a total captive of homosexual activists within the group who are driving a political and cultural agenda?
The APA’s removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder from the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM) in 1973 is considered by homosexuals to be a watershed event that has helped normalize homosexual behavior here in the United States and throughout the world.
The ugly truth, however, is that the removal of homosexuality from the DSM had nothing to do with sound science or rational thought. It was the result of homosexual aggression within and outside of the organization. The removal was a political act, not one based on a dispassionate study of the serious dysfunctional characteristics of homosexual behavior.
But, don’t take my word for it. Pro-homosexual author Dr. Ronald Bayer chronicled this ugly history in his 1981 book, “Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis.” In it, Bayer describes how aggressive homosexual activists terrorized various APA conventions prior to 1973 and how homosexual activists inside the organization worked to subvert the organization.
Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, author of “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth” has also described how closeted homosexuals inside the APA were influential in getting homosexuality removed as a serious mental condition.
Dr. Charles Socarides, who has repeatedly warned about the social consequences of normalizing homosexuality, outlined what occurred in 1973 in his essay, “Sexual Politics And Scientific Logic: The Issue Of Homosexuality.” According to Socarides, the removal of homosexuality from the DSM “created injustices for the homosexual as it belied the truth that prevented the homosexual from seeking and receiving psychoanalytic help.”
Study after study over the past thirty years has shown that the person who engages in homosexual conduct suffers from high levels of mental problems, substance abuse, and life-threatening venereal diseases, including HIV. This is consistent even in “gay-affirming” environments like San Francisco and The Netherlands.
Moreover, homosexual households are notoriously unstable, violence filled, and unsafe for children. Dr. A. Dean Byrd, the head of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality’s Scientific Advisory Committee has just published a lengthy study showing the serious problems within homosexual households and the impact this has on children.
[More at URL]
----- 25 -----
THE DESTRUCTION OF MARRIAGE PRECEDES THE DEATH OF A CULTURE
Traditional Values Coalition
Special Report
Sociologists and anthropologists who have studied the death of civilizations have found that rampant sexual immorality, feminism, and homosexuality have been factors in destroying nations.
by Rev. Louis P. Sheldon Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition
http://traditionalvalues.org/pdf_files/deathofmarriage.pdf
In his 1979 book, Our Dance Has Turned To Death, Christian sociologist Carl W. Wilson outlined the dangers facing traditional marriage and the family in America's increasingly sexualized culture. Wilson could clearly see what was going to happen to the American family if our society continued to be sex saturated.
Wilson noted that history reveals that nations decline and eventually die when sexual immorality becomes rampant and the traditional family is discarded in favor of group sex, homosexuality, infidelity, and unrestrained sexual hedonism.
He pointed to the writings of British anthropologist J. D. Unwin, whose 1934 book, Sex and Culture, chronicled the historical decline of numerous cultures. Unwin studied 86 different cultures throughout history and discovered a surprising fact: No nation that rejected monogamy in marriage and pre-marital sexual chastity lasted longer than a generation after it embraced sexual hedonism. Unwin stated it this way, "In human records there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on prenuptial and postnuptial continence."
Unwin found that nations that valued traditional marriage and sexual abstinence were creative and flourished. He described this as "cultural energy" that can only be maintained when sexual activities remain restricted within marriage.
[More at URL]
----- 26 -----
WASHINGTON POLITICS: Bart Jansen
Real Senate battle may be ahead
Portland [Maine] Press-Herald
Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/insight/jansen/050529bartcolumn.shtml
Sen. John Warner's drawl doesn't sound like Neville Chamberlain's British accent. Maybe the scrap of paper that the Virginia Republican waved in settlement of a dispute about judicial nominations will last longer than the "peace in our time" that the prime minister promised before World War II.
But don't count on it. Less than three days after the Monday agreement, the Senate refused Thursday to end a filibuster of John Bolton's nomination to become ambassador to the United Nations.
"Actions speak volumes, and so does inaction," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.
Few sounded happy with the judicial agreement from the start.
Fourteen senators - senior members, mavericks and moderates including Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins - agreed to avert an impasse between Republican and Democratic leaders over limiting debate on judicial nominations. Three judges won a path to nomination votes and the showdown to end filibusters was postponed, which disappointed partisans on all sides.
For example, the conservative group Concerned Women for America called the seven Republicans "dwarves" in a fairy tale.
"Instead of ending the unconstitutional use of the filibuster, the seven dwarves have handed the filibuster key to the Supreme Court castle to the Democrats," said Lan LaRue, the group's chief counsel. "The American people won't take this lying down."
Concerned Women for America decries failure of Bolton cloture vote as evidence that Democrats cannot be trusted, treating it as a violation of the judicial filibuster agreement;
Washington Times quotes CWA wonks - not always identifying them as such - a lot in an article about "reclaiming schools";
Denver Post article on fundamentalist plans to target Senators who compromised on the judicial issue;
CWA links to an article on "Godspy: faith on the edge" condemning gender reassignment;
Traditional Values Coalition attacks the transgendered, includes a Congressional action item;
TVC asks whether the APA has "gone insane" by considering endorsing marriage rights;
TVC "report" showing that homosexuality, feminism, and "sexual immorality" cause the collapse of civilisation;
Portland, ME paper talking about the "real battle" in the Senate still ahead.
----- 18 -----
Get Good Judges on the Bench
Citizen Magazine
Focus on the Family
http://www.family.org/cforum/citizenmag/departments/a0036741.cfm
One reason we have judges like George Greer—who issued Terri Schiavo's death sentence and was re-elected in 2004—is that nobody's "forcing judges to declare their positions on things important to pro-family voters," said Chuck Hurley of Iowa Family Policy Center Action.
"The party's over when the judges start answering questions," he said. "But until then, they are going to hide behind this Wizard-of-Oz veil." Help end the silence by:
1. Distributing judicial voter guides
First, find out if your state has judicial elections. Then call your state family policy center or other local conservative groups to find out how you can support voter-guide efforts.
2. Forcing judges to answer questionnaires
The U.S. Supreme Court has given us a great tool: In Republican Party of Minnesota v. White (2001), the Court ruled that the First Amendment allows judicial candidates to discuss political issues.
[More at URL]
3. Calling your senators
At presstime, Democrats were still filibustering President Bush's conservative court nominees, so U.S. Senate Republicans were proposing the "Constitutional Option"—changing the Senate rules so that Democrats would be forced to give court nominees an "advice and consent" vote, as stipulated in the U.S. Constitution. Democrats had threatened to shut down the entire Senate in retribution.
[More at URL]
4. Calling your congressmen
Congress also can withdraw courts' jurisdiction over areas they've mishandled. At presstime, legislation was being proposed to end federal courts' control over public acknowledgements of God, like the Ten Commandments and the Pledge of Allegiance phrase "under God." Ask your U.S. congressmen to support that legislation (see CitizenLink for contact information).
[More at URL]
This article appeared in Citizen magazine. Copyright © 2005 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
----- 19 -----
CWA Says, You Can't Trust the Trust-Busters
Concerned Women for America
5/27/2005
http://www.cwfa.org/articles/8260/MEDIA/nation/index.htm
Washington, D.C. – Concerned Women for America (CWA) said Thursday night’s failed 56-42 cloture vote on John Bolton, President Bush’s nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, shows that Democrats who’ve been hailing this week’s Senate sell-out as an end to destructive partisanship and a show of trust cannot be trusted. (Some of the seven voted for cloture.)
“Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut), Sen. Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), and Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colorado) voted against cloture for John Bolton, and Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) didn’t vote at all, only three days after signing onto the agreement on judicial nominees that claims to symbolize bipartisan trust,” said Lanier Swann, CWA’s director of legislative affairs. “Their refusal to allow John Bolton an up or down vote on the Senate floor shows that their feigned ‘heroism’ in reaching an agreement based on ‘mutual trust and confidence’ earlier this week was an empty publicity stunt. The Democrats would rather bring Senate business to a screeching halt than give an up or down vote on a nominee they don’t like.”
“It’s time to end this circular debate on John Bolton and give him the up or down vote he deserves,” said Wendy Wright, CWA’s senior policy director. “In the face of scandals like Oil-for-Food and Sex-for-Food, in which the guilty have yet to be punished, the time for tough talk and shaking things up is long past due. ‘Diplomacy’ can be used as an excuse for not demanding accountability. Bolton is exactly who the U.N. needs from the United States: someone who will demand ethical reform and responsibility. Sometimes people’s feelings get hurt when their views are opposed. But it is in the best interest of the innocent and law-abiding, in order to foster good relations throughout the world, to have a reliable system that respects the rule of law and ethical standards.”
“Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) agrees that Bolton is the right guy for the U.N., but he apparently sees no connection between bowing the knee to the trust-busters earlier this week and their current refusal to give Bolton an up or down vote,” said Jan LaRue, CWA’s chief counsel.
----- 20 -----
Sex-ed opponents part of movement to reclaim schools
By Jon Ward
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://washingtontimes.com/metro/20050526-102945-6200r.htm
Parents who stopped a new sex-education curriculum in Montgomery County, Maryland are at the nexus of a national trend in parental activism in school matters.
"Montgomery County has become a symbol for parental activism," said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America.
Warren Throckmorton, a psychology professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, said parents "are beginning to take matters into their own hands and are looking for ways to collaborate with other like-minded parents to protect their kids."
Mr. Throckmorton works with former homosexuals and wrote a 51-page critique of the Montgomery County sex-ed course. He said he has heard from parents in Fayetteville, Ark.; Pleasant Valley, Iowa; and Toms River, N.J., who have found objectionable material in school libraries and are challenging their school boards to remove the books.
The Montgomery County school board voted 7-1 Monday to dissolve the curriculum and the citizens committee that approved the course. In November, the board had voted 6-0 to adopt the course.
Curriculum supporters said the course taught tolerance for homosexuals and included factual instruction on how to deal with homosexual feelings.
[More at URL]
----- 21 -----
Religious right vows payback for brokers of filibuster pact
By Eric Gorski
Denver Post Staff Writer
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_2755930
This week's compromise over Senate filibusters greatly disappointed Focus on the Family and its allies, who believed November election victories would help fulfill their long-held wish for a conservative makeover of the federal judiciary.
But representatives from conservative Christian groups who made the filibuster their signature issue suggest a severe price might be paid by the 14 Democrats and Republicans who brokered the last-minute deal.
"Any of them who have White House aspirations should get used to living in the doghouse," said Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America.
James C. Dobson, founder of the Colorado Springs-based Focus, urged supporters to flood the Senate switchboard with calls to do away with the filibuster.
"We share the disappointment, outrage and sense of abandonment felt by millions of conservative Americans who helped put Republicans in power last November," Dobson said in a statement. "I am certain that these voters will remember both Democrats and Republicans who betrayed their trust."
For many evangelical Christians, the courts have become a battleground in the wake of rulings on school prayer, abortion and gay marriage. The desire to do away with the filibuster - a prolonged debate that prevents votes on nominees - was motivated by the likelihood of Supreme Court vacancies during President Bush's second term.
The fact that seven maverick Republicans crossed party lines to keep the filibuster alive angers social conservatives who for years supported GOP candidates, even those not strong on moral issues, said Mark Rozell, a public-policy professor at James Madison University.
"This is a real defeat for the religious conservative groups," said Rozell, who studies evangelical politics. "They went all out on this issue. They didn't frame it as procedural issue but as a moral-values one. They did a significant amount of work to rally their activists to press GOP senators not to compromise."
Religious right vows payback for brokers of filibuster pact
By Eric Gorski
Denver Post Staff Writer
This week's compromise over Senate filibusters greatly disappointed Focus on the Family and its allies, who believed November election victories would help fulfill their long-held wish for a conservative makeover of the federal judiciary.
But representatives from conservative Christian groups who made the filibuster their signature issue suggest a severe price might be paid by the 14 Democrats and Republicans who brokered the last-minute deal.
"Any of them who have White House aspirations should get used to living in the doghouse," said Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America.
James C. Dobson, founder of the Colorado Springs-based Focus, urged supporters to flood the Senate switchboard with calls to do away with the filibuster.
"We share the disappointment, outrage and sense of abandonment felt by millions of conservative Americans who helped put Republicans in power last November," Dobson said in a statement. "I am certain that these voters will remember both Democrats and Republicans who betrayed their trust."
For many evangelical Christians, the courts have become a battleground in the wake of rulings on school prayer, abortion and gay marriage. The desire to do away with the filibuster - a prolonged debate that prevents votes on nominees - was motivated by the likelihood of Supreme Court vacancies during President Bush's second term.
The fact that seven maverick Republicans crossed party lines to keep the filibuster alive angers social conservatives who for years supported GOP candidates, even those not strong on moral issues, said Mark Rozell, a public-policy professor at James Madison University.
"This is a real defeat for the religious conservative groups," said Rozell, who studies evangelical politics. "They went all out on this issue. They didn't frame it as procedural issue but as a moral-values one. They did a significant amount of work to rally their activists to press GOP senators not to compromise."
Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss., said social conservatives are indeed frustrated by the actions of breakaway Republican senators.
"You would think to the victors go the spoils," he said.
[More at URL]
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SURGICAL SEX
godspy.com
When I became psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins, I realized that by doing sex-change operations the hospital was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness. We would do better for these patients, I thought, by concentrating on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia.
By Paul McHugh
http://www.godspy.com/issues/Surgical-Sex-Sex-Change-operations-by-Paul-McHugh.cfm
When the practice of sex-change surgery first emerged back in the early 1970s, I would often remind its advocating psychiatrists that with other patients, alcoholics in particular, they would quote the Serenity Prayer, "God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Where did they get the idea that our sexual identity ("gender" was the term they preferred) as men or women was in the category of things that could be changed?
Their regular response was to show me their patients. Men (and until recently they were all men) with whom I spoke before their surgery would tell me that their bodies and sexual identities were at variance. Those I met after surgery would tell me that the surgery and hormone treatments that had made them "women" had also made them happy and contented. None of these encounters were persuasive, however. The post-surgical subjects struck me as caricatures of women. They wore high heels, copious makeup, and flamboyant clothing; they spoke about how they found themselves able to give vent to their natural inclinations for peace, domesticity, and gentleness—but their large hands, prominent Adam's apples, and thick facial features were incongruous (and would become more so as they aged). Women psychiatrists whom I sent to talk with them would intuitively see through the disguise and the exaggerated postures. "Gals know gals," one said to me, "and that's a guy."
The subjects before the surgery struck me as even more strange, as they struggled to convince anyone who might influence the decision for their surgery. First, they spent an unusual amount of time thinking and talking about sex and their sexual experiences; their sexual hungers and adventures seemed to preoccupy them. Second, discussion of babies or children provoked little interest from them; indeed, they seemed indifferent to children. But third, and most remarkable, many of these men-who-claimed-to-be-women reported that they found women sexually attractive and that they saw themselves as "lesbians." When I noted to their champions that their psychological leanings seemed more like those of men than of women, I would get various replies, mostly to the effect that in making such judgments I was drawing on sexual stereotypes.
[More at URL]
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Transgender Madness Goes Prime Time & Gets A Boost From Radicals In Congress
Traditional Values Coalition
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=2298
The Sundance Channel is airing a special in September featuring four college students who under go so-called sex change operations. Radical homosexuals in Congress are also helping normalize a serious Gender Identity Disorder.
May 27, 2005 – The Sundance Channel, in cooperation with LOGO, a homosexual-themed cable network created by VIACOM is airing an eight-part series on so-called sex change operations in September, 2005. LOGO launches on June 30.
The show, “TransGeneration” will follow the lives of four sexually confused college students who believe they are the opposite sex. Each of them undergoes a so-called sex change operation.
According to male-to-female transgender Denise Leclair, executive director of the International Foundation for Gender Education, he/she hopes this show “breaks down some barriers for the transgender community…. There is a lack of visible role models, and the transition is a difficult thing, especially for younger people.”
“TransGeneration” is being produced by World of Wonders (WOW) Productions, which plans an advanced showing of the show in San Francisco on June 23. WOW’s Jeremy Simmons directs the series. Simmon’s latest credits include “Inside Deep Throat” and “Party Monster.” World Of Wonder has also produced several shows about homosexuality, including “Gay Hollywood.”
WOW’s online manifesto states: “We at World of Wonder pride ourselves on being champions of the eccentric, the bizarre, the kooky, the outlandish, the subversive, the outcast, and all things that exist on the fringe of society. We believe that the underground of today is the mainstream of tomorrow, and that the true innovators of the present are found not at the crest of pop culture, but lie just underneath, creating the groundswell for the next great wave. It is our goal to bring into the spotlight those people and ideas that now reside at the edge of civilization.”
“TransGeneration” is yet another attempt by homosexuals and their allies to normalize what is a serious mental health issue. Individuals who believe they are the opposite sex are in need of deep therapeutic help, not societal approval for this Gender Identity Disorder. The surgical mutilation of a person’s body is not the way to deal with what is a mental problem.
The Insanity Spreads
In May, 2004, the International Olympics Committee ruled that so-called transgendered individuals could compete in opposite sex events if they could prove they had taken hormones for two years and they had their “new” sex officially recognized. This insanity will make it more difficult for women to compete in events where male-to-female individuals are involved.
And in New York City in April, 2005, Pauline Park, a man who is a transgender activist but has not had a sex change operation, won the right to use women’s restrooms in that city. Park describes himself as a “male bodied woman” and heads the New York Association of Gender Rights Advocacy. He claims that his biological sex is different than his “gender identity” so he should be free to use women’s restrooms.
This kind of insanity will only spread if Congress passes legislation that adds “gender identity” as a protected class.
Congress Joins The Rush To Normalize Gender Identity Confusion
On May 26, Democrat homosexual legislators and their Republican allies in the U.S. Congress introduced the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2005. This legislation will add “gender identity” as a newly protected class if a federal crime is committed based on someone’s perceived gender identity (cross dresser, drag queen, and transsexual).
The legislation was sponsored by homosexual Representatives Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank as well as Reps. Ileanna Ros-Lehtinen, John Conyers, and Christopher Shay.
The Hate Crimes Prevention Act will be used by homosexual and transgender activists to embed “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” into federal law as protected classes. It is likely that this legislation is simply a Trojan Horse to get these behaviors protected under federal law.
This legislation is a rehash of previous legislation introduced every year for the past decade by Ted Kennedy and other pro-homosexual legislators. In 2004, this legislation was called the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act (LLEEA) and was allegedly designed to help local officials deal with “hate crimes.”
The LLEEA was reintroduced as the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2005 in January, 2005 by Texas liberal Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee. Now, it is being reintroduced again, but now includes federal protection for individuals who believe they are the opposite sex.
TVC’s report, “Hate Crime Legislation: Unequal Protection Under The Law” describes the dangers of all pro-homosexual hate crime bills. Hate crime laws criminalize thought, threaten free speech, freedom of association, and freedom of religious belief.
The U.S. Senate published a lengthy report on the dangers of federal hate crime laws in 2003: http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/CRIMEcr071503.pdf.
In addition, sexual behaviors do not deserve federal protection any more than smoking deserves federal protection. These deviant behaviors are not genetically based and can be controlled and cured. Likewise, a person who is confused about his gender needs counseling, not federal protection under hate crime laws.
TVC’s report, “A Gender Identity Disorder Goes Mainstream” details the political and social agenda being pushed by transgender/homosexual activists. Download and distribute this important document.
During the past five years, both the House of Representatives and the Senate have passed hate crime legislation in some form giving special class status to homosexual sodomy and “gender identity.” In the House it was a non-binding vote. In the Senate, the language was removed in conference committee before being sent to the President for his signature.
Help Is Available
Those who suffer from the Gender Identity Disorder known as transvestism, can get help. Reality Resources is an American-based counseling service to those who are sexually confused about their gender. Gender Menders is an Australian counseling service that helps individuals overcome gender confusion. The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) also publishes materials dealing with gender confusion and the reality of change for individuals struggling with same-sex attractions.
TAKE ACTION: Contact your U.S. Representative and ask that he or she vote NO on the Hate Crimes Prevention Act Of 2005. This legislation is a threat to freedom of religion, speech, and association. It also normalizes mental illness/gender confusion and gives federal protection to sexual behaviors that are treatable through counseling. Send copies of TVC’s reports and the Senate report on Kennedy’s hate crime bill to your Representative. This legislation must be defeated once again.
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Has The American Psychiatric Association Gone Insane?
By Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition
For Publication On Or After
June 1, 2005
http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=2299
Washington, DC – A little more than a week ago, the delegates to the American Psychiatric Association (APA) convention in Atlanta voted to endorse homosexual marriage. They claim they did so in order to promote the “mental health” of homosexuals. The APA vote is to be finalized before the board of trustees in July of this year.
What about our mental health? Do the majority of Americans who think homosexuality is abnormal have to bow to the wishes of a small fraction of the population who engage in sodomy? Must the institution of marriage be redefined to cater to the sexual desires of these troubled individuals? I think not.
This latest action by the American Psychiatric Association makes one wonder if the leadership of this organization has gone insane. Or has the APA become a total captive of homosexual activists within the group who are driving a political and cultural agenda?
The APA’s removal of homosexuality as a mental disorder from the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM) in 1973 is considered by homosexuals to be a watershed event that has helped normalize homosexual behavior here in the United States and throughout the world.
The ugly truth, however, is that the removal of homosexuality from the DSM had nothing to do with sound science or rational thought. It was the result of homosexual aggression within and outside of the organization. The removal was a political act, not one based on a dispassionate study of the serious dysfunctional characteristics of homosexual behavior.
But, don’t take my word for it. Pro-homosexual author Dr. Ronald Bayer chronicled this ugly history in his 1981 book, “Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis.” In it, Bayer describes how aggressive homosexual activists terrorized various APA conventions prior to 1973 and how homosexual activists inside the organization worked to subvert the organization.
Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, author of “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth” has also described how closeted homosexuals inside the APA were influential in getting homosexuality removed as a serious mental condition.
Dr. Charles Socarides, who has repeatedly warned about the social consequences of normalizing homosexuality, outlined what occurred in 1973 in his essay, “Sexual Politics And Scientific Logic: The Issue Of Homosexuality.” According to Socarides, the removal of homosexuality from the DSM “created injustices for the homosexual as it belied the truth that prevented the homosexual from seeking and receiving psychoanalytic help.”
Study after study over the past thirty years has shown that the person who engages in homosexual conduct suffers from high levels of mental problems, substance abuse, and life-threatening venereal diseases, including HIV. This is consistent even in “gay-affirming” environments like San Francisco and The Netherlands.
Moreover, homosexual households are notoriously unstable, violence filled, and unsafe for children. Dr. A. Dean Byrd, the head of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality’s Scientific Advisory Committee has just published a lengthy study showing the serious problems within homosexual households and the impact this has on children.
[More at URL]
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THE DESTRUCTION OF MARRIAGE PRECEDES THE DEATH OF A CULTURE
Traditional Values Coalition
Special Report
Sociologists and anthropologists who have studied the death of civilizations have found that rampant sexual immorality, feminism, and homosexuality have been factors in destroying nations.
by Rev. Louis P. Sheldon Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition
http://traditionalvalues.org/pdf_files/deathofmarriage.pdf
In his 1979 book, Our Dance Has Turned To Death, Christian sociologist Carl W. Wilson outlined the dangers facing traditional marriage and the family in America's increasingly sexualized culture. Wilson could clearly see what was going to happen to the American family if our society continued to be sex saturated.
Wilson noted that history reveals that nations decline and eventually die when sexual immorality becomes rampant and the traditional family is discarded in favor of group sex, homosexuality, infidelity, and unrestrained sexual hedonism.
He pointed to the writings of British anthropologist J. D. Unwin, whose 1934 book, Sex and Culture, chronicled the historical decline of numerous cultures. Unwin studied 86 different cultures throughout history and discovered a surprising fact: No nation that rejected monogamy in marriage and pre-marital sexual chastity lasted longer than a generation after it embraced sexual hedonism. Unwin stated it this way, "In human records there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist on prenuptial and postnuptial continence."
Unwin found that nations that valued traditional marriage and sexual abstinence were creative and flourished. He described this as "cultural energy" that can only be maintained when sexual activities remain restricted within marriage.
[More at URL]
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WASHINGTON POLITICS: Bart Jansen
Real Senate battle may be ahead
Portland [Maine] Press-Herald
Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/insight/jansen/050529bartcolumn.shtml
Sen. John Warner's drawl doesn't sound like Neville Chamberlain's British accent. Maybe the scrap of paper that the Virginia Republican waved in settlement of a dispute about judicial nominations will last longer than the "peace in our time" that the prime minister promised before World War II.
But don't count on it. Less than three days after the Monday agreement, the Senate refused Thursday to end a filibuster of John Bolton's nomination to become ambassador to the United Nations.
"Actions speak volumes, and so does inaction," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.
Few sounded happy with the judicial agreement from the start.
Fourteen senators - senior members, mavericks and moderates including Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins - agreed to avert an impasse between Republican and Democratic leaders over limiting debate on judicial nominations. Three judges won a path to nomination votes and the showdown to end filibusters was postponed, which disappointed partisans on all sides.
For example, the conservative group Concerned Women for America called the seven Republicans "dwarves" in a fairy tale.
"Instead of ending the unconstitutional use of the filibuster, the seven dwarves have handed the filibuster key to the Supreme Court castle to the Democrats," said Lan LaRue, the group's chief counsel. "The American people won't take this lying down."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2005-06-01 07:56 pm (UTC)Oh great. Way to collapse civilization, Solar!
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Date: 2005-06-01 08:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-01 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-01 09:22 pm (UTC)Cathy