An RE teacher who recommended her pupils to sleep around instead of getting married has been banned from the profession, reports the Daily Telegraph.
The ban is for at least five years and has been imposed by Education Secretary Michael Gove. A disciplinary panel found her guilty of “unacceptable professional conduct” whilst employed at Saddleworth School, High Street, Uppermill, Oldham.
Catherine Reynolds, 29, also used abusive and profane language to pupils and spoke about her drinking habits.
Christian Voice National Director Stephen Green is due to speak about the matter on the Jeremy Vine show at 12.30 this afternoon, in a three-cornered discussion with someone who is actually prepared to defend her on the grounds that the occasional ‘loose cannon’ of a teacher adds colour to the profession.
Somehow we can’t see that defence being advanced from the sexual libertarian corner to defend someone teaching creationism in a biology class.
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Normally these stages would be some weeks apart, but the pregnancy of the Duchess of Cambridge has thrown the Government into a panic.
The Prince of Wales and a key House of Lords Committee have expressed misgivings over the Bill and highlighted the possibility of ‘unintended consequences’.
‘In determining the succession to the Crown, the gender of a person born after 28 October 2011 does not give that person, or that person’s descendants, precedence over any other person (whenever born).’
That might seem as if anyone can succeed to the throne, which would be rather good news to those of us born outside the royal family.
The only legislation needing consequential amendment is said to be the Treason Act 1351, which is surprising.
The Bill also abolishes the disqualification to succession to one in line to the throne who marries a Roman Catholic, and removes the need for members of the Royal Family – other than the immediate 6 in line- to seek the monarch’s permission to marry.
John Hemming MP has put down an amendment to the Bill to downgrade all wives of a future reigning king to ‘kings’ consort’. This equality measure would prevent the Duchess of Cambridge ever becoming queen.
And just as we predicted in our briefing paper Defending theCrown, an MP, Paul Flynn, is to put down an amendment to allow children from a same-sex royal ‘couple’ to succeed to the throne, even though the public would have no clue as to who was the real father (or mother, if two lesbians) and who out of all the semen or egg donors in the world was the other true parent.
At least, if John Hemming’s amendment goes through, the gay couple wouldn’t be king and king – or a pair of queens.
“The Government appear to want to legislate on royal succession as quickly as possible. This risks shortcutting proper parliamentary scrutiny. The Succession to the Crown Bill is clearly of constitutional significance and as such should not be treated as fast-track legislation.
“Recent commentators have raised possible unintended consequences of the Bill. The Committee is of the opinion that those matters are the kind of issues that Parliament must have suitable time to discuss; that will not be the case if the legislation is fast-tracked.”
Christian Voice continues to oppose the Succession to the Crown Bill and asks for prayer for Members of Parliament as they consider this unnecessary and destablising measure tomorrow.
Our Booklet Defending the Crown available in booklet form for £2.75 incl P&P HERE or online HERE.
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It’s not just Britain. Elsewhere in the world, libertarian politicians are trampling over popular opinion to legislate ‘gay marriage’.
last Sunday week, half-a-million people marched through Paris in support of real marriage. demanding that President Francois Hollande withdraw the enabling bill and hold a national debate before any change in the definition of marriage.
Government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who is also women’s affairs minister, said nothing had changed. The plan to submit the reform bill in parliament late this month and pass it by June would go ahead undisturbed, she told Europe 1 radio.
“The government is totally determined to achieve this reform, this historic progress that is not the victory of one camp over another but progress for the whole society,” she said.
Christiane Taubira – changing civilisation
“We take note of the demonstration (but) this will be discussed in parliament and not in the street.”
Interior Minister Manuel Valls told the daily Le Monde: “We always thought the turnout would be strong and it was … All the more reason to stay focused on the goal of passing the law.”
Daniel Liechti of the Conseil National des Évangéliques de France said the protest showed a new role for religion in public life in France, a constitutionally secular country.
In New Zealeand, a select committee of MPs is currently assessing submissions from the public on Labour MP Louisa Wall’s Marriage Amendment Bill, but only after MP’s voted by 80 votes to 40 in favour of it last August (2012). Submissions closed in October with proponents and opponents said to be equally numbered.
The select committee is due to report back to the House by 28 February 2013 recommending whether the bill should be passed, and it may suggest amendments to the bill. No-one expects the select committee to object to the bill.
It will be interesting to see how the French and NZ Governments address the issues of consummation and adultery. If these are changed due to the inability of a homosexual couple to achieve them, they are changed for all marriages.
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The Oxford Union is to invite an American pro-family activist to address it after a mix-up on dates.
Scott Lively was due to speak last night in the annual ‘gay rights’ debate, but an error saw him given the date of the Israel debate on 31st January instead. As Mr Lively had already arranged his travel around that date, the President-Elect of the Union has courteously offered to schedule an additional event for him to speak on Friday 1st February.
Proposing the motion were PinkNews.co.uk and Out4Marriage founder Benjamin Cohen, gay rights activist Richard Fairbass of the band Right Said Fred, and Phyll Opoku-Gyimah of Black Pride UK. Opposing the motion was Peter D Williams of Catholic Voices, anti-abortion activist Anthony McCarthy, journalist Lynette Burrows and Rev George Hargreaves, leader of the Christian Party.
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, has taken part in similar debates at both the Oxford and Cambridge Unions in the past. He said today:
‘Any pretence at an objective, fair-minded debate where minds could be changed by great oratory and consideration of factual evidence has vanished over the years. It has been replaced by emotionalism, fashion and barracking of opponents of the new intolerant status quo.
‘I can only admire the bravery of the young people who go through the ‘No’ lobby at these debates.’
Scott Lively, who has a personal testimony of the healing power of the Lord Jesus and is a strong advocate of Christian healing therapy for those suffering from same-sex attraction, has become a hate-figure of gay rights activists since his address on that subject to parliamentarians in Uganda was followed by the introduction of a Bill to make the promotion of sodomy in the East African nation illegal.
Things are seen differently in Africa from the universities of Britain.
The Prince of Wales if right to raise concerns about the way the Succession to the Crown Bill is being rushed through Parliament without adequate attention being given to the possible ramifications, Christian Voice announced today.
While it may seem like a nice gesture to remove the prohibition on the monarch marrying a Roman Catholic, Prince Charles is right that doing so could set off a chain of unintended consequences that would ultimately destabilize the institution of the monarchy.
But first, what is the Act of Settlement and how did it arise?
Background to the Act of Settlement
James II of England and VII of Scotland
During the reign of James II of England and VII of Scotland (r. 1633 –1701), James managed to alienate himself from his fellow Englishman through his Roman Catholic, pro-French and absolutist policies. When his wife, Queen Mary, produced a Roman Catholic heir in 1688, it was too much for English Protestants to endure. Hoping to divert a Catholic dynasty, seven English nobleman (known later as the ‘Immortal Seven’) invited James’ eldest Protestant daughter, Mary, to come to Britain and rule. She agreed on the condition that she would rule the country jointly with her Dutch husband, William the Prince of Orange.
William came over with an army prepared to fight for the throne against his father-in-law. However, knowing it would be impossible to win a war without popular support, James II retreated to France. This bloodless revolution, known as ‘the Glorious Revolution,’ established the Hanoverian line of British monarchs – a line preserved through the present House of Windsor.
In order to give legal legitimization to Hanoverian rule, Parliament passed the Bill of Rights in December 1689. This was designed to protect Parliament from arbitrary rule of another Sovereign such as the deposed James II, to ensure the continuation of the Protestant faith, and to preserve common law freedoms.
Princess Sophia of Hanover (1630-1714)
Towards the close of the reign of King William III (r. 1650 –1702), it began to look as if the king would die without a legal heir. Since the Bill of Rights had not specified the line of succession far enough into the future to cover such an eventuality, Parliament began to worry that the deposed James II or his offspring might try to capitalize on the situation and claim the throne. In order to simultaneously solve this problem and fix the line of succession ad infinitum, a law known as the Act of Settlement was introduced. It specified that the heirs to the throne would always be descendants of Princess Sophia of Hanover (1630-1714), who was also appointed heir presumptive by the same Act. Sophia was the granddaughter of James I of England.
The Act of Settlement also specified that the monarch must always be Protestant, and it states that if the monarch is ‘reconciled to the See of Rome’ or ‘marries a Papist’ ‘…in all and every such Case or Cases the People of these Realms shall be and are thereby absolved of their allegiance’.
The Act of Settlement, which was extended to Scotland in 1707, also lays down other rules of constitutional import, including male preference primogeniture. The Act of Settlement came to apply to all of the Commonwealth realms in 1931 through the Statute of Westminster. The Statute of Westminster 1931 actively forbids any alteration to the rules of succession without the agreement of all 16 nations that share the throne. That is why current attempts to ‘modernize’ the laws of succession must first be approved by all 16 legislatures, from the little island of Tuvalu with a population of 11,000 to the United Kingdom. If even one nation disagrees, the proposed changes cannot be enacted. (See Zoe Kirk-Robinson’s article ‘Why Kate’s First-born May Not Be Crowned.’)
So each of the nations in the Commonwealth who share the Queen as monarch (the ‘realms’) must ask themselves whether the Act of Settlement is still relevant in the modern world. Is there any reason to think that this relic from the early 18th century should still be preserved?
As each of the Commonwealth realms considers this question, they must take into account the fact that constitutional experts believe that changing the laws could precipitate a constitutional crisis. As soon as the monarch is allowed to marry a Roman Catholic, the possibility exists that the future heir to the throne could be raised Catholic. Indeed, Roman Catholic common law mandates that if even one of the parents is Catholic, the children must be raised catholic. If that were to happen, then there would either have to be an abdication crisis, or the law would need to be changed to allow Roman Catholics to succeed to the throne, reversing Henry VIII’s historic break with Rome. If the latter course prevailed, then it could lead to the bizarre situation of having a Roman Catholic as the supreme head of the Church of England.
In his 2003 Spectator article ‘The Price of Liberty’, Adrian Hilton presented a strong case for preserving the prohibition on the monarch marrying a Roman Catholic:
Since [Roman Catholic] canon law requires that all children of Roman Catholics be brought up in that faith, such a proposed amendment would eventually create an exclusively Catholic royal dynasty, whose primary allegiance would be to the higher spiritual and temporal authority — the Papacy….
The Papacy is, by its own admission, a political institution, and still claims universal legislative authority or jurisdiction. It would be intolerable to have, as the sovereign of a Protestant and free country, one who owes any allegiance to the head of any other state.…
It is not possible to discuss the removal of the bars on Catholics and the monarchy without at the same time discussing the constitutional position of the Church of England; and therein lies the principal division among Catholics. There are many who regard the establishment of the Church of England as a great advantage for the faith because it perpetuates Christianity as the ‘official’ religion through its presence in Parliament. For those who hold this view, a minor historical relic of anti-Catholic discrimination is a lesser evil to be tolerated than the alternative. For when the protective barrier of Anglican establishment is torn away, Christianity would lose a political voice and Britain its cultural governmental foundation as a Christian nation.
The Act therefore demands that the sovereign must ‘join in communion with the Church of England as by law established’. While earlier monarchs have come from Calvinist and Lutheran traditions and have not been prevented by their own Church discipline from receiving the Eucharist, the position of Rome is quite different. These difficulties do not emanate from the Church of England but from the Roman Catholic Church, which prohibits its adherents from receiving Holy Communion at Anglican services. To forbid an Anglican Eucharist to a Roman Catholic monarch who remains Supreme Governor of the Church of England is not only absurd but plainly regressive.
Further, since Rome does not recognise the Church of England as a Christian Church in the full and proper sense of that term, it does not recognise the Holy Orders of Anglican clergy, which Pope Leo XIII condemned as ‘absolutely null and utterly void’. The present Pope has reiterated this view. A Roman Catholic monarch who followed the teaching of the Mother Church would therefore have to regard the archbishops, bishops and clergy of the Church of England (and, incidentally, of the Church of Scotland) as lay people, lacking the ordained authority to preach and celebrate the sacraments. And further still, a Roman Catholic monarch would be unable to be crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury. As long as the coronation service involves a priestly anointing, no ‘utterly void’ Anglican could administer it. Presumably a future Roman Catholic monarch would receive the crown from the Pope, and the wheel would have come full circle.”
More recently Telegraph journalist Charles Moore has tried to raise awareness of these and other potential problems. Writing in the Telegraph in December 2011, Moore drew attention to the chain of unintended consequences that could be set in motion by lifting the prohibition on a monarch marrying a Roman Catholic:
Suppose the heir to the throne does marry a Catholic, which, under the new rules, he/she will be permitted to do. Suppose that they have a child. Suppose the child, as the Catholic Church requires, is brought up a Catholic. Under the law, even as reformed, that child cannot become Monarch. “Are you asking me,” the doubting MP might inquire, “to vote for a reform which could precipitate a constitutional-cum-religious crisis?”
If, on the other hand, the law were changed to permit a Catholic to come to the throne, there would be a lot more questions. What would happen to the monarch’s headship of the Church of England? How would he/she be crowned? “Are you proposing, Prime Minister,” the awkward MP could ask, “to disestablish the Church? If so, please lay before us your legislation for doing so.” Untune that string, as Shakespeare famously put it, and hark what discord follows. There may be a way around these problems, but at the least Government should be inviting a rigorous public debate about these implications, instead of conducting the changes in a semi-secret environment
Implications for Hereditary Titles
Halsbury Laws of England
What about Prince Charles’ other concern, regarding hereditary titles? Here again, the Prince has identified a problem that has received almost no attention in the public discourse.
Changing the succession laws for the crown will almost certainly result in gender equality being extended to the inheritance of peerages. Although succession of hereditary peerages forms no part of any proposed change, it would be hard to preserve the older system of inheritance once male primogeniture had been abandoned with respect to the crown. This is especially true given that the heir to the throne succeeds to a number of peerages. If male primogeniture is changed, then will succession in the dukedoms, earldoms and baronetcies attached to the throne devolve to the eldest child, or will there be a two-tier system whereby the titles to which the throne is attached will still devolve to the eldest male?
Hereditary peerages are created by writ, by Act of Parliament, by charter, or by letters patent. The rules governing the order of succession of future heirs are specified in the original grant for the peerage in question. The preferred method by which peerages are created is by letters patent. With few exceptions, the patents transmit titles only to male offspring, a system known as “tail male.” As Halsbury’s Laws of England states:
“Letters patent creating a peerage must specify the patentee, the name of the dignity and its limitation to future heirs of the patentee. The limitation must be one known to the law. The rule in England is a limitation to heirs male of the body with an occasional addition of special remainders to bring in the daughters and their issue, brothers, nephews and collaterals, but ultimately the descent is always fixed in an heir male line.”
This “limitation to heirs male of the body” for the succession of peerages is even stricter than the rules regulating the succession of the crown (which allows a female to inherit when she is without brothers) and can result in peerages becoming extinct. As Regency Researcher Nancy Mayer has explained,
The descent of most hereditary English peerages is determined by the patent by which the peerage was created. Except in very rare cases, the patents say that the peerage should descend to heirs male of the body of the one for whom it was created. That means that ordinarily the peerage becomes extinct if the first earl, for instance, doesn’t have a son. Once in a while patent will let a brother or a nephew inherit if the man does not have a son. When Admiral Lord Nelson died without a son, his patent allowed his brother to inherit. On the other hand, and much more typical, was what happened to Admiral Lord Collingswood’s peerage. It became extinct on his death because he had only daughters.
In the event that a statute were to change the presumption of male descent with respect to the Crown, it would only be a matter of time before the eldest daughter of a peer will challenge original letters patent on the grounds that these too are unfair and out of step with the rules governing the thrown. Such a challenge would be hard to resist once male primogeniture has been abandoned with respect of the monarchy.
There is good reason to be cautious about equal absolute primogeniture with respect to peerages. It is true that under the current system a peerage may become extinct in the absence of male heirs or it may move to another branch of the family. While this may seem undesirable, the alternative is that this inheritance passes out of the family completely. Indeed, if current letters patent were to be altered by law to remove the distinction between the sexes, the title and its associated property could only then be traced in future through a complicated maze of ancestors, one generation passing perhaps through the mother, the next through the father. Without the tribal system and the periodic restructuring of the ancient Hebrew Jubilee laws, it would be difficult to ensure that property remained in the original family if daughters could succeed to a title.
As this suggests, a change in the order of succession does not just affect the Monarchy, but could have ripple effects in every dukedom, earldom, baronetcy in the land. Prince Charles is right to raise the concerns that he has.
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‘Irresponsible’: Blake Harrison leads in BBC3’s suicide comedy ‘Way to Go’
An MP has criticised the BBC for planning to air a situation comedy which treats assisted suicide as a “matter of fun”, reports the Sunday Express.
‘Way To Go’ has three young men building a machine that can kill people. They offer their services for money to those who wish to end their lives. The show is written by US-based writer Bob Kushell and stars Blake Harrison, Marc Wootton and Ben Heathcote.
But Conservative MP Mark Pritchard has slammed the sitcom, planned to go out on BBC 3 this month. He said: “This is a sensitive and complex issue that should be handled with compassion and understanding.
“It is a sad fact that assisted dying is now regarded a ‘revenue stream’ to some foreign clinics and clearly as a matter of fun by some parts of the BBC.”
In one scene the lever of the machine is pulled to inject a fatal dose. Harrison’s next-door neighbour dies in a matter of seconds.
Later a friend phones from a pub with another client for the assisted suicide machine.
He tells him: “He’s got stomach cancer. How fantastic is that!”
Mark Pritchard MP: ‘Sensitive and complex issue’
BBC 3 controller Zai Bennett said: ‘Bob Kushell’s scripts are in turn dark, poignant, absurd, moving and brilliant, but mostly they are very, very funny. I’m thrilled that Way To Go is coming to BBC 3.’
Comedy producer Jon Plowman, responsible for shows such as The Office and Little Britain, said: ‘Way To Go is a show about a current and difficult issue but it treats its serious subject in the same way that Arsenic And Old Lace dealt with old lady poisoners or Kind Hearts And Coronets dealt with aristocratic murders.’
Government figures show that three-quarters of suicides in the UK are by men with those aged 30-39 at highest risk of suicide, followed by men aged 40-49.
However, teenage suicide is a serious and growing problem. Suicide is the second most common cause of death in people aged 15-24, behind accidental death.
Concerns have repeatedly been raised about websites promoting suicide and self-harm not least as reported in both the Daily Telegraph and the Independent. The latter reported on new research carried out by the charity ‘Beat Bullying’ which, it said, ‘revealed that websites encouraging suicide and self-harm topped a list of teenagers’ greatest worries about the internet. The findings have raised fears that growing numbers of young people are becoming vulnerable to the messages being put out by such sites.’
Tallulah Wilson committed suicide on the railway in a copy of that of fellow-fifteen-year-old Rosie Whitaker.
The Telegraph reported: ‘Tallulah had also dedicated her Twitter account to Rosie Whitaker, also 15, who apparently threw herself in front of a train at Beckenham Junction station in south-east London in June after becoming “heavily influenced” by suicide websites.’
In Bridgend, a spate of teenage suicides prompted Phillip Walters, the coroner, to investigate social media websites which were heavily implicated in the deaths. The coroner said: ‘I shall be looking at these networking sites myself to see if there is a link between them and the growing number of youngsters committing suicide.’ Bridgend MP Madeleine Moon described the deaths as ‘tragic’.
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, said today:
‘Amidst a growing cult of suicide among young people, BBC3 thinks it is appropriate to screen a comedy making light of suicide, in which the protagonists are those from exactly the most vulnerable demographic. The comparison with 1940s film comedies is false. There are not legions of old ladies about to be prompted to become serial killers. But there are hundreds if not thousands of vulnerable teenagers.
‘Making suicide funny makes it acceptable. BBC3 is reinforcing the message of the suicide websites. ‘Irresponsible’ hardly conveys the enormity of it. If their programme results in just one suicide of a troubled young person, BBC3 controller Zai Bennett and new Director General Tony Hall will have blood on their hands.’
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Christian Voice National Director Stephen Green spoke at a meeting of the Challenging Orthodoxies Society in Manchester last night, alongside Guy Otten of the Manchester Humanist Society and Shahid Saleem.
The meeting, chaired by Catriona Watson, was called ‘Christmas Unwrapped – are national celebrations of Christian festivals still appropriate in a multicultural society’? By a happy coincidence, it took place on the very day the Office for National Statistics released the 2011 census figures on religion.
The blurb for the event said:
‘Our University Calendar is dictated by Christian religious festivals, as are the calendars of the majority of institutions, businesses and individuals in the UK. Semester two doesn’t finish until the end of January yet we have a four week break just a couple of weeks before, schools take two weeks off at the end of December when everybody could have an extra two weeks in the sun in July.
‘What about those who don’t celebrate Christmas but still have to take time of work for a festival they don’t believe in? Christmas decorations are paid for by councils and institutions but what do those who celebrate Eid or Hannukah get for their taxes?
‘Challenging Orthodoxies Society is exploring whether nationwide Christmas celebrations are still appropriate in a multicultural nation. Would a move towards treating all religious holidays equally be the forward thinking actions of a secular state or is questioning such a well-established cultural tradition simply a symptom of ‘christianophobia’ and too much focus on being politically correct.’
To a meeting sadly depleted because the Politics Philosophy and Economics Society decided to hold their annual Christmas party on the same night, Stephen Green said:
According to the census figures just published today, there was a decrease in people who identify as Christian (from 71.7 per cent to 59.3 per cent) and an increase in those reporting no religion (from 14.8 per cent to 25.1 per cent) in England and Wales, between 2001 and 2011. There were increases in the other main religious group categories, with the number of Muslims increasing the most (from 3.0 per cent to 4.8 per cent).
Of the other main religious groups, 1.5% of people identified themselves as Hindu in 2011; 0.8% as Sikh; 0.5% as Jewish; and 0.4% as Buddhist.
That means just 8% of the population have religious cultures which are not Christian, but I don’t know any who are actively campaigning against Christian festivals in the UK. Of course, if we had as many Muslims in the general population as there are in Tower Hamlets (36%) it would be different. Indeed, in Tower Hamlets it is different. Muslims are in every political party there and they have a Muslim majority which cuts across party affiliations.
Perhaps we all ought to come back here in 2042 and see what it looks like then. But as things stand today, Muslims cannot demand the whole population celebrate Eid Al Fitr from a population base of less than 5%.
Actually, the talk about ‘multi-culturalism’, the restriction on advertising oin libraries by a Christian environmentalist group, all the barmy ‘winterval’ stuff, comes not from religious minorities, but from secularist activists in diversity units using the presence of faiths other than Christian in the UK as a stick with which to beat the Christianity they so hate with a passion.
It’s not just the UK. The decision of the National Agency for Education (NEA) in Sweden to ban all references to ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’ during school Advent services is out of the same atheist box.
We have 8 bank holidays in the United Kingdom. Five out of the eight days are based on Christian festivals, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Whitsun, Christmas Day and Boxing Day (St Stephen’s Day). And so they should be.
New Year’s Day, May Day and the August Bank Holiday are atheist, so three out of eight days in a year seems to flatter the atheist population somewhat.
The fact is, this is historically a Christian country with a Christian monarch and a Christian constitution.
Our laws still derive from the laws of Alfred the Great, who based his ‘dooms’ on the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, all of which were endorsed by the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Old Testament has more of a societal emphasis and the New Testament focuses more on the individual. Nevertheless, a common thread that all societal institutions, individual, family, state, corporate worship, relate to and derive their authority from Almighty God runs all the way through, from Genesis to Revelation.
The fact is, Christianity is an unashamed force for individual and societal good throughout the world.
Look at how many hospitals are named after saints. London has St George’s, St Bartholomew’s and St Thomas’s, and Tommy’s neighbour Guy’s was also a Christian foundation. In Manchester there is Saint Mary’s. In Bradford, St Luke’s. In Oldham, All Saints. In Ashford Saint Peter’s. The Knights Hospitaller provided succour to travellers throughout these islands and the world in the middle ages. The Church provided for the poor for centuries until the modern state decided that was its responsibility.
I have yet to hear of someone leaving a life of crime, packing up drugs, stopping self-harming, getting out of prostitution, by becoming an atheist. But I know many people delivered from these things by the power of Jesus Christ. Their testimonies are all over the web.
I have yet to hear of an atheist starting up an orphanage at his own expense, as the Christian Thomas Barnado did in the 1860s.
Or of an atheist campaigning at his own expense, unsupported by public money, against slavery, as William Wilberforce did in the early 19th century.
Or to limit factory and working hours, set up schools for the children of city slums, champion the cause of chimney sweeps’ boys and improve housing conditions for ordinary men and women, as the Christian philanthropist Lord Shaftsbury did in the med nineteenth-century.
And of course these Christians went about their philanthropy precisely because of the incarnation of Jesus Christ we celebrate at Christmas. God was interested enough and involved enough in our human condition to become one of us at a point in history. Jesus Christ, Immanuel, ‘God with us’, healed the sick, comforted the bereaved, even raised the dead, taught the good news and commanded men to repent.
He set an example for us to follow. He told Christians they would be judged and rewarded in the kingdom of God not by how many prayers they made, but by how closely they kept faith in him, kept his commandments and dealt with their fellow human beings. He was among us as one who serves.
That is the heritage Christ Jesus left behind, that is why we should celebrate his birth at Christmas, his liberating death and resurrection at Easter and why we should fight to preserve his faith in this United Kingdom.
So finally, I can do no better than to wish you all a Merry Christmas.
Read:
Luke 22:25-27, Matt 25:34-40, Gal 6:9 and 2Thess 3:13
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Homosexual activists are urging multinational companies to usurp democracy in Uganda.
Patrick Strudwick, an agent provocateur who posed as a Christian seeking healing for same-sex attraction in order to attack Christian counsellor Lesley Pilkington, is leading the charge.
In an email, Strudwick writes:
‘In a matter of days — possibly even hours — Uganda’s parliament is set to pass the so-called “Kill the Gays” bill, which could enshrine in law the death penalty for LGBT people. Their Speaker described the bill as a “Christmas gift” for the Ugandan people.
‘Activists in Uganda say that one way to stop this is by putting pressure on powerful international banks in the country to condemn the bill.
‘Barclays and Citibank both have millions of pounds invested in Uganda and wield a huge influence on the government. A public statement from Barclays speaking out against the “Kill the Gays” bill might be the best chance to stop it and save gay people from being executed.
‘Both banks have supported human rights for LGBT people in the Europe and the US. Barclays is one of the UK’s top employers for LGBT people and prides itself on its work championing gay equality in Britain, which is why I’ve been a customer of theirs for years.
‘If these banks speak out against the bill the Ugandan government will see the huge risk posed to business and their economy if they forge ahead with it.
‘That’s why I’ve started a petition’ … he drones on.
There are two main things wrong with this outpouring from a character described as ‘Smugtwit’ and one of ‘Britain’s two most boring gay men’ by a homosexual blogger.
The second is that the Bill of which he complains is not remotely a ‘kill the gays’ measure anyway.
Now, in its first draft it did provide for the death penalty for those who use the act of sodomy to infect others with HIV/Aids, and those who sodomise children. What penalty would Strudwick want to see for such paragons of ‘gay virtue’? Nothing? An award of ‘Infectious Personality of the Year’ in next year’s Stonewall awards?
It also addressed an anomaly in which those found guilty of rape face the death penalty but those convicted of forced sodomy do not. Again, what penalty does Strudwick think is appropriate for homosexuals who violate others like that? ‘Sports Award of the Year’, perhaps, sponsored as it was this year, by Barclays?
The true reason behind the Bill, introduced three years ago by Ugandan ruling party members David Bahati, is to protect Uganda’s children from being recruited into the homosexual lifestyle by wealthy Western pederasts.
A secondary problem addressed by the Bill is the promotion of sodomy by Western NGO’s such as Jon Stryker’s Arcus Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Dutch humanist group Hivos and George Soros’s ‘Open Society’. On top of all that is the ‘strings-attached’ foreign aid from the US, the EU and Britain. The East Aftican homosexual propaganda industry is entirely funded by rich homosexuals and their friends in the West.
Simon Lokodo, the Minister for ‘Ethics and Integrity’ plans to ban 38 different organisations that are currently promoting homosexuality if the Bill becomes law. It is the Bill’s clamp-down on their proselytisation which most annoys Western homosexuals, and the loss of an exotic playground where adolescent boys can be enticed with a couple of dollars.
The Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, told The Associated Press on Monday 12th November that the bill will become law this year.
The Hon Rebecca Kadaga, Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament.
Ugandans “are demanding it,” she said, reiterating a promise she made before a meeting on Friday of anti-gay activists who spoke of “the serious threat” posed by homosexuals to Uganda’s children. Some Christian clerics at the meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, asked the speaker to pass the law as “a Christmas gift.”
“Speaker, we cannot sit back while such (a) destructive phenomenon is taking place in our nation,” the activists said in a petition. “We therefore, as responsible citizens, feel duty-bound to bring this matter to your attention as the leader of Parliament … so that lawmakers can do something to quickly address the deteriorating situation in our nation.”
The anti-gay activists paraded in front of Mrs Kadaga, with parents and schoolchildren holding up signs saying homosexuality is “an abomination.” The speaker then promised to consider the bill within two weeks, declaring that “the power is in our hands.”
“Who are we not to do what they have told us? These people should not be begging us,” Mrs Kadaga said of activists who want the bill to become law.
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The President of Uganda has repented of past sins and dedicated his nation to Almighty God.
President Yoweri Museveni made history last month at the National Jubilee Prayers in Namboole, when he openly repented of his sins and the sins of Uganda, according to Moses Mulondo of New Vision.
Uganda has been targetted in recent years by wealthy Western homosexual activists, furious at that country’s opposition to pro-sodomy activism.
Both President Museveni and First Lady Janet Museveni have warned of the dangers posed to individuals and society by sodomy. But the subject did not warrant a mention in the President’s prayer, as he concentrated on repentance for sins and rededication of the nation to God.
President Museveni said:
Father God in heaven, today we stand here as Ugandans, to thank you for Uganda. We are proud that we are Ugandans and Africans. We thank you for all your goodness to us.
I stand here today to close the evil past and especially in the last 50 years of our national leadership history and at the threshold of a new dispensation in the life of this nation. I stand here on my own behalf and on behalf of my predecessors to repent. We ask for your forgiveness.
We confess these sins, which have greatly hampered our national cohesion and delayed our political, social and economic transformation.
We confess sins of idolatry and witchcraft which are rampant in our land. We confess sins of shedding innocent blood, sins of political hypocrisy, dishonesty, intrigue and betrayal.
Forgive us of sins of pride, tribalism and sectarianism; sins of laziness, indifference and irresponsibility; sins of corruption and bribery that have eroded our national resources; sins of sexual immorality, drunkenness and debauchery; sins of unforgiveness, bitterness, hatred and revenge; sins of injustice, oppression and exploitation; sins of rebellion, insubordination, strife and conflict.
These sins and many others have characterised our past leadership, especially the last 50 years of our history. Lord forgive us and give us a new beginning. Give us a heart to love you, to fear you and to seek you. Take away from us all the above sins.
We pray for national unity. Unite us as Ugandans and eliminate all forms of conflict, sectarianism and tribalism. Help us to see that we are all your children, children of the same Father. Help us to love and respect one another and to appreciate unity in diversity.
We pray for prosperity and transformation. Deliver us from ignorance, poverty and disease. As leaders, give us wisdom to help lead our people into political, social and economic transformation.
We want to dedicate this nation to you so that you will be our God and guide. We want Uganda to be known as a nation that fears God and as a nation whose foundations are firmly rooted in righteousness and justice to fulfil what the Bible says in Psalm 33:12: Blessed is the nation, whose God is the Lord. A people you have chosen as your own.
I renounce all the evil foundations and covenants that were laid in idolatry and witchcraft. I renounce all the satanic influence on this nation. And I hereby covenant Uganda to you, to walk in your ways and experience all your blessings forever.
I pray for all these in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Christian Leaders React
The Church of Uganda Archbishop elect, Stanley Ntagali said the prayer was a step in the right direction. That it was appropriate for the head of state to repent of his sins and the sins of Ugandans.
The leader of Pentecostal churches, Apostle Alex Mitala, said the prayer was the beginning of the healing of a nation. “All the nations we read about in the Bible were healed when their leaders repented and acknowledged God’s supremacy,” he said. Mitala urged Ugandans to turn away from their wicked ways.
Pastor Dr. Martin Kalibbala of New Testament Covenant Church warned that the fruits of repentance are what matter. “If you repent of stealing, God expects you to immediately stop stealing. If the President’s repentance is genuine, it will be measured on God’s yardstick of bearing the fruits of repentance,” he said.
Pastor Dr. Martin Ssempa of Makerere Community Church said it was a good thing for the President to repent on his behalf and on behalf of the nation. He commended those who encouraged and helped the President prepare the prayer, adding that God will answer it.
“We hope the President’s repentance will result into greater obedience to God by the executive, which he heads.”
Stephen Green of Christian Voice in the United Kingdom said: “President Museveni has set a standard which other national leaders would do well to emulate. All the sins which the President has identified in Uganda are present in Britain and America under different names. All governments need to root out corruption, wickedness and injustice and return to God.”
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Education Secretary, Michael Grove, condemned the decision as “indefensible.”
A Yorkshire council today admitted it made a mistake in removing children from foster parents because the couple were members of the UK Independence Party. (Read the Times article about it here.)
The children, a baby girl, a boy and an older girl, were removed from the foster couple by the Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council in South Yorkshire following allegations from social workers that the parents’ political affiliation was at odds with the children’s European backgrounds. (The Ukip party favours Britain’s complete withdrawal from the EU.)
The social worker in the case alleged that UKIP is a racist party and that the children’s “cultural and ethnic needs” might be compromised by the foster parents. However, the council admitted that the South Yorkshire couple, a qualified nursery nurse and a former Royal Navy reservist, were good foster parents and provided proper care to the children.
The children had been with the foster parents for about eight weeks. During this time they were encouraged to share their own folk songs and speak their native language, which the foster parents were attempting to learn.
The Council’s admission of error occurred after Education Secretary, Michael Gove, condemned the decision as “indefensible” last weekend, leading to an investigation of the Council’s behaviour.
In a statement earlier today, council leader Roger Stone commented that “Membership of UKIP should not bar someone from fostering. The council places the highest priority on safeguarding children, and our overriding concern in all decisions about the children in our care is for their best interests.”
Labour leader, Ed Miliband also criticized the Council’s totalitarian actions. He was joined by Michael Grove, who heads the Government department responsible for children’s services. Mr Grove promised to investigate what happened and to “deal with” the situation. He commented that
“Rotherham’s reasons for denying this family the chance to foster are indefensible. The ideology behind their decision is actively harmful to children. We should not allow considerations of ethnic or cultural background to prevent children being placed with loving and stable families…. Any council which decides that supporting a mainstream UK political party disbars an individual from looking after children in care is sending a dreadful signal that will only decrease the number of loving homes available to children in need.”
The couple have still not received the children back, nor have they been given a public apology. The wife told The Daily Telegraph: “We feel that we have personally been slandered and we would like a public apology from Rotherham. We would also like something in the form of a letter stating that they have got it wrong in this case and that it will not be on our records that we have had children removed from our care.We just want a clean slate.”
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that social workers and local councils have used their power as leverage over parents whose views are not politically correct. Last June we reported on the story of Toni McLeod, who has taken up residence in Ireland to try to escape the tentacles of Durham County Council. Durham council is attempting to gain custody of Mrs. McLeod’s baby because of her allegedly anti-Muslim views.
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What Obama’s Re-Election Tells us About America (Part 5)
Thankfully, the 2012 election did not have the Messianic mood of the 2008 election. Obama’s dreams of utopia never materialized and no one made the same mistake ofconfusing Obama with God. The American people seem to have realized that, whatever his pretensions, Obama is only a man.
But while the nation of America seems to have got over wanting Obama to be God, they have not given up the wish for the President to have God-like powers. Indeed, Obama’s re-election suggests that America wanted a stronger and more powerful president, one that is almost omnipotent.
Historically, the Executive Branch has only played a limited role, and the United States Constitution even prohibits the President from introducing legislation. This was intentional, since the legal structure of the United States was set up so that most power resided in the states and in their elected legislatures.
Throughout the twentieth-century, however, American Presidents have progressively assumed unprecedented powers. Yet nothing compares with the way Obama has reinvented the Executive office.
Even before taking power in 2008, it was clear that Obama believed the president would possess almost super-human powers. He made some extraordinary promises about what he would accomplish, even claiming that he would cut the federal deficit in half. Such promises could only have been made by someone with an insufficient grasp of how bad America’s economic recession really was, or someone with an over-inflated sense of how much power the President actually wields. Indeed, a foreigner listening to Obama’s extraordinary promises could be forgiven for thinking that the executive branch was the sole organ of government and capable of automatically implementing all the Presidents wishes.
While the United States President may not wield as much power as Obama might wish, he has done everything he can to increase that power. I have already given some examples in my earlier article ‘Totalitarian Creep’, but some more recent examples include
By expanding George Bush’s “war on terror” to mainland United States (not to mention expanding it abroad), President Obama has introduced war-time conditions into America. But the “war on terror” is ubiquitous and can never be won since it is against an abstract foe, which by definition can never satisfy the conditions for surrender. The intrusion of this abstract fight into America herself means that all citizens become potential enemies, and no longer can they depend on their historic rights for protection. This is to invest the Executive Branch with a power undreamed of by the architects of the American nation.
Obama’s proposed Cybersecurity executive order would re-route all Internet traffic through federal agencies, ostensibly to be on the look-out for terrorist groups. But let’s not forget that under Obama the Department of Homeland Security issued a report associating states’ rights activists and “those “dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion” with domestic terrorists. Is this really the type of administration we want spying on our internet activity?
On 16 march, 2012, President Obama signed into law Executive Order 13603, which makes provisions for establishing martial law in America during times of peace. Brandon Turbeville explains how this will allow “the President and his Secretaries have the authority to seize all transportation, energy, and infrastructure inside the United States as well as forcibly induct/draft American citizens into the military” and possible forced labor. (Click here to listen to a revealing radio show about the order, and visit William Anderson’s article ‘Executive Orders and the Decline of Law‘ for a good background about executive orders in general.)
What Obama’s Re-Election Tells us About America (Part 4)
Obama’s re-election has huge symbolic value, since he epitomizes changing attitudes towards liberty in America. He represents a growing constituency which believes that maximization of liberty means removing all barriers to sexual license.
It is common knowledge that no president has been as virulently pro-abortion and pro-homosexual as Obama. But the real significance of this is that as Obama attempts to overturn centuries of Christian morality, he does so in the name of liberty.
In the case of Obama’s support of abortion, the policies he embraces actually remove liberty from the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. Similarly, his recent support of same-sex ‘marriage’ could see unprecedented restrictions on freedom of speech and even thought. However, Obama pursues these policies in the name of greater freedom for the American people. This is significant since it shows that America is involved in a sea-change shift of what liberty actually means.
In the older tradition, the government’s role in preserving liberty was primarily negative, with the state acting as a hedge against outside threats to life, property and the pursuit of happiness. In this framework, liberty was as much a restriction of the state as it was anything else. Put another way, liberty was essentially negative.
Since roughly the time of Franklin Roosevelt, however, rights and liberties have increasingly come to be seen as something the state has a responsibility to proactively create. In his 1944 State of the Union Address, Franklin Roosevelt created the template for a new way of thinking about liberty when he called a “second Bill of Rights” on the grounds that “Necessitous men are not free men”. If a man is necessitous—that is, if there are things he needs but doesn’t have—then he is lacking true liberty. Of course, if this be granted, then the only way for the state to preserve liberty is to satisfy people’s needs. Roosevelt thus went on to suggest that the state should provide a “new basis of security and prosperity” which included “The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.”
Now there is nothing wrong in principle with the state providing medical care to its citizens, provided it can afford to do so. The problem is when we assert that anything less represents a deficit of liberty, and that I can only be truly free in a society where government meets my needs. To confuse freedom with provision in this way is to imply that for most of the United States’ history the citizens have never been truly free and that the ideals of liberty can only be realized under modern activist government.
This new concept of liberty is analogous to evolving notions of human rights. No longer are rights God-given conditions that the state simply protects; rather, rights become benefits that government is responsible to actually create.
It’s interesting to see how this played out in two of the most contentious issues during the election: contraception and Obamacare. Significantly, Obama has not simply argued that the state should provide free contraception and healthcare to all its citizens. On the contrary, again and again he has suggested that government must do this because Americans have a right to it. By converting a growing amount of needs and desires into inalienable rights, Obama has given the American government a burden it cannot afford (literally) to bare.
The shift in the concept of liberty and rights arises from confusion over where our rights actually originate. Do our most basic inalienable rights and liberties come from God, who then ordains the state to protect those rights and liberties? Or are our most basic inalienable rights the creation of the State?
According to America’s Declaration of Independence, our inalienable rights come from God. It reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Because our most basic rights come from God, the role of the state in preserving liberty is primarily negative, acting as a hedge against people and forces who would take away those rights.
Obama has made it clear that he disputes the notion of negative liberties. In a 2001 interview on Chicago’s public radio station WBEZ FM, he referred to needing to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution” and he criticized those who believed ” the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties.” Bruce Walker had this to say about the utter absurdity of these new “positive liberties” that Obama hoped to introduce:
The 2001 audio tape of Barack Obama describing the Constitution as a document of “negative liberties” reveals an utterly Orwellian Obama. How can liberty be anything other than negative? Liberty is the absence of external control. Only in our age of collective thinking and untidy language could such a thing as “positive liberty” be conceived. The state power to coerce is not liberty.
Notions like “positive liberty” are part of the web of thought control by language manipulation which Orwell described in 1984. If Obama cannot think of “positive liberty” as a contradiction in terms, then he simply cannot think. The conscious surrender of language to the needs of the party creates a self-made prison from which escape is, quite literally, inconceivable. These unguarded remarks by Obama display a mind trapped in a reality in which words are phantoms.
Obama could have spoken about the limited value of liberty. Government does some things which reduce our private rights and yet which increase the common good. Politics is all about where the boundary between broad notions of promoting the general welfare by state coercion and preserving liberty should be. Politicians on the Left have often argued that liberty should be reined in more tightly so that “the people” can live better. But implying that more state power somehow increases liberty is beyond mere Leftism. It is entry into that dead realm of Newspeak in which language is pureed into nonsense, and then nonsense is presented as argument.
Behind Obama’s Newspeak is a certain worldview that we must be attentive to. In Obama’s world, because liberties and rights do not have any objective a priori grounding, it is totally consistent to turn them into the plaything of an all-powerful state. Since rights and liberties do not come from God but from the state, government has the responsibility to invent and then dispense these positive liberties to the populace (and indeed, to the world).
But how do we know that Obama does not believe that rights and liberties originate with God? Listen to Obama when he tries to quote this passage (taken from a speech made at a fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Rockville, Md:
As wonderful as the land is here in the United States, as much as we have been blessed by the bounty of this magnificent continent that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, what makes this place special is not something physical. It has to do with this idea that was started by 13 colonies that decided to throw off the yoke of an empire, and said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that each of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Do you notice something missing when Obama quotes the Declaration? He leaves out part which says that our certain inalienable rights are endowed to mankind “by their Creator.” Could this be a simple oversight on Obama’s part? Perhaps, if it was only this one speech. But in fact, Obama has misquoted the Declaration on at least two different occasions, making it difficult to dismiss as a simple mistake. This apparently deliberate omission is a powerful statement about Obama’s worldview, in which it is not God who gives us our most basic rights and liberties, but the State.
Ken Myers put his finger on the pulse of this attitude in his Mars Hill Audio Journal, when he commented that “Modern liberal societies are structured around the assumption that since there is no one definition of happiness that everyone can agree on, the state and state-approved social institutions will promote freedom and equality so that everyone will be able to pursue happiness on their own terms. However, in the absence of any substantive understanding of happiness—of the ends of human life—freedom and equality become variable, plastic, elusive terms, defined relative to the cultural status quo and not objectively.”
What Obama’s Re-Election Tells us About America (Part 3)
Obama’s re-election tells us that image matters more than reality.
In the days leading up to his re-election, Obama announced to America that the federal deficit had gone down under him. “We tried our ideas. They worked. The economy grew. We created jobs. Deficits went down.” Well, the federal deficit actually expanded under Obama, and not even his supporters have tried to argue otherwise.
However, what has mattered more than the facts was the impression Obama gave of himself as an experienced statesman who halted the rising deficit through his policies of fiscal prudence. Most of America bought the lie, or Obama wouldn’t now be preparing to serve a second term.
In addition to portraying himself as a thrifty leader who had brought America out of its recession, Obama successfully portrayed Romney as an intolerant, right-wing plutocratic. The barrage of the withering television ads that the Obama campaign let loose in the swing states solidified this caricature of Romney, though it was about as accurate as Obama’s claim to have decreased the federal deficit.
What this tells us about America is that impression matters more than substance. As I pointed out in an article I wrote last summer, political speeches “are increasingly filled with vacuous statements that do not invite rational disputation. Speeches are designed to maximize applause lines, stroke the emotions and appeal to our intuitions, while being lean on substantive content.”
Obama embodies this image-based paradigm. He was able to appeal to the intuitions and emotions of most Americans, especially those living in urban areas, while being lean on factual content.
What Obama’s Re-Election Tells us About America (Part 2)
Obama’s re-election shows us that the Christians living in the nation need a kick in the backside. Obama’s victory was made possible by the thousands of Christians who supported him, as well as by those who did not support him yet decided not to vote for Romney.
CNN reportedthat “One-in-four Obama voters were religiously unaffiliated, the second-largest “religious” demographic in the president’s coalition…. Minority Christians – consisting of black, Asian, Hispanic and mixed-race Americans – made up 31% of Obama’s coalition, the largest religious group.” American Christians elected Obama!
Obviously Obama did not have the support of very many conservative Christians, yet many of these refused to vote. Obama won by a slim enough margin in the swing states that some experts believe the results would have been different had enough evangelicals and conservative Christians voted for Romney.
Leading up to the election, most of the Christians I spoke with told me that they could not bring themselves to vote for Romney even if it meant Obama got another four years. One of the common justifications evangelical Christians gave for not voting for Romney is because they were concerned about his Mormonism. While it is certainly true that we should be concerned about any false religion, it is unclear why so many Christians felt they couldn’t engage in cobelligerents with a Mormon, especially one claiming to be pro-life and against same-sex ‘marriage.’
Certainly Romney was not the ideal candidate from a Christian perspective, especially since he was so quick to merely echo whatever he thought people wanted to hear. Yet precisely because Romney did have a conservative base to please, it is possible that the electorate could have kept him accountable to some of his campaign promises. Wishful thinking? Perhaps. However, with three Supreme Court nominations coming up in the next four years, it’s hard to imagine Romney doing any worse than Obama. Sometimes the most responsible thing to do is to choose the lesser of two evils.
Leading up to the election a number of Christians told me that they believed it would be wrong—if not sinful—to choose the lesser of two evils. When pressed, those who put forward this concern were never able to explain why choosing the lesser of two evils is wrong from a Biblical point of view. And when you stop to think about it, unless Jesus Himself were running for office, any vote is going to be a vote for the lesser of two evils, at least on some level.
The concern that Christians should not vote for the lesser of two evils fails to appreciate why we actually vote in the first place. From almost any ethical perspective—certainly from the Christian perspective—the decision who to vote for ought to be based on what benefits the common good, and not on there being a candidate we feel happy to get behind (which, if we’re honest, will rarely be the case). As my friend Brad Littlejohn explained it in a recent blog post,
a vote is [not] an endorsement of, or an identification with any particular candidate—it is simply an attempt to secure a relatively better realization of the common good, and to render less likely particularly serious evils. That being the case, one may vote for a candidate whom one expects to make a number of evil decisions, without being personally culpable for those decisions, if one believes that on the whole, justice will be better served by that candidate.
Unfortunately, the concept of needing to serve the common good plays far too small a role within the political discourse of the conservative Christian community of America. The Christian right in America is becoming increasingly individualistic, myopic and self-serving. In reaction to the incipient socialism of the political left, America’s conservative community is fast becoming characterized by individualistic opportunists who associate any appeal to the common good with utilitarianism or collectivism. I first started realizing this was a problem when a conservative businessman said to me (in another election), “I’m not concerned with which candidate is going to best serve our nation, I’m going to vote for the candidate whose policies will benefit me.”
PRAY: that the Christians in America would move from a posture of retreat and compromise to become a light to the nation. Ask that during the years of Obama’s second term, the Lord would raise Christians up to witness to the truth and bring America to her knees in repentance.
What Obama’s Re-Election Tells us About America (Part 1)
On the surface, Obama’s re-election was a puzzle. With unemployment in America at 7.9%, food prices skyrocketing and the price of living at it’s highest in three years, all the odds were stacked against the incumbent. By all accounts, Romney should have sailed to an easy victory.
The common narratives to explain Obama’s re-election doesn’t really get to the root of things. Republicans are blaming Obama’s re-election on the fact that Romney was insufficiently conservative and too changeable, that the Obama campaign was better organized, that Romney had managed to alienate the Hispanic vote during the primaries, or that Hurricane Sandy deflected media focus away from Romney’s campaign in the final crucial days.
While all of these factors played a part, they don’t really get at the deeper spiritual and social issues which explain why the American electorate was so eager to give Obama another four years. In series of five blog posts I will seek to uncover some of those deeper issues and to ask, “What does Obama’s re-election tells us about America?”
Changing Spiritual Environment
America’s choice to re-elect Obama has huge spiritual significance because of what Obama symbolically represents. Never before have Americans chosen a national figurehead who was as openly hostile to the Christian faith.
Earlier this year David Barton did us a great service of putting together in one place a list of Obama’s acts of hostility to the Christian faith. I want to quote Barton’s list in full. (Click on the footnotes to see references substantiating that Obama or his administration actually did these things.) The fact that the United States decided to re-elect a President with this kind of track record says much about the changing spiritual environment of contemporary America.
1. Acts of hostility toward people of Biblical faith:
April 2008 – Obama speaks disrespectfully of Christians, saying they “cling to guns or religion” and have an “antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” 1
February 2009 – Obama announces plans to revoke conscience protection for health workers who refuse to participate in medical activities that go against their beliefs, and fully implements the plan in February 2011. 2
April 2009 – When speaking at Georgetown University, Obama orders that a monogram symbolizing Jesus’ name be covered when he is making his speech. 3
May 2009 – Obama declines to host services for the National Prayer Day (a day established by federal law) at the White House. 4
April 2009 – In a deliberate act of disrespect, Obama nominated three pro-abortion ambassadors to the Vatican; of course, the pro-life Vatican rejected all three. 5
October 19, 2010 – Obama begins deliberately omitting the phrase about “the Creator” when quoting the Declaration of Independence – an omission he has made on no less than seven occasions. 6
November 2010 – Obama misquotes the National Motto, saying it is “E pluribus unum” rather than “In God We Trust” as established by federal law. 7
January 2011 – After a federal law was passed to transfer a WWI Memorial in the Mojave Desert to private ownership, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that the cross in the memorial could continue to stand, but the Obama administration refused to allow the land to be transferred as required by law, and refused to allow the cross to be re-erected as ordered by the Court. 8
February 2011 – Although he filled posts in the State Department, for more than two years Obama did not fill the post of religious freedom ambassador, an official that works against religious persecution across the world; he filled it only after heavy pressure from the public and from Congress. 9
April 2011 – For the first time in American history, Obama urges passage of a non-discrimination law that does not contain hiring protections for religious groups, forcing religious organizations to hire according to federal mandates without regard to the dictates of their own faith, thus eliminating conscience protection in hiring. 10
August 2011 – The Obama administration releases its new health care rules that override religious conscience protections for medical workers in the areas of abortion and contraception. 11
November 2011 – Obama opposes inclusion of President Franklin Roosevelt’s famous D-Day Prayer in the WWII Memorial. 12
November 2011 – Unlike previous presidents, Obama studiously avoids any religious references in his Thanksgiving speech. 13
December 2011 – The Obama administration denigrates other countries’ religious beliefs as an obstacle to radical homosexual rights. 14
January 2012 – The Obama administration argues that the First Amendment provides no protection for churches and synagogues in hiring their pastors and rabbis. 15
February 2012 – The Obama administration forgives student loans in exchange for public service, but announces it will no longer forgive student loans if the public service is related to religion. 16
2. Acts of hostility from the Obama-led military toward people of Biblical faith:
June 2011 – The Department of Veterans Affairs forbids references to God and Jesus during burial ceremonies at Houston National Cemetery. 17
August 2011 – The Air Force stops teaching the Just War theory to officers in California because the course is taught by chaplains and is based on a philosophy introduced by St. Augustine in the third century AD – a theory long taught by civilized nations across the world (except America). 18
September 2011 – Air Force Chief of Staff prohibits commanders from notifying airmen of programs and services available to them from chaplains. 19
September 2011 – The Army issues guidelines for Walter Reed Medical Center stipulating that “No religious items (i.e. Bibles, reading materials and/or facts) are allowed to be given away or used during a visit.” 20
November 2011 – The Air Force Academy rescinds support for Operation Christmas Child, a program to send holiday gifts to impoverished children across the world, because the program is run by a Christian charity. 21
November 2011 – The Air Force Academy pays $80,000 to add a Stonehenge-like worship center for pagans, druids, witches and Wiccans. 22
February 2012 – The U. S. Military Academy at West Point disinvites three star Army general and decorated war hero Lieutenant General William G. (“Jerry”) Boykin (retired) from speaking at an event because he is an outspoken Christian. 23
February 2012 – The Air Force removes “God” from the patch of Rapid Capabilities Office (the word on the patch was in Latin: Dei). 24
February 2012 – The Army orders Catholic chaplains not to read a letter to parishioners that their archbishop asked them to read. 25
April 2012 – A checklist for Air Force Inns will no longer include ensuring that a Bible is available in rooms for those who want to use them.26
May 2012 – The Obama administration opposes legislation to protect the rights of conscience for military chaplains who do not wish to perform same-sex marriages in violation of their strongly-held religious beliefs.27
June 2012 – Bibles for the American military have been printed in every conflict since the American Revolution, but the Obama Administration revokes the long-standing U. S. policy of allowing military service emblems to be placed on those military Bibles.28
3. Acts of hostility toward Biblical values:
January 2009 – Obama lifts restrictions on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services or counseling abroad, forcing taxpayers to fund pro-abortion groups that either promote or perform abortions in other nations. 29
January 2009 – President Obama’s nominee for deputy secretary of state asserts that American taxpayers are required to pay for abortions and that limits on abortion funding are unconstitutional. 30
March 2009 – The Obama administration shut out pro-life groups from attending a White House-sponsored health care summit. 31
March 2009 – Obama orders taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research. 32
March 2009 – Obama gave $50 million for the UNFPA, the UN population agency that promotes abortion and works closely with Chinese population control officials who use forced abortions and involuntary sterilizations. 33
May 2009 – The White House budget eliminates all funding for abstinence-only education and replaces it with “comprehensive” sexual education, repeatedly proven to increase teen pregnancies and abortions. 34 He continues the deletion in subsequent budgets. 35
May 2009 – Obama officials assemble a terrorism dictionary calling pro-life advocates violent and charging that they use racism in their “criminal” activities. 36
July 2009 – The Obama administration illegally extends federal benefits to same-sex partners of Foreign Service and Executive Branch employees, in direction violation of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. 37
September 16, 2009 – The Obama administration appoints as EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum, who asserts that society should “not tolerate” any “private beliefs,” including religious beliefs, if they may negatively affect homosexual “equality.” 38
July 2010 – The Obama administration uses federal funds in violation of federal law to get Kenya to change its constitution to include abortion. 39
August 2010 – The Obama administration Cuts funding for 176 abstinence education programs. 40
September 2010 – The Obama administration tells researchers to ignore a judge’s decision striking down federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. 41
February 2011 – Obama directs the Justice Department to stop defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act. 42
March 2011 – The Obama administration refuses to investigate videos showing Planned Parenthood helping alleged sex traffickers get abortions for victimized underage girls. 43
July 2011 – Obama allows homosexuals to serve openly in the military, reversing a policy originally instituted by George Washington in March 1778. 44
September 2011 – The Pentagon directs that military chaplains may perform same-sex marriages at military facilities in violation of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. 45
October 2011 – The Obama administration eliminates federal grants to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for their extensive programs that aid victims of human trafficking because the Catholic Church is anti-abortion. 46
4. Acts of preferentialism for Islam:
May 2009 – While Obama does not host any National Day of Prayer event at the White House, he does host White House Iftar dinners in honor of Ramadan. 47
April 2010 – Christian leader Franklin Graham is disinvited from the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer Event because of complaints from the Muslim community. 48
April 2010 – The Obama administration requires rewriting of government documents and a change in administration vocabulary to remove terms that are deemed offensive to Muslims, including jihad, jihadists, terrorists, radical Islamic, etc. 49
August 2010 – Obama speaks with great praise of Islam and condescendingly of Christianity. 50
August 2010 – Obama went to great lengths to speak out on multiple occasions on behalf of building an Islamic mosque at Ground Zero, while at the same time he was silent about a Christian church being denied permission to rebuild at that location. 51
2010 – While every White House traditionally issues hundreds of official proclamations and statements on numerous occasions, this White House avoids traditional Biblical holidays and events but regularly recognizes major Muslim holidays, as evidenced by its 2010 statements on Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hajj, and Eid-ul-Adha. 52
October 2011 – Obama’s Muslim advisers block Middle Eastern Christians’ access to the White House. 53
February 2012 – The Obama administration makes effulgent apologies for Korans being burned by the U. S. military, 54 but when Bibles were burned by the military, numerous reasons were offered why it was the right thing to do. 55
PRAY: that the Lord would have mercy on America and strengthen His church during this time of virulent opposition to the gospel.
An Exclusive Brethren church trust in Devon is to consider advertising its services to satisfy the Charity Commission that it serves a public benefit, according to Third Way magazine yesterday.
The news that the Preston Down Trust had been refused charitable status was greeted with alarm in some Christian circles, but the National Director of Christian Voice believes it is a very special case and that good can come from it if the decision forces churches into the gospel imperative of social action.
In a letter to the Brethren, the Charity Commission cited a tribunal ruling that religion is not always for “the public benefit” and said “there is no presumption that religion generally, or at any more specific level, is for the public benefit, even in the case of Christianity or the Church of England”.
The Exclusive Brethren are a Christian denomination who have no fellowship with those outside. They affix a small sign to their meeting hall stating that it is a place of public worship to satisfy the law, but little else gives its function away. They do not extend hospitality to outsiders and are not involved in the community at large, keeping themselves as separate as they can from the world.
MPs on the Public Administration Select Committee, which is investigating the work of the Charity Commission, are concerned that the commission could start denying charitable status to other religious groups.
Charlie Elphicke, a member of the committee and the MP for Dover and Deal, believes the commission is ‘committed to the suppression of religion’.
The Charities Act 2006 means that organisations which previously gained charitable status automatically now have to demonstrate “public benefit”.
Professor Peter Luxton, an expert in charity law at Cardiff University, said the Charity Commission’s attempt to define public benefit was “a nonsense,” since the 2006 law did not make any changes to the definition of a charity.
He added: “The Commission has been completely out of control.”
The Charity Commission said: ‘The application from Preston Down Trust was not accepted on the basis that we were unable to conclude that the organisation is established for the advancement of religion for public benefit within the relevant charity law.’
A spokeswoman went further, saying that the decision to deny charitable status to the Preston Down Trust ‘took into account the nature of Christian religion embraced by the trust and the means through which this was promoted, including the public access to its services and the potential for its beneficial impact on the wider community’, according to Third Sector.
Rod Buckley, a member of Preston Down Trust, said that it does allow non-members to attend services, but advertising its meetings will demonstrate that.
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, said:
‘This decision, while it may seem unwelcome, is not quite the big deal that some are making out. There is not the remotest possibility of churches up and down the land losing their charitable status.
‘In a sense it is a pity that new charity law has allowed the Charity Commission to change the old understanding that the promotion of religion is a good thing and that ‘it is good for people to have a religion’, but that was in an era when ‘religion’ in our land simply meant Christianity.
‘However, in Britain today, we are beginning to see that not all religion is good. Churches engage, or should engage, in social action, and the Christian faith has brought immense benefit to our nation. Our laws were historically based on Christian principles of justice, although secularists have deliberately legislated against righteousness in the last fifty years. Our heritage of generosity, altruism, philanthropy and care for the poor and needy were based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, although these too are now under pressure.
‘But other religions struggle to show any public benefit. Mosques and Islamic trusts further the Islamic faith and give nothing beneficial to the community at large. Hinduism is similarly introspective, while campaigning atheist concerns with charitable status offer nothing that could conceivably be described as having a public benefit.
‘By observing that the Exclusive Brethren need to show how their faith benefits the outside world, the Charity Commission are pussing them into an openness and a willingness to serve that should be at the heart of the Gospel. That can only be a good thing.
‘Christians and churches in general need to take note and if they do not have projects which benefit the community, they should put them in place as a matter of urgency. God became one of us in Jesus Christ, and especially as we come up to Christmas, we need to learn the message of his incarnation and become his hands and feet doing what he urged us to do on earth. In addition, we need to show that Christians live industrious, God-fearing lives which make a positive impact on the world around us.
‘We should also begin to draw the attention of the Charity Commission to the lack of public benefit of anti-Christian bodies with charitable status. Groups promoting evil under the guise of ‘educating the public’ should be exposed for what they are. The Charity Commission may have done the cause of Christ a lot of good in this decision.’
Some suggestions of social action church projects:
Engaging with the community in prayer and worship
Evangelism
Wide advertising of worship meetings, services and projects
Street Pastors and ‘Night Lights’
Soup Kitchens
Food Banks
Offering help with unemployment claim forms and housing benefits
Debt counselling
Helping people into work with courses, drafting CVs, etc
Advice with business skills and encouragement,
Marriage preparation, guidance, and building.
Poverty relief at home
Support of projects overseas
MIcro-finance
Support for parents in trouble with Social Services,
Help with parenting and home management skills,
Speaking out on the issues of the day,
Do our members have any other suggestions?
Find out how to join Christian Voice and stand up for the King of kings (clicking on the link below does not commit you to join)
In a live interview earlier this week, This Morning presenter Phillip Schofield handed the Prime Minister a card with a list of names on it drawn from the internet, saying that they were people Mr Cameron knew and asking whether he would be talking to them.
Mr Schofield was wrong to dignify gossip in such a way and no-one being interviewed appreciates an ambush. A furious Mr Cameron, who did not look at the names, replied:
“There is a danger, if we’re not careful, that this could turn into a sort of witch-hunt, particularly against people who are gay and I’m worried about the sort of thing you are doing right now – giving me a list of names that you’ve taken off the internet.”
Nobody in the world of media wants to talk even about the possibility of links between homosexuality and paedophilia, or to confuse the public by separating paedophiles into those attracted to adolescents (usually referred to as ‘pederasts’) and those attracted to pro-pubertal children (true paedophiles).
Uncomfortable as it is to admit, Mr Cameron was correct in his slip of the tongue. There is indeed a link between homosexuality and sexual attraction to children.
Those campaigning for the legalisation of paedophilia have always been male homosexuals. The founders of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), Paedophile Action for Liberation (PAL), the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) and the New Zealand based Aotearoa Man-Boy Love Association (AMBLA) were all adult male homosexuals. Ian Dunn, who helped set up PIE, was a leading light in the Scottish Minorities Group, an early homosexual activist group. The Campaign for Homosexual Equality had the abolition of all ages of consent as one of its aims.
It all seemed wonderfully sexually liberated to these activists in the 1970s and early 1980s. PIE even published a book in 1982 called ‘Betrayal of Youth’ (BOY) campaigning against ages of consent, and edited by their Vice-Chairman. Peter Tatchell contributed a chapter to Betrayal of Youth: ‘Questioning Ages of Majority and Ages of Consent’. There has never been any suggestion that Peter Tatchell was or is himself a paedophile, but he helped their cause with his expressed desire to abolish ages of consent.
But if paedophilia is a minority interest in the homosexual world, pederasty is widespread. A cult of youth is a mainstream part of homosexual culture, where magazines with names like ‘Boyz’ and websites are filled with pictures of attractive young men.
In their 1979 book ‘The Gay Report’, Jay and Young, two American homosexuals, revealed that 73% of their fellows had at some time had sex with boys 16-19 or younger. One reported “My lover and I are into many young boys 13-18 years old …” There is no reason to suppose that with lowering of ages of consent and generally more liberal attitudes to under-age sex that today’s homosexual men have suddenly become less inclined to adolescent boys.
The UK Home Office carried out research on cases of indecent assault in 1973, and were able to distinguish between ages of victim as follows. Out of 802 convictions for indecent assault on males, we find the following:
Age of victim: 0-4 5-9 10-11 12-15 16-17 18-20 21+ All 0-15
% of cases: 3.1 32.5 18.6 33.9 4.9 2.8 4.2 88.1%
It is quite common for apologists for homosexuality to assert that ‘heterosexual men are more likely to be paedophiles’, so we need briefly to examine this claim.
For the same year that the Home Office did their research into indecent assault, they also published the figures for assaults on females. There were 3,006, and the ages broke down as follows:
Age of victim: 0-4 5-9 10-12 13-15 16-17 18-20 21+ All 0-15
% of cases: 3.2 24.8 15.4 26.2 7.1 7.8 15. 5 69.6%
Leaving aside for a moment the paedophile/pederast distinction, the total assaults on under-16 males were 18.55% of all convictions (88.1 x 802 / 3808), and those on under-16 females were 54.94% of all convictions (69.6 x 3006 / 3808) . We must assume for the sake of the argument that all the assaults were carried out by men, and also assume, to be generous, that there are 1.5% of men in the UK population who are sadly homosexual.
Then we can say that the 1.5% who are homosexual were responsible for 18.5% of assaults, and the 98.5% who are heterosexual were responsible for 55%, meaning that a homosexual in the statistics was (18.55/1.5) / (54.94/98.5) = 22 times more likely to offend than a heterosexual.
But this is not the whole picture. If heterosexuality is the ability to enter into a complete loving and sexual relationship exclusively with an adult of the opposite sex, then the men convicted of the offences on girls under 16 were not up to the mark either. Jimmy Savile committed his staggering litany of abuse against pubescent girls because he was emotionally unable to form a normal relationship with a woman. He was not ‘heterosexual’ by any reasonable definition.
We must thank Messrs Schofield and Cameron for giving us the opportunity to talk about an issue which is too often kept under wraps, and which has implications wider than their immediate focus at a time when homosexual activists from groups like Stonewall are demanding ever more rights and acceptance.
Christian Voice National Director Stephen Green handing out leaflets outside Coutts Bank HQ opposite London’s Charing Cross Station on Friday 26th October. Coutts condemned Stonewall’s ‘bigot’ award on Monday 29th.
It’s not often we are able to celebrate a victory, but the announcement from the Queen’s bankers that they will no longer support the Stonewall lobby group’s playground bullying is welcome news.
Coutts Bank have joined Barclays in condemning Stonewall’s insulting ‘Bigot of the year’ award. In an email sent to one of our members on Monday evening they said:
‘Thank you for your email. Coutts are sponsors only of Stonewall’s Writer of the Year Award and have in no way been involved in the judging or support of the Bigot of the Year category. We have advised Stonewall that we will be withdrawing our support of the awards unless they remove this category.’
Coutts remarkable decision comes just one working day after we gave out leaflets about the affair to Coutts employees in a street witness outside their London headquarters in The Strand last Friday afternoon.
We first encouraged our members to pray, write and email to the directors of Barclays, Coutts and Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC) on 3rd October concerning their sponsorship of categories of the Stonewall awards and to draw their attention to the ‘bigot’ award.
Barclays immediately condemned the ‘bigot’ award in trenchant terms. Their ‘Head of Global Diversity’, Mark McLane, said the next day:
‘As part of what is a positive longstanding relationship with Stonewall we were approached to see if we would be willing to sponsor a category for the 2012 Awards, which we agreed to do – the Sports Personality of the Year – on the understanding that the awards are a celebration of diversity and positive impact in our communities.
‘I have recently been made aware of the inclusion of a ‘Bigot of the Year’ category in the awards. Let me be absolutely clear that Barclays does not support that award category either financially, or in principle and have informed Stonewall that should they decide to continue with this category we will not support this event in the future. To label any individual so subjectively and pejoratively runs contrary to our view on fair treatment, and detracts from what should be a wholly positively focused event.’
Going further, Mr McLane said: ‘We have been very clear with Stonewall that we regard the award in question to be beyond the pale and will not sponsor this event in the future should they decide to continue this award category.’
Despite that, Mr McLane continued:
‘This matter apart, it is our view that Stonewall do valuable work in the field of promoting equality, and provide outstanding resource to our communities in the pursuit of becoming more diverse and inclusive.’
Whether Barclays support Stonewall’s new demand for ‘gay marriage’ or not Mr McLane has failed to say.
However, Coutts and PWC, while distancing themselves from the ‘bigot’ award, failed to condemn it. The move by Coutts leaves PWC out on a limb.
Despite the Banks’ condemnation, Stonewall are intent on keeping the ‘bigot’ award, even if it means losing sponsorship for some of the categories. Awash with donations and public money, they are certainly wealthy enough to fund the whole event without the need for the odd £5,000 in prize money.
Ben Summerskill, Stonewall’s Chief Executive, told the Guardian: “We have never called anyone a bigot just because they disagreed with us.” He continued “All the nominees have gone well beyond what anyone normal would call a decent level of public discourse.”
Stonewall said goodbye to Nationwide Building Society’s sponsorship of the whole event this year thanks to a dogged campaign of prayer and action by Christian Voice members from November last year up to its AGM in July 2012.
We are grateful to Christian Concern for joining our campaign against these awards on Monday. Co-incidentally, Coutts were formulating their shift in position as Christian Concern were putting out an email encouraging their people to lobby the CEO’s of Barclays, Coutts and PWC. They were able to celebrate the Lord’s victory just one day later.
Pray: Praise the Lord for his victory. Pray for the directors at PWC that they too will condemn the ‘bigot’ award. Pray for the Lord to expose the bullying Stonewall group and for their support to fall away.
But not content with congratulating those who have advanced the homosexual cause, Stonewall also have a ‘bigot of the year’ award, just to insult and bully their opponents.
Christian Voice supporters started outside Coutts Bank at lunchtime, before moving to Barclays flagship branch in Piccadiily Circus and finishing at PWC for going-home time.
In fairness, our leaflets pointed out that Barclays have at least condemned the ‘bigot award’ as ‘beyond the pale’ which is more than Coutts or PWC have done. Nevertheless, all three institutions compliment Stonewall on their work.
PWC’s front entrance off Tooley Street, SE1. Do its directors agree with Stonewall’s demands for gay marriage or not?
Whether that means the directors of PWC, Coutts and Barclays support ‘gay marriage’, Stonewall’s big new demand, and the consequent redefinition of marriage and it key concept of ‘consummation’, none of them have yet addressed.
Last year, Nationwide Building Society sponsored the whole awards dinner, but after being made of the ‘bigot’ award by Christian Voice, pulled out of any more financial involvement with the dinner (see links below).
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, commented today:
‘This was a very blessed time for us, and we pray that some of the 250 leaflets we handed out to the well-dressed employees of Coutts opposite Charing Cross Station and the 100 at Barclays have made people think about whether these banks’ relationship with Stonewall is a bit too close.
‘The security staff at Coutts and Barclays were dignified enough to stay inside and allow our witness to proceed uninterrupted. The same could not be said of PWC, whose bouncers tried to have us moved on. PWC has a back entrance in the private ‘More London’ complex, and its main entrance is in Abbey Street off Tooley Street near London Bridge Station.
Don’t cross the line! The division between the public highway in Tooley St and More London’s diagonal paving in Abbey St.
‘They came out to remonstrate and even called the ‘More London’ staff when we were on the public highway in Tooley Street. Clearly we struck a nerve, but the PWC staff were more willing than the Coutts folk or the Barclays customers and passers-by to take our leaflets. Four hundred were given out at PWC, a total for the day of 750.
‘We also had an encounter with the police when someone complained that the leaflets were insulting, abusive or threatening, along the lines of Section 5 of the Public Order ACt 1986. However, the police office who attended told us he saw that we were calm and reasonable, not causing an obstruction, and that there was nothing in the leaflet that could cause a reasonable person alarm or distress.
‘The leaflets also nailed five key lies told by the sodomy lobby and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ. All in all it was a very worthwhile exercise and we pray that our gracious God will open someone’s mind to the sad truth about homosexuality and turn at least one heart to the truth that Jesus Christ died to release everyone who belives in him from both the stain of sin and the power of sin.
‘May God be praised and glorified in the Lord Jesus’
Text of the Leaflets (Coutts and PWC are similar):
The five lies told by homosexual activists nailed by the Christian Voice leaflets:
‘(1) Homosexuals claim to be 10% of the population on the basis of the dishonest Kinsey Report. The true figure from proper academic research is around 1.5%.
‘(2) They claim they were born that way, refusing to accept the evidence of ‘ex-gay’ men and women who have turned their backs on the gay lifestyle and been released from their homosexual desires.
‘(3) They insist they just want to live their lives in peace, yet they hold intimidating gay pride parades and their paid activists campaign for laws to silence dissenting voices and force all of us to respect their immorality.
‘(4) They do all they can to avoid discussing the reality of their abusive, dangerous sexual practices, framing their arguments instead in terms of ‘human rights’.
‘(5) They pretend their lives are just the same as everyone else’s, despite academic studies revealing promiscuity levels and associated ill-health in the gay world unheard of even in today’s sex-obsessed heterosexual society.’
Andy Stephenson of Abort67 was asked about the location of the witness and said yesterday: ‘Why university campuses? Because not only are 19-24 year olds having significant numbers of abortions, but this is where our future leaders are.
‘We saw people change their minds in this way today. One guy who was studying nursing at another university talked at length with the team and left saying he was going to try and get us a three hour lecture spot for his medical faculty. Others included a Law student who moved significantly in his position.’
Pro-abortion students attempt to obscure the pro-life message
Pro-abortion students mounted a counter-demonstration after a couple of hours, standing in front of the pictures shouting and swearing in the hope that people wouldn’t notice the pro-life witness.
Andy Stephenson continued: ‘I am fairly certain that the rest of the day, the only topic of conversation on campus was abortion. Indeed before I even had a chance to unpack our things, a blogger at Huffington Post responded with an article.
‘It is unlikely (though not impossible) that those so entrenched in their pro-death position will ever move, but they are not our target audience. A majority of people are just plain ambivalent about abortion. These are the ones with functioning consciences and enough intellectual honesty to recognise they have been lied to about who the baby is and what abortion will do to him/her.
‘I am always amazed that pro-aborts don’t see the irony in what they blindly recite over and over. If people are distressed by what they believe to be a noble choice, it is because abortion is a distressing act. Of course, we are grateful for the coverage and the inclusion of one of our graphic images that will now be seen by countless people.
‘Do the pictures work? The pro-aborts think so.’
Please sign our simple online petition to Parliament to repeal the 1967 Abortion Act:
