Republicans for Family Values

Let’s return integrity and conservatism to the Illinois Republican Party

My name is Peter LaBarbera. I am a 47-year-old, happily married father of five living in Naperville — and an elected precinct committeeman in the Naperville Township Republican Organization. Today I am asking for your vote to serve as Republican State Central Committeeman for the 13 Congressional District of Illinois.

I entered this race as a strong fiscal and social conservative in the model of Illinois’ own Ronald Reagan. I believe that the IL-GOP is badly in need of reform and that we can be better served than by our current leaders – including my opponent, Roger Claar — who have put power over principle and lost sight of the greatness that a conservative Republican Party can achieve.

As a Reagan Republican, my dream for the Illinois Republican Party is that it would return to the standards of conservatism, decency, integrity and high principle of the man who grew up here, in Dixon, and who as President restored American greatness and accomplished what many said was impossible: to force the demise of Soviet Communism, an “Evil Empire” (as Reagan called it) and the most murderous political system ever created.

Like Ronald Reagan, I am a committed to certain core principles, from which I will never waver; most are enumerated in the Republican Party Platform:

• The right to life: the GOP is the party of life, a value our public servants should not run from but rather embrace, as Reagan did. As one who has a younger brother with Down Syndrome, I cherish this principle, understanding that a society that allows “imperfect” or “inconvenient” lives to be discarded in the name of “choice” erodes the dignity of life for every American. Let the Democrats be the party of abortion-on-demand; we Republicans must celebrate life, a gift from God, with its endless potential for good;
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Candidate also promised but never delivered press release to respond to scandal

Republican DuPage County Chairman aspirant Debra Olson canceled a scheduled appearance at a Wayne Township Republican Organization (WTRO) candidate forum last evening, as she continues to remain silent on the cheating sex scandal reported by RFFV that has rocked her candidacy.

Olson confirmed her participation in the WTRO debate a couple of weeks ago, said WTRO Chairman Ken Spitz, and again communicated early in the evening to Spitz that she was coming but would be late. But then she never showed. Olson’s husband Don was present at the forum, as was Republicans For Family Values editor Peter LaBarbera.

Two of Olson’s GOP opponents in the DuPage County Chairman primary, Carol Pankau and Gary Grasso, gave presentations at the forum, which also included talks by candidates for other local and statewide offices.

Olson (right), who runs on a pro-family values record, continues to avoid discussing the adultery charges against her. RFFV has reported that Olson had a year-and-a-half adulterous relationship with Wheaton attorney David Allen in 1998-99, and then a second affair with fellow DuPage County Board member Brien Sheahan in 2004. (Olson and Sheahan were each first elected to the Board in 2002.) Both of Olson’s adulterous affairs were acknowledged by her husband Don in phone conversations with RFFV.

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Below is reprinted from Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH). Note also that as of Tuesday afternoon, the influential “conservative” blog Illinois Review had yet to pick up on RFFV’s Debra Olson/Brien Sheahan adultery story. However, thanks in part to Dave Diersen’s GOPUSA e-mail — which circulates widely to Republicans statewide – many in the GOP are talking about the story.  AFTAH writes:

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Does a Candidate’s Adulterous Past Matter? Just Ask Rich Miller…

Over at Republicans For Family Values, a political site, I examine the case of a local DuPage County, Illinois candidate running on a strong “pro-family” record — Debra Olson — who has engaged in adulterous affairs — as revealed mainly by the aggrieved wife of David Allen, Olson’s former illicit partner. To some voters, that’s a serious issue and a big story. To others, it’s just that much more “religious right” prudery.

Here’s how Illinois liberal political blogger Rich Miller (Capitol Fax Blog) tries to slam my RFFV story:

One of Peter LaBarbera’s websites is currently attempting to out a suburban county candidate for having adulterous affairs. No link [read: Miller refuses to link to the story]. Try to avoid the Google. It’s really disgusting. LaBarbera has stooped to a new low.

Ouch, Rich. You wouldn’t want your readers to actually READ the piece you are criticizing, would you? Bottom line: Miller is an intolerant leftie who hates social-issues conservatives. Why is it a “new low” to investigate and expose serious moral compromise in the life a very public Republican “Christian pro-family” leader? (Of course, when Miller exposes hypocrites, it’s OK.)

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‘Pro-family’ Republican and mom of four led sexual double-life; had illicit sex in family van, tryst in lawyer’s home while his wife was away at Christian retreat; 2nd affair in 2004  

** RFFV EXCLUSIVE ** WARNING: Offensive Content  

Illinois politician Debra Olson, who vows to "protect families," had a one-and-a-half year adulterous affair with an attorney. On one occasion she had sex in the lawyer's Wheaton home while his wife was away on a women's church retreat.

CORRECTIONS: Jean Allen wrote us to clarify two errors in the original story:  

1. Debra Olson and David Allen (Jean’s husband) did not have an illicit meeting at the Allen’s vacation house in Michigan — as we initially reported — but rather at a hotel in Michigan.
2. In an early sexual encounter between Olson and David Allen in his law office, she did not tell him at that time, “I don’t want to be a girl like this.” Rather, she made that comment to him separately during a later phone call.

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Editor’s Note:  This is NOT a politically-driven story but one inspired by the shocking account of an aggrieved woman, Jean Allen, who was deeply hurt by the adulterous double-life of a very public Christian and pro-family Republican politician, Debra Olson — and who relives the pain daily with Olson’s campaign for higher office. We at Republicans For Family Values believe:  

• that public servants — especially outwardly committed Christians running on a “pro-family” record — should be held to a higher standard of ethics and accountability than other politicians, or the average private citizen;
• that a candidate’s character should be an important factor in the decisions of voters weighing his or her candidacy and qualifications for office; 
• that sexual conduct is a deep reflection of a person’s character and the seriousness of their faith and professed morality;
• that the voting public’s right to know about a candidate’s character — including his or her “personal” morality — outweighs the privacy concerns of the candidate. A potential legislator’s character, morality and integrity are a guide to whether they can be trusted to keep their promises and to serve the public with integrity. Overtly Christian and religious candidates, especially, have a higher calling and ethical bar in this regard;
• lastly, that the liberal/secular campaign to disengage (private) morality — and indeed all religion — from public life is fatally flawed and dangerous to the Republic. (Publicly Christian) Bill Clinton’s perverted and treacherous ”private” life as president had far-reaching repercussions for America and for public policy – but beyond that it contributed greatly to the corruption of children and the degradation of American morals generally. 

We have encountered a few people who say that we should not tell this story. One Republican activist who has worked with Debra Olson wondered if it is proper to do so, from a Christian perspective, since Debra has asked Jean Allen for forgiveness. But when I asked this same person if he would react differently were we reporting about, say, a Democratic man running for office (as a pro-family Christian) who was discovered to have secretly engaged in a year-and-a-half-long sexual affair with another man’s wife — and then a second infidelity years later — he admitted that he wouldn’t have as much of a problem with our exposé. And that symbolizes why Republicans For Family Values (RFFV) is telling this tragic story. — Peter LaBarbera, www.rffv.org  

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By Peter LaBarbera, RepublicansForFamilyValues.com  

NAPERVILLE, Illinois (DuPage County) — Debra Olson, a DuPage County, Illinois, Board Member who is running as a pro-family conservative Republican for Chairman of the Board in the GOP-dominated county, was involved in at least two adulterous affairs — one lasting a year-and-a-half – Republicans For Family Values has learned.  

Olson — as a mother of four children– had sex with prominent Wheaton attorney David Allen in the guest bedroom of Allen’s home while his wife Jean was away on a Christian women’s retreat sponsored by their church, Jean Allen revealed in an interview. The aggrieved Mrs. Allen — barraged by campaign signs, ads and printed fliers for Mrs. Olson’s candidacy — is troubled that the truth about Olson has largely remained hidden, and that many Christian conservative voters who appreciate her status as an evangelical, pro-family legislator are completely unaware of the promiscuous double life Olson has led.  

Indeed, Olson’s extended adulterous relationship in 1998-99 with Allen has not become widely known nor apparently slowed down her political ambitions. Although rumors about Olson’s sexual affairs with other men exist, even her close associates, church acquaintances and active Republicans in DuPage first learned about the adulteries only through the pursuit of this story. 

In contrast, a repentant David Allen paid heavily for acknowledging his serial adulteries in March 2004. After confessing to decades of sexual affairs with multiple women – including Olson (pictured above; a campaign photo of Olson with her family can be found at www.debfordupage.com) – Allen resigned from the Board of Elders at Wheaton Bible Church and from several other well-known (mostly Christian) organization’s boards. He then publicly repented and asked for forgiveness in three separate church services at Wheaton Bible, a large evangelical church where he and his wife Jean are longtime members.  

There were no such wide public apologies by Olson. In fact, it was her high local visibility – made higher by Olson’s current campaign for Chairman of the DuPage County Board — that contributed to the desire of David Allen’s traumatized wife Jean to see the truth about Olson’s infidelities revealed. Debra Olson attends Wheaton Evangelical Free Church on Roosevelt Road, a few miles down the road from her home in Wheaton. She runs as a committed Christian on a strong pro-life and pro-family record. Olson’s church membership is listed prominently on the biography of her campaign website, and every year she participates in the Wheaton National Day of Prayer event.  

“I don’t want to hurt anyone, but the truth is very important to me, and honesty is very important to me,” said Jean Allen in an interview at her Wheaton condominium. “I see [Olson] putting herself out there specifically before Christian conservatives — as a faithful pro-family advocate – as very dishonest after all she has done.”  

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Mark Kirk has a radical pro-abortion and pro-homosexual-agenda voting record, so most conservatives are not enthused about him becoming the next U.S. Senator from Illinois.

Dear RFFV Readers,

We’re back! With this post by my friend Laurie Higgins, Republicans for Family Values (www.rffv.org) is reactivating after a long silence — just in time for primary elections. The case of Congressman Mark Kirk running as a Republican for U.S. Senate in Illinois is a troubling one: here’s a fellow who voted AGAINST banning partial-birth abortion — and then rationalized the vote to party VIPs and activists as one necessitated by his liberal district (suburbs north of Chicago).

I don’t know which is more pathetic: Kirk’s pandering to pro-abortion feminists, leading him to miss an opportunity to criminalize de facto infanticide; or his sorry attempt to justify it politically. I realize most pseudo-compassionate left-wingers are heartless when it comes to the defenseless unborn, but is there really any congressional district so liberal that it necessitates protecting the gruesome practice of piercing the skull of a late-term unborn baby fully capable of living outside the womb so as to end its (inconvenient) life? Shame on you, Mark!

On the “gay” front, Mr. “Real Integrity” (a Kirk radio ad extols him as a “leader with real integrity”) is one of the most pro-homosexual-agenda of all the Republican legislators on Capitol Hill. According to the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s most powerful homosexual lobby group, Kirk has the following rankings for the last three Congresses (voting with HRC’s misguided agenda) : 85%, 575 and 88% in the 110th, 109th and 108th Congresses, respectively.

In contrast, fellow Illinois Congressman Peter Roskam, also a Republican, has an HRC ranking of zero percent in the 110th Congress (his debut term).

This may explain why radical homosexual “outers” like Mike Rogers are in no hurry to talk about Kirk’s sexual proclivities, since they focus more on secretly homosexual Republicans who have a strong “pro-family” voting record. Of course, as Higgins writes, this would influence a “Senator Kirk” to continue voting pro-homosexual while the “gay” pressure ratchets up for him to reverse his few pro-family votes on the issue as his profile grows in Washington.

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Barack Obama is a charlatan on abortion. He has pledged to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would increase the number of abortions across the country by overturning pro-life reforms. Click HERE to watch Obama’s 2007 speech at Planned Parenthood.

Republicans For Family Values  — News Release
www.rffv.org

November 3, 2008; contact: Peter LaBarbera: rffv@comcast.net

CHICAGO – Peter LaBarbera, founder of Republicans For Family Values (RFFV), said Barack Obama’s ideological devotion to both the homosexual and abortion agendas should weigh more heavily than non-moral issues as committed Christians weigh their vote tomorrow.

RFFV has published an essay, “Obama is FOR Gay Marriage even as He’s Against it,” to illustrate the Democratic candidate’s double-speak on “same-sex marriage.” Obama has promised homosexual activists that he would work to fully repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996. This issue has been largely ignored by the media, and John McCain has given Obama a pass on it.

“The Obama spin machine has done a con job on evangelicals and Catholics,” LaBarbera said. “Obama courts Christians by saying he supports traditional marriage. Meanwhile, he does everything he can to support the homosexual ‘marriage’ agenda – including his promise to “gay” activists to repeal DOMA.

“Similarly, Obama courts people of faith by pledging to ‘reduce the number of abortions.’ Yet he opposed an Illinois bill to give human rights to babies ‘born alive’ through botched abortions. And he blasted a Supreme Court ruling upholding a law banning heinous partial-birth abortions (infanticide).

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Democratic deception has worked: most ignorant about Obama’s radical anti-DOMA agenda

By Peter LaBarbera

As a social conservative, one of the most troubling aspects of this presidential campaign has been the media’s (and John McCain’s) failure to flesh out Barack Obama’s “audacious” doublespeak on the issue of same-sex “marriage.”

Here’s the question Obama was lucky enough to have never been asked in this campaign: What does it mean to say you support traditional marriage (one man, one woman) – when you do so much to advance the pro-“gay marriage” cause, including denouncing state marriage-protection amendments like Prop 8 in California as “discriminatory and divisive”?

Did you know that Obama has promised homosexual activists that he will work to fully repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act? DOMA was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996 and protects states from being forced to recognize out-of-state “gay marriages.” It was passed overwhelmingly by the Senate, 85-14, with Sen. Biden joining 28 other Democrats in voting yes. How liberal is Obama’s anti-DOMA scheme? Hillary Clinton, a trusted gay ally, pledged to repeal only part of DOMA.

Neither McCain nor Gov. Palin has made an issue of Obama’s extreme anti-DOMA sop to the homosexual crowd even though they had a clear opening. (One 2007 Quinnipiac poll revealed that a homosexual group’s endorsement of a candidate would be a net electoral loser among voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.) The result is that Obama’s DOMA Destruction Plan never surfaced in the debates and barely in the major media.

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Gagnon says Obama ‘audaciously’ twists Christ’s Sermon on the Mount to affirm homosexuality

A Special Report for Republicans For Family Values (www.rffv.org)

Note: RFFV has excerpted the text in question on pages 222-224 of Barack Obama’s book, The Adacity of Hope, here:  “Obama’s ‘Audacity of Hope’ Passage Downplays ‘Obscure Line in Romans’ Proscribing Homosexual Sex.” The “obscure line” in the New Testament Book of Romans to which Obama refers is evidently this (all links are to the New International Version of the Bible):

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (Romans 1:26-27)

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Barack Obama’s Disturbing Misreading of the Sermon on the Mount as Support for Homosexual Sex

by Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
gagnon@pts.edu

October 23, 2008

Presidential candidate Barack Obama has written in The Audacity of Hope—a book that perhaps should have been entitled The Audacity of Portraying Myself Messianically as the Herald of Audacious Hope—that he is not “willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans [about homosexual practice] to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount.”[1]  He repeated this line in a campaign appearance in Ohio this past March. He stated that if people find controversial his views on granting the full benefits of marriage to homosexual unions, minus only the name, “then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans.”[2]  These remarks by Obama represent a gross distortion of the witness of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.

On Romans 1
First, they misrepresent the text in Romans 1:24-27 against all homosexual practice, a text that belongs to one of the two or three most important books in Scripture, a catalyst for frequent spiritual revivals for the past two millennia. Romans 1:24-27 depicts all homosexual practice as an “indecency” and moral “impurity” that does three things. First, it violates God’s male-female standard for valid sexual relations given in Genesis 1:27 (the text contains strong echoes to Genesis 1:26-27). Second, it violates the obvious evidence in the material structures of creation that male and female, not persons of the same sex, are each other’s sexual counterparts or complements (a particularly obvious example on the plane of human interrelationships of suppressing the truth about God and ourselves accessible in creation and nature). Third, it “dishonors” the sexual integrity of the participants who engage in such activity by imaging themselves as only half their own sex in their attempt to merge with an alleged complement of the same sex. The passage is no more “obscure” than Paul’s comments on idolatry in the preceding passage in Romans 1:19-23 or his comments regarding a case of adult-consensual man-stepmother incest at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 5—another instance of prohibited sexual intercourse between persons who are too much alike (here on a familial level, already of the same “flesh”).

On Scripture Generally
Second, Obama’s remarks misrepresent Scripture generally in that they suggest that Paul’s stance on homosexual practice is somehow an oddity within the pages of Scripture. The truth is that a person would be hard-pressed to come up with an example of consensual sexual relations that the witness of Scripture opposes more strongly, consistently, and absolutely. Paul’s remarks were certainly not isolated. Every law, narrative, proverb, poetry, metaphor, teaching, and exhortation in Scripture that has anything to do with sexual relations presupposes a male-female prerequisite. The creation texts in Genesis 1 and 2 both establish such a prerequisite. Genesis 1:27 integrates the creation of “male and female” as a sexual pair with being made in God’s image, suggesting that same-sex pairing would efface that part of the image of God stamped on the sexual self (as also would adultery and incest, the latter even of an adult-consensual sort). Genesis 2:21-24 portrays a male-female sexual bond as the re-merger of the two complementary sexual halves of an integrated sexual whole. In other words, the sexual “counterpart” or “complement” of a man is a woman (and vice versa), a being both “corresponding to him” and “opposite him” (as the Hebrew word kenegdo infers).

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The following is the key passage dealing with homosexuality and “same-sex marriage” in Sen. Barack Obama’s book, The Audacity of Hope. The “obscure line” in the New Testament Book of Romans to which Obama refers is evidently this:

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. (Romans 1:26-27)

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The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

By Barack Obama; Crown Publishers: 2006

Obama writes on pages 222-224 (emphasis added):

[Following a passage on the lack of compromise on both sides of the abortion debate…]

For many practicing Christians, the same inability to compromise may apply to gay marriage. I find such a position troublesome, particularly in a society in which Christians men and women have been known to engage in adultery or other violations of their faith without civil penalty. All too often I have sat in a church and heard a pastor use gay bashing as a cheap parlor trick—‘It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!’ he will shout, usually when the sermon is not going so well. I believe that American society can choose to carve out a special place for the union of a man and a woman as the unit of child rearing most common to every culture. I am not willing to have the state deny American citizens a civil union that confers equivalent rights on such basic matters as hospital visitations or health insurance coverage simply because the people they love are of the same sex—nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount.

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Barber says Barack’s own words betray his extremist homosexual agenda

Obama’s San Francisco Values?  Matt Barber argues that Barack Obama’s pro-homosexual positions — including his call for a full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA, which Joe Biden voted for and which Bill Clinton signed into law) — have far more in common with the radical sexual ethos of the nation’s “queer” Mecca than with the Middle America Obama claims to represent. At left, “Sister Mary [F-cking] Poppins,” one of the male-homosexual-drag-queen mock “nuns” of the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” — a San Francisco-based “charity” group despised by many Catholics but adored by the city’s homosexuals — poses for a photo at the Folsom Street Fair. Folsom is a pornographic, nudity-filled, outdoor sadomasochistic celebration that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the Bay city. Click on photo to enlarge.

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By Matt Barber

If Bill Clinton was the first black president, Barack Obama, if elected, will be the first “gay” president. No, I don’t mean he’ll personally decorate the West Wing, open a bathhouse in the Rose Garden or take up with Barney Frank. I mean he’ll be the most radically pro-homosexual, anti-family president in history. He’s very quietly pledged as much to the homosexual “Human Rights Campaign” and other fawning members of his homofascist fan club.

In the wake of the current economic crisis, neither presidential candidate is talking much about social issues. But in the months and years preceding this election cycle, Obama did plenty of talking. Unfortunately, most people have no idea what he’s said. If the mainstream media would do its job, quit shilling for their ideological messiah and objectively report on Obama’s unwavering fidelity to extremist homosexual pressure groups, many of his unsuspecting supporters might kick him to the curb.

You may have heard the term “San Francisco values” bandied about from time to time. These values do not so much derive from a geographical locale as they do from a shared, deeply engrained “progressive” worldview – a worldview marbled throughout in murky tones of secular humanism and moral relativism. Central to San Francisco values is the notion that the only thing immoral is to believe there are things immoral.

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