Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) has a strong pro-homosexual voting record, and voted against a ban on partial-birth abortion, among other anti-life votes.

By Laurie Higgins

With all the recent bad press about Mark Kirk’s prevaricating about his military record and his weaselly responses when confronted by the media about his prevarications, multiple people have made the argument that as bad as he is, it’s better to have a Republican elected than a Democrat. In the past I shared that view.  I have never voted for a third-party candidate or refused to vote—until now.  I have always been firmly committed to voting for the Republican candidate even if I had to hold my nose while voting—until now. Is there a limit to how bad a Republican candidate can get before Republicans will stand on principle? I’m beginning to think that Republicans have a limitless capacity for capitulation.

This is my thinking:

I think that it will be easier for a good Republican candidate to unseat Alexi Giannoulias in six years than it will be for a good Republican to unseat a semi-skillful incumbent like Mark Kirk. If Kirk gets in office, I fear we’ll have him for decades. I don’t think that’s the case with Giannoulias. The loss of the Senate seat to Giannoulias would provide Illinois Republicans six years to find a truly worthy Republican candidate. No matter which position Republicans take, it’s a crapshoot. We’re all speculating. Giannoulias could be an effective senator and, therefore, very difficult to unseat. Or he could be incompetent and, therefore, easy to unseat. With Kirk, we know we’re getting a skillful and experienced legislator who will be difficult to unseat.

Marc Ambinder, political editor of The Atlantic, writes this about the prospect of a Kirk win:

If Kirk wins the seat, he’s instantaneously the biggest name in the GOP.  The seat, you’ll remember, was Barack Obama’s seat. Kirk would be bigger than Massachusetts’ lion killer Scott Brown, bigger than the presidential candidates for a while, and he can be a kingmaker.

He’ll have a huge donor list, he’ll own Obama’s seat, and then he’s faced with a choice. Does he moderate himself truly, work in a bipartisan way and be a leader in the Senate.  Or, does he go with immediate ego gratification and position himself to be on the vice presidential short list for 2012? If Kirk doesn’t want to run again in 2016, he can bank on the fact that he’ll either be on the veep short-list then, or he’ll be a bona fide presidential contender in his own right.(http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/05/mark-kirk-the-next-scott-brown/56598/)

There is too much at stake to risk letting Kirk get into the Senate. I’m willing to pay a relatively small price now by letting Giannoulias get elected rather than pay a huge price in a few years by letting Kirk get his nose in the Senate tent.

In addition to Kirk’s wholly indefensible embellishment of his military record, there is the significant matter of his sexual predilections, about which, thanks to homosexual activist, blogger, and “outer” extraordinaire Mike Rogers, there is less doubt. Behind the scenes, many people on both sides of the political aisle have long claimed that Kirk is homosexual, but it took Rogers to give wider exposure and greater credibility to those rumors.

Rogers, who “outed” Kirk last week, has the dubious honor of being reliable when it comes to “outing” politicians. For those unfamiliar with Rogers, click here to see him when he appeared on the View a year ago to promote the “outing” documentary Outrage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsOJwVmFozs&feature=player_embedded .

Why did he “out” Kirk now? Rogers “outed” him now because Kirk did not vote with the “gay” lobby on the recent vote to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” As long as Kirk toed the “gay” line—which he has consistently done—his secret was safe with political lefties. A thrill goes up the legs of homosexualists whenever the “Republican” Kirk endorses yet one more assault on sexual norms and families. They will tolerate many things, including both open and secret sexual deviance, as long as they get the votes they need. According to that paradigm of virtue, Mike Rogers, there is one thing they will not, however, tolerate, and that is “hypocrisy.”

Here’s yet more skin-crawling information on Kirk’s voting record:

Kirk voted against the ban on the barbaric procedure euphemistically called “partial birth” abortion; he voted against restricting interstate transport of minors to get abortions; he voted against making it a crime to harm a fetus during the commission of another a crime; but he voted in favor of embryonic stem cell research.

For those Republicans who foolishly dismiss the “social” issues and character, there’s always Kirks infamous defense and fiscal votes. Kirk stunned his constituents by first voting against the troop surge in Iraq and then voting for cap and trade, which Indiana Republican Congressman Mike Pence describes as “the largest tax increase in American history under the guise of climate change.”

Some Illinois Republicans have described my decision not to vote for Kirk as “misguided,” arguing that with Giannoulias’ youth, we risk having him in the Senate for decades. Well, Kirk too could serve for decades. While my Republican compatriots think even six years of Giannoulias is too high a price to pay, it’s a price I am willing to pay in the hope of preventing a two or three-decade reign by a pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, and deceitful “Republican.” It’s a price I am willing to pay to prevent Kirk from getting a shot at the White House.

These same Republicans argue that the Republican Party desperately needs Kirk’s vote, but what are the crucial upcoming legislative issues for which we desperately need a win and for which we can rely on Kirk for the right vote? We know we won’t get the right votes on any legislation pertaining to the rights of the unborn or the family. Yes, Kirk threw conservatives a bone on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but as we all know that vote was an anomaly, perhaps motivated by his need to appease social conservatives. And as his vote for cap and trade and against the troop surge prove, we can’t rely on his votes on fiscal or defense issues.

These same Republicans reveal their own deformed moral sensibility when they express more moral outrage about my refusal to nose-hold than they do about Kirk’s support for the slaughter of the unborn. They argue that the battleground was the primary, and now it’s time to rally around the Republican candidate. Some say that in six years, we can try to field a better candidate to run against Kirk in the primary. Really? Do they actually believe that in six years any Republican challenger to an incumbent Senator Kirk would have a shot? Do they actually think the Republican Party would support a challenge to an incumbent Republican senator?

For years I’ve heard Republican strategists and party operatives tell voters that it’s imperative that we do what we’re told, that for the good of the party and the state and the nation, we must vote for the Republican candidate no matter how offensive his positions and no matter how unethical his personal life. And we do. Like obsequious little minions, shamed by being labeled “naïve” “ignorant” or “misguided,” we support with our money and our votes any lousy candidate the Republican establishment parades before us. What have we gotten in the bargain? Mark Kirk.

The IL Republican party and the national Republican Party keep telling us to be good little team players and go along. Not me—not any longer. It strikes me that there is an important difference between justifiable political compromises and wholesale selling out. Voting for Kirk represents the latter. I think that if all the disgruntled IL Republicans would band together and say with their votes “no more. We’re mad as h*** and we’re not gonna take it any more”—even if that means we’re stuck with Giannoulias for six years—the powers-that-be might finally get the message. They might then busy themselves with the important task of finding good candidates.

The right to vote is a precious right, and I’m not willing to squander it on someone who refuses to protect the unborn, who refuses to defend sexual morality, and who, in his desperate and unholy quest to advance those views, lies to Illinoisans. For once, I’m following my moral principles rather than the political dictates of those who have given us Mark Kirk.

Laurie Higgins is a writer based in Deerfield, Illinois.

Did Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) switch to support the pro-gay workplace bill, Employment Non-Discrimination Act, under pressure from homosexual "outing" activists?

News Release, April 30, 2010

Republicans For Family Values
www.rffv.org

Contact: Peter LaBarbera: 630-717-7631; rffv@comcast.net

CHICAGO, Ill. — Peter LaBarbera, founder of Republicans For Family Values (www.rffv.org), urged potential Supreme Court pick Elena Kagan , Republican Reps. David Dreier and Patrick McHenry, and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist — each the subject of wide speculation that they practice(d) homosexuality — to answer the question: ‘Are (or were) you a practicing homosexual?’

“In an era of ubiquitous pro-gay messages and pop culture celebration of homosexuality, it’s ridiculous that constituents should be left guessing as to whether a judicial nominee or politician has a special, personal interest in homosexuality,” LaBarbera said. “Speculation is rife over whether potential Supreme Court nominee and Solicitor General Elena Kagan is a practicing lesbian. Kagan has a radical pro-homosexual record, including fighting to keep military recruiters off the Harvard campus because the military bars homosexuals. So Americans certainly have a right to know if her activism is driven by deeply personal motivations that could undermine her fairness as a judge.”

In a similar vein, Rep. Dreier (R-CA) was “outed” by alternative publications years ago. (In recent days, his staffers twice hung up on calls from RFFV inquiring about the Congressman’s sexuality; in 2007, Dreier switched to support the pro-homosexual Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and was quickly congratulated by gay “outing” activist Mike Rogers.) Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) also has been targeted by Rogers and “gay” activists, as has Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who just left the GOP.

“Especially in the wake of the Eric Massa (D-NY) and Mark Foley (R-FL) scandals, these men need to honestly answer the question about whether they are or were practicing homosexuals,” LaBarbera said. McHenry is getting married in June, but that does not settle the question, as there is a history of “closeted” homosexuals entering into sham marriages to cover up their illicit lifestyle, according to LaBarbera.

“Given the important homosexual-related issues coming before the Supreme Court , Kagan should say so if she has a personal interest in lesbianism. Similarly, any politician — especially those representing conservative districts — should come clean on the homosexuality question if it is an ‘open secret’ like Foley’s homosexuality (years before the page scandal) or becomes the subject of wide speculation.

The Foley scandal demonstrates the political dangers for Republicans of covering up for covertly homosexual members. Duplicitous homosexual legislators can become extortion targets or be pressured to make pro-“gay” votes like Dreier on ENDA. But generally, constituents have a right to know if their representative secretly practices any immoral behavior — including homosexuality, but also if he is a skirt-chaser, gambling addict, etc.

“We appeal to Kagan, McHenry, Dreier, Crist, and all potential “hiding-in-the-closet” politicians or appointees to answer the question: ‘Are (or were) you a practicing homosexual or do you consider yourself homosexual (gay)?’Homosexuals’ privacy interests simply do not outweigh the public’s right to know about potential conflicts-of-interest in the lives of their representatives and judges,” LaBarbera said.

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;
• Revitalized GOP through competition: Unlike my opponent, I enthusiastically support SB600 as a means of strengthening the conservative grassroots of the IL-GOP. A party leadership that fears the grassroots is one destined to produce failure and stagnation. IL-GOP big-shots oppose SB600 because it threatens their hold on the party. They selfishly put their narrow interests above the Party’s. SB600 will open up and reinvigorate the IL-GOP through competition at the local level. Conservative ideas championed by faithful, empowered Republicans across Illinois will rise to the surface and grow the Party.
• Small government: our hope is in the entrepreneurial engine of private business and the ingenuity of industrious Americans – not in government. Public service is not intended to enrich and empower our leaders through “pay-to-play” politics and other schemes; nor is it meant to build political war-chests, but rather to enable everyday Illinois citizens to live their life and their American dream to the fullest – with common-sense government and limited interference from the state;
• Low taxes: we are already overtaxed in Illinois. Rather than consider new taxes, we must lower taxes and the financial burden on families, which will ignite economic growth and draw people to our state rather than drive them away – as the current Democrat tax-and-spend policies have done;
• Conservative and Constitutional values: we must distinguish ourselves from the Democrats and give voters a real choice by remaining faithful to conservative, pro-family principles. “Gay marriage” is not a Republican value. Neither is unbridled gambling justified as a revenue stream for bloated government. We cannot hope to win Tea Party votes if we scorn Tea Party values. Our liberties – including the right to life — come from God and we must remain the party that preserves freedom and opportunity through economic growth.
• Truth over Political Correctness: my whole professional life has been about commitment to Truth over politically correct trends – including my current role as founder of Americans For Truth , a group dedicated to opposing the powerful Homosexual Lobby. As Republicans, we must stop “settling,” and remember that commitment to Truth and Principle – embodied by solid conservative values — is our highest calling. Corruption and Politics-for-Personal-Enrichment should have no place in the GOP.
• A Nation Under God: America is truly, as Reagan believed, a Nation Under God, and we must reject secular ideologies that arrogantly assume that we can remain great even as we reject timeless moral values and our Judeo-Christian heritage. Ultimately, as a nation and individually, we answer to a holy and just God.

I was born in Chicago and lived as a boy in Elmhurst and then Winfield (our house was at the corner of County Farm and Blair Roads) before moving to Michigan at age 12. After graduating from the University of Michigan, I worked for various conservative and pro-family organizations including Accuracy in Media, the Council for Inter-American Security, Concerned Women for America and Family Research Council.

I also served as a reporter for The Washington Times, where I cut my teeth in public policy covering Ronald Reagan’s bold foreign policy initiative of supporting “freedom fighters” battling Communist client states. I made several reporting trips to Central America – then a battleground between freedom and Communism. One of the greatest moments in my life was in 1990 witnessing firsthand the stunning election in Nicaragua in which the people – finally given the right to vote – overthrew the Soviet-backed Sandinista regime. The next day my wife Cristina and I watched as Western leftists (“gringos” whom the locals derided as “Sandal-istas”) sulked  around the capital, Managua, with their heads down – while joyous Nicaraguans, packed like sardines in the back of beat-up Toyota pick-ups, cheered and celebrated their surprise victory over Marxism-Leninism.

Ronald Reagan’s uncompromising commitment to freedom in the face of leftist Democrat appeasement made that Nicaraguan vote possible. Today, in Illinois, we also want the right to choose our own Illinois Republican Party leaders – yet entrenched Combine supporters like Roger Claar do not trust us – that is, you – to make that decision and decide the course of your Republican Party according to your conservative values.

When I left Washington and returned to Illinois in 2003 to head up the Illinois Family Institute, I was disappointed to find what I consider one of the most dysfunctional and corrupt Republican Parties in the nation. Time after time “moderate” Republicans showed their contempt for conservatives and used their office to expand their own personal power at the expense of the Party’s well-being.

I am an idealist, but the reporter in me recognizes that I am perhaps the longest of long-shots in this election against an entrenched and powerful politician with a ton of money at his disposal. And yet after reviewing Mayor Claar’s record, I do not regret heeding the call to get in this race. For values like “integrity” and “principle” do not jump off the page when studying his record:

• Mr. Claar is an avid supporter of George Ryan, even rallying to his defense after Ryan was convicted on charges of corruption. Only a truly out-of-touch Republican politician would publically decry Ryan’s conviction as Claar did.
• Claar has amassed a huge political war-chest way out of proportion for the mayor of a medium-sized town, Bolingbrook, with a population under 100,000. “Nearly half of his donations came from companies and individuals who have done business with Bolingbrook,” the Chicago Tribune reported. Using his own PAC’s money, Claar has taken trips to China and India — junkets that would be difficult to rationalize for a U.S. Congressman much less for the mayor of a suburban Chicago city.
• Claar has embraced pay-to-play politics and the Combine – precisely the conduct that identifies Republicans with the same sort of corruption that has soured voters on the Democrats.
• Claar has given campaign contributions to Democrats.

Mayor Claar’s record is all too typical of Illinois politics, and creates the sort of spectacle that has made “Illinois” synonymous with corruption and the butt of countless jokes across the nation. I believe Republicans can do better. We need to reform the Republican Party, to return it to the conservative values of Ronald Reagan. We need to end “pay-to-play,” not raise it to a new art form! 

But most of all, Illinois Republicans need to return to a standard of integrity, and thereby inspire voters to stand proudly again as citizens of the “Land of Lincoln.” We must not be the Democrat-lite Party. As your Central Committeeman, I will promote conservative solutions and work tirelessly for reform and transparency in the IL-GOP — and fight for your right to elect leaders who are conservative and honest. I will work to bring transparency to the party as a means to end the corruption that has made the IL-GOP an also-ran in election after depressing election.
 
Please vote for me, Peter LaBarbera, a conservative, independent-minded Reagan Republican, as your State Central Committeeman for the 13th Congressional District. Thank you.

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.

David Allen’s wife Jean relayed the details of Debra Olson’s long-term affair, with Jean’s now-repentant husband, in an interview with RFFV. In March 2004, Mr. Allen confessed to his wife affairs with many women, including Debra Olson. He then repented publicly to his church and resigned immediately from the elder board of Wheaton Bible Church and from several local organizations’ Boards. In contrast, Olson’s adulterous past has remained largely hidden, even to close associates, although some had heard of “rumors” about her illicit sexual conduct.

After refusing a week’s worth of interview requests from Republicans For Family Values editor LaBarbera to get her side of the story, Olson promised a press release Tuesday to a GOP news service (and available to all media),  in response to the RFFV story, which was published Monday. But that press release never came. Local media and even conservative Republican media — with the exception of Dave Diersen’s GOP USA Illinois e-mail news service, which circulates to over a thousand Illinois Republicans statewide — have yet to pick up on the story. (A Daily Herald reporter showed up at the Wayne Township forum last night in anticipation of Olson speaking and possibly addressing the adultery issue; Herald reporters are aware of the RFFV exposé but the paper has not yet covered the scandal.)

Nevertheless, thanks to the internet and Diersen’s news service, the Olson cheating sex scandal story has circulated widely in Republican circles in Illinois, engendering various reactions. One GOP activist in DuPage wrote in a mass e-mail that the RFFV article only confirmed long-standing rumors circulating in the county about Olson’s promiscuous behavior. The e-mail revealed that some GOP activists feared her reckless behavior could one day emerge and damage the Party. Others said that since Olson’s husband forgave her, the story should not have been published, as the affairs happened years ago. Some women, in particular, seemed more upset at Jean Allen than Debra Olson. Still others in separate communications commended RFFV for exposing Olson as a “fraud” and a “hypocrite.”

Brien Sheahan’s campaign also has not commented on the accusation — confirmed by Don Olson – that he (as a then single man) had an affair in 2004 with the married Debra Olson. Sheahan is running in the GOP primary for State Representative of the 41st House District, which includes Elmhurst.

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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.)

Well, for the same reason that liberals like Miller despise those who oppose the pro-homosexuality movement. The secular Left’s “non-judgmentalism” is applied liberally when it comes to NOT criticizing those who transgress historic Judeo-Christian values. But as you can see, their nasty judgments overflow when it comes to bashing people and groups who stand up for traditional morality.

America is waking up to the reality that the Secular Left is a mean-spirited and highly intolerant political force that is bad for America. “Consensuality,” “choice,” “my truth” (versus absolute truth), “tolerance,” “diversity”: these are some of the Left’s self-satisfied buzzwords. But watch out if you uphold a divinely-ordered morality that pays no heed to their worldly, politically correct — and, yes, selfish — trends. Then you are anathema.

In other words, today’s liberals are fundamentalists of different stripe. And remember: don’t read that piece! — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org

** 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.

______________________

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  

__________________________________  

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.”  

Jean Allen said she is not motivated by revenge and has no special animus for Olson, whom she regards as ”just another person who was sexually involved with my husband.” However, Allen said what makes Olson different from her husband’s other illicit sexual partners is Olson’s very public position as a County Board member and candidate — and ostensibly as a wholesome, pro-family Christian leader. Olson was elected to the DuPage County Board in 2002 and has been reelected twice since. She is vying with three other Republicans in a primary race to be the GOP candidate for Board Chairman. The Illinois primary election for the six-figure Chairman position is Tuesday, February 2nd, and early voting has already begun. 

RFFV first learned of Olson’s infidelities from veteran Republican activists in DuPage County. We repeat that this is not a political story: this writer has not spoken with either of Olson’s three Republican opponents, Dan Cronin, Carol Pankau, or Gary Grasso, nor any staffers from these three opposition GOP campaigns. 

RFFV interviewed Jean Allen last week with the full knowledge of her husband, who did not wish to be interviewed for this story. Her account of the details of the Olson affair stems from Jean’s painful discussions with her repentant husband. Mrs. Allen considers lifting the “cloud of secrecy” surrounding the scandal and “getting things out in the open” to be part of her healing. Moreover, she is deeply troubled by the ubiquitous signage, printed ads and fliers for Olson’s campaign that serve as a constant reminder of the painful past of Olson cheating with Jean’s husband. 

RFFV has tried to confirm details of the affair with Debra Olson — and inquire as to other aspects of the story — but she has not responded to repeated phone and e-mail requests for an interview. Jean Allen provided this writer with written letters from Debra Olson and her husband Don dealing with the confessed infidelity and its aftermath. In two separate letters, Debra Olson asked for Jean Allen’s forgiveness for her illicit affair with David Allen.  

“Jean, I am so very, very sorry for the pain and anguish that I have caused you and your family as well as my own family. Words cannot express my profound remorse and regret. I had hoped that this day would never come because I knew that many people would experience terrible pain at my own hands,” Debra Olson wrote in a letter to Jean in December 2004. “I have anguished that many times … that my choices could bring others so much agony. … I am so sorry that you are a casualty of my stupidity, selfishness and willful disobedience.”  

Since David’s confession, the Allen’s have undergone years of counseling after Jean felt called by God to preserve the marriage. David Allen is involved in a ministry at Wheaton Bible Church called Compass for Men – “a support group for men striving for sexual integrity.” In partnership with Jean, he adheres to a strict accountability program whereby, for example, he does not meet alone with other women, even for a business lunch. 

It is unclear whether Debra Olson has adopted a similar accountability plan with her husband — but her subsequent adulterous affair with a fellow County Board Member (see below) years after the longer-term illicit relationship with Allen would indicate that if she has one, it is being flouted. 

Perhaps there is a cultural double standard for women caught in adultery as compared to men, but RFFV has received no indication that Debra Olson endured “public humiliation” or went through a church-wide public repentance at Wheaton Evangelical-Free Church in any way remotely close to resembling that experienced by her ex-lover, David Allen. 

One friend of the Allen’s who requested anonymity agreed that in contrast to Debra Olson, Dave Allen “paid a heavy price” for his full and public repentance.  

“Dave did a full turn and walked away from everything in order to focus on living a more godly life,” said the friend. “He was terrified of the evil and wanted to be clean. This is not a tack Deb has taken.”  

Jean Allen confirmed that her husband’s Christian faith and maturity have deepened in the process of repentance and overcoming what she refers to as his sexual addiction. The Allen’s three children were told of their father’s serial adultery. In contrast, Don Olson told this writer that his four children were not told of their mother’s sexual cheating. (In fact, Mr. Olson appealed to that fact in his earnest requests that RFFV not run this story. Two of the Olson’s children are now away at out-of-state colleges.) 

Olson’s husband confirms second affair, with Brien Sheahan  

Despite Debra Olson’s non-response to repeated requests for an interview, this writer has spoken with her husband, Don, who in three separate phone conversations urged RFFV not to run this story. In the first conversation, Don Olson acknowledged his wife’s infidelity with David Allen but said it was a long time ago and he has forgiven her. He supports her run for DuPage County.  

Republican DuPage County Board Member Brien Sheahan, then single, reportedly had a sexual affair with the married Debra Olson -- several years after Olson's long-term affair with Wheaton attorney David Allen.

Don Olson later confirmed that Debra Olson was involved in another adulterous affair, with (Republican) DuPage County Board Member Brien Sheahan (left) — although Sheahan also is not talking with RFFV. Like Olson, Sheahan has served on the County Board since 2002. Don Olson said he confronted his wife about being involved sexually with Sheahan – thus confirming the account of a source who said Don had broken up his wife’s affair with Sheahan. 

Olson’s admission also jibed with suspicions from some other local Republicans and acquaintance of the Olson’s who told RFFV that Debra Olson — as a married woman — had seemed inappropriately close to Sheahan.  

According to two Republican female acquaintances of Olson – Debra Olson was directly confronted about being involved with Sheahan. Both sources put the time frame of the alleged Olson-Sheahan affair around 2004-2005 — the same time frame in which Don Olson was dealing with the startling revelations of Debra’s previous long-term affair with Dave Allen several years earlier. (David Allen repented to Jean and resigned from his church elder board and other boards in March 2004.) 

An attorney in Elmhurst, Illinois. He is recently married but was single when involved with Olson. Sheahan runs as a conservative and is vying to fill the seat once held by Republican State Rep. Bob Biggins, a pro-life and pro-family stalwart. 

RFFV has tried repeatedly to contact Sheahan by phone and e-mail regarding his past relationship with Olson, but as of late Monday night neither he nor his campaign staff had returned our phone calls or e-mails.   

A Republican activist familiar with the workings of the DuPage County Board said that the interaction between Olson and Sheahan on the Board gave rise to widespread rumors that they were not just associates or even close friends. 

“You could tell by the eye contact between them that something out of the ordinary was going on,” said a source, who described the suspicions about Olson and Sheahan as being held by “more than a few” DuPage County Republicans at the time. According to another source, Debra Olson was directly confronted by a female friend, who pleaded with her to end her compromising involvement with Sheahan. 

Jean Allen’s ordeal  

In March 2004, Jean Allen’s life was turned completely upside down by her husband’s sudden confession —  ”downloading thirty years of infidelity in three-hours,” as she put it in the sit-down interview with RFFV. One of the many women on David’s list was Debra Olson, who had worked with Jean and another woman in organizing a fund-raiser — hosted by David and Jean Allen at their Wheaton home – for GOP U.S. Senate candidate Al Salvi, who ran as a strongly pro-life and pro-family conservative.  

Jean Allen said she is not sure if her husband was sexually involved with Debra Olson at the time of the Salvi fund-raiser, but is certain that the immoral relationship was cemented around that time. A Republican activist who attended the Salvi fund-raiser at the Allen’s home said Debra Olson’s behavior there was strange: “It was the weirdest thing. She acted like she owned the house, like she was the spouse.”  

Jean Allen would later learn that her husband and Olson had a sexual tryst in the guest bedroom of the same Allen home on Washington Street near Wheaton College — in 1999, while Jean was away at a Christian women’s retreat sponsored by their church, Wheaton Bible. (The Allen’s children were away from home at the time, with two in college.)  

Jean recalled her husband’s initial confession to her as “horrendous. That night, when he confessed half way through, I said to Dave, ‘Stop! I feel like this is a bad dream and I’m gonna wake up and it’s not true.’ And he said, ‘Jean, it’s true.’” 

Other details from the adulterous relationship with Olson are equally troubling and tawdry: David and his lover Debra (who was “hardly his first,” according to Jean) once had sex in the Olson’s family van – and once in the Olson’s house, according to Jean, relaying the detailed confessions of her husband. Jean said that David and Debra Olson got together weekly at hotels and other locations: ”It was pretty much a regular thing.” After his confession, David revealed the hotels where his liaisons with various partners, including Olson, occurred. She and he were also tested for sexually-transmitted diseases (none were discovered). 

“Dave was really, really good at covering his whole life as a ‘Christian’ — all as a cover for reality,” Jean told RFFV. “He had a double life — the ‘Christian’ life was his cover — that’s how I look at it.” 

She suspects that Debra Olson’s situation is similar, and said that out of concern for its effect on her “public life,” in the weeks following David’s 2004 confession he still ”wanted to protect Debbie” by not revealing details of their adulterous relationship. 

Consensual adultery 

Jean Allen describes her husband as a former “sexual predator” (and sex addict) who ”never pushed himself on a woman” but rather used his considerable skills as a highly successful attorney to “set things up” so that the woman with whom he wanted to be involved would take the sexual initiative. 

In Olson’s first encounter with Allen, she performed oral sex on him when they were alone together in his law office conference room on a Saturday, Jean recounted. Later, in a phone call, Olson reportedly told the married man: “I don’t want to be a girl like this.”  

As part of his confession, David revealed the hotels and other spots where he and Olson (and his other female paramours) would rendezvous. He also revealed that he and Olson took a romantic trip together to New York City. 

“[David] very much took advantage of business travel to be involved with [Olson and] other women,” Jean Allen said. “That was his M.O. [modus operandi].” Olson and Allen also hooked up in Virginia, where Olson was visiting a relative and David was travelling on business. And the two lovers met at a hotel in Michigan. 

Mr. Allen also encouraged Olson to complete her bachelor’s degree at Northern Illinois University and at various times gave her money (not more than $1,000 at a time, according to Jean) to help Olson with expenses. 

Jean said that Olson ultimately broke off the adulterous relationship after telling David Allen that it was “hurting my prayer life.”  

Jean Allen ends the secrecy 

Critics say Debra Olson appears prim and proper in public as a conservative Christian legislator -- as in this campaign flier photo of her meeting with elderly constituents -- but privately she engages in reckless and inappropriate conduct. (Olson is third from right.)

In letters sent to David Allen by the cuckolded Don Olson in 2004 after discovering his wife’s infidelity– letters that Jean Allen showed to RFFV  — Mr. Olson at first angrily lashed out at Mr. Allen for stealing his wife. 

“Vote Debra Olson, Your “[F-----g]” Family Concerns Candidate — [signed:] Dave (the [c--k]) Allen,” he mocked as part of one long, vulgar letter sent to David Allen in November 2004. (Emphasis his.) 

A subsequent, less angry, letter to Allen in March 2005 inadvertently reveals the sentiments underlying Jean Allen’s desire to expose the truth about the scandalous episode. 

In telling David Allen how hard it is to forgive him (“you took from me one of the most precious earthly things in life”) – but earnestly pledging to do so — Don Olson writes: “I do know that simply seeing your picture in the … scrapbook in the DR [dining room] just about sent me into an emotional roller-coaster mode that I couldn’t get off.” 

Such is the cause — multiplied a hundred-fold — of Jean Allen’s ongoing heartache — or perhaps nightmare is the better word: she not only has to bear the possibility of having a chance encounter with Debra Olson — but is bombarded by colorful, four-feet-by-four-feet reminders of her husband’s former partner-in-adultery every time she drives to the grocery store. Blue-and-yellow “Debra OLSON, Republican for County Board Chairman” yard signs are everywhere in Wheaton and throughout DuPage County. And the candidate’s glitzy campaign fliers — adorned with a photo of the attractive Olson and her family — arrive in the mail. 

Last September, Jean Allen cracked open the dark secret of Olson’s past by sending the following e-mail letter to DuPage County Chairman Bob Schillerstrom (whom Olson is currently running to replace) and to Olson herself: 

From: JeanWAllen
To:  [Schillerstrom e-mail address]
CC:  [Olson e-mail address]  

Sent: 9/24/2009 9:03:46 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subj: “WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU”  

Dear Mr. Schillerstrom,  

I received a piece in the mail this past Monday (from the DuPage County
Board) that said on the back (just above your picture) “WE WANT TO HEAR FROM
YOU.”   I know that what you had in mind was the survey, but I wanted to
contact you directly to make a request.  

Receiving that mailing brought great pain to me and my family … because of
the pictures in it.   Some years ago my husband had an affair with Debra
Olson.   Receiving her picture in my mail was extremely painful for me (I
don’t know if you can relate to that kind of pain, but perhaps asking your
wife how she would feel if that was her experience might help you to
understand).  

If there is a way that I could not receive any mail with Ms. Olson’s picture
in it in the future, I would be most appreciative of that kind
consideration. 

Olson responded to Jean Allen’s request with a respectful promise to do all she could to prevent the DuPage Country mailers containing her photo from being delivered to the Allen’s home, but once again Olson’s decidedly anti-family and anti-marriage past was catching up with her – a very inconvenient development for a socially conservative candidate in a tough GOP primary race. 

For her part, Jean told RFFV that she sent the letter to Schillerstrom and Olson because it was her sincere intent “to have no pictures of [Debra] in my home. This is disturbing to my peace and serenity.” She notes that while her husband David finally “got caught” and then faced deep public humiliation (including some severe consequences that Jean did not want revealed as part of this article), the same cannot be said of Debra Olson. The latter’s lack of public humiliation, Jean asserts, is demonstrated by Jean’s various conversations over the years with Christian friends who are stunned to hear of her firsthand experience as a spouse victimized by Debra’s adulterous conduct. 

“My prayer for her is that she would get into honest recovery like my husband has,” Jean said. 

Need to know basis? Spreading “gossip”? 

In one of his phone conversations with this writer, Don Olson — when asked if voters in general and Christian and moral-minded DuPage voters in particular have a right to know about his wife’s adulterous conduct – said that Debra had revealed the illicit relationship with Dave Allen to all those who “need to know.” The picture is one of a Debra Olson being open, repentant and transparent. However, a more critical portrait of Olson emerges from other acquaintances who know and work with her — one in which she tightly guards her past infidelit(ies), ostensibly to protect her political career. 

When Olson learned that one Republican very active in DuPage County politics (who knew and respected Jean Allen) had discovered Debra’s lengthy adulterous relationship with David Allen, Olson became upset and scolded the GOP activist for “gossiping,” even quoting from the Bible to make her point. The activist told RFFV that she was stunned at Olson’s reaction and chutzpah — and regarded it as a manipulative attempt to squelch the truth. 

“This wasn’t gossip. Gossip is about spreading untruths. This was NOT untruth. These were facts!” said the conservative Christian GOP activist. 

Another acquaintance of Allen’s who was once active in GOP politics said that Debra Olson excelled at conveying a “don’t hurt me” posture that somehow suggested that she was the victim of unfounded attacks, rumors and “unChristian” gossip, even though Olson herself was engaging in highly inappropriate behavior for a pro-family leader and Christian woman. 

Perhaps this helps explain why at least three people approached for this story who know Olson well or work closely with her had no inkling of her seriously compromised past until informed of the evidence through this story. One GOP activist who is a volunteer working with Olson’s current campaign cavalierly described her as “pure as snow” when this writer first mentioned accusations of Debra’s past infidelities. Later, in pursuit of the story, when she was asked again about the adulteries — this time not as mere conjecture but noting the existence of documentable and corroborating evidence to back up the charge – she offered that she would check with Debra and set up a quick meeting “so we can get this all cleared up.” 

That was Sunday afternoon and the GOP volunteer with Olson’s campaign never phoned back to set up a meeting or returned calls and e-mails about our query. 

Another close associate of Olson’s — also a Republican activist — was surprised to learn details of her lengthy adulterous affair, having previously mentioned the commonly heard assertion that the infidelity charges against Olson were only “rumors.” Evidently, in the world of hard-fought political campaigns, it is easy to dismiss potentially explosive charges based on fact as the mean-spirited dirty tricks of an opponent. That gambit is made easier by the significant number of Republican (and Democratic) politicians whose lives have been scarred — and who have scarred others’ lives – through adultery. 

Clearly, as the party of “family values” and “defending marriage,” Republicans should not seek to sweep adultery under the rug as a non-issue, nor highlight only the hypocrisies of Democrats in this area. 

But politics and dirty tricks have nothing to do with Jean Allen’s struggle. She just wants the truth to be told, and fears it is being hidden amidst all those blue-and-yellow “Debra Olson – Republican for County Board Chairman” yard signs. 

Who can blame Jean Allen for resenting seeing campaign signs like this advertising the candidacy of the woman who committed adultery with her husband -- for a year and a half? Mrs. Allen feels that most voters are ignorant of this other side to Olson -- and that it would influence their vote if they knew.

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.

Anyway, with Republicans like Kirk in the nation’s capital, who needs Democrats? And Higgins is correct: if Kirk has a personal homosexual issue in his life — I would call it a problem — don’t the voters have a right to know given his radically pro-homosexual voting record ? You bet they do. – Peter LaBarbera, www.RepublicansForFamilyValues.com

_______________________________________________

Mark Kirk’s weaselly denial is very Clintonesque

Posted: January 08, 2010

By Laurie Higgins

I taped the Channel 5 news last night [Jan 7], and was mesmerized by Mark Kirk’s performance in the brief excerpt Channel 5 aired in which he decidedly did not deny that he’s homosexual. He used quintessential weasel words in his non-denial, which should infuriate all Illinoisans who believe that engaging in volitional homosexual acts constitutes a character issue and one which very likely influences the policy decisions of legislators.

Here’s Kirk’s exact statement: “It’s ironic that I was there fighting for his rights while he was using his free speech rights to say things which were untrue.”

This is a clever (or not so clever) way of appearing to deny the claim that he is homosexual while never actually denying the claim. He simply referred to “things that were untrue,” which could be any number of things that Andy Martin said.

It’s the same kind of weaselly non-denial as the one issued by Kirk’s campaign in which they said Andy Martin’s ad was untrue, which, of course, is entirely different from saying that Kirk is not homosexual. If at some later time, Kirk and his disciples are compelled to acknowledge that he is, indeed, homosexual, this squishy, expansive marshmallow rhetoric provides the cover they need. It allows Kirk and company to say, for example, that the” untrue things” were Martin’s claim that Raymond True says Kirk has surrounded himself with homosexuals. Kirk seems to be cut from the same weasel cloth as the weasel who infamously said, “I did not have sex with that woman,” and “that depends on what the definition of the word ‘is’ is.”

The indignant huffing and puffing of pundits and politicians on both the left and the right about Martin’s public question strikes me as both amusing and utterly hypocritical. Many of these self-same arbiters of social decorum have been talking about Kirk’s alleged homosexuality for years, and then in high dudgeon they moralistically condemn Martin for publicly discussing the same topic. Granted, due to a history of unsavory actions, Martin makes an easy target, but how about a modicum of truth from the press and our elected officials.

I first heard the Kirk rumor over a year ago from a good friend who worked closely with a current U.S. congresswoman. I was told that it is “well-known secret that Mark Kirk is gay.” It seems that the only people who haven’t heard this well-known secret are those who are asked to vote for him.

The “sexual orientation” of our legislators is relevant for it tells us precisely what they hold to be true about the nature and morality of homosexuality which will likely shape their policy decisions. Those who claim “sexual orientation” is irrelevant are usually those who hold the arguable theories that homosexuality is ontologically equivalent to race and morally equivalent to heterosexuality. Kirk’s distinctly un-Republican voting record on issues related to homosexuality could be explained by his philosophical views and sexual proclivities.

And concealed homosexuality is relevant because it opens up legislators to blackmail: vote a certain way or be outed.

I have heard that Kirk was asked directly by reporters if he is “gay” to which he said “no.” Due, however to some of his and his campaign’s equivocal answers, and the pervasiveness and longevity of the rumors, and the overwhelming disincentives Kirk has to an admission that he is homosexual, the wannabe lawyer in me would be more reassured if Kirk were to say in a written statement “I have never engaged in homosexual activity.” I know, I know, very McCarthy-esque. But after Bill Clinton’s deceit and Mark Foley’s deceit and Larry Craig’s deceit, we can never be too circumspect or precise. One thing the Republican Party does not need is another sex scandal-or another vote that affirms the social and political goals of homosexuals.

Some of Kirk’s evasive, obfuscatory statements have not only intensified questions about his sexual proclivities, but left me with serious doubts about his capacity for unequivocal, unambiguous truth-telling.

Laurie Higgins is the Director of the Division of School Advocacy at the Illinois Family Institute. This article represents her views as an individual and not necessarily those of IFI.

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).

“Talk about ‘audacity’: here’s a politician who lectures America about reducing abortions — when he promised to sign the Freedom of Choice Act, which would eviscerate pro-life laws across the country, thus increasing the number of abortions.

“I don’t know what’s worse – palling around with an unrepentant American terrorist or palling around with Planned Parenthood,” LaBarbera said, urging pro-life voters to watch the YouTube video of Obama’s friendly 2007 speech to Planned Parenthood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUl99id2SvM.

Regarding Obama’s pro-homosexual agenda, RFFV reveals that:

• Obama congratulated homosexual activists for “getting married” at a San Francisco Democratic gay event;
• Though Obama says he “personally” opposes “gay marriage,” he supports identical federal “civil unions,” saying, “I believe civil unions should include the same legal rights that accompany a marriage license.” This has led Obama to support a bill to allow homosexual partners to immigrate to the United States just like married spouses;
• Obama promises homosexual activists that he will use the bully pulpit to advocate for homosexual adoptions – which would place children in homes that are motherless or fatherless by design.

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.

The Democratic spin on marriage has fooled a lot of voters. If you watched the presidential debates, including the Saddleback Church event with Pastor Rick Warren, you might have concluded that Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, pretty much agree with McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin on same-sex “marriage.”

That is a precisely what the savvy strategists at the Obama/Biden campaign want you to think, as they strive to hide their candidates’ radical pro-gay agenda and portray themselves as reasonable moderates on this wedge issue. Truth is, the gulf between the tickets is the difference between saying you support marriage and actually doing something to protect it – and NOT favoring policies like repealing DOMA that are completely in line with the homosexual activists’ goal of radically redefining this sacred institution.

McCain is a strong DOMA supporter who will embrace a Federal Marriage Amendment if he sees activist judges forcing “gay marriage” on the states. Obama, on the other hand, went from supporting DOMA in 2004 to calling it “abhorrent” as part of his radical promise to homosexual groups to overturn it. Obama is setting the stage for nationalizing “same-sex “marriage” (perhaps under the guise of “civil unions”), while reporters dutifully provide him cover by repeating his alleged opposition to same.

If only one major media reporter would ask Sen. Obama: how can you say you support traditional marriage and yet “abhor” a popular law (DOMA) that helps states to preserve it? Alas, we mere mortals have to choose sides – and most politicians flip and then flop — but apparently Obama, The One, is allowed to embrace both sides of an issue simultaneously and get away with it.

Consider the following Obama policies and rhetoric and ask yourself if this sounds like a man who supports traditional marriage:

• Obama congratulated homosexual activists for “getting married” at a San Francisco Democratic gay event;
• Though Obama says he “personally” opposes “gay marriage,” he creates a distinction without a difference by supporting federal “civil unions.” Obama told the nation’s leading homoseuxal lobby group: “I believe civil unions should include the same legal rights that accompany a marriage license.” Interestingly, this stance has led Obama to support a bill to allow homosexual partners to immigrate to the United States just like married spouses;
• Obama promises gay activists that he will use the bully pulpit to advocate for homosexual adoption of children. Thus Americans may have to endure the absurd spectacle of a President Obama using the prestige of the White House to defend placing children in homes that are motherless or fatherless by design;
• Obama said he “respects” the California supreme court’s 4-3 decision earlier this year forcing “gay marriage” on that state, even though it wiped out a previous statewide ballot vote by Californians to preserve marriage as between a man and a woman;
• Obama denounced the Federal Marriage Amendment as a mere “political ploy”;
• Obama dismisses a key passage in the New Testament Book of Romans and distorts Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount to justify his pro-homosexuality agenda.

Considering the above, is it asking too much of the media to stop repeating the distortion that Obama and Biden support traditional marriage?

Appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres show, Sen. Biden eagerly told Ellen, a “gay-marriage” activist, that if he were a California voter he would vote “no” on Prop 8 in California. How strange, since Prop 8 does nothing but reinstate the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. (It does not affect same-sex “domestic partners,” who already receive the same benefits as married couples under California law.) Of course, earlier, in the vice-presidential debate, Biden claimed to oppose gay “marriage” — creating the false impression that he and Palin essentially agree on the same-sex-”marriage” question.

John McCain blew it by not calling out his opponents on their “gay marriage” deception and their plans to do in DOMA. All he needed to say was that the Illinois Senator doesn’t have the guts to tell the truth — that Obama’s “personal” opposition to “gay marriage” is meaningless because his pro-gay pledges would greatly advance the spread of homosexual “marriage” across the land. With friends like Obama and Biden, McCain could have said, the beleaguered institution of marriage really doesn’t need enemies.
_________________________________

Peter LaBarbera is founder of Republicans For Family Values (www.rffv.org) and president of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality (for identification purposes only).

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).

On Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount
Third, Obama’s remarks grossly distort the message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). The Sermon on the Mount says nothing at all that intimates either support for homosexual relationships or opposition to the kind of view espoused in Romans 1, a view that would have been held universally by Jews and Christians of the period.

The Sermon as a closing of remaining loopholes in the Law of Moses
Following the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-11), Jesus contends that he has not come to abolish any portion of the law and the prophets but rather has come to tighten its demands and close remaining loopholes (5:17-48). Six “antitheses” are put forward, the gist of which is: You use to be able to get away with the following but I say ‘no longer’ (5:21-48). Two of the six antitheses have to do with sex: adultery of the heart (5:27-28), which extends God’s requirement for sexual purity into the interior life, and divorce/remarriage (5:31-32). In between them is a warning by Jesus that if your eye or hand threatens your downfall, remove them, for it is better to go into heaven maimed than to be thrown into hell full-bodied (5:29-30). This last statement—along with Jesus’ strong affirmation of “the law and the prophets”—does not fit well with Obama’s view that applying the adage “hate the sin but love the sinner” to homosexual practice is wrong because “such a judgment inflicts pain on good people.”[3]

The two-sexes foundation for Jesus’ view of marital twoness 
The remarks against both divorce and marriage to a divorced person are pertinent to the issue of homosexuality. While we permit both in our society it would be invalid to argue from this to acceptance of homosexual unions; first, because Jesus’ remarks implicitly forbade polygamy, which we continue to reject today; and, secondly, because Jesus regarded a male-female prerequisite for marriage (and thus for any sexual union) as foundational for, and hence more important than, the definition of a valid sexual union as a lifelong commitment between two persons.

What we see in Matthew 5:31-32 is only the outcome of a reasoning that is more fully put forward in Matthew 19:3-9 (which parallels Mark 10:2-12). There Jesus bases his view of marital monogamy (the ‘twoness’ of the sexual bond) and marital indissolubility on two Scripture texts: Genesis 1:27 (“male and female [God] made them”) and Genesis 2:24 (“for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his woman/wife and the two shall become one flesh”). The “cleaving” text in Genesis 2:24 is obviously relevant to Jesus’ remarks about marital permanence, even as it presupposes a male-female prerequisite. But of what relevance is the terse quotation that God “made them male and female”? Apparently Jesus extrapolated from God’s creation of two primary sexes that sexual unions should be limited to two persons, whether serially (no divorce) or concurrently (no polygamy). The twoness of the sexes, their binary or dimorphic character, was for Jesus the foundation for limiting sexual unions to two persons. Otherwise, there would have been no reason for Jesus to have cited Genesis 1:27 and no basis for limiting marriage to two and only two persons.

Confirmation for this interpretation of Jesus’ remarks can be found among the Essene community at Qumran, the Jewish sect whose opposition to polygamy was closest to Jesus’ views. They rejected “taking two wives in their lives” because “the foundation of creation is ‘male and female he created them’ [Genesis 1:27]” and because “those who entered (Noah’s) ark went in two by two into the ark [Genesis 7:9]” (Damascus Document 4.20-5.1). Once the two primary sexes came together in a sexual union a third party was neither needed nor desirable.

What this means is that Jesus thought the male-female paradigm given by God in creation was the foundation for the twin principles of monogamy and lifelong commitment. The foundation is obviously more important, not less so, than any superstructure predicated on the foundation. Since we don’t permit polygamy today, even between three or more persons with a polysexual orientation in a loving relationship of lifelong commitment, there is even less of a basis for permitting homosexual unions. Once the twoness of the sexes is rejected as a basis for extrapolating a monogamy principle, there is no nature-based or logical reason for limiting the number of persons in a sexual union to two persons at any one time.

Jesus and “born eunuchs”: no sex for them
In Matthew 19:10-12 Jesus compared “eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” to “eunuchs who from their mother’s womb were born thus.” The former were people who did not get married, and thus abstained from sexual relations, out of a pragmatic missionary desire to further God’s kingdom (i.e., a single person would have greater freedom of movement and might be more willing to take risks than someone who had a family to worry about). The latter, the “born eunuchs,” were men who did not experience sexual desires for women, whether because they were asexual or, possibly, homosexual. Why does Jesus compare “eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven” with “born eunuchs”? Answer: Like the “born eunuchs,” the “eunuchs for the kingdom” are not having any sexual relations. If the “born eunuchs” included men attracted only to other men—a reasonable interpretation given the ancient evidence—then Jesus was presuming that men with exclusive homosexual attractions should not be having intercourse with other males. This is consistent with his argument from Genesis 1:27 and 2:24 earlier in the same passage (Matthew 19:4-9), where the only link between the two creation texts is the insistence that marriage—and thus all sexual unions since Jesus permitted sexual intercourse only in the context of marriage—be between the two sexes, male and female, man and woman. Those who cannot find sexual satisfaction in such relationships, Jesus believed, were not permitted other forms of sexual relationships, including same-sex sexual activity.

Other indications of Jesus’ embrace of a male-female standard for sexual unions
There are many other arguments to which one can point in order to establish Jesus’ embrace of a male-female prerequisite for valid sexual unions. These include:

• Jesus’ retention of the Law of Moses even on relatively minor matters such as tithing, to say nothing of a foundational law in sexual ethics; and his view of the Old Testament as inviolable Scripture, which Scripture was absolutely opposed to man-male intercourse.
• The fact that the man who baptized Jesus, John the Baptist, was beheaded for defending Levitical sex laws in the case of the adult-incestuous union between Herod Antipas and a woman who was both the ex-wife of his half-brother Philip and the daughter of another half-brother. The rejection of homosexual practice in the same two chapters of Leviticus from which the incest laws stem (18 and 20) is the closest analogue to the incest laws inasmuch as both types of law’s reject sex between persons too much alike in embodied structures, whether in terms of kinship or in terms of gender.
• Early Judaism’s univocal opposition to all homosexual practice—no exceptions anywhere within many centuries of the life of Jesus.
• The early church’s united opposition to all homosexual practice. This completes the historical circle and underscores the absurdity of positing a homosexualist Jesus without analogue in his historical context: cut off from his Scripture, from the rest of early Judaism, from the man who baptized him, and from the church that emerged from his teachings.
• Jesus’ saying about the defiling effect of desires for various forms of sexual immoralities (porneiai, Mark 7:21-23), which distinguished matters of relative moral indifference such as food laws from matters of moral significance such as the sexual commands of his Bible and connected Jesus to the general view of what constitutes the worst forms of porneia in early Judaism (same-sex intercourse, incest, bestiality, adultery).
• Jesus’ affirmation of the Decalogue prohibition of adultery, which in early Judaism was treated as a rubric for the major sex laws of the Old Testament, including, prominently, the laws against homosexual practice.
• Jesus’ saying about Sodom which, understood in the light of Second Temple interpretations of Sodom (Matthew 10:14-15, with parallel text in Luke 10:10-12), included an indictment of Sodom for attempting to dishonor the integrity of the visitors’ masculinity by treating them as if they were the sexual counterparts to males.
• Jesus’ saying about not giving what is “holy” to the “dogs” (Matthew 7:6), an apparent allusion to Deuteronomic law (Deuteronomy 23:17-18) and texts in 1-2 Kings that indict figures known as the qedeshim, self-designated “holy ones” identified as “dogs” in Deuteronomy for their attempt to erase their masculinity by serving as the passive-receptive partners in man-male intercourse.
• The fact that Jesus developed a sex ethic that had distinctive features not shared by the love commandment (love for everyone does not translate into having sex with everyone); reached out to tax collectors and sexual sinners while simultaneously intensifying God’s ethical demand in these areas; insisted that the adulterous woman stop sinning lest something worse happen to her (i.e., loss of eternal life; compare John 8:3-11 with John 5:14); appropriated the context of the “love your neighbor” command in Leviticus 19:18 by insisting on reproof as part of a full-orbed view of love (Luke 17:3-4; compare Leviticus 19:17: you shall reprove your neighbor lest you incur guilt for failing to warn him); and defined discipleship to him as taking up one’s cross, denying oneself, and losing one’s life (Mark 8:34-37; Matthew 10:38-39; Luke 14:27; 17:33; John 12:25).

Conclusion
Obama claims that his advocacy for homosexual unions receiving full marriage benefits is in keeping with Jesus’ own views in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere. As an assertion about the Jesus of history or even about the living Christ (assuming significant continuity between the two), this claim is preposterous. It is nothing but a fantasy, a figment of Obama’s imagination imposed on the text of the Sermon. The Sermon does speak about loving one’s enemies (Matthew 5:43-48) and about not judging others over relatively minor matters while ignoring larger problems in one’s own life (7:1-6). However, these themes provide no more support for homosexual unions than they do for loving, committed polyamorous or polygamous unions or for adult-consensual incestuous unions, both of which Jesus obviously opposed. If in the Sermon Jesus warned against men marrying divorced women, even women divorced by their husbands on invalid grounds (i.e., on grounds other than adultery), the idea that Jesus would have opposed “hurting the feelings of gays and lesbians” by not treating such unions as the functional equivalents of a valid marriage represents revisionist history at its worse. Obama’s argument, carried to its logical but absurd conclusion, would force Americans to provide full marital benefits for adult-committed polygamous unions and incestuous unions, since such persons too deserve to have hospital-visitation privileges, health insurance coverage, and all the other benefits of marriage every bit as much (and more so) than homosexual unions.[4]

Obama’s image of Jesus is that of a person who, rather than lovingly calling sinners to repentance so that they might be reclaimed for the kingdom of God that he proclaimed, tells others to stop judging them. This is not the picture of Jesus’ mission to “sinners and tax collectors” in the Gospels. Instead, we find a picture of a Jesus who aggressively reaches out in love to the biggest violators of his ethical demands while simultaneously maintaining that demand; a Jesus who encourages offenders to “go and no longer be sinning” lest something worse happen to them, namely, exclusion from the kingdom of God. Obama does not love more or better than Jesus. That would be carrying a messianic complex a bit too far.

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Endnotes:

1. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (Crown, 2006), 222.

2. Cited in: Michael Foust, “Obama: Sermon on the Mount supports gay civil unions,” Baptist Press, March 3, 2008 (online: http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=27532); Sarah Pulliam, “Obama Cites Sermon on the Mount for his Support of Civil Unions,” Christianity Today, Mar. 3, 2008 (online: http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2008/03/obama_cites_ser.html).

3. Audacity of Hope, 222. Obama refers to a woman in a lesbian relationship who was hurt by his not going all the way to endorse “gay marriage”—a silly observation in retrospect since Obama wants to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (which he has called “abhorrent” [see RFFV article at http://republicansforfamilyvalues.com/2008/10/18/obama-calls-defense-of-marriage-act-doma-abhorrent-in-letter-to-chicago-gay-newspaper/] and whose main purpose is to prevent “gay marriage” adopted in one state from being foisted on all other states), strongly opposes California’s Proposition 8 (which merely limits the definition of marriage to a “marriage between a man and a woman”), has stated that he “respects” the California Supreme Court decision foisting “gay marriage” on the state, opposes any federal constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and strongly endorses granting every single marriage benefit to homosexual unions, not to mention every “sexual orientation” special protections law imaginable. To take such positions is obviously to support the foisting of “gay marriage” across the country. The only reason why Obama doesn’t say that he supports “gay marriage” is because it is not a popular position around the country and would make him look like the extremist that he is on homosexual issues. Yet even in his 2006 book he coyly stated that he wants “to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided” (an unwillingness that, at any rate, is nothing more than political expediency, opportunism, and pragmatism) and that his main reason for not coming out for “gay marriage” is that, “in the absence of any meaningful consensus, the heightened focus on marriage [is] a distraction from other attainable measures to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians” (ibid.). Translation: Obama will come out publicly for “gay marriage” just as soon as feels that he can do so without significant harm to his political aspirations, and not a day later. In the meantime, he will do everything possible to advance the ‘cause’ for “gay marriage” without declaring that he is for “gay marriage” itself.

4. The issues of hospital visitations or health insurance coverage are red herrings. Few hospitals today, if any, reject visitations by a limited circle of very close friends. No law has to be passed here affirming homosexual relationships as marriage equivalents. At most a law could be passed entitling a person in a hospital to name any person of their choosing, within a limited number, as someone entitled to full hospital visitations. The insurance coverage issue is invalid because homosexual unions, which are as immoral as adult-committed incestuous unions and more immoral than heterosexual polygamous unions, should have no greater claim than any close friendships between unrelated persons. Obviously it is not fiscally practical to extend insurance coverage to all one’s close friends. It is not violating any principle in the Sermon on the Mount, in spirit or letter, to take such stances.

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About the author

Robert Gagnon (www.robgagnon.net) is associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice (Abingdon, 2001). The views expressed herein are Dr. Gagnon’s own and do not speak for Pittsburgh Theological Seminary as a whole. Gagnon came to PTS in the Fall of 1994 after a one-year position as Visiting Professor of Religion at Middlebury College in Vermont. He has a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. His main fields of interest are Pauline theology and sexual issues in the Bible. He is a member both of the Society of Biblical Literature and of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas [Society of New Testament Studies]. He is also an ordained elder at a Presbyterian Church (USA) in Pittsburgh. In addition to being the author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001; 520 pgs.), Gagnon is co-author (with Dan O. Via) of Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003; 125 pgs.); and, as a service to the church, provides a large amount of free material on the web dealing with Scripture and homosexuality. In addition, he has published scholarly articles on biblical studies in Journal of Biblical Literature, New Testament Studies, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Novum Testamentum, Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, Horizons in Biblical Theology, and The Christian Century.

For a partial curriculum vitae of Dr. Gagnon go HERE. To contact Dr. Gagnon send an e-mail to: gagnon@pts.edu or call 412-441-3304, ext. 2205 or 412-362-5610, ext. 2205. If you would like to be included on his mailing list and notified once a month or so regarding new materials on his website, e-mail Dr. Gagnon with the request. To view his superb website, go to www.robgagnon.net.

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.

Perhaps I am sensitive on this issue because I have seen the pain my own carelessness has caused. Before my election [to the United States Senate], in the middle of my debates with Mr. [Alan] Keyes, I received a phone message from one of my strongest supporters. She was a small business owner, a mother, and a thoughtful, generous person. She was also a lesbian who had lived in a monogamous relationship with her partner for the last decade.

She knew when she decided to support me that I was opposed to same-sex marriage, and she had heard me argue that, in the absence of any meaningful consensus, the heightened focus on marriage was a distraction from other attainable measures to prevent discrimination against gays and lesbians. Her phone message in this instance had been prompted by a radio interview she had heard in which I had referenced my religious traditions in explaining my position on the issue. She told me that she had been hurt by my remarks; she felt that by bringing religion into the equation, I was suggesting that she, and others like her, were somehow bad people.

I felt bad, and told her so in a return call. As I spoke to her I was reminded that no matter how much Christians who oppose homosexuality may claim that they hate the sin but love the sinner, such a judgment inflicts pain on good people — people who are made in the image of God, and who are often truer to Christ’s message than those who condemn them. And I was reminded that it is my obligation, not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided, just as I cannot claim infallibility in my support of abortion rights. I must admit that I may have been infected with society’s prejudices and predilections and attributed them to God; that Jesus’ call to love on another might demand a different conclusion; and that in years hence I may be seen as someone who was on the wrong side of history. I don’t believe such doubts make me a bad Christian. I believe they make me human, limited in my understandings of God’s purpose and therefore prone to sin. When I read the Bible, I do so with the belief that it is not a static text but the Living Word and that I must be continually open to new revelation – whether they come from a lesbian friend or a doctor opposed to abortion.

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.

While Barack Obama may hail from Illinois, Hawaii, Kenya or wherever, his set of core principles – his values – discernibly stem from the underbelly of San Francisco’s hyper-sexualized Castro District. The very San Francisco values that brought you the behaviorally driven homosexual AIDS epidemic, San Francisco’s public Folsom Street orgy and the preposterous and oxymoronic notion of “gay marriage” are the same values embraced by both homosexual activists and Obama, the latest politico to make ‘em light in their loafers.

Still, don’t take my word for it. Obama’s own words betray his veiled extremism. Despite a series of utterly hollow and politically expedient platitudes to the contrary, the overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that Barack Obama fully endorses the postmodern concept of “same-sex marriage.” He’s promised homosexual activists – in hushed tones – that if elected, he’ll do everything possible to make it happen.

The only thing keeping counterfeit “gay marriage” from spreading state-to-state is the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Due to the U.S. Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause – which requires that states respect the “public acts, records, and judicial rulings” of other states – “gay marriage,” without DOMA, becomes a communicable social malady. DOMA is a boost of penicillin in America’s arm. It inoculates states from being forced to recognize counterfeit marriages from other states like California, Massachusetts or Connecticut.

In 2004, Obama called DOMA an “abhorrent law” and said, “The repeal of DOMA is essential. … For the record,” he continued, “I opposed DOMA in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.” Obama also came out earlier this year in favor of the May 15 California Supreme Court decision that unilaterally redefined natural marriage in that state to include same-sex duos. “I want to congratulate all of you who have shown your love for each other by getting married these last few weeks,” Obama gushed. Despite assurances otherwise, these are not the words or policies of a man who opposes “same-sex marriage.”

But Obama’s contempt for the sanctity of natural marriage is only the beginning. As a candidate for the highest office in the land, his hostility toward the tens of millions of Americans who respect traditional sexual morality is unprecedented. He has enthusiastically signed off on every demand of militant homosexual pressure groups. Said Obama, “We must be careful to keep our eyes on the prize – equal rights for every American. We must continue to fight for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). We must vigorously expand hate-crime legislation and be vigilant about how these laws are enforced. We must continue to expand adoption rights to make them consistent and seamless throughout all 50 states, and we must repeal the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ military policy.”

So, let’s break it down. If elected, Obama has promised to sign radical thought-crimes legislation into law, effectively criminalizing respect for biblical morality. These laws would punish those who oppose sexual behaviors that every major world religion, thousands of years of history and uncompromising human biology have coldly rejected.

ENDA and “hate-crimes” legislation will unconstitutionally compel Christians and other people with traditional values to abandon those beliefs and adopt – under penalty of law – the postmodern “anything goes” view of human sexuality. Such “sexual orientation” laws have been the precursor to even more oppressive “hate-speech” laws in Canada, Great Britain and throughout Europe. But as Obama has signaled, these laws will not remain confined to his beloved Europe. There is little doubt that such laws will be similarly enforced here in the U.S under his administration. If you happen to believe that God created human sexuality to be shared between husband and wife within the bonds of marriage, you’d better not say so or you’ll suffer very real consequences.

Still, Obama’s loyalty to America’s sexual anarchists doesn’t stop there. He’s additionally sworn to turn the U.S. military into a cultural petri dish. Having no military experience of his own, he would nonetheless arrogantly disregard the vast majority of our military leaders and allow open homosexuals and cross-dressers to infiltrate the ranks of the armed forces – during a time of war – thereby disrupting military readiness and unit cohesion. To use the armed forces for such radical social experimentation is both dangerous and gravely irresponsible.

Finally, Obama’s promise to require “gay” adoption in all 50 states is particularly troubling. Here, his blind arrogance billows over. Once again he and his homosexual activist cohorts presume to know better than both God and science. As if common sense weren’t enough, studies have firmly established that children are best served with both a mother and a father. Although it’s not always possible, mom and dad each provide unique qualities vital in healthy child development. To selfishly place untold thousands of children in intentionally motherless or fatherless homes so that Chad and Thad can dress up and play house represents the height of narcissism.

So yes, if elected, Barack Obama – the “change candidate” – will undoubtedly live up to his name. He will certainly institute sweeping change over the next four to eight years. But as you walk into that voting booth on Nov. 4, consider whether Obama’s brand of change is change America can afford. Because isn’t change – for the mere sake of change – really just chump change?

Matt Barber is director of Cultural Affairs with both Liberty Counsel and Liberty Alliance Action and associate dean with Liberty University School of Law. Barber also serves on the Board of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality, a group devoted to countering the nation’s “gay” lobby. (This information is provided for identification purposes only.)

The following is the text of an edited letter sent by then-U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama to the Windy City Times, one of two homosexual newspapers in Chicago. Note that WCT editors shortened the letter, apparently for publication. According to a 2007 ABC News report, “Would Obama Position Spread Same-Sex Marriage?,” Obama shifted his position from one of supporting the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to opposing it on Feb. 4, 2004 — in other words, as announced by this letter. (The U.S. Senate passed DOMA by a vote of 84-14 on Sept. 10, 1996; Obama’s running-mate, Sen. Joe Biden, was among those who voted for bill.)

ABC News reported, “When he began his campaign for U.S. Senate, [Obama] told a group called Independent Voters of Illinois — Independent Precinct Organization that he supported D.O.M.A. He then switched to an anti-D.O.M.A. position on Feb. 11, 2004, as the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary drew near. According to Obama’s staff, the Illinois Democrat changed positions mid-campaign because he heard from gay friends how hurtful D.O.M.A. was.”

Emphasis and web links are added below:

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Windy City Times
2004-02-11
Obama on Marriage

As an African-American man, a child of an interracial marriage, a committed scholar, attorney and activist who works to protect the Bill of Rights, I am sensitive to the struggle for civil rights. As a state Senator, I have taken on the issue of civil rights for the LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] community as if they were my own struggle because I believe strongly that the infringement of rights for any one group eventually endangers the rights enjoyed under law by the entire population. Since 1996, I have been the sponsor or a chief co-sponsor of measures to expand civil liberties for the LGBT community including hate-crimes legislation, adoption rights and the extension of basic civil rights to protect LGBT persons from discrimination in housing, public accommodations, employment and credit.

Today, I am a candidate for the U.S. Senate. Unlike any of my opponents, I have a legislative track record. No one has to guess about what I will do in Washington. My record makes it very clear. I will be an unapologetic voice for civil rights in the U.S. Senate.

For the record, I opposed DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying. This is an effort to demonize people for political advantage, and should be resisted … .

When Members of Congress passed DOMA, they were not interested in strengthening family values or protecting civil liberties. They were only interested in perpetuating division and affirming a wedge issue. …

Despite my own feelings about an abhorrent law, the realities of modern politics persist. While the repeal of DOMA is essential, the unfortunate truth is that it is unlikely with Mr. Bush in the White House and Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress. …

We must be careful to keep our eyes on the prize—equal rights for every American. We must continue to fight for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. We must vigorously expand hate-crime legislation and be vigilant about how these laws are enforced. We must continue to expand adoption rights to make them consistent and seamless throughout all 50 states, and we must repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy.

I know how important the issue of equal rights is to the LGBT community. I share your sense of urgency. If I am elected U.S. Senator, you can be confident that my colleagues in the Senate and the President will know my position.

Barack Obama

Democratic Candidate for the U.S. Senate

Where were the media when Obama and his cronies viciously, and most often falsely, attacked everyone from John McCain and Sarah Palin to an abortion survivor who only asked that Barack Obama consider her plight in his abortion position? Complicit, and AWOL.

How do the Republicans win the White House when nearly everything they say goes through the liberal filters in the media?

Bob Holmes
Michigan

News Release; October 13, 2008

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Over 325,000 USA churches, synagogues get new publication, ‘The Judeo-Christian View’

Vista, CA (Monday, October 13) – Over 325,000 rabbis, priests and pastors in every Jewish and Christian congregation in America have received the inaugural issue of The Judeo-Christian View by U.S. mail, according to the publisher of the new periodical. The launch edition deals with the volatile issues of religion, presidential politics, same-sex unions and “child sacrifice.” Signed by dozens of clerics who concur that homosexuality and partial birth abortion – plus related policies of U.S. Senator Barack Obama – are at odds with the ancient Biblical faiths, the first edition also went online during Yom Kippur (www.thejudeo-christianview.com) and is heading to another 5 million U.S. clerics, theologians and religious laity via e-mail as part of an ambitious subscription strategy.

Signatories of the ecumenical epistle — rabbis, pastors and theologians themselves — urge congregational leaders to boldly pray, preach and teach “the Judeo-Christian view” on same-sex intercourse while conveying to their flocks where Senators Obama and John McCain stand on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law that shields states from forced legal recognition of gay unions from other states, such as Massachusetts and California. The “multimedia journal of opinion”– including a graphic DVD “video sermon” for congregations which cites both Jewish and Christian Bible translations — reports that Obama favors full repeal of DOMA and supports same-sex unions, while McCain takes the opposite stand.

The clerical signers come from Jewish, Roman Catholic, evangelical and “mainline” Protestant denominations, including the United Methodist, Anglican, African Methodist Episcopal, Brethren, Baptist and Congregational traditions. Among them: Rabbi Herzel Kranz from The Jewish Center of Silver Spring, Maryland; Rev. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.; Father Frank Pavone, Roman Catholic head of Priests for Life; Rev. Rosemary Schindler, San Francisco Board of the Anti-Defamation League and member of the Oscar Schindler family (of Schindler’s List); Dr. James M. Hutchens, Brigadier General and Deputy Chief of US Army Chaplains (Ret.); Rev. Ben Kinchlow, former co-host of The 700 Club; Dr. Bruce Fong, president, Michigan Theological Seminary; Dr. Kenneth L. Hutcherson, Antioch Bible Church, Kirkland, Washington; Dr. Erwin Lutzer, senior pastor of Moody Memorial Church, Chicago; and Rabbi Yehuda Levin of the Rabbinical Alliance of America of Torah Loyal Jews and The Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada.

On the issue of “child sacrifice,” The Judeo-Christian View springboards from Jewish Scriptures (eg., Leviticus 18:21, Jeremiah 32:35) into graphic verbal and video descriptions of partial birth abortion — a late-term procedure that involves piercing the skull and vacuuming the brain of the fetus, something McCain would ban, but Obama would allow. The rabbis and pastors contend that Obama’s policy to liberalize the practice, “combined with his effort to kill a bill that would protect babies who survive abortions, tends to gut the USA’s moral standing to condemn jihadic use of Muslim children as suicide bombers; both are horrific cases of child sacrifice that support a Culture of Death and demonstrate utter contempt for the Judeo-Christian Culture of Life.”

“We don’t advise political endorsements from pulpits, but we certainly do urge leaders to teach Jewish and Christian ethics while naming names of politicians who reject aspects of that foundation,” said Dr. O’Neal Dozier, General Publisher of the journal and pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, Florida. “It is a simple matter of full disclosure and informed consent. Shepherds must lead their sheep.” Dozier, an African American and former NFL linebacker for the Chicago Bears and New York Jets, said the new publication is unrelated to the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal aid group that recently encouraged some pastors to make express political endorsements from their pulpits.

“We think our readers will appreciate the eloquence and courage of the interfaith signatories who say what so many others fear to say,” said Dozier. “Our model is predicated on free, opt-in online subscriptions and eventual advertising support. We hope to hook both the shepherds and their flocks on bold content that emphasizes the common values of Jews and Christians in the USA and globally. Threats to religious liberty and civil freedom here and around the world make it essential that we ‘People of the Book’ work closely together.” Dozier said the next issue will be The Judeo-Christian View on “The Free Exercise of Islamic Violence.”

Although juxtaposing Scripture with the two senators’ policies, the multiracial signers reject “any kind of hatred, mean-spiritedness or gay-bashing”, “bigotry against peaceful Muslims”, racism, or mistreatment of “young mothers pressured by boyfriends, parents or society to abort their pre-born infants.” Urging “love the sinner, hate the sin”, the signers encourage the same “attitude toward erring politicians as well.” The publication also reports that the two senators differ on integrating open gays into U.S. military barracks, and urges prayer for ballot measures in California, Florida and Arizona designed to uphold traditional monogamy.

The publication’s mission statement says it “is a multimedia journal of opinion for rabbis, priests pastors and religious lay leaders of Jewish, Christian or mixed heritage which seeks to research, report on and uphold the Abrahamic, Mosaic and Judeo-Christian foundations for Creator-endowed human rights, religious liberty, civil freedom and tolerance, respect for women, family structure, American exceptionalism and Western Civilization. We do not endorse, oppose, coordinate with or advocate on behalf of any politician or party; rather, we seek to uphold the Judeo-Christian View.”

LINKS: www.TheJudeo-ChristianView.com

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

Barack Obama says he supports traditional marriage even as he actively supports the homosexual lobby’s campaign to spread “gay marriage” nationwide. Obama supports the full repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — which running-mate Joe Biden supported and which was signed into law by fellow Democrat Bill Clinton in 1996. “Both Sides Barack” also opposes ALL statewide ballot measures to constitutionally preserve marriage as one-man, one-woman.

Contact: Peter LaBarbera, Republicans For Family Values: 630-457-0178; rffv@comcast.net

NAPERVILLE, Illinois, Oct. 7, 2008 — GOP vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin missed a golden opportunity Thursday in her debate with Joe Biden to expose Barack Obama’s double-speak on “gay marriage,” Republicans For Family Values founder Peter LaBarbera said today.

Obama claims to support traditional marriage even as he promises to fully repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) – signed into law by Bill Clinton – which protects states from being forced to recognize out-of-state homosexual “marriages.” Obama also opposes state Marriage Protection Amendments, and even promised gay activists that he would use the “bully pulpit” to promote same-sex adoptions.

After vice-presidential debate moderator Gwen Ifill asked Biden, “Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?” the Delaware senator answered that “in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.”

Seemingly contradicting that sweeping statement, Biden then said that he (like Obama) does not “support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage.”

Responding to the same debate question, Palin strongly defended traditional marriage but failed to mention Obama’s extreme plan to overturn DOMA. Palin – who as Governor vetoed a bill denying benefits to homosexual state employees on the advice that it was unconstitutional — said granting same-sex benefits undermines marriage.

LaBarbera said Palin could have responded as follows:

“Gwen, I oppose all efforts to redefine traditional marriage, and to give marital benefits to unmarried and same-sex partners. I strongly support the Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. Back then, Joe Biden – like John McCain — voted YES on DOMA, but now Biden’s running-mate, Barack Obama, wants to repeal this vital law.

“It’s time for some straight talk on defending marriage. ‘Both-Sides Barack’ claims to support traditional marriage – while simultaneously opposing DOMA and helping to defeat ballot measures in California, Florida and Arizona that would constitutionally protect marriage. If Obama gets his way and DOMA is overturned, it would open a Pandora’s box for judicial activists to spread same-sex ‘marriage’ across the nation. By the way, Obama is even more liberal than Hillary Clinton, who pledged to repeal only part of DOMA.

“Sen. McCain and I want to preserve traditional marriage – and not just in name only like the Democrats. Obama and Biden want to give all the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples – while still pretending that they are standing up for marriage as one-man, one-woman. What a sham.

“Obama even wants to use the ‘bully pulpit’ to promote homosexual adoption of children. That may appeal to liberal elitists but surely not to Main Street Americans, who – perhaps ‘clinging to their religion’ – know instinctively that every child deserves a mom AND a dad.”

For identification purposes only, LaBarbera is president of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality.

By Peter LaBarbera

ST. PAUL, Minn.–Check out James Hartline’s piece on the “other side” of Michelle Obama — you know, the side that pleads with Democratic homosexual activists to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law in 1996 by Democrat Bill Clinton.

Hartline writes:

Her push to repeal both the Defense of Marriage Act and the ban on homosexuality and lesbianism in the military, indicate that Michelle Obama is suffering from some type of political schizophrenia. One night she’s talking about faith and motherhood and basketball. The next day she’s instructing gay extremists to dismantle the institution of marriage. One thing that Michelle Obama is consistently demonstrating by her melodramatic and distasteful flip-flopping on family values is the fact that she will not be settling down to play house anytime soon.

What’s up with the Dems? They’re more committed than ever to promoting the homosexual politicial/cultural agenda, and yet they know they have to hide that from public, especially during propagandistic soirees like the Democratic convention in Denver. Sure, Barack Obama mentioned homosexuals in his nomination acceptance speech, but did he preach it from the mountaintop (or was that the temple portico?) that he wants to REPEAL THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT?

No way. That would be a catastrophic departure from the Dems’ conservative-mimicking script in Denver. Can’t let those homophobic American rubes — especially the ones in Ohio and Pennsylvania — know about our true same-sex agenda now, can we? Nope, the double-game continues, and Democratic strategists are taking special care to keep their lavender clothes in the closet.

This tells me that the Cultural Elites have not yet succeeded in breaking down mainstream America’s moral norms. Much as the left-leaning media keep reminding us that “gay marriage” won’t be the make-or-break issue it was in 2004, they know deep down that it could be — so don’t look for the Fourth Estate to examine the Obamas’ ”DOMA Destruction” plans until, say, November 5th.

And so, it’s up to Sen. John McCain, Gov. Sarah Palin and the Republicans to draw a stark contrast on “family values” between the GOP and the Democrats who insult Americans with their smarmy wholesome appeals while they (wink, wink) stoke the hopes of committed ”queer” militants by preaching the Gay Gospel off stage. Will the Republicans expose Obama’s cynical marriage and abortion hypocrisy? The answer to that question will help decide if the GOP is serious about electing a President McCain. 

If you want to know what’s in store for America under an Obama Administration, forget the ”soft” Michelle in Denver and listen to the her speech to the DNC’s Gay and Lesbian Leadership Council. The Democrats – with their schizophrenic “gay pride” — have handed the Republicans an issue on which, alone, they could practically capture the presidency. Will McCain, Palin & Co. take it?

Republicans For Family Values
www.rffv.org

September 2, 2008

Contact: Peter LaBarbera: 630-457-0178; rffv@comcast.net

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion and pro-homosexual candidate ever to receive a major party’s nomination, Republicans For Family Values (www.rffv.org) founder Peter LaBarbera said today.

RFFV will be at the GOP convention to educate Republicans and the media on Obama’s extreme record on the two most important moral crises facing our nation: the killing of millions of innocent, unborn babies; and the campaign to use government to force Americans to support (and subsidize) homosexual behavior against their conscience.

“While pro-life advocates have done an outstanding job alerting the nation to Obama’s radical abortion record — he opposes banning heinous partial-birth abortions and opposed an Illinois bill recognizing human rights for babies “born alive” after botched abortions — Obama’s extreme pro-homosexual record remains largely hidden from the public.

The following are some examples of Obama’s pro-homosexual advocacy:

• Despite repeatedly professing his belief in traditional marriage, Obama’s stated public policies invariably promote the Homosexual Lobby’s “gay marriage” agenda. In other words, he claims to support marriage while simultaneously undermining it;
• For example, Obama promises to completely repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law by fellow Democrat Bill Clinton. If DOMA were to be repealed, states could be forced to recognize out-of-state “same-sex marriages” against their will. (Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged to repeal only part of DOMA.);
• Obama opposes the California marriage protection amendment (Prop 8), which would simply reinstate marriage as solely between a man and a woman – the very thing that the Illinois Senator SAYS he supports;
• Obama congratulated San Francisco Democratic homosexual activists on “getting married” – again showing his hypocrisy on marriage, and his old-politics habit of trying to appeal to both sides of this and other controversial issues at the same time;
• Obama pledged to homosexual activists to use the White House bully pulpit to advocate for homosexual adoption of children – thus creating the potentially absurd spectacle of a U.S. President using the moral authority, power and prestige of the office to push for placing children in same-sex households that are motherless or fatherless by design;
• Obama distorts the Bible to justify his support of homosexuality and even used Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount to support same-sex unions.

America’s liberal media do not see Barack Obama’s radical pro-homosexual advocacy as a big deal, but to many millions of Americans, it may help solidify him as too liberal to be president. But will most Americans find out how strongly pro-homosexual Obama is?

In the interview for the following story by AFA’s OneNewsNow, I indicated that Barack Obama becomes the first major party’s presumptive presidential nominee to support homosexual “marriage.” Other Democratic presidential primary candidates in 2004 and this year — e.g., Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH) in 2008 and Rev. Al Sharpton in 2004 — went even further than Obama in supporting full “gay marriage” rights, but they never got close to the Democratic nomination. — Peter LaBarbera, Republicans For Family Values

OneNewsNow reports (click HERE to listen to it online):

Obama — the Pro-’Gay’ Candidate

Jeff Johnson – OneNewsNow – 8/11/2008

According to at least one political analyst, Barack Obama has gone farther in supporting the homosexual agenda than any other presidential candidate [major party nominee] in history.

Peter LaBarbera, founder of Republicans for Family Values, says a recent letter from the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to a homosexual activist group confirms the extremism of his positions.

“He advocates the full repeal of DOMA, which goes farther than Hillary Clinton, who only recommended repealing part of the Defense of Marriage Act,” note LaBarbera. “He’s talking about opening up the military to homosexuality in a time of war. He’s talking about ‘gay’ adoption — putting children in homes that are intentionally fatherless or intentionally motherless, and using the White House bully pulpit to do that.”

On August 1, Obama responded to an inquiry from the pro-homosexual Family Equality Council, pledging in a letter [click HERE for PDF] his support for “LGBT families” — lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. He also congratulated homosexual couples that have recently “married” in California and Massachusetts.

According to LaBarbera, “that makes Obama…the first presidential candidate to actually support homosexual marriage. When you’re congratulating homosexuals for their supposed marriage, that’s being for and celebrating homosexual marriage,” he emphasizes.

LaBarbera hopes Obama’s candor about his positions will awaken conservatives who may be considering sitting out the November elections.

Says LaBarbera: “I think the central question of this election is this: Can Barack Obama take these extremely radical, pro-homosexual positions and, yet, still pull the wool over the eyes of enough American Evangelicals to win the election?”

McCain’s Human Rights Campaign 2006 Congressional Scorecard rating of 33 percent, though way too high from the perspective of most conservatives, is in stark contrast to Obama’s 89 out of 100 in the same HRC Scorecard. McCain voted against HRC on all but one key vote (he opposed the Federal Marriage Amendment), while Obama voted with HRC on all but one vote (he did not support a pro-homosexual immigration bill).

Here is another way to compare the two senators’ records: Human Rights Campaign’s analysis of Obama’s co-sponsorship of pro-homosexual legislation backed by HRC, versus the same analysis for McCain.)

The fact that McCain’s spokesman reports (below) that the senator was “proud” to receive the endorsement of the homosexual Log Cabin Republicans — a group that crusades for homosexual “marriage” and routinely demonizes Christian conservatives just as all the other “gay” activist groups do– will stick in the craw of pro-family Republicans.

We eagerly wait to see if McCain smartly makes a serious play for pro-family, conservative voters in the wake of California’s homosexual “marriage” ruling, or opts instead to try to split the middle of the GOP’s “big tent” — perhaps even making bolder pro-homosexual overtures to court “moderates.” — Peter LaBarbera

The following is excerpted from a Washington Blade report June 6 (emphasis added):

HRC Blasts McCain

HRC [Human Rights Campaign] on Tuesday released a compilation of Sen. John McCain’s statements and stances on gay issues. The five-page report called McCain an “opponent of equality” and “out of touch with the GLBT community.”

Lisa Schwartz, HRC’s legal director, said McCain as president would “act against the civil rights” that gay Americans seek, including “basic fairness” guarantees in the workplace.

“John McCain opposed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act,” she said. “He opposes protections for GLBT people so that they can go to work and lead the productive lives that they can and deserve to.”

Schwartz said McCain also opposes hate crimes legislation that is supported by an “overwhelming bulk” of Americans, plus many chiefs of police and state attorneys general.

“John McCain has had three opportunities to vote for hate crimes legislation that would protect people on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability,” she said. “And all three times, he’s voted against this legislation.”

Schwartz said McCain exhibits a “backward looking way of thinking that doesn’t reflect what most Americans believe about” these issues.

The report does not assign McCain a score. He received 33 of 100 on HRC’s most recent congressional scorecard. Obama scored 89 of 100.

Brian Rogers, a McCain campaign spokesperson, said in a statement to the Blade that McCain would continue to seek support from all Americans.

“Sen. McCain is seeking support from all Americans this November, based on his vision for moving America forward and his long record of treating people with respect and dignity,” Rogers said. “He was proud to receive an endorsement from the Log Cabin Republicans in his 2004 re-election campaign, and we’re confident he’ll win strong support this fall.”

Log Cabin has not yet announced whether it will endorse McCain.