Author Archives: Dan

‘Gates of Hell’ grabs stage in Planned Parenthood dispute

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‘I believe the racial components, the racial directives, will be its undoing.’

The “Gates of Hell” movie project by Molotov Mitchell of Illuminati Pictures has captured part of the stage in the developing controversy over the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Foundation’s decision to stop donating to the nation’s biggest abortion industry player, Planned Parenthood.

The Komen Foundation explained earlier this week that it wasn’t going to donate to organizations that are under investigation for their activities. Planned Parenthood is under investigation in several venues. Komen later issued a statement changing course again, saying it would give to the abortion business again.

The movie was noted in an Examiner report on the blowup between the breast cancer-fighting organization and Planned Parenthood. 

“Planned Parenthood has been also under scrutiny by some members of the African-American community because of the high proportion of abortions being performed on Black women,” the report said. “Film maker Molotov Mitchell, who recently produced the film, ‘Gates of Hell’ has alleged that Planned Parenthood from its inception, under the direction of Margaret Sander (sic), targeted Black and minority women. It has also been targeted by The National Black Catholic Congress.”

Mitchell earlier told WND the film explores the black genocide pursued by Planned Parenthood in an entirely different light.

“If it is indeed true that the black community is being targeted for extinction today, this is like major political thriller stuff,” he said.

Discover for yourself the movie that has people on BOTH sides of the abortion debate buzzing with “Gates of Hell” on DVD! 


He noted Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s views of race, her work on the Negro Project and mounting evidence that abortion clinics are disproportionately distributed among black and minority communities as evidence of an underlying conspiracy. At one time, Mitchell points out, civil-rights leaders were at the forefront of sounding the alarm over abortion’s “racist” agenda.

He said today that ultimately the “racial components, the racial directives of Planned Parenthood will be its undoing. And the more that people become aware that Planned Parenthood is racist, and racially driven to exterminate the Black population and has always been driven since their founding, Planned Parenthood finally will be done.” 

He continued, “There’s nothing more radioactive than the word racist. It’s fortunate for pro-lifers that Planned Parenthood has such a huge Achilles heel in that they are racist from their origins to the present.”

Officials with Planned Parenthood did not respond to messages requesting comment.

In published website statements the abortion company has said officials are “alarmed and saddened” that the Komen Foundation would “have succumbed to political pressure.”

“Anti-choice groups in America have repeatedly threatened the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation for partnering with Planned Parenthood … and news articles suggest that the Komen Foundation ultimately succumbed to these pressures,” the group stated.

Planned Parenthood supporters rallied to attack Komen, from trying to block permits for its parades to accusing Komen of abandoning women’s health interests.

But Mitchell said the racism of Planned Parenthood is a “skeleton in the closet” that the abortion business would not want publicized. So pro-life activists need to expose it, he said.

Noting there’s no defense for racism, he said, “I really believe the ‘Gates of Hell‘ approach is the most effective approach that we can utilize at this juncture. We have to present the facts and allow people to connect the dots.”

Planned Parenthood critics constantly note the high number of abortion clinics in minority and black communities and their relative scarcity in affluent and white suburbs.

But the racism is evident even in recent incidents.

It was just a few years ago that Planned Parenthood was caught on tape agreeing to take a donation for an abortion that would destroy an unborn black child specifically.

Click here to watch the new trailer.

It was uncovered through the work of Lila Rose, then editor of the Los Angeles-based Advocate and now chief of Live Action, which goes undercover to document the activities of abortion providers.

In a taped interview, an Idaho official for Planned Parenthood said it was “understandable” that a donor would want to contribute to abortions targeting blacks so that his own, presumably white, child would have less competition in college.

The conversation:

Actor: I want to specify that abortion to help a minority group, would that be possible?

Planned Parenthood: Absolutely.

Actor: Like the black community for example?

Planned Parenthood: Certainly.

Actor: The abortion – I can give money specifically for a black baby, that would be the purpose?

Planned Parenthood: Absolutely. If you wanted to designate that your gift be used to help an African-American woman in need, then we would certainly make sure that the gift was earmarked for that purpose.

Actor: Great, because I really faced trouble with affirmative action, and I don’t want my kids to be disadvantaged against black kids. I just had a baby; I want to put it in his name.

Planned Parenthood: Yes, absolutely.

Actor: And we don’t, you know we just think, the less black kids out there the better.

Planned Parenthood: (Laughs) Understandable, understandable.

Actor: Right. I want to protect my son, so he can get into college.

Planned Parenthood: All right. Excuse my hesitation, this is the first time I’ve had a donor call and make this kind of request, so I’m excited, and want to make sure I don’t leave anything out.

At that time, Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union, said, “African-Americans are having abortions at a hugely disproportionate rate according to their population, and Planned Parenthood has no shame whatsoever in accepting money that specifically targets our community.”

The audio was posted on YouTube, which later censored it.

Sanger supported eugenics through birth control to cull people she considered unfit from the population. In 1921, she said eugenics is “the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.”

At one point, Sanger lamented “the ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.” Another time, Sanger wrote, “We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”

The National Black Catholic Congress also has weighed in on the issue, challenging its members to choose the cause of death most costly to the black community, since 1973.

“Think about it for a minute. Is it heart disease – 2,266,789 deaths since 1973, cancer – 1,638,350, or accidents – 370,723? It is AIDS – 203,695, or violent crimes – 306,313? There is one possibility that is often overlooked. It happens 1,452 times a day in our community. It has taken over 13 million Black lives within the last 30 years. It has taken 1/3 of our present population. What is it? ABORTION!”

The group continued, “The CDC reports that of the approximately 4,000 abortions that are performed daily in the United States, 1,452 of them are performed on African American women and their pre-born children. This means that although African Americans represent only 12 percent of the population in the United States, they account for 35 percent of the abortions,” the report said.

Mitchell said his documentary’s trailer is shocking and provocative, which is what trailers are supposed to be:


And he said his work is not a call to violence.

“I’m not espousing the murder of anybody,” Mitchell told WND. “The film is not a call to arms; it’s a political thriller. The topic of black genocide, the cover-up, the conspiracy – we were shooting for (pun intended) great art, great entertainment.”

Click here to learn more about the new film. 

In mere seconds, college students across the nation have been experiencing an instant life-changing revelation about the sanctity of life – flipping from being adamantly pro-choice to recognizing the value of the precious soul inside a mother’s womb.

A small army of 1,000 workers gave away 200,000 copies of the award-winning movie “180″ at 100 top universities around the country in one day.

The “180″ film is a stunning revelation that, first, many people simply are unaware of the diabolical evil imposed on the world by Adolf Hitler, and, second, they are largely unaware of the facts about abortion and its tremendous toll on life in the U.S.

Ray Comfort discusses abortion with UCLA students


The pro-life video shows eight people who are pro-abortion changing their minds and becoming pro-life after being asked one question. Within the first month on YouTube, the 33-minute video clocked 1.2 million views and sold more than 150,000 copies.

“People can’t get enough of this because it’s changing minds about the hot-button issue of abortion, said Ray Comfort, author, evangelist and the filmmaker who produced the movie. “[T]his week’s university giveaway was very special, because it put the physical DVD into the hands of the youth of America, and engaged many in healthy dialogue.”

Watch the video trailer here:

What Every Christian Ought to Know About President Obama’s Healthcare Mandate

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Jim Daily, President of Focus on the Family has written a compelling piece on the title to this post. I commend it to you.

It was difficult to click on a website, turn on the TV or venture into the social media space over the weekend without encourtering news of President Barack Obama’s attempt to blunt criticism that his healthcare plan would force religious groups to violate their deeply held morals and values by paying for contraceptive drugs that could cause abortions.

As you’ve probably read, seen or heard from that coverage, the administration’s self-described “accommodation” has not gone over well with institutions or people of faith. That’s because, for us, this is matter of morals, not money. Principles like how we view human life and whether we are truly free to live and practice our religious convictions speak to the very essence of who we are as people and as a society. They are woven through every aspect of our lives. They are not issues for America; they are the ethos of America.

There are many compelling points to be made that the president’s revision does not adequately address the concerns of Catholic charities and other religious groups—including evangelical organizations like Focus on the Family.

Under the revised mandate, employers who have “a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan” will not fund these services directly. Instead, the insurance plan will cover these services to all female employees. Still, all insurers must include coverage for the objectionable services in all the policies they would write. At this point, it would appear that self-insuring religious employers, and religious insurance companies, are not exempt from this mandate.

Also of concern is that private business owners who provide healthcare services for their employers have no exceptions. A Catholioc business owner would have tofund contraception; an evangelical business owner would have to fund possible abortion-inducing drugs. To think you’ve placated Christian groups by giving them what they want, while denying it to other people, disregards a core tenet of our faith: the needs of others are always to supersede our own.

Then there’s the issue that the drugs mandated for coverage by the Obama administration go beyond contraception as most Americans understand it. That is, they don’t just prevent the fertilization of a woman’s egg. Drugs like Plan B and Ella, which are mandated for coverage, can cause an early abortion by preventing the embryo from attaching to the uterine lining. This is terminating a human life.

That brings up a point that should be pondered by fair-minded Americans who hold even vastly different views on the sanctity of human life: This mandate elevates contraception and abortion-inducing drugs to the level of preventative healthcare. They are not. Plan B should not be considered equivalent to the polio vaccine. Pregnancy is not a disease. Perhaps the most fundamental flaw in the White House’s “accommodation” reasoning—no matter, frankly, what in the end that accommodation turns out to be—is that religious liberties are not something any president has the legal authority to recognize or deny. As Christians, we believe these rights come from God; but you don’t need to believe in God to recognize such rights are protected for all citizens by the Constitution.

There is a limit to what government can compel us to do—or not do—particularly in matters of faith and conscience. It is in the best interest of all Americans, of every ideological stripe, that this limit, this line, not be crossed.

This is not about politics. It is about more than one government policy. It is about what’s proper – and it is never proper for government to force the people who elected it to violate their consciences.

Yours in Christ,
Jim Daly's signature

Unconstitutional President

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Abraham Lincoln said one day long ago, “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right”

This Mini Documentary reveals how our illegal president has been propped up by Congress. While Democrats play their usual roll Republicans are their own stones. This documentary proves that many members of both parties know that Obama is serving illegally and unconstitutionally. In their attempts to cover this travesty, their efforts to change our U.S. Constitution is reprehensible. This is a must video for Americans of both parties to see.

A Fox in the Hen House

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A Calculated Confrontation

If you ever wanted to see a clear example of President Obama playing politics as usual …

the absurd forced contraception and abortion insurance issue is it.

This is a perfect example of the president deceiving the people.

First of all, Obama is being dishonest when he says that his opponents will attempt to play politics with this issue. Not only is he playing politics with the issue, he introduced the issue with the intention of using the issue to rally his far left base, and divide the electorate, and he is deliberately manipulating the electorate.

Apparently, the far left who are in charge of the mainstream media and President Obama, decided to introduce contraception as an issue for Obama to run on in the coming election in their campaign strategy planning. Running on Obama’s record is not an option for them. I saw this first in the recent Republican debate when George Stephanopolous asked; “do you believe the states have the right to ban contraception”

It is not a mere coincidence that both Stephanopolous and Obama would bring this issue front and center for anything other than political purposes. In the face of the real problems facing America, this is unquestionably a sham issue. This is the Democrats attempt to change the subject.

MSM and Obama Are Clearly Under
The Control Of The Extreme Left


A Silly Question

The calculation was that Obama would nudge the electorate with the issue, get everyone upset on both political extremes. The far left which is disenchanted with Obama would now have an issue to fight for. This is good for fund raising and getting his base mobilized. He then would offer a compromise and now has

has scored a victory on an issue that was not even an issue in the first place. And for sure we won’t be talking about unemployment, jobs, putting Americans back to work, or the runaway budget deficits or worse yet Obama’s failed policies.

This Cap Sunstein “Nudge” concept may have worked perfectly here unless Obama and the silly game he is playing wakes up conservative Catholics, and the Tea Party Movement is once again mobilized to defeat him.

Obama must think Americans are ignorant.

The problem for Obama is that this is a different electorate than the one that voted for him in 2008. This time around, the people are up to his manipulative skills; and they are mad as hell, and they’re not gonna take it anymore.

With our most precious religious and personal liberties at stake, there is much for God loving, and freedom loving Americans to stand up and fight for.

 Posted by at 7:25 PM

Obama Gone Wild! $800M for ‘Arab Spring’

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Is this insanity, ignorance or un American? When Obama is in his campaign mode, he continues to speak of American who need major assistance from those who are doing very well. From the article below which used Reuters as their source, it would seem that the President is far most interested in moving money from America’s rich to Muslim countries, not known as lovers of the red, white and blue. Read the following article and see what your conclusion might be!

(Reuters) – The White House announced plans on Monday to help “Arab Spring” countries swept by revolutions with more than $800 million in economic aid, while maintaining U.S. military aid to Egypt.

In his annual budget message to Congress, President Barack Obama asked that military aid to Egypt be kept at the level of recent years — $1.3 billion — despite a crisis triggered by an Egyptian probe targeting American democracy activists.

The proposals are part of Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2013, which begins October 1. His requests need the approval of Congress, where some lawmakers want to cut overseas spending to address U.S. budget shortfalls and are particularly angry at Egypt.

Obama proposed $51.6 billion in funding for the U.S. State Department and foreign aid overall, when $8.2 billion in assistance to war zones is included. The “core budget” for the category would increase by 1.6 percent, officials said.

Most of the economic aid for the Arab Spring countries — $770 million — would go to establish a new “Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund,” the president said in his budget plan.

Analysts said it was difficult to tell how much of the proposal was actually new money.

“As presented it’s very difficult to determine if the Arab spring fund is new wine in new bottles or old wine in new bottles,” said John Norris, a former U.S. foreign aid worker now at the Center for American Progress.

The Middle East and North Africa Incentive fund “will provide incentives for long-term economic, political, and trade reforms to countries in transition — and to countries prepared to make reforms proactively,” the White House budget document said.

The proposal said this approach “expands our bilateral economic support in countries such as Tunisia and Yemen, where transitions are already underway.”

It would also build on other programs for the area, including up to $2 billion in regional Overseas Private Investment Corporation financing, up to $1 billion in debt swaps for Egypt, and approximately $500 million in existing funds re-allocated to respond to the region last year, the budget document said.

It did not say how the Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund would be divided between countries, or give any other details of the plan.

Egypt has long been among the top recipients of U.S. aid, getting about $1.6 billion annually, mostly in military assistance. In fiscal 2012, $250 million of aid approved for Egypt was economic; $1.3 billion was military and there was a $60 million “enterprise fund” approved by Congress.

No U.S. assistance is moving to Egypt at the moment, U.S. lawmakers and their aides said last week. Some legislators favor cutting off aid to Egypt entirely if it does not drop accusations against American democracy activists and lift a travel ban on them.

Obama continued the practice of putting proposed foreign assistance for war zones in a separate account. This account, known as the “Overseas Contingency Operations,” includes $8.2 billion for the State Department and foreign aid.

It includes $3.3 billion for Afghanistan, $1 billion for Pakistan, and $4 billion for Iraq, where U.S. troops have left the country but the State Department has picked up some of their functions such as police training.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/13/us-usa-budget-foreign-idUSTRE81C1C920120213

The Rise of a German Europe

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by Victor Davis Hanson Hoover Institution, Stanford University

The rise of a German Europe began in 1914, failed twice, and has now ended in the victory of German power almost a century later. The Europe that Kaiser Wilhelm lost in 1918, and that Adolf Hitler destroyed in 1945, has at last been won by German Chancellor Angela Merkel without firing a shot.

Or so it seems from European newspapers, which now refer bitterly to a “Fourth Reich” and arrogant new Nazi “Gauleiters” who dictate terms to their European subordinates. Popular cartoons depict Germans with stiff-arm salutes and swastikas, establishing new rules of behavior for supposedly inferior peoples.

Millions of terrified Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Portuguese and other Europeans are pouring their savings into German banks at the rate of $15 billion a month. A thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the euro-rich Merkel now determines whether European countries will limp ahead with new German-backed loans or default and see their standard of living regress to that of a half-century ago.

A worried neighbor, France, in schizophrenic fashion, as so often in the past, alternately lashes out at Britain for abandoning it and fawns on Germany to appease it. The worries in 1989 of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand over German unification — that neither a new European Union nor an old NATO could quite rein in German power — proved true.

How did the grand dream of a “new Europe” end just 20 years later in a German protectorate — especially given the not-so-subtle aim of the European Union to diffuse German ambitions through a continent-wide super-state?

Not by arms. Britain fights in wars all over the globe, from Libya to Iraq. France has the bomb. But Germany mostly stays within its borders — without a nuke, a single aircraft carrier or a military base abroad.

Not by handouts. Germany poured almost $2 trillion of its own money into rebuilding an East Germany ruined by communism — without help from others. To drive through southern Europe is to see new freeways, bridges, rail lines, stadiums and airports financed by German banks or subsidized by the German government.

Not by population size. Somehow, 120 million Greeks, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese are begging some 80 million Germans to bail them out.

And not because of good fortune. Just 65 years ago, Berlin was flattened, Hamburg incinerated and Munich a shell — in ways even Athens, Madrid, Lisbon and Rome were not.

In truth, German character — so admired and feared in some 500 years of European literature and history — led to the present Germanization of Europe. These days we recoil at terms like “national character” that seem tainted by the nightmares of the past. But no other politically correct exegesis offers better reasons why a booming Detroit of 1945 today looks like it was bombed, and a bombed-out Berlin of 1945 now is booming.

Germans on average worked harder and smarter than their European neighbors — investing rather than consuming, saving rather than spending, and going to bed when others to the south were going to dinner. Recipients of their largesse bitterly complain that German banks lent them money to buy German products in a sort of 21st-century commercial serfdom. True enough, but that still begs the question why Berlin, and not Rome or Madrid, was able to pull off such lucrative mercantilism.

Where does all this lead? Right now to some great unknowns that terrify most of Europe. Will German industriousness and talent eventually translate into military dominance and cultural chauvinism — as it has in the past? How, exactly, can an unraveling EU, or NATO, now “led from behind” by a disengaged United States, persuade Germany not to translate its overwhelming economic clout into political and military advantage?

Can poor European “adolescents” really obey their rich German “parents”? Berlin in essence has now scolded southern Europeans that if they still expect sophisticated medical care, high-tech appurtenances and plentiful consumer goods — the adornments of a rich American and northern Europe lifestyle –then they have to start behaving in the manner of Germans, who produce such things and subsidize them for others.

In other words, an Athenian may still have his ultra-modern airport and subway, a Spaniard may still get a hip replacement, or a Roman may still enjoy his new Mercedes. But not if they still insist on daily siestas, dinner at 9 p.m., retirement in their early 50s, cheating on taxes, and a de facto 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. workday.

Behind all the EU’s 11th-hour gobbledygook, Germany’s new European order is clear: If you wish to live like a German, then you must work and save like a German. Take it or leave it.

Israel and Middle East Report

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by General Shimon Erem – Israel/Christian Nexus

IRAN
The most critical developments in the Middle East over the past weeks have been in Iran. I will begin this report with something that made international headlines: the assassination on January 11 of yet another Iranian nuclear scientist: Dr. Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. He was a very prominent scientist who had been warned that he was next in line to be killed. And, now he is dead. Whoever did it – and your guess is as good as mine – has decided that it is in their best interest to eliminate the nuclear scientists of Iran.

This is an important issue because the minute Iran has the nuclear facilities – the nuclear capacity – it will be very difficult to do anything to stop theior ambitions in the Middle East and around the world. The Gulf States would no longer have the ability to set their own course under the threat of a nuclear Iran. Threats of rising oil proces, or even access to oil, while they might not pose much of a risk to the US. since we are not as dependent on Gulf oil as are other nations, particularly China, North Korea and other Asian States.

That is why those countries are so involved and so invested in a successful outcome for Iran. In the meantime, the United States is amassing naval forces to send a message to Iran that they will take action to stop Iran fro blocking Persian Gulf tanker traffic through the Hormuz Straits These are the Straits through which one-fifth of the worl’s oil is transported.

Iran has threatened to bock the tankers following the EU’s vote to join the U. S embargo of Iranian oil; sanctions that the U.S. and its allies have hoped would bering Iran tothge table to discuss its nuclear developemnt program. So it has become a very important issue.

Shariah Law Says

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Breaking news reports say that Iran’s Supreme Leader has endorsed legal arguments – under Islamic Shariah law – that set out “‘jurisprudential justification’ to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel.”

Support Israel's right to stop Iran from making nuclear weaponsThe threats to Israel are escalating because Iran is ignoring sanctions and is getting closer to having nuclear weapons.

We must stand with Israel – our greatest ally in the Middle East – and support their right to defend themselves.

Sign the Petition in Support of Israel Taking Action Against a Nuclear Iran today.

President Obama continues to waffle in his support of Israel – creating dangerous separation between Israel and us at this critical time.

Please sign and forward this urgent petition to everyone you know who supports the Israeli people, and use the “Like” buttons in this email to share it on Facebook.

Israel must be able to defend itself against a regime that believes it is “legally and morally justified” to “annihilate” the Israeli people, and prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

The United States must take the lead in supporting the right of Israel to defend itself. Join us in urging President Obama to support our greatest ally in the Middle East. Take action.

Thank you for standing with the ACLJ in solidarity with the Israeli people.

Jay Sekulow
ACLJ Chief Counsel

P.S. Iran threatens anyone who believes in freedom – including their own people. We are continuing to support Iranian Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani. Please go to ACLJ.org for the latest news about Pastor Youcef.

Religious Groups Unite to Uphold Marriage

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When studying the founding of the United States, you can’t help but encounter the faith of the nation’s forefathers. Time and again they recognized God’s hand in the shaping of America. You will find Him repeatedly mentioned in their words and documents. And you will find Him having an active, vibrant role in the country’s early history.

Today, God continues His work in America – but it’s in a nation that has clearly lost its moral compass. Every week, “Morality in America” will address the myriad of moral concerns facing the United States and undermining its Godly heritage:

  • Sanctity of life – abortion and euthanasia.
  • Sanctity of marriage – same-sex marriage and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues.
  • Sanctity of the family – divorce, spousal and child abuse, out-of-wedlock pregnancies and absentee fathers.
  • Judicial activism (Supreme and lower court decisions).
  • Revisionist education in the public schools.
  • The perceived rise of Socialism and one-world government trends.
  • Attacks and media bias against Christianity.
  • And much more…

After you read, remember to intercede in prayer for America – that this nation will return to the Christian standards that once defined it.

We have the Presidential Prayer Team web site to thanks for these graphics and exceptional articles. The article below was written by Jim Ray.

Giving Licenses and Taking Liberties

A rabbi, a priest, and a minister walk into a bar…

Well, not really, but that’s the way the well-worn joke goes. In truth, you wouldn’t expect to see a rabbi, a priest and a minister together very often – until now. A group of diverse religious leaders united earlier this month to present an open letter to “All Americans” defending the institution of marriage.

The letter is, in essence, a response to this question endlessly posed by homosexual rights activists: How does it harm you if two men – or two women – want to be married to each other? The harm, the religious leaders answer, is to the constitutionally-protected right to religious freedom. The rabbi, the priest and the minister disagree on many subjects, but on this they are unified.

The effort to preserve the definition of marriage as being the union of one man and one woman is, by some accounts, a losing proposition. Homosexual activists have skillfully composed their argument as one of civil rights, and merely an effort to “keep the government out of the bedroom.” But as government acquiesces to the demands of homosexual rights supporters, other fundamental rights are being quietly stripped away.

Signed by 39 national religious leaders representing a wide variety of faith communities, the letter notes that altering the civil definition of marriage “does not change one law, but hundreds, even thousands, at once,” and infringes upon the religious rights of those who believe homosexual behavior is inconsistent with the instructions of the Scriptures. For example:

  • Religious adoption services that place children exclusively with married couples would be required by law to place children with same-sex couples who are civilly “married.”
  • Religious marriage counselors would be denied professional accreditation for refusing to counsel same-sex “married” relationships.
  • Religious employers who provide special health benefits to married couples would be required to offer identical benefits to same-sex “spouses.”
  • In addition to civil liability, religious people and groups would face the targeted withdrawal of government grants and other benefits.

All of the scenarios cited have, in fact, already occurred, even though at present only a minority of states authorize licenses for same-sex couples. The government’s continued meddling in the definition of marriage – an institution created by God before any government existed – will destroy many more rights than it will create or preserve.

But rather than simply curse the darkness, people of faith should work to promote the value of traditional marriage, and on this subject the religious leaders are also unified. Marriage serves the “well-being of the couple, of children, of civil society and all people,” they write, and it is “a universal good and the foundational institution of all societies.”

2012 will be a critical year in the battle to preserve marriage and religious freedom. If you believe these are values worth fighting for:

  • Let your political candidates know where you stand on the issues and how you intend to vote.
  • Work to strengthen traditional marriages – your own, or the marriages of loved ones or friends.
  • Encourage your church to take a role in promoting marriage, such as celebrating National Marriage Week USA February 7-14.
  • Pray for special compassion and wisdom as you confront this issue in your community, that you may speak “the truth in love.” (Ephesians 4:15)

Jim Ray is a writer and marketing specialist who currently serves as Estate Gift Representative with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. He also serves on the advisory board for Street 2 Street, a New York-based charity ministering to inner-city youth through the vehicle of sports. Jim and his wife Stacey have two children and reside in Nashville, TN.

Presidential Quote of the Week

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James Madison (1751-1836), 4th President of the United States

The source to which I look for the aids which alone can supply my deficiencies is the well-tried intelligence and virtue of my fellow citizens, and in the counsels of those representing them in the other departments associated in the care of the national interests. In these my confidence will under every difficulty be best placed, next to that which we have all been encouraged to feel in the guardianship and guidance of that Almighty Being whose power regulates the destiny of nations, whose blessings have been so conspicuously dispersed to this rising Republic, and to whom we are bound to address our devout gratitude for the past, as well as our fervent supplications and best hope for the future.

- Composed for his inaugural ceremonies, March 4, 1809

James Madison

James Madison, Jr. was born in March 1751 at Belle Grove Plantation near Port Conway, Virginia. He grew up as the eldest of twelve children. The family were tobacco planters. He received his early education at the nearby Innes plantation, learning mathematics, geography and modern as well as ancient languages. He became especially proficient in Latin. At age 16, he began a two-year course of study in private tutoring preparing him for college. He enrolled at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton), and after graduating there he remained on to study Hebrew, political philosophy and law. He gained admission to the bar.

As a young lawyer, Madison defended Baptist preachers arrested for preaching without a license from the established Anglican Church. He persuaded Virginia to give up claims to northwestern territories, including modern-day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and part of Minnesota, to the Continental Congress which then created the Northwest Territory.

Madison was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates and then was a delegate to the Continental Congress. Together with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay he wrote the Federalist Papers. Madison is often acknowledged to be the “Architect of the Constitution.” He and Patrick Henry are often credited for a large part of the Bill of Rights amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

During the Jefferson Administration, Madison was the U.S. Secretary of State. In 1808, he was elected the 4th President of the United States. The War of 1812 and the Second Barbary War both occurred during his presidency. Both Louisiana and Indiana were added as States during his terms in office.

When Madison left office, he retired to Montpelier, his tobacco plantation in Virginia, not far from Jefferson’s Monticello. He died there a few years later, the last remaining Founding Father, and is buried in the Madison Family Cemetery at Montpelier.

Madison was married to Dolley Todd who had one son, John, from a prior marriage. James Madison was known to regularly lead his household in the observance of family devotions. He was an adamant defender of religious liberty. He was most probably a Presbyterian.