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Social Conservative Leaders Wonder: Can Homosexual Activism and Religious Liberty ‘Coexist’?

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Minutes after addressing a packed room at the 2016 CPAC, two leading social conservatives told LifeSiteNews that sexual agendas are putting religious liberty at risk.

The Family Research Council’s Travis Weber told LifeSiteNews that “for a lot of us, religious liberty’s only been a hot-button issue recently, we’re seeing in the news. Why is that? It’s driven by agendas affecting matters of sexuality – marriage, abortion, contraception, and all sorts of other issues.”

(watch a recent interview between Joe Miller and Travis Weber below:)

“So what do we do about this? Some of these claims are going to be dealt with in the courts. Others, though, we need to deal with [inaudible] protections. Where’s the threat right now? It’s on anyone doing business with the government, having indexes with the government, those getting tax-exempt status, contracting, getting grants, etc.”

“And those folks need to be protected with a version of the federal First Amendment Defense Act, or state government non-discrimination act, not other areas, such as pastor protection act, or some focus that doesn’t need protection right now.”

Weber’s co-presenter was Ashley McGuire of The Catholic Association. “We were discussing threats to religious liberty,” she explained. “I focused on the threats facing health care workers and religious people who do not wanted to be conscripted into providing drugs and devices that violate their consciences.” (Read more from “Social Conservative Leaders Wonder: Can Homosexual Activism and Religious Liberty ‘Coexist’?” HERE)

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Warning: The Rainbow Jihad Won’t Be Letting up in 2016

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It already seems clear that 2016 isn’t going to just lay down and let 2015 be the most heinous year for assaults against religious liberty since the Salem Witch Trials.

Gotta hand it to the pagans. They know how to put their foot on the gas and keep it there when the on-ramp says “highway to hell straight ahead.”

The United States Department of Education has determined that religious taxpayers who pay the salaries of its employees need to be set aside for a special dose of Orwellian hazing. See, the Marxists’ plan on affixing scarlet letters—Christian schools that receive federal money will have their waivers for refusing to participate in the Rainbow Jihad posted online for public view.

In other words, conveniently listed for Rainbow Jihad target practice.

Sure, such a federal exemption was explicitly provided by a vote of Congress back in 1972, and there’s also that whole First Amendment thing to consider as well, but whatever, you bigot. Welcome to the intelligentsia’s black list! Joseph McCarthy called and said he wants his cowbell back.

Sadly, though, this new tactic isn’t even coming as a result of the latest rogue decision by a U.S. district court, but through nothing more than the encouragement of eight U.S. senators—Ron Wyden, Tammy Baldwin, Barbara Boxer, Al Franken, Edward Markey, Jeff Merkley, Patty Murray, and socialist-in-chief/presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders.

You mean you want to rob the country blind AND round up Christians for ritualistic shaming, Bernie? No wonder you are storming ahead in the polls among Democrats. That’s the leftist Full Monty right there.

And with brainwashed quislings like the Department of Education’s assistant secretary for civil rights, Catherine Lhamon, on your side, who needs accountability?

Otherwise known as “a basic search tool so that applicants, students, parents, and others can be better informed about which educational institutions have sought and/or received a religious exemption.”

Tyranny has never sounded so antiseptic and efficient. In fact, even America’s homeless population can’t escape the Rainbow Jihad’s bureaucratic blitzkrieg. I mean, did you think the progressives over at the Department of Housing and Urban Development were actually going to just lay down and let the educrats take the award for “Insufferable Public Servant of the Year” without a fight?

Those folks want to get rid of the rule that allows temporary emergency shelters to take sex into account when providing shared sleeping areas or bathrooms. Yep, as if the homeless don’t have it bad enough, now the women whose lives are in total disarray may also have to share close quarters with the guy who can’t get a job or stay sober but is absolutely certain he looks fantastic in the same blouse.

I know you may have no idea where your next meal is coming from, but you, too, will be made to care.

And not to be outdone, the feminist scolds over at the U.S. Navy are reviewing a proposal to take the “man” out of “midshipman” because a former female Marine Corps pilot said the change is needed so women feel welcome. After all, how am I supposed to focus on killing the enemy with so many trigger words floating around that make me want to kill my fellow American? C’mon, sailor, where’s my safe space?

But where, o where, does all this attention to detail go when it comes to responsibilities that are actually under the federal government’s constitutional umbrella, like enforcing our border? I know, queue up the laugh track.

Not only did Senate Democrats move to block legislation last week that would impose more stringent background checks on Syrian refugees, but the Washington Times reported the federal government doesn’t investigate 99 percent of the roughly 500,000 illegal immigrants who entered the country legally but overstayed their visas in 2015.

Among those who overstayed are thousands from countries connected with terrorism. But who cares. Your government has made its priorities clear.

It has Christians to hunt. (For more from the author of “Warning: The Rainbow Jihad Won’t Be Letting up in 2016” please click HERE)

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New York Values? Farmers Can’t Refuse Homosexual Wedding in Backyard – Unless They Want to Be Fined

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Farmers who host weddings in their backyard cannot refuse ceremonies where two people of the same sex are trying to get married, a New York court has ruled.

The court’s decision affirmed the state’s Division of Human Rights (DHR) ruling against Robert and Cynthia Gifford, owners of Liberty Ridge Farms, after they declined to host a “wedding” for a same-sex couple. The Giffords said they would host the reception for a lesbian couple, but the ceremony itself would have to be hosted elsewhere because of their religious beliefs about marriage.

DHR found that the couple violated New York’s “places of public accommodation” anti-discrimination law. If the court’s decision stands, the Giffords must pay $10,000 in state fines and an additional $3,000 in damages to the lesbian couple, Jennie McCarthy and Melissa Erwin, for “mental pain and suffering.”

Additionally, the Giffords – who say they have hosted a birthday party for a lesbian couple’s adopted child, and employed people with same-sex attractions – will have to provide sensitivity training to their staff and prominently display a poster highlighting state anti-discrimination laws.

The suit goes back to a 2012 phone call that Cynthia answered. Erwin and McCarthy wanted to have their wedding on site, something Cynthia said couldn’t happen. (Read more from “New York Values? Farmers Can’t Refuse Homosexual Wedding in Backyard – Unless They Want to Be Fined” HERE)

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Christian Bakery Owners Who Refused to Make Homosexual Wedding Cake Just Had to Do This

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Oregon bakery owners who denied service to a same-sex couple have paid $135,000 in state-ordered damages – after refusing to do so for nearly six months.

The Bureau of Labor and Industries says Aaron Klein, co-owner of the Portland-area bakery, dropped off a check Monday for $136,927.07. That includes accrued interest. Klein also paid $7,000 earlier this month.

Damages were awarded in July for emotional suffering caused by Sweet Cakes by Melissa, which two years ago refused to make a wedding cake for Laurel and Rachel Bowman-Cryer. The bakers said their refusal was prompted by religious beliefs. (Read more from “Christian Bakery Owners Who Refused to Make Homosexual Wedding Cake Just Had to Do This” HERE)

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Pastor Who Was Raised by Gay Parents Reveals How Churches Can Minister to Homosexuals

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In an amazing story of redemption, a former Atheist who was raised by gay parents is now an influential pastor who seeks to minister to those struggling with same-sex attraction and encourage them to see Christ as their main identity.

Caleb Kaltenbach, the pastor of Discovery Church in Simi Valley, California and author of the book “Messy Grace”, shared his inspiring testimony during a podcast interview with The Church Boys . . .

After three years of serving in Dallas, he felt called to move back to Southern California to lead Discovery Church in Simi Valley. Two weeks before he left, both of his parents gave their lives to the Lord: “I was floored … how did this happen? To this day, I’m still not sure. I do believe my parents are saved.”

Today, Kaltenbach works to minister to those who may feel alienated from the Christian community due to past experiences: “I believe any expression of sexuality outside of heterosexual marriage is sinful,” he said of how he interacts with the LGBT community, “but I don’t believe God called me to make gay people straight.”

“I completely concur that God designed sexuality to be between a man and a woman, but that’s not the first thing I talk about with somebody that’s gay,” he continued. I want to get to know them as a person, to build a friendship.” (Read more from “Pastor Who Was Raised by Gay Parents Reveals How Churches Can Minister to Homosexuals” HERE)

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Starbucks to Become an LGBT ‘Safe Place’

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Starbucks announced Wednesday that its Seattle stores are officially “Safe Places” for members of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) community.

Partnering with the Seattle Police Department’s “Safe Place” program, 97 of Starbucks’ stores in the Seattle area will finish specific employee training early next week on “how to respond to and engage with LGBT victims of violence and effectively report hate crimes to police.”

“Safe Place,” started by openly gay Seattle Police Officer Jim Ritter, is a campaign against bias crimes. Since May, Officer Ritter has spoken with 650 businesses across Seattle, all of whom have supported the campaign, displaying rainbow-badge decals in their windows . . .

Starbucks may serve as precedent for other large companies to support the initiative as well. With 2,000 extra pairs of eyes, Ritter is convinced the program will help “put bullies on notice that they can’t get away with victimizing people.”

Starbucks has shown its support for the LGBT community in other ways recently, raising a gay pride flag at its Seattle headquarters and airing a commercial featuring contestants from “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Bianca Del Rio and Adore Delano. (Read more from “Starbucks to Become an LGBT ‘Safe Place'” HERE)

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COVER-UP: ‘Gay’ Rape in Military Is Completely Underreported by Pentagon

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Far more military men are being raped by other men and experience other sexual traumas than is reported by the Pentagon because of the stigma attached to such assaults, says a new study released Tuesday by the American Psychological Association.

“Rates of military sexual trauma among men who served in the military may be as much as 15 times higher than has been previously reported, largely because of barriers associated with stigma, beliefs in myths about male rape, and feelings of helplessness,” the APA said in releasing findings published in its periodical Psychological Services.

Comparing the new study’s numbers and the Pentagon’s survey results produced some shocking statistics.

The Rand Corp., which conducted the most recent Pentagon sexual assault survey in 2014, found that about 12,000 men reported being assaulted. Sexual assault in the military is defined as unwanted sexual contact, including rape and other assaults or the attempt to commit those acts.

Extrapolating the study’s estimates of up to 15 times greater than the Pentagon’s count, it would mean that as many as 180,000 men are assaulted in one year and, of those, 57,750 are “penetrative” attacks. (Read more from “‘Gay’ Rape in Military Is Completely Underreported by Pentagon” HERE)

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Wedded ‘Throuples’ Coming to America

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Has the Supreme Court’s ruling that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry paved the way for all kinds of non-traditional relationships to be legally recognized?

“If marriage is not the union of a man and a woman, why limit it to two people?” asked Michael Brown, a national talk radio host and author of “Outlasting the Gay Revolution.” “What makes the number two unique or necessary? Why not marry yourself, as some women have recently done? Why not throuples? There are several examples of this in the last few years. Why not three women and two men? We see this already in polygamous relationships. Why not?”

Paul Kengor, a university professor and author of “Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage,” said these types of unions are inevitable once a nation redefines marriage to mean anything other than one man and one woman.

“Once the standard becomes that marriage can be defined in whichever way a people or culture desire, then marriage is redefinable, period,” Kengor told WND. “This is plainly inevitable. If liberals could get past emotion, and look at the sheer logic of what they’re asserting, then they’ll see that they’ve created the conditions for these types of new marriage configurations by smashing the standard of one-man-one-woman marriage.”

Carl Gallups, a pastor, talk radio host and author of the forthcoming book “Be Thou Prepared,” believes the U.S. soon may see odd configurations for marriage such as threesomes. (Read more from “Wedded ‘Throuples’ Coming to America” HERE)

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No, Scientists Have Not Found the Gay Gene

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This week, a team from the University of California, Los Angeles claimed to have found several epigenetic marks—chemical modifications of DNA that don’t change the underlying sequence—that are associated with homosexuality in men. Postdoc Tuck Ngun presented the results yesterday at the American Society of Human Genetics 2015 conference. Nature News were among the first to break the story based on a press release issued by the conference organisers. Others quickly followed suit. “Have They Found The Gay Gene?” said the front page of Metro, a London paper, on Friday morning.

Meanwhile, the mood at the conference has been decidedly less complimentary, with several geneticists criticizing the methods presented in the talk, the validity of the results, and the coverage in the press.

Ngun’s study was based on 37 pairs of identical male twins who were discordant—that is, one twin in each pair was gay, while the other was straight—and 10 pairs who were both gay. He analysed 140,000 regions in the genomes of the twins and looked for methylation marks—chemical Post-It notes that dictate when and where genes are activated. He whittled these down to around 6,000 regions of interest, and then built a computer model that would use data from these regions to classify people based on their sexual orientation. . .

The problems begin with the size of the study, which is tiny. The field of epigenetics is littered with the corpses of statistically underpowered studies like these, which simply lack the numbers to produce reliable, reproducible results. . .

There’s also another, larger issue . . . the team used their training set to build several models for classifying their twins, and eventually chose the one with the greatest accuracy when applied to the testing set. . . If you use this strategy, chances are you will find a positive result through random chance alone.
(Read more from “No, Scientists Have Not Found the Gay Gene” HERE)

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Watch: Vatican Sacks Gay Priest as Pope Opens Synod

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Pope Francis defended marriage as “an indissoluble bond between a man and a woman” on Sunday as he opened a landmark Catholic synod on the family just hours after the Vatican fired a senior priest who came out as gay.

In a solemn mass held in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Pope set a largely merciful tone by urging religious leaders to do more to “seek out and care for” marginalised believers, but reaffirmed Catholic opposition to gay marriage.

The opening of the synod has been overshadowed by Saturday’s announcement by Polish-born priest and Vatican theologian Krzystof Charamsa that he was in a gay relationship and was prepared to become an advocate “for all sexual minorities and their families who have suffered in silence.”

“I’m out of the closet and I’m very happy about that,” said the 43-year-old priest, wearing his clerical collar and flanked by his boyfriend.

The Vatican reacted furiously, calling the Polish priest’s announcement a “serious and irresponsible” decision timed to put undue media pressure and tension on the Synod assembly. (Read more from “Watch: Vatican Sacks Gay Priest as Pope Opens Synod” HERE)

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