Tag: focus on the family

Did the Ex-Gay Movement Exodus the Building?

Posted on by

By Becky Garrison

Despite recent efforts to mainstream its image, Exodus International, a network of ministries formed over 30 years ago to “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality,” appears to be on the decline. As reported by Truth Wins Out, a non-profit organization that fights anti-gay religious extremism, attendance at Exodus International’s latest Love Won Out conference, drew at most 400 people, a far cry from the 1,000 in attendance during its heyday when Focus on the Family organized these quarterly ex-gay symposiums. This drop in attendance follows a meeting convened by Exodus International President Alan Chambers on November 16, 2011 to explore how to keep the organization from social and economic oblivion. Continue Reading →

Searching Herman Cain's Soul. In Iowa.

Posted on by

By Andy Kopsa 

Standing before a crowd of reporters at the Friar’s Club in New York, Sharon Bialek told her story.  With her lawyer Gloria Allred at her side, Bialek painted a picture of an unwanted sexual encounter in a parked car in Washington DC: what she was wearing – pleated skirt, suit jacket; a pleasurable dinner and cocktails; and to her surprise, an upgrade to a suite at her hotel, courtesy of her host for the evening, Herman Cain.

Bialek shockingly revealed that Cain “reached for my genitals” and then pulled her head toward his crotch.  She resisted and asked, “What are you doing you know I have a boyfriend?” Cain’s reply was simply, ‘You want a job, right?’

For a man who has likened himself to Moses, claims God* told him to run for presidency and is a registered minister at Antioch Church in Atlanta, these charges should be troubling.  Instead Cain’s personal response has been indignant, his campaign’s ham-handed and somewhat juvenile.  Cain’s lawyer recently cautioned that women considering going public with claims of harassment by Cain should “think twice,” a threat like that of a playground bully.

What Bialek has described is sexual assault.  While sexual harassment is serious, sexual assault is, criminally speaking, a whole other level.  In Washington DC, where the alleged Bialek – Cain incident occurred, a misdemeanor sexual abuse charge carries a $1000 fine plus up to 180 days in jail.  If a case reaches into 3rd or 4th degree assault territory fines can reach $100,000 and jail time soars to 10 years in prison. Continue Reading →

Searching Herman Cain’s Soul. In Iowa.

Posted on by

By Andy Kopsa 

Standing before a crowd of reporters at the Friar’s Club in New York, Sharon Bialek told her story.  With her lawyer Gloria Allred at her side, Bialek painted a picture of an unwanted sexual encounter in a parked car in Washington DC: what she was wearing – pleated skirt, suit jacket; a pleasurable dinner and cocktails; and to her surprise, an upgrade to a suite at her hotel, courtesy of her host for the evening, Herman Cain.

Bialek shockingly revealed that Cain “reached for my genitals” and then pulled her head toward his crotch.  She resisted and asked, “What are you doing you know I have a boyfriend?” Cain’s reply was simply, ‘You want a job, right?’

For a man who has likened himself to Moses, claims God* told him to run for presidency and is a registered minister at Antioch Church in Atlanta, these charges should be troubling.  Instead Cain’s personal response has been indignant, his campaign’s ham-handed and somewhat juvenile.  Cain’s lawyer recently cautioned that women considering going public with claims of harassment by Cain should “think twice,” a threat like that of a playground bully.

What Bialek has described is sexual assault.  While sexual harassment is serious, sexual assault is, criminally speaking, a whole other level.  In Washington DC, where the alleged Bialek – Cain incident occurred, a misdemeanor sexual abuse charge carries a $1000 fine plus up to 180 days in jail.  If a case reaches into 3rd or 4th degree assault territory fines can reach $100,000 and jail time soars to 10 years in prison. Continue Reading →

Taking Gaga Off the Lebanese Shelves

Posted on by

Ashley Baxstrom: Not even a celebrity shout-out is enough to satisfy some.

The Los Angeles Times reported on Monday that Lady Gaga’s latest album Born This Way has been unofficially banned in Lebanon on the grounds that it may be “offensive to religion” in general and Christians in particular. The office of censorship said it had collected CDs and boxes full of the offending albums were reportedly stacked in Beirut police stations, though no formal ban has been announced by the government.

And all this despite the fact that the title single gives the country a shout-out. Continue Reading →

Tolerance Makes Kids Gay

Posted on by

“Tolerance” is considered a general good, an aspirational goal that, when done right, ameliorates violence and promotes understanding.  But “tolerance” has a number of definitions in play on the current political stage.  The dispute over its meanings is at the heart of a new bill in California that would institute the education of school children about the historical impact of gays. Continue Reading →

Enter the Dragon: How Al Gore, the U.N., Earth First!, and an Episcopalian Bishop are All in Cahoots… with Satan

Posted on by

by Jack Downey

In 1964, Richard Hofstadter published a rather enduring essay in Harper’s Magazine that succeeded, if nothing else, in accomplishing what most (egomaniacal) writers only fantasize about: he coined a new phrase that had legs, and has proved a valuable addition to our intellectual lexicon.1 “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” investigated the social psychology behind the contemporary rise of the anti-intellectual “Radical Right,” and witnessed profound similarities between his allegedly secular subjects – although the distinction is not as clean as he seems to hope (especially in his treatment of anti-Catholicism) – and Christian millenarianism:

I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind…2 The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regards a “vast” or “gigantic” conspiracy as the motive force in historical events.

Continue Reading →

Green = Death

Posted on by

From Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, Not Death, a new book (with a 4 disc DVD companion; look for a review by Jack Downey at The Revealer this week) that professes to expose the culture of death that is the foundation of the green movement:

The strange compulsion to societal suicide is a dogma in the Green movement, moving ever closer to the edge of a cliff. And they want people to step over the cliff to show solidarity with the new organizing principles. This madness is reminiscent of the national suicide of the amaXhosa. Like Mhlakaza, false prophets promise salvation if only we will destroy the means of maintaining our civilization. No more carbon, they say, or the world will end and blessings cease. Rather than scorning the pagan prophets a similar mass hysteria infects many professing Christian churches.  Though the boat still moves forward, the ebb tide of Biblical Christianity is plain. Western Civilization has never known greater prosperity than at the present, but rejection of the Christian foundations of our prosperity is near total in many denominations. Pagans of all stripes now offer their rival views of salvation, all of which lead to death. As it says in Proverbs 8:36, “But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul: all those who hate me love death.”

Continue Reading →