10:30AM EDT 10/23/2014 Tony Perkins
Houston Mayor Annise Parker has launched a First Amendment face-off with her city\’s pastors by demanding to review the content of their sermons and speeches.
As far as Glenn Beck is concerned, the biggest threat facing Texas isn\’t Ebola. It\’s Houston\’s holy war against free speech.
\”This is more dangerous to the republic of Texas than any virus is. This is more dangerous than anything I\’ve ever seen,\” the talk host warned. \”This is not about equal rights. … This is about shutting people down.\” And not all religious people—but Christians.
Like us, Glenn thinks one of the most stunning things about this Left\’s anti-faith crackdown is how selective it is. \”God forbid you say, \’This mosque has radical Islamic imams preaching hatred,\’\” he said on his show. \”You have a bag of bricks fall on your head, and they immediately shut down everyone from even saying, \’Wait a minute—the bombers came from that mosque.\’ … The president immediately sends a team of delegates to apologize to that mosque, as it happened in Oklahoma.\”
But in Texas, where a bully of a mayor is intent on gagging local pastors, the president and his party are nowhere to be found. \”We have become a very anti-religious group of people,\” Beck went on. \”It was the Christians that were leading the way to man\’s freedom. And if the Christians don\’t do it this time, we\’ll never do it. We will lose it.\” With nearly 52,000 signing our petition to the Houston mayor, I\’d say many are in agreement.
Fortunately, Glenn wasn\’t the only familiar face sounding the alarm on Houston. Chuck Norris had a message for the tyrants in Texas: nobody messes with religious liberty in his state and gets away with it. Angry that any elected leader would try to strip the power of the pulpit, Norris was blunt about the mayor\’s legal demands. Instead of combing through pastors\’ personal emails and messages, Norris thinks Houston officials should try reading the Constitution instead. \”If the city attorney and Mayor Annise Parker need a primer on the First Amendment, then let them know that America\’s founders drafted it even to protect the political speech of preachers!\”
And if it\’s \”speeches\” the mayor is interested in, then she can expect plenty on November 2, when FRC and other organizations link arms with local churches and rally Christians and churches from around the nation to stand for our Christian faith as we host I Stand Sunday. Like these local pastors, our speakers have a little experience sticking up for their values under pressure. Phil and Alan Robertson of \”Duck Dynasty\” have taken plenty of fire for standing by their biblical beliefs—and they\’ll be at Grace Community Church with us to encourage Houstonians to keep the faith. David and Jason Benham lost a national show on HGTV for their convictions—and haven\’t regretted it a single minute.
Hear from them as well as conservative heroes who are never tired of tackling the tough issues like Governor Mike Huckabee, Southern Baptist Convention President Dr. Ronnie Floyd, pastors of the targeted churches like Dr. Ed Young, Pastor Steve Riggle, and the man responsible for breaking his share of these outrageous stories, Fox News\’s Todd Starnes.
\”We have become a very anti-religious group of people,\” Beck warned. \”And we better wake up right now.\” Help us rouse the nation by joining us November 2 at 6 p.m. (CT) for I Stand Sunday. If you can\’t participate in person, do the next best thing: encourage your church or small group to host the simulcast. For details on both, click here.
| Arab Muslims set an Ambush for Jewish and Other non-Muslim visitors as they Attempt to Ascend Jerusalem\’s Temple Mount
Israel Today Staff (Oct 8, 2014) \”We will continue to show zero tolerance for any attempt to violate the public order, and we will arrest [the perpetrators] and bring them to justice.\” -Israeli police spokesman (Israel)—Arab Muslims set an ambush for Jewish and other non-Muslim visitors as they attempted to ascend Jerusalem\’s Temple Mount on Wednesday to mark the start of the Biblical holiday of Sukkot, also known as the Feast of Tabernacles. (Photo via Israel Today) Sukkot is one of three Biblical festivals during which the people of Israel were commanded to come to Jerusalem and ascend the Temple Mount. Many still adhere to that precept. Or, they try to, at least. For the past decade or so, Muslim mobs occupying the holy hill have erupted in violence each and every time the Jews try to ascend in honor of one of their festivals. Sukkot has annually seen the worst holiday confrontations. And Wednesday was no different. The moment that the single gate accessible to non-Muslims was opened, masked Muslims began hurling firebombs and stones at Jewish visitors and police officers. At least four police were wounded in the ensuing clash. Ultimately, the police were able to clear out the rioters and restore order to the Temple Mount, allowing the holy site to remain open to visitors throughout the morning. |
| French Families Rise Up to Say a Loud \”No!\” to Government Interfering with Traditional Marriage
Jeanne Smits (Oct 8, 2014) Half a million march in Paris in support of the natural family. (Paris, France)—Half a million people of all ages, including many families with children, took to the streets of Paris once more on Sunday to protest the French government\’s \”anti-family\” policies and to express their anger over legalization by stealth of surrogate motherhood. Incredibly, the \”Manif pour tous\” (demonstration for all) continues to attract gigantic crowds who will not be deterred either by past failure or by governmental soothsaying. For the seventh time running, despite the legalization of same-sex \”marriage,\” which brought hundreds of thousands into the French capital last year in protest, what seemed impossible two years ago came true once again: families are rising up to say \”no.\” The rally departed at 1 p.m. from the Porte Dauphine in the west of Paris and covered over 4 miles to reach its endpoint as fixed by the police authorities: a relatively small square at the meeting point of several thoroughfares in front of Montparnasse train station where a podium had been installed. This was seen as an initial and calculated annoyance: not only was the venue far too small to contain the immense crowds but the course offered no good vantage point for photographers to give a realistic impression of their numbers. According to police figures the rally attracted 70,000 people, slightly less than the official expected figure released on the eve of the march. As an eyewitness it is difficult to believe these statements: I saw hundreds marching past, at least 20 or 30 abreast, many with small children, in dense formation, for several hours. The whole march covered a full 5 km from end to end (roughly 3.5 miles); many joined along the way and even more returned home upon reaching Montparnasse to allow the upcoming waves of protesters to complete the course. Two or three hundred thousand participants would seem a conservative estimate and probably 500,000 is much nearer to the truth. And that is surprising. Mobilizing such numbers to protest against a clear-cut proposal with an imminent risk of execution such as the legalization of same-sex \”marriage\” was already an astonishing feat in secularized France. This time round, the rally\’s focal point was the condemnation of artificial fertilization and surrogate motherhood for same-sex couples: both were deliberately left out of the law last year by the socialist government, probably under the \”Manif pour tous\” pressure. And François Hollande has repeated that he has no intention of legalizing either under this term of his presidency. But French families are more and more wary about Hollande and his team\’s promises. A circular sent last year to birth registrars and tribunals by the justice minister, Christiane Taubira, required the authorities to facilitate the inscription of children born of surrogate mothers abroad from French \”customers\” as French citizens in registries, without question, even though surrogacy is illegal in France. While the French Constitutional Court resisted this measure last June, several decisions not to recognize this type of filiation that reached the European Court of Human Rights last month were criticized by the European judges for not having recognized homosexual couples\’ right to \”private and family life.\” Courts are expected to follow the ECHR\’s ruling. A few weeks ago, the Constitutional Court gave its opinion that lesbian couples obtaining artificial insemination abroad should not be punished for this illegal action and that the female partner of the biological mother should be allowed to adopt the child without question, \”in the child\’s best interest.\” (Photo via lamanifpourtous.fr) This was sufficient to trigger the massive response we saw on Sunday, in what is probably the only major demonstration in the world to have centered a protest on the ills of deliberately dissociating biological parenthood from \”social\” parenthood. Other factors also played a role: the nomination of Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, a supporter of gender equality, as France\’s new education minister in August, a slap in the face for the \”Manif pour tous\” public, certainly prompted many not to lay down their blue and pink flags and take to the streets again in sweatshirts bearing the march\’s distinctive logo: a childlike drawing of a father, a mother, a boy and a girl. Many protesters had identity checks and were even kept in custody for wearing the sign last year. It has become a rallying sign all over France. The mention of her name by Ludovine de La Rochère and other speakers on Sunday prompted vigorous booing. Sunday\’s event was also an occasion to say \”no\” to gender ideology, which is becoming more and more pervasive in the French school curriculum with which all public-funded schools—including the Catholic ones—must comply. Government ministers such as Najat Vallaud-Belkacem frequently insist that \”gender ideology\” does not exist. Several websites in France keep track of its multiple appearances in the media, schools, and universities. De La Rochère made it clear she has no hope of seeing the same-sex \”marriage\” law or \”Loi Taubira\” repealed by this government, but she insisted that it should be a major theme during the presidential election coming up in 2017. Up to date, the few politicians who have agreed to dismantle homosexual \”marriage\” have announced that they will seek to \”ameliorate\” the existing civil union contract or \”pacs\” (civil solidarity pact) tailored for homosexual couples in 2001, but which is attracting ever-increasing numbers of \”heterosexual\” couples because of its simplicity and flexibility (it can be unilaterally ended without notice), to the detriment of marriage. |