homosexuality

Mexican activists target Catholic cardinal with criminal complaints for opposing gay ‘marriage’

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Mexico shows where same sex “marriage” impacts churches and their freedom to preach Biblical values.

From lifesitenews.com

Mexican activists target Catholic cardinal with criminal complaints for opposing gay ‘marriage’

June 30, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez, the retired archbishop of Guadalajara, has been made the subject of multiple criminal complaints by homosexual activists following a televised speech in which hedenounced the Mexican Supreme Court’s recent declaration nullifying state laws restricting marriage to a man and a woman, according to Mexican media sources.

In his weekly video address broadcast on the Catholic television network Mariavision last week and redistributed widely on the internet, the cardinal denounced the definition of marriage embraced by the court as “deviant” and a “perversion” of the true nature of marriage, words that describe the Catholic Church’s doctrine on homosexual acts.  He also lamented the lack of opposition from Catholic bishops, and theorized that the impulse to redefine marriage is an attempt to destroy the institution as part of a larger plan to establish a “new [world] order” and a single global government.

“Anything outside of this divine institution [of marriage] is an attack against it and is an aberration, and cannot be acceptable to a Catholic,” said Sandoval.

In response, a coalition of at least twelve homosexual organizations has filed criminal complaints with two government agencies claiming that the cardinal’s words are “discriminatory” and “incite violence” against homosexuals.

The cardinal “with his declarations is fomenting homophobia and transphobia,” said Carlos Becerra of the Diverse Union (Unión Diversa), one of the groups filing complaints, in an interview with the Spanish news agency EFE.

“The cardinal thinks that marriage between people of the same sex isn’t a matter of human rights, but human rights are for everyone,” he added.

Mexico’s left-wing Milenio newspaper reports  that another homosexualist group, the Cohesion of Diversities for Sustainability (CODISE), plans to file a complaint against Sandoval with the federal Secretariat of Governance, as well as against the seminary of Guadalajara because they “give a talk that incites hatred and discrimination and that generates confusion among heterosexual parents regarding the rejection of their homosexual children, and creates a repressive and suicidal mentality in their homosexual children.”

This is not the first time Cardinal Sandoval and other Catholic prelates and institutions have been threatened with legal action for daring to defend the Catholic Church’s doctrines regarding the immorality of homosexual acts and the nature of the marriage bond.

In August 2010 Sandoval publicly accused Marcelo Ebrard, then the Chief of Government of the nation’s capital, of having “fattened” the Supreme Court with benefits so as to secure rulings in favor of his anti-life agenda, which included abortion and homosexual “marriage.” Ebrard repeatedly threatened and then initiated legal action against Sandoval, using his own personnel to prosecute him on four charges. Ebrard also threatened the spokesman for the archdiocese of Mexico City, Hugo Valdemar, with legal action for stating that the city’s abortion regime was more murderous than narcotraffickers, because it had killed more people. The charges against Sandoval and Valdemar were found to be baseless in a verdict given in 2014, and Ebrard was required to pay all of the legal fees of the archdioceses of Guadalajara and Mexico City.

Jennifer LeClaire: Judgment or Awakening? My Response to America’s Great Fall

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Judgment or Awakening? My Response to America’s Great Fall

Gay American flag
The Supreme Court voted to overturn a ban on gay marriage, causing a massive ripple effect. (Reuters)
 
 
Jennifer LeClaire is now sharing her reflections and revelations through Walking in the Spirit, a new podcast from Charisma. Listen at charismapodcastnetwork.com.
Watchman on the Wall, by Jennifer LeClaire
When I learned the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage I went into what you might call spiritual shock. I almost felt like someone had died. Someone didn’t, but something did. True liberty and justice for all. I am grieving right now over the false freedom that was birthed out of a false equality movement. I am mourning because true freedom and true equality have been replaced by a counterfeit crusade that truly sets no one free. I am weeping because America has fallen and many in the church are being caught up in the Great Falling Away.
A line in the sand was long ago drawn. Our tyrannical government crossed that line on June 26, 2015. When five Supreme Court justices trampled state rights they knew all too well Christian rights would be trampled along with them. Call it a betrayal of our Constitution. Call it an anti-Christ agenda. Call it an assault on religious freedom. It’s all that and more.
See, crossing this line in the name of equality was a spiritual assault on every believer who calls on the name of Jesus. This isn’t about allowing gays to get married. No, not really. While I stand against gay marriage, it’s not the letter of the law that concerns me most. It the spirit behind the law that truly grieves me. This ruling will open the floodgates to a tsunami of perversion in the land. Pedophiles now want the same rights as same-sex couples. But that’s the topic of another column.
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Of course, we wrestle not against flesh and blood (see Eph. 6:12). Our nemesis here is essentially the spirit of the world (see 1 Cor. 2:12). The church opened the door to the spirit of the world long ago, as is evidenced by the adultery, child molestation, financial improprieties and other scandals running rampant in the body of Christ. Unfortunately, we’ve discovered it’s not so easy to shut the door. High-profile pastors and entire denominations are capitulating to the popular opinion on gay marriage. As Charisma Media founder Steve Strang so aptly wrote, it’s time to stand up and be counted.
I would say that persecution is coming except that it’s already here. Bakeries, bed and breakfasts, pizza shops and farmers are being sued for refusing to accommodate gay weddings. Public officials are being fired for standing for the truth and military chaplains are being told they cannot pray in the name of Jesus. As the saying goes, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
So what is my response to America’s great fall? Will we see a great judgment as so many are saying in this hour?
Read the full article here

Christology and Sexology

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From Ministry Matters:

REUNITING CHRISTOLOGY AND SEXOLOGY

June 23rd, 2015
 By Talbot Davis
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Don’t you hate it when your strongest disagreement is with your closest friends?

Here’s how that’s working in my life. In the same-sex relationship, intimacy and marriage debate that is currently dominating United Methodist news, I have a collection of colleagues with whom I am in substantial agreement on almost every theological issue.

That is, we hold to a high view of the authority of Scripture, an ongoing concern for the salvation of all people, a belief in the continuing work of the Holy Spirit, and most essentially, a commitment to what is commonly called a “high Christology.”

By “high Christology” I mean an understanding that Jesus is not godly. He is God. He is not a great man. He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. He is not one of many. He is the one and only. Along with my friends, I treasure the truths we read in John 1:1-4, Colossians 1:15-20, Hebrews 1:1-4 and Philippians 2:5-11. Every knee really will bow and every tongue really will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

And yet a number of those same “high Christology” colleagues also embrace a new relational ethic in which same-sex marriages would ultimately be approved by and occur in United Methodist churches. With great passion and convincing articulation, they claim that you can at the same time affirm the historic creeds of the Christian faith and an evolving understanding of human sexuality. The list of these friends includes people likeSteve Harper, one of my seminary professors,Adam HamiltonandMichael Slaughter, Methodism’s highest profile voices, and the voices you hear among the new cadre of colleagues from theVia Media Methodistssite (an organization which, to be clear, has taken no official stand on changing the language in the Book Of Discipline.)

So I want to share a few lines with you on why I believe such a view is both intellectually and biblically untenable. In short, why a high Christology must be reunited with an ancient sexology. My points below will center primarily-though-not-exclusively on Paul’s texts, as he is the source of both the strongest language and the greatest disagreement in the same-sex marriage debate. 

Read the rest of the article here

Gay Sharia

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They keep insisting that recognising gay “marriage” won’t affect anybody else, but the facts are different.

Bill Muehlenberg writes:

More Islamic and Homosexual Sharia

In an earlier piece I noted the frightening similarities between the Islamic war on faith, family and freedom, and the homosexual war on faith, family and freedom. The attempt to push Islamic sharia law throughout the West is destroying democracy and liberty, but so too is the attempt to force everyone to embrace and promote the militant homosexual agenda.

Thus it is now not even worth bothering to differentiate between the two, since both are totalitarian movements designed to crush all opposition and silence all critics. So here I will simply offer more examples of Islamic sharia in action and homosexual sharia in action.

shariaLet me start with the ugly Big Brother activism of the homosexual lobby. They and their buddies in the courts and the media are doing a great job of smashing freedom and destroying genuine debate. Let me begin with a Christian bakery forced to close down because homosexual militants sued them in court for not making them a cake.

Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer sued Aaron and Melissa Klein of Sweet Cakes Bakery, forcing it to close its doors and won damages which will bankrupt the family. The Bowman-Cryers claimed they felt “mentally raped” in a list of 88 symptoms of emotional distress at being refused a cake. Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer were awarded $135,000 for damages.

A similar case occurred in Iowa where another Christian business was forced to close down by the hate-brigade:

The owners of a Christian family run business is being forced to shut their doors after being charged with discrimination against a homosexual couple. Betty Odgaard and her husband, Richard, have been the owners of Görtz Haus Gallery since 2002, when they purchased a 77-year-old stone church and transformed it into a bistro, flower shop, art gallery and wedding venue. On August 3, 2013, a homosexual couple from Des Moines asked to rent Görtz Haus for their wedding, and because of their Mennonite faith, the Odgaards told the couple they couldn’t host their wedding.
The couple immediately filed a discrimination complaint through the Iowa Civil Rights Commission, and knowing their business was going to be in trouble, the Odgaards ended their wedding business in order to avoid the probability of another complaint and the associated fines and penalties. After leaving the wedding business, Görtz Haus struggled to survive, but the Odgaards felt they had no choice. The risks were simply too great.

And consider this appalling case of homofascism from Boston:

On March 30, a major Harvard-affiliated hospital in Boston, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), expelled a well-respected urologist from its medical staff because he voiced concerns about the unhealthy nature of homosexual behavior and objected to the hospital’s aggressive promotion of “gay pride” activities.
Dr. Paul Church has been a urologist on the BIDMC staff in Boston for nearly 30 years. He is a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty. He has done research on diagnosing prostate and bladder cancer, and has been a frequent volunteer for medical mission projects in Mexico and Africa. He has also spoken before educational and civic groups on the subject of high-risk sexual behaviors.

So telling the truth about the health risks of homosexuality will now get you fired. So much for tolerance, acceptance, inclusion and diversity. So much for medical and scientific truth. Now the only thing that matters is if you don’t hurt the feelings of a homosexual. Truth can be damned as the militants and their agenda get preferential treatment.

Read the rest here

Separating From State on Marriage

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As the secular state continues to march away from the Christian ideals of marriage, more and more people are pondering a post-secular marriage arrangement by which churches institute their own sacramental marriages independent from the state.

While I have been praying for the current campaign for same sex “marriage” to be destroyed, I have also thought about alternatives to marriage. In NSW, for example, there is a relationship register set up primarily for gay couples but open to all couples. This would provide a legal recognition of a marriage celebrated by a church but outside of the legal marriage system.

Roger Olsen comments on the U.S. situation:

Some Thoughts (and a Proposal) about the Religion and Marriage Issue

It seems to me the next step in separation of church and state is one religious organizations should take. They should be proactive. Take the proverbial ball into their own court and decide and announce, very publically, that only they will decide for themselves who is and who is not married. This is the natural parallel with religious organizations alone deciding who is and who is not ordained.

In “old Europe” governments decided who was ordained with all the civil privileges and responsibilities attached to that status. So-called “sects” (religious organizations not recognized by the state) could ordain whomever they wished but, in the eyes of government, those ordinations meant nothing. In “new America,” gradually, through a series of court decisions, all governments got out of the business of deciding valid ordinations. Today, so far as I know, no government entity in the U.S. has the authority to declare any religious organization’s ordinations valid or invalid.

The next natural step is for churches and other religious organizations to take away from government the right and authority to decide for them who is married and who is not. Already some Baptist churches in Texas, for example, are doing this. Some are calling the marriages they perform and recognize “covenant marriage” and relegating marriages they don’t recognize as valid, for them, to the category “civil marriages” or “civil unions.”

Read the full article here

Marriage Hasn’t Changed: Ireland Has

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From Lifesitenews.com:

Keith Fournier writes:

Marriage hasn’t changed. Ireland has.

May 25, 2015 (Barbwire.com) — On Friday, May 22, 2015, the people of Ireland failed to heed the warning the Apostle Paul gave to the Christians of Rome.

They “exchanged the truth about God for a lie.” (Romans 1: 18-30) In this case, they exchanged the truth of natural marriage for the lie of false equality and fake tolerance.

Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told the Irish Times that the referendum amounts to a social revolution and the Catholic Church needs to do a reality check because “most of those people who voted yes are products of our Catholic schools for 12 years.”

That is why the Catholic Church in Ireland, and throughout the West, needs a new evangelization.

Many fellow Christians have asked me how this could happen since “Ireland is Catholic.” It happened because, for all practical purposes, this is not true. The Irish have what the Apostle Paul described —  a form of religion but they deny its power. (2 Tim. 3:5) There are no doubt faithful Christians in Ireland, but they are clearly in the minority.

Prime Minister Enda Kenney joined the crowd claiming “with today’s vote, we have disclosed who we are: a generous, compassionate, bold and joyful people.” His Deputy Prime Minister Joan Burden called the vote a “magical moving moment.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Referendums cannot change reality. What has changed is Ireland. It has rejected its Christian roots. The veneer of Ireland as the home of Christian missionaries has been ripped away.

Read the full article here

The New Established Religion: You Must Bow

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From Life Site News:

There’s a new established religion nowadays: Christians can’t bow to it

April 13, 2015 (BreakPoint.org) — It’s almost become a part of the weekly news cycle: American citizens publicly tarred and feathered for professing their sincerely held religious beliefs.

Just this month, we watched a family-owned pizzeria close its doors after its owners received hate mail and death threats from around the country. Their offense? Giving the wrong answer to a question about whether they’d cater a gay wedding. Keep in mind that the restaurant had never actually turned down a gay customer. They were hammered for holding the wrong beliefs about a hypothetical scenario!

Major corporations are getting into the bullying act, as well. At least two state governments have now backed down or modified religious freedom legislation in response to pressure from companies like Walmart and Salesforce. Keep that in mind next time you think about shopping at Walmart.

And this culture-wide search-and-destroy mission is only accelerating. As Princeton’s Robby George writes in First Things, activists for the new sexual orthodoxy are “giddy with success and urged on by a compliant and even gleeful media.”

The message is clear: not only should Christians remain silent about gay marriage if we know what’s good for us, but we must be made to agree with and even celebrate what Scripture calls sin. As Ana Marie Cox recently said of Christians on MSNBC, “you’re going to have to force [them] to do things they don’t want to do.”

But gay columnist Frank Bruni recently took it to the next level in the New York Times, writing that it’s time Christians get with the program and “take homosexuality off the sin list.” The lived experience of same-sex couples ought to trump what he calls the “scattered passages of ancient texts” condemning his lifestyle. Wow.

As for freedom of religion, Bruni suggests a new definition: “freeing . .  . religious people from prejudices that they . . . can indeed jettison, much as they’ve jettisoned other aspects of their faith’s history, rightly bowing to the enlightenments of modernity.”

Yes, he actually wrote “rightly bowing.”

I’m reminded of a scene from C. S. Lewis’ “The Last Battle,” in which Shift the Ape explains to the poor creatures of Narnia why they’re being shipped off to the Calormene salt mines.

“You think freedom means doing what you like,” says Shift. “Well, you’re wrong. That isn’t true freedom. True freedom means doing what I tell you.”

Writing at National Review, Yuval Levin says what we’re witnessing isn’t so much the suppression of free exercise of religion as it is the establishment of a new national religion; the religion of secular liberalism. And dissenters must be forced to worship at its altar and affirm its creed of anything-goes sexuality.

Given the likely outcome of this summer’s Supreme Court case on same-sex marriage, Rod Dreher asks what will it be like to be a Christian in our brave, new society—and what will become of orthodox Christianity now that the price of professing it could be our credibility and livelihoods.

The answer, Dreher says, will depend a great deal on us. Will we hold fast to biblical teaching and refuse, in a manner of speaking, to burn incense to Caesar?

Friends, the fight for religious liberty is far from over. And as John Stonestreet and I have been saying again and again, it’s time for the Church to wake up, to pray, and to publicly defend our religious rights and our brothers and sisters under assault for their beliefs.

More Double Standards

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The US is currently going through the legal consequences of gay marriage in litigious society. You may have heard of christian bakers and florists being hounded,bullied, fined and persecuted because they refuse to participate in gay weddings. In each case the business people involved have been happy to serve people regardless of their sexuality, but because of their faith will not provide flowers or wedding cakes that endorse an event of a gay wedding.

Lately there was outrage over a law passed in Indiana that protects the rights of religious people to not be prosecuted or sued for merely following through their beliefs. Ironically a dozen other stated have passed identical laws without the same outrage.

Some commentators have wondered about the outrage over christians refusing to participate in gay weddings (or other events for that matter). We know that Muslims share the same belief about homosexuality that christians do because just about every Muslim country in the world has banned homosexuality with some quite severe penalties.

So if a gay guy goes into a Muslim bakery and asks them to bake a cake for a gay wedding then you can expect rejection. So a guy did this several times over with a hidden camera, with the expected result. But there’s no outrage from the media, Hollywood, Discirimmation Commisars or even the gay lobby.

Do Muslims get a free pass on every issue? Or is thereal agenda of all of the leftist lobby groups just to oppose christians?