A WordPress Blog-THE CHURCH MILITANT Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse. ALL CONTENT FROM HTTPS://RATHEREXPOSETHEM.BLOGSPOT.COM MOVED TO THIS NEW BLOG, MAY 2020
“Outreach to the community.” Yeah, that’ll work. Hasn’t it worked beautifully since 9/11? Meanwhile, hampering these investigations is the fact that even now, the clueless and compromised FBI includes no study of the motivating ideology of jihad terrorists in its counterterror training. It is working in the dark, and the consequences will inevitably be…explosive.
“FBI Director: 1,000 Homegrown Terror Investigations Active, Not Counting ‘Traditional’ ISIS, al-Qaeda Suspects,” by Bridget Johnson, PJ Media, May 17, 2018 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
WASHINGTON — FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday that the bureau is tracking several hundred homegrown terror suspects, not counting those linked to a terror group or domestic extremist groups such as white supremacists.
“In every state in the nation who have been inspired by ISIS or al-Qaeda or similar groups, and radicalize, no longer by traveling to training camps, but via the internet through videos, or private chat rooms, or other means. How is the FBI countering that threat?” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) asked at the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing to examine the FBI’s annual budget request. “It seems to be very difficult to identify these individuals.”
Wray told the senator she put her finger “on what I would call sort of our highest counterterrorism priority at the moment.”
“We have about 1,000 investigations into exactly the kind of people you’re describing, covering all 50 states as I’m sitting here right now. And that’s not even counting, you know, the al-Qaeda investigations, the traditional ISIS investigations, the domestic terrorism investigations, but just the group you’re talking about,” he said.
“And what makes it so hard is that there are not many dots to connect with some of these people. They pick soft targets, they use easy to use weapons, you know, IEDs, cars, knives, guns. And they can make decisions on the spur of the moment. We’re trying to get better at looking for red flags, as to when people who are getting radicalized sort of make that switch into potentially mobilizing.”
Wray said trying to stop homegrown extremists includes a lot of “outreach to the community, partnership with our state and local law enforcement who know those communities better, but it’s hard.”…
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Anti-gun Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.)(center) with Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
Fairfax, VA –-(Ammoland.com)- The headline of the USA Today op-ed said it all. Anti-gun Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) last week advocated for legislation to ban an as-yet undetermined class of semi-automatic firearms and to “go after resisters” who refuse to relinquish their lawfully-acquired firearms.
Lest anyone mistake his intentions, Swalwell followed up with a lengthy NBC News interview this week in which he made clear that his own proposal is a departure from prior gun bans that allowed those who obtained the firearms when they were lawful to keep them.
Swalwell said that after thinking “about the different ways to address it … I concluded the only way to do this is to get those weapons out of our communities.”
According to the NBC piece, Swalwell is modeling his own proposal on laws passed during the 1990s in Australia.
The article then inaccurately states, “But while Australia comes up often in gun debates, almost no prominent figures have proposed national laws that would demand that gun owners turn in existing weapons en masse.”
The truth is that anyone who suggests the United States should adopt Australian-style gun control – a club that includes such infamous gun ban advocates as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – is by definition advocating for the forcible disarming of “resisters.” That, in fact, was the signature feature of the Australian approach.
The widespread disarming of Australian citizens occurred through a comprehensive scheme that proceeded as follows.
First, the various political subdivisions within Australia unanimously agreed to a uniform ban on large categories of popular firearms. The ban was both retroactive and prospective.
Second, the government instituted “amnesty” periods, which allowed those who had previously acquired the newly-banned firearms lawfully to surrender them to the government for a fixed and nonnegotiable rate of compensation.
Third, and most importantly, anyone who refused to relinquish their formerly lawful property was to be treated as an armed criminal, with all the physical jeopardy and legal consequences that entails.
The Australian government also uses a “may-issue” licensing scheme for firearm acquisition, which among other things requires an applicant to show a “genuine reason” for needing the gun. Self-defense – which the U.S. Supreme Court considers the “central component” of America’s right to keep and bear arms – is not recognized under Australian law as a permissible reason for the acquisition, ownership, or use of a firearm.
Australian-style gun control, in other words, is completely foreign to and incompatible with America’s history, tradition, and rights of firearm ownership. Simply put, there is no reconciling Australian-style gun control with America’s Second Amendment, a fact which even some gun control advocates in their more candid moments are willing to admit.
If Swalwell has distinguished himself at all from other American advocates of the Australian approach, it’s because he is willing to be more forthcoming about the fact that it would turn millions of formerly law-abiding Americans into armed “criminals” with the stroke of a pen.
In his NBC interview, however, he tried to have it both ways.
First, he insisted:
I'm not proposing a roundup or confiscation. It would be like anything else that's banned: If you're caught with it there would be a steep penalty. Any fear of ATF agents going door to door to collect assault weapons is unfounded and not what is proposed here. They don't go collecting drugs that are banned or any other substance or weapon that's banned and I’m not proposing that here.
That, of course, is a lie. Law enforcement agents with enough probable cause that someone possesses drugs or other contraband to get a warrant absolutely do go after the contraband. Some might even say they are duty-bound to do so. A quick Internet search will show you what that looks like in the real world.
Anybody who illegally possesses a contraband firearm potentially risks the same treatment. Swalwell, who touts his credentials as a former prosecutor, surely knows that.
But when asked to elaborate about the “stiff penalties” that would supposedly ensure compliance with his scheme, Swalwell seemingly contradicted his no-confiscation stance, stating, “I'd want to first get the gun.”
To their credit, NBC asked Swalwell directly whether he was “prepared for some of the confrontations that might erupt from this,” adding, “You’re surely familiar with the slogan, ‘I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands.’” Swalwell brushed aside the question, indicating that Parkland survivors who have been advocating for gun control have given him “courage” for resolute action.
The actions he is calling for, however, carry inherent risks of further unnecessary loss of innocent life.
But that is what the gun “debate” has come to in America, with at least one gun control advocate so emboldened that he’s openly willing to put violent confrontations on the table to advance the agenda.
Whether Rep. Swalwell is serious or whether he is just hoping to move the Overton Window on what is considered legitimate rhetoric in the realm of gun control policy is perhaps debatable.
What is no longer debatable, however, is the true agenda and ideology that lies behind the gun control project in America. It is the abolition of the right to gun ownership in America as we know it … “resisters” be damned.
About:
Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org
Eric Swalwell Calls For Gun Buy-Back That Turns Law Abiding Citizens Into Felons
Criminals OVERNIGHT!
Eric Swalwell goes on Tucker Carlson Tonight to call for a gun buy-back of assault weapons that if you don't turn in your weapon you WILL BE PROSECUTED. He uses children and cops deaths to argue his point instead of logic. Tucker doesn't let up.
Prosecute Those Who Fail to Surrender Their Firearms
Democrat calls for gun ban, prison for holdouts
Political strategist, Emily Miller, sounds off about Swalwell's remarks about guns.
Will the Pope accept the resignations of all 34 Chilean Bishops offered over the massive pedophile church scandal? Will the Pope accept responsibility himself?
It’s worth pointing out that Pope Francis was talking to a victim of Catholic sexual abuse when he reportedly told him it was “okay to be gay.”
Why it matters:
The context of the Pope’s alleged statement is being overshadowed by the statement itself. The context, however, is important because it sheds light on the decades-long molestation accusations against Catholic priests, many of which turned out to be true. It also sheds light on why the Pontiff is motivated to drift away from traditional Catholic teachings.
The Pope’s statement isn’t just about “homosexuality vs. the church”:
Pope Francis is an adherent of liberation theology promoted by Latin American socialists for decades with the end goal of destroying the church from within.
During the 20th century, communist revolutionaries found that, despite their best efforts to overthrow Latin American nations and install puppet regimes, they could never gain control of hearts and minds of populations due to the steady bulwark of the Catholic Church.
That’s why communists decided to subvert the Catholic Church from within by “legitimizing” Marxist teachings in the church through liberation theology, which merged Catholicism with Marxism.
Given that context, it isn’t surprising why Pope Francis, a Latin American pope who’s friendly to liberation theology, seems to go against the grain of Catholic teachings at every chance he gets.
Juan Carlos Cruz is a sex-abuse victim of the Roman Catholic church. He is the chief whistleblower in the Chilean Romanist sex abuse scandal and spent days with Pope Francis last month at the Vatican. During the three days with the Pontiff, Cruz discussed his sexual orientation (the Chilean man is a homosexual) and explained to Francis what it was like to have been victimized by Romanist priests. Cruz’ time at the Vatican occurred after Pope Francis made some highly controversial remarks, dismissing the severity of the sexual assaults and tacitly defending some of those who helped to cover up the crimes. According to news reports, Pope Francis told the man that God gave him his sexual orientation and that his sodomy did not matter because God loved him.
“You know Juan Carlos, that does not matter. God made you like this. God loves you like this. The Pope loves you like this and you should love yourself and not worry about what people say.”
The words were recorded by Carlos and repeated to the press, according to CNN.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to homosexuality as an “inclination that is objectively disordered” (Paragraph 2398, 1997 edition). The Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons (1985) cites The Vatican Council II in Dei Verbum 10, which refers to the “supremely wise arrangement of God” in heterosexual relationship, and relationship, and asserts that homosexual relationships are a deviation of God’s wise arrangement (chapter 5). The Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics (December 29, 1975) called homosexuality “intrinsically disordered.”
There has, however, been a gradual and growing progressivism in the Romanist church on the topic of homosexuality. In 1973, the first Romanist priest came out publicly as gay, Robert Carter, and he was not removed as a priest. He went on to form Dignity USA, a pro-LGBTQ organization advocating for homosexual Romanists. Beginning in the 1980s with Cardinal Cooke of New York City, Papists began to teach that it wasn’t a sin to be homosexual, so long as you practiced abstinence, the very same position now being taught by Southern Baptist Convention leaders like Russell Moore. By mid-2017, the same diocese hosted a “pilgrimage” of LGBTQ Romanists to the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart for hundreds of married homosexuals who profess Catholicism. Today, Romanists all around the world publicly call for same-sex marriage and the normalizing of sodomy-based unions, with no punitive consequences from the Romanist church.
Greg Burke, the Pope’s spokesman, was asked about the Pope’s words of affirmation regarding homosexuality and he responded, “We do not normally comment on the Pope’s private conversations.”
In the meantime, the Scripture does speak to the issue of homosexuality, and it is not in agreement with the Pope of Rome. The Bible tells us that homosexuality is a sin (Genesis 19:1-13; Leviticus 18:22; 20:13; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9). Furthermore, Romans 1:26-27 teaches specifically that homosexuality is a demonstration of human depravity and that God has given them over to this wickedness. While the Pope says that it doesn’t matter, the Bible, in 1 Corinthians 6:9, proclaims that homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God.
In reality, studies demonstrate that childhood sexual abuse is more likely – exponentially – to correlate with adult homosexuality, at least among men. If anyone made Carlos gay it wasn’t God, it was the Roman Catholic church.
Naim Stifan Ateek, (born in the Palestinian village of Beisan in 1937) is a Palestinian priest in the Anglican Communion and founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. He has been an active leader in the shaping of the Palestinian liberation theology. He was the first to articulate a Palestinian theology of liberation in his book, Justice, and only Justice, a Palestinian Theology of Liberation, published by Orbis in 1989, and based on his dissertation for his degree in theology. The book laid the foundation of a theology that addresses the conflict over Palestine and explores the political as well as the religious, biblical, and theological dimensions. A former Canon of St. George’s Cathedral, Jerusalem, he lectures widely both at home and abroad. His book, A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation, was published by Orbis in 2008, followed by A Palestinian Theology of Liberation, 2017.
Fresh off an anti-Israel film series, Washington, DC-area Episcopalians at St. John’s Norwood in upscale Bethesda, Maryland and elsewhere have once again taken the lead in demonizing Israel by hosting Reverend Naim Ateek. This Palestinian Anglican known for his anti-Semitic outbursts against Israel addressed St. John’s on May 16, before participating in more vitriol the next day at Washington, DC’s anti-Israel Jerusalem Fund.
St. John’s rector, Sari Ateek, introduced the church’s evening lecture by noting that Naim Ateek, often called the “Desmond Tutu of Palestine,” is the “father of Palestinian liberation theology. He is also the father of me.” Before the overwhelmingly white and older audience of about 90 in the church nave who came to hear the founder of the anti-Israel Sabeel Palestinian Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, Sari noted that most were St. John’s members. The audience also included Sari’s fellow Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) member Steve France, who sits on the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC’s Companion Diocese Committee—Jerusalem (CDCJ). France’s associate from the film series, the Palestinian-American Zeina Azzam, also attended.
In his lecture, the Israeli citizen Naim Ateek suggested a neo-Marcionite approach to the Old Testament, in which Christians could cherry-pick the Jewish scriptures and thereby supersede any imputed Jewish theological chauvinism. In the Hebrew Bible, “some of it is palatable and beneficial for Christians,” he stated, while criticizing the scripture passages of Numbers 33:50-56 and Deuteronomy 7:1-7 displayed in his Powerpoint presentation. “Do these two texts reflect the God that we have come to know in Jesus Christ” and the “love of God?,” Ateek rhetorically asked, to which he answered that they reflect a “tribal God understanding.”
Ateek’s warped theology that denied any particular Jewish national claim to the Holy Land complemented his fabricated history that condemned Zionism as immoral imperialism. In order to “tell the story of Palestine,” one of his Powerpoint slides on the “Palestinian Loss of Land” used a thoroughly discredited map series, while another deceptively distorted an 1895 diary entry from Zionist founding father Theodor Herzl. Another slide cited the “arc of the moral universe” quotationoft-attributed to civil rights icon Martin Luther King, yet contrary to the St. John’s audience, the Zionist King condemned anti-Zionism as antisemitism.
In Ateek’s false utopian vision, universal humanistic values would transcend Jewish atavistic particularism with the abolition of Israel’s Jewish state within an Arab-Jewish binational, unitary Palestine. “One state” is the “ideal solution: Equal democracy for all citizens, Israelis and Palestinians,” stated the slides, while the “pro-Israel lobby is powerful” with “blind support to Israel.” The slides’ listed “Reasons for hope” included that Ateek’s oft-touted political partner, the radical Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), “is very active,” and “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions [BDS] are working” to destroy Israel with political warfare.
Accordingly, Ateek condemned President Donald Trump’s recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s historic capital. Ateek stated that Muslims have “governed Jerusalem hundreds of years more than the Jews.” Yet only Jews, not Muslims or anyone else who conquered Jerusalem in the past, have ever had a capital in this city often neglected by Muslims throughout history.
Nonetheless, “many of us are weeping, are sad, for what has happened to Jerusalem,” Ateek stated. Trump’s “blunder…just gave Jerusalem on a silver platter to one religion, to one group, and totally disregarded the specialness, the holiness of the city of Jerusalem to the Muslims and to the Christians.” Ateek did not explain how Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem, the city’s historically most tolerant governance, far more liberal than any Jordanian or Palestinian administration of the Holy Land, infringed upon Christian and Muslim holy sites.
Before a small audience of about 20 the next day, Jerusalem Fund director Mohamed Mohamed continued Ateek’s theme while introducing his panel. Mohamed stated that Trump’s Jerusalem decision will “erase the rights of Palestinian Muslims and Christians” and referenced Jerusalem’s international corpus separatum status under the 1947 United Nations Palestine partition plan. He ignored the fact that this temporary status was to precede Jerusalem’s (and its Bethlehem district’s) ultimate disposition in a referendum among Jerusalem’s Jewish-majority population, who presumably favored Israel.
Ateek’s views on Jerusalem coalesced with his fanciful claims to his sympathetic listeners that Arabs such as he consistently opposed Israel nonviolently. At St. John’s, he stated that recent Gaza riots incited by Hamas as cover for terrorism against Israel appeared to him to be peaceful protests, in which “thousands of Palestinians have been killed and wounded because they were defending their right for Jerusalem.” “We don’t believe that we can champion in any way violent revolutions or violent resistance,” he said the next day. This is rich coming from an author of the 2009 Kairos Palestine Declaration, with its praise for Palestinian terrorists who “have given their life for our nation.”
Ateek’s fellow speaker, FOSNA Executive Director Tarek Abuata, outdid Ateek by whitewashing a century of Arab terror against Zionism with analogies to the American civil rights movement and Mahatma Gandhi. At St. John’s, Abuata referenced the landmark 1965 civil rights march over Selma, Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, and said that “Gaza and justice in Palestine is the Edmund Pettus Bridge of our day.” Seemingly wanting to sing “We Shall Overcome” with Hamas jihadists recently killed by Israeli forces, he decried that in the “past two days of the Gaza murders, the appalling silence of a lot of our churches has been deafening.” Given that the Episcopal Church has rejected BDS, despite the wishes of many at St. John’s, he stated that “sadly the Episcopalian Church is behind on divesting.”
The next day at the Jerusalem Fund, Abuata ludicrously claimed that nonviolence “has been practiced for the past 100 years by Palestinians,” as if Muslim Arab collaboration with the Nazis against Jews never existed. He recalled that Congressman Steny Hoyer once asked Abuata about the Palestinians, “Where are your Gandhis? Well, 60 of them were shot in the past two days.” “If you are not with Palestinian justice and prophetic action now, you would not have stood with Martin Luther King” during the civil rights movement, Abuata scandalously claimed. Like Ateek, Abuata slandered Zionism as opposing an “anti-racist God that is inclusive of all.”
In contrast to a supposedly peaceful Muslim-majority Palestinian population, Christian Zionists were characterized by Ateek and his fellow Jerusalem Fund speakers as “extremist Christians.” The speakers highlighted the outlandish beliefs of various Christian Zionist individuals in order to create a strawman caricature of Zionist thinking, which actually has a respectable and broad-based tradition in Christian history. Mohamed stated that “powerful Christian Zionists work to foster Armageddon and the destruction of both rival religions” of Judaism and Islam. Meanwhile, Ateek continued his de-Judaizing of the Bible by discussing how the Judean Jew Jesus, who lived long before the name Palestine existed, was a “Palestinian living under foreign occupation.”
Joining Abuata and Ateek at the Jerusalem Fund, the David Duke-endorsed crank Max Blumenthalsimilarly defamed Zionism as simply an accessory to antisemitism. Zionism, he stated, is a collaboration between anti-Semites in the West, who would like a West free of Jews, and traditional Zionists who believe that antisemitism is actually a force that can help propel Jews into making Aliyah or emigrating to the Holy Land and helping drive this project of colonization.
For Blumenthal, such Zionist perfidy continued today, as the “Jewish world is in a moral freefall because of Zionism” and its role in “Western empire.” In particular, the “weapons industry in the U.S. relies on this special relationship with Israel,” in which Israeli Jewish soldiers “are being incentivized to kill in order to increase profits.” The audience laughed when he noted his libelous comparison of genocidal jihadists in the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) with Israel, the “Jewish State of Israel in the Levant” (JSIL).
Blumenthal preached to the choir, including not only France, but also his CDCJ and FOSNA colleagues Thomas Getman and Paul Verduin, as well as the CATO Institute’s “libertarian for sharia” Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad. One regular Jerusalem Fund attendee, an older Arab Christian man from Nazareth, Israel, reiterated his usual refusal to say the name Israel. “Our country was occupied and we called it something else. I don’t want to even talk about that. So Palestine is now occupied Palestine,” and “that’s the only way we should pass the word to everyone,” he stated.
Ateek’s Washington, DC, speaking tour makes perfectly clear why, as he noted at St. John’s, synagogues consistently refuse to host him as a speaker, despite his myopic protestations that “I am not ant-Semitic.” Nevertheless, he deserves scrutiny from critics who enter his partisan rallies of the anti-Israel faithful, no matter how displeasing his allied zealots find such increasingly identifiable ideological interlopers. One woman at St. John’s purposely sat in a crowded pew next to this author as he was typing notes on his laptop, and suspiciously asked, “Is this going to go on Jihad Watch?” Yes.
Challenged in Parliament about why criticism of Christianity is taken for granted while criticism of Islam embroils one in societal (and legal) difficulties, British Prime Minister Theresa May answered:
“We value freedom of expression and freedom of speech in this country. That is absolutely essential in underpinning our democracy. But we also value tolerance to others. We also value tolerance in relation to religions. This is one of the issues that we’ve looked at in the counter-extremism strategy that the government has produced. I think we need to ensure that, yes, it is right that people can have that freedom of expression. But in doing so, that right has a responsibility, too. And that is a responsibility to recognize the importance of tolerance to others.”
This heralds the end of the freedom of speech in Britain, for May’s statement is flatly self-contradictory. Who will decide whether one’s criticism of Islam has shaded over into becoming “intolerant”? Presumably the police or some governing authorities. But the freedom of speech is designed precisely to protect people from being prosecuted or persecuted by the governing authorities because their speech dissents from the accepted line. It was developed as a safeguard against tyranny.
By introducing this massive exception, May is turning the freedom of speech on its head and emptying it of all meaning. She is also implying that the British government will now be bringing the full force of the law against those who are deemed intolerant, and indeed, that has already begun.
20 attorneys general have signed an amicus brief supporting Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for altering its Title X funding criteria to prefer groups that promote abstinence and work with faith-based entities. They claim that the new standards will negatively affect the ability of women to contribute to the economy due to pregnancy, and assert that contraceptives conversely benefit “women’s broader health, financial independence and social well-being.”
The brief is led by Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California, who filed criminal charges against pro-life investigator David Daleiden for recording his discussions with Planned Parenthood while posing as a buyer of baby body parts.
“Defendants’ new preference for clinics that emphasize abstinence-only and ‘historically underrepresented’ methods of family planning, set forth for the first time in the FOA application review criteria, would not improve family planning care but would be a step backward,” it asserts.
“Enabling women to reliably plan pregnancies contributes to their educational and professional advancement. Women’s use of oral contraceptives positively affects their education, labor force participation, and average earnings, narrowing the gender-based wage gap,” the brief states.
As previously reported, Planned Parenthood filed suit against HHS earlier this month after it rolled out its 2018 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), which outlines that, going forward, applicants for Title X funding should encourage “avoiding sexual risk.”
Planned Parenthood interprets this notation as referring to abstinence, and asserts that the Trump administration is attempting to “push people toward abstinence or pressure women into marriage.”
Among the application review criteria includes the notation that organizations should place “[a] meaningful emphasis on education and counseling that communicates the social science research and practical application of topics related to healthy relationships, to committed, safe, stable, healthy marriages, and the benefits of avoiding sexual risk or returning to a sexually risk-free status, especially (but not only) when communicating with adolescents.”
It also recommends “[a]ctivities for adolescents that do not normalize sexual risk behaviors, but instead clearly communicate the research informed benefits of delaying sex or returning to a sexually risk-free status.”
Planned Parenthood therefore bemoaned in its lawsuit, filed on behalf of affiliates in Wisconsin, Ohio and Utah, that the 2018 application criteria “now give[s] the most weight to new ‘program priorities’ and ‘key issues,’ such as placing ‘meaningful emphasis’ on abstinence as an approach to birth control (even for adults), providing onsite primary care, and cooperating with faith-based organizations.”
It argued that the criteria violate the statutory mandate that Title X recipients must provide “acceptable and effective” family planning services, as Planned Parenthood doesn’t believe promoting abstinence is effective.
“Abstinence prevents pregnancy and STIs when used perfectly, but in reality, it has extremely high rates of ‘user failure’—that is, people often decide to have sex, even if they had previously intended to abstain from sex,” the complaint argued. “Emphasizing abstinence to adult patients would be particularly inappropriate.”
“Indeed, placing a ‘meaningful emphasis’ on abstinence until marriage to an unmarried, healthy adult woman who wishes to be sexually active, and who comes to a health center for an IUD, would not only be a coercive and egregious clinical practice, but would disrespect the patient’s dignity as an individual … and could be understood as refusing service based on marital status,” it asserted.
In the amicus brief signed this week by 20 attorneys general, it was similarly posited that the new abstinence promotion criteria is less effective, and will “result in serious harm” because contraceptives are beneficial to society’s interests.
“The burdens that result from restricting access to or information about reproductive healthcare, including information about contraception, often fall disproportionately on a state’s most vulnerable residents, including low-income women and women of color,” the signees claim. “And apart from the intrinsic value of protecting residents’ constitutional right to procreative choice, the states know from experience that restricting access to reproductive healthcare also burdens the public.”
The brief further asserts that encouraging “natural family planning” over contraception use affects the “economic productivity” of women.
“[L]imiting access to contraception would cause social and economic repercussions flowing from lost opportunities for affected women to succeed in the classroom, participate in the workforce, and contribute as taxpayers. These are lifelong consequences for women and their families, and for the states. Restricting the economic productivity of their residents necessarily harms the states as well,” it states.
It also argues that having babies too soon or too often can result in health issues for the infant, and that using contraceptives to prevent pregnancy keep a woman’s “pre-existing health conditions from worsening and new health problems from occurring, because pregnancy may exacerbate existing health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.”
Signees include the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia.
1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 states, “For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication, that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God.”
Hebrews 13:4 also warns, “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.”
To be very clear, the creation of a database of minority-status identity groups is the move of certain Social Justice Warriors within the SBC who have been enamored with the recent promotion of Rauschenbuschism by Southern Baptist entities, but the database creation is not an official move of any SBC entity in particular. Rather, the new Affirmative Action tool is the creation of Southern Baptist pastor Brent Hobbes and leftist-progressive professor and Critical Race Theorist, Alan Cross.
Following on the heels of the MLK50 event co-hosted by the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the creation of a “Department of Kingdom Diversity” at Southeastern Baptists Theological Seminary (which has most recently promoted the material of the father of Black Liberation Theology, James Cone, and hosted a “Malcom X Read-In” on campus), the two Southern Baptist bloggers decided to create a database to keep track of those identifying with minority groups and to assist their promotion to denominational appointment based upon the color of their skin, rather than the content of their character (or theology).
Brent Hobbes writes at SBC Voices…
The SBC Leadership Diversity Initiative is designed to be a networking tool that helps open channels of communication within our convention. We are receiving nominations of ethnic minority leaders and women who may be available, interested, and willing to serve the SBC in leadership capacities – committees, boards, elected roles. We will compile the names of those submitted, along with some basic information, and make that available to anyone responsible for nominating or appointing these leadership positions.
Marxist Intersectionality seems to play a role in the decision to create the database, as women – as well as minority ethnicities – are the anticipated recipients of this program. Intersectionality was originally an idea of the Radical Feminist Movement but has been co-opted by Black Liberation Theologians under the broader spectrum of Cultural Marxism, to promote victimology and the perpetual identification of individuals collectively as the oppressed.
Hobbes continues…
We want to open the floodgates and remove as many barriers as possible to achieve our goal: A convention where ethnic minority leaders and members, as well as Southern Baptist women, know they are valued and considered an indispensable, integral part of our denominational life together.
Will you help us build our network? Do you know of SBC pastors or leaders who are willing to serve our convention? All you have to do is fill out our short nomination form and click submit. You can click here or on the image below to visit the nomination form.
The form asks the question regarding the applicants ethnic status. The form will then be forwarded to nominating committees to make it easier for SBC committees to appoint “underrepresented” gender and ethnic identity groups.
Curiously, there is no checkbox for Jew, Gentile, circumcised, uncircumcised, Sythian, Slave, or Freeman (Colossians 3:11).
This is precisely the opposite of how we are told to consider one another in the Sacred Writ. The is precisely the same as we are told to consider one another in a Marxist worldview. These men need to read their Bible and stop being carried to and fro by the spirit of our age.
Justin Peters & Costi Hinn (Benny Hinn’s Nephew who LEFT the Prosperity Gospel) on: Are the Word-Faith/New Apostolic Reformation movements in error on secondary issues or do they actually qualify as heretical? In this program, Costi and Justin demonstrate that these movements actually teach a very different Jesus than the Jesus of the Bible. Christology is not a secondary issue. A different Jesus constitutes a different gospel. This program will show why you should be very concerned if you have a friend or family member in this movement. Souls are truly at stake.”
In March 2016, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had reached a migrant deal with Turkish President Recep Erdogan. The agreement obliged Turkey to rein in migrant trafficking in Aegean in return for billions of euros in ‘aid’. As part of the 2016 deal, Merkel also agreed to accept 150,000 to 200,000 migrants from Turkey against the wishes of several European member states.The European Union’s deal with Turkey is failing to stop migrants from crossing into Europe.
They end up in Italy and Greece. From there, they can go anywhere. Alarmingly:
A top Greek court ruled on Wednesday that migrants landing on Greek islands should no longer be held there while asylum claims are assessed, a decision raising alarm among EU officials in Brussels.
Appeasing jihadist regimes does not work, and trusting Islamic supremacist despots is folly. This was evident from the Iranian deal: Obama pumped billions into Iran’s coffers, which the rogue state used to advance its jihadist proxies globally and expand its nuclear capability. “55,000 pages of documents and 183 CD’s revealed that Iran hid an atomic archive of documents on its nuclear program.” Iran has been “blatantly lying” as it developed its nuclear program.
In this case, the dishonest Islamic despot is Recep Tayyip Erdogan:
Despite Erdogan’s repeated threats to scrap the deal and ‘flood Europe with migrants’, EU continues to cut large checks to Ankara. By March 2018, European countries shipped more than €6 billion to Erdogan under the deal….Erdogan, however, isn’t satisfied with financial incentives alone. He also wants visa-free travel for 80 million Turkish nationals within Europe’s Schengen zone.
European taxpayer dollars are being recklessly committed to Erdogan, as Muslim migrants still continue to flood Europe and further burden those same taxpayers, not just financially, but with the escalating risks of jihad attacks, Muslim migrant crime and expanding no-go zones.
Erdogan has stated that “Turks are the future of Europe,” as part of his dream of a revived Ottoman Empire. He also still wants Turkey to join the EU.
“New Migrant Surge Hits Greece Despite EU-Turkey Deal,” by Vijeta Uniyal, Legal Insurrection, May 18, 2018:
In March 2016, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had reached a migrant deal with Turkish President Recep Erdogan. The agreement obliged Turkey to rein in migrant trafficking in Aegean in return for billions of euros in ‘aid’. As part of the 2016 deal, Merkel also agreed to accept 150,000 to 200,000 migrants from Turkey against the wishes of several European member states.
Chancellor Merkel is pushing for similar deals with the Muslim-majority countries of North Africa. “We must agree on similar deals with other countries, such as in North Africa, in order to get better control over the Mediterranean sea refugee routes,” Merkel said months after sealing the deal with Turkey.
Despite Erdogan’s repeated threats to scrap the deal and ‘flood Europe with migrants’, EU continues to cut large checks to Ankara. By March 2018, European countries shipped more than €6 billion to Erdogan under the deal.
Erdogan, however, isn’t satisfied with financial incentives alone. He also wants visa-free travel for 80 million Turkish nationals within Europe’s Schengen zone.
German weekly Der Spiegel reported the surging migrant influx across Turkey’s borders:
In recent months, more migrants have come into Europe through Turkey than last year. According to the European Commission (EU’s executive arm), the number of unauthorized crossings on the coasts and territorial borders of the EU has more than doubled compared to the first quarter of the previous year. As of May 6, estimated 15,450 refugees entered Europe through this route.
The EU Commissioner for Greece called for more border officers to be dispatched and providing the EU border and coastal protection agency Frontex with better equipment. Member states need to urgently allocate resources for the agency to keep its operations running and to take up additional tasks, [EU Commissioner] Avramopoulos said. [translation by the author]
The sudden surge in migrant inflow coincides with Turkey’s renewed efforts to join the European Union. Earlier this week, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Recep Akdag told a German newspaper that he wanted his country’s “EU accession to be sped up.” The EU had suspended the accession talks after Erdogan regime began a massive clampdown on dissidents and Kurdish minority in the wake of Turkey’s 2016 military coup….
Italy is about to form a new coalition government that promises big change and a challenge to the reckless immigration impositions from Brussels. The biggest proposal is to deport half a million migrants.
A 58-page manifesto also calls for “a recruitment of more police, the building of new prisons and the clearing of illegal gypsy settlements in Italian towns and cities.” Further plans include a “review of the Dublin Regulation, which dictates that migrants and refugees apply for asylum in the first EU country they reach,” which is usually Italy or Greece.
Now the Dutch government is blaming Italy and Greece for “allowing two-thirds of migrants arriving on their shores to slip into Europe by failing to register them properly as the EU rift over the migrant crisis deepens.”
Italy now joins Austria and the Visegrad group in being dubbed by globalists as “anti-immigrant,” “populist,” and “far right” — terms used to label anyone who opposes suicidal immigration policies. Such movements have been growing in the EU, as citizens become more disaffected by their leaders and by the chaos in their countries emanating from the Hijra.
“Italy’s populists promise to kick out half a million migrants as they edge towards forming new government,” by Nick Squires, Telegraph, May 18, 2018:
Italy’s populist parties, which are expected to form a new government within days, have pledged to deport up to half a million migrants.
An aggressive stepping-up of repatriations was a long-held promise of the hard-Right League, which is poised to form a coalition government with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement.
The parties presented their policy programme on Friday, in what was widely seen as the biggest challenge to the authority and cohesion of the EU since Brexit.
The 58-page manifesto called for a review of governance and spending rules imposed by Brussels.
It called for the recruitment of more police, the building of new prisons and the clearing of illegal gypsy settlements in Italian towns and cities.
“Today there are around 500,000 irregular migrants in Italy,” the document said, calling for a much swifter rate of expulsions and repatriation.
Migrants targeted for expulsion would be rounded up and held in “temporary stay facilities”, with at least one to be established in each of Italy’s 20 regions.
Around 600,000 migrants and refugees have reached Italy from Libya in the past four years, with some repatriated already and others granted asylum and resettled elsewhere within the EU.
The parties want a review of the Dublin Regulation, which dictates that migrants and refugees apply for asylum in the first EU country they reach, which Italy and Greece have long argued is unfair as they are the first port of call because of their location on the shores of the Mediterranean…..
UK: At last someone asked Theresa May the right questions on freedom of speech in the British Parliament.
