The United States of America

 
Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare

FRIDAY ONE YEAR AGO – A 3-year-old girl was taken from the only home she knew and loved and placed with strangers – extended family who had never bothered to visit her or get to know her. Her adoptive parents fought for her in court and experts said she would be traumatized by the forced move, but the court decided that was okay and moved her anyway.

After almost five months, on APRIL 13TH, the adoptive parents got a call to come and get their little girl right away. There was a problem, and she had to be moved from the home she had been placed in. They left immediately, driving a couple hours to get her. When she saw them, she ran into their arms and said she was ready to go “home” – “Can I go home?” she asked – Adoptive mom wept – but daughter held her tears until after they had left the building, then wept freely. The people she had been with had told her that her adoptive parents were wolves, and would eat her -

Fortunately, she wasn’t physically hurt during the five months. But she was, indeed, emotionally traumatized. She was NOT okay. She had been told there were monsters in the closet who would come eat her if she cried, and she reported that she had been locked in a storage shed. She was only three so it’s still hard to say what actually happened, but it is known that things were not well – as evidenced by the emergency request by social services for the adoptive parents to go after her.

TODAY – A YEAR TO THE DAY she was taken from them – the Adoption was finalized and no one can take her away again!

PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION – Kids of tribal heritage need protection EQUAL to any other child in the U.S. – PLEASE sign this White House Petition. If we can get 25,000 signatures by mid-December, the White House will review the petition and give a response!

Children such as the child in this story have no voice – there are many advocating for ICWA, but no other national organization advocating for Children and families who, as US citizens, do NOT want to be under the jurisdiction of tribal government. Please help by bringing their needs to the attention of those in the federal Government.

It is a little complicated to sign this petition – it is on a White House Website and Lord knows they can’t make anything uncomplicated. But we need your help to do this – Please click the below link, register, and SIGN this petition and ask others to as well! – Thank you!

http://wh.gov/bvZ

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Event Took Place Friday, November 19, 2010

Dec. 9, 2010

CAICW Friends;

An adoptive mother made her first contact with CAICW on Facebook about 1am Saturday morning, November 20, 2010, only hours after she had lost her little girl…

“They just took my baby after 3 years…her sobbing is forever etched in my soul. She wanted us to save her and we couldn’t..devastated.”

She then wrote to friends:

“Please sign this petition..the despair on her face pushes me to help destroy this law. She didn’t want to go and was looking for us to protect her and we couldn’t…I can’t remember ever feeling so worthless.”

Saturday, November 20th, 2010, was National Adoption Day. On this day, a small girl, denied the right to be adopted by the only mother she’d ever known, spent the first day in her memory in foster care, frightened and alone amongst strangers. She was denied the right to be adopted solely because of her heritage. In America, having even a small bit of Indian heritage can mean not having the same rights and opportunities for adoption that other children receive.

Saturday, November 20th, was also her adoptive mother’s birthday. Her mother wrote on Facebook, thanking her friends for their love and prayers, and said that the best gift was people signing the petition.

We will be taking the petition with us when visiting Congress in DC at the end of January. The purpose of the Petition is to show Congressmen that people are concerned about this law and want it changed to reflect the best interest of children, not government expediency. We want to the rights of parents and children respected. We encourage families that have been affected by ICWA to join us.

If you aren’t able to join us in DC, I urge everyone to obtain the legislative drafts we have available and talk to as many of your US Senators and Representatives and you can, as well as you legislators on the State level. We need to be pushing our representatives on both the federal and state levels to pass protective legislation for these children. No more pretending that what they have decided to do with children of heritage is acceptable or even constitutionally legal.

Finally – CAICW needs financial support. Please help us to:

* Stay in Contact with Families,
* Publish the Newsletter,
* Research Case Law,
* Update & maintain the CAICW.org Website,
* Develop a legal Defense Fund,
* Continue to Educate Federal and State Officials,
* Educate the Community through Facebook and Twitter,
* Speak to and Connect with family-oriented Organizations

All Children need to feel safe. Help CAICW to Advocate, Educate, Assist, & Defend.

http://www.caicw.org/pleasedonate.html

- Please see these sites for more information, and please share these important links:

Read Letters from Families: http://www.caicw.org/familystories.html


How You Can Help: http://www.caicw.org/HowYouHelp.html

Follow CAICW on TWITTER: http://twitter.com/CAICW

Join CAICW on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fbCAICW.org

EMAIL: writeus@caicw.org

Thank you all for your prayers and support -

Lisa Morris
Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare (CAICW)
PO Box 253
Hillsboro, ND 58045

CAICW – Christian Evangelism and Ministry – Gal. 2:10, “All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.”

Sexual Anarchy

 Comments Off
Sep 022011
 
Liberty Counsel Action Logo

By Matt Barber – Liberty Council Action

In “Batman,” the Joker rhetorically asks a young Bruce Wayne: “Tell me, kid – you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?” Well, I have. Not by the pale moonlight, but in a brightly lit Four Points Sheraton in Baltimore, Md.

On Wednesday, Aug. 17, I – along with the venerable child advocate Dr. Judith Reisman – attended a conference hosted by the pedophile group ‘B4U-ACT.’ Around 50 individuals were in attendance, including a number of admitted pedophiles (or “minor-attracted persons” as they euphemistically prefer), a few self-described “gay activists” and several supportive mental-health professionals. World renowned “sexologist” Dr. Fred Berlin of Johns Hopkins University gave the keynote address, saying: “I want to completely support the goal of B4U-ACT.”

Here are some highlights from the conference:

  • Pedophiles are “unfairly stigmatized and demonized” by society.
  • There was concern about “vice-laden diagnostic criteria” and “cultural baggage of wrongfulness.”
  • “We are not required to interfere with or inhibit our child’s sexuality.”
  • “Children are not inherently unable to consent” to sex with an adult.
  • “In Western culture sex is taken too seriously.”
  • “Anglo-American standard on age of consent is new [and ‘Puritanical’]. In Europe it was always set at 10 or 12. Ages of consent beyond that are relatively new and very strange, especially for boys. They’ve always been able to have sex at any age.”
  • An adult’s desire to have sex with children is “normative.”
  • Our society should “maximize individual liberty. … We have a highly moralistic society that is not consistent with liberty.”
  • “Assuming children are unable to consent lends itself to criminalization and stigmatization.”
  • “These things are not black and white; there are various shades of gray.”
  • A consensus belief by both speakers and pedophiles in attendance was that, because it vilifies MAPs, pedophilia should be removed as a mental disorder from the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in the same manner homosexuality was removed in 1973.
  • Dr. Fred Berlin acknowledged that it was political activism, similar to the incrementalist strategy witnessed at the conference, rather than a scientific calculus that successfully led to the declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder: The reason “homosexuality was taken out of DSM is that people didn’t want the government in the bedroom,” he said.
  • The DSM ignores that pedophiles “have feelings of love and romance for children” in the same way adults love one another.
  • “The majority of pedophiles are gentle and rational.”
  • The DSM should “focus on the needs” of the pedophile, and should have “a minimal focus on social control,” rather than obsessing about the “need to protect children.”
  • Self-described “gay activist” and speaker Jacob Breslow said that children can properly be “the object of our attraction.” He further objectified children, suggesting that pedophiles needn’t gain consent from a child to have sex with “it” any more than we need consent from a shoe to wear it. He then used graphic, slang language to favorably describe the act of climaxing (ejaculating) “on or with” a child. No one in attendance objected to this explicit depiction of child sexual assault. There was even laughter.

(In fairness, Dr. Berlin did later tell Mr. Breslow that his words might “anger” some people and that he [Berlin] is categorically opposed to adult-child sex with “pre-pubescent” children. When asked about the propriety of adult-child sex with pubescent children, Dr. Berlin did not provide a clear answer.)

So, am I just an intolerant, “pedophobic” bigot? Apparently so. In fact, Dr. Berlin says pedophilia is just another “sexual orientation.” Some of the “minor attracted” conference-goers insisted that they were “born that way.” Sound familiar?

This is sexual anarchy – fulfillment of the moral relativist dream.

In the 1940s, homosexual psychopath and secular-humanist messiah Alfred Kinsey’s stated goal was to destroy, in society, the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic. He has largely achieved that goal.

Indeed, during his sexology “research,” Kinsey facilitated the rape of thousands of children – some as young as 2 months old – placing stopwatches and ledgers in the hands of “minor-attracted persons” to document their “findings.” He then recorded everything in what is generally referred to as the “Kinsey Reports.”

Kinsey determined, among many things, that children are not harmed by sex with adults and that it can be a positive experience. Old Al even earned his very own Kinsey Institute, still in existence today at Indiana University.

As recently as 1998, the APA seemed to agree with Kinsey’s assessment, releasing a report that suggested harm caused by child rape was “overstated” and that “the vast majority of both men and women reported no negative sexual effects from their child sexual abuse experiences.”

Furthermore, the APA report suggested that the term “child sex abuse” be swapped with “adult-child sex,” indicating, as did Kinsey, that such “intergenerational intimacy” can be “positive.” Isn’t “tolerance” wonderful?

Oh, and the “progressive,” political-activist APA has also seen fit to join an amicus brief in favor of so-called “same-sex marriage.” What does this have to do with psychiatry? Your guess is as good as mine.

Make no mistake: Children are the target of what I call the “sexual anarchy movement.” Whether it’s the movement’s pedophile wing that seeks to literally rape children, or its radical pro-abortion, homosexualist and feminist wings, which seek to rape the minds of children, the larger sexual anarchy movement has a shared goal: Attack, corrupt and destroy God’s design for human sexuality. Children are just collateral damage.

Sexual anarchists know that to own the future, they must own the minds of our children. Hence, groups like B4U-ACT, GLSEN (The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network), Planned Parenthood and the like utilize academia from pre-school to post-graduate to brainwash and indoctrinate. Still, sexual anarchists are not restricted to the world of not-for-profit perversion advocacy. They also permeate the Obama administration.

Consider, for instance, that the official website for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently linked to “parenting tips” that referenced children as “sexual beings” and suggested that they should experiment with homosexuality and masturbation.

Small surprise when you consider that radical feminist and pro-abort Kathleen Sebelius was President Obama’s pick as HHS secretary.

You may also recall that Mr. Obama appointed Kevin Jennings, founder of the aforementioned GLSEN, to the post of “safe schools czar.” The position is now defunct, ostensibly due to national outrage over Jennings’ appointment.

In keeping with the thinly veiled goals of B4U-ACT, GLSEN seems to be “running interference” for pedophiles, having tacitly advocated adult-child sex through its “recommended reading list” for kids.

Again, not surprising when you consider that one of Jennings’s ideological mentors is “gay” activist pioneer Harry Hay. “One of the people that’s always inspired me is Harry Hay,” he has said glowingly.

What did Mr. Hay think? I’ll let him speak for himself. In 1983, while addressing the pedophile North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), Hay said the following:

“[I]t seems to me that in the gay community the people who should be running interference for NAMBLA are the parents and friends of gays. Because if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world. And they would be welcoming this, and welcoming the opportunity for young gay kids to have the kind of experience that they would need.”

(Oddly, there’s another “gay” activist group, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, or PFLAG, that frequently partners with GLSEN. I wonder where they came up with the catchy title.)

Bolstered by support from the National Education Association, GLSEN has access to your children through sex education curricula it provides thousands of public schools across the country, and via adult sponsored “Gay Straight Alliances,” hosted in those same schools.

Alas, we live in a post-Kinsey America wherein our culture, along with our Judeo-Christian heritage, rots in the heat of the day. The stench of sexual anarchy is masked by the soaring, disingenuous rhetoric of “tolerance,” “diversity” and “comprehensive sex education.”

Sick to your stomach? I am. Why can’t these sexual anarchists leave our children alone and let kids be kids?

Matt Barber is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action. (This information is provided for identification purposes only.)

 
"Restoring Courage" with Glenn Beck in Israel

Liberty Counsel
NEWS RELEASE
Contact: PUBLIC RELATIONS DEPARTMENT – 800-671-1776 or Media@LC.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 29, 2011

U.S. State Department Promoting an Anti-Israel Propaganda Agenda

www.LC.org

Washington, DC – The U.S. State Department is promoting an anti-Israel propaganda campaign. The extent of the campaign and the misinformation raises serious concern. The most recent misinformation surfaced last week when the U.S. issued a “warning” to all U.S. citizens the day of Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Courage” event on August 24 in Jerusalem.

On the same day, the Consulate General of the United States released an “Emergency Message” stating that

“Jerusalem is under a heightened Security Alert.” U.S. citizens in Jerusalem were told to “exercise extra vigilance and avoid large crowds during upcoming rallies and religious holidays, particularly in and around Jerusalem’s Old City.”

The “warning” continued:

“On Wednesday, August 24, 2011, there will be a rally held near the south east [sic] corner of the Old City.” The areas where the “Restoring Courage” event was being held “are off limits to official U.S. Government personnel from 4:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. on that day due to recent clashes in the area.” http://Jerusalem.usconsulate.gov/wms-082411.html.

Beck’s event began at 5:00 p.m. in the exact area referenced above.

“As one who spoke at Glenn Beck’s event outside the Southern Wall of the Old City on August 24, I can say that the U.S. State Department’s ‘warning’ was false political propaganda designed to advance an anti-Israel agenda,” said Mat Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law.

“There had been no ‘clashes’ in the area prior to the ‘Restoring Courage’ event, and there were none during or after the event,” said Staver. “When U.S. citizens who attended Glenn Beck’s event learned of the State Department’s ‘warning,’ they were outraged because they knew it to be untrue,” Staver added.

Staver also said,

“At the event I spoke with Israelis who work in the highest level of government. If anyone would have had intelligence suggesting danger, these people would have, and yet they appeared at the event.

The District of Columbia is far more dangerous than Jerusalem or the entire nation of Israel. As of August 26, there were 71 murders in the District, down from a high of 479 in 1991. In all of Israel last year there were 139 homicides, but in the District there were 132. Considering only Jerusalem, the number of homicides or violent crimes pales compared to the District.

The U.S. Consulate General for Jerusalem issued a press release promoting a folk rock concert, funded by U.S. tax dollars, to “promote dialogue and mutual understanding between Palestinians and Americans” held in Jerusalem and the “West Bank” only one month prior to Beck’s event. http://jerusalem.usconsulate.gov/pr_072011.html.

The same website lists 7 pro-Palestinian programs and no pro-Israeli programs. http://jerusalem.usconsulate.gov.

###

Jun 012011
 
9-12 Tea party 2010

By J. Matt Barber

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. – C.S. Lewis

Comedian Jim Wiegand – aka “Jim Wiggins, the last hippie in America” – is a throwback to a bygone era. The hilarious 70-year-old wisecracker is known for, among other things, a quite liberal worldview. He’s also known for raising Joe Wiegand, his rebellious, good-for-nothing son. Apart from sharing both a sharp sense of humor and mutual love and admiration, father and son see eye to eye on little else.

Joe, a good friend of mine,
isn’t a rebellious good-for-nothing in the conventional sense. He’s a 40-something Illinois-based GOP strategist, a Teddy Roosevelt impersonator without equal and a buttoned-up evangelical Christian.

The elder Mr. Wiegand can’t figure out where he went wrong. He jokes that when Joe was a youngster, he once discovered magazines hidden under the boy’s mattress. He was shocked to find his son looking at such smut: National Review.

Hippies once were the counterculture. Liberals were the nonconformist rebels, boldly wearing unwashed anarchy on tattered sleeve. They loudly and proudly raged against the establishment machine.

Today, they are the establishment machine.

All of our ruling-class institutions – academia, courts, government, media and entertainment industries – are teeming with closed-minded, hard-left ideologues who seek to “fundamentally transform America.”

Consider that, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, self-identified liberals outweigh their conservative counterparts in the mainstream media by a 5-1 margin.

Likewise, a 1999 North American Academic Study Survey (NAASS) of students, faculty and administrators in colleges and universities throughout the United States determined that five times as many college faculty members vote Democratic as Republican. In fact, 72 percent described themselves as “to the left of center,” while a mere 15 percent identified themselves as “right of center.”

One can only imagine that in the ensuing decade, the ideological disparity has increased. Ask any kid in the halls of academia, and he’ll tell you, with few exceptions, that professor so-and-so is a liberal so-and-so.

Still, liberals – or “progressives,” as they prefer to be called – persist in laboring under an embarrassing misconception: They honestly believe they remain the nonconformists. It’s precious.

In fact, today’s liberals are nothing of the sort. They compliantly conform – like little windup, patchouli-daubed lemmings – to a carnival-prize caricature of what they imagine nonconformity to look like. You know, the usual stuff: neo-Marxism, environmentalist activism, sexual relativism, big-government nanny statism, an actions-without-consequences rendering of reproductive rights, and other such populist nonsense. Simply put, today’s progressive nonconformist conforms.

Indeed, the “Stepford Wives” have become the “Stepford Lesbians.” The prudish, judgmental church lady has swapped spots with the easy – yet somehow self-righteous – birth-bashing feminist.

So what is a young person – brimming over with that instinctive, defiant impulse to rebel against “the man” – to do?

Well, in this up-is-down, spend-money-to-save-money world, conservatives have become the contemporary nonconformists. Today’s rebellious youth are telling the progressive establishment to put its moral-relativist, redistributionist party-line pig swill in its well-used chamber pipe and smoke it.

Kids: Really want to get under your obnoxiously “tolerant,” Volvo-driving, MSNBC-watching folks’ skin? Try this: Go to church, abstain from premarital sex, join the Young America’s Foundation, attend a Tea Party rally, enroll at Liberty University, listen to Rush Limbaugh and vote Republican.

You’ll have them writhing in their Birkenstocks.

I’ve often said that President Obama could either be the best thing to happen to America or the worst. The best insofar as this man’s policies are so radical, so extreme that, in keeping with Newton’s third law of motion, the “opposite reaction” might well trigger Republican rule in perpetuity.

First, the bad news: So far, Mr. Obama is the worst. Now, the good news: I believe he has awakened a sleeping giant in the millennial generation (ages 18 to 29). Today’s counterculture is rejecting the tired progressive policies pushed by this president and his secular-socialist sycophants.

For instance, a 2010 Marist Institute for Public Opinion poll determined that nearly 60 percent of millennials believe abortion is “morally wrong,” a nearly 10-point increase over the more progressive baby-boomer generation. The tide is turning.

Similarly, a recent survey from Harvard University’s Institute of Politics found that millennials are worried sick about their futures. Yet President Hopey Changey and Democrats in Congress continue to play back-alley dice with their lives via incomprehensible deficit spending and a national debt that swells annually by the trillions.

Do you think these kids won’t rebel as the clouds quickly darken?

Winston Churchill once observed,

“If you’re not a liberal at 20, you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at 40, you have no brain.”

Liberalism is emotion-based and rooted in soaring, knee-jerk notions of “social justice.” Conservatism is logic-based and rooted in reality.

Today’s rebellious youth have the heart part down. I’m glad to see they’re developing some brains.

Matt Barber is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. He serves as Vice President of Liberty Counsel Action.

 

IN all the rhetoric about who is to blame for the shooting, there has been little talk about 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green.

Her Grandfather, Dallas Green, who managed the Phillies to the World Series in 1980 and one of the few men to manage both the Yankees and the Mets, was confused when his wife, Syliva, came into the living room after talking to their son on the phone Saturday. She was in shock and tears, barely able to get out the words, “They shot our beautiful Christina.”

Christina was killed in the shooting spree at U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ meet-and-greet in Tucson, AZ, Saturday. One of the bullets had been fired directly into Christina’s heart.

“I can’t believe our princess is gone,” Green said to a friend. He then told the Daily News, “I’ve had a lot of tough things happen to me in my life but this is one I’m never going to get over. We’re all hurting pretty bad. My son is devastated.”

Christina, who was the daughter of his son, John, a Dodger scout, had gone with neighbors to meet Rep. Giffords so she could see how government works.

Her mother Roxanna, told Fox News that Christina was “very interested in government …how she could help her community.”

The Arizona Republic, interviewing her uncle, Greg Segalinia, outside her house, reported that a neighbor had invited Christina along because she thought she would enjoy it. “The next thing you know this happened,” Segalini said. “How do you prepare for something like this. My little niece got killed-took one on the chest and she is dead.”

Segalinia told the Republic that his niece was involved several extracurricular activities ranging from ballet to baseball, the sport of her father and grandfather.

According to TV station KVOA, she was a passionate dancer who loved ballet, hip-hop, jazz and gymnastics. KVOA also noted that Christina was the only girl on her Canyon del Oro Little League baseball team, “The Pirates,” and played second base. She also loved horseback riding, swimming, and animals. Family members described Christina as vibrant and excited about life.

Her parents called her “the best daughter in the world.”

The 9-year old had just been elected to her student council at the Mesa Verde Elementary School. “She was a good speaker,” John Green told the Arizona Star. “I could easily have seen her as a politician.”

John Green later reflected on his daughter being born on September 11, 2001, and now dying in this massacre. Born – and died – on two very emotional, senseless and tragic days for America; yet, said Green, the nine years in between were magical for his little girl as well as for them.

Christina was one of the babies featured in a book called Faces of Hope, Babies Born on 9/11, by Christine Pisera Naman. When she was old enough, her parents had told her about the day she was born. Misunderstanding, Christina then told a few people that she was born on a “holiday.”

Big Journalism.com had an additional, sad perspective on this national tragedy; “Christina’s birth brought hope to America, taught us that in the face of tragedy life goes on. Her death was used by the media to destroy hope and generate political divisiveness, a sad tribute to this young girl’s life.”

It was tragic that “CBS found the time to exploit the shooting for it’s own progressive slant, but didn’t have the time to show this picture, or to tell Christina’s story in their report.”

As for the personal, family perspective, Dallas Green said, “I can’t believe this could happen to any 9-year old child, much less our own,” and that it’s “The worst thing to ever happen to us.”

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/01/09/2011-01-09_christina_taylor_greens_grandfather_exmets__yankees_manager_dallas_green_devasta.html#ixzz1AayHExLI

 
TSA

.

 

Secret recording of TSA unlawfully detaining,  interrogating and threatening passenger –  Four Parts

 

 

Part 2 – Passenger appears to know what the law is – and politely requests throughout ordeal for the TSA to clarify why they are questioning him.  They never respond. Did they refuse to answer his question because they couldn’t?  Did they know there was no law that required him to answer them?  Were they having a slow day,  and he happened to show up to play with?  Once one of them starts messing with a passenger, do the others tend to feel they need to support that TSA officer, even if he was wrong?

 

Part 3 – After threatening over and over to take him to the police, they finally do. Perhaps they thought that by threatening him, he would submit out of desire to get over this and get back on the plane.  But he called their bluff.  

 

 They finally take him to the police – who appear to politely look over his paperwork – and then simply let him go.  He had done nothing wrong.  He broke no laws.   Do the police mind the TSA wasting their time on this type of thing?  Maybe they don’t end up taking innocent people to the police too often.  Most people do what ever the TSA asks – both because they don’t know the law, and because they just want to get on the plane and get to where they are going.

Apparently, this man worked for the  Campaign for Liberty – a Ron Paul group – and the money was from the sale of t-shirts at an event.  This man had, indeed, answered every question truthfully.  He knew the law, knew his rights, and knew the TSA had no legal reason to detain and question him. 

Finally – CNN reported on the recordings and the unlawful detention.

 

 

 

Apparently, it is now illegal to advertise for a Christian roommate.

A civil rights complaint has been filed against a 31-year-old Michigan woman who posted an advertisement on a bulletin board in her church seeking a Christian roommate.

Someone had seen the ad – in the church – with the words “Christian roommate wanted” and contacted the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan.

The case was then turned over to the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, which filed a housing discrimination charge. According to the ‘Fair Housing’ Center, the ad

“…expresses an illegal preference for a Christian roommate, thus excluding people of other faiths.”

FHCWM Executive Director Nancy Haynes told Todd Starnes of Fox News that “It’s a violation to make, print or publish a discriminatory statement. There are no exemptions to that.”

Haynes said this woman could face several hundreds of dollars in fines and “fair housing training so it doesn’t happen again.”

Harold Core, director of public affairs with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, appears to agree. While noting there are exemptions in law for gender when there is a shared living space, he told the Grand Rapids Press that the Fair Housing Act forbids people from publishing ads stating a preference of religion, race or handicap with respect to sale or rental of a dwelling.

Haynes, who said officials plan on pursuing the matter because “We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” asks, “If you read it and you were not Christian, would you not feel welcome to rent there?”

Describing the case as “outrageous,” her attorney, working for the Alliance Defense Fund, said this is a blatant violation of her First Amendment right to freely associate and

“Christians shouldn’t live in fear of being punished by the government for being Christians. It is completely absurd to try to penalize a single Christian woman for privately seeking a Christian roommate at church — an obviously legal and constitutionally protected activity.”

Having already sent a letter to the state asking the authorities to dismiss the case as groundless, he went on to say,

“The First Amendment guarantees us Freedom of Religion and we have the right to live with someone of the same faith. The Michigan Department of Civil Rights is denying her rights by pursuing this complaint.”

The ADF is representing this woman free of charge.

After an outcry arose over the apparent injustice of the charges against the woman, Haynes seemed to have backtracked from her earlier statement concerning an illegal preference for a Christian roommate – excluding people of other faiths. Haynes told 24 Hour News 8 the woman has every right to seek and live with a Christian roommate — but advertising for it publicly, even on a church bulletin board, violates federal law.

“She can be a Christian and she can even use that as a criteria for who she wants to rent to. She just can’t state that. Because to state that is a violation of the Fair Housing Act,” she said. “There are certain exceptions that apply. She can actually, in practice, not rent to a non-Christian. But she can’t make the statement. The statement alone is a violation of the act. What she can do in practice she can’t make a statement about.”

Haynes now claims someone in the congregation was offended and filed a complaint.

She also spoke with a little less severity concerning the charges, explaining that the action is administrative, not criminal. The center asks for a response to try and negotiate a settlement. If they can’t, it’s possible that the Michigan Department of Civil Rights would determine if a violation happened and perhaps recommend a hearing.

“I found (the woman and her attorney’s) response very offensive. We’re not punishing her for being Christian at all. If you’re in the business of renting, it’s a business transaction that’s held to a standard under federal, state and local law.”

The state does want the woman to get training in federal law, and reimburse the Fair Housing Center $300 for the time it took them to ‘investigate.’

Here are some of my thoughts about why I find this so upsetting:

This was a private note on a church bulletin board. No financial transaction was involved. We are told about a so-called separation of church and state but this appears to mean the state will not allow any Christian activity associated with any state activities but the state is perfectly willing to intrude and penalize church affairs and activities.

If not directly this certainly indirectly impacts on how, and with whom, we live in our own private homes. The government claims she can choose to live only with a Christian but just can’t say that is what she is doing. But not being able to say or put up a notice probably will severely limit her choices of potential Christian roommates and have a direct and potentially negative impact on her living situation.

If she can choose to live only with a Christian but can’t say that is what she is doing , what impact does this have on her First Amendment guarantees of free speech and association?

The people of this church now have to consider and deal with the fact that they have a secret government informer in their midst. If a Christian in the church was offended by the note there is clear scriptural direction on how to deal with it–go to that person privately, take several others with you, bring it to the church and finally suffer wrong before going to secular authorities. [Matthew 18:14-17 and I Cor. 6:2-8]

This woman is expected to pay the costs of the investigation. I’m sorry but this reminds me of the requirement in Iran that family members pay for the bullet that executed a relative in order to get the body returned for burial. What is the difference between this reimbursement and a civil or criminal fine except that there isn’t a judge, jury or stipulated statute amount. What if the investigative cost was $10,000 instead of $300? Who decided this amount?

She is expected to go and get training in federal law so this doesn’t happen again. This sounds like a simpler, abbreviated form of government reeducation. Where do we know this from?

The government says this is a violation of federal, state and local laws. This is surely because of federal mandates on the state and local governments raising questions about the role of federalism and how it is being perverted by federal grants and their associated mandates.

Maybe this case is so outrageous simply because it raises the question of what can’t the government do if they chose to?

 

 
Tea Party DC

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I have heard that the Obama Administration has recently back-tracked on the plan to label Conservative Christians as “non” Christians….but that doesn’t make what’s already been said go away.  Misconceptions and, well, slander should still be addressed.

So…in the statements below, Mr. Jim Wallis appears to be judgemental, angry, intolerant, and impatient with fellow Christians …and doesn’t appear to even like Americans of light skin tone.  But this is who our President asks to speak into the Spiritual lives of Americans… so he must have a warm heart and ability to love his brothers and sisters in the Lord, even if they disagree with him.

As Christians, would Jim Wallis and David Gushee be willing to sit down and just listen to a few of their conservative Brothers & Sisters in Christ – just sit down, with love, patience, respect and tolerance, and listen, with a heart open to understanding and without trying to correct or instruct?  Just as they would with Wallis’ friend, the Imam in charge of the planned Mosque near Ground Zero?

World News Daily: ‘Christians’ set to attack tea partiers
Author warns of next assault after failed attempt to define group as racist

“With recent attempts to portray tea-party members as racist backfiring, a renewed attack is being launched, warns the author of “The Tea Party Manifesto,” and this one is from progressive Christians who claim the movement lacks Christlike charity.

“Just as the racism accusation from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People proved groundless before it deteriorated into an embarrassing public-relations disaster that encompassed the White House, says Joseph Farah, author of the “Manifesto,” no one should accept the latest salvo as gospel either. Federal welfare programs are “coercively taking money from people and redistributing to other people, which, at the end of the day, is legalized stealing,” Religion News Service recently quoted Farah as saying. “And the Bible is pretty firm on stealing. … When Jesus talks about clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, he’s talking to us as individuals. [The Bible doesn't] suggest that government is the institution that he designed to help the poor.”

Progressive Christians with ties to the Obama administration – whose policies of government expansion over private-sector industries gave rise, in part, to the tea-party groups – characterized the movement as unbiblical.

“I think that the general ideology of the tea party is not a Christian one,” said David Gushee, co-founder of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good. “This kind of small-government libertarianism, small-taxes, leave-me-alone-to-live-my-life ideology has more in common with Ayn Rand than it does with the Bible.”

In one of his regular columns on the Huffington Post, Gushee wrote,

“I believe that extending health-care access to every American was always the right goal and reflects the moral commitments of the Christian faith.”

Gushee’s biography boasts of being “contacted by candidate Barack Obama and remain(ing) in conversation with the religious-affairs office of the Obama administration.”

The Rev. Jim Wallis, founder of the Washington-based social-justice group Sojourners and a key member of Obama’s faith council, is “even blunter in his assessment of the tea party’s approach to giving,” reports Religion News Service.

“The libertarian enshrinement of individual choice is not the pre-eminent Christian virtue,” he wrote on his blog, God’s Politics. “Emphasizing individual rights at the expense of others violates the common good, a central Christian teaching and tradition.”

How “Christian virtue” and “the common good” jibe with Wallis’ own documented radical associations and stances, including support of violent extremists, oppressive regimes and anti-American sentiment, warrants examination, critics say.

While the Associated Press described him as a “politically progressive evangelical,” Wallis reportedly served as Michigan leader of the Students for a Democratic Society – out of which Bill Ayers’ domestic-terrorist group the Weather Underground sprouted.

Wallis’ magazine Sojourners, reports WND, “actively lobbied for communist regimes that seized power in Latin America in the late 1970s.” His 1976 book “Agenda of Biblical People” called America “the great power, the great seducer, the great captor and destroyer of human life, the great master of humanity and history in its totalitarian claims and designs.”

Wallis got involved early in the racism offensive against the tea party.

“There is something wrong with a political movement like the Tea Party which is almost all white,” he blogged May 27. “Does that mean every member of the tea party is racist? Likely not. But is an undercurrent of white resentment part of the tea party ethos, and would there even be a tea party if the president of the United States weren’t the first black man to occupy that office?” 

Farah, who wrote a book as far back as 2003 predicting the circumstances that would foster the tea-party movement, advises resisting attempts to narrow its scope to tax reform and fiscal issues. Subtitled “A Vision for an American Rebirth,” Farah’s “The Tea Party Manifesto” argues for following the Framers’ example in defining the movement’s spiritual core.

With “phase two in the coordinate strike against the tea-party movement attempting to co-opt the language of faith,” Farah warns, “realizing its spiritual moorings is essential not only to the success, but the actual survival, of the movement – and the future of America’s liberty.”

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