Why christians are upset...

[Merry99%]

Judge Prohibits Mother from Teaching on Homosexuality
Denver County Circuit Judge John Coughlin recently prohibited professing Christian Cheryl Clark from teaching her eight-year-old daughter about the biblical view of homosexuality.

Between 1995 and 2000, Dr. Clark was involved in a lesbian relationship that ended when she converted to the Christian faith. After the break-up, her former partner, Elsey McLeod, sued for custody of Clark’s daughter. Incredibly, a county judge awarded joint custody to both women.

As a result, Judge John Coughlin ordered Clark to “make sure that there is nothing in the religious upbringing or teaching that the minor child is exposed to that can be considered homophobic.”

Immediately following the ruling, Dr. Clark appealed this decision. Liberty Counsel has filed an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief to assist Clark’s appeal. Mat Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, stated, “We’ve seen cases around the country where the court will order one parent not to say anything negative about the other spouse’s lifestyle, but this goes much further than anything we’ve seen.”

“The mother is a Christian, and that’s a major part of her lifestyle. She would be prohibited from reading her daughter Romans 1 or anything in the Bible dealing with sexual fidelity in marriage,” Staver told reporters. “Elsey never adopted this child. It’s an egregious situation because the court is giving custody to someone who is not related to the child and has not adopted the child.”

Dr. D. James Kennedy, president and founder of the CENTER FOR RECLAIMING AMERICA, stated, “This decision shows a clear bias. Essentially, this judge has ruled that the ideals of homosexuality outweigh the ideals of Christianity. As a result, this homosexual woman may openly flaunt her way of life, while the court has placed a judicial muzzle on the child’s Christian mother.”



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Source List:
“Mother Appeals Ruling on Gays,” The Washington Times, November 5, 2003.
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20031105-122726-4541r.htm
IS christianophobic a word yet? :rolleyes:

[Merry99%]

N.H. Supreme Court: Lesbian Affair Does Not Constitute Adultery
Friday, November 14, 2003

By Sam Kastensmidt


David Blanchflower, of Hanover, N.H., recently filed for divorce after he learned that his wife, Sian, had engaged in a lesbian affair. During the divorce proceedings, Sian argued that her lesbian affair does not meet the legal definition of adultery. Initially, a family court judge dismissed these claims, but Ms. Blanchflower appealed her case to the New Hampshire Supreme Court arguing that gay sex should not constitute adultery.

Incredibly, on November 8, the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that adultery does not include extramarital, homosexual affairs.

The Court’s Logic

The court’s majority opinion reasoned that lesbians could not engage in sexual intercourse, and, therefore, that their behavior should not be considered adultery. The majority opinion wrote, “This standard would permit a hundred different judges… to decide just what individual acts are so sexually intimate as to meet the definition.”

The Dissent

Meanwhile the dissenting opinion, including Chief Justice David Brock and Justice John Broderick, argued that a relationship should be considered adulterous if “it occurs outside of marriage and involves intimate sexual activity, not because it involves only one particular sex act.”

Marcus Hurn, a professor at Franklin Pierce Law Center, stated, “I think the majority opinion is unintentionally trivializing same-sex relations and violating modern notions of the sanctity of marriage.”

[Merry99%]

http://www.reclaimamerica.org/PAGES/fastfacts.asp
These fact sheets are packed with valuable information and statistics to help you handle any of the hot issues of today. FASTFACTS are published by the CENTER FOR RECLAIMING AMERICA, an Outreach of Coral Ridge Ministries, to inform citizens and offer vital resources so you can take a stand in your community. They are designed so that you may easily print them out from your own home and use them or distribute them as necessary.


Available FASTFACTS:



Abortion* The Cultural Mandate*
Abstinence* UPDATED! Gambling*
America's Christian Heritage* The Family*
Anti-Christian Bigotry UPDATED! Hate Crimes
Assisted Suicide Hate Crimes II*
Assault on the Boy Scouts* Homosexuality* UPDATED!
Boy Scouts: What's at Stake?* Judicial Tyranny* UPDATED!
Boy Scouts in Broward County* The Media*
Creation vs. Evolution* Pornography*

Tolerance*

*(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 Click Here to Download FREE)

I am reading some of the tolerance facts now,it is eyeopening,and shocking to me are some of the stories of how christians have been treated over the past few years.
one story:
25 year old Michelle Shocks of bothell washington was riding a public bus home from work.She was also sharing her faith with a fellow christian.The bus driver told them to stop,when they didn't they were removed from the bus.Shocks was 5 months pregnant and was forced to walk the last half mile in the rain.
Ok even if it offended the driver,why not go a half mile to let her out?Even though she did not OBEY the driver,even if the women may have been speaking too ludly(which the article does not say they were) could the driver just have easily asked them to be quieter? Apparantly not.SAD!

[jdglmg]

This whole thread makes me so sad for our country.

[Merry99%]

Thankfully that is changing:)
http://jewishworldreview.com/0103/prager.html
As for Jews' fears of American Christians, they are even less fact-based than blacks' continuing anger at whites. American Christians were never the anti-Semites of Jewish memory. Those were European Christians who persecuted Jews for all those years, precisely the Christians that America's (Christian) founders fled to establish this different society. American Jews' fears of American Christians are therefore simply irrational, especially now when Christian Americans (outside of the National Council of Churches) are the Jews' and Israel's most loyal friends.


Memory also explains American Jews' irrational fears of the right. Because the Nazis are widely deemed far rightists (yes, Nazism stood for National Socialism, but no leftists or socialists considered it an ideological ally), Jews continuing to only look rightward for anti-Semitic threats is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because it is like looking only to the right when you cross a two-way street because your grandfather was killed by a car coming from the right. And it is dangerous because since World War II, and at this very moment, the greatest anti-Semitism has come from the left.


The result of all these misperceptions on the part of blacks and Jews is that the Democratic Party understands that in order to maintain its overwhelming black and Jewish support, it must abet black anger at whites and abet Jews' fears of Christians and conservatives. And this they do well, to the great detriment of the country.


There are signs, however, that this strategy, at least vis-a-vis the Jews, is beginning to fail. Many Jewish Democrats are thanking God that Christian conservative Republicans (George W. Bush and Dick Cheney) rather than Democrats (Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman) are in the White House. And as they look around, they find that in a world that once again has a cold spot in its heart for the Jews, virtually all their allies are conservatives.


As for blacks, I am less sanguine about the immediate future. A generation of blacks has been repeatedly told by their leaders, by liberal educators, liberal media, and by the Democratic Party that America and whites are racist. They have also been told that the only way out of the social problems that plague parts of black life is through the Democratic Party.


What then should Republicans do? Talk to and especially listen to blacks. Most blacks want, more than anything else, to know that they are being heard. We can ask blacks not to allow their memories of centuries of racism to cloud their views of America today, but they can ask the rest of us not to forget those centuries. We therefore have to say sincerely to blacks, "We will not forget what this country did to you." Only when blacks know that we remember, will they allow themselves to stop being preoccupied with remembering.


With Christians speaking up for Jews and conservatives hearing blacks' memories, the Democrats will no longer be able to win elections by appealing to black anger and Jewish fear. What a better America that will be.

[Merry99%]

Moretti's sculpture only stone, not heart of Christ
Commentary by JAMES L. EVANS
BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD

Who would have dreamed that a major political battle would erupt over the placement of a religious statue in a public place? Oh wait, I forgot, this is Alabama.
This time it's about a marble bust of Christ sculpted by Giuseppe Moretti — the same artist who cast the statue of Vulcan that stands atop Red Mountain in Birmingham. The issue being raised is about where Moretti ultimately wanted his bust of Christ displayed.

One group says Moretti wanted the bust of Christ standing alongside Vulcan. That way Vulcan, the ancient Roman god of fire, and Christ the Savior, would together symbolize Birmingham's economic and spiritual life.

This has been challenged by another group that has produced evidence that Moretti wanted the bust of Christ displayed separately in a museum setting.

Reading like a chapter out of "The Da Vinci Code," proponents on both sides have bolstered their case with ancient letters and cryptic remembrances, not to mention some serious reading between the lines.

There's also been some hardball politics. Led by Jefferson County Commission President Larry Langford, the commission threatened at one point to cut off funding for Vulcan Park if the bust of Christ was not included in the display.

There's a thin veneer of hypocrisy in all this. The debate is being cast in terms of Moretti's original intent for his statue, but that is not what it's really about. Behind all the maneuvering is a veiled attempt to give Jesus equal time on Red Mountain.

Not that Vulcan is serious competition. The religion he once symbolized has been dead for about 2,000 years. No surprise there. Once a faith is reduced to mere statuary it's pretty much finished.

The hillsides in Greece and Italy are littered with the broken remains of once lively faiths. Which begs the question, why do Christians want to display a statue of Jesus?

Not that we should doubt for a moment Moretti's faith. His bust of Christ was a labor of faithful love and devotion. But the effort to display it alongside Vulcan is not. It is a shallow effort to promote the Christian faith by means of a public display.

For those who are truly concerned about the quality of faith, it is important to realize Christianity does not advance by means of public displays or power politics.

Jesus does not find his way into the human heart because of a statue in a public park, or even as the star of a full length feature film. The success and vitality of Christianity depends heavily on our willingness to live out the meaning of Jesus' teaching.

Therefore, instead of trying to get Jesus equal time on Red Mountain, why not turn him loose on some of the desperate problems facing our state?

Let's give him equal time in political arrangements that allow children to languish in poverty with poor education and poor health care.

Let's give Jesus equal time in a tax structure that punishes the poor while rewarding the rich.

Let's give Jesus equal time in a political and economic system that systematically ignores the ones he called "the least of these my family members."

Not that Jesus had anything against mountains. He spoke from them and was even transfigured on top of one. But he would not stay on them. He was always going down the mountain into the valleys where people were hurting and needed his help.

Maybe we should go and do likewise.

James L. Evans is pastor of Crosscreek Baptist Church in Pelham.