Street preacher gets a reprieve

Mike Overd preaches the gospel regularly in the streets of Taunton, motivated, he says, by his love for Jesus Christ and a deep concern for people who don't know His great love.

One day a man who identified himself as a homosexual objected to something that was said about homosexuality and insisted on debating it. Mr Overd was charged under the Public Order Act, which deals with threatening words or behaviour. At Bristol Crown Court he was fined, ordered to pay costs and ordered to pay compensation.

The Christian Legal Centre (part of Christian Concern) took a dim view of a remark by the judge that Mr Overd should not have referred to Lev 20:13 in explaining what the Bible said but could have used Lev 18:22, and decided to back Mr Overd in an appeal.

At Taunton Crown Court Circuit Judge David Ticehurst upheld the appeal and overturned the conviction.

King Solomon High School in Redbridge recently held an "LGBT Week." The pupils were given rainbow badges which they were told they must wear or they would be given detention. 

When one of the sixth form girls went home with the news, her mother, Anna Erickson-hull, wrote a protest on her Facebook page. She quoted 1 Cor 6:9, 10: "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God."

Apparently someone complained to Facebook, and Facebook took down her Facebook page.

The Office for National Statistics says that one per cent of the population in Britain is homosexual. Actually, the figure is 1.6 per cent, but that includes bisexuals. That one per cent is holding this nation to ransom, and the nation is helping it do so.

The sooner this nation comes back to its senses the better.  
      

Is anyone listening?

When sin begins, it doesn't add up; it multiplies. We are living in desperate days. For hundreds of years marriage was only between a man and a woman: it never entered anyone's head that this was in any way unequal.

Now, in the name of equality, the US Supreme Court has followed the UK's example and legalised same-sex marriage in all 50 states. (Critics say the Supreme Court justices have ignored the law and the Constitution and rewritten the law according to their left-wing mindset.)

More and more denominations are accepting same-sex marriage. More and more churches are in agreement with divorce and remarriage.

Have you noticed the state of British television? More and more programmes are based on sex. Programme makers appear to be vying with each other to see who can be the more explicit. Blasphemy, which would have been unheard of on television a few years ago, is now the common language on some programmes.

Many would say that legalised abortion is so entrenched that it would be impossible to reverse. The Bible says that nothing is impossible with God. Six hundred unborn babies are being killed each day in the UK.

I am told that some Christian groups are now trying to live outside of society,  without reference to the standards of society around them. Their attitude is incorrect. Christians are meant to take a stand on all these issues.

Corporate prayer is desperately needed.

What is required is not sympathy, but action. Is anybody listening?
    

A very worthwhile job

Maggie Gobran is a Coptic Christian. She was brought up in Egypt, the daughter of a wealthy physician. She had maids, wore the latest fashions, holidayed in Europe, bought clothes in Paris. She had a good education, and became a marketing executive and a college professor.

In her mid-thirties, with a husband and two children, Maggie felt the need to choose between living the rest of her life in self-pleasing and doing something more worthwhile. She felt the call to full-time service.

In Cairo there are garbage villages. Fifty thousand people live in them in shacks among piles of rotting garbage, some seven or eight to a room, many with no water or sanitation. They are known as garbage people.They collect the garbage from Cairo's residents and exist off what they find among it.

They live in sewage, disease and overpowering stench. Almost half the children there will die before they are five years old. Many of the people are illiterate; some have never travelled on a bus or slept in a bed. Violence and sexual abuse are commonplace.

Mama Maggie, as she is known, began to visit the garbage villages. In 1989 she founded Stephen's Children, a charitable organisation. Now hundreds of workers and volunteers help with food, clothing, free medical treatment, education and vocational training.They serve 30,000 poor families every day. Mama Maggie builds kindergartens, schools, community centres, children's camps and homes for boys and girls.

She rises to pray at 3am. During the day, you will see her in a garbage village. washing children's feet and assuring them that they are loved. Often, she disappears to a monastery in the desert to seek God's face on behalf of the children.

"I want to go on with our work for the poor more and more, until it spreads all over Egypt, the Middle East and the whole world, to make a better place for humanity - especially the children," she says.

"This is the real love story. The one that lasts for ever."

In recent years of political turmoil in Egypt, churches have been burned to the ground. Christian homes and businesses have been torched. Christians have been killed. Many have been kidnapped for ransom.

One man's house was surrounded one dark night by a mob with long knives challenging him to come out so they could kill him. The man stepped out into the street. He focussed on one young man in the mob. "Why do you hate me?" he said. He looked the young man in the eye. "I don't hate you," he said. "I love you." The mob slowly melted away into the darkness.

Mama Maggie has been advised to leave Egypt for her own safety. "Jesus would not leave," she says. "He would stay with His people. I must do the same."

Mama Maggie's story is the subject of a new book, Mama Maggie: The untold story of one woman's mission to love the forgotten children of Egypt's garbage slums, by Marty Makary and Ellen Vaughn. Nashville, Tennessee: Nelson Books, 2015.

Christian? 'Intolerant, superstitious and backward'

Christians are the sort of people who built our civilisation, founded our democracies, developed our modern ideas of rights and justice, ended slavery, established universal education and who are now in the forefront of the fight against poverty, prejudice and ignorance.

Yet Christians have been swamped with such a tidal wave of prejudice and negativity that to call yourself a Christian in contemporary Britain is to declare yourself intolerant, naive, superstitious and backward. And invite pity, condescension or cool dismissal.

So says former Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove.

How did it come to this?

"The contrast between the Christianity I see our culture belittle nightly and the Christianity I see our country benefit from daily could not be greater," writes Gove in the Spectator.

"The reality of Christian mission in today's churches is a story of thousands of quiet kindnesses. In many of our most disadvantaged communities it is the churches that provide warmth, food, friendship and support for individuals who have fallen on the worst of times. The homeless, those in the grip of alcoholism or drug addiction, individuals with undiagnosed mental health problems and those overwhelmed by multiple crises are all helped - in innumerable ways - by Christians.

"Churches provide debt counselling, marriage guidance, childcare, English language lessons, after-school clubs, food banks, emergency accommodation and sometimes most importantly of all, someone to listen. . .

"Belief in the unique and valuable nature of every individual should make us angry at oppression, at the racism which divides and the prejudice which demeans humanity. And it was deep, radical Christian faith which inspired many of our greatest political heroes - Wilberforce, Shaftesbury, Lincoln, Gladstone, Pope John Paul II and Martin Luther King. There should be nothing to be ashamed of in finding their example inspirational, the words and beliefs that moved them beautiful and true."

Parliament may have its share of black sheep. But thank God, say I, for someone who is a Christian and is not afraid to say so.
     

Child sex exploitation: We're to blame too

Realisation is beginning to sink in.

When the news broke about the sexual exploitation of young girls, vast numbers of them, by Asian gangs in Rochdale, in Rotherham, in Oxfordshire, it was a matter of finding someone to blame. It was the Muslim culture. It was the police, who hadn't done their job. It was social services, who didn't care.

There was criminal activity. Of that there is no doubt. The police had failed to take action, as a result of decisions by senior police officers. Social workers had chosen to ignore the situation, for whatever reason.  But it's now admitted that society was to blame too in making it possible. Society. That's you and me.

We said yes to easy divorce. We pretended cohabitation was as good as marriage, when all the evidence was to the contrary.

There was never enough sex education. We insisted  - and still insist - on explicit sex education to younger and younger children. We failed to prevent access to pornography. We provided free contraception and the morning-after pill for children long before they were old enough to consent to sex. When children became pregnant, we provided free abortion, and counsellors to see them through the abortion process so their parents wouldn't have to know.

We are reaping what we have sown. We have scorned Christian principles and gone for the opinions of secular humanists who pretend to be experts.

It's too late to undo the damage that has been done. But it's not too late to start again - with principles that work.
    

So how did we get in this state?

Where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we understand Him? I guess that's a sign that I'm getting old. . . But there are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities come from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different. This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking.

In light of recent events. . . terrorists attack, school shootings etc. . . I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. . . The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbour as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr Spock's son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he's talking about, and we said OK.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with "We reap what we sow."

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell. Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. Funny how you can send jokes through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing. Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing yet?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you're not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit.

If not, then just discard it. . . no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don't sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

The above was written and recited by Steven Levy on America's CBS Sunday Morning Commentary. It could apply equally to the UK.

Just thought you might like to think about it.
   

'British values' - or religious freedom?

Someone suggested that attempting to prevent Islamic extremism being taught in British schools would have repercussions for Christianity. Well, it has.

A successful Christian school in the Home Counties is said to have been downgraded from "good" to "adequate" and could even face closure because it failed to invite a leader from another religion, such as an imam, to lead assemblies.

The school is said to have been in breach of new rules to promote "British values" such as liberty and tolerance, following the Trojan Horse scandal involving Muslim schools in Birmingham.

Orthodox Jewish schools have complained about recent inspections in which girls from strict traditional backgrounds are alleged to have been asked if they were being taught enough about lesbianism, if they had boyfriends and if they knew where babies came from. The girls were said to have been left "traumatised."

The Telegraph, which reported the case, suggests the new rules were pushed through during the school holidays.

The Christian Institute, which is providing legal backing for the Christian school and is preparing a judicial review of the new regulations, says they are "invasive and unjustified." Simon Calvert, the institute's deputy director, says the regulations are invading the rights of children, parents, teachers and schools to hold and practise their religious beliefs.

Home schooling, anyone?
   

Marriage 'till death us do part'?

A recent article by demographers said that the current divorce rate is much higher than previously thought, especially among those 35 and over.

"This news," says Patrick Lee, a professor of bioethics, "suggests that two generations of no-fault divorce (among other things) have altered the general concept of marriage and have severely eroded our society's confidence that marriage can be counted on.

"Indeed, the high divorce rate has ceased to shock or even concern many people. Divorce has become an acceptable, normal fact of life. The predominant view is that many marriages break down through no fault on the part of either spouse: they simply "grow apart." And so - the thinking goes - one cannot expect married men and women to remain devoted to each other until death parts them. If marriage is a love relationship, and the love has died, is it not pointless to continue with the charade of 'marriage'?

"But this conventional wisdom is based on a redefinition of what marriage is. In the traditional understanding, the term 'marriage' is reserved for the comprehensive union of a man and a woman - bodily, emotional and spiritual. . . In the alternative view, marriage is seen as an essentially emotional and sexual relationship that, by implication, can be dissolved when the relationship is no longer emotionally fulfilling.

"This false view has caused marriage to be fragile and has led to immeasurable tragedy for children, wives, and husbands."

Marriage, says Professor Lee, requires a lifelong commitment. But what of those couples who simply "grow apart"?

Read the rest of the article. (You can see it here.) What the author says needs to be heard.
      

Home at last

Viorel Cebotari was born in a village in Moldova. When he was two, his father committed suicide, leaving his mother to bring him up alone. She had trouble. As a teenager, Viorel was constantly in bother with the police, and frequently in and out of prison for drinking, stealing and fighting.

He married four times - and each time his wife left him. At 25, he attempted suicide by drinking poison. He was taken to hospital, and recovered.

He never thought about God until he found himself in prison after seriously injuring a man in a bar-room brawl. His cellmate, seeming to believe there might be a God, asked him questions. Viorel's mother was a teacher, and there were always books around at home, but they all said there was no God, and that we all evolved from monkeys.

Sick of living, Viorel did a deal with the God he didn't know. "If you really exist," he said, "get me out of this prison and I'll serve you."

He got out of the prison, but went back to his old ways. God reminded him of his promise, but he thought he would have to live in a monastery, and he didn't know where there were any monasteries. 

He would have to get his hands on a Bible, he thought. "I really thought it would be written in there which monastery I should go to and where I would find it."

He found a Bible and started to read. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." It felt like an electric current flowing through his body. Immediately, he knew this book was like no other book.

He read on. He found a woman taken in adultery. Jesus forgave her. He found a woman who had had five husbands. Jesus accepted her. He saw the thief on the cross. His own relatives didn't want anything to do with him, but Jesus accepted them. For the first time in ages he felt hope.

He took the Bible with him everywhere he went, and would read it even when he was drunk. He realised now that what he was doing was wrong, but he couldn't stop. "How is it possible to know all this and be unable to live it?" he said.

Finally, he broke down and wept. When he stopped trying to be good in his own strength, God met him.

He looked for a church in his own village, and found four old ladies meeting in a private home. They didn't know how to talk to him, but they accepted him.

They gave out food parcels, firewood and school supplies. They started a day centre for vulnerable children. The villagers had a prejudice against evangelical believers, and they knew Viorel's record.

The grandmother and the mother of two children in the day centre were converted. Some of the parents, most of them alcoholics, now come regularly to church.

After watching him carefully, they have decided that Viorel and his friends are not a sect who want to steal and sell their children, but are truly people of God.
 

Same-sex marriage: A sad day

The first same-sex marriages in Britain took place today..

The following time-honoured words, as someone pointed out, have effectively been consigned to the dustbin of history:

Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee; and is commanded of Saint Paul to be honourable among all men; and therefore is not by any to be enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy man's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God, duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained.

First, it was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.

Secondly, it was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication;
; that such persons as have not the gift of continency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ's body.

Thirdly, it was ordained for the mutual society, help and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity, unto which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined. . .

God ordained marriage at the beginning of time:

Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.  Gen 2:24.

Jesus clearly supported it:

"Have you not read that he who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,'

"and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'?

"So then, they are no longer two but one flesh.Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."  Matt 19:4 - 6.

Marriage has stood for thousands of years. Those who have dared to redefine it have done the nation a great disservice.

The Cutting Edge Consortium and the LGBTI Anglican Coalition welcomed the change in the marriage law, which they say "has evolved over the centuries in response to changes in society and in scientific knowledge."

They continue: "We acknowledge that some (though not all) of the faith organisations to which we belong do not share our joy, and continue to express opposition in principle to such marriages. We look forward to the time, sooner rather than later, when all people of faith will feel able to welcome this development."

They may have a long wait. God's institutions, and God's word, are not so easily overturned.

Sex and the church

Dr Lisa Severine Nolland, writer, lay chaplain and consultant to Anglican Mainstream, has worked with children, adolescents and families for years.

Before same-sex marriage was legalised, she says, younger people didn't care about the issue. Older people, especially Christian leaders, would say "just preach the gospel," or "run another Christianity Explored or Alpha - that should sort things." Such approaches, she says, are understandable, but naive at best and ignorantly culpable at worst.

She warns that we are in a sexual revolution of the first order, which is affecting us all, inside and outside the church. Now same-sex marriage has been legalised, other alternative sexual lifestyles, including plural partnerships, are demanding the same rights on the same basis - "This is me and my identity, I was born this way, I am not hurting anyone, society discriminates against me, I am not putting up with it any more."

There is a danger, she says, that the antediluvian views of those who still believe in traditional marriage will go the way of the dinosaur, at least in public. Preachers will steer ever more clear of these minefields, majoring on "love and acceptance." Children will be taught to affirm all family forms, which are no better and no worse than any other, and that to believe to the contrary is evil.

But it is not too late to respond to these challenges. Here, says Dr Nolland, is what we can do:

1.   Blow the whistle on the myth that Jesus did not speak much about sex issues. He did. Sex matters a lot to Jesus. Sex was good, but only in a monogamous heterosexual marriage.  

2.   Stand up for the view that living and thinking in a distinctively Christian manner in relation to sex and marriage is a vital part of Christian discipleship. Ask your church leadership to do the same.

3.   Get yourself educated on the dangers of all sex outside this framework and the benefit to children of married heterosexual parents, and teach your children the uncensored, real version. Ask your church leadership to do the same

4.   Become culturally and politically engaged through groups like Christian Concern, Christian Institute or C4M in the UK, or National Organization for Marriage or other conservative groups in the US.

5.  Pray individually and corporately about these matters. 

The need is desperate.

Life and death: A time to remember

Anka Bergman married her husband Bernd in her native Czechoslovakia in 1940.

In 1941 they were both sent to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt. The sexes were segregated, but they managed to meet, and Anka fell pregnant. When her pregnancy was discovered, she was forced to sign a paper agreeing to hand over the baby to the Gestapo when it was born so the baby could be killed.

She gave birth to a son, George. Surprisingly, he wasn't handed over, but died of pneumonia when he was two months old.

Bernd was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. By this time, Anka was pregnant again. She volunteered to go to Auschwitz the day after her husband was moved. She never saw him again. He was shot dead in Auschwitz a week before the camp was liberated by the Red Army.

On her arrival in Auschwitz, her pregnancy was not discovered and she was selected to live by Josef Mengele. Her son George's death saved her life. If she had had her baby, she would have gone straight to the gas chambers.

After 10 days of "hell on earth," she was transported to work in a munitions factory in Germany. After her pregnancy became obvious, she was transported with others for three weeks without food in an open coal truck to the death camp at Mauthausen. When she saw the name, she went into labour.

Anka gave birth to her daughter Eva in a cart filled with people suffering from typhoid. She weighed five stones; her baby weighed about three pounds. Her baby was wrapped in newspaper to try to keep her warm.

She survived for two reasons: the Germans had stopped gassing people and blown up the gas chamber the previous day, and the camp was liberated by the American Army a week later. Strangely, Anka had always believed she would survive the Holocaust.

When she returned to Prague, 15 members of her family had perished. She was taken in by a surviving cousin. After the war, Anka came to Britain with her daughter.

She died last July, aged 96, leaving a daughter, grandchildren and great grandchildren. 

● Yesterday/today (Monday evening to Tuesday evening) is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Music saved her life

Alice Herz-Sommer, who lives in London, is the oldest living Holocaust survivor. She is also said to be the world's oldest living pianist.

Born in Prague with a remarkable musical gift, she became a concert pianist. After the Germans invaded, she was sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp, a "show camp" of artists, writers and musicians.

She gave more than a hundred concerts for the starving inmates. They had only a little black coffee and a little watery soup, but music kept them alive. "This was their food," she says.

She survived the war, and moved to London some 25 years ago. She is 109.

I wrote a blog post about her almost two years ago. Now someone has contacted me to tell me of the release of a full-length film, The Lady in Number Six, telling the story of her life.

You can see extracts from the film here.

'The nicest man in the world'

A remarkable story has come to light this month. Brigitte Hoess, a German woman who lives in the United States, worked in Washington for 35 years for a Jewish couple who fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Brigitte's father, Rudolf Hoess, was the commandant at Auschwitz, where 1.1 million Jews were killed, along with 20,000 gypsies and tens of thousands of Russian and Polish political prisoners. After the war, Rudolf Hoess was captured and executed.

Brigitte travelled to Spain and worked as a model for dress maker Balenciaga, then to the US, where a Jewish store owner asked her to work for her. Soon after she was hired, she got drunk and confided that Rudolf Hoess was her father. The Jewish lady said she could stay, as she had committed no crime herself and was not responsible for her father.

The son of the store owners said they had employed Brigitte out of a sense of humanity. "I am proud to be their son," he said.

Brigitte was tracked down and interviewed by British writer Thomas Harding, whose great uncle, Hanns Alexander, captured Rudolf Hoess hiding on a German farm in 1946.

Asked about her father, Brigitte, now 80, says he was "the nicest man in the world." There must have been two sides to him, "the one I knew, and then another." He was, she says, "very good to us." She remembers them eating together, playing in the garden, and reading the story of Hansel and Gretel.

She does not deny what happened in Auschwitz, but questions that so many people were killed. Above her bed hangs her parents' wedding photograph, taken in 1929.

Homosexuality and 'jackboot thuggery'

Twenty-five years ago, almost two-thirds of the British public opposed same-sex relationships because they believed they were morally wrong. Today, according to the new British Social Attitudes Survey, only one person in five disapproves of homosexual relationships in principle.

How could there be so major a change in attitude in so short a space of time?

For one thing, homosexual activists have taken patently false facts - like people are born homosexual and cannot be changed - and shouted down anyone who dares to oppose them. Oppose them, and you are automatically "homophobic" and "a bigot."

They have campaigned vociferously for their human rights as a persecuted minority. And they have created a politically-correct worldview which people have not cared to contradict.

Here's Bill Muehlenberg again:

The militant homosexual lobby has long ago stopped pretending it is about achieving “equality” and “tolerance”. They have instead made it clear that they will settle for nothing less than the complete homosexualisation of society. All resistance will be ruthlessly opposed, and everyone will be expected to embrace, promote and even favour the homosexual agenda.

It is no longer a question of the normalisation of homosexuality, but the glamourisation and forced exaltation of the lifestyle. Our coercive utopian leaders are now telling us, ‘You will love and embrace homosexuality. You have no other option. All resistance will be punished.’

I have of course already documented case after case of this state-enforced promotion of homosexuality, with recalcitrants facing the music. Every time I think I should get my new book off to the printers, a whole new bunch of cases arise.

Last year the state of California for example led the way by banning reparative therapy for homosexuals. So even though a person may desperately want to get out of this lifestyle and change his ways, the Californian tyrants have declared that to be verboten.

It does not matter if you have a strong longing to get out of homosexual bondage. The state has decided that this desire is wrong, and anyone daring to help such a person will feel the full force of the law. And now New Jersey has just become the second state to pass such a draconian and totalitarian law. . .

So the forcible prevention of changing one’s lifestyle and sexual preferences has now become the business of the Totalist State. Simply add this bit of jackboot thuggery to the never-ending list of other outrages perpetrated by the homosexual militants and their state supporters, and you have a recipe for a genuine Police State rivalling anything Huxley or Orwell might have dreamt up.

The real target of course is the church. The activists know that once they shut down Christianity for good, then their free rein to totally transform society will be complete. Silence all dissenting Christians, and the homonazi agenda can go through unimpeded.

As Matt Barber has correctly observed, “‘Gay pride’ necessitates anti-Christian hate. It must. ‘Gay marriage’ and other ‘sexual orientation’-based laws do violence to freedom and truth. They are the hammer with which the postmodern left intends to bludgeon bloody religious liberty and the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic”. . .

“Ken Hutcherson, an influential black pastor from the Seattle area, put it well: ‘It has been said loudly and proudly that gay marriage is a civil rights issue. If that’s the case, then gays would be the new African-Americans. I’m here to tell you now, and hopefully for the last time, that the gay community is not the new African-American community. Don’t compare your sin to my skin!’

“Some things never change. Other things do. Today’s liberals seek to ‘rehabilitate’ Christians to their way of thinking under penalty of law. Liberals of old just threw us to the lions. I guess that’s what they mean by ‘progress’.”