Dear Friends,
What's next? Speech against "a woman's right to choose" is illegal? If this hate crimes bill passes, the pro-life community may be the next one silenced. No more prayer outside the abortion centers. No more reaching out with compassion and hope to mothers. No more speaking out against abortion at all. Anywhere. Please call your U.S. Senators and ask them to vote against the hate crimes bill. Read on to learn the effects of this bill. God bless, JA


Action Alert

U.S. Senate set to effectively endorse deviant and criminal behaviors under hate crimes amendment

In a shameless act, Senators Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) filed the anti-Christian "hate crimes" legislation as an amendment to the Department of Defense Reauthorization Bill. This bill is currently being debated in the U.S. Senate and a vote could come as early as Friday July 13th or next week.

This amendment makes sexual orientation a protected class yet, sexual orientation is not defined either in this legislation, or in federal law generally.

Contact your Senators at: http://capwiz.com/traditional/home/

What Are The Effects of the So-Called Hates Crimes Amendment?

This so-called "hate crimes" amendment will make 30 sexual orientations: http://www.traditionalvalues.org/pdf_files/SexualOrientationsDSMRev.pdf into federally-protected minority groups! The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has published 30 such sexual orientations that, because of Congress's failure to define "sexual orientation," will arguably be protected under this legislation. These 30 orientations are listed in the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), which is used by physicians, psychologists, social workers, nurses, and psychiatrists throughout the U.S. It is considered the dictionary of mental disorders. Those 30 sexual orientations include behaviors that are felonies or misdemeanors in most states or can result in death.

Serious Threat to Religious Liberties. This language begins to lay the legal foundation and framework to investigate, prosecute and persecute pastors, business owners, and anyone else whose actions are based upon and reflect the truths found in the Bible.

So-called "hate speech" which could include a pastor's sermon, an author, citizen activist who writes a letter to the editor, or individual speech against homosexual behaviors, could become the target of zealous pro-homosexual federal prosecutors!

During the House Committee debate, Representative Artur Davis admitted that the "hate-crimes" bill could be used to prosecute pastors for their sermons if they incite or are an "inducement" to violence.

H.R. 1592 is based upon a false premise: That there's an epidemic of so-called "hate crimes" against homosexuals and drag queens that needs federal involvement for local law enforcement officials!

Immediate Action is needed: Contact your (2) U.S. Senators and tell them to oppose the so-called hate crimes amendment to the Department of Defense Reauthorization Bill. because:

Congress's refusal to define "sexual orientation" creates the prospect of legal protection for every form of sexual perversion recognized by the psychiatric profession. By its silence, Congress is effectively endorsing such deviant and criminal behaviors as beastiality, pedophilia, and necrophilia as "sexual orientations" protected by federal law.

It lays the legal foundation and framework to investigate, prosecute and persecute pastors, business owners, and anyone else whose actions are based upon and reflect the truths found in the Bible.

Contact your Senators at: http://capwiz.com/traditional/home/

Distribute this email to your church leadership and at least 10 friends and ask that they contact their U. S. Senators IMMEDIATELY!

Traditional Values Coalition
139 "C" Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003
Web site address: http://www.traditionalvalues.org/


Submitted by
Jessie Anne Nobles
Ministries Assistant

Labels: pro-life efforts

Over on the blog of Jill Stanek, there has been a raging debate between pro-lifers on whether or not to support incremental legislation and whether or not such legislation helps or hinders the pro-life cause.

Most of the people in the pro-life movement support incremental legislation because it works. In many states where various laws restricting abortion have been implemented we have seen a reduction in the numbers of abortions performed.

On the other side you have those who say that the support of any legislation that does not absolutely ban abortion in effect allows abortion to continue, and in some cases even encourages it, and is therefore evil and cannot be supported.

One of the bases for this argument is that by allowing abortion to continue, these types of laws chip away at the dignity of the human person and help people to turn away from the humanity of the unborn. The end result, it would seem, is a more callous disregard for the rights of the unborn and a slow, slippery slope towards legitimizing more abhorrent forms of death to more groups of people.

But is the assertion correct that supporting incremental laws chips away at already existing human dignities? Another way to ask that question is: Does the child in the womb today enjoy protected status that would demand respect for their life?

The answer, according to the Supreme Court is a big, fat "NO" and the exact wording from the Roe V. Wade decision goes like this,

"All this, together with our observation, supra, that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn."

You can't chip away at something that doesn't exist.

Our culture is called a "culture of death" exactly because we lack the traditional respect for the dignity of the human person that is necessary for our survival. In order to fix the culture, we must take the time and effort to rebuild that respect for human life and do it one step at a time. Every human endeavour works this way and the fight to restore protection for the unborn is no different.

Or as Pope John Paul II put it when he addressed the young people gathered by the millions in Toronto for World Youth Day in 2002:

"The aspiration that humanity nurtures, amid countless injustices and sufferings, is the hope of a new civilization marked by freedom and peace. But for such an undertaking, a new generation of builders is needed. Moved not by fear or violence but by the urgency of genuine love, they must learn to build, brick by brick, the city of God within the city of man."

Labels: pro-life efforts

In early February, Fonda Lash, Maria Graham and I were sent to Acapulco to train Father Pablo Straub's Missionaries of the Holy Savior in Sidewalk Counseling, the organization of the CPLC and to help with materials for their pro-life efforts.

While the opportunities for evangelization in such a city are endless, the biggest challenge presented itself as the question, "where do we start?" With a priest in the diocese of Guerrero who wishes to start a diocesan pro-life ministry, a doctor who runs the only Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) in the city, and Fr. Pablo Straub's order working with them, pro-lifers of Acapulco already have a great foundation with which to begin.

We were able to give a sidewalk counseling training to over 80 nuns, brothers, priests and local townspeople. In addition, we found that a couple meetings with Fr. Pablo Straub, the CPC Doctor, as well as a couple nuns would prove to be a pivotal point in pro-life efforts in Acapulco.

From these meetings of brainstorming and deliberating, Fr. Pablo conjured up two concrete plans: one for evangelization and the other for pro-life education of the city. As you can see, they truly are starting from the ground up.

During these meetings, we also found out that there is only one crisis pregnancy center in all of Mexico City. ONE! Can you believe it?

Please pray for the continued pro-life efforts in Acapulco and all of Mexico, as people work hard to get the truth of abortion and life issues known in a place where education on these topics is sparse.

Labels: Acapulco, Mexico, pro-life efforts

Anyone who has been paying attention to the current fight to release churches from their imposed restriction on saying things political is aware of how powerful they are.

Case in point, the US Bishops have gone out of their way in the past 30 years (since Roe v Wade) to tell us faithful Catholics that our faith must inform every action that we do, and that this necessary includes involvement in political life. As a matter of fact, since the political scene is such an important one because it affects so many aspects of the issues that the Catholic Church is rightly concerened with, they have given our political involvement higher play than usual.

Well and good. But then at the same time we are told that we cannot endorse political parties or candidates due to a law that was passed with the intent of muzzling powerful religous organizations.

Why this conflict? How can we be encouraged to go full bore into something but yet, at the same time be barred from doing one of the most important things that one can do in political life, endorsing and supporting a particular candidate?

Now we are told that this is OK, as the Church would not want to endorse any particular party because there is not really a Catholic position on what the minimum wage should be, and that Catholics of all stripes can disagree on what it should be. Fine. But why are we willing to submit to this restriction meekly and in fact have allowed so many clergy mento use it as a crutch to NOT get involved in political life. As if the mission of the Church is so much different than the mission of our government. After all, both receive the law from God and both are tasked with making sure that the law will be carried out and protected.

We should not have this law hanging over our heads. It is an unconstitutional invention that unfairly suppresses free speech and that for too long has paralyzed Churches into meek submission of phantom threats of IRS dismantling of a 501 C 3 status.

Maybe the Church should not endorse candidates or political parties. But the CHURCH should decide that, not the government.

Labels: pro-life efforts