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Remember when, a few weeks ago, Newt Gingrich called the forced resignation of Brendan Eich as Mozilla CEO an “open, blatant example of the new fascism”? Charles Krauthammer called it “totalitarian,” Pat Buchanan labeled it “the new blacklist” and RedState headlined it as “a fascist purge.” Even foulmouthed leftist comedian Bill Maher described the perpetrators as the “gay mafia,” while well-known “gay” media personalities condemned it, Andrew Sullivan saying it “disgusts me” and radio talker Tammy Bruce calling out the “gay gestapo.”
As everyone knows, Eich – the tech prodigy who created JavaScript and co-founded Mozilla, maker of the popular Firefox browser – had committed the unpardonable sin of donating, years earlier, $1,000 to California’s Proposition 8 upholding traditional marriage. And when he was forced out as CEO of his company, it seemed everyone was shocked – shocked – at this singularly egregious injustice.
However, in reality, what happened to Brendan Eich – widely denounced as “fascist,” “totalitarian,” “mafia”-like and “gestapo”-like – is not only not unusual in today’s America, it has become a routine and disgraceful part of the normal warp and weft of our daily lives:
- Just last week, HGTV pulled the plug on its highly anticipated new series slated to launch in October, “Flip it Forward,” starring David and Jason Benham. The show promised to provide a true public service in desperate economic times. Hosted by the house-flipping expert Benham brothers, the reality series, says Entertainment Weekly, “would have followed families creating their dream homes from fixer-uppers.” The only problem was, the Benham twins are also Christians with mainstream, traditional Christian beliefs, including a belief that homosexuality and same-sex marriage are neither moral nor biblical. Their show was killed in the cradle, HGTV just announced. Apparently, if you’re a Christian, you don’t deserve to work.
- Before that there was “Duck Dynasty’s” Phil Robertson, an evangelical Christian, who started a firestorm of protest after he told GQ magazine he believed homosexuality is a sin. The show’s creator, A&E, announced it was indefinitely suspending Robertson from its most lucrative show, until a massive public backlash caused the network to realize its colossal stupidity and it reinstated Robertson.
- Media reports that Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy opposed same-sex marriage and donated to traditional-values groups prompted “gay” activists to call for protests and a national boycott, with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel banning Chick-fil-A from the city and several universities barring Chick-fil-A from their campuses. Although the boycott effort backfired in the short term – when “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” and grassroots goodwill resulted in a dramatic increase in the chain’s income – in the longer run, the intimidation had its desired effect: Dan Cathy now says he made a “mistake” and has become “wiser.” Perhaps part of what weakened his prior resolve was the August 2012 attempted mass-murder attack on the Family Research Council, when an angry homosexual activist named Floyd Lee Corkins entered FRC’s Washington, D.C., headquarters carrying 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches and a 9-mm handgun, shooting a security guard before being overcome by the courageous staffer. After his arrest, Corkins – who told federal investigators (see video below) he was inspired to commit the terror attack on the Christian organization by the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate map”– confessed he had planned to “kill as many people as I could … then smear a Chicken-fil-A sandwich on their face.”
Now that’s tolerance for you.
- And of course, a major win for homosexual activists was the Boy Scouts of America, which they relentlessly pressured year after year, putting enormous financial, legal, boycott and media pressure on the private group until enough members of its governing body finally weakened – and then broke – admitting open homosexuals, in the process essentially destroying the century-old “morally straight,” Christian-inspired organization for boys.
- And don’t forget Carrie Prejean, Miss California USA, who during finals of the Miss USA Pageant was ambushed by homosexual pageant judge Perez Hilton who asked for her opinion of same-sex marriage. Her kind, respectful and utterly normal response – “I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman” – was considered so outrageous that the evangelical Christian contestant was widely mocked and ridiculed.
‘Cease and desist’ being a Christian
But these high-profile news events are truly just the tip of the iceberg. The exact same sorts of totalitarian “you-aren’t-allowed-to-even-think-that way” assaults are occurring all the time, throughout America. Here are just a few more everyday examples to consider (courtesy of my friend and activist-journalist Peter LaBarbera, founder of Americans for Truth).
You probably heard about the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent refusal to review the case of New Mexico Christian photographers Jon and Elaine Huguenin who were sued by two lesbians under the state’s “sexual orientation” law after declining to photograph the lesbians’ “commitment ceremony.”
But did you hear about the New Jersey case of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, convicted of “discrimination” after two lesbians, Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster, decided to hold their “commitment ceremony” on the Methodist-run association’s popular family friendly boardwalk? After that, Ocean Grove quit the wedding-hosting business.
Or what about the Aloha Bed & Breakfast in Hawaii, a Christian business forced to “accommodate” two Southern California lesbians after a judge ruled the B&B violated state law when the owner told Taeko Bufford and Diane Cervelli she wasn’t comfortable having them stay together in her home, due to her religious beliefs? Aloha has since been ordered by the state “to provide a room to any same-sex couple that wishes to stay there.”
Or Illinois Christian B&B owners Jim and Beth Walder who, for expressing their religious convictions regarding homosexuality, are being sued by “gay” activist Todd Wathen, who demands monetary damages, attorneys’ fees and “an order directing [the Walders] to cease and desist from any violation” of the state’s Human Rights Act.
Or Vermont’s Wildflower Inn, which paid a settlement to lesbians and shut down its wedding reception business after the ACLU won a $10,000 civil penalty for two lesbians. The settlement also requires the inn’s owners to place $20,000 in a charitable trust for the lesbians.
What about Oregon’s “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” bakery, which shut down after declining to bake for a “gay wedding”? Or owners of Indiana’s “Just Cookies,” who, for refusing to fill a special order for “rainbow cookies” for an LGBT group, were charged with “discrimination” under the city’s “sexual orientation” law. Or Colorado’s “Masterpiece Cakes,” target of a formal complaint by the state’s attorney general for refusing, on religious grounds, to make a “gay” wedding cake. Or Iowa’s “Victoria’s Cake Cottage,” whose owner Victoria Childress refused to provide a wedding cake for a homosexual couple out of “convictions for their lifestyle.” Or Oregon’s “Fleur Cakes,” which joins “Sweet Cakes” in refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
And what about Washington state’s “Arlene’s Flowers,” whose owner Barronelle Stutzman declined to provide flowers for the wedding of a same-sex couple who had long frequented her shop, because of her “relationship with Jesus Christ”? She now faces two lawsuits. Or New York’s “Liberty Ridge Farm,” which refuses to allow its property to be rented out for a lesbian “wedding.” Or Texas’ “All Occasion Party Place,” a Fort Worth venue that refuses, on religious grounds, to rent out a banquet hall for homosexual “wedding” receptions.
Do I need to keep going?
What about Craig James, fired by Fox Sports Southwest after a GOP debate tape showed him expressing Christian beliefs in opposition to “homosexual marriage”? Or the Christian T-shirt maker in Kentucky being targeted by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Human Rights Commission for refusing to print “gay pride” designs for a local homosexual group?
What about Chris Penner, owner of the Twilight Room Annex bar in Portland, who was fined $400,000 under the Oregon Equality Act for excluding transsexual men who, dressed as women, had been alienating other customers by using the women’s restroom.
According to the Seattle Times, 11 people – calling themselves the “T-girls” – “will get the money, with awards ranging from $20,000 to 50,000.” Does that sound “totalitarian” or “mafia”-like to you? It does to me.
There are mountains of other examples – the Catholic Church being forced to shut down successful adoption agencies in several states because it opposes adoption by homosexual couples; Christians kicked out of college counseling programs because they oppose homosexuality; therapists prohibited by law from helping young people overcome unwanted same-sex attractions; “ex-gay” and pro-change therapists forced out of business by lawsuits; people fired from their jobs solely because they oppose same-sex marriage; school districts forced to positively affirm homosexuality; “anti-gay” 501(c)(3) organizations having their nonprofit status challenged; even a proposal to ban Christians from serving in government if they had ever demonstrated “bias” against homosexuals!
On and on it goes, increasing, not diminishing, with each passing year.
In America today, every serious Christian is a Brendan Eich or a Phil Robertson or the Benham brothers – either now or at some point in the near future.
Even me. After publication of my first book,
“The Marketing of Evil,” the head research librarian at Ohio State University’s Mansfield campus selected it as one of four books he wanted to recommend as required reading for incoming freshmen.
As a direct result – because chapter one of “The Marketing of Evil” exposes (in gay leaders’
own words) the tactics and techniques they have successfully employed to mainstream homosexuality in America – the librarian,
Scott Savage, was brought up on charges of sexual harassment by the university.
Sexual harassment – for recommending a book! That’s how offended and threatened several openly “gay” OSU professors were that a popular conservative book might be read on campus. Although ultimately the university dropped the charges after the Alliance Defending Freedom informed school officials of a little-known document called the Constitution, just consider the “harassment” complaint against Savage – and indirectly, me – coming from one of the openly homosexual accusers, English professor J.F. Buckley:
Rather than waste your time with the paucity of intellectual rigor that Kupelian brings to the table, I encourage you to visit his website, and see for yourself his unmitigated homophobia and xenophobia. In short, he is a pontificating, phobic, cultural atavism bemoaning the loss of an (Anglo) America that only existed on such shows as “The Lone Ranger.” … As a gay man I have long ago realized that the world is full of homophobic, hate-mongers who, of course, say that they are not. So I am not shocked, only deeply saddened – and THREATENED – that such mindless folks are on this great campus. I am ending now, with the hope that I have seriously challenged you Scott, and anyone who “thinks” as you purport to do. You have made me fearful and uneasy being a gay man on this campus. I am, in fact, notifying the OSU-M campus, and Ohio State University in general, that I no longer feel safe doing my job. I am being harassed.
The vicious attack on Scott Savage – a
devout and peace-loving Quaker who wouldn’t hurt anyone or anything, who even rode a horse-drawn buggy like the Amish in that part of Ohio – cost him dearly. Though the charges were dropped, he was made so uncomfortable he had to leave the university and lost his main livelihood. Scott was an early Brendan Eich.
‘Just a bunch of brownshirts’
So here’s a question for you: Why on earth can’t the left – including the ever-expanding sexual anarchy movement – simply tolerate the most basic exercise of First Amendment freedom of speech and freedom of religion? Why are they so deeply offended, so mortally threatened, by people simply disagreeing with them, no matter how civil and well-meaning?
To understand the answer to that question is to understand the very core of the “civil war” currently engulfing America.
Here’s how I explain it in
“The Marketing of Evil” – which, come to think of it, may explain why the “gay professors” demanded it be expelled from school:
Where and when will this “gay rights” steamroller stop? The end game is not only to bring about the complete acceptance of homosexuality, including same-sex marriage, but also to prohibit and even criminalize open criticism of it, including the quotation of biblical passages disapproving of homosexuality. In other words, total “jamming” of criticism with the force of law.
“Why?” you might ask. “I thought gays just wanted equal rights, and to be free to do what they want in their own bedrooms.” No, they’ve had that for years.
Their campaign will not end until Christians and other traditionalists opposing homosexuality are shut up, discredited and utterly silenced – and all because of a little factor we’ve forgotten about in our cleverness, namely this:
In truth, there is something wrong with homosexuality.
It is immoral, unnatural, perverted, self-destructive – all the negative descriptive terms Western Civilization has applied to it over the centuries.
Homosexual activists fancy their cause as identical to that of blacks during the ’60s Civil Rights Movement. But being black is not a sin. Being of African origin doesn’t involve running away from one’s own conscience, and the author of that conscience – God.
But it is precisely because of this difference that the “gay civil rights” movement is not about changing the laws so homosexuals can have equal opportunity for advancement or access as it was for blacks during the ’60s. Homosexuals already live in freedom, and can reside, work or play virtually anywhere they want. In fact, as a group homosexuals enjoy a higher income level than the general American population.
It’s not about rights. It’s about redefining truth and censoring all criticism so that militant homosexuals can be comfortable in their “lifestyle” without having to be disturbed by reality.
Remember, all of us, homosexuals included, have a conscience – that other-dimensional standard that God has tucked away inside each of us, and which causes us inner conflict when we’re doing the wrong thing. But if we tumble into the grip of dark forces we don’t understand, and then start to defend our obsessions and compulsions, we inevitably come to regard our conscience as an enemy. And although we may be somewhat successful in drowning out that inner warning bell, what happens when this same rejected conscience factor appears in another person and gets too close to us for comfort? We feel threatened.
Therefore, we feel compelled to silence the “voice of conscience” – not just the one inside of us, but the one in other people, which tends to revive our own conscience with which we’re at war. This means we can’t tolerate dissent. We simply can’t stand it. It makes us want to scream.
To the homosexual living in denial, then, even a loving offer of help from, say, a Christian ex-gay ministry or “reparative therapy” counselor (to help overcome homosexual addiction) feels like the most vile, abusive hatred. In fact, it’s real love – which we misinterpret as hatred and “bigotry” simply because it causes us to confront a truth that is not welcome in us.
Rush Limbaugh, reflecting on Eich’s ouster, describes in somewhat harsher tones the same troubling reality traditional-minded Americans now face:
“These people, they claim that all this is how they are inclusive and this is how they’re promoting diversity – and they’re not. They are exclusionary. There’s no diversity tolerated here. You’ve gotta be one way. There is no openness.
“There is no kindness, there is no compassion, there’s no inclusiveness, and there certainly isn’t any diversity on the left. It’s just a bunch of brownshirts. And if you are not wearing one, you either soon will be, or you’re gonna be ruined. There is no dissent. They have no interest in debating anybody. They have no interest in discussing anything. If you disagree with them, you die – figuratively. You’re dead. You don’t exist.”
Any questions?
View video trailer of Kupelian talking about Whistleblower:
Media wishing to interview David Kupelian, please contact media@wnd.com.
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