Plans to Change the Way Americans Think about Sex

Life Site News reports a San Francisco sex group’s four-year strategic plan, aimed to “change the way Americans think about sex” by desensitizing mainstream American culture to aberrant sexual practices, has been leaked.

According to Lifes Sites report, the document reveals a well thought out strategy to acclimatize the American public to everything from the practice of sadomasochism to orgies and every other “consensual” sexual behavior besides.

“CSC will be taking the lead in framing the sex positive discourse in our culture,” writes the Center for Sex and Culture in its 2007-2011 strategic plan. “In this ambitious vision of the future, certainly more than five years distant, CSC will have accomplished the difficult task of changing the way Americans think about sex.

“People will feel more comfortable with their sexual desires and society at large will be more accepting of a wide range of attitudes regarding sexuality.”

CSC says its mission is “to provide non-judgmental, sex-positive sexuality education and support to diverse populations” by means of educational initiatives that include “hands-on, practical skills-building events.” The group currently offers several workshops related to homosexual and sadomasochistic sex, and other “non-mainstream sexualities,” and advertises other monthly activities we will not go into detail on here.

CSC’s goals in advancing the “sex positive revolution” include a comprehensive plan to expand the group via marketing, the formation of regional and national partnerships with local groups, as well as the development of a “sex positive” curriculum that would “appeal to both professionals and lay-persons.” In addition, the group says it plans to launch a formal internship program to “add legitimacy to CSC in the academic world,” and expressed interest in instigating a “Sexual Attitude Reassessment” program.

via Read Articles.

UK – 80% Think It’s Ok To Steal From Work

Four out of five people see nothing wrong with stealing from their workplace – while more than half think it acceptable for a carer to persuade an elderly person to rewrite their will, according to a new study.

The fascinating insight into Britain’s ‘moral compass’ also found that one in three people have downloaded music illegally and 13 per cent have shoplifted.

The findings, from an online study of more than 15,000 people, suggest that the typical Briton is less honest and more confused than most people realise.

It also shows that the concept of honesty varies hugely from person to person.

Eight of 10 people who took part in the survey said it was dishonest for a woman to wear a dress for a party before returning it to the shop for a refund.

But only 43 per cent believed it was dishonest for a carer to try to persuade an elderly person to leave them something after their death.

The authors of the study commissioned for the British Science Festival in Guildford say the findings raise disturbing questions.

Dr Stefan Fafinski of Brunel University said: ‘The law is base upon an assumption that the majority of people in society hold the same views about what conduct is dishonest.

‘Our research challenges that assumption as we found that there is a great deal of disagreement among people even upon very basic situations such as finding money in the street or taking stationery home from work.’

via How 80% think it’s OK to steal from work as study reveals our wavering moral compass | Mail Online.

50,000 Muslims To Hold Islamic Prayer Service On Capitol Hill

A massive Islamic prayer service will be held on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. at the end of this month – and 50,000 Muslims are expected to take part.

For a few hours on Sept. 25, the site where U.S. presidents are traditionally inaugurated, will essentially be turned into a giant outdoor mosque. The Jummah service – weekly Friday prayers – will “echo off of the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument and other great edifices that surround Capitol Hill,” according to the organizers.

They explain that the objective of the gathering is to “invite the Muslim Communities and friends of Islam to express and illustrate the wonderful diversity of Islam. We intend to manifest Islam’s majestic spiritual principals [sic] as revealed by Allah to our beloved prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) of Arabia. Likewise, we intend to inspire a new generation of Muslims to work for the greater good of all people.”

The event, organized by a mosque in Elizabeth, New Jersey, is billed as a “Day of Islamic Unity.”

“Thousands of Muslims from all races, creeds, colors and ethnicities will gather for the sole purpose of prayer,” the organizers’ website states, and “the peace, beauty and solidarity of Islam will shine through America’s capitol.”

The website page concludes, “Our Time Has Come.”

What the World Thinks of God – Poll Results

Britain is one of the most secular nations in the world, a new poll in 10 countries finds

Levels of religious belief and activity in the UK are far lower than in almost all other countries surveyed across the globe in a special poll undertaken for the BBC.

The ICM poll of 10,000 people in the USA, UK, Israel, India, South Korea, Indonesia, Nigeria, Russia, Mexico and Lebanon was carried out for What the World Thinks of God – BBC TWO, Thursday 26 February, 9.00pm.

It reveals that only 46% of respondents in the UK said they have always believed in God – 27% less than the average.

Only Russia (42%) and South Korea (28%) were lower.

Furthermore just 52% of UK respondents believed God (or a Higher Power) created the universe, compared to 85% in the USA, 83% in Mexico, 99% in Indonesia and 96% in Lebanon.

The highest levels of belief are found in the poorer nations of Nigeria (98%), India (92%) and Indonesia (97%).

However, the USA – the richest nation polled – has a very high level of belief.

Only 13% of those polled in America said they found it hard to believe in God (a Higher power) when there was so much suffering in the world.

Yet this compares to more than half (52%) of those polled in the UK – the highest of all the countries – and more than twice the average. The figures for Lebanon were 2% and Nigeria 12%.

The survey found that only 19% of those in the UK said they would die for their God/beliefs.

This compares to 37% in Israel, 90% of those polled in Indonesia and Nigeria, and 71% in the USA and Lebanon.

A staggering 78% of those polled in the USA claimed to have studied religious texts, by far the largest figure, followed by 51% in Nigeria and 42% in the UK. This compares to an average of 33%.

The poll also looked at the place of religion in the world.

Almost a third (29%) of people in the UK believe that the world would be a more peaceful place without beliefs in God but very few people in other countries agreed.

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China Detains More House Church Leaders

Over a dozen Chinese house church leaders faced another day of detention Saturday, June 13, and some of them the prospect of years imprisonment, after security forces raided a house church in China’s Sichuan province, Christians said. There was also concern over the whereabouts of a prominent human rights lawyer after a Chinese official spoke about his alleged kidnapping by security forces.

Rights group China Aid Association (CAA), which has close contact with the reportedly persecuted Christians, told Worthy News that over 30 house church leaders were detained June 9, while gathering in a house church in Langzhong city of Sichuan province. “Thirteen leaders were given 15 days of administrative detention, and five of the leaders were placed under criminal detention. The other leaders were released,” CAA said.

It identified the 13 leaders who receiving 15 days of administrative detention as: Wang Fang, Ma Zhongqiong, Wang Huaying, Pang Kaizhen, Chen Deying, Hu Xiuying, Li Daxiu, Deng Shuhua, Chen Jingfang, Wang Yulan, Song Liangqing, Wang Shixiu and Li Shufeng. Five other pastors, Gao Guofu, Li Ming, Zhang Guofen, Gu Lianpeng and Yu Zhipeng received “criminal detention” a prelude to possible “three years of re-education through labor,” CAA said.

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The End of Evangelical Innocence In The Church

Today I’ll be in the studio with John MacArthur, taping an interview about the contemporary evangelical obsession with sex. “The Case Against the R-Rated Church” is the working title, but the interview is unscripted, so we’ll see where it goes.

Anyway, I was looking up facts and various news items on the subject and three things struck me.

One: This is a huge and widespread problem. The “Christian” districts of the World Wide Web are filled with places that aren’t safe for family viewing—everything from “Christian” sex shops to lurid advice columns.

Two: Modesty is all but gone from the evangelical movement. Not only have today’s evangelicals cast aside innocence as if it were something to be ashamed of; they are proud to have done so. They are keen to show a comfortable familiarity with the very things Scripture says it is shameful to speak of in public (Ephesians 5:12), and they would be embarrassed to be thought squeamish about such things.

Three: Sermons with graphic sexual themes and church-wide sex challenges are merely symptoms of a much bigger problem. In short, the church is fornicating with the world and intoxicated with the spirit of the age. Some of neo-evangelicalism’s favorite jargon—missional, contextualization, authenticity—has been tortured and misappropriated in order to justify and institutionalize gross worldliness.

via Pyromaniacs: The End of Evangelical Innocence.

Senate Letter Calls For Filibuster Of Hate Crimes Bill

A Texas pastor has written an open letter to the U.S. Senate, asking someone, anyone, to filibuster pending “hate crimes” legislation and stop what he calls a “maddening march to the destruction of our First Amendment right to freely practice our religion.”

As WND has reported, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 would provide special protections to homosexual people but leave Christian ministers open to prosecution should their teachings be linked to any subsequent offense, by anyone, against a homosexual person.

A hearing on the act, already approved by the U.S. House as H.R. 1913 and pending in the Senate as S. 909, is expected in the Senate Judiciary Committee soon.

Concerned individuals may contact elected officials, sign a petition against hate crimes legislation and participate in WND’s FedEx campaign to send thousands of letters to senators by overnight delivery.

“The legislation pending before you will make me an ‘inducer’ to hate crimes if I preach Romans 1:18-32 and someone who hears me then commits a criminal act against a protected class,” writes Rev. Rick Scarborough of Harvest Point Church in Nacogdoches, Texas, and founder of Vision America. “It is clear that this bill will criminalize biblical preaching and will prevent me and thousands of other clergymen from practicing our faith without threat of penalty from our own federal government.”

Romans 1:18-32 is particularly inflammatory, labeling homosexual acts in various translations as against nature, indecent, unseemly and perversion.

Under a comparable law in Sweden, a minister was sentenced to 30 days in jail for preaching from Leviticus, which labels male homosexual acts as detestable. Similar state laws have resulted in similar results. In Philadelphia several years ago, a 73-year-old grandmother was reported to have been jailed for trying to share Christian tracts with people at a homosexual festival.

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Mideast’s Christians Are Losing Numbers and Sway

Christians used to be a vital force in the Middle East. They dominated Lebanon and filled top jobs in the Palestinian movement. In Egypt, they were wealthy beyond their number. In Iraq, they packed the universities and professions. Across the region, their orientation was a vital link to the West, a counterpoint to prevailing trends.

But as Pope Benedict XVI wends his way across the Holy Land this week, he is addressing a dwindling and threatened Christian population driven to emigration by political violence, lack of economic opportunity and the rise of radical Islam. A region that a century ago was 20 percent Christian is about 5 percent today and dropping.

Since it was here that Jesus walked and Christianity was born, the papal visit highlights a prospect many consider deeply troubling for the globe’s largest faith, adhered to by a third of humanity — itsmost powerful and historic shrines could become museum relics with no connection to those who live among them.

“I fear the extinction of Christianity in Iraq and the Middle East,” the Rev. Jean Benjamin Sleiman, the Catholic archbishop of Baghdad, said in a comment echoed across the region.

The pope, in a Mass on Tuesday at the foot of the Mount of Olives, addressed “the tragic reality” of the “departure of so many members of the Christian community in recent years.”

He said: “While understandable reasons lead many, especially the young, to emigrate, this decision brings in its wake a great cultural and spiritual impoverishment to the city. Today I wish to repeat what I have said on other occasions: in the Holy Land there is room for everyone!”

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Can Christians Serve In The New World Order Army?

Many patriotic Americans, including many retired and former military personnel, are increasingly chagrined at the direction the U.S. armed forces are taking. For one thing, there were numerous instances in the Clinton and both Bush administrations when American GIs were required to serve under foreign or United Nations commanders. Does anyone remember the Michael New case? How can any American GI, who has taken an oath to the U.S. Constitution, willingly surrender himself to a foreign commander, flag, or uniform? That is a potential conflict that has caused many to question modern military service.

Another potential moral conflict in modern military service (at least for Christians) is the inter-sex training and quartering that is now required in every branch of military service (except the Marine Corps). To put healthy young adults of the opposite sex in such close and, many times, compromising environments is more than problematic for those wishing to stay morally pure. (Christian parents should know that many state colleges and universities now require students to live in coed dorms, including using coed bathrooms and showers.) Add to this President Barack Obama’s determination to expunge the Department of Defense’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, thereby allowing open homosexuals to serve in the military. All of the above has many Christians questioning the wisdom of giving their sons and daughters to today’s U.S. military.

Another disconcerting element of modern military service is the reality that today’s American military is more and more being used as the tool of globalists to forge an international New World Order. For instance, both Republican and Democratic Presidential administrations will send U.S. military personnel (including the National Guard) to guard the borders of foreign countries, but never ask them to protect our own borders. Sending the National Guard overseas, especially, strains the principles of constitutional government. But maybe that explains why we have so many foreign troops on U.S. soil. After all, did President George W. Bush not ask foreign troops to monitor our borders and skies in the weeks and months following the attacks on 9/11?

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White House Links Iran Nukes To Palestinian State

The Obama Administration on Sunday did what Israelis have long feared and pleaded with the US to avoid when White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel linked the resolution of the Iran nuclear crisis to the creation of a Palestinian state.

Speaking at the annual Washington conference of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Ynet quoted Emanuel as insisting that the ability to confront Iran and reach a diplomatic solution over its defiant nuclear program was solely dependent on progress toward the birth of “Palestine.”

Emanuel said that with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled to meet with US President Barack Obama later this month, Israel now faces a moment of truth – it can either acquiesce to international demands and in return have its most serious threats dealt with, or maintain the status quo and have those threats persist.

In its main conference event on Tuesday, AIPAC is scheduled to present the congressmen representing its thousands of members from across the country with a letter urging Obama to take strong action toward the creation of a “viable Palestinian state.”

A majority of the congressmen are expected to sign the letter and pass it on to the president.

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HR 1913 Attorneys Urge Senate to Vote Against Hate Crimes Bill

Attorneys at a Christian legal group are urging the U.S. Senate not to pass the expanded “Hate Crimes” bill, which the House this week voted 249-175 in favor of.

The attorneys at the Alliance Defense Fund insist that the bill, H.R. 1913, could severely impede Americans’ constitutional rights to freedom of religion and freedom of expression while creating additional legal protections for those engaged in homosexual behavior that are not available to everyone else.

If made into law, the bill would add violence against individuals based on sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability to the list of federal hate crimes. Current federal law only covers crimes committed on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity or national origin.

“All violent crimes are hate crimes, and all crime victims deserve equal justice,” said ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot in a released statement. “So-called ‘hate crime’ laws actually serve only one purpose: The criminalization of citizens based on whatever thoughts, beliefs, and emotions they have that are not considered to be ‘politically correct.’ No one should fall for the idea that this bill does anything to bring about greater justice for Americans.”

Last week, ADF attorneys had delivered a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, urging it to reject the bill. In it, the attorneys shared how similar efforts to “impose upon sincere people of faith a ‘political orthodoxy’” have already led to fines, arrests, and prosecution in states with similar legislation.

One small photography company in New Mexico, for example, had been fined by that state’s human rights commission for refusing to photograph a civil union “commitment ceremony.”

In another example, a group of Christians in Philadelphia that protested at an “Outfest” in 2005 was arrested and charged under Pennsylvania’s hate crimes laws with “ethnic intimidation,” “riot,” and “conspiracy.”

“Although the charges were ultimately dismissed (with Alliance Defense Fund assistance), they nevertheless had to go through the ordeal of arrest and prosecution,” the attorneys noted.

“Simply being required to undergo a criminal defense in such circumstances can lead to a chill and censorship of legitimate free speech and free exercise of religion activities,” they added.

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Support For Terror Suspect Torture Differs Among Faithful

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small. See results of the survey »

The president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Leith Anderson, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The survey asked: “Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?”

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Obama Approval High Among Muslims, Jews, and Catholics

Gallup Poll Daily tracking during President Obama’s first 100 days in office finds broad support for him among Americans affiliated with most major U.S. religions. U.S. Muslims and Jews give Obama his highest job approval ratings, at 85% and 79%, respectively. He also receives solid majority support from Roman Catholics (67%) and Protestants (58%), and more approval than disapproval from Mormons.

Obama also enjoys broad support — 73% approval — from the sizable group of Americans with no religious affiliation, including those calling themselves atheists or agnostics.

These findings are based on large sample sizes for each religious group contained in the combined Gallup Poll Daily tracking results from Jan. 21-April 29, 2009. This includes interviews with approximately 55,000 Protestants (defined in this study as those who identify themselves either as Protestant or with another non-Catholic Christian religion), 24,000 Catholics, 2,500 Jews, 1,600 Mormons, and 350 Muslims. (Full details of the methodology are provided at the end of this report.)

via Obama Approval High Among Muslims, Jews, and Catholics.

HR 1913 – Will Hate Crime Bill Silence Pastors

The U.S. House today approved a federal “hate crimes” bill that would provide special protections to homosexuals but leave Christian ministers open to prosecution should their teachings be linked to any subsequent offense, by anyone, against a “gay.”

The vote, 249-175, came despite intense from Republicans who argued the measure would create a privileged class.

Bishop Harry Jackson Jr. of the High Impact Leadership Coalition also condemned the action, offering a warning about the nation’s future.

He was interviewed on the issue by Greg Corombos of Radio America/WND, and the audio of his interview is embedded here:

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Social conservatives say their right to free speech will be jeopardized if hate crimes legislation now headed to the Senate becomes law.

A Senate hate crimes bill that would extend federal protection to gay and transgender victims is rousing the ire of social conservatives who say their right to free speech will be jeopardized if it becomes law.

“In and of itself this law can be applied to speech. The nature of assault — putting someone in fear of their safety — what will that mean for someone preaching against homosexuality?” said Mathew Staver, founder of the Liberty Council, a law firm that works on religious freedom cases.

“It elevates homosexuality to the same protective category as race. It’s all part of the radical homosexual anarchist agenda,” Staver said.

For much of the last decade gay rights activists have been fighting for inclusion within the federal hate crimes law, which places greater penalties on crimes that are committed based on race, ethnicity and religion. Social conservatives, including former President George W. Bush, have fought the legislation on the grounds it could be used to prosecute religious groups who say homosexuality is morally wrong.

But with Democrats now controlling both houses of Congress and the White House, gay rights activists are confident the law will pass and President Obama will sign it. The bill passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday, 249-175.

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