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Monday January 5, 2009 Doctors Urge Puberty Blockers for Children Considering Sex Change By Kathleen GilbertCHEVY CHASE, Maryland, January 5, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An international medical organization has recommended that children as young as 12 who question their sexual identity should be given drugs to block the physical changes of puberty.The New Scientist reports that the injunction comes as part of a set of guidelines, the first of its kind, published last month by the Endocrine Society.  The “Guidelines For Health Organisations Commissioning Treatment Services For Trans People” call for healthcare administrators around the globe to provide full coverage...

Two California homosexuals have won a federal lawsuit, allowing both their names to be on their adopted son's Louisiana birth certificate. According to Chron.com, the state of Louisiana initially refused the request because homosexual adoption and same-sex "marriage" are illegal in that state. Oren Adar and Mickey Ray Smith then filed a lawsuit, which stated that leaving their names off the birth certificate "singles out unmarried same-sex couples and their adoptive children for the improper use of making them unequal to every one else." Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University's law school, comments. "What, essentially,...

San Francisco Mayor Newsom and the Board of Supervisors have shown nothing but contempt for the First Amendment rights of Catholics. Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, in the heart of San Farncisco's gay Castro community, was vandalized over the weekend by opponents of Proposition 8, the California resolution passed by voters in November that rejected gay marriage. Swastikas were painted on the church and the names Ratzinger (referring to Pope Benedict XVI) and Niederauer (the San Francisco Archbishop) were scrawled besides the Nazi symbol. In the wake of Proposition 8, innocent persons have been assaulted, churches have been vandalized, a...

Another wave of legal arguments hit the California Supreme Court on Monday in the battle over Proposition 8's ban on same-sex marriage. Local governments, led by San Francisco and Santa Clara County, filed their latest opposition papers to Proposition 8, describing the voter-approved initiative as a "dark moment'' in California history. The brief is an attempt to refute the legal arguments of Proposition 8 backers as the Supreme Court weighs a challenge from government officials, civil rights groups and same-sex couples who are seeking the right to marry. The San Francisco brief sides with the unique argument raised in December...

No defending the Defense of Marriage Act The author of the federal Defense of Marriage Act now thinks it's time for his law to get the boot -- but for political reasons, not in support of gays. By Bob Barr In 1996, as a freshman member of the House of Representatives, I wrote the Defense of Marriage Act, better known by its shorthand acronym, DOMA, than its legal title. The law has been a flash-point for those arguing for or against same-sex marriage ever since President Clinton signed it into law. Even President-elect Barack Obama has grappled with its language,...

Two California homosexuals have won a federal lawsuit, allowing both their names to be on their adopted son's Louisiana birth certificate. According to Chron.com, the state of Louisiana initially refused the request because homosexual adoption and same-sex "marriage" are illegal in that state. Oren Adar and Mickey Ray Smith then filed a lawsuit, which stated that leaving their names off the birth certificate "singles out unmarried same-sex couples and their adoptive children for the improper use of making them unequal to every one else." Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University's law school, comments. "What, essentially,...

The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission (CADC) has prepared a Top Ten list of the most egregious acts of Christian Bashing in American in 2008. Every day in America serious Christians face increasing hostility at work, school, and in the culture because they stand for their faith and values. "It is time for the Christian bashing to stop and for Christians to no longer be treated like second-class citizens," said Dr. Gary Cass, Chairman and CEO of CADC. "Anti-Christian bigotry is real and growing. Those who engage in it should be exposed and called to account." INSTANCE #10: Jack Black Musical Video...

A Newport Beach parish split from the U.S. Episcopal church because of a gay bishop. The state high court rules that 'the local church did not have the right to take the church property with it.' Reporting from San Francisco and Los Angeles -- The California Supreme Court decided unanimously today that churches that break away from a national denomination may not take the church assets with them. In a ruling written by Justice Ming W. Chin, the state high court said the property of St. James Episcopal Church in Newport Beach is owned by the national church, not the...

A generation ago, then-Gov. Jerry Brown's conscientious stand against the death penalty prompted a revolt in the Legislature and eventually spurred voters to throw out his appointee as chief justice of the California Supreme Court. Now the 70-year-old attorney general and would-be 2010 gubernatorial candidate is stirring a new storm by his legal challenge to voters' approval of a measure banning gay marriage in California. It's a move that could pay political dividends in a June 2010 Democratic primary against another likely gubernatorial candidate, San Francisco mayor and gay marriage champion Gavin Newsom. After initially indicating his office would defend...

A Catholic church in San Francisco was defaced with spray-painted graffiti depictions of swastikas overnight, police said Sunday. A Most Holy Redeemer Church employee reported the incident at about 6:30 a.m. at 100 Diamond St., Lt. Neville Gittens said. The employee told police that when he left the night before, the church had not been defaced, Gittens said. Police are investigating the vandalism as a hate crime.

Last August I wrote a column critical of Rick Warren's decision to host a presidential candidate forum at his Saddleback Church. My reasoning then was that America's crisis is moral ambiguity. I argued that Pastor Warren would only contribute to this ambiguity by hosting candidates with opposing views on issues such as abortion and homosexuality and presenting himself as a neutral moderator. Only Barack Obama would gain, I felt, being showcased as an acceptable candidate by one of the nation's best known evangelical pastors. If John McCain had wanted to clarify his social conservative credentials, he didn't need to go...

On gays, Obama's Joint Chiefs chair is caught between his boss and a conservative military. In the next year, Mullen might have to ask troops to do something many will find even more uncomfortable: welcome openly gay men and women into their ranks. Such was the promise made by President-elect Obama in the 2008 campaign—gay-rights groups will hold him to it.

Vandals spray-painted swastikas on a Catholic church in San Francisco's Castro District Saturday night. It appears the vandals are upset about the Catholic church's support of Proposition 8, which made same-sex marriage illegal in California. But, the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church on Diamond Street is gay-friendly. Many parishioners voted against Prop 8 and they are upset their church was targeted. "We're very disturbed by the hierarchy's support of the Yes on Eight Campaign. We've been in conversation with the bishop, which is the way I think we need to handle it. I think Catholic teaching shows us we're all...

A woman raping another woman is unthinkable. This is not how women behave, society tells us. Our legal system is not equipped to handle woman-to-woman sexual assault, our women's services do not have the resources or even the words to reach out to its victims, and our lesbian and gay communities face hurdles in acknowledging its existence. Already dealing with complex issues related to their sexual identities, and frequently overwhelmed by shame, lesbian and bisexual survivors of such violence are among the most isolated of crime victims. In a work that is sure to stir controversy, Lori B. Girshick exposes...

Two New England states have already legalized same-sex marriage, and a Boston-based advocacy group wants to see the other four join them. Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, known as GLAD, has launched a first-of-its-kind regional campaign aimed at winning approval for same-sex marriage in the six-state New England region by 2012. Same-sex marriage is already legal in Connecticut and Massachusetts, a result of court decisions in cases brought by GLAD lawyers. The 2003 Massachusetts decision was the first in the nation, while the Connecticut ruling went into effect Nov. 12.

Leather convention precedes inaugurationDecember 31, 2008 Those with a fetish for leather and motorcycles will in Washington the weekend before President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration, convention organizers say. The Centaur Motorcycle Club, a group of men with an enthusiastic interest in motorcycles, leather and other men, said the 25th annual Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend will take place Jan. 16, 17 and 18 -- overlapping with many inauguration-based parties and balls, ABC News reported Wednesday. **SNIP** Certainly many of our guests are happy about the inauguration and some people will be attending both, but for us we're celebrating what we normally celebrate --...

This past year, we have seen a flurry of activity around states either permitting gay and lesbian couples to marry or defining marriage as a union only between a man and a woman. The conflict in our culture is often misconstrued as a standoff between religious persons and nonreligious persons. This does not ring true for me or for many of the Christians I know. My own church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, has been engaged in a long, cautious process of investigating whether the unexamined conventional wisdom we have received from our ancestors in the faith rings true:...

We have begun a New Year. These first days are a time for reflection and resolution. I have noted a deep depression in the ranks of some committed to the great human rights struggle of our age, the struggle to defend and protect the first right, the right to life from conception to natural death. Similarly, I have noted weariness among those committed to defending true marriage - and the family founded upon it - against the new cultural revolutionaries who seek to compel society to grant a legal equivalency between homosexual partnerships and marriage and enforce their new order...

BARNEY'S PASTOR BALONEYLast updated: 2:05 am January 1, 2009 Well, that didn't take long. Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank hasn't quite broken with Barack Obama, but he criticized the president-elect - and in a way rarely heard from a left-wing Democrat. Obama, complains Frank, "overestimates his ability to take people, particularly our colleagues on the right, and, sort of, charm them into being nice." Now, what could have prompted Barney Frank to aim one of his celebrated verbal barbs at Obama? The issue is the prez-to-be's invitation to evangelical pastor Rick Warren, a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage, to deliver the...

Critics of America's public school system have launched a new effort highlighting the need for Christians to exit the system. The initiative -- dubbed The Call to Dunkirk was launched by Dr. Bruce Shortt, author of The Harsh Truth About Public Schools; Rev. Voddie Baucham, author of Family Driven Faith: Doing What It Takes to Raise Sons and Daughters Who Walk with God; and the founder and director of the Exodus Mandate Project, retired U.S. Army Chaplain Lt. Col. E. Ray Moore. Moore explains the proposal. "The Call to Dunkirk is a special emergency effort to try to get other...

The other night I saw another debate on the topic of gay marriage. The debate was between Robert Jeffress, an opponent, and Wayne Besen, an extremely gay activist. It was the kind of lame debate I’ve come to expect lately on the Fox News show The O’Reilly Factor. In fact, nothing interesting happened until the last few seconds of the six-minute segment when Besen characterized the debate’s first legitimate point as “crazy.” Jeffress argued the point many opponents argue when he said that gay marriage could lead to polygamy and even to marriage between a man and his pet. When...

To some staunch conservatives watching President Bush relinquish the reins of power to President-elect Barack Obama, a few too many ardent liberals are now crashing the gates. Some well-known Democratic activists are advising Obama on how to steer federal agencies, including a few whom conservative Republicans fought hard to keep out of power in the Clinton administration. They include Roberta Achtenberg, a gay activist whose confirmation as an assistant housing secretary was famously held up by then-Sen. Jesse Helms (N.C.), and Bill Lann Lee, who was hotly opposed by foes of affirmative action and temporarily blocked from the government's top...

One of the top lawyers in the nation in the battle to protect traditional marriage, historically Christian lifestyle choices, parental rights and the key freedoms provided by the U.S. Constitution is warning that there eventually could be no lawyers left to take up those disputes. That's because of a recommendation before the State Bar of Arizona – the organization that licenses attorneys – to require all new lawyers to swear they won't let their personal religious perspective on homosexuality affect their representation of any client. Mathew Staver, chief of Liberty Counsel, warns that the proposal is just the "tip of...

This is not an easy thing to write. There are issues that touch the very heart of one's personality and, at the same time strike into the heart of prejudices and passions of those around. I've been open about these issues in several forums where I am an active participant, and was asked by a friend to consider submitting something to a certain publication. which decided not to accept it. I am a lifelong Christian, brought up in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, later, after a rather strange and wandering period, moving on to The Episcopal Church as a committed...

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 29, 2008 - For the first time, researchers have established a clear link between family rejection of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) adolescents and negative health outcomes in early adulthood. The findings will be published in the January issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a peer-reviewed article entitled "Family Rejection as a Predictor of Negative Health Outcomes in White and Latino Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Young Adults."

Gay row hits Sanremo festival: Group threatens to disrupt event over 'gay convert' song (ANSA)Rome, Dec. 23-Italian gay rights group Arcigay on Tuesday threatened to disrupt Italy's biggest musical event of the year, the Sanremo song festival, if a song apparently about 'converting' gays to heterosexuality is not pulled... Mancuso said Povia was ''not exactly new'' to taking public stances against homosexuality, adding that he was famous for a magazine interview in which he declared that ''people aren't gay, they become gay on the basis of who they spend time with''... The Arcigay president said Povia had gone on to...

Don Batten and Jonathan Sarfati interview husband and wife Dr Stephen Grocott and Dr Dianne Grocott. Stephen is a leading international research scientist in industrial chemistry, currently with a major firm in Queensland, Australia. Dianne is a qualified medical practitioner and psychiatrist. They have spoken on several occasions for Creation Ministries International. Whether challenging secularists on creation or abortion, this dynamic duo packs a powerful punch...

Information scientist, author and evangelist, Dr Werner Gitt, a close friend of CMI, told us that on 23 October 2008 he was subjected to the most strident opposition he had ever encountered...

More than a dozen families filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging a new Arkansas law banning unmarried couples living together from becoming foster or adoptive parents. The Arkansas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of the families in Pulaski County Circuit Court seeking to overturn Act 1, which was approved by voters in last month's general election. "Act 1 violates the state's legal duty to place the best interest of children above all else," said Marie-Bernarde Miller, a Little Rock attorney in the lawsuit. [Snip] The lawsuit challenging Act 1 was assigned to Pulaski County...

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. (AP) | A church group that owns beachfront property discriminated against a lesbian couple by not allowing them to rent the locale for their civil union ceremony, a New Jersey department ruled Monday in a case that has become a flash point in the nation's gay rights battle. The New Jersey Division on Civil Rights said its investigation found that the refusal of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association to rent the oceanfront spot to the couple for their ceremony in March 2007 violated the public accommodation provisions of the state's Law Against Discrimination.

The chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission says homosexual activists have launched a criminal attack on his ministry. Recently, Dr. Ted Baehr says he learned about the distribution of a number of emails and blog posts that were supposedly from him or his organization. However, the emails were links to pornography, including homosexual content.

The Daily Beast reports that it's obtained a private text message in which "Mickey Rourke bashes Sean Penn — his chief rival in the Oscar race — as a 'homophobe' and an 'average' actor. " Columnist Gerald Posner says a Los Angeles entertainment honcho showed him the text message, which read: "Look seans an old friend of mine and i didnt buy his performance at all—thought he did an average pretend acting like he was gay besides hes one of the most homophobic people i kno' [sic] "

Protests following the passage of California's Proposition 8, which defined marriage as between one man and one woman, made news headlines, but the Pacific Justice Institute reports a growing number of cases where those opposed to the ballot measure have taken out their anger more quietly: by harassing – and even firing – employees who voted for it. PJI, a non-profit legal defense organization specializing in religious freedom, claims to be representing a San Francisco woman who was fired for voting for Proposition 8, but whose name remains confidential to protect her privacy and legal case. "Californians have been shocked...

In an unprecedented move, California Attorney General Jerry Brown, has declared that he will not fulfill his statutory obligation to defend all the laws of the state. The issue prompting this dereliction of duty is, of course, the recently voter-passed constitutional amendment declaring that only a union of a man and woman shall be recognized as a marriage under state law. “It came down to a choice between doing what the law requires and what I personally think is right,” Brown announced. “While the case could be made that defending the laws of the state—whether enacted by the legislature or,...

Editor's Note: WARNING – Some content in this article is graphic. EXCERPTED BY FRPR - NO GRAPHIC MATERIAL Four San Diego firefighters who say they suffered sexual harassment when they were ordered by the city to participate in the obscenity-laden "gay" pride parade in 2007 are going to trial for a second time.... ...it was in July 2007 when the firefighters, all Christian and two Catholic, were ordered to participate in uniform on their city fire engine in San Diego's annual "Gay Pride" parade.... ..."The city of San Diego subjected these firefighters to sexual harassment rather than take reasonable steps...

Science Intrudes Into Morality Dec 23, 2008 — The Pope recently declared that we need to save humanity from self-destructive behaviors, like homosexuality. Can science intrude on questions of human behavior and morals? New Scientist thought so; a blog entry today says the Pope “misuses science to attack homosexuality.”One would think that moral behavior would lie outside the field for a scientific news source, but online news editor Rowan Hooper went on, mocking the Pope’s claim that the church has a role in saving “human ecology” like scientists have a role in protecting tropical forests. Hooper called this “a bizarre...

“A gay-bashing tirade?” What Pope Benedict really told the Roman Curia on Dec. 22 Both mainstream and homosexual media around the world launched into a full-court and often vicious attack on Pope Benedict XVI following his Dec. 22 Christmas address to the Roman Curia. The furor began after the Holy Father said that protecting humankind from self-destruction was as important to Catholics as protecting the tropical rainforests. Although the pope nowhere used the word “homosexuality” in his discourse, homosexuals and others seized on a portion of his description of the Catholic understanding of the created natural order in which he...

Perhaps the most important argument against same-sex marriage is that once society honors same-sex sex as it does man-woman sex, there will inevitably be a major increase in same-sex sex. People do sexually (as in other areas) what society allows and especially what it honors. One excellent example illustrating this is an article recently written in the McGill University newspaper by McGill student Anna Montrose. In it, she wrote: "It's hard to go through four years of a Humanities B.A. reading Foucault and Butler and watching 'The L Word' and keep your rigid heterosexuality intact. I don't know when it...

Make a contribution today! Help Stop Workplace Discrimination Write to your Delegate and Senator today and urge them to support legislation that will help stop workplace discrimination. xxxxxx, Please plan now to join us in Richmond on January 27, 2009 for Equality Virginia's annual Lobby Day. The Family Foundation is saying that they are expecting to turn out "hundreds" for their lobby day a week earlier. Help Equality Virginia show its strength and your unrelenting commitment to change laws and lives by registering now for this event. You'll have the opportunity to meet other advocates from around the state, learn...

As he looked around the Tel Aviv theater and asked questions of the audience, Israeli filmmaker Yair Hochner could see a smattering of Orthodox Jewish men distinguished by their religious dress - and the way they avoided his attention. "They were trying to hide - like putting their hands on their faces and stuff like that," Hochner says. "It was very touching to see." Touching because Hochner was screening "Antarctica," his dramedy about gay and lesbian Israelis, and the Orthodox Jews were wrestling with their consciences to be there. Orthodox Judaism prohibits same-sex relations, which "Antarctica" spotlights in an explicit...

NEW ORLEANS — A same-sex couple in California has won a federal court ruling that their adopted son’s Louisiana birth certificate must bear the names of both adoptive fathers. The facts are so clear that no trial is needed, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey wrote. Louisiana’s Office of Vital Records must give full faith and credit to the New York State court in which Oren Adar and Mickey Ray Smith of San Diego adopted the boy, he ruled Monday. The office had refused to issue a birth certificate listing both as the boy’s legal parents. The state could appeal the...

Los Angeles - Disney confirmed Wednesday that it would not be involved in the third film of "The Chronicles of Narnia" fantasy series, dealing a blow to the franchise based on CS Lewis's classic books. A spokesperson for Disney confirmed in an e-mail that the company had chosen not to exercise an option to co-produce and co-finance the next Narnia film with producers Walden Media. The Hollywood Reporter cited "budgetary and logistical reasons" for Disney's decision, which leaves the third film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader facing an uncertain future. The film was due to...

December 23, 2008, 4:00 a.m. Gross Dereliction of DutyBy the Editors As attorney general of California, Jerry Brown has a duty to defend the state and its laws in court. That duty requires him to offer the best grounds in defense of any law that may reasonably be defended. In a brief he filed last Friday in the case challenging Proposition 8 — the ballot measure that amended California’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage — Brown grossly violated that duty. On Election Day, California voters approved Proposition 8. Opponents of Proposition 8 then rushed to court to invalidate it...

If 2002 was Mormonism's debutante ball, 2008 may go down as its first semester of college. The Utah-based church made new friends, endured back-stabbing from would-be friends, joined some clubs, got a taste of fame and had a few wrenching exams. From the possibility of a Mormon in the White House to a stream of Latter-day Saints on reality television, from being attacked as belonging to a cult (or mistaken for a polygamous sect in Texas) to participating in California's bitter battle for traditional marriage, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would see their faith in...

As we saw during primary season, our president-elect is not free of his own brand of hubris and arrogance, and sometimes it comes before a fall: “You’re likable enough, Hillary” was the prelude to his defeat in New Hampshire. He has hit this same note again by assigning the invocation at his inauguration to the Rev. Rick Warren, the Orange County, Calif., megachurch preacher who has likened committed gay relationships to incest, polygamy and “an older guy marrying a child.” Bestowing this honor on Warren was a conscious — and glib — decision by Obama to spend political capital. It...

NEW ORLEANS -- A same-sex couple in California has won a federal court ruling that their adopted son's Louisiana birth certificate must bear the names of both adoptive fathers. The facts are so clear that no trial is needed, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey wrote. "What a great Christmas present for these guys!" said Kenneth D. Upton Jr. who represented Oren Adar and Mickey Ray Smith of San Diego. In his ruling Monday, Zainey said Louisiana's Office of Vital Records must give full faith and credit to the New York State court in which Adar and Smith adopted the boy,...

2008 was filled with triumphs and setbacks for Rhode Island’s GLBT community, and featured a scandal involving openly gay Providence Mayor David Cicilline. Cicilline was the subject of some complaints from the GLBT community when he failed to show up for the Pride festival in June. Cicilline had been announced as one of the grand marshals for the Illuminated Nighttime Parade. United States Senator Sheldon Whitehouse filled in for Cicilline as Grand Marshal. Rodney Davis, co-chairman of RI Pride, later claimed the city had thrown "stumbling blocks" in the organization’s path, making it difficult for RI Pride to put on...

Responding to news that Britain is counting the number of homosexual citizens it has in a new survey beginning in January, everyone's favorite troublemaker, actor Tom Cruise, has called on the U.S. government to do the same. As Cruise told talk show host Jimmy Kimmel last night: "I am tired of not knowing. I am tired of hearing numbers quoted all over the map from practically zero to only a few million, all of them certainly far less than I believe there are. I think it is, psychologically, now the time to try and do something about this." Kimmel had...

Top Stories for Thursday, January 1st, 2009: The Holy Family by Bartolome Esteban Murillo ( 1618- 82).  Outrages Gay Power Elite By PAUL LIKOUDIS Pope Benedict XVI’s annual message to the Curia on Decem­ber 22 that the “ ecology of man” is as worthy of protection as the rain forests in Brazil prompted hostile headlines across the west­ern world and accusations from gay activists that he was promot­ing gay- bashing. “ Pope Accused of Stoking Ho­mophobia,” declared the London Times December 23. “ Gay Groups Angry at Pope Remarks,” trumpeted the BBC. “ Pope Says Humanity Needs ‘ Saving’...

The cause of gay rights has made enormous progress in the last couple of decades, but the more specific cause of gay marriage continues to be battered. In the same election that voters helped bridge the United States' racial divide by electing the country's first African-American president, voters in California overrode a ruling of that state's Supreme Court and effectively rebanned gay marriage. Reliably Democratic-voting California — home to those much-mocked "San Francisco values" that tolerate gay lifestyles — has now joined 29 other states, including Ohio, banning gay marriage. Protests in reaction to the vote popped up across the...