Faith groups increasingly lose gay rights fights

Faith organizations and individuals who view homosexuality as sinful and refuse to provide services to gay people are losing a growing number of legal battles that they say are costing them their religious freedom.

The lawsuits have resulted from states and communities that have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Those laws have created a clash between the right to be free from discrimination and the right to freedom of religion, religious groups said, with faith losing. They point to what they say are ominous recent examples:

* A Christian photographer was forced by the New Mexico Civil Rights Commission to pay $6,637 in attorney's costs after she refused to photograph a gay couple's commitment ceremony. * A psychologist in Georgia was fired after she declined for religious reasons to counsel a lesbian about her relationship. * Christian fertility doctors in California who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian patient were barred by the state Supreme Court from invoking their religious beliefs in refusing treatment. * A Christian student group was not recognized at a University of California law school because it denies membership to anyone practicing sex outside of traditional marriage.

Of the gay activists talking points concerning gay “marriage”,(and their whole agenda,for that matter) ,there are three arguments in particular that they repeat ad nauseum that I now would like to poke a few holes through.They are:
1)Their lifestyle won’t be taught in schools.
2)It other won’t affect anyone else.
3)It won’t affect churches or private organizations.
Won’t be taught in schools?
(Oct. 13, 2008) — A group of San Francisco first-graders participated in a field trip to attend their lesbian teacher’s wedding, officiated by Mayor Gavin (any two-some) Newsom. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/11/MNFG13F1VG.DTL

(March 2007) — Freshmen were told not to tell their parents about Deerfield (Ill.) High School’s pro-gay seminar and were required to sign a confidentiality agreement. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54683

(March 2007) — A Massachusetts high school banned parents from attending a seminar for students on how they can know they are homosexual. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54708

(April 27, 2005) — A Massachusetts father was jailed after requesting that his 6-year-old son’s school notify him when it discussed homosexuality or transgenderism. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46945

(February 23, 2007) — The judge in the Massachusetts case ordered the teaching of the homosexual lifestyle to children in public schools. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54420

Will not affect you?
· In New Mexico, a same-sex couple filed a “human rights” complaint against a photographer who declined to photograph their “commitment” ceremony-notwithstanding that New Mexico has neither gay “marriage” OR civil unions. The photographer lost and was ordered to cough up more than $6,600 in attorneys’ fees. Before the ruling, the couple hired a different photographer from the myriad of other ones available, but still chose to retaliate against the first photographer for her lack of moral approval. http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/print/9720/
· In Georgia, a counselor was fired because she referred a woman in a same-sex relationship to another counselor for relationship advice. The second counselor provided service that the woman herself characterized as “exemplary.” Yet she still demanded—and obtained—the first counselor’s termination for her lack of moral approval. http://www.sovo.com/2008/8-1/news/localnews/8943.cfm
· In California, a woman in a same-sex relationship sued a doctor who declined to artificially inseminate her, claiming discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.” The woman misrepresented her marital status to the doctor, who has a policy not to perform the procedure on unmarried women regardless of their “orientation.” Other doctors successfully performed the procedure, and she has since borne three healthy children, yet the woman continues to demand the first doctor’s moral approval in court. http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?hint=2&DR_ID=16412
Note that having other options did not satisfy the people involved in the above same-sex relationships. The point to see: they demand moral approval. And some will go to court, have you fired, or otherwise seek your demise to get it. And they don’t care if you have to act against your conscience, just so long as you can ease theirs.
...a few other examples...
- The University of Toledo fired an African-American administrator for writing a letter-to-the-editor complaining about homosexuals being compared to blacks. (”I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a black woman,” Crystal Dixon wrote to the Toledo Free Press .) University of Toledo President Lloyd Jacobs determined that Dixon’s exercise of her First Amendment rights was an intolerable violation of the school’s non-discrimination policy — thereby discriminating against adherents of the Judeo-Christian ethic. http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08050605.html

-(February 2008) — A professor was fired from San Jose Evergreen Community College after being accused of providing an “offensive” answer out of the textbook to a student’s question about heredity and homosexual behavior.She had essentially asked if people were “born gay”,and the teacher truthfully answered that no one really knows.... but THAT was an un-PC answer. http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/news/story.aspx?cid=4612
- (May 29,2008) Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, a Democrat, signed a law allowing men to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, based on so-called sexual-identity (a man who feels like a woman, wants to be a woman or thinks he is a woman). Under the state’s new “transgender nondiscrimination” law, restaurants and other public accommodations that try to keep men out of the ladies room are subject to a fine of up to $5,000 and a year in jail.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26781&keywords=transgender+nondiscrimination

http://www.grasstopsusa.com/df060408.html
-Hewlett-Packard fired a Christian employee for posting near his cubicle a sign with Bible verses relating to the prohibition of men lying with men. This was in response to a celebrate-sexual-diversity poster put up by the company. Hewlett-Packard does not celebrate diversity of opinion. http://www.crosswalk.com/root/1240009/page0/
-Thomas Meeker, who worked as a systems engineer for Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was fired for refusing to submit to “diversity training.” Meeker, who wasn’t discriminating against anyone, said that as a Christian he couldn’t participate in a program that celebrates what the Bible calls sinful. Rockwell Collins said that when it comes to bending the knee to the new sexual ethic, conscience is no excuse. http://www.rutherford.org/articles_db/TRINEWS_release.asp?article_id=14
-The American Red Cross fired an employee, Michael Hartman, for expressing his disagreement with homosexuality.
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/redcrossfireshartman04aug05.shtml

-Recently,at San Jose State University,school administrators
discontinued blood drives on campus to protest
the FDA’s “discriminatory” ban on gay men giving blood....a “discrimination” based on the fact that a homosexual’s HIV risk is 60 times greater than that of heterosexuals.Now,apparently,this is the choice that the PC police want to give you...bleed to death from lack of an available blood supply,or risk getting AIDS from infected blood.It seems that in these PC times,the rights of homosexuals to not be offended trumps your right to not get
AIDS from them.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1967682/posts

University Ousts Student For Not Affirming Homosexual Behavior
April 6,2009 - DETROIT — School officials at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) dismissed a student from the school’s counseling program for not affirming homosexual behavior as morally acceptable. The school ousted Julea Ward from the program because she would not agree prior to a counseling session to affirm a client’s homosexual behavior and would not retract her stance in subsequent disciplinary proceedings.
EMU requires students in its program to affirm or validate homosexual behavior within the context of a counseling relationship and prohibits students from advising clients that they can change their homosexual behavior. Ward has never addressed homosexual behavior in any form during counseling sessions with clients.
http://www.thevoicemagazine.com/society/527-university-ousts-student-for-not-affirming-homosexual-behavior.html

Won’t affect Churches or private organizations?

(July 5, 2004) — The pastor of a Swedish Pentecostal church in Kalmar, Sweden,was sentenced to one month in prison by a Swedish court, for “hate speech against homosexuals” for a sermon he preached citing Biblical references to homosexuality. http://www.akegreen.com/

(December 3, 2007) — The pastor of an Alberta Canada Church wrote a letter to the editor of his hometown newspaper in which he said homosexuality is immoral and physically dangerous for those involved in it. The Humans Rights Commission ruled to silence the pastor and prevent him from any further speech against Homosexuality. http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/dec/07120306.html

· In New Jersey,a lesbian “couple” sued a Methodist organization because it would not allow them to celebrate their civil union ceremony on its property.
In addition to forcing the organization to disregard the rules set down in the United Methodist Book of Discipline, which states that gay unions cannot be performed in church buildings, the lesbian thugs also wanted cash “for economic loss, humiliation, and,[of course] mental pain.”
The justification for this outrage is the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, which has been interpreted to mean that homosexuals must be granted their increasingly arrogant demands, however unreasonable.
Almost as disturbing as the use of these feel-good discrimination laws to inflict depravity on a church is the contempt shown for private property. According to Garden State Equality, which imposes the interests of “the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community,” the church’s property is in fact public property “by virtue of having been used by the public for many years.”
The women could have held their ceremony anywhere—and eventually did hold it somewhere else—but they filed a complaint anyway because they loathed the ministry’s lack of moral approval.Seriously, this is on par with demanding that the NAACP hold a KKK rally at their HQ in Maryland.
Next look for demands that homosexual orgies be held in St. Patrick’s cathedral.

http://mainstreamiowan.blogspot.com/2007/07/lesbian-couple-sues-methodist-owned.html

-In Massachusetts, Catholic Charities, the largest provider of adoption services in the commonwealth, was forced to end this aspect of its work because it refused to arrange for children to be adopted by homosexual couples. Thus an affiliate of the largest church in America was prevented from doing vital work because it would not go along the absurdity that children placed for adoption don’t need a mother and a father. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/03/11/catholic_charities_stuns_state_ends_adoptions/
-In Philadelphia, the local Boy Scout council was told to pay $200,000 a year for rent on office space on city property that is provided to other charities free of charge.(This was spear-headed by a homosexual city councilor,by the way). This is the latest in an ongoing vendetta against the Scouts for winning a 2000 Supreme Court ruling confirming the group’s right to bar homosexuals from leadership positions.
The Boy Scouts — an organization that has done incalculable good over its 98-year history of helping boys navigate the perilous waters of adolescence — are being punished for not encouraging male homosexuals to take pre-pubescent lads into the woods on overnights...... It’s funny,but a lot of the very same people that condemned the Catholic Church for having allowed predatory homosexual priests to destroy the lives of young boys,villifies the Boy Scouts for trying to prevent the very same thing from happening in their organization.
http://www.cultureandmediainstitute.org/articles/2007/20070619164654.aspx

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