Jennings is the founder of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) that claims a national network of 10,000 “students and allies working to create safer schools.” The truth is that GLSEN is after our kids, as its following 1999 statement demonstrates: “The fear of the religious right is that the schools of today will be the governments of tomorrow. And you know, they are right. If we do our jobs right, we’re going to raise a generation of kids who don’t believe the claims of the religious right.” Here in California, the recent passage of the law instituting “Harvey Milk Day” in the public schools should make it that much easier for GLSEN to achieve this goal.

Groups like GLSEN and the ACLU are now closer than ever to eradicating from the public schools all traces of the Judeo-Christian beliefs which have greatly influenced our American culture for over two centuries. The ACLU issued a statement in connection with the 2003 case of Lawrence v. Texas that said: "The religious beliefs of Americans have nothing to do with reality." Moreover, ACLU Board Member, Franklin E. Kameny, had this to say in 1993: "I view homosexual activity . . . as moral, virtuous, right, and desirable." This is apparently also the official view of the Obama administration.

Jennings’ concerns about kids being indoctrinated into heterosexuality are not unique to him. A coalition of liberal sex education advocates says the Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Congress will end support for sex-ed programs that emphasize marriage and heterosexual relationships. Martha Kempner, vice president for information and communications with the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) claims that these programs will end because emphasizing marriage and heterosexual couples is discriminatory: “These programs are really made — I would say they are made — for a heterosexual classroom, but they are really made for a heterosexual world and obviously that’s inappropriate.”

Another Obama appointee, Harry Knox, is a leader with the homosexual activist group Human Rights Campaign. He has been appointed to President Barack Obama’s advisory council on faith-based partnerships. Knox has called Pope Benedict XVI and Catholic bishops “discredited leaders”. He has also attacked the Catholic lay men’s organization, the Knights of Columbus, by calling it an “army of oppression” for their work to preserve the definition of marriage as the union between a man and a woman.

Rather than heeding calls to replace Jennings and Knox, Obama’s recent public statements lead one to conclude that he actually supports their extreme viewpoints. At a recent speech before the Human Rights Campaign, Obama stated: “You will see a time in which we as a nation finally recognize relationships between two men or two women as just as real and admirable as relationships between a man and a woman.” He went on to state: “We must all stand together against divisive and deceptive efforts to feed people’s lingering fears for political and ideological gain.”

President Obama promised the Human Rights Campaign that he would seek to “pass an inclusive hate crimes bill” but, unable to pass it legitimately, as a stand-alone law, the Senate snuck it in as an amendment to a “must pass” defense funding bill. It was signed into law by Obama on October 28th. Such laws have been used in places like Canada and Belgium, where same-sex marriage is already permitted, to silence the voices of any that dare oppose it. We can expect the same to occur here. Indeed, closer to home here in San Diego, I have already seen religious persecution suffered by my own clients who dared stand up for traditional values. This includes the four brave Christian firefighters who protested their being ordered against their will to participate in the licentious San Diego Gay Pride Parade. It also includes my client Carrie Prejean, a native San Diegan and Christian, who lost her title as Miss California for courageously exercising her Constitutional right to speak out in favor of traditional marriage.

One of President Obama’s latest appointees to the EEOC is lesbian law professor Chai Feldblum, a former lawyer for the Human Rights Campaign and the ACLU. In 2006 , Feldblum admitted that when sexual freedom and religious liberty conflict, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”

At a recent GLSEN awards ceremony, a wealthy homosexual activist, David Bohnett, stated: “It’s time to combat head-on the religious organizations that are funding the opposition to marriage equality and safe school legislation.” He further declared: “Among our greatest adversaries who actively work against us are the leaders of the Catholic, Mormon, and evangelical churches who seek to deny equal protection for us and for our children.” Bohnett called for “active measures” to be taken against such religious organizations: “The Bible is all too often used as a weapon against us”. He argued that children taught that the Bible condemns homosexuality may become “school bullies” and later become the adults who vote “to deny marriage equality.”

It seems sadly ironic that the man who campaigned on the theme of unity is proving to be the most radical and divisive President in the history of the nation. President Obama’s hate crimes amendment will undoubtedly have the affect of chilling religious speech and may well be the counter-weapon to the Bible that the likes of Bohnett are seeking to try to silence their opposition. The battle has been joined. I only hope that parents of school children and the churches realize it.

Unwin found that societies that adopted this model typically took about three generations to reach their peak of productivity and progress.  After that, frequently, a gradual development of complacency and licentiousness would take place and what he described as an ”outburst of homosexuality” would sometimes occur.  When that happened, and the society started to move away from the traditional model of male-female monogamous marriage as its foundation, it would begin to unravel.  It would then take another three generations of deterioration from that point for the society to collapse.

It is my opinion that between the end of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction of the South, proceeding through the Industrial Revolution, and continuing up until about the end of World War II in 1945, the U.S. reached its zenith.  Then came the U.S. Supreme Court’s Everson decision in 1947 which imposed an unconstitutional “Wall of Separation” between Church and State.  This directly contradicted the vision of the founding fathers.  Upon his farewell address to the nation, George Washington tried to impress upon his fellow countrymen that it was “Religion and Morality” that served as the foundation for our young nation.

Our thinking about human sexuality was transformed in the late 1940′s and early 1950′s by Alfred Kinsey, using false and  fraudulent statistics — including the 10% myth concerning the number of homosexuals in the population.  His work was based largely on the deviant sexual practices  reported by those in prison.  His flawed conclusions were not surprising since 86% of  convicted child molesters against males describe themselves as being either homosexual or bisexual.  A young college student at the time, Hugh Hefner, was influenced by Kinsey’s work and started what was to become the Playboy empire which in turn helped launch the sexual revolution of the 1960′s.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Griswold  in 1965 (which found a new constituitional “right to privacy” for contraception) was the next big judicial construct.  This in turn helped fuel the feminist revolution of the 1970′s since women were no longer “chained to their homes” by babies to raise.  But, since contraception does not always work, the U.S. Supreme Court had to find a new application for the constitutional right to privacy, which it did in Roe v. Wade in 1973.  This travesty of a judicial decision allowed for abortion on-demand.  With the new influx of contracepting and “liberated” women in the workplace, having more extramarital affairs than ever, it was of course necessary to adopt liberal No-Fault Divorce laws.  In this way, the cheating spouses could easily get out of their lifelong marital commitments with little or no legal penalty or social stigma.

This in turn created the situation where there were far more little boys growing up with no strong male role models at home and far more little girls being raised with no father or by step-fathers more likely to sexually abuse them (e.g. Ellen DeGeneres).  In either event, we increased the number of male and female homosexuals by enhancing the risk factors for developmental gender confusion and the psycho-social deficits which eventually lead to the same-sex attraction.  Hence, the need for yet another constitutional right to privacy to be announced by the U.S. Supreme Court in the horrific Lawrence decision in 2003 — this time for homosexual sodomy.  Thus, what started with the uncoupling of sexuality and procreation in the Griswold  (contraception) case has now reached its unnatural conclusion with the legalization and normalization of  homosexual sodomy in the Lawrence case.  After all, if sex is only about adult emotional attachments, and not procreation, then why not homosexuality?

Of course, the downward slide of our society has been greatly accelerated by the explosion of pornography on the Internet which has weakened the natural romantic attraction between young people and replaced it with unbridled selfish sexual gratification.  This has further lessened the natural resistance and even revulsion to various sexual perversions.  Indeed, just this past week we have witnessed the sitting Chief Appellate Justice of the largest federal judicial district in the nation, posting disgusting sexual images on his website (involving people and animals) while presiding over a pornography trial involving beastiality and extreme fetishes.  Where does all of this lead us — to same-sex “marriage,” of course.  And how much time do we have left by Unwin’s standards — I would say that we are at least at the end of the second generation of deterioration, if not already well into the final third generation before the collapse.

Can we stop this societal suicide — possibly, but not if we can’t stop same-sex “marriage” in California in November 2008, and not without supernatural help.  Without the foundation of Religion and Morality that George Washingoton and the other founding fathers provided for us, there is simply no real hope for the future of this country.

Finally, since it is only in our maleness and femaleness that we are made in the image and likeness of God, the destruction of the concept of gender is perhaps Satan’s greatest accomplishment.  Moreover, since the sacramental marriage of a husband and wife is used to image the relationship of Christ and His Church, even the idea of same-sex ”marriage” is a sacrilege. Therefore, separate and apart from the seemingly accurate prognastications of Professor Unwin, I just don’t see how a God of Justice can tolerate such a diabolical mockery of His divinely ordained instituion of marriage for very long.  Indeed, the same man to whom our Lord entrusted the Keys to the Kingdom warned us that:  “…in the last days there shall come deceitful scoffers, walking after their own lusts… ” (2 Peter 3:3).  In conclusion, I informed my friend that although we have had the privilege of living in the greatest nation in the history of the world, based on the foregoing, we may very well be seeing it in its waning years.  May the God of our fathers have mercy on us and our beloved country.

Conflict of Interest?

The prophetic import of Chesterton’s words has become increasingly poignant in our own time.

My introduction to Thomas More came, as it has with many, through viewing Robert Bolts’s 1966 cinematic masterpiece, A Man for All Seasons. I first saw the film in 1977 which, providentially, occurred shortly before I left for a year of graduate study abroad in England through the University of San Diego’s Oxford program. It was providential because that year happened to coincide with the 500th anniversary of More’s birth and an outstanding exhibition of his life and times at the National Portrait Gallery in London. My immersion in the works of Thomas More throughout that year began a lifetime devotion to this patron saint of lawyers, judges, and statesmen.

As I learned about the momentous challenges More faced in his own day, I became keenly aware of how fortunate we were to live in a time and place in which we would presumably be forever free from persecution for our sincerely held religious beliefs. Now, a mere three decades later, it is clear to me that history does, indeed, repeat itself and that the lessons of More’s life and death are absolutely invaluable in contemporary times.

Over the last two years, as lead counsel in the efforts to preserve the Mt. Soledad Cross in San Diego, I have become acutely aware of the magnitude of the anti-Christian bias in our own society. For example, when I was retained to represent the City of San Diego pro bono in this controversy, my opponent stated on the record in court that the city hiring of a Christian attorney to represent it in the case concerning the Mt. Soledad Cross was analogous to the city hiring the Ku Klux Klan to represent it in a desegregation case. The liberal Superior Court Judge assigned to the case overruled my objection to such improper comments, and invited my advisory to proceed with his anti-Christian diatribe which, of course, he was only too happy to do.

When later interviewed by the press, my opponent stated that he did not mean to suggest that I was a racist, but rather: “How dare [the city] hire a Catholic attorney” to represent it in a religious freedom case. In ruling in favor of the atheist challenging the presence of the Mt. Soledad Cross on City property, the activist judge went so far as to state in her written opinion that it constituted an unconstitutional entanglement of government and religion for the City of San Diego to hire an attorney affiliated with a Catholic public-interest law firm to represent it in the case. It was solely this finding by the trial court that led the City Attorney of San Diego to conclude that it was a “conflict of interest” for me to continue to represent the city in the case.

In God’s Hands

Once again, the Mt. Soledad Cross case is an excellent example, inasmuch as it has been a true ecumenical effort that has helped bring about a series of spectacular successes. Multi-denominational alliances have helped achieve victories at the ballot box, in Congress, and even through legal efforts to obtain a stay granted by the United States Supreme Court. All branches of the state and federal governments have become involved in the case and the prospect of ultimate victory in the United States Supreme Court is now better than ever — especially with five Catholics currently sitting on the Court.

With all our political and legal maneuvering, which even led me to be present in the Oval Office to watch President Bush sign the legislation regarding the Mt. Soledad Cross which I helped draft, there is one lesson I have learned better than any other. That lesson is that regardless of the amount of effort expended and the degree of support and opposition, the outcome is ultimately in God’s hands. Perhaps the best example of this is the result of the 54-day Miraculous Novena, prayed by a group of Catholics in San Diego, for the preservation of the Mt. Soledad Cross. At about the end of the first 27 days of the prayers for petition, Justice Kennedy of the United States Supreme Court issued a very rare stay of the federal court order to remove the cross by August 1, 2006. Then, on the 54th day of the Novena, which itself ended on August 1, 2006, the United States Senate, by unanimous consent, voted to transfer the Mt. Soledad property to the federal government, thereby mooting the effect of the federal court order to remove the cross from city property.

Saint Thomas More knew all too well that true devotion to the Eucharist, the rosary, and the Cross itself, are indispensable weapons in the spiritual battles that confront all devout Catholics seeking to live their faith in an increasingly secular world. Like many of the veterans honored atop Mt. Soledad, Thomas More was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for his beliefs. In his case, as his final words on the scaffold reflect, he died as “The King’s good servant, but God’s first.” The ultimate question each of us has to answer in the difficult days that lie ahead is, “How far am I willing to go in the defense of my own faith?”

© Copyright 2006 Catholic Exchange

Charles S. LiMandri is the West Coast Regional Director of the Thomas More Law Center, a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for Thomas More Studies at the University of Dallas, President of the San Diego Chapter of Legatus, and past President of the Thomas More Society of San Diego. He has a civil litigation practice in Rancho Santa Fe, California.

Threats Within and Without

So much for any of my previous naive illusions that Christians in general, or Catholics in particular, are now free from religious discrimination in this country. Current events are leading me to wonder if we are entering into another period of virulent anti-Catholicism, such as Thomas More experienced in England during the Protestant revolt of the early 16th century. Thomas More was martyred in large part for opposing Henry VIII’s attack on the authority of the pope and the sanctity of marriage. Yet even today devout Catholics are being persecuted for speaking out against the relentless attacks on traditional marriage by the radical homosexual lobby in this country.

In California, the Catholic health care system is even under attack by those who would force Catholic physicians to perform abortions and in vitro fertilization procedures on lesbians. In Massachusetts, Catholic Charities is out of the adoption business for the first time in over 100 years, because it will not place children with homosexual couples, a violation of basic tenets of our religion. Increasing numbers of school children are being taught not only to tolerate, but to actively embrace the homosexual agenda. Conscience clauses are being eliminated from anti-Christian legislation that Catholic lawyers and judges will be asked to enforce against their brothers and sisters in the faith.

Elsewhere in the world the situation is even worse:

The world’s 2.1 billion Christians are a religious minority in eighty-seven countries. The Geneva Report of 2002 estimates that up to 200 million Christians are being denied their full human rights, as defined by the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, simply because they are Christians. Since 2000, there have been forty countries where at least one verifiable death attributable to anti-Christian violence has occurred. (Susan Brinkmann: “The Greatest Story Never Told: Modern Christian Martyrdom,” This Rock, September 2006)

There are numerous parallels between More’s day and our own that could explain the somewhat rapid spread of anti-Catholicism. I’d like to focus on two of the more notable engines of change that have characterized both More’s time and our own.

The first is a strong trend toward secularization. In More’s day, this was evident in the writings of the likes of Machiavelli, whose book The Prince was published in 1532. In that work, Machiavelli sought to divorce religion and morality from politics. The classic example is More’s former friend and benefactor, Henry VIII — the once Catholic prince turned heretical tyrant. The writings of Machiavelli and anti-Catholic revolutionaries like Martin Luther helped fuel the Protestant Reformation and the persecution of faithful Catholics like Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher.

In our own day, we have witnessed a resurgence of secularism that reflects, at best, a sneering tolerance of those who still aspire to Christian ideals. That grudging tolerance is increasingly giving way to a legally enforced hostility to religion that has no room for traditional morality. In More’s day, the invention of the printing press revolutionized the free flow of ideas, both good and bad. While it helped usher in a Renaissance of new learning, it also served as a vehicle by which heresy and sedition spawned anarchy and persecution. Five hundred years later, the widespread availability of the Internet has, in our own time, once again revolutionized the dissemination of information — both good and bad. Whereas the wisdom of the ages can now be summoned to our computer screens in an instant, so can anti-religious propaganda and unbridled immorality. The latter has greatly weakened the resolve of millions in the current culture war being waged against religion and traditional values in the world today.

The challenges in More’s day came not only from within his society itself, but also from an external enemy in the form of radical Islam. In More’s lifetime, the Muslim empire was threatening to conquer Christian Europe. The European powers were greatly weakened through infighting and discord and, in 1521, Muslim forces conquered Hungary. The papal legate to England pointed out to Henry VIII that all of Christendom, including England itself, was in the greatest danger from the Muslim threat. Now, 500 years later, the scourge of radical Islam is again upon us. It has been predicted that within this generation, even without violence, Islam will finally overcome much of Europe through a shift in demographics (see Mark Steyn: “It’s the Demography, Stupid,” The New Criterion, January 2006). Thus, the great Muslim threat to Europe, which first arose in More’s lifetime, stands to achieve its objectives in our own.

With dire threats to our culture from within and without, how do we stand to fare any better than did Thomas More, who was a martyr to his faith? Of course, the answer lies in that faith itself. Contemporary with Thomas More was Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, who helped introduce a counter-reformation through a renewed commitment to Catholic orthodoxy. And, in our time, it is not surprising that it is the orthodox seminaries that are flourishing. Moreover, while secularism has been on the rise, faithful Catholics are banding together and forging alliances with evangelical Christians and devout Jews.