Raving Conservative Radio

This is my very first attempt at a webcast. This is an MP3 file so it can be strreeamed, downloded, or saved to an MP3 player. This broadcast showed me just how difficult it is to do even a 28 minute monologue. Those radio hosts have some serious ability. One quick apology, if I seem to ramble a bit, forgive me, future broadcasts will be better organized. I am just so excited I had to get this one out this week.

http://www.switchpod.com/users/dmoray1/RavingConservativeRadio1.mp3

Your feedback is greatly apreciated.

Tune in next week Wednesday when I interview Dr. Phat Tony about the Big Box o' Porn campaign to send spank mags to the troops in Iraq.

Fathers are Vital

The following information is from the website www.childrensjustice.org

Effects of Fatherlessness (US Data)

1) BEHAVIORAL DISORDERS/ RUNAWAYS/ HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUTS/CHEMICAL ABUSERS/ SUICIDES

85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes (Source: Center for Disease Control)
90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census)
71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes (Source: National Principals Association Report on the State of High Schools.)
75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes (Source: Rainbows for all God's Children.)
63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census)

2) JUVENILE DELINQUENCY/ CRIME/ GANGS

80% of rapists motivated with displaced anger come from fatherless homes (Source: Criminal Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26, 1978)
70% of juveniles in state-operated institutions come from fatherless homes (Source: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Special Report, Sept 1988)
85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home (Source: Fulton Co. Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. of Corrections 1992)
California has the nation's highest juvenile incarceration rate and the nation's highest juvenile unemployment rate. Vincent Schiraldi, Executive Director, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, "What Hallinan's Victory Means," San Francisco Chronicle (12/28/95).
These statistics translate to mean that children from a fatherless home are:
5 times more likely to commit suicide.
32 times more likely to run away.
20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders.
14 times more likely to commit rape
9 times more likely to drop out of high school.
10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances.
9 times more likely to end up in a state-operated institution.
20 times more likely to end up in prison.
Juveniles have become the driving force behind the nation's alarming increases in violent crime, with juvenile arrests for murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault growing sharply in the past decade as pistols and drugs became more available, and expected to continue at the same alarming rate during the next decade. "Justice Dept. Issues Scary Report on Juvenile Crime," San Francisco Chronicle (9/8/95). "Crime Wave Forecast With Teenager Boom," San Francisco Chronicle (2/15/95).
Criminal behavior experts and social scientists are finding intriguing evidence that the epidemic of youth violence and gangs is related to the breakdown of the two-parent family. "New Evidence That Quayle Was Right: Young Offenders Tell What Went Wrong at Home," San Francisco Chronicle (12/9/94).

3) TEENAGE PREGNANCY

"Daughters of single parents are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 164% more likely to have a premarital birth, and 92% more likely to dissolve their own marriages. All these intergenerational consequences of single motherhood increase the likelihood of chronic welfare dependency." Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Atlantic Monthly (April 1993).
Daughters of single parents are 2.1 times more likely to have children during their teenage years than are daughters from intact families. The Good Family Man, David Blankenhorn.
71% of teenage pregnancies are to children of single parents. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.

4) CHILD ABUSE

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that there were more than 1,000,000 documented child abuse cases in 1990. In 1983, it found that 60% of perpetrators were women with sole custody. Shared parenting can significantly reduce the stress associated with sole custody, and reduce the isolation of children in abusive situations by allowing both parents' to monitor the children's health and welfare and to protect them.

5) POVERTY

"The National Fatherhood Institute reports that 18 million children live in single-parent homes. Nearly 75% of American children living in single-parent families will experience poverty before they turn 11. Only 20% in two-parent families will experience poverty." Melinda Sacks, "Fatherhood in the 90's: Kids of absent fathers more "at risk"," San Jose Mercury News (10/29/95).
"The feminization of poverty is linked to the feminization of custody, as well as linked to lower earnings for women. Greater opportunity for education and jobs through shared parenting can help break the cycle." David Levy, Ed., The Best Parent is Both Parents (1993).
While this comes as absolutely no surprise to me, it is certainly shocking information to the legions of people who want to believe that single parent families typically healthy, fathers are not a necessity, and women are capable of being both mother and father o their children.

While am still of the opinion that father is easier to replace than a mother, I have always believed that a man is an essential part of the family unit. The fact is that children need fathers for numerous reasons. Boys need to learn how to treat women from how their fathers treat their mothers. Girls need to learn how a man who loves them will treat them from how their fathers treat them. Children learn respect from fathers and love from mothers. The total list with explanation could fill a book, and is actually the subject of several books.

Fathers excel at discipline, protection, and provision. Mothers excel at loving, nurturing, and teaching. While both can teach what the other teaches, neither can do it as well the gender that is hard-wired by God and nature to do it by nature. Both roles are absolutely vital. While these roles differ, to claim that one is more important than the other is folly, and to claim that women can fill the male role and that men can fill the female role equally is a demonstrable fallacy.

This entire situation is a potent argument in favor of traditional families, and against all of the following:

Divorce
Abandonment
Fornication
Adultery
Homosexual marriage
Homosexual adoption
Single parent adoption
Artificial insemination for singles
Anything else that results in children being raised by single gender parent households

Naturally, I am, and always have been opposed to everything on this list. I support traditional families and traditional family values. I think men who make babies and run away are scum. I think men who abandon their families are scum. I think that all children are so precious that they deserve both a mommy and a daddy and anything that robs them of this should be fought.

Men, stay with your families. Do not make babies out of wedlock, and if you do get a woman pregnant you must do the honorable thing and marry that lady, treat her in the most loving way imaginable, and raise that baby. Do not abandon your families. Do not seek divorce unless your wife is an adulteress. Men, we hold the cure to many of society’s ills. We must all stand for families, stand for children, and raise up a generation of men and women who are better adjusted and healthier than many of us had the opportunity to become. We can stop the destruction of civilization just by being loving, dutiful, and faithful husbands and fathers. Now do your part.

Proof That I am Right About the Gay Marriage Agenda

For those of you who have been swearing that all of the dire consequences of homosexual marriage are nothing more than the paranoid rantings of a Christian bigot, I present the following form the website BeyondMarriage.org, the website of a group of homosexual activists seking homosexual marriage . . . and more.

BEYOND SAME-SEX MARRIAGE A NEW STRATEGIC VISION FOR ALL OURFAMILIES & RELATIONSHIPS
July 26, 2006
We, the undersigned – lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) and allied activists, scholars, educators, writers, artists, lawyers, journalists, and community organizers – seek to offer friends and colleagues everywhere a new vision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition of diverse kinds of partnerships, households, kinship relationships and families. In so doing, we hope to move beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics as they exist in the United States today.
We seek access to a flexible set of economic benefits and options regardless of sexual orientation, race, gender/gender identity, class, or citizenship status.
We reflect and honor the diverse ways in which people find and practice love, form relationships, create communities and networks of caring and support, establish households, bring families into being, and build innovative structures to support and sustain community.
In offering this vision, we declare ourselves to be part of an interdependent, global community. We stand with people of every racial, gender and sexual identity, in the United States and throughout the world, who are working day-to-day – often in harsh political and economic circumstances – to resist the structural violence of poverty, racism, misogyny, war, and repression, and to build an unshakeable foundation of social and economic justice for all, from which authentic peace and recognition of global human rights can at long last emerge.
Why the LGBT Movement Needs a New Strategic Vision
Household & Family Diversity is Already the Norm
The struggle for same-sex marriage rights is only one part of a larger effort to strengthen the security and stability of diverse households and families. LGBT communities have ample reason to recognize that families and relationships know no borders and will never slot narrowly into a single existing template.
All families, relationships, and households struggling for stability and economic security will be helped by separating basic forms of legal and economic recognition from the requirement of marital and conjugal relationship.
U.S. Census findings tell us that a majority of people, whatever their sexual and gender identities, do not live in traditional nuclear families. Recognizing the diverse households that already are the norm in this country is simply a matter of expanding upon the various forms of legal recognition that already are available. The LGBT movement has played an instrumental role in creating and advocating for domestic partnerships, second parent adoptions, reciprocal beneficiary arrangements, joint tenancy/home-ownership contracts, health care proxies, powers of attorney, and other mechanisms that help provide stability and security for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and heterosexual individuals and families. During the height of the AIDS epidemic, our communities formed support systems and constructed new kinds of families and partnerships in the face of devastating crisis and heartbreak. Both our communities and our HIV organizations recognized, respected, and fought for the rights of non-traditionally constructed families and non-conventional partnerships. Moreover, the transgender and bisexual movements, so often historically left behind or left out by the larger lesbian and gay movement, have powerfully challenged legal constructions of relationship and fought for social, legal, and economic recognition of partnerships, households, and families, which include members who shatter the narrow confines of gender conformity.
To have our government define as “legitimate families” only those households with couples in conjugal relationships does a tremendous disservice to the many other ways in which people actually construct their families, kinship networks, households, and relationships. For example, who among us seriously will argue that the following kinds of households are less socially, economically, and spiritually worthy?
· Senior citizens living together, serving as each other’s caregivers, partners, and/or constructed families
· Adult children living with and caring for their parents
· Grandparents and other family members raising their children’s (and/or a relative’s) children
· Committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner
· Blended families
· Single parent households
· Extended families (especially in particular immigrant populations) living under one roof, whose members care for one another
· Queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple, in two households
· Close friends and siblings who live together in long-term, committed, non-conjugal relationships, serving as each other’s primary support and caregivers
· Care-giving and partnership relationships that have been developed to provide support systems to those living with HIV/AIDS
Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others. While we honor those for whom marriage is the most meaningful personal ­– for some, also a deeply spiritual – choice, we believe that many other kinds of kinship relationship, households, and families must also be accorded recognition.
An Increasing Number of Households & Families Face Economic Stress
Our strategies must speak not only to the fears, but also the hopes, of millions of people in this country – LGBT people and others – who are justifiably afraid and anxious about their own economic futures.
Poverty and economic hardship are widespread and increasing. Corporate greed, draconian tax cuts and breaks for the wealthy, and the increasing shift of public funds from human needs into militarism, policing, and prison construction are producing ever-greater wealth and income gaps between the rich and the poor, in this country and throughout the world. In the United States, more and more individuals and families (disproportionately people of color and single-parent families headed by women) are experiencing the violence of poverty. Millions of people are without health care, decent housing, or enough to eat. We believe an LGBT vision for the future ought to accurately reflect what is happening throughout this country. People are forming unique unions and relationships that allow them to survive and create the communities and partnerships that mirror their circumstances, needs, and hopes. While many in the LGBT community call for legal recognition of same-sex marriage, many others – heterosexual and/or LGBT – are shaping for themselves the relationships, unions, and informal kinship systems that validate and support their daily lives, the lives they are actually living, regardless of what direction the current ideological winds might be blowing.
The Right’s “Marriage Movement” is Much Broader than Same-Sex Marriage
LGBT movement strategies must be sufficiently prophetic, visionary, creative, and practical to counter the right’s powerful and effective use of “wedge” politics – the strategic marketing of fear and resentment that pits one group against another.
Right-wing strategists do not merely oppose same-sex marriage as a stand-alone issue. The entire legal framework of civil rights for all people is under assault by the Right, coded not only in terms of sexuality, but also in terms of race, gender, class, and citizenship status. The Right’s anti-LGBT position is only a small part of a much broader conservative agenda of coercive, patriarchal marriage promotion that plays out in any number of civic arenas in a variety of ways ­ – all of which disproportionately impact poor, immigrant, and people-of-color communities. The purpose is not only to enforce narrow, heterosexist definitions of marriage and coerce conformity, but also to slash to the bone governmental funding for a wide array of family programs, including childcare, healthcare and reproductive services, and nutrition, and transfer responsibility for financial survival to families themselves.
Moreover, as we all know, the Right has successfully embedded “stealth” language into many anti-LGBT marriage amendments and initiatives, creating a framework for dismantling domestic partner benefit plans and other forms of household recognition (for queers and heterosexual people alike). Movement resources are drained by defensive struggles to address the Right’s issue-by-issue assaults. Our strategies must engage these issues head-on, for the long term, from a position of vision and strength.
“Yes!” to Caring Civil Society and “No!” to the Right’s Push for Privatization
Winning marriage equality in order to access our partners’ benefits makes little sense if the benefits that we seek are being shredded.
At the same time same-sex marriage advocates promote marriage equality as a way for same-sex couples and their families to secure Social Security survivor and other marriage-related benefits, the Right has mounted a long-term strategic battle to dismantle all public service and benefit programs and civic values that were established beginning in the 1930s, initially as a response to widening poverty and the Great Depression. The push to privatize Social Security and many other human needs benefits, programs, and resources that serve as lifelines for many, married or not, is at the center of this attack. In fact, all but the most privileged households and families are in jeopardy as a result of a wholesale right-wing assault on funding for human needs, including Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, HIV-AIDS research and treatment, public education, affordable housing, and more.
This bad news is further complicated by a segment of LGBT movement strategy that focuses on same-sex marriage as a stand-alone issue. Should this strategy succeed, many individuals and households in LGBT communities will be unable to access benefits and support opportunities that they need because those benefits will only be available through marriage, if they remain available at all. Many transgender, gender queer, and other gender-nonconforming people will be especially vulnerable, as will seniors. For example, an estimated 70-80% of LGBT elders live as single people, yet they need many of the health care, disability, and survivorship benefits now provided through partnerships only when the partners are legally married.
Rather than focus on same-sex marriage rights as the only strategy, we believe the LGBT movement should reinforce the idea that marriage should be one of many avenues through which households, families, partners, and kinship relationships can gain access to the support of a caring civil society.
The Longing for Community and Connectedness
We believe LGBT movement strategies must not only democratize recognition and benefits but also speak to the widespread hunger for authentic and just community.
So many people in our society and throughout the world long for a sense of caring community and connectedness, and for the ability to have a decent standard of living and pursue meaningful lives free from the threat of violence and intimidation. We seek to create a movement that addresses this longing.
So many of us long for communities in which there is systemic affirmation, valuing, and nurturing of difference, and in which conformity to a narrow and restricting vision is never demanded as the price of admission to caring civil society. Our vision is the creation of communities in which we are encouraged to explore the widest range of non-exploitive, non-abusive possibilities in love, gender, desire and sex – and in the creation of new forms of constructed families without fear that this searching will potentially forfeit for us our right to be honored and valued within our communities and in the wider world. Many of us, too, across all identities, yearn for an end to repressive attempts to control our personal lives. For LGBT and queer communities, this longing has special significance.
We who have signed this statement believe it is essential to work for the creation of public arenas and spaces in which we are free to embrace all of who we are, repudiate the right-wing demonizing of LGBT sexuality and assaults upon queer culture, openly engage issues of desire and longing, and affirm, in the context of caring community, the complexities and richness of gender and sexual diversity. However we choose to live, there must be a legitimate place for us.
The Principles at the Heart of Our Vision
We, the undersigned, suggest that strategies rooted in the following principles are urgently needed:
Ø Recognition and respect for our chosen relationships, in their many forms
Ø Legal recognition for a wide range of relationships, households, and families, and for the children in all of those households and families, including same-sex marriage, domestic partner benefits, second-parent adoptions, and others
Ø The means to care for one another and those we love
Ø The separation of benefits and recognition from marital status, citizenship status, and the requirement that “legitimate” relationships be conjugal
Ø Separation of church and state in all matters, including regulation and recognition of relationships, households, and families
Ø Access for all to vital government support programs, including but not limited to: affordable and adequate health care, affordable housing, a secure and enhanced Social Security system, genuine disaster recovery assistance, welfare for the poor
Ø Freedom from a narrow definition of our sexual lives and gender choices, identities, and expression
Ø Recognition of interdependence as a civic principle and practical affirmation of the importance of joining with others (who may or may not be LGBT) who also face opposition to their household and family compositions, including old people, immigrant communities, single parents, battered women, prisoners and former prisoners, people with disabilities, and poor people
We must ensure that our strategies do not help create or strengthen the legal framework for gutting domestic partnerships (LGBT and heterosexual) for those who prefer this or another option to marriage, reciprocal beneficiary agreements, and more. LGBT movement strategies must never secure privilege for some while at the same time foreclosing options for many. Our strategies should expand the current terms of debate, not reinforce them.
A Winnable Strategy
No movement thrives without the critical capacity to imagine what is possible.
Our call for an inclusive new civic commitment to the recognition and well-being of diverse households and families is neither utopian nor unrealistic. To those who argue that marriage equality must take strategic precedence over the need for relationship recognition for other kinds of partnerships, households, and families, we note that same-sex marriage (or close approximations thereof) were approved in Canada and other countries only after civic commitments to universal or widely available healthcare and other such benefits. In addition, in the United States, a strategy that links same-sex partner rights with a broader vision is beginning to influence some statewide campaigns to defeat same-sex marriage initiatives.
A Vision for All Our Families and Relationships is Already Inspiring Positive Change
We offer a few examples of the ways in which an inclusive vision, such as we propose, can promote practical, progressive change and open up new opportunities for strategic bridge-building.
· Canada
Canada has taken significant steps in recent years toward legally recognizing the equal value of the ways in which people construct their families and relationships that fulfill critical social functions (such as parenting, assumption of economic support, provision of support for aging and infirm persons, and more).
o In the 1990s, two constitutional cases heard by that country’s Supreme Court extended specific rights and responsibilities of marriage to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. Canada’s federal Modernization of Benefits and Obligation Act (2000) then virtually erased the legal distinction between marital and non-marital conjugal relationships.
o In 2001, in consideration of its mandate to “consider measures that will make the legal system more efficient, economical, accessible, and just,” the Law Commission of Canada released a report, Beyond Conjugality, calling for fundamental revisions in the law to honor and support all caring and interdependent personal adult relationships, regardless of whether or not the relationships are conjugal in nature.
· Arizona
The Arizona Together Coalition (www.aztogether.org) is currently running a broad, multi-constituency campaign that emphasizes how the proposed constitutional amendment to “protect marriage” will affect not just same-sex couples but also seniors, survivors of domestic violence, unmarried heterosexual couples, adopted children and the business community. The Arizona Coalition highlights the probability that the amendment will eliminate domestic partnership recognition, by both government and businesses. They also point out that DOMA supporters are the same forces that wanted to keep cohabitation a crime. As a result of the Coalition’s efforts, support for the constitutional amendment declined sharply in polls (from 49% to 33%) in the course of a few months (May 2005 - September 2005). Accordingly, should the amendment make it onto the November 2006 ballot, Arizona is poised to become the first state to reject a state anti-gay constitutional marriage amendment in the voting booth. We suggest that the LGBT movement pay close attention to the way that activists in Arizona frame their campaign to be about protecting a variety of different family arrangements.
· South Carolina
The South Carolina Equality Coalition (www.scequality.org) is fighting a proposed constitutional amendment with an organizing effort emphasizing “Fairness for All Families.” This coalition is not only focused on LGBT-headed families, but is also intentionally building relationships with a broad multi-constituency base of immigrant communities, elders, survivors of domestic violence, unmarried heterosexual couples, adopted children, families of prisoners, and more. As we write this statement, the Coalition’s efforts to work in this broader way are being further strengthened by emphasis on the message that “Families have no borders. We all belong.”
· Utah
In September 2005, Salt Lake City Mayor Ross Anderson signed an Executive Order enabling city employees to obtain health insurance benefits for their “domestic partners.” A few months later, trumping the executive order, the Salt Lake City Council enacted an ordinance allowing city employees to identify an “adult designee” who would be entitled to health insurance benefits in conjunction with the benefits provided to the employee. The requirements included living with the employee for more than a year, being at least 18 years old, and being economically dependent or interdependent. Benefits extend to children of the adult designee as well. While an employee’s same-sex or opposite-sex partner could qualify, this definition is broad enough to encompass many other household configurations. The ordinance has survived both a veto by the Mayor (who wanted to provide benefits only to “spousal like” relationships) and a lawsuit launched by anti-gay groups. The judge who ruled in the lawsuit wrote that “single employees may have relationships outside of marriage, whether motivated by family feeling, emotional attachment or practical considerations, which draw on their resources to provide the necessaries of life, including health care.” We advocate close attention to such efforts to provide material support for the widest possible range of household formations.
We offer these four examples to show that there are ways of moving forward with a strategic vision that is broader than same-sex marriage, and encompassing of all our families and relationships. Different regions of our country will require different strategies, but we can, and must, keep central to our work the idea that all family forms must be protected – not just because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is the strategic and winnable way to move forward.
A Bold, New Vision Will Speak to Many Who are Not Already With Us
At a time when an ethos of narrow self-interest and exclusion of difference is ascendant, and when the Right asserts a scarcity of human rights and social and economic goods, this new vision holds long-term potential for creating powerful and vibrant new relationships, coalitions, and alliances across constituencies – communities of color, immigrant communities, LGBT and queer communities, senior citizens, single-parent families, the working poor, and more –hit hard by the greed and inhumanity of the Right’s economic and political agendas.
At a time when the conservative movement is generating an agenda of fear, retrenchment, and opposition to the very idea of a caring society, we need to claim the deepest possibilities for interdependent social relationships and human expression. We must dare to dream the world that we need, the world that has room for us all, even as we also do the painstaking work of crafting the practical strategies that will address the realities of our daily lives. The LGBT movement has a history of being diligent and creative in protecting our families. Now, more than ever, is the time to continue to find new ways of defending all our families, and to fight to make same-sex marriage just one option on a menu of choices that people have about the way they construct their lives.
We invite friends everywhere to join us in ensuring that there is room, recognition, and practical support for us all, as we dream together a new future where all people will truly be free.

So, at least parts of the homosexual community freely admit to the desire to wipe out the family as we know it and turn mariage into a mad free-for-all just like I have been telling you all for two years now. And you should know that the court battles tomake this list has already begun because there is now a movement to use the courts to legalize polygamy the same way the courts are being used in an attempt to legalize homosexual marriage. Which, you may recall, I told you would be the first of the additions to this movement.

Chew on this for a bit and think hard before you call me paranoid for talking about the homosexual activist community trying to destroy the family.

My Favorite Conversion Story

With so many to choose from one might think that it would be hard to choose a favorite conversion story, but this one was remarkably easy.

My favorite conversion story is that of David Berkowitz, AKA: The Son of Sam.

For those of you who do not who the Son of Sam is, he is a serial killer from New York whose reign of terror had women dying their hair black to avoid being targeted for murder because he preferred to murder light haired women. Once he was caught he was easily convicted and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of payroll. So, true to liberal ideals, we have a man in prison for life whose proper punishment was death.

Still, this is a case where it worked out in a weird sort of way.

Initially David Berkowitz was a vile terror in prison. After a copious amount of extreme violence and terrorizing of both prisoners and guards he was given a new nickname “David Bezerkowitz”, and transferred to a supermax prison where he now spends most of his time in solitary confinement.

Eventually, a Christian missionary began to minister to David Berkowitz through a prison ministry program. This man, with love and patience, eventually got through to Sam and he eventually came to Christ.

The change couldn’t have been more dramatic.

Remember, David Berkowitz was never in any danger of being executed, and he has no possibility of payroll. There is no manipulative reason for him to pretend to have been converted.

I think the prison guards who have known him a long time put it best when they say that he is not even close to the same David Berzerkowitz from Tsing Tsing. They state plainly that everything about him right down the look in his eyes has changed. He is no longer violent. He no longer bears the familiar crazed look. He no longer spews hatred, especially the hatred toward women that he used to rant on about steadily. His conversation has changed. And, most importantly, he is genuinely repentant of his past.

I remind you that he has nothing at all in this world to gain from this.

I first learned of this when I listened in on a special on Christian Radio where David was being interviewed about his transformation in Christ. It was the first I had heard though t had been several years. The mainstream media did not consider this transformation to be news even though David started taking every opportunity to give interviews t share the good news. He even allowed himself to speak freely and remorsefully about his violent past, which, through the magic of editing, was distilled down to omit everything of consequence and simply present the details of the murders by his words along with the usual condemning voice-overs. After a few years of this he quit giving any interviews where he talked about his famous serial killings because he was tired of the sensationalist focus of the reporters omitting everything that he considered vitally important, specifically, his change and remorse, and his apologies to the families of his victims. He now only speaks of his conversion and life since in interviews, and the mainstream media has lost all interest in him, much to detriment of everyone. Now only a few people go to perform interviews with him, mostly Christian ministers who want everyone to see that even the worst monsters can be transformed into the likeness of Christ. That the worst humanity has to offer is not beyond the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is also why David Berkowitz’s conversion is my favorite. It proves what I have been saying most of my life that no one is beyond salvation, and that even Hitler, had he come to Christ before he died (which he did not) would be in Heaven right now.

This is too much for many people to stomach. Many people will never forgive such evils by such beasts of men and refuse to believe that God could forgive them either. Some Christians even believe that some sins cannot be washed away by the Blood of Jesus. Many non-Christians see the fact of forgiveness of even the worst among us as sheer nonsense. Some people are even hostile toward Christianity specifically because we believe that even such beasts can be saved up to just before death, but that people who are far better than they are doomed simply because they refused to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ in their lives and in this world. “Where is the fairness?” they ask, “Where is the Justice?”

The fairness and the justice are found in John 3:16

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

I think that David Berkowitz is a beautiful picture of the absolute truth of this Biblical passage.

Racist Voters?

After Alan Colmes claimed that the only reason Bob Corker beat Harold Ford Jr. for senate in Tennessee was because 33% of people responded that race had something to do with their vote, implying, of course, that it was white racism that was the primary cause for Bob Corker’s victory, I decided to do a little test.

Being a guy who occasionally gets a wild itch he just HAS to scratch, I performed a a brief survey.

In Maryland Michael Steel, the black candidate, lost. Maryland has a very high black population. So here is what I did to see if racism was involved in his loss.

I pulled up the online white pages and did a little survey. I randomly called some people until I spoke to 20 people who actually voted. HOWEVER! There is a fun twist to this. I only called people with one of two last names. I called people named Black, who in my experience are usually white, and I called people named White, who, in my experience, are usually black.

Here are the results:

Out of 10 Whites (blacks?) 4 said race was important to them when they voted.
Out of 10 Blacks (whites?) 2 said race was important to them when the voted.

Average is 30% took race into consideration with Whites (blacks?) showing a greater tendency toward racism while voting than Blacks (whites?).

So, next time some liberal wants to claim that white racism is keeping minorities down I suggest you remember that racism goes both ways.

Thisisanentertainmentsurveyandnotascientificsurveyandtheresultsshouldnotbeconsideredrepresentativeofthepopulationofmarylandasawhole.

Midterm Election Results 2006

After careful review of the close Senate and House Races I have discovered something VERY interesting.

In almost every case the vote that went to conservative third party candidates was more than sufficient to take the victory away from the Republican Candidate and give it to the Democrat.

Consider the following three examples:

Virginia:
Jim Webb = 1,172,541 votes
George Allen = 1,165,324 votes
Glenda Parker (Independent Grassroots, a conservative) = 26,102 votes

Jim Webb won by 7,217 votes. That is just under 19,000 votes less than the third party candidate siphoned off from George Allen.

Missouri:
Claire McCaskill = 1,028,920 votes
Jim Talent = 987,383 votes
Frank Gilmour (Libertarian) = 47,007 votes

Without the Libertarian candidate Jim Talent would have had 1,034,390 votes, more than enough to win in Missouri.

Montana:
John Tester = 198,302 votes
Conrad Burns = 195,455 votes
Stan Jones (Libertarian) = 10,324 votes

Stan Jones’ 10,324 conservative votes are plenty to bring Conrad Burns above the 198,302 vote John Tester received over 7,400 to spare.

So, Democrats across the nation, be sure to send your thanks to the various conservative third party candidates who handed the Senate to you as well as giving you a larger majority in the House than you would have otherwise had.

This I also an indicator of the people’s frustration with the apparent abandonment of many of the conservative principles the voters expected out of the Republican party. This is further evidenced by the fact that the vast majority of new Democrats coming into office are conservative Democrats, in some cases actually more conservative than the Republicans they replaced.

Of course, this totally screws the Democrats in 2008. The various committee chairs in the house and Senate are going to be the ultra liberal old guard, and they will be forced to address their constituents demands over that of the new Representatives and Senators. Specifically, there will be a deluge of investigations, the will be impeachment proceeding with no factual basis to support the charges, there will be even greater obstructionism, and it will all be hailed by the mainstream media as good for the American people and that there will be sudden reports about how our economy, which is somehow supposed to be dismal despite all time low unemployment, record high stocks, record high home ownership, record earnings, savings, and investments by ordinary Americans, and one of the most vigorously growing economy’s in the world. In spite of all this, we are supposed to be in dire straits right now, but be aware that the media will soon start to trumpet these facts that were caused by Republicans as great achievements by the Democrats . . . and some people will actually believe it despite all of the facts being to the contrary.

However, the disingenuousness of the media as well as the wacky behavior the ultra left will have forced upon them by their screaming constituencies will soon tire the American people of Democrat antics. This victory virtually guarantees that the Democrats will lose the presidential bid in 2008, as well lose the Senate in 2008. It also guarantees that their numbers in the House will be diminished as some of them are replaced, and as a few freshman congressmen get fed up and switch sides, but they will probably retain the House until they let the tax breaks expire in 2010, when they will get swept out of office on a wave of voter anger at the sudden pinch to their wallets.

Also, the Republicans have been chastened by their base. This will force them to evaluate their actions and return to the principles they were voted into to office to protect, and it will result in a freshly invigorated and potent Republican party.

In short, when one takes the long view, this election is not quite what it appears to be. By losing now the 2008 election has been saved for conservatives. And we will just get more dominant from there.

So, enjoy your victory while it lasts Dems, because you will assuredly destroy yourselves.

Ted Haggard

This is a very difficult piece for me to write. I know Pastor Ted Haggard. I was a member of his church, New Life, in Colorado Springs for the last 2 years I lived there. I have spoken with him personally. I have shook his hand. I have hugged him. All on numerous occasions. My church belongs to the National Association of Evangelicals. This hits me very hard.

Today, Pastor Ted as he is known to his church confessed that the allegations of purchasing drugs and gay sex with a male prostitute are true. I had hoped that it was all a lie from a homosexual who hated Pastor Ted and what he stood for, as is often the case in situations like this, but it is not so this time. Pastor Ted has declared himself to be a deceiver and admitted his sin and betrayal of the church.

I have been perusing the articles written about Pastor Ted and looking over the comments people have been leaving behind for a few days now. Most of what I see are 2 extremes of wrongness. The first one that I shall address is the extreme of “So what?”

A get over it attitude is wrong in this case. Pastor Ted has been doing wrong for a long time now, and he has been living as a hypocrite. Words cannot express my personal disappointment in this. It is the deception more than the male prostitute and closeted homosexuality that bother me the most. For one to stand before men as a man of God and publicly fight against the very sin he was secretly engaged in is . . . painful.

People often fight the hardest against the evil that affects them the most. For Pastor Ted this was homosexuality. Unfortunately, now that his secret has been revealed much of his work has been destroyed. It will take a great deal of effort to repair the damage he has done.

On the plus side he has confessed his sin openly, admittedly, it was under duress, but he did. He has also been penitent, resigned his leadership positions in the church, and is working through his problems. What many people do not understand, or choose to ignore is that homosexuality is a sin problem. The good news about all of this is that Pastor Ted has been forced to face his sin, and is now seeking help. Now that he is seeking help he will finally overcome his lifelong struggle. By facing shame in this life he is being spared in the next. What greater proof is there of God’s mercy other than the death of Christ is there?

On the other extreme is the crowing, the bile, the hatred that is being spewed at Pastor Ted by . . . homosexuals and their allies. You would think that the homosexual community would be happy to have the chance to include one of their greatest foes as one of their own, that they might welcome him with open arms. This, as is typically the case, is not true at all. The mockery being heaped upon Pastor Ted by homosexuals is disgusting, beyond mere humor it s filled with hate and vengeance. The homosexual community is screaming about how Pastor Ted should be made an outcast for his hypocrisy and how he should be condemned by all men.

To mock another for the same evil you perform is the purest form of hypocrisy, and by their behavior the homosexual community is now guilty of the same hypocrisy they hate Pastor Ted for engaging in.

The people who are treating Pastor Ted with love and forgiveness are the Christians. Yes, some are infuriated by feelings of betrayal. But most are simply saddened and want nothing more than to see him get the help e needs. And he is getting it already. Members of the Christian community, mostly ones closest to Pastor Ted are giving him counsel, praying with him, and praying for him. He is being treated with love and being brought up out of his sin so that he can live a free life. He is being helped to a life that is free of the shame he has borne for so many years, and a life that is free of the deception he has been enslaved to for so very long. You want to know what it means to love a sinner? Look at how Christian leaders are treating Pastor Ted. His sin and betrayal are horrific, but he is not being excommunicated for it, he is being helped into the fullness of life and truth and into a right relationship with God.

This is in stark contrast to the godless and the homosexuals who appear to want to see Pastor Ted lynched. Words cannot express how very glad I am that they are being disappointed by the Christian community at large. To them I say, you have no idea about what it means to be a Christian.

I speak out against homosexuality a lot. I believe it is evil because the Bible calls it evil in both the Old and the New Testaments. It is beyond reasonable dispute that homosexuality is a sin, as is adultery and fornication, both of which I also make a habit of speaking against. Yet I, who have been accused of preaching hate just like everyone else who speaks out against homosexuality is accused of preaching hate, am not the one who is behaving hatefully toward Pastor Ted right now. It is the ones who have been accusing me of hate that are being the hateful ones right now, and they are foul hypocrites for it.

Homosexuals want to be accepted, but they behave hatefully toward closet and recovered homosexuals as well toward those who openly oppose the homosexual agenda. Christian want to have homosexuality recognized for what it is, a choice and an addiction, and prevent it from being legitimized as if it were skin color or gender, and we are kind and forgiving to homosexuals while opposing their sin.

If nothing else, Pastor Ted’s situation has enabled the world to see the stark difference between we Christians and the homosexual movement, and to understand that it is not we who are the hateful ones.

There is something to be admired in this though. One of the first things that came to my mind when this all got started was the situation that Jesse Jackson found himself in a few years ago. So let us compare the two situations and see who is the better man.

Both men were exposed as sexual sinners, Jesse Jackson committed adultery, Ted Haggard committed homosexual adultery. HOWEVER! Jesse Jackson denied, denied, denied, then accused the people who outed his behavior and made it well known of racism. Ted Haggard took responsibility for his actions (after a few days) and is seeking help and healing.

Jesse Jackson still calls himself Reverend and leads his numerous organizations, claiming to be a righteous man of God. Ted Haggard has resigned form all church leadership as the Bible commands. He is contrite and humbled, and acknowledges his sin in its entirety (hopefully).

Jesse Jackson screamed “Racist!”, but I have yet to hear Ted Haggard scream “Homophobe!”

One man is repentant for his sin and shall be saved by the mercy of God. The other is not and is in dire peril.

It took far more courage for Ted Haggard to do what he is doing than it takes to deny and accuse the way so many others have done and do to this day. I admire this courage and pray for God’s healing hand on Pastor Ted and his family, and I pray for wisdom and protection for the next leader of New Life Church and the National Association of Evangelicals.

All glory to God in His great love and mercy. All praise to God in His holy righteousness. May He keep and bless Pastor Ted Haggard, and bring him healing and grace eternal. Amen.