Miami lawsuit disenfranchises Floridians who voted to affirm natural marriage

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MIAMI, Florida – Florida Family Action along with a diverse coalition of citizen groups crossing racial, political, and religious lines, today filed a Motion to Intervene in Pareto v. Ruvin, the lawsuit initiated by homosexual activists seeking to declare Florida’s marriage laws unconstitutional.

Liberty Counsel, founded and led by Mat and Anita Staver, is one of the premier First Amendment constitutional advocacy groups in the country are representing the parties seeking to intervene.  Florida Family Action is a cultural action organization with thousands of members across the state, devoted to preserving and protecting the institution of marriage.

Florida Family Action lead the campaign in 2008, when 62 percent of Floridians voted to pass Amendment 2, amending their state constitution to reaffirm the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Amendment 2 was the first constitutional amendment to clear the heightened 60% threshold for voter approval, thanks to the largest grassroots effort on any ballot issue in Florida’s history.

Having lost in the marketplace of ideas, and having failed to convince the public to adopt their radical version of “marriage,” homosexual activists have now filed suit, asking Miami judge Sarah Zabel to throw out the votes of 8 million Floridians, and to judicially impose homosexual marriage upon all Floridians.

In addition to Florida Family Action, Liberty Counsel represents two other umbrella civil rights organizations who are seeking to intervene to protect both marriage and the voting rights of all Floridians. PEOPLE UNITED TO LEAD THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY is a civil rights umbrella organization consisting of 35 civic groups and representing thousands of African-Americans and other minorities. FLORIDA DEMOCRATIC LEAGUE is one of the leading Hispanic-led human rights organizations in Florida, with thousands of members throughout the state, many of which are registered Democrats. Each of these organizations was instrumental to the passage of Amendment 2, and all are uniting to defend natural, man-woman marriage, and to the right of every Floridian to have his or her vote counted.

John Stemberger, President of Florida Family Action, previously stated after the lawsuit was originally filed that, “The six same-sex plaintiff couples in this lawsuit appear to be very sincere and are certainly free to self-define themselves and have private civil commitment ceremonies.  But they, and the activists who motivated them to file this suit, are not free to redefine a fundamental human institution which has served civilization since the beginning of time.”

According to Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, “This lawsuit threatens to disenfranchise millions of Floridians who voted to affirm natural marriage, and to supplant the clearly expressed will of a super majority of Florida’s voters with the radical vision of homosexual activists who cannot win at the ballot box,” added Horatio Mihet, Liberty Counsel’s Senior Litigation Counsel. “We are committed to provide a vigorous defense for marriage and voting rights,” concluded both.

Hollande government chokes on “Gender Theory”

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The French government’s attempts to have old-fashioned pink and blue sexual stereotypes replaced with a basket of new kinky stereotypes celebrating same-sex parents, homosexuals, transvestites and the like – have run into trouble.

France’s Socialist Hollande government, mired in unprecedented depths of unpopularity, was caught red-handed with its latest social engineering experiment: a pilot project in some 600 kindergartens based on gender theory. The issue had been stewing ever since the passage last spring of the same-sex marriage law that granted homosexuals the right to marry and raise children in wholesome families. Adoption rights are extended, children born in previous heterosexual relationships can be cuddled in recomposed matrimonially united 2-mother or 2-father families.

The implied promise of normalization of children brought into the world with the help of artificial insemination and womb rental and the eventual legalization of these methods in France rounded out the package. But widespread opposition to the indoctrination of male-female equality, starting with day care centers and kindergartens, has blocked the “social progress” momentum.

While tens of thousands of well-behaved citizens marched for five hours on February 2 in protest against the government’s “family phobic” measures, cabinet ministers, commentators and, for some reason, journalists, too, parroted government talking points: the demonstration was totally uncalled for. Neither womb-rental nor artificial insemination for lesbian couples is in the proposed Family Affairs bill. As for the decried gender theory, it doesn’t exist. Women’s Rights Minister & government spokesperson Najat Vallaud-Belkacem kept repeating: This demonstration is uncalled for, it’s based on fear mongering and vicious rumors, there is no such thing as gender theory, we are teaching male-female equality, helping children overcome stereotypes that lead to homophobia and violence again women while stifling their professional ambitions.

The Family Affairs bill is indefinitely postponed. Family values advocates are not reassured, the LGBT contingent is furious, and social engineering is alienating the Left’s Muslim clientele.

Farida Belghoul, who was in the forefront of the Beur [second generation Arab-Muslim immigrants] movement in the 1980s is back with JRE [journée de retraite de l’école]: Parents opposed to gender theory indoctrination keep their children home from school in a once-a-month boycott organized by Belghoul via her text message network. Farida Belghoul has forged an alliance with Alain Soral, France’s most unashamed National Socialist [= Nazi], 100 percent anti-Semite, and buddy-buddy with the comedian Dieudonné. Videos of her talks are posted on Soral’s Egalité et Réconciliation [Equality and Reconciliation] website, cheek to jowl with tirades against the “Jew-loving” Interior Minister Manuel Valls; the Minister of Education, Vincent Peillon, who is a Jew; and long winded exposés on the civilization Soral is defending… from the Jews.

Belghoul has no compunction about drawing French Muslims, including banlieue youths, into her coalition with Soral. A strong Catholic society, she declares, is the best protection for Muslims in France and worldwide. “If France falls, we all fall.” Her discourse and her physical appearance are frantic. Her plea for family reconciliation – husbands with wives, children with parents – seems to be fuelled by personal disappointments. She concludes her talks with a resounding “Vaincre ou mourir” [vanquish or perish]. Her claims about sexual indoctrination in the schools may be oversimplified and exaggerated, but when she displays a merry multiple family book that celebrates all combinations – mother & father + child, 2 mothers + child, 2 fathers + child, 1 female-female couple & 1 male-male couple + child, etc. – her exasperation is shared by multitudes outside of her unsavory movement.

Scores of titles were exposed in the aftermath of the February 2 demonstration. Opposition leader Jean-François Copé discovered “Tous à poil” [everybody strips]: everyone from the baby-sitter to the grandfather and including the postman, the teacher, the traffic cop is realistically drawn in explicit nakedness with full display of what used to be called the “private parts.” The publisher did a new print run of 2,000 to satisfy demand stimulated by the controversy. Vallaud-Belkacem said Copé is an Inquisitionist book burner.

Other titles emerged, celebrating same-sex parents, homosexuals, transvestites etc. via animals or human beings: Two male birds raise an egg deposited in their empty nest by an anonymous donor, a princess doesn’t like princes, a tomboy, a boy in frilly dresses, brother and sister toddlers playing tickly games in bed… in short, those silly old-fashioned pink and blue stereotypes are replaced with a basket of new kinky stereotypes. It turned into a game of ping pong: opponents of gender theory would display a title on official reading lists, national education authorities would deny it and simultaneously take it off the lists. The ABCs of Equality used in schools, they said, owes nothing to gender theory. It doesn’t exist.

Why do politicians keep lying in the old fashioned way when everything they ever said is available with one click of the mouse? Interviewed in August 2011 by the giveaway newspaper 20 Minutes,  Belkacem is asked how “gender theory” can help change society. She replies: “By showing that the socio-cultural context is as much a factor as biology in determining  ‘sexual identity’ gender theory raises the question of unacceptable, persistent inequalities between men and women, and homosexuality, and shows us how to educate on these subjects.” I noted Vallaud-Belkacem’s LGBT commitments in my profile [Dispatch International May 2013], and her intention to develop programs based on the findings of a commission she appointed to study sexual stereotypes. The report included an enthusiastic account of an experimental Norwegian kindergarten where the children were never identified as boys or girls.

Having copiously fawned over its Muslim clientele for decades – it is estimated that Francois Hollande got 80 percent of the Muslim vote to 14 percent for Sarkozy – the Left is alienating this electorate with its social engineering. On the other hand, voters attracted by the Left’s progressive agenda are drastically disappointed. The extent of the damage will be counted in the coming municipal elections (March 23 and 30).

Speaking of stereotypes, isn’t Najat Vallaud-Belkacem a sterling example of the use of feminine charm to defend anything and everything? Despite her boyish haircut and unisex style Vallaud-Belkacem is an attractive young woman with lovely eyes and French elegance. As befits her role, she speaks the words put in her mouth by the government, lies with disarming sincerity, attacks her opponents with a delicately sheathed blade.

As for President Hollande, he runs a full range of feminine attributes, from the fertility companion Ségolène Royal, mother of his four children, to Valerie Trierweiller, maturely glamorous journalist, to the sexy young movie star, Julie Gayet. And Najat asks kindergarteners why so few girls want to be stonemasons?

EDITORS NOTE: The featured picture is of François Hollande à Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire taken by Ludovic Lepeltier. The photo is under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Mainstream media in Massachusetts starts campaign to normalize transgenderism and sex-changes for schoolchildren!

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Pushing the transgender agenda to kids.These two men had a booth at the “Youth Pride” event in Boston last year. They were inviting middle school and high school students to a “Drag Gospel Festival”. [MassResistance photo]

MassResistance fights back on national radio.

This past year Massachusetts began to enforce its mandate that public schools fully accommodate the concept of “transgenderism” and cross-dressing by children. Now, a powerful campaign has been ramping up in the local mainstream media to normalize “transgenderism” and even sex-change operations for children in the eyes of the public.

As we reported last year and in our recent post on the “War on Children,” schools in Massachusetts are now directed to allow so-called “transgender” students — children who decide to “identify” as the opposite sex — to wear opposite-sex clothes to school, use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms, and be called by an opposite-sex name. (California now has also mandated “transgenderism” in the public schools, and several other states are not far behind.)

This boy was marching in the state-supported “Youth Pride Parade” in Boston in 2013. This is what happens when homosexual and transgender adult activists are allowed to push their agendas in the schools.
[MassResistance photo]

But this has been happening relatively quietly. The general public still knows very little about it. But even in Massachusetts, seeing children involved in this makes people disturbed and outraged.

Thus the radical movement felt the need for a slick, effective PR campaign to change the public’s attitudes. In other words, the current stream of articles and radio spots is no accident or coincidence. Like similar homosexual-themed PR campaigns, this has the fingerprints of the well-funded and well-connected homosexual-transgender groups all over it. These groups have long worked hand in glove with their allies in the mainstream. Their activists and hand-picked “experts” appear in almost all of the articles.

Softening up the public

Not long ago this concept was considered so fringe and demonic that no even the homosexual newspapers would barely touch it. But the public is now being softened up to believe that this is an everyday occurrence — and even a “normal” part of life. There’s even the constant use of the opposite-sex pronoun (i.e., “he” when referring to a girl) to play not-so-subtle tricks with your mind.

Just a few examples over the last month:

A four-part series by National Public Radio in Boston about “Nate,” a girl who has decided she wants to be a boy:

* Jan. 22 – National Public Radio/Boston:
 “Living Transgender – Part 1: Battling perceptions and pronouns.” Local NPR affiliate WBUR explores the “challenges facing transgender teenagers through the story of Nate, a 16-year-old transgender male” (i.e., a female).

* Jan. 22 – National Public Radio/Boston: “Living Transgender: Frequently Asked Questions, Resources” This is very frightening. It is mostly a collection of junk science, “queer theory,” and the opinions of radical “experts.” But it’s an example of what is being told to children as fact.

* Jan. 23 – National Public Radio/Boston:
“Living Transgender – Part 2: As A Transgender Teen, Nate Finds Acceptance At His School” The undertone is that normalizing transgenderism in schools is like integration and the Civil Rights movement.

* Jan. 24 – National Public Radio/Boston: “Living Transgender – Part 3: “Uncertainty Surrounds Medical Treatments For Transgender Youth.” A very distressing piece about medical procedures and body surgery to “change” a teenager from one sex to the other.

National Public Radio’s Boston affiliate, WBUR, did a four-part series celebrating this girl, who now calls herself “Nate” and dresses as a boy. She’s “uncomfortable” being a girl, and the radio report explores the “challenge” of getting people to call her “he.”
[Photo: WBUR]

* Feb. 9 – Boston Globe: “Transgender Revolutionary.” Article about a “male” teacher and coach at a boys’ private boarding school who is actually a woman with facial hair, who is “married” to a lesbian. She has written a book about a distant ancestor, a woman in the Revolutionary War who also dressed as a man, though later married and had children.

This woman, dressed as a man and taking testosterone to grow facial hair and lower her voice, coached the boys’ cross-country team at a private boarding school in Rhode Island. She is “married” to a lesbian, according to theBoston Globe article.
[Photo: Boston Globe.]

* February 18 – Boston Globe: “Transgender student takes national stage” One of three identical female triplets has taken hormones to grow facial hair in “his brave effort to become truly himself.”

The Boston Globe celebrates this girl’s so-called “transitioning” into a boy. This includes continually taking male hormones and an upcoming operation to have her breasts removed, according to the article.
[Photo: Boston Globe]

It’s also happening in California, which also passed a “transgender” school law:

* February 21 – San Gabriel Valley Tribune: (Also reported in the Los Angeles Times.) “Azusa High transgender student-athlete Pat Cordova-Goff attends first practice.” A boy who “identifies” as a girl is allowed to play on the school’s girls’ softball team, because of new California law.

A boy (right) who says he now “identifies” as a girl plays on the girls’ softball team, as mandated by California state law.
[Photo: Watchara Phomicinda]

A particularly disturbing aspect is the tone of all of these articles: They arecelebratory of this horrible situation, as if it were a great social triumph. They include no substantial opposing viewpoints. And they are completely dispassionate about the destructive nature of the medical procedures done to these kids to “improve” them. It is pure propaganda meant to normalize something that is profoundly abnormal.

Ignoring the damage

Unfortunately, the Left only thinks about its political agenda. It has no interest in the horrible trauma and sometimes suicidal feelings down the road when a person who went through “gender change” procedures realizes that he/she made a terrible mistake that may be unrecoverable. (Among other things, some of the medical procedures given to youth cause permanent sterilization.) It doesn’t “fix” the underlying problem of gender dysphoria, it only prolongs it. This has been documented at length by people like Walt Heyer and others who had hormone treatments and surgical procedures.

MassResistance fights back on national radio

On Monday February 17, Brian Camenker of MassResistance was featured on the national radio show “Crosstalk”, one of the most prominent Christian radio shows in the US. The show is broadcast on 97 radio stations across the country on the VCY America network.

The daily Crosstalk show is broadcast on 97 stations across America on the VCY America network.

Most people across America are completely unaware of the extent of the homosexual and transgender assault on children in the schools — particularly in the East Coast and West Coast where it’s at its worst. But Camenker laid it out for the radio audience. It was pretty shocking to a lot of people. Afterwards, MassResistance got a lot of emails from around the country with very emotional reactions.

Listen to radio interview with Camenker HERE (33 min.).

The propaganda will continue

Unfortunately, you can expect to see more of this in the mainstream media, even beyond Massachusetts and California. They understand that this is necessary for acceptance by the public. Like homosexuality itself, every generation normally finds these concepts unnatural and repulsive unless there is a heavy dose of propaganda and social pressure to conform. We’ve seen that the homosexual and transgender lobby is prepared to provide that.

Unquestioned acceptance by the liberal establishment

But in our observation, probably even more difficult and frightening for conservatives to deal with is how readily the liberals in the press, the schools, and elsewhere unquestioningly accept this complete lunacy. There appears to be no lower limit to what those people will embrace as fact, no matter how ludicrous, if it falls within the realm of political correctness.

One wonders if this is how the horrors of the 1930s in Europe and later in China and other communist countries took place so easily. It makes it all the more necessary for good people to speak out as loudly as possible.

There must be no compromise

And unfortunately, we’re already seeing many pro-family groups cave in on the “transgender” issue. They disagree with it in principle but invariably refuse to challenge it with anything stronger than polite opposition to the use of “gender identity.” They’ll argue that “privacy” rights should be respected in restrooms and locker rooms or that “special rights” should not be granted in schools. That way, by arguing at the edges, they avoid a direct confrontation with the transgender lobby. But it’s the coward’s way out and in the long run hurts children terribly.

MassResistance doesn’t compromise on these issues. Neither should you. This can and must be derailed.

Pushing the transgender agenda to kids.These two men had a booth at the “Youth Pride” event in Boston last year. They were inviting middle school and high school students to a “Drag Gospel Festival”.
[MassResistance photo]

A closer look at the “Drag Gospel Festival” poster.

Rhode Island pro-life / pro-marriage activists put their words into real action: Marriage and now a baby!

And finally some GOOD news!

During the heat of the culture war battles in Rhode Island over the last few years two of the most prominent pro-marriage and pro-life activists in the state have been Kara Russo and Chris Young. We’ve worked with them a lot.

Sometimes the battle tends to spur us on to bigger things. As we reported back in September of 2012 Chris and Kara decided to collaborate on their pro-marriage activism by . . . getting married!

Well, they didn’t leave their pro-life work behind. On December 22, 2013 their daughter Immanuel Mary Katherine was born. On Feb. 2, she was baptized by at St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church in Galilee, Rhode Island, the same church where they were married.

Chris Young, Kara Young, and Immanuel Mary Katherine Young at the baptism on Feb. 2.

Now THAT’s what we call dedicated activism!!

Students for Life Group Declared ‘More Controversial’ Than Gay Rights Group

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(Left) A flyer the Wilson High School Administration did not allow Students for Life to pass out.

(Right) A poster for the Gay-Straight Alliance allowed by the administration.

Tyler O’Neil from CP U.S. reported:

A high school chapter of the pro-life group Students for Life is claiming that it was censored by the administration and given less freedom than a gay rights group.

Bryce Asberg, president of the Wilson High School SFL chapter, said the flyers were just one aspect of the school’s preference for the GSA. He also mentioned a struggle over a candlelight vigil and a day of silence. “I would definitely say that there’s some censorship involved and trying to block our rights of free speech,” Asberg said. “Our message is more controversial, but that doesn’t give them grounds to block our message.”

History of the Controversy

Asberg outlined the school’s alleged censorship since the SFL chapter started in November 2013.

“In late November, early December, we submitted the flyers. The same week later we realized they were not approved,” he recalled. The denied leaflets featured a quote from the late President Ronald Reagan – “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion is already born.” – and a milk carton showing a baby with the word “missing” and the caption “Since Roe v. Wade 1/3 of our generation has been aborted.”

Read more.

EDITORS NOTE: Featured image courtesy of  CP U.S.

RELATED COLUMN: Questions You’re Asking About Cakes, Gays, and Religious Freedom

Pardon My Paranoia

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An organization, Patriots for America, is calling for millions of Americans to descend on Washington, D.C on May 16th for Operation American Spring whose purpose is to demand that President Obama and others in his administration be removed from office.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/Ddg7fYtdGUY[/youtube]

Among the rules of engagement set forth on their Internet site include (1) no weapons, no ammunition. “The Communist forces that control Washington, D.C. do not recognize the 2nd Amendment and have banned all weapons and ammunition from the district. Do not give them the opportunity to arrest you and prosecute you.” (2) Follow all rules of the road. (3) Comply with all constitutional requests of local authorities. And (4) travel in groups of four or greater.

Geoff Ross is identified as the senior chief of the organization that wants participants to be prepared to stay as long as it takes for Congress to take action. The event suggests that he and many supportive groups think the U.S. is at risk of losing its constitutional government so long as Barack Obama is President.

The worst possible scenario to the event would be if some element of the law enforcement authority is ordered to fire on the gathering, but I recall that in July 2008 presidential candidate Obama said that Americans could no longer “…continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

America does not need a civilian national security force.

We have the military whose job is to protect us against foreign invasion and we have state and local police authorities in our towns and cities to address riots and large protests. The force the President wants would exist solely to intimidate and control Americans who he deems his enemies.

What we do have in the wake of 9/11 is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and it is not intended to be a military force although it does include the Coast Guard. On March 23, 2013, Capt. Terry M. Hestilow, U.S. Army retired, wrote to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) warning that DHS is preparing to go to war with the citizens of the United States.

“It is with gravest concern that I write to you today concerning the recent appropriation of weapons by the DHS that can only be understood as a bold threat of war by that agency, and the Obama administration, against the citizens of the United States of America.” He expressed his concerns over “recent purchases of almost 3,000 mine-resistant ambush-protected (MRAP) armored personnel carriers, 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition (with associated weapons), and other weapons systems.”

“One needs only look to the rise of Adolf Hitler,” wrote Capt. Hestilow, “and his associated DHS organizations, the SA and the SS, of 1932-1934, to see the outcome of allowing an agency of government this kind of control over the free citizens of a nation.”

In a February 5, 2014 article on Infowars.com, Kit Daniels reported that “The U.S. Postal Service is currently seeking companies that can provide “assorted small arms ammunition in the new future. The U.S. Postal Service joins the long list of non-military federal agencies purchasing large amounts of ammunition.”

What has a growing number of Americans concerned is this arming of government agencies we do not associate with the need to be heavily armed. “Since 2001, the U.S. Department of Education has been building a massive arsenal through purchases orchestrated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms” reported Daniels. “Back in July, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also purchased 72,000 rounds of 40 Smith and Wesson, following a 2012 purchase for 46,000 rounds of .40 S&W jacketed hollow point by the National Weather Service.”

One might assume that the DHS needs to be armed to some degree, but there is no logical reason for the Post Office, the Department of Education, and NOAA to be heavily armed. Reportedly DHS spent over $58 million to hire security details for just two Social Security offices in Maryland and $80 million for armed guards to protect government buildings in New York and more guards for federal facilities in Wisconsin and Minnesota. “Even the Environmental Protection Agency has its own SWAT teams conducting raids on peaceful Americans,” wrote Daniels.

DHS has been engaged in a program to provide military-style weapons and vehicles to local police forces around the nations.

My most profound fear, my paranoia, concerning the May 16 protest, despite its instructions to participants not be armed, is that some incident would escalate to a point where shots were exchanged. One can conceive of that serving as the reason to initiate an “emergency” proclamation and/or to declare martial law.

One gets the feeling that this government, under the direction of President Obama, is preparing for a national insurrection against his often lawless administration. The May 16 event would provide an excuse to initiate actions that would put us all under the gun.

I no longer believe “it can’t happen here.” We have a President who sees no reason to work with Congress and who recently “joked” that he can do whatever he wants.

I worry that members of our military and others would obey orders to impose governmental control to the extent that we might see widespread resistance by millions of armed Americans. I regard the surge in the purchase of weapons by private citizens during Obama’s terms in office as a reflection of the paranoia that I am feeling these days.

But is it paranoia? Or is it a reasonable assumption that a President who feels free to ignore the Constitution might have plans that do not include peaceful elections or his departure from the office?

© Alan Caruba, 2014

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Hawaii House Rejects Religious Freedom Restoration Act (HB 1624)

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Jim Hochberg, President of Hawaii Family Advocates, writes, “In special session last November, your State Government created legal homosexual marriage with language in the law that clearly puts your religious liberty in danger whenever it comes up against homosexual marriage issues.  At the time, our friends in the House sought to amend the bill to protect religious liberty and fix other issues with 24 amendments.  Each one failed.  At the time, the idea was that the majority in the House would take up the issues in this session.”

Religious Freedom Restoration Act (HB 1624)

House Bill 1624 was introduced to strengthen religious liberty, but House Judiciary Committee Chairman Karl Rhoads (District 29: Kalihi, Palama, Iwilei and Chinatown) steadfastly refused to schedule a hearing on the bill because he viewed it as “re-litigating SB1” which he refused to do.

On February 13, 2014, Representative Bob McDermott (District 40: Ewa, Ewa Beach, Ewa Gentry and Iroquois Point) made a motion on the floor during session to pull the bill from the Judiciary Committee so that it could be voted on by the full House for Second Reading without the committee hearing. Seventeen House members voted with him (18) to bring the bill to a vote (listed as support in the chart below), but of the other 33 House members, 28 voted to recommit (listed as oppose in the chart below) the bill to the committee where it is dead for this session.  The other five members were absent.

What is truly disturbing is that our citizen-driven push by 2,500 of you who contacted the House members requesting a hearing on HB1624 was completely ignored by the majority in the House.  This majority apparently does not view your religious liberty as important enough to have a committee hearing or a vote on the floor.

ABSENT

Representative Faye P. Hanohano HI-004 Absent
Representative Karen Awana HI-043 Absent
Representative Mele Carroll HI-013 Absent
Representative Romy Cachola HI-030 Absent
Representative Roy M. Takumi HI-035 Absent

 

SUPPORT

Representative Henry J. C. Aquino HI-038 Support
Representative Isaac Choy HI-023 Support
Representative Ty Cullen HI-039 Support
Representative Richard Fale HI-047 Support
Representative Beth Fukumoto HI-036 Support
Representative Sharon E. Har HI-042 Support
Representative Ken Ito HI-049 Support
Minority Leader Aaron Johanson HI-031 Support
Representative Jo Jordan HI-044 Support
Representative Derek S.K. Kawakami HI-014 Support
Representative Lauren Matsumoto HI-045 Support
Representative Bob McDermott HI-040 Support
Representative Marcus R. Oshiro HI-046 Support
Speaker Emeritus Calvin K. Y. Say HI-020 Support
Representative James K. Tokioka HI-015 Support
Representative Clift Tsuji HI-002 Support
Representative Gene Ward HI-017 Support
Representative Ryan I. Yamane HI-037 Support

 

OPPOSE

Representative Della Au Belatti HI-024 Oppose
Representative Thomas Brower HI-022 Oppose
Representative Rida T.R. Cabanilla HI-041 Oppose
Representative Richard P. Creagan HI-005 Oppose
Representative Cindy Evans HI-007 Oppose
Representative Mark Hashem HI-018 Oppose
Representative Linda Ichiyama HI-032 Oppose
Representative Kaniela Ing HI-011 Oppose
Representative Bertrand Kobayashi HI-019 Oppose
Representative Chris Lee HI-051 Oppose
Representative Nicole E. Lowen HI-006 Oppose
Representative Sylvia Luke HI-025 Oppose
Representative Angus L.K. McKelvey HI-010 Oppose
Representative John M. Mizuno HI-028 Oppose
Representative Daynette Morikawa HI-016 Oppose
Representative Mark M. Nakashima HI-001 Oppose
Representative Scott Y. Nishimoto HI-021 Oppose
Representative Takashi Ohno HI-027 Oppose
Representative Richard H.K. Onishi HI-003 Oppose
Representative Karl Rhoads HI-029 Oppose
Majority Leader Scott K. Saiki HI-026 Oppose
Speaker Joseph Souki HI-008 Oppose
Representative K. Mark Takai HI-033 Oppose
Representative Gregg Takayama HI-034 Oppose
Representative Cynthia Thielen HI-050 Oppose
Representative Justin H. Woodson HI-009 Oppose
Representative Jessica Wooley HI-048 Oppose
Representative Kyle T. Yamashita HI-012 Oppose

SB1 gave homosexuals legal liberties they did not have before, while your religious liberty was trampled on by SB1.  Remind your representative that tolerance is a two way street.

ACTION:

If your representative opposed the recall of HB1624, please today or early next week call, email or visit them in person and find out for yourself why they did not represent your interests on HB1624.  If your representative supported the recall of HB1624 so that people of faith would be protected, please contact them and let them know you support them and their actions.  Please do not leave this action to others.  Every one of us must take the five minutes to make the contact so they know you have not gone back to sleep.  They believe you have and that is why they don’t think they need to care about your religious liberty.  (Click the link on the bottom of this email to send a message to your legislator).

If you need help identifying your Hawii Representative, please CLICK HERE.

Hawaii Family Advocates is a 501C4 organization associated with Hawaii Family Forum. Click the link below to log in and send your message: https://www.votervoice.net/link/target/hiff/4J5K7WqbW.aspx

 

Swiss model helps curb heroin addiction

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It’s sad that society rises to a level of sympathy and understanding only when death by drug addiction strikes the rich and famous.

When poor Willie Smith is found behind the convenience store Dumpster at 5:00 a.m., lying dead with a needle in his arm, it gets zero attention by the news media. But when movie stars like Whitney Houston and Phillip Seymour Hoffman die by the needle, it’s big news, bringing a spurt of awareness until the story dies down.

Heroin is a dangerously addictive drug that is used by all facets of society, rich and poor. During my days as a cop, I met business people who functioned in a normal life, but hid their addiction from family and associates as they entered the sordid black market once a week to buy their “medicine.” They began using the drug earlier in life to fit in with their peers.

It’s getting worse. The Wall Street Journal reported in August that heroin use in the United States was soaring after a huge surge in production from Mexico during the past six years. In 2012, officials seized 1,989 kilograms of heroin compared to 487 kilos in 2008. The estimated number of heroin users increased from 373,000 in 2007 to 620,000 in 2011.

While isolating this substance from all others, we should note that if there were no pushers, there would be no sales. Many street sellers reward users for bringing in new customers, usually among the youth. Rewards generally come in the form of free dope. Heroin addicts are deathly afraid of withdrawals, because the sickness is horrible. Thus, the yoke of heroin is almost impossible to break.

Perhaps we should start thinking outside the box and consider the Swiss model that was implemented in the late 1990s after the Swiss people approved referendums to decriminalize heroin (use and possession) and set up special heroin programs. Until then, parks and railway stations in Switzerland were bustling with users and sellers, creating immense social problems, particularly with HIV and health care facilities, not to mention associated crime.

Switzerland set up Heroin Addiction Treatment (HAT) programs providing accessible heroin clinics for chronic addicts to receive free “medicine.” The results were staggering. During a period of seven years, incidents of deaths from drugs and HIV infections from needles dropped dramatically. The desperation factor disappeared for addicts who no longer had to rob and steal and turn on new junkies to support their habits. This pulled the rug from under the black market and the smugglers/sellers moved elsewhere.

Other countries, such as Germany and Portugal, along with Vancouver, Canada, have been conducting similar experiments with amazing results. Citizens are safer, drugs are regulated, needles are cleaner, prison populations are down and the market for new addicts has diminished.

In 2004, a World Health Organization report concluded that for every dollar invested in the HAT program, $12 is saved on law enforcement, judicial and health costs, not to mention prisons and victimization.

There are other ways to improve the crime problem in America. It’s not always about long prison sentences. It’s time for a change in thinking.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is titled Boiling up heroin. Author/Photographer: Hendrike (2001).

JUSTIN BIEBER : Spincer of the Month, January 2014

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This month was an easy pick.

Young folks who find great fame and success are often seen wallowing in self love and depravity, thinking they are somehow more important and better than the average person. The selection for January of 2014 showed what a true fool he really is by anointing himself above the law in a Miami Beach residential neighborhood, embarking on a drag race (60 mph in a 30 zone) in his ostentatious Lamborghini. When stopped by the cops, he was less than polite, delivering a barrage of expletives to the officers before being hauled in for DUI. He was also allegedly under the influence of marijuana and prescription drugs while driving with an expired license. He was also charged with Resisting Arrest. Bieber was arrested with R&B singer, Khalil Amir Sharieff.

Other reports have come in claiming he had raced his car earlier in Miami at speeds up to 130 mph.

Well, why not. He’s Justin Bieber, rich and famous. How did he get rich? He sings.

Bieber is also under investigation for egging his neighbors house in California last month to the tune of $20,000 in damages, a felony.

Bieber is also being charged with assaulting a Limo driver in Toronto, Canada, in December 2013.

Then there’s this:

A couple weeks after the arrest in Miami, Bieber chartered a private plane to go to NYC to attend Super Bowl parties. According to news reports, the pilots and flight attendant claimed that Bieber and his entourage were abusive during the flight, puffing freely on joints and filling the aircraft with so much smoke that the pilots had to wear oxygen masks to avoid a contact high and jeopardize their licenses over failing a drug test. According to the report, “The captain of the flight stated that he warned the passengers, including Bieber, on several occasions to stop smoking marijuana,” read a report obtained by NBC News. The captain also needed to request that the passengers stop their harassing behavior toward the flight attendant. Justin’s father, Jeremy Bieber, was on the flight with the singer.

And what do Bieber’s parents have to say about their darling child? Basically, they defend him saying he has so many good qualities. She was recently quoted, “If Justin is struggling, don’t kick him when he’s down, or condemn him…pray for him.”

I have some comments for Justin Bieber’s parents:

Pattie Mallette and Jeremy Bieber, I know how tough it is to have a wayward son, I have had one of my own. But he won’t be corrected by making excuses for him. If you were truly caring parents, you’d make a public statement that would piss him off, but in the long run it would be the best thing you ever did. Tough love’s not easy, but it can be effective. Here’s what you say: “Justin, we are ashamed of you. We are good and decent people, and you are growing into a miserable punk kid. The only people who respect you are dopers and sleazebags. Straighten out, stop embarrassing your mother and father, get help now, you can afford it. You are not invulnerable. Keep this up and you will one day end up lying on a bathroom floor just like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, only he will be remembered as a good and loving man. You won’t. Stop being a complete and total Sphincter.”

Will his parents be upfront and honest?

Doubtful. Not as long as the cash cow keeps pumping.

Click here: Times Bulletin: Justin Bieber s arrest latest sign of trouble

Click here: Justin Bieber May Face Felony Charges Over Egging Incident | Music News | Rolling Stone

Click here: Justin Bieber Speeding — New Report Claims He Went 130 MPH In Miami – Hollywood Life

Click here: Justin Bieber Was Clocking 136 MPH Before Miami Beach Arrest: Report | Billboard

Amnesty, legalizing marijuana and gun control: Creating a “cartel of death” in America

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There has been much discussion about amnesty for illegal aliens in Congress. Democrats, led by President Obama, want amnesty at all cost. I recently had a conversation with Kelly Kirshner, the former Mayor of Sarasota, FL. He is planning a demonstration to promote “immigration reform”, which is code for amnesty. Kirshner believes he is doing good, when in fact he is promoting policies that will bring violence to America.

Dr. Lawrence W. Reed from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, created the Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy. Reed’s third principle states: Sound [public] policy requires that we consider long-run effects and all people, not simply short-run effects and a few people.

Amnesty (immigration reform) is inextricably linked to efforts to legalize drugs and control gun ownership in America. These three movements are joined at the hip and will, in the long term, lead to a “cartel of death” in America. By not taking into account the long-run effects and all people these policies will wreak havoc on our society, especially our youngest and most vulnerable.

Mexican_drug_cartels_2008

The major Mexican drug cartels. For a larger view click on the map.

Many have documented how our borders are not secure. Dennis Michael Lynch in his documentary “They Come To America” focuses on the land border between the United States and Mexico. Many ignore the border states along the Gulf of Mexico. Drug cartels, like the Gulf Cartel, use these porous borders to come to America transporting not only illegal aliens but also drugs and the certain violence that is part and parcel of the drug business.

There is a push by Libertarians, Democrats and some Republicans to legalize medical marijuana. This effort is only the first step, like in Colorado, to the full legalization of marijuana, like in Florida. By legalizing marijuana you legalize the cartels and the culture of death that comes with them and their drugs. President Obama gave banks permission to do business with marijuana distributors.

Sheila Polk in her op-ed column “Legalized marijuana: Colorado kids are paying the price” writes:

On Jan. 1, Colorado opened its doors to this nation’s first legal sale of recreational marijuana. Lost in the buzz is the documented impact of legal marijuana on Colorado children.

The reality about today’s marijuana, an addictive substance whose average potency has dramatically increased from 3 percent THC in the 1990s to almost 15 percent, should change everything that people think they know about the drug.

[ … ]

Past 30-day use of marijuana by teens 12 to 17 is highest in medical-marijuana states. In Denver between 2004 and 2010, past 30-day users of marijuana ages 12 and up increased 4.3 percent, while the increase for the nation was 0.05 percent.

By 2010, past 30-day use for this age group was 12.2 percent, compared to 6.6 percent for the country. One in six kids who start using marijuana becomes addicted.

Read more.

The below video is by the National Rifle Association. It is a different approach for the NRA in that it links the violence and the effort to demonize guns by President Obama, Michael Bloomberg, candidate for Florida governor Charlie Crist and others. We now know due to the work of bloggers and authors like Katie Pavlich, that these guns were provided by our own government in an operation named “Fast and Furious.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABCDEFGH[/youtube]

Polk concludes with:

What can Arizona learn from this?

Lesson Number 1: We should not rush to experiment with an entire generation of our young people by legalizing marijuana. Use of marijuana by Arizona’s 8th, 10th and 12th graders has already increased by 14.4 percent from 2008 to 2012.

Lesson Number 2: We must build an environment in which every child can learn and thrive. That must include funding public education to heighten awareness about the harms of marijuana. Every child can succeed when adults believe in them and create safe communities for them.

Marijuana is never part of that equation.

A wise warning indeed. Drugs, children, violence and guns make for a toxic combination.

EDITORS NOTE: Sheila Polk is the Yavapai County Attorney and co-chair of MATFORCE, the Yavapai County Substance Abuse Coalition. The featured image is courtesy of  activist Thomas Good, who is in costume – “recruiting” for the military as the Grim Reaper, October 2007. The photograph was taken by the subject’s 14-year-old son, Nathaniel Good. In March of 2007 the photo was reprinted as the cover shot on “Peacework” magazine, a publication of the American Friends Service Committee.

RELATED COLUMN: Swiss model helps curb heroin addiction | FLORIDA TODAY | floridatoday.com

Has God changed from when He asked men, like Noah, to do strange things?

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“As in the days of Noah,” God asked him to become the laughing stock of the world. But on Father’s Day, we might recall Noah was a better Dad than most other great men–he saved his whole family!

Abraham is another person who was willing to do strange things for God. He left home and all that he knew because he heard a voice? Later he accepted circumcision as a token of his faith, that even if amputated, he would still have children. His name meant “father of many.” And he insisted his servants be circumcised too–before the days of anesthesia! Embarrassing, but he was willing to be a fool for God.

Moses also heard voices, and life became harder for the Israelites—they had to make bricks without straw. Maybe they hated Moses with the frogs and lice, and then he asked them to kill a lamb and put its blood on their doorposts. Bizarre?

All of the above must have seemed weird. Looking back, we understand the reasons, but could God want us to do something strange?

Israel celebrated the Passover, the greatest event of Old Testament history, by eating the lamb and staying awake all night. We no longer need to kill lambs, but Christ asked His disciples to “watch and pray.” Those words are repeated throughout the New Testament and if we did them on the eve of Passover, it would commemorate the greatest events in Scripture.

Maybe Ellen White had that in mind when she wrote, “As [Christ] ate the Passover with His disciples, He instituted in its place the service that was to be the memorial of His great sacrifice.”1

We know it as “the Lord’s Supper” and we celebrate it as communion, but we haven’t done so “in its place.” on Passover. And because we don’t, we could be missing an important part that’s still enjoined, ”Watch and pray.” We spiritualize the word watch and think it means to be aware.

The Greek word for watch is gregorio, and it means to be awake. Paul wrote, “let us not sleep…let us watch.”2 and the context has several clues suggesting Passover.

  • Verses 1,2 imply a time we [should] “know perfectly.” Perhaps we’ve misunderstood something. Paul referred to the holidays like Passover as “shadows of things to come.”3
  • Writing of those times that we “know perfectly, the day of the Lord” comes as a thief. “The day of the Lord” is the Old Testament apocalyptic term and it’s linked to Passover as “the day of the Lord’s sacrifice” in Zephaniah 1:7,8 where God will punish “the king’s children clothed in strange apparel.” No wedding garment? Each wedding parable has Passover imagery, like the midnight cry in Matthew 25:6 and also in Exodus 12:29-30.
  • That cry was also the cry of childbirth. At Passover, God brought forth “my son…my firstborn.”4 “The day of the Lord comes” as travail on a woman with child and we are to know “perfectly.”

Paul kept Passover with Greek believers in Philippi and Corinth and he said, Follow me as I follow Christ. 5

Ellen White cited Christ’s death at Passover and said, “In like manner [at Passover?] the types which relate to the second advent must be fulfilled at the time pointed out in the symbolic service.”6

Perhaps we should see Passover also as when God said, “I will execute judgment.”7 Seventh-day Adventists believe in a pre-Advent judgment, but it may have three components:

1.  “the time of the dead that they should be judged”8

2.  “the nations were angry” (the rider on the red horse takes peace from the earth—a time of judgment for the living when they face life and death situations as in Daniel 1-6. “Daniel” means “God is my Judge.” But the book of Judges shows judges as deliverers, and God may deliver us as the three Hebrews who also said, “But if not…we will not worship…the image”9

3.  “thy wrath is come” on those who worship the beast or his image.10

The point is, just as Adventists believe #1, the judgment of the dead, began on the Day of Atonement, perhaps we should consider that when judgment is executed, it could begin on Passover, as in the type.

If God isn’t going to do anything without revealing it,11 shouldn’t we consider it revealed and try to understand when?

Christ’s disciples were probably thinking of Passover as a time of judgment for those events in Matthew 24,25 when He said, You don’t know the day or hour.

We overlook the meaning of the Greek word, oida—be aware, consider, understand. Christ was saying, You don’t understand, and each time He said it, He gave an example that fit a provision in their law for Passover a month later, “as in the days of Noah.” But how much “as”? Could it include timing?

The Flood came with Passover timing. Noah entered the ark on the 10th day, the same day that the sacrifice was selected in Exodus 12:3, but it was the 2nd spring month because Noah had to bury Methuselah who died as a sign of the Flood. His name meant, at his death, the sending forth of waters.12 That delay of one month is specified in Numbers 9:10,11 as a reason to observe Passover later.

Again, after five women missed the wedding, Christ said, Watch (a word linked to being awake at Passover), for the kingdom of heaven is like a man traveling to a far country.”13 Israelites didn’t travel in winter, but if they took a long journey in spring and couldn’t get back for Passover, they were to keep it in the 2nd month as specified in Numbers 9.

Could it be significant that Christ punctuated His two parables in Matthew 25 with instruction to watch and a qualification of when to watch, if we understood their law better. And didn’t Christ say, “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the law”?14

Could we be the “goodman” who doesn’t know when to watch [be awake] so that our house is broken by the thief? The King James has only one reference to goodman in the Old Testament. A harlot says, “The goodman…is gone a long journey…and will come home at the yom kece [full moon]. Passover comes on a full moon, but “long journey” means 2nd Passover.

Christ said, “If you shall not watch, I will come on you as a thief.” But there’s Good News as well…

“Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when He comes shall find watching [another link to Passover] Verily I say unto you, that He shall gird Himself and make them sit down to meat and come forth and serve them.” Girding Himself and serving us is also Passover imagery—the Last Supper.
If we are “so doing” when He comes and “knocks…He will make [us] ruler over all that He has.” So much to gain and so little to lose!
Why we should do so this year is beyond the scope of this article, but this year, 2nd Passover (“as in the days of Noah,” falls on Wednesday evening, May 14. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our churches were filled with members seeking communion on the authentic time for Christ’s return from “a long journey”?

Our favorite author said those seeking the Lord’s return should be found in prayer meeting. Why not on May 14? We have many reasons for all night prayer vigils. “It would be well for us to spend a thoughtful hour each day in contemplation of the life of Christ. We should take it point by point, and let the imagination grasp each scene, especially the closing ones…If we would be saved at last, we must learn the lesson of penitence and humiliation at the foot of the cross.” Why not share this article with your pastor and ask if we could do something crazy?

References:

1    The Desire of Ages, p 652

2    1 Thessalonians 5:1-6

3    Colossians 2:16,17

4    Exodus 4:22

5    Acts 20:6; 1 Corinthians 5:8; 11:1

6    The Great Controversy, p 399.9

7    Exodus 12:12

8    Revelation 11:18

9    Daniel 3:18

10  Revelation 14:9,10

11  Amos 3:7

12  Genesis 5:21, King James, margin

13  Matthew 25:13,14

14  Matthew 5:18

[1]   Proverbs 7:19,20

[1]   Revelation 3:3

[1]   Luke 12:36,37

[1]   Luke 12:43-48

[1]   The Desire of Ages, p 83

Free Marie Winkelman: Pray for Justice Now!

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Marie Winkelman’s guardianship has a large cast of characters who benefit from her status as a Ward of the State of Florida, including family members and quasi-family members, as well as a host of attorneys and numerous service providers that were unknown to Marie before she was forced into guardianship. This is the fifth in an investigative series on Marie’s case (see links at the end of this column).

A Large Cast of Attorneys

Economou_D

Judge Deno Economou, 12th Circuit Court, Sarasota, FL.

Marie’s first guardianship attorney, Erika Dine, was appointed by Judge Deno Economou, who single-handedly presides over the probate courts in Manatee and Sarasota Counties, Florida. Dine was also the attorney who represented the guardian (Aging Safely, Inc.) of Al Katz, who was an 89-year-old Holocaust Survivor, as is Marie. See this writer’s previous investigative series on the Al Katz guardianship.

Barry Spivey, Marie’s next attorney, prepared and signed a mediated settlement agreement that he asked Judge Economou to adopt in his incapacity and guardianship order, which declared Marie to be incapacitated and made Sabal Trust Company her Trustee. Spivey never showed the Agreement to Marie before or after it was signed and never told her he had a closed hearing with the Judge to declare Marie incapacitated and put her into guardianship, losing all control of her millions of dollars in trust.

Rebecca Proctor, P.A.

Rebecca Proctor, P.A.

Also attending the secret hearing on December 2, 2013, was Rebecca Proctor, the attorney for Marie’s two guardians, Raymond Millman and Alina Koren, Marie’s sole blood relative, who was rescued by Marie from Poland as a toddler after the Holocaust. Attorney Proctor is a Director of Aging Safely, which is the agency that was Al Katz’s guardian for two months, during which time he went from fully verbal and mobile to “imminent death” status.

Both Proctor and Alina Koren (plus her husband, Dr. Yoram Koren) signed the Mediated Agreement that made Marie’s trust part of her guardianship and transformed it from revocable to irrevocable, thereby sealing the beneficiaries of the trust forever, including Alina Koren. Thus, its primary beneficiaries, Marie’s stepdaughters – Corinne Szychowski and Diane Winkelman – are set to inherit millions of dollars each from the trust.

Quasi-Family Members and Even More Attorneys

Corinne’s husband and Ruttger’s administrator, Robert Szychowski, initiated Marie’s guardianship, which automatically made him the successor trustee to her trust. All of his legal bills and transportation costs to fight Marie in court are paid from Marie’s assets without any oversight by Marie or the court. Robert Szychowski hired two attorneys, Christopher Likens and Kim Bald, who fought to have all of Marie’s civil rights taken from her. Their fees, likely amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, are paid from Marie’s accounts.

Audrey Bear PA

Audrey Bear, P.A.

At this time, Marie’s lawyer is Audrey Bear, a friend of Rebecca Proctor and Christopher Likens, who had promised Marie she would litigate her case zealously, but instead asked the court to once again mediate Marie’s incapacity and guardianship behind closed doors, with no record made and no evidence presented on Marie’s behalf. This mediation has been ordered by the court to take place on February 28 in the offices of attorney and mediator, Gary Larsen.

Medical Professionals Added to the Cast Members

JosephJLarkin

Joseph J. Larkin, M.D.

Behind the scenes from the beginning of Marie’s case were medical professionals. Dr. Joseph Larkin, Marie’s physician, sent visiting nurse, Lori Gaetano, to Marie’s residence, and Gaetano then recommended a psychiatrist, Dr. Miguel Rivera, to see Marie. In early July 2013, Gaetano accompanied Rivera to evaluate Marie without telling her the purpose of their visit. It was Rivera’s subsequent report that was used by Robert Szychowski in court to initiate Marie’s guardianship. Rivera was later paid more than $900 from Marie’s assets by Robert Szychowski, who later hired Gaetano to be Marie’s “care manager,” at her expense without her knowledge for months.

Also hired by Robert Szychowski is an agency (Bright Star) that visits Marie twice everyday, although Marie is in good health for her age and has outstanding health for a Holocaust Survivor. Somehow, unbeknownst to Marie, Lori Gaetano is still being employed at Marie’s expense to supervise this staff of nursing assistants.

In a depressed economy, at least dozens of professionals are faring very well from fair Marie.

RELATED COLUMNS:

The taking of Marie Winkelman 1-2-3

Florida places Holocaust survivor in guardianship without due process

Marie Winkelman’s Case demands Litigation, not Mediation, to protect her Life, Liberty and Property?

Exposed: Florida’s Judicial Star Chamber

Celebrate Valentine’s Day and Monogamy

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A great marriage is a marvelous and mysterious thing. My parents celebrated 64 years of marriage together until my Father passed away. Even into his 90s, he could not leave the dinner table without pausing to give her a kiss. They enjoyed each other’s company and gave each other the space to pursue their interests.

Valentine’s Day arrives preceded by two weeks of commercials in which men are reminded to purchase flowers, chocolates, pajamas, or teddy bears for the women they love. In my parent’s era—they were born in 1901 and 1903—and in the era in which I spent my childhood and became a young man, the 1940s and 1950s, courtship was expected to result in marriage. Getting divorced or having a child out of wedlock was a disgrace. Compare that to the present era.

In the 1950s, having returned from the great drama of World War Two, men wanted to settle down and start families, and as William Tucker notes in his new book, “Marriage and Civilization: How Monogamy Made Us Human”, “More than 75 percent of households were occupied by married couples. Illegitimacy was a miniscule 5 percent…The phenomenon of “single motherhood” was virtually unknown.”

My Father, a Certified Public Accountant, was the breadwinner, but my Mother also contributed because, for three decades she taught gourmet cooking in adult schools where we lived. She was an expert on wine and wrote two cookbooks, gaining awards from France and elsewhere. I grew up in a town that was the quintessential suburb filled with tree-lined streets and broad lawns. The men went off to work. The women tended to the children and the home.

Their generation and mine could never have imagined the society in which we live today. Tucker asks, “Should we attempt to strengthen the traditional two-parent family or do we accept broken homes and single motherhood as a ‘new type of family’—one that seem to require the everlasting support of the government?”

If we do not strengthen the traditional family, our society, our values, and our nation will be in deep trouble, if it isn’t already. A nation in which abortion was legalized in 1973 has witnessed the destruction of the lives of 55,772,000 unborn children and counting.

One of my friends was Betty Friedan, the author of “The Feminine Mystique”, published originally in 1963. A formidable intellect, Betty was also a socialist to the core. The book spoke about the pent-up wishes of women to be something more than wives and mothers. It unleashed a revolution and in 1981 she followed it up with “The Second Stage” which she called “a problem that has no name.” How were women supposed to live with their new freedoms? She inscribed the book to me, “For Alan—who surely is a second stage man.”

“Since antiquity, monogamy has been the general rule of Western civilizations,” notes Tucker. “It is often easy to overlook how unique the organization of human society is in nature. Of all the species ever identified, approximately 95 percent are polygamous.” We share a unique commonality with chimpanzees. “Chimps and humans are theonly two species in nature where the band of male brothers forms the core of the group…The result is that human beings are the only species in nature where males work together in the context of social monogamy. That is what makes us unique. It makes us human.”

There’s more. “Within the anthropological record, there is a statistical linkage between democratic institutions and normative monogamy.” Dating back to ancient Greece, “the peculiar institutions of monogamous marriage may explain why democratic ideals and notions of equality and human rights first emerged in the West.”

“Monogamous families,” writes Tucker, “create socially conscious human beings ready to live in peaceful societies.” There are a billion Muslims in the world and Islam permits polygamous marriage. The nations where it is the dominant religion have a long history of warfare with each other and with nations in which monogamy is the standard.

“Monogamous marriage is the most thrilling adventure anyone ever undertakes—that perilous encounter with an individual who is so much like you yet so different, the other half of your humanity, without whom you are never a complete human being, It relies not on sex, which is easy, but on romance, falling in love and staying in love, which is the work of a lifetime.”

Happy St. Valentine’s Day!

© Alan Caruba, 2014

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of Carulmare.

Diverse Ways of Viewing Diversity

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Comedian Jerry Seinfeld made some comments last week about not caring about “diversity” in Hollywood, especially in the area of comedy, and set off some very heated conversations across the country.

Seinfeld was on CBS This Morning being interviewed about his Internet-based show, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” Seinfeld has been criticized in the past, as he is now, for having no minorities on his hit TV show “Seinfeld.” When asked about this by the reporter from CBS, Seinfeld said, “People think it’s the census or something? This has gotta represent the actual pie chart of America? Who cares? Funny is the world that I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested. I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that…It’s more about PC nonsense than are you making us laugh or not?”

I happen to agree with Seinfeld. I have never watched his TV show nor have I watched his webcasts. He has absolutely no obligation to have a diverse cast on any of his projects. If that really bothers you, then why do you watch his shows? It’s called choice. Turn him off and tune him out.

Maybe, just maybe, you are not his intended viewer. Have you ever thought about that? I don’t support diversity for the sake of diversity.

The rap group, NWA has no Whites in it; should they be required to have at least one White person in the group? The Delta’s have no men in their sorority; should they be required to just for the sake of diversity?

If you want diversity, then it must be sought across the board. But who determines what is diversity and how do you know when you have enough?
America, as a nation, has yet to come to grips with its diversity. Unfortunately, far too many view our diversity as a liability – as seen by the reaction to the interracial Cheerios TV that ran during the Super Bowl.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Whites are 72 percent of the U.S. population, Hispanics are 15 percent, and Blacks are 13 percent. For the first time in American history, the White death rate outnumbered White births in 2012. This trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

So, this continued march towards diversity will only become more pronounced. How that will be reflected in our society is an open question.

The Census Bureau projects It is projected that Whites in the U.S. within three decades. What will be the impact on America when this happens? What will be the legal definition of minority? Will it be Whites who will be making demands of us – the newly constituted majority?

The winds of change cannot be stopped or slowed. Diversity can and should be embraced. Globalism has shrunk the world. World travel is more affordable than ever before. More Americans should take the opportunity to visit a foreign country this year.

Diversity can be an asset or it can be a liability, depending on whether it is embraced or resisted. Certain things must be embraced in order for diversity to be an asset. English must be the language that binds us together. Knowing and understanding America’s “total” history is mandatory to understanding how good we have it. Believing in America’s promise of freedom and opportunity, while never forgetting your heritage, helps you to fully embrace the American dream.

But, in this pursuit, we must resist the temptation to self-isolate based on country of origin, race, or religion. I fail to understand how a person can live in America or any country for years and not speak the native language as too many immigrants have done. Far too many people have never been to a church outside of their own denomination. Far too many people have never been to an ethnic restaurant in their own city.

America is far from perfect; but sometimes we spend so much time focusing on that which divides us that we forget what unites us. Remember, we can’t have unity without “u-n-i.”

France’s united front of Jew hatred

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Parts of the French left have no problems participating in anti-Semitic demonstrations demanding that Jews be kicked out of France. The Socialist government is less than pleased.

PARIS. What happened in the streets of Paris on the 26th of January? On the eve of Shoah Remembrance Day, a significant contingent of demonstrators marching in the Jour de Colère [Day of Rage] howled “Jews, get out of France” and other vicious anti-Semitic slogans.

The best coverage of the march I have seen begins with a display of Islamic Jew hatred on the Champs Elysées in October 2012. Then, scenes of wild Dieudonné fans mocking the Shoah alternate with choice excerpts from the Day of Rage, illustrating converging branches of Jew hatred packed into a cocktail of contemptuous destructive rage.

One week later, on February 2nd, a far larger crowd marched peacefully for five hours with absolutely no violence, anti-Semitism, or disrespect for the République. The Manif’ pour tous [Everyone’s protest march] is a movement created last year in an attempt to block the passage of the mariage pour tous [marriage for everyone] Bill. Though the Hollande government tried desperately to link the two movements, the difference is visible to the naked eye and confirmed by closer examination of the people, the discourse, and the outcome.

The Left, which is never more than a heartbeat away from the barricades, adores street protests… when it is in the Opposition. Today, an embattled government with nothing to show for its first 18 months in office but a tawdry politico-sexual scandal at the summit is tut-tutting about “baseless” demonstrations. The JDC [Jour de Colère] is, apparently, the brainchild of Béatrice Bourges, a dissident of the MPT [Manif’ pour Tous]. Exasperated with the failure to prevent passage of the same-sex marriage law, Bourges created an aggressive Printemps Français [French Spring] faction that engaged in battles with the police, easily used by the government to discredit the squeaky clean MPT movement that had mobilized at least half a million. Having failed to take over leadership of the MPT, Bourges sought new allies and new forms of action.

Ten days before the Day of Rage, in a debate with Pierre Cassen of the anti-Islamization site Riposte Laïque, Béatrice Bourges presented her analysis of same-sex marriage and parenthood, by adoption and eventually artificial insemination and womb rental, as part of a global project of “transhumanism.” The plan is to create a New Man hors sol [without national identity] and hors sexe [without sexual identity], a slave of an oligarchy determined to rule the world by turning people into featureless units of production and consumption. Her choice of villains and vocabulary ring with the familiar string of adjectives often associated, in times of trouble, with Jews: “stateless cosmopolitan unscrupulous money-grubbing demons of finance …”

Cassen announced he would not participate in the Day of Rage after Dieudonné encouraged his followers to join the troops. Bourges countered, helter skelter, that Dieudonné himself wouldn’t attend, the best way to discourage his acolytes was to ignore them, but it doesn’t matter if they do come because this is the Day for all the rhymes and reasons of Rage, no one should be excluded. Expressed rage, she said, is less prone to violence than repressed rage. These and other predictions about attendance—“it will be a tsunami”– and results—“the government has feet of clay, a few good blows and it will topple”– turned out to be equally inaccurate. I have not found on the Jour de Colère or Printemps Français any statement sites of disapproval of the anti-Semitic slogans, chants, and signs.

Though Béatrice Bourges is believed to be a central figure in the JDC organization, the movement adopted the anonymous Facebook-twitter image ascribed to the “Arab Spring.” Another “Arab Spring” prop, the “Hollande dégage” [Hollande, bug off] slogan, picked up from one of the participating groups, goes back to Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution” and subsequent uprisings in Libya, Egypt, etc. “Day of rage” is associated with a Palestinian practice of periodic organized violence against Israel. Aside from the strange Middle East echoes, these borrowings perpetuate the idea that we are living under a dictatorship that must be overthrown. (Similar echoes were found in the Occupy Wall Street movement.)

This justified accusations that the protest movement is aimed at destroying the République. But nothing can hide the Left’s paternity of a movement that coalesces dark forces from all extremes of the political spectrum. It would be impossible within the limits of this article to give an idea of the pot pourri of participating groups listed on the Jour de Colère site. Splinters, split-offs, offshoots of multiple varieties–anti-Islamization, Muslims against gender theory, anti-globalization, anti-population replacement, Catholic fundamentalists, old fashioned neo-Nazis, small businessmen, freelancers, nationalists, royalists, farmers… An undercurrent of the Jew hatred that emerged on the Day of Rage can be discerned here and there: the campaign to keep children home from school to protest gender theory indoctrination in kindergartens was organized by Farida Belghoul, one of the pioneers of the “beur” [second generation Maghrebi] movement spawned on the Left. She is now allied with arch anti-Semite Alain Soral. Media Press, a JDC-friendly site links to articles such as “Is Manuel Valls the Interior Minister of France or Israel?”

Will the coalition of united rage, fired by the weakness of the French government, find Jew hatred as its common denominator? The danger is real. Socialist deputy Julien Dray declared that an important faction of the Day of Rage demonstration intended to march into the rue des Rosiers in the heart of the Jewish Marais. Sammy Ghozlan, president of the BNVCA [Bureau national de vigilance contre l’antisémitisme] warns that when the law catches up with Dieudonné and puts him in handcuffs, it could trigger a “Crystal Day.”

Is there room for the hope that many French people, disgusted with overt Jew hatred, will withdraw from the hastily concocted coalition? It only took fourteen years for the guttural shouts of “Kill the Jews” that have been ringing out in pro-Palestinian, anti-war, pro-Hamas and go-jihad marches to reach the ears of French media. And for the government to recognize that anti-Semitism/anti-Zionism is a danger to the République.

Epilogue

The Manif’ pour Tous is another story and the government didn’t know what to do about it. Spokespersons and friendly media pumped out the talking points as tens of thousands marched in bright winter sunshine: This protest is based on wild rumors. Reproductive boosters—PMA [artificial insemination] for lesbian couples and GPA [womb rental] for males—do not figure in the Family Affairs Bill slated for March. The “ABC of Equality,” experimented in hundreds of kindergartens, is not “gender theory,” it’s just about abolishing stereotypes. Mariage pour tous is the law of the land; it is undemocratic to demonstrate against it.

It didn’t work.

Monday morning the Interior Minister, followed quickly by the Prime Minister, promised they would not allow deputies from the majority to attach PMA and GPA amendments to the Bill.

By late afternoon the government announced that the controversial Bill is postponed … indefinitely.

The Forefathers Monument: “When Injustice Becomes Law Resistance Becomes Duty”

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This is wonderful tapestry carved out of granite that embodies the beauty and richness of our heritage. The Forefathers Monument is a history lesson, written not in words but in symbols and artwork as a testament to those who came before us and a beacon for those who may become lost in the future. It is the largest granite monument in the US and stands 81 feet tall. The sculptor, Hammatt Billings designed it to be nearly twice as tall. The monument was formerly called The Pilgrim Monument. The monument does not receive the special status that it deserves by residing in the center of a city square or as a focal point in the capital.

Sadly this monument if often overlooked and forgotten, as it is located at the end of a residential street in Plymouth, Massachusetts standing on a little hill amongst homes. The statue points towards the sky giving power and glory to God. Perhaps that might be a contributing factor as to why this majestic piece of history is neglected by our country, and a primary reason we should focus on this monument now more than ever to explore and restore what this statue represents.

Unfolding the richness of what this monument symbolizes would take a lot more time and attention than I can relate in this article, it wouldn’t do justice to this masterful artwork. The monument is comprised of several statues which outline the five (5) keys of knowledge that tell the story of what our nation’s pilgrims believed in and on which our country was founded.  In order to get the most out of this monument there is an order or sequence to the keys.

Standing at the center of this monument is a beautiful woman who represents Faith. She stands with one foot on Plymouth Rock, has an open Bible in her left hand that is well worn from reading while her right hand is uplifted to heaven. There is a star on her forehead which means she was given wisdom to live in this world.  She looks down as if to call people to trust in a higher power. Faith is at the center and is the tallest point on the monument there are four other statues that are beneath and circle Faith. Those statues are Morality, Law, Education and Liberty.

Morality is depicted as a woman which unseeing eyes, meaning that we are to look inward and are responsible for our own morality. She is wearing a breastplate necklace which represents that the individual followers of Christ have direct access to God and is a priest to his family.  In her left hand are the 10 Commandments which represents God’s direction for life and in her other hand is the Scroll of Revelation which states God is the Alpha and Omega and rules over all time.  On the base of Morality there are two more statuettes one that represents a prophet that hears the call from God and follows God’s commands the other is the Evangelist which is taking seed from the Bible and sowing it;  which is a common allegory for preaching the message of Christ. The pilgrims’ desire was to live in their faith, be an example and share their faith with others.

The statue representing Law is a very stern faced man with serious eyes that have vision.  In his left hand are the 10 Commandments – 6 of these deals with civil society.  *Honor your father and mother *Do not murder *Do not commit adultery *Do not steal *Do not covet *Do not bear false testimony.  His right hand is extended in mercy. The pilgrims believed that all were created equal before the law that no special privileges should be considered due to birth, wealth or social status.  Many of their laws came right from the Bible and applied Biblical principles to justice, ethics and proper restitution for wrongdoings.  Beneath the statue of Law are two more statuettes representing Justice and Mercy.  Justice has scales in her right hand which represents equal justice under the law for all, no matter their standing in society, and that the punishment should fit the crime.  There is a sword by her left side which represents that authority is given by God to the civil government to provide justice.  Mercy is a man standing with both arms at his side with his hands palms open and lifted up depicting balance and any punishment will be fair.  The Law’s pedestal is a replica of The Peace Treaty.

Education is represented by a youthful woman who is wearing a “victor’s wreath”, showing she had accomplished the task of educating her children and was victorious in passing on the ideals of liberty to the next generation. Her youthful face shows she completed this task at a young age. She has an open Bible on her lap with a finger on the page as if giving instructions, it also represents all books that speak of whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, to focus on those things that are excellent and trustworthy. Learning was highly valued among the pilgrims.  The two statuettes below her showing youth and age depict a woman holding a child’s hand which relates that teaching a child is hard work and she is holding his hand which shows love, leading him in instruction and guiding the child. Literacy was high among youth and adults. Reading the Bible and other books were the key to learning and education. Literacy rates and breadth of reading far outpace today’s standards. The other statuette is an older man depicting a wise counsel of elders and at his feet are 3 objects.  An open Bible representing a lamp unto our feet and a guide to us, behind the Bible are the 10 Commandments God’s guidance for personal behavior and the basis for civil government and then the glob taking the Great Commission to the world.  The Education’s pedestal has an engraved replica of the Mayflower Compact.

The Mayflower Compact is representative of the 4 forms of government. Individual government, which is self responsibility and self governance, next is Family government which represents love, care, provision, children, education and legacy. Then comes Church government which provides inspiration, encouragement and accountability with the last form of government being Civil government which is protection and justice. As you apply those characters to yourself, the individual, those same qualities should be made manifest in civil government, electing persons of no special eminence above the rest, let your wisdom and godliness appear.  Select capable men who fear God, trustworthy men, who hate dishonest gain. Ex 18:21 (NIV).  (Standards we have lost along the way, however they can be restored).

The final statue is Liberty which is represented by a man in his prime sitting down with a steady gaze which shows clear sight, there is a rising sun on his helmet which denotes a new day of liberty dawning. There is a slain lion with a paw on his right shoulder, his left arm shows lion skin and a foot while behind his back is the lion’s head. The slain lion represents spiritual tyranny which the pilgrims believed that they were overcoming l Peter 5:8-11 (NIV) “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.  Resist him, standing firm in the faith and the God of all grace, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”  The shackles of tyranny are broken represented by chains on his hand which lie broken dangling down to his left thigh and calf.  With the chain under his foot showing that tyranny is under submission.  There is a sword that is sheathed which means that they would defend their liberty and would not take an offensive position.  Knowing the best way to keep peace is to be prepared to defend self, community and nation.

There are two statuettes beneath Liberty one which represents overcoming Tyranny the other represents Peace.  The statuette representing tyranny shows a man standing with his foot on the chest of a man on the ground. The standing man has his hand raised up representing God’s strength; his foot on the chest of the other man depicts a tyrant who is kept under control which shows freedom is worth fighting for. The tyrant is trying to brace himself with his elbow to get back up which show that tyrants always will try to get back in power.  The quest to gain power is innate in man. The other statuette is Peace a woman standing with an olive branch in her right hand offering peace and there is also a cornucopia which signifies abundance because with peace there is also abundance.

The Forefathers Monument represents the embodiment of why our forefathers came to America and the values and character they possessed. Our rich Christian heritage is represented in every aspect of this historical piece of art inspiring those who gaze upon it to embrace the principles depicted on the monument. I hope this peaked your curiosity to learn more about this remarkable monument and perhaps encourage smaller replicas be made and installed all across America as a reminder of our true path.

To watch a brief YouTube of the Forefathers Monument with Kirk Cameron go to:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/glfPpsFPyYc[/youtube]

Sources:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Monument_to_the_Forefathers , ctmonuments.net/2010/08/national-monument-to-the-forefa.
historicaldigression.com/2012/01/31/forefathers-monument-in-plym…   More from historicaldigression.com
newenglandtravelplanner.com/go/ma/southshore/plymouth/sights/forefa…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glfPpsFPyYc