Sir Paul Coleridge under fire for defending the right thing

High Court judge Sir Paul Coleridge has been disciplined for media comments he made in support of marriage – but he says the response is “disproportionate”.

The formal warning relates to his involvement in articles for The Times newspaper in December last year and for The Telegraph’s website in July.

The Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO) – the official body that deals with judicial discipline – says the comments amount to “judicial misconduct”.

Stability

Sir Paul, speaking about same-sex marriage, told The Times in 2012: “So much energy and time has been put into this debate for 0.1 per cent of the population, when we have a crisis of family breakdown”.

And in his Telegraph article the judge commented: “‘Stability’ is the name of the game and comparatively speaking that means marriage.”

Last month Sir Paul said he will retire early, partly because of the lack of support from some of his colleagues for his pro-marriage beliefs.

He says many agree with him, but won’t say so publicly: “With one or two exceptions they have been very, if quietly, supportive.”

Champion

In 2012 the judge set up the Marriage Foundation which aims to be a “national champion” for the institution.

Criticising the formal warning from the JCIO, Sir Paul said: “I strongly disagree with the overall conclusion of the JCIO, which underlies this announcement that my occasional comments on the huge social problem of family breakdown or my public support for the Marriage Foundation amounts to misconduct or brings the judiciary into disrepute.

“Indeed I think the contrary is true.”

“My involvement with the work of the Marriage Foundation may indeed be unusual and unconventional for a judge, but I do not agree that that renders it, of itself, ‘incompatible with my judicial responsibilities’.

‘Lower profile’

“It has not in any way interfered with my judicial work and no one who has appeared in my court has ever suggested that it has or does”, Sir Paul commented.

Last year the judge was told to keep a “lower profile” over his role at the Marriage Foundation by the JCIO’s predecessor.

At the time the body said a lower profile role within the organisation would be “more appropriate for a serving judicial office holder”.

Source: http://bit.ly/1bSEW4e

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Gay Activists Threaten Violence

Is the culture war going to turn into a shooting war?

No one knows. But in light of what some pro-family advocates have experienced lately, the question cannot be dismissed.

A gay activist recently used the Internet to suggest that a sniper target Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth (AFT), Illinois. LaBarbera’s home address was published on a lesbian blog, Pam’s House Blend, in January. A homosexual militant in South Dakota posted this message with it:

“It’s [LaBarbera’s home] across from a park in an area with cul de sacs … Snipers take note.”

“Hyperbolic Language”?

“A lot of pro-family leaders have received death threats,” LaBarbera told Chalcedon. “The gays are the most intolerant special interest group in the nation.

“I trust in God to protect us. But we are taking precautions, and an example should be made of this guy. There are probably many others like him out there.”

LaBarbera has reported the incident to law enforcement, and a police investigation is in progress. He called the FBI first, “who directed me to call the Durham, North Carolina, police.” (The owner of the lesbian blog lives in Durham.) He has consulted an attorney who, he said, has advised him that the sniper threat made against him may have constituted a criminal offense.

The threat badly frightened his wife, LaBarbera told police.

The blogger, Pam Spaulding, said the threat was posted on her blog without her knowledge or consent. The message remained posted for almost a month, and was removed after LaBarbera made it public.

Spaulding has apologized to LaBarbera and his family.

“Probably she removed it after the police called her,” LaBarbera said. “I don’t know how you can run a blog and not know what’s being posted on it.”

The militant in South Dakota, Barry Wick, also apologized. Wick denied that he meant to make a real threat, saying he was only using “hyperbolic language … As a new member of Ms. Spaulding’s blog community, I got carried away with the atmosphere … I humbly ask your forgiveness.” AFT has published both apologies.

“While of course I’ll accept his apology,” LaBarbera said, “I believe that if he engaged in criminal acts, he should be prosecuted.”

The whole incident, he said, reveals “abject hatred and anti-Christian bigotry. I don’t know how seriously the police are taking it. But if I put something like that on my blog, threatening a gay activist, I’ll bet there would be an FBI agent on my doorstep in an hour.”

An Intimidation Campaign

LaBarbera’s experience is only one of many instances of militant homosexuals using the Internet to intimidate or threaten pro-family advocates and ordinary citizens.

“They’re very nasty,” said Evelyn Reilly, with the Massachusetts Family Institute. “We have one threat here that I’m going to talk to the FBI about.”

Reilly said she was not at liberty to reveal the particulars of the threat — which, she added, was not made against her personally. “But if our side did anything like this,” she said, “somebody would be in the can.”

The threats aren’t always physical, or specific. Sometimes the tactic of choice is general intimidation.

In 2005 a pair of militant homosexuals in Massachusetts vowed to publish on the Internet the names and addresses of everyone who signed a petition to ban court-ordered “gay marriage” in their state. They kept that promise, “outing” the signers on a website called knowthyneighbor.org.

“Many people were called and harassed about signing the petition,” Reilly said. “The gays used the threat of exposure to dissuade people from signing. They used automated phone calls, making people think their signatures had been stolen.

“I think some people were intimidated. Others got mad and went out of their way to sign. At the end, we broke all records in state history for signatures.”

At the end of 2006, the state legislature voted to put the ban on the ballot for a statewide referendum.

“Legislators who voted for the amendment got hateful and threatening emails,” Reilly said. “We also get plenty of hateful emails here at our office.”

Although the tactic failed in Massachusetts, Know Thy Neighbor tried it again in Florida last year, publishing the names and addresses of some 455,000 citizens who signed a defense-of-marriage petition.

A comment on the organization’s Massachusetts website reads, “[A]nyone who signs this awful petition has the right to receive such intimidation” (see http://knowthyneighbor.blogs.com/home/2005/09/test.html).

Know Thy Neighbor plans to “out” petition signers in Illinois this year (http://emllinoisreview.typepad.com/emllinoisreview/2006/06/how_well_do_you.html). Apparently the fact that tens of thousands of citizens have signed these petitions in spite of the intimidation campaign has not discouraged activists.

Packing Heat

“I’m not afraid of these people,” Reilly said, “although I don’t know why. They just don’t scare me.”

“It’s not so much that I’m worried about myself,” LaBarbera said. “But the effect this could have on my wife and children — that has me extremely upset.”

Americans for Truth has posted a statement by a pro-family blogger, Clayton Cramer, who says:

“There is one, and only one, group of political activists that have ever made harassing phone calls to me (repeated calls at 6 a.m. with silence at the other end), made lewd phone calls to my children (who fortunately were small enough to be confused rather than shocked), tried to get me fired from a job, or threatened my safety with threats of violence” (http://americansfortruth.com/news/conservative-blogger-says-homosexual-activists-are-most-extreme.html). Since “the unrelenting campaign of harassment started in the early 1990s,” the blogger writes, “I started to regularly carry a gun because of it.”

A History of Hatred

Homosexual rage against Christians is nothing new. Writing in 1982, in his preface to The Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. II, R. J. Rushdoony says, “[T]he comments on homosexuality [made in Vol. I, 1973] outraged many. No other aspect led to more intense (if covert) opposition, slander, and sheer venom … The homosexual clergy are sometimes great champions of love from the pulpit and savage practitioners of hatred on the sly.”^[1]

And introducing Volume III in 1999, “Writing The Institutes of Biblical Law, volumes I and II, certainly brought on me savage hostilities.”^[2]

Why should this be? Rushdoony explains: “The homosexual is marked by a deep hatred of God and man, which, while often concealed, comes readily to expressions.”^[3]

What has changed is that now these expressions of hate can be instantly made public over the Internet, reaching a much wider audience than ever before. What has not changed, Rushdoony says, is that homosexuality “is a central offense against God, and the essential burning out of man in his hatred of and war against God. (In Romans 1:27, ‘burned’ should be translated as ‘burned out.’)”^[4]

The homosexual has always played for very high stakes, and never more so than now, when he has a powerful political lobby. “The goal of ungodly sexuality is chaos,” Rushdoony writes. “Homosexuality, bestiality, and every other violation of God’s law have as their purpose the destruction of order, God’s order.”^[5]

The Gay Agenda

We should expect gay activists to react furiously when pro-family advocates work to deny them their dearest dream, the destruction of God’s order. The cause of homosexual behavior is sin. Why should we be surprised when an evil tree bears evil fruit? It would be surprising, even astounding, if gay activists pursued their quest to dominate society by being reasonable, charitable, and civil. It would be amazing if they “fought fair.” Lesbian Rosie O’Donnell’s anti-Christian tirades on television typify their usual approach.

The “gay rights” movement demands the radical redefinition of marriage and the family, the adoption of children by pairs of homosexuals, and the rewriting of the criminal code to make offenses against homosexuals — both real crimes, and offenses that exist primarily in the mind of the offended — subject to more serious penalties than offenses against non-homosexuals. It also demands the restriction of free speech and, finally, government interference in the free exercise of religion: especially Biblical Christian religion.

“Look at what these guys are saying,” LaBarbera said. “They don’t believe this is a free society.”

“Gay rights” is not compatible with our basic civil liberties. The gay agenda cannot be made to stick without abridging free speech or stifling the open profession of Christian religious principles. It’s no wonder at all that gay activists have tried, on their own, to impose these restrictions: they are impatient for the government to get around to it. The sin that drives their private behavior drives their political behavior, too.

We are waiting to see how seriously law enforcement takes these latest threats. Are they, in the language of the law, “real” or “sincere” threats, or simply an indulgence in intemperate language?

We cannot know for sure until one of the threats is actually carried out. For the victim, of course, that will be too late.

For now, it’s against the law to make terrorist threats, and we ought to insist that law enforcement officials take them seriously and act appropriately.

The one thing we cannot do is to surrender our families, our churches, and our public institutions to gay activists. But political activism by Christians can only be a stopgap measure. As we have seen in Massachusetts, this ceases to be productive as soon as the “gays” have more political muscle than the Christians — for instance, control of the teachers’ unions that fund and staff political campaigns. If we cannot ignore politics, neither can we allow ourselves to be sucked into and absorbed by politics.

Strong Christian faith, strong Christian families, strong Biblically faithful churches, and strong Christian communities will always be the best defense against the gays’ ambitions.

As this went to press, police in Rapid City, South Dakota, decided not to prosecute Barry Wick for his “Snipers, take note” reference to Peter LaBarbera’s home. Police told LaBarbera that the comment was “too vague” to constitute a credible threat of violence.

“We are still considering our options,” LaBarbera said. “We want to send a message to radical homosexual activists that there is zero tolerance for threats of violence or physical intimidation against people of faith (or anybody) who stands against the radical homosexual movement. We want the next pro-homosexual zealot to think long and hard before making a violent threat against a Christian.”

---

^[1] R. J. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. II: Law and Society (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1982), ix.

^[2] R. J. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, Vol. III: The Intent of the Law (Vallecito, CA: Ross House Books, 1999), ix.

^[3] Vol. II, 636.

^[4] Vol. III, 79.

^[5] R. J. Rushdoony, Revolt Against Maturity, 1987 edition, 66.

Lee Duigon is a Christian free-lance writer and contributing editor for Faith for All of Life. He has been a newspaper editor and reporter and is the author of the Bell Mountain Series of novels.

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God save the Hungarians! The European Union’s Culture war against Hungary – what it really is all about

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In recent days there have been a lot of media reports about Hungary. According to those reports, the country not only is in a very bad shape economically, but there is also a risk that the Government, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, was trying to overturn democracy and install a right-wing dictatorship that is completely out of line with “European values”.

The chorus is led by politicians like Luxembourg’s foreign minister Jean Asselborn, who slammed the country as being on its way to becoming “the blemish of the EU”, or the European Parliament’s Vice President (and Lenin-Double) Marin Schulz, who insinuated a lack of legitimacy of the current government when he said: Everybody in Europe is called upon to support the democratic opposition in Hungary.

If information like this is repeated often enough in the mass media, the public will end up believing that something is going seriously wrong in Hungary, and that the international community must join all its forces to get rid of a dangerous oger who is going to erect some kind of neo-fascist regime right in the very center of the continent. It all reminds very much of the hysteria back in 2000, when Austrian conservative leader Wolfgang Schüssel dared to form a new Government that did not include the Socialist Party. In other words: where Social Democrats (or, in the case of Hungary: ex-communists) lose control, the end of democracy must be nigh…

Although this blog only reaches a limited readership, I think I should do what is within my powers to rectify what appears to be a deliberate slandering campaign of the EU’s liberal left against a government that they see as a threat against their cultural hegemony. Presumably, most of our readers are Americans, and hence will (quite understandably) be unfamiliar with Hungarian politics and recent history. Thus, let me explain the situation as follows:

1. While in Germany after WWII there was a process of “de-nazification”, no comparable process took place in most countries of the former Soviet block. There were elections where the communists were voted out of power, but their organisations were never dissolved, nor was there any systematic attempt to cleanse the public administration from former communist party members. In some of those countries, legislation that stands in the most radical contradiction to human rights and democratic values still remains in force today – the most blatant example being the so-called “Benes Decrees” in the Czech Republic. There was no real rupture with the past – instead, the former communists just changed the name of their party, presented themselves at the next elections, and, in certain countries, were back in power fairly quickly. As a matter of consequence, many members of Eastern Europe’s contemporary political elite are in fact former communists (if their pre-1989 party membership was not always motivated by inner conviction, then at least by opportunism). During the enlargement process that preceded the accession of formerly communist countries, the EU did not exert any pressure to address the problem, which, as a consequence, has been imported into the EU’s own institutions: following the EU-accession of those countries, many of those ex-communists have made careers in the EU institutions, including the European Commission and the Parliament (where, quite unsurprisingly, most of them have joined the ranks of the Socialist and Communist groups).

2. In Hungary, the communists actually were clever enough to anticipate the revolution of 1989, and to initiate the transition to democracy before anybody else did. It was communist leaders like Gyula Horn, Imre Poszgay, or Miklos Nemeth, who allowed Eastern German refugees to cross the border to Austria, cut down the iron curtain, delared Hungary’s renunciation of the Warsaw Pact, and called the first democratic elections. This won them the praise and confidence of Western elites, which is why Hungary never came under any pressure from the outside to revisit its comunist past. As a consequence, many communists were never from the posts they had occupied before 1989, but stayed on.

3. In the years following 1989, Hungary has been led by ex-communist governments from 1994 to 1988 and from 2002 to 2010. This has not done the country much good. Although the country was received into the EU as a reward for its role in 1989, many structural reforms have not been carried out. Instead of cutting public spending and initiating thorogh economic reform, subsequent governments (including a conservative government led by Mr. Orban from 1998 to 2002) found it more convenient to “meddle through”. This is why Hungary’s economy today is in such a bad condition.

4. The Socialist government led by Ferenc Gyurcsany acquired a particularly bad reputation when, shortly after his electoral victory in 2006 an audio tape (allegedly from a closed-door meeting of the Socialist Party) surfaced on which he was heard saying that “we have obviously been lying [viz.: about tha state of the country's financial situation] for the last one and a half to two years”. It was at this moment that the public suddenly realized how bad the country’s situation really was. the publication of the tape led to riots on the streets of Budapest, but Gyurcsany refused to resign. However, he was a lame duck from that moment onwards, and the following elections in 2010 resulted in a landslide defeat of the former communists. This time, the Hungarian Electorate wanted a real change. The elections undoubtedly were fair and democratic, but the results for the conservative “Fidesz” Party was truly overwhelming, securing them more than 2/3 of the seats in the National Assembly.

5. The new Prime Minister of Hungary is Viktor Orban, leader of “Fidesz”. With a 2/3 majority in the National Assembly (263 seats out of 386), Fidesz was able to enact a new Constitution. While there can be no serious doubt that this new Constitution corresponds to all democratic standards one could reasonably ask for, it is also true that it does not represent a “compromise”. Here are some quotations that are clearly indicative of those values:

M. Article
(1) Hungary protects the institution of marriage between man and woman, a matrimonial relationship voluntarily established, as well as the family as the basis for the survival of the nation.
(2) Hungary supports child-bearing.
(3) The protection of families is regulated by a super majority law.

II. Article
Human dignity is inviolable. Everyone has the right to life and human dignity; the life of a foetus will be protected from conception.

The Constitution also has a preable beginning with the words “Isten áldd meg a magyart” (“God bless the Hungarians” – the first words of the national anthem).

It is a Constitution based on Christian values. The opposition, consisting of the ex-communist MSZP, the extremist right-wing “Jobbik” Party and the Green-Liberal Party “Politics can be different” (Lehet Más a Politika) voted against it, which however did not prevent it from being adopted with the necessary 2/3 majority.

6. The media attacks against the current Hungarian Government can thus to a large extent be explained as a culture war against the Christian values that are expressed in the new Constitution. The campaign is led by the defeated ex-communists, who, having been victed from power at home, are now mobilizing their allies in the European Parliament to fight back on their behalf. It is no wonder that one of the first charges against Mr. Orban was that he had “imposed” this new Constitution without duly involving the opposition parties. (I commented on this in a previous post. The reproach is nonsensical and can only be explained by the bad faith of those making it. In actual fact there had been a wide public consultation, including with all political parties represented in Parliament. It was the ex-communists who, when they realized that (inter alia) references to God, the family, marriage, and the protection of unborn life were going to be included, pulled out of the process and started to campaign from abroad. In addition, one is tempted to wonder which opposition should have been treated with greater forbearance than actually was the case: the ex-communist “Socialists” scarcely have more votes that the extreme-right “Jobbik”, so that any benefit given to them in terms of institutionalized minority rights would equally have to be given to “Jobbik”. Would that really be a reassurance for the politically correct EU???)

7. Given that issues like the family, the protection of unborn life, etc. do not fall within the competence of the EU, it seems hardly possible that any of the above-quoted provisions violates EU standards. There are no EU rules to legalize abortion (which indeed is illegal in Ireland and Malta, and regulated under rather restrictive terms in Poland), nor is there any obligation for the State to be “secular” (besides Hungary, many other EU Member States, including Germany, Ireland and Greece, invoke God in their respective Constitutions). There also is no obligation under EU law to recognize “same sex marriages” (a point that has, with regard to the European Human Rights Convention, also been clarified by the European Court on Human Rights). Thus all allegations concerning these issues are obviously unfounded. However, it comes ats no surprise that the most radical anti-life and anti-family campaigners (such as the homosexual lobby ILGA and its allies in the European Parliament) are at the forefront of the campaign.

8. The newest diatribes against Hungary’s government deal with issues such as the nomination of new constitutional judges (again, and quite absurdly, the charge is that the opposition – i.e. the ex-communists and the extreme right “Jobbik” – have not been allowed to nominate any judge, which is of course outrageous…), or a new law that provides the government considerable influence on the policies pursued by the country’s central bank, or the new law on mass media. Most of these issues, however, again are clearly outside the competence of the EU. There are no common EU rules on the nomination of constitutional judges (the UK even has no Constitutional Court!), nor are there any common standards to protect the independence of central banks (Hungary is not part of the Euro zone, and even within the Euro zone each country follows different approaches with regard to the role assigned to its central bank).

Certainly, some of the policy choices made by Mr. Orban seem debatable, but it is absurd slander to say that these choices, just because they are not shared by the destitute ex-communist party or the extreme right-wing “Jobbik”, were in contradiction to any “common European values” Hungary has taken a committment to comply with. On the contrary: the above quotations show that it really is Hungary that defends true moral and cultural values against the contemporary “mainstream” represented by the EU establishment.

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No media bias at all. None whatsoever

Daily Mail

Gay rights campaigners in Poland yesterday condemned a court ruling allowing a far-right group to formally register a 'no gay sex' symbol as its official logo.

A judge allowed the small National Rebirth of Poland (NOP) party to register the homophobic symbol in a little noticed decision at the end of October.

The symbol - a stylised representation of gay sex with a red line crossing it - has provoked horror among gay rights campaigners in the country.

Homophobic: Polish far-right activists wave placards denouncing homosexuality during a protest in 2009. Polish gay rights campaigners have slammed a court ruling allowing a group to formally register a homophobic symbol its logo

'Such symbols tap directly into fascist, neo-fascist and xenophobic traditions, and intolerance,' said Robert Biedron, Poland's first openly gay MP, told reporters, according to AFP.

Mr Biedron, who is one of Poland's most prominent gay rights campaigners and newly elected as part of the country's left-wing opposition, urged the justice ministry to step in.

The gay community in Poland has in the past told of living amid a 'climate of fear'.

Opinion polls in the country - where over 90 per cent of the population is Roman Catholic - show two out of three Poles opppose gay rights demonstrations.

Fascist: The NOP also won the right to use the Celtic Cross - an internationally recognised symbol of neofascism

The NOP, which turns out regularly to oppose gay rights rallies, has been back in the spotlight after clashing with police during Poland's Independence Day celebrations on November 11.

The group hailed the court ruling, which also allowed it to adopt the Celtic cross - an international symbol of the far-right and neofascism.

It said on its website the decision had capped a two-year legal fight.

But Grzegorz Schetyna, a senior politician with Civic Platform, Poland's ruling cerntrist group, accused the judge who took the decision of failing in his duties.

AFP reported Mr Schetyna telling Polish station Radio Zet that 'such symbols are unacceptable.'

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Yes. It is the left, which is totalitarian, fascist, and anti-freedom.

See the video.

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