Focus on the Family seeks to deprive children of parents.

Citizenlink blog, Mar 17, 2010 by Jenny

Stark bill promotes agenda over children’s needs

A federal bill reintroduced this week would place children and their need for a mother and a father at the mercy of an agenda to promote gay and lesbian couples.

Implying that the only reason gay couples adopt children is so that the kids can be used as props to “normalize” their own relationship in the eyes of the public.

If passed, the bill would make it illegal for states that give priority to married mother and father couples for foster care and adoption placement, to receive federal funds for the purpose. Read about it here.

Yep. From the link:

The bill would make it illegal for any entity involved with adoption or foster care placement that receives federal funding to discriminate in its placement decisions based on sexual orientation, gender identity or marital status. States whose statutes or policies conflict with the laws would need to change those policies or risk losing federal adoption funds.

And voilà, “big government” finds a family, and “small government” becomes an orphan.

There's some interesting stuff in section 2 of the bill that you may want to check out:

(4) As of 2007, gay, lesbian, and bisexual parents were raising 4 percent of all adopted children and fostering for 3 percent of all foster children. A report from the Evan B. Donaldson Institute found that an additional 2,000,000 gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals are interested in adoption.

(5) According to the Urban Institute, same-sex couples raising adopted children tend to be older, more educated, and have more economic resources than other adoptive parents. Studies confirm that children with same-sex parents have the same advantages and same expectations for health, social and psychological adjustment, and development as children whose parents are heterosexual.

Unlike FOTF's disingenuous show of concern for the wefare of foster kids, This bill really is about improving their lives.
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Extrapolating from the ‘bigotry should be government sanctioned' stance, Ms. Jenny decries this potential LGBT measure of equality as a travesty, managing to take swipes at gay marriage along the way:

1) …State policies favoring the most stable family structure for orphaned children would necessarily be thrown out in order to comply with the federal law.
2) …faith-based foster care and adoption organizations … [will] lose business with the state.
3) People of sincere religious faith will marginalized…
4) …Catholic Charities in D.C. had to drop its foster care services when the city council redefined marriage.
5) …Catholic Charities of Boston was run out of that state, too—just after same-sex marriage became law.

And apparently it’s all our fault.

~The Sociopath Next Door, p59:

Using fear-based propaganda to amplify a destructive ideology, such a leader can bring the members of a frightened society to see the its as the sole impediment to the good life, for themselves and maybe even for humanity as a whole, and the conflict as and epic battle between good and evil. Once these beliefs have been disseminated, crushing the its without pity or conscience can, with chilling ease, become and incontrovertible mandate.

And if there’s one thing the anti-gay industry knows how to do best, it’s how to portray a gay as an it. Gays are promiscuous, disease ridden, drug addicted, child molesters, to name just a few of the dehumanizing terms they use to turn us into its.

Also, did you know that CHILDREN NEED A MOTHER AND A FATHER!!!!

Six out of nine paragraphs include some combination of the words “mother” and “father,” the rest implied it:

1) need for a mother and a father
2) married mother and father
3) both a mother and a father
4) mother-father homes
5) a mother and a father.
6) need a mother and a father, and the best way to make that happen is still marriage.

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To use Jenny’s words; “It’s hard to know where to begin with all that is wrong with this.”

1) Let's start with the Gay Bashing used to decry LGBT adoptions:

a) …children…at the mercy of an agenda to promote gay and lesbian couples.

b) We all know that difficult situations arise and family policy should address those situations, but it shouldn’t create them.

c) The “family”… …[is] more specific than two adults—or the current fad in social engineering.

2) Faith based adoption agencies will be forced to shut down.

a) According to the article you linked to, That's only if they can't pay their own discriminatory way.

b) If an organization wants to discriminate against a certain group, then I think it's only ethical to not receive their tax dollars in doing so.

Why should discriminatory agencies be allowed to receive federal funding that includes a portion of the tax dollars of LGBT citizens and their supporters? Otherwise it's thievery.

c) Being organizations of faith, shouldn’t this be where your “faith” kicks in?

d) And finally, If a child-placement service---especially a faith based one---is willing to sacrifice the welfare of the many in order to starve the few, I think it’s fair to question the integrity of that organization.
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This was an interesting article in regard to how Catholic Charities of Boston was “run out of that state”:

Catholic Charities stuns state, ends adoptions

Hehir said he hoped the decision will end the tumult surrounding the gay adoption issue. The controversy began in October when the Globe reported that Catholic Charities had been quietly processing a small number of gay adoptions, despite Vatican statements condemning the practice. Over the last decades, the Globe reported, approximately 13 children had been placed by Catholic Charities in gay households, a fraction [1/55th] of the 720 children placed by the agency during that period.

Agency officials said they had been permitting gay adoptions to comply with the state's antidiscrimination laws. But after the story was published, the state's four bishops announced they would appoint a panel to examine whether the practice should continue. In December, the Catholic Charities board, which is dominated by lay people, voted unanimously to continue gay adoptions.

3) “Children need a Mother and a Father”

OMG, by far the most irritating of all.

a) A motherload of a lie. If that was their concern they’d be fundraising to make divorce illegal.

One of the quotes they love to bash us with:

Mark 10:5-9

5"It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. 6"But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'[a] 7'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,[b] 8and the two will become one flesh.'[c] So they are no longer two, but one. 9Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

Yet man separates “one flesh” all the time. But who cares what the Bible says, right, FOTF?

b) Are you seriously suggesting that it would be better for a child to live in an abusive home with “a mother and a father,” than to live in a same-gender parented household that was safe?

c) The studies that FOTF points to that prove the power of the mom and dad, are too often (if not always), irrelevant and/or misleading in some way, but that’s whole ‘nother can of worms.

d) Placing so much emphasis on the importance of gender cheapens this theoretical “mother and father” down to an “Any married p and v will do” position.

~The Sociopath Next Door, p109:

When deciding whom to trust, bear in mind that the combination of consistently bad or egregiously inadequate behavior with frequent plays for your pity is as close to a warning mark on a conscienceless person’s forehead as you will ever be given.

Pity the “victims” of gay adoption, and then pity us, and our loss of yet another government subsidized expression of faith based hate religious freedom.

Boo. Hoo.
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The results of the studies on the welfare of kids in foster care are appalling. That’s a long article, you can get a sense of it here:

Now, consider a study released on April 7, 2005 by a large, Washington State-based foster-care provider, Casey Family Programs, and Harvard Medical School. The study used case records and interviews to assess the status of young adult “alumni” of foster care.

When compared to adults of the same age and ethnic background who did not endure foster care:

· Only 20 percent of the alumni could be said to be “doing well.” Thus, foster care failed for 80 percent.
· They have double the rate of mental illness.
· Their rate of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was double the rate for Iraq War veterans.
· The former foster children were three times more likely to be living in poverty – and fifteen times less likely to have finished college.
· And nearly one-third of the alumni reported that they had been abused by a foster parent or another adult in a foster home.
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Why, then, do we continue to pour billions of dollars into a system which fails 80 percent of the time and actually abuses at least one-third of those forced into it?

We do it because, over 150 years, we’ve built up a huge, powerful network of foster-care “providers” – “a foster care-industrial complex” with an enormous vested interest in perpetuating the status quo.

The author of that article links to another article entitled Twelve Ways To Do Child Welfare Right.

If you click on one link in this article, that’s the one. It offers a variety of solutions to fix the broken foster-care system, focusing mainly on prevention. This is where Focus on the Family’s priorities should lie--ON THE FAMILY.

Focus on the Family has an annual budget of over 100 million dollars and boasts of a 38 state network of “Fully Associated Family Policy Councils.” So far, twenty-nine states have been successful in their bid to bash gay relationships by legal decree.

They’ve raised millions upon millions upon millions through campaigns of lies and deception. The sociopaths at the top make them up, and their nonthinking followers repeat them.

Bush’s trillion dollar deficit, a-okay. An unnecessary war that cost the lives of tens of thousands (at least), to the tune of another trillion, a-okay. Children languishing in foster care, children in foster care unnecessarily, families that can’t make ends meet--also, a-okay.

But two gay people in love who want to wed? That, classily enough, opens up the floodgates. Wallets open, volunteers appear, press releases claiming victimhood are “rushed” out, and church networking explodes in the effort to prevent any chance of it.

However, when it comes to raising funds for actual families in need, Focus and their 38 state network of "family" groups are MIA.

For Shame.

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Additional resources.

Rosie O’Donnell’s movie, America
-Resources and disturbing facts section.

The sociopath next door-Amazon.
-This book changed my life. It really helped me to better understand the atrocious behavior of the anti-gay industry’s talking heads and their non-thinking flocks.

Sociopaths: the predators among us.
-one of my essays (long).
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*God hates staying together for the kids*

New Law Would Ban Marriages Between People Who Don't Love Each Other

Focus on the Family upset about too much respect

Citizenlink
3-11-10
Gay Agenda in New York Classrooms

New York City schools are hosting a Respect for All week.
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Citizenlink was apparently unable to provide a link to these gay-agenda shenanigans, so I took the liberty of Googling the event to find out for myself.

[NYC] Council, DOE Launch First Annual “Respect for All Week”

Anti-Bullying and Harassment Week Will Kick Off on March 8 and Run through March 12, 2010

...The Department’s “Respect for All” initiative is New York City’s effort to combat bullying and harassment based on ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and other characteristics...

Re video below: The two city advocates featured here, more than ‘made the case’ for the Respect For All program and seemed genuinely and passionately interested in its success (I especially enjoyed the reasons, facts and examples portion of the adult conversation ;).

Christine Quinn: But it was just very exciting today at the kickoff precedent, just to have such a hugely diverse group of New Yorkers standing behind us. Rabbis, Imams, Reverends, ..coalition, everybody there with a united message that everyone has to be respected in our public school system if children are going to have the ability to get a quality education.

Naturally, Focus on the Family---via Citizenlink---is having none of it. One of the characteristics listed on the scale of bullying is sexual orientation, which they invariably interpret to mean homosexuality:

Joseph Mattera, presiding bishop of the Christ Covenant Coalition, said that gives GLSEN a permanent foothold in New York City classrooms.

"The whole idea is just to soften up the students so that there will be a receptivity in the future to same-sex marriage or other gay-friendly curriculum," Mattera said.

“The whole idea ... gay-friendly curriculum”

Yes. And an ethnic-friendly curriculum, and a nationality-friendly curriculum, and a religion-friendly curriculum, and a disability-friendly curriculum, and a gender-friendly curriculum, etc --- As the sign says: Respect for All.

They end with this link:

There are ways to deal with promotion of homosexuality in schools.

Which goes to a place called truetolerance.org; “a project of focus on the family”:

Concerned about the pro-gay agenda in your child’s public school? It’s sad, but many public schools have, in the name of “tolerance,” stifled free speech and true diversity by silencing students of faith, and those with conservative perspectives.

This isn’t true tolerance. True Tolerance means a free and respectful exchange of ideas.

One of those free and respectful exchanges of ideas might include the “truly tolerant” way of smearing any program that supports LGBT persons.

Such as thse participants of the Day of Silence:

The Day of Silence is a student-led national event that brings attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. ...The event is designed to illustrate the silencing effect of this bullying and harassment on LGBT students and those perceived to be LGBT.

And this is how truetolerance.org characterizes the participants of the pro-gay Day of Silence. definition (PDF) of the Day of Silence:

GLSEN claims its “Day of Silence” event, held annually in mid April, is about tolerance and safety. But if you pay close attention to the materials being distributed for this event, it’s clear there is a one-sided political agenda beneath the rhetoric.

They define concern for LGBT bullying as “rhetoric,” and then charge that “there is a one-sided political agenda beneath” it.

IMNSHO, truetolerance.org is essentially another site designed to bash any program that brings attention to gay-bashing.

Exodus’ Jayson Graves keeps the focus on the anus.

Jayson Graves, a board member of Exodus International, co-hosts a show called “Pure Passion” (now in reruns). A show that highlights those who’ve supposedly overcome “sexual bondage.” Personally, I think it gives genuine testimony of changed (for the better) lives, and actually helps some people.

Unless you’re gay. Then you will get AIDS and die because of your “sinful behavior.” At least according to this program.

Jayson Graves (intro): Welcome to Pure Passion. My name is Jayson Graves and I’m your host for today’s program.

Did you know that the US Center for Disease Control has a fact sheet they’ve issued, which says that in 2006, 54% of HIV infections among males age 13-29, were caused by homosexual contact. As well, that demographic is the only one that is seeing an increased rate of HIV infection in this country. Sadly, there were over 56,000 people in the US who were newly infected with HIV that same year, most of them being homosexual men.

The CDC fact sheet went on to say that 77% of HIV positive homosexual men, between the ages of 15 and 29, do not know they’ve been infected.

Another study shows that HIV positive, practicing homosexual men, are 9000% more likely to develop anal cancer.

Even in Canada, the HIV / AIDS rates have risen sharply, 51% of infections are now found among homosexual men.

On today’s program, we’re going to talk with a man who has AIDS. These are always sobering stories, but it’s important that we become informed on the subject.

So let’s hear Dan’s testimony, and let it be a witness not only to the consequences of sinful behavior, but, also to the power and love of God, to cleanse us, and forgive us, from all unrighteousness.

The entire intro was devoted to the conclusion that HIV/AIDS are due to "sinful behavior."

From the Exodus website: "In brief, AIDS is better seen as a reaping of consequences than as God's wrath on a specific group."

Exodus leaves it up to the reader to decide whether or not AIDS is God's punishment.

Timothy Kicaid of Box Turtle Bulletin crunched some numbers and estimates that there is a "5.9% incidence of gay people (men and women) who are living with HIV/AIDS"

Instead of expressing a desire to find a cure and/or vaccine for the disease, they exploit, in God's name, the 6% of us who are suffering and dying, to suggest to their audience that anyone GLB or T are are warehouses of infectious disease.