NEW YORK CITY: Churches Win Temporary Stay On Public School Evictions

The 160 churches that operate virtually free in New York City's public schools have been granted a temporary reprieve from the eviction ordered by a federal court of appeals.

Alliance Defense Fund says the temporary restraining order is in effect for 10 days while the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York more fully considers constitutional arguments about the city’s unique-in-the-nation prohibition on worship services in vacant public school buildings on weekends. As ADF senior counsel Jordan Lorence puts it, “Churches help communities; evicting churches hurts communities. Empty buildings offer nothing to communities that need hope.”

Andy Humm reports at Gay City News that anti-gay Christian groups are operating a "church planting" network intended to indoctrinate children attending public schools.

The congregation’s legal argument relied on the Supreme Court’s Good News v. Milford Central School ruling that allowed religious meetings in schools. In “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children,” published last month, Katherine Stewart argues that the “real mission” of Good News Clubs in schools is to “convert children to fundamentalist Christianity and encourage them to proselytize to their ‘unchurched’ peers, all the while promoting the false but unavoidable impression among the children that its activities are endorsed by the school.” She also documents how leaders “of the church-planting movement have declared their ambition to turn all 1,200 of New York City’s schools into churches.”

As an example of the type of churches granted the above-cited reprieve, here's what the Village Church, which operates out of PS 3 on Hudson Street, has on its website.You read that right. An "ex-gay" ministry affiliated with Exodus is operating in New York City public schools. And YOU are paying for it. Why not just charge us for the rope used to hang us?

Miami TV Reports On Rise In LGBT Youth Homelessness

THIS you can lay squarely on the doorsteps of the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, the Catholic Church, etc. Igor Volsky has more at Think Progress.

Freep This FRC Poll

I suggest "other." And do have some fun entering your totally real personal information.

Blacklisted By Liberals And Homos!

Pat Buchanan says that liberals and homosexuals have hounded him off of MSNBC and that he is now blacklisted in the media.

My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end. After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous. [snip] A Human Rights Campaign that bills itself as America’s leading voice for lesbians, bisexuals, gays, and transgendered people said that Buchanan’s “extremist ideas are incredibly harmful to millions of LBGT people around the world.”

Their rage was triggered by a remark to NPR’s Diane Rehm—that I believe homosexual acts to be “unnatural and immoral.” That homosexual acts are unnatural and immoral has been doctrine in the Catholic Church for 2,000 years. Is it now hate speech to restate traditional Catholic beliefs? [snip] Defy them, and they will go after the network where you work, the newspapers that carry your column, the conventions that invite you to speak. If all else fails, they go after the advertisers. I know these blacklisters. They operate behind closed doors, with phone calls, mailed threats, and off-the-record meetings. They work in the dark because, as Al Smith said, nothing un-American can live in the sunlight.

Muttley laugh.

Anti-Gay Douchebags: UNITE

The eight hate group leaders behind their new hero have all been the subject of multiple JMG posts. Vomit.

Garden State Equality On Chris Christie

Garden State Equality chair Steven Goldstein has issued a statement about Gov. Chris Christie and his impending veto of the marriage equality bill. An excerpt:

As I have said before, where we agree with them on the issues, Governor Christie and his Administration have treated us with warmth and responsiveness. Yes is yes, no is no, and we’ll get back to you means they get back to you faster than you thought, usually with invaluable help.

And that’s precisely why Governor Christie’s veto of the marriage equality bill will hurt so badly. We’re not naïve – we’ve always known he would veto the bill, and frankly, I was always a bit puzzled by the silly tea-leaf reading and phantasmagoric hopes that perhaps the Governor would look deep inside his heart and let the bill become law. Ridiculous. I know this Governor, and when he says he’ll do something, take him at his word, for better and here for worse.

It’s why I chose not to waste a breath in pleading with the Governor not to veto – and have put Garden State Equality immediately to work to achieve an override. The great news is, we have until the end of the legislative session, in January 2014, to do it.

That doesn’t obviate the pain of the Governor’s veto. Because I do know him, I also know he is not some anti-LGBT nut. He is no Rick Santorum. Frankly, I don’t think Chris Christie has an anti-gay bone in his body, however much I cannot say the same about his impending veto. His veto will be a brutally anti-gay act, pure and simple.

Read the full statement.

Quote Of The Day - Bishop William Lori

"When in a state they’re proposing a same-sex marriage law, they always say to religious people ‘you don’t have to solemnize these marriages so we’re protecting your freedom,’ but they want to force us out of foster care and adoption, they want to force us to provide benefits for same-sex couples. The other thing we should not miss is that when we send our kids off to public schools and a lot of places its being drilled into them that the sexual mores taught by the churches are bad, repressive, that same-sex marriage is OK, that homosexuality is all right.

"Of course if you look at a Western Civ. course the role of Christianity is always portrayed in a negative light, as an impediment to progress. As I say, there is an established religion, it’s really an un-religion, an aggressive secularity, that’s a system of belief and that’s becoming the established ‘religion’ in our country today." - Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut, who yesterday testified before Congress about the president's alleged trampling of religious liberties.