LGBT campaign targets Christian South (Shortened & reprinted from American Family Association)

[Edward D Lacey]

The nation’s largest Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual (LGBT) activist organization, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) — with its 1.5 million members and its $53-million annual revenue and support — recently launched its “All God’s Children” campaign.

The project encompasses three states — (1) starting with Mississippi and ending with nearby Alabama and Arkansas — and looks to spend some $8.5 billion over the next three years to convince Southerners that homosexuality is compatible with Christianity in its even broader “Project One America,” which reaches beyond faith groups.  "We want to successfully engage a majority of Mississippians on the issue of LGBT equality," HRC Communications Director Jason Rahlan stressed to Baptist Press, seemingly unfazed by a Gallup Poll earlier this year that found the Magnolia State to be the most religious state in the country. "This suggests that the best way to do so is to speak — authentically and from the heart — in the context of faith. As this campaign has shown and will continue to show, we're doing just that."  Despite the Bible’s condemnation of homosexual behavior, HRC remains confident that the $310 million it is allocating to its "All God’s Children" Mississippi run will successfully change the hearts and minds of Baptists and other conservative Christians in the Deep South. Campaign organizers seek to persuade Bible believers that the Word of God does not really teach that marriage is only reserved for one man and one woman and that God’s blessing extends to same-sex couples.  This objective might seem overly ambitious to many, but HRC has a proven track record of successfully changing public opinion to accept the homosexual lifestyle and welcomes the challenge of converting Baptists in its campaign to bolster public and legislative backing for LGBT “rights.”

The biggest backers of HRC in the business world include Apple, Microsoft, American Airlines, Nationwide Insurance and Citibank. Also partnering with HRC as corporate sponsors are Nike, Starbucks, Coca-Cola, Google, Hershey’s, IBM, Bank of America, Macy’s, Chevron, PepsiCo, MetLife, Shell, BP (British Petroleum), Dell, Whirlpool and Orbitz.  HRC’s latest campaign focusing on the South has deployed 20 staff members to make the area more accommodating to homosexual behavior, as it wants to change the fact that Alabama and Mississippi do not have any state- or local-level LGBT laws. Arkansas has just one LGBT city ordinance in the entire state — Fayetteville residents are scheduled to vote on overturning it Dec. 9. The three states are among only 15 left across America that have constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage, as 35 states have now legalized the unbiblical unions.  Spanning its arm across America to spread its influence and support for the homosexual agenda, HRC employs 150 activists at its Washington, D.C. headquarters, plus numerous field workers on special assignments from coast-to-coast heading up various LGBT initiatives. Many of the projects and programs currently under way in various states target youth, families and people of faith, including the Children, Youth and Families Program; the Religion and Faith Program and; the Coming Out Project — a campaign that pushes people to come out of the closet and openly live their lives as members of the LGBT community.

Christian leaders believe that the Southern Baptists’ biblical beliefs on societal issues are a threat to the HRC’s nationwide campaign, so they’re aiming at the heart of the South.  "To HRC, the South embodies the sort of thinking about LGBT rights that is the problem," asserts John Stonestreet, who serves as a speaker and fellow with the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. "To be successful [in the South] would go a long way to selling the 'historical inevitability' argument we so often hear [about accepting LGBT rights]."  If HRC’s Mississippi campaign is a success, the rest of the South can expect to see homosexual activism at their front doorsteps in the near future.

The SBC is fully aware that the Christian sector of society must brace itself and its children for the impending war on its values.   "Red states and Bible Belts do not provide adequate protection from these cultural trends," contended Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Russell D. Moore at the launch of the "All God's Children" campaign. “[Churches should be] preaching and articulating a Christian vision of sexuality as rightly expressed in the one-flesh union of a man and a woman."  As SBC’s lead ethicist, Moore is afraid that HRC and other LGBT activist organizations will not relent on their attack, when it comes to challenging biblical teachings to forward their agenda.  “[Preaching and teaching] must not stop at morals, but go on to show how marriage is rooted in the Gospel, as a picture of Christ and the Church,” Moore continued. “And our churches must be — like Jesus and His apostles — those who call for repentance of sin and those who offer mercy to all who come to Christ in repentance and faith."

"... Churches need to clearly teach the inherent dignity of all people, because we are made in the image of God,” Stonestreet shared with Baptist Press. “When Christians respond to the LGBT community without that undergirding everything else we say and do, we inadvertently endorse a very bad anthropology that is at the root of our sexual confusion.”  Stonestreet goes on to explain that clear lines must be drawn for believers, emphasizing that the Christian response to homosexuality is not based on opinion or loose interpretation — but in scriptural truth found in black and white in the Bible.

"Second, we need to teach a solid theology of sexuality and gender,” Stonestreet continued. “Christians say ‘no’ to various expressions of sexual sin because of God's great, brilliant gift of sexuality. This has to be understood.”  According to Stonestreet, Christian leaders must never forget that they are to always represent the Gospel of love, and that as fellow sinners, all believers in Christ must treat those considering, promoting or practicing in homosexual behavior with kindness and compassion.

"Third, the church should find ways to reach out to, and truly love, members of the LGBT community,” Stonestreet concludes. “If we are honest, 'love the sinner, hate the sin' is a bad mantra, and we've done a whole lot more hating the sin than ever loving the sinner. We must find ways to love, without endorsing behavior that is biblically described as sinful."

Yours, praying to better hate the sin and love the sinner,
Davis
E. Davis Lacey

NOTE:  The Human Rights Campaign is America's largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.

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