Reuters and numerous blogs today announced the public formation of the Freedom Federation, a coalition of long-time members of the religious-right Arlington Group including the ex-gay member ministries of Exodus International.
According to Vision America and Liberty Counsel (via Ex-Gay Watch), the federation offers a “Declaration of American Values” including:
- freedom from contraception, phrased as “right to life”
- freedom from same-sex marriage and single parenting
- freedom from parental responsibility laws that protect children, phrased as “parental rights”
- freedom from non-evangelical religious faiths, phrased as “religious liberty [for conservative Christians]“
- freedom from undefined “indecency”
- freedom to use one’s property in ways that harm neighbors and community, phrased as “the right to property”
- freedom from international obligations and agreements, phrased as “national sovereignty”
The federation declares war against the legality of single-parent families as well as same-sex parents and their children. The federation does this by declaring as a top goal: “To secure our national interest in the institution of marriage and family by embracing the union of one man and one woman as the sole form of legitimate marriage and the proper basis of family.”
Overwhelmingly Caucasian and evangelical, the Freedom Federation defines freedom, in short, as freedom from freedom: Freedom from the beliefs, values, cultures, circumstances, and activities of people who are not conservative evangelicals and who are therefore deemed untrue Americans and untrue Christians.
This “true” freedom is sometimes called “Freedom in Christ” — which has come to be redefined by evangelical partisans as a freedom from responsibility to co-exist with liberal Christians as well as Jews, Muslims, agnostics, and others.
Coalition members include:
- American Association of Christian Counselors
- American Family Association
- Americans for Prosperity
- Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND)
- Campaign for Working Families
- Catholic Online
- Concerned Women for America
- Conservative Action Project
- Eagle Forum
- Exodus International
- Faith and Action
- Family Research Council
- High Impact Leadership
- Liberty Alliance Action
- Liberty Counsel
- Liberty University
- Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN)
- Marc Nuttle
- Morning Star Ministries
- National Clergy Council
- National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
- Renewing American Leadership
- Strang Communications
- Teen Mania
- The Call to Action
- Traditional Values Coalition
- Vision America
The Traditional Values Coalition has been identified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
In a world that is freed from the slavery of freedom, everyone can live pleasantly, without disagreement, without troublesome doubts, without temptation, without individuality. What could be better than that?
The “Slavery of freedom?” Paging Mr. Orwell…
Missing from the federation’s cherished freedoms are most of the rights guaranteed in the U.S. Bill of Rights:
Freedom of the press
Freedom of religion (as distinct from religious liberty for conservative Christians)
Freedom of speech
Freedom of assembly
Eminent domain (limitation on so-called property rights)
Prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment
Protection of individual rights not specifically enumerated in the U.S. Constitution.
I’ll save the judgement for GOD! For we all will answer and I will be proud to to say, “I lived the Gay life you gave me Heavenly Father, Thank You.”
And what EXACTLY are they planning on accomplishing by making this stupid “freedom from freedom” list?
Is it because they have some kind of abnormal fixation/fantasy about what this country should be about and they realize it’s not becoming a reality so they have to write it down to wish upon it every day?
Or do they just want to announce to the rest of the world, what bigots they actually are?
With these guys, you never know……
[...] gay sex punishable by life imprisonment. More recently, Exodus joined the religious-right “Freedom Federation” which promotes the myth that conservative Christian freedom requires that liberal and [...]
Three words. The Handmaid’s Tale.
Once a friend said that nothing like the Handmaid’s Tale could ever happen because the Fundies wouldn’t be able to agree amongst themselves. I said, “Oh yeah? Give it about twenty years.” Looks like my friend was wrong.
What a lot of people still realize is that Wayne is a secular Jew. I guess this would explain his fear and loathing of “all things Christian”.
Actually, Micro, I do not fear and loathe real Christians. They are often very fine people.
The problem is, in my dealings with the extreme right, I find genuine Christians a rare species. Many are a bunch of self-righteous hypocrites whose goal is to deal with their personal issues on the public stage (politics). Such behavior is not righteous, nor is it moral. It is not ethical and it is not healthy.
Micro, if you are a real Christian, we will get along just fine. If you are of the Craig/Ensign/Sanford variety, we will have issues.
Why do I get the feeling that you are the latter?
wayne
i happen to be a real christian who is very dismayed
by the actions of the three that you mentioned,
however,let me ask you this: I beleive that the
bible does not support homosexualty, only affirms
one man, one woman marriage as stated in the creation
account, Jesus himself in Matthew, and Paul in
Ephesians. Does this make me a false christian?
How can I be a false christian, when I am following
what Jesus himself taught, and what the christian
church has taught and believed since its inception?
tell me wayne do you still think we’ll get along
fine?
Brad, the Bible regrettably does not affirm one-man-one-woman marriage; the worst parts of the Bible affirm polygamy by David and incest by Lot, the best parts honor single parents and orphans living under adverse circumstances.
The New Testament affirms slavery, and much of American Christianity followed suit until the past century.
The Old Testament affirms historically inaccurate accounts of mass genocide against tribes that are falsely accused of wrongdoing, and it affirms the rape and slaughter of the wives and children of the vanquished. Meanwhile, the New Testament affirms pacifism in response to violent assaults. In short, I believe it is Christian of me to acknowledge that the Bible is at times inconsistent, and at times just plain wrong. Jesus said as much in condemning Biblical legalism.
Brad, you cherry-pick a small handful of Bible verses, remove them from context, interpret them to be repudiations of same-sex attraction and love, and dismiss much of the Bible and Christian moral code amid your preoccupation over homosexuality.
In other comments at TWO, you have seemed to affirm a variety of lies, deceptions, and factual distortions regarding gender and sexuality that are central to ex-gay ideology. Ex-gay myths had no place in historical Christianity — not up until antigay evangelicals adopted the mistaken suppositions of atheist Sigmund Freud in the past half-century and declared these myths to be Biblical without any scriptural evidence whatsoever.
I conclude from the above that your religious beliefs are flimsy, half-formed, infused with myths borrowed from non-Biblical and post-Biblical sources. I hope you will take time to get to know former ex-gays and their journey of faith and truth out of the lies and self-contradictions of the ex-gay pseudo-religion.
Yes, and that’ not all. The Bible also affirms the judicial murder of gays:
“The man who lies with another man in the same way as with a woman: they have done a hateful thing together; they must die, their blood shall be on their own heads.” (Leviticus 20:13)
As the Dutch Protestant theologian Harry Kuitert observes, “[I]f we were to do everything that is handed down in the Bible as God’ commandments, we would be bad people with abhorrent deeds.”
michael
tell me where exactly does Jesus say that the bible is wrong?
for your information I am not “preoccupied with
homosexuality” as you put it. Homosexuality is the
hot issue in the church today. i am doing what is
commanded in the Bible namely contend ernestly for
the faith. by the way, michael, christians through
out history have died horrable violent deaths
rather than denounce the Bible, a little more
respect for God’s word please! As for your
comment, william, Jesus did away with the curse
of the law (stoning, etc) but the moral law
is still in force, or are you prepared to say
that adultry, child sacrifice, and beastiality
are now permissable, because the law has been
done away with? I will continue as long as I
have breath and ability to defend God’s
word. I am not not ashamed of it. (Rom 1:16)
Homosexuality should not be a hot issue in the church, Brad: It should be a non-issue.
What should be issues: Individual and religious freedom, the rapid decline of the global environment, the millions of people dying in wars each year, inexcusable poverty, the failure of heterosexual parents to accept full responsibility for their kids’ education and after-school activities, and steps that can be taken to make abortion unnecessary and obsolete.
The Bible does not make homosexuality a priority; you do.
I respect the portions of the Bible that are indeed inspired by God and therefore are worthy of respect; you, Brad, are dishonest about your obvious rejection of unethical portions of the Bible.
Brad, you are making a distinction in the Mosaic Law which the Mosaic Law itself does not make, viz. the “moral” law and the other “non-moral” parts.
There are no subtitles saying “The following are moral regulations” or “The following are non-moral regulations”. ALL the regulations in the Holiness Code are presented as explicit commands of Yahweh, and there is NO suggestion whatever that any are optional, temporary or in any way of lower status than others. On the contrary, it is repeatedly emphasized that ALL the laws are to be kept, and severe divine retribution is threatened to anyone who fails to keep ANY of them.
The only reasonable conclusion is that the Mosaic Law is not a reasonable foundation for Christian morality. Yes, things like adultery, child sacrifice and beastiality [sic] are indeed sinful, but their sinfulness does not depend on their condemnation by the Mosaic Law. They would still be wrong even if not a word of the Mosaic Law had ever been written.
Actually, Brad, by Jesus’ time, stoning was a practice that was all but abolished by the Rabbinical Jews (Pharisees). The Oral Law – the guidance given by what you might call the Holy Spirit to wise Jewish people as to how to follow the Mosaic Law – had made it as much a footnote as possible; with very strict and specific circumstances that needed to be fulfilled in order for the punishment to be carried out – making stoning virtually obsolete. Things like being forced to marry your deceased husband’s brother were not enforced either; in fact the widow had the choice to say “no” to such an event. And the phrase “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” is a Hebrew expression referring to adequate monetary compensation for whatever crime was committed – like a lawsuit settlement.
It’s a bit sad to see what “conservatives” will do to mangle Jewish and Christian scriptures to suit their comfort zone, even as they claim to respect said scriptures and to believe them in their entirety.
It also alarms me when supposed moral conservatives appear willing to commit any modern-day sin that isn’t explicitly prohibited by their selective interpretation of 2,500-year-old writings.
What’s wrong is wrong, in my opinion — whether certain religious writings say so or not.
Actually, even a biblical fundamentalist can’t logically insist that there are no bad laws in the Pentateuch, since Ezekeiel 20:23 represents God as saying of the children of Israel in the wilderness:
“I even gave them laws that were not good and observances by which they could never live….”
And he DOESN’T add: “I mean non-moral laws, of course.”
[...] we last visited the new Freedom Federation, Exodus International was joining this federation of Christian Right [...]