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Truth in Politics ---
the Terrible Failure of our Conservative Leadership

[COMMENT:  My comments just below are a reaction to a series of emails which I have received from some new friends over the last few weeks.  I was shocked to find that there are some people who do indeed share my negative view of our current pseudo-conservative non-leadership.  In the Church and out of it.  There are some wonderful exceptions to this massive failure, but they are few.  God will raise of a new army.  Perhaps He is even now paring down the numbers as He did with Gideon (see Judges 6-7).It is getting scary as to whether America will make it without collapse and violent revolution. 

As with emails generally, read from the bottom up, if you want to follow chronologically. 

The main point of John and Gregg is that in certain crucial cases, the courts are being taken as having effectively changed the law.  These two are saying that that is not the case at all, and that conservative leaders are giving the case away by agreeing to that falsehood.  We should be saying that the judges have no jurisdiction to change the laws in the way supposed, and that the legislatures MUST stand up and tell the truth, and discipline the judges who are trying to change the law, acting beyond their jurisdiction.  If the legislature will not defend its own legitimate turf, then the separation of powers will collapse (it is far along that road now), and we will have an open tyranny operating in America.  We are already a nation no longer of laws, but of despotic persons who ignore the laws under which the rightly rule over us.  We MUST reverse that. 

And that will happen only when Judeo-Christians regain their backbone and wisdom to stand against this war against the sovereignty of God.  Either Jesus is Lord, or civil government will be, and the latter means return to totalitarianism.   

Sadly, nobody in this debate below is defending the sovereignty of God.  That means that the issues will always be made pragmatically, not on objective moral grounds.  That is partly why conservative writers and politicians are incapable of standing firm on moral issues.  Without a clear theological foundation, they sense the slippery ground under their feet.  It is NOT a case of "traditional religion", or of "family values", it is a matter of the sovereignty of God.  Only that can stand firmly whether we like it or not. 

So, without the sovereignty of God under our belts, we will never win the war in which we are engaged.  The war is above all else, a war on the sovereignty of God and on the Image of God.  They cannot win, of course, they will only destroy themselves, and God will raise up an army.  But they can take many human beings with them, so we must stand up with truth and grace, at any cost to ourselves.

NOTE:  If anyone has substantial information on the status of the court decisions contrary to that indicated below, please let me know.    E. Fox]

NOTE:  I tried to edit the emails below so that names other than a few, would not be made known.  It may not always be clear who is writing a given email, but I think the drift is clear enough so that the points Gregg and John are making come through. 

NOTE:  For chronological order, read from bottom up.  At the top is my response to the dialogue.   Bold emphasis below in the emails is mine.    

 

John, Gregg. et al, 
 
        I have been watching and digesting this long email conversation over many days with a mixture of shock, surprise, and "o well, here we go again!"   I know hardly any of the names that have appeared over time in this conversation.  And I am not much up on the niceties of law, so I have to be careful about how I respond.  But I can say that my experience with Episcopal conservative leadership has been almost to a jot and a tittle identical to that which Gregg J and John H have had with others who think of themselves conservative leaders. 
 
        Way back in the 1980's when the homosexual issues hit the Episcopal fan, and our noble Bishop, John Spong, began telling us that we needed to rethink our thoughts about homosexuality, my own diocese (then) of Connecticut issued a similar report. I was about the only one in the diocese who would object to the growing acceptance of what is provably a compulsive, lethal addiction.  But the conservative leadership sat on its hands, and let it be known that I was a troublemaker.  Nothing has changed in the 20 years since then.  I went for several years to our triennial General Convention to put on a workshop to make the facts known, but the information never made it to the floor of debate.  That was the doing (or non-doing) of "conservatives", not "liberals". 
 
        The pseudo-liberals did not win the Episcopal Church, the pseudo-conservatives surrendered it.  And now they are running from, getting out of, the Episcopal Church mostly so that they will not have to deal with the issue, not because they have learned anything in the process.  They are incapable or unwilling, and will not admit that.  So they will just carry their incompetence, prudery, cowardice, and pathological politeness with them.  The Episcopal conservative leadership has never had an offensive strategy, and resents being told so. 
 
        Several years ago, I tried to challenge First Things magazine on their response to the Paul Hill incident.  They had a colloquium on whether his defense for having shot an abortionist and his body guard was justified.  At the trial, the judge apparently made it hard or impossible for Hill to present his defense.  And, never once did any of the First Things "conservative" authors actually address Hill's defense, which was essentially just one line -- that "the unborn child deserves the same protection as a born child."  I challenged them to give Hill the courtesy of actually dealing with the issue, as his life was at stake (on death row), but nothing happened (he was executed -- never, it seems, having gotten an honest day in court).  Their refusal to give Hill an honest hearing came from the difficulty of showing that such a statement is false, and then, if they defended Hill, the difficulty of keeping their constituency happy if they had even given a hint of supporting Hill. 

        I forget how, but the issue came up with Focus on the Family, who also would have nothing to do with me.  They also would not put my book on homosexuality on their approved list (so far as I know, it is the only book which proposes a strategy for winning the struggle).  No reason given. 
 
        As to the situation in California, though I am a relatively new-comer to law and politics, I do know that the principle of separation of powers means that one branch cannot arbitrarily and unilaterally overrule another (what else would separation mean?).  Judges cannot make or unmake law.  It is still a question as to whether, even when they declare a law unconstitutional, that is the final say so.  I think not (not, at least, as the Constitution was originally intended).  So John's and Gregg's challenges make perfect sense to me.  And the apparent refusal of the challengees to respond directly to the issue they raise suggests that they just might be out of the same mold as the Episcopal conservative leadership. 
 
        All, or most, of these conservative leaders are doing a lot of good things.  I admire much about First Things and Focus on the Family.  Focus is very helpful with their "Love Won Out" seminars on homosexuality.  But none of those good things justifies subversion of truth, ignoring honest questioning, refusal to keep discussion free and candid -- to let the truth and the Lord of truth speak for themselves.  Our American Constitution was written, above all else, to provide an arena in which legislative debate, court trials, and executive actions could be conducted free of distortion, coercion, manipulation, etc.  That is why the powers are separated.  But apart from the moral commitment to being a truth-seeker and truth-speaker at any cost to oneself, the Constitution will not survive.  We are watching it go under because both sides of almost all debates have not committed themselves to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth --  which, apart from "so help me God", cannot and will not happen. 
 
        I have come to believe that there is a primal obligation upon all persons -- to be truth-seekers and truth-speakers, at any cost to ourselves.  That obligation precedes and undergirds all other obligations -- which would otherwise be meaningless.  One might be forgiven a lie under certain pastoral situations -- [Knock on door.  "Are you hiding (choose your victim) <Jews, slaves, Christians, etc.>?"]. 
 
        But there is never, never, never any excuse for systematic lying, systematic subversion of truth in public policy issues.  That is a hill upon which we must be willing to die -- as per Patrick Henry.  Otherwise, all else is lost to the manipulator, charlatan, and criminally-minded.  Systematic subversion of truth is a sign that we are not in an honest conversation, which means that we are in spiritual warfare.   
 
        And that means that the substantial issue is, "Who is God?"   We have two realistic choices:  Either Jesus is Lord, or civil government de facto will be lord.  And if civil government is lord (definer of good and evil), then there is no possibility of a free people under a limited government. 

        In 1962, the Supreme Court arbitrarily (no precedent given, for the first time in SC history, and directly contrary to all such decisions prior to the 1940's) dismissed God from His sovereignty with Engle vs. Vitale, telling God that He was no longer permitted to talk to our children on government school time (nor they to Him), that they, the Court, would decide what truth was about, and what should be taught to their (no longer our) children.  Our conservative leadership was, for all practical purposes, already four decades go, dead in the water.  (Hey, if our conservative leadership thinks that the Supreme Court can dismiss God, they can hardly be blamed for thinking that these same judges can make law.) 
 
        I go down to the Mexican border once a month to work with the Minutemen.  I tell them that we will not win this war, get America back for truth and freedom, without doing it His way.  God gave us America, so only God can get it back for us.  Only He can sustain us in the fight against subversion of truth. 
 
        At any rate, I am delighted to run into you folks.  Thanks to John for including me on this list.  I will be visiting Gregg in a week on my way to Fresno (from La Habra, just southeast of LA).  And I am eager to see what the Lord will do with the likes of us. 
 
Resurrection Blessings, Earle Fox
 
** Emmaus Ministries - a School of Judeo-Christian Apologetics
** 1001 W. Lambert Rd #232, La Habra, CA 90631
** http://theRoadToEmmaus.org
  **** We have two choices:
  **** Jesus is Lord, or...
  **** ...Civil government will be lord. 
 

NOTE:  Read  from bottom up for chronological order....

From: John
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 3:17 PM
Subject: RED ALERT, friends! -- Re: Comment on B's Article: Where Are Our Leaders?
Importance: High

Gregg is going to need some forceful back-up for what he has just bravely done.

Every word Gregg put in his e-mail about CWA and others has been stated privately by many people at every level of the "pro-family movement" from the grassroots activists to senior veterans at the very top.

It is time to show what we're made of.  CWA has been privately agreeing with the truth-tellers but publicly closing ranks with the mercenaries and traitors for years.  They've done it again over the last four years as Romney sold off religious freedom and all of our unalienable rights and gave some of the proceeds to his pseudo-conservative Praetorian Guard among the GOP and "pro-family" elites.  M and CWA have been totally hypocritical throughout and they are repeating the pattern all over again now in California.

Gu's response simply proves Gregg's devastating point: "I'm A personal friend and associate of M's...

"It's all about the buddy system. Cover up the sheer mercenary cowardice, misstatements about the law and constitutionalism and defend the malpractice of your "friends' colleagues and allies" in "the movement" and shamelessly perpetuate the ongoing charade of lukewarm "Christianity" and fake "conservatism" that are about nothing more than money, access to power, and face time on Fox TV.

Please, each of you, weigh in to the entire list and back Gregg up or he will be blacklisted as a trouble-maker" in the tried and true habit of the big-money "pro-family" marketing machine. The pattern is that those who wake up and see the truth never get forceful backing from the rest of us and they are then isolated and driven into exile.

Isn't four decades of defeat, capitulation, surrender, rationalization and more fundraising enough?

From: "Gu

Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 3:11 PM        Subject: Re: Comment on B's Article: Where Are Our Leaders?

> Gregg, I'm A personal friend and associate of M's and I think that's an unfair and unwise commentary on him below. H'e withstood the fires, so to speak, many times. I've been at his side once in doing so in Chicago, and many times in other mediums, so know him to be among the good and couragoues white-hats, so to speak.  Why did you copy all those people?
>  ~Gu

> Gregg J  wrote:

>    Thanks M,
>  
>  That was my son's constitution and unalienable rights you just shot down.
>  
>  As many veteran pro-family insiders know, CWA has long prided itself on charting an easy lukewarm course between FRC-Focus-ADF-Sekulow-RTL surrender "activism" and real constitutional and moral leadership.
>  
>  Firing "courageous" rhetoric at the barbarians outside the gates is false heroism.
>  
>  CWA has long gossipped in private about the sell outs at Focus, FRC, ADF, ACLJ, etc...
>  
>  It's really sad to see you following in that pattern.
>  
>  Declaratory judgements such as Goodridge and this California decision contain no orders that we can seek to "stay."
>  
>  Falling once again for the court's head fake is malpractice.
>  
>  How has this hopeless, failed obsession with postured standing up to "activist  judges" (within courtrooms where judges have the final say, M!) working over the last 30 years? That "strategy" guarantees two things:
>  
>    1. We lose the culture war and our religious liberty.
>  2. CWA, FRC, Focus, ADF, RTL, and ACLJ continue their 3 decades of squeezing donations out of the grassroots.
>  
>  Other than that, M, anything else to show for this "strategy" of obsessing over "judicial tyranny" (a legal concept that has no conceivable meaning)?
>  
>  Once again CWA chooses a lukewarm middle ground that condemns our children to slavery.
>  
>  M, your solemnly sworn duty in God's holy name as a Christian and member of the bar is to vigorously and honestly defend constitutional governance by publicly demanding that Schwarzenegger and the clerks respect the conditional sovereignty of the people and their definition of marriage. As Justice Baxter's dissent told you M, neither any court, nor governor, mayor, legislator, or clerk can bypass the law the Sovereign People ratified.
>  
>    In seeking to "stay" a court opinion with no legal force CWA and M have again chosen to safely blend in to the pro-family surrender machine.
>  
>  Thanks M, I am not sure how I will explain this to my son when he is old enough to understand.
>
>  
>  Gregg
> 
> 
>  On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 10:39 AM, M wrote:

>        There's no doubt the CA Sup. Court engaged in judicial activism.  Four black robed tyrants are acting as a self-ordained Judiciocracy.  The Court circumvented the will of the people (Prop. 22) and exceeded its authority by manufacturing a "constitutional right" from thin-air, dislodging CA government's delicate balance of power between its three "co-equal" branches of government.  This has knocked the process, as it was intended, off kilter, causing government to wobble violently.  However, for all intents and purposes, the court has imposed "gay marriage" on CA.  It has constructively legislated from the bench.  The court has effectively "legalized" same-sex marriage" (albeit through an arguably illegal process which paradoxically both invokes the constitutional "checks and balances" firewall and abuses it at the same time) because the other two branches of government will (and have) waved the right of challenge.  They have - as they did in Mass. - capitulated.
> Therefore, "same-sex marriage" will be treated as legal in California (whether or not it actually is) at every level of government.  This "marriage" experiment from the Island of Dr. Moreau has effectively, though not genuinely, been "legalized."  Ostensibly, out-of-state "gay" couples will now "marry" in California and head back to their home states demanding their "marriages" be given "full faith and credit" whether or not their home states have a marriage amendment.  Look forward to legal chaos.  The California "decision" (not just an "opinion") is the goose that laid the golden egg for Lambda Legal/ACLU types. 
>  
>  So, we can jump up and down, jousting at windmills and yelling and screaming, "it's not really legal!" while it becomes "not really legal" across the country.  Or we can gear-up and join the fight in process where it's actually occurring.  We can challenge this decision head on, and, hopefully, actually effect a positive outcome by working diligently to get state and federal marriage amendments passed.  It would be counterproductive to ignore someone who is stabbing you with a knife, telling others that he's not really stabbing you, because stabbing people is illegal.  If you're being stabbed, you have to defend yourself or be killed.  A crucial first step to keeping marriage from being killed is to slow the bleeding by seeking a stay of the CA. Sup. Court's decision. 
>  
>    From: Gregg
>  Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 4:00 PM
> To:

>  Subject: Comment on B's Article: Where Are Our Leaders?
>    
>    B, some good stuff on the importance of the natural family but how about we stop handing a victory to the enemy?

>    You said: On Thursday, California's top court issued its decree ordering California to allow same-sex couples to "marry." 
>    This is not true. The court merely issued a declaratory opinion. No order. No decree. Merely an opinion. They issued an opinion that stated that the majority believed the current voter approved initiative in 2000 that defined marriage as one man and one woman was unconstitutional and urged the legislature to consider its opinion and amend the current statute. Only the voters themselves, according to our Constitution here in California, can overturn the binding results of the people's initiative.
>    The real story here isn't that the MSM didn't report all the negative aspects of homosexuality and "gay marriage." They never will. This isn't news. It's axiomatic at this point in time- right up there with death and taxes.
>    The real story is that "gay marriage" is not legal anywhere in the United States and our "dream team" is directly responsible for the mass ignorance of the law. Our "leaders" and limo-chasing lawyers and pundits should quit repeating the liberal talking point that the "court legalized gay marriage."
>    B, sadly the most most crushing defeats are being orchestrated by the "conservative" establishment through incompetence, greed, and arrogance. If the Media Research Center refuses to hold the purportedly "conservative" media to exactly the standard we criticize the liberal media for, MRC will be guilty of helping to blind its readers to the real reason we are in total constitutional melt-down.
>  Shouldn't our conservative and pro-family "leaders" be talking and writing about the fact that same sex "marriage" is not legal? Why is it that so many "on our side" Brain have advanced the homo-fascist deception that "same sex marriage" was legalized by the "activist courts" in Massachusetts and California when the courts themselves never even claimed that they were "changing the law" or "ordering" any of the other two branches to "change the law?"
>    The real story B is that EVERYBODY on our side is handing an unconditional surrender to the global sodomy revolution. Noboby is plainly stating the truth which is that GAY "MARRIAGE" IS NOT LEGAL ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES and demanding that Schwarzenegger uphold his oath to only enforce the current laws and statutes of the State of California which prohibit sodomy-marriage and to ignore the toothless unconstitutional non-binding OPINION as the dissenting judges have done.
   This is what our so-called "leaders" failed to do with Romney when he illegally issued marriage licences to "same sex couples." Will we make the same mistake again and invite Schwarzenegger to violate his oath and break the law?
>  Where are our LEADERS?
>    Why are we advancing the opposition's cause further and faster than they could have ever dreamed of doing on their own?
> Are we addicted to losing?
>
>    Sincerely.
> Gregg
>
>    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
> Subject: Networks Quickly Drop Blockbuster California Marriage Story
> >
>    B,
>    Once again, you have hit the ball  right out of the park... Great Job!
>
>    cc: CDA Network (and Friends)
>
>    Networks Quickly Drop Blockbuster California Marriage Story
>
>    by B
>    The Supreme Court of the nation's largest state redefined the most important relationship in human society, marriage, and the networks lost interest in the story in one weekend.
>    On Thursday, California's top court issued its decree ordering California to allow same-sex couples to "marry."  The networks carried the story on their Thursday evening broadcasts, but by Sunday, only one of the Big Three networks' weekly public affairs shows bothered to discuss it. ABC's This Week devoted a paltry two minutes to this monumentally important topic.
>>    The liberal media treated the story one-dimensionally, as an historic victory for civil rights and the inevitable wave of the future, with a brief quote or two from opponents as a sop to balance.  This isn't surprising, given the media's commitment to the homosexual agenda. 
>>    As I have witnessed personally, most of the big newspapers and major broadcast and cable networks sponsor the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA, pronounced "negligee").  They also recruit at NLGJA conferences.  The media, both news and entertainment, have accepted the gay activist perspective that homosexuals deserve special civil rights protections that are now based on race, ethnicity, disability or sex.
>>    Judging from the one-sided coverage of this court decision, the news media also have embraced gay activist principles about handling stories related to homosexuality.  NLGJA member Ramon Escobar: "When we cover the black community, I've never seen a newsroom where you're covering one side and then you have to go run out and get the Klan's point of view."
> >    Sorry, Ramon, but this is a story with two sides.  On one side, what's best for homosexuals.  On the other, what's best for society as a whole. 
>     Marriage is the institution that holds together the basic building block of society, the family.  When marriage is strong, families are more likely to be healthy.  Healthy families produce capable children who enable society to survive for another generation.  When marriage is weak, families and children suffer, and eventually society pays the price.  The media are failing abjectly to explore the implications of this decision for marriage and the family. 
>>    Here are a few points the media ought to be discussing in depth, if they would remove their ideological blinders:
>     Decline of marriage.  Reports from European countries that have already gone down the civil union and same-sex "marriage" road are not encouraging.  Scholar Stanley Kurtz warns that "gay marriage is both an effect and a cause of the increasing separation between marriage and parenthood."  According to Kurtz, "Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable."
>>    Proliferation of family structures.  Same-sex "marriage" sets a terrible legal precedent.  Once we've stepped outside the traditional boundary of one man, one woman marriage, we have no objective basis for denying marriage to any other combination of consenting adults.  Certain standards are already being undermined.  HBO is producing a cable TV show, Big Love, that desensitizes viewers to polygamy.  In recent weeks we've also seen news stories that treat non-judgmentally, or even sympathetically, brother-sister and father-daughter incest.
>>    Experimental childrearing.  How do we know that these alternate family designs will produce healthy children as effectively as the nuclear family?  Do we have the confidence, and the moral authority, to experiment with the next generation of children? A meta-analysis of "gay parenting" studies assembled by two pro-gay researchers at the University of Southern California and published in American Sociological Review [1] acknowledges what the media refuse to report: Growing up in a same-sex household does make kids more open to homosexuality and less gender-specific behavior, a finding the authors applaud. 
>>    Church-state conflicts.  If same-sex "marriage" is the law of the land, what happens to churches that refuse to marry same-sex couples, or hire people in same-sex relationships?  In last week's episode of ABC's Boston Legal, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston lost its tax exempt status for refusing to allow a woman to become a priest. Boston Legal is just a television show, but in real-life Boston, Catholic Charities was forced to cease placing orphans for adoption because it refused to put children in homosexual households. Won't real-life churches that oppose the state's view of "civil rights" inevitably have their tax-exempt status challenged, or worse? 
> >    Infringement on free exercise of religion.  Companies owned by devout Christians or Jews have no protection whatever against being forced to subsidize what their faiths inform them is sinful behavior. The media have ignored California's already Draconian law forcing businesses to provide marital-type benefits to gay partners or be banned from contracting with the state government.
> >    What about the schools?  In Massachusetts, where the courts and former Governor Mitt Romney imposed same-sex marriage in 2004, the state has introduced pro-homosexual propaganda into the public schools.
> >    Do the American people still govern themselves?  California's Supreme Court directly overruled the California public's overwhelming preference to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples, which is based on the traditional understanding that marriage is the unique, complementary joining of the two sexes, and widely held consensus that homosexual behavior is morally wrong.   Same-sex "marriage" is not really a constitutional conflict. It's a clash between two values systems-the secular-elite vs. the traditional-religious. Who are the elite courts to overrule the moral values of the majority?  The media clearly side with the secular elites in this debate.
>>    The lessons of history.  Oxford anthropologist J.D. Unwin wrote Sex and Culture, the definitive study of why civilizations collapse. Unwin found that societies that practice "absolute monogamy," in which sex is restricted to lifelong heterosexual marriage, tend to grow and prosper.  Societies that open the sexual Pandora's box and depart from absolute monogamy invariably decline.  They become insignificant backwaters or disappear altogether.
>    Whether America should embrace same-sex "marriage" is a profoundly important question that needs to be fully aired.  By not examining the enormous stakes, the media are allowing a razor-thin majority of California Supreme Court justices to have the final word.
    CMI Director R  contributed to the above article.
>
>       
>   Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz, "(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?" American Sociological Review, Vol. 66, No. 2 (April, 2001), pp. 159-183.
>> --
> Gregg Jackson
> Co-Host "Pundit Review Radio"
> WRKO Boston's Talk Station www.WRKO.com
> Author of "Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies: Issue By Issue Responses to the Most Common Claims of the Left from A to Z"

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Date Posted -  5/31/08   -   Date Last Edited - 06/16/2008