NewsMax.com's David Limbaugh writes today:

Newsweek's Anna Quindlen recently wrote that a presidential victory for Rudy Giuliani "wouldn't be a good thing for this country, but his candidacy may wind up being a good thing for his party," which Quindlen obviously believes has been hijacked by the Christian right.

Giuliani's strong poll numbers, said Quindlen, perhaps "indicate that the end is nigh for the stranglehold the Leviticus Lobby has had on the GOP." It's no longer surprising that those screaming most loudly against Christianity and its influence on public policy in America often employ the same tactics and represent the same dangers they falsely attribute to Christians. Christians have far more to fear from the secular thought police than the other way around.

Whether it's writer Christopher Hitchens or CNN's Christiane Amanpour sloppily conflating Christian "fundamentalists" or observant Jews with Islamic jihadists; secular leftists calling the Christian right the American Taliban; or militant secularists like HBO's Bill Maher salivating over reports that Mother Teresa had a crisis of faith, the theme is the same. Christian activists are a societal nuisance.

The secularists' criticism goes beyond decrying the Christian right's alleged hostility to church-state separation. They claim strong religious belief leads to oppression, tyranny, and violence.

They even suggest the mere defense of absolute truth is dangerous. Alan Hurwitz of North Star Writers Group, wrote, "One thing I do know — the pursuit of 'truth,' as in mine over yours, creates conflict and isolation among individuals, groups, and societies. I am secular enough to think those are bad things. Religious zealots, 'knowers of truth . . . often have a scary gleam in their eyes . . . The challenge of dealing with rigid manifestations of religious 'truth' is one of management leadership — how to create societies that allow diverse groups to believe and act on their truth, without hurting each other." Note this is not some Christian talking about creating societies and exerting control.

The secularists demanding the removal of specks from Christians' eyes are oblivious to the planks in their own. Their paranoid predispositions about Christians lead them to the very type of oppressive behavior they wrongly ascribe to Christians. If anyone is guilty of wanting to foreclose debate and impose their values on others, it is these hyperventilating secularists.

They are the ones who have decreed there's a consensus on global warming and attempted to stigmatize dissenters as paid mouthpieces for "evil" energy companies. With their absence of self-reflection it must never occur to them that in their professed monopoly on "science," they squarely violate the fundamentals of the scientific method by forbidding debate and insulating their theories from scientific scrutiny.

They malign intelligent design proponents for daring to subject their dogma — and distortions — to the rigorous re-examination scientific methodology requires.

They seek to remove God from the Pledge of Allegiance, though one poll reveals that only 14 percent of Americans agree with them.

They brand as bigots opponents of the societal sanctioning of homosexual marriage. Some even pronounce certain scriptural passages on homosexuality "hate speech" that leads to violence, as if to disapprove of any behavior is to hate it or its practitioners and leads to violence against them.

Likewise, many pro-abortionists speciously argue that pro-life advocacy leads to violence against women — never mind the violence against the unborn. The secular left condemns traditionalists for "legislating morality" and invading our bedrooms. Their quasi-religious fervor apparently blinds them to their efforts to wield governmental power to impose their own values, whether on homosexual marriage, abortion, wealth redistribution, or socialized medicine.

Alas, none of this should surprise Christians, who surely understand we are reaping the ravaging effects of a secularist, atheistic worldview that has finally become dominant in our postmodern culture and has claimed absolute truth as its casualty.

Liberty Letters agrees; read the full article.

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Missing the Mark With Religion, Part 7

As a child growing up in New York, I was attracted to the opposite sex. When I saw a pretty little girl flash a smile, my heart fluttered, my cheeks blushed, I shuffled my feet and shyly looked the other way.

I always liked girls. No one had to tell me that I should. I just did.

When I became a teen, little changed. I still adored them, though when I thought of females, I began to think of marriage. Holy matrimony seemed like a prerequisite to happiness and completeness. Don't ask me why. It was instinct. I knew I was born to be married; and fortunately, no man, woman or institution stepped in to pervert nature's instincts.

Public schools, you see, and even television, still defended traditional values and helped reinforce what nature had implanted.

Ben Franklin, a man from a value-laden era, and a man who was not the philanderer anti-American historical revisionists make him out to be (he firmly believed in the law of chastity, for instance), (1) expressed long ago what I by nature felt as a teen. In an attempt to persuade a young friend to reject the idea of a mistress and embrace the institution of marriage, Franklin wrote:

Marriage is the proper remedy. It is the most natural state of man, and therefore the state in which you are most likely to find solid happiness. Your reasons against entering into it at present appear to me not well founded. The circumstantial advantages you have in view by postponing it are not only uncertain, but they are small in comparison with that of the thing itself, the being married and settled. It is the man and woman united that make the complete human being. Separate, she wants his force of body and strength of reason; he, her softness, sensibility, and acute discernment. Together they are more likely to succeed in the world. A single man has not nearly the value he would have in that state of union. He is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors. If you get a prudent, healthy wife, your industry in your profession, with her good economy, will be a fortune sufficient. (2)

One Flesh He might have added, for it fit, "Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord" (3) and God's command to our first parents, "[to become] one flesh." (4)

Franklin and the revelations are right. There really is something about this marriage thing, an extraordinary opportunity ordained by God and Nature to become something we cannot be alone (and not become with a person of the same sex).

Two people, man and woman, mutually bound by love and sacred covenants, become one flesh in the natural unity of sexual intercourse; they become one flesh through children, who literally possess their combined genetic code; they become one heart and mind through the common endeavor of raising these children through thick and thin; and hopefully, through their common devotion to God, His laws, and their duty to serve their fellow man and, firstly, each other, they become one forevermore.

But this is not all. They also become one, as Franklin noted, because of natural differences between man and woman, which interlock and complement each other in a wonderful symphony achieved through a lifetime of give and take, sacrifice and patience, struggle and mutual reform.

It is an ingenious and inspired plan devised to stretch man, refine him, and teach him to love others more than he loves himself, a plan which, besides being religiously sanctioned, has met with the approval and sanction of every great civilization.

Family and National Stability

And here's why: All societies have learned that the family is basic and fundamental to national stability and happiness. When families fall apart, so do nations.

French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville knew that a collective animosity or negligence toward the family was the sort of destabilizing force that fomented revolutions, while strong families prop up and prosper free government, as was the case in early 19th century America. In his classic work, "Democracy in America," he observed:

But when the American retires from the turmoil of public life to the bosom of his family, he finds in it the image of order and of peace. There his pleasures are simple and natural, his joys are innocent and calm; and as he finds that an orderly life is the surest path to happiness, he accustoms himself easily to moderate his opinion as well as his tastes. While the European endeavors to forget his domestic troubles by agitating society, the American derives from his own home that love of order which he afterwards carries with him into public affairs. (5)

America rose, Europe fell. No wonder. Unfortunately, the cultural differences between Europe and the United States are now dimming. Generally, we still have stronger families than they, and thus more stability, strength and freedom; but, simultaneously, the anti-family values that brought the terror and instability of the French Revolution have gained a considerable and militant foothold here in the United States, and may, if left unchecked, beckon our downfall.

Marx's Loathing of Family

It was the ideology of communism founder Karl Marx that led the charge against marriage and the family that unsettles us today. In language fuming with hatred, loaded to the hilt in reckless, sweeping generalizations and on fire with revolution, Marx decried Western Civilization's belief in the "hallowed co-relation" of husband to wife and parent to child as a "bourgeois claptrap [artifice]" which is "disgusting." To him and his cohorts, capitalist children are thought of by their parents as nothing more than "articles of commerce and instruments of labor," whereas wives and daughters are thought of by their capitalist husbands and fathers as nothing more than "common prostitutes"; and bourgeois marriage is thought of by men in general as nothing more than "a system of wives in common," (6) for, according to Marx's dark view of the Capitalist Christian culture, every Capitalist, like every Christian, cheats on his wife and abuses his children.

Such a world!

But he didn't stop there, no. Since the family stinks, then why not a free-sex society where anything goes? It sounds all too familiar. Marx has, in many respects, won the day. He teaches in our schools, writes the scripts in Hollywood and sends down edicts from the bench.

Yet, Marx's modern beneficiaries, the various ‘victim's' lobbies of the anti-family movement, ought to consider the possibility that they have been exploited alright, by political opportunists who employ "a technique that is as old as the human race, a fervid but false solicitude for the unfortunate over whom they thus gain mastery, and then enslave" (7) – that is, exploited, and ultimately duped into slavery, by a moral, even a religious appeal from the very folks who say they abhor such things in public life!

Nevertheless, not all things are as they seem to be. Sometimes a chunk of free cheese obscures a deadly trap. Or to put it another way, in this case, behind the smoke screen of supposed rights for things thousands of years of culture, religion and law have rejected as harmful, it seems plain that a red eye emerges, wickedly, haughtily peering down on marriage and the family intent on overthrowing the existing moral and political order.

Joining hands with the same are myriads of individuals and institutions pressing forward, unwisely, unwittingly, perceiving a benefit in being thus encouraged, and thus exploited, many of them ironically doing so in the name of preserving religious freedom. Those who do, miss the mark about religion in public life, and in truth, hold hands with Marx, the Devil, and every tyrant who ever hoped to enslave the children of men.

And so we have come full circle. And yet, whether it remains politically correct or not, marriage between a man and woman, and children raised by mother and father are still divine institutions; and as such, the nation that makes war on them will rue the day as surely as the sun rises tomorrow; while the nation that rises up and defends them will save itself.

The only question is, to which will we cleave?

Steve Farrell is a pundit with NewsMax.com, associate professor of political economy at George Wythe College, editor of the Liberty Letters, author of the inspirational classic "Dark Rose," and founder and president of the Latter-day Foundation for Moral Liberalism: preserving and promoting the Judeo-Christian ethic, the U.S. Constitution, and lessee-faire in the 21st Century.

Footnotes

1. Franklin was in his 80s, beset with several incapacitating physical maladies – gout, boils and huge (some have said softball size) gall bladder stones (during the time he was supposedly philandering!) – and was thought of by the ladies in France, and the French in general, as "harmless," "sober," "a Quaker," a man of "simplicity and innocence," one of the "paragons of the age," "beloved Papa," and was proclaimed in the title of a portrait of Franklin commissioned in France as a "Man of Character." It was true, at this age, that women enjoyed his company, and he theirs. Especially appealing to him was that French women were educated.

But the accusations against him as a philanderer were made by political enemies, denied by Franklin and those who knew him best (teaching on the principle of chastity, he counseled his son ‘to avoid the very appearance of evil,' as a result of these political charges), and were, besides slander and libel, at his advanced age and particularly in his medical condition, nonsense as well. The one charge that might honestly be held against him was that he fathered a child in his youth, which today's revisionist ‘historians' mention in such unkind ways as "he fathered a bastard child," but they rarely, if ever, tell the full story, that Franklin was quick to rectify his mistake and took good care of his obligations to mother and child the rest of his life, even finding honorable and profitable employment for the boy as he grew older.

This helps us understand why Franklin counseled so strongly against the same weakness in others. He learned the hard way, and wished to prevent others from sharing in the same fate. In light of all this, here's a point to ponder: To the Christian who repents, God remembers the sin no more, but ‘historians,' particularly those who wish to destroy America's heritage, unveil just how un-Christian, how ill-motivated, they truly are by drudging up old mud, again and again – indeed, conjuring up new mud while they're at it.

2. Franklin, Benjamin, Letter, June 25, 1745.

3. Holy Bible, 1 Corinthians 11:1.

4. Ibid., Matthew 19:5-6, Mark 10:8, Genesis 2:24, 1 Corinthians 6:15-20, Ephesians 5:31.

5. de Tocqueville, Alexis. "Democracy in America," Book 1, Chapter 17.

6. Marx, Karl. "Communist Manifesto," for all the quotes from Marx in these two paragraphs.

7. David O. McKay, former president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, warned: "We … warn our people in America of the constantly increasing threat against our inspired Constitution. … The proponents thereof are seeking to undermine our own form of government and to set up instead one of the forms of dictatorships [which] is now flourishing in other lands. These revolutionists are using a technique that is as old as the human race, a fervid but false solicitude for the unfortunate over whom they thus gain mastery, and then enslave them." (See: Cannon, Donald Q. ed., "Latter-day Prophets and the United States Constitution," Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1991, pgs. 120 - 121.)

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Having failed in their effort to persuade Americans to put the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) into the U.S. Constitution, despite spending tens of millions of dollars and enjoying the support of Big Media, three Presidents, and dozens of prominent politicians of both parties, the feminists are now trying to give us an even more dangerous ERA through ratification of a UN Treaty on Women enforced by busybody bureaucrats from foreign countries. This treaty has the pretentious label of United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Signed by Jimmy Carter in 1980, and repeatedly promoted by Bill and Hillary Clinton, the U.S. Senate has wisely never ratified it.The notion is downright ridiculous that American women (the most fortunate class of people who ever lived) should submit to a treaty that dictates uniform rules for 185 other nations, all of which treat women far worse than the United States. Ratification of CEDAW would be craven kowtowing to the radical feminists, exceeded only by the treaty's unlimited capacity for legal mischief.

Article 1 purports to abolish discrimination against women "in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field." What other fields do the feminists have in mind?

Article 2 reiterates that the treaty would "eliminate discrimination against women by any person, organization or enterprise," including "laws, regulations, customs and practices." Our "customs" should be none of our government's business, much less the business of the United Nations.

Article 3 would require us to pass new federal laws not only in political but also in "social, economic and cultural fields."

Article 5 would require us "to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women" and to "ensure" that we are following United Nations dictates about "family education."

Article 10 would make it a federal responsibility to ensure "the elimination of any stereotyped concept of the roles of men and women at all levels and in all forms of education . . . by the revision of textbooks and . . . teaching methods." We certainly don't want the UN to revise our textbooks! Remember, the feminists consider it a "stereotype" that children should be raised by a mother and father married to each other.

Article 11 would chain us to the feminist goal that wages should be paid on subjective notions of "equal value" (i.e., the discredited notion of "comparable worth") rather than on the free market or on U.S. legal standards of equal pay for equal work. It would also require us to "establish" another long-time feminist goal, a federal "network of child-care facilities."

Article 12 would guarantee "access to health care services, including those related to family planning," and Article 16 would require us to allow women "to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their children." The text doesn't use the word "abortion," but CEDAW's compliance committee has interpreted this feminist jargon to mean approval of abortion, and has pressured 37 nations to legalize or increase access to abortion. The CEDAW committee has held that nations should provide public funding of abortion, and has even criticized nations that have laws to allow medical professionals to opt out of providing abortions. The European Parliament in 2002 adopted a report calling for removal of all limitations to abortion, citing CEDAW as its authority. Some pro-abortion U.S. Senators claim that they can paper over this problem by inserting an "understanding," but an "understanding" in regard to a treaty has no legal force whatsoever. (For further information, see National Right to Life document, 2-1-07)

Article 17 creates a monitoring committee in charge of "progress." This consists of "23 experts," on which the United States might some day have one vote out of 23. The current committee includes representatives from Algeria, Cuba and Bangladesh and a vice chairman from Zimbabwe. No doubt the "experts" will always be "experts" in feminist ideology and tactics, such as Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, or a president of NOW.

CEDAW's international "experts" have already issued negative reports about the practices of countries that were foolish enough to ratify the treaty. The committee criticized Ireland for "promoting a stereotypical view of the role of women in the home and as mothers," Belarus for "such symbols as a Mother's Day" because it promotes "a negative cultural stereotype," and Slovenia because "less than 30% of children under three years of age were in formal day care." The committee recommended "the decriminalization of prostitution in China."

Article 16 also orders a massive interference with U.S. laws as well as with our federal-state balance of powers by obligating the federal government to take over all family law, including marriage, divorce, child custody, and marital property. When Edmund S. Muskie was Secretary of State, he issued a memo stating that the treaty completely fails to take into account "the division of authority between the state and federal governments in the United States." His memo also admitted that this treaty applies "to private organizations and areas of personal conduct not covered by U.S. law."

CEDAW would give foreign bureaucrats and activist judges extraordinary powers to revise U.S. laws, education and customs to comport with radical feminist ideology.

Senator Jesse Helms kept CEDAW in the bottom drawer for years after it was signed by Jimmy Carter, but the new Democratic Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden, has dusted it off and is trying to get the Senate to ratify it. Tell your Senators to vote NO on CEDAW. Even better, tell President Bush to UNsign this Carter-signed UN Treaty just as he UNsigned the Clinton-signed International Criminal Court Treaty.
More Lobbying for More Feminist Pork
The feminists have cooked up a new plan to raid the U.S. Treasury for more feminist pork. They want Congress to pass the I-VAWA (International Violence Against Women Act). They are using a report issued in October 2006 by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called "In-Depth Study on All Forms of Violence Against Women." The report is said to be based on interviews with 24,000 women conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO report asserts that one in three of the world's women, in some countries as many as 70%, experience violence in their lifetime, usually from their own partner, which is the rationale for calling it domestic violence. I'm surprised the feminists don't claim 100%, since "violence" is broadly defined to include non-physical "psychological and economic" actions.

Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) says the "statistics are appalling." Indeed they are. But it doesn't follow that the solution is the UN "In-Depth" report's demand for "consultation with women's [i.e., feminist] groups" with "adequate funding streams" to develop "international standards" for all nations. All UN projects pertaining to women follow the feminist model: break up the family, force women into the workforce, and send kids to daycare.

A new feminist front group called the Women's Edge Coalition is partnering with Amnesty International U.S. to lobby for congressional passage of I-VAWA which, of course, would create millions of dollars of feminist pork. I-VAWA's stated mission is to carry out a campaign of policy advocacy and education, consulting with dozens of U.S organizations, grassroots organizing, and working with strategic media partners (i.e., getting the media to do their propagandizing).

You can bet that a primary purpose of I-VAWA money will be to lobby the U.S. Senate for ratification of CEDAW so that its UN monitoring committee can force U.S. compliance with feminist goals. That agenda includes everything from requiring unlimited abortion rights to rewriting our school textbooks to eliminate all so-called "stereotypes" and gender-specific references.

Our Senators are taunted with the assertion that the United States should be embarrassed because 185 countries have ratified CEDAW, while we have not. I'm glad the Senate so far has had the good sense to reject a treaty that fraudulently makes people believe it will improve the lot of Americans.

CEDAW has had no effect in stopping the horrible crimes against women that take place in so many non-Christian countries. Many of these countries persist in social norms that justify abuse against women, such as genital mutilation, forced marriage, honor killing, murder of unborn and born female babies, and polygamy. Ratification of CEDAW by their governments has done nothing to stop these atrocities.

Pakistan has ratified CEDAW. That's the country where a tribal council ordered a young woman gang-raped to avenge her brother's crime of being seen with an unchaperoned woman from another tribe. Gang rape is common in Pakistan.

Nigeria has ratified CEDAW. That's a country where women are stoned to death for the crime of adultery. Islamic law, called Shariah, calls for death to women who commit adultery, but a lesser punishment for adulterous men.

Saudi Arabia has ratified CEDAW. That's the country where 14 girls died inside a Mecca school that went up in flames. Religious police kept rescuers from entering the building because some of the girls were not wearing their head coverings. Colombia has ratified CEDAW. That's a country where thousands of women a year are sold into sex slavery. Similar outrages take place in India, Nepal and Thailand, which have also ratified CEDAW.

All these countries are eligible to sit on CEDAW's monitoring committee of 23 "experts" who monitor "progress" and order compliance. I-VAWA is based on the lie that violence against women is the same problem in the United States as in other countries and that "international standards" are the solution.

Any "international standards" would vastly diminish the rights and benefits American women now enjoy. American women, the most privileged class of people on the face of the earth, are the beneficiaries of the Judeo-Christian civilization, including the requirement in the Ten Commandments to honor mothers and the Christian religion that honors the Virgin Mary and respects women.

Tell your Members of Congress to vote No on I-VAWA.

ERA Is Still a Bad Amendment

The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution, was voted out of Congress on March 22, 1972 and sent to the states for ratification. ERA was passionately debated across America from 1972 to 1982, rejected by the American people, and died at the end of its extended time limit on June 30, 1982.

ERA was born in the era of the women's suffrage amendment and first introduced into Congress in 1923. For nearly 50 years, all those Congresses had the good judgment to leave ERA buried in committee.

In 1971, the women's liberation movement burst on the scene with massive support from the media. Its leaders demanded that we change to a gender-neutral society in which we would all be forced to treat men and women exactly the same no matter how reasonable it might be to respect differences. These feminists chose ERA as their principal legislative goal so they could use the U.S. Constitution to force all Americans to accept a gender-neutral agenda.

A radical feminist organization called the National Organization for Women (NOW) stormed the halls of Congress, secured signers for a discharge petition, and forced ERA out for a vote. Apparently convincing many members of Congress that they represented all women, the House passed ERA by an overwhelming margin on October 21, 1971, and the Senate did likewise on March 22, 1972, sending ERA to the states and giving them seven years in which to pass ratification resolutions in 3/4ths of the states (38 is the necessary number to become part of the U.S. Constitution).

Women were falsely led to believe that ERA would put women in the U.S. Constitution. But as anyone can see from the text, ERA would not put women in the Constitution — it would put "sex" in the Constitution. The text of ERA is: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

ERA had a righteous name and incredible momentum. Within the first year, ERA was ratified by 30 states, and ERA needed only 8 more states to become part of the U.S. Constitution. Supporting ERA were all those who had pretensions to political power from left to right — from Ted Kennedy to George Wallace — and three Presidents of the United States: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. ERA was actively supported by most of the pushy women's organizations, a consortium of 33 women's magazines, numerous Hollywood celebrities, and 99% of the media. There weren't any friendly TV and radio talk show hosts who now fill the airways, no Rush Limbaugh talking about feminazis, no Fox News, no "no spin zone." We had no internet, no email, no fax machines.

But American women rejected ERA. Our Stop ERA campaign was launched with the February 1972 Phyllis Schlafly Report called "What's Wrong with �Equal Rights' for Women?" Over the 10 years, I wrote nearly 100 issues of my Report about ERA, which staked out the battleground: the legal rights that women would lose if ERA were ever ratified.

We showed that ERA was a fraud. While pretending to benefit women, it actually would be a big takeaway of rights that women then possessed, such as the right of an 18-year-old girl not to be drafted and sent into military combat. We got our facts straight from the writings of the pro-ERA legal authorities: Yale Law School Professor Thomas I. Emerson's 100-page article in the Yale Law Journal, and ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg's 230-page book Sex Bias in the U.S. Code (17.84 MB pdf file). Those documents confirmed our arguments that ERA would draft women into military combat, abolish the presumption that the husband should support his wife, take away Social Security benefits for wives and widows, and cause all kinds of legal mischief.

We showed that ERA would give enormous power to the federal courts to define the words in ERA: "sex" and "equality of rights." Section 2 of ERA would give vast new powers to the Federal Government over all laws that allow traditional and reasonable differences of treatment on account of sex: marriage, property, divorce, alimony, adoptions, abortion, homosexual laws, sex crimes, private and public schools, Boy and Girl Scouts, prison regulations, and insurance.

The ERAers could not show any benefit to women, not even in employment, since employment laws were already sex-neutral. The ERAers said their Amendment would put women into the Constitution. But the Constitution doesn't mention men or women; it uses only sex-neutral words such as "we the people," person, citizen, inhabitant, President and Senator.

The media were solidly hostile and never gave us equal time to debate the issues. But we did have equal time at state legislative hearings. Year after year in the 1970s, we presented legislators with the powerful arguments and documentation provided by the Phyllis Schlafly Report. I ultimately testified at 41 state hearings.

The military draft was a strong argument in the early years because we were just coming out of the Vietnam War. The ERAers, most of whom were well over draft age, claimed that they wanted girls to be drafted. That argument was hard to sell to young women who did not see it as a benefit to be forced to register for the military draft and serve in combat like men. Nor did wives see it as a benefit for ERA to make unconstitutional all state laws that make it the duty of the husband to support his wife.

From 1973 to 1975, the ERAers won only five more states, but five other states rescinded their previous ratifications, and the ERAers were running out of time to win any more states.

International Women's Year (IWY) became the feminists' plan to win ratification in the remaining states. Bella Abzug was then a Member of Congress, and she got Congress to appropriate $5 million for a tax-funded IWY convention in Houston in November 1977.

The International Women's Year convention opened in Houston, featuring every feminist you ever heard of; 3,000 members of the media were on hand to give them total press and television coverage.

But all that media coverage exposed to the American people the real goals of the feminists and the radical effects of ERA: taxpayer funding of abortions and the entire gay rights agenda. ERAers argue that since abortion happens only to women, it is sex discrimination to deny taxpayer funding for abortions. And, since the word used in ERA is "sex," not women, ERA would require us to grant same-sex marriage licenses. The International Women's Year conference in Houston proved that ERA's real agenda is taxpayer-funded abortions and special gay rights.

A couple of months later, a reporter asked the Governor of Missouri, "Governor, are you for ERA?" He replied, "Do you mean the old ERA or the new ERA? I was for equal pay for equal work, but after those women went down to Houston and got tangled up with the abortionists and the lesbians, I can tell you ERA will never pass in the Show Me State."

When the feminists realized time was running out and they could not win 38 states by the seven-year deadline, they ran for help to President Carter who, with Congress, gave them a crooked 3-year time extension.

Congress passed an ERA Time Extension to change "within seven years" in the original ERA resolution to 10 years, 3 months, 8 days, 7 hours and 35 minutes, so that the time limit was extended to June 30, 1982 instead of expiring on March 22, 1979. Congress passed this unfair Extension by only a simple majority vote instead of by the 2/3rds majority required for constitutional amendments. Political cartoonists had a field day, describing the Time Extension as giving three more innings to a baseball game that was not tied up.

The American people were so turned off by the dishonesty of the Time Extension that ERA never had another victory, even though ERA has since been voted on about 25 times, in state legislatures, in Congress, and in several statewide referenda.

In a famous lawsuit called Idaho v. Freeman, the Federal Court ruled that the Time Extension was unconstitutional, and that the rescissions are constitutional. The decision was appealed. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on October 4, 1982 that the lawsuit was "moot" because ERA was dead, regardless of whether we use the original time limit of March 22, 1979 or the extension time limit of June 30, 1982.

Since then, the ERAers have repeatedly tried to revive ERA. They re-introduced ERA in Congress in 1983 to start the process all over again, but were defeated in the U.S. House on November 15, 1983.

Then the ERAers tried to revive their momentum by passing ERA as state constitutional amendments. They failed in dramatic referendums in Maine in 1984, in Vermont in 1985, and in Iowa in 1992.

ERA advocates have now cooked up an incredibly dishonest plan. They are telling people that they can ignore the time limits put on ERA, both in its original text passed in 1972 and also in the Time Extension resolution passed in 1978, and that they can ignore the federal court decision in Idaho v. Freeman, and ignore the U.S. Supreme Court decision that ERA is dead, and then deceive three states into passing ERA ratification resolutions, and then get their friend Speaker Nancy Pelosi to declare ERA part of the U.S. Constitution. This is so outrageously dishonest that we wonder how anybody could argue it with a straight face.

The ERAers are presenting ERA in exactly the same text that has been voted down again and again, and rejected by the American people. All the same original arguments against it are still valid.

We now have a new generation of state legislators who don't remember the debates of the 1970s. It is important for Americans who care about our nation and its future to teach a new generation of Members of Congress and State Legislators why we do not want ERA in the U.S. Constitution. Eagle Forum has two new fliers to explain the evils of ERA.

Support Liberty Letters with your purchase of Steve Farrell's modern Christian classic, Dark Rose.

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Liberty and license are not synonymous. Parents know better.

Too many of them have had the unfortunate dilemma of dealing with the "I am free to do as I please" child who routinely, or upon occasion, exercises that egocentric proclamation to reckless extremes. These parents stand as witnesses that a widely accepted notion that "freedom and moral responsibility are not connected" is at best a delusion instilled by mis-education, not experience, and is at worst a diabolical lie.

The pain they feel, the shipwrecked lives they labor to pick up and reassemble, the incessant pleadings to stubborn, short-sighted children, and the endless nights spent sobbing upon their knees, all testify to them that unrestrained freedom is not freedom at all, but quite often a terrible, miserable slavery.

Every act has a consequence. Experience, that cruel schoolmaster, teaches us that. But it's not as if the idea is lacking in proponents.

The voice of Christianity warns, "Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." (1)

The voice of the sciences seconds, "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." (2)

And even the man-on-the-street echoes, "What goes around comes around."

Experience, God, the scientist and the streetwise understand this common-sense law. Call it the Law of the Harvest, the Law of Physics, the Law of the Street, or the Boomerang Effect; it is dreadfully real that actions for good or evil will bring results which either enlarge or limit one's freedom.

Sexual "freedom," when thought through, provides a clear-cut confirmation of this truth. For instance, the modern doctors of humanism, socialism and new age-ism proclaim to our youth that premarital sex is a healthy, happy and satisfying activity.

No doubt, it seems satisfying for the few moments it lasts.

But the choice to be sexually active as a teen-ager is not the liberating, ‘isn't-that-sweet' lifestyle that the social engineers and social scientists say that it is.

Early premarital sex reaps natural consequences: loss of virginity, damaged or lost church affiliation, guilt, limitations on spousal selection (men exploit sexually active women but are reticent to marry them), social disease, pregnancy, adoption, abortion (with the even greater moral dilemma of considering killing one's own), early marriage or single motherhood, increased risk for poverty, divorce (with its unpleasant, often unrelenting custody and parenting battles), abuse, and possible enslavement to government welfare programs.

This is especially so for the female. The male experiences some of the same, but worse yet, he often runs from responsibility and into the arms of yet another victim, and the cycle begins anew.

For a young lady abandoned to motherhood, even when she just happens to be that tough, resilient female who takes her lumps, transforms her life, bravely bears her child and wisely goes to college to improve her lot, the question must be asked of her, "Are you now free?"

Her answer most likely will be a resounding "No!" For when the school day is over, and the social and dating ritual begins, she is, rightly so, home with the baby, loving, feeding, cuddling, lullabying and diaper changing. She may be working a job.

Her social life is nonexistent; her chance of finding a worthy young man diminished; her study time, if she hasn't the luxury of affording a babysitter (few do), checkered and challenged; her life terribly lonely and stress-filled.

There are exceptions, but relatively few.

Unrestrained freedom bears a heavy cost.

Others suffer too. Parents (in a variety of ways), younger brothers and sisters by way of a poor role model, friends who naively believe that single parenthood ‘looks like fun,' and unrelated citizens who are forcibly taxed to pay for an assortment of social repair programs.

Beyond this, the precedent of extending a "safety-net" catches on and every other mistake-ridden person on the block joins in with the plea: "If the government can take care of him or her, than why not me?"

But there is at least one more cost. It is the cost of those whose exercise in "liberty" leads them to become bitter rather than better.

There is a little-known but documented story of an obscure boy, and his family, who converted to Christianity. Of that conversion, the changed young man wrote a precious and powerful testimony to the world concerning his newfound faith. It had transformed him and his parents, bringing great joy and purpose in life.

Then something devastating happened. He went to college! Isn't that all too often the case? It was there that he, like so many others, decided it was time to spread his wings and assert his newfound freedom. He could have done so in a positive manner, but he did not. His choice was to have a sexual affair with a married woman.

At that point, rather than express regret and redress the mistake, he exulted in his liberty. He decided his previous religious liberation was a form of physical and emotional bondage. He began to pursue a course to denounce the religion of his parents, his former faith of Judaism, and every other religious faith. He set his hand against God, denounced Him as a hoax, and, as an addendum, promised to abolish all "eternal truths," to erase "freedom, justice … religion … [and] morality," and to eradicate those twin trouble makers (the family and private property) from off the face of the earth. (3) Men, he said, and only a few select men at that, were the only true gods, henceforth and forever. Truth and morality would now be relative.

He put this all down on paper. He founded a revolution based on these principles. This revolution, first spawned by the self-justification of the ‘liberty' he had found by violating the law of chastity with a married woman, was the starting point of the most horrific adventure in mass murder, slavery and poverty in the history of the world.

Perhaps you've guessed it by now, though ‘historians' and ‘educators' have hidden the lesson. The boy's name was Karl Marx. The philosophy he founded was Communism. You see, freedom without moral responsibility, never really is an exercise in liberty at all.

MensNewsDaily contributor Steve Farrell is a pundit with Silver Eddy Award Winner, NewsMax.com, associate professor of political economy at George Wythe College, the editor of The Liberty Letters, and the author of the highly praised inspirational novel "Dark Rose." Help support Liberty Letters by getting your copy today

Footnotes

1. Holy Bible, Galatians 6:7.

2. Newton, Sir Issac. This is Newton's third law of motion.

3. Marx, Karl. "Communist Manifesto"

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Debates about same-sex marriage and gay adoptions always include the argument that a child has the right to both a father and a mother. If that is true, why is a child usually deprived of that right when heterosexual couples divorce? It would seem that maintaining the father's love and authority would be crucial when a child's life is turned upside down by divorce. Yet, family courts routinely deprive children of one of their parents, usually the father, restricting his time with his child to about six days a month.

The courts pompously assert they are invoking "the best interest of the child," but how can it be in the best interest of children to make them forfeit one parent?

We hear many pious comments about the need for fathers to be involved in the upbringing of their children. This need should be even more important in times of emotional stress (such as divorce) than the need for fathers to play ball with their kids in an intact family.

Some states are considering legislation that establishes a presumption of shared parenting whereby divorced parents divide equally both time and authority over the children. This enables children to maintain strong ties to both parents.

When primary or sole custody is given to the mother, the father becomes merely a visitor in the child's life (that's why it's called "visitation"), whose only value is to mail a paycheck and be an occasional babysitter. The father loses his parental authority and fades out of his own child's life.

An argument is sometimes made that shuttling back and forth between two homes may be upsetting or a nuisance, but there is no more shuttling with equal custody (where parents, for example, get alternating weeks) than with the typical mother-custody/father-visitation schedule (where the father gets two weekends a month plus some Wednesday evenings). Do the math; both plans have about the same number of shuttles between homes.

An argument is also made that giving custody primarily to the mother promotes stability, but the need for stability is really a reason for shared custody. The stability of parental relationships is a great deal more important than contact with material things.

Americans have always assumed that parents share decision-making authority because only parents can determine what is in the best interest of their own children. As recently as 2000, the Supreme Court in Troxel v. Granville reaffirmed this principle and rejected the argument that a judge could supersede a fit parent's judgment about his child's "best interest."

Nevertheless, in what Stephen Baskerville calls a "silent revolution," millions of divorced parents have had their fundamental right to decide what is in the best interest of their own children taken away and given instead to a vast array of government officials and so-called "experts" such as judges, lawyers, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, child protective services, child support enforcement agents, mediators, counselors, parenting classes, and feminist groups.

This shift began in the 1970s after the spread of unilateral divorce was followed by the creation of a giant federal child-support-enforcement bureaucracy. The notion that this mix of government officials and government-appointed advisers can dictate what is the best interest of the child rather than a child's own parents is how the liberals and feminists are fulfilling their goal that "it takes a village (i.e., the government) to raise a child."

An example of the bias against fathers can be seen in the Responsible Fatherhood Act of 2007 (S. 1626) recently introduced by Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Evan Bayh (D-IN). The bill mentions "child support" 65 times, but not once does it mention parenting time, custody, visitation, or access denial.

Dr. Baskerville's new book called Taken into Custody to be published in August by Cumberland House, provides a copiously documented description of society's injustices to children who have been deprived of their fathers and of fathers who have been deprived of their children. This book is a tremendous and much-needed report on how family courts and government policies are harming children.

It is a breakthrough for shared parenting that a non-custodial father, Robert Pedersen, was recently named Runner-Up in the nationwide Best Life Magazine's "Hero Dad" Contest

. Pedersen is only allowed 6 to 8 days a month with his two children from a previous marriage.

Pedersen has devised a novel way to demonstrate the importance of fathers to children of divorced parents. He is leading an "Equal Parenting Bike Ride" starting in Lansing, Michigan, on August 11 and culminating with a rally in Washington, DC on August 18.

Used with the permission of Liberty Letters' friend "Eagle Forum."

Praised as a "modern classic;" support Liberty Letters by purchasing your copy of Steve Farrell's inspirational novel, "Dark Rose." 

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Now that Hillary Clinton is publicly embracing the importance of faith in a politician's life, the New York Times has evidently forgotten all about the separation of church and state. A feature article on Ms. Clinton speaks fawningly of her teaching adult Sunday school classes and of how her Methodist faith has "guided her" as she has "struggled to fulfill the Biblical commandment to love they neighbor in the bare-knuckles world of politics." The Times notes with approval that she "has been alluding to her spiritual life with increasing regularity in recent years," and quotes a religion expert who says that she "appears to be a person of deep and sincere faith." Says Sen. Clinton herself about her faith, "It has certainly been a huge part of who I am, and how I have seen the world and what I believe in." On the campaign trail, she now can be found "increasingly speaking of her personal piety" and "sprinkling in references to inspiring Biblical verses." The Times gushes over the fact that "she carries a Bible on her campaign travels" and "reads commentaries on Scripture." The bottom line is that as long as a candidate's Christianity disposes them to support abortion, special rights for homosexuals, and the involuntary redistribution of wealth, the Times is all for it. The Times does not really believe in the "separation of church and state," it believes in the "separation of conservative Christians and the state." (Clinton Dwells on Faith as a Central Part of Her Life - New York Times)

Liberty Letters Comment: Thank you to our friends at the Idaho Values Alliance for digging up this tidbit.

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An enlightened people, who have once attained the blessings of a free government, can never be enslaved until they abandon virtue and relinquish science [the science of government and of laws]. These are the nurses of infant liberty and its fostering genii when matured. To seek their favour is to secure its; to neglect it, is infallibly to lose it. … the ignorance of the people is the footstool of despotism … when ignorance is united with [moral inactiviity], liberty becomes lethargic, and despotism erects her standard without opposition.

- St. George Tucker, View of the Constitution of the United States, p. 14.

Liberty Letters Comment: Tucker's work is a much respected founding era source of study on the Constitution. George Tucker is the man who edited Blackstone's works to apply to the American situation. His point is vital to the entire constitutional and educational debate about the value of morality, and the freedom to inject the religious perspective in the public debate. Lose our moral foundation, lose a nation full of men and women who are willing to lay down their lives, whether figuratively or in reality, for moral principle, and how easy to defeat this people - and that's the point.

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Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian Church. I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of Christianity no less than Capitalism.

- Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood, "Birth Control and the Revolution," 1917

Liberty Letters Comment: Few recognize it, but the roots to creating legislative, judicial, and classroom support in favor of that which is immoral, and against that which is moral, or consistent with that most inspired of moral system, the Judeo-Christian ethic (as expounded most clearly by Christ), are so very often calculated, not to liberate man in the spirit of the American Revolution, but to enslave him in the spirit of the Marxist Revolution. This confession by Margaret Sanger is but one of so many that are out there for our serious consideration, if we just open our eyes and stop pretending that it doesn't matter. It does matter, it always has, and always will. We are in a war between good and evil, and we had better be up to it. Our civilization and our souls are on the line.

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