On June 4, 2003 the House of Representatives passed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban (HR 760). The bill had been held up for months by concerns over a Supreme Court ruling which found a state version of the bill unconstitutional. In the end, the sponsor of the bill, Congressman Chabot (R-OH), believed that the final language of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban (PBA) would be able to withstand certain legal challenge by groups such as Planned Parenthood. The bill passed the House by an overwhelming vote of 282-139. Even many "pro-choice" Democrats, aware that the majority of their constituents oppose the procedure, voted for the Partial Birth Abortion Ban. A Gallup poll had found that 70% of the public favors a ban on partial birth abortion. This goes along with a general increase in pro life sympathizers. In 1995 only 33% of those polled said they were pro-life. That has increased to 48% today.

The bill gives a vivid and accurate description of the partial-birth procedure, stating that the baby is delivered alive and that "in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother," before the baby is killed. Typically in this type of abortion, a late term baby is pulled out of the birth canal feet first until only the head is inside the mother. The base of the skull of the baby is then punctured and the brain is sucked out by a vacuum device. After the brain is removed the baby is delivered dead, thus by-passing numerous murder laws on the books.

A version of the Partial Birth Abortion (S-3) had been passed in the Senate earlier this year. There are some slight differences between the House and Senate versions that must be ironed out in a conference committee before the final version is sent to President George W. Bush. In an administration memo to Congress just before the vote the President stated, "The Administration strongly supports the enactment of HR 760, which would ban the abhorrent procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion."

Although the Religious Freedom Coalition promotes many conservative issues other than the pro-life issue, we have worked diligently for years on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban. During the Clinton years, two different bills banning this gruesome procedure were passed and sent to his desk. On both occasions President Bill Clinton vetoed the legislation and allowed for the continued murder of healthy babies who would have been viable outside the womb.

Planned Parenthood, which receives much of its funding from government grants, has vowed to fight the ban in court. Thirty states have passed laws against partial-birth abortion, but lawsuits have held up implementation of those laws in twenty states.

The Religious Freedom Coalition is now working on the passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. President George W. Bush has indicated he would sign this much needed legislation into law as well. When passed, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (also known as the Laci and Conner Peterson Act) would punish those who cause harm to a child still in the womb. Thus if a pregnant woman is murdered, the perpetrator of the murder would be charged not with one count, but with two counts of murder. 

Over the years the Religious Freedom Coalition has produced a number of video documentaries. One of our first detailed the plight of the families of the Contras who were fighting for the freedom of Nicaragua from communist oppression. At the time, our ministry worked to train Contra chaplains and to supply food and medical supplies to the families of Contra soldiers. That was back in the 1980's during the Reagan Administration and no, I don't have any copies left. I also wrote a book entitled, Nicaragua: Portrait of a Tragedy about the chaos the Sandinista communists caused there.

Last year the RFC produced Holy Land Terror about the persecution of Christian Palestinians who live in the areas controlled by Yassar Arafat and his gang of thugs. This year we have two more video documentaries under production with story lines centered on the Holy Land. One, Holy Land Settlements, was filmed on location in the Jewish Settlement of Ariel in Samaria. This documentary features interviews with the mayor of Ariel as well as with a Jewish Christian evangelist who lives in the settlement. (Yes, you read that right.) The video is fully edited and in production and should be available for shipping by the time you receive this newsletter.

The second documentary, Holy Land Teenagers, is still in production. This documentary features my 17-year-old daughter, Katie, interviewing Christian, Jewish and Muslim teenagers in the Holy Land. This is one of the best documentaries we have ever done. This concept just has not been done by anyone before. When it is viewed there will be a clear understanding as to why that land will never be peacefully shared by Muslims and Jews. The video will be out of editing in about a week and should be available by mid-July.

During the August congressional recess I may go back to Israel with some members of Congress to show them the "settlements" which are actually major cities. Ariel, for example, has a population of move than 20,000 and the factories there produce more than half a billion dollars in goods each year for shipment around the world. Ariel is just twenty-five miles inland from the Israeli coastline. This area, which Europeans demand be given to the Muslim Arab tribes, contains about one-third of Israel’s water supply.

The $25,000 payments from Iraq to suicide bombers’ families ended with the downfall of Saddam Hussein. During the drumbeats leading up to the war, President George W. Bush never mentioned the payments to Palestinian suicide bombers’ families as one of the reasons to topple Saddam, but you can bet it was on his mind.

The payments to the Palestinian suicide bombers’ families were handed out by the Arab Liberation Front which is an arm of the Iraqi Ba’ath Party. It is estimated that nearly $30 million was paid to Palestinian families. Not all the money went to the families of suicide bombers. A lesser amount, $10,000, was paid to armed fighters killed while confronting Israeli troops.

The $25,000 paid to each family of a suicide bomber was a huge amount and an incentive to encourage young men and women to blow themselves up. The average annual income in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is less than $850. Thus, the $25,000 payment was the equivalent of nearly thirty years of income for a Muslim Palestinian family. The Saudi Arabian government, which claims to be our ally and claims to fight terrorism, still gives payments of about $7,500 each to the families of suicide bombers.

Of course there is much more than the financial payoffs to the families of the bombers. They become heroes to the community and to the youth. Palestinian Authority schools have posters of suicide bombers everywhere, and instructions on how to kill Jews and Americans begin in kindergarten. This is an incredible culture of death which for some odd reason is supported by American liberals and Europeans in general.

Five British citizens have been arrested for recruiting and training suicide bombers. The arrests came in response to a suicide bombing in Israel in which two British citizens, both Muslims, blew themselves up, killing several Israelis and injuring scores more. The bombing at a nightclub frequented by many Americans in Tel Aviv, was the first by citizens of a western nation. Suicide bombings by Muslims are becoming more frequent throughout the word as Muslims see how well they have worked to kill and maim in Israel.

The first week of June saw a suicide bombing against a Russian bus by a woman dressed in a white medical jacket. The bombing killed 18 Russian airmen who were taking the bus to work. Many others were wounded. The culture of death that has been the hallmark of Muslim Palestinian society has now spread throughout the world. Suicide bombers have struck this year in Bali, Indonesia and in the Philippines with devastating results.

Western intelligence services predict suicide bombings in the United States. It is not a matter of if, but when, Muslim suicide bombers attack crowded buses in metropolitan areas such as New York or San Francisco. Bombings of these types have devastated the economy of Israel and could paralyze the American economy. When the Muslim snipers were shooting innocent men and women in the Washington, DC area last year, shopping mall traffic went down drastically. The threat of bombs could do even more economic damage.

Political correctness does not allow police officers in the United States to properly profile those suspected of such acts. The sniper incident in Washington clearly indicated this. For weeks police and FBI agents looked for a "lone white gunman," even after witnesses told lawmen the gunmen were black. When one of the gunmen called police to brag about the shootings, cops hung up the phone on him because he had a "black voice" and they thought it was a prank call. Several times the snipers were allowed to slip through road blocks simply because they were black. With this kind of police work and restrictions on profiling Muslims, it would be impossible to stop suicide bombings in the United States.

Speaking of a culture of death, the nine Democrat candidates for President are the most pro-abortion group that has ever been fielded. As they campaign, they try to out-do each other in pro-abortion rhetoric, often claiming that their opponents in the primary are not pro-abortion enough.

When not promoting abortion, the nine are promoting homosexuality as a lifestyle. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, which since 1981 has compiled records of candidates’ stand on homosexual issues, has nothing but praise for the Democrat candidates. Their executive director, Matt Foreman, said, "As a group, this is the most pro-gay presidential field ever." The pro-homosexual group rates candidate Carol Moseley Braun, the former Illinois senator, as the most pro-gay, followed by former governor Dean of Vermont. He signed a civil unions measure in 2000, while he was still governor.

A co-author of the report issued by the Gay and Lesbian Task Force stated that homosexuals were the third most loyal group to the Democrat Party, after blacks and Jews. What I find interesting in that statement is that the Democrats assume control over various groups by race and behavior, while the Republicans for the most part recruit along lines of ideology. Homosexuals represent less than 1% of the population of the United States yet the Democrats need them because of the enormous amounts of money they give that party. Since homosexuals have no children to raise, they have huge amounts of discretionary income to use on political issues.

REPUBLICAN "GAYS"

Speaking of homosexuals, I was stunned to read in a Family Research Council publication that the new head of the election committee for President George W. Bush had called Christian conservatives "misinformed and misled about gays". I searched for the alleged quote by Marc Racicot and actually found it in a homosexual publication, The Advocate. In the article The Advocate stated:

Did I miss something or did the man who is about to head up the President's reelection committee call all of us social conservatives uninformed and ignorant? Is Racicot forgetting that these "misinformed" social conservatives voted overwhelmingly for the President in the last election? I just don't see us social conservatives in a good working relationship with Marc Racicot during the election cycle, and this could be bad news for President Bush.

This homosexual issue may become one of the hot issues in the Republican Party during this next election cycle. Dr. Jerry Falwell discussed this issue on national TV shows including the most watched news show on TV, The O’Reilly Factor. He has warned the Administration and the Republican Party that welcoming homosexual activists into the party could chase away a major part of its base, that of evangelical Christians who view homosexual activity as a sin.

What really drives the Republican Party to move in the direction of homosexual activists? The polls! Recent Gallup polls show the number of people who view homosexuality as "moral" has increased in recent years. The most recent Gallup poll indicates than 44% of American adults view homosexuality as "moral."

When viewing the poll one has to wonder where many of these folks go to church or if they listen while they are there. The majority of Americans also believe that having a child out of wedlock, gambling and divorce are "moral" things to do. Indeed 66% of adults view divorce as "morally acceptable."

About the only things really looked down on by the vast majority of Americans and called "morally wrong" are cloning humans, polygamy and extra-marital affairs. (In some good news, pro life views have been trending upwards, so that only 37% of Americans now see abortion as "moral").

Overall, though, the polling statistics are causing growing fear in higher up Republican circles--fear that the social conservative wing of the party may become a burden to it in coming years. Many powerful men in the party believe that the time has come to go back to the traditional Republican base of economic conservatives and leave the social conservatives behind in the dust. This is the main reason for the flirtation with homosexual activists such as the gay political action committee, the Log Cabin Republicans.

At the same time, however, the Republican Party is trying to woo Hispanics and conservative Jews into the party. Hispanics are overwhelmingly pro-family and against the homosexual agenda. This holds true for Orthodox and conservative Jews as well. Thus we have a Republican party that wants to expand its base by attracting Hispanics who are overwhelmingly Catholic and oppose homosexuality, and at the same time attract homosexuals who are by and large anti-Catholic. Makes no sense to me, but hey, what do I know? I’m just one of them dumb uneducated Christian conservatives who hasn’t learned to appreciate homosexual friendships in the steam room at my local health club.

THE PLEDGE

Congressman Todd Akin (R-MO) now has more than 190 co-sponsors for his Pledge Protection Act of 2003. Every member of the Republican leadership including Majority Leader Tom DeLay, has signed on as a co-sponsor. This is a very simple, one-line judicial jurisdiction act prohibiting any federal court, other than the Supreme Court, from ruling on the constitutionality of the Pledge. Judicial jurisdiction acts are actually fairly common and have been passed numerous times just in the past few years.

Often the Congress passes legislation with a caveat stating that there can be no Federal Court review of it. There is such language in the Patriot Act as well as in the American Service Members Act and the Aviation Security Act. In all of these Acts, no court other than the Supreme Court may hear challenges to them. Both the House Majority Leader and the Majority Whip, and all Assistant Whips, have co-sponsored the Pledge Protection Act of 2003. Oddly enough, however, the bill seems to be stalled in the House Judiciary Committee.

It seems that the new chairman of that committee, James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) is just not interested in moving it forward and has scheduled no hearings. If you have an interest in the bill you may want to contact Congressman Sensenbrenner.

DEFENDING THE CULTURE FROM THE HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA

Alarmed by the many efforts nationwide to give full legal recognition to homosexual relationships as "marriages," a broad alliance of conservatives is actively working to protect the ancient institution of marriage as the foundation of the family. The great majority of Americans, even those who do not regard themselves as religious, still revere the institution of marriage and do not want a few radical, unelected judges trying to obliterate the social norms accepted by civilized societies for thousands of years. The Federal Marriage Amendment would enshrine the definition of marriage in the Constitution, preventing the courts from forcing America to recognize homosexual unions as on a par with normal heterosexual marriages. Amendments to the Constitution are of course harder to pass than ordinary laws, since an Amendment must get a two thirds majority in both houses of Congress as well as be ratified by two thirds of the states. This Amendment, though, is so broadly popular that it can probably clear all the hurdles. Its appeal crosses all racial, religious, and political party lines. Following is the text of the Amendment (H. J. Res. 56):

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.

There are several bills before Congress that the Religious Freedom Coalition has an interest in, which I did not go into detail about in this newsletter. Some but not all of those include:

The Religious Freedom Coalition has issued letters of support for these bills. Weekly updates on these and other legislative issues can be found at the RFC Internet site at www.rfcnet.org. You may also sign up at our Internet site to receive the weekly bulletins by e-mail.

HOLY LAND SETTLEMENTS

We are getting better at what we do. Of the many video documentaries the Religious Freedom Coalition has produced, Holy Land Settlements: The Christian and Jewish Views is undoubtedly the best.

Holy Land Settlements was filmed at the "settlement" of Ariel in Samaria. Samaria is of course the part of Biblical Israel that is now claimed by Palestinians as part of the "West Bank." The documentary contains a rather amazing interview of Mayor Ron Nachman, the founder of the "settlement" whose family has lived in the Samarai-Judea area since the 19th century. There is also on interview with the resident Christian evangelist of Ariel and commentary by myself.

Ariel is in reality a city of more than 20,000 with an annual economic output of more than half a billion dollars. Will the "Roadmap For Peace" proposed by President Bush be used to force the Jews to hand over large cities such as this to Muslim Palestinians? Will the Jewish settlers fight to keep their cities? You must see Holy Land Settlements.

All the material in Holy Land Settlements is new. It was filmed on location as the war with Iraq began earlier this year. My daughter, Katie, accompanied me on this trip and produced her own video of interviews with Jewish, Christian and Muslim teens. The video is still in editing and not yet available .... But ... I can tell you that it is exciting and shows why, in the long run, the "Roadmap" will not bring peace to the Holy Land ... Only Jesus can bring peace there.

Funds from the sale of Holy Land Settlements are for the most part used for our programs in the Holy Land including funding of Christian schools in the Muslim controlled areas of the "West Bank." I am also arranging visits for congressmen to Ariel and other "settlements" so they can understand the situation better. Please consider obtaining a second copy of Holy Land Settlements for you church or a local library. 50 minutes ... Just $19.95 and we pay the shipping! For more information click here.