As usual, it is all about the GAY! Newt Gingrich knows if his comeback is to be successful, he needs to pay homage to the radical Christian extremists who whine about gay marriage and gay anything. So he’s slamming Barack Obama’s appointments to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Newt is slamming the appointments, but he’s really slamming the gay, and he’s got a lot of support ont he extremist anti-gay wing of the Republican Party. Here’s what Newt had to whine about, from CNN:

Newt Gingrich said Tuesday the Obama administration is “intensely secular” and “anti-religious,” the former House Speaker’s second hard-hitting criticism of the new administration this week.

In an interview with FOX News, Gingrich said he strongly disagreed with Obama’s choice of Harry Knox – an outspoken activist for gay rights – to the White House advisory council on faith-based initiatives.

“I think their goal is to have a very secular America in which government dominates everything,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you put an anti-religious, left-wing zealot on a faith-based group? It’s a perfect pattern for this administration.”

Since 2005, Knox has served as the director of the Human Rights Campaign, a national organization that advocates on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals. He is also a former Methodist pastor.

Newt evidently missed the list of people Obama appointed. (Here’s the list, Newt, since you obviously haven’t read it.) It’s got a ton of people who are quite religious. sure, Newt might not like that there’s a Hindu on the list, and he might not agree with the politics of Jim Wallis, but that doesn’t mean those folks are irreligious, as Newt claims. Knox isn’t irreligious either. But he is gay, and Newt attacking his appointment with falsehoods is par for the course. Newt himself is converting to Catholicism as a serially divorced man, so the hypocrisy of him defending religion falsely is rich, rich, rich.

More scandalous is the ugly politics of attacking gay people in this country. Why scandalous? Such attacks and ugliness lead to an environment where real people, real Americans, are hurt. Sirdeaner L. Walker is one of those Americans. She came home Monday in Springfield, MA on Monday to find her 11 year old son, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, hanging by an extension cord. The boy had been taunted at school. He’d been called gay by the other kids. Repeatedly.

America’s tragedy, and the Republican Party’s shame is that they treat gay and lesbian citizens as if they were trash. In doing so these “leaders” give license t

The Philadelphia Daily News has a picture of a wedding dress made of condoms, though I think it would probably come in far more handy as a Prom dress. Just think, all the other attendees would be your best friend as they head to their after-Prom activities (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

This was done by a design student at Rosemont College, where I’m sure extra security is being laid down with the expected protests from extremists whack jobs due in 5. . . 4. . . . 3. . . 2. . .

Oh, the Vatican has not yet weighed in on all of the foreign policy decisions of Barack Obama, but it appears tthe Holy See is doing a whole lot to determine exactly who is appointed Ambassador to the Vatican. Caroline Kennedy, for instance, has been mentioned as a potential nominee. Reports from the Daily Telegraph, foreignpolicy.com, the right wing Washington Times and the extremist conservative Human Events say the Vatican has rejected that possibility, as well as a couple others. Ray Flynn, former Ambassador to the Vatican, says the problem is that Caroline Kennedy is pro-choice. From the Daily Telegraph:

The Italian paper said that the Vatican strongly disapproved of Mr Obama’s support for abortion and stem cell research. The impasse over the ambassadorial appointment threatens to cloud his meeting with the Pope during a G8 summit in Itay in July.

Ms Kennedy, 53, has said that she supports abortion. Raymond Flynn, a former US ambassador to the Vatican, said earlier this week that Ms Kennedy would be a poor choice.

“It’s imperative, it’s essential that the person who represents us to the Holy See be a person who has pro-life values. I hope the President doesn’t make that mistake,” he told the Boston Herald. “She said she was pro-choice. I don’t assume she’s going to change that, which is problematic.”

Let me propose something refreshing. After all, we had a completely fair election in this country, as oposed to the Vatican. We are a country that has no state religion, either. My proposal is that when the Vatican holds a completely open and free election, then they can have a say as to the Ambassadors we send to the Vatican. We’ll get the United Nations to monitor the elections so everyone in the world can see that they’re fair. Until then, the Vatican may comment all it wishes about Us policies it disagrees with, but determining our policies, for whatever reason, is going too far. Rejecting an Ambassador, or three, as is the case here, is much too far.

Would Caroline Kennedy make a good Ambassador? I’ve no idea. But Ray Flynn’s notion that there should be a litmus test is simply absurd. Does he also think there should be a litmus test for the most cherished values other countries hold? No, Ray, let’s not go there. It doesn’t appear you’re logically equipped to do so.

This is really a disgusting story. The plane crash in Butte, Montana the other day Killed the parents and children in three families. Seven adults and seven children died. That’™s a true tragedy. The families were coming up to meet Irving ‘œBud’ Feldkamp and his wife for a ski vacation. Feldkamp’™s two daughters and their children were on board the plane, as well as some family friends. That’™s the stark tale of the crash, with no editorializing, as reported by insidebayarea.com.

But there’™s more to the story, and that more is what the anti-choice people are focused on. Irving Feldkamp is evidently a dentist, but he owns a few other things as well, including a race track, Glen Helen Raceway Park in San Bernardino, and Allcare, which may be a holding company for Family Planning Associates, a for-profit provider of family planning services, including legal abortions. There’™s a woman named Gingi Edmonds, an anti-choice activist, who writes about Mr. Feldkamp, most of whose family just died in a tragic plane crash. Despite her disclaimer, it appears Gingi Edmonds is dancing on the graves of Feldkamp’™s grandchildren. From the Gingi Edmonds blog:

In my time working for Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, I helped organize and conduct a weekly campaign where youth activists stood outside of Feldkamp’™s mini-mansion in Redlands holding fetal development signs and raising community awareness regarding Feldkamp’™s dealings in child murder for profit. Every Thursday afternoon we called upon Bud and his wife Pam to repent, seek God’™s blessing and separate themselves from the practice of child killing.

We warned him, for his children’™s sake, to wash his hands of the innocent blood he assisted in spilling because, as Scripture warns, if ‘œyou did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you’. (Ezekiel 35:6)

A news source states that Bud Feldkamp visited the site of the crash with his wife and their two surviving children on Monday. As they stood near the twisted and charred debris talking with investigators, light snow fell on the tarps that covered the remains of their children.

I don’™t want to turn this tragic event into some creepy spiritual ‘œI told you so’ moment, but I think of the time spent outside of Feldkamp’™s – Pam Feldkamp laughing at the fetal development signs, Bud Feldkamp trying not to make eye contact as he got into his car with a small child in tow – and I think of the haunting words, ‘œThink of your children.’ I wonder if those words were haunting Feldkamp as well as he stood in the snow among the remains of loved ones, just feet from the ‘Tomb of the Unborn’™?

I only hope and pray that in the face of this tragedy, Feldkamp recognizes his need for repentance and reformation. I pray that God will use this unfortunate catastrophe to soften the hearts of Bud and Pam and that they will draw close to the Lord and wash their hands of the blood of thousands of innocent children, each as precious and irreplaceable as their own.

‘œI have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then.’ (Deut. 30:19)

Wow! Sure, Gingi tells us she doesn’™t want to use the tragic deaths of children for her own ends, but that’™s exactly what she does. It shouldn’™t surprise us that her words are repeated at LifeNews and ChristianNewsWire, among other places. Perhaps the most egregious place is at Hannity’™s web site forums, where the comments about the story are truly disgusting, but where at least some people are trying to point out that cheerleading the death of seven children isn’™t appropriate behavior no matter the circumstances.

The children died here. Fred Phelps is likely headed to protest at the funerals of those children and their parents. From the words spinning throughout whack job extremist Christian web sites, Fred Phelps could get a whole lot of joiners to witness, too.

In Brazil a man repeatedly raped his step-daughters. The youngest of them got pregnant. The girl’s mother helped the girl get an abortion, thankfully. Sadly, she was pregnant with twins. Her 9 year old body, however, wasn’t even going to handle on fetus developing inside it. Yes, this isn’t just about rape, but about a pregnant nine year old, somehow mature enough to get pregnant, but whose body is not developed enough. The pregnancy would likely kill her.

The Catholic Church’s response is to excommunicate the mother and the Doctors who performed the abortion. I find it difficult to characterize their reaction better than the BBC:

The Catholic Church tried to intervene to prevent the abortion going ahead but the procedure was carried out on Wednesday.

Now a Church spokesman says all those involved, including the child’s mother and the doctors, are to be excommunicated.

The Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, told Brazil’s TV Globo that the law of God was above any human law.

He said the excommunication would not apply to the child because of her age, but would affect all those who ensured the abortion was carried out.

However, doctors at the hospital said they had to take account of the welfare of the girl, and that she was so small that her uterus did not have the ability to contain one child let alone two.

Evidently to the Catholic church medical facts do not count, and if it were up to them this girl’s life would be forfeit, as would, of course, the lives of the twins she was carrying. No, the article does not mention how far along she was in preganancy, but it seems apparent that a nine year old girl simply does not have the body to carry out a pregnancy with twins. That’s obvious. In insisting on its abortion policy to the letter, the Catholic church here comes off as anti-children. There’s a certain evil to that.

The Catholic church has been dead wrong many times in the past, but not so much about as about this. They have had the priest sex-abuse scandals, which even caught one of their chief theorists about abortion laws. For the most part they show no thinking on this issue of abortion. It is simply a blanket rule, and when that blanket covers a nine year old girl who was repeatedly raped by her father since she was sick, whose body is too small to survive a pregnancy, then it is clear it is not a blanket of morality the Catholic church spreads for abortion, but one of rigid and insensitive authority. Yes, it becomes clear that the Catholic church cares far more for authority than for the life of a child.

Perhaps the biggest defender of the Catholic church and fighter against abortion in the American political world is Rick Santorum. Santorum has been getting headlines recently hoping Barack Obama fails, and doubting the sincerity of Obama’s faith. Rick is much concerned with “life,” even to the point of running to Florida to perform public prayers for the brain dead Terry Schiavo (while raking in some campaign cash, of course). Rick Santorum has been completely vocal about his unwavering stance on abortion and his complete and utter faith in the Catholic church. Hmm.

Rick Santorum writes a column in my local newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer. If he has the audacity to doubt the faith of Barack Obama, then I’m going to call him out on the authenticity of Rick Santorum’s faith. Can he defend the policy of the Catholic church that he supports so faithfully? Can Rick Santorum defend his own policies about abortion in the face of a nine year old girl whose rape has gifted with her a pregnancy that is a sentence of death? For the sake of Rick Santorum’s immortal soul, I dare him to address abortion and the policy of his church on this issue. Of course I know Rick Santorum dare not do so. He hasn’t the moral fiber to do so.