Posted on 11/18/2004 9:24:36 AM PST by Ed Current
PHILADELPHIA - A preliminary hearing has been set for December 14 in Philadelphia City Court to determine probable cause for charges against eleven Christians arrested for alleged "hate crimes" while exercising their First Amendment rights at Philadelphia’s "Outfest" on October 10. The charges brought against Repent America’s Michael Marcavage and ten others during the homosexual "coming out" event consist of three felonies and five misdemeanors, which could result in up to 47 years in jail.
"Outfest" is an annual block party sponsored by Philly Pride Presents, Inc. to celebrate so-called "National Coming Out Day," a celebration of homosexuality. A 15-block downtown area was designated for the event; however, there is no cost for admission and thus no separation between Outfest participants and the general public walking on the same public streets. Prior to the event, Marcavage, director of Repent America, was denied his application to have a display booth at Outfest, in order that he might proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to deliver homosexuals from their lifestyle. Because of the public venue, guaranteeing First Amendment rights, Marcavage and his group attended in order to open-air preach, hand out tracts, and carry signs with Scripture and the Gospel message.
They were met by the "Pink Angels", an organization founded by attorney Chuck Volz, senior advisor to Philly Pride Presents, who had stated in a pre-event interview that their group would carry large signs to block Christians’ access to Outfest participants. A group of the "Pink Angels" locked arms to create a human wall to blockade the public sidewalk and prevent the Christians from proceeding.
The Philadelphia Civil Affairs Police Captain, William Fisher, initially broke the blockade when requested to do so by Marcavage, and confirmed that they had freedom to go where they wanted on the public street and sidewalks. However, Fisher failed to take subsequent action when the "Pink Angels" again surrounded the Christians and began to blow whistles, scream obscenities, and hold their approximately 10-foot-high pink Styrofoam boards to obscure the Repent America workers from anyone’s view. After a complaint by an Outfest vendor, and some discussion with Marcavage about the legalities of both the "Pink Angels" and Captain Fisher’s actions, Fisher moved the Christians to a more remote location. However, the "Pink Angels" continued to surround, obstruct and shout at the Christians.
Neither City Attorney Karen Simmons nor Chief Inspector of the Civil Affairs Division, James Tiano, would deal with the boisterous behavior of the "Pink Angels" nor would specify what laws, if any, Repent America workers were breaking. However, when Marcavage and his group attempted to walk to another area, Chief Tiano unexpectedly placed all eleven Christians under arrest.
The Christians, including a juvenile, were held from 1:30 Sunday afternoon until Monday morning, with a sixty-seven-year-old woman not released until ten days later. They were charged with three Felonies: Criminal Conspiracy, Ethnic Intimidation, which falls under "Hate Crimes", and Riot; as well as five Misdemeanors: Reckless Endangerment, Possession of Instruments of Crime, Failure to Disperse, Disorderly Conduct, and Obstructing Highways. None of the "Pink Angels" were cited or arrested.
Only days prior to the arrests, the American Family Association’s Center for Policy and Law (CLP) had filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court (Marcavage vs. City of Philadelphia), claiming the City of Philadelphia exhibits a "policy, practice and custom" of denying Marcavage’s First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by continually harassing, intimidating, threatening, and arresting him for his street ministry. CLP attorneys are currently gathering facts and deciding on a strategy to respond to the latest charges stemming from the "Outfest" event.
The preliminary hearing will take place on December 14 at 9AM in courtroom 606 of the Philadelphia Criminal Justice Center.
David Limbaugh, a lawyer and syndicated columnist, is the author of Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity, which is his second book (his first was on the Clinton/Reno justice department). Limbaugh recently answered some of NRO's questions about his new book.
Limbaugh: I decided to write about this subject when I continued to see stories in the newspapers almost every other day reporting incidents of discrimination against and mistreatment of Christians. I concluded that the pervasiveness of the assaults was evidence of a systematic attack on Christianity in our culture that needed to be chronicled in comprehensive form in a book - and in the secular market.
Limbaugh: Of course there is a bias against religion generically, but the overwhelming majority of discrimination in our culture is targeted at Christians and Christianity. The most likely reason is that Christianity is perceived as the majority religion and its absolute standards of right and wrong interfere with the advancement of the radical secularist agenda, the homosexual lobby, the feminist movement, and other politically correct nostrums.
Lopez: Do Christians know all of this is going on?
Limbaugh: Unfortunately, many Christians do not seem to be fully aware that they are under attack, which is the primary reason for this book. It is intended to be a clarion call to Christians, jolting them out of their complacency, alerting them - if they don't already realize it - that they are the primary targets in a culture war. I believe the evidence I've adduced in the book is overwhelming. While my liberal critics on some of the talk shows have charged that my examples are merely anecdotal, I respond that examples, by themselves, or in small groups, are by definition anecdotal. But at some point - and we've greatly exceeded that point here - the sheer number and variety of the attacks constitutes evidence of a systematic and comprehensive, if not overtly conspiratorial, assault on Christianity and Christian freedom.
Homosexuality and the Nazi Party
The probable reason for Hitler's attack on Christianity was his perception that it alone had the moral authority to stop the Nazi movement. But Christians stumbled before the flood of evil. As Poliakov notes, "[W]hen moral barriers collapsed under the impact of Nazi preaching...the same anti-Semitic movement that led to the slaughter of the Jews gave scope and license to an obscene revolt against God and the moral law. An open and implacable war was declared on the Christian tradition...[which unleashed] a frenzied and unavowed hatred of Christ and the Ten Commandments" (Poliakov:300).
Was Hitler's Homosexuality Nazism's Best-Kept Secret?
CORNELL LAW LIBRARY: The Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection at ...
Homosexual Manifestos This essay was printed in the February 15, 1987 issue of the homosexual newspaper Gay Community News by Michael Swift, and was reprinted in the February 15-21 1987 Congressional Record.
All laws banning homosexual activity will be revoked. Instead, legislation shall be passed which engenders love between men.
If you dare to cry faggot, fairy, queer, at us, we will stab you in your cowardly hearts and defile your dead, puny bodies.
We will unmask the powerful homosexuals who masquerade as heterosexuals. You will be shocked and frightened when you find that your presidents and their sons, your industrialists, your senators, your mayors, your generals, your athletes, your film stars, your television personalities, your civic leaders, your priests are not the safe, familiar, bourgeois, heterosexual figures you assumed them to be. We are everywhere; we have infiltrated your ranks. Be careful when you speak of homosexuals because we are always among you; we may be sleeping in the same bed with you.
There will be no compromises. We are not middle-class weaklings. Highly intelligent, we are the natural aristocrats of the human race, and steely-minded aristocrats never settle for less. Those who oppose us will be exiled. We shall raise vast, private armies, as Mishima did, to defeat you.
All churches who condemn us will be closed. Our only gods are handsome young men. We adhere to a cult of beauty, moral and aesthetic. All that is ugly and vulgar and banal will be annihilated. Since we are alienated from middle-class heterosexual conventions, we are free to live our lives according to the dictates of the pure imagination. For us too much is not enough.
We shall be victorious because we are fueled with the ferocious bitterness of the oppressed who have been forced to play seemingly bit parts in your dumb, heterosexual shows throughout the ages. We too are capable of firing guns and manning the barricades of the ultimate revolution. Tremble, hetero swine, when we appear before you without our masks!
This Version was printed in "The Advocate"
Recently, homosexual author Steve Warren told Christians what gays expect of them. In The Advocate, the nation's largest and most mainstream homosexual publication, he says: "Here are some of the things you will be expected to affirm. ...
1. Henceforth, homosexuality will be spoken of in your churches and synagogues as an 'honorable estate.'
2. You can either let us marry people of the same sex, or better yet abolish marriage altogether. ...
3. You will be expected to offer ceremonies that bless our sexual arrangements. ... You will also instruct your people in homosexual as well as heterosexual behavior, and you will go out of your way to make certain that homosexual youths are allowed to date, attend religious functions together, openly display affection, and enjoy each other's sexuality without embarrassment or guilt.
4. If any of the older people in your midst object, you will deal with them sternly, making certain they renounce their ugly and ignorant homophobia or suffer public humiliation.
5. You will also make certain that ... laws are passed forbidding discrimination against homosexuals and heavy punishments are assessed. ...
6. Finally, we will in all likelihood want to expunge a number of passages from your Scriptures and rewrite others, eliminating preferential treatment of marriage and using words that will allow for homosexual interpretations of passages describing biblical lovers such as Ruth and Boaz or Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Warning: If all these things do not come to pass quickly, we will subject Orthodox Jews and Christians to the most sustained hatred and vilification in recent memory. We have captured the liberal establishment and the press. We have already beaten you on a number of battlefields. ... You have neither the faith nor the strength to fight us, so you might as well surrender now."
Family Research Report - Dec 2002
The homosexual historical footprint is large when it comes to the rape and murder of children.
The Sexual Rage Behind Islamic Terror ALL SERIAL KILLERS, almost without exception, are severely sexually abused as children.
In this culture, males sexually penetrating males becomes a manifestation of male power, conferring a status of hyper-masculinity. An unmarried man who has sex with boys is simply doing what men do. As the scholar Bruce Dunne has demonstrated, sex in Islamic societies is not about mutuality between partners, but about the adult male's achievement of pleasure through violent domination.
Major Scientific Study Examines Domestic Violence Among Gay Men
The conclusion arrived at by the researchers, based upon these figures, is that the rate of abuse between urban homosexual men in intimate relationships "is a very serious public health problem."
The Lords of Bakersfield (Homosexuality and Corruption)
Powerful gay men. Vulnerable teen-age boys. Murder. For years, some prominent local men who led secret lives were rumored to be protected. Whispers surrounding another important man's death prompt the question: Is there really a conspiracy? Why we wrote these stories A conspiracy theory born in the late 1970s and early '80s had become a long-forgotten legend until last September, when the slaying of Assistant District Attorney Stephen M. Tauzer gave new life to speculation about "The Lords of Bakersfield." We felt this legend and the crimes that spawned it warranted a closer look.
The top six U.S. male serial killers were all gay.
Theo G. M. Sandfort, Archives of General Psychiatry Vol. 58, Number . , 2001. Page(s) 85-91.
Compared with their heterosexual peers, homosexual men were at greater risk for psychiatric disorders, including mood and anxiety disorders, bipolar disorders, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, and simple phobia. ---
Susan C. Turrell,Journal of Family Violence Vol. 13, Number . , 2000. Page(s) 281-293.
Relationship violence was found to be a significant problem for homosexuals. Forty-four (44) percent of the gay men reported having experienced violence in their relationships; 13 percent reported sexual violence and 83 percent reported emotional abuse. Levels of abuse ran even higher among lesbians: 55 percent reported physical violence in their relationships, 14 percent reported sexual abuse, and 84 percent reported emotional abuse.
RollingStone.com: News - Bug Chasers
Carlos offers, not for the first time, to have me come along and watch him and Richard have sex, but I decline. In the taxi to Richard's place, the conversation falls silent. He hasn't been tested in a couple of years, and he's reluctant to get a test now. He might very well be positive already. But as long as he doesn't know for sure, he can always hope that tonight is the night he gets the virus. Every date is potentially The One. Stepping out of the cab into the rain, I ask what he will do if he finds out one day that he has succeeded in being infected -- ending the fun of being a bug chaser. He stops, then says he might move on to being a gift giver: "If I know that he's negative and I'm f*ck*ng him, it sort of gets me off. I'm murdering him in a sense, killing him slowly, and that's sort of, as sick as it sounds, exciting to me."
Accuracy In Media - Media Monitor - Communists And Homosexuals
For some reason that we don't completely understand, the conservative Washington Times is running a regular column by homosexual writer Andrew Sullivan, and he uses it to attack conservative groups and promote the gay rights agenda. When he attacked AIM for noting a link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the Times gave us an opportunity to respond. But the paper has now given Sullivan another opportunity to insist that the homosexual movement has nothing to do with molesting kids.
The founder of the modern homosexual movement, Harry Hay, was a prominent supporter of NAMLBA. This story is told in a book, The Trouble With Harry Hay, which is sympathetic to Hay, who was also a communist. What's more, this was instrumental in developing the homosexual movement. The book notes, "All of his C.P. [Communist Party] activities were useful training for unforeseen political challenges. Many formulas of Marxist theory...have obvious implications for the challenges he faced in conjuring a gay movement out of nothing."
Homosexuality... One of the most vile, hideous choices on the planet earth!
Unfortunately, there are many judges who are more than willing to jail people for their beliefs. I'd like to see this go to the SCOTUS after the filibuster stranglehold the Democrats have imposed on the confirmation process is broken and we get a Supreme Court that understands that the First Amendment isn't just about pornography.
Your post is rather conspiratorial but a lot of interesting tid bits. I probably think the tactics of both Repent America and the Pink Angels are over the top, but it needs to be sorted out in court. Freedom of speech was definitely trampled on. I do have a hard time with born agains screaming repent or you're going to hell on street corners....it gives the left a lot of ammo insofar as labeling these folks as American Taliban.
Amendment VIII: Thomas Jefferson, A Bill for Proportioning Crimes ... Whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least.
I don't think it gives anyone even a little ammo.
I don't think it gives anyone even a little ammo.
Only to folk with little minds and big mouths.
Ping.
Why waste time at the federal level. The Pennslyvania Constitution is unambigously clear on this issue.
Pennsylvania Constitution
Freedom of Press and Speech; Libels Section 7.
The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the invaluable rights of man, and every citizen may freely speak, write and print on any subject, being responsible for the abuse of that liberty.(libel)
No Discrimination by Commonwealth and Its Political Subdivisions Section 26.
Neither the Commonwealth nor any political subdivision thereof shall deny to any person the enjoyment of any civil right, nor discriminate against any person in the exercise of any civil right.
Religious Freedom Section 3.
...no human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with the rights of conscience,
BUMP
You don't expect judges to abide by the constitution, do you?
("Johnny can't read." "Okay, let him be a judge.")
God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Spirit pretty much lets us know right from the git go not only how He feels about Sodomite and Lesbian marriages but also pretty much what we can expect in terms of consequences resulting from disobediance to Him
Problem with that is not every body has one anymore
Please FreepMail me if you want on or off my Pro-Life Ping List.
There was an earlier ongoing attempt to propagate that sort of thing out of Pennsylvania and into other states during the first 100 years of US history. Over the past 35 years, it has been happening.
Boy every right or left political group could be labeled "Taliban" if speaking at street corners is the defining feature!
Got & read a signed copy. He documents in detail exactly what you are saying. No one can intelligently deny that this stuff is happening. It may well increase as Bush haters try to get revenge for the election.
Absolutely. The libs have a different constitution than the rest of us. Theirs has replaced the First Amendment with separation of church and state and the Second Amendment with the right to an abortion. The First Amendment is dusted off on special occasions to promote filth but never to hinder the PC police.
Does freedom of speech guarantee one freedom of booth at a street fest?
Not a good idea. The courts currently function as dentists whose purpose in life is to yank all the teeth from the Constitution. They should be protecting the citizens from the zealous police and the homosexual attacks on our freedom.
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