NEW YORK GIVES ADOPTION AGENCY ULTIMATUM: CHANGE POLICY EXCLUDING UNWED OR SAME SEX HOMES, OR SHUT DOWN

 

 ABOVE: LAURA VELEZ, DEPUTY COMMISSONER

SYRACUSE REGIONAL OFFICE

 Office of Children and Family Services

The Atrium, 100 S. Salina Street, Suite 350, Syracuse, NY 13202
Sara Simon, Director, 315-423-1200
Suzanne Colligan, Permanency Specialist, Adoption, 315-423-3943

NEW YORK GIVES ADOPTION AGENCY ULTIMATUM: CHANGE POLICY EXCLUDING UNWED OR SAME SEX HOMES, OR SHUT DOWN 

BY HEATHER CLARK

SEE: https://christiannews.net/2018/12/12/ny-gives-christian-adoption-agency-ultimatum-change-policy-excluding-unwed-or-same-sex-homes-or-shut-down/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

 SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A Christian adoption agency has filed a federal lawsuit after the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) gave the entity an ultimatum to either change its policies in regard to only placing children in homes with both a mother and father or discontinue its foster and adoption program.

New Hope Family Services of Syracuse, which was founded in 1965 by a pastor and seeks “to be Christ’s hands extended to offer hope and help to people with pregnancy, parenting, adoption, or post-abortion needs,” says in its complaint that it was visited in September by a representative of the New York OCFS for an official review that included meeting with staff and perusing sample records.
Syracuse regional office Director Sara Simon later sent New Hope Interim Director Judy Geyer a letter that, while requesting a few policy adjustments, praised the organization for its work.
“Our office found that your program has a number of strengths in providing adoption services within the community. One of which is the strong emphasis on assisting the birth parents in making an informed decision for their newborn, providing them time to make the decision, along with a supportive and detailed adoptive family selection process,” the correspondence read.

However, just days later, Geyer received a phone call from Suzanne Colligan, who had conducted the review, to advise that a problem had been found with the faith-based organization’s placement policies. Colligan reportedly told Geyer that New Hope must allow placement with unmarried couples and homosexuals, or the adoption agency would be “choosing to close.”
Geyer said that New Hope could in no way violate its religious convictions and that the organization would “never choose to close. You will be forcing us to close.” According to the legal challenge, Colligan advised during the call that “[s]ome Christian ministries have decided to compromise and stay open.”
Geyer soon after received a formal letter from Laura Velez, the deputy commissioner of OCFS division of child welfare and community services.
“It was found that the agency’s policy pertaining to not placing ‘children with those who are living together without the benefit of marriage’ or ‘same sex couples’ violates Title 18 NYCRR § 421.3, and is discriminatory and impermissible,” Velez wrote.
She requested a formal response in regard to revising the policy to eliminate the exclusion, and warned that “should the agency fail to bring the policy into compliance with the regulation, OFCS will be unable to approve continuation of NHFS’ current adoption program and NHFS will be required to submit a close-out plan for the adoption program.”
New Hope Family Services has consequently decided to take the matter to court in order to continue serving children in the state without having to violate their Christian convictions in the process.
Its formal complaint states that several other faith-based agencies have lost their authorization because of the State’s requirements, and points to a quote from OCFS spokesperson Monica Mahaffey in the Buffalo News, in which she declared, “Discrimination of any kind is illegal and in this case OCFS will vigorously enforce the laws designed to protect the rights of children and same sex couples. … There is no place for providers that choose not to follow the law.”
New Hope also outlined that it has had to turn away four prospective adoptive families because of OCFS’ threats, and rather refer them elsewhere, as well as four expectant birth mothers who wanted help placing their children up for adoption.
The organization also operates its own pregnancy resource center, and says that its work to help mothers with unplanned pregnancies will likewise be negatively impacted if it is unable to place children in foster care or with adoptive families.
“OCFS has conditioned New Hope’s perpetual authorization to perform adoption services on New Hope’s willingness to renounce or violate its religious beliefs pertaining to marriage and family,” the legal challenge states.
“Defendant has violated the unconstitutional conditions doctrine by conditioning New Hope’s perpetual authorization to provide adoption services on its willingness to relinquish its First Amendment rights,” it contends.
New Hope says that there are numerous secular adoption agencies in the state that work with unmarried or same-sex households, and that the government does not need to force a Christian organization to violate its mission or give up its right to the free exercise of religion to accomplish its purposes.
It is seeking an injunction against OCFS enforcement, as well as a declaration that the government’s actions violate the adoption agency’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
Read the legal challenge in full here.

APOSTATIZED CHURCH OF ENGLAND RELEASES GUIDANCE FOR ANGLICAN LEADERS TO MARK "TRANSITION" OF "TRANSGENDERS"

APOSTATIZED CHURCH OF ENGLAND RELEASES GUIDANCE FOR ANGLICAN LEADERS TO MARK "TRANSITION" OF "TRANSGENDERS"

BY HEATHER CLARK

SEE: https://christiannews.net/2018/12/12/apostatized-church-of-england-releases-guidance-for-anglican-leaders-to-mark-transition-of-transgenders/    

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

LONDON — The apostatized Church of England has released new guidance for “parishes planning services to help transgender people mark their transition,” a move that has raised concerns among those who were already worried about the direction of the denomination.
“The Church of England welcomes and encourages the unconditional affirmation of trans people, equally with all people, within the body of Christ, and rejoices in the diversity of that body into which all Christians have been baptized by one Spirit,” it reads.
The document, which was written following consultation with three male priests who identify as women—who go by the names Tina Beardsley, Sarah Jones and Rachel Mann—was released on Tuesday after being approved by the House of Bishops.
It states that if a person who identifies as the opposite sex has not yet been baptized, “then baptism itself would be the natural liturgical context for recognizing and celebrating their identity in Christ and God’s love for them.” If the individual was baptized in the past, then the rite of Affirmation of Baptismal Faith would be employed to “recognize liturgically a person’s gender transition.”

“The affirmation therefore gives priority to the original and authentic baptism of the individual as the sacramental beginning of the Christian life, allowing someone who has undergone a serious and lasting change to re-dedicate their life and identity to Christ,” the directives claim.
The document further advises leaders to avoid stereotyping and to use the preferred pronouns and chosen name of the church member during the service.
It also provides suggestions in regard to Scripture readings for the service, such as Genesis 17, where God changes Sarai’s name of Sarah; Genesis 32, where Jacob is named Israel after wrestling with an angel; and Galatians 3:27-28, which says that for those baptized into Christ “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
The guidance also states that the person may be anointed with oil, presented with gifts such as a Bible with their chosen name, and invited to provide their “testimony,” so as to “provide both the candidate and congregation with an opportunity both to understand the person’s Christian journey and to affirm them in their identity.”
However, some have expressed deep concern over the development, including Andrea Williams of Christian Concern, who serves as a lay member of the General Synod. Her statement was also published by the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), which released an open letter earlier this year urging Christians to “defend the gospel against threats from without and within.”
“Today’s guidance continues the Church of England’s devastating trajectory towards an outright denial of God and His word, by undermining what it means to be baptized and to identify with Him through baptism,” Williams lamented.
“The point of baptism is to identify a person with Jesus as they begin a life of following Him,” she noted. “Using an affirmation of baptism to celebrate a gender transition turns this upside down by encouraging people to follow their own feelings and live in identities contrary to how God created them.”
Williams said that the Church of England thinks that it is being “loving” in releasing the guidance, but it is actually doing the opposite.
“There is no need for Christians to sacrifice truth in a misguided attempt to be loving. It is not loving to mislead people—and wider society—into the falsehoods and myths of transgender ideology,” she remarked.
“The Bible, God’s revealed and perfect word, does not recognize postmodern gender theory. Neither does the official doctrine of the Church of England. It is time for bishops to teach faithfully on this issue and for the clergy to speak with love, compassion and truth.”
As previously reported, in July 2017, Gavin Ashenden wrote for Anglican Ink that the Church of England has presented a false Jesus to the world in matters of both homosexuality and transgenderism—which is especially dangerous and damning to those who are perishing.
“Where the real Jesus saves us from our sins and offers us renewal in the image and furthers the likeness of God, the fake Jesus offers to make us comfortable in our skins, cozy with our sexual appetites and untroubled by having the central areas of who we are off limits to the interference of God,” he outlined.
“This comes under the historic categories of both blasphemy and heresy,” Ashendon continued. “It interferes with peoples’ salvation. It replaces faith in the Living Christ with pseudo-therapy. It is an abandonment of the heart of the gospel; and this is done by people who when they use the words ‘Jesus, holy, love and acceptance,’ have twisted the words to mean very different things from what the Church has always intended.”

SOROS-FUNDED UNIVERSITY KICKED OUT OF HUNGARY

SOROS-FUNDED UNIVERSITY 

KICKED OUT OF HUNGARY 

REPORT BY DR. STEVE TURLEY

 

ISLAMIC JIHAD: THE STRASBOURG, FRANCE CHRISTMAS MARKET MASSACRE (& THE COWARDICE OF THE MEDIA)~PRESS BENDS TO COMPLAINTS FROM MUSLIM COUNCIL

 MUSLIMS COMPLAIN ABOUT GRAPHIC NEWS HEADLINES, SO THEY ARE CHANGED TO ASSUAGE THEM

 

 

ISLAMIC JIHAD: THE STRASBOURG, FRANCE CHRISTMAS MARKET MASSACRE 

(& THE COWARDICE OF THE MEDIA)

Acts17Apologetics

Published on Dec 12, 2018
 Muhammad said, "I have been made victorious with terror." Nearly 1400 years later, jihadis continue to strike terror into the hearts of infidels. On December 11, 2018, a young Muslim named Chérif Chekatt opened fire at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, killing and wounding many. Meanwhile, Western media sites such as the BBC and Sky News take orders from the Muslim Council of Britain on how to word their headlines. David Wood discusses the issue.

 Chérif Chekatt: Everything you need to know about Strasbourg terror suspect

 

Joan Sellers

Published on Dec 12, 2018

Chérif Chekatt: Everything you need to know about Strasbourg terror suspect: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/.... Thanks for watching, subscribe for more videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Sa...  

The gunman suspected of killing three people and injuring 13 near Strasbourg’s Christmas Market served several terms in prison for armed robbery and is believed to have been radicalised in prison.  29-year-old Chérif Chekatt has been on France’s “S” file terrorist watch list since 2015, and his profile matches that of self-styled “jihadists” who have carried out other attacks in France.   Born in Strasbourg, he is a French citizen and has some 27 convictions in France, Germany and Switzerland to his name, according to Strasbourg's public prosecutor Rémy Heitz. In 2016, he was released from prison in Germany and, before the attack on Tuesday night, was wanted in connection with an attempted murder and an armed robbery, according to a source close to the investigation.  On Tuesday morning, police raided Mr Chekatt's home and found grenades, a .22 firearm and two hunting knives, but failed to capture him. Five associates were, however, detained. Strasbourg shooting map  “He fell into crime when he was still in his teens,” the source said.  In 2011 he was jailed for six months for assaulting a teenager with a broken bottle, and completed his last prison sentence in France in at the end of 2015, around the same time as the November 13 Paris attacks that left 130 dead.  He went on to serve a further jail term in Germany for robbing a dental practice and a pharmacy, and was deported to France last year after completing his sentence.   The suspected motive for the shootings on Tuesday night is terrorism. “Terrorism has again struck our soil,” said Mr Heitz at a press conference on Wednesday, noting that witnesses heard the gunman shout "Allahu Akbar" during the attack.   Laurent Nunez, the junior interior minister, said: “The individual appears to have been radicalised in his religious practices during his prison terms.” Specialised anti-terrorist prosecutors are in charge of the investigation.  In prison, the suspect became known for violence and  repeated attempts to convert fellow-inmates to a radical form of Islam.   Before the Strasbourg attack, he was considered to be an extremely high-risk suspect, intelligence sources said.  France’s DGSI, the domestic intelligence service, placed him under "active" surveillance following his release from a French prison in 2015, Mr Nunez said.  As a child in Strasbourg, he grew up alongside six brothers and sisters. Although he worked for local authorities after leaving school, he had not been employed since 2011.  Investigators are trying to establish whether Mr Chekatt travelled to Syria or Iraq to join an Islamist group, or whether he was radicalised entirely in France, according to sources close to the case.
_____________________________________________________________

 France Islamic Terrorist Had 27 Previous Convictions

BY DANIEL GREENFIELD

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/272228/france-islamic-terrorist-had-27-previous-daniel-greenfield; 

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

These "lone wolf" Muslim terrorists invariably have a track record.
Before they actually carry out an attack, they've usually spent years enriching the European countries they settled in with a long record of petty crime, violent attacks and drug dealing.
Cherif Chekkat, who opened fire at the Strasbourg Christmas market, has the expected record.

Chekkat was born in Strasbourg in February 1989, into a family with Moroccan roots, and appears to have fallen first into petty crime then gangster circles. The final stage, his apparent move into Islamic extremism, was reportedly sparked – or at least strengthened – during a spell in prison between 2013 and 2015.

This is typical enough. As I noted in a previous article on the gang rape in Freiburg, these guys usually have a track record.

29.
That’s how many crimes one single Syrian migrant had allegedly committed since entering Germany four years ago. He had already been wanted for drug trafficking and had been investigated for a rape last year. And then he struck again, this time in a case that has once again torn apart a sleepy college town.
Majid and another of the suspects had already been suspected of the rape of another 20-year-old woman in her home. And Majid had also been suspected of committing yet another sexual assault. He was also due to be arrested shortly for drug trafficking, but before the police could take him in, he struck again and destroyed a young woman’s life.

This is what's Europe's criminals and terrorists look like.

TWITTER WARNS FOES OF JIHAD TERROR & SHARIA OPPRESSION THAT THEIR TWEETS VIOLATE PAKISTANI BLASPHEMY LAWS

TWITTER WARNS FOES OF JIHAD TERROR & SHARIA OPPRESSION THAT THEIR TWEETS VIOLATE PAKISTANI BLASPHEMY LAWS 

BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/12/twitter-warns-foes-of-jihad-terror-and-sharia-oppression-that-their-tweets-violate-pakistani-blasphemy-laws;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

People have long debated the question of how a free society can lose its freedom without a fight. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens in full view as people help usher in authoritarianism, such as modern-day Leftists who ally with Islamic supremacists and those who continue to deny the reality that it is indeed happening. The actions of Twitter should raise serious concern for everyone who supports free societies.
Twitter has become a Sharia police. 
Last month, as Jihad Watch noted, Ensaf Haidar, the wife of Raif Badawi, “who has been languishing for years in a Saudi prison for ‘insulting Islam,’” posted an anti-niqab tweet on twitter. She received a notice from Twitter that she was in violation of Pakistani law.
Canadian columnist Anthony Furey also received an email from Twitter warning him about violating Pakistan’s blasphemy laws for his posting of cartoons of Muhammad years ago. Imam Mohammad Tawhidi from Australia is a third person to receive the same such warning.
Add to this the fact that Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan vowed to go to the UN to stop all Muhammad cartoons and criticism of Islam.
Pakistan is a state sponsor of jihad terror that is actively exporting jihad beyond its borders. Aside from spreading Sharia blasphemy laws, its spy agency, Inter Service Intelligence, is now manipulating the general elections in Bangladesh that are coming up this month in order to help the jihadist Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat e Islami Bangladesh (JIB) to be part of the next government.

“Twitter warns global users their tweets violate Pakistani law,” Channel News Asia, December 11, 2018:

WASHINGTON: When Canadian columnist Anthony Furey received an email said to be from Twitter’s legal team telling him he may have broken a slew of Pakistani laws, his first instinct was to dismiss it as spam.
But after Googling the relevant sections of Pakistan’s penal code, the Toronto Sun op-ed editor was startled to learn he stood accused of insulting the Prophet Mohammad – a crime punishable by death in the Islamic republic – and Twitter later confirmed the correspondence was genuine.
His perceived offense was to post cartoons of the prophet several years ago.
Furey and two prominent critics of extremism in Islam say they are “shocked” to have received notices by the social media giant this past week over alleged violations of Islamabad’s laws, despite having no apparent connection to the South Asian country.
They say the notices amount to an effort to stifle their voices – a charge Twitter denies, arguing the notices came about as a result of “valid requests from an authorized entity,” understood to mean Pakistan, helped users “to take measures to protect their interests,” and the process is not unique to any one country.
But Furey is the third prominent user in the space of days to publicly complain about receiving a message linked to Pakistan.
The other two are Saudi-Canadian activist Ensaf Haidar and Imam Mohammad Tawhidi, a progressive Muslim scholar from Australia who was born in Iran.
Both are outspoken critics of religious extremism and have accused the social media giant of helping to silence progressive ideas within Islam.
‘VALIDATES BLASPHEMY LAWS’
Furey, who detailed his experience in a column for his newspaper on Saturday (Dec 8), told AFP: “I’m somewhat alarmed that Twitter would even allow a country to make a complaint like this, as it almost validates their absurd blasphemy laws.”
The tweet in question was a collage of cartoons of Mohammad that he posted four years ago.
“Looking back, I remember I did it right after there had been an ISIS-inspired attack in retaliation over the cartoons,” Furey wrote in his column, adding he had not posted similar material before or since….

GESTAPO TYRANNY: NEW JERSEY STATE POLICE REFUSE TO RULE OUT DOOR TO DOOR DISARMAMENT

 

 THE GESTAPO ARE COMING!

 

POLICE STATE NEW JERSEY'S SEARCH & SEIZURE MENTALITY EXPANDS

NEW JERSEY STATE POLICE REFUSE TO RULE OUT DOOR TO DOOR DISARMAMENT 

BY Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.

SEE: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/30893-nj-state-police-refuse-to-rule-out-door-to-door-disarmament?vsmaid=2469&vcid=3987;  

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

Breitbart News reports that the New Jersey State Police have “refused to rule out house-to-house enforcement of the state’s ‘high capacity’ magazine ban,” in correspondence from the Garden State’s law-enforcement agency to the news organization.
As of December 11, it is a fourth-degree felony in New Jersey to possess a “large capacity ammunition magazine,” which is defined as “a box, drum, tube or other container which is capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition to be fed continuously and directly therefrom into a semi-automatic firearm.”
Governor Phil Murphy signed a slate of gun-control measures into law in June, including the so-called large capacity ammunition magazine ban.
A story in Freebeacon reported that the new statute “gave New Jersey gun owners who currently possess the magazines in question 180 days to either surrender them, permanently modify them to only accept up to 10 rounds, or transfer them to somebody who is allowed to legally own them.” The grace period expired yesterday, December 10.
In what can only be interpreted as an omen of impending and expanding infringement of the right to keep and bear arms, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals handed down an opinion last week declaring the New Jersey ban to be “constitutional.”
In the majority opinion, Judge Patty Shwartz wrote: “New Jersey's law reasonably fits the State’s interest in public safety and does not unconstitutionally burden the Second Amendment's right to self-defense in the home.”
Since when was the Second Amendment’s protection confined to “self-defense in the home?”
Never!

For evidence that this limitation never entered the mind of the Founding Generation, let’s look at the Militia Act of 1792.
Prior to the enactment of that law, President George Washington spoke to the House of Representatives, saying that “a free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined.” In response to this exhortation and as an indication of their own legislative will, Congress adopted the Militia Act of 1792, which required every “free able bodied white male citizen” between the ages of 18 and 45 “to provide himself with a good musket of firelock,” and the “requisite type and amount of ammunition.”
Henry Knox, Washington’s secretary of war, was the sponsor of this bill, and during deliberation on the matter he echoed his boss’s point of view, saying that “all men of legal military age should be armed,” claiming that such a force of citizen soldiers is the “capital security of a free Republic.”
And to put a cap on the concept, during congressional consideration of the proposal, Thomas Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania said, “As far as the whole body of the people are necessary to the general defense, they ought to be armed.”
So much for Judge Schwartz’s opinion that the Second Amendment was written to scare off burglars.
Anyone convicted of violating the magazine ban faces 18 months in prison, a $10,000 fine, or both.
Breitbart News reached out to New Jersey state law-enforcement officials “to ask how they planned to enforce the newly enacted ban. We asked whether they would enforce it on a traffic-stop basis — checking magazines in firearms when they pulled over drivers for speeding, reckless driving, etc. — or whether they would enforce it by going to house-to-house to check magazine capacity in the firearms New Jersey residents kept in their homes.”
The reply is, sadly, not surprising and not at all direct.
“We do not discuss enforcement strategies,” was all the New Jersey State Police would say.
While that’s not a “yes,” it’s not a “no” either.
Breitbart explained that they enquired about the enforcement plan because “Americans always fear Second Amendment prohibitions will lead to knocks on their doors.”
As well they should.
Americans have had to suffer attempts by law enforcement to seize their ammunition and firearms for a couple of centuries. In fact, it was the British plan to disarm Bostonians that flamed the fire of separation that the king and Parliament had kindled years earlier.
Our Founding Fathers knew, and Americans should remember, that the “shot heard ‘round the world” on Lexington Green on April 19, 1775 was fired because King George sent British troops to seize the patriots’ ammunition stockpile stored outside of that small Massachusetts village.
They knew that in the days following that battle, British general Thomas Gage ordered soldiers to go house to house in Boston, confiscating all weapons from civilians.
Beyond and before their personal experience with disarmament as a tool of tyranny, our Founding Fathers learned the history of Rome and Greece, and from their childhood they were well aware of this tactic popular with those who sought to rule over the formerly free people of the past.
Our Founding Fathers very well intended that every American be armed, believing that such was the only way to avoid being enslaved by tyrants. They knew from their study of history that a tyrant’s first move was always to disarm the people, and generally to claim it was for the people’s safety, and to establish a standing army so as to convince the people that they didn’t need arms to protect themselves, for the tyrant and his professional soldiers would do it for them.
In ancient Greece, Aristotle reported that the tyrant Pisistratus, after winning the battle of Pallenis, “seized the government and disarmed the people.” Then, when the people were finally fed up with the taxes and the tyranny, they had to turn to Sparta for relief, for their own weapons were long ago surrendered to a despot promising to be “kindly and mild.”
The record is clear. Our Founding Fathers knew from sad experience and from their study of history that one of the telltale signs of a tyrant is the disarmament of anybody who might oppose him. It was true in Athens circa 490 B.C., and it is true in New Jersey in 2018.
______________________________________________________________

 Blue Cities Announce Plans To Confiscate Guns 

In Red Rural Areas