Saturday, December 19, 2009

Bicyclists Plan Naked Protest Ride in front of Jewish Synagogue

Friday, December 18, 2009

 

NEW YORK —  Bicyclists planning a Saturday protest ride are calling it their "Freedom Ride" — free of clothing, that is. And they may be pedaling naked in a fierce snowstorm, if the forecast holds.

The removal of clothing is meant as a protest over the removal of a bike lane in Williamsburg, an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn.

The activists want to go topless in front of Hasidic residents who "can't handle scantily clad women" on wheels, bike messenger Heather Loop told a local newspaper earlier this week.

The newspaper, The Brooklyn Paper, suggested the scantily clad protesters might roll into the neighborhood at sundown Saturday — just as families leave synagogue services on the Sabbath.

Bicycling advocates claim Mayor Michael Bloomberg erased the bike lane because conservative residents don't like seeing women in skimpy clothing riding by every day.

Members of the Satmar branch of Judaism "don't want to see women in shorts," says Baruch Herzfeld, who runs a bike-sharing program in a community where Jewish women wear hefty skirts and blouses with long sleeves and men heavy coats and hats, even in summer.

"The rabbis want to keep their people in the 18th century, and they don't want the world to intrude into their enclave," says Herzfeld.

Not entirely true, says Leo Moskowitz, a resident with five children. He insists the main issue is safety.

"Kids can be knocked over because school buses are not allowed to stop in the bike lane — it's dangerous," says Moskowitz, a salesman at a telecommunications company who acknowledges that he feels "very uncomfortable" seeing women bare their legs in public.

The bike lane battle is pitting Hasids against hipsters and, in some cases, Jew against Jew.

Marc LaVorgna, a Bloomberg spokesman, says the city always consults members of a community when making changes that affect them. In this case, he said, city officials want riders to use a much safer lane nearby that he called "the Cadillac of bike paths" — a two-way path separated from car traffic. That bike lane also drew the wrath of some Satmars last year, but it stayed.

The participants in the ride do not have the support of Transportation Alternatives, a major cycling advocacy group.

"A ride with people in provocative undress doesn't make Bedford any safer, and it undermines efforts to bring the neighborhood together to solve the problem," says Wiley Norvell, a group spokesman.

The biggest challenge for the topless riders, however, might not be the law — it's legal to go topless in New York in public — but the weather: Forecasters are predicting as much as 10 inches of snow and brisk winds.

JMC Ministries Response

Written by Miranda Caverley

Just this year a woman was arrested for standing nude in the front door of her house. Because her house sits across the street from a school and children were seeing her naked.

But to have many people naked in front of a place of worship where children and possibly hundreds of others will see them is not grounds for an outcry to prosecute from the community other than the Jewish side of it.  This should be an outcry to stop this from every one from Christian, to Jew, to anyone that stands for moral values in America!

We can only pray that this protest is shut down and that children and the innocent are not subjected to this kind of filth.

Islamic Mosque to be built Near Ground Zero in New York

Posted December 17, 2009

By Chelsea Schilling

2009 World Net Daily

A new Islamic mosque will open its doors just steps from Ground Zero where Muslim terrorists murdered 2,751 people in the name of Allah on Sept. 11, 2001—and its leading imam, who conducts sensitivity training sessions for the FBI, has reportedly blamed Christians for the starting mass attacks on civilians.

The five-story building at Park Place, just two blocks north of the former World Trade Center site, was the site of a Burlington Coat Factory.  But a plane’s landing gear assembly crashed through the roof on the day19 Muslim terrorists hijacked the airliners and flew them into the Twin Towers in 2001.

Now Muslim worshippers currently occupy the building, and they plan to turn it into a major Islamic cultural center.

The men and women stand up, raise their hands on either side of their head, and murmur ‘Allahuakhbar,’ bow and kneel again, “ reports Spiegel Online.

Only in New York City is this possible,” Daisy Khan, executive director the American Society for Muslim Advancement, or ASMA, told the magazine. Khan is the wife if Imam Feisal Abdul Fauf, founder of ASMA.

They have leased the new prayer space as an overflow building for another mosque, Jasjid al-Farah, at 245 West Broadway in TriBeCa, where Rauf is the spiritual leader.

The building – vacant since that fateful day when time stood still as millions of Americans grieved the loss of loved ones, friends, family members, co-workers and strangers – was purchased in July by real-estate company Soho Properties, a business run by Muslims. Rauf was an investor in that transaction.

Just down the street, the Museum of Jewish Heritage honors victims of the Holocaust, and St. Peter's Church, New York's oldest Catholic house of worship, is located around the corner.

Rauf has announced his plans to turn the building into a complete Islamic cultural center, with a mosque, a museum, "merchandising options," and room for seminars to reconcile religions, "to counteract the backlash against Muslims in general, " Speigel reports. The project may cost as much as $150 million.

Rauf told the New York Times purchasing the building "where a piece of the wreckage fell sends the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11."

"It was almost obvious that something like this had to arise from the ashes of 9/11," Khan told Spiegel. "In some way, this has the hand of the divine written over it. It's almost as if God wanted to be involved."

The move is supported by the city. The mayor's director of the Office of Immigrant Affairs, Fatima Shama, told the Times, "We as New York Muslims have as much of a commitment to rebuilding New York as anybody."

On June 4, 2009, President Obama gave a speech to the Muslim world from Cairo, in which he stated:

I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles – principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings. … So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn't. And I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

Click to read full article at the WND

'Witch hunt' expected under new U.S. 'hate crimes' law

Posted: December 13, 2009
6:57 pm Eastern

By Bob Unruh
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

The lawyer who handled the years-long battle by Pastor Stephen Boissoin over "hate speech" charges for a letter he wrote to the editor of a local newspaper that cited the Bible's condemnation of homosexuality is forecasting a nationwide "witch hunt" in the U.S. prompted by an expanded "hate crimes" law signed by President Obama.

Gerald Chipeur,  who supervises law offices across Canada, worked from his Calgary headquarters on the defense of Boissoin, who was accused by a university professor of instigating hate against homosexuals with his letter to the editor.

As WND reported, an appellate court in Canada recently reversed the decision by an administrative judge that Boissoin was to pay $5,000 and give a written apology to the professor.

Alberta had adopted a "hate speech" law with promises it would be reserved for actions that accompany "hate speech." Boissoin's letter to the Red Deer Advocate criticized those who "in any way support the homosexual machine that has been mercilessly gaining ground in our society since the 1960s."

"Our children are being victimized by repugnant and premeditated strategies, aimed at desensitizing and eventually recruiting our young into their camps. Think about it, children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system… Your teenagers are being instructed on how to perform so-called safe same gender oral and anal sex … Come on people, wake up!" Boisson wrote.

"Back Fired" shows how the faith that gave birth to tolerance is no longer tolerated!

University of Calgary professor Darren Lund filed the complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission . An administrative law judge later ordered the $5,000 payment and written apology from Boissoin along with instructions not to express his beliefs further.

Chipeur today told WND the damage to religious liberties from the case was immediate and dramatic and continues even though the decision has been overturned.

"I had church pastors, church school principals, board members coming to me for legal advice [when the case erupted]," he said. "They were saying, 'What should we do about our statement of faith, our bylaws, our policies. Should we just completely repeal them so that we won't have people offended?'"

Chipeur said his advice was for organizations to "tell the truth as you see it from the Bible" and the law firm's job was to defend that right.

"Even though I gave them that advice, many pulled punches," he said. "They reversed policies, they buried their statements of faith, ran for the hills. They tried to do everything they could."

Benjamin Bull, chief counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, agreed with the damage assessment.

"Homosexuals got exactly what they wanted. In the marketplace of ideas, one side has now been censored," he said. "This [situation] is exactly what homosexual activists have in mind."

That damage – the suppression of religious beliefs because of the intimidating effect of the lawsuit – continues today, Chipeur said.

"I can tell you there was significant damage from the decision. People continue to be afraid. People aren't going to feel safe overnight. That was the impact of the decision. Christians became afraid," he said.

"They're only human. They were frightened. They acted upon that fear, and started to reverse policies that had been in place forever," he said.

Chipeur described the core problem with the Boissoin case as a misunderstanding on the part of many who believe "hate crimes" laws will make "everyone love everybody."

Further, there are minorities who are not happy with the liberty to live their lives as they choose; they demand government endorsement and approval. Once given that, they then want to crack down on anybody who disagrees with them, he warned.

In practicality, he said, such "hate" laws – the ones in Canada and the U.S. are similar – are intended to address actions, not thoughts.

"This legislation does not address your ability to think it. It does not address your ability to speak it. It does affect your ability to act on this, to prevent someone from having a job, to get accommodations to buy things because of race, religion or sexuality," he said.

But Chipeur said he expects the same issues now to be raised in the U.S., because of the expanded "hate crimes" law signed by Obama.

"I would be shocked if you did not have 100 times more problems with this legislation than we are. Your system is set up to encourage lawyers to do this, and you have so many more people, there is more opportunity for people to take offense," he said.

"There are certain people in society who look to the government for everything, including to help them with their hurt feelings. The government was never made for that," he said.

Regardless, "there are those who want the government to bless their approach to life, whatever it is, because they have this view. They come to the point they want the government to say … you are right."

"We've learned from history that's a very bad idea. You get persecution, which is exactly what's happening here," he said.

Then those interests want the "power of the state to punish anyone who disagrees," he said. The result is, "doing exactly what we did 500 years ago. They will be going on a witch hunt, [repeating] the Spanish Inquisition."

"This is not theoretical. We've already seen it, hospitals, school boards, religious organizations pummeled with this. There are board meetings going on as we speak … talking about what they can do to avoid having complaints," he said.

The Boissoin appeals court ruling did not strike down the "hate speech" law, but it sets limits for its use. The Alberta ruling means "hate speech" laws cannot be used to silence religious expression or public debate simply because someone takes offense. Such a provision would, in fact, violate the Canadian Charter of Human Rights, the ADF said.

The accuser in such a case "must demonstrate that the speech contributed to actual harm," ADF said.

Obama signed the "Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act" in October after Democrats strategically attached it to a "must-pass" $680 billion defense appropriations bill.

The law cracks down on any acts that could be linked to criticism of homosexuality or even the "perception" of homosexuality. As Congress debated it, there were assurances it would not be used to crack down on speech. But with the law only weeks old, it has yet to be tested in court.

Days after Obama signed it, in response, pastors and other Christian leaders gathered to read from the Bible at a rally organized with the help of Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Coalition.

Click to read the rest of this article at the WND