PayPal returns frozen funds to pro-family activist following internet protest

by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, Latin America Correspondent

November 29, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) — The PayPal corporation has returned funds it froze mid-September in pro-life and pro-family activist Julio Severo’s account following a campaign by militant homosexuals to cut Severo off from the company’s service.

Following several weeks of unfavorable articles on PayPal’s actions in LifeSiteNews and other media outlets, as well as a petition drive that gathered more than 10,000 electronic signatures and offers of legal help from multiple groups defending the rights of Christians, PayPal informed Severo that it would make an “exception” and release the funds.

The company had previously claimed that it would hold the money in the account, which constituted most of needed Severo’s funds, for up to nine months before returning it to him.

PayPal shut down Severo’s account and froze his funds after the organization was petitioned by the homosexualist organization All Out to eliminate ten organizations or individuals from its service, for opposing the homosexual political agenda.

Julio Severo and others were accused of peddling “hate,” although Severo makes it clear that he has no animosity towards homosexuals and wants them to be rescued from the self-destructive homosexual lifestyle. In addition to translating and writing for LifeSiteNews, Severo publishes a blog in Portuguese that is one of Brazil’s best-read, and is followed by politicians and other influential individuals in the country. Severo also has blogs in English and Spanish.

In response to the gay activist complaints, PayPal launched an investigation of the targetted groups. It sought to cut off any that could not prove that they were a legally-constituted charity capable of receiving donations, despite the fact that PayPal permits individuals to receive money without reference to membership in any group.

Also targeted by the campaign have been such groups as Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP), a Catholic group that defends the rights and dignity of Christians and opposes sodomy, and Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, which seeks to inform the public about the facts about the “gay” lifestyle.  So far, none of these have been cut off by PayPal. 

Although LifeSiteNews sent the petition list to a number of PayPal addresses and informed the company of the signatures, no response was ever received.

Previous LifeSiteNews coverage:
* Homosexual activists seek to cut off PayPal accounts of pro-family organizations
* PayPal launches investigation of pro-family groups following homosexual complaints
* Petition against PayPal discrimination reaches 7,400 signatures - PayPal stonewalls
* Gay activists get LifeSiteNews translator and pro-family activist Julio Severo cut off by PayPal
* Homosexual activists boast of victory over pro-family groups in PayPal campaign

Source: LifeSiteNews

A Gulag of Your Own Making

State-Sanctioned Homosexuality Causes More Harm

Catholic TV on PayPal vs. Julio Severo

PayPal blacklists Christian writer

Online ‘hate’ campaign targets Christian sites

Homeland Security surveillance detected on Christian website

The power of a single blogger and his faith: the story of Julio Severo and his fight against anti-“homophobia” bills

Would you believe genocide against homosexuals?

The New York Times talks about Brazilian minister Silas Malafaia

Comment by Julio Severo: I didn’t like the mocking tone that the leftist American newspaper used to speak about Malafaia, but the leftist mindset is narrow and it keeps them from seeing reality as it is. The newspaper erroneously compares Malafaia to Pat Robertson, a conservative in times gone by so solid that he even suggested that Hugo Chavez, a friend of Lula and Dilma Rousseff, should be murdered. Although Malafaia has, on the abortion and gay agenda, the same stance as real conservatives do, his political leanings keep him away from a legitimate conservatism, and such fact was recognized in the interview itself when he admitted to have voted for Lula twice and not to have anything personally against Rousseff. If she didn’t support abortion and homosexuality, would everything be ok? Of course not. See, she was formerly a terrorist, and she has never repented of her terrorist past or of her socialist ideology and her connections with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. That repugnant socialist aspect doesn’t seem to be an inconvenience to Malafaia. I will continue, as a writer and blogger, to support Malafaia as he attacks the radical abortion and homosexual agenda. But how can we Brazilians follow his disastrous political leanings? It is a pity that he doesn’t have 50% of Michele Bachmann’s political convictions.

Here is the complete interview:

Silas Malafaia: “God called on me to be a pastor, and I won’t exchange that for being a politician.”

Evangelical Leader Rises in Brazil’s Culture Wars

By SIMON ROMERO

SILAS MALAFAIA’s books, which sell in the millions in Brazil, have titles like “How to Defeat Satan’s Strategies” and “Lessons of a Winner.” The Gulfstream private jet in which he flies has “Favor of God,” in English, inscribed on its body.

As a television evangelist, Mr. Malafaia reaches viewers in dozens of countries, including the United States, where Daystar and Trinity Broadcasting Network broadcast his overdubbed sermons. Over 30 years, Mr. Malafaia, 53, has assembled thriving churches and enterprises around his Pentecostal preaching.

Still, he might have garnered little attention beyond his own followers had he not waded into Brazil’s version of the culture wars. After all, Brazil has evangelical leaders who command larger empires, like Edir Macedo, whose Universal Church of the Kingdom of God controls Rede Record, one of Brazil’s biggest television networks. Others, like Romildo Ribeiro Soares, of the International Church of God’s Grace, are known for greater missionary zeal.

But it is Mr. Malafaia who has recently attracted the most attention, with his pointed verbal attacks on a broad array of foes, including the leaders of Brazil’s movement for gay rights, proponents of abortion rights and supporters of marijuana decriminalization.

Silas Malafaia gives an interview at the backyard of a hotel prior to an event.

“I’m the public enemy No. 1 of the gay movement in Brazil,” Mr. Malafaia said in an interview this month here in Fortaleza, a city in Brazil’s northeast where he came to lead one of his self-described “crusades,” an event mixing scripture and song in front of about 200,000 people. Tears flowed down the faces of some of the impassioned attendees, while others danced to the performances that served as his opening act.

Before ascending to the pulpit, he described how coveted he had become on television talk shows as a sparring partner with gay leaders. But that is only a small part of his repertoire, and television is just one of many media at Mr. Malafaia’s disposal. On Twitter, he has nearly a quarter of a million followers, and in videos distributed on YouTube, he lambastes not only liberal foes but also journalists and rival evangelical leaders.

Not surprisingly, his rising prominence has made him the source of both admiration and unease. He mobilized thousands to march in the capital, Brasília, this year against a bill aimed at expanding anti-discrimination legislation to include sexual orientation.

“He’s like Pat Robertson in the sense of being a pioneer in moving Brazil’s evangelical right into the national political realm,” said Andrew Chesnut, an expert on Latin American religions at Virginia Commonwealth University, comparing Mr. Malafaia to the conservative American television evangelist.

Brazil’s elite is seeking to understand the rise of such a polarizing figure, and how it might influence the nation’s politics. Piauí, a magazine that is the rough equivalent of The New Yorker in the United States, ran a lengthy article this year on Mr. Malafaia’s rise from obscurity in Rio de Janeiro, where he grew up in a military family, to the power he now wields.

BEYOND Mr. Malafaia, the broad expansion of evangelical faiths, particularly Pentecostalism, in recent decades is altering Brazil’s politics. (While Pentecostalism varies widely, its tenets in Brazil include faith healing, prophecy and exorcism.) Leaders in Brasília must now consult on a range of matters with an evangelical caucus of legislators with resilient clout.

About one in four Brazilians are now thought to belong to evangelical Protestant congregations, and Pentecostals like Mr. Malafaia are at the forefront of this growth. In a remarkable religious transformation, scholars say that while Brazil still has the largest number of Roman Catholics in the world, it now also rivals the United States in having one of the largest Pentecostal populations.

Not everyone in Brazil is enthusiastic about this shift.

In a November essay, the journalist Eliane Brum wrote of the intolerance shown toward atheists in Brazil by some adherents of born-again faiths, describing what she called the “ever more aggressive dispute for market share” among big churches.

Ms. Brum’s essay unleashed a wave of reactions from Pentecostals. Mr. Malafaia’s words were among the most caustic.

During the interview here, he called Ms. Brum a “tramp,” and repeated his contention that “communist atheists” in the former Soviet Union, Cambodia and Vietnam were responsible for more killings than “any war produced for religious questions.”

Whether by design or default, his aggressive language has often become a spectacle. In November, Época magazine reported that Mr. Malafaia, during heated comments about taking legal action against Toni Reis, a prominent gay-rights advocate, said he would “fornicate” Mr. Reis.

Mr. Malafaia fired off an explanation that he had actually said he would “funicate” Mr. Reis. While researchers were unable to find Mr. Malafaia’s word in reference dictionaries, he said it was slang that roughly translated as “trounce.”

The visibility Mr. Malafaia achieves from such episodes has fueled questions about his political ambitions. He said he had no desire to run for office because it could make him beholden to a specific political party, thus curbing the broader visibility he now has.

“God called on me to be a pastor,” he said, “and I won’t exchange that for being a politician.”

But political influence is another matter. Mr. Malafaia said he voted twice for Brazil’s former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and for years enjoyed access to Brasília’s corridors of power. But he also related an anecdote about Mr. da Silva’s successor, President Dilma Rousseff, that suggests how important evangelical figures are becoming in national elections.

He said she spoke with him by telephone for 15 minutes during last year’s presidential campaign, trying to lure his support. But he said he refused because of ideological differences with parts of the governing Workers Party of Mr. da Silva, a former labor leader, and Ms. Rousseff, a former operative in an urban guerrilla group.

“I told her, ‘I don’t have anything personal against you. I think you’re an intelligent, qualified woman,’ ” he said. “ ‘But how can I vote for you if I spent four years fighting with the group from your party supporting a bill to benefit gays, thus hurting me?’”

MR. MALAFAIA, while stabbing the air with fingers adorned with diamond-encrusted gold rings, delivers such tales in booming Portuguese with a thick Rio accent.

His persona has given him almost rock-star status among some supporters.

“I didn’t recognize him without his mustache,” said Erineide Mendonça, 39, an employee at the Fortaleza hotel where Mr. Malafaia was staying, referring to the trademark facial hair that he shaved not long ago. “But I recognized his voice,” she said, asking to be photographed with the evangelist she adores.

Both Mr. Malafaia and his wife, Elizete, were trained as psychologists, and when he rises to the pulpit, his voice echoes in sermons laden with lessons of self-help and perseverance.

A favorite theme involves success and how to attain it. While he contends that he still lives relatively humbly and is not even a millionaire, he makes no apologies for his own material rise. In fact, he celebrates it, touting, for instance, his Mercedes-Benz — a gift, he explains, from a prosperous friend.

Then there is the Gulfstream, acquired secondhand in the United States, he said, not by him but by his nonprofit religious organization at a reasonable price.

“The pope flies in a jumbo jet,” he said, referring to the chartered Alitalia plane that carries the bishop of Rome, and chafing at what he viewed as a double standard with which Brazil’s ascendant evangelical leaders must contend. “But if a pastor travels in any old jet, he’s considered a thief.”

Source: The New York Times, via Julio Severo in English

Diplomatic safe sex: No US asylum to Saudi gay

By Julio Severo

A homosexual from Saudi Arabia had his asylum request denied by the Obama administration.

The Jerusalem Post reported that Ali Ahmad Asseri “argued that if he returned to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia he would face execution because the country’s radically fundamental form of Islam mandates the death penalty for same-sex relations.”

Reportedly, the Obama administration denied the asylum to “avoid disrupting US-Saudi relations”. Annoying wasps is less dangerous than annoying a Muslim nation!

Is not the Obama administration the most radically pro-sodomy government in the US and world history? Has not the US government under this pro-Muslim president committed itself to fight “homophobia” whenever and wherever it appears?

To grant asylum to Asseri would show to the Muslim world that the Obama administration is serious about its world policies equaling sodomy to human rights.

Contrary to many asylum seekers, Asseri did not lie: Saudi Arabia really executes homosexuals. Poor Asseri! To tell truth did not help him.

In contrast, Brazilian homosexual Augusto Pereira de Souza, 27, had no such hardship to be granted asylum by the Obama administration. Enough for him was to allege that “Brazil is one of the most violent countries against homosexuals”. Nothing else than falsehood was necessary to get him asylum.

In spite of Pereira’s charges against Brazil as a threat to gays, Asseri could freely and safely live in Brazil. In fact, his troubles to get US asylum have been reported by a Saudi-American blogger and journalist based in Brazil, the “homophobic” country. In Saudi Arabia, Asseri and the journalist defending him would be treated very differently than the Brazilian government and society would do.

On the other hand, Souza is free to criticize and enter Brazil. As in the US, in Brazil media and government agencies are brazenly pro-sodomy and criticism against Christians and their “homophobia” is widespread and most welcome — as long as such criticism is directed exclusively to Christians, never to Muslims. What Souza cannot do is to criticize and enter Saudi Arabia. To enter there would spell his doom. At least, it would change his mind about “Brazil as one of the most violent countries against homosexuals”.

If Saudi Arabia were as Christian as Uganda is, it would be easier for the US to charge it of “homophobia” and grant asylum to the Saudi gay. Christians are always fair game for dishonest charges. But the US cannot afford giving similar treatment to Saudi Arabia, which is so radically against sodomy as the US is radically for it.

Stuart Appelbaum, a prominent gay activist in New York, said that if the Obama administration refuses to grant asylum to Ali Ahmad Asseri because it is afraid of the Saudi reaction, then the US will become complicit in his fate. “It is exactly because of how Ahmad might be treated on his return to his homophobic and brutal land that the United States should grant him refuge,” he said.

As far as Saudi Arabia and its Islamic law are concerned, the Obama administration will never sacrifice its economic interests with Muslim nations to defend sodomy as a human right. This is why it finds safer to grant asylum to a lying Brazilian homosexual than to a truthful Saudi homosexual. Between defending a perverted sexual act and not offending Muslim allies, the latter is priority diplomatic safe sex for a US radically committed to protect the former.

When homosexuality hits its international relations with Muslim nations, the US government commitment is not to annoy its gay-executing, Muslim allies.

Portuguese version of this article: Sexo seguro diplomático: Nada de asilo americano para gay saudita

Spanish version of this article: Sexo diplomático seguro: No hay asilo americano para gay saudí

Source: www.lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com

The lie that got asylum

Will the United States become a magnet to attract homosexuals of other countries?  

Asylum for homosexual perverts U.S. policy

Homosexual Brazilian Gets Asylum in US After Claiming ‘Persecution’

A Gulag of Your Own Making

Don Hank

A few weeks ago, PayPal cut off service to Julio Severo because Julio says on his blog that he agrees with the New Testament on homosexual behavior. They did this at the behest of a homosexual activist group.

Effectively, PayPal, as the only service of its kind, unilaterally decided to try and ban Julio’s blog, which has played a key role in stopping utterly totalitarian-style legislation in Brazil that would have banned speech perceived as offensive to homosexuals. Since PayPal is effectively a monopoly, they have threatened Julio’s livelihood in objection to his faith, which they want to see banned everywhere in the world.

PayPal is therefore what I call a NGE, or Non-Governmental Enforcer, of an unconstitutional speech code, circumventing the law by using methods that would be politically impossible for government to use.

And yet you will note that government has been glaringly silent and will do nothing to help Julio barring a lawsuit. And it is far from clear whether our leftist-packed judiciary will do anything to intervene on behalf of freedom of speech.

Now, not much fuss was made over Julio’s plight outside Christian activist circles, apparently because religious freedom is now being supplanted in Western minds by sexual freedom, a favorite platform of libertarians.

Yet, I have tried to warn that when you allow government (or its proxy) to tell Christians they may not speak out against what they perceive as evil, the totalitarian system will soon direct its fury against you, even if the government per se is not directly involved in this assault. Because you see, the far left (as exemplified by the Fabian Society, which has lost no time in stealthily removing your freedom since the 1880s) has always used stealth tactics to enforce laws, even laws not yet on the books. They believe they are on the side of History, and I write that with a cap because for them history is God.

Now, the West has gradually accepted the mindset that religion is nothing but a throwback and has no place in public life. In fact, they portray Christianity as a sinister system designed to enslave people. Yet when large corporations in league with corrupt government (crony capitalism) overtly take steps to eradicate Christian speech in public, then those liberty-minded individuals who generally ignore the plight of Christians, also considering us to be knuckle dragging Neanderthals, are unwittingly cutting their own throats, because if groups of bullies can tell Christians to shut up with impunity, then they can tell you to shut up as well. It is only a matter of time.

A few scant weeks have passed since PayPal censored Christian blogger Julio Severo and now, those who sat silently by are seeing the censors moving into their own territory. For libertarians generally believe that any censorship is bad and cuts into liberty. Yet, as suggested above, they foolishly look away when Christians are censored, particularly Christians who flout the Ruling Class purportedly on the “side of history.” What they fail to see is that the censorship of Christian speech is a harbinger of much bigger things to come. Because the Ruling Class despises Judeo-Christian values (as exemplified by their behavior in Europe where they import Christian-hating Muslims by the millions, and in the Muslim World, where each war they engage in invariably has the outcome of Christian persecution and decimation of the indigenous Christian populations).

This lack of compassion for Christian speech on the part of the “freedom minded,” including numerous nominal Christians, is a bad sign, my friend. You didn’t speak out for Julio because you bought into the left’s propaganda that only homosexuals can be victims, never Christians. The far left in league with the New World Order taught you that Christianity is the enemy of freedom and compassion, when in fact it represents the only real freedom and compassion one can ever hope to have.

Now we are here:

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2011/10/25/248252/Wikileaks-turns-to-fundraising-as-US-finance-companies-cut-off.htm

He [Assange] claims that since Wikileaks began publishing thousands of secret US government files and diplomatic cables online, an “arbitrary and unlawful financial blockade” has been imposed by Bank of America, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union.

Each and every one of those corporations are nothing more nor less than partners in an unholy alliance with the most radical political apparatus we have ever seen in America. Along with many others, I had said many times before that there is no longer free market capitalism in America.

But loss of economic freedom is never alone. Loss of religious freedom and loss of political freedom are never far behind.

We are now officially in that latter phase when the right to freedom of speech has been abridged and soon will be completely abolished unless you and I have a change of heart.

Did Assange complain when Julio Severo was cruelly denied a living for his family, including 4 children?

I didn’t hear his protests.

And I didn’t hear yours either when WorldNetDaily alerted you to this outrage.

So don’t protest when they muzzle you and take away your voice and your vote.

Welcome to Gulag America, a prison of your own making, through your silent complicity.

Don Hank has been the owner/operator of the Christian news and views site Laigle's Forum since 2006. His work has been published by WorldNetDaily, Canada Free Press, Christian Worldview Network, Etherzone, FedUpUSA, Renew America, Desert Conservative and Midia Sem Mascara. From 1971 to 2009 Don was the owner and operator of a technical translation agency. He has translated professionally from over 20 languages and is the author of Japanese-to-English Technical Translation Manual and French-English Dictionary of Aluminum Manufacturing Terms. He is now retired and residing in Panama with his wife Zoila and their daughter Luisa.

Portuguese version of this article: Nós mesmos estamos ajudando a criar um campo de concentração para nós

Source: Laigle’s Forum, via Last Days Watchman

State-Sanctioned Homosexuality Causes More Harm

Catholic TV on PayPal vs. Julio Severo

Homosexual activists boast of victory over pro-family groups in PayPal campaign

PayPal blacklists Christian writer

Gay activists get LifeSiteNews translator and pro-family activist Julio Severo cut off by PayPal

Online ‘hate’ campaign targets Christian sites

PayPal launches investigation of pro-family groups following homosexual complaints

Homosexual activists seek to cut off PayPal accounts of pro-family organizations

Homeland Security surveillance detected on Christian website

The power of a single blogger and his faith: the story of Julio Severo and his fight against anti-“homophobia” bills

Would you believe genocide against homosexuals?

State nightmare for children

Government agencies easily take children from their parents, and easily expose them to pedophiles

By Julio Severo

FoxNews has just reported:

A new California state audit found that over 1,000 sex offenders are living in homes licensed to provide foster and child care services.

The startling information was uncovered after the audit was requested to investigate how Child Welfare Services handled child deaths in foster care homes.

Earlier this year, Assemblyman Henry Perea of Fresno requested the state investigate child deaths that are in Child Protective Service custody. The request was made after 10-year-old Seth Ireland was beaten to death by his mother’s boyfriend in 2008.

National Center for Youth Law senior attorney Bill Grimm thinks the failure of Child Welfare Services to use databases of sex offenders that the agency had access to is “reprehensible and inexcusable.”

“How can you take a child out of their own home, their parents home, because you alleged they are unsafe or have been abused and then put them in a facility or a home where they are subject to risk and further abuse? It’s just inexcusable,” Grimm said.

Hey, only California was found to have 1,000 sex offenders living in homes licensed to provide foster and child care services. What about the other 49 American states?

We are living in the 21st century, are not we? How can state children services be exposing children to pedophiles?

In the 1980s, my friend Mary Pride denounced how dangerous the government services were for children. In that time, sure, the State promised to take measures to make children safe from its own unsafety.

Then in the 1990s, Brenda Scott, in her book “Out of Control. Who’s Watching Our Child Protection Agencies?”, exposed how easily Children Protective Services took children from their parents and exposed them to sex offenders and other perverts. Again, the State promised to correct its unsafety…

Next, in 2005 we had reports of abundant sex abuse against children in homes licensed to provide foster and child care services. And the State came with its usual promises… And children continued unsafe.

Sadly, the State has been unable to avoid exposing children to sex offenders. And it has been equally unable to avoid easily taking children from their parents.

FoxNews has also just reported:

A Hawaii couple’s 3-year-old daughter was taken away from them for 18 hours after they were arrested for forgetting to a pay for two $5 sandwiches.

The Hawaii family

The outing-turned-nightmare happened Wednesday while the family was shopping at a local Safeway.

“We walked a long way to the grocery store and I was feeling faint, dizzy, like I needed to eat something so we decided to pick up some sandwiches and eat them while we were shopping,” Leszczynski told the news station.

Leszczynski, who is 30-weeks pregnant, her husband, Marcin, and daughter Zophia bought $50 worth of groceries — but forgot about their two chicken salad sandwiches.

“It was a complete distraction, distracted parent moment,” Leszczynski told KHON.

As the family left, they were stopped by store security, who asked for their receipt.

“I offered to pay, we had the cash. We just bought the groceries,” Leszczynski told the station.

Instead, the expectant mother told KHON that the Safeway manager called police. They were taken to the main Honolulu police station where they were booked for fourth degree theft. Then Zophia was taken into custody by Child Protective Services.

“When they notified us that they would have to take her because we both would be arrested, I just couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe this was happening, because I forgot to pay for the sandwich and that she’s never been away from us this long,” Leszczynski told KHON.

Zophia’s mom said she spent a sleepless night worrying about her daughter and shared the ordeal on the parenting website www.babycenter.com. Her post grabbed the attention of hundreds of outraged moms and dads.

“We didn’t know where our daughter was, didn’t know what the situation was, she didn’t have any clothes they just took her right from the grocery store,” Leszczynski told KOHN.

Fortunately, the young girl was returned 18 hours later to her parents. But 18 hours, or some days away from their parents in a state agency, it’s time enough for pedophiles and other predators make their dirty work. In a sex-obsessed society, children are unsafe whenever they are away from their natural family.

Source: Last Days Watchman

Brazilian Supreme Tribunal of Justice approves homosexual ‘marriage’

by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

October 27, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Brazil’s highest appeals court for non-constitutional issues, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (STJ), has approved the “marriage” of two lesbians in a 4-1 vote.

The couple, who had been living together for five years in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, will be permitted to civilly “marry” based on an earlier decision of the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), the nation’s highest court for constitutional issues.

The STF ruled in May that homosexual couples can enter into civil unions, despite the Constitution’s explicit restriction of civil unions to “a man and a woman.” 

The Supreme Tribunal of Justice has now ruled that, given that the Constitution “facilitates the conversion of a stable union into marriage,” it must conclude that “sexual orientation cannot serve as a pretext to exclude families from the juridical protection represented by marriage.”

Although the decision is not binding in other cases, it will have profound legal repercussions in Brazil, according to Luiz Mello, coordinator of the Study and Research Group on Gender and Sexuality at the Federal University of Goiás.

“It isn’t a decision with binding effect, but it creates an important precedent,” said Mello. “Now, all of the registry offices and state courts that are thinking about denying this right must remember that the STJ has decided in favor of it.”

The STJ’s decision faces overwhelming opposition against both civil unions and “marriage” for homosexuals from the Brazilian public.

As LifeSiteNews reported in August a recent poll has indicated that Brazilians reject the STF decision permitting civil unions by 55 to 45 percent. A poll in late 2010 found that 60 percent opposed civil unions and only 35 were in favor.

Related Stories

Brazilian city council imposes fine for inducing children into homosexuality

Majority of Brazilians reject homosexual civil unions following imposition by Supreme Tribunal

Brazilian judge approves first same-sex ‘marriage’

Brazilian judge declares Supreme Tribunal decision favoring civil unions ‘unconsitutional’

Brazil supreme court defies Constitution, grants homosexual civil unions

Source: LifeSiteNews, via Last Days Watchman, by Julio Severo

Triumph of the state over the family: Brazilian Congress reinforces ban on homeschooling

by Julio Severo

The Education and Culture Committee of the Chamber of Representatives in Brazil has unanimously rejected, October 19, a bill that would have authorized, under state supervision, parents to homeschool their children. The homeschool bill had been introduced in 2008 by Evangelical representative Henrique Afonso and Catholic Representative Miguel Martini.

In their rejection, the committee expressed its view that homeschooling “disrespects the Constitution, the Penal Code, the National Education Guidelines and Basic Law and the Child and Adolescent Statute.”

However, home education was not, in the past, a strange experience in Brazil. The constitutions of Brazil had protection and respect for the parents’ primary role in the children’s education, without removing from them their right to choose where and how to educate.

The Brazilian Constitution of 1937 said,

Article 125: The integral education of the children is the most important duty and natural right of parents. The State will get involved in that duty, collaborating, in a main or subsidiary way, to facilitate its implementation or supply the deficiencies and gaps in the private education.

That constitution recognized the function of the State as an assistant to parents in their educational choices for their children, instead of trying to substitute them or usurp their right to choose.

The Brazilian Constitution of 1946 said,

Article 166: The education is a right of all and it will be given at home and in the school. It should be inspired by the principles of freedom and in the ideals of human solidarity.

Dr. Rodrigo Pedroso, a Brazilian jurist, comments: “This confirms that the article 166 of the Constitution of that time was interpreted as allowing the education in the school or exclusively at home. Therefore, home education is, strictly speaking, a Brazilian juridical tradition that, for some unknown reason, was abandoned without anyone expressing a protest in the National Assembly that drafted the new constitution in 1987”.

The National Education Guidelines and Basic Law, in its Article 30 of December 20, 1961, said,

“A married man with children or a guardian cannot work public office, nor occupy employment in a company of society of mixed economy or a company concessionary of public service if he has presented no proof that his child is enrolled in a school, or that his child is being supplied home education”.

Yet, Brazilian socialist government officials were able to repeal this article in the 1990s.

The Brazilian Constitution of 1967 said,

Article 168: The education is a right of all and it will be given at home and in the school; being guaranteed opportunity-equality, the education should be inspired on the principle of the national unit and on the ideals of freedom and human solidarity.

So it is very clear that the Brazilian constitutions before the Constitution of 1988 guaranteed freedom for the parents to choose home education or institutional school. The Constitution of 1988 came, allegedly, as a better, more democratic document, but only later Brazilians woke up for the fact that that their modern constitution, drafted with the help of many leftist parliamentarians, instead of expanding the parents’ rights, quietly turned off the home education option. Parents’ right and freedom were usurped by an assumed “right” and “obligation” of the State. The State literally swallowed the rights of the families.

Other serious threat to the families’ rights in the education of their children has been the Child and Adolescent Statute (CAS), which is a direct product of the United Nations Children’s Rights Convention. CAS imposes many state interferences in the Brazilian families and their children, especially in the educational and health issues. CAS has been used by the Child Protective Services of Brazil to enforce the state ban on homeschooling, harass families and their children and put them under legal hardships.

Although homeschooling is common in many developed countries and is associated with higher levels of academic achievement, the increasingly-intrusive and socialist government in Brazil has not only abolished its constitutional tradition of home education, but has also repealed several homeschool bills in the Brazilian Congress since the 1990s.

Control over people requires quality and freedom to be discarded and sacrificed on behalf of compulsory indoctrination. For a State possessed by socialism, it does not matter if schoolchildren are not learning to read and write satisfactorily. What matters is to turn away children from parental sphere, authority and values in order to indoctrinate them directly into the state interests.

This indoctrination is a proven reality throughout Brazil. In a long story on the Brazilian schools, Veja magazine (the Brazilian counterpart of Time magazine) made the following revelations:

* A prevalent trend among Brazilian teachers of imposing leftism in the minds of children.

* Leftist indoctrination is predominant in private schools. It is something teachers take more seriously than classroom subjects, as a CNT/Sensus poll, ordered by Veja, found.

* It is embarrassing that Marxism has stayed alive only in Cuba, North Korea and in the Brazilian classrooms.

* CNT/Sensus poll interviewed 3,000 people from 24 Brazilian states, among students and teachers in public and private schools. Its conclusion in this issue was astonishing. Parents (61%) are aware that teachers make political discourses in the classroom and they find it normal. Most teachers recognize that they really indoctrinate children and they think this is their main mission — something more important than teaching how to interpret a text or excel in math. For 78% of teachers, political discourse makes sense, considering that they ascribe to school, above all, the function of “forming citizens” — above of “teaching subjects”.

* Many Brazilian teachers are fascinated by characters that in the classroom deserve a more critical approach, as the Argentinian guerilla Che Guevara, who in the poll appears with 86% of positive mentions, 14% neutral, and no negative comment.

This reality of Brazilian schools is in perfect harmony with the government policies, whose interest is not quality and freedom, but exclusively state control over children. This reality makes Brazil to look more like communist China, where four-year-old children are obliged to attend school just to receive state indoctrination. In fact, according to Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil and China announced the “the creation of a quinquennial plan of targets, as the plans adopted by the Chinese communist government, to create a joint education model”.

Homeschool is illegal, according to the latest Brazilian Constitution and the Brazilian legal version of the United Nations Children’s Rights Convention, but it is not illegal to amend the Constitution for less honorable, state purposes. In its last days, the socialist Lula administration was able to change the Constitution to give 4-year-old children the “right to attend school”, which in China and Brazil means to force parents to deliver their 4-year-old children to the State for “education”.

The few homeschool families in Brazil in public legal battles have been put under educational surveillance and strict tests tailored to make their children fail. Even so, they have incredibly reached high scores. One wonders what the institutionalized schoolchildren would do if submitted to such harshness. But they are spared this shame, receiving graciously tests tailored to make any student easily successful. But even with such state condescension, success is hard for them to grasp.

On international tests, Brazilian students have been found to produce extremely low scores.

The 2007 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which compares student performance in 57 countries, gave Brazil well below-average scores in mathematics, reading, and science.

Domestically, more than 50% Brazilian students in the third year of the elementary school are unable to read the minimum required for math.

The rejected homeschool bill could have been an alternative to the educational chaos in Brazil. In 2005, I helped Dr. Paulo Fernando de Mello, a legislative consultant, to draft this federal homeschool bill. In that time, I was able to introduce in the bill the fundamental recommendations Dr. Brian Ray, the director of NHERI, had sent me. But I had always feared that if approved, the socialist government in Brazil would impose so much austerity, surveillance and intrusiveness that the Brazilian homeschool law eventually would turn home education into a state education at home!

So if approved, we parents would have very little to celebrate. If rejected, we would be “free” to remain illegal, ostracized, Catacomb-homeschoolers!

Now, we have only two choices: homeschool illegally and suffer the massive and violent state intervention in our parental, natural choice, or let our children suffer social, moral, psychological and spiritual violence in the public educational “jails”.

Physical and moral violence and functional illiteracy are rampant in the state education in Brazil. If homeschooling were commonplace in Brazil and produced the same results the state-controlled education has produced for years, it would deserve a complete ban and prosecution and punishment for the culprits.

Public schools make children abandon their intellectual potential. Even so, if a family homeschool their children, government officials in Brazil have a prepared legal charge: intellectual abandonment. Legally in Brazil, intellectual abandonment is not to keep children from education, but keep them from attending school institutions.

International tests have repeatedly proved the failure of the Brazilian public schools, but the government does not have the nerve to charge them of “intellectual abandonment”, under the risk of condemning itself.

If to force the presence of a child in a public school might make her educated, to force her to remain in a garage would turn her into a car!

In the Brazilian public schools, children can be whatever the State decides, not what their parents want. So, for the exclusive benefit of the state interests, the ban on homeschooling in Brazil has now been unanimously reinforced by the Brazilian Congress.

Portuguese version of this article: Triunfo estatal contra a família: Congresso Nacional reforça proibição à educação escolar em casa

Spanish version of this article: Triunfo estatal en contra de la familia: El Congreso de Brasil refuerza la prohibición de la educación en el hogar

German version of this article: Triumph des Staates über die Familie: Brasilianischer Nationalkongress bekräftigt Homeschooling-Verbot

Source: LifeSiteNews