Monday, June 18, 2007

English-Language Media Wildly Overestimated Brazil Gay Pride Numbers, Underestimated Pro-Family March

English-Language Media Wildly Overestimated Brazil Gay Pride Numbers, Underestimated Pro-Family March

Brazilian Gay Pride March vs March for Jesus: A Comparative Analysis

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

SAO PAULO, June 14, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Some three million Christians marched through the streets of the Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paulo last week, only three days before the annual “Gay Parade”, chanting slogans against homosexuality and affirming their religious beliefs. The “March for Jesus”, held June 7th, was organized by a major evangelical protestant ministry in Brazil and included over thirty live bands playing religious music, many placed on top of flatbed trucks that rolled through the main avenues of the city.

One minister led the crowd, paraphrasing a traditional Latin exorcism prayer with “Vade retro, Satan!”, adding “Vade retro, homosexuality!” (Get back, Satan! Get back homosexuality!). Although the Associated Press, Reuters, and other English-speaking news services claimed that only a million people attended the march, the mainstream Brazilian press widely reported that three million attended, citing the Policia Militar (Military Police).

When questioned by the media, marchers denied hostility towards homosexuals, and expressed concern for their well-being. "Through the Bible, we know that God doesn't agree with what they do," members of one church group from the Vila Carrão neighborhood of Sao Paulo told the Brazilian news service G1. "We condemn their actions, and never the people. What we want is for them to know God."

Another pastor who brought a group from his church denied that the march had anything to do with the "Gay Parade", emphasizing the positive aspect of it: "This is a demonstration in the name of Jesus. The two have nothing to do with each other." No violent incidents were reported during the march.

Three days later, the nation's annual "Gay Parade" presented a stark contrast to the March for Jesus. Over one million homosexual men and women marched down the city's main thoroughfare, many without shirts and dressed in drag outfits or wearing feathers.

They carried huge banners with the rainbow symbol that has been adopted by the international homosexual movement, and demanded an end to "machismo, racism, and homophobia". Last year's march resulted in the creation of a bill, currently pending in the Brazilian Congress, to outlaw all condemnations of homosexual behavior as "homophobia". The Gay Parade organizers this year demanded that such measures be accelerated.

Unlike the March for Jesus, the Gay Parade was frequently marred by violence between participants, according to Brazilian homosexual news outlets. G Online (the web version of G Magazine, a Brazilian homosexual publication), noted that “the G Online team, which covered the event throughout the day and throughout the march route, investigated various unpleasant scenes along the avenue (see photo on left). Shoving, fights, drunkenness and thefts were common during the Parade.” The photo to the left showed a man covered in blood slumped against a car.

The Brazilian homosexual web portal, MixBrasil stated glumly that “this year, marked by violence between the parade participants, families disappeared” from the march. “Assaults, fights on every corner, thefts, pure violence…a tragedy.”

Although the mainstream media generally quoted the parade organizers' estimate of 3.5 million attendees uncritically, both Reuters (quoted in The Australian) and the Brazilian news service Ultimo Segundo stated that the police only counted one million, while admitting that thousands more probably remained uncounted on side streets.

Also in stark contrast to the March for Jesus, this year's Gay Parade enjoyed heavy support from government and affiliated business institutions in Brazil. Unlike Parades in years past, this year's event was sponsored by Brazil's state energy company, Petrobras, as well as the state-owned Caixa Economica Federal Bank.

Major government officials were present for the event, including the Governor of Sao Paulo state, Jose Serra, and the Mayor of Sao Paulo, Gilbert Kassab. The Sao Paulo city government spent over $200 million to support the event, although profits from tourists attending the event were only calculated at $67.5 million, yielding tax revenues of only $35 million.

Among the expenditures by the government was a flyer containing the program for the event, as well as advice on how to avoid diseases when using injected narcotics. At some point the organizers suspended the flyer's distribution, apparently due to controversy.

Source: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2007/jun/07061501.html

Sunday, June 03, 2007

Brazilian minister persecuted for alerting on the homosexual agenda

Brazilian minister persecuted for alerting on the homosexual agenda

Julio Severo

RANCHO QUEIMADO, SC, Brazil — In rural towns, novelties are rare. What attracts the attention are usual facts as births, marriages and deaths. Usually the country is free from the great problems of the larger cities.

Yet, because of the impositions from the “Brazil Without Homophobia” program, the federal government’s tentacles are extended to all the corners of Brazil, granting to those that practice homosexuality boldness and freedom to promote the homosexual agenda.

In the locality of Rancho Queimado, Santa Catarina, Brazil, a man was able to convince some local businessmen to sponsor his newspaper O Tropeiro. Everybody thought it would be a normal publication, to spread information for the public interest.

However, in the November 2006 issue, O Tropeiro presents the article “Diversity: to be or not to be? Here is the issue”, where the author, with a psycho-sociological jugglery, tries to show that homosexuality is natural. As an example, he uses the pagan societies, even the American Indian cultures, where not only religious homosexuality was common, but also the bloody sacrifice of children, men and women for the gods that approved homosexual practices.

The article says: “For the ancient Greeks, before the Christianization, in order to be a citizen a man had to maintain sexual relationships with other men. For other civilizations as some Amerindian tribes of North America, a man maintaining sexual relationships and living conjugally with other man didn’t make him less important than others. On the contrary, it gave him a sacred position in the tribe”. Essentially, the article invites readers to question their own sexuality and not to accept as normal that a human being is just man or woman.

In the same issue, O Tropeiro brings the article “Gays speak plainly”, which contains many “testimonies” of homosexuals telling that their sexual practices are right. One of them affirms: “Church people always want to heal us, as if homosexuality were a disease. They should be more concerned about what happens around them than about the lifestyle of others”.

Still in the same issue, O Tropeiro interviews transsexual Luana Cotroffi, who is the director of a group of homosexual militancy that gives juridical, psychological and social assistance to “victims” of violence, abuse and discrimination of homophobia. The interview explains how the transsexual learned how to accept his sexual deviation.

In the April 2007 issue, a reader declares: “To be gay is normal. I am gay and I am very happy…”

In that same issue, O Tropeiro used the habitual and boring speech of prejudice in the article “Coward aggressions against homosexuals", that praises the approval in the Chamber of Deputies (Brazilian counterpart of the U.S. House of Representatives) of the anti-homophobia bill from the leftist parliamentarian Iara Bernardi. (Now that bill, PLC 122/2006, is going to be voted in the Senate, threatening to swallow up churches of Brazil in persecutions.) The text, that was written by the homosexual militant Carlos Matias Cardoso, also uses information and statistics with no clear methodology to prove that homosexuals are always victims, as if they never committed crimes and murders.

Rev. Ademir Kreutzfeld, who has been worried about the homosexual propaganda in the public schools, saw that the newspaper was promoting homosexual issues dangerous for the innocent and immature minds of children and adolescents, or even adults. And he was sad to see those issues sponsored by some shops. He wondered: “Are those businessmen conscious of what they are doing? Do they want really to support the homosexual agenda, which seeks the homosexualization of the society?”

Kreutzfeld made the decision to check, calling the shopkeepers and asking questions. They were surprised, because they didn’t know that their sponsorship had been linked not to a paper for the well-being of the population, but to a paper containing homosexual propaganda. And, much less, they didn’t know that the coordinator of the newspaper was a homosexual activist. They were worried and decided to demand explanations when they saw their shops associated to homosexuality.

Nobody, in good sense, wants to be seen or be involved in a sexual behavior that has always been unnatural. Rev. Kreutzfeld, as a local evangelical leader, preaches love and respect for sinners, but he has never confused that love and respect with tolerance to sin. He loves drug-addicts, but not their addiction. He loves adulterers, but not their addiction. And he loves homosexuals, but not their addiction. Therefore, the issue is about behavior.

As a responsible leader, he doesn’t take from anybody the freedom to choose wicked ways and behaviors, but he makes an effort to encourage his congregation and other people to choose what is better for themselves and for their families, according to moral and biblical values. He encourages parents to take care of the spiritual and moral upbringing of their children and he makes everything that he can so that everybody may avoid the addiction of drugs, adultery, homosexuality, etc.

His attitude was to alert the sponsors, that perceived that they had fallen in a serious mistake, and also to collaborate for the protection of the moral health of people in his area. In Rancho Queimado, there is no shop that wants to be exposed in a publication of tendency homosexual. They know that to have the name of their shops associated to the practice of homosexuality — or other addictions — has negative consequences for their businesses.

Of course, in a democratic society, all the good citizens are entitled to free expression to encourage other citizens to avoid addictions and immoral behaviors. And undeniably drug, prostitution and homosexuality are addictions that no father and mother want for their children. Everybody wants to avoid those behaviors, not to promote them or praise them.

Some ministers are acting while they have time, because if the National Congress in Brasilia approves anti-homofobia laws, no Christian leader will be allowed to do what Rev. Kreutzfeld did. However, strangely, even with no anti-homofobia law approved in Brazil, Kreutzfeld received a threatening email from the homosexual activist, saying: “Ademir, you lost the respect that I had for you, and from now on I turned over this issue to the juridical department of our institution, which directed me to complete a police report in the police station, for homophobia is crime”.

Obviously, the activist was furious for losing the sponsorship for his homosexual propaganda. And, consulting his institution of homosexual militants, he fulfill his promise to turn the authorities against the minister — literally a threat against the freedom of expression, of conscience and religious values.

Immediately, Rev. Kreutzfeld received citation to appear in the local police station, on May 29, 2007. In that occasion, it was determined a court hearing for June 5, 2007.

“In Sodom, behave yourself as a sodomite”. It is not the way Rev. Kreutzfeld thinks and acts. And for behaving differently, he is paying a high cost for alerting people he loves and respects. As a minister of the Gospel, he would never avoid the responsibility to alert people in his locality concerning addictions as drugs or homosexuality — even though wicked laws consecrate those vices.

The great problem is that, even before the approval of the law of criminalization of homophobia, homosexual activists think they are free, under allegation of homofobia crime, to persecute good men and women that are opposed to the promotion of the homosexual agenda in the society.

Kreutzfeld, who is a minister of the Evangelical Parish of Lutheran Confession in Rancho Queimado (an IECLB affiliate), is feeling that persecution in a very personal way. He comments: “What have I done? I just made some phone calls to shops, alerting that they were, without perceiving, sponsoring a newspaper of ideology homosexual. As a Christian committed to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, I could not fail to inform them. Of course, I am not “homophobic’. As a Christian, I love sinners. I am also one of them. But I cannot remain silent before sinful practices”.

Kreutzfeld could not really remain silent, not only because the Bible itself condemns in a clear and decisive way all sexual relations of a man with another man. In the same area where the activist got sponsorship for his homosexual propaganda, João Rodrigo Coelho, a 13-year-old boy, appeared dead, with wounds in his neck and lacerations in his anus, on September 8, 2006. (Local newspaper Vitrine Popular, 09/15/2006, page 5.) An investigation found that the victim, that apparently committed suicide, was sexually abused by Néri Brusch, a 38-year-old man. However, the big Brazilian press outlets, which always spread information favorable to the homosexual militants, did not mentioned anything on the boy that suffered homosexual abuse. The politically correct censorship is actively working, covering the homosexual filth and scandals in so a way that even in Google one is hardly able to find the name of the man that committed homosexual abuses against the 13-year-old boy.

Kreutzfeld, conscious that the homosexual practices have consequences, seeks not to imitate the omission and irresponsibility of the liberal and leftist media. For him, drug-addicts, prostitutes and homosexuals need to be helped to leave their destructive lifestyle. For him, the promotion of any one of those lifestyles should be hindered, for every child or adolescent needs to be protected from the harmful influence of propagandas that approve or encourage those addictions.

Yet, in the views of those that promote those practices, Christians like Rev. Kreutzfeld should be hindered and criminalized. That is why today he is being summoned by the courts. In the politically-correct mindset, homophobia is crime: all attitude or view against the promotion of homosexuality should be legally threatened, intimidated and punished.

By the “Brazil Without Homophobia” program tenets, all legal threat, intimidation and punishment is forbidden for those promoting homosexuality, even in schools. Now those under risk to suffer those consequences are ministers and other Christians that want a Brazil Without Sodomy.

That real fact in the town of Rancho Queimado is an evidence of the persecution wave that threatens to come on Brazil by the approval of PL 122/2006, bringing undreamed-of consequences for those that live according to moral, religious and biblical values.

Portugueses version of this article: Pastor é perseguido por alertar acerca da agenda homossexual

Julio Severo is a writer and author of the book O Movimento Homossexual (The Homosexual Movement), published by the Brazilian branch of the Bethany House Publishers. Email: juliosevero@gmail.com

Source: Last Days Watchman

Other articles by Julio Severo on the homosexual agenda in Brazil:

Behind the homosexual tsunami in Brazil

The criminalization of homophobia in Brazil and the Christian churches

Brazil without Homophobia: What the Lula administration is doing to impose the homosexual agenda on Brazil