Director of YWAM in Brazil attacks Christian activism against the anti-“homophobia” bills and homosexual “marriage”
Bráulia Ribeiro accuses Christian mobilization against gay agenda as “hate and prejudice crusade”
By Julio Severo
The year is 1932. Evangelical churches, highly moralist, were marked by holiness in their behavior and a major concern for an ethical and impeccable testimony. There was also a real interest in the purity of the Gospel and in sacrifices for its spread to a lost world.
To transform such interest into action is more than fair. Since the Gospel offers hope to the sinner, decades before the first anti-“homophobia” bills, churches took on the prophetic head, launching in the 1930s campaigns to fight discrimination against homosexuals.
The initiative included propaganda in trains, carts and streets, educating the astonished population — who were having a very hard time to understand what was happening — that those committing homosexual acts are normal and deserve respect…
As a direct result of those pioneering pressures from evangelical ministers in the 1930s, today homosexuals run no risk of being assaulted or murdered in prostitution and drug quarters at 2 a.m. Special police units escort homosexuals before and after their sexual encounters, guaranteeing protection and safety for their activities. Because of evangelicals, homosexual safe sex became a reality.
That odd fairy event should have been reality, according to a recent article by Bráulia Ribeiro, who suggested that efforts against “homophobia” should have been firstly launched neither by homosexual activists nor by the Lula administration, but by Christians.
Christians in the 1930s would have been astonished and frightened if they had been told that the 21-century society would be immersed in a homosexual obsession — not mentioning that they would have been shocked by the idea that they in their days should have launched campaigns for the social acceptance of homosexuals as normal individuals.
Churches know how to be pioneering in positive campaigns. Decades before the first social campaigns against smoke, many churches were delivering alerts. These alerts were treated by the secular world as fanaticism, but today this same world is treating such addiction in the same way churches treated it: as a health risk.
I believe that churches acted appropriately in the past, treating homosexuality as an abomination, a serious sin that should be shunned, but the declarations of Bráulia Ribeiro inspire doubts and confusion, because she did not know how to make the distinction between the role of the Gospel and the role of a Christian as a citizen in a society needing not only the Gospel, but fair laws to rule.
Bráulia Ribeiro speaks, Julio Severo answers
Following are the declarations of Bráulia Ribeiro, in her Portuguese article “Não quero o direito de ser homofóbica” (I do not want the right to be homophobic), published in some Brazilian leftist magazines and websites.
Bráulia Ribeiro: “It is not our role to legislate morality”.
Answer from Julio Severo: “It is not our role to legislate morality”. This is, Christians should just stay passive while the wicked legislate every kind of immorality. You can hardly hear Satan saying to evangelical ministers and politicians, “Listen, you Christians! I am legislating immorality throughout the society and I do not want you disturbing my activities. For the time being, you are free to legislate your morality only within your churches”. You can find the echo of these words among feminists, who tell, “The State is secular. You Christians cannot promote the value of life in society. Only we, who are not Christians, have the right to legislate abortion and whatever else we want. Keep away. This domain — the society — belongs to us”. The words of homosexual activists are not different, “The State is secular. Only we can do whatever we want. You Christians may legislate your morality only within your churches”. Sometimes, a Christian voice appears to give them support. Such are the voices of Bráulias.
The argument that “It is not our role to legislate morality” will be also used against Christians fighting pedophilia. In the Netherlands, which was the first nation to legitimize homosexual “marriage”, there is an official pedophile party composed by homosexual members and because of the pressures of homosexual activism the age for sexual consent has been lowered. According to Bráulia, if homosexual activists want the same “conquests” in Brazil, we cannot “legislate morality” to thwart them.
Bráulia Ribeiro: “God did not assume that because there is an ideal, we would be forced into it”.
Answer from Julio Severo: The ideal, for the sexuality, is marriage between a man and a woman, as Bráulia acknowledged. But, as she also acknowledged, many turn away from the ideal, making wrong choices. Those deviations include: men who prefer other men, men who prefer boys, men who rape women, men who rape girls, etc. Bráulia suggests that there should be no law to enforce the ideal. So if there cannot be just laws to enforce the ideal, does it make any sense to allow passively the imposition on the society of unjust laws protecting the deviation from the ideal?
Bráulia Ribeiro: “The Bible stresses more adultery than perversions, strongly defending family limits. We Christians do not give to adultery the same importance. We excuse, understand and even ‘defend’ adultery in the name of personal happiness and in the name of the mere hedonism that flavors our religion with the same worldly aroma”.
Answer from Julio Severo: God hates adultery, but when he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, the cause was homosexuality. Additionally, we do not see pride parades of adulterers, there are no groups of adulterers throughout Brazil pressing city councils, legislative assemblies and the Brazilian Congress for the approval of bills against “adulteryphobia”, there is no federal campaign “Brazil without Adulteryphobia”, etc. Schools do not receive from the government orders to praise adultery, teaching children to see it as a natural option.
Besides, churches preaching against adultery are not threatened by lawsuits and federal prosecutors. But if you preach against homosexuality, threats will come.
The media, the schools and the government exalt much more homosexuality today than adultery. Even though churches have the responsibility to condemn both sins, we have to admit the reality of our days. Fifty years ago, churches openly condemned adultery, and did not talk about homosexuality, because homosexuality was not a societal obsession. Today, the homosexual subject is compulsory throughout the society. Cannot Christians talk about what the whole Brazil is talking about?
Bráulia Ribeiro: “In a society that lives Bible principles, the responsibility to legitimize marriages belongs to family. It is in the domain of families that the union of two young people and the formation of a new family are legitimized and strengthened. We see marriages in the Bible, but no marriage established or legitimized by the church or by the State”.
Answer from Julio Severo: I fully agree with Bráulia.
Bráulia Ribeiro: “If the State sees fit to legitimize homosexual union and the population of the nation agrees, as Christians we can do nothing”.
Answer from Julio Severo: She could also have told,
“If the State sees fit to legitimize abortion and the population of the nation agrees, as Christians we can do nothing”.
“If the State sees fit to legitimize infanticide and the population of the nation agrees, as Christians we can do nothing”.
“If the State sees fit to legitimize pedophilia and the population of the nation agrees, as Christians we can do nothing”.
If Bráulia had been in Nazi Germany, her argument would have been,
“If the State sees fit to legitimize persecution to Jews and the population of the nation agrees, as Christians we can do nothing”.
Hitler was democratically elected, and most of the German population supported him. He introduced many wicked laws in the predominantly and nominally Christian Germany. The Christian majority, as Bráulia, thought, “As Christians we can do nothing”.
Yet, two Christians did not think as she does. Evangelical Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Catholic Claus von Stauffenberg were members of small groups that wanted to eliminate Hitler. Today they are famous and admired, but in their own time they suffered the contempt from the government of their own country and the contempt from the most German Christians.
By sheer coincidence, the man that Stauffenberg wanted to eliminate was homosexual. In fact, the highest Nazi German leaders were violent fascist homosexuals.
If Christians are supposed to do nothing when the State sees fit to legitimize evil and the population of the nation agrees, why then did Stauffenberg and Bonhoeffer do?
Bráulia Ribeiro: “To mix God and State was a mistake in the time of Constantine and it is a mistake today”.
Answer from Julio Severo: Secularists and the Lula administration are certainly saying “Amen” to the declaration of Bráulia. All that humanists, socialists, gay activists, feminists and anthropologists want is a society where laws and politicians “do not mix God and State”.
The mistake of Constantine was not to mix God and State. His mistake was to force the conversion to Christianity of all inhabitants in the Roman Empire.
To mix God and State produces successful results. King David did it, and the result was success. Early America did it, and the result was success.
In fact, Romans 13 clearly instructs that politic officials have the calling to serve God, to be ministers of God. How to serve God as a politician when socialists and now even Bráulias demand separation between God and State?
What about, Mrs. Bráulia, to demand separation between State and gay agenda, feminist agenda, abortion agenda and Indian infanticide agenda?
Bráulia Ribeiro: “A fair State, which reflects God’s values, will defend for each individual the right to his personal choices, providing such choices do not infringe on the other’s right”.
Answer from Julio Severo: The reality that most homosexuals suffered sexual violence from a male adult in their childhood demonstrates that someone made a choice that hurt a boy. How can Bráulia use the right to choice considering such brutal reality? She wants everybody to see the brutality of the Indian infanticide. What about other brutalities? Don’t they count?
Bráulia Ribeiro: “Many evangelicals have been expectantly waiting a kind of Christian sharia, where Christian morality would be enforced by the State. This unjust and absurd sharia would not change the heart of men…”
Answer from Julio Severo: The Christian mobilization against the gay agenda has been shy, because each Christian step is ruthlessly attacked by the media. And now, joining the chorus of such attackers, Bráulia raises the absurd charge of a Christian sharia, while the Brazilian society is being engulfed by a real socialist sharia and is about to suffer a homosexual sharia.
Laws are not made to change the hearts of people. No law against murders and rapes changes the hearts of people. Laws serve only to control harmful behaviors. If we cannot create laws because they do not convert, then are laws against murders and rapes useless because they have never converted anyone?
Bráulia Ribeiro: “We have the Christian obligation to fight homophobia… The anti-homophobia voice should have been heard firstly from our mouths… If we had led this fight probably we would not have to live today the discomfort of the imposition of the homosexual agenda as we are living. We would have joined them for Christ’s sake, and not raised us against them in a hate and discrimination crusade…”
Answer from Julio Severo: Are public schools indoctrinating children in homosexuality? The blame, according to Bráulia, is on the Christian churches, which were not pioneering in the fight against homophobia.
Before, during and after Christianity, boys were abused by homosexuals? The blame, according to Bráulia, is on the Christian churches, which were not pioneering in the fight against homophobia.
Homosexual activist groups are distorting statistics of homosexual crimes to advance special laws to protect homosexuality? The blame, according to Bráulia, is on the Christian churches, which were not pioneering in the fight against homophobia.
Are Christians faithful to God and to the Bible and good-will people under the threat of being jailed if they criticize the homosexual behavior? The blame, according to Bráulia, is on the Christian churches, which were not pioneering in the fight against homophobia.
I have frequently heard homosexual activists accusing Christians of “hate and prejudice”, only because Christians do not accept the gay dictatorship. You have an obligation to accept this dictatorship. If not, you are automatically labeled a “hate and prejudice”-filled bigot.
In fact, FUNAI — the Brazilian government agency that directs and controls Indian affairs — sees only “hate and prejudice” in the YWAM’s efforts to save Indian children. At last, Bráulia found a way to revenge what YWAM has been suffering.
The difference between poor Julio Severo and wealthy YWAM
The secular world has a very clear vision on the role of Christians in the society:
Abortion: Christians should respect abortion as a women’s human right, because the State is secular and what must prevail is the secular State’s will.
Indian infanticide: Christians should respect Indian culture. Child-killing is part of the Indian culture and it is rejected only by Indians influenced and tainted by the Christian “culture”.
Speaking on Indian infanticide, Bráulia has a view on this issue. As the director of YWAM in Brazil, Bráulia complains that YWAM is victim of persecutions and false charges.
Federal prosecutors in Brazil and the Lula administration classify as crimes the YWAM actions to save Indian children from murders.
Similarly, federal prosecutors in Brazil and the Lula administration classify as a crime my fight against the gay agenda.
Do you know the difference? I give all my support to the hard mission of YWAM. I give it wholeheartedly. In fact, the YWAM video exposing the killing of Indian children was posted in my blog, where more than sixty thousand Brazilians have watched. I have fought in many other necessary battle-fronts. I am involved in the direct fight against abortion for more than 20 years, as witnessed by my friends for more than two decades Congressman Talmir Rodrigues and Dr. Humberto L. Vieira, the director of Associação Nacional Pró-Vida e Pró-Família (National Pro-Life and Pro-Family Association).
By God’s Grace, YWAM has the support from powerful national and international Christian institutions in its honorable fight against Indian infanticide.
Yet, in my fight against the gay agenda, I receive discouragement, charges and threats.
There is an abyssal difference between Bráulia and someone like me, who fight the gay agenda — and fight also Indian infanticide. Bráulia has the privilege to be the director of an institution of huge financial power and she has no hard time to get access to a good accommodation in any place in the world, because YWAM is present in many nations.
In my fight against the gay agenda in Brazil, I do not have the support from any group as powerful as YWAM. I am wandering among the nations, without an adequate place where to stay, because I have the support from no group that is present in many nations. Differently from Bráulia, who lives by and from YWAM, I can live only by faith. Nothing else.
Institutional interests versus spiritual interests
By embracing an schizophrenic stand minimizing the gravity of the homosexual agenda, of the sexual sacrifice of boys and the value of the efforts of Christians fighting this threat, and respecting exclusively conveniences and particular interests, Bráulia behaves as an institutional Christian, as an institutional individual, who in everything takes into consideration the interests of the institution which he works for, sacrificing everything else.
It is not wrong to work for an institution. I know YWAM since 1984, and I had many national and international contacts with people from YWAM. I read the biography of Loren Cunningham, founder of YWAM in the US, and I liked very much. I praised and I praise God for his life. Even so, I admit that over the time religious institutions become corrupted. They become slowly corrupted until to reach the stature of a futility and imbecility far from their own foundation. Harvard University, founded centuries ago to form evangelical ministers, is an excellent example. It became so corrupted that today it effectively forms anti-Christian activists. YWAM owns major institutions, including a great university in Hawaii, and such human greatness requires caution to avoid the first steps into futility and imbecility.
Throughout the history, the biggest resistance to the Holy Spirit moves came from institutional Christians, that is, Christians connected to institutions that, even though founded on Christian principles, got hardened in a closed vision, resisting God’s actions.
I do not think that churches should have moved beforehand, decades ago, to fight the prejudice against the murder of Indian children or against homosexuality or against abortion.
Indian infanticide worries me, because it involves the sacrifice of children. Abortion worries me, because it involves the sacrifice of children. The advance of the gay agenda worries me, because it involves the sexual sacrifice of boys. The absolute majority of homosexuals suffered experiences of sex abuse. And while society is pressed by gay militants to give special attention to rare cases of murdered homosexuals — many of them involving sexual affairs as cause or even high risk behaviors of homosexuals that walk through insecure drug and prostitution quarters at 2 a.m. — thousands of boys are raped and even murdered, and society and Bráulias do not remember that children deserve protection against an admittedly-threatening sexual behavior
Bráulia Ribeiro and the leftist chorus
The call from Bráulia “We have the Christian obligation to fight homophobia… The anti-homophobia voice should have been heard firstly from our mouth…” has been echoing throughout the Christian left. Not by coincidence, her article was published in the Eclésia magazine, a direct successor of the overtly leftist Vinde magazine, founded by Caio Fábio, who was the responsible for the approximation of evangelical leaders to Lula many years ago. This Brazilian magazine, which was busy indoctrinating the Brazilian public with a leftist vision, never spared efforts to neutralize Christian actions not complying with the Theology of Liberation dictates.
Her article was also published in the FENASP website, founded by Bishop Robson Rodovalho, a socialist politician who openly supported Lula in the last two presidential elections in Brazil.
Not by coincidence also, Bráulia is a regular contributor for Ultimato, a leftist evangelical magazine, and she has a book published by the Ultimato publishing house. The ideological extremism of Ultimato would never have allowed so a strong involvement or bond if Bráulia did not have in major points the same interests. Bráulia’s voice in the “homophobia” issue is the voice of the world Christian left.
Socialism — whether evangelical or anti-Christian — does two things: promotes the advance of their ideology and demotes all authentic Christian vision and mobilization not conforming to the will of Karl Marx.
While Muslims, socialists and gay activists impose a sharia, Bráulia Ribeiro attacks Christian activism
When a Christian tries to help protect Indian children from murders, secularist priests appear with charges that we are imposing a Christian culture, etc. They label us Nazi, etc. Perhaps the only term they did not use still is that we want to impose a Christian sharia — a Muslim term Bráulia used against Christians fighting the gay agenda. Her term will serve greatly in the repertory of those attacking all kind of Christian mobilization in the society.
If the winds of institutional interests or objectives were blowing in the opposed direction, Bráulia could possibly have behaved in an inverse way, giving preference to the homosexual subject and to the sexual sacrifice of boys, and making Christians opposed to Indian infanticide equal to Muslims wanting to impose a sharia.
For her own interest, Bráulia did not use the term sharia in the issue of Indian infanticide, even though the YWAM enemies are essentially saying that YWAM is imposing a sharia on the “Indian culture”. What is Bráulia going to do to appease the wrath from the YWAM enemies? “Hey, you secularists, anthropologists and Lula administration! I also want to show that I am allied to you in some points. I am going to do it to gain your sympathy and friendship! Are you opposed to homophobia? Me too! What about now? Can we be friends now? I am being kindly to you in the homophobia issue. Now be kindly to me in the Indian infanticide issue”.
Even as YWAM is treated by its enemies, so Bráulia treated the Christian opposition to the gay agenda — perhaps as a compromise and bargain.
But why to be in friendship with the world only halfheartedly? Why to be hard in one issue and soft in another? Why to be lukewarm to please everybody?
She makes compromises even in music, embracing the practice of singing secular songs in the YWAM evangelical meetings. If the objective is to please, to make compromises is a must.
Real Christian activism should fight every wicked agenda
Because of the video “Hakani” of YWAM on Indian infanticide and because of my friend Dr. Damares Alves, I got involved in the fight against murders of Indian children. I had the privilege to know personally Hakani, Bráulia Ribeiro and Dr. Wilson Bonfim, who fight Indian infanticide. The first time she saw me, the girl Hakani said to her mother Márcia, “See Jesus Christ there, mommy!” The only reason I do not fight in a more intensive way is because, thank God, there are many groups and Christians engaged in this fight.
In the homosexual issue, when I began my awareness campaign years ago through my book O Movimento Homossexual (The Homosexual Movement), published by the Brazilian branch of Bethany House Publishers, the absolute majority of Christians were frightened to confront the gay agenda. Today, not much, but disinformation, timidity and even fear still persist. The reason is simple: To fight the gay agenda is so risky as to fight Indian infanticide, because the liberal and leftist media gives no value to those battling in these two fronts. My mission is to keep my awareness campaign.
The Indian infanticide issue does not affect the whole Brazil, but only the Indian tribes. Yet, the homosexual issue affects Brazil from North to South. It affects poor and rich. It affects atheists and Christians. Rich and poor homosexuals, born into Christian or atheist homes, confess experiences of abuse. Men raping boys is not a reality restricted to tribes. It is a reality present throughout the Brazilian society. So my fight is to help Brazil to avoid the destiny of Sodom and Gomorrah.
However, our fight against the gay agenda, the abortion agenda and the socialist and secularist agenda protecting and covering Indian infanticide requires union, because a “household divided against itself will not last”. And this household has been very divided, with Christian leaders who do not denounce the gay agenda and the pro-homosexuality campaigns by the federal government because they themselves have alliances with the Lula administration. And now why is YWAM in Brazil joining the anti-“homophobia” chorus? Does YWAM in Brazil want to alleviate the burden of its uncomfortable “cultural” situation before the Lula administration?
“I do not want the right to be against evil in the society”
“I do not want the right to be homophobic” is nothing else than a big appeal directed to the cultural forces today hostilizing YWAM in Brazil because of the movie “Hakani”. “Homophobic” is a politically-charged adjective whose meaning is: an individual that hates homosexuals.
For the homosexual activists, every minister preaching against homosexuality is “homophobic”.
For the homosexual activists, every parent protecting their children from homosexuality is “homophobic”.
For the homosexual activists, every citizen fighting the gay agenda is “homophobic”.
For the homosexual activists, every former homosexual sharing that homosexuality can be left is “homophobic”.
“Homophobic” is an adjective used usually by the cultural forces that hostilize the Christian opposition to the gay agenda. In her wish to appease those forces that also hate YWAM, Bráulia has debased herself by using the same term of hate they use to throw Christian to the lions.
How to leave the lion’s den without throwing other Christians into there?
Daniel was saved from the lion’s den because he trusted God. But some Christians today want to leave the lion’s den by throwing other Christians into there.
“I do not want the right to be homophobic” is a title that pleases secularists and the Lula administration. But if Bráulia wants to keep pleasing, she will need to write also “I do not want the right to be against the Indian culture”, because whatever she or I try to explain, all that secularists and the Lula administration are able to see in the Indian infanticide is “Indian culture”. Nothing else.
If to receive the support and sympathy from the media, we who fight the gay agenda have to throw into the lion’s den our brothers and sisters who fight Indian infanticide, this is a cost I do not want to pay.
It is a pity that in her praiseworthy fight against Indian infanticide, Bráulia has chosen to pay such cost, with the heads of those sacrificially fighting the gay agenda.
Source: http://www.lastdayswatchman.blogspot.com
Before the gay-agenda threats in Brazil, where are the powerful evangelical leaders? The powerful are with the powerful. Not accidentally, the inauguration of Record News, a news channel owned by TV Record, had the attendance of the “powerful” Lula, who wanted to be together with the “powerful” Bishop Edir Macedo, the founder of the “powerful” IURD. The powerful please the powerful.
Daniel escaped from the lion’s den because of his integrity before God, especially his spiritual and financial integrity. Today, the “great men of God” leave the lion’s den — dens of scandals and corruption they dig themselves through their lack of integrity — pleasing the powerful.
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