Tech

Apple Bans Pro-Traditional Marriage App After Campaign From LGBT Group

Published

2 years ago

Dec 27, 2018

Mark down another loss for religious liberty Thursday, not at the hands of government, but rather at the hands of the Palo Alto Mafia.

“Living Hope Ministries (LHM) has had its app for about three years, but the program was pulled by Apple just a day after Truth Wins Out, a group opposing conversion therapy, pushed to have it removed,” according to NBC5.

The ministry’s app was accused of supporting gay conversion therapy – a claim which cannot be verified now that the app is offline. But LHM’s website does not seem out of the ordinary for a conservative Christian organization.

“Living Hope Ministries is a non-profit, non-denominational, 501(c)3 organization whose mission is to proclaim God’s truth as we journey with those who are seeking sexual and relational wholeness through a more intimate relationship with Jesus Christ,” it says.

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It would appear that their only sin was opposing gay marriage.

“LHM proclaims a Christ-centered, Biblical world-view of sexual expression rooted in one man and one woman in a committed, monogamous, heterosexual marriage for life. Anything less than this ideal, falls short of God’s best for humanity,” the page said.

Is any group that supports traditional marriage now subject to de-platforming by Apple and its Silicon Valley cronies? That much is unclear. But what is clear is that it is a scary time in America when a gigantic private corporation can simply make an organization disappear based on religious and political beliefs.

Regardless of your stance on gay marriage, this is a disconcerting precedent.

“The group that petitioned the app, Truth Wins Out, thanked Apple in a statement saying the app ‘stigmatizes and demeans LGBT people,'” according to the article. “It went on to call ex-gay programs consumer fraud.”

A Change.org petition to de-platform the app was also launched before the app was banned.

“The Apple Store is now peddling an outrageously offensive ‘ex-gay’ app that targets ‘Youth and Young Adults’ to change from gay-to-straight through prayer and therapy,” said the petition’s creator Steve Dowling.

Praying for homosexuals to abide by the word of God is relatively innocuous for a group whose deeply held religious beliefs dictate that gay marriage is wrong. Since when did it become a crime to be religious in America?

Soon, the only churches that will be allowed to exist in America will be the progressive ones that only preach God’s love, forgetting that repentance and God’s wrath are central biblical themes.

Follow Peter D’Abrosca on Twitter: @pdabrosca

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Tech

Justice Department Files Antitrust Lawsuit Against Google

Published

8 hours ago

Oct 20, 2020

Evan James

On Tuesday morning the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet Inc.’s Google, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The lawsuit accuses Google of engaging in monopolistic, anticompetitive practices to tighten their stranglehold on the search and search advertising market.

In the words of the WSJ report, the company is “maintaining its status as gatekeeper to the internet through an unlawful web of exclusionary and interlocking business agreements that shut out competitors.” Google also allegedly uses billions of dollars in ad revenue to pay smartphone manufacturers, carriers, and browsers, so that they “maintain Google as their preset, default search engine.”

Many have been eagerly awaiting this move for some time. Big League Politics published an article five months ago on the Justice Department’s intention to file an antitrust suit against the tech giant:

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Despite the Wuhan virus pandemic making work complicated for the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr has allocated significant resources into the Google investigation and continues to place it as a top priority. Barr told The Wall Street Journal in March that he wanted the Justice Department to make a final decision this summer. “I’m hoping that we bring it to fruition early summer,” Barr said during the time. “And by fruition I mean, decision time.”

Paxton said the pandemic was not preventing his office from pursuing further action. “We’ve issued [civil subpoenas] to Google and impacted third parties. We hope to have the investigation wrapped up by fall,” Paxton declared in a statement. “If we determine that filing is merited we will go to court soon after that.”

Google responded to the lawsuit saying, “Today’s lawsuit by the Department of Justice is deeply flawed. People use Google because they choose to—not because they’re forced to or because they can’t find alternatives. We will have a fuller statement this morning.”

It’s about time we see one of these Big Tech behemoths get challenged in court. Hopefully this represents a first step in the government going after Silicon Valley in general.