Friday, June 10, 2016

Houston anti-lgbt group launch vile national ad campaign against Target, transgender community

It is always my hope that readers will feel that my posts are significant enough to share amongst their friends and the community at large. From time to time, I even will implore readers to  share certain posts which I feel are vitally important to the mission of this blog.

This is one of those times.

Yesterday, I published a post with the video below about how Anita Bryant was the first to demonstrate the power of anti-lgbt propaganda and stereotypes in legislative fights over lgbt equality:




That fact and the video in question is highly important because of the following video.

According to The New Civil Rights Movement:

A Houston-based anti-LGBT hate group has launched a national ad campaign against retailer Target featuring a remake of the disgusting TV spot that effectively deceived voters into repealing the city's Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) last November.
  
Steve Hotze and Jared Woodfill, both key players in the anti-HERO "Campaign for Houston," say they plan to spend $2 million on their "Campaign for USA," which calls for people to boycott Target over its policy, announced in April, allowing trans people to use restrooms and dressing rooms according to their gender identity in its stores.

Here's the new ad, which ignores that existing laws already outlaw predatory behavior:



This ad, like the ads above with Anita Bryant, are filthy lies which exploits two things - people's personal beliefs and/or ignorance about the lgbt community and the fear of every parent that their children will be put into danger.

They are  "headless monsters, i.e. negative beliefs which have been refuted continuously but remain powerful because their defenders continue to prop them up by claiming that they are true.

"Headless monsters"  pushed against the gay community are no different than those pushed against African-Americans by white supremacists groups or accusations lodged against the Jewish community by anti-Semitic groups. They are all preconceived notions rooted in fear and lies. The only difference being that anti-gay propaganda is sometimes mistaken as “personal deeply held religious beliefs” and expressions of the Christian faith.  And they are highly successful tools in turning people against lgbt equality and will continue to be successful until our community confronts them aggressively and BEFORE we are put into a situation where we are put on the defensive and having to play catch up.

It's a shame that we hae the same lies in 2016 that we've had to battle in 1978.  Perhaps it's time that we not only go after the lies but publicly call out the motivations of the so-called moral people pushing these lies.

Let's start putting THEM on the defensive for a welcomed change.

Related posts:

A Comprehensive Guide To The Debunked “Bathroom Predator” Myth - Everything you need to know about the "bathroom predator" lie pushed by "Campaign for USA."

How They See Us: Unmasking the Religious Right War on Gay America - a 16 page, graphics-intensive look at how religious right and anti-lgbt groups use lies, junk science, and cherry-picked science to demonize the lgbt community.


Using religious liberty as a weapon for homophobia


Peter Montgomery,  a senior fellow at  People for the American Way, recently came out with a column dissecting how the anti-lgbt right uses the argument of religious liberty as a weapon against our community.

It should be required reading.

Here is an excerpt:

For the second year in a row, more than 100 pieces of anti-LGBT legislation were introduced in state legislatures during the first few months of the year, many of them promoted as measures to protect religious liberty. How did something as fundamentally American as religious freedom become a culture war weapon against LGBT people and their families?

The religious right has a long history of equating criticism with persecution, and portraying political losses and legal defeats as attacks on faith and freedom. Its followers have been told for years that feminists, liberals, and gays are out to silence people of faith, and even to criminalize Christianity.

There’s a sinister logic to the strategy: It is easier to convince fair-minded people to support discrimination against their gay neighbors if you first convince them that the gay rights movement is out to destroy their churches and families.

Read more of The Weaponization of Religious Liberty