Thursday, February 05, 2009

The religious right and the precision of their lies

Earlier this week, while I speculated on the power of the religious right echo chamber, People for the American Way did me one better.

The organization is following an actual case demonstrating just how the religious right is able to successfully push distortions and lies.

The following increments is taken from PFAW's Religious Right Watch:

ACLJ Demands Non-Existent Threat Be Stripped from Stimulus Bill - Feb. 3, 2009 - The right wing American Center for Law and Justice inaccurately claims that President Obama's stimulus package contains a threat to religious activities on colleges and universities.

DeMint Lends Voice to Bogus Controversy Over Stimulus Bill - Feb. 4, 2009 - My Senator from South Carolina, Jim (gays shouldn't be allowed to teach) DeMint gets involved.

Bogus Stimulus Outcry Grows as Liberty Counsel and TVC Hop on the Bandwagon - Feb. 4, 2009 - the Liberty Counsel and the Traditional Values Coalition get involved. Also, the lie gets a shout-out from Fox News due to this unbelievably biased framing of the issue - "Democrats in Congress have declared war on prayer, say conservative groups who object to a provision in the stimulus bill that was passed by the House of Representatives last week. "

ACLJ's Zombie Lie Becomes Official Right Wing Talking Point - Feb. 5, 2009 - Now the Family Research Council gets involved.

The Zombie Lie Lumbers On - Feb. 5, 2009 - And now the Christian Anti-Defamation League get involved. You remember that group, don't you? They were the ones who accused President Obama of bashing Christians simply because he has a different view of the religion.

Sen. DeMint Spews Zombie Lies on Senate Floor, Compares Opponents to George Wallace - Feb. 5, 2009 - And now, Senator DeMint has been handed the ball and he is running with it. By the way, the defintion of irony alert - South Carolina Senator DeMint evoking the image of a racist George Wallace while the Confederate Flag hangs at the SC State House along with a statue dedicated to a virulent racist (Ben "Pitchfork" Tillman) who bragged on the Senate floor about murdering African-Americans.

And that, my friends, is how it is done.

While I certainly can't give the religious right points for integrity, they get a '10' in precision.
See how they lie

Jeremy from Good As You pointed this out and I just want to piggyback on it.

Yesterday, I wrote how Peter LaBarbera is going on another crusade against an alleged bondage/sadomaschistic event at a hotel.

Usually LaBarbera goes after gay subcultural events and tries to use them to generalize about all lgbts.

However, this event in question has to do with heterosexuals, not lgbts. Even LaBarbera's screechings about the event emphasizes this point.

But today comes the news that this doesn't stop World Net Daily from proclaiming the following:

Another homo-sex-fest set for hotel'

Winter Wickedness' to include 'sadomasochistic perversion'

What can you say about a "Christian" news source that will tell such a blatant lie?
Say it with me now - GO AWAY SALLY KERN!

I never did like the controversy regarding Oklahoma legislator Sally Kern.

I didn't like the way she consistently relied on bad information from Paul Cameron and the religious right to make her case that lgbts are as bad as terrorists.

I didn't like the way she hid behind her so-called Christian religion when questioned about her comments.

And most of all, I didn't like how the lgbt community pretty much let her get away with it.

We wasted time speculating on whether or not her son was gay or talking about what Ellen DeGeneres said about the situation. The fact that Sally Kern was a good example of how the religious right flim flams guillible people of faith into believing the worst about lgbts was a point that got lost in all of the controversy.

I was glad when the controversy died down. One wonders if Kern was because she keeps making an ass of herself:

Speaking at the Clouds Over America conference, run and organized by the John Birch Society in Oklahoma City, Kern told a welcoming crowd that she found the elusive gay agenda between the pages of Marshall Kirk's and Hunter Madsen's 1990 book After The Ball: How America Will Conquer Its fear & Hatred Of Gays In The 90s. Its authors mostly argue in 432 pages that gays and lesbians will most likely be accepted once they are liked by the general public.

Oklahoma Gazette, the Oklahoma City alternative weekly, reports Kern spoke to a packed crowd.

“You know,” Kern said, “I've done a lot of reading on this. I wish I could describe to you their behavior. I will not because I would be redder than this suit. It's their behavior that we oppose.”


Here we go again. Gays are following a six point plan to take over America. It's a standard urban legend in religious right dogma.

From time to time, the religious right will claim that the lgbt community is using the book After the Ball as a sort of blueprint to allegedly force acceptance. Then they will point to certain incidents that somehow "connect all of the dots."

To a lot of us, these incidents (i.e. more visibility and a little more acceptance for lgbts and our families) mean nothing more than positive evolutionary steps of the human existence. To the religious right, these steps are the result of planning by a group of evil geniuses intent on conquest.

Apparently they got us mixed up with their efforts to ban same-sex marriage nationwide.

For the record, the vast majority of lgbts have never heard of After the Ball - not that it matters to Kern and folks who agree with her.

The real question is will our community finally bring more attention to the fact that the religious right is intentionally putting out bad propaganda about lgbts?

Somehow I doubt that this will happen.

To some of us, it's much more fun to focus on issues such as Kern's age or weight.