Minister sells out Black community for race-baiting National Organization for Marriage

Harry Jackson

The National Organization for Marriage has been steadily attempting to blunt the charges that it engaged in attempts to drive a wedge between the black and gay communities on the subject of marriage equality.

Ever since confidential documents came out detailing NOM's strategy to play the gay and black communities against one another, the organization has engaged in several tactics push aside the knowledge that these documents exist.

The most egregious has been when NOM shines a spotlight on black ministers defending the organization's attempts to manipulate the black community.

The last time NOM tried this was with Bishop George McKinney and in his attempt to defend NOM, he went out of his way to avoid talking about the specific passage in the documents which outlined NOM's wedge strategy.

This week, NOM spotlighted Minister Harry Jackson of the High Impact Leadership Coalition.

Jackson says the following on a post naturally published on NOM's blog:

For three years, I have stood shoulder to shoulder with Brian Brown and the National Organization for Marriage, fighting to protect marriage in Maryland and in our nation's capital.

Together—for the first time in Maryland—we have built a true rainbow coalition of Blacks, Latinos and whites, Republicans and Democrats, Catholics, evangelicals, Mormons and Jews, all working together to protect and preserve marriage. It's a new phase in the battle for marriage—and critical as we head toward a referendum this fall.

The National Organization for Marriage has done so much to protect marriage, not only in Maryland, but in similar battles all across the country.

It's no wonder groups like the Human Rights Campaign and The New York Times are trying to tear our coalition apart.

My answer? Not a chance!

The ugly insinuations and outright lies I have seen over the past two weeks are nothing short of reprehensible. They're trying to create the impression that NOM is exploiting racial division—using Blacks and Hispanics to further its political agenda.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Naturally Jackson doesn't address NOM's documents anywhere in his piece. The documents which said the following on page 11:

The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks - two key democratic constituencies. We aim to find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; to develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; and to provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party.

This is nothing that Jackson hasn't done before You see, Jackson has provided cover for the religious right several times. In fact, according to a People for the American Way report, Harry Jackson: Point Man for the Wedge Strategy, he is considered a star in the religious right's supposed outreach into the black community:

In recent years, Religious Right leaders have made a major push to elevate the visibility and voices of politically conservative African American pastors. The star of that effort has been Bishop Harry Jackson. Jackson, the pastor of a congregation in Maryland, has been ushered into the Religious Right’s inner circle since he announced in 2004 that God had told him to work for the reelection of George W. Bush. Since then, Jackson has become somewhat of an all-purpose activist and pundit for right-wing causes – everything from judicial nominations to immigration and oil drilling -- but his top priorities mirror those of the Religious Right: he’s fervently anti-abortion and dead-set against gay equality. And he has enthusiastically adopted the Right’s favorite propaganda tactic: he routinely portrays liberals, especially gay-rights activists, as enemies of faith, family, and religious liberty.

Jackson has big ambitions. He sees himself as a game changer in the culture war, someone who can help conservative Christians “take the land” by bringing about a political alliance between white and black evangelicals. Religious Right leaders see him that way, too, which is why they’ve helped Jackson build his public profile.

The irony is that this report was written over a year before the documents regarding NOM came out. And if you have never heard of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, then don't hate yourself. It's nothing more than a silly shell group which has not pull nor any power in the black community as the vast majority of us have never heard of it. The organization is nothing more than an ego booster created by Jackson to make it seem that the Black church is going hand-in-hand with the predominantly white religious right on several issues.

 Like so many other African-Americans put on a pedestal by conservative groups, Jackson's purpose is not outreach in the black community, but to give the inaccurate impression that predominantly white conservative groups actually care about the black community.

In other words, Harry Jackson is a token. Other African-Americans would use stronger words to describe Jackson's bowing and scraping and "yess suh bossin" to the predominantly white conservative movement.

But I won't. At least not here.

I will say however that  I find Jackson's willingness to defend NOM to be extremely distasteful. He is a liar who sold his integrity and soul to defend an organization who is exploiting his people like they aren't human, but rather chess pieces who exist on NOM's will and pleasure.

His personal feelings about gays are irrelevant. Jackson is a minster, which is a prime leadership position in the black community. Ministers in the black community are seen as protectors. They are not only our voices but our consciences. They are not supposed to lead the community into any type of danger, whether it be physical, mental, or spiritual.

If Jackson was a true black leader, then he should have been demanding answers from NOM for its race-baiting and its attempt to use black people as soulless pawns. But instead, he not only provides cover for it, but participates in this exploitation. I wonder if he realizes how many lgbtq youth will be harmed from hearing their pastors attack them in the pulpit thanks to NOM's strategy.

I wonder if Jackson thinks about the many resources wasted in the black community because of NOM's divide and conquer strategy.

And I wonder if Jackson thinks about how much focus and attention will be taken away from the true problems which plague the black community because of NOM's strategy.

I'm sure that Jackson has thought about these things. And frankly, I'll bet that he just doesn't care.

'NOM's anti-Starbucks campaign continues to flop' and other Monday midday news briefs

Liberty Counsel Revives Campaign against the Day of Silence - And it's a lazy attack. One would think that they aren't even trying anymore.

NOM’s International Boycott of Starbucks is a Total Flop - Poor NOM. The smallest violin in the world plays for them.

Breaking: straight philanthropist Todd Stiefel launches $100,000 matching donation campaign to defeat Amendment One - The momentum against Amendment One continues to grow.

CNN Includes Gay Adoption Advocate In ‘Heroes’ Series - Excellent segment.

Conservative Group Whines About Urban Outfitters’ Gay Advertising - One Million Moms will continue its losing streak.

Focus on The Family staffers were concerned about hate group leader's anti-gay rhetoric

Tony Perkins

Focus on the Family has just written a piece attacking GLAAD for its Commentator Accountability Project.

You will remember that GLAAD began this project as a way of educating the media on the true rhetoric of religious right groups - rhetoric that anti-gay spokesmen are not questioned on by the mainstream media because they put on another face when talking to news organizations like CNN and MSNBC.

In the piece, Focus on the Family's also defends Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council against the group Faithful America. Faithful America recently began a campaign asking that Chris Matthews of Hardball stop featuring Perkins as an expert on his show. Focus on the Family claims that Faithful America and GLAAD wants to silence people like Perkins for supposedly standing up for Christian values:

*By “anti-gay activist,” GLAAD means anyone who believes and speaks out on the truth that God designed sex to unite a man and a woman in marriage, ruling out sexual activity outside that union, with children being a possible result.

But Jeremy Hooper from Goodasyou.org just published something which exposes Focus on the Family as hypocrites. Apparently in January, a staffer from the organization lodged some concerns about Perkins' rhetoric in an email to Hooper:

Hooper says this about revealing the email:

You know what, Focus on the Family staffer? I did stay tuned to see if these concerns made their way to the public. I held up my end of the bargain. But while I was waiting for that to happen, a funny (but not funny "ha ha") thing occurred. I instead watched as Focus on the Family personality after Focus on the Family personality flat-out lied about GLAAD CAP, completely overlooked the "approach and tone" that led someone like Tony on the list, and acted as if we LGBT activists are absolute crazypants opponents of free speech for having and expressing these concerns. I waited patiently, sitting on information that I knew to be true, in hopes that some of you would have the fortitude to publicly talk about reasonable concerns that I know that you know to be true as well.

. . . Even though "off record" was never requested, I never intended to make this public. I never intended to burn down whatever personal bridges had been forged over the years in spite of the deep political differences. I never wanted to force Focus on the Family to go public with their own conversations of concern about Tony Perkins' "approach and tone." The startling lack of ethics and hypocrisy that Focus on the Family has shown towards GLAAD CAP, a project with which I have intimate familiarity, forced my hand.

It is pretty much hypocritical for Focus on the Family to attack GLAAD and Faithful America for lodging concerns about Perkins' anti-gay rhetoric when some in the organization itself has done the same thing.

And Hooper deserves a lot of kudos for exposing this hypocrisy.

Religious right spokesman whines about being labeled as a 'wacko'

Peter LaBarbera

The religious right can't handle scientific proof which destroys their anti-gay narratives.

Last week, it was the Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber who attacked an Australian study which proved what many of us knew - that homophobia leads to poor health in gays.

The results of that particular study reached a conclusion similar to another study conducted but the American Psychological Association.

Barber attacked the study and the APA, calling the organization a political organization. However he neither offered up any other studies refuting the Australian study nor did he provide any proof that the APA has turned "political."

This week, another religious right spokesman attacked another study for proving what many of us probably suspects when it comes to those who are homophobic:

A recent article in Science Daily, a news website for topical science articles, suggests opposition to homosexual conduct is strongest from individuals with an "unacknowledged attraction" to the same gender.

Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) has spent years exposing the true agenda of homosexual activism. He says the idea presented in "Is Some Homophobia Self-Phobia?" is just another myth from the left to take aim at people who oppose homosexuality.

"The larger issue here is homosexuality once was studied as a pathology. Now, liberal academics are studying so-called 'homophobes,'" he notes. "The media and academia are completely trying to normalize homosexual practice, and in the process they have to stigmatize anybody who resists."

Though there are not enough of them, says the activist, the researchers want to convey those individuals as "wackos."

"We've got all these pathologies within the homosexual world -- men who beat their partners, you've got high rates of STDs through the roof for men who have sex with men -- and yet none of that merits a study that would come out and say that homosexual practice is wrong," LaBarbera laments. "Instead, they have to study so-called homophobes."

Like Barber, LaBarbera has no expertise in research or science. And like Barber, LaBarbera offers no refutation to this study simply because he has none.

However if you ask me, perhaps LaBarbera should have kept his mouth shut.

In gay blogging circles, LaBarbera goes by the nom de plume of "Porno Pete" because of his penchant of attending leather events and "street fairs" with his camera, looking for "filthy images" to publicize on his webpage as an example of the so-called real face of lgbt America.

At least he used to until he couldn't take the attention given to him because of it.

That's not to say that LaBarbera has totally abandoned the habit of attempting to shock folks. Recently he published a close up photo of a sexually transmitted disease (anal warts) in a pathetic attempt to demonize the gay community.

That was his attempt. The outcome, however was that he did in fact look like a "wacko."

I'm certainly not making any assumptions about LaBarbera's orientation, but based upon his history of attacking the gay community,  some would probably claim that "the lady doth protest too much, methinks."