Tuesday, January 16, 2024

The Christian Post claims religious right groups never demonized the LGBTQ community. The many 'receipts' tell a different story.



A conservative evangelical publication, The Christian Post, is angry that the Biden Administration is working with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Conservative evangelicals (publications, groups, and personalities) have had a beef with SPLC ever since the group began labeling certain religious right organizations (such as the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom) as hate groups because of their constant verbal and legislative attacks on the LGBTQ community.

While defending these groups, Christian Post "reporter" Tyler O'Neil, in the piece Anti-Christian bias in the Biden White House, made this unbelievable statement.

The SPLC publishes a “hate map” that plots conservative Christian organizations like the Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC brands these groups “anti-LGBTQ hate groups,” claiming that they demonize people who identify as LGBTQ. Contrary to the SPLC’s claims, neither FRC nor ADF demonize people for their sexual orientation or gender identity. They do, however, advocate for religious freedom and the biblical view of sexuality and the family.

O'Neil is lying. We know this because SPLC, GLAAD, and others have documented the many times FRC and ADF have demonized the LGBTQ community. 

The Family Research Council

From SPLC 

"For years, LGBT activists wanted to keep the goal of luring children into sexual confusion under wraps. Now that they’ve hoodwinked a lot of the country on their agenda, these extremists no longer have to hide. In fact, they are increasingly bold–even boastful–about their real intentions of recruiting kids.” – Tony Perkins, “‘I Have a Girl Brain but a Boy Body’: Virginia Kindergartners Are Read Transgender Story,” posted at The Daily Signal, March 6, 2019 

Editor's note - Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council.

 “Homosexual activists vehemently reject the evidence which suggests that homosexual men … are … relative to their numbers, more likely to engage in such actions [childhood sexual abuse] than are heterosexual men.” – Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at FRC, on why the Boy Scouts should not allow LGBTQ scouts or leaders, FRC blog, Feb. 1, 2013 

 From GLAAD

  (FRC) baselessly claimed, in a document written by Robert Knight and Robert York titled “Homosexual Behavior and Pedophilia,” that “one of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order.” The document also claimed that the “homosexual rights movement has tried to distance itself from pedophilia, but only for public relations purposes.” SPLC notes that the booklet has since disappeared from FRC’s website, but the organization has not withdrawn the claims it made. Former reality television star Josh Duggar, who directed FRC’s lobbying arm FRC Action, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in May 2022 after being convicted of child pornography possession that a Homeland Security investigator described as among the most abusive and horrific he had ever seen. Duggar was also charged with child molestation for abusing five underage girls, including four of his sisters. 

Also

(Tony Perkins also) claimed gay parents “provide distorted values to innocent adopted kids.” 

 

 And below is a video of Tony Perkins claiming that gays are the "pawns of the enemy" (i.e. Satan)

 

The Alliance Defending Freedom 

 According to O'Neill: 

 The SPLC claims that ADF has supported criminalizing LGBTQ identity, a claim ADF has repeatedly denied.

 But SPLC has the 'receipts,' so to speak. 

 ADF also has worked to keep LGBTQ sex criminalized. In 2003, the group filed an amicus brief in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that various laws prohibiting private sexual acts between LGBTQ adults were unconstitutional. In the brief, page after page describes, in graphic detail, vaginal, oral and anal intercourse and various infections that may result from the latter. ADF argued that the Texas ban was in the interest of public health, because gay men and lesbians, the brief contended, engage in “risky” sexual behaviors that increase the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. “The issue under rational-basis review is not whether Texas should be concerned about opposite-sex sodomy,” it argued, “but whether it is reasonable to believe that same-sex sodomy is a distinct public health problem. It clearly is.” 

 In 2003,(former ADF President Michael) Farris, before joining ADF, also co-wrote a 2003 amicus brief with ADF attorneys Jordan Lorence and Joshua Carden in support of Texas’ criminalization of LGBTQ sex in Lawrence v. Texas. Farris listed his affiliation in the brief as the Center for the Original Intent of the Constitution, which was formed in 1998 by the HSLDA and then was moved under the auspices of Patrick Henry College. The brief argued that states should have the right to police and criminalize sexual behavior, stating: “Defining the criminality of certain forms of sexual conduct, such as same-sex sodomy, is a policy issue that has historically and properly been left to the state legislatures.”

 In addition, SPLC also has documented statements from ADF members which also contradict O'Neil's claim.

 “When given the same choice the Supreme Court of the United States had in Lawrence vs. Texas, the Indian Court did the right thing. India chose to protect society at large rather than give in to a vocal minority of homosexual advocates. … America needs to take note that a country of 1.2 billion people has rejected the road towards same-sex marriage, and understood that these kinds of bad decisions in the long run will harm society.” – Benjamin Bull, former executive director of ADF Global, on the recriminalization of consensual sex between adults of the same sex in India, 2013

In fact, according to SPLC, the ADF has worked internationally for laws to imprison LGBTQ people based upon their sexual orientation.

 ADF, which has argued that removing anti-LGBTQ laws from criminal codes will pave the way to marriage equality, has worked to keep those laws on the books, but mostly overseas since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws in this country. The group has advised anti-LGBTQ organizations in countries like Belize that are trying to keep the law that criminalized LGBTQ sex on the books. That law was declared unconstitutional by the Belize Supreme Court in 2016. 

 . . .  Other ADF attorneys have publicly advocated retaining anti-sodomy laws. Jeffrey Ventrella and Piero Tozzi, two senior counsels for ADF at the time, spoke at a 2012 conference in Jamaica, with Tozzi defending the laws as a “bulwark” against an unspecified “agenda.” 

 And speaking of the demonization of LGBTQ people, SPLC has ADF statements to that effect: 

 “We mention the new promotion of pedophilia in the context of talking about the influence of homosexual behavior on college campuses, because, despite all objections to the contrary, the two are often intrinsically linked.” – Alan Sears and Craig Osten, The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today, 2003

 According to GLAAD, the ADF committed the following deceptive acts against the LGBTQ community.

 Made false claims in filings against transgender students looking to participate in sports. A softball player testified in front of Arizona lawmakers in support of a ban on transgender athletes, but did not disclose she was the daughter of ADF’s general counsel, and her testimony included the false claim that her team lost a tournament to team with a transgender player. The player was not transgender; she had short hair. 

 For nearly a decade colluded with the American College of Pediatricians (ACP) to shore up anti-transgender policy efforts and legal arguments with junk science. The ACP uses anti-LGBTQ junk science to back up many of its discriminatory talking points and to provide medical justification for interpreting Title IX to exclude gender-identity protections. Because the ADF lacked scientific evidence to back up its claims that nondiscrimination protections put children at risk, the organization ordered custom white papers from ACP. The coordination also extended to ADF drafting legislation for many states to ban transgender healthcare; ACP members were recruited to testify in support of those bans in GA, AL, KY and OH. Despite testifying before state legislatures in support of the bills, ACP’s “experts” have been discredited as not qualified to be experts in court, including Dr. Quentin van Meter and Dr. Paul Hruz

 Apparently Christian evangelicals like O'Neil and others who read The Christian Post probably support Donald Trump because they have more in common with him than they would like to admit.

For one thing, they all lie like hell.

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