Anti-gay marriage amendment supporter in North Carolina urinates on sign

From my online buddies Jeremy Hooper and Louis Marinelli ,  comes proof that some folks are getting out of hand in voicing their support for Amendment One in North Carolina - the bill which would not only outlaw marriage equality (which is already outlawed in the state as it is) but would cause chaos with unmarried couples and domestic violence laws.

Recently, a teen was filmed shooting down an anti-Amendment One sign (causing a justifiably negative reaction). THIS particular young man, Chris Kaliber, goes farther.

He states on his video page that he is "voting for the Bible."

But the way he chooses to do so has nothing to do with the Bible or the ballot box, but demonstrating that he chooses not to control his water



This is not a joke. I asked him on his video page - "Regardless of how you feel, was it really necessary to do this thing. Make your choice at the ballot box."

This is what he said - "Yes, yes it was."

As disgusting as what this young man does, I don't blame him more than I blame the National Organization for Marriage.

History has shown us that instigators generally come into communities and exploit people's fears, beliefs, and prejudices until chaos arises.

Take a good look, Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown, and the rest of the folks at NOM. This is what YOU  helped cause.

Editor's note - Again, the only way we can speak out against this madness is to make it known, regardless of how angry we may get.

Anti-gay street group's video of supposed violence fits its record of entrapment

TFP street group creates questionable incidents of alleged 'pro-gay' violence.

Peter Sprigg, the National Organization for Marriage (and no doubt many others in the religious right) are touting the following video of a religious right organization supposedly being attacked by those who favor marriage equality:



If you don't want to seen the entire video (called Attacked by Tolerance), I don't blame you.  It merely shows snippets of incidents We don't really see many of these incidents in their entirety. This is what its summary says:

In this video, volunteers with the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) describe how they were violently assaulted by pro-homosexual "marriage" advocates while supporting traditional marriage on college campuses and in the public square.

No doubt, TFP hopes to make the video go viral and it probably will. But let's put some truth in. No doubt, Sprigg, NOM, and other who push this video will omit the following facts:

What exactly is the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP)? David Badash of The New Civil Rights Movement, a pro-gay blog, did some research and found the following:

According to their website,

TFP Student Action is a project of the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property. Founded in 1973, the American TFP was formed to resist, in the realm of ideas, the liberal, socialist and communist trends of the times and proudly affirm the positive values of tradition, family and private property. The American TFP was inspired by the work of the Brazilian intellectual and man of action Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira.

What We Do

Networking with thousands of students and concerned parents, TFP Student Action defends traditional moral values on college campuses. Inspired by the teachings of the Holy Catholic Church, TFP volunteers are on the front lines of the culture war, working to restore the values of Christian civilization.

TFP activities are carried out by 75 full-time volunteers and have the support of 120,000 members nationwide. The director of TFP Student Action is John Ritchie.

Now, here’s what else you need to know about TFP.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, “[i]n a 1986 article, The Washington Post described TFP as an “all-male, extreme right-wing group with chapters in 13 countries” (15 May 1986). The Brazil-based organization was financed mainly by wealthy South American families and supported the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile (ibid.). It was banned for its paramilitary activities in Venezuela, where it was implicated in 1984 in a plot to assassinate the Pope, a charge that the group denied.”

 Now the following is what I have discovered - TFP has a history of creating contrived incidents of supposed violence by gay equality supporters and videotaping these alleged incidents for use by religious right groups.

'North Carolina anti-gay amendment created to protect white race?' and other Wednesday midday news briefs

Pastor: Telling parents to punch kids was joke - Is he serious? I hate to see when he is really trying to be funny.

Wife of NC State Senator says Amendment One is necessary ‘to protect the Caucasian race’ - Gasp and swoon! Has anyone told Patrick Wooden yet?

How a Bullied Gay Marion Teen Used Secret Identity to Fight Back - This young man should be commended.

David Barton says AIDS is God's Punishment for being Gay. Julia Sugarbaker Disagrees - I mean to post this excellent piece a while back. It says it all about phony Christians casting stones.


Matt Barber: 'The LGBT Agenda and Constitutional Rights Cannot Exist in Harmony' - I can't decide whether Matt Barber gives me bad gas or he looks like he is in a constant state of having bad gas. The latter statement would explain all of his outrageously mean-spirited statements about gays.

NC pastor created lies about gay sex because of his 'religious views'

Patrick Wooden

 During a recent Leadership Triangle forum regarding Amendment One (which would wreak havoc in North Carolina for unmarried couples and domestic violence laws if passed) blogger Pam Spaulding of Pam's House Blend had a very interesting conversation with one of the leading supporters of this amendment,  Pastor Patrick Wooden.

Pastor Wooden of Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh, NC has been very vocal in his support of the amendment.  In  past interviews, he claimed that gays engage in so much anal sex that they have to wear diapers and also they use instruments such as cell phones as sexual aids:

. . I know of a case where in a hospital a homosexual male had a cellphone lodged in his anus and as they were operating on him the phone went off, the phone started ringing!

After the forum, Pam questioned Wooden directly on his spurious claims regarding gays and sex, particularly the cell phone claim. The following is what she said took place:

Wooden’s defense is that he was asked to go on the program and he told “an anecdote." I reminded him that he had no data or evidence to support this claim, and that this is only supporting the notion that he thinks being gay is all about sex, and that heterosexuals engage in all sorts of sexual behaviors that don’t have any impact on their civil rights. All he could say was that he has to talk about it in these terms because, by definition, “homosexuals as a group are defined by who they sleep with” and by extension, since his religious view is that homosexuality is a sin, this is what drives him to speak out.

So basically Wooden did not supply any evidence of his claim because there was none. Wooden admitted that the only reason he made the claim  was to create an image of the gay community which is conducive to his religious beliefs that gays are immoral sinners.

In other words, Wooden lied. Deliberately and unashamedly.

Wooden was not interested in giving logical reasons why Amendment One should be passed. In fact, Wooden has never been interested in defending Amendment One through logic at all. He has only been interested in pushing Amendment One through any means, even if it meant demonizing the gay community through fear tactics and ugly stories of sex, diapers, and cell phones. And why did he do this? Because his religious beliefs dictated that homosexuality is a sin.

Where in the Bible does it say that Christians should lie in accordance to their beliefs?

Seems to me that if a truly Christian man feels that the position he takes on an issue is correct, he should not have to stoop to lies in order to defend it.

Wooden's admittance calls into question not only his integrity, but also his character.

Gays and lesbians partaking in the sacred institution of marriage in no way damages it. We merely want protection for our loved ones and the right to love without fear.

What's so immoral about that?

However, if anyone fears a danger of marriage being corrupted, they would be best served to look in Pastor Wooden's direction and remember his shameless ability to deceive without a shred of impunity.

Marriage is about love, support, and truthfulness. Pastor Wooden is nothing but lies.

To call on him to "protect marriage" is like asking a thief to guard Fort Knox.

The grand irony is that Wooden, according to Pam, said that the pastors who were against Amendment One didn't know how to read their Bibles. Wooden also had some ugly words to say about Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II of the NC NAACP who has been a vocal opponent of Amendment One:

He (Wooden) spoke dismissively onstage about other religious leaders who oppose Amendment One, and when I asked him about the NC NAACP’s Rev. Barber’s Open Letter to North Carolinians and very forceful advocacy against A1, he said that Rev. Dr. Barber is a demagogue (that’s a quote), and is not telling the truth about the harms of the amendment.

So Wooden seems to think that Rev. Barber is a demagogue huh? Well let's just put that one to a visual test:

I'm sure the Rev. Barber and the other pastors who oppose Amendment One know the Bible just as well as Wooden.

Particularly the verse about bearing false witness.

North Carolina pastor supports violence against gay children

The following is just plain sick. Pam Spaulding describes the scene:

There are many, many people of faith, progressive houses of worship fighting out and proud against Amendment One in solidarity with their LGBT neighbors who will be hurt by it, should it pass. On the other side? A man reveling in shooting up an anti-amendment sign, and now this news of a pastor in Fayetteville, Sean Harris, of Berean Baptist Church, whose loving message for parents of a child who might be gay — just beat it out of him.  Sickening. (Via JMG and Good As You):

Transcript (courtesy of Jeremy Hooper):

"So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”

You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?”

Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that."

You may hear folks laughing in the background, but this is hardly funny. Perhaps Harris (I refuse to dignify this sick man by calling him a pastor) should read about children beaten and murdered for being gay or suspected of being gay,

Pay attention particular attention to the story of Ronnie Harris:

Ronnie Paris Jr. was a three-year-old boy who died after repeated abuse from his father, who feared that the boy was gay. The abuse that eventually led to the death started as early as when the boy was one year old. In May 2002, Paris was removed from his parents' home after the Florida Department of Children and Family Services found him malnourished and with a broken arm.

More than two years later, Paris was returned to his birth parents and the abuse continued. Just six weeks after he was moved back into his parents' home, Paris slipped into a coma while the parents were at a bible study. The child remained on life support for six days before the support was removed and he died.

Paris' mother, Nysheera Paris, told authorities that the boy's father, Ronnie Paris Jr. abused the boy because he was afraid that the son would grow up gay. This conversion abuse involved father-son boxing matches to toughen up the child but was nothing more than slapping and hitting Paris until he would cry and shake.

If Amendment One passes, that would mean North Carolina would supposedly "save marriage," right?

Then who is going to save our children from the supposed "defenders of marriage?"


(Editor's note - if this makes you mad, then good. But I implore you not to trade evil for evil. Do what you can to bring attention to this awful mess. Blast this all over!)

'Don't Say Gay' bill bites the dust hard and other Tuesday midday news briefs

From Think Progress, an item which needs to repeated as is:

Jeremy Hooper has been documenting the many vile, incendiary things that proponents of North Carolina’s Amendment One have been saying about the LGBT community.

Surprise, surprise: Vast majority of #Amendment1 cash comes from NOM, Catholic church, Christian groups - A feeling of entitlement and an assload of money to back it up. It's a deadly combination.

A Call to Stop the Killings in D.C. - Our transgender brothers and sisters in D.C. need our prayers and support.


Tennessee Abandons ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill - A dumb bill bites the dust.

Fischer: 'It's Perfectly Appropriate to Discriminate Against' Homosexuality - Because apparently Bryan Fischer not only sits on the right hand of God but had a hand in writing our Constitution. And people wonder why are lgbtqs so angry?


Al Mohler’s truly stupid bigoted statement - Dr. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary makes an eyebrow raising implying statement regarding gays in the Boy Scouts and pedophilia.

Lie about gay assault backfires on NOM in North Carolina

Maggie Gallagher

In 2008 in the aftermath of the Proposition 8 vote, the National Organization for Marriage was able to spin a story of gays allegedly assaulting an old woman to raise its profile and embarrass the gay community.

Four year later, this tactic has backfired in North Carolina regarding the fight over Amendment One - an amendment that if passed would cause chaos in North Carolina

Yesterday, Maggie Gallagher herself wrote the following post:

The Vote YES For Marriage NC campaign is reporting on Facebook that an elderly woman who refused to surrender her "vote yes" sign was beaten by a gay marriage advocate.

I knew of at least one case like this in California. This comes from "de-legitimizing" your opponents, claiming there is no possible argument for any point of view but your own.

I hope North Carolina does not become a repeat of the harassment and occasional violence we saw in California:

Gallagher was probably referring to the case of Phyllis Burgess, a woman who was allegedly assaulted by gay equality supporters during the aftermath of the Proposition 8 vote. On camera, Burgess was shoved and had a styrofoam cross ripped from her hands.

NOM and the rest of the religious right consistently brought up this camera footage as proof that gays are pushy and violent when we allegedly can't get our way.

However, they only told part the story.  The real story was that Burgess did not inflame the crowd by her views, but her actions. She allegedly elbowed her way to the front of the group so that she could be seen on camera. And in doing so, she allegedly knocked a disabled man to the ground.

How the religious right spun that story was no doubt fresh in the mind of Joe Jervis from the blog Joe.My.God because he investigated the North Carolina incident. This is what he found:

Guess what? The story was a lie.

According to Detective Branch, the woman in question was not in her own yard, as was implied by Vote For Marriage NC, she was at another house "looking for her sister." Branch told me that there the woman may have argued with a man about a yard sign, but Branch didn't know where that sign may have been located or for which side of the marriage issue it advocated. It's possible that she was complaining about the other man's own yard sign. There may have been no yard sign at all.

Robeson County officers advised the woman that if she wanted to pursue charges about having her car door slammed on her as she left the man's house, she could file for a misdemeanor charge of simple battery. Branch said no such claim was yet on record.

Does anybody want to take odds that Vote For Marriage NC confesses to their numerous outrageous lies about this concocted event?

Check out the rest of the Jervis's blog entry for how many times Vote for MarriageNC changed its tweets on the matter.

The irony is that while NOM and Vote for MarriageNC  spins their false story, they conveniently miss an actual story of a man shooting an anti-Amendment One sign allegedly on his neighbor's property:



Kismet is indeed a harsh mistress, isn't it, NOM?