Analyzing and refuting the inaccuracies lodged against the lgbt community by religious conservative organizations. Lies in the name of God are still lies.
While members of the religious right are patting themselves on the back on a successful Chick Fil-A Appreciation Day (while totally oblivious to how they helped US get the information out on the evil that Chick-Fil-A supports), the following has been happening in the real world:
As part of an effort to market its standard discounted family travel program, for the first time, the national passenger rail company included gay families in its materials. In an online ad sent by Instinct magazine to its email subscribers, a photo of same-sex parents with their child is featured.
Two version of the ad, one with a picture of a male couple and another with a female couple, were distributed. Both versions include the headline: Priceless Family Moments Are Now Affordable. The ad goes on to promote Amtrak's 50% off campaign for children age 2 to 15 who are traveling with an adult, and directs readers to its gay travel website www.AmtrakRideWithPride.com.
Also, Judith Arndt has become the first openly gay athlete to medal at the Olympics in London by winning the silver in Women’s Cycling Time Trials.
This is the third Olympic medal for Judith Arndt, who, as a 20-year-old, won silver for the 3000 Meter Pursuit at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. She also won a bronze in Road Race at the Athens Olympics in 2004.
Concerned Women For America vs. Amazon - Only a religious right group - in this case, Concerned Women for America - can contradict itself in its own writings and think that gay folks won't notice.
Of course what would one expect. His call to support the restaurant chain on this day has been echoed and endorsed by several religious right and anti-gay groups as well as some ignorant religious entities.
So while these folks will no doubt inundate the media with videos and photos of today's event, I would like to reassure my lgbtq community and our allies not to worry.
You see we have won already. And when I say that we have won, I don't mean the intangible way that the title of my piece implies.
Our goal has never been about "shutting down Chick-Fil-A."
Our goal has always been to make people aware of just who Chick-Fil-A supports because this issue goes way beyond chicken.
A group of conservative black pastors are responding to President Barack Obama’s support of same-sex marriage with what they say will be a national campaign aimed at rallying black Americans to rethink their overwhelming support of the President, though the group’s leader is offering few specifics about the effort.
The Rev. Williams Owens, who is president and founder of the Coalition of African-Americans Pastors and the leader of the campaign, has highlighted opposition to same-sex marriage among African-Americans. He calls this campaign “an effort to save the family.”
“The time has come for a broad-based assault against the powers that be that want to change our culture to one of men marrying men and women marrying women,” said Owens, in an interview Tuesday after the launch event at the National Press Club. “I am ashamed that the first black president chose this road, a disgraceful road.”
CNN deserves kudos for telling the entire story about Owens and his fake group, including talking about comments which Owens made linking gays to pedophilia:
Owens has long been an opponent of gay marriage and consults with the National Organization for Marriage as a liaison to the black churches.
At the press conference, Owens said that Obama’s support of same-sex marriage tantamount to supporting child molestation.
“If you watch the men who have been caught having sex with little boys, you will note that all of them will say that they were molested as a child…” Owens said. “For the president to condone this type of thing is irresponsible.”
Owens later walked about those comments back, saying he didn’t think the president was condoning molestation.
CNN also did make mention of NOM's wedge strategy, i.e. the group's plan to play gay and black America against each other on the subject of marriage equality.
Jack Phillips, Denver Baker Who Refused Wedding Cake To Gay Couple, Defends His Stance - Phillips says he would rather lose his business before making a cake for a gay couple. It's good for us to know who NOT to give our business to. However, it goes beyond that. If businesses are allowed to discriminate against gay couples on the basis of their religious beliefs, then where is that line drawn? Today it's gays. Tomorrow it may be people of a different faith, be it Jewish or Catholic. And then there is the case of racial ethnicities.
Liberty Counsel Jumps on the Boycott Hypocrisy Bandwagon - One good thing about this Chick-Fil-A is how it exposes the hypocrites. Wasn't Matt Barber - a defender of Chick-Fil-A - one of the folks who organized a failed boycott of McDonalds a while back?
NOM’s dumps are flattening out - Meanwhile, the National Organization for Marriage's anti-gay protests are fizzling hard.
An online buddy of mine, Rusty McMann, has assembled some simple answers to the questions about the gay community's anger at Chick-Fil-A, as well as why we are boycotting the restaurant.
This is necessary because while there have been so many television stations, newspapers, pundits, and columnists who have weighed in on the controversy, very few are trying to get the full story:
Simple answers to difficult questions about the Chick-Fil-A boycott
Q. Why are the gays making such a big deal out of this? Aren’t we all entitled to our own opinions?
A. Well the first thing you need to know is that there is no "the gays." Gay Americans don’t speak in a unified voice any more than all straight Americans, or all African-Americans, or all left-handed Americans.
Q. OK fine. So what’s the big deal and why are *so many* of gays so upset that Dan Cathy is against gay marriage?
A. Dan Cathy is perfectly entitled to his opinion about marriage equality or anything else. That’s not what has so many people upset. The reason we are boycotting Chick-fil-A is because the CFA Corporation, through its charitable arm The WinShape Foundation, has donated almost 4 million dollars to organizations and causes that are dedicated to doing harm to gay men and lesbians – not just here in the US, but around the world.
Q. Oh, come on. The WinShape foundation is about leadership training and strengthening families.
A. While it is true that the WinShape foundation has a number of admirable programs for at-risk youth, it would also appear that WinShape believes that “curing” homosexuality (a concept that is roundly rejected by the scientific community) and preventing same-sex couples from being legally married is something that trains leaders and makes families stronger – because they give A LOT of money to foundations and advocacy groups that are hostile to the LBGT people.
$1,188,380 to the Marriage & Family Foundation (founded by Bubba Cathy (Dan’s Brother) the MFA provides funding to organizations that preach that the American family is threatened by the proliferation of same-sex couples )
$480,000 to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (dedicated to “curing” gay athletes);
$247,500 to the National Christian Foundation (is a grant-making foundation that has provides money to anti-gay groups like Focus on the Family, Family Life, and the Family Research Council);
$54,000 to the New Mexico Christian Foundation (the New Mexico branch of the NCF);
$2,500 to the Georgia Research Council (which lobbies against marriage equality, both in Georgia and around the US); and
$1,000 to Exodus International, an organization dedicated to “curing homosexuality” and whose board member Don Schmiererhad a hand in the creation of a bill in Uganda that could "punish homosexuality" with death .
So every chicken sandwich and waffle fry you purchase helps to fund one of those organizations.
In the African-American community, there is a comical phrase which denotes extreme anger. It is called "being pissed off to the highest levels of pissivity."
That is how I feel right now and there is nothing funny about it. What angers me are the words from Log Cabin Republican head R. Clarke Cooper over the gay community's anger at Chick-Fil-A. He didn't exactly defend us. Instead he attacked us in a piece.
Part of it reads a follow:
Turning a chicken sandwich into Public Gay Enemy Number One makes LGBT people look superficial, vindictive and juvenile — everything that we as a community have worked hard to overcome. Remember, employers don’t want drama queens on the payroll, military service is serious business, and marriage is not a right society grants to spoiled children. While in a perfect world our equality should not depend on our good behavior, in a world where our rights too often hinge on political reality, the way our movement conducts itself matters.
In the past, while I may have disagreed with the Log Cabin Republicans (a group of gay Republicans for those who are not aware), I have always respected the organization, even to the point of defending it when others in the community have attacked it as an "Uncle Tom" organization.
But right now, I simply can't. And I will tell you why.
Last week, I received a letter from a young man thanking me for this blog. He told me that what he reads here is the first piece of positive information he has read about the gay community. All other times, he said, he has been bombarded by negative information; information such as gays are evil, gays are sinners or things like us being called vile, intolerant, and pawns of the Devil:
or folks expressing wishes that our "behavior" be criminalized:
What's significant about these two statements is that both are coming from the Family Research Council, a group which has received donations from Chick-Fil-A. That is the main reason why so many of us are angry.
And it leads me to ask is Mr. Cooper clueless or does he just not give a damn. The above tripe from the Family Research is what he is defending. The destruction of the self-esteem of our lgbtq youth is what he is defending.
I could see if he voiced a problem with the way some of us in the community may express our anger but he didn't do that.
Cooper seems to think that gays shouldn't express anger at all over any of Chick-Fil-A's actions. That somehow if we are slapped and don't respond in any form or fashion, the so-called movable middle will respect us.
Well for one thing, I have no idea what this movable middle is and if the gay community should sacrifice our dignity and self-respect to get their approval, then maybe they are not a group we need to reach.
I'm serious about how Cooper's words bother me. He has been given a platform which many in our community don't have, especially our children. And he is using this platform in a hideous manner
He does not call out the folks who seek to hinder gay equality and positive self esteem (especially the self-esteem of our gay children) through lies but rather those of us who seek to put a stop to these lies.
It is a very sad entity - be it a singular person or an organization - who attacks their own people for demanding dignity and respect.
Also, Judith Arndt has become the first openly gay athlete to medal at the Olympics in London by winning the silver in Women’s Cycling Time Trials.
