Dear Ms. News Anchor who doesn't want to see gays kiss, Anderson Cooper wants a word with you

This speaks for itself. Handle yo' business, Anderson:

'Tony Perkins caught telling embarrassingly false story about Obama, lgbts, Armed Forces' & other Wednesday midday news briefs

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins Falsely Claims Obama Was Too Busy Pushing Gay Rights 'To Acknowledge Armed Forces Day' - No, today is not Let's Pick on Tony Perkins" Day. Granted, I loathe the man and his anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council. I also despise how his every word figuratively sets Christianity back to the days of Torquemada and the Bloody Mary Tudor of England. But most of all, I just can't respect a man who will tell a lie so embarrassingly easy to expose such as this one he spins about Obama pushing lgbt equality instead of acknowledging our fighting men and women. Betcha Perkins won't acknowledge or apologize for the error either. 

Florida Lawmaker Stands By Claim That Common Core Turns Kids Gay - I missed the memo on this one. I thought we were still using Smurf episodes.

 Uncovered Papers Show Past Government Efforts to Drive Gays From Jobs - This is a huge scoop and a national shame.  

Gallup: Nationwide Support for Gay Marriage at All-Time High - I believe the word you are looking for is BAMMM!  

Linda Harvey: HIV Prevention Drugs Lead To 'Racial Cleansing' - Of course Linda Harvey doesn't care about preventing disease. To her, it's all about gay sex. Girlfriend needs Jesus.

Editor's note - photo of Tony Perkins taken from The Huffington Post.

Tony Perkins thinks America will 'discard' judges' rulings for marriage equality

It's like I said before, in lieu of providing proof of their arguments in court cases (such as the recent marriage equality victories in Pennsylvania and Oregon), anti-gay organization leaders such as Family Research Council president Tony Perkins are whining about "activists judges."

What I didn't count on is how folks like Perkins would take the visage of dotty old men shaking their fists at the sun while talking about open rebellion against the courts:

Tony Perkins

Like a dozen black-robed activists before him, Judge Michael McShane argued, "Because Oregon's marriage laws discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without a rational relationship to any legitimate government interest, the laws violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution." The state's failure to defend its own constitution, and the failure of an openly homosexual judge to recuse himself, demonstrate what an overreach this decision was. The deluge of rulings hit Pennsylvania next, where Judge John Jones wrote one of the harshest opinions yet, insisting that laws affirming natural marriage should be discarded "into the ash heap of history."

While both judges cited the Supreme Court's June decisions as a rational basis to destroy marriage, the high court said nothing that would give a federal judge the right to redefine marriage. In an interesting twist, both rulings came down within hours of Politico's new polling -- which showed that a clear majority of likely voters in swing states (52-48%) are digging in on their support of natural marriage.

Obviously, the Left's strategy of forcing this agenda through the courts is backfiring -- and it's only a matter of time before the country begins to discard the opinions of unelected judges on the same ash heap where Jones tried to send marriage. Just as the country has never accepted the Supreme Court's declaration of a "right" to destroy unborn human life in Roe v. Wade, we will never accept the Court's assertion of a "right" to change the definition of our most fundamental social institution. The courts can ignore natural law, or even suppress it, but they will never succeed in subduing it.

So according to Perkins, based on a poll which has nothing to do with marriage equality, court rulings are backfiring. In addition,  states should ignore the opinions of judges because they aren't elected anyway.

Will anti-gay propaganda artists obscure truth of marriage equality victories?

In the second victory in as many days for the lgbt community, a federal judge has struck down Pennsylvania's ban on gay marriage, making it the 19th state in which lgbts have won the right to marry.

This underlines the fact that there is a trend going on here. We now have control of the tsunami unleashed against us in 2004 by the Republican party which was used to reelect President Bush.

But in the midst of all of this good news, one thing worries me. Will the truth be told?

With Fox News giving anti-gay groups carte blanche to spin their message and countless conservative blogs and false news groups out there, I cringe at the thought that these entities working together will obscure the truth behind our victories.

And that truth is anti-gay groups are trapped in the 30-year apparatus they created to demonize the lgbt community. All of the lies, junk science, cherry-picked science, and anecdotes they have used against us is collapsing on them. They can scare folks to vote against marriage equality but they can't use that crap in court because they would have to admit that its all a lie.

Or to put it another way, remember the words of Marc Mutty, during Question One, a documentary about how NOM aided in defeating marriage equality in Maine in 2009. At the time, Mutty led the campaign:



Transcript: 

We use a lot of hyperbole and I think that's always dangerous," says Mutty during a Yes on 1 strategy session, at the time on leave from his job as public affairs director for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Maine.

"You know, we say things like 'Teachers will be forced to (teach same-sex marriage in schools)!' " he continues. "Well, that's not a completely accurate statement and we all know it isn't, you know?"

"No," interjects a woman off-camera. "We don't say that."

"Let's look back at our ads and see what we say," Mutty persists. "And I think we use hyperbole to the point where, you know, it's like 'Geez!' 

The question is should lgbt victories continue to pile up with regards to marriage equality, will the media even touch this angle. Or will they just hand off the microphone to anti-gay groups and allow them to falsely represent Christianity and spin lies?

Related post:

Marriage equality opponents need genuine 'come to Jesus' moment about their leaders

'Maggie Gallagher's gloating comes back to haunt NOM' & other Tuesday midday news briefs

This is not meant to be gloating but I would get drummed out of the UHA (United Homosexuals of America) if I didn't bring this up. In light of our recent marriage equality victories, Jeremy Hooper of Goodasyou.org reminds us of something former NOM head Maggie Gallagher said a few years ago:

Flashback: When #Oregon native Maggie Gallagher gloated that “it’s really fun to win.” She is absolutely right!!! http://t.co/icGhrEjo2e
— Jeremy Hooper (@goodasyou) May 19, 2014

 
In other news:

Utah told to accept gay marriages - More good news from Utah as we await final news on marriage equality there. These involve the marriages which took place before the emergency stay.

How Fox News Is Helping Homophobes Hijack Christianity - Yep. That's Fox News with its one-sided junk.. On a side note, I don't see how any person freely brags that she would urinate on corpses (hi there, Dana Loesch) can be any type of defender of Christianity. Except of course on Fox News.

Media Outlets Should Cover This Historic HIV/AIDS Development - But they probably won't. And that is the problem with today's overpaid media.

Janet Mefferd Praises Matt Barber For Getting Christian Publisher Booted From NRB - In which we find out what the religious right actually thinks of their jaded phrase "religious liberty."

Marriage equality opponents need genuine 'come to Jesus' moment about their leaders

In case you have been living in a cave under a rock with your fingers in your ears, you now know that Oregon became the 18th state to legalize marriage equality.

Mazel tov!

Now let's get serious for a bit. On election night less than two years ago, many Americans got caught by surprise when President Obama was reelected to a second term. Fox News, just about all of the conservative media and bloggers, and their gut had told them that Mitt Romney would either win in a close vote or a landslide.

As it turned out, what they probably felt in their gut was a brief case of happy gas.  However, when it came to all of the other prognosticators, it was genuinely agreed that these seers, these so-called correct predictors of the election day mood, was taking their audience for a ride. Prominent conservatives and republicans like David Frum and Joe Scarborough had it so correct when they read the riot act to folks like Fox News commentator Dick Morris and talking heads Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin for leading fellow conservatives down a primrose path of destruction fueled by a conservative bubble which shut all reality out of an assured Obama victory.

By that same token, someone needs to yank all of these folks who voted for these statewide anti-marriage equality amendments and give them a good figurative slap. And I'm not talking about a wimpy one. I'm talking one of those infamous Joan Crawford type smacks where you really get your hand in the cheek, leaving a loud noise and a lasting sting.

Someone needs to sit these folks down and say "look guys, you have been victimized, bamboozled, played for fools, treated like dopes, and basically sold a bill of goods worse than a car lot full of lemons. In other words, these so-called traditional values and morality groups have been using you."

You see, in spite of the fact that in the past these laws were passed by overwhelming majorities, they still  had to be defended in courts of law if there is a question of whether or not they were constitutional. And no spin about "activist judges" or the "will of the people" will change that. It's standard practice in this country that laws are challenged and have to be proven to be constitutional.

And when this happens, someone has to defend these laws. And when it came to marriage equality laws, things changed bizarrely. Those defending the laws either offered off-the-wall defenses, no defenses at all, or defenses comprised of discredited studies so blatantly inaccurate that at times, I found myself feeling pitiful for the authors of these studies rather than dancing in glee at their obviously painful audacity.

Meanwhile, the amen corners which got folks all riled against marriage equality were pretty much nowhere in sight. I tend to think that was intentional.

In other words, it's easy sending out mass emails (that would be you, Family Research Council and American Family Association), running television commercials (that would be you, National Organization for Marriage), preaching in the pulpits ( that would be you, various pastors) or leading one-sided interviews on your fake news channels (that would be you, Fox News) spinning stories of gays wanting to recruit children, pushing discredited or cherry-picked studies, or  telling false anecdotal stories about "evil homosexuals."

But, as a very smart lawyer once said, the witness stand is a lonely place to lie. 

Scaring people enough to vote a certain way and proving that said vote was constitutional are two entirely different things.


And there, as they say, lies the rub.  For all of the talking emanating from Tony Perkins and Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council or Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown, or Frank Schubert of the National Organization for Marriage or all of their cohorts, just how many volunteered to testify in a court of law as to the validity of the anti-marriage equality laws they were pushing?

Where were theses so-called defenders of morality during the DOMA court case? The Prop 8 court case? How about the state cases? Hell, where were they during the Oregon court case which was just decided. If any time they were needed, that would have been it then because Oregon's attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, wouldn't defend the law.

Of course that's not altogether fair for me to make such a judgement. I hear that NOM did request to defend the law but was turned down by the courts. Then again, knowing NOM like I do, I suspect the organization was making a deliberately futile gesture.

In common street language, these anti-marriage equality groups and their cohorts used a lot of spooky language, made a lot of false claims, but they wouldn't back it up in the place where it counts, i.e. the courts. Instead, they turned tail and ran. Now when their side loses, they always return claiming that the system is biased so as to distract their supporters from the basic unavoidable point that all of their past fearmongering was (oh how can I say this) basically full of shit.

So true to form, FRC, NOM, various pastors, and other anti-gay groups are probably going to read the riot act, making predictions about how "America is on a precipice of destruction by God" or how "homosexuals are using marriage equality to force acceptance," or, my favorite, "unelected activist judges are attempting the destroy this country's so-called Judeo-Christian foundation."
All I ask those who oppose marriage equality is to ignore those bombastic words for a second and count how many times these folks will be asking you for money.

At the most, don't give them any more money because their track record is beginning to stink like five -day old fish.

At the very least, please recognize that you have been sold a bad bill of goods,  i.e. lies told in the name of God, Jesus, and "traditional morality." And all lies, even those told in the name of God,can NEVER carry the day.

'NOM may face $50,000 fine in Maine' & other Monday midday news briefs

National Organization for Marriage may face $50,000 fine in Maine - Karma is a sweet lady. 

Jim DeMint: Marriage equality makes people 'angry, resentful of their country and of the people who are pushing it' - I never cared about what came out of DeMint's mouth when SC had the ignorance to elect him as a Senator. Naturally, I care even less now that he is no longer a senator.
  
The Same-Sex Adoption Cases Playing Out In Utah While Marriage Is On Hold - Utah really needs to stop pussyfooting with the lives of these families.  

Transgender Teens Are Fitting In With The Aid Of School Officials, But Concerns Remain - Slowly but surely, our children will be protected.  

Government Awards Full Benefits To Wife Of Female Soldier Killed In Afghanistan - Bittersweet but positive news. 

Finally: 

How They See Us: Unmasking the Religious Right War on Gay America - a special shout-out for the booklet as it is less than 60,000 reads (embedded and direct) away from reaching one million. Of course I wish the downloads would pick up even though 769 is hardly anything to sneeze at. Let's all do what we can to expose the 30 year plus apparatus of anti-lgbt propaganda. And you can do it in two ways:

Go to the Scribd site and read it. Be sure to download and/or send the link to your local or national lgbt organizations, family, friends, and even the opposition.

Or if the Scribd site gives you too many problems, go here to to direct adobe acrobat copy of the booklet. Read and/or download to the folks I mentioned above.

This is not Alvin McEwen's booklet. This is OUR booklet. It is short but concise and direct ammunition against anti-gay propaganda which we have needed for the longest time. Although not as glamorous as other things in the lgbt community, this booklet gets the job of exposing the anti-gay right done. And then some . .