Analyzing and refuting the inaccuracies lodged against the lgbt community by religious conservative organizations. Lies in the name of God are still lies.
Yesterday, I posted how the Anti-Defamation League condemned the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins for implying that gays want to start a "Holocaust" against Christians.
The ADL's president, Abraham Foxman, demanded that Perkins apologize for trivializing the Holocaust. However, as Right Wing Watch tacitly pointed out, if Perkins were to recognize his error and apologize, he wouldn't be the only one who had to.
I've noticed that lately, there has been a lot of anti-gay groups and spokespeople who have compared lgbts to Nazis and conjured up visions of how they will harm Christians if given the chance. Thanks to Right Wing Watch, here are just a few:
". . . it’s getting harder every day to tell our modern homo-fascists from the Nazis of the 1930s and 40s. “Gay”-stapo or Gestapo, could somebody please tell me the difference?" - Jeff Allen, editor of the right-wing BarbWire
"In Hollywood’s recent theatrical release of The Monuments Men, the storyline follows an Army unit that was guided by a group of seven museum directors, curators, and art historians as they engaged in a gripping search to recover priceless pieces of art before they were destroyed by the Nazis. Likewise, the hostile homosexual goose-steppers are seeking to destroy marriage, the masterpiece of God’s handiwork. As dedicated Christians, we too must metaphorically endeavor to recover and restore this infinitely valuable work of art before it’s been marred beyond recognition by the “gay”-stapo."" - Jeff Allen of BarbWire (again)
This was just brought to my attention and you bet your sweet bippies that I am going to push it.
It seems that Liberty University's Mat Staver's recent testimony in front of a Congressional committee has become more than he bargained for. The online publication Raw Story is now asking did he tell the committee a lie:
At a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, the head of
a conservative legal group may have misled the committee when he said
that he does not support the implementation of Russian-style antigay
laws in the United States.
On Tuesday, the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice held a hearing on “The State of Religious Liberty in the United States”
to study the rise of “religious freedom” laws in some U.S. states,
under which people of faith cannot be compelled to perform their jobs or
provide goods and services if to do so would conflict with their
personal beliefs.
. . . Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) asked Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel,
“There are certain antigay laws they have in Russia. You, I believe,
have advocated for something similar to that, have you not? Do you
support the Russian antigay laws?”
Staver replied, ”What I am concerned about is having people of
Christian, uh, Judeo-Christian beliefs be forced to participate in a
ceremony or an event that celebrates something that is contrary to their
religious beliefs.”
Thank you Anti-Defamation League and Abraham Foxman for doing what should be done on more occasions - calling out Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council for their odious comparisons of gays to Nazis.
On June 6, Perkins blasted a Colorado Civil Rights Commission ruling finding that a baker had violated the state's anti-discrimination law by refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple, asking on his radio program Washington Watch,
"I'm beginning to think, are re-education camps next? When are they
going to start rolling out the boxcars to start hauling off Christians?"
Perkins' remarks echoed his statement in April that the LGBT movement "reminds me of Nazi Germany."
In a June 10 statement, ADL President Abraham Foxman denounced Perkins' comments, calling them "offensive and inappropriate":
Tony Perkins' invocation of the Holocaust in his statement referring
to a judge's finding that a baker unlawfully discriminated against gay
customers is offensive and inappropriate.
There is no comparison between contemporary American political issues
and the actions of Hitler's regime during the Holocaust. Such
inappropriate analogies only serve to trivialize the Holocaust and are
deeply offensive to Jews and other survivors, as well as those Americans
who fought valiantly against the Nazis in World War II. We urge Perkins to apologize and to refrain from using Holocaust imagery to make his point.
Don't count on Perkins to apologize. In his version of the Bible, humility and the admittance of wrongdoing have probably been crossed out. No matter. Tune in to this blog tomorrow morning because I'm working on something special with regards to Perkins, the religious right, and their love of comparing lgbts to Nazis.
House Committee Invites Witness To Go On Anti-Gay Rant, Because Religious Freedom - The Huffington Post invites more scrutiny on Liberty University's Mat Staver's ridiculous testimony on 'religious liberty.' You know it used to be that anti-gay talking heads would get away with spouting distortions in front of Congress. Not anymore. But here is the sad thing. Will the lgbt community stop fighting itself to take advantage of this or will it be up to the bloggers (again) to raise awareness and sound the call?
To say the National Organization for Marriage isn't happy that marriage equality has come to Wisconsin is an understatement. From its president, Brian Brown:
"Again, an individual, activist judge is legislating from the bench and trampling on the sovereign will of the people of Wisconsin.This has got to stop, and the only way it will is for the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and protect the democratic process and the rights of the tens of millions of voters who have declared that they want their state's social policy to define marriage as it has been known for millennia — the union of one man and one woman."
Oh stop whining, Brian. It's not anyone's fault that the horror stories and fake homilies you all used to pass these laws can't stand up in a court of law.
This post is dedicated to the intelligent but misguided colleagues of mine who complain when anti-gay spokespeople are given a platform to spread their homophobic lies.
You cannot stop lies by covering the mouth of those who tell them. You only give them power through pity. As the following post, courtesy of Right Wing Watch proves, by all means, give anti-gay spokespeople a platform to spread their lies. But not a platform which offers no challenge. Let people like Tony Perkins, or in this case, Mat Staver, speak. But make sure they are challenged by someone who knows their stuff such as Rep. Jerry Nadler:
Testifying before a House committee today about supposed threats to religious freedom in the U.S., Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver struggled to defend his support for allowing businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.
New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler grilled Staver about his view that it would be wrong for a wedding photographer to discriminate against a Jewish couple because of a religious objection, but that the photographer is free to discriminate against a same-sex couple.
First, Staver tried to avoid the question by saying a photographer wouldn’t refuse to work for a Jewish wedding, but ultimately agreed that such anti-Jewish discrimination is in fact a violation of the law.
“I don’t see any difference at all” between refusing a Jewish couple and a gay couple, Nadler said.
He continued: “I’m holding out myself in commerce and my religious belief is that I don’t want black people or Jewish people or gay people in my restaurant and the federal government says that is discrimination, is that a violation of the freedom of religion?”
“No,” Staver conceded.
Public condemnations are messy, but in the case of anti-gay groups and spokespeople, it is something which is very necessary. You see, even when their anti-gay propaganda is refuted on paper, they tend to repeat it as if nothing happened. They tend to get away with this a lot.
Public condemnation and exposure is one of the only few actions which they have a difficult time ignoring. It not only exposes flimsiness of their arguments but also their lack of integrity. Don't think so? Ask Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family about the 2011 incident in which Sen. Al Franken called him out during his testimony for distorting a study.
