The central reason why the LGBTQ community lost the Prop 8 vote (and other referendums)

Last week, I hinted on a new project about the religious right's demonization of the LGBTQ community. At the time, I wasn't ready to give complete details. However, right now, I am ready to drop a small hint as to what that project will be.

It's a simple hint because the project (provisionally named HELL) is a simple, but effective one which I hope will bring a much needed degree of seriousness and examination of history when it comes to how anti-LGBTQ groups and personalities have spent countless years dehumanizing us.

There has been lots said about the initial losses we suffered in our fight for marriage equality; the constant defeats we endured in referendum after referendum, which culminated in the shocking loss regarding Prop 8 in 2008 ; the loss which, for the time being, banned marriage equality in the state of California. Supposedly we were supposed to win that won, so when we loss, fingers were pointed, ugly things were said, and unspoken divisions were put out in the open.

However, the Prop 8 loss shared a similarity (which for the purpose of my upcoming project) like so many other referendum fights. Unfortunately, it was a similarity which very few brought up.

In the future, it shall be.  But for now, enjoy the truth of the meme (click on it if you want to enlarge it.). It will be a sign of things to come:

'Steve Bannon trying to get anti-LGBTQ former judge elected to Senate' & other Fri midday news briefs

Roy Moore

Why Steve Bannon’s Next Act Revolves Around Alabama And The Religious Right - Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and his propaganda site, Breitbart, are working in Alabama to get Roy Moore elected to the United States Senate. This akin to Darth Vader teaming up Aliens to get them more food sources, but without the humor of the situation. If Moore gets to the US Senate, the LGBTQ community will have a new problem. 

DACA Reversal Could Be ‘Death Sentence’ for LGBTQ Immigrants - I repeat - Trump's awful move on DACA affects us too. 

Russia Isn’t Happy About Canada Secretly Helping LGBTQ Refugees Escape Violence in Chechnya - They can go to hell. Russia that is. 

Back-to-School Worries for Gay Parents- Glad this is getting noticed.

Trump DOJ To Supreme Court: Making Gay Wedding Cake Would Violate Baker’s Rights - By the way, this shit happened. I don't care how many people criticize Hillary Clinton. All I know is that HER justice department wouldn't be doing this crap. Let's get a little selfish, folks and think of our concerns too while some of us try to save the entire world. 

The First White President - Not necessarily an LGBTQ issue per se, but the piece is so smoking, so on-point that it needs to be read by ALL OF US.

Religious right pastor claims he has talked with Trump about judicial appointments

There is a verse in the Bible which says "pride goeth before a fall." Someone needs to tell that to pastor and Trump advisor Robert Jeffress.

From People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch:

Trump is talking about judicial appointments with THIS man

Texas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, who serves as a top evangelical ally to President Donald Trump, told Christian radio host Sandy Rios today that he met with Trump last week to discuss moving his judicial nominations through the Senate. Jeffress, who has declared that God has authorized Trump to go to war with North Korea, pronounced that God had intervened to make Trump president and said that Trump’s border wall and his attacks on the media are soundly based in the Bible, told Rios that he told Trump that Senate Republicans were holding up his nominations.

“Listen, I want to be very clear about this, Sandy. I had the chance to talk to the president and his team last week about this bigger issue of these federal judge nominees being blocked,” Jeffress said.

. . . Jeffress has a well-documented history of homophobic statements that include labeling gay people as either pedophiles or child abusers, claiming that the gay rights movement will welcome the Antichrist and suggesting that homosexuality will lead to the “implosion of our country.” The megachurch pastor also has a record of hostility to Muslims, Jews, Mormons and Roman Catholics.

Are you scared yet?

Anti-LGBTQ hate groups wages pathetic war against SPLC

Right under our noses, conservative and religious right groups are waging a serious war with the Southern Poverty Law Center because the organization has rightfully labeled many of them as hate groups. They have amassed a lot of attention for their efforts on twitter, on the right-wing blogsphere and on pseudo-news programs such as the one anchored by Fox News personality Tucker Carlson.

It's ugly to see but also funny in a way. For all of their fury, organization, and discipline to their narrative, the only folks they are resonating with are the ones who already share their opinions.  Even worse for them, their desire to slander SPLC only opens up new avenues to have the debate that they don't want.

In other words, in spite of all they do and say, all it takes is a video, a post, or an article to dismantle their false cards. And the SPLC (and others such as yours truly) own these "receipts" and then some:

Right Wing Ramps Up Campaign Against Southern Poverty Law Center - People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch breaks it down. Say what you will about the religious right, they are organized and discipline in pushing their lies.

Tucker Carlson defends hate group that wanted to criminalize homosexuality because its members aren't Nazis - I never liked Tucker Carlson even when he wore that bow tie. Since getting his own show, Carlson has been doing awful work to normalize homophobia and bigotry. 

Time for the receipts: 

Namesake of ministry suing SPLC once endorsed obscenely homophobic comic - My post from last night. After that awful shooting early this year in DC, many on the right attempted to link the assailant, James Hodgkinson, to SPLC because he reportedly "liked" its facebook page. If one uses that logic, what can we say about the D. James Kennedy Ministries because it's namesake endorsed an viciously homophobic comic? 

SPLC's list of anti-LGBT groups and actions - Educate yourself about these groups and why SPLC calls them hate groups. 

 Last but not least, my favorite receipts

Namesake of ministry suing SPLC once endorsed obscenely homophobic comic

A ministry currently suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for being designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group may soon learn the lesson about past actions coming back to bite.

First, a little background:

D. James Kennedy Ministries, based at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, has filed a federal lawsuit in Alabama against the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center for calling the ministry a hate group. The lawsuit was filed Aug. 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama in Montgomery. The lawsuit alleges that the SPLC "illegally trafficked in false and misleading descriptions of the services offered by DJKM and committed defamation against DJKM arising from the publication and distribution of false information that libels the ministry's reputation and subjects the ministry to disgrace, ridicule, odium, and contempt in the estimation of the public," according to a statement by the ministry. 

The ministry is named for the late TV Evangelist D. James Kennedy, who was the longtime pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church and host of the nationally syndicated "Coral Ridge Hour" TV program. He died in 2007. Kennedy played a role in helping form the conservative Presbyterian Church in America denomination, which organized in Birmingham in 1973 at Briarwood Presbyterian Church.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has made it clear that anti-LGBTQ hate groups are designated so because they demonize the LGBTQ community in the most lurid, inaccurate terms:

The religious right in America has employed a variety of strategies in its efforts to beat back the increasingly confident LGBT rights movement. One of those has been defamation. Many of its leaders have engaged in the crudest type of name-calling, describing LGBT people as "perverts" with "filthy habits" who seek to snatch the children of straight parents and "convert" them to gay sex. They have disseminated disparaging "facts" about gays that are simply untrue — assertions that are remarkably reminiscent of the way white intellectuals and scientists once wrote about the "bestial" black man and his supposedly threatening sexuality.

And that brings up to the late James Kennedy. The D. James Kennedy Ministries has a huge section dedicated to his life and his work.  One thing it doesn't have is when Kennedy endorsed the following 1986 comic book:

How do we know Kennedy endorsed this comic book? Because his endorsement is the first one on the back cover, with his official title as "Senior Minister, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church."

Reflections on 11 years as a blogger, Trumps's attack on Dreamers split evangelical coalition, & other Wed midday news briefs

Eleven years ago, this blog began because there needed to be a spotlight on the junk science, lies, and discredited arguments religious right groups were using to dehumanize the LGBTQ community and deny us our God-given equality.

Since that time, a lot of progress has been made in calling out groups like the Family Research Council, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and others. Thanks to groups like Media Matters and the Southern Poverty Law Center fueling the discussion, the tactics of these groups have entered the public debate and will not be going away. I like to think I was a part of that.

However, so much more needs to be done. It has been my biggest disappointment how the LGBTQ community leadership - and community in general - have been dropping the ball on this. Even before Trump took office, we constantly find ourselves drawn into repetitive little skirmishes. Bathroom bills, religious liberty bills, etc.  Before our very eyes, the same lies which exploited the fear of gay men and children are being used against our transgender brothers and sisters. And while we fight like hell against in these skirmishes, we fail to weave the thread, i.e. bring into the public debate how all of these attacks on us are connected. How arguments against marriage equality, transgender rights, LGBTQ equality in general are following the same distorted patterns.  We fight the arguments emanating from the anti-LGBTQ empire but have not taken the initiative to attack the empire itself.

We allow ourselves to be put in the position time and time again to have to justify our existence even though we have won major victories in terms of our families, our children, even our private sexual behavior. We fight from a reactive position rather than a proactive position.  And we shouldn't be doing that. We are winners and we need to start acting like winners. We need to start demanding that these groups justify their lies and their tactics. There is nothing wrong with us picking a verbal debate with religious right groups before they begin their latest attack on our physical and spiritual persons. There is nothing wrong with us, just out of the blue, demanding answers to their constant lies about how we harm children.

As they are becoming more aggressive in pushing back against being labeled as hate groups and hungrier because Trump is in office, we shouldn't just be sitting and waiting. It is a war. A war of position, debate, and narratives.   It's time we took control of all of these things.

On that note, I am announcing that I am developing a new visual project. Provisionally, I call it "HELL." And when I'm done with it, I hope that it will be hell . . . for the opposition


In other news:

Southern Baptist Minister: Anti-LGBT “Nashville Statement” Is An “Expression Of Love” - Why is it that every time the religious right shows us love, it makes us feel that we've been pistol whipped for Valentine's Day?

This 6-Year-Old Spent A Year Of Her Life Fighting To Use Her School’s Bathroom - Why we must always not be blase about standing up for our rights. We aren't just standing up for ourselves, but also our children. 

Trump Abandonment of DREAMers Splits Religious Right - Looks like some members of the religious right are showing just a tad bit of integrity. 

47 LGBT Groups Send Letter Opposing Trump’s Justice Department Pick Eric Dreiband - We got another one of Trump's appointments to knock on his ass. 

  Anti-LGBTQ hate group submits pro-discrimination arguments to Supreme Court - Small case with large repurcussions.

Trump has evangelical leaders wrapped around his finger

Robert Jeffress (top) and Tony Perkins (bottom) are just two of the many evangelical leaders Trump has wrapped around his finger by catering to their egos.

If there is one positive to Trump being in the Oval Office, it's that his time there is exposing a lot of these so-called Christian leaders as the power-hungry charlatans they are.

A very good article by Religious News Services, All the president’s clergymen: A close look at Trump’s ‘unprecedented’ ties with evangelicals, while pretty much objective, gives a picture of the embarrassing way several right-wing white evangelicals and black pastors who generally partner with them on other initiatives are freely throwing away what little religious integrity they have because Trump "gives them so much access."

Since inauguration, there have been meetings, dinners, photo ops and conference calls, according to participants. And there have been countless other encounters, including some at prayer events and signing ceremonies and a concert at the Kennedy Center. On Sept. 1, some from the group were back in the Oval Office as the president declared a National Day of Prayer for victims of Hurricane Harvey. Texas pastor Robert Jeffress led another laying-of-hands benediction that cast Trump as a national savior. 

 “Father, I thank you that we have a president … who believes in the power of prayer,” he said. “This country has been bitterly divided for decades upon decades, and now you have given us a gift, President Donald Trump.” 

 . . .And unlike the business advisory councils that disbanded over the president’s response to violence by white supremacists last month in Charlottesville, Va., the evangelicals are still standing by him. Extensive interviews with key participants — as well as public statements and photos — reveal that a cadre of conservative Christian religious leaders — mostly white and male (with notable exceptions such as White and Suarez) — has the ear of the politically powerful on matters of national priority, from judicial appointments to immigration and criminal justice reform. And while presidents before have consulted with spiritual advisers — evangelist Billy Graham is the best-known example — the current group’s members certainly appear to care not only about Trump’s own spiritual well-being, but also have concrete views about a range of issues and make no secret of wanting policy changes.