Congressional leaders called out for mingling with anti-gay hate groups

This ad is awesome and we need more of stuff like this. I've seen that when we call out the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and other anti-gay groups, we put them on the defensive for a change:



According to Faithful America, the group which put out the ad:

 Faithful America, a national Christian organization, is airing a new TV ad that calls on Virginia Congressman Randy Forbes to cancel his upcoming appearance at a Washington, D.C. luncheon sponsored by the American Family Association, a fringe hate group whose spokesman has blamed America for 9/11, claimed gays caused the Holocaust, said black people “rut like rabbits” and argued that women have no place in politics. Watch the new ad, “There’s nothing Christian about hate,” which is running this week in Virginia’s 4th Congressional District.

“As founder and chair of the so-called Congressional Prayer Caucus, Rep. Randy Forbes holds up himself up as a Christian leader in Washington, D.C. But there's nothing Christian about the hateful rhetoric of the American Family Association. Thousands of Christians across America are calling on Rep. Forbes to cancel this appearance.” said Faithful America executive director Michael Sherrard.

The American Family Association and its spokesman, Bryan Fischer, have a long track record of extremism. During the last election, Mitt Romney confronted the group, calling out its “poisonous language” and lack of “decency.” The AFA has officially been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its outrageous and bigoted statements about gays, which include: “Homosexuality gave us Adolf Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.”

Faithful America’s new TV ad comes on the heels of a national petition to Congressman Forbes, which was launched last week and so far has over 12,000 signatures.

Faithful America will run the new TV ad throughout the week and deliver its petitions to the Congressman’s office ahead of the American Family Association luncheon at the Values Voter Summit. The luncheon is scheduled for 12:15 PM on Friday and set to feature Rep. Forbes and Buddy Smith, AFA’s Executive Vice President.

Faithful America is not the only group bringing attention to the problem with Congressional leaders mingling with groups who preach anti-gay rhetoric. According to Right Wing Watch:

On Friday, People For the American way joined with the Southern Poverty Law Center, Faithful America, GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza to send a letter to every public official scheduled to speak at this year’s Values Voter Summit, urging them to withdraw from the event. Among the scheduled speakers are Sens. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Tim Scott and Reps. Paul Ryan, Randy Forbes, Michele Bachmann, Jim Bridenstine, Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan, Steve King, Steve Scalise and Scott Turner.

The letter [pdf] reads in part:

We understand that you’ve been invited to speak at the upcoming Values Voter Summit being held in Washington, D.C., from Oct. 11-13. Given the demonizing lies about the LGBT community spread by the host, the Family Research Council (FRC), and another major sponsor of the event, the American Family Association (AFA), we urge you to not lend the prestige of your office to the summit. The FRC has amassed an extensive record of vilifying gays and lesbians with falsehoods – portraying them as sick, evil, incestuous, violent, perverted, and a danger to the nation.

 Perhaps its most insidious claim is that gay men molest children at a far higher rate than heterosexual men – a claim refuted by all credible scientific authorities, including the American Psychological Association. Yet the FRC has continued to smear gays and lesbians by claiming that pedophilia, in the words of FRC President Tony Perkins, “is a homosexual problem.” Perkins also says the “It Gets Better” campaign, an initiative designed to give LGBT students hope for a better tomorrow, is “disgusting” and part of a “concerted effort” to “recruit” children into the gay “lifestyle.” One senior FRC official has even argued that homosexuality should be illegal.

The AFA’s Bryan Fischer, who serves as the group’s spokesman and director of issue analysis, frequently blames homosexuality for the Holocaust and Nazi Party: “Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.” He also promotes the views of the American architect of the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda. Demonizing the LGBT community has consequences. As FBI data demonstrate, it is one of the groups most likely to be victimized by violent hate crimes. Defaming them publicly day after day – as the FRC and the AFA do – only throws fuel on the fire.

The bigotry of the FRC and the AFA is not limited to gays and lesbians. Fischer, for example, has said that African Americans “rut like rabbits” and argued that women should be kicked out of politics and the military. He’s also stated that Hispanics are “socialists by nature” and come here to “plunder” our country. The FRC’s executive vice president, Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, has said Jews must be converted to Christianity and has argued that “Islam is not a religion and does not deserve First Amendment protections” – a statement that is antithetical to American ideals.

Even if these groups fail to convince members of Congress to withdraw from the Values Voter Summit, as far as I'm concerned they have won the battle by bringing attention to not only the homophobic rhetoric spewed by these phony Christian groups, but also how members of Congress seem to have no problem giving it a pass.

'Conservative magazine devotes entire issue to smearing lgbts' and other Monday midday news briefs

Conservative magazine: LGBT people are secret weapons - And entire issue devoted to smearing the lgbt community. What have we done to be so lucky?  

Liberty Counsel: Teaching Students About LGBT People Is "Sexual Assault" - These people have a strange idea of sexual assault.  

Rainbow American Flag Sparks Controversy At Middle Tennessee State University - Oh boy. Batten down the hatches Part 1. For the record, I personally like what was done to the flag. It symbolizes that its our America too.

 Columbia, SC Police Officers Defy Orders to March in Gay Pride Parade Over Religious Beliefs: VIDEO - Batten down the hatches Part 2. And in my city at a Pride in which I participated no less.  

New California Law Will Allow Children More Than Two Legal Parents - The headline is a mess. This law needs to be explained.

'Former Fox producer, discredited study playing roles in Russia's anti-gay crackdown' and other Friday midday news briefs

Longtime Fox News Producer Testified In Support Of Russia's Anti-Gay Laws - The rotten apple doesn't far from the tree, does it. First we find out that NOM was involved, and now a former Fox News producer. How many more Americans were involved in pushing anti-gay laws in Russia? This is slowly but surely blowing up to be a huge controversy. 

Regnerus Whines and Lies at RNA Conference - I wouldn't be surprised if THIS guy was involved also. Meanwhile as this article shows, he is catching a lot of flack for that discredited anti-gay study he pushed last year.  

Globalizing Homophobia, Part 3: A New Life for Discredited Research - Guess what. Regnerus was involved in pushing anti-gay laws in Russia via his discredited study.

 STUDY: Undocumented Transgender Immigrants Face High Levels Of Discrimination - This is awful!  

University Of Mississippi's 'The Laramie Project' Production Interrupted By Students, Athletes Yelling Anti-Gay Slurs - The ignorance on display here is just sad.

PA Gov. Corbett compares marriage equality to incest

And this wasn't the smartest thing to say:

 Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett has compared the marriage of same-sex couples to the marriage of a brother and sister during an appearance on a morning TV news show.

The Republican made the remark Friday on WHP-TV in Harrisburg when asked about a statement his lawyers made in an August court filing.

The attorneys had said gay marriage licenses have no "value or legitimacy" in Pennsylvania and can't be defended in court. They compared gay couples to children, who can't marry because a 1996 law says marriage is between a man and a woman.

Corbett has called that statement inappropriate. On Friday, he said he thinks "a much better analogy would have been brother and sister, don't you?"

National Organization for Marriage involved in Russia's anti-gay crackdown

NOM's Brian Brown

In part two of its series of articles demonstrating how American religious right groups are embracing Russia's homophobic crackdown on its lgbt citizens, People for the American Way's Right-Wing Watch has just released some interesting information. The National Organization for Marriage is playing a  role in this homophobic crackdown. NOM's president, Brian Brown, visited Russia and spoke against gay adoption :

On June 13, 2013, just days after the Russian Duma passed laws banning on gay “propaganda” and actions that “offend religious feelings,” a delegation of five French Catholic anti-gay activists --at least one with ties to the far-right Front National party -- traveled to Moscow at the invitation of the Duma committee on family, women and children to discuss, among other issues, Russia’s plans to tighten its ban on adoption by same-sex couples abroad.

Joining them was one of the most well-known figures in the American anti-gay movement, National Organization For Marriage president Brian Brown . Brown had worked closely with the French anti-gay movement in its protests of the country’s marriage equality law, traveling to Paris to demonstrate against the law and signing onto an email to members of the Collectif Famille Mariage, one of the most prominent groups working to oppose marriage equality in France. (Excerpt, via Google Translate: “You are the people who invented the Gothic art and launched skyward these wonderful cathedrals which the whole civilized world was inspired…The new cathedral that you are to build our eyes is composed of living stones: you, dear French Resistance, youth and adults, men and women, boys and girls!” )

 . . . According to Russian news reports, the French activists and Brown attended two events in Moscow. One was a joint meeting on changes in international adoption laws with the Duma’s committee on foreign affairs and its committee on family, women and children – whose chair, Yelena Mizulina, authored the ban on gay “propaganda” and the adoption bill.

The other event was a roundtable discussion on "Traditional Values: The Future of the European Peoples," hosted by the St. Basil the Great Foundation – a Catholic group run by Konstantin Malofeev, the head of a private equity group and spirited anti-gay activist – and also sponsored by the Duma’s family committee, the right-wing Center for Social-Conservative Policy, and a new multi-party group of Russian MPs formed, with approval of the Russian Orthodox Church, to “protect traditional Christian values” and fight “aggressive liberalism” inreaction to Pussy Riot’s protests. Among the measures pushed by the group was the new law imposing jail time for “insulting religious feelings.”

The National Organization for Marriage did not publicly announce Brown’s participation in this international meeting of anti-gay minds. However, his presence was mentioned by Revel in a blog post about the visit, in which he noted that Brown gave a “remarkable speech in the Duma.” The NOM leader also spoke to Russia 1’s Vesti news program: 

According to a re-translation of the Russian translation of the interview with Brown, he told the reporters that restricting Russian adoptions to gay and lesbian couples was a way of halting a slippery slope of “very negative developments all over the world”:

 Right now you’re having the fight about adoption, but the adoption issue is indivisible from the marriage issue. If you don’t defend your values now, I’m afraid we’re going to see very negative developments all over the world. 

Right-Wing Watch obtained a copy of Brown's speech:

 In his speech to the committee (again, translated to Russian and back again to English), Brown warned of the dangers of allowing gay people to adopt children, saying “Every child should have the right to have normal parents: a father and a mother,” and sharing some of NOM’s favorite stories of the supposed religious persecution following marriage equality in the U.S.:

 But we are now convinced, having heard the presentations of our French brothers and sisters, that we are talking about very serious problems indeed. We are talking about violations of rights, we are talking about the rights and problems of children in their education. We should not shy away from this and should not forget about it and create an illusion for ourselves. A reconsideration of the definition and understanding of marriage is in fact a real threat to rights. Very soon after a law was passed that legalized same-sex marriage in the state of Massachusetts, we saw that religious organizations were closing down, religious organizations that dealt with adoptions and that did not support adoption by same-sex families. They were closing one after another. We have actually seen that in some schools, they are talking to children about homosexuality, but in fact they don’t have the right to learn about a lot of things like that until a certain age. . . . I think that this visit, the invitation to visit Russia, will enable the development of this movement around the world. We will band together, we will defend our children and their normal civil rights. Every child should have the right to have normal parents: a father and a mother. 

It's worth noting that in addition to cracking down on international adoption by gay couples, Russia is also considering a law which would remove children from their homes if their parents are gay or lesbian. There are rumblings that the Regnerus study which is connected to NOM has been cited by folks pushing this law.

But this new development alone regarding Brown's speech puts another crack in NOM's argument that the organization is "simply trying to preserve traditional marriage."  With its participation in Russia's persecution of its lgbt citizens, NOM has officially entered the international arena of anti-gay persecution and none of the shucking and jiving or semantical word play the organizations uses can erase this fact.

NOM needs to be called out on this.

'NOM is suing the IRS' and other Thursday midday news briefs

NOM: ‘The IRS Needs To Pay’ For Leaking Document Revealing Its Wrongdoing - Talk about trying to draw attention to yourself. NOM is worse than Sarah Palin.  

Globalizing Homophobia, Part 1: How The American Right Came to Embrace Russia’s Anti-Gay Crackdown - Part 1 of a kick-ass series of articles which every lgbt in America needs to read. 

From People for the American Way:

 . . . we’ll look at how American activists influenced Russia’s anti-gay laws by funding anti-gay activism in Russia, testifying before the Duma, providing false research to fan the flames of anti-gay laws abroad, and building an international movement to back the harshest anti-gay laws around the world. 

College Gay Pride Celebrations Come Under Attack Despite Institutional Support - A former Georgia lawmaker writes a vicious anti-gay letter. But you should read the comments under the letter. They are BRUTAL to him.  

Two Minutes of Advice for Those Testing HIV-Positive (VIDEO) - A much needed video for every community.

 One Million Moms Very Upset About Funny Ruby Tuesday Ad Featuring Pixellated Meat - Huh?

October is LGBT History Month

With all of the shutdown nonsense grabbing the spotlight, I almost forgot that October is LGBT History Month. The Equality Forum has come out with its annual videos spotlight noted lgbt historical figures. Although, I am NOT happy with one of the selections this year because I feel that living lgbt historical figures should be out (and the last time I checked, Queen Latifah isn't out), I would encourage folks to check out the videos coming out daily featuring the selected 31 figures. The following video is an overview: