Hate group of attorneys plotting to wreck LGBTQ equality under guise of defending 'religious liberty'

The Alliance Defending Freedom is a supposed Christian law firm which claims to protect the religious liberty of all Americans. However, others see it as a hate group plotting to overturn laws protecting LGBTQ Americans from discrimination.  I am in the latter category.

ADF has been working behind the scenes to undermine the rights and safety of LGBTQ Americans for a number of years. The organization has been the architect behind several anti-LGBTQ cases  (such as the Masterpiece bakery case and the Baronnelle Stutzman case) which it has skillfully painted as innocent Christian businesses vs. the onslaught of radical gay activists. Or even worse, children and women fearing for their safety in bathrooms and locker rooms against so-called transgender predators.

But it has a carefully cultivated image in the media of legitimacy.

How does ADF get away with it? Part of the reason is that a lot of people aren't aware of its existence or the extreme positions it takes.  Also,  it has high profile connections in the Trump Administration, a budget of $50 million and a global network of over 3,200 attorneys.  And all of that is devoted to creating a carefully crafted image of purity and discipline in the public eye and the media (some of which are very accommodating, i.e. Fox News) while it slowly picks away at LGBTQ rights and safety.

But let's do a visual. The following video is how ADF portrays itself to the public. On Youtube, the organization pumps out incredibly polished videos like so:

That's the image ADF wants you to see. The reality is uglier:

 

This should serve as a lesson to the community. The threats to our equality and safety don't necessarily come from off-the-wall street protesters. They don't necessarily come from bakeries or florists who won't treat us like regular customers. They come from groups with huge budgets planning behind the scenes to play long games and weave narratives which will cost us our freedoms. It's not paranoid to say that there are people and groups with huge budgets conjuring up plots against us in expensively laid board rooms because that's what happening. It sounds like a silly spy movie, but unfortunately it's reality.

In the fall, the ADF will be arguing in front of SCOTUS again in cases which may decide whether or not companies and businesses can fire us simply for our sexual orientation. I have a hope that good will prevail.  But regardless, folks need to get educated and send the word out about ADF.

I look at the ADF like the infamous Koch Brothers. The group is very powerful when it can do its  business without notice. The most dangerous thing to the ADF is notoriety. You can steal when no one is watching.  When people are watching and know you as a thief, it's not so easy.  ADF's unearned sterling reputation partly comes from the fact that not too many people are aware that it exists. I think we as a community should change that.

Because no one can dish out the dirty like we can.

Related posts:

No Gays Allowed - A website devoted to all of the vulgar positions that the Alliance Defending Freedom is hiding from the public
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SPLC profile of the Alliance Defending Freedom

The extremism of anti-LGBTQ powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom - Media Matters has an exhaustive profile on ADF. Everything you need to know and then some.

GLAAD spotlights Alliance Defending Freedom’s decade long anti-LGBTQ legal strategy - GLAAD spotlight on ADF from 2017 but with a wonderful detailed look at the history of the cases it has brought against the LGBTQ community.

Conservative publication PJMedia digs a hole into the credibility of anti-LGBTQ hate groups - A piece I wrote last week. The conservative media network bends over backwards to sanitize ADF.

'Teen says he was attacked in school locker room for being openly gay' & other Fri midday news briefs

Alexandria teen says he was attacked in school locker room for being openly gay - This child is all of us. He is one of the reasons why we must always fight like hell for what belongs to us.

Republican congressman slams trans people in new campaign ad - Disgusting. I didn't make a blog post focused solely on this because I didn't want to give this pig too much attention. 

Meeting series aims to connect LGBTQ biz owners, allies - This is a wonderful idea. 

Munroe Bergdorf Reflects on the 'Toxic' LGBTQ Hierarchy - She makes a good point and it is a conversation which needs to happen.

Sorry, but you can't blame the LGBTQ community for any predators in the church

Courtesy of  Right-Wing Watch is an off-the-wall conversation about sexual abuse in the church featuring E.W. Jackson.

Jackson  is a Trump supporter who once accused presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg of attempting to turn America into a "homocracy." I have no idea what that is. In addition, Jackson has railed against gay parents, called us "servant of Satan," and apparently has more lurid ideas of gay sex than most of us. I guess you can say that he's not an ally of the community. To quote Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show, "he's a nut."

Now one homophobic nut is bad enough, but when more than one get together, you get a "nut synthesis"  This means you are going to hear all sorts of zany mess about the LGBTQ community. And with that, I give you a conversation Jackson had with Amy Cooper, the host of vague "Christian show." They are discussing gay men in the church, so you know the conversation is bound to be  . . . something:

Okay, none of that stuff is true. And you will note that neither Cooper nor Jackson offered any proof that gays have been coming into churches and molesting children.

The irony is that while the above conversation happened last week, on Thursday of this week an article came out revealing that a former prominent leader in the Southern Baptist Convention mentored and assisted a younger pastor even after learning of allegations of said pastor engaging in the sexual assault of several women.

Paige Patterson, the leader in question, isn't exactly an angel himself when it comes to the treatment of women:

Patterson’s infamy became clear in April of 2018 when we learned he once offered “advice” to women trapped in abusive marriages by telling them to stay and pray. In a separate sermon, he made creepy sexual remarks about an underage girl. As president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, he once told an alleged rape victim to not talk to the police and forgive the rapist. Last September, he body-shamed a woman during a sermon while also condemning those who make false accusations against men (as if that routinely happens). And in June, a lawsuit alleged that a former seminary student told him that someone at the school had raped her at gunpoint and taken pictures of her for blackmail purposes… and Patterson responded by shaming and shunning her.

But go ahead and blame gay men in the church, Jackson and Cooper. Go ahead with your bad selves.


# apologies to the  tv show The Boondocks for pilfering its idea to create the notion of the "nut synthesis."

'Bigots continue to freak out over Drag Queen Story Hour' & other Thur midday news briefs

Right-wing and evangelical media are freaking out over Drag Queen Story Hour in Washington - While those dipsticks are freaking out over this . . .

Couple Who Ran Gay Conversion ‘Camps’ for ‘Troubled Boys’ Indicted for Human Trafficking: WATCH - . . . we have some real trouble here. 

Conservative publication PJMedia digs a hole into the credibility of anti-LGBTQ hate groups - Post from last night cause it deserves repeating. 

Donald Trump’s War On LGBTQ Americans Is Ramping Up - Hold my wig and earrings cause things are about to get ugly.

Gay conservative group loses several leaders after Trump endorsement - Nice to see some gay Republicans with a degree of self-respect.

Conservative publication PJMedia digs a hole into the credibility of anti-LGBTQ hate groups

Conservative site PJMedia tried to refute the notion that the Family Research Council (top) and the Alliance Defending Freedom (bottom) are hate groups. It failed.

On Wednesday, conservative publication PJMedia attempted to prove that SPLC's claims about the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom being hate groups were false.

That was the intention. By publishing a one-sided, very shoddy article, Tyler O'Neil, the publication's senior editor, probably sought to give the groups ammunition and cover. What happened was that he inadvertently opened up a huge hole in the two groups' claims and credibility

And naturally, I had to stroll in with a few facts he conveniently sought to omit.

O'Neil's piece, 5 Reasons the SPLC Is Profoundly Wrong About Two Notorious Christian 'Hate Groups,' was the second in two weeks by conservatives trying to paint SPLC as a dangerous group out to smear Christian organizations. The first, by ADF employee Jessica Prol Smith, took a personal, but highly evasive view of the situation.

Unlike Smith's piece, O'Neil's article sought to address and refute the specific reasons why SPLC considers these organizations as hate groups. Whereas Smith was evasive, O'Neil sought to be direct. In taking this route, O'Neil committed several errors of distortions and omission.

Let's look at a few sections of his article:

The SPLC's accusation against FRC breaks down into two issues: FRC demonizes LGBT people and FRC suggests homosexuals are pedophiles. So, does this Christian organization demonize LGBT people? 

In the pamphlet "How to Respond to the LGBT Movement," FRC's senior fellow for policy studies, Peter Sprigg, lays out his organization's position on these issues. That pamphlet opens by emphasizing that "every person, no matter who they are sexually attracted to, is created in the image and likeness of God" and therefore is "equal in value and dignity and must be treated with respect." Sprigg goes on to explain that FRC does not believe that sexual attraction defines a person, so the idea that homosexual activity is sinful does not involve a degradation of dignity. 

"The key reason why FRC believes that homosexual conduct is harmful to the people who engage in it is the high rate of physical health problems which are a direct or indirect result of their sexual conduct," Sprigg told PJ Media on Monday. "This is particularly true of men who have sex with men (MSM), who have dramatically higher rates of HIV and syphilis, as well as high rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and HPV. High rates of the latter cause MSM to have rates of anal cancer 17 times higher than among heterosexual men, according to the CDC." 

Physical health risks for lesbians are less extreme, but may include Bacterial vaginosis, Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and Breast and other cancers, he argued, citing Web MD. 

"Those who engage in homosexual conduct have also been shown to have higher risks of mental illness and substance abuse. Although LGBT activists blame 'discrimination' and 'stigma' for these problems, that theory is undermined by the fact that these problems have persisted at high rates even in countries that are very accepting of homosexuality, such as the Netherlands.," Sprigg added. 

"Many of these conditions put others (such as sexual partners) at risk; and governments have spent billions of dollars in prevention, treatment, and the search for cures for these diseases. This is why we believe the cost of these behaviors is also being borne by society at large," he concluded. 

LGBT activists are free to vehemently disagree with these claims, but FRC does not spread them in order to demonize LGBT people.

This entire section is a careful mischaracterization of LGBTQ health.  Sprigg's statement - Although LGBT activists blame 'discrimination' and 'stigma' for these problems is blatant cherry-picking.

The claim about how discrimination and stigma leads to negative health problems in the LGBTQ community is not an idea conjured up by activists as Sprigg implies. It is a fact which has been voiced by legitimate medical professionals on numerous occasions. As a matter of fact, they are the same medical professionals cited in O'Neil's article. The article linked to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) when giving a listing of the diseases affecting gay men. This is what the CDC also said about stigma, homophobia can lead to these diseases in gay men:

Homophobia, stigma (negative and usually unfair beliefs), and discrimination (unfairly treating a person or group of people) against gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men still exist in the United States and can negatively affect the health and well-being of this community.

'LGBTQ books are being censored in middle schools' & other Wed midday news briefs

LGBTQ books are being censored in middle schools. Authors are speaking out. - THIS right here is some mess to keep the books away from our kids.

Right-wing and evangelical media helped land anti-trans parent group the Kelsey Coalition in USA Today - We got a bunch of trashy so-and-so's trying to create havoc for our transgender children under the guise of "helping" them.

Trump claims ‘some of my biggest supporters’ are gay & support his plan to legalize discrimination - Sheeeeiiiitttt! Don't even.

Medina LGBTQ referendum effort fails to get enough signatures - We win. 

Federal judge overturns Wisconsin Medicaid provision barring transgender surgery - We win again. Nice.

'Veggie Tales' creator doesn't want to be 'forced' to talk about LGBTQ issues (but no one asked him to)

The creator of the children's show 'Veggie Tales' doesn't want to make it  LGBTQ-inclusive. But no one asked him to.

I've never seen the children's show Veggie Tales and after the creator's ridiculous comments about the LGBTQ community, I doubt I ever will.

From The Advocate:

The co-creator of the Christian-oriented children’s video and TV series Veggie Tales predicts Christian kids’ shows will soon be forced to be LGBTQ-inclusive, but he intends to resist. “Parents are definitely going to have to deal with a growing LGBT presence in children’s media,” 

Phil Vischer told The Christian Post. “It’s going to show up more and more as the world has decided that LGBT issues are in the same categories as race and civil rights issues. So to say you shouldn’t have a same-sex couple on Sesame Street is the equivalent of saying you shouldn’t have a black couple on Sesame Street.” The famed PBS show is, of course, secular in nature. 

He said that when another secular PBS show, Arthur, featured the wedding of two male characters this year, it was a “shot heard through the Christian parenting world.” It sent “such a strong message of, well, kids, of course you’re fine with gay marriage, because there’s nothing to question about it,” he said, which is “concerning.” 

“If I get pressure from Hollywood to show two men getting married because we’ve all decided it’s right and correct, my pushback is: ‘No, I won’t. Because that’s not what I believe is best for kids,’” Vischer continued. “It’s more about what we show as normal rather than explicitly showing something and saying, ‘That’s wrong.’ I’m portraying the positive rather than the negative.”

Mr. Vischer shouldn't think so much of himself to believe that he is going to be coerced into talking about LGBTQ issues or same-sex families. We get it loud and clear that you either want to omit our families or address us from a negative perspective.

And we have enough support out there to not care about you. So don't worry your empty head about being coerced to talk about our issues or our families. We don't need you or your 'vegetables.'