The Truth Wins Out web site will be offline for maintenance and upgrades from about 10 p.m. EST Friday, January 27, until midday Saturday, January 28. There may be other brief downtimes later during the weekend.

Reporting from Iowa, Chris Johnson of The Washington Blade uncovers the thoughts of young, gay Iowa caucus attendees, who they support in the GOP, and why.

The common themes:

“the candidate’s business background”
“limited government”
“what really made this country, and what made us who we are”
“core values of the U.S. Constitution”

Given eight years of Bush-Cheney, and given some current GOP presidential candidates’ support for global corporations that use government to tax and manipulate the American people — progressives may chortle at young Republicans’ blind assumption that the GOP favors limited government and the Bill of Rights.

But whose fault is that?

I know of few if any prominent progressives who celebrate “entrepreneurship, “limited government,” or “American values.” Instead, most folks are talking about some “99 percent” mathematical mumbo-jumbo. What next — square roots? Exponents? (I say that as someone who favors a restoration of Clinton-era taxes upon the upper class.)

I also know of few progressives who celebrate the ability of public-school children to pray as they and their parents wish, without interference from pushy rival churches or cults. Instead, we are quoted siding with religious “minorities” against “Christian students” who are inaccurately portrayed as champions of religious freedom (albeit only for like-minded Christians).

We are not celebrating the freedom to learn and protecting historic truths, so much as we are “opposing bullies” (allowing the GOP to redefine bully) and “changing curricula” (allowing the GOP to pretend it’s not changing curricula and revising history to erase all minorities).

Progressives also are not explicitly celebrating individual responsibility, entrepreneurship and initiative. We are not communicating the protection of our own families’ wealth and achievement from redistribution by either ruling party to its donors.

Many of us may assume these values have been self-evident in our actions — but they haven’t. People ranging from Mitt Romney to Tim Tebow to Fox News exploit our failure to communicate with the language and customs of middle America. So long as they are the primary source of talk about these values, we allow them to own the conversation.

Until we rethink and translate our language of economics and values, the progressive message will continue to be framed by others. Progressives and young moderate midwestern Republicans might as well be distant tribes speaking different languages, both ripe for mistranslation and political exploitation. Under present conditions, the young Republicans who will likely lead large swaths of America in 10 to 15 years will continue to tune out progressives’ sometimes-dated foreign language of (socialist?) equality, (LGBTQIA?) alphabet soup, (Gloria Steinem?) sexism, (transvestite?) gender norms, and so forth. Certainly, public understanding of sex and gender must be advanced — but in plain English, not Ivy League lingo that is so easily twisted by yellow journalists.

So long as we dismiss or ridicule flyover country instead of speaking their language, we dismiss our audience — and deny ourselves access to many of our future leaders.

The hard work of Exodus International director Don Schmierer in 2009 is paying off:

Officials in Uganda have brought Uganda’s kill-the-gays legislation back to life.

According to Bloomberg Businessweek:

Uganda’s parliament voted to reopen a debate on a bill that seeks to outlaw homosexuality that may be expanded to include the death penalty for gay people.

The bill had died in the previous session of parliament, earlier this year, while under threat of U.S. and European human-rights sanctions. That threat has faded, as the U.S. has promised Uganda additional military aid to fight the Lord’s Resistance Army.

In 2009, Don Schmierer traveled to Uganda and co-keynoted what became the launch conference for the kill-the-gays legislation. Along with Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively and Caleb Lee Brundidge — an acolyte of discredited therapist Richard Cohen — the Exodus board member assured Ugandans that parental upbringing and religious infidelity were to blame for any increase in undesirable sexual honesty and authenticity in their country — and that legal sanctions combined with Christian ex-gay therapy could rid their land of homosexuals.

Schmierer is program officer of Fieldstead & Company, the asset management company of far-right philanthropist Howard F. Ahmanson. Fieldstead has funded some extremist antigay U.S. projects in the United States, such as Linda Harvey‘s Mission America.

Box Turtle Bulletin details the latest Ugandan parliamentary maneuvers to exterminate homosexuals.

Several recent posts by Truth Wins Out have documented Linda Harvey’s efforts to promote antigay violence, defamation, and denial of access to health care.

It’s amazing what one ostensibly Christian woman can accomplish on just $29,000 per year.

Yet that’s her budget, according to Harvey’s IRS 990 Form for 2010.

Harvey’s IRS filings are incomplete and sketchy. According to Guidestar, Mission America is missing from the IRS’s most recent list of tax-exempt organizations, yet the group’s tax-exempt status apparently has not been revoked.

From the available information, we see that Harvey claims to work 20 hours per week, claims to collect no income, and yet somehow spent almost $27,000 on a weekly AM radio show for which she is the host.

According to her filings, Harvey’s four main supporters in 2010 were:

• Thomas W. Harvey, same address as Linda
• Fieldstead & Company, the asset management company of right-wing philanthropist Howard F. Ahmanson. This same company employs Exodus director and financier Don Schmierer as program officer.
• Maclellan Foundation, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Talk To Action documents this foundation’s ties to far-right finance.
• George Edward Durell Foundation, Westerville, Ohio

The IRS filing implies that each foundation gave no more than $5,000 directly to Mission America, but altogether, these four sources can single-handedly supply Harvey with most of her annual revenue.

If Harvey keeps promoting antigay violence, then it’s only a matter of time before she appears on official lists of U.S. hate-group leaders.

In the meantime, we can ponder why Don Schmierer, a key director of Exodus and its holding entity, is so closely tied to one of Linda Harvey’s primary sources of cash.

Presidential candidate Sen. Rick Santorum appeared Saturday on the radio show of Minnesota “kill the gays” youth preacher Bradlee Dean to endorse so-called sodomy laws, which would imprison all LGBT Americans while sparing millions of misbehaved heterosexuals.

According to the Minnesota Independent:

Santorum pointed to the landmark case, Lawrence v. Texas, where the U.S. Supreme Court overturned sodomy laws that were used to imprison gays and lesbians.

“And I stood up from the very beginning back in 2003 when the Supreme Court was going create a constitutional right to sodomy and said this is wrong we can’t do this,” Santorum said. ”And so I stood up when no one else did and got hammered for it. I stood up and I continue to stand up.”

Santorum added, “I do not believe that sexual orientation should be added to hate crimes, but let me be honest, I don’t believe in hate crimes, period.” (Full audio.)

Like Santorum and Dean, Exodus International leaders including Minnesota activist Janet Boynes effectively contend that violence targeting specific minorities should be punished more leniently, if at all.

Update: Protest hits snag: Pastor backed by [some in] gay community

According to Canada’s National Post: “A small-town Pentecostal pastor has formed an unlikely alliance with members of the gay and transgendered community who say he is being harassed and threatened by social activists who have staged a massive protest, after he complained to a coffee shop manager that a couple he thought was a young boy and girl, but turned out to be two women, were making out in front of his children.”

Original story:

Canada-based coffeehouse chain Tim Hortons is again facing criticism of its franchise practices, after a rural Ontario store threatened to call the police on a lesbian couple who were drinking coffee, cuddling, and occasionally kissing at the store three weeks ago.

According to the London Free Press:

Rev. Eric Revie, an assistant pastor at Glad Tidings Community Church in Blenheim (Ont.), said he had complained to the manager about the “sexual activities of a couple that he thought were male and female. …

The chain later issued a statement saying sexual orientation had nothing to do with the manager asking the couple to leave.

“The guests’ behaviour went beyond public displays of affection and was making other guests feel uncomfortable,” said the e-mail statement sent to The London Free Press.

“The management has apologized to (the couple) and invited them back to their restaurant. We apologize if (they) were offended by the misunderstanding that occurred at our Blenheim restaurant last month on behalf of the owners and management. It was not the manager’s intention to offend or target anyone based on their sexual orientation.”

In August 2009, Providence Daily Dose broke the news that the coffee chain’s Southern New England division (since disbanded) was sponsoring a Rhode Island antigay picnic and fund-raiser on behalf of the National Organization for Marriage. Truth Wins Out and Change.org quickly spread the word; 100 people protested the picnic; and thousands of Change.org petition signatures prompted Tim Hortons and a caterer, Blount Fine Foods, to withdraw sponsorship of the NOM event.

Most local Tim Hortons stores are owned by independent franchisees, however, Tim Hortons’ Standards of Business Practices require that local franchise owners and managers maintain the company’s ethical standards. That didn’t happen in 2009, and whether that happened in Blenheim depends upon one’s definition of acceptable public affection.

A protest, Occupy Timmies, is planned for this Thursday at Tim Hortons stores across North America.

Hat tip: The New Civil Rights Movement

Conservative Christian professor and blogger Warren Throckmorton confirms what many have long suspected:

The ex-gay think-tank NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality) claims to be a professional mental-health organization — but it isn’t.

Actually, according to NARTH’s operations director, David Pruden, only about 250 of NARTH’s approximately 1000 members are mental health professionals. Furthermore, some of those 250 members who have mental health degrees are academics who write about sexuality but do not provide sexual reorientation therapy. Thus, the lion’s share of NARTH’s members consist of lay people, ministers, and activists who have an interest in the materials provided by NARTH but are not scientists or therapists. …

Two prime speakers at next week’s convention in Phoenix are not scientists at all, but antigay activists.

Here’s another way of putting it:

NARTH is an organization of 750 antigay bigots who pay a token number of ethically sketchy ideologues with college degrees to pose as experts, distort the research of others, and parrot the antigay prejudice that donors pay to consume.

While brave Ugandan human-rights activists like Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera stand up to officially and evangelically-sponsored death threats and “kill the gays” legislation, the United States is sending 100 special-operations forces to that nation — ostensibly to aid Ugandan officials’ battle against the barbaric Lord’s Resistance Army.

Human Rights Watch welcomed the deployment, but there is reason for concern about the impact of U.S. aid on Uganda’s sexual minorities. HRW’s own 2011 annual report for Uganda spotlights widespread abuses of human rights, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech.

The LRA is just one of countless brutal rebel groups around the world, and critics question why the United States would bother with Uganda. Fox News asked U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein this question; despite her foreign-affairs and national-security expertise, Feinstein couldn’t provide a coherent answer.

Even without the LRA, the human-rights situation in Uganda is discouraging. “Born-again” Christians are calling for police violence against religious minorities. Evangelicals are renewing pressure to enact a death penalty against LGBT Ugandans. Elections are routinely rigged. Dissidents are extrajudicially executed by police and paramilitary organizations. In addition to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, other proposed bills censor the media, violate international human-rights laws, and abuse foreign HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment efforts.

(Read More)

“Give it a rest,” a conservative Christian family member today told a gay Navy officer. In their Facebook conversation, the officer had just provided Bible verses which countered the antigay “clobber verses.”

The relative continued: “I love you, but you shouldn’t make enemies out of your loved ones who don’t agree. If God sees fit, maybe not in your lifetime or mine, things might change. I don’t know His will but when I pray I ask ‘Your will be done.’”

Just imagine Jesus of Nazareth telling God and the Apostles, “Give it a rest, guys. Find something better to do.” This Christian can’t quite be bothered to correct herself or right a wrong. Nor does she even pray for justice, not even for a soldier who defended her country. The most that she can muster is, “God, I can’t be bothered. You deal with it. Where are my earplugs?”

Skillfully restated with false piety, of course.

Casting itself as a defender of religious freedom, Focus on the Family warned on Friday that a federal commission for religious freedom faces dissolution.

But the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom is not an advocate for religious freedom at all.

The USCIRF was founded by U.S. evangelicals to shield the foreign activities of right-wing Christian missionaries, not religious minorities. The commission has advocated for military interventions, not to defend religious diversity and freedom of individual religious expression, but rather to advance Christian missionary objectives.

The Indian press have accused USCIRF of grossly mischaracterizing Hindu-Muslim conflicts and of doing little or nothing to defend the freedom of anyone other than Christian evangelicals.

In Egypt, Coptic Christians have accused USCIRF of antagonizing their Muslim neighbors in a politically motivated effort to smear Egypt.

And federal religious-freedom “ambassador” Robert Seiple criticized USCIRF’s emphasis on the punishment of (anti-Christian) religious persecution over the promotion of religious freedom.

Given USCIRF’s betrayal of non-evangelicals, its anticipated dissolution next month can’t come soon enough. Focus on the Family’s defense of special rights for evangelicals — at the expense of other Christians and the world’s non-Christian religious minorities — is another indication of that organization’s disingenuous selfishness.