Truth Wins Out executive director Wayne Besen appeared on CNN Headline News today to defend a British TV ad which featured gay men in parental roles, serving Heinz mayonnaise.

Besen criticized U.S. foodmaker H.J. Heinz for succumbing to homophobia and withdrawing the ad under pressure from the right-wing American Family Association. About 200 viewer complaints were received by British regulators.

Here’s the ad:

Truth Wins Out defended the ad:

The Headline News segment included Randy Sharp of the AFA, who claimed that the ad promoted a homosexual lifestyle: “What does mayonnaise have to do with homosexuals and their lifestyle?” Sharp claimed that 70,000 AFA supporters in the United States disagreed with the ad.

Business marketing analyst Dan Hill said Heinz was right to pull the ad. Hill said:

“In business you can never afford to forget that the bottom line is that ‘family values’ means ‘my family, not your family,’ and I think in the UK most households have traditional family structures.”

Besen responded that gay couples are well-accepted in the United Kingdom and that gay soldiers have been allowed to serve in British armed forces with great success.

From the comfort of a conservative Christian enclave in central Florida, Exodus executive vice president Randy Thomas loves those Jewish people. He loves them so much that his policy until now has been to not talk to them without praying for their conversion to his own ignorant and immature views regarding Judaism.

After blessing antigay Jewish activist David Benkof with this smug paternalism, Thomas had to be stopped and corrected by his boss, Exodus president Alan Chambers. How is it that someone so lacking in grace and courtesy, not to mention spirituality, is allowed to represent an international ex-gay “Christian” network?

There are, no doubt, some valid and fact-based reasons to oppose Barack Obama as the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for President of the United States.

But the echo chamber of the far right does not care much for facts; among that crowd, vague smears and self-flattery have sadly become the chosen political currency.

Exodus youth activist Mike Ensley reminds of that today, as he parrots a fact-free tirade against Obama that was first penned by Thomas Sowell of the increasingly neocon and partisan Hoover Institute.

First, Ensley (through Sowell) projects onto others his own preoccupation with trivialities — denying gay Americans equality, promoting scientific ignorance among youths — at a time when America needs unity and true leadership to reverse the catastrophe in Iraq, conserve energy at home, live with religious and cultural diversity, and accept the sacrifices that will be necessary to reverse such crises as the federal debt and economically catastrophic climate change. Ensley points to the speck in his enemy’s eye while ignoring a plank in his own:

One of the painful aspects of studying great catastrophes of the past is discovering how many times people were preoccupied with trivialities when they were teetering on the edge of doom.

Then Ensley parrots Sowell’s cynical and hypocritical position on federal judges. The Liberty Counsel, which with Exodus is a member of the Arlington Group, believes that reactionary activist judges should rewrite American law and justice, and remake social policy, according to the Group’s reinterpretations of the Bible and according to un-Biblical social mores that seem to be derived from 1950s TV sitcoms. When judges do their duty and rule that there are constitutional limits to presidential power, or that gay Americans are entitled to their constitutional rights, then Ensley, Exodus, and the Liberty Counsel vent the Arlington Group’s collective outrage and resentment with about as much individuality and originality as a ventriloquist’s puppets.

Read carefully:

Barack Obama has already indicated that he wants judges who make social policy instead of just applying the law.

Notice that Ensley does not support judges’ mandate to interpret state and federal constitutions, nor their mandate to balance and counteract the other two branches of government. Instead, Ensley views judges as rubber stamps “applying” whatever unconstitutional laws might be passed — provided, of course, that such laws are written by Republican Party apparatchiks who are, in turn, controlled by the Arlington Group.

Ensley briefly parrots unsubstantiated gossip about Obama’s record on crime. Then Ensley, who has demonstrated no knowledge of mid-20th-century American history, accepts at face value — and without a single factual example — Sowell’s vague, sloppy, and sweeping accusations about Obama’s domestic and foreign policy:

Although Senator Obama ha s presented himself as the candidate of new things — using the mantra of “change” endlessly — the cold fact is that virtually everything he says about domestic policy is straight out of the 1960s and virtually everything he says about foreign policy is straight out of the 1930s.

Sowell offers no evidence, and Ensley apparently neither notices nor cares. Whether anything that has been said about Obama has any basis in fact is irrelevant to Ensley, who lives and works in a political environment of gossip and innuendo.

If this style of gossip and innuendo is what Exodus wants to bring to the nation’s schools and youths, then Exodus should be banned from schools and disenfranchised by the nation’s Christian youth groups.

The nation and its youth are in need of historical, social, scientific, political and religious facts — not more partisan warfare and smug, factless diatribe.

A month ago, David Benkof presented me with an opinion piece he wrote slamming the “ex-gay” organization Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH). It appeared to be useful information, but I refused to employ it in my efforts. Why?

Because, in my view, Benkof lacks character and cannot be trusted. Once upon a time, he was the openly bisexual founder of Q-syndicate, which provides the GLBT press with content. Then, he quit his job, became a born again Jew, changed his last name from Bianco to Benkof and claims to have given up sex with men. He went on to stab the GLBT community in the back and cozied up to the anti-gay industry.

Granted, I never liked this man. I met him at a National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association meeting in Chicago several years ago. I found him to be crass and lack class. He was an overbearing, insufferable, ill-mannered braggart with an ego the size of the Sears Tower. With a distaste for his personality, I simply smiled and walked away.

After Benkof became a “New Jew,” he moved to Las Vegas. I was to pass through on my “Anything But Straight” book tour. Through a respected intermediary, he tried to set up a lunch meeting and I refused. I did not like him when he was “out,” so I certainly had no use for him when he was “In.” (For the record, I’ve even dined with ex-gay leaders Randy Thomas and Alan Chambers, who are much better company than Benkof)

The last thing I was going to do was waste part of a day in Vegas with Bianco/Benkof. No thanks, get me to the pool and to the slot machines. Besides, the fake models of the Eiffel Tower and New York’s skyline were enough artifice in Las Vegas, without bringing Benkof into the picture.

This year, Benkof has slithered back into the public eye, emerging as an anti-gay activist who poses as a pro-gay advocate. He has fancied himself a regular columnist with the GLBT press, even though this is not true. He has also been accused by more than one respected advocate of misrepresentation in interviews for his column.

Most important, this spotlight-seeking charlatan has been dishonest about his motives. For these reasons, I elected not to use his information about the ex-gay industry. I try to only quote sources that are known to be honest and have integrity. Mr. Benkof does not fit the bill. One just has to feel sorry for this poor, troubled soul who craves attention at all costs.

Today, Box Turtle Bulletin’s Timothy Kincaid wrote an excellent article exposing this fraud. I urge everyone to read it so they know the true David Benkof. Here is an excerpt:

Benkof is not swayed by logic. As Benkof argued in a chatroom debate over same-sex parenting:

However, my stance wouldn’t change even if 100 studies showed no differences in children of every family structure — because my beliefs are informed by a traditional Jewish worldview and its attitudes toward families and childrearing. But I want to ask you — would your stance change if 100 studies showed harmful effects in children raised without both a mother and a father?

You see, all of Benkof’s arguments have nothing to do with what he’s claiming in his writing. Benkof doesn’t care whether it could be proven by undeniable evidence that equality, marriage, children’s issues, the military, discrimination, and every other issue was without question on our side.

He’s not really debating policy, he’s pushing his religion.

And if Benkof were honest about his efforts, I would be fine. I have respect for those who live according to their religious constraints. And I don’t seek to diminish those who present their faith for others to consider.

But that isn’t what David is doing. He’s not presenting his articles of faith for consideration for cultural adoption. He’s seeking to advance the rules of his faith by making secular argument, and not being honest about it. Because pushing religion is viewed suspiciously, David Benkof has chosen to adopt artificial arguments. And an artificial identity. And artificial supporters.

I wonder if he thinks his God is pleased.

The youngest daughter of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick says she’s gay, but didn’t come out to her parents until after lawmakers voted to kill a proposal to outlaw gay marriage.

Katherine Patrick made the revelation public in an interview with her father in Bay Windows, a weekly Boston newspaper aimed at the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community.

Patrick, who supports gay marriage, said he was proud of his daughter. The two will march in Boston’s gay pride parade Saturday.

This is an example of love truly winning out, not the bogus snake oil Focus on the Family peddles to desperate and confused parents.

At TWO, we tend to focus on the official “ex-gay” ministries. However, there are many examples of GLBT families torn apart by “friends” and family members who will do anything to stop a person from living an openly gay life. It is sort of the unofficial ex-gay ministries.

Over the years, I have received calls or e-mails from men and women whose long-term partners had been persuaded to leave GLBT relationships by people who use coercion, brainwashing and mind-control. It is particularly easy to manipulate the individuals who suffer from mental disabilities.

On a new website, David Nahmod, a man who lives in San Francisco, tells a harrowing story of how a woman befriended his partner with the obsessive goal of breaking the couple apart. The “friend” allegedly poisoned the relationship and eventually lured the partner to live with her born again family in Arizona.

Such cases are difficult to track, but they can be very real and cause heartache and heartbreak for many in the GLBT community.

The parents of PFLAG reached out June 7 to attendees of “Love Won Out,” Focus on the Family’s ex-gay roadshow in Orlando, Florida. The parents offered a message of unconditional love and hope to counter the conditional love and damaging stereotypes of the ex-gay conference.

Earlier, Truth Wins Out participated in a press conference with Dr. Kathryn Norsworthy, licensed psychologist; Joe Saunders, Equality Florida; Rev. John Middleton, Joy Metropolitan Community Church; Pastor Brei Taylor, Oasis Ministries; and Linn Possell, Hope Unites United Church of Christ. The press conference was hosted by the Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Community Center of Central Florida.

Amid protests over Focus on the Family’s use of its TiVo affiliation to discriminate against gay fathers, TiVo has removed the page of its own website that promoted Focus on the Family’s affiliate relationship with TiVo.

The original page currently displays a Page Not Found error. Here’s the page as it appeared a few days ago.

Is the removal is temporary? Is TiVo re-evaluating Focus’s role in TiVo’s KidZone child-safety filter? Is TiVo rethinking its association with Focus’s campaign against gay fathers? These questions remain unanswered.

Hat tip: Good As You

Who better to lead a Southern Baptist Convention panel promoting gender stereotypes than a cabal of gender-confused ex-gay political activists?

Photos of the panel show it to be dominated by Exodus International president Alan Chambers and other Exodus leaders including South Carolina ex-gay activist Tim Wilkins, Florida ex-gay activist Christine Sneeringer, and Texas ex-gay activist and SBC gender-issues czar Bob Stith.

The panel appears to be all-white — and all-male except for Sneeringer. Some members are not Southern Baptist.

None of these “ex-gays” has demonstrated academic expertise in gender issues nor a commitment to equal opportunity for women.

Instead of educating the public about gender diversity and individuality, the SBC gender panel plans to recruit Southern Baptist financial support for ex-gay activists and to confuse Christian teen-agers, their pastors, and their parents into believing they aren’t truly manly or womanly unless they mimic a 1950s-era heterosexual “lifestyle.”

Hat tip: Good As You