(Weekly Column)

I was surprised when I began to tear up prior to the press conference on Tuesday announcing The American Prayer Hour. The purpose of the APH, which is Thursday, February 4, is to offer an alternative to the annual National Prayer Breakfast, which takes place on the same day and is run by the secretive fundamentalist organization known as The Family. This shadowy group is directly tied to the notorious “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda.

In the past, I have worked press conferences that included hate crime victims and their families. So, I’ve become somewhat inured to the daily horrors that are inflicted on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

But, today really got to me.

Moses, a young gay man from Uganda, spoke at our media conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. He is seeking asylum in The United States, because he fears for his life in Uganda. The Ugandan media sometimes publishes the photographs and addresses of LGBT people, placing their livelihoods at risk and their lives in imminent danger.

I usually prep speakers by reviewing talking points. On this day, however, two staff members for the Human Rights Campaign prepared Moses to face the national media by obscuring his face. They stood in a corner fitting his head with a paper bag.

We had two different size bags, and he tried on each, as if they were shirts at an Old Navy store. We had to ensure that it was a snug fit, lest it fall off, reveal his identity and put his life in jeopardy.

It had been a three-day trek by car for Moses and a friend to get to Washington. This heroic journey would not end in magazine covers, book deals or fame as a talking head on the cable networks. All Moses had to gain was the opportunity to share the truth in anonymity, and he did so with remarkable equanimity.

As Moses stood in front of the podium, the juxtaposition of the American flag and this courageous young man wearing a bag to blur his humanity was jarring. I felt pride for living in a free country where we could hold a press conference to denounce The Family’s role in Uganda. But, there was also shame that America, famous for its innovation, had been exporting a virulent and violent strain of religious extremism to far away lands.

In front of the cameras, Moses recounted how he had been forced to marry a woman, was assaulted at school, raped by a policeman, and fired from his job because he is gay.

“One would rather die than come out of the closet,” Moses said at the press conference.

Many people at the National Prayer Breakfast have no idea about the radical and unorthodox, cult-like beliefs that The Family is passing off as Christianity. With little transparency and regard for democracy, this organization, which believes God favors powerful elites, spreads its influence throughout the world.

Prominent members of The Family in America include: Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla), Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Mark Pryor (R-AK), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), John Ensign (R-NV). Key House members include: Reps. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn) Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.), Heath Shuler (D-NC) Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Joe Pitts (R-PA).

“Would you like a glass of fresh blood with your bacon?”

Perhaps, if this were the question asked the rich and powerful attending Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, they’d finally understand that the group behind this event was also serving up extreme ideology that wasn’t on the menu. They’d realize that while they dined in an opulent ballroom at the Washington Hilton, there were gay Ugandans who were running for their lives.

While some members of The Family have denounced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda, the group’s leader, Doug Coe, usually a loquacious man, has been strangely silent. On Tuesday, Religion News Service reported that, “the Family has not officially denounced the bill, and did not return repeated requests for clarification of their role in its development.”

One would think that publicly opposing a potential slaughter would be high on Coe’s agenda, considering the sponsor of the bill, David Bahati, is a key member of The Family.

President Barack Obama will speak at The National Prayer Breakfast. Hopefully, he will denounce the Uganda bill and make a statement that could affect the dire situation in Uganda.

In the meantime, you can help by attending one of 17 American Prayer Hours across the country, including one in Washington DC. (http://www.americanprayerhour.org). It is time to unmask the horror and create a world where people are free to be themselves.

To quote another Moses: “Let my people go.”

On this site, Evan Hurst wrote about new suspicions that Tim Tebow’s mother, Pam, may be fudging her story about defying a doctor’s recommendation to abort her unborn football star son Tim (pictured left) when she was facing a difficult pregnancy in the Philippines. CBS will air a controversial Focus on the Family ad during the Super Bowl where Ms. Tebow is portrayed as a hero, ironically, for choosing life.

The problem is, it appears unlikely that Tebow could have made this decision, since abortion is outlawed in the Philippines. Those who violate the law are often prosecuted and jailed.

As the facts come out, Ms. Tebow’s tale is under increased scrutiny. And if there is one thing we know, fundamentalists love magic stories of transformation, even if they are not true. In fact, the entire “ex-gay” industry is built on whoppers that often set a compelling narrative, but are left factually wanting.

Let’s be clear. The veracity of Ms. Tebow’s story may be verified. She could be honestly and sincerely recounting a true event in her life.

But, if Tebow is twisting the facts or exaggerating the circumstances to fit a desired storyline, perhaps she thinks that she can get away with it because the alleged incident took place overseas.

However, the truth almost always seeps out. Focus on the Family and Pam Tebow should remember the cautionary tale of another football player, Pat Tillman (pictured left). The military shamefully tried to conceal how the gridiron star turned soldier died at war in Afghanistan. They invented a heroic fictional storyline and thought they could get away with it because the incident took place in a distant land.

They were wrong.

If Focus on the Family executives believe that they can air a hoax and won’t be exposed as frauds, they are in greater denial than the hapless token “ex-gays” they keep on-staff.

A  multi-million dollar ad aired during the Super Bowl will likely be investigated. Remember, there is a doctor still out there (unless he or she has passed away) who offered the alleged abortion advice to Pam Tebow. This doctor, if found, could very well contradict the her story.

Focus on the Family is already facing serious challenges, such as cutbacks and layoffs due to the recession. Their founder, James Dobson, is leaving the group next month to start a rival radio ministry with his son Ryan. If Mrs. Tebow’s story turns out to be a con job, her fable could destroy this once venerable, and now vulnerable, right wing organization. (Focus compound pictured left)

If they are wise, leaders of the Colorado Springs-based ministry will immediately dispatch a team of private investigators to the Philippines to rigorously fact check this fishy story. If they find a discrepancy and have the decency to pull the ad, Americans will be very forgiving. If the ad airs, however, and it is a fraud, they will lose face, trash their honor, destroy their reputation, and squander their already low stockpile of credibility.

Focus on the Family’s name is clearly on the line with this ad. If a mistake of consequence and magnitude is made, it will haunt this group and may cause the organization to go out of business.

The more I read about the Tea Party, the more it becomes vividly clear that this is nothing more than a Great Tea Purge of Republican moderates and independent thinkers. This process was already underway for years. It began when Ralph Reed was hired by Pat Robertson to form The Christian Coalition. Reed took the huge mailing list compiled from Robertson’s quixotic run for President in 1988 and transformed it into a movement.

Having placed basically every blue-nosed busybody in a database, Reed set out to hijack the Republican Party. He had a stealth strategy of taking over school boards, local GOP committees and city councils under the radar. Once this was accomplished, his largely clandestine movement came out of the closet and stole Congress. Unfortunately, Washington has never been the same, with collegiality in shambles and extremism replacing reasonable debate. In short, Reed and Robertson soiled our nation to fulfill their sinister goal of turning America into a theocracy.

The Christian Coalition ran out of steam. However, this new Tea Bag movement has picked up where they left off. Phillip Glass is using his National Precinct Alliance to hijack the GOP by signing up Tea Baggers to run the party. In the process, they are running out moderates and finishing the job that the Christian Coalition’s Reed set out to do.

So, what is the Tea Party (Purge)?

It is a brilliant coup by Big Business to co-opt the American government, by using dim-witted fundamentalists and under-educated, under-employed rural folks to carry their water. Look at the issues:

1) Climate Change: Irresponsible members of Big Business do not want to pay to stop the damage corporations have done to our planet. They want to continue polluting and exploiting our natural resources. The best way to do this is to trick people, by flooding the Internet with fake science, into believing climate change is not man made. The next step is to turn the government into a bogeyman, so “the people” will reduce its power to regulate corporate excess and corruption.

The end result will be dirtier water, filthier air, sicker families and dwindling natural resources. Of course, the powerful and wealthy CEO’s won’t notice. While your children choke on the dust and grit, they will be yachting off to the few remaining private islands that are not despoiled by greed and pollution.

2) Taxes: One of the most irresponsible parts of this “movement” is that Americans should not have to pay their fair share of taxes. This whole idea that you can get something for nothing is a mirage and the poor families who scream and act the fool at Tea Bag protests are the ones who will be left without basic services if this radical agenda becomes enacted.

Here is a dirty little secret. Developing countries are only “Third World” for the desperately poor (i.e. the majority.) The sliver of wealthy people in these nations often live like kings. They have privatized services  and are pampered in every imaginable way. They frequently jet off to beautiful flats in Paris, New York and London, while “the people” suffer in anonymity back home. While living in such luxury, these elites have little incentive to make life better for the impoverished masses.

By significantly eroding or eliminating the tax base, the majority of Americans would lose government services – from clean water to garbage pick-up, to affordable education to job training, to pathogen-free meat to reliable transportation (such as train service). The CEO’s would save a fortune on taxes, while using private companies to pay for services no longer available to average Americans.

They win. You lose.

Meanwhile, when people become angry over the situation, these titans will spend millions of dollars on propaganda to blame the deterioration of America on liberal morals and government incompetence – even as they starve the government of the resources it needs to effectively do its job.

What a scam.

The hard truth is, these avaricious conservatives and their Tea Party tools are going to turn America into a Third World nation, where there is a huge gulf between rich and poor. Look around – it is already happening.

Wake up Tea Baggers. You are dupes who are forfeiting your family’s future and don’t even realize it.

3) Health Care: CEO’s and their families will always receive top-notch health care and cutting edge medicine. But, increasingly, they see little incentive for workers and average Americans to get the same benefits and level of care. By crushing labor unions and buying off politicians, thanks to our Supreme Court, they can easily replace sick workers with younger, healthier models.

The CEO’s have used this gullible Tea Bag crowd to convince a majority of people that the government is inefficient and should stay out of health-care. I guess these “real Americans” are content having potential treatments for their children rejected by faceless insurance company bureaucrats sitting in sterile cubicles with the job of protecting a corporation’s bottom line.

Do these tools realize how they have been tricked by hucksters like former Congressman Dick Armey (R-TX) – who now runs FreedomWorks, an umbrella for Tea Party groups? Armey is a corporate shill who is robbing your family of its future. However, too many people think he is on their side because he wears cowboy boots and uses quaint, folksy sayings.

Catch a clue – Armey cares nothing about your freedom. Armey is a con artist – an actor – posing as a good ole’ boy outsider, when he is the ultimate insider. Yet, countless Americans keep falling for his phony snake charmer act.

4) Illegal Immigration & Gays: The corporate titans realize that if they ran on a platform of, “We manipulate the system to steal your money and you go broke”, they would not do so well in elections. So, they have developed the cat-with-a-laser technique.

When I want to distract Critter, my cat, I shine a laser on the wall and he runs to attack it. He never actually catches the gosh-darn-red-light, but he always feels like he’s getting close. More importantly, he expends a lot of energy – and then takes a multi-hour slumber.

Tea Baggers – you are the cat and the issues of immigration and gay rights are the laser. You are being distracted, busied on a circular obstacle course and ultimately being put to sleep – even as you feel you are accomplishing something.

I have news for you.

You are never going to stop people from crossing the border, as long as there are better economic opportunities in America. You are never going to stop gay people from dating and mating. No matter how high you build that wall, or how many Proposition H8 measures you spend millions of dollars to enact. You are essentially wasting your time and money. You will eliminate gay people and immigrants, right after you accomplish winning that great war against marijuana or electing pure Christian politicians who won’t cheat on their spouses.

It ain’t going to happen, so the sooner you drop the expensive fantasy, the sooner we can all move on to real issues that will actually improve the lives of our families.

Of course, by adopting extreme anti-government, anti-regulatory economic policies, we will ruin the economy for all but the robber-barons. With few decent-paying blue-collar jobs left in America, hard-working Mexican immigrants will just stay at home. And, those loudmouths at the Tea Party rallies will have no choice but to fill their threadbare shoes – picking tomatoes and mowing laws.

Sadly, these folks will be happy performing such labor-intensive, menial tasks, because – a bad job is better than no job. And, the joke is, the radical politicians they helped elect to destroy America’s economy will make these dupes feel important by feeding them propaganda about opportunity, freedom and hard work.

“If you just scrub that toilet a little bit harder, you’ll be an entrepreneur in the opportunity-based society and one day smoke cigars on the country club golf course with Rush Limbaugh,” I can hear the hired PR guns say. (Read More)

“Never again“, the world says – and yet genocide has occurred numerous times since 1945. The most infamous recent example is in Rwanda, but Saddam Hussein also dabbled in genocide against the Kurds in Iraq back in the 1980s. And it still goes on today – with the state-sponsored murders of gay people in Iran, the religious fundamentalist militias in Iraq, the mob violence and murders of gay people in Jamaica and Uganda. The laws being passed in numerous countries which turn ordinary people into criminals and fugitives based solely on their sexuality or gender identity are a precursor to genocide. They put it in people’s minds that such people are a threat and are in fact criminals.

(Read More)

In a dramatic move, University of Florida’s legendary football coach, Urban Meyer, abruptly quit the sport on Christmas Day. His decision came after a hospitalization for chest pains and a realization that he had nearly worked himself to death building a championship team. Meyer’s prodigious work habits included neglecting his family and e-mailing recruits in church.

“I’m a person of faith and I wanted to make sure I had my priorities straight,” said Meyer. “A lot of times, coaches do not have their priorities straight. You put business before God and family, you have a problem.”

Of course, this is wishful thinking. If Meyer had actually prioritized God and family before the pigskin, he’d make a fine deacon and a great father…..and a mediocre Division II coach. Those who reach the pinnacle  in sports have a rare combination of natural gifts and an obsessive need to win. For example, the two most successful basketball players in my lifetime are Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant – both of whom are pathological competitors. Their need to win likely crosses over into a disorder – but that is what it takes to be a champion.

For all his talk about God, it was the text messages and e-mails from the pews that catapulted the coach into sainthood in Gainesville. The choice was to worship on Sunday or be worshiped by adoring fans each Saturday – and Meyer chose the latter. This is not a criticism, just a reality check on Meyer’s message that he could have reversed his priorities and still had the same successful career. I doubt he could have.

When Meyer announced his retirement, his 18-year old daughter hugged him and said, “I get my daddy back.” The coach said that he was retiring because God had told him to quit and his daughter’s reaction was confirmation of this divine intervention.

Two days later, following an afternoon on the practice field, Meyer changed his mind and switched his retirement status to a “leave of absence.” He expects to coach next fall.

So, did Meyer misinterpret God, confuse God’s voice with his own desires or is the coach defying His will by returning to the sideline?

In sports, it seems, God is always on the winning side, ready to snatch victory from the presumably heathen team, and deliver the game to the good guys. However, the notion is quite offensive and in some ways ruins the game. Why even watch, after all, if the sport is fixed and a victory is already preordained by God?

In any case, I think that athletes and coaches should get back to scoring touchdowns or drawing up plays on chalkboards. The whole “catch a ball for God” routine is getting quite stale. Just once I’d like to see an athlete say, “I dropped the ball because Jesus doesn’t like me.”

Why not?  Does He not get the credit for touchdowns, with an increasing number of spoiled, solipsistic athletes pointing towards the heavens after each score?

It is also outrageous to think that God gives a damn about football when children are starving and wars are raging. On my block in New York City, there are about a half-dozen hobos who are exposed to the harshness of winter. I’d like to think that a just deity would end such injustice before traipsing off each Sunday to the New York Giants game.

For selfish reasons, as a University of Florida alumnus, I am glad Meyer is returning. I like to win and gator chomp and it makes me feel good to marinade in victory. It was exhilarating to crush Cincinnati 51-24 in the Sugar Bowl.

But can we finally keep God off the goal line and have a separation of sports and Scripture? Can former Gator quarterback, Tim Tebow, an incredible athlete and a seemingly decent person, complete one sentence without mentioning Jesus and turning it into a prayer?

The fact that an athlete is gifted, does not mean he is God’s gift to the universe. Fundamentalist athletes and coaches alike aren’t special and should stop acting like Moses, just because they get to appear on ESPN’s Sports Center.

Although, after watching Tebow pass for a career-high 482 yards and three touchdowns while rushing for 51 yards against Cincinnati, I wouldn’t rule out that he could part the Red Sea.

(Weekly Column)

A February 2008 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that 16 percent of America’s 225 million adults are unaffiliated with any religion. According to the report, “When ‘childhood religion’ is compared against ‘current religion,’ the unaffiliated show a net increase of 8.8 percentage points, compared to a 7.5 point loss among Catholics, for example, or a 2.6 percent loss among Protestants.”

It is my belief that outrageously hypocritical behavior by conservative religious authorities is directly responsible for the surge in non-believers or those who shun organized religion. The ubiquitous scolds who dominate cable TV and Republican politics are too often conservatives of convenience, who believe they are exempt from practicing the strident rules that they preach.

For example, South Carolina’s First Lady, Jenny Sanford, filed for divorce last week after her husband, Gov. Mark Sanford (R), admitted an affair with a woman from Argentina. Until the scandal broke, Mark and Jenny posed as a beacon of Christian family values.

I can understand Jenny’s disgust with her husband, who left his four sons to cheat with his mistress on Father’s Day. But one can’t masquerade as a Bible-thumper when it comes to gay rights and other issues, and then say that the Bible is suddenly irrelevant when it comes to divorce.

Both Jenny and Mark profited from their charade, yet jilted Jenny wants to conveniently abandon biblical absolutism and utilize liberal divorce laws because her feelings are hurt. Sorry Jenny, but a mistress does not negate your marriage vows. Anyone can embrace the “sanctity of marriage” in good times. A true person of fundamentalist faith stays with the vows even when the relationship sours.

To highlight such hypocrisy, John Marcoa, a Sacramento Web-designer, has drafted a 2010 parody ballot measure that would ban divorce in California. Tellingly, the right wing organizations that fought to save marriage from gay couples have not lined up to support it.

From mega-churches to suburban strip mall ministries, fundamentalist youth rail against the secular culture, even as they ape it. They sport gaudy tattoos of Jesus, wear earrings in their noses and play imitation rock. On their fingers are silly chastity rings, when they really need chastity belts.

A recent New York Times magazine article points out that “More government money has been spent on the cause of sexual abstinence in Texas than any other state, but it still has the third-highest teen birth rate in the country and the highest percentage of teen mothers giving birth more than once.”

Former beauty queen Carrie Prejean is the perfect spokesperson for liberal bashing libertines. She moralized over same-sex marriage, but expected forgiveness and understanding when, thanks to tabloid pictures, America got to know her in the biblical sense.

Perhaps the most amusing part of studying conservatives is their absurd claim that America is a Christian nation, which is impossible, because no two people can define what it means to be Christian. A new Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report entitled,  “Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths,” concludes that people are now choosing to “blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs”. Who knew crystals and Christ went so well together?

Last month, Watergate felon Chuck Colson joined a batch of wing nuts to write “The Manhattan Declaration”. This supposedly conservative manifesto began by shamelessly co-opting historical liberal successes. The Declaration reads:

“It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery…Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement…The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians…

It is true that Christians played a role in these movements. However, it was non-believers teaming up with liberal Christians to overcome the opposition of conservative Christians. The anti-gay signers of The Manhattan Declaration are the ideological heirs to those on the wrong side of history. It was remarkable how efficiently they scrubbed their own embarrassing past and replaced their monumental failures with liberal accomplishments.

Social conservatives are a loud bunch, but their power is slipping. I think back to Middle school, when I attended a Houston Rockets basketball game with my father. During a time out the “Voice of God” announced that a gay rights measure had been crushed. The enthusiastic crowd burst out in to loud cheers, which was quite devastating to a thirteen-year old coming to terms with his sexual orientation.

On Monday, Houston voters elected openly gay Annise Parker as mayor. Unlike my youth, I watched a Houston crowd cheer for progress instead of prejudice. No doubt there were countless social conservatives across the city slamming beers, ogling women who weren’t their wives and betting on sports – while bemoaning the city’s fallen values.

This is the lifestyle of today’s conservatives of convenience. They are all creed and no deed.

(Weekly Column)

Earlier this week, extremists within the Republican Party proposed a 10-point checklist of principles that GOP candidates would have to sign if they expect to receive Party support. Like a deranged “Social Issues Santa”, the enforcers of doctrine are descending in their sleighs to slay Republicans who are naughty and not considered nice.

According to their puritanical plan, Republicans would be required to sign 7 of 10 radical resolutions, such as, “opposing Obama’s socialist agenda.” By far the most reckless part of this pledge is the demand that Republicans agree to, “Support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troops surges.” I wonder what such pandering politicians might say to families if these wars took a turn for the worse: “I’m sorry your son died on the battlefield, but I had six campaign pledges and needed a seventh to get a windfall of dough from the Republican Party.”

Ironically, the Republican governors gathered last week and ran away from such extremism. According to The New York Times, “There was little talk of the divisive social and political issues that Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove embraced as a way to attract independent and moderate Democratic voters and build a lasting Republican majority.”

The right wing chest thumping seen in the GOP checklist was echoed in a manifesto signed by 145 religious activists and clerics called the Manhattan Declaration. This document basically said that religious people were above the law and did not have to obey it if they deemed it unholy. Tony Perkins, the President of the Family Research Council, hailed the radical manifesto by calling it a “line in the sand” and vowing that the malcontents “will not be moved.”

Of course, growing up on the lovely beaches of Florida and Hawaii, I’ve learned that there is nothing more temporary than a line in the sand. These arrogant preachers are badly overreaching and will be surprised to find that their sinister sandcastle will succumb to history’s high tide.

The Catholic Church, in particular, is entering politically perilous territory it will soon regret. For most of American history, many voters were concerned that Catholic politicians were beholden to Rome. John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic President, won by assuring people that he was independent of the Vatican.

This week, however, Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin scolded another member of the famous clan, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), and told him he was unworthy of taking part in communion because of his pro-choice views.

Amazingly, Tobin told NBC News, “To receive a sacrament you have to be in union with the church.” To voters, this can be interpreted as: “Bow to Rome or go home.”

If the Church continues to push these boundaries, it will become toxic. It will force office holders into making a decision between voting with the Vatican, or risking nasty public spats, like the Tobin-Kennedy spectacle. In an era where people are quite fickle with faith, aspiring Catholic politicians may find it easier to avoid this dilemma and switch religions. In the future, the only remaining Catholic politicians may be hardliners, such as former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.).

In fact, this backlash is already underway. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine criticized the Archdiocese of Washington this week for threatening to end contracts to feed Washington, DC’s homeless if the city allows gay couples the freedom to marry.

“I’m Catholic and I think it’s wrong,” Kaine said. “If you look at the church through history, the church will stand in tough situations and continue to do good. I think the strategy of threatening to hold back, it just doesn’t seem like the church I’ve come up in.”

Kaine was seconded by Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who also is Catholic.

“I don’t understand how they can possibly do this,” O’Malley said. “I have a hard time believing that the nuns and priests who taught me about the Corporal Works of Mercy would agree that this is an appropriate response for the church.”

Inside their adoring mega-churches and towering Cathedrals, these conservative clerics are powerful demigods. Such adoration blinds them to the sobering reality that millions of people view them as power hungry demagogues. The Religious Right is still one of the strongest special interest groups in America, but they keep forgetting that they represent an immoral minority, not the Moral Majority they once fancied themselves to be.

Raging with dictatorial ultimatums and mutinous manifestos, these extremists are too far-gone to realize they have gone too far. As the “Social Issues Santas” shimmy down the chimney to deliver their dogma, it is unclear if they are simply blowing smoke or gift-wrapping future elections for the Democratic Party.

(Weekly Column)

It is time to admit that the gay community has a gigantic Pope problem. Under the leadership of Benedict XVI, the Vatican has become an implacable foe of liberalism, modernity and basic rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Rome has eagerly jumped with both feet into America’s culture wars and is working on a global scale to punish or purge ideological dissenters within the church. This aggressive activism presents a formidable new front in the fight for parity – one with considerable political clout and financial resources.

Last week, a coalition of totalitarian religious activists and radical clerics joined forces to unveil the “Manhattan Declaration” at Washington’s National Press Club. This rambling manifesto, written by former Watergate felon Chuck Colson, called for “Christians” to disobey laws they didn’t fancy and to ignore civil rights laws that protected GLBT people from discrimination. It was a dishonest document filled with historical revisionism that promoted theocracy, encouraged anarchy and supported the dissolution of the rule of law. It falsely portrayed right wing Christians as victims, even as they pledged to work tirelessly to deny equality to those who would not adhere to their sectarian church rules.

An extreme manifesto of such breathtaking cynicism and insincerity is no surprise coming from what passes for “leaders” in today’s evangelical circles. It was striking, however, that more than 15 key American Catholic leaders signed on to the “Manhattan Declaration”. Signatories included heavyweights such as Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, DC. This was clearly a call to arms and a powerful signal that the Roman Catholic Church is taking the gloves off to fight political battles in America.

This hands-on involvement from Rome has passed the “trend” stage and appears to be official policy. Consider the significant involvement the Catholic Church had in stripping marriage rights away from GLBT couples in a Maine referendum held earlier this month.

In the same manner, on June 11, the Washington, DC Archdiocese threatened to abandon the homeless and quit charity work in the District if it had to comply with anti-discrimination laws. Catholic Charities had the audacity to believe it was entitled to collect $8.2 million in tax dollars meant to serve all DC residents, and then still get to handpick whom it deems worthy of assistance.

Catholic involvement with arch-conservative politics is growing by the day. In May, Catholic groups tried to stop President Barack Obama from speaking at a Notre Dame commencement ceremony because of his pro-choice position.

Earlier this month, Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin put the clamp on Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), banning the lawmaker from communion because he is pro-choice. This was reminiscent of The St. Louis Archbishop refusing to give communion to John Kerry during his presidential campaign.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has suddenly begun to steer GLBT Catholics to 12-step programs that promise to “cure” homosexuality or support them in a lifelong celibacy. The Catholic Diocese in Sioux Falls, South Dakota urged its 128-thousand members to oppose an attempt to bring legalizing embryonic stem cell research to a public referendum. (I guess the sacrosanct “people’s right to vote” on controversial social issues only applies to same-sex marriage)

In fighting back, we must remember that the Vatican is launching these attacks from a position of weakness. It has yet to recover its moral authority from public exposure of rampant child sexual abuse scandals that cost the Church billions of dollars in legal settlements.

The Vatican appears to be acutely aware it is losing its worldwide market share. It is basically defunct in the Middle East, where the religion began, and on life-support in Western Europe, where it once prospered. In Africa, Rome competes with Islam and Anglicanism for a shrinking slice of the pie. (Who can forget that while in Africa the Pope said condoms could make the AIDS crisis worse.) South America, one of its few remaining strongholds, is losing Roman Catholics to evangelical faiths by the millions.

Instead of competing against the conservative evangelical brand, Pope Benedict has decided to embrace it, shaping a conspicuously political Catholicism that embraces extremism and drives out dissenters. The Vatican has become so doctrinaire that it recently launched an invasive probe into the lives of America’s 60,000 nuns to enforce anachronistic rules. In January, Benedict welcomed back excommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson who denied that millions of Jews died in Nazi death camps.

Fortunately, Benedict is a cold, unsympathetic figure and the majority of American Catholics often ignore his edicts. The strategy for the GLBT community should be to stand up to Rome and help mobilize mainstream Catholics to fight back against an authoritarian Pontiff who is hell-bent on making the Catholic Church as unpopular and unappealing as His Holiness.

The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) is a discredited  “ex-gay” fringe organization that peddles fraudulent “cures” for homosexuality. Sadly, a lucrative market still exists for anti-gay stereotypes disguised as science and the greedy ideologue “therapists” eager to profit from unnecessary pain. They take advantage of vulnerable people who want to “fit in” and exploit suffering families who are desperate to believe they can cure a loved one.

Here are 10 Key Facts to know about NARTH:

1)    NARTH recommends “treating” males as young as three years old, referring to them as “pre-homosexual boys.” In our view, this is consumer fraud since parents are unlikely to see results, despite expensive therapy sessions. We also believe forcing children to undergo traumatic, shame inducing “therapy” is child abuse that may cause lasting psychological scars. (Read More)

The Birmingham News
November 4, 2009

Evidence Suggests People Can’t ‘Pray Away The Gay’

By Wayne Besen

As long as prejudice and discrimination exist, some gay men and lesbians will feel pressure to try to change their sexual orientation. Unfortunately, there are organizations, such as Focus on the Family, that exploit such vulnerable people and their fears of rejection by family, church and society. On Saturday, Focus on the Family will roll into Birmingham with its much-hyped road show, “Love Won Out,” which offers false hope and broken promises.

It is important that one realize that such efforts are rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organization in America, such as the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The America Psychiatric Association says that attempts to change sexual orientation can cause, “Anxiety, depression and self-destructive behavior.”

In August, the American Psychological Association released a landmark report that said, “There is insufficient evidence” for therapists to claim conversion therapy works. The APA report also cautioned so-called “ex-gay” counselors not to mislead clients by telling them that their sexual orientation can be changed.

Without science on their side, Focus on the Family has taken to distorting research. In the past two years, eight scientists have accused this group of manipulating their studies. The testimonies of these experts can be viewed at www.Respectmyresearch.org.

The empirical evidence also suggests that people can’t “pray away the gay.” For example, I photographed the “ex-gay” founder of Love Won Out, John Paulk, in a Washington, DC gay bar in 2001. Two of the founders of Exodus International, Michael Bussee and Gary Cooper, divorced their wives after they fell in love. The American Family Association’s poster boy for sexual conversion, Michael Johnston, had to step down in 2003 after he admitted affairs with men he had met on the Internet. Christian singer Ray Boltz came out of the closet in 2008 after thirty years of marriage and trying to “change”.

Love Won Out does not create heterosexuals, but their misguided “ex-gay” programs do lead to broken families. Focus on the Family loves to show people wedding photos. But, it would be more honest if they showed the divorce papers, which are a common outcome of such sexual engineering efforts.

More disturbing are conversion techniques. These include exorcisms and encouraging masculinity in male clients by suggesting they drink Gatorade and call friends “dude”. Lesbians attend makeup and lipstick seminars, which highlight the superficial and cosmetic “changes” such programs offer. Sadly, these groups even take clients as young as three years old!

A recent study by Caitlin Ryan shows that gay teens who experienced “negative feedback” by family members after they “come out” were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression and more than three times at risk of drug use. Clearly, unconditional love is important for gay teens and the message of Love Won Out epitomizes the negative feedback that can produce such harmful results.

Finally, Love Won Out’s spokesperson Melissa Fryrear was disingenuous when she told the Birmingham News this week that, “Science hasn’t proved people are born gay. It’s absolutely an open question. Part of the message is to read the studies that have been done. They’ll see there’s no evidence proving homosexuality is genetic. It’s a multi-causal struggle, and there are a number of factors that may make one vulnerable.”

It is unscientific and backwards to say that people are “vulnerable”, as if homosexuality can be caught like a cold. Most gay people – just like heterosexuals – instinctively know their sexual orientation is natural and that there was no “choice” in the matter. Conveniently, Fryrear misstates the facts and fails to point out that numerous studies have shown that sexual orientation likely has a genetic or biological basis.

However, there are no modern studies that show sexual abuse or poor parenting cause homosexuality, as Love Won Out falsely claims. While confusing parents by creating a fake cause and effect for homosexuality is good public relations, it simply is not true and dishonest for Fryrear to push such outdated and disproven theories.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and trangender Americans come from every type of family imaginable. We grow up in liberal homes and conservative homes, non-religious and orthodox Christian families. How people are raised or if they believe in God has absolutely nothing to do with the outcome of their sexual orientation. This is just common sense supported by the hard and indisputable facts.

Love will truly win out when gay and lesbian people can live out of the closet with the unconditional acceptance, love and support they deserve.