Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) has filed a frivolous discrimination complaint with the Montgomery County (Maryland) Board of Education against its school Superintendent Joshua Starr (pictured). The kerfuffle started in February when PFOX disseminated 8,000 fliers at five Montgomery County schools, which led Starr to rightfully call PFOX “reprehensible and deplorable.”

FStarr claimed that although he vehemently disagreed with PFOX’s noxious message, the school district was legally bound to hand out the fliers because the law stated that the literature of all registered non-profits must be included for distribution. This has led to a reassessment of policy, with the school district considering the termination of the entire flier program. In this case, one rotten apple may ruin the entire barrel.

As the record unequivocally shows, Starr’s assessment of PFOX was correct. Robust and unambiguous evidence proves that PFOX is a radical anti-gay hate group that distributed deeply misleading and offensive fliers. The organization advocates discredited therapy models, denigrates LGBT people, brazenly uses outdated studies, deliberately inflates its credentials, demonizes its opposition, engages in false advertising, and refers students to disgraced therapists who use bizarre techniques.

The Montgomery Country School Board has an obligation to address PFOX’s deception and actual record, not the sophistic public relations campaign evidenced in its trivial complaint. The school board has a duty to protect students from harm and it is clear by PFOX’s own statements that the goal of the organization is to ridicule, malign, and shame LGBT pupils.

Here is the case against PFOX and why the Montgomery County School Board should dismiss its latest empty threat:

1) PFOX is a hate group that loathes LGBT people

In a press release outlining the group’s complaint against Superintendent Starr, PFOX’s Executive Director Regina Griggs wrote that PFOX’s flier “discouraged student name calling and labeling, and urged tolerance for former homosexuals.”

To the extent this is true, it highlights how the flier is deeply deceptive and is intended to conceal the true message of PFOX. While PFOX claims to oppose name-calling, its history tells another story. For example, in August 2010, PFOX president Greg Quinlan spoke at a conference organized by SPLC-certified hate group, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality. In his speech, Quinlan made an outrageous and offensive anti-LGBT slur:

“I wasn’t your flaming faggot, you know,” Quinlan said. “I can say that because I’ve been there and done that. You know, the one’s whose wrists are so limp that when the wind blows they slap themselves in the face. I wasn’t one of them.”

Let’s not beat around the bush – Quinlan’s recorded comment is reason alone for Montgomery County Schools to prohibit distribution of PFOX’s flier. It also gives credence to Starr’s assertion that PFOX’s message is “reprehensible and deplorable.” Had any other minority been publicly subjected to such a slur we would not be having this debate. Quinlan’s comments do, however, lay waste to the claim that PFOX stands for tolerance and diversity and is opposed to bullying and name-calling.

PFOX’s press release goes onto say: “Starr does not respect diversity and is creating an unsafe school environment. As School Superintendent, Starr’s actions make it impossible for Montgomery County public schools to provide an atmosphere where differences are understood and appreciated, or where everyone is treated fairly and with respect free of discrimination and abuse, as mandated by its Nondiscrimination Policy ACB.”

This rhetoric is fascinating considering PFOX board member Peter Sprigg, who works for SPLC hate group, the Family Research Council, once said that he wanted to “export” LGBT people and that he supports criminalizing homosexuality.

In March 2008, Sprigg responded to a question on Hardball with Chris Matthews about uniting gay partners during the immigration process by saying: “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.” He later apologized, but then went on to tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.” “So we should outlaw gay behavior?” Matthews asked. “Yes,” Sprigg replied.

Arthur Abba Goldberg (pictured), a convicted felon who is a key member of PFOX’s speakers bureau, has smeared LGBT people with ugly stereotypes disguised as scientific observation:

“By the way, did you notice that a lot of gays who remain in the gay lifestyle also do a lot of body building,” said Goldberg in a live recording at an Americans for Truth About Homosexuality conference. “They will be in the gym a lot trying to build up their pecs…Because they have these body image issues and don’t feel they are masculine enough.”

Another PFOX board member, Matt Barber, recently responded to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech declaring that gay rights are human rights by saying, “How dare we, the U.S., export our decline in morality to other nations?”

Barber, who disparagingly calls the gay rights movement “the sexual anarchist lobby,” and the lives of LGBT people “The Gay Deathstyle,” is so extreme that he has even defended the debunked work of holocaust revisionist Scott Lively. Here are a few “loving” gems from PFOX’s Barber:

• “It boils down to this: there is nothing ‘conservative’ about one man violently cramming his penis into another man’s lower intestine and calling it ‘love.’ Or two women awkwardly mimicking natural procreative relations or raising a child together in an intentionally fatherless home.”

• “Indeed, it seems the common moniker ‘homosexual lifestyle’ has it exactly backwards. As opponents of the extremist ‘gay’ lobby have long illustrated, homosexuality falls dead center within our nation’s burgeoning culture of death.”

• “Unfortunately, however, we live in a society where this particular sin is embraced, promoted and even celebrated. People erroneously equate this unnatural and sinful behavior with ‘identity’ and ’orientation’ even taking ’pride’ in an objectively deviant lifestyle.”

• “It’s tragic when people yield to disordered sexual temptations that can literally kill them spiritually, emotionally and physically. Nobody with any compassion enjoys watching others ‘[receive] in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.’”

• “There are even self-professed Christians today who inexcusably join in with the secular Left in affirming homosexual sin as a good thing. There’s a word for these types: apostate. There’s no wiggle room here. If you defend or seek to justify homosexual conduct, you defy God. Not good.”

• “I don’t mean to be flip (okay, maybe a little flip) but can someone please tell me why on earth the Left insists that we ‘tolerate’ homosexual behavior while – as the CDC has once again confirmed – it continues to have results similar to brick-walling?” (Running head first into a brick wall)

The insincere “love” caveat aside, such extreme rhetoric should surprise no one familiar with PFOX. The group’s founder, the late Anthony Falzarano, once referred to hate crime victim Matthew Shepard as a “predator to heterosexual men” and once told CBS News, “AIDS comes from the devil, directly from Satan. He uses homosexuals as pawns and then he kills them.”

To recap: We have a crass organization that refers to LGBT people as “flaming faggots.” PFOX’s disparages and mocks gay men by claiming they, “engage in violently cramming [the] penis into another man’s lower intestine and calling it ‘love.’” And a key board members want to criminalize homosexuality or gay people exported.

Incredibly, this remarkably nasty and virulently homophobic group makes the outrageous claim that they carry the banner of true tolerance? I hope the Montgomery County School Board is not buying what they are selling.

Obviously, PFOX is using its relatively milquetoast flier to conceal its discriminatory actions, mean-spirited remarks, and mask its shocking level of malevolence towards LGBT people. And once vulnerable students read the flier, they are directed to the PFOX website where they will be subjected to poisonous anti-gay rhetoric or quack therapists.

2) PFOX misrepresents its credentials

To boost its credentials and bolster its failed attempts to appear mainstream, PFOX applied for and received a perfunctory “Certificate of Appreciation” from the District of Columbia. What PFOX isn’t telling people is that former DC mayor, Adrian Fenty, said in 2010 that the “honor” was a clerical error. After PFOX refused to take the “award” down, the Secretary of the District of Columbia sent a letter demanding that PFOX “remove Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s Certificate of Appreciation from your website.”

Arrogantly, PFOX refused the request and the certificate is still on the bottom right-hand side of the organization’s website. This brazen action demonstrates of pattern of gross deception and illustrates that PFOX is deliberately misrepresenting itself as an organization valued by the DC government.

3) PFOX intentionally uses outdated science to deceive its members

Last month, Dr. Robert Spitzer disavowed his infamous 2001 study claiming that some gay people could become heterosexual. This was a major news event that was covered by the mainstream media. Yet, PFOX still has a video up of Dr. Robert Spitzer on the lower right hand side of its website where Spitzer’s is discussing his now retracted information. The disputed Montgomery County fliers direct students to the PFOX website, which contains the outdated Spitzer interview. This is a vivid and indisputable example of PFOX outright lying and distorting reality. This is not a simple difference of opinion or a political or religious dispute, as PFOX wrongly suggests, but a conscious effort to misrepresent the facts.

4) PFOX demonizes and lies about its opponents

PFOX smears LGBT advocates with whom it disagrees and literally demonizes them. For example, on October 7, 2011 PFOX President Greg Quinlan was interviewed on NewsPlus with Mark Segraves (WDCW-TV).

“Truth Wins Out if you look further, including Wayne Besen. He’s asked for people, you know, somebody needs to run Greg over. He needs to be hit with a bus. Somebody should inject him with AIDS. Those are the things that Wayne Besen and Truth Wins Out says about me. That’s pretty hateful rhetoric.”

As a result of this comment, Truth Wins Out sued PFOX and Quinlan (pictured). A Virginia judge quickly dismissed the case claiming that Besen was a public figure, which significantly raised the bar for proving defamation. However, when confronted with TWO’s original threat of a lawsuit, Quinlan abruptly changed his story on PFOX’s website: “The truth is that Besen once said to me in a private conversation that someone should run me over with a bus or inject me with AIDS.”

First Quinlan alleged that Besen made these statements to other people, then he reversed course and said that Besen addressed him directly in a private conversation. TWO challenged Quinlan to disclose when and where this alleged private conversation occurred or to provide e-mail or phone records that would confirm his telling of events. As of this date, PFOX and Quinlan have not provided evidence to back their contrived, defamatory, and fabricated tale.

Quinlan also outright lied on PFOX’s website about Besen being fired from the Human Rights Campaign (He wasn’t). During the court case TWO provided Quinlan and his legal team with a letter from HRC refuting the bogus charge. Yet, Quinlan is still unrepentant and brazenly repeating the false story, which brings into question the character of PFOX’s leadership team.

Last week, in a PFOX website post, the organization requested that people send harmful information about TWO’s Wayne Besen to the e-mail address WackyWayne666@hotmail.com, with the “666” symbolizing the “devil.” This is not the first time that Besen has been literally demonized by PFOX. The group’s former webmaster, who went by the name Burning Black Triangle, distributed a picture on the Internet that portrayed Besen as satanic.

A PFOX ally and former PFOX board member, DL Foster, once drew an Adolph Hitler mustache on Besen, who is Jewish, and circulated it on the Internet.

Despite his propensity to draw Hitler mustaches on opponents, here is PFOX’s description of DL Foster’s ministry:

Powerful Change Ministry Group (PC) is a national fellowship of 11 Christian African-American led ministries whose goal is to advocate change for same-sex strugglers among people of color.  PC members work diligently to raise awareness in the Black community on the need for holistic ministry to affected individuals as well as their families. Contact:  DL Foster, National Coordinator

Do Montgomery County Schools really want to place students in the hands of people with such alarming and extreme views?

5) PFOX recommends students go to bizarre and discredited therapists

The former president of PFOX, Richard Cohen, was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association for multiple ethics violations:

Cohen is the individual most associated with the discredited mental health techniques trumpeted by PFOX. When students read PFOX’s flier, they presumably go to the website. Once there, they are directed to either Cohen or those trained in his bizarre methods to “cure” homosexuality. Watch Cohen in action and then decide if this is the healthiest atmosphere for LGBT students who attend Montgomery County Schools:

PFOX also relies heavily on the “ex-gay” organization the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Here is an example of NARTH’s “unbiased” and “scientific” views:

“We, as citizens, need to articulate God’s intent for human sexuality,” Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, President of NARTH, said in CNN’ 360 Degrees with Anderson Cooper, April 14, 2007.

At the Feb. 10, 2007 Love Won Out conference in Phoenix, Nicolosi told the audience, “When we live our God-given integrity and our human dignity, there is no space for sex with a guy.”

NARTH was co-founded by late Dr. Socarides who told The Washington Post on August 14, 1997, “Homosexuality is a psychological and psychiatric disorder, there is no question about it. It is a purple menace that is threatening the proper design of gender distinctions in society.”

In 2006, NARTH was ensnared in two major controversies. In the first, psychiatrist Joseph Berger, MD, a member of their “Scientific Advisory Committee,” wrote a paper encouraging students to “ridicule” gender variant children.

“I suggest, indeed, letting children who wish go to school in clothes of the opposite sex–but not counseling other children to not tease them or hurt their feelings,” Dr. Berger wrote on NARTH’s website. “On the contrary, don’t interfere, and let the other children ridicule the child who has lost that clear boundary between play-acting at home and the reality needs of the outside world. Maybe, in this way, the child will re-establish that necessary boundary.”

In the second controversy, Gerald Schoenwolf, PhD, also a member of NARTH’s “Scientific Advisory Committee,” wrote a polemic on the group’s website that seemed to justify slavery:

“With all due respect, there is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America,” wrote Schoenwolf. “It could be pointed out, for example, that Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle, as yet uncivilized or industrialized. Life there was savage, as savage as the jungle for most people, and that it was the Africans themselves who first enslaved their own people. They sold their own people to other countries, and those brought to Europe, South America, America, and other countries, were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa. But if one even begins to say these things one is quickly shouted down as though one were a complete madman.”

It is critical that the Montgomery County School Board understand that when students take home PFOX fliers and are directed to its website, they are urged to contact NARTH:

Call NARTH (National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) at 818-789-4440 for the names of therapists in your area who specialize in reorientation therapy.  To learn more about NARTH, they have a website at http://www.narth.com

How does the school board rationalize sending gay teenagers to a “therapy” group that justified slavery, calls homosexuality a “purple menace,” and believes that gender variant children can be “corrected” by allowing “the other children ridicule the child.”

It is also worth pointing out that PFOX directs students to JONAH and People Can Change. Both organizations are affiliated with unlicensed counselors, including Alan Downing, who allegedly acted inappropriately with at least four clients.  Neither organization properly investigated or took action against the serious allegations.

It is essential to note that all respected medical and mental health organizations oppose “ex-gay” therapy, with the American Psychiatric Association saying that attempts to change sexual orientation can lead to, “anxiety, depression, and self-destructive behavior.”

Why would Montgomery County want to place LGBT youth, already at an elevated risk for bullying, depression, and suicide, in dangerous situations that can lead to tragedy? To continue allowing PFOX into the school system is to court disaster. It is grossly irresponsible, reckless, and a dereliction of the primary duty of administrators, which is to protect students from potential predators.

6) False Advertising 

PFOX talks a good game about people going from gay-to-straight, but they have no evidence to back up their false claims. PFOX President Greg Quinlan exaggerated the success rate of Richard Cohen by saying that he cured 90% of his clients.

Where is Quinlan’s or Cohen’s proof to back up such wildly optimistic assertions? It is interesting how they conceal their “amazing” results and the methods they used to achieve them.

Ironically, PFOX is making such outrageous claims at a time when other so-called “ex-gay” activists are scaling back their empty promises. Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International, had this to say at the Gay Christian Network conference in January:

“The majority of people that I have met, and I would say the majority meaning 99.9% of them have not experienced a change in their orientation or have gotten to a place where they could say that they could never be tempted or are not tempted in some way or experience some level of same-sex attraction.”

John Smid, the former director of the “ex-gay” organization Love in Action, recently said:

“I’ve never met a man who experienced a change from homosexual to heterosexual.”

Last year, Former Brazilian “ex-gay” activist Sergio Viula admitted:

“In fact, ex-gays don’t exist – it’s pure self-suggestion.”

Even with such strong testimony against “change”coming from the least likely quarters, PFOX still uses the following billboard, which can be seen on its website:

If this isn’t an example of false advertising, I don’t know what is.

The record of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX) really is “reprehensible and deplorable.” The Montgomery County Board of Education and its  Superintendent Joshua Starr should dismiss their frivolous complaint and do everything in their power to keep this toxic hate group’s lies away from students.

In recent years, we have seen a growing trend among conservative Roman Catholics and evangelicals who adopt a liberal “freedom of conscience” meme to justify sidestepping the customer-service policies and civil-conduct codes of their employers.

In upstate New York, for example, town clerk Barbara MacEwen refused to perform her duties last year, forcing other employees to change their schedules to serve the taxpayers that MacEwen opted not to serve. In that case, religious conservatives contended that one employee’s conscience trumps everyone else’s conscience. Conversely, last month bishops in 140 Roman Catholic dioceses declared that “freedom of conscience” is under attack by a hostile government that is acting on behalf of individual employees. Father Geoff Farrow astutely observed, in response, that in this case:  ”The bishops are taking a cherished inalienable right endowed to every person and co-opting it to a corporation. They are saying that an institution’s conscience trumps the conscience of employees of that institution.”

So which is it? Whose conscience overrides whom?

Until now, religious conservatives generally applied their tangled rationale to progressive private employers and government agencies. One consistent thread in their incursions: The intended victims of these “conscience” actions tend to be religious and sexual minorities.

Now, though, a conservative ideologue has donned the freedom-of-conscience mantle to disregard the policies of his own conservative church, which his allies contend are not conservative enough.

In an insightful article, religion blogger John Shore explores the context of the Rev. Marcel Guarnizo’s dereliction of duty at a funeral in Gaithersburg, Maryland, last Saturday. After duly noting three other instances in which other Roman Catholics (including a retired priest) stepped forward to substitute for Guarnizo, Shore observes:

When the head of Saint John Neumann’s, Fr. LaHood, was made aware of what had happened at the Johnson funeral, he phoned Barbara to apologize. Barbara played for me Fr. LaHood’s message. It left nothing on the table: his apology was sincere, obviously heartfelt, and accompanied by every last means to reach him, including his personal cell and home phone number.

After Barbara later met with Fr. LaHood, she reported that, “He was very kind, compassionate, and apologetic.”

In other words, Guarnizo’s impromptu “freedom of conscience” move forced many others, including conservative superiors and the Archdiocesan headquarters, to divert from their own responsibilities to fulfill the duties that Guarnizo abdicated.

Religious conservatives may face more such disruptions within their own churches, so long as they affirm the disruption of employers’ operations through denial of equal service to religious- and sexual-minority customers and taxpayers. If religious conservatives wish for government to stay out of matters of church and marriage — and if for clergy to fulfill their duties without interruption — then perhaps it’s time for a less arbitrary and more consistent approach to religious freedom.

A lot of public attention and criticism has been directed at Rev. Marcel Guarnizo, the Washington, D.C.-area priest who denied the Eucharist to a family member and bailed out in the middle of a deceased woman’s funeral last weekend. Naturally, folks are curious to know Fr. Marcel’s side of the story.

Washington Post blogger Mike Rosenwald sought out Guarnizo, in order to hear him out.

 I wondered how old Guarnizo is. I wondered if he was a nice guy. I wondered whether he was a rigid man, or a forgiving one.

Unfortunately, Guarnizo isn’t talking.

Until Guarnizo comments, this is what the public has seen in the past: A hardline public figure who defames a doctor who performs abortions and, Rosenwald observes, “compares the doctor and the act of abortion to the crimes and criminals of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.” Watch, and compare to what Jesus would do:

Methinks we won’t be hearing an apology from Guarnizo to the bereaved family and other funeralgoers anytime soon.

TWO’s John Becker wrote yesterday about the Rev. Marcel Guarnizo, the Maryland priest who denied Communion and disrupted a parish funeral on Saturday because the deceased woman’s daughter, Barbara Johnson, happened to be a lesbian.

Today the Washington Post reported that “the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington is commenting only with a brief statement that says the priest’s actions were against ‘policy’ and that officials would be looking into the incident as a personnel issue.”

As if to pre-empt possible hope for compassion and inclusion, the archdiocese implied that Guarnizo’s mistake was merely in being so public:

“In matters of faith and morals, the Church has the responsibility of teaching and of bringing the light of the Gospel message to the circumstances of our day,” the archdiocese said in a statement. “When questions arise about whether or not an individual should present themselves for communion, it is not the policy of the Archdiocese of Washington to publicly reprimand the person. Any issues regarding the suitability of an individual to receive communion should be addressed by the priest with that person in a private, pastoral setting.”

Johnson’s brother Larry cautioned against turning the incident into a discussion about gay rights or Catholicism.

“We agreed this is not a discussion about gay rights, or about the teachings of the Catholic Church,” he said. “We’re not in this to Catholic-bash. That’s the farthest thing from our minds. We just want the public square to have knowledge of what this priest did.”

Larry asked whether some church priests are becoming “state of grace” police, and whether that trend is “consistent with the teachings of Christianity.”

At least one Washington-area Catholic conservative came to Guarnizo’s defense, stating, “The blame here is not on the priest, but on Barbara Johnson.” This blogger asserts that antigay forces are “losing the battle over same sex marriage” because the church hierarchy is too charitable toward homosexuals — and too harsh toward “faithful” priests.

via Reuters:

Maryland’s governor plans to sign a bill making same-sex marriage legal later this week, his office said on Monday, while opponents were making plans to challenge the new law at the ballot box. The legislation, making Maryland the eighth state in the nation to legalize gay and lesbian nuptials, heads to Governor Martin O’Malley’s desk for his signature at a ceremony at 5 p.m. on Thursday, his office said.

Potential ballot referendum or not, this is a major step forward. Thursday is my birthday, and I can’t think of a sweeter present than marriage equality for same-sex couples in Maryland.

Funerals are supposed to be a time of fellowship and celebration, where people gather together to mourn the loss and/or celebrate the life of a loved one. They’re a time for the community to give comfort, consolation, and hope to each other and to the family of the deceased, especially to the immediate family, where the loss is often most sorely felt.

Unfortunately, for some in the Catholic Church, that doesn’t apply to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people who refuse to submit to celibacy as Catholic teaching (ridiculously, insultingly, delusionally, hypocritically, etc.) demands.

Check this out, via David Badash at The New Civil Rights Movement:

A lesbian who was attending her mother’s funeral was denied communion by the attending priest because she is a lesbian, according to reports out of Maryland, the state that just passed a marriage equality bill into law. The priest reportedly denied the woman communion, then exited in the middle of the funeral, and claimed he was too ill to go to the cemetery to deliver the final blessings.

“I cannot give you communion because you live with a woman and that is a sin according to the church,” the priest, Father Marcel Guarnizo, a Vicar at Saint John Neumann Catholic Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland, reportedly said to the woman, identified only as “Barbara…”

Then, according to the original post authored by Ann Werner, a friend of Barbara’s:

To add insult to injury, Fr. Guarnizo left the altar when she delivered her eulogy to her mother. When the funeral was finished he informed the funeral director that he could not go to the gravesite to deliver the final blessing because he was sick.

Because burying one’s mother isn’t difficult enough. . .

As I’ve pointed out before, communion — known as the Eucharist to Catholics — is sacred to LGBT and non-LGBT Catholics alike, who believe it to be the body of Christ. To use it as a weapon of punishment against LGBT people who have the courage to live and love openly and true to themselves is nothing short of reprehensible. And to do so to the daughter of a deceased woman at her mother’s funeral?!? Words simply cannot convey the depth of my disgust.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t remember Jesus ever turning anyone away. I guess “Father” Marcel Guarnizo must just think he knows better than the teacher he purports to serve.

President Barack Obama should express his unwavering support for marriage equality in Maryland, the eighth state where same-sex couples can marry. His imprimatur is critical because the issue may reach the ballot in November and African Americans represent 30-percent of the state and are more likely to oppose the law.

A recent Washington Post poll found a sharp divide among Maryland Democrats based on race. Among whites, 71 percent support same-sex marriage, while 24 percent do not. Among blacks, 41 percent are supportive, while 53 percent are opposed. Maryland has the largest percentage of African Americans of any state outside of the Deep South.

TWO joins author David Mixner (pictured) who told the Washington Post that the fight over keeping the law “lands the issue squarely on the president’s desk” because of the state’s proximity to Washington and its sizable black electorate. He pointed out that Obama’s opposition to marriage equality has been cited by opponents in California, as well as by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who recently vetoed a marriage law.

“It is essential that he makes clear to the voters of Maryland, without any caveats, that if he were a resident of the state, he would vote against repeal,” Mixner told the Washington Post. “We can’t afford to have his statement be ambiguous so the other side can claim that he’s on their side.”

The President has been a friend of the LGBT community and now is the time we need our friends to come through for us. His voice could be the difference of winning or having our relationship status demoted to second class citizenship.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Wayne Besen, Executive Director
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org

TWO Joins David Mixner in Hoping Obama will Issue Clear Statement On Issue

Burlington, Vt. – Truth Wins Out called on President Barack Obama today to express unwavering support for marriage equality in Maryland, the eighth state where same-sex couples can marry. His imprimatur is critical because the issue may reach the ballot in November and African Americans represent 30-percent of the state and are more likely to oppose the law.

“This would be an ideal time for Barack Obama step up and boldly express his support for the Maryland law and his strong opposition to voters stripping gay couples of their right to marry,” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen. “His leadership would help influence some African Americans to stand for fairness at the ballot box and embrace equality for all Maryland couples.”

A recent Washington Post poll found a sharp divide among Maryland Democrats based on race. Among whites, 71 percent support same-sex marriage, while 24 percent do not. Among blacks, 41 percent are supportive, while 53 percent are opposed. Maryland has the largest percentage of African Americans of any state outside of the Deep South.

TWO joins author David Mixner who told the Washington Post that the fight over keeping the law “lands the issue squarely on the president’s desk” because of the state’s proximity to Washington and its sizable black electorate. He pointed out that Obama’s opposition to marriage equality has been cited by opponents in California, as well as by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who recently vetoed a marriage law.

“It is essential that he makes clear to the voters of Maryland, without any caveats, that if he were a resident of the state, he would vote against repeal,” Mixner told the Washington Post. “We can’t afford to have his statement be ambiguous so the other side can claim that he’s on their side.”

“The President has been a friend of the LGBT community and now is the time we need our friends to come through for us,” added TWO’s Wayne Besen. “His voice could be the difference of winning or having our relationship status demoted to second class citizenship.”

Truth Wins Out is a nonprofit organization that fights anti-LGBT extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.

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This is what it looks like when hate groups like the Family Research Council really start losing it:

Consider this thought experiment. Twin brothers announced on a TV talk show that they were gay. Under the laws proposed, can they marry? If not, why not? They’ve certainly had a “committed relationship” since before they were born. What constitutional principle could you invoke to say these twins cannot marry each other? And if these twin brothers may marry, why not a twin brother and sister? Dick Cheney probably never met Mae West. For younger readers unfamiliar with one of Hollywood’s original blond bombshells, I’ll simply say: sailors in World War II called their large life jackets Mae Wests. (This is a family blog, after all.) Mae West famously said: “Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution.” How strange that Mae West had a better understanding of civil marriage than a former Vice President of the United States, a man who was twice elected to national office by pro-family voters.

For those trying to keep up at home, blah blah blah, twins, Mae West was hot and said something funny, therefore Dick Cheney sucks.

The Maryland Senate voted a 25-22 in favor of marriage equality, with the House having already passed its bill. Governor Martin O’Malley will sign it and it would take effect January 2013. Opponents will now try to gather 55,736 signatures necessary to refer the Civil Marriage Protection Act to the general election ballot — before the law can take effect.