There’s no good place to start, and I’m coming back after a long weekend which involved my laptop, a mug of coffee being spilled on it, and a magical screw that used to be in the laptop, but is now in my pocket, so let’s just jump in and look at the wingnut reactions to the Southern Poverty Law Center adding the Family Research Council and the American Family Association to their list of anti-gay hate groups.
Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage may indeed be illiterate. He is very upset about NOM being added to the list, which is hilarious, because NOM wasn’t added to the list. Here’s what he said:
“This is an absurd distraction emanating from a once-great organization’s real mission — with all the actual hate groups out there, how can Southern Poverty Law Center stoop so low?
This report is not an attack on NOM but on the majority of Americans who believe that to make a marriage you need a husband and wife. It is also further proof of what NOM has been saying: today’s gay marriage movement is no longer about tolerance, live or let live — it’s about driving out dissenting voices from the public square.
Gay marriage now serves as the tip of the spear to a new campaign to demonize and generate hatred against those who adhere to traditional views of sex and marriage.
Regular readers of NOM’s work know how we characterize gay people: those who support our vision of marriage, we welcome to join our work. For gay marriage advocates (the majority of whom are not gay) we say: we think you are wrong, and we will fight for our right to vote for marriage in the public square.”
Yeah, Brian, please learn to read good and do other stuff good too. You’re definitely a disturbed bigot, and so is Maggie Gallagher, but y’all aren’t on the list yet. You were profiled in the report as an anti-gay group, but the report specifically explained, in English, that those listed on the official hate groups list were those with asterisks [looks like this: *] next to them.
The next several quotes are viaAlvin McEwen, who did the hard work of writing about this during the holiday weekend, while the rest of us were being lazy. Here’s Robert Knight, whose Coral Ridge Ministries somehow managed to stay off the list. Robert is very upset and says that the SPLC are the REAL HATURS:
“No organization better defines what a hate group is all about than the Southern Poverty Law Center,” said Robert Knight, Washington correspondent for Coral Ridge Ministries. “Smearing legitimate groups merely for disagreeing about homosexuality is a very hateful act.”
“Lumping Christian groups in with violent, racist gangs is a form of ‘bracketing,’ a political tactic described in the gay strategy manual ‘After the Ball.’ It’s guilt by association and it’s meant to intimidate,” Knight told WND.
This is known as the “I know you are, but what am I” defense, and it is very popular with childish wingnuts. But no, Robert, the SPLC specifically stated that merely disagreeing with homosexuality was not enough to land a group on the list. One of the prerequisites is a tendency to lie about LGBT people, and all of the groups on the hate group list [as well as your own] lie about LGBT people with feverish abandon.
In that same piece from WingNutDaily, here is some whining from King Hater Tony Perkins:
“The Left’s smear campaigns of conservatives is being driven by the clear evidence that the American public is losing patience with their radical policy agenda as seen in the recent election and in the fact that every state, currently more than thirty, that has had the opportunity to defend the natural definition of marriage has done so,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.
That’s some wishful thinking, since every poll taken on gay rights over the past twenty years has shown us progressively winning over a few more percentage points every year, all the way to where we are now, with support for marriage equality being the majority position. But then again, people like Tony Perkins lie to support their agendas.
Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Coalition:
“We are going to form a coalition of organizations to lobby Congress to withhold funds from SPLC,” Christian Anti-Defamation Coalition head Gary L. Cass told WND. “We will also demand Congress restrict federal law enforcement from relying on the biased SPLC reports, like the discredited ‘Report on Right-Wing Extremism’ SPLC wrote for the Department of Homeland Security.”
The SPLC doesn’t receive federal funds, dingus.
Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, who is also inexplicably not on the list:
Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, contended that SPLC is more focused on advancing a radical political agenda than on combating hatred.
“This might be an opportunity to point out who are actually filled with hate and bigotry,” said Wright. “If they were to judge according to actions, they would have to have a special section for homosexual groups that vandalize and threaten people who oppose the homosexual agenda. We’ve had death threats against us posted openly on websites because of our work to uphold traditional marriage.”
“It’s the homosexual groups that have violated and invaded churches, vandalized homes and cars, that instigate death threats against people who are simply trying to uphold traditional values,” Wright observed.
The Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg has called for gays to be deported from this country. The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer is such a frothing hatemonger that his work almost singlehandedly landed him on the list. Note that Wendy is also using the second grade level “I know you are but what am I?” defense. She bitches about “death threats,” but cannot point to a single person killed or taking his own life due to anti-fundamentalist-wingnut bias, yet continues to ignore the bodycount of gay and lesbian schoolchildren, as it interferes with her slavish devotion to her incorrect worldview.
Isn’t it cute how present day haters and bigots never think their hatred and bigotry is like the hatred and bigotry of their direct ancestors? People: Tony Perkins bought David Duke’s mailing list for a reason. On some level, he understands that his group and other groups like his are connected to white supremacist groups of days past via a direct line of inheritance.
Anyway, Bryan Fischer has also weighed in, claiming that all the religious right lies about gay people that have been exposed are actually true, because Bryan Fischer is a liar. Whether he knows he’s lying or not is open to discussion. That’s all for now. There are more out there, but this post is long already, so I’ll post some more tomorrow!
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a landmark report today adding new official Hate Groups to its well-respected list. The report concludes that the overall climate is getting better for LGBT people, which is leading some anti-gay organizations to get even more extreme.
Such extremism has taken its toll.
SPLC analyzed hate crime statistics and compared the rate of victimization for homosexuals to that of the other groups:
The figures show that homosexuals are 2.4 times more likely to suffer a violent hate crime attack than Jews (8.3 divided by 3.5). In the same way, gays are 2.6 times more likely to be attacked than blacks; 4.4 times more likely than Muslims; 13.8 times more likely than Latinos; and 41.5 times more likely than whites, according to the FBI figures. The basic pattern holds by years as well as across the years.
The bottom line: Homosexuals are far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crime.
One new organization certified as an official hate group is the Family Research Council. A key reason for the listing is FRC’s Peter Sprigg, who is also on the board of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays. PFOX just weaseled its way in as a charity at the World Bank. Here is what SPLC had to say about PFOX’s go-to guy:
Headed today by former Louisiana State Rep. Tony Perkins, the FRC has been a font of anti-gay propaganda throughout its history. It relies on the work of Robert Knight, who also worked at Concerned Women for America but now is at Coral Ridge Ministries (see above for both), along with that of FRC senior research fellows Tim Dailey (hired in 1999) and Peter Sprigg (2001). Both Dailey and Sprigg have pushed false accusations linking gay men to pedophilia (see related story, p. 31): Sprigg has written that most men who engage in same-sex child molestation “identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual,” and Dailey and Sprigg devoted an entire chapter of their 2004 book Getting It Straight to similar material. The men claimed that “homosexuals are overrepresented in child sex offenses” and similarly asserted that “homosexuals are attracted in inordinate numbers to boys.”
More recently, in March 2008, Sprigg, responding to a question about uniting gay partners during the immigration process, said: “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.” He later apologized, but then went on, last February, 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. At around the same time, Sprigg claimed that allowing gay people to serve openly in the military would lead to an increase in gay-on-straight sexual assaults.
When the World Bank learned about PFOX’s radical program, it made a step in the right direction by ensuring it would not receive tax-payer money through World Bank matching funds in 2011. However, to punish PFOX, the World Bank had to undermine 24 legitimate organizations that will also not be eligible for matching funds.
Given this new information on Sprigg and his ties to PFOX, the World Bank should move expeditiously to reinstate the legitimate organizations and drop PFOX as a charity. Unless, that is, the World Bank is comfortable associating itself with extremists who seek to discriminate against, blatantly lie about, deport and imprison LGBT people.
The World Bank should act now before it diminishes its reputation as a tolerant organization that respects diversity. This is particularly important because associating with radical hate-mongers will also damage the World Banks global efforts to combat HIV/AIDS.
This is not the first time that PFOX has been tied to hate groups.
In August, two key members of PFOX spoke at the “Truth Academy”. The conference was hosted by Americans For Truth About Homosexuality’s founder Peter LaBarbera, whose organization was also listed today as an official hate site by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
At the Truth Academy, PFOX Board President Greg Quinlan raised eyebrows with an offensive speech. Quinlan explained how he allegedly went from gay-to-straight, and found support from an Assemblies of God Church that accepted him because he allegedly was not effeminate.
“I wasn’t your flaming faggot, you know,” Quinlan told the chuckling crowd. “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.”
At the same conference, Arthur Abba Goldberg, the convicted Wall Street thief who runs PFOX’s speakers bureau, demonstrated PFOX’s unscientific use of stereotypes.
“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 Abba Goldberg. “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.”
Again, we ask the World Bank: Do you really want to be linked to destructive people such as Abba Goldberg, Sprigg, LaBarbera and Quinlan?
Outrageous. Unbelievable. Our armed forces are fighting the enemy overseas while this lunatic judge behind our own lines decides to throw a hand grenade right into our own barracks,” said Robert Knight, senior writer for Coral Ridge Ministries.
“The arrogance of this judge is stunning,” said Knight, an expert on homosexuality-related political issues and a long-time leader in the fight against homosexual activism.
“She has decided she is smarter than God, more than 1,163 retired generals and admirals who support the military’s policy, the hundreds of congressmen and senators who voted for the law in 1993 and generations of military leaders who believed that morality affects discipline and that homosexual conduct undermines military preparedness.”
Gay actor John Barrowman submitted himself to brain scans to gauge his brain activity for signs of arousal, when shown pictures of nude men and nude women. He began by claiming that he was 100% gay.
What did his brain say?
I agree with Rob Tisinai here: I’d like to see Alan Chambers, Randy Thomas, Richard Cohen, Greg Quinlan and all the rest of the supposedly “ex-gay” leaders take just such a test. I would also expand it to all anti-gay Religious Right leaders, such as Peter LaBarbera, Bryan Fischer, Matt Barber, Robert Knight, and all the rest.
Earlier today, Peter LaBarbera opened his Truth Academy confernece, a three day gay bashing extravaganza in a Chicago exurb. Despite weeks of flogging the event and several stories in right wing media, our spies tell us that the event was a major dud.
According to our sources, there were between 20-30 people in attendance. This was shocking, considering there was a large roster of notoriously anti-gay speakers:
Arthur Abba Goldberg, JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality)
Ironically, the Gay Liberation Network’s protest had more demonstrators (see below) outside the event than there were people soaking up the hate on the inside.
The event was not only homophobic and sparsely attended, it was painfully boring, according to one eyewitness.
“It was an exhausting 12-hour day,” said a spy. “The speakers were less charismatic than tree stumps. I would rather turn Bill Gates’ vast fortune into a giant mountain of pennies and count them, than endure one more tedious anti-gay seminar.”
Clearly, this disaster was a serious blow to Porno Pete’s already disintegrating career and showed that he is incapable of drawing support — even with a who’s who of anti-gay activists on-hand.
Maybe, it is time for him to give up his shtick and get a day job?
If you’re a garden variety homophobe, you might think the prospect of DADT repeal only involves gays and super-sexy shower scenes. Oh, how wrong you are! Robert Knight is here from Coral Ridge Ministries to explain how DADT Repeal is like Vietnam times forced abortions times Roman lions times infinity:
On the gays in the military issue, the left is deploying its favorite weapon – implying inevitability. That’s the tactic that scares wobbly Republicans who fear they’ll be “on the wrong side of history.” They won’t, if they stick to respecting the military and upholding our God-given, transcendent moral order. They need to see through the liberals’ theft of the moral capital of the black civil rights movement. Is being black really the same as Fred sizing up Larry for “the crime against nature”?
What are Fred and Larry going to do to nature?! Are they going to drill miles down into Nature and cause her to erupt in some sort of spill that will kill off millions of other parts of Nature? That would be awful! Oh, wait, Robert Knight is worried that Fred and Larry are going to have consensual sex. Earth to Robert: Those two have been going at it for years.
Besides, whatever your position is on homosexual activism, this is first and foremost about ensuring maximum efficiency and combat readiness of our armed forces. It’s about giving our servicemen and women the best chance at victory and coming home alive. Injecting homosexuality into the barracks, showers, submarines and “diversity” training cannot possibly improve combat readiness or morale.
Maybe that would be true if our armed forces were made up of crusty old bigots like Robert Knight, but in the real world it’s not, and the troops don’t really care. They just want people who will do their jobs well and have their backs. Only sad, weak little homophobes like Robert Knight are worried about these things, and those aren’t the brave men and women we want in the best military in the world.
Anyway, ready for Knight to sound a bunch of wingnut alarms?
Forcing open homosexuality on the armed forces would destroy the volunteer military and bring back the compulsory draft. Since women are now deployed close to combat, and the only legal reason they are not eligible is their combat exemption, a new draft could include our daughters. And some would face pressure to have on-base abortions in order to complete their tours of duty.
The draft! Ladies fighting! Abortions! This is all so delusional, it’s mindblowing.
Chaplains would be the first victims of Mr. Obama’s homosexualization of the military, followed by anyone who violated “zero tolerance” policies for homosexual acceptance. Bible-believing Christians would quickly find themselves unwelcome in Barney Frank‘s new pansexual, cross-dressing military.
Perhaps Knight doesn’t really understand what the hell military chaplains do. They’re not there to teach the troops about how fags are going to hell and how “aborshun are killin’ babies.” They’re there for spiritual guidance for the troops, in the situations the troops actually face. And newsflash, Bob: Not all the chaplains are bigots like you, because they’re forced to join the real world in ministering to people of many different religious backgrounds in the military. I’m aware that Bob Knight’s version of the Christian faith thinks that it has a personal ownership stake in the United States military, but sadly, that is not the case in this secular nation.
Note how truly stupid Bob Knight is here, also, in that he can’t make a coherent argument and instead starts making gay jokes about Barney Frank. Most teenagers I know have more moral authority when they speak, but if you’re a Fundamentalist, Knight’s probably the smartest one you’ve got, so whatever.
The military is a bastion of traditional values
Oh, like hell it is. Have you ever seen the Navy when they come in for Fleet week?
and symbolizes America’s strength and independence.
One of the things they fight for is our freedom from Robert Knight’s pig ignorance, actually. So yes. There are already many, many openly gay and lesbian servicemembers, and they fight for Robert Knight’s right to believe whatever intellectually malnourished bollocks he wants, every single day. What of equal honor has Robert Knight ever done?
One more wingnut alarm to sound, that of the Crying Masturbatory Fantasy About The Left That Actually Only Exists In Wingnut Minds:
Opening the ranks to open homosexuality will accomplish the left’s dream – undermining the military and transforming it into a wrecking ball against Judeo-Christian morality.
Robert: The fact that you can’t pronounce the words that great liberal thinkers use does not automatically mean they’re plotting against you, so get a bunch of paper towels, wipe up the puddle you’ve just left on the internet, and PLEASE, change your underwear. And no, you cannot sleep with the light on.
Excuse me, they’re calling it the “Americans For Truth Academy.” Kids and young adults ages 14-25 can go for only $99 and learn how to be stark-raving mad homophobes from these experts:
Prospective attendees will need to be approved with references; this is not open to pro-homosexual activists but only to those who share AFTAH’ belief that homosexuality is immoral and that the GLBT movement is destructive to America and a direct threat to our religious freedom.
“Please write a double-spaced essay about how a-feared you are of gays, and get it signed by somebody we already know is a total bigot, because we’ve been burned recently by having people report our words verbatim when we think nobody else is listening.”
Also, this event is being billed as “rigorous,” which I can only assume means that Matt Barber, Ryan Sorba, Feats of Strength, and sweat will be featured prominently.
Robert Knight is losing his damn mind (moreso than usual) over the fact that Washington’s elite Republicans are slowly but surely stepping off the train of anti-gay bigotry and into the reality of the civilized world:
Sexual morality is over. That’s the conclusion of one of the smartest men in Washington, the estimable columnist George Will. On ABC’s “This Week” on May 30, Mr. Will agreed with colleague Matthew Dowd that apart from a few glitches, homosexuality will soon be a nonissue in the military.
First of all, George Will did not say that “sexual morality is over,” I do not think? It’s one thing to quote the man, but to filter it through the English-to-Wingnut dictionary is another thing entirely.
Mr. Will: “For people of Matt [Dowd]‘s son’s generation, being gay is like being left-handed. … The Supreme Court has a famous phrase it used in some opinion, the evolving standards of decency that mark a maturing society. Clearly these are evolving, and the case is over, basically.”
This plunge into moral relativism could mean that Sodom and Gomorrah had evolved into a more “maturing society” than, say, Jerusalem under King David. Or America under Abraham Lincoln.
Or maybe Robert Knight doesn’t actually know much about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah? Oh, and yes, I think we’ve matured beyond the America Abraham Lincoln inherited. Maybe Robert Knight disagrees.
Not to be outdone, ABC correspondent Jake Tapper chimed in: “The case is over. But why is there such a fight by Republican officeholders? If you look at polling … the public is overwhelmingly supportive of lifting the ban. Conservatives support it. Republicans support it. White evangelicals support it. What’s going on with the Republicans in Congress?”
This is based on loaded polls by liberal media. But let’s go back to George Will, who gives the answer: “They’re not being very intelligent.”
“Loaded polls,” translated back into English from the Wingnut means simply “all polls which do not reflect Robert Knight’s bigotry, by which we mean all polls.”
Ah, that’s it. Those of us who believe that God created male and female and that sex outside marriage – adultery, fornication and homosexuality – is wrong and harmful, are just not being intelligent.
Haha, George Will called Robert Knight stupid.
And what about the Creator of the Universe? It is God’s moral code that has undergirded Western society for more than 3,500 years.
For the millions of years before that, people didn’t know you were supposed to stone rape victims to death. Thanks, God!
God’s intelligent design – marriage – is the glue that holds it together. Even Chinese philosopher Confucius called marriage “the foundation of civilization.” What a moron.
George Will called Robert Knight stupid, and then Robert Knight called Confucius a moron. Name-calling!
I’m almost done making fun of this piece, because it mostly devolves into a whine about how all the studies which have shown homosexuality to be completely normal and natural have been summarily debunked by wingnut pastors with beakers and lab coats, but this one part is just hilarious, as Knight writes the names of all the Republicans who have betrayed him by being smarter, more cultured, more educated, and slightly more secure with their own naked bodies on his chalkboard of sins:
Charles Krauthammer, who has written some of the best critiques of Obamacare and the rest of the left’s assault on America, is also aboard the gay express. He’s smarter than God. So, too, are Chicago Tribune columnist Steve Chapman, Weekly Standard columnist Stephen Hayes, Fox News analyst Margaret Hoover and American Spectator columnist Phillip Klein, all of whom have called for repealing the military ban. Mr. Klein called it a “no-brainer.” No arguing with that.
Yep, no arguing with that. Oh, but Robert Knight’s Go-Go-Gadget-Love-of-Christ will avenge the Beltway Republicans’ betrayal one day, you just watch:
Perhaps the answer lies in the Book that they now find quaint: “Professing to be wise, they became fools … who exchanged the truth of God for a lie.” (Romans 1:22, 25)
Someday, the smartest folks in America will wonder how they could have been so foolish.
Leinaala Fruean spoke at the Religious Right’s May 1 rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, “May Day 2010: A Cry To God For A Nation In Distress.” I was at the event and videotaped what can only be describes as a zealously zany sermon by Fruean.
Fruean represents Island Breeze Ministries in Hawaii. The woman next to her in the yellow shirt is the infamous televangelist Cindy Jacobs.
Enjoy the show! It’s Nutapalooza!! (And they call us crazy??)
As if we had not suffered enough inclement weather, citizens of Lynchburg, Virginia and South Bend, Indiana will get “ex-gay” snow jobs this weekend.
In Lynchburg there will be a conferenceon Friday, “the Consequences of Same-Gender Attraction.” The hate-fest will feature Exodus International’s President Alan Chambers, (pictured) who is using this opportunity as a warm-up act for an April trip to Belfast, Ireland.
Hasn’t Chambers’ irresponsible outfit caused enough problems already in places like Uganda? How this man wakes up in the morning and can look in the mirror without feeling deep shame, (not counting the shame he internalizes over his sexuality) I’ll never know. It takes a special type of human being, one with out a conscience, to consistently lie to himself and others.
I’d like to remind the good folks of Lynchburg, that last time Liberty University tried the ex-gay thing, it didn’t go so well. Their “pray away the gay” poster boy was a man named Michael Johnston. He now lives in a sex addiction facility in Kentucky, following a slew of bareback orgies with men. Here’s the mini-movie:
On Saturday, the Liberty University Law Review will host a legal symposium entitled “Homosexual Rights and First Amendment Freedoms: Can They Truly Coexist?”
Of course they can co-exist, unless your religious beliefs and practice are defined exclusively by violent anti-gay animus. If you believe the First Amendment allows you to harass, intimidate, torment and physically abuse LGBT people then there is a conflict. Other than that, there’s no problem.
So, why all the fear-mongering?
It seems quite obvious that in states with laws that protect citizens based on sexual orientation, people are still free to pray any way they wish. But, reality has never been the Religious Right’s cup of tea.
If you are fortunate enough to be around at 1:30pm on Saturday, you will catch a panel featuring arch-homophobes Robert Knight (pictured) and Elaine Donnelly, “Hire Them and Don’t Fire Them: How Homosexual Rights and Privileges Have Eroded Employers’ Rights and Destroyed Religious Freedom.” (Read More)
Earlier today, Peter LaBarbera opened his 
As if we had not suffered enough inclement weather, citizens of Lynchburg, Virginia and South Bend, Indiana will get “ex-gay” snow jobs this weekend.
So, why all the fear-mongering?
