Here is a completely normal, run-of-the-mill, so-boring-I-can’t-believe-I’m-posting-it story. Try not to yawn from boredom at this story, which happens so, so often:
A conservative Christian politician has a secret life as a sperm donor for lesbian couples – even though he has campaigned against gay marriage.
American politician Bill Johnson has spent most of this year in Christchurch helping run the earthquake recovery, all the while using the online persona “chchbill” to meet women who want help to get pregnant.
Under that persona, he has discussed making donations to at least nine women without the knowledge of his family in the US.
Three of the women are now pregnant, and Johnson has assisted another three with donations in the past month. It is believed he has been in communication with at least another three women to discuss sperm donation.
His actions as a sperm donor sparked concern in the fertility medicine community, whose guidelines recommend donations are made in the regulated environment of a fertility clinic, and that no man provide sperm donations to more than four families.
Not only did he give some sperm to lesbians in New Zealand, officials are concerned that he gave too much sperm to lesbians in New Zealand.
In his political life, Johnson campaigned on a conservative Christian platform which opposed gay marriage.
He said he did not know the “relationship status” of the women he donated to: “I just know they want to have children.” Asked if it mattered, he said: “I’m not going to answer that question.”
Oh, so he can spread his seed throughout the Southern hemisphere but he can’t answer a simple question? Typical wingnut.
“This is a really, really difficult time for our family,” Kathy Johnson said in an email to the Press-Register. “I’m still in disbelief and very hurt, and our family has a lot of healing to do.”
Well, at least that is talking point spewed by nearly 1,000 historical revisionists that descended upon downtown Montgomery, Alabama on Saturday. The group of Confederacy worshipers raised the rebel flag on the capitol lawn and had a mock swearing-in of Jefferson Davis. As the fake Davis sashayed up to the podium, some of the pro-Confederacy crowd bellowed, “God bless you, Mr. President” and “Long live Dixie”.
Like today’s social conservatives, the Confederate crowd tried to play the victim. According to The Advertiser, Lt. Commander in Chief Kelley Barrow compared his movement’s alleged persecution to that suffered by civil rights icon Rosa Parks.
He went on to mention Rosa Parks, stating while she moved from the back of the bus to the front, the “people of the Confederacy have been forced to move to the back of the bus.”
These poor misunderstood victims. How will they go on and survive in such a hostile climate?
I happened to be in Montgomery for Truth Wins Out’s “Winter Tour” and witnessed this unpatriotic disgrace. The participants were in severe denial about what they called, “The War of Northern Aggression”.
“People today aren’t educated about the war and since history is written by the winners, the truth may never by told,” Robert Bentley of Muscle Shoals told The Montgomery Advertiser.
If it were only so simple. Unfortunately, the losers have been writing countless tomes attempting to spin and justify the grotesque bigotry of the Confederacy. I personally overheard several people make the inaccurate claim that the Civil War was not about slavery, but state’s rights.
Cute. In reality it was about state’s rights — in so much as the southern states wanted the right to continue the sickening slave trade. If anyone doubts that slavery was central to the Civil War, skip all the propaganda and go right to the secession resolutions in state’s like South Carolina.
The facts don’t lie. The evidence is simply too overwhelming and robust to come to any other conclusion. Yet, the local newspaper, The Montgomery Advertiser, repeated the lie that the causes for the war were inconclusive.
The reasons for the Civil War have been widely debated, with the controversy surrounding the event Saturday due to the war’s connection to slavery.
Only a “connection” to slavery? Isn’t that like saying the Waffle House is only “connected” to waffles, rather than the source? The New York Times series, Disunion lays waste to the notion that slavery was not central to the Civil War. Here is one of several excerpts:
Following South Carolina’s prompting, representatives of the seceded states met in Montgomery, Ala. on Feb. 4, and they adopted a provisional constitution that explicitly recognized racial slavery on Feb. 8…..The Carolinian commissioners urged the speedy creation of a southern nation and conveyed a united message in their speeches to the secession conventions of the cotton states. The North and the Republicans stood for “the social principle that equality is the right of man,” according to Spratt, but the slave South embodied the “social principle that equality is not the right of man, but the right of equals only. ”
Truth be told, the Civil War was about buying and selling human beings. The people who defended this moral abomination are not chivalrous, nor honorable. Those who defended the Confederacy were traitors whose heritage includes the deep stain of slavery and Jim Crow.
Such a legacy is nothing to celebrate. The people at the rally should, instead, bow their heads in shame and sorrow for instigating a war that killed tens of thousands and supported bigotry of the most heinous kind.
When you hear conservatives talk about “state’s rights” in the context of LGBT equality — never forget where this ugly refrain came from.
I just love how in this photo the successful black professional is smiling down on the defeated, un-groomed Confederacy fan. I think this picture captures why these people are living in the past. In the old days, the white guy would hold power over this black man, by virtue of his color. Now he must compete with him for jobs and status. And, judging from this picture, who would you rather hire or have a drink with?
They sure know how to pick ‘em in Alabammy, don’t they?
Gov.-elect Robert Bentley in a speech at a Baptist church this afternoon said he plans to be the governor of all Alabamians and be color-blind, but he also said people who aren’t ”saved” Christians aren’t his brothers and sisters.
Bentley told a big crowd at Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where the late civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once was pastor, that he believed it was important for Alabamians ”that we love and care for each other.”
”I was elected as a Republican candidate. But once I became governor … I became the governor of all the people. I intend to live up to that. I am color blind,” Bentley said in a short speech given about an hour after he took the oath of office as governor.
Then Bentley, who for years has been a deacon at First Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, gave what sounded like an altar call.
“There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit,” Bentley said. ”But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.”
Bentley added, ”Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.”
Ew, don’t you feel like you need a shower now? Especially with all the “daddy” talk. You’re a grown man, Mr. Bentley. Get a hold of yourself.
This New York Times excerpt should scare the hell out of you:
Dr. Robert Bentley, an Alabama state legislator little known until he won the right to the runoff in the June 1 primary election, received 56 percent of the vote, with nearly all precincts reporting, compared to 44 percent of the votes won by his opponent Bradley Byrne, a lawyer and former college chancellor who had the support of Gov. Bob Riley, former and current Republican congressmen and area business groups.
He promised fiscal conservatism and Christian values, but struggled in fund-raising, receiving $621,000 in contributions compared with Mr. Byrne’s $2 million. An outside group named the True Republican PAC also ran advertisements questioning whether Mr. Byrne believed the entire Bible is literally true (he says he does) and whether he opposes teaching creationism in public schools (he says he supports it).
Why should this development terrify you? Because Obama’s falling poll numbers, the high unemployment rate and midterm elections – which usually benefit the party out of power – means that ever-radicalizing Republicans have a shot of taking over at least one house of Congress.
Even scarier is the voters’ apparent willingness to choose political novices or alleged “outsiders” with radical agendas. An alarming number of voters seem so desperate to change the country that they may be willing to try anything – even if that means electing nutjobs like Sharron Angle in Nevada. This emerging trend would not only be disastrous for America, but a potential setback for LGBT equality.
Sure, Alabama does not reflect the nation. And, maybe choosing extremists in the primaries might help catapult reasonable candidates into office in the general election. However, races, such as this one, hold out the grim possibility that angry voters and a volatile electorate may lurch towards the margins in November.
Glenn Shadix (on left) is an actor made famous by roles in movies such as Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas and the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes. His television work includes the HBO drama Carniv?†le, and the NBC television comedy Seinfeld, in which he played Jerry’s landlord.
What many people do not know, however, is that Shadix had undergone shock therapy as a teenager in Alabama, in an attempt to turn from gay-to-straight. The “cure” did not work and today Shadix lives as a proud openly gay man. Having lived in New York City and Hollywood, he recently returned to Alabama. Truth Wins Out applauds Shadix for his willingness to share his experience and help other people avoid the pain and suffering of the ex-gay industry.
The Tuscaloosa News reported yesterday that a state legislator has prefiled a bill, with the support of the governor, to prohibit public universities from offering employee benefits to same-sex domestic partners.
But the same lawmaker is willing to subsidize unmarried heterosexuals who shack up.
The legislation penalizes the state’s taxpayers in order to subsidize the benefits of heterosexual bureaucrats, based on the religious bias of evangelicals who oppose religious freedom and the separation of church and state.
Rep. DuWayne Bridges said taxes should not be used to treat state workers equally. He said it is objectionable to “subsidize same-sex lifestyles” but offered no apparent objection to subsidized benefits for unmarried heterosexual couples.
Contrary to Bridges’ assertion that “liberals” engage in social engineering, it is he and Alabama Gov. Bob Riley who seek use taxpayer money to reward sectarian religious activists’ favored bureaucrats and to cheat skilled and accomplished government workers out of equal benefits.
Bridges also applauded the notion of Alabama voters deciding who is or isn’t entitled to constitutional rights, when they voted to ban marriage equality. The new bill will be introduced to the state legislature in January.
What next — a bill to require universities to hire only conservative Christians?
The ex-gay “Love Won Out” roadshow has, since its inception, taught parents, clergy, and would-be “ex-gays” not to trust mainstream mental health professionals or mainstream science regarding sexual orientation.
Instead, LWO speakers use vague and mostly un-Biblical religious language, discredited claims, and misquotations of legitimate research to blame overmothering, absent fathering, and abuse — without exception — for homosexuality. LWO also denies the existence of sexual orientation as opposed to mere sexual temptation. The program stereotypes gay men as insufficiently masculine, lesbians as insufficiently feminine, and both as depressed sex addicts.
The solution, they say, is not mainstream psychiatric care; it’s a heavy dose of blame, political correctness, prayer, and acting-out of stereotypical masculine or feminine behavior.
In a promotion for its roadshow this weekend in Birmingham, Ala., Focus on the Family doesn’t deny Truth Wins Out’s allegation that “Love Won Out tells young people and their families that they aren’t whole and that they should and can change — which isn’t true.”
Instead, activist Joe Dallas — who claims to be a former homosexual and writes books damning gay people of faith and their values — portrays himself as though he were a leader of an organization that ex-gays frequently condemn: the gay-affirming parents group PFLAG. According to Dallas, LWO does not teach parents to hate or coerce.
“Just the opposite,” he said. “We teach parents how important it is to love and care for their sons or daughters, no matter what choices they make.”
That sounds nice, but like so many statements by Focus on the Family, it’s a half-truth. Dallas teaches parents and pastors to believe prejudices about LGBT persons and to reject the plain truths spoken by these persons (and expert researchers) as if they were satanic deceptions. Dallas is neither tolerant nor respectful toward people of his same religion who disagree with his antigay prejudices and his sloppy, egocentric theology. He divides families according to his own political and religious agendas. And he uses the word “choice” to describe sexual orientation — a cruel hoax that is rejected even by some conservative Christian researchers. In short, Dallas defines “love and care” the way most sensible people define “hate and coerce.”
Meanwhile, his LWO colleague Melissa Fryrear says, “Moms and dads shouldn’t have to relinquish their religious convictions.” But she makes it clear that, given a choice between political and religious correctness and the health, welfare, and love of their children, parents should choose the former.
It is hateful to deliberately and persistently lie about the nature of sexual orientation in one’s relatives, as Dallas, Fryrear, and LWO teach parents to do. It is hateful to deliberately lie about the attractions, character, values, choices, and “lifestyle” of one’s relatives. And it is coercive to manipulate relatives by requiring them to conform to LWO stereotypes, stigmatizing relatives and their partners, and denying relatives full equality in religion, housing, employment, and public services.
Focus on the Family equates prejudice with love, and ignorant manipulation with care.
Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, will be on hand in Birmingham on Saturday to support local LGBT people and their affirming families and allies in protest against FOTF’s grotesque assault against family integrity and human dignity.
Focus on the Family complained tonight that “Alabama schools are now required to write stricter anti-bullying policies, thanks to language in a bill that opens the door to the gay agenda.”
But a Focus on the Family employee doesn’t seem to know the difference between a bill and a law; he uses the two terms interchangeably.
He may be referring to the Student Harassment Prevention Act, which goes into effect Oct. 1. (PDF copy of the Act.) The legislation empowers the state department of education to develop a model policy for local districts to receive reports of harassment and to punish perpetrators. In particular, the law directs the department to develop “a procedure for the development of a nonexhaustive list of the specific personal characteristics of a student which may often lead to harassment. Based upon experience, a local board of education may add, but not remove, characteristics from the list.”
In other words, the state might specify race and religion for statewide protection; a local district might add sexual orientation to its local policy.
Until now, there haven’t been any legal repercussions from bullying and it’s an issue the state has long needed to address, said longtime educator Lisa Moses, of Florence, who said bullying is one area addressed in another new piece of legislation known as Taylor’s Law. Under that law, a student’s behavior at school, including bullying, can delay the student from acquiring a driver’s license.
“Bullying has too long been ignored on the school level and has somewhat been accepted with a ‘boys will be boys’ attitude,” Moses said. “Kids need to be able to report these things anonymously, but they don’t trust that it will be kept quiet and they’re scared.” …
The issue came to a head in April when 11-year-old Jaheem Herrera committed suicide at his Atlanta-area home after his parents say he was repeatedly tormented in school. District officials denied it, and an independent review found bullying wasn’t a factor, a conclusion his family rejects.
Until now, Alabama children have been completely unprotected:
Alabama’s law covers grades pre-kindergarten through 12th. The sponsor of the bill, State Rep. Betty Carol Graham, D-Alexander City, said the new Alabama law was three years in the making and grew out of the rise in suicides among youth in the state and nation.
Focus on the Family objects to the law’s attention to “the motivations and ‘characteristics’ of victims, rather than on the wrong actions of the bullies.”
In other words, Focus believes that bullying is not really bullying in the case of certain types of victims. Focus believes that the distinction between “bullying” and physical action to correct homosexual youths should be decided not by the community or police, but by individual bullies and antigay faculty members.
Focus offers applause to Betty Peters, a member of the Alabama education board, who (Focus claims) said gay activists are “encouraging like-minded individuals to sign up for local committees that will be responsible for writing similar policies. She encouraged parents who oppose the gay agenda to do the same.”
Focus warns:
Parents should watch out for attempts to mandate special protections for “gender identity” and “sexual orientation”‚Äî which can pave the way for pro-gay curriculum and mandatory “diversity” training.
Focus believes other characteristics of students may be protected from bullying — but not gender identity or sexual orientation.
Josh Montez, Focus’ staff writer, fails to inform readers that Peters is a member of the American Family Association, Alabama Republican Assembly, Eagle Forum, and Christian Coalition. Peters wants creationism to be taught in schools. She was the lone no-vote on state Superintendent of Education Dr. Joe Morton’s recommendation that Alabama participate in a state-led initiative to develop common core standards for English and mathematics. Peters also opposed President Obama’s speech to school children.
Peters’ Eagle Forum membership is worth remembering — we shall revisit this momentarily.
Montez also failed to tell readers about the experiences of bullied students and faculty. According to radio station WBHM-FM in Birmingham:
…Critics say that merely implying that gay students are protected is not enough. The result, they say, is that no one is safe, even those who are just perceived gay.
Experts say that these days children are hearing more anti-gay language in school. Carly Friedman is a Samford University psychology professor and research consultant for the Alabama Safe Schools Coalition. Friedman is surveying Alabama students to gauge how often they hear gay slurs in school.
“We are seeing an increase in things like, Oh that’s so gay, You’re such a fag. These words that we are hearing more often I think that really can have an effect on young people.”
She’s found that they don’t concentrate as well, they skip class, and they have higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. Friedman adds that gay slurs affect all youth. …
But people like Eunie Smith, president of Eagle Forum of Alabama, a conservative activist group, say homosexuality shouldn’t be talked about in schools, much less tolerated.”Well, young people are highly impressionable. And for the schools to provide some special status for those who would perceive themselves to be homosexual…would be to legitimize and therefore to encourage these unhealthy lifestyles.”
Smith and Peters — both of them, leaders within the Eagle Forum — object to safety for LGBT students despite those students’ safe and responsible lifestyles, and even when those students’ parents and churches accept them. In the view of Smith and Peters, antigay parents and students enjoy a “religious freedom” to slander and bully others: a freedom that supersedes the personal and religious freedom of LGBT students and their families.
But Focus’s Montez does not share any of this information with readers.
Focus says Montez obtained a bachelor’s degree in communication from Moody Bible Institute. One wonders what kind of communication is really taught at Moody.
Here is a completely normal, run-of-the-mill, so-boring-I-can’t-believe-I’m-posting-it story. Try not to yawn from boredom at this story, which happens so, so often:
Instead, activist Joe Dallas — who claims to be a former homosexual and writes books damning gay people of faith and their values — portrays himself as though he were a leader of an organization that ex-gays frequently condemn: the gay-affirming parents group PFLAG. According to Dallas, LWO does not teach parents to hate or coerce.
Meanwhile, his LWO colleague 
Focus offers applause to Betty Peters, a member of the Alabama education board, who (Focus claims) said gay activists are “encouraging like-minded individuals to sign up for local committees that will be responsible for writing similar policies. She encouraged parents who oppose the gay agenda to do the same.”
