Alvin McEwen has a great, very important petition at Change.org that you should all check out.  In it, he is petitioning the United States Congress to subject Religious Right testimony on LGBT issues to a high level of scrutiny, based on their pattern of cravenly distorting actual research in order to further their anti-gay agenda:

In June of this year during a Congressional hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act, Sen. Al Franken exposed Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery’s attempt to inaccurately cite a study to defame same-sex households.

Earlier this year during another Congressional hearing on DOMA, National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher committed the same distortion – i.e. inaccurately citing a study to defame same-sex households. Gallagher’s group (NOM) has also been called out twice by the Pulitzer Prize winning site Politifact for inaccurate negative statements it has made about the gay community.

The Family Research Council was declared as an official anti-gay hate group last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its tendency to spread propaganda about the gay community such as gays molest children at a high level and same-sex households harm children.

However, the head of the Family Research Council – Tony Perkins – is frequently called as a Congressional witness on many occasions from discussing issues of gay equality to the selection of Supreme Court justices.

That’s just three examples. Alvin points out at his blog that, though Tom Minnery was called out, Maggie Gallagher and Tony Perkins got away with it, and that this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Religious Right distorting the work of real, honest researchers.  That petition, again, is at Change.org, so check it out and sign it.

The other petition comes from Kathy Baldock, and focuses on the pride celebration in Charlotte, North Carolina.  If you’re not familiar with Kathy, she is a straight, evangelical woman who spends her days fighting for dignity and respect for LGBT people within the church.  At Charlotte Pride, as usual, the vehemently anti-gay activist Michael Brown has planned a counter demonstration called “God Has A Better Way.”  Brown has a distinct pattern of pretending that he is reaching out in love to LGBT people, and somehow managing to send some of the most grotesque, hateful messages possible to the gay community.  Kathy explains a bit more about the message of the God Has A Better Way people:

The stated beliefs of the backers of GHABW * with respect to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are:

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are a deviation from God’s best, God’s intentions and His design.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people can change orientation and be heterosexual with no negative effects.

If they do not succeed in orientation change, they should remain celibate in order to identify as Christians.( “Gay Christian” is always placed in quotation marks to dismiss the existence of gay Christians.)

The majority of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people are inherently unhappy, unhealthy, sexually immoral or rebellious to the will of God.

Transgender people would best follow God’s plan by using hormonal therapy, prayer and counseling to overcome the issue of gender identity. Sexual reassignment surgery should never be used as an option.

Acting on same sex attraction is sinful and indicative of non-submission to God.
Same-sex attraction is a behavior, not an orientation.

In your face hateful, as usual.  These people, of course, claim that they are bringing this message in “love,” but Michael Brown has shown repeatedly that his concept of “love” is warped at best.

Sign Kathy’s petition to ask the group to cancel their nasty little counter rally here.

Tuesday night’ County Commissioner’ meeting erupted after Mecklenberg (Charlotte, N.C.) Commissioner Bill James used a gay slur when referring to another commissioner’ son, who died of AIDS. Wednesday afternoon, Commissioner Vilma Leake was still too shaken to repeat the words James said to her at the meeting.

The incident occurred after Leake had made a passionate plea for same-sex partner benefits, telling commissioners that her own son had lived a homosexual lifestyle and died of AIDS.Moments after she finished speaking, James leaned over to her and said something.

Eyewitness News has learned that he said he didn’t know her son was, in his words, “a homo.”

Leake shot back as Commission Chairman Jennifer Roberts began to speak. Wednesday morning, James stood by his comment. In a statement, he said, “Since she didn’t define what lifestyle she was referring to, I asked her…response to me was to threaten violence.” James said using the slang term for homosexual was not necessarily a putdown and called Leake a religious hypocrite, using her son’ lifestyle to vote for benefits that will cost tax dollars. Leake said she does not plan to let the comment go.

Well, there you go. James is what passes for a compassionate fundamentalist these days. It is nice to feel such love, support and understanding. Isn’t it time moderate Christians take back this religion

This post can also be read at:

The Huffington Post

The Falls Church News Press

WayneBesen.com

Sometimes, words can kill.

A vocabulary carefully crafted into lethal lies almost always foreshadows fatalities.

In the case of Nazi Germany, the evidence of Hitler’s wicked intentions — from Mein Kampf to the Brown Shirts – was vividly clear. People may have ignored the alarm bells, but no one can say that there were not warnings of the brutality to come.

In 1994, Hutu radio broadcasts that called Tutsis cockroaches helped lead to genocide in Rwanda. Prior to the infamous broadcasts, a newspaper published the Hutu Ten Commandments, which smeared the rival ethnic tribe and included the eerily prescient eighth commandment: “Hutus must stop having mercy on the Tutsis.”

Earlier this month, in Gojra, Pakistan, more than 20,000 rioters torched 100 houses that belonged to Christian families and murdered seven people after a false rumor spread that the town’s Christians had defiled the Koran. Local mullahs enthusiastically furthered this big lie and used it to spark violence.

“We were afraid because the clerics had been railing against us in the mosques,” Riaz Masih, a Christian and retired math teacher whose house was gutted told the New York Times. “They said, ‘Let’s teach them a lesson.’”

The circumstances of these tragedies are vastly disparate in terms of geography, time period and circumstances. However, they illustrate three points:

1) Inflammatory and defamatory words, especially if spoken by religious or political authority figures, can and do lead to violence.

2) There is no shortage of mentally unbalanced people who will sometimes carry out shocking acts, and we should be very careful not to incite them with rhetoric that stokes their paranoia. Like stacks of firewood, these angry individuals go unnoticed until the gasoline is poured and the match is lit.

3) Americans are human beings, just like everyone else. So, the notion that what we say does not matter “because it could never happen here” is jingoistic foolishness.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Dr. Michael Brown, an anti-gay ideologue in Charlotte who brought hundreds of red shirted fundamentalists to that town’s gay pride event. Brown’s mission is to “raise up a holy army of uncompromising spirit-filled radicals who will shake an entire generation with the gospel of Jesus by life or death.”

If you haven’t noticed, the extreme right is getting dangerously delirious. A black president, a Latina on the Supreme Court and gay people gearing up to marry in Iowa has exacerbated this crowd’s feelings of marginalization. (Read More)