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 via Alvin 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!

Get this lady some smelling salts!

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.”

Mon dieu! Robert Knight is so upset!

Eh, he’ll live.

[h/t Joe]

Weekly Column

If there is one term the gay and lesbian movement should consider banishing it is “movable middle”, which refers to fence sitting heterosexuals who can be persuaded to support equality. This phrase is a misnomer, because it implies that people must leave the mainstream and join a “wing” if they conclude that anti-gay discrimination is unjust.

The concept of a “movable middle” on gay rights is just as absurd as offering a similar designation for those who are enlightened and have overcome racism or Anti-Semitism. This fictitious category is really just shorthand for people who haven’t thought through LGBT equality or do not see how it impacts their lives.

So, what we are really talking about is a large group of individuals, of all political stripes, who are not conscious of the harm their silence is causing innocent people. Thus, the key to success becomes transforming the apathetic into the energetic by imparting a deeper understanding and connection to this issue. And this is happening more every day.

For instance, ultraconservative icon, Grover Norquist, joined the Board of the Republican gay organization GOProud. He did so in spite of strenuous objections from Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council (FRC) which declared that Norquist, “seems prepared to compromise a unified conservative movement in order to appease a tiny minority of the overall population.”

As more people across the political spectrum come to see homophobia as a moral evil, groups such as FRC will be increasingly marginalized. Even as FRC penned its bitter screed against Norquist, another conservative icon, Ted Olson, was delivering his brilliant closing argument in court to overturn Proposition 8, which prohibits marriage equality in California. It must have stuck in the FRC’ craw when Olson told a group of law students that the marriage case, “is the most compelling, emotionally moving, important case that I have been involved in my entire life.”

Unfortunately, social changes, from increasing LGBT acceptance, to the election of Barack Obama, have inflamed America’ extremists. Each day, the nation’ fanatics seem to be sinking to new depths, and these zealots are driving the GOP further to the fringe.

For example, while we’ve always known our opponents are an oleaginous bunch, they went overboard when they accused Obama of “extorting” money from BP, after he got the company to commit $20 billion to help people whose lives had been upended by the mess. While it wasn’t surprising that oil company shills in Congress condemned the President, it was peculiar that a fanatical mega-church in Fort Lauderdale claimed in that BP’ compensation amounted to a socialistic power grab.

“We’re moving into uncharted and troubled waters as the president assumes power over private industry not granted under the Constitution or our laws,” said Dr. Jerry Newcombe, host and co-producer of the new documentary from Coral Ridge Ministries, Socialism: A Clear and Present Danger. “His harsh diktat sounds more like Hugo Chavez than Thomas Jefferson.”

When the oil spill was first reported, Texas Gov. Rick Perry called it an example of, “acts of God that cannot be prevented.”

Given this medieval mindset, it was no surprise that Louisiana designated Sunday as a day of prayer to end the spill. “Thus far efforts made by mortals to try to solve the crisis have been to no avail. It is clearly time for a miracle for us,” read a state resolution.

God wasn’t amused. The oil is still flowing into the Gulf and God fried an Ohio mega-church idol known as Touchdown Jesus with a lightening bolt.

Such radicalism, of course, extends to old-fashioned homophobia. In addressing a crowd in Iowa, the National Organization for Marriage’ Maggie Gallagher said, “We’re here, we’re not queer, get used to it.” Embarrassed that her bigotry was recorded on video, she tried to pass off her reprehensible remark as a joke.

In a spasm of anti-gay zealotry, Texas Republicans rolled out a new platform that supports legislation that would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to gay couples as well as for an official to perform a marriage ceremony for same-sex partners. The deranged document includes statements such as, “We believe that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family.” The platform also calls on the state to outlaw all “sexually-oriented businesses” — including strip joints and “all pornography”.

While the term “moveable middle” may not be an accurate description of potential gay rights supporters, it is fair to say that there is a “move to madness” by our foes. Deep down they know they are slowly losing their grip on power, which is causing many to lose their grasp of reality.

A year after it helped launch the Uganda genocide legislation, Exodus is teaming up with Robert Knight, Matt Barber, and an attorney who affirmed child abduction by her ex-gay activist client. Joining with NARTH’s leading political activists “therapists” at Liberty University’s School of Law, their objective is simple: Convince the public that the Constitution’s Bill of Rights cannot survive so long as LGBT people have any rights at all.

Exodus International President Alan Chambers will headline a two-day conference and symposium Feb. 12-13. The events will criticize sexual honesty, reject mainstream psychiatry, deny the existence of sexual orientation, and assert that conservative Christians’ rights are incompatible with the rights of sexual and religious minorities.

According to the Liberty Counsel, a Christian Right legal-attack squad, the February 12 conference is titled “Understanding Same-sex Attractions and Their Consequences.” On February 13, the Liberty University Law Review will host a legal symposium entitled “Homosexual Rights and First Amendment Freedoms: Can They Truly Coexist?” Liberty University was founded by fundamentalist Jerry Falwell, and it is operated as a veritable police state where no dissent from the late Falwell’s ideology and lifestyle are permitted.

Chambers will tell fundamentalists — as he has done many times before — that same-sex attractions are caused by bad parenting and abuse, that public honesty about one’s orientation is sinful, and that recognition of the equality of religious and sexual minorities is demonic. (Read More)

Read in The Miami Herald (Steve Rothaus)

For a time after its founder D. James Kennedy recently passed away, there was hope that Fort Lauderdale-based Coral Ridge Ministries would go in a new direction.

For decades, the church had been a rabidly anti-gay organization that had employed attack dogs, such as the notorious Janet Folger. The church spearheaded the 1998 “Truth in Love” ex-gay campaign. (It ended badly after two of the campaign’s stars were caught having gay relations) But since Kennedy’s departure, Coral Ridge had been relatively quiet on divisive social issues.

Unfortunately, it seems their new pastor, Rev. Tullian Tchividjian, wants to reignite the culture wars. His General in this fight is Robert Knight, a veteran in these battles. Knight had recently been laid off from the Media Research Center’s Culture and Media Institute. He had also worked for Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council.

Already one can see Knight’s deleterious influence on Coral Ridge. The website’s homepage is packed with shameless lies about hate crime legislation and it also promotes theocracy in America. (This brings us back to Kennedy’s dishonest days when the pastor even flirted with Reconstructionsism – a brand of Christian fanaticism that calls for homosexuals to be stoned to death.)

Knight is best known for his paranoid – if not delusional – rantings about the gay movement’s secret desire to stamp out the free speech of radical Christians. He is one of the right’s most nefarious propagandists and is severely truth challenged. Knight is also known for his sexual immaturity and penchant to make crude anti-gay wisecracks. At one event I attended, he joked about chubby lesbians in beer halls. Knight is also obsessed with gay sex and is closest in tone to Peter Labarbera. The two men worked together in the late 90′s at the Family Research Council and were like bosom buddies.

It seems that preaching the Bible was not enough to sustain the congregation – so Coral Ridge has returned to anti-gay bile. On the sun-drenched shores of Fort Lauderdale, Coral Ridge Ministries is still in the spiritual darkness.