Recently, Tennessee passed a bill which prohibited its cities from setting their own non-discrimination policies, or rather policies which are stronger than the state’s own pathetic non-discrimination law. It was pushed solely by the Family Action Council of Tennessee, a wing of the Family Research Council hate group, as an attack on LGBT people and our families. Regular readers might remember us posting a video of the extremely fey FACTn leader, David Fowler, wearing a pink shirt in a playground gloating about the passage of the law. A lawsuit has been filed to overturn the law, and the documents now being exposed, related to the passage of that law, are illuminating:

To satisfy attorneys in the gay rights lawsuit against the state last week, conservative Christian lawmakers coughed up 2,200 pieces of correspondence related to their wonderful new statute that overturned Nashville’s nondiscrimination ordinance in the last legislative session.

[...]

Just for fun, we pulled the filed marked “Sen. Mae Beavers” first and, right off the bat, we were delighted to discover an email to her from David Fowler—the Ralph Reed of Tennessee’s Christian Right and the driving force behind the state law. In this email, Fowler shockingly treats Beavers like a puppet on a string (do lobbyists really run things in Nashville?) and instructs her precisely what to say about the Tennessee Family Action Council’s bill. He obviously views Beavers as not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, but useful just the same as his bill’s sponsor.

“The bill itself is not that complicated,” Fowler writes. “We don’t need more regulation of business and business sure doesn’t need the 348 different cities coming up with their own ideas of what a discriminatory practice is. That’s the line and you just repeat it like Glen Casada did last night when the bill passed the House 73 to 24.”

“Will the homosexuals be upset?” Fowler then asks. “Sure. But to be honest, they seem to be rather resigned on this bill.”

Ha, well, I know some of “the homosexuals” who filed the lawsuit, and they are anything but “resigned.” Or as the Nashville Scene writer put it:

Whoops! Fowler misread the temperature of gay activists there. Outraged by his law, they launched a campaign to embarrass just about every major corporation in Tennessee into renouncing it. When that was done, they filed their lawsuit painting the state legislature as a bunch of bigots.

Yep!

The truth of the matter is that Senator Mae Beavers probably isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it’s interesting to see just how much our opponents on the Religious Right view their elected officials as puppets. “We bought you, now read this word for word,” seems to be the order of the day.

The linked piece points out that, in order to prevail, those who filed the lawsuit must show that the bill was passed strictly out of bias against gay people, rather than to make it “easier to do bidness in Tennessee,” so it’s helpful that many of Tennessee’s major corporations are now squarely against the law. Reading the documents in Ms. Beavers’ file, showing e-mails spanning the wingnut diaspora, from the garden variety house-wingnut all the way up to Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, thanking her for standing up against ‘dem homoseckshuls, should give those involved in the lawsuit a hint as to what was really going on when one of Tennessee’s resident hate groups decided to lobby for special access to discriminate against LGBT people in the state.

Yesterday, speaking to the wingnuts at the so-called “Family Research Council,” a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group, GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann had this to say about the unemployed (in addition to her usual gay bashing and crazy-eyed fear of “socialism”):

“Our nation needs to stop doing for people what they can, and should, do for themselves. That revives the principle of a national work ethic that we have sadly forgotten. That means an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. Self-reliance means, if anyone will not work, neither should he eat.”

I wonder if the god she worships — presumably the same god who is commanding her to run for President — gave her a divine dispensation to ignore the whole “feed the hungry” thing.

Jeremy caught this tweet from hate group leader Tony Perkins:

It’s funny when they accidentally forget their messaging and just come right out with their weird, shame-induced belief that all sex is dirty.

But when you’re a fundamentalist leader, you’re much more worried about keeping your ideology pure and wishing upon a star that all people’s naughty bits might somehow be under lock and key for all time*, than you are about keeping your kids STD and teen pregnancy free. Look at the teen pregnancy rates in the more fundamentalist states to see how well that works.

*except for those terrible times when a Fundamentalist husband and wife must engage in terrible, disgusting, shameful sex in order to have a baby.

Wow, this one comes from Joplin, Missouri. A teacher, whose name is not being released, allegedly posted these remarks on Facebook in response to a story about gay kids committing suicide:

How grotesque. There’s a news video here on the incident, which I can’t seem to embed over here.

Joe noticed that one of America’s Most Vicious Hatemongers, Tony Perkins, is defending the teacher. What’s a little laugh over child suicide among fundamentalist wingnuts, am I right?

Sometimes people think we’re exaggerating when we say that, as we have now reached the tipping point, the majority position in the United States is to support full equality for gay people, and the bigots’ opinions are becoming completely socially unacceptable, those bigots are very likely to become more and more extreme and possibly violent. Watching one of the most well-known “pro-family” leaders in the country defend a person laughing about children committing suicide should open people’s eyes to the true character of our opposition. These are their true colors.

Herman Cain says gayness is a choice. Tony Perkins says, “yeah!”

But Joe points out that just a few months ago, Tony Perkins said these words: “Same-sex attraction is not a choice.”

Joe responds simply, “Somebody’s losing track of their own bullshit.”

Indeed. That’s what happens when your belief system is stupid, bigoted and incoherent.

MEDIA ADVISORY

Oct. 7, 2011

Contact:
Apreill Hartsfield
334.956.8458
apreill.hartsfield@splcenter.org

Southern Poverty Law Center to Hold Press Conference Outside Values Voter Summit

The Southern Poverty Law Center will hold a press conference this Friday, Oct. 7, to release a report on the Family Research Council (FRC) and American Family Association (AFA), two groups that spread false propaganda that demonizes the LGBT community. The FRC is hosting the annual Values Voter Summit this weekend Washington, where many prominent public officials will be speaking. The AFA is a major co-sponsor.

WHO: Mark Potok, Director, Intelligence Project, Southern Poverty Law Center
Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out

WHEN: Friday, October 7
8 a.m. (EDT)

WHERE: Omni Shoreham
2500 Calvert Street NW (at Connecticut Ave.)
Washington, DC

###

The Southern Poverty Law Center, based in Alabama with offices in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, is a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society. For more information, see www.splcenter.org.

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

Look, it’s Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council hate group, clinging childishly to the belief that average Americans are bigots with weird hair like he is. It’s very, very sad, and we should all take a break from making fun of him to pity him.

He says that DADT repeal will change the military, due to the fact that soldiers who are sad bigots like Peter Sprigg will have to take up a Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy about their weird, unnatural hatred of gays. Or something. Who knows what this man is ever talking about? Meanwhile, the actual military is pretty much shrugging their shoulders at the change, because they’re grown-ups.

[h/t Joe]

In the middle of a breathless, stupid missive from the Family Research Council hate group [short version:  give us money!], they use the defeat of Anthony Weiner to make themselves and their minions feel better:

Meanwhile in the heart of liberal New York City, pro-family Democrats helped elect a Republican for the first time since the 1920′s. A major deciding factor? The losing Democratic candidate, while in the state senate, offended many of his religious constituents by voting to redefine marriage to appease a small homosexual constituency.

Yeah, no. There is an anti-incumbent atmosphere right now [as there often is with American voters these days, but especially when the economy sucks], and oh, also, Anthony Weiner was a disgraced former congressman.  That tends to contribute to whether a party keeps a seat in a special election, even though the Democratic candidate, in this case Weprin, is a totally different person. If this district votes for a Republican again, then we can start talking about “deciding factors” and whatnot. Of course, redistricting is about to, most likely, eliminate that congressional seat anyway, so I’m not sure why we’re even talking about this.

No, Family Research Council, the tide is not turning in your direction, and it’s not going to turn in your direction. I know it makes your followers feel better [and more likely to give you their bingo winnings] to assert such things, but to the rest of us it just looks sad.

Also, read Roy Edroso on this.  Maggie Gallagher has had equally stupid things to say about the NY-9 election, and he makes fun of her right nicely.

If you are like normal Americans, you were under the impression that yesterday, Labor Day, is a holiday where we celebrate the accomplishments of the organized labor movement in this country. More information about that here! Of course, wingnuts really hate organized labor in this country, so they have to find weird, contrived things to write about it whenever it comes around. So it is that we have this dude, writing at Tucker Carlson’s Daily Choler, about what Labor Day means to him, personally:

Robert Morrison served in the Department of Education under President Ronald Reagan. He is now a Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at Family Research Council in Washington.

Great, a dingus I’ve never heard of from a hate group that annoys me.  This should be entertaining:

As we mark Labor Day, I’d like to salute those women who keep our economy productive by their labors in the home.

Scripture refers to the first time that God said that something was not good. “And the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him’” (Gen. 2:18). By “an help meet,” the Elizabethan writers of the King James Bible meant someone who is able to help a man work. Even in paradise, there is much work to be done. Naming and exercising authority over the plants and animals, making the garden fruitful — these are labors of the first order. Thus, we see marriage between man and woman as part of the natural order. In thus creating and honoring marriage, God also dignified labor.

God said something wasn’t good that wasn’t about gayness? Imagine. So we’re paying tribute to the ladies who stay at home, that’s fine. How is he going to make this about gays?

Labor unions claim credit for being “the folks who brought you the American weekend.”

That’s largely true. But today, organized labor also brings us America the weakened. That’s because liberal labor union leaders have too often ignored their members’ values as they’ve pressed for abortion-on-demand and the ending of marriage.

Bravo, weird wingnut, bravo. America is weaker because “labor unions today” (evil) spend all their time loving abortion and gayness. He of course offers no corroborating evidence for these assertions, but “proof” is anathema among the fundamentalist wingnut crowd. You’re simply supposed to take what the hate group hack says on faith!

Anyway, he goes on for several more paragraphs doing his “women should stay at home and push out babies” thing because that is the true meaning of “labor,’ and then he is finished, therefore so are we.  Ugh.

[h/t Roy]

(Weekly Column)

Sometimes I’m amazed by the rapid success of the gay rights movement. Homosexuality, the love that dare not speak its name, is now spoken freely, while homophobia has quickly become the hate that dare not speak its name – at least if one is running for higher office.

On ABC’s This Week, presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann was asked about a statement she made in 2006 calling homosexuality “personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement.” Bachmann declined to say whether she still believed her previous tirade:  “I am not running to be any person’s judge. And I give — I ascribe dignity and honor to all people, no matter who they are. And that’s how I view people.” She continued equivocating on NBC’s Meet the Press: “I don’t judge them. I don’t judge them,” she told host David Gregory. “I’m running for the presidency of the United States.”

For her entire political career Michele Bachmann practically walked around in a black robe and slammed LGBT people over the head with a gavel. Now this modern day Anita Bryant suddenly isn’t judgmental? Bachmann’s incredible copout is about as believable as Joan Rivers running for president and suddenly claiming that she never told jokes.

Her husband Marcus was just as disingenuous during a heated exchange with Iowa State University professor Warren Blumenfeld:  “I do not use reparative therapy, none of our clinic therapists do. What we do is we counsel; we talk to [patients] about whatever they want to talk about….There is not anything that comes close to reparative therapy.”

It is not surprising to hear the Bachmann’s dissemble. After all, lying comes as easily to them as breathing. What is shocking is that they now view outright anti-gay bigotry as detrimental to winning national office. Even in a virulently anti-everything GOP presidential primary, candidates like Bachmann are toning down the overt gay bashing.

The Bachmann family is not alone. Christine O’Donnell, occasional witch and former Delaware Republican Senate candidate, appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan Show and refused to answer questions on her past anti-gay extremism, which included running her very own “ex-gay” ministry called Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT).

When asked about marriage equality, she obfuscated and then robotically repeated that she was there to “talk about the issues I chose to talk about” in her new book. When pressed by Morgan, she accused the host of being rude. It wasn’t too long ago that O’Donnell would have accused Morgan of being discourteous if he had not asked her about her signature issue. As the polls change, however, so do the interests of ambitious politicians who want to be seen as mainstream.

At the very moment conservative politicians are running away from the gay, Religious Right activists are becoming more extreme. For example, Linda Harvey exemplified the radicalism this week on her radio show: “We could also close down homosexual bars and bathhouses, that would be a start. God never created people to engage in these unnatural acts.”

Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council, a certified Southern Poverty Law Center Hate group, attacked President Barack Obama last week for his participation in Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better Project,” which is designed to keep bullied LGBT youth from committing suicide.

“It’s disgusting,” Perkins wrote in a fundraising letter, “And it’s part of a concerted effort to persuade kids that homosexuality is okay and actually to recruit them into that ‘lifestyle.’”

The big question: how long will these fringe activists continue to nod and wink, before they think slick politicians like Bachmann and O’Donnell stink?

We already saw the first evidence of backlash from The Media Research Center’s L. Brent Bozell who called O’Donnell a “buffoon” that “made an ass of herself.”

It is easy to see why candidates are beginning to inch away from the more insane positions of anti-gay activists. In a recent New York Times op-ed, two political scientists wrote that the Tea Party “is even less popular than much maligned groups like ‘atheists’ and ‘Muslims.’ Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.”

And what is the Christian Right if not a group defined by its opposition to abortion and disdain for LGBT people?

The delicate dance between GOP candidates and fringe activists will continue to play out. Pollsters are imparting to candidates that remaining stealth on gay issues is better for their long-term political health, while socially conservative organizations are making the case that gay bashing is better for their political wealth in terms of money and enthusiastic voters.

Attacking LGBT people is not yet a third rail of politics. It is also clear that it is no longer the Holy Grail for electing Republicans that it once was in the not too distant past.