Two days after Apple removed Exodus International’s rule-breaking antigay app from its online retail store, the app is — for thousands of people who downloaded it — alive and well.

See that picture to the right? It’s the app running on my iPad right now.

The app is still slow — so slow, in fact, that Apple’s quality-review team should have rejected it for that reason alone.

And the app still supplies its unhealthy dose of antigay and antifamily venom.

The only thing missing now is Apple’s stamp of retail approval.

Yet across the Internet, people who have not even seen the app — nor taken one moment to review the antifamily, antifaith, and antiscience advice on Exodus’ web site — are leaping at the opportunity to defend a special right among Christian Rightists to force Apple to violate its guidelines and carry apps that undermine mental health, family integrity, religious freedom, and respect for minority groups.

If Exodus really possessed a special right to force its views upon retailers’ shelves, then there would be little to stop Exodus from marching into mall-based Apple Stores and installing un-erasable NARTH e-books and Exodus website bookmarks on the desktop of every Mac Pro, iMac and iPad, right below that shiny “Macintosh HD” icon.

If “free speech” means that Exodus can tell retailers what to market, then little is stopping Exodus from marching into every Best Buy and putting its icons and e-books on every Dell, HP, and Toshiba computer, every Amazon Kindle and every Barnes & Noble Nook.

So long as Exodus tries to force retailers to hawk its merchandise, Exodus should be consistent in its logic — by allowing gay activists the same right to force Exodus’ website and bookstore to carry pro-equality media.

After all, forced speech — according to Exodus’ defenders — what “freedom of speech” is all about.

As you all know, Apple pulled the bigoted Exodus iPhone app after our petition drew over 150,000 signatures from customers demanding that the company treat anti-gay apps the same way they would racist or anti-Semitic apps. In reality, it never should have been approved in the first place, but mistakes are made sometimes, and Apple has corrected it. Unfortunately, a writer at another gay blog seems to have a problem with that, so I’d like to take a few minutes to set the record straight by responding to any misunderstandings they may have about what this was and was not about, starting with our old, original logo, with its completely wrongheaded accompanying caption:

Here is the oh-so-cute caption they placed beneath that graphic: “…But only if opposing viewpoints are effectively silenced?”

Um, no. The entire Religious Right has a louder voice in this country than their numbers would suggest, and no one is taking anything from them that falls under the category of “freedom of speech.” But more on that later. Let’s have a look-see at the article:

So why are we not exactly celebrating here at AfterElton? First, we’re bracing for the inevitable: complaints from groups like Exodus, AFA and NOM that this is yet another example of “gay activists” bullying and trying to silence Christians.

Yes, that’s what they say every single time their fee fees get hurt, on every loud speaker they can find. Their views, somehow, are never silenced, especially by Truth Wins Out and the other gay news sources which actually are experts on the Religious Right, who make a daily practice of quoting these people’s words verbatim. If we were trying to “silence” their voices, we’d hide under a rock and hope that makes them go away.  Moving on:

Second, and more importantly, as vehemently as we might disagree with Exodus International’s mission and beliefs, we think they should be allowed to express them.

And they do. Moving on:

Exodus International’s smartphone app was basically a platform for their blogs, podcasts, latest news and FAQs – essentially the same material you could find if you went to their website. It’s not as if the thing was marketed as some sort of magical/religious gay cure in and of itself.

AND what does Exodus International do for a living?! They market “freedom from the homosexual lifestyle!” If one spent any time with the app itself, one would have found that the app opened up a world of false information and defamation of LGBT people. Indeed, Dr. Gary Remafedi specifically wrote a letter to Apple, stating that the Exodus app featured misrepresentations of his own scientific research, and that therefore they should remove the app.

And even if it was, anybody offended and yes, disgusted even, by the Exodus International app could of course choose not to download and install it.

Ah, yes. Freedom of choice. Just like you can choose not to go to a website you don’t like/are disgusted by. We’re winding up to the smackdown here, folks, give me two more paragraphs.

But honestly, how many people were offended by the application itself? How many people even saw the thing? Certainly not 150,000. It’s more likely that most of the people signing that Change.org petition simply didn’t like Exodus International and all that they stand for.

Would 150,000 people signing a petition against a KKK app need to actually see/download it to express their outrage?

Apple says the app was removed because it was “offensive to large groups of people.” But lots of things are offensive to large groups of people. Does the GLBT community really want that to be the standard for what is allowed on Apple’s increasingly pivotal app store? How soon until Apple gets a petition to remove Grindr? What if The Trevor Project tried to release an app to assist gay teens?

Indeed, and I wish Apple had worded that better, but the reason we petitioned for its removal is because it went against Apple’s own corporate policies in that it was defamatory against an entire minority group, and moreover, it spread false information about that group.  So, if a bunch of wingnuts whine and start a petition against Grindr, they’re going to have to prove that Grindr defames them in some way, and it doesn’t.  There are thousands of Christian apps available, and it’s important to note why we petitioned against this app.  It has nothing to do with “opposing viewpoints,” and it certainly doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the First freaking Amendment.

Speaking of gay teens, Truth Wins Out claimed that a key rationale for the petition was “stopping a virulently anti-gay organization from peddling false speech at the expense of vulnerable LGBT youth.” This has an ironically familiar ring to it. The right is forever saying it is teens and children who should be protected from gay content. With this precedent established those Christian activists can now make the exact same case in opposing any gay apps they don’t like.

Oh, well, I don’t know how much time you spend covering things like gay teen suicide and the damage religious extremists do to gay teens and young adults, because I don’t read your blog, but we’re sort of the experts on that, seeing as it’s in our Mission Statement. So you might think it sounds “ironically familiar,” but whereas the Right doesn’t have the moral authority or the concrete evidence to show that they have a good reason to protect youth from gay people, we have both the moral authority and the concrete evidence, and the statistics on bullying and suicide, and a treasure trove of testimony and reporting on the effects of so-called “reparative therapy,” and unlike the Religious Right, we can back up our assertions with the findings of every single major medical and mental health organization in the United States.

Earlier this month the Supreme Court in an 8-1 decision ruled that the Westboro Baptist Church had a First Amendment Right to wave their vile “God Hates Fags” signs outside of military funerals.

And the court got it exactly right.

Of course, you can distinguish the Westboro decision from the facts here in that Westboro was spewing their hateful message in a public space. Apple’s online app store is a private space, and thus they have the right to include/exclude whatever organizations and applications they want.

Well, if I had known you were going to win my side of the argument for me, I wouldn’t have wasted all this time.

But it seems clear that Apple’s dominance in the smartphone and tablet markets means that their App store has become a substantial channel for communication. How confident are you that the next public outcry and petition that Apple responds to won’t be to kick off a pro-Gay app?

We’re not very confident at all.

Are you scared? I mean, we’ll be there to fight it if that happens, but I’m a bit stunned that a blog purporting to represent the interests of the LGBT community is so willing to defend an organization with a proven track record of hurting gay people and their families. Yes, the App store is a “substantial channel for communication.” It’s also a private corporation, and as long as their policies are what they are, we will fight for people to recognize that true defamation against LGBT people has no place where racism, anti-semitism and other forms of bigotry would otherwise not be tolerated.

It is really that simple.  I will allow that Apple often applies its policies inconsistently, and that this is a situation that will probably be revisited at some point in the future, for some reason, but that is not an excuse to tuck tail and run when something as egregious as this slips by their filters.  Obviously over 150,000 petition signers agree.

UPDATE: If anyone is not quite clear on who the victims of reparative therapy are, what it does to them, and why Exodus’s “ministry” is really just a front for a hate organization against the LGBT community, please read this in its entirety.  An excerpt:

Being an ex-gay survivor myself and personally speaking with over 1,500 fellow survivors, I can say that [Exodus's Jeff] Buchanan is correct on one point—Exodus has no cure to offer. Instead they issue a curse for those who submit or are forced to submit to their teachings. They offer harm—psychological, emotional, and spiritual damage. They tamper with their clients’ relationships, careers, personal development, and finances. They make a mess of our lives in Jesus’ name.

So what exactly does Exodus do? They now publicly admit that no one changes from gay to straight. They claim they don’t offer a cure. They say they don’t therapize. What services do they provide? Basically they will undermine your sense of self as they reinforce the notion that you are not good enough as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer person. They will demonize your desires, and will not even be satisfied if you choose to be celibate yet insist on honestly calling yourself lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer. To add insult to injury they have fought to deny happy homosexuals and transgender people legal rights and protections. They malign LGBTQ people, our relationships, our desires, our dreams, and then they export this message to Uganda, South Africa, Croatia, Singapore, Costa Rica and beyond.

As I said, read it all.

UPDATE DEUX:  I just took a gander at AfterElton’s homepage, seeing as, as I said before, it’s never a blog that’s seemed remotely useful to me in any way.  As I expected, their piece on this was the only one which even approached an attempt to speak about something of actual import to the LGBT community outside of pop culture or Lady GaGa or Glee or whatever the hell else. Ya know, there are some who can do both.  Joe does.  Andy does.  But then there are some who can’t and shouldn’t try, those who should leave it to the grown-ups.

The support for our petition for Apple to remove Exodus International’s inherently bigoted iPhone app has been overwhelming.  As I hit “post” on this piece, the number of signers sits at 139,943.  [If you haven't signed yet, do it!]  We at Truth Wins Out are thrilled with the response, and we encourage Apple to listen.

However, there have been pieces and comments here and there which suggest that some people, even some ostensibly on our own side, don’t quite understand why we’re doing this, or why it’s important.  Some of the complaints mention the First Amendment and/or censorship, neither of which are really appropriate critiques here.  Other complaints suggest that, while those making them may indeed understand Apple’s policies against defamatory apps, they don’t quite understand the inherently hateful message of Exodus and similar groups, couched as it is in sugary, “loving” religious language.

So I wanted to take a few minutes to really break this down, and as my framework, I’ve decided to respond to a piece in Forbes by a writer named Victoria Pynchon, who I truly believe is completely well-meaning, but nonetheless doesn’t quite get it.  Here is how Pynchon starts her piece:

I downloaded the Exodus App today to see whether it contained something akin to hate speech which has been variously defined as any communication which disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race or sexual orientation; or attacks or disparages a person or group of people based on their social or ethnic group.

At the risk of putting myself at the center of a firestorm of disapproval, I have to say that what I viewed and read on the Exodus app was not hate speech but simply the expression of religious beliefs with which I, and many other people, disagree.

Exodus International appears to be a non-denominational religious organization that believes homosexuality is a sin. It also promotes the idea that this sin can be relieved by establishing a spiritual relationship with Jesus.

Let us talk about “religious beliefs” for a moment. Many religious beliefs are uniformly harmful. The religious belief that black people should be the natural slaves of white people is/was harmful. We do have a First Amendment in this country which protects speech, protects against the establishment of a state religion, and at least endeavors to keep religious expression and the state separate. However, the free practice of religion doesn’t always extend any old place the religious want it to go. In short, your “religious freedom” ends the second it damages my constitutional freedoms.

Now, that was sort of an aside, because let us be clear that this issue has nothing to do with the First Amendment.  No one is telling proponents of Exodus-style brainwashing that they cannot exercise their religious beliefs.  However, Apple has a stated policy regarding their apps, which specifically excludes apps that are defamatory/hateful toward entire groups of people.  Racist apps do not get in.  Anti-Semitic apps do not get in.  Perhaps some of the confusion, then, is in what precisely about Exodus and similar groups makes them inherently hateful, inherently bigoted, and inherently discriminatory against the entire LGBT community.  Peterson Toscano, who is one of the most well-known survivors of the Exodus world, broke it down the other day in a piece where he quite simply labels Exodus-supporting groups as straight supremacists:

Why all the fuss? Why not let these folks have their freedom of speech even if what they have to say is wacky, antiquated, and panned by proper medical folks?

In the case of Exodus, here’s why we fuss. For one, we are NOT talking about a freedom of speech issue. Exodus is free to say whatever they want on their blogs and pulpits. No private company like Apple has to use their resources to promote Exodus’ message. Apple has the right to say, no.

Exodus spokespeople paint themselves in the media as kindly folks who simply want to help those who are unhappy with being gay. They don’t force anyone to do anything against their will. They do not want to interrupt the lives of happy homosexuals who are content with their sexuality or identity. That’s what they say, but that’s not what they mean. They are being wise as serpents and gentle as doves. They are duplicitous.

Exodus is a Straight Supremacist group that believes that heterosexuality, straight marriage, and gender normative behavior are superior to anything lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) people have going on in their lives. At Exodus conferences, in their books, through their many local programs they state that LGBTQ people are inferior to heterosexuals. They say over and over that LGBTQ folks are morally, spiritually, developmentally damaged. Just last week Alan wrote that even celibate gays who still identify as gay “fall short of God’s best.” In fact, he makes it clear that God’s best is for people to be heterosexually partnered, even if they are not heterosexual. They do not seem to consider the needs of a straight person who may well suffer as a result of this union (which is often the case.)

[...]

And what is Exodus’ big goal for 2011? To reach out to youth in middle school and high school with a message of hope! You don’t have to be bullied for being gay because you can chose the superior identity of being straight. They have a new iphone app in large part to reach out to the younger generation with their straight supremacist message. In essence they say, “The bullies are right. You are a worthless piece of shit, but we can bring value to your life. We can help you leave all that gayness behind and become holy and valuable to the world around you.”

You see, Ms. Pynchon, Exodus does not exist without an inherently defamatory framework which blames gay peoples’ problems on our sexuality, and which states that indeed we are worthy of hatred and scorn, and then makes money off promulgating the entirely false hope that one can leave all of these problems behind by denying our true selves and joining up with the Straight Supremacist cause.  Imagine, then, a group which was based on the idea that any time a black person has problems, their skin color is the root of that problem, but if you spend several years and tens of thousands of dollars, you, too, can leave the African-American lifestyle and live as a Caucasian.  It wouldn’t pass Apple’s policies, would it?

Now, there are racist websites and anti-Semitic websites and anti-gay websites all over the internet.  No one is trying to “suppress” their rights to speak out.  But Apple is a private corporation with a stated policy against defamatory and hateful apps.  Facebook has similar policies.  What we are doing here is simply asking Apple to abide by their own guidelines, and if that means it’s time for the Apple hierarchy to spend a moment getting educated on what Exodus International really does, so be it.

Apple had no problem deleting the bigoted Manhattan Declaration app, because the hate in that document was so in your face that a fool could see it.  We understand that Exodus is far more serpent-like in the way they go about their business, but here is something important to understand: the entire ex-gay industry mostly serves as a tool to prop up the very same bigoted groups behind the Manhattan Declaration. Because there is an arm of the Religious Right claiming to love gays so much that they’ll help us find “freedom from homosexuality,” hate groups like the Family Research Council and the American Family Association are able to maintain a veneer [even if only in their own minds] of plausible deniability over whether they actually hate gay people.  ”Of course we don’t hate gay people!  We love them enough to try to free them from their sin!”

Later in her piece, Pynchon engages in what I see as a deep over-analysis of the subject, trying to suggest that somehow Apple products have become the arbiters of our “national narrative”:

There’s something deeper at work in the demand for the expulsion of Exodus from the App store than what might underlie calls for the boycott of an enterprise whose policies don’t meet with a certain group’s approval – Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE:ANF) and the HRC Index come to mind.

The furor over the Exodus App suggests that the iPad, by virtue of its shape and function, is assumed to be carrying our national “super story” – the tale a community tells about itself to establish a shared identity. As scholars explain, these national narratives hold us together and keep us apart.

[...]

When we demand that people be ejected from the public square based on the content of their speech, we’re usually doing so because we don’t want them to be telling any part of our communal story.

[...]

If the iPad and iPhone have become, by virtue of their information app-lization, a version of the public square, we’d be better off letting the public decide whose ideas are more consistent with our national character and whose are not.

No, Ms. Pynchon. It is not that complicated, at all. The Apple products are not The Public Square, and you’d be hard-pressed to point to a situation where gay activists are truly asking that Religious Right opinions be removed from The Public Square. Indeed, we spend our days highlighting and refuting their statements, thus giving their opinions more airtime on the internet [which IS the public square] than they’d ever have before.

This is very simple. Apple has a stated policy against discriminatory and defamatory apps, but unfortunately, as with so many sectors of our society, which have yet to catch up with the fact that anti-gay bigotry is no better than racism or anti-Semitism, they have failed to make the connection that this app goes against their policies just as a white supremacist app would. No one is trying to take away Exodus’s “Freedom of Speech.” We’re asking Apple to be consistent and treat their LGBT customers with the same dignity as they’d treat anyone else.

In a report that holds grave implications for liberal writers seeking to preserve freedom and equality, Ole Ole Olson writes on Alternet today about a massive right-wing campaign to suppress free speech within the blog-search and social-media hub Digg.

Bloggers and other online writers use Digg to publicize their articles by topic to a broad online audience. Articles are voted up or down by readers, and articles with the most votes reach the most Digg users.

According to Alternet, a network of authoritarian conservative members of Digg conspired for over a year to manipulate votes and broadly bury articles that were submitted to Digg by supposed liberals.

Olson explains:

One bury brigade in particular is a conservative group that has become so organized and influential that they are able to bury over 90% of the articles by certain users and websites submitted within 1-3 hours, regardless of subject material. Literally thousands of stories have already been artificially removed from Digg due to this group. When a story is buried, it is removed from the upcoming section (where it is usually at for ~24 hours) and cannot reach the front page, so by doing this, this one group is removing the ability of the community as a whole to judge the merits or interest of these stories on their own (in essence: censoring content). This group is known as the Digg “Patriots”.

Olson provides the usernames of more than 100 member Patriots, links to recent articles that were suppressed, and the usernames of the most common targets of suppression.

By suppressing liberal speech, the network sought to leave Digg users with fewer alternatives to the conservative propaganda of the GOP, Tea Party, and Big Oil (BP in particular).

Olson says the Patriots have been using Yahoo, Twitter, and Facebook to coordinate their efforts to suppress liberal speech.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Wayne Besen
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org

Religious Extremism And Censorship Are Dangers To LGBT Equality

NEW YORK – Truth Wins Out expressed strong support for Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of Comedy Central’ South Park, after they faced calls for violent reprisals following an episode that showed the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit. Such religious extremism and intolerance threatens all Americans, particularly the gay, lesbian bisexual and transgender community, says TWO.

“We stand in solidarity with the creators of South Park and strongly defend their freedom of speech,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “Our liberty demands that we fight back against intolerant fanatics — no matter what the religion – who believe they can bully and intimidate to get their way. If zealots have a problem with South Park, they can turn the channel. If we cave into their demands, the LGBT community will be one of the first to feel the chilling effects and suffer the consequences.”

Following the controversial episode, a fringe Islamic website, RevolutionMuslim.com, warned Parker and Stone that they could face retribution. The website included a graphic photo of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was murdered in 2004 after making a documentary on violence against Muslim women.

“We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show,” the website reads. “This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them…They’re going to be basically on a list in the back of the minds of a large number of Muslims. It’s just the reality.”

“The goal of these extremists is to foment fear and create an atmosphere of self-censorship,” said TWO’ Besen. “This would essentially lead to an unwritten blasphemy law that would curtail creative freedom. We must not allow this to happen or other fringe religious organizations will view threats of violence as a legitimate strategy to meet their demands.”

Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that monitors religious extremism, fights anti-gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender misinformation campaigns, and educates about the lives of LGBT people.

I don’t even like Adam Lambert. I don’t like American Idol. I did not watch the AMA’s. So, in reality, I do not care what did or did not happen there, whose crotch was where, what got shoved into what, or any of that other funny business!*

But I’m now thinking about these things, and it’s Alex Blagg‘s fault.

As you may know, Adam Lambert’s performance on the AMA’s was controversial. He did some gay-ish things, some straight-ish things…in short, he was pushing the envelope.** This brought about the expected fainting-couch-hitting from the usual suspects, and also some FCC complaints. Well, The Smoking Gun filed a Freedom of Information Act request and now we get to see some of those complaints, and some of them are hateful, some are sadly misinformed, and some are just straight-up funny. (Often these are overlapping categories, obviously.) Usually, when we deal with homophobia, we’re responding to public statements by notorious hatemongers and homophobes “pro-family” leaders. But in this instance, we get to see it unfiltered. Let’s have a look at a few, and then you can go to The Smoking Gun to look at the rest!

How many times have you been to “Bancok,” sir? Interesting Freudian spelling, I think…but that one’s not so bad. How about this one for some unfiltered hatred?

Nazi? I wonder where they got that!

This one is just funny:

That’s right, get that frickin’ lesbian off my screen.

The last one I’m going to post is more serious, and it’s revelatory of the fact that the anti-gay side, for the most part, simply doesn’t understand how things work in the United States of America.***

“Freedom of speech does not include the freedom to offend.” Uhhhh, actually? Yes, it does. That’s the entire point of having freedom of speech. I’m very sorry, but the fact that some people apparently have such fragile worldviews that they cannot bear seeing or hearing things they find disagreeable does not mean we should censor ourselves. And what is it with gays? What is it with straight people? Why are they always making kissy kissy with each other and bein’ naughty and humpin’ stuff on the Desperate Housewives program and on the soaps, I mean, where’d my America go, the days where I could sit on the sofa and watch my stories and not have to worry about all kinds of straight people showin’ their boobies and their whozits and their jingle-jangles? Well, I never!****

Anyway, there are so many more where that came from, and they run the gamut from offensive to funny to laugh-out-loud funny in a different way, and there are even some supportive ones.

And again, I do not care about Adam Lambert. For the record.

Also, read Gawker on the same subject.

*Also, you kids, GET OFF MY LAWN!

**Nothing that David Bowie didn’t do thirty years ago, and better.

***These people tend to be the ones who “want their country back.” It’s bizarre, because they seem to want a country that never actually existed. Or as John Oliver showed on The Daily Show the other night, what they tend to want is a return to simpler times, when they were children, because children don’t have to worry their little heads about grown-up stuff.

****I said, GET OFF MY LAWN, YOU KIDS!

The American Civil Liberties Union is requesting that Senate Bill 909, the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, be amended to include additional free-speech protections that are already contained in the House version of the legislation, H.R. 1913.

According to The Washington Blade:

Linda Paris, an ACLU spokesperson, told the Blade that [Sen. Sam] Brownback’s [free-speech] amendment is insufficient and that her organization wants the specific language found in the House version of legislation included in the final passage of the bill.

The language ACLU is seeking reads: “Evidence of expression or association of the defendant may not be introduced as substantive evidence at trial, unless the evidence specifically relates to that offense. However, nothing in this section affects the rules of evidence governing the impeachment of a witness.”

Paris said passage of this provision from the House bill would “reduce or eliminate the possibility that the federal government could obtain a criminal conviction on the basis of evidence of speech that had no role in the chain of events that led to any alleged violent act proscribed by the statute.”

The Human Rights Campaign contends that the legislation’s existing protection for religious speech is sufficient. Nevertheless, Chris Anders of the ACLU says House lawmakers are likely to insist upon the revision in conference committee.

The Family Research Council on Feb. 26 sent out an e-mail to constituents which contended that penalties for felony violence threaten religious liberty.

The enactment of so-called “hate crimes” legislation is a long-stated objective of the homosexual agenda. What this legislation does is lay the legal foundation and framework for investigating, prosecuting and persecuting pastors, business owners, and anyone else whose words and actions reflect their faith.

The act would establish a new FEDERAL offense for so-called “hate crimes” and add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as specially protected classes. It will mandate a separate federal criminal prosecution for state offenses.

FRC sidesteps a basic fact: Existing hate-crime laws punish felony violence — murder, rape, and severe battery — not speech. Adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the existing laws merely ensures that such violence won’t be ignored or treated less harshly by local authorities.

Why does FRC, year after year, defend a special right to felony violence against gay and transgender persons? Perhaps because its constituency of far-right pastors considers bullying and incitement to violence by far-right Christians to be valid forms of religious expression against the religious and social freedom of others.

FRC adds that punishment of antigay felony violence is equivalent to punishment of “thought crime.” FRC concludes by asking donors to sign a worthless online “petition” which tells signers that they are fighting hate crimes — even as they exempt antigay and anti-transgender felony violence from full prosecution under existing hate-crime laws which already protect other at-risk demographics.

Sign our Petition TODAY to say that equal protection under the law means equal protection for ALL.

FRC seems to reinterpret the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution so that it guarantees “equal protection” only to those persons who continue to be excused by prejudiced law-enforcement agencies for acts of systematic violence against gay people.

Despite what some prooftexted Bible verses may claim, felony violence is never a legitimate form of religious “speech” in civilized society. Furthermore, it is the victims of felony violence — not the perpetrators — who are denied religious liberty.

For FRC’s culture-war constituency, bullying and incitement to violence against entire sectors of the population remain necessary tools in their war against religious and social freedom and individuality.

The Fairness Doctrine is a defunct federal policy which required that federally licensed users of the publicly owned airwaves allow diverse voices to air their perspectives on public property. The doctrine was phased out as cable TV and the Internet greatly broadened opportunities for expression beyond old-fashioned radio and TV.

The intent of the doctrine was to maximize free speech and minimize the role that costly broadcast infrastructure plays in silencing perspectives which aren’t supported by the executives of multibillion-dollar media companies.

To Focus on the Family Action, however, the expression of diverse opinion on public property is a form of “censorship”. Focus seems to suggest that federally owned airwaves should be wholly controlled by those lucky few who have millions of dollars in cash and billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure at their disposal.

Limiting media access to large companies, according to Focus, preserves free speech. Granting diverse taxpayers a voice on government-owned airwaves, Focus says, is “censorship.”

Valid arguments can be made for and against the Fairness Doctrine. But Focus takes the low road, projecting its own desire for suppression of free speech onto those who defend diverse, robust, and civil public conversation.

The Family Research Council today criticized a joint New York Times op-ed by the antigay advocate David Blankenhorn and gay libertarian Jonathan Rauch, in which both authors recommend a compromise federal civil-unions law that would preserve robust rights for religious organizations and individuals to deny recognition of such unions.

David Link of the libertarian-leaning Independent Gay Forum points out:

The compromise tests the veracity of the claim that religious believers worry civil recognition of same-sex relationships will invade their belief system through the enforcement of civil rights laws which require gays to be treated equally. The right has been able to scare up a few anecdotes about this misuse of civil rights laws: a wedding photographer forced to photograph a lesbian wedding; a same-sex couple who wanted to take advantage of a church-owned gazebo, which the church offered for use to the public; and churned them into a froth of paranoia about governmental intrusion into religion.

I’m with Jon in offering this proposal up publicly. I am happy to let the right know that we are dedicated to stopping this cascade of anecdotes. If they want additional assurance that the first amendment’ separation of church and state means what it says, I will be on the front lines to add a statutory “and we really mean it” clause.

But I don’t think anyone will take us up on this offer, since I don’t think this is really their worry. It is not the first amendment they are concerned with, it is the fourteenth. It is equality that is the problem for them. Any government recognition at all of same-sex couples is more equality than they can bear.

I think Link is correct: FRC has effectively admitted that it respects neither the First Amendment guarantees of free speech and freedom of religion, nor the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee that all Americans shall receive equal protection under the law.