C. Peter Wagner says he gave the New Apostolic Reformation its name, and he has been a prominent leader in that movement for decades. He seldom gives interviews to non-friendly media, but he did one on Fresh Air yesterday. From NPR’s summary:
Among the topics discussed on Monday’s show are: Wagner’s explanation about a recent video that has been shown on television in which he claims the emperor of Japan had sex with the sun goddess, a power of darkness headed by the kingdom of Satan, and how that resulted in the decline of the Japanese stock market; how demons figure into the belief structure of NAR; the role of prophets and apostles within NAR; what Wagner means when he describes the NAR’s mission as taking dominion over business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family and religion; how he felt when he found out that Ted Haggard, his World Prayer Center co-founder, had used drugs and had sex with men; spiritual mapping; and the role of Jews and Israel in preparing for the second coming.
On Monday, August 1, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition aired a report from Alix Spiegel entitled “Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation?” Instead of accurately representing “ex-gay therapy” as ineffective, dangerous, and condemned by every mainstream professional medical and mental health organization, NPR opted to misrepresent the facts, falsely framing the story as a debate between two equally legitimate sides that “has been raging in psychological circles for more than a decade.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. A 2009 press release from the American Psychological Association announcing the results of an exhaustive study on the efficacy of “ex-gay” therapy says it all: “Insufficient evidence [exists] that sexual orientation change efforts work… Practitioners should avoid telling clients that they can change from gay to straight.” In a recent ABC News interview discussing “ex-gay” therapy, renowned author and psychiatrist Jack Drescher put the discredited practice in its proper perspective: “This is so far outside the mainstream it’s practically on Mars.”
Truth Wins Out, GLAAD, and other organizations called on NPR to correct and apologize for parroting “ex-gay” propaganda. Instead, NPR Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos released a tepid, long-winded blog post in which he demonstrated a much greater interest in defending his reporter than correcting her errors.
The Ombudsman’s response is disappointing and woefully inadequate. We expect better from a top-notch, well-respected news organization like National Public Radio. Join Truth Wins Out in calling on NPR to meet with TWO and survivors of “ex-gay” programs so they can be fully informed about the dangers of the “ex-gay” myth –
The LGBT community has every right to be upset over National Public Radio’s handling of a segment that interviewed “ex-gay” activist Rich Wyler and former “ex-gay” Peterson Toscano. The response to the outrage by NPR Ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, was inadequate and failed to dispel concerns that NPR had aired a poorly investigated puff-piece that benefited the “ex-gay” industry. In Schumacher-Matos’ defense of his reporter Alex Spiegel and editor Anne Gudenkauf, he stated that they “clearly worked hard on this story.”
I beg to differ and agree with NPR listener Paul Frantz of San Francisco who wrote “It’s a whole lot easier for your reporter to just hand microphones to people on opposing sides of the issue and take the rest of the day off.”
First, NPR should have identified Rich Wyler as an “ex-gay” activist whose business is taking gay men into the woods on weekend trips for $650 to allegedly turn them from gay to straight. The ombudsman replied that such identification wasn’t too important because, “Wyler founded an organization that claims to help men with same-sex attraction change. But they [Spiegel and Gudenkauf] said that Toscano, too, profits from his experience, writing plays and giving speeches about it.”
This comparison highlights how NPR failed to do its homework. While Peterson Toscano may profit from speaking, no one doubts that there are countless LGBT people who exist and do not make their living from activism. The same, however, can’t be said for so-called “ex-gays” who almost always exist in the context of working for conversion ministries or anti-gay political organizations.
Indeed, “ex-gay” activists themselves can’t even find successfully converted gays. Dr. Robert Spitzer, for example, conducted a controversial study on such individuals in 2001. Even with the help of the entire “ex-gay” industry, it took Spitzer two years to find a mere 200 so-called “ex-gays” and a significant portion of his sample were directly provided by activist groups such as NARTH, Exodus and PFOX. Given this reality, NPR should have tried to find individuals that were not “ex-gay for pay.” Truth Wins Out always challenges journalists to find such people and they come up empty handed. This speaks to the fact that there is no genuine “ex-gay” movement, just a high-dollar, politically motivated marketing campaign to create the appearance that such people exist in large numbers.
Second, where was NPR’s research team? Wyler’s People Can Change (PCC) website is rife with errors and research distortions. For instance, in a section called “Evidence of Change,” PCC lists at least two debunked studies as proof of the efficacy of sexual conversion.
Its site included the infamous Masters & Johnson study that claimed LGBT people could be cured. But in 2009 Virginia Johnson acknowledged to Thomas Maier, author of Masters of Sex, that the alleged sexual orientation changes found in their study, Homosexuality in Perspective, were a fabrication. Why is this falsified study still on the PCC website?
PCC also lists Dr. Irving Bieber’s long-discredited 1962 study, Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals. The research is dismissed for its fatally flawed sample: Out of 106 male homosexuals recruited from mental institutions, twenty-eight were schizophrenics, thirty-one neurotics, and forty-two had character disorders.
Yet, despite the dissemination of pseudo-science used to trick vulnerable and desperate LGBT people into coughing-up $650 for a weekend in the woods, NPR elected to use the dishonest Wyler as a credible source.
Third, Wyler was given a free pass because NPR never bothered to hold him accountable for his organization’s demonization of LGBT people. Schumacher-Matos comes across as naïve when he writes:
Wyler himself says in the piece that while he didn’t feel right living a gay life in Los Angeles, far from his family and church, he understood that it was right for others. I took that to mean that he didn’t denounce being gay, or think it was wrong.
Perhaps Schumacher-Matos and his staff that “clearly worked hard on this story” could have bothered to read the bigoted distortions on LGBT life that appear on PCC’s website:
The common experience among us was that we experienced the gay world as a place that was fraught with promiscuity, lust, obsession with youth and physical appearance, addiction to sex, alcohol and lust. We found judgment, pettiness, spiritual darkness and brokenness. Although we experienced small pieces of healing there at times, for the most part, it only deepened the emotional and spiritual emptiness inside.
Wyler innocently presents himself as a nice guy who simply wants to help those unhappy with their sexual orientation. The reality is that he and his organization demean, dehumanize, stigmatize, and beat down LGBT people to the point where they seek help. A sophisticated and well-researched NPR report would have challenged Wyler on his use of anti-gay rhetoric to recruit clients.
NPR should also have explored a couple of key questions: Why have so many former “ex-gay” activists renounced the “ex-gay” ministries? What was going through their heads to make them publicly extol the virtues of such programs – only to later claim they do not work? This psychological dynamic is key to understanding and critical to telling this story.
Fourth, Wyler’s bogus etiology of homosexuality should not have aired or at least been vigorously challenged by NPR. His core ideology is that LGBT people do not exist and are simply misbehaving heterosexuals that become gay as a result of abuse, neglect or bad parenting. In particular, PCC promotes the scientifically deficient idea that distant fathers are responsible for homosexuality in men. The cure includes male bonding and teaching gay men to play sports. The group even promotes a “sports camp” by the Catholic “ex-gay” organization Courage. Why not allow people like myself — who played college basketball and are very close to their father – to rebut this junk science? Why not have psychological experts set the record straight on this matter, so Wyler does not get away with repeating unsubstantiated myths that damage LGBT people and their families?
Fifth, NPR failed to report on the controversy surrounding Wyler’s organization and its woodsy Journey into Manhood (JIM) weekend. Last year, Truth Wins Out uncovered that two young men counseled by Alan Downing, JIM’s senior reorientation coach, were told to strip in front of a mirror and touch their genitals. While this did not happen at Wyler’s program, it does call into question PCC’s judgment in hiring counselors and its utilization of “touch therapy” to allegedly heal “homo-emotional wounds.”
For example, journalist Ted Cox infiltrated JIM weekend last year and he discovered what he dubbed, the “cuddle room,” where grown men sit in the laps of other grown men and caress each other in an allegedly non-sexual way. One of the petting positions is called the motorcycle, were a man straddles another like he is riding a motorbike. An additional position is named after Richard Cohen, the discredited “ex-gay” therapist who was permanently expelled from the American Counseling Association for multiple ethics violations.
Another PCC life coach is Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH) co-founder Arthur Abba Goldberg, a convicted felon who stole billions of dollars on Wall Street. It seems that PCC will take any reprobate and slap on the title of “life coach” or “counselor.” This demonstrates a lack professional standards and potentially places clients in harms way. To cover themselves, PCC’s website states: “The following list includes a mix both of licensed therapists and counselors and unlicensed counselors and professional life coaches.”
Could NPR not have explored the “ex-gay” industry’s penchant for embracing quacks, armatures, and scoundrels, considering that real people are having their lives affected by the ideas and actions of such individuals?
Sixth, it was remarkably shallow and biased the way that Schumacher-Matos handled the religious aspect of this controversy:
Gay rights advocates understandably demand that, rather than trying to change individuals, it is religion and society that must change, which indeed has been happening. But that doesn’t help conflicted individuals who are in this world we live in now. To dismissively say that these individuals should just find another religion is to be discriminatory and ignores the profound importance of a given religion in many people’s lives.
This arrogant statement blatantly ignores that a significant number of LGBT people found health and happiness, as well as ended their internal conflict, by adjusting their belief system to fit reality. And reality is admitting that it is highly unlikely for LGBT individuals to maintain optimal mental health remaining in a belief system that demands perpetual sexual frustration and loneliness.
The indisputable fact is, people can and do abandon destructive or unfulfilling belief systems every day. They change religions, alter their views, and switch churches – just as Michele and Marcus Bachmann have recently done. Wyler belongs to the Mormon Church, which sends youth on missions around the world. One of their primary goals is to convince people to change their beliefs and join the LDS church. When organized religion does this it’s hunky-dory with Schumacher-Matos, while its somehow “discriminatory” when LGBT activists merely suggest that most people are more content when their spirituality and sexuality are not at war.
Finally, in a particularly galling passage, Schumacher-Matos says that the NPR story “was prompted by the recent news that the husband of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann runs a mental health clinic that reportedly provides such therapy.” He then inexplicably writes, “I am curious…to know what really it is that Bachmann’s husband practices…”
As the organization that uncovered the Bachmann clinic scandal, we could have answered this question. It is appalling that NPR did not contact us or ask for a copy of our undercover video, as did other major news outlets, such as ABC News, NBC News, CNN, The Nation Magazine, and The New York Times. Again, glad to know that NPR “clearly worked hard.”
This is a crucial issue that affects the lives of real people. The American Psychiatric Association says attempts to change sexual orientation can lead to “anxiety, depression, and self-destructive behavior.” The least that NPR and other media outlets can do is take some time to research this topic before they potentially cause harm by offering platforms to for-profit purveyors of scientifically and ethically bankrupt anti-gay theories and rhetoric.
It is reasonable and responsible for the LGBT community to expect professionalism from those in the media who hold the power to impact our lives.
In a recent television show discussing “ex-gay” therapy, renowned author and psychiatrist Jack Drescher put the discredited practice in its proper perspective: “This is so far outside the mainstream it’s practically on Mars.”
Unfortunately, the media keeps putting on its space suit and blasting off with “ex-gay” propaganda that places its debunked theories on par with legitimate therapy backed by the American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, American Medical Association, and American Academy of Pediatrics.
We’ve come to expect such farce from the Fox “News” Channel, run by the reprobate Rupert Murdoch. However, the elevation of “ex-gay” junk science all too often occurs in the allegedly “liberal media.” (Or is it Lazy Media?)
For example, NPR aired a segment this week that inexplicably claimed, “The debate about the value of conversion therapy, also known as reparative therapy, has been raging in psychological circles for more than a decade.”
In reality, the debate began to ebb in 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. In 2009 the American Psychological Association conducted an exhaustive study on the efficacy of “ex-gay” therapy. The press release said it all: “No evidence that sexual orientation change efforts work, says APA,” and “Practitioners should avoid telling clients that they can change from gay to straight.”
What about this vivid APA statement isn’t clear to media outlets like NPR?
There is absolutely no “debate about the value of conversion therapy” taking place among real scientists. What we have on one hand are genuine researchers who believe the issue has long been settled, and on the other hand a politically motivated marketing campaign by the “ex-gay” industry with the goal of tricking news outlets into thinking a controversy is actually occurring.
It is depressing that NPR, a top-notch news organization, was so easily hoodwinked and ended up parroting the antigay party line. I can only imagine the exuberant high fives at the headquarters of the “ex-gay” group People Can Change when they realized that NPR had bought their baloney.
One of the major problems in our political discourse, on gay rights and every other issue, is that our media believes that there are two equal sides to every story. So, for instance, even though it’s common knowledge to anyone with the ability to use Google and read words that Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe are lyingthugs, their “stories” become part of the mainstream narrative. But it’s not all the media’s fault. Part of it is that liberals all too often, out of fear or whatever else, roll over and die in the face of the Right’s fake, usually completely made-up controversies, as happened at NPR recently when a fundraising director was caught saying that the Tea Party is full of insane racists (true), which led to the CEO of NPR resigning (!!!). It’s a sad statement on our cultural state of affairs when a person will resign for saying something so true and so innocuous.
There are much better ways to respond to these things, and Right Wing Watch and People for the American Way have put together a how-not-to guide on what the liberal response to right wing bullies of all kinds should be. It’s all worth reading, as it’s framed around what went wrong with the sane side of the culture’s response to the gay/lesbian art exhibition at the Smithsonian, which featured a harrowing work by David Wojnarowicz created during the early days of the AIDS crisis. It’s all worth reading, but I want to point specifically to two sections of the report, starting with the part about how giving wingnuts even one inch essentially empowers them, and the fact that they’re never satisfied with any kind of compromise:
Backing down so quickly to bullies like Bill Donohue will not satisfy Religious Right leaders who are eager to reignite the culture wars. It will encourage and energize them. Pulling the Wojnarowicz video suggested that there was something wrong about showing it in the first place, giving credence to the Religious Right’s claims that the museum was intentionally insulting Christians.
[...]
Case in point: Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council continued to attack the Smithsonian even after it pulled the video. Perkins, who said the exhibit contained plenty of “in-your-face perversion,” said in a radio commentary:
Right now, the Smithsonian gets 65% of its funding from taxpayers. But Congressman Jack Kingston says they can count on a lot less if this display doesn’t change. And according to one official, it already has. Curators took down the Jesus video last week. But the Battle of the Smithsonian isn’t over. All it’s done is taken the debate over art funding-and framed it.
Rep. Randy Forbes appeared on the Religious Right “Wallbuilders Live” broadcast in December and agreed with the host that the Constitution only gives Congress the power to protect art, not fund it, suggesting that he believes funding for arts and museums may actually be unconstitutional.
And they will continue to use it as part of their Two Minutes Hate, because that’s just how they are. Remember, this entire controversy, as PFAW’s report covers in detail, was manufactured. No one had complained until a Catholic reporter decided to gin up the Wingnut Noise Machine, which stretches directly into Congress, but all of a sudden a work of art was a “national outrage,” or at least portrayed as such.
Another salient point PFAW makes is the cute little language trick all extremist Christians use when they refer to things that grieve them as insulting to “Christians.” It’s beyond arrogant, and more than a little bit stupid, for these fundamentalists to claim they speak for All Christians, but it shouldn’t be surprising, because they lie in creative ways:
MRC President Brent Bozell’s November 30 letter to John Boehner opened with a claim to be speaking on behalf of all American Christians, indeed, everyone who supports freedom of religion:
On behalf of all tax-paying Americans who respect and support freedom of religion, particularly the overwhelming majority of Americans who call themselves Christian, I call upon you today to take immediate action to halt the obscene and bigoted anti-Christian Hide/Seek exhibition currently on display at the venerable Smithsonian Institution National Portrait Gallery.
It is, on its face, a ludicrous claim, albeit one frequently made by Religious Right leaders. There are in fact many Christians and many freedom-loving Americans who oppose the Religious Right and its hostility to freedom of expression.
Unfortunately, by folding so quickly to Bill Donohue’s practiced outrage, the Smithsonian gave unwarranted legitimacy to the idea that Donohue speaks for American Catholics.
The report ends with a sort of How To Do Better Next Time that all should read. In short, the Smithsonian should have put the damn piece back up and told Bill Donohue and John Boehner to go to hell. NPR should have done the same with O’Keefe. Why don’t liberals do this?! I have said many times that the major problem with the Democratic party, and also with liberals, is their utter inability to take their own side in a fight. People complain all the time about how the media portrays wingnut fever dreams as a valid opposing side [see above], but a big part of that is that liberals let them, by refusing to upend the narrative and expose the Right for the fools they are.
I think a large part of it is fear [the report goes into that too -- if we give them what they want, they'll go away], but the way we’re doing things now simply doesn’t work, so we might as well try something else, you know?
UPDATE: Commenter Gary points out that this is about a year old. This is what happens when this particular blogger writes words on the internet without the coffee IV attached. That being said, Dan Savage linked to it yesterday, and I didn’t check the dates. That also being said, it’s a really good message, and it’s timely, with everything that’s been going on, with our kids being targeted by bullies young and old, so if it’s new to you, enjoy; if not, read it again.
I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is “an abomination to God,” about how homosexuality is a “chosen lifestyle,” or about how through prayer and “spiritual counseling” homosexual persons can be “cured.” Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate “reparative therapy,” as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality “deviant.” I will no longer listen to that pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ, which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase that “we love the sinner but hate the sin.” That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is “high-sounding, pious rhetoric.” The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn’t. Justice postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to “Roll on over or we’ll roll on over you!” Time waits for no one.
That is just the first paragraph. He goes on to direct his ire directly toward his own Episcopal Church, and then says something important to the media, a message they can’t learn soon enough:
In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates conducted by “fair-minded” channels that seek to give “both sides” of this issue “equal time.” I am aware that these stations no longer give equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be compromised any longer.
Hear, hear! And read the whole thing. It is long past time that our mainstream media stop being so utterly lazy when it comes to gay issues. It’s long past time that people like Tony Perkins knock on the doors of the Washington Post and NPR, only to be rebuffed with the message, “No, sir, you’re a hatemonger who doesn’t tell the truth about anything, you’re not an opposing side.” There is no valid opposing side — not anymore. There is far too much education available, far too much research, far too much information for anyone with Googling fingers.
And as we’ve seen, the continued platform given to Religious Right hatemongers isn’t something we are simply academically opposed to; there are real world, tragic results when a man like Tony Perkins is able to go on NPR and tell depressed, suicidal gay kids that the reason they’re hurting is because they’re flawed and evil. And when these messages are treated as valid, they filter down to people like school board member Clint McCance of Independence County, Arkansas, who look up to Religious Right leaders, and who then feel completely comfortable ranting and reveling on Facebook over the fact that gay kids are committing suicide.
It’s simply unacceptable for our media to continue, as Spong said, pretending like there are two sides here. Because of the Fox News climate, the other mainstream sources are always obsessively trying to run from being tarred as “the liberal media” — well guess what? They’re going to be called that anyway. So, with that being the case, they might as well try out something new, like being decent reporters.
The lead sponsor of Uganda’ controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill, David Bahati, (pictured) was reportedly disinvited today from The National Prayer Breakfast, which is scheduled for February 4, in Washington, DC. According to The Advocate Magazine, Ambassador Richard Swett, a breakfast spokesperson, distanced the group that hosts the event, The Family, from Bahati and the “Kill the Gays” bill in Uganda.
“The National Prayer Breakfast is an organization that builds bridges of understanding between all peoples, religions and beliefs and has never advocated the sentiments expressed in Mr. Bahati’ legislation,” said Ambassador Swett.
This statement is not only astonishing, but it is inaccurate and dishonest. The Family is intimately tied and directly connected to the politicians who sponsored Uganda’ Anti-Homosexuality bill. As a result of negative publicity, The Family is covering its rear-end and scurrying away as fast as it can. However, it is completely outrageous, totally insincere and remarkably deceitful for The Family to deny the crucial role it played in the introduction of the “Kill the Gays’ legislation.
On November 24, 2009, Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio’ Fresh Air, interviewed Jeff Sharlet, the author of “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.” In the interview, Sharlet identified Uganda’ dictator, President Yoweri Museveni, as one of The Family’ “key men” in Africa. He also linked Bahati directly to The Family.
“David Bahati, the man behind this legislation, is really deeply, deeply involved in The Family’s work in Uganda, that the ethics minister of Uganda, Museveni’s kind of right-hand man, a guy named Nsaba Buturo, is also helping to organize The Family’s National Prayer Breakfast,” Sharlet revealed to Gross on Fresh Air. “And here’s a guy who has been the main force for this Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda’s executive office and has been very vocal about what he’s doing, in a rather extreme and hateful way. But these guys are not so much under the influence of The Family. They are, in Uganda, The Family.”
The linkage and direct connection is incontrovertible. Swett’s only comeback against such damning evidence might be that the actual National Prayer Breakfast does not promote death bills. Well, maybe not on-stage, but backstage is where this creepy organization recruits it’s “key men”.
Along with eggs and bacon, The Family is serving up extremism at The National Prayer Breakfast – even if the dirty work is done behind the scenes. This is not a benign organization and they have displayed atrocious judgment in selecting “key men” across the globe. The people they have held up as “moral’ have turned out to be monsters and it is time they apologize for the damage they have inflicted on innocent people.”
On February 2, respected religious leaders will hold a press conference to announce the formation of The American Prayer Hour, a multi-city event on February 4, 2010, with primary events in Washington, DC, Dallas, Chicago and Berkeley. Please consider attending one of these events, or hosting your own American Prayer Hour in your town.
NEW YORK — Truth Wins Out (TWO) today urged world leaders and members of Congress to skip the National Prayer Breakfast, February 4th, in protest of “The Family’ (aka The Fellowship) direct role in promoting a bill that would lead to severe human rights abuses against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in Uganda.
“The National Prayer Breakfast is giving legitimacy to those who promote barbarism in the name of the Bible,” said TWO’ Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We hope that world leaders who care about human rights will reconsider attending this year’ breakfast. To say grace with the people pushing this hateful and dehumanizing bill in Uganda would be disgraceful.”
On National Public Radio’ Fresh Air, Terry Gross interviewed author Jeff Sharlet (pictured), whose book, “The Family”, is a groundbreaking expose on the clandestine group in charge of the National Prayer Breakfast. On the program, Sharlet revealed a “smoking gun”, tying The Family directly to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, which threatens liberty and life for all GLBT people living in Uganda. Here is the key part of the transcript:
GROSS: So you’re reporting the story for the first time today, and you found this story — this direct connection between The Family and the proposed [Uganda anti-gay hate] legislation by following the money?
SHARLET: Yes, it’ — I always say that the family is secretive, but not secret. You can go and look at 990s, tax forms and follow the money through these organizations that The Family describe as invisible. But you go and you look. You follow that money. You look at their archives. You do interviews where you can. It’ not so invisible anymore. So that’ how working with some research colleagues we discovered that David Bahati, the man behind this legislation, is really deeply, deeply involved in The Family’ work in Uganda, that the ethics minister of Uganda, Museveni’ kind of right hand man, a guy named Nsaba Buturo, is also helping to organize The Family’ National Prayer Breakfast. And here’ a guy who has been the main force for this Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda’ executive office and has been very vocal about what he’ doing, and in a rather extreme and hateful way. But these guys are not so much under the influence of The Family. They are, in Uganda, The Family.
GROSS: So how did you find out that Bahati is directly connected to The Family? You’ve described him as a core member of The Family. And this is the person who introduced the anti-gay legislation in Uganda that calls for the death penalty for some gay people.
SHARLET: Looking at the, The Family’ 990s, where they’re moving their money to — into this African leadership academy called Cornerstone, which runs two programs: Youth Corps, which has described its in the past as an international quote, “invisible family binding together world leaders,” and also, an alumni organization designed to place Cornerstone grads — graduates of this sort of very elite educational program and politics and NGO’ through something called the African Youth Leadership Forum, which is run by -according to Ugandan media — David Bahati, this same legislator who introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Act.
“It is unconscionable to pray with a group that is actively preying on innocent people in Uganda, just because of their sexual orientation,” said Truth Wins Out’ Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We call on all world leaders who care about human rights to opt out of this year’ National Prayer Breakfast. No one should break bread with a group that is breaking the bones and spirits of gay and lesbian people.”
Earlier this month, four members of Congress wrote a powerful letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to express alarm over the proposed law in Uganda.
“This egregious bill represents one of the most extreme anti-equality measures ever proposed in any country and would create a legal pretext for depriving lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Ugandans of their liberty, and even their lives,” said the bipartisan letter, signed by Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc., Pictured), Gary Ackerman (D-NY), Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.). “Particularly given the United States’ substantial contribution to Uganda through the President’ Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), we believe swift action is necessary to ensure Ugandan leaders understand this bill is wholly unacceptable and antithetical to democratic values.”
The United States embassy in Uganda also spoke out against the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, calling it a major setback in the promotion of human rights.
“If adopted, a bill further criminalizing homosexuality would constitute a significant step backwards for the protection of human rights in Uganda,” the embassy’ public affairs officer Joann Lockard said in an email. “We urge states to take all necessary measures to ensure that sexual orientation or gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular executions, arrests, or detention.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that counters anti-gay misinformation, fights religious extremism exposes the “ex-gay” myth and educates America about the lives of GLBT people.
Additional coverage: The Family’s Sen. Ensign Scandal and cover-up
As noted by TWO, Richard Cizik, Washington lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned his post last week because of controversy over his nationally broadcast support of gay civil unions. The NAE and right-wing political organizations are applauding his departure with words both questionable and unkind.
During a Dec. 2 interview on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air,” Cizik told host Terry Gross that he voted for Barack Obama in the Virginia primary and said Christians should not fear supporting pro-choice and pro-LGBT candidates. Cizik also said that his views on marriage were “shifting” and that he supports civil union.
The comments made by the lobbyist — formally known as NAE’s vice president for governmental affairs — caused a huge stir in evangelical Christian circles and the controversy led him to resign his job. In a statement to the organization’s board members, the association’s acting president Leith Anderson explained his departure, saying Cizik’s radio remarks caused “a loss of trust in his credibility as a spokesperson among leaders and constituencies.”
It turns out that Cizik’s views are evolving even more. For years, he has been one of the rare evangelicals banging the drum for addressing climate change. The DC-based Institute on Religion & Democracy’s Mark Tooley told OneNewsNow that “Cizik has been very outspoken and in some ways ‘off the reservation’ for the last five or six years in terms of his global warming activism, which the board of NAE had initially somewhat disavowed — but that had not discouraged him.”
Cizik’s civil-union support was an apparent step too far from the reservation. “The National Association of Evangelicals has official positions strongly supporting traditional marriage and opposing same-sex marriage, and certainly by implication same-sex civil unions,” Tooley said. “So it seemed to be a very clear case where Cizik was ignoring the very obvious and official positions of his own organization, for which he is supposed to be the chief spokesman and lobbyist in Washington.”
Evangelical support for Cizik’s resignation is voluminous, the criticisms harsh.
Ingrid Schlueter, co-host of evangelizing radio show Crosstalk America said, “Those who are at war with God, the author of life, should be publicly confronted by evangelical Christians. Instead, they are aided and abetted in their evil by craven leaders like Cizik.”
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council is expectedly meanspirited: “This is the risk of walking through the green door of environmentalism and global warming – you risk being blinded by the green light and losing your sense of direction. How else can you explain enthusiastic support for what will probably be the nation’s most pro-abortion, anti-family president in our nation’s 232 year history?”
Janice Shaw Crouse, director and senior fellow of Concerned Women for America’ Beverly LaHaye Institute, takes a broad swipe: “I think, perhaps, my dear friend Rich has been inside the Beltway for too long and has swallowed too much of the NPR and Vogue magazine Kool-Aid.”
I suppose the nasty talk has to be over-the-top. After all, Cizik has the ear of millions of Americans. People listen to him. You can see it in the responses on the FRC blog, where faithful Christians responding to Perkins’ statement wonder why caring about the environment or supporting Barack Obama contradicts their beliefs. Time magazine even named Cizik one of the world’s 100 most influential people this year. That’s a lot of clout to for the evangelicals to overcome.
Consider the response of NAE supporters of Cizik — and there are many of them. According to US News and World Report, “a coalition of roughly 60 evangelical leaders (mostly of the non-Christian right variety) has written to … Leith Anderson pushing for a successor [who, like Cizik, is] not beholden to the Christian right… [one] who embraces more progressive causes like combating global warming.” Read the full letter here.
David Gushee, a college professor and progressive evangelical activist who helped write the letter to Anderson, said this in an interview with USNWR:
I think Leith and the executive committee are going to take their time and let the furor over this die down. I personally think they need to find somebody who can promote all seven of the policy commitments in the NAE’s Health of Our Nation statement. There’s one on sanctity of life and one on climate change and one on poverty. There are always pressures from the right that the two fundamental issues of our time should be abortion and homosexuality. I think there will be pressure to hire somebody to make those the top priority.
I can tell you from some feedback that if the NAE makes the mistake of rolling back to the classic Christian right agenda, they would lose support of a lot of people who are currently happy to be working with them.
Yes, this comes from within the NAE.
The good news for Cizik, if he is sincere in his evolution, is that his message is being heard across the nation. It’s evident in the growing support for legal recognition of same-gender couples and for humane and just treatment of LGBT citizens. It is reflected in the fact that an increasing number of people are realizing that “gay” isn’t something that needs to be prayed away. Even the vote that passed California’s obnoxious and un-American Proposition 8 was a close one. Cizik is but one of many Americans who are slowly but surely understanding that being a Christian does not require denying compassion and equality to LGBT people.
Let’s hope this good man is snapped up by a progressive evangelical organization so that his vast influence — and his personal evolution — can continue. And let’s hope those questioning evangelicals continue searching their hearts and minds.
Evangelical Leader Takes Heat For His “Shift’ On Same-Sex Relationships
NEW YORK — Truth Wins Out praised the National Association of Evangelicals’ top lobbyist today for resigning in a storm of controversy after he said on a Dec. 2 “Fresh Air” NPR broadcast that he had shifted his position on gay relationships. The Associated Press reported that he told Fresh Air, “I’m shifting, I have to admit. In other words, I would willingly say I believe in civil unions. I don’t officially support redefining marriage from its traditional definition, I don’t think.”
“We applaud Rich Cizik for opening his mind and speaking from his heart,” said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. “It would have been easier for Cizik to have remained silent and continued collecting a paycheck. Instead he did what he thought was right and one can only admire such courage.”
Not surprisingly, Focus on the Family said they were glad Cizik was stepping down. “It was time for him to go,” Tom Minnery, a Focus on the Family senior vice president, told the Associated Press. “He no longer represents the view of evangelicalism. He has not represented those views for some time.”
“Focus on the Family is going to find that support for their outdated position on gay and lesbian equality is eroding, even among evangelical Christians,” said Besen. “As more gay people come out, Americans can see that we are their friends and family members — and certainly no threat to their lives.”
On Thursday, Truth Wins Out placed a hard-hitting full-page ad in The Salt Lake Tribune, under the headline, “Lies in the Name of the Lord.” It was in response to an ad in last Friday’ New York Times, that portrayed protests against Proposition 8 – a ballot measure in California that prohibited same sex couples from marrying — as mob violence. One of the people criticized by TWO was Cizik, who signed the ad.
“If I someone would have told me that I would have ended the week praising Rich Cizik, I would have told them they were living in a dream world,” said Besen. “But, Cizik’ evolution on this issue shows that we should never make blanket assumptions that individual evangelical Christians don’t support fairness and equality. I call on more fair-minded evangelicals to speak out in the name of equality and fairness for gay and lesbian people, as this courageous man has done.”
Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that counters right wing propaganda, exposes the “ex-gay” myth and educates America about gay life.
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With a gift of $35 to Truth Wins Out, you can receive an autographed copy of "Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth."
The lead sponsor of Uganda’ controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill, David Bahati, (pictured) was reportedly disinvited today from The National Prayer Breakfast, which is scheduled for February 4, in Washington, DC. According to 
NEW YORK — Truth Wins Out praised the National Association of Evangelicals’ top lobbyist today for resigning in a storm of controversy after he said on a Dec. 2 “Fresh Air” NPR broadcast that he had shifted his position on gay relationships. The Associated Press reported that he told Fresh Air, “I’m shifting, I have to admit. In other words, I would willingly say I believe in civil unions. I don’t officially support redefining marriage from its traditional definition, I don’t think.”
