Folks, if you’re not a member of the ACLU….

…or Americans United for the Separation of Church and State…

…or People for the American Way…

…join already! Progressive organizations are at it full-time trying to protect your rights. But they need enthusiastic, committed armies behind them, armies just as energetic as fundamentalist congregations. If you need a kick in the pants, go to a right-wing megachurch,* witness the frenzied, bubbly vim, and reflect on the fact that some of these folks will go home after church and put all that energy to work to change society in ways you really won’t like.

Pretend you’re one of them, only through the looking-glass. Let an outrageous news article be the sermon that gets you going. Next time you read one, send five bucks to the progressives. Better yet, volunteer.

And when you join, leave a comment on this blog. Preach it!

* Or just watch Jesus Camp.

On May 17, voters in Jacksonville, Florida will face a runoff city council election. The Democratic candidate, Kimberly Daniels, has repeatedly made denigrating statements regarding religious and sexual minorities and has for years allied herself with the extreme fringe of the religious right.

Leslie Watson Malachi, Director of People For the American Way’s African American Ministers in Action (AAMIA) issued the following statement:

“At African American Ministers in Action, our hope is that Americans will always have the opportunity to elect public officials who stand for respect and liberty, fairness and equality, and treat all people with the dignity that they deserve. We are disheartened by the advancement of a candidate who has instead chosen to be a voice of fear and intolerance. The people of Jacksonville deserve better.”

African American Ministers in Action, a program of People For the American Way, is an alliance of over 700 progressive African American clergy supporting social justice, civil rights, and reproductive health and justice.

Reseacher Bruce Wilson has found more Crackpot Kim quotes HERE.

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 lying thugs, 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?

This is rich.  Peter LaBarbera, who has been integral in the placement of two organizations on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate-group list, and who openly associates with and defends the most obviously hateful anti-gay figures (Scott Lively, the buffoons at MassResistance, Linda Harvey, Laurie Higgins, etc.), seems to be taken aback by the fact that Kyle at Right Wing Watch labeled Peter’s “homosexual troof kamp” a “hatefest.”  Really, Kyle, why are you so mean?

Oftentimes when activists on the Left have no evidence that something they disagree with is actually ”hateful,” they just label as such anyway, and then repeat themselves ad nauseam so that we’ll all get the message that said conservative activity is, well, “hateful.”

No, Peter, actually it’s your words and deeds that get you labeled as hateful.  The evidence has already been compiled, so just click here for the Porno Pete archives at Truth Wins Out, here for the archives at Good-As-You, and here for the archives at Right Wing Watch.

Seriously, though, most people on the Left are not quite willing, yet, to define anyone who disagrees with homosexuality as “hateful” — although they might call them “homophobic” (an artificial construct whose elastic definition has evolved to meet the needs of pro-”gay” liberals).

There are only two choices:  knowingly hateful or woefully, fearfully misinformed on the subject.  This has nothing to do with “morality.”

I’m sure there are exceptions, but I suspect that most “gay”-affirming people would not automatically label anyone who believes that homosexuality is immoral — or that homosexual sex is unnatural – as “haters.”

Eh, we’re getting there, though.  Twenty years ago, it wasn’t the case, because people didn’t have as much access to correct information, so they could be granted a little more leeway/time to become more educated.  Nowadays, as the anti-gay segment of our society is dying off, those who cling to their discriminatory, bigoted views have a lot more to apologize for.  Hell, most Republicans I come across find anti-gay rhetoric to be distasteful and gross, because they know better.

However, if you reflect that moral opposition in the public square — if you defend the age-old position that homosexuality is wrong – then suddenly you become, yes, “hateful.”

Yes, because the fact that it’s “age-old” doesn’t make it right.  Slavery was “age-old,” and supported by the Bible.  It’s wrong, though, but you don’t arrive at the conclusion that slavery is wrong by reading an ancient religious book.  You have to look to a more reason-based system of morality and examine the harm done to sentient beings.  From there, it’s an easy jump to “owning people is not good.”  Likewise, you can excuse your bigotry in the pages of the Bible, especially if you don’t really understand words very well, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to reason that if two people love each other and are productive, contributing members of society, that they should not be discriminated against just because some loons with double-digit IQs can’t handle the genitals of the couple in question.  I know many of them secretly wish they could handle the genitals of the couple in question, but the sexual repression of the fundamentalist Christian church is not my problem.

Hard to win that argument: ME: pro-gay, loving and tolerant. YOU: anti-gay, hateful and intolerant.

To be fair, Peter, you’ve already lost that argument.

Give me the old-fashioned liberals who might disagree with AFTAH’s beliefs forcefully but who at least understand that name-calliing is no substitute for an argument.

Translation:  Give me the days when my worldview hadn’t been summarily disproven, the days when it wasn’t the laughingstock of educated people everywhere.

Morality is not “hate” and defending the historic Judeo-Christian sexual ethic is not “bigotry.”

He’s correct that morality is not hate.  His mistake is in continuing to believe that happy, healthy gays and lesbians falling in love is somehow a “moral” issue.  Defending patriarchal subjugation and sexual control is definitely bigotry, though.

Homosexuality is wrong, and a controversial moral and religious issue involving behavior.

You can keep saying that, Peter, but all credible scientists say otherwise.

…[T]here are thousands of former homosexuals — people like our Truth Academy instructor Greg Quinlan, who once considered himself “gay” before leaving the lifestyle.

Prove to me that Greg Quinlan doesn’t get a raging erection when he sees a naked man, and we’ll talk.

The evidence is overwhelming that homosexual practice — especially among men — is a big factor in the spread of diseases like HIV.

Wrong, dude!  Unsafe sex, poor education, and oftentimes, patriarchal sexual control, is what spreads HIV.  That’s why it’s growing among straight people, why it’s rampant in Africa, etc.  Meanwhile, lesbians have the lowest infection rates on the planet, so based on this twisted strain of LaBarberian logic, lesbians are the most moral of all!

Does PFAW hold that it is OK to crusade for acceptance of homosexuality, but “un-American” and ”hateful” to oppose it civilly?

Kyle can answer for himself, but I do, because real people are involved, real gay kids end up depressed, on the streets or dead because of the “loving opposition” (pure, unmitigated hatred) from people like Peter LaBarbera, who has spent his life working to make sure those kids’ pain is as intense as possible.

Is every American who opposes homosexuality hateful — or just those who defend that position in public?

I answered this above, but again, they are either:

A.  Actively hateful (Peter, etc.)
B. Woefully undereducated on the subject. (Peter also, and others)
C. Irrationally fearful of gays, especially gay men. (Peter, again, and others.)

When does moral disagreement become “hate”?

When your “moral disagreement” is predicated on denying an entire class of people their rights as Americans, against all facts and evidence, and hurting as many of those people as possible, and also when it leaves a body count.

Meanwhile, below are the Truth Academy curriculum and speakers, not one of whom has a hateful bone in his or her body.

I always suspected they weren’t made of human flesh and bone. Now we have confirmation.

UPDATE: Here’s Kyle’s response to Peter’s bullroar.