Metro DC Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and the Rainbow Youth Alliance (RYA) sent the following letter this week to the Montgomery County Public Schools’ Board of Education.
The school district — located in an otherwise liberal area of Maryland adjoining Washington, D.C. — falsely claims to be required by court rulings to host the antigay fliers of an organization whose leaders call for the imprisonment of all LGBT people, including parents and students. (TWO encourages the SPLC to take note.)
Visit Teach The Facts for complete local background, or check out Truth Wins Out’s articles about PFOX efforts to undermine public education in Maryland.
Media Contact: Wayne Bessen, American Prayer Hour Coordinator Phone: 917-691-5118 E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org Website:www.AmericanPrayerHour.org
Multi-City Prayer Hour Offers Alternative to the National Prayer Breakfast Whose Leaders Have Apparent Ties to Uganda’s Draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill
What: On Tuesday, February 2, 2010 key religious leaders will hold a press conference to announce the formation of The American Prayer Hour, a multi-city event on Thursday, February 4, 2010, with key events in Washington, DC, Dallas, Chicago and Berkeley. The American Prayer Hour events will affirm inclusive values and call on all nations, including Uganda, to decriminalize the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. The American Prayer Hour provides an alternative to the National Prayer Breakfast, which is sponsored by The Family (aka The Fellowship), a group with disturbing ties to those spearheading Uganda’s oppressive Anti-Homosexuality Bill.
When: Tuesday, February 2, 2010 – 10:30 a.m. (EST)
Where: The National Press Club (Washington, DC) Murrow Room
529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor – Washington, DC 20045
Who: Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church
Frank Schaeffer, author, “Crazy For God: How I Grew Up
As One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right and Lived to Take
All of it Back.”
Harry Knox, The Human Rights Campaign, Director of Religion and Faith
Moses, A gay Ugandan man seeking asylum in The United States
Rev. Elder Darlene Garner, Metropolitan Community Church, Vice-Moderator, Board of Elders
Bishop Carlton Pearson, Senior Minister at Chicago, Illinois’ Christ Universal Temple
Background: Uganda is considering the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, put forth by parliamentarian David Bahati and initially backed by President Yoweri Museveni. If passed, the new law would unleash a vicious campaign of persecution against LGBT citizens. Bahati and President Museveni are members of The Family and are among their “key men” in Africa. The Family hosts the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. The American Prayer Hour will show that such cruelty and extremism does not represent most people of faith.
Sponsors:
National Black Justice Coalition
Religion and Faith Program
Human Rights Campaign Foundation
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
National Religious Leadership Roundtable
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
On Nov. 7th, Focus on the Family brought its absurd “ex-gay” roadshow Love Won Out to Birmingham Alabama. This is a conference that tries to help people “pray away the gay”. (Cue uproarious laughter)
Truth Wins Out joined several local groups in protest. More than 50 people greeted conference attendees as they entered the church parking lot. Movie star Glenn Shadix, who had once undergone shock therapy in a failed effort to become straight commented on Joe Openshaw’s blog about what he saw at the demonstration:
“An image that will always stay with me is that of a young teenager being driven by what seemed to be his parents, into The Metropolitan Church of God,” said Shadix. “He slowly raised his hand and, hidden from those in the front seat of the car, waved at us as he was driven into the all day seminar. His sad face haunts me. I have been there. My prayers are with him.”
Truth Wins Out joined The Alliance for GLBT Equality at UAB, Covenant Community Church, Equality Alabama Birmingham, Central Alabama Pride and PFLAG.
Special thanks to Bob Palmatier, Joe Openshaw and Rev. J.R. Finney (and many others) for a powerful action against the intolerance and bigotry of Focus on the Family.
Today was Focus on the Family’s final Love Won Out road show, which took place in Birmingham, Alabama. Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen joined more than 75 people to protest the misinformation being spread at the mega-church where the “ex-gay” extravaganza took place.
If you like the fact that Truth Wins Out is fighting back against such lies, please consider a tax-deductible contribution today. Only with your help can we continue our efforts exposing lies and anti-gay distortions.
Today’s protest included members from: The Alliance for GLBT Equality at UAB, Equality Alabama Birmingham, Central Alabama Pride, Covenant Community Church and PFLAG. Several media outlets covered the presentation. Movie star Glenn Shadix, an Alabama native was on-hand. On Thursday, he shared his story of undergoing shock therapy in his youth to unsuccessfully become heterosexual.
We will provide video of the protest later. In the meantime, here are a few pictures.
It’s been nearly 27 years since twenty-year-old Bobby Griffith took his own life.
Nearly three decades later, the church whose teachings drove him to suicide continues to preach intolerance towards LGBTs.
Guided by Church elders, Bobby’s Mom had tried to “cure” him of his “affliction.” It’s a very different Mary Griffith who speaks to us today.
“It’s not something I did out of malice,” says an older, wiser Griffith. “I can forgive me: it’s harder to forgive the church.”
Griffith adds: “Love has to come from God, that was distorted in my life.”
“The family was not guided well by their church, but it’s important not to demonize religious people,” says acclaimed actress Sigourney Weaver, who plays Mary Griffith in the new Lifetime film Prayers For Bobby. “I’m hoping this film will open their eyes.”
Over the ensuing years, Griffith has made amends for Bobby’s death the only way she knew how: by becoming a staunch advocate for LGBT youth. She’s an honored member of P-FLAG, and does a lot of public speaking on the organization’s behalf. Her message to the parents of LGBT kids is simple: accept and love your children for who they are.
In Prayers For Bobby, Sigourney Weaver plays the Mary who once was. After Bobby’s death, the Oscar nominee brilliantly recreates the changes that gradually came over Mary.
“The film was very difficult to watch,” admits Griffith. “But it will help a lot of kids and adults: I hope it will bring hope to people.”
“It was not my intent to impersonate Mary,” said Weaver. “I felt that I had to take the essence of what happened and run with it. It didn’t occur to me that I couldn’t go certain places. Mary had given me permission to tell the truth.”
Both women had strong words for Proposition 8, the recent ban on gay marriage passed by a slim majority of California voters.
“It’s unconstitutional to have a referendum like that,” Sigourney Weaver said firmly. “Everyone has the same rights, no exceptions. I can’t believe they put it on the ballot.”
Adds Mary Griffith: “What shocked me is that people don’t realize they’re messing with their own 14th Amendment rights.”
These days, a semi-retired Griffith speaks proudly of her newly out lesbian granddaughter. Though she continues the good fight, she admits that health problems have slowed her down a bit.
She also made an admission that may surprise some: “I still go to church. I’m good no matter where I go.”
Prayers For Bobby airs on Lifetime on these dates (confirm local listings for airtimes):
Saturday, Jan. 24, 2008 at 9 p.m. Eastern
Sunday, Jan. 25, 2008 at 8 p.m.
Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2008 at 9 p.m.
David Alex Nahmod lives in San Francisco, where he does film reviews and celebrity interviews for a variety of LGBT publications. Visit him at: DavidsOpenForum.Blogspot.com.
The Anchorage Press, wrote a large feature story on the so-called “ex-gay” ministries. It did so after TWO and local Alaskan activists squared off against Focus on the Family, which brought its “ex-gay” road show to town last week. TWO Executive Director, Wayne Besen, flew to Alaska to help organize a response. The anti-gay symposium took on national interest after GOP Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s house of worship – the Wasilla Bible Church – promoted the event. Besen spoke at the Anchorage Metropolitan Community Church with local clergy and mental health experts to counter Love Won Out.
“The Anchorage Press article was in-depth and did a very good job of getting to the essence of the ex-gay industry – which is politics,” said Besen. “Focus on the Family’s Love Won Out road show is a political vehicle used to make people feel better about themselves when they vote for anti-gay legislation. Other than that, the glitzy event has no practical purpose.”
Thanks to E. Ross of the website Bent Alaska and Edie Bailey of the Metropolitan Community Church and PFLAG, there was a powerful response to the “ex-gay” road show.
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) today responded to reports that U.S. Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s church promoted Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out” ex-gay road show. The ex-gay propaganda day, which mobilizes antigay parents and pastors to oppose equality and sexual honesty for gay members of their families and churches, will commence later this week in Alaska’s state capital, Juneau. (Read More)
The parents of PFOX wrote to me yesterday to alert me to the “Political and Social Oppression of the Ex-Gay Community.” How horrible, I thought, that the sprawling Ex-Gay Community is treated that way!
I feared for the lives and the rights of my “no – longer – identified – as – anything, free-from-freedom, no – news – here, move – along” friends in the teeming ex-gay ghettoes of Colorado Springs and Orlando. So I tore open the PFOX e-mail envelope and read the following dispatch from suburban Washington, D.C. …
As you can see from the below local ABC news video, many ex-gays are afraid to come out of the closet because of the harassment they will receive — their names, phone numbers and personal information posted on gay websites; attacked at ex-gay exhibit booths; press releases issued against them, etc. The tactics of gay activists are to go after anyone who comes out publicly as ex-gay, force them back into the closet, and then claim that ex-gays don’t exist because there aren’t any out in public:
PFOX radiates fear and paranoia — blaming critics of the ex-gay industry for ex-gay homophobia, prejudice, and fear of legitimate mental-health professionals. These fears result in ex-gays, and the antigay families of gay people, living in fear of their own shadows.
Thankfully, open-minded parents and school officials in Maryland were also watching WJLA-TV on May 5.
David Fishback, for example, is a former chair of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Public Schools Citizens Advisory Committee for Family Health and Human Development. He also is on the board of Metro-DC PFLAG.
The full text of WJLA’s video report is here; Fishback’s full analysis is here. (Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, is featured in the WJLA report.)
Here are some brief bullet points that I culled from Fishback’s analysis: (Read More)
Become ex-gay — or else: Sydney, Australia, Anglican Rev. Richard Lane once wrote to High Court Justice Michael Kirby, urging him to join an “ex-gay” ministry or face the wrath of God. Lane’s letters were publicized at a Sydney forum on religious tolerance and homosexuality. In response, Kirby accused the churchman of using intemperate language, ignoring modern discoveries about sexual orientation and missing the “central loving message of Jesus and the Gospels.” Kirby stated, “There is not a single word of Jesus that sustains the thesis of animosity in your letter.”
Kern’s double-talk: Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) released recordings of its 40-minute meeting with Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern, refuting Kern’s subsequent claims that she did not object to antigay discrimination and that she did not agree to meet again with the families of gay Oklahomans.
Exodus support for Kern?Video is now available of Exodus member activist Stephen Black giving his support to Oklahoma state Rep. Sally Kern and falsely claiming that most gay people are abused or badly parented. Exodus’ national office declined to affirm or condemn Black’s statements.
Door open to future antigay violence: Massachusetts antigay group MassResistance, which has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has declined to condemn violent threats made against Lexington, Mass., School Superintendent Paul Ash. Antigay parent David Parker, whose campaign against tolerance in Lexington schools has been trumpeted by Exodus, conditions his own opposition to the threats by simply saying that violence is not justified “at this time.”
Shock ‘em straight? Maybe not: Officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have accepted an invitation to meet with Affirmation, a support group for gay and lesbian Mormons. Affirmation wishes to discuss the church’s historical support for ex-gay therapies including electric shock aversion therapy, which prompted some Mormons to commit suicide. (BTB)
Oklahoma state legislator Sally Kern claims that the Oklahoma City chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) misquoted her positions on discrimination, sin, and civility after a meeting between her and PFLAG representatives.
But PFLAG’s fact-checking reveals that it is Kern who has misrepresented PFLAG’s carefully worded account of their meeting. Kern’s latest volley of strawman arguments and uncivil vitriol against the families of gay people suggests, at the very least, that she has ensnarled herself in her own tangled web of hate speech against parents and Christian clergy.
After all, why should Kern bother to calmly discuss what she or PFLAG actually said, when it’s so much easier to rant breathlessly about what Kern imagines herself, others — or God — to be saying?
