FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bachmann’s Billing Appears As Unethical as His ‘Ex-Gay’ Therapy, Says TWO

Burlington, Vt. – Attorney Norm Kent sent a letter to Bachmann & Associates today on behalf of Truth Wins Out demanding that he cease and desist from harassing the organization. TWO has also launched a petition on Change.org urging people to contact Bachmann and tell him to stop his petty and vindictive threats against the LGBT organization.

“Marcus Bachmann’s billing practices appear to be as unethical as the ‘ex-gay’ therapy offered at his clinic,” said Truth Wins Out Executive Director Wayne Besen. “We will not be intimidated or bullied and do not intend to pay Bachmann’s phony bill.”

On Monday, Bachmann personally called the group’s Communications Director, John Becker, leaving a voicemail in which he demanded $150 for cancelled July sessions of “ex-gay” therapy with a counselor at his practice. He threatened that if TWO did not pay him by Friday he would turn the phony bill over to a collection agency. This morning, the Law Offices of Kent & Cormican faxed a letter to Bachmann’s Minnesota clinic. According to the letter:

“If you are persistent in this claim, and attempt to employ the collection agency you have threatened to, you should know that my firm and our associates in your jurisdiction would take legal action against you,” wrote attorney Norm Kent. “Specifically, and you should make no mistake about the same, we consider your therapy and practices fraudulent. We have concluded your services are dubious and questionable, not worthy of any billing at all. We consider your fees and charges part of a larger civil conspiracy to defraud vulnerable individuals.”

In July, Truth Wins Out went undercover and exposed Bachmann & Associates for practicing a form of discredited “pray away the gay” therapy. The revelation rocked Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign. After TWO’s John Becker, who went undercover, had enough videotape evidence to prove that “ex-gay” therapy occurred at Bachmann’s clinic, he called the clinic and cancelled his remaining appointments. Despite widespread circulation of TWO’s video footage, Marcus denied the therapy had taken place.

“I cancelled my remaining appointments in compliance with Bachmann & Associates’ stated procedure,” said John Becker, TWO’s Director of Communications and Development, “yet Marcus Bachmann himself called me and threatened to send the fraudulent $150 ‘bill’ to a collection agency by Friday. I find it odd that Bachmann handled this matter personally rather than through his billing department. This is certainly an unorthodox way of doing business, much like the spurious ‘ex-gay’ therapy offered at his clinic.”

Becker returned Bachmann’s call on Tuesday and spoke with him for nearly seven minutes in the presence of a reporter from the local ABC/FOX affiliate in Burlington. The video of the tense exchange can be viewed at Truth Wins Out’s website.

“We saw firsthand that the ‘ex-gay’ therapy practiced by Bachmann & Associates is unethical and unhealthy for clients,” said Becker. “What goes on in that clinic is rejected by every respected medical and mental health organization in America.”

Truth Wins Out is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to create a world where LGBT individuals can live openly, honestly and true to themselves. TWO fights anti-LGBT religious extremism, monitors anti-LGBT organizations, documents their lies and exposes their leaders. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.

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

Contact: John Becker, Director of Communications & Development
Phone: 920-265-6023
E-mail: john@truthwinsout.org

Politically obsessed liberals are probably aware that Markos Moulitsas has a new book out, American Taliban, about the similarities between Islamic extremists and American Christian religious extremists.  The title is obviously hyperbolic for the purposes of making a point.  I haven’t read it, but I plan to pick it up.  If you’re on the fence, though, General JC Christian of Jesus’ General has posted his Amazon review, and he’d like you to help vote it up as the “Most Helpful Negative Review.”  Here’s a bit:

How dare the author compare the American right to the Taliban. Sure, we both hate sex, reproductive choice, secularism, government regulation, homosexualism, and masturbation. We both want to establish godly governments that enforce scriptural law. And, we both justify our wars on the basis of religion. But the similarities end there.

We fight our wars in the name of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. They fight their battles for Allah, a god who doesn’t even know how to transubstantiate or turn water into a party.

We want to impose God’s kingdom on Earth by passing biblically based sharia laws. The Koran serves as the basis of the Taliban’s law, and unlike the Bible, it offers no object lessons in which she-bears eat children or whole cities are smitten with hemorrhoids.

The Taliban punish OB/GYNs using crude, uncivilized methods like stoning. We shoot doctors from a distance with a modern high-powered rifle.

While we may demand that our women dress modestly, and enforce it by calling them sluts or blaming them when they are victims of rape, our burka is a more fashionable and procreation-friendly burka.

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Heh.  The she-bear verses have always been among my favorites.

The American Family Association continues to show that they have lost any semblance of a moral compass, if indeed they ever had one in the first place, by attacking 10 year-old Will Phillips, who is supposed to be the grand marshal of Northwest Arkansas’s pride parade. Phillips, you’ll remember, is the precocious kid who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance, because he understands that the line “liberty and justice for all” doesn’t apply to LGBT Americans, at least not yet. Indeed, AFA president Tim Wildmon is invoking the words “child abuse” and accusing people of exploiting Will Phillips:

AFA President Tim Wildmon says,” It’ shameful that adults would abuse a brain-washed child in this way,” said AFA president Tim Wildmon. “He’ obviously just parroting the nonsense he’ been told by manipulative adults.For gay activists to trot out this child and make him the poster child for promoting unnatural sexual expression is a form of child abuse. “

To which I reply: It’s shameful that adults abuse children brainwashed into Christian fundamentalism the way they do. Those children obviously just parrot the nonsense they’ve been told by manipulative adults. For Christian fundamentalist activists to trot out their children and make them the poster children for promoting unseemly bigotry and hatred against entire portion of the population based on a stack of lies about who gay people are is child abuse, especially since, as we all know, many of their own children are gay. At least we don’t lie to them.

This is all happening via an American Family Association e-mail action alert, to try to cow the mayor of Fayetteville, Arkansas, into rescinding his proclamation for the event, and Will’s mom views them (quite rightly, considering the people involved) as a threat to her family.

Two ways you can help:

1. Visit the Facebook page for the city of Fayetteville and leave supportive messages.

2. Contact Fayetteville’s public officials with nice, positive messages of support. You and I are well aware that the e-mails sent from AFA subscribers will contain a level of venom which is directly converse to their reading level. This is a time for catching flies with sugar, as they say.

Ward 1, Position 1 Adella Gray (479) 442-4958 ward1_pos1@ci.fayetteville.ar.us

Ward 1, Position 2 Brenda Thiel (479) 442-3095 bthiel@cox.net

Ward 2, Position 1 Kyle Cook (479) 521-7632 ward2_pos1@ci.fayetteville.ar.us

Ward 2, Position 2 Matthew Petty (479) 595-8303 (Email preferred) citycouncil (at) matthewpetty (dot) org

Mayor Lioneld Jordan (479) 575-8330 mayor@ci.fayetteville.ar.us

Ward 3, Position 1 Robert K. Rhoads (479) 973-5200 rrhoads@hallestill.com

Ward 3, Position 2 Bobby Ferrell (479) 442-3535 ward3_pos2@ci.fayetteville.ar.us

Ward 4, Position 1 Shirley Lucas (479) 442-4612 ward4_pos1@ci.fayetteville.ar.us

Ward 4, Position 2 Sarah Lewis (479) 263-2087 sarahelainelewis@gmail.com

Fayetteville is a great town, if you’re not aware, and Arkansas is not all anti-gay. Give Fayetteville and the Phillips family the support they need, because it’s never a good day when a band of rabid extremists attacks your child.

More at AfterElton and Pam’s House Blend.

In a harsh rebuke of the increasingly extreme United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, a major Catholic health group backed the Senate’s health-care compromise on abortion. The Catholic Health Association said that the most important thing that Congress could do was pass a bill that would cover the nation’s uninsured.

Needless to say, the uncompromising, obstinate Bishops proclaimed the compromise “morally unacceptable.

I suppose the Bishops believe that leaving people uninsured to die in the cold in order to use health reform as a platform for abortion politics is the moral and ethical route.

The current crop of conservative Bishops appear hardhearted and clueless to the concerns of real people who desperately need help. They seem to believe that priestly polemics will solve the health care problem in this country.

“The Catholic Health Association does not represent the teaching of the Catholic Church on the non-negotiable defense of innocent life,” the conservative Catholic activist Deal Hudson said in a statement, calling the association’ move “utterly offensive.”

The difference between The Catholic Health Association and ideologues like Hudson, is that the hospitals actually deal with uninsured sick people. Well, Hudson and his ilk also deal with sick people – but in their case, a good shrink and medication is all that is needed.

Good for the Catholic Health Association for standing up to the extremists in the Catholic Church and the Republican Party.

In other Catholic News:

The Associated Press reports that two more Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland have resigned in the wake of a damning investigation into decades of church cover-up of child abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese.

The bishops, Eamonn Walsh and Ray Field, offered an apology to child-abuse victims as they announced their resignations during Christmas Mass on Friday. Priests read the statement to worshipers throughout the archdiocese, home to a quarter of Ireland’ 4 million Catholics.

In his Christmas sermon, Archbishop Martin said the church for too long had placed its self-interest above the rights of its parishioners, particularly innocent children. “It has been a painful year,” he told worshipers. “But the church today may well be a better and safer place than was the church of 25 years ago ‚Äî when all looked well, but where deep shadows were kept buried.”

Of course, we know this is nonsense. Until the Catholic Church does the following, there will be abuse:

1) Allow openly gay, sexually active priests. Doing so will attract psycho-sexually healthy gay men who will not use the priesthood to hide their sexuality – and in many cases use their power to take advantage of the young and vulnerable. Out gay priests will look for age-appropriate partners.

2) Allow women into the priesthood. This would immediately break up the good old closet boys network.

3) Allow married heterosexual priests. Just as it is imperative to attract sexually mature gay people, it is just as key to attract sexually healthy heterosexuals. Having a team of immature, pent-up priests is a recipe for disaster.

Until these rule changes are made, the Vatican is just spinning us.