The man shown above is pastor Steve Gaines of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis. Though he is not a resident of the city of Memphis, Gaines really wants to make sure his church members know which candidates to support in the city’s upcoming city council elections. Of course, like most wingnut church-state separation deniers, he knows how to play cute with language in order to avoid those nasty laws against endorsing candidates outright. He walks right up to the line that shall not be crossed, drops his pants and whizzes all over the democratic process, essentially. Gaines sent this e-mail to church members the other day:

Gaines and his flying wingnuts have been heavily involved in the past several years in local Memphis politics, working tirelessly to make sure the city can’t pass a simple nondiscrimination ordinance to protect all citizens from losing their jobs over something as trivial as their sexuality. Indeed, it’s quite a sight to see when Gaines and his busloads o’ Baptists show up at City Hall, go in through the back door and spend the next several hours in City Council chambers spreading hate all over the place like trans fats at, well, a Baptist church picnic…

I digress.

The Family Action Council of Tennessee that Gaines references is a farm team for the Family Research Council, an SPLC-designated hate group. You might remember the head of FACTn, the fey David Fowler, as the man who recently soiled his proverbial wingnut adult diaper by floating a bizarre conspiracy theory involving insurance companies and hordes of homosexuals secretly teaming up for the purpose of making people like David unhappy. Before that, he wore a pink shirt and made a creepy video in a playground gloating about how successful his organization was in hurting gay families.

It’s also quite interesting that Steve Gaines has the balls to use the word “pro-family” in any sentence that doesn’t start with, “You’re quite a fool if you actually think I’m…,” as Gaines’ most notable act as Bellevue’s pastor, his greatest accomplishment, was when he decided to protect an admitted child molester for six months, keeping him on Bellevue’s staff and allowing him to counsel child sexual abuse victims. This is not a man who is motivated by concern for anyone’s children or families. Far from it, Gaines simply seems to have a weird fixation with homosexuality, even moreso than garden variety anti-gay wingnuts.

So let’s see. We have a state organization with a constant, unhinged need to hurt gay families, and a pedophile-protecting pastor who claims to want to protect children and families, and who really, really thinks he has the right to control the city council of a place that is embarrassed to have him as a suburban parasite. And on the other side, we have an organization which simply fights to protect the rights of the people the aforementioned men work tirelessly to hurt every day. Who’s “pro-family” again, please?

The Tennessee Equality Project is having a bit of fun with this. As an actual political organization which has the right to endorse candidates [i.e., not a church], TEP has endorsed candidates who will support equality for all citizens in Memphis, and who, yes, will replace the puppets pictured above. Here’s Jonathan Cole of TEP:

Truly pro-family voters will be voting for candidates who support the right of all people to earn a living, provide for their families and contribute to their communities without fear of unfair workplace discrimination. Voters can be proud to cast their vote in District 1, District 2, and Superdistrict 9-1 for pro-equality and pro-family candidates endorsed by TEP PAC: Kendrick Sneed, Sylvia Cox and Paul Schaffer. They aren’t likely to succumb to a false prophet like Steve Gaines.

Indeed! Early voting is already underway in Memphis, and Bellevue Baptist Church is an early voting location! Therefore, TEP is asking all equality-minded citizens of Memphis to go vote at Bellevue this Saturday at noon and wear purple to show the bigots of Bellevue what actual pro-family people look like. Who knows if Steve Gaines will be there or not — there might be a pedophile that needs protecting, you know — but TEP will be out in full force.

All three men pictured above are of the sort of caliber I would never trust to mow my lawn or walk my dog, but they unfortunately have seats of power, and are a primary reason Memphis has failed to achieve its goals of becoming a world class city. When the world looks at your city council and the first phrase that comes to mind is, “behind every good conservative Christian man is an extremely nervous sheep,” it’s hard to get ahead, you know? If you’re a Memphian, get out and replace them.

In an article today for Focus on the Family, writer Catherine Snow contends that respected Christian and Jewish groups are actually “a ‘who’s who’ of Leftist, humanist, abortion and gay organizations.”

Focus warned that “liberal groups” were asking President Obama to repeal a 2002 executive order that allows Focus and similar groups to collect and abuse taxpayer dollars for the purpose of enriching favored religions and discriminating against religious and sexual minorities.

But Focus drastically shortened the coalition’s membership list: It removed most of the Christian and Jewish groups, and presented the edited result as a liberal conspiracy against Christians. To its credit, Focus offers its readers a link to the coalition‘s actual letter (PDF) to President Obama, but the link is buried in footnotes.

Here is the coalition membership list that Focus didn’t want Christians and Jews to see: (Read More)

The separation of Church and State is a fundamental tenet of the U.S. Constitution. Increasingly policies that funnel taxpayer dollars into faith-based organizations challenge this important principle. This month on our June Pride episode, IN THE LIFE follows the money to expose some faith-based initiatives that sanction homophobia here and abroad.

DEMOCRACY OR THEOCRACY?

The first amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects religion from governmental interference, at the same time it ensures government is protected from religious influence. But faith leaders with close ties to Capitol Hill, target the LGBT community by using religion as a basis to deny our equality and blur the line distinguishing our democracy from a theocracy.

EXPORTING HATE

In 2009, the Ugandan Parliamentary proposed an anti-homosexuality bill that would impose the death penalty on serial offenders of homosexual acts. Inciting fear and sanctioning homophobia, the bill has caused LGBT Ugandans to be hunted in their communities and forced into exile. IN THE LIFE focuses on the man behind the bill and his supporters, and exposes the political and financial influence used by powerful conservatives in the U.S. to export their anti-gay agenda overseas.

Intersections of Church and State will begin airing June 1st. To find out when it airs in your local area, to stream or download it, go to the IN THE LIFE website: www.inthelifetv.org.

Watch a preview now

When I was 11 years old and entering Middle School my family moved from Miami to Alief, a suburb of Houston. Only days before my first Christmas in Texas, a large high school student wearing cowboy boots and chewing tobacco confronted me.

“You a Jew?” he angrily inquired. “How could you people not believe in Jesus after you murdered him? Did you know it’s Jesus’ birthday? If Jesus Christ ain’t the son of God, who the hell is?”

This is the type of pressure often faced by non-Christians in conservative school districts. There can sometimes be an enormous amount of coercion to conform to the majority view, particualrly around Christmas, when the “Jesus is the reason for the season” crowd, wants to let non-Christians know they are an alien species in a “Christian Nation. While I am certain things have improved since I was 11, in 1981, there are still pockets of bigotry and religious intolerance in America.

As recognition that religious majorities often make religious minorities feel left out, as well as to follow that pesky “separation of church and state” rule that keeps our country free, we don’t use public schools to shove religion down the throats of pupils. Not only would doing so be illegal, but it is also rude and obnoxious behavior – violating the spirit of Christmas.

Unfortunately, not everyone is smart enough to understand the wisdom of ensuring that our public schools are not turned into private fundamentalist church services. A terribly misguided substitute teacher in Redding, Calif., Merry Hyatt, is sponsoring a ballot initiative that would require all public schools in California to give children the opportunity to sing or listen to religious Christmas carols.

“For years and years, maybe one person has been able to ruin it for an entire school,” Hyatt said. “It’s not right. I think it’s the majority’s turn.”

Hyatt is mindlessly promoting a myopic and shortsighted idea designed to make non-Christians uncomfortable in the hope they will convert to Christianity in order to feel accepted and fit in. Portraying religious minorities as the Grinch who stole Christmas is also exploitative, because students are a captive audience who would have no choice but to endure unwanted proselytizing – sometimes at the hands of older, larger tobacco spitting students in cowboy boots.

Of course, the unspoken subtext is that such bullying is precisely what people like Hyatt are truly after. They want consequences to be paid for anyone who is not a fundamentalist or for GLBT students, who would also face increased persecution in a more religious public school atmosphere, given that faiths practiced in conservative areas are largely anti-gay.

People like Hyatt worship mob rule as long as they are in the majority, where they can force their sectarian views onto others. I’m not sure how tolerant people of her ilk would be if, for example, a majority Muslim public school in Dearborn, Michigan, forced Christians to celebrate Ramadan. Or, a majority Catholic public school made a picture of the Pope mandatory in classrooms. How about a majority Jewish school jettisoning Christmas songs in favor of Hanukkah ditties? What about a New Age Winter celebration in liberal public schools at the expense of Christmas altogether?

“It’s sad and it’s wrong to have a Christmas party and not mention Jesus,” said Hyatt. “It’s his birthday.”

The undeniable fact is, Hyatt can sing religious songs at any moment of her choosing, when she is off the clock. She can attend church every day of the week if she wants to. So, clearly, this is not about religious freedom, nor is it about Hyatt being denied her ability to practice her faith.

No, this is about her not being content to practice her faith privately, and having a predatory desire to inflict her beliefs on others without their consent. This is about her wanting to use public money to peddle her religious ideas on public property – which is paid for by all of us.

Prior to her stint as a substitute teacher, Hyatt taught at a Christian school for a year. This, of course, was the proper venue for her cloying need to indoctrinate children and hammer home her narrow worldview. Instead, she wants to obliterate parents’ rights, by subjecting children to religious dogma and a conservative worldview that violates the beliefs of many mothers and fathers.

Under her proposed measure, students who don’t want to participate, or whose parents don’t want them to participate, could be excused.

“They can have a holiday party in the other room,” she said. “Or if they don’t want a party, they can have social studies or some other learning experience.”

Yes, of course they could, and be heckled and treated like heathen freaks by their peers…just the way intolerant zealots like Hyatt want it to be.