Truth Wins Out’s acclaimed Center Against Religious Extremism (TWOCARE), offers original, in-depth, and on-site reporting.

“Please, come join us,” insisted an attractive college student flashing her bright Aquafresh smile.

Before I was able to decline her friendly invitation I was gently pulled into a large prayer circle of thirty or so Charismatic Christians. “I’m sorry my hand is sweaty,” the girl said with a sheepish grin.

Those were the last words she spoke that I understood. We quickly surrounded a handful of young preachers who whooped and hollered before surrendering English for the unintelligible language of tongues.  The manic participants sounded like a cross between a prayer service and a Native American tribe preparing for battle.

Eventually, they raised their hands toward the sky pointing to God, which allowed me to escape and enter the seating area at Ford Field, where Lou Engle, founder of The Call, had gathered 27,000 fundamentalist Christians from across the nation on 11.11.11, a date that came to him in what he believes to be a divinely inspired vision. The majority of the crowd was Caucasian, however a significant number were African American. There was a large youth component, but the age of participants reached across the spectrum.

While I can’t speak for the entire conference, which was a 24-hour call to fast and prayer, I did spend 14 hours at Ford Field watching sermons, surveying sideshows, videotaping the gathering, and interacting with the hyped-up crowd. So, my observations, while not complete, do offer a significant snapshot of the 11.11.11 Detroit rally.

In a press release prior to the event I wrote that I expected 11.11.11 Detroit to be a “gay bashing” and “Muslim trashing” extravaganza. After all, The Call had chosen Detroit as its rally site in an effort to convert the region’s estimated 150,000 to 200,000 Muslims.

The Associated Press reported that Apostle Ellis Smith, Engle’s local “point person” for The Call, referred to Islam in a sermon leading up to the revival as a “false,” “lame” and “perverse” religion.

Engle had previously held an infamous event in Uganda that whipped up anti-gay hysteria. In 2008, the electrifying preacher organized a rally at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium in support of Proposition 8, a successful measure to prohibit marriage equality in California.

To my surprise, the festivities, which were aired on God TV, were appreciably toned down. Sure, there was red meat on the menu, but it was not the all-you-can-eat buffet that I had come to expect from Engle and other leaders of the 7 Mountains Movement (aka The New Apostolic Reformation) that he is a key part of.

Indeed, most of the aspersions on Friday evening and Saturday were deliberately cast though euphemism. Homosexuality was never explicitly mentioned, but was instead lumped together with other “sins” under the umbrella of “sexual immorality.” Other times, speakers camouflaged their anti-gay agenda by simply saying they supported “traditional marriage.” During the entire time I observed the event there was not one reference to healing homosexuality and no “ex-gays” were trotted up on the stage to tell tales of how they “prayed away the gay.”

However, the Detroit Free Press reported that Apostle Smith claimed that at the event, “a lesbian came from the homosexual community and said she has never experienced such love. And she is now working to change her lifestyle.”

(I’m sure this alleged lesbian was very stable and well adjusted because it is common for healthy and secure LGBT people to spend weekends attending revivals that consider them demonic.)

The conversion of Muslims was also downplayed and “Dearborn,” referring to the Detroit suburb with perhaps the nation’s largest Muslim population, euphemistically replaced the word “Islam.”

It took several hours to figure out what was really going on – but I gasped when the disturbing pattern finally revealed itself. This elaborate show had all the trappings of a modern religious revival – from the thumping music to the two gargantuan video screens suspended above the enraptured audience. But this ostensibly religious event was little more than a political front.

Its real aim was to peel African American support away from the Democratic Party in a swing state during a critical election year. Not only is President Barack Obama’s reelection at stake, Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow is locked in a tight race that includes social conservative and former GOP Rep. Peter Hoekstra. This cynical revival was not about “values” — it was about votes. It was not about worship, but winning office for Republicans by promoting what writer Ed Kilgore called in The New Republic, a “big-God, small-government creed.”

The amazing part was that the audience seemed totally unaware of the underlying motives and machinations. After all, the words “Democrat” and “Republican” were never spoken and there was only one local politician identified on-stage. It seemed that even some of the minor speakers might not have been privy to the overarching strategy. Nonetheless, a brilliant display of political subterfuge was unfolding as the oblivious crowd bopped to Christian rock with their hands swaying above their heads.

This is not the first attempt of white fundamentalists to lure black voters away from the Democratic Party. Immediately following the 2004 presidential election, social conservatives made a strong push to lure African-Americans. Rev. Lou Sheldon, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center hate group, The Traditional Values Coalition, hosted a right wing meeting of 70 black religious leaders in Los Angeles.

“In 2004, the religious right was concerned about re-electing George W. Bush,” said Al Sharpton at First Iconium Baptist Church. “They couldn’t come to black churches to talk about the war, about health care, about poverty. So they did what they always do and reached for the bigotry against gay and lesbian people.”

Unbelievably, at the Los Angeles meeting Sheldon played an anti-gay video featuring disgraced Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. Remember, Lott had to step down as Senate Majority Leader after he publicly pined over Strom Thurmond not winning the presidency as a Dixiecrat. African-American columnist Leonard Pitts put Sheldon’s power grab in perspective:

“Whether the issue was slavery, segregation, lynching, voting rights or housing discrimination, social conservatives have always taken a position that history later judged to be ignorant and flat-out wrong….which leaves me at a loss to understand why any African American possessed of a functioning brain would give this atavistic bunch the time of day.”

Still, the attempt was gaining some momentum until Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, which badly frayed the burgeoning unholy alliance. The effort was further hampered by the emergence of Barack Obama as the Democratic standard bearer.

In this renewed effort in Detroit, Lou Engle and his minions were smart. They wisely figured out that direct attacks on the Democratic Party would not fly, nor would all-out verbal barrages against President Barack Obama, who still has strong African American support. They also understood that the baggage surrounding white Evangelical racism would have to be addressed and surmounted before real progress was made.

To overcome these obstacles and recruit African Americans to vote for the GOP they devised what seems like a five-part strategy.

1) Pick a key swing state with a beleaguered city that had an economically disadvantaged African American population

2) Create an emotional spectacle where tearful white people pleaded for forgiveness and repented onstage for past racism

3) Sharply define new wedge issue(s) and create a racially-based conspiracy theory that could ultimately be used against the Democratic Party

4) Exploit these emerging wedge issue(s) to the point they become more important than fixing the economy

5) Redefine voting criteria so candidates are primarily judged by where they stand on these wedge issue(s) – with the ultimate goal of leading many African Americans to conclude that they are best represented by the conservative GOP.

Lou Engle understands that much of Michigan is conservative. If he were able to peel off fifteen or twenty percent of Detroit’s black Democratic vote, he might be able to turn the state solidly red. The main wedge issue he selected to accomplish his plan is abortion. For good measure, he helped weave a conspiracy theory: Sinister white bigots who run programs like Planned Parenthood were using abortion to reduce African American birthrates.

“What Birmingham is to the civil rights movement, Detroit is to abortion,” bellowed Engle at the event. “Detroit has a calling…blacks and Latinos could lead the parade of history.”

Engle’s message was aided by a parade of socially conservative African American ministers.  One preached that black people must choose “BC (Biblical Correctness) over PC (Political Correctness).” The subtext was that the pro-life GOP is on the side of the Bible and thus should be the party of African Americans. Another pastor was even more explicit when he declared that African Americans had a choice: “God’s way or a political party’s way.” (Read More)

The Southern Poverty Law Center today updated its list of designated hate groups, and this year is significant in that some of the larger anti-gay outfits have made the cut.  After a litany of ever more extreme statements from people such as Peter Sprigg and Tony Perkins of the FRC, Bryan Fischer of the AFA and Laurie Higgins of the IFI, the SPLC has determined, correctly in our view, that these groups all deserve to be designated as having gone beyond mere advocacy, and into full-blown hatred against the LGBT community.  Especially after the recent spate of gay teen suicides elicited no remorse from any of these institutions, they have indeed earned their place in the halls of hate.

It is notable that Focus on the Family is not on the list.  Though we at Truth Wins Out still stand in solid opposition to Focus’s mission, they have indeed made baby steps in the past year to moderate their message, which is in stark contrast with the growing extremism at FRC and AFA.  Higgins and the IFI have always been awful, of course.  These groups especially deserve recognition for their abject ignorance of facts and reality, choosing as they do to spread anti-gay propaganda at all costs, which indeed suggests that their “work” is inspired by little more than juvenile animus.

The list of anti-gay hate groups now includes the following:

1. Abiding Truth Ministries [Scott Lively]
2. American Family Association
3. Americans for Truth About Homosexuality [Peter LaBarbera]
4. American Vision
5. Chalcedon Foundation
6. Dove World Outreach Center [Terry Jones]
7. Faithful Word Baptist Church [Steven Anderson]
8. Family Research Council
9. Family Research Institute [Paul Cameron]
10. Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment
11. Illinois Family Institute
12. MassResistance
13. Traditional Values Coalition

Read more from the SPLC here.

The majority of the “pro-family” movement is simply anti-gay. They do virtually nothing to assist parents with child rearing or creating marriages that last. The one organization that occasionally seemed to offer some value to Christian parents was Focus on the Family.

However, in recent years, the somewhat constructive work was largely overshadowed by the destructive, aggressively political agenda of the organization’ founder James Dobson. His addiction to bullying leaders in Washington, purification purges of the Republican Party and an obsession with attacking gay and lesbian people branded the organization as mean-spirited and intolerant.

“Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies,” House majority leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) once complained.

Fortunately, Dobson recently left Focus on the Family and has been replaced by Jim Daly (pictured), who pledges to take the organization in a new direction. One of the first things he did was dump the group’ obnoxious “ex-gay” road show Love Won Out. Over the years, it became a fountain of fabrication and a mountain of misinformation on LGBT issues.

Daley claims to hold similar social views to Dobson, but he does not appear to want to shove his religion down peoples’ throats. At least that is the message he is trying to sell us. On the surface, he seems more open to dialogue and not quite as arrogant at his predecessor.

For example, instead of the propaganda-spewing Love Won Out conference, Focus on the Family actually participated in a Colorado Springs panel discussion where dissenting views were allowed. AOL News reports that some panelists were openly gay, while Focus on the Family provided “ex-gay” employee Jeff Johnston, who discussed his “journey out of homosexuality.”

Daly was out of town for the panel, but taped a welcome message. “We’re not always going to agree,” he said on the video, but added, “I’m not here to tell you what to do.”

The fact that Focus on the Family is still pushing the tired and tragic ex-gay myth is dispiriting. But, allowing openly gay people who actually live fulfilling lives to speak is a definite step in the right direction.

More important, Daly seems to be moving away from Dobson’ quest for Christian dominion over government. “The Christian label means a lot to me,” Daly said in the AOL interview. “We don’t want a theocracy. We want a government informed in moral principle.”

While we hold different viewpoints on marriage, Daly, seems to understand, on some level, that allowing gay couples to wed isn’t catastrophic.

“I’m not fearful that change will happen in America. It will happen. … I don’t know what will happen with same-sex marriage, but I’m not going to be discouraged if we lose some of those battles,” he said, noting that for “98 percent” of people, traditional marriage will remain relevant. “It’s going to be difficult in this culture and the way the demographics are going right now,” he continued. “You look at the under-35 age group. I think it’s splitting 60-40 support for same-sex marriage. There’s a lot of people in the U.S. [who] basically come to the conclusion that this is something between two adults. I will continue to defend traditional marriage, but I’m not going to demean human beings for the process.”

Compare this to the doomsday response to marriage equality from Dobson: “Homosexuals are not monogamous,” Dobson told The Daily Oklahoman on Oct. 23, 2004. “They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth.”

Focus on the Family is also striking a different tone on abortion. It ran a controversial feel-good ad during the Super Bowl featuring football star Tim Tebow. Strategically, it seems like a wise move to persuade mothers to “choose” to give birth, rather than have angry zealots browbeating pregnant women in front of abortion clinics. (Of course, Focus on the Family would have more credibility pushing the “choose life” message if it actually weren’t cynically working to overturn Roe v. Wade.)

Additionally, Daly has started a program to reduce the number of legal orphans in foster care by recruiting families to adopt hard-to-place children. His Wait No More program has expanded to five states and has already halved the number of children in foster care in Colorado.

Daly’ cheerful style is particularly welcome at a time when many fundamentalist organizations are losing their marbles. For instance, Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition is running around Capitol Hill demanding that Congress defeat the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) to keep “she-males” from becoming gym teachers.

Eugene Delgaudio the executive director of the anti-gay organization, Public Advocate of the U.S, sent out an insane fundraising letter this week. It warned that “Radical homosexuals will terrorize day care centers, hospitals, churches and private schools…Wedding-gown clad men smooching before some left-wing clergy or state official is just the beginning….You’ll see men hand-in-hand skipping down to adoption centers to “pick out’ a little boy for themselves.”

Still, not everyone is sold on the surface changes at the Colorado Springs-based mega-ministry.

“There is clearly a concerted rebranding effort within FOtF, with the communications team placing a focus on creating a nicer, sweeter, less hostile Focus on the Family,” wrote blogger Jeremy Hooper on his popular Good As You website. “But they seem to want this change in impression without actually creating any change within their own operation… We on the side of LGBT equality buy into the “nicer, softer” myth at our own peril!”

Hooper (pictured) points out that, “This is still the group that, just two weeks ago, declared that an openly gay SCOTUS nominee is automatically a non-starter, regardless of merit and qualifications. This is still the outfit that donates hundreds of thousands whenever gay rights are up for contention at any one of our state’s polls.”

Will Focus on the Family actually start helping real families rather than fixating on gay people? With Daly’ leadership, there is at least hope that the culture war will eventually turn into a civil cultural discussion.

But if this is all spin and no substance his plan will sow distrust and backfire. It won’t take long to know if Daly’ hugs are thinly disguised headlocks. While outspoken homophobes are unpleasant, they are always preferable to insincere hypocrites.

The Traditional Values Coalition’s linking of ENDA to “religious liberty” and children — illogical, disingenuous and disgusting as it is — still resonates with voters and politicians. TVC launched a new campaign in March called “ENDA Hurts Kids”

Here is some background information on the Traditional Values Coalition from ace reporter Karen Ocamb.

When Wayne went to the extremist Awakening conference, Matt Barber and Andrea Lafferty acted as if there was much ado about nothing, since all Wayne had seen was “Christian compassion” overflowing within those walls.

So, in the interest of sharing their “Christian compassion” with a wider audience, let’s watch the aforementioned Andrea Lafferty on CBS, abusing the Human Rights Campaign’s Alyson Robinson, a transgender woman, on the subject of ENDA. Drink every time she says the words “mental disorder” to Alyson’s face.

(h/t Good-As-You)

The new definition of “Christian compassion,” apparently, is “malignant lying spewed by the leader of a Southern Poverty Law Center-certified hate group.”

By the way, nice animal print, Lafferty.

(The Awakening Conference was sponsored by the Freedom Federation and held April 15-16 at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA. Truth Wins Out’s founder Wayne Besen reports live from the event )

If the Religious Right fringe one day establishes a theocracy in America, no one will be able to credibly claim that they did not explicitly broadcast their dubious intentions. Having just spent two days at “The Awakening” conference at the late Rev. Jerry Falwell’ Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, one message was unmistakable: Many key Religious Right figures vehemently reject separation of church and state and believe America is a fundamentalist Christian nation.

“The Bible is the government of the people, by the people and for the people,” thundered Cindy Jacobs of General’ International from the stage. “I believe there is an awakening to do just that.”

What’ frightening is that many leaders on the Religious Right hold a basic belief system that is seemingly incompatible with democratic forms of government. Their central tautological argument is that liberty originated from God and so the only way to be truly free is through a theocratic system that honors the creator of freedom.

Huh? Exactly.

According to this mindset, God has ordained the faithful to be in positions of leadership, rendering any form of government that does not elevate these “chosen ones” or reflect their extreme views as illegitimate.

The Saturday night rally began with a surprising controversy. Lou Engle (pictured), the constantly rocking, intense, mustachioed cleric of The Call with the booming voice of a professional wrestler declared, “We are here to honor all denominations. There will be no tongues tonight.”

This left many in the audience offended, and well, tongue-tied. In a huff, several people stormed out of the main chapel. Sensing a gaffe, Engle soon reappeared on-stage and happily declared, “I apologize, we can speak in tongues!”

At this heavily advertised event, there was no shortage of the paranoid and prejudiced. But, one pleasant surprise was that attacks on LGBT people were on the decline. The crowd was more riled about President Barack Obama’ healthcare plan, which the Family Research Council’ Tony Perkins referred to onstage as “a socialistic time bomb.”

The big news at the conference came from Engle. While sitting in the audience during the “LGBT Agenda” breakout session, he spoke up and conceded that the next generation of evangelical Christians is largely supportive of LGBT rights (but not abortion). Engle said that when he preaches against gay people, the Christian youth often “rage against him.” Engle, a giant in right wing circles, said that the far right has lost on this issue barring a miracle, such as an intercession at a 500,000 strong youth rally. When he floated this idea to the activists on-stage, The Liberty Counsel’ Matt Barber said they should privately discuss such a rally after the forum.

Good luck with that idea, considering the breakout session at Falwell U. drew only 15 people. Virtually everyone in the small crowd was a hardcore anti-gay activist from groups such as Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays (PFOX). Clearly, gay bashing was an issue that was not motivating many young people, as it has been in the past. (Although, it seems Engle’ group, The Call, may already be testing his intercession plan in Uganda) (Read More)

For the past two days I observed The Awakening, a two day extremist conference that took place at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA. In-depth commentary and analysis will be provided later when I return to New York City.

For now, here are a few pictures from the event. Yes, that is me posing with Liberty Counsel’s Matt “Bam Bam” Barber. In the other picture, Matt is with Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition and Rena Lindevaldsen, Esq.

The big news here is that radical cleric Lou Engle of The Call conceded, at a the LGBT Agenda breakout session, that the next generation is largely supportive of LGBT rights. (but not on abortion) He claims that the far right has lost on this issue barring a miracle, such as an intercession at a 500,000 youth rally that Engle floated to the activists on-stage and in the audience. Matt Barber said they should privately discuss such a rally after the forum.

Good luck with that idea, considering the breakout session at the late Jerry Falwell’s university drew only fifteen people – two of whom were observers from progressive organizations. The rest of the crowd were hard core anti-gay activists from groups like PFOX.

Unfortunately, I was “outed” at the session by Lafferty which made me about as comfortable as a fly landing on a porcupine. She asked me if I had any questions. I looked around the room and saw no movable middle in this bunch, so I declined. I preferred to plead the 5th, to ensure I could attend the big rally that was planned for the evening.

Check in later for more observations on the conference and rally.

In a piece protesting the fact that the U.S. Tax Court ruled that a transgender woman may deduct the cost of her sexual reassignment surgery from her taxes, the SPLC-certified hate group Traditional Values Coalition made this unhinged remark:

A person can no more change his sex than he can change his species. A person can’t become a potato or a giraffe. Yet, the gay, lesbian, transgender movement claims that a person can become the opposite sex. This is madness.

First of all, it’s actually the medical community that, in some cases, recommends sexual reassignment surgery for transgender individuals. Many if not most transgender people actually do not have that surgery, but in some cases, on an individual basis, it’s deemed the most appropriate course of action. Last time I checked, the medical community is not a wholly-owned subsidiary of “the gay, lesbian, transgender movement.”

But look, here’s the thing: People can and do turn into potatoes and giraffes. All. The. Time. In fact, the National Association for the Research and Treatment of Humanity (NARTH) clearly states that thousands, if not millions of people every day leave the human lifestyle and live complete, full lives as potatoes, and also as giraffes. Anyone who would tell you differently is simply bigoted against people who sincerely want to change.

Anyway, so my point in posting this is that our friends at Box Turtle Bulletin got their name when the text of a speech by Sen. John Cornyn famously and stupidly compared marriage equality to one’s neighbor marrying a poor, lowly box turtle. He didn’t actually say those words when he delivered the speech, but the meme was out there, and their blog was born.

So, my question is: Who’s going to step up and create the Potato Giraffe Chronicle for transgender people?

(h/t Right Wing Watch)

By Wayne Besen

“What is it about gay sex that makes U.S. health officials want to play Chicken Little with AIDS prevention and public safety?” Tony Valenzuela writes in the latest Poz magazine, where he criticizes, “The clueless tabloid and public health hysteria over man-on-man sex.”

Valenzuela points to “an imaginary “super strain’ of HIV to the sci-fi MRSA superbug.” And, he is correct that it seems the media and society seem to always take on the absurd posture that gay sex is a mysterious ticking time bomb.

It is important to remember that gay bashing is a multi-million dollar industry. There is a vested interest by fundamentalist groups to convince the public that gay people are morally inferior and diseased, thus a threat to children, society and themselves.

The notion that AIDS is a punishment from God is a staple of right wing literature. Instead of focusing on the condemnation of unsafe sexual practices, extremist groups say that the very nature of being gay makes one a candidate for an early death. For example, the so-called “ex-gay” group Exodus International uses the Bible to justify their belief in God’ wrath and fury against homosexuals.

“Those who practice these sins “receive in their own persons the due penalty of their error,’” writes former Exodus Executive Director Bob Davies in “A Biblical Response to the Pro-Gay Movement.’ “In today’ society, homosexuality is reaping a bitter harvest…homosexual involvement reaps deep devastation in the lives of many who practice it.”

The Traditional Values Coalition has published what they call a “fact-based report on the dangers of homosexuals and homosexual behavior to children and to our society.” One “fact sheet” is called, “Homosexual Sex = Death From HIV Infection.”

Focus on the Family offers that, “solid, irrefutable evidence proves that there are lethal consequences to engaging in the defining features of male homosexuality…”

Of course, blaming victims for deadly diseases is nothing new and has ushered in some of the most shameful and horrific acts in world history. In a recent New York Times magazine article, epidemiologist and physician Gary Slutkin (the article was about gang violence, not HIV) spoke of how Chinese Americans were once thought to be inherently prone to disease.

“Chinatown, San Francisco in the 1880′,” Slutkin said. “Three ghosts: malaria, smallpox and leprosy. No one wanted to go there. Everybody blamed the people. Dirty. Bad habits. Something about their race…And people come up with all kinds of other ideas that are not scientifically grounded — like putting people away, closing the place down, pushing people out of town. Sound familiar?”

John Kelly’ book, “The Great Mortality” explains how Jews were blamed for the “Black Death” that wiped out an estimated one-third of fourteenth century Europeans.

“In January 1349, Basel burned its Jews on an island in the Rhine, while hygiene-conscious Speyer, fearing pollution, put its dead Jews in wine barrels and rolled them into the river,” wrote Kelly. “Strasbourg marched its Jews to a local cemetery and burned them…In Worms the local Jewish community, faced with death at the hands of Christian neighbors, locked themselves in their homes and set themselves ablaze.”

What I find bizarre is how the right continues to portray HIV as a gay disease when more than 80 percent of people infected worldwide are heterosexual. If God really wanted to punish the so-called “gay lifestyle” and send a message, wouldn’t He use a smart bomb — like blowing up gay bars on Saturday nights — instead of an indiscriminate shotgun blast that claims the lives of hemophiliacs and babies? The last time God was this inefficient, He placed George W. Bush in the Oval Office to carry out his will.

For reasons of political convenience and conservative correctness, anti-gay groups pick and choose who gets blame. In Washington, DC, black residents account for 81% of new reports of HIV infection and 86% of people with AIDS, though the city’ population is only 57% African-American. Based on anti-gay “logic,” this would mean that the “black lifestyle” is dangerous and should be condemned. Interestingly, they only focus on homosexuality and ignore other demographics and the largely hetero International AIDS epidemic because the inconvenient facts don’t mesh well with the right’ anti-gay storyline.

Gay people were around for thousands of years before AIDS and will still inhabit this planet long after the disease subsides or is eradicated. In the grand scheme of the universe, HIV does not define homosexuality any more than past syphilis or gonorrhea outbreaks in Europe defined heterosexuality.

Illnesses, like natural disasters, are not God’ wrath, but ordinary phenomena that affect different populations at any given time. History, however, teaches us that the most enduring disease is divisiveness in the name of the Divine, that predictably rears its ugly head at the very moments when healing is needed instead of hatred.