Special Thanks to the American "Family" Association's One Million (acuallty 40,000) Anti-Gay Moms ... Seriously

by Scott Wooledge for the Huffington Post:

The LGBT community owes a great big thanks to the "One Million Moms" (actually, closer to 40,000) for launching the best LGBT-friendly public relations blitz the community has seen in ages, and battering Christian conservative's image in a way the LGBT community could never hope to do.

Not since Rick Perry's "Strong" has an anti-gay campaign played out so poorly for the instigator and so well for the target. This tiny subgroup of the hate group the American Family Association (which has a particularly ugly and viciously anti-gay state affiliate in Venango County, Pa.) recently declared war on arguably America's most popular and likable lesbian, Ellen DeGeneres. The group, reacting to the news that DeGeneres would serve as a new spokesperson for JCPenney department stores, sent out this alarm to "family values" conservatives nationwide:

DeGeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store. The majority of JC Penney shoppers will be offended and choose to no longer shop there. The small percentage of customers they are attempting to satisfy will not offset their loss in sales.

JC Penney has made a poor decision and must correct their mistake fast to retain loyal customers and not turn away potential new, conservative shoppers with the company's new vision.

...

By jumping on the pro-gay bandwagon, JC Penney is attempting to gain a new target market and in the process will lose customers with traditional values that have been faithful to them over all these years.

The irony is rich in another part of their release: "Unless JC Penney decides to be neutral in the culture war then their brand transformation will be unsuccessful." JCPenney can only demonstrate their "neutrality" by firing Ellen for being gay? If that's neutral, what's gay-hostile?

In this move the One Million 40,000 Moms have demonstrated that these days, the term "traditional values," as defined by the religious right, is really just code for capricious, indiscriminate cruelty, bigotry, divisiveness, and cowardice. And America saw it as exactly that.

Now, one doesn't get named to the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups without constantly taking cheap and ugly shots at someone or something. And this latest poutage over yet another sign of the impending apocalypse (lesbians shilling t-shirts for a family department store!) could have gone mostly unnoticed by mainstream culture, as have their wars on Walgreens and Macy's.

But it it was the absolute absurdity of casting the innocuous, likable, almost painfully inoffensive DeGeneres as some sort of radical warrior in the deviant homosexuals' nefarious plan to destroy all things wholesome and American that really made America stop, take notice for just a moment and say, "WTF are these crazy people talking about?! Ellen? They hate Ellen? Really?! Ellen?!"

Now, admittedly, the One Million 40,000 Moms got a little help from GLAAD, who swiftly launched a "Stand Up for Ellen" campaign. This likely drew more attention to the story than the moms could have ever have hoped to draw themselves.

Though GLAAD's ostensible call to action was to persuade JCPenney not to fire Ellen, there may have been an ulterior motive. It's entirely possible that the crew at GLAAD didn't seriously worry about Ellen's continued employment with JCPenney. Ellen would be fine either way: she's rich, she's famous. But GLAAD's messaging picked up on the fact that what the moms were calling for, firing someone for being LGBT, is perfectly legal in most of the United States for those of us who aren't rich and famous already (despite polls showing 90 percent of Americans believe it is illegal). It was a "teachable moment" for America.

We certainly can thank the One Million 40,000 Moms for cooking up a scheme that had enormous amounts of Fail baked right into it from the start. I'm sure JCPenney knew Ellen was a lesbian when they hired her; it isn't a state secret. It's probably a safe bet they actually thought that through before they inked the deal.

Ellen's LGBT activism, like her humor, has always come with soft edges. It's hard to imagine in 2012 what a brave act it was for her to come out in 1997, when she was the star of a major network sitcom. But she was executing the simple act of activism that Harvey Milk tasked LGBT people to do two decades before: "come out." She told Diane Sawyer at the time, "For me, this has been the most freeing experience, because people can't hurt me anymore." And it was that act, by her -- and millions of others -- that inoculated her from this attack. There was a time no major sponsor would touch a gay star. But those days are long gone.

There never was any doubt that JCPenney would brush off the One Million 40,000 Moms. When JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson spoke to CBS News, he called it a "no-brainer" and dismissed that there was even a controversy to be debated. The Moms couldn't have looked smaller or more irrelevant when Johnson said, "[W]e stand squarely behind Ellen as our spokesperson, and that's a great thing. Because she shares the same values that we do in our company. Our company was founded 110 years ago on The Golden Rule, which is about treating people fair and square, just like you would like to be treated yourself."



We can also thank the One Million 40,000 Moms for not being as bright as the average high school bully. Even teenage high school bullies know that if you're going to pick on someone, pick on someone no one likes (because you'll get away with it a lot longer). And America wasn't going to let the One Million 40,000 Moms get away with this.

That is another immense level of Fail the One Million 40,000 Moms really should have seen coming. Just last year the New York Times reported that it isn't just the LGBT community that likes Ellen; America likes her. A lot. A whole lot. The Times described how Warner Brothers and NBC, in mapping out the future of daytime TV in 2010, conducted research into Ellen's market popularity. They knew they had a winner in Ellen, but still, her popularity as measured by a media research firm "startled" them: "The 52-year-old Ms. DeGeneres is seen as relaxed and relatable. Already, she is seen as more likable than Ms. Winfrey, according to the Q Scores Company, which measures consumer preferences." Moreover:

"When the Magid panelists were surveyed about their attitudes toward daytime hosts, Ms. DeGeneres was in a virtual tie with Ms. Winfrey, even though there is a ratings lag, according to Steve Ridge, president of the media strategy group for Magid.

"Ellen already has equity with daytime viewers, which is worth its weight in gold," he said.

Oh, one suspects the folks over at GLAAD might not have worried as much about Ellen's future with JCPenney as about seizing an opportunity to demonstrate to America just how very much the far right Christian conservative base really does hate gay people: "Look, America, you can be Ellen DeGeneres, the queen of nice comedy, and they still hate you and want you to be fired."

And in short while, the LGBT community rushed to Ellen's defense, but not just them. And we can thank the One Million 40,000 Moms for rallying people left, right, and center to the cause of defending Ellen and condemning this sort of divisive, hateful rhetoric.

Very popular radio host Howard Stern described himself as "outraged" at the One Million 40,000 Moms' action and threatened to organize a boycott of JCPenney if they caved. In a 12-minute rant he asked, "What do you want these [gay] people to do? Do you really want Ellen to go away? Do you want her to die? You want a public flogging of this woman?" Co-host Robin Quivers added, "You want her to force herself to be with a man to make you happy?" (That would be yes, yes, yes, and yes, please.)



Not ordinarily known for sensitivity, Stern and Quivers discuss at great length the plight of LGBT teens suffering at the hands of bullies. They mention Tyler Clementi and other teens driven to suicide, and lay the blame on groups like the Moms. Stern takes no prisoners, saying the president should just come out for marriage equality. And then in Stern's typically bombastic style, he goes full-on Godwin on the country's most notorious homophobes:

This Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum, they're the two worst people on the planet. They get up wherever they can, they still feel comfortable getting up in front of an audience in 2012, and fuckin' saying shit about gays, about how they shouldn't be getting married, they feel no qualm about putting out this kind of bigotry. Now, Hitler put this kind of shit out pre-World War II in Germany in beer halls, if the entire beer hall had gotten up and beaten they shit out of Hitler and kicked him in the face, you wouldn't have had World War II, and you wouldn't have had any problems.

He goes on to say they should be "drummed out of the country," "spat upon," and "ignored, shunned, and treated as lunatics."

This language is unlikely to be adopted by any LGBT rights groups, like Human Rights Campaign, anytime soon -- and for good reason. But we can thank the One Million 40,000 Moms for prompting our straight ally Howard Stern for saying what responsible LGBT activists would not.

From the right, we can thank the One Million 40,000 Moms for recruiting the most unlikely of LGBT allies to come to DeGeneres' defense: Bill O'Reilly of Fox News. Bill's segment begins with a snarky introduction that draws America's attention to the inherent cowardice of the anti-gay movement, their reluctance to come out of the closet with their hate: "Now we tried to get one of the One Million Moms to come on the Factor tonight. But we could not. Apparently, all the million moms are busy tonight." Their cowardice was also reflected in their decision to delete their Facebook posting when the story became widely known. The group has made no media appearances to defend themselves or their actions.

O'Reilly chats instead with Fox News contributor Sandy Rios, who attempts to defend the One Million 40,000 Moms. But Bill-O isn't really having it; it's a very combative session, and Rios comes out looking pretty bad. Perhaps it's a libertarian streak in him, but his objections are placed in the Republican frame of free-market captialism; he essentially argues that JCPenney has the right to hire whoever they want, and the One Million 40,000 Moms are conducting a "witch hunt," and worse, "McCarthyism." He asks, "What is the difference between the McCarthy era of the '50s and the One Million Moms saying, 'Hey, JCPenney and all you other stores, don't you hire any gay people. Don't you dare'? What is the difference?" One Million 40,000 Moms? Something went really wrong with your plan when you prompted Fox News' highest-rated commentator to stick up for a lesbian and compare you to one of the most notorious names in American history, Senator Joe McCarthy.



Again, better O'Reilly should call these anti-gay bigots "McCartheyesque witch hunters" than the LGBT community. And we can thank the One Million 40,000 Moms for prompting him to do so. Surely a few Fox News viewers' heads exploded that evening.

The LGBT community themselves could never have planned an action that would prompt personalities as disparate as Howard Stern, Bill O'Reilly, Ron Johnson, and all the other voices, big and small, to chime in and express disgust and outrage at anti-gay bigotry and condemn yet another overreach of the religious right.

We can thank the One Million 40K Moms for that.

For too long the Christian right has presumed to speak on behalf of people who have "values." And for too long, too many people took them at their word that they represented "good Christian values." We can thank the One Million 40,000 Moms for tearing off the mask off that façade before a very wide audience.

Under the guise of "religious freedom," they assert their right to say God hates gays. However, in the case of Ellen, God seems to be smiling on her. She has a loving and lovely wife, extraordinary talent, a long, very distinguished career, and great wealth, and she has endeared herself to millions. So, since God has, thus far, failed to act on his scorn for Ellen, the One Million 40,000 Moms have taken it upon themselves to act on his behalf. They want to be sure God's punishment is meted out in this lifetime, where they can watch.

We can thank the One Million 40,000 Moms for kickstarting another round of conversation about what our "values" are. Ellen has long demonstrated in her career that "meanness" is not among hers. In an era that has increasingly rewarded comedians that belittle, degrade, and ridicule, Ellen never went there. Her brand is as a "nice" comedian, someone who makes you laugh but never at the expense of others. If Ellen takes a shot at anyone, it is at herself, a humble, self-effacing teasing that says, despite her fortune and fame, "I'm really not special."

Which makes her the perfect foil for that cabal of Americans who really do think they are special. The One Million 40,000 Moms think they are the ones who get to decide the best values for JCPenney, the country, and everyone.

Ellen herself eventually spoke on the controversy, and she got the opportunity to address the One Million 40,000 Mom's condemnation of her "values." She said, "Here are the values I stand for: I stand for honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you'd want to be treated, and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values. That's what I stand for." The studio audience cheered uproariously in agreement. They know she not only speaks but lives those values, like the time, just the previous week, when her show arranged a $100,000 donation to a struggling Pennsylvania school.



It's certainly presumptuous to say anyone "speaks for the LGBT community." But in that moment, I think it's safe to say that Ellen spoke very well for the LGBT community, and she made us, and every kind-hearted American, proud.

And the One Million 40,000 Moms? We can thank them for creating a national jump-the-shark moment for the protectors of "traditional values."

LGBTI Rights: The Rhetoric and The Reality

In right-wing America, dominated by hate groups that pump out demonizing propaganda, like the Venango County-based American Family Association of Pennsylvania, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are an enemy to be feared, criminalized, exterminated.

The reality, however, is quite different, as summed up in this description of the Open Society Institute's LGBTI Rights Initiative:

Throughout the world lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people are the target of human rights violations. They are killed, tortured, raped, and sexually assaulted simply because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. More than 80 countries consider consensual, adult homosexual relationships criminal behavior. Penalties include lengthy jail sentences, torture, and forced psychiatric treatment. In at least seven countries, individuals can be executed for homosexual conduct.


Even in countries that do not criminalize homosexual conduct, hate violence remains prevalent. Other serious human rights violations against LGBTI people include invasions of privacy; arbitrary detention; and discrimination in employment, family rights, housing, education, and health care. Additionally, when LGBTI people try to organize to assert recognition of their basic human rights, their rights to freedom of expression and assembly are frequently denied, and they often face both government and nonstate violence and harassment.

Despite these challenges and the pervasive discrimination that exists, more and more LGBTI people are engaging in a vibrant and growing global social movement to advance their rights. However, while these rights groups now exist in every region of the world, they continue to face major obstacles including social stigma, lack of recognition by broader civil society communities, and limited resources.

The Open Society Foundations seek to empower LGBTI communities to promote and defend their human rights. The LGBTI Rights Initiative will provide funding to local rights groups and regional networks in the developing world. It will also support global advocacy initiatives that advance LGBTI rights and complement efforts at the local level.

Religious Zealotry Deadly for Gays

Is this a preview of what extremists at hate groups like the Venango County-based American Family Association of Pennsylvania want to see in the U.S.?

Gay "Honor Killing" Movie Shakes Turkey Up

from Reuters:

ISTANBUL - On a hot summer's day in 2008, 26-year-old physics student Ahmet Yildiz was shot dead when he popped out from his Istanbul apartment to buy ice cream.

The main suspect in the killing, a fugitive still wanted by Turkish police, is Yildiz's father, who could not accept that his only son was in a homosexual relationship.

The case, widely believed to be Turkey's first gay "honor killing", has inspired a movie "Zenne", which opened on January 13 and explores gay sexual identity and prejudice in overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey.

"We had the movie idea in mind right after our dear friend Ahmet was killed," said Caner Alper, writer and co-director of the movie. "His story needed to be told."

Yildiz was born into a wealthy religious family in the ancient city of Sanliurfa, in Turkey's impoverished and conservative southeast, but moved to cosmopolitan Istanbul during his university years, seeking more freedom as a gay man.

In Istanbul, Yildiz started a new life and made new friends; he also began a gay relationship and eventually moved in with his boyfriend, who witnessed Yildiz's murder from the window of their apartment on the Asian side of the city divided by the Bosphorus Strait.

In the movie, Yildiz's character is encouraged to come out of the closet by a male belly dancer, or zenne, and a German photographer who has moved to Istanbul after a personal crisis in Afghanistan, where he accidentally caused the death of several children during a photo shoot. Both are fictional characters.

In real life, Yildiz's coming out as a gay man was seen as an affront in his deeply patriarchal and tribal family, even though his parents adored him, a cousin, Ahmet Kaya, told the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey.

LOOKING FOR A "CURE"

Yildiz's father had urged him to return to their village and to see a doctor and an imam to "cure" him of his homosexuality and get married, but Yildiz refused.

"Ahmet loved his family more than anything else and he was tortured about disappointing them," Kaya was quoted as saying in the foundation's report.

After he was killed, the family did not claim Yildiz's body for a proper Islamic burial -- an indication of the deep shame the family felt and that they had ceased to consider him one of their own. He was buried instead in a "cemetery for the nameless."

"The one scene I wasn't able to distance myself from the character I played as an actor was when Ahmet apologized to his father for being gay on the phone after coming out," Erkan Avci, a young actor who played Yildiz, told Reuters.

"It's such a great tragedy, so cruel and inhumane that anybody has to apologize for who he is."
Avci drew parallels between Ahmet's situation and his own as a Kurd from Diyarbakir province in a country whose Kurdish minority has long complained of discrimination and inequality.

"It would have been immoral for me to turn down this role, as a man who had to apologize for years for being Kurdish," he said.

"Zenne", which won five awards at Turkey's most prestigious film festival, the Antalya Golden Orange, has received a huge amount of attention in mainstream media and is reported to be having reasonable success at the box office.

With a $1 million budget, including financial support from the Dutch embassy, it opened in a luxury movie theatre in one of Istanbul's most fashionable neighborhoods.

Gays are normally depicted in Turkish movies as colorful and exaggerated secondary characters who add a comic element - hardly the main character of a story.

"Zenne" tackles head-on such sensitive issues as gay society, prejudice and equal rights for Turkey's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

"'Zenne' is a very special film for us. It brings to the screen some of the important issues for the LGBT cause such as hate crimes, the complications for gay men to forego the mandatory military service and coming out," said Umut Guner, spokesman for the Ankara-based Kaos GL, a LGBT group.

PREJUDICE

The film has not been welcomed in conservative circles.

Islamist daily Vakit called it "homosexual propaganda" by a gay lobby bent on "legitimizing perversion through their so-called art."

Despite being the only suspect, Yildiz's father is still at large and is being tried in absentia.

Friends and activists, who have attended some of the hearings wearing masks bearing Yildiz's portrait, say the authorities lack the will to find the perpetrator.

Alper and Mehmet Binay, co-directors of the movie and together as a gay couple for 14 years, said they heard their friend Yildiz receive death threats from his family over the phone.

Yildiz filed an official complaint but failed to receive any protection, they said.

"Honor killings," or crimes carried out against mostly women and young girls seen to have tainted the family's name, are not uncommon in Turkey, particularly in poor and rural areas.

The European Union, which Turkey wants to join, has repeatedly urged Ankara to take a tougher stance against such crimes.

MILITARY PRACTICES

Turkey is often held as an example in the Middle East for marrying Islam and democracy, but Turkish gay activists say Ankara's human rights record is far from perfect.

One practice particularly abhorred by rights groups is the method by which gay men can be exempted from the required 16-month military service: they have to prove their homosexuality in medical tests and are compelled to provide photos of them having sex with other men.

In the movie, two characters undergoing one such examination are forced to wear make-up and dress in women's clothes, while doctors perform anal examinations.

According to Article 17 of the health regulations of the Turkish Armed Forces, homosexuality is considered a "psychosexual deviance."

"Turkey is going through a democratization process, and the army needs to enter this phase, too," said Binay.

"We don't live in a dream world and we don't expect it to happen all of a sudden in such a deep-seated institution, but at least they could stop the humiliating practices against gay men."

Turkish rights groups reported 24 killings of gay and transsexual individuals in the last two years. In most cases, courts reduced the sentences or the perpetrators were not found.

In a report last year, Amnesty International urged Ankara to draw up laws preventing discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and to punish perpetrators of homophobic attacks.

The EU in a separate report also last year said lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons in Turkey "continued to suffer discrimination, intimidation and violent crimes".

LGBT activists say they get little sympathy from the AK Party, in power for a decade, which has its roots in political Islam and is known for its socially conservative stance.

Selma Aliye Kavaf, Turkey's former Women and Family Affairs Minister, made waves in 2010 when she said homosexuality was "a biological disorder, a disease that needs to be treated".

The current interior minister accused an outlawed armed organization with "engaging in every kind of immorality, including homosexuality".

Director Binay said he hoped the movie would help to change views both among government officials and the wider society, but believed that would not happen overnight.

"These movies will be made in Turkey as long as those from different identities refuse to learn to live together."

Home Depot Tells Anti-Gay Hate Group AFA What They Can Do With Their Petition

from LGBTQ Nation:

Executives at The Home Depot gave a cool reception to representatives of the anti-gay hate group American Family Association at the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting in Atlanta this week.


The AFA recently called for a nationwide boycott against The Home Depot because it says the home improvement retailer continues to “promote the homosexual agenda.”

AFA Executive Vice-President Buddy Smith, and Director of Special Projects Randy Sharp, said they were rebuffed by Home Depot Chairman Frank Blake and other company executives for challenging their “corporate endorsement” of marriage equality and LGBT rights.


“We presented to the shareholders and to the chairman and the board of directors over 470,000 signature petitions asking them to remain neutral in the culture war, specifically when it addresses gay marriage and homosexual activist groups,” Sharp tells OneNewsNow.

The reception was cool, adds the AFA spokesman. Blake thanked AFA for the petitions but again, as in the past, reiterated the company’s support for “diversity,” which includes same-gender “marriage.”

Atlanta-based Home Depot promotes diversity-oriented organizations, including “Out and Equal Workplace Advocates,” an LGBT advocacy group that supports workplace diversity, marriage equality, and activities such as Transgender Remembrance Day. The Home Depot is also a supporter of the Human Rights Campaign.

“For several years, The Home Depot has given its financial and corporate support to open displays of homosexual activism on main streets in America’s towns,” said the AFA, in a statement. “The Home Depot has chosen to sponsor and participate in numerous gay pride parades and festivals. Most grievous is The Home Depot’s deliberately exposing small children to lascivious displays of sexual conduct by homosexuals and cross-dressers, which are a common occurrence at these events.”

The AFA has been designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Most recently, Bryan Fischer, the AFA’s director of analysis for government and policy, has referred to gays as Nazi’s, and also called gays the “#1 perpetrators of hate crimes in America.”

Call for LGBT Rights & Equality in Hate Group's Home Town

Tupelo Coalition Announces Day of Events for Gay Rights & Equality

GIVE HATE A HOLIDAY
Tupelo, Mississippi – October 10, 2011

Tupelo, MS – A very special series of events will take place in Tupelo on Monday, October 10, to help raise public awareness about the lives and concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Mississippi and throughout the South and to help build support for ongoing local, state, and regional efforts to make our communities more just, inclusive, humane, and safe for LGBT and all people who call them home.

In line with recent high profile public debates about bullying and youth suicides, safe schools, family equality, military service, racial intolerance and other civil and human rights concerns, there will be an emphasis on the perspectives and needs of LGBT youth, as well as efforts to help bridge the gaps that have divided families, friends, churches and communities on these issues for far too long.


Tupelo holds special significance as the setting for these events as headquarters for the American Family Association (AFA), a national organization recently designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center for the “thoroughly discredited falsehoods and demonizing propaganda it pumps out about homosexuality and other sexual minorities.” (Venango County is home to the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Family Association.)

The Give Hate A Holiday events will begin with an 11:00 AM press conference at Tupelo's Link Centre, featuring coalition representatives, to offer statements and answer questions about its purpose and goals. Mark Potok, Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project will also unveil a highly anticipated new Intelligence Report on Bryan Fischer, the AFA's prominent, and controversial, spokesperson. Additionally, Southern Clergy for Inclusion will release “A Southern Proclamation” in which they proclaim God’s love for all, including LGBT persons and publicly apologize where they have been silent.


The public events start at 12:00 Noon with a peaceful and colorful public gathering outside the Link Centre where participants are invited to demonstrate, with signs, chants and other creative forms of public witness, their commitment to the struggle for inclusion, fairness and equality and to call out to others to join the movement and take a stand in their community.

At 2:00 PM, in the Link Centre Concert Hall, there will be a Free Public Screening of OUT IN THE SILENCE, the acclaimed, hopeful and entertaining documentary film about courageous local residents confronting homophobia and the limitations of religion, tradition and the status quo in their conservative small town, followed by a dynamic Town Hall-style Public Forum aimed at engaging the audience in an action-oriented dialogue about inclusion, fairness, and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and all people in Mississippi, throughout the South, and across the country. Filmmakers Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer will be on-hand to help lead the discussion, and the public is invited to participate and to share their perspectives and ideas for promoting positive change with the audience. (There will be a Repeat Film Screening and Town Hall Forum at 7:00 PM for those unable to attend the afternoon showing.)

Following the film screening and town-hall forum, participants are invited to continue the conversation in the Link Centre's Reception Hall and to visit with representatives of local groups and organizations to learn about their work and about how to get more involved and take action. (Groups or organization that would like to set-up an information table should contact Melanie Deas at: mdeas@link-centre.org)

Co-sponsors of the Give Hate a Holiday event include: Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Tupelo -- Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Oxford -- All Saints' Episcopal Church of Tupelo -- PFLAG Tupelo -- PFLAG Oxford/North Mississippi -- Gulf Region PFLAG -- University of Mississippi Gay-Straight Alliance -- OUTlaw at The University of Mississippi -- Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights – ACLU of Mississippi – Unitarian Universalist Mid South District -- Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations "Standing on the Side of Love" Campaign – Believe Out Loud – Americans United for Separation of Church and State -- Tennessee Equality Project -- Georgia Equality -- Equality Federation -- Out Now Youth (Springfield, MA) -- GetEQUAL.

The Nature of Hate

Venango County is home to a notoriously anti-gay hate group known as the American Family Association of Pennsylvania.

This important new film from In The Life media looks at hate-speech spewed from such organizations and whether, in a nation lacking legal protections for LGBT people, it motivates violence against the LGBT community.

"Round Up All Gays"

In a new burst of African homophobia, a government minister in Ghana has drawn support after calling on the country's intelligence services to track down and arrest all gays and lesbians.


Does such brazen evil foreshadow the "Christian" nation that many right-wing extremist groups, such as the Venango County-based American Family Association of Pennsylvania, in the U.S. are fighting to create?

from The Pretoria News:

In a new burst of African homophobia, a government minister in Ghana has drawn support after calling on the country's intelligence services to track down and arrest all gays and lesbians.

The call from Paul Evans Aidoo, the minister for the Western Region of Ghana, marks the latest in a series of expressions of officially condoned homophobia across the continent, which has previously been seen in Malawi, Uganda and South Africa.

Joy FM, a popular radio station in the capital Accra, reported earlier this week that Aidoo, a Catholic, said: “All efforts are being made to get rid of these people in society.” He called for the Bureau of National Investigations to round up gays and called on landlords and tenants to inform on people they suspect of being homosexual. “Once they have been arrested, they will be brought before the law,” he is reported to have said.

The comments from the National Democratic Congress politician come in the feverish run-up to the 2012 elections in the West African country.

There has been controversy over the meaning of a clause in the criminal code of Ghana's 1992 constitution which condemns “unnatural carnal knowledge”.

The constitution guarantees human rights “regardless of race, place of origin, political opinion, colour, religion, creed or gender”, but does not mention sexuality.

The move by Aidoo has drawn support from other politicians, including the general secretary of the People's National Convention (PNC) who told Radio Gold on Tuesday: “Homosexuality is abhorrent. Media discourse across the world is being dictated by the vulgar opinions of homosexuals. Ghana and probably Africa cannot sustain the menace of homosexuals.”

The lifestyle of gay, lesbian, bisexuals and transgender people are listed as criminal in 38 African countries, according to South African campaigners.


Last year, the launch of a parliamentary bill in Uganda proposing the death penalty for same-sex encounters sparked a campaign of “outing” of a dozen lesbians and gay men by a Kampala newspaper.

One of those named, gay rights activist David Kato, was beaten to death with a hammer in January. The law is still under discussion in Uganda but after intense international pressure, MPs supporting it now say imprisonment rather than the death penalty would be appropriate.

In Malawi, two men who staged a partnership ceremony in December 2009 were jailed for 14 years. They were pardoned in April 2010 after pressure from European and American aid donors.

The prime ministers of Zimbabwe and Kenya, where new constitutions are under debate, have in the past year denounced homosexuality.

South Africa, whose constitution recognises same-sex partnerships and condemns discrimination, has an uneasy relationship with homosexuality: township practice of “corrective” gang rape of lesbians seems on the increase. The current Mr Gay World is a South African, Charl van den Berg, and the country is hosting the contest next year. - The Independent

Four Minutes of Hate: The Naked Bigotry of the American Family Association

Venango County Is Home
To The American Family Association of Pennsylvania

Why it matters:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

America's Vulnerability to 'Religious' Demagogues

Writing a Faslified American History,
from The Bilerico Project:

The New York Times did a piece the other day on David Barton, a Christian dominionist who writes fictional versions of the history of the United States to support the efforts of Christianists to dupe the masses and impose a Christianist theocracy in place of the nation's current constitutional government. Barton displays utter contempt for real history and would be a laughable figure but for the fact that fools and demagogues of the far right - including many in today's round up of Republican candidates - either quote Barton or rely on him as if he were a legitimate historian. (This list of fools and demagogues also includes Venango County-based hate group, American Family Association of Pennsylvania.)

Truth be told, Barton has about as much legitimacy as a historian as Sarah Palin has as a serious intellectual. Chris Rodda, a Senior Research Director at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and author of Liars For Jesus is beside herself that anyone takes Barton as anything more than a serious whack job and has a post venting on the Huffington Post.

The whole situation underscores America's vulnerability to demagogues due to the fact that so many Americans know nothing of real history - a subject relegated time and time again to a low status in our public schools. First, here are highlights from the New York Times story:

Mr. Barton is a self-taught historian who is described by several conservative presidential aspirants as a valued adviser and a source of historical and biblical justification for their policies. He is so popular that evangelical pastors travel across states to hear his rapid-fire presentations on how the United States was founded as a Christian nation and is on the road to ruin, thanks to secularists and the Supreme Court, or on the lost political power of the clergy.

Many historians call his research flawed, but Mr. Barton's influence appears to be greater than ever. Liberal organizations are raising the alarm over what they say are Mr. Barton's dangerous distortions, including his claim that the nation's founders never intended a high wall between church and state.

"I've met with several of the potential candidates this time, always at their call," Mr. Barton said of the Republican presidential hopefuls. They usually seek specific advice, he said: whom to hire or contact in a particular state, how best to phrase a sensitive point... Among the possible Republican presidential candidates who seek his advice are Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich and Representative Michele Bachmann.


[M]any professional historians dismiss Mr. Barton, whose academic degree is in Christian education from Oral Roberts University, as a biased amateur who cherry-picks quotes from history and the Bible. "The problem with David Barton is that there's a lot of truth in what he says," said Derek H. Davis, director of church-state studies at Baylor University, a Baptist institution in Waco, Tex. "But the end product is a lot of distortions, half-truths and twisted history."

Groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State have long challenged Mr. Barton's conclusions. Now, his critics are ratcheting up their alarms. The liberal group People For the American Way recently devoted a report to Mr. Barton, warning about his "growing visibility and influence with members of Congress and other Republican Party officials."

Chris Rodda isn't as kind as the Times and calls out Barton for what he is: a liar. I would add, a deliberate liar. Barton and those like him pose a clear and present danger to the U.S. Constitution and freedom of religion as envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Here's a part of her take on Barton from Huffington Post:

After nine years of battling Barton's lies, the first three or four of which were spent writing my book, Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History, I'm at a point of utter frustration as I watch this Christian nationalist liar get more and more influential. Jon Stewart's interview was the tipping point. If Jon couldn't nail this shameless and obvious history revisionist to the wall, I don't know who can.

A lie can be told in a few words. Debunking that lie can take pages. That is why my book (which is only the first volume of what will be a three volume series) is five hundred pages long. Nobody is going to be able to adequately prove to any audience that Barton's lies are lies in an interview like Jon Stewart did last night, and David Barton is never going to agree to debate anyone that he knows can defeat him.

If you haven't seen it already, please watch the Daily Show interview, particularly the online extended interview. Then watch the videos on my website: Liars For Jesus. I'll be outside on this beautiful spring day playing with my dog, knowing that I've now done everything I possibly can to fight the scourge of David Barton.

Barton is indeed a prime example of professional Christians in my view being synonymous with the term pathological liars. As for the sheeple who believe such bullshit, Bob Felton has a good description at Civil Commotion:

Barton won't be influenced, of course, and neither will the morons who want to believe his lies. After years of watching these clowns up close, I'm convinced that there is an intellectual dysfunction at work, not quite a fide mental illness but something very close. They need their fictions, the way an addict needs his crack; they cannot face the world without them.

Venango County-based "American Family Association of Pennsylvania" Designated as Official "Hate Group" by Prominent Watch Dog Organization

The American Family Association Put On List Of
18 Anti-Gay Hate Groups and Their Propaganda

The Southern Poverty Law Center monitors hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States and exposes their activities to law enforcement agencies, the media and the public. We publish our investigative findings online and in the Intelligence Report, our award-winning quarterly journal. We’ve crippled some of the country’s most notorious hate groups by suing them for murders and other violent acts committed by their members.

Currently, there are 1,002 known hate groups operating across the country, including neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, border vigilantes and others.

And their numbers are growing.

Excerpted from the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report:


Even as some well-known anti-gay groups like Focus on the Family moderate their views, a hard core of smaller groups, most of them religiously motivated, have continued to pump out demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities. These groups’ influence reaches far beyond what their size would suggest, because the “facts” they disseminate about homosexuality are often amplified by certain politicians, other groups and even news organizations. Of the 18 groups profiled below, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) will be listing 13 next year as hate groups (eight were previously listed), reflecting further research into their views; those are each marked with an asterisk. Generally, the SPLC’s listings of these groups is based on their propagation of known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling. Viewing homosexuality as unbiblical does not qualify organizations for listing as hate groups.

*American Family Association

Methodist minister Donald E. Wildmon formed the National Federation for Decency in 1977, changing its name to the American Family Association (AFA) in 1988. Today, the group, which was taken over by Tim Wildmon after his father’s 2010 retirement, claims a remarkable 2 million online supporters and 180,000 subscribers to its AFA Journal. It also broadcasts over nearly 200 radio stations.

The AFA seeks to support “traditional moral values,” but in recent years it has seemed to specialize in “combating the homosexual agenda.” In 2009, it hired Bryan Fischer, the former executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, as its director of analysis for government and policy. Taking a page from the anti-gay fabulist Scott Lively (see Abiding Truth Ministries, above), Fischer claimed in a blog post last May 27 that “[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.” (Ironically, the elder Wildmon was widely denounced as an anti-Semite after suggesting that Jews control the media, which the AFA says “shows a genuine hostility towards Christians.”) Fischer has described Hitler as “an active homosexual” who sought out gays “because he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough.” He proposed criminalizing homosexual behavior in another 2010 blog post and has advocated forcing gays into “reparative” therapy. In a 2010 “action alert,” the AFA warned that if homosexuals are allowed to openly serve in the military, “your son or daughter may be forced to share military showers and barracks with active and open homosexuals.”

Gays aren’t the AFA’s only enemies. In late 2009, Fischer suggested that all Muslims should be banned from joining the U.S. military. “Islam is a totalitarian political ideology,” Fischer added in August 2010. “It is as racist as the KKK. ... Allowing a mosque to be built in town is fundamentally no different that granting a building permit to a KKK cultural center built in honor of some King Kleagle.” A little later, according to the Huffington Post, Fischer said that whatever the government does to "to make it unthinkable for America's youth to join a white supremacist group," it should also do "to make it as unthinkable for a resident of America to embrace Islam." Around the same time, the Huffington Post said, he blogged that Muslim values are "grossly incompatible with American values," and therefore no place in America should allow a mosque to be built.

And then there are the promiscuous. On his May 26, 2010, radio show, Fischer recounted the biblical story of Phineas, who used a spear to kill a man and a woman who were having sex. Citing the nation’s “rampant sexual immorality,” Fischer said, “God is obviously looking for more Phineases in our day.”

The American Family Association of Pennsylvania is the state
affiliate of the Tupelo, MS-based American Family Association

The AFAofPA is based in Franklin, PA, the Seat of Venango County -
It states its mission as follows:

1.) To make a positive difference in our community by standing up for traditional Judeo-Christian values.

2.) To encourage the faith community to break the silence on controversial issues and be a voice for pro-family values.

3.) To provide leadership in defending the Biblical ethic of decency.

4.) To educate the public on the negative effects of pornography and violence in the media.

5.) To do what we can to encourage, promote and defend families.

6.) To protect children from those who would seek to commercialize or propagandize them.

To accomplish its goals it, well, see the above description of the organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Diane Gramley
President of the American "Family" Association of Pennsylvania

Bigots & Bullies: The Unholy Alliance of Newt Gingrich & the American "Family" Association

Newt Gingrich Secretly Funneled $350,000 To Anti-Gay Hate Groups Last Year

from Think Progress:


Last year, former Speaker Newt Gingrich offered his vocal support for the ultimately successful campaign to oust three of the nine Iowa Supreme Court justices who had unanimously ruled in favor of marriage equality. As Gingrich courts social conservatives while exploring a possible presidential bid, new disclosures from his camp indicate that he and his associates bankrolled more than one-third of the $850,000 campaign to remove the Iowa justices.

ThinkProgress previously reported on $200,000 that Gingrich funneled from an anonymous donor to the anti-marriage equality group Iowa for Freedom, which was also being funded by AFA Action, the political arm of the virulently anti-gay American Family Association. The Associated Press revealed yesterday that one of the cogs in Gingrich’s vast network of business enterprises and front groups, ReAL Action, provided $125,000 to AFA Action. The Des Moines Register reported this morning that ReAL Action also contributed $25,000 to yet another Iowa anti-LGBT group, the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition.


AFA is not only of the nation’s most prominent anti-LGBT groups, it has been officially labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. As ThinkProgress has reported, the AFA is known for making incendiary comments about gays, including blaming gays for crop failure and various other biblical plagues, claiming that Hitler was gay, saying lesbians can’t be justices, equating gay sex with domestic terrorism, and equating gay sex to heroin, just to cite a few examples.

Gingrich’s tacit support for these radical views would not seem to be in question, as his spokesman went to great pains to explain that the grant to AFA Action was for “general support,” noting:

“We leave up to the groups receiving the money to determine how they would spend the money."

While those who fought to retain the Iowa justices question why Gingrich had previously kept his financial support for the anti-LGBT groups secret and is only now acknowledging it as his possible 2012 bid ramps up, Gingrich’s spokesman said that there was no connection between his support for the Iowa groups and his possible presidential ambitions. This assertion seems highly questionable considering the leader of last year’s anti-marriage equality campaign against the three justices, Bob Vander Plaats, is an Iowa political kingmaker who now heads the FAMiLY Leader, a radical anti-LGBT organization that is hosting an ongoing Presidential Lecture Series that ThinkProgress has been attending and reporting on. Gingrich himself is scheduled to appear before the group on July 11.

And while some have pointed out that Gingrich’s multiple patriotism-inspired adulterous affairs might present a problem for socially conservative GOP primary voters, Gingrich-funded Vander Plaats seems unconcerned. He told the Los Angeles Times that Gingrich “had won over pastors in [Iowa] with his ‘open and transparent’ approach” and that Christian conservatives “understand that we all fall short of the standards” they set for themselves.

It remains to be seen whether Gingrich’s funding of virulently anti-LGBT hate groups will pay political dividends outside the small group of overwhelmingly white, socially-conservative voters that determine the winner of the Iowa caucuses.