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.

OUT IN THE SILENCE on Arizona Public Television

Interview by "Arizona Illustrated" host Kimberly Craft:


In 2006, human rights activist Joe Wilson published an announcement of his wedding to his same-sex partner in his small hometown of Oil City, Pennsylvania. That one act sparked a whirlwind of controversy, and it led Wilson back home in an effort to chronicle and understand his home's relationship to homosexuality, inclusion and equality.

Now a filmmaker, Wilson joins the studio to talk about Out in the Silence, the widely acclaimed documentary that grew from his experiences. He shares the story behind the movie, its impact on his hometown and his hopes that it will strengthen Arizona's efforts to heal community divides.



Arizona will host several screenings of the film, sponsored by the Pima County Public Library System, ACLU of Arizona, Wingspan Anti-Violence Project, The Amancio Project, and the Yuma High School GSA. Screenings are scheduled for:

Feb. 22, 7:30pm - The Loft Cinema - Tucson

Feb. 23, 6:30pm – Arivaca Old School - Arivaca

Feb. 24, 6:00pm - Yuma County Main Library - Yuma

Feb. 25, 1:00pm - Salazar-Ajo Library - Ajo

In addition to the film's hopeful and entertaining stories, and dynamic post-screening discussions with filmmaker Joe Wilson and local organizers, the Arizona events will feature performances by special guest Namoli Brennet, a Tucson-based transgender musician. (Brennet's music is a major feature of the film's soundtrack.)

Homophobia Starts At Home

by Dean Hamer & Joe Wilson for the Huffington Post:

Last month's horrific murder of Ugandan gay activist David Kato sparked outrage and a series of protests against the U.S.-based religious groups responsible for exporting American-style bigotry and homophobia to Africa, resulting most infamously in Uganda's pending "kill-the-gays" bill.

While such activism is sorely needed, the focus on foreign countries prompts the question: Why are we not equally outraged and rising up against the massive damage these same conservative religious groups cause right here at home?

Organizations such as the American Family Association, for example, are too clever to propose a law that would impose the death penalty on homosexuality in the U.S. -- that would be a bit obvious -- but they continue to use their well-funded propaganda machine to spew anti-LGBT lies and distortions that have a similar effect, creating an atmosphere so poisoned and repressive that many LGBT people, particularly in small towns and rural communities, live their entire life in the closet or possibly even take the ultimate step of suicide.

This video of small town "family values" mom Meribeth Glenn sadly demonstrates how these tactics play out. Many of her statements, including the presumed connection between marriage equality and bestiality, are taken straight from the AFA, which broadcasts a regular program on her local Christian radio station. In fact, Glenn consented to speak on camera only after consulting with her Venango County-based AFA chapter head, Diane Gramley.



When anti-gay bigotry and hatred is a commonplace and accepted feature of conservative and religious broadcasting -- as it is today in the U.S. -- and when its adherents incorporate these messages into the lexicon of their own daily lives -- as Glenn and millions of other people do -- is it any wonder that we continue to see LGBT lives ruined, families and communities in distress and a rash of gay teen suicides?

And when the President of the United States feels comfortable attending a National Prayer Breakfast event, as he did on Feb. 3, supported and attended by the AFA and other conservative religious groups -- including "The Family," the very group pushing for the anti-gay legislation in Uganda -- is it any wonder that the best response we can muster to the recent rash of gay teen bullying and suicides is to promise that "it gets better"?

Recently, Dan Savage -- creator of the 'It Gets Better' video campaign -- declared in a Newsweek interview that "the culture war is over" and later that the homophobes are "losing the battles [that] are taking place in living rooms all over the country." Obviously Savage hasn't spent much time in the living rooms of people like Meribeth Glenn or he would realize that there are still many battles to be fought to ensure that all people -- here in the U.S., as well as in Uganda and other countries around the world -- can live full lives, openly, with dignity, respect and equal treatment under the law.

The late David Kato knew that his activism put him at risk. When asked by a reporter why he gave up the comfortable life of an educated professional in relatively progressive South Africa to return home to Uganda, he said "My role is to fight and liberate."

As residents of the country from which much of the global anti-LGBT crusade emanates, we feel that we all have a similar obligation. Please join us in the OUT IN THE SILENCE Campaign for Fairness and Equality and learn what you can do to make our own country and the world a safer and more welcoming place for all.

Truth Wins Out Slams The American Family Association For Offensive Remarks Against Native Americans

Companies Should No Longer Pay Attention to Boycott Threats From Certified Hate Group

by Wayne Besen, Truth Wins Out:


BURLINGTON, Vt. – Truth Wins Out condemned the American Family Association (AFA) today for writing a remarkably bigoted article titled, “Native Americans Morally Disqualified Themselves From the Land.” The AFA is best known for its anti-gay activism and launch of boycotts against companies that it deems too gay-friendly. The latest op-ed by the organization’s spokesperson, Bryan Fischer, provides yet another reason why corporations should ignore pressure campaigns by the AFA.

“We are appalled by the American Family Association’s reprehensible remarks that distort history and demean Native Americans,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Responsible companies should no longer give The American Family Association the time of day and their boycott threats should be ignored. This organization has shown itself unfit to be part of the adult conversation and it certainly does not represent the majority of families.”



The American Family Association was recently certified as an official hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Fischer’s latest column provides evidence that this was a wise decision by SPLC.

“In all the discussions about the European settlement of the New World, one feature has been conspicuously absent: the role that the superstition, savagery and sexual immorality of native Americans played in making them morally disqualified from sovereign control of American soil,” Bryan Fischer wrote on the website, “Rightly Concerned” a project of The American Family Association.

“This nauseating rhetoric is usually reserved for LGBT people, but apparently the American Family Association has more than one group it likes to dehumanize,” said Truth Wins Out’s Wayne Besen. “The true character of the AFA has been revealed and no corporation or politician can pretend that this group has even a shard of credibility. The only reasonable response to AFA threats is to not return their calls and pretend they don’t exist.”

The AFA is a Tupelo, Mississippi-based organization known for launching failed boycotts against companies such as The Walt Disney Company, Home Depot, Wal Mart, Ford Motor Company and McDonalds. The group’s once accused Mighty Mouse of snorting cocaine.

Writers for AFA’s website include Chuck Norris, Janet Porter, David Limbaugh and Rev. Rey Pritchard.

Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.

Murder in Uganda -- Does The Religious Right Have Blood On Its Hands?

Documentary About Bullying & Homophobia in Venango County Opens Inaugural Human Rights Watch Film Festival in Washington, DC

(Washington, DC, January 19, 2011) – The first DC Human Rights Watch Film Festival will screen five works with distinctive human rights themes each Wednesday from February 2 to March 2, 2011, Human Rights Watch announced today.


The festival, a co-presentation of Human Rights Watch and The West End Cinema, is designed as a forum for courageous individuals on both sides of the lens to empower audiences with the knowledge that personal commitment can make a difference.

“The DC Festival brings a reflection of the condition of the world in which we live to one of the world's most important human rights stages: the capital of the nation that has long sought to promote human rights around the globe,” said John Biaggi, director of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

The opening night feature on February 2, is “Out in the Silence,” a documentary by Washington, DC-based filmmakers Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer that looks at an issue of urgent human rights concern: the need for full inclusion, justice and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the United States.

The documentary follows the story of a small American town (in Venango County) confronting a firestorm of controversy ignited by a same-sex wedding announcement in the local paper, and the subsequent brutal bullying of a gay teen. It challenges audiences to rethink their values and consider how they can help close the gaps that have divided families, friends, and communities on these issues.

“In light of the public debates over issues such as military service and marriage equality, not-to-mention anti-gay bullying, teen suicides, and safe schools, the screening of this film in Washington, DC could not be more timely,” said Boris Dittrich, acting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender program director at Human Rights Watch.

Produced in association with the Sundance Institute and Penn State Public Broadcasting, “Out in the Silence” premiered at the 2010 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival in New York. It won an Emmy Award for Achievement in Documentary from the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, and has received praise from critics and festivals worldwide.

The film's directors say they are most interested in using it as a vehicle for grass-roots outreach, education, and civic engagement, particularly in small towns and rural communities where there often isn't any visible or organized LGBT presence at all. Wilson and Hamer have conducted more than 300 town-hall-style screening events in libraries and other public venues across the country, reaching nearly every county in Pennsylvania, and doing rural tours of Oregon, South Carolina, and South Dakota.

“The characters in the film are just ordinary people – a kid and his mom, an Evangelical preacher and his wife, a lesbian couple who start a business – but their stories get at the heart of how anti-LGBT stigma and repression play out and continue to harm individuals in such communities,” Hamer said.

“We're hoping that this Human Rights Watch screening here in DC, from which so much of the harmful anti-LGBT rhetoric and activities emanate, will shine new light on these issues and help people, particularly our elected officials and other high-profile leaders, begin to find common ground to end the madness once and for all,” Wilson said

Wilson, Hamer, and Dittrich, will be at The West End Cinema, 2301 M Street NW, for a post-screening dialogue with the audience.

Visit www.westendcinema.com for more information.

For a press kit and to see a film trailer: http://OutintheSilence.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Quotes About OUT IN THE SILENCE

“A stunning documentary” -Philadelphia Inquirer

“Film Critic's Pick-of-the-Week” -New York times

“Tough. Wrenching. Inspiring.” - OUT Magazine

“Most moving are the stories of heterosexuals who transform because of their relationships with GLBT people.” -American Library Association

“Though the film is made by two gay men, it doesn't seek to promote a “gay agenda” or to stereotype the “religious right.” It's simply a matter of trying to understand attitudes in small-town America.”
-Christianity Today

Ugandan Gay Rights Activist Is Beaten to Death - U.S. Evangelicals Have Blood On Their Hands

The "Christians" who terrorize LGBT people in the U.S. and now Africa and other parts of the world are one and the same. Enough Is Enough!


Ugandan Gay Rights Activist Is Beaten to Death

By Jeffrey Gettleman for The New York Times:

NAIROBI, Kenya — David Kato knew he was a marked man.


As the most outspoken gay rights advocate in Uganda, a country where homophobia is so severe that Parliament is considering a bill to execute gay people, Mr. Kato had received a stream of death threats, his friends said. A few months ago, a Ugandan newspaper ran an antigay diatribe with Mr. Kato’s picture on the front page under a banner urging, “Hang Them.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Kato was beaten to death with a hammer in his rough-and-tumble neighborhood. Police officials were quick to chalk up the motive to robbery, but members of the small and increasingly besieged gay community in Uganda suspect otherwise.

“David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. evangelicals in 2009,” Val Kalende, the chairwoman of one of Uganda’s gay rights groups, said in a statement. “The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S. evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood.”

Ms. Kalende was referring to visits in March 2009 by a group of American evangelicals, who held rallies and workshops in Uganda discussing how to turn gay people straight, how gay men sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” intended to “defeat the marriage-based society.”


The Americans involved said they had no intention of stoking a violent reaction. But the antigay bill was drafted shortly thereafter. Some of the Ugandan politicians and preachers who wrote it had attended those sessions and said that they had discussed the legislation with the Americans.

After growing international pressure and threats from a few European countries to cut assistance — Uganda relies on hundreds of millions of dollars of aid — Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, indicated that the bill would be scrapped.

But more than a year later, that has not happened, and the legislation remains a simmering issue in Parliament. Some political analysts say the bill could be passed in the coming months, after a general election in February that is expected to return Mr. Museveni, who has been in office for 25 years, to power.

On Thursday, Don Schmierer, one of the American evangelicals who visited Uganda in 2009, said Mr. Kato’s death was “horrible.”

“Naturally, I don’t want anyone killed, but I don’t feel I had anything to do with that,” said Mr. Schmierer, who added that in Uganda he had focused on parenting skills. He also said that he had been a target of threats himself, recently receiving more than 600 messages of hate mail related to his visit.

“I spoke to help people,” he said, “and I’m getting bludgeoned from one end to the other.”

Many Africans view homosexuality as an immoral Western import, and the continent is full of harsh homophobic laws. In northern Nigeria, gay men can face death by stoning. In Kenya, which is considered one of the more Westernized nations in Africa, gay people can be sentenced to years in prison.

But Uganda seems to be on the front lines of this battle. Conservative Christian groups that espouse antigay beliefs have made great headway in this country and wield considerable influence. Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity, James Nsaba Buturo, who describes himself as a devout Christian, has said, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights.”

At the same time, American groups that defend gay rights have also poured money into Uganda to help the beleaguered gay community.

In October, a Ugandan newspaper called Rolling Stone (with a circulation of roughly 2,000 and no connection to the American magazine) published an article that included photos and the whereabouts of gay men and lesbians, including several well-known activists like Mr. Kato.


The paper said homosexuals were raiding schools and recruiting children, a belief that is quite widespread in Uganda and has helped drive the homophobia.

Mr. Kato and a few other activists sued the paper and won. This month, Uganda’s High Court ordered Rolling Stone to pay hundreds of dollars in damages and to cease publishing the names of people it said were gay.

But the danger remained.

“I had to move houses,” said Stosh Mugisha, a woman who is going through a transition to become a man. “People tried to stone me. It’s so scary. And it’s getting worse.”

On Thursday, Giles Muhame, Rolling Stone’s managing editor, said he did not think that Mr. Kato’s killing had anything to do with what his paper had published.

“There is no need for anxiety or for hype,” he said. “We should not overblow the death of one.”

But that one man was considered a founding father of Uganda’s nascent gay rights movement. In an interview in 2009, Mr. Kato shared his life story, how he was raised in a conservative family where “we grew up brainwashed that it was wrong to be in love with a man.”

He was a high school teacher who had graduated from some of Uganda’s best schools, and he moved to South Africa in the mid-1990s, where he came out. A few years ago, he organized what he claimed was Uganda’s first gay rights news conference in Kampala, the capital, and said he was punched in the face and cracked in the nose by police officers soon afterward.

Friends said that Mr. Kato had recently put an alarm system in his house and was killed by an acquaintance, someone who had been inside several times before and was seen by neighbors on Wednesday. Mr. Kato’s neighborhood on the outskirts of Kampala is known as a rough one, where several people have recently been beaten to death with iron bars.

Judith Nabakooba, a police spokeswoman, said Mr. Kato’s death did not appear to be a hate crime, though the investigation had just started. “It looks like theft, as some things were stolen,” Ms. Nabakooba said.

But Nikki Mawanda, a friend who was born female and lives as a man, said: “This is a clear signal. You don’t know who’s going to do it to you.”

Mr. Kato was in his mid-40s, his friends said. He was a fast talker, fidgety, bespectacled, slightly built and constantly checking over his shoulder, even in the envelope of darkness of an empty lot near a disco, where he was interviewed in 2009.

He said then that he wanted to be a “good human rights defender, not a dead one, but an alive one.”

"Traditional Family Values" - American Family Association of Pennsylvania-style

The American Family Association of Pennsylvania, a Venango County-based Hate Group, Regularly Smears LGBT People As Incapable of Upholding Traditional Family Values.

Is This What Is Meant By "Traditional Family Values," AFAofPA-style?

(Pictured at right is AFA of PA President, Diane Gramley)




"Amish Man Charged In Murder Case Now Dead"

from The Oil City Derrick:

An Amish man who brutally murdered and disemboweled his 29-yearold wife in front of their two children in 1993 was found dead Friday in a barn in Cambridge Springs, Crawford County.


Meadville state police said Edward Gingerich, 45, committed suicide by hanging himself in the lower level of a barn located on Miller Station Road, in Cambridge Springs.

Gingerich was pronounced dead at the scene by Crawford County Chief Deputy Coroner Scott Schell.

According to Schell, Gingerich had been staying with some friends, George and Stephanie Schroeck, at their residence on Miller Station Road.

Stephanie Schroeck told Schell that Gingerich had gone out to the barn around 10 a.m. to feed the horses. When she did not see Gingerich around the farm several hours later, she went searching for him, Schell said.

“She thought it was unusual that she hadn’t seen him around the farm all day,” Schell said.

Schell said Schroeck called 911 around 3:18 p.m. after finding Gingerich hanging in the barn.

In 1993, Gingerich became a household name throughout the region when he killed his wife, Katie Shetler Gingerich.

Gingerich confessed to pushing his wife down on the floor and crushing her skull. He then cut her stomach open with a kitchen knife and removed her organs. The couple’s 4-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter witnessed the entire incident, sources said.

In the highly publicized Meadville trial, Gingerich’s attorneys said Gingerich suffered from schizophrenia and thought he was possessed by the devil. Gingerich was on medication for schizophrenia but stopped taking it due to side effects. Reports also said that Gingerich sought treatment from a Cambridge Springs chiropractor named Merritt Terrell for six months prior to the incident, including just hours before the murder.

Gingerich was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter — the first Amish person in the U.S. to be found guilty of murder — but was deemed mentally ill, and sentenced to five years in prison under psychiatric watch.

Gingerich was released from a state regional correctional facility in Mercer on March 19, 1998, five years and one day after the murder.

Full details of the story leading up to the murder were detailed in the true-crime novel “Crimson Stain,” published in May 2000 by Edinboro University professor Jim Fisher.

Fisher and others said Gingerich struggled early on with the confines of the Brownhill Amish community in which he lived. Following prison, Gingerich spent the next 12-plus years struggling with life outside of the Amish community.

“Of course, he was shunned from the Amish community,” Schell said. “He was not allowed to live in that community any more.”

In 1998, Gingerich moved to a Mennonite halfway house in Michigan, where he worked for a sawmill. Sources said Gingerich was eventually kicked out of the Michigan enclave for undisclosed reasons and moved back to Pennsylvania in 2007.

Gingerich was back in the news shortly after his return to the area when he was arrested for concealing the whereabouts of his then 17-year-old daughter in April 2007. Both children lived with their grandparents, Daniel and Mary Gingerich, following the 1993 murder.

Gingerich pleaded guilty to charges and was sentenced to six months probation and ordered to pay $500 in fines. He was also ordered to cease contact with his daughter and other family.

In 2008, Gingerich was once again arrested, this time for illegally possessing and using a firearm while deer hunting. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and served three months in Crawford County jail.

Is Rep. Barney Frank Now in the Cross Hairs of Venango County-based Hate Group, the American Family Association (of Pennsylvania)?

Is Diane Gramley of the Venango County-based American Family Association (of Pennsylvania), an official "hate group" as designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center, now putting openly-gay Congressman Barney Frank in the cross hairs of the right-wing 'culture war' by saying:

"Barney Frank and others in Washington have a goal of normalizing, through legislation, a lifestyle that has been considered abhorrent and unnatural throughout history. Hopefully new members of the 112th Congress will not view their job as simply a game in which to keep score, but a responsibility to preserve the American Way. America spoke on November 2nd and the returning members of Congress as well as the new ones need to listen to what America had to say.

"We'll put Barney Frank on notice. A Sleeping Giant has awakened and the majority of Americans do not share in your goal setting. Americans are tired of waking up to find an America that they hardly recognize. This is not a game to them, it is a war to get our country back."

Here is Gramley's "News Release," frighteningly titled "Let The Games Begin," in its entirety (pasted below before it is purged from her web site):

American Family Association of Pennsylvania
News Release

For Immediate Release: January 5, 2011
Contact: Diane Gramley 1.814.271.9078 or 1.814.437.5355

Congress is Sworn In: “Let the Games Begin!”

(Harrisburg) — Today the 112th Congress was sworn in. But apparently some view their job on “The Hill” as simply a means to further their own agenda of remaking the United States into something most Americans would not recognize, noted the American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA of PA), a statewide traditional values organization.

After President Obama signed repeal of the law banning homosexuals in the military, misnamed ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ after a convoluted Clinton policy, openly homosexual Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts was quite honest about his intention as well as those of others who want to normalize the homosexual lifestyle. He said, “For those who are worried about the radical homosexual agenda, let me put them on notice. Two down, two to go.” He was referencing the passage of hate crimes and repeal of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ and he is simply waiting for the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (another misnamed bill) and the repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) before he has a complete victory.

“To Barney Frank and others this is simply a game, a means to further their personal agenda, and they are keeping score. Apparently they are not concerned about what is best for this nation, if they consider it in opposition to what they want, they will ignore the facts and vote to force all of Americans to accept homosexuality as normal. Some examples of ignoring the facts are the denial that there is a homosexual agenda and CDC statistics about the dangers of the homosexual lifestyle, “remarked Diane Gramley, president of the AFA of PA.

Barney Frank and others in Washington have a goal of normalizing, through legislation, a lifestyle that has been considered abhorrent and unnatural throughout history. Hopefully new members of the 112th Congress will not view their job as simply a game in which to keep score, but a responsibility to preserve the American Way. America spoke on November 2nd and the returning members of Congress as well as the new ones need to listen to what America had to say.

“We’ll put Barney Frank on notice. ‘A Sleeping Giant has awakened and the majority of Americans do not share in your goal setting.’ Americans are tired of waking up to find an America that they hardly recognize. This is not a game to them, it is a war to get our country back,” Gramley further stated.

# # #

For information about the OUT IN THE SILENCE Campaign for Fairness & Equality, see this link: OutintheSilence.com

Heated and Hateful Rhetoric Is A Threat To All, Not Just Elected-Officials

In the wake of the recent tragic events in Tucson, where a troubled young man went on a shooting rampage that killed six people, including a federal judge, and gravely wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords, what is likely to be a wrenching debate over anger, vitriolic rhetoric, and violence in American political culture has been set off.

We can not help but be reminded of the inflammatory language, threats and implicit instigations to violence that emanate from those who call themselves "Bible Believing Christians" in the hills of northwestern Pennsylvania and be concerned about the consequences for those that are in their crosshairs.

We reprise this article as a renewed call to conscience for us all.



"Bible Believing Response" to OUT IN THE SILENCE Promotes Anti-Transgender Violence

Dispatch from Coudersport, PA:

by Joe Wilson, August, 31, 2010:

Diane Gramley sat peacefully behind Robert Wagner in the Coudersport Public Library as the retired physician shared his views on transgender individuals with the assembled audience. “I'm gonna put a ball bat in my car,” he said, “and if I ever see a guy [Wagner refuses to use proper pronouns] coming out of a bathroom that my granddaughter's in, I'm gonna use the ball bat on him.” Moments later he added: “In the good old days, before 'she-males' existed, they just called such people perverts.”

Gramley is no stranger to such ideas. As President of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Family Association, a 'traditional family values' organization based in Mississippi, she spends much of her time planting similar seeds of suspicion about the dangers posed by “men who think they are women,” her disparaging term for transgender females. She also crusades relentlessly against what she and the AFA call the “homosexual agenda” and the type of legal protections that her and Dr. Wagner's threatening rhetoric suggests are needed for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

Gramley was in Coudersport, a small town of 2,600 residents in the sparsely populated north-central part of the state known as the Pennsylvania Wilds, as a special guest of Dr. Wagner for what he titled “A Bible Believing Christian's Response to OUT IN THE SILENCE,” my documentary film about the quest for inclusion, fairness and equality for LGBT people in the small town where I was born and raised, Oil City, PA, just a two-hour drive from Coudersport.

Gramley, who also happens to call the Oil City area home, plays a central role in OUT IN THE SILENCE as a result of the firestorm of controversy she helped to ignite in opposition to the publication of my same-sex marriage announcement in the local paper. It was that controversy that compelled my partner, Dean Hamer, and I to go back to my hometown with our cameras to document what life is like there for LGBT people, and to show hopeful and inspiring stories about the growing movement for equality.

The film was produced in partnership with Penn State Public Broadcasting, received support from the Sundance Institute, premiered at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, screened in Tribeca Cinemas Doc Series, and has been broadcast on PBS stations around the country. We're now using it as an educational tool in a grassroots campaign to help raise LGBT visibility and to bring people together in small towns like Oil City and Coudersport to begin building bridges across the gaps that have divided families, friends, and entire communities on these issues for far too long.

As part of this campaign, OUT IN THE SILENCE had screened just a month earlier for a standing-room-only crowd in the Coudersport Public Library despite vehement opposition from Dr. Wagner and the efforts of the local Tea Party and a small group of fundamentalist preachers to shut the event down and have the library 'de-funded' for making its space available for such a program.

Wagner's “Bible Believing Response,” he told the crowd of approximately 60 local church people, “was intended to expose the filmmakers’ real agenda and to question the directors’ assertion that the community should tolerate alternative lifestyles.”

During the two hour program, Wagner asked special guest Gramley a few questions about her experiences as a minor subject of the film, but he used her more as a prop, seated silently behind him, providing an odd sort of legitimacy as he put forth offensive theories and mischaracterizations about LGBT people, including that “AIDS is the gay plague” and “gays can't have families.”

Dean and I were in the library for the presentation. We made the six-hour drive to Coudersport from our home in Washington, DC because I wanted to bear witness to this event, to experience for myself, if only for a few hours, what it feels like to be so close to such willful ignorance and brazen cruelty.

As I sat there, listening to 'amens,' snickering laughter, and even a roar of approval from the people around me when asked if they agree with the AFA assertions that there “should be legal sanctions against homosexual behavior” and “homosexuals should be disqualified from public office,” I felt a sadness unlike any I have known before. A sadness for those who fall prey to such bigoted and hostile bombast, who carry the feelings these things stir into their homes and family relationships, and for the communities that suffer the sometimes-violent consequences of such mean-spirited divisiveness.

But as I looked at Gramley, unmoved next to Wagner, condoning the ugliness without a word of protest, I thought of all the courageous people who have attended OUT IN THE SILENCE Campaign events over the past many months in far flung places, including there in Coudersport, who refuse to be silent anymore, who are working for change in their communities against great odds, and I was inspired all over again.

It is in their spirit that we will continue our campaign to speak out in the silence and to help build the movement for fairness and equality in small towns and rural communities across America.

I hope you'll join us! Learn more at OutintheSilence.com

It Gets Better's Dan Savage Meets Western Pennsylvania 'Traditional Family Values' Believer

A fantasy virtual conversation between It Gets Better Project founder Dan Savage and a "traditional family values" adherent in a small western Pennsylvania town. Meribeth unfortunately ended up on the cutting-room floor in the OUT IN THE SILENCE editing room, but here she gets to have her say. For more, see OutintheSilence.com

Fox News: Vibrant Gay Communities In Every Small Town And The Truth About Gay-Haters and Conservative Moralists

from The Bilerico Project:

Even FOX News is starting to make fun of Peter LaBarbera, the head of "Americans for Truth About Homosexuality" (the meetings are shirtless!). Commonly known as Porno Pete in the LGBT blogosphere, he loves to attend leather conferences and gay baths to do "research."

"Traditional Family Values" - Pastor Who Backed Prop 8 Held On Multiple Child Molestation Charges

Pastor Tom Daniels of Rio Linda, California is being held on $6M bail after being charged with multiple felony counts of sexual assault on a child. Lavender Newswire reports that Daniels twice made donations to Protect Marriage, the backers of Proposition 8.

'Traditional Family Values' in the Oil Region

Man charged in Titusville death

Police say suspect buried girlfriend in snow

by Kristi Cummins for The Derrick:

It’s hard to tell that someone was murdered near the quiet apartment complex at 820 Rockwood Drive in Titusville.

There’s no crime scene tape, no crowds, and the only sound that could be heard Wednesday morning was the scrape of a shovel on snow nearby.

But late Tuesday night, Titusville police officers had reported to the scene — based on a confession from Michael Brooker — where they found the body of Renee R. Gates, 23, of Titusville, buried in the snow.


Brooker, 35, of Phoenix, Ariz., had gone to the Titusville police station Tuesday night to report what he’d done. After confessing, he was arraigned in court early Wednesday on one count of criminal homicide, and he is being held without bail.

Sandy Murphy remembers her neighbor as kind and caring, which made the news of the apparent homicide all the more shocking.

“Renee was a wonderful, wonderful person,” Murphy said. “She was friendly, outgoing, and just as sweet as they come.”

When Murphy was recently hospitalized, Gates was the first to visit her, offering to do anything she could to help Murphy out.

Murphy had no idea what happened sometime over the weekend between Gates and Brooker that led to her death.

“I didn’t hear a thing. I am absolutely stunned by this,” Murphy said.

Other residents of the Titusville Apartments agreed, saying even though they had been home at the time of the murder — and when police came to the scene to look for Gates’ body Tuesday night — they never heard a thing.

“We’re very sad about this,” said Diane Wagner, site manager at Titusville Apartments. “Our hearts and prayers go out to her family.”

.. .. ..

At about 11:10 p.m. Tuesday, Brooker entered the Titusville Police Department, where he told Capt. Glenn Ciccarelli that he had killed his girlfriend, according to the affidavit of probable cause filed by police with Titusville District Judge Amy Nicols. Brooker was then interviewed by Officer Aaron Madden.

Brooker said about three days ago, either Saturday or Sunday, he went to Gates’ apartment, where they got into a physical fight.

During the fight, Brooker said he pushed Gates and then she scratched his face. The affidavit noted Brooker had visible scratches on his face.


Brooker told police he then punched Gates in the face, and she ran into the apartment’s master bedroom. She jumped out the bedroom window, turned right, and ran toward the apartment complex’s storage sheds, about 50 feet away.

In the affidavit, Brooker said he followed Gates out the window and caught her just as she reached the side of the storage sheds.

He took her back to the side of the building, about 10 feet away from the storage shed, when Gates began to scream.

According to the affidavit, Brooker said he put Gates in a headlock to stop her from screaming and continued to drag her back to the bedroom window.

Once he let her out of the headlock, Brooker said Gates fell to the ground but was still conscious.

Brooker told police he then placed his foot on Gates’ neck and stood on her throat “for quite a bit.”

When he removed his foot, Gates was not moving, he told police.

Brooker re-entered the apartment through the master bedroom window and retrieved a shovel to bury Gates’ body in the snow.

Brooker said he placed the shovel by the front door of the apartment. The clothes he was wearing, he told police in the affidavit, were covered in Gates’ blood.

At about 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, Ciccarelli and Officer William Dilley located Gates’ body buried in the snow just where Brooker said she had been.

.. .. ..

Two sources told the newspaper that Brooker and Gates met while working in a carnival together.

In the court documents, Brooker is described as 6 feet tall with brown hair and blue eyes.

Nicols said Brooker was “very polite” when he was arraigned before her early Wednesday morning.

“He was very detached,” Nicols added.

Titusville police said there were no visible wounds or ligature marks on Gates’ body.

Crawford County Coroner Patrick McHenry said an autopsy will be conducted at the Erie County Coroner’s Office to determine the cause of death.

Nicols said Brooker was being held at the Crawford County jail without bail but was moved to a local hospital after an apparent suicide attempt.

Titusville police were assisted at the scene by state police, and an investigation is continuing.

Anti-LGBT Bullying: Are Venango County School Districts Doing Enough?

from the ACLU:

Stop Anti-Gay Bullying: Seth's Story

When Seth was in the fifth grade, other students started calling him "gay." As he got older, the harassment became more frequent and severe. By seventh grade, taunts and verbal abuse were a constant occurrence. Students regularly called him "fag" and "queer." He was afraid to use the restroom or be in the boy's locker room before gym class. Seth's mother and close friends report that teachers and school administrators were aware that Seth was being harassed and, in some instances, participated in the harassment. One teacher allegedly called Seth "fruity" in front of an entire class.

Wendy's pleas to the school for help were often brushed aside. Seth had always been a good student, receiving A's and B's, but his grades quickly dropped to failing as the harassment continued. Friends reported that he became depressed and withdrawn. A note Seth left upon his death expresses love for his family and close friends, and anger at the school "for bringing you this sorrow."

Seth died on September 28, 2010, after nine days on life support.

On December 16, 2010, the ACLU sent a letter to Tehachapi Unified School District officials urging them to take immediate and affirmative steps to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again. The U.S. Department of Education is also investigating the district.

TELL CONGRESS TO Protect LGBT Students From Harassment and Discrimination

MORE
U.S. Department of Education Letter to Schools Outlining Legal Responsibility to Address Bullying and Harassment

18 Municipalities in Penna. Prohibit Discrimination -- When Will Venango County Communities Join The List? Oil City, Franklin, What Do Ya Say?

Lower Merion Township Becomes 18th Municipality In Pa. To Ban Discrimination

by Cheryl Allison for The Main Line Times:

Lower Merion Township tonight became the 18th municipality in Pennsylvania to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.


The board of commissioners, following a public hearing on a third draft of an anti-discrimination ordinance, voted unanimously to adopt the legislation.

The measure affects discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations.

It also creates a seven-member local Human Relations Commission to receive, evaluate and investigate complaints, and potentially impose penalties – including fines up to $10,000 – in some cases.

For more than half a century, discrimination based on a number of other factors, including race, religion, sex, gender, age and disability, has been prohibited under Pennsylvania’s Human Relations Act. The law has not provided such protection based on sexual orientation or gender identity, and efforts to extend it to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens has so far been unsuccessful.

The state law, however, does not preclude local municipalities from adopting their own anti-discrimination ordinances protecting LGBT individuals, and, beginning in the 1980s with Philadelphia, 17 have done so.

The movement toward an ordinance in Lower Merion began this summer, when a 21-year-old Bala Cynwyd resident, Jason Landau Goodman, first asked commissioners in a public meeting to draft legislation.

Goodman also announced the formation of a new organization, Equality Lower Merion, supporting a local ordinance.

Over the past several months, three draft versions of an ordinance have been discussed, leading to tonight’s public hearing.

The ordinance has broadened in scope to some extent, in that it calls for the new commission to receive complaints of discrimination on any of the factors also covered by the state law. Any cases that cannot be resolved by initial mediation on factors other than sexual orientation or identity, however, are to be referred to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission.

The Lower Merion ordinance lays out a progression of steps, beginning with mediation and ending with a formal public hearing and order, by which complaints of discrimination on the basis of sexuality may be resolved.

Hate Under Cloak of Religion

The Southern Poverty Law Center rightly calls out the Family Research Council's anti-gay rhetoric.

by Tim Rutten for the Los Angeles Times:

The Southern Poverty Law Center is an organization with deep roots in the civil rights movement. Its ingenious lawsuits helped break the back of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist factions, and in recent years, it has joined the Anti-Defamation League as a reliable monitor of hate groups.


The Family Research Council is an influential Washington-based advocacy group with deep roots in the religious right. Its annual political forum, the Values Voter Summit, has become a nearly obligatory stop for ambitious Republican office-seekers hoping to win the support of so-called values voters. In recent years, the council has given an increasing share of its attention to opposing marriage equality and open military service by gays and lesbians.

Now, the two groups are locked in a sharp confrontation that raises crucial questions about where the expression of religiously based views on social issues ends and hate speech begins.

Last week, the law center added the Family Research Council to its list of more than 930 active hate groups, citing the anti-gay rhetoric of its leaders and researchers, which have included calls to re-criminalize consensual sex between individuals of the same gender. The Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group as one with "beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics."

The council's president, former Louisiana lawmaker Tony Perkins, reacted angrily to the designation, calling it "slanderous" and demanding an apology. "The left is losing the debate over ideas and the direction of public policy, so all that is left for them is character assassination," Perkins said, insisting that his group "will continue to champion marriage and family as the foundation of our society and will not acquiesce to those seeking to silence the Judeo-Christian views held by millions of Americans."

Other conservative commentators also have assailed listing the council as a hate group, calling it an affront to protected speech. That is a superficially compelling argument, but it won't withstand scrutiny. It is perfectly possible for a church or an organization associated with a denomination or religious tendency — as the Family Research Council is with evangelical Protestantism — to oppose, say, marriage equality as a departure from tradition and traditional notions of civic virtue without defaming gays and lesbians as a group.


But the council goes well beyond that. Over the years, it has published statistical compendiums purporting to quantify the "evils" of homosexuality. One of its pamphlets is entitled, "Dark Obsession: The Tragedy and Threat of the Homosexual Lifestyle." At various times, its spokesmen have spuriously alleged that the gay rights movement's goal "is to go after children" and that child molestation is more likely to occur in households with gay parents. Last week, one of its senior fellows, Peter Sprigg, told reporters on a conference call concerning repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that "homosexuals in the military are three times more likely to commit sexual assaults than heterosexuals are relative to their numbers."

Such rhetoric is eerily reminiscent of that with which religiously affiliated opponents of African American equality once defended segregation. It wasn't all that long ago that some of them argued against school integration because, they alleged, black adolescents were uniquely unable to control sexual impulses and, therefore, would assault white schoolgirls. Exhortations against "race mixing" were commonplace pulpit messages short decades ago, though we now recognize them as hate speech. It's past time to do the same with rhetoric that denigrates gays and lesbians.

So long as even the most objectionable religious dogma stays under the church roof, it's a constitutionally protected view. People's religious beliefs — even when noxious — are a private matter. Our churches are free to order their internal affairs as they will — to set the terms of sacramental marriage as they see fit, to discriminate in the selection of their clergy, to racially segregate their membership or to separate the sexes in their schools or places of worship.

However, when a group sets out to impose its views on the rest of society by lobbying for public policies or laws, it can no longer claim special protections or an exemption from the norms of civil discourse simply because its views are formed by religious beliefs. This is precisely the dodge the Family Research Council has been running.

AN OPEN LETTER TO ROBERT WAGNER AND DIANE GRAMLEY: STOP BULLYING TRANSGENDER PEOPLE

This past August, Coudersport, PA resident Robert Wagner convened a “Bible Believing Christian” forum at the Coudersport Public Library at which he threatened to violently attack transgender individuals with a baseball bat.

Forum “special guest” Diane Gramley, whose Venango County-based American Family Association of Pennsylvania regularly plants seeds of suspicion about the dangers posed by “men who think they are women,” Gramley's disparaging term for transgender females, condoned Wagner's incitement without a word of protest.

(The American Family Association, parent organization of the AFAofPA, was recently designated a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization.)

A video of Wagner's verbal assault, which attracted national media attention, can be viewed here:



Each November, the world commemorates the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a time to mourn and honor the many transgender lives tragically cut short by hatred, fear, and violence.

We are writing this open letter to call on Wagner and Gramley to take responsibility for the consequences of their rhetoric, publicly apologize for their remarks, and denounce anti-transgender bullying, discrimination and violence.

We also urge readers to raise their voices with others in the community to express support for the right of all people to live free of fear and discrimination, with dignity and respect, regardless of their actual or perceived gender identity and expression.

Please let your voice be heard by writing a letter-to-the-editor of your local paper and sharing news of your action here, on the Out In The Silence blog or the Out In The Silence website.

Thank You,

Joe Wilson & Dean Hamer
OUT IN THE SILENCE Campaign

American Family Association Designated a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center

Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda

by Evelyn Schlatter:

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, 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.

The report includes the entry of the American Family Association, whose Pennsylvania chapter is based in Venango County, headed by anti-LGBT extremist Diane Gramley.
See the FULL REPORT Here.

Hate Groups Waiting In The Wings

from Truth Wins Out:

A steady theme of my weekly column this year is the notion that the LGBT community has reached a tipping point and is winning the war. While the trajectory of history is clear, there will be another 10-20 years of hard-fought battles ahead. During this period, life for LGBT people will gradually improve, punctuated by unsettling instances of violence caused by the increased desperation of anti-gay activists.

The only way the LGBT community can lose is if America is overcome by extremism. Thus, it is disturbing to see the radicalization of our opponents, and watch as these once semi-nuanced organizations have simply gone nuts.

This week, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a landmark report on anti-gay defamation. The SPLC certified several new hate groups, including well-known organizations, such as The Family Research Council and The American Family Association.

A perfect example of alarming rhetoric came from FRC spokesman Peter Sprigg. Responding to a question about uniting gay partners during the immigration process, Sprigg said, “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.”

Last February, Sprigg appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews and said, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.”

“So we should outlaw gay behavior?” Matthews asked.

“Yes,” Sprigg replied.

The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer claimed in a May 27 blog post that “homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.”

The Traditional Values Coalition, which was already an SPLC hate group, has a page on its website headlined “Homosexual Urban Legends”, which ridiculously asserts without evidence that, “[t]he cold, hard fact is that teens who are struggling with homosexual feelings are more likely to be sexually molested by a homosexual school counselor or teacher than to commit suicide over their feelings of despair.”

The words spewed by these organizations can create a climate that leads to violence, as they give unstable people a way to rationalize their aggression. “Hey, I’m just cleansing my community of immoral perverts,” the deranged thug might think after being exposed to the hate speech disseminated by these organizations.

In its report, SPLC analyzed hate crime statistics based on FBI figures. The SPLC compared the rate of victimization for gay people to that of the other groups. The figures show that homosexuals are 2.4 times more likely to suffer a violent hate crime attack than Jews. In the same way, gays are 2.6 times more likely to be attacked than blacks; 4.4 times more likely than Muslims; 13.8 times more likely than Latinos; and 41.5 times more likely than whites. The bottom line, according to SPLC is that, “Homosexuals are far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crime.”

So, while life is improving for LGBT people – particularly in large cities and college towns – there is always the looming threat of random and capricious violence. Unlike heterosexuals, same-sex couples cannot enjoy holding hands in public without scanning their surroundings and analyzing, if only subconsciously, the risk of attack. If a person – gay or straight – does not fit gender norms, trouble is always lurking, fueled by the rhetoric of hate groups that inflame ignoble passions.

What truly concerns me are external issues that can lead to demagoguery and scapegoating. The high unemployment rate, a decaying infrastructure, the slow death of the American Dream, and political instability in Washington are factors that could undercut the hard-fought gains of the LGBT movement.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes that, “inequality in the United States has soared to levels comparable to those in Argentina six decades ago — with 1 percent controlling 24 percent of American income in 2007.”

Another Times columnist, Thomas Friedman quoted a Nov. 4 speech by Education Secretary Arne Duncan who said, “One-quarter of U.S. high school students drop out or fail to graduate on time. Almost one million students leave our schools for the streets each year… America’s youth are now tied for ninth in the world in college attainment.”

Even in areas the U.S. is thought to excel in, we are falling behind. For example, the U.S. is ranked 22nd worldwide in Internet connection speed.

As many Americans grow angrier, poorer, and fall further behind, they may begin to look for answers in the wrong places. Stepping in to fill the dangerous vacuum are political extremists who will point fingers and blame minorities to increase their grip on power.

The SPLC report is a sober reminder that we must remain vigilant in combating extremism. There are well-organized and wealthy hate machines waiting in the wings, poised to cause tremendous harm to LGBT people if the opportunity ever presents itself.

Is This What "Traditional Family Values" Means?

Man sentenced in baseball bat death
2010-11-23 / AP News

ALLENTOWN (AP) — An eastern Pennsylvania man has been sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison for the baseball bat beating death of his estranged girlfriend last year.

Forty-three-year-old Alfredo Reyes Ortiz pleaded guilty last month to third-degree murder in the death of 29-yearold Francesca Isley. Authorities said he beat Isley in July 2009 with a wooden baseball bat, splitting it into several pieces, and then thrust one piece down her throat.

Lehigh County Judge Kelly Banach called Ortiz “a dangerous man” Monday and told him he needed to be locked away “for as long as the law permits.”

Bob Barr, the Architect of the Defense of Marriage Act, Again Calls for its Repeal

by Michael Jones for Change.org:


When Bob Barr was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, he became famous for quite a few things. Conservative as they come, Barr was an adamant supporter of impeaching President Bill Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. He also once tried to get the Pentagon to ban Wicca in the military, and made controversial statements about how he couldn't take people with "cult hairstyles" seriously in meetings.

But despite these more bombastic and colorful moments of his Congressional career, Barr was also critically involved with major pieces of legislation. One of his biggest "accomplishments," much to the dismay of the LGBT community, was authoring a piece of legislation known as the Defense of Marriage Act, known by most as DOMA. Barr wrote DOMA in 1996, fearing that state courts might make moves to legalize same-sex marriage, and he didn't want other states or the federal government to have to recognize those laws.

As we all know, DOMA passed with flying colors. And 14 years later, it's still on the books, preventing same-sex couples from hundreds of benefits that heterosexual-married couples take for granted. The fact that gay couples can't sponsor their binational partner for legal immigration status? It's because of DOMA. The fact that gay couples can't inherit social security benefits or share health insurance if one of them works for the federal government? It's because of DOMA. The fact that a legally-married gay couple in Massachusetts can travel to Florida (or any of the other 40+ states that do not recognize marriage equality) and be treated like a second class citizen? Yup, that's DOMA's fault, too.

All of this should be enough to get a picture of Bob Barr's mug placed on every gay person's dartboard around the country. Except now, Barr admits that he was wrong to write DOMA, and is urging Congress to repeal the Act, which he says failed miserably and actually ends up violating core parts of the Constitution.

Huh. Anyone know that song, "I Wish That I Knew What I Know Now When I Was Younger?" If only Bob Barr had been privy to this song in 1996.

As Pam's House Blend notes in some awesome coverage of a November 12 symposium entitled "Legal, Secular, and Religious Perspectives on Marriage Equality/Marriage Protection/Same-Sex Marriage" at St. John's University School of Law in New York City, Barr once again called DOMA flawed legislation.

"Here we had a piece of federal legislation that said for federal law purposes only...this is what marriage means, reflecting the vast majority of Members of Congress representing the vast majority of people in the country at the time in 1996. A lawful union of one man and one woman. Yet what happened is rather than simply provide a shield for purposes of distributing federal moneys pursuant to that definition, the Defense of Marriage Act over the intervening years has been used as a club to force states not to adopt any definition of marriage other than the one that is supposed to apply just for federal law purposes," Barr said.

DOMA as a brutal club. Sounds like an apt analogy.

Barr continued by saying that he thinks LGBT Americans ought to have the legal right to marry. As Tony Varona reported for Pam's House Blend, Barr said that marriage equality was a "fundamental freedom."

"Speaking in favor of the right of same-sex couples to marry, Barr said that marriage equality 'is an issue of individual liberty,'" Varona reports. "He observed that 'back in the 1850s' marriage 'was considered for what it truly is -- a personal relationship, a contract between two individuals.' It was, according to Barr, only 'after the regulatory state began to take hold that government realized that [the regulation of marriage] was another way to control people.'"

So what's it say when the author of a particular piece of legislation says that it should be thrown out with the garbage? Seems like it says that it's time for DOMA to go.

Openly Gay Student Defends Teacher at School Board Meeting

Jay McDowell, a high school teacher in Howell, Michigan, was suspended last month for disciplining an anti-gay student. At a recent school board meeting, openly gay 14-year-old Graeme Taylor came to McDowell's defense with an incredibly articulate/inspiring speech.

Would students in Venango County feel safe or empowered enough to speak out so courageously?

Religion-based Bigotry Harms Youth

by Mitchell Gold for the Washington Post:

In the past few weeks, the shocking number of suicides by gay teenagers has sparked a serious national discussion about the root causes of anti-gay harassment and bullying. Across the country, parents, school officials, legislators, religious leaders, and others are recognizing that young people are deeply harmed by the message that being gay is sinful and wrong. For the first time, many voices are calling for accountability from groups and public figures who misuse religion to justify anti-gay bigotry.


Not surprisingly, those who have made careers of promoting anti-gay views are fighting back. Last week, Tony Perkins, the director of the Family Research Council, attacked those who "lay blame at the feet of conservative Christians who teach that homosexual conduct is wrong." In a guest voices column for On Faith, Perkins cynically denied any connection between the harassment of gay youth and the belief that gay people are sinful and disordered. According to Perkins, all responsibility must be placed on the bully, and not on religious teachings that condemn homosexuality as a threat to society. Incredibly, Perkins claimed that if gay youth commit suicide, it is because they "recognize intuitively that their same-sex attractions are abnormal," not because of rejection by family, friends, and religious leaders.

Perkin's distortion of scientific research and callous disregard for the harm caused by his anti-gay views have been widely condemned, and rightly so. And yet the views he expressed are shared by millions of Americans of integrity and good will who genuinely love and care for their gay children and family members. For decades, anti-gay religious leaders have taught that homosexuality is not an innate aspect of a person's identity, but a sinful choice to engage in immoral and abnormal conduct. Many people of faith have been deeply influenced by those teachings and have internalized them with little thought or reflection.

But unlike professional anti-gay advocates such as Perkins, most people who hold these views are genuinely unaware of the harm they are causing to gay youth. Tragically, many well-meaning and loving parents and family members who have been exposed to these teachings mistakenly believe they are protecting a gay child by rejecting their child and doing all they can to force the child to stop being gay. As a result, many gay teens are kicked out of their homes or sent to therapists who try to change their sexual orientation because their parents have been taught their child is choosing "an immoral lifestyle." Many loving grandparents reject a gay or lesbian grandchild because their church group said they must do so "for the child's own good." Too often, young people are ostracized by their families at the very time they most need their love and support--because the families have been taught that is what God would want them to do.

In reality, however, sexual orientation is a God-given trait--not a "choice." There is not a shred of evidence it can be changed. And just as is true for heterosexual people, it is a very central and important part of one's being. When parents reject or punish a child for being gay, they are rejecting the essence of who their children are as people.

That rejection can have deadly consequences. Gay youth who are rejected or ostracized by their families are at high risk of depression, substance abuse, HIV infection, and dropping out of school. They are also at least four times more likely than other youth to commit suicide. For gay youth who are sent to a therapist who tries to change their sexual orientation, that risk is even higher. Let me emphasize, it is not their being gay that puts them at risk but rather how they are treated by their parents and clergy. And by people like Tony Perkins.

During my visits with people of faith in all parts of the country, I have spoken with Evangelicals, Catholics, Protestants and Jews who have been taught that homosexuality is immoral and wrong. Almost invariably, they are surprised and concerned when they hear about the harms caused by those teachings. Many have told me they had not fully considered the impact on a gay young person of being told that he is sinful and abnormal, or that he will be cut off from God's love unless he can do the impossible and change who he is.


It is tragic that it has taken the death of so many young people in the past few weeks to focus national attention on the impact of anti-gay beliefs and the central role played by anti-gay religious leaders in promoting those beliefs. Once people of faith are made aware of these facts, they must ask themselves whether causing such severe harm to young people can exist comfortably with their deepest religious values.

True faith, compassion, and love do not ask any person to harm another human being. The past weeks have made the harm caused by anti-gay attitudes painfully clear. People of faith must ask whether they are complicit in causing such devastation and whether their beliefs give them the right to judge and condemn others--even when those beliefs may convince a young person that he would rather be dead than gay.


Mitchell Gold is co-founder of renowned home furnishings brand Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, and founder of Faith in America, a 501 C-3 non profit whose mission is to educate about the harm caused to LGBT Americans by religion based bigotry; and in 2008, published a book entitled CRISIS: 40 Personal Stories Revealing The Personal, Social and Religious Pain And Trauma Of Growing Up Gay In America.