The Brains Behind The National Organization for Marriage

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) spends millions upon millions to portray same-sex marriage (and parenting) as harmful to ALL children, economically devastating, and tantamount to polygamy -- to name just a few of their “disagreements.”

*Note that they use a dinosaur to depict themselves asking the question.

In other words, tolerate my intolerance.

PFOX Furious Over Government Support for LGBTQ Anti-bullying Efforts

This post brought to you by Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & not Gays (PFOX):

Families Ask Obama Administration to Take Down Government Links to Anti-Ex-Gay Websites

Government gives $100, 000 to gay group for schoolchildren to become “youth activists”

Those statements are basically the same complaint; That LGBTQ anti-bullying/suicide prevention resources are an assault on the so called ex-gay/formerly-homosexual community — Seriously.

That first part is self explanatory enough so I’m going to start by breaking down the second one.
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The Gay Straight Alliance Network (GSAN), “empowering youth activists to fight homophobia and Transphobia in schools” has received a $100,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

To help clarify the CDC’s mission (keeping in mind that “health” includes “mental health” as well):

CDC: The CDC awards nearly 85 percent of its budget [$7 billion in over 14,000 separate] grants and contracts to help accomplish its mission to promote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disability.
 
Contracts procure goods and services used directly by the agency, and grants assist other health-related and research organizations that contribute to CDC’s mission through health information dissemination, preparedness, prevention, research, and surveillance.

About GSAN:

GSAN: GSA clubs are powerful tools that can transform schools – making them safer and more welcoming for LGBTQ youth, youth with LGBTQ parents, and straight allies. GSA Network helps GSA clubs become activist clubs that can educate teachers and students to improve the school climate. GSA Network teaches GSA clubs how to work with the school administration to implement school policies that prevent harassment and violence.

It would seem that gay straight alliances are a very effective means of innoculating its participants from anti-gay influences.

PFOX, however, sees things quite differently and sent a letter, via the “United States Justice Foundation,” criticizing the CDC’s LGBTQ supportive resource links as being “anti-heterosexual” and asks:

Why is the federal government spreading intolerance against the ex-gay community and Christians who support the religious testimony of former homosexuals?

Griping that…

The CDC’s federal government website, “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health Youth Sources” at http://www.cdc.gov/lgbthealth/youth-resources.htm#friends links to gay activist organizations and homosexual resources for youth and parents, but fails to include links to organizations or resources for parents who do not affirm homosexual behavior, or for youth with unwanted same-sex attractions.

(For the record, the letter PFOX sent to the CDC is dated after the CDC’s “response” letter below. Regardless, the point intended remains the same.)

The CDC’s ”response” letter includes a quote from the APA.

[T]he American Psychological Association advises parents, guardians, young people, and their families to avoid sexual orientation change efforts that portray homosexuality as a mental illness or developmental disorder and to seek psychotherapy, social support and educational services that provide accurate information on sexual orientation and sexuality, increase family and school support, and reduce rejection of sexual minority youth

Regina Griggs, PFOX’s executive director, then goes on to kvetch about how these anti-bullying/suicide-prevention sites aren’t scientifically based either.

“Families Ask Obama Administration to Take Down Government Links to Anti-Ex-Gay Websites”

PFOX is asking President Obama’s administration to stop promoting websites of organizations and publications that denigrate Christian ex-gay ministries and former homosexuals.

Regina Griggs, and her invisible flock of “ex-gays” and “former-homosexuals” are, in effect, claiming that they’re victims of their victims.

The very concept of ex-gay/formerly-homosexual is meant to convince the voting public that homosexuals are just heterosexuals who engage in “homosexual behavior.” Thus, no obligation to secure us equal protection under the law, and most importantly, no obligation to legalize our right to marry.

As I see it, the federal legalization of gay marriage would legitimize the equality of our relationships with those of straight ones, effectively making the denial of our participation in virtually all areas of society, discrimination under federal law.

Whether or not this is the motive of the ex-gay movement, or any aspect/individual thereof is irrelevant, the message is the same. In short: There’s no such thing as LGBTQ.

The White House has an “It Get’s Better” page,” with anti-bullying/suicide prevention resource links. Which I assume is what, PFOX/Griggs, was referring to in that last quote.

That page also contains video after video of administration officials speaking to LGBT youth about their own challenges in youth and how it made them a better person today.

I found this one to be particularly poignant.

Inspired by President Obama’s “It Gets Better” video,” several LGBT White House staffers share their messages of hope and support for LGBT youth who are struggling with being bullied.

 

White House it Get’s Better page 

Bishop Harry Jackson loves like a rusty gate.

Re; DC votes to legalize gay marriage. Tip from Right Wing Watch.

RWW links to an article that addresses the DC's City Counsel's vote to legalize gay marriage.

From that article:

Opponents, however, said the issue is far from settled. Members of a group called Stand4Marriage, led by local pastor Bishop Harry Jackson, have met with members of Congress to urge them to oppose the bill...

..."If it gets to the vote, we win," he said, referencing the other states where residents overturned same-sex marriage laws.

One of the Biblical passages [1 Corinthians 13:1] Stand4Marriage quotes is thus:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

Stand4marriage then goes on to state the rest of the verse that explains the 'true' meaning of love, (essentially, that it's unconditional).

This coming from a man who asserts in his book---The Truth in Black & white---that homosexuality is a choice [p147].

This chosen belief about LGBT persons is a common excuse to justify the non-passage of pro-equality laws.

I vote that his love is of the "rusty gate" kind.
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Much more on Jackson here.

Rick Scarborough on hate-crime legislation: "I’m not here to hurt anyone"

Re; Right Wing Watch.

Anti-Hate Crimes Legislation Rally
Washington, D.C.
November 16, 2009

Compiled Footage of Religious Right 'Rally' on Hate Crimes (Edited)



They isolate gays as being unworthy of hate-crime protection, attempt to hide that fact by pretending that they are against ALL hate-crime legislation, and then claim it’s not about hate.

Rick Scarborough highlights these points, and then some:

Rick Scarborough: But I don’t believe hate-crimes legislation is about protecting homosexuals, I think it’s about silencing alternate speech.

For the first time in American Jurisprudence, we now have laws on the books, and this adds to those laws, where lady justice has to drop the blindfold, speak out, and see who it is that’s being protected, and then mitigate justice based upon one person as being superior to another person. One of our speakers hit that hard and very clear. That’s the problem I have with it.
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I think it’s much superior to have a life in a world, I should say, or a country, where this group [pro-gay] can have their rallies, we can have our rallies--let the superior idea win.

I’m not here to hurt anyone, or to infringe on anyone’s rights, but I’m going to die protecting my own. And that is the American way.

"justice based upon one person as being superior to another person"

That’s a load of garbage, as he is equally protected under the same hate-crime legislation, as per religion and sexual orientation.

"I think it’s much superior to … let the superior idea win"

That “superior idea” being that GLBT Americans are inferior, a "right" he is willing to “die” for, and considers to be the “American way.”

More on that “superior idea”:

Rick Scarborough: So listen, homosexuality is a sinful lifestyle. Therefore homosexuals, and this is just going to burn people that disagree. But homosexuals by definition are immoral people. They’re breaking the moral codes and standards of God.

Now, if a man will commit the act of sodomy, you can pretty well decide he will do about anything, include lying.

Nope, not hateful or hurtful at all.

Satire: NOM’s anti-gay marriage Gathering Storm ad

Yes, I know this has already made the rounds…

Original:




Parody:

A Gaythering Storm from Jane Lynch

Once again, Alan Chambers hides his true views in the open.

WORLDmag.com
Today’s news / Christian views
April 25, 2009

Alan Chambers believes just the opposite: that the new gay marriage bonanza is a trap.

"My major concern is that homosexuality is a counterfeit of what God intended us to experience in human sexuality," said Chambers, president of Exodus International and a former homosexual who left the lifestyle 17 years ago. "There will be young people who are like I used to be, who will see homosexuality as their only option for happiness and relationship fulfillment. [Normalizing] gay marriage is a stumbling block for them. A lot of people look at this from a policy perspective. But I think of all of those hearts that are searching for something legitimate in a way that's absolutely not able to meet their need"

“My major concern is that homosexuality is a counterfeit of what God intended us to experience in human sexuality…"

= Our love is fake.

“…said Chambers, president of Exodus International and a former homosexual who left the lifestyle 17 years ago.”

Former homosexual = used to think fake love was real, but now knows the difference (except for those pesky same-sex "temptations").

Left the [homosexual] lifestyle = left the sexually promiscuous lifestyle.

And apparently -- according to decades old San Francisco bath house studies -- it's true. Everyone who identifies as LGB or T has millions of sex partners in a lifetime.

Alan Chambers: "There will be young people who are like I used to be, who will see homosexuality as their only option for happiness and relationship fulfillment. [Normalizing] gay marriage is a stumbling block for them.”

Apparently the 99% of heterosexual relationships and weddings that young people are exposed to is all for naught. That 1% exposure to gay relationships is all it takes to convince gay teens that fake happiness is their "only option."

I can kind of see where he’s coming from. Since our love is fake, and the happiness that our relationships bring us is fake, our rights are fake too. Therefore, denying us our rights (and eventually our relationships), isn’t really denying us anything at all.

From Exodus:

No one is saying that change is easy… …But we find hundreds of former homosexuals who have found a large degree of change--attaining abstinence from homosexual behaviors [celibacy], lessening of homosexual temptations [denial], strengthening their sense of masculine or feminine identity [behavior], correcting distorted styles of relating with members of the same and opposite gender [behavior]. Some former homosexuals marry and some don't, but marriage is not the measuring stick; spiritual growth and obedience are.

And there’s the rub. The goal isn't heterosexuality, it’s all about being a good anti-gay Christian.

If you’re Jewish or atheist or Hindu with unwanted same-sex attractions, you’ll just have to convert if you want the help of Exodus.

Otherwise, you can go to hell, literally.

From that same page:

Studies suggesting change rates in the range of 30-50% are not unusual, although "success rates" vary considerably and the measurement of change is problematic. For details and review of several studies, see the link below.

Remember from above, “change” means: celibacy, denial, behavior, and behavior -- NOT heterosexuality. And the study they link to counts celibacy as successful “change.”

Not surprising, as the study is NOT peer reviewed, and admittedly sets the bar for success, nearly as low as it is possible to set a bar for success:

Chapter 1, page 15: The Exodus Project [conflict of interest, anyone?] reported here was directed at answering two simple questions: (1)…is it ever possible for an individual who has a homosexual orientation to change that orientation via religious means? (2) Is the attempt to change harmful, as so many today claim?

As part of their “Christian Ethical Responses to Homosexual Behavior,” in their quest to define “homosexual behavior as a moral prohibition,” they endorse mass murder twice, on pages 55 and 57, by citing Leviticus 20:13, without so much as a whisper as to the immorality of such a position.

Leviticus 20:13: If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

BTW, the authors of this 400 page propaganda piece: “Ex-gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation,” are Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse.

Back to Alan Chambers: “A lot of people look at this from a policy perspective.”

Policy: course of action, rule, strategy, plan, guiding principle, guidelines, procedure, dogma, program

And voila, all we millions of LGBT Americans are reduced to a “this,” to be approached, taken, and understood as a "policy" issue.

Alan Chambers: "But I think of all of those hearts that are searching for something legitimate in a way that's absolutely not able to meet their need"

Who the intercourse is he to speak for every LGBT person on the planet?

And on a personal note, I have NEVER seen him wax passionate about his relationship with his wife, his job, his children, nor do I recall ever having seen him genuinely smile. It’s like he’s an empty shell just going through the motions.

You'd think this "genuine" love that he's discovered (to the rest of our chagrin) would produce some sort of discernable liveliness.

Of course that absence of passion might make sense if your true goal was to be “right.” Naturally, the more you force the outside world to conform to your inside world, the more “right” you can pretend to be.

Maggie Gallagher’s anti-gay marriage “Talking Points”

This page is basically a crash course on how to spread bigotry and hatred without coming across as bigoted and hateful.

They start with the assertion that:

Extensive and repeated polling agrees that the single most effective message is:

"Gays and Lesbians have a right to live as they choose,
they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for all of us."

Obfuscating the true message of intolerance by tempering it with a disingenuous message of tolerance. Doublespeak at its best: We have the right to live as we please, but only to the extent that we live our lives as they please. Justified by implying that our right to marry would infringe on their thoughts about marriage.

Their use of the word ‘marriage’ is a euphemism for love. It’s another purposeful obfuscation to avoid saying that our love is fake - which would make them look hateful.

They then advise wanna-be bigots to NEVER say you’re against same-sex marriage, and to only say that you’re against the “redefinition” of it.

Apparently saying you’re against SSM causes them a 10% drop in polls.
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They then play the race card (in the effort to counter claims of racism?) by claiming that 60% of African Americans are against gay marriage. Which is really not a credit, it’s an insult. In other words, 60% of African Americans were duped into believing the lies they were told by people like Maggie Gallagher and organizations like her's.
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They advocate for a Federal Marriage Amendment. This is something that I don’t think enough people understand the full motive behind. It’s an attempt to wrest the power and check of the Supreme Court (if not all courts), from any constitutional interpretation on the matter, other than to rule that marriage can only be between one man and one woman. It would instantly nullify all same-sex marriages in the union.

(No more "activist judges," at least when it comes to we godless sodomites.)

One of the reasons the courts exist is specifically to protect minorities from tyranny of the majority. Anti-gays understand this, thus the need to go over the courts' heads via anti-gay Constitutional Amendment.
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About benefits: “If medical proxies aren’t working, let’s fix that problem. If people need health care, let’s get them health care. Don’t mess with marriage.”

Again, baloney. The anti-gays are itching to shut down any expression of LGBT’s. That includes websites, books, parades, bars, protests, LGBT groups of any kind, even just coming out of the closet. Furthermore, their vocal objections to the striking down of Lawrence v Texas (decriminalizing consensual gay sex) indicates that they heartily endorse our imprisonment.

And if they accomplish that, capital punishment is next. After all, God sanctions it in the Bible, and even says it would be our own fault:

Leviticus 20:13: If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

They then have the audacity to claim that the high (nearly 50%) divorce rate is the “reason we should be strengthening marriage.”

An especially egregious claim, as the bulk of this page’s reasoning is of the “won’t somebody please think about the children” mantra.

The phrases, Mother and Father, man and woman, husband and wife, or some variation thereof, are used no less than 16 times - usually in the context of "what's best for children."

Absence of a male or female parent, via divorce, resulting in single parenting = A-OK.

Yet they present the insanely hypocritical argument that two parents of the same gender should be prevented from raising children because it’s not the IDEAL.

Clearly, this is not about the children. It’s about personal selfishness at the expense of children.
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Edit: changed the word "gullible" to "duped." 5-11-09 @ 6:07 AM

Response to NOM ad. Sincere, non-violent, non-mocking.

Weathering the Storm


From the YouTube info:

Love Not Laws aspires to show that Margaret Mead was correct when she said "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." None of the people who appear in this video received any compensation for their time.

None of the people who worked on this video received any compensation for their time. All materials used to create the video were donated. We simply came together to promote the ideals of love and equality.

Contact us: lovenotlaws@gmail.com ©2009

Gratuitous offensive language on my part taken out, 5-6-09 @ 7:35

Rick Scarborough on homosexuality: “The look on their faces testifies against them”

Here’s a new one.

From his book: Enough is Enough
A Practical Guide to Political Action
© 2008

Isaiah makes an interesting observation about homosexuality: “The look on their faces testifies against them” (Isa. 3:9). Have you ever noticed most homosexuals have a certain look that is reflected in their eyes? The King James Version describes it as the “shew of their countenance.” There are a number of theories as to why that is so, but the fact is undeniable. As a rule, homosexuals cannot totally disguise themselves because it is reflected in their eyes. Jesus said:

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

--Matthew 6:22-24

This helps explain a number of things regarding homosexuals. Though they love to be portrayed as gentle, caring, and sensitive human beings, do not be deceived. Many homosexuals can become very violent and appear to have no hesitancy to inflict property damage or even bodily harm to anyone who would dare to disagree with them. Scenes of the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston quickly come to mind. Police officers in every major city in America can testify to the level of violence homosexuals can an will inflict.

A few things.

1) If you click on the link for Matthew 6:22-24, you’ll find that a small, but important portion of that quote has been left out:

22"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

24"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Now, why on Earth any Christian would want to hide the fact that they worship the money they make by spreading unwarranted hatred for gays, through lies, and in God’s name, is simply beyond me.

2) He gave no footnote, or any other identifying criteria in regard to the alleged 1992 RNC incident.

3) To think that one non-contextual incident 16 years ago is ample evidence that same-gender attraction -- in and of itself -- causes violent behavior, says WAY more about you, Rick Scarborough, than it does about homosexuals like me.

And as far as that noticeable evil-eye trait that all we gays supposedly share, I’m sure that advice will come in quite handy for unscrupulous anti-gay bigots like you.

From now on when they see wolves in ocular clothing such as this…

…they will now recognize that person to be gay.

You’re quite the cultural lifesaver.