December 2010

As organizations such as Focus on the Family vigorously work to stop schools from implementing anti-bullying policies that protect gay students, the Minnesota Family Council (MFC) is leading the charge against anti-bullying programs in Minnesota schools. MFC head Tom Prichard previously condemned schools for permitting Gay Straight Alliances, which he says have “kids indoctrinated in homosexuality,” adding that “it’s sad and harmful for kids to celebrate homosexuality when in fact it’s not a healthy lifestyle.” Barb Anderson of the MFC and the Parents Action League recently talked to rabidly anti-gay activist Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality about why she thinks LGBT-rights groups like the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) are actually to blame for the bullying of gay students by promoting “homosexual propaganda” and targeting certain students for indoctrination.

Anderson singled out the Anoka-Hennepin School District for her group’s campaign. In July, a student committed suicide after he was relentlessly bullied for being gay, and his family and other advocates have asked the school district to strengthen their anti-bullying policies to protect LGBT students from pervasive bullying. Anderson accused safe-schools groups such as GLSEN of using the student’s suicide “as a Trojan horse” to instill “pro-gay training” in schools.

Andy Birkey of the Minnesota Independent reports:

[Anderson] said that it was LGBT groups that caused the bullying because more students were coming out of the closet.

“That is one of the tactics that they are using now, to say that by not legitimizing and normalizing homosexuality, we are creating an atmosphere in the schools that is hostile to quote-end-quote gay kids,” she said. “What they are doing is just the opposite themselves. They are creating an environment where these children that are sexually confused suddenly become affirmed as a homosexual or that they are born that way, and then these kids are locked into a lifestyle with their choices limited, and many times this can be disastrous to them as they get into the behavior which leads to disease and death in some cases.”

She added, “So, it’s really… They are the ones that are contributing to an atmosphere that can even increase bullying as more kids get into this kind of a lifestyle.”

Specifically, she said that it was the fault of the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network.

“They are the driving force, really the clearing house for all of the homosexual propaganda that is coming into the schools,” she said. “GLSEN also promotes getting gay themed literature for children to read which in most cases is extremely obscene and pornographic. They are also behind getting the Gay-Straight Alliances into the elementary schools as well.”

She added, “This is a real dangerous organization. They are what I would call a child corruption organization basically.”

She said the group is targeting “creative” and “unique” students in the Anoka-Hennepin School District’s Fred Moore Middle School where a GSA was created this year.

“It’s interesting that they targeted an arts school to begin with because a lot of times your have homosexual teachers in that type of environment working with students,” she said. “So these are students that tend to be sometimes very creative and unique in their personalities so it seems to be an area where they try to get in and get the students involved in gay themed productions as well.”

Anderson said that her group, the Parents Action League, has been pressing the school district to do away with GSAs.

“Because of the Equal Access act they feel that they have to allow this in the schools and they they have not been able to put a stop to it, but there are parents getting organized and trying to plead the case that this really is harmful to students,” she said. “It is not providing them with healthy information. None of this is based on truth or scientific fact, especially if they are telling kids they are born this way.”

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She added, “Really homosexual behavior is one of the most hazardous behaviors that kids could get into and start practicing.”

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“In the wake of that tragedy,” said Anderson, “we have had more of the pro-gay materials flooding into our school district, because they are using that as a Trojan horse, playing on the emotions of the people involved and, of course, this is just a horrendous tragedy for this family.”

Anderson continued, “But they are playing on the fact that we have got to get more of this in the schools so this doesn’t happen to other kids and so that’s where all this pro-gay training is coming in, and it’s making it harder for parents to stop it. It’s really coming in like a tsunami.”

She then praised the school board, “But we do have an outstanding policy. Our sexual orientation policy, which parents can look at on the Parents Action League website, that was written by our school board members and is in place and is the one piece that is keeping these types of pro-gay materials out of the school day.”

After The New York Times reported that the new health care reform law will cover “voluntary advance care planning” as a reimbursable Medicare service, the Obama Administration immediately feared pushback from right-wing opponents of reform. Anti-reform politicians and activists jumped on a widely-discredited and disputed article by former New York Lt. Governor Betsy McCaughey, who predicted that the reform bill will lead to government control over end-of-life decisions.

Republicans pounced on the false claim, as Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) declared that the country “should not have a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on grandma” and House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) warned that the “provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia.” Most famously, Sarah Palin wrote on Facebook that her “baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide” if he is “worthy of health care.” The New York Times said that “Ms. McCaughey has been the hammer to Ms. Palin’s nail” as the two “have driven some of the most disturbing, and distorted, claims about the proposals.”

Not only is the service voluntary, but Medscape Medical News reports that since January 1, 2009, “Medicare has been paying for [end-of-life care plans] in a limited fashion — and with little if any protest,” and the American Academy Family of Physicians and American College of Physicians applauded the move as a way to “tailor care” for each patient.

Conservatives though are already decrying the decision as the return of the death panels. Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel condemned what he called “a super death panel” that will put “pressure on the elderly to end their lives prematurely” by targeting senior citizens:

When you have the government mandating this end-of-life counseling, they're conscripting doctors to do end-of-life counseling on a massive scale. It will be the equivalent of a super death panel. Elderly patients will get confused and will end up signing documents without having a clue what they're signing, and they will sign away care they might really want.

Spokesmen from other Religious Right groups, including the American Life League, Concerned Women For America, and Operation Rescue, also denounced the purported "death panels":

"Nothing good can come of this," said Judie Brown, the president of American Life League. "This will affect everybody's parents and grandparents and preborn babies, and it will not affect anybody for the good."

Congress must step up to cancel the regulation, Brown added. "If not, a death certificate is written for an awful lot of elderly people."

"Those of us who voted in common-sense representatives to take control of the House will be expecting to see reversals of regulations like these that run roughshod over the will of the American people," said Dr. Janice Crouse, director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute at Concerned Women for America.

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Operation Rescue President Troy Newman called the Obama approach "Darwinist," and predicted it would lead to rationing of health care.

"When you have a fixed amount of money that is allocated to health care, it's only logical that some bureaucrat will regulate it and decide who will get treatment," Newman told WND. "That treatment will be based on some humanist, egalitarian principle that these bureaucrats always seem to hold. Their principles are Darwinist, survival of the fittest.

"My grandmother is 94 years old," Newman continued. "Suppose she breaks her hip. Are they really going to authorize that expense over a 16-year-old who has urgent needs? It was Obama who said maybe Grandma should take a pill rather than get this expensive treatment."

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"Having just returned from the funeral of a dear lady – widow of a Navy man, both buried at Arlington National Cemetery – I couldn't be more repulsed by the idea of government-controlled death panels that will make end-of-life decisions for the most vulnerable of our citizens," Crouse added.

Conservative columnist Cal Thomas uses Charles Dickens to blast the move, and claims that it redeems Sarah Palin:

Sarah Palin deserves an apology. When she said that the new health-care law would lead to "death panels" deciding who gets life-saving treatment and who does not, she was roundly denounced and ridiculed.

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Do you see where this leads? First the prohibition against abortion is removed and "doctors" now perform them. Then the assault on the infirm and elderly begins. Once the definition of human life changes, all human lives become potentially expendable if they don't measure up to constantly "evolving" government standards.

It will all be dressed up with the best possible motives behind it and sold to the public as the ultimate benefit. The killings, uh, terminations, will take place out of sight so as not to disturb the masses who might have a few embers of a past morality still burning in their souls. People will sign documents testifying to their desire to die, and the government will see it as a means of "reducing the surplus population," to quote Charles Dickens.

• Colorado right wing activist Douglas Bruce faces stiff fines for running a “secret campaign.”

• Speaking of campaign problems, federal officials are investigating Christine O’Donnell for using campaign finances on personal expenses.

• A third court has ruled against Joe Miller, but he still refuses to concede!

• New York’s Conservative Party now number three on the state ballot, while The Rent Is Too Damn High Party falls around 9,000 votes short of receiving an automatic spot.

• Log Cabin Republicans in New York start their own school to train Republican activists.

When the North Carolina Council of Churches, a coalition composed of mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, selected an openly gay man as the body’s new president, right-wing activists jumped on the story in their efforts to foster divisions and anti-gay sentiment among church groups. Seventeen denominations, including Episcopal, Lutheran, AME, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Reformed, and Methodist churches, are members of the North Carolina Council of Churches, and President-Elect Stan Kimer promised to make outreach, environmental stewardship, and social justice key parts of his agenda.

“I have a strong belief that as a Christian I'm called to make the world a better place,” Kimer told the Charlotte Observer, “I like to spend my time with groups where I can see an impact.”

Now, the far-right Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) is using Kimer’s election to advance its agenda of splitting Protestant churches by opposing any denomination’s support for LGBT equality.

IRD’s Vice President Alan Wisdom condemned the coalition’s decision to OneNewsNow, saying, “All major branches of the Christian church -- the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, the evangelicals, the African-Americans, the historic Protestant denominations for the most part -- agree that God's standard of sexual morality is the marriage of man and woman and that homosexual relationships are not in accord with Christian teaching.” Wisdom also condemned the Metropolitan Community Church, of which Kimer is a member, for its foundational support of gay equality.

The New York Times reports that the IRD opposes women’s and gay rights, and leads “traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics of the denomination's leaders.” The IRD has ties to ultraconservative organizations including Concerned Women For America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, the anti-immigrant group Numbers USA, the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Patrick Henry College and The Weekly Standard, and receives its funding from the right wing Scaife, Bradley, Olin, and Ahmanson Foundations.

Reverend Kapya Kaoma of Political Research Associates reported on how IRD mobilizes church groups in Africa to viciously oppose rights for gays and lesbians and to resist mainline Protestant denominations. In “Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia,” Rev. Kaoma writes that the IRD encourages anti-gay congregations based in Africa to launch missions in North America as “part of a long-term, deliberate, and successful strategy to weaken and split U.S. mainline denominations, block their powerful progressive social witness promoting social and economic justice, and promote social and economic conservatism in the United States.”