Brian Tashman's blog

During the CPAC panel on the future of the Tea Party, Kevin Jackson said that the conservative movement has a lot to learn from the Left because progressives are so forceful that they have even "changed the definition of pedophilia." Jackson might be referring to frequent right-wing claims that the U.S. should resist the growing social acceptance and civil rights for gays and lesbians because it will lead to the normalization of pedophilia:

During a CPAC panel on supposed U.S. spending “to promote abortion and homosexuality worldwide,” Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Initiative (C-Fam), attacked protections for people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity in United Nations studies on violence and execution. Ruse first lamented that an initially-removed reference to sexual orientation was restored to a resolution condemning summary, extrajudicial and arbitrary executions, and went on to bemoan a decision by the Human Rights Council to study “discriminatory laws and practices and acts of violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity, in all regions of the world.” He argued that such a resolution is “just the nose of the camel under the tent” and lashed out at supporters of LGBT rights, maintaining that “their theory of international law is that it’s done by lying, coercion and trickery.”

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In 2010 there was a debate about summary execution that entered sexual orientation and gender identity into the equation, that was defeated and then it was accepted, and then the Human Rights Council last summer called for a report on violence against homosexuals. This was hard fought, it was barely lost, and the reasons that countries oppose this idea, ‘what’s wrong with having a study on violence against homosexuals,’ it’s because they’re introducing language which we know is just the nose of the camel under the tent. When this vote took place calling simply for a study, it was heralded in the New York Times as a great victory for human rights of the LGBT community, it was nothing of the sort it was a vote to have a study. See, this is the drumbeat that they use, ‘oh it’s a victory for human rights’ and then it happens again ‘and it’s another victory for human rights’ and it happens again ‘and it’s another victory for human rights,’ and the water gets warmer and warmer and warmer until the frog is boiled. This is their theory of international law: their theory of international law is that it’s done by lying, coercion and trickery.

Focus on the Family's Tim Goeglein, a former Bush Administration official who resigned in disgrace after admitting to plagiarism, told CPAC today that more than any other president "in the history of the United States," President Obama has "savaged and attacked" marriage, life and religious liberty.

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During the CPAC panel on the "Phony Divide between Fiscal and Social Conservatives" moderated by former National Organization for Marriage head Maggie Gallagher, new NOM chairman John Eastman attacked the Ninth Circuit Court's recent decision to overturn Proposition 8 as unconstitutional. He warned that legalizing same-sex marriage would have "catastrophic consequences for civil society" and harm children by displacing their role in families.

Eastman went on to mock the concept of marriage equality and challenge Justice Anthony Kennedy, seen as a swing vote in a possible Supreme Court case on marriage, saying that conservatives must ask him, "Do you want to be the critical vote that would destroy the institution that has been the bedrock of civil society since time immemorial.

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The Conservative Political Action Conference panel “Islamic Law in America: How the Obama Justice Department Is Selling Us Out,” featured numerous anti-Muslim speakers including Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, Ilaria Pantano and James Lafferty of the Virginia Anti-Sharia Task Force. Lafferty, whose wife Andrea runs the Traditional Values Coalition, dedicated his speech to his activism against mosques in his community and a Muslim Republican’s candidacy for the state House of Delegates.

Lafferty told the guests that “we are being outgunned by them, literally and figuratively” and claimed, “This is a spiritual war we are fighting.” At one point in his talk, Lafferty described a Justice Department “hate crimes summit” he attended. He expressed pride in the fact that most of the mosques that had been attacked were in the South:

Well with what the gentleman was saying about the Justice Department, I went to the briefing, the hate crimes summit, and I went there and it was all Muslim officials speaking and they had all these pictures of some mosque somewhere, and it was usually in the South I’m proud to say where a guy would drive a pickup truck right into the mosque. They had I bet 20—it looked like the same picture after a while because they just kept showing these same pictures, and each Muslim speaker got up, and remember this is a Justice Department meeting, and really ragged on two groups: the FBI and the NYPD. So whatever they’re doing they’re doing something good.

Former Concerned Women for America president and Fox News contributor Sandy Rios in a column today hailed the American Family Association’s OneMillionMoms for their campaign to pressure JC Penney to fire Ellen DeGeneres because she is openly gay. Rios said that the destigmatization of homosexuality in America as a result of public figures like DeGeneres is much like women who “adjust to men who beat them,” “young girls to fathers who rage in a drunken stupor” and Patty Hearst’s brainwashing “to the views of her Symbionese Liberation Army captors.” “We have opened our doors to deviancy and adjusted ourselves to the dark, foul draft,” Rios writes, “We laugh at gay characters in sit-coms, reality and talk shows and have become so desensitized.” Rios maintains that DeGeneres is leading to the “complete eradication of the traditional family” and America’s descent into “moral chaos.”

Imagine you had to make a case against Ellen DeGeneres being the new spokesman for JCPenney. Ellen is charming and delightful ... witty, warm and engaging. What's not to like about Ellen DeGeneres? And yet for thousands ... yeah millions of Penney's customers, it is an unsettling proposition.

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But this isn't about Ellen's winsome personality or her caring approach to her guests. It's about the private choices she has publicly flaunted and the profound influence she has chiefly because of her charm and likeability. Openly lesbian, Ellen is "married" to her partner Portia Rossi. Militantly gay, DeGeneres has fought for homosexual rights including marriage and indoctrination in public schools.

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Humans are capable of adjusting to almost anything. Soldiers freak out at the first sign of death, but hardened by battle in due course. Women adjust to men who beat them ... young girls to fathers who rage in a drunken stupor. Patty Hearst accustomed herself to the views of her Symbionese Liberation Army Captors. We can adjust to almost anything, but it doesn't make that "anything" healthy, normal or right.

We have adjusted ourselves to the point of breaking on the issue of homosexuality. We have invited through media what would have been unthinkable ten years ago into our own homes daily. We have opened our doors to deviancy and adjusted ourselves to the dark, foul draft. We send our children off to be indoctrinated by teachers indoctrinated themselves with homosexual advocacy by the National Education Association and declare our schools "safe." We laugh at gay characters in sit-coms, reality and talk shows and have become so desensitized; we can no longer distinguish from personal affection for them and disapproval of how they live.

And so it is with Ellen DeGeneres. We like her and therefore cannot bring ourselves to condemn what she does or see any harm in her being the spokesperson for a company where America's traditional families shop. We are incapable of making the distinction and so we open wide the gates and assure for ourselves the future homosexual activists have long written about: the complete eradication of the traditional family and the acceptance of any sexual choice anyone wants to make.

At least with Ellen we'll have some laughs as we descend into moral chaos.

After warning that the hate crimes law would be “used to prosecute pastors” (it didn’t), now Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber is warning that the mandate for insurance plans to cover contraceptives with narrow religious exemptions, a decision backed by the majority of Catholics, will mean that the government may “start rounding up priests.” Yesterday on Faith and Freedom, Barber made the case that the contraceptive mandate, which he called “the most astounding and gross constitutional violation I have ever seen,” will lead to the government to “start throwing priests in prison” and “pastors in prison.”

This I have to say is the most astounding and gross constitutional violation I have ever seen, and violation of the freedom of conscience, I have seen in my lifetime, and it comes from the President of the United States. The gloves have come off, all pretexts are gone, this president is willing to push his agenda to trample the Constitution of the United States to do it, his radical pro-abortion, liberal agenda.

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I am hoping that they have called President Obama’s bluff here, because what’s the alternative now? Are they going to go in and start shutting down Catholic hospitals? Start shutting down Catholic schools? Start fining them inordinate amount of money? Start throwing priests in prison, pastors in prison, organizers and CEOs of Christian hospitals around the country in prison? They might! I wouldn’t be surprised frankly, the fact that they were willing to do something so brazenly unconstitutional who’s to say that they won’t take it to the next step, to the next level, and start rounding up priests who refuse to comply with this unconstitutional dictate?

Today at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the group ProEnglish organized the panel, “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American identity,” and host Robert Vandervoort thanked CPAC for hosting the panel despite the work of “leftist thugs” who are trying to “shut down freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.” Vandervoort is a former leader of the White Nationalist group Chicagoland Friends of the American Renaissance, a racist magazine published by fellow White Nationalist Jared Taylor. Presumably, Vandervoort was referring to the efforts of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, which issued an alert on his background, and People For the American Way, which called on Republican leaders attending CPAC to denounce another panelist, Peter Brimelow, founder and head of the White Nationalist hate website VDARE.

In 2009, Brimelow reflected on CPAC after “Obama’s racial-socialist coup” and expressed his fear that the U.S. is doomed to face a “minority occupation government.” He called on the Republican Party to start focusing on becoming the party of white voters by attacking “ethnic lobbies,” affirmative action, bilingual education and “taxpayer subsidies to illegal aliens.”

Prior to Brimelow’s talk, Vandervoort delivered a rambling speech from Serge Trifkovic (who wasn’t able to attend) that focused on how the “cult of non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual victimhood” and “multiculturalist indoctrination” is ruining the West. “The native Western majorities will melt away,” Trifkovic’s speech concluded, “Europeans and our trans-Atlantic cousins are literally endangered species. The facilitators of our destruction must be neutralized if we are to survive.” Afterwards, Rosalie Porter bemoaned the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act for giving too much political influence to minorities.

Brimelow stayed on message and warned that multiculturalism and bilingualism were “diseases” that could wreck American society as they empower minorities and suppress traditional American (read: white) groups. He claimed that Canada, which is officially bilingual, was a good example of how bilingualism becomes a tool of elites to help minorities (Quebecers) at the expense of the majority, and went on to call multiculturalism and bilingualism a “ferocious attack on the working class.”

But the surprise guest of the panel was the fiercely anti-immigrant Rep. Steve King (R-IA) who came to discuss his bill to make English the official language of the U.S.

During a panel discussion, Brimelow said that the Democratic Party has “given up on the white working class” and is using immigration to “elect a new polity,” i.e. increase the number of ethnic minorities. Before he could turn to King, the congressman giddily told Brimelow, “I read your books!” King went on to say that Brimelow “eloquently wrote about the balkanization of America.”

Following the panel, King dismissed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s classification of VDARE as a hate group in an interview with BuzzFeed, saying, “I wouldn’t take them seriously.”

With the blessing of a leading Republican congressman, it looks like Brimelow’s dream of having a conservative movement which focuses on challenging cultural diversity may finally be coming to fruition.

Yesterday on Family Talk, James Dobson and Daniel Lapin came to the conclusion that ‘the pill’ paved the way for the destruction of civilization by increasing sexual promiscuity and reducing masculinity. Today, Dobson blamed Bill Clinton for the growing acceptance of “illicit sexuality” among politicians. Dobson, a prominent endorser of Rick Santorum, even lamented that the public isn’t having serious problems with supporting “an admitted womanizer,” Newt Gingrich. The Focus on the Family founder earlier claimed that he wouldn’t support Gingrich because he didn’t want the First Lady to be a former mistress.

Dobson: In the mid- to late-1990s, Bill Clinton, as president, had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. And the popular culture and the elites in media and in government rose to his defense and said that character really doesn’t matter, what matters is that a president is able to do his job properly, and the moral aspect was discounted. And something changed in our culture, not just about Bill Clinton, but about our attitudes toward our leaders being involved in illicit sexuality. And we’re seeing it right now on a number of fronts. I’m going to have to really come close to the limits here, but one of our candidates has been an admitted womanizer, and he has indicated, even to me, that he’s been forgive for that and that only God knows, and I accept that. But the attitude of the public toward that has changed. It is reflective of what happened in the 1990s.

Later in the program, Lapin argued that America is facing economic decline because of the removal of “religious restraints to rampant sexuality,” as men lose “self-discipline” and society is “effeminized.” Lapin then claimed that as “a more feminine society,” America has become more open to the “brutal and violent culture” of “fundamentalist Islam,” which he says is the only way “to explain the love affair that America’s leftwing and secularized elites have with Islam.”

So there you have it: feminism is responsible for the moral failings of men, economic decline and Islamic radicals.

Lapin: Once you remove the religious restraints to rampant sexuality, and all you got to do is relax those religious restraints and male nature will take care of the rest and bring about the decline of a civilization, one of the mechanisms is of course as we’ve discussed economic because in a sense it requires the same kind of control and self-discipline to get up every single morning and go to work whether you like it or not as it takes to restrain various appetites. So when you weaken one muscle you weaken everything else as well and not only do we have a tendency on the part of a society that has relaxed all form of sexual restraint to also go into free fall economically but what also happens is such a society tends towards becoming a more feminine society in a sense. Islam, fundamentalist Islam, which is essentially a brutal and violent culture is seducing a somewhat effeminized American culture because there is no other way to explain the love affair that America’s leftwing and secularized elites have with Islam.

Ex-gay activist Greg Quinlan of Parents and Friends of Gays and Ex-Gays (PFOX) and the New Jersey Family Policy Council, who recently testified against a marriage equality bill in the New Jersey State Assembly, yesterday told talk show host Steve Deace that gays and lesbians are practicing “sexual cannibalism.” After a long diatribe about how child abuse and fractured parental relationships are responsible for homosexuality, Quinlan argued that same-sex relationships represent “sexual, emotional cannibalization.” Later in the show, Quinlan attacked anti-bullying programs and blamed cases of suicide among LGBT youth on the gay community because “we’re making martyrs out of the kids that we’re recruiting to behave as homosexuals.”

Quinlan: I like the word that you used there, ‘cannibalized,’ because there is a scientific term that’s called that, ‘I want to have sex with that man so I can be like him, so I can become a part of him.’ It is a sexual, emotional cannibalization. ‘That person has something I want, they look better than I do, they’re more muscular than I am, they’re more virile than I am, they have something I want,’ and it’s a type of what we call an emotional or sexual cannibalism. I can’t describe it any better than that.
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Deace: What’s wrong with anti-bullying? Greg, why wouldn’t we want to stop kids from getting picked on or is there something else happening here?

Quinlan: It’s an agenda. We’re making martyrs out of kids that we’re recruiting to behave as homosexuals when no one is born that way, and that’s the problem and that’s the issue.

Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, along with several Republican senators and congressmen, are set to appear at the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference, but the GOP brass aren’t the only ones set to be at CPAC. As we’ve previously reported, CPAC will play host to anti-gay groups such as the Family Research Council, the birther leader of WorldNetDaily, and the Apartheid-nostalgic Youth for Western Civilization.

But that isn’t all.

Following speeches from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Rep. Michele Bachmann, CPAC is hosting the panel “The Failure of Multiculturalism: How the pursuit of diversity is weakening the American Identity” with Peter Brimelow, the founder and head of VDARE.com.

VDARE is a White Nationalist website, run by Brimelow, which frequently publishes the works of anti-Semitic and racist writers and is named after Virginia Dare, who is believed to be the first child of English parents born in the Americas. Brimelow, an immigrant from Great Britain, expresses his fear of the loss of America’s white majority, blames non-white immigrants for social and economic problems and urges the Republican Party to give up on minority voters and focus on winning the white vote. He also said that a New York City subway is the same as an Immigration and Naturalization Service waiting room, “an underworld that is not just teeming but also almost entirely colored.”

VDARE has published the work of people like Robert Weissberg, who says that black and Hispanic students are responsible for problems in the American education system, Marcus Epstein, the Youth for Western Civilization leader who karate-chopped a black woman after calling her a “n****r” (he later pled guilty to assault), and J. Philippe Rushton of the eugenicist Pioneer Fund.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists VDARE as a White Nationalist hate group and notes that “VDARE.com’s archives contain articles like ‘Freedom vs. Diversity,’ ‘Abolishing America,’ ‘Anarcho-Tyranny — Where Multiculturalism Leads’ and ‘Why Immigrants Kill,’” compiled quotes from other VDARE writers that call the U.S. an exclusively white nation and denounce Jews for “weakening America’s historic White majority”:

"America was defined — almost explicitly, sometimes very explicitly — as a white nation, for white people, and what that means is that there is virtually no figure, no law, no policy, no event in the history of the old, white America that can survive the transition to the new and non-white version. Whether we will want to call the new updated version ‘America’ at all is another question entirely."

— Sam Francis, VDARE.com, July 21, 2003

"Jewish activity collectively, throughout history, is best understood as an elaborate and highly successful group competitive strategy directed against neighboring peoples and host societies. The objective has been control of economic resources and political power. One example: overwhelming Jewish support for non-traditional immigration, which has the effect of weakening America’s historic white majority."

— Kevin MacDonald, VDARE.com, Nov. 14, 2006

"What race realists find most infuriating about the liberalism of the last half century is not just that it has lost its instinctive appreciation for the culture and people of the West but actively, viciously attacks them. Whites are doing something no other people have ever done in human history. Our rulers and elites welcome replacement by aliens, they vilify our ancestors and their own, they sacrifice our interests to those of favored minorities, and they treat the entire history of the West as if it were a global plague of rapine and exploitation. This is a disease that is killing us, and we must fight it head on."

— Jared Taylor, VDARE.com, July 4, 2008

While CPAC gave the boot to the gay conservative group GOProud “because of their behavior and attitude,” apparently running a website dedicated to promoting white nationalism is just fine.

As Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and other Republican leaders like Speaker John Boehner and Leader McConnell are scheduled to appear at CPAC, do they have any problem speaking at a conference which is giving a platform to birthers, apartheid apologists and white nationalists?

UPDATE: In a statement, People For the American Way President Michael Keegan called on Romney, Santorum and Gingrich to "speak out" against Brimelow's agenda, adding "It’s shocking that the CPAC would provide a platform for someone like Brimelow."

The problem with pre-recorded radio shows is that they don’t necessarily keep up with the news. On his radio alert today, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins pays tribute to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation for cutting off funding for breast cancer screenings and mammogram referrals at Planned Parenthood clinics. Apparently, no one at the FRC thought it was a good idea to pull the bulletin as last week Komen backed down from its move to defund Planned Parenthood, and listeners might be confused while Perkins is “tickled pink” about Komen.

After seven years of sitting out Susan G. Komen events, pro-lifers can finally get back in the Race! Hello, I'm Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. Pro-lifers aren't just happy--they're tickled pink about America's biggest breast cancer charity. After a seven-year partnership, Susan G. Komen finally cut ties with Planned Parenthood. Most people never understood the relationship to begin with. One group was setting out to save lines, and Planned Parenthood committed to ending them. But, since 2005, Komen sent millions of dollars to the abortion giant for breast cancer screenings. Then the news broke. Planned Parenthood didn't need the money for mammograms, because it never offered them! All they do are manual breast exams, which the NIH calls ineffective. Liberals are bashing the Foundation for politicizing the issue, but in reality, Komen's just trying to be a good steward. Planned Parenthood's under investigation by Congress for everything from fraud and criminal cover-ups. Any legitimate organization would walk away! It's just too bad the federal government isn't one of them.

Self-proclaimed prophet Cindy Jacobs and her husband Mike recently hosted Rebecca Greenwood, who like Jacobs is a leading figure in the New Apostolic Reformation, to discuss ways how to cast demons out of people who view pornography. Like American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer, Mike blamed incidents of oral sex on President Bill Clinton. He said that Clinton helped bring about “an outpouring of demonic into our nation” as “kids started having sex parties where they were having oral sex” because Clinton “took it out of the dimension of being wrong.”

Watch:

The Bible talks about the sins of the fathers, that doesn’t necessarily mean your natural father. I remember some years ago when the President of the United States was caught engaging in oral sex. Cindy and I talked to ourselves and we said, this is going to open a door that is going to cause an outpouring of demonic into our nation. We’ve seen that happen, I believe you can show statistically that things that we did not encounter, that were not an issue in our nation, all of the sudden, kids started having sex parties where they were having oral sex. Why? Because the President said because, ‘oh that’s not really sex.’ So it took it out of the dimension of being wrong and so it opened the door for the future generations.

In today’s prayer alert, the Family Research Council boasted that as a result of their pressure campaign against the Girl Scouts “their cookie sales are suffering.” The FRC has long attacked the Girl Scouts over discredited allegations that the Girl Scouts work with Planned Parenthood to promote “casual sex” and train girls about living with HIV. Ironically, while the FRC is hounding the Girl Scouts over the unfounded charges, the group criticized the tactics of “Planned Parenthood’s activist machine” which put pressure on the Susan. G. Komen for the Cure Foundation to restore ties with the women’s health organization.

Although “none of the money” from Girl Scout cookie sales “is given to any other group,” that hasn’t stopped FRC from asking for prayers against the Girl Scouts. The prayer alert says the “Scouts had better confess their errors” and stop “collaborating with Planned Parenthood,” and even cites a passage from Matthew 27 on the suicide of Judas Iscariot to imply that the Girl Scouts are taking blood money.

Planned Parenthood - The victory for the Susan G. Komen Foundation was short lived in breaking away from the largest private and tax funded abortion business in America. Planned Parenthood's activist machine so bludgeoned Komen that they agreed to reverse their stand. The Girl Scouts, whose leadership has been collaborating with Planned Parenthood for years, have found out and their cookie sales are suffering. This is very sensitive for the Scouts. The Scouts had better confess their errors and make a clean break while they can. Yet Planned Parenthood doesn't let its captives go easily.

May Congress expose and defund Planned Parenthood and may private organizations refuse to submit to shakedowns by Planned Parenthood and others in the abortion advocacy industry. May the Pro-life Majority grow in America until abortion has been abolished (Ex 23:2; Dt 21:1-9; 2 Kg 24:2-4 Pr 20:11; 24:11-12; Mt 27:4-6; Eph 5:11-14).

Robert Knight of the American Civil Rights Union today railed against legislation in Maryland in a column, “Counterfeit Marriage is Anti-Religion,” arguing that marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples “violates the very essence of marriage.” According to Knight, legalizing same-sex marriage would do “incalculable” damage to religious freedom and would endanger the future of society because where “marriage is weak, devalued or redefined, communities fail.” “Whatever the expressed good intentions behind the same-sex ‘marriage’ legislation,” Knight writes, “creating a counterfeit and then forcing it down people's throats is straight out of George Orwell's Newspeak in 1984”:

Maryland's proposed Civil Marriage Protection Act, which would legalize same-sex "marriage," is not about tolerance.

It's about using the law to force people to recognize a counterfeit as the real thing. In fact, it should more accurately be called the Attack on Religious Freedom Enabling Act.

That's because this is about more than the feelings of any two people. When you declare a couple "married," with the force of the law behind it, you bring everyone into it.

A brideless or groomless couple is not merely an addition to the marriage definition; it violates the very essence of marriage by excluding one or the other complementary sex.

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Marriage over the millennia on all continents has meant the uniting of male and female. Customs have varied, but sex is universally channeled into marriage to protect children and families -- the lifeblood of communities. Where marriage is weak, devalued or redefined, communities fail.

Whatever the expressed good intentions behind the same-sex "marriage" legislation, creating a counterfeit and then forcing it down people's throats is straight out of George Orwell's Newspeak in 1984. Compassionate motives cannot mask the inevitable bad outcomes of a bad law.

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I urge legislators to consider that the drive to legally impose same-sex "marriage" is neither inevitable nor irreversible, despite the media's blatantly biased treatment of this issue.

However, should Maryland take this step, the damage to freedom -- particularly religious freedom -- could be incalculable.