MassResistance

MassResistance will be hosting a fundraising banquet in early March where right-wing "journalist" James O'Keefe is scheduled to be a featured guest speaker:

James O'Keefe is an investigative journalist and filmmaker. He came to national prominence in 2009 when he filmed and produced an investigative report that helped expose corruption within ACORN -- including ACORN employees providing individuals they believed to be involved in an international under-age prostitution scheme with advice on how to break the law. Congress voted to defund ACORN shortly after the videos were released.

James began his career as a journalist as the founder and editor-in-chief of The Centurion at Rutgers University. He has helped start over a dozen campus newspapers nationwide. His past projects include an investigation of Planned Parenthood, where his reporting exposed the organization's willingness to ignore apparent instances of statutory rape and eugenics-based racism. He currently posts as VeritasVisuals (on YouTube), and blogs at BigGovernment.com.

Whether or not O'Keffe actually manages to make this engagement remains to be seen, because it looks like he just got himself in a lot of trouble:

The FBI, alleging a plot to wiretap Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in downtown New Orleans, arrested four people Monday, including James O'Keefe, a conservative filmmaker whose undercover videos at ACORN field offices severely damaged the advocacy group's credibility.

FBI Special Agent Steven Rayes alleges that O'Keefe aided and abetted two others, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, who dressed up as employees of a telephone company and attempted to interfere with the office's telephone system.

A fourth person, Stan Dai, was accused of aiding and abetting Basel and Flanagan. All four were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony.

As California prepares to vote in November on whether to keep same-sex marriage, the Massachusetts legislature is reconsidering the Jim Crow-era law restricting out-of-state gay couples from marrying if their home state prohibits it. Repeal of the 1913 law passed the state Senate Tuesday with no objections. And the far Right is furious.

Brian Camenker of MassResistance called yesterday’s voice vote “cowardly” and “sleazy,”  claiming that gays had taken over the state:

[Camenker] watched his state senate in action and described it as "completely orchestrated" by homosexual activists.

"It was horrible," he said. "It was as if the gays were playing them like a violin."

The voice vote, "was just a sort of murmur and that was it," he said.

"I'll tell you there's no more democracy in Massachusetts, no constitutional government. They were completely being run by the homosexual lobby," he said.

Camenker warned that repeal of the restriction would “cause havoc” for other states, and Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality called it “a recipe for chaos.”

"Obviously, what the homosexuals are trying to do is to create a tidal wave for homosexual...marriage, build up a number of states [that] are allowing either civil unions or homosexual...marriage, and then have a favorable case before the Supreme Court, which grants this nationally," explains the pro-family activist, noting that only a Defense of Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution could prevent the court from doing that.

About a month ago, during the debate over immigration reform, the editorial board at the National Review issued a series of challenges to the editorial board at the Wall Street Journal to debate the merits of the immigration bill.  The WSJ never accepted the challenge and the bill eventually died in the Senate and both NRO and the WSJ moved on.

But it looks as if the right-wing anti-gay activists at MassResistance have taken a page out of the NRO playbook and are now using it against them, challenging the magazine for its fawning coverage of Mitt Romney:

Twenty-two conservative activist leaders will publicly release a letter this week challenging the conservative magazine National Review's "puff work" for presidential candidate Mitt Romney and implying that the magazine is quietly abandoning the social conservative grassroots and constitutionalism. The editors refuse even to acknowledge receipt of the letter, which cites information about which they've misled their readers …

"A magazine that conservatives grew up with has legitimized a charlatan who trashed a constitution. As an opponent of judicial tyranny, Romney is a fraud," Haskins said. "Notwithstanding the post-constitutional nihilism of [NR pro-Romney blogger David] French, no legal training is needed to read English. Constitutions are not for lawyers to lock away from prying eyes, but for laymen as defense against the Frenches, Hewitts and Romneys of the world."

NR also conspicuously failed to report a detailed, provocative letter forty-four conservative leaders sent Romney disproving his claim that he "enforced the law" by imposing homosexual "marriage" when the Legislature refused to legalize it. Law professors and constitutional attorneys have affirmed the conclusions of the letter, which urged Romney to reverse his illegal orders. Signers included Paul Weyrich, an architect of the Reagan revolution; Robert Knight, a draftsman of the Defense of Marriage Act; Sandy Rios of the Culture Campaign (former president of Concerned Women for America); Phil Lawler, editor of Catholic World News; Phil Likoudis, editor of The Wanderer; and attorney Gary Kreep (United States Justice Foundation).

In contrast to NR spiking coverage of both letters, Kathryn Jean Lopez, their dedicated Romney cheerleader, trumpeted as newsworthy a pro-Romney letter from eight "conservatives" of widely varying reputations and conflicts of interest, including some who privately admit Romney failed to defend the constitution.

When NRO was challenging the WSJ, they mocked them as “the type of people who ordinarily you’d expect to welcome a challenge and a good old-fashioned intellectual rumble” and wondered sarcastically why they were hearing “only silence.” 

Well, MassResistance is now challenging NRO to explain its "puff work" coverage of the Romney campaign and will be releasing the letter it sent to the magazine later this week.  We’ll be keeping an eye on NRO to see when, or even if, they bother to respond.  

Next month, GLSEN’s annual “Day of Silence” will be held with students from around the country pledging to “be quiet all day to protest the discrimination, harassment and abuse—in effect, the silencing—faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and their allies in schools.”

Unsurprisingly, the anti-gay Right is not about to let this silent protest go by without comment.  

The Alliance Defense Fund is promoting its own trademarked “Day of Truth” to counter the “Day of Silence,” which it claims is “part of their overall strategy to change how our society perceives homosexual behavior … the Day of Silence is a misnomer, because what is truly being silenced is the Truth.” 

Scheduled for the day after the GLSEN event, the “Day of Truth” is designed to give anti-gay students an opportunity to “stand up for their First Amendment right to hear and speak the Truth about human sexuality in order to protect that freedom for future generations.”

As ADF’s 14-page instruction manual [PDF] states:

It is our responsibility to point the hurting person tempted by or even trapped in homosexual behavior to this healing love and merciful grace. Love does not mean condoning or ignoring things that are wrong or that cause harm. When Christ loved someone, like the woman caught in adultery (John 8:11), he expressed compassion for her. He also gave her the loving direction to “go now and leave your life of sin.” As followers of Christ, we must take action when someone is trapped in sinful behavior that separates them from God (John 8:24). We must be able to speak the Truth and direct people to their need for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and to find the all forgiving love of God.    

In order to accomplish this, ADF recommends that students wear T-shirts and pass out cards with the following message:

I am speaking the Truth to break the silence.

Silence isn’t freedom. It’s a constraint.

Truth tolerates open discussion, because the Truth emerges when healthy discourse is allowed.

By proclaiming the Truth in love, hurts will be halted, hearts will be healed, and lives will be saved.

But for a coalition of right-wing groups - including Concerned Women for America, Peter LaBarbera’s Americans For Truth, Massachusetts Resistance, and the ex-gay Stephen Bennett Ministries - counter-protesting just isn’t enough. Apparently, the idea of having students even witnessing the “Day of Silence” is far too dangerous and it is better if parents just keep their children home from school altogether:   

A national pro-family coalition, www.NotOurKids.com, is calling upon parents to keep their children home from school on April 18 -- to avoid GLSEN's homosexual "Day of Silence," in which students and some supportive faculty intentionally remain silent throughout the school day to protest alleged oppression of homosexuals.

…

"Teenagers deserve an opportunity to study English, history, math, and science -- without being subjected to pro-homosexual proselytizing sanctioned by school authorities. Students shouldn't be forced to self-censor or adopt beliefs contrary to those of their parents and places of worship," said Linda Harvey of Mission America, a coalition member.  "Even the strongest of our junior high and high school children are not equipped to serve as frontline soldiers in this culture war."