Posts on Flip Benham

When Randall Terry, founder of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, recently sued Troy Newman over the use of the name, he certainly opened up a can of worms.

A number of former OR activists issued a statement on Newman’s behalf, calling for Terry’s repentance for “unbiblical lifestyle decisions”; “[W]e can no longer remain silent while Mr. Terry continues to fleece unsuspecting pro-life people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for his personal and selfish gain,” they added. Terry responded with his own list of supporters vouching for his character.

And Flip Benham, who runs Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, put aside his distaste for Terry (“Giving more money to Randall Terry is like giving booze to an alcoholic,” he has said) to attack both Newman and the former OR activists who criticized Terry. “These are the same ones who would not stand with Operation Rescue leadership in the fall of 1993 and call the premeditated shooting (murder) of abortionists, sin,’” wrote Benham, recalling the darkest period of the militant anti-abortion movement.

But while Flip Benham’s Operation Rescue and Troy Newman’s Operation Rescue remain locked in their bitter name dispute, there is at least one thing they can agree on: Barack Obama.

Newman’s OR called for anti-abortion activists to descend upon an Obama appearance at the National Council of La Raza convention in San Diego this past weekend:

“Abortionists are famous for targeting minority communities and those who are most vulnerable. When Obama throws his support behind the abortion industry, he is also tacitly supporting the exploitation of Latinos and African Americans,” said Operation Rescue spokesperson Cheryl Sullenger. “Operation Rescue urges all pro-life supporters in the San Diego area to let their voices be heard in protest of Obama’s extremist abortion policies, and his tacit approval of the abortion industry’s despicable pattern of racial exploitation.”

Meanwhile, Benham’s group is conducting an anti-abortion campaign in Atlanta, which doesn’t seem to have much to do with Obama. But in announcing a church OR plans to picket, the group adds:

According to their bulletin, this is a UCC church which will host the Human Rights Campaign Gospel Concert. The HRC is the largest group advocating gay & lesbian rights and the UCC is the denomination of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barak Obama. For the first time in the history of our nation, we have a man running for president who is neither a Christian nor a patriot.

Lest John McCain get too excited about this new source of support, they don’t have a whole lot of nice things to say about him, either. Benham wrote back in October, “[T]here is no way we true evangelical Christians will support Giuliani, McCain, Thompson, or Romney.”

And Randall Terry, who led a small band of protesters against GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani over the winter, recycled the same language (“an enemy inside your camp”) for McCain in an interview with Playboy:

Q: What impact would a John McCain presidency have on the pro-life agenda?

A: If McCain would appoint judges who would overturn Roe, it could be a huge boon. I don’t think we have any assurance that would happen. Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor were all appointed by Republican presidents who did not do their homework. If presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. had done what they said they would do, we would already have overturned Roe because we wouldn’t have had Kennedy, Souter and O’Connor. There’s a very strong movement afoot in the conservative wing of the Republican Party to deny McCain the White House. Their attitude is, an enemy outside your camp makes you vigilant and unites you, but an enemy inside your camp makes you dead because he can cut your neck in the night or poison your food by day.

Last year, we tried to untangle the complicated legacy of the militant anti-abortion protest group Operation Rescue, famous for its massive clinic blockades in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Nothing so abstract as its role in shaping the debate over reproductive choice—no, it was hard enough trying to figure out which small, bickering group using the OR name was which.

Now Randall Terry, who founded Operation Rescue back in 1988, is adding another level of confusion: He’s claiming trademark infringement by Wichita-based Operation Rescue (also known as Operation Rescue West), headed by Rev. Troy Newman.

Bo Jackson, Twiggy, Marc Chagall, Jimmy "Margaritaville" Buffett and Randall Terry find themselves in the same company: a pretender tried to steal their identity. …

Mr. Terry seeks to regain control of the name Operation Rescue, which is his moniker.

Mr. Troy Newman lied under oath to the Trademark Office when he filed his registration of the name, Operation Rescue. Moreover, Mr. Newman has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars by falsely claiming a connection with Operation Rescue. …

Randall Terry states: "Mr. Newman mistook my patience for a lack of resolve. His identity theft of a name, a heritage, and a history over which he has no right is as offensive as it is ludicrous."

Terry dropped out of the anti-abortion protest scene after declaring bankruptcy during drawn-out litigation against the National Organization of Women, but he resurfaced to help create the media circus around the death of Terri Schiavo in 2005. More recently, he returned to protesting—albeit with a more modest-sized crowd—to oppose Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

As we explained, Rev. Flip Benham took over OR after Terry left, eventually changing the name to Operation Save America/Operation Rescue—apparently to try to elude further lawsuits. Meanwhile, Newman moved Operation Rescue West—which moved in the same small circle of hard-core activists—to Wichita, Kansas, the place of OR’s infamous 1991 “Summer of Mercy” protest. Newman then dropped the “West” from his group’s name—much to the objection of Benham, who claimed to have never given up the OR appellation. “Troy owning the name Operation Rescue is no more legal than abortion is,” complained Benham. The two groups apparently also disagree on strategy and tactics: They released contradictory statements about James Dobson and the Partial Birth Abortion Ban.

It’s not clear where Terry fits in to all this, other than as a sui generis publicity hound. While Benham’s group is apparently the same one Terry founded, Terry makes no mention of it in his press release. Indeed, Benham has no love for Terry: He published an article on his web site entitled “Please Remove Randall’s Feeding Tube.” “Giving more money to Randall Terry is like giving booze to an alcoholic,” Benham is quoted is saying.

When he was running for president, Mike Huckabee made no secret of his displeasure with the current leadership of the Religious Right, regularly chiding them for refusing to support his candidacy.  It was, at least in part, because of their glaring lack of support that Huckabee’s campaign eventually folded, forcing him to drop-out of the race and it looks as if Huckabee is not particularly prepared to let bygones be bygones:

Mike Huckabee can't definitively explain why he couldn't win the Republican presidential nomination, but he thinks the desire of Christian leaders to be "kingmakers," media coverage and Mother Nature all had something to do with it.

"Rank-and-file evangelicals supported me strongly, but a lot of the leadership did not," the former Arkansas governor says. "Let's face it, if you're not going to be king, the next best thing is to be the kingmaker. And if the person gets there without you, you become less relevant."

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson backed Rudolph W. Giuliani; American Value President and former presidential hopeful Gary Bauer endorsed Sen. John McCain; and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins remained neutral, even as Mr. Huckabee was wowing their supporters and winning the values voter straw polls they organized.

Huckabee seems particularly galled by Religious Right’s allegations that he was weak on foreign policy issues and didn’t fully comprehend to threat posed to this country by “Islamo-fascism,” which he says was nonsense since he was the only one who really understood the true nature of the threat:

"I was the one person who talked about this being a theological war, not just a geopolitical war [because] it was unlike a traditional war over borders and boundaries," he says.

While Huckabee remains bitter over his inability to win over the Right’s current leadership, it appears as if various other right-wing outsiders are equally bitter over the prospect of having to support John McCain and are considering defecting to the Constitution Party:

[I]is 2008 the year when a third-party candidate would find some traction among those disaffected by the abortion, marriage and national security stances found in the records of the three front-runners left in the race?

Charles Lewis, national outreach director for Christian Exodus, is one of those behind the launch of the new Save America Summit website, and believes it's not only time, it's overdue.

Among those participating in this third-party-seeking Save America Summit are Flip Benham, Wiley Drake, Bill Federer, Gordon Klingenschmitt, Howard Phillips, Chris Simcox, as well as representatives of organizations such as Gun Owners of America, the Council for National Policy, and Stop the ACLU and others who are convinced that McCain, Obama, and Clinton all plan "an EU-style unification of America with socialist Canada and Mexico during the next administration."

Sadly for Huckabee, he can't seem to get any love from these right-wing activists either, since they seem to have already narrowed down their choices for president to four people: Alan Keyes, Roy Moore, Jerome Corsi, and former Sen. Bob Smith.

Pass the Salt Ministries (yes, you read that right) has big news for right-wing activists in Ohio -  a bevy of second and third-tier Religious Right leaders will be gracing their fair state later this month for "A Gathering of Eagles":  

"A Gathering of Eagles" is taking place in Coshocton, Ohio on December 14-15 as some of America's finest Christian leaders are gathering for a Leadership Summit and Biblical Worldview Conference. Dr. Alan Keyes is confirmed as the keyniote [sic] speaker and will be joined by the likes of Rev. Flip Benham, Chaplain E. Ray Moore Jr. , Rev. Rick Scarborough, Peter Labarbera, and Pastor Ernie Sanders and others. This NON-POLITICAL event is designed to educate Christians about the great moral issues facing this country. Learn the truth from the front lines in the cultural war regarding issues such as The Gay Agenda, Abortion, Individual Liberty, Hate Crime Legislation, and the religion of Secular Humanism.

This doesn’t really sound like a “non-political” event at all.  In fact, it sounds likes a distinctly political event designed to rally right-wing voters heading into the Republican primaries and general election.  After all, Rick Scarborough has endorsed Mike Huckabee and is currently in the midst of an “all out effort to move Values Voters to vote their values on Election Day '08” while Alan Keyes is currently running for President (though you’d be forgiven for not knowing that.)

As for Pass the Salt, it is the brainchild of Dave Daubenmire:  

[A] veteran 25 year high school football coach, [Daubenmire] was spurred to action when attacked and eventually sued by the ACLU in the late 1990’s for alledgedly [sic] mixing prayer with his coaching. After a two year battle for his 1st Amendment rights and a determination to not back down, the ACLU relented and offered coach an out of court settlement. God honored his stand and the ACLU backed off. Coach’s courageous stand, an inspiration to Americans everywhere, demonstrated that the ACLU can be defeated. As a result of the experience, Coach heard the call to move out of coaching a high school team, to the job of coaching God’s team.

Of course, the claim that ACLU “relented and offered coach an out of court settlement” is accurate only if you ignore the fact that Daubenmire was ordered to stop leading religious activities at school and the school board agreed to pay an estimated $18,000 settlement.

Two years ago this week, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and other stretches of the Gulf Coast. At the time, the response by many on the Right was to blame the victims and/or social-service programs, and to take advantage of the “golden opportunity” to advance a far-right economic agenda. Remember Pat Buchanan, who criticized the “failure” of the “character and conduct” of the population of New Orleans, who “waited for the government to come save them” and “screamed into the cameras for help”? Then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) called for “tougher penalties” for those who were stranded when the storm hit and the city was flooded. Bill O’Reilly saw video footage of the tragedy as an ideal object lesson for young people: “If you refuse to learn, if you refuse to work hard, if you become addicted, if you live a gangsta-life, you will be poor and powerless just like many of those in New Orleans.” (Watch the video.)

Operation Restore America's Flip Benham, along with Ante & Kathy Pavkovic and Christen Sugar - the three protestors arrested for disrupting a Hindu prayer in the Senate - are holding a press conference before these "three gentle Christians will appear before man's court to answer charges for standing up for Jesus before a nation that has forsaken the God of our fathers."

Among the handful of Christian Coalition chapters that parted ways with their national affiliate, the Alabama chapter has had the most acrimonious divorce. Not only did the old chapter – now called Christian Action Alabama – publicly disagree over a gambling measure with the replacement chapter, the two were embroiled in a lawsuit. Randy Brinson’s newly-formed Christian Coalition of Alabama claimed John Giles and Christian Action Alabama had absconded with Christian Coalition assets.

Now, Brinson and CC of Alabama are prepared to let bygones be bygones. “We dropped the lawsuit because basically we were getting such bad press out of it," he explained.

It’s been said that bad press is better than no press, however, and it may be a while before we hear from either faction again. While Brinson’s still trying to get the new CC of Alabama – which then-rival Giles had called “one man and a name” – off the ground, the old group appears to be moribund. Giles, who used to be its president and full-time lobbyist, found a job in the private sector, and says Christian Action Alabama will be “in an idle position” for the time being.

Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists are bringing another factional dispute to the state.

As we noted the other day, the Religious Right was none-too-pleased that Rajan Zed, a Hindu clergyman, was scheduled to deliver the opening prayer in the United States Senate yesterday. Some were so opposed to it, in fact, that they got arrested for disrupting Zed’s prayer by shouting and calling it an “abomination” [see the video here.]

The Carpetbagger Report has a good post on this issue which notes that, several years ago, the Family Research Council likewise objected when similar situation arose:

Back in September 2000, I took on a highly entertaining project while working at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Venkatachalapathi Samuldrala, a Hindu chaplain, was invited to be the very first Hindu in American history to lead a congressional chamber in prayer. AU opposes official congressional prayers, but nevertheless believes that if lawmakers are going to have one, they better be even-handed about it.

The Family Research Council didn’t see it that way. The group flipped out, said Samuldrala’s prayer could lead to “moral relativism and ethical chaos,” and explained its belief that religious liberty “was never intended to exalt other religions to the level that Christianity holds in our country’s heritage.” In other words, as the FRC saw it, minority faiths are separate and unequal, First Amendment be damned.

I had a blast mocking the FRC for this, calling reporters and making the far-right group look pretty silly for demanding more religion in the public square and then balking at a religious invocation on the House floor. Eventually, the FRC not only backpedaled, it said the announcement condemning Samuldrala’s prayer was distributed by accident.

It appears that FRC either didn’t learn its lesson from this previous incident or has completely forgotten about it, as FRC is now fretting that Zed’s prayer is a sign that the U.S. Senate has taken "just one more step away" from America's Christian heritage and FRC president Tony Perkins just released this “special publication”:

There is no question that under the first amendment Zed enjoys freedom in this country that Christians do not enjoy in his home country. But does that mean it is appropriate for him to open the nation’s highest elected body in prayer? I think not … No one can legitimately challenge the fact that the God America refers to in the pledge, our national motto, and other places is the monotheistic God of the Jewish and Christian faith. There is no historic connection between America and the polytheistic creed of the Hindu faith. I seriously doubt that Americans want to change the motto, “In God we Trust, which Congress adopted in 1955, to, “In gods we Trust.” That is essentially what the United States Senate did today.

While we are on the subject, it should be noted that, according to various news sources, the three protestors were members of Operation Save America, which makes this quote all the more ludicrous:

The Rev. Flip Benham, director of Operation Save America/Operation Rescue, lambasted the decision to turn the prayer ceremony over to a non-Christian.

He said that the protesters recited the First Commandment and offered prayers. They were not part of an organized group but were Christians who happened to be in Washington to fight the hate crimes bill. They did not know there was to be a Hindu prayer, Benham said.

Three members of Operation Save America just happened to be in the nearly empty Senate chamber yesterday morning at the very time that a Hindu clergyman was scheduled to deliver a prayer, yet they had no idea it was taking place despite the fact that various right-wing news outlets had been writing about it for weeks? Wow, what an amazing coincidence. Good thing they were there or else this “abomination” would have simply taken place quietly and Operation Save America would have completely missed out on an opportunity to generate some press coverage for itself.

Today, Operation Rescue is among a handful of far-Right groups attacking James Dobson for saying a recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the so-called “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban” would “protect children”:

In a full-page ad in The Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs, the group said Dobson wrongly characterized the court's April ruling as a victory for abortion foes. The ad said the ruling will actually encourage medical professionals to find "less shocking" methods than late-term abortions, which abortion opponents often call "partial-birth abortion."

"Dr. Dobson, you mislead Christians claiming this ruling will 'protect children.' The court granted no authority to save the life of even a single child," the ad said. It concludes by asking Dobson to "please repent." A spokesman for Dobson did not immediately return a call. …

The letter is signed by Brian Rohrbough, president of Colorado Right to Life; the Rev. Tom Euteneuer, president of Human Life International; Flip Benham, director of Operation Rescue/Operation Save America; Judie Brown, president of American Life League; and Bob Enyart, pastor of Denver Bible Church.

Also today, Operation Rescue is joining the Christian Defense Coalition for a press conference in Wichita “to demand to know how the federal government plans to enforce the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act now that it has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.” In fact, Operation Rescue released a statement that it is “proud to stand with Dr. Dobson” on the Supreme Court case.

Today’s confusion arises from an internecine squabble rivaling the spat between Chris Simcox’s Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project.