Gary Glenn

Three Times Makes a Trend

Submitted by Kyle on February 9, 2010 - 9:46am

For the third time in the last week, a leading Religious Right activist has declared that his goal is to see homosexuality criminalized.

First it was Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association and Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council who made such declarations and now Gary Glenn of the AFA of Michigan has joined the call as well:

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, has added his voice to a growing course of American leaders calling for the re-criminalization of homosexuality in the U.S.

In an e-mail to Michigan Messenger, here’s how Glenn responded when asked if he supported the criminalization move proposed by the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg’s comments last week on Hardball:

“The short answer to your question is yes, we believe that states should be free to regulate and prohibit behavior that’s a violation of community standards and a proven threat to public health and safety — including, as most of the United States did throughout its history, homosexual behavior.”

It should also be pointed out that Glenn is among the plantiffs in the Thomas More Law Center's lawsuit challenging the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 on the grounds that protection for gays is part of an effort to "criminalize the Bible and use the threat of federal prosecutions and long jail sentences to silence Christians from expressing their Biblically-based religious belief that homosexual conduct is a sin."

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Religious Right Sues Over Hate Crimes Law

Submitted by Kyle on February 2, 2010 - 10:29am

I am actually surprised that it took the Religious Right this long to file suit:

A conservative civil liberties group is challenging the constitutionality of the recently enacted federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 ... The Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center says it elevates people engaged in deviant sexual behaviors to a special, protected class of persons under federal law.

The lawsuit naming U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of three pastors and the president of the American Family Association of Michigan.

All of the plaintiffs “take a strong public stand against the homosexual agenda, which seeks to normalize disordered sexual behavior that is contrary to Biblical teaching,” the Law Center said in a news release.

“There is no legitimate law enforcement need for this federal law,’ said Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center.

“This is part of the list of political payoffs to homosexual advocacy groups for support of Barack Obama in the last presidential election,” Thompson continued. “The sole purpose of this law is to criminalize the Bible and use the threat of federal prosecutions and long jail sentences to silence Christians from expressing their Biblically-based religious belief that homosexual conduct is a sin. It elevates those persons who engage in deviant sexual behaviors, including pedophiles, to a special protected class of persons as a matter of federal law and policy.”

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The four plaintiffs are Michiagn Pastors Levon Yuille, Rene Ouellette, James Combs, and Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan.

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Robert Muise, who is handling the case, said the new law promotes two Orwellian concepts: “It creates a special class of persons who are ‘more equal than others’ based on nothing more than deviant, sexual behavior. And it creates ‘thought crimes’ by criminalizing certain ideas, beliefs, and opinions, and the involvement of such ideas, beliefs, and opinions in a crime will make it deserving of federal prosecution."

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Right Wing Leftovers

Submitted by Kyle on April 8, 2009 - 4:06pm

Did you know there is a sports complex in one of Israel's biggest settlements in the West Bank named for John Hagee?

For some reason, Richard Viguerie seems to think that the Justice Department's prosecution of the Ted Stevens case under the Bush administration is evidence of a "alliance between leftwing Democratic politicians and corrupt bureaucrats and special interests."

Alan Keyes will reportedly be speaking at Washington, DC's "Tea Party" rally next week ... and Fox News has been aggressively promoting them.

Phyllis Schlafly declares that her gay son is fully supportive of her right-wing agenda and likewise opposes gay marriage.

Because WorldNetDaily apparently doesn't have enough nutcases writing columns for them, they've decided to bring Michael Savage on board as well.

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association in Michigan, was greeted by hundreds of protesters when he arrived to speak at Central Michigan University last night.

More than 250,000 people have reportedly signed a petition sponsored by the Cardinal Newman Society calling on Notre Dame to withdraw its invitation to President Obama to speak at the May 17 commencement.

The Vatican has reportedly rejected at least three of President Obama's candidates to serve as U.S. ambassador because they support abortion.

Finally, Franklin Graham is beginning to sound more and more like Pat Robertson:

America was once a nation that honored and trusted God, albeit imperfectly. Many of today’s prestigious institutions of higher learning were founded by Christians, and precepts from Scripture were foundational for instruction. Presidents and national leaders embraced Christianity’s influence on civil matters, and God’s moral laws were encoded into our judicial system.

That godly heritage has been abandoned and rejected, and I believe we are paying the price today. Greed isn’t good. The lack of personal integrity has massive consequences. We’ve built a culture of our own making that is on the verge of destruction.

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This is a time of testing for our country. Will we acknowledge our sin and turn back to God? Will we call on God for help in our hour of distress, or will we continue to further distance ourselves from His aid?

God always leaves room for repentance. He is patient and long-suffering. But there comes a time when He finally allows us to reap what we’ve sown. That will be a bitter harvest, one that I pray we will not experience.

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MI AFA’s Glenn Targets Gays and Those Who Affiliate With Them

Submitted by Kyle on October 27, 2008 - 3:18pm

It should shock nobody to learn that Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan and early Mike Huckabee supporter, is not particularly gay-friendly and so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that he would be targeting openly gay candidates in his state:

An activist who opposes gay marriage and same-sex benefits for public employees is trying to raise sexual orientation as an issue in a state House race.

Gary Glenn sent an e-mail Friday to supporters and the media targeting openly gay Democrat Garnet Lewis. Glenn wrote that Lewis is a "homosexual activist with an extremely liberal agenda" not representative of voters in the 98th district, which covers parts of Saginaw and Midland counties.

The e-mail notes Lewis has been endorsed by Michigan Equality, Triangle Pride and other gay rights groups.

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Lewis said she's been open about her sexual orientation, which was mentioned in some media reports as early as this summer. But she said she was disappointed that Glenn would try to make it a campaign issue because it's "old news."

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Glenn was a major backer of the successful 2004 campaign to define marriage as between one man and one woman in the Michigan Constitution. He lives in Midland County and is president of the American Family Association of Michigan and chairman of the Campaign for Michigan Families political action committee.

But it looks like you don’t even have to be gay to be the target of Glenn’s ire - all you need really is to have been in some way associated with a gay rights group:

As the November election approaches, a group claiming to promote Michigan families is renewing a campaign that attacks an Allegan County judge for his ties to homosexual groups.

The Campaign for Michigan Families, a political action committee, plans to run 60-second radio spots on Judge William Baillargeon's background. The spots are to air on five West Michigan radio stations.

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The radio campaign attacking Baillargeon comes after the Campaign for Michigan Families, chaired by Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan, sponsored a round of recorded phone calls to voters about Baillargeon before the August primary.

The robo-calls featured essentially the same message as the radio ads, touting Baillargeon's past service on the board of advisers for the Detroit-based Triangle Foundation, which serves the gay and lesbian community, and asking voters if Baillargeon can be trusted to uphold "our values, given his background."

Baillargeon says that his relationship to the Triangle Foundation “was limited to having his name placed on a ‘resource list’ so that the group could refer legal questions to him,” but apparently that was enough to get Glenn to question “his values” and seek his defeat.