American Family Association of Michigan

Early in 2010, Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan and three Michigan pastors filed a lawsuit against the federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. The group was represented by the ultra-right wing Thomas More Law Center, which argued that "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."

The lawsuit was dismissed in September of that year and that was the last we had heard about it, though Glenn continued with his anti-gay activism and then decided to make a bid for the US Senate.

You'd think that with Glenn focusing on this Senate race and rounding us support from leaders like Mike Huckabee, the last thing he'd be interested in would be resurrecting this two year-old lawsuit ... but that is exactly what is happening:

A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati is taking up the claim of three Michigan ministers that a federal hate crime law infringes on their First Amendment rights and should be declared unconstitutional.

Oral arguments are scheduled Wednesday.

The law expands federal hate crimes to those committed against people because of sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

The ministers say they could be targeted for their sermons against gay behavior. The law's supporters say it's aimed at acts of violence, not speech by clergy.

A lower court judge dismissed the lawsuit last year.

The ministers are Jim Combs of Waterford, Rene Ouellette (oo-LET') of Bridgeport and Levon Yuille (YOOL) of Ypsilanti. Another plaintiff is Gary Glenn, head of the American Family Association of Michigan.

President Obama signed the legislation in October 2009 and, to date, not one person has been charged for preaching against homosexuality ... but that obviously is not going to stop anti-gay activists from filing lawsuits claiming that is exactly what will happen.

When Gary Glenn, the head of American Family Association’s Michigan affiliate, announced his run for U.S. Senate, Kyle wondered “how long it will be before Glenn receives Mike Huckabee's endorsement given that Huckabee believes that ‘if we had leaders like Gary Glenn across America, our work wouldn't be so hard.’”

Well, today Huckabee made it official, endorsing Glenn and saying he “will be a Senator that will take his values with him to Washington”:

I am very happy to endorse and support Gary Glenn for the United States Senate in Michigan. Gary is a person whose clarity of conviction is refreshing. He has boldly led on issues of life, traditional marriage, and the Fair Tax. When I needed help in Michigan in 2008, Gary didn't wait until it was convenient or popular, he stood with me out of sheer courage of his views. Gary Glenn won't take a poll to find out where he needs to stand. He will be a Senator that will take his values with him to Washington. I hope you will join me in getting behind Gary with your prayers, your generous and sacrificial contributions, and your vote.

Glenn faces a competitive primary against former congressman Pete Hoekstra and charter school activist Clark Durant and, if he wins the nomination, an uphill climb against Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow.

While leading the AFA’s state chapter, Glenn has amassed a tremendous anti-gay record. He not only led the successful campaign to enshrine a ban on marriage equality for gays and lesbians in the state constitution, but also targeted openly gay candidates and was a plaintiff in the unsuccessful lawsuit to block the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expands hate crimes laws to protect people targeted because of their sexual orientation.

Glenn supports the criminalization of homosexuality and joined anti-gay radio host and Mission America head Linda Harvey to warn companies against hiring gay and lesbian employees, saying, “What ridiculous folly to suggest that only those individuals who engage in homosexual behavior given all of its severe medical consequences constitute the best and the brightest.” During an interview with anti-gay extremist Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, Glenn said that anti-bullying programs were a “Trojan Horse” of “homosexual activists” and said that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell “defies reason,” predicting repeal will lead to more “sexual assaults” and “security,” “moral,” and “medical” risks.

But for Huckabee, Glenn’s “clarity of conviction is refreshing.”

Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan is one of the most rabidly anti-gay Religious Right activists operating today.  Just the other day he and Linda Harvey were ranting about how the "severe medical consequences" of being gay make gays an "employment risk."

So, of course, he is contemplating running for the US Senate:

Gary Glenn is exploring a possible jump into the U.S. Senate race as a Republican challenger to incumbent Debbie Stabenow.

Glenn, 53, of Midland served as GOP Michigan delegate for a decade, is a veteran of the U.S. Army Reserves and has a pro-life stance. He has spoken at a dozen Tea Party events, including the 2009 Midland County Tea Party rally, and has served as the president of the American Family Association.

Although several people have been mentioned in political circles as a GOP challenger to Stabenow, a Democrat, only Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner John P. McCulloch has officially declared his candidacy.

Glenn, in an e-mail released this morning, said the country's founding values are under assault.

"Our nation's economy, security, liberties, moral foundation and founding principles — all that's made America and Americans exceptional in the history of the world — are under attack from within," Glenn said.

As Religious Right groups accelerate their campaign against anti-bullying policies in schools, Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan wants to use his experience fighting anti-bullying policies as a model for anti-gay groups in other states. From California to Minnesota, organizations like Focus on the Family have ramped up their efforts to stop schools from implementing anti-bullying policies that protect LGBT students, who studies show face widespread harassment in schools.

Glenn joined Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality to brag about his role in successfully opposing the introduction of anti-bullying programs that protect LGBT students in Michigan schools.

On the bullying issue, the Republicans were floundering in the Michigan legislature as to how to stop this, we just simply framed it a different way.

The homosexual activists are using the bullying issue, as you indicated, as a Trojan Horse. Their real objective is to establish in Michigan state law and in other states sexual orientation — i.e. homosexual behavior — and gender identity — i.e. cross-dressing — as the legal basis of rights and protections. So all we said was why do you insist on segregating students into these special protected class categories like sexual orientation and gender identity and then dole out protection against bullying expressly on the basis on a student’s membership in one of these protected classes, in other words, a segregation strategy.

Glenn’s claim that “homosexual activists” are using anti-bullying laws as “a Trojan Horse” is commonplace in the Religious Right, whose leaders consistently condemn the “homosexual propaganda” and “homosexual message” that is purportedly found in anti-bullying programs.

Last time Glenn appeared on LaBarbera’s program, Glenn suggested that Martin Luther King Jr. would’ve been on the side of anti-gay activists today and LaBarbera said that Oprah Winfrey “will have to answer to her Creator” for “promoting” homosexuality.

Peter LaBarbera and Gary Glenn, head of the American Family Association of Michigan and a longtime ally of Mike Huckabee, came together to condemn homosexuality. Much like Lou Engle, who prayed for Ellen DeGeneres to be “converted” and use her influence to condemn homosexuality, LaBarbera began the program stating that Oprah Winfrey “will have to answer to her Creator” over her support for gay-rights:

I believe that someday Oprah will have to answer to her Creator about what you did with your influence. She’s a woman of incredible talent and influence, not just in America but the whole world. And yet here she is, using it to promote a lifestyle that God has declared sinful.

Glenn and LaBarbera later criticized Congress over the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and Glenn described the “security,” “moral,” and “medical,” reasons for banning gays from serving in the military, baselessly claiming that the “preponderance of sexual assaults [are] committed by individuals who are secretly in the military and involved in homosexual activity”:

Glenn: This Don’t Ask Don’t Tell moniker was not federal law; the federal law actually prohibits individuals who openly identify themselves as involved in the homosexual lifestyle from serving in the United States military. Because of security concerns for example, the openly homosexual intelligent officer at the Pentagon who’s responsible for all the WikiLeaks that have been in the news recently.

LaBarbera: That’s Bradley Manning right.

Glenn: Bradley Manning.

LaBarbera: Funny how the media didn’t report that much, Gary?

Glenn: Because of the dramatically, certainly from a per capita standpoint, preponderance of sexual assaults committed by individuals who are secretly in the military and involved in homosexual activity.

I mean to compel a more conservative segment of American society, which is the definition of those who volunteer to serve in the United States military typically tend to be people of traditional values, to be forced to share showers and barracks and latrines and foxholes and battlefield conditions with people openly involved in the homosexual lifestyle. Not only from a moral standpoint but from a medical standpoint, because of the severe medical consequences associated with that behavior, and battlefield blood transfusions. It simply defies reason or rationale that anyone would institute a public policy that put our men and women in the armed services especially on the battlefield at increased risk of being injured or infected on the battlefield through battlefield blood transfusions.

Then, Glenn says Martin Luther King Jr. would be standing with LaBarbera and himself if he was here today:

I mean, Dr. King having been a conservative, southern, with a small ‘s,’ southern Baptist pastor in the 50’s and 60’s, whose view from a biblical standpoint on the question of homosexual behavior would’ve been unquestionable that he would have opposed it. And yet homosexual activists today use the legacy of Dr. King and the civil rights movement to suggest that someone’s sexual behavior, two men engaging in sex with each other, is somehow comparable to the color of skin, which someone happens to be born.

Listen:

Earlier today I noted that Mike Huckabee seemingly has no problem associating himself with fringe right-wing and Religious Right activists, regardless of how radical they may be.

Now Sarah Posner brings to our attention another connection that I had not realized: Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan.

As Sam Stein reports, Glenn is targeting Democratic state House candidate Toni Sessoms with robocalls that use the word "homosexual" ten times:

Liberal Democratic lawyer and openly homosexual statehouse candidate Toni Sessoms, doesn't share our values. Michiganliberal.com boasts that Sessoms is 'independently wealthy, and if elected would become the first openly lesbian state representative.' Sessoms is endorsed by the homosexual newspaper in Detroit, by Detroit's homosexual equality Michigan PAC and by the Michigan Democratic Party homosexual and transgender caucus. Sessom's campaign manager is the openly homosexual Central Michigan University faculty member who lost the statehouse race two years ago. Her deputy campaign manager was co-president of CMU's homosexual student group -- an openly homosexual candidate with a campaign run by homosexual activists. But, of course, in a district where voters strongly supported the marriage protection amendment none of this is disclosed on Toni Sessom's campaign material. With homosexual activists in the Michigan Democratic Party pushing to repeal our marriage amendment, our families deserve a state representative we can trust shares our values. Not a candidate with a hidden agenda, homosexual activist agenda, not Toni Sessoms.

Posner notes that Huckabee and Glenn have a long history and points to this video in which Huckabee positvely gushes about the work being done by Glenn and the AFA Michigan:

The following year, Huckabee provided a videotaped speech to Glenn's group's annual fundraiser, in which he called Glenn "a very special friend. . . one of the stalwart, key people who absolutely has not flinched or wavered in his commitment to pro-life and pro-family values." He continued, "If we had leaders like Gary Glenn across America, our work wouldn't be so hard. . . . [they] have been committed to maintaining a solid course for truth."

In February, four Religious Right activists in Michigan - Levon Yuille, Rene Ouellette, James Combs, and Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan - represented by the Thomas More Law Center filed suit against Attorney General Eric Holder over the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, claiming that protection for gays "creates a special class of persons who are ‘more equal than others’ based on nothing more than deviant, sexual behavior."

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Thomas L. Ludington dismissed the suit:

In a 43-page motion to dismiss, Holder called Glenn’s arguments hypothetical.

Citing 68 cases, he said Glenn and the ministers had no right to file a civil suit based on “conjectural” or hypothetical injuries or infringements.

“Plaintiffs do not allege that they have been prosecuted under the Act, that they have been threatened with such prosecution or that they intend to engage in any conduct prohibited by the Act,” Holder argued.

“The Act does not proscribe speech. It prohibits only violent conduct and includes specific provisions ensuring that it may not be applied to infringe any rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.”

Ludington agreed.

“... it is entirely speculative that Plaintiff’s conduct would be prosecuted under the Act,” Ludington wrote.

Case law requires that a plaintiff’s claim must be more than a “generalized grievance,” the judge noted.

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.”

...

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

...

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."

Last week, we reported that the on-line activists who constitute Huck’s Army were warning that they would not support John McCain if Mike Huckabee was not named his running mate or at least chosen to deliver the keynote address at the upcoming convention.  

While Huckabee obviously can’t control what his on-line supporters do, that doesn’t mean he can’t undercut them:

Huckabee said he assumes he will be asked to speak during the convention, but didn't know whether he'd be a major player in the GOP's quadrennial pep rally.

…

"My goal right now at the convention would be to be the most helpful I can be to Sen. McCain," Huckabee said. "Whether that's visible or invisible, that's something he's got to decide, not me."

His schedule will include a couple performances with his Arkansas-based rock band and a conference on obesity. Huckabee also will join the Creative Coalition for a news conference on the importance of music and art education in schools.

"What I want to do is help not just Sen. McCain, but my party and my country," he said, adding, "This isn't about me anymore. It's really about John McCain and winning."

And predictably, the activists behind Huck’s Army have now sent out a clarifying email saying that the previous message was not the official position of the group:

The message that went out to our forum members today is not the official position of HucksArmy and was a communication from a few of our members who were concerned by some dismissive treatment toward supporters of conservative cultural values.

Many of our members and leaders consider the earlier statement overly harsh and demanding. Understand that any directives that HucksArmy sends out is not a command but an option.

HucksArmy is a community and not an organization and so we rarely issue statements representing the whole of our community.

HucksArmy as a whole is not demanding that Huckabee be the VP or be given a keynote at convention or else. While we would love to see these things happen, we do not have any official demands as a collective group.

But just because Huckabee and his supporters are playing nice, that still doesn't mean they've given up their almost militant opposition to Mitt Romney:

Bauer said he personally believes that Romney "would be a great running mate" and said he has conveyed that message personally to Romney. Bauer, chairman of the Campaign for Working Families political action committee, said he was not allowed to say whether he advised McCain to pick Romney.

Bauer said that he recently conducted an unscientific poll among activists about who should be picked for vice president and said that Romney won a plurality of votes. He said that "it was notable" that among those who backed Huckabee, "many of them said negative things about Governor Romney."

In fact, a battle between Huckabee and Romey supporters continues to unfold in Michigan:

In a blistering e-mail Friday to Michigan Republicans, a former aide to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign accused Michigan social conservative activist and Mike Huckabee supporter Gary Glenn of "a vicious smear campaign" against Romney.

Katie Packer, the strategist for Romney's successful Michigan primary campaign, accused Glenn, the head of the American Family Association of Michigan, of distorting Romney's record on social issues and "declaring war on other members of the Republican party."

Glenn, in an e-mail to The Detroit News, responded with a list of criticisms of Romney's record on social issues. "If Katie wants to have another full-fledged public debate about Mitt Romney's pro-abortion, pro-homosexual record, now is an excellent time," he wrote.