Family Research Council

Last year we wrote about how CPAC allowed notorious white nationalists to speak on multiple panels but banned the gay conservative group GOProud. This year the CPAC organizers, who aren’t entirely oblivious to the 2012 election, are trying to emphasize diversity. There’s even a panel entitled, “Conservative Inclusion: Promoting the Freedom Message to all Americans,” which boasts a racially diverse lineup of conservative activists.

“Conservative inclusion” is a nice idea, but it doesn’t go very far at CPAC. For the second year in a row, the gay conservative group GOProud has been banned from the conference. So at best, “inclusion” at CPAC means “straights only.”

Even more telling is the roster of sponsors and exhibitors at CPAC. Most troubling is the inclusion of the anti-immigrant group ProEnglish, which is run by longtime white nationalist organizer Bob Vandervoort. The Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights has reported extensively on his activities:

Vandervoort was at the center of white nationalist activity during his time in Illinois. While he was in charge, Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance often held joint meetings with the local chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens. The group held events featuring numerous white nationalist figures. Vandervoort also made appearances at white nationalist events outside Illinois, for instance participating in the 2009 Preserving Western Civilization Conference.

When CPAC and its organizers at the American Conservative Union were widely criticized last year for allowing Vandervoort and other white nationalists to speak on multiple panels, the conference organizers played dumb:

“This panel was not organized by the ACU,” CPAC spokeswoman Kristy Campbell told The Daily Caller, ”and specific questions on the event, content or speakers should be directed to the sponsoring organization.”

There’s no such excuse this year. CPAC knew all too well about Vandervoort’s white nationalist background and yet they allowed his group to return. Apparently “conservative inclusion” means shunning gays while including racists.

The reality is that CPAC couldn’t open its doors to gay conservatives even if it wanted to. As Brian reported last week, the head of CPAC sponsor Accuracy In Media is not only pleased with the GOProud ban, he wants to see a panel at the conference on “the dangers of the homosexual movement and why some of its members seem prone to violence, terror, and treason.”

Another important sponsor is the Family Research Council, which has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-gay hate group. The group’s top policy expert, Peter Sprigg, explicitly supports the criminalization of homosexuality, and readers of this blog are familiar with FRC’s aggressive and dehumanizing advocacy against gays and lesbians. There is no compromising on gays with extremists like these.

As we’ve reported, GOProud isn’t the only group banned this year. Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, co-founders of the Freedom Defense Initiative, are vicious Islamophobes and conspiracy theorists. Had CPAC banned them for spreading lies and fomenting hate against Muslims, it would be a sign of progress. But Geller and Spencer were really banned for having made the mistake of extending their Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy theory to include two American Conservative Union board members, Suhail Khan and Grover Norquist.

In past years, ACU has happily given Geller and company a platform to bash Muslims. And Spencer, who runs the blog “Jihad Watch,” overwhelmingly won this year’s CPAC People’s Choice Blogger Award. But their paranoid rantings hit too close to home this year, so CPAC pulled the plug. Even “conservative inclusion” has its limits.

Family Research Council senior fellow Pat Fagan appeared alongside Tony Perkins, the head of FRC, on Washington Watch yesterday to discuss his article which claims that Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that overturned a Massachusetts law banning the distribution of contraceptives to unmarried people, may rank “as the single most destructive decision in the history of the Court.”

Fagan argued that the Supreme Court decision was wrong because it effectively meant that “single people have the right to engage in sexual intercourse.” “Society never gave young people that right, functioning societies don’t do that, they stop it, they punish it, they corral people, they shame people, they do whatever,” Fagan said.

The court decided that single people have the right to contraceptives. What’s that got to do with marriage? Everything, because what the Supreme Court essentially said is single people have the right to engage in sexual intercourse. Well, societies have always forbidden that, there were laws against it. Now sure, single people are inclined to push the fences and jump over them, particularly if they are in love with each other and going onto marriage, but they always knew they were doing wrong. In this case the Supreme Court said, take those fences away they can do whatever they like, and they didn’t address at all what status children had, what status the commons had, by commons I mean the rest of the United States, have they got any standing in this case? They just said no, singles have the right to contraceptives we mean singles have the right to have sex outside of marriage. Brushing aside millennia, thousands and thousands of years of wisdom, tradition, culture and setting in motion what we have.

…

It’s not the contraception, everybody thinks it’s about contraception, but what this court case said was young people have the right to engage in sex outside of marriage. Society never gave young people that right, functioning societies don’t do that, they stop it, they punish it, they corral people, they shame people, they do whatever. The institution for the expression of sexuality is marriage and all societies always shepherded young people there, what the Supreme Court said was forget that shepherding, you can’t block that, that’s not to be done.

• TNF Insider: God, Guns and Greg Abbott.
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• Joe.My.God: Tony Perkins Endorses The Kidnapping Of Children From Their Gay Parents.

Conservative activists are in an uproar over a new transgender-inclusive policy in Massachusetts [PDF] designed to prevent gender identity-discrimination in schools. Today, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council added his voice, arguing that Massachusetts schools will soon see “teenage boys invading girls’ locker rooms.” He blamed the new policy on the 2004 legalization of same-sex marriage in the state, which he said led to “the fundamental altering of society,” and called on parents “to protect your kids from a fate like Massachusetts’s” by opposing marriage equality.

If there's one subject giving Massachusetts schools trouble, it's anatomy! Hello, I'm Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. In kindergarten classes, learning about genders won't be the problem--but ignoring them might be! Under a new statewide directive, Massachusetts officials are rolling out the welcome mat to cross-dressing students by banning everything from gender-based sports teams to sex-specific bathrooms. And anyone who doesn't like it had better keep quiet--or else. If a student so much as refers to a peer by their biological sex, it's "grounds for discipline." And people wonder why families are pulling their children out of public school! Maybe, you've fallen for the lie that same-sex marriage won't affect you. Well, it may take teenage boys invading girls' locker rooms to prove it. Redefining marriage is about a lot more than two people who love each other. This is about the fundamental altering of society. If you want to protect your kids from a fate like Massachusetts's, it starts by defending marriage now.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, made an interesting observation on his radio show yesterday. Speaking about the confirmation of Chuck Hagel, Perkins mused about the ‘irony’ that Hagel, whom he considers to be anti-Israel, was backed by Democratic senators who are “mostly aligned with a lot of the Jewish lobby” and “enjoy the money coming from the Jewish community.” Hmmm, “Jewish lobby,” where have I heard that before?

Hagel has been savaged in recent weeks for having used the phrase in a 2006 interview. He has since apologized and said he should phrased his comments differently. In case it isn’t obvious, the ADL’s Abe Foxman explains the many problems with saying “Jewish lobby.”

Notwithstanding Hagel’s apology, Sen. Lindsey Graham grilled him about his use of the phrase during his confirmation hearing. FRC also cited Hagel’s use of “Jewish lobby” in its background document opposing his confirmation. Meanwhile over at the website of the American Family Association, which broadcasts Perkins’ show, David Limbaugh railed against Hagel’s “bigoted accusation” about the “Jewish lobby” and said he failed to provide a “satisfactory explanation for his disgraceful terminology – because there is none.”

“Bigoted” and “disgraceful” sounds about right, but don’t hold your breath waiting for conservatives to denounce Perkins’ comments:

But here’s the irony. Is that the Democratic Party and the Democratic senators that supported Hagel, in spite of the fact that he has a record that’s deplorable on Israel, it comes from Democratic senators who are mostly aligned with a lot of the Jewish lobby here in Washington and around the nation, enjoy the money coming from the Jewish community. The Jewish community tends to be liberal, not all, but a lot of it is, and it supports Democratic candidates. But yet the Democratic Party works against the benefit of Israel in many ways, and this is an example of it.

Perkins seems mystified as to why most American Jews support Democrats, but his right-hand man thinks he knows the reason. FRC’s Executive Vice President Jerry Boykin has argued that Hitler was “an extraordinarily off the scale leftist” but “many Jews in America, for example, can't identify with the Republican Party because they're called the party of the Right, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.”

This is the same Boykin who was rebuked by the ADL in 2003 and believes that the “Jews must be lead to Christ.” And this is the same FRC – a certified hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center – that warned yesterday that Hagel's confirmation may bring God's judgment on America. So I guess we shouldn't be suprised.

When the U.S. Senate finally confirmed Chuck Hagel to head the Department of Defense yesterday, Religious Right leaders who actively campaigned and prayed against his nomination were sorely disappointed.

The Family Research Council’s prayer team today warned that Hagel, along with President Obama, have put America “on dangerous ground” as “those in power have forgotten God's covenant with Abraham: to bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse her.”

Indeed, FRC suggests that Hagel’s confirmation may even bring about the judgment of God: “Students of Bible prophecy have said that amid America's declining American faith and morals, our support for Israel has slowed the advance of God's judgment since 2001. But each step we take farther away from Israel has repercussions with respect to that balance.”

Chuck Hagel Confirmed - Today, former Senator Chuck Hagel began his new job as Secretary of Defense.Senate Republicans had rightly criticized Hagel as unqualified based upon his historic disdain for Israel, support for the Palestinian cause, favor of negotiation with Hamas and Iran, lack of any managerial experience, and more, yet 18 Republicans chose not to use their cloture vote to prevent his confirmation. Four supported Hagel directly in the final vote: Thad Cochran (Miss.), Richard Shelby (Ala.), Mike Johanns (Neb.) and Rand Paul (Ky.). With a President and Defense Secretary who have often shown hostility toward Israel and favor toward our mutual enemies, Bible believing Christians know the U.S. is on dangerous ground. Those in power have forgotten God's covenant with Abraham: to bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse her. Christians must keep extra vigil, standing in the gap for Israel and America, that our leaders will keep faith with our historic friendship and alliance. Students of Bible prophecy have said that amid America's declining American faith and morals, our support for Israel has slowed the advance of God's judgment since 2001. But each step we take farther away from Israel has repercussions with respect to that balance.

May God's people, who understand God's severe warnings against nations that oppose His plan for Israel, pray, stand boldly and speak out to preserve our nation's commitment to God's covenant people and land! (Gen 12:3; Ps 137: all, Is 40:1-2; 59:15-16; 62:6; Zech 12:3-9; Eze 36:24, 35; 37:11-12, 21, 25; 38:8; Hos 3:4-5; Joel 3:1-2; Amos 9:15; Zech 2:12; 8:7-8; Lk 21:24; Rom 1:16; Eph 6:10 ff)

Concerned Women for America’s Penny Nance also chided Hagel for allegedly supporting the disarmament of the US.

The confirmation of former-Sen. Chuck Hagel to be the next civilian head of the United States Military doesn't make American families feel safer, because we as a nation are more vulnerable under his leadership. Hagel does not have a sound understanding of the global threats facing America, nor does he have the discernment needed for a workable defense policy.

The Senate has failed to properly vet this candidate. As if his shaky, inconsistent committee hearing wasn't enough to show his lack of qualifications, we can also add his failure to submit critical documents. Motives follow money, and Hagel's refusal to submit financial documents, as well as his omission of funding sources, reiterates his real motives.

Our national security interests stand at a threatening juncture. Hagel's record shows his lack of knowledge when it comes to nuclear disarmament, and his vision for how to deal with these issues is dangerous to American families. While in the Senate, he voted to adopt Global Zero and reconfirmed his opinion by saying, "How can we preach to other countries that you can't have nuclear weapons but we can and our allies can?" Countries like North Korea and Iran are on the verge of nuclear power; it's naive to put false hope in the fact that anti-American countries would cease their pursuit of nuclear capability if we disarm ourselves.

By confirming Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, the Senate has catered, once again, to the president's wants and overlooked the needs of the American people.

Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families and the Emergency Committee for Israel, who earlier claimed that Hagel will “invite acts of aggression and terrorism” against the US, said he can no longer trust Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) after he voted in favor of Hagel’s confirmation.

Sadly, the Senate voted yesterday 58-to-41 to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. I say sadly because I never thought I would see the day when a nominee for Secretary of Defense endorsed by Louis Farrakhan would be confirmed! But that day has arrived.

Every Senate Democrat voted for Hagel. They were joined by four Republicans -- Thad Cochran (MS), Mike Johanns (NE), Rand Paul (KY) and Richard Shelby (AL). All four votes are depressing, but I want to comment on Senator Paul's vote.

When Rand Paul ran for the Senate three years ago, there were concerns about his views on Israel and the Middle East. He has tried to dispel the doubts.

In January, Paul traveled to Israel and said, "I came here to show that I am supportive of the relationship between Israel and America." He later said, "I think we should … announce to the world … that any attack on Israel will be treated as an attack on the United States." That is why his vote for Hagel yesterday was so disappointing.

And it is disappointing for another reason too. Paul explained his vote for Hagel by saying, "The president gets to choose political appointees." That's true to a point, but Paul is under no obligation to vote for them.

Rand Paul's claim to conservative support is that he is a champion of constitutional government. The Founding Fathers could have easily said that the president gets to appoint his cabinet and left it at that. But after a protracted debate, they decided that the president's nominees must receive the consent of the Senate.

Paul's explanation implies he is ignoring the clear words of the Constitution in exchange for a formulation that suggests presidential appointments are essentially guaranteed. That doesn't pass the straight face test.

I don't see how anyone who claims to support a strong national defense, who wants to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons and who believes that Israel is our best ally could vote to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. If Rand Paul wants to be a serious contender for the Republican nomination in 2016, he has some explaining to do.

The Family Research Council hosted a panel discussion Wednesday on religious liberty in America.  If you have paid any attention at all to the frantic warnings from FRC’s Tony Perkins that tyranny is on the march, you could have guessed what was coming.  The overall theme of the conversation was that the HHS mandate for insurance coverage of contraception is a dire threat to religious freedom in America.  So are the advance of marriage equality and laws against anti-gay discrimination – or the “sexual liberty agenda.”

The panel featured three lawyers: Adele Keim of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Kellie Fiedorek of the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly known as the Alliance Defense Fund) and Ken Klukowski of the Family Research Council.

Keim talked about Becket’s client Hobby Lobby, which is suing the Obama administration over the contraception mandate.  Or as Keim insisted on calling it, the contraception/abortifacient mandate. Keim argued that business owners are no less deserving of religious accommodation than churches or religiously affiliated nonprofits, saying “Americans do not lose their First Amendment rights when they go to work.” Of course by the standard she was invoking, many Americans could find their own rights and access to health care dictated by the religious beliefs of their employer.

The ADF’s Fiedorek focused on the “great peril” to religious liberty posed by the “agenda to expand sexual liberty and redefine marriage.”   She said in the conflict between sexual liberty and religious liberty, "people of faith" are "the ones being marginalized." She recounted a litany of such “persecution,” including now-familiar stories of a New Mexico photographer and a Colorado baker who were penalized under state anti-discrimination laws when they declined to serve same-sex couples celebrating commitment ceremonies.  Fiedorek compared cases in which businesses are required not to discriminate against gay couples to requiring an African American photographer to take pictures at a KKK event or a Jewish baker to create a cake decorated with a swastika.  She called it “particularly atrocious” that Catholic social service agencies were being required to abide by anti-discrimination ordinances – and were being “forced” to close.  She began and closed her presentation with quotes from the movie Chariots of Fire, ending with one that includes, “Don’t compromise. Compromise is a language of the devil.”

Klukowski talked about the role of religious freedom in the settling of America and the founding of the U.S.  And he recycled ridiculous religious right charges that the Obama administration believes not in freedom of religion but in the narrower “freedom of worship,” a notion that he said would be “profoundly disturbing” to the founding fathers.

The most interesting question from the audience focused on implications of the Bob Jones University case, and on whether the racialist Christian Identity movement could make the same religious liberty claims the lawyers were defending.  Why, the questioner asked, couldn’t the “conscience” rights the lawyers wanted for business owners not be claimed by a Christian Identity-affiliated business owner to deny doing business with African American people or interracial couples?

After a moment of awkward silence, Klukowski said that in the Bob Jones case, the Supreme Court had said the university could continue its racially discriminatory policies, but that its tax exemption was a benefit conferred by the government and could therefore be removed, especially in light of the post-civil war constitutional amendments addressing racial discrimination.  Klukowski did not directly address whether and how that principle could, would, or should apply to the current conversation about anti-gay discrimination.  He gave a confusing statement about what he said was the right of a business owner to throw someone out of their store for wearing a certain T-shirt or carrying a Bible.  The First Amendment, he says, allows people to be jerks in their private lives, but it was not clear whether he meant that the relationship between a business and its customers was “purely private” or falls into the category of public accommodation.

Congressman Steve Scalise (R-LA) appeared on Washington Watch with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins yesterday to discuss the State of the Union address where he pushed the standard right-wing canards that President Obama is leading an attack on freedom and trying to exploit “tragedies that he uses to his own benefit.”

Perkins: There’s not been an administration that’s been more hostile to our first freedom, our fundamental right of the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion.

Scalise: Right, look, just go in order. Right after that, he’s gone after freedom of speech and religion, now in that same speech he is going after our second amendment rights, our freedom to defend ourselves by having the ability to own guns for law-abiding citizens. All of these things he talked about, these tragedies that he uses to his own benefit, none of them would have been prevented by his own gun control measures, it just takes away the rights of law-abiding citizens.

Responding to Rep. Steny Hoyer’s insistence that Congress let the Bush tax cuts expire, Scalise falsely claimed that the tax cuts raised revenue and led to an economic boom.

Scalise: You know they are just living in some kind of parallel universe that doesn’t mesh with reality. You know I’ll just give you one point that he mentioned there Tony right out the box, he said, ‘oh we didn’t pay for the Bush tax cuts.’ Maybe Steny Hoyer needs to go back and look at the history, back in 2003 when those tax cuts took full effect the federal government actually took in forty percent more revenue, it actually brought in more money to the federal treasury to cut taxes because people had more money in their pockets and the economy took off in 2003. Go look at the history of this.

Of course, the economy didn’t “take off” after the Bush tax cuts passed. In fact, under President Bush the country had an exceptionally anemic recovery.

Scalise’s assertion about tax revenues also reveals that the congressman himself hasn’t taken a “look at the history of this.”

Citing data from the Congressional Budget Office, the Annenberg Public Policy Center concluded that the Bush tax policy “had a total negative effect on revenue growth,” and former Bush economist Alan Viard of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute said that there is “no dispute” among economists that “federal revenue is lower today than it would have been without the tax cuts.”

Former Reagan economist Bruce Bartlett also determined that “revenue as a share of G.D.P. was lower every year of the Bush presidency than it was in 2000,” citing this helpful chart:

source: Congressional Budget Office.

“Perhaps the whole point of the apparent Republican disinformation effort to deny that the Bush tax cuts reduced federal revenue is to make the reverse argument next year,” Bartlett writes, “allowing them to expire will not raise revenue.”

While he certainly has a lot of competition serving among the likes of Michele Bachmann, Steve King, Louie Gohmert and Steve Stockman, Rep. Tim Huelskamp is doing his best to position himself as the leading congressman of the anti-gay radical right.

Huelskamp told Family Research Council president Tony Perkins in an interview before last night’s State of the Union address that President Obama seeks “to destroy the family and replace it with his view of a radical new social agenda.”

This President has a radical social agenda and the media will probably give him a pass when instead of talking about the fact that mom and dad don’t have a job we’re going to talk about how to destroy the family and replace it with his view of a radical new social agenda. So we’re going to hear a lot about that, we’re going to hear a lot of blaming and also a lot of talk about how he would solve this and that problem but gosh darn it he’s had four years to do that and he hasn’t solved one and I would argue it’s gotten progressively worse since he took office.

The congressman went on to criticize the Republican leadership for trying to avoid a discussion of social issues. Huelskamp, who last year falsely claimed that 85 percent of people in the U.S. don’t support legalizing same-sex marriage, insisted that Republicans “defend the seventy percent position that most Americans support traditional marriage,” which in Religious Right-speak means oppose marriage equality.

Of course, most polls find that just over half of Americans support same-sex marriage.

Huelskamp went on to call the Department of Defense’s extension of partnership benefits to same-sex couples and the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) as “radical ideas” that “most Americans do not accept” because they “specifically and selectively reward homosexual behavior.”

Once again, the majority of Americans favor job protections and partnership benefits for gays and lesbians.

The response from the general leadership is: gosh, we can’t talk about social issues. But the President can? Someone has to stand up and defend the seventy percent position that most Americans support traditional marriage, most Americans understand the value of family, they understand it’s under attack and they understand that, they see it, they believe it. So we got to stand up. I’ve always been confused by Republicans that refuse to support a seventy percent position and say, ‘gosh we can’t take our stand there.’ But whether it’s Obamacare, whether it’s these radical DoD [Department of Defense] proposals coming out of the White House or changing all the employment rules to specifically and selectively reward homosexual behavior, those are really radical ideas and most Americans do not accept them.

So we’ll have an opportunity to hear from the President but again don’t forget he is a lame duck President, he’s not running for election again and I think this could be the most radical we’ll hear from him in a long time because it is Obama unleashed. We’re going to hear tonight probably exactly what he would like to do and he promised he’s going to change America and he’s still after that agenda and that goal.