LEARN

• Coral Ridge Ministries is now to be known as Truth in Action Ministries.
• FRC is very relieved to learn that no gay person has been appointed to the RNC.
• Will Michele Bachmann be this election's Mike Huckabee?
• Gordon Klingenschmitt wants GOP presidential candidates "to make a major campaign speech endorsing H.R. 297, to defund the U.N. if they seize Israeli land."
• Finally, the quote of the day from Burt Prelutsky: "As for gay-pride parades, I can hardly imagine anything goofier. What is it exactly that they're so proud of? That their sexual activity will never lead to the birth of a baby, but only, tragically on occasion, to a dreadful disease?"

In 2009, Janet Porter of Faith 2 Action organized a right-wing conference in St. Louis called "How To Take Back America" that was co-sponsored by the likes of WorldNetDaily, The American Family Association, Vision America, Liberty Counsel, and WallBuilders.  The keynote speakers at the conference were Mike Huckabee and Rep. Michele Bachmann.

The line-up at this conference was so radical that we put together a report on the participants which gave special attention to the truly fringe views espouse by Porter: 

It is probably impossible to overstate the extremism and lunacy of Janet Porter, whose radio program and Faith2Action.org website gives her a platform for promoting the most unhinged of conspiracy theories.

Porter is Mike Huckabee's biggest fan. She first fell in love when she organized the 2007 Values Voter Debate to which she had personally invited a gospel choir to sing "Why Should God Bless America?" and after which Porter (then Folger) declared that Huckabee had been revealed as the answer to Christians' prayers for a presidential candidate who shared their views, proclaiming him to be the "David among Jesse's sons." During the presidential primaries, she started a front group to attack Huckabee's arch nemesis Mitt Romney and wrote columns claiming that only Huckabee could prevent Hillary Clinton from throwing all Christians into prison and save her fantasy world from this "evil queen and her dragon of slaughter."

She has since claimed that God has cursed America for voting for Obama, that anyone who voted for him is bound for hell , and that anyone who has ever voted for a pro-choice candidate is also living under a curse. She has actively pushed the Birther conspiracies and even alleged that Obama's presidency was the culmination of a decade-long Communist conspiracy twenty years in the making. After the election, but before the inauguration, she called on God to prevent Obama from taking office, while warning that "AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN" to this nation because we deserve God's judgment.

Among other fears she has recently been stoking: the Obama administration is creating internment camps for conservatives and building mass evacuation buses to take them there, while warning that the H1N1 flu vaccine is really a nefarious plot by the government to kill millions of Americans. She helped to create and inflate the Right's false claims that a Department of Homeland Security report was equating conservatives and veterans with terrorists; as noted above, she's now pushing comparisons between the Obama administration and the rise of Nazism.

Porter has written a book called "The Criminalization of Christianity" and claims that hate crimes legislation will lead to Christians being thrown in jail. More recently she's joined the chorus of extremists falsely claiming that the bill would "give heightened protection to pedophiles." As part of her campaign against hate crimes legislation, Porter has repeatedly invited on to her radio show Ted Pike, a rabid anti-Semite who claims hate crimes laws are part of a Jewish plot for world domination.

Of course, the radical views held by Porter and the others in no way dissuaded Bachmann from attending.  In fact, Bachmann appeared on Porter's radio program ahead of the event and used it as an opportunity to praiser her and endorse the May Day at the Lincoln Memorial prayer event Porter was planning for the following spring:

That May Day event ended up being so infused with Seven Mountains Dominion Theology that Porter lost her radio program and almost ended her career at a Religious Right activist, until she showed up in Ohio earlier this year where she began scheduling fetuses to "testify" on behalf of her extremist anti-choice "Heartbeat Bill."  In her downtime, she was busy praying for God to give Christians control over the media and every level of government.

But none of that seemed to bother Bachmann, who joined Porter, Joseph Farah, and others in promoting Porter's "Pink Slip" campaign to warn members of Congress that they would lose their jobs if they voted for legislation opposed by the Right:

In 2008, Porter was a key supporter of Mike Huckabee.  But with Huckabee declining to run for President this time around, Porter's endorsement is still up in the air. 

But given the already existing ties between Bachmann and Porter (and judging by the poll Porter is currently running on her website) it seems increasingly like that Bachmann could wind up being her candidate of choice.

Governor Rick Perry has now filmed a video urging people to join him for the prayer rally he is organizing with the American Family Association and various Religious Right activists in Houston in August, saying prayer is needed now more than ever to fix this nation's spiritual problems:

This is Governor Rick Perry and I'm inviting you to join your fellow Americans for a day of prayer and fasting on behalf of our nation. As an elected leader, I am all too aware of government's limitations when it comes to fixing things that are spiritual in nature. That's where prayer comes in, and we need it more than ever. With the economy in trouble, communities in crisis and people adrift in a sea of moral relativism, we need God's help. That's why I'm calling on Americans to pray and fast like Jesus did and as God called the Israelite to do in the Book of Joel. I sincerely hope you will join me in Houston on August the sixth and take your place in Reliant Stadium with praying people asking God's forgiveness, his wisdom and provision for our state and nation. To learn more, visit TheResponseUSA.com then makes plans to be part of something even bigger than Texas.

You know, if Perry really wanted people to "pray and fast like Jesus did," he probably wouldn't be urging them to join with him in this massive public display:

5 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you ... 16 “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

The AFA's resident spokesbigot Bryan Fischer operates on a very consistent pattern:  he spends months saying and writing outrageously bigoted things but when some pressure starts to mount over all of the bigoted things he says, he lashes out and accuses his detractors of lying about what he said.

He has done it several times before, and now that Gov. Rick Perry is getting some heat for associating with Fischer and the AFA, he has done it again, taking issue with this Tim Murphy piece in Mother Jones.  Fischer claims that Murphy "strung together a litany of lies and distortions" and then proceeds to try and set the record straight.

In three instances Fischer fully admits to the views attributed to him - gays should be banned from public office and Muslims should be banned from the military and from building mosques:

- "gays should be banned from holding public office" — This is accurate. I do believe this, for the same reason that I believe Anthony Weiner should resign, as did Larry Craig, John Ensign and Mark Foley and numerous other Republicans caught in sexual misconduct. Aberrant sexuality morally disqualifies a practitioner from public office, and whatever else homosexual behavior is, it is aberrant sexual behavior.

- "there should be a permanent ban on mosque construction in the United States" — Partly true. What I have recommended is that local planning and zoning boards no longer issue permits — what about the word "permit" do people not understand? — for the building of mosques. This is because 81% of the mosques in America distribute literature that supports violent jihad and the imposition of sharia law by force, and 95% of Muslims who attend prayers regularly attend one of these mosques. I have suggested our policies toward Islam should be the same as our policies toward the KKK and white supremacist groups, since they are equally and violently antisemitic. Whatever the NAACP thinks ought to be done to halt the spread of the KKK and white supremacists I'll be happy to adopt as our policy against the spread of Islam.

- "Muslims should be prohibited from serving in the armed forces" — True. Serving in the United States military is a privilege not a right, and we should have no room in our military for those whose religion teaches them to "slay the idolaters wherever you find them" (Surah 9:5). If you don't think this policy suggestion makes sense, ask the families of Major Nidal Malik Hasan's homicidal rampage at Ft. Hood, done in the name of Allah.

But Fischer takes issue with several other assertions ... and, in typical Fischer fashion, attempts to clarify the record by more or less reiterating the very thing he claims he never said in the first place:

1. "gays caused the Holocaust." False. What I spoke is the simple truth: the Nazi Party was responsible for the Holocaust. If the question is then further asked, who was responsible for the Nazi Party, the answer, as a matter of simple historical truth: homosexual thugs. The Nazi Party was actually formed in a gay bar in Munich, and virtually all of Hitler's early enforcers in his rise to power were homosexuals.

Here is what I wrote in my column on what Nazi Germany teaches us about the wisdom of allowing open homosexuals in the military:

"Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews. Gays in the military is an experiment that has been tried and found disastrously and tragically wanting. Maybe it's time for Congress to learn a lesson from history."

So I clearly lay the blame for the Holocaust on the Nazi Party, but attribute the rise of the Nazi Party to homosexual brutes. That's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of historical fact, as inconvenient as that fact may be to the mavens of political correctness on the left.

2. "gays...are planning on doing it (the Holocaust) again." False.

Here is the transcript of my remarks:

"Homosexual activists, when it comes to freedom of speech, are Nazis. When it comes to freedom of religion, they are Nazis. There is no room in their world for dissent, there is no room in their world for disagreement, there is no room in their world for criticism. You criticize homosexual behavior, they tag you as a bigot and a homophobe and then they go to work to silence you just like the Roman Catholic Church did in the days of Galileo — it's no different; it's the Spanish Inquisition all over again.

"Ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Do not be under any illusions about what homosexual activists will do with your freedoms and your religion if they have the opportunity. They'll do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany."

Clearly the parallel I was drawing here is that homosexuals are out to suppress freedom of speech, religion, and dissent just as the Nazis did. This is indisputable.

So Fischer never said that gays caused the Holocaust and they are going to commit another one against Christians - he simply said that the Holocaust was the fault of the Nazis (who were all gay) and that, if given the chance, gays would do the same thing again today.

So you can see that that is totally different. 

Fischer also claims he never called for the forced conversion of Muslims or their deportation from America:

5. "foreign Muslims should either be exterminated or forced to convert to Christianity" — Horrendous distortion. What I said was that, if we are attacked from or by a Muslim nation, we should go in with military force and neutralize the threat. Then I suggest we bring missionaries in, since it is Christianity that has made the United States the freest, strongest, and most prosperous nation on earth. If they don't want to listen to our missionaries, fine. We'll bring them and our soldiers home. But we let them know that if you attack us again and we have to come back, this time we'll come back not with missionaries but with overwhelming lethal force.

6. "American Muslims should be deported" — Wrong again. What I have written is that American Muslims who have been naturalized of course should remain, as well as American citizens who convert to Islam. But I do believe we should not extend citizenship any longer to immigrant Muslims, even the ones who are here legally. When their legal immigration provisions expire, we should happily bear the cost of repatriating them to their homelands. Immigration is a privilege, not a right, and the god of Islam teaches his followers to kill Americans. It's simply bad policy to extend citizenship to people who have a solemn, sacred, religious obligation to exterminate us.

Fischer was quite clear when he said that when the US goes into a Muslim nation, it must try to convert them to Christianity but if the Muslims refuse to convert, then the next time the US returns, it will be to kill them. 

Likewise, Fischer has asserted that simply by virtue of being a Muslim, they are guilty of treason and that Muslims living in the US ought to be deported.

Yet, somehow Fischer thinks it is an unfair distortion of his views to claim that he supports forced conversion and the deportation of Muslims.

Fischer has a long history of saying openly bigoted things on an almost daily basis ... and he has just as long a history of claiming that all of the bigoted things he said were taken out of context or misrepresented.

As I have said before, it is utterly pointless to try and have any sort of rational debate with Fischer ... and this is further evidence of just why that is the case. 

Last month, Sarah Posner reported that professors at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University Law School were teaching students to break the law in cases where US law conflicted with "God's Law," which goes a long way toward explaining by the affiliated Liberty Counsel's star client, Lisa Miller, ended up kidnapping her daughter and fleeing the country.

Today, Liberty Law School unveiled a new ad featuring Newt Gingrich urging students who care about America's future to enroll and learn how to become more effective "conservative advocates":

Jason Cherkis of The Huffington Posts reports that, according to tax records, David Barton considers himself an expert on Black history:

David Barton, the Republican establishment’s favorite amateur historian, claims in tax records reviewed by HuffPost to be something of an expert on African-American history.

In filings with the Internal Revenue Service, Barton’s nonprofit, Wallbuilder Presentations, Inc., justified its tax-exempt status by highlighting among its "accomplishments" a video project “of the moral heritage and political history of African Americans."

As luck would have it, we actually wrote an entire report about the very video that Barton produced a few years ago called "Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White" ...  and I am sure you will be surprised to learn that it was utterly and intentionally misleading:

Though the program is billed as an attempt to recognize “the forgotten heroes and untold stories from our rich African American political history,” it is, in reality, a 90-minute effort to portray the Democratic Party as responsible for every problem that has ever plagued the African American community in America and imply that the Republican Party is the antidote. Barton’s website proudly claims that he “is currently breaking ground in the African-American community with his presentations” based on this DVD.

Throughout the program, Barton presents a staggeringly slanted, openly partisan, and tellingly incomplete view of American history. Barton focuses on the Democratic Party’s historical support for slavery and Jim Crow, but completely ignores the transformation of American politics brought about by the civil rights movement. Barton, of course, never mentions that the rise of the modern Republican Party was built on a “southern strategy” of embracing and exploiting the resentments of racist southern Democrats who joined the Republican Party after Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson pushed and signed landmark civil rights and voting rights legislation.

We even took several clips from Barton's program and included them in the report, and so I decided to edit a few of them together just to give you a sense of what sort of propaganda Barton is peddling in the DVD as he tries to link today's Democratic Party to the Ku Klux Klan and asserts that Democrats supported slavery just as they support abortion today:

The rise of the Tea Party and economic libertarians has inspired a revitalization of Ayn Rand’s book sales and sparked more curiosity for her ‘Objectivist’ thinking. Leading Republicans have embraced Rand, as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) called Rand the “the reason I got involved in public service” and Rep. John Campbell (R-CA) gives a copy of Atlas Shrugged to his interns. The movie Atlas Shrugged: Part I premiered at CPAC and won burgeoning interest from conservative moviegoers, until it received abysmal reviews that were so bad it convinced the producer to drop plans for parts II and III.

But Religious Right leader Chuck Colson isn’t happy with the Ayn Rand retrospective. He made a two minute video attacking Rand and her devotees, deriding Rand as an anti-Christian atheist. “Not only should you stay away from the film,” Colson says, “you ought to stay away from anybody who wants to see the film, unless their interest is ironic.” Colson warns that Rand’s “patently anti-Christian ideas seem to be gaining steam” among conservatives, cautioning that her Objectivist philosophy is the “antithesis of Christianity” and that her followers are “undermining the Gospel”:

Colson also posted an article that expresses bewilderment on how Ryan or any other politician could have been inspired by Rand:

What makes this newly-renewed regard especially troubling is that Rand’s worldview is explicitly anti-Christian. She once said she wanted to be known as “the greatest enemy of religion.” And when Rand said “religion” she meant Christianity, which she once called the “kindergarten of communism.”

For Rand the idea of God, as understood by Christianity, was “degrading to man.” According to her, the only god who can bring men peace and joy was not the great “i am” but “I.” Yet even some prominent Christians are being sucked in.

It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that her worldview, called Objectivism, which rejects love of God, has even less regard for love of neighbor. Jennifer Rubin, who wrote the definitive biography of Rand, says that “whereas traditional conservatism emphasized duties, responsibilities, and social interconnectedness, at the core” of Rand’s ideology “was a rejection of moral obligations to others.”

Thus, Rand could say that the world was “perishing from an orgy of self-sacrifice.” Not because it was true but because, for Rand, any regard for your neighbor was an offense against the only god who mattered: the self. How such a toxic idea can inspire “public service” is beyond me.

Ed Whalen is back with another nonsensical article, arguing in the National Review that since Judge Vaughn Walker, who was appointed by George H. W. Bush, is openly gay, his decision to overturn Proposition 8 should be vacated and he should have been disqualified from ruling on the case in the first place. Using Whalen’s logic, white judges should be barred from ruling on cases involving white people, female judges should not be allowed to rule on cases involving women, and Jewish judges should be prohibited from ruling on cases involving Jews or Judaism:

In taking part in the Perry case, Judge Walker was deciding whether Proposition 8 would bar him and his same-sex partner from marrying. Whether Walker had any subjective interest in marrying his same-sex partner — a matter on which Walker hasn’t spoken — is immaterial under section 455(a). (If Walker did have such an interest, his recusal also would be required by other rules requiring that a judge disqualify himself when he knows that he has an “interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding.”) Walker’s own factual findings explain why a reasonable person would expect him to want to have the opportunity to marry his partner: A reasonable person would think that Walker would want to have the opportunity to take part with his partner in what “is widely regarded as the definitive expression of love and commitment in the United States.” A reasonable person would think that Walker would want to decrease the costs of his same-sex relationship, increase his wealth, and enjoy the physical and psychological benefits that marriage is thought to confer.

…

Now that Walker has finally disclosed facts that would have warranted his disqualification from Perry, the appropriate remedy is for the Ninth Circuit — or, if necessary, the Supreme Court — to vacate Walker’s judgment upon a request by Prop 8 proponents. As the Supreme Court ruled more than two decades ago in Liljeberg v. Health Services Acquisition Corp. (1988), where a district judge has violated section 455(a) by deciding a case that he should have disqualified himself from, it is “appropriate to vacate the judgment unless it can be said that [the losing party] did not make a timely request for relief, or that it would otherwise be unfair to deprive the prevailing party of its judgment.” In that case, the losing party did not learn of the facts requiring disqualification until ten months after the court of appeals had affirmed the district court’s judgment, so the question was whether the judgment that had become final on appeal should nonetheless be set aside. The Court found the request for relief to be timely, as the delay was attributable to the judge’s failure to disclose the facts requiring disqualification. A request now by Prop 8 proponents to vacate Walker’s judgment would indisputably be timely (and would clearly not involve any unfairness to the Perry plaintiffs), as the appeal on the merits is still pending, and Walker has only now revealed the information requiring his disqualification.

While the American Family Association and Liberty Counsel are calling on parents to prevent their children from attending school today and Concerned Women for America is encouraging a “Day of Silence Walk Out,” other Religious Right groups are trying to add anti-gay “balance” to today’s Day of Silence. Focus on the Family’s Day of Dialogue, which will take place on Monday in order to directly follow the Day of Silence, wants to help students they believe are “messed up sexually.” The “Day of Dialogue” is the successor to the ex-gay ministry Exodus International’s Day of Truth, and continues to employ the same anti-gay rhetoric as the group urges students to use stories like one from Rochelle, about the deleterious consequences of “embracing a lesbian lifestyle”:

Yet the further I plunged into lesbianism, the greater the void in my soul grew. I found girlfriends and guy friends; went to social events, gay bookstores and clubs; wore the clothes, talked the talk, and tried to become the person I thought I was, but deep inside I still was unsatisfied. What appeared to be a wonderful, enriching lifestyle turned out to be an illusion. It looked thrilling and exciting, but in reality, there was backbiting and selfishness, much as I’d already experienced in heterosexuality. People I encountered weren’t satisfied and confident; they were depressed, empty, and anxious, just like I was. What I thought would bring me life and community left only brokenness and bitterness in its wake.

Jeff Johnston, the group’s “gender and homosexuality analyst,” discussed his “road out of homosexuality,” which he blames on his early exposure to pornography, and his experience attending a conference called “Hope and Healing for the Homosexual”:

I learned at this event that I wasn’t alone – there were others in the church who wrestled with same-sex attractions. Some of them had walked away from homosexuality. I also learned that there might be some influencing factors in my life that had steered me toward homosexual thoughts and feelings, my early sexual experiences, for example. And I began talking to people about my struggle.

…

I wouldn’t trade any of my life now for “gay pride” or for “being gay.” There is such freedom in living a life without trying to push down all those secrets, dark thoughts and feelings. There is joy in being a father and a husband. And there is peace in being forgiven.

Like Focus on the Family, the group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) wants students to learn about “former homosexuals” and accuses the Day of Silence of “intolerance of ex-homosexuals”:

Regina Griggs, executive director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX), says homosexual activists are censoring her group's point of view. "We would love people to make the decision to leave homosexuality, but they can't make a decision when they don't even know former homosexuals exist," she contends.

Pro-homosexual groups are promoting today's Day of Silence to encourage students to remain silent for a day at school to protest society's intolerance of homosexuals and cross-dressers. But Griggs wonders if they are concerned about the intolerance of ex-homosexuals.

"If you're going to worry about sexual orientation non-discrimination and pick a day every year to host it, shouldn't that include all sexual orientations, such as former homosexuals," the PFOX executive director questions. "Where are their rights?"

So she is encouraging students to distribute her organization's literature in schools today so that the message of hope will reach a hurting community.