OneNewsNow

Family Research Council senior fellow Peter Sprigg appeared today on The Matt Friedeman Show on the American Family Association’s American Family Radio to discuss the budding controversy over the right-wing “charity” service CGBG. The progressive groups AllOut.org and Change.org have persuaded over 200 retailers to leave the CGBG, a for-profit group that allows customers to shop at companies online and direct part of their proceeds to right-wing organizations like FRC and Focus on the Family – success that, unsurprisingly, has got the Religious Right up in arms.

It’s rather ironic that the AFA is helping the FRC denounce the pressure campaign against the CGBG, as the AFA itself led boycotts against Ford, Home Depot, Old Navy, Pepsi, and Glee along with pressure campaigns against Burger King, Toyota, Lexus and Cellular South to stop running ads on Glee and Google and Disney to drop out of the It Gets Better Project. But this double-standard should come as no surprise, as the FRC endorsed the AFA’s boycott campaign against McDonalds and led its own campaign against Wal-Mart.

Sprigg and Freideman alleged that FRC is only facing a backlash from gay rights and women’s rights groups because the group oppose marriage equality. However, the AllOut.org petition urging companies to drop CGBC doesn’t mention the FRC’s position on marriage at all, instead focusing on FRC’s advocacy for laws criminalizing homosexuality, opposition to anti-bullying efforts and dishonest attempts to tie homosexuality to pedophilia.

Sprigg: People are afraid of the homosexual activists and they’re particularly afraid of this character assassination that comes in the form of the word ‘hate.’ Nobody wants to be accused of participating in ‘hate’ and so throwing that word  ‘hate’ around becomes a trump card even when nothing that we have done can reasonably be called  ‘hate.’ On the contrary, everything we do is motivated by love for the people who are hurt by this lifestyle.

Friedeman: Well, again I think what Tony Perkins has done and Peter Sprigg you by extension, you just say, we’re asking people, and AFA does this all the time as well, you urge retailers to remain neutral in the culture wars, the current cultural battles, particularly when you come down to something like homosexuality.

Such a claim is hard to believe coming from Peter Sprigg, who:

• Said that he would “much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States because we believe homosexuality is destructive to society.”

• Supported the criminalization of homosexuality.

• Lobbied to make it harder for students to join Gay-Straight Alliances because “homosexuality is harmful to society.”

• Argued that gays and lesbians shouldn’t be judges because a gay judge can’t “be held up as a role model.”

• Linked homosexuality to pedophilia even when scientists rejected their correlation.

• Opposed allowing same-sex partners or their adopted children from collecting their deceased partner or parent’s Social Security benefits.

• Cheered on Lisa Miller after she kidnapped her daughter and fled to Central America in order to evade court order granting custody to her former partner.

But the LGBT community, Sprigg says, should see all these as acts of love.

No matter how many times the deceitful claim that abortion providers are systematically targeting the black community for genocide is repudiated, new anti-choice groups can’t seem to stop running more ‘black genocide’ billboard campaigns. In March, a group called Life Always notoriously used images of President Barack Obama and a young black girl in their billboard campaign that abortion is black genocide. Earlier this summer the National Black Pro-Life Coalition put up billboards in Atlanta likening legal abortion to slavery and the Radiance Foundation and Issues4Life placed billboards in Oakland as part of their campaign comparing abortion rights to the genocide in Darfur.

Now, a new group called the Restoration Project is placing billboards in Atlanta with a similar message in their ‘Abortion In The Hood’ campaign.

The Restoration Project was founded and is led by Catherine Davis, who previously was “director of minority outreach” for Georgia Right to Life with a role of “educating Georgians about the holocaustic impact this practice has had on the Black community.” Davis says that the ‘Abortion in the Hood’ billboards are supposed to both spread the ‘black genocide’ message while also shaming pro-choice female and black leaders. Davis told the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow: “If this were alcohol or tobacco, we would have African-Americans marching in the street. But because it's abortion, they are not willing to examine this question, and they're turning a blind eye, and we are asking why that is.”

Her group calls out the Congressional Black Caucus in particular for supporting “abortionists as they prey on Georgia’s black women and target our children”:

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has long told the black community they are “leading our communities and country with passion and commitment” assuring us that they “… continuously strive to be a voice for the voiceless, earning the moniker “the conscience of the Congress” (Emmanuel Cleaver, III, Chairman, Congressional Black Caucus).

Yet, neither the CBC, nor its members from Georgia has examined abortion’s impact on the people they serve. Instead they have turned a blind eye to abortion’s impact by voting for legislation that promotes and supports abortion. They have betrayed their constituents instead giving “voice” to the abortionists as they prey on Georgia’s black women and target our children. They refuse to examine the disproportionate number of abortions on black women. They do not seek explanation for abortion’s depopulation effect on us.

Each is rated 100% by the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), indicating a pro-abortion voting record. Georgia is among the states leading in abortions on black women and our members of the CBC will not question why. They will not discuss the fact that one hundred percent of Georgia’s abortion clinics are in urban areas where blacks reside. We demand they begin to ask why!

• Florida school teacher Jerry Buell has been reinstated after posting anti-gay marriage remarks on his Facebook page. But that probably won't be the end of the Religious Right's crusade about it.
• Tony Perkins says the Religious Right would be pretty happy with any of the GOP frontrunners. I highly doubt that is true regarding Mitt Romney.
• Rick Perry has signed the Susan B. Anthony's anti-choice pledge.
• Another day, another piece dismissing dominionism devoid of any research whatsoever.
• The defamation claim against John Stemberger over statements he made while representing Rifqa Bary has been dropped.
• Finally, Peter LaBarbera thinks that Fox News is pro-gay because it is "based in New York City, which is a gay Mecca."

David Ramadan is a long-time Republican activist who is currently running for a seat in the Virginia State Assembly and he has secured endorsements from the likes of Eric Cantor and Ed Meese.

But he is also a Muslim, which of course means that his campaign is vehemently opposed by the anti-Islam faction on the right:

James Lafferty is chairman of the Virginia Anti-Sharia Task Force. He says Ramadan supports the "Ground Zero" Mosque in New York City and has also had some ties with the lobbying firm for Libya in the United States.

"That's not like any conservative I've ever met," Lafferty says of Ramadan's connections. "He's says that those of us who are opposed to building the Ground Zero Mosque are 'racist' and 'Islamophobes.'

"Lots of Americans are getting this sort of condescending attitude from extremists like Mr. Ramadan. We don't think he should be in the House of Delegates in Virginia. We're not even sure he should be allowed to continue to live in the United States."

Lafferty has joined with other professional anti-Muslim activists like Frank Gaffney, Pamela Geller, and Robert Spencer in sending a letter to Meese demanding he withdraw his endorsement of Ramadan until he answers questions about his "close relationship with the lobbying firm for Muammar Qadaffi’s Libya" and proves that he is "someone we can trust."

• Matt Barber is not happy with Ann Coulter for joining GOProud's Advisory Council.
• Speaking of GOProud, the groups is not happy about being tossed-out of CPAC.
• PBS takes a look at Francis Schaeffer and his work, which had a big influence on Michele Bachmann.
• Albert Mohler says the the biggest problem with marriage equality "is not that homosexuality will be normalized and accepted, but that homosexuals will not come to know of their own need for Christ and the forgiveness of their sins."
• Finally, it seems that Focus on the Family is still angry about the American Family Association being labled a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Maybe they should watch this.

• The New York Times profiles the American Family Association and the role they are playing in funding Rick Perry's prayer rally.
• On a related note, the Family Research Council will be streaming the event live on Saturday.
• Speaking of FRC, they have released their latest list of prayer targets: "May the Lord intervene to stop these efforts to homosexualize our nation – and to indoctrinate our children with evil!
• C. Boyden Gray has filed a complaint with the IRS seeking to revoke Media Matters' tax-exempt status.
• Gary Cass says the only hope for America is for Islam to be defeated. And he is just the man to do it!
• Pamela Geller is just like Gen. George Patton.
• Finally, quote of the day from Peter LaBarbera: "I think a lot of things are gay, such as the disproportionate STDs related to homosexual sex. But marriage isn't one of them. Marriage isn't homosexual; marriage is between a man and a woman."

Last month, J. Paul Oetken won Senate confirmation by a vote of 80-13, making him the first openly gay man to be confirmed as a federal judge.

Peter LaBarbera has long demanded a sexual orientation test for judges, asserting that all nominees must declare if they have a history of "practicing immoral homosexual behavior" or "consider yourself homosexual."

So needless to say, the milestone of Oetken's confirmation is not sitting well with him:

"Homosexual activists are quite clear that their so-called 'rights' trump our religious liberty, our freedom to act on our beliefs to oppose sexual immorality," he explains. "So we certainly can't trust open homosexual activists to give us fairness and to defend religious liberty and our First Amendment freedom to live by our faith."

LaBarbera adds that it is because homosexual activists strive to convince people, and force them by judicial fiat, to accept the homosexual lifestyle as somehow equal to heterosexuality.

"This is dangerous territory where we are seeing homosexual activists trying to get on the bench," says the spokesman. "The Democratic Party is advancing their cause and it's not going to help justice. In fact, I predict this will undermine religious liberty in this country."

Says LaBarbera: "We have a big fight ahead of us."

I wonder what LaBarbera's response would be if people were to demand that an openly Christian judicial nominee be kept off the bench because everyone knows that the Religious Right cannot be trusted to "give us fairness" on equality issues? 

• Good to know that Newt Gingrich has been getting paid by the American Family Association for speeches.

• Roll Call looks into the strategy sessions at the Family Research Council’s Washington headquarters.

• The Traditional Values Coalition has a brand new website!

• Peter LaBarbera says he will never stop fighting to bring back Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

• Finally, the American Family Association wants you to beware of “Homo Depot.”

Conservative columnist and radio host Peter Heck is defending Michele and Marcus Bachmann against what he calls the “inquisition” against them following news that their clinic practiced “ex-gay” reparative therapy. Heck writes that the Bachmanns, not the gay and lesbian patients who have to go through “ex-gay” therapy, are the real victims of the story, and contends that the “real scandal would be if a supposed Christian clinic like Bachmann's didn't offer this kind of hope for those with unwanted same-sex attraction”:

Break out the pitchforks and light the torches! The leftist media is in the midst of launching a modern-day version of the Salem Witch Trials. Except this time the target isn't those who blaspheme against the Christian religion, but rather those who practice it. The inquisition began almost two weeks ago when Diane Sawyer and her ABC World News Tonight team christened a very provocative and alarming "investigation" into the beliefs of Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and her husband, Dr. Marcus Bachmann.

…

Along with the hypocrisy comes the blatant inconsistency. Irreligious, or at least humanistic liberals, are always quick to point to the Constitutional ban on "religious tests" for federal office when they are touting one of their godless candidates. While butchering the context within which this Article VI prohibition was written, liberals tell everyone who will listen that a person's religious beliefs (or unbelief) are immaterial in considering their qualifications. But then why does Chris Matthews want Republican candidates grilled over whether they believe in a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation account? And why does ABC tout the work of a left-wing group "investigating" the Bachmann family's religious views on homosexuality? Apparently the left believes in selective application of the ban.

Finally, and most importantly, the hate and discrimination these liberal media types are stoking by their actions cannot be excused or overlooked. ABC's investigation implies that there is something scandalous about a Christian clinic that seeks to use prayer and biblical teaching to turn a person away from what the Bible calls sin. Um...is ABC seriously unaware that this is what Christians do? The real scandal would be if a supposed Christian clinic like Bachmann's didn't offer this kind of hope for those with unwanted same-sex attraction.