Civil Rights

GOP Campaign Worker Caught Using Racist, Sexist Slurs Against Black Opponent's Campaign

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 10/20/2011 11:50 am

A campaign worker for a Republican county legislator in Nassau County, New York was caught using racist and sexist slurs earlier this week against his opponent’s campaign and a family member. The sister of Democratic candidate Carrie Solages, who is black, was filming a campaign worker of legislator John Ciotti while he was trying to put the Republican legislator’s campaign signs on Solages’ office. In the video, the campaign worker calls her a “pig” and yells at her and another African American woman outside the office, “Call animal control so we can arrest ‘em.” Later in the video, he says to another Ciotti volunteer, “We will put them on the back of the bus where they belong.”

Two years ago, workers for the Ciotti campaign shouted down his Democratic challenger during her campaign kickoff speech. This time, Ciotti fired the campaign worker and denounced his remarks, but now a civil rights attorney has accused the Republican incumbent’s campaign of intimidation.

Watch:

Jackson: IRS Regulations Designed To Silence Black Churches

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 10/19/2011 2:36 pm

Earlier this month, hundreds of pastors across the nation participated in the Alliance Defense Fund's annual "Pulpit Freedom Sunday," during which they openly endorsed or opposed political candidates from their pulpits in a direct challenge to the IRS.

Among those participating pastors was Bishop Harry Jackson who, along with Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, was featured in a short video from Odyssey Networks about the effort.

In the video, Jackson provided a rather unique explanation for his involvement in opposing IRS regulations that prohibit churches from engaging in politics, asserting that such regulations were put in place in order to prevent black churches from speaking out in support of the civil rights movement:

Of course, the reality is that the prohibitions grew out of an amendment inserted into the tax code by Senator Lyndon Johnson in 1954 (years before he became president) in response to attacks on him by tax-exempt groups that accused him of being soft of Communism during his re-election campaign.

If Jackson is going to be involved in leading this challenge to the IRS, it might be helpful for him to actually know what he is talking about.

While Condemning Religious Bigotry, Romney Aligns Himself With Anti-Muslim Activists

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 10/12/2011 1:40 pm

This morning on the Today Show Mitt Romney and Chris Christie repeated their call for Rick Perry to disassociate himself from pastor Robert Jeffress because of the pastor’s denigration of Romney’s Mormon faith. Yesterday, Christie even compared Jeffress to “those folks in New Jersey who disparaged in both parties my decision to appoint a Muslim judge” and said that any “campaign that associates itself with that type of comment is beneath the office of President of the United States, in my view.”

Ironically, one of the people who slammed Christie over his criticism of anti-Muslim activists is Jay Sekulow, who endorsed and introduced Romney at the Values Voter Summit last week and in 2008 was a member of Romney’s “National Faith and Values Steering Committee.”

In fact, Sekulow and his organization, the American Center for Law and Justice, which was founded by Pat Robertson, tried to prevent American Muslims from exercising their First Amendment rights by suing to block the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan and also issued a pamphlet which claims that Sharia law is on the brink of eclipsing the U.S. Constitution that “devout Muslims cannot truthfully swear the oath to become citizens of the United States of America.” Tim Murphy pointed out the irony in Romney condemning anti-Muslim bigot Bryan Fischer while praising Sekulow, and People For the American Way urged Romney to disavow Sekulow in the same way he has urged Perry to “repudiate” Jeffress:

“Mitt Romney is right to criticize his rivals for silently standing by and accepting bigotry,” said Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way. “Now it is time for him to apply those standards to his own campaign. The truly courageous position for Romney to take would be to stand up against religious bigotry of all stripes – including the GOP’s increasingly prevalent scapegoating of American Muslims.

“Romney endorser Jay Sekulow’s American Center for Law and Justice has suggested that devout Muslims cannot become true citizens of the United States. Sekulow himself has perpetuated the debunked claim that the Constitution is under a threat from Sharia law and was a leader of the extremist backlash against the building of an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, including overseeing the ACLJ’s lawsuit attempting to stop the community center’s construction.

“Last weekend, Mitt Romney called Sekulow a ‘treasure.’ If Romney wishes to show that he is a true champion of the American values of religious freedom and tolerance, he must apply the same standard to his own endorsers as he does to those of Rick Perry.”

But Sekulow isn’t the only anti-Muslim activist in the Romney camp.

Walid Phares was recently named a foreign policy adviser to Romney. As the Council on American Islamic Relations pointed out in a letter [pdf] to Rep. Peter King, Phares has close ties to a Lebanese militiamen and even served as an official in a militia that was “implicated, by Israel’s official Kahan inquiry and other sources, in the 1982 massacre of civilian men, women and children at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon.”

Phares also claims [pdf] that “jihadists within the West pose as civil rights advocates, interested solely in the ‘rights’ of their immigrant communities” in order for their “institutions [to] fall into their hands,” and warns of the “spread of Wahhabism” through Muslim infiltration of “the U.S. armed forces and ultimately even into the Pentagon.”

While Romney was willing to call out Jeffress and Fischer over their intolerant rhetoric, it is uncertain if he will apply that standard to his own campaign.

Bill Donohue Condemns Jeffress As A "Poster Boy For Hatred"

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 10/12/2011 10:40 am

Last week we posted audio of Robert Jeffress, the prominent Rick Perry endorser who introduced the candidate at the Values Voter Summit, condemning the Roman Catholic faith as a “counterfeit religion” that represents “the genius of Satan” in a sermon last year. Jeffress linked the Catholic Church to a Satanic “Babylonian mystery religion” that worshiped a fish god and warned that Catholics will “miss eternal life” because of their religion’s supposed paganism:

Catholicism isn’t the only religion that has encountered hostility from Jeffress: he is best known for calling Mormonism a cult that is “from the pit of Hell.” He has argued that Hindus, Muslims and Jews are also destined for Hell.

Today, right-wing Catholic activist Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights released a statement slamming Jeffress for having “demonized” the Catholic faith. In 2008, Donohue called on John McCain to renounce one of his endorsers, John Hagee, who has a history of anti-Catholic rhetoric and once said that God sent Hitler to be a “hunter” of Jews. While McCain ultimately rejected Hagee’s endorsement, Perry has so far refused to disavow Jeffress:

Last Friday, Rev. Robert Jeffress, the Dallas pastor who introduced Gov. Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit, spoke derisively about the Mormon faith of Mitt Romney, making the case that “Mormonism is a cult.” Two days later, he chided Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism as “false religions.”

Last year, Rev. Jeffress said the Roman Catholic Church was the outgrowth of a “corruption” called the “Babylonian mystery.” He continued, “Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn’t come from God’s word. It comes from that cult-like pagan religion. Isn’t that the genius of Satan?”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue offered these remarks today:

Where did they find this guy? When theological differences are demonized by the faithful of any religion—never mind by a clergyman—it makes a mockery of their own religion. Rev. Jeffress is a poster boy for hatred, not Christianity.

Who’s Who at the Values Voter Summit 2011

Submitted by Miranda Blue on Wednesday, 10/5/2011 11:20 am

This weekend, nearly every major GOP presidential candidate, along with the top two Republicans in the House of Representatives, will speak at the Values Voter Summit, an annual gathering of the leaders of the movement to integrate fundamentalist Christianity and American politics.

The candidates – Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich – and the congressmen – House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor – will join a who’s who of the far Right at the event. The organizers of the Values Voter Summit and many of its prominent attendees are on the frontlines of removing hard-won rights for gay and lesbian Americans, restricting women’s access to reproductive healthcare, undermining the free exercise rights of non-Christian religions and breaking down the wall of separation between church and state.

In perhaps the starkest illustration of how far even mainstream Republican candidates are willing to go to appease the Religious Right, Mitt Romney is scheduled to speak immediately before the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, a man whose record of hate speech should be shocking by any standard. Along with regularly denigrating gays and lesbians, Muslims, and other minority groups, Fischer has no love for Romney’s Mormon faith. In a radio program last week, Fischer insisted that Mormons have no right to religious freedom under the First Amendment and falsely claimed that the LDS Church still sanctions polygamy.

People For the American Way has called on GOP presidential candidates appearing at the conference to denounce Fischer’s bigotry. Last year, PFAW issued a similar call to attendees, which was met with silence.

The following is a guide to some of the individuals with whom the leaders of the GOP will be rubbing shoulders at the Values Voter Summit this year.

Bryan Fischer

Bryan Fischer is the Director of Issues Analysis at the American Family Association, which is a sponsor of the Values Voter Summit. Fischer acts as the chief spokesman for the group and also hosts its flagship radio program, Focal Point, on which he has interviewed a number of prominent figures including Bachmann, Gingrich, Santorum and Mike Huckabee.

On his radio program and in blog posts, Fischer frequently expresses unmitigated bigotry toward a number of minority groups, including gays and lesbians, Muslim Americans, Native Americans, low-income African Americans and Mormons.

Fischer has:

At a speech at last year’s Values Voter Summit, Fischer said that if Christians don’t get involved in politics, they “make a deliberate decision to turn over the running of the United States government to atheists and pagans.” Of the gay rights movement, he warned, “We are going to have to choose, as a nation, between the homosexual agenda and freedom, because the two cannot coexist.”

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council, the main organizer of this weekend’s summit. Perkins leads the group’s efforts against gay rights, abortion rights and church/state separation.

The FRC famously expressed its hostility to religious pluralism in a 2000 statement blasting a Hindu priest who was invited to give an opening prayer in Congress: "[W]hile it is true that the United States of America was founded on the sacred principle of religious freedom for all, that liberty was never intended to exalt other religions to the level that Christianity holds in our country's heritage…. Our Founders … would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal deference."

The FRC has one of the most anti-gay platforms of any major political organization, including expressions of support for the criminalization of homosexuality. Earlier this year, the group called on members to pray for the continuation of Malawi’s law prohibiting homosexuality , under which a gay couple was sentenced to fourteen years in jail. Senior fellow Peter Sprigg said 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.”

Perkins himself frequently reflects the extreme views of his organization. He:

At last year’s Values Voter Summit, Perkins managed to simultaneously insult U.S. servicemembers and several important U.S. allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying that armies that allow gays and lesbians to serve openly “ participate in parades, they don’t fight wars to keep the world free .”

Mat Staver

Mat Staver is the head of the Liberty University School of Law and its legal affiliate, Liberty Counsel, both sponsors of the Values Voter Summit. Liberty Counsel vehemently opposes rights for gays and lesbians, and in July filed the lawsuit to overturn New York’s Marriage Equality Act . The group’s Director of Cultural Affairs Matt Barber has called marriage equality “ rebellion against God” and said LGBT youth are more likely to commit suicide because they know “ what they are doing is unnatural, is wrong, [and] is immoral .” Barber has also described liberalism as “hatred for God” and said the president and Democrats “are anti-God.” In fact, Liberty Counsel claimed that Obama is “ pushing America to move under the curse ” of God and “ jeopardizing our nation” for purportedly not supporting Israel.

Through his role at Liberty Counsel and on his radio program Faith & Freedom, Staver has:

Staver aggressively promotes “ex-gay” reparative therapy and warns that gays and lesbians are “ intent on trampling upon the fundamental freedoms ” of others. He is also closely linked to the saga of Lisa Miller, a woman represented by Liberty Counsel who kidnapped her daughter and fled to Central America after a court granted custody to her former partner, a lesbian woman. Although Liberty Counsel denies involvement in the kidnapping, earlier this year Miller was reportedly staying at the house of Staver’s administrative assistant’s father in Nicaragua . Staver has also taught the Miller case in his law classes as an example of an instance where “God’s law” preempts “man’s law.”

Jerry Boykin

Retired Army Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin sparked a controversy when, as a high-ranking official in the Bush Defense Department, he framed the War on Terror as a holy war against Islam. He has since built a career as a Religious Right speaker, specializing in anti-Muslim rhetoric and anti-Obama conspiracy theories. Boykin rejects religious freedom for American Muslims, claiming that Islam “is not just a religion, it is a totalitarian way of life.” In an interview with Bryan Fischer, he called for “no mosques in America.”

Boykin is a leading member of the dominionist group The Oak Initiative. In a speech at the group’s conference in April, he declared that George Soros and the Council on Foreign Relations conspired to collapse the U.S. economy in order to help President Obama get elected. Last year, he told the group that President Obama was using his health care reform legislation as a cover to establish a private army of Brownshirts loyal just to him .

Star Parker

Parker is a long-time Religious Right activist who is particularly active in anti-gay and anti-abortion rights work. As Washington, DC was poised to legalize marriage equality, Parker warned that it would lead to more HIV infections in the city, which would “ transform officially into Sodom.” In a recent radio interview with Tony Perkins, Parker mused that black family life was “ more healthy” under slavery than it is today and has accused liberals of treating Justice Clarence Thomas and Gov. Sarah Palin like runaway slaves. She has called legal abortion a “genocide” on par with slavery and the Holocaust.

Ed Vitagliano

As the AFA’s research director, Ed Vitagliano helped co-produce the 2000 anti-gay documentary “It’s Not Gay,” which is riddled with misleading statistics about gays and lesbians and promotes “ex-gay” reparative therapy. The “documentary” starred ex-gay leader Michael Johnston, a self-described “former homosexual,” who was later revealed to have been secretly having sex with other men. Vitagliano’s anti-gay work has continued apace — on the AFA’s radio program this year, Vitagliano argued that gay men are “ abusing the nature of the design of the human body” and said homosexuality is not a “ natural and normal and healthy activity.” Vitagliano also scolded congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis for supporting marriage equality , saying that Lewis “thumbed [his] nose” at God and “needs to go back and read his Bible.”

Bishop Harry Jackson

Jackson, who built his career as an avowed opponent of rights for gays and lesbians, is a regular speaker at Religious Right conferences. He has called for a “SWAT Team” of “Holy Ghost terrorists” to work against hate crimes legislation that protects gays and lesbians, and said that black organizations that support gay rights have “ sold out the black community” and have been “ co-opted by the radical gay movement .” Jackson claims that gay marriage is part of “ a Satanic plot to destroy our seed” and that the larger gay rights movement is “ an insidious intrusion of the Devil.”

Along with his fierce opposition to LGBT rights, Jackson has compared legal abortion to “lynching” and urged the Senate to defeat Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court because she is not a Protestant (Kagan is Jewish). Jackson has even described his political efforts in apocalyptic terms, telling a Religious Right group before the 2010 elections, “God is saying to us ‘I want to pick a fight in which I can wipe out my enemies and cause them to be silenced once and for all.’ This is where America is; if we do not recognize and repent, we are going to see our way of life destroyed as we now know it.”

Lila Rose

Rose is the anti-choice activist responsible for carrying out a deceptive hit job against Planned Parenthood this year. Members of Rose’s group, Live Action, went to Planned Parenthood clinics around the country posing as clients seeking help with a child sex trafficking ring. Planned Parenthood alerted the FBI about the activity, and the one staffer who handled the supposed traffickers inappropriately was promptly fired. Nevertheless, Rose claimed that her hoax proved “beyond a shadow of a doubt that Planned Parenthood intentionally breaks state and federal laws and covers up the abuse of young girls it claims to serve.”

Rose is no newcomer to the Values Voter Summit: in a speech at 2009’s summit, she called for abortions to be performed “in the public square.”

Glenn Beck

Until Beck’s Fox News program was canceled earlier this year, he was one of the Right’s most visible fear-mongers and conspiracy theorists. When his violent rhetoric inspired some real threats against progressive leaders, he laughed off the critics who urged him to choose his words more responsibly. Beck’s elaborate conspiracy theories include the idea that socialists and Islamists were planning a global caliphate, with the help of American progressives; an obsession with the progressive funder George Soros, at whom he leveled a number of anti-Semitic smears including a personal attack that the Anti-Defamation league called “horrific”; and a distrust of President Obama, who he once said was “racist” with a “ deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture .”

On air, Beck joked about killing prominent progressives (for instance, poisoning Nancy Pelosi’s wine), but frequently insisted that it is progressives who were urging violence, even predicting his own martyrdom. In one 2010 broadcast, he warned that "anarchists, Marxists, communists, revolutionaries, Maoists" have to "eliminate 10 percent of the U.S. population" in order to "gain control."

After a terrorist in Oslo killed dozens of young members of Norway’s Labor Party at an island summer camp, Beck attacked the victims , comparing the camp to “Hitler Youth” and calling it “disturbing.”

Spencer Claims Liberals And Islamists Are United By Their Shared Loathing Of America

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 9/20/2011 3:55 pm

Anti-Muslim activists have been making the rounds in Religious Right media recently, including Frank Gaffney’s weeklong love fest with Rick Joyner, Robert Spencer’s and Pamela Geller’s appearances on Janet Mefferd’s show, and Steve Emerson’s interview with Jerry Newcombe of Truth in Action Ministries. Yesterday, Spencer joined Newcombe on his show Truth that Transforms, where the two conflated progressives’ support for civil rights for Muslims with support for extremism. Spencer told Newcombe that “the left doesn’t really like America or western civilization” so they “see in Islam” an influential “ally.” He made a similar argument on The 700 Club with Pat Robertson, when he asserted that the supposedly liberal media “hate” everything “that’s American, that’s Western, that’s Christian, that’s Judeo-Christian.”

Listen:

Newcombe: I find it a phenomenon right now in our culture at large if you look at a lot of liberals and so-called progressives and so forth, let’s say even organizations like the ACLU, that supposedly are in favor of women’s rights and so forth, and yet these liberals by and large embrace Islam more than they do historic, traditional Christianity.

Spencer: It is ridiculous but it is very commonplace. I mean what we have really is that the left doesn’t really like America or western civilization and so I think that they see in Islam an another entity that doesn’t like western civilization and so they see it, in it an ally, and that’s essentially what’s going on.

Financial Scandal Rocks Priests For Life

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 9/14/2011 10:31 am

Frank Pavone, the head of the prominent anti-choice group Priests for Life, has been suspended from his position because of concerns over financial improprieties. Pavone is a priest in the Roman Catholic diocese of Amarillo, Texas, but has used his position in Priests for Life to be a full-time political activist. He garnered national attention during the Terri Schiavo case when he called her husband Michael “a murderer.” He gained more notoriety after bringing in Alveda King to Priests for Life, when he launched “Freedom Rides” in the South in an attempt to connect abortion rights opponents to the Civil Rights Movement. Pavone increased his standing by working with Republican leaders including John McCain and Sam Brownback. Catholics for Choice has consistently warned about financial inefficiencies in Pavone’s organization and “PFL’s electoral campaign-style selling of Pavone as antichoice personality.”

The Amarillo Globe-News reports:

Amarillo’s Roman Catholic bishop ordered a nationally known anti-abortion leader back to his diocese starting Tuesday, citing concerns about a “potential financial scandal” over the priest’s management of millions of dollars in donations.

The move against the Rev. Frank Pavone, announced in a fiery letter from Bishop Patrick J. Zurek to his fellow bishops across the country, ignited a clash reaching all the way to Rome. Pavone said he’d comply with the suspension of his public ministry outside Amarillo, but he’d already appealed to the Vatican.

Priests for Life, Pavone’s Staten Island, N.Y.-based charity, “has become a business that is quite lucrative, which provides Father Pavone with financial independence from all legitimate ecclesiastical oversight,” Zurek wrote in his Sept. 9 letter. Pavone’s fame, Zurek added, “has inflated his ego.”

…

The steady flow of donations has been accompanied by growing worries over how the money is used, according to Zurek’s letter.

“The financial questions and concerns have persisted with no clear and adequate answers since the time when Father Pavone was under two previous bishop ordinaries,” Zurek wrote.

Pavone called Zurek’s assertions that he has refused to provide financial documentation “completely false.”

Pavone said in a statement:

This past week, however, I received a letter from the Bishop insisting that I report to the Diocese this Tuesday, September 13 and, for the time being, remain only there.

I am very perplexed by this demand. Despite that, because I am a priest of the diocese of Amarillo, I will be obedient and report there on the appointed date, putting the other commitments that are on my calendar on hold until I get more clarity as to what the bishop wants and for how long. Meanwhile, I continue to retain all my priestly faculties and continue to be a priest in “good standing” in the Church. The bishop does not dispute this fact. Rather, he has said that he thinks I am giving too much priority to my pro-life work, and that this makes me disobedient to him. He also has claimed that I haven’t given him enough financial information.

…

Therefore, in the interest of preserving my good reputation as well as protecting the valuable work done by the Priests for Life organization, I have begun a process of appeal to the Vatican. This process aims to correct any mistaken decisions of the bishop in my regard and to protect my commitment to full-time pro-life activity for my whole life. We are very confident that the Vatican will resolve this matter in a just and equitable fashion. Because of this confidence, we are not currently making any changes in any positions at Priests for Life, or in any of our projects and plans.

Ahn Equates Marriage Equality With Racist Laws

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 9/13/2011 4:59 pm

During today’s show Holy Spirit Today, Che Ahn said that even if same-sex marriage became legal in the United States it will never be justifiable in the same way laws that didn’t consider African Americans citizens were illegitimate. Ahn is a prominent Religious Right activist who worked on the campaign to pass Proposition 8, co-founded The Call with Lou Engle, and was an official endorser of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s The Response prayer rally. He is also a vocal proponent of Seven Mountains Dominionism who claims that the president of South Korea is an ‘Apostle.’

According to Ahn, LGBT equality “is not a civil rights issue” because they never had “rights taken from them.” He went on to say that same-sex couples have no right to get married just as the country banned incest and polygamy. Ahn concluded that “just because it’s legal does not mean that it’s right, at one time we had a law saying blacks were not citizens, that didn’t make that right.”

Watch:

Boykin: "Persecution" Of Christian Soldiers, Politicians A Sign Of The End Times

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 9/9/2011 4:13 pm

Boykin: Persecution Of Christian Soldiers A Sign Of The End Times Former Lt. General Jerry Boykin has emerged as a Religious Right hero as a leading opponent of civil rights for American Muslims, fervent critic of President Obama, and a rigid supporter of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Boykin also presents himself as the victim of anti-Christian persecution when he was reprimanded after he delivered a speech in uniform during which he said he was part of an “army of God” fighting “Satan,” and that the Muslim warlords he fought worshipped an “idol.”

Yesterday, in an interview with Janet Parshall, Boykin argued that the “persecution” of Christian soldiers and public figures was actually a sign of the End Times:

Boykin: Jesus tells us in Luke 21 that before all the signs of His return ultimately are completed that they will take us before kings and rulers and persecute us in His name. And that is, just scripture, that’s prophesy, and I think we’re seeing that persecution now of Christians, particularly of Christians in uniform, Christians that are prominent Christians, Christians that are in the public eye. That persecution is going to increase as we come closer to the time of Jesus’ return.

Boykin has consistently warned that Christians like himself were encountering discrimination and that religious soldiers will be negatively impacted by the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, telling the Christian Broadcasting Network that the “presence of people who are homosexual has a divisive effect” on the military as “one person who would demonstrate what I consider to be aberrant behavior can really tear up the integrity of the organization.” Now, it appears that this supposed persecution signals the Second Coming.

Kuhner: Martin Luther King, Jr "Both Liberated and Imprisoned Black America"

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 9/2/2011 2:37 pm

After blaming daycare and public schools for ruining society, Jeffrey Kuhner of the Edmund Burke Institute now has another figure to blame for America’s ills: Martin Luther King, Jr. Reflecting on the recent dedication of the King memorial in Washington, D.C., Kuhner writes in The Washington Times that King’s support for progressive causes was responsible for keeping African Americans bound to the “shackles of affirmative action and the welfare state.” Such claims may be news to Glenn Beck, who claimed that he was going to “reclaim the civil rights movement” and tried to frame himself as the next King. Kuhner writes:

Yet, there was a dark side to King and it should not be ignored. Its effects continue to plague our society. Contrary to popular myth, the Baptist minister was a hypocrite who consistently failed to uphold his professed Christian standards. His rampant adultery and serial, life-long womanizing revolted even some of his closest associates. Large parts of his doctoral dissertation were plagiarized. He had numerous ties with communists and Soviet sympathizers. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover knew this, which is why he considered King a “fraud.”

…

King’s leftism ultimately betrayed his original civil rights creed. His call for a color-blind society was contradicted by his multicultural progressivism. Affirmative action, racial quotas, government handouts to minorities - these policies directly violate the basic principle of equality under the law. Contemporary Americans are not judged as individuals, but as members of a racial group, gender or ethnicity. This is a perverse inversion of the very kind of racialism prevalent in the Old South. More than 40 years after his death, we are further away from being a genuine meritocracy. Victimology and racial set-asides dominate large swathes of American life, from university admissions and government bureaucracies to big business and construction. The country has slowly Balkanized, splintering along ethnic lines.

King’s socialism also convinced many blacks to adopt welfare liberalism. It transformed them into a permanent Democratic constituency. The results have been disastrous. The nanny state has crippled the black community, undermining self-reliance, entrepreneurship and personal responsibility. It has fostered family breakdown, soaring rates of illegitimacy and trapped millions in a cycle of poverty and urban squalor. King showed blacks the way out from segregation, but he led them to an economic plantation.

The great irony is that more Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act than Democrats. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the legislation but to overcome the intense hostility of Southern Democrats he needed - and received - strong GOP congressional support. The party of Lincoln not only freed the slaves, it helped to dismantle Jim Crow. Instead of rewarding Republicans, blacks have largely turned their backs on them and with that, have rejected the self-empowerment and prosperity that comes from free-market capitalism.

King’s legacy has been a double-edged sword: He both liberated and imprisoned black America. As we celebrate his achievements with the new memorial in the nation’s capital, for the sake of future generations, let us remember too how King erred. In order to truly create a society where all citizens rise to the height of their potential, we must discard the shackles of affirmative action and the welfare state.

HT: Media Matters

Farah: Marriage Equality Will "Plunge" America Into "The Moral Abyss Of Chaos And Barbarism"

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 8/26/2011 10:20 am

Joseph Farah, the editor of WorldNetDaily, is out with yet another column attacking marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, arguing that it will lead to the downfall of civilization. Farah, who once called for “literally, a break-up of the nation” because several states have legalized same-sex marriage, writes that marriage equality will inevitably lead to polygamy. Claims that same-sex marriage are not uncommon from the Right, Farah fears that if Republicans support the right of states under the Tenth Amendment to legalize same-sex marriage that they will ultimately introduce polygamy:

It took nearly 50 years for Utah to be admitted into the Union for this reason. And it was Republican Party opposition to polygamy that forced the action – just as it was Republican Party opposition to slavery that resulted in an end of that hideous institution in the United States.

Today we have even some Republicans in denial of history and in denial of the natural lusts of men throughout history.

Believe me, there is no legal or moral argument that can be made against polygamy if the institution of marriage is redefined as one between any two people. At that point, I would have to agree that marriage, as redefined, really would become discriminatory, since it is based on nothing more than judicial rulings and legislative actions by men.

…

Those who tell you that same-sex marriage is no big deal and won't lead to the further diminishment of the 6,000-year-old institution of marriage are either being disingenuous or are just plain ignorant.

Marriage is the most important cultural institution in any free and self-governing society.

If you want to plunge into the moral abyss of chaos and barbarism, then just cast your vote for same-sex marriage. Just pretend this profoundly faddish idea is only the latest breakthrough in "civil rights." Just don't raise your voice of objection to this bizarre idea being rammed down America's throat by those who have no appreciation for what really works in God's economy.

For Rick Perry, Fighting "Over-Taxation" Is A Testament Of Faith

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 8/23/2011 10:46 am

Texas Gov. Rick Perry raised eyebrows yesterday when, while campaigning in South Carolina, he likened the struggles of corporations resisting paying their fair share in taxes to the civil rights movement. When told that he was visiting a town where civil rights advocates held a sit-in fifty years ago, Perry mused that the corporate fight against taxes and regulation is an extension of the civil rights movement: “I mean we’ve gone from a country that made great strides in issues of civil rights,” Perry said, “And as we go forward, America needs to be about freedom. It needs to be about freedom from over-taxation, freedom from over-litigation, freedom from over-regulation.”

Immediately, critics rightfully questioned how the fight against “over-taxation” and “over-regulation” could be seen as an outgrowth of a movement that fought for social and economic justice.

But it is important to remember that Perry’s fight for lower taxes and regulations for corporations (on the backs of low-income families) is not just an economic position but also a spiritual issue. Before his Response prayer rally earlier this month, Perry told The 700 Club that he would be praying to end “government’s over-taxed, over-regulated, over-litigated” policies that have “caused roadblocks to economic prosperity.”

In an interview with televangelist James Robison in May, Perry claimed that the current economic crisis was God’s way of ending our “slavery” to government. Like civil rights leaders who used the story of Exodus in their struggle against discrimination, Perry contended that “Pharaoh” exists today in the form of government and “we’ve become slaves to government”:

Barton: Gay Rights Are "Impossible," People Are Poor Because They're Not Religious

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 8/19/2011 3:36 pm

Today on WallBuilders Live, David Barton and co-host Rick Green trumpeted their opposition to gay rights and reproductive rights, as Barton previously argued that God will hold you accountable if you vote for a pro-equality or pro-choice candidate. During the program, Barton tried to distinguish calls for LGBT rights from the abolitionist and civil rights movement. He contends that while the opposition to slavery and segregation was based in the Bible, simplifying a complicated history of racism in America as defenders of slavery and segregation frequently cited the Bible, advocates of LGBT equality are actually violating the laws of God. “I’m sorry, you’re sexual choice is not a God-given right,” Barton said, “You’re talking about a choice and you’re talking about elevating a choice to an inalienable right, which is impossible, you can’t, not under the definition of American documents.”

Barton goes on to say that because there is no species composed entirely of homosexuals that can survive, homosexuality is not a natural right: “When you find homosexuality in nature, it is an aberration, there is no homosexual group in nature that survives, it can’t, it simply can’t, in nature it happens but it’s always an aberration. What is normal is heterosexual, and that is a law of nature and it’s a law of nature’s God.”

Barton later asserts that poverty doesn’t contribute to a higher abortion rate, asking, “is it not the attitude that leads to poverty that also allows abortion and everything else? Is it poverty that causes abortion or is it an attitude?” He claims that there is a “spiritual solution” to poverty and abortion because people of faith do not “choose to live in poverty.” Barton contends that once poor people change their humanistic attitude that tolerates abortion, poverty will end:

If you choose not to advance your life, not to work your tail off, work three or four or five jobs or whatever it takes, if you choose to stay in that lifestyle is that not an indication of an attitude and therefore an attitude, ‘I don’t care about life I don’t care about anything but me, I’m the only thing I care about,’ and that’s why you stay in poverty. Therefore, it’s not a matter that if you eliminate poverty you’re going to eliminate abortion, you got to eliminate the attitude that keeps somebody in poverty and that goes back to a spiritual solution.

Meet The Religious Right Extremists Behind The Pro-Bachmann Super PAC

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 8/18/2011 11:37 am

A secretive ‘Super PAC’ tied to an Ohio political operative is planning to aid congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign after working to defeat South Carolina congressman John Spratt in the last midterm election. Chris Cillizza writes that “Citizens for a Working America, as the group is known, will be chaired by former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Ed Brookover, a longtime political consultant and adviser to Bachmann, will be involved as will conservative lawyer and economist Marc Nuttle.”

Ken Blackwell’s ties to the Religious Right are well known, but Nuttle’s activism has flown below the radar.

Blackwell was Ohio’s Secretary of State from 2002-2006 whom after leaving office, unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2006 and chairman of the Republican National Committee in 2009. He is now a senior fellow with the ultraconservative Family Research Council, a senior fellow with the far-right American Civil Rights Union, and a board member the pro-corporate Club for Growth. Columbus-based televangelist Rod Parsley vigorously backed his failed gubernatorial campaign and Religious Right activists endorsed his abortive bid for RNC chair. His staunchly anti-gay views will serve him well in the Bachmann camp, as Blackwell once compared gay people with arsonists and kleptomaniacs and same-sex couples with farm animals.

Nuttle is a Republican adviser and economist with deep ties to an extreme movement within the Religious Right composed of advocates of Seven Mountains Dominionism. Nuttle is in fact Chairman of The Oak Initiative, a far-right organization dedicated to promoting the Seven Mountains ideology. The group claims in its mission statement, “The Oak Institute is being developed to raise up effective leaders for all of the dominant areas of influence in the culture, including: government, business, education, arts and entertainment, family services, media, and the church,” otherwise known as the Seven Mountains of society that Dominionists think should be controlled by fundamentalist Christians.

The Oak Initiative’s president Rick Joyner, the founder of MorningStar Ministries, has claimed that God is planning to destroy California and that God used Hurricane Katrina to punish America for tolerating homosexuality. The Oak Initiative’s board is filled with leading proponents of Seven Mountains Dominionism, including Jerry Boykin, Janet Porter, Lance Wallnau and self-proclaimed prophet Cindy Jacobs. Lou Sheldon, the head of the Traditional Values Coalition who described LGBT activism as “the very face of evil,” is also a board member.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (Blackwell’s boss) and 2000 GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes addressed the Oak Initiative’s 2011 Summit alongside Nuttle, where Perkins called gays and lesbians “hateful” people who are “pawns” of Satan and Keyes urged Congress to impeach President Obama before he seizes power with the help of foreign countries. At the Summit, Boykin said that Obama is creating his own Brownshirt army to usher in Marxism and Joyner suggested that a secretive cabal crashed the economy to help Obama win the presidential election.

Nuttle spoke to Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries on how to “apply proper biblical principles to the marketplace and the workforce” and that God “has a plan and a solution for this current world crisis we find ourselves in.” Nuttle said that people “don’t have to figure” out all the economic solutions, “all you have to do is be obedient” to God. He also claimed that the United States is the only country with a government subservient to God: “Every other government in the world is some sort of government authority, it’s a dictatorship, or Islam where government is God, or where the dictator is God, or the Constitution is God, over the constituents.” Nuttle argued that “the fight is against the 30% [of politicians] who don’t care” about the decline of the economy, “because then there’s more room for government. Government’s what they want, socialism is the goal.” He ended his speech by saying, “lock your shields with each other against the enemy.” 

Earlier this year he addressed Liberty University’s Awakening 2011, the Religious Right political event hosted by Mat Staver of the LU-affiliate Liberty Counsel. Nuttle also appeared on God Knows with Jacobs, where he shared with the 'Prophet' his plan to solve the nation’s debt troubles.

As heads of the pro-Bachmann Super PAC, Blackwell and Nuttle will surely help Bachmann link her far-right economic views with her deep-seated social conservative activism.

Bachmann, Romney, Santorum Promise "Presidential Commission To Investigate Harassment Of Traditional Marriage Supporters"

Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 8/4/2011 11:33 am

As we mentioned yesterday, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann will be joining FRC, the National Organization for Marriage and the Susan B. Anthony List for a ""Values Voter Bus Tour" through Iowa.

In kicking off the event, NOM has announced that Santorum, Bachmann, and Mitt Romney have all signed a five-point "Marriage Pledge" [PDF] that includes a promise to establish a "presidential commission" to "investigate harassment of traditional marriage supporters":

One, support sending a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the states for ratification.

Two, nominate to the U.S. Supreme Court and federal bench judges who are committed to restraint and to applying the original meaning of the Constitution, appoint an attorney general similarly committed, and thus reject the idea our Founding Fathers inserted a right to gay marriage into our Constitution.

Three, defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act vigorously in court.

Four, establish a presidential commission on religious liberty to investigate and document reports of Americans who have been harassed or threatened for exercising key civil rights to organize, to speak, to donate or to vote for marriage and to propose new protections, if needed.

Five, advance legislation to return to the people ofthe District of Columbia their right to vote on marriage.

Nimocks: Bans on Interracial Marriage Were Wrong Because They're Discriminatory, But Bans on Same-Sex Marriage A.O.K.

Submitted by Coral on Wednesday, 7/27/2011 11:40 am

After his testimony at last week’s DOMA hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee, Austin Nimocks of the Alliance Defense Fund has been doing the rounds in the right-wing radio circuit. In a recent interview withthe Concerned Women for America’s radio show, Nimocks hit all of the classic anti-marriage-equality arguments, claiming that marriage between a man and a woman “naturally builds families,” and that children do best with two heterosexual parents. Nimocks then tried to discredit the comparison of DOMA to the laws against interracial marriage during the civil rights movement.

“Interracial marriage and the racism that underscored the prohibitions on interracial marriage in this country have nothing to do with the question of same-sex marriage, and for multiple reasons. When you look at it from a big picture, we understand what racism was about. It was about white supremacy and about keeping people apart. And there was an underlying bad associated with that doctrine and that policy that found its way into our laws. Marriage is not about keeping people apart. It’s about bringing together the two great halves of humanity, men and women, for a deep, deep social good. And the drastic difference in those two things cannot be overlooked. And then you look at that and say wait, marriage is about bringing people together, and it doesn’t discriminate on the basis of people’s skin color.”

Hold on a second, Nimocks. So bans on interracial marriage were about keeping people apart, but the bans on same-sex marriage are about bringing people together? And there was an “underlying bad” associated with racism, but there isn’t one associated with homophobia? And marriage shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of skin color, but it should discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation? Excuse me if I’m not exactly compelled to the case you’re making.

It comes as no surprise that the Concerned Women for America or the Alliance Defense Fund are making illogical arguments and holding moral double-standards, but the logical leaps they’re making are becoming more and more obvious as time goes on.

Parker: Black Family Life "Was More Healthy" Under Slavery

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 7/27/2011 11:02 am

While appearing on American Family Radio’s Today’s Issues with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association, right-wing activist and onetime Republican congressional candidate Star Parker endorsed the claim that Black families were better off under slavery. She was discussing a pledge signed by presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum written by The Family Leader which “suggested that black children born into slavery were better off in terms of family life than African-American kids born today.” Parker, who recently argued that “too many Blacks do not want to be free,” said that under slavery “black family life, in the vulnerable state that it was, some could say more healthy than it is today,” even though black people were considered property and it was illegal for slaves to marry.

Watch:

Parker: Now we don’t have clear data getting to your question about what black family life looked like during slavery as what the attacks are now even against people like Michele Bachmann who signed on to a document that said the black family was more intact than it is today. But we do know the reason we don’t have clear data of course is because only some data made it through the civil war.

Wildmon: What about prior to civil rights?

Parker: Well I’m going back to this point in history that they went back to, which was slavery, during slavery. Because black family life, in the vulnerable state that it was, some could say was more healthy than it is today.

AFA: Marriage Equality Means "You Abandon God"

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 7/26/2011 12:26 pm

The American Family Association’s research director and American Family Radio radio talk show host Ed Vitagliano criticized Democratic congressman and civil rights hero John Lewis for supporting marriage equality, saying that “you can only discard the traditional institution of marriage if you abandon God and abandon our Judeo Christian heritage in this country.”

According to Vitagliano, Lewis was wrong to cite the civil rights movement to defend his support for equal rights for gays and lesbians: “If you want to cite God for eliminating slavery and Jim Crow laws, you cannot then thumb your nose at the same God who obviously created men and women and created us to maintain the race through having children, and thus being married. So with all due respect, Congressman Lewis has read the gay playbook and has bought the arguments, without thinking them through, or perhaps he just needs to go back and read his Bible.”

Later in the program, Buster Wilson, the managing director of AFR, said that gay and lesbian couples who faced discrimination as a result of the Defense of Marriage Act only had themselves to blame, arguing: “that of course is tragic for anyone to go through, but as I read all that and heard about all this and how terrible DOMA is because it has violated all these rights and caused all this trouble, I just kept thinking, you know there is consequence for wrong living.” He went on to say that “homosexual lifestyles and homosexual marriage relationships are not right, and so there are consequences for living in a way that society has said for over 5,000 years is the wrong way to live.”

Right Wing Leftovers

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 7/22/2011 5:46 pm
  • Why am I not surprised that the Religious Right claim that a Texas military cemetery banned religious expression is wildly off-base?
  • Fox News daringly exposes the left-wing plot to “eradicate the poor” through birth control.
  • Opponents of teaching evolution suffer a major defeat in Texas.
  • Quote of the day from Bryan Fischer: “Alas, the homosexual lobby is rapidly turning us into China and the former Soviet Union. Christians are now being treated officially as second-class citizens with far fewer human and civil rights than those who engage in aberrant sexual behavior.”

Engle: Gay Rights And Secular Government In America Similar To Nazism

Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 7/22/2011 1:37 pm

At the International House of Prayer’s Prayer and Prophetic Conference, Lou Engle contended that gays and lesbians only have the right to “repent” for their homosexuality and compared the state of America to Nazi Germany. IHOP has been facing increased scrutiny as a result of its prominent role in organizing Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s The Response prayer rally, for which Engle’s The Call serves as a model. Engle, who has advocated for the criminalization of homosexuality and showed solidarity with Uganda while it was considering a bill that would make homosexuality a crime punishable by death, told IHOP that gay rights and secular government are putting America on the road of Nazi Germany.

Watch:

Can a homosexual have civil rights in America? They might. But it is not their right given by God. Their right is to repent and stand until Jesus delivers, and then the Church must go into war for them and get them free. Brothers and sisters, we made it two spheres: government has a sphere and God has a sphere. That’s what they did in Hitler’s day, they voted for money in economic crisis and they sacrificed the sanctity of life of the Jews. We do the same thing in America.
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