hate

Arkansas State University student Abdullah Raslan penned a column for the school newspaper reflecting on the 9/11 attacks by strongly condemning violence and calling for interfaith reconciliation and understanding. “Living in the Bible Belt for the past three years and befriending many devoted Christians here on campus, I've learned that Islam and Christianity have a lot in common,” he wrote. “Both religions preach values and morals, stressing that violence is never the answer.”

But the anti-Muslim group ACT! for America has no interest in any form of interfaith dialogue, and instead sent to their members across the country Raslan’s article along with their line-by-line rebuttals written in all caps. Led by Brigitte Gabriel, ACT! For America is one of the most conspiratorial and virulent anti-Muslim groups in America. The membership email calls Raslan’s article illustrative of “information warfare” and suggests he wrote it using “the practice of taqiyya.”

Is the Muslim college student from Saudi Arabia, who wrote the column below, naïve, uninformed, or deliberately feeding us disinformation (the practice of “taqiyya”)?

We can’t know for sure. But regardless, this column, which appeared in the ASU newspaper, illustrates again how disinformation is being peddled to mislead Americans. Uninformed Americans are vulnerable to this “information warfare.”

Last week Kyle noted how Bryan Fischer explained his love for gays and lesbians by denouncing people who favor gay rights as the real bigots. Today, the American Family Association spokesman made a similar case when discussing Chaz Bono, a transgender man who will appear in the upcoming season of ABC’s ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ Fischer says that the show’s producers are the “true haters here,” and contends that anyone who loves Bono would’ve convinced him not to have female-to-male gender reassignment surgery. “She needs restorative therapy rather than stardom. She needs to become a patient, not a celebrity,” Fischer writes, “ABC executives are unashamedly preying on her mental illness, cannibalizing her psychologically disturbed soul for ratings, and profiting handsomely in the process.”

Mocking claims that virulent anti-LGBT rhetoric contributes to suicide, Fischer argues that no one “has been demonized, marginalized, and turned into social pariahs” more than “the pro-family movement,” and accordingly, “We should be awash in suicides here at the American Family Association.” Fischer says that out of love, Bono should be dropped from the show because “ABC is helping to forge the chains that will imprison Chaz Bono for the rest of her life in a dark dungeon of confusion and despair”:

Chaz Bono is not a "he," Chaz Bono is a "she." She is a "she" in every single cell of her body, and will be until the day she dies. Her DNA from the moment of conception was indisputably female, and it will always be female.

No amount of surgical mutilation and hormone injections can change that. God designed her to be a female and a female she will be for the rest of her life.

Chaz Bono had her breasts surgically removed by a surgeon, and has been receiving injections of male hormones, but remains unmistakably female from the waist down.

It's bizarre, by the way, to find ourselves as a culture celebrating Chaz Bono's sexual mutilation while at the same time we try to stop the female genital mutilation of young girls in Islamic countries. This kind of schizophrenia is certainly a sign that Chaz Bono is not the only one with mental health issues. Our entire society is suffering from a severe mental disorder on the whole subject of human sexuality.

…

Opponents of the truth about sexuality admit that suicidal ideation is very high among homosexuals and transsexuals. But they argue that the fault should be assigned to the pro-family movement for making such people pariahs.

This is absurd on its face. The pro-family movement is relentlessly demonized by those who want to normalize sexual aberrations. We are accused without ceasing of being hateful, homophobic bigots. Our organizations are tagged as hate groups. If anybody has been demonized, marginalized, and turned into social pariahs, it is the pro-family movement.

Meanwhile, Chas Bono is hardly a pariah by anyone's definition. She is the talk of Hollywood, and when the dancing starts will literally be the belle of the ball.

If the left's template is correct — that turning folks into social pariahs makes them kill themselves — then we should be awash in suicides here at the American Family Association. Our staff should be suffering from an epidemic of self-murder. But here we are, enjoying our lives, our families, our friends and our churches while nary a thought of suicide crosses our minds.

The bottom line here is that, according to America's mental health professionals, Chaz Bono is a mentally disturbed individual.

Chaz Bono needs to be helped, not lionized. She needs restorative therapy rather than stardom. She needs to become a patient, not a celebrity.

…

This means the issue here is ultimately about ABC, not Chaz Bono. ABC executives are unashamedly preying on her mental illness, cannibalizing her psychologically disturbed soul for ratings, and profiting handsomely in the process. This is immoral, uncaring, greedy and just plain wrong.

If "hate" is the opposite of "love," then the producers of "Dancing With the Stars" are the true haters here. ABC is helping to forge the chains that will imprison Chaz Bono for the rest of her life in a dark dungeon of confusion and despair.

This is not a proud moment for ABC. And every advertiser who spends money to promote such sexual abnormality should be embarrassed even to be connected to this charade.

Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs joined Janet Mefferd on Friday to promote her new book “Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide To The Resistance.” As a columnist for WorldNetDaily, which also published her book, Geller has publicized her ‘investigation’ into the “full extent of Muslim Brotherhood infiltration in the Department of Justice and its brazen pro-Muslim activities.” While speaking to Mefferd, Geller said that President Obama and the Department of Justice were both “aiding and abetting the restoring the universal caliphate”:

During her last appearance on Mefferd’s show Geller called herself a victim of a ‘blood libel,’ so it was no surprise that today she spent most of the program lashing out at her opponents. Geller told Mefferd that criticism of her is “the enforcing of the Sharia” and its “blasphemy laws.” “So while in Muslim countries you’re executed, non-Muslims are executed for blasphemy, here in America you’re not assassinated but you’re character is assassinated,” Geller said. “The people are cowed, cowed, that’s what they want you to be, they want you to be a big ole cow”:

In this book I address how you can fight the mosque-ing of your neighborhood, how you can fight the mosque-ing of your workplace, how you can fight the mosque-ing of your public school. You must speak up. You must not be cowed. And by the way when you speak up you will be called a ‘racist, Islamophobic, anti-Muslim bigot.’ And why is that? Because that is the enforcing of the Sharia. Under the Sharia if you speak candidly about Islam, if you speak critically about Islam, you are a ‘racist, Islamophobic, anti-Muslim bigot’ because it is blasphemy. These are blasphemy laws. Do not insult Islam, do not defame Islam, do not speak candidly about Islam. So while in Muslim countries you’re executed, non-Muslims are executed for blasphemy, here in America you’re not assassinated but you’re character is assassinated. This is how they shut people up. This is how they make—the people are cowed, cowed, that’s what they want you to be, they want you to be a big ole cow.

…

Anybody that speaks about these things gets criticized for it. look, I was on Fox & Friends yesterday for three minutes discussing my book and immediately the leftist shills and Islamic apologists like Media Matters, which is a Soros financed organization, went nuts that Fox is mainstreaming hate and radicalism because that’s the one thing they must achieve is a blackout. A blacklist of voices of freedom and voices of truth.

Earlier this year, Mike Huckabee appeared on Bryan Fischer's radio program where the two of them attacked President Obama's "fundamental anti-Americanism."

Shortly thereafter, Huckabee was a guest on Alan Colmes' radio program where he was asked about why he was associating with a vicious bigot such as Fischer, to which Huckabee responded by claiming that was not familiar with Fischer's long record of undeniable bigotry and that he was not responsible for things Fischer may have said.

Since then, it has become pretty clear that there is nothing that Fischer can say that might get anyone in the conservative movement to treat him as the pariah that he is, as leading conservative figures continue to appear on his radio program on a regular basis.

Huckabee himself has appeared on Fischer's show multiple times and did so again yesterday to discuss his upcoming appearance at a fundraiser for Personhood Mississippi and declared that he was "delighted to stand" with "courageous leaders" like the AFA's Don Wildmon in supporting this effort:

So this is just another reminder of the fact that seemingly nobody on the Religious Right finds Fischer's relentless bigotry in any way objectionable or unacceptable:

It is no secret that Bryan Fischer wants to see our nation governed by the Bible, going so far as to demand that whales, bears and other wild animals be put to death in accordance with scriptural mandates.  So it was no surprise to see that he has written a new post defending the use of the death penalty as entirely biblical: 

The King James version, “Thou shalt not kill,” has led some to erroneously believe that God was prohibiting killing of every kind, but he most certainly was not. The Sixth Commandment is specifically a command against cold-blooded murder. Killing in self-defense, war, and as punishment for murder are not only permitted but prescribed in the Scripture.

In fact, on the next page on the book of Exodus, in chapter 21, there are six specific crimes for which capital punishment is the prescribed penalty. As an aside, it’s worth noting that the death penalty was mandated for participation in the slave trade: “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death” (Exodus 21:16).

In other words, if the United States had simply followed the standards found in Scripture, slaves never would have appeared on our shores, slavery never would have been an issue, and the Civil War would never have been fought. Then, as always, the Scriptures show us the way forward not just personally but politically as well.

It is a little hard to understand how Fischer can claim that if the US had just followed Scripture, slavery would have been illegal since just a few passages later in Exodus 21: 20-21 it is made pretty clear that it was not slavery that warranted the death penalty, but theft:

When a man strikes his slave, male or female, with a rod and the slave dies under his hand, he shall be avenged. But if the slave survives a day or two, he is not to be avenged, for the slave is his money.

So if you beat a slave to death, you are to be punished but if the slave recovers, there will be no punishment ... yet somehow Fischer thinks that this should have been our guide to "show us the way forward not just personally but politically as well."

For what it is worth, the Exodus 21 passage Fischer cites also mandates death for anyone who strikes or curses his mother or father, so maybe he thinks we ought to enact that into law as well.

And we already know that Fischer wants to see homosexuality criminalized, so given that he wants Scripture to show us the way forward politically, one has to wonder whether he thinks Leviticus 20's "Punishments for Sexual Immorality" ought to be enacted into law as well:

10 If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

...

13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

I'd encourage others to ask Fischer that question but we all know that trying to get Fischer to actually defend or explain his views is just an exercise in futility.

Frank Turek has become a hero of sorts to the Religious Right after Cisco terminated his contract as a consultant when an employee complained about his work as an anti-gay activist. Turek, who was a motivational speaker for Cisco before he was canned, is a radio commentator on American Family Radio, the American Family Association’s far-right radio network, and is the author of Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone. He also frequently appears on broadcasts from Rick Joyner’s the Oak Initiative and joined Joyner, Tony Perkins and Jerry Boykin to create the Religious Right’s own '300' Spartan army. While a guest on Bryan Fischer’s AFR radio show in May, Turek warned that gay rights advocates and Islamic extremists are “in concert together” because “they both hate Western Civilization” and “hate Judeo-Christian natural law values that our Constitution and particularly our Declaration of Independence.”

Turek now writes columns for the American Family Association. In his latest piece, he claims that the people who truly love gay people are the ones like him, who believe they should become ‘ex-gays,’ while the people who hate gay people are those who affirm their sexual orientation. “If I have good reason to think you are on the road to destruction—if a truck is about to run over you,” Turek writes, “the only way to love you is to urge you to get out of the street”:

Everyone puts limits on marriage—if marriage had no definition it wouldn’t be anything. Recognizing that marriage is between a man and a woman is not bigotry, but common sense rooted in the biological facts of nature. That’s why the state recognizes marriage to begin with—not because two people love one another but because only heterosexual unions can procreate and best nurture the next generation.

Everyone also puts limits on behaviors. But opposing behavior is not the same as opposing or “hating” people. In fact, to really love people, we often have to oppose what they do! Parents know this, and all former children know it as well.

Celebrating behavior that leads to disease and an early death is closer to hate than love. According to the latest data from the Center for Disease Control, homosexual men comprise more than 80 percent of sexually transmitted HIV cases despite comprising less than 2 percent of the population. The FDA says that men who have sex with men have an HIV infection rate 60 times higher than the general population. Why should we be encouraging behavior that results in such tragic outcomes? If I have good reason to think you are on the road to destruction—if a truck is about to run over you—the only way to love you is to urge you to get out of the street. If I tell you to keep walking down that road—that I celebrate the road you’re on—how could I hate you more?

But isn’t homosexuality like race? No. Race has nothing to do with behavior, but homosexuality is a behavior! Skin color affects no one, but destructive behavior affects many. Moreover, sexual behavior is always a choice, race never is. You’ll find many former homosexuals, but you’ll never find a former African-American.

So if you don’t approve of a man because of his race, you are a bigot. But if you don’t approve of a man’s destructive behavior, you are wise.

…

[B]eing born a certain way is irrelevant to what the law should be. Laws are concerned with behaviors not desires, and we all have desires we ought not act on. In fact, all of us were born with an “orientation” to bad behavior, but those desires don’t justify the behaviors. If you are born with a genetic predisposition to alcohol, does that mean you should be an alcoholic? If you have a genetic attraction to children does that mean you should be a pedophile? What homosexual activist would say that a genetic predisposition to anger justifies gay-bashing? (Don’t blame me—I was born with the anti-gay gene!) Certainly, those that oppose alcoholism, pedophilia and gay bashing are not “bigots”—they are wise.

Since the Charity Give Back Group was forced to defend its financing of right-wing organizations like the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, spokesman Kevin McCullough (who himself has propagated virulent anti-gay rhetoric) has stated that the campaign to have companies withdraw from the CGBG represents bullying. Tony Perkins, the president of the FRC, even said it was an attempt to “censor” Christians. After Apple dropped out of the CGBG, which was previously known as the Christian Values Network, McCullough told The Christian Post, “We're not asking Apple to embrace our position or the other side's position. We just want them to stay neutral,” and the FRC is calling on activists to tell companies to “remain neutral in the current cultural battles.”

But by indirectly assisting the FRC and Focus on the Family, two of the major ‘culture war’ players, companies listed in the CGBG’s virtual mall are inadvertently finding themselves anything but ‘neutral’ parties. Both groups are heavily involved in the electoral politics and lobbying, which makes it difficult to consider them purely charitable organizations. FRC is one of the most prominent Religious Right advocacy groups in Washington D.C., and Focus on the Family has a policy arm (CitizenLink) dedicated to political activism. If companies really wanted to ‘remain neutral in the current cultural battles,’ that is more reason to drop out of the CGBG’s list.

While FRC and Focus have received the most attention, another group listed as an affiliated organization is Liberty Counsel.

Liberty Counsel is a sister organization of Liberty University and Liberty Action, part of the network established by the late Jerry Falwell. Liberty Counsel’s Liberty Alerts depict their legal victories as “Gaining Ground in the Culture War,” and the head of Liberty Counsel, Mat Staver, wrote a book called Take Back America that he descried a Liberty Action flyer called “an Invaluable Resource to Help Win the Intensifying Culture War!” Staver’s deputy at Liberty Counsel Matt Barber even described liberalism as “hatred for God” and demanded President Obama’s impeachment for providing family benefits to federal employees in domestic partnerships. Most recently, they defended Lisa Miller, who kidnapped her daughter and fled the country to escape a court order granting her former partner custody of the child, and the Florida teacher who used his Facebook to post anti-gay messages. Like FRC and Focus, Liberty Counsel consistently propagates the most stringent anti-gay rhetoric.

Barber has argued that marriage equality is “rebellion against God,” held that gay and lesbian youth who commit suicide do it because they intuitively know homosexuality is “immoral” and called anti-bullying programs part of a “a homosexual activist political indoctrination agenda.” Such anti-gay rhetoric is extremely similar to that used of the FRC and Focus. The FRC’s Perkins claimed that homosexuality is “man shaking his fist in the face of God” and said that gay and lesbian children are likely to commit suicide because they “recognize intuitively that their same-sex attractions are abnormal.” Focus on the Family led the push against anti-bullying programs across the country, calling them efforts “to promote homosexuality to kids.”

Liberty Counsel and the FRC also defended Malawi’s law that criminalizes homosexuality and attacked American efforts to alter it.

Despite right-wing criticisms of the pressure campaign on companies tied to the CGBG, Liberty Counsel launched their own pressure campaign against schools that allowed students to participate in the ‘Day of Silence,’ which protested anti-gay bullying. Liberty Counsel also conducts an annual campaign against companies that they believe are supposedly undermining Christians, and Staver calls on customers to “shop elsewhere” if the store is not seen as sufficiently respectful of Christmas.

Liberty Counsel even joined forces with the militantly anti-gay Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, Illinois Family Institute, and the American Family Association to launch a boycott and pressure campaign against McDonalds after it made a donation to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Barber lashed out at McDonalds for working with “militant homosexual activists” in front of their company headquarters.

Who else supported the boycott and pressure campaign against McDonalds?

Why, none other than the Family Research Council, which supported the boycott against McDonalds and lauded “McDonald’s agreement to stop financing the homosexual agenda.”

Now, will FRC and its allies please stop complaining that pressure campaigns against companies represent “discrimination” and the undue influence of ‘cultural battles’ into the corporate world? Probably not.

A campaign spearheaded by LGBT rights and women’s rights groups Change.org and AllOut.org, encouraging companies to drop their ties to the Charity Give Back Group (formerly the Christian Values Network), unsurprisingly has the Religious Right up in arms. The CGBG “operates a sort of online mall, donating a portion of each purchase to religious nonprofits,” Michelle Goldberg explains. “Among them are conservative organizations like Focus on the Family, The Family Research Council, Promise Keepers, and a number of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers.”

The campaign to get businesses to opt out of CGBG’s program has been very successful, with over 200 companies such as Delta, Apple and Macy’s dropping out of the program so far.

Focus on the Family is now encouraging its members to write to the companies that have ended their ties with CGBG. And today, the Family Research Council launched the “Resist Discrimination” campaign, demanding companies “resist pressure to discriminate against customers with a traditional, biblical view of marriage” with a warning that they “should beware of online activists who spread misinformation to pressure retailers to discriminate against customers and charities with Judeo-Christian moral views, including marriage as the union of a man and a woman.” Of course, Focus on the Family and the FRC would never support similar pressure campaigns…right?

As a matter of the fact, FRC was part of a campaign last year that threatened to boycott Comedy Central if the channel did not drop a planned comedy show about Jesus Christ, and in 2008 endorsed a five month boycott of McDonalds and Wal-Mart because of the companies’ ties to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Focus on the Family also closed its Wells Fargo accounts in 2005 to protest the bank’s donation to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. In 2006, Focus on the Family founder and then-president James Dobson urged members to boycott Proctor & Gamble because of its support for a gay-rights initiative. “For Procter & Gamble to align itself with radical groups committed to redefining marriage in our country is an affront to its customers,” Dobson said.

The CGBG was founded by Stephen Baldwin (Alec Baldwin’s brother) and Michael Lohan (Lindsay Lohan’s father), with Mike Huckabee acting as its spokesman. Now, the CGBG is advised by Baldwin and Kevin McCullough, who run XtreMEDIA. McCullough recently acted as a spokesperson for CGBG’s response to the AllOut! and Change.org campaign, saying the groups were disseminating a “dishonest message.” While FRC and Focus’s active opposition to LGBT and women’s rights is well documented, McCullough is a lesser known activist. He has a radio show on the Christian channel Family NET and stands in for American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer when the latter is on vacation from his show on American Family Radio.

While McCullough claims that the CGBG shouldn’t be attacked over its ties to the FRC and Focus, McCullough’s own anti-gay activism speaks for itself.

• Peter Montgomery @ Religion Dispatches: Paranoia and the Progressive Press: A Response to WaPo’s Religion Columnist.
• Alvin McEwen: 16 reasons why the Family Research Council is a hate group.
• John Fea: Palin: The National Endowment for the Humanities Needs to Go.
• Media Matters: Restoring Hyperbole: Beck's Jerusalem Rally Will Be "A Planet Course-Altering Event."
• Ian Millhiser @ Think Progress: Just One Week Into His Campaign, Rick Perry Disavows His Nine-Month-Old Book.
• Joe Sudbay @ Americablog: Prof. says Boehner’s DOMA lawyer "misconstrues and distorts my research findings."