« Robert Knight
June 18, 2008
Knight Compares Calif. Marriage to Pearl Harbor
Robert Knight, tired of hearing “gay activists” argue that “the sky is not falling” and the “sun still came out, the birds still chirped and the flowers still bloomed” after Massachusetts permitted gay marriage, comes up with a stinging retort: “Well, the birds chirped and the flowers bloomed in Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941, as the American fleet lay smoldering.”
Posted by Chris at 4:33 PM | Permalink
March 24, 2008
Falwell Never Apologized
Robert Knight weighs in on the Jeremiah Wright controversy, saying it is unfair to compare to Jerry Falwell to Wright because "Falwell was no hater. After his most controversial moment, when he blamed pro-abortion and pro-homosexual groups for 9/11 as God's punishment on America for abandoning moral standards, he apologized." Of course, Falwell did nothing of the sort.
Posted by Kyle at 11:15 AM | Permalink
October 24, 2007
Bob Knight Blasts Children's Book Author
Media Research Center activist accusing "Harry Potter" author of pushing "hip, kaleidoscopic sexual deviancy that is engulfing us from every which way" in revealing gay wizard.
Posted by Ezra at 10:40 AM | Permalink
October 11, 2007
Right Versus Librarians
A few years ago, anti-gay activists found themselves having a rough time in their attempts to vilify the gay penguins of Central Park Zoo in New York, but it seems they are always looking for ever-more sympathetic targets.
“There’s good news and bad news in the world of children’s books,” writes Robert Knight, head of the Media Research Center’s Culture and Media Institute, adding that the “good news” involves banning books—a book about penguins, no less:
First, the good news: And Tango Makes Three, a picture book for 4- to 8-year-olds about two penguins who are into homosexual “parenting,” is the “most challenged” book on the American Library Association’s (ALA) Banned Books Week list.
This means some parents are still on the job and are not turning their children over to the tender mercies of the Free Sex Lobby, which effectively runs the ALA.
So, what’s the “bad news,” you ask? According to Knight, formerly a spokesman for Concerned Women for America, it’s that fewer books are being banned, thanks to those (supposedly sex-crazed) librarians and their 25-year campaign against censorship.
Posted by Ezra at 5:53 PM | Permalink
September 21, 2007
Family Impact Summit: 'Jaunty Musclemen,' 'Gay Aliens,' and the 'Homosexual Agenda' in PowerPoint
One of our correspondents sent this report from the first day of the Family Impact Summit in Florida:
The first panel's topic was "The Homosexual Agenda," and Peter Sprigg, vice president for public policy at the Family Research Council, gave his talk with the aid of a PowerPoint presentation purporting to outline the "Elements of the Agenda." Sprigg lectured the crowd about how “militant gay rights activists” were going about crossing off agenda points, and spoke at length about the gay rights activists' movement to "indoctrinate every student from kindergarten to 12th grade."
While Sprigg gave the usual compassionate-sounding phrases of the anti-gay movement—with statements like, "We desire the best for homosexuals, and desiring the best for someone and acting to bring that about is the essence of love…"— he "affirmed" the state of Florida for having the strongest prohibition against adoption by gay couples. He made the claim that "most children raised by homosexuals are the result of previous heterosexual relationships," and proceeded to pontificate about how this "undermines the notion that homosexuality is something fixed from birth and cannot change—there are very few homosexuals who have never had a heterosexual relationship."
Sprigg’s shining moment, I think, was when he chastised the "militant gay rights activists" for characterizing sexual orientation as tantamount to race. He stated that "homosexuality is not equivalent to heterosexuality," and thus is not a civil rights issue like race.
We heard a lot about those "ex-gays" and then were addressed by "an ex-gay" in person: Alan Chambers, the president of Exodus International. Chambers worried about "the militant activist groups out to co-opt family life, our rights, and change America into an America that is only good for them." We were told that these “militant gay activists” were "trying to co-opt our very way of life."
In fact, the phrase "militant gay activist" was bandied around so much, I felt silly for having left my weaponry at home … I was also ashamed not to fit Chambers' image of what a gay man is: a "jaunty mustached muscleman," apparently, in contrast to the "nice young people, old people, and attractive women" progressives are said to use in our commercials and media campaigns. Chambers also claimed that "the gay activist movement is wealthy. None of us in the pro-family movement are making money. I am in poverty compared to what the executives of the pro-gay movement are making."
Chambers concluded by saying, "We have to stand up against an evil agenda."
Bob Knight of the Media Research Center’s Culture and Media Institute posed a rhetorical question: "If there's only less than 2-3% of the population that are gay, how are they so powerful?” Knight’s answer: “Because they are like a little kid, with a big brother and a baseball bat behind them—the American media." According to Knight, the "gay media" is making bizarre, unfounded claims. Gay and lesbian journalists' organizations, he argued, should be courted by The Weekly World News and the Globe instead of reputable news providers; "The truth about those gay aliens" should be exposed, he joked.
Knight claimed that the gay rights movement stole the "moral capital of the civil rights movement" by applying it to sexual behavior. He chastised the gay community for "messing with the institution of marriage," and he accused us of "sticking a finger in God's eye Himself, and saying that 'we will define morality ourselves.'"
Posted by Ezra at 4:15 PM | Permalink
September 20, 2007
Religious Right Rally against Marriage Equality in Florida
Just days after the Religious Right’s B-team gathered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to question Republican candidates for president (including the ones who didn’t show up), a number of more prominent right-wing figures are convening in Tampa for the Family Impact Summit, sponsored by the Focus on the Family-affiliated Florida Family Policy Council, the Tampa-based Community Issues Council, the Family Research Council, and the Salem radio network.
Advertised topics range from “Christian Citizenship” to “Homosexual Agenda,” but the focus will no doubt be on the 2008 election, and in particular, the effort by Florida’s Right to put a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot—even though gays are already prohibited from marrying by statute.
Below is some background on the featured speakers, from Tony Perkins and Richard Land to Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell.
Tony Perkins
Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council, considered the leading religious-right think tank in Washington, DC. Before coming to FRC, Perkins was a state legislator in Louisiana, and as a campaign manager for a Republican candidate, he reportedly bought David Duke’s e-mail list.
Under Perkins’s leadership, FRC, along with Focus on the Family, put together several “simulcasts” of political rallies held in churches, including three “Justice Sunday” events in 2005-2006—“Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith,” ”God Save the United States and this Honorable Court,” and “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land”—featuring religious-right luminaries such as James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Phyllis Schlafly, along with politicians like Rick Santorum and then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, arguing that opposition to Bush’s extreme judicial nominees constituted an assault on their faith or Christianity itself. A fourth event just before the 2006 elections, “Liberty Sunday,” promoted the idea that gays and their “agenda” were out to destroy religious freedom.
That fall, FRC also organized a “Values Voter Summit,” in which Dobson and other activists exhorted their constituency to turn out for the GOP; the conference showcased a number of future presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Sam Brownback. A second Values Voter Summit is planned for next month.
Also appearing from FRC at the Family Impact Summit are David Prentice and Peter Sprigg.
Richard Land
Since 1998, Richard Land has served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, which is “dedicated to addressing social and moral concerns and their implications on public policy issues from City Hall to Congress.”
Land has been an active and influential right-wing leader for many years and in 2005, was named one of “The Twenty-five Most Influential Evangelicals in America” by Time Magazine, joining the likes of James Dobson, Chuck Colson, David Barton, Rick Santorum, and Ted Haggard.
Land also hosts three separate nationally syndicated radio programs and has written several books including, most recently “The Divided States of America? What Liberals and Conservatives are Missing in the God-and-Country Shouting Match!,” which Land claims seeks a middle ground between the right and the left on the role of religion in the public square. In reality, the middle ground Land stakes out consists mainly of standard right-wing positions on political and social issues that are made to appear moderate in comparison to ultra-radical positions put forth by far-right fringe elements.
In recent months, Land has been positioning himself to play a much more high-profile role in the presidential campaign than he has in the past, repeatedly asserting that he and other Evangelicals will not support Rudy Giuliani or Newt Gingrich, should he run, while regularly bolstering the campaign of Fred Thompson, who Land calls a “Southern-fried Reagan.”
Harry Jackson
Jackson, pastor of a Maryland megachurch, has become a frequent spokesman for right-wing causes in recent years. In 2004, he played a prominent role in urging blacks to vote for George Bush, and in 2005, he started the High Impact Leadership Coalition and unveiled his “Black Contract with America on Moral Values”—an agenda topped with fighting gay marriage—at an event co-sponsored by the far-right Traditional Values Coalition. Jackson spoke at “Justice Sunday,” a religious-right rally in favor of Bush’s judicial nominees, as well as “Justice Sunday II, where he promised to “bring the rule and reign of the Cross to America.” He is a member of the Arlington Group.
Since then, Jackson has continued to urge blacks to vote for right-wing causes and candidates. “[Martin Luther] King would most likely be a social conservative,” he wrote in one typical column. His most recent efforts have focused on opposing hate crimes protections for gays, falsely claiming that a proposed bill would “muzzle our pulpits.”
In an article in Charisma magazine, Jackson wrote that the “wisdom behind” the “gay agenda” is “clearly satanic,” and he called for an aggressive “counterattack.” He asserted to The New York Times that “Historically when societies have gone off kilter, there has been rampant same-sex marriage.”
Don Wildmon
Wildmon is the Founder and Chairman of the American Family Association, which exists primarily to decry whatever it deems “immoral” in American culture and lead boycotts against companies that in any way support causes, organizations, or programs it deems offensive, particularly anything that does not portray gays and lesbians in a negative light.
Over the years, AFA has targeted everything from the National Endowment for the Arts, Howard Stern, and the television show “Ellen” to major corporations such as Ford , Burger King, and Clorox. AFA has also been particularly focused on Disney, declaring that the company’s “attack on America’s families has become so blatant, so intentional, so obvious” as to warrant a multi-year boycott.
Recently, AFA has been busy warning that proposed hate-crimes legislation is designed to lay the “groundwork for persecution of Christians,” attacked presidential candidate Mitt Romney over his time on the board of Marriott Corporation because the company offers adult movies in its hotels, and warned that the US Senate was “angering a just God” and bringing “judgment upon our country” by allowing a Hindu chaplain to deliver an opening prayer.
Gary Bauer
Gary Bauer is a long-time right-wing activist and leader. After serving President Ronald Reagan's administration for eight years in various capacities, Bauer went on to become President of the Family Research Council, which was founded, in part, by James Dobson of Focus on the Family, where Bauer also served as Senior Vice President.
Bauer stepped down from FRC in 1999 when he launched an unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. After dropping out of the race, Bauer made a surprising endorsement of Sen. John McCain at a time when many of the other right-wing leaders had lined up behind George W. Bush.
Bauer’s standing took a beating when he defended McCain’s attack on Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance” and he was ostracized by many for quite a while after McCain lost. But Bauer pressed ahead, creating his own non-profit, American Values, and gradually reestablished himself in right-wing circles.
Since then, Bauer has been active in various right-wing campaigns, most notably joining with likes of Tony Perkins and James Dobson in defending and pressing for the confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.
William Owens
Owens, a graduate of Oral Roberts University and a Memphis pastor, founded the Coalition of African American Pastors to combat equal marriage rights for gay couples. Owens reportedly told the “Rally for Traditional Marriage” held in Mississippi in 2004 that “homosexual activists of today have hijacked the civil rights cause,” adding: “We're going to fight until we win,” he said. “We're going to have crusades and rallies like this until we win. We're going to let our political leaders know ‘if you don't stand for God, we won't stand for you.’” Owens lent the CAAP name to the Religious Right’s judges campaign, signing on to the “National Coalition to End Judicial Filibusters” and holding a press conference in support of Samuel Alito’s Supreme Court nomination.
In 2004, Owens formed an alliance with the Arlington Group, a coalition of powerful religious-right leaders that was widely credited with being the driving force behind the effort to put anti-gay marriage amendments on the ballot in 11 states in that year’s election. Owens is now on the group’s executive committee, alongside James Dobson, Gary Bauer, Bill Bennett, Tony Perkins, Paul Weyrich, Rod Parsley and others.
Alan Chambers
"Ex-gay" Alan Chambers is president of Exodus International and executive director of Exodus North America, which claim gay men and lesbians can be “cured" and "change" their sexual orientation to heterosexual. Exodus' board includes long-time anti-gay activist Phil Burress of Ohio's Citizens for Community Values, his wife Vickie Burress – founder of the American Family Association of Indiana – and Mike Haley, who replaced discredited "ex-gay" John Paulk at Focus on the Family as chief spokesperson on homosexuality and gender issues. Exodus also co-sponsors a series of "ex-gay" conferences across the country with Focus on the Family. One recent Love Won Out event was particularly mired in controversy when it was revealed that one of its presenting organizations had published a racist column that appeared to justify slavery. During a 2006 CPAC conference panel, Chambers insisted "lifelong homosexual relationships are not possible" and the battle for marriage equality was solely being promoted by the liberal media.
Other representatives of the “ex-gay” activist community scheduled for the conference include Scott Davis and Mike Ensley of Exodus and Nancy Heche, whose book “The Truth Comes Out” describes “how to respond lovingly, yet appropriately, to homosexual family members and friends,” such as her husband, who held secret “homosexual affairs,” and her daughter, whose open relationship with Ellen DeGeneres Heche called “Like a betrayal of an unspoken vow: We will never have anything to do with homosexuals.”
Robert Knight
Robert Knight is something of a journeyman within the right-wing movement. After starting out as a journalist and editor for various newspapers, Knight has held a series of jobs with various right-wing organizations including Senior Director of Cultural Studies at the Family Research Council, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and director of the Culture & Family Institute at Concerned Women for America.
Currently, he is the head of the Media Research Center’s Culture and Media Institute at the Media Research Center and a columnist for Townhall.com.
His hostility toward gays is well-known, as evidenced by his response to the news that Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of the Vice President, was expecting a child with her partner:
"I think it's tragic that a child has been conceived with the express purpose of denying it a father," Knight said.
"Fatherhood is important and always will be, so if Mary and her partner indicate that that is a trivial matter, they're shortchanging this child from the start."
"Mary and Heather can believe what they want," Knight said, "but what they're seeking is to force others to bless their nonmarital relationship as marriage" and to "create a culture that is based on sexual anarchy instead of marriage and family values."
John Stemberger
Stemberger, a personal injury attorney and former political director for the Florida GOP, is the president and general counsel of the Florida Family Policy Counsel/Florida Family Action, a state affiliate of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.
Stemberger is leading the petition drive to put on next year’s ballot a constitutional amendment to ban equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, which is already banned by statute. While a 2006 effort fell short, as of September 5, Florida4Marriage.org claimed to have gathered 594,000 of the 611,000 signatures they need to submit by February 1, making it likely that the amendment will be on the ballot in 2008.
Ken Blackwell
Blackwell is most famous as the controversial Ohio secretary of state during the 2004 election, overseeing voting laws while moonlighting as state co-chair for Bush/Cheney. But he has a long history of far-right activism on economic and civil rights issues, and in 2004 Blackwell forged an alliance with the Religious Right as he campaigned for an anti-gay ballot measure. By 2006, when Blackwell ran for governor, this alliance had grown into a church-based political machine, with megachurch pastors Rod Parsley and Russell Johnson taking Blackwell to rallies of “Patriot Pastors,” who signed on to a vision of a Christianity under attack by dark forces, in need of “restoration” through electoral politics. “This is a battle between the forces of righteousness and the hordes of hell,” declared Johnson.
Blackwell’s gubernatorial bid failed, but he continues his career as a right-wing activist with affiliations with the Family Research Council and the Club for Growth, as well as a column on Townhall.com.
Katherine Harris
Harris is well known for her controversial role in Florida’s 2000 presidential election debacle, when she served as both secretary of state, overseeing a “purge” of voter rolls as well as the recount itself, and as a state co-chair for Bush/Cheney. She was elected to the U.S. House in 2002 and 2004, and spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in both 2002 and 2003.
In 2006 Harris made a quixotic Senate run, during which she heavily courted the Religious Right. In an interview with the Florida Baptist Witness, she implied that her opponent, Sen. Bill Nelson, was not a Christian, saying, “[I]f you’re not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin. They can legislate sin. They can say that abortion is alright. They can vote to sustain gay marriage. And that will take western civilization, indeed other nations because people look to our country as one nation as under God and whenever we legislate sin and we say abortion is permissible and we say gay unions are permissible, then average citizens who are not Christians, because they don’t know better, we are leading them astray and it’s wrong.” She also advised people to disbelieve “that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state.”
Tom Minnery
Minnery is vice president for public policy at Focus on the Family and a frequent spokesman for the group. He is the author of “Why You Can’t Stay Silent: A Biblical Mandate to Shape Our Culture,” arguing that society should be “changed from the top down morally.” Focus on the Family, with a combined budget of over $160 million, promotes far-right positions on social issues to millions of Americans through radio, print, and the web, and Focus founder James Dobson is probably the single most influential figure on the Religious Right.
“There are more than enough Christians to defeat the Left," Minnery said at a rally in South Dakota. "There are a lot of pastors who didn't want to be seen as an 'activist,' but this issue of marriage has left them with little choice but to get involved."
Posted by Ezra at 3:05 PM | Permalink
July 25, 2007
Poll Shows Nefarious Gay Plot Succeeding
As recently interpreted by Focus on the Family and the Culture and Media Institute, polls judging attitudes toward equal workplace rights demonstrate that the American people are a bunch of suckers:
According to Gallup, 90 percent of Americans believe gay people should have equal workplace rights, but only 47 percent think being gay is “morally acceptable.” To bridge the gap, the gay strategy is to spotlight themselves as credible and professional, and provide business leadership with gay-friendly misinformation.
“The bottom line is they are using the power of money and position to promote an agenda that these people acknowledge that half of Americans still feel is immoral,” Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Media Institute in Alexandria, Va., told Family News in Focus.
Apparently, this “gap” couldn’t have stemmed from the American public’s ability to develop nuanced views with regard to ideas of equality and their own personal moral convictions... No, the gap must have come from a successful disinformation campaign that somehow managed to fool the public into believing that gay people can be capable workplace employees.
Posted by Michael at 12:16 PM | Permalink
May 16, 2007
Religious Right's Trip to Poland: From Nazism to Communism to the 'Forces from San Francisco'
At a convening of U.S. religious-right activists and reactionary leaders from around the world, Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey passed along an important message. “I bring you greetings from President Bush!” she told the World Congress of Families in Poland, helping to legitimize the controversial conference. Sauerbrey also specifically thanked the Illinois-based Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society “for all of their hard work in organizing this wonderful opportunity to celebrate and reflect upon the family and its vital role in society.”
WCF was organized around the theme of the “natural family”; in practice, that meant, as the Howard Center’s Allan Carlson put it, the “religious right … gone global.” Carlson’s group warned of a “demographic winter” in Europe with declining birthrates in many countries. Naturally, women bore much of the blame for this. Paige Patterson, president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, noted that 60 percent of college students are female and warned that the advance of feminism and “the marginalization of men” are leading to a dire threat to the home. Soon, Patterson warned, men will be underrepresented in “the intelligentsia.” David Mills of Touchstone Magazine decried that even conservatives “will often ‘stiffen and scowl’ when they’re told the calling of each girl is to become a wife and mother,” as the American Family Association’s news service reported. And Patrick Fagan of the Heritage Foundation declared: "Feminists of Europe take note, the safest place for children is in the natural family.”
Speakers at the conference also took aim at gays and lesbians. “Marriage will be destroyed by making all relationships equal,” warned Ben Bull of the Alliance Defense Fund. Lynn Wardle, a law professor at Brigham Young University, said, "Legalizing same-sex marriage will drain marriage of its social meaning.”
The centerpiece of the conference, however, was the anti-gay activism of the Polish Education Minister, Roman Giertych. Giertych, a leader of the right-wing League of Polish Families party, drew fire from the European Union for his recent proposal to fire teachers found to be promoting “homosexual culture.” Giertych – along with the president of Poland – spoke at the conference, declaring his efforts to combat the vaguely-defined “propagation of homosexuality” in Poland as “something I have to do.”
The host country’s embrace of anti-gay policies and defiance of the EU was roundly cheered by the activists at WCF, and the Polish officials there “made it clear that Poland will be assuming the leadership role to end the demographic winter in Europe,” according to LifeSiteNews.com. According to other speakers, they have their work cut out for them – Catherine Vierling of the European Forum for Human Rights and Family warned that some EU members “actively promote and implement very aggressive anti-life, anti-faith, anti-family agenda behind closed doors.” Robert Knight of the Media Research Center declared that Poland was “nearly alone” in Europe and “inspiring people around the world with their stance.” Said Knight, who compared Poland to far-right former Sen. Jesse Helms,
This is a nation that has suffered enormously over many decades. First from Nazism and then communism. They're a tough bunch of people who appear to have the strength to resist especially the homosexual agenda. If you've been victim of communists and Nazis, you're not going to run in fright from the forces from San Francisco.
Scott Loveless, managing director of the World Family Policy Center at Brigham Young University, outlined a world in which two competing moralities stand “militantly” against each other. Assistant Secretary of State Sauerbrey’s presence, with greetings from President Bush, and her congratulations to Poland for its “pro-family” policies, gave this far-right assembly a much-desired stamp of approval – and made clear who the Bush Administration is standing with.
Posted by Ezra at 5:58 PM | Permalink
January 17, 2007
2008: Large Cohort Attacks Romney on Gay Marriage
Including Weyrich, Knight, others. More from LaBarbera.
Posted by Ezra at 5:55 PM | Permalink
December 19, 2006
'Ex-Gay' Group Attacks NEA over Anti-Bullying Policy
And citation of GLSEN, sponsor of gay-straight alliance clubs.
Posted by Ezra at 6:37 PM | Permalink
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