Brian Tashman's blog

Earlier this year, we reported that Colorado pastor Dave Buehner of Generations Radio said that homosexuality will “destroy society… destroy everything,” a statement he made after likening gays to cannibals and child molesters. Today, Joe Jervis alerted us to an interview Buehner gave to Colorado Springs NBC affiliate KOAA, which reported that Buehner’s comments are “causing a national stir.”

Buehner repeated his claims about homosexuality and claimed that homosexuals should be treated like rapists and murderers. He also urged Colorado legislators to “remove homosexuals from society, saying they’ll also pay the price at the golden gates if they don't fall in line.”

Buehner maintained: “God’s law to the civil magistrate in terms of homosexuality says you should remove the abomination from the land, so that's God’s instruction to the people who work up in the capitol who make our laws. That’s what they’re going to be held accountable for.”

Buehner and his co-host Pastor Kevin Swanson support the Ugandan “kill the gays” bill and laws from the pilgrim era that criminalized homosexuality.

While preparing up for the 2016 presidential election, Rand Paul visited Israel in a trip that “was arranged by the American Family Association and included 53 prominent evangelicals and conservative activists.”

This wouldn’t be the first time the far-right AFA worked closely with a potential Republican presidential candidate, as the group also put together Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s “The Response” prayer rally that he used as a springboard into the presidential race.

Guests included top Religious Right organizer David Lane, anti-gay activist Tamara Scott of Concerned Women for America and birther leader Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily. Farah praised Paul in his column today and saluted his opposition to foreign aid and marriage equality.

Farah’s participation is not surprising as the American Family Association also peddles similar conspiracies.

Farah and AFA spokesman Bryan Fischer have blamed the Sandy Hook shooting on the lack of school prayer, endorsed birther conspiracies, likened gays to terrorists and the Taliban, seek to restrict Muslim immigration and predicted that the Obama administration will use special security forces to persecute political opponents.

Of course, Rand Paul certainly won’t be the only potential GOP presidential candidate to court extremists like Farah and the AFA as more Republicans gear up to run.

For the past two days, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson has been promoting his new dystopian novel, “Fatherless,” about a conspiracy to depopulate the earth. Dobson’s guest on Family Talk was co-author and former Focus vice president Kurt Bruner, who joined him in warning that the U.S. is entering a demographic crisis. Yesterday, Dobson lamented that “recently this nation has lurched to the left” and that “everything I have fought for is on the line and is in danger now.”

Dobson’s sentiments reflect his monthly newsletter where he said that in the last election “nearly everything I have stood for these past 35 years went down to defeat.”

Dobson: You evaluate the trip of a train down the track not about where it is now but where it’s going and I saw a bridge out down there and I committed myself to try to do what I could to preserve the family. I’ve been working on it for over forty years now and just recently this nation has lurched to the left. I’m not speaking politically now, I’m talking about the change of values that is being expressed by a majority of Americans. It puts a lump in my throat because everything I have fought for is on the line and is in danger now. That’s why Kurt, when you came out and said let’s write on this subject, I said, let’s do it.

Yesterday, the Florida Family Association hired a plane to fly above a Lady Gaga concert in Tacoma, WA with a banner reading “NOT BORN THIS WAY.” “How would you feel if your child or grandchild went to a concert where unbeknownst to you they were convinced to embrace a homosexual or transgender lifestyle for a lifetime?” the FFA told members when asking for contributions to run additional advertisements. “The fact that someone these kids do not know spent significant resources to fly a plan to tell them they are NOT born that way will prayerfully speak to their souls,” read the appeal for donations.

The virulently anti-gay group went on to say that “homosexual males target adolescent males” through a combination of child abuse and “unscientific, emotionally charged propaganda.”

Florida Family Association hires aircraft to fly “NOT Born this way” banner over Lady Gaga’s Born Brave Bus for several hours before January 14, 2013 concert at Tacoma Dome.

How would you feel if your child or grandchild went to a concert where unbeknownst to you they were convinced to embrace a homosexual or transgender lifestyle for a lifetime? You can help counter Lady Gaga’s concert campaign to persuade kids to accept the homosexual lifestyle.

You can help counter Lady Gaga’s concert campaign to persuade kids to accept the homosexual lifestyle.

Florida Family Association hires aircraft to fly “NOT Born this way” banner over Lady Gaga’s Born Brave Bus for several hours before January 14, 2013 concert at Tacoma Dome.

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Florida Family Association has hired a plane to pull a banner around the Tacoma Dome parking lot from 1 PM until sunset. The banner will simply state: NOT Born this way.

The fact that someone these kids do not know spent significant resources to fly a plan to tell them they are NOT born that way will prayerfully speak to their souls. Florida Family Association would like to fly more banners to counter Gaga’s hedonistic, Godless message at more concerts. You can click here to see the schedule Ladygaga.com. It will cost $1,900 to fly this banner for four hours before sunset. The goal is not to fly banners at every concert but at enough concerts to make a difference.

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All of these studies indicate that homosexual males target adolescent males at a rate that is disproportional to the population by 2200% (1.5% of the population which is homosexual accounts for 33% of homosexual abuse cases.)

Thousands of kids who might have otherwise worked through their pubescent sexual identity issues will be inspired to accept the wrong choice based upon this unscientific, emotionally charged propaganda. What’s brave or kind about telling thousands of sexually frustrated teens that they were Born This Way when a high percentage of them would have ended up taking the straight heterosexual path for life?

For decades, the gay community and its allies have been doing incredible work combating HIV/AIDS and providing care for people with the virus, but according to anti-gay activists Janet Mefferd and Peter LaBarbera, gay rights supporters have tried to whitewash the epidemic and show little compassion to HIV-positive people.

While discussing LaBarbera’s “20 Resolutions for Pro-Family Advocates Battling the Homosexual-Transgender Agenda in 2013” on her radio show, Mefferd said that the Religious Right had an opening to exploit the issue of HIV/AIDS “because we’ll say, we care about people who are having terrible diseases because of the behavior and where is the compassion on your side for these people who have these illnesses?”

Of course, Mefferd and LaBarbera have both defended efforts to criminalize LGBT status, which only exacerbates the spread of HIV.

LaBarbera: Boy, about fifty years ago the whole issue of homosexual behavior was taboo. Now, they are basically running society, they are deciding which issues get covered on the news, which people get to speak at inaugurals, I mean wow, this country is really de-Christianizing fast.

Mefferd: That’s right. One of the things you’ve mentioned and this is one of your resolutions as well, but you mention the fact that we don’t talk very much at all anymore about the health consequences of the behavior. It used to be in the ’80s when then AIDS crisis was at its peek peak at the time, when Elizabeth Taylor and everybody came out and they had the red ribbons at every awards show and everything, everybody wanted to raise money and solve the AIDS crisis; people aren’t talking about AIDS anymore and yet it is still an issue, isn’t it? We still have venereal diseases and all kinds of bad health consequences to this, how are they successful and able to get this whole subject to be something we don’t talk about anymore?

LaBarbera: Well, it’s just the media, they have the media in their pocket and so the media is like a massive affirmative action program for the gay agenda, the media does not want to talk about the obvious connection between homosexual behavior and sexual diseases, especially for men. I put in my point four on my list, you know getting back to the behavior, try Googling ‘MSM, ‘CDC’ and ‘HIV,’ and you get this laundry list of articles about the strong, disproportionate connection between men who have sex with men and sexual diseases like HIV.

Mefferd: And on that point we could really make a lot of progress because we’ll say, we care about people who are having terrible diseases because of the behavior and where is the compassion on your side for these people who have these illnesses? This is awful.

LaBarbera: Absolutely.

This post has been updated, 1/16.

Tea Party Nation president Judson Phillips emailed members an article yesterday entitled, “What The F#@$ Is Up With Colin Powell?” by tea party activist John Wiseman that asks Powell’s family to “get his Alzheimer’s treated already.” He said Powell is “hypocritical” for criticizing intolerance in the Republican Party since he worked for several Republican administrations before he “began drinking the liberal kool aid.”

Before I go too much further in my rant of disgust with Powell's recent behavior, allow me to say that I admire his long, distinguished, and honorable service to our nation. I thank him for all that he has done. That being said, there is a difference between his past and current actions. What ever benefits of doubt he earned with his service, he has used up, and then some. Just to put the point to the word hypocritical that has been so thoroughly earned by Powell, let's do some score keeping, shall we? Powell served as a White House Fellow in both the Nixon and Ford Administrations. He served as a National Security Adviser to Republican Ronald Reagan. George H.W. Bush appointed Colin to be his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. George W. Bush made him his Secretary of State. To date, he has been appointed to nothing by any of the more tolerant Democrats who occupied the Oval Office. Colin Powell's support of Barack Obama is his Constitutional Right. I applaud him for using his gravitas to support any candidate he chooses, he has earned that privilege to both hold that gravitas, and to use it in any way he sees fit. What I have a problem with is his usage of his gravitas to demagogue me, and any who agree with me because we would dare to disagree with him politically. Just for Colin, and any who might be swayed by his recent rap, here is the definition of demagogue.

dem•a•gogue /ˈdeməˌgäg/ Noun A political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument. (in ancient Greece and Rome) A leader or orator who espoused the cause of the common people.

Special note for Powell's family:

Please, for the love of God, get his Alzheimer's treated already.

It is possible to support your chosen candidate and to keep the arguments focused on factual debate. It should be possible to be opposed to any one and not automatically labeled as racist or be bullied for holding an opposing view point. The discourse coming from the political left for years has been nothing more than ad hominems, straw men, non sequiturs, and the lowest form of divisive class warfare. Part of my reason for being so angry with General Powell is not just the fact that he switched sides and began drinking the liberal kool aid, such is his right as an American. It is that I had come to expect so much more from him in terms of honest discourse. Watching a person for whom I had so much admiration descend to this level of slime is painful to me on a very personal level. I gave him my personal trust and admiration, and he has so thoroughly destroyed that trust, that I am no longer interested in welcoming him back into any tent that I will ever occupy. He may be a perfect fit for the new Republican Party, once they've successfully purged themselves of any who hold the slightest resemblance of being principled.

In an interview with the American Family Association’s Sandy Rios today, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said that a government default – which would crash the U.S. economy – may actually be a “wonderful experiment.” Coburn encouraged Republican resistance to raising the debt ceiling, the routine mechanism that allows the government to borrow to meet its existing financial obligations. 

Coburn justified his opposition to raising the debt ceiling by using the false equivalence of the federal budget with a household budget. He also falsely claimed that programs like Social Security and Medicare would not be impacted by a default and even used inflated statistics to attack public workers, suggesting that they are to blame for the national debt.

He concluded by arguing that “our freedoms are going to be put at risk” under President Obama and expressing doubt that the nation could “survive” Obama’s leadership.

We can also now add Coburn to the list of GOP leaders who apparently have no qualms appearing on shows hosted by the extremists at AFA. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised: he seems to fit right in to the group’s fact-free alternate universe.

Coburn: Let me address again, which I didn’t, this idea we’re not going to pay our bills. We’re going to collect $200 billion a month if in fact the government were to not extend the debt limit. Social Security would be paid, Medicare would be paid, the essentials would be paid; it’s the non-essentials that wouldn’t be paid, it’s the $250-300 billion a year in stupid things we do that we wouldn’t pay, it’s the programs that aren’t an absolute necessity that wouldn’t get funded, the things that would be a necessity would get funded. It might be a wonderful experiment, regardless who wins the next election or not, just to see if we could live on the money that’s coming into the Treasury and not have to borrow against the future of our children.

Rios: But Dr. Coburn, who decides that. [Obama] made that threat yesterday when he said you know, Social Security recipients would have delayed checks and military and on and on the most horrible list of all these horrible cuts that would happen. Doesn’t he decide that? Doesn’t he ultimately decide?

Coburn: He can decide it but the point is, look, we’re coming to a point in our country where the cost of our profligate spending in the past is going to be so great and so manipulated that our freedoms are going to be put at risk. I’m not sure we shouldn’t challenge that. I’m not sure the debt limit is the place to challenge that. I’m not sure that we should continue to run a government that is highly inefficient and highly ineffective where the average federal employee works 3.8 weeks less than the rest of us and makes on average twice what the rest of us make. I’m not sure we should continue down that road. That doesn’t mean federal employees aren’t good employees and it doesn’t mean they don’t do a good job but we have set it up where we’ve undermined self-reliance, we’ve undermined efficiency, we’ve undermined expectations in this country as far as those who work for the federal government and then we’ve overpromised.

So when the federal government’s discretionary spending is about forty percent bigger than it was eleven years ago and the average family is tightening things and living within their means and living within their budget, its’ time for that comparison to be seen. Maybe we lose that battle but if we lose that battle we’re going to lose our country anyway and that’s what people ought to be thinking about. you cannot continue to borrow the way this President wants to borrow and our country survive.

Frank Gaffney is demonstrating once again why even an increasing number of Republicans aren’t taking him seriously anymore, as he is attacking President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA for speaking Arabic. In his Washington Times column today, Gaffney said that counterterrorism adviser John Brennan’s knowledge of Arabic and past role as CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia are actually negatives and reveal his terrorist sympathies. Gaffney also took issue with Brennan’s resistance to using the term “jihad” and argued that Brennan is “the single most important enabler of the Islamic supremacists’ agenda in government today” as he “has helped legitimate, empower, fund, arm and embolden them abroad, and embraced and appeased them here at home.”

Mr. Brennan is a textbook example of a U.S. official who has “gone native.” He speaks Arabic and was formerly the top CIA officer in Saudi Arabia. He has shown himself to be deeply sympathetic to Islamists — for example, excusing and dissembling about their commitment to jihad and the necessity of not offending them.

After President Obama himself, Mr. Brennan is, arguably, the single most important enabler of the Islamic supremacists’ agenda in government today. In his role as homeland security adviser to the president — a position that does not require Senate confirmation and that he was given as a consolation prize when it became clear that he might not be confirmable as CIA director back in 2009 — Mr. Brennan has helped legitimate, empower, fund, arm and embolden them abroad, and embraced and appeased them here at home.

Of particular concern is the fact that Mr. Brennan has presided over the policy of engaging the Muslim Brotherhood, which has consequently been portrayed by a politicized intelligence community as “largely secular” and “eschewing violence”; the shredding of training briefings and the proscribing of trainers that might upset Muslims by telling the truth about Shariah and the jihad it commands; the penetration of U.S. agencies by Muslim Brotherhood-associated individuals as employees or senior advisers; and misrepresentations to Congress about the true, jihadist character of the attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi this past Sept. 11.

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Ordinarily, a president should be given wide latitude by the Senate to appoint those he wants to staff his administration. This is no ordinary time, though, and this is no ordinary president or administration. The circumstances are such that a Team Obama that is pursuing so dangerous a policy course must be challenged and impeded, not encouraged and abetted.

The Senate’s constitutional responsibility to confirm senior executive branch appointees is one of the few it hasn’t compromised or allowed the president to expropriate. It must exercise its authority to assure “quality control” with respect to his picks for top national security Cabinet posts.

Indeed, the fact that Mr. Obama seeks not one or two but three individuals who share his determination to achieve the radical and dangerous national security transformation he seeks in his second term demands that senators defy him. After all, should the Senate fail to object to this trajectory by rigorously debating and defeating any — and preferably all — of these problematic choices, its members risk not only allowing but becoming party to the realization of a world without America.

The Violence Against Women Act expired this year after House Republicans blocked a reauthorization that boosted protections for Native Americans, immigrants and the LGBT community. This development has overjoyed Religious Right activists, who have long opposed the anti-violence law.

Sandy Rios of the American Family Association, speaking today with Ed Bartlett of Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, criticized the indisputably effective law and attacked Vice President Joe Biden, warning that “if we knew Joe Biden’s private behavior with women it might not be a pretty picture.” Rios stated that Biden’s “crassness, crudeness and disrespect for women” raises doubts about his work on VAWA while Bartlett used Biden’s own admission that abuse occurred in his household when he was younger as a reason to block the law.

Rios was also upset that VAWA may soon include protections for the LGBT community. Bartlett contended that these new protections prove VAWA is too easy on women since “studies have shown that lesbian-perpetrated domestic violence is higher than violence among heterosexual couples.”

However, according to the Center for American Progress, “Studies have found that domestic violence occurs among same-sex couples at comparable rates to straight couples.” While Bartlett admits that domestic violence is a concern among same-sex couples, he and Rios seem to believe that is a reason to oppose the inclusion of LGBT protections in VAWA.

Rios: Then we have this whole business of reaching out to the LGBT community and now that’s confusing because that’s women against women in many cases. That would have to be women against women.

Bartlett: Exactly, you’re right. In fact, studies have shown that lesbian-perpetrated domestic violence is higher than violence among heterosexual couples. So that again shows that this is a problem not limited to male perpetrators and female victims.

Rios: You know the person that has been pushing for all these years is Vice President Joe Biden, I find that very curious, what can you say about that?

Bartlett: I’ll tell you something that most people don’t know about Vice President Biden. He himself as a child was subjected to very serious physical abuse by his female sister, his sibling. Most people don’t know that but he has actually stated that in hearings held in the Senate. There’s a high irony here, a fellow who as a child was subjected to female violence is now denying the very existence of that.

Rios: I also think it’s ironic. I have a personal opinion because of Joe Biden’s repeated behavior. I know he’s become the brunt of jokes because he’s always saying something silly. But one theme in his jokes is crassness, crudeness and disrespect for women. He’s supposed to be some champion for women and yet he comes out and says these outrageous things which are insulting. I think if we knew Joe Biden’s private behavior with women it might not be a pretty picture.

Rios even argued that the law has had “an extremely detrimental, unfair, tilted, bad effect on men.” Bartlett dismissed reports that women face disproportionate rates of domestic violence and said that VAWA was actually passed by those seeking “to undermine family stability.”

Rios: The problem with this particular law, as I understand it, is it has had an extremely detrimental, unfair, tilted, bad effect on men. Give us an example of how that has happened.

Bartlett: Sandy, you’re right and it’s happened in many ways. Part of what many people believe is the agenda is to undermine family stability by stereotyping men as being abusive. So over and over when you go to the websites of these various domestic violence organizations, they quote arrest statistics but they don’t quote the actual statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, which are the best statistics of all, which show that this is an equal opportunity problem. So we have men being stereotyped as being abusive, obviously that’s not good for strong, respectful gender-relationships in our country.

To be clear, the CDC and the Department of Justice [PDF] both find that women are much more likely than men to experience intimate partner violence. The DOJ found that “intimate partners were responsible for 3% of all violence against males and 23% of all violence against females in 2008,” and the CDC reports that “about 1 in 4 women (24.3%) and 1 in 7 men (13.8%) have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner” in their lifetime.

Evangelist Lance Wallnau announced on the Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Praise the Lord that God is giving Christians "technology that can heal diabetes" within months, along with technology “that is going to revolutionize our dependence on oil and energy.” However, Wallnau shared that these new discoveries will only be “given to Kingdom-minded believers” and not sold to benefit the general public.

Later in the interview, Wallnau likened the development to the Apostle Paul, who in Acts of the Apostles obtained refuge from the leader of Malta after healing his ailing father. Wallnau claimed that he is urging that the purported diabetes cure be shared with “top layers of the political elite” of the Chinese Communist Party in order to gain access to their government and help to spread the Gospel.

Watch: