PFOX

Religious Right Panelists: Gay Rights Activists are Christ-Hating Fascists

At Liberty Counsel’s recent Awakening conference, gays were portrayed as enemies of religious freedom who are bent on turning public schools into indoctrination centers using the issue of bullying as a “Trojan horse.”  Greg Quinlan, president of Parents and Friends of ExGays and Gays, who describes himself as ex-gay, complained that New Jersey’s new anti-bullying law is being used to bully Christian students, and hollered that the law is actually fascism.

You don’t need a law, inculcated and put into code, to talk about bullying. What this bully bill is is behavior modification. That’s the job of the parents and the teachers and we don’t need that put into law. This is fascism! This is fascism! We need to put a swastika on it!

Quinlan complained that public officials, including Gov. Chris Christie, would not listen to Religious Right objections to the bill because gay rights advocates had exploited the suicide of a bullied boy:

Because one boy -- and the homosexual agenda is extremely good at this, when there’s a disaster -- one boy jumps off the George Washington Bridge, kills himself in the Hudson River. And they seized that moment and they took it and used it to their advantage. And what did we do? We said “Oh, that’s terrible that that happened,” but we don’t have any statements to make when these issues do happen. This is where we have to have better messaging.

Matt Barber, one of the most ferociously anti-gay voices in public life, used a question about the treatment of an anti-gay protestor to charge that gays are motivated by hatred for Jesus Christ and that the “homosexual lifestyle” is a sin-condemned “culture of death.”

The question was, an elderly woman was at a homosexual rally and she was carrying this big styrofoam cross and she was knocked around, it was caught on film, no charges were filed, they took her cross, and stomped it, and crushed into tiny bits. That is a microcosm of what we’re up here – and I thought, something that immediately occurred to me was, wasn’t that a metaphor for what we’re up against. It’s about the cross. It’s about the cross and a hatred of Christ, who is what? The way, the truth, and the life.  They hate the way, which is Christ, they hate the truth, which they are in conflict with, and they hate life. This is a culture of death we are talking about here, and the wages of sin is what? Is death. The homosexual lifestyle astronomically, from a statistical standpoint, leads to death. The wages of sin is death.

Other speakers on the panel were Rena Lindevaldsen, a Liberty University law professor and associate dean, and Cynthia Dunbar, a Religious Right activist who served on the Texas state board of education and who is now also a law professor at Liberty. Dunbar bragged in her conference bio that her work has earned her a “position” on Right Wing Watch.

Peter Montgomery's blog

Rios: Opponents of Boy Scouts' Gay Ban Should Pay for Child Abuse Cases

The American Family Association’s Sandy Rios today continued to press the Boy Scouts of America against opening the organization to gay members on her radio show. She said that opponents of the ban like AT&T CEO Randall Stevenson, Ernst & Young CEO James Turley and Mitt Romney (!) who are affiliated with the BSA should be forced to pay for any future settlements of all the child abuse cases that Rios claims will be a consequence of having openly gay Boy Scouts.

I think I have a solution, I just thought of it this morning. I think these guys, let’s put Mitt Romney in there, and let’s put the guy with Ernst & Young whose name is James Turley, and let’s put Randall Stevenson the CEO of AT&T, and any of the other organizations or corporate sponsors who are pushing the Boy Scouts for this policy change. I think actually we might let this go through with the stipulation that whatever lawsuits are brought from now until the end of time against Boy Scout leaders who have sexually molested their Scouts, that they personally are responsible to pay them. Let’s go after Mitt Romney, let’s go after the guy at Ernst & Young, let’s go after Randall Stevenson at AT&T, let them write a check and just say, ‘I believe in this so much that I am willing personally to cover any costs on the outside, ridiculous chance that some Boy Scout should be molested by a gay Scout leader or seduced. If there is any harm then I’ll pay, I will pay.’ If they are willing to sign that statement, go for it. While we’re at it, we should have AT&T and all the other organizations like Ernst & Young that are pushing for this put their corporate—just think of all the money, the potential of lawsuits.

The AFA has even called for Stephenson to resign from the BSA board for “using his corporate influence to bully the BSA into gay assimilation,” and joined a whole host of Religious Right groups demanding that both Stephenson and Turley step down.

Along with the AFA, the coalition includes ex-gay groups like the Restored Hope Network and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) in addition to Mat Staver’s Liberty Counsel; Rick Scarborough’s Vision America; Scott Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries; Linda Harvey’s Mission America; Peter LaBarbera’s Americans For Truth About Homosexuality; Brian Camenker’s MassResistance... and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which apparently still exists.

Brian Tashman's blog

Will the Supreme Court Read the Most Horrific Children's Book of All Time?

Earlier this week, we looked at the slightly conflicted amicus briefs that the Family Research Council submitted to the Supreme Court ahead of its consideration of two major marriage equality cases. Today, Warren Throckmorton alerts us that the “ex-gay” group Parents and Friends of Gays and Ex-Gays (PFOX) has submitted its own brief to the Court.

The PFOX amicus brief [pdf], unsurprisingly, argues that gays and lesbians should not be a “protected class” under the law because homosexuality “is not an immutable characteristic.” As evidence, it presents the stories of four self-proclaimed “ex-gays” whose lives purportedly show that “sexual orientation can shift over time and does so for a significant number of people.”

One of the stories the brief presents is that of “Richard Cohen, M.A…an ex-gay who is now married with 3 children. He struggled for much of his life with unwanted same-sex attraction. Richard is the founder of the International Healing Foundation (IHF) and the author of Coming Out Straight, Gay Children Straight Parents, Let’s Talk About Sex, and Alfie’s Home.”

As it happens, Cohen is one of the most prominent purveyors of reparative therapy, the harmful process of trying to “cure” homosexuality that was recently banned for minors in California. And his book Alfie’s Home, cited in PFOX’s Supreme Court brief, is the most horrifically disturbing children’s book we have ever seen. We know, because we are unlucky enough to have a copy in our research library. Here is some of what the Justices have in store if they check out Cohen’s work:

Alfie’s Home was published in 1993 by Cohen’s International Healing Foundation. It starts out with a picture of the protagonist on a boat with his dad.

But it goes bad fast, going right for the right-wing myth that homosexuality is caused by childhood sexual abuse…

…and by insufficiently attentive parents:

Eventually, Alfie seeks help and takes part in the “touch therapy” advocated by Cohen…

…which leads him to “realize that I’m not gay” and start dating a woman:

You can see Cohen’s “touch therapy” in practice in this 2006 CNN interview:

He also made a cameo on the Daily Show.

For their own sakes, I hope the Justices don’t look too far into Cohen’s story. But if they do, they’ll get a revealing glimpse of the world that is trying to sink gay rights laws across the country.
 

Miranda Blue's blog

Right Wing Leftovers - 10/29/12

  • Richard Land, who always prided himself on his "24-year tradition of not exercising my right as a private citizen to endorse a candidate" has now broken that tradition to endorse Mitt Romney because "this election is that important."

  • Speaking of Romney, was his election as President predicted in the Bible.  WND says it was! 

  • Gary Bauer has the vapors: "The use of profanity conveys a lack of seriousness, and it trivializes the democratic process. Its repeated use contributes to the coarsening of our culture. More than anything, it shows disrespect and disregard for the voters whose support Obama needs to win reelection."

  • Bryan Fischer is obviously still angry about his recent profile in The New Yorker.

  • Finally, the ex-gay organization PFOX is accusing the Obama administration of "spreading intolerance against the ex-gay community and Christians who support the religious testimony of former homosexuals."
Kyle Mantyla's blog

Anti-Gay Leaders Call for Prayer Movement to stop 'Homosexual Tornado' coming to 'Destroy America'

At the Awakening 2012’s panel on the “LGBT Agenda,” Lou Engle, who was not a panelist but an audience member, called for Religious Right leaders to launch a “massive concerted prayer movement” to counter the demonic “principalities and powers” behind gay rights activism. Panelists including Rena Lindevaldsen and Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel, Greg Quinlan of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, and former Texas board of education member Cynthia Dunbar jumped over each other in expressing their hope that Engle or another conservative would lead such a movement to stop the “two tornadoes coming to destroy America,” which he said are “the homosexual and abortion tornadoes.”

Engle, who brought The Call prayer rally to Uganda to help rally support for the country’s proposed “kill the gays bill,” lamented that he gets “blasted” over his anti-gay work and is “haunted that God has not opened the door for me to go after this thing.” Lindevaldsen agreed that “we need a prayer movement because a spiritual battle is at the root of this.”

It seems that Engle’s first prayer initiative, StoneWall Now, a “nation wide prayer movement” to “stand in the gap crying to God to restrain the homosexual ideology” isn’t going so well as its website is offline.

Watch:

Engle: I think we need a massive, concerted prayer movement to deal with principalities and powers and pray that God would release laborers into the harvest field.

Barber: If there is anybody in the room who is adept that leading that ...

Dunbar: You’ve got that in your heart, with your spirit, and we’re with you.

Quinlan: We need that.

Barber: Did you volunteer yourself, Lou?

Engle: In 2006, we did 50 days and 50 nights of intercession of seven young people, we were given a dream of two tornadoes coming to destroy America and they were the homosexual and abortion tornadoes. In the dream I was given a sight to raise up intercession to confront those tornadoes.

Quinlan: Please.

Engle: And Bound4Life was raised up but I'm haunted that God has not opened the door for me to go after this thing, I’ve tried, I’ve gotten blasted.

Barber: It’s time.

Engle: I don’t know how to do it but I am crying out to God for an answer.

Lindevaldsen: Meet with us afterwards ... we need a prayer movement because a spiritual battle is at the root of this.
Brian Tashman's blog

Family Research Council Demands Elevation of 'Ex-Gay' Message in Schools

After a Maryland school district decided to reconsider its flyer policy after the “ex-gay” group PFOX distributed material promoting the discredited and dangerous reparative therapy, Family Research Council senior fellow and PFOX board member Peter Sprigg responded with a furious op-ed in the Washington Times and an appearance on Today’s Issues with FRC president Tony Perkins. During the interview, Perkins said that “the homosexual community” is trying to stop children from getting “the options or the help that’s available for them if they’re struggling with [sexuality] issues” by opposing the distribution of ex-gay material, and lamented that “government officials [are] increasingly becoming really patsies for the homosexual activists.” Sprigg said that unless the ex-gay “message gets out in the schools,” then more and more confused kids who “would end up being perfectly heterosexual” would be “told by their teachers and guidance counselors, ‘well you are probably gay.’”

Perkins: When you look across the board in different incidences where the homosexual community is involved, they simply want to shut down any discussion, they don’t want children to be aware of the options or the help that’s available for them if they’re struggling with these issues, and now you see government officials increasingly becoming really patsies for the homosexual activists.

Sprigg: Right. It’s especially important that this message gets out in the schools because it’s normal for young people, adolescents to experience some confusion about their sexual identity. An important statistic that I read once was that there’s a survey done of 12 year olds that found at age 12, 25 percent of the students were unsure of their sexual orientation. But we know from surveys of the adult population that only maybe 2 to 3 percent of the adult population will actually identify as homosexual or bisexual. So you have this population of young people that left to themselves, 9 out of 10 would end up being perfectly heterosexual, but now with the politically correct environment in the schools, those kids are being told by their teachers and guidance counselors, “well you are probably gay, you were born that way, you just have to accept it and embrace it.”
Brian Tashman's blog

PFOX Head Accuses Gays and Lesbians of 'Sexual Cannibalism'

Ex-gay activist Greg Quinlan of Parents and Friends of Gays and Ex-Gays (PFOX) and the New Jersey Family Policy Council, who recently testified against a marriage equality bill in the New Jersey State Assembly, yesterday told talk show host Steve Deace that gays and lesbians are practicing “sexual cannibalism.” After a long diatribe about how child abuse and fractured parental relationships are responsible for homosexuality, Quinlan argued that same-sex relationships represent “sexual, emotional cannibalization.” Later in the show, Quinlan attacked anti-bullying programs and blamed cases of suicide among LGBT youth on the gay community because “we’re making martyrs out of the kids that we’re recruiting to behave as homosexuals.”

Quinlan: I like the word that you used there, ‘cannibalized,’ because there is a scientific term that’s called that, ‘I want to have sex with that man so I can be like him, so I can become a part of him.’ It is a sexual, emotional cannibalization. ‘That person has something I want, they look better than I do, they’re more muscular than I am, they’re more virile than I am, they have something I want,’ and it’s a type of what we call an emotional or sexual cannibalism. I can’t describe it any better than that.
…

Deace: What’s wrong with anti-bullying? Greg, why wouldn’t we want to stop kids from getting picked on or is there something else happening here?

Quinlan: It’s an agenda. We’re making martyrs out of kids that we’re recruiting to behave as homosexuals when no one is born that way, and that’s the problem and that’s the issue.
Brian Tashman's blog

PFOX Distributing Misinformation to Maryland Students

A public high school in Montgomery County, Maryland, is being criticized for distributing literature of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, a group tells gay youth to “transition out of a homosexual identity” even though the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Association of Social Workers and the American Psychiatric Association all deny the effectiveness, safety and ethics of reparative therapy. While Religious Right groups have sued for the right to distribute literature in Montgomery County schools, like the PFOX flyer which propagates discredited and harmful misinformation about sexual orientation and gender identity, they have also sought to deny this right to groups they disagree with.

Their pamphlet Preventing Bullying at Your School says that kids become gay because people call them gay, and that later in their lives gay people bully those who “decide to pursue alternatives to homosexuality”:

Many people, especially during adolescence, are called “gay” or other names even though they do not have same-sex attractions. Appearance is not a reliable means to know what another person feels. No one should be labeled “gay,” “sissy” or “queer” based on the perception of others. They may begin to believe what others tell them about themselves, which may be completely false labeling and cause gender confusion for the victim.

Moreover, a number of teens who do have same-sex attractions choose not to be identified based on who they are attracted to. Others are working to overcome their unwanted same-sex attractions and should not be called “homophobic,” “pretender,” or “fake” – derogatory words often used to describe ex-gays. Such name-calling can lead to depression, fear and feeling unsafe.

Students who have transition out of a homosexual identity, or decide to pursue alternatives to homosexuality, deserve compassion and respect. Their decision should not subject them to discrimination, ridicule, fear or hate.

Another PFOX pamphlet, Feelings Change, encourages kids to seek reparative therapy:

Lots of our friends had same-sex attractions when they were young and later on descovered [sic] they weren’t gay. You yourself may have heard, “You must be gay!” But no one should be labeled “gay” based on the perception of others. Get Smart! Explore the origins of your same-sex attraction. Why do I have these feelings/ Where did they come from? Why should I pre-label my life?

…

A growing number of teens with same-sex attraction are looking beyond a gay identity to define who they are.

Although your same-sex attraction may feel like a gay identity, a gay identity may not fit into who you are. If you are not happy with same-sex attractions or a gay identity, there is help. Find out for yourself. Get the facts! Find out who you truly are! Be informed before you decide. Before adopting a gay identity, get smart! Get the facts!

The PFOX board [pdf] is also composed of some of the most stringently anti-gay voices in politics today, including Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel, who claims gay youth are more likely to commit suicide because they intuitively know homosexuality “is wrong and immoral;” Robert Knight of the American Civil Rights Union, who thinks there is a conspiracy among gay Hill staffers to control Congress; Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, who has called for gays to be deported from the U.S., and of course, Greg Quinlan, who was once married to a fellow “ex-gay” woman until she divorced him. As Amanda Hess of the Washington City Paper notes, very few people serving on the PFOX board are actually “ex-gays,” but that hasn’t stopped them from promoting dangerous “ex-gay” reparative therapy to children.

Brian Tashman's blog
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