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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
Former Arkansas governor and possible 2012 Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee came to the defense of the Family Research Council recently during an interview with the Walton Sun.
He was responding to the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center had named FRC and other religious right groups as anti-gay hate groups.
Huckabee was also astounded when the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled Family Research Council as a hate group, because they oppose same sex marriage.
“So does 60 percent of America,” Huckabee said. “Does that mean that that 60 percent of America is a hate group?”
Huckabee is seriously displaying his ignorance here. The Southern Poverty Law Center did not designate FRC as an anti-gay hate group because its opposition to gay marriage. According to SPLC:
Even as some well-known anti-gay groups like Focus on the Family moderate their views, a hard core of smaller groups, most of them religiously motivated, have continued to pump out demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities. These groups’ influence reaches far beyond what their size would suggest, because the “facts” they disseminate about homosexuality are often amplified by certain politicians, other groups and even news organizations. Of the 18 groups profiled below, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) will be listing 13 next year as hate groups (eight were previously listed), reflecting further research into their views; those are each marked with an asterisk. Generally, the SPLC’s listings of these groups is based on their propagation of known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling. Viewing homosexuality as unbiblical does not qualify organizations for listing as hate groups.
Huckabee is doing what he has done many times in the past when it comes to the lgbt community – attempting to shift the argument so that the lgbt community looks like the aggressors and folks like him look like the “innocent Christians persecuted for their faith.”
But Huckabee is peddling lies and before he defends FRC, he should explain the following photo:
The man with Huckabee in this picture is Brian Camenker of Mass Resistance, an anti-gay organization in Massachusetts which was also named as an anti-gay hate group by SPLC. And this picture was taken during a religious right conference last year.
Mass Resistance has a long history of demonizing the lgbt community and even stooping to coordinating phony moral panics, including:
Manufacturing a phony panic about “schools teaching children about homosexuality,”
Claiming in 2005 on Comedy Central's Daily Show that if given time, he would be able to connect gay marriage in Massachusetts to the “reduction” of the quality of life in the state, a spike in homelessness rates, or and a lowering the quality of the air in the state, or
Making a claim in 2006 that “gays were trying to get legislation passed to allow sex with animals” in Massachusetts.
Continuing a vindictive campaign of misinformation against the transgendered community (whom the organization refers to as “men in dresses) .
The organization was also key in manufacturing inaccurate claims about Obama appointee Kevin Jennings in an attempt to get him dismissed. The watchdog site Media Matters published a list of the lies Camenker and Mass Resistance spread about Jennings.
Camenker has even bragged that Huckabee is aware of his group:
When told Brian was from MassResistance, Gov. Huckabee said, “I know. I get your emails.”
Seems to me that Huckabee defends anti-gay hate groups like the Family Research Council not because they are innocent victims of a supposed “radical homosexual conspiracy,” but because his views probably align closely with theirs.
Hat tip to People for the American Way
14 Comments
Displaying his ignorance?No, he knows exactly what he’s saying and exactly why SPLC designated his good buddies at FRC as a hate group. He’s deflecting, and, as you point out, trying to make us the villains.
Remember, he defends these people for the same reason that he associates with them: they share his attitudes.
He’s confident he won’t be called on itThe people who care what he says will all be getting their news from within the right wing echo chamber. Unless Beck or Limbaugh or the Fox News machine call him on it, they’ll never even hear a dissenting voice about this.
The same-sex marriage issueand the anti-gay hate that the hate groups peddle are 2 entirely different things.
One thing ourt community may need to do is to ensure that the two issues remain as separate as possible.
I’m not sure about thatSame-sex marriage is the biggest fundraising tool the anti-gay right ever had. And if you look at the campaigns NOM waged in California and Maine (not to mention all the anti-marriage amendment campaigns in other states), they weren’t about marriage — they were about icky gays recruiting your children into a degenerate lifestyle.
We can try to keep them separate, but we’ll be hitting some pretty stiff headwinds on that, especially since the MSM will buy into whatever the Perkinses say and never challenge it. Remember, even before the hate group designation, he’d been called out as a liar on national television — and then they invited him back to lie some more.
Let’s not forgetMike Huckabee also co-wrote the book “Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence” about the school shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas, which blamed the shootings on, among other things, homosexuality, which the book equated with necrophilia.
He co-wrote the book with George Grant, who is a member of the Christian Reconstructionist movement, a movement that openly advocates the death penalty for homosexuality.
I think there’s a lot that Huckabee is hiding regarding what he really thinks about gay people.
Oh, for THEM it’s all about the icky gay and the children being recruited into the “gay lifestyle,” to be sure.
That’s our job to keep the two issues separate.
Yes! Huckabee was also astounded when the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled Family Research Council as a hate group, because they oppose same sex marriage.
”So does 60 percent of America,” Huckabee said. “Does that mean that that 60 percent of America is a hate group?”
In a word…. ‘Yes!’
that’s not why they were designated a hate groupthey were designated a hate group because they demonize gays and promote lies about gays. be careful, because you’re falling for huckabee’s line.
DADTI would like to know how they plan on dealing with LGBT service if we ever need a draft! My 18 year old “gay” son received his registration papers in the mail the other day, so what are they going to do, force gays and lesbians to serve a country that will not allow them to voluntarily serve?
Epic failWhoops that posted on the wrong story, sorry.
That’s exactly what they’ll do, though.If there’s a draft while DADT is still in place, your son will be called up, forced to serve, denied any opportunity for promotion, and then tossed to the side without benefits when they no longer need him. That’s not even a hidden policy — that’s almost the official stance.
Huck is jurt trying to get media attentionHe doesn’t make the list of probable and viable GOP presidential candidates for ’12 and really needs to get back into the spotlight; this is his way of attracting attention from his base of far right wing biblical literalists and Domionists. Perhaps a defence of Fred Phelps is next….
On what basis……do you make that claim?
During the Vietnam war, the last time the USA had an active draft, homosexuality was an automatic deferment.
SilberIgle is not……”falling for Huckabee’s line.” I am quite sure [he/she] is fully aware of Huckabee’s distortion.
But here, SilberIgle is simply answering Huckabee’s question.