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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
From People for the American Way's Right-Wing Watch:
In April, the Freedom Federation will host its second annual “Awakening” conference entitled “Raising Our Voices: Equipping and Empowering a New Revolution” which organizer hope will feature a mix of right-wing activists like Lou Engle, Tony Perkins, Mat Staver, Frank Gaffney, Wendy Wright, David Barton, and Gary Bauer with Republican leaders like Cuccinelli, Michele Bachmann, Marco Rubio, Alan West, Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Huckabee
The following are the list of speakers, some of which are a cornucopia of anti-gay voices:
I see that Mike Huckabee, Sen. Marc Rubio, and Reps. Mike Pence, Allen West and Michelle Bachmann are going to be at the conference and thus will be hobnobbing with members of the Family Research Council (Tony Perkins), the Traditional Values Coalition (Andrea Lafferty), and Concerned Women for America (Wendy Wright). FRC and TVC were declared anti-gay hate groups according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, while CWA was profiled for its anti-gay animus.
The designations was given to these three organizations not because of their “religious beliefs” regarding homosexuality and gay marriage but because of their insistence in spreading false and ugly propaganda about the gay community (i.e. homosexuality and pedophilia are connected.)
One has to wonder what the panel discussions at the conference will be this year. Last year, Lafferty and the Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber led a panel discussion on the so-called dangers of homosexuality. It was during this discussion that Lafferty made the absurd claim that pro-gay nondiscrimination laws will lead to the molestation of crippled war veterans.
No doubt, Huckabee and company will probably still attend this conference even after told about these organizations and no doubt they will give a false explanation of why they will mingle with anti-gay groups if asked – something along the line of “it's unfair that these groups are being called hateful simply because their religious beliefs.”
But the fact that these folks will attend a conference with anti-gay hate groups is good to know, especially in light of the knowledge that Huckabee, Pence, and Bachmann are possible Presidential candidates. All the more reason that they become three people who have no place residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
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and all the more reason to HIGHLIGHT their anti-gay hate group links BY THE DEMOCRATS during the campaign. If Obama’s team doesn’t, then they deserve whatever the outcome.
The Fascist RevolutionThey have so many of the same targets as the fascist parties of the 1930′s
Not long ago, some of the churches supporting these groups were preaching that segregation of the races was biblical.
Maura,I suspect you are a treasure.
Just experienced, not a treasureBecause of what I do for a living, I know a lot about the goals of fascism and the interrationship between such movements, churches and political parties.
Did you know, for example, that the superstar republican of the 1930′s, a Col Charles Lindbergh, was pro-Hitler, a friend of Goering, and denounced the Jews as the most dangerous influence in the Franklin Rooselvelt administration?
As for other things, to prosecute some people I’ve dug through for sekeetons in closets when not looking for them in mass graves. Also, I am pretty good at following the money.
The Christian Coalition was based out of segregationalist churches, including the late Reverend Falwell’s church.
Too true!Not only Jim Crow, Maura, but the original judge in the Loving v Virginia case quoted scripture in his ruling that miscengenation was righteous.
Others claimed that society would crumble and the population would crash, claiming that the offspring of interracial couples would be sterile — just like the mule (the offspring between a donkey and a horse).
It always amazes me the rank and utter ignorance of the parallels between racism and heterosexism, especially among conservative blacks.
One of my favorite quotes is by Mel Boozer, when he said at the 1980 Democratic National Convention: “Would you ask me how I dare to compare the civil rights struggle with the struggle for lesbian and gay rights? I can compare them and I do compare them, because I know what it means to be called a ‘nigger’ and I know what it means to be called a ‘faggot,’ and I understand the differences in the marrow of my bones. And I can sum up that difference in one word: none.”
Case in point: the Southern Baptist ConventionThe Triennial Convention, founded in 1814 to associate independent Baptist congregations around the US, was officially neutral with regards to slavery and many Baptist ministers preached abolition. In a few years, however, Baptists in the South had started agitating in favor of slavery and preaching that it was not only permitted by the Bible but mandated. In 1845, the Southern Baptist Convention split from the Triennial Convention over the issue of slavery.
It was not until 1995, the 150th anniversary of the founding of the SBC, that the denomination adopted a resolution (non-binding, of course) renouncing racism.
And guess which mainstream Christian denomination has been at the forefront of the anti-gay movement?
Another case in point: The Democratic (sic) National CommitteeLeah Daughtry, Chief of Staff of the DNC, organized “F.I.A. (Faith In Action) group that has met weekly at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington: three evangelicals, a Catholic, a Muslim and a Jew, all with backgrounds blending work in religion and politics. …
F.I.A. “financed the faith outreach of state parties…” using DNC funds. Did you donate? “In Alabama, the pro-life party chairman was given F.I.A. money to publish a “Faith and Values Voters Guide” in local newspapers just before Election Day in 2006. The 12-page insert provided the religious narratives of statewide Democratic candidates… and concluded with a Democratic ‘covenant for the future.’ The covenant pledged to ‘require public schools to offer Bible literacy as part of their curriculum’… to ‘pass a constitutional amendment confirming that all life is a gift from God and should be protected; and that life begins at conception’ and to ‘defeat any efforts to redefine marriage or provide the benefits of marriage to a same-sex union.‘
The DNC is, on paper, run by Presidential appointee Tim Kaine, who’s just as bad as Daughtry. He’s antiGLBT, opposes same sex marriage and adoption by LGBT folks, is anti-choice, opposed to stem cell research, a union buster and pro-war.
At the top of this heap of bigots sits Barack Obama, who deliberately torpedoed the fight to save same sex marriage in California in 2008 by mobilizing the christer bigot vote claiming that skygawd jebuz supported Prop 8 – ‘gawd’s in the mix’. Obama went on invite superbigot Rick Warren, who helped initiate the law to legalize the lynching of LGBT folks in Uganda, to his Inaugural. Obama consistently defended Bill Clinton’s DOMA and DADT in court, using vile bigoted language, including the recent court decision to knock down DADT.
The Republicans and their evangelical supporters are just as bad. Neither deserve our support. Republicans look us in the eye and stab us in the chest. Democrats look the other way and stab us in the back.
If I had to guess… I’d say that the teabaggers represent the political base of a future fascist mass movement and that street fascists – like the SA and SS thugs – will be drawn from the ranks of young evangelical hardliners (SS) and skinheads (SA).
Right now neither party is fascist by any stretch of the imagination. The Republicans are moving right at a steady clip and Obama and the DLC/Dixiecrats are tripping over themselves to catch up to them.
Obama has already signaled that he’ll play the same slimy right wing games that Clinton did before after the Republican Revolution in 1994. Before ’94 he campaigned for NAFTA and DADT and signed both. After he campaigned for and signed DOMA and laws deregulating financial predators which led to the current Depression, austerity for working people, wage cuts and mass unemployment, homelessness and poverty.
IRONYThe quote from Ben Franklin, who was one of the most liberal of the founding fathers as they get!
I am also not sure how they equate “freedom” with government mandated dogma.