Connect with us

Exposed: Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, Tea Party ‘Coming Together’ With Anti-Gay Groups

Published

on

David Brody, the chief political reporter for CBN News admitted in an MSNBC “Morning Joe” discussion this morning that the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, and the Tea Party are “coming together” with major anti-gay organizations and a hate group, the Family Research Council.

READ: New Poll Finds Tea Party Is Political Group That Hates Gays The Most

CBN News is the Christian Broadcasting Network, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson in 1961. Brody, author of the new book, The Teavangelicals: The Inside Story of How the Evangelicals and the Tea Party are Taking Back America, is also “a political contributor to Glenn Beck’s GBTV network,” according to CBN.

“We talk about the pro-life groups but the pro-life groups are also the Tea Party type groups, in other words, they’re all coming together,” Brody told the panel, explaining the close relationship between the Tea Party, Tea Party organizations, the Koch Brothers (who fund those groups,) anti-gay organizations, and anti-gay hate groups.

“Here’s my point: Concerned Women for America, a pro-life group, they’re working with Americans For Prosperity, Tim Phillips group, and so they’re doing a lot of bus tours together.”

Americans For Prosperity was founded by the Koch Brothers.

While Concerned Women for America is not technically a named anti-gay hate group, they are mentioned in this Southern Poverty Law Center article, “18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda” at least five times. They, their work, and their people have been embedded in several other anti-gay hate groups, like the Family Research Council, Traditional Values Coalition, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, and Chalcedon Foundation, the SPLC reports.

Here’s what the Southern Poverty Law Center article says about Concerned Women for America:

San Diego, Calif., activist Beverly LaHaye, whose husband Tim would go on to become famous as co-author of the Left Behind novels depicting the end times, started Concerned Women for America (CWA) in 1979 to create an anti-feminist group that matched the power of the National Organization for Women. Today, CWA claims more than 500,000 members organized into state chapters, a radio program that reaches more than 1 million listeners, and a cadre of attorneys and researchers devoted to the group’s mission of promoting biblical values.

LaHaye has blamed gay people for a “radical leftist crusade” in America and, over the years, has occasionally equated homosexuality with pedophilia. In 2001, she hired prominent anti-gay propagandists Robert Knight (now with Coral Ridge Ministries; see below) and Peter LaBarbera (now with Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, above) to launch CWA’s Culture and Family Institute. Matt Barber was CWA’s policy director for cultural issues in 2007 and 2008 before moving on to similar work with the Liberty Counsel (below).

While at CWA, on April 12, 2007, Barber suggested against all the evidence that there were only a “miniscule number” of anti-gay hate crimes and most of those “may very well be rooted in fraudulent reports.” In comments that have since disappeared from CWA’s website, Barber demanded a federal probe of “homosexual activists” for their alleged fabrications of hate crime reports.

CWA long relied on and displayed Knight’s articles and talking points, including claims that “homosexuality carries enormous physical and mental health risks” and “gay marriage entices children to experiment with homosexuality.” Most remarkably, Knight cited the utterly discredited work of Paul Cameron (see Family Research Institute, below) to bolster claims that homosexuality is harmful.

Today, CWA continues to make arguments against homosexuality on the basis of dubious claims. President Wendy Wright said this August that gay activists were using same-sex marriage “to indoctrinate children in schools to reject their parents’ values and to harass, sue and punish people who disagree.” Last year, CWA accused the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a group that works to stop anti-gay bullying in schools, of using that mission as a cover to promote homosexuality in schools, adding that “teaching students from a young age that the homosexual lifestyle is perfectly natural … will [cause them to] develop into adults who are desensitized to the harmful, immoral reality of sexual deviance.”

“Family Research Council, the pro-life group, is working with Colin Hanna, and Let Freedom Ring, another Tea Party group. It’s all very much a conglomerate… coming together,” Brody continued.

Business Week describes Let Freedom Ring as “an advocacy organization active with ads targeting Obama in 2008 and whose founder is evangelical Christian John Templeton, and Washington-based Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, which is affiliated with Republican political strategist Karl Rove, are also airing commercials critical of the president’s energy policy.”

Tony PerkinsFamily Research Council, which most of America now knows is listed as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, who notes:

Headed since 2003 by former Louisiana State Rep. Tony Perkins, the FRC has been a font of anti-gay propaganda throughout its history. It relies on the work of Robert Knight, who also worked at Concerned Women for America but now is at Coral Ridge Ministries (see above for both), along with that of FRC senior research fellows Tim Dailey (hired in 1999) and Peter Sprigg (2001). Both Dailey and Sprigg have pushed false accusations linking gay men to pedophilia: Sprigg has written that most men who engage in same-sex child molestation “identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual,” and Dailey and Sprigg devoted an entire chapter of their 2004 book Getting It Straight to similar material. The men claimed that “homosexuals are overrepresented in child sex offenses” and similarly asserted that “homosexuals are attracted in inordinate numbers to boys.”

That’s the least of it. In a 1999 publication (Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys) that has since disappeared from its website, the FRC claimed that “one of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order,” according to unrefuted research by AMERICAblog. The same publication argued that “homosexual activists publicly disassociate themselves from pedophiles as part of a public relations strategy.” FRC offered no evidence for these remarkable assertions, and has never publicly retracted the allegations. (The American Psychological Association, among others, has concluded that “homosexual men are not more likely to sexually abuse children than heterosexual men are.”)

In fact, in a Nov. 30, 2010, debate on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” between Perkins and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok, Perkins defended FRC’s association of gay men with pedophilia, saying: “If you look at the American College of Pediatricians, they say the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a danger to children. So Mark is wrong. He needs to go back and do his own research.” In fact, the college, despite its hifalutin name, is a tiny, explicitly religious-right breakaway group from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the 60,000-member association of the profession. Publications of the American College of Pediatricians, which has some 200 members, have been roundly attacked by leading scientific authorities who say they are baseless and accuse the college of distorting and misrepresenting their work.

Elsewhere, according to AMERICAblog, Knight, while working at the FRC, claimed that “[t]here is a strong current of pedophilia in the homosexual subculture. … [T]hey want to promote a promiscuous society.” AMERICAblog also reported that then-FRC official Yvette Cantu, in an interview published on Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s website, said, “If they [gays and lesbians] had children, what would happen when they were too busy having their sex parties?”

More recently, in March 2008, Sprigg, responding to a question about uniting gay partners during the immigration process, said: “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them.” He later apologized, but then went on, last February, to tell MSNBC host Chris Matthews, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.” “So we should outlaw gay behavior?” Matthews asked. “Yes,” Sprigg replied. At around the same time, Sprigg claimed that allowing gay people to serve openly in the military would lead to an increase in gay-on-straight sexual assaults.

Brody also stated this morning:

“What Ted Cruz did last night, talking about our rights come from God not government, Mitt Romney used that exact line in Irwin Pennsylvania and had — and I counted it — a 17-second standing ovation. Bigger than Obamacare, bigger than anything else.”

And Brody admitted Republican Senatorial nominee Ted Cruz used “code language” to appeal to religious voters, like, “the great awakening,” and agreed the former President George W. Bush also used the idea that rights come from God not from government.

“We hear about this all the time in those Tea Party and Evangelical circles, I call them the Teavangelical circles, you know, the great awakening, very much a spiritual reference to our nation’s history,” Brody said, talking about his book. “I talk about how our rights come from God, not government,” Brody added.

10 days ago, The New Civil Rights Movement reported on a new poll that found while “Democrats came in with 68% support for same-sex marriage, Independents with 57%, and Republicans with only 30%, a mere 6% of Tea Party members said they support same-sex marriage. No other group was close to that low support level.”

The relevant portion begins around the 8:00 minute mark, but the entire clip is fascinating.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There's a reason 10,000 people subscribe to NCRM. You can get the news before it breaks just by subscribing, plus you can learn something new every day.
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

‘Good Chance’ Trump Will Be Electorally ‘Humiliated’ in November: Carville

Published

on

Democratic strategist and pundit James Carville, responding to the international outcry and condemnation over President Donald Trump’s failed efforts to acquire Greenland, predicted that he will likely lose big in the November midterm elections.

“I think the world wants to return, with the United States as being part of the world,” Carville said on his podcast. “And I think the way that that happens is Trump has to be humiliated.”

“He has to be electorally humiliated, and I think there’s a good, good chance that’s gonna happen this November in our elections,” he said. “It’s not enough that he just walk away, and the Democrats take over the presidency.”

There has to be “a well laid plan and strategy to utterly humiliate him, to the point that everybody around the world says, ‘This m — —, or no one like this m — —, is gonna ever come back and lead the United States,'” Carville declared.

READ MORE: Trump ‘Miscalculated’ and It ‘Backfired’: Columnist Explains What Led to Trump ‘Failing’

“I think that’s the possibility, and I think if that happens, I think we can renormalize the world a lot faster than most.”

“And he’s completely crazy,” Carville also remarked. “He’s going downhill.”

According to the New York Post, Trump will be campaigning during the midterm elections as if he were on the ballot.

“President Trump will treat the November midterm election like a presidential campaign, his senior leadership team tells The Post — traveling like he’s on the ballot, flooding key races with cash and hammering home how his policies will help Americans with affordability,” the Post reported.

Susie Wiles, Trump’s White House Chief of Staff and his former campaign co-chair, told The Post, “He’s going to campaign like it’s 2024.”

READ MORE: Trump Unleashes Wild Ego-Fueled Social Media Grievance Storm After Davos Defeat

Image via Reuters

 

Continue Reading

News

Trump ‘Miscalculated’ and It ‘Backfired’: Columnist Explains What Led to Trump ‘Failing’

Published

on

President Donald Trump “miscalculated” his level of support — especially on the issues that won him re-election in 2024, and it has “backfired,” according to an opinion columnist.

In “Why Trump is failing,” Steven Roberts in the Columbia Missourian writes: “Trump has called 2025 ‘the greatest first year’ of any president, but a majority of Americans strongly disagree.”

“To hardcore MAGA loyalists, the president can do no wrong. But rabid Red Hats account for only about 35% of Americans,” observes Roberts.

He identifies where the president is losing support: “since Trump received almost 50% of the popular vote, that means about 15% of his backers were not true believers, and they are the ones who are slipping away.”

Roberts identifies why.

“The single biggest reason Trump won a second term was economic discontent with the Biden administration, and it’s the single biggest reason so many voters are now disillusioned,” he says, pointing to a CNN poll that, he writes, finds “55% say Trump’s policies have actually made things worse and almost two-thirds say he has not done enough to reduce their cost of living.”

But Roberts offers more.

READ MORE: Trump Unleashes Wild Ego-Fueled Social Media Grievance Storm After Davos Defeat

He explains that Americans supported Trump’s policies on immigration when it was about immigrants at the border.

“They were ‘others’: easy to demonize and dehumanize. They had no voice and no identity, and Trump and his media managers could control what voters knew and felt about them.”

But, he continues, “Trump miscalculated, and his show backfired,” because his targets are no longer “faceless hordes but real people with jobs and families, friends and neighbors.”

The came the shooting of a Minneapolis mother of three, Renee Good.

“The administration tried to brand her as a domestic terrorist who had caused her own demise by driving at the agent. But the videos — seen by more than 80% of Americans — told a different story,” he writes. “Good simply did not look like a terrorist. Plus, independent news organizations analyzed the cellphone footage and concluded that it ‘contradicted’ the official line.”

Trump “lost control of the narrative, and public opinion turned against him.”

The president’s other miscalculation: his stance on the affordability issue, an issue that arguably got him re-elected.

With just 36 percent of Americans saying Trump has the right priorities, Roberts surmises that is simply his “loyal MAGA base.”

And he warns that if this trend continues, voters at the polls in November will “take it out on his party.”

READ MORE: These 19 Democrats May Already Be Jockeying for a Presidential Run: Report

 

Image via Reuters 

Continue Reading

News

Trump Unleashes Wild Ego-Fueled Social Media Grievance Storm After Davos Defeat

Published

on

President Donald Trump on Thursday unleashed dozens of rapid-fire social media posts after what critics described as a difficult few days at Davos. His speech there reportedly further strained relations with U.S. allies, following his Greenland gambit, which produced few if any clear gains and drew criticism over its diplomatic costs. The rollout of Trump’s Board of Peace also struggled to gain traction, with a handful of European allies participating in the inaugural signing ceremony.

In spoke of the more recent posts, Trump went off on “Fake Polls,” while admitting that they have his approval rating “in the low 40s,” although The Economist shows his net approval rating currently at 37%.

“We have the Greatest Economy in the History of our Country, we have the Strongest Border in History, nobody has ever done a job like I have done, and they have me in the low 40s,” he complained. “The Democrats destroyed Healthcare, I’m trying to fix it, and they give me FAKE low numbers. Fake Polls on the Economy, on the Border, on just about everything, are ridiculous and dangerous. The REAL Polls have been GREAT, but they refuse to print them.

“The Times Siena Poll, which is always tremendously negative to me, especially just before the Election of 2024, where I won in a Landslide, will be added to my lawsuit against The Failing New York Times,” he wrote. “Our lawyers have demanded that they keep all Records, and how they ‘computed’ these fake results — Not just the fact that it was heavily skewed toward Democrats. They will be held fully responsible for all of their Radical Left lies and wrongdoing!”

READ MORE: Top Conservative Think Tank Roasted Over ‘Retrograde’ Marriage and Family Report

Some posts promoted questionable claims, including suggesting that annualized U.S. GDP grew to more than 5 percent — while most expectations and Congressional Budget Office predictions are currently about half that number.

He promoted a claim that he “helped create ‘The Martin Luther King Jr International Freedom Games’ in 1966,” when he would have been about 20 years old.

Other posts he promoted talked about the U.S. trade deficit, alleged illegal voting in the 2020 election, immigration, tariffs, globalism, Don Lemon, Supreme Court oral arguments for Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and one declaring Trump the “greatest President in the world.”

Another post offered the transcript and video of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller allegedly claiming, and without evidence, that James Comey, Jim Clapper, John Brennan, Lisa Monaco, and President Barack Obama “all conspired and worked together to sabotage, undermine, unravel, and overthrow the United States government and the democratic institutions and structures of this country.”

That post, as Raw Story reported, appeared to be in response to former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s currently ongoing congressional public testimony.

Another post included video of Argentinian President Javier Milei attacking “wokeism” while praising the “Americas.”

READ MORE: These 19 Democrats May Already Be Jockeying for a Presidential Run: Report

 

Image via Reuters 

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.