The New Civil Rights Movement’s Scott Rose today made a Freedom of Information Act Request regarding Robert P. George to the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
George, a board member of the SPLC-certified anti-gay hate group the Family Research Council (FRC), and a founder and mastermind of the so-called National Organization for Marriage, was appointed to the USCIRF by Speaker John Boehner in March, 2012. The commission makes policy recommendations to the president, Congress and the U.S. Department of State.
The Freedom of Information Act, (FOIA), exists to provide for some transparency in what government officials are doing.
As an anti-gay hate group leader, Robert George’s presence on the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom is especially troubling.
Along with convicted felon Chuck Colson, and in collaboration with Republican political strategist Karl Rove, Robert George authored and is promoting The Manhattan Declaration, sub-titled A Call to Christian Conscience.
An evident attack on Obama administration policies, and by extension, on President Obama, George’s Call to Christian Conscience lays on heavy with a trowel the notion that Obama is something other than Christian. When state-level marriage equality passed in New York, anti-gay hate group board member Robert George sneeringly suggested of N.Y Governor Andrew Cuomo, who supports equality, that he could not really be considered Catholic.
One of the signers of Robert George’s Manhattan Declaration is the radical Nigerian Christian cleric Peter J. Akinola, who thinks that if two gay men hold hands in public, they should be thrown in jail for five years. A New York Times article about Akinola describes how he recoiled in horror, the one time in his life that he realized he was shaking a gay person’s hand.
According to critics of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom, the commissioners pick their  priorities arbitrarily and with religious and political bias.
Rose sent his FOIA request to USCIRF’s Executive Director Jackie Wolcott.
The FOIA request is for:
All communications conducted by USCIRF Commissioner Robert George, with any and all persons domestic or foreign,involving homosexuals and/or homosexuality in any way.
All communications conducted by USCIRF Commissioner Robert George, with any and all persons domestic or foreign, involving marriage and/or marriage law and/or votes on marriage laws in any way.
All communications conducted by USCIRF Commissioner Robert George, with any and all persons domestic or foreign,involving LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, intersex)persons and/or rights in any way.
All communications conducted by USCIRF Commissioner Robert George, with any and all officials, employees, and/or contract employees of the Vatican, the Catholic Church and/or the Catholic League involving homosexuals, gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals, transgendered persons, intersex persons and laws impacting them, discussions about them, in any way.
“All communications” means all communications, including but not limited to e-mails, traditional physical mail, e-mail attachments, voice mails, notes of telephone conversations, recordings of meetings, and any and all other communications. “Any and all persons” means any and all persons.
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New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide†is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.
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