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GLAAD Accused Of Creating “Ministry of Propaganda” To Silence Anti-Gay Right

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GLAAD is being accused of censoring the anti-gay radical religious right, and creating a “ministry of propaganda to silence opponents of [the] homosexual agenda” by a consortium of the very people whose voices GLAAD is attempting to amplify. Last week, as The New Civil Rights Movement reported, GLAAD launched its brand-new Commentator Accountability Project (CAP), designed to house and catalog all the anti-gay comments coming from the top three dozen anti-gay professional pundits. But since CAP’s launch, the anti-gay religious right has twisted and turned the intention of the project, attacking it and GLAAD with lies and mis-information.

READ: Gay-Basher Chuck Colson: “I Can’t Think of A Single Time” I’ve Gay Bashed

Today, Catholic Online’s Deacon Keith Fournier wrote a ludicrous and ridiculous attack, titled, “GLAAD Sets Up Ministry of Propaganda to Silence Opponents of Homosexual Agenda.” Fournier writes:

In a sign of their growing intolerance of people who hold positions other than those of the Homosexual Cultural Revolution, the Media Watchdog Organization which calls itself “GLAAD” (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) has issued a blacklist of commentators.

This effort is called the “Commentator Accountability Project“. The blacklist includes some people I know and admire. It also includes some of my favorite commentators, in both the Catholic and evangelical protestant communities. For example, both Robert George and Chuck Colson have been blacklisted.

The effort recruits likeminded parties to “spy”. They are asked to send reports in to GLAAD if these commentators are featured in local media. GLAAD will then pressure the media sources to not feature their writing. In effect, the organization has established a ministry of propaganda. Its purpose seems to be to ensure that only the positions of the Homosexual Equivalency movement are allowed to be read, heard or considered.

Aside from the either communistic or Harry Potter-esque overtones of the title, the content is an embarrassment of misinformation — at best. As the image, right, a screenshot from Fournier’s piece, shows, the right is accusing GLAAD of censorship, another misunderstanding of the First Amendment.

“Homosexual Cultural Revolution”? Really? What does that even mean? The only other use of that strange and incorrect term appears to be from TFP. Who is TFP? ”Tradition, Family, Property” is an anti-gay neo-fascist para-military cult accused of assassination plots against President Reagan and the Pope. TFP has been described by the UN as “an ultramontane Catholic group, strongest in Brazil and Argentina, which among other things maintains that all Popes since John XXIII have come under Marxist influence.”

That said, let’s be clear. GLAAD’s CAP is no “blacklist of commentators.” The mere accusation is embarrassingly false on its face.

Fournier writes two of his “favorite commentators,” “Robert George and Chuck Colson have been blacklisted.”

Who are these people?

Well, as The New Civil Rights Movement wrote yesterday, “Colson, best-known as a Watergate felon turned prison minister, is also one of the triumvirate  – along with NOM, National Organization For Marriage founder Robert George – who drafted the virulently anti-gay ‘Manhattan Declaration.’ And last year he also wrote, ”gay marriage’ will inevitably undermine all marriages‘.”

Colson vehemently denies he is a gay-basher. We respectfully disagree, and offer mounds of proof.

And as for Robert George, well, he founded NOM. And sadly, that’s only the tip of the anti-gay iceberg.

Aside from his strange need to Capitalize Words That Don’t Require Capitalization, Fournier misunderstands and mis-characterizes GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project entirely.

How?

The New Civil Rights Movement reached out to GLAAD this morning, and received this response from Herndon Graddick, GLAAD’s Vice President of Communications and Programs:

“These anti-gay activists are scared that people are going to see their actual records. It’s completely Orwellian that they are yelling about being silenced when what we are actually doing is making sure people see and hear what they’ve actually said. We want the media to know just exactly who they are dealing with when they put these people on their air. Scott Lively, who is profiled by our project, calls for the criminalization of the public advocacy of gay rights. That’s not just advocating for people to be put in jail for being gay…he’s calling for straight people who are vocally supportive of gay people to be put in jail too. The anti-gay industry doesn’t want Americans to know the depth of their extremism.”

And that’s exactly the point.

Because when the average American sees these people, like Tony Perkins, who has appeared on, of all places, MSNBC more than any other cable news network, he seems balanced and fair and reasonable. But few people get to see or hear what he and his SPLC-certified anti-gay hate group actually says to its base, when they think average Americans are not listening.

GLAAD’s CAP will help everyone see and hear what the professional anti-gay industry really thinks and says.

If they have no problem calling for, say, the imprisonment or death of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, when talking amongst themselves, on their radio stations, talk shows, press releases, and conventions, why are they so deathly afraid of the rest of America hearing their words?

 Image, top: World War II propaganda poster.

 

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Will Santos Choose Jail? Judge Rules Names of Persons Who Provided His Half-Million Dollar Bond Must Be Made Public

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A district magistrate judge Tuesday afternoon ruled the names of the three people who put up the $500,000 bond for U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-NY) must be made public. Santos, under indictment on 13 federal charges including money laundering, wire fraud, theft of public funds, and lying to Congress, has said he would rather go to jail than allow the names to be released to the public.

Santos pleaded not guilty and was released on a $500,000 bond on May 10. He could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Law & Crime News’ Adam Klasfeld reports, “The identities of Rep. George Santos’s bond co-signers must be UNSEALED, a magistrate judge ruled. Santos has a brisk schedule for an appeal.”

Santos has until Friday at noon to appeal, or the documents and bond will be unsealed.

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The embattled New York Republican Congressman’s legal team has argued “the three people who helped provide Santos’ bond ‘are likely to suffer great distress, may lose their jobs, and God forbid, may suffer physical injury,'” CBS News reported Monday evening.

“There is little doubt that the suretors will suffer some unnecessary form of retaliation if their identities and employment are revealed,” the motion also says.

“My client would rather surrender to pretrial detainment than subject these suretors to what will inevitably come,” Santos’ attorney said in the filing.

CBS News adds that the House Ethics Committee is also requesting the names of the three people who helped the Congressman make bail be made public.

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‘Isn’t There a Beach in Mexico Waiting for You?’: Cruz Mocked for Claiming Garland Will Indict Trump Over SCOTUS Seat Loss

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June 6, 2023

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U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) is being roundly mocked after claiming Attorney General Merrick Garland will indict Donald Trump because he “hates” the ex-president and because he is angry his early 2016 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court was blocked.

“They hypocrisy is massive,” Sen. Cruz declared on Fox News Monday night. “And mark my words: I believe Merrick Garland will indict Donald Trump. He wants to indict Donald Trump because he hates Donald Trump. He hates him – he’s angry – Merrick Garland is angry that he wasn’t confirmed to the Supreme Court. he wants to indict him.”

Cruz, who has a law degree from Harvard, is wrong on the basic facts, and he’s being widely mocked for it.

As many are pointing out, first, Attorney General Garland appointed Jack Smith as Special Prosecutor. Smith, who was appointed as Acting U.S. Attorney by Donald Trump in 2017, will make the decision on whether or not to present charges to a grand jury. The grand jury, not Garland and not Smith, will make the decision on whether or not to indict Trump.

Also, whether or not Garland has any anger about not being confirmed by the U.S. Senate, that anger would rightly be pointed to then Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who took the unprecedented step of refusing to even allow a committee hearing to consider his nomination.

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McConnell did that in early 2016, even before Trump was the GOP’s presidential nominee. Trump had nothing to do with blocking Garland’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This is dangerous,” warned foreign policy and intelligence expert John Sipher, who spent nearly three decades in the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Clandestine Service. “He knows what he’s doing and he’s risking violence.”

After Cruz’s Fox News appearance, he posted video of his own remarks and baselessly tweeted, “Merrick Garland is the most partisan Attorney General in American history. He has corrupted the DOJ, the FBI, and the machinery of government. And now, out of nothing but a sense of hatred and political retribution, Garland is trying to indict Trump.”

Later, on Tuesday he added, “Merrick Garland has corrupted the Department of Justice and effectively turned it into an arm of the Democratic National Committee. The FBI and DOJ want to protect and insulate Joe Biden and the Biden family’s corruption.”

None of his allegations have any basis in publicly-known fact.

Cruz came under fire in 2021 after advising Trump’s legal team during the ex-president’s second impeachment, even though he would also be a juror – and supposedly impartial – in Trump’s Senate trial. In December of 2020 Cruz told Trump he would “be happy” to argue a proposed Supreme Court lawsuit designed to keep Trump in power despite having lost the election one month earlier.

Author Cliff Schecter labeled Cruz’s claims on Fox News, “Complete horses*t, which is Ted’s brand.”

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“But, if true, Garland would be doing more re his SCOTUS rejection than @tedcruz did when Trump called his wife ugly,” he added. “Ted doesn’t get why Garland wouldn’t just make hostage video phone calls for Trump’s campaign.”

Historian and author Kevin M. Kruse: “The line that ‘they’re only indicting Trump for the crimes Trump clearly did because they hate Trump’ is pathetic when it comes from Trump himself, but Jesus Christ, it is twelve kinds of sad when it comes from one of his lickspittles.”

Reporter and award-winning columnist David Lazarus noted, “Republicans keep insisting Trump is being investigated and prosecuted because people in power hate him. That’s one theory. Or Trump is being investigated and prosecuted because he kept breaking the law.”

Lincoln Project co-founder Jennifer Horn, a former New Hampshire Republican State Committee chair, blasted Cruz.

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Watch video of Cruz above or at this link.

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Jim Jordan Demands Merrick Garland Hand Over Documents Authorizing Special Counsel’s Trump Investigation

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3 hours ago

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June 6, 2023

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House Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding documents related to Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s two-tiered investigation into Donald Trump.

Chairman Jordan’s letter (below) comes just days before Smith’s grand jury is expected to reconvene after a short hiatus, and one day after Trump’s legal team met with DOJ investigators, including Smith.

Jordan is asking Garland to hand over an unreacted, full version of the memo that authorized Smith’s appointment as Special Counsel to investigate Trump, along with all supporting documentation. NBC News first reported on the existence of the letter.

Jordan, a staunch ally of Donald Trump, is claiming his request is part of his committee’s investigation into “the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) unprecedented raid of President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022.”

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The letter in part states, “we write to request an unredacted copy of the memorandum outlining the scope of Mr. Smith’s probes regarding President Trump and any supporting documentation related to his appointment as special counsel. Accordingly, please provide the Committee with an unredacted copy of the memorandum outlining the scope of Special Counsel Smith’s investigations pursuant to his appointment on November 18, 2022, and any other document describing, listing, or delineating the authority and jurisdiction of the special counsel as soon as possible, but no later than 5:00 p.m. on June 20, 2023.”

Legal experts across the board anticipate Smith will ask the grand jury to indict the ex-president on a litany of federal felonies centered on his unlawful removal from the White House, retention, refusal to return, and possible sharing of classified and top secret documents. That indictment appeared even more likely after it as reported Smith has audio of Trump admitting he held on to a Pentagon document he knows is classified, and allegedly said he would like to be able to share it. Some experts say an indictment could come as early as this week.

Read Jordan’s letter below or at this link.

 

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