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

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.