Homosexuality: How Much Difference Lies Between US Anti-Gay Groups And Iran?

The anti-gay positions and hate speech of America’s religious right extremists — including anti-gay groups like NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, and the so-called “pro-family,” anti-gay hate groups, like the American Family Association and the Family Research Council — are sounding eerily similar to all but the most-extreme public policy positions on homosexuality of the Islamic Republic of Iran, designated by the U.S. Department of State as a “state sponsor of terrorism.”

From claims that Hollywood is working to “normalize” homosexuality, claims that President Obama is working to spread homosexuality around the world, suggestions he is working to eliminate heterosexual marriage, force Americans into same-sex marriages, and claims of indoctrination of youth into homosexuality through the education system, America’s anti-gay organizations, radical religious institutions, and anti-gay hate groups are echoing some of Iran’s anti-gay propaganda.

In a wild conspiracy theory posing as public policy, Iran’s state-sponsored national newspaper is charging the West and Israel with collusion to “spread homosexuality” around the world in an effort to oppress the masses and to achieve “world domination.”

“A report in a state-controlled Iranian paper last week asserting that the ‘Zionist regime’ ‘spreads homosexuality’ across the globe in order to pursue its goal of world domination has sparked fierce criticism from experts on Iran because of its homophobia and anti- Semitism,” the Jerusalem Post reported:

Mashregh News, an outlet affiliated with radical Islamists in Qom, wrote that the US and the UK are using money from Jews to spread homosexuality throughout the world. The article blasted Israel for promoting demonstrations for gay rights and specifically decried Tel Aviv as the gay paradise on earth. It also ridiculed Conservative Judaism for accepting gay rabbis, and urged Western governments to stop people from engaging in gay – and therefore immoral – actions, and provide medical treatment for homosexuals in order to stop their conduct.

Writing on Monday on the gay website GGG, Chris Karnak said the Mashregh item “reads like an article from the Nazi agitation paper Der Stürmer.”

Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, an expert on minority groups in Iran, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that the article is “against gays, against the West and anti-Semitic.” He added that “the text legitimizes the execution of gays in Iran; they made a text not only to ridicule the West but to provide a reason why Iran executes gays.”

The Iranian report also attacked Hollywood for depicting gays in positive terms on the silver screen. Moreover, according to the article, schools in California include homosexuality in their education plans because of a recommendation of a Jewish university.

 

While American anti-gay organizations are stopping short of calling for the execution of LGBT people in the U.S., attacking Hollywood and the government for supporting LGBT rights is a daily event, and some representatives of anti-gay organizations, like Bryan Fischer, the public face of the certified anti-gay hate group, American Family Association, have called for homosexuals to be jailed. In other cases, one North Carolina pastor this spring called for LGBT people to be penned up in internment camps. Another called for young children to have their possible homosexuality beaten out of them.

Conservatives in California are outraged over SB 48, the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act, that will ensure the contributions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and disabled Americans are properly taught in California schools.

Right wing extremist Randy Thomasson, who heads the anti-gay hate group Save California, started “Protect Your Children From Harvey Milk Gay Day In Schools,” and calls the FAIR Act “the most in-your-face sexual brainwashing yet.”

Iran’s Mashregh News apparently gave no explanation of how people are being turned into homosexuals, nor was there any explanation of how turning people into homosexuals or “spreading homosexuality” around the world would enable Israel and the West to achieve world domination.

Regardless, many of Iran’s ludicrous claims are strikingly similar to those made by some anti-gay organizations, the radical religious right, and anti-gay hate groups here in America.

Brian Brown, president of NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, who last month called gay people gay people “homosexual thugs and bullies” and just this past Friday, sent one of his many infamous fudaising emails to supporters, stating:

After watching the President’s speech last night, one thing is clear: Obama hasn’t just endorsed homosexual marriage as the official, national policy of the United States of America.

Obama is running for re-election on a platform to re-define marriage for everyone.

But don’t take my word for it. Obama’s official, national platform has codified homosexual marriage as its policy for all Americans!

You see, Obama’s platform actually calls for the “full repeal of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act” and imposes “one man and one man” marriage on all of us.

So-called “low-information voters” easily could read Brown’s email and believe President Obama is outlawing “traditional marriage” and forcing everyone into a same-sex marriage.

In perhaps one of the most damning pieces of evidence that the anti-gay religious right is promoting much of the same language as presented by Iran, and is in lockstep with most of Iran’s false beliefs about homosexuality, 98 representatives of groups like the Catholic League, including people like hate group head Scott Lively, signed a letter that condemned the U.S. government’s participation in a Prague gay pride event. Here are a few excerpts from the letter:

“anything which undermines the family – including changing the definition of marriage – is a breach of the State’s responsibility to protect this indispensable institution which precedes government and makes a stable and free society possible.”

“Washington is aggressively promoting the ‘gay’ agenda internationally, including same-sex ‘marriage’ and the stigmatization and marginalization of any who object to the same.”

“We can not imagine a worse form of cultural imperialism than Washington trying to force approval of the ‘gay’ agenda on societies with traditional values.”

Right Wing Watch commented on those who signed the letter:

The list of signatories is mighty long, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay; Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver and Matt Barber; American Family Association’s Tim Wildmon; Catholic League’s Bill Donohue; Vision America’s Rick Scarborough; Rabbi Daniel Lapin; American Civil Rights Union’s Robert Knight; Concerned Women for America’s Janice Shaw Crouse; Pastor Jim Garlow; WND’s David Kupelian; TFP’s C. Preston Noell III; conservative activist Richard Viguerie; World Congress of Families’Don Feder; Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell; Traditional Values Coalition’s Louis Sheldon andAndrea Lafferty; and the Southern Baptist Convention’s Paige Peterson.

Other activists like Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, Scott Lively of Defend the Family International and Sharon Slater of Family Watch International are also among the signatories, as is Mission America’s Linda Harvey, who believes people should refuse care for themselves and their children from openly gay doctors and nurses.

Speaking of Scott Lively, he has been tied to Uganda’s infamous “Kill The Gays” bill, and a lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court is “accusing him of violating international law by inciting the persecution of gay men and lesbians in Uganda,” the New York Times in March reported:

Mr. Lively is the founder and president of Abiding Truth Ministries. He is also the author of “The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party,” which says that Nazism was a movement inspired by homosexuals, and “Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child,” a guide to prevent what he calls “pro-homosexual indoctrination.”

In June, the Alliance Defense Fund (now the Alliance Defending Freedom), part of a team of anti-gay Christian lawyers who work to infuse biblical law into U.S. law, and who defended Prop 8 in court, released a statement decrying “Hollywood activists” and claiming that all the Prop 8 rulings, which have all found Prop 8 unconstitutional, “were little more than an attack on the character and judgment of millions of Californians.”

Also in June, Chuck Norris “wrote an opinion piece … blasting President Obama and portraying him as a puppet master working behind the scenes to create a ‘pro-gay Boy Scouts of America’ and promote an increasingly pro-gay agenda,” the L.A. Times reported.

Two weeks ago, the anti-gay hate group American Family Association, via their One Million Moms group, claimed, “Hollywood is continuing to push an agenda that homosexuality is acceptable when scripture states clearly it is a sin.”

Remember that collusion to ‘spread homosexuality’ around the world?

The late Chuck Colson, co-creator of the anarchy-based Manhattan Declaration, in 2003 wrote:

“To ask the government to crack down on smoking and at the same time promote homosexual behavior is lunacy. Both practices damage people’s health, although there is an important difference: Homosexual practices shorten a person’s life expectancy far more than smoking.  Of course, the hazard is also to the nation’s health.”

Colson, before his death earlier this year, was a popular prison minister and Watergate felon, and had repeatedly attacked same-sex marriage and homosexuality. He wrongly stated “homosexual behavior” is more “dangerous than smoking, it lowers the life expectancy dramatically.” Colson also falsely stated that legalizing same-sex marriage was “sanctioning behavior known to be dangerous.” And, again falsely, stated that gays and lesbians “don’t want marriage; they want their sexual choices affirmed as normal and moral.”

And as late as last year, despite years of research to the contrary, Colson was publicly advocating that homosexuality was both a choice and avoidable if parents “properly” raised their children.

In February, when Prop 8 was once again declared unconstitutional, here’s what Tony Perkins who runs the anti-gay hate group Family Research Council, offered in response to the news:

“Today’s ruling by a three-judge panel upheld a lower court decision by now-retired federal Judge Vaughn Walker in August 2010. Judge Walker later admitted he is himself a homosexual and has had a long-term partner, meaning that he potentially stood to personally benefit from the legalization of same-sex “‘marriage’.”

“Today’s decision was disappointing but not surprising, coming from the most liberal Circuit Court in the country. This Hollywood-funded lawsuit, which seeks to impose San Francisco values on the entire country, may eventually reach the Supreme Court. This is not about constitutional governance but the insistence of a group of activists to force their will on their fellow citizens.

“This ruling substitute’s judicial tyranny for the will of the people, who in the majority of states have amended their constitutions, as California did, to preserve marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

“However, we remain confident that in the end, the Supreme Court will reject the absurdargument that the authors of our Constitution created or even implied a ‘right’ to homosexual ‘marriage,’ and will instead uphold the right of the people to govern themselves.”

Gay Star News adds of Iran’s attack:

The article also suggested that Western support for LGBT rights was disingenuous as if it was motivated by genuine concern it would offer them medical support to refrain from homosexuality.

‘If support for homosexuals stemmed from humane considerations or defense of human rights, it would be in the form of providing individual assistance to these people, who need care and medical treatment to rescue them from the immoral actions that undermine the family institution,’ the report claimed.

Last month, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer began a campaign to convince Americans there should be an “underground railroad” to help steal children away from their gay parents and from same-sex couples. Here’s what he said:

Disagreement is not hatred. We don’t hate anyone. In fact, we love homosexuals enough to tell them the truth about the risks involved in their lifestyle choices. But for those who hate the truth, the truth will seem to be hate.

In 2010, Fischer said of his attempts to deter people from being gay, “you can’t go wrong telling people the truth about behavior that could destroy them.”

Last year, Fischer, whose show on American Family Radio is broadcast by more than 180 radio stations in 38 states, ironically, claimed “the homosexual agenda is just like Islam,” then said of gays — repeatedly — “they are Nazis.”

“The homosexual agenda is just like Islam: there is no room for dissent, there is no room to leave, once you’re in, you can’t leave. Muslims won’t let you leave, homosexuals won’t let you leave – if you leave, they claim you’re faking it, so there’s no way out. There’s no freedom of choice, there’s no freedom of religion – if you have religious views about homosexual behavior, you are squashed.

“I mean, ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Homosexual activists, when it comes to freedom of speech, are Nazis. When it comes to freedom of religion, they are Nazis. There is no room in their world dissent, there is no room in their world for disagreement, there is no room in their world for criticism. You criticize homosexual behavior, they tag you as a bigot and a homophobe and then they got to work to silence you just like the Roman Catholic Church did in the days of Galileo – it’s no different; it’s the Spanish Inquisition all over again.

“Ladies and gentlemen, they are Nazis. Do not be under any illusions about what homosexual activists will do with your freedoms and your religion if they have the opportunity. They’ll do the same thing to you that the Nazis did to their opponents in Nazi Germany.’

When it comes to promoting the hatred of gay people, there’s little difference between the the public policy positions of anti-gay organizations and anti-gay hate groups tied to religious right extremists, and Iran, a “state sponsor of terrorism.”

Editor’s note: All bolding is added.