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Is This Really Just ‘Mainstream Christian Advocacy’?

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Following the shooting of a security guard at the anti-gay Family Research Council, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank called it “reckless“ for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to say the FRC is a “hate group.” He further suggested that calling the FRC “hateful” is an example of “inflammatory labels” and “hurling accusations that can stir up the crazies,” and questioned why the SPLC considers the FRC a “hate group” alongside the KKK and Aryan Nations. Throughout the piece, Milbank describes the FRC as “a mainstream conservative think tank,” “a policy shop that advocates for a full range of conservative Christian positions,” “a mainstream Christian advocacy group,” and “driven by deeply held religious beliefs.”

But Milbank’s appraisal of the FRC as something other than hateful is only possible because of his complete refusal to examine the actual substance of the organization’s infamous “conservative Christian positions.” For anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the group’s so-called “mainstream Christian advocacy,” the claim that they aren’t hateful is so plainly ridiculous that the very word “hate” is meaningless if it doesn’t include the FRC.

An accusation of hatefulness certainly isn’t something to be thrown around lightly – it has to be earned. The SPLC does not consider organizations to be hate groups merely because they have strong political or religious views, but because they repeatedly make false and defamatory claims about LGBT people. And the FRC has been working overtime since its inception to do just that. They’ve made no effort to hide their extraordinary attacks on the LGBT community; for anyone who cares enough to look, all of this is a matter of public record.

The FRC is pervasively opposed to the recognition and acceptance of transgender people. In one edition of their “Washington Update,” they criticize the rules of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for providing undocumented transgender detainees with continued access to hormone therapy rather than forcibly de-transitioning them. As they see it, trans people as a group are not even entitled to receive their own prescribed medications. Contrary to the recommendations of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which recognize gender transition treatments as beneficial and medically necessary, the FRC considers this “exacerbating a mental health crisis like cross-dressing.”

Testifying before the Maryland State Senate, FRC senior policy fellow Peter Sprigg – whose medical qualifications include being a professional actor and an ordained Baptist minister — again claimed that trans people should only receive “mental health treatments to help them become comfortable with their biological sex.” He further added that they transition “to fulfill their sexual desires,” which he describes as “transvestic fetishism.” In a policy document on gender identity nondiscrimination ordinances, which Sprigg labels “bathroom bills,” he argues against trans people being allowed to present as their identified gender, calling them “often highly unconvincing and therefore disturbing to witnesses.” To Dana Milbank, this is just “mainstream Christian advocacy,” which apparently includes denying health care and legal protections to entire classes of people and calling them sexual fetishists who are ugly.

The FRC and its staff have also used distorted and debunked studies to claim that LGBT people are unfit parents and are more likely to molest children. FRC president Tony Perkins describes pedophilia as “a homosexual problem,” and senior fellow Timothy Dailey has claimed that “disproportionate numbers of gay men seek adolescent males or boys as sexual partners.” An FRC pamphlet from 1999 stated: “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.”

They’ve recently cited Mark Regnerus‘ widely criticized study, which included hardly any examples of long-term same-sex parenting and was found to be severely flawed in an audit by the journal that published it, to claim that children of gay parents were more likely to be sexually abused, and “fare worse on most outcomes.” The study’s author admitted that it was not representative of stable families with same-sex parents, and the journal Social Science Research believes the paper’s methodological flaws should have disqualified it from publication. The FRC called it a “gold standard” of research. Is misrepresenting the competence of same-sex parents and the welfare of their children just one of those “deeply held religious beliefs”?

Of course, the FRC isn’t content with merely opposing the recognition of our families and depicting us as sexual predators – they’ve repeatedly challenged the very legality of our consenting, adult relationships. In 2010, Peter Sprigg appeared on Hardball and stated, “I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas which overturned the sodomy laws in this country was wrongly decided. I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.”

The FRC was also found to have spent $25,000 lobbying Congress against approving a resolution condemning Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which would institute the death penalty for anyone who had gay sex more than once. Their explanation was that while they don’t support the Uganda bill, they only wanted to remove “sweeping and inaccurate assertions that homosexual conduct is internationally recognized as a fundamental human right.” It’s not that they want us dead or anything – they just don’t think we have the right to do what heterosexuals do every day without facing “criminal sanctions,” like death.

And these aren’t just exceptions to an otherwise respectable record. At the FRC, such extreme stances are the rule. Whether they’re calling to “export homosexuals from the United States,” asking public health organizations to tell people to quit being gay as if it were a cigarette habit, recommending that teenagers be discouraged from identifying as LGBT in order to reduce teen suicide, comparing gay marriage to a man marrying a horse, describing efforts against anti-gay bullying as “telling school children that it’s okay to be immoral,” or comparing gay pride events to “adultery pride” and “drunkenness pride,” the FRC has made a name for itself. And that name is hate – proud, shameless, unapologetic hate.

What does Dana Milbank have to say about this?

Offensive, certainly. But in the same category as the KKK?

I have to wonder: if the KKK restricted itself to calling people of color child abusers and immoral sexual deviants with pedophiles for prophets, and demanded that they be denied health care and subject to “criminal sanctions,” would Milbank similarly object to calling them a hate group? Or would it be obvious that these are unambiguously hateful beliefs?

In asking us not to call this hateful, we’re expected to accept people wanting us demonized, detained, deported and dead as a normal part of American political and religious life. We’re the ones being told we must tolerate this as a simple difference of opinion – after all, it’s just “mainstream Christian advocacy.” To call them hateful is “reckless” and “inflammatory” of us; to be that hateful is mainstream and conservative of them.

There’s a remarkable irony in Milbank’s attempt to gloss over the particulars of the FRC’s beliefs by simply saying they’re “Christian.” He accuses us of calling Christian and conservative beliefs hateful, and yet he’s the one claiming that this unbelievable hostility toward our lives is just another element of Christianity and conservatism. Which is really worse: calling out hate groups for truly hateful behavior, or saying that mainstream American religion involves hating every aspect of our existence?

Not all deeply held Christian beliefs are hateful, and not all conservatism is hateful. But hate is still hate regardless of its religious or political origins. If these are your deeply held religious beliefs, then your deeply held religious beliefs are hateful. If these are your conservative Christian positions, then your conservative Christian positions are hateful. And if the FRC can’t be called hateful, then what can?

 

Zinnia Jones is an atheist activist, writer, and video blogger focusing on LGBTQ rights and religious belief. Originally from Chicago, she’s currently living in Florida with her partner Heather and their two children.

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News

‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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April 23, 2024

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Republicans in the Tennessee House passed legislation Tuesday afternoon allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons in classrooms across the state, thirteen months after a 28-year old shooter slaughtered three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville.

The measure is reportedly not popular statewide, with Democrats, teachers, and parents from the school, Covenant Elementary, largely opposed. The Republican Speaker of the House, Cameron Sexton, at one point literally shut down debate on the bill by shutting off a Democratic lawmaker’s microphone and then smiling.

Ultimately, Republican Rep. Ryan Williams’s legislation passed the GOP majority House as protestors in the gallery shouted their objections: “Blood on your hands.”

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The legislation bars parents from being informed if their child’s teacher has a gun in the classroom.

State Troopers were called to “prevent people from getting close to the House chambers,” WSMV’s Marissa Sulek reports.

“You’re going to kill kids,” one woman had yelled at Rep. Williams from the gallery on Monday, The Tennessean reports. “You’re going to be responsible for the death of children. Shame on you.”

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Democratic state Rep. Justin Jones said on social media, “This is what fascism looks like.”

“In recent weeks,” the paper also reports, “parents of school shooting survivors, students and gun-reform advocates have heavily lobbied against the bill, with one Covenant School mom delivering a letter to the House on Monday with more than 5,300 signatures asking lawmakers to kill the bill.”

The bill, which already passed the state Senate, now heads to Republican Governor Bill Lee’s desk. He is expected to sign it into law.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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OPINION

Trump Complains He’s ‘Not Allowed to Talk’ as He Gripes Live on Camera

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17 hours ago

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April 23, 2024

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At the end of another short courtroom day that required barely three hours of Donald Trump’s time, the ex-president spoke to reporters inside Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building to complain about a wide variety of perceived and alleged wrongs he is suffering, including, not being “allowed to talk.”

The ex-president’s presence was required only from 11 AM until just 2 PM. Judge Juan Merchan is overseeing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of the ex-president in a case that has already drawn a straight line through the “hush money” headlines to correct them to alleged criminal conspiracy and election interference.

Judge Merchan, for nearly two hours Tuesday morning, heard prosecutors’ allegations that Trump has violated his gag order ten times, and heard defense counsel’s claims that he had not.

It did not go well for the Trump legal team, with Judge Merchan toward the end of the hearing, during which no jurors were allowed, telling Trump lead attorney Todd Blanche, “You’re losing all credibility.”

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During the day’s hearing, jurors heard prosecutors’ lead witness, the former head of the company that publishes the National Enquirer tabloid, David Pecker, explain how he was working to help the Trump campaign.

“David Pecker testifies that, following his 2015 meeting with Trump and [Michael] Cohen, he met with former National Enquirer editor-in-chief Dylan Howard,” MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin reports. “Pecker outlined the arrangement and described it as ‘highly private and confidential.’ Pecker asked Howard to notify the tabloid’s West Coast and East Coast bureau chiefs that any stories that came in about Trump or the 2016 election must be vetted and brought straight to Pecker — and ‘they’ll have to be brought to Cohen.’ Pecker told Howard the arrangement needed to stay a secret because it was being carried out to help Trump’s campaign.”

Trump did not discuss any evidence against him with reporters, but he did complain about the gag order. And President Joe Biden. And the temperature in the courtroom. And his apparent attempt to stay awake, which has been a problem for him almost every day in court.

“We have a gag order, which to me is totally unconstitutional, I’m not allowed to talk but people are allowed to talk about me,” Trump told reporters, emphasizing the last word in that sentence.

“So they can talk about me, they can say whatever they want, they can lie. But I’m not allowed to say anything, I just have to sit back and look at why a conflicted judge has ordered me to have a gag order.”

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“I don’t think anybody’s ever seen anything like this,” Trump claimed, falsely implying no criminal defendant has ever had a gag order imposed on them previously. “I’d love to talk to you people, I’d love to say everything that’s on my mind, but I’m restricted because I have a gag order, and I’m not sure that anybody’s ever seen anything like this before.”

Trump then started to discuss the “articles” in his hand, what appeared to be dozens of articles he said had “all good headlines,” while implying they claimed “the case is a sham.”

Trump oversimplified the legal arguments attached to his gag order, as discussed with Judge Merchan Tuesday morning. The judge has yet to rule on prosecutors’ request to hold Trump in contempt.

“So I put an article in and then somebody’s name is mentioned somewhere deep in the article and I end up in violation of a gag order,” he told reporters, apparently referring to his posts on Truth Social with persecutes say violated his gag order. “I think it’s a disgrace. It’s totally unconstitutional. I don’t believe it’s ever – not to this extent – ever happened before. I’m not allowed to defend myself and yet other people are allowed to say whatever they want about me. Very, very unfair.”

“Having to do with the schools and the closings – that’s Biden’s fault,” Trump said, strangely, as if the COVID pandemic were still officially in process. “And by the way, this trial is all Biden, this is all Biden just in case anybody has any question. And they’re keeping me, in a courtroom that’s freezing by the way, all day long while he’s out campaigning, that’s probably an advantage because he can’t campaign.”

“Nobody knows what he’s doing. he can’t put two sentences together. But he’s out campaigning. He’s campaigning and I’m here and I’m sitting here sitting up as straight as I can all day long because you know, it’s a very unfair situation,” Trump lamented. “So we’re locked up in a courtroom and this guy’s out there campaigning, if you call it a campaign, every time he opens his mouth he gets himself into trouble.”

Watch below or at this link.

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News

Biden Campaign Hammers Trump Over Infamous COVID Comment

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20 hours ago

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April 23, 2024

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Four years ago today then-President Donald Trump, on live national television during what would be known as merely the early days and weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggested an injection of a household “disinfectant” could cure the deadly coronavirus.

The Biden campaign on Tuesday has already posted five times on social media about Trump’s 2020 remarks, including by saying, “Four years ago today, Dr. Birx reacted in horror as Trump told Americans to inject bleach on national television.”

Less than 24 hours after Trump’s remarks calls to the New York City Poison Control Center more than doubled, including people complaining of Lysol and bleach exposure. Across the country, the CDC reported, calls to state and local poison control centers jumped 20 percent.

“It was a watershed moment, soon to become iconic in the annals of presidential briefings. It arguably changed the course of political history,” Politico reported on the one-year anniversary of Trump’s bleach debacle. “It quickly came to symbolize the chaotic essence of his presidency and his handling of the pandemic.”

How did it happen?

“The Covid task force had met earlier that day — as usual, without Trump — to discuss the most recent findings, including the effects of light and humidity on how the virus spreads. Trump was briefed by a small group of aides. But it was clear to some aides that he hadn’t processed all the details before he left to speak to the press,” Politico added.

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“’A few of us actually tried to stop it in the West Wing hallway,’ said one former senior Trump White House official. ‘I actually argued that President Trump wouldn’t have the time to absorb it and understand it. But I lost, and it went how it did.'”

The manufacturer of Lysol issued a strong statement saying, “under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route),” with “under no circumstance” in bold type.

Trump’s “disinfectant” remarks were part of a much larger crisis during the pandemic: misinformation and disinformation. In 2021, a Cornell University study found the President was the “single largest driver” of COVID misinformation.

What did Trump actually say?

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out, in a minute,” Trump said from the podium at the White House press briefing room, as Coronavirus Task Force Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx looked on without speaking up. “Is there a way we can do something like that? By injection, inside, or almost a cleaning, ’cause you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. You’re going to have to use medical doctors, right? But it sounds interesting to me.”

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Within hours comedian Sarah Cooper, who had a good run mocking Donald Trump, released a video based on his remarks that went viral:

The Biden campaign at least 12 times on the social media platform X has mentioned Trump’s infamous and dangerous remarks about injecting “disinfectant,” although, like many, they have substituted the word “bleach” for “disinfectant.”

Hours after Trump’s remarks, from his personal account, Joe Biden posted this tweet:

Tuesday morning the Biden campaign released this video marking the four-year anniversary of Trump’s “disinfectant” remarks.

See the social media posts and videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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