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Anti-Gay Activist Uses Robin Williams’ Rehab To Argue ‘Ex-Gay’ Therapy Shouldn’t Be Banned

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An anti-gay religious extremist who supports the deportation of all LGBT people has now abused the memory of Robin Williams by claiming his recent visit to rehab was ineffective and — for some illogical reason — therefore “ex-gay” therapy shouldn’t be banned.

Leave it to the hate mongers at the certified anti-gay hate group Family Research Council to abuse the memory of Robin Williams and even ignore recent statements by Williams’ wife about his sobriety and recent Parkinson’s diagnosis.

FRC’s Peter Sprigg, who infamously answered “yes” in 2010 when MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked him if “gay behavior should be outlawed,” on Monday penned an article somehow conflating Williams’ rehab visit to harmful “ex-gay” therapy.

“Apparently, Williams quit alcohol and drugs cold turkey in the early ‘80’s, without any professional therapeutic intervention,” Sprigg writes.

He reported that he stayed sober for twenty years, but then began drinking again while working on location in a remote town in Alaska. After three years of drinking, a “family intervention” persuaded Williams to enter “rehab” (residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation) at the Hazelden Addiction Treatment Center near Newberg, Oregon, where he stayed for two months. After that, Williams told The Guardian, he continued to attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous every week.

Then just last month, news broke that Williams had again returned to rehab, this time at a Hazelden center in Minnesota. A spokesman for Williams said that he had not relapsed into substance abuse, but was “simply taking the opportunity to fine-tune and focus on his continued commitment [to sobriety], of which he remains extremely proud.” That was on July 1 — but six weeks later, he was dead.

Of course, it’s inconvenient to Sprigg’s twisted tale to include the facts that Williams’ wife stated he was not abusing drugs or alcohol, and, sadly, he had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

“Robin’s sobriety was intact and he was brave as he struggled with his own battles of depression, anxiety as well as early stages of Parkinson’s disease, which he was not yet ready to share publicly,” Williams’ wife, Susan Schneider said.

But Sprigg, an ordained Baptist minister and FRC’s Senior Fellow for Policy Studies, sees things differently.

Ignoring the readily-available history surrounding Williams’ tragic suicide, Sprigg asks, “In light of this history, I have only one question for socially liberal political activists — why aren’t you trying to outlaw rehab?”

I ask the question because such activists are trying to ban a form of mental health treatment — not drug and alcohol rehabilitation, but “sexual orientation change efforts” (“SOCE”), also known as “sexual reorientation therapy.” Such therapy involves assisting people with unwanted same-sex attractions to overcome them.

Nothing like abusing the memory of an internationally-beloved comic genius who devoted his life to the happiness of others, to try to advance a scientifically harmful and hate-flled agenda.

Sprigg discounts that the American Psychological Association has deemed “ex-gay” or “reparative” therapy harmful and ineffective, claiming they are no less safe or ineffective than “any other form of mental health treatment” — which is clearly false.

There are good, solid reasons the Southern Poverty Law Center deems the Family Research Council a certified hate group — primarily its dissemination of falsehoods about LGBT people. 

Add Sprigg and his falsehoods to that list.

 

Image: FRC

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‘Bring Back Joe McCarthy’: Fox Host Rages at Democrats’ ‘Communist’ NYC Candidate

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July 31, 2025

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Fox News intensified its ongoing attacks on Zohran Mamdani on Thursday, as host Jesse Watters delivered a sweeping monologue accusing the popular but controversial Democratic mayoral nominee of being a communist, portraying his supporters as “radicals,” and calling for the return of an anti-communist crusader.

“These are the same dumb Marxist ideas that we’ve been hearing for decades,” Watters declared, “and it’s just destruction. At a certain point, you have to think, democracy is not a suicide pact, right?”

“We’re just not gonna allow a faction of radicals in a great city like this to come in, elect the guy, and have it destroyed,” he said, appearing to suggest some form of action against Mamdani, who is not a communist but a self-described Democratic socialist.

“What kind of democracy is that?” Watters asked, suggesting electoral outcomes he opposes are not true democracy. “It’s not tolerable to do that.”

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Describing Mamdani as “Kamala Harris with a beard,” he went on to declare that while America “won the Cold War … Marxism survived, and these teachers at universities got bolder.”

“So you have unchecked immigration, and you have unchecked indoctrination, and you spit them all out into Manhattan, and they vote for a communist who wants to destroy the city, and we’re supposed to sit back and let it happen? I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Watters declared, appearing to suggest, falsely, that undocumented immigrants and non-citizens are voting.

“I think we have to bring back Joe McCarthy.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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White House Pushes for Trump to Be Awarded Nobel Peace Prize—and One for Economics

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July 31, 2025

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President Donald Trump has long craved a Nobel Peace Prize, and has bemoaned that President Barack Obama was awarded the honor but he never has. Now, it appears, the White House is campaigning for the President to receive, not one but two Nobels—one for peace, and one for economics.

In a rant during Thursday’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to make the case, rattling off a list of his supposed successes.

“President Trump helped deliver an immediate and unconditional ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia. The two countries were engaged in a deadly conflict that had displaced more than 300,000 people until President Trump stepped in to put an end to it,” she claimed, appearing to imply that his involvement alone halted the hostilities.

“The president spoke directly on the phone with the acting Prime Minister of Thailand and the prime minister of Cambodia to inform both leaders that unless they brought their conflict to an end, there would be no trade discussions or agreements with the United States,” she continued. “Almost immediately afterward, a peace was brokered that will save thousands of lives and allowed for trade negotiations with these countries to resume, and they have.”

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“The president has now ended conflicts between Thailand and Cambodia, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India and Pakistan, Serbia and Kosovo, and Egypt and Ethiopia,” Leavitt claimed—crediting Trump with a sweeping series of diplomatic breakthroughs.

“This means President Trump has brokered on average, about one peace deal or ceasefire per month during his six months in office. It’s well past time that President Trump was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

In March, The New York Times reported on Trump’s Nobel “obsession.”

“For nearly a decade, Mr. Trump has publicly and privately complained that he has yet to win the prestigious prize. He has mentioned the award dozens of times in interviews, speeches and campaign rallies dating back to his first term.”

“If I were named Obama,” Trump lamented last year during the campaign, “I would have had the Nobel Prize given to me in 10 seconds.”

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Leavitt was not alone in promoting the President for a peace prize.

Senior Counselor to the President Peter Navarro, also on Thursday, suggested that handing Trump a peace prize has been widely discussed, before offering another prize he feels Trump has earned.

“You know, a lot of people,” Navarro told Fox Business, “talk about Donald Trump for the Peace Prize, the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Navarro then pushed for another prize.

“I’m thinking that since he’s basically taught the world trade economics, he might be up for the Nobel in economics, ’cause this is a fundamental restructuring of the international trade environment in a way where the biggest market in the world has said, ‘You’re not going to cheat us anymore.'”

“We’re going to have fair deals, and everything he’s doing has defied the critics. The tariffs have been tax cuts rather than inflation,” Navarro once again falsely claimed.

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is generally awarded to researchers.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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‘Doesn’t Even Mention Them’: Judges Question Trump’s ‘Emergency’ Tariff Powers

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11 hours ago

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July 31, 2025

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Just one day before sweeping—and in some cases massive—tariffs are set to take effect on goods from numerous countries, many of which have not struck trade deals with President Donald Trump, federal appeals court judges voiced skepticism that the administration has the legal authority to impose them.

The Trump administration claims a 1977 law, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), allows the President to impose and negotiate tariffs, but no other president has ever used it for that purpose.

“IEEPA doesn’t even say tariffs, doesn’t even mention them,” one of the eleven judges on a panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C. told Trump’s lawyers on Thursday, as USA Today reported.

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The plaintiffs—including several states and businesses—who are “challenging the tariffs argued that they are not permissible under IEEPA and that the U.S. Constitution grants Congress, and not the president, authority over tariffs and other taxes,” the paper also reported.

“One judge [wondered] if Trump has the extraordinary, unbounded power to tariff on basis of ’emergency’ — and that he has total discretion to [declare] an emergency — why would any president bother with longstanding trade powers that have more onerous limits?” reported Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

“Judges [also wondered] whether they can review Trump’s claim of an emergency over the trade deficit, which has been persistent for years,” Cheney noted.

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The U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) earlier this year ruled Trump’s tariffs against goods from various nations including China, Mexico, and Canada were “unlawful,” as Law & Crime reported.

Observing that the Trump administration was “getting beaten up badly at oral arguments,” Washington Post columnist Jason Willick made this prediction:

“After this morning’s oral argument on Trump’s tariffs at a federal appeals court in D.C., the markets, the media and foreign countries will start taking much more seriously the possibility that Trump’s trade policy is in doubt.”

The Cato Institute’s Thomas Berry offered this view: “Holding that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs would be the cleanest and simplest way to resolve this case, and it appears that the Federal Circuit may be leaning toward that result.”

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