Box Turtle Bulletin

Hutcherson Attracts Conflict Again

UPDATED: See Below

Rev. Ken Hutcherson is the senior pastor of a 3,500 member church in Redmond, WA. Hutch, as he’s called, was also a linebacker for the Cowboys, Chargers, and Seahawks in the mid 70’s. But what he’s best known for is as a vocal opponent of civil rights and equality for gay people.

Hutcherson is a founder of the anti-gay group Watchmen on the Walls, which has been known to justify violence and murder, he’s lobbied to overturn Microsoft’s anti-discrimination policies (including a bizzare scheme in which he encourages Christians to buy shares of Microsoft and give them to him), and most recently seemed to reject the Christian notion of loving gay people (“The Bible says when a sinner will not separate himself from a sin then he is condemned with it.”)

Hutcherson’s beliefs are not a secret. But somehow the principle of Mt. Si High School in the Snoqualmie Valley either did not know or did not care about Hutch’s very vocal and visible campaign to reinstate legal discrimination against gay folks in Washington State. So he invited Rev. Hutcherson to come speak at the school’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day assembly.

Hutcherson, whose daughter attends the school, did not speak about his homophobic social activism but instead discussed growing up black in Alabama.

But some students and teachers were shocked that such a vocal opponent of gay civil quality would be brought in to talk about civil rights on a day recognizing King’s contributions. One teacher booed when Hutcherson was announced and another teacher asked Hutcherson at the end of his presentation how he could claim to speak about civil rights when he so actively opposed them for gay people. Hutch got offended.

The principle sent out a public apology to Hutcherson and gave each of the two teachers a “letter of discipline” in their permanent files.

Well this event has stirred up a firestorm in the community. The assembly has now been the subject of two contentious School Board meetings. Some parents are furious that any teacher should voice their “personal and political views” while others are angry that the administration would not support the teachers who stood up to bigotry. Hutcherson’s wife, Jan, claimed at the meeting that the beliefs of Hutcherson have resulted in the family being “boldly called names like ‘bigot’, ‘homophobe'”.

But as the event was scheduled on his birthday, I can’t help but wonder why no one is asking what Dr. King would have done had he been in attendance.

UPDATE:

Good-As-You brought to our attention a letter that Hutcherson wrote to his church:

Saturday, 09 February 2008

Dear Church,

Last night at the Snoqualmie Valley School Board Meeting, the teachers supportive of the Gay Straight Alliance drew a line in the sand, and I am stepping over it. I spoke to the Superintendent this morning and he promised, “…it’s for the children.”

I said I want him to protect my daughter and I want Kit McCormick removed from the classroom.

Another teacher at the meeting last night, George Potratz, said that if I am trying to repeal rights for gays, he thinks we should start a movement to bring back slavery.

Mr. Potratz does not deserve to be on the faculty of the school and should be fired immediately. Over the next few days, I will be talking with the School Board and the school officials.

My theme will be a line from a Pink Floyd song, “Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!”

In response to what happened, one of our members, Steve Dudgeon, wrote the following letter: Click here to read!

Pastor Hutch

I find it very disturbing that this man is trying to bully the school into firing a teacher for simply asking him a question at a school assembly. Does he really think that getting someone fired for disagreeing with you is remotely “Christian”?

The letter is even more laden with martyrdom language. Hutch and his congregation believe that they are the victims whenever those whom they are attacking stand up to them.

I was amazed at the vitriol and hatred shown by several pro-gay rights teachers toward us as Christians. They hate our guts.

In some rather strange parable about bull fighting, Dudgeon argues that a Christian is to go into a bull ring and wave a red flag. If the bull charges, the Christian demands that the owner of the bull build a smaller ring.

Oddly enough, I think that pretty well describes Hutcherson’s attitude and approach.

More Tacky Details about Rep. Richard Curtis

Thanks to Dan Savage and Jeremy at GoodAsYou we know far more about Rep. Curtis’ particular sexual appetites than we probably really want.

For more details, you can check out the police report (courtesy of The Stranger)

Without being too graphic, we know that Curtis is versatile, doesn’t like the feel of latex (and is willing to pay not to use it), thinks offering a potential sex partner “$100 for gas” differs from prostitution, likes dressing up in women’s lingerie.

We also know that Curtis’ toy has performed for the camera (Savage has the link for the truly curious).

UPDATE: KOIN is reporting that Curtis has resigned.

Add One More Closeted Anti-Gay Republican Politician to the List

First there was Mark Foley
Then there was Bob Allen
Then there was Larry Craig
Then there was Joey DiFatta

And now there’s Richard Curtis.

Rumors have been circling that Curtis, a Republican state rep in Washington, was being blackmailed over gay sex. Now the documents have been released and Seattle Post Intelligencer has what they say:

A Republican state legislator from southwest Washington had sex with a man he met at an erotic video store and then told police he had been targeted in an extortion attempt, according to police documents released Tuesday.

And just to make it seedier:

Castagna told police that Curtis agreed to pay him $1,000 for sex and also said Curtis purchased two gay pornographic films from the hotel for them to watch in his room.

and

Police interviewed several witnesses at the Hollywood Erotic Boutique, and according to the report, Curtis walked into a bathroom at the store and a few minutes later left the bathroom wearing long red women’s stockings and a black sequined lingerie top. A witness told police that at another time in the store, he saw a man with a cane performing a sexual act on Curtis.

Curtis, married with children, predictably claims that he isn’t gay. And because they NEVER are libertarian minded Republicans who get caught in these messes:

In 2005 and 2006, Curtis voted against a bill that granted civil rights protections to gays and lesbians.

In 2007, Curtis voted against a bill that created domestic partnerships for same-sex couples.

At first this stuff was kinda funny. Now it’s just becoming progressively more pathetic.

Watchmen Wrap-up

The Watchmen On the Walls are trying to get their last impressions in on their conference last weekend in Lynnwood, Washington. While they had anticipated that about 600-700 people would attend the conference at the Lynnwood Convention center, only about 100 people actually showed up.

Now, ordinarily such a dismal showing would be seen as something of a failure. According to news reports, there appeared to be more protesters outside the conference hall than inside. But the Watchmen are gamely putting a triumphant face on the whole thing.

Latvian pastor Alexei Ledyaev put it this way:

I am very pleased with the way in which the conference took place in California and Washington. Surprisingly, the news media attack on the Watchmen in Washington has made us popular, and has brought us many new friends. … I am sure that next year there will be an even better Watchmen conference.

Taking the adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity, they appeared to have been especially pleased to have been on television this time. Sergei Prihodko, US Coordinator for the Watchmen, claimed that “according to some estimates,” the publicity was worth half a million dollars.

Let’s see… Half a million, divided by a hundred people…

But despite all the attention, the Watchmen could not avoid their ominous rhetoric. The Stranger’s Eli Sanders observed:

Next Lively offers a disclaimer: “We do not promote or condone violence.” It’s quickly followed by more defiance: “We do not apologize for opposing homosexuality because it is morally, physically, psychologically, and socially wrong, unnatural, and harmful.” Technically, Lively’s statements do stop short of explicit calls to violent action, but they clearly lay the foundation upon which an impressionable and/or agitated mind could come to the conclusion that violence might be necessary to defend the Watchmen from their “enemies.”

And while it’s true that Lively, Ken Hutcherson, and others issued statements claiming that violence was not being promoted, there were some glaring inconsistencies. For example, Hutcherson said this about violence:

We have law enforcement, we have the police, and we have those who would say no that is wrong. And we have the responsibility if anyone is trying to take it that far to tell them that is absolutely wrong. That is not what the Bible teach. We’re not going to stand on anything the Bible doesn’t teach.

But holocaust revisionist and Watchman co-founder Scott Lively himself twisted the facts about Satendar Singh’s murder to paint the assailants in a sympathetic light before a Watchmen conference last August in Novosibirsk. What’s more, Lively has shown a violent streak himself. The SPLC reports that Lively was ordered by a court in 1991 to pay $20,000 to a lesbian photojournalist who he dragged by the hair through the halls of a Portland church.

And then there’s this ominous statement from another prominent Watchman, Vlad Kusakin:

“All of the events that happened during the week before the conference look like a filthy provocation. There was an incredible stir in media. We were accused of everything. Of hatred, of ties with the KKK, of incitement to murder! Someone has thrown this hoax in to gain political points. So far I can not tell for sure, but it looks like the root of this provocation lies somewhere in Latvia, and soon we will make all efforts to find this source and present to the public those real instigators and racists who wanted to provoke a conflict in Seattle.”

But if Mr. Kusakin really wants to find the “source” rather than a scapegoat, he needs to look no further than the Watchmen’s own web site.

Low Turnout At Watchmen Conference

It looks like this past weekend’s Watchmen On the Walls conference turned out to be a bust. Organizers of the conference had expected 600 to 700 people to show up to the convention center in Lynnwood, Washington, but according to news reports the conference drew only a little over a hundred. It would appear that there were nearly as many protesters outside the convention center as there were conference attendees inside.

Seattle television station KING was there with a video report on the conference. Box Turtle Bulletin was credited for relaying the video of the Scott Lively speaking at the Watchman conference in Novosibirsk last August.

The Watchmen On The Walls issued this statement Friday during a news conference before the start of the conference:

We are the Watchmen on the Walls.

We are a global coalition of men and women of every race, color and nationality who believe in the superiority of the natural family and marriage between one man and one woman.

We are against cohabitation, divorce, abortion, adultery and other behaviors that weaken the marriage-based society on which civilization depends. But we are especially focused against homosexuality, because those who practice this self-destructive vice, and have organized themselves into a political movement, are the chief enemies of the natural family.

We do not promote or condone violence.

We do not apologize for opposing homosexuality because it is morally, physically, psychologically and socially wrong, unnatural and harmful. This is self-evident to the vast majority of the citizens of the world, whom we represent.

…

We are the Watchmen on the Walls and we will not shrink from our duty.

Notice how they sandwiched a single statement about not condoning violence between statements characterizing homosexuality as “morally, physically, psychologically and socially wrong, unnatural and harmful” and the “chief enemy of natural families.” While they don’t seem to explicitly condone violence, they certainly couch their rhetoric in the language of warfare.

And in the face of real violence, Lively in particular has shown an amazing capacity to excuse it whenever it occurs. And Lively is no stranger to violence himself. According to the SPLC, Lively was ordered by a court in 1991 to pay $20,000 to a lesbian photojournalist he was accused of dragging by the hair through the halls of a Portland church.

See also:
Watchmen Wrap-up

From Novosibirsk To Lynnwood

The international anti-gay extremist group Watchmen on the Walls will hold a conference in Lynnwood, Washington October 19 through 21. Unfortunately, the Lynnwood Convention Center doesn’t appear to know who they are dealing with:

The venue is owned by the Lynnwood Public Facilities District, a public taxing district that operates the convention center but is separate from the city.

“Our understanding is that they’re law-abiding. They have a right of free speech just like any other group,” said Mike Echelbarger, the board’s chairman.

“If we were talking about the (Ku Klux Klan) we’d have a totally different take on it. Of course we wouldn’t rent to the KKK,” he said.

Of course, they wouldn’t rent to the KKK. But as we reported earlier, they may as well. The rhetoric the Watchman use has often been violent, using the rhetoric of warfare in their speeches and writings. Founded by Redmond, Washington by preacher Kenneth Hutcherson, holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, and Latvian megachurch pastor Alexey Ledyaev, Watchmen on the Walls have gained a tremendous amount of influence in Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia. Ledyaev’s fomenting of anti-gay hatred in Riga, Latvia led to violence when skinhead and other demonstrators threw excrement and eggs at Gay Pride participants in 2006.

And as the SPLC recently reported, the Watchmen also represent an increasingly violent anti-gay movement among Slavic evangelical immigrants in several U.S. cities which have previously been known as being gay friendly. In July 2007, a group of Russian-speaking men killed Satendar Singh, a 26-year-old gay Fijian of Indian near Sacramento, California. Two men, Andrey Vusik, 29, and Aleksandr Shevchenko, 21 were charged in connection with Singh’s death. Vusik fled to Russian in July and is being sought by the FBI. Ledyaev and Lively have refused to publicly condemn the killing.

Scott Lively (right) at the Watchmen conference in Novosibirsk, Aug 16-19.

I recently learned that the Watchmen held a conference last August in the Siberian capital of Novosibirsk in the Russian Federation. Scott Lively appeared at that conference, where he described Singh’s killing to his Russian audience his way:

Now, I’ve been working with the Russian community in Sacramento. And I want to tell you this is an example of how bad things are in the United States. Because we’ve come to a place in the United States where the homosexuals have achieved very high power. And they’ve begun to punish… They’ve begun to cause the political powers to punish anyone who says that homosexuality is wrong.

There was a situation in Sacramento a few weeks ago in a public park. There was a group of homosexuals and they were very drunk and one of the homosexual men was taking off his pants. And there were children in the park. And a Russian man went over to these homosexuals and he was rebuking them and there started a fight. And the Russian man punched the homosexual. [The audience starts to shout and applaud.] No, no, no, don’t… The man was very drunk… the homosexual was very drunk. He was very drunk and he fell down and he hit his head and he died. [Some in the audience start to applaud and laugh] No…. no…

Now the Russian man has been accused of murder and the FBI is seeking him. And all of the powers in Sacramento have been accusing all of the Russian community of being murderers. And the goal is to silence everyone who speaks against homosexuality. And this is a very dangerous situation because we don’t want homosexuals to be killed. We want them to be saved. Amen?

Do you feel the love?

Scott Lively’s fame in the Slavic-American evangelical community stems from his book, The Pink Swastika, where he blames the rise of Nazism in Germany on gays. This theory has been readily accepted among a population who suffered mightily at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. In a June 23, 2003 letter to the Washington Times, Lively wrote that “No clear-thinking person believes that the homosexual sexual ethic and that of the family-based society can peacefully coexist. …One must prevail at the expense of the other.” He repeated and expanded that war rhetoric in his remarks in Novosibirsk:

There is a war that is going on in the world. There is a war that is waging across the entire face of the globe. It’s been waging in the United States for decades, and it’s been waging in Europe for decades. It’s a war between Christians and homosexuals.

This is a war you haven’t seen yet. You’ve only seen a little bit of it, because Russia had been protected against the homosexual movement by the Communists. One of the few good things that the Soviet Union did is that it stopped the sexual revolution from infecting the Russian people. But all across the West, the sexual revolution changed the culture of the nations. The sexual revolution embraces the idea that there should be no limits on sexual conduct.

And this is the design of the Devil to destroy civilization, because civilization is based on the natural family. One man and one woman united in marriage bringing children into the world and training them to replace them in the next generation. That’s the foundation of civilization and the heart of Christian living.

And in the United States where the sexual revolution began, it was the homosexual political movement that designed this strategy to attack Christianity. The homosexual movement teaches sexual freedom, and its first target is the heterosexual people. The homosexual activists stayed hidden but they taught this philosophy through their activists. And out of the philosophy came the principalities and powers that is destroying the West: The pornography industry, the abortion industry, and the destruction of marriage through divorce.

These things are the product of a way of thinking. They deny the Truth of God. They deny the design of God for human beings. And their purpose is the change the cultures of the world.

Now, the homosexual movement has been winning this war in the United States, and it has been winning this war in Europe. And we’re looking at the future collapse of Western civilization. And Watchmen on the Walls is an organization to fight against this collapse. Watchmen On the Walls is an organization of men and women with courage, who will stand on the Truth of God and without compromise demand that the culture will follow the guidance of God. That marriage and family must be held at the highest level.

Ken Hutcherson has been equally blunt with the war rhetoric, telling the Seattle Times last January, “We better wake up. This is a war.” Hutcherson went to Latvia last March to speak at Ledyaev’s church in preparation for this year’s Pride celebrations. While there, he claimed that he was speaking on behalf of President Bush, saying that the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives named him “Special Envoy for Adoptions, Family Values, Religious Freedom, and Medical Relief.” When the Seattle Stranger asked the White House about it, spokeswoman Alyssa J. McLenninghen said nobody gave Hutcherson any such title or authority to speak on behalf of the White House. Hutcherson promised to prove his status by producing video of him being given the “power,” but no such proof has surfaced.

According to a translation of the Watchmen On the Walls website, Vlad Kusakin says the conference in Lynnwood is intended to promote the “protection of traditional Christian and moral values, which, owing to the liberalization of mores are under threat of extinction.” Kusakin is the host of a Russian-language anti-gay radio show in Sacramento and the publisher of a Russian-language newspaper in Seattle. He is also one of the speakers at the conference. Scott Lively rallied his Novosibirsk audience with a similar mandate:

If we allow the people who hate God to take control of all the centers of power, then they will change all of the rules and they will put barriers in the way of the Gospel. They will prevent us from telling the truth to the people around us. But if the people of God can step forward and take control of the centers of power, then we can make the rules work in favor of the Gospel. We can use the government to help us tell the message of Jesus Christ. And we must do this!

Hat tips: Ruslan Porshnev and BTB reader Tom.

See also:

Ever Wonder What Anti-Gay Hatred Sounds Like In Russian? — for video of Scott Lively’s talk last August in Novosibirsk.
The Watchmen: Protections for LGBT Youth Worse Than Holocaust Furnaces

Washington State Enacts Domestic Partnerships

Charlene Strong experienced a terrible horrer last December when her partner, Kathryn Flemming was trapped by rising water in her basement studeo in Seattle. Strong was initially barred from her partner’s hospital room, and after her partner died, she was barred from  planning the funeral.

Today, Sharlene Strong looked on as Washington state governor Chris Gregoire signed domestic partnerships bill into law which gives gay and lesbian couples just a few of the rights that come with marriage. These rights include  hospital visitation rights, the ability to authorize autopsies and organ donations and inheritance rights when there is no will. The new law takes affect in July.

Meanwhile, civil union bills continue to wind their way though the Oregon and New Hampshire legislatures. A civil union bill passed the Oregon house, and awaits action by the Senate. Gov. Ted Kulongoski is expected to sign it. In New Hampshire, Gov. John Lynch announced that he will sign that state’s civil unions bill if it passes the Senate. And in Colorado, Gov. Bill Ritter has pledged his support for a gay adoption bill over the objections of the Catholic Conference of Colorado and Focus on the Family.