Box Turtle Bulletin

Ever Wonder Whether Those “It Gets Better” Videos Have Ever Helped Anyone?

This video and this video helped the young man you see below, who says thanks:

Yet Another Poll Shows Young Evangelicals’ Increased Support for Marriage Equality

The Washington Post points to a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute released in late August that found a huge generation gap between young Evangelical Christians and seniors in support for same-sex marriage. PPRI found that there is at least a 20-point gap between Millennials (age 18 to 29) overall regardless of religious affiliation and seniors (age 65 and older) on every public policy position concerning LGBT people. The survey found that 62% of Millennials favor allowing same-sex marriage, 69% are okay with gay couples adopting children, 71% favor civil unions and 79% favor employment anti-discrimination measures. Sixty-nine percent of Millennials overall believe that religious groups are alienating young people by being anti-gay.

The gap persists among Evangelicals as well. Forty-four percent of white Evangelical Millennials favor marriage equality, as opposed to 12% of Evangelical seniors.

Taking religion out of the equation, the same poll also found that 49% of Republican Millennials also favor marriage equality, in contrast to 19% of Republican seniors and 31% of Republicans overall.

The same poll also found that 52% of self-identified Catholics favor allowing gay people to marry, and an identical proportion believe that gay relationships are not a sin. What’s more, 46% of Catholics think the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality is too conservative, 43% think it’s about right, and only 6% think it is too liberal. Among Catholics who attend Mass weekly, 37% overall think the church is too conservative on gay issues while 54% say it is about right. This poll also confirms earlier findings that there is a significant ethnic division among Catholics on this issue, with 55% of Hispanic Catholics believing the church is too conservative on homosexuality, compared to 43% of white non-Hispanic Catholics holding the same view.

The poll’s margins of error: ±2% for the general sample, 3.7% for white Evangelicals, 3.9% for Catholics, 8.3% for Latino Catholics, 4.5% for Millennials, 3.8% for seniors, and 3.5% for Republicans. No margin of error was given for white Evangelicals Millennials or for white Evangelical seniors.

Third Salt Lake-Area Gay Man Attacked In Two Weeks

Police in American Fork, a suburb community south of Salt Lake City, are investigating an attack on a hair salon owner as he was taking out the trash at 12:45 a.m. early Thursday morning. Police say that he was beaten by two or three assailants as they uttered gay slurs. The victim, 32-year-old Cameron Nelson, was treated at a hospital for multiple injuries including a broken nose. Police are investigating.

Two weeks ago, two gay men in Salt Lake City were attacked in separate incidents. One man, Dane Hall, suffered a broken jaw and lost six teeth when his attackers “curb stomped” him. Incredibly, SLC police are refusing to regard either of the attacks as hate crimes.

Could A State’s Refusal To Recognize Same-Sex Marriage Facilitate Polygamy?

A BTB reader at Virginia Tech emailed this thought experiment:

My spouse and I were talking yesterday, and a question came up that I thought you would find interesting—and that I’ve never seen discussed in a public forum.

In our home state (Virginia), recognition of SSM is banned by our Constitution. We could then, at least theoretically, each legally marry a woman of our choice in Virginia since the state won’t recognize our current relationship.

If we left the state on our favorite vacation route, traveling up the eastern seaboard, we would suddenly find ourselves in states where he and I are married twice, once to each other and also each to a woman. In those states that recognize SSM, I’m assuming our second marriages would be deemed null-and-void. Federally and in states banning SSM, the first marriage wouldn’t count, but the second one would.

The question then is, by creating this mishmash of SSM recognition by states, are they actually be default creating a situation where they’ve legalized polygamy?

Interesting question, especially since I would assume that if the guys wanted to get a divorce in Virginia, the courts would turn them down. As an added mindfreak, it gets even messier if the two women had also married each other elsewhere before marrying the guys in Virginia.

The Daily Agenda for Friday, September 9

TODAY’S AGENDA:
What “Love Won Out” Leaves Out: Houston, TX. With Exodus International’s Love Won Out conference heading to the Houston area on Saturday, Truth Wins Out has teemed with Resurrection Metropolitan Community Church for a series of events to educate the local community about ex-gay movement. Tonight, Resurrection MCC will host Ex-Gay Survivor and performance artist Peterson Toscano, who will reprise portions of his one-man play, “Doin’ Time In the Homo No Mo Halfway House,” which is based on his experience as a client at a Memphis-based residential ex-gay program. He will also perform excerpts from “The Re-Education of George W. Bush” and “Queer 101–Now I Know my gAy,B,Cs.” Resurrection MCC is located at 2025 West 11th Street in Houston, and the performance begins tonight at 7:00 p.m. And tomorrow, there will be a protest outside of Sugar Creek Baptist Church in Sugar Land, where the Love Won Out conference will take place. The protest begins at 11:30 a.m. Click here for more information.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Grimsby, UK; Humboldt/Eureka, CA; Limerick, Ireland; Mankato, MN; and Peoria, IL.

AIDS Walk This Weekend: Bathurst/Chaleur, NB.

Also This Weekend: Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, Austin, TX; Folsum Europe, Berlin, Germany; and OUT Film Festival, Nairobi, Kenya.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Reuters Reports Government Routinely Spied On Gay Groups: 1982. Information wants to be free, and the Freedom of Information Act uncovered a trove of documents from the FBI and the Pentagon which showed that the government routinely spied on gay rights groups throughout the 1950s through the early 1970s. An FBI spokesman said that surveillance ended in the mid-1970s under new rules requiring evidence of a crime before an investigation can begin. But two members of Congress, Reps. Philip Burton and Henry Waxman (both D-CA) demanded an investigation of the agencies involved. According to Reuters, “Among the documents is a December, 1965, memorandum from the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover titled ‘Homosexual Hangouts Throughout the United States.’ It instructs agents to obtain a copy of ‘The Address Book,’ a publication that lists such hangouts, ‘in order to conduct thorough interviews and for use in getting … leads.’ Another document said a 53-page list of homosexuals and persons ‘identified as having homosexual tendencies (or) as associates of homosexuals’ had been added to the files in the San Francisco FBI office.”

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

Dominionism Is Not A Myth, Continued

Evangelical Christian Warren Throckmorton has really taken this meme to heart, and he’s the only one I can think of who has. In his latest post on Crosswalk, Throckmorton takes fellow Evangelical opinion makers to task for developing mass amnesia with regard to the very real phenomenon of Christian Dominionism. And he has posted what amounts to a series of readings for Dominionism deniers on his own web site, and lays out why this new phenomenon matters:

The other issue for me is the erosion of the ability to dialogue with people of various viewpoints. The dominionists see their position as dictated by God. Thus, in a policy discussion, the dominionist can’t give up ground since it is holy. Opponents are not just incorrect, they are evil or as I quote in my article, one of the “enemies of God.” Who makes political deals with an enemy of God?

One can also substitute God for “patriotism” and make a damning indictment for the current state of political discourse as well, and I suspect that’s no accident. Dominionists aren’t alone among other Evangelicals more broadly who have conflated God with the Founding Fathers. So if questioning far right principles is heresy and makes one an enemy of God, questioning conservative orthodoxy today also makes one a traitor and an enemy of America. That’s how you reach the point where persistent accusations that the president is a secret Kenyan Muslim socialist hell-bent on destroying America with his terrorist pals is accepted as just another point of view by a major national “news” channel. Dominionists didn’t necessarily create that phenomenon, but they do dovetail quite nicely with the broader paranoia and self-anointing tendencies of the extreme right as keepers of pure American values. And it’s an extreme which is now becoming increasingly mainstream. That may explain why many voices on the political right can’t see Dominionists in their midst. They really don’t stand out anymore like they would have a decade ago.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, September 8

TODAY’S AGENDA:
What “Love Won Out” Leaves Out: Houston, TX. Exodus International will bring its Love Won Out road show to the Houston suburb of Sugar Land on Saturday, but tonight, Truth Wins Out and the good folks at Houston’s Resurrection Metropolitan Community Church will continue their series of events to educate the local community about ex-gay movement. Tonight, Resurrection MCC will play host to a showing of Morgan Fox’s This Is What Love In Action Looks Like, a documentary about the controversy surrounding sixteen-year-old Zach Stark’s committal to the Memphis-based ex-gay program known as “Love In Action” in 2005. Fox and Brandon Tidwell, a former client of the Memphis-based ex-gay residential program run by Love In Action, will be on hand to answer questions after the movie. The screening begins at 7:00 p.m. And tomorrow night, you won’t want to miss Ex-Gay Survivor and performance artist Peterson Toscano, who will reprise portions of his one-man play, “Doin’ Time In the Homo No Mo Halfway House,” along with excerpts from “The Re-Education of George W. Bush” and “Queer 101–Now I Know my gAy,B,Cs.” This week’s activities will wind up with a protest outside of Sugar Creek Baptist Church, host of the Love Won Out conference. Click here for more information. Resurrection MCC is located at 2025 West 11th Street in Houston.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Grimsby, UK; Humboldt/Eureka, CA; Limerick, Ireland; Mankato, MN; and Peoria, IL.

AIDS Walk This Weekend: Bathurst/Chaleur, NB.

Also This Weekend: Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, Austin, TX; Folsum Europe, Berlin, Germany; and OUT Film Festival, Nairobi, Kenya.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Time Magazine’s “The Homosexual In America”: 1975. When Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich’s picture appeared on the cover of Time with the caption announcing “I Am a Homosexual,” he was determined to become a test case challenging the pre-DADT ban on gays serving in the military. As Time reported, he was the perfect test case: “The tall, red-haired sergeant has an impeccable twelve-year military record, no known psychiatric problems, and a Bronze Star and Purple Heart won on one of his three tours in Viet Nam.” A five-member Air Force review board would hear his case the following week. He would lose that case, and he would be excommunicated from the Mormon Church a month later.

But on this date in 1975, he would be the face of the gay community as Time devoted several pages to the rising gay rights movement. By 1975, twelve states had eliminated their laws making homosexuality a crime, and the American Psychiatric Association and American Psychological Association recognized that homosexuality was not a mental disorder. AT&T and the Civil Service Commission had announced that they were willing to hire openly gay employees, and one major educational journal wrote that gay teachers should come out to their students. Time covered the usual ground for stories of this kind: a look at the new gay activism, the problems gay people face, the glimpse into a gay bar for that requisite dose of seediness (New York’s Eagle gets a mention, along with an introduction to a handkerchief code and bathhouses), yet the article manages to present gay people as real people — something quite rare for 1975. The word “gay” is used in about equal measure as “homosexual,” and the word “militant” appears only three times in the 5,400 word article. It did however end on a down note, warning of the dangers that homosexuality might spread if anti-gay discrimination were to end:

Says Psychoanalyst Herbert Hendin: ” ‘Anything goes’ is a legitimate attitude for consenting adults toward each other, but for a culture to declare it as a credo is to miss entirely the stake all of us have in the harmony between the sexes and in the family as the irreplaceable necessity of society. This is a society that is increasingly denying its impotence by calling it tolerance, preaching resignation and naming all this progress.”

It’s worth noting that while both APA’s (the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association) had declared that homosexuality was not a mental disorder, the American Psychoanalytic Association was much slower to reach that conclusion. It wasn’t until 1991 when the APsaA formally declared that homosexuality was no longer a barrier to becoming a psychoanalyst. It’s also worth noting that most conversion therapy today is still rooted in older psychoanalytic theories. And, it’s worth noting further that the argument that increased acceptance for gay people today will create more gay people tomorrow is still a staple of anti-gay and ex-gay rhetoric.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

NC Anti-Gay Preacher Channels Hippie Chick from 1971

North Carolina lawmakers held a press conference yesterday to promote a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that is expected to be introduced into the state legislature shortly. And in the latest installment of the battle of bad marriage metaphors, Rev. Johnny Hunter called same-sex marriage “immoral and unnatural” because only heterosexual acts can be “consummated.” Just goes to show his own ignorance when it comes to sexual matters. Anyway, Hunter then went on to use used a lock and key to try to make his case. 

But unfortunately, when I heard about it, all I could think about was this:

(For you wippersnappers who don’t know what a roller skate key was for, Wikipedia explains: “The rollerskates in question would have been children’s quad skates, which were clamped to the soles of ordinary shoes. The clamps were tightened with a special ‘key’ that basically was a very simple socket wrench. The key was inevitably lost or misplaced, in which case a screwdriver or other tool usually could substitute though at some inconvenience.”)

HHS Strengthens Hospital Visitation And Medical Directives Rules

The Department of Health and Human Services unveiled new guidance this morning to ensure compliance to new HHS policies designed to enhance hospital visitation rights for same-sex couples. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid sent letters to states outlining additional enforcement mechanisms for the new policies announced last year which require that medical facilities accepting Medicare or Medicaid funds allow patients to designate their own visitors during hospital stays and recognize advance directives designating a same-sex partner for making emergency medical decisions. The letter to state auditing agencies outlines guidance on ensuring compliance with the new policies, and marks the last step in implementing the policy change.

The policy change announced last year affected rules and regulations for safety and quality of health care that hospitals must meet before qualifying to receive Medicare and Medicaid funds. Because those rules apply to the hospital’s operating procedures as a whole, the policy change applies to all hospital patients, not just those whose care is paid for by Medicare or Medicaid.

In announcing the new guidance for enforcing the rules, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelious said, “Couples take a vow to be with each other in sickness and in health and it is unacceptable that, in the past, some same-sex partners were denied the right to visit their loved ones in times of need. We are releasing guidance for enforcing new rules that give all patients, including those with same-sex partners, the right to choose who can visit them in the hospital as well as enhancing existing guidance regarding the right to choose who will help make medical decisions on their behalf.”

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, September 7

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival: Austin, TX. The festival actually kicked off last night with an opening night party, but the main events really get underway this weekend. aGLIFF is yet another opportunity to plug Morgan Fox’s This Is What Love In Action Looks Like, a documentary about the controversy surrounding sixteen-year-old Zach Stark’s committal to the Memphis-based ex-gay program known as “Love In Action” in 2005. Two years later, Love In Action shut down down the Refuge youth program that Zach was forced to attend, and LIA announced they were “suspending” their adult residential ex-gay program last week. You can read Daniel Gonzales’s film review here.  I’ve seen various trailers for the film, but haven’t had a chance to see the finished product yet. I look forward to seeing it soon. Most of the events for aGLIFF take place at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar.  Schedule and showtimes are available here.

Also, What “Love Won Out” Looks Like: Houston, TX. Exodus International will bring its Love Won Out road show to the Houston suburb of Sugar Land this weekend. As part of a lineup of activities to counter the event, Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out will host an overview of ex-gay ministries tonight at Resurrection Metropolitan Community Church, followed by a pastor’s panel and Q&A. Tonight’s activity begins at 7:00 p.m. And while you’re making plans, you might want to keep in mind that there will be a showing of Morgan Fox’s This Is What Love In Action Looks Like tomorrow night, also at Resurrection MCC. Fox and Brandon Tidwell, a former Love In Action client, will be on hand to answer questions after the movie. And on Friday, Ex-Gay Survivor and performance artist Peterson Toscano will reprise portions of his one-man play, “Doin’ Time In the Homo No Mo Halfway House,” along with excerpts from “The Re-Education of George W. Bush” and “Queer 101–Now I Know my gAy,B,Cs.” Resurrection MCC is located at 2025 West 11th Street in Houston.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Grimsby, UK; Humboldt/Eureka, CA; Limerick, Ireland; Mankato, MN; and Peoria, IL.

AIDS Walk This Weekend: Bathurst/Chaleur, NB.

Also This Weekend: Austin Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival, Austin, TX; Folsum Europe, Berlin, Germany; and OUT Film Festival, Nairobi, Kenya.

Joseph McCarthy and his "pixie," Roy Cohn

TODAY IN HISTORY:
McCarthy’s 145 “Deviates” In The State Department: 1952. Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R-WI) anti-Communist hearings are a dark, well-known chapter in American history. His campaign to root out suspected “subversives” from under every bed wasn’t limited to Communists; there was a very strong anti-gay subtext to his witch hunts as well. For the first time, gay men and women were actively rooted out of all levels of government employment. Gays were seen not only as morally suspect, but also a security risk and a dangerous influence in government offices. In 1952, McCarthy published a book titled McCarthyism: The Fight For America, in which he laid out his crusade to rid the country of “Communists and perverts.” As part of his book’s promotion, McCarthy answered several question from the editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel. McCarthy accused several State Department employees by name of harboring Communist sympathies and took credit for their ouster. He also took credit for the removal of 145 “deviates”:

QUESTION — How many sex deviates have been removed from the State Department?

ANSWER — Ninety-one were forced to resign from the State Department prior to 1950 and 54 since that time. The Senate Special Investigating Committee had this to say about those who were allowed to resign: “In most of those cases, these known homosexuals were allowed to resign for ‘personal reasons,’ and no information was placed in the regular personnel files of the state Department indicating the real reason for resignation nor was the Civil Service Commission informed of the true reason for the resignation … Die ot the manner in which these cases were mishandled, 23 of those 91 state Department employees found there way into other departments of government.”

QUESTION — Do you claim that the sex deviates removed from the State Department were all disloyal?

ANSWER — No, but all were considered security risks. One reason why sex deviates are considered by all intelligence agencies of the government to be security risks in that they are subject to blackmail. Is is a known fact that espionage agents often have been successful in extorting information from them by threatening to expose their abnormal habits.

The Special Senate Investigating Committee had this to say about the high percentage of sex deviates in government: “The homosexual has a tendency to gather other perverts around him. Eminent psychiatrists have informed the subcommittee that the homosexual is likely to seek his own kind because the pressures of society are such that he feels uncomfortable unless his is with his own kind. Due to this situation the homosexual tends to surround himself with other homosexuals, not only in his social but in his business life. Under these circumstances, if a homosexual attains a position in government where he can influence the hiring of personnel, it is almost inevitable that he will attempt to place other homosexuals in government jobs.”

The worst irony in all this is that throughout McCarthy’s witch hunts, a young lawyer by the name of Roy Cohn served as McCarthy’s right hand man. During one of McCarthy’s televised hearings into the supposed influence of communists in the U.S. Army, attorney Joseph Welch accused McCarthy of accepting a doctored photo as evidence. Referring to Cohn, Welch asked McCarthy whether the photo “came from a pixie.” When McCarthy asked what a pixie was, Welch replied “a close relative of a fairy.” Cohn would later become a regular fixture in gay conservative circles, and died of AIDS in 1986.

Global Economic Crisis? Blame the Gay!

Mark Steyn is a bestselling conservative author. Frank Pastore is the host of the biggest Christian radio talk show in the US. The radio host has been promoting Steyn’s big lie about economist John Maynard Keynes.

I’ve written about this in depth elsewhere (go here, if you’re a policy geek), but to summarize, Steyn writes this in his new book:

In his pithiest maxim, John Maynard Keynes, the most influential economist of the 20th century social-democratic state and the patron saint of “stimulus”, offered a characteristically offhand dismissal of any obligation to the future: “In the long run we are all dead.” The Greeks [currently in upheaval over their economic crisis] are Keynesians to a man: The mob is demanding the right to carry on suspending reality until they’re all dead. After that, who cares?

He’s got the quote right, but the interpretation is pure dishonesty.

Keynes wrote that in 1923, snapping back at classical economists who believed the government should do nothing when the economy goes wrong. It’ll fix itself in the long run, they said — which Keynes viewed as small comfort to hard-working folks who lose their jobs or homes or savings before the long run finally arrives.  As Keynes put it:

The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again.

Keynes wanted the government to even out the business cycle by running budget deficits in bad times, balanced by surpluses in good times. That way we’re not passing down debt or a wildly unstable economy to the next generation.

I learned about Steyn’s lie when Frank Pastore repeated it on his talk show. Their agenda is clear:  Those who want to stimulate the economy aren’t just bad — they’re horrible, selfish people who care nothing about the future.

But what does this have to do with gays?

Well, nothing, I thought, until my Friday evening commute when I heard Frank Pastore interviewing Steyn on his radio show.  Here’s my transcription (or you can listen here):

Frank Pastore: Mark, I was just checking the Drudge Report:  the lead headline right now is talking about the United States for the first time in history is ten trillion dollars in debt,  and of course the reality that in the West at large and specifically here  in America we just can’t continue to pay for a social welfare state.  Where’s the money coming from and it goes back to something that Keynes said, “In the long run we’re all dead.” Explain that.

Mark Steyn: Yeah, I’m always struck by that line. He’s the most influential economist of the 20^th century. Barack Obama is a Keynesian to a fault, they fall back on Keynes to defend the stimulus and all the rest of it. [dramatic pause] Keynes was a childless homosexual, he was a libertine in many ways in his personal life. And I think that reflected his particular view of the purpose of life: “In the long run we are all dead.” That’s his most famous quote, it’s the one that’s in Webster’s, it’s the one you can — if you’ve only got one if you’ve only got one quotation from Keynes, it’ll be that one in whatever quotations book you look up. And I think that’s not how humanity works, that human existence is a compact between the present and the past and the future…

<snip>

Keynes just says, “Huh! Nuts to that, in the long run we’re all dead.” And that’s what you see in the streets of Athens, when those guys are rioting, and that’s what you see in Madison, Wisconsin –-

Frank Pastore: Yes!

Mark Steyn: — when those union workers are saying they’re going to defend those –- they don’t care if their privileges bankrupt the state. In the long run they’re dead, as long as they keep the checks coming till they’re dead, they don’t care what it does.

Frank Pastore: Yeah, and who’s going to end up paying for this? And, well, basically, screw our kids and our grandkids. And we’re doing that, and it’s like it’s the mindset of, “Well, hey, after all, in the long run we’re dead.”

Emphasis added.

Steyn isn’t just continuing to bear false witness against Keynes and Keynsians. No, he offers up Keynes’ sexual orientation as an obvious explanation of how the man could be was so awful: Surely Keynes wasn’t as terrible as that — wait, he was a homosexual? Oh, well then of course he was a selfish bastard!

You almost have to admire Mark Steyn’s big brass balls. He’s attacking Keynes’ character and he’s doing it by telling a lie! But that’s just the start. During the middle of dishonest rant about the debt crisis, Steyn also manages to toss in a smear gay about people in general (though to be fair, he might only want to slander childless gays, and he’d be just as eager to demonize straight people who aren’t parents — ya think?). It’s as if he’s doing a product placement for homophobia in the middle of his movie about the recession.  People are selfish, don’t care about community, want to steal from our kids, yada yada yada — oh, and it’s all because we trusted a homo.

Sadly enough, that’s one product that still seems to sell.

Two Men Attacked In Wichita, KS

From the Wichita Eagle:

Sgt. Jesse Boomer said two cars pulled up beside the 18- and 19-year-olds walking in the 1700 block of east Douglas, near Hydraulic, around 2:30 a.m. Six men, all in their late teens or early 20s, got out of the cars, accused the two men of “being homosexuals” and attacked them, Boomer said. The victims drove themselves to a local hospital, where they were treated for minor injuries and released.

Tammy Baldwin Announces Senate Run

Wisconsin Rep. Tammy Baldwin has announced her candidacy for Senate this morning. The six-term Democrat is running for the open Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Herb Kohl, who has announced his retirement. If she wins, she will be the first openly gay Senator in history.

Religious Groups Push for Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill Revival

There has been a lot of talk about the pending revival of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill (a.k.a., the “Kill the Gays” Bill) in the next month or so, or even as early as this week. This morning’s Daily Monitor, Uganda’s largest independent newspaper, reports on one important religious group in Uganda that is organizing a campaign to pressure Parliament to take up the bill. According to Daily Monitor:

L-R: Unidentified woman, American holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, International Healing Foundation's Caleb Brundidge, Exodus International boardmember Don Schmierer, Family Life Network (Uganda)'s Stephen Langa, at the time of the March 2009 anti-gay conference in Uganda.

Parents under the Family Life Network and Uganda Coalition for Moral Values (UCMV) have opened a fresh campaign to force the government abandon economic and foreign policy considerations and pass the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009.”We urge you to do what is right even if it is not politically correct. Remember that your first obligation and loyalty should be to the citizens of Uganda and our children who are our future,” they urged government in a statement signed by Mr Steven Langa, the executive director Family Life Network.

Mobilising under the ‘Uganda National Parents Network,’ the “Pass the BILL Now Campaign” the parents addressed journalists in Kampala yesterday and outlined their course of action, following revelations lately that Cabinet had abandoned the bill owing to international pressure from donor countries.

Langa’s Family Life Network was the organizer of the infamous March 2009 conference in Kampala which featured American anti-gay extremists Scott Lively, Exodus International boardmember (and current Treasurer) Don Schmierer, and Caleb Lee Brundidge of Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation. It was at Langa’s conference where Lively dropped his now-famous “Nuclear Bomb.” Langa followed that meeting with another one in which he repeated the falsehoods he learned from Lively, Schmierer and Brundidge. He also organized a press conference with a claimed Ugandan “ex-gay”, who was later found to have been paid by anti-gay extremists for his cooperation. Langa also appeared on local FM radio announcing the names of gay people in Kampala and demanding mass arrests, and he organized a march on Parliament demanding stiffer penalty against gay people.

Langa is a member of Phoenix-based Disciple Nations Alliance. According to the DNA’s web site, he heads the Uganda affiliate called Transformation Nations Alliance (TNA). The first DNA Vision conference in Uganda was held in 2000 at Stephen Langa’s Watoto Church (then known as Kampala Pentecostal Church). The second conference in 2001 was held at the same church. The DNA claims that Langa’s mission at TNA is to lead “to the restoration of God’s original plan for creation.” The DNA’s mission is very similar to the Dominionist “Seven Mountain’s Mandate,” particularly where they say:

The Disciple Nations Alliance began in 1997 as a joint initiative of Food for the Hungry International www.FH.org and the Harvest Foundation www.harvestfoundation.org to envision and equip local churches worldwide to fulfill their strategic role in the transformation of communities and nations. The Disciple Nations Alliance began by promoting a “school of thought” centered on the power of Biblical Truth for cultural transformation, the strategic role of the church in society, and the importance of wholistic, incarnational ministry.

In the latest report from Daily Monitor, Langa promises to launch a recall campaign against any member of Parliament who fails to support the bill’s reintroduction into Parliament.

Beware The Hordes of Homosexuals

Anthony Pugno, head of California’s Yes on 8 campaign known as Protect Marriage, is worried that some of teh gay might accidentally rub off on him as he is forced to “push through the hordes of homosexual activists” on their way to the San Francisco State Supreme Courthouse this morning:

Please join us, and thousands of other supporters, in prayer this evening and tomorrow morning for safety as our Legal Team pushes through the hoards [sic] of homosexual activists into the courthouse in the heart of San Francisco, and for the wisdom and grace needed to prevail in court.

Protect Marriage is arguing before the California Supreme Court this morning for standing to pursue an appeal of the Federal Court decision which declared California’s Prop 8 unconstitutional. That ruling is stayed until the California Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court works out whether Protect Marriage has standing to appeal since the State of California has refused to do so.