Box Turtle Bulletin

Amateur “GSA Site” Mistaken For the Real Thing

Update: I’ve rescinded the LaBarbera Award for the so-called “Gay Straight Alliance”. Click here to see why.

When I instituted the LaBarbera Award, I anticipated that I’d end up giving it to an ostensibly pro-gay site. I just didn’t think it would be so soon. But if this amateurish web site for the Gay Straight Alliance is a pro-gay “resource,” then you can count me out:

WITHOUT GSA ACCESS, STUDENTS ARE FORCED TO SIMPLY KILL CLASSMATES WHO TAUNT & BULLY – SHOOTING, STABBING AND POISONING ARE THE COMMON FORMS OF RETRIBUTION. FAR TOO MANY GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS LIKE BULLYING CHILDREN TO THE POINT WHERE RETRIBUTION AGAINST CLASSMATES AND FACULTY IS ONLY OPTION TO REDRESS RELENTLESS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN MANY REGIONS. SPECIOUSLY-NAMED “PRO-FAMILY” LEADERS ARE CHILD MOLESTERS WHO MAKE MONEY STIGMATIZING HOMOSEXUALITY TO SILENCE GAY VICTIMS.

So let’s dispense with the obvious and the obligatory. This is bunk. While there is some evidence that high-profile school shooters experienced marginalization among their peers, it is the height of irresponsibility to conclude that anyone is “forced” to kill classmates. Let’s be clear: Retribution is NEVER the only option, nor is it EVER a reasonable one. Furthermore, equating “pro-family” leaders with child molesters irresponsibly trivializes the very real pain of those who experienced child sexual abuse, and it diminishes the horrible crimes of their abusers. So let’s just be clear about that.

Whoever is behind this web site is peddling hate, pure and simple. It is about as legitimate as Peter LaBarbera’s or Mission America’s.

Anti-gay web sites are just beginning to pass this “portal” around as if this were the work of a legitimate gay rights organization. This amateurish web site, which is kind of slick-ish in that outmoded “frames and popups are cool!” sort of way, carries just the kind of hyperbolic rhetoric that makes anti-gay activists’ day.

GrasstopsUSA’s Don Feder appears to have been the first to notice the site. Linda Harvey of Mission America sent Feder’s article out in an E-mail Alert. Exodus’s Mike Ensley then made the appropriate condemnation while noting the site is not an official site connected with GLSEN. He nevertheless sought to make a link anyway with his call to effectively hold GLSEN responsible for any offensive site that may appear on the whole World Wide Web. Exodus president Alan Chambers then picked up on Ensley’s post and described the site as representing “the GSA powers that be.” And so it spreads.

Even Warren Throckmorton has picked up on it, and the comments on his site are interesting. Commenters who generally take anti-gay stances were generally somewhat more prepared to accept the site at face value as a legitimate site. Gay commenters however were quick to see through it. (Update: Warren has added an update apologizing for leaving the impression that the web site is connected with GLSEN or the similarly named GSANetwork.)

I invite you to look the site over carefully and notice a few things:

• GayStraightAlliance.org is not associated with the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), the national organization which is dedicated to fostering GSA’s in the school. The only link GayStraightAlliance.org has to GLSEN is a single, solitary link buried in one of it’s popups. There are no reciprocal links from GLSEN, which is a large, national, well-known organization.
• GayStraightAlliance.org is not an organization. There doesn’t appear to be any “about” page describing who they are or what they do. There’s no mention of officers, chapters, offices, or contact info other than an anonymous email. There isn’t even a donation page.
• GayStraightAlliance.org is largely bereft of original content, which probably explains its description as a “portal” at the bottom of the center frame.

Ex-Gay Watch’s David Roberts did a little digging and found that it belongs to a company called Event Horizon Publications, but little else is know about them. But the fact is, anybody with a couple of bucks and web authoring software can throw up a decent looking web site and call themselves a “resource for student support groups.” It doesn’t mean they’re legitimate, but it does mean that they can be grist for the anti-gay mill.

But worse, it also means that they can give a deeply disturbed student the justification he needs to act out on his violent impulses. And for that, they deserve every condemnation that comes their way, no matter where it comes from.

Shaming Gays – What The Onion and Peter LaBarbera Have In Common

The current issue of The Onion satire newspaper features the headline “Small Town Holds Annual Gay Shame Parade” accompanied by this image:

While The Onion clearly intends for the idea of shaming gay people to be satire Peter LaBarbera has increasingly been using the term in all seriousness. Here’s a Google inventory of LaBarbera’s use of the term “shame.”

Small Town Holds Annual Gay Shame Parade

The Onion has the details:

“To see a whole community rally together like this around a good cause—it’s really an inspiration,” said Ellen Lundblom, a mother of four enjoying the festivities with her youngest son, first-time reveler Timmy, 3. “If I were a lesbian, this would have really made me feel awful about myself.”

Interview On Sirius OutQ With Michelangelo Signorile

I will appear on the Michelangelo Signorile Show today at about 4:30 EDT (1:30 PDT) on Sirius OutQ 109 to talk about Exodus’s recent moves in the political arena. We’ll be talking about my post “Exodus Sharpens Its Political Presence” and Timothy Kincaid’s follow-up, “Is Exodus a Lobbyist Group?”

A Novel Approch to Reorientation

From England we hear of a new and effective way to change the objects of affection of brown tail moths:

Scientists are using a powder that spreads female pheromones – the smell of sexual attraction – and confuses the male moths, thus slowing the breeding. The powder is left near breeding grounds and, when larvae hatch, they are coated in it. Other male moths are then tempted naturally to make contact with them, believing them to be female.

However, I don’t think that Exodus should take this as an encouraging sign for their reorientation efforts with people.  As The Times noted

Moths have small brains and dreadful eyesight.

Sometimes Bigots Create Their Own Enemies

Sometimes decent people get so annoyed at bigotry that they feel compelled to respond.  When Bill Mills, mayor of the 12,000 residents of Truro, Nova Scotia, decided that his “Christian beliefs” compelled him to not fly a rainbow flag over City Hall it so annoyed and embarrassed heterosexual resident Sharon Farrell that she organized a protest to show her solidarity and support for her gay neighbors.

Well the haters weren’t going to take that lying down.  They hunted down her number and called to give her a piece of their mind.  Unfortunately they got the wrong person, Sharon Laura Farrell.  After hearing the vile comments left for her namesake, Ms. Farrell No. 2 felt she had to do something:

Ms. Farrell then sent the other Sharon Farrell, the rally organizer, a message on her Facebook account in which she detailed the calls. They later met at the rally.

“I was very impressed with her. She is very sincere and she was aghast that anyone would go to such great lengths to get a phone number or to make phone calls like that. I was impressed by her stand. It got me involved.”

And Now This Message from your Local Fire Department – You’re Gunna Burn

The City of San Diego, like most major metropolitan cities, sends a presence from its civic institutions to the various cultural events that occur throughout the city’s diverse communities.  Cities have long known that this builds goodwill and trust and helps with overall crime prevention and city management.

One such cultural event is the annual gay pride parade, in which the San Diego Fire Department has participated for the past 15 years.  Generally these events are enjoyed by the fire crew involved and is staffed by volunteer basis.  This was also the case this year until the crew backed out on the last day due to a family death.

Rather than cancel their participation, the department directed the local unit located in Hillcrest to drive the truck in the parade. 

“At the last minute the crew in that community was asked to step up and represent our agency in the parade,” [Fire department spokesman Maurice Luque] said. “We have a responsibility and we take it seriously to participate in these parades.”

This did not sit well with the firemen so ordered and they are now threatening a lawsuit.  They claim that they were subjected to catcalls and that they were heckled when they refused to be friendly or respond to the crowd.  While harassment is the purported reason for the objections of the fire crew, anti-gay bias seems to be the more evident cause reflected in comments by engineer Jason Hewitt:

“I was forced into a situation that would compromise what I hold true and what I believe in”

Those unfamiliar with the beautiful city of San Diego may not know that Hillcrest is “the gay part of town”.  It’s similar to West Hollywood or to Greenwich Village or Chicago’s Boystown.  Any firefighters working out of that station would have to assume that a great many of the citizens they serve and with whom they need to maintain relations are gay and lesbian.

But their attorney, Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center (an extremist anti-gay law group), described the event as “celebration of lewdness and obscenity in support of the homosexual agenda” and full of “debauchery“.  They even (gasp) had to see “men hugging and kissing one another passionately”.

The message sent to the gay citizens of the Hillcrest district is clear: your local firefighters, those who will be called upon to save your life and property, despise you and think you are lewd, debased, and obscene.  They consider your quest for liberty and equality to be “an agenda” and they consider waving at you to be beneath them.  They want nothing to do with the local inhabitants and consider it a compromise to what they hold true to drive a fire truck in your midst.

This stunt by these fire fighters and their gadfly counsel has seriously harmed the relationship between the fire department and the residents of Hillcrest and indeed all of the gay and gay supportive citizens of the city.  Frankly, if I lived there I would not be sure that a call for help would result in a reasonable response and I certainly would not expect any acts of bravery from fire fighters who think I belong in the flames of Hell.

UPDATE:  as it turns out the fire crew would not have been able to avoid the parade in any case.  The fire house is directly on the parade route.

The Union-Tribune has a copy of the EEO complaint made by the firemen.  It seems they felt they needed a “crisis intervention team” to deal with their offended sensibilities.  It is also quite clear that contrary to the claims of their counsel, none of their objections arose from the events of the parade but rather because they were required to participate at all.  The “offense” was not based on the behavior of the citizens but because they had to go to a gay event. 

“I asked Captain Ghiotto if he expressed my concerns to him and he stated I told him how we all felt and that Chief Pollard knows that afterwards that we are all going to write paper on this issue”.

The complaint is worth reading.  It’s a montage of homophobia, gay panic, and assumed privelege.  It’s clear to me that the complaining individuals believe they should not have to be subjected to the existence of gay persons – even in Hillcrest.  The most obvious or innocuous of calls (“Hey, Honey”, or “look at the big firemen”) were viewed as insults, affronts, or harassment.  And when they were blatantly rude to those watching the parade, they still felt entitled to deference from them.

Each of them were “offended” by the anti-gay protesters.  Not because the protesters were angry, accusatory, or offensive in their treatment of gay people but rather because the firemen weren’t gay and therefore didn’t deserve to be lectured.

Had they been friendly or waved at the people who pay their salary, they might have had a different experience.  Few citizens respond well to hostility and arrogance from city employees. 

Having read their complaints, that final sliver of sympathy I felt for them has now melted away.

Is Exodus a Lobbyist Group?

Exodus International requests contributions from its supporters by means of its website.  Exodus informs potential donors of the following:

We are a 501(c)(3) organization incorporated in the state of Maryland. Our tax identification number is 52-1413470.

501(c)(3) status refers to a section of the tax code identifying a specific type of non-profit organization. This status is particularly important because this is what allows contributions to such an organization to be deductible on the donor’s income tax return. It is this distinction that motivates many larger donors to contribute to non-profit charitable religious or educational organizations instead of candidates or political efforts.

Tax deductible organizations are allowed to take positions on cultural issues and can even do some minimal lobbying. They can extol the virtues of conservationism or decry the evils of greenhouse gasses or educate about immigration. But they cannot endorse candidates and they cannot be a lobbyist group.

In general, no organization may qualify for section 501(c)(3) status if a substantial part of its activities is attempting to influence legislation (commonly known as lobbying). A 501(c)(3) organization may engage in some lobbying, but too much lobbying activity risks loss of tax-exempt status.

An organization will be regarded as attempting to influence legislation if it contacts, or urges the public to contact, members or employees of a legislative body for the purpose of proposing, supporting, or opposing legislation, or if the organization advocates the adoption or rejection of legislation.

It is quite clear that Exodus does at this time perform lobbying efforts.  Whether it is a “substantial part” of their organization is a legal question I am not qualified to answer.  However, in general Exodus is allowed to spend about 20% of its budget on direct contact with legislators and about 5% on grass roots efforts.

Exodus may wish to contact its CPA firm to help determine how Amanda Banks’ salary is to be allocated.

See also:

Exodus Sharpens Its Political Presence

Congressman Tim Walberg Lies About Hate Crimes

In an amazing act of chutzpah, OneNewsNow, the “news” service of the American Family Association, claims that Steve Cohen (D-TN) is “lying” about hate crimes legislation.

But Congressman Tim Walberg (R-Michigan) says the bill does indeed threaten the First Amendment rights of pastors and churches.

“He [Cohen] said it was a lie — when, in fact, if you read the legislation it doesn’t go any further than what we have presently in place as far as actual murders and mayhem and assaults; but it moves into the thought police side in saying you can’t talk about beliefs and values that you’ve long held. The fact of the matter is that if you do, we may indeed be able to pull you in as an incentive to hate violence. That’s a chilling effect,” says Walberg.

The proposed legislation has no such provision. Rep. Cohen is correct. The law only addresses actual violence or specific threats to violence. It doesn’t cover speech or “talking about beliefs and values” because it can’t. No hate crimes law can overturn the First Amendment.

I’ve issued this challenge three times before. This will be number four. After the jump, I’ve posted the Senate bill yet again, and I challenge Rep. Walberg to point out where it tries to ban “talking about beliefs and values.”

The fact is, he can’t. And neither can anyone else, whether it’s the American Family Association, Focus On the Family, Family “Research” Council, Exodus, Traditional Values Coalition, or anyone else. Including congressmen.

And by the way, I still haven’t seen any of them having the guts, let alone the integrity, to put the bill’s text on their web site either.

Click here to read the text of Senate Bill 1105

PFOX Settles with VA School

PFOX claims it was discriminated against by a school that didn’t let them distribute propaganda claiming that gay people “can seek help and information in overcoming those feelings”.  The school claims that they don’t let anyone distribute flyers at high schools, period.  And now they’ve settled.

A settlement, reached last week, specifically states that PFOX will have the same access given to other groups and can submit fliers for distribution to middle and elementary school students if it wishes, said PFOX’s lawyer, Timothy Tracey.

It seems the terms of the “settlement” are that PFOX does not get to have preferential treatment at high schools.  But having won the right to do what they could do all along, PFOX is “considering” whether to distribute flyers to middle school students.

Gay Church Camp

One of my favorite weeks of every summer when I was a kid was spent at church camp.  Up in the woods away from family and surrounded by hundreds of other kids, this was a time for both spiritual growth and for bonding with other kids who believed just like you.

Logo is currently running a documentary called Camp Out, about ten gay kids from the midwest who got together in 2004 for church camp (Lutheran) and a chance to get to know other kids who were gay and who shared their faith in God.  I recommend that you watch this special if you can (it is available on the logo website).  It touched my heart.

Exodus Sharpens Its Political Presence

Attending the Exodus Freedom Conference last June in Irvine, California, was an eye-opening experience for me. For one, it blew away many of my stereotypes, which is always a good thing. But I also learned a few new, disturbing things that had escaped my attention before. And one of the things that dismayed me was how increasingly political Exodus had become.

While I was dismayed, I can’t say I was surprised. Exodus under Alan Chambers has always had a political edge to many of their activities. Last fall, Alan Chambers told Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air” that he was proud of political direction he has brought to Exodus:

And so as the President of Exodus, I have brought a new dynamic to the ministry in reaching out and dealing with these very sensitive policy issues and that’s something that I believe will continue to be a part of the life of the ministry of Exodus.

I got to see that firsthand on Wednesday June 30, the second day of the Exodus conference, when Amanda Banks, Exodus’s brand new Director of Governmental Affairs held an informal talk called “Revolutionizing the Public Square.” Playing on the “Revolution” theme of the conference, she talked about the unique role Exodus is playing in “bringing about a revolution, to affect a radical change in” the larger culture — more specifically, in public policy.

The Focus-Exodus Connection

Unlike most employees at Exodus, Amanda Banks is not a “former homosexual,” although she said she has a family member “affected by homosexuality.” She graduated with honors in public policy from Indiana University, and joined Focus on the Family to spend four years as Focus’s chief liaison to Congress working as a federal policy analyst.

It just so happened that her cubicle at Focus’s Colorado Springs headquarters was located next to Melissa Fryrear’s, a prominent Love Won Out speaker. Through Banks’s day-to-day association with Fryrear, she got to know Alan Chambers and Randy Thomas and their “growing desire to be relevant to the culture” — in other words, to make Exodus a more explicitly political organization. She and her husband moved to back to their home state of Indiana and she was hired by Exodus last March. She works from her home in Indiana.

But Amanda Banks still retains extensive ties with Focus on the Family. In addition to her position with Exodus, she is also vice-president of The Wabash Group, a public affairs firm dedicated to conservative political candidates and causes. Her husband Jim Banks is President. He is also a former Focus on the Family organizer for their Family Policy Councils, and the Wabash Group list Focus on the Family at the very top of their list of clients and employers.

During her remarks at the Exodus conference, Banks repeated Exodus’s mission statement: “Mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality.” She noted that when most people discuss the mission statement, they focus on the last part of the statement: “a world impacted by homosexuality.” But she said that her job at Exodus was a little different, emphasizing the first part: “mobilizing the Body of Christ.”

To Exodus, “mobilizing the Body of Christ” specifically means political engagement. Banks cited the “radical impact of the gay lobby” and lamented that there was no “alternative voice,” a void that she said Exodus is uniquely qualified to fill by acting as “a door to our stories and our truth.” And by way of example, she described the political lobbying trip that Alan Chambers, Randy Thomas and others took to Washington, D.C. last April.

The Look On Their Faces

Everyone in Washington had met gay activists — she claims that the Congressional majority “is in the pockets” of the Human Rights Campaign — but according to Banks almost nobody is aware of the existence of ex-gays. And so several Senators and Representative were visibly surprised to meet and talk to Thomas and Chambers who said they had “changed.” (She didn’t say which definition of “change” Chambers used.) This was a new concept to them, and she said their presence and testimony served as a power example to those they met.

And this gets to the heart of Exodus’s involvement in the political arena. By presenting examples of people who claimed to have changed — even if they really hadn’t — it drives home the message that because they could change, sexuality in general was changeable and not deserving of recognition of any sort in Federal law.

Banks later added that the April trip was not limited to Exodus staff. There were fifty Exodus members and friends representing five like-minded groups. They held fifty-five meetings and dozens of drop-offs when they couldn’t meet with Senators or Representatives personally.

Since then, her role with Exodus has been to perform coalition leadership activities, direct lobbying, and provide talking points to like-minded politicians. On that last point, she claimed success in helping politicians talk about issues affecting the gay community without sounding like a bigot. She also said that one Senator regularly consults with Exodus to formulate his messages and fine-tune his speeches.

Choosing the Issues

Banks described the process they go through in deciding which political issues to get involved in. The chief consideration was “policy proposals that would infringe on the ministry that we do.” And in deciding whether to get involved, she said they ask themselves two questions: 1) Does the issue affect our ministries or members, and 2) Do we have an opportunity to offer a unique perspective and opportunity to influence? And on this second point, the role of Exodus’s “door to our stories” becomes very clear: if “change is possible” then laws granting equality and protections for gays and lesbians are unnecessary.

She talked about a couple of specific examples, starting with hate crime legislation. She repeated the same lies that we’ve heard before (it elevates one group of victims above another, it threatens pastors ability to preach the gospel, gays aren’t economically disadvantaged and therefore aren’t oppressed, it creates a category of “thought crimes”). And for good measure she threw in a few more, saying that hate crimes legislation would include other “orientations” such as pedophilia and polygamy — a charge that comes straight out the Traditional Values Coalition’s playbook, and one that I haven’t heard any Exodus official use before.

Banks also talked about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which she falsely claims would require religious organizations to hire people who would threaten their mission. In fact, section six of the bill specifically exempts religious organizations from the act.

Building a grass-roots organization.

Banks then announced the creation of ExodusRoots, a grass roots initiative which sends out email alerts (like the one you see here — click to see the full size version) to members urging them to contact their representatives on various issues. She urged her audience to call their Congressional representatives rather than using email or mail, saying that phone calls are more effective at the federal level. But at the state and local level, she said that emails are much more effective because staffs are either much smaller or nonexistent, and the officeholder is much more likely to receive the email directly.

And speaking of the state and local level, future plans for Exodus’s political activity includes expansion to state and local politics. She noted that Chambers and Thomas both testified in Massachusetts against same-sex marriage, and lobbied against domestic partnership benefits in Orlando.

With Banks’s new position dedicated solely to political lobbying, Exodus under Alan Chambers’s leadership is now locked and loaded to take on all fronts in the culture wars. Exodus has moved far beyond its original mission of being a non-political ministry dedicated solely to helping men and women who are dissatisfied with their sexuality. Exodus’s previous protestations that they only want to “reach out” have now fallen by the wayside.

Now they are committing valuable resources to fight against gays and lesbians who are perfectly satisfied with who they are, with the intended result of making their lives as difficult as possible. Exodus is spending the money it raises from its member ministries to raise the political stakes ever higher. But it’s hard to imagine how their latest efforts will serve their clients and make their lives any better — unless it’s to make sound alternatives to the ex-gay “lifestyle” as untenable as possible.

See also:

Is Exodus a Lobbyist Group?

Better Racist Than Gay

So what does it say when, after being arrested for soliciting oral sex with a male police officer, a Florida politician defends himself by saying he didn’t really want to have sex with him, but went along anyway because he was afraid of the African-American undercover officer?

Peterson Toscano: Change Was NOT Possible

Peterson Toscano has posted the last of his three part series on why change was not possible:

The letter of the law kills but the Spirit gives life. No matter how much I trusted in the Spirit’s power, I had insisted that the Spirit enable me to follow the law of man and not the word of God, and the law was killing me.

…Sure I experienced change, but not what I had hoped for. The ex-gay process transformed me into a joyless, uptight, frustrated drone of a man, growing more and more distant from God despite the many hours of daily prayer and Bible study.

An Ex-Gay Survivor’s Diary

This popped up on one of my Google searches — an ex-gay survivor found his diary in the attic. It’s impossible to pick just one small snippet out of what he posted. This is just a sample:

R.W. suggested my “absent” father, and my desire to have a relationship with him is the root of this evil. And here I thought they always blamed the mother? :) What? A little humor isn’t called for here?

If my father thought he was responsible for this it would kill him.[…]