Posts Tagged As: American Renewal Project

Trump To Join Rubio At Anti-Gay Meeting In Orlando

Jim Burroway

August 10th, 2016

The Christian Broadcasting Network reported that Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump will appear at the anti-LGBT “Rediscovering God in America” conference in Orlando. The event will be held this week on August 11 and 12, coinciding with the two-month anniversary of the Pulse night club massacre:

Trump will speak to them about his push to repeal the Johnson Amendment. The law, which has been in place for decades, has made it more difficult for pastors to speak out on political issues and candidates from the pulpit. We should also note that former presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio will also speak to pastors at the two-day event.

Liberty Counsel Action, the political action arm of the Liberty Counsel, and the Florida Renewal Project, an affiliate of the American Renewal Project, are sponsering the the private event which will be closed to the public and press. About 700 pastors and spouses are expected to attend. David Lane, founder of the American Renewal Project told Bloomberg that Trump’s talking about the Johnson Amendment would be just “a good first step”:

“That’s a good first step,” said David Lane, the American Renewal Project’s founder. “But what about the religious liberty of Christian photographers, Christian bakers, Christian retreat centers, and pastors who believe same-sex intercourse and marriage is sin? These Christians were simply living out their deeply held convictions of their Christian faith when they politely refused to provide services for a same-sex wedding. Doesn’t the First Amendment give us all a right to our beliefs?”

Lane added, “Homosexual totalitarianism is out of the closet, the militants are trying herd Christians there.”

Last month, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was named the event’s headliner, a move which brought fierce criticism from members of Orlando’s gay community. Rubio tried telling the Tampa Bay Times, presumably with a straight face:

“The event I will be speaking at in Orlando is a gathering of local pastors and faith leaders. Leave it to the media and liberal activists to label a gathering of faith leaders as an anti-LGBT event. It is nothing of the sort. It is a celebration of faith,” he said.

So is it an anti-LGBT event? You tell me. Here’s a rundown on some of the other speakers that Trump and Rubio will be sharing a platform with:

  • Mat Staver: He is head of the Liberty Counsel and Liberty Counsel Action. Liberty Counsel defended Kentucky clerk Kim Davis’s refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. When Staver was dean of Liberty University’s law school, he taught his law students that they should counsel their clients to break the law in favor of “God’s Law.” And according to a RICO lawsuit connecting his law school to the Miller-Jenkins kidnapping case, his law school apparently practices what he taught. Last month, he denounced Orlando area churches for participating in “homosexual love feasts” by offering prayer services and open channels of prayer, and dialogue with the grieving community.
  • David Barton: He is a Texas-based fake historian who has said that God was preventing the medical profession from finding a cure for AIDS because it was “the penalty due them.” He has also repeated the false claim that gay people die decades earlier than straight people. In 2011 when Democrats still held the majority in the Senate, Baron claimed that prayers from the Senate side of the U.S. Capital can’t get through to God because “they get delayed twenty-one days because the principalities are up there fighting in the Heavenlies.”
  • David Lane: Right Wing Watch has this rundown, which included his 2013 statement that we would see “car bombs in Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Des Moines, Iowa,” because of “homosexuals praying at the Inauguration.” In 2015, Lane organized a trip to Israel for sixty Republican Party leaders which was paid for by the American Family Association.

Marco Rubio Announced As Featured Speaker At Anti-Gay Event In Orlando

Jim Burroway

July 27th, 2016

Marco RubioLiberty Counsel Action, the political action arm of the Liberty Counsel, and the Florida Renewal Project, an affiliate of the American Renewal Project, have announced that Sen. Marco Rubio will be speaking at its “Rediscovering God In America Renewal Project“on August 11 and 12 in Orlando. The conference will take place exactly two months after the Pulse gay night club massacre in which 49 people were killed and 53 injured. According to Right Wing Watch, Rubio will be speaking alongside anti-gay extremists like Mat Staver, David Barton, Bill Federer, David Lane, and Maine pastor Ken Graves.

Last week, Rubio was confronted by angry protesters when he made a media appearance just a short walk down the street from the now-shuttered Pulse night club. Protesters were angered by Rubio’s statement in which he said he was “honored to receive John Stemberger’s endorsement.” John Stemberger is Florida’s leading and best-known anti-LGBT activist as head of Florida Family Action. Rubio will now be sharing the platform with some of the country’s more extremist anti-gay activists. Here’s a brief refresher:

  • Mat Staver: He is head of the Liberty Counsel and Liberty Counsel Action. Liberty Counsel defended Kentucky clerk Kim Davis’s refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. When Staver was dean of Liberty University’s law school, he taught his law students that they should counsel their clients to break the law in favor of “God’s Law.” And according to a RICO lawsuit connecting his law school to the Miller-Jenkins kidnapping case, his law school apparently practices what he taught. Last month, he denounced Orlando area churches for participating in “homosexual love feasts” by offering prayer services and open channels of prayer, and dialogue with the grieving community.
  • David Barton: He is a Texas-based fake historian who has said that God was preventing the medical profession from finding a cure for AIDS because it was “the penalty due them.” He has also repeated the false claim that gay people die decades earlier than straight people. In 2011 when Democrats still held the majority in the Senate, Baron claimed that prayers from the Senate side of the U.S. Capital can’t get through to God because “they get delayed twenty-one days because the principalities are up there fighting in the Heavenlies.”
  • David Lane: I haven’t been following him, except for this post where he organized a trip to Israel for sixty Republican Party leaders which was paid for by the American Family Association. Right Wing Watch has this rundown, which included his 2013 statement that we would see “car bombs in Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Des Moines, Iowa,” because of “homosexuals praying at the Inauguration.”

Bryan Fischer “Fired” While Republican Party Leaders Travel To Israel on Hate Group’s Tab

Jim Burroway

January 29th, 2015

While news outlets in America are discussing Speaker John Boehner’s irresponsible invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress as part of Netanyahu’s re-election campaign back home, the Israeli daily Haaretz is filling its Israeli readers in on a trip being made by some sixty members of the Republican National Committee, with all expenses paid by the American Family Association. In the process Haaretz is giving its readers a good glimpse of what the AFA’s Bryan Fischer has said on behalf of the organization footing the bill for the Republican junket:

Bryan Fischer, the AFA’s director of issue analysis, has said that black people “rut like rabbits.” Moreover, in a September essay, he wrote: “We are a Christian nation and not a Jewish or Muslim one.” On a video segment on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” last Friday, Fischer was seen blasting gay activists as “jack-booted homo-fascist thugs,” and depicting Islam as “an Ebola virus that is lethal and deadly.”

…For his part, AFA’s Fischer, in a 2010 essay slamming the end of the U.S. military’s ban on openly gay soldiers, blamed homosexuals for the Holocaust: “Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.”

The AFA has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-gay hate group. GOP Chairman Reince Priebus sent out the invitation for the trip to all 168 RNC members in November. About sixty accepted and are going on the trip, including Priebus. Altogether 98 people are going on the nine-day trip that begins on Saturday. David Lane, who heads the American Renewal Project, is organizing the trip. The American Renewal Project is funded by the AFA, and is housed at AFA headquarters in Tupelo, Mississippi. Haaretz also gave its readers a small dose of some of Lane’s past statements as well:

His American Renewal Project is working to persuade 1,000 evangelical pastors to run for public office in 2016. “The Lord gave me this model of mobilizing pastors to try and engage the culture. Somebody’s values are going to rein supreme,” Lane told Haaretz, adding, “America was founded by Christians for the glory of God and the Christian faith.”

…We were established as a Christian nation in the name of God and for the advancement of the Christian faith. It’s my position that we’ve lost that,” Lane explained, in an appearance on conservative political commentator Glenn Beck’s television show “The Blaze.” “Restoring America to our Judeo-Christian heritage and re-establishing a Christian culture is the only way that we get out of where we are.”

No one from the RNC, the Republican Jewish Coalition, or the Anti-Defamation League would respond to a week’s worth of telephone messages from Haaretz for comment.

So far, this has been little noted in the American press, although it’s gotten to be a really big deal in Israel. Debra Nussbaum Cohen, the Haaretz reporter, appeared on Rachel Maddow last night to talk about the story. Maddow also reported that the AFA has responded by announcing that Fischer has been “fired” as a spokesperson and Director of Issues Analysis for the AFA. Tim Wildmon, the AFA’s president, told MSNBC that Fischer was now “just a radio host,” and that he was “fired” because of “the soundbite quotes, you know, the Hitler and the homosexuality one…” Maddow noted that even though Fischer has a long history of consistently making these same remarks over and over, Wildmon said simply, “we reject that.” For now, at least, while the Israeli public’s eyes are on them.

I’m still putting Fischer’s “firing” in quotes, because he apparently still has his radio program, carried throughout the AFA’s radio network of more than 200 stations. He may no longer have the title, but he still has the same national platform that he always had, courtesy of the AFA:

Meanwhile, more than a third of the entire Republican National Committee and its chairman will depart Saturday in the company of several Christian Reconstructionists on the AFA’s $400,000 tab. So for now, nothing’s really changed.

    

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