Box Turtle Bulletin

Oh Noes! The FBI is going to Teh Ghey!

Don’t you just love self parody?

The Catholic “news” source LifeSiteNews is trotting out the rantings of certified loon, Brian Camenker: “Obama’s FBI and CIA ‘going gay’ warns pro-family activist.”

Both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency have embraced the homosexual movement, posing a new threat to the country’s sexual morals and to pro-family activists, according to Brian Camenker of the Massachusetts pro-life and pro-family organization MassResistance.

Poor Brian Camenker. It must be tough going through life with no sense of irony.

Counter-Protests Overshadow Boston Tea Party Rally

The last thing you want is for the counter-protesters’ arrests and reports of “rushing the stage” to become the main story to emerge from an anti-gay rally, as that only serves to feed the persecution complex of anti-gay extremists. The only other story to compete with that meme is that of a photo that was posted on Flickr showing a Boston police officer’s hands around a protester’s neck. Criticism of the Boston police’s handling of the Tea Party rally prompted a statement from a department spokesperson saying that they would investigate, but that due to “the aggressive nature” of the protests (the short statement used the word “aggressive” twice) the department “supports the arrests made by the officers today.” The man in the photo was reportedly not among those arrested.

According to the narrative from Boston’s primary news outlets, those appear to be the main stories behind yesterday’s Mass Tea Party Rally held on Boston Common which featured Scott Lively of Abiding Truth Ministries an SPLC-certified hate group, and Brian Camenker of MassResistance, another certified anti-gay hate group.

Turning back to the rally itself, it’s very difficult to learn exactly what was said there. MassResistance posted a headline saying, “Mob of homosexual activists overrun & nearly shut down Boston Common Tea Party event as police look on and do nothing.” But if the The Boston Globe and local television reports are any indication, it appears that the rally was neither overrun nor “nearly shut down,” nor that the police “did nothing” amid those reports of arrests and apparent abuse. Online accounts of what Lively or Camenker said are sparse. One is from Mike Ball:

Photo by Mike Ball

Lively came on at the very end to give a benediction. Of course, given his self-righteous bent, it wasn’t a blessing at all. It was the eternal-damnation version of Deuteronomy 30. His went beyond the “I have set before you live and death; therefore choose life.” It was if you warn someone what they have to believe and they don’t do it, they’re going to hell. So there.

Some benediction, Scotto.

During his time, the counter-demonstrators kept up their yelling, calling him a murderer, in allusions to his Ugandan politicking. They did shout him down.

Photo sent to me from Matthew Murphy, who is shown holding the sign.

Ball said that turnout for the rally on Boston Common was rather small, perhaps about 100 people. About 40 more were counter-protesters. Another account, from Join The Impact MA, puts the number of counter-protests at 20, but they were joined by “100 exuberant protestors from the Occupy movement (who) charged onto the scene.” According to that account:

The din became an uproar as Lively took the microphone. In his speech, Lively blasted conservatives who would minimize the importance of social issues. Then he denounced LGBT rights activists as “fascists” who were intent on destroying civilization. Camenker met with similar pushback as he criticized the work of GLSEN for allegedly promoting homosexual recruitment of public school students—in reference to the group’s efforts to prevent anti-LGBT bullying. Lively and Camenker were loudly booed, and much of their speech-making was drowned out by Occupy chants and “mic check” counterpoint.

Not all counter-protestors joined the chanting. I (Join the Impact MA’s Don Gorton) argued that Lively and Camenker should be allowed to speak, both out of respect for freedom of expression and because they tend to discredit the opposition to LGBT equality when their extremist views are publicized. Yet the passions these two hate group leaders stir are difficult to contain. Tea Party organizers learned that giving a platform to anti-gay bigotry effectively drowns out any other message they may seek to propagate. The Boston Police kept the peace while allowing everyone an opportunity to be heard. By the time anti-government activist Carla Howell took the podium after Camenker, most of the “tea party” attendees had frittered away, the momentum of the rally dissipated.

The Daily Agenda for Sunday, April 15

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
Family “Research” Council’s Values Bus Tour: Westlake and Cuyahoga Falls, OH. The Family “Research” Council, an SPLC-certified hate group, continues its Values Bus Tour of Ohio. Today, the tour goes to the Cleveland suburb of Westlake for morning services at Church on the Rise. The bus will be there from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The bus then departs for an Akron Tea Party “Rescue America Tax Day Rally” at Fall River Square in Cuyahoga Falls. That rally features “Joe the Plumber” (Samuel Wurzelbacher, who is running for Congress to represent the heavily gerrymandered district that stretches from Toledo nearly to Cleveland) and Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH). That rally goes from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Scott Livley, Brian Camenker, Don Feder Speak at Tea Party Rally: Boston, MA. The SPLC’s list of anti-gay hate groups will be well represented at today’s Patriots’ Day Rally on Boston Commons today, sponsored by the Massachusetts Tea Party. MassResistance’s Brian Camenker and Abiding Truth Ministry’s Scott Lively, and Don Feder (who once described himself as making Atilla the Hunn look like a “a limousine liberal”) are listed as featured speakers. The keynote speaker will be Texas GOP Congressman (and LaBarbara Award winner) Louie Gohmert. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnston had been on the bill as another keynote speaker, but he withdrew on Thursday after learning about Scott Lively’s participation. Johnson will be at a competing Worcester Tea Party rally instead. The Boston rally will soil the Boston Common Bandstand from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Protest of FRC Values Bus: Westlake and Cuyahoga Falls, OH. GetEqual Ohio and Freedom To Marry Ohio will meet that FRC Values Bus events today with counter-rallies at both locations. The first one at Westlake will take place in front of Church on the Rise, and will go from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The second counter-rally will take in Cuyahoga Falls at Fall River Square from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Pride Celebrations Today: Łódź, Poland; Miami Beach, FL; Piteå, Sweden

AIDS Walks Today: Honolulu, HI and New Haven, CT.

Other Events Today: Women’s Fest 2012, Camp Rehoboth, DE and Scandinavian Ski Pride, Hemsedal Norway.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:
Leonardo Da Vinci: 1452. Born in Vinci “at the third hour of the night,” Leonardo was apprenticed to the artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence at the age of fourteen. Early descriptions indicate that he was tall (at least 5’8″), athletic and extremely handsome. One contemporary described him as “an artist of outstanding physical beauty who displayed infinite grace in everything he did.” At the age of twenty-four, Da Vinci was among four people accused of sodomy, a very serious accusation because it carried the death penalty. Those charges were dismissed on the condition that there were no further accusations. When accusations were made again that same year, charges were dismissed again, perhaps because one of those charged may have been linked with the powerful Medici family.

Undoubtedly, those accusations made Da Vinci very cautious, even in Florence where, despite those charges,  homosexuality was somewhat more tolerated than elsewhere (so much so that in Germany, the word Florenzer became slang for homosexual.) While there is no further contemporary mention of Da Vinci’s sexuality, it was generally known that the life-long bachelor was particularly fond of and generous with his handsome male pupils, some of whom may have inspired some of Da Vinci’s erotic sketches. Later historians mostly assumed that he was gay, an assumption that gained greater currency in the nineteenth century when German, French and British authors began examining the new understanding of what was to be called inversion, uranism, and, finally, homosexuality. Whenever nineteenth century authors sought examples of inverts in history, Da Vinci’s name nearly always earned a prominent mention.

Bessie Smith: 1894. “The Empress of the Blues” was born in Chattanooga, the daughter of a laborer and part-time Baptist preacher. He died before she could remember him, and by the time she was nine, she had lost her mother and a brother. Her older brother had joined a Black Vaudeville troupe owned by Moses Stokes, which featured Ma Rainey as blues singer. In 1912, Bessie joined that same troupe, but as a dancer rather than a singer. While it’s believed that Rainey didn’t teach Smith to sing, (Smith had been singing on the streets of Chattanooga from a very young age), Rainey is credited with teaching Smith about stage presence. By 1913, Smith began singing professionally, and her career exploded in 1923 when she began recording for Columbia Records. By then, she was the highest-paid African-American entertainer in her day.

In 1923, she entered a very stormy marriage with Jack Gee, but he was unable to accommodate her show-biz life or her open bisexuality. They separated but never officially divorced. Meanwhile, she recorded hit after hit for Columbia, including “Downhearted Blues,” “St. Louis Blues”, “Empty Bed Blues,” and the tune she is perhaps best known for today, “Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer).” By the end of the 1920’s, the arrival of the “talkies” meant the end of vaudeville, while the onset of the Great Depression brought about a collapse of the recording industry. Smith continued touring in clubs, but the going was tough. By 1933, she was recording for Okeh records, where she was paid a non-royalty fee of $37.50 for each side. Those were her last recordings. She was critically injured in a car accident in 1937, her right arm nearly severed in the accident. She died the following morning at the G.T. Thomas Afro-American Hospital in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Her funeral in Philadelphia drew 10,000 mourners. Her grave however remained unmarked; her estranged husband kept pocketing the money raised for a tombstone. She finally got her marker in 1970, courtesy of Janis Joplin.

George Platt Lynes: 1907. He first wanted to start a literary career after meeting Gertrude Stein and her circle in Paris. In 1927, he opened a bookstore in Englewood, New Jersey and took up photography so he could take pictures of his friends, and that is where his creative energies went. By 1932 Lynes opened his photography studio in New York and began exhibiting in the city’s art galleries. He earned commissions from the New York City Ballet, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bergdorf Goodmans. After World War II, he moved to Hollywood, where he became chief photographer for Vogue and photographed such illuminaries as Katharine Hepburn, Gloria SWanson, Igor Stravinsky, and Thomas Mann. His work was an artistic success, but a financial failure. He moved back to New York, but was never able to re-establish the success he once had.

The passion he had for his photography can be best seen in the photos that he took which harkened back to his reason for taking up photography in the first place: intimate (usually nude) photos of friends, lovers, performers and models. The artist Paul Cadmus, who posed for Lynes, recalled how he “used flattery to make everyone feel so comfortable.” Those male nudes were never published, at least not in his lifetime. In the late 1940s, he transfered many of his negatives to Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s Institute for Sexual Research in Bloomington, Indiana, and destroyed much of the rest of his work just before dying of lung cancer in 1955. In 2011, Rizolli published George Platt Lynes: The Male Nudes, marking the first time many of his beloved nudes appeared in print.

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

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

MassResistance Endorses Scott Lively As Write-In Candidate for Governor

Scott Lively calls Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill "the lesser of two evils."

MassResistance, the most prominent group in Massachusetts that has been fighting a quixotic battle against ‘the state’s same-sex marriage law since the Goodridge decision, has become increasingly rabid in its anti-gay opposition. So much so, that they are one of only fourteen anti-gay hate groups tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center. (That’s out of 932 active hate groups in the United States the SPLC tracked in 2009.) But to give you an indication of how firmly entrenched they are in the politics of personal vilification, MassResistance has now endorsed holocaust revisionist Scott Lively as write-in candidate for Massachusetts governor in the GOP primary:

Lively is everything that (GOP primary front-runner) Charlie Baker is not. He is principled, pro-family, pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-2nd-amendment, pro-religion, pro-parents’ rights, and utterly fearless.

Send a clear message to the RINO establishment

There’s nothing quite like voting for someone you actually support, rather than the lesser of two (or three) evils.

And by thousands (we hope!) of people voting for Scott Lively as a write-in candidate in the September 14 Republican Primary, a very strong statement will be made to the RINO Republican establishment, especially since relatively few people vote in most primaries. Don’t assume you own us. What you’re selling, we’re not buying. The people running the Massachusetts Republican Party love to use social conservatives to do the grunt work on campaigns, but they arrogantly see themselves as above “dirtying” themselves with the principled issues that conservatives care about.

Scott Lively is best known as the author of the widely discredited book, The Pink Swastika, in which he claims that the Nazi movement was, at its core, a gay movement, and that the inevitable result of LGBT equality would be the imposition of murderous fascism. He recently argued that repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would result in a Nazi takeover of the U.S. military, and he told The Daily Show that gay men exhibit absolutely no moral restraint whatsoever.

In March 2009, Lively was one of three American anti-gay activists to deliver what he called his “Nuclear Bomb against the gay agenda” at a conference in Kampala, Uganda which ultimately led to the introduction of the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill in Uganda’s Parliament. That bill calls for the death penalty against LGBT people under certain circumstances, and virtually criminalizes knowing or providing services to gay people. Lively has called that bill “a step in the right direction” and “the lesser of two evils,” although he claims to oppose the death penalty and has falsely claimed on multiple occasions that the death penalty has been removed from the bill. It has not. The bill, while unchanged, now appears stalled in two Parliamentary committees following international outcry.

Scott Lively himself is no stranger to the SPLC’s list of anti-gay hate groups. His own Abiding Truth Ministries, now based in Springfield, Massachusets, is also listed as an anti-gay hate group. He has worked closely with the other two Massachusetts-based anti-gay hate groups. He delivered a series of lectures at the School of Christian Activism, which is a ministry of the New Generation Christian Center. New Generation itself is a ministry of Latvia-based pastor Alexey Ledyaev, founder of the New Generation Movement. Lively and Ledyaev co-founded an international anti-gay movement known as Watchmen On the Walls, which is also listed as an anti-gay hate group by the SPLC.

(By the way, here’s a trivia note. The picture that MassResistance posted in their endorsement of Scott Lively is a cropped version of my screen-capture from video of Lively speaking on the first day of a Watchmen On the Walls conference in Riga, Latvia. What, they couldn’t get a headshot from their good friend?)

Which means, for those of you keeping track, that Lively is now working very closely with four of the fourteen anti-gay hate groups tracked by the SPLC.

Scott Lively’s ties with MassResistance are deep. He has appeared on MassResistance’s podcast as far back as 2006, and his writings are promoted in MassResistance’s web site. Last March, Lively joined Peter LaBarbera to speak at a MassResistance banquet. Last March, Lively joined Peter LaBarbera to speak at a MassResistance banquet.

MassResistance’s Brian Camenker spoke at a rally put on by the Plymouth Rock Tea Party last July. This appearance followed the cancellation of another Tea Party rally on the Lexington Battle Green due to controversy over Camenker’s participation.  Camenker will also appear at a South Boston Tea Party rally on Aug 22, where the featured speaker will be Don Feder. It should come as no surprise that Feder, who once described himself as being “to the right of Attila the Hun,” was also a featured speaker at the Watchmen’s Riga conference. Anti-gay extremism forms a very tight little world.

Hate Group Holds Press Conference At Maine Statehouse For Question 1

Brian Camenker of MassResistance, one of only eleven anti-gay hate groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center, held a rally and press conference in the Hall of Flags at the Maine State House in Augusta. He will be joined by two other anti-gay extremists, Peter (“Porno Pete“) LaBarbera and Paul Madore of the Maine Grassroots Coalition.

According to the group’s press release, “Speakers at the press conference will expose the hidden aspects of the radical homosexual agenda, and will reveal how Maine is being manipulated into voting No on 1.”

Brian Camenker certainly has a knack for making the news. Last October, he an an accomplice, Michael Olivio, were chased by Andover, Mass., police who were responding to 911 calls from parents who were concerned about two men taking pictures at a middle school. For some reason, Olivio thought it would be smart to begin stripping his clothes while running through neighbors’ backyards during the chase:

We don’t know what his intention and purpose was around the school and the kids,” said police Lt. James Hashem.

But Michael Olivio’s employer has come forward to back up his story. Olivio, 48, works for the anti-gay rights group MassResistance.org. Brian Camenker, head of the group, said Olivio mistakenly went to West Middle School Tuesday to snap pictures instead of the high school.

Camenker said Olivio was to get pictures of the high school because the state Commission on Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgendered Youth held a meeting there Monday night.

“I figured I would do a write-up for the Web site and I wanted a picture of the high school,” Camenker said.

All three extremists have plenty of buffoonery in their history. Peter LaBarbera is particularly responsible for publishing among the most vile anti-gay tracts in the entire movement. He has long defended the discredited research of Paul Cameron, who has advocated the quarantining and medical extermination of gay people; he has deep connections with Holocauset revisionist Scott Lively, who insists that Nazism was, at its core, a homosexual movement; and he has openly defended White Supremacists when they assault LGBT people.

This press conference comes squarely on the heals of Stand for Marriage Maine’s attempt to project a softer and kinder image. Jeff Connely Jesse Connolly, Campaign manager for Protect Maine Equality issued a press release denouncing the true face of the anti-gay crowd:

This is not the new face of the Yes campaign, it’s been there all along. They can swap out their TV ads from attacks that have been called baseless by the Maine Attorney General and Maine newspapers across the state, to a gentler, softer approach, but the result is the same. They don’t believe in treating all Maine families equally and these national and local spokespeople represent some of the most vitriolic, anti-gay voices in the country.

“They can’t have it both ways — to pretend to back civil rights, yet stand behind a group like Mass Resistance which is one of only 11 designated anti-gay hate groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. And they can’t stand behind Peter LaBarbera who has attacked Ben & Jerry’s, supported rescinding women’s right to vote and believes we should return to the Old Testament where gay people were stoned. And they can’t stand behind Paul Madore and the Maine Grassroots Coalition which is behind some of the most anti-gay hate speech over the last 20 years.

Huckabee, Bauchmann, McClintock To Speak At Conference Featuring Hate Group

Former Arkansas Governor and GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, Rep. Michele Bachman (R-MN), and Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA are confirmed speakers at the upcoming Take America Conference in St. Louis September 25 and 26. This same conference invited MassResistance to give a workshop titled “How to counter the homosexual extremist movement,” presumably on of the strength of their resounding successes in Massachusetts.

MassResistance is one of only eleven anti-gay groups designated as an official hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. MassResistance has developed closes ties with Holocaust Revisionist Scott Lively, where he was a featured speaker at the MassResistance banquet last January. Conference connections to hate groups don’t end with MassResistance. Host committee member Don Feder spoke at the 2007 Watchmen On the Walls conference in Riga, Latvia. The Watchmen, another SPLC-designated hate group, was also co-founded by Scott Lively.

The Take America Back conference is co-chaired by Phyllis Schlafly (Eagle Forum) and Janet Folger Porter (Faith2Action). Other host committee members include LaBarbera Award Winners Mat Staver (Liberty Counsel) and Rick Scarborough (Vision America), as well as Don Wildmon (American Family Association) Dick Bott (Bott Radio Network), Michael Farris (Home School Legal Defense Association), Phillip Jauregui (Judicial Action Group), Rick Green (Wallbuilders), and Joseph Farah (WorldNetDaily).

“We’re Going To Suffer Some Kind Of Infrastructure Collapse” — All Because Of The Gays

In an amateur video posted this week on YouTube, Scott Lively talked about his work in “re-Christianizing America,” which is threatened by an “infrastructure collapse” brought on by that dreaded gay agenda:

Frankly, I see things simply disintegrating very rapidly and I believe that we’re going to suffer some kind of infrastructure collapse in this society because of the failure of moral culture, and that Christians have a responsibility to continue to oppose this disintegration.”

Scott Lively is famous for his book, The Pink Swastika, which claims that the Nazi party was, at it’s core, a murderous homosexual movement, and that fascism is the inevitable result of any expansion of gay rights. Last spring, he appeared at an anti-gay conference in Kampala, Uganda with Exodus board member Don Schmierer. That conference called for a strengthening of that country’s already draconian law against homosexuality which already provides for a lifetime imprisonment for those convicted. That conference kicked off a long-running public anti-gay vigilante campaign which is still reverberating through the country. A bill has been announced before Uganda’s parliament to rescind free-speech protections for LGBT people and place an outright ban on all advocacy on their behalf.

In this latest video, Lively sees himself as a missionary to Massachusetts, saying he moved to Springfield from Temecula, California, because “Massachusetts is the most morally corrupt state in the union.” He offered his latest brain-droppings while preparing to speak before a committee of the Massachusetts House against a bill which would provide hate crime and non-discrimination protections on the basis of sexual identity and expression.  Lively identified that bill as one of “two hundred other bills that’s being heard today” which he thinks are just as bad, so he has to pick and choose his battles. “We don’t have time to deal with them all,” he shrugs. You can guess which one he chose:

The only solution we have to this kind of a problem is for good people, godly, god-fearing people who hold to the truth of the Bible to be sitting in those seats and making the decisions. Lacking that, we have to scramble to try to come and testify on the ones that are the most critical, like this transgender hate crimes bill, and sort of live with the frustration that our efforts are not sufficient to stop the trend.

Lively is optimistic though. He’s convinced that things will get so bad that people will eventually turn back to his particular version of God:

…[A]s it has always happened in the past, people are going to cry out to God, and they’re going to repent. They’re going to look for a way out of that problem, out of that crisis, just like happened right after 9/11. You remember it lasted three weeks or so after 9/11 you saw a little glimpse of that. But I think that’s going to happen again, and if those of us who are true to His Word are preparing ourselves for that day, then we will be able to begin to rebuild on a more Biblical and more logical and more family-friendly footing.”

Watch it:

Scott Lively’s Abiding Truth Ministries is one of only twelve groups on the Southern Poverty Law Center\’s list of anti-gay hate groups. His is also co-founder of Watchmen On the Walls, another international group that is listed by the SPLC as an anti-gay hate group. Last January, he was a featured speaker at the MassResistance fundraiser, and appears to be forming links with that group. That would be a third SPLC anti-gay hate group he has ties to. The man certainly gets around.

Earlier this month, Lively announced that he would “no longer be monitoring the day-to-day developments of the culture war regarding homosexuality as closely.” I was skeptical. He’s not going away anytime soon.

ABC 7 News Buys into Mass Resistance’s Hype

The wacktivist anti-gay group Mass Resistance has been pushing the writing effots of Ryan Sorba, a young political activist. They play host to the first draft of his book, The Born Gay Hoax, and have been trying to raise his profile in the conservative movement.

Until recently they were having little success. This is probably due to the sensationalistic tone and wildly inaccurate statements that Sorba relies on. Few conservatives will argue with a straight face that “Reparative therapy is a proven success” and one can only read the term “pro-sodomy activists” so many times before recognizing that Sorba’s animus far outweighs his scholarly instincts.

Firebrands and kool-aid drinkers will nod their heads along to his proclamations, but most folk will not find him any more readable than they do Mass Resistance’s website. Which is probably why they are the ones who are encouraging his efforts. Kooks tend to attract kooks.

But all that changed last week when a group of lesbians disrupted a talk that Sorba was giving to the Conservative Club at Smith College. Now, having been shouted down, young Ryan has become a bonafide martyr, an example of how badly the evil homosexuals treat good Christians.

Naturally, the less credible of Christian news sources could hardly withhold their glee at reporting this travesty of justice and thrashing of the First Amendment (conveniently forgetting that free speech goes both ways). But more responsible Christian press – and, of course, the secular press – hardly considered this story of rude behavior by some lesbians on a college campus to be newsworthy.

Well, until WJLA, ABC 7, a DC area television outlet, got wind of it. They breathlessly declared

The idea that a person can change their sexual preference is beginning to become a major debate with gay activists because of an upcoming book, “The Born Gay Hoax”.

The Born Gay Hoax is driving debate? Oh yeah. Sure. Except no one has heard of it and no one cares.

If this wasn’t truly pathetic journalism, it would be laughable. But on they go about “militant gay activists hijack[ing] public debate” and ex-gays fearful to give their name lest they be harassed.

The entire article is an embarrasment on the news department at ABC 7, and perhaps even a sad endictment of the quality of “news” that reaches the consumers of press-release based journalism. The station manager would do well to find whichever anti-gay staff member introduced this piece of foolishness into their newsroom and remind them that a reporters job is reporting, not advocacy for religous extremism.

MassResistance and White Supremist Find Common Cause

Paul Ash is the Superintendent of Schools in Lexington, Massachusetts. He has long been under attack from the virulently (but hypocritically) anti-gay group Mass Resistence. His crime? Including same-sex married couples in curriculum that talks about families.

Anti-gay activist David Parker has been the primary player in waging war on the school district.

Courts have concluded that the school system can talk about families, including gay families, whether or not it displeases the religious sensibilities of some specific parents. And Ash intends to do just that.

But Hal Turner, an internet radio show host, has posted Mr. Ash’s home address and encouraged his readers to attack him.

I would laugh if some concerned father(s) donned ski masks and gloves, took a ride over to this arrogant prick’s house and knocked the living shit out of him. I advocate parents using FORCE AND VIOLENCE against Superintendent Paul B. Ash as a method of defending the health and safety of school children presently being endangered through his politically-correct indoctrination into deadly, disease-ridden sodomite lifestyles.

This, naturally, has concerned the Superintendent and the local authorities. So who is not concerned about Ash’s well being. According to WBZ TV,

“He has to expect that people are going to be extremely angry over what he’s doing,” said Lexington parent David Parker, who objected to the same-sex curriculum in the past.

Parker said he’s not surprised by the threats.

“You can put it under any guise you want but little children don’t need other adults asserting sexual proclivities to them and normalizing it and parents are in an outrage,” he said.

“We can’t be deterred by individuals that are attempting to intimidate teaching children to love one another and respect one another.”

MassResistence reports about the incident (with the subtitle Threats against Parkers, as usual, are ignored).

Parker had never heard of the talk-show or the website (nor have we). However, he acknowledged on WBZ-TV that parents have no longer any legal protection for their children and many are becoming agitated.

What Parker and MassResistence (and the television station) failed to mention is the primary focus of Mr. Turner: advancement of the White Supremacist cause. Here are a few samples of Mr. Turner’s choice phrases. (Warning: Offensive language; emphases in the original.)

For all his millions, this guy is nothing more than a low-class NIGGER. He needs to have a Cross lit on his property to calm his uppity-black-ass down. If that warning doesn’t work, Lynch his black ass.

and

Blacks cannot compete and cannot get-by in schools where they share studies with Whites and Asians.

In city after city, the sad story repeats itself. When will people realize that Blacks are GENETICALLY inferior? When will we reinstate segregation that is so desperately needed?

Perhaps I’ve lived in California too long. But people like this make my stomach turn. They certainly don’t inspire me to go on a television show in their defense.

But this really shouldn’t surprise me. Haters are haters.

UPDATE:

Pam Spaulding of Pam’s House Blend reminds us that in 2005 Max Blumenthal at The Nation exposed the relationship between Hal Turner and Sean Hannity.

To area conservatives, he was best known by his moniker for call-ins to the Sean Hannity Show, “Hal from North Bergen.” For years, Hannity offered his top-rated radio show as a regular forum for Turner’s occasionally racist, always over-the-top rants. Hannity also chatted with him off-air, allegedly offering encouragement to Turner as he struggled to overcome a cocaine habit and homosexual leanings.

Again, while this saddens me, it really shouldn’t surprise me.

Failing to Convince, Seeking to Coerce

Why do some people put such effort into “defeating the homosexual agenda”? Regular ol’ people seldom really care what you do in private. They can’t even seem to get all incensed about whether you marry the person you love and they tend to think you shouldn’t be fired from your job or banned from the military. But why do some folks care a WHOLE LOT about those issues?

Often when you scratch below the surface, the motivation becomes evident. Sometimes it’s a hidden sex life. Sometimes it’s some grief that the individual had with a gay person. But quite often it turns out that the anti-gay activist has a gay child.

I believe that their motivation to pass anti-gay legislation or other forms of discrimination is born out of their sense of frustration. Unable to convince or persuade their child not to be gay, they seek to use the power of the government to control the life of their child.

This week one more anti-gay activist is revealed to be the parent of an openly-gay child. This time it is the virulently homophobic Amy Contrada.

We’ve discussed Amy before. She’s the voice of opposition to The Laramie Project that recently was embarrassed when her daughter starred in the play (though she was quick to point out that this daughter is adopted). To Amy’s chagrin, rather than being grateful and submitting to Amy’s every demand, the Claudia Contrada is exerting her right to be herself. This week Claudia gave an interview to Queer Today:

I am a lesbian, which my mom still does not get. She just says that I am confused. I realized in around eighth grade, but I was in denial for quite some time because I was scared due to my mother constantly saying that homosexuality is wrong. How can it ever be wrong to love though? That’s what I’d like to know.

We know full well how difficult it can be living in a home that does not approve of your orientation. We wish Claudia strength.

Further, we wish Amy the courage to let go and allow Claudia to become the woman she’s intended to be. We wish Amy the wisdom to see that her efforts to control the lives of total strangers is based in her inability to control those closest to her and that such efforts are not only futile but also selfish and cruel.

A Tale of Liars and Attention Whores

One of the problems with being a Culture Warrior and fighting against an Evil Agenda is that sometimes you begin to believe your own rhetoric. Of course, it helps if you start with a bit of a disconnect from reality.

Take, for example, this story from Edge about a recent confluence of some of the anti/ex-gay’s loonier players.

MassResistance, an anti-gay outfit in Massachusetts, held a forum on October 3 at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School to protest the Drama Department’s planned production of The Laramie Project. Ironically, the daughter of MassResistance’s main blogger, Amy Contrada, is playing a lead part in the play. Amy was unable to be at the forum because she was “putting her efforts into our banquet” planned for the following day. However, ex-gay gadfly Stephen Bennett was scheduled to declare that “no one is born homosexual and complete change is completely possible”.

Brian Camenker, the face of MassResistance, told a little story to those in attendance about why Bennett didn’t show.

“Stephen Bennett will not be here tonight. … He is reviled and hated by the homosexual movement. While he was driving here after he got off the Mass Pike onto highway 290, as he paid his tolls and went going there was a parked car,” Camenker told the crowd of about 50 people at the start of the forum. “The parked car, as he got going, bashed into his car, causing him personal injury and then took off. State troopers came and they refused to file a police report on this.”

The story of the gay plot to target Stephen Bennett became a recurring theme throughout the evening, particularly in the remarks of Dr. John Diggs, a Massachusetts internist who spoke at the forum to warn Acton parents and community members about the dangers of homosexual sex. Diggs at various points in his remarks compared the alleged attack on Bennett to the attacks on civil rights workers in the South fighting for rights for African Americans, and he said the attack was similar to the tactics used to quash dissent in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union.

“So why is Stephen Bennett so dangerous? Why is Stephen Bennett run off the road, in Massachusetts, the land of tolerance!” said Diggs, raising his voice to a shout. “Obviously because of what he had to say here tonight. Why? … Stephen Bennett is dangerous because he sticks the knife in the core of the lie.”

Frightening! Shocking! Horrifying!

The only problem with this story? It wasn’t true.

Camenker forgot to run his conspiracy story by Bennett, who had no idea that gay activists had attacked him. And, when contacted, the police told another story which differed from Camenker’s fairy tale.

“The damage as a result of that crash was extremely minor. It includes a scuffed bumper,” said Benson.

He also dispelled the myth of a conspiracy between State Police and gay activists. He said police did not file a crash report because the incident did not meet the required threshold; the damage to Bennett’s car was less than $1000 and he was not injured. Benson said police took down Bennett’s description of the vehicle of the alleged perpetrator, including the license plate number and are working to track that person down.

Camenker has yet again illustrated that he’s either deranged or an unabashed liar. And Bennett has yet again illustrated that he’ll join with anyone, no matter how nutty, to get his face in the spotlight.

Ah, Irony

Mass Resistance is a anti-gay site that seeks (rather futily) to promote anti-gay attitudes in Massachusetts. Amy Contrada is one of the main haters. Typical rantings from Amy:

Many of you may be aware of the pro-homosexual play “The Laramie Project” that’s being presented in colleges and even high schools across the country. It’s an extremely offensive piece of propaganda that uses the murder of the gay college student Matthew Shepard to push acceptance of homosexuality and horribly demonize Christians and others who have moral issues with homosexual behavior. It is also an extremely violent and profane work, meant to be psychologically jarring, with little value beyond that.

So perhaps it’s more than a little amusing that QueerToday.com is reporting that Amy’s daughter, Claudia Contrada, is performing in her school’s production of…The Laramie Project. This is confirmed by a couple of fellow students who also report that Claudia is delightful.

Let’s hope the production goes well and touches the hearts of all who watch it.

hat tip GoodAsYou

UPDATE

Yep. It’s Amy Contrada’s daughter. And MassResistance responded in their usual loving way:

This is the true sleazy, self-centered face of the homosexual movement, that cares about no one else’s rights and nothing but their immediate emotional desires.

As reported by Queer Today, Contrada basically argues that other people should boycott The Laramie Project, but that because her daughter enjoys acting then her family is exempt:

Amy and her husband were forced into a no-win situation by the school when the “Laramie Project” was chosen as the fall play. Their daughter had her heart set on acting during her senior year; being involved means a great deal to her.

And here I had my heart set on equality for all citizens regardless of sexual orientation.

Manufacturing A Double Standard

The conservative Christian web sites Agape Press and LifeSite are reporting that Jacob Parker, the son of Massachusetts anti-gay activist David Parker was beaten up by a group of eight to ten kids in the playground of his Lexington elementary school.

David Parker, if you remember, was arrested last year for refusing to leave the school after a meeting with the principal in which he demanded to be notified when any topic touching on sexual orientation (including same-sex marriage, which is legal in Massachusetts) is brought up in class. He is now suing the school system.

According to the Agape Press, David Parker’s son was attacked on May 17^th, on the two-year anniversary of gay marriage in Massachusetts. Mr. Parker claims that other parents put their kids up to beating up his son because they are upset with his opposition to homosexuality. He also complains of a double standard in how his son’s case is being handled:

If the assault against his son had been perpetrated on a child of homosexual parents, “lessons teaching tolerance and diversity or homosexual behavior normalization would be forced upon the young children,” he contends.

But the local newspaper, the Lexington Minuteman reports a very different story. Paul Ash, the Superintendent of Schools, doesn’t know anything about what happened, but he’s going to look into it. Meanwhile he notes that if a student were assaulted, it would “trigger a whole series of actions,” including notifying parents, staff, the school psychologist, the Department of Social Services, and the police.

But the Lexington police department says it doesn’t have a complaint on file and there’s no ongoing investigation. Why?

Neil Tassel, the Parker’s legal counsel, spoke for the Parker family saying that had hoped to keep the incident private. Due to the age of the students involved, they had opted not to go to the police.

So if there is a double standard, it’s of Mr. Parker’s doing by not allowing the authorities to address the problem — according to what his attorney is telling the local press.

David Parker has the prerogative to decide whether or not he should avail himself of the services of the local police department to protect his son. But his actions certainly raise some interesting questions concerning his motives for going public now. Is issuing a press release on a very prominent web site the best way to “keep the incident private?” And how strange is it to complain of a double standard when he short-circuits the very process that he complains would be performed if it had been the son of a gay parent that was beaten?

Maybe it’s just more convenient to manufacture a double standard.

Update: The Lexington Public Schools issued a press release. The fight, it turns out, was over who got to sit where in the cafeteria. What’s more, the Parkers didn’t complain when they were told about the actions the school took in response to the fight, and “following the incident the boys were observed arm in arm at school and subsequently the child who was hit went to the house of the child who hit him for a play date.”