A Trio of Anti-LGBT Nutballs to Hold Press Conference in Maine

UPDATE: See the press conference.

When you're struggling during a big, important battle, wouldn't you pull out all the stops? That's what Yes on 1 campaign is doing.

Three major wingnuts will be holding a press conference today in Maine at the Hall of Flags at the State House right about . . . now. (Video will be forthcoming). So who are the Three Musketeers?

Jeremy at Good as You has the scoop:

-Brian Camenker: The leader of one of only eleven organizations to be so extreme, that they've chosen by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an official anti-gay hate group.

-Peter LaBarbera: So heated in his hostility, that he sent yours truly a message a few days before his wedding for the sole purpose of condemning the upcoming nuptials.

-Paul Madore: Longtime cohort of the Christian Civic League of Maine, an organization that has gone so far as to blame LGBT progress for things like bad weather, graffiti, and economic crises.

The press release that announced the coming of the Christianists:

The Maine Grassroots Coalition will hold a press conference in the Hall of Flags at the State House in Augusta at 11:00 on Wednesday October 28th, to alert the public to the dangers of the radical homosexual agenda. The press conference will feature three well-known pro-family speakers, Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, Brian Camenker of Mass Resistance, and Maine's own Paul Madore, from the Maine Grassroots Coalition.

Paul Madore warns that clever advertising by pro-homosexual groups is trying to portray the Yes on 1 campaign as dominated by out-of-state money, when in fact, the pro-homosexual marriage campaign has raised three times more money than our side. Madore also warns that pro-homosexual marriage groups are recruiting same-sex marriage activists from around the country - including San Francisco - to take "Maine Volunteer Vacations" and campaign against our Peoples Veto.

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.

But luckily, NO on 1/Protect Maine Equality is all over it.

Jesse Connolly, the NO on 1/Protect Maine Equality campaign manager, will attend the Maine Grassroots Coalition/Stand for Marriage Maine press event this morning at the Hall of Flags in the State House. Among those attending their press event are Brian Camenker of Mass Resistance and Peter LeBarbera of Americans for Truth.

“To go on Maine television and try, in the last week of the campaign, to pivot from distorting and misleading voters to a message of tolerance just isn't believable," said Connolly. "And now they're bringing two of the most anti-gay leaders in the country to the state capital. It's really pretty shameful."

Stay tuned for video of the showdown.

GET INVOLVED! Go to NO on 1/Protect Maine Equality.

Image: From Towleroad.

Explosion of Hate Mocks Christian Values

Part of Unite the Fight's mission is to identify the true opposition to LGBT rights. And by "true opposition", I mean the people who actively work hard against us and twist the truth to fit their agenda. This excludes many Christians.

Michael-in-Norfolk blog has done a great post titled, "Explosion of Hate Mocks Christian Values" which separates true Christian values that unfortunately have been mixed up with these "Christianist values" who have truly forgotten what Christianity is all about.

Here's the post:

Since the Iowa Supreme Court ruling a week ago, which was soon followed by the legislative triumphs for gay marriage in Vermont and Washington, D.C., the explosion of hate from Christianists and the dehumanizing and untruthful things that they are disseminating about LGBT individuals in my view are a travesty and make a mockery of Christ's message. After all, Christ said that the two great Commandments were to love God and to love thy neighbor as they self.

Moreover, the Gospels repeatedly show Christ as condemning the self-righteous and sanctimonious who smugly judged and condemned others in contravention to the command to love thy neighbor. The Christianists claim to believe the Bible is inerrant and must be followed verbatim as "the word of God." Why then do they pick and choose what they want to follow as if the Bible were an al carte menu?
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Let's be candid - from the National Organization for Marriage and it's bogus ad with paid actors pretending to be real ordinary citizens, to commentaries in National Review and statements by Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention - what we have seen is unbridled hatred for other humans merely because we do not subscribe to a particular set of religious beliefs. The statements are truly hate filled and - in my view - will provide another basis for more citizens to look at the Christian message and walk away shaking their heads in disgust.

Andrew Sullivan has it right when he says that these folks hold gay lives in contempt. Here are some highlights of the "love" being disseminated by professed Christians. I begin with the National Review comment:

Few social goods will come from recognizing same-sex couples as married. Some practical benefits may accrue to the couples, but most of them could easily be realized without changing marriage laws. Same-sex couples will also receive the symbolic affirmation of being treated by the state as equivalent to a traditional married couple — but this spurious equality is a cost of the new laws, not a benefit. One still sometimes hears people make the allegedly “conservative” case for same-sex marriage that it will reduce promiscuity and encourage commitment among homosexuals. This prospect seems improbable, and in any case these do not strike us as important governmental goals.

Then we have Richard Land at the SBC who is rapidly becoming as extreme a homophobe as Peter LaBarbera and Fred Phelps making Southern Baptists as a whole appear to be a most unloving crowd. Land's official title is "President of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention's official entity assigned to address social, moral, and ethical concerns, with particular attention to their impact on American families and their faith." Here are Land's incendiary statements:

Once again, it was the judiciary branch of state government rending the nation’s moral fabric, bent on rewriting our country’s social construct. With no residency requirements, the [Iowa] court’s opinion means at the end of April when the order goes into effect, same-sex couples will be free to travel from other states to exchange “vows” in the Iowa Heartland.

This ruling turns Iowa into a destination for same-sex “marriages.” No doubt there are weekend travel packages already being planned. Iowa will soon be the Las Vegas of same-sex “marriage” for America. And you know those folks won’t be resettling in the Hawkeye State, but will be heading back home–perhaps to your state.

The Iowa Supreme Court couldn’t have ruled that an amendment to the constitution is “unconstitutional.” If they had done that, then a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” would be imperiled. If the California Supreme Court does this in the case they are currently considering, then we’d have to say that our entire system of government is coming to a tragic end.

Another comes from the Baptist Press where Eric Schumacher pastor of Northbrook Baptist Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, maintains that gay marriage is more catostrophic than a 500 year flood and will"eternal damage" that cannot be repaired and which will "erode" civilization. Here are some highlights:

On April 3, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a state law limiting marriage to one man and one woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution. Licenses will be issued to homosexual couples April 27. It is not hyperbole to say that this ruling has the potential to be the worst disaster to strike the state of Iowa.

Flood waters destroy houses, ruin offices buildings and displace families. Yet, recovery happens. Houses are rebuilt. Businesses relocate. Families eventually find housing. Legalized "homosexual marriage," on the other hand, does far more pervasive and irrecoverable damage. Civilization itself is eroded as marriage, the central building block of culture and society, is redefined. Soon, our sons and daughters are confused about what it means to be male and female, as "homosexual marriage" gains both legal status and visibility in neighborhoods and the classroom.

Flood waters erode the soil. "Gay marriage" erodes the soul. A flood impacts for a decade. "Same-sex marriage" destroys generations. A flood draws a community together. "Homosexual marriage" tears the family apart. Communities recover from floods. The promotion of un-natural unions has an eternal consequence.

As I have said in prior posts over the nearly two years I have been actively blogging, messages like these are akin to how the Nazi regime dehumanized and denigrated Jews in the run up to the Holocaust. How many people will hear these messages and feel totally justified in violence against LGBT citizens. It is bigotry and religious based discrimination of the worst order.

"Christianism" vs. "Christianist"

Part of Unite the Fight's mission statement is to learn about the opposition to LGBT equal rights and why they move against us. Though it's the easy route to throw all Christians under the bus and accuse them of being bigots and opponents to our cause, that is far from the case. Many Christians do in fact practice what they preach and truly do love their neighbor as themselves. Including the LGBT community.

And then there are those who wave "God Hates Fags" signs.

It is essential that we learn the difference because if we are to win this battle, we need our allies. We can't afford to group people into one lump category, just as they can't do that to us.

Equal Marriage Now, a blog aimed at providing comprehensive information on the fight for marriage equality, recently posted on identifying the differences:

While there’s some debate who coined the terms originally, it’s pretty clearly Andrew Sullivan who’s brought them into the modern conversation about religion and politics.

His basic definition splits Christianity into the Christian faith as spiritual experience versus a Christian-identified political imperative:

"the critical distinction between a Christianist and a mere Christian. One wants to infuse politics with religion; the other wants to respect both, separately, and to keep religion private. I should add I do not want to banish the word “God” from the public square. But I do want that invocation to be as thin and as empty and as formal as the Founders intended." (1)

That wasn’t the first time he used the term, however. He originally defined the idea in an essay for Time Magazine, in which he described its meaning in greater detail:

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"So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike." (2)

A subsequent blog post adds a layer of nuance. It’s not just the difference between leaving one’s religious belief out of politics or not, it’s about the fundamental way that belief interacts with the uncertainties and diversities of the world:

"The thing about fundamentalism, though, is its totality. There is something in the fundamentalist psyche that not only demands complete submission to a certain “truth”; but subsequently a frenzied effort to remove and obliterate all threats to that truth - because it has become so psychologically important for your own spiritual survival. Doubt, in this view, is not a goad to faith, but a terrible threat to it - so doubt must be eradicated. That inevitably leads to the empowerment of government for the pursuit of Christianist ends, and to the loss of empirical prudence in governance." (3)

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(1) Sullivan, Andrew. “The right and religion.” The Daily Dish. 14 December 2007. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/12/the-right-and-r.html (retrieved 19 December 2009).

(2) Sullivan, Andrew. “My problem with Christianism.” Time. 7 May 2006. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1191826,00.html (retrieved 19 February 2009).

(3) Sullivan, Andrew. “Christianism, Debated.” The Daily Dish. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2006/05/christianism_de_3.html (retrieved 19 February 2009).