Flanders sends emails claiming mugshot from assault arrest against teen boy is “copyrighted” property; two gullible corporations buy it and close down AFTAH sites

Media Release September 17, 2018
Contact: Peter LaBarbera, americansfortruth@gmail; 312-324-3787

CHICAGO, IL—The entire website for Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH.org) was shut down for more than two weeks beginning August 24 after a convicted homosexual sex offender, Adam Flanders, threatened a lawsuit against FirstLight Fiber, the Internet Service Provider (ISP) for AFTAH’s web host company–claiming his mugshot photo from a 2006 assault arrest against a minor boy was “copyrighted” material.

Flanders, a homosexual activist, is a registered sex offender in both Maine and California, where he now lives. He pleaded guilty in 2008 to “Sexual Abuse of a Minor” involving a boy aged 14 or 15. He also admitted to engaging in homosexual sex with his then-14-year-old boyfriend when he (Flanders) was 18–in a 2007 public letter exposing a Maine “gay youth” club. Later, Flanders sought to retract the letter and demanded that web sites take it down.

Flanders has a long history of making such litigious and mendacious threats containing absurd, exaggerated and sometimes nonsensical claims against pro-family leaders and websites that have exposed his past criminal offenses and other actions.

The mugshot photo in question can be viewed at upper right. AFTAH will not take it down because it is obviously in the public domain and not “owned” by Flanders. (Mugshots are routinely used in news stories and political ads.) Note also that after years of Flanders’ harassing threats and even a $1 million “defamation” lawsuit against pro-family hero Brian Camenker and his organization, MassResistance (see below), the identical Flanders 2006 mugshot photo printed by AFTAH remains posted throughout the MR site. Had Flanders’ accusations any legal merit, would Camenker leave them up, risking further ordeals?

Weighing legal options

Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans For Truth, and Jared Heath, CEO of Altha Technology, AFTAH’s web host company, are weighing their legal options against Flanders and FirstLight Fiber, the ISP that capitulated to his spurious email demand. Another ISP, HostGator, took down an AFTAH temporary site (see below); that site, “Americans For Truth Censored,” remains down.

“Flanders’ reckless actions and the ISPs that bowed to them have caused me and Jared Heath, the ex-Marine who runs AFTAH’s web host company, severe emotional and mental distress. They also have caused us significant financial harm and damage to our reputations,” said LaBarbera. “I know Flanders wants to erase his crimes from the web, especially his Sexual Abuse of a Minor conviction, but we will never give in to his intimidation tactics.”

LaBarbera also called on Flanders to privately and publicly apologize to Paulie Heath, Jared’s mother, for the horrific and demented web-bullying graphic he created in 2005 cruelly distorting her visage (see below).

Flanders held knife at teen boyfriend’s throat

As this 2013 U.S. District Court document reveals (p.2), Flanders was arrested again in 2007 for another, more violent crime involving the same boy, now 16. According to U.S. Magistrate Judge Margaret Kravchuk’s decision, Flanders knifed the father of the teen boy lover after violating a court protection order to stay away from the boy. In that altercation, when the boy’s father came to rescue his son, Flanders held a knife at the boy’s throat, and knifed both the father and the boy in the altercation.

FirstLight took down the entire AFTAH website on August 24, 2018, three days after receiving an “abuse” complaint demanding “removal of copyrighted content pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).” AFTAH site has been up since September 10 using a separate IP address, but Flanders is continually working to take it down, and is again threatening legal action against LaBarbera and Heath.

FirstLight’s reckless takedown of an entire pro-family website containing thousands of articles–based on a single email containing outlandish assertions by a homosexual activist trying to erase his criminal history–demonstrates the growing crisis of anti-conservative censorship in Corporate America.

As AFTAH was reeling from Flanders’ harassment, it learned that Facebook had demanded that the AFTAH Facebook page take down a harmless post involving another homosexual activist, Phillip Picardi. The post, shown HERE and below, shows Picardi taking a selfie of him kissing another man as he defiantly gives the finger to critics upset at his defense of an article promoting anal sex in Teen Vogue, a magazine for young girls. Picardi is digital editor of Teen Vogue.

The following is a sample of Flanders’ previous outrageous and litigious stunts:

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“All of those murders that I have investigated have been in [homosexual] relationships and are victims of gay attacks, domestic situations.” — British investigator and former Scotland Yard detective Les Green, July 8, 2012

Folks, the 2012 Jamaica Observer article below about gay-on-gay violence in Jamaica is critically important in that it debunks the oft-repeated charge by homosexual activists that anti-homosexual “hate violence” is widespread in Jamaica. [See this hateful “Truth Wins Out” article about Jamaica and AFTAH that stokes the same false polemic.]

Every time a homosexual is murdered in Jamaica, the local “gay” group, J-FLAG (Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays) and other homosexual activists blame “homophobia” — and implicitly (or explicitly) the actions of religious opponents of the “gay” agenda for the crime. Meanwhile, Christian groups like the Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society (JCHS) condemn all violence against homosexuals.

This victim mongering copies a tactic that LGBT activists have used in the United States for decades to advance their agenda. (Think Matthew Shepard, who was allegedly murdered “because he is gay”; later it was learned that his murder was linked to his reckless lifestyle, including drug dealing.) Even worse, many times American homosexuals have staged fake “anti-gay hate crime” hoaxes to burnish their status as victims needing to be protected from (religious-motivated) “hate.” [See this AFTAH item on a “hate-crime” hoax staged by a Nebraska lesbian.]

A personal note: having just returned from a visit to Jamaica to take part in a pro-family conference put on by JCHS, I did not witness any “hatred”  or violent attitudes toward homosexuals. What I did see was a group of sincere, dedicated Christians who love God and are fighting the best they can not to have decadent Western (and American) sexual mores and LGBT laws imposed on their small nation. We must expose and rebut the insidious lie of LGBT activists everywhere that imputes “hate” to those who merely disagree with grantin “rights” based on disordered, sinful sexual behavior. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH

Below is the full text of the 2012 Jamaica Observer article, with our emphasis added. The original piece included a photo of some Jamaican transvestites over the caption: “Two cross-dressers pose for photos at a Fashion Week event in Kingston last month where they moved around without being harassed.”

_______________________________

Gay lobby claims not true, says Green

‘Jamaica far more tolerant of homosexuals than the public hype’

BY KARYL WALKER Online news editor walkerk@jamaicaobserver.com
Jamaica Observer, Sunday, July 8, 2012

A day before former Assistant Commissioner of Police Les Green left the island at the end of his eight years of service, he rubbished a common claim by the gay community and international rights groups that homosexuals in Jamaica are victims of wanton murder, mob-mauling and marginalisation.

His pronouncement came just weeks after gay lobby group Jamaica Forum For Lesbians All-sexuals and Gays (JFLAG) suggested that two men killed in the New Kingston area were slain because of their sexual preference.

In an interview on Thursday with the Sunday Observer, Green said despite claims by JFLAG that Jamaicans are intolerant of their lifestyle, and are targeting them for death, his experience during his tenure here was totally different.

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Vicious GLN exemplifies left-wing hatred; refused to condemn 2011 brick attack against AFTAH

Special Note from AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera:

Folks, as you can see from the graphic above, copied off the website of the Chicago group Gay Liberation Network (GLN), we just received word that radical homosexual activists are again planning to protest our annual banquet (this Saturday, Nov. 16^th; see AFTAH banquet information page; get a printable PDF banquet flier HERE).  The GLN banquet protests have become sort of an annual tradition for AFTAH. But it appears that this year in their rush to publicize their protest, this motley crew of left-wing fanatics got their facts wrong. (Imagine that: the Left caught fibbing.) So I’ve taken the liberty to correct GLN’s mistakes below:

1) YES, Americans For Truth is holding its fund-raising dinner banquet this coming Saturday evening at Christian Liberty Academy (CLA), 502 W. Euclid Ave., Arlington Heights, IL. Doors open at 5:30; dinner is served at 6:30 PM. Tickets are $25 at the door or just $20 if you buy them online by midnight Thursday (tomorrow). And you can still sponsor a Table of 10 for $200.  AFTAH banquets are wonderful, informative celebrations of truth, so please come and support us, and bring your friends and family!

(Interesting fact: AFTAH holds our annual event at CLA because several years ago, when we used to hold banquets in hotels, the petty homo-fascists at GLN would harangue the hotel about hosting a “hate group.” Twice we were booted out of hotels based on these malicious misinformation campaigns. Now we hold our banquet at CLA – and even there we were targeted with a glass-shattering brick attack by homosexual militants in the early morning of our banquet in October 2011 [more on this below]. Nobody is more “intolerant” than homosexual activists.)

2) NO, this is NOT a joint fund-raiser between AFTAH and Illinois Family Institute. As much as we love our good friends at IFI and applaud them for all the great work they do throughout the state, they just had a fund-raiser last month! But we understand: all “homophobes” look alike to “progressives” like the GLN. (Of course, I jest: “homophobe” is the smear-term of choice for “gay” activists and their elitist fellow travelers on the Left – meant to deride and demonize their (mostly Christian) opponents as irrational, fearful bigots. The jaundiced term homophobe itself is so discredited that even the liberal-leaning Associated Press has largely given up using it in AP news stories.)

3) YES, our keynote speaker, Sandy Rios, claimed that the (media-hyped) Matthew Shepard “story was a fraud,” but she did so only after interviewing this writer on her AFR Talk program, “Sandy Rios in the Morning.” We discussed the findings of an amazing book by openly homosexual author Stephen Jimenez, The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths about the Murder of Matthew Shepard. In the book Jimenez reveals that, YES, pretty much the entire, convenient “Matthew-Shepard-was-murdered-just-because-he-was-gay” story was fraudulent. And what a coincidence: this “hate crime” tale was cynically exploited to demonize religious conservatives and link defenders of traditional sexual morality with “hate” and even violence toward homosexuals.

The bogus Matt-Shepard-hate-crime story was also repackaged as a tendentious play (The Laramie Project) that has been used to propagandize hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren and young adults in the same false “gay”-activist narrative. In fact, exploiting the false Matthew Shepard story has become big business on the Left.

4) So, indeed, YES, Sandy and I have publicized Jimenez’s well-researched findings that Shepard’s tragic 1998 death was very much “drug-related” – and hence was not a “hate crime.” Jimenez reveals the following about Shepard and his killers, fellow Laramie, Wyoming residents Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, and the circumstances of the case:

• McKinney and Shepard knew each other (as opposed to McKinney meeting Matthew for the first time on the night of the murder);
• McKinney and Shepard were both involved in using and dealing drugs, especially methamphetamines (meth);
• The two had partied with each other and possibly even had sex with each other as part of the same Laramie drug and social scene; and
• Neither McKinney nor his accomplice and friend, Henderson (both are in jail for life for murdering Shepard), were known for hating homosexuals. (In fact, Henderson’s girlfriend’s mother was in a lesbian relationship and Russell lived with her for months and “there was no evidence whatsoever of Aaron or Russell expressing anti-gay feelings,” Aaron’s father, Bill McKinney, told Jimenez [p. 48].) Compare that to the liberal media/LGBT-promoted story line that McKinney and Henderson – somehow fueled by Religious Right homophobia, which fostered a “climate of anti-gay hate” – murdered Shepard “just because he was gay,” after the latter made a sexual pass at McKinney. [To order Jimenez’s fascinating book on Amazon, go HERE.]

5) Lastly, NO, Sandy Rios never asserted that there was some kind of “pro-gay” conspiracy – a “plan by liberals to kill Matt to use him as ‘propaganda’ for LGBT acceptance.” This is sheer GLN nuttiness. Nobody in his right mind (pardon the pun) would suggest that liberal activists are so diabolical that they would plot to kill the young homosexual Shepard to create a “gay” martyr and thus advance the LGBT agenda!  But within hours of the bloody assault, as the Wyoming college student was fighting for his life in a hospital bed, the crime was quickly seized upon – first by close friends of Shepard, then by homosexual advocates, then by the media – as an alleged crime of “anti-gay hate.” Thus it became a pivotal “moment” in America for the Left to advance the LGBT agenda while stigmatizing moral-minded Americans as dangerous bigots.  (Jimenez also reveals that even some Laramie police officials joined in promoting the “anti-gay hate crime” theme, perhaps as opportunists caught up in the gay-liberal media spin, or maybe to draw attention away from Laramie’s criminal drug culture.)

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GLAAD smears pro-family leaders while honoring homosexual activist hatemongers

WARNING: Story includes uncensored, obscene tweet by hateful homosexual activist awarded by GLAAD

The homosexual pressure group GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) has named AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH Board Member Matt Barber and 34 other American pro-family opponents of homosexual activism to a list of targeted commentators whom it aims to discredit by lobbying the media.

GLAAD’s new “Commentator Accountability Project” (CAP) focuses on “our nation’s most frequently quoted anti-gay activists,” according to the power homosexual pressure organization. GLAAD says CAP “is designed to shine a big, bright light on the extreme views of the vast majority of prominent anti-LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender”]talkers.”

“Hate is not an expert opinion,” GLAAD spokesman Herndon Graddick told the Denver Post, employing the same demonizing rhetoric used by the Southern Poverty Law Center — which labels mainstream pro-family organizations opposed to homosexuality like Americans For Truth, American Family Association and Family Research Council as “hate groups.”

GLAAD is asking its followers to provide critical information back to them against the 36 pro-family advocates — which GLAAD will then relay to “reporter, editors, show runners, and guest bookers [who] need to know about the violently anti-LGBT rhetoric that many of their guests regularly use.”

The following pro-family leaders are listed in GLAAD’s CAP list: Campaign for Working Familes’ Gary Bauer, historian David Barton, NOM’s Brian Brown, Liberty Council Action’s Matt Barber, Dr. Michael Brown, Exodus International’s Alan Chambers, Mass Resistance’s Brian Camenker, Prison Fellowship’s Chuck Colson, Focus on the Family’s Jim Daly, Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, Christian Civic League of Maine’s Bob Emrich, Lou Engle, WND.com’s Joseph Farah, AFA’s Bryan Fischer, NOM founder Maggie Gallagher, California Prop 8 leader and pastor Jim Garlow, Princeton Prof. Robert George, Antioch Bible Church pastor Ken Hutcherson, pastor Harry Jackson, AFTAH’s Peter LaBarbera, Defend the Family International’s Scott Lively, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler, radio host Kevin McCullough, Ruth Institute’s Jennifer Roback Morse, CWA’s Penny Nance, Christopher Plante, Focus on the Family’s Glenn Stanton, Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver, FRC’s Peter Sprigg, Vision America’s Rick Scarborough, author Frank Turek, Bob Vander Plaats, and Don Wildmon and his son, Tim Wildmon, of AFA.

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Help defend AFTAH against latest example of homo-fascism

TAKE ACTION NOW: a new homosexual web campaign is urging the internet payment company PayPal to drop AFTAH and other pro-family organizations as so-called “extremists” that “promote anti-LGBT hate.” Please help defend Americans For Truth from being dropped by PayPal in response to this anti-Christian pressure campaign.

1) Go to PayPal’s website and make a much-needed gift to AFTAH to support our work. Or do so through the AFTAH website at www.americansfortruth.com/donate/. Mail a check to AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522.

2) Write or call PayPal and urge them to STAND FOR FREEDOM and NOT give in to this intolerant pressure campaign by homosexual activists; use PayPal’s online “Comment Card” HERE, or post a note to the PayPal blog.  Or use their Contact Page HERE (note, the latter seems to favor comments by people holding a PayPal account).  Here is the Contact Page for PayPal’s parent company, e-BAY Inc.

Please THANK PayPal for initially siding with religious freedom so far [as reported HERE by the homosexual website Pink News] and not abruptly caving to All Out’s demands.  Urge them NOT to punish Christian and pro-family advocates – which could potentially alienate millions of potential PayPal customers.

3) Also, sign the LifeSiteNews petition to PayPal defending AFTAH and other pro-family targets by going here: http://www.profamilyfreedom.net/

4) Send this message to your friends and contact list to educate them on the anti-Christian and censorious nature of the homosexual movement. “Gay” activists no longer want “Tolerance”; now they want Dominance even if it means smearing pro-family people as “haters” and destroying our cherished religious freedoms.  

__________________________________________

By Peter LaBarbera

Dear AFTAH Reader,

Every day brings more evidence that the Homosexual Lobby is all about kicking pro-morality people (mostly committed Christians) who disagree with homosexual behavior OUT of the public square. More and more observers are seeing this for what it is: homo-fascism. Last week we learned of a homosexual web campaign called “All Out” that is targeting the payment service company PayPal for doing business with Americans For Truth and nine other groups — which it smears as “extremists” who “promote anti-LGBT “hate.” Here is the wording of their All Out petition:

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Politically correct media abets ‘homo-fascist’ drive to squelch Christians’ voice

TAKE ACTION: Contact Apple Inc regarding its open hostility to faith-based customers defending traditional morality and its capitulation to homosexual activists. Call 408-996-1010.

Apple Inc.
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
408-996-1010

By Peter LaBarbera

On Wednesday, Apple Inc. succumbed to a web-based homosexual lobbying blitz demanding that it drop an “app” for the ex-“gay” ministry Exodus International from its iPhone. This capitulation is only the latest to reward a creeping ‘homo-fascism’ that is spreading across America and the world — and which is integral to the wider LGBT activist strategy of demonizing and marginalizing religious people opposed to homosexuality. We don’t use this term lightly — the Homosexual Lobby’s hardball strategy is built on lies, intimidation and even bullying of well-meaning, compassionate Christians and religious people who simply disagree with the practice of homosexuality.

Incredibly, a tiny Sexual Sin Lobby–  purporting to represent perhaps 1-2 percent (or less) of any given population — presumes to dictate to the rest of us what is and is not acceptable speech, ideas, and conduct with regard to homosexuality and same-sex “marriage.” (They even claim to be the arbiter of what is “love” and “hate.”) The failure of the national media — stuck in “gays-as-victims” mode — to question the growing pro-LGBT intolerance, demonization, and oppression of adherents to Judeo-Christian  moral teachings, itself contributes greatly to the persecution of people of faith.

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The homosexual hate group Gay Liberation Network (GLN) — whose co-leader Bob Schwartz celebrated the University of Illinois’ recent firing of Catholic professor Kenneth Howell — has announced that it will protest the AFTAH Truth Academy, which will be held Aug. 5-7 at the Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

GLN is a Marxist-oriented street protest group that attempts to equate Judeo-Christian opposition to homosexuality with “hate” — and which uses its protests to intimidate businesses from hosting pro-family events. For its extreme anti–Christian bigotry and hateful rhetoric — including vicious ad hominem attacks against pro-family critics (e.g., calling AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera “Satan’s Lover”)  — we label GLN a homosexual hate organization.

GLN, formerly the Chicago Anti-Bashing Network, once smeared the historic Moody Church in Chicago as a “House of Hate” because Moody’s revered pastor, Erwin Lutzer, wrote a book critical of “same-sex marriage.” GLN has repeatedly pilloried Chicago’s Catholic leaker Cardinal Francis George with similar accusations because George defends Catholic teachings on sex and marriage.

Beyond that, Schwartz once told LaBarbera — who was protesting a “gay youth” rally in downtown Chicago as then-executive director of Illinois Family Institute — that if it weren’t for the police standing nearby, he would push him into the busy street. (Schwartz has never denied making this comment after it was reported by IFI.) LaBarbera maintains that had such a veiled violent threat been made against a homosexual by a conservative or Christian, it could have been the basis for a criminal charge under Chicago’s “hate crime” law.

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Dear AFTAH Readers,

Our upcoming Truth Academy to teach young people how to counter “gay” activist misinformation is not proving to be very popular with GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) activists. In a letter to AFTAH, Frank Kameny, the world’s oldest and most respected (by GLBTs) homosexual activist, has denounced the Truth Academy, which will be held August 5-7 at AFTAH’s office in Carol Stream, Illinois [click HERE for more info].

Kameny is the fellow who can’t recall if he spoke at a 1981 meeting held by NAMBLA (the notorious North American Man/Boy Love Association; NAMBLA reported that he had attended). Kameny also wrote AFTAH to assert that bestiality is OK “as long as the animal doesn’t mind (and the animal rarely does).”

If Kameny is correct that we non-homosexuals have to learn only from homosexuals themselves when it comes to this culture-war issue, then I would ask him: please, teach us about the ethics of declaring the God of the Bible a “sinful, homophobic bigot” and committed Christians “Christianofascists”; or addressing a group that advocates sex between men and young boys (we might understand if you came to scold NAMBLA, but apparently you did not); and teach us about the ethics of bestiality. With regard to the latter, how exactly can a human being be sure that an animal is consenting to be his or her “sex partner”? Also, teach us why we should accept your (a)moral view that “Gay is good” and “Gay is Godly” (he wrote the latter as an admitted atheist) when that flies in the face of historic, Judeo-Christian teachings on sex and marriage.

It is a sobering thought that given his celebrated status as an icon of the proud homosexualist movement, Frank Kameny could one day be lifted up to students as an American hero and role model whose life should be studied — especially if an annual “Gay History Month” becomes a reality in schools (a perverse copy of Black History Month). As with another “gay” activist, Harvey Milk, students will learn only glamorized lessons about these LBGT icons and nothing that would undermine the homosexual activist movement.

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