AN AMERICANS FOR TRUTH PRESS RELEASE

NAPERVILLE, Illinois—Americans for Truth is asking Fox News Channel to be “fair and balanced” by giving $10,000 to a conservative group to match its donation to a homosexual journalists’ organization whose leader recently compared pro-family critics of homosexuality to “white supremacists.”

In a letter sent today to Fox News Channel President Roger Ailes—following FOX’s $10,000 sponsorship gift to the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) annual convention—AFT President Peter LaBarbera wrote:

“FOX News cannot claim to be ‘fair and balanced’ in its coverage of homosexuality while providing large grants to a special interest group like the [NLGJA] that demonizes religious conservatives and, worse, seeks to influence the media nationwide to exclude conservative critics of the homosexual political/cultural agenda from gay-related stories.

“A balancing grant to AFT or a like-minded pro-family organization would signal that Fox News Channel is committed to living up to its credo and not taking sides in the Culture War. It would also … show respect for the tens of millions of Americans who do not deserve to be likened to the KKK simply for adhering to historic Judeo-Christian beliefs.”

The NLGJA bills itself as merely a professional organization for journalists, yet over the years its members have repeatedly suggested that covering “both sides” of homosexuality-related issues is like quoting the KKK on stories about race—a preposterous analogy especially considering that African Americans poll stronger against “gay marriage” than whites.

NLGJA National President Eric Hegedus repeats the spurious white supremacist comparison on the NLGJA’s website:

“How appropriate is it to quote interviewees whose ideas could be considered homophobic? … Certainly, news organizations have written extensively about white supremacists and other hate groups… But I doubt that any journalist is adding them to a source contact list for bringing “balance” to future stories about reparations, interracial marriage, the Holocaust or immigration. That same ethic needs to extend to LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] coverage, too.”

Wal-Mart Corporation is also listed among the $10,000 sponsors of the NLGJA convention, which began yesterday and runs through the weekend in Miami.

Excerpted from Hoping Md. Is ‘Ready for a Person Like Me’, by Daniel de Vise, published Sept 2, 2006, in The Washington Post:

For the five decades preceding a fateful 2003 trip to San Francisco, Dana Beyer lived her life as a man named Wayne. The September primary will tell whether her legislative district, one of the most progressive in Maryland, is ready to elect the state’s first transgender lawmaker.

…She lived her first five decades as a man, graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University, receiving a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and raising two sons in a marriage that lasted 19 years. A second marriage ended amicably after the 2003 procedure that Beyer terms her “transition.”

…”You know, I think this district is ready for a person like me,” Beyer said. As evidence, she cited Richard S. Madaleno Jr. (D), the openly gay delegate she hopes to replace in the House. Madaleno is running for the state Senate.

At the candidates forum one recent evening, Madaleno introduced his partner and their 3-year-old daughter. His sexual orientation prompted much talk when he ran for office in 2002, Beyer recalled. “And now, nobody cares.”

Continue reading in The Washington Post…

Excerpted from “He’s Gay and That’s OK,” by Benjamin Weinthal, published 8/31-9/6/2006 in Gay City News:

The most popular politician in Berlin is gay. Will he continue to make political history by winning a second term as mayor on September 17? The nation’s first openly gay big city mayor, Klaus Wowereit is running an energetic re-election campaign in the city restored to its traditional role as capital in the wake of Germany’s reunification.

Berlin, of course, is also a city with a lively queer culture.

Wowereit (pronounced vovv-er-ite) catapulted himself into political and gay cultural stardom with his eloquently succinct statement outing himself in 2001. “Ich bin schwul und das ist auch gut so”—”I am gay and that’s okay,” declared Wowereit in a televised speech.

…Wowereit was not the first openly gay mayor in Europe—Bertrand Delanoë was elected mayor of Paris in March, 2001, but the Berliner has helped forge a political climate across Germany which has enabled other leading politicians to declare that they too are gay. That could very well be Wowereit’s greatest contribution so far to power politics in Germany. Guido Westerwelle, the chairman of the Free Democratic Party, outed himself in 2004, and Ole von Beust, the mayor of Hamburg and a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), remained mum when his own father outed him (in a matter-of-fact way). Neither Westerwelle nor von Beust suffered any political fallout.

Continue reading at Gay City News…

By Sonja Dalton, AFT Research Analyst

Listen for the riches made possible by the holy integration of intimacy and sexuality. When lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender folk come out of the shadows, the whole community of faith can begin to embrace holiness. This holiness is a God-given wholeness that embraces both intimacy and erotic love.

That is the introduction to this week’s “Out in Scripture” a new campaign by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading homosexual pressure group, to defend homosexual practice using sacred Scripture and religious arguments. Among this week’s Bible selections is Song of Solomon 2:8-13, about which the HRC says:

Love, in this book, is embodied in the longing of lovers for one another… The passage can be read dramatically by two men without changing any pronouns, or by two women by simple pronoun changes. Such a reading becomes a gift to the church, a reminder that our presence as openly LGBT folk in the church raises to consciousness the reality of erotic love and sexuality…

Nothing could be further from the Truth.

Song of Solomon is indeed an erotic love story – between a man and a woman. Like all scripture, it affirms God’s design for human sexuality: one man, one woman, the two being made one in marriage, joined for a lifetime, mirroring the relationship between Christ and the church.

Excerpted from Why Liberals Are Crushing Dissent, by Kevin McCullough, published Aug 25, 2006, by WorldNet Daily:

…[T]his week in one of the boldest moves yet by a sitting liberal, Democrat California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez proclaimed, “The real purpose of SB 1437 is to outlaw traditional perspectives on marriage and family in the state school system.”

…And Nunez’s viewpoint is one that pervades liberals in his party and in the nation. That is why Nunez and his fellow Democrats in the California State Assembly voted in unison to pass four bills that are all designed to punish people who disagree with them. To incarcerate someone for daring to criticize a different point of view – over a purely behavioral issue.

The bills in question have passed both houses and await Gov. Schwarzenegger’s signature or veto. The bills were unanimously embraced by the Democrats and universally denounced by the Republicans.

What do they say?