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Real Hate: A leader of the Gay Liberation Network in Chicago refused to condemn a leftist brick attack against an AFTAH banquet speaker in 2011.
Here is an excellent video, “Selling Hate,” by libertarian journalist John Stossel and Reason magazine. It exposes the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) for what it is: a “hate group” and ” and “left-wing, money-grabbing slander machine.” The SPLC listed AFTAH (Americans For Truth About Homosexuality) as a “hate” organization (and later a hate website) in 2010 when it first began adding groups and individuals that oppose the homosexual agenda to its “hate” listings (which until then included mostly racist and anti-Semitic fringe groups). See our 2012 protest led by Black pastors against SPLC at their headquarters HERE.
Just as SPLC fails to list Antifa as a “hate group” (see their feeble and technical explanation as to why HERE), they do not list extremist homosexual groups like the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network (GLN) as “hate groups.” This despite obvious demonstrations of real hatred by such groups: go HERE to read our press release about a GLN leader, Bob Schwartz, who refused to condemn the 2011 leftist brick attack against AFTAH and our banquet speaker, Scott Lively.
Kudos to Stossel for calling out the evil SPLC–something most left-leaning journalists still refuse to do. Please share this short (5:41) video far and wide. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH; Twitter: @PeterLaBarbera[More info from video after video and jump]
LaBarbera allowed provisional entry into Canada for ‘Mischief’ trial Oct. 30 stemming from April protest at public university
Canada’s “Hate” Police:Above is an excerpt of the Border Services Agency document issued against Peter LaBarbera when he was originally denied entry into Canada in April on the basis that he and AFTAH “incite hate” in violation of the nation’s Hate Propaganda” law. LaBarbera was subsequently allowed into the country, but later arrested at a peaceful pro-life/pro-family protest at the University of Regina. Click to enlarge.
By Peter LaBarbera
UPDATE from author: After a short meeting in Regina with a Border Services official this morning, I was allowed to travel and speak in Canada until the completion of my trial Thursday upon agreeing to these two provisions:
“While in Canada:
“If I am on private property, and am asked to leave that property by the owner for any reason, I must leave the property immediately;
“If I am issued a direction or command by a police officer or other person in authority, follow that direction immediately.”
REGINA, Saskatchewan, Canada–Customs agents detained this writer (AFTAH president Peter LaBarbera) and did an intense search of my phone, laptop and belongings–as I arrived at Calgary International Airport late last night on the first leg of a trip to Regina, Saskatchewan for my trial on “mischief” charges October 30.
The mischief charges were filed against me and Canadian pro-family activist Bill Whatcott after Whatcott, and then me, refused on free speech grounds to abandon a peaceful protest April 12 against abortion and sodomy at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, a public university. [See AFTAH article HERE and LifeSiteNews article HERE on how I was almost refused entry into Canada on the basis of AFTAH’s alleged “hate.”]
The Calgary Border Services agents confiscated a DVD copy of a new Russian documentary called “Sodom” as potential “hate propaganda” in violation of Canadian law banning material or people who could potentially “incite hate” based on “sexual orientation.”
Ironically, “Sodom”–which I have yet to watch–is available and easily accessible in Canada (and worldwide) on YouTube. Whatcott told me that he had already shared the documentary with his network of Canadian supporters across the country. “Sodom” features an interview with American pro-family leader Scott Lively of Defend the Family International. Lively, who received AFTAH’s American Truth-Teller Award on 2011, is currently running for governor as an independent in Massachusetts.
If the Russian film is deemed “hate propaganda” by the government’s “Prohibited Importation Unit” in Ottawa, it will be destroyed, two border agents informed me. If “Sodom” does not meet that designation, it will be mailed back to my home in Illinois.
Either way, the seizure of the film would make it impossible for me to view and/or present it to others in Canada–were it not easily accessible to everybody with a web connection on YouTube. Such is the folly of state censorship in an Internet age.
Customs hearing today
Canadian pro-family activist Bill Whatcott and AFTAH’s Peter LaBarbera.
Despite my two-and-a-half hour detainment in Calgary, agents ordered me to attend another hearing today (Tuesday) with Immigration officials in Regina at 11:00 A.M.–for “further examination” on my “admissibility” into Canada. Nevertheless, Border Services agents told me that I would be able to attend my “Mischief” trial in Regina on Thursday and that I am “innocent until proven guilty” under Canadian law.
A border agent named Shane Paul (I called him “Paul” because that was on his uniform and I presumed that was his first name) asked me questions about a small speaking engagement I was to have with Whatcott and others this (Tuesday) evening. I was unsure of the location of the meeting, as the venue has been changed three times already–because skittish Canadians pulled out from hosting the event fearing leftist protests. You can read about one cancellation in the Regina Leader-Post HERE (Note: not included in the story is Whatcott’s assertion that the prospective host, Greg Kulak, was not telling the truth when he claimed NOT to know the nature of the event.) By the way, Whatcott distributed thousands of fliers advertising the event–which Kulak’s cowardly pullout rendered meaningless by abandoning the listed location for it.
As an American, let me say that it is remarkable how far official political correctness – enforced and encouraged by sometimes fanatical left-wing activists and abetted by an anti-conservative media – has not only shut down conservative speech in Canada but succeeded in punishing people who run afoul of various liberal ideologies—not limited to pro-homosexualism. For example, the Canadian owners of a conservative website, “Free Dominion,” shut it down after 13 years of operation in January after losing a defamation lawsuit to “human rights” legal activist Richard Warman. They were fined a total of $107,000 and ordered not to print anything negative about the leftist Warman—effectively censoring them as a public forum [See LifeSite article HERE].
In the two years that I have worked closely with Bill Whatcott, I have seen the extraordinary harassment and soft (and hard) tyranny he has had to endure in his quest to get out biblical truth and facts about homosexuality and abortion. Whatcott, who distributes tens of thousands of fliers door-to-door every year, was found guilty of Canada’s “Hate Propaganda” law by Canada’s highest court. Earlier this year, he was denied service by Aaron Rubin, a computer shop in Weybourn because the owner did not like Bill’s views; Whatcott sued under the “human rights” laws and won and–in a demonstration of Christian grace–did not push for a big financial judgment but instead asked Rubin to do volunteer service for a local pro-life group. Rubin opted not to do the service and paid a mere $200 to have it done.
Recently, Whatcott tried to submit a simple ad for his event tonight (where I am to speak) to the Regina Leader-Post newspaper. The ad’s innocuous headline was “Bringing the Light of Christ to Our Culture”–but that did not matter; it was refused anyway. He could have another “human rights” victory in store if he sues the liberal paper for anti-religious discrimination. (Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms ostensibly protects religious freedom.) But even if the ad had run, Whatcott would have been chased out of the venue for the event.
With such relentless leftist pressure led by a few fanatics like Warman, it is only the rare, brave soul like Whatcott who fights on for Truth in Canada, while so many others fall away in fear. (Note that in the Chicago area, AFTAH, too, has been chased out of venues after the leftist activists with the Gay Liberation Network wielded their spurious “hate group” accusation against us.)
Searching my phone, laptop, books and papers–again
Anyway, I cooperated fully with the Border Services “investigation” of me at the Calgary airport, as I did in April at the Regina International Airport. Agent Paul and another Agent with the last name of Meehan went through—as in April—my:
Phone
Laptop
Books (including Dr. Michael Brown’s “Can You Be Gay and Christian?”; his book, “Something Queer Happened to America”; Robert Reilly’s book, “Making Gay OK”; and Frank Turek’s “Correct, Not Politically Corrrect: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone”)
Tracts: I brought a bunch of ex-“gay” Stephen Bennett’s tract “I WAS ‘Gay’”; and
Papers
When Shane asked me about Westboro Baptist Church (with its “God Hates Fags” message), I told him that AFTAH has always condemned Westboro, as has every other pro-family group I have worked with. I told them that AFTAH has long condemned violence and genuine hatred against homosexuals or anyone, for that matter.
At one point in the search, Shane asked me if I had children and then I asked him if he had children. He asked me as if offended: “Why do you ask that?” and then said, “I’m gay.” I told him I meant nothing by it and that I ask a lot of people that question. I told him my five children are a tremendous blessing and he said he may want to adopt children some day.
Once Shane’s “gayness” was out in the open, it was almost easier to have a conversation about my work and the larger homosexual issue. I told him that disagreement with homosexuality does not equal “hate,” despite the best efforts of LGBT activists to conflate the two. He and Meehan laughed when I told them that I couldn’t be a “homophobe” because if I truly “feared” homosexuals, I could not do AFTAH’s work, which requires me to be around many homosexuals.
Despite the awkwardness of the situation, it helped this time, compared to my April airport search in Regina, that Shane and Meehan, the two fellows handling my entry at Calgary, were actually interested in my explanation of what I and AFTAH do. They appreciated my defense of civility in the “gay” debate and I think Shane was satisfied that I didn’t hate him or homosexuals in general. I thanked him for his professionalism.
Shane asked me if anything i would present on Wednesday could be construed as “hateful.” I told him no, but explained that they’re is a lively debate going on in the culture about what constitutes “hate” on this question. I explained, and he agreed, that we could have a civil discussion about homosexuality and yet agree to disagree.
Paul discovered in my belongings the Human Right Campaign report, “Exporting Hate,” with its highly unflattering graphics of me and Michael Brown, and Mat Staver. (Others are targeted in the “Hate” booklet, but I only taken copies of the pages with the shadowy images of myself, Brown and Staver.)
He asked me about this quotation accurately attributed to me by the HRC “Export of Hate” hit-piece:
“Kids would ‘be better off in a single-parent household [compared to a homosexual-led household]…because you’re not modeling homosexual behavior. When you have two men raising a young child, that child grows up learning, basically, dysfunction and a sexual perversion as normality.” (Alan Colmes Show, 1/7/14)
Shane seemed especially concerned about my use of the word “perversion” and suggested in so many words that there is no religious (biblical) case for that word. I explained that historically the word has been used in association with homosexuality and that we also make the case that Natural Law opposes homosexuality.
Stay tuned for updates. Please pray for my meeting with Immigration officials today, and for our meeting (if it happens) this evening—and lastly, for Bill’s and my trial Thursday in Regina on the ridiculous “Mischief” charge leveled against us for defending life and sexual morality at—of all places—a public university.
Crude effort to block pro-family speech in Canada not unlike GLAAD/SPLC crusade to censor pro-family voices opposed to homosexuality in media
“I would like for him to be turned away from our border….Peter LaBarbera should not be allowed to enter our country. His sole purpose of entering Canada is to spread his message of hate and intolerance.”–Bailey Ashton Brookes, Intolerance Free Weyburn, in a public letter to Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, Steven Blaney
“Tolerance,” Canadian Style: Canadian pro-life and pro-family activist Bill Whatcott poses for photo with adversary and anti-“intolerance” activist Bailey Ashton Brookes, who is lobbying the State to keep AFTAH’s Peter LaBarbera out of Saskatchewan, Canada, where he is scheduled to give a talk Oct. 11-12.
By Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH
Folks, below is the verbatim copy of a Facebook letter by “Intolerance Free Weyburn” [Saskatchewan] activist Bailey Ashton Brookes. She is urging others to write Steven Blaney, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, to bar my entry into Canada, where I am scheduled as a speaker at the Saskatchewan Pro-Life Association (SPLA) conference in Weyburn, October 11-12. [see original AFTAH story HERE; see letters by Joe Scheidler and Mary Anne Hackett defending me as a speaker].
“I would like for him to be turned away from our border,” Brookes writes.
Despite the Left’s history of censorship and totalitarianism, I am a bit taken aback to be the target of such an outrageous attempt to intimidate SPLA’s leaders into jettisoning me as a speaker–and then lobbying the State to ban me as a supposed purveyor of “hate.”
It’s one thing to write and poke fun at the “pro-Gay Thought Police,” and quite another to be in its crosshairs.
Here we have an object lesson on the inevitable end-result of political correctness–in the form of leftist “thought control” fused with State power. For years now, the far-left-biased Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has maliciously smeared my group, AFTAH, as well as dozens of other pro-family organizations like American Family Association and Family Research Council as “hate groups.” Then fellow travelers on the Left, led by LGBT activists, circulate the SPLC’s lie as if it is some kind of authoritative evidence that AFTAH and this writer are truly “hateful.”
In Canada, bereft of a First Amendment, mischievous “progressives” can cause more trouble faster than in the U.S., by citing legal bans on “hate speech” that have been upheld by the country’s highest court. Canadian Bill Whatcott, a brave pro-life and pro-family activist who will be speaking at the conference next week, has been victimized by such “hate speech” prosecutions. So have many good Canadians like Stephen Boissoin, who have been dragged through preposterous “human rights tribunals” merely because they voiced opposition to the Sin of Sodom.
SPLC smears go worldwide
SPLC’s One-Sided “Hate” Scam: Remember this leftist brick attack on AFTAH’s banquet in 2011? The Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network (GLN) publicly refused to condemn it–demonstrating actual hatred. Yet the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has never labelled GLN–or any homosexual organization–a “hate group,” while slandering dozens of pro-family organizations like AFTAH with that false smear. The words on the paver brick thrown through the glass doors of the Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights, IL, refer to AFTAH banquet speaker and honoree Scott Lively.
The SPLC’s corruption and radical pro-homosexual bias is illustrated by the fact that it has never designated an LGBT organization as a “hate group.” In fact, the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network (GLN), which took great pride in “reporting” AFTAH to the SPLC as a potential “hate group,” later publicly refused to condemn a brick attack against the school, Christian Liberty Academy, that hosted our 2011 banquet! [See AFTAH original story on the pro-homosexual brick attack.]
That’s real hate as opposed to ideologically-defined “hate.” Yet the SPLC has yet to designate GLN as a “hate group.” The good news is that many Americans and pundits finally are seeing through the SPLC’s “hate” scam.
Most activists on the Left are not as brazen as Ms. Brookes and her husband in pressing the censor card, but these two “morality-phobic” individuals are merely applying a more extreme and crass version of the pro-LGBT Left’s hardball tactics. Homosexual activist groups like GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation)–working with others like the SPLC–continually and falsely equate opposition to homosexuality with “hate.” They also throw around the ominous-sounding charge of “homophobia”–implying that their opponents are filled with irrational fear as opposed to disagreeing with immoral and unhealthy sexual behavior.
Then this Coalition on the Left pressures the media not to give a voice to the haters, homophobes and bigots. In recent years, they have expanded their crusade to include the enemy of “religious-based bigotry.” In their pride, they possess little regard for the sincerity and motives of Christians and others who genuinely seek to defend God’s moral order (“righteousness” in the Bible)–while holding out the hope of healthy change as personified by the many men and women who have left homosexuality (“gayness”) behind.
Since these illogical arguments and self-serving tactics can easily be defeated by pro-family advocates, pro-LGBT militants would rather just shut groups like AFTAH down in the Public Square. Endlessly playing their “anti-hate” card, they plead with the media to stop including the “other side” in their stories–stoking the ridiculous notion that no legitimate opposition to homosexualism (“gay rights”) exists. I’m afraid this is how countless cowed and ill-informed Western journalists think about homosexuality today. The arrogance and injustice of deciding for everyone what supposedly constitutes “hate,” “intolerance” and appropriate arguments in this Culture War debate apparently is lost on these liberal Speech Police and their media accomplices.
The judicial confirmation process has become a spectacle almost as comical as one of Al Franken’s (D-MN) jokes. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was not grilled on whether she believes Americans have a First Amendment right to oppose homosexuality — i.e., whether their religious and moral liberties are overridden by “sexual orientation” laws.
“Kagan did not deny that her application of Harvard’s [‘sexual orientation’ nondiscrimination] policy would have excluded the Catholic Church.” —CNSNews.com, reporting on Kagan’s confirmation hearing
By Peter LaBarbera
Solicitor General Elena Kagan has been confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 13-6 vote — after hypocritically dodging and weaving her way through the farce that now masquerades as the judicial confirmation process. Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC) was the lone Republican to vote for her — despite the fact that South Carolina is conservative while Kagan is the ideological cousin of our elitist, far-left president. (Click HERE for the MassResistance report on Kagan’s pro-homosexual record at Harvard.)
Kagan’s future now rests with the Democrat-dominated Senate — where most pundits (betting on listless GOP opposition) expect her to win confirmation; the vote is expected to come in early August.
Americans now face the prospect of a radically pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality social Leftist-for-Life sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, potentially for 30 or more years. In just 105 days, on Election Day (Nov. 2), U.S. citizens will be able to cripple Barack Obama’s power — a day anticipated by millions of citizens outraged over his arrogant and reckless presidency. In two more years, Obama could be voted out of office a la Jimmy Carter.
Not so with Kagan. Unless Republicans summon up the guts to actually block her via filibuster (don’t bet on it), she likely will soon become Justice Kagan until she retires at an old age. There, if her past is any indication, one day she will vote to create a new “fundamental right” of “same-sex marriage” out of an “evolving” Constitution — all the while protecting that old make-believe “constitutional right,” sacrosanct to liberals, of abortion-on-demand. (See this Omaha World-Herald story on Kagan’s manipulation of expert testimony in the Clinton administration to fight legislative attempts to ban the gruesome practice of partial-birth abortion.)
New York City homosexual activist Joe Jervis recklessly claims that the Americans For Truth Academy "will train young people how to properly hate faggots and dykes and foster violent crimes against them." Jervis, here protesting California's pro-traditional-marriage amendment, routinely conflates moral opposition to homosexuality with hatred.
Jervis wildly claims that the Americans For Truth Academy “will train young people how to properly hate faggots and dykes and foster violent crimes against them.”
Folks, it didn’t take too long for homosexual activists to smear the Americans For Truth Academy, which will be held in Carol Stream, Illinois, August 5-7. Here is one particularly inane and mean-spirited post by atheist “gay” leatherman Joe Jervis, who runs the blog “Joe.My.God.” With clockwork-like regularity, homosexual activists resort to their favorite lie: that civil speech opposing homosexuality in the public square leads to violence against homosexuals. (Such claims form the basis for demands to banish said speech; of course, vicious and nasty attacks on Christians somehow do not qualify as “hate” nor lead to violence against people of faith….)
Per Jervis’ piece below, “Porno Pete” is a smear term against yours truly invented by another hypocritical homosexual militant, Wayne Besen, and circulated by fellow “gay” activists (who simultaneously condemn name-calling against homosexuals — go figure). One of the things we will teach at the ongoing AFTAH Academy is that while homosexual activists demand respect and tolerance from others, they consistently dish out vitriol and invective against their opponents — all the while cynically equating historic, Judeo-Christian moral truths with hate, bigotry and “homophobia.”
Will the United States become a magnet for foreign homosexuals?
Pro-family Christian Julio Severo fled his home country of Brazil to avoid state prosecution and harassment on "homophobia" charges. Would Severo be granted U.S. asylum like Brazilian homosexual Augusto Pereira de Souza?
By Peter LaBarbera
Homosexual websites are celebrating that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has granted asylum to 27-year-old Brazilian homosexual Augusto Pereira de Souza, who claims he would face torment and violent attacks if forced to return to his country.
I wonder what would happen if Julio Severo (right), the outspoken Brazilian Christian advocate who fled his country due to escalating oppression against critics of homosexuality, were to apply for applied for U.S. asylum. An article in the “Queerty” blog claims that Brazil is “one of the world’s most violently anti-gay countries … with 180 reported LGBT murders in 2008 alone.” I do not know the accuracy of this information. But here is the problem: already Queerty and other pro-homosexuality activists are citing the case of Souza (whose asylum claim was secured by three students at Columbia Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic,” Queerty reports) as good news for Ugandan homosexuals who might want to make similar claims.
Is the United States of America under President Obama going to become the magnet for foreign homosexuals and “queer” activists the world over? AFTAH has condemned draconian punishments against homosexuals (such as “solutions” prescribed by radical Islamists). However, America and the West have no right to impose their decadent, perversion-celebrating values on the rest of the world, and other countries certainly have the right to criminalize homosexual behavior just as it was criminalized in the United States prior to the Supreme Court’s activist Lawrence v. Texas decision. (Anti-sodomy laws remain on the books in many states and laws that do not solely ban homosexual sodomy have NOT been struck down; here is a Wikipedia article which — despite that website’s strong pro-homosexual bias — describes the sodomy law situation in all 50 states.)
“When you say that your organization is no more hateful than the Catholic church, we have a rare point of agreement. You are both haters.” — Bob Schwartz, Gay Liberation Network
The Catholic Church should also be on the "hate" list, says Bob Schwartz of the Gay Liberation Network.
Note that you don’t have to agree with the Catholic Church’s handing of its homosexual/pedophile crisis (most Catholics I know do not) to see the absurdity of labeling the church a “hater” because it defends traditional sexual morality and natural marriage between a man and a woman. The folly of the SPLC’s expanding “hate” dragnet is that it threatens to engulf all religious/moral opposition to homosexuality. Indeed, it would be revealing to query the top 25 “GLBT” activist across the nation and ask them if they would also label, as Matt Barber pokes fun HERE, the following as “hate groups”: Family Research Council, AFA, the Roman Catholic Church, Focus on the Family, the Southern Baptist Convention and ADF. (I posed the question to one young “gay” activist, Alex Blaze, HERE, and received no response.)
Yes, we’re all “haters” now (except the likes of Schwartz, despite his bully tactics and GLN’s ugly, anti-Christian bigotry). And just like ObamaCare is padding the rolls of the IRS to keep Americans in “compliance” with government “health” mandates, perhaps the SPLC needs an infusion of Obama stimulus funds to expand its already large staff and huge budget to accommodate its “reporting” on the ever-expanding “hate” network.
Pictured above is the 'hateful' and 'violence-prone' Matt Barber, Board Member of Americans For Truth, in his days as a professional boxer.
By J. Matt Barber
Though always left of center, the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)once had a reputation as a fairly objective civil rights group. Founded by direct-marketing millionaire Morris Dees and partner Joseph Levin Jr. in 1971, the SPLC made important and honorable contributions to many of the historic civil rights gains of the 20th Century. According to its own materials, the SPLC was “internationally known for tracking and exposing the activities of hate groups.”
Alas, “power corrupts,” as it goes, and the SPLC, having amassed tremendous power and wealth over the years, has regrettably become corrupt to its core. By way of an ever-escalating wave of “us-versus-them” money-grubbing schemes, Today’s SPLC has morphed into a far-left political activist outfit, famous for promoting a panoply of extreme liberal causes.
Ken Silverstein, writing for Harper’s Magazine, addressed this untoward metamorphosis in 2000:
“Today’s SPLC spends most of its time – and money – on a relentless fund-raising campaign, peddling memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the collection plate. ‘He’s the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of the civil rights movement,’ renowned anti-death-penalty lawyer Millard Farmer says of Dees, his former associate, ‘though I don’t mean to malign Jim and Tammy Faye.’
“The American Institute of Philanthropy gives the Center one of the worst ratings of any group it monitors,” continued Silverstein. “Morris Dees doesn’t need your financial support. The SPLC is already the wealthiest civil rights group in America, though [its fundraising literature] quite naturally omits that fact. … ‘Morris and I…shared the overriding purpose of making a pile of money,’ recalls Dees’ business partner, a lawyer named Millard Fuller (not to be confused with Millard Farmer). ‘We were not particular about how we did it; we just wanted to be independently rich.’” (You say Fuller. I say Farmer. The two Millards say “call the whole thing off.”)
So, what happens when a dragon slayer – paid per dragon head – runs out of real dragons to slay? Well, he invents new ones, of course. Gotta keep those sprinklers-a-sprinklin.’ (According to Harper’s, “Dees bought a 200-acre estate appointed with tennis courts, a pool, and stables.” SPLC’s 2008 Form-990 shows net assets of over 219 million at the beginning of that year. Yup, there’s a spate to be made in the hate trade.)
