The following is excerpted from Dana Milbank’s August 16 column in the Washington Post. Naturally, as a Post columnist, Milmank is careful to affirm his pro-homosexuality pedigree. But at least he recognizes the ludicrousness of putting the Family Research Council — and by extension other pro-family groups  like AFTAH and AFA smeard by Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) “hate group” charge — in with racist fringe groups. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH

___________________________

Hateful speech on hate groups

By Dana Milbank, Published in the Washington Post [full column HERE], August 16, 2012

Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights organization, posted an alert on its blog Tuesday: “Paul Ryan Speaking at Hate Group’s Annual Conference.”

The “hate group” that the Republicans’ vice presidential candidate would be addressing? The Family Research Council, a mainstream conservative think tank founded by James Dobson and run for many years by Gary Bauer.

…

Human Rights Campaign isn’t responsible for the [FRC] shooting. Neither should the organization that deemed the FRC a “hate group,” the Southern Poverty Law Center, be blamed for a madman’s act. But both are reckless in labeling as a “hate group” a policy shop that advocates for a full range of conservative Christian positions, on issues from stem cells to euthanasia.

I disagree with the Family Research Council’s views on gays and lesbians. But it’s absurd to put the group, as the law center does, in the same category as Aryan Nations, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Stormfront and the Westboro Baptist Church. The center says the FRC “often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science.” Exhibit A in its dossier is a quote by an FRC official from 1999 (!) saying that “gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.”

Offensive, certainly. But in the same category as the KKK?

…

From the Culture and Media Institute:

Media ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ about Key Ruling
Court’s affirmation of military policy goes unreported even by AP, which instead exhorts Democrats to rescind ban on homosexuality.

By Robert Knight and Julia Seward
Culture and Media Institute
June 12, 2008

When it comes to reporting on court rulings about the military’s ban on homosexuality, the media seem to have their own “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

A case in point was Monday’s ruling by the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cook vs. Gates upholding the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, established by Congress and President Clinton in 1993, which enables the military to remove open homosexuals from service.

There was no coverage by the TV networks, nor by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today or the Washington Post. The Associated Press (AP) ignored the story as well. Only the Boston Globe and Boston Herald carried brief articles on it, because the case originated in Boston.

From my good friend Robert Knight, director of the Culture & Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center that examines how media bias undermines faith and traditional American values–PL:

Posted: 09/21/2007, Human Events Online

Most liberal media outlets reacted in similar fashion to Tuesday’s major Maryland Court of Appeals ruling, which upholds the state’s law defining marriage as one man-one woman. They presented it through the lavender lens of homosexual activism. 

CBS News’ Web site ran this headline: Maryland Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban

Calling the law a “gay marriage ban” is as misleading as describing it as a “ban on polygamous marriage,” or a “ban on incestuous marriage” or perhaps a “ban on interspecies marriage.” For the record, the Court in Conaway vs. Deane notes that neither the 1973 law nor the legislative debate at the time address “sexual orientation” nor any “gay” issue. All the law does is reiterate the fundamental nature of marriage for legal purposes. 

To liberal journalists, however, a law merely acknowledging the timeless definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is unacceptable.  Such a law must be depicted only as a negative, as a ban rather than an affirmation.

The CBS article itself was straightforward at the top, but devolved into passages like this:

Many of the plaintiffs have children, and they argue that their families are being denied the stability and legal protection that comes from having married parents.

Lisa Kebreau, 39, and her partner, Mikki Mozelle, 31, who live in Riverdale, have three children – ages 17, 2 and 20 months.

“We really wanted them to understand how normal and good their family is – that their family is just like any other family,” Kebreau said.

CBS quoted no pro-marriage spokesman in response who might have argued that kids deserve to have both a mother and a father. The story also did not explain the court’s key finding that “sexual orientation” is not a civil rights class such as sex, race and ethnicity.

The Baltimore Sun ran this headline: Court Upholds Md. Gay Marriage Ban

The story, a cardinal example of advocacy journalism, was devoted to homosexual activists and liberal jurists complaining about the ruling or vowing to create “gay marriage” by other means. Not a single pro-marriage spokesperson was quoted.

The Washington Post’s article gave a more balanced account, but spent most of its ink criticizing the decision and discussing how to circumvent it. The opening sentence reflects the Post’s bias, describing Maryland’s marriage law as “the state’s ban on gay marriage” and “the controversial law.”

In fact, the marriage law is not controversial, at least outside homosexual activist and liberal media circles. All 50 states have laws defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman (even Massachusetts, which still has no business issuing same-sex marriage licenses without a change in the law).

What is controversial is Baltimore Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock’s nutso January ruling striking the law down. Murdock wrote that the law violates a state constitutional provision guaranteeing equal rights. By her reasoning, any specific definition of a relationship or status could violate the rights of somebody who does not qualify.  Perhaps we should all be considered “doctors,” not just those folks who graduated from medical school.

Click HERE to read the entire article in Human Events Online

 This FOX News Channel ad ran in the program guide of the recent National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association conference in San Diego. 

The following is Allyson Smith’s first installment on the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) conference in San Diego — which she attended representing Americans For Truth. Note the casual mixing of homosexual media with “mainstream” media – all sharing and strategizing around a pro-gay perspective — and the complete lack of opposing voices present at the NLGJA panels. (Allyson tells me that at one panel on “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell,” the moderator said that opponents of homosexuals in the military were invited to speak but declined to attend.)

All this begs the question of whether homosexual reporters working in establishment media can truly be objective — i.e., fair and balanced —  especially when they are assigned to cover homosexual-related issues. Also, note that for ease of reading, we have not put quote marks around the word “gay” as we would normally do. – Peter LaBarbera

By Allyson Smith

Gay Activists & Journalists Mingle and Strategize Together at National Gay Journalists Conference: Day 1 at the NLGJA

On Thursday, August 30, I attended the first of three days of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention, held at the Westin Horton Plaza Hotel in downtown San Diego. Although I have been to many homosexual conferences and events since the dawn of the millennium, at times using my real name and at other times an assumed name, this would be my first time to attend such a convention as a totally “out” Christian conservative reporter under the auspices of an organization many homosexual activists hate: Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), headed by longtime pro-family activist Peter LaBarbera.

   The photo at right appeared in the homosexual newspaper Dallas Voice’s story on Allyson Smith, who attended the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists (NLGJA) conference in San Diego representing Americans For Truth. Smith received a lot of attention at the annual event as a lone voice opposed to homosexuality. The NLGJA event is financed and sponsored each year by “mainstream” media corporations, including FOX News, which also recruited there. 

The following article first appeared on the blog of Mike Heath, who directs the Christian Civic League of Maine, and who is Chairman of the Board of Directors at Americans For Truth. As one who has both attended several National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) conferences (openly, as a critic), and even spoken as a panelist at one, I will add that the NLGJA events have an odd mix of activism and journalism. They prominently feature activists like Besen who can fairly be described as pro-homosexual culture warriors, but they also are attended by professional journalists who claim to be objective, mostly as open homosexuals. (I would suspect that the typical media consumer has no clue that the NLGJA reporter they’re reading, watching, or listening to is “gay.”) 

Wayne’s predictable jibes are far less important than the question of whether openly (or “closeted”) homosexual journalists can cover homosexuality-related issues with any semblance of objectivity and fairness. — Peter LaBarbera 

A ‘Christian Crusader’ amidst the World of ‘Gay Journalism’
By Mike Heath | September 7, 2007

Most of us don’t even know that there is such a thing as a homosexual press.  If someone told us there was one we’d look at them askance and wonder which airport bathroom stall they just crawled out of.  Alas, not only is there such a thing … it is thriving.  How do I know?  It wasn’t FoxNews that told me.  Turns out FoxNews sponsors the homosexual press, and recruits from their ranks.  Fox was one among many familiar news sources who showed up to sponsor the National Gay and Lesbian Jounalist Association convention in San Diego a couple weeks ago.

One intrepid truth teller took time to show up.  Allyson Smith, a San Diego resident, attended the entire conference representing (openly) Americans For Truth.  It is important to know that Allyson lives in San Diego.  Truth tellers about homosexuality in the west have learned to live on fund-raising fumes.  It is harder to raise funds for truth telling about homosexuality than it is for Larry Craig to figure out his “intent.”  If Smith didn’t live in San Diego, the important and underrated organization Americans for Truth wouldn’t have had anybody at the conference.  They don’t have the money.  It is easy to raise money by loving all things gay, hating gays or helping gays.  It is hard to raise money to tell the truth about the so-called “gay” movement.

Send your check today to Americans for Truth by visiting their website HERE.

Approximately 500 journalists, editors, producers, travel writers, bloggers and other communications workers from homosexual and mainstream media outlets gathered August 30 – September 2 for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) annual conference.

As at past NLGJA conferences, conservative-leaning Fox News Network was among the sponsors and recruiters.

Titled “Breaking Stories, Breaking Waves,” the convention, held in downtown San Diego’s Westin Horton Plaza hotel, featured a one-day LGBT media summit, six receptions, and more than 50 sessions and workshops ranging from “Covering LGBT Conservatives” (oddly, the Christian-conservative-bashing Wayne Besen was a panelist), to “Will Gays Matter in ’08?” to “Sex Writing for Fun and Profit.”

Attendees included print and broadcast professionals from top U.S. mainstream news agencies such as CNN, Associated Press, ABC/Primetime, NBC, CBS, Fox News Network, Hearst Newspapers, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bloomberg News, Newsday, the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, CNBC, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Time Warner/Turner Broadcasting, Washington Post, Hartford Courant, People Magazine, NPR, Clear Channel Communications, Wired Magazine, Cox Enterprises, and USA Today.

Among major homosexual media outlets represented were the Washington Blade, Dallas Voice, San Diego’s Gay and Lesbian Times, GO Magazine, Gay News Watch, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), Bay Area Reporter, IN Los Angeles Magazine, Sirius OutQ Radio, CBS News on LOGO, and here! Networks.

Other organizations who sent employees to the convention, according to an attendee directory distributed with the registration package, included Cirque de Soleil; MGM Mirage; USC Annenberg School of Communications; Human Rights Campaign (HRC); Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund; Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN); Arizona State University Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication; JetBlue Airways; Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard; several Canadian tourism agencies; Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN); Lambda Legal; Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation; Out and Equal Workplace Advocates; Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau; and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The convention included plenary sessions on the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and immigration issues affecting homosexuals, as well as a general session featuring a conversation with Larry Kramer, founder of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP), a radical, “in your face” demonstration group that made headlines in December, 1989, for disrupting a Catholic Mass and destroying a consecrated Communion host at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

The Canadian Tourism Board was the presenting sponsor for the convention. Other sponsors included JetBlue Airways, CBS News, CNN, ESPN, General Motors, Toyota automobiles, Orbitz, Bloomberg, Coca-Cola,  the Gill Foundation, Sony Pictures and Television, visitBritain, ABC News, Fox News Network, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Washington Post.

Among “Career & Community Expo” participants were the Associated Press, Dow Jones, Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, MGM Mirage, Reuters, Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau, the New York Times, Fox News Network, and NBC Universal.

Other events occurring during the convention included a student projects, a documentary film screening, a “not so silent” auction, 12-step meetings, and a “San Diego Night Out.”

Americans For Truth sent reporter Allyson Smith to the convention for three days, where she attended more than a dozen sessions and raised issues of concern to pro-family advocates — including the biased manner in which “mainstream media” covers homosexuality-related issues. A full report about the sessions that Smith attended will follow in coming days.

Robert Knight is a hero in the culture wars and is director of the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center. Here he briefly lays out the truth behind the infamous “Tinky Winky” smear against Rev. Jerry Falwell. The “Tinky Winky” story is a textbook study in how the media discredits and ridicules religious conservatives: 

Getting a Kick out of Falwell’s Death 

By Robert Knight
Culture and Media Institute
May 18, 2007

In many of his talks to Liberty University students, the Rev. Jerry Falwell emphasized the importance of “finishing well.”

Last Tuesday, he was at the top of his game when he unexpectedly died in the college office where he was planning more expansions of the fast-growing university that he founded in 1971.

The Rev. Falwell did a lot of things well, ticking off liberals right up to the end. How else would he have garnered the kind of tribute from a major newspaper’s religion writer that was headlined, “Sigh of relief over Falwell death.”

To make sure no one mistook her, Chicago Sun-Times Religion Writer Cathleen Falsani’s May 18 column explains her reaction to the news about Dr. Falwell on May 15:

“…My very first thought upon hearing of the Rev.  Falwell’s passing was: Good.  And I didn’t mean ‘good’ in a oh-good-he’s-gone-to-be-home-with-the-Lord kind of way. I mean ‘good’ as in ‘Ding-dong, the witch is dead.’”

Falsani, who claims to be a Christian, learned of this apparent good news in the airport departure lounge in Key West, a place where Jerry is not held in great esteem.

She went on to compare the good reverend to the foul-mouthed TV mobster Tony Soprano, and accused Falwell of saying “insensitive, mean-spirited, sometimes downright hateful things …in the name of Christ.”  She did do a bit of backing up, saying that maybe, in his own way, God used Jerry so that “lives were changed for the better by his ministry, his college, and the flip side of the endeavors he made in Jesus’ name.”

Meanwhile, she informed readers of her own apparent spiritual superiority, noting that “not all of us are that self-righteous, judgmental and holier than thou.”

I guess that openly enjoying the death of a fellow Christian and utterly distorting his Christian message into a caricature of hate is the mark of the nonjudgmental. I think it’s somewhere in the Sermon on the Mount.

Of course, Falsani is not the only journalist to use Rev. Falwell’s death as one more opportunity to cast fiery darts at him.

Virtually every major news outlet made sure that Falwell’s controversial comment following 9/11 and his notorious “outing” of the “gay Teletubby” Tinky Winky got ink and airtime.

The New York Times noted that it was an article in the National Liberty Journal, which Falwell published, that touched off the Teletubbies ruckus.  But the article failed to mention that the Liberty Journal piece quoted The Washington Post’s outing of Tinky Winky, and that the gay press and several other mainstream outlets had cheered openly for a year that the boy in the purple suit, carrying a purse and bearing the homosexual symbol, an upside down triangle, on his head, was clearly the first openly “gay” character in a children’s program.

I recall faxing The Washington Post article to the National Liberty Journal back in February 1999.  I had also faxed an article from a gay newspaper in which one of Teletubbies’ creators boasted openly that Tinky Winky’s character, which combines a deep daddy’s voice and mommy’s handbag, was a deliberate attempt to make children think differently about gender.  The Liberty Journal editors decided to stick with the Washington Post as the main source, which seems like a wise thing to do.  But in the end, it didn’t matter.

In the 10 years since, the press magnified and sustained the myth that Jerry Falwell “outed” Tinky Winky with no apparent evidence. He just did it for the heck of it, to be mean to gays.  As smears go, it made him easy to ridicule. Try as they might, that was the best they could do, since they unearthed no hint of scandal involving his integrity. In March 1999, Liberty Journal Senior Editor J. M. Smith pointed out the media’s distortions, but the myth continued to gain strength. Dr. Falwell himself took it in stride, even placing a stuffed Tinky Winky on top of his computer as a joke. Given his own generous spirit and lack of vitriol, he didn’t seem to understand the damage that was done to his reputation.

Click HERE to read the rest of Bob Knight’s column on the Culture & Media Institute website

From The View from the Bottom, by Robert Knight, published Mar 16, 2007, by WorldNet Daily:

The girls on “The View” are unanimous: Homosexuality is not only morally right but probably ought to be encouraged if we want to keep our military strong.OK, maybe mandating homosexuality in the military won’t fly just yet. For now, the ABC morning show’s talkers will have to be content fighting amongst themselves as to who is more outraged by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace, who told the Chicago Tribune that homosexuality, like adultery, is immoral.

The gals were in good media company. Not one of Tuesday’s morning or evening news shows on ABC, NBC or CBS featured a single person defending the general’s remarks. The tone was overtly hostile, with stories moving smartly through a laundry list of talking points found on homosexual activist groups’ websites. The Washington Post managed a March 13 trifecta: an editorial, “The Right to Serve,” an op-ed by Republican homosexuality booster and former Wyoming Sen. Alan K. Simpson, “Bigotry That Hurts Our Military,” and a news article by Ann Scott Tyson, “Sharp Drop in Gays Discharged From Military Tied to War Need.”

It’s not as if the American people are clamoring for the military to welcome open homosexuality. Despite some profoundly distorted polls like the recent Zogby survey of military personnel, a large segment of the American people believe, as Gen. Pace does, that homosexual behavior is immoral. According to the Cultural and Media Institute’s National Cultural Values Survey released on March 7, which polled 2,000 demographically representative Americans, 49 percent say flatly that homosexuality is “wrong.” Only 14 percent of Americans say homosexuality is “right.” The stampede to end the ban isn’t coming from the public, but from the media and some liberal politicians backed by the homosexual lobby.

On “The View,” the ladies opened the March 13 program by trashing the general, who wasn’t there to defend his honor.

Nor was anyone else inclined to do so, even designated “conservative” Elizabeth Hasselbeck. She openly wondered whether Pace harbors vices of his own that drove him to say what he did. This is a standard homosexual propaganda technique: Attribute dark motives to anyone who won’t salute the rainbow flag. You can look it up in their strategy manual, a book entitled “After the Ball.”

Rosie O’Donnell, a famous out lesbian, predictably came unglued. Over the past few years, she has defined herself primarily by her sexual behavior, and then claimed that people with moral qualms about homosexuality are bigots who are assailing her identity.

Here are portions of the five-minute discussion:

Joely Fisher: “We need to open General Pace’s closet and see what’s in there.”

Joy Behar: “Do you think people who are homophobic are gay closeted cases themselves?”

Fisher: “Or sexually repressed or uncomfortable with their own sexuality in any way?”

O’Donnell: “So if you are a gay person you are immoral. You are innately bad. You are less than, because you are gay. It’s like saying all lefties are witches.”

Hasselbeck: “He likened it to adultery, an adulterous person in the armed services would face some sort of punishment or some sort of slap on the wrist. …”

Fisher: “But it’s OK to kill people.”

Behar: “If you’re saying it’s immoral the way adultery is, then let gay people get married. Then it won’t be immoral.”

O’Donnell: “Can you be a straight person who is a horrible person, who is adulterous and has no morals?”

Fisher: “And have a leg up”

O’Donnell: “But it’s impossible for a gay person ever to be treated equal, which is the premise of this country, that all men and women are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, all people, even the gay ones. (Bares her teeth, shouts) General Pace, wake up! It’s 2007. There’s a war on! Leave the gays alone!” (applause)

After Rosie’s outburst, Hasselbeck explained why everyone doesn’t just go ahead and cheerfully accept homosexuality as moral:

“What happens is there’s this group of, you know, religious believers, be it Christian or whoever, who believe certain sins are worse than others. They do believe homosexuality is a sin, because they are not guilty, guilty of it, then they say, ‘It’s not my sin so I will focus on that,’ then pretty much hide the fact that I’m guilty of some other things as well.”

Later, she opined that, “We should not judge one another. I feel that’s the root of Christianity. You shall not judge.”

Does that mean we’re not to judge adultery? Promiscuous sex? Polygamy? Prostitution?

Inquiring Viewers want to know.