Following is an important opinion piece by our friend Gina Miller providing background about a court case that poses a direct threat to Americans’ freedom. The pro-homosexual Left–in this case the well-heeled “hate” manipulators at Southern Poverty Law Center–are attempting to use the courts to shut down ex-“gay” therapists–who help men and women overcome unwanted same-sex attractions. (Next they will be going after ex-“gay” ministries and church- or religiously-affiliated counselors.) Leftists are totalitarians at heart, as more and more they move to squelch dissent on the “gay” issue (in the name of “equality” and “protecting” people, of course–liberals know how to package their tyranny). This column first ran about a year ago in Renew America, an excellent website for patriots. Please do all you can to help JONAH and Chuck LiMandri’s Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, as literally is liberty are on the line in this case. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH

February 16, 2014

By Gina Miller

Listen to an audio version of this column at Renew America

As we continue to watch insanity reign in our nation on far too many levels, yet another activist federal judge, an Obama appointee who apparently does not know the difference between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, has overruled the will of the people in the State of Virginia and declared its ban on same-sex “marriage” to be “unconstitutional.” So continues the warped, vicious assault on truth, reason, the family and our freedoms.

We also have an example of what a Godless, morally relativistic university system produces. A third-year law student at Yale has written an opinion piece published on Wednesday in the New York Times. Jacob Victor’s column titled, “Ending ‘Gay Conversion’ for Good,” demonstrates the standard, leftist talking-point lies used against those who help people overcome unwanted same-sex attraction.

His piece begins:

Therapy programs that purport to “convert” lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender kids have caused immeasurable harm since they became prominent in the 1970s. Rigorous studies have shown again and again that efforts to change young people’s sexual orientation not only fail, but are also linked to suicidal behavior, depression, anxiety, drug use and risky sexual behavior.

These are lies. I am not aware of any therapists who guarantee conversion, any kind of therapists. When sin has a powerful hold on someone, it’s never easy to let it go, but it is possible. Countless people have escaped the grip of homosexuality and have gone on to live normal lives. To say that change from homosexuality is not possible is to lie.

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.

Christopher Doyle, founder of Voice of the Voiceless. Doyle overcome homosexuality in his own life and is now happily married and the father of three children. AFTAH urgers readers to support Doyle’s new organization defending ex-“gays,” Voice of the Voiceless.

Folks, Christopher Doyle–a former homosexual himself who is now living happily as a married heterosexual family man (somebody report him to Homosexual Hatemonger Wayne Besen!)–is doing outstanding work through his new organization, Voice of the Voiceless. Doyle is the lead pro-family advocate confronting the Orwellian campaign by Besen and other homosexual militants (and the Southern Poverty Law Center) to outlaw pro-heterosexual therapy for minors–apparently using big lies when necessary (see the “transgender tale” below).

If Besen and his ilk win, children and freedom lose. So please support Doyle and VOTF. This column originally appeared online in the Christian Post, March 13, 2014.–Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH

_____________________________

Setting the Record Straight on ‘Gay Conversion’ Therapy for Minors

By Christopher Doyle

As a response to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals’ refusal to hear an appeal over the 2012 California law prohibiting Sexual Orientation Change Effort (SOCE) therapy for minors, it has been open season for anti-therapy activists. To compliment existing laws in New Jersey and the Golden State, legislation has also been introduced in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington, Ohio, Washington, D.C., Florida, Minnesota, New York, Maryland, Hawaii, Virginia, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Pundits across the political spectrum are anticipating more laws to come in 2014.

A February 16 article in The Washington Times predicted that such laws would likely follow the path of states legalizing gay marriage, and perhaps even pave the way to a national ban if anti-ex-gay advocates were to gain more power on the federal level, while a February 12 editorial in the New York Times suggested that a wiser path would be for “victims” to use legal measures to quell the “deceptive practices” of those who offer SOCE therapy. After all, it’s a well-known fact that such therapy for minors has been “proven” to be “ineffective” and “harmful.”

However, recent legislative efforts by activists in Virginia and Washington have failed, and a hearing in Maryland on similar legislation was cancelled, partly because the lies and half-truths of activists are catching up to them. In Washington, a witness testifying in a January committee hearing said that a licensed therapist forced a child to watch pornography while in an ice bath so that the client would associate sexual arousal with pain. However, when questioned after the hearing, the woman refused to provide the name of the therapist and when it happened; nor was she willing to do any research to help uncover whether, if it had in fact happened, it was a licensed therapist.

In a senate hearing in February, a representative of the Washington Department of Health, which has jurisdiction over professional licensing and fields approximately 10,000 complaints a year, said that the current staff has 11 years of institutional knowledge and no one was aware of a single complaint alleging that a licensed therapist had attempted to coerce someone into not being gay.

This story sounds eerily similar to the disaster witnessed in New Jersey last year, when transgender activist Brielle Goldani claimed to have been sent to a “conversion therapy torture camp” in Ohio in 1997. Goldani alleged to have been electroshocked at the month-long “True Directions” camp in an attempt to make him, now her, straight. Yet, an investigation published at WorldNetDaily.com revealed that the entire testimony was a fraud, taken directly out of a Hollywood production starring drag queen RuPaul.

The following video was published by the Family Research Council  (FRC) on September 20, 2013. I agree with Leo Johnson [at 6:40 on the vide0] that “gay” activist Floyd Corkins deserved a tougher sentence than 25 years (especially considering that only Johnson’s heroics likely kept Corkins from committing mass murder). Newsbusters documents HERE how the major networks ABC, NBC and CBS ignored the sentencing of Corkins, who targeted FRC based on a spurious “hate map” put out by the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Needless to say, had the situation been reversed and a conservative activist had nearly committed mass murder at the headquarters of the Human Rights Campaign (a homosexual lobby group), the story would have been received far greater coverage than the shocking attack on FRC. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH [more information follows the the video, after the jump]