Anti-LGBT Activities Roundup 4/27/2017

Alliance Defending Freedom* (ADF) attorneys Matt Sharp and David Cortman appeared on “Washington Watch,” the radio program of Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council* (see below). Cortman is senior counsel and vice president of litigation and joined Perkins to discuss his recently argued April 19 case before the Supreme Court on behalf of Trinity Lutheran Church, which runs a preschool and daycare. It was excluded from a Missouri program that provides grants to buy rubberized surfacing materials for playgrounds because the daycare is run by a church ADF sued on behalf of Trinity Lutheran. The grant program bars state money from going to religious schools.

ADF consistently works to remove the barriers between church and state and is attempting to dismantle the Johnson Amendment, which regulates what tax-exempt organizations like churches can do in the political arena.

ADF attorney Matt Sharp joined Perkins to discuss the latest on a Minnesota school bathroom case, in which ADF and plaintiffs alleged that a young trans woman engaged in “twerking” and “grinding,” upsetting other young women in the locker room. The plaintiffs dropped the lawsuit earlier in April.

ADF is linked to many of the anti-trans bathroom bills that are currently sweeping the country. The bills are designed to restrict trans people’s access to public facilities.

The American Family Association*’s (AFA) One Million Moms (OMM) issued an anti-trans call to action April 25 against Dove (owned by Unilever) to protest one of its ads that includes a trans woman as one of the parents of a child. OMM consistently misgenders the trans woman in their statement and refers to her as a “cross-dressing father” and says that, “This cross-dressing young father who rejects his sex has in effect abandoned his son.” Furthermore, the message her son gets is that the trans woman is “looking inward to his [sic] own narcissistic and disordered desires.”

Monica Cole, director of One Million Moms.

OMM, which has been active since roughly 2006, launches frequent campaigns against advertisers they don’t agree with or against advertisers whose ads appear associated with television programs and movies they don’t agree with. Their goal, as stated on their website, “is to stop the exploitation of our children, especially by the entertainment media (TV, music, movies, etc.).” They claim they are a powerful tool against the “immorality, violence, vulgarity and profanity the entertainment media is throwing at your children.”

The AFA was originally founded in 1977 as the National Federation for Decency, which focused primarily on combatting pornography and what it considered indecent television programming. One of the tools the AFA has used consistently in that regard is boycotts, and OMM is one of its projects that appears to continue the original mission of the organization.

OMM’s primary targets include programs, movies, and ads that represent LGBT people in a positive manner. Most recently, they issued a call to action against the Disney Channel’s Star vs. the Forces of Evil because same-sex couples were kissing in a crowd. In 2015, the organization tried to launch a boycott against American Girl magazine (and parent company Mattel) because the magazine featured an article about an 11-year-old girl and her brothers who were adopted out of foster care by two dads. OMM accused the magazine of promoting the “gay agenda.” As a result of OMM’s actions, American Girl and the family it featured received an outpouring of positive media attention and the non-profit one of the dads founded to provide basic necessities for foster children received triple its usual donations.

And in 2012, OMM backed off its nationwide boycott of retailer J.C. Penney for hiring Ellen Degeneres as its spokesperson when the campaign flopped after numerous quarters attacked the effort, including Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.

The Family Research Council* (FRC) will hold a panel discussion titled “Transgender Ideology in Public Schools: Parents Fight Back” at their headquarters in Washington, D.C. on May 5. The panel deals with Fairfax, Va., which FRC calls “ground zero in the efforts to impose transgender ideology on American school children.”

In 2015, an unnamed student and his parents sued the Fairfax school district along with Andrea Lafferty, the president of the Traditional Values Coalition*. Lafferty and the student were represented by the Liberty Counsel*. The student in the 2015 case, identified as “Jack Doe,” claimed that the school’s attempts to include gender identity and sexual orientation in its anti-harassment policy “traumatized” him. The Virginia Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit in early April, 2017.

The panel includes Fairfax school board member Elizabeth Schultz; Meg Kilgannon, a parent in the district who, FRC claims, “has created a veritable army of parent and taxpayer activists”; Josh Hetzler, legislative counsel at the Family Foundation of Virginia; and Cathy Ruse, senior fellow for legal studies at FRC.

The panel fits with FRC’s promotion of anti-trans pseudoscience, exemplified in a 2015 policy paper the organization released called “Understanding and Responding to the Transgender Movement,” written by Dale O’Leary and Peter Sprigg. The latter is a longtime senior fellow for policy studies at FRC and a longtime purveyor of anti-LGBT pseudoscience. He appears to have no background in gender and sexuality studies; instead, he is an ordained Baptist minister who spent several years as a professional actor and worked for a time in non-profits and as an economic development assistant to Robert Drinan, the late Massachusetts congressman.

Sprigg has expressed support for criminal sanctions against “homosexual behavior” and has said that laws protecting trans people from violence and discrimination “force private actors to affirm delusions.” He has also been a member of the board of PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays), a group that supports reparative therapy – that is, LGBT people can stop being LGBT – and according to the group’s 2015 990 tax form, he was serving as “vice president/director.”

Dale O’Leary is a freelance writer and lecturer whose primary targets are LGBT people and feminists. She promulgates the right-wing conspiracy theory of “gender ideology”/ “gender agenda”/ “gender theory” which is an invention of the right that consists of a hodgepodge of disparate ideas of a variety of thinkers over the past fifty years that have been cobbled together by those opposed to feminism and LGBT people. The tenets of the theory are that LGBT people, feminists and other “sexual revolutionaries” are trying to “erase sex and gender” and destroy the so-called “natural family” (one man married to one woman with their biological children). “Gender theory,” O’Leary wrote in 2013, “in whatever form it takes is a denial of the reality of sexual difference. Those who have adopted the theory into their lives are in rebellion against their own nature, which leads to feelings of alienation.”

FRC Radio Roundup: Tony Perkins, the president of FRC, does a daily radio show, “Washington Watch.” Guests since April 14 have included newly elected representative Ron Estes (R-KS); Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ); Representative Ted Poe (R-TX); Senator James Lankford (R-OK); Representative Warren Davidson (R-OH); Representative Tom Reed (R-NY). Others included Pointe Coupee, Louisiana sheriff Beauregard “Bud” Torres; Everett Piper, anti-LGBT president of Oklahoma-Wesleyan University and Jonathan Saenz, president of the anti-LGBT group Texas Values. On April 24^th, Sandy Rios, radio host for the American Family Association*, guest-hosted for Perkins.

Focus on the Family (FOTF) president Jim Daly was the keynote speaker at the mayor’s prayer breakfast in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on April 28.

Focus on the Family was founded in 1977 by anti-LGBT psychologist James Dobson in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Under Dobson’s tenure, FOTF was known for its strident anti-LGBT rhetoric and positions, as well as for pushing of anti-LGBT pseudoscience and misrepresenting legitimate research. Daly took over the organization in 2005 and in 2013, the New York Times ran a piece in which it appeared Daly has softened some of the group’s stances, though some refuted that interpretation.

Daly has made anti-LGBT statements in the past, including claiming that same-sex marriage endangers civilization; said that two gay parents contribute no value to parenting; that “homosexual activists” wish to restrict the speech of anyone opposed to homosexuality and that “it really is a form of fascism.” He has also supported the discredited anti-LGBT study by sociologist Mark Regnerus.

FOTF is perhaps best-known for launching the “Love Won Out” campaign and ministry in 1998, which was a push for the pseudoscientific and often harmful practice of ex-gay therapy that included annual conferences. Its primary spokesman, John Paulk, was photographed in a gay bar in Washington, DC. He has since apologized for his role in the ministry and is living as gay.

Regardless, FOTF continues to push ex-gay therapy and the belief that people can “leave” homosexuality on its website. Many of the "resources" are written by Jeff Johnston, who claims he is no longer gay. Johnston has also called same-sex relationships “unreality” and pushes the falsehood that people (especially men) are gay because they were sexually abused as children.

FOTF is also responsible for the “Day of Dialogue” to counter the “Day of Silence,” a student-led even to bring awareness of the silencing effects of anti-LGBT bullying, name-calling and harassment. Though billed as a free speech initiative, The Day of Dialogue encourages and equips young Christians to express condemnation of homosexuality and transgender people.

The Day of Dialogue has its roots in a 2005 initiative created by Alliance Defending Freedom* (then the Alliance Defense Fund) called “Day of Truth,” which was designed to “counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda.” FOTF took over the renamed Day of Dialogue, but ADF is listed on the event’s website as providing pro bono legal representation for Day of Dialogue students “who encounter unconstitutional roadblocks to their free speech rights.”

This year, the Day of Dialogue is April 28.

Janet Boynes Ministry, will hold Called Out, its annual ex-gay conference, July 26-29 in Wayne, New Jersey. From its start in 2013, the conference description states, the “Called Out Conference has had a singular mission – to see people be set free!” Speakers include Janet Boynes, who is often touted on the anti-LGBT right as proof that people can “leave” homosexuality. She has likened homosexuality to drug addiction and pointed to a variety of causes for it, from domineering mothers to having too many gay friends. She has also stated that acceptance of same-sex marriage is a sign of the end times and recommended that parents not allow the same-sex partners of their LGBT adult children into the house. 

Janet Boynes

Other speakers include Christian musician Charlie Hernandez, who claims he has “struggled” with homosexuality since childhood and Greg Quinlan, a fixture on the ex-gay circuit who is also a former president of PFOX. He claims he “left homosexuality” in 1992 and he is currently the president and founder of anti-LGBT group Garden State Families in New Jersey which purports to advocate for the “natural family,” a term the anti-LGBT right uses which they define as one man married to one woman and their biological children. Quinlan has touted the false claim that childhood molestation causes homosexuality, and also claimed that “homofascism” is threatening liberty through “anti-heterosexual legislation.” Karen Jensen Salisbury of Karen Jensen Salibury Ministries is also listed as a speaker. She and Quinlan were listed as speakers at last year’s Called Out conference, as well.

Liberty Counsel*’s 2017 Covenant Journey tours to Israel begin May 21. The second is in June and the third and fourth occur in July. Tours are open only to Christian college students who “have leadership potential” and have “some level of support for or interest in Israel.” According to the website, the tours are designed “specifically to motivate college students to discover and affirm their Christian faith and identity” and will provide participants “the ability to advocate for Israel upon their return.”

Liberty Counsel has also created an original TV series with affiliated ministry Christians in Defense of Israel titled Why Israel Matters. Episodes can be viewed on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

“Coach” Dave Daubenmire, president of Pass the Salt Ministries*, said on his Coach Dave Live webcast April 18 that he would be in Atlanta, Georgia April 27 and was planning to protest a three-week run in Atlanta of the play “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told,” an “alternate version and comedic sendup of stories from the Old Testament,” presented through the eyes of Adam and Steve, a gay couple, and Jane and Mabel, a lesbian couple. Daubenmire said, “we’re going to be down there in Atlanta and we’re just going to bring a loving rebuke to those folks down there.” He said it would most likely be on Sunday (April 30).

Daubenmire is a former high school football coach who was sued in 1999 for allegedly coercing his players to pray. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit against the school district after years of complaints from local citizens

"Coach" Dave Daubenmire

alleging that members of the coaching staff had led prayers, and passed out scriptural verses to players. Daubenmire admitted to leading the team in prayer after games, passing out scriptural verses to team members, and to allowing ministers to lead the time in prayer. He also used Bible stories as part of certain team meetings. The lawsuit was settled but Daubenmire made a second career out of claiming he was the target of an ACLU lawsuit.

He has a long history of anti-LGBT statements; on April 18, he referred to the actors pictured for “The Most Fabulous Story” as “sodomite homosexual spirits.” He has called homosexuality “the most dangerous lifestyle in America” and said that “it is better for you to put a millstone around your neck … then to allow your children to be taught that homosexuality is normal.” After the mass murder of 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando in June 2016, Daubenmire stated that what happened proves “the devil is willing to sacrifice some of his own team in order to get our big players.” The next step would be the government coming for people’s guns, he continued.

He has also said that Jews are not God’s chosen people because they’re “Christ-haters,” just a few days after he blamed the recent U.S.-initiated airstrikes on Syria on Jews advising President Trump, specifically the president’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner. And a few days after that, Daubenmire hosted Charles Jennings of Truth in History Ministries on his show. Jennings stated that efforts to “de-Christianize” America come mainly from Jewish organizations and that Jews have always been “the enemies of Jesus Christ.” Jennings also called the Talmud “filthy.”

Daubenmire dabbles in other issues, as well, warning April 26 that efforts are underway to “deceive Christians” into welcoming extra-dimensional beings” who will appear as rescuers of the world. In addition, warned about an ancient race of giants called “cloudeaters,” after information he found on an apocalyptic End Times website.