Gary Glenn leads of one of the nation’s most vicious anti-gay hate groups

Gary Glenn, who announced earlier this week that he is seeking the Republican nomination for the 98^th district of the Michigan House of Representatives, says nothing whatsoever about LGBT people on his campaign website. But the reality is that he is the state leader of one of the nation’s most vicious anti-gay hate groups.

Glenn’s platform, as described on his campaign site, is conservative but not radical. He wants to defend Michigan’s right-to-work law, prevent the implementation of “Obamacare,” and reform the educational system. Glenn neglects to mention his decade-plus history of hardline anti-gay work, and he makes no reference at all to his position as president of the American Family Association of Michigan.

The American Family Association (AFA), headquartered in Tupelo, Miss., is not some ordinary conservative Christian group that is critical of homosexuality or same-sex marriage. After it was started in 1977, it was widely criticized after its founder suggested that obscene media content is largely due to Jewish control of the press and Hollywood. In recent years, it has become even more openly vicious. The AFA’s spokesmen have argued that “homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler … the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews”; that gay men molest children at vastly higher rates that others; that President Obama “nurtures a hatred for the white man”; that welfare incentivizes black people who “rut like rabbits”; and that Muslims in America “have no First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.” ( continue to full post… )

Caleb Orozco is a gay man in the tiny Caribbean country of Belize who is bringing an important legal challenge to a criminal statute that can land people in prison for 10 years for having gay sex.

He has been threatened. He has been physically assaulted. Now, he fears for his life. “I cannot walk the streets among a crowd anymore,” he said.

Attitudes in Belize have changed in recent times, Orozco said, and those changes can be traced to the involvement of U.S.-based religious-right groups that are providing legal expertise to the anti-LGBT forces in Belize and, at the same time, fomenting hate by spreading the same kind of false, demonizing propaganda they have developed in the U.S. ( continue to full post… )

Tony Perkins

As barriers to equality for the LGBT community continue to fall, the Family Research Council (FRC), an influential Christian Right group that has been propagating anti-gay pseudo-science for decades, is broadening its message by adopting the language of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement.

Case in point: This week, less than two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the federal government cannot discriminate against legally married same-sex couples, the FRC circulated an online fundraising appeal that urges recipients to “Seize this Opportunity to Stop Tyranny in America!” ( continue to full post… )

Pedophilia. Incest. Bestiality.

Oh my! What in heaven have the Supremes wrought with their decision that it’s unconstitutional for the federal government to discriminate against legally married same-sex couples?

It’s a slippery slope, my friend. So says the rabidly homophobic Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association (AFA). “The DOMA ruling has now made the normalization of polygamy, pedophilia, incest and bestiality inevitable. Matter of time,” he tweeted, matter-of-factly. ( continue to full post… )

Australian Study of Child Health In Same-Sex Families

In the latest blow to anti-gay forces, a major study conducted at the University of Melbourne in Australia has found that children of same-sex parents do as well or better than children raised by heterosexual parents. The Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families collected data on 500 children up to the age of 17 who grew up in gay or lesbian households across the nation.

An interim report on the study released earlier this week noted no statistical difference between children of same-sex couples and the population at large on such indicators as self-esteem, emotional behavior, and time spent with parents. Children of same-sex parents, however, scored higher than the national average for overall health and family cohesion. ( continue to full post… )

On May 13, Jason McCann’s nephew celebrated his first communion at the Saint Benedict Center (SBC) in Richmond, N.H.

McCann was not in attendance.

He wanted to be there. But Brother André Marie, Prior of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a religious order based at SBC, was firm in his refusal to allow McCann to worship at SBC’s chapel. In a May 9 letter explaining his decision to McCann, he wrote that McCann’s “sin ranks, along with willful murder, oppressing of the poor, and defrauding working men of their wages, as one of the ‘sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance.’”

McCann’s so-called “sin”? The 25-year-old Boston man is openly gay and has declared himself in love with his partner, Earlon Smith. ( continue to full post… )

Mark Regnerus, the author of a widely discredited 2012 study purporting to show that same-sex parents are bad for children, will be speaking this weekend at a conference sponsored by the Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). Geared toward college students, the annual It Takes a Family (ITAF) conference addresses issues like marriage (should be heterosexual), family (should also be heterosexual), and sex (heterosexual and should ideally not take place outside of marriage).

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They just can’t stop lying. They claim to represent Christianity and the celestial love for mankind that Christ embodied, but when it comes to whomever they regard as their enemies here on planet Earth, the crudest of libels will do.

The latest example of the religious right’s endless series of falsifications, slanders and baseless demonizations came last Friday from Janet Porter, the former Janet Folger who heads the Faith2Action website, is an Obama-bashing “birther,” and really, really dislikes gay people. On a YouTube video, Porter claimed that the Southern Poverty Law Center had named the Concerned Women for America a hate group, published its president’s address, and “invited” people to “visit” her. ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s Note: We’ve corrected the attribution of a quote below suggesting that if the attackers were antigovernment they would have attacked a government target, rather than random Americans. The quote actually came from Mike Lackomar of the Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia. Hatewatch regrets the error, which was the result of an editing mistake.

Who was responsible for the deadly Boston terrorist attack?

The Muslims did it. No, it was an illegal immigrant. Think again – it was a gay guy. Wait, you missed the key signs: Our own government once again pulled off an act of covert terror to promote its nefarious aims.

Fingers have been pointed in all of these directions by conspiracy theory peddlers and professional hatemongers since the bombings Monday.

“It’s a pretty safe bet right now that this attack was carried out by an Islamist,” declared a post on the Tea Party Nation website Tuesday. The obvious cause for the violence? “We have a government that is not committed to protecting America.” Linking Islam with Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” of Communism, the post warned that the Boston bombings are just another event presaging future violence in “an ideological war” that can only be won if we have tougher, more anti-Islam U.S. political leaders. That, of course, would be the Tea Party cabal.

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Thousands of conservative culture warriors are gathering in Washington this morning for the “March for Marriage,” timed to coincide with today’s U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments over the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, the 2008 voter referendum that banned same-sex marriage.

The march and rally on the National Mall is sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the most visible and well-funded group working to deny marriage to same-sex couples. It’ll probably be a feel-good moment for the anti-LGBT activists, but given the rapidly changing political landscape and a powerful tide of public opinion turning against them, it wouldn’t be surprising if the NOM organizers felt they were marching straight into oblivion. ( continue to full post… )