Southern Poverty Law Center, Family Research Council and the Rhetoric of Hate

Recently the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization with its roots in the civil rights struggles of the African American community published a list of organizations it identified as hate groups. These groups were actually added to an already existing list compiled by the SPLC which was made up of white supremacist organizations like the KKK. Included was the organization the Family Research Council, which has since fired back at the SPLC by saying they are simply representing Christian values and a perspective shared by the majority of Americans. This is in fact patently false.

It is important to recognize the nature of the FRC and its activities. They are known among many mainstream groups as a far-right advocacy organization that specializes in two issues, gay rights and abortion. Not only is the information they put out not widely considered legitimate research, but they are known to in fact be heavily committed and involved in political campaigns. Most recently they partnered with the National Organization for Marriage, who themselves are widely recognized for their far-right political views, in committing a virulent and riotously bigoted campaign to vote out of office the three justices of the Iowa Supreme Court who were up for election this past November. Those justices included the chief justice and were part of a unanimous decision by the nine judge panel that LGBT citizens in Iowa were constitutionally endowed with the right to marriage. They have since been very public about their intentions to continue their crusade in the next election cycle until all of the justices who participated in that decision are removed from office. I say committed a campaign because the campaign against these three justices was not only fraught with the use of the most virulent and bigoted rhetoric against members of the LGBT community, but it also included outright harassment of those justices by members of their organizations, which were summarily recorded on video and circulated on the internet.

While the rhetoric of the FRC is presented as 'research' which has been somehow independently vetted and verified, it is nothing but that, rhetoric. This far-right organization does their best to present a public face of reasonableness and rationality in the media, however it only takes a cursory investigation to see the depth of bigotry ingrained in their message. All of this is while representing themselves as tolerant Christians who are not anti-gay, but merely seeking to protect the welfare of children and society through the institution of marriage.

The research and statements of this organization are actually categorically false and the list of organizations or news outlets who present them as even remotely possible is short and telling. Recently FOX News interviewed Tony Perkins, the president of the organization, in response to the SPLC's labeling of them as a hate group and he firmly declares that organization as a far-left fringe group desperately trying to hold on to being relevant when their leftist platform of promoting a homosexual agenda is losing soundly, as represented in the last election, he alleges. Not only is this not true, but it presenting a lie as fact to a large portion of the public who watch FOX News and consider it a legitimate news organization.

The Facts:

According to a 2009 USA Today/Gallup poll, while the majority of Americans are opposed to gay marriage, those numbers swing dramatically when you consider how they break down, with 60% of people under the age of 30 thinking gay marriages should be legally recognized and have the same rights and status as heterosexual marriage. The majority of self-identified liberals and moderates support gay marriage, with only self-identified conservatives representing an overwhelming majority against gay marriage.

While the country remains split pretty evenly on the issue of gay-marriage, recent polls show that the majority of Americans do believe that there should be some sort of legal recognition for same-sex couples, including legal rights and protections similar or equal to those of heterosexuals. It is interesting, however, to note that while those polls are pretty evenly split in general, Republicans and self-identified conservatives still strongly oppose gay marriage.

The country, though, isn't evenly split over the issues of LGBT people serving openly in the military. That same page on PollingReport.com shows that the majority, ranging from two-thirds to three-fourths, of Americans believe gay people should be able to serve openly and would vote for open service if it was on a ballot.

So, when the FRC represents themselves as being in step with even a large number of Americans, they are either lying, or they are really referring only to self-identified conservatives. Even among those conservatives, or among Republicans, polled there isn't a unanimous consensus. This is the same fallacy touted by pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and even Bill O'Rielly. These people state as fact that the 'liberals', or according to O'Reilly the 'leftist pinheads', are losing this imaginary culture war they have concocted over the years. To them it is just an easily recognizable truth that their political ideology is the majority opinion, which means that they have the right to impose it on all of us by encoding it into law, and that somehow because they believe they are a part of the majority that that somehow makes them right and that the reasoning behind those opinions are factual and moral truth.

Here is the truth: In another ten to twenty years same-sex marriage will be a reality in this country. In fact if the court case against Prop 8 continues on to the US Supreme Court and is successful there, which is the inevitable ruling if it is ruled on its merits, then gay marriage will be a reality in this country far sooner. As far as I know, the striking down of a state constitutional amendment, which Prop 8 was, by the SCOTUS would then overturn all of the laws, statutes, and constitutional amendments set in to law across this country. While this may create an outcry among people for a host of reasons and would, of course, be labeled as legislating from the bench or judicial advocacy by the right-wing, and then likely thought of as that by much of the rest of the country, within a short period of time it would become a non-issue, as it has in MA. In that state, despite all of the anti-gay energy poured in, the constitutional amendment did not make it through the legislative process in time to stop marriage licenses from being issued and then has subsequently, since 2004, not been a serious ballot issue. Once the majority of Americans see how much of a non-issue gay marriage will be in their daily lives, how it will in fact not significantly impact their freedom of religion or the operations of their churches, and how it won't lead to the indoctrination of their children by public schools, all of the uproar will go away and any continued opposition will be relegated to the far-right fringe, as has opposition to legalized abortion.

In conclusion, there is a reason that the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the Family Research Council, among other anti-gay organizations, as a hate-group. Despite the exterior it likes to present of a moderate Christian organization devoted to researching issues related to families and its positions and research suggesting that civil rights for gay people somehow negatively impacts society, it is actually a far-right organization who are motivated by continuing to impose their religious doctrine on our political process. One need not look past the rhetoric used in their campaigns, in their literature, and its political affiliations to see that. They raise money for the purpose of affecting public policy through political campaigns and do so with rhetoric that the majority of Americans, as evidenced by legitimate polling data, disagree with, and I would assert would be disgusted by. For any news organization to represent them as anything but a conservative, if not arch-conservative far-right, political organization is both a lie and an injustice to the majority of Americans. An organization that presents them as a reasonable and rational contributor to our political process and its discourse truly identifies that organization, or news channel, as part of or pandering to that far-right fringe.

The Homosexual Patriot

There was a consistent theme among the campaigns of Tea Party candidates, and within the propaganda of the continuing Tea Party movement, that they are on the side of 'truth' and 'liberty'. Most of us probably remember being taught at young ages that lying is bad, that we are supposed to tell the truth, meaning admit to something we've done. For some this is a religiously informed moral issue, for some it is a matter of developing a firm ethical mindset not dependent on a religious ideology. For most of us, though, we are taught that there is one truth, one reality, one concrete right and wrong.

As we grow up, however, and especially as we educate ourselves about the world around us, we recognize that 'good' and 'evil', 'right' and 'wrong' are often subjective. On an individual level it is easy to differentiate between the two in terms of one's own actions and behaviors. When we expand our scope of subject to a whole community or even a whole culture, things grow very murky. That is one thing that empirical data and facts are supposed to help clarify. One of the benefits of science, and specifically how it's been applied to social sciences, is that we have quantitative descriptions and results of surveys regarding the impact of our behaviors. These surveys and studies, however, are not entirely faultless, they can be skewed toward a specific answer or research goal, questions and problems designed to find certain outcomes.

This is one reason why we look toward independent groups, groups not tied to, associated with or who financially support political campaigns and ideological groups. We have many organizations like this in this country, some are directly involved in statistical analysis and we see their names most often during an election season as they tabulate polls. The other body we look to for empirical studies and information are to independent universities, either non-religious private schools or even religious private schools known for impartiality, or toward public universities. Even within these bodies are individual researchers and professors looking for specific answers or for answers that reflect their own beliefs. There are, however, standards imposed on them and critical analysis and discussion of their work, including refuting articles and surveys to disprove overtly skewed and partial findings.

Why am I mentioning all of this? Because it becomes very important when looking at political candidates, campaigns and specifically campaign ads. The idea of a campaign ad is to either stress all the good things about a specific candidate or to attack their opponent. The art of an attack ad, as I see it, is to make the opponent look bad and distance them from the electorate, all while making the candidate sponsoring the ad either look good by comparison or attacking in a way that doesn't cause a negative reaction against the sponsoring candidate. We saw this with several ads that had, with some, drastic, impacts on the campaigns and ultimate defeats of certain candidates this year. Jack Conway, for one, ran an attack ad against Rand Paul that included information about activities of Paul during college when he was 19. That ad allowed Paul to inch ahead and ultimately claim a strong victory. Sharon Angles with her ads tying Harry Reid to illegal immigration was another ad that had blow back, or in which there was a negative reaction back on Angles.

Ideally we'd like to think that even though ads stretch the truth or skew the truth, that they do present the truth. Often, and I'd like to say that it happens more often with Republican candidates but I know that's not true, the truth gets so obscured by the message the ad tries to convey or by the spin on the facts presented that the facts actually are misrepresented or are outright lies. Sharon Angles, for example, in her ad tying Harry Reid to illegal immigrants outright lied about portions of legislation he helped sponsor or move forward in the Senate, claiming they did exactly the opposite of what the language really was about. This was part of the way the Tea Party worked, they were responsive only to message and not to facts or reality.

Then enters the National Organization for Marriage and the Iowa elections. This organization along with Focus on the Family, and the seemingly credible in name only Family Research Council, spent millions on a bus tour around the state, including candidates for Iowa legislative positions, all aimed at removing three of that state's Supreme Court justices. The message they tried to promote was that Iowans should have been allowed to vote on same-sex marriage, that the judges were engaging in the worst kind of 'judicial legislating' or 'judicial activism'. That message resonated with voters in a state that has often been mainstream liberals, part of the upper Midwestern Democratic political base arising from the farmer and labor unions and incorporated into the state Democratic parties. In MN, for example, the state party is called the DFL, or the Democratic Farmer Labor party as there used to be, decades ago, a separate Farmer Labor party.

I've written over and over again about the hypocrisy of the Tea Party movement, and of its outright ignorance of both the political process and politics in general. This, however, is less about the Tea Party voters across the country and more about the politics of it all. There is no 'liberty' or 'freedom' while one group of Americans is denied the same rights that are expected and taken for granted by another group of Americans. Also, and many of our founders recognized and remarked on this, the rights of the minority should never be put up to a popular vote. The majority would never choose to advance or protect the rights of the minority. This is what we've seen in a number of states where the issue of same-sex marriage has been put to a vote. This is also why we see political blow back from enough of the Iowan electorate to successfully remove three justices from the state Supreme Court, an act that has never happened in that state's history. The argument by the anti-marriage people is that the citizens have a right to vote on the measure. That somehow by upholding their constitutional responsibilities as interpreters of laws and their constitutionality, the Supreme Court had overstepped their authority and infringed on the rights of state voters.

Just to rehash the historical significance of the same-sex marriage judicial decisions versus the voter rights issue, inter-racial marriage laws existed throughout the country until one case on the matter succeeded through the federal court system and eventually to the Supreme Court, thereby striking down all laws barring inter-racial marriage in this country. If there was to be a popular vote on the matter during the 1950's and 60's when that case was being considered, would the voters have recognized the rights of those individuals? No. How can I tell, because the representatives of those voters in the legislative branch never repealed that law, and in fact had fought all through that period to keep Jim Crow laws and segregation. A similar case happened in the more recent case in which the Supreme Court struck down the anti-sodomy law in Texas after two gay men who had been in the privacy of their home had been arrested and charged with sodomy. That law had remained in place until the court struck it down, and then not long after voted to ban any and all forms of legal recognition for gay and lesbian couples both within the state and unions from other states.

So now we get to the crux of this idea of 'truth' that I talked about earlier. We have decades of studies supporting the positive impact of gay civil rights on gay individuals, on their communities and on our society at large. We have multiple studies proving that children raised by gay couples are in no more danger of being molested, turning gay or doing poorly in school as those raised by heterosexuals. In states where gay marriage has already been the law for most of the decade, namely Massachusetts, there has been no significant impact on the marriages of heterosexual people, churches haven't been forced to recognize or perform gay marriages, and people of faith haven't been forced by the state to accept homosexuality in a way contrary to their beliefs. Gay people and the recognition of their human and civil rights are a reality in this country just as they are a reality all around the world. In nations around the globe there is greater tolerance and acceptance of LGBT people and even recognition of their relationships. Some of the nations that already have same-sex marriage are surprising as they are historically and predominantly Catholic. Others that are just as surprising have civil unions, civil partnerships or domestic partnership laws recognizing the rights of LGBT couples.

When groups like the National Organization for Marriage parade around and yell about 'truth' and about 'freedom', they are lying to people. From their perspective the rhetoric they are using is important, is necessary to save their vision of America, and is the truth. What is apparent to anyone not central to that organization or to groups like Focus on the Family is that what is also clear is that what is important to them is hatred. For all of their talk about freedom what they really want is the ability to discriminate and hate with impunity. They want a state that reflects their ideas and beliefs while rejecting anyone who disagrees with them. A state constructed around their ideology would only permit sanctioned behaviors and would punish anyone who didn't fit into their rigid models. What's probably most ironic about these people is that there is a total disregard for policing their own behaviors. While purporting to be Christians they act without charity or compassion, they denigrate and demonize whole groups of people and use dehumanizing language to depict two specific fictional narratives, one a reality in which gay marriage is legal and America descends into complete chaos because of its depravity, the other a fictional tale of America returning to some version of itself that never existed and was never possible in part by prohibiting immoral behaviors.

This is the same ideology that would outlaw abortion, and following the logic of outlawing any non-sanctioned behaviors, then pornography would be illegal, alcohol would be illegal, smoking would be illegal, literature and media, especially the internet and video games, would be censured for anything deemed illicit and for violence. They parade around their own moral behavior and cite examples of the 'truth' as dictated through the research of groups like the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, as well as specifically anti-gay groups like Exodus International. These groups represent their 'facts' as empirical and their opinions as representative of the majority of people in this country, but here is the hard reality - these are political organizations. They fund ads campaigning for ballot initiatives and either for or against specific candidates. They participate in lobbying and campaigning through passing out literature, signing petitions and on-the-ground campaigns, meaning knocking on doors and making phone calls. These are not the activities of departments at a university that puts out studies and surveys. It is not the behavior of independent polling groups.

So what is the 'truth'. As the Senate Majority Leader in Iowa said recently while quoting his daughter in speaking to a group of conservative men denigrating gay people and same-sex marriage, "You've already lost. My generation could care less." That is the problem with all the people who want to prohibit behavior and demonize whole groups of people. As we move forward even fiscal conservatives are socially progressive. That is one of the reasons why Megan McCain is worried about the radical elements of the Tea Party pushing the Republican party into irrelevancy. Our nation was founded on radically progressive ideas that we all should not only have rights, as other nations had those, but that we should be an entirely representative government in which we are governed not just 'by the people' but also 'for the people'. Any act, then, that exercises those 'inalienable' rights is a patriotic act. Anyone who would deny those rights to any one citizen or who would obstruct their pursuit of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' is then unpatriotic, and un-American.

Thereby, all people of the LGBT community who live their lives in honesty, whether publicly open or not, and who pursue their own vision of who they are and what they want their lives to be is a patriot. It is a revolutionary act to challenge a norm dictated to us by an inflexible and violently fascist societal regime. When they gain political power or control over us we then must make our voices heard even louder and be that much stronger in our conviction not to be dictated to or to be intimidated into fear. Just as the Tea Party enjoys their right to free speech, so to do we, and while they use rhetoric of fear and divisiveness to demonize us and sway public support against us, so too do we have the power of truth and of reality and honesty. In a time when pundits and political fascists try to pervert our perceptions of reality with untruthful polls and un-factual studies, we have the face of honesty and moderation, we have families and individuals who look just like their neighbors and who work alongside everyone else without disrupting others' lives or their communities. We have family members and close friends who have swayed the opinions and hearts of others through love and inspiring those others to open their minds and hearts to the LGBT community and our civil rights.

For all the rhetoric and slogans and political speeches, it is not the Tea Party who are patriots with their fake activism and their historic costumes. It is the minorities of educated people, intellectuals, a group demonized in every other corrupt regime around the world, of LGBT people living their lives in honesty and with respect, of ethnic and racial minorities who refuse to be shut out of institutions of learning and traditional career fields. We are the patriots, we are what makes America a 'melting pot', a blending of cultures. Without us this would be a very different nation. If America is a place of acceptance of diversity, of freedom and of honesty and compassion, then anyone who would deny others rights they themselves enjoy are the poison that is helping to destroy our country.

President Obama and the Gay Left

Something pretty incredible happened recently. After two important rulings regarding the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in the US military first declared that the policy violates constitutional rights of service members and people considering entering military service but that in at least the instance of a specific flight nurse the policy actually hindered readiness and morale. The primary reason given by those opposed to repeal is that allowing gay and lesbians hurts readiness, morale and group cohesion. Recently, the judge who declared the constitutional issue via a ruling in a lawsuit filed by the Log Cabin Republicans issued a worldwide injunction basically saying that anyone and everyone involved with the military administration and chain of command must immediately halt any and all procedures involving implementing DADT.

Now, those on the progressive side of politics, progressive Republicans as well as Democrats, have seen the faces of service members who were discharged, some of whom have honorable and highly lauded careers as well as specialized skills such as being Arab linguists. As most US citizens support the repeal, and as the military struggles in many areas of recruiting and retaining qualified and talented service members, it becomes apolitical to support the cause of repeal.

And then there's the position of the President. From the beginning of his campaigning for the support of the LGBT political left Obama has made repeal of DADT his clinch issue. Many other issues important to progress of gay rights do not really have national platforms or attention right now, nothing like the attention on DADT. Because of that, it was an extremely important to securing the kind of financial support and political action from groups like the HRC.

From what I understand, as Commander in Chief, the president had the power to immediately halt the investigative process in the discharging of gay service members. While it wouldn't outright repeal the policy, it would have kept hundreds of qualified and awarded members of the military from being removed from service. As of now, Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense, has given instructions to the military to halt enforcement of a key part of DADT, which is the involuntary outing, so basically the witch hunts and the investigations prompted by rumors from other service members of a service member's sexuality. One of the reasons he did this was to prompt a more 'humane' approach to enforcing the policy and was done around the time that they commissioned the study on the most effective way to implement repealing the policy. The president could have done that more than a year earlier.

It is important to note, and this is something that conservative Republicans, and those who repeatedly used anti-gay rhetorical reasoning in their committees, so not necessarily outright derogatory remarks but rather lines of reasoning based on base stereotypes and horrible prejudices, is that it is only a matter of time before it is repealed. Nearly all the military leadership recognizes and wants this to be repealed. The President and the Secretary of Defense are committed to repealing it, one way or another. The majority of citizens think it makes no sense and support repealing it and allowing open service. Thus, it's only a matter of time, so while they argue against repealing it, that's not the issue cause it's going to be repealed. The issue, in terms of their filibusters and nay votes, has been when they would implement the procedural activities involving repeal, not whether it would happen at all.

So the problem now for the President is that he's got not only two court cases, landmark cases, that justify repeal and rule against the policy's constitutionality, but that there is now a legal injunction in place preventing any implementation. Does he have the Department of Justice, which was the group acting as the plaintifs in both cases and basically arguing for the constitutionality of the policy, appeal the ruling on the Log Cabin Republican's case and the subsequent injunction? They have already started the appeal process for a recent ruling in Massachusetts that overturned DOMA, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act put into place after gay marriage was allowed in Hawaii, a situation that has since been changed through voter memorandum. The argument about DOMA was made around the distribution of federal benefits by the state to married same-sex partners and the 'Full Faith and Credit' clause to the Bill of Rights, which guarantees that any legal contracts recognized in one state, be they private or business contracts or whatever, must be recognized by all other states. DOMA specifically defines marriage on the federal level as between a man and a woman, and rejects any same-sex marital status from a given state in terms of federal pension and social security benefits and everything else on the federal level. It also said that any state can decide for themselves what the definition of marriage is and choose to not recognize marriages from other states. They will appeal that ruling.

In light of the Justice Departments decision to appeal the DOMA ruling, and in light of the fact that the White House has taken a soft position on the repeal of DADT as wanting it to be done by Congress, it is not certain whether they will then appeal this ruling as well. These are important cases and would be hugely influential on all civil rights laws, just as those regarding African Americans were in past decades, if they reach the Supreme Court. As there is, right now, a balance that slightly favors the liberal end of the Court, it would be a good time for these cases to go before them. The problem for Obama and for the gay community is, if Obama has them appeal the DADT ruling as they are doing with DOMA, they will be not only acting against their position on repeal but in fact will be standing against the progress of LGBT civil rights.

There are arguably three cardinal issues in struggle for LGBT civil rights. The first is same-sex marriage, which is probably the most divisive issue nationwide. Eventually, no matter how much the religious conservatives in this country speak out against it, gay marriage will be a reality. All conclusive evidence in terms of polling and studies done about election turnouts indicate that the country is growing more and more supportive with younger generations, and sorry to say this but eventually those who think they are on the correct side of the issue by opposing it are going to die off. Most likely they'll die off soon as most of those who oppose it are older. The second cardinal issue is Don't Ask, Don't Tell. This is the one that has been most pressing in the past two or three years and the one that Obama took the most decisive progressive position on. The third and possibly fourth issues are same-sex adoption and then policies in schools dealing with the harassment of LGBT youth.

Obama has now made a serious misstep in terms of a progressive, pro-civil rights position, on one of these cardinal issues in having the Justice Department appeal the DOMA ruling. That particular ruling is pretty solid and has legal precedence behind it in the overturning of laws prohibiting interracial marriages. If that goes to the Supreme Court, however, no matter what the outcome the repercussions across the country will be significant. Ruling in favor of striking down DOMA would be a move towards considering the issue of the legislation and amendments to state constitutions, which cannot violate the federal constitution. The DADT ruling, however, and particularly the injunction are on much shakier ground as they are unique, they do not have the backing of precedent and while the constitutional issue may be upheld by the Court, the injunction could be challenged on multiple fronts, including the separation of powers clause.

President Obama has not taken decisive action in repealing DADT. Instead he has issued strong positions while implementing soft actions, failed to put the necessary pressure on Congress to proceed in a way that was conducive to passing repeal, and now may or may not appeal the most conclusive and decisive action taken on the policy, this time by the federal courts, thereby either directly compromising his position on repeal or, if choosing not to appeal, taking no action at all as another branch of the government altogether takes the hard action. Either way there has been a profound failure of decisive leadership. If promises and policy positions are to mean anything, a leader needs to take strong, clear action on them. If he pledges his support to a policy position and promises to do whatever it takes to accomplish the goals of that position, it means nothing if he doesn't take action to achieve those goals. By stating publicly, both in meetings with LGBT lobby groups like the HRC and in the State of the Union Address that he was going to make sure it was repealed, he must make good on his promise. He hasn't done so, though. Instead he has abdicated that function to the courts while providing just enough political action to give himself cover if the issue is brought up by progressives in his own reelection campaign.

Mr. Obama promised to be a fierce ally and advocate for the civil rights of LGBT people. He has said multiple times that he is committed to the repeal of DADT and not done nearly as much as he can in order to ensure repeal. Can the LGBT community then really claim that Obama is our ally? John McCain, during his election campaign, also took a pro-repeal position. He might have been the principle senator in filibustering the repeal legislation but if he had won the presidency, who's to say he wouldn't have worked toward repeal. When it comes time to start drawing battle-lines for the 2012 presidential campaign, when Obama begins soliciting campaign contributions and looking to excite the progressive base who were instrumental in his initial election, will the LGBT community show up in similar numbers? Will we give in similar amounts or act with similar force as we did in 2008? If the major policy issues the President can affect are decided through the courts and there isn't much left for him to do, then the question will be should we support him as we did. In a year when there may possibly be a Sarah Palin nomination for the Republican candidate, we may have no choice. However, when we have such immediate issues as the recent gay teen suicides to deal with and organizations that can benefit those youth directly with our contributions, wouldn't our money be better spent there rather than on a candidate who proved himself to be at best a useless ally?