FACT President David Fowler

In May, the Tennessee legislature passed a bill dubbed the “Special Access to Discrimination” (SAD) Act that prohibits municipalities from creating non-discrimination protections for the LGBT community. Conservatives advanced the legislation after Nashville passed such protections earlier this year, effectively overriding them. Equality advocates are now suing to overturn the law, arguing it was designed to illegally discriminate against LGBT people as opposed to protect businesses from “burdensome” regulation, as lawmakers argued. Documents obtained in the suit now show that the Family Action Council of Tennessee (FACT) and Southern Baptist Convention were scripting the debate, rooting their arguments in anti-LGBT bias. FACT president David Fowler wrote the following to state Sen. Mae Beavers (R):

FOWLER: The bill itself is not that complicated. We don’t need more regulation of business and business sure doesn’t need the 348 different cities coming up with their own ideas of what a discriminatory practice is. That’s the line and you just repeat it like Glen Casada did last night when the bill passed the House 73 to 24.

Will the homosexuals be upset? Sure. But to be honest, they seem to be rather resigned on this bill.

This is hardly new for Fowler. FACT initially opposed Nashville’s non-discrimination protections, alleging that transgender people were child predators who were going to use the protections to molest children in public bathrooms. When insurance provider BlueCross BlueShield started enforcing its own non-discrimination protections, Fowler protested that the company was promoting “cultural acceptance of homosexual conduct.” There’s no shortage of evidence that FACT is motivated by anti-gay and anti-trans animus, and if Fowler was literally scripting the debate on the bill, plaintiffs should have a compelling case to make against the law.

Democratic candidate Liz Mathis

A group calling itself “Citizens for Honesty and Sound Marriage” has been making robo calls in Iowa Senate District 18, accusing Democratic candidate Liz Mathis of “homosexual sex acts”:

ROBO CALL: Liz Mathis also endorses homosexual marriage. But Iowa just threw out three supreme court judges who also did. Homosexual marriage obviously involves homosexual sex. So, before you support Liz Mathis, call her at 319-899-0628 and ask her which homosexual sex acts she endorses.

Watch KGAN’s report about the calls:

The National Organization for Marriage has spent close to $40,000 injecting the issue of same-sex marriage into the special election race and endorsing Republican Cindy Golding, hoping to eliminate the Democratic majority in the Iowa Senate. This is despite the fact that 86 percent of Iowa voters say same-sex marriage is not the most important issue guiding their vote.

NOM and its Iowa-based partner The FAMiLY LEADER have “decried” the “bogus” calls, suggesting they’re a “dirty trick” and calling upon the Iowa Attorney General to launch a criminal investigation. Golding’s campaign has similarly distanced itself from the calls. Even if NOM is not directly responsible for the calls, the group is still responsible for using large sums of outside money to inject the issue of marriage into the race in the first place. If NOM was not prepared to stand by the homophobic rhetoric at the heart of their anti-equality argument, perhaps they should not have involved themselves at all.

Rick Perry suggested that he would reinstate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell during an interview with ABC News’ Christine Amanpour this morning and promised to speak to military commanders about the policy if elected president. “I think Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell worked very well,” Perry responded, ignoring the thousands of service members dismissed form the military because of their sexual orientation. “I think the President of the United States changing a policy that was working well and to do it while we were at war in two different theaters, I think was irresponsible and I think he truly did it to respond to his political base,” Perry said.

Asked if he would have been uncomfortable serving with openly-gay members in the Air Force, Perry simply said, “I don’t ask that question”:

PERRY: If an individual in their private life makes a decision about their sexuality from the standpoint of how they’re going to practice it, that’s their business. I don’t think that question needs to be asked. That’s the reason Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was in fact a workable policy and that’s where I would be comfortable with our country going back to that.

Watch it:

The National Organization for Marriage has become one of the biggest bullies against same-sex families, but the organization shrouds its propaganda in a devious self-victimizing campaign. Like the Michigan GOP, NOM believes religious conviction provide a free pass to demonize and vilify the gay community and that any attempt to curb the negative messages the organization and its staff spew is an affront to their rights. They doubled down on this strategy in September with the creation of their “Marriage Anti-Defamation Alliance,” which spotlights people who are openly homophobic for their “courage” to speak out. Now, they have tripled down with the creation of a “Corporate Fairness Project,” which asks businesses to pledge not to “discriminate” against “marriage supporters.”

NOM targeted Bank of America and the Cisco Corporation as the first to join the project. Both came under fire from NOM’s first “anti-defamation” victim, Dr. Frank Turek, who lost his corporate consulting jobs with them because of his anti-gay views. Though the Human Rights Campaign has given BoA and Cisco ratings of 100 on its Corporate Equality Index, they have kowtowed to NOM’s demands. Cisco admitted it was “incorrect” to “discriminate against vendors such as Frank Turek” and BoA celebrated the diverse viewpoints of its employees, adding that “Dr. Turek remains a vendor in good standing with us.”

But neither company has any obligation to associate with a vendor such as Turek, especially given how radically anti-gay his views are — views that he sells in the form of books, lectures, and appearances with hate groups like the Family Research Council and American Family Association. Good As You and Right Wing Watch have tracked Turek’s extreme anti-gay positions:

• There are “documented health problems that result from same-sex couplings.”
• Gays should not be in the military at all.
• Sexual orientation is an “illegitimate” and “changeable” behavior comparable, and gays can be compared to sociopaths, alcoholics, and even gay-bashers.
• Gays have allied with radical Muslims to destroy Western Civilization.
• Homosexuality is a “road to destruction,” like getting run over by a truck.
• Diversity training programs “indoctrinate…people to believe something they know isn’t right.”

These are harmful, fear-mongering views. Bank of America and Cisco decided not to affiliate with Turek because of them, but now NOM has bullied him back into their corporate profiles. There is no right to spread stigma, and companies who affiliate with NOM should be held accountable for endorsing such an idea.

As voters in Maine consider a ballot initiative to strike down a narrowly-passed law that eliminated election day voter registration in the state, opponents of same-day registration are running an ad in 25 community papers that singles out a gay rights group’s involvement in the effort. The ad implies that same-day registration would help the LGBT equality organization — EqualityMaine — push through a “gay” agenda and hopes to convince homophobic voters to maintain the new election restrictions:

Maine’s Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster is defending the tone of the ad, arguing that it was designed to “educate” the public about EqualityMaine, “one of the advocacy groups involved in the coalition that wants to retain the state’s 38-year-old EDR law.” “We’ve talked about the different left-of-center groups that are supporting this referendum and questioned why they’re doing that,” Webster said. “That’s all this is.”

Meanwhile, a recent poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP) found that support for EqualityMaine’s “agenda” — which includes marriage equality — is increasing among independents in Maine. Fifty-one percent of voters say they support marriage equality, including 53 percent of independents. In 2009, EqualityMaine lost its campaign to preserve marriage equality when a referendum to overturn same-sex marriage passed by a vote of 53 percent to 47 percent.