Mike Heath

Mike Heath is leading one of the efforts to oppose marriage equality — what he calls “sodomy based marriage“ — in Maine this year through his “No Special Rights PAC.” Having worked hand in hand with the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins in the past, Heath felt the need to join the exploitation campaign of this week’s tragic shooting at the FRC headquarters. Rather than just attack the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” label, Heath simply draws a direct connection between homosexuality and violence:

HEATH: If Maine doesn’t end this decades long conflict over the evil of sodomy with an overwhelming NO vote in November we can expect to see this sort of violence in Maine in the near future. Homosexuality can lead to the most horrific and violent consequences in individuals and society. The twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of it.

Heath has also applied for a concealed weapons permit, claiming it is the responsibility of all good men to be prepared to protect innocence from evil.

One movement is advocating for equality in the form of economic security and personal safety. The other is trying to erase a group of people from society through societal stigma, harmful identity-erasing therapy, criminal sanctions, and deportation. It’s not that difficult to make sense of which side of the culture war is “incendiary.”

Joining the chorus of anti-gay conservatives blaming the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” labels for Wednesday’s tragic shooting at the Family Research Council, internet evangelist Bill Keller has threatened to sue the SPLC for $100 million if it does not take him and his ministry LivePrayer.com off its “hate group” list:

KELLER: The sad shooting the other day at the Family Research Council by a man who supports the radical homosexual agenda, was clearly fueled by the left wing group, the Southern Poverty Law Center. I receive at least 4-5 death threats a month for taking a Biblical stand on issues like homosexuality, the false religion of Islam and other cults, and the fact life begins at conception and choosing to end that life is nothing more than legalized infanticide.

Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center give license to individuals who oppose a Biblical worldview to take whatever actions they deem fit, even acts of violence, to silence those they disagree with. Sadly, this intimidation has worked, because there are very few like myself who are willing to go into the mainstream media and promote Biblical Truth that a large percentage of society now rejects.

In the year 2012, if you take a Biblical stand, the media and groups like the SPLC identify you as a ‘hate group.’ Because the anti-God secular media gives a platform to radical organizations like the SPLC, it opens the door for people who reject Biblical Truth to commit acts of violence against those individuals and organizations who have been demonized by them.

Like all others before him this week, Keller’s claims are a bogus strawman, focusing only on the label of “hate group” instead of the valid need for such a label. The SPLC classifies Keller under its “General Hate” category for the dangerous positions he takes on various issues. Last October, he blamed the LGBT community for the suicide of Canadian gay teenager Jamie Hubley, calling openly gay people “brainwashed” and claiming it is those who “glorify this deviant, unnatural, and unhealthy choice of sexual activity, who are most responsible for Hubley’s death.” He went on to describe homosexuality as “a bondage like alcohol, drugs, gambling, or anything else people get addicted to.” His latest campaign is encouraging people to “Write in the Name of Jesus for President,” because Barack Obama is “the most pro-death President in history” and “an enemy of God and a true tool of satan.”

Should Keller follow through on his outlandish threat to sue, his complaint will likely be dismissed as a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP). The SPLC uses direct quotes to inform its designations, so any allegation of defamation would be without foundation.

Derek McCoy, flanked by Maryland Marriage Alliance supporters (via Baltimore Sun).

Despite successfully petitioning Maryland’s same-sex marriage law to the ballot, its opponents have been fairly quiet in their campaign to overturn marriage equality. This week, however, Maryland Marriage Alliance Chairman Derek McCoy made the unfounded claim that those in support of marriage equality are somehow trying “to intimidate people if they can’t win them fairly.”

MCCOY: On the people that actually signed the petition, they got the records from the Board of Elections. And in addition to Google mapping them out, they have actually started going to people’s addresses and having conversations with people at the address to tell them that they are haters. [They] knock on their door and try and intimidate them to go the other way and give them their long story about their personal saga about their life selection.

McCoy is describing the common practice of canvassing and just calling it “intimidation” for political purposes. Ballot campaigns go door to door to raise awareness about the issue, and one of the best ways to help people understand the importance of marriage equality is to simply let them hear about the life experiences of gay people. (Here’s an example of an Equality Maine canvasser having a conversation with a voter opposed to same-sex marriage.) As for the list of petition signers, that’s a public record, and it makes sense to reach out to people who have already established concern about same-sex marriage to better understand the motivations for their position and provide some education.

Rachael Stern, New Media Director at Marylanders for Marriage Equality, provided the following response to ThinkProgress, dismissing McCoy’s comments outright:

STERN: The anti-gay movement has been trying to paint the LGBT community in negative terms for decades. While we’re out all over Maryland talking about love and lifelong commitment and basic fairness, Rev. McCoy is engaged in name calling.

If opponents of marriage equality had a case to make, they wouldn’t need create false narratives about how they’re supposedly being victimized.

In an attempt to explain the allegations of sexual harassment at the Department of Homeland Security, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera on Friday resorted to saying that the few women in powerful roles at DHS want to ban all men, and that the department as a whole is undergoing a “same-sex takeover,” and a “lesbian cabal.”

The exchange on “Fox and Friends” this morning clearly made the only female host, Gretchen Carlson, uncomfortable. As she tried to steer the conversation toward a different topic, Rivera insisted on indicating that all of the women in top roles at Homeland Security are lesbians, and that such manly items as “old spice,” “smelly sailors,” and “english leather cologne” wouldn’t be allowed under Sec. Janet Napolitan:

RIVERA: Is the sub-text of the Department of Homeland Security scandal that there is some kind of lesbian kabal, that it’s a same sex takeover. …It seems everyone is talking around it. Is that really what people are saying, that men are disadvantaged because women and specifically lesbians are ruling the roost there?

CARLSON: I don’t know about that last part.[...]

KILMEADE: We don’t know for sure. But it’s easy to come to that conclusion that there is some different type of glass ceiling separating the Homeland Security Department in this case.

RIVERA: No machos need apply?

Watch it:

While all allegations of sexual harassment should be taken seriously, regardless of the gender of the person accused, it’s ludicrous for Rivera to say that the department is run by lesbian women. Though the top two officials are women, a quick glance over the list of leadership at DHS indicates that the majority of top positions are occupied by men.

Rivera is falling into the easy trap of assuming that any powerful woman must be a lesbian, and that women achieving any level of power portends the end of men. But in fact, his comments — which seem an intentional attempt to incite anger — point the the general problem that having few women in leadership leads to sexist assumptions about a woman’s abilities, sexuality, and relationship with male coworkers.

On the other hand, it’s understandable that Rivera might not know about women in leadership positions. His own employer, Fox News Corporation, seems to have just one female executive out of 10, and one female board member out of 16.

Various anti-gay conservative groups have been exploiting Wednesday’s shooting at the Family Research Council to push back on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” labeling. The event was indisputably a tragedy that has been roundly condemned, but it is now being used a political cover for anti-gay rhetoric. Unfortunately, various journalists are catering to the argument, as exemplified by two Washington Post columnists.

Dana Milbank engaged in some impressive double talk over the issue of the “hate group” label.  He called out FRC’s Tony Perkins for suggesting that the SPLC provided the gunman with “license” to shoot, but in the same piece suggested that “hate group” labeling is “reckless,” arguing it could “stir up the crazies”:

Human Rights Campaign isn’t responsible for the shooting. Neither should the organization that deemed the FRC a “hate group,” the Southern Poverty Law Center, be blamed for a madman’s act. But both are reckless in labeling as a “hate group” a policy shop that advocates for a full range of conservative Christian positions, on issues from stem cells to euthanasia.

I disagree with the Family Research Council’s views on gays and lesbians. But it’s absurd to put the group, as the law center does, in the same category as Aryan Nations, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Stormfront and the Westboro Baptist Church. The center says the FRC “often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science.” Exhibit A in its dossier is a quote by an FRC official from 1999 (!) saying that “gaining access to children has been a long-term goal of the homosexual movement.”

The violent history of the KKK and Aryan Nations are obviously quite different from that of anti-gay groups, though it’s worth noting that Tony Perkins has happily spoken in front of white supremacy groups before and even once rented a KKK Grand Wizard’s phone bank. Milbank seems content to focus on these differences, but in doing so he fails to notice the obvious similarities. Groups like the KKK, or even the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church, might not function as a “policy shop” per se, but the effect of their efforts is no different. Groups that promote white supremacy and heterosexual-supremacy both publish and promote rhetorical fuel designed to foster hate, disdain, and bigotry against groups of people throughout society. Milbank seems to (incorrectly) believe that “hate” requires a certain threshold of hostility, oblivious to obvious tactics by conservative groups like FRC to polish their public image and save their vitriol for being-closed-doors meetings. Indeed, GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project exists primarily to point out that anti-gay activists are more candid about their views with “friendly” conservative audiences than they are when speaking to the mainstream media. By ignoring these tactics, Milbank essentially argues that promoting hate against LGBT people simply isn’t as bad as promoting hate against people of color.

Similarly, Jennifer Rubin complained that there is a double standard about who can be accused of perpetrating hate crimes, laughably claiming that “anti-Christian bias in the media is still acceptable in a way that anti-gay bias is not.” This is demonstrably untrue, with anti-gay Christian voices overwhelmingly dominating the media on LGBT issues. Rubin’s argument requires that she similarly subscribe to the conservative appropriation of Christianity, implying that any criticism of the extreme views of groups like FRC constitutes a smear on all people of faith. She even accused ThinkProgress of “turning itself inside out to insist killing someone for his or her religious-based views is not a hate crime. (You can Google, if you must.)” She purposely didn’t link, because our post actually made the case that Wednesday’s shooting could very well have been a hate crime.

The case being made against the label of “hate group” is weak, and intentionally distracts from the truly valid reasons the label was ever applied.

A jury sided with an openly gay former University of Michigan student government president in his defamation suit against Andrew Shirvell, the former assistant Michigan attorney general who was fired for mounting a vicious campaign of anti-gay harassment against him. The jury agreed with plaintiff Chris Armstrong on all counts and awarded him a $4.5 million judgment.

The Associated Press reports Shirvell remained unrepentant:

Shirvell, who was representing himself, said the jury award was “grossly excessive” for what was “clearly protected speech … and activity.”

“This should have been thrown out,” he said, adding that he plans to appeal. “Juries give short shrift to First Amendment rights.”

Shirvell says, as he is now unemployed, “there’s no way” he “could possibly ever pay such a judgment.” Armstrong had offered to drop the case in exchange for a simple apology and retraction, but Shirvell refused, reportedly calling the offer disingenuous.

This ruling should send a message to bullies like Shirvell that free speech does not give carte blanche to harass, defame, and stalk.