One Million Moms has announced its latest protest: NBC’s The New Normal, a sitcom about a committed gay couple who hire a surrogate so they can have a child. The show doesn’t even premiere until September, but the hate group thinks it’s “harmful” enough that the show will have gay content at all [emphasis is original]:

NBC is using public airwaves to continue to subject families to the decay of morals and values, and the sanctity of marriage in attempting to redefine marriage. These things are harmful to our society, and this program is damaging to our culture. [...]

Millions of Americans strongly believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman. NBC’s “The New Normal” is attempting to desensitize America and our children. It is the opposite of how families are designed and created. You cannot recreate the biological wheel.

One Millions Moms exists only as a symbolic PR tool. It is not itself a real organization — having no names or faces to represent it — but is merely a subsidiary of the American Family Association, a hate group run almost entirely by men. It’s in doubt if there is even one mom affiliated, let alone one million, judging from the fact the effort’s Facebook page has less than 5 percent of that goal. But conservatives know that moms are a movable voter base when they feel their children are threatened, so AFA uses the front of “One Million Moms” to attempt to scare individuals with the myths that the mere existence of gay people somehow harms children.

And that’s the complete story here. The New Normal hopefully will desensitize children and families from the grossly unwarranted stigma against same-sex couples and their families. Schools and communities will be safer, more welcoming places as a result.

Watch the show’s heartfelt trailer to see just how “damaging” it will be:

On the conservative Christian radio show AFA Today, evangelical spokesperson Jerry Newcombe blamed the tragedy of the Aurora shooting on the nation’s loss of fear of God and hell. Discussing the victims, Newcombe argued that the non-Christians were going to Hell:

If a Christian dies early, if a Christian dies young, it seems tragic, but really it is not tragic because they are going to a wonderful place.. on the other hand, if a person doesn’t know Jesus Christ.. if they knowingly rejected Jesus Christ, then, basically, they are going to a terrible place.

Newcombe is a spokesperson for Truth in Action Ministries, which has two nationally syndicated television programs and a combined audience of over half a million on television, radio, and the Internet. In a column in One News Now, Newcombe wrote that the shooting was evidence that “we’re reaping what we’ve been sowing as a society,” explaining, “Lawsuit after lawsuit, often by misguided ‘civil libertarians,’ have chased away any fear of God in the land.”

On the same radio segment, Fred Jackson, the host and director of the American Family Association, similarly blamed Hollywood, liberal media and churches for contributing to mass shootings:

I have to think that all of this, whether it’s the Hollywood movies, whether it’s what we see on the internets, whether it’s liberal bias in the media, whether it’s our politicians changing public policy, I think all of those somehow have fit together—and I have to say also churches who are leaving the authority of Scripture and losing their fear of God—all of those things have seem to have come together to give us these kinds of incidents.

Jackson’s American Family Association is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of its frequent demonizing of homosexuality. The conservative Christian blame game kicked off Friday when Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) attributed the shooting to atheism and attacks on Christians.

Google has launched a new international initiative called Legalize Love to promote safer conditions for gay and lesbian people in countries with anti-gay laws on the books. Naturally, the American Family Association is now considering a boycott of Google products.

On their radio network, the AFA’s Buster Wilson decried Google’s gay rights campaign, which plans to start its focus in Poland and Singapore before expanding to other countries. Right Wing Watch has the video:

If the AFA thought boycotting Oreos was tough, wait until they start trying to avoid all Google products. As Wilson notes, anti-gay boycotters would need to ditch Gmail, Google Calendar, YouTube, their Android phones, and the search engine itself. “It’s going to be a hard one for a lot of us,” Wilson concedes, but it will “test the meat of our convictions.”

AFA will certainly need strong convictions because they are quickly running out of acceptable companies. If they plan to boycott Google, they would also have to add Microsoft, Nike, Time Warner Cable, Levi Strauss, CBS, and Xerox to their list — just a handful of pro-gay U.S. corporations. As more and more businesses realize the economic and social benefits of having inclusive pro-LGBT policies, the AFA’s feeble boycotting of Oreo cookies and Google products looks increasingly silly.

– Steven Perlberg

Bryan Fischer, voice of the AFA.

Bryan Fischer is the American Family Association’s no-holds-barred spokesperson, who finds new ways to attack the LGBT community (and plenty of other groups) on a weekly — if not daily — basis. In his latest column, Fischer purports that an effort to ban the portrayal of “barebacking” or any unsafe sex in pornography is actually the gay community trying to criminalize its own sexual practices, which Fischer endorses:

Do not miss the significance of this. A homosexual activist group is leading the charge to re-criminalize gay sex. Gay sex should be contrary to public policy, and it looks like the first steps in that direction are being taken by gay activists themselves. Who could have seen that coming? Perhaps the best thing the pro-family community can do is just get out their way. [...]

We have been saying for years that homosexual behavior ought to be contrary to public policy because it is a menace to public health. We ought to care too much for our citizens to promote behavior that we know is linked to a disease which can destroy human health and shorten life spans. It is callous and indifferent to endorse behavior that we know can be lethal to people we are supposed to love and care for. [...]

So the next logical step is obvious: for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation to propose an ordinance that proposes a fine for any act of unprotected gay sex, whether money changes hands or not, and proposes criminal penalties for repeat offenders. If they care about the health of all homosexuals, not just the ones who do it for money, they can do no less.

The petition in question will expand a Los Angeles law requiring porn actors to wear condoms to 85 other cities in L.A. county (excluding Pasadena, Long Beach, and Vernon, which have their own public health departments). It has important consequences for both the safety of the actors, as well as the cultural impact of the films.

Fischer easily ignores the impact on heterosexual porn, leaping at the opportunity to condemn gay sex as the direct cause — not form of transmission, but cause — of HIV. His motives are clear: criminalize homosexuality itself. Conservatives like Fischer refuse to promote safe sex because they believe in abstinence until opposite-sex marriage, and anything outside of that paradigm is morally wrong. But as offensive as his extreme (and self-plagiarizing) conclusions are, what is perhaps even more offensive is his insensitivity to the history and ongoing threat of HIV infection.

As Mark S. King noted today, the term “barebacking” first appeared as a rebranding for unsafe sex in the mid-1990′s when new medications became available that prevented AIDS from causing near-instant death. According to King, “gay male culture responded with a vengeance,” seeking to erase the ugliness and fear associated with the spread of HIV in favor of a condom-free sexual revolution. New porn companies celebrated and profited off the carnal, using “collegiate jock” types whose “health and vitality” could erase “all evidence of HIV.” But the end result has been to reinforce the invisibility of the HIV/AIDS menace, and the continued high rates of infection among men who have sex with men — not to mention society’s widespread ignorance about the virus — are the disastrous consequences.

What Fischer unsurprisingly doesn’t appreciate is that promoting safe sex among gay men is good for the health of the gay community. He instead offers a false dichotomy of two anti-gay solutions: let gay people suffer AIDS as God’s punishment for having sex or punish gay sex as “domestic terrorism“ under the law. Fortunately, reality offers solutions that actually affirm the lives of gay people and their well-being.

Phil Burress

A California bill (AB-1856) that would require LGBT training for foster parents and caregivers has conservatives up in arms. Focus on the Family said last week that it believes the policy would “drive Christian couples away” and hurt kids who are already “seriously damaged” because of sexual abuse. Today, the American Family Association ran its own story on the bill, inexplicably inviting Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values — an Ohio-based anti-gay group — to describe his concern that the training will somehow be used to recruit people to be gay by “confusing children”:

BURRESS: It’s going to continue to confuse children. This is the way the homosexual activists continue to build their numbers — is to get people confused about their gender identity and start acting out… Obviously, people who care about children — Christian couples — they will probably go ahead and go through the training if they’re required to. When they start raising them, they’re just going to have to raise them as Christians.

Burress is yet another reminder that conservative beliefs about homosexuality have not changed over the decades. Just as hate groups like AFA are concerned about “indoctrinating students into homosexual behavior” by teaching them about same-sex families, they believe that something as simple as family acceptance is actually some kind of gay recruitment tool. Worse yet, they now seem to be encouraging conservative parents to pretend to be accepting so that they can instead force anti-gay and anti-trans self-hatred upon these young people.

Sexual orientation and gender identity are not necessarily intertwined. Both, however, present naturally and any identity along either spectrum cannot be separated from a person’s mental health. Research shows that family rejection can impact depression, substance abuse, risk of HIV and STI contraction, and suicide, while family acceptance minimizes those risks. By scaring families into ignoring the importance of supporting LGBT young people, these “family” groups are promoting their very destruction. Confusion is cured with understanding, not condemnation.

In some ways, anti-gay hate groups have polished their rhetoric over the years, but often times they remind that they still believe the same old tired myths about homosexuality. At the core of this mythology is the belief that homosexuality is chosen, and thus it must be coerced from young people. That’s exactly what the Alliance Defense Fund believes was happening in Erie, Illinois.

The Erie Community Unit School District had adopted some curriculum resources from GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network. Parents complained about one book in particular, Todd Parr’s “The Family Book,” which mentions on one page that “some families have two moms or two dads.” The controversy that erupted when the school board elected to remove that book and all other GLSEN materials reignited the national conservative war against GLSEN — a war against LGBT youth and the children of same-sex families.

This week, for no apparent reason except to prolong the conflict, the anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund issued a legal memo supporting the Illinois school district. ADF’s attorney Jeremy Tedesco explained why he believes GLSEN’s materials are dangerous:

TEDESCO: Public schools should not be coerced by outside groups into indoctrinating students into homosexual behavior by exposing them to inappropriate sexual materials. Schools are supposed to be places of learning, not places where schools push propaganda on students. The school is right under these circumstances to prohibit access to the GLSEN materials and not cave to the ACLU’s demands.

By this logic, any kid who comes to school and mentions that she has two daddies is “indoctrinating” her classmates into “homosexual behavior.” The claims are simply outlandish. Having same-sex parents is neither inappropriate nor sexual, but Tedesco’s comments reflect how conservatives insist on equating anything gay with sex.

GLSEN’s mission has always been to make sure that students feel “valued and respected” regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. This means creating visibility and education to counter the ignorance and stigma present in society that has been clearly demonstrated to harm students. ADF, the American Family Association, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council — all of whom have come to Erie’s defense — are intent on scaring parents by capitalizing on their own lack of education about sexuality. By demonizing GLSEN, they believe they can maintain the toxic climate in schools and somehow discourage young people from “becoming” LGBT. After decades of trying to erase LGBT people, all they’ve done is create harm, but they persist with their lies nevertheless.

Though an individual can choose to boycott a product, a boycott is, by definition, only effective if organized on a large scale. ABC News chose to ignore this distinction when it reported yesterday, “Oreo Pride: Rainbow-Stuffed Cookie Sparks Boycott.” The article highlighted the rainbow Oreo posted on Facebook this week, which was accompanied by the message, “Proudly support love!” Though the innocuously inclusive message has largely been praised, ABC News drew its conclusions solely from some negative comments posted on Facebook:

But while many of the comments were supportive, some Facebook users pledged to boycott the cookie because of the post.

“I’ll never buy Oreo again,” one commenter wrote.

“Disgusted with oreos,” wrote another. “Being gay is an abmonitation in GOd’s eyes i wont be buying them anymore.”

If such journalistic conclusions could be drawn from random typo-ridden comments on Internet content, news headlines would instantly lose all integrity. Two Facebook comments do not constitute a boycott, nor would 100 anti-gay comments even warrant calling the posting “controversial.” Culture wars have never merely been about a “difference of opinion.” Controversy is manufactured by such headlines that over-emphasize negative voices and draw false conclusions about their impact.

There are, of course, anti-gay boycotts, but none have been successful. The one-man operation known as the Florida Family Association has generated faux outrage about almost every LGBT-inclusive television program. The American Family Association has been boycotting Home Depot for its support of gay rights for years to no avail. Its subsidiary, One Million Moms, has whiningly railed against JC Penney for featuring Ellen DeGeneres and same-sex couples in advertisements. The National Organization for Marriage has been unsuccessfully “dumping” Starbucks and now General Mills. (Only a few dozen people showed up to protest General Mills yesterday, and the company actually boosted its dividends — thank General Mills here.) If NOM wants to retaliate against Oreos, it’ll have to add all of Kraft foods to its boycott, which would leave conservative kitchens with relatively empty pantries. To truly eschew all pro-LGBT companies, they’d also have to add Google, Microsoft, Nike, Time Warner Cable, Levi Strauss, CBS, and Xerox to their list, to name a few.

Businesses have realized that supporting equality and inclusion is good for their employees, good for their customers, and good for their bottom line, so it’s no surprise that pro-LGBT policies are quickly becoming ubiquitous throughout the corporate world. To try to upset this reality by highlighting a few negative reactions is not only irresponsible, it’s simply incorrect.