Kirk Cameron is playing the victim card for all that it’s worth. Following up his new partnership with the National Organization for Marriage, Cameron spoke at Liberty University last week about the comments he made in an interview with Piers Morgan in March. Choosing not to reiterate his belief that homosexuality is “unnatural,” “detrimental,” and “ultimately destructive” to society, Cameron simply said that his words constituted “love speech,” and that liberals tried to “crucify” him for these remarks:

CAMERON: Will you speak the truth in love? Because the truth is always “love speech,” it’s not “hate speech.” The truth, communicated with compassion, with a desire to see people in a right relationship with God — helped, and healed, and whole — is the most genuine form of love speech you can give to anyone. Am I right?

But you know, I also learned a lesson from that. And that is that blasphemy laws are still alive and well in America. And I seem to have blasphemed the God of political correctness and they tried to drag me out into the public square and crucify me.

Watch it (via Right Wing Watch):

Condemning an entire group of people as a bane on society can hardly be considered “love speech,” nor does accountability for such harmful remarks constitute crucifixion.

On the same day a Mennonite pastor was convicted of abetting international kidnapping of the child of a same-sex couple, one of the girl’s mothers filed a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) suit against that pastor and others who she alleges helped her former partner kidnap their child Isabella and flee the country.

The lawsuit, filed by Janet Jenkins Tuesday in the United States District Court for the District of Vermont, also names her former partner Lisa Miller, the Liberty University School of Law, and the Thomas Road Baptist Church, among others. Both Liberty University and Thomas Road Baptist were founded by the late Jerry Falwell and are based in Lynchburg, Virginia.

In Jenkins’ filing, she complains:

against Defendants for intentionally kidnapping and conspiring to kidnap Isabella Miller-Jenkins on or about September 21, 2009, and intentionally causing her continued detention outside the State of Vermont to the present day. The Plaintiffs also complain against Defendants for violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1962 (c) and (d) for participating and conspiring to participate in the affairs of the Beachy Amish-Mennonite Christian Brotherhood through a pattern of past and continuing acts and threats involving kidnapping, money laundering and mail fraud. Plaintiffs further complain against the above named Defendants for conspiring to violate their civil rights in violation of 42 U .S.C. § 1985 (3) and 42 U.S.C. §1986.

The suit seeks an immediate return of the kidnapped child to the U.S., as well as actual and punitive damages.

While anti-LGBT extremists have cheered this kidnapping, actually comparing it to the “Underground Railroad,” the verdict in the criminal case and this new case could finally hold those behind the kidnapping accountable for their actions.

Some of the Right’s most extreme anti-gay voices are up in arms this week because the judge set to hear the challenge to Illinois’ ban on same-sex marriage is gay herself. Judge Sophia Hall was a charter member of the Alliance of Illinois Judges, a group committed to “promoting and encourage respect and unbiased treatment for LGBT individuals as they relate to the judiciary, the legal profession, and the administration of justice.” This alone, these hate group leaders argue, should disqualify her. Peter LaBarbera of American for Truth About Homosexuality rounded up responses from Rena Lindevaldsen of Liberty University, who defended ex-gay child kidnapper Lisa Miller, and Scott Lively, who has promoted homophobia in Uganda and believes homosexuality is responsible for the Nazi party:

LINDEVALDSEN: If the tables were turned and she was a charter member of an organization that had as its mission to overturn Roe v. Wade and she was presiding over a case where the validity of Roe was in question, there would be incredible outcry to have her removed from the case. Given the significance of the case before her, Judge Hall should take steps to avoid even the perception of a conflict of interest, and recuse herself.

LIVELY: Judicial recusal to prevent the appearance of bias is an essential component of our legal system. Its authority depends on public confidence in its impartiality. Can anyone reasonably expect an open lesbian and member of a “gay rights” advocacy group to be impartial on the issue of “gay marriage”? If this judge has any respect at all for our judicial system, she must recuse herself.

Both comparisons are fallacious and insulting. Judge Hall helped found an organization committed to promoting professional respect, not a legal player or party to the case. It would be just as offensive to suggest that a woman could not rule on a case about women’s issues (as Lindevaldsen essentially does), that a person of color could not rule on an issue of racial civil rights, or that a person with any religious affiliation (like the many Catholic members of the Supreme Court) would be biased on any question of religion. Besides, if heterosexuals have a stake in “defending marriage,” as conservatives claim, then by their own argument no heterosexual could be unbiased either. LaBarbera, Lindevaldsen, and Lively stand appalled that Hall would admit she fights the “injustice of racism, gender bias, bias against gays and lesbians, and other stereotypes,” because they know that if she actually stands for justice — as her job demands — they will lose.

Mitt Romney — who at an earlier point in his career had promised to advance the equality of gay and lesbian people — is scheduled to deliver the Commencement address at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University on May 12, an Evangelical Christian college that refuses to recognize people or ideas that don’t adhere to its social conservative worldview.

The university — founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell in 1971 — seeks to impress on its students a “commitment to the Christian life” that “leads people to Jesus Christ as the Lord of the universe and their own personal Savior” and forbids openly gay enrollees. Students are required to abide by a strict Code of Conduct, which prohibits them from engaging in “[n]on-marital sexual relations,” drinking, smoking, watching R-rated movies, dancing, cursing or hugging for longer than three seconds. In 2009, the school attracted controversy after it revoked its recognition of a Democratic club, because “[t]he Democratic Party platform is contrary to the mission of Liberty University and to Christian doctrine.” The school condemned the party for supporting abortion rights, “same-sex marriage, hate crimes, LGBT rights, and socialism.”

To that end, Liberty is heavily invested in the anti-gay and ex-gay movement. The school withdrew from the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in 2010 to protest the inclusion of a gay rights group and hosted a one-day symposium to address the consequences of being gay. The event offered sessions on “[u]nderstanding Same-sex Attractions and Their Consequences” and “Homosexual Rights and First Amendment Freedoms: Can They Truly Coexist?” Liberty University law professors Matt Barber and Judith Reisman have also linked gay and lesbian rights to “the pedophile movement,” while the school’s affiliates describe marriage equality as a “rebellion against God” and claim that gay people are more likely to commit suicide because they know “what they are doing is unnatural, is wrong, [and] is immoral.”

Significantly, this isn’t the first time Romney has embraced conservative Christian Evangelicals in an effort to endear himself to Republican voters. In 2007, he addressed Regent University, the school founded by televangelist Pat Robertson.