Increasingly Hateful Rhetoric on Gay Rights

With each passing day it seems that we are witnessing increasing levels of vile anti-gay rhetoric coming from the Christianist/Mormon.GOP camp. In addition to the ad released in West Virginia depicting gays as out to murder "the family" that I mentioned yesterday in Utah new anti-gay ads have been released in an effort to defeat small incremental increases in civil rights for LGBT citizens in Utah. A group called America Forever ran full-page ads in The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News calling on Utahns to "stop the homosexual movement." The ad compares being gay to being "druggies and hookers," labels homosexuality as "anti-species behavior" and concludes that "gays should be forced not to display" their sexual orientation. A full-page ad in both Sunday papers costs about $15,000.00, so it would be interesting to see where the money is really coming from. Here are some highlights from the Salt Lake Tribune:

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Gay-rights opponent Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, agrees with America Forever's stance on upholding "traditional marriage" but condemns the group's tactics and rhetoric, including the ad.
"Everything they're doing crosses the line," Wimmer said Monday, noting he helped to eject members of America Forever from an Equality Utah news conference last week after they became confrontational. "There's no need to have hateful discourse," Wimmer said. "Quite frankly, they make those of us who are on the side of traditional marriage -- they make a lot of us -- look bad."

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Mike Thompson, executive director of Equality Utah -- the advocacy organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Utahns that is pushing the Common Ground Initiative -- called the ad "inflammatory" and "divisive."

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MediaOne, which handles advertising, production and circulation for both The Tribune and Deseret News , said four subscribers canceled subscriptions to The Tribune on Monday in response to the ad. No one had stopped subscriptions to the News , said Brent Low, MediaOne's president and chief executive officer. MediaOne made the decision to run both ads -- and removed a photo of two gay men kissing from the LDS Church-owned News version -- Low said, consistent with publishing guidelines from both papers. . . . America Forever paid full price for the ads, Low noted. Based on MediaOne's rate card, a full-page ad in both Sunday papers costs about $15,000.

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Here is a sampling from America Forever's website that describes the supposed "gay agenda" and its war on the family (caution: its really sick stuff and beyond inflammatory):

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"We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all-male clubs, in your house of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us... All laws banning homosexual activity will be revoked. Instead legislation shall bee passed which engenders love between men.