Jeb Bush Hires Anti-Muslim, Anti-Gay Extremist

So much for Jeb Bush's pretense of being the GOP "moderate."  After hiring a gay communications director - one has to wonder what that individual is now thinking - Bush has reportedly hired Jordan Sekulow, a far right Christian extremist as part of Jebbie's campaign staff.  The take away?  That Bush is only too happy to prostitute himself to the ugliest elements of the Republican Party base.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at Sekulow's ugly track record which doesn't bode well for anyone hoping that the GOP might regain some shred of sanity.  Here are excerpts:

He [Sekulow] frequently appears on right-wing television to pontificate—his face caked with makeup, hair gelled back, suit shining, and double chin taking on a life of its own—about a wide range of topics, from Christian persecution to conservative persecution. On social media, he branded those behind the proposed Ground Zero Mosque “terrorists.” And in his capacity as executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, televangelist Pat Robertson’s snake oil mega-mall of right-wing legal causes, he has lobbied foreign governments to ban homosexuality and fought efforts to allow exceptions to anti-abortion laws when the life of the mother is at risk.

And on Friday, he announced he’s going to work for Jeb Bush. That’s right, Sekulow will be a senior adviser to the political action committee of the likely Republican presidential candidate most often labeled a moderate.

While Bush has not endorsed Sekulow’s extreme anti-gay position, Salon’s Luke Brinker notes that he also has not “staked out positions substantially at odds with those taken by Sekulow and the ACLJ.”

Until this point, Bush’s hires have done nothing but bolster his moderate reputation—especially on the issue of marriage equality.

In 2012, when Sekulow and his father, Jay, chief counsel for the ACLJ and geriatric rocker, were advising the Romney campaign, it was reported by Mother Jones’ Andy Kroll that the pair had opened their own ACLJ offices in Africa to lobby local officials. In Zimbabwe, where homosexuality was outlawed in 2006, they “pushed an agenda that backs outlawing same-sex marriage and making sure that homosexuality ‘remain[s] a criminal activity.’” The younger Sekulow, the publication reported, traveled to Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, to lobby officials in person. The father-son duo made similar anti-gay lobbying efforts in Russia.

In hiring Sekulow, Bush is extending an olive branch to the far-right, but he is also perhaps damaging himself should he make it to the general.

Sekulow has dabbled in islampahobia, even supporting anti-Sharia law measures in Oklahoma.

The Need for Global LGBT Cooperation Against Anti-Gay U.S. Evangelical Extremists

As has been noted frequently on this blog, as their fortunes have dimmed in America and gay rights and gay marriage have seen increasing public acceptance and support, American Christofascists has stepped up efforts to export anti-gay hate and bigotry overseas, particularly to Africa, but also to parts of South America and counties that formerly comprised portions of the former Soviet Union.  A piece at The New Civil Rights Movement by the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights argues that LGBT individuals and organizations need to work to form a a unified, cooperative effort worldwide to defeat the Christofascists.  Here are some excerpts:

Martin Luther King famously noted in his Letter from Birmingham Jail that “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” This is particularly true of LGBTQ people in many places around the world whose fates are tied more closely together through the actions of one particular set of actors: extremist U.S. evangelicals in the business of exporting a virulent anti-gay agenda.

While 2013 has been a year of once unthinkable strides forward in the U.S., with rapidly shifting public opinion and breakthroughs on marriage equality, a look beyond our own borders reveals a different, but related trend in the opposite direction. In the very week that President Obama proclaimed our national journey towards freedom went through “Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall,” the Russian Duma passed a bill – by a vote of 390 — 1 – which would criminalize advocacy by and on behalf of LGBT people. While these events may seem unrelated, a deeper look uncovers a disturbing relationship between the advances in civil rights in the U.S. and the growing efforts to criminalize LGBTQ existence in Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America.

Anti-gay extremists in the U.S. who have long devoted themselves to fear-mongering about the “homosexual agenda” have sought new markets abroad. As Rev. Dr. Kapya Koama, the leading researcher of this phenomenon, put it in the American Prospect, “It is homophobia, not homosexuality, that is being imported to the [African] continent by neocolonialists with an agenda: to spread U.S. culture wars worldwide.”

Exhibit A is Rev. Scott Lively, president of Abiding Truth Ministries. In the U.S., his organization is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, but in Uganda, Lively has been free from such baggage and has marketed himself as an expert on homosexuality. He has worked with prominent clerics and government officials there since 2002 to advance his rights-erasing strategies  .   .   .   . 

Lively, who  describes  LGBTQ people as evil, genocidal, brutal and above all as child predators, has as his aim the criminalization of advocacy for LGBTQ rights and works to strip away the most fundamental human rights from them. In Uganda, both state repression and extra-legal violence have been on the rise as a result of the anti-gay strategies Lively has helped orchestrate. 


While the destructive role of U.S. evangelicals in Uganda has gotten some attention, Uganda is just the tip of the iceberg. Lively himself has been active in several Eastern European countries. 

[T]he anti-gay American Center for Law and Justice, a Pat Robertson outfit, has recently expanded its international presence from Africa to South America, where it has set up shop in Brazil. These anti-gay evangelicals’ efforts, as Lively’s work exemplifies, go beyond fighting civil rights advances to eradicating basic, fundamental rights for LGBTQ people.

Those in the U.S. committed to the full civil and human rights of all people, including LGBTQ people, have a particular obligation in this situation.   .   .   .   .   it is very much our responsibility to speak out and do all we can to keep them from doing further harm. LGBTQ people around the world are fighting for their lives and their rights on their own terms on their own turf. Standing in solidarity with them, our most useful contribution to their struggles is to address the American origins of the attacks on their rights and existence.

Pat Robertson Legal Group Fires Senior Attorney for Possibly Being Gay

As a number of news outlets are reporting, Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice fired James Henderson on September 25, 2012, apparently because of Internet rumors that Henderson might be gay and having some type of relationships with younger men.  Having met Robertson - who is regarded by many in Hampton Roads as a major embarrassment to the region - and his then minion, Ralph Reed, in person several times years ago during my GOP activist days I have to laugh.  Ralph Reed set my gaydar off into the dangerous overdrive zone.  While Reed isn't as nellie as "Marcia" Bachmann, in my opinion, if the man is straight, then I'm Queen Victoria!!   But that apparently was fine with Robertson so long as Reed was helping to wage the culture wars.   The Advocate reports on this bizarre story.  Here are highlights:

A senior attorney has been fired from the conservative American Center for Law and Justice for reportedly having multiple relationships with younger men.

Metro Weekly reports that James Henderson was fired September 25, one day after two blogs, Exposed Politics and The Patriot-Ombudsman, posted reports that Henderson may be gay. The reports showed that Henderson created a Facebook account solely to communicate with at least two men he was involved with.

While it is unclear whether the men are at the age of consent or old enough to consume alcohol, it appears that Henderson provided them with alcohol and marijuana. One of the reports alleges that one of the men was 17 when he began communicating with Henderson in 2010.
Henderson is married with eight children.

The American Center for Law and Justice was founded in 1990 by Pat Robertson as a counter to the American Civil Liberties Union. Representatives of the organization confirmed to Metro Weekly that Henderson had been fired but would not make any further comments. His attorney, Christopher Zampogna, told Metro Weekly that he would not comment on Henderson's termination, but also confirmed that he was fired.

Henderson previously taught undergraduate religious studies at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va., also founded by Pat Robertson.