Showing posts with label Center for Reclaiming Christ for America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Center for Reclaiming Christ for America. Show all posts

Sunday, May 09, 2010

Voice of Christian Youth America Dumps Janet Porter

What a week!! Janet Folger Porter has literally made a career out of demonizing gays and pushing a Christo-fascist agenda aimed at meddling in the sexual affairs and religious beliefs of other citizens. Here's a brief chronological run down: For nine years she was the Legislative Director of Ohio Right to Life (1988-1997). From there, she served as the National Director for the Center for Reclaiming America (1997-2002), founded by rabidly anti-gay Coral Ridge Ministries' founder, the late D. James Kennedy. At Coral Ridge, Folger/Porter helped devise the use of gay-bashing and the threat of the "gay agenda" as a Christianist fund raising tool. From Coral Ridge, she started her own entity, Faith2Action, another organization seeking to destroy religious freedom for other citizens not subscribing to her particularly ego centric religious beliefs, to continue living off of fear instilled in the gullible. During this process, she has been peddling a daily radio program on Christian networks and individual stations. She also has been writing a weekly column for World Net Daily, a/k/a WingNutDaily.
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Along this journey, Folger/Porter has become more and more delusional and hostile to other religious faiths and belief traditions. Now, she's apparently too crazy even for Voice of Christian Youth America ("VCY"). As Right Wing Watch is reporting, VCY has dumped Folger/Porter's show. It seems her increasingly unrestrained dominionist theology was just too much. Here are highlights from Right Wing Watch:
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Janet Porter of Faith 2 Action had become increasingly involved in "dominion" theology, the idea that Christians are called to take complete control over every aspect of human life in order to bring about the return of Christ.
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There is something called "7 Mountains" theology that sets out seven specific aspects of the national culture that Christians are supposed to retake and this "7 Mountains" theology was at the very center of Porter's May Day prayer rally at the Lincoln Memorial over that weekend. Organizers had been preparing for as many as 8,0000 to attend but no more than a few hundred actually showed up, leading speakers to plead with those in attendance to make sizable donations to help defray the $70,000 cost of putting on the event.
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I was listening to VCY America, which carries Porter's daily radio program, in order to hear how she would spin this epic failure ... but instead of hearing Porter's program begin at 2:00 pm as scheduled, I heard instead a statement from VCY America's Vic Eliason announcing that they would no longer be carrying or supporting her program due to her increasing involvement with dominion theology . . . Elisaon explains that they had repeatedly warned Porter about her dominionism to no avail, thus forcing them to sever their ties with her and her program.
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One can only hope that more of the Christianist extremists will become so unhinged that they are deemed non-credible even by conservative Christian outlets like VCY.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Closing of Center for the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ

My friend, Wayne Besen, the Director of Truth Wins Out ( http://truthwinsout.org/) released the following press release on the closing of James Kennedy's anti-gay organization, Reclaiming America for Christ. I am pleased that I may have had a small part in helping this to happen. Here are Wayne's comments:

Failed 'Ex-Gay' Poster Boy Michael Johnston Helped Lead to Theocratic Center's Demise

MIAMI BEACH - Truth Wins Out today rejoiced over the downfall of the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, a political arm of theocratic-leaning Coral Ridge Ministries. In 1998, the Center, which was then led by anti-gay activist Janet Folger, gained notoriety by leading a divisive national advertising campaign that featured so-called "ex-gays." The Center's influence quickly declined after its "ex-gay" poster boy Michael Johnston was caught in a 2003 sex scandal.

"Today we celebrate the demise of one of the most insidious anti-gay groups in America that incited intolerance by pumping out virulently anti-gay propaganda," said Truth Wins Out's Executive Director Wayne Besen. "The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ bet the bank on the 'ex-gay' message, and by doing so, bankrupted their credibility after their rising 'ex-gay' star crashed and burned."

The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ featured Michael Johnston, an HIV+ "ex-gay" leader in a million dollar print and television advertising campaign in 1998. In the notorious TV ad, Johnston's mother, Frances, used convoluted logic to explain how homosexuality led to her son contracting HIV. In a full-page print version that ran in the Miami Herald, Johnston is shown as a young boy blowing out birthday candles under the headline, "From Innocence to AIDS."

In August 2003, Johnston's claims at sexual conversion collapsed. Michael Hamar, a Virginia attorney, contacted Besen to say he had a client who had been having an affair with Johnston, not realizing, at first, Johnston's true identity as a prominent ex-gay figure. Besen was also introduced to another young man who claimed to have had unprotected sex with the ex-gay leader. While in Virginia, Besen was shown a video of a man that looked eerily similar to Johnston having unprotected sex with several men. Hamar's client signed an affidavit swearing the man was Michael Johnston.

What Wayne doesn't mention is that the Center for Reclaiming America continued to market videos and books featuring Johnston right up until the moment the Washington Blade story broke.