White House Rebuffed DHS Attempts by to Combat Domestic Terrorism

Despite requests from local politicians that he stay away, Donald Trump traveled to both Dayton, Ohio - which he referred to as Toledo earlier in the week - and El Paso, Texas, today.  White House officials claimed the trips were to "honor victims" and to praise first responders even thought Trump in typical fashion ended up attacking opponents and Democrats and never once apologized for his own incendiary language that was paraphrased by the El Paso shooter. Thankfully, many protesters came out to oppose Trump's visit although one would never know this if they only watched Trump TV, a/k/a Fox News where Tucker Carlson called "white supremacy a "hoax."  As CNN is reporting, for over a year, the Trump?pence regime has blocked Department of Homeland Security efforts to beef up efforts to counter domestic terrorism, most of which involved some form of white supremacy. One should never be duped by Trump's disingenuous and insincere remarks about the latest mass shootings.  His regime has encouraged white supremacist violence and blocked efforts to stop it.  Here are highlights from CNN:

White House officials rebuffed efforts by their colleagues at the Department of Homeland Security for more than a year to make combating domestic terror threats, such as those from white supremacists, a greater priority as specifically spelled out in the National Counterterrorism Strategy, current and former senior administration officials as well as other sources close to the Trump administration tell CNN.

"Homeland Security officials battled the White House for more than a year to get them to focus more on domestic terrorism," one senior source close to the Trump administration tells CNN. "The White House wanted to focus only on the jihadist threat which, while serious, ignored the reality that racial supremacist violence was rising fast here at home. They had major ideological blinders on."
 "Ultimately the White House just added one paragraph about domestic terrorism as a throw-away line," a senior source involved in the discussion told CNN. That paragraph mentions "other forms of violent extremism, such as racially motivated extremism, animal rights extremism, environmental extremism, sovereign citizen extremism, and militia extremism." It made no mention of white supremacists. (A separate paragraph in the report mentions investigating domestic terrorists with connections to overseas terrorists, but that does not seem to be a reference to white supremacists.)

The document mentions that domestic terrorism is on the rise, but the subject is only briefly addressed, all the more stark given that FBI Director Christopher Wray's July testimony that there have been almost as many domestic terror arrests in the first three quarters of the fiscal year -- about 100 -- as there have been arrests connected to international terror. Wray noted that the majority of the domestic terrorism cases were motivated by some version of white supremacist violence, adding that the FBI takes the threat "extremely seriously."
 Said a current senior Trump administration official, "DHS is surging resources to the [domestic terrorism] issue, but they're behind the curve because of lack of support from the White House.

Critics of President Donald Trup hit out at the White House's lack of support for the department's attempts at combating domestic terrorism, including multiple Democratic presidential candidates. "People are getting killed, and this President is turning a blind eye to America's national security threats," said California Sen. Kamala Harris on Twitter. Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, another presidential candidate, who is from El Paso, tweeted, "Despite the evidence, despite the threat to our country that domestic terrorism poses, this president did nothing. He made us less safe." Why the White House pushed back so much is a matter of some debate. The former senior administration official noted that the White House, specifically the President, has a problem criticizing white supremacy, and says he "didn't have expectation they would get behind it" -- the brief mention of domestic terrorism as a threat in the National Counterterrorism Strategy -- "because the preponderance of it involves white supremacy and that's not something this administration is comfortable speaking out against, until the other day by the President and even that was pretty hedged."

The senior source close to the Trump administration acknowledged the President's reluctance to criticize white supremacists was part of "an overlay" of all these discussions.  "You know it will trigger the boss," the source said. "Instinctively you know he's going to be averse to mentioning that."
 During the lengthy back and forth, the senior source tells CNN, one White House official proposed that the National Counterterrorism Strategy focus radical Islamists and foreign drug dealers, since that would please the President.   "But those things don't go together," the source recalled. "That was part of the warped worldview they had there."

Like it or not, everything Trump - and Pence - does involves the issue of skin color.  If the terrorists are white, expect the White House to block responsible actions to counter the threat to the general population.  Why?  Because a large segment of Trump's base is comprised of white supremacists. 

Evangelicals Furious Over Trump Plan to Decriminalize Homosexuality

Trump and Pence with hate merchant, Tony Perkins.

The spittle is flying and shrieks of outrage are echoing form evangelicals over the purported Trump/Pence regime play to push for the decriminalization of homosexuality across the globe.  Most in the LGBT community have yawned and discounted the legitimacy of purported effort in light of Trump/Pence's continuous attacks of LGBT Americans. At this point, most wonder where the purported effort is headed since Trump himself pleaded ignorance about it. If the plan proceeds, it will be one of the few times Trump has failed to deliver on promises to his loyal, misogynist evangelical base.  A piece in The Advocate looks at the evangelical melt down.  Here are excerpts: 

The Trump administration’s push to decriminalize homosexuality abroad — which the president seemed strangely unaware of when questioned by reporters this week —  is drawing the ire of the religious right.

Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany and the highest-ranking openly gay official in the administration, is leading the effort to persuade countries where homosexuality is illegal to change their laws, administration officials said Tuesday. Grenell wrote an article on the plan for a German newspaper, referring to Iran’s reported execution of a man believed to be gay as an example of the harm caused by such laws. The campaign has met with skepticism from LGBTQ advocates, given the administration’s homophobic and transphobic domestic policies.

Religious right activists, while not endorsing the death penalty for LGBTQ people, denounced the push for decriminalization.

“Let’s find common ground in calling for an end to all forms of physical violence against homosexuals —  but refrain from imposing the values of the sexual revolution on the rest of the world.” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, a longtime supporter of Donald Trump, wrote in his Washington Update column Thursday.

Massachusetts minister and occasional political candidate Scott Lively, always a virulent homophobe, was even more pointed in a column for World Net Daily, a right-wing website. “Reasonable tolerance and sympathy for people who suffer from same-sex attraction disorder is warranted — as is protecting them from violence — but sanitizing homosexuality and transgenderism as if they were morally, psychologically and behaviorally equivalent to sexual and gender normalcy is PC-driven lunacy,” he wrote.
 In a commentary for BarbWire, another far-right site, Julio Severo denounced Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a conservative Christian, for supporting Grenell’s effort, and took the opportunity to accuse LGBTQ people of being a danger to children.

“Such push coming from the Trump administration is a shame.” Severo wrote. “Coming from an evangelical who is the State Secretary, helping homosexual activist Grenell, is a bigger shame, because he is doing exactly what left-wing Protestant Hillary Clinton was doing when she was also a State Secretary.”

“When I think about violence and homosexuality, the first thought coming to my mind is not individuals suffering violence for their sexual lifestyle,” he added. “The first thinking is children suffering homosexual violence — physical and psychological. There is a massive effort to cover up the suffering of children in the hands of homosexual predators.”

Scientists have found no link between homosexuality and pedophilia, but Severo continued to push the assertion that gays are predators, and he blamed gay priests for the widespread abuse of children and teens in the Roman Catholic Church.

The commentators were still reluctant to blame Trump for the decriminalization campaign. . . . Perkins was encouraged that Trump seemed not to know of the campaign when reporters asked him about it Wednesday.

There may be another reason for Trump appearing to be ignorant of the move, however. New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman floated a possible explanation on Twitter: Or he does and doesn’t want to acknowledge on camera because it risks offending portions of his base.

Franklin Graham: Working to Spread the Christofascist Cancer

Other than Donald Trump, one of the most hideous and malignant forces in American politics is the Christofascist theocratic movement and the parasitic "professional Christians" who preach a message of hate while lining their own pockets and living lavishly.  Few represent this cancer on American society more than Franklin Graham, a steadfast supporter of Trump all too willing to overlook Trump's moral bankruptcy if  it aids his insatiable thirst for power (and, of course, more money in his own pocket in the process -  in 2014, Graham pocketed $622,252.00 from his "charity", Samaritan's Purse, alone).  Now Graham with his right wing extremist allies are focused on stirring up evangelical haters in California to rescue threatened Republican Congressional seats.  Among the bogeymen that Graham will peddle is the "threat" of same sex marriage and the myths of Christian persecution.  A piece in the New York Times looks at Graham's toxic mission.  Here are excerpts:

Franklin Graham stood in a packed locker room at the Rose Bowl, surrounded by fellow evangelists, pastors, and his top Los Angeles donors. It was two weeks before the California primary, and Mr. Graham was urging them to take a stand against their state’s “blue wall.”

The blue wall of California, Mr. Graham told the gathering, represents secular values that have taken root on the country’s west coast.

“Progressive?” he went on, “That’s just another word for godless.” Now is the time for churches to “suck it up” and vote.

Mr. Graham is leading a three-bus caravan up the middle of the state, one of the biggest political battlegrounds this year, to urge evangelicals to vote and to win California for Jesus. The two week tour ends on the day of the primary, June 5. . . . the parallel political message is just as resounding: Support candidates who will advance the socially conservative causes dear to many evangelicals — especially opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage — and get to the polls and vote for them. Three of his stops are in or bordering critical House districts in the Central Valley, and others hug the line between red and blue up the state.

Don’t be afraid to preach about it, Mr. Graham told the pastors. “Lose your tax exempt status; the progressives want to take it away anyway,” he said.

Though the state has one of the highest percentages of religiously unaffiliated adults, the fast growing religious group in the country, that largely blue sea is dotted with evangelical islands that are largely red. One in five adults in the state are evangelical Christians, according to the Pew Research Center, and there are more megachurches in California than in any other state.

And while 26 percent of national voters in 2016 were white born-again Christians, according to exit polls, just 13 percent of California voters were . . .

Finances play a role, too. After Mr. Graham’s home state of North Carolina, California is the second largest donor base for Samaritan’s Purse and his other organization, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Last Sunday, the day Mr. Graham began his bus trip, a large Los Angeles church on the border of an open House seat ended its services early and directed its 3,000 congregants to write letters protesting a state assembly bill that would prohibit conversion therapy, intended to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, as a form of consumer fraud. In 2012, California passed a law restricting the practice on minors.

Even Republican political strategists and party officials doubt that Republicans could win top statewide offices like governor or senator in California this fall. . . . . As the Republican base in California shrinks, religious conservatives become an even more important part of the party’s coalition, said Dan Schnur, a longtime Republican consultant in California who is now an independent. . . . “It is going to be impossible for them to save those House seats without significant religious conservative turnout,” he said.

In 2016, Mr. Graham held rallies in all 50 state capitals to urge Christians to vote. Donald J. Trump won the White House that year, defying all predictions, in large part thanks to a groundswell of white evangelical turnout.

In California, one clear goal is to change the makeup of school boards. “Can you imagine if your school boards were controlled by evangelical Christians?” he asked the pastors in Pasadena, a not so subtle reference to conservative religious protests of California’s new sex education curriculum, which includes lessons on LGBTQ sexuality.

But other evangelicals are not comfortable with the political direction Mr. Graham is taking their faith. When a Graham organizer asked Daniel Balcombe, the pastor of Living Way Church near Escondido, to promote Mr. Graham’s rally, he said no. “He’s too politically toxic,” Mr. Balcombe, a registered Republican, said in an interview. “I told the organizer this, and he made excuses and insisted that he would not be political in his crusade. Still, I told him no thanks.”

It is a reminder that evangelicalism, and the culture that goes with it, is changing. Sergio De La Mora, pastor of a large Latino-led church with five main campuses, called Cornerstone Church of San Diego, says the future of California Christianity is neither red nor blue, especially because of the growing Hispanic church whose political priorities do not fit an expected mold.

While Mr. De La Mora voted for Mr. Trump, citing his family work ethic, he says he is most passionate about issues like green energy, women’s rights and immigration. “Don’t look at us as this lost, liberal state,” he said. “Look at us as this emerging new America that says, we can coexist.” 

 Graham's toxic agenda needs to be defeated and Christofascists need to be cast into the political wilderness as if they were radioactive.  They are all about hate and division despite disingenuous bleats about Jesus and "faith."  

Scamvangelists Like Joel Osteen Are Why Americans Are Leaving Religion

Scamvangelist Joel Osteen

As noted in numerous posts, a growing number of Americans are simply walking away from religion, particularly Christianity.  Various pools and studies have shown that for the Millennials, a main motivation is the anti-LGBT animus that is a hallmark of so-called "conservative" denominations. Another principal motivation has been shown to be revulsion to the hypocrisy and Pharisee-like behavior of the Christofascist.  Now, with Hurricane Harvey having wrought heretofore unimaginable damage to Houston and  the Texas coastline, we are once again seeing who the real Christians are so to speck and who are the they equivalent of the money changers in the temple as described in the Bible.  While many small local churches are mobilizing to help (a number of churches in my former neighborhood in Houston), the obscenely wealthy televangelists - I call them scamvangelists - have been slow to help and seemingly put their own wealth ahead of aiding those in need.  A case in point is Joel Osteen whose mega church only stepped up to assisting Hurricane Harvey victims after scathing condemnation on social media. A piece in Salon looks at how Osteen and those of his ilk are accelerating the exodus from organized Christianity.  Here are excerpts:

[A]s American Protestantism has moved from focusing on humble public service to greed and naked political ambition. Some, like Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, . . . . . In 2013, he finished construction on a $130 million church campus in Dallas, a project which he claimed was about glorifying God, instead of mammon.

“In these tough economic times, we wanted to use our gifts to build a church that provides spiritual growth and healing while seeking to reflect the splendor and majesty of God,” he said at the time. A year earlier, he had claimed that then-president Barack Obama was “paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.”

Jeffress made those comments during the 2012 election campaign, in the context of his support of that year’s Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. Just four years prior, the Baptist minister had claimed that Romney’s Mormon faith was a “cult” whose members were going to hell. In a 2016 move that surprised no one, Jeffress was one of Donald Trump’s earliest endorsers.

Osteen is different from some of his evangelical colleagues in that he has generally shied away from political involvement. Despite having called Trump “a friend of our ministry” and “a good man,” he has not endorsed political candidates. What Osteen has endorsed, however, is what many critics have called the “prosperity gospel,” the idea that God not only wants to bless believers spiritually but wants to bless them financially as well.

Osteen does not draw a salary from his Lakewood Church nor does he directly ask his fans for money, unlike many other ostensibly religious organizations. Last year, a Canadian religious group called Gospel for Asia was accused of absconding with more than $90 million in donations. Nonetheless, Osteen’s followers have certainly ponied up bigly. His organization reportedly has an annual budget of more than $70 million, and the church facility he originally declined to open up to flood refugees was previously the home arena of the NBA’s Houston Rockets.

Osteen’s views on wealth and his ostentatious style (he lives in a $10.5 million mansion and is estimated to be worth about $40 million) are a pronounced departure from traditional Christian teachings about “the love of money” being the root of all evil, how difficult it is for a rich person to live a life worthy of God and how the materially disadvantaged are regarded more favorably by the divine.

Osteen’s theological indifference seems to be reflected not just in his initial refusal to follow Jesus Christ’s directive to care for “the least of these my brethren” but also in his apparent lack of preaching interest in Christ himself.

A search through Osteen’s Twitter feed reveals that he almost never mentions Jesus to his digital flock. Generally speaking, he only mentions the name of his alleged savior around Easter, never around Christmas. In fact, within the past three years, he has mentioned “Jesus” or “Christ” only 14 times amid hundreds of tweets.

Rafts of political science research have demonstrated that American churches’ doctrinal views have driven away people who want their faith to be more receptive to scientific evidence on issues like homosexuality or evolution. The Religious Right’s vociferous attempts to merge evangelical Christianity with far-right political opinions have also made those with moderate or liberal views look elsewhere for moral discussion.

It’s also clearly true that some religious leaders’ attempts to cash in on their followers’ need for validation and their displays of callous indifference to suffering — both of which are exemplified by Osteen — are part of the reason why nearly 24 percent of Americans now say they have no religious affiliation, compared to just 3 percent in the 1950s.

“Hypocrisies and conflicts in church, when they (inevitably) erupt, don’t just drive people to other churches, as in the past, but sometimes take them out of Christianity altogether,” Georgia pastor David Gushee wrote last year. He’s exactly right.

As the Pew Research Center’s Michael Lipka noted in 2015, this process is only accelerating as people who say they’re not a part of any religious tradition are not only becoming more numerous, they’re also becoming even more skeptical of religion itself.

Presumably, these trends ought to bother people like Joel Osteen and Robert Jeffress. Apparently they have other things on their minds.

Sadly, what these con-artists have on their minds is money and self-enrichment. In nearby Virginia Beach we have a case study in self-enrichment combined with marketing hate and intolerance: Pat Robertson.  The Gospel message means nothing to these people. They are a case study in why one would not want to label themselves as "Christian."

Trump's Evangelical Cheerleaders Remain Loyal to Him As Others Flee

While there has been an exodus of corporate CEO's from Der Trumpenführer's advisory boards and charities and organizations have been cancelling conferences at Trump's Florida estate, one group - with one exception - has remained true to Trump: members of his evangelical advisory board.  (The Guardian has a piece that provides a who's who of this group, a number of whom have a long documented history of religious extremism).   While a majority of Americans have been appalled by Trump's embrace of white supremacy and Neo-Nazism (and rightfully so), the evangelical crowd seemingly has no problem with open racism. Why? I would argue it is because if you look at the Southern Baptist Convention and certainly the Southern evangelical groups, they ARE racists and long standing proponents of white supremacy and unchallenged white privilege. The Southern Baptist Convention was indeed formed to continue church support f slavery.  In March of 1861, the Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in his so-called Cornerstone Speech summed up this agenda well:

"The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution."  he continued: "... the great truth [is] that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

The take away is that one should not expect to see many defections by evangelicals from the Trump white supremacist/Neo-Nazi train.  Here in Virginia, The Family Foundation - a Christofascists hate group - traces it roots to segregationists who supported "Massive Resistance" and the closure of public schools rather than desegregate. Indeed, the only refugee today from Trump's evangelical advisory board is not surprisingly from the North.  The Washington Post looks at this lone defection:

Most of President Trump’s evangelical advisers have stood by him this week following much criticism over his response to violent clashes in Charlottesville, even as several CEOs left business advisory councils and members of his Committee on the Arts and Humanities have announced they are leaving the panel.

In a first for his evangelical advisory council, New York City megachurch pastor A.R. Bernard announced Friday that he had stepped down from the unofficial board of evangelical advisers to Trump. 

Bernard’s Brooklyn-based Christian Cultural Center, which claims 37,000 in membership, has been described by the New York Times as the largest evangelical church in New York City. He said he submitted a formal letter on Tuesday, the same day Trump made controversial remarks about the events that took place in Charlottesville. Bernard was part of Trump’s advisory council during the campaign, but he told the Times last year that he had stepped away from that election role because he felt more like “window dressing” than a genuine adviser. The Times also reported that Bernard is a registered Republican, though he voted twice for Bill Clinton and twice for President Obama. Other leaders, including Southern Baptist pastors Jack Graham and Robert Jeffress, Tony Suarez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and televangelist Mark Burns, doubled down in their support of the president. A rising number of Americans wants Trump to resign a Public Religion Research Institute poll conducted in early August found, but white evangelicals remain most opposed to the idea. Among white evangelicals, 79 percent oppose the calls to impeach Trump compared with half of Americans who say Trump does not deserve to be impeached. On Sunday, Jonathan Falwell, who leads the megachurch Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va., denounced racism from his pulpit. His brother Jerry Falwell Jr., who leads Liberty University, remained silent for several days until he tweeted support for Trump on Wednesday. Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, defended Trump earlier this week. 

I have long argued that few elements in American society are more morally bankrupt than evangelical Christians who ignore the Gospel message and have turned Christianity into a cult of hate.  They are utterly self-centered, see themselves as above the law, and celebrate their embrace of ignorance and hatred of others.  Their continued support of Trump underscores their moral bankruptcy.

Charity Database Tags "Family Values" Organizations as Hate Groups

Tony Perkins - the white supremacist president of Family Research Council ("FRC") who is pictured above - is livid that charity database group Guidestar has tagged his organization and similar Christofascists groups a hate groups.  For those unfamiliar with Guidestar, it posts publicly available tax documents for charities to enable would donors to see which organizations make the best use of donated dollars and other information that is relevant to making charitable donations.  FRC is not the only "family values" organization that pretends to be an educational charity to receive the hate group designation even as it disseminates lies and untruths about gays and others.   Having followed the activities of FRC for roughly 20 years, there are few more dishonest organizations other than perhaps The American Family Association and Traditional Values Coalition.  All three are designated hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center which tracks hate groups across America due to the virulent lies and propaganda they publish (some have used Nazi like propaganda against LGBT individuals).  The Raw Story looks at these groups finally being exposed for what they are (The Family Foundation in Richmond needs to be added to the list).  Here are story highlights:

A non-profit resource that posts publicly available tax documents for charities has infuriated anti-gay Christian and conservative nonprofits by  using a widely available database at the Southern Poverty Law Center and tagging  each of them as a “hate group.” 

Charity database  GuideStar— which bills itself as “the world’s largest source of information on nonprofit organizations” — now includes information provided by the SPLC.

Among the putative Christian non-profits with a political bent who made the “hate group”  list are the Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel, Family Research Council, and the American Family Association — all of whom promote anti-LGBTQ policies,

Also being tagged with the “hate group” designation is the anti-Muslim group American Freedom Defense Initiative, headed by conservative gadfly Pam Geller.

As Guidestar notes on their website: “The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a respected hate group watchdog. There is disagreement on some of SPLC’s specific choices, but on balance GuideStar believes the analysis is strong enough to share. We leave it to you to come to your own conclusions.”

Fearful that the “hate group” designation may be cutting into their non-profit cash haul, the groups are lashing out at Guidestar for “liberal bias.”

 

FRC vice president Jerry Boykin also blasted Guidestar, calling bet use of the database, “another attack on conservative Christian organizations and individuals.”

Greg Scott, the spokesperson for the Alliance Defending Freedom said his organization would like to ignore it, and attempted to dismiss the civil rights watchdog SPLC as a “tabloid’ operation.

Several of the organizations have pushed back at Guidestar, writing a letter at letter to CEO Jacob Harold that attacks the SPLC, saying it incited violence. . . .

“Despite its denials to the contrary, this highly refined method of ostracism and dehumanization practiced by the SPLC isn’t just about verbal debate – it can foreseeably lead to violence,” the letter read.

In truth, the only ones seeking to incite violence are these false charities.  It is long past time that they public be informed of their true toxic nature.  Kudos to Guidestar..   

The Moral Bankruptcy of Evangelical "Leaders"

This week saw the observance of "National Coming Out Day."  Ironically, it was in October, 2001, that I began my coming out journey, being clueless at the time on a host of LGBT issues, but struggling to deal with the Catholic religious brainwashing that I had been subjected to over my childhood and teen years. Thankfully, coming out is becoming easier for younger generations, although we are far from reaching the point where being gay is a non-issue. In my own case, the process was made easier by the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal that exploded in 2002 as recounted in the Academy Award winning movie Spotlight.  Suddenly, I realized that the bitter men at the Vatican and in bishoprics across the globe were not only hypocrites when it came to preaching about sexual morals, but were in many cases criminal conspirators who care absolutely nothing for children and youths.  

Now, in the age of Donald Trump, when even some Republican elected officials who generally show few limits to their willing to self-prostitute themselves for votes are stepping away from Trump, many of the so-called evangelical Christian "leaders" - most of who are stridently anti-LGBT - are holding fast to their support of Trump.  These individuals, mostly men, are now revealing themselves to be just as morally bankrupt as the Catholic Church hierarchy.  Instead of turning away from Trump as decent moral individuals should do, they are justifying their continued allegiance through various disingenuous statements, all of which ultimately come down to their lust for power and whatever deals Trump has promised to them at secret meetings shielded from public view.  Bob Felton has put together a short summary of these homophobic, modern day Pharisees.  Here are highlights:

Those of you wondering how evangelical leaders can rally to the support of Donald Trump after his latest remarks about women … The Pious are sick, deformed people with a corrupt concept of the ‘good,’ and we need to drive them out of our public life.

James Dobson:
And James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and now host of the show Family Talk, stood by his Trump endorsement on Monday.[ … ]“The comments Mr. Trump made 11 years ago were deplorable and I condemn them entirely,” he said. “I also find Hillary Clinton’s support of partial birth abortion criminal and her opinion of evangelicals to be bigoted. There really is only one difference between the two. Mr. Trump promises to support religious liberty and the dignity of the unborn. Mrs. Clinton promises she will not.”

Jerry Falwell, Jr.:
“We’re never going to have a perfect candidate unless Jesus Christ is on the ballot,” he said. “I’ve got a wife and a daughter, and nobody wants to hear their women talked about in that manner.”[. . . ]I don’t think the American people want this country to go down the toilet because Donald Trump made some dumb comments on a videotape 11 years ago.”

Robert Jeffress:
Well, let me be very clear about this. These statements were lewd, offensive, and indefensible, but they’re not enough to make me vote for Hillary Clinton. Last week, I was in Trump Tower. I moderated a meeting between Mr. Trump and religious leaders, and I said, with Trump seated to my left, I said, “look, I might not choose this man to be a Sunday school teacher in my church, but that’s not what this election is about.” It’s about choosing the best leader to reverse the downward spiral of the nation.

Franklin Graham:
 Evangelist Franklin Graham condemned Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump for his 2005 remarks about women, but said the real estate magnate’s comments are as indefensible as “the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton” and that the Democratic candidate would prove to be more harmful for America’s future.

Ralph Reed:
Ralph Reed, chairman of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a member of Trump’s religious advisory board, has also said he’s still with the Republican candidate.Reed told NPR in an interview Saturday, adding that Trump has apologized. “I think given the stakes in this election and those and other critical issues, I just don’t think an audiotape of an 11-year-old private conversation with an entertainment talk show host on a tour bus, for which the candidate has apologized profusely, is likely to rank high on the hierarchy of concerns of those faith-based voters.”

LGBT citizens continue to be openly condemned and stigmatized by these individuals even though every legitimate medical and mental health association in the nation (and most of the advanced world) holds that homosexuality is a normal phenomenon.  Yet these people continue to support a man who brags about his aggression against women and who has now been accused of sexual harassment by more and more women.  I sincerely hope young LGBT individuals and their parents and friends will ignore these "men of god" and that soon being a "evangelical Christian" will hold far more stigma than being LGBT.

Botswana Deports Anti-LGBT American Pastor

Sadly, here in America, religion gets huge amounts of undeserved deference.  Hate is allowed to parade in public and "men of god" are free to encourage violence against others.  Equally disturbing is the manner in which politicians, especially Republicans, prostitute themselves to hate merchants standing behind a pulpit and by default normalize the misogyny they advocate.  Thankfully, in deporting anti-LGBT U.S. pastor Steven Anderson the government of Botswana demonstrated how such foul individuals should be treated. No deference, no respect, and no platform to poison others with their hatred of others. The Washington Blade looks at Anderson's deportation.  Here are excerpts:

The government of Botswana announced on Tuesday it has deported an anti-LGBT U.S. pastor from the country.

Steven Anderson told a Botswana radio station during an interview on Tuesday that the government should kill gays and lesbians. He also described the victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Fla., as “disgusting homosexuals who the Bible says were worthy of death.”

Botswana immigration officers were with Anderson when he left the radio station.

Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana said it received a report that Anderson assaulted someone who attended his church service on Monday. The advocacy group wrote on its blog that Anderson called the person “a fag, a homosexual and with a mouth full of AIDS” before he was forcibly removed.

Anderson, who is a pastor at the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Ariz., arrived in Botswana on Sept. 15. The government of neighboring South Africa announced earlier this month that it had banned him from entering the country.

A State Department official referred the Washington Blade to the Botswana government for comment “on their policy regarding individuals affiliated with the Faithful World Baptist Church.”

Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana criticized the government from allowing Anderson into the country. The group nevertheless applauded the decision to deport him and “in the process defended its citizens.” "We applaud the people of Botswana who have stood with us to protect, defend and promote human rights in our country,” said Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana.

Note that South Africa banned Anderson from entering that nation.   Perhaps one of the biggest ironies is the way Christofacists condemn the Koran and say it's a message of hate, yet then cite the Old Testament of Bible - also a message of hate - to justify similar bigotry and violence.

Anti-Gay Hate Merchant Tim LaHaye Dead at 90

Tim LaHaye and his equally foul wife, Beverly LaHaye

It is said that it is poor form to speak ill of the dead.  But when the dead individual promoted hatred, sought to denigrate the lives of others, and peddled religious extremism and discrimination, it is not a time to mutter neutral platitudes.  Therefore, I for one can say little positive about Christofascist extremist Tim LeHaye, who with his wife Beverly (a founder of the stridently anti-gay Concerned Women for America), did much to hold back LGBT rights and to maintain discrimination while enriching himself in the process.  The Washington Post looks at the passing of this truly foul individual with a sugar coated piece.  Here are highlights:

LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins wrote the 16-book series starting with “Left Behind” in 1995. With the theme of the end of the world and characters including the Antichrist, the books blended faith and fiction and sold more than 65 million copies.

Before he started writing fiction, LaHaye was highly active as a pastor. He founded San Diego Christian College and a dozen Christian grade schools and secondary schools, according to his ministry. He organized pastors to support political candidates including George W. Bush. He and his wife Beverly, the founder of the conservative organization Concerned Women for America, hosted a radio show together.

Time magazine called him one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in the United States

However, if you want a true glimpse at the real LaHaye, this piece gives some at just how hate filled and homophobic the man was.  Here are a few excerpts:

Given how much influence LaHaye’s books had in certain circles, and how many American homes contained his work, one of the titles on my reading list was called The Unhappy Gays: What Everyone Should Know About Homosexuality.

I didn’t really know what to expect in terms of either social prescriptions or theology, other than knowing this book was, at one time, the go-to manual for a conservative family that discovered they had a gay child. I had no idea how bad it was. Dear God, it’s no wonder so many of these young kids killed themselves. In a literal sense, no hyperbole intended, the closest parallel I’ve ever read is the anti-Jewish literature in the buildup to World War II and the “anti-negro” writings of white southerners in the aftermath of the Civil War through the Civil Rights era. LaHaye is right up there with the pre-reformed George Wallace. Part of me wants to acquire his works and fund a museum somewhere to demonstrate how brainwashed by hatred and prejudice a person can be. This is an incredible example of irrational ideological animus.

Here are just a handful of excerpts from the book. Imagine being 14 years old and your parents making you read this because they found out your secret. The suicide rates make sense now. Keep in mind this was considered a compassionate Christian book on the market about the topic at the time. Writings like this were the reason we now have a generation of old Senators and pastors being caught with hookers and in public bathrooms while insisting they are straight. The psychological damage is profound.

According to Tim LaHaye, gay people may be demon possessed…

No doubt some homosexuals are indeed demon possessed. – Page 141

According to Tim LaHaye, gay people might be vulnerable to demons even if they are cast out…

Even after a demon is cast out, if indeed that is necessary, the individual still has to overcome the homosexuality that caused him to become so rebellious toward God that he made himself vulnerable to the demons in the first place. – Page 141.

Got it so far?  Gay people are lying, self-indulgent, selfish, suspicious, angry, women-hating, possibly-demon possessed monsters who are unable to control themselves.  The compassion is overwhelming.

According to Tim LaHaye, gay people are a disease comparable to a plant infection…
Homosexuality is a blight on humanity … – Page 150

According to Tim LaHaye, many parents would rather have their child die than turn out gay…

Many such parents would prefer the death of their child to his adopting the unhappy wretchedness of homosexuality. – Page 157.

[A]ccording to Tim LaHaye, even when they were murdered by friends and family, it’s kinda cool because having your head split open by rocks being thrown at you was really compassion…

[When talking about the death penalty for gays in the Old Testament] This may seem “cruel and inhuman treatment” by today’s standards, but our leniency has caused today’s widespread problems. This is not to suggest that Christians advocate the death penalty for today’s homosexuals, but I do have a question that needs consideration. Who is really being cruel and inhuman – those whose leniency allows homosexuality to spread to millions of victims who would not otherwise have been enticed into this sad and lonely life style, or those who practiced Old Testament capital punishment? – Page 107.

According to Tim LaHaye, you know that despite practically every gay ever telling you they’ve known since they were a child, just like straight people, it’s totally a choice for them to be gay because otherwise God is completely unfair when He said they should be murdered.

God would never have commanded the death penalty for homosexuality if a person was really “born that way.” All capital punishment was for crimes a person committed voluntarily. Homosexuality is no exception (Leviticus 20). – Page 187

According to Tim LaHaye, since it’s not okay to kill the gays anymore, people should still try to stop them from getting laws passed to protect them against housing or employment discrimination…

 There is much more.  Suffice it to say, if there is a Hell, LaHaye must have a special reserved seat.  The world is a better place without LaHaye in it. 

Donald Trump and the Self-Prostitution of Evangelical Leaders

I had noted in a recent post how James Dobson had made the ludicrous statement that Donald Trump is a the equivalent of a "baby Christian" as part of the rationale for his decision - along with other evangelical extremists - to support Trump in the 2016 presidential election.  Once one stops either vomiting or laughing at the concept of Trump being even remotely a  Bible believe Christian, Dobson remarks reveal just how morally bankrupt the Christofascists have become and just how willing they are to prostitute themselves to someone like Trump in their never ending quest for power.  A piece in Salon looks at the moral sell out of Dobson, et al, and their true lover affair with access and power. Here are article highlights:

I’ve written quite a bit about Donald Trump’s unexpectedly successful wooing of the religious right in this presidential campaign. After all, we’ve been told for more than three decades now that conservative Christians require that America’s political leaders have the highest personal moral standards and adhere to a strict commitment to traditional values so he wasn’t expected to do well with them. Recall the stirring words of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson back in 1998 during the impeachment scandal:

As it turns out, character DOES matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country, without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world! Nevertheless, our people continue to say that the President is doing a good job even if they don’t respect him personally. Those two positions are fundamentally incompatible 

We are facing a profound moral crisis — not only because one man has disgraced us — but because our people no longer recognize the nature of evil. And when a nation reaches that state of depravity — judgment is a certainty.

There was Ralph Reed, formerly of the Christian Coalition and current leader of the Faith and Family: 

”Character matters, and the American people are hungry for that message. We care about the conduct of our leaders, and we will not rest until we have leaders of good moral character.”

It’s fair to say that Donald Trump misses the mark on these requirements by a thousand miles.  With his three marriages, his history of public bragging about his sexual exploits and the size of his penis in the national media, and his obvious lack of even rudimentary knowledge of the Bible or any religious teachings, Christian or otherwise, he would seem to be the last person that people of strong faith would find acceptable.

But in the primaries, it became clear that he was drawing many of the voters Ted Cruz had counted on being in his corner. It’s not that Cruz didn’t get evangelical voters, it’s that he was only getting the ones who actually attended church.  . . . . it turns out that for a lot of people “evangelical” is itself just another cultural signifier like those boots and those pork rinds, a tribal designation rather than a serious adherence to Christian teachings.

That’s not to say that this particular group of self-identified evangelicals don’t believe in anything. They undoubtedly go to church from time to time and think of themselves as Christians. It’s just that they don’t actually live their lives in accordance to the Bible as Christian Right leaders have spent years indoctrinating the public to believe. They’re conservatives the way Donald Trump is conservative — authoritarian, intolerant and often cruel. 

A Christianity constantly looking for political answers to moral and spiritual problems gives believers an excuse to blame other people when they should be looking in the mirror.

But then the Christian Right has long been a political operation rather than a religious movement, hasn’t it?
 
This brings us to Trump’s most recent “outreach” to the religious right which took place last week in New York when Trump met with a large group of Christian leaders to set their minds at ease about his candidacy. . . . . he also sold himself as someone who would protect “religious liberty”—  the latest social conservative buzzword — with his Supreme Court picks which seemed to thrill the assembled church leaders.  

At the end of the meeting, Trump released a long list of religious right leaders as his “Evangelical advisory committee” including Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, a man who has been scathing in his criticism of Trump. (He torturously explained that he would agree to serve Hillary Clinton too because that’s what Jesus would do.)

Not everyone is buying it. This evangelical scholar suggests that the real believing evangelicals are being played:

What happened on Tuesday in New York was the theo-political equivalent of money laundering.  Dobson and his gang are making Trump clean so that he is worthy of evangelical votes.

So, all those white working class types who identify as evangelical but don’t go to church are being seduced by Trump’s crude nationalism and nativism, largely as result of religious leaders politicizing religion and turning it into a vehicle for their own secular power.  Now, after years of lectures about morality and personal rectitude in public life, they’ve sunk so low that they’re actually trying to convince the truly devout weekly church goers that this depraved demagogue is someone they should support.

 These people are making the spineless establishment Republicans look like saints by comparison.

When I look at Christian Right figures like James Dobson and Ralph Reed -  I met Reed years ago and he struck me as a conflicted closeted gay  and made my gaydar alarm go off the charts - it reinforces my desire to no longer call myself a Christian.  These foul people have become the face of Christianity and the so-called "good Christians" remain sitting on their hands doing little or noting to silence these hate merchants thus becoming by default complicit in the horrors they do and the harm they cause to so many. 

Is Rush Limbaugh in Trouble?

One of the most partisan and hypocrisy filled mouth pieces of today's hate and bigotry filled Republican Party is Rush Limbaugh.  Together with Christofascist professional Christians, Limbaugh has exerted undue influence over the GOP and has  provided legitimacy to some of the ugliest elements and most insane conspiracy therapists of the lunatic far right.  Now, thankfully, it appears that Limbaugh may be in trouble in terms of radio stations broadcasting his nut job propaganda  and that his oce successful business model if you will is crumbling.  A piece in Politico looks at Limbaugh's potential fall.  Here are highlights:

Earlier this year, as that unmistakable bass line of the Pretenders’ My City Was Gone faded into the background, Rush Limbaugh opened his daily three-hour broadcast with characteristic bombast. “[According to the] latest research data,” he intoned, “the audience is expanding at near geometric proportions, as people seek guidance, answers, explanations, information, and an answer to the basic question, ‘What the hell is happening out there?’"

Whether “what the hell is happening out there”—in particular, the remarkable political rise of Donald Trump—has been good or bad for the Republican Party, or the country at large, there’s no denying one thing: It’s been great for talk radio. Ratings are finally ticking up, after a moribund four years. And conservative radio gabbers are driving the political conversation in a way that they didn’t when allegedly mushy moderates like John McCain and Mitt Romney were the standard-bearers of the country’s conservative party.

This has been particularly true for Limbaugh . . . . And yet, there are signs that all is not well in the Limbaugh radio empire. Because even as his influence is sky high and his dominance at the top of talk radio remains unchallenged, as a business proposition, Limbaugh’s show is on shaky ground. In recent years, Limbaugh has been dropped by several of his long-time affiliates, including some very powerful ones: He’s gone from WABC in New York, WRKO in Boston and KFI in Los Angeles, for example, and has in many cases been moved onto smaller stations with much weaker signals that cover smaller areas.

Why? Because four years after Limbaugh called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” on air, spurring a major boycott movement, reams of advertisers still won’t touch him. He suffers from what talk radio consultant Holland Cooke calls a “scarlet letter among national brand advertisers.” And for someone who has said that “confiscatory ad rates” are a key pillar of his business, that spells trouble. (Limbaugh ignored multiple interview requests.)

Limbaugh’s extremely lucrative eight-year contract—estimated to be worth roughly $38 million a year—is up this summer. What will happen to “America’s Anchorman,” as Limbaugh quasi-ironically refers to himself, once the contract is up, is anybody’s guess. Because as he is learning, political power does not necessarily a stellar business make.

But for all his business acumen, Limbaugh’s show has been a harder sell since 2012—even if he does still impishly refer to commercial time-outs as “obscene profit timeouts.” If you had to pinpoint a moment when Limbaugh’s business model began to turn, you’d have to look to the Sandra Fluke incident, when he referred to the Georgetown law student who spoke in front of Congress in favor of the Obamacare contraception mandate as a “slut” and a “prostitute.” It was a self-inflicted error that Limbaugh has never recovered from.
[B]y attacking Fluke in such grotesque terms, Limbaugh broke a cardinal rule of radio—not to mention polite society, says Darryl Parks, a radio industry veteran and former Clear Channel news-talk format chief based in Cincinnati: “Don’t beat up on a woman, and don’t beat up on a [young person].” In one fell swoop, he had done both. The backlash was swift and unforgiving—including from Fluke herself, who rejected Limbaugh’s multiple on-air apologies. (It didn’t help matters that Limbaugh said he was sorry for “acting like … leftists” by attacking her in such personal terms.) Politicians, including not a few Republicans, scorched Limbaugh.

The anti-Limbaugh faction came up with the social media-friendly slogan “Flush Rush.” The group’s efforts met considerable success in the months that followed. Dozens of companies, including Netflix, JCPenney and Sears, announced they would boycott Limbaugh’s show. Most have yet to return. And the increasing popularity of platforms like Twitter, which can be used to stoke outrage and promote boycotts, makes it highly unlikely they ever will.
 The Sandra Fluke incident “did a lot of harm to talk radio,” Darryl Parks says. “Thirty-eight percent of revenue disappeared overnight.” . . . . after the Fluke incident, entire stations—or indeed, the entire format of talk radio—were deemed no-go zones by blue chip brands.

JCPenney PR executive Kate Coultas explains this via email. “We [now] have a general ‘no run’ policy in place to not advertise on any kind of political program,”

In the end, the collateral damage was significant. The Wall Street Journal Radio Network, for example, which broadcast news updates on stations across the country, could not withstand the loss of ad revenue from brands like Penney. It shuttered completely in 2014—a decision directly attributable to the Fluke fallout, says one talk radio consultant. . . . . Even when they could sell ads, radio stations found that they had to move them at fire-sale prices. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2015 that talk radio ad revenue was falling and that “advertising on talk stations now costs about half what it does on music stations, given comparable audience metrics.”

[T]he biggest brands still stay away from Limbaugh. In 2015, the top five national radio advertisers were T-Mobile, Comcast, Home Depot, GEICO and Sprint. But you won’t hear ads from those giants on the Rush Limbaugh Show. Instead, most of Limbaugh’s spots are so-called “direct-response ads” (“enter the promo code Rush”) from the likes of home security companies, gold and silver purveyors and flower delivery outfits.

The move to smaller stations in big markets has apparently hammered Limbaugh’s syndicator. In the old days, Premiere Networks “could make a lot of money through fees—a million [dollars] a year or more from single stations,” says John Mainelli, a long-time radio executive who was WABC’s program director when Limbaugh made the move from Sacramento to New York. 

Now, because Limbaugh has been moved to so many smaller stations that pay much smaller fees, Premiere is “not collecting anywhere near what they used to collect in fees,” says Mainelli. And Mainelli points out that with the decline in ad revenue since 2012, the fees have become even more important: Their reduction has only added insult to Premere’s injury. . . . On top of that, it stands to reason that if Limbaugh is moved to enough lower-watt stations, his ratings will eventually suffer. None of his show’s woes have hurt Limbaugh personally, of course. He has a guaranteed contract dating back to 2008 that runs into July. But with his deal coming to an end in a few months, it’s an open question what the future will hold for the “Doctor of Democracy.”
 Most of the people I spoke with for this story speculate that Limbaugh will probably stay with Premiere. . . . . the big question is what that “right price” will be. It almost certainly won’t be as nice as his current arrangement, a contract so lucrative it allowed Limbaugh to buy a Gulfstream G550 he dubbed “EIB 1.” . . . A big question is whether Limbaugh would be willing to countenance a significant pay cut, particularly were it to become public. Like Donald Trump, a big part of Limbaugh’s brand is “winning,” after all. 

Limbaugh has been a toxic influence on America's politics and political discourse.  Candidly, the collapse of his "empire" and the demise of his toxic influence would be an extremely welcome development.