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Next entry: Mark Sanford on new stories of more women - but I ‘didn’t cross the sex line’ Previous entry: States To Exercise Constitutional Rights To Things And Such

Professional right-wing, ex-gay extremist groups band together to form the ‘Freedom Federation’

This is what you do when the times get tight in bigot world—you join forces as to ride out the recession and regime change to keep the social conservative agenda viable until a return to power. Of course they are going to lose the war, but they are going to do everything in their power to slow the advancement of anything remotely resembling equality. The groups are holding a press conference today at the National Press Club. Take a look at this who’s who list of A-Z list winger orgs:

The Freedom Federation is a new and unique federation of some of the largest multi-ethnic and transgenerational faith-based organizations in the country committed to plan, strategize, and work together on common interests within the Judeo-Christian tradition to mobilize their grassroots constituencies and to communicate faith and values to the religious, social, cultural, and policymaking institutions.

WHO:
  — American Association of Christian Counselorsits mission is to “equip clinical, pastoral, and lay care-givers with Biblical truth and psycho-social insights

  — American Family Association - we already know about Don and Tim Wildmon’s Tupelo, MS-based hate brigade and “news” organ One News Now.

  — Americans for Prosperityfree market, small tax crowd

  — Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) - headed up by Faux News favorite anti-gay, anti-black token negro Jesse Lee Peterson.

  — Campaign for Working Families - failed presidential candidate Gary Bauer’s hangout

  — Catholic Online - mission is “to accurately represent the Catholic religion: its “past” and present.”

  — Concerned Women for America - Another favorite fringe group that always seems to be run by men.

  — Conservative Action Project - Arkansas-based free market, low tax org

  — Eagle Forum - Mother Schlafly’s birdnest

  — Exodus International - ruining LGBTQI lives daily.

  — Faith and Action - Rob Schenck, who anoints Senate Judicial hearing rooms with oil, says his org is “America’s only Christian outreach across the street from the United States Supreme Court

  — Family Research Council - Tony Perkins den of bigotry in the name of “family.”

  — High Impact Leadership Coalition - Bishop Harry Jackson, late of trying to stop marriage equality recognition in DC

  — Liberty Alliance Action - the successor org to Falwell’s Moral Majority. Very LGBT-obsessed.

  — Liberty Counsel - Bam Bam Barber’s and Mat Staver’s lair

But wait, there’s more…below the fold.

  — Liberty University - more Falwell-based “education”

  — Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN) - a group of Indiana homeschooling families from Bloomington and Monroe County

  — Marc Nuttle - author of a tome called Moment of Truth, “a clarion call for conservative America to take a stand today for the future the country.”

  — Morning Star Ministries - Rick and Julie Joyner’s ministry’s goal is to “provide the household of faith with the highest quality spiritual food that is timely, or “meat in due season.”

  — National Clergy Council - Rob Schenck, AGAIN

  — National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference - will lead the Hispanic born-again community in America for the purpose of transforming our culture, preserving our Judeo Christian Value System and building the spiritual, intellectual and social/political capital within the Hispanic American Community.

   — Renewing American Leadership -

I have no idea what this is, but

it has a dormant web site. Right Wing Watch says this is Newt Gingrich’s new parking space.

  — Strang Communications - it’sa multi-media communications company focused on spreading the name and fame of Jesus throughout the world through the mass media.”

  — Teen Mania - Ron Luce’s organization; his call to action is to retake America from the “virtue terrorists” (gays, pro-choice supporters, etc.) is “Battle Cry.”

 — The Call to Action -

not sure about this one

Kyle at RWW says this is Lou Engle’s new hole-in-the-wall.

  — Traditional Values Coalition - possibly the most hateful anti-LGBT organization out there, Lou Sheldon sets a new standard for peddling fear-based ignorance.

Ex Gay Watch‘s David Roberts managed to get a quote from Alan Chambers of Exodus on the project.

Keyboard protection ON:

I am attending a meeting today for the formation of a new conservative coalition made up of a wide variety of groups on a wide variety of topics. Because there will be focus on gay and lesbian issues I was invited to join the coalition and to speak. My stated purpose for being there is not to rejoin the policy debates or to engage Exodus in them. We have made great efforts over the last two years to be a ministry focused on spiritual renewal and not political renewal. We know that nations change when the hearts of people change. Today when I address this group, some of whom are friends that I deeply respect, I will do so, ironically, on behalf of the gay community. My overwhelming message will be that God is deeply in love with the most adversarial of gay activists and that as these groups do battle over policy they must never forget that fact.

  I was asked to speak at the follow up press event, which is the notice you received, and decided instead to serve only as a testimony to my conservative colleagues in a meeting prior, which I believe will serve as a reminder that it is God’s kindness that leads to repentance. I imagine there will those who shout amen when I speak today and those who will write me off because I am no longer activist material. Either way, I hope at the end of the day what I share encourages my fellow Christians to treat others as they would like to be treated and when they find someone who is struggling with unwanted homosexuality that they will think of Exodus.

I wonder if they will rent a nice office in DC and bunk out together?

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Posted by Pam Spaulding on 02:52 PM • (21) Comments

Well, it’s nice to have all the wingnuts in the same place.  It’s makes spraying ever so much easier.

Comment #1: Magis  on  06/30  at  03:05 PM

That is one impressive clusterfuck of hate and intolerance. I didn’t even know Schlafly was still alive.

Comment #2: oriskany  on  06/30  at  03:25 PM

Nothing like putting a bunch of paranoid, intolerant, xenophobic, camera-whorish regional ass clowns in the same office room.  There’s no WAY we’ll see any friction develop between the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and The anti-immigration Eagle Forum.  Or between Catholic Online and the pope-hating wanna-bes at Family Research Council and Liberty University.

Can we maybe get some sort of Zionist / Al Qaeda foreign policy institute together next?

Comment #3: Zifnab  on  06/30  at  03:50 PM

Well, it’s nice to have all the wingnuts in the same place.  It’s makes spraying ever so much easier.

At first I thought you said “spayed” which didn’t make any sense since nearly the entirety of these homobigots are male. That would have to read “neuter.”

Then I realized what you actually wrote. Not sure I was wrong though.

Comment #4: Vir Modestus  on  06/30  at  03:53 PM

Vir Modestus beat me to it.  I read “spay” instead of “spray” and thought, “Too late - they’ve probably been breeding for years.”

Comment #5: NobleExperiments  on  06/30  at  04:08 PM

So where do the small government conservatives GO if they don’t want to be associated with this crap?  Ron Paul’s liberty brigade? Galt? What?  It’s maddening because there is no (good) reason to conflate bigotry and (traditional) conservativism.  Liberty means liberty for everyone, and that means a live-and-let-live attitude toward differences, it means pro-choice (privacy), it means the Constitution and civil rights, it means celebration of the individual sovereign spirit, it generally means get the State’s nose out of citizens’ personal business, it means no invading other countries, it means letting States govern themselves. It’s a clear philosophy that doesn’t deserve to be smeared with the racist, homophobic crap today’s Republican party currently wallows in. The party is an embarrassment to basic decency.

Both sides of my extended family bailed from the Repub party after the Great Evangelical Neocon Infestation of 1980.  Many started voting Democrat but were horrified by what they ended up with (more statism, new Federal agencies, new taxes, wars on this and that, etc.).  They dutifully pay their new/higher taxes but are angry. They won’t wave teabags because, well, dignity.  They’ve got nothing. Nowhere to go.  Just bitterness and abdication from politics in general because no one they’re allowed to elect ever represents their interests.

Comment #6: The Hedonistic Pleasureseeker  on  06/30  at  04:22 PM

encourages my fellow Christians to treat others as they would like to be treated and when they find someone who is struggling with unwanted homosexuality

But when they find someone embracing his/her homosexuality, then it’s open season, right?  Sick f#cks!

Comment #7: Kristen from MA  on  06/30  at  04:47 PM

These people are doing to the word “freedom” what the Communists did to “democratic” and “republic.”

Comment #8: Bitter Scribe  on  06/30  at  05:05 PM

Hedonistic Pleasureseeker—those are the Reform Party folks.

Comment #9: Punditus Maximus  on  06/30  at  05:07 PM

This would be so fun. The Traditional Values Coalition will offend Catholic Online by making some crack about priests and altar boys, Strang Communications and the Morning Star Ministries will come to blows over which of them has the (tm) on Jesus, and the Teen Mania will accuse the Exodus International of checking out his ass.

Then they send the Concerned Women for America out to make the coffee.

Comment #10: Phoenician in a time of Romans  on  06/30  at  05:11 PM

Many started voting Democrat but were horrified by what they ended up with (more statism, new Federal agencies, new taxes, wars on this and that, etc.).

I know how they feel, having voted Democrat myself in 2000 and 2004.

Seriously, though, small-government conservatives will continue to be stuck with bozos as long as they limit their teabagging Libertarianism to economic matters.

Regarding the main post, are they going to set up a secret HQ? I hear this place is on the market thanks to the Great Recession. Even Lex Luthor must be in awe of the scale of destruction wrought by these bankers and mortgage brokers.

Comment #11: Gracchus.  on  06/30  at  06:02 PM

American Association of Christian Counselors

Otherwise known as “Mental Health Malpractice R Us.”

Comment #12: MAJeff, the God of Biscuits  on  06/30  at  06:17 PM

I hope the ex-gays clean out the Republicans cash stash soon.  These guys have got to be cleaning up.  Hell, their secretaries’ must be making good money and the INSURANCE PREMIUMS for ex-gays have to be into the hundreds of thousands each or maybe these just get a huge discount for coming out as Republicans.

Comment #13: less is more  on  06/30  at  08:50 PM

I wish they had called it the Justice League instead. Then they could wear better costumes.

Comment #14: paul  on  06/30  at  10:26 PM

Both sides of my extended family bailed from the Repub party after the Great Evangelical Neocon Infestation of 1980.  Many started voting Democrat but were horrified by what they ended up with (more statism, new Federal agencies, new taxes, wars on this and that, etc.).  They dutifully pay their new/higher taxes but are angry. They won’t wave teabags because, well, dignity.  They’ve got nothing. Nowhere to go.  Just bitterness and abdication from politics in general because no one they’re allowed to elect ever represents their interests.

Hedonistic Pleasureseeker, your politics sound extremely different from mine, but you express an alienation that I have sometimes felt.

Even if you do not like either of the major parties, there are plenty of things ways you can be active politically. You could join a party like the libertarians or the Reform party, as someone mentioned, which might be more in line with your beliefs. Or, you could use activism for certain issues, voting tactically for whoever seems best in a given situation.

Once you feel that you are outside the normal system, it then becomes a question: do you drop out of politics entirely, or do you try to find a more creative way of expressing the values that you hold dear?

Comment #15: atheist  on  07/01  at  06:14 AM

Echoing the earlier discussion of libertarianism on Pandagon, I would like to emphasize the presence in this nefarious, authoritarian alliance of the “free market, small tax crowd” (Americans for Prosperity, which champions, according to its website “cutting taxes and government spending in order to halt the encroachment of government in the economic lives of citizens”).

I understand that some libertarians have a theoretical commitment to restraining state power and promoting self-determination. Thus, keeping the government out of coercing individuals’ choices in the market also means keeping the government out of coercing individuals’ choices in their private, intimate lives. To these libertarians, I would suggest that setting up a sacrosanct sphere of economic and personal autonomy, in a democracy, requires some grant of state power, in order to have some way of protecting people from majority efforts to curtail such autonomy. The reason is that this thereotically pure libertarianism has set up constraints on state action that are not democratic, that do not depend upon majority support, and that must be observed whether the governing majority wishes to respect them or not.

But is that really the sort of libertarianism groups like Americans for Prosperity are advocating, if they are willing to jump into bed with authoritarian groups who cheerlead behemoth state controls of people’s private sex and family lives? My understanding is that this is another variety of libertarianism entirely, celebrating the freedom from any state controls over what a democratic majority decides. So if the majority sets up a state apparatus to police people’s private lives, too bad for the individuals who choose to engage in non-majority-endorsed private activities.

But if that’s the case, why resist majority-supported economic controls? Isn’t it just too bad for companies and individual marketeers if the majority decides it must impose health and safety codes or tariffs? Why insist that individuals must be left to the mercy of the majority, and fend for themselves in the face of discrimination and regulations of private life, but then turn around and assert that companies and marketeers must be immune from the majority passions of their society?

Maybe some libertarians could clarify this, because I just do not understand the possibility of a theoretical commitment to market freedom and peeping into people’s windows to police sexual and other private behavior.

Comment #16: Luke  on  07/01  at  09:30 AM

And, I don’t understand calling such a commitment a commitment to “freedom,” as this group does.

Comment #17: Luke  on  07/01  at  09:48 AM

“These people are doing to the word “freedom” what the Communists did to “democratic” and “republic.””

Their certainly giving it a try, along the lines of the old one about the Holy Roman Empire, it’s not in favor of freedom and it’s not much of a forum.

Comment #18: witless chum  on  07/01  at  10:18 AM

faith-based organizations in the country committed to plan, strategize, and work together on common interests within the Judeo-Christian tradition

(bold mine)

I absolutely hate it when these people try to claim a monopoly on Judeo-Christian values.  There are millions of Christians who are accepting of homosexuality.

Comment #19: bananacat  on  07/01  at  12:41 PM

The S&L;loan scandals, Enron, and now the housing market CDO implosion show that libertarianism work perfectly when no humans are ever involved in the design or implementation if the system.

Comment #20: cynickal  on  07/01  at  02:07 PM

These people are doing to the word “freedom” what the Communists did to “democratic” and “republic.”

Bitter Scribe - They’ve already done it for the word “liberty.” Its contemporary use is a sign of someone who’s trying to wrap himself in both the flag and the Bible.

Their next stop: “family.”

Comment #21: Molly, NYC  on  07/02  at  01:49 AM
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