Within hours of the shooting of the security guard at the Family Research Council last Wednesday, more than 20 gay organizations issued a joint statement that they “utterly reject and condemn such violence.” This is highly commendable. Unfortunately, they did not utterly reject, condemn, or even acknowledge their potential role in helping to create the toxic environment that may have contributed to the shooting. Consider how shrill gay activist rhetoric has become.
In June, after Southern Baptists reaffirmed marriage as the union of one man and one woman (for conservative Christians who base their faith on the Bible, a no brainer), gay icon Mel White branded them “holy terrorists,” ending his Huffington Post article with these words: “Please, for the sake of millions of our sisters and brothers who are victims of holy terrorism, resist!” What kind of actions could rhetoric like this produce?
To be sure, just a few lines earlier, White wrote, “If we resort to violence, we will lose the war,” but those words were drowned out by the passionate call to resist “holy terrorism” and by the reference to “holy terrorists.”
Interestingly, in 1995, White wrote his first book as a “gay Christian” with the irenic title Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America. In 2006, he published a much more aggressive volume, Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right, which was then reissued in 2012 with the title Holy Terror: Lies the Christian Right Tells Us to Deny Gay Equality. So, while the position of conservative Christians has not changed (aside from being much more compassionate than it was 20 years ago), gay rhetoric condemning that position certainly has changed: By following the Scriptures, you are guilty of holy terrorism!
Day and night, LGBT people are told how much we hate and despise them, that Prop 8 in California was actually Prop Hate, that Chick-Fil-A serves “hate chicken” (this from the mayor of Washington, DC). Is it any surprise, then, that a number of churches were vandalized after the Prop 8 vote in 2008 or that a Chick-Fil-A store had the words “tastes like hate” scrawled on its walls? And given the view that failure to affirm homosexuality is an act of hate, is it any surprise that in April of this year, a church in Seattle had its windows smashed by a group called Angry Queers?
Wayne Besen, founding executive director of Truth Wins Out, was one of the signers of the joint LGBT statement condemning the FRC shooting on August 15th. One day later, he assured his readers that the FRC “loathes LGBT people with a special passion” and that the SPLC was “100% correct” in labeling the FRC a hate group, although “hate groups don’t deserve to be victims of hate crimes.” (My next article will focus on the deplorable irresponsibility and arrogance of the SPLC.)
Last year, at the gay pride event in Charlotte, about 400 Christians (including me) wore “God Has a Better Way” tee-shirts and handed out 2,500 bottles of water inscribed with “Jesus Loves You.” (For us, “the Jesus Revolution” means putting down swords of violence and hatred and picking up crosses of truth and love.)
In response, Besen wrote an article entitled, “Michael Brown Is an Anti-Gay Monster,” claiming that my “game is to try inciting followers to possible violence against LGBT people.” He stated, “I do strongly believe to my core that Brown’s ultimate goal is to create the conditions for a nasty physical clash,” claiming that, “The madman fully understands that he only has to create a hostile climate to inflame the most unstable of his thugs and they will eventually provoke the type of confrontation that this pathological monster deeply desires.”
What effect do such vitriolic, ugly, and hate-filled words have on an unstable gay reader? And how would that person recognize that there is not a grain of truth in Besen’s inflammatory words?
Not surprisingly, on the very web page featuring Besen’s excellent statement condemning the FRC shooting, he allowed comments like these to stand: “Have the hypocrites started their screams yet?” And, “You can only push people so far in oppression before they react. Shooting is NOT a way to dialogue. FRC will use this to beg and plead for more money to fight the ‘radical homosexual agenda.’ Thankfully the guard was only wounded, but the deeper wounding has been happening for over twenty years on the part of FRC.”
So, the shooter was guilty, but the FRC bears the greater guilt. As another commenter on the Truth Wins Out site opined, the shooting “was Lady Karma finally come a-calling on the FRC.”
Sadly, there are gay websites more extreme and inflammatory than Besen’s, and even those that are more restrained in their language continually fuel the fires of “hate,” as if any failure to affirm or celebrate homosexuality can be based on one thing alone: hatred of gays. (Question to gay readers: If you oppose plural marriage, does that mean you hate polygamists and polyamorists?)
I know this has worked well for gay PR, and I don’t doubt that many LGBT people believe the “hate” charge to be universally true, but it’s high time the gay activist rhetoric of hate be dropped before the atmosphere becomes even more toxic. Surely all of us who are spokesmen and leaders on both sides of the debate can step higher and maintain civility in the midst of our profound differences.
To borrow from President Obama’s Black Nationalist mentor, Jeremiah Wright, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate-baiting chickens “have come home to roost.” The hard-left group has become everything it presumes to expose.
On Wednesday, homosexual activist Floyd Corkins entered the Washington-based Family Research Council (FRC) armed with a gun and a backpack full of ammunition. He also had 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches (FRC recently defended the food chain’s COO Dan Cathy for pro-natural marriage statements).
The only thing standing between Corkins and mass murder was FRC facilities manager and security specialist Leo Johnson. As Corkins shouted disapproval for FRC’s “politics,” he shot Johnson who, despite a severely wounded arm, managed to tackle Corkins and disarm him (of course, this is all impossible as it’s illegal in Washington, D.C., to carry a concealed weapon).
Of Johnson’s actions, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said, “The security guard here is a hero, as far as I’m concerned.”
I agree.
Upon hearing of Leo’s selfless act of heroism, I was reminded of John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
But according to the SPLC, Leo’s heart is, instead, full of hate. In fact, everyone at FRC is hateful. After all, in 2010 the SPLC, with much fanfare, “officially certified” FRC as a “hate group” for its orthodox Christian positions on marriage and family.
Alongside violence-charged photos of actual hate groups like the Aryan Brotherhood and the KKK, the SPLC lists on its website the decidedly mainstream and always peaceful FRC.
It’s a clever strategy, dishonest and reprehensible though it may be. By juxtaposing FRC and other Christian organizations with violent extremist groups, SPLC has engaged in intellectual sloth at its worst (the organization has repeatedly declined to debate FRC President Tony Perkins over its “hate group” smear).
Rather than debating – on the merits – mainstream Christian groups with which it has ideological disagreement, SPLC has chosen, instead, the coward’s way out: demonization and marginalization through false guilt by association.
It’s a scheme not only slimy, but extremely dangerous.
If ever there were a time I’d prefer not to have been right, now is that time. Back in November 2011, I essentially predicted both the FRC shooting and the SPLC’s undeniable complicity therein.
With a column headlined, “Liberal violence rising,” I wrote, “The SPLC’s dangerous and irresponsible (‘hate group’) disinformation campaign can embolden and give license to like-minded, though less stable, left-wing extremists, creating a climate of true hate. Such a climate is ripe for violence.” (If anyone deserves to be taken out – rationalizes the unbalanced SPLC dupe – its members of this or that evil “hate group” whom, as he’s been repeatedly told, mean him great harm.)
That was before the fact. After the fact – one day after the shooting – Tony Perkins addressed exactly that which I forecast:
“Let me be clear that Floyd Corkins was responsible for firing the shot yesterday,” he told Washington reporters. “But Corkins was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have been reckless in labeling organizations hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy.”
The SPLC “should be held accountable for their reckless use of terminology that is leading to the intimidation and what the FBI here has categorized as an act of domestic terrorism.”
Regrettably, Mr. Perkins finds himself in a uniquely credible position to make this charge.
Still, although there remains a vast ideological divide between the SPLC and the tens of millions of Christian Americans represented by the Family Research Council, the Southern Poverty Law Center now finds itself with a brief window of opportunity to both do the right thing and rehabilitate its badly damaged reputation.
To the SPLC, I say this: Your cynical efforts to dehumanize Christians and equate biblical truth to “hate” are working better than I think even you expected. It’s now within your power to right a horrible wrong and restore a sense of peace and security to the rattled folks at FRC. What a gift that would be.
I appeal to your sense of goodwill. This is not a game. Lives are at stake. I know you have good employees (I’ve met some) who believe they’re doing the right thing; so, please, validate that belief. It’s time to remove your metaphorical “hate group” Star of David from mainstream Christian organizations before another of your ideological allies spills blood.
And to homosexual activists and other liberal groups, I say this: Rise above the fray. Let’s come together. Here is something on which even we can agree. Publicly encourage SPLC to lift this veil of fear.
Media, you, too, are on notice. Remember Wednesday’s shooting next time you even think about repeating SPLC’s “hate group” brand while addressing the Christians upon whom it’s tattooed. You also have share in the blame.
SPLC, hear me now: If, God forbid, something like this – or even worse – happens in the future and you have yet refused to retract and apologize for your “hate group” propaganda, then your hands will forever be stained with the blood of innocents.
Still, either way, we Christians are commanded to speak the truth of Christ “even unto death.”
FRC will not be deterred. “We’re not going anywhere,” Tony Perkins told reporters Thursday [8/16/12]. “We’re not backing up; we’re not shutting up,” he vowed. “We feel that – we don’t feel, we know [that] we have been called to speak the truth. Speak it in love, but to speak the truth nonetheless – and we will not be intimidated, we will not be silenced.”
“I was there as [Leo] came to from the anesthesia,” said Perkins, “and I told him, ‘Leo, I want you to know you’re a hero.’ And he thought about it for a minute and he said, ‘You know, this hero business is hard work.’”
Heroes don’t work for “hate groups,” and FRC’s hard work is heroic indeed.
Within hours of the shooting of the security guard at the Family Research Council last Wednesday, more than 20 gay organizations issued a joint statement that they “utterly reject and condemn such violence.” This is highly commendable. Unfortunately, they did not utterly reject, condemn, or even acknowledge their potential role in helping to create the toxic environment that may have contributed to the shooting. Consider how shrill gay activist rhetoric has become.
