Today is Thursday, October 29, 2015
This week there is the World Congress of Families (WCF) being held in Salt Lake City. It is primarily an anti-LGBT gathering of religious organizations and anti-gay activists from around the world who promote the notion of ‘natural’ marriage. There are about 3000 attendees from sixty different countries this year. The WCF was formed out of a meeting between Allen Carlson of the Illinois Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, and two professors from Moscow State University in Russia. Initially, the impetus was a concern for the demographic changes in the U.S. and Russia, that were leading to a population decline and a growing movement for homosexual inclusion in mainstream society. The congress was first organized as a pro-‘natural’ family event to promote one-man-one-woman marriages and families around the world. Their work has been instrumental in the success of some of the anti-gay legislation in Uganda, Nigeria, and Russia. The WCF, however, denies any ‘anti-gay’ agenda, yet they allow very extreme people and organizations to participate. One such extreme organization is The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) represented by it’s leader, Brian Brown. Brown really tipped his hand regarding his organization’s agenda In his address to this world congress. This is what he said:
” The Supreme Court didn’t change the definition of marriage, it “put a lie into the law” — just like slavery and the Dred Scott decision.” Brown said that there’s no time for activists to be depressed. Citing the history of Christian martyrs, abolitionists and civil rights activists, he criticized believers in his anti-LGBT cause who don’t want to reveal themselves publicly because some of their Facebook friends might think less of them. “Instead of being depressed, we should savor the fact that we live at a point in history, like those times before, in which we can stand for the truth, make a difference, and God has put us here for some reason. This fight is not over. It has just begun.”
In his address, Brown proposed four goals for the anti-marriage equality movement:
1. Affirm continually and publicly that marriage is by nature a union of a man and a woman.
2. Reject the Supreme Court’s decision as illegitimate
3. Overturn the decision, perhaps through decades of struggle or perhaps with new Supreme Court justices appointed by a Republican president elected in 2016
4. Contain the damage in the meanwhile by passing laws that allow public officials and businesspeople to refuse to have anything to do with gay couples’ marriages and families.
This agenda is, on its face, absurd, especially number four. Brown now makes it perfectly
clear that these religious freedom laws that NOM supports and promotes in states around the
country have nothing whatsoever to do with protecting ‘faith’ or anyone’s religion. It is a straight
forward attack on the humanity, dignity and families of gay people.
They can believe whatever they want about LGBT and their families, but to attempt to create
a legal framework to marginalize, persecute and discriminate against gay people should be a
frightening proposition for everyone and a clarion call for everyone politically to fight against
their agenda.
Although the WCF itself doesn’t advocate any level of violence, there are those at this world
congress who advocate imprisonment or death for gay people, and there are many so-called
Christians here in this country who agree with that. The fact that NOM, Brian Brown, politicians
like Carson and Kansas Governor Brownback, and other U.S. religious organizations are
participating in this world congress with people who advocate violence against LGBT, gives tacit
if not overt approval of this disgusting, medieval, puritan attitude. These people who advocate
imprisonment or death for homosexuality are sociopaths with no level of empathy with their
fellow human-beings whatsoever and they hide their sickness behind the veil of ‘religious
freedom’. Rational, intelligent, humane people, whether religious or non-religious, are not
fooled by this deception. NOM, Carson, Brownback, Huckabee and Cruz need to be publicly
criticized for their participation and/or support.
Brown’s stated agenda and his participation in this ‘congress’ sends the message to all
Christians that it is good to target any group of people worthy of Christian hatred. The
message is very transparent that they want to impose their beliefs on the whole country. The
message is not meant just for Christians, but for all of America. The intention is to remove
the barriers between Church and State, establishing state-level religious laws to oppress and
suppress homosexuals and homosexuality ‘in the name of God’, and in the guise of ‘protecting’
believers from prosecution for exercising their First Amendment right to ‘freedom of religion’.
But Brown’s fourth agenda item makes it quite clear that protecting freedom of religion is NOT
the underlying motive in their support for religious freedom laws. Rather, the motive is to target
LGBT and render them legally and politically inferior within the American body-politic. That
item is a clear statement of bigotry and not religion.
They obviously don’t care one bit about the US Constitution or the rule of law. In their
agenda, they make it perfectly clear they have no respect for the Constitution or the Supreme
Court. Asserting ‘God’s’ law and forcing it on American society is what they’re after, which
makes them essentially no better than ISIS or conservative, authoritarian Muslim governments
when they imprison or execute gay people. Just because NOM and the WCF do not openly
advocate such tactics, does not mean they do not sympathize with the attitude. Their ignorance
is so frightening, it is hard to imagine anyone who can still think in these archaic, medieval
religious terms–but they do.
They also have their politicians who are participating–Ben Carson’s PAC is there as well as
Kansas Governor Brownback, who is giving a speech to the congress. Other presidential
candidates like Cruz and Huckabee also support the WCF and NOM. The Southern Poverty Law
Center has identified NOM as a hate group based on their agenda and activities. Of course, they
object to the label, but truth is truth. The very fact that Brown’s fourth agenda item singles out
and targets LGBT for open discrimination makes the hate group label a reality. Conservative
politicians who align themselves with NOM and the WCF do so at their political peril. It does not
matter what anyone believes about gay people and their families, but it does matter that they
are being targeted for open discrimination and persecution by groups like NOM and the WCF.
As Americans, whose basic mission statement includes the fundamental right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, whose Constitution guarantees equal treatment and equal access to all levels of society for everyone, this anti-LGBT agenda has to be rejected as both irrational and un-American.
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