A goofy guy named Adam Weinstein writing for a goofy website called Gawker has called for the jailing of those who deny global warming. Weinstein says, “there is the body of purulent pundits, paid sponsors, and corporate grifters who exploit the smallest uncertainty at the edges of a settled science.” Those who disagree with Weinstein on a scientific and political point are criminally negligent and should face not just fines but even prison.
As goofy as he is, he’s not the only one.
Just this past weekend serial adulterer Robert Kennedy Jr., who may have driven his second wife to suicide—and who also attended the New York march on climate change—also called for the jailing of those who disagree with him.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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In an interview with something called Climate Depot Kennedy said those who are skeptical of global warming are “treasonous” and ought to be treated that way. A few years ago a memo was put up at agenda-setting left wing site Talking Points Memo—since taken down—saying those who disagree about global warming should be executed.
In recent days, the President has said that global warming is one of our top national security concerns, even more pressing than Islamic radicalism. After all, climate change affects the whole planet, while Islamic radicals are only beheading a few lousy Christians.
Climate change and the call for prosecutorial punishment for disagreement is a glimpse into the modern liberal imagination but it is not the only area where the modern left wants not just to bully opponents but punish them. Walking in goose-step with them is the LGBT left. A new report from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) shows the same frightening glimpse of the increasingly dangerous bullyboys of the hard left.
The report is called The Export of Hate and features attacks on many of my friends and colleagues.
It sure is a scary report. It looks that way and reads that way. “There exists a network of American extremists who are working tirelessly to undercut LGBT people around the world at every turn.” Undercut. Yes, you read that right. They undercut. And it does not get any more evil than that.
The report says that their “vicious brand of bigotry is currently finding little traction in the United States” and so they have cast their evil eyes overseas where they find audiences with Parliaments, heads of state “and their wives” and where popular opinion against the homosexual agenda is widespread.
The report features scary mug-shot drawings of their enemies—the scarier the better, so as to frighten every LGBT donor from here to Timbuktu.
Have you ever heard of Scott Lively? Likely not. He runs a teeny tiny group with an annual budget of less than $100,000 but he is the bête noir of the bullyboys. They credit him for instituting the new “draconian” laws in Russia against homosexual propaganda in grade schools. They credit him with the new anti-LGBT laws in Africa.
According to the report, Lively’s crime is suggesting there is a global battle going on between “Christians and homosexuals.” You would be forgiven if you considered that the new HRC report is all about that battle but from the gay side. For Lively, though, saying such a battle exists is a crime. The report says Lively is active—cue scary music—in Uganda, Eastern Europe, Russia, and the United Kingdom.
The report targets Peter LaBarbera, who runs Americans for Truth about Homosexuality (that has a whopping and truly scary annual budget of $110,000). LaBarbera’s crime is saying that kids are better with a single parent than with a gay couple. He is exporting such hate to Jamaica and, you won’t believe this, Canada. Actually, LaBarbera was stopped at the Canadian border some months ago and not allowed in because of his political views on homosexuality.
And then there’s Paul Cameron. You have not heard of him either. His Family Research Institute exists on $54,494 a year. His main claim to fame years ago was to look at obituaries and determine that gays die earlier than others. He’s been to Moldova, Russia and Poland.
Sharon Slater of Family Watch International is a close and long time UN ally of mine. The report lists her annual budget as $26,569. Slater’s crime, according to the Human Rights Campaign, is denying there is such a thing as “sexual rights.” Of course, there isn’t such a thing. It has been debated for years at the UN and repeatedly rejected. But, in this case, agreeing with the UN is tantamount to a crime.
Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage is listed. His group is larger than most with an annual budget, at least during campaign season, north of $11 million. Brown was tagged because he said man-woman marriage is a core pillar of society.
The fabulously wealthy, powerful and politically connected HRC has even put up some super-scary videos showing how super-scary their political opponents are. They are shot in black and white with super-scary music and a super-scary editing technique that makes you think they were shot surreptitiously. In hers, Sharon Slater is shown saying the super-scary thing that there’s no such thing as “sexual rights.” This is what passes for thought and speech crimes by the hard sexual left.
Scott Lively believes he is being targeted for murder. An exaggeration? Two years ago a homosexual activist loaded a backpack with Chick-Fil-A sandwiches and loaded a pistol with bullets and shot his way into the lobby of the Family Research Council in Washington, DC. His intention was to kill as many employees as possible (this is where my wife works) and stuff their dead mouths with the bigoted chicken sandwiches. At trial he said he was inspired to murder by a report from the hard-left Southern Poverty Law Center that said FRC was a hate group exactly like the Skin-Heads and Nazis.
Since the HRC report came out, Lively has received several death threats which he has put up on his website. One guy wants to rip out his throat. Another wants him raped in prison and then killed.
This is nothing less than the criminalization of political differences. And worse than that, it is a call for vigilantism. Peter Wolfgang, who runs the Family Institute of Connecticut, was repeatedly threatened with murder by a gay activist who was later convicted and imprisoned. Wolfgang gets death threats all the time.
Sarah Palin put crosshairs on pictures of her political opponents and was accused of causing the shooting of Congressman Gabby Gifford. Our moral betters tell us repeatedly about the importance of civility in political discourse. Yet, here is a $50 million a year gay group putting up mug-shots of its political opponents and nary a peep of complaint from anyone except their targets that what they are trying to do is bully, shout down, marginalize, criminalize and even victimize those who disagree with them politically.
And here’s the thing. To suggest that Lively or any of these folks, myself included, have in any meaningful way affected the Russian parliament and the entire government of Uganda or any other government in any way is simply laughable. They are bogeymen created by the sexual left to intimidate opposition and to scare dollars from donors. That is all.
It should be noted that public support for same-sex marriage is finally eroding, according to a new poll from Pew. Could it be that the bullyboys and their tactics are finally catching up to them? Who really supports closing down Catholic adoption services because they refuse to violate Church teaching? Only the bullyboys. Who supports prosecuting small businessmen and women who exercise their own freedom of conscience in resisting same-sex marriage ceremonies? Only the bullyboys.
Perhaps people are finally noticing that the bullyboys have been incapable of convincing voters and consumers with the strength of their arguments and have had to resort to force either from the courts or from corporations. They are weaklings on the beach getting bigger and stronger boys to fight their fights.
After years of failing to get to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, they finally won only after great big and strong NBC and Guinness Beer intervened for them. A conservative Governor finally vetoed the Freedom of Religion bill in Arizona only after the NFL came to their rescue by threatening to withhold the Super Bowl. In recent days, the HRC has asked Big Daddy Barack to prosecute the World Congress of Families for attending a family conference in Russia.
This is hollow ground upon which to build a longstanding consensus. To coerce only builds resentment and not agreement. The polls have gone their way for a while but they don’t win votes and now even the polls are drifting away.
Something wicked is afoot in America and it is not just a disagreement over politics. Let us engage them in the public square both here and around the world. But they do not want that. They want their opponents silenced, jailed and even worse.
This madness has to stop but it is impossible to see how or when. For starters, all the mainstream politicians who appear at HRC dinners and help them raise an annual $50,000,000 should denounce this new report. But they won’t because they like these bullying tactics.
It is enough for now that every mom and dad in the land comes to know the bullyboy tactics and how it is Christians who are their targets. So, get to work.
(Photo credit: Courtesy of Shutterstock.)