http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-thayer/why-we-are-protesting-aga_b_666811.html
Andy Thayer
Anti-war activist and co-founder of the Gay Liberation Network in
Chicago
Posted: August 2, 2010 12:53 PM The Huffington Post
Why We Are Protesting Against "Americans For Truth About
Homosexuality"
Beginning August 5, a group which calls itself Americans For Truth
About Homosexuality (AFTAH) is organizing what they call an "academy"
to "train young people (as well as older pro-family advocates) how to
answer 'gay' activist misinformation and fight the homosexual-bisexual-
transsexual agenda."
AFTAH has a long history of telling lies about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
and Transgender (LGBT) people, and recently was designated a "hate
group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. AFTAH's literature about
their forthcoming "academy" calls the LGBT rights movement
"destructive to America" and invites people to donate money to fund
scholarships for people as young as 14-years-old to attend.
***
So many things about AFTAH's forthcoming anti-gay "academy" are
offensive on their face that it's easy to lose sight of the broader,
strategic reasons for organizing public protests against organizations
like AFTAH.
* Many rightly have a visceral reaction against organizations that try
to turn back the clock to a time in American history when it was
openly acceptable to scapegoat minorities who had already endured
plenty of hate and discrimination, thank you very much.
* Organizations like AFTAH that target young people for indoctrination
with bigotry - their anti-gay "academy" says that it's for people as
young as 14-years-old - recall historical pictures of adult white
supremacists bringing their children to rallies against African
Americans, Jews and "communists."
* Organizations that peddle their paranoia about "the Other" in times
of economic distress, like today's "Great Recession," recall earlier
times in history when such scapegoating had devastating effects on the
lives and opportunities of those targeted.
Important as these reasons are for protesting AFTAH, our own LGBT
civil rights struggle shows that there are civil rights opportunities
to be gained by not taking an "ignore them and they'll go away
approach" towards groups like AFTAH.
Reading through AFTAH's propaganda materials, one is struck by the
great lengths they go to portray themselves as simple, "good
Christians" (albeit far better than those lapsed, "fake" Christians).
Besides wrapping themselves in Biblical godliness, they're hyper-
patriots, boisterously proclaiming their Americanism. And diabetics
beware - their sanctimonious tracts about what they call family values
contain so much sugar they are hazardous to your health. They're just
about as Godly, Pro-American and Pro-Family as you can get.
Why so much emphasis on God, patriotism, Mom and apple pie? Because
the real product they're selling is one that, when Americans think
about it more deeply, is something many will find repugnant. This is
where marketing comes in.
AFTAH is in favor of denying equal access to employment, housing and
public accommodations - including government services like equal
Social Security and marriage benefits - to a whole group of people.
AFTAH's central mission is to prevent the spread of full LGBT legal
and social equality and to roll back those gains that we have already
made. In order to accomplish these goals, they must expand further the
territory they've already secured for "acceptable" anti-gay bigotry in
mainstream politics and among the wider public.
Their problem is that, while Civil Rights Movement for African
Americans certainly wasn't popular in many quarters in the 1960s, it
did win at least surface acceptance over time. And part of its legacy
was that it eventually established in the United States a popular
repugnance among many against those who overtly oppose legal equality
for African Americans and indeed against anyone who peddles hate and
discrimination against whole groups of people.
Like present-day anti-gay bigots, in the 1960s opponents of the
movement for African American civil rights also boisterously wrapped
themselves in faith, family and country. And it is no accident that
many prominent anti-gay leaders of this century, such as the Mormon
Church and the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, were strident opponents of
African American legal equality in the last century. Falwell, for
example, infamously labeled the Black freedom movement "the civil
wrongs movement."
So as anti-gay groups like AFTAH promote themselves as godly,
patriotic, and pro-family, this is not just stylistic exuberance.
Rather, it is part of a carefully thought out strategy aimed at
countering those who label them as haters. And when mainstream LGBT
leaders advise our community to ignore groups like AFTAH or go lightly
on them, they are playing right into their hands.
By contrast, in the late 1970s when the pro-gay movement which brought
us Harvey Milk defeated the anti-gay movement represented by Anita
Bryant, they did it by successfully labeling Bryant as a narrow-minded
bigot very reminiscent of the bigots which the African American Civil
Rights Movement organized against. All the "pro-family" and "Save Our
Children" saccharine in the world could not protect her from a pro-gay
movement which peeled away the patriotic and "Christian" façade to
reveal a nasty bigot underneath.
For the most part, our present-day mainstream LGBT leaders repeatedly
fail to take on the present-day Anita Bryants. Instead, while AFTAH
and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) spew out vitriol
suggesting that we are a bunch of disease-ridden child molesters, pro-
gay leaders typically pull their punches and prefer to shy away from
labeling creeps in AFTAH and NOM as the anti-gay bigots that they are.
The result, in contrast to our 1978 victory over California's anti-gay
Briggs Amendment, is our defeat in many eminently winnable anti-gay
referenda fights over the past few years, including in places like
Maine where we held a 2-to-1 fundraising advantage.
Rather than paint the Catholic and Mormon Church leaderships as bigots
opposed to equal rights and painting them into a corner the way that
Harvey Milk, et al, did against Anita Bryant, most LGBT leaders give
anti-gay leaders like the Pope a pass; instead, they try to compete on
the same terrain by setting up "faith-based" divisions at
organizations like the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and out-doing the
bigots in demonstrating our "godliness" and "pro-family
values" (whether we're Christian or not, or whether we consider
ourselves part of families or not).
With dozens of defeats in recent statewide referenda, this is a
spectacularly failed strategy.
The question is why do mainstream LGBT groups and their leaders
obsessively persist in this failed strategy? Part of the answer lies
in their fear of taking on still-powerful religious hierarchies like
the leaderships of the Mormon and Catholic Churches - the latter still
very dominant in American life despite the repeated pedophilia
scandals and the gradual growth of agnosticism and atheism among the
public.
But this alone does not explain LGBT leaders' hesitancy to take on
religious anti-gay leaders. After all, until California's anti-gay
Briggs Amendment, Anita Bryant also appeared to be hugely powerful, a
seemingly unstoppable force in the late 1970s, rapidly overturning pro-
gay legislation in city after city while a seemingly friendless gay
community gathered virtually no support from established institutions
in American society. Yet our young gay movement took her on and was
successful.
The core of our present-day problem lies in our movement's reliance on
leaders who themselves have intimate ties to the Democratic Party and
explicitly or implicitly take their marching orders from it. And the
fact remains that most significant leaders in the Democratic Party
oppose marriage equality and other aspects of full citizenship for
LGBT people.
Part of the reason mainstream LGBT leaders fail to more actively take
on anti-gay religious leaders is that for them to do so, while failing
to also take on their anti-equality politician-allies, would make them
look like hypocrites. So in the face of anti-gay leaders' vitriol and
slander, these mainstream gay leaders in groups like HRC and the
Stonewall Democrats take the easy way out. Rather than earning respect
by taking the battle to our enemies by labeling their opposition to
LGBT equality to be plain and simple bigotry, they earn people's
contempt by pathetically pleading for "fairness" and "tolerance."
So as important as it is to oppose AFTAH's nasty attempt to
indoctrinate the next generation with anti-LGBT hate, our protest on
Thursday night is about much more than that, too. It is also about
breaking from the failed strategy which gave us the California Prop 8
and Maine Question 1 defeats. It's about rejecting a "kids-glove"
treatment towards anti-gay leaders who, like AFTAH's Peter LaBarbera,
relentlessly push anti-equality legislation and constitutional
amendments when given half a chance.
***
The protest against Americans For Truth About Homosexuality's anti-gay
"academy" will take place at 7:30 PM sharp, Thursday, August 5 in
front of "Christian Liberty Academy," 502 W. Euclid Avenue, Arlington
Heights, IL. Those traveling from Chicago will meet at 6 PM sharp in
front of the Ogilvie Transportation Center Metra station, 500 W.
Madison Street, Chicago (just look for the Pride flag!). For
information, email or call the Gay Liberation Network at
LGBTlib...@aol.com or
773.209.1187