Tag Archives: Hate groups

This week in anti-gay temper tantrums

We-dont-discriminate-stickerFirst up: Oral arguments in Bostic v. Schaefer before the Fourth District Court of Appeals are scheduled for May 13. The court will be hearing the appeal of Judge Arenda Wright Allen’s ruling that struck down Virginia’s anti-marriage Marshall-Newman amendment.

The Virginia “Family” (not yours) Foundation, in anticipation, is holding a 40 day “fast.” Don’t be alarmed, though. They won’t starve, or even lose any weight. The word “fast,” according to the clarification that appears on their website, and contrary to its common meaning, “does not translate” to “hunger strike.” It only means temporarily giving up something you kind of enjoy, like Diet Coke. Yes, Diet Coke is actually the example they cite. This word salad, apparently intended to explain the aforementioned desperate action, also appears:

Our state and nation are mired in a morass of confusion and post-modern thinking that does not believe in absolutes nor that any truth can even be known..

Huh? A bizarre statement, until you realize that it perfectly describes their own post-modern thinking. Martyrdom is just not what it used to be.

Next, from the Magnolia State: As you might imagine, Mississippi, like Virginia, has no civil rights provisions protecting LGBTI people from discrimination. Unlike, for example, in New Mexico, it is perfectly legal for the proprietor of a Mississippi business or public accommodation to refuse service to someone on the basis of their actual or perceived gender presentation or sexual orientation. It’s also perfectly legal to fire someone, deny them housing, deny them a bank loan, or any other form of discrimination that would be prohibited if it were on the basis of race, nationality, or religion.

That wasn’t enough for those in the state who see imaginary violations of their constitutionally protected religious freedom in every shadow, however. Earlier this month, the state legislature passed a bill, similar to the one famously vetoed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, that reiterates the “right” to discriminate that anti-gay bigots in Mississippi already enjoy, and effectively expands their “right” to discriminate against anyone else they dislike as long as they claim the discrimination is motivated by a “sincerely held religious belief.”

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Delgaudio attorney apparently switching sides

EugeneDelgaudioSadPandaLeesburg Today reports that Charlie King, the attorney representing Eugene Delgaudio in the citizens’ effort to have Delgaudio removed from office by the Circuit Court, has filed a subpoena seeking documents from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The rationale for the subpoena, according to Charlie King:

“Almost every article written about Supervisor Delgaudio mentions the designation of Public Advocate as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center,” King said in an email statement. “The Sterling petitioners (in a petition to remove Delgaudio from office) cited Public Advocate’s hate group status as one basis for removing him from office. In today’s America, calling somebody a member of a hate group is serious.”

Yes, it certainly is. And now I don’t know who, if anyone, is in charge of strategy over at Public Advocate/Office of the Sterling Supervisor.

Regarding SPLC’s 2012 addition of “Public Advocate of the U.S.” to its short list of anti-gay organizations extreme enough to be called “active hate groups,” Delgaudio only sings one note. Every transparently planted online comment, every press release, every public utterance directed at Loudoun County we’ve seen has repeated the same monotonous talking point: That the SPLC designation was made “because Public Advocate upholds traditional marriage.”

The repetition of this talking point has been so consistent that it could not possibly be accidental. The propagation of this lie has been the centerpiece of Delgaudio’s public relations management of the revelations about the co-mingling of his hate group’s fundraising activities with the privileges of his public office.

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Photos from 2009 Public Advocate stunt show Delgaudio working with his new extremist Library Board appointee

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. We don’t yet know how many words Sterling supervisor Eugene Delgaudio will emit claiming that he didn’t know “much of anything” about Andrew Beacham, his nominee for Loudoun County’s Library Board – but we do know that they will be arranged into falsehoods.

According to Chairman York, who apparently agreed to nominate Beacham “on behalf of” his Sterling colleague (how does he manage to get himself into these predicaments?), “the information provided on Beacham was not very detailed. Beacham’s four-paragraph resume only said he had ‘worked in the field of media production and broadcasting over the last 4 years.'”

In fact, Beacham’s “work” includes publicly defacing the Koran “in support of Florida pastor Terry Jones” and other political theater acts with fringe anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry. He is active with nativist and anti-government groups in Loudoun, and calls himself a “full-time Pro-Life missionary and activist for Christian policies in government” while declaring that “the only good progressive is a dead progressive.”

Beacham did not move to Sterling by coincidence.

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Morality call – say no to the Values Voter Summit

The SPLC is asking elected officials to stop courting the anti-GLBT hate groups that sponsor the so-called Values Voter conference.

It’s a simple ask.

“If you are elected to represent *all* people, you can’t treat some people as sub-human.”

Morality call, no human is sub-human. If a “values voter” considers a fertilized egg to be fully human,  how can he or she treat a living breathing person as a sub-human?

Here is the SPLC email. Continue reading

Enough Mephisto

Eugene's campaign workers. Hannah Champ (Scoggins) at the door, Werner Workman on the right.

Leesburg Today ran a very critical editorial of Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio’s latest LCRC antics, but the criticism, “Stop the Circus,” didn’t go far enough in exposing Supervisor Delgaudio operations.

He was putting on a political show—one, like so many during his 14-year board tenure, that was woefully short on substance, but with potential to help fuel his campaign fundraising machine. Continue reading

A good example of false equivalency

I misunderstood a comment by the author of the letter to which I respond below. His letter was originally published almost exactly one year ago (publication dates don’t include the year), which means that it was the author’s reposting of the year-old link that was actually inspired by our online conversation. I think it’s fair to say that my reading of it as pre-meditated exploitation of a conversation that he initiated, and in which I was participating in good faith, led me to respond more harshly than I otherwise would have. For that I apologize to Mr. Dickinson. He obviously did not, as I suggested in my response, write this to deflect negative attention generated by the Grand Jury report, or the censure, or any other Delgaudio-related drama of the past year.

On the other hand, his point in posting the link to that thread was to say that he more strongly than ever endorses the idea that the reporting of hate group activity is the moral equivalent of the very hate group activity being reported, even openly warning that I, personally, could be responsible for “fomenting a hate attack” because I discuss the hate group activities of the Sterling supervisor. The veiled suggestion that I had best not continue reporting on his active campaign to incite fear and hatred of people like me is offensive.

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Other crimes against humanity we shouldn’t be talking about

As noted in the first comment on the Uganda post below, we were admonished by a frequently irritated visitor to this blog for talking about the crimes against humanity unfolding in Uganda. Apparently – and I don’t know how else to interpret these words – because we are “highly educated” and fortunate to live in the rural end of the most affluent county in “the most free country in the world,” our concern about what’s going on in Uganda at the alleged direction of a US-based hate group leader is “over the top.”

I take the position that if you’re a human rights advocate, you should be concerned about crimes against humanity anywhere, not just where you live. And you should be especially concerned when the crimes are the outcome of collusion with a U.S. hate group leader, who is running the operation from within your own country precisely because it is free.

The situation in Uganda began with propaganda that defamed and dehumanized LGBTI people with claims that we sexually assault children. All human rights catastrophes started somewhere, and studying them is how we learn to do better. Do I think that what’s happening in Uganda could happen here, just because Scott Lively is the leader of a hate group, and Eugene Delgaudio is also the leader of a hate group? No – but pretending so is a lazy, simpleminded way to attack Eugene’s critics, isn’t it?

Anti-gay hate groups don’t have much of a future here. It’s more likely that when Nervous Eugene‘s cash cow runs its course in the U.S. he’ll move on to something or somewhere else. And if that new enterprise involves human rights abuses of LGBTI people in some other country we’ll have a responsibility to help them, too.

So this happened in 1935, as human rights advocates were warning of the deteriorating climate for certain disfavored groups in Germany: Continue reading

This is why they’re called “hate groups”

Crossposted at Equality Loudoun

[The lawsuit] boils down to nothing more than an attempt to define my Biblical views against homosexuality as a crime..

..Clearly, this lawsuit is intended not only to silence me as an effective voice of opposition to the ‘gay’ agenda, it is also to intimidate everyone else who would dare to follow my example.

Now, who does that sound like? A certain disgraced and censured Sterling supervisor who fills his bank account by running a hate group at Loudoun taxpayers’ expense? And some of his shameless apologists?

Yes, but it’s actually another hate group director, Scott Lively. Mr. Lively is currently facing a federal lawsuit for his role in creating a deadly climate for the LGBTI community in Uganda. Readers may remember him also as the man who hired a known child rapist to run his fake “ministry” out of a coffeehouse designed to attract teenagers. But that was okay, because the predator had “accepted the salvation of Christ” (and of course, the children he preferred were female).

Mr. Lively has tried to have the lawsuit against him dismissed on First Amendment grounds. But it turns out that there are limits even to free expression when that expression is an integral part of criminal activity, and the criminal activity of which Mr. Lively is accused is aiding and abetting in the commission of a crime against humanity.

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WTOP Regurgitates Delgaudio Press Release

Eugene Delgaudio, his ex-county-paid aide and "the Walrus" defend the BSA

WTOP’s Hank Silverberg wrote a lazy incompetent report, Censured Delgaudio Bites Back in Loudoun County that reads like a Delgaudio Press release. Silverberg describes Public Advocate as a “right-leaning group” and then quotes Eugene.

“So, when you go to people and say, ‘he’s president of Public Advocate, a nonprofit that defends the Boy Scouts of America and defends traditional marriage’ – string me up?”

In Delgaudioland, defending the Boy Scouts means driving down to the Capital with a bunch of YAF protoges, putting a bag over your county-paid aide’s head, insulting Ernst & Young’s CEO, and spreading the lie that gay men are pedophiles. In other photos from the above YAF Public Advocate protest, the actors present a check to the Jerry Sandusky Defense fund.

Public Advocate only “defends” Eugene’s wallet. Hank Silverberg needs to turn in his “journalism” license.

The BoS MUST halt Supervisor Delgaudio’s recruiting activities

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisor’s MUST put a halt to Supervisor Delgaudio’s youth recruiting activities and apologize to all teens for allowing the Supervisor to coerce them into joining a right-wing club with the imprimatur of county government. I sent a letter to the BoS stating such.

Here is how the letter opens:

The purpose of this letter is to recommend that you bar Supervisor Delgaudio from sponsoring the “Eugene Delgaudio Sterling Teen Job Fair.” The Sterling Supervisor uses the job fair to recruit youth into a right-wing political club that has a history of violence, defamation and hatred towards minorities and progressive causes. Furthermore, this board should send a letter of apology the participants of prior job fairs and their parents advising them that the county was not aware of the recruitment activity and that it does not endorse or sponsor the Sterling Supervisor’s recruiting activities. I’m requesting that you take this into consideration at your July 17, 2013 meeting under the agenda item “Grand Jury Report: Follow-up on Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio Investigation.” Continue reading