Today's Cultural Warfare Update

More catch-up. Lots to do, lots to do. Notible in today's update is that we finally see activity out of the Concerned Women for America sockpuppet organisation, the "Culture and Family Institute," headed by longitme CWA wonk Robert Knight, with help from CWA writer Brian Fitzpatrick, and a lot more crossover than usual between townhall.com and CWA.

But now, this morning's news.

Focus on the Family unhappy with New Hampshire civil unions law; quotes Republican state chair as saying that "New Hampshire voters did not have civil unions in mind when they gave Gov. Lynch a Democratic majority last fall";

eHarmony.com founder says "We don't really want to participate in something that's illegal," referring to not providing matchmaking service to GBLT people;

Focus on the Family reports, "United Methodists to Weigh Transsexuality," and friendly-quotes an opponent calling GRS "mutilation of the body" and opposing the concept of gender identity disorder;

Focus on the Family wants Texas Supreme Court to issue ruling recognising fertilised eggs as "persons," which has very specific and important legal meaning;

FotF condemns opposition to Chief Executive Bush's anti-gay surgeon-general nominee as religious discrimination, subheading their article with, "man of faith is under fire for biblical stance on homosexuality";

Exodus International to try to "grow" its network of "ex-gay"/"conversion therapy" counselors, and its church network; Focus on the Family also promotes its own ex-gay religious-conversion programme;

Focus on the Family, other theoconservative groups, want 10 Commandments postal stamps, quotes Roy Moore;

Catholic Church, Mexican Federal government challenge Mexico City abortion law allowing first-trimester abortion, hope to overturn it;

FotF ad promotes David Limbaugh book Persecution, claiming that Christians are persecuted in the US by the "mythical 'separation of church and state'" and "tolerance"; this is part of the recurring theme, that by not being able to impose their religious beliefs on others via the force of law, they are the ones being persecuted. This recurring theme has been ongoing since at least the mid-1990s, when I started monitoring the fundamentalist movement;

Alliance Defense Fund sues New York State to halt New York State's recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states and/or countries;

FotF: Democratic candidates all support abortion rights, stating that they are all "radical" in "defending the killing of preborn children";

FotF rails against Cannes Film Festival critics for giving "abortion film" the Palm d'Or;

Pro Life Virginia, Children Need Heroes, StreetPreach, and Paul Hill Memorial announce Paul Hill Memorial Tour and a four-day event called "Paul Hill Days"; who is Paul Hill? The assassin of John Britton, a Florida doctor who provided abortion services, and James Barrett, Dr. Britton's clinic escort;

Children Need Heroes, one of the sponsours of the above event celebrating the martyrdom of Paul Hill (their words, not mine) has a chintzy website, but here's a link to their "Three Heroes" page - three anti-abortion-rights activists who either bombed women's health clinics or killed abortion-providing doctors;

LA Times reporter Megan Stack writes on the experience of trying to exist as a woman in Saudi Arabia, and how the high-level theocratic government works to eliminate the existence of women from public life; these are our "allies";

Indiana man beaten to death over a period of several hours and left in a field to die (before they came back and tried to hide the body) for being perceived as gay (reportedly he actually wasn't); the alleged assailants are using the "gay panic" defense; there's been virtually no press coverage, but bookshop wrote about it;

Concerned Women for America condemn CDC disease-prevention efforts targeting GBLT people, saying, "CDC is sponsoring events that foment the spreading of disease rather than those that prevent disease"; CWA's Matt Barber says, "It is the height of irresponsibility and incongruity for the CDC, which is tasked with disease control and prevention, to actively promote and encourage the very homosexual lifestyle which they admit is most responsible for the spread of preventable, and often deadly, sexually transmitted disease";

Concerned Women for America's Matt Barber condemns lawsuit against eHarmony over eHarmony's refusal to server GBLT people; turns out the founder of eHarmony "has ties to" James Dobson and Focus on the Family. Matt Barber again calls GBLT people "immoral and disordered," and that the intent of the "lefty-lavender-bully-brigade" is "to fill the vacuum with government mandated celebration of deviant, mutable and disordered homosexual behaviors"; this article is also run by townhall.com;

CWA's condemns Massachusetts vote not to eliminate marriage rights for GBLT couples; most of the article is quoting Matt Barber again; he's quite the busy fellow;

CWA's Janet Crouse ridicules the idea that anti-gay harassment and/or pressure has any role on teen suicide; note that CWA is also against anti-bullying and anti-harassment programmes that work to prevent bullying or harassment of GBLT teens, even by teachers and staff at schools; this article also ran on townhall.com;

CWA's Sarah Rode condemns the Equal Rights Amendment;

townhall.com asks "Why Do Gays Hate Religious Freedom?" a question which is, of course, intended to further the association of anti-gay activities with religion; making anti-gay politics a core part of Christian religion has been a continuing de facto project of the theoconservative movement over the last several years;

WorldNetDaily joins the crowd calling emergency-birth-control (Plan B, the "morning after" contraceptive pill") an abortifacient, using the same method of redefining pregnancy to be contraception rather than implantation, which is a meaning nobody outside the theoconservative uses. They even use scare-quotes around the word "contraceptive," which is pretty sad;

Los Angeles Times article on the rift between Focus on the Family (et al) and Colorado Right to Life (et al) over how to work on ending all access to abortion;

Michael Medved, who should have stuck to writing good books about bad movies, blames "TV addiction" for "liberalism"; what's interesting about this is that he credits the "Culture and Media Institute," headed by Robert Knight. Longtime readers will recognise Robert Knight as a CWA wonk; the Culture and Media Institute is a CWA sockpuppet organisation. Also extensively quoted is the CMI's Brian Fitzpatrick, who is also a Concerned Women for America writer.

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