Boston mayor opposes Chick-fil-A but supports group calling homosexuality a ‘crime that must be punished’?

Michael Graham at Boston Herald points out this case of selective sensitivity in the Chick-fil-A affair.

Boston Herald:

Given his stance on Chick-fil-A, would Mayor Tom Menino grant permits to a group that has counted among its leaders a man who has repeatedly called homosexuality a “crime that must be punished” by death? 

Actually, he has done that  . . . and more! Menino effectively gave away city land valued at $1.8 million to the organization, and he gave a speech at its ribbon-cutting ceremony. 

It’s the Islamic Society of Boston’s mosque, and when it comes to anti-gay sentiment, one of its early supporters makes Chick-fil-A look like the Provincetown Men’s Chorus. 

During the (understandable) controversy over the city selling land for a house of worship at a below-market rate a decade ago, reporters discovered that the Islamic Society of Boston counted imam Yusef al-Qaradawi as one of its spiritual guides. As the Weekly Standard reported at the time: 

“The ISB does not dispute the fact that they have repeatedly used al-Qaradawi as a tool to raise funds for the Boston mosque, printing a brochure that highlighted al-Qaradawi’s enthusiastic support of the mosque and playing a videotaped message of support from him at a 2002 gathering.” 

Also in attendance at the gathering, listening to al-Qaradawi’s message: Mayor Tom Menino. 

Outside Boston, al-Qaradawi is better known as a vocal supporter of terrorism who teaches a hard-core version of Islam. His claim to fame as a “progressive” is that he was the first prominent imam to urge women to become suicide bombers, too. 

It was only when his terror support became known that the Islamic Society of Boston announced that epeated [sic] listings of al-Qaradawi as an ISB trustee had been a mistake. 

But nobody’s accusing Chick-fil-A of supporting terrorism — just traditional marriage (I think liberals still see the former as more dangerous). Menino heard the president of the company call same-sex marriage a “sin,” and he announced it would not be allowed to do business in Boston. 

OK, Mr. Mayor. But when you gave all that land to the ISB at a song, here’s what imam al-Qaradawi was teaching: 

“[A homosexual should be given] the same punishment as any sexual pervert  . . . Some say we should throw them from a high place, like God did with the people of Sodom. Some say we should burn them.”

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel plays chicken with Chick-fil-A

Last week Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel seemed to support Ald. Joe "Proco" Moreno’s plan to block Chick-fil-A from opening a restaurant because the company president, Dan Cathy, supports gender-integrated marriage.

NBC Chicago:

"I think it's irresponsible to have discriminatory policies from the top down," he said, adding, "they're not coming in." 

Moreno said he doesn't want in his ward a company that discriminates against a segment of the community. He also said zoning is not a right and there already have been concerns about traffic in the area.  

 Mayor Rahm Emanuel supports the idea and has said it would be a bad investment. 

"Chick-Fil-A's values are not Chicago values," he said. "They're not respectful of our residents, our neighbors and our family members, and if you're going to be part of the Chicago community, you should reflect the Chicago values."

He said, she said

Now Emanuel seems to have evolved on the same-sex marriage opposition issue.  According to his press secretary Tarrah Cooper, "He never said he'd block the restaurant from coming."

NBC Chicago again:

After a national conversation blew up this week over the role of legislature and small business, Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to set the record straight on how he feels about Chick-fil-A. Emanuel press secretary Tarrah Cooper called Friday to clarify the mayor's stance on whether a Logan Square Chick-fil-A location would be vetoed because of the company's views on gay marriage. "He never said he'd block the restaurant from coming," Cooper said.   

Did New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg start a trend in favor of free speech and pro-gender marriage when he defended Chick-fil-A? 

NYC Mayor Bloomberg disagrees ‘really strongly’ with ban on Chick-fil-A over pro-gender marriage

New York City scored a serious win for free speech and pro-gender marriage when Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended Chick-fil-A’s president Dan Cathy and his right to free speech and his belief in gender-integrated marriage.  Bloomberg said there will be no ban on Chick-fil-A in New York City.

Politicker:

As mayors around the country — including Boston’s, Chicago’s and San Francisco’s — are backing efforts to keep the fast food chain out of their cities due to the company’s president, Dan Cathy, spending millions to push back against gay marriage, Mr. Bloomberg said it’s “a bad idea and it’s not going to happen” on John Gambling’s radio show this morning. 

“They’re all friends but I disagree with them really strongly on this one,” Mr. Bloomberg said of his mayoral colleagues. “You can’t have a test for what the owners’ personal views are before you decide to give a permit to do something in the city. You really don’t want to ask political beliefs or religious beliefs before you issue a permit, that’s just not government’s job.” 

Mr. Bloomberg went on to argue that blocking a business based on their political beliefs opens a potential slippery slope where liberal cities block conservative establishments and vice versa with conservative cities.

Amazon founder donates millions to support anti-gender marriage

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos believes in gender-segregated marriage and pledged 2.5 million to support efforts to redefine marriage in the state of Washington.  Although proponents of Referendum 74 call it marriage “equality,”  redefining marriage means intentionally excluding a  gender, thereby depriving children of having both a mother and a father.  

The New York Times:

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.com, and his wife, MacKenzie, have agreed to donate $2.5 million to help pass a same-sex marriage referendum in Washington State, instantly becoming among the largest financial backers of gay marriage rights in the country. 

With the gift, the couple have doubled the money available to the proponents of Referendum 74, which would legalize same-sex marriage in the state by affirming a law that passed the Legislature this year.

So far the anti-gender mentality has failed every time at the ballot, but will an infusion of 2.5 million be enough to sway voters to support gender-segregation?  Are motherless and fatherless children the future for Washington State?  Or will the people continue to support pro-gender marriage?

The Chick-fil-A story: Why do liberals assume pro-gender advocates are anti-gay?

Get Religion notes the media bias in the Chick-fil-A story after company President Dan Cathy expressed his support for “family — the biblical definition of the family unit.”

This raises an interesting journalistic question: Is a defense of one doctrine automatically the same thing as an on-the-record attack on the opposite doctrine? In this case, is it accurate for CNN (and others) to say that Cathy made comments about gay marriage when, in fact, he did not speak words addressing that issue? 

Picky, picky? Well, yes. It would have been so easy for the mainstream press to have reported Cathy’s remarks accurately and, then, to have accurately reported the comments of those who were more than happy to criticize the Chick-fil-A leader’s conservative views on marriage. 

That equation is par for the journalistic course. But is it fair game to actually state, as fact, that the man said things that he didn’t say?

And, is it fair to assume that someone who believes in gender-integrated marriage is ipso facto “anti-gay”?

At the Weekly Standard, Mark Hemingway lists other instances where the mainstream news jumped to assumptions based on stereotypes instead of sticking to reporting facts in his post:  “Media Invents Story That Chick-fil-A President Condemned Gay Marriage:” 

CNN, Time and many other news organizations owe Cathy and Chick-fil-A some serious corrections and/or clarifications. It should further cause news organizations -- particularly in the wake of ABC's absurd speculation that the Aurora killings were done by a Tea Partier and many news organizations falling for Greenpeace's intentionally deceptive campaign against Shell Oil -- to reflect on why these kinds of egregrious media errors habitually reflect left-wing political narratives. 

When I wrote, "The president of Chick-fil-A never actually said anything condemning gay marriage," I was referring specifically to the Baptist Press interview that formed the basis of the attack by CNN and many other news outlets. It's also been known for decades that Chick-fil-A is run by devout Christians that support traditional famly values, yet only now has there been a national furor over Cathy and his company's position on this. That controversy came only by taking his quotes out of context to suggest he was attacking supporters of gay marriage rather than defending his own beliefs. And it certainly doesn't justify supposedly mainstream news organizations calling him "homophobic" -- an astonishingly biased and juvenile way of framing what he said.

But that is precisely the story that the left spins:  Everyone who supports pro-gender marriage is automatically homophobic.

This is why reasoned debates are so difficult.  Name-calling and lawsuits impede consensus.

Video: President Obama thanks ‘gay-porn kingpin’ Terry Bean for fundraiser

The Weekly Standard reports:

This evening in Portland, Oregon, President Barack Obama thanked a man named Terry Bean for organizing the reelection campaign fundraiser he was speaking at.

It Gets Better

The New York Post referred to Terry Bean as a “gay-porn kingpin” and noted that he was the sole trustee of the Charles M. Holmes Foundation in a 2008 article “Gay-Porn Kingpin linked to O:”

ONE of the "bundlers" who has raised $50,000 to $100,000 for the Barack Obamapresidential campaign is Terrence Bean, who once controlled the biggest producer of gay porn in America. 

Bean, the first gay on Sen. Obama's National Finance Committee, is the sole trustee of the Charles M. Holmes Foundation, which owned Falcon Studios, Jock Studios and Mustang Studios, the producers of about $10 million worth of all-male pornography a year.

From ‘The New Normal’ to Batman lawsuit: Study finds sexual content in media has significant impact on sexual behavior

How much influence does the media have on viewers and who is responsible?

LifeSiteNews reports:

Researchers at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College are urging parents to protect their children from sexual content in films as they release a new six-year study that found viewing such content has a significant impact on the sexual behaviour of young adults. 

“Adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in movies start having sex at younger ages,” says Dr. Ross O’Hara, adding that they also tend to have “more sexual partners” and indulge in risky sexual behaviour. 

“These movies appear to fundamentally influence their personality through changes in sensation-seeking, ” O’Hara says, “which has far-reaching implications for all of their risk-taking behaviors.” 

O’Hara and his colleagues found that greater exposure to sexual content in movies at a young age led to a higher peak in sensation-seeking during adolescence. As a result, sensation seeking sexual behavior can last well into the late teens and even into the early twenties if young people are exposed to these kinds of movies. 

Many adolescents turn to movies to acquire “sexual scripts” that offer examples of how to behave when confronted with complicated emotional situations. 

Researchers point out that it is important to remember that this research cannot conclude a direct causal effect of movies on sexual behavior. Nonetheless, O’Hara says, “This study, and its confluence with other work, strongly suggests that parents need to restrict their children from seeing sexual content in movies at young ages.”

One Million Moms is working to do just that as they seek to influence NBC to drop its TV show, “The New Normal,” which attempts to normalize the homosexual lifestyle.  NBC’s vision:  “These days, families come in all forms - single dads, double moms, sperm donors, egg donors, one-night-stand donors... It's 2012 and anything goes.”

One Million Moms reports:

To sum it up, this show is about a homosexual couple who hires a surrogate to have their baby. . . It is no surprise that openly gay Ryan Murphy, is one of the executive producers and director, who also brought us "American Horror Story," "GLEE," and "Nip/Tuck." 

NBC is using public airwaves to continue to subject families to the decay of morals and values, and the sanctity of marriage in attempting to redefine marriage. These things are harmful to our society, and this program is damaging to our culture. 

Millions of Americans strongly believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman. NBC's "The New Normal" is attempting to desensitize America and our children.

Gay rights activists mock OMM for seeking to prevent the spread of homosexual propaganda. 

From the Huffington Post article, "TV made me gay":

A Bunch Of Mothers [One Million Moms] wants you to believe that shows like Glee, Ellen, The New Normal and Modern Family will turn your children gay and damage our culture. 

First, being gay is not a choice -- no more a choice than, say, being a woman, or being white. Second, a TV show might make you realize you are gay, but TV cannot make people gay. One is born gay, or they are not.

First of all, having same-sex attraction is quite different from promoting the homosexual lifestyle.  One is a feeling, the other is a behavior.  Second, if people are born gay, why is there no gay gene and why is sexual orientation now considered fluid?  Third, if the media has no influence on the behavior of its viewers, why do advertisers spend frillions of dollars to influence our actions?

And why is there now a lawsuit accusing a movie studio with fostering Aurora mass murderer James Holmes’ violent behavior?

TMZ reports that Aurora massacre survivor Torrence Brown Jr. is suing Warner Bros. for fostering violence in its Batman trilogy.  Brown’s attorney Donald Karpel told TMZ, "Somebody has to be responsible for the rampant violence that is shown today."

Will the lawsuit mentality cross over to sexual content in the media?

If movie studios are held responsible for the actions of their viewers, will shows like "The New Normal" be sued for fostering an unhealthy homosexual lifestyle? 

When does personal accountability begin?

LA Times on same-sex marriage: ‘far more troubled by the reaction of Boston Mayor’ than Chick-fil-A

Regarding Chick-fil-A’s support for pro-gender marriage, the Los Angeles Times correctly notes the difference between private individuals boycotting a company and public officials using their power to punish companies for exercising their right to free speech.

LA Times:

But public officials have a responsibility to carry out their ministerial tasks fairly and evenhandedly — and to uphold the principle of free speech — whether or not they like a business executive's social or political stances. We disagree heartily with [Chick-fil-A president Dan] Cathy, but are far more troubled by the reaction of Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who vowed to block Chick-fil-A's effort to open an outlet in that city.

In his drive to be inclusive, Mayor Menino vowed to exclude Chick-fil-A from opening its doors in Boston.


Boston Herald:

“Chick-fil-A doesn’t belong in Boston. You can’t have a business in the city of Boston that discriminates against a population. We’re an open city, we’re a city that’s at the forefront of inclusion,” Menino told the Herald yesterday. 

“That’s the Freedom Trail. That’s where it all started right here. And we’re not going to have a company, Chick-fil-A or whatever the hell the name is, on our Freedom Trail.” 

Menino wants to limit free speech on the Freedom Trail?

“If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult — unless they open up their policies,” he warned. 

“It doesn’t send the right message to the country,” Menino said. “We’re a leader when it comes to social justice and opportunities for all.”

America has become so politically correct that offending people who support same-sex attraction is avoided at all costs.  The price for same-sex marriage is gender-segregation in the basic family unit, and even the foundational American right to free speech itself is in danger.

The courage to come out from under the GLBT umbrella

If you believe the gay agenda and same-sex marriage are all about love and commitment, meet Dawn Stefanowicz who wrote about her experiences growing up in the shadow of her father’s homosexual lifestyle in her memoir Out From Under.  

To mark the fifth anniversary of the release of her book, Catholic World Report interviewed Stefanowicz. 

Excerpts from the Catholic World Report must-read interview:

In my home there would be my father’s partners and male friends, and they would often take me along to meeting places in the GLBT community. I was just a child, but I was exposed to overt sexual activity. When I was about nine, for example, my father took me to a downtown sex shop. He said he wanted to expose me to sexuality so that I wouldn’t be prudish. There was no sense of privacy around sexuality. Sex was very public; that was part of the gay culture. 

Once, when I was in the 10th grade, I was excited because my father came to school to watch me perform in the band. He never did before. I saw his eyes bug out when he saw all the teenage boys performing on the stage with me. Then I realized that he was not there for me, but to pick up young men. 

He’d tell me to dress provocatively, and wear this or that top, and we’d go out cruising. A man may identify himself as gay, but my dad knew they still liked attractive young women. Or, it could be a way to attract bisexual or heterosexual men.   

My father liked well-dressed, “clean cut” men, who were about 10 years younger than he was. It was always a younger man, never the same age or older. I knew many gay men who had a preference for adolescent males who had just hit puberty. They would look for boys with absent fathers who were vulnerable. 

Other adult children that came from same-sex environments shared with me that they had been [abused]. There is higher risk of sexual abuse in such an environment. 

I should also add that as a woman, I did not feel valued, appreciated, or loved. It was a demeaning environment for me. I saw a lot of confusion about gender; my father, for example, sometimes dressed in women’s clothes. Or, you might see one of my dad’s male partners taking on a “pseudo-female” role. 

I was born under the GLBT umbrella. I didn’t choose that. Coming out from under has been lonely. But doing so has given me a freedom and a happiness that I want to share with others.

Homosexual rights movement poses threat to free speech

No Special Rights PAC president Michael S. Heath notes the alarming trend among gay rights activists to squelch Americans’ right to free speech.  Citing three separate cases involving lawsuits or threats aimed at silencing pro-family organizations, Heath exposes the tactics of the activists who want to redefine marriage for everyone in order to suit the sexual preferences of 1.4% of the population.

From Bangor Daily News:

 The heat is increasing for those opposed to the normalization of homosexuality. Fewer and fewer people are willing to speak out against a movement which has the power to silence its opponents. One new tactic used by the homosexual community is to silence free speech. One pro-family leader, Brian Camenker of Mass Resistance, is being sued for defamation of character for publishing a letter revealing the alleged activities of a homosexual youth organization in Maine. The plaintiff is a registered sex offender in Maine. Camenker, a man with limited means, is faced with losing his website and his livelihood as well. 

Another pro-family website, Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, has been warned that if it continues to publish the same material, it too will be sued for defamation of character and its Web hosting service will be forced to take the website off the Internet. 

Similarly, Dr. Scott Lively, another leading figure in the pro-family movement, is being sued in Federal District Court by an organization called “The Sexual Minorities of Uganda” in what can only be characterized as a frivolous lawsuit and an assault on the First Amendment. 

 These three examples prove that the power of the homosexual rights movement is now so vast and so reckless as to pose a threat to free speech.

MassResistance warns that the lawsuit from convicted sex offender Adam Flanders could be used as a "template" by LGBT activists across the country to silence opposition with expensive court cases.  See Flandersgate.

Don't let Homoffendia stop you.  Support pro-gender marriage.