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Notes from Anti-LGBT Activism Talk on 3/1

Submitted by Amophrast on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 1:55am

Jeffrey Longhofer, Ph.D., LCSW Associate professor from Rutgers school of social work
April 9th, EEO on LGBT population

Interactive session.
Philip Lichtenberg

Encountering Bigotry

Cheryl Parks

White, out lesbian

Dr. Christine McGinn

Transgender plastic surgeon

Queer white man

Does this affect perspective?

Anti-LGBT Activism: A Social Movement or Paranoid Fringe?
A handful of images from Oklahoma City, April 19, 1995, 9:02 AM
On the first floor of a building was a childcare center. 72 children. By the end of the excavation there were 16. 168 fatalities (bombing)
When I speak to undergraduates, I find that memory of this is quite distant

Quite right

Timothy McVeigh – news media tended to present him as a homosexual
Estes Park, 1992

YMCA, 200 or 300 people. National meeting of the …?

Opposition researcher
New right, old right, neo vs. paleo
Can’t mobilize unless you can really grasp the historical significance of divides in American conservatism
The Rise of the Old Right

AR Conference
http://vdare.com/
Amren.com/conference2012/
“Ours is an era of fear and self-censorship. Virtually no whites are willing to break taboos about racial differences in IQ, the costs of “diversity,” or the challenges of non-white immigration. We are different. We believe these are vital questions.”
Click to conference page
Beyond homophobia…neofascist? How to describe?

One of my agendas here is to convince you that these folks are not a paranoid fringe.

Inaccurate
Their movement is just as powerful and significant
If you start to think for a moment that they’re on the margins, you won’t be able to strategically organize against them.
Many organizations simply miss this

The Paranoid Style in American Politics

He was wrong

Led us away from thinking of the right wing as a social movement
As scholars and activists, we can’t afford to make these mistakes
Agenda

My interest in the subject: opposition research
Scope of anti-lgbt social movement activity
The argument: new social movements vs paranoid style
Rise of the right: paleo and neo-conservatives
Some historical background on anti-lgbt activity
Current anti-lgbt activity

The Koch brothers, the tea party

Strategies for political mobilization

Metropolitan Opera funded by the Koch family

Tea Party wouldn’t be running the house without Koch ($$$)

Ron Paul

http://blog.mises.org/11414/is-gay-marriage-a-constitutional-right/

Who donates to these organizations?

Very hard to track the money
Koch brothers – over $40 million since the last election
Large degree of interest inspired by Ron Paul
Ludwig von Mises Institute

This particular slice of libertarianism is very, very homophobic
The Federal Society

Some neo-cons but an increasing number of paleo-cons
Legal scholars, legal thinks, legal activists

Radical states’ rights folks

So conservative that they’re too conservative for William Buckley

Why be concerned about them? Because they’re huge. Their budget has got to be larger than HRC’s—does that concern you? That might not be true, but it’s big.
The Pink Swastika

Steve Lively
“…we knew [this book] would cause controversy, contradicting as it does the common portrayal of homosexuals as exlusively victims of the nazi regime. For tis reason we were scrupulous in our documentation of homosexuals as the true inventors of Nazism…”
defendthefamily.com
Go on Amazon…recently many of their critical comments/reviews disappeared.

Posts from activists have been deleted. Only positive results remain

Long timeline:
1969 – In the same year that we have Stonewall, the Posse Comitatus formed

The far, far right

1973 – Heritage Foundation established
1977 – Focus on the Family formed, Cato Institute formed (backed with Kock money)
1978 – C A Briggs initiative
1979 – Moral Majority formed Falwell and Weyrich

Paul Weyrich was one of the architects of the direct mail campaign
Teaching Falwell the basics of politics

1980 – Traditional Values Coalition, Kochs fund LP (libertarian party) candidate Ed Clark

Ed was to be present in 1992 in Estes Park.

1983 – Gordon Kahl killed 2 federal marshalls in Missouri. Was a member of the Posses Comitatus
1984 – Reagan Reelected
1985 – George Grant Bringing in the Sh…ves?
1989 – Bush sr. elected President.
1992 – Clinton elected to first term
2000 – 70 m voter guides to support George W. Bush
2003 – Dr. Tom Coburn, favors death penalty for abortionists
2002 – Justice A. Scalia “Government is Minister of God”
1990 – Ralph Reed
1995 – OKC bombing
1996 – DOMA passed
1997 – PNAC formed
1991 – Cold War ends
1992 – Clinton elected to first term
1986 – Oregon’s Citizen Alliance formed
2004 – Coalition scorecards US Senate
2005 – Constitution restoration act
2008 – Prop 8 passes CA
2011 – Rep Giffords shot
Short wave radio
Right reactions to Climenti suicide

‘Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association said gay rights activists “pressure these students to declare a disordered sexual preference when they’re to oyoung to know better, [so] they share some culpability.”’
‘Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a key critic of anti-bullying programs, said gay activists were “exploiting these tragedies to push their agenda.” He said that gay kids may kjnow “intuitively” that their desires are “abnormal” and that the claim, pushed by gay activists, that they can’t change “may create a sense of despair that can lead to suicide.”’
‘Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel said those activists want “to use the tragedies to increase pressure on the real victims: Christians.”’

Liberty University/Liberty Counsel backed by Koch
These people are our neighbors—they are not a psychological aberration
David Brinkley

Wrote an essay that leaves on LGBT dimensions of this

Two Arguments

Rightward Shift of Center and the Implications for LGBT political mobilization
New social movement theory offers better account of anti-LGBT activity/action than Paranoid Fringe or old social movement theory

Dixie crack movement
Wallace campaign acted as a catalyst
Anxieties about “will we survive”
Aracial politics
Wrote the Radical ___
Movements as very race-driven.
The center does not hold
If you consider the LGBT movement aimed at trying to create new names.
New social movements

NSM theory focuses on culture and struggle over control of production of meaning.
NSM theory looks at constitution of new collective identities

Including the right

Allan Bloom – conservative, died of AIDS

Critical of the idea that LGBT people, people of color could even be part of social movements

Social movements: ours and theirs

Tendency to use different theories for movements we agree with and those we disagree with

Our own movements
Opponents

Irrational, deluded even motivated by evil

Doesn’t work any longer. This kind of thinking has failed us.

Extreme or one?

Emotionally disturbed or social movement activists shifting the center?
Fred Phelps Westboro Baptist Church
Helped hold him up as an example of someone who is so far out of the mainstream

Don’t believe in Richard hofsteder’s thesis!

Brave enough to say what million of people are thinking

NARTH

National….therapy homosexuality
25% of funding from Kochs

Were in oil and gas business

Purpose of opposition research is to expose and shame
Kind of a pity sometimes, but it works
CBN – Christian Broadcast Network
Broadcast right after Brokeback Mountain

Culmination of the Hollywood conspiracy

“People who put faith and truth above the lies of political correctness”

Americans for Truth Hour
Opposing gay agenda
Radical Marxist hate group??
“Archbigot”
“we tried to represent the other side”
“They are truly a hate group”

Matt Barber

Liberty University

Neo-cons

Andrew Sullivan
William Buckley
Sen. Henry Scoop Jackson
Francis Fukuyama
Crystals
Broder (not anti-gay)

Neo-con movement has a lot of different tendencies in it
Paleo-cons

Sarah Palin
Michelle Bachmann
Howard Phillips

Reagan administration

Paleo-cons are isolationists: they don’t support going to wars (but neo-cons do)

Roots in WWII movement called America First
Pat Buchannan considers himself as a part of America First

Buckley and Buchannan had a break—Buckley couldn’t deal with his paleo-conservatism

The center has shifted further and further to the right – don’t recognize how deep their paleo-conservative roots are
CEO of Target donated to Bachmann’s campaign. Donation happened to be right as she was articulating her anti-gay agenda

They refused to back off of this
Through convoluted politics they tried to soften the blow

Palin’s entry into presidential campaign has been exemplary in showing how far politics have shifted to the right
Rev. Pete Peters from LaPorte, CO

Quoting Leviticus – SO FUNNY
He’s using the word queers but I bet he’s not doing it to be politically correct
Homosexuals = perverts
“There’s a wipeout coming in this country”
“Homosexuality is a sin in the bible” video
Broadcasts daily to 15,000 AM stations

Christian Reconstructionism, Christian Identity

White Christian identity movement has permeated the far right of the right movment
Concern: all of these other right movements of the past that led to Phillips and Buchannan being a part of the Reagan administration, this stuff will eventually push us in the same direction.
While it seems weird and odd and extreme, you can’t help but note that this was a place where Howard Phillips stands.
These Christian identity people were at the table (Estes Park 1992) and were setting the agenda for it
“People of color are ‘pre-Adamic mud people…”
You read it and I read it and you think that it has to be a part of paranoia

How did you feel being at meetings with these people?

Scared, sometimes
The time I was the most scared was when I brought a friend and at the registration table they heard him say “What name should I use?”

Lenny Ziskind – lots of training, fake IDs

At the meeting was very anxious
Keynote speaker was a retired U.S. colonel

Many retired military officers in this movement

Claimed to have aerial shots (pre-Cold War) of Soviet tanks on the Baja peninsula
“Sergei, shut up!”

“They’ve tried to kill Lenny” (gestures) “a dozen times, more”

Has to travel with pretty extensive security

Leonard Zeskind, “Blood and Politics”
Right wing has always flirted with the organic movement. Pure people…pure water…pure food.
German Nazi organic movement literature

Roots in fascism

Queers and people of colors as “impure”
Someone brings up Tim Miller

Father Donahue issued a statement saying that the subject matter is objectionable
Not as if he would have been performing, just would have been a playwriting workshop
Some are saying that he’s should repent for acknowledging homosexuality, etc. etc.
“oh they’re just fringe people…” but are they?

Groups: