The project aims to educate the media about the extreme rhetoric of many of those who are often interviewed or quoted in opposition to LGBT people and the issues that affect their lives, especially in stories about marriage equality. CAP gives journalists critical context and information about these voices.
Profiles are available at http://glaad.org/cap
Next week on Election Day marriage for gay and lesbian couples will be voted on in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington. GLAAD’s update to the CAP project includes profiles of anti-LGBT activists working against LGBT families in those states. The profiles, which include direct quotes or writings from the activists, have also been shared with pro-LGBT campaigns in the states.
“Media have a responsibility to provide context when giving platforms to anti-LGBT activists who are dedicated to making life more difficult for LGBT families,” said GLAAD President Herndon Graddick. “Voters should know that ads and talking points put forward by these activists are not fueled by facts, but merely by anti-gay animus. If the key voices on one side of any other issue were to consistently state that their opponents are controlled by Satan, influenced by demons, comparable to Nazis, or equal to pedophiles, those beliefs would absolutely be a central part of the conversation.”
As of October 26th, 2012, the current Commentator Accountability Project is as follows, with highlights listed here. Click each name to see a full list of key contextual points for that entry.
NOM: National Organization for Marriage – has been caught using divisive and race-baiting tactics to pit Blacks and Latinos against marriage equality supporters
MAINE: Carroll Conley – calls marriage equality “insidious and evil”
MAINE: Bob Emrich – says pro-equality legislators are “mocking God”
MAINE: Mike Heath – says the LGBT equality movement is “rooted in sorcery and it is a child of the devil”
MAINE: Paul Madore – calls same-sex couples suffer from “unadulterated sophristy and perverted kind of thinking”
MARYLAND: Harry Jackson – says marriage equality is part of “a satanic plot to destroy our seed”
MARYLAND: Derek McCoy – says marriage equality is an assault on the kingdom of God
MINNESOTA: Barb Anderson – Says LGBT equality is “the greatest threat to our freedom and the health and well-being of our children”
MINNESOTA: Brad Brandon – claims gay people are using Bob the Builder and Dora the Explorer to make kids pro-equality because “Satan knows that if he gets the kids he gets the future. Even Adolf Hitler knew that”
MINNESOTA: Chuck Darrell – claims “medical evidence proves” that being gay “is a killer”
MINNESOTA: Bradlee Dean – has claimed that “On average, [gay people] molest 117 people before they’re found out”
MINNESOTA: John Helmberger – says it is necessary to vote against LGBT equality in order to “restrain evil”
MINNESOTA: Tom Prichard – equates being gay with pedophilia and infidelity
WASHINGTON: Joseph Backholm – equates marriage equality with the practice of bloodletting
WASHINGTON: Joe Fuiten – says “demons inspire people to believe that homosexual union is the moral equivalent of a proper marriage”
WASHINGTON: Ken Hutcherson – compared Governor Chris Gregoire, who signed marriage equality into law, to John Wilkes Booth, who shot Abraham Lincoln
WASHINGTON: Stephen Pidgeon – says the true goal of the LGBT equality movement is “about population control, and the goal is to get the United States to 150 million people”
Keith Ablow – compares being transgender to a person pretending he or she is a farm animal
Ron Baity – says that gay people are worse than maggots
Matt Barber – calls pro-equality advocates “purveyors of evil” and “satanic”
David Barton – says HIV/AIDS is God’s punishment
Gary Bauer – says LGBT equality has increased gang culture and deteriorated the black family
Brian Brown – compares the “persecution” he faces today to that faced by Jesus Christ
Michael Brown – says of marriage equality “the devil is moving forward with energy and aggression”
Brian Camenker – says “remnants of Nazism and the Nazi movement” have “been a focus of the homosexual movement”
Alan Chambers – says LGBT activists are following Hitler and Marx:
Chuck Colson – compared being gay to jumping off a 10-story building
Mark Creech – calls being gay “‘impure,’ ‘dirty,’ and ‘disgusting.'”
Candi Cushman – claims that “gay activists” are “infiltrating classrooms under the cover of ‘anti-bullying’ or ‘safe schools’ initiatives.”
Jim Daly – says gay people are a threat to civilisation.
Bill Donohue – says God smites faith communities who welcome gay people
Lou Engle – says the movement for LGBT equality is based in the “spiritual powers of death, the gates of hell.”
Joseph Farah – predicts that same-sex couples’ “twisted unions” will “bring down American faster” than anything else
Bryan Fischer – says “Homosexuality gave us Adolf Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.”
Tami Fitzgerald – claims sexual orientation includes “homosexuals, bisexuals, and 28 other ‘sexual orientations’ ranging from pedophilia to bestiality.”
Maggie Gallagher – calls being gay “a sexual disability”
Jim Garlow – compared children losing their parents on 9/11 to children who have gay parents
Robert George – described being gay as “beneath the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures.”
Linda Harvey – says the pro-equality movement brings a “decline into barbarism”
Peter LaBarbera – says “Only a decaying society pretends that homosexual relationships are morally equivalent to normal, male-female couples.”
Scott Lively – called for the criminalisation of “the public advocacy of homosexuality.”
Kevin McCullough – says his inclusion on this very list, that you are reading right now, constitutes being “targeted by the Enemy, and I mean the Evil One,” before claiming GLAAD wants him dead
Albert Mohler – claimed that the earthquake in Haiti, like every other earthly disaster, reminds us that creation groans under the weight of sin and the judgment of God.”
Jennifer Roback Morse – says the pro-equality movement is “anti-human” and “Earth worship”
Penny Nance – says repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell proved that the Obama Administration is “not serious about the war on terror.”
Tony Perkins – says about gay people: “They are intolerant. They are hateful. They are vile. They are spiteful…pawns of the enemy.”
Christopher Plante – says children of gay parents are in a “tragic situation” and equated having gay parents to having divorced or even dead parents
Pat Robertson – says an “ex-gay”-identified man’s “compulsion” to have gay relations is “somehow related to demonic possession.”
Rick Scarborough – says that the AIDS epidemic is God’s “judgement as a result of an immoral act”
Peter Sprigg – said “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behaviour.”
Glenn Stanton – says children adopted by gay parents have been turned into “human guinea pigs”
Mat Staver – says that children with gay parents will end up “behind bars for committing violent crimes.”
Frank Turek – says that gay people are “trying to do the work of the enemy”
Bob Vander Plaats – calls gay people a “public health risk” akin to smoking.
Don Wildmon – says LGBT people have been “working diligently to overthrow the traditional views of Western Civilisation”
Tim Wildmon – says it’s a fact that gays are “immoral” and “unnatural”
Patrick Wooden – claims Chaz Bono is under “the influence of the Devil, demon spirits—spirits of perversion”
Visit the GLAAD Commentator Accountability Project at glaad.org/cap and follow the Twitter hashtag #GLAADCAP.
