Gay-Bashing Tops Agenda At Religious Right Rally In Florida
In what may be a prelude to other attempts nationwide, a campaign is under way for a 2008 ballot initiative that would amend the Florida constitution to outlaw gay marriage. That drive is being fueled by the Florida Family Policy Council – which is affiliated with James Dobson’s Focus on the Family — and a local outfit called the Community Issues Council.
High-profile Religious Right leaders helped draw attention to the Florida anti-gay marriage drive by co-sponsoring a so-called “Family Impact Summit” at Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Fla., over the weekend.
The three-day event was replete with speakers who bemoaned gays as societal threats and pleaded for evangelical Christians to not become complacent in the public policy arena. The underlining message of the conference was not subtle – the outcome of the 2006 elections was disappointing, but don’t give up. So conference speakers urged the gathering of around 300, many of them local pastors, to become informed on the issues, get fired up and vote for God-fearing candidates in 2008.
Other speakers also railed against the First Amendment principle of church-state separation, an allegedly corrupt American society and public schools that fail to teach students that America is a Christian nation. (Land, for example, claimed Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union essentially invented the principle of church-state separation.)
During another session dubbed “Defending Marriage: What’s at Stake,” panelist Dale O’Leary, who writes for a Catholic-based Web site, www.thefactis.org, spent the majority of her allotted time spewing invective at gay men.
The majority of gay men, according to O’Leary’s purported research, is prone to psychological problems, drug abuse and sex with numerous partners, and is really intent on destroying marriage as we know it. But a primary reason to oppose gay relationships, she said, is because of her take on God’s will.
High-profile Religious Right leaders helped draw attention to the Florida anti-gay marriage drive by co-sponsoring a so-called “Family Impact Summit” at Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Fla., over the weekend.
The three-day event was replete with speakers who bemoaned gays as societal threats and pleaded for evangelical Christians to not become complacent in the public policy arena. The underlining message of the conference was not subtle – the outcome of the 2006 elections was disappointing, but don’t give up. So conference speakers urged the gathering of around 300, many of them local pastors, to become informed on the issues, get fired up and vote for God-fearing candidates in 2008.
Other speakers also railed against the First Amendment principle of church-state separation, an allegedly corrupt American society and public schools that fail to teach students that America is a Christian nation. (Land, for example, claimed Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the American Civil Liberties Union essentially invented the principle of church-state separation.)
During another session dubbed “Defending Marriage: What’s at Stake,” panelist Dale O’Leary, who writes for a Catholic-based Web site, www.thefactis.org, spent the majority of her allotted time spewing invective at gay men.
The majority of gay men, according to O’Leary’s purported research, is prone to psychological problems, drug abuse and sex with numerous partners, and is really intent on destroying marriage as we know it. But a primary reason to oppose gay relationships, she said, is because of her take on God’s will.
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