Professional right-wing, ex-gay extremist groups band together to form the 'Freedom Federation'

by: Pam Spaulding

Tue Jun 30, 2009 at 13:15:00 PM EDT

The Freedom Federation is a new and unique federation of some of the largest multi-ethnic and transgenerational faith-based organizations in the country committed to plan, strategize, and work together on common interests within the Judeo-Christian tradition to mobilize their grassroots constituencies and to communicate faith and values to the religious, social, cultural, and policymaking institutions.

WHO:
   --  American Association of Christian Counselors -  its mission is to "equip clinical, pastoral, and lay care-givers with Biblical truth and psycho-social insights"

   --  American Family Association - here at the Blend we already know about Don and Tim Wildmon's Tupelo, MS-based hate brigade

   --  Americans for Prosperity -- free market, small tax crowd

   --  Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) - headed up by Faux News favorite anti-gay, anti-black token negro Jesse Lee Peterson.

   --  Campaign for Working Families - failed presidential candidate and failed flapjack flipper Gary Bauer's hangout

   --  Catholic Online - mission is "to accurately represent the Catholic religion: its "past" and present."

   --  Concerned Women for America - Another favorite fringe group here at the Blend.

   --  Conservative Action Project - Arkansas-based free market, low tax org

   --  Eagle Forum - Mother Schlafly's birdnest

   --  Exodus International - ruining LGBTQI lives daily.

   --  Faith and Action - Rob Schenck, who anoints Senate Judicial hearing rooms with oil, says his org is "America's only Christian outreach across the street from the United States Supreme Court"

   --  Family Research Council - Tony Perkins den of bigotry in the name of "family."

   --  High Impact Leadership Coalition - Bishop Harry Jackson, late of trying to stop marriage equality recognition in DC.

   --  Liberty Alliance Action - the successor org  to Falwell's Moral Majority. Very LGBT-obsessed.

   --  Liberty Counsel - Bam Bam Barber's and Mat Staver's lair.

   --  Liberty University - more Falwell-based "education"

   --  Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN) - a group of Indiana homeschooling families from Bloomington and Monroe County

   --  Marc Nuttle - author of a tome called Moment of Truth, "a clarion call for conservative America to take a stand today for the future the country."

   --  Morning Star Ministries - Rick and Julie Joyner's ministry's goal is to "provide the household of faith with the highest quality spiritual food that is timely, or "meat in due season."

   --  National Clergy Council - Rob Schenck, AGAIN

   --  National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference - will lead the Hispanic born-again community in America for the purpose of transforming our culture, preserving our Judeo Christian Value System and building the spiritual, intellectual and social/political capital within the Hispanic American Community.

   --  Renewing American Leadership - I have no idea what this is, but it has a dormant web site. Right Wing Watch says this is Newt Gingrich's new parking space.

   --  Strang Communications - it's "a multi-media communications company focused on spreading the name and fame of Jesus throughout the world through the mass media."

   --  Teen Mania - Ron Luce's organization; his call to action is to retake America from the "virtue terrorists" (gays, pro-choice supporters, etc.) is "Battle Cry."

   --  The Call to Action - not sure about this one Kyle at RWW says this is Lou Engle's new hole-in-the-wall.

   --  Traditional Values Coalition - possibly the most hateful anti-LGBT organization out there, Lou Sheldon sets a new standard for peddling fear-based ignorance.

Wow - did they put this coalition together by going through our list of right-wing organizations and simply inviting all the groups and individuals we write about most frequently to join?  Sorry,  Christian Anti-Defamation Commission  - if only we had written about you a few more times, maybe you would have been deemed worthy of inclusion in this ground-breaking new effort by the Religious Right ... to do whatever it is this new organization is going to do.

Honestly, what purpose can this possibly serve?  Are the Council for National Policy and the Arlington Group somehow lacking and so these groups decided that what they really needed was yet another coalition to carry out the same work?

I am attending a meeting today for the formation of a new conservative coalition made up of a wide variety of groups on a wide variety of topics. Because there will be focus on gay and lesbian issues I was invited to join the coalition and to speak. My stated purpose for being there is not to rejoin the policy debates or to engage Exodus in them. We have made great efforts over the last two years to be a ministry focused on spiritual renewal and not political renewal. We know that nations change when the hearts of people change. Today when I address this group, some of whom are friends that I deeply respect, I will do so, ironically, on behalf of the gay community. My overwhelming message will be that God is deeply in love with the most adversarial of gay activists and that as these groups do battle over policy they must never forget that fact.

   I was asked to speak at the follow up press event, which is the notice you received, and decided instead to serve only as a testimony to my conservative colleagues in a meeting prior, which I believe will serve as a reminder that it is God's kindness that leads to repentance. I imagine there will those who shout amen when I speak today and those who will write me off because I am no longer activist material. Either way, I hope at the end of the day what I share encourages my fellow Christians to treat others as they would like to be treated and when they find someone who is struggling with unwanted homosexuality that they will think of Exodus.