What next, FOF: Gonna call on Tony The Tiger to help you prove the Grrrrreatness of Frosted Flakes?

Research Shows Ex-Gay Therapy Beneficial [FOF Citizenlink]

**Unfamiliar with NARTH? Wayne Besen's Truth Wins Out can clue you in.

***UPDATE: It's gets even more ludicrous. In a related print story, Focus on the Family's Gary Schneeberger claims that this all comes from "a new report in this month's issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Human Sexuality." Only problem for Gary/FOF? This supposed peer-reveiwed "journal" is an internal publication creation by NARTH itself!!!!!!!!!!! It's not an academic publication -- it's essentially a glorified press release!

After Gov. John Lynch (D-N.H.) betrayed voters and signed a same-sex "marriage" bill into law, some pundits suggested that the issue didn't carry the same political risk that it once did. According to a new poll, they couldn't be more wrong. In the aftermath of Lynch's marriage flip-flop, his approval ratings have plummeted. The survey, conducted by the University of New Hampshire, found that Lynch's disapproval ratings in the last five months have gone up 15%--the highest since he took office in 2005. Also, the Governor's favorability rating has dropped a stunning 21%, with more voters indicating that they were more likely to vote against Gov. Lynch because he legalized homosexual "marriage."

Liberal activists who think this is some sort of statistical fluke need only to look toward the American Research Group which also found that the Governor's approval rating hit an all-time low since signing the legislation. The man who enjoyed a 70% approval rating earlier this year now has the backing of less than half his state. Leaders beware! Support for same-sex "marriage" is not without its political price. Any politicians who cross voters on marriage do so at their own peril.

**FRC's Included source link: Examiner.com: NH poll reflects Lynch as wishy-washy
Lynch Pinned in Poll [FRC]

Got all that? Okay, well now check this out. This comes from the very link that FRC includes as their source:

It's no surprise, really, given his well publicized wishy-washy approach to some of the polarizing legislative issues this year, that New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch's favorability rating has slipped.

Think gay marriage. Think medical marijuana. Think video slots gambling.

Think playing both ends of the middle too often.

For the first time since October 2005, according to a University of New Hampshire Granite State Poll, the Lynch's favorability has slipped to below 70 percent.

The most recent polling shows 63 percent of New Hampshire adults approve of how he is handling his job as governor, 27 percent disapprove, and 11 percent are neutral or don’t know.
...
While the same-sex marriage bill had an impact, it was not devastating politically: 28 percent of New Hampshire adults saying they are less likely to vote for him because he signed the bill, 19 percent say they are more likely to vote for him, but most Granite Staters, 52 percent said it will have no effect on their vote. The effect was most felt among the GOP: 49 percent say they are less likely to vote for Lynch because he signed the same-sex marriage bill.
NH poll reflects Lynch as wishy-washy [Examiner]

Okay, first off: Even with the drop, the governor, as you can read, still maintains a 63% approval rating. Now of course that, the key point, is never mentioned by FRC. Instead, they focus solely on his disapproval and unfavorable ratings, which even among Republicans are only at a minority 43% and 42% respectively [see poll data (pdf)].

And then the big whopper, which is highlighted in the very link to which FRC directs its readers: Same-sex marriage actually had little to no effect on this new poll! The vast majority say it had no effect on their views, and the percentages of "more likely" supporters and "less likely" opponents pretty much cancel each other out. The negligibility of the impact is explicitly spelled out not only in FRC's source link, but also in the poll data itself (pdf). But yet the FRC writers editorialize that "any politicians who cross voters on marriage do so at their own peril "??! They present same-sex marriage as the key issue? And they, long supporters of the most dreadfully unpopular president in American history, are chastising a governor who still maintains a fairly healthy, bipartisan favorable rating?!

Sorry, FRC, but even for you who have treated actuality like a particularly resilient string of taffy, this is still quite the stretch.

Let's get started, shall we?

These were the stock prices on the week that the American Family Association announced their boycott of Pepsico and all related products:

And here now is Pepsico's last close before the holiday break:

These latest ones? Yea, they would be more. And as of 3:15 today, the company's stock is hovering around 57.01. This despite the AFA's newly posted video wherein, in a last ditch effort to save their failing boycott, they attempted to exploit Pepsico's support for various gay pride parades.

So it would seem that when it comes to summer consumption, the American consumer is much more entice by an icy cold bottle of carbonated syrup than they are a frigid can of anti-gay bullcrap. There is hope for us yet.

Pepsico, Inc. [Yahoo! Finance]

Tammy Bruce at the Tucson Tea Party, July 4, 2009 [YT]

And why shouldn't Tammy give Sarah a pass? After all, Ms. Palin may not support Tammy's right to equality -- but at least she's likely to quit her job before she can ever enact her gay-unfriendly views.

**MORE TAMMY:

It is for these reasons that I can barely stomach to even look at the mugshot of one Candi Cushman.

With an unrighteous goal of seizing Anita Bryant's tried and true tired and untrue "gays recruit children" mantra and applying it to modern day, Candi spends her days toiling away at Focus on the Family's Colorado Springs headquarters, devising new and unique ways to mask a very simple idea (namely: "we simply don't care for gay people, so we don't want kids thinking such kinds of humans are okay") behind overwrought language (namely: "we want to protect children"). When there arises a program that's meant to curb school bullying, Candi jumps in to convince folks that it is the "agenda" and not the harassment that is truly unsavory. When an author pens a children's book that's meant for a pro-gay audience, Candi rushes to the scene to condemn any representation that doesn't exalt Cinderella and Prince Charming above all else. Or when any school determines that children have a right to know about the numerous gay parents that raise some of their classmates, Candi grabs her torch and rushes to tell the kids of same-sex parents that their homes are simply not good enough for her "pro-family" liking. When it comes to schoolyard acceptance, Candi acts like the bully who takes not only a pro-gay kid's lunch money, but also their right to form their own opinions about the world's (or even their personal home's) reality.

Which leads us to Candi's latest bit o' indoctrination. In a new commentary that she has aggressively titled "Capturing Children's Minds," Ms. Cushman attacks everything from gay guinea pigs to anti-bullying laws to "the consequences of cheapening the value of the traditional family and of man-woman marriage in this society." And of course she does it all with reckless non-concern for the millions upon millions of gay people that she is directly, unabashedly, unscrupulously hurting through her discrimination propagation:

But let’s think carefully about this. Can we really afford to teach the next generation that there is nothing distinctive or particularly beneficial about having a mother and a father? That a family is nothing more than a group of individuals — no more unique than a herd of elephants in the jungle?

Haven’t we already reaped enough of the consequences of cheapening the value of the traditional family and of man-woman marriage in this society?

But the latest news is that we’ve moved beyond penguins to guinea pigs: There’s a new book cropping up in elementary classrooms called "Uncle Bobby’s Wedding." For kids as young as 4, the book shows two male guinea pigs wearing bow ties, celebrating their "wedding."

And if you assume this is just a problem in California, think again. The nation’s largest homosexual-advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign, is piloting a pro-gay curriculum, “Welcoming Schools,” in several elementary classrooms across the land. It radically redefines the meaning of marriage and family.

The Obama administration has just appointed one of the nation’s most radical gay activists — Kevin Jennings, founder of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network — to a senior staff position in the U.S. Department of Education. So expect this sort of thing to be coming soon to a school near you.

So what can we do about it? It’s much easier to be proactive and protect your local schools than it is to get something out once it’s inside the system. So the first thing we can do is learn lessons from recent events in Alameda and elsewhere in the nation about what red flags to look for...
Capturing Children’s Minds [FOF]

Then she proceeds to detail the "red flags" that really mean to say: "dread f*gs!" She is quite unapologetically telling any and everyone to dislike/protest/stay away from gay people. There is no other fair or reasonable takeaway message. Her every word is dripping with hostility for the concept of benign LGBT acceptance. And while her periods and questions marks might on the surface be intended to stop her sentences, we quite understandably see them as hoping to sentence us to a life of shunned inequality.

It's one thing to take on adults who have already gone through the motions of opinion formation. Attack our lives and loves: We can take it. But when it comes to the little cubs who still have the joy of living in a mind unobstructed from "culture war" bullsh*t, these corruptive campaigns take on a whole other level of disgust. Regardless of her accomplishments as a wife, mother, or human (and there's no reason to assume that she is devoid of merit in these areas), Candi Cushman should feel nothing but shame for the targeted hostility that she calls a career.

*When asked to pass this on to Ms. Cushman, Focus on the Family's Gary Schneeberger called this post "name calling." Please, tweet him @gschneeberger to remind him of the difference between calling names and responding to another "culture war" personality's work!

NEWARK (CN) - A graduate of East Side High School demands punitive damages for "severe mental and emotional trauma" because on his paid personal page in the school yearbook, the school blacked out a photo of him kissing his homosexual partner, but it did not black out photos of heterosexual students kissing.
Student Sues School Over Gay Kiss Photo [Courthouse News]
(h/t: Jaime McGonnigal)

Okay, let's have a refresher course in Yearbook Etiquette 101:

Bad hair and fashion choices: Should haunt students ten years past their yearbook's issuance.

Bad memories of that Calculus teacher who you hated to the tenth power: Should be a high school rite of passage.

Bad homophobic and heterosexist choices: Should have gone away since well before "The '80s are gonna be rockin!" was a popular yearbook signature!

It's elementary, really.

The student, Andre Jackson, is suing for punitive damages. His heterosexual peers, on the other hand, are free to enjoy their summer vacations on the beach instead of in the court room, free from the burden of having their natural internal instincts seen as a "controversy."

**UPDATE: This story is actually in relation to a 2007 incident. We're not sure if the matter is just now going to court, or if this Courthouse News report was reposted in error. Checking now -- sorry for the confusion.

D.C. Council member Marion Barry found himself mired in more political, legal and personal drama yesterday after his arrest late Saturday on charges that he was stalking a female companion.

Barry's latest run-in with the law centers on his relationship with political consultant Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, who alleges that he continues to approach her even though they split up a few months ago.
...
Watts-Brighthaupt, the mother of two girls, says she never felt her life was in danger as Barry was "trying to catch me." But she said she has "tons and tons of evidence to prove" that Barry was stalking her in a way that was not life-threatening.
The Charge Against Barry: Stalking His Ex-Girlfriend [WaPo]

Now, we should say that these are all allegations, and that it would be wrong for anyone to convict Mr. Barry in this admittedly odd case before they've heard all the evidence. But that being said: We've never been questioned on any legal charges, much less multiple ones spanning several decades. And we've never been married four times. And we've never been defined more by our controversy than our contributions.

Isn't it way past time for the "sanctity" crowd is forced to answer for their string of hypocritical spokesmouths?!

RUSH: I want you to hear this. June 25th, a week ago, Senate Judiciary Committee, Eric Holder testifying, and this is the question. "Jeff Sessions presents a hypothetical where a minister gives a sermon, quotes the Bible about homosexuality and is thereafter attacked..." You know what the media didn't pick up yet? Whether liberalism is chosen or whether you're born with it. Once they get through the fog of the Jackson death, Media Matters will get that to 'em. I'm sure they have it. It's just a matter of it hasn't penetrated the fog there at the editors' desks. Anyway, a question, hypothetical. "[A] minister gives a sermon, quotes the Bible about homosexuality, is thereafter attacked by a gay activist because of what the minister said about his religious beliefs and what Scripture says about homosexuality." Is the minister protected, is what Sessions said. Here's a portion of the answer, the testimony from Eric Holder.

HOLDER: Well, the statute would not -- would not necessarily cover that. We're talking about crimes that have a historic basis. Groups who have been targeted for violence as a result of the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, that is what this statute tends -- is designed to cover. We don't have the indication that the attack was motivated by a person's desire to strike at somebody who was in one of these protected groups. That would not be covered by the statute.

RUSH: In other words: ministers and whites are not covered by the hate crime statute because we're talking about crimes that have a historic basis, groups who have been targeted for violence as a result of their skin color, sexual orientation. So hate crimes are reserved exclusively for blacks and homosexuals. Everybody else can get to the back of the bus on this one. So if you're a minister, if you're white, he didn't even say -- well, sexual orientation, that's not gender. Not unless you've got an addadictomy, and he didn't talk about that, either. So I guess at the front of the bus are blacks and gays on hate crimes.
Holder: Whites, Ministers, Military Not Protected by Hate Crime Law [Rush Limbaugh]

Well yea, Rush -- that is a portion of Holder's answer, surrounded by your own commentary. Only problem with it, you big fib factory? YOU LEFT OUT KEY, VERY PERTINENT POINTS OF THE SESSIONS/HOLDER EXCHANGE WHEREIN THE ATTORNEY GENERAL SPECIFICALLY ADDRESSED THE REPUBLICAN SENATOR'S CONCERNS, WITHOUT SO MUCH AS NOTING THE REDACTED SECTIONS!!!!!!!!!!!! AND ACTUALLY, EVEN THE SETUP ITSELF IS INCORRECTLY STATED, AS SEN. SESSIONS ACTUALLY INVOKED THE KORAN, NOT THE BIBLE!

Here, listen to the unedited exchange for yourself:

“The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009” [Sen. Jud. Commitee]

Hear the difference? Holder specifically addresses the difference between an attack motivated by speech and an attack motivated by a person's characteristics. He is, quite accurately, separating true bias motivation versus argumentative motivation. Inciteful speech vs. attacks incited by nothing more than certain characteristics.

Of course all of the groups -- ministers, soldiers, security guards, etc. -- are too protected on the basis of race, religion, national origin, etc (and hopefully soon sexual orientation and gender identity). But Sessions doesn't want to hear it. Rush doesn't want to hear it. They want to cut out all explanation and analysis, so that they can boil it all down to the most base level and make it sound as if progressives are hellbent on keeping the poor, poor majorities down. It's as anti-intellectual as it is anti-gay.