Subject: COLORADO: UPDATE ON THE RIGHT (LONG!)

From: Kevyn Jacobs <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 11:13:44 -0600 (CST)

KANSAS NOTE:  KANSAS REPRESENTATIVE DARLENE CORNFIELD IS MENTIONED

by Mike Shaver
Citizens Project
Freedom Watch, Volume 3, Number 4
July/August 1994

In May, Colorado-for Family Values (CFV) sponsored a closed-door,
invitation-only conference for nearly40 national organizations committed to
"roll[ing] back the militant gay agenda." If audio-taped portions ofthe
proceedings are any indication, once the cameras are gone, anti-gayforces
emphasize very different themes than those touted in public.

A May 19 Washington Times article described CFV's recent conference
inColorado Springs as two days of top-secret meetings." Conference tapes and
internal documents obtained by Citizens Project spell out why participants
wanted to meet unobserved. The conference, held May 16th through the 18th at
the Navigators' Glen Eyre Conference Center, resulted in an eight-page
blueprint for future action.

This blueprint, according to post-conference summary materials, outlines a
national plan for collecting and sharing data on gay-supportive office
holders and activists, waging massmedia blitzes, and adopting tactics from
the now publicized Project Spotlight (see sidebar at end).

Speakers emphasized the importance of the next few years-a period
characterized by one participant aspart of a full blown revolution against
domestic enemies."

Letting their guard down

The list of participants and presenters included some of the most prominent
organizations and individuals ever to rally around the antigay flagpole. With
organizational superstars like Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for
America, Christian Coalition, Family Research Council, Traditional Values
Coalition, Eagle Forum and the American Family Association, it's no surprise
that CFV conducted the meeting in near-perfect secrecy.

According to CFV Executive Director Kevin Tebedo, the total media blackout
(with the exception of the Washington Times, a paper described as having been
a good to this issue and to CFV") was designed to encourage participants to
speak "freely and openly" about their mutual objectives. Nationally
recognized speakers did just that, waxing candidly about the successes and
failures of the past few years.

Anti-gay heavyweights included Paul Cameron, a researcher whose vicious work
about gays and lesbians prompted his expulsion from the American
Psychological Association; Peter LaBarbera, creator of the now notorious "Gay
Agenda" video; Ron Ray, a lawyer, reserve Colonel in the Marines and a former
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense who authored Military Necessity and
Homosexuality, Judith Reisman, author of Kinsey, Sex and Fraud and Focus on
the Family's John Eldredge, Director of Seminars and Research and architect
of FOF's Community Impact Seminars. These and other speakers covered a broad
range of issues, painting a disturbing picture of the years to come.

Extreme objectives, mainstream message.

As some of the more frank commentary from the conference demonstrated, ideals
held by the mainstream are often at odds with anti-gay legislation. It was
necessary, therefore, to repackage their message in terms more acceptable to
the broader public. Citing figures which show a strong majority of the public
supporting the values of individualism and autonomy, Focus on the Family's
John Eldredge explained, "This is still a country that embraces the
pioneering spirit radical individual autonomy is an American value."

While acknowledging individualism as a "traditional"  value, Eldredge quickly
explained that commitment to such a value has "tilted the field, if you will,
in favor of the militant gay agenda." Winning on this field means carefully
controlling one's image. "To the extent we can control our public image, we
must never appear to be bigoted or mean-spirited. And you noticed the
qualification-to the extent we can control our public image.  We must never
appear to be attempting to rob anyone of their rights, of their
constitutional rights," explained Eldredge.

Having underscored the importance of appearances, Eldredge later offered his
unabridged view, remarking, "I think the gay agenda, and I would not say this
as frankly as I will now in other cultural contexts, I think the gay agenda
has all the elements of that which is truly evil. It is deceptive at every
turn...it is destroying the souls and the lives of those who embrace it, and
it has a corrosive effect on the society which endorses it, either explicitly
or even implicitly."

Manipulating the data

Part of repackaging this "evil"  view of homosexuality as a political message
means selective use of data. In a moment of striking candor. Leading anti-gay
researcher Paul Cameron pointedly denied the widely-circulated claim that
gays are disproportionately wealthy, a claim used by the far right to
characterize gays as unusually powerful.

Explains Cameron, "Most people who engage in homosexuality are of the lower
strata. These are people who are waiters and busboys and bums and hobos and
jailbirds and so forth."  Trying to explain the apparent contradiction,
Cameron argued that the figures showing gays earning large incomes referred
to an elite few subscribing to The Advocate, a national gay news publication.

Ironically, Cameron's observation about gay income levels came less than an
hour after gay-researcher Judith Reisman maintained that the number of gays
reading The Advocate constituted "somewhere between 30 to 50 percent of the
homosexual population".  Reisman's research used personal ads from the
magazine to argue an alleged link between homosexuality and child
molestation. Her need for a larger, representative sample-in this case
appeared to be at odds with Cameron's interest in a much smaller sample.

Although inconsistencies like these surfaced around general claims about gay
culture, when it came to the engine driving this movement, discord vanished.
Seemingly unquestioned was the assumption that an effective assault against
the "militant homosexual agenda" required the engagement of religious
institutions and closer adherence to a narrowly defined set of moral
principles reality especially observable in discussions about dissenting
Christians.

Attacking fellow Christians

Interestingly, gays and lesbians were not alone in being criticized.
Unsupportive Christians were characterized as "extraordinarily damaging to
our movement" by John Eldredge, who described the evangelical church as "a
house divided."

Conference materials included correspondence from the Institute in Basic Life
Principles, an Illinois- based ministry which filed a legal brief supporting
Amendment 2 during the injunction hearing. The letter, signed by Kent Sehmidt
from the ministry's legal department, criticized prominent evangelical author
Tony Campolo for adopting "the innocent sounding axiom 'love the sinner-hate
the sin,"' which Sehimdt described as "heresy." Further evidence of alleged
"injury to the cause" was Campolo's call for the church to be a "support
community"  for Christians who are non-practicing homosexuals. Compolo's
comments prompted Schmidt's request that this issue be addressed at the
conference.

Additional criticism was directed at the clergy. National Legal Foundation
counsel Robert Skolrood minced no words, saying, "Our pastors don't know
anything and most of them are wimps."  Skolrood went on to explain, "There's
compassion on one hand and there's truth on the other and I think this is
where pastors have a lot of problems."

Energizing and excluding

>From the beginning, gay rights proponents have claimed that anti-gay
measures like Amendment 2 are driven by individuals with a religiously
inspired political agenda that is inherently at odds with basic notions of
democracy and political inclusion.  Political success for anti-gay groups,
therefore, required establishing credibility by use of the mantra "equal
rights, not special rights." As important as this claim was during the
Amendment 2 campaign, taped sessions and conference documents make no
reference to the concept of "equal rights, not special rights." The reason,
as the presentations suggest, is that this movement is less about rights and
more about a much broader objective.

Robert Skolrood, who heads the organization that worked with CFV to draft and
defend Amendment 2, prefaced his legal talk by stating. "As you know, it's a
spiritual battle."

He explains, "Although we lead normal human lives, the battle we are fighting
is on the spiritual level...The very weapons we use are not human but
powerful in God's warfare for the destruction of the enemy's strongholds." He
concludes his point, describing the war this way: "We fight to capture every
thought until it acknowledges the authority of Christ."

Also revealing is the list of "Foundation Principles" from the printed
materials which appear to summarize the conference.

Objectives include getting elected officials to oppose gay-friendly
legislation and public policy, eliminating government dollars and resources
for problems which are "the result of improper behavior brought on by their
lifestyle (ex. AIDS)," and stressing family values so that "homosexuality
would be regarded as a sad pathology by implication." In marked contrast to
these principles, however, is the third objective, which reads simply
"Spiritual revival."

This item may have been inspired by Ron Ray, an active and vociferous critic
of gays serving in the military.  His presentation included several minutes
of religiously charged rhetoric, which included: "We're going to have to
remember His standard... And then we can have repentance, because the problem
is the church...Once we have repentance, we can have revival...  Sodomy,
Sodom and Gomorrah, means the end or termination point...When you accept it
in the law order, they have rendered Thy word void. Now the Lord will have to
move."

Ron Ray and Bob Skolrood were not alone in drawing on this theme. John
Eldredge noted that Focus on the Family president James Dobson sees the issue
of homosexuality as "one of the key issues of our age"  and outlined the work
that Focus is doing to "raise the consciousness of the vast majority of
Christians in the country who are woefully ignorant on these issues."
Observing that the church is "slowly waking up," Eldredge promised that
evangelical churches would turn "the great ship of evangelism backs toward
social engagement".

Looking ahead

Whether mentoring isolated anti-gay activists or kicking in 70% of the money
needed to pass an Amendment 2-styled law in Cincinnati, CFV has become a
leader in the growing assault on gay and lesbian rights. Now that role is a
national role, and CFV appears to be taking it seriously. How does the
"behind-closed doors"  talk of anti-gay groups match their public rhetoric? A
prominent disparity concerns religion.  Public claims, like CFV chairman Will
Perkins' sworn testimony that "Amendment 2 is not a religious issue," become
highly suspect when talk of "equal rights, not special rights" is replace by
calls for revival, repentance and warfare against "evil"  gays and dissenting
Christians.

At bottom, this kind of duplicity suggests a drive so passionate and
uncompromising that basic respect for truth and the democratic profess has
been sacrificed for political expediency. If this conference is an indication
of things to come, their biggest foe may well be an alerted public.

[sidebars]

Who Was There?

According to conference documents, CFV was host to some of the brightest
stars in America's traditional right constellation, as well as a scattering
of more unique groups.

Attendees included Concerned Women For America, Focus on the Family National
Legal Foundation, Colorado chapters of the Traditional Values Coalition and
Christian Coalition. Washington-based Family Research Council formerly a
division of Focus on the Family was there as well as The Conservative Caucus,
represented by Howard Phillips (who also heads the American Taxpayers Union).

Mississippi-based American Family Association was represented through
numerous State level organizations, including representatives from Texas and
Florida (two big states facing Amendment 2- like iniatives).

Of the national organizations, Colorado; Springs own Focus on the Family
played the most prominent role, sending three representatives two of whom
were featured speakers.

Among the less well-known organizations, were New Mexico's Warriors Not Wimps
for Jesus and Mothers Against Bad Government. Texas sent the curiously named
Truth before Consequences. The Chinese Family Alliance came all the way from
California and The Kansas Education Education Watch was joined by Kansas
state representative Darlene Cornfield

Broadening Their Scope

According to a list of "Primary Strategies" developed at the CFV conference,
gays and lesbians are no longer alone in being targeted by anti-gay groups
like CFV. Their "to-do" list includes developing a "central clearing house"
for information about corporations, media personalities, clergy, political
candidates and office holders.

Plans also call for recruiting and promoting sympathetic candidates, an
aggressive "war of words like heterophobia, Christian-phobia,
Christian-bashing," as well as creating an "anti-gay national PAC."