In the world of political lobbying, things are not always black or white. Depending on who's doing the lobbying, or the monitoring, there can exist a mighty wide area of gray.
So it is that the Hawaii Family Forum and the Hawaii Catholic Conference have agreed to revise some of their spending reports with the state Ethics Commission and pay $3,000 to resolve complaints about their lobbying activities. It's not a fine, mind you, but payment that goes along with public transparency to resolve charges of improper disclosure of lobbying.
For its part, the Catholic Conference said it hadn't realized it had to separately file lobbying reports for its political activism, and has now done so.
This case "should send a message to others who lobby elected officials to inquire into whether filings are warranted in their particular case," said former Ethics Commissioner Jacqueline Kido. "We have a lobbying law for good reason." Amen to that.
Is Diane Gramley of the American Family Association (of Pennsylvania), an official "hate group" as designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center, now putting openly-gay Congressman Barney Frank in the cross hairs of the right-wing 'culture war' by saying:
"Barney Frank and others in Washington have a goal of normalizing, through legislation, a lifestyle that has been considered abhorrent and unnatural throughout history. Hopefully new members of the 112th Congress will not view their job as simply a game in which to keep score, but a responsibility to preserve the American Way. America spoke on November 2nd and the returning members of Congress as well as the new ones need to listen to what America had to say.
"We'll put Barney Frank on notice. A Sleeping Giant has awakened and the majority of Americans do not share in your goal setting. Americans are tired of waking up to find an America that they hardly recognize. This is not a game to them, it is a war to get our country back."
Here is Gramley's "News Release," frighteningly titled "Let The Games Begin," in its entirety (pasted below before it is purged from her web site):
American Family Association of Pennsylvania News Release
For Immediate Release: January 5, 2011 Contact: Diane Gramley 1.814.271.9078 or 1.814.437.5355
Congress is Sworn In: “Let the Games Begin!”
(Harrisburg) — Today the 112th Congress was sworn in. But apparently some view their job on “The Hill” as simply a means to further their own agenda of remaking the United States into something most Americans would not recognize, noted the American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA of PA), a statewide traditional values organization.
After President Obama signed repeal of the law banning homosexuals in the military, misnamed ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ after a convoluted Clinton policy, openly homosexual Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts was quite honest about his intention as well as those of others who want to normalize the homosexual lifestyle. He said, “For those who are worried about the radical homosexual agenda, let me put them on notice. Two down, two to go.” He was referencing the passage of hate crimes and repeal of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ and he is simply waiting for the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (another misnamed bill) and the repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) before he has a complete victory.
“To Barney Frank and others this is simply a game, a means to further their personal agenda, and they are keeping score. Apparently they are not concerned about what is best for this nation, if they consider it in opposition to what they want, they will ignore the facts and vote to force all of Americans to accept homosexuality as normal. Some examples of ignoring the facts are the denial that there is a homosexual agenda and CDC statistics about the dangers of the homosexual lifestyle, “remarked Diane Gramley, president of the AFA of PA.
Barney Frank and others in Washington have a goal of normalizing, through legislation, a lifestyle that has been considered abhorrent and unnatural throughout history. Hopefully new members of the 112th Congress will not view their job as simply a game in which to keep score, but a responsibility to preserve the American Way. America spoke on November 2nd and the returning members of Congress as well as the new ones need to listen to what America had to say.
“We’ll put Barney Frank on notice. ‘A Sleeping Giant has awakened and the majority of Americans do not share in your goal setting.’ Americans are tired of waking up to find an America that they hardly recognize. This is not a game to them, it is a war to get our country back,” Gramley further stated.
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For information about the OUT IN THE SILENCE Campaign for Fairness & Equality, see this link: OutintheSilence.com
In the wake of the recent tragic events in Tucson, where a troubled young man went on a shooting rampage that killed six people, including a federal judge, and gravely wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a wrenching debate over anger, vitriolic rhetoric, and violence in American political culture, finally, has been set off.
We cannot help but be reminded of the inflammatory language, threats and implicit instigations to violence that emanate from those who call themselves "Bible Believing Christians" in the hills of northwestern Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, and be concerned about the consequences for those who have long been in their crosshairs.
We reprise this article as a renewed call to conscience for us all.
"Bible Believing Response" to OUT IN THE SILENCE Promotes Anti-Transgender Violence
Dispatch from Coudersport, PA:
by Joe Wilson, August, 31, 2010:
Diane Gramley sat peacefully behind Robert Wagner in the Coudersport Public Library as the retired physician shared his views on transgender individuals with the assembled audience. “I'm gonna put a ball bat in my car,” he said, “and if I ever see a guy [Wagner refuses to use proper pronouns] coming out of a bathroom that my granddaughter's in, I'm gonna use the ball bat on him.” Moments later he added: “In the good old days, before 'she-males' existed, they just called such people perverts.”
Gramley is no stranger to such ideas. As President of the Pennsylvania Chapter of the American Family Association, a 'traditional family values' organization based in Mississippi, she spends much of her time planting similar seeds of suspicion about the dangers posed by “men who think they are women,” her disparaging term for transgender females. She also crusades relentlessly against what she and the AFA call the “homosexual agenda” and the type of legal protections that her and Dr. Wagner's threatening rhetoric suggests are needed for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
Gramley was in Coudersport, a small town of 2,600 residents in the sparsely populated north-central part of the state known as the Pennsylvania Wilds, as a special guest of Dr. Wagner for what he titled “A Bible Believing Christian's Response to OUT IN THE SILENCE,” my documentary film about the quest for inclusion, fairness and equality for LGBT people in the small town where I was born and raised, Oil City, PA, just a two-hour drive from Coudersport.
Gramley, who also happens to call the Oil City area home, plays a central role in OUT IN THE SILENCE as a result of the firestorm of controversy she helped to ignite in opposition to the publication of my same-sex marriage announcement in the local paper. It was that controversy that compelled my partner, Dean Hamer, and I to go back to my hometown with our cameras to document what life is like there for LGBT people, and to show hopeful and inspiring stories about the growing movement for equality.
The film was produced in partnership with Penn State Public Broadcasting, received support from the Sundance Institute, premiered at the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, screened in Tribeca Cinemas Doc Series, and has been broadcast on PBS stations around the country. We're now using it as an educational tool in a grassroots campaign to help raise LGBT visibility and to bring people together in small towns like Oil City and Coudersport to begin building bridges across the gaps that have divided families, friends, and entire communities on these issues for far too long.
As part of this campaign, OUT IN THE SILENCE had screened just a month earlier for a standing-room-only crowd in the Coudersport Public Library despite vehement opposition from Dr. Wagner and the efforts of the local Tea Party and a small group of fundamentalist preachers to shut the event down and have the library 'de-funded' for making its space available for such a program.
Wagner's “Bible Believing Response,” he told the crowd of approximately 60 local church people, “was intended to expose the filmmakers’ real agenda and to question the directors’ assertion that the community should tolerate alternative lifestyles.”
During the two hour program, Wagner asked special guest Gramley a few questions about her experiences as a minor subject of the film, but he used her more as a prop, seated silently behind him, providing an odd sort of legitimacy as he put forth offensive theories and mischaracterizations about LGBT people, including that “AIDS is the gay plague” and “gays can't have families.”
Dean and I were in the library for the presentation. We made the six-hour drive to Coudersport from our home in Washington, DC because I wanted to bear witness to this event, to experience for myself, if only for a few hours, what it feels like to be so close to such willful ignorance and brazen cruelty.
As I sat there, listening to 'amens,' snickering laughter, and even a roar of approval from the people around me when asked if they agree with the AFA assertions that there “should be legal sanctions against homosexual behavior” and “homosexuals should be disqualified from public office,” I felt a sadness unlike any I have known before. A sadness for those who fall prey to such bigoted and hostile bombast, who carry the feelings these things stir into their homes and family relationships, and for the communities that suffer the sometimes-violent consequences of such mean-spirited divisiveness.
But as I looked at Gramley, unmoved next to Wagner, condoning the ugliness without a word of protest, I thought of all the courageous people who have attended OUT IN THE SILENCE Campaign events over the past many months in far flung places, including there in Coudersport, who refuse to be silent anymore, who are working for change in their communities against great odds, and I was inspired all over again.
It is in their spirit that we will continue our campaign to speak out in the silence and to help build the movement for fairness and equality in small towns and rural communities across America.
On the first day of the OUT IN THE SILENCE Campaign's Rural Oregon Tour, aimed at helping to raise lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) visibility and support the efforts of state and local groups building the movement for fairness and equality for all, the Linn-Benton Community College campus was plastered with inflammatory fliers even as the audience was watching the film.
The fliers used the words “JIZZFEST” and “CUMTASTIC” to ridicule and stigmatize LGBT people as nothing more than sexual deviants. They also purposely listed the contact information for the head of the college's new Diversity Achievement Center, which hosted the screening, to send a message that any attempts to promote equality and inclusiveness will be met with resistance.
While the shock, fear and pain caused by the incident was palpable in the room as it came to the audience's attention, the act also brought into stark relief the very real and immediate challenges still faced by LGBT people on a daily basis right there in the community, and helped to quickly move the post-screening conversation to the work that needs to be done to address such problems in a meaningful and systemic way.
In addition to an investigation and response by law enforcement and the college administration, LBCC Diversity Center staff and allies will be working hard in the days ahead to demonstrate that the campus is a welcoming, safe, inclusive and culturally respectful place for all and that it is no place for hate.
They will undoubtedly be joined by members of the groups that organized this OITS rural tour and have been working hard to build the movement for social and economic justice for all in Oregon for the past two decades. These groups include the Rural Organizing Project, Basic Rights Oregon, Community of Welcoming Congregations, Oregon PFLAG, and dozens of local human dignity groups around the state.
Please support the important work these groups are doing on behalf of justice and equality for all by joining us at, or helping to spread word about, the upcoming tour events in communities across Oregon.
More information about the tour can be found HERE.
