Reply #4: Here's what The Southern Poverty Law Center says about them [View All]

Holy War
The religious right's anti-gay crusade heats up
Religious leaders have engaged in 30 years of name-calling and bogus 'science' in their attack on gays. But only now is their crusade reaching biblical proportions.
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/intrep.jsp?iid=31



Traditional Values Coalition
ANAHEIM, Calif.
www.traditionalvalues.org

Nobody has warned Americans about the "gay threat" longer, or louder, than former Presbyterian minister and Pat Robertson protégé Lou Sheldon, already a veteran anti-gay crusader when he founded the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) in 1981.

Sheldon, who deems homosexuality a "deathstyle," sends a steady stream of sensationalistic fundraising appeals to TVC members (he claims 43,000 churches are part of his coalition). Most center around the idea that child-molesting is the real "homosexual agenda."

"They want our preschool children. ... They want our kindergarten children. ... They want our middle school and high school children," read a recent direct-mail appeal.

In 1992, Sheldon reportedly told columnist Jimmy Breslin, "Homosexuals are dangerous. They proselytize. They come to the door, and if your son answers and nobody is there to stop it, they grab the son and run off with him. They steal him. They take him away and turn him into a homosexual."

TVC reports echo that theory: "As homosexuals continue to make inroads to the public schools, more children will be molested and indoctrinated into the world of homosexuality." Gay-Straight Alliances on high school campuses are also part of a plot to "target children for recruitment" to gay sex, cross-dressing and sex-change operations, TVC says.

Yet another TVC report claims "the deviant homosexual subculture has fueled efforts to normalize adult/child sex."

In 1985, Sheldon personally suggested putting AIDS victims into "cities of refuge." When a hate crimes bill was signed in the early 1990s in California, Sheldon told a reporter that it would "protect sex with animals and the rape of children as forms of political expression."

Sheldon and his daughter, Andrea Lafferty, are active lobbyists in Washington. In 1995, Sheldon managed to engineer a congressional hearing on gay activists' supposed infiltration of public schools in a bid to whip up support for Sen. Jesse Helms' bill to cut federal funds for schools "encouraging or supporting homosexuality."

But the hearing turned into a fiasco; the star witness was Claire Connolly, a lesbian who falsely accused gay male activists of using federal AIDS funds to hold orgies.

Still, Sheldon's hard edge has never faded. Commenting on "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," Sheldon suggested the Bravo television network "consider airing a series called AIDS Hospice ... far more accurately portray the end results of homosexual sodomy."

More:
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=872

(SPLC allows reproduction of material with proper citation)