Hate and Lies

The Christian Civic League of Maine is willing to say just about anything to further the cause of discrimination. They have attempted to link homosexuality to pedophilia, gay people to Nazis, and most recently they have insisted that the legislation intended to stop discrimination in housing, credit and employment will mean the legalization of same-sex marriage.

So it was with little surprise that I read their daily email newsletter today and found a "homosexual manifesto" that they claim was published in the The Advocate, a GLBT magazine. The manifesto claims that gays have control of "the liberal establishment and the press" and want to "abolish marriage altogether" while subjecting "Orthodox Jews and Christians to the most sustained hatred and vilification in recent memory". This kind of hate-filled screed seems to verify everything the CCL has claimed about the "homosexual agenda". The only problem is, none of it is true.

As far as I can tell, this "manifesto" was written by conservative congressman William Dannemeyer for his 1989 book, "Shadow in the Land" and is completely fictional (which he admits in the book). It was then plagiarized (without attribution or disclaimer) by the Miami-Dade Christian Coalition when they were protesting a local equal-rights ordinance (their pamphlet can be found here). It was exposed as fraudulent as early as March 10, 1999 by columnist Liz Balmaseda of the Miami Herald.

The people of Maine are by and large tolerant and good human beings. The Christian Civic League knows that the only way they can win is with these kinds of lies.

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