Gay friendly media - promoted fake claim of anti-gay harassment

Americans have watched as the improbable claims of actor Jussie Smollett have unraveled. The mainstream media immediately latched onto Smollett's story that he was the victim of a racist, homophobic attack. Smollett's claims were not checked or investigated by the media. Instead, they were instantly broadcast as true throughout the world because they fit nicely into one of the media's favorite narratives: that LGBT individuals face widespread intimidation, harassment, and even violence and on a daily basis.

Smollett the victim, who is a homosexual, was feted at a sold-out concert in Hollywood and was a guest on countless network news, entertainment and late night television shows where he was given free rein to tell his story of the supposed racist, anti-gay attack.

Since the beginning, however, there has been no corroborating evidence to document Smollett's claims. Indeed, the available evidence showed that no attack took place. Smollett refused to turn over important evidence to investigators. As suspicion started to be raised, he pointed to a grainy video image of two men as being that of his attackers. They were white, racist and homophobic, he claimed and hurled anti-gay epithets at him.

Then law enforcement was able to find the men. They were black, not white, and Smollett knew them. He regularly worked out with them at his gym and followed them on Instagram. One was his personal trainer and the other an extra on Smollett's television show. Now it is being reported that Smollett may have paid them to stage the attack to generate sympathetic publicity.

Sadly, this type of fake claim of anti-gay harassment and intimidation is all too familiar. These claims are made because people know that the media is primed and ready to publicize them on a moment's notice, and that they will take off on social media like a wildfire.

Some fake news is quite serious, other claims far less so. Consider for a moment the example of a New Jersey waitress, a lesbian, who posted on social media a couple of years ago a note supposedly written on a receipt that a family would not leave her a tip because they disagreed with her lifestyle. The claim exploded and the waitress received over $3,000 in donations from outraged citizens. Then the unnamed family came forward with their own copy of the receipt, which included a 20% tip and did not have any anti-gay message written on it. The waitress was eventually fired and forced to return the donations, but not before a massive amount of sympathetic publicity was generated for the LGBT community, not only in America but internationally.

Or consider the unfortunate case of The Salvation Army, a revered Christian ministry that has cared for the poor and destitute for over 150 years. They were targeted by false claims that they do not serve the LGBT community, a complete smear. The claims generated huge negative publicity right during the height of their most important fundraising drive, their annual Red Kettle campaign.

Or consider the despicable work of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) which seeks to portray any Christian ministry that does not fully embrace the extreme LGBT agenda as being discriminatory, hateful and bigoted toward gays and lesbians.

Let me be clear – we decry and deplore any actual act of bigotry or violence against anyone, including those in the LGBT community. This has no place in civil society. But the plain truth of the matter is that when it comes to bigotry and discrimination, it's people of faith who are facing false charges and feeling the ire of the media and the culture.

Look no further than the disparate treatment of Jussie Smollett as compared to the Catholic kids from Covington High School who attended the recent March for Life. Smollett was instantly believed and portrayed as a martyr. The Catholic kids were instantly vilified and portrayed as racists.

The media and their allies in the culture were wrong in both cases.

The reason I am getting into this issue is because the inaccurate portrayal of the LGBT community as facing inherent and wide-spread bigotry and hate in America is what is behind pending legislation that would give them extraordinary special legal rights at the expense of people of faith and all other Americans. Both the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and The Equality Act would allow gays and lesbians to make claims of sexuality or gender-based discrimination and use those claims to punish all manner of Americans, especially those who maintain a traditional, biblical understanding of human sexuality, marriage and gender.

And it's this false sense of bigotry and discrimination that underlies the formation and attitudes of so-called Human Rights commissions across the country that regularly target Christians like cake artist Jack Phillips with claims of discrimination simply for declining to violate their faith to participate in LGBT ceremonies that they cannot support.

And it's this false sense of anti-gay discrimination that is at the root of attempts to punish, even jail, people who decline to refer to transgender individuals according to the pronoun of their choice.

And it's this false portrayal of bigotry that fuels millions in donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center and positions them as supposedly independent arbiters of nonprofit groups, deciding which are worthy of support and which are homophobic and should be shunned.




Look all around and you can see the vast number of vehicles that are arrayed against us in this present culture, all of which are designed to marginalize, silence and dismiss people of faith through the use of lies, intimidation and force.