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By PHIL LaPADULA and JUAN CARLOS RODRIGUEZ
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Our Friend of the Week honors go to Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. On April 8, Bishop Tutu will receive the 2008 Outspoken Award from the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission.
“Archbishop Tutu’s vision of a world in which human rights are respected has always explicitly included LGBT people, despite the fierce opposition he has faced from his peers and colleagues,” says Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of IGLHRC. “He has challenged political apartheid in South Africa and continues to challenge spiritual apartheid within his religious community."
The award will be bestowed in San Francisco, where IBM will also be honored for its work in support of the GLBT human rights in Latin America.
Peter Sprigg
Vice president of policy research
Family Research Council
In a videotaped interview that is now making the rounds on the Internet, a spokesperson from the right-wing religious group Family Research Council made an incredibly hateful and dehumanizing comment about gay people in response to a question about immigration policy.
Peter Sprigg, vice president of policy at FRC, was asked about the Uniting American Families Act, which would give gay men and lesbians the same rights as heterosexuals to sponsor their foreign partners.
“I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States because we believe homosexuality is destructive to society,” Sprigg said.
In the past, I have cautioned against labeling everything our opponents do and say as “hate.” My reasoning is that you don’t want to overuse the word so that people recognize the real thing when it comes along. This is the real thing. There’s no way Sprigg’s comments can be interpreted as anything but hate speech. He talks as if gay people are not even humans but commodities to be “imported” or “exported” out of a country. Since Sprigg advocates removing gay and lesbian people from society, it’s reasonable to ask where he thinks we should go — to concentration camps? That’s exactly what Hitler did to the Jews after he exiled them from Germany and removed them from their communities in Eastern Europe.
What is even more stunning is the shameless hypocrisy of the Family Research Council. Ken Blackwell, another spokesperson for the FRC, appeared on Glen Beck’s show recently to speak out against Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s alleged hate speech. Blackwell, whose appearance on the Beck show came after Sprigg’s remarks about gays, went on about “national unity” and how damaging Wright’s words were.
The Family Research Council’s website describes the group’s mission as “promoting the Judeo-Christian worldview.” Is advocating the ethnic cleansing of homosexuals from America a Judeo-Christian value?
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