Fox News host Mike Huckabee will be the keynote speaker at the Inaugural National Leadership Convention for On My Honor's Youth Adventure Program, an anti-gay program formed in response to the Boy Scouts of America's (BSA) new membership policy permitting openly gay scouts.
In an August 15 Facebook post, On My Honor announced that Huckabee would be the headline speaker at the organization's first national convention, to be held in Nashville in September:
The new Youth Adventure Program being developed as an alternative to the Boy Scouts of America has just announced that former Governor and FOX News Contributor Mike Huckabee will be the keynote speaker at the first Inaugural National Leadership Convention to be held in Nashville, Tennessee on September 6-7, 2013.
The convention theme will be “Honoring the Legacy... Raising the Standard.”
Given that the new program emerged as a protest of BSA's new membership policy, On My Honor is an inherently anti-gay enterprise. A look at its leaders' backgrounds indicates just how vehemently they oppose LGBT people.
Founder John Stemberger's Florida Family Policy Council promotes discredited “conversion therapy” programs aimed at aiding patients in “leaving [the] gay lifestyle.” He has declared that “anything that has the word 'gay' on it in our culture ... [is] guaranteed to be inappropriate for kids.” On My Honor Interim Executive Director Rob Green, meanwhile, dismissed the campaign for a gay-inclusive BSA as “an obvious attempt of the homosexual lobby to 'get a foot in the door.'”
Stemberger and Green's Youth Adventure Program proudly touts its discriminatory practices. The program excludes openly gay scouts, stating that there's no way a "'morally straight', 'clean' and 'reverent'" organization could accept gays.
For an organization founded on anti-gay principles, Huckabee is not a half-bad choice for a featured speaker. In his time at Fox, the erstwhile politician has fear-mongered about non-discrimination ordinances, called the anti-gay hate group the Family Research Council (FRC) “one of the most respected family organizations in America,” and compared same-sex marriage to slavery. Back when he was seeking elected office, he endorsed the quarantining of AIDS patients. Oh, and one of the reasons he's cited for opposing marriage equality? “The ick factor.”