Glenn Beck doesn't want the Tides Foundation talking to your kids. That would be “indoctrination.” How about people who call gay relationships “an abomination” and Islam a “devious religion”? Beck gives them his stamp of approval.
During a recent broadcast of his Fox News show, Beck attacked the Tides Foundation for sponsoring a 6-part curriculum that encourages Christian teens to “explore the relationship between their consumption, their faith, and the health of the planet.” Beck claimed that the curriculum -- which is free for churches to download and was released 6 months ago -- was “propaganda” and “indoctrination,” and told his viewers to “run for your life” if they “see anything like this” in their churches.
Beck went on to promote a 12-DVD anti-environmentalist series called Resisting the Green Dragon as an alternative to the Tides curriculum. The DVD's are sponsored by the Cornwall Alliance, a coalition of religious figures opposed to policies designed to fight “alleged man-made global warming.” According to Beck's guest Calvin Beisner, who is selling the just-released DVDs for $50, Resisting the Green Dragon “examines the world view, the theology, the ethics, the politics, the economics, the science, the history, everything about the environmentalist movement and how it is intentionally infiltrating churches and intentionally targeting especially children.”
If you watch the 12-minute preview available through the website of the Cornwall Alliance, the sponsors of Resisting the Green Dragon, not only will you see fearmongering about environmentalists targeting children (Avatar is an “apologia for pantheism”), you will see true extremism and conspiracy theories run amok. For instance, one of the commentators says environmentalists' policy prescriptions “can only be implemented under a global government that would control every aspect of your life.” The host of the video asserts that environmentalism is “your enemy” and “deadly to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Also, watch out for Scandinavian communists:
On top of this, the Resisting the Green Dragon video features Janet Parshall, who previously suggested that Matthew Shepard's actions were partly to blame for his murder; called gay adoption “state-sanctioned child abuse”; and hosted a member of the racist neo-Confederate League of the South as an American history expert on her radio show. Here are some others involved in the Resisting the Green Dragon promoted by Beck:
- Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association previously criticized Beck for saying that “we have bigger fish to fry” than the gay marriage issue, asserting that “Same sex marriage undermines the moral integrity of a nation. And Glenn Beck's desire for a prosperous America and economic freedom--both of which are good things--can never happen when we shake our fist at Almighty God and consecrate as 'blessed unions' behavior that God calls an abomination.”
- Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association attacked “the dark and dangerous and devious religion of Islam” at the Values Voter Summit and recently defended Carl Paladino's anti-gay remarks, writing on the AFA website that, “Everything - every single thing - that Paladino said about the homosexual lifestyle yesterday was dead on the money,” and “The fact that homosexual activists will now bare their fangs, veritably dripping saliva as they go for Paladino's carotid artery, and will do so with the full-throated blessing of the out-of-the-mainstream media, only illustrates the enormously dangerous clout these purveyors of perversity have been given in our culture.” Fischer has also attacked Beck for not declaring war on gay marriage: “Glenn, Glenn, Glenn: if special rights are given to people just because they want to use the alimentary canal for sexual purposes, no social conservative will be able to criticize homosexual behavior on biblical or moral grounds without running the risk of legal punishment.”
- E. Calvin Beisner of the Cornwall Alliance wrote an article arguing against the “militant homosexuals” that were calling for an increase in federal spending on AIDS research, treatment and education. Beisner asked if it was “rational” to increase funding to “fight a disease that is almost 100 percent self-inflicted by people intent on immoral and irrational behavior? Not when there are more pressing matters that ought to take priority.” Beisner has also written that “the public schools are the enemy, not the friend, and not even a neutral party, to Christians” because they aren't teaching Intelligent Design in biology classrooms.
- David Barton has written that the United States should ban gays from the military because that's what the Founders would do. He argued that George Washington “was the first not only to forbid, but even to punish, homosexuals in the military”; that Thomas Jefferson “authored a bill penalizing sodomy by castration”; and that the idea of allowing gays to serve in the military “would have brought disbelief, disdain, and condemnation from those who established our Armed Forces.” Barton has also been criticized for speaking at events hosted by racist anti-Semitic groups (He said he was not aware of their ideology at the time.) Barton has recently asked, “Why don't we regulate homosexuality,” comparing gay men and lesbians to trans fats, fast food, cigarettes, hard liquor, and salt.
- Tony Perkins of Family Research Council has claimed that “the soil of the Islamic faith just does not work with democracy,” and has spoken to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a hate group that “oppose[s] all efforts to mix the races of mankind ... and to force the integration of the races.” Perkins has also ignored scientific research to draw a “link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse.” He even went so far as to oppose anti-gay bullying measures, saying in a column published on The Washington Post's On Faith blog that “the homosexual movement” was to blame for gay youth suicides, and was now “exploiting these tragedies.”
- Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family stated in a 2008 video about the presidential candidates that Mitt Romney has “acknowledged Mormonism is not a Christian faith.” Responding to a 2003 Supreme Court ruling against the Texas anti-sodomy law, Minnery stated: If the people have no right to regulate sexuality, then ultimately the institution of marriage is in peril, and with it, the welfare of the coming generations of children. By unlocking one of society's last social seat belts, the court has guaranteed only one thing: More fatal collisions lay just down the road." The Denver Post reported that Focus on the Family recently said “it opposed efforts to specifically protect gay kids from bullying because those programs promote acceptance of homosexuality as normal.” Focus on the Family believes “that homosexuals can and do change their sexual identity” and that “Just as there are many paths that may lead a person to experience same-sex attractions, there are likewise multiple ways out.”
- Richard Land served on President Bush's Commission on International Religious Freedom. One of Land's previous books (co-authored with Frank D. York), Send a Message to Mickey: The ABC's of Making Your Voice Heard at Disney (Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998), outlined the two major reasons behind the Southern Baptist Convention's boycott of the Walt Disney Company beginning in 1996: “the appearance of Gay Days at Disney theme parks each year," and the “granting of domestic partner insurance benefits to homosexual lovers.”
- David Noebel - who spent much of his career insisting that the popular music had been concocted by Soviet agents as a way to brainwash and indoctrinate American teenagers -- has reportedly urged Christians to “fight homosexuals” and wrote recently of proposals to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell: “Can any thinking American wish to see an 'open' cross-dressing homosexual Army general trying to gain the trust of his troops (or for that matter, the nation)? Have we as a nation fallen so far that we need to apologize to Sodom?” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Noebel co-wrote Special Report: AIDS which posits that the U.S. may need to “exile” all “active homosexuals” from the county.
Beck would be the first to say that one's associations reveal everything you need to know about a person. So what does this undeniable pattern of embracing anti-gay figures tell us about Beck?