Recently, government-encouraged outbreaks of mob violence against LGBT persons in countries from Uganda to Russia, and draconian new anti-gay legislation in those countries too, have gained growing media notice - some of which has focused on the role American evangelicals have played in inciting such hatred.
But the American culprits are not being funded from the margins. Tens of millions (possibly evens hundreds of millions) of dollars for that project is coming from the foundations whose representatives assemble yearly at an event known as The Gathering, where multimillionaire and billionaire evangelical funders of the culture wars from the families DeVos, Coors, Prince, Maclellan, Friess, Ahmanson, and others, and heads of the mammoth National Christian Foundation - gather, dine, and strategize.
This year, The Gathering 2014 - held September 25-28 at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Orlando, Florida - will feature two of the nation's most prominent op-ed columnists, David Brooks of the New York Times and Michael Gerson of the Washington Post.
"[H]omosexuality is wrong, unhealthy, should be illegal, and, frankly, is un-American — because of its inherent selfish character and obviously self-destructive tendencies... ...gay politics or, in other words, organized homosexuality, is a group manifestation of the homosexual’s pathological need to justify his existence. It’s nothing more." -- speaker at anti-LGBT presentation at The Gathering 1997, organized by Howard Ahmanson's Fieldstead & Company, on how to combat "organized homosexuality".
"I think we’re at great threat, externally, from radical Islamists who want to destroy us and our way of life… The second greatest threat I think this nation faces is internally, and it’s from the radical homosexuals that want to destroy the underpinnings of our nation." -- Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, speaking at The Gathering 2006. Perkins' FRC is classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an antigay hate group.
"[I]n the course of the now hundreds of cases the Alliance Defense Fund has now fought involving this homosexual agenda, one thing is certain: there is no room for compromise with those who would call evil 'good.' " -- From speech by Alliance Defending Freedom President Alan Sears presented to the anti-LGBT World Congress of Families VI, Madrid 2012. Sears was a featured speaker at The Gathering 2013. According to Human Rights Campaign Vice President Fred Sainz, the ADF is "easily the most active antigay legal group".
"Maturity is moving from the close-up to the landscape, focusing less on your own supposed strengths and weaknesses and more on the sea of empathy in which you swim, which is the medium necessary for understanding others, one’s self, and survival." -- David Brooks, featured The Gathering 2014 speaker.
Giving a presentation at the Thursday evening kickoff will be Terry Parker, a board member of the nonprofit that hosts The Gathering and also a co-founder of the National Christian Foundation, which is now the 12th biggest charity in America by one ranking and whose anti-LGBT funding pattern is so extensive that I've written a small encyclopedia to profile some of the more egregious anti-gay groups NCF bankrolls.
you can read the rest of this story here, at Twocare.org's Center Against Religious Extremism (CARE)