Gays for Sharia?
Over at Salon, Chris Stedman, the Assistant Humanist Chaplain and the Values in Action Coordinator for the Humanist Community at Harvard, has published a vicious piece attacking me for calling attention to the persecution of gays under Islamic law. This comes just days after San Francisco's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution condemning my ads standing up for gays. Stedman and the transgender head of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, Theresa Sparks, could form a new organization: Gays for Sharia.
Stedman is a chaplain? Now that's a mouthpiece: a chaplain who smears and defames. What will Harvard think of next? In Stedman's headline, he calls me a "Crusader," despite the fact that I am...Jewish. That gives you an indication of the quality of Stedman's inflammatory smear.
More indications of how Stedman plays fast and loose with the facts came when he describes me as misrepresenting a proposed Islamic Community Center in lower Manhattan as the Ground Zero mosque. Uh, Chris, it is a mosque, and it's in a building that was destroyed in the 9/11 attacks - that is, at Ground Zero. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good lie. Stedman trots out that venerable leftist, opportunistic, and very well-compensated fundraising machine, the SPLC, that deems every proud patriot a threat (yes, a threat to progressives). And he says that I have spent millions. Not. Even. Close. If I had that kind of money, my ads would be everywhere.
In justifying Muslim oppression of gays under the Sharia, Stedman pulls out the old "religion-based bigotry" card, but fails to mention that Christians and Jews are not slaughtering gays under canon law or Jewish law.
It is wild to me that this nasty little man is turning himself inside out to defend an ideology that hangs gays in public, tears their faces off with a razor blade in Gaza and makes them parade down streets with latrine cans on their heads. And he claims I have no support among gays. Let him talk to Michael Lucas, the famous gay adult entertainment magnate. "I just returned from Tunisia (and I travelled half the Muslim world)," Michael wrote me today, "and I think gay Muslims, or I should rather say gay Arabs, would agree with your ads because they know first hand the persecution they undergo on a daily basis, It is a shame that, instead of fighting for the rights of LGBT people in Muslim countries, 'political gays' are fighting against you. You are doing a fantastic job uniting people against evil and waking Americans up. Gays should join your movement."
Another gay activist, Artie Galvin, wrote on Facebook: "I stand with Pam Geller 100%. She is not a hate monger and she is a supporter of the LBGT movement. I am gay and know a lot of other gays who back her up. There is not one thing that she has said that is inaccurate or untrue. She doesn't hate Muslims but rather the ideology of hatred and violence that is so much a part of Islam." And another writer addressed Stedman: "Yeah, that's right, Chris, Pamela's the reason gays and Muslims don't get along. It has nothing to do with 1400 years of continuous persecution, execution of homosexuals in Muslim countries, attacks on gays by Muslim immigrants or Islamic hate preachers calling for the death penalty for 'sodomy.'"
Pat York of my organization Stop Islamization of America (SIOA)'s LGBT division says: "The American LGBT community is just as woefully uninformed about the harsh, deadly, current realities of Islam as anyone else. It is for this reason that an LGBT division of SIOA was recently created. The American LGBT community is allowing itself to be deceived and used for political reasons. As a community we do not need the stigma of being allied with a group that is dedicated to 'destroying western civilization from within'" - as the Muslim Brotherhood has stated in a captured internal document.
Cynthia Yockey, who blogs as "Conservative Lesbian," wrote: "Pamela Geller is a true friend of the LGBT community. She has the courage to tell the truth about the menace of Islam. I admire her and respect her work."
And gay activist Mark Koenig wrote: "I am a gay man living in Atlanta, GA, and I have an honest and sincere answer for Mr. Stedman: Not only do I categorically support Ms. Geller, I consider her to be a freedom-fighter of the highest order. She has endured years of slander and even death threats from supporters of the evil ideology that is Islam, simply for telling the truth about it. Mr. Stedman is evidently ignorant of the unconditional condemnation and death-sentence prescribed for homosexuals in the Islamic holy texts. This is more than just an aberrant interpretation or a small group of 'extremists' who take these writings literally and act upon them. Homosexuals are routinely executed in Islamic countries simply for BEING homosexual. In fact, Israel is the ONLY nation in the Middle East where gay people can be open about their sexuality without fearing for their lives."
Yet the useful idiot Stedman is even urging the fundraising site Indiegogo to take our American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) fundraiser down - as if he recognizes the power of the truth and therefore seeks to silence it.
Stedman's screed follows on the heels of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' resolution condemning my ads as "Islamophobic." The Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) crowed: "The resolution is the first of its kind in the nation, sending a clear message that San Francisco's elected leaders stand against hate and Islamophobia."
"The first of its kind." Imagine that. You would think that the ultra-progressive San Francisco city council would pass a resolution against Muslim gangs targeting gays and shooting them in the face while videotaping it. Or perhaps a resolution against San Francisco law enforcement for covering up a string of Muslim anti-gay violence incidents. You would think that the "first of its kind" resolution from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors might condemn honor violence, clitoridectomies, religious apartheid, and gender apartheid. No, the San Francisco city council passes a resolution, a "first of its kind" against our ads, against my work. Did they condemn the actual quotes used by high profile Muslims against gays? Worse than that, when pressed by blogger Pete Ingemi if they would refuse to condemn the anti-Muslim statements of Islamic world figures, they refused.
Sparks, something of the spark for our new AFDI campaign, went so far to say, "it's actually easier to get insurance for sexual transition procedures in Iran than in America." Perhaps that is because gay men are forced to have transgender operations in Iran. Forced. Not all gay men want to become women and have their manhood cut off. But Sparks thinks this is a fabulous policy. Such delusion is without peer. In Iran, gays are forced to choose between sex change operations and death.
For someone so clear about being true to herself and being who she is, Sparks is either blind or cowardly. The persecution, subjugation and oppression of gays is based on religiously-motivated hatred -- it's the Sharia. Not every Muslim subscribes to it, of course. But the ideology behind it is very much the problem. Sparks claims, on the contrary, that it's cultural -- what culture is that? Islamic culture. Sparks, like Stedman, is sharpening the blade of her own executioners.
Sparks joined a chorus of media trolls and Huffington Post "human rights attorneys" like Enjy Abdelkadar who claim that our ads "suggest that all Muslims hate gays." That's a red herring. The ads suggest no such thing. The oppression and persecution of gays is epidemic in the Muslim world and Sparks and Stedman and Abdelkadar are sanitizing this horror. And many in the gay community suffer here in the United States.
Where was Theresa Sparks when a Muslim gang was targeting gays in San Francisco in a series of attacks, shooting them in the face with a BB gun and videotaping the attacks? A Muslim gang targeted nearly a dozen victims one evening, recording the shootings on a video camera confiscated by police along with a "rifle-style" BB gun. There was a concerted effort within the San Francisco police department to bury this story, and it is only because one officer leaked the report to the media that anything was ever reported. The Muslims chose their victims "because they appeared to be gay."
Where was Sparks then?
How many attacks do we not hear about so as not to offend the sensibilities of the Muslim community? These attacks are increasing across the country where there are large Muslim communities, including in New York, Minnesota, and Maine, not to mention the gay-bashing in Sharia zones in the UK, France and across Europe. Shame on Theresa Sparks and Chris Stedman.
The visceral response of the San Francisco City Council, the Human Rights Commission, SFHRC head Theresa Sparks, and the uber-left media in San Francisco, as well as Chris Stedman, to our "Gays under the Sharia" ad campaign is obscene proof of how desperately this awareness campaign is needed. They call my ads hateful when I am merely quoting Muslim political leaders, spiritual leaders and cultural voices in the Muslim community.
History will not be kind to these useful idiots. They will be ridiculed and despised by future generations yearning, fighting for freedom.
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Note: I submitted this piece to Salon in rebuttal to an attack piece they ran on me and my work. Salon has repeatedly attacked my work and is carrying out a campaign of smears and defamation against me - most notoriously, it ridiculed my warnings of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover in Egypt back in January 2011, which turned out to be completely accurate (The Blogger who still Loves Mubarak).
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and author of the new book Freedom or Submission: On the Dangers of Islamic Extremism & American Complacency, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.