Please read our news release below, then contact your state Senator and urge him to oppose HB 4162 and its Senate counterpart SB 0107.

Thanks for your support!

Gary Glenn, President
American Family Association of Michigan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, March 28, 2007
CONTACT: Gary Glenn - 989-835-7978

Family group: House Dems try to deceive voters, hide “gay rights” push from public on bullying bill

LANSING – A statewide family values organization Wednesday accused Democrats in the Michigan House of Representatives of trying to deceive voters after a purported “anti-bullying” bill was amended to create special “protected class” status on the basis of homosexual behavior and cross-dressing — but hide from clear public view the language doing so — while refusing to even allow a recorded vote on language simply protecting all students from bullying and harassment regardless of motivation. The House then approved House Bill 4162 on a near-party line vote of 59-to-50.

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, said “House Democrats proved today that their real motivation is a political payoff to billionaire Jon Stryker and other homosexual activists who demand that Michigan create special protections and legal rights specifically for individuals who engage in homosexual behavior.”

The original language of HB 4162 expressly segregated students into categories based on personal or behaviorial characteristics, then doled out protection based on a student’s falling into one of the segregated categories which included so-called “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression.”

However, after hearing last week from thousands of citizens who opposed the creation of special protection based on homosexual behavior, House supporters of the bill Wednesday deceptively removed the original language that would have openly and expressly created the segregated “protected class” categories, replacing it with language that has the exact same effect by giving the power of law to a Michigan State Board of Education model bullying policy that itself segregates students into the same categories, including based on homosexual behavior and cross-dressing. (See paragraph two of the MSBE model policy here)

Glenn said the Democrats’ amendment “proves that they’re still trying to push Jon Stryker and other homosexual activists’ political agenda but now realize that agenda is not popularly supported and are trying to hide it from public view.”

(more…)

“Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, said the bill would create for the first time in state law a protection based on homosexual behavior. ‘Homosexual activists are using legitimate concern for student safety as a Trojan Horse to sneak their special rights agenda into law,’ he said.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lansing, Michigan
March 28, 2007

House Votes to Require Anti-Bullying Policies for Schools

by David Eggert, The Associated Press

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Buoyed by parents, students and advocates, the Democratic-led House approved legislation Wednesday that would require Michigan schools to adopt anti-bullying and harassment policies.

The bills, backed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm, now head to the Republican-controlled Senate. One bill passed the House on a 59-50 vote, with Republicans in opposition.

Lawmakers, mostly Democrats, have been pushing for changes to state law the past few years.

“This is not kids being kids. This is causing psychological impact, psychological scars — if not leading children to commit suicide,” said Rep. Pam Byrnes, a Democrat from Washtenaw County’s Lyndon Township, who spoke at a rally inside the Capitol before the House vote. She was joined by Granholm, along with students, parents and gay rights activists who spent the day lobbying legislators.

Conservatives opposed the legislation because it would specifically protect students who are being bullied because of their sexual orientation — in addition to race, height, weight, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex and other characteristics.

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, said the bill would create for the first time in state law a protection based on homosexual behavior.

“Homosexual activists are using legitimate concern for student safety as a Trojan Horse to sneak their special rights agenda into law,” he said.

But supporters of the legislation — including school groups and social workers — said their intent is to protect all children from bullying and harassment. The bill is named after Matt Epling, an East Lansing student who killed himself in 2002 after a hazing incident.

Supporters said some schools aren’t doing enough to help students who’ve been bullied. Some critics said the legislation doesn’t go far enough because it wouldn’t require teachers to report instances of bullying.

Read the full Associated Press article: http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/michigan/index.ssf?/base/news-42/1175116763260540.xml&storylist=newsmichigan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, March 29, 2007
CONTACT: Gary Glenn - 989-835-7978

“No evidence an assault occurred,” Detroit police say

Police urged to investigate complicity in filing of false report

DETROIT — A statewide family values organization accused by homosexual activists of inciting an elderly Detroit man’s alleged murder Thursday called on Detroit police to investigate who may have been complicit in the filing of a false police report after police and medical officials announced that 72-year old Anthony Anthos had not been attacked and instead died of an accidental fall caused by a degenerative disease.

The Associated Press reported today (Thursday): “‘There’s no evidence that an assault occurred,’ police spokesman James Tate said Wednesday. …’They determined that he died of natural causes,’ Tate told The Detroit News.” [Read the full article here].

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, issued the following statement:

“Homosexual activists were obviously well into great plans to exploit and profit both financially and politically from the now apparently false claims about the tragedy of this poor man’s death. It’s time for Jeff Montgomery and the Triangle Foundation to come clean and tell us whatever they know about whether someone convinced an elderly man suffering from mental illness, a week after he accidentally fell and hit his head, to falsely accuse an African-American man of attacking him for ‘being gay’,” Glenn said.

(more…)

“‘There’s no evidence that an assault occurred,’ police spokesman James Tate said Wednesday. …’They determined that he died of natural causes,’ Tate told The Detroit News.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Detroit, Michigan
March 28, 2007

Police, Coroner: Detroit Gay Man Died Naturally, Not from Beating

DETROIT (AP) — Police said Wednesday that an elderly gay man whose death became a national focus for gay rights advocates based on reports he had been fatally attacked because of his sexual orientation actually died of natural causes.

“There’s no evidence that an assault occurred,” police spokesman James Tate said Wednesday.

The death of Andrew Anthos, 72, last month drew wide attention, and was cited on the floor of Congress by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., as evidence of the need to extend hate crime legislation to gays.

But the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office concluded that Anthos fell because he had an arthritic neck, and detectives were unable to find witnesses to a beating, police said.

“They determined that he died of natural causes,” Tate told The Detroit News.

“So the case will be closed,” homicide unit supervisor Lt. Linda Vertin told the Detroit Free Press.

A cousin of Anthos said she was shocked at the closing of the case and angry that police didn’t tell her before making it public.

“I’m just livid about this,” said Athena Fedenis of St. Clair Shores. “Andrew didn’t have any reason to make this up.”

The Associated Press left a message Wednesday night seeking comment from police.

According to Fedenis and other family members, Anthos said he was riding a city bus home from the library on Feb. 13 when a young man asked him if he was gay and called him a “faggot.”

Anthos said the man followed him off the bus, confronting him again. Anthos said he told the man he was gay as he went to help a friend whose wheelchair was stuck in a snow bank, according to Fedenis.

Anthos said the attacker struck him in the back of the head with a pipe and ran off after the friend yelled for him to stop. Anthos died Feb 23.

Medical Examiner Dr. Carl Schmidt said evidence did not support the report of an attack on Anthos and said a head injury likely came from falling.

Anthos probably flexed his neck, which caused arthritic spurs to compress his spinal cord enough to paralyze his legs, Schmidt said.

“I won’t let this rest,” Fedenis said. “I can’t let this tarnish him. I don’t want anyone to think it wasn’t a hate crime.”

Read the full Associated Press article: http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/michigan/index.ssf?/base/news-42/1175135083210020.xml&storylist=newsmichigan

STATE NEWS
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan - March 12, 2007

Black community doesn’t support same-sex unions

In “Gay rights fight mirrors black civil rights struggle” (SN 2/23), Sam Curcuruto, who appears in photographs to be white and too young to have been alive during the African American Civil Rights Movement, ridiculously wrote, “(Michigan’s) Marriage Protection Amendment is no better than the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. … (The) argument that half the nation can identify with the desire to protect marriage goes hand in hand with the fact that during the Civil War, half the nation could identify with keeping African Americans as slaves.”

If Mr. Curcuruto’s premise is correct, perhaps he can apply his expertise to the following questions:

Why did communities in Michigan with the largest African American populations — Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Muskegon and Benton Harbor — all vote in favor of the Marriage Protection Amendment?

Why did the Detroit Free Press report that its 2004 exit polls found that 59 percent of all black voters statewide voted in favor of the amendment?

Why did former state Rep. Triette Reeves, D-Detroit — who, at the time, was chaplain of the Michigan Legislative Black Caucus — co-sponsor the amendment?

Why did Dr. Alveda King, niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a former Georgia Democratic legislator, travel to Michigan to campaign in favor of our marriage amendment?

Why did the Rev. Bernice King, daughter of Dr. King, lead a march on the Georgia state Capitol in support of that state’s marriage amendment?

Why is former Congressional Delegate Walter Fauntroy, D-Washington, D.C., who organized the 1963 march on Washington at which Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, serving along with many other nationally prominent African Americans on the board of the Alliance for Marriage, which organized to promote a federal marriage amendment?

If Mr. Curcuruto can’t answer, perhaps he should talk to someone who knows more about the Civil Rights Movement than he does and who knows the difference, as African Americans obviously do, between protecting one-man, one-woman marriage and denying individuals basic civil rights based on the immutable color of their skin.

Gary Glenn
president of American Family Association of Michigan

(Professor Nemecek’s) response is simple. ‘The organization he (Glenn) represents is anti-homosexual which he seems to equate with transgender/transsexual. Another sign of religious ignorance and unwillingness to learn,’ Julie wrote in an email. ‘I am confident that if Jesus were at our mediation on Tuesday that he would be sitting on my side of the table and holding my hand.’ “

BETWEEN THE LINES
(homosexual activist newsmagazine)
Detroit, Michigan - March 8, 2007

Spring Arbor professor’s journey to womanhood
by Todd A. Heywood and Wire Reports

SPRING ARBOR — Julie Marie Nemecek always knew there was something different about her growing up. Something she could not quite put a finger on.

That was before Julie, though. That was when she was John.

“I remember when I was in fifth or sixth grade it was made clear to me I could not hang out with the girls during recess,” Nemecek told the Lansing Community College Gay Straight Alliance. “So I slipped into macho mode.”

That mode lasted for most of Julie’s 55 years, until 2003 when she was cruising the internet and discovered information about being transgender. “Oh my gosh, that’s me. That’s me,” she told the students she remembered thinking. When her wife, Joanne, of 35 years returned home from a trip, Julie told her.

“We spent five or six weeks reading and praying and crying,”Julie says.

Joanne, 55, didn’t know if she could stay in the marriage, especially when John wanted to transition further into living as a woman. She thought John’s lifestyle was sinful but eventually changed her mind after learning more about his condition.

“The person I love and care about the most is Julie. This is the right thing to do. I gave up the fight,” said Joanne, who sometimes catches herself referring to Julie as “he” or “him.” Julie says she’s attracted sexually to Joanne.

Julie was diagnosed as transgender in December of 2003 and immediately shared the diagnosis with her immediate supervisor at the conservative Christian university where she worked, Spring Arbor University.

What followed after, she says, were a series of more and more repressive actions, including a slash in her salary of twenty percent, restrictions appearing on campus, and even directing her not to identify as an employee of Spring Arbor University.

(more…)

Please join the American Family Association of Michigan in sending a message to thank Spring Arbor University for their refusal — in the eyes of young students — to legitimize and enable mental, emotional, and spiritual confusion:

https://community.gospelcom.net/Brix?pageID=9619

Gary Glenn, President
AFA-Michigan

“Spring Arbor University, a small, evangelical Christian school 75 miles west of Detroit, fired the 55-year-old associate professor earlier this week after a 15-month dispute over (his) transgender lifestyle…citing conduct that’s ‘inconsistent with the Christian faith.’ ‘We believe it’s their decision to make as a private Christian institution,’ said Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan. ‘This is an adult role model for teenagers whose parents thought by sending them to a Christian school, they were not likely to be exposed to such lifestyle choices and emotional problems.’ “

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lansing, Michigan - March 2, 2007

Transgender professor fights dismissal at Christian school
by David Eggert, The Associated Press

SPRING ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — Julie Nemecek has long, manicured fingernails and wears a blond wig, makeup and dangling earrings.

She’s also legally a man. Julie, formerly John, says she gained a lot emotionally after starting to live openly as a woman in recent years — cross-dressing, getting hormone therapy and, a week ago, legally changing her name. But she lost something as well: her job.

Spring Arbor University, a small, evangelical Christian school 75 miles west of Detroit, fired the 55-year-old associate professor earlier this week after a 15-month dispute over Nemecek’s transgender lifestyle. It previously had decided not to renew Nemecek’s contract after the spring semester, citing conduct that’s “inconsistent with the Christian faith.”

An ordained Baptist minister who once led churches in Chicago and Grand Rapids, Nemecek attends church regularly with her wife of 35 years, Joanne. Nemecek is legally a male and doesn’t plan to have a sex-change operation, partly to continue the marriage.

The school isn’t saying much publicly because Nemecek, who wants the job back and damages for pain and suffering, filed a sex discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A mediation hearing is scheduled Tuesday in Detroit.

In a recent statement, the school said: “Our curriculum integrates faith in all aspects of our liberal arts education, and we expect our faculty to model Christian character as an example for our students.” The school, which is affiliated with the Free Methodist Church, says her transgender lifestyle violates its employment qualifications. It will pay Nemecek through the end of the academic year.

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