Dear AFA-Michigan supporter,

Here’s additional testimony to AFA-Michigan’s effectiveness in providing a voice for traditional family values in the mainstream news media. Earlker this week, we issued a news release which resulted in the following story broadcast by and appearing on the website of WNEM-TV Channel 5 in Saginaw.

One of the most telling measures of AFA-Michigan’s effectiveness is how professional homosexual activists react when they realize their propaganda message no longer enjoys a monopoly in mainstream media news coverage. Please note immediately following the WNEM-TV story below a commentary written by Sean Kosofsky of the homosexual activist group Triangle Foundation, posted today on his online blog. At the end, Kosofsky urges homosexual acitivists to contact WNEM-TV to protest their factually accurate coverage.

As always, thank you for your continued support, which makes all that we do possible!

Gary Glenn, President
American Family Association of Michigan
www.AFAMichigan.org

WNEM-TV
Saginaw, Michigan
April 24, 2008

“Day Of Silence” has parents, group upset

American Family Association of Michigan
urging parents to keep kids home from school

SAGINAW, Mich. — A statewide family values organization is urging parents to keep their children home from school if their school is among those planning to allow a national homosexual activist group’s scheduled protest Friday to protest the treatment of gay teens.

Earlier this week, TV-5 broke the story of how students across Michigan, including Clare High School, are planning Friday to protest bullying, especially when it comes against kids leading alternative lifestyles.

Participating students will not talk or participate in class discussions during the school day.

The American Family Association of Michigan, which proposed and co-authored a Marriage Protection Amendment approved by voters in 2004, said its national affiliate has contacted tens of thousands of parents and grandparents statewide, urging them to “stage a protest of their own, using their public school tax dollars,” association President Gary Glenn said Wednesday.

“Many parents and grandparents are displeased that their local school is being used by a national homosexual activist group to stage a protest promoting and enabling sexual activity that poses a severe threat to children’s health,” Glenn said.

“If school officials are willing to allow the normal education process to be disrupted for the sake of promoting immoral and unhealthy behavior, one way parents can express their displeasure is by refusing to expose their children to that message.”

For more information on the two organizations promoting the event and boycotting it, visit GLSEN and AFA.

Mission America, a national organization that monitors homosexual activists’ activities in public schools, including the so-called “Day of Silence,” lists the following schools in Michigan that are reported by GLSEN or other sources to be sponsoring or supporting the protest or allowing students to refuse to participate in normal classroom activities:

ACADEMY OF FLINT
ARTS ACADEMY IN THE WOODS
ATHENS HIGH SCHOOL
BATH HIGH SCHOOL
BERKLEY HIGH SCHOOL
BLACK RIVER HIGH SCHOOL
BLOOMFIELD HILLS ANDOVER HIGH SCHOOL
CANTON HIGH SCHOOL
CESAR CHAVEZ ACADEMY
CITY MIDDLE/HIGH SCHOOL
CLARE HIGH SCHOOL
COMMUNITY HIGH SCHOOL
CRANBROOK KINGSWOOD SCHOOL
CRESTON HIGH SCHOOL
DEWITT HIGH SCHOOL
DEXTER HIGH SCHOOL
EAST GRAND RAPIDS HIGH SCHOOL
EAST KENTWOOD HIGH SCHOOL
EAST LANSING HIGH SCHOOL
EASTERN HIGH SCHOOL
EVERETT HIGH SCHOOL
FARMINGTON HIGH SCHOOL
FRUITPORT HIGH SCHOOL
GREENHILLS SCHOOL
GREENVILLE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
GROSSE POINTE SOUTH HIGH SCHOOL
GULL LAKE HIGH SCHOOL
WYLIE E.GROVES HIGH SCHOOL
HASLETT HIGH SCHOOL
HAZEL PARK HIGH SCHOOL
HOLLAND HIGH SCHOOL
HURON HIGH SCHOOL –Ann Arbor
INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY
JACKSON HIGH SCHOOL
KALAMAZOO CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL
KENOWA HILLS HIGH SCHOOL
KELLOGGSVILLE HIGH SCHOOL
LAKEVIEW HIGH SCHOOL–Battle Creek
L’ANSE CREUSE HIGH SCHOOL
LANSING SEXTON HIGH SCHOOL
LAPEER WEST SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
LOY NORRIX HIGH SCHOOL
MATTAWAN HIGH SCHOOL
MONA SHORES HIGH SCHOOL
NORTH FARMINGTON HIGH SCHOOL
OAK PARK HIGH SCHOOL
OKEMOS HIGH SCHOOL
PINCKNEY COMMUNITY HIGH SCHOOL
PIONEER HIGH SCHOOL
PLAINWELL HIGH SCHOOL
PLYMOUTH HIGH SCHOOL
RIVER ROUGE HIGH SCHOOL
THE ROEPER CITY AND COUNTRY UPPER SCHOOL
ROGERS HIGH SCHOOL
ROYAL OAK HIGH SCHOOL
SALEM HIGH SCHOOL
SALINE HIGH SCHOOL
TAWAS AREA HIGH SCHOOL
WEST OTTAWA HIGH SCHOOL
WYOMING PARK HIGH SCHOOL

————————————————–

BLOG O’ QUEER
Detroit, Michigan
April 25, 2008

Horrible coverage of Day of Silence in Michigan

by Sean Kosofsky, Director of Policy
The Triangle Foundation

WNEM has run one of the worst stories I have seen in recent years on LGBT (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender) issues by using insensitive and inflammatory terms to cover the Day of Silence today..

First, the headline is pure AFA propaganda. Then referring to the AFA as a “family values” organization is a flat out lie. Then they referred to gays and lesbians as living an “alternative lifestyle” and referred (to) us as “homosexuals.” They also keep referring to DOS as a protest, as if there will demonstrations occurring in schools. The AFA lies in the piece by saying they have contacted tens of thousands of parents in MI. They have no such list in MI. If they mean they are reaching parents through the meda (sic).

They also ran no response to Gary Glenn of the AFA. It is completely biased coverage. They basically ran the press release of AFA.

Contact them at:

WNEM-TV
Building C, Suite D
55409 Gateway Centre
Flint, MI 48507
Phone: 810-232-3900
Newsroom: 810-234-5607
Email Ian Rubin
ian.rubin@wnem.com

AFA-Michigan President Gary Glenn testified before the Royal Oak City Commission, urging commissioners to protect families and children by blocking Internet access to pornographic material on the city library’s computers. The issue arose after a man was arrested at the Royal Oak Public Library in February for using a library computer to access child pornography. The city commission then heard testimony from a library board member and library director before unanimously approving a resolution instructing the library to block Internet porn access. The library board is still dragging its feet, and AFA-Michigan is urging commissioners to adopt an ordinance or city charter amendment requiring Internet pornography filters.

(Fast forward to 24:30 of the video for Glenn’s six-minute testimony, and to 34:08 for an additional hour and fifteen minutes of further testimony and discussion on the issue.)

MICHIGAN INFORMATION AND RESEARCH SERVICE
The State Capitol
Lansing, Michigan
April 1, 2008

Senators: AFA-Michigan not bullying on bills

The American Family Association of Michigan (AFAM) is crowing that two GOP senators have yanked their sponsorship of anti-bullying legislation, issuing joint press releases with Sens. Randy Richardville (R-Monroe) and Valde Garcia (R-Howell).

HB 4162 and HB 4091 passed the lower chamber last year and have been sitting in the Senate Education Committee ever since, but a Capitol rally last week brought the bills back to the forefront. There’s also SB 107 sponsored by Sen. Glenn Anderson (D-Westland), but proponents say they’re focused on the House bills.

AFAM blasted a lobby day event put on by the Safe Schools Coalition on Wednesday pushing “Matt’s Safe School Law,” named after Matt Epling, an East Lansing eighth-grader who took his own life in 2002 after severe hazing incidents.

School districts would have six months to adopt an anti-bullying policy or face potential future action by the Legislature (”Bullying Bills Primed For Movement,” 3/13/07).

AFAM President Gary Glenn blasts the legislation as promoting the “homosexual agenda” by including gender identity and homosexuality as personal characteristics a person could not be bullied for. But Sean Kosofsky, policy director for the gay rights group the Triangle Foundation, said the House bills don’t have a list of protected groups.

In an e-mailed release Wednesday morning, Glenn accused the Triangle Foundation of instituting a dress code for the lobby day, which attracted more than 100 people, including Michigan State Police Director Peter Munoz.

Glenn unleashed a response that raised the ire of the Triangle Foundation: “In the sad reality of enabling emotional trauma and delusion that comprises their stock in trade,” Glenn said, “it is not a joking matter to wonder if the Triangle Foundation’s wardrobe instructions will further traumatize or inhibit the emotionally disturbed men who claim they’re really women, who had every serious intent of wearing a dress to the state Capitol and using the women’s restrooms while they’re there. Is the Triangle Foundation asking ‘lobbying day’ participants to go back into the closet for mere political expedience?”

Kosofsky retorted: “There’s no dress code for our lobby day. We’ve had people with Mohawks and people in jeans and T-shirts. It’s come as you are. …This is the politics of distraction. That’s why they bring up cross-dressing and women’s restrooms. … The AFAM isn’t a pro-family organization. They’re a hate group.”

AFAM issued a press release announcing Garcia had dropped his support for SB 0107 four hours later on Wednesday. A similar release with Richardville followed on Friday. But the senators stress AFAM didn’t bully them into retracting their support.

“The AFAM had concerns, but they didn’t pressure me to change my mind,” Garcia said. “They’re just now getting involved…I always had concerns.”

“That’s not the reason I do things,” Richardville told MIRS. Anderson concurred that he didn’t believe his colleagues had caved to AFAM, saying he held them both in “high regard.”

Garcia said he became more aware of problems with the bill after he signed on last year. Furthermore, he points out neither have technically withdrawn their names because that can’t happen until legislation comes before the Senate. Anderson said Garcia had told him of his decision. He stressed they’re “still in the process of working out differences.”

Kosofsky said it’s moot. The focus is on getting the House bills passed, which have more updated language than Anderson’s bill. He described Garcia’s and Richardville’s actions as “disheartening,” but felt confident they’d sign on to the final legislation.

“Gary Glenn is manufacturing dissent where there’s not any,” he said.

Garcia and Richardville said they were concerned about bullying as a problem, but did not want to protect specific classes of people based on sex, race, sexual orientation, etc. It’s the same argument used against hate crime legislation — a crime’s a crime, so it’s no different to attack someone even if race, for instance, is a motivating factor.

Richardville notes sexual orientation is included, but factors like “physical size, what part of the city kids live in and what their clothes look like” are not. He would like to see a more general anti-bullying bill. “Everyone should be protected,” Richardville said, “not just certain classes.”

Garcia agrees that “inadvertently, you leave something out, someone out.”
Glenn calls the legislation a “Trojan horse.”

“(It) would have no real effect on bullying but is being backed by homosexual activist groups who hope to use legitimate public concern about student safety as a ruse to establish — for the first time ever, anywhere in Michigan law — special ‘protected class’ status based on homosexual behavior and cross-dressing,” Glenn claims.

Richardville said he’s not interested in championing anyone’s “agenda.”

Anderson said he’s received several e-mails from people “who don’t believe some people should be protected. I believe all children should. (Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) students should not be in fear.”

He also said AFAM is using the bill as a fundraiser and to motivate its base. He said it’s “fanning bigotry across the state, anxiety across the state.”

“Unfortunately, we’re talking about school kids here,” Anderson said. “It’s difficult to express how I feel about someone using that to raise money when not all children are afforded a safe environment to learn.”

Richardville said he doesn’t doubt that gay students — and those perceived as gay — face bullying at school.

“I don’t espouse that lifestyle, but there are students figuring those things out. I just don’t think we should spell things out (in legislation),” Richardville said. “That’s not my agenda item.”

He condemns “radical” groups that use hate speech, like the Kansas Westboro Baptist Church’s “God hates fags” campaign. Richardville said he views issues through a Christian lens in which you “love the sinner, but hate the sin.”

Richardville said after talking with Education Chair Wayne Kuipers (R-Holland), he believes taking out the specific groups will make it easier to pass the bill. Anderson said he’s willing to compromise and remains optimistic.

“If you try to get everything, you won’t get everything,” Richardville said.

http://www.mirsnews.com