WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids, Michigan, originally agreed to air the hour-long paid program ‘Speechless: Silencing Christians,’ a documentary seeking to expose the agenda of homosexual activists and their impact on families and freedom of religion. The station later canceled the agreement shortly after the Human Rights Campaign, a pro-homosexual organization, issued a national alert against the film urging people to call for its cancellation. The American Family Association of Michigan, however, has now learned that Trevor Thomas, the deputy communications director for the HRC in Washington, D.C., once worked in WOOD-TV’s newsroom.”

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WORLD NET DAILY
Cave Junction, Oregon
February 20, 2009

Censorship query uncovers pro-’gay’ activist
Spokesman worked at station that silenced Christian program
by Drew Zahn

A Michigan television station agreed to broadcast a Christian documentary critical of the “gay rights” movement, but later backed out – and now a family values organization is questioning whether the station’s about-face was influenced by a former newsroom executive who is a homosexual activist.

As WND reported, WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids, Mich., originally agreed to air the hour-long paid program “Speechless: Silencing Christians,” a documentary seeking to expose the agenda of homosexual activists and their impact on families and freedom of religion. The station later canceled the agreement shortly after the Human Rights Campaign, a pro-homosexual organization, issued a national alert against the film urging people to call for its cancellation.

The American Family Association of Michigan, however, has now learned that Trevor Thomas, the deputy communications director for the HRC in Washington, D.C., once worked in WOOD-TV’s newsroom.

Gary Glenn, president of AFA-Michigan, said in a statement to WOOD-TV General Manager Diane Kniowski that he originally suspected the cancellation was merely a matter of political correctness, but now wonders how deeply the connection runs between Thomas and the station.

“Now,” Glenn wrote to Kniowski, “we learn that a public spokesman for the so-called Human Rights Campaign – the national homosexual activist group that claimed credit for pressuring your station to censor and breach its agreement to air AFA’s paid documentary – is a former long-time WOOD-TV newsroom executive who while holding that position was allowed by the station to actively and publicly campaign against the Marriage Protection Amendment approved by Michigan voters in 2004.”

“That new information,” Glenn continued, “leads us to question whether the real story is that WOOD-TV management was unduly influenced by or even acted in collusion with a former high-level staffer who you allowed to openly campaign for homosexual activists’ political agenda while with the station and who now promotes that agenda full-time nationwide.”

According to the HRC website, Thomas worked as an assignment editor and news producer at WOOD-TV from at least September 2001 through November 2004. During his tenure at the station, Thomas also wrote an essay for The Grand Rapids Press, speaking out against Michigan’s 2004 marriage amendment. Following its publication, he served on a number of college panels on “gay,” lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues. Thomas’ work also includes a three-year tenure on the board of directors for the Network of Western Michigan: a non-profit that aides the GLBT community.

Two television station professionals, according to a Michigan Messenger report, denied any hint of collusion between Thomas and the station, and scoffed at the AFA description of Thomas’ news room producer position as either an “executive” or a “high-level staffer.”

The Messenger reached Thomas by phone, but he declined to comment on the allegations of collusion.

A WOOD-TV statement released following cancellation of “Speechless” suggested the station was attempting to back out of the controversy over the program.

“Our station is being bombarded with calls and messages, and we find ourselves in the middle of someone else’s fight,” Kniowski said in the statement. “We are removing ourselves from this matter.”

Glenn, however, says the timing of WOOD-TV’s cancellation announcement – coming only an hour after the HRC’s action alert was issued – suggests there may have been an intentional coordination.

He said WOOD-TV’s claim that it cancelled the broadcast to avoid controversy “is simply nonsensical in light of the station’s actual actions, which were tailor-made to generate as much controversy and publicity as possible.”

“The question,” Glenn continued, “is whether WOOD-TV was influenced by its former editor and producer to handle it this way on purpose to make sure its censorship of the AFA video got as much publicity as possible and their former newsroom executive’s new employer got the credit.”

“Speechless,” hosted by talk show host Janet Parshall, emphasizes the media’s role in promotion of homosexuals’ “radical agenda,” and includes examples of how television shows and movies such as Friends,” “Will & Grace,” “The L-Word,” “The War at Home,” “ER” and “Entourage” attempt to persuade viewers that aversions to homosexuality stem from bigotry and ignorance.

“Speechless” explores the homosexual lobby’s impact on school curriculums. Videos promoted as anti-bullying actually endorsed “gay” lifestyles, and students were forced to view them during school hours. It claims homosexual lobbyists also push for “gay” literature in schools.

According to the program, the homosexual activist agenda demands same-sex “marriage,” teaches children that homosexuality is normal, promotes homosexual service in the armed forces, pushes for hate crime laws that threaten freedom of speech, calls for laws forcing Christian business to hire homosexuals and insists upon reserving minority status and preferential treatment for them.

“If you think that agenda is bad for America, you must do something,” a female voiceover states.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=89523

“The ruling Friday prompted American Family Association of Michigan President Gary Glenn to call for a ballot measure that would ban gay adoptions in the state. ‘What’s best for any child is to have both a mother and a father who are married,’ Glenn said. He said Florida, Arkansas, Mississippi and Utah have bans against gay adoptions.”

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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lansing, Michigan
February 20, 2009

Michigan court recognizes
Illinois adoption by gay couple
by David Eggert, Associated Press Writer

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan courts can oversee a custody dispute between lesbian parents who adopted in Illinois even though Michigan doesn’t formally recognize gay relationships, the state Court of Appeals said Friday.

The court ruled 2-1 that the U.S. Constitution requires state courts to recognize Diane Giancaspro and Lisa Congleton as adoptive parents. It reversed a trial judge who said Michigan’s 2004 voter-approved gay marriage ban kept her from enforcing the women’s parental rights.

“The only relevant consideration in this matter is each individual party’s established relationship as an adoptive parent with the children, not their relationship with each other,” Judges Alton Davis and Stephen Borrello wrote.

Judge Kurtis Wilder dissented because he said Giancaspro didn’t show documents authenticating the Illinois adoption.

“My concern is the well-being of my children. I want them to live in a place where their rights are protected,” Giancaspro said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and the New York-based gay rights group Lambda Legal.

An attempt to reach Congleton was unsuccessful because her phone number was disconnected. The couple’s three children were living with Giancaspro, the ACLU said.

The couple adopted from China while living in Illinois, and the children began living with them in 2003. But the couple’s relationship ended in 2007 after they moved to southwestern Michigan.

Giancaspro sued for custody under Michigan law, but Congleton said the case should be dismissed because neither parent has rights since the state constitution doesn’t allow the recognition of domestic partnerships. The couple never married.

Berrien County Circuit Judge Mabel Johnson Mayfield ruled for Congleton in September 2007, recognizing the validity of the adoption. But the judge said Michigan’s amendment banning gay marriage kept her from enforcing either woman’s parental rights.

The appeals court disagreed with the trial judge and sent the case back to her for a child custody hearing.
The ruling Friday prompted American Family Association of Michigan President Gary Glenn to call for a ballot measure that would ban gay adoptions in the state.

“What’s best for any child is to have both a mother and a father who are married,” Glenn said. He said Florida, Arkansas, Mississippi and Utah have bans against gay adoptions. The ACLU said it was thrilled with the appeals court’s decision.

“Today gay parents and their children can rest easier knowing that they again have access to Michigan courts,” said Kary Moss, the Michigan executive director of ACLU.

Gay couples in Michigan were allowed to jointly adopt children in Washtenaw County but the practice stopped in 2002 after the county’s chief judge said such adoptions violated state law.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/G/GAY_ADOPTIONSITE=MTBIL&SECTION=NATIONAL&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-02-20-21-14-31

Former WOOD-TV news editor/producer who campaigned against state
Marriage Protection Amendment is now spokesman for Washington, D.C.
group that claimed credit for pressuring station to drop paid documentary

Flint, Traverse City stations aired AFA program without controversy

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — The state affiliate of the American Family Association Thursday urged a Grand Rapids television station to reverse its breach of an agreement to air the group’s one-hour documentary on the threat posed to religious freedom by homosexual activists’ political agenda. The American Family Association of Michigan, in an e-mail to NBC affiliate WOOD-TV Channel 8, questioned whether the station’s decision was unduly influenced by its relationship with former WOOD-TV assignment editor and producer Trevor Thomas, now a public spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a national homosexual activist group that last week claimed credit for pressuring the station to cancel the broadcast.

AFA-Michigan President Gary Glenn said in a statement delivered Thursday to WOOD-TV General Manager Diane Kniowski that “the irony of station management’s on-again, off-again gymnastics was so transparent that it would be amusing if the issues addressed by the documentary were not so serious.”

“The documentary details the threat homosexual activists’ political agenda poses to religious freedom and such activists’ efforts to demonize, silence, and eventually criminalize any expression of public opposition to that agenda,” Glenn wrote Kniowski. “Its title is ‘Speechless: Silencing the Christians,’ and your capitulation or perhaps even collusion with homosexual activists’ demands that you censor and cancel the broadcast proves the point. To reassure the public that WOOD-TV is not in collusion with homosexual activists, including a former high-level WOOD-TV staffer, we urge you to reconsider your decision.”

Glenn wrote Kniowski that he “initially thought station management’s clumsy path to censorship resulted from a combination of politically correct handwringing, lack of professional objectivity, or perhaps even incompetence.”

“Now, however, we learn that a public spokesman for the so-called Human Rights Campaign — the national homosexual activist group that claimed credit for pressuring your station to censor and breach its agreement to air AFA’s paid documentary — is a former long-time WOOD-TV newsroom executive who while holding that position was allowed by the station to actively and publicly campaign against the Marriage Protection Amendment approved by Michigan voters in 2004,” Glenn wrote.

“That new information leads us to question whether the real story is that WOOD-TV management was unduly influenced by or even acted in collusion with a former high-level staffer who you allowed to openly campaign for homosexual activists’ political agenda while with the station and who now promotes that agenda full-time nationwide,” Glenn wrote. “The broader question raised by that relationship and your censorship of AFA’s pro-family documentary is whether viewers can trust WOOD-TV to be a fair and impartial source of news regarding the homosexual agenda.”

Glenn cited the Human Rights Campaign’s website which reports that Thomas has served since October 2007 as the group’s deputy communications director.

“Thomas, a journalist by trade, worked as an assignment editor and news producer at West Michigan’s NBC affiliate – WOOD-TV” from at least September 2001 through November 2004, HRC’s website reports, and was allowed by station management while on staff to actively campaign against Michigan’s Marriage Protection Amendment, which in 2004 was overwhelmingly approved by voters including a two-thirds majority in conservative west Michigan, WOOD-TV’s viewing area.
http://www.hrc.org/about_us/9643.htm

HRC’s website states: “In July of 2004, Thomas served as a guest essayist for The Grand Rapids Press, speaking out against an anti-gay marriage amendment on the Michigan ballot. Following its publication, he served on a number of (Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender) panels at Grand Valley State University, Western Michigan University, (and) Aquinas College.

“WOOD-TV initially agreed and accepted payment to air the AFA-produced documentary on Monday, Feb. 9th, at 7:00 p.m. Station management breached that agreement, however, claiming they were concerned about unspecified ill effects of airing it immediately preceding President Obama’s news conference the same evening. Management initially said they were merely delaying the broadcast until Wed., Feb. 11th at 7:00 p.m; however, prior to that time slot, the station announced it was again delaying the broadcast until 2:00 p.m. Saturday.

Wednesday of last week, the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign, which claims to be the nation’s largest homosexual activist group, issued a nationwide e-mail alert urging its members to send e-mails to WOOD-TV demanding the station cancel the broadcast altogether. Within an hour of HRC’s alert, WOOD-TV announced they would do just that.

HRC immediately claimed credit for the decision, issuing a news release titled “Michigan Television Station Pulls Misleading AFA Program Following Announcement of National Action Alert By Human Rights Campaign,” in which HRC President Mark Solomnese boasted: “Within an hour of (HRC’s) action alert announcement, the Grand Rapids station which had planned to air the deceptive programming rescinded that offer. …I am so proud of our members who answered the lies and distortions of the AFA and stopped this campaign of hate and deception.”
http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/campaign/stopthespecial

The timing of HRC’s action alert and WOOD-TV’s announcement of the documentary’s cancellation — coming within an hour of each other — suggests that there may have been coordination between the two, Glenn said.

He said WOOD-TV’s claim that it cancelled the broadcast to avoid controversy “is simply nonsensical in light of the station’s actual actions, which were tailor-made to generate as much controversy and publicity as possible.”

He said WOOD-TV’s announced delay of the broadcast generated media attention and opposition from homosexual activist groups opposed to the broadcast. The station’s repeated delays and public statements over a matter of days invited additional pressure from both sides of the issue, he said, then its decision to cancel the broadcast ensured that local viewers who supported the broadcast would be upset.

AFA’s e-mail system confirmed, for example, that 2,199 e-mails were sent to the station urging it to air the documentary, all from AFA e-mail subscribers who live within 75 miles of Grand Rapids, WOOD-TV’s viewing area.

“Given that station management handled this in the way guaranteed to generate as much controversy and publicity as possible, it’s simply not believable that your decision to censor the broadcast was based on trying to extricate yourselves from a fight you yourself — by your own actions — created,” Glenn wrote Kniowski.
He pointed to the dramatically different experience of two other Michigan television stations — WSMH Fox 66 in Flint and NBC’s WPBN Channels 7&4 in Traverse City — which aired the program Sat., Feb. 7th at 7:00 p.m. as scheduled, without incident.

“The lesson for WOOD management would seem to be that if you want to avoid getting hammered by both sides of the debate on any issue, it’s simple,” Glenn said. “Be professional and impartial, keep an arm’s length relationship with all parties, and run paid programming when you contract to run it. That’s not a difficult concept to understand, and it’s what stations in Flint and Traverse City did without incident and without managing to make themselves the subject of a national news story.”

“The question,” he said, “is whether WOOD-TV was influenced by its former editor and producer to handle it this way on purpose to make sure its censorship of the AFA video got as much publicity as possible and their former newsroom executive’s new employer got the credit.”

Thomas remains involved in the homosexual movement in west Michigan, despite now living in Washington, D.C., HRC’s website reports:

“Thomas’ work also includes a three-year tenure on the board of directors for the Network of Western Michigan: a non-profit that aids the local gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. While in college, he served two years as chair of education for Grand Valley State University’s Gay-Straight Alliance – a position he created. He’s also credited with starting a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender speaker’s program aimed at educating students on sexual orientation and gender identity. Thomas currently serves as an alumni advisor for (GVSU’s) newly created GLBT campus center, expected to open in the fall of 2008.”

Please call or e-mail WOOD-TV today and urge station managers not to cave in to homosexual activists’ demands that they censor the AFA documentary “Speechless: Silencing the Christians.”

Phone: 616-456-8888
E-mail: news@woodtv.com

_______________________________________________________

“To inform America and here in Michigan about the danger homosexual activism and the so-called gay rights movement poses to religious freedom,” said Gary Glenn, president of AFA-Michigan.

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WXMI-TV Channel 17
Grand Rapids, Michigan
February 9, 2009

Anti-gay TV program stirs up controversy

GRAND RAPIDS – A documentary set to air this week in West Michigan has gay and lesbian groups fuming. Some are saying that it’s pushing an agenda of intolerance.

Speechless: Silencing the Christians was produced by the American Family Association. They say it’s meant to counter “Pro-gay Propaganda.

“It’s a paid program being showed in cities around the country including Traverse City and Flint and set to air this week on WOOD-TV. It’s part of the American Family Association’s anti-gay pro traditional family message.

“To inform America and here in Michigan about the danger homosexual activism and the so-called gay rights movement poses to religious freedom,” said Gary Glenn, president of AFA Michigan.

They want to reveal the “Truths” about what they call the “Radical homosexual agenda,” including that homosexuals are not born that way and should not have protected rights.

Colette Beighley is with the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center at Grand Valley State.

“That kind of broadcasting is irresponsible, not only irresponsible, it’s reprehensible,” said Beighley.She had not yet seen the video but read literature about it from the AFA and says it will only spread hatred.

“There’s a direct connect between anti gay propaganda and an increase in hate crimes against the gay community,” said Beighley.

The General Manager for WOOD-TV said they considered not airing the program but felt not airing the documentary would set a bad precedent. She felt it was appropriate to give air time to someone who legitimately paid for it, the same way they would to a political candidate.

The program was supposed to air Monday night but they postponed because of the President’s News Conference. It will still air at 7 pm on a date yet to be announced.

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On the Web: Silencing Christians

http://www.wxmi.com/pages/landing/?blockID=208994&feedID=296

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GRAND RAPIDS PRESS
Grand Rapids, Michigan
February 10, 2009

WOOD-TV considers airing paid program
decrying ‘radical homosexual agenda.

by Ted Roelofs | The Grand Rapids Press

Colette Beighley, assistant director of Grand Valley State University’s Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center, says a show decrying the “radical
homosexual agenda” hurts the image of West Michigan if WOOD-TV chooses to air it.

GRAND RAPIDS — A controversial one-hour paid program on the “radical homosexual agenda” scheduled for WOOD-TV is delayed for the second time as partisans on both sides debate its merit.

Opponents decry it as verging on hate speech, as they press WOOD-TV officials to cancel a special funded by the American Family Association.

But backers are just as passionate in their belief it should air, adding heat to an issue that has long divided West Michigan.

The program was originally slated to air Monday in the time slot before President Barack Obama’s 8 p.m. news conference.

WOOD-TV program director Craig Cole said Tuesday that station officials decided to move it to Wednesday, before it was moved again.

“We didn’t feel that it was the appropriate place, leading into the presidential event,” Cole said.Cole said he had received about a hundred emails on the subject, about evenly split on the issue.

In a letter promoting the program, the American Family Association asserts that most Americans get their “information about the homosexual movement from the secular news media and Hollywood, which not only support but promote the gay agenda. What people know is tainted by pro-homosexual propaganda.

“Colette Beighley, assistant director of Grand Valley State University’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resource Center, called it “irresponsible programming. I am just so disappointed that WOOD-TV would participate in something like this.

“If an organization came into Grand Rapids and wanted to air biased programming slamming the Asian community, West Michigan would send a message that that puts Asians brothers and sisters at risk, Beighley said. “Grand Rapids wants to be a cool city and one of the cornerstones of a cool city is diversity.

“The special, says the American Family Association, will “reveal the truth about the radical homosexual agenda and its impact on the family, the nation and religious freedom.”

It promises to “alert viewers about what’s at stake for the family” if activists get their way.In a statement, WOOD-TV general manager Diane Kniowski said the scheduling of the show “slipped through our filters. We don’t pre-judge people’s ideas or opinions. However, we have restrictions on controversial programming and key time periods.

“Kniowski said the station is offering a time slot for Saturday from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. but had not received a decision from the sponsor. “If the show airs, we will have disclaimers at the beginning and end of the show stating that these are not the opinions or views of this station.”

http://www.mlive.com:80/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2009/02/woodtv_considers_airing_paid_p.html