Right wing group appears to have invented fake "hate" attack for sympathy.

Here is the original story that the fanatical fundamentalists are spreading through the internet. According to the Mullahs at Focus on the Family a peaceful group of Christians, witnessing as to how their prayers can cure homosexuality, were set upon with a “barrage of verbal abuse and one man was reportedly assaulted by a gay activist.” This supposed at a county fair.

According to Regina Griggs this “cured” homosexual was standing there mind his own business and: “They walked by him and hit him in the back -- attacked him.” Focus on the Family says that police “kicked the gay activists out of the fair and encouraged” the poor, persecuted Christians to press charges, but they chose not to do so. One should know that Griggs has been on an antigay vendetta ever since she found out her son was gay.

The Christian “news” service Lifesite, never one to pass up an antigay rumor, reported on the story but added their own unique, fanciful touch. They described “angry homosexual activists “ who “harassed and assaulted” these peaceful, loving Christians.

They also claimed that police “ejected” the violent activist and that the victim of this assault “declined to press charges citing the example of Jesus Christ.” Oh, how sanctimonious. Another Focus on the Family outlet described how a “cheerful day at a Virginia county fair ended in chaos” after an attack by “homosexual activists.”

The folks over at Ex-Gay Watch were skeptical. First, they tried to find out what gay group had a booth at the fair, since they were the ones which Focus on the Family and others accused of the assault. They found it was the Arlington Gay and Lesbian Alliance and they contacted the president, Daniel Hays, who was perplexed. He said:

I worked several evening shifts at the Arlington Gay & Lesbian Alliance booth. I did hear one, what I would call “heated” discussion, but never saw any thing beyond raised voices. Our organization purposefully did not do anything to even interact with them, but I cannot speak to what individual fairgoers may or may not have said or done when I was not there.

Next they contacted Denis Roller, event manager for the fair. She said that if there was an incident nobody bothered to tell the fair about it. She said she was at the fair almost the whole time it was open and knew of no such altercation.

Next Exgay Watch decided to check with the Arlington police. After all the police supposedly evicted a violent homosexual activist and urged his victims to press charges. Police media Relations officer, John Lisle, said he knew nothing about the alleged attack. He asked around the police department and couldn’t find anyone else who knew of such an incident either. He read the report issued by Christian groups and he spent another two days trying to find anyone who knew about such an attack. He came up empty handed. There was no police report on such an incident and no police officer could remember such an incident.

What are we left with? The religious group won’t name anyone as the attacker. In spite of the prevelance of cell phones with cameras no one photographed the assault that allegedly took place. The gay group in question says they know nothing about it. The fair organizers know nothing about it and were there most of the time themselves. Police have no record of the incident either and, so far, no police officer has recollection of such an attack.

The anti-gay religious group in question conveniently refused to file a formal complaint against the attacker thus assuring that no record would exist to verify their story. They say they were following the example of Jesus. So instead of filing a complaint against the attacker they spread the story around the internet to smear the entire gay group at the fair. I would have thought that if they were turning the other cheek they wouldn’t be broadcasting this story around the net so heavily.

The antigay hate group, Americans for Truth (a sure sign they are distorting facts), repeated the claim. They quoted the group in question as saying: “As happens every year, gay activists disrupted our booth activities.” Every year! And no one knows about it -- talk about stealth attacks.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Focus on the Family has invented, or reported, false stories. Maybe it happened but no evidence for the attack seems to exist. And since the victims were supposedly being so holy, as to not press charges, we have nothing but their word to go on. And that’s not much. So what are the odds they were lying? Substantial, I would think.

Interesting thing about these religious fanatics. They are so quick to quote Scripture. Yet, I have to wonder what they would think about: "thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." Proverbs says that "a lying tongue" is an "abomination" to God. Matthew wrote that among the things "which defile a man" is "false witness". Revelations said "all liar shall have their part in the lake which burnest with fire and brimstone." Since they are so quick to use that book as weapon to bash people over the head with I have to wonder why they ignore it when it comes to their own vicious, smear campaigns.

Focus on the Family editor lies to her readers.

Here is a question. What makes a lie a lie? Two things: one is it intentional and does it conflict with reality or the facts.

I say intentional because if someone gives you directions but misunderstood where you wanted to go they didn’t lie to you they made an error. A lie is when you have information that one thing is true and say the other.

And that brings me to an editor over at the Theopublican outfit Focus on the Family. They run a website called citizenlink.com. At that site a editor, Jennifer Mesko, told an outright lie. They lie a lot and the make a whole lot more mistakes as well. I ignored Mesko’s first lie. If I wrote about lies told by fundamentalists I wouldn’t have time for anything else and still not even scratch the surface.

But now Mesko repeats the first lie and then doubles it. But she brags that she’s a “Christian journalist” who adheres “to truth and accuracy.” I have no doubt she’s a Christian. I don’t know if writing for Focus on the Family makes her a journalist. But I do know she is a bald faced liar.

The fundies at Focus on the Family are vehemently anti-gay but that’s no surprise. And they push a series of fraudulent ministries that claim to be “ex-gay”. That is their right. If people are screwed up enough to get involved with them there is little I can, or would, do about it. That is their problem. A gaggle of these misfits were holding their annual convention where they spout the fundamentalist line. Except they were unhappy because this year a lot of their former “cures” were gathering across not far away to denounce their previous ministries as fraudulent.

So you have the picture. A group of “exgays” are on one side and a group of “ex-exgays” are on the other side. Not real exciting. But Jennifer claimed in her article the ex-exgays conference only attracted 100 people versus an alleged 1,000 at the exgay conference. (For the record a large percentage of the people at the exgay conference were just people who hate homosexuals or fundamentalist parents who can’t understand how one of their kids could be gay.) Now on the surface this is even more boring. Who cares who had what number of registrations? It proves nothing. The problem is that Jennifer invented her claim. How do I know this? Simple: she published her claim about the ex-exgay conference one full day before it actually started. If you go to the Focus on the Family site you will see the article is dated June 28th. The ex-exgay conference began the evening of June 29th. Any claim as to actual attendance at that point would be fraudulent.

Clearly Jennifer knew nothing about the attendance at the conference in question since it had not yet started. She claimed she did. And various blogs and websites noted her claim and questioned how she knew this figure before the conference actually took place. Of course because her dishonesty was question Jennifer claims she is under attack by “gay activists”. She ignores the fact that she wrote an article about the results of a conference before it took place.

Was this intentional? Of course, I don’t know how one could write that unintentionally. She could not have a source for the number since no one in the world knew what the attendance would be in advance. Without a source for her claim she could only have made it up. And since the conference did not yet start she knew any number she put down would be dishonest.

Now we go to Jennifer’s second lie also published by Focus on the Family. She wrote:

The article I wrote on Thursday included this line about the Exodus conference: "The meeting, which began Tuesday and wraps up Sunday, has drawn close to 1,000 people – and no protesters so far. Across town, a counter-conference drew about 100 people."
Apparently miffed at the reference to "100 people," Roberts accused me of "supplying attendance figures seemingly out of thin air." But I got the numbers from reliable people who attended both conferences – although their thinness is not a matter of record.

Note how she leaves out the fact that her article was published in advance of the actual ex-exgay conference. And she claims “I got the numbers from reliable people who attended both conferences”. That is actually two lies in one. No one gave her those figures based on attending the second conference since no one had yet attended it. She never tells her gullible readers at Focus on the Family that she published her claims BEFORE the actual event in question.

The starting date of the conference is not in question. The publication date of Jennifer’s article is not in question. And anyone can see she published prior to the event. She covers that up and then makes it out that she is under attack by nasty gay activists. Actually she is under attack because she lied to her readers and is now lying about the lies. This seems morally acceptable to Focus on the Family.