I recall first learning of James Robison at a Christian revival meeting in Muskogee, Oklahoma.  It was reported that some felt James was the next Billy Graham. He was on track to speak to more people than Graham ever would.  

The Tom White child sex abuse scandal is going national.  A widely published Associated Press story has spread the news that White, age 64, the longtime executive director of the international Christian Right organization Voice of the Martyrs (VOM), apparently committed suicide last week as police investigated the alleged molestation of a ten year old girl.

I detailed the basics of the story and the implications for the wider Religious Right in a post here at Talk to Action on Sunday.

How far is the school privatization juggernaut willing to go to disguise and promote their agenda?  The Betsy DeVos-led American Federation for Children, through its PA affiliate Students First and its funding recipients, is financing the campaign of an openly gay, African American, Muslim woman for State Representative (188th District - West Philadelphia) in Pennsylvania's Democratic primary.

The movement that claims that it is about defending and/or restoring the sacredness and primacy of the nuclear family far too often fails its own central value.  It also too often fails to come clean about the ways in which its own culture enables pedophiles and take appropriate action. It further notably fails in holding perpetrators accountable.

Given this movement's concern about the integrity of the family as among the highest of values, we would reasonably expect that it would hold itself to very high standards. But the simple truth is that that has not happened.

In a recent sermon, Bishop Daniel Jenky of the Catholic Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, managed to embarrass himself and the Church by engaging in some of the most incendiary acts of false equivalence by any religious leader in recent years.

The primate of Peoria distinguished himself by equating non-dogmatic Catholics with Judas Iscariot, and President Obama's policies with those of Hitler and Stalin.

The Broadway tune goes "Love Makes the World Go 'Round." For the Christian Right, "Controversial ads make the cash registers sing."
Less than two months after launching its pathetically unsuccessful campaign to get the retailer JC Penney to dump Ellen DeGeneres as their spokesperson, the American Family Association's OneMillionMoms is attacking Urban Outfitters for its April catalog featuring an image of two young women kissing.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "The company's president and CEO, Richard Hayne, is a known conservative and he donated over $13,000 to the Rick Santorum campaign." Hayne also donated $10,000 to Republican Meg Whitman's failed California gubernatorial run.

Inquiring minds want to know: Why would an conservative Christian group that calls itself OneMillionMoms and has only 40,000 members, be taken seriously?

Sunday is Earth Day, a time when a lot of us will be thinking about how we can better care for our planet to ensure it remains habitable for future generations.

Well, not all of us. Some people will be thinking about how the Bible says it's all right to pretty much do whatever we want with the Earth and not worry about a thing.

"A-1 Self Storage was one of the original donors who helped the founders of Invisible Children travel to Uganda and make the documentary Invisible Children: The Rough Cut which led to the creation of Invisible Children, Inc the 510 C 3 non-profit organization... The contributions of A-1 Self Storage have been crucial to the growth and success of Invisible Children"

-- quote from current Invisible Children web page, crediting the Caster family business A1 Self Storage with providing crucial funding that launched Invisible Children. The Caster family was one of the biggest donors funding California's Proposition 8 and has just been exposed as one of the biggest funders, in 2008, of the virulently anti-LGBT rights National Organization For Marriage.

Today, Friday the 20th, two national human rights efforts will hold awareness events in American schools. One, the Gay, Straight, and Lesbian Education Network (GLSEN) will hold its annual Day Of Silence, to raise awareness about anti-LGBT bullying and harassment in schools.

The other effort, Invisible Children, is also holding an event today, called "Cover The Night". While IC, behind the KONY 2012 viral video, states that it is pro-LGBT rights, the organization has extensive ties to the hard, antigay politicized evangelical right; in fact, Invisible Children's own website states that the organization was started with "crucial" seed money from one of the top funders of both California's anti-same sex marriage Proposition 8 and the anti-gay rights group the National Organization For Marriage.

Invisible Children has an extensive history of funding and promotion by anti-gay rights entities, summarized in this article.

The annual Day of Silence,initiated in 1996, has been observed in schools across the nation in an effort to protest the bullying and harassment of gay and lesbian students. Since 2000, the annual event has been sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight  Education Network (GLSEN), and since 2005 Religious Right organizations have sponsored very visible and widely-criticized efforts to counter this event.  This year the Day of Silence is competing with a different type of event - Invisible Children's week of activities closing with "Cover the Night," also on April 20.

In early March, Invisible Children burst onto the world stage with its KONY 2012 video promoting its "Stop Kony" campaign. The video focused on Joseph Kony, the Uganda warlord and leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, a guerrilla group with a long and violent history that includes turning kidnapped children into child soldiers.

The KONY 2012 video went mega-viral; surpassing 100 million views in six days and breaking previous records set by Susan Boyle's April 2009 appearance on the television program "Britain's Got Talent," which hit that mark in 9 days, and Lady Gaga's Bad Romance video, which took 18 days to surpass 100 million views.

Not long after the organization became a social media phenomenon, its co-founder Jason Russell was captured on video running naked along a busy San Diego street, cursing and ranting about the devil. That video also went viral.

While the video, and Russell's mental breakdown, have been extensively reported on, Invisible Children's broad connections to the Religious Right have not received much media attention.

This Friday, students all over America will choose to remain quiet in school. They'll be participating in the Day of Silence, an annual event designed to protest the bias and bullying that often silences gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students.

The premise behind the event is simple: Students attend classes but do not speak for the entire day. The Day of Silence isn't sponsored by the schools. It's run by students, often through a Gay-Straight Alliance Club that many schools now have. (Ironically, these clubs exist thanks to a federal law backed by Religious Right groups, which were eager to get Christian clubs into public schools.)

[UPDATE: also see Invisible Children Touts Ties To NOM & Proposition 8 Funders and Invisible Children's "Cover the Night" is April 20 - on LGBT "Day of Silence", by Talk To Action contributor Rachel Tabachnick.]

Since the eruption of Invisible Children's record-breaking KONY 2012 viral video in early March, a considerable body of evidence has emerged which ties the nonprofit, and its leadership, to the American Protestant evangelical right. This is a summary of that evidence - which includes the recent revelation, by LGBT rights group Truth Wins Out, that in 2007 Invisible Children officially applied to be one of the Christian ministries supported by an evangelical right-wing nonprofit called the Barnabas Group.

In early 1916, the First World War was entering its third year. For over two years the German army had been locked in a stalemate with the forces of Britain and France on the Western Front.  The German high command decided on a strategy intended to "bleed France white" by drawing the French Army into a battle of attrition centered on the forts of Verdun.   But in pursuit of this strategy, the Germans almost bled themselves out instead.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and the most powerful leader of the the Catholic Church in the United States -- may be leading his church towards a similar outcome, having adopted a similar strategy towards groups seeking greater accountability for the Catholic hierarchy's handling of pedophile clergy.

Recently a bill reached the desk of Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam that would encourage public school teachers to discuss the alleged "controversy" over evolution and offer them legal protection if they teach creationist concepts.

Haslam indicated that he opposed the so-called "monkey bill," but he refused to veto it. Instead, he allowed it to become law without his signature.

In the trailer for his new documentary "Monumental," TV actor Kirk Cameron has an 'a-ha! 'moment. While visiting Christian historical revisionist David Barton, Cameron exclaims: "So hold on. The United States Congress was commissioning and printing Bibles to be given to all the people because they knew that that's what would produce the character necessary to make America blossom and flourish and thrive."

It doesn't take much for the Christian Right to embrace a narrative of martyrdom. And if you're in showbiz and you've been criticized for anti-gay remarks, the boys in the band - the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, American Values' Gary Bauer, the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer among others - will automatically leap to your defense.

Lights, camera, action! - it's close-up time for Kirk Cameron.