Jewish World Review Jan.8, 2004 / 14 Teves, 5764

UNHOLY WAR

By Evan Gahr

Prominent Christian leaders now denouncing Alliance For Marriage's queer partner

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | The Alliance for Marriage, which is spearheading the push for a constitutional amendment to limit matrimony to heterosexuals, is coming under fierce attack from its conservative religious base for its collusion with a controversial Muslim group.

AFM's embrace of Islamic Society of Northern America (ISNA), first reported in JewishWorldReview.com, has already mired the group in considerable controversy. Now, four nationally known religious conservatives, including a former presidential candidate and a renowned conservative strategist who helped launch the Religious Right, have decried the connection.

The criticism is likely to sting. Given its source, it can't be dismissed as leftist clap trap or journalistic carping. Already, prominent religious conservatives, including Father Richard John Neuhaus and Barry Freundel, known as "Lieberman's rabbi" because the Connecticut senator worships at his shul, have come under close scrutiny because they serve on the AFM advisory board alongside ISNA. But most of the examination was in Jewish, mainstream and gay publications. Even then, the press coverage took a toll on the AFM.

After JewishWorldReview.com reported the ISNA connection last month, Rabbi Marc Gellman, of "God Squad" fame and perhaps the best known rabbi in America, resigned from the AFM advisory board rather than serve alongside ISNA.

Gellman's resignation was the second time the AFM has lost key Jewish representation because of investigative reporting by JewishWorldReview.com In 2001, just hours after the JWR reported that a group similar to ISNA served on the AFM advisory board, the Orthodox Union withdrew its representative.

The AFM, for its part, cites scholars who deem ISNA a mainstream organization that represents many Muslims. The AFM also boasts that the State Department does not list ISNA as a terrorist organization or terrorist front-group.

Religious conservatives answer to the Almighty, not the State Department.

The AFM's rationales are distinctions without moral differences from the perspective of Gary Bauer, who gained national recognition when he made a feisty bid for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2000, and Free Congress Foundation head Paul Weyrich, who coined the term "Moral Majority" for Jerry Falwell. They contend that AFM's association with ISNA is a morally problematic fools' errand that, if not corrected, could seriously damage the anti-gay marriage movement.

Indeed, the plain fact is that ISNA, regardless of how its labeled, has indulged the kind of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-American sentiments that long ago got Louis Farrakhan banished from polite society — and when closely examined is likely to repulse many Americans.

In Congressional testimony, terrorism expert Steve Emerson said that Hamza Yousef, who serves on CAIR's board of advisors, told a 1995 meeting of the Islamic Society of North America that "the Jews would have us believe that G-d has this bias to this small tribe in the middle of the Sinai dessert and all the rest of humanity is just rubbish. I mean that this is the basic doctrine of the Jewish religion and that's why it is a most racist religion."

Along the same lines, Muzammil Siddiqi of Islamic Society of America, has personally voiced similar noxious statements. According to author Steven Schwartz he told an anti-Israel "Jerusalem Day" rally on October 28, 2000 that "America has to learn . . . if you remain on the side of injustice, the wrath of G-d will come. Please, all Americans. Do you remember that? If you continue doing injustice, and tolerate injustice, the wrath of G-d will come."

	READ THE ORIGINAL EXPOSES
	Queer allies: The little-noticed alliance between gay marriage opponents and alleged terrorist sympathizer What the Alliance for Marriage heads and board members either don't know or don't want you to know One less fellow traveler. 'God Squad' rabbi bolts Queer Alliance. Is 'Lieberman's rabbi' next? Is somebody you respect on the Alliance For Marriage's board? Click HERE to check. Comment on this series by clicking here.

This kind of stuff makes Gary Bauer cringe. After 9/11 Americans have no tolerance for anyone soft on terrorism, he explains. AFM's association with ISNA, an "apologist for radical Islam" and guilty of "crass anti-Semitism," sends the "wrong signal" to the American people and "doesn't help our cause."

Weyrich has previously told JewishWorldReview.com that collaboration with groups like ISNA is too high a price to pay to fight gay marriage. Now, he's voiced even fiercer criticism of the AFM's recent conduct. Informed that AFM vice-president Paul Rondeau had provided unsolicited derogatory "information" about this writer to a journalist who followed up on his story, Weyrich likened the AFM to Leninist disciples. "He exhorted the faithful to always change the subject when you can't win an argument."

Can the AFM really change the subject? Bill Donahue, the outspoken head of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which fights anti-Catholic bias in the media and popular culture, worries that liberal media outlets at some point is likely to seize upon the ISNA connection to discredit the anti-gay marriage movement. "I don't need those kind of headaches."

Donahue has a very simple solution. Dump ISNA.

Although Donahue, Weyrich and Bauer all voiced strong moral objections to the ISNA connection, another nationally known religious figure cites Christian Scripture to make the point even more stark. The Rev. Bailey Smith, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, was mortified to learn about the ISNA connection — and feverishly pro-Israel Baptists will likely have a similar reaction.

Smith says that to adamantly pro-Israel Southern Baptists the alliance with ISNA is unfathomable. "Is there any group that is hurting the world more than radical Islam?" The AFM alliance with ISNA, he adds, contravenes Christian Scriptures. "You can't mix darkness with light."

Will sunlight already focused on the AFM, but now intensified by criticism from the Christian Right, make the best disinfectant?

Or shall the forces of darkness prevail?