Cross posted on Amplify 10,000 people went to the Pride Charlotte festival in North Carolina, and it looked like a really awesome event. One group, called God Has a Better, way released a statement on the day of the pride festival that began with this:

We are here today to reach out and resist –– to reach out to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community with compassion, as neighbors and friends and fellow-workers, and to declare God’s great love for GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender] people.
We acknowledge the fact that homophobia is alive and well in some churches, and we renounce and repudiate that hateful and destructive attitude.

Sounds good, right? Well, they decided to start with a “tolerance” message, when clearly they stand for anything but that:

Our love also compels us to speak the truth, and we do not believe that all sexual orientations should be celebrated.

We do not celebrate the fact that some people believe they are women trapped in men’s bodies;

We do not celebrate the fact that two men or two women cannot reproduce their own unique offspring and that same-sex families guarantee that a child will never have either a mother or a father;

We do not celebrate the fact that some people choose to surgically mutilate their God-given organs and must take hormones for the rest of their lives just to be at peace with themselves;
We do not celebrate the sexual confusion that exists in many young people today, to the point that they can only identify themselves “as genderqueer”;
We do not celebrate the pain and brokenness that exists in the lives of many of those attending Pride Charlotte today –– completely apart from societal rejection –– and we proclaim to our GLBT friends that God has a better way, that there is a place of wholeness and transformation to be found in Jesus. And we are here for the long-term to help them on that journey.

 Wow. Both above quotes really were in the same statement, found in its entirety here. The contradictions are astounding, and this makes very angry. They start by saying they understand the plight of GLTBQ Americans and want to each out with compassion, and its all just lies to try to hide the fact that they are bigots. How dare they say that they want to reach out the GLBTQ community as friends and neighbors, when they are so ignorant and homophobic as to say “We do not celebrate the pain and brokenness that exists in the lives of many of those attending Pride Charlotte today”

Pain and brokenness? Excuse me, but the Pride Charlotte festival was a gathering of 10,000 people (as opposed to the 500 people there to protest) to celebrate equality and tolerance. The Charlotte Observer reports that

Festival goers listened to music on two stages and browsed among more than 80 vendors.

Saturday's activities also included a four-mile run and alcohol-free dance.

People of all ages, including parents and children, moved through Saturday's crowd wearing T-shirts supporting gay pride.

“It's about having fun,” said Pride committee member Su Cummings. “It's not political. It's about family and friends.”

Doesn’t sound like pain and brokenness to me.

There were some witty signs at Pride Charlotte as well:

“There is no 'better way' than being Human”, “God is militant transgender feminist”, and “Focus on your own family” (which is mocking the homophobes over at “Focus on the Family” )

 “God has a better way” sugarcoats their message in equality lingo, but they are 100% intolerant and anti-gay. I think that much of what they are saying comes from ignorance rather than hate, but still. In that same statement, they also say

We don't believe it is right for major Charlotte-based companies like Bank of America and Wachovia and Duke Energy to pour tens of thousands of dollars into a radical organization like the Human Rights Campaign, an organization that has stated that supporters of male-female marriage are “right wing extremists” and that mandates that businesses must have special bathroom accommodations for employees undergoing sex-change surgery.

We are saddened by the fact that some of those who came out of the closet forty years now are now trying to put conservative Christians in the closet.

We don't believe in tampering with the foundations of human society – male-female marriage and family – and creating a new institution previously unknown in human history.

We utterly reject the new theologies that advocate “Queering Christ” and writing “Queer Commentaries” on the Bible, and we say to Charlotte and the nation, “By God's grace, it stops here.”

I have been to the Human Rights Campaign headquarters in DC and met some of the people who work there, and there is nothing radical about it.  I don't know what God Has A Better Way is referencing in its claims about HRC, but is it actually considered controversial to say

By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all. 

That is on the HRC website under about us.  If that is considered radical, then what does God Has A Better way consider normal?  Well, apparently its this: 

 Dr Brown mention lots of examples of tolerance and equality such as Obama’s pride event at the Whitehouse and Heather Has two mommies in schools, and then he says how bad that all is.  He also stretches the truth and exaggerates to make his point, and he jumps to the gay activist agenda line a few time. 

In my mind, the “gay activist agenda” is to fight for equality, and that is in no way a bad thing.