Harvard Accused Of Holding "Hate Conference"

 BURLINGTON, VT  -- One week after spearheading a successful petition drive that led to Apple removing an anti-gay iPhone app, Truth Wins Out has turned its attention to confronting a bitterly divisive and homophobic conference at Harvard University. On April 1-2, the Harvard Extension Service and Learning Society will be hosting the "Social Transformation Conference," featuring religious extremists who are falsely billed as "leading voices for the faith-based social transformation culture."

Truth Wins Out will place a full-page ad in The Harvard Crimson on Thursday, March 31, to educate the campus and the local community on the extreme ideas espoused by conference speakers who belong to the "Seven Mountains Movement." The intolerant idea behind this radical plan is to "reclaim" and "hold dominion" over seven key spheres of society: education, arts, family, media, business, government, and religion. Truth Wins Out's Executive Director, Wayne Besen, will be in Boston and available for media interviews for the duration of the conference, as well as TWO researcher, Bruce Wilson.

TWO will also co-sponsor a Join the Impact Massachusetts protest against this conference: 12 Noon, Saturday April 2, at the Northwest Science Building (52 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA). There may also be a student protest on Friday evening, further details, TBA.

"This is a divisive conference that demonizes and dehumanizes entire groups of people," said Truth Wins Out's Executive Director Wayne Besen. "It promotes religion-based bigotry in the guise of improving society. While these zealots have a right to speak, Harvard University has a moral and ethical responsibility to ensure it provides an appropriate forum where these dangerous views are vigorously challenged. To this end, Harvard failed. As a result, the university is aiding and abetting the dissemination of hateful, exclusionary, totalitarian views that are anathema to Harvard's values of inclusion, pluralism, fairness, robust intellectual debate, and diversity."

Once example of "red meat" rhetoric comes from conference speaker Lance Wallnau who said during an October 2010webcast:

"You've got Islam invading the United States. So you've got your homosexual activity, your abortion activity here, Islam coming in, you've got a financial collapse -- all of this, to those of us who are Christians, is an apocalyptic confirmation that when you remove God from public discourse, when you don't line up your thinking with kingdom principles, you inevitably hit an iceberg like the Titanic and you go down"

"These religious supremacists may attempt to tone down their radical views at Harvard in a deceptive effort to appear mainstream," said TWO researcher Bruce Wilson, who has done extensive research for Truth Wins Out on the Seven Mountains Movement. "However, even a cursory glance at their rhetoric shows that they are dangerous demagogues and utopian extremists who dream of taking over America. We will shine a spotlight on this fringe movement to make it more difficult for them to use the prestige of Harvard University to legitimize their outlandish views and whitewash their radical agenda."

TWO believes exposing this movement is important because prominent politicians, such as Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Sarah Palin, have courted it. The university's ostensible stamp of approval will make it easier for these theocrats to appear respectable and create powerful political alliances at the expense of America's future.

Truth Wins Out is a non-profit organization that fights anti-LGBT religious extremism and the "ex-gay" myth. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.