A page from the children’s book, King and King
(Graphic: Amazon.com, where a Look Inside feature is available)

To hear Robb and Robin Wirthlin recount the day their 7-year-old son Joey was subjected to a schoolroom reading of the colorful children’s book King and King, you’d imagine he’d been read a gay porn novel by his elementary school teacher.

Dan Aiello, writing in the Bay Area Reporter, has taken a closer look at the Wirthlins, who are currently being bussed from church to church across California by Protect Marriage to support Proposition 8, which would eliminate marriage equality in California. Aiello uncovers a number of details about the couple that the Yes on 8 folks would rather remain unmentioned.

While the Mormon couple maintain they were merely trying to protect their children, they have been associated with two organizations that are determined to to eliminate marriage equality in Massachusetts through a constitutional amendment: The Massachusetts Family Institute and MassResistance, an organization identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-gay hate group.

Anti-gay hate groups, according to SPLC, “are organizations that go beyond mere disagreement with homosexuality by subjecting gays and lesbians to campaigns of personal vilification.” The designation places MassResistance squarely in the company of neo-nazi, white nationalist, racist skinhead and black separatist organizations.

MassResistance Watch has more information about the group. 

A spokesperson for Yes on 8 denied the Wirthlin’s involvement with the groups — both of which publicized the Wirthlin’s cause, raised funds and organized vigils on their behalf.

According to Aiello, “The Wirthlins, it seems, were looking for a reason to sue in Massachusetts. Now they’re looking for a fight here in California.”

From Dan Aiello:

Mass. couple pushes Prop 8

Like Reverend Lovejoy’s wife on the television series The Simpsons, the new Yes on 8 campaign ad features a Massachusetts couple asking Californians, “Won’t somebody pleeeaaase think of the children?”

But although the couple presents themselves like a Norman Rockwell portrait come to life, Joseph “Robb” and Robin Wirthlin are real, and a very real threat to opponents of Proposition 8, which would eliminate same-sex marriage in California.

[ … ]

The Wirthlins joined David Parker, another Lexington, Massachusetts parent, in filing a federal lawsuit in May 2006. The Wirthlins alleged their civil rights were violated when a pro-gay fairytale was read to their children at Estabrook Elementary School. In March 2006, the teacher had read the book King and King to her second grade class as part of a lesson about weddings. Parker sued because his kindergarten child was sent home with a “diversity book bag” that contained a book that dealt with family diversity. The books were not required to be read to the student.

At the end of the reading in Joey Wirthlin’s class, the teacher explained that same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts and some children have two mommies while other children have two daddies.

[ … ]

In Massachusetts, the Wirthlins are better known. They, along with Parker, objected to any teacher-initiated discussion that mentions same-sex couples, alleging that such speech violates the parents’ views, which are governed by the “laws of the God of Abraham,” according to a 2006 American Civil Liberties Union news release that called the lawsuit “frivolous.”

“Most people can see that a book about different kinds of families is not sex education,” explained Massachusetts ACLU Executive Director Carol Rose in the release. The Wirthlins continue to describe the book in terms that suggest sexuality was explicit in it.

[ … ]

The Wirthlins told reporters gathered at the Sacramento church rally Monday that they “had to move” from Lexington to another community because the people of Lexington, including people they considered friends, turned against them. The Wirthlins seemed bitter as they described the folks of Lexington as “juvenile” and “sophomoric.”

But [Pam] Hoffman disputes that claim. “As far as I know, they moved onto Hanscom Air Force Base. They moved there when he finished his school,” she said.

[Lisa] Kling also disputes the Wirthlins’ assertion they were “forced” to move. “I learned they would be moving when he was finished with school two or three years earlier,” before the couple became involved in the suit, said Kling.

[ … ]

“The Wirthlins don’t really believe that all families are equal. They believe theirs is better,” said Ellen Pontac, a Yolo County chapter leader of Marriage Equality USA, who was protesting in front of the Yes on 8 rally Monday along with other No on 8 activists who called themselves “the truth squad.” 

“They’re saying ‘your family is not real’ to us, even their signs are offensive. There are … children throughout California with same-sex parents. What is the message they are trying to send to our children?” asked Shelly Bailes, another Yolo county leader of MEUSA.

There are five more stops on the Protect Marriage bus tour, which ends in San Diego on 27 October at Skyline Church in La Mesa.

Find my earlier post Meet the Wirthlins at the link.

UPDATE (10-26, 8:50 am Pacific): Good As You has some new information on the Wirthlins and their pallin around with hate-group MassResistance … and those mysterious, vanishing emails.

From Good As You:

Only thing? Neither of the claims about the Wirhtlin/MassResistance connection are really true. For one, MassResistance is not a membership organization. To say they were not “members” may pass a lie detector, but it doesn’t mean they didn’t work closely with the group. Much evidence suggests that they did.

Which leads us to the second claim — the one about the emails. The truth is that the Wirthlin’s personal email correspondences (which they HAD to have sent to MassResistance themselves) have not, in fact, been removed from MR’s site. You can still find them all right here, fully intact on MR’s web home:

Emails between parents and school officials, on their meeting about homosexual issues in the second grade. [MR]

And the MassResistance-penned piece that accompanies these emails is filled with comments from Robb and Robin themselves. So while they may not have necessarily agreed with MR’s tactics — they certainly gave the organization time, attention, and personal email correspondence. lLus, MassResistance was ALL OVER their case, as well as the similarly-themed “plight” of David and Tonia Parker, publicizing every minor development in their subsequent court battles. For the Wirthlin/Parker matter, MR was the cheerleader, the ally, the de facto press agent — they were a major fuel tank for turning this minor, biased molehill into a majorly biased “pro-family” mountain. That cannot and should not be ignored.

Tags: California, Dan Aiello, Mormons, Prop 8, Queer Rights, San Diego, The Right, TheoFascism

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 25th, 2008 at 11:14 am and is filed under People, Places, Politics, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.