Thomas Peters is a Catholic fundamentalist and has become instrumental in the fight to deprive gay and lesbian Americans of their equal civil rights under American laws (his LinkedIn profile currently available). He started the Catholic blog “AmericanPapist” in 2005 and has amassed thousands of followers on the social networking site ”Twitter” as well as a similar facebook page.

For the past several years, Thomas Peters has written anti-gay articles on his blog “AmericanPapist” which is now hosted on the anti-gay site “CatholicVote”. A large percentage of Thomas Peter’s blog posts focus on thwarting gay rights. Peters wrote that a bakery in Indiana should be able to refuse to serve cupcakes to a gay person and even encouraged his readers to buy from the bakery that supported discrimination (link). He also supported the fact that a lesbian was  purposefully humiliated  at her mother’s funeral (link). In 2012, he called on his followers to help “slay” those that support same sex marriage (link).

In January of 2011, Peters accepted a job as Director of Culture with America’s leading anti-gay  rights group, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). Initially, Peters blogged on the NOM blog with a full byline on his articles including a link to his profile. This ceased after only a few months, and a current search for Peter’s name on the NOM blog now turns up empty. However, a number of posts appear both at his personal blog and at the NOM website under “NOM staff” and as of this writing, Peters lists the National Organization for Marriage as his present employer.

NOM often uses this unclear connection  to their advantage, passing off Thomas Peter’s biased articles as independent journalism. In a recent post on the NOM website, a “staff” writer cites an article by Thomas Peters regarding the supposedly false conclusions of an independent poll, without ever mentioning that Thomas Peters actually works for NOM.

Update 4/4/2011:  Following the original publication of this page on March 31, 2011, Thomas Peters is now showing up as an author on new articles at the NOM Blog. Did we strike a nerve?

Update 6/28/2011: Thomas Peters once again misrepresents his connection with NOM claiming that he has “worked closely” with the organization and refusing to mention that he is in fact an employee of that organization.

Update: 8/26/2011: Thomas Peters lies about the situation with Catholic Charities in Illinois claiming  “Catholic Charities [is] being forced to shut down in yet another state.” This is FALSE. The State decided not to renew existing foster care contracts with Catholic Charities because the organization refused to abide by existing non-discrimination laws and then sued the state in a pre-emptive move. Catholic Charities is not being forced to shut down. He goes on to claim that the State is “squashing the right of the Church and fair-minded people to provide needy kids with a mom and dad” despite the fact that Catholic Charities has been placing foster and adopted children with unmarried single parents for years (source)

Update 1/25/2012: Thomas Peters authors an article where he calls Washington Representative Jamie Pedersen a “Jerk” and makes the false claim that Pedersen insulted the religious views of one of his constituents.  What did Rep. Pedersen actually say? He said: “I believe that our state has a strong interest in not discriminating against — and harming — the families of same-sex couples” and that people that oppose marriage for gays and lesbians in Washington are a “small and dwindling minority.” In fact, research has proven that banning gay and lesbian people from marriage does indeed harm their mental health severely and that the people of Washington state increasingly and overwhelmingly support marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples by a margin of 55% for those rights and less than 38% against. With posts like these, it’s no wonder that Thomas Peters wants to hide half his face.

Update 1/25/2012: Thomas Peters proclaims “Tolerance is not a Christian virtue.” (evidently demonizing gay people by telling lies and running hate-filled advertising campaigns against them is – at least according to Thomas Peters.)
Update: 11/15/2012: Thomas Peters attempts to tar and feather a young man that supports marriage equality and subsequently was rejected by his Catholic Church. Peters attempts to convict this young man in the court of public opinion by suggesting that he stole signs from neighbors and vandalized other people’s property, despite the fact that there was not ANY evidence that this might be the case.

Citations:

Thomas Peters on LinkedIn

Thomas Peters announces job at NOM

Code on NOM website shows Thomas Peters as author

Thomas Peters lies about his employment with NOM

Thomas Peters lies about Catholic Charities in Illinois

Thomas Peters calls someone else a Jerk.

Thomas Peters proclaims “tolerance is not a christian value” (someone evidently forgot to tell Christ)

Thomas Peters attempts to slander a young marriage equality supporter