In a Huffington Post editorial, former criminal prosecutor-turned-private trial attorney Linda Kenney Baden protests another main focus of the controversy, that being attention given on whether legendary coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham Spanier should have lost their jobs for covering up former coach Jerry Sandusky’s alleged child rape, and not on the victims of the acts and the safety of children.

But one organization has managed to turn the conversation away from both football and child molestation. For Peter LaBarbera, president of Naperville, Ill.-baesd Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH) — a hate group according to the Southern Poverty Law Center — Sandusky’s actions are the result of being gay (an allegation solely pushed by AFTAH).

In a press release sent out three times on Thursday by the news-wire service the Christian Communication Network, LaBarbera conflates pedophilia with homosexuality and blames LGBT-rights advocates — rather than third parties in the know — for perpetuating sexual violence against children.

From LaBarbera:

Sandusky is married but obviously has a homosexuality (perversion) problem. Yet pro-”gay” liberals will deny any linkage between homosexuality and Sandusky’s rape/seduction of boys. In fact, after news of the Penn State scandal came to light, “gay” activists stressed that Sandusky is married and that most pedophile cases involve “straight, married men.” However, behavior is what matters – not a person’s marital status or self-described “sexual orientation.”

Last month anti-AFTAH activists threw a brick into the window of a Christian private school in Arlington Heights, Ill., in protest of the school hosting an AFTAH banquet honoring anti-gay activist Scott Lively. Ever since, LaBarbera has discussed the incident as an example of overwhelming hatred present in the LGBT community.

Candidates slated to attend the The American Principles Project’s “Palmetto Freedom Forum” include Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain. The three panelists doling out questions to the candidates will be DeMint, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and Robert George, who is chair emeritus of NOM. George is also the founder of APP.

NOM has already attempted to influence the 2012 presidential election by asking GOP candidates to sign a pledge promising to oppose marriage for gay and lesbian couples on a federal level. Perry is the most recent candidate to sign NOM’s marriage pledge, joining Bachmann, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has recently made headlines for opting out of the forum.

Cain, meanwhile, has been attacked by NOM for not signing the five-point pledge, which makes candidates promise to

• Support a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage,

• Nominate federal judges that “reject the idea our Founding Fathers inserted a right to gay marriage into our Constitution,”

• Defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) “vigorously in court,”

• Establish a presidential commission to investigate reports of Americans who have been “harassed or threatened” for supporting ant-gay-marriage initiatives, and

• Try to ban same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia, which is currently legal.

Though a lot of the publicity is being associated with DeMint, George and King will also shape the debate. The stated intention of the forum is “to engage candidates in a fair and meaningful way instead of forcing sound-bite answers to complex issues.”

“Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. …

Our government has no obligation to allow a treasonous ideology to receive special protections in America, but this is exactly what the Democrats are trying to do right now with Islam.

From a constitutional point of view, Muslims have no First Amendment right to build mosques in America.”

Fischer claimed in 2010, while his group was spending around $140,000 in Iowa to oust three Supreme Court justices, that Adolf Hitler was gay and hired gays to be Nazi stormtroopers for their “savagery,” that homosexuals should be banned from public office, and having fewer homosexual students would reduce teen suicide rates. In December, he called for homosexual sex to be made illegal because it was as dangerous as intravenous drug use.

The Southern Poverty Law Center recently classified AFA as a hate group. However, conservative Republicans considering a run for president have still courted the Mississippi-based organization.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty recently appeared on Fischer’s radio program, where he said he would reinstate the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that bans homosexuals from serving openly in the military.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich helped bankroll AFA Action’s effort to oust the justices in Iowa based on their unanimous ruling overturning a state ban on same-sex marriage. Gingrich quietly donated $125,000 to them in 2010, in addition to his monetary support for other groups involved in the anti-judge campaign.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn), who appears to be edging closer to running for president, told Fischer in an interview Thursday that she would support using all of the natural resources “God has given us” in her platform for her energy policy.

Karger was the first to announce his intent to run in April 2010 and the first to form an exploratory committee in July 2010. He has traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire multiple times and even launched a commercial for a brief time.

Karger’s resume includes working as a senior consultant for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and Gerald Ford.

However, as Karger prepares to campaign in Iowa, he’ll have a tough road set by Christian conservative activists. Karger, the first openly gay presidential candidate, challenged with the Maine Ethics Commission that the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) engaged in money laundering, resulting in an ongoing investigation.

NOM, along with the anti-gay American Family Association and the Family Research Council, supported the Bob Vander Plaats-led campaign to successfully oust three Iowa Supreme Court justices.

The FEC is currently considering a formal complaint by Karger that his exclusion from a recent forum with the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition was an “in-kind contribution.”

Karger was also an outspoken opponent against the Proposition 8 campaign in California to ban same-sex marriage by popular vote.

During the Faith & Freedom event, the 5 potential GOP presidential candidates all expressed their opposition to same-sex marriage.

Karger said he will be officially filing the papers at the FEC’s Washington, D.C., office Wednesday morning.

But none of the contributions to American Crossroads has drawn as much attention from the LGBT community as [Robert] Rowling’s, which appears to be generating a virtual firestorm in the gay blogosphere. That’s because in addition to Omni Hotels, Rowling’s TRT Holdings owns Gold’s Gym, and apparently the only thing we hold more sacred than shopping at Target is working out.

The reason for the minor storm is Highland Park billionaire Robert Rowling’s multimillion-dollar donation to the major GOP-backing outside spending group, American Crossroads, which has been supporting a slew of Republican Senate candidates whom many in the LGBT community consider anti-gay. Rowling’s company is usually listed as the anodyne-sounding TRT Holdings on disclosure forms, but the company plays parent to a number of more familiar names, like Omni Hotels and Gold’s Gym.

Whether the firestorm will grow or run out of oxygen isn’t yet clear. The case isn’t quite as galvanizing as the one surrounding Target and Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer (R), but many of the same principles apply. It highlights the potential danger that companies with regular consumer bases face if they choose to make high-profile donations, illustrating once again why so few appear to be giving to political groups that are obliged to disclose their donors.

From Playbook:

BREAKING: The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, who became the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop in 2003 and last year entered into a civil union with his gay partner, will deliver the invocation for Sunday’s kickoff inaugural event on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, with President-elect Obama in attendance. The event is free and open to the public.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Rick Warren!

Oh, by the way, according to the transition, the move has absolutely nothing to do with Rick Warren. Also from Playbook:

An Obama source: ‘Robinson was in the plans before the complaints about Rick Warren. Many skeptics will read this as a direct reaction to the Warren criticism – but it’s just not so.’

No word yet on whether Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s witch-hunting pastor is planning to come to Washington to protect Obama from black magic.