MassResistance marks 30 years of activism

We’ve made a big difference already – across the country and beyond.

And we plan to step up the fight!

December 18, 2023

In 2016 these California MassResistance activists visited their State Senator's office in Long Beach to strongly disagree with his sponsorship of a an oppressive LGBT anti-religion bill. As a result, he agreed to back off on the bill and compromise.

This year, 2023, marks our 30th year of activism! Many people don’t realize our organization has been around that long. And we’ve accomplished a lot during that time! We’ve expanded our reach incredibly and the momentum is with us to do even greater things.

Our Archives section and our home page have links to hundreds of our posts documenting our engagement in the culture war. Here’s an overview:

Starting out as a parents’ group in one city

Five years ago, we wrote about our 25th anniversary of activism. We described how we got started as a parents’ group in Newton, Massachusetts back in 1993, how we became a statewide group a few years later, and how we engaged the “culture war” battles during those early years. Here are two of our best known efforts:

The “Parental Notification Law,” which we wrote and successfully got passed in the Massachusetts Legislature (and signed by the governor) in the mid-1990s, still stands as the only major pro-family legislation to be enacted into law in the state.

We led principled opposition to the illegitimate “gay marriage” ruling in late 2003 by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. A full account of this period can be read in the book by our activist Amy Contrada, How Gay Marriage Began in Massachusetts (available here).

Our first fifteen years were a real trial by fire! We learned (often by trial and error) about what tactics actually work, and the difference between focusing on success versus “looking dignified.” (Note that even the name “MassResistance” carries a psychological impact that most conservative groups are not comfortable with. There’s a reason for that.)

Continuing to make a difference in Massachusetts

For several years starting in the mid-2000s, we were the major force in Massachusetts stopping horrible anti-family bills in the legislature pushed by Planned Parenthood, the LGBT movement, and others.

Planned Parenthood tried several times to replace our Parental Notification Law with one requiring their sex-ed programs. It was stopped each time through determined activism. We were the major force derailing the LGBT movement’s attempts to pass “transgender rights” legislation for years. And there were many other bills that we made sure never got out of committee.

In 2007, the pharmaceutical industry was heavily lobbying a bill to mandate the often-dangerous HPV vaccine to all 6th-grade girls in Massachusetts. It was cruising to passage. But MassResistance organized a big push against it – and we successfully got it killed! We also successfully opposed the effort to mandate the H1N1 vaccine in 2009.

Even when we weren’t successful, the leftist forces felt our presence! We forced the budget committees to take out money for LGBT indoctrination in the schools, though the leadership would often replace it later. We forced then-governor Mitt Romney to disband the loathsome “Massachusetts Commission for Gay and Lesbian Youth” (though the legislature later recreated it as an independent agency). We aggressively publicized the depraved state-sponsored “Youth Pride Day” parade and events in Boston and in local schools, which embarrassed state officials.

National media attention

From the late 1990s to early 2010s, MassResistance’s activism was often covered by national news media. This was before Fox News became “pro-LGBT” – and while the other media outlets, though still biased, were at least willing to cover both sides of the issue.

Thus, we appeared fairly often on the Fox News Network – The O’Reilly Factor, Fox & Friends, Hannity & Colmes, Megyn Kelly, and others. Our activism (and opinions) were also covered in the NBC Nightly News, CNN, CBS News, ABC Evening News, MSNBC, National Public Radio, the New York Times, and many others.

Unfortunately, those days are long gone. Now, even conservative media are often hesitant to cover opposition to anything "gay."

Expanding across the country

We were becoming very well-known across the country and others wanted to take advantage of our serious approach to activism. In 2009, we started our first state chapter in Virginia. Then a few more came on board. Within four years we had MassResistance Chapters from Hawaii to Maine! Over the years we’ve organized chapters in the majority of states, plus Puerto Rico and DC.

A lot of impressive people have been part of them. For example, Marjorie Taylor Greene, now a firebrand Member of Congress, was an activist with our Georgia MassResistance chapter.

Gay marriage battles. Before the 2015 Obergefell ruling, many of our state chapters were fighting the “gay marriage” battle in numerous blue states where their legislatures were working to pass it. In far-left Maryland, we played a major role of stopping it in 2011. Unfortunately, the following year when it was re-introduced, the other pro-family groups ignored our advice and it passed.

Barack Obama’s federal “Safe Schools Czar.”  In 2009, Barack Obama appointed Kevin Jennings, the notorious LGBT school activist and founder of GLSEN, as his “Safe Schools Czar” in the Department of Education with a huge budget to push the LGBT agenda in the nation’s schools. MassResistance led a successful campaign to lobby Congress to act. As a result, fifty-three Congressmen signed a letter demanding his removal. A resolution was submitted in the US House also demanding his removal. In 2011, Kevin Jennings was forced to resign.

Drag Queen Story Hour. MassResistance has taken the lead in stopping the toxic Drag Queen Story Hour events across the country. We have also exposed several of the “Drag Queens” as convicted criminals, including child molesters.

Pornographic books in schools. We have also taken the national lead in getting pornographic books removed from schools and libraries across the country. In several places we’ve forced the perverted employees who bring them in to quit or be fired. And we’ve persuaded several library districts to leave the leftist American Library Association.

Hard-hitting conferences. Our Texas activists put on three incredible pro-family conferences. The speeches from those are still being circulated, years later. Our biggest blockbuster was the Teens4Truth Conference held at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2017. Teenagers came from around the state and learned how to fight back against the culture war in their schools. The presentation by pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Quentin Van Meter’s at that event (“The terrible fraud of ‘transgender medicine’ ”) has received 647,000 views on YouTube.

State Legislatures. We have organized people to help stop bad bills and get good pro-family bills passed in legislatures across the country - more than we can list here. A great example was in 2018 – we stopped an anti-therapy bill in the California Legislature that was on its way to easy passage.

And around the world …

When pro-family people in other countries heard of us, they desperately wanted our help fighting their own culture war issues. Many of them feel isolated and under siege. So we’ve been glad to step in! As a result, we’ve had MassResistance chapters form literally around the world.

We've been active in Australia, Barbados, Canada, Cayman Islands, Chile, Costa Rica, Finland, Ghana, Hong Kong, Ireland, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom.

We’ve also been featured in more foreign media news sites than we can list (even Russia). So we can honestly say that the sun never sets on MassResistance activism!

An interesting note: In 2012 the Australian Parliament was taking on the “gay marriage” fight. Our Australian activists asked us to do a video on how “gay marriage” affected Massachusetts, for them to send across the country. The video, What ‘gay marriage’ did to Massachusetts, became an instant international hit, and has been translated into Chinese, Finnish, Spanish, and other languages by local activists.

Hated by all the right people!

It goes without saying that if you’re effective, then the Left will hate you. The number of sleazy left-wing attack groups that smear and demonize MassResistance is pretty impressive: the Southern Poverty Law Center, Media Matters, GLAAD, ACLU, and ADL to name just a few.

Their attacks don’t intimidate us – because we recognize that we are in the midst of an actual battle, a culture war.  But too many conservative groups go out of their way to avoid being labeled by the Left, and as a result are simply ineffective.

Moving forward

MassResistance sees everything we’ve done as laying the groundwork for bigger successes. We believe the next few years will be our most powerful yet. We have a first-rate staff, the world’s best activists, and incredible momentum!