PayPal has suspended the accounts of
four anti-gay organizations in response to a campaign from gay
activists.
According
to the group Allout.org, the websites of the Florida-based Truth
in Action Ministries, formerly Coral Ridge Ministries, and Dove World
Outreach Center are no longer accepting donations through the payment
service.
Coral Ridge Ministries was founded by
the late D. James Kennedy, an opponent of gay rights.
Last year, the Dove World Outreach
Center vociferously opposed the campaign of Gainesville Mayor Craig
Lowe.
“Here in Gainesville, they're getting
ready to have a runoff election between two candidates and one of
them is openly a homo, gay, fag – whatever you want to call him, I
don't care,” Pastor Wayne Sapp says in a video. “Bottom line is
we cannot afford a homo mayor.”
“We got one running for mayor of
Gainesville, trying to convert Gainesville into Homoville,” Sapp
adds. “We can't have it.”
PayPal functionality on two additional
sites outside of the United States has also been disabled. The
website of Noua Drepta, an ultra-nationalist organization in Romania,
and Julio Severo's site Last Days Watchman no longer accept PayPal.
In his book The Homosexual Movement (O Movimento Homossexual),
Severo opposes the gay rights movement in Brazil.
Allout.org says PayPal is breaching its
own ethics policy, which states that account holders “may not use
the PayPal service for activities that … promote hate, violence,
racial intolerance.”
Nearly 40,000 people have signed the
group's petition calling on PayPal to disable the accounts of 10
anti-gay groups.
The group is also targeting: Abiding
Truth Ministries, New Generation Ministries, Faithful Word Baptist
Church, Family Research Institute, Americans for Truth About
Homosexuality and American Society for the Defense of Traditional
Family and Property.