Since Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer has called me a liar — again — for reporting that he was hanging out with the bigots of the Christian Action Network and the English Defense League, here’s a post at Bartholomew’s Notes that illustrates — again — just how disingenuous Spencer can be: Guess Who’s Not Coming to Dinner? The English Defence League.

Little Green Footballs picked up on my recent blog entry about the Christian Action Network’s recent visit to the UK with Robert Spencer, during which the CAN met up with the English Defence League:

And look who’s hanging out with the English Defense League now, on a tour of Britain with wacko fundamentalist nutbag Martin Mawyer and his “Christian Action Network” — none other than Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch.

Robert Spencer responds:

Charles Johnson is lying — again. During my recent trip to the U.K., I did not “hang out” with members of the English Defense League. I did not meet with them, then or at any other time. What’s more, the link Johnson provides [that’s me! -RB] to establish this “hanging out” doesn’t even say I did meet with them.

What happened was that during August CAN director Martin Mawyer conducted an interview with some balaclava-wearing EDL leaders somewhere outside London, who were then were invited by CAN’s Jason Campbell to a meal at a restaurant in London the next night, at which Spencer would be dining with Douglas Murray, Adrian Morgan, and some other British conservative “anti-Jihadi” types. The original plan was for dinner at a restaurant called the George, but Spencer writes in another blog entry that due to the nature of the discussion they were asked to leave by the management (his entry includes the venue’s phone number, so that his minions can cause some vengeful annoyance).

Got that?

Spencer claims he never met with the English Defense League (although he obviously can’t deny meeting with the extremists of the Christian Action Network), and it’s actually true — as far as it goes. But in reality, the only reason he didn’t meet with them is because he and the leaders of CAN were thrown out of the restaurant before the meeting could occur.

There’s another point here too. The Christian Action Network is fully as extreme and bigoted as the English Defense League, although possibly not as dumbly violent. Here’s some background on the head of this whacked-out organization, Martin Mawyer: ‘A Mighty Army’.

Martin Mawyer, longtime editor of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority Report, founded the Christian Action Network (CAN) in 1990, a year after Falwell folded the original Moral Majority.

In his “dirty and dangerous” battle against “militant homosexual groups,” Mawyer has not held back. In 1997, after Ellen Degeneres came out as a lesbian on her TV sitcom, Mawyer accused her of “DUMPING HER FILTHY LESBIAN LIFESTYLE RIGHT IN THE CENTER OF YOUR LIVING ROOM!! … If we allow the tidal wave of gay and lesbian smut to continue to pour into our homes, it will utterly consume us in no time at all!”

In 1999, he asked the Federal Communications Commission to put an “HC [homosexual conduct] warning label” on TV programs with gay characters. The following year, CAN caused a national stir when TV stations refused to air its inflammatory ad attacking Hillary Clinton, who was then running for U.S. Senate.

Over ominous drumbeats, the narrator intoned: “It is rumored that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian. It is rumored that Hillary Clinton supported homosexual marriage. It is rumored that Hillary Clinton will leave her husband upon taking office. … Sometimes, rumors are true. Shouldn’t you know the truth? For more information on traditional family values, please contact the Christian Action Network.”

More recently, CAN protested “Gay Days” at Disney World and other theme parks — events that Mawyer’s wife and CAN partner, Bonnie, says demonstrate “the true intent of these homosexuals: they are after our children!!”

A 2000 Mawyer mailing incorporated militia-like paranoia: “I am not ready to give this great nation over to one-world government extremists … radical, disease-carrying homosexuals … anti-family lesbian feminists … or anti-American U.N. globalists!”

CAN activists today are familiar faces at Gay Days, videotaping “bad behavior.” In 2003, CAN turned its footage of “homosexual kissing, hugging and fondling” into a video tour of the Southeast, warning parents about the perils of Gay Days and warning that “homosexuals live in a pattern of sin and debauchery.”