Justin's Political Corner

The American Family Association’s One Million Moms is asking members to contact advertisers on “The Fosters,” a show about a lesbian couple raising adopted, biological and foster children, and demand that they drop the program for “attacking my faith, morals and values.”

“Not only is this program insulting to conservative viewers and traditional families,” the sample email to advertisers reads, “but it also focuses on a controversial subject that your company would probably not desire to be associated with.”

The group claims that the show’s emphasis on helping foster children is offset by the attempt to “redefine marriage and family by having two moms raise these children together” and “desensitize America and our children by promoting inappropriate behavior, especially on a family channel.”

The American Family Association announced yesterday that it has parted ways with Buster Wilson, the host of AFA Today and the general manager of its radio network. Wilson says he will continue to write for his personal blog.

Certainly Wilson isn’t leaving because he is too extreme (see: Fischer, Bryan) or vacuous (see: Wildmon, Tim) for the AFA, but we are going to miss him in particular because we have always appreciated Wilson’s tendency to respond to nearly every single Right Wing Watch post about him and even completely make up things we’ve said.

But most of all we really enjoyed watching him conclude many of his conspiratorial rants with the phrase, “I’m just asking the question.”

Since Wilson is a member of the extremist Oath Keepers, we were not surprised to see him push several anti-government conspiracy theories, wonder about the existence of FEMA concentration camps and assert that he was “staying neutral” on the matter of whether it is appropriate to shoot U.S. Marshals. He also maintained that the government was going to classify Christians as mentally ill in order to “get us out of the picture,”confiscate the guns of conservative Christians and ban celebrations of Christmas. Furthermore, he has promoted the birther conspiracy theory and posted a hoax photo of President Obama’s “foreign student ID.” 

Wilson has also been no friend of the gay community. He warned that gay men are bent on molesting Boy Scouts, linked the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to an increase in the military’s suicide rate, warned that legalizing gay marriage will lead to dog, building and automobile marriages and blamed Hurricane Isaac on an LGBT festival. At one point, Wilson even floated a boycott of Google over the company’s strong stance in support of gay rights. 

h/t: Right Wing Watch

What is making the right-wing mouthpieces angry today? It is the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)’s website was blocked on some military bases.

The Tennesseean:

The website for the Southern Baptist Convention has been blocked from some US Army computers.

That’s caused some conservative activists to accuse the Pentagon of being hostile to religion.

Ties between conservative evangelicals and the military have been strong in the past. But the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and other recent incidents have strained those ties.

A Southern Baptist spokesman said that he spoke to Army officials who confirmed that some computers have blocked access to SBC.Net

Those officials say the problem is a glitch, said Roger “Sing” Oldham, convention spokesman.

Even SBC spokesman Sing Oldham admits the the site’s blocking as accidental, but according to the conservative minsinformation chamber, the incident was viewed as “sinister,” “anti-Christian,” and even “pandering to Islamists.”

Right-Wing Reactions:
Todd Starnes, Fixed Noise Radio:

The U.S. Military has blocked access to the Southern Baptist Convention’s website on an unknown number of military bases because it contains “hostile content” — just weeks after an Army briefing labeled Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics as examples of religious extremism, Fox News has learned.

The censorship was made public after an Army officer tried to log onto the denomination’s website and instead — received a warning message.
“The site you have requested has been blocked by Team CONUS (C-TNOSC/RCERT-CONUS) due to hostile content,” the message read.
Team CONUS protects the computer network of the Dept. of Defense. The SBC’s website was not blocked at the Pentagon.
It’s unclear what the “hostile content” might have been. The SBC is pro-life and opposed to same-sex marriage.

Bryan Fischer, host of AFA Radio’s Focal Point:

Bryan Fischer has produced the latest anti-Christian conspiracy theory and of course rather than do any research, rather than do anything as simple as picking up the phone or sending an email, he’s decided to go on the air to tell his million or so listeners about this latest “attack” on their religious rights by their government.

In this video, below, Fischer explains that he has “breaking news,” that the U.S. government is blocking access from military or government personnel to the Southern Baptist Convention’s homepage. The SBC is the nation’s second-largest Christian group, after Roman Catholics, and they boast about 16 million members, or about five percent of the nation’s population.

By the end of the video clip, Fischer has convinced himself that this seems like a vast government conspiracy to label the Southern Baptist Convention a “hate group,” making the giant leap from “hostile content” to “hate group.”

“Basically, the U.S. military has classified the Southern Baptist Convention as a hate group — the entire denomination,” Fischer repeatedly cries, adding, “it’s like porn.”

Lucianne Goldberg, founder of Lucianne.com:

Was access to Islamic radical websites also blocked? I would sure be more concerned about that! The DOD is working diligently to investigate what might be causing access issues. Uh huh.

AFA Action Alert:

This is just another example of the Christian faith coming under attack in the military. Earlier this month, an Army email listed prominent Christian ministries like the Family Research Council and American Family Association as “domestic hate groups.”

FreeRepublic:
Here are some of the more out there comments on that site:

Actually, it seems that some U.S. Army officers are hostile to the Southern Baptist Convention. - righttackle44

Muslims good, Christians bad. -  E. Pluribus Unum

Military chaplains and bibles in the foxhole have a long history. Now because sodomites are celebrated by a corrupt culture, sin has been redefined by the government. That is still prohibited by the First Amendment. - a fool in paradise

but not a negative word about Islam.

Time for Christians and conservatives to not join the military and to advise their relatives not to. - GeronL

They’re getting this information from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). A very far Left Wing outfit that labels any and everything conservative a hate group. The SPLC is now a traning contractor for the US government.

Originally hired by “Big Sis” Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, who claimed military veterans were potential terrorists deemed watching by DHS, the SPLC is now training the entire FedGov.

Write your Congressman! The SPLC contract HAS TO GO! - Alas Babylon!

The comments on that page are what you would expect— blaming it on Muslims, gays, liberals, Obama, et al.

Ken Kluklowski at Breitbart.com’s Big Government:

Lt. Col. Damien Pickart insists the Pentagon is not intentionally blocking access for Southern Baptists but has not provided any official explanation for the multiple reports of the military blocking access to Southern Baptist material. On its face, this looks like a brazen show of hostility by the Obama administration against devout Christians in the U.S. military.
Breitbart News legal columnist Ken Klukowski is senior fellow for religious liberty at the Family Research Council.

Today on AFR’s Focal Point, Bryan Fischer hosted Todd Starnes on this topic. As expected, it’s full of complaining that “Muslims have more rights than [Conservative] Christians in this country” crap.

The right will continue to declare this an “intentional sabotage of our Christian freedoms,” but the fact is this: the Southern Baptist Convention’s website getting blocked is more likely to be a glitch. Flip the story for a second: If it was Planned Parenthood, Media Matters, Alternet, pro-LGBTQ sites, or this very site getting blocked on the bases, the right would cheer it.

(cross-posted from Daily Kos) 

It looks like Family Research Council president Tony Perkins is embracing a conspiracy theory first floated by Buster Wilson of the American Family Association about how the Obama administration may begin preventing conservative Christians from purchasing guns.

Yesterday on Washington Watch, Perkins said he opposes a new Senate bill that expands background checks because such a system may prevent anyone identified as an “evangelical, bible-believing fundamentalist” from acquiring a firearm.

H/T: Right Wing Watch

For example, American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer suggested the move would allow Jerry Sandusky-like pedophiles to become troop leaders:

Conservative talk show host Janet Mefferd followed suit.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, which launched a boycott of UPS after the company stopped donating to the BSA for failing to meet its non-discrimination guidelines,said that the inclusion of openly gay members undermines “the well-being of the boys under their care”:

“The Boy Scouts of America board would be making a serious mistake to bow to the strong-arm tactics of LGBT activists and open the organization to homosexuality. What has changed in terms of the Boy Scouts’ concern for the well-being of the boys under their care? Or is this not about the well-being of the Scouts, but the funding for the organization?

“The Boy Scouts has for decades been a force for moral integrity and leadership in the United States. Sadly, their principled stances have marked them as a target for harassment by homosexual activists and corporations such as UPS which are working to pressure the Boy Scouts into abandoning their historic values.

“The mission of the Boy Scouts is ‘to instill values in young people’ and ‘prepare them to make ethical choices,’ and the Scout’s oath includes a pledge ‘to do my duty to God’ and keep himself ‘morally straight.’ It is entirely reasonable and not at all unusual for those passages to be interpreted as requiring abstinence from homosexual conduct.

“If the board capitulates to the bullying of homosexual activists, the Boy Scouts’ legacy of producing great leaders will become yet another casualty of moral compromise. The Boy Scouts should stand firm in their timeless values and respect the right of parents to discuss these sexual topics with their children,” concluded Perkins.

In an email to members, Perkins claimed that any policy change would have “devastating” consequences:

A departure from their long-held policies would be devastating to an organization that has prided itself on the development of character in boys. In fact, according to a recent Gallup survey, only 42 percent of Americans support changing the policy to allow homosexual scout leaders.

As the BSA board meets next week, it is crucial that they hear from those who stand with them and their current policy regarding homosexuality. Please call the Boy Scouts of America at 972-580-2000 and tell them that you want to see the organization stand firm in its moral values and respect the right of parents to discuss these sexual topics with their children.

The Christian Post, whose editor Richard Land leads the Southern Baptist Convention’s political arm, interviewed a top Southern Baptist who said the potential shift in policy “boggles the mind.”

A source who has knowledge of the situation told The Christian Post last week that the BSA’s top executives had met with top leaders at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, among others, over the last few weeks to inform them of the possibility of this policy shift.

…

“It boggles my mind to think the BSA would make such a move,” said an executive in the Southern Baptist Convention who asked not to be identified. “If they have counted the cost of this decision in terms of relationships and numbers, then I believe they have miscalculated that cost.”

H/T: Right Wing Watch

Yesterday on Focal Point, American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer marked the anniversary of Roe v. Wade by predicting that America “will have to pay” for legal abortion: “It could be through civil war, it could be through anarchy, it could be through Muslim fundamentalists and terrorists attacks on the United States, but one way or another we cannot escape God’s justice.”

He went on to argue that Planned Parenthood clinics are no different from Nazi death camps. “You see a Planned Parenthood clinic, just think Birkenau, just think Auschwitz, just think Bergen-Belsen,” Fischer said, “because that’s what you are looking at, you are looking at an equivalent of a Nazi gas chamber.”

Later, he repeated the false charge that Planned Parenthood promotes domestic abuse to its members.

From the 01.23.2013 edition of AFR’s Focal Point:

H/T: Brian Tashman at RWW

In an email entitled “What will religion look like in the year 2060?”, the AFA warned about the coming onslaught against Christians, who currently make up over three-quarters of Americans. The group’s predictions include that Christians will be brutally discriminated against like blacks in the Civil Rights Era, government will take children from parents at birth, and any city with “Saint” or other loosely-religious name will be forced to change.

The full email:

What will religion look like in the year 2060?

Conservative Christians will be treated as second class citizens, much like African Americans were prior to civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

Family as we know it will be drastically changed with the state taking charge of the children beginning at birth.

Marriage will include two, three, four or any number of participants. Marriage will not be important, with individuals moving in and out of a “family” group at will.

Churchbuildings will be little used, with many sold to secular buyers and the money received going to the government.

Churches will not be allowed to discuss any political issues, even if it affects the church directly.

Tax credit given to churches and non-profit organizations will cease.

Christian broadcasting will be declared illegal based on the separation of church and state. The airwaves belong to the government, therefore they cannot be used for any religious purpose.

We will have, or have had, a Muslim president.

Cities with a name from the Bible such as St. Petersburg, Bethlehem, etc. will be forced to change their name due to separation of church and state.

Groups connected to any religious affiliation will be forced out of health care. Health centers get tax money from the state, making it a violation of church and state.

Get involved! Sign THE STATEMENT.

Sincerely,

Donald E. Wildmon

As absurd as they may be, these 2060 predictions may not even rank among the AFA’s most extreme ideas. The group’s spokesman has called for kidnapping the children of same-sex couples through a modern-day “Underground Railroad” system. When one man heeded this advice and aided a woman in kidnapping the daughter of a lesbian woman, the group advised him to flout American laws and flee the country. AFA also organizes against any individual or company that shows the slightest tolerance for LGBT people, including Office Depot, Urban Outfitters, Home Depot, JC Penney, and Google.

h/t: Scott Keyes at Think Progress

The latest filings from Karl Rove’s American Crossroads show a last minute contribution of $1 million received just days before the election (10/29/12) from Gary Heavin — the co-founder of Curves International Inc., which calls itself “the world’s leader in women’s fitness.”

Curves, a chain of women-only fitness center franchises, claims nearly 10,000 locations in more than 85 countries. Heavin and his fellow co-founder, his wife Diane, sold Curves International to an private equity firm in October, but they remain prominently featured on the company’s website. The Heavins say they “share a passion for and commitment to women’s health and fitness.” But his massive donation to the right-wing super PAC is only the latest in a long pattern of their efforts
in support of policies that undermine women’s equality in the workplace and restrict women’s access to health care services.

American Crossroads spent $91 million to elect Mitt Romney over President Obama. Romney refused to endorse key pro-women legislation including the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act, but backed reinstating the “global gag rule” on even discussing abortion as a family planning option and supported the infamous Blunt Amendment to allow employers to deny health benefits that go against their personal views. Crossroads also worked to help far-right extremists like Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, and George Allen. Much of the American Crossroads attack strategy focused on criticizing Obamacare and those who backed the effort to expand health insurance access to all Americans.

And this past election isn’t the only time that Curves and the Heavins have worked against women’s reproductive rights. Gary Heavin pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars for controversial “pregnancy crisis centers” that try to talk women out of abortions and have been accused to providing false information. They also made large donations to abstinence-only education programs — programs which often misinform and make teens more likely to engage in risky behavior and become pregnant. Curves also pulled its funding for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation over its objection to the charity’s funding for Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening services. In a 2004 editorial, Mr. Heavin attacked Planned Parenthood’s sex education literature, writing “I have a 10-year-old daughter. I would absolutely not allow her to be exposed to this material. I don’t want her being taught masturbation and told that homosexuality is normal.”

That anti-choice and anti-LGBT stance was further demonstrated when Curves partnered with the American Family Association — a group that has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group.” 

Gary Heavin has also been an outspoken enthusiast for televangelist Pat Robertson, who has blamed natural disasters on same-sex marriage equality and blamed 9/11 on abortion, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties groups.

H/T: Josh Israel at Think Progress Health

Mix It Up at Lunch Day is one of those programs that just seems like a nice thing to do.

The idea is that on one day of the school year, kids are invited to have lunch with the kind of kids they don’t usually hang out with: the jocks mix with the nerds, lunch tables are racially integrated, et cetera. Sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center as part of their Teaching Tolerance division, it arose out of a broad effort to tackle the problems of bullying in the schools and bigotry in society – and it appears to have been effective in breaking down stereotypes and reducing prejudice. Over 2,000 schools nationwide now participate in the program, which is set to take place this year on 30 October.

You can argue about how permanent its effects are, or whether other approaches might be better, but the idea of making new friends in the lunchroom seems utterly benign. Right?

Wrong, as it turns out – at least, according to the American Family Association, a radical right-wing evangelical policy group. Mix It Up at Lunch Day is, in fact, part of “a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools,”according to the AFA literature. The program “is an entry-level ‘diversity’ program designed specifically by SPLC (sic) to establish the acceptance of homosexuality into public schools, including elementary and junior high schools,” warns the AFA website. “See if your child’s school is on the list.”

The AFA has urged parents to keep their kids home on 30 October, and claims that at least 200 schools have responded to its charge by canceling the program.

There’s a backstory here. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has fought for civil rights causes since its founding in 1971, conceived and promoted Mix It Up at Lunch as part of their Teaching Tolerance program. The SPLC also, as it happens, named the AFA, along with a dozen other “pro-family” groups, as a “hate group” in 2010, citing, among other factors, AFA’s expressed views on same-sex relationships. The “homosexual agenda” is not the only factor in the SPLC’s decision to include AFA on the list. AFA’s director of issues analysis, Bryan Fischer, has appeared to suggest that what is biblically deemed “sexual immorality” merits punishment by death. He evidently hates Muslims, too, having recently opined that “allowing a mosque to be built in town is fundamentally no different than granting a building permit to a KKK cultural center.”

So, now it’s payback time. The AFA’s jihad against Mix It Up at Lunch Day is its way of saying “I’m rubber, you’re glue.” It has come up with its own list of boycotts and hate groups, and sure enough the SPLC, on account of its “incendiary language,” is on that list.

Funny word games aside, the SPLC is right. It is, by now, well known that the AFA and the kind of interests they represent spread conspiratorial falsehoods about the LGBT community, placing blame for a wide variety of social ills on a “gay agenda.” They also seem to support a certain type of bullying and bigotry in public schools – the faith-based kind – and believe there should be more of it.

One example comes from an AFA cultural ally: Gateways to Better Education, formed in 1991 by Focus on the Family in tandem with a rightwing Christian legal advocacy group that calls itself the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). Gateways publishes a “Guide for Commemorating Religious Freedom at School.” But the freedom Gateways and the ADF have in mind applies only to those who share their religion.

This type of rhetoric is also championed by a segment of Jewish conservatives. Alarmed that Obama won 78% of the Jewish vote in 2008, they accused Democratic Jews of being “Jinos” – Jews In Name Only. “They eat bagels and lox; they watch ‘Schindler’s List,’” writes Town Hall columnist Ben Shapiro, “but they do not care about Israel” – at least, not in the way that Shapiro thinks we should.

When religion is thus reduced to a single policy decision and support for a political party, it becomes shrill and bigoted. This abuse of religion for political purposes has been tremendously damaging for American politics. But it is worth pointing out that it has been destructive of religion, too. According to another poll this month, this one by the Pew Research Center, record numbers of Americans are now reporting that they have no particular religious affiliation. Perhaps that is because, right now, the God of hate seems to be shouting louder than the God of love.

h/t: AlterNet

On Mix It Up at Lunch Day, schoolchildren around the country are encouraged to hang out with someone they normally might not speak to.

The program, started 11 years ago by the Southern Poverty Law Center and now in more than 2,500 schools, was intended as a way to break up cliques and prevent bullying.

But this year, the American Family Association, a conservative evangelical group, has called the project “a nationwide push to promote the homosexual lifestyle in public schools” and is urging parents to keep their children home from school on Oct. 30, the day most of the schools plan to participate this year.

The charges, raised in an e-mail to supporters earlier this month, have caused a handful of schools to cancel this year’s event and has caught organizers off guard.

“I was surprised that they completely lied about what Mix It Up Day is,” said Maureen Costello, the director of the center’s Teaching Tolerance project, which organizes the program. “It was a cynical, fear-mongering tactic.”

The swirl around Mix It Up at Lunch Day reflects a deeper battle between the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil-rights group founded 41 years ago in Montgomery, Ala., and the American Family Association, a Bible-based cultural watchdog organization in Tupelo, Miss. The association says its mission is to fight what it calls the “increasing ungodliness” in America.

The law center recently added the group to its national list of active hate groups, which also includes neo-Nazis, black separatists and Holocaust deniers.

Association leaders, in return, have gone on the offensive, calling the law center a hate group for oppressing Christian students and claiming its aim is to shut down groups that oppose homosexuality.

“The reality is we are not a hate group. We are a truth group,” said Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the association. “We tell the truth about homosexual behavior.”

Although the suggested activities for Mix It Up at Lunch Day do not expressly address gay and lesbian students, the law center itself promotes equal treatment for gays and lesbians and that philosophy then informs the school program, he said.

“Anti-bullying legislation is exactly the same,” Mr. Fischer said. “It’s just another thinly veiled attempt to promote the homosexual agenda. No one is in favor of anyone getting bullied for any reason, but these anti-bullying policies become a mechanism for punishing Christian students who believe that homosexual behavior is not something that should be normalized.”

The program is not about sexual orientation but rather about breaking up social cliques, which are especially evident in a school cafeteria, Ms. Costello said.

h/t: NYTimes.com

The movement known as the Religious Right is the number-one threat to church-state separation in America. This collection of organizations is well funded and well organized; it uses its massive annual revenue and grassroots troops to undermine the wall of separation in communities nationwide.

1. Jerry Falwell Ministries/ Liberty University/Liberty Counsel

Revenue: $522,784,095

Although Jerry Falwell, a Religious Right icon and founder of the Moral Majority, died in 2007, his empire is going strong thanks mostly to Liberty University, a Lynchburg, Va., school now run by his son, Jerry Falwell Jr. Following in his father’s footsteps, Falwell Jr. regularly meddles in partisan politics – from local contests to presidential races. This year, he invited Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney to give Liberty’s commencement address, introducing him as “the next president of the United States.” A second Falwell son, Jonathan, is pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church, a mega-church in Lynchburg. Liberty Counsel is a Religious Right legal outfit founded by Mat Staver that is now based at Liberty University, where it launches lawsuits undermining church-state separation and encourages pastors to get involved in partisan political activity.

2. Pat Robertson Empire

Revenue: $434,971,231

Known for his years of involvement in far-right politics, TV preacher Pat Robertson has forged a vast Religious Right empire anchored by the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Robertson also runs Regent University and  a right-wing legal group, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ). (Attorney Jay Sekulow heads ACLJ, as well as his own quasi-independent legal outfit, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism.) CBN, which brings in the bulk of Robertson’s revenue, broadcasts far-right religious and political invective laced with attacks on church-state separation, a concept Robertson has called a “myth” and a “lie of the left.” His “700 Club” TV program is a powerful forum for the promotion of right-wing ideology and favored politicians. Robertson has been welcomed into the halls of government. The current governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, is a Regent U. graduate.

3. Focus on the Family (includes its 501(c)(4) political affiliate CitizenLink)

Revenue: $104,463,950

Fundamentalist Christian James Dobson founded Focus on the Family to offer “biblical” solutions to family problems. Dobson, a child psychologist by training, soon branched out into the dissemination of hardcore right-wing politics with an international reach. Dobson has been a major player in the halls of power in Washington, D.C., and Focus-aligned “family policy councils” pressure lawmakers and influence legislation in 36 states. In fact, the Colorado-based organization frequently plays a key role in fighting gay rights and restricting abortion at the state level. Jim Daly is now president of Focus; Dobson left the organization in 2010 but remains active on the political scene.

4. Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly Alliance Defense Fund)

Revenue: $35,145,644 

The ADF may have changed its name, but it still promotes a familiar Religious Right agenda. The Arizona-based organization, which was founded by far-right TV and radio preachers, attacks church-state separation, blasts gay rights, assails reproductive freedom and seeks to saturate the public schools with its narrow version of fundamentalism. In recent years, the ADF, headed by Ed Meese acolyte Alan Sears, has worked aggressively to overturn a federal law that bars tax-exempt churches and other nonprofits from intervening in partisan elections. The group says church-state separation is not in the Constitution and calls the church-state wall “fictitious.”

  

Religious Right groups have publicly seethed at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s decision a couple of years ago to designate several of them as hate groups for consistently spreading false, inflammatory, and defamatory propaganda about LGBT people.  It is now clear that Religious Right leaders are hoping to exploit this week’s shooting at the Family Research Council to try to damage the SPLC.
 
FRC’s Tony Perkins said this week that the SPLC gave the shooter “license” to attack the organization by calling it a hate group.  Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber accused the SPLC of having blood on its hands.  The American Family Association and Traditional Values Coalition were among others who blamed SPLC for the attack.  Religious Right groups have long equated any criticism of their positions or tactics as attacks on their freedom of speech and religion; now they are taking it a step further to say that critics must stop calling out their hateful rhetoric and naming it as such.
 
It is important not to let Religious Right groups exploit this violence - which was quickly and unequivocally condemned by progressive movement leaders, including People For the American Way President Michael Keegan - to divert attention from the Religious Right’s anti-gay extremism.  As Right Wing Watch has noted, FRC was not labeled a hate group because of a simple policy disagreement, as FRC’s backers would have you believe; the SPLC cited very specific examples of FRC’s wildly inflammatory anti-gay language. 
                                                                                                             
You don’t have to look far.  Last year Perkins called gay-rights activists vile, hateful, pawns of Satan.  In 2010, Perkins responded to President Obama’s call for civility on the issue of homosexuality by slamming the president for criticizing Uganda’s kill-the-gays bill. Perkins described the infamous law as “enhanced penalties for crimes related to homosexuality” and an effort to “uphold moral conduct.”  FRC spokespeople have supported laws criminalizing homosexuality overseas and here in the U.S.  

One of them is Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage, who went on CNN on Thursday to say it is “totally irresponsible and unacceptable” to call FRC a hate group.   But Brown was flummoxed when CNN anchor Zoraida Sambolin confronted him with an actual example of FRC rhetoric claiming that “one of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order.”  Brown repeatedly refused to acknowledge that such rhetoric is hateful, exposing his call for “civility” as nothing but empty political posturing.  

h/t: Peter Montgomery at RWW

The National Organization for Marriage set a bad precedent blaming the label of “hate groups” for theshooting that took place Wednesday at the Family Research Council. Now, Bryan Fischer has takenexploitation of this tragedy to a whole new level in a statement written on behalf of the American Family Association. Fischer characterized the organization’s condemnation of homosexuality as “love,” which could only be perceived as “hate” by those who “hate the truth.” In addition to irresponsibly speculating about the shooter’s motives, Fischer outright blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center for the tragedy:

But the SPLC, by their own hateful and malicious rhetoric against FRC and AFA, has essentially claimed responsibility for this shooting, and they too should be held to account in the court of public opinion.

SPLC claims it only lists organizations as “hate groups” if they engage in the “propagation of known falsehoods” about homosexuality. But the SPLC website itself lists numerous falsehoods about homosexuality. For instance, the SPLC says, without a single shred of proof, that homosexuals are born that way, that it is impossible to leave the gay lifestyle, and that homosexuals are not at elevated risks of depression, anxiety and substance abuse disorders.

Like FRC, AFA is classified as a hate group, and Fischer provided a prime example of the harmful lies that warrant such a designation. 

AFA and NOM have made it explicitly clear that they intend to politically exploit the tragedy of a shooting to somehow excuse the harmful rhetoric they spew daily. There seem to be no bounds to the lengths they will go to condemn people just for being gay.

h/t: Zach Ford at Think Progress LGBT

Concerned Women for America’s Chelsen Vicari on Monday hosted a call with Linda Harvey of Mission America and Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute where they discussed their plans for a walkout on the Day of Silence, when students protest anti-LGBT bullying and bias by remaining silent throughout the school day. The walkout endorsers also include the American Family Association, Citizens for Community Values, Faith 2 Action, Liberty Counsel and Save California, all prominent supporters of the Religious Right’s anti-anti-bullying campaign.

We posted highlights from program where Higgins urged teachers to “plan activities that involve student communications so students are not allowed to do this” and Harvey warned that the Day of Silence is using children “as a tool” for an “ungodly agenda.” Harvey dubbed the Day of Silence a “God-dishonoring day” that makes children “bow before manipulative, exploitative and deceptive accusations.”

Higgins: What the Day of Silence does is ask kids to refuse to speak during instructional time in class, that they have no legal right to do and no school has to accommodate that, and so that’s what we’re doing is asking parents to call their school, ask if students are allowed to refuse to speak in instructional time, and if they are, to keep their kids home in protest about the disruption of instructional time for a political purpose.

h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW