American Family Association -- HATE GROUP

Designated a hate group

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), in a 2005 report, stated that the AFA, along with other groups, engaged in hate speech to "help drive the religious right's anti-gay crusade."^[106] Mark Potok of the SPLC determined that the turning point was 2003's Lawrence v. Texas, in which the Supreme Court struck down Texas's anti-sodomy laws. After that, the Christian right spent millions on advertisements,^[106] and on pastor briefings organized by activists such as born-again Christian David Lane.^[107] Lane helped AFA put constitutional opposite-sex marriage amendments on the ballots of 13 states.^[106]
In November 2010, the SPLC changed their listing of AFA from a group that used hate speech to the more serious one of being designated a hate group.^[108]^[109]^[110]^[111]^[112]^[113] Potok said that the AFA's "propagation of known falsehoods and demonizing propaganda" was the basis for the change.^[114]^[115]
The AFA was greatly displeased with the designation as a hate group,^[116] calling the list "slanderous".^[117] In response to the SPLC's announcement, some members of the Christian right "call[ed] on Congress to cut off their funding."^[118] J. Matt Barber of The Washington Times said that the SPLC was "marginalizing" themselves by giving the AFA the same hate group designation shared by the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis.^[119] Tony Perkins, the president of Family Research Council (FRC) – an organization also named a hate group – asked the SPLC to strike the new designation, but they held their position.^[120] In reaction, the FRC and the AFA joined with other "pro-family" organizations targeted by the SPLC to establish a new website, an online petition^[121] called "Start Debating/Stop Hating" to counter the SPLC,^[122] and they took out full page ads in two Washington D.C. newspapers, defending their work "to protect and promote natural marriage and the family."^[123] The advertisement stated the "undersigned stand in solidarity" with the organizations designated as hate groups, and that they "support the vigorous but responsible exercise of the First Amendment rights of free speech and religious liberty that are the birthright of all Americans."^[122] House Speaker-Designate John Boehner and the governors of Louisiana, Minnesota and Virginia were among those signing the statement.^[123] The SPLC addressed the new website statement; Potok was quoted by David Weigel of Slate magazine as saying, "the SPLC's listings of these groups is based on their propagation of known falsehoods – claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities – and repeated, groundless name-calling."^[124] The American Independent News Network (AINN) noted that the AFA had recently denounced Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan as a lesbian unfit for office – AINN stated that "she's not" a lesbian – and that Fischer said Hitler's savage and brutal methods were only possible because he and most of his stormtroopers were gay.^[125] Jillian Rayfield of Talking Points Memo noted the irony in the website calling the SPLC a "radical Left" group "spreading hateful rhetoric" yet elsewhere declaring that the debates of the Christian right "can and must remain civil – but they must never be suppressed through personal assaults that aim only to malign an opponent's character."^[117]
Despite the designation, conservative Republicans considering running for president have courted the AFA.^[126] Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour, and Mike Huckabee appeared on Fischer's radio show in March 2011; each are politicians seeking support to win the Republican Party presidential primary in 2012.^[127]

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STIRRING UP SHIT!

STIRRING UP SHIT!

Bias is good for industry, says NOM & an SPLC-designated hate group

The National Organization For Marriage is now partnering with the American Family Association (an SPLC-designated "hate group," it must be noted) in order to place the following ad in a local Indiana newspaper (Columbus Republic):
NOM's Full Page Ad in Columbus (IND) Republic

Well that's one way for Maggie to more widely syndicate her column.
But you know, NOM and crew can deny the negative impact of marriage bans all they want. But I can tell you firsthand: I am someone who would not, at this point in my life, live or work in a state with such an amendment. And there are many others like me, a reality that is only going to increase over time.
Now, on the flip: Are there some people who might ONLY live in a state where the most precious governing document has been altered for the expressed purpose of discriminating against certain taxpayers? Perhaps. So that is what must be weighed: Which is the more sustainable value, equality or discrimination. I'd argue the former, ever more so as the calendar goes latter.

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*UPDATE: Look at what NOM's partners at the AFA of IN want for gay people:

Intelligence Report, Winter 2010, Issue Number: 140
18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/winter/the-hard-liners

*American Family Association

Methodist minister Donald E. Wildmon formed the National Federation for Decency in 1977, changing its name to the American Family Association (AFA) in 1988. Today, the group, which was taken over by Tim Wildmon after his father’s 2010 retirement, claims a remarkable 2 million online supporters and 180,000 subscribers to its AFA Journal. It also broadcasts over nearly 200 radio stations.

The AFA seeks to support “traditional moral values,” but in recent years it has seemed to specialize in “combating the homosexual agenda.” In 2009, it hired Bryan Fischer, the former executive director of the Idaho Values Alliance, as its director of analysis for government and policy. Taking a page from the anti-gay fabulist Scott Lively (see Abiding Truth Ministries, above), Fischer claimed in a blog post last May 27 that “[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.” (Ironically, the elder Wildmon was widely denounced as an anti-Semite after suggesting that Jews control the media, which the AFA says “shows a genuine hostility towards Christians.”) Fischer has described Hitler as “an active homosexual” who sought out gays “because he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough.” He proposed criminalizing homosexual behavior in another 2010 blog post and has advocated forcing gays into “reparative” therapy. In a 2010 “action alert,” the AFA warned that if homosexuals are allowed to openly serve in the military, “your son or daughter may be forced to share military showers and barracks with active and open homosexuals.”

Gays aren’t the AFA’s only enemies. In late 2009, Fischer suggested that all Muslims should be banned from joining the U.S. military. “Islam is a totalitarian political ideology,” Fischer added in August 2010. “It is as racist as the KKK. ... Allowing a mosque to be built in town is fundamentally no different that granting a building permit to a KKK cultural center built in honor of some King Kleagle.” A little later, according to the Huffington Post, Fischer said that whatever the government does to "to make it unthinkable for America's youth to join a white supremacist group," it should also do "to make it as unthinkable for a resident of America to embrace Islam." Around the same time, the Huffington Post said, he blogged that Muslim values are "grossly incompatible with American values," and therefore no place in America should allow a mosque to be built.

And then there are the promiscuous. On his May 26, 2010, radio show, Fischer recounted the biblical story of Phineas, who used a spear to kill a man and a woman who were having sex. Citing the nation’s “rampant sexual immorality,” Fischer said, “God is obviously looking for more Phineases in our day.”

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