re: right of station to refuse adverts or programs. It’s been 30 years or so since the Fairness Doctrine was removed from FCC license requirements. A privately owned station can play what it pleases and refuse what it pleases. All that said, citizens need to be more vocal about problem stations when FCC license renewal comes up periodically – the stations did not have perpetual rights to public airwaves (usable frequencies serving a specific area – a resource limited by laws of physics and current engineering issues). Stations that directly incite violence* ought to be shut down immediately on the free speech exemption usually illustrated by the example “crying “FIRE!” in a crowded theater in order to start a stampede”. Customers can boycott the station’s advertisers, can engage in publicity embarrassing to the station, and so on. I don’t consider any of these acts censorship.

I doubt that the WOOD-TV station was presented with an offer from FOTF equivalent to the price of all 20 minutes of advertising on a one hour show, added to the price of the advertising immediately following the Presidential press conference. As the conference is usually covered by multiple sources, a large majority of the prime-time viewing public is going to avoid the snoozer of a religious broadcast on a non-religious station, and end up spending all evening on some other station. The station would get twice as many viewers by just putting a syndicated rerun of almost any show in the slot. There’s a reason why long paid adverts don’t make it on prime time TV (with the remarkable exception of Obama’s 30 minute ad – likely to attract large numbers of viewers). Prime time long paid adverts are prohibitively expensive.

*(per the “reasonable person” standard – a call to grab guns and shoot any gay on sight would qualify, whereas a preacher stating that gays will go to hell would not)

Srsly.. if the US population cant see through the load of bollocks or simply is already biased enough to believe it, then… we are doomed already.

Joel, the problem isn’t that people can’t see through the bollocks (as you so eloquently and accurately put it) it’s that they don’t want to.

In many cases this is because they’ve chosen their position, nailed their flag to the mast, and now for the sake of their pride they do not dare to backtrack – so they will eagerly seize any bullshit propaganda they can which supports their position, and consciously choose to ignore any inconvenient truths (like the fact that said propaganda is invariably a crock of codswallop) in an effort to avoid the possibility that they could be wrong.

For others, it’s simple moral & ethical laziness: they want someone else to worry about what is and isn’t moral in this life. They want a nice black-and-white rule-book to live by, they don’t want to have to face tough questions with loads of inconvenient grey areas, so they choose whichever option gives that all nicely packaged.

For some (mostly politicians and preachers) it’s a matter of expediency – having a whipping-boy is a good way of getting the troops all fired up and eager, which is good for business and winning elections.

Taken with what you said, America is doomed because many Americans are proud, lazy, greedy and/or power-hungry. Fortunately for America these are all common human failings, so finding another nation where they aren’t a problem is highly unlikely. If America is doomed, it’s no more doomed than any other country.

THAT is the point Joel. Neighbors need your permission to use your lawn.

Well guess what? The AFA needs the TV station’s permission to use their broadcasting signal — and they don’t have it, it’s the same thing, and that’s the point.

By tossing around the words “censor” and “censorship” you cheapen the concept and undermine the seriousness of real censorship….for example, the government in China has made a deal with google to restrict search results — THAT’s true censorship, google is not being allowed to present it’s own search results on it’s own website to Chinese users. Please read up on the word “censorship” and it’s history before making such hyperbolic statements.

Voice over: “This is what being hated is like. The previous documentary is mostly a web of lies, distortions, and half-truths. If this sounds like the gay people you know– your friends, your family, your neighbors and co-workers, then this message is not for you. But if it sounds like the hate speech that it is, please be outraged.”

someone far cleverer than I could make it work. We don’t have to call people bigots. we do have to start talking about bigotry. we lost on prop. 8 because the campaign was unwilling to talk about bigotry and prejudice, and unwilling to show real gay people who are hurt by this. A closet campaign.

Using your time and energy to ask gay people in the grand rapids area to come out to their friends and families in order to counter this hate speech would also be effective.

I think most people are actually pretty decent and reasonable. They just need to be shown how much this stuff hurts real people that they know.

Out of the closets, into the streets, as we used to say in my youth. True now as it was then.

I do understand that the station per se is not a public entity and therefore has the freedom to refuse to air anything. And that on the behalf of $$ they might choose to not air something.
But srsly.. its probably not even a majority, so the $$ issue is moot. Yet, why pander to those that wish to censor, cant they just turn off their TV’s?

They need to ask permission to do so on my lawn. That’s not really the point.

I mention that I am a crime scene photographer with the LAPD. And that I can utilize the LAPD databases to track crime stats that breakdown hate crimes, homicides, simple assaults and major crimes as well as victim to perp percentages when it comes to sexual orientation, ethnicity and gender.
This was just as a point of reference because one of the posters claimed he’d been in forensics for thirty years.
And also claimed that gays and lesbians were the most violent, threatening and indolent people he’d ever come across.
Well, I knew him to be a liar because of my own profession.
But before I knew it, he’d said I’d gone into PERSONAL data, used the access illegally and deserved prosecution for doing so.

But I knew, as does most of us in law enforcement, that intense law enforcement biases such as his will blow a case, even a major crime. Hello?
OJ Simpson!

And a recent article titled “Is Gay the New Black?”, has now become an exposition that paints Christians or the anti gay as the new black, and victims of militant homosexuals and homosexuaLISTS.

On this anniversary of Lawrence King’s death, and the recent assaults on a lesbian in the Bay area and the Suszuchanay brothers, the claims made regarding vandalism and assault ring so petty.

When it’s all said and done, the powerful majority, i.e. Christians or those who identify as against gay equality are more able to manipulate the media in their favor.

But an unpopular minority has a difficult time with the MSM reporting on issues that are either positive, comprehensive or honest.
Until extreme incidents require their attention, such as the murder of Lawrence King, most people aren’t too well informed or don’t care about what’s really going on.

That’s why the attack ads around Prop. 8 were so effective, and even people who don’t live in CA got involved from all over the country.
I’ve been analyzing the similarities in how the media reported on the Civil Rights movement.
I have an excellent book, published in 2006, called “The Race Beat”, by Gene Roberts and Hank Kibanoff.
I can easily see so many parallels in how gay issues are covered, or have been even up until the Matt Shepard killing and since.
And that we consider gay related situations a civil rights one, is legitimate.

That the AFA and other orgs such as FOTF and FRC criticize gay people for ‘hijacking’ the language, intentions and socio/political history of the civil rights movement is screamingly hypocritical…because that’s exactly what the AFA and all the rest is doing as we speak.

The analogy, of course, is simple, Joel, if you turn off a program you don’t want to watch — is that censorship, too? If you refuse to let your neighbors write on your lawn “Joel is evil” — would that be censorship?

Censorship is when you are not allowed your OWN forum, or a government sponsored forum available to everyone else, or when the government destroys your work, original drafts, master tapes and throws you in jail. This doesn’t even come close.

Srsly.. if the US population cant see through the load of bollocks or simply is already biased enough to believe it, then… we are doomed already.

I understand the honest intentions behind this boycotting of free speech. And that this free speech is offensive and demeaning of gays. Yet, the way to counter this is through our own use of free speech and NOT through the censorship of it. GEECH for crying out loud.

126 violent crimes out of 2810 were against Christians, while 695 were against LGBTs. That’s just under 5% against Christians, and just under 25% against LGBTs. For non-violent hate crimes there 1351 against Christians, and 765 against LGBTs, out of a total of 6196. That’s just under 22% against Christians and just over 12% against LGBTs. The totals number of hate crimes are about equal.

So if the two groups were equal in size, LGBs would be five times more likely to be attacked than Christians, but roughly half as likely to be a victim of a non-violent hate-crime. However the two groups are not the same size – assuming that LGBs make up 5% of the population, there are fifteen times as many Christians as LGBs.

Factor that into the equation, and LGBTs are seventy-five five times more likely than Christians to be victims of violent hate-crime. In addition, even though almost twice as many non-violent hate crimes are against Christians, the massive disparity in the size of the two populations means that LGBTs are over eight times more likely to be victims of a non-violent hate crime. Finally, because the total number of hate crimes is roughly equal for both groups, LGBTs are fifteen times more likely than Christians to be victims of a hate-crime. Finally, 9% of hate crimes against Christians involve violence, vs. 48% of those against LGBTs, meaning that LGBT hate crime victims are over five times more likely to be victims of violent hate crime than Christian hate crime victims.