Box Turtle Bulletin

AFA’s Bryan Fischer: Protestant Immigrants Good, Catholic Immigrants Bad

The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer has some reservations about the fact that some Evangelical conservatives support President Barack Obama’s immigration reform proposals. Those evangelical see Latinos, who make up the bulk of the expected beneficiaries of immigration reform, as being sufficiently anti-gay and, therefore, desirable future voters for socially conservative causes. Fischer disagrees:

Not so fast. According to the Christian Post, 57% of Latino Catholics in California support homosexual marriage. Let’s not forget that Latinos make up 36.6 percent of California’s population.

The good news, if you happen to be an evangelical, is that just 22 percent of Latino Protestants support gay marriage.

If getting pro-family illegals legalized is the goal, perhaps Dr. Land can be persuaded to amend his recommendation and give preference to Protestant illegal aliens.

Leave it to Fischer to suggest a religious test for entry to the U.S. The American Family Association, according to former AFA attorney Joe Murray, isn’t just anti-gay, but anti-Catholic as well.  This, of course, shouldn’t be too surprising. Where there’s one form of bigotry, there’s almost never a good reason to refrain from indulging in other forms as well.

Update: Details behind Fischer’s numbers are discussed here.

AFA boycotts the Home Depot

It must be boycott season, cuz the American Family Association has named their latest target. This year the featured business will be Home Depot.

Home Depot, the lumber/hardware mega-store, refused to acquiesce to AFA’s demands that they ban all employees from participating in gay pride:

“At the end of the day here, we’re not going to send anything out that forbids our associates to be involved in these pride festivals in any way.” – July 15, 2010

Well if Home Depot isn’t going to get control over their employees on their own time, then by golly AFA will.

So here’s what I predict will happen.

1. AFA will auto-email Home Depot pre-fab letters from their member list declaring that they will not shop at Home Depot.

2. Home Depot’s stock will go up. (I still haven’t figured out why this happens)

3. At some point Home Depot will agree to some tiny concession of no material concern.

4. AFA will declare victory and call off the boycott.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been meaning to change my sticking front door-knob… maybe it’s time.

McDonald’s won’t market to gay customers

Don Wildmon, the American Family Association’s director, will periodically declare war on some company or other (usually for undecipherable reasons), get some coverage at WorldNetDaily, send out some fund letters, declare success! (again for undecipherable reasons) and move on to his next target. Back in 2008 the target was McDonald’s. It seems that McDonald’s contributed to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce which meant, somehow, that the company was “endorsing the homosexual agenda”.

When the company’s employee who was on the board of NGLCC moved out of the country, AFA declared victory.

A corporate executive for McDonald’s restaurants who had been on board of directors of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce has stepped down following a boycott of the chain organized by the pro-family American Family Association.

McDonald’s officials confirmed today to WND that Richard Ellis, who had been named to the “gay” chamber board after McDonald’s contributed $20,000 to the organization, “made a personal decision to step down” after he accepted a new position with McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada.

At the time, I wrote this off as coincidental. But perhaps the AFA had more of an impact on McDonald’s than I thought. Or, as new information suggests, perhaps AFA’s message found a sympathetic ear at McDonald’s.

Now a new issue has arisen to get anti-gays into a dither, and McDonald’s response is disturbing. It involves a McDonald’s advertisement which ran on French television.

This charming ad – part of a larger campaign welcoming everyone to come as they are – is not offensive. It is not sexual or provocative or inappropriate. But to those who oppose the existence of gay people, the idea of welcoming gay youth “as they are” is an indication of an insidious homosexual agenda.

And McDonald’s has made it very clear that such a message will not be part of their US marketing.

Lisa Howards, McDonalds’s director of corporate media relations, told Media Matters that the “Come as You Are” campaign was made exclusively for France.

“The ad you’re referencing is one of a series of ads called “Come as You Are,” which recognized he diversity of McDonald’s customers in France. This particular commercial was produced by McDonald’s France and is running only in France,” Howards said in the statement. “Each of our 117 markets around the world determines their own advertising and marketing.”

Companies like McDonald’s have complicated multi-year advertising strategies that include corporate image, message, and theme and I certainly have no expectation that McDonald’s target-market specifically to the gay community. But there is a difference between less narrow marketing and a strategy that specifically excludes gay customers.

And now Don Thompson, McDonald’s new President and Chief Operating Officer, has made it very clear in an interview with the Chicago Tribune that this ad was a “mistake” and that McDonald’s will not market to gay customers. His religion doesn’t approve of gay people.

Tribune: A French TV ad featuring a gay teen and his father has stirred some controversy — not there, but here. Can you talk about that?

Thompson: It is an example that markets, cultures are very different around the world. (For instance), I’ve never shied away from the fact that I’m a Christian. I have my own personal beliefs and I don’t impose those on anybody else. I’ve been in countries where the majority of the people in the country don’t believe in a deity or they may be atheist. Or the majority of the country is Muslim. Or it may be the majority is much younger skewed. So when you look at all these differences, it’s not that I’m to be the judge or the jury relative to right or wrong. Having said that, at McDonald’s, there are core values we stand for and the world is getting much closer. So we have a lot of conversations. We’re going to make some mistakes at times. (We talk) about things that may have an implication in one part of the world and may be the cultural norm in another part of the world. And those are things that, yes, we’re going to learn from. But, you’re right, that commercial won’t show in the United States.

Tribune: How has it done in France?

Thompson: Interestingly enough, there have been no negatives coming out of France. The brand is a local brand and different things will occur in different parts of the world. We just have to make sure that we understand the impact one action may make on another part of the world.

So I guess McDonald’s “core values” do not include marketing to gay youth. Others should come as they are, but there won’t be any marketing to gay people in the United States. In fact, he seems to be saying that there will not be any more marketing to gay people anywhere from now on. It might “have an implication.”

When AFA came calling, Don Thompson was President of McDonald’s USA and there were “things he learned”. I fear that what he learned was that he now has an excuse for implementing his own bigotries and biases. He’s not “imposing on anyone,” he’s just upholding “core values.”

But perhaps McDonald’s has more to learn. Perhaps they need to discover that America’s youth do not share “core values” with the AFA or with Don Thompson.

And McDonald’s certainly doesn’t share “core values” with me.

LaBarbera Award: Bryan Fischer

Speaking of paranoia, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer also seems to have an overly-active imagination:

Some of England’s leading newspapers – The Sun, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail – all had feature stories yesterday about the latest Taliban terror tactic: burying dirty needles with their bombs in an effort to infect troops with HIV. They are planting hypodermic syringes below the surface with the points facing upward in hopes that bomb squad experts will prick themselves and become contaminated with hepatitis and HIV.

If the bomb goes off, then the needles become deadly flying shrapnel.

Said a member of Parliament, “Are there no depths to which these people will stoop? This is the definition of a dirty war.”

If we connect the dots here, the inescapable conclusion is that gay sex is a form of domestic terrorism.

…Now if gays are allowed into the military, they will be inevitably be put in battlefield situations where donated blood from soldiers may be necessary to save the lives of wounded comrades. An HIV-infected American soldier whose blood is used in those circumstances may very well condemn his fellow soldier to death rather than save his life.

If open homosexuals are allowed into the United States military, the Taliban won’t need to plant dirty needles to infect our soldiers with HIV. Our own soldiers will take care of that for them.

All members of the military, gay or straight, are tested for HIV before they enter. Once in the army, everyone, again gay or straight, is tested every two years. Only those who are HIV-negative are sent into war zones. Other services have similar policies. A simple Google search can uncover this information in just 0.32 seconds. Fischer’s vision of hoards of AIDS-infected soldiers posing as a terrorist threat is purely a figment of his imagination. And it’s that creative spark that we look for whenever we award someone the LaBarbera Award.

Matt Barber adds names to Hate Group list

As we told you, Peter Labarbera’s amusingly misnamed website, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, has been named a hate website by the Southern Poverty Law Center. And while I see this as a reasonable classification for a man whose “religious objection to homosexuality” always seems to be expressed in the vilest terms of contempt for gay individuals, fellow anti-gay activist Matt Barber (who sits on AFTAH’s board) has leapt to the Peter’s defense.

Writing in third person, he declares that this addition to the hate list entirely discredits the SPLC. And besides, AFTAH is no different from a number of other groups.

“It’s a ‘hate group,’ mudslinging good time!” joked Barber. ” Let’s try it on for size. In exercise of the SPLC’s trademark ‘I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I’ criteria for determining ‘hate group’ status, I hereby declare the Southern Pov Law Center an officeal ‘anti-Christian, anti-conservative hate group.’ Try it, it’s fun.

“But seriously,” continued Barber, “If AFTAH is a ‘hate group,’ then so is Liberty Counsel, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, American Family Association, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Roman Catholic Church.”

Well now, Matt, those are interesting nominations. You’ve given us something to think about.

Don Wildmon Steps Down From AFA

According to a press release from the American Family Association, Donald Wildmon, the AFA’s chairman has resigned due to an illness. From August to November of last year, Wildmon battled St. Louis encephalitis from a mosquito bite. He also underwent surgery for cancer on his left eye. His son, Tim Wildmon, is expected to take over as head of the AFA.

The elder Wildmon will continue to work at AFA, but according to the press release he “will not have a leadership role.” His son has had a prominent role at the AFA for quite some time, and with his father’s presence still around, I wouldn’t expect too many changes.

AFA Radio Calls for Criminalizing LGBT People

Uganda’s Parliament will return after its long winter recess tomorrow, and it is expected that its first order of business will be to take up the Anti-Homosexuality Bill for its second reading. The anonymous blogger GayUganda says that police round-ups are continuing under the current law even as we speak. Does anyone doubt that there are those who would like to see the same thing here? Anti-Gay Inc., in the form of the American Family Association, thinks it’s a dandy idea. Here’s Bryan Fischer, host of the AFA’s Focus Point radio program:

It might be worth noting that what I actually suggested is that we impose the same sanctions on those who engage in homosexual behavior as we do on those who engage in intravenous drug abuse, since both pose the same kind of risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. I’d be curious to know what you think should be done with IV drug abusers, because whatever it is, I think the same response should be made to those who engage in homosexual behavior.

I don’t know that Fischer has taken a position on Uganda’s proposal for the death penalty against HIV-positive or “serial offender” gay people, nor their proposal for life imprisonment for everyone else, nor their proposal to lock up anyone — health care professionals, caregivers, landlords — who has any knowledge or contact with gay people. But it doesn’t really matter. The impulse is the same. To paraphrase an old joke about sex and prostitution, we’re just haggling over the price.

[Hat tip: Warren Throckmorton]

AFA’s Bryan Fischer Proposes Sectarian Cleansing of US Military

AFA's Bryan Fischer speaking at the 2009 Value Voters Summit

This is shocking even by usual American Family Association “standards.”  Here’s what the AFA’s Bryan Fischer is saying:

It it is time, I suggest, to stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military. The reason is simple: the more devout a Muslim is, the more of a threat he is to national security. Devout Muslims, who accept the teachings of the Prophet as divinely inspired, believe it is their duty to kill infidels. Yesterday’s massacre is living proof.  And yesterday’s incident is not the first fragging incident involving a Muslim taking out his fellow U.S. soldiers.

Of course, most U.S. Muslims don’t shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine. As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we’ll go back to allowing them to serve. You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you’re right, and Muslims can once again serve. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it’s used, and we’ll welcome you back with open arms.

Let’s contrast Fischer’s statement to the 1942 US Government propaganda film “Japanese Relocation” (wikipedia / youtube):

We knew that some among them [Japanese Americans] were potentially dangerous but no one knew what would happen among this concentrated population if Japanese forces should try and invade our shores. Military authorities therefore determined that all of them, citizens and aliens alike would have to move.

Near the end of the film:

[This current story of Japanese internment] will be fully told only when circumstances permit the loyal American citizens once again to enjoy the freedom we in this country cherish and when the disloyal, we hope, have left this country for good. In the mean time we are setting a standard for the rest of the world in the treatment for people who may have loyalties to an enemy nation, we are protecting ourselves without violating the principals of Christian decency.  We won’t change this fundamental decency no matter what our enemies do.

via Joe.My.God

“Disney Elevates Homosexual”

That’s the headline the American Family Association plastered above their post about Disney’s naming Rich Ross as studio chief. Ross was awarded his position after having revived the Disney Channel. I guess he’s gay and doesn’t want to live in the closet, which is an unforgivable affront to these people. And not hiding in the closet is what makes him an “activist” according to Peter LaBarbera:

“The sad reality is that whenever you see a homosexual activist at the top, nine times out of ten they end up pushing that gay agenda using their influence to push it wherever they can,” states LaBarbera.

“It’s the way the homosexual movement ends up influencing the country far beyond its tiny numbers,” he explains. “They get in key positions of power, and then they use that power to advance their agenda.”

A man does his job well and is rewarded for it, but anti-gay activists see it as “pushing that gay agenda.” I smell a boycott. Imagine the outcry if he had been named to a post in the Department of Education or something.

AFA Launces Boycott Against Pepsi; Call Pepsi And Tell Them “Thank You”

The American Family Association has teamed up with PFOX to launch a boycott of all Pepsi products. They are upset over Pepsi’s support for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), which the AFA claims promotes “intolerance of the ex-gay community.” Which seems very strange to me. If there is such a thing as an “ex-gay community,” it has to be among the most invisible communities in the world. Sort of like the “leprechaun community” or the “pixie community.” Besides I thought the “ex-gay community” was supposed to be the “straight community.”

Anyway, the AFA’s latest action alert, which is ironically titled, “Pepsi refuses to be neutral in the culture war,” says:

By issuing national press releases against PFOX, by organizing protests at ex-gay conferences, by publishing anti-ex-gay literature, and by opposing ex-gays equal access to public venues, Pepsi-supported Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) contributes to the intolerance of the ex-gay community, stereotypes former homosexuals, and continually misrepresents PFOX’s mission.

PFLAG is a vocal and activist homosexual group that calls those who oppose homosexual marriage “the forces of prejudice and discrimination.” PFLAG not only cheered the California Supreme Court’s ruling on May 15 which legalized same-sex marriage, it was also vociferous in its opposition to Proposition 8, the ballot initiative which restored traditional marriage in California on Election Day.

By funding PFLAG, PepsiCo and its shareholders help promote fear and hostility against the ex-gay community and other heterosexuals. PepsiCo is the leading corporate sponsor of PFLAG.

The AFA wants its members to call Pepsi’s corporate office to complain, and they want their members to call their nearest Pepsi bottling company. From what we hear, Pepsi is being bombarded with nasty phone calls.

So let’s all call Pepsi (914-253-2000 or 1-800-433-2652) and tell them we appreciate their support and their refusal to bow to anti-gay extremists. The boycott also extends to other PepsiCo products, like Frito-Lay (800-352-4477), Quaker Oats (800-367-6287), Tropicana (800-237-7799) and Gatorade (800-884-2867).

And while you’re at it, call your local Pepsi bottler and distributor.

Michigan TV Station Declines To Air Anti-Gay Propaganda

The American Family Association has been flogging a paid program to television programs called “Speechless: Silencing Christians” Already one television station had agreed to air the special before backing down from a national outcry.

WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan originally scheduled the program to air right before President Barack Obama’s Monday news conference. Program director Craig Cole decided to move it to Wednesday, saying “We didn’t feel it was an appropriate place, leading into the presidential event.” After receiving hundreds of emails, the station’s general manager acknowledged that the show “slipped through our filters,” and offered the AFA a Saturday afternoon time slot. Now we learn that the offer to air the infomercial has been taken off the table:

“We made a gesture of the 2-3 p.m. Saturday time period. It’s been 24 hours and we had no response,” Kniowski said. “Our station is being bombarded with calls and messages, and we find ourselves in the middle of someone else’s fight. Ours was a fair offer and we are removing ourselves from this matter.”

“Speechless” is a veritable tour-de-force of false accusations that the “homosexual agenda” seeks to destroy Christianity. It begins by citing Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen’s book “After the Ball” as the very agenda itself. The book, published in 1989, simply offers gay activists a set of more professional public relations techniques — the very same public relation techniques that anti-gay activists have been using for decades.

The offense that Kirk and Madsen committed, of course, is in denying anti-gay activists a monopoly on those techniques. And boy are they outraged. This latest television program is a perfect example of the AFA’s following Kirk and Madsen’s formula to a tee — with the added mix of false accusations, one-sided reporting of events, and the time-honored fear-mongering slander that gay activists pose a sinister threat to children.

All of this effort is directed towards convincing Americans that Christians are under assault by “homosexualists”, and that if we’re not all careful everyone will be “forced” to accept LGBT people as citizens deserving of civil rights, freedom from bullying, assault and murder, or even the simple right to visit dying partners in hospitals.

Of all the nerve!

“Speechless” is the latest attempt among anti-gay activists to portray Christians as a persecuted minority, even though they make up more than three-quarters of the population — and a rather religious population at that. According to the American Religious Identification Survey taken in 2001 (PDF: 452KB/47 pages), only 16% of Americans described themselves as secular or somewhat secular, while 75% regarded themselves as religious or somewhat religious.

And if there’s any question as to who’s being persecuted, all we need to do is revisit the latest hate crime statistics. According to the FBI, hate crimes against gays and lesbians continued to increase in 2007, contradicting the overall trend of fewer hate crimes since 2006. Crimes based on sexual orientation very nearly tied those based on religion for second place:

Of the religion category for 2007, anti-Jewish offenses 1,010 of the total. Anti-Catholic and anti-Protestant combined make up only 124 offenses for an anti-Christian total. And of those, only 23 were attacks against persons. The rest were crimes against property.

In fact, we noted earlier that hate crimes based on sexual orientation continue to be the most violent type of hate crime by far. Attacks based on sexual orientation are much more likely to be physically violent than in any other category:

While we are still disturbed that WOOD-TV continued to offer to air the AFA’s hate-filled propaganda, we nevertheless congratulate them for listening to the outcry raised in this debacle. Let’s hope other station managers around the country don’t fall into the same mistake.

AFA Boycotts Pepsi

Remember when we asked whether the American Family Association was gearing up for a Pepsi boycott? Well, game on.

AFA Steamed Over Campbell Soup Ad

The Campbell Soup Company is running an ad in the Advocate featuring a child with two mommies. The ads for Swanson’s broth ran in the December 2008 and January 2009 issues. This has the American Family Association boiling:

Campbell Soup Company has openly begun helping homosexual activists push their agenda. Not only did the ads cost Campbell’s a chunk of money, but they also sent a message that homosexual parents constitute a family and are worthy of support. They also gave their approval to the entire homosexual agenda.

They appear particularly upset that the ads featured a homosexual family:

“Not only did the ads cost Campbell’s a chunk of money,” writes AFA Chairman Donald Wildmon in an email alert, “but they also sent a message that homosexual parents constitute a family and are worthy of support.”

They are a family. What other term would Wildmon propose we use to describe two parents and a son? A pack maybe?

Wildmon is calling on his followers to call Campbell soup to complain. This is typically the first step to one of his boycotts. Campbell appears to be pretty resolute though:

A spokesperson for Campbell’s, however, explained that the advertisements are simply an attempt to reach a wide audience. “Campbell’s has been in business since 1869,” spokesperson Anthony Sanzio told WND. “For more than century people from all walks of life have enjoyed our products. We will continue to try to appeal to all people in ways that are meaningful and relevant to them.”

Newsweek Essay Draws Howls of Protest

Anti-gay activists are pulling their hair out over Lisa Miller’s essay in Newsweek, in which she lays out a religious case for same-sex marriage. She opens her essay by saying, “Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.”

As you can imagine, that didn’t go over well with one particular segment of Christianity. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a member of the Focus on the Family Board of Directors, wrote:

Many observers believe that the main obstacle to this agenda [of allowing same-sex marriage] is a resolute opposition grounded in Christian conviction. Newsweek clearly intends to reduce that opposition.”

That was one of the calmer reactions. Tony Perkins of the Family “Research” Council denounced it as “yet another attack on orthodox Christianity.” The Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association called it “one of the most biased and distorted pieces concerning homosexual marriage ever published by any major news organization.” Not surprisingly, he also is calling on his followers to inundate Newsweek with emails.

And Peter LaBarbera, not one to be outdone, called the essay a “scandalous hit piece” and an “embarrassing attempt to make a Biblical case for sodomy-based ‘marriage.'” (See why we have an award named in his honor?) And Peter’s pal, Matt Barber responded, “You know, scripture says woe to those who call evil good and good evil, and I say woe to Newsweek for even printing this drivel.”

Part of the outrage stems from the fact that anti-gay activists have tried for years to couch their opposition to same-sex marriage on sociological research to make their point — research that, as we have pointed out many times, they have distorted with amazing consistency. But by calling on science instead of the Bible, they seek to inoculate themselves from charges of trying to impose their religious views on others. “See? We’re not religious zealots. Science supports us,” they like to say. Richard Land, of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, repeated this line in saying, “The arguments that are used are often not biblical arguments. They are secular arguments, arguing about marriage as being a civic and a social institution, and that societies have a right to define marriage.” And Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, claimed, “We’re not trying to take the Bible and put a bill number on it and legislate it.”

But when they are talking among themselves, religious arguments are firmly at the fore, whether it’s LDS Elder M. Russell Ballard speaking of the “central doctrine of eternal marriage” or Richard Land himself explaining with an apparently straight face that what he calls the global warning “hoax” is simply due to “cycles of nature that God has allowed in the cosmos.” Neither of these positions sound very scientific to me.

But the religious face is not the public face that these religiously-motivated leaders want to present. And by having to respond to Lisa Miller’s essay, they are forced to publicly defend the religious basis for their beliefs, which annoys a few of them to no end.  Watch how Concerned Women for America’s Janice Shaw Crouse pivots when asked about the Newsweek essay:

“Beyond the Scriptural distortion, the article distorts the pro-marriage and pro-family movement that is solidly grounded on sociological research about family structures that contribute to the well-being of women and children.”

She then goes on to mischaracterize what “experts agree.”

But the other part of the outrage also seems clearly aimed at someone who really did intrude onto their home turf. After all, in the same-sex marriage debates, only one small group of Christians are presumed to be allowed to use the Bible — when they think nobody else is looking. Anti-gay activists behave as though the Bible is solely their possession and no one else’s — including other Christians who read the same Bible and come to different conclusions. It’s okay for anti-gay opponents to turn outside their own sphere of authority — science — to make their point. But now that Lisa Miller has taken them on in their own home turf, they’ve let loose with their persecution complex and complained that they– and by extension all of Christianity, since they presume to speak for all Christians — have been “attacked.” 

Which reminds me of a great and appropriate graphic making its way around the Internet:

Nothing Says “Christmas” Like A Blazing Cross In Your Front Yard

Mississippi-based American Family Association wants you to light up your front yard for Christ this Christmas.

Light up your front yard, porch, patio, driveway, business, organization or church this holiday season with a stunning Christmas cross.

Stunning indeed!

There was a time when people lit candles on their Christmas trees and placed burning candles in their windows at Christmastime. But that proved to be too much of a fire hazard, so they’ve all been replaced by their modern-day electrified cousins.

But the blazing cross remained a problem.  Not anymore. Because unlike the flaming crosses of yore, this one is not only perfectly safe, but “weather-proof” — thanks to the modern miracle of electricity.

Not available in stores. I wonder why?

[Hat tip: reader Gabriel]