Posts on Tradition Family and Property

Not long ago an obscure but well-heeled group called the American Society for Tradition, Family and Property started showing up on the right-wing scene, becoming very active in the fight against marriage euqality.  It is currently engaged in "a 30-day tour of cities and colleges across California to educate the public on the importance of preserving traditional marriage" and it is not off to a particularly good start, at least according to their latest press release:

Volunteers with the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP) were assaulted on September 5th while distributing literature in support of traditional marriage at Santa Rosa Junior College.

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TFP, a Catholic organization, was distributing flyers titled "Ten Reasons Why Homosexual 'Marriage' Is Harmful and Must Be Opposed." It calls on Californians to firmly and peacefully resist the advance of the so-called gay-rights movement.

TFP claims that its volunteers have been shouted at, swatted at, and had coffee thrown on them which, if true, we obviously don't condone.  Just to be safe, maybe they should start sending out their regiment of regalia clad activists from now on to help keep everyone in line:

After all, what good does it do to have a pseudo-military force like this if you don't use it?

Not surprisingly, the Religious Right is upset at the failure of an effort to block California’s recent same-sex marriage decision from going into effect. “[N]ationwide legal chaos,” predicted the Alliance Defense Fund. The decision “abolishes the meaning of motherhood and fatherhood,” opined Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. A “further extension of their judicial activism,” said Pacific Justice Institute’s Brad Dacus.

At the same time, readers of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Times were confronted with an enormous advertisement urging them to “join the Crusade” of “conscientious resistance” to “the homosexual ‘moral revolution.’”

An obscure but well-heeled group called the American Society for Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) ran ads today covering two full pages in those newspapers, warning of the threat of same-sex marriage. The ad echoes the now-common Religious Right theme that equality for gays and lesbians would lead to the “persecution” of Christianity, but with 4,600 words in some of the most expensive print around, TFP apparently tried to make the argument in the least succinct way possible, discoursing on Nazism, the definition of truth, various Vatican publications, and Joan of Arc.

By legalizing same-sex “marriage,” the State becomes its official and active promoter. It calls on public officials to officiate at the new civil ceremony, orders public schools to teach its acceptability to children, and punishes any state employee who expresses disapproval. …

Left unchecked, this anti-Christian trend will become an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment and our American way of life that we do not hesitate to call persecution. …

As the homosexual revolution’s anti-Christian intolerance makes itself felt through increasingly persecutory measures, a terrible problem of conscience arises in any who resist: Should we follow our consciences? Should we give in?

For Catholics like ourselves, the condoning of same-sex “marriage” would be tantamount to a renunciation of Faith. …

This is a battle for the soul of America. The so-called Cultural War is gradually becoming a Religious War.

Tradition, Family and Property is an unusual group. Founded in 1973 after the anti-Communist writings of a Brazilian dissident Catholic activist, TFP brought a unique style of protest—serious young men with red capes, heraldic banners, and brass bands—to issues ranging from abortion, homosexuality, and contraception to anti-Communism, water subsidies, flag burning, and the Gulf War. While the group doesn’t have the name recognition of the more media-savvy Catholic League, it still brought in $6.8 million in donations and sales in 2006.