Posts on Peter Sprigg

It looks like the Religious Right will have a new enemy to fight in their annual “war on Christmas” now that the American Humanist Association has announced its new ad campaign:

"Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake," proclaims a new holiday ad from the American Humanist Association. Already appearing today in the New York Times and Washington Post, the message will soon be blazoned on the sides, taillights, and interiors of over 200 Washington DC Metro buses.

It's the first ad campaign of its kind in the United States, and the American Humanist Association predicts it will raise public awareness of humanism as well as controversy over humanist ideas.

Needless to say, right-wing leaders and activists have already swung into action to warn unsuspecting Americans of the dangers of this new advertising campaign:

Peter Sprigg, vice president of policy at the conservative Family Research Council (FRC), told CNSNews.com that sustainable morality is grounded in a belief in a higher being.

“I don’t think it’s possible to sustain long-term morality without religion,” Sprigg said. “If there is no higher being obliging humans to act morally and ethically, why should we do it?”

Sprigg emphasized he thinks that atheists can act morally, but he also said that society would shift towards greed and selfishness without a belief in a higher power.

And you just knew that Bill Donohue was going to have something to say about it:

Codes of morality, of course, have always been grounded in religion. For those of us in Western civilization, its tenets emanate from the Judeo-Christian ethos. By casting this heritage aside, and replacing it with nothing more than the conscience of lone individuals, we lay the groundwork for moral anarchy. And that is because there is nothing that cannot be justified if the only moral benchmark is what men and women posit to be right and wrong. Indeed, every monster in history has followed his conscience.

The danger is so great in fact that even the moribund Christian Coalition was obligated to speak out against this effort to “ban Christmas and God from the public square,” saying the AHA “has an elitist contempt for Americans believing in God” and urging their “millions of supporters to call the city of Washington, DC and Congress to stop this un-Godly campaign." Even Mat Staver weighed in to call the campaign "insulting" while American Family Association president Tim Wildmon called it "stupid."

We had mentioned a group called In God We Trust once before when they inexplicably demanded that Barack Obama publicly denounce a series of “Imagine No Religion” billboards that the Freedom From Religion Foundation had placed around the country … and so it is no surprise that they would weigh in on this latest affront and do so by attempting to link the AHA to the Right’s most-hated nemesis – the United Nations:

"These ads are a deliberate attack on American traditions, beliefs and customs by a United Nation's affiliated group that espouses a radical anti-American agenda and is funded by an zealot who believes that the U.S. is a backwards nation full of imbeciles," says In God We Trust Chairman Council Nedd.

…

"This ad campaign is yet another attempt by America-hating snobs to mock and attack our nation's traditions and culture" says Nedd. "The AHA is not some harmless little atheist group. These people hate America and they are working with our nation's enemies to attack our heritage."

From John Stossel's latest column: "I asked the Family Research Council's Sprigg whom the government protects when it closes down sex shops. 'The government is protecting actually the people who patronize those shops because I don't think it's in their interest to use pornography and sex toys'."

As California prepares to vote in November on whether to keep same-sex marriage, the Massachusetts legislature is reconsidering the Jim Crow-era law restricting out-of-state gay couples from marrying if their home state prohibits it. Repeal of the 1913 law passed the state Senate Tuesday with no objections. And the far Right is furious.

Brian Camenker of MassResistance called yesterday’s voice vote “cowardly” and “sleazy,”  claiming that gays had taken over the state:

[Camenker] watched his state senate in action and described it as "completely orchestrated" by homosexual activists.

"It was horrible," he said. "It was as if the gays were playing them like a violin."

The voice vote, "was just a sort of murmur and that was it," he said.

"I'll tell you there's no more democracy in Massachusetts, no constitutional government. They were completely being run by the homosexual lobby," he said.

Camenker warned that repeal of the restriction would “cause havoc” for other states, and Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality called it “a recipe for chaos.”

"Obviously, what the homosexuals are trying to do is to create a tidal wave for homosexual...marriage, build up a number of states [that] are allowing either civil unions or homosexual...marriage, and then have a favorable case before the Supreme Court, which grants this nationally," explains the pro-family activist, noting that only a Defense of Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution could prevent the court from doing that.

Not surprisingly, the Right’s reaction to last week’s ruling by the California Supreme Court in favor of equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians was swift and negative.

Former Rep. Ernest Istook, now of the Heritage Foundation, evoked Nazi metaphors to blame those who supported civil unions as a compromise: “By trying to appease homosexual rights activists, those who have refused to stand up for traditional marriage helped to create this court ruling.  They are the Neville Chamberlains of the cultural wars.”

Barrett Duke of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission said he was "saddened for the people of California" but "especially for the children of that state."

"The California Supreme Court ruling not only overruled the very clear will of the people, it also proposes to overrule God's design," Duke said. "These judges may think they know more about marriage than the rest of us, but I am confident they don't know more about marriage than God. Marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Children need that environment to give them their best chance to fulfill their great potential. That's not only my opinion and the opinion of most of the people in this country, it's God's opinion, and His opinion overrules the opinion of any judges.

Indeed, the Right emphasized this “activist judges” angle; Gary Bauer, attacking the “four unelected robed radicals,” wrote:

It was an egregious exercise in judicial activism – of judges wielding raw political power to redefine our most basic values. But that is how the Left has succeeded. It cannot achieve its goals through the democratic process via the elected legislatures, so it ignores the people and goes to the courts, where it relies on political activists cloaked in black who answer to no one. The Left succeeds by using the most undemocratic methods possible.

Of course, Bauer may not realize that, while appointed at first, justices on California’s Supreme Court face voters at the next general election; each of the justices in the majority for this case has been retained by voters at least once. Bauer is probably aware, though, that the “elected legislature” in California passed marriage equality in 2005 and 2007, only to have it vetoed both times by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Nevertheless, right-wing activists hoped the decision would energize opponents of gay rights into action. “The good news is that I believe this will re-ignite the debate over a federal constitutional amendment,” according to Concerned Women for America’s Matt Barber. Jan LaRue called on Californians to recall members of the state’s Supreme Court in the way they recalled the governor several years ago. “Are you going to sit by and do nothing while four black-robed despots take away your right to govern yourselves?”

Meanwhile, the effort to put on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage on the California ballot continues—now, apparently, with more funding.

And, in spite of a beleaguered GOP’s effort to keep a low profile on social wedge issues during this election cycle, the Right is hoping the decision will push John McCain to “speak out more strongly in support of defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” as Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council put it.

Family Research Council Vice-President Peter Sprigg devoted his op-ed on the Texas polygamy investigation to a defense of statutory rape laws, but he couldn’t resist a “slippery slope” attack linking marriage equality for gays to the fundamentalist sect’s polygamy and apparent abuse:

[T]he existence of such a large group of practicing polygamists within our borders reinforces the concern that some have (which I share) that redefining marriage for the benefit of homosexuals would put us on a slippery slope toward other redefinitions-including legalization of polygamy.

Medill News Service, a project run by Northwestern University graduate journalism students, recently ran a story about the Uniting American Families Act, legislation that “would allow same-sex partners to be united legally through the U.S. immigration process. The bill would correct the bias in the [Immigration and Nationality Act] by adding the term ‘permanent partner’ to the law’s definition of family members; therefore, same-sex partners of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents would be eligible for green cards and immigrant visas available to spouses and other family members.”

The piece profiles a couple, Tim Miller and Alistair McCartney, who have been together for fourteen years who may be forced to separate or leave the country altogether when McCartney, an Australian citizen, sees his work Visa expire next year.  

Reporter Sirena Rubinoff then interviewed Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council who explained his organization’s opposition to the legislation:

We oppose this bill because it is, although it may be at the margins, part of an assault on the definition of family ... I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States because we believe homosexuality is destructive to society.

One of our correspondents sent this report from the first day of the Family Impact Summit in Florida:

The first panel's topic was "The Homosexual Agenda," and Peter Sprigg, vice president for public policy at the Family Research Council, gave his talk with the aid of a PowerPoint presentation purporting to outline the "Elements of the Agenda." Sprigg lectured the crowd about how “militant gay rights activists” were going about crossing off agenda points, and spoke at length about the gay rights activists' movement to "indoctrinate every student from kindergarten to 12th grade." 

While Sprigg gave the usual compassionate-sounding phrases of the anti-gay movement—with statements like, "We desire the best for homosexuals, and desiring the best for someone and acting to bring that about is the essence of love…"— he "affirmed" the state of Florida for having the strongest prohibition against adoption by gay couples. He made the claim that "most children raised by homosexuals are the result of previous heterosexual relationships," and proceeded to pontificate about how this "undermines the notion that homosexuality is something fixed from birth and cannot change—there are very few homosexuals who have never had a heterosexual relationship."

Some PBS stations are reportedly set to air a three-part BBC series entitled “A Brief History of Disbelief” which seeks to “uncover[] the hidden story of atheism.” 

Not surprisingly, the Right doesn’t like it at all:

Janice Crouse, director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute for the conservative group Concerned Women for America, told Cybercast News Service that "airing the program gives credibility and cohesiveness to individuals who seek to undermine the beliefs and values on which democracy and the American dream are founded."

"One has to wonder why it is so important to them for everyone to understand their 'disbelief,'" she said. "The program is not a dispassionate, positive voice - as they claim. Instead, it is clearly demagogic and propagandistic."

Perhaps Crouse is not the best judge of what is or is not “dispassionate” considering that Beverly LaHaye, the namesake of the institute which Crouse heads, believes that “Christian values should dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the Bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.” And when it comes to demagogic, it’s hard to top this:  “In recent times, Western Civilization has willingly chosen to exchange the faith and logic of a Biblical worldview for an irrational secularism based on an unthinking and cruel relativism. This foolish exchange is at the root of the glaring injustices of modern American public policy.”

But CWA is not alone in opposing this program:

By airing "Disbelief," [Peter] Sprigg [of the Family Research Council] added, PBS is "revealing their bias against Christianity, against traditional faith."

…

"If they really want to be objective, they need to have a three-part series documenting the evidence in favor of Christianity," he added.

Indeed.  PBS hardly ever runs anything about Christianity.