Submitted by Brian Tashman on February 1, 2012 - 12:50pm
Yesterday on Today’s Issues, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins claimed that “Islamists and the homosexuals work out of the same playbook” in their attempt to “marginalize” and “silence” critics. Perkins told his cohost, American Family Association head Tim Wildmon, that both Islamists and gays and lesbians attack critics because “if what they do and what they subscribe to is scrutinized, people will turn away from it.” Wildmon wholeheartedly agreed with Perkins and said that Islamists and the gay community want people to “suspend common sense.”
Listen:
Perkins: The Islamists and the homosexuals work out of the same playbook. They knew that if what they do and what they subscribe to is scrutinized, people will turn away from it, so what they want to do is they want to marginalize and eventually silence anyone who challenges their ideology and their agenda.
Wildmon: That’s called political correctness.
Perkins: Yup.
Wildmon: What you have to do there is you have to deny reality and you have to, you know, you have to suspend common sense.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on January 24, 2012 - 4:52pm
On Today’s Issues, a despondent Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association discussed the likely passage of a bill in Washington that will legalize same-sex marriage. Citing the stories of “ex-gays,” Perkins argued that gays and lesbians will always have “an emptiness within them” and will never be content with having the right to marry, as “they are operating outside of nature and outside of God’s plan and design.” He went on to say that gay rights advocates ultimately want “the indoctrination of our kids.” Perkins has previously said that gay youth are more likely to commit suicide not as a result of “inacceptance” but because they intuitively know they are “abnormal” and even blamed “the homosexual movement” for suicides.
Wildmon: Do you really think though, and I think you spoke to this earlier program, that these people really care about getting married, that they really care? Or are they looking for societal approval of their behavior?
Perkins: I think it’s the latter. We’ve seen that even in the early states that had same-sex marriage, not many actually, there were some certainly but by and large they don’t, you can talk too many in the homosexual community, I mean you can Google it and read the interviews, a lot of them don’t want marriage. Not every person that identifies as a homosexual or a lesbian is an activist trying to redefine the laws. I do think and many of those who have come out of the homosexual lifestyle will tell you this that they are looking for acceptance, there is an emptiness within them, they are looking for that acceptance and they think that if society will redefine the norms of behavior that will make them feel content, and it won’t because they are operating outside of nature and outside of God’s plan and design. It will be something else next; redefining marriage will not be the end of this. We’re already seeing this in California, SB 48, the measure that took effect this month, now all of the “positive” contributions of those in the GBT, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender population have to be taught in the public schools, so it will be the indoctrination of our kids to teach them that homosexuality is normal.
Remember, this is the pastor the AFA and the FRC brought on their radio show to prove why they do not deserve the SPLC’s ‘hate group’ classification.
During the show, Wooden claimed that SPLC, which he recently protested alongside Peter LaBarbera and Matt Barber, was “hijacked” and “infiltrated” by gay rights advocates, and called homosexuality “deviant” and a “death style,” and even claimed that the LGBT community discriminates against African American males.
Perkins accused the SPLC of trying to “silence the debate” over gay rights and Wildmon asserted that the SPLC “switched over” to covering LGBT issues because racism is in “rearview mirror here in our country and we moved beyond that and they had to have something to do,” and labeled the AFA and FRC anti-gay hate groups simply because the two organization “stands for traditional marriage and against homosexual marriage.” However, their stance on marriage equality was not part of the SPLC’s criteria as “not one of them was listed because of their position on same-sex marriage.”
Submitted by Brian Tashman on December 20, 2011 - 2:45pm
Pat Buchanan joined Tim Wilmon of the American Family Association today where he warned that the left wants to “convert America into a monstrous replica of the United Nations General Assembly where everyone is equal in every way.” While promoting Suicide of a Superpower, Buchanan lamented that America may become “an egalitarian society” that is part of a vision rejecting what people see as America’s “racist, bigoted, sexist, imperialist, colonialist, homophobic” past:
Wildmon: Why do these folks have such hostility for our traditions and for the Christian religion? Where does this come from?
Buchanan: Well I think it certainly flourished in the 1960s on the campuses, around the mid-1960s, and the ground had been prepared by many in the faculty. The basic feeling on a part of a lot of these people is that the old traditionalist America was racist, bigoted, sexist, imperialist, colonialist, homophobic and every other adjective you can think of, and they look upon that past with detestation. They want to change and alter what was a sort of, basically a Western Christian country, part of the West, part of European civilization, and they want to put an end to that. They want to create a new nation that is of all the races, cultures, creeds of every continent and country on earth and an egalitarian society, and frankly a country that has never before existed. They want to convert America into a monstrous replica of the United Nations General Assembly where everyone is equal in every way, and it’s a utopian idea and I think that it is incompatible with the existence of the country we grew up in. That is what is happening, but there is a deep, ingrained hostility of the country that we were raised in for the reasons that I mentioned.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on December 12, 2011 - 4:40pm
Rick Perry’s desperate ad attacking openly gay service members and criticizing President Obama’s purported “war on religion” has quickly become one of the most disliked videos on YouTube, but it has found a few unsurprising fans: anti-gay zealots in the Religious Right. The ad even divided Perry’s own campaign staff with one pollster calling it “nuts”:
American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer said that the ad’s hostile reception on YouTube proves that Perry is a good candidate for Christian conservative voters: “Perry’s ad had triggered an astonishing 637,738 dislikes to just 19,792 likes by 10:53 Eastern time this morning, clearly stamping him as the candidate the vengeful, hate-filled, vitriolic homosexual lobby wants to destroy,” Fischer wrote today. “If you’re looking for your values candidate, conservatives, you may have just found him.” On his radio show last week, Fischer even said that AFA founder and chairman emeritus Don Wildmon, who led The Response prayer rally with Perry, called the ad “the best political ad he’s ever seen.”
Wildmon’s son Tim, the current head of the AFA, agreed with Todd Starnes of Fox News that the ad might help Perry consolidate support among conservative voters and propel Perry to the top of the polls. Starnes predicted “that we are going to see a bump in the poll numbers as the result of this ad, they may not give this ad credit but if you see a rise in the numbers I think it is because of this ad,” saying that it “articulated” how evangelical Christians in America feel:
The Family Research Council even promoted the ad to members and dismissed concerns that it would backfire on the Texas governor, whom they claim is in touch with “everyday Americans”:
Rick Perry's latest ad was intended for Iowa, but thanks to the national media, it's airing on every network in America. A number of pundits are panning the spot for its bold social conservative themes, which they insist will hurt the Texas Governor's chances. "I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian," Gov. Perry says, "but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school." The ad is called "Strong," and that's the kind of message it sends on issues like religious freedom. "As President, I'll end Obama's war on religion. And I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage." True, Gov. Perry probably wouldn't win the media's vote with that kind of platform--but he does stand to benefit with everyday Americans who are tired of seeing their values in the line of fire under this administration.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on November 15, 2011 - 5:35pm
Last week on American Family Radio’s Today’s Issues, Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council hosted Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) to discuss a bill he wrote that would compel the Department of Interior to include a prayer from Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the World War II Memorial. After Wildmon lashed out at the Obama administration’s supposed hostility to Christianity, the freshman congressman told Wildmon and Perkins that Obama and his administration are “not only hostile to the Christian faith; they’re hostile to America, period.” Johnson went on to say that Obama has “a different view than any American that I know about what makes this country great” and is “out slamming America every time he gets an opportunity.”
Wildmon: Can President Obama do any more, to be hostile to the Christian faith?
…
Johnson: They’re not only hostile to the Christian faith; they’re hostile to America, period. You heard just within the past week President Obama saying that America’s been lazy about investing and creating business opportunities in the Pacific region, he simply has a different view than any American that I know about what makes this country great. Instead of being about creating jobs and balancing the federal budget and holding Washington accountable, he’s out slamming America every time he gets an opportunity.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on September 30, 2011 - 3:00pm
Back when Gov. Rick Perry was organizing his massive "The Response" prayer rally, we were hard at work chronicling the ties between organizers of the event and the self-proclaimed prophets and apostles affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation.
But it was not just people like us who were taking note of the fact that Republicans and Religious Right leaders were embracing this new breed of spiritual warriors, as some conservatives leaders began to raise alarms of their own.
One of the leading conservative critics of this development has been Brannon Howse of Worldview Weekend, who has been using his radio program to voice his opposition.
And his criticism is apparently causing such massive headaches for the folks over at the American Family Association that, as Warren Throckmorton reports, hosts of programs that air on the AFA's American Family Radio network are now being told that their shows will be dropped if they in any way partner with Howse:
The American Family Association has taken aim at fellow religious conservative Brannon Howse over his criticism of the AFA’s recent sponsorship of GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry’s The Response prayer meeting. Earlier this week, Jim Stanley, program director of AFA’s radio network, American Family Radio, sent notices to two talk show hosts who are associated with Howse, informing them that continued presence on the AFA’s radio network was conditioned on severing ties with Howse.
The talk show hosts, John Loeffler and Todd Friel, have shows aired by American Family Radio and also speak at Howse sponsored events. According to Tim Wildmon, president of the AFA, “we identified two people with programs on our networks and told them, ’you have to make a choice.’” In defense of the move, Wildmon said “AFR is under no obligation to run programs of individuals who are going to help Brannon when he is attacking our friends. We make programming decisions all the time.”
Howse heads Worldview Weekend, a socially conservative ministry which espouses similar conservative views as the AFA on culture war issues as abortion and homosexuality. However, Howse charges that religious right leaders have formed improper religious alliances with leaders in the New Apostolic Reformation such as Cindy Jacobs in order to promote a conservative political agenda. About his stance, Howse said, “Christians must defend the gospel when we believe Christian leaders are giving credibility to what the Bible describes as false teaching ... In an email, Wildmon told me that Howse had tried to “sabotage The Response that we were sponsors of and has gone after our friends and associates like Jim Garlow, Tony Perkins, James and Shirley Dobson, etc., by name.” He explained that the network had received calls from listeners and that the situation had been “a headache.”
Submitted by Brian Tashman on September 14, 2011 - 12:15pm
Yesterday on American Family Radio’s Today’s Issues, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and American Family Association head Tim Wildmon agreed that God is going to judge the U.S. over the issue of abortion and marriage equality. “God is going to hold us accountable for the death, the destructive policies of this country that have devalued human life and are redefining marriage,” Perkins said, and Wildmon concurred that as long as abortion continues to be legal in America “we will be judged and held accountable for it, as a country.”
Listen:
Perkins: You and I Tim as Americans have been given a very unique role in the history of mankind to be a part of that process and choosing our leaders, but with that opportunity comes a responsibility and an accountability. I think we’ll give an account for who the leaders of this nation, who the leaders are, and the policies that they adopt. We can’t simply wash our hands and say ‘oh just because we have a pro-abortion president, a Democratic president, we don’t have anything to do with that.’ No my friends, we do. When only fifty percent of the church-going population is registered to vote and only half of them are actually voting, I have some really somber news: I believe God is going to hold us accountable for the death, the destructive policies of this country that have devalued human life and are redefining marriage.
…
Wildmon: Folks keep in mind the overarching principle here we need to look at is a Biblical one, in that it is immoral, it is evil, it is wrong in the eyes of God to kill unborn babies.
Perkins: And as long as it’s happening in the United States we’re a party to it.
Wildmon: We’re a party to and we are being and we will be judged and held accountable for it, as a country.
Submitted by Miranda Blue on August 5, 2011 - 6:14pm
Updated 8/5/2011
On August 6, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will host The Response, a “prayer rally” in Houston, along with the extremist American Family Association and a cohort of Religious Right leaders with far-right political ties. While the rally’s leaders label it a "a non-denominational, apolitical Christian prayer meeting," the history of the groups behind it suggests otherwise. The Response is powered by politically active Religious Right individuals and groups who are dedicated to bringing far-right religious view, including degrading views of gays and lesbians and non-Christians, into American politics.
In fact, a spokesman for The Response has said that while non-Christians will be welcomed at the rally, they will be urged to “seek out the living Christ.” Allan Parker, a right-wing activist who participated in an organizing conference call for the event, declared in an email bearing the official Response logo that including non-Christians in the event "would be idolatry of the worst sort."
Perry told James Dobson that the rally was necessary because Americans have “turned away from God.”
The following is an introduction to the groups and individuals who Gov. Perry has allied himself with in planning this event.
The American Family Association
The American Family Association is the driving force behind The Response. Founded by the Rev. Don Wildmon in 1977, the organization is based is best known for its various boycott campaigns, promotion of art censorship, and political advocacy against women’s rights and LGBT equality. The organization also controls the vast American Family Radio and an online news service, in addition to sponsoring various conferences frequented by Republican leaders, including the Values Voter Summit and Rediscovering God in America. The AFA today is led by Tim Wildmon, Don’s son, and its chief spokesperson is Bryan Fischer, the Director of Issues Analysis for Government and Public Policy and host of its flagship radio show Focal Point.
Fischer routinely expresses support for some of the most bigoted and shocking ideas found in the Religious Right today. He has:
said that the anti-Muslim manifesto of the right-wing Christian terrorist who killed dozens in Norway was “accurate.”
Other AFA leaders and activists are just as radical:
AFA President Tim Wildmon claims that by repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell President Obama shows he “doesn’t give a rip about the Marines or the Army” and “just wants to force homosexuality into every place that he can.”
AFA Vice President Buddy Smith, who is on the leadership council of The Response, said that gays and lesbians are “in the clasp of Satan.”
The Response’s leadership team includes five senior staff members of the International House of Prayer (IHOP), a large, highly political Pentecostal organization built on preparing participants for the return of Jesus Christ. In a recent video, IHOP encouraged supporters to pray for Jews to convert to Christianity in order to bring about the Second Coming. IHOP is closely associated with Lou Engle, a Religious Right leader whose anti-gay, anti-choice extremism hasn’t stopped him from hobnobbing with Republican leaders including Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee. Engle is the founder of The Call, day-long rallies against abortion rights and gay marriage, which Engle says are meant to break Satan’s control over the U.S. government. One recent Call event featured “prophet” Cindy Jacobs calling for repentance for the “girl-on-girl kissing” of Britney Spears and Madonna. Perry's The Response event is clearly built upon Engle's The Call model.
Engle has a long history of pushing extreme right-wing views and advocating for a conservative theocracy in America. Engle:
IHOP’s founder and executive director, Mike Bickle, who is an official endorser of The Response, like Engle pushes radical End Times prophesies. In one sermon, he declared that Oprah Winfrey is a precursor to the Antichrist.
The International House of Prayer, incidentally, remains locked in a copyright infringement lawsuit with the International House of Pancakes.
Tony Perkins
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, is a co-chairman of The Response. At the FRC, Perkins has been a vocal opponent of LGBT equality, often relying on false claims about gay people to push his agenda. He:
denied that there was a correlation between anti-gay bullying and depression and suicide, saying instead that gay and lesbian teens know they are “abnormal” and “have a higher propensity to depression or suicide because of that internal conflict";
One of the most prominent members of The Response’s leadership team is pastor Jim Garlow. The pastor for a San Diego megachurch, Garlow has been intimately involved in political battles, especially the campaign to pass Proposition 8. Garlow invited and housed Lou Engle to lead The Call rallies around California for six months to sway voters to support Proposition 8, which would repeal the right of gay and lesbian couples to get married. He claims Satan is behind the “attack on marriage” and credits the prayer rallies for the passage of Prop 8. He said that during a massive The Call rally in San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium “something had snapped in the Heavenlies” and “God had moved” to deliver Prop 8 to victory.
Most importantly, Garlow is a close spiritual adviser to presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and leads Gingrich’s Renewing American Leadership (ReAL). Garlow is a principal advocate of Seven Mountains Dominionism, and wants to “bring armies of people” to bring Religious Right leaders into public office and defeat their political opponents.
likened homosexuality to bestiality, saying that if marriage equality is upheld “the next court case could conceivably say that if three people wanted to marry or four people or five people or if someone wanted to marry their dog or their horse”;
While Senator John McCain rejected John Hagee’s endorsement during the 2008 presidential campaign for his “deeply offensive and indefensible” remarks, Perry invited Hagee to join The Response. Hagee leads a megachurch in San Antonio, Texas, and is a purveyor of End Times prophesies. Like members of the International House of Prayer, Hagee utilizes language of spiritual warfare and says he is part of “the army of the living God.” He runs the prominent group Christians United For Israel, which believes that eventually a cataclysmic war in the Middle East will bring about the Rapture.
John McCain was forced to disavow Hagee for a reason as the Texas pastor:
claimed that God sent Hitler to be a “hunter” of Jews to usher in the establishment of Israel and “do God’s work,” lamenting that Jews are no longer “spiritually alive.”
referred to the Catholic Church as ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.’
said that God won’t allow the United States to win wars anymore because “we have allowed the worship of Satanism in the U.S. military.”
James Dobson
James Dobson, an official endorser of The Response, is one of the most prominent figures in the Religious Right. Founder of both Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council , Dobson has been instrumental in bringing the priorities of the Religious Right to Republican politics, including campaigning hard for President George W. Bush. But many of the views that Dobson pushes are hardly mainstream. Dobson:
insists that the Religious Right’s fight against Planned Parenthood is “very similar” to that of abolitionists who fought against the slave trade.
Asked if God had withdrawn his hand from America after 9/11, Dobson responded: “Christians have made arguments on both sides of this question. I certainly believe that God is displeased with America for its pride and arrogance, for killing 40 million unborn babies, for the universality of profanity and for other forms of immorality. However, rather than trying to forge a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the terrorist attacks and America's abandonment of biblical principles, which I think is wrong, we need to accept the truth that this nation will suffer in many ways for departing from the principles of righteousness. "The wages of sin is death," as it says in Romans 6, both for individuals and for entire cultures.”
David Barton
David Barton, an official endorser of The Response, is a self-proclaimed historian known for his twisting of American History and the Bible to justify right-wing political positions. Barton’s strategy is twofold: he first works to find Biblical bases for right-wing policy initiatives, and then argues that the Founding Fathers wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, so obviously wanted whatever policy he has just found a flimsy Biblical basis for. Barton, “documenting” the divine origins of his interpretations of the Constitution gives him and his political allies a potent weapon. Opponents who disagree about tax policy or the powers of Congress are not only wrong, they are un-American and anti-religious, enemies of America and of God.
Barton uses his shoddy historical and biblical scholarship to push a right-wing political agenda, including:
Biblical Capitalism: Barton’s “scholarship” helps to form the basis for far-right economic policies. He claims that “Jesus was against the minimum wage,” that the Bible “absolutely condemned” the estate tax,” and opposed the progressive income tax.
Revising Racial History: Barton has traveled the country peddling a documentary he made blaming the Democratic Party for slavery, lynching and Jim Crow…while ignoring more recent history.
Opposing Gay Rights: Barton believes the government should regulate gay sex and maintains that countries which “rejected sexual regulation” inevitably collapse.
Other Allies
Among the other far-right figures who have signed on to work with Gov. Perry on The Response are:
Rob Schenk, an anti-choice extremist who was once arrested for throwing a fetus in the face of President Clinton, and who allegedly had ties with the murderer of abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian.
Loren Cunningham, who is working to mobilize support for the rally is a co-founder of the radical “Seven Mountains Dominionist” ideology. Cunningham says that he received the “seven mountains” idea, which holds that evangelical Christians must take hold of all aspects of society in order to pave the way for the Second Coming, in a message directly from God.
Doug Stringer, The Response's National Church and Ministry Mobilization Coordinator, who blamed American secularism and the increased acceptance of homosexuality for the 9/11 attacks, saying “It was our choice to ask God not to be in our every day lives and not to be present in our land.”
Cindy Jacobs, self-proclaimed “prophet” and endorser of The Response, who famously insisted that birds were dying in Arkansas earlier this year because of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
C. Peter Wagner, an official endorser of The Response, is one of the most prominent leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation, a controversial movement whose followers believe they are prophets and apostles on par with Christ himself (other adherents include Engle, Jacobs and Anh). Wagner has advocated burning Catholic, Mormon and non-Christian religious objects. He blamed the Japanese stock market crash and later the devastating earthquake and tsunami in the country on a traditional ritual in which the emperor supposedly has “sexual intercourse” with the pagan Sun Goddess.
Che Ahn, a mentor of John Hagee and official endorser of The Response, who endorses “Seven Mountains” dominionism and compares the fight against gay rights to the fight against slavery.
John Benefiel, a self-proclaimed "apostle" and official endorser of The Response, who claims the Statue of Liberty is a "demonic idol" and that homosexuality is a plot cooked up by the Illuminati to control the world's population, and that he renamed the District of Columbia the “District of Christ” because he has “more authority than the U.S. Congress does.”
James “Jay” Swallow, official endorser of the rally, who calls himself a “spiritual warrior” and hosts “Strategic Warriors At Training (SWAT): A Christian Military Training Camp for the purpose of dealing with the occult and territorial enemy strong holds in America.”
Alice Smith, who advocates "spiritual housecleaning" because demons "sneak into" homes through everyday objects.
Willie Wooten, a self-proclaimed “apostle” who claims that God is punishing the African American community for supporting gay rights, reproductive freedom and the Democratic Party.
Pastor Stephen Broden – Broden, an endorser of The Response, has repeatedly insisted that a violent overthrow of the U.S. government must remain “on the table.”
Timothy F. Johnson – Johnson, a former vice-chairman of the North Carolina GOP, was elected to that post despite two domestic violence convictions and still unresolved questions about his military service and educational record.
Alice Patterson – Patterson, a member of The Response's leadership team, insists that the Democratic Party is controlled by a "demonic structure."
Submitted by Peter Montgomery on August 2, 2011 - 10:42am
Another reason to get your tickets for this year's Values Voter Summit: a fundraising letter from the American Family Association promises that its new "documentary" -- Divorcing God: Secularism, Sexual Anarchy and the Future of the Republic -- will debut at the VVS, the major annual political gathering for the Religious Right movement.
The letter from AFA President Tim Wildmon indicates that the group is eager to maintain its status at a top source for over-the-top anti-gay rhetoric and religious bigotry. Wildmon writes that Divorcing God "connects the dots" among three movements that have "contributed to America's moral decline" -- the secular/humanist movement, the sexual revolution, and the homosexual movement. But it's really about the latter. "In the relentless drive to convince our society that homosexuality is the moral equivalent of heterosexuality, we see the convergence of all three movements. The New York [marriage equality] vote is a potent case-in-point."
Wildmon cites a verse from the biblical book of Jeremiah in which he says God complains about humanity's rebellion against His law, and then Wildom writes:
Doesn't this describe the past 60 years of America's attempt to run from God?
It began when the humanists insisted that God be driven from the public square through the so-called 'separation of church and state.'
It continued into the 1960s with the transformation of the marital embrace from an act of love and creativity to an act of mere self-pleasure and self-worship that ultimately led to the legalization of abortion.
Now our nation's rebellion has reach [sic] the point that homosexuality is seen as normal, and same-sex marriage is embraced as a civil right.
In Romans 1, Paul uses homosexuality to describe the ultimate idolatry and rejection of God and His dominion over us, since it is a violation of the natural law that God wrote on the hearts of all mankind.
Fortunately, says Wildmon, God hasn't abandoned America...yet. God is "calling us back to Himself," says Wildmon, "And one way He is doing so is through the voice of the AFA, especially the message of Divorcing God: Secularism, Sexual Anarchy and the Future of the Republic." And if the AFA can raise "literally hundreds of thousands" of dollars to get Divorcing God onto cable networks and into churches across America, it just might be possible to save the Republic.
