American Family Association

Former child star Kirk Cameron’s anti-gay tirade, calling homosexuality “unnatural” and “detrimental and ultimately destructive,” led to a backlash from some prominent actors, but Religious Right groups are more than happy to broadcast his claims. Tony Perkins of FRC Action defended Cameron from criticism by citing a poll by the anti-gay Alliance Defense Fund which tried to overstate the number of people who oppose marriage equality, as recent surveys show that more Americans favor marriage equality than oppose it and that support for legalizing same-sex marriage is on the rise.

Where is the tolerance? You won't find any on display with homosexual activists who are determined to attack and silence anyone who dares to disagree or challenge their political or social agenda. Their latest target is actor Kirk Cameron. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is attacking Cameron for remarks he made in an interview with Piers Morgan last Friday, in which he said that the definition of marriage should be, "One man, one woman for life till death do you part." Cameron, a born-again Christian who starred in the movie Left Behind and the pro-marriage film Fireproof, also said he considers homosexuality to be "unnatural," "detrimental," and "destructive." Perhaps it's GLAAD, not the 1980s teen star, who's out of step, since a 2011 poll showed that 62% of Americans agree with the statement, "I believe marriage should be defined ONLY as a union between one man and one woman." Another 2011 poll found a substantial majority of Americans (56%) believe that "sex between two adults of the same gender" is "morally wrong."

Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families also weighed in, saying that the “radical left” is trying to expunge “faith” and “traditional values” and that conservatives need to fight back and make sure that there “will be no ‘truce’ in the culture war”:

The left went nuts. Homosexual rights groups blasted Cameron's alleged bigotry and intolerance. Liberal Hollywood types rushed to Tweet their condemnation of Cameron's values and to reaffirm their fidelity to the gay marriage cause.

Not long ago, virtually no one would have argued with Cameron's comments. But the cultural left is determined to impose its values on the rest of society. It began by purging faith from the public square and forcing it into the closet. Then abortion was forced on every state in the country. Now marriage is being redefined. The secularists want an America where traditional values cannot be spoken.

As the Democrat Party embraced the radical left, more and more values voters found a home in the Republican Party. They expect the GOP to unapologetically defend their cherished values. Increasingly, however, it seems only one party is committed to fighting and winning the culture war.

…

Yet I am bothered when I hear conservatives buy into this line of reasoning. There will be no "truce" in the culture war. The left fully intends to win it. It's absurd that many Republicans and even some conservatives are preemptively surrendering by refusing to bring up these issues!

Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality attacked the “Hollywood liberals and LGBT militants” who have criticized Cameron:

As you can see, this is not the tone of an “extremist” but a thoughtful Christian man who is smart enough to know that Hollywood liberals and LGBT militants will pounce on any statement he makes critical of homosexual behavior [sic], which God through the Bible condemns. (By the way, I think Kirk would have been better off just saying “yes” to Morgan’s question about whether he believes homosexuality is a sin.)

GLAAD is awarded unprecedented access and sway in Hollywood (and the media) to advocate for, essentially, one side of a controversial moral issue. Here it stokes anti-Christian bigotry against Cameron, as it does against anyone who voices politically incorrect beliefs about homosexuality through the media. Ultimately, GLAAD (while curiously extolling “diversity”) hopes to keep interviews like Morgan’s with Cameron out of the media altogether. (Otherwise, why would they previously have lobbied so hard against CNN for including Christian former homosexual Richard Cohen in a debate segment?) GLAAD is afraid of a fair debate, hence their demonizing name-calling against Cameron. Please help encourage him.

Of course, American Family Association Bryan Fischer praised Cameron on Focal Point for standing up to “anti-Christian, anti-morality bigot” Piers Morgan:

The American Family Association recently hired Fox News contributor and former Concerned Women for America president Sandy Rios to host her own show on American Family Radio, and here’s what we get to look forward to: attacks on Jewish Americans for supporting President Obama. Earlier today she spoke with the AFA’s Tim Wildmon and Bryan Fischer, where she suggested that secular Jews are enemies of America. Rios bemoaned that “the Jewish vote in this country is so confused, so many of the Jews in this country are atheist and their hearts are with this President.” “They’re far-left,” Wildmon said, “Most of the Jews in this country are far left, unfortunately.” Rios said that “a lot of Jewish atheists are some of the ones who have done, just like former Christians or quasi Christians, people who have some dealing with Judeo-Christian ethics, sometimes turn out to be the worst enemies of the country.”

Later on in the show, Rios said that “there are very few” religious people in Israel, “by and large Israel is an atheistic country, they don’t really believe in the God of their fathers, there’s no question about that,” and maintained that Christians must “evangelize and pray for our Jewish brothers and sisters.”

The American Decency Association and the American Family Association are fighting an anti-discrimination ordinance in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, that would protect people from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in jobs, housing and public accommodations. Gary Glenn, a Republican candidate for US Senate and the head of the AFA’s Michigan chapter, called it a “discriminatory ordinance” and a “volatile proposal which is clearly a solution in search of a non-existent problem.” The American Decency Association, which is based in the nearby Fremont, Michigan, is asking members to email the mayor, warning that those “promoting gayness as a legitimate lifestyle” are putting America on the road to “godlessness, reprobation, tyranny and anarchy”:

The real issue is not that people are “gay,” but that the “gay” movement insists on promoting gayness as a legitimate lifestyle. This is the root issue, the cosmic issue throughout history:

Calling good what God calls evil. It is the fundamental expression of human anarchy in defiance of God's moral order. It is the original temptation marking humanity's descent from God and authentic goodness.

It is not enough that we transgress God's law. Humans must also reject the very idea of order - make immorality moral - sanctify sin.

You as leaders are being drawn into/pressured into making allowances for immoral lifestyles. The "gay" movement is couching their non-discrimination as injustice and unfairness but in truth they are lobbying for acceptance of their immoral and unhealthy lifestyle. Calling good what God calls evil may play for a season but little by little ever so slowly as we have seen in other countries it will lead to increasing confusion, godlessness, reprobation, tyranny and anarchy. Immorality will ultimately prevail as we as individuals and/or as leaders give license to immorality.

On behalf of morality and those who come after us I urge you to vote against the so-called non-discrimination ordinance.

During the course of his daily two-hour radio program, Bryan Fischer generally covers a variety of different topics but the underlying themes are always the same: the Left is ruining America.

And yesterday was no exception, as he held up the Senate vote against the Blunt Amendment as proof that Democrats hate Christianity and used the death of Andrew Breitbart as an opportunity to recount his opposition to the gay conservative group GOProud in order to declare that America cannot exist "half gay and half straight":

Do not misunderstand this, ladies and gentlemen, Democrats and liberals despise Judeo-Christian morality. They despise historic Christianity. The despise the truth claims of the Bible. They despise the truth claims of Jesus Christ. They despise the truth claims of the Judeo-Christian tradition and they will stand in its way any chance that they get.

...

We cannot exist half-gay and half-straight, as a nation. We can't do it any more than we could exist half-slave and half-free, as Abraham Lincoln said. We cannot do it. We cannot endure half-gay and half-straight. We're going to have to make a choice between the two because liberty and the homosexual agenda cannot exist.

It’s not exactly a surprise when the American Family Association, home of the consistently unhinged Bryan Fischer, uses over-the-top rhetoric in its attacks on President Obama.  Still, the latest fundraising letter from AFA President Tim Wildmon is memorably apocalyptic in tone:

In a very real way the year 2012 is as important to our nation as was the year 1776.

Just as then, this year Americans must choose between freedom and tyranny.

Wildmon goes on to call the administration’s recent regulations on insurance coverage of contraception “but the latest instance of the Obama Administration’s all-out war on Christians.”

Wildmon cites "the choice God put before the Israelites before He would allow them to enter into the Promised Land" and says

I believe God is asking America to make that same choice now:

              Life and good … or death and evil.

Wildmon suggests Obama’s re-election would bring God’s wrath on America:

 …everyone here at AFA is convinced that the elections this November will determine whether or not America will survive as a nation. After all, God has been long-suffering with us for decades now. How long will his patience last?

But, he says, if tens of millions of Christians register and vote for men and women who “respect our Christian heritage, will fight to protect religious freedom, and will work to build America’s crumbing moral foundation,” then

We can literally save America! As a nation we can stand before Almighty God and tell Him:

We love You, Lord! As a people, we will walk in Your ways and keep Your commandments!

The response card accompanying the letter seeks donation to “help elect godly leaders and to restore America to a nation that honors the one, true God.”

The American Family Association’s women’s group OneMillionMoms is waging a campaign to convince JC Penney to fire Ellen DeGeneres as their spokesperson because DeGeneres is openly gay, predicting that the retailer “will be losing more than they’ll be gaining.” Today, OneNewsNow, which like OneMillionMoms is a branch of the AFA, posted an article today from the Associated Press which tried to link a drop in JC Penney’s credit rating to “‘gay’ activist Ellen DeGeneres”:

The American Family Association has a long history of exaggerating the impact of their boycott campaigns, even taking credit for a decline in Ford Motors sales by attacking the company’s “support [of] homosexual groups.” Plus, it is highly unlikely the Associated Press would include scare-quotes around the word ‘gay.’

Of course, the Associated Press story on JC Penney’s credit rating doesn’t mention DeGeneres at all:

The AFA’s distorted version of the DeGeneres story is yet another reason why one shouldn’t trust a news service which called champion sprinter Tyson Gay “Tyson Homosexual,” floated whether Satan is “the major factor” behind the purported power of homosexuals, and wondered if the Little Mommy Cuddle 'n Coo doll is “promoting Islam.”

The extreme and hysterical arguments emanating from the Religious Right over the contraception mandate in insurance plans would continue to amuse if not for the fact that their pathetic arguments only trivialize actual cases of religious persecution. While speaking with American Family Association president Tim Wildmon, talk show host Janet Parshall claimed that the health care reform law shows that President Obama is “blinded by a doctrine of death” and is a “person whose heart is hardened.” She warned of an “erosion of free speech” and “an erosion of our practices” under the Obama administration:

Chuck Colson even told Jim Daly on Focus on the Family Radio that the contraception mandate may even lead government to dictate to churches on the doctrine of the Trinity:

Not to be outdone, Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council compared the contraception insurance coverage mandate to Nazi Germany, saying that churches should prepare to follow the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazi government for his involvement in the resistance movement and the plot to kill Adolf Hitler:

In recent days, Jewish rabbis have joined all Catholic bishops in the United States in expressing alarm over the President's "healthcare" mandates and other violations of the Constitution. The National Clergy Council deliberated for the last week on what it would do, consulting pastors, moral theologians, organizational executives and activists from around the US. As a result, the Reverend Rob Schenck, president of the Washington, DC based group, will begin the holy season of Lent 2012 by appealing to President Obama for answers with a "State of Emergency and Time for Speaking" declaration to be hand-delivered to the White House on Ash Wednesday morning, February 22, 2012.

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As Rev. Schenck explains in the document, the action he and his committee have taken is inspired by the Nazi-era hero Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "the German pastor and martyr, who is an exemplar of what it means to hold to and to exercise one's religious, moral, and ethical convictions, even to the surrender of every other right, including the right to one's life." Bonhoeffer wrote on the "status confessionis," a time when churches must speak out. Schenck says in his letter this is such a time, "during which we must take extraordinary action to respectfully resist your decrees, state our deeply held and felt reasons for doing so, and call our coreligionists, and all people of conscience to stand with us." President Obama was publicly given a copy of a recent biography on Bonhoeffer by the author, Eric Metaxas, when Mr. Metaxas and the President shared a podium at the February 2 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

Mathew Staver of Liberty Counsel Action even likened the situation to the American Revolution:

Barack Obama is literally forcing insurance companies and self-insured religious organizations to provide contraceptives and abortifacients to Americans who want to pay for neither.

As I told you on Friday, President Obama has once again grossly overstepped the constitutional authority of his office. Thankfully, it appears that Americans have finally had enough.

Former Attorney General Edwin Meese, a leading member of President Ronald Reagan’s Cabinet, recently said the Obama administration is “…as close to a monarchy as there’s been since the days of George III.”

In reality, our situation today may be even worse than during the founding era since King George III merely TAXED the goods that inspired the Boston Tea Party. Even so great a despot as he did not imagine he could FORCE the colonials to BUY the stuff!

American Family Association founder and Newt Gingrich Faith Leaders Coalition co-chair Don Wildmon yesterday on AFA Today warned voters not to support President Obama for reelection because if he wins a second term “then we’re gone” as “his hands will be free to come after religious people.” Wildmon also told listeners not to shop at JC Penney because their new spokesperson, Ellen DeGeneres, “has a perversion.” The AFA’s women’s group OneMillionMoms is leading a campaign to pressure JC Penney to fire DeGeneres because she is openly gay.

Watch:

When one wonders why polls show that the number of Americans who don’t believe President Obama is a Christian is actually rising, consider the harsh rhetoric of Religious Right leaders like American Family Association head Tim Wildmon and Rick Scarborough of Vision America. On Today’s Issues, Wildmon and Scarborough told listeners that President Obama is not a Christian and that there are “no fruits of [Christian faith] in his public policy positions.” In fact, the Religious Right leaders argued that he is “anti-Christian”:

Wildmon: I’m just somewhat stunned by the secular, anti-Christian, anti-life attitude and statements and policies of President Obama, it’s just one thing after another. He claims to be a Christian, I see no fruits of that in his public policy positions, you claim to be a Christian yet you’re for murdering unborn babies in the womb. How do you put that together?

Scarborough: At some point finally you have to look at the man’s life and determine whether to believe the rhetoric or not.

…

Scarborough: You have to conclude, something is wrong, something is missing, the rhetoric doesn’t match the life.

Wildmon: I think there’s an anti-Christian, overt anti-Christian hostility.