Family Research Council

In a conversation flowing out of Norman Podhoretz’s new book, gadfly blogger Robert Stacy McCain makes a typically ridiculous point:

The demonization of the “Religious Right” was a project developed by Norman Lear and others during the Reagan era, after Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority played such a key role in the 1980 election, and this theme has defined the politics of the Democratic Party ever since.

As a political tactic, it is both amazingly effective and fundamentally false. The Republican Party is chiefly devoted to political policies having nothing specifically to do with evangelical Christianity. Yet there is an entire industry of liberal propagandists who specialize in seeking out various outre pronouncements of “Religious Right” leaders and presenting these views as if they would become firm policy in the next Republican administration. . . .

While we’re always thrilled to hear our founder and board member given credit for “[defining] the politics of the Democratic Party” from 1980 onwards, he might want to check before he claims that the pronouncements of the Religious Right won’t become the firm policy of the next Republican administration. After all, the candidates running for the Republican nomination keep promising exactly that.

Mike Huckabee, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitt Romney--all likely candidates for the presidency--are confirmed guests at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC next week, as are Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader John Boehner. (Sarah Palin is invited but not confirmed, which is surprising as she doesn’t have a full time job at the moment.) If past behavior is any guide, all of these party leaders will take the opportunity to pledge undying fealty to the far right platform espoused by the Family Research Council. And while we were founded on the principle that one could disagree with that right-wing platform without being a “bad Christian,” I’d be surprised any of the attendees of the summit attendees to say it out loud.

If any of those candidates decide to use the opportunity to distance themselves from the “outré pronouncements” of the Religious Right, we’ll be sure to let you know. 

Don’t hold your breath.

Newsweek has a good article on the Rifqa Bary saga that we've been covering here for the last few weeks and it contains a few new nuggets of interesting information, such as the fact that Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel is more than just a "longtime friend," as the Orlando Sentinel reported, of Blake and Beverly Lorenz, the couple to whom Bary fled in Florida. He is also serving as their lawyer:

Bary's parents ... became frantic when they discovered their daughter was gone. They filed a missing-persons report with Columbus police and reached out to everyone they could think of. Police say the Barys cooperated fully with their investigation and seemed like loving parents who were worried sick. Searching among Rifqa's personal items, the Barys found a flash drive filled with spiritual writings by [Brian] Williams. He'd already spoken to the family and told them he didn't know where Rifqa was. But on Aug. 5—more than two weeks after the girl went missing—Columbus police interviewed him by phone (he was now living in Kansas City, Mo.). He says they threatened to arrest him if Bary didn't appear in the next 24 hours. Immediately after that call, he says, Kansas City police went to his home looking for the girl. Alarmed, Williams says he called and e-mailed all the people he knew Bary had been in touch with, including Blake Lorenz, who's a Facebook friend of his.

The Lorenzes had been housing Bary the whole time, even though it's a misdemeanor in Florida to shelter an unmarried minor for more than 24 hours (the Florida Department of Law Enforcement won't say whether it's investigating the couple). Their attorney, Mat Staver, says they consulted various agencies and nonprofits regarding how to handle Bary's situation. They also called the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) several times, though they didn't provide the specifics of her case until Aug. 6.

The article also contains this other interesting bit of information 

Mohamed and Aysha Bary left Sri Lanka in 2000 with their two kids, Rifqa and an older brother, and moved to New York (their third child, a boy, was born in the United States). The reason: concern about Rifqa's well-being. As a child, she'd fallen on a toy airplane that pierced her right eye. Doctors in Sri Lanka wanted to remove the eye, prompting Mohamed to relocate the whole family so Rifqa could obtain better medical treatment. In the end, her eye was spared, though she can't see out of it.

Now, that piece of information is interesting primarily because groups like the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission have been spreading this story:

Rifqa Bary, a petite 17 year old cheerleader, fled from Ohio to Florida to escape her abusive Muslim family. She fled out of fear that she would be killed because she has become a Christian and she has good reasons.

Her father screamed at her that if she had Jesus in her heart, she was dead to him and he would kill her. Prior to that Rifqa had been repeatedly beaten by her family even to the point of losing vision in one eye.

I keep writing about this issue because a) I find it fascinating and b) it has the potential to eventually blow up into an Elian Gonzalez or Terri Schiavo-like story. 

I'm not predicting that it will, mind you, but John Stemberger, who is serving as Bary's attorney, was intimately involved in the Schiavo battle back in 2005, when he authored  "The Terri Schiavo Controversy - Facts, Myths and Christian Perspectives," which was disseminated by the Family Research Council (see #17, though the document has since been removed from FRC's website.)

With someone like Stemberger leading the fight and right-wing news outlets and Religious Right groups getting more involved by the day, this story has all of the hallmarks of a full-blown right-wing crusade in the making.

The other day, Jeremy at Good As You noticed that Religious Right groups organizing behind the anti-marriage equality effort in Maine were suddenly distancing themselves from Mike Heath of the Maine Family Policy Council.

I assumed these groups were trying to avoid being seen in public with Heath because of the rabidly anti-gay insanity he's been spreading recently.  But, as it turns out, these groups just trying to avoid being seen in public period:

The Stand for Marriage Rally is being organized by Focus on the Family, The Maine Jeremiah Project, Family Research Council and Stand for Marriage Maine, which includes the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland.

Bishop Richard Malone is expected to address the crowd, along with religious leaders from Maryland and California.

James Dobson of Focus on the Family will provide a video message, [Rev. Bob Emrich] said.

The event is free, but tickets are required. Emrich said members of the media will not be allowed inside the event.

The most recent campaign finance reports from Main showed that of the money raised by the Religious Right groups fighting marriage equality in the state, the amount that came from actual residents of Maine constituted a mere .1%, whereas the amount donated by national Religious Right groups like the National Organization for Marriage and Focus on the Family made up the other 99.9%.

These groups sure do seem to be dumping a lot of time, money, and effort into this campaign while simultaneously trying to keep the people of Maine in the dark about it.

In the months following the election, there appeared a series of articles all carrying a similar theme: With the election of Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress, the Religious Right was all but dead.

As we pointed out in a series of posts and reports, these sorts of pieces tend to get written whenever Republicans fare poorly in an election and there is rarely any validity to their claims:

I have to say I find this temptation from commentators to write the Religious Right’s obituary after every Republican electoral setback rather remarkable. For one thing, as we pointed out not too long ago, these sorts of pieces appear every few years, only to be overtaken a short time later with pieces marveling that the “sudden” and “unexpected” resurgence of the “values voters" crowd. In addition, despite the gloominess from the likes of Mohler and Deace, the Religious Right is more committed than ever to regrouping as a “resistance movement” to fight for its agenda and eventually regain its position as an influential and powerful political and social force.

And that day may come sooner than many realize. While it might seem at the moment that the Religious Right is on its way out, it is important to remember that the GOP has lost exactly one mid-term election and one presidential election and Democrats have controlled Congress and the White House for less than three months.

Doesn’t anyone else remember all the talk following George W. Bush’s election, and especially his re-election, about the “values voters” and coming of a “permanent Republican majority” which would give the GOP ironclad control over the reigns of government for decades to come?

Remind me again: how did that all work out?

The point is that political fortunes change … and often change rapidly. It is far, far too early to be declaring the Religious Right to be dead based on two elections and three months of Democratic government.

Well, guess what?  After being declared moribund just a few months ago, the Religious Right has been miraculously resurrected, thank to the healthcare reform debate, declares the Washington Post:

The Christian right, facing questions before the presidential election about its continuing potency as a force for cultural and political change, has found new life with Barack Obama in office, particularly around health care.

As the president prepares to address a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night to press for health-care reform, conservative Christian leaders are rallying their troops to oppose him, with online town hall meetings, church gatherings, fundraising appeals, and e-mail and social networking campaigns. FRC Action, the lobbying arm of the Family Research Council, has scheduled a webcast Thursday night for tens of thousands of supporters in which House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and other speakers will respond to the president's health-care address.

...

"It's a busy time," said Tom Minnery, senior vice president of Focus on the Family Action, the lobbying arm of Focus on the Family. He said donations to Focus Action have climbed beyond expectations, although he declined to say by how much.

[F]or the moment, conservative Christian leaders are riding high on opposing health-care reform.

"Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Henry Waxman have done more to energize Christian conservatives than any conservative leader could have done with this health-care package," said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. "I, who never believed that we were dead, did not believe that it would happen this quickly."

...

"We're not having to build a grand new organization. We're using the strengths of other organizations that understand the needs of their particular constituencies," said Mathew Staver, dean of the Liberty University School of Law and an organizer of the Freedom Federation.

Christian right leaders say it is too soon to tell whether health-care reform will trigger a flood of donations, but they are encouraged by the response they are seeing in other ways.

Gary Bauer, who heads the socially conservative group American Values, said that the list of addresses to which he sends his daily e-mail alerts was down to 170,000 and that he was getting only 50 requests a week to sign up for it before the election. Now, he said, the e-mail list is up to 225,000, and he is getting 1,000 or more requests a week asking to be added.

"The passion that was so evident in the Obama campaign right now, at least, has shifted to our side," he said.

The Post reports that "experts say the resurgent interest is proving that predictions of the death of the Christian right -- widespread before the election -- were again premature." 

Gee, really? 

And who exactly was making all those "predictions" about the "death of the Christian right"?  It was the media that declared the Religious Right dead ... and now it is the media declaring that they have been resurrected. 

It is sort of like a doctor declaring a sleeping patient to be dead and then proclaiming it a miracle when the patient wakens while blaming others for "prematurely" writing their obituary.

A quick round-up of some right-wing efforts to capitalize on the absurd "controversy" over President Obama's planned speech to the nation's students today.

Public Advocate announces that they will be protesting the venue:

Public Advocate volunteers will protest President Barack Obama on Tuesday morning September 8 prior to his speech at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia starting at 10:15 a.m.

Public Advocate volunteers will hold banners that state "Mr. President, Stay Away from our kids" at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va.

Earlier, on Monday at 5:30 p.m. Public Advocate volunteers posted signs protesting the visit of President Barack Obama at Wakefield High School where the president will be Tuesday morning.

Signs that stated "Mr. President, Stay Away From Our Kids" were posted along Leesburg Pike, Route 50 Arlington Boulevard, and several area schools in Northern Virginia.

The Family Research Council uses the issue to further its own campaign against Kevin Jennings:

In his inaugural speech in 1961 President John F. Kennedy delivered this memorable line

["Ask not..." clip]

Fast forward nearly 50 years and President Barack Obama was poised to ask the nations elementary school students not what they could do for their country but what they could do for their President.

The White House announced that the President would be speaking live to the nations k-6th graders. The Department of Education had prepared a work sheet to accompany the speech in which the children were instructed to engage in several exercises including writing a letter about how they could help the president.

After a fire storm of opposition erupted the White House changed lesson plans and now the youngsters will be asked to consider how they can help themselves achieve their educational goals. Certainly a more appropriate question, but one that is probably more suited for middle and high school students.

However, parents remain considered. Some are keeping their kids home from school on the day of the speech. Over 95% of parents who responded to an FRC survey said the President should not be speaking to children during classroom hours.

Some in the media have decried the parental opposition as partisan. But it is really?

Consider that this speech is being made during one of the most controversial public policy debates in years in which the president has been steadily losing public support for his health care plan.

But even if the speech does not interject policy into the class room of 6 & 7 year old children, when parents consider the agenda of this administration as represented by the presidents appointments to the education department parents have a right to be concerned.

The Secretary of the department, Arne Duncan, has promoted some pretty controversial ideas, like special schools for homosexual students when he was head of the Chicago school system. Even more concerning is Kevin Jennings who is supposedly in charge of the Safe and Drug Free School Program for the Department of Education.

Jennings is the founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educational Network, an organization that promotes homosexuality in the public schools, he also wrote the forward to a book entitled Queering Elementary Education.

This Administration has given parents plenty of reason to be concern over what is piped into the classroom. For more visit FRC.org

And the Liberty Counsel likewise throws in an attack on Jennings while calling the speech an "illegal political move" and warning that "Obama is after our children":

Mathew D. Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, commented: "Obama has pushed his political agenda to the extreme by forcing himself on America's children. Obama's political agenda on healthcare and his expansive vision for government is being rejected by the American people. Now Obama is after our children, who, like some socialist members of Congress, have not read the healthcare bill. Americans do not appreciate the President's attempt to use our children as political pawns in his game of chess. Mr. President, you must abide by the rule of law and stop this illegal activity. Our children do not belong to you."

In yesterday's "Newscall" post on the Family Research Council's "Cloakroom" blog, Krystle Weeks, FRC's web editor, included this item:

HotAir.com asks a good question: Does Obama plan to spy on social networking sites? After all, CNet, there is a bill proposed in the Senate that would give the President emergency control of the internet.

I have a question of my own:  did Weeks even bother to read the Hot Air article?  Because if she had, she would have known that Hot Air was not "asking" this question, but was rather debunking this claim, which is being circulated by the National Legal and Policy Center:

NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites.

The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.”

Ed Morrissey points out that NLPC's claims are entirely bogus:

I’m not sure that highlighting a public contract offer amounts to “uncovering” a conspiracy, especially since their analysis turns out to be faulty. Contrary to NLPC’s take, the contractor would be collecting data required to be kept by the White House — by law.

...

Which brings us to the common-sense check on the rumor. How much time and resources would it take to effectively monitor every entry on Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and every blog in the blogosphere? And to do that secretly, while archiving all of it? The NSA would have to take that on full time, and even then … best of luck just keeping up with the archiving, let alone surveillance ... [T]his is nothing more than a big, pointless archiving project, one which may stimulate the economy of a handful of people, but otherwise inconsequential. There are a lot of good reasons to be worried about the Obama administration, but this doesn’t appear to be one of them.

Note to Weeks: if you are going to try to spread unfounded rumors about the Obama administration, be sure to link to the people creating those rumors, not the people debunking them. 

Via Pam's House Blend, we see that Harry Jackson appears in a new video laying out his plans on how they the Right can try to stop Washington, DC from granting marriage equality to its residents if his effort to get an initiative on the ballot fails - getting members of Congress to kill any such effort:

''Let me share with you, one of the unique dynamics of DC that makes your prayer, your involvement, your writing your Congressman so very important: Currently, every law that is passed in DC has got to be approved by the Congress. In other words, DC does not really have 'home rule.' Once they pass a law, that law has 30 days in which Congress, in its legislative sessions can decide that the city should not take the measure that they have taken. So, right now, we have the opportunity to block same-sex marriage reciprocity. We have an opportunity to block the rise of an overt same-sex marriage law by having your Congressman say, 'Not on my watch.' And tell them, the people must decide... We can turn this thing around by signatures for a referendum. And we can say yes to marriage, no to same-sex reciprocity, no to the land becoming a modern Sodom and Gomorrah, because you've reached out and responded to your Congressman.... What happens in DC, doesn't stay in DC.''

In this this video, which appeared on the YouTube page of Kenyn Cureton, Vice President for Church Ministries at the Family Research Council, Jackson also dusts off the old Christian Coalition playbook by urging activists to works towards taking over local elected offices like school boards and thereby "change America politically through a new kind of activism ... for the cause of Christ."

The other day Daimeon over at Pam's House Blend caught the Maine Family Policy Council posting this image on its website along with this description:

Who would know the meaning of the symbols shown below, for example? The bumperstickers on this car in Augusta are a silent 'dog-whistle' which tells other homosexuals that the owner supports the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest homosexual rights organization (the yellow and blue equal sign) and has had some contact with a sadomasochist organization in Georgia (a map of the state of Georgia drawn with the colors used by the sadomasochist movement, black and blue.)

The only problem was that the decal of the state of Georgia with a blue line across it is actually "displayed in honor of those injured or killed in the line of duty" in law enforcement.

Today, Jeremy at Good As You noted that MFPC has owned up to the mistake, but did so by blaming gays and society and pretty much everyone but themselves:

Yesterday The RECORD ran a photo of an auto in Augusta which sported two decals, one for the Human Rights Campaign, and one for what we incorrectly stated was the decal of a sadomasochistic organization. It was instead a "Thin Blue Line" decal which honors police.

Given the similarity of the "Thin Blue Line" design to the flag of the sadomasochistic movement, the mistake was understandable ... This is an error that anyone could have made, and is understandable in a society which is no longer shamed by perversion, but actually boasts of perversion and publically endorses it as "pride." The fault lies ultimately with those who seek to normalize deviancy.

We regret, however, if we have unwittingly and unintentionally associated anyone with this despicable movement.

This sort of insanity and vitriol is not an anomaly. In fact, just a few weeks ago the MFPC claimed that "call for same sex marriage and other forms of sexual immorality" are directly linked to urban blight and even said that crops were failing in the state due to gay marriage.

Amazingly, the organization is not just some crackpot fringe group, but is rather a "fully associated" affiliate of Focus on the Family whose leaders routinely participate in events with representatives from groups like the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America.

The Family Research Council wants its members to organize town hall meetings opposing health care reform in their local churches ... just like the Founding Fathers did [PDF]:

In 1787, when the Constitutional Convention decided not to reform the weak Articles of Confederation but rather assemble a new constitution, they faced a tremendous challenge in gaining the support of the citizens of this young nation. The process lasted for months and included numerous public "townhall" type meetings. Many of these meetings were held in churches, moderated by prominent pastors.

No one thought the church an odd setting for discussing the fundamental issues of government. The church had been, from days of the earliest settlements in the New World, the focal point of education, debate and action about the most pressing moral and political matters of the day.

Today must be no different. The leaders God has raised up for His people have to be ready to proclaim “the whole counsel of God” concerning the Bible’s clear instructions about the sacredness of human life, from conception (“You knit me in my mother’s womb” – Ps. 139:13) to natural death (“precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” – Ps. 116:15).

This is more urgent than perhaps ever before, because under the proposed health insurance scheme being advanced by President Obama and his allies in Congress, Americans would be compelled to:

• Pay for abortion on demand by financing insurance companies that pay for abortion services.

• Fund the leading provider of abortion in the nation, Planned Parenthood.

• Foot the bill for government panels that would foster the notion that self-termination (i.e., suicide) is a sound moral and financial option for the elderly.

• Pay for abortifacient contraceptives. 

...

We are calling on pastors and Christian leaders nationwide to hold forums in your churches where these matters can be discussed and exposed. And it’s to that end that we are sending you the material in this package - so that you can create your own townhall meeting, just as our founding pastors did more than two centuries ago, to inform and activate the people in your pews and communities.

Here is a sample "Town Hall Meeting Agenda" that FRC provides [PDF]:

7:00 PM Welcome from meeting moderator - Church Pastor

7:02 PM Opening Prayer - Local Pastor

7:04 PM Pledge - Local Veteran

7:05 PM Overview of meeting - Church Pastor

7:10 PM Health care presentation - Congressman/Senator

7:25 PM Physician’s perspective - Local physician

7:30 PM Family Policy Council Representative or Other pro-family organization

7:35 PM A Biblical perspective - Church Pastor

7:45 PM Public Q&A of Program participants

8:25 PM Action Steps - Moderator

8:30 PM Closing Prayer - Local Pastor