« American Family Association
August 21, 2008
OneNewsNow, a Quote-Unquote News Site
The creative geniuses at the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow still haven't learned their lesson. The right-wing site was roundly ridiculed last month after we reported that the site was automatically replacing every instance of the word "gay" with "homosexual" in the Associated Press stories that it syndicates. As a result, they ran numerous stories like this one about track star Tyson Gay: "Homosexual breaks Greene's US record in 100 at trials."
And they're still at it. The folks at Queerty noticed some less-than-subtle edits in today's AP story on Hallmark's decision to carry same-sex wedding cards.
The headline – Now on Hallmark Aisle: Gay Marriage Cards – was changed to this: Hallmark embraces homosexual ‘marriage.’
And the lede went from “Most states don't recognize gay marriage” to “Most states don't recognize same-sex ‘marriage.’”
The scare quotes around marriage are a great touch, but we’re surprised that OneNewsNow passed up the opportunity to replace “same-sex” with “homosexual,” as they did later in the story. This can only mean one thing – the OneNewsNow summer interns have headed back to Virginia Beach to resume their formal education at Pat Robertson University.
Posted by Josh at 4:31 PM | Permalink
McCain’s VP Talk Derails Right Wing’s Plans
For most of the election season, the Right has been anything but energized about supporting John McCain. That had started to change in recent weeks, as their fear of a Barack Obama presidency began to overpower their principles and they initiated efforts to mobilize on his behalf. At least until McCain suggested that he was open to the idea of naming a pro-choice running mate, at which point the Right began to freak out and, as World Magazine reports, the massive mobilization efforts they had planned came to a screeching halt:
[Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values] said McCain appeared sincere and serious about his pro-life and pro-marriage views. After the June meeting, Burress was poised to deliver for McCain in Ohio: With nearly 1 million contacts in the CCV database, Burress began planning mailings that would tout McCain’s pro-life position.
Burress told WORLD he was also in talks with other Christian groups to send material to their state mailing lists: 100,000 contacts from Focus on the Family, 100,000 from the American Family Association, and some 50,000 from the Family Research Council, according to Burress.
…
Then came August 13: When Burress heard McCain’s comments about the possibility of a pro-abortion running mate, the grassroots gears screeched to a halt. “The train has stopped in its tracks,” Burress told WORLD.
Until McCain announces his running mate, Burress says all plans for grassroots activities are on hold. Political observers say McCain will likely announce his running mate next Friday— the day after Obama delivers his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Burress and other social conservatives remain hopeful that McCain will pick a pro-life candidate, and Burress says he’s confident that evangelicals in Ohio would enthusiastically support him if he does. If he doesn’t? “It will feel like a kick in the stomach,” said Burress. “And you don’t feel like working very hard when you’ve been kicked in the stomach.”
Posted by Kyle at 11:27 AM | Permalink
August 7, 2008
Anthrax Family Values: Suspected Bioterrorist Supported Anti-Gay Group
The virulently anti-gay American Family Association generates buzz and media attention year after year by launching outlandish boycott campaigns – McDonald’s is the latest target. It also doesn’t hurt that their flamboyant founder and chairman, Don Wildmon, more than lives up to his name.
PR is the lifeblood of a group like AFA, so you might think that they’d be thrilled when a longtime supporter of the group rocketed to the top of the media charts. Maybe so, but not when that supporter happens to be the FBI’s only suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks – Bruce Ivins.
Indeed, the nation learned today that Ivins and his wife – who served as president of a local anti-abortion group – were strongly committed to the AFA:
Donations were made to AFA in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Ivins 11 times between 1993 and 1997. Another donation by the couple was recorded one month after an article about the Greendale incident appeared in the AFA Journal. The Ivins subscribed to the Journal until March 2005.
And his support for the AFA actually helped the FBI catch him:
Bureau investigators also connected the fictitious return address on the second round of anthrax letters – the "Greendale School" of Franklin Park, N.J. – to a charity well-known to Ivins. He had donated numerous times to a group called the American Family Association, which in 1999 had filed a lawsuit on behalf of parents at the Greendale Baptist Academy in Wisconsin in a dispute involving corporal punishment.
Here’s a scanned image of one of the envelopes:
Knowing more about Ivins’ background may help explain a great deal about the attacks, especially the targets. The anthrax letters were sent almost exclusively to prominent Democrats – Senator Pat Leahy and then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle – and large, New York media outlets. Interestingly, Senators Leahy and Daschle and the mainstream media have consistently served as punching bags for the AFA.
Posted by Josh at 1:27 PM | Permalink
August 1, 2008
Obama: Harbinger of the Anti-Christ
Hal Lindsey, best known as the author of "Late Great Planet Earth” once speculated that “the decade of the 1980's could very well be the last decade of history as we know it.” Yet here we are, twenty years later so it’s not as if Lindsey has a particularly good record on making predictions. Yet that isn’t stopping him from warning that with Barack Obama running for president and generating excitement in places like Berlin, Germany, it can only mean one thing: the Anti-Christ is coming
America has never faced so many different crises at the same time in living memory. The war with al-Qaida and Islamic terror, the Iran crisis, Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, the rising price of oil, the falling dollar, enemy acronyms like OPEC, NAM, OIC, U.N. ... Obama is correct in saying that the world is ready for someone like him – a messiah-like figure, charismatic and glib and seemingly holding all the answers to all the world's questions.
And the Bible says that such a leader will soon make his appearance on the scene. It won't be Barack Obama, but Obama's world tour provided a foretaste of the reception he can expect to receive.
He will probably also stand in some European capital, addressing the people of the world and telling them that he is the one that they have been waiting for. And he can expect as wildly enthusiastic a greeting as Obama got in Berlin.
The Bible calls that leader the Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his acquaintance.
The idea that Obama may not be the actual Anti-Christ but sure has a lot in common with him seems to be spreading among right-wing activists, as Sarah Poser recently reported:
On Friday, the day after Obama's Berlin speech, the AFA Report's host, Fred Jackson, made note of the "messianic tone" of the speech, then quickly denied that he believes Obama is messianic. Ed Vitagliano, one of the program's roundtable guests, chimed in, "I don't think he's the Antichrist, but there is a spirit of Antichrist at work in the West in a very strong and open way that is leading people to want to solve their problems and have a desire to have their lives improved without Christ. That's what the spirit of Antichrist does, it denies Christ." In other words, Obama's not the Antichrist. He's just like the Antichrist.
But apparently John McCain’s campaign hasn’t yet gotten on board with the messaging, since they just released their latest typically informative, fact-based, and classy ad suggesting instead that Obama sees himself as the Messiah:
Posted by Kyle at 3:13 PM | Permalink
July 31, 2008
AFA Breaks Open Its Piggy Bank
CNSNews reports that the American Family Association has donated 500,000 to the Proposition 8 effort in California: "The American Family Association said the $500,000 donation comes from 'years of savings.' In a message to supporters, AFA acknowledged its 'obligation to be good stewards of the gifts given to this ministry. We don’t buy anything on credit. We have no debt. We are careful to make sure your gifts are used wisely. We are very frugal with your gifts.' AFA said it has put aside money over the years so it would have the funds to meet whatever need might arise. The $500,000 for ProtectMarriage.com came from those savings, it said."
Posted by Kyle at 4:13 PM | Permalink
July 30, 2008
AFA Says Obama Like the Antichrist
From Sarah Posner's most recent FundamentaList: "On Friday, the day after Obama's Berlin speech, the AFA Report's host, Fred Jackson, made note of the 'messianic tone' of the speech, then quickly denied that he believes Obama is messianic. Ed Vitagliano, one of the program's roundtable guests, chimed in, 'I don't think he's the Antichrist, but there is a spirit of Antichrist at work in the West in a very strong and open way that is leading people to want to solve their problems and have a desire to have their lives improved without Christ. That's what the spirit of Antichrist does, it denies Christ.'"
Posted by Kyle at 4:18 PM | Permalink
July 28, 2008
Better Early Than Never
The Grand Rapids Press reports that the American Family Association of Michigan has begun running ads against Allegan County Circuit Judge William Baillargeon saying he has a "long history of involvement with homosexual activist groups that promote so-called homosexual 'marriage' and other radical elements of the homosexual agenda." The ads are scheduled to run through the Aug. 5 primary - which isn't particularly effective considering that Baillargeon's Circuit Court race isn't until November.
Posted by Kyle at 3:09 PM | Permalink
June 30, 2008
The Dangers of Auto-Replace
In addition to blocking traffic from websites they don’t like, it looks like the web-geniuses behind the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site have a few other tricks up their sleeves, such as automatically replacing any use of the word “gay” with the word “homosexual” in any of the AP stories they run … leading to instances in which proper names are reformatted to meet their ridiculous standard, such as this article about sprinter Tyson Gay winning the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials in which he is renamed “Tyson Homosexual”:
Though AFA has since corrected its article, it looks like this auto-replace feature has been embarrassing them for quite some time now:
And while they may have fixed this particular instance, it looks like they haven't gone back through their archives and corrected other articles where this happened, such as this article where professional basketball player Rudy Gay is referred to as "Rudy Homosexual."
Posted by Kyle at 9:33 AM | Permalink
March 31, 2008
Here We Go Again
Just three weeks after the American Family Association declared victory in its boycott against Ford Motor Company, the anti-gay group has a new target: General Motors. From an e-mail alert titled “General Motors Supports The Gay Agenda”:
General Motors has made a decision to help promote the homosexual agenda. The automaker supports the gay agenda with advertising in homosexual publications and on the gay TV cable channel LOGO.
GM's Cadillac regularly places full-page ads in The Advocate, a magazine dedicated to pushing the homosexual agenda. The LOGO TV network carries programs promoting the lifestyle.
AFA is urging its activists to sign a petition that GM should “not involved in promoting an aberrant, anti-family lifestyle,” but that may be just the beginning for the boycott-happy group.
Posted by Ezra at 5:45 PM | Permalink
March 11, 2008
Declaring Victory
If an anti-gay campaign falls in the forest, and no one hears it, does it make a sound?
For two years, the American Family Association has operated a boycott of Ford Motor Company for its gay-friendly employment practices and its advertising in gay magazines. And AFA has not been shy about taking credit for the automaker’s financial woes.
“For the 13th month out of the last 15, the boycott of Ford Motor Company by AFA and other pro-family groups has helped cause Ford to lose sales,” the group bragged last June. “Ford continues to financially support homosexual groups despite the massive sales drop and a loss of millions for the company’s stockholders,” it warned in July. In January, AFA founder Don Wildmon asserted that a “significant amount” of Ford’s decline in sales was “a direct result of the boycott.”
Nevertheless, industry analysts have seen Ford’s continuing financial woes as the result of factors such as gas prices, market changes, workforce aging, and management—and not as a direct result of “its commitment to the homosexual agenda,” as AFA put it. Instead, reports focused on Ford’s “Way Forward” plan (released before AFA’s boycott), which announced large downsizing and projected profitability in 2009. The right-wing Media Research Center issued a report accusing “the media” of being “strangely silent” about the boycott.
Yesterday, AFA announced that it was declaring victory and ending the boycott, asserting that, based on AFA’s own “monitoring,” Ford had met its conditions on donations to gay and lesbian non-profits and gay-oriented advertising. “Flinch! Ford finally bends,” trumpeted the right-wing World Net Daily. Ford, on the other hand, denied that it had made any changes in policy:
Ford said in a statement that its principles haven't changed, but that it has reduced overall advertising and charitable spending in recent years because of losses in North America. Ford lost $2.7 billion in 2007.
"We are committed to treating everyone fairly and with respect, including our dealers, customers and employees," the company said. "Ford will continue to market its products widely to attract as many customers as possible and make charitable contributions to strengthen communities to the extent business conditions allow."
If AFA is to be believed, we can expect Ford Motor Company to make a dramatic recovery in the coming months. Then again, it could be that AFA simply gave up, as Daniel Blatt predicted just a month ago:
Let the AFA attribute the decline of Ford to its drawing attention to the company’s pro-gay policies. But other corporations have adopted similar policies and not suffered like the American automaker. The AFA may claim that it hasn’t targeted them, but I would wager that if it had, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Americans are more concerned about a product’s quality than they are about the domestic partnership policies of the corporations than produce it.
Realizing this, expect the AFA to drop its boycott against Ford as it did the campaign against Disney. It will probably claim that it made a point, but it really won’t have made much of a difference.
Posted by Ezra at 6:12 PM | Permalink
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