« Family Research Council
July 24, 2008
Saving America One Right-Wing Event at a Time
It is almost time again for the annual Values Voter Summit, the political conference sponsored by the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, American Values, and others where right-wing activists gather to rant and rave, attack homosexuals, and suggest that the anti-Christ is gay while Republican presidential candidates fall all over themselves to pander for votes.
Heading into this year’s event, FRC unveiled a new ad urging right-wing activists to attend or risk “losing America”:
Are we losing America? Radical activists redefine marriage. Your tax dollars put towards abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. Your parental rights erased. Your religious liberties expunged. Your basic freedoms eliminated. Are we losing America? Unless we act now, the answer is YES! That’s why this year’s Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC is so vital. This September, you’ll discover how you can make a difference. We’ll equip you to protect the tradition of marriage, the innocence of your children, and the sanctity of your faith. Join leaders like Newt Gingrich, Bill Bennett, Chuck Colson, and others for the Values Voters Summit September 12-14 in Washington, DC … Are we losing America? We don’t have to.
While the Values Voter Summit is one of the Religious Right’s premier political events filled with pomp and professionalism, the same cannot be said for the 9th Annual Freedom21 National Conference, which is taking place right now in Dallas, TX. Whereas FRC can boast of heavy-hitters like Gingrich, Sen. Sam Brownback, and James Dobson, the best Freedom21 could do was land the likes of Rep. Michelle Bachmann, Jerome Corsi, Phyllis Schlafly, and third party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin … and with third-rate entertainment and lackluster attendance such as this, it is not hard to see why:
Posted by Kyle at 4:02 PM | Permalink
July 23, 2008
FRC Knows What Is Best For You
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'."
Posted by Kyle at 3:58 PM | Permalink
July 22, 2008
Perkins Wants To Run The Show
FRC's Tony Perkins seems to think that he has a right to be included in every political event that is focused on religion and is now dictating questions to be asked during the upcoming Obama/McCain event at Saddleback Church:"Saddleback Church has the rare opportunity to crystallize the debate over abortion and homosexuality before FRC Action's Values Voter Summit in September. The candidates should be asked: 1. What is your position on man-woman marriage? 2. Where do you stand on partial-birth abortion and the killing of nearly-born babies? 3. Would you sign the Freedom of Choice Act into law? 4. How can the federal faith-based initiative survive without hiring protections for religious charities?"
Posted by Kyle at 4:33 PM | Permalink
July 1, 2008
At End of Supreme Court Term, Right Wing Points to November
According to Politico, the Right is warming to John McCain’s far-right stance on judicial appointments, and with the 5-4 decisions that closed out the Supreme Court’s term, we can see the outline of McCain’s and the Right’s campaign to get the base to turn out in November on the issue of judges.
Last month’s Supreme Court decision on habeas corpus was likened by the Right a “white flag of surrender” that would cause “more Americans to be killed”; Fred Thompson, a judicial advisor to John McCain, wrote that the “remedy” was for “concerned citizens to turn out on Election Day to elect a new president.”
The more recent decision overturning D.C.’s gun ban inspired Ted Nugent to write in Human Events that “the 5-4 ruling is another painful example” of “a divisive culture war raging on, and four supreme justices frighteningly disconnected from the heart and soul of America.” Michael Reagan warned that the majority “will vanish if the liberals manage to elect Barack Obama and give his party sufficient control of Congress to guarantee that future Court vacancies will be filled with activist liberal justices who will turn the Constitution upside down.”
The Family Research Council called the Second Amendment case “a reminder for voters of just how important the elections are this fall.”
The next President is likely to name 2-3 Supreme Court justices, who will be examining the constitutionality of a variety of laws for the next few decades. Life, marriage, and religious freedom are all issues that are likely to land in front of the Supreme Court. … For fiscal, social, and national defense conservatives, judges are one issue that brings all conservatives together.
According to the Weekly Standard, a case restricting capital punishment to murderers and not rapists of children demonstrated “that the fight to turn the Court from a capricious and imperious vanguard of liberalism into an impassive umpire is far from over.” The Standard’s Matthew Continetti advised McCain to “take this opportunity to explain how his judicial philosophy differs from Obama's, and why it matters.” A National Review editorial similarly responded, “Too many of our justices are evolving away from democracy. Let’s not elect a president who will encourage them — and appoint more of them.”
Traditional Values Coalition’s Lou Sheldon wrote that the death penalty case and the habeas corpus decision “are perfect examples showing why it’s important that Americans choose the right person to assume the Presidency in January 2009.”
The person who becomes President and Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces will likely have to replace Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, and Souter – all liberals who use their power to impose their leftist ideology upon all Americans. …
If we fail to put a man into the Oval Office who understands judicial restraint and the rule of law, our legal system will be set back 30 years. This is especially true if a liberal President appoints young liberals to the Court and fills up the federal judiciary with more radical leftist judges.
Finally, there’s the 5-4 decision overturning the “Millionaire’s Amendment,” a part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that lifted contribution limits for politicians facing self-funded opponents. Despite McCain’s role in originally passing the law, McCain supporter Hans von Spakovsky wrote that the narrow ruling “graphically illustrates just how important the next president's appointments to the Supreme Court will be to preserving our First Amendment rights in the political arena.”
“[G]iven the number of Supreme Court appointments a Democratic president will be able to make, an Obama victory will move America more radically leftward than ever in its history,” Dennis Prager summarized.
All these cases will continue to be cited by the Right in pushing its unmotivated constituency to the polls, as “are reminders that elections are not just about putting candidates in office for a few years,” as Thomas Sowell put it to those “who are thinking of venting their frustrations by voting for some third-party candidate that they know has no chance of being elected. There will be a president chosen this November, and he will appoint Supreme Court justices during his term, regardless of whether you stay home or go to the polls.”
Posted by Ezra at 5:42 PM | Permalink
June 30, 2008
Perkins Tags In
While the Religious Right came into this election cycle in some disarray—fueling countless premature “Religious Right is dead” articles—that doesn’t mean they can’t still make a major impact. They’re sure going to try. Witness James Dobson’s tirade last week against Barack Obama’s faith—a move so crass it’s made some allies blanch. And on Friday, Family Research Council unveiled a TV spot against Obama, focusing on abortion.
FRC President Tony Perkins—who also stars in the ad—said the timing, on the heels of Focus on the Family’s anti-Obama radio series, is a coincidence.
The ad quotes a recent Obama speech on Father’s Day, in which the senator said, “We need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn’t just end at conception.” Perkins, baby in arms, changes the subject from raising children to abortion: “If, as you say, fatherhood begins at conception [sic], when does life begin?”
And it’s only June. Both Perkins’s ad and Dobson’s radio rant may suggest that the two Religious Right heavyweights are worried about Obama making a good first impression among the religious conservatives they claim as their own constituency. But these attacks also suggest that we can only expect more over the next four months.
Posted by Ezra at 5:57 PM | Permalink
June 25, 2008
Richard Land on Dobson and Obama
If any Religious Right commentators were still bashful in knocking Barack Obama’s Christianity, James Dobson’s decision to attack Barack Obama on theological grounds is like a permission slip for them to come out of the woodwork.
“When you enter into that conversation, you open your theology and your policies up to scrutiny,” claimed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “And that's what Dr. Dobson did.” Rick Scarborough—who is revamping his “Patriot Pastor” church rallies—said he “was appalled by the Senator's remarks … [T]he presumptive Democratic nominee is no friend of Bible-believing Christians.”
Mike Huckabee, who once came to the defense of Jeremiah Wright but now is working for both Fox News and John McCain, also joined the amen corner, accusing Obama of “reinterpret[ing]” religion and claiming that “what Barack Obama has done is to drive his campaign into a sink hole by saying some things regarding religion that I think will make people who are religious very uncomfortable.”
And Baptist Press, the media outlet of the Southern Baptist Convention, also promoted Dobson’s attack. BP’s executive editor Will Hall wrote that the senator “disrespected a portion of the Word of God simply because it does not fit his worldview” on the issue of homosexuality. “Obama's misappropriation of Scripture to fit his political perspective is more grave than its implications for a presidential election,” he added, calling the supposed scandal “biblical in proportion.”
Published next to the report on Dobson’s comments and Hall’s piling-on, Baptist Press also featured the words of Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention’s political spokesman:
"I think to go into the particular beliefs of a particular faith and to try to grill a candidate on that is an intrusion into his personal faith," Land said. "I think what we want to know in a campaign is how that person's faith impacts them.
Wait a minute—it sounds like Land is defending Obama and repudiating the “intrusion” of James Dobson! Indeed, Land said it was fine for candidates to talk about faith and their values, but that “they shouldn't either be asked to be or volunteer to be a spokesperson for their faith tradition, in other words talking about the particulars of their faith.”
Of course, there’s a catch: Land was speaking nearly three weeks before Dobson made his comments.
When Dobson attacked Land’s favored presidential candidate Fred Thompson—even saying he didn’t “think he’s a Christian”—Land called Dobson’s words “harsh and unwarranted.” Will Land hold Dobson to the “intrusion” standard this time?
And what about Obama’s statement that the U.S. is “no longer just a Christian nation,” which Dobson and his lieutenant also attacked? Land said at the above event that he “was, as a Baptist, somewhat appalled by John McCain’s assertion that the Constitution created America as a Christian nation.” Will he say he’s “appalled” by the Focus on the Family version?
Well, we’re not going to hold our breath. Land has been trying to rally the Right to John McCain, even as some complain about McCain’s faith talk. "I'd rather have a third-rate fireman than a first-class arsonist,” Land said recently of the two candidates.
Posted by Ezra at 6:17 PM | Permalink
June 23, 2008
The Musclehead Revolution Takes Over FRC
For years, Kevin McCullough was little more than a fringe right-wing activist who hosted a radio program called “MuscleHead Revolution” heard sporadically throughout the northeast United States, blogging at Townhall and penning columns for WorldNetDaily – columns where he claimed, for instance, that “Radical homosexual activists hate marriage because fundamentally they hate God, and the guilt of both drives them to extremes”:
No longer satisfied with practicing the unspeakable perverse sexual pleasures that their hearts seek in private bedrooms, they wish to be able to do so in public. They are also suffering from such immense guilt over their sexual behaviors, because they know inherently that the actions they perform are in fact unhealthy, that they will go to any means necessary to try and shut down the voices in their heads that tell them it is wrong.
They wrongfully believe that the guilty voice within them is an echo of a prudish state that seeks to limit their freedoms. They wrongfully believe that the judgment they feel is emanating from "Bible thumpers." And what they fail to admit is that the voice that condemns them the loudest is never a human voice – but in fact the voice of their own conscience informed by the truth of the God who created them.
There are attributes of marriage that same-sex couples will never achieve. But in the minds of radical activists, getting the label and a piece of paper saying so will be close enough.
For instance, a woman who engages in lesbianism will never know the joy of lovemaking that creates within her the product of that union – an actual human life. She will never know the security of a true man protecting her from the dragons of the world and providing for her an environment where she can nurture and give love to that little life once it arrives, or the stamp of approval that God puts on such an experience. And because she and her partner know this, they must defy reason, biology and sexual function to create children and experiences that serve as faulty substitutes for that God-ordained picture.
Likewise, a man who seeks his perverse kicks by depositing the seed of life in, shall we say, non-life-giving cavities, may know orgasm, but never complete union, as he uses anatomy in ways for which the Creator did not create it.
Apparently, Family Research Council leaders were so impressed by McCullough’s insights such as HIV doesn’t threaten “people who behave as God intended when it comes to sexual expression” that they decided to bring him on board:
On this week's edition of Washington Watch Radio: We go LIVE to California for the very latest on the court's decision to redefine marriage to include alternate sexual unions. FRC had eyes and ears on the ground in San Francisco, Sacramento, San Jose, Santa Barbara, Ventura, West Hollywood, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Kevin McCullough, nationally syndicated columnist, former New York City based talk show host, and author of the book, The Kind of Man Every Man Should Be joins Tony live from California.
McCullough not only joined FRC’s Tony Perkins for the radio program, but for an extended discussion of the issue that FRC posted on YouTube where Perkins referred to him as “the voice of FRC news.” In the past, McCullough has participated in FRC events, such as the Blogs for Life Conference and has recently begun contributing to the FRC’s institutional blog.
McCullough’s bio says he has “been called the heir apparent to Dobson and Falwell, by America's most prolific faith-based writers,” which seems like a shameless exaggeration – but if he continues to receive validation and credibility from “mainstream” right-wing groups such as FRC, it seems entirely possible that he might actually manage to transition from the right-wing fringe where he currently resides out into the broader Religious Right political network.
Posted by Kyle at 4:00 PM | Permalink
June 19, 2008
The Right Goes All In to Stop Marriage Equality in California
As we have noted over the last several weeks, the Religious Right’s response to the California marriage ruling has been noticeably over-the-top, even for them. Throwing out everything from Nazi metaphors and warnings that the end of the world was upon us to hateful language and ridiculous scare-tactics, the Right’s response has consisted almost entirely over rhetorical over-reaction.
But now that same-sex marriages have begun in California, the Right appears to be transitioning from over-reaction to action and begun ramping up its organizing efforts to amend the California Constitution to “provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized.”
Just yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported that Focus on the Family dumped a quarter-million dollars into the effort:
The initiative campaign proposes to amend the state Constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. It received $250,000 this week from an evangelical group, Focus on the Family, and declared that the debate about same-sex marriage "is not over." Focus on the Family, led by James C. Dobson, posted a statement on its website declaring that California's "judicially imposed social experiment has hastened the demise of religious freedom across the U.S."
Today, the Family Research Council sent out an email seeking to have its own quarter-million dollar investment be doubled by a matching grant for the fight in California and across the nation:
I'm writing to ask you to give a generous donation to Family Research Council's MARRIAGE CAMPAIGN.
Your donation and others will be doubled by a Matching Grant up to $250,000!
Traditional marriage is now in grave peril across the nation due to the outrageous decisions by activist judges and radical legislators in Massachusetts, California, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Oregon. With reckless disregard for logic and law, these threats open the door to:
* Counterfeit marriage being imposed on states with marriage amendments
* Erosion of traditional morality as homosexuality is normalized
* Schools teaching that homosexual behavior and homosexual "marriage" are social goods
* Restriction of religious freedom and free speechIn response to the marriage crisis, FRC has launched our Marriage Campaign.
Our initial goal: raise $2 million immediately to educate the nation on the centrality of marriage, respond to threats and lies across the country, educate leaders and pastors, and register voters.
The crisis is so great that FRC has been given a $250,000 Matching Grant to help fight this battle and others
FRC plans to use the money is raises to, among other things, “Educate the grassroots and government leaders, Launch paid advertising and press events, Alert and inform FRC's powerful network of churches and Flood TV, radio, newspapers, and the Internet with FRC experts doing eye-opening interviews.”
FRC plans to use the money is raises to, among other things, “Educate the grassroots and government leaders, Launch paid advertising and press events, Alert and inform FRC's powerful network of churches and Flood TV, radio, newspapers, and the Internet with FRC experts doing eye-opening interviews.”
The group through which FOF and FRC will presumably channel their money and efforts is ProtectMarriage.com, a who’s who of right-wing organizations and individuals. ProtectMarriage itself appears to kicking its efforts into high-gear, beginning with what they seem to be billing as the single most important conference call ever:
Dear Pastors, Friends and Christian Leaders,
We have labored to make this letter as short as possible. However, the gravity of this moment caused us to need to share several critical items. Please read carefully – at least this first page.
The landscape of California will change dramatically as of Monday, June 16 at 5:01 PM. Every Bible believing pastor and church will be affected.
Please join with pastors and Christian leaders all across California who are coming together at 43+ locations for a statewide Pastors Strategic Conference Call, Wednesday, June 25, at 10 AM.
For the location list, please see www.protectmarriagesd.com.
If you, as a pastor, are willing to host a gathering of pastors and Christian leaders at your church, or you know of a pastor who will host, please contact Chris Clark at pastor@eastclairemont.com or 858-395-7136. You need to have speaker-phone capability that can be adequately amplified, along with PowerPoint capabilities for visual purposes.
Additionally, please forward this email to as many pastors and Christian leaders as you can or email reply with the email addresses of pastors and Christian leaders so that we can keep them informed of future developments … Be assured that the information shared will be extremely beneficial for the future of the cause of Christ in California. Saying it another way, it is worth canceling all other appointments in order to be present at one of these locations.
The conference call looks like it is tied to the organization’s efforts to use churches to register thousands of new voters before the November election:
The church in California is being called upon to turn out the vote for the November election, in which voters will vote on a constitutional amendment to nullify a recent court decision legalizing homosexual "marriage" in that state.
ProtectMarriage.com has already signed on a thousand churches to work to increase voter registration and turnout. As spokesman Ron Prentice notes, the church is seen as one of the keys to victory. "[In] many elections, only 50 percent of those church members register to vote," he says. "And so we know that our success hinges on getting out as many votes as possible -- and the church community is available and willing."
Prentice explains that as a follow-up to voter registration materials, his group will provide church leaders with specific sermon content on the subject of biblical marriage -- "and then we'll be working with them to get out more and more of their congregation to vote," he adds.
It seems as if it has finally dawned on the Right that a loss in California on the marriage issue could do serious damage to their efforts to pass a federal marriage amendment and permanently deny marriage equality to men and women throughout the nation and they look set to pull out all the stops in an effort to ensure that that does not happen. As AFA’s OneNewsNow put it: “History has shown that what happens in California affects the rest of the country, so Prentice is calling on people to pray for victory."
Posted by Kyle at 5:30 PM | Permalink
June 18, 2008
FRC Demands That McCain Talk Religion Like They Want
In its most recent “Washington Update,” the Family Research Council appears to be trying to call out John McCain on the fact that his website just isn’t religious enough:
A quick tour through the candidates' official websites may do more to predict who our next president will be than months of polling data. On one nominee's site, visitors can select from featured articles called, "When Faith Is Front and Center," "Reconciling Faith and Politics," and "Strengthening Families." In another section, they can scroll through the priority issues of "ethics," "faith," and "family" and read excerpts from speeches, watch video clips, and peruse editorials devoted entirely to this senator's religious conviction. If you attributed that content to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), guess again. The site belongs to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), whose party is vying for the "values void" created by the GOP's near-silence on its core issues. Unlike Obama's site, McCain's homepage is dedicated to "energy security," "global competitiveness," and "Iraq." Nowhere is faith or family referenced. With the exception of a blurb on human dignity, found on the bottom half of his issues menu, McCain's commitment to and record on social values are glaringly absent … Is it any wonder then that the gap of support between McCain and Obama is shrinking in the religious community? As of Friday, McCain was leading by only five percent among those who said that religion is an important aspect of their everyday life. The GOP's silence on marriage, particularly at this critical juncture in California, is deafening.
Oddly, if you actually bother to compare the two candidate’s websites, they don’t seem nearly as different as FRC makes them out to be.
Obama does have a “Faith” page consisting mostly of a link to a speech he delivered to Call to Renewal's Building a Covenant for a New America Conference in 2006 and a link to a document entitled “Barack's Faith Principles. Other articles FRC cites look to be run-of-the-mill campaign issues - concerns about the issues such as “Ethics” and “Family” certainly are not unique to the so-called “Values Voters” FRC claims to represent and the "When Faith Is Front and Center” article they cite is basically a link to an op-ed by Obama supporter Douglas Kmiec.
It’s not clear why FRC is so high on Obama’s website relative to McCain’s. FRC praises Obama for having a “Family” page even though it contains proposals for a bunch of things FRC loathes, such as providing a living wage and universal healthcare. On McCain’s site, what FRC dismisses as a “blurb” is actually a long “values” page dedicated to Human Dignity and the Sanctity of Life which is chalk full of the issues FRC and its ilk care about and even starts off by pledging to overturn Roe v. Wade which, for groups like FRC, has long been its top political priority:
John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench.
The page goes on to set out McCain’s views on the importance of protecting marriage, protecting children from internet pornography, and restricting stem-cell research. It concludes with a declaration that “decency, human compassion, self-sacrifice and the defense of innocent life are at the core of John McCain's value system and will be the guiding principles of a McCain Presidency."
McCain’s website also contains articles such as “John McCain: Keeping Faith, On His Own Terms” as well as others about his efforts to reach out to the GOP’s conservative Christian base and even the text of his remarks to FRC’s own Values Voter Summit.
FRC’s one-sided review of the websites seems to be an exercise in pressuring McCain into publicly discussing his faith more openly. As FRC’s Tony Perkins explained back in February:
“[McCain] must make social conservatives feel that he, No. 1, understands their issues; No. 2, believes in their issues; and No. 3, will advance them as president.”
Apparently, the only way McCain can do that, despite all the pandering he has already done, is to spend a lot more time talking about religion in a manner that FRC deems acceptable.
Posted by Kyle at 5:08 PM | Permalink
June 17, 2008
How Gay Marriage “Sodomized The Entire Culture” and Destroyed Father’s Day
Last month, when the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage rights for gays and lesbians, the Right was typically apoplectic, unleashing everything from Nazi metaphors to warnings that the end of the world was near. In the weeks since, it doesn’t seem as if the Right has calmed down much and now that marriages have begun in the state, they have come out in force to rail against it and warn of dire consequences to come.
While Concerned Women for America announced a Day of Prayer and Fasting in hopes that “our nation will return to the Biblical values on which she was founded,” others such as Biblical Family Advocates screeched that “California has slid off of its foundations into moral anarchy” and accused the court of mandating sin by allowing gays to “sodomize the entire culture”:
"It is truly amazing that the homosexual community desired the government to get out of their bedroom and now they use the government to force their bedroom upon the general populace. They will not be satisfied until they have sodomized the entire culture, including the family, schools and even the church which should be a safe haven for children, not hedonistic indoctrination camps."
For his part, Vision America’s Rick Scarborough lambasted the “judicial autocrats” who have dealt “another body blow to the institutions of marriage and the family” and proclaimed that religious institutions and the family itself were now in danger:
"Those who think the judicial assault on marriage won't affect them had better think again. It will impact on everything from adoption to public-school curriculum. Church-based agencies will be forced to place children with same-sex couples or get out of the adoption business. The schools will be required to teach that there's absolutely no difference between a family with a mommy and a daddy and one with two mommies, or two daddies." Scarborough urged the people of California and America to "resist this monumental evil."
The idea that faith-based organizations will come under attack was echoed by the Family Research Council, as was the idea that the traditional family was also in danger, with FRC going so far as to run ads bizarrely claiming that marriage equality was somehow going to destroy Father’s Day:
Posted by Kyle at 6:18 PM | Permalink
Older Family Research Council posts: