Todd Starnes Warns the Military Will Begin Monitoring Personnel who Support Religious Right Groups

Fox News “culture war” correspondent Todd Starnes chatted with Buster Wilson of the American Family Association yesterday about an email that a lieutenant colonel in Kentucky reportedly sent to a handful of subordinates encouraging them to stand up to anti-gay organizations. This obviously irked the AFA since they are on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-gay hate groups.

Starnes asserted that if a military family subscribes to an AFA publication, the Pentagon “would be obligated at that point to monitor that family for suspicious activity.”

Wilson asked Starnes if individuals in the White House or the Pentagon who are “anti-pro-family groups, anti-Christian groups” were behind the emails.

“It appears that this administration is trying to secularize the United States military,” Starnes warned. Wilson added that the Obama administration is “dissing Christianity, traditional conservatism and what’s really American.”

Later, Starnes agreed with Wilson’s claim that the “liberally-controlled government” will use the power of the state to suppress hate groups.

Wilson: At what point does the liberally-controlled government start to say, you know what this hate group needs to be quieted, they need to be quiet, we need to shut them up, they are doing what they do because of what they say and what they say is dangerous. It’s the old shouting fire in the theatre thing, they need to be quiet.

Starnes: Once you start saying something long enough people start believing it and I suspect we’re on that trajectory. At this stage in the game I think Jerry Boykin from FRC says that it is time for Americans to stand up and it is time to start fighting back by contacting your lawmakers, contacting your representatives in Washington, not just on the phone but in person saying ‘this has to stop.’

Earlier in the program, Wilson used Melissa Harris-Perry’s commentary on the collective responsibility of raising children to warn that America is in decline. He said that he now understands why “they think that they have the right to teach them about homosexual sex and it’s okay to have feelings for someone of the same-sex in kindergarten.”

Wilson: I never thought I’d see the day when we would be talking about openly from once respected news brands like NBC saying that you don’t own your own children. I just got to tell you sometimes it breaks my heart and sometimes my wife and I will just be talking about this and we’ll just tear up, we’re like, what is going on in this country? You honestly are going to try to sell me the idea that my kids don’t belong to me, they belong to you and everybody else? No wonder they think that they have the right to teach them about homosexual sex and it’s okay to have feelings for someone of the same-sex in kindergarten, no wonder they think that because it’s their kids and that’s what they believe.