Friday, December 12, 2014

The Family Research Council isn't held accountable for its homophobia, anti-gay lies

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center:

The Family Research Council (FRC) bills itself as “the leading voice for the family in our nation’s halls of power,” but its real specialty is defaming gays and lesbians. The FRC often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science. The intention is to denigrate LGBT people in its battles against same-sex marriage, hate crimes laws, anti-bullying programs and the repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

According to GLAAD, FRC president Tony Perkins has made several outrageous comments about the lgbt community, including accusing us of being "pawns" of Satan, claiming that we want to put Christians in boxcars and cart them away, comparing us to terrorists, and - of course - claiming that we want to recruit children.

Substitute the African-American or Jewish community for lgbt community in terms of who FRC and Perkins denigrates and do you honestly think that the following montage of Perkins being called upon to comment as a "Christian leader" on Fox News would happen:


The problem here isn't solely the fact that Perkins and FRC continuously lie about and denigrate the lgbt community. Part of the problem is that the media doesn't hold them accountable for these actions.

Hat tip to Jeremy Hooper for the montage.

3 comments:

Prup (aka Jim Benton) said...

Alvin: I've read pieces from you before, and references to you on Steve Benen's MADDOWBLOG, but it's the first time my careening around the blogosphere has ever brought me here -- a lacuna I regret even more now that I have read your posts in full. I will have much to say in response to a post below, but here, I just have to make one correction -- and expansion -- to your argument.

It isn't that Perkins would be criticized for his bigotry were he to direct it against the black or Jewish communities. You forget his history, which included a shout out to the "Phineas Priest" (anti-'miscegenation') movement at a conservative hate fest a few years back, and his attempt (or success) to get David Duke's mailing list when he (Perkins) ran for Congress.

Perkins has, in fact, inherited the ;civilized, respectable bigot' mantle once it had riped and revealed Pat Buchanan's swastika armbands. Right now his

I think you have put your finger on an important mistake that Democratic and Progressive candidates and PACs have been making for years -- and which led to both the Disaster of 2010 and the Catastrophe of 2014. It is a policy to ignore the various hate groups, bigots, and just plain crazies in the Republican mix.

I think it was as understandable as it was wrong, a mix of an unwillingness to take the craziness seriously, an idea that gays (or blacks, or Hispanics, or working people, or women, or science-minded people) can obviously see how suicidal it would be to vote Republican, so there is no need to 'play towards' those groups, and the quite accurate realization that one thing that led to Republicans being willing to nominate bigots, phonies, and fools was Gingrich's attempt to 'nationalize' and 'Parliamentize' the Congressional elections.

(I would also include the fact that, ever since 1974, the Democrats -- specifically the candidates -- have been the only ones that still believe in the Agnew/Safire "Silent Majority" or Buchanan's "Pitchfork Army.")

The results are sadly obvious. The 'ignore them and they'll go away' sounded at least plausible in 2006 when Michelle Bachman and Steve King were the undisputed King and Queen of the Congressional Crazies' Prom, and when Sarah Palin was only plaguing Alaska. Bachman is gone, Palin and her family have become self-parodies (despite Bristol's 'legendary' left hook), but if Michelle and Steve were around they'd barely make the seed in a Top 16 bracket for their old 'honors.'

[to be continued in next comment]

Prup (aka Jim Benton) said...

We ignored the 'birther' nonsense -- and now substantial numbers of Republicans, maybe even a majority, believe it, and a surprising number of democrats 'aren't sure' about either his birthplace or his religion.

As for 'we don't have to make specific appeals to the ... community because they are already on our side and wouldn't be crazy enough to vote Republican' idiocy, that alone is catastrophic for us -- and I am not being a drama queen in using such words after November. It is a good example of what I described -- in possibly the most snarky sentence I've ever written -- when I said that "It is obvious the Democrats have decided to care more about quality than quantity when it comes to voters.'

We have begun talking only to each other, commenting 'from our carefully insulated 'Weimar salon' about the 'mess on the streets so far below us.' Or. to change the metaphor -- and this refers mostly to the blogosphere and even more to the commenters rather than the bloggers - we've turned into a version of "Sports Talk Radio" in which what matters is getting our name known, our presentation of fascinating but totally impractical ideas -- like the trades we hear of on STR -- and our ability for creative nastiness, but which totally ignores the suggestion that what we say could actually matter.

I think this can be turned around, and we can return to the party we were, briefly, in 2006-2008 (when we never lost a single Senate seat to a Republican, and not any House seats) and to the effective, politically active blogosphere we were back then. (Remember, it was bloggers that caught and publicized 'macaca'; the wonderful folks at Mudflats that exposed Palin for what she was.)

I'll try and pass on some of my ideas for doing this in comments -- and even e-mail if you would prefer. I hope to get back to here later this afternoon, if not, over the weekend.

[I was going to make this a separate comment, but when I ran into the problem of length and had to break this, I decided to include it here.]

One prime example of Democratic 'avoidance.' After Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America made his 'they should be afraid' comment, Mark Kelly -- the husband of Gabby Giffords -- begged all candidates of whatever party to refuse contributions or endorsements from Pratt and the GOoA.

Not only did no Republican comply, afaik, not ONE Democrat even used such support or endorsement against his or her Republican opponent.

Nor are Democrats so 'gauche' as to complain about Republicans appearing, not just with Perkins, but with Bryan Fisher, with the clowns of the conservative conferences, or with the NOM crowd. Did one Democrat use, as a campaign argument, that 'my opponent is a hater and a homophobe' (however phrased) or ask why he 'legitimized' these various haters by appearing on their platforms or radio shows.

(Nobody has even complained about their appearing with Rick Wiles, who claims that ISIS is a front for the Mossad and Western Intelligence Agencies, that Obama deliberately aided the spread of Ebola, that Ferguson protests were an attempt by Obama to start a racial civil war, and that Obama should be arrested for treason -- along with the usual homophobia as exaggerated as you might guess. Check PFAW's RIGHT WING WATCH for these and other quotes from Wiles.)

Prup (aka Jim Benton) said...

I forgot how easy it is to lose comments on Blogger blogs and lost the follow-up post. Have a few things to do, will try and get back and rewrite it later. Sorry.