Muslims join lgbts as the victims of Family Research Council lies

Tony Perkins lies about Muslims the same way he lies about lgbts.

I generally go after the Family Research Council for the lies and distortions it spews about lgbts. However, since Donald Trump's eruption against the Muslim community, all attention seems to be there.

And this includes that of the Family Research Council's.

I wish I could say  that the organization actually shows itself as the Christian group it claims to be - i.e. the reason it claims to be against lgbt equality - by calling out Trump's incendiary and prejudiced rhetoric, but no such luck.

Instead, FRC uses techniques which us lgbts should be used to (citing distorted or junk science and wholesale demonization under the cover of religion) to actually defend Islamophobic prejudice in general.  The following is just a snippet from an email by its president, Tony Perkins:

What most people either don't realize or willfully ignore is that only 16 percent of Islam is a religion -- the rest is a combination of military, judicial, economic, and political system. Christianity, by comparison, isn't a judicial or economic code -- but a faith. So to suggest that we would be imposing some sort of religious test on Muslims is inaccurate. Sharia is not a religion in the context of the First Amendment. Under the framework proposed by Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rick Santorum, America wouldn't vet refugees based on religion but an ideology that's incompatible with American liberty. "I've proposed actual concrete things [like eliminating the visa lottery system] and immigration law that would have -- not the effect of banning all Muslims, but a lot of them," Santorum explained.

The bottom line is this: the U.S. Constitution is an agreement between people about how they'll be governed. What good is it if people immigrate to America with the sole purpose of undermining that contract? We shouldn't be embarrassed to say that we oppose those who want to come to the United States to destroy it. And while most Muslims are not radicalized, Sharia certainly encourages it. Based on polling from the Center for Security Policy, that's the system most would choose. The majority of Muslims in America believe they "'should have the choice of being governed by Sharia [law].' Sharia authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won't convert, beheadings, and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women."

First of all, for an organization constantly whining about attacks on religious liberty, it is extremely hypocritical for the Family Research Council to dictate what encompasses Islam. No matter what the organization says, Islam is a religion, just like Christianity. And if one looked at the historical perspective, Christianity  once embraced a military, judicial, and economic code in Europe and in the early days of this country.  Lastly, as much as FRC likes to brag how Christian beliefs encompasses the actions and decisions of its favored legislators and leaders, the fact that the group seeks to pull back and claim that Christianity is merely a "faith" is morally dishonest.

But more importantly, FRC cites "polling from the Center of Security Policy," days after its has been discovered that not only is the organization and its head, Frank Gaffney, extremely Islamophobic, but the data in question is misleading. In fact,  FRC is citing some of the same information that Trump cited to attack the Muslim community


According to Media Matters:

  On July 7, Nathan Lean and Jordan Denari, both experts on Islamophobia, explained the questionable nature of the Center for Security Policy's poll on Muslims that Donald Trump cited in his demand to bar entry for Muslims into America :

The Center for Security Policy (CSP), a Washington, D.C. think tank run by former Reagan official Frank Gaffney, just released a survey of 600 Muslims living in the United States. Its takeaway, captured in a headline on the CSP website, is this: "Poll of U.S. Muslims Reveals Ominous Levels of Support For Islamic Supremacists' Doctrine of Shariah, Jihad."

[...]
But this survey should not be taken seriously. It comes from an organization with a history of producing dubious claims and "studies" about the threat of shariah, and was administered using an unreliable methodology. Its proponents seize upon its shoddy findings, exaggerating and misrepresenting them to American audiences, and falsely claim that the survey data represents the views of Muslims nationwide.

[...]

CSP's survey was a non-probability based, opt-in online survey, administered by the conservative group the Polling Company/Woman Trend, a small Washington-based agency that has collaborated with CSP on other occasions to produce surveys about Islam and Muslims. (We learned this after reaching out to the Polling Company to get more details about their methodology, which wasn't released to the public when Gaffney began promoting the survey's findings.)

According to the body that sets ethical standards for polling, the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), opt-in surveys cannot be considered representative of the intended population, in this case Muslims. The AAPOR says that in these cases, "the pollster has no idea who is responding to the question" and that these kind of "polls do not have such a 'grounded statistical tie' to the population."

 . . . This survey does not represent the views of American Muslims. It only represents the views of the 600 Muslims that it polled. [Huffington Post, 7/7/15]

The Family Research Council's pathetic attempt to defend Islamophobia shouldn't surprise anyone.

For all it's talk about morality and values, FRC has lied without scruples on countless occasions against the lgbt community. It claims to be defending religious values. In reality, the organization deals in prejudice, ignorance, and bigotry. When it comes to the lgbt community, FRC obviously feels that lying in God's name is an appropriate action. Why should it feel any different about the Muslim community?