October 12, 2014
HRC's '10 Shocking Facts About the American Family Association'
EDGE READ TIME: 2 MIN.
What do teen suicide, the Holocaust, ISIS and pedophila all have in common? According to the American Family Association, they're all caused by gay people.
Like death and taxes, one of the unfortunate certainties in life are the outrageous assertions made by the American Family Association (AFA) whenever any advancements are made for equal right for LGBT citizens. Last week was no exception, when Bryan Fischer of AFA radio drew a ridiculous parallel comparing the Supreme Court's decision not to hear same-sex marriage cases with the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which denied African Americans the rights of citizens.
"The nearest parallel we can find to what happened yesterday is the Court's 1857 decision legitimizing the institution of slavery," Fischer said. "The Court duplicated its wrongheaded and grossly immoral Dred Scott ruling yesterday by imposing same-sex marriage on the entire country. This is tyranny."
AS AFA bills itself as being "on the frontlines of America's culture war" and "one of the largest and most effective pro-family organizations in the country," Human Rights Campaign's blog pulled 10 "pro-family" statements and stances out of AFA:�
1. AFA's Bryan Fischer blames the Holocaust on LGBT people, stating, "Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews."
2.�AFA's Fischer has called for an "Underground Railroad" to take children from gay and lesbian parents.
3.�Fischer has compared the criminalizing of LGBT people with bans on murder, stealing, child molestation, delicious trans fats and prostitution.
4.�AFA says God is going to use ISIS to punish America for being tolerant of LGBT people.
5.�AFA supported the passage of Uganda's deplorable anti-gay law, which calls for LGBT Ugandans or anyone "promoting" homosexuality to be jailed -- potentially for life.
6.��AFA thinks that kids belonging to the Boy Scouts of America would be better off drowning in the sea than the organization allowing LGBT Scouts.
7.�AFA compares LGBT people to pedophiles and people who have sex with animals: "We should discriminate against unnatural and aberrant sexual behavior, whether pedophilia, bestiality, or homosexuality."
8.�AFA thinks fewer students will commit suicide if adults tell young people it is wrong to be LGBT and help them to "choose" to be straight -- a practice that has been condemned by every major medical and mental health organization in the country.
9.�AFA thinks the NFL celebrating Michael Sam coming out as gay is the same as the NFL celebrating "a brain concussion."
10.�AFA supports criminalizing LGBT people and, when talking about punishment, asks, "Do you put them to death, do you lock 'em up... what do you do?"
In 2010, the Southern Poverty Law Center designated AFA as a hate group for the organization's "propagation of known falsehoods and demonizing propaganda."