A U.S. Hate Group – Family Research Council – And Their Support of Murder of Gay People
December 7, 2012
Do you know that we have an organization leader here in the United States who supports a dictator? Do you know that we have an organization leader here in the U.S. who, speaking for his organization, supports death for people who are gay? Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council, illustrated the accuracy of his organization’s designation as a hate group when he praised Uganda’s leadership in putting forward a bill that would legally mandate the persecution and murder of LGBT people.
If you’re not familiar with the Family Research Council, it is an American conservative “Christian” group and lobbying organization formed in the United States in 1981 by James Dobson. It began as a division of the Focus on the Family organization, whose stated mission is “nurturing and defending the God-ordained institution of the family and promoting biblical truths worldwide.”
Focus on the Family and Family Research Council (FRC) oppose abortion, divorce, gambling, LGBT rights, LGBT adoption, pornography, pre-marital sex and substance abuse. They both support abstinence-only sexual education, non-LGBT adoption, corporal punishment, creationism, school prayer, and strong gender roles.
This bill that Mr. Perkins supports in Uganda is known as the “Kill the Gays Bill.” An article on AlterNet today states:
The bill, quickly dubbed the “Kill the Gays” bill because of its provision of a death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality,” also includes severe penalties for other actions and non-actions, including the “failure to disclose the offense” by anyone who might be aware of another person’s same-sex sexuality. Although the bill has not been yet passed, it has attracted harsh international condemnation, and many attacks on LGBT people and activists have been attributed to the public debates surrounding it.
Austin Cline tells us in his article, American Christian Evangelicals Celebrate Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” Bill:
If you think you understand how bad Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill is, I suggest you take a closer look because it’s probably much worse than you realize. It doesn’t merely authorize “killing the gays.” As bad as that is, it would actually represent an improvement.
What makes Uganda’s bill worse is something that happens quite often when a despised minority is targeted for persecution: the bill is designed to make it useful for targeting almost anyone and everyone else under the guise of attacking gays. Almost anyone can be tainted not only by association, but also by being accused of homosexuality and for fairly innocuous behaviors.
Tony Perkins: American liberals are upset that Ugandan Pres is leading his nation in repentance–afraid of a modern example of a nation prospered by God?
Bryan Fischer (Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association (AFA) – another organization of the same ilk): Homosexuality is now against the law in Uganda, just as it was for 200 years in the US. It can be done.
Source: Daily Kos
I think it’s important to remember that, aside from our commitment to human rights, we in the United States have some very specific responsibility for this bill. in 2009 it was a small group of people from the US, three Evangelical “Christians,” who stirred up the discourse in Uganda beyond what was already an appalling approach to homosexuality and painted such a dire picture of danger to children, family, the Ugandan way of life (I know – you’ve heard it all here too!) that Uganda felt the need to up their already repressive response to homosexuality and make it a crime punishable by death. How could such a thing happen? With the same hate speech and fear-mongering we hear in our own country. The theme of the conference in Uganda, according to The New York Times, was the “gay agenda” : “how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how ‘the gay movement is an evil institution’ whose goal is ‘to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity’.
Following exposure of a 2009 $25,000 Congressional lobbying contribution to defeat The US House of Representatives resolution that condemned the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill , the FRC issued a statement denying that they were trying to kill the bill, but rather that they wanted to change the language of the bill “to remove sweeping and inaccurate assertions that homosexual conduct is internationally recognized as a fundamental human right.”
While many people who support the agenda of the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, may, in fact, be extremely homophobic, I wonder if they realize they are advocating, through their millions and millions of dollars of contributions to these organizations, murder of people for being gay? How many of those donors would, if asked, agree that someone should face execution or life in prison for being a gay male or a lesbian?
I don’t know about you, but I am picturing Nazi Germany. I am picturing every regime through-out history that has sanctioned murder and turned neighbor against neighbor, punishing those who don’t “out” someone else, to eradicate someone or something they feared or even hated. The Catholic Church is globally bigger and more homophobic than either of these groups, but they are anti-death penalty. Those who lead the Family Research Council and other hate group leaders are taking a position that followers wouldn’t support if they understood. I have to believe that no matter how you felt about homosexuality, you wouldn’t support execution of someone for being gay.
I suggest that we have to make sure, somehow, that those members and believers who are supporting Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, know that they are supporting a leader who supports execution for being gay. Because let me ask you this…. Who is next?