Focus continues to bury it’s head in the sand over hate-crime protections for gay Americans today. I sent them the following letter:
For as much as Focus talks about Constitutional law you sure casually brush aside First Amendment protections of hate speech. Racist sermons have always been protected under the Constitution. There is absolutely no reason why religious speech against gay people would be criminal either. That “slippery slope” is never going to emerge in this country because of that unique little thing called the First Amendment. You know perfectly well the First Amendment is why Focus can air shows in the US it can’t air in Canada. Now stop deceiving by omission.
Daniel Gonzales
Feel free to email them too.
news@family.org
focus@family.org
I believe Focus omits the First Amendment because they, like a few leftist counterparts, oppose the First Amendment’s protection of viewpoints contrary to theirs.
Where individual left-leaning organizations may cite “civility” and emotional harm as an excuse to censor speech, the rightists resort to false appeals to “morality” as their excuse.
True, I was disturbed by the choice of chants at the recent LWO protest “shut it down.” Of course “stop using ex-gays as cover to deny us civil equality” isn’t as easy to chat 😛
While “shut it down” may sound like a cry for government censorship, more likely it was an demand that the event organizers recognize the harm they were doing by the seminar and shut it down. After all, they were chanting in front of the seminar, not at city hall.
I’m sure you both of you would agree that we support the right of LWO to disseminate lies, hate, and idiocy, but we would appeal to the better nature of the FOF to recognize their actions and cease them.
Perhaps a chant of “stop the lies” might have been better….
“Perhaps a chant of “stop the lies” might have been better….”
I agree. Often individuals in our community don’t see the potential for what they say or do being twisted by bigots and used against them.
Of course, there were other chants but this one is the one that the anti/ex-gays believe makes the protesters seem intolerant – so its the one they report.
Exactly — “shut it down” is vague and open to deliberate misinterpretation.
“Stop the lies” would make an excellent theme song. If we did a whole musical production maybe some of the ex-gays will join in and become ex-ex-gays!
Just for clarification the “shut it down” was a moral demand, not a request that the State censor anti-gay speech. It was a moral demand that THEY shut it down.
In fact, the entire context of the chant was that someone would say something, usually an abstraction, and the crowd would respond: Shut it down! For instance: “Sexism: Shut it down!” “Homophobia: Shut it down!” “Christian Right: Shut it down!” They just heard the “shut it down” part.
We’re not going to trip over ourselves and wring our hands over what they’re going to say about us. We are just going to do what is necessary to defend our community from political attack. They’re going to twist and distort things anyway. It didn’t matter what we said, the fact that there was a massive protest to them is evidence that they are “under attack.”
Timothy says: I’m sure you both of you would agree that we support the right of LWO to disseminate lies, hate, and idiocy, but we would appeal to the better nature of the FOF to recognize their actions and cease them.
This makes an incredible leap in logic: that FOF has a ‘better nature’. I can find no evidence to support this proposition.
DaleA
LOL. Ok maybe they have no better nature.
But I can still hope that maybe their conscience will slap them upside the head and remind them of what they pretend to believe.
I’d have preferred “Stop the lies,” too.
But from what I saw, the anti-gay groups would have turned *any* molehill outside their door into a mountain.
Daniel, I’m sure they’ll brush off your letter, but I still think it’s great!