The Christian conservative group
American Family Association (AFA) has rejected a claim that it is an
anti-gay hate group.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)
recently added the AFA, a group that opposes gay rights, to the same
list of hate groups as the Ku Klux Klan, the Nation of Islam and the
Aryan Nations. Also
added were the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the nation's
most vociferous opponent of gay marriage, and the Family Research
Council (FRC), which hosts the annual conservative celebrity-studded
Values Voter Summit in Washington.
According to the SPLC's website, all
the hate groups on its list “have beliefs or practices that attack
of malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable
characteristics.”
Referring to a
sidebar in the SPLC report titled 10
Anti-Gay Myths Debunked, Bryan
Fischer, director of issue analysis at the AFA, rejects the hate
group designation in a blog post at the group's website, arguing that
“what the SPLC calls 'myths' about homosexuality turn out to be
what neutral observers call 'truths' about homosexuality.”
Fischer asserts that it's true that
“homosexuals controlled the Nazi Party and helped orchestrate the
Holocaust,” that “homosexuals molest children at far higher rates
than heterosexuals,” that “hate crime laws will lead to the
jailing of pastors who criticize homosexuality and the legalization
of practices like bestiality and necrophilia,” and that being gay
is a choice.
“People leave the homosexual
lifestyle every day, just like people stop abusing drugs and alcohol
every day,” he wrote.
In an earlier blog post, Fischer
reached out to troubled gay teens considering suicide. He wrote that
he was “here to help” and urged the teens to “resist homosexual
impulses” which will “leave you diseased, lonely and dead.”