Tuesday, The New York Times' Erik Eckholm wrote a pretty one-sided piece on the sponsor of Governor Rick Perry's "The Response" the American Family Association (AFA), which was held in Houston yesterday. (And poorly attended.)
Eckholm's piece received pretty significant pushback from progressive and LGBT media watchdogs.
Though not a complete white wash, it is another troublesome example of false "balance" delivered via "he said/she said" reporting tactics that ignores a lot of empirical evidence and provides little context that support alternative perspectives.
Most troubling is the mitigating and dismissive frame Eckhold places around "critics" of the group. It marginalizes the critics as merely coming from "liberals" and hands the floor quickly over to American Family Association to make the case to readers they are merely just another mainstream version of Christianity:
Though liberal critics call it a hate group, the association and Mr. Wildmon are widely revered in conservative circles. Working in the relative isolation of Tupelo and lacking a magnetic television personality, Mr. Wildmon is not as widely known as other titans of the religious right, like Pat Robertson or James C. Dobson. But last fall Mr. Wildmon was described as “one of the most effective Christian leaders of our time” as he received a lifetime achievement award at the Values Voter Summit, an annual gathering of top religious conservatives.
Mr. Wildmon, who has remained the association’s guiding force, said the group would spend up to $600,000 putting on the Texas rally.
There's a lot of context that Eckholm fails to provide the readers about his subject's views and history and the nature of their critics, which results in a false sense of "balance."
I'm not sure Mr. Eckholm really knows what a "hate group" is.
The construction of this sentence is particularly sloppy:
Though liberal critics call it a hate group, the association and Mr. Wildmon are widely revered in conservative circles.
Whether AFA is widely revered by large numbers of people does not render "liberal critics" misinformed or incorrect that AFA is a "hate group."
There is also here a false inflating of AFA's influence. AFA is certainly revered in religious right circles. But while it may be safe to safe all members of the religious right are conservatives, it is not correct to say all conservatives are religious right members. These terms should not be used interchangeably.
Eckholm also fails to inform readers that the among the "liberal critics" that call American Family Association a "hate group" is the esteemed and highly credible Southern Poverty Law Center and they have a long proud history of battling extremism against minorities in America. Eckholm makes no mention of Southern Poverty Law Center at all.
He also fails to provide any context for what a "hate group" is outside of a rhetorical charge that any person can lobby at another group of people they don't like.
According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) a "hate group" according to the Uniform Crime Reporting Guide is a group whose:
"primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against persons belonging to a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin which differs from that of the members of the organization."
The FBI does not publish the names of groups it feels present a danger to the public.
The Southern Poverty Law Center does however.
And in Winter 2010, SPLC added the sponsor of Rick Perry's prayer event, American Family Association to a list of hate groups they have identified in America. SPLC also keep tabs on the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi groups, anti-semitic groups and abortion clinic bombers.
Of course, religious right has responded it's the Southern Poverty Law Center that is the real hate group. Sounds like he said, she said, I guess we'll never know?
Right Wing Watch compiled a video which in a few, short, thoroughly disgusting minutes tells you everything you need to know about this group: "Four Minutes Of Hate, The Naked Bigotry Of American Family Association's Bryan Fischer."
In a perfect world it would be required viewing for all journalists before they submit softball pieces like Eckholm's on groups like AFA. They might be less inclined to dismiss objections as merely the raving of some "liberals," who just have a different opinion.
- Rational Americans do not believe that Hitler was gay and recruited only homosexuals for their brute savagery to exclusively staff his brownshirts. This rhetoric is holocaust revisionism and shouldn't be presented in the New York Times as a merely a "disputed theory" (you know, like those wacky global warming and evolutionary theories).
- Rational Americans do not believe that gay people are empowered to ship their opponents off to "reeducation camps" to be "brainwashed" into "supporting deviant sexual behavior."
- Rational Americans do not believe that gay people have an agenda of recruiting children to "swell their ranks." Heterosexuality is not a competing team gay people are intent on conquering. In fact, many gays count heterosexuals among their very best friends, and would be perfectly fine if even their own children were to choose to make that particular lifestyle choice.
- Rational Americans do not believe that homosexuals are "morally disqualified from holding [public] offices." In fact, in even in Houston, TX they vote to elect them.
- Rational Americans do not believe that the "number one class of people who are committing hate crimes are homosexual activists" and "they are by far the most egregious perpetrators of hate crime offenses in the United States of America." This is empirically, demonstrably false assertion. Quite the opposite, LGBT Americans are 2.4 times more likely to be victims of hate crimes than other minorities (certainly more than poor Christian fundamentalists).
These are insane assertions. Disagreeement with the American Family Association does not make one "a liberal." It makes one sane.
But these are the tenet and beliefs that drive American Family Association's ministry.
And it is also what views they repeatedly espouse to their followers.
And that is why "some liberals" call them a "hate group."
This talk is more than irrational, deranged, and extremist. It is dangerous. Talk like Fischer's can be shown to have direct correlation to teen suicide, hate crimes and detrimental effects on mental health.
It is not just "liberals" who don't agree with the America Family Association, it is mainstream America. AFA consistently speak words Americans know, both literally, empirically and in their hearts, to be untrue.
Gays are not Nazis intent on imprisoning Christians and molesting children.
We are your sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, teachers, students, firemen, policemen, doctors, lawyers, waiters, accountants, soliders, elected representatives, friends, neighbors and colleagues.
And we deserve more respect than Bryan Fischer, American Family Association and Governor Rick Perry and the New York Times afford us.
FWIW
Friday night Bill Maher mocked reports that attendance was looking bad for what he called Perry's "Prayer-A-Palooza."
It seems to have transpired as such.
An attendee reports the crowd was much smaller than media/stadium employee reports of 30,000. This picture taken as Governor Perry spoke to the crowd and reveals sparse seating, even fairly close to the stage and no one seated in the second tier (you can click to zoom in). The stage was moved to the 50 yard line as it became clear that the 70,000 seat stadium would be more than half empty. Some people left after the Governor spoke.
Houston itself is a city of 2.2M people, it seem the call was not responded to by many locally, or statewide. The wisdom of Governor and potential candidate Perry's decision to align himself with extremists on the far religious right remains to be seen.