The American Family Association has become scary. There I said it.

At one point, I presented facts to the AFA correcting a report from their information source, OneNewsNow, about the American Psychological Association’s task force report on sexual orientation but their reporter hung up on me. I was allowed to rebut some criticism aimed my way which they published as hearsay, but the damage was done. But these are minor problems compared to where Bryan Fischer has taken the group.

I have discussed Fischer’s views before (biblical law, gay nazis) and I suspect will again. Here is one that is really troubling from a group that claims to uphold religious freedom. From Fischer’s blog post, No More Mosques, Period:

Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero. This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.

You have to read the rest to grasp the concept. Fischer, fronting an ostensibly Christian group, calls for the coercive power of the state to limit the freedom of expression of Islam. When Islamic nations call for restrictions on Christianity, we rightly criticize them. Well, what about this?

Of course, any group, Islamic, Christian, atheist, gay or straight, who plots rebellion against the government should be investigated and stopped. If there is evidence that a mosque is really a front for terror then make the case and take action. However, in the most obvious of ironies, Fischer wants the government to violate the Constitution with his plan to restrict Islam. Freedoms of religion, association and speech are freedoms we want to protect, right?

Amy Ritter at Hot Air tossed a nurf ball at Fischer and the AFA. She is worried about Fischer declaring his idea in the name of conservatism. I am more concerned about what is coming out of the AFA being considered Christian.

Update: Quickly, I note that another AFA writer criticized Fischer’s stance the next day. That’s nice. However, it still is deeply troubling that someone in leadership at AFA has a platform to call for the undermining of the Constitution in the name of conservatism and Christianity.

Note: Been away for a spell, might be back at it more next week.

Remember the E-Trade commercial that featured the girl baby asking the boy baby why he didn’t call her last night? And then we find out that the boy baby was dividing his time between the first girl baby and “that milk-a-holic, Lindsay?” In case you forgot, here it is. But near the end, don’t blink and see if you think “Lindsay Lohan” when the literal babe jumps out and asks the age old question, “milk-a what?”

Never occured to me but it did to Lindsay Lohan. She is suing E-Trade for unlawfully using her “likeness, name, characterization, and personality.” Her likeness?

You mean, like, say what?

Read through to page 4 and you will see a familiar name…

Must have been a heady moment to be with Donald Trump and keep her Miss California crown. Carrie Prejean reminded people that she and the President hold the same position on same-sex marriage…(well probably not exactly the same if you consider his approach to Prop 8).

And a nice trifecta today: keep the crown, hang out with Trump and featured guest again on the Focus on the Family radio show. All in all a better day than some of the last few.

On the heels of defending revealing photos as part of the job of a model, Carrie Prejean has had second thoughts about a recent photo published in Blisss Magazine (spelled Bl!sss on the mag website). Miss Prejean’s pic is a “Super Taste” centerfold of the month and is the lead photo on her Otto Models page. (warning: not workplace friendly)

The recent controversy surrounding Miss Prejean’s modeling work has focused on pictures of her taken when she was 17. She has expressed regret publicly about those photos.

Her publicist, Melany Ethridge, confirmed a comment she gave to celebrity Web site TMZ in which she said Prejean was just 17 when she posed for the photos, hoping they would land her a job model for the Victoria’s Secret lingerie line.

“In her naivete, an agent convinced her to pose for this photo to submit to a lingerie company, claiming they could make her the next Victoria’s Secret model,” Ethridge told TMZ. “She has since learned what a lie that was, and what a mistake it was to have the photo taken.”

However, she defended lingerie modeling as recently as Tuesday when she issued a statement saying:

I am a Christian, and I am a model. Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos.

More recently, she posed for the centerfold of Bl!sss, an action sports oriented magazine which features young women in various states of undress. She touts the Blisss modeling assignment on the Miss California website as part of her resume. However, through her publicist, I have learned that Prejean regrets the Blisss Magazine photo. Her publicist, Melany Ethridge, said that Miss Prejean has had second thoughts. Late yesterday, Ms. Ethridge told me that

…she would not do the Blisss mag photo shoot, if asked now.

Melany did not address my question about whether Miss Prejean would take such jobs in the future. However, this new statement may signal a broader evaluation of her work.

UPDATE: Earlier today, Melany Ethridge contacted me to say that the original statement above about the Bl!sss magazine photo was her belief about what Ms. Prejean would do. However, this afternoon, she now has confirmed with Prejean that “given who she is today,” she would not take the job.

UPDATE 2: Monday appears to be decision-day for Miss California.

This just in from Uganda Pulse:

Members of civil society organizations (CSOs) have today petitioned Parliament, calling for a select committee to investigate the impact of homosexuality in Uganda and to pass stern laws to punish people involved in acts of homosexuality.

The petition, signed by over 50,000 Ugandans, was presented to the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, by the Executive Director of Family Life Network, Stephen Langa.

Langa, who was accompanied by Pastor Martin Ssempa, Deputy Mufti, Sheikh Abdul Musisi and other civil society members, notes that homosexuals have continued to roam the country freely promoting the vice yet homosexuality is illegal according to the Constitution and the Penal; Code Act.

He says that the homosexuals have penetrated into schools and distributed reading tools that promote the vice, citing United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) which was recently put in the spotlight for distributing a book that promotes homosexuality without approval from the Ministry of Education.

Langa revealed that the CSOs have submitted a protest letter to UNICEF expressing disappointment in their actions and have called upon them to apologize to Ugandans and also retrieve the books that were distributed to schools in about 30 districts.

Deputy Speaker, Rebecca Kadaga, commended the organizations for their solidarity against homosexuality, adding that Parliament will look into current legislation to ensure that they are strengthened to penalize acts of homosexuality.

Kadaga promised to push for the amendment of Article 31 of the Constitution which prohibits homosexual marriages. Langa had earlier noted that the article prohibits gay marriages but not the actions.

I wonder what would have happened if the three Americans who went to Uganda in March would have called for decriminalization of homosexuality? I wonder what might have happened if those three Americans said we will not speak at your conference unless we are allowed to advocate for freedom of conscience? I wonder what would happen if American Christian groups made direct contact with the Ugandan church to urge calm and rational policy? If the laws are toughened, I wonder what will happen to religious people who speak in favor in decriminalization there? Will their speech be free?

Maybe nothing would/will change but I just wonder.

Not anyone I have written about before…

The rhetoric is getting so outrageous that I didn’t think any more societal ills could be blamed on gays but I was wrong. But Robert Peters of Morality in Media (Can the irony get any thicker?), put out a news release just now with this headline:

“Connecting the Dots: The Link Between Gay Marriage and Mass Murders”

His news hook is the horrific shootings in Binghamton, NY where 14 people were killed, including the perpetrator of the crime. In the release, he says mass murderers and gay marriage stem from the same source – a post-Christian society. He says near the end of the release that he isn’t blaming the murders on gays:

It most certainly is not my intention to blame the epidemic of mass murders on the gay rights movement! It is my intention to point out that the success of the sexual revolution is inversely proportional to the decline in morality; and it is the decline of morality (and the faith that so often under girds it) that is the underlying cause of our modern day epidemic of mass murders.

So why bring gays into it?

Most mass killings, as in this case, relate to mental illness, notably that involving thought disorders. His thesis is tired and in this release without a shred of substantiation. And then to use that awful situation in New York to bash gays takes it to a new level of immorality in media.

UPDATE: David Corn at Mother Jones weighs in…

Out with the old, in with the new.

It is on.

We are most likely at an impasse of sorts in the culture. The Rick Warren prayer is the kind of event which brings into bold relief the issues which divide. We have discussed on this blog before whether or not the gay-evangelical divide is a zero-sum situation — for one side to prevail, the other side must be defeated. John Cloud at Time magazine gives me evidence to think the divide continues to be wide. About Barack Obama, he writes:

Obama has proved himself repeatedly to be a very tolerant, very rational-sounding sort of bigot. He is far too careful and measured a man to say anything about body parts fitting together or marriage being reserved for the nonpedophilic, but all the same, he opposes equality for gay people when it comes to the basic recognition of their relationships.

John Cloud here redefines bigot. Bigot means someone who is intolerant of others opinions and actions. Seemingly unaware of the contradiction, Cloud calls Obama a “very tolerant sort of bigot.”

I am thinking out loud here, but I wonder if the impasse comes down to beliefs and how these are properly lived out in a democracy. I don’t think it is about “being” gay/straight or being wired to experience opposite- or same-sex attraction. I say this because one may experience same-sex attraction and find that experience something unacceptable for reasons of morality, or for more pragmatic reasons. One may not value some impulses which rightly or wrongly are believed to lead to undesireable consequences. Thus, the divide may be more about ideology than ontology.

If I am right about the basic difference being ideological, then how do we regard people who disagree with us on matters of belief? Do we call them bigots? Do we say you disagree with me so you hate me and all that I am? Let’s leave “do” and go to “should.” Should conservatives say to liberals, you are bigots because you disagree with my beliefs? I do not think so. When John Cloud (who in my contacts with him seems quite tolerant of those who he apparently considers bigots) calls Barack Obama a bigot, does he not invite the same treatment? John you are a tolerant sort of bigot, I might say, when you come to an Exodus conference and converse cordially with the ex-gays.

In the newspeak, bigot means someone who disagrees with me. I doubt this will be good.

This is a disturbing story on several levels.

A Pennsylvania couple have named their children after Nazi figures, including naming their three year old son after Adolf Hitler. The parents wanted Shoprite to inscribe a cake with his full name for his birthday party. The store refused. Now the parents are outraged. The Warren County (NJ) Express-Times went in depth. Here are some excerpts:

HOLLAND TWP. | In a living room decorated with war books, German combat knives and swastikas, a 2-year-old boy, blond and blue-eyed, played with a plastic dinner set.

The boy, asked his name, put down a tiny plate and ran behind his father’s leg. He flashed a shy smile but wouldn’t answer. Heath Campbell, 35, the boy’s father, encouraged him.

“Say Adolf,” said Campbell, a Holocaust denier who has three children named for Nazism.

Again, the boy wouldn’t answer. It wasn’t the first time the name caused hesitation.

Adolf Hitler Campbell — it’s indeed the name on his birth certificate — turns 3 today, and the Campbell family believes the boy has been mistreated. A local supermarket refused to make a birthday cake with “Adolf Hitler” on it.

The ShopRite rationale, while somewhat vague, reserved their right to decide what was appropriate for them to do. Wal-Mart accommodated the request.

Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman, said the grocer tries to meet customer requests but rejects those deemed inappropriate. “We believe the request to inscribe a birthday wish to Adolf Hitler is inappropriate,” she said.

The grocer offered to make a cake with enough room for the Campbells to write their own inscription. But the Campbells refused, saying they would have a cake made at the Wal-Mart in Lower Nazareth Township. The Campbells say Wal-Mart made cakes for Adolf’s first two birthdays.

A spokeswoman for Wal-Mart said the store won’t put anything illegal or profane on a cake but thinks it’s important to respect the views of customers and employees.

“Our No. 1 priority in decorating cakes is to serve the customer to the best of our ability,” Anna Taylor, the spokeswoman, said from Bentonville, Ark.

Could the Campbell’s have a discrimination case here?

If the Campbells have a legal case over the refusal, it would be that the family was denied service because of race, ethnicity or religion, said Shannon Powers, of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, a state agency that enforces anti-discrimination laws.

The Campbells, she said, would have to prove ShopRite didn’t make a reasonable attempt to provide service it provides others. She said the offer to make a cake with room for an inscription would probably count as a reasonable attempt.

“It sounds like they (the supermarket) don’t want to offend other patrons or do something offensive to their own sensibilities. If that’s the motivation, that’s totally different from discrimination,” Powers said.

What planet are these people living on?

The Campbells have swastikas in each room of their home, the rented half of a one-story duplex just outside Milford, a borough in Hunterdon County. They say they aren’t racists but believe races shouldn’t mix.

The Campbells said they wanted their children to have unique names and didn’t expect the names to cause problems. Despite the cake refusal, the Campbells said they don’t expect the names to cause problems later, such as when the children start school.

“I just figured that they’re just names,” Deborah Campbell said. “They’re just kids. They’re not going to hurt anybody.”

Heath Campbell said some people like the names but others are shocked to hear them. “They say, ‘He (Hitler) killed all those people.’ I say, ‘You’re living in the wrong decade. That Hitler’s gone,’” he said.

“They’re just names, you know,” he said. “Yeah, they (Nazis) were bad people back then. But my kids are little. They’re not going to grow up like that.”

This is lunacy – or feigned innocence. Of course, this is going to be a problem for the children. A local psychologist weighs in…

Robert M. Gordon, a clinical psychologist in Allentown, said the names would hurt the children.

“Certainly society is going to be hostile towards those kids, especially when they go to school,” Gordon said.

More than that, he said, the children would be harmed by their parents’ views.

“By the time they get to school, they will already have been damaged,” Gordon said. “Any parent that would impose such horrific names on their children is mentally ill, and they would be affecting their children from the day they were born. Only a crazy person would do that.”

I cannot diagnose via a news report but as a former court appointed custody evaluator, I can speculate that one might have to rule out a psychiatric condition in a case like this. The remainder of the article gives a glimpse into the sad emotional state of the family.

We live in a society that values freedom and so we wrestle with situations like this. It is clear that these kids are at risk for social stigma. But parents have rights to raise children in accord with their view of the world. If we intervene here, then where will such interventions stop? However, the state has a role in preventing harm to citizens, and in this case to citizens who cannot protect themselves. Probably, I would advocate some mandated sessions with a counselor or mediator.

I started this post yesterday, and since then it has made the international press with USA Today and the UK’s Guardian picking it up. Not much in the way of analysis in these articles where it seems mostly treated as an oddity.