As a follow up to my last posting about the American Family Association, which notes that AFA has turned its Facebook site into a closed group (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/02/targeting-youth-with-anti-gay-lies-afa.html), I’d like to draw attention to a posting at Pam’s House Blend two days ago. Pam Spaulding notes that, identifying itself and “Christians” as “victimized” in contemporary American society, AFA has just launched a Silencing Christians website (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=600C4800E0F365416A1CE8F1170AF6C4?diaryId=9404). Pam links to the AFA site at www.silencingchristians.com.Pam offers a brilliant breakdown of the site’s bogus claims that “Christians” are being persecuted. As she points out, head to the AFA site, and you’ll see it’s not about Christians at all, but about gays and lesbians—about attacking gays and lesbians in the name of Christianity, and then claiming that one is persecuted when those attacked fight back. Or point out that lies are being disseminated in the name of hate. Or ask for the truth to be told. Or call on Christians to adhere to the ethical guidelines of Christianity, which forbid believers to lie and to hate.
The anti-democratic theocratic agenda of AFA and its adherents is evident in comments like the following on the website:
This goes to show us the end near. With a Muslem in the White House and a liberal congress we know God is about to say enough is enough and Jesus will be coming soon to rapture us Christian [sic] out.
As for the claim that “Christians” are persecuted in contemporary American society, note the nifty graphic (from AFA itself) at Pam Spaulding’s discussion of AFA’s claims of persecution. Christians are an overweening majority of the citizens of the United States. It ill befits a huge majority to whom the political structures of the nation and its media constantly bow to call itself persecuted, when the attempt of a select group of its members to suspend democracy and force theocracy on everyone else is thwarted by democratic consensus.
For those of us who are Christian, but who combat the theocratic ambitions of some right-wing Christians and critique the theological basis on which those ambitions are founded, it’s essential to make our alternative voices heard. It’s also important to work around the roadblocks such groups try to place in the way of free discourse (even as they claim that they are being censored), and to see that accurate information about these hot-button issues gets out—particularly when groups are announcing their intent to step up their use of online tools to to target youth.
