Unholy Alliance Rick Perry & The American Family Association’s “The Response”
Texas Governor and U.S. Presidential hopeful, Rick Perry, will take the stage this August in support of and in collaboration with a designated hate group. Governor Perry called for a National Day of Prayer in response to the “crisis” faced by America. The event, aptly titled “The Response,” is sponsored by the American Family Association (AFA), which recently received the “hate group” designation from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
While Governor Perry has disguised his intolerance of LGBTQ people in the shrouds of “religion” and “prayer,” the real Truth of The Response became evident when the president of the American Family Association (AFA), Tim Wildmon, acknowledged that one of the purposes of the prayer event is to end the “increasing acceptance of homosexuality” by American society. Alex McFarland, of the American Family Association, recently stated that Perry’s event is needed more than ever after marriage equality passed in New York.
While purportedly Christian groups like the AFA vehemently target LGBTQ people and have developed political agendas to deny equal protection of queer Americans, not all Christians translate faith into bigotry. According to the Religion Poll, conducted this year by the Human Rights Campaign, “The majority of Christians oppose the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, favor protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people from discrimination, favor laws prohibiting bullying and harassment against LGBT students or the children of LGBT parents, [86%] believe their faith leads them to conclude that the law should treat LGBT people equally, and believe condemnation of LGBT people by religious leaders does more harm than good.” However, the remaining 14% of Christians opposed to equal protections under the law are the vocal minority.
But Perry has awakened the majority by his alliance with a hate group. The Houston Clergy Council released a statement requesting that Governor Perry leave ministry to the clergy and “refocus his energy on the work of governing our state,” noting that the AFA is not only an anti-gay hate group, but has also “been stridently anti-Muslim, going so far as to question the rights of Muslim Americans to freely organize and practice their faith.”
The event has grabbed the interest of non-clergy as well, including one of the Grand Marshal’s for Gay Pride San Antonio, 11 year old Will Phillips, who fell victim to the AFA’s rhetoric when serving as a Grand Marshal for Northwest Arkansas Pride. In Will’s speech to the community, he reflected on the AFA and their assaults against him and his family, “They called out their evil social conservative ninja assault robots to take down the Mayor’s office with force… and katanas… and wire guided acrobatics. But mostly they just sent letters, e-mails, & nasty phone calls. The Mayor’s office received hundreds, perhaps thousands of these, from across the nation, all telling him [the Mayor] that it was inappropriate for him and me to be going to a ‘gay sex parade’ and that he should not attend... Legal harassment of the Parade organizers and my family occurred with people calling my parents in to DHS for child abuse.”
But not all LGBTQ advocates concur with removal of the AFA from the event. Most notable were remarks made to the Houston Chronicle by the Mayor Annise Parker, who is openly lesbian and largely heralded as an LGBTQ civil rights hero. When asked if she considered the AFA holding an event in her city an insult, she said, “No, I’m glad to have anybody’s dollars coming to the city of Houston. They can come back on a monthly basis if they’d like as long as they spend money.”
The AFA has certainly spent money. The organization is accused of funneling roughly $25,000 for lobbying initiatives against the U.S. State Department’s condemnation of the Ugandan “Kill the Gays” bill, which would make homosexuality a criminal offense punishable by death. It has also invested significantly in teaching churches how to advocate for political causes while maintaining their tax-exempt status with specific focus on oppression of LGBT people.
Several rallies and protests of the event have also been planned with varying messages, including “separation of church and state” due to reports that Perry used State resources in planning and organizing The Response.
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