The American Family Association was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was a pastor of the First United Church at the time in order to “motivate and equip individuals to restore American culture to its moral foundations.” It was originally founded as “The National Federation for Decency,” but the name was
changed in 1988 in order to appeal to a larger group of people without changing their goals. The group’s members support “the protection of the familial unit from the government, preserving marriage as ‘the conjugal union of a husband and wife,’ and the protection of religious liberties [for Christians].” They
oppose anything that violates the sanctity of life (abortion, euthanasia, interspecies cloning, etc.) and anything that promotes indecency (Sex, violence, profanity, etc.). With over two million online supporters, it is one of the largest pro-family organizations in the country. The prime objective of the group is the boycotting of any organization that it deems “Anti-Christian.” The list of traits a business can possess to attract the ire of the AFA is beyond extensive. Major corporations such as American Airlines, Allstate Insurance, and the Walt Disney Company have been put on the AFA’s boycott list due to their non-discrimination policies that include sexual orientation or their domestic-partner benefits for same-sex couples. Around Christmas, a “Naughty or Nice?” list of businesses that refuse to use the word “Christmas” in their advertisements. Among these companies were McDonalds, Victoria’s Secret, and Old Navy. Jacob Sloan, a spokesperson for the AFA, said in 2009 that “[the] AFA has reviewed up to four areas [of each company’s website] to determine if a company was Christmas-friendly. A boycott of the P. C., Christmas-censoring Gap, Old Navy, and Banana Republic stores is being called for; why, why does Old Navy hate Jesus so much?” Sears came under fire from the AFA once they began running commercials for a LGBT cable channel. AFA members were urged to “condemn” the store for this “pornographic material” it was distributing. A countless number of other companies have been boycotted for refusing to discriminate against homosexuals. To the AFA, if a company doesn’t have anti-homosexual policies or if it chooses to exercise a decent amount of political correctness, it is anti-Christian. But the boycotts are not only limited to companies. A group associated with the AFA, Christian Leaders for Responsible Television (CLeaR-TV) goes after both television shows and their sponsors. If they feel that the show is immoral or indecent, members of the AFA are encouraged to boycott those shows and their sponsors. If a sponsor of a show is considered to be anti-Christian or tolerant of homosexuals, the members are encouraged to boycott the network on which the show is broadcast as well as the sponsors and their affiliates. Shows such as Saturday Night Live,” “Roseanne,” “Nightline,” and “Ellen,” among countless others, have been targeted by the AFA and CLeaR-TV. CLeaR-TV is funded by the AFA because founder Don Wildmon believes that the obscene content on television and in movies is due to the Jews intentionally placing anti-Christian messages and content into their programming to undermine Christianity. The boycotts of the AFA extend even to government agencies. Several press releases were issued by the AFA in 2000 condemning the National Endowment for the Arts for its funding of various novels, among them One of the Guys by Robert Clark Young. The AFA has continually lobbied since to get Congress to revoke funding for the NEA, in an effort to prevent “scatological” and “sexually explicit” material from being published and distributed. The AFA’s
own legal firm, the Center for Law and Policy (CLA), approved and sent these press releases. The CLA was the legal and political branch of the AFA, prior to it being shut down in 2007. It handled religious-discrimination lawsuits for its members and specialized in First Amendment cases, defending the Christians who were being discriminated against and protecting those who were discriminating others. The reason behind the closing of the CLA has never been discussed by Wildmon or any other AFA spokesperson, but it is widely accepted that the closing is linked to the failed lawsuits against the city of Seattle and Multnomah County. These suits were filed in 2004, when the cities were attempting to recognize same-sex marriages (the lawsuits argued that doing this was unconstitutional). However, the AFA is not a group that focuses solely on boycotting. When members are not being encouraged to boycott the latest threat to common decency and Christian morality, they are being encouraged to lobby for whatever the latest goal of the AFA is. Letter-writing campaigns are common occurrences, and members are encouraged to remain active through mail and “Action Alerts” sent through email. The AFA also has published a magazine called “The AFA Journal,” which has approximately 180,000 paid subscribers. This way the AFA can lobby at
the community level, state level, and even national level to push forth their agenda. These lobbying efforts cost money, but the AFA is very well supplied for a non-profit organization. There are no records of how much the AFA makes annually, but estimates are between fourteen and twenty million dollars every year. There are no records of exactly how this money is acquired, nor are there records of where it goes. The
AFA is not registered as a lobbying entity, even though it legally should be registered. An organization is allotted $24,500 semi-annually to spend on direct lobbying activities. The AFA spends much more than that and yet are not registered, so it is impossible to track their funds and exactly how they choose to lobby for their agenda. However, they do receive most of their money through donations. After a boycott of AT&T for supporting homosexuals, the AFA encouraged their membership to use “Lifeline,” a company that would donate 10% of all charges to the AFA as a “ministry of choice.” The AFA journal also brings in a hefty sum of money, with 180,000 paid subscribers, and the AFA’s website asks for donations, claiming to be “good stewards of whatever gift you can give.” Even between these methods of income and a membership of over two million, it is hard to believe that the AFA can acquire enough money each year to maintain the
two hundred radio stations it controls, in addition to the websites and television channels and paid staff of over 100 with 5 full-time lawyers, all of which it uses for the purposes of lobbying. These numbers are implausible, yet the AFA is free to not disclose their financial information. Despite defending religious freedom for Christians who feel persecuted, the AFA is more than willing to persecute others. On August 10, 2010, on the subject of the infamous “Ground Zero Mosque,” the AFA’s director of Issue Analysis for Government and Public Policy, Bryan Fischer, wrote that: “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… because of this subversive ideology, Muslims cannot claim religious freedom protections under the First Amendment…” It is after reading something as intolerant as this that one must reconsider that the man who wrote that is a high-ranking officer of the American Family Association. One will note that in all that has been said about the AFA in this report, or anywhere, very little of it can be perceived as family-oriented. While looking at a list of what the American Family Association has accomplished in the time since its founding, little, if any, of it has anything to do with the American family. It takes the name AFA as a lure to attract more members with more money, and uses that money to push forth its agenda of
intolerance and bigotry. They are lobbyists yet there is no way to tell how they’re spending money,
they hide their true values behind a veil of decency, and worst of all, they have a lot of power. Millions of members strong, the AFA does have the power and ability to get results. Boycotts often remove anywhere from 5 to 10% of a businesses’ income. This is a large chunk, which means that most often any group that is under attack from the AFA changes their policies to appease them, and only the largest of companies can hold out. They change policy for no reason but to be anti-homosexual. They blame tragedies such as the Virginia Tech Massacre on the gays and the “immoral.” It is sad to see how a group originally founded as the National Federation for Decency sinks so low as to be perfectly indecent at the best of times.
Eleonora Rossi (4B)