or a group with such an inoffensive name, the AFA are amazingly militant and way, way, way out there to the radical Christian right. They are not quite as crazy as the God Hates Fags types, but they ain't far short of it, and their amusing antics are always good fodder for blog discussion.

This page collects various daily commentaries on the AFA, with more recent ones added on top.

December 10, 2002

From a short beginning as a comment about one article, this grew into an entire essay... thing.  Funny how that works.

So there's this funny article about a survey that had embarrassing results for the pro-Christian company that carried it out.

The American Family Association, a far right lobbying group in Washington, released results from a recent survey that shows mainstream Americans see evangelical Christians as one of the least likeable groups in the country.

Researchers from the Barna survey asked respondents how they felt about evangelicals, born-again Christians, ministers, and other groups of people in society. According to the survey, evangelicals came in tenth out of eleven, narrowly beating out prostitutes.

Somewhat amusing, but unsurprising.  No one wants some "holier than thou" kook harassing them, regardless of what they (the kook) believes in.  You can share 90% of their beliefs, but you still don't want some wild-eyed guy ranting about eternal damnation on your doorstep.

As usually happens when my mind is involved, a tertiary point in the article was what most grabbed my attention.  I wanted to know what the eleven eleven groups were.  If you were dividing all modern society into 11 groups, what are the odds that "evangelical Christians" and "prostitutes" would both be on it? I don't see any connection; I mean one is a religious group, and the other a profession (sort of).  Shouldn't the whole list be groups, like religions of every kind, or else all trade groups/professions?  It's apples and oranges otherwise; a prostitute could be an evangelical Christian, after all.

So I soon found myself looking around the AFA's website, trying to find the full survey, with little success.  While there I read a number of their articles though, and they are worth a comment.  More than one actually, for they are amazing. The amount of spin and editorialism they pile on top of everything is impressive.

It's news they are presenting, but news filtered through their agenda, with everything slanted to support what they want supported, or else presented as evidence of the utter degeneracy of their ideological opponents. I find it pretty funny, but that's because I know a lot more about most of the topics than they are discussing, so I can easily see what they're leaving out or twisting around.  I'd say that most of their readers don't know any better, and don't want to know any better, and slurp up every word as though it's gospel.  Pun intended.

Not that you need to know anything, other than how to access your common sense, to see issues with their theories. For example, there's a great article about Liam Neeson's decision to play Michael Kinsey, the famous sexual researcher, in an upcoming film.  It seems a pretty non-controversial topic, I mean it's an actor playing a role in a biopic of a famous scientist. "Who would object?" he asked rhetorically.

One of Hollywood's leading men is risking his reputation with a plan to portray the "father of the sexual revolution," Alfred Kinsey, contends a chief critic of the late researcher.

The Francis Ford Coppola biographical drama, set to begin production next spring, has tapped Irish-born star Liam Neeson to bring to life a man researcher Judith Reisman calls the "most infamous pedophile propagandist in scientific history."

The "researcher" Reisman has sent Neeson an open letter saying that playing Kinsey is like portraying Nazi butcher Joseph Mengele as merely a controversial figure.  Shows the mind set of the religious right pretty well: sexual researcher = Nazi monster.  'Cause after all, sex research is the greatest human evil possible.  Almost as evil as sex itself.

You'll note that Kinsey's famous work first appeared in 1948, and he died in 1956. Amazing the effect his work had on society, that kidnapping figures half a century later are directly attributable to his published results!

There are some points to be made about Kinsey's use of information obtained from a pedophile, and the narrow sample group from which he drew his results on some aspects of the survey, but who's to say that the film won't cover that critically?  There's no mention of that possibility, and it's pretty obvious the AFA objects strongly to any coverage or publicity of Kinsey and his work.  They just harp (mostly) on the controversial issue of some info coming from a pedophile since it's their only solid point to object to.  The rest is just "sex is bad" which they know is a losing argument with normal people.

That's just one article, they have a whole website full of them in a similar vein.

The one on Cracker Barrel restaurants adding "sexual orientation" to their anti-discrimination policies is a good read.  Apparently the AFA is appalled that employees will no longer be able to scream, "faggot!" at each other, or fire any confirmed rump wranglers with impunity.  Also.

"Cracker Barrel directors, by doing something they think is rather innocent, are going to hurt themselves in the long run because now the homosexual activists have their foot in the door," Sharp says. "They're not going to be satisfied with just non-discrimination -- now they're going to demand domestic-partner benefits, which will drive up insurance costs for all employees at Cracker Barrel."

The horror!  Next they'll demand equal pay for equal work, arbitration in the case of disputed firings, and time off for Judy Garland film festivals. Well, maybe not that last one.

I eventually gave up finding it on their site, but a google search on a quoted phrase got me to this page on the AFA site, which is a carbon copy of the initial news item on Data Lounge, and what I was looking for.  If it's linked from anywhere on the AFA main page, I certainly didn't see it.  Anyway, the AFA version of the article at least has a link to the Barna research group site, and on the front page of that site there is a link to this press release, which is, at last, the full report on the survey Barna carried out.  God reporting sucks on the internet, that it takes me an hour to find a link to the source material for a news item that had to have seen the source material to be written from.

The full article has a lot of cherry-picked result comments, and at last the full stats at the very bottom of the page. Here they are, with the percent of people who said they approved of each group.

• 56% -- Military officers
• 44% -- Ministers
• 32% -- Born again Christians
• 32% -- Democrats
• 30% -- Real estate agents
• 25% -- Movie and TV performers
• 24% -- Lawyers
• 23% -- Republicans
• 23% -- Lesbians
• 22% -- Evangelicals
• 5% -- Prostitutes

The 11 groups aren't as fascinating as I had anticipated, but it's still quite a weird list.  Why would you have Born Agains and Evangelicals?  I'd bet the vast majority of Americans would think those are the same thing.  Why lesbians but not gay men?  Why not more professions like teachers, police, politicians, carpenters, used car salesmen, etc?  Why Ministers but not Rabbis or Priests or Clerics? (Priests would be an interesting score, given recent news developments.)

I'm surprised how low the scores are, with only military officers getting an overall approval rating.  Also surprising how low "Movie and TV performers" came in, as much as most people worship celebrities.  Apparently "obsess over and stalk via tabloid their every move/hot date" does not equal "approve".

These are just the "approve" results, and many of the groups have more "in between" replies than "disapprove".  Just for quick full disclosure, my votes would be: between, between, disapprove, in between, in between, in between, disapprove, disapprove, approve (if they're lipstick), disapprove, in between.  In descending order.  Yes, I'm pretty wishy-washy about the whole thing, surprisingly-enough.

They do list their methodology in some detail, and it sounds like a relatively competent technique.  The sample size is tiny, just over 1000, and even if they are widely-spread around the country and demographic groups, you can't extrapolate with any accuracy to the entire US population of 260m+ from the replies of 1/260,000th of it.

Still, it's encouraging that so few people think well of religious fanatics.  *cough*

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.