American Family Association throws a fit over Miss. businesses that say they don't discriminate

[ck4829]

The sticker is simple. It just tells LGBT people that their money and business are welcome at a particular establishment.

The pro-business, pro-economy campaign comes in response to Mississippi's governor signing his state's version of the "license to discriminate bills" that anti-LGBT social conservatives are trying to enact across the country. When Gov. Phil Bryant (R) signed that bill in front of gay-hostile invited guests like Tony Perkins—TONY PERKINS!—we all knew exactly what the bill was all about. Thus this new sticker campaign, which simply allows local businesses can make their support for LGBT customers known in the face of this legislative pockmark.

But of course the American Family Association, the Mississippi based anti-LGBT organization that Gov. Bryant courted in order to build support for this bill and related measures, is outraged over the effort. Spokesman Buddy Smith says it's "bullying"—right before he condemns homosexuality and tells people to stay away from these businesses. See the "logic" at work:

Buddy Smith, executive vice president of Tupelo-based American Family Association, offers his take on the sticker campaign.

"It's not really a buying campaign, but it's a bully campaign," he says, "and it's being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture.

"They don't want to hear that homosexuality is sinful behavior – and they wish to silence Christians and the church who dare to believe this truth."

Smith offers a word of caution for those who do business with facilities posting the decal supporting homosexual activism. "If you do that, you are agreeing with these businesses that Christians no longer have the freedom to live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience," he tells OneNewsNow.

If you shop at these stores "you are agreeing with these businesses that Christians no longer have the freedom to live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience"? What, did I miss the asterisk that leads folks to another hidden sticker that stipulates some covert form of discrimination that the shop does, in fact, support? Or maybe the sticker is scratch-and-sniff and emits some sort of evangelical repellant whenever a devout Christian gives it a scrape? Because as it reads, in what seems to be pretty direct language, the sticker indicates nothing more than that every customer's cash holds the same weight within this particular business.

http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2014/04/afas-new-definition-of-bullying-businesses-that-say-they-dont-discriminate.html

The Christian Right's argument in a nutshell...

"You think it's OK to be gay?! That means you want to kill us... WAAAAAGH!"

[RKP5637]

1. Many of these so called christians today preach/teach exactly the opposite of

what I was taught. In my church they would have been called the devil in disguise!

[JoePhilly]

2. If you don't believe what I believe ... you have attacked me!

[leftynyc]

3. Didn't Tupelo get clobbered yesterday?

Maybe the AFA should be wondering why G-d is so pissed at them.

[HooptieWagon]

4. Thats about the most convoluted thinking Ive ever heard.

[alp227]

5. Is this article from 1962 or something?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/americas_us_civil_rights_movement/html/3.stm

[SMC22307]

6. Wow. They do "victim" better than anyone.

Stuff like this makes me want to pick up the phone and call my mother to thank her for raising us in a hate-free, mainline Protestant household. Hmm. Think I will.

[MisterP]

9. that's the US's paradox: mainstream churches are only 40% of the population

right now, IIRC

[dickthegrouch]

7. I thought religion was voluntary

"Christians no longer have the freedom to live out the dictates of their Christian faith and conscience"

They have the exact same freedom we all have to live according to their own dictates. They CANNOT ask the government to make us all live according to their dictates.

So many people don't understand the language they profess to speak. It's disgusting.

At some level prisons condone murder and theft (They'd be empty if they put as much energy into prevention as do they do to retribution, and the for-profit (sorry, outsourced) ones would be for-profit no longer). By the same logic, if a KKKristian wants to think they are condoning homosexuality by spending their money in a place that proclaims it does not discriminate; they are wrong, but that is their right.

To bleat about being a victim of their own rigidity and wrongheadedness is just making them look even less attractive and less able to recruit or retain their customers, (sorry, parishioners).

[TlalocW]

8. I hope this happens...

What religious conservatives always believe about these laws is that they will only apply to them, but it's very difficult to write a law that only targets one group (like gays) or benefits only one religious group so their "Keep the Blacks... I mean gays away from our lunch counter" laws have to be couched more generally... "religious freedom," otherwise, they wouldn't stand up in any court in the land... Okay, maybe in Mississippi they would, but a higher court would put the kibosh on them.

So, they're perfectly within their rights to whine about businesses putting up stickers, but if they do anything more direct targeting those businesses, religious conservatives might end up in court being sued for trampling other people's religious freedoms under that same law.

TlalocW