Angry moms condemn Geico’s cellphone app commercial they claim promotes bestiality

[Archae]

11. "One Million Moms" is an offshoot of the AFA...

The viciously anti-gay hate group "American Family Association."

AFA created One Million Moms and One Million Dads, two websites with the stated goal of mobilizing parents to "stop the exploitation of children" by the media. It uses these websites to organize boycotts and urge activists to send emails to mainstream companies employing advertising, selling products, or advertising on television shows they find offensive.[86] In 2012, the group started and then backed off from a failed campaign against the hiring of talk show host Ellen DeGeneres as a spokesperson for department store chain JC Penney.[87] They opposed her employment on the grounds that DeGeneres is "an open homosexual".[88] At a taping of her show, DeGeneres informed her audience of the fizzled effort: "They wanted to get me fired and I am proud and happy to say JC Penney stuck by their decision to make me their spokesperson."[89]

The One Million Moms expressed opposition to Marvel and DC Comics issues which featured gay characters. They described the story lines as a "brainwashing and desensitizing experience" for children, written to "influence them in thinking that a gay lifestyle choice is normal and desirable."[90]

On December 6, 2012, One Million Moms released a statement on their website, again objecting to JC Penney's use of Ellen DeGeneres as spokesperson in a Christmas-themed commercial, saying, "Since April, JC Penney's has not aired Ellen DeGeneres in one of their commercials until now. A new JCP ad features Ellen and three elves. JCP has made their choice to offend a huge majority of their customers again."[91]

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Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), in a 2005 report, stated that the AFA, along with other groups, engaged in hate speech to "help drive the religious right's anti-gay crusade."[121] Mark Potok of the SPLC determined that the turning point was 2003's Lawrence v. Texas, in which the Supreme Court struck down Texas's anti-sodomy laws. After that, the Christian right spent millions on advertisements,[121] and on pastor briefings organized by activists such as born-again Christian David Lane.[122] Lane helped AFA put constitutional opposite-sex marriage amendments on the ballots of 13 states.[121]

In November 2010, the SPLC changed their listing of AFA from a group that used hate speech to the more serious one of being designated a hate group.[123][124][125][126][127][128] Potok said that the AFA's "propagation of known falsehoods and demonizing propaganda" was the basis for the change.[129][130]

The AFA was greatly displeased with the designation as a hate group,[131] calling the list "slanderous".[132] In response to the SPLC's announcement, some members of the Christian right "called on Congress to cut off their funding."[133] J. Matt Barber of The Washington Times said that the SPLC was "marginalizing" themselves by giving the AFA the same hate group designation shared by the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis.[134] Tony Perkins, the president of Family Research Council (FRC) – an organization also named a hate group – asked the SPLC to strike the new designation, but they held their position.[135] Ken Williams commented that in reaction, the FRC and the AFA joined with other "pro-family" organizations targeted by the SPLC to establish a new website, an online petition[136] called "Start Debating/Stop Hating" to counter the SPLC,[137] and they took out full page ads in two Washington D.C. newspapers, defending their work "to protect and promote natural marriage and the family."[138] The advertisement stated the "undersigned stand in solidarity" with the organizations designated as hate groups, and that they "support the vigorous but responsible exercise of the First Amendment rights of free speech and religious liberty that are the birthright of all Americans."[137] House Speaker-Designate John Boehner and the governors of Louisiana, Minnesota and Virginia were among those signing the statement.[138] The SPLC addressed the new website statement; Potok was quoted by David Weigel of Slate magazine as saying, "the SPLC's listings of these groups is based on their propagation of known falsehoods – claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities – and repeated, groundless name-calling."[139] The American Independent News Network (AINN) noted that the AFA had recently denounced Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan as a lesbian unfit for office – AINN stated that "she's not" a lesbian – and that Fischer said Hitler's savage and brutal methods were only possible because he and most of his stormtroopers were gay.[140] Jillian Rayfield of Talking Points Memo noted the irony in the website calling the SPLC a "radical Left" group "spreading hateful rhetoric" yet elsewhere declaring that the debates of the Christian right "can and must remain civil – but they must never be suppressed through personal assaults that aim only to malign an opponent's character."[132]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Family_Association