I’ve heard so much about the WinShape Foundation’s “anti-gay” contributions that I decided to do a little checking. Here’s what I learned, beginning from the Equality Matters site, which tells us the following:
WinShape Gave Over $1.9 Million To Anti-Gay Groups. In 2010, WinShape donated $1,974,380 to a number of anti-gay groups:
- Marriage & Family Foundation: $1,188,380
- Fellowship Of Christian Athletes: $480,000
- National Christian Foundation: $247,500
- New Mexico Christian Foundation: $54,000
- Exodus International: $1,000
- Family Research Council: $1,000
- Georgia Family Council: $2,500
Please note that the most frequently mentioned contributions–to the Family Research Council and Exodus International–amount to roughly 0.1% of the foundation’s gifts.
The largest gift went to the Marriage and Family Foundation, which seems to be a Cathy family charity. This becomes sinister through a bit of innuendo tying the foundation to the Marriage CoMission, which has been “supported by anti-gay activists.” From where I sit, the Marriage CoMission looks like an organization devoted to helping couples have successful marriages. I’d bet that its services aren’t available to same-sex couples, but that wouldn’t make the organization anti-gay, any more than a church could be regarded as bigoted because it only provides pastoral marriage counseling to its members.
So the WinShape Foundation supports an organization that helps traditional heterosexual marriages succeed.
The second largest donation went to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, not exactly at the forefront of our culture wars.
The third largest donation went to the National Christian Foundation, whose raison d’etre has nothing to do with the culture wars.
An organization with which I’m affiliated–the Georgia Family Council–received $2,500 in 2010. While I’d never pretend to speak for the GFC, its concerns run more to promoting school choice, helping marriages flourish, and calling attention to human trafficking than to taking high-profile stances on hot-button social issues.
Finally, we come to the grand sum of $1,000 a piece for the FRC and Exodus.
Much of the sound and fury here has to do with guilt by association. Others have called this McCarthyism. On the basis of this glance at the evidence, I’m inclined to agree with them.
August 8th, 2012 | 3:09 pm
“Others have called this McCarthyism. On the basis of this glance at the evidence, I’m inclined to agree with them. ”
That’s exactly what it is. Furthermore, homosexual activists are lying when they claim that they attacked Cathy because of his donations and not because of his decent, traditional marriage views.
When Cathy was first interviewed, he said nothing about any donation, he spoke about his views on marriage.
That’s what prompted the recent efforts to lynch him in the public eye.
Freedom or normalization of homosexuality – choose one.
August 8th, 2012 | 3:34 pm
Joseph Knippenberg
Thank you for some en depth investigative reporting. Its nice to see how a little delving into the facts can clear the air.
I had no idea how paltry the donations were to the (supposedly) suspect charities that became the basis for alleging that Chick-Fil-A was an “anti-gay” hate group or supporter thereof.
The pro-gay left has elevated smear and character assassination into an art form.
There is a blogger out there; who is all over the Internet comment sections, named Scott Rose (a pen name.
He was responsible for initiating the review of Mark Regnerus work. His rants rack and stack the “charges” against Prof. Regnerus and his work, and are filled with so many gross mischaracterizations and hyperbole and invective that they become almost impossible to unpack.
He is symptoms of a problem of thug tactics and the unhinged quality of gay rights supporters.
It seems that Mr. Kathy and his company are simply Christians who support general Christian causes that include its sexual ethic. He, as his comments reflect..does not have a particular bone to pick with homosexuality specifically, but is more concerned with marriage in the main.
That is enough these days to bring down the fervor of the pro-gay left and its tactics. If the mayors of several cities had not joined the fray; we may never have known how innocuous Mr. Kathy’s opinions and charitable giving really are.
This smear behavior by the left over issues of sexuality is obviously standard operating procedure. It is a overt effort to demonize any and all opposition and is aided and abetted by a complicit activist Judiciary that emboldens and reinforces these tactics.
An excellent example of that understanding can be found here:
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/conciliating-hatred–2
One simply finds it uncommonly rare to engage gay, or pro-gay “marriage” supporters who can engage in serious and fair arguments. The tactics run from outright demonization to elision and obviation of the most crucial points.
This stands in bold contrast to how this debate was started amidst promises of a “live and let live” atmosphere were supporters of marriage could go their merry way unmolested.
August 8th, 2012 | 5:04 pm
I am a little puzzled here. Is the implication that if Chick-fil-A had given more money to Exodus International and Family Research Council, and had given sizable contributions to, say, the National Organization for Marriage, it would have been accurate to call Chick-fil-A “anti-gay”? I would have thought the position of First Things contributors would be that opposing same-sex marriage is not “anti-gay.”
How can it be McCarthyism for gay-rights activists to accuse Chick-fil-A of something you all approve of—trying to fight same-sex marriage?
August 8th, 2012 | 5:23 pm
Of course the gay-rights movement is about the “normalization” of homosexuality. And conservative Christianity is, for the most part, adamantly opposed. So conservative Christianity is anti-gay in the eyes of gay-rights organizations and people who sympathize with them.
The second largest donation went to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, not exactly at the forefront of our culture wars.
The FCA Student Leader Application for has the following:
Now, of course most people who read First Things wouldn’t bat an eye at that, but remember that gay-rights organizations are trying to “normalize” homosexuality. So organizations that require people to sign such pledges are seen as anti-gay. And of course, whether they actively campaign or not, they are definitely anti-gay-marriage.
August 8th, 2012 | 11:46 pm
When I hear the epithet ‘anti-gay’ applied to whoever doesn’t hold to the current incoherent anthropology of gayness, I often think of the proverb, “The kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.” The glow one feels in taking a stand against history and what one has convinced oneself is the equivalent of the KKK may feel flattering more especially when one is already complicit in guilty sexual behavior and thought and how many are not guilty in a culture where sado masochism is openly celebrated in the main stream. The wicked form leagues against God. Equality in sin, a democracy voting God out, divine laughter coming in through the door.
August 8th, 2012 | 11:51 pm
David N,
Back on the FCA sexual purity policy as “anti-gay”? Please. We have had this discussion before. The FCA is “anti” any sexual congress whatsoever outside of heterosexual marriage. Would you call that “anti-unmarried hetero”? You can distort this standard to mean “anti-gay” if you like but presumably (I do not know for certain) a celibate homosexual could occupy a position of leadership in the FCA. Further, this is a “leadership” application. It does not say (or even intimate) that those who attend FCA meetings or are members of the FCA must be heterosexual. So, where exactly is the “anti”?
The idea that the promotion of what is an (quite unremarkable) orthodox Christian sexual ethic is to be understood as somehow “anti-gay” is really quite outlandish. The fact that you think this attempt at “normalization” by gay rights activists requires explanation to the readers of this blog is mystifying, and frankly, the implications of your explanation, insulting.
August 8th, 2012 | 11:56 pm
Is it possible to redefine marriage to eliminate reference to marriage being between a man and a woman without eliminating the implicit biological nexus to children that this provides? It doesn’t seem so. So why are children’s rights almost never brought up in the gay marriage debate? Why is Regnerus reviled so ideologically? Is it possible that the marriage debate would never come up unless a population is preened into pervasive narcissism first so that the question of children’s rights does not even float into consciousness except it is dismissed with A thoughtless “gays can adopt”.
August 9th, 2012 | 9:04 am
David,
The trouble with your analysis is that it extends to the idea that gays are “anti-religious”. So if the “anti-gays” are bigoted then the “anti-religious” are bigoted and neither has a leg to stand on. We wind up with the country of the blind.
On the other hand, if we can distinguish being “anti-” from “disagreeing”, we have a road forward. More importantly, we can find what we share and live within that while we struggle to resolve the disagreement.
The former is, in fact, ancient practice, the dark side of tribalism. Supposedly, the Enlightenment helped lead us out that.
August 9th, 2012 | 9:04 am
MacArthyism it will be, if supporters of organizations that oppose gay marriage were convicted of “treason” and sent to jail. But then, conservatives have some nerve when using certain terms and language.
August 9th, 2012 | 9:14 am
As far as people with a homosexuality agenda are concerned, “anti-gay” = bigot, hater, hate-mongerer, anti-civil rights, un-evolved, unenlightened, in short, a horrible human being that must change their views.
Furthermore, it is always more or less implied by corrupt homosexual agenda activists that a person who is “anti-gay” equally holds some position or attitude where they are inclined to bully, assault or discriminate someone with a homosexuality problem.
The smear campaign that homosexual agenda activists are waging against Cathy and CFA is exactly structured along these lines. “Equality Illinois,” a homosexual agenda organization led by Randy Hannig, is urging business and institutional leaders across the country to end all relationships that enable the Chick-fil-A brand to operate on their premises because it calls CFA “homophobic.”
As far as reported, CFA does not discriminate in its business practices against homosexuals. What Hannig is doing is a public smear of CFA equal to what the Nazis did of Jewish businesses in the beginning of the 1930s. Hannig first shamelessly smears CFA with a false accusation of fomenting hate in order to justify his call for a sordid destruction of this upstanding company. This is a company where 60,000 employees work making a decent living in a decent environment. The majority of the employees are young and very much in need of their jobs.
Obviously, it takes a vicious organization to want to destroy all of this, but it’s what “Equality” Illinois is doing.
Now the question is: why should a business owner hire an individual who hates him and is intent on destroying his business?
This is why all laws regarding discrimination based on “sexual orientation” should be scrapped. Basically they are a corrupt mechanism to allow individuals with a dysfunctional sexuality to behave in destructive ways with impunity.
Lastly, in reality, homosexuals and bisexuals are the ones who perpetrate an enormous amount of violence towards people with a homosexual problem, and are thus quite vicious and criminal all by themselves. The reported number of violent acts committed by people with a decent, social conservative view of sexuality against homosexuals is tiny.
The rhetoric that is used by homosexual agenda activists serves to hide the fact that there is a huge number of destructive and violent homosexuals and bisexuals at the same time that they smear decent, law-abiding social conservatives.
Why would anyone want to hire someone with such a corrupt agenda?
August 9th, 2012 | 9:40 am
Of course the gay-rights movement is about the “normalization” of homosexuality.
Really?
I thought it was just about giving homosexuality their rights.
The “normalization” of homosexuality implies they want more than just the right to live and let live – they want to actively interfere in the religious freedom of others.
Is it true that gays just want their rights? Or is it true that they want to interfere with anyone who feels homosexuality is a sin? Because their “rights” do not include any right to tell other people what behavior is and is not sinful.
A Jewish Orthodox man has the right to eat Kosher, and a vegetarian the right to eschew meat, but that does not grant either group the right to interfere with those who think dietary restrictions are not only stupid but actively harmful. I am allowed to believe – and argue – that eating meat is not a vice. In fact, I am allowed to believe – and argue – that eating meat is a virtue, and refraining from consumption of meat is a vice. I can believe that if I want, because your right to be a vegetarianism does not mean you have the right to inflict your views on me.
If vegetarians were to crusade for the “normalization” of their dietary preferences – and by “normalization” we mean an attempt to force everyone to share their views about appetites and consumption – then they would have the right to do this – freedom of speech – but it wouldn’t be anti-vegetarian “bigotry” to despise and shun them for their thuggishness and zealotry – nor would it be bigotry to defend one’s right to one’s own beliefs about appetites.
It’s not clear to me why gays are so sure they’re entitled to special rights (and a monopoly on the right to decide what’s right and what’s wrong), but please – can we have more video footage of self-righteous zealots bullying people for “not being tolerant enough”?
August 9th, 2012 | 9:40 am
When I hear the epithet ‘anti-gay’ applied to whoever doesn’t hold to the current incoherent anthropology of gayness . . .
David Alexander,
Would you say that anti-gay is a meaningless word?
August 9th, 2012 | 9:49 am
The idea that the promotion of what is an (quite unremarkable) orthodox Christian sexual ethic is to be understood as somehow “anti-gay” is really quite outlandish. The fact that you think this attempt at “normalization” by gay rights activists requires explanation to the readers of this blog is mystifying, and frankly, the implications of your explanation, insulting.
david c,
You’ll have to explain the hostility here. I am not writing angry or hostile messages, but I am getting a lot of anger back from you and others.
As I asked David Alexander, what would you say is the meaning of anti-gay? And who gets to define it—conservative Christians or gay people?
Since gay people, basically by definition, reject the idea that any sex outside of heterosexual marriage prohibited, gay people reject the idea that homosexuality is some kind of “abomination” in the eyes of God. Would you expect them to do otherwise? Why the anger and hostility? The FCA is not merely asking people to sign a pledge to remain celibate for the duration of their stay in FCA. They are asking people to sign on to the idea that homosexuality is condemned by God. Gay people and many who support them do not accept this idea. Why should this all make you and others so angry?
August 9th, 2012 | 9:49 am
As far as people with a homosexuality agenda are concerned, “anti-gay” = bigot, hater, hate-mongerer, anti-civil rights, un-evolved, unenlightened, in short, a horrible human being that must change their views.
This is because their tactic relies on begging the question.
Are they entitled to X?
Is it true that X = their basic right, human right, “civil right”?
That is what is being decided. If you accept the premise that opposing them = violating their civil rights, then you don’t need to have the argument: they’ve already won.
August 9th, 2012 | 10:02 am
[...] Chick-fil-A and charity … the largest chunk … toward a marriage counseling charity. Gosh, how outrageous. [...]
August 9th, 2012 | 10:08 am
The trouble with your analysis is that it extends to the idea that gays are “anti-religious”. So if the “anti-gays” are bigoted then the “anti-religious” are bigoted and neither has a leg to stand on. We wind up with the country of the blind.
Mike Melendez,
I am partially in agreement with what you say. However, I would point out that because gay people find religious groups that claim God condemns homosexuality to be anti-gay, not all religious groups condemn homosexuality.
On the other hand, if we can distinguish being “anti-” from “disagreeing”, we have a road forward. More importantly, we can find what we share and live within that while we struggle to resolve the disagreement.
I would love to see the relationship between conservative Christianity and gay-rights advocates move from angry confrontation to disagreement. I would like to think that’s the spirit in which I write messages here, although I don’t always succeed in being as civil as I would like. I have never called anyone in any of these discussions a bigot. If people here are angry or hostile to me, when I am trying my best to be calm and civil, the dialog between conservative Christians and gay-rights advocates doesn’t seem to me to have much of a chance.
August 9th, 2012 | 10:23 am
Blake,
I would say “normalizing” homosexuality is somewhat similar to “normalizing” divorce and remarriage. The Catholic Church holds very firmly to the idea that if two baptized persons marry, they are married for life. If they get civil divorces and remarry, they are not married at all, but are living in adultery. Where they have been able to, the Catholic Church has fought against divorce laws, and at this point the only places they have been able to prevail are Vatican City and the Philippines.
Now, how do Catholics regard divorced and remarried people who are living in “adultery,” having children out of wedlock, and raising those children as two adulterers? Do Catholics want to keep these “adulterers” from raising children, or adopting? Do good Catholic parents try to keep their children from playing with the children of the divorced and remarried? Do Catholics require some special agenda in public schools to teach that there is really no divorce?
I would say that to “normalize” homosexuality, or divorce (or Mormonism, or vegetarianism) goes a bit farther than “live and let live,” in that it calls for a level of tolerance that goes beyond saying “They are free to do what they want as long as I don’t have to see it or hear it or cooperate with it in any way.” But it is certainly less than demanding that everyone have the same view of homosexuality, or divorce (or Mormonism, or vegetarianism).
August 9th, 2012 | 10:54 am
Harriet: As far as people with a homosexuality agenda are concerned, “anti-gay” = bigot, hater, hate-mongerer, anti-civil rights, un-evolved, unenlightened, in short, a horrible human being that must change their views.”
Blake: This is because their tactic relies on begging the question.
Are they entitled to X?
Is it true that X = their basic right, human right, “civil right”?
That is what is being decided. If you accept the premise that opposing them = violating their civil rights, then you don’t need to have the argument: they’ve already won.
=======
This also justifies in their minds committing any crime they want against social conservatives in order to pursue their homosexuality agenda. Therefore breaking any law in order to do harm to social conservatives is an acceptable tactic for them.
Acting in foul and underhanded ways against conservatives is only one more way to destroy their enemy. Where have you seen a social conservative saying they were going to commit crimes against homosexuals because they had un-American values? This is the level of lack of ethics that homosexuality agenda proponents have attained and are encouraging people to have.
Have you seen any liberal say they want to kick Moreno, Rahm, etc. out of office for their public declarations expressing the will to break the law to harm CFA? Not a single one.
People who have a homosexuality agenda are profoundly destructive of democracy itself. While clamoring for some kind of invented “civil right” they claim they don’t have, they trample on everyone else’s most fundamental human rights without batting an eye.
August 9th, 2012 | 11:06 am
For the record, I think many gay-rights organizations have behaved very unwisely in waging a propaganda campaign against Chick-fil-A. And politicians like Rahm Emanuel of Chicago and Christine Quinn of New York behaved outrageously, offending against the First Amendment and also harming the gay-rights movement. This was a skirmish in the “culture war” that was not at all worth having. Watching news coverage on television, I saw a couple going to Chick-fil-A to show their support, and they said, “They want us to tolerate them, but they don’t tolerate us.” It was a perfectly reasonable indictment of the whole assault on Chick-fil-A.
Nevertheless, Dan Cathy made this statement:
There is no way to read that other than a condemnation of (not just a disagreement with) proponents of same-sex marriage.
August 9th, 2012 | 6:49 pm
David Nickol, I am sorry for any incivilities in past comments. Anti-gay I think just means hatred of someone who is identified as gay but that doesn’t explain what being gay is, but objectively leaves whatever assumptions about homosexuality the user of the term brings to the term undisturbed. However, the terms’ use is more laden and tipped than that. It is a charge of subversion of the royal law of Christianity, to love and not to hate or be indifferent toward, but it also includes an unquestioned though incoherent anthropology smuggled in with the charge, it seems to me. In our current time, clearly the use of the pejorative does not imply a gayness anthropology open for questioning but perhaps a posturing hiding the hollowness and intellectual weakness of the denouncers’ position. The violent aversion to Regnerus’s study suggests that any true scientific inquiry into actual homosexuality is considered an offense if it does not tow the pre established line. But if the pre-established view is false and harmful to those identified as gay then the current use of the term anti-gay is anti-gay in effect, a cruelty to the gay, by its driving further in a false and consequently harmful set of beliefs about their identity. I think that a key aspect of the anthropology smuggled in has to do with broader sacralization of democracy in which the process begins to provide the content. First there is the adoption of the doctrine of which Lionel Trilling presciently described as the democratic plurality of sex in “The Kinsey Report”, the prior disposition which is adopted as part of the sacralization of democracy, then there is then there is the reading of ”homosexual’ based on this prior disposal of oneself. It is a Gnostic-like anthropology which embraces a limitless freedom in principle and makes more acute the Icarus like fall afterward and the resourcelessness of the denouement. It takes no cues from nature which is largely regarded as meaningless or tinged with perhaps a Darwinian ugliness that can be overcome with technology. It is choice without judgment, in principle, and that is incoherent.
August 9th, 2012 | 8:30 pm
This also justifies in their minds committing any crime they want against social conservatives in order to pursue their homosexuality agenda.
I don’t think it’s really a homosexuality agenda. I think the gays are just being used – the same way race-baiters use ethnic minorities, who are caught in a no-win trap.
The people who are really pushing the sexual revolution agenda are in favor of breaking down sexual and family boundaries. They don’t care about gays one way or another – they are actively hostile to conservative gays or gays who aren’t interested in participating in the destruction of the family structure. What they are interested in is the destruction of certain kinds of limits or restraints. Exactly what motivates the movement as a whole I don’t know – but anger is very visible in the movement, anger at authority, at religion, at parents or people who talk/act like parents, at moral expectations and especially the idea that people ought to grow up and stop being children – have you noticed how much of the sexual revolution is focused on the adult’s ability to stay childlike, irresponsible and taken care of (yet sexually active, which is kind of disturbing) while the real children are minimized away; it doesn’t matter if you’re aborting them; it doesn’t matter if you’re breaking up their homes, leaving them home alone, or depriving them of the chance to know a mother or a father; it doesn’t matter how you treat them – children are not people, just kids, with fewer rights than a favorite dog.
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