GLAAD Takes On Anti-Gay Groups, Calls FRC ‘As Fringe As Fringe Gets’
GLAAD Takes On Anti-Gay Groups, Calls FRC ‘As Fringe As Fringe Gets’
by DAVID BADASH on AUGUST 23, 2012
in NEWS,POLITICS
New GLAAD president Herndon Graddick is calling the Family Research Council (FRC) “as fringe as fringe gets,” and is chastising NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, for fundraising on last week’s shooting at FRC headquarters. Graddick, who’s been with the Gay And Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation for several years and became its president in April, is spot-on when he writes in today’s Huffington Post that after the FRC shooting, while “more than 40 organizations that support LGBT equality condemned the incident and expressed our best wishes to the victim,” the “actions of anti-gay groups in the aftermath have been nothing short of reprehensible.”
In 2009, [FRC President] Tony Perkins called the man who murdered women’s health care provider (and frequent FRC punching bag) George Tiller a “vigilante” and said that we should all “look toward the end of all violence.”
But after the shooting last week, the rhetoric coming from people like Perkins is missing words like “vigilante.” Instead, Perkins and fellow anti-gay crusader Brian Brown from the National Organization for Marriage are trying to blame this inexcusable act of violence on groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, which labeled FRC a “Hate Group” for its damaging misinformation campaigns against the LGBT community. Perkins wants people to think this designation comes solely from his groups’ positions on the issues.
Unfortunately this sentiment has been seeping out into the public consciousness. Washington Postcolumnist Dana Milbank referred to FRC as a “mainstream conservative think tank.”
Trouble is, I don’t know many mainstream organizations that characterize their opponents as being in league with Satan, as Perkins did (calling LGBT advocates “pawns of the enemy”) in April of last year at the Oak Initiative Summit.
more: http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/glaad-takes-on-anti-gay-groups-calls-frc-as-fringe-as-fringe-gets/politics/2012/08/23/47329