ADF, the Alliance Defense Fund targeted and attacked GLAAD yesterday evening, suggesting their just-launched Commentator Accountability Project (CAP) violates the First Amendment. In one of the ADF’s many daily “Alliance Alerts,” they claim GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project “targets free speech.” In other words, apparently the ADF, who brought us, among other atrocities, Prop 8, now believes that lying about gay people is akin to free speech. As always, that’s for the courts to decide on a case-by-case basis. But what is entirely clear is that GLAAD’s CAP merely keeps track of what anti-gay pundits say. It does not attempt to silence or censor, despite cries from the anti-gay radical right, which have been many in the past 24 hours.
“Free speech” is an all-too often used straw man, that many ignorant of basic legal concepts mistake. Free speech is actually the First Amendment assurance we have from our government that it will make no law “abridging the freedom of speech.”
GLAAD is not the U.S. government, and if they — or anyone — want to set up a system to track and catalog all the anti-gay hate speech, including lies, that right wing extremists like to spout on cable news channels, any attempt to stop them would be of great concern.
I applaud GLAAD and their new Commentator Accountability Project (CAP), which we first reported yesterday when it launched. (Go have a look and see for yourself!)
But apparently, many on the right , including those closely linked to the very people GLAAD is keeping tabs on, do not.
By the way, who exactly is the ADF?
Via Wikipedia:
The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is a conservative Christian nonprofit organization with the stated goal of “defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.” ADF was founded in 1994 by the late Bill Bright (founder, Campus Crusade for Christ), the late Larry Burkett (founder, Crown Financial Ministries), James Dobson (founder, Focus on the Family), the late D. James Kennedy (founder, Coral Ridge Ministries), the late Marlin Maddoux (president, International Christian Media), and Donald Wildmon (founder, American Family Association), along with the leadership of over thirty other conservative Christian organizations.
ADF supports the inclusion of invocations at public meetings and the use of religious displays (such as crosses and other religious monuments) on public lands and in public buildings. The ADF opposes abortion, and believes that healthcare workers have a right to decline participation in the performance of abortions and other practices an individual health worker finds morally objectionable. ADF opposes same-sex marriage, as well as adoption by same-sex couples based on their belief that children are best raised by a married mother and father. ADF believe parents should be able to opt their children out of sex education in schools that run counter to a family’s religious beliefs.
You’ll note the presence of both the American Family Association and the Family Research Council, two certified anti-gay hate groups.
How is it that in the 21st century, a reputable organization like GLAAD can come under attack by a consortium of anti-gay hate groups?