Focus On The Family is one of the most well-funded anti-LGBTQ organizations in the country
Star New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees is angrily dismissing outrage from fans, including many supporters of the LGBTQ community, over his involvement with an infamous anti-LGBT organization, Focus on the Family. The 42-year old group, one of the best-funded anti-gay organizations in the world, promotes and advocates for the harmful and destructive pseudo-science of “conversion therapy.” LGBTQ people who have experienced it have likened it to torture.
Brees says all he did was record a short video for kids for “Bring Your Bible to School Day,” a nationwide effort to use kids to indoctrinate and convert their classmates into Christianity, which is disturbing enough.
But to make matters worse, “Bring Your Bible to School Day” is a program of Focus On The Family, which also actively opposes civil rights for LGBTQ people, including marriage and adoption.
In a videotaped statement Brees defends making the video, and blasts those criticizing him for it.
And in an astonishing act of ignorance, Brees concludes his videotaped statement by saying: “I do not support any groups that discriminate or that have their own agendas that are trying to promote inequality. So, hopefully that will set the record straight.”
It might be written off as a wrong move by a football player who didn’t bother to consider what he was doing, but as Big Easy Magazine, which first reported on Brees’ “Bring Your Bible to School Day” video notes, he has been involved with Focus On The Family for nearly a decade.
On Thursday Brees continued to defend his actions, telling reporters, “I was not aware of any of the things [Focus On The Family] said about them lobbying for anti-gay, any type of messaging for inequality of any type of hate-type related stuff. I was not aware of that at all.”
Brees apparently doesn’t understand he cannot separate his support for tiny portion of a group’s actions from that group’s principles.
And he has yet to denounce Focus On The Family or conversion therapy, nor has he promised to sever his partnership with the anti-LGBTQ group.