An anti-gay organization finds itself in hot water

The American Family Association of Tupelo, Mississippi, is always up to something. Usually something related to sex. Often it involves a boycott.

Time was when the AFA seemed most incensed about nudity, pornography, suggestive clothing and the like. We remember a decade or so ago when it mailed news organizations still photographs of what might have been a bare breast flashing by in a CBS promotional film. People in newsrooms around the country no doubt studied that mailing very carefully.

The AFA still objects to nudity. Its Web site features a complaint that the Department of Defense is allowing Playboy publications to be sold on military bases. It’s promoting a House bill that would end that practice. But in recent years, homosexuality has become the AFA’s greatest preoccupation. Currently, it’s urging people to stay away from McDonald’s because, it says, the company promotes “the homosexual agenda, including homosexual marriage.” To which a McDonald’s official replied: “We have a well-established and proud heritage of associating with individuals and organizations that share our belief that every person has the right to live and work in their community free of discrimination.”

The AFA’s effectiveness is in some doubt. McDonald’s stock is up more than 10 percent during the past year, and sales are steady. Earlier AFA boycotts did not go well either, including those against Procter & Gamble, Disney, CBS and Kraft Foods. The AFA claims it did better with its Ford boycott, but the energy crisis may have had something to do with any success in that arena. The AFA corporate Hall of Shame (also called “the dirty dozen”) lists other companies that seem to be doing okay: Microsoft, Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, Johnson & Johnson, Viacom. The dirty details are at www.afa.net.

The AFA has recently made bigger waves with a software program it developed that automatically replaces the word “gay” on its news Web site with the word “homosexual.” The idea is that “gay” leaves a more positive impression than “homosexual.”

That policy caused a few raised eyebrows the other day in a report about U.S. Olympic sprinter Tyson Gay. The AFA software on its One News Now Web site took an Associated Press story and altered it to read:

“Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has. His time of 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials Sunday doesn’t count as a world record, because it was run with the help of a too-strong tailwind.

“Here’s what does matter: Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he’s certainly someone to watch in Beijing.

“ ‘It means a lot to me,’ the 25-year-old Homosexual said. ‘I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.’ ”

The headline over the story read: “Homosexual sets U.S. Record in 100 with 9.77.”

We shudder to think what would happen if “The Gay Ranchero” ever showed up in the One News Now TV listings. The 1948 film starred Roy Rogers and Andy Devine. Wouldn’t the American Family Association have a homosexual old time with that one?

(Article originally published in The Keene Sentinel) An anti-gay organization finds itself in hot ...
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