Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy preaching about his company's religious practices.

Earlier this week, a ThinkProgress reader wrote us, objecting to our description of Chick-fil-A as a “Christian-run” company. He cited the many steps the Episcopal Church has taken toward supporting LGBT equality as “real Christianity in action,” accusing Chick-fil-A of using Christianity as “cover for their own bigotry.” Obviously, ThinkProgress cannot and will not impose judgment upon how any individual, anti-LGBT or otherwise, expresses their religious beliefs. Nevertheless, the reader’s concern has considerable merit, and as conservatives flock to “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” it’s important to consider what exactly they are defending and how.

Arguably, the rise of the Christian Right is due for a 40th anniversary to mark the appropriation of Christianity by conservatives like Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, and Ralph Reed. This coalition of mostly evangelical Christians, Catholics, and Mormons has largely succeeded in reducing the cultural definition of being Christian to those who share their beliefs. The present-day ravings of faux-historian David Barton seek to push even farther and erase the religious diversity at the heart of American patriotism. The “culture war” over LGBT equality presents one of the clearest dividing lines, with anti-gay talking heads like Tony Perkins over-dominating the media on behalf of “Christianity” while LGBT-affirming Christians are severely under-represented.

Some have tried to shrug off the controversy about Chick-fil-A’s donations to anti-gay hate groups and condemnations of marriage equality, but it provides a very clear example of how conservatives hide behind the respect they expect for their religious beliefs to avoid accountability for the harm caused by their anti-gay words and actions. In doing so, they maintain a wedge between “Christianity” and the LGBT community that is far more volatile than the race wedges they have attempted. Here are some current examples of this “cover” in action:

• Mike Huckabee said Chick-fil-A must be defended against “hate speech and economic bullying” from those who “disenfranchise” Christians.
• Sarah Palin decried Chick-fil-A’s detractors as the ones who are “intolerant, bigoted, and hypocritical” for not agreeing with the comments made by its president, Dan Cathy.
• Conservative columnist Star Parker accused “homosexual activists” of a “hate campaign” against Chick-fil-A for the “crime of being a Christian.”
• Robert Knight of the conservative American Civil Rights Union described the Chick-fil-A controversy as a “smear campaign” and “fascistic assault” by “enraged liberals who are at war with nature and nature’s God.”
• Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George stood by Chick-fil-A because allowing marriage equality would violate the “constitutionally protected freedom of religious belief and religious practice.”
• Former Los Angeles Archbishop Cardinal Roger M. Mahony accused those who disagree with Chick-fil-A of trying to “punish us for clinging to and expressing our faith beliefs.”
• The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue believes educated white people “want to punish those who hold to the traditional view,” an effort he describes as “madness laced with fascistic elements.”
• Even the National Organization for Marriage’s official “Thank Chick-fil-A” page identifies a “culture increasingly hostile to traditional and especially Christian values,” urging supporters to “stand firm by your Christian beliefs.”

But this is all a façade — one rife with Biblical hypocrisy, at that. There is nothing about the Chick-fil-A controversy that has anything to do with so-called “religious freedom.” The company donates millions of dollars yearly to organizations that actively work against the safety and health of LGBT people. Its president preaches that gays and lesbians should be scorned as “twisted up stuff” who “invite God’s judgment” upon society. These are all actions with direct consequences for LGBT people, and religion in no way justifies them. Certainly, many who identify as Christians — including many LGBT people — see Chick-fil-A’s anti-gay principles as foreign to their inclusive faiths, but their voices are largely absent from the public conversation.

The takeaway here must be how lopsided the “religious freedom” talking point is. If standing up for the fair treatment of LGBT people is an attack on conservative religious beliefs, then denying LGBT equality is just as much an attack on inclusive religious beliefs. Religion, itself, is thus a moot point in the debate, a “headless monster” used by conservatives only to further stigmatize and disenfranchize the LGBT community. Nobody should tolerate that, no matter how they spiritually identify.

NOM Religious Liaison Rev. Bill Owens

In March, a leaked internal document from the National Organization for Marriage revealed the anti-gay group planned to “interrupt the attempt to equate gay with black and sexual orientation with race.”

NOM’s plan is now clearly in full swing, and at a press conference yesterday, the anti-gay organization’s “religious liaison” and founder of the Coalition of African-American Pastors (CAAP), Reverend Bill Owens, lambasted President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage and criticized the president for “condoning” child molestation:

OWENS: The time has come for a broad-based assault against the powers that be that want to change our culture to one of men marrying men and women marrying women. [...] For the president to bow to the money as Judas did for Jesus Christ is a disgrace and we are ashamed [...] Another very important point I think that needs to be made is if you watch the men who have been caught having sex with little boys, you will note that all of them will say that “I was molested as a child — a man molested me in my home,” wherever. They will say they were molested. And for the president to condone this type of thing knowing the full facts is just irresponsible.

Listen:

This kind of homophobic vitriol is nothing new for Owens. Earlier this month, he compared homosexuality to bestiality. Now, Owens is arguing that by supporting same-sex marriage, the president is, in effect, condoning child molestation. Owens believes that allowing every American to enter into a committed lifelong partnership with the person he or she loves will doom society into a cataclysmic slippery slope where gay child molesters molest children thereby making them grow up to be gay child molesters.

Of course, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. A psychiatric disorder, pedophilia refers only to a sexual interest in children. A gay man is no more likely to abuse a child than a straight man, as psychologists have stated for years. Owens’ fear that children are more endangered around gay men stems from the same inane homophobia that compels Mike Huckabee to claim that Boy Scouts are somehow safer without gay troop leaders.

To see what NOM is trying to do here, one need only look at that leaked internal memo: “Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage.” Bill Owens is that spokesperson, even though CAAP only boasts about a dozen members. CAAP’s only purpose since its founding has been to attack same-sex marriage. According to Owens yesterday, there is “not one issue more important than holding the family together.”

CAAP may purport to speak for the entire black community in its mission to force the president to rescind his endorsement, but recent polling shows that a majority of African Americans supports same-sex marriage.

– Steven Perlberg

NOM's Jennifer Roback Morse

Jennifer Roback Morse heads up the National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute, which more often than not is just another outlet for proliferating anti-gay propaganda. Morse has complained before that sites like ThinkProgress have debunked her fabrications about the “consequences” of marriage equality, and in March, she objected strongly to GLAAD’s inclusion of her in its Commentator Accountability Project, which advises the media about offensive comments would-be guests have made in non-mainstream venues. In her rant, she attempted to make the case that “opposing the gay lobby” didn’t make her anti-gay. Of course, she never actually addressed the crude, offensive remarks she has made, like comparing the LGBT movement to Nazi Germany and her fears that it amounts to a “hostile takeover of the whole civil society” that is “anti-human” and “at war with Mother Nature.” She has also described homosexuality as an “intrinsically disordered behavior” that people “suffer” and “struggle” with.

Four months after ThinkProgress wrote about Morse’s objections to GLAAD, she is again complaining that we distorted her position, claiming that the “lifestyle left doesn’t actually make arguments. They just make noise”:

Do you see what they have done? They have slipped in an unstated assumption that the “gay lobby” = “gay rights.” Anyone who disagrees with the gay lobby automatically, always and everywhere, opposes gay rights. Put it another way: they have turned an important and debatable question into an unquestioned assumption.

But no assumption is required;  Morse does oppose gay rights — it’s her entire livelihood. No doubt there are plenty of people within the LGBT community who disagree about the best way to lobby for LGBT equality, but that’s definitely not a conversation Morse participates in. She reminds of this just a few paragraphs later:

The subject of my original article in The Blaze was my claim that removing the gender requirement from marriage would result in the state insisting that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. I believe that this will impact men and women differently, and that the net result will be the further marginalization of fathers from the family.

I still believe that to be true. I still believe it will be a very bad thing for society. I am not ashamed of this belief, in spite of GLAAD’s rather ham-handed attempt to shame me about it.

The most telling point though is that Think Progress did not even bring up the question of whether redefining marriage will marginalize fathers from the family. They just changed the subject.

Morse is free to believe whatever she wishes, but that doesn’t make her beliefs correct. As a fellow blogger, surely Morse appreciates that not every post can address every topic, and surely she recalls that just two months prior, ThinkProgress debunked this very argument when she made it. In fact, our blog has repeatedly challenged the notion that same-sex parenting harms children or families, pointing out the duplicitous way that conservatives like Morse use studies about the experience of single mothers to attack lesbians mothers with claims that their children are victims of “fatherlessness.” The one study NOM found (and likely conspired to have published) that drew negative conclusions specifically about gay parenting was so faulty in its methods that the publisher’s internal auditor called it “bullshit.”

Morse thinks GLAAD, Good As You, ThinkProgress, and others are making “noise” by calling out her anti-gay statements for what they are. Rather than confront the honest reality of the harm her lies cause, it is she who is making “noise” with an empty debate about rhetorical strategy.