crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
The entire story is here in Faith In Public Life:
. . . the Family Research Council sent out a press release with the headline “FRC Calls On President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Senator Reid to Repudiate Diana DeGette’s Religious Bigotry,” which stated
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins today called on President Obama and Congressional leaders to repudiate comments made by U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) to The Hill’s Michael O’Brien that “religiously-affiliated groups…should be shut out of the process” in the health care debate because of their support for the Stupak/Pitts amendment. She told The Hill, “Last I heard, we had separation of church and state in this country,” she said. “I’ve got to say that I think the Catholic bishops and all of the other groups shouldn’t have input.”
Faith in Public Life refutes this:
1) ) Congresswoman DeGette’s remarks didn’t come from an interview with The Hill’s Michael O’Brien. Rather, they came from O’Brien’s report about DeGette’s appearance on ABC News’s “Top Line” broadcast today.
2) In that Top Line appearance, Congresswoman DeGette said religious groups should have input in the debate.
The webpage Tracking American Evangelicals adds more context to FRC’s deception by juxtaposing the organization’s truncation of Congresswoman DeGette’s comments to what she actually said:
Congresswoman DeGette’s comments – “I gotta tell you, last I heard we had separation of church and state. I don’t think the Catholic bishops are in charge of writing our healthcare bill. I think that they are one of many groups that we should listen to, but in the end they should be concerned that 36 million more people in this country will get healthcare. Many of them are their parishioners.”
FRC’s version of her comments – “religiously-affiliated groups…should be shut out of the process” in the health care debate because of their support for the Stupak/Pitts amendment. She told The Hill, “Last I heard, we had separation of church and state in this country,” she said. “I’ve got to say that I think the Catholic bishops and all of the other groups shouldn’t have input.“
The site also said that because of scrutiny and complaints from organizations such as Faith in Public Life, FRC revised the comment:
However, Rep. DeGette accused the Catholic Bishops of controlling the outcome of the health care legislation and also accused them and other conservative Christians of violating the “wall of separation’ between church and state.
If only the lgbt community could muster up such force to make the Family Research Council own up to all of the times it cites Paul Cameron as well as the many times it distorts legitimate studies to spin false images of our community.
[...] conservative evangelical brand, Pope Benedict has decided to embrace it, shaping a conspicuously political Catholicism that embraces extremism and drives out dissenters. The Vatican has become so [...]
Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone ought to be paying the least bit of attention to the FRC, or any other group of its ilk. When things like this occur, chalk it up to their desire to spew out the propaganda, and consider the source. Are these people [the FRC] even capable of telling the truth, and – more importantly still – are they WILLING to tell the truth?
Stated honestly, I don’t take what the FRC says, and groups like them, as being in the real world with the rest of us. Mostly, in my experience, they have their heads in the clouds, or – as I once heard it so aptly stated in a book – “they are so heavenly minded, they are no earthly good.” Seems like they would take a look around them, and realize the only ones listening to their rhetoric are themselves, and their membership.
Worse yet, when did the FRC and like organizations last “attract” anyone to God? Seems like all they do is “repel” people away with their hateful rhetoric.
Unfortunately, CA, many foreign antigay churches such as those in Nigeria and Uganda cite FRC, Scott Lively, and Peter LaBarbera as factual news sources to justify their genocide campaigns against their LGBT neighbors.
These hate groups must not only be refuted after each false claim they make; they must also be pro-actively discredited and pre-emptively deprived of both income and audience.