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American Family Association

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The American Family Association (AFA) is a conservative, fundamentalist Christian non-profit organization founded in 1977 by Rev. Donald Wildmon as the National Federation for Decency. The AFA is headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi.

According to their Web site, the AFA "represents and stands for traditional family values, focusing primarily on the influence of television and other media—including pornography—on our society."

Activism

The AFA has a long history of activism by organizing its members in boycotts and letter-writing campaigns aimed at promoting socially conservative values in the United States. As of June 2005, it is promoting boycotts of Abercrombie & Fitch ("Use of softcore pornography in company catalogs"), Movie Gallery ("distributor of pornographic videos"), Ford Motor Company ("promoting homosexual lifestyles"), Kmart ("Sale of adult-rated music CDs") and Nike ("promoting a back door move to legalise homosexual marriage").

In the past, the AFA has promoted boycotts of all television shows, movies, and businesses that have promoted "indecency". The AFA has also launched specific boycotts against Crest, Volkswagen, Tide, Clorox, Pampers, MTV, Burger King, the Carl's Jr. hamburger chain, Kraft Foods, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Old Navy stores, NutriSystem, and American Airlines. In 2004, the AFA went after the movie Shark Tale, because the group believed the movie was designed to brainwash children into accepting gay rights. In 2005, it attacked the company American Girl, seller of dolls and accessories,[1] because of a charity that the company supported, and Target for its lack of the word "Christmas" in its advertising.[2]

AFA's boycotts have had mixed success. In 1990, Blockbuster Video decided not to stock films that carried the recently introduced NC-17 rating after pressure from the AFA. But a nine-year boycott of Disney resulted in none of the group's demands being met while Disney enjoyed a surge in profits.

The AFA failed in 2000 to persuade Congress to eradicate the National Endowment for the Arts for funding a controversial book, One of the Guys, by Robert Clark Young. In March of 2004, the AFA filed suit in an attempt to prevent the city of Seattle, Washington from recognizing same-sex marriages. (see Same-sex marriage in the United States).

Controversial statements

After the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005, the American Family Association's Agape Press published praise for the hurricane's destruction as an instrument of God's mercy, in that it "wiped out rampant sin". [3]

In January 2006, Rev. Rob Schenck was quoted by AgapePress, the American Family Association's news service, as apparently questioning the religious devotion of those who prayed for the trapped miners in West Virginia, then warning that "God rebuked nations who only turned to Him in their most extreme moments of need."[4]

Critics

The AFA has long been opposed by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and various liberal organizations. It has also been opposed by conservative Constitutionalists who see the AFA's support for government regulation as unconstitutionally increasing centralized power.

Many legal restrictions on individual liberty favored by the AFA require a loose interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Paleoconservatives and Christian libertarians, even fundamentalist ones, have also opposed the AFA for similar reasons as well as for the AFA's desire to make vices into crimes, which the critics argue is forcing religious beliefs on non-believers.

See also

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