The American Family Association--through its in-house wire service--is mighty peeved at the Republican caucus in the Utah State Senate. At issue? The caucus disciplined one of its members for homophobic remarks.
State Senator Chris Buttars recently commented to a documentary filmmaker that he believes the homosexual lifestyle is immoral, adding that militant homosexual activism poses a grave threat to American culture. Matt Barber, director of cultural affairs at Liberty Counsel, says Utah's Senate president Michael Waddoups caved in and took punitive action against Buttars instead of supporting his own constituent.
"What's unfortunate is the Republican leadership has thrown him under the bus," he contends. "Senator Buttars' comments and beliefs are shared by the vast majority, certainly of Utahans, and by the conservative majority of Americans."
Knowing what we know about OneNewsNow (this is the same outfit that frequently publishes AP stories that leave out a lot of facts in an attempt to push the base's buttons), I figured there's more to it than this. Wouldn't you know, there is.
Turns out Buttars' remarks went way, way beyond just garden-variety homophobia.
State Senator Chris Buttars (R- West Jordan) is in the news again, this time for comparing gay activists to Muslim radicals and saying homosexuals have no morals.
The comments came from an interview for a documentary about Proposition 8. Buttars told the interviewer that homosexuality is "the greatest threat to America going down I know of."
So does the AFA feel that gays and lesbians are in the same boat as the likes of Osama bin Laden and Ramzi Youssef? Apparently so, if Buttars' views are shared by the "conservative majority of Americans."
It is inconceivable that OneNewsNow hasn't been following this story closely. The most benign interpretation of this is that Don Wildmon was so determined to rile up the base over what this supposed slap in the face to such an upstanding supporter of "traditional values" that it couldn't be bothered to give out all the facts. What makes this even more irresponsible is that the great majority of OneNewsNow's readers live in a "Christian cocoon"--more than likely, this, along with CBN News, is their primary source for national and world news.
I haven't had the impulse to complain to OneNewsNow before, but this grossly irresponsible reporting is something that can't go unanswered. Crash their inbox. Now.
UPDATE: Turns out, per several commenters, that Buttars was punished not for comparing gays to radical Muslims, but because he'd promised his fellow Republicans he wouldn't talk about LGBT issues at all.