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National

Trump Refuses to Say if He'll Accept Election Results

Threatening to upend a fundamental pillar of American democracy, Donald Trump refused to say in the final debate that he will accept the results of next month's election if he …

Politics

AP Editor's Note: Trump's Promises

While a lot of his agenda will be a hard sell, he won't have the excuse used by many presidents whose promises have fallen short — a Congress in the …

Education

Sex Education’s Last Chance in Mississippi?

Sex education in Mississippi could end, or be revamped, as soon as July this year, depending on legislators' actions between now and the end of the session.

Immigration

Who Would Jesus Deport?

Religious leaders, political figures and hyperbolic talking heads have yet to reach a consensus on the Bible's application to the issue of immigration in the United States.

World

Rival Koreas Masters at Pulling Back from the Brink

Once again, the Koreas are trying to disentangle themselves from violence and threats of war — this time in tense talks that have dragged out in two marathon sessions over …

LGBT

Kentucky Clerk Won't Interfere with Gay Marriage Licenses

Clerk Kim Davis returned to work Monday for the first time since being jailed for disobeying a federal judge and said she was faced with a "seemingly impossible choice" between …

The Day After: Dems Take Washington

OK, here's your chance. Gloat. Whine. Vent. What are your thoughts on the very decisive mandate the country sent last night? Let 'er rip.

Pelosi Be Damned: House Votes to Up Minimum Wage

The House passed an ambitious minimum-wage bill before adjourning on Tuesday. HB 237, which passed 68-to-50, calls for every state employer to raise minimum wage to $6.25 by July 1, …

Cover

JFP Election Guide 2004

Major Candidates and Issues

The race for U.S. president is coming down the wire with two major candidates vying for the job—and third-party candidates that are getting very little attention, including Ralph Nader, whom …

Capitol

Republicans Call Espy ‘Sexist’ for Saying He’s Better for Women

Incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith accused her Democratic opponent, Mike Espy, of sexism and “mansplaining” after he told supporters he would be a better U.S. senator for women.

Immigration

Rep. Thompson Blasts White House's 'Outright Lies,' Calls for Hearings

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., accused the Trump administration of "outright lies" and called for hearings on the deaths of children who were in U.S. custody.

April 30, 2014 | 3 comments

The Back Story on the Anti-Gay Alliance Attacking Mississippi's "If You're Buying" Campaign

By Donna Ladd

This falls in the can't-make-it-up column.

Most of you know that Mitchell Moore of Campbell's Bakery, who is straight, and Eddie Outlaw of William Wallace Salon, who is gay, and others started the amazing "If You're Buying, We're Selling" campaign. They want Mississippi business owners to put stickers in their windows to indicate that they don't discriminate, in response to SB 2681, Mississippi's version of the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act." (See lots of business owners with the icon in their ads in this week's JFP, too.)

So, the religious right is apparently not happy with the international media coverage the campaign is getting -- and from Mississippi, which is supposed to be their wheelhouse, you know. They really didn't like it when Emily Pettus of the AP (the JFP's next-door neighbors) did a story about this that was picked up by many outlets.

In response, they went on a PR tear to take back the messaging. Greg Scott, who tweets at @adfmedia, led the way, tweeting this week in response to the AP story: "Sticker folks protest imaginary law .@AP bows false narrative, RFRA not "vaguely written," no threat to "=treatment" http://bit.ly/QEU2El

Curious, I did some research. Turns out, Scott is the VP for media communications for Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly Alliance Defense Fund), a nonprofit group founded in 1994 by extreme-right and vocally anti-gay leaders including James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association. (Interestingly, Mississippi's Judge Charles Pickering is also on the board.)

Not to be outdone, the American Family Association, an alliance co-founder, also blasted the sticker campaign on a Christian "news" site, which is part of the American Family News Network, which is part of the ... American Family Association. "It's not really a buying campaign, but it's a bully campaign," said Buddy Smith, executive vice president of Tupelo-based American Family Association, "and it's being carried out by radical homosexual activists who intend to trample the freedom of Christians to live according to the dictates of scripture."

The Southern Poverty Law Center includes the alliance (and AFA) on its list of a dozen groups that drive the "religious right's anti-gay crusade." On its website, it brags that its "attorneys have successfully defended marriage as the union between one man and one woman in over 40 cases nationwide."

SPLC indicates that the alliance was established in the early 1990s in response to gay-rights battles in the courts—which it clearly believes is the "principal" threat to religious freedom. ADF President Alan Sears and Vice President Craig Osten wrote " The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom," which ties homosexuality to pedophilia and other "disordered sexual behavior."

SPLC states: "The ADF has also mounted legal challenges to gay military service, marriage, adoption and foster-parenting, as well as to domestic partner benefits around the nation. It trains other attorneys 'to battle the radical homosexual …

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