Criticism Grows of Texas Governor’s Hate Group-Sponsored Rally
splcenter.org
Perry tries to distance himself while not totally disavowing.
After news spread last week that Texas Gov. Rick Perry is planning to hold a prayer rally in August funded and organized by the stridently anti-gay group, the American Family Association (AFA), the governor and his staff have worked feverishly to distance themselves from the group’s hateful views.
Katherine Cesinger, spokeswoman for the governor, did not return several calls from the Southern Poverty Law Center seeking comment about Perry’s association with AFA. But earlier she told others that, “controversial statements [by AFA] have nothing to do with what the Governor is trying to promote.”
The AFA’s comments about the LGBT community – most notably those made by its director of policy analysis Bryan Fischer – are certainly controversial. Last year, for example, Fischer said, “Homosexuality gave us Adolph [sic] Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.” More recently, in comments about a South African newspaper columnist found guilty of hate speech for a 2008 column, Fischer said, “This sorry incident tells us two things: homosexualism will kill free speech, and homosexualists are bigots.”
It’s no surprise that Perry would associate himself so closely with an anti-gay group like AFA. In a decade as governor, he has waged a fight to keep “homosexual conduct” listed as a criminal offense in the state penal code – a law he has said is “appropriate.” The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately struck down Texas’ anti-sodomy law in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas. In 2005, while signing a bill to amend the state constitution to specifically prohibit gays and lesbians from marrying, Rob Parsley, a celebrity Pentecostal faith healer, joined Perry and lauded the governor for “protecting the children of Texas from the gay agenda.”