While Focus on the Family compared its anti-LGBTQ views to long-held biblical beliefs, the National Organization for Marriage did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment regarding critics’ claims that it spreads anti-LGBTQ animosity.Īmazon has routinely received a perfect 100 score from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which rates companies for workplace protections, inclusive benefits and responsible corporate citizenship.
“While masquerading as 'charities,’ these anti-LGBTQ organizations are shamefully taking advantage of a program meant to aid organizations that genuinely help vulnerable people.” “For many years, anti-LGBTQ groups like Focus on the Family and the National Organization for Marriage have used their platforms to dehumanize LGBTQ people and spread hatred and misinformation about LGBTQ families,” GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis said. OpenDemocracy also alleges eight groups in the AmazonSmile program have partnered with the World Congress of Families, an SPLC-designated hate group that has promoted anti-LGBTQ legislation in Russia, Europe and Africa. and international court cases, and Human Life International, which has claimed “nothing else poses such a direct threat to our God-given freedoms” as the gay rights movement. Other Smile program recipients include the National Organization for Marriage and the American Center for Law and Justice, both of which have opposed same-sex marriage in U.S. “In a pluralistic country like America, why should those individuals not be extended the same privilege of participating in Amazon’s charity program and be permitted to direct funds to organizations and causes that share their deeply held convictions?” he said. Batura, vice president of communications for Focus on the Family, said millions of Americans who embrace “multi-millennial old beliefs found in the Bible” regularly shop on Amazon. Neither the Family Leader nor the American Family Association immediately responded to NBC News’ request for comment.
He has also called allowing transgender people to use bathrooms that match their gender identity a “train wreck waiting to happen” and predicted the policy would lead to adult men trying to assault 12-year-olds in girls restrooms. After the Supreme Court’s landmark same-sex marriage ruling in 2015, Platts claimed the decision opened the door to legalized polygamy and the decriminalization of pedophilia. is harmful both to the individuals who choose to participate in it and the society that chooses to accept it,” the memo, signed by 485 Iowa pastors and ministry leaders, read. “If we’re teaching the kids ‘don’t smoke’ because that’s a risky health style, the same can be true, too, with the homosexual lifestyle,” Family Leader founder Bob Vander Plaats said in a 2011 interview.An unsuccessful candidate for Iowa governor, Plaats joined a 2010 letter calling on the state to ban same-sex marriage.