The AFA a hate group?  Gosh, that's … um … well

So take the news story — not only on Fox, but an opinion piece on Fox — with a grain of salt.  But let's assume it's accurate.  Is the AFA (American Family Association) a "hate group" alongside the KKK, the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam?

Well … it's kind of hard to avoid that idea if you actually look at the stuff they publish.

The basis for the complaint seems to be the AFA's view of gays — which the article author and AFA spokesman Bryan Fischer consider not "hate" but simply "disagreement".

Consider an AFA talk show host stating that gays wanting to be scoutmasters is "big proof" that they are pedophiles (http://goo.gl/kaoGWO).  Or Fischer himself suggesting that gays are Nazis (http://goo.gl/Q6oMv). Or, apparently not considering the purpose of good order and discipline, Fischer asserting that the end of DADT that we now will have a military "feminized and neutered beyond repair," that the Marines' new motto should be “The Few, the Proud, the Sexually Twisted,” and that any reasonable young man should avoid military service because it will "force him to shower naked with males who have a sexual interest in him and just might molest him while he sleeps in his bunk?" (http://goo.gl/Wflvw).

Oh, and I do love the irony of AFA spokesman Bryan Fischer suggesting, "If our military wasn’t headed by a commander-in-chief who is hostile to Christian faith, these allegations would be laughed off every military base in the world."  That Bryan considers Barack Obama hostile to Christianity says something about his — and the AFA's — view of Christianity and, for that matter, the message they are conveying to the military about their commander-in-chief.

This is, of course, a delicate matter.  American law tolerates religious and political views — reactionary and radical alike. The question becomes how that bedrock (and, to my mind) valuable position on extreme variances of opinion can be reconciled with the military's need for order and discipline.  

If an organization were preaching that Jews were out to undermine the United States and that Jews serving in the military were detrimental to our national defense, would the military be justified in calling that organization a hate group?  If an organization were asserting that blacks were out to kill whites and that black officers were liable to put white subordinates in harm's way, would the military be justified in watching out for folks who belonged to such an organization?  

Just because a group claims it is Christian, or Jewish, or Muslim, or black, or white, or whatever demographic cohort you wish, doesn't mean it cannot be a hate group.  Given the vitriol and accusations coming from the AFA against gays (and, thus, gay members of the military), not to mention Muslims, Native Americans, Hispanics, et al., if I were a military officer, I would have some concerns about soldiers in my unit who seemed overly enamored of the AFA and its positions, in terms of how such soldiers would work in a unit that had such undesirables in it, in peacetime or on the battlefield.

I don't pretend it's not a slippery slope or an area filled with a lot of gray.  But ignoring the problem would be, for the military, nearly as bad as overreacting to it.