The Family Leader Pledge

It’s getting close to election time again. Unfortunately, this means that all the fringe lunatics from both sides of the political spectrum will start pushing hard for their own particular agendas. It is interesting to watch closely how such throwing around of political weight actually affects the candidates. Naturally, the far religious right is right in the middle of the fray already. A group in Iowa calling itself “The Family Leader” has already managed to get caught making hash of historic fact and getting at least two of the Republican candidates to sign a pledge that is chocked full of misinformation and factual errors. It always amazes me what the perceived promise of large groups of voters will entice candidates to adapt as policies.

The Family Leader is actually a splinter group of the much larger “Focus on the Family” group run by James Dobson that has a long history of trying to set the agenda for conservative candidates on a right wing religious footing (See earlier post, Focus on the Family? ) Both groups like leading with the idea of being centered around “family” values but are actually only interested in pushing right wing Christian values as is evidenced by information on both of their websites if one takes the time to actually read their propaganda at its source. This is neither surprising nor new for anyone who has taken the time to look into exactly who is funding the Tea Party groups in the country today (See earlier post Tea Party of the Religious Right? ).

Beliefs
The FAMiLY LEADER champions the principle that God is the ultimate leader of the family. Our goal at The FAMiLY LEADER is to honor and glorify God – not a political party, not a candidate, and not a program. The FAMiLY LEADER is a Christ-centered organization that will lead with humility and service to strengthen and protect the family.

Hardly a broad based family organization if you take them at their word here. Obviously, unless you believe that God is the ultimate leader of your family you aren’t welcome in their “family”. In case you want to interpret their use of the term God in some generic way they further define this is a Christian organization with the bit about being Christ-centered. Jews, Bhuddists, Islamics, nor any other widely held views about who or what God is are incontrovertibly disowned in the second paragraph on the website. It is not a family organization at all, it is a Protestant Christian organization specifically aimed at influencing political elections and processes. This becomes even more obvious when one looks into the PAC mission statement on the same webpage which states that they seek to elect conservatives with a biblical world view. While I don’t begrudge them the opportunity to influence elections there is a widespread epidemic in this country of organizations working under the guise of religious organizations according to their tax structure and political organizations in actuality but I will leave that be for the moment.

Recently the Family Leader made headlines for a pledge it was trying to get candidates to sign in order to receive their support in Iowa. Two of the leading Republican candidates signed the pledge immediately after it came out as they were obviously anxious to garner whatever votes this organization could swing their way as a result. Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum both signed the pledge immediately upon being presented with it. While it isn’t surprising to see two Republican frontrunners anxious to be more conservative than anyone else running it doesn’t say much for their level of understanding when they both signed something that is so plainly discriminatory and controversial without bothering to read it first.
The very first tenant of the document gives away the intention of the document and the mentality of those who wrote it:

Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA‟s first African-American President

Obviously, it is a backhanded slap at our current president which is only to be expected from any conservative group as most view him as something between the anti-Christ and a socialist intent upon destroying the very fabric of our culture. Anyone who couldn’t smell something wrong after reading this salvo isn’t very astute to begin with. In the first place, slavery in the United States did not recognize the right to have a family so there was technically no such thing as an African-American slave family in 1860. The institution of marriage was not recognized as something that slaves in the United States had a right to participate in. Recognition of slave families would preclude the right of slave owners to sell them separately and we should make no mistake in understanding this was a routine practice for slave owners. Beyond that, in ALL cases slaves had no right of ownership of their own children as it was a routine business practice to separate slave children from their parents at birth. Ownership of slave children was legally bound to the ownership of the parents. In other words, the slaves not only had no right of marriage they also had no right of ownership of their own children who could and often were sold outright with the parents having no say in the matter. In other words, there was absolutely no family unit recognizable to children born into slavery in 1860 and almost no possibility that they would be raised in a two parent household. It would be hard to make a statement more patently and irrefutably false than this one so I wondered where such an idea could come from.

There is a footnote in the pledge with reference to where this particular nugget of information came from. It is a report written to study the effects of marriage on African American families titled “The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans”. This report studies the effects of marriage on socio-economic status amongst African Americans and is an interesting read. However, it is NOT a source that covers anything to do with children born into slavery in 1860. As a matter of fact, the earliest data referenced in this report was taken in 1880 and 1910, fifteen and forty five years after the elimination of slavery in the United States. According to the report only minor changes in the basic numbers of two parent households in the African American occurred before 1950. Much the same can be said for white two parent households in this country as well but I am getting off the subject.

Not only is the original statement in the pledge factually incorrect, the report that was supposedly the source of the statement contains no information whatsoever that relates to it. The Family Leader website has this quote in bold letters on its mission statement page:

“…we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”
-2 Corinthians 4:2

Obviously, to the people at The Family Leader deception has a different meaning from that the rest of us understand as there is not even a grain of truth in their original statement concerning children born into slavery. Whoever wrote the statement plainly does not understand very much about slavery, nor have they bothered to read the information they use as source material to support the statement. In any case, after the media noticed that two of our leading candidates for president had signed a pledge containing such idiocy the good people at The Family Leader took this section out of the pledge and issued the following statement:

“After careful deliberation and wise insight and input from valued colleagues we deeply respect, we agree that the statement referencing children born into slavery can be misconstrued, and such misconstruction can detract from the core message of the Marriage Vow: that ALL of us must work to strengthen and support families and marriages between one woman and one man." The Family Leader added, "We sincerely apologize for any negative feelings this has caused, and have removed the language from the vow.”

This is a good example of the right wing’s idea of an apology. Obviously, there are some people at The Family Leader who have trouble understanding the English language. The statement is not one that can be misconstrued; it is a statement that is totally and completely without factual basis. Not only is it a flat out lie, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the material it purports to use as source information. None of this is surprising or new but we should start to be aware of the propaganda efforts that are currently underway in this country to convince the American public that this country was based upon some biblical worldview when the truth of the matter is that most of the founding fathers were secular humanists who were no less terrified of the involvement of religious institutions in our government than they were of monarchy and dictatorships. The far right and the religious fundamentalism is no less dangerous in this country than it has been in any other part of the world and groups like the Family Leader and Focus on the Family who are providing much of the financial muscle behind the Tea Party can only easily be defeated by dispersion of the truth. After all, propaganda can only be effective if its antithesis, factual information, is forcibly silenced.