Okay, some notes:
*NOTE 1: Again, all we did was simply make note of the sponsorship, as Pennsylvania Family Institute claimed it on its own flyer. This whole thing then played out, organically, in the marketplace of ideas.
*NOTE2: A marketplace that led us to discover that the “Strengthening Marriage” organization behind the PFI event , Family Life, includes on its official website teachings like this…
Help! My Child is a Homosexual – [FamilyLife.com]
and this…
Gay Marriages … What’s the Big Deal? – [FamilyLife.com]
and this:
“These days our media bombard us with the idea that God created and blesses other kinds of sex, like that practiced by homosexuals. You will need to share with your child that there is a radical homosexual element in our culture saying, “We’re going to be in your face. You’re going to see us kissing on television and in movies. We want to become acceptable.”
Our children must know that just because some group wants to validate their behavior, that does not make it right in God’s eyes. Our children need to learn how to hate the sin (see Romans 1:26—27) while loving the sinner.”
Teaching Your Teen About God’s Views on Sex [FamilyLife.com]
That certainly caught our attention.
*NOTE 3: We then, in an eerily unrelated turn of events, learned of an odd connection between the National Organization For Marriage’s Ruth Institute and Chick-Fil-A’s own WinShape foundation.
*NOTE 4: This WinShape development then led us to dig further, and eventually learn about something called the Marriage CoMission and an annual marriage seminar that WinShape hosts at its own Georgia retreat. Some quick clips from that event: Here’s Dan Cathy’s brother “Bubba” introducing one of the seminar sessions/making the family patently clear:
Here’s Focus on the Family president Jim Daly thanking the Cathys for hosting the thing::
Oh, and here’s Chick-Fil-A/WinShape worker bee Jeff Fray laying out exactly where the Summit leadership stands on what marriage is, no debate needed:
So at this point, the initial PFI thing — which could’ve been nipped in the bud by a simple Chick-Fil-A statement on Day One, as frankly we never saw it as anything all that big — became something else entirely. Something much bigger. Something that definitely has our attention.
*NOTE 5: Attention grabbed, we soon learned that this a seminar where folks like Maggie Gallagher and Jennifer Roback Morse (of the aforementioned NOM/Ruth) are invited to speak, and where voices like anti-LGBT film guy Ted Baehr claim the “gay agenda” tells kids to call their parents “mean”…
…and where a film depiction of a priest molesting a young boy supposedly led gays to become studio heads:
(*Ted actually means “The Celluloid Closet,” which is all about gays in Hollywood.)
So thanks for the video, Don Cathy. But not gonna lie: We still have some questions. And not because we are mean or angry or militant or on Colonel Sander’s payroll. No, no — We care because we too love our families, our marriages, and our peaceful accommodation. We care because we believe we also have some strength to offer this spinning orb.
