American Family Association
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
The American Family Association (AFA) is a conservative, fundamentalist Christian non-profit organization founded in 1977 by Rev. Donald Wildmon as the National Federation for Decency. The AFA is headquartered in Tupelo, Mississippi.
According to their Web site (http://www.afa.net/about.asp), the AFA "represents and stands for traditional family values, focusing primarily on the influence of television and other media—including pornography—on our society."
The AFA has a long history of activism by organizing its members in boycotts and letter-writing campaigns aimed at promoting socially conservative values in the United States. As of June 2005, it is promoting boycotts (http://www.afa.net/projects/) of Abercrombie & Fitch ("Use of softcore pornography in company catalogs"), Movie Gallery ("distributor of pornographic videos"), Ford Motor Company ("promoting homosexual lifestyles") and Kmart ("Sale of adult-rated music CDs"). In the past, the AFA has promoted boycotts of all television shows, movies, and businesses that have promoted "indecency".
It has previously had successful campaigns that include, in 1990, pressuring Blockbuster Video not to stock films that carried the recently introduced NC-17 rating. The AFA failed in 2000, however, in an attempt to persuade Congress to eradicate the National Endowment for the Arts for funding a controversial book, One of the Guys, by Robert Clark Young.
In March of 2004, the AFA filed suit in an attempt to prevent the city of Seattle, Washington from recognizing same-sex marriages. (see Same-sex marriage in the United States).
Critics
The AFA has long been opposed by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and other liberal organizations. It has also been opposed by conservative Constitutionalists who see the AFA's support for government regulation as unconstitutionally increasing centralized power. Many legal restrictions on individual liberty favored by the AFA require a loose interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Paleoconservatives and Christian libertarians, even fundamentalist ones, have also opposed the AFA for similar reasons as well as for the AFA's desire to make vices into crimes, effectively forcing their religious beliefs on non-believers.
External links
- American Family Association (http://www.afa.net/)
- AFA Journal (http://afajournal.org/), a publication of the AFA
- Right Wing Watch (http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=3796) (People for the American Way)
Categories: Organization stubs | Political advocacy groups in the U.S. | Anti-pornography activists | LGBT rights opposition
