A couple of days ago I received an e-mail from Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association. In typical seething indignation, the missive exhorted me to leap to the condemnation of Morningstar, a provider of financial information, for its refusal to run an ad on its Web site from Faith Financial Planners:
We have learned that our friends at Faith Financial Planners were denied a paid advertisement on the website of Morningstar unless they removed the “Christian” content from their advertisement. Morningstar — one of the largest providers of financial information on mutual funds, stocks, and portfolios for individual investors and institutions in the world — told Faith Financial that the company had to “change the message completely and eliminate the Christian undertones.” This is a clear example of bigotry just because Faith Financial represents a Christian message about values and investing. Faith Financial is a company that, through one of its subsidiaries, provides information for Christians to use in reflecting their values in their investments. The information alerts values-based investors to those companies that are involved in pornography, abortion, the homosexual agenda, etc.
But Wildmon wasn’t finished yet:
In an unprecedented move, after a contract had been signed by both parties, an ad sales agent for Morningstar informed Faith Financial that Morningstar had reversed its decision to accept the ad and decided that Faith Financial must censor the “Christian undertones” in order for the ad to be acceptable. American Family Association is asking you to let the leadership at Morningstar know that this kind of Christian bigotry is unacceptable.
I, of course, took action. I like to take the AFA’s stock letter copy and rewrite it to take the polar opposite position. In a perverse way, it relaxes me and is mightily entertaining. Today I received a response to my e-mail from Morningstar Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Joe Mansueto:
The AFA’s email alert claimed that Morningstar asked a company called Faith Financial Planners to “eliminate the Christian undertones from their ad,” reneged on a contract, and rejected an advertisement on the basis of anti-Christian bias.
These allegations are false. First and foremost, at no time did Morningstar sign a contract with Faith Financial or any group representing Faith Financial, and no one at Morningstar asked Faith Financial to “eliminate the Christian undertones from their ad.” The AFA is also incorrect in accusing us of bias in our decision not to run the ad in question.
Seems Morningstar had pretty good grounds for not running the ad:
This ad, which was submitted to us by a third-party agency, was a special promotional offer for a free copy of the book “Money on Loan from God.” A variety of companies run these types of promotional offers, which are made available to people who sign up for Premium Membership service on our Web site, Morningstar.com.
To give you a better sense of our internal process, our ad sales team evaluates each ad submission on a case-by-case basis, within our stated advertising guidelines. We have limited sponsorship opportunities available for the special offer area of our Web site and often turn down promotional requests based on a number of factors.
We also frequently turn down ads that we believe make unreasonable or risky promises to investors. The text in this particular ad—“Achieving a double bottom line on your investment — financial and moral!”— raised a red flag with our ad rep. Also, our ad rep was not familiar with the author of the book or the book’s contents.
Taking all of these issues into consideration, as well as our advertising guidelines, our ad rep made the judgment call to turn down the promotional offer for this special area of our site.
So, let’s review the facts, since AFA apparently didn’t: There was no signed contract, Morningstar didn’t ask Faith Financial to change its ad copy, the ad probably violated Morningstar’s ad policy and it wasn’t Faith Financial but a third-party agency that submitted the ad.
This is a familiar approach by American Family Association — trump up some nonexistent instance of alleged bias against Christian values, distort the facts, rouse its base to action and smugly await some hoped-for free media coverage.
The AFA simply practices thuggery in the name of Jesus. Like any bullies, the Wildmons — pater and son — exaggerate their organization’s power and significance, and wield the threat of economic boycott like a baseball bat when they attack, supposedly in defense of Jesus.
Morningstar’s Mansueto did the right thing by showing the AFA for what it is — a gang of lying, bullying Christian fundamentalist extremists.
Update: AFA has compounded its earlier lies with new ones. Read more…
American Family Assoc. Caught in Another Lying Smear Campaign…
The rabid right thugs at AFA are in attack mode again, this time against Morningstar, the financial info company — saying Morningstar reneged on a contract to run a Christian ad. Morningstar flatly denies signing a contract and says the ad was a promo…
YIKES!!! Guess they hadn’t remembered their bible…. Render unto Caesar thinks that are Caesar’s, render unto God things that are God’s…. since when does God loan money… Good for Morningstar….we’ve had enough of that right wing fundamentalist BS…
Your story title and commentary are at least as misguiding as what you’re alleging AFA did. Nowhere in the AFA missive did I see a lie on their part. Tim Wildmon was acting on information he got from Faith Financial Planners. Why would he make this up on his own? There’s no motivation for AFA to lie. All AFA is trying to do is protect Christians against discrimination. Christians are the only group in America that doesn’t enjoy free speech protections. I am still not convinced by Morningstar’s response. I believe their rejection of the ad was totally based on someone being afraid of promulgation of a Christian message. You have to ask yourself: Why does Christ cause such a commotion 2000 years after His life on earth? There must be something to it…
“Christians are the only group in America that doesn’t enjoy free speech protections”
Apparently if you repeat a lie enough people (particularly theists) will believe it.
Oh, poor Christians.
Maybe someday there will be a Christian in the White House!
Jeremy: Wildmon saw an opportunity to pursue his agenda and he took it either without confirming the information independently or distorting and fabricating it on his own. The AFA has a history of distortion and intimidation, and if you do a search on Pensito Review, you’ll see we have been exposing the Wildmons for the hypocrites and liars they are for years. And we’ll continue to do so, until people wise up to their radical, intolerant un-Christian agenda.
Jeremy:
If you don’t see the lie here, you must have trouble reading for comprehension. AFA is not just your run of the mill hate group. It has a net worth of $32,165,821 — 100% of which it obtained by duping feeble-minded people out of their hard earned dough.
And to say Christians are the only group that doesn’t have First Amendment rights or that Christians have trouble getting their message out is absurd.
Christian politicians control the White House and they controlled the House and the Senate for most of the previous 12 years. Christians have at least two cable channels that do Christian programming 24/7. Christians dominate talk radio as well as the Fox News Channel.
Christians sell millions of books to each other, and they own and operate facilities tax free — churches — in every neighborhood of every town in America. They can meet in these facilities and talk about Christianity all day and all night if they so choose.
That’s a pretty good soap box for evangelicals which make up 10 percent of the population.
A true Christian of the old school, ie. non-political, would look at the fortune controlled by AFA and wonder how many people could housed, clothed and fed for the $32 million that AFA will waste on spreading hatred and intolerance in Christ’s name.
Wanna read about the worst smear campaign ever?
Sam Sloan was the victim of an 18-month smear campaign in which he was relentlessly called a child molester, while they simultaneously impersonated him on the web.
All this over a 3-million-dollar Chess budget.
The attackers are former chess champion Susan Polgar, and her husband Paul Truong.
Chess has become quite a ruthless and cutthroat business.
Link
I, of course, took action. I like to take the AFA’s stock letter copy and rewrite it to take the polar opposite position.
Hooray for Morningstar and Mr. Mansueto!! It’s nice to know there are a few people that have the courage to stand up to these bullying fanatics that claim to represent Christian values, when they actually represent the very opposite of what Christ was trying to convey to us. Although I am a 67-year-old woman that is still workking and not in the clas of big investors, I would like to subscribe to Morningstar as a way of supporting a paper with integrity and courage! Where do I sing up?
[…] The AFA made the following claim: We have learned that our friends at Faith Financial Planners were denied a paid advertisement on the web site of Morningstar unless they removed the “Christian” content from their advertisement. Morningstar… told Faith Financial that the company had to “change the message completely and eliminate the Christian undertones.” This is a clear example of bigotry just because Faith Financial represents a Christian message about values and investing. […]