James Dobson, Focus on the Family
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson (image via screenshot)

After New Orleans Saints’ quarterback Drew Brees got slammed for making a 23-second video with Focus on the Family (FotF), a longtime antigay hate group, the group is claiming that it’s not actually an antigay hate group (even though it totally is).

You may recall that Brees’ video encouraged Christian kids to participate in “Bring Your Bible To School Day,” an event deliberately started by its founders as a way to “counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda and express an opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective,” according to longtime queer journalist Matt Baume.

Related: Focus On The Family Exec Shuns Gay Daughter, Now She’s Speaking Out

After being called out by fans for working with bigots, Brees said he doesn’t think FotF Family is a hate group, even though he’s worked with them for nearly a decade.

He said, “I do not support any groups that discriminate or have their own agendas that are trying to promote inequality. Hopefully that set the record straight and we can all move on, because that’s not what I stand for.”

And now FotF is trying to act like it’s not rabidly antigay either by releasing a video responding to Bree’s blowback. In the video, the group says, “Some in the LGBTQ community were offended by because obviously Drew Brees didn’t know, according to them, that we were a ‘hate group.’”

Aha, that’s cute. It’s not according to “us” — it’s according to the decades of comments the group has made demonizing queer people.

As our own Graham Gremore mentioned, “Focus on the Family opposes same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. It also supports gay conversion therapy and religious freedom laws, believes trans people are deranged, says anti-bullying groups promote homosexuality, and has lobbied for legislation allowing antigay workplace discrimination.”

It has also compared same-sex couples to pedophiles and animal rapists.

Naturally, hate groups don’t like admitting what they are because it’s not good for business. But if it walks like a hate group and talks like a hate group …

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