first class fail

Should the Family Research Institute Have to Pay the Standard Postal Rate?

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Hoping to alert Americans about the dangers of gays serving openly in the military, the 28-year-old hate group Family Research Institute sent out a four-page newsletter to some 1,000 folks, which includes an interview with a female soldier who had to deal with faggots in basic training, as well as “research” about gay servicemembers. But then postal workers in Colorado charged with distributing the mailer decided it was “obscene” and “incited force-able resistance against the government,” and refused to give FRI the non-profit mailing rate. You can imagine who grew furious.

First, let’s be clear about what FRI — founded to uphold traditional values and whatever — believes. In a February blog post titled “Gays in Military = Sex in Barracks,” the organization claims, “If homosexuals are allowed to serve in the military, they will be recruiting in the showers, having sex in the barracks, and straights will undergo sensitivity training. Before long, the U.S. may be defended by the sex-obsessed and those who can tolerate kowtowing to them.”

LOL, right?

But it’s no laughing matter to FRI chairman Dr. Paul Cameron, who says, “This is a most serious matter. We’re Americans. Where does the post office get off enforcing Obama’s rules and thinking, on us, because we disagree with them.” As for the newsletter: “There’s no violence in there. There’s no obscenity in there. There is, what we consider to be, interesting information.”

Cameron’s group was forced to pay the standard rate, which is three cents more. Ron Perry, a Postal Service spokesman, says “we have mailing standards that we have to uphold.” So FRI appealed the decision to the Postal Service’s Price and Classification Board in Washington D.C., which overruled the Colorado post office’s decision. (FRI still wants an apology.)

And that was the right decision. FRI is a registered non-profit, and its newsletter wasn’t advising anyone to go out and murder the gays. Disagree with its viewpoints, but like any gay rights group whose views FRI might disagree with, Cameron should receive the same non-profit mailing rate as any other organization in the group.

In addition to the interview with a female soldier (which we couldn’t find online), FRI says this letter — from retired Navy Cap. Lawrence R. Jefferis — was also part of the mailing.

And even his ridiculous statements are constitutionally protected speech: “During my enlisted service, homosexuals seemed to be a clumsy lot. They had a tendency to repeatedly fall headfirst down an engine room ladder. Some were even known to trip on deck and “fall” overboard. The crew had a way of policing themselves to eliminate homosexual advances.… It has been my experience that if sexual favors are available aboard ship, some enterprising sailor, petty officer, or officer will find a way to take advantage of the offer. … The argument I hear most often expounded by the homophiles is that the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy deprives the military of outstanding young men and women who want nothing more than to defend their country and that they have the ability to operate a radar, or a gas turbine, or a gun as well as a heterosexual. That can’t be true.… But, even if it were true, are homosexuals really worth the administrative problems they would create by their mere existence? The Navy, today, does not willingly accept GED holders… Minor criminal records are a bar to enlistment. Visible tattoos and piercings are not permitted. Are these aberrations more damning than sodomy? Is it your contention that cohabitors, adulterers, prostitutes, young men and women with tattoos, those with only GEDs, or the obese cannot serve as well as homosexuals? If so, what is your empirical evidence to support such an argument? If we get to pick and choose which laws we uphold, which laws are next on the line to ignore? Carnal Knowledge?”

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