When Kwame Kilpatrick, candidate for Mayor of Detroit, made some offensive comments about not wanting his children to be around gays, AFA Michigan's Gary Glenn praised him for it. BTL 6/21/01

AFA of Michigan's anti-gay and anti-pornography work in MI is heavily funded by right-wing extremists.

First of all, most of the campaigns they have been involved in have been directly subsidized by AFA National in Tupelo, MS. For example, when anti-gay activists fought to repeal the Human Rights Ordinance in Ferndale, Michigan the only contribution made to their campaign was $5,000 from AFA in Mississippi.

Also AFA has aligned themselves with one of the most infamously right-wing zealots in America: Tom Monaghan. Monaghan is well-known for the bottomless pit of money he amassed as owner of Domino's Pizza. He still owns 7% of the company. Monaghan has formed a right-wing version of the ACLU known as the Thomas More Center for Law and Justice. They are designed to carry out Roman Catholic orthodoxy through impact litigation (test cases). Monaghan also formed the Ave Maria School of Law to train future fundamentalists to be armed with law degrees. To complete his troika, he has also formed the Ann Arbor PAC which funnels a great deal of his political contributions to fight the gay community and reproductive freedom.

Monaghan formed Legatus which is a global network of right-wing Catholic millionaires that carry out Vatican policies around the world in places like Guatamala, the United States and other South American countries. Monaghan has suffered servere criticism from much of the Roman Catholic community for not spending his millions of dollars on combatting poverty or homelessness. Monaghan also considers himself 9 months older than his birth certificate would indicate because he considered the time he spent in his mother's womb as time he was a person.

The AFA of Michigan has frequently used the conservative petition firm National Petition Management in its campaign to put the basic human rights of GLBT people up to a vote. NPM has been hired to advance several right-wing initiatives around the country, including vouchers, and English-only laws.

During the Royal Oak Human Rights Ordinance Campaign, AFA Michigan worked to secure contributions from the conservative Cavalry Baptist Church in Pontiac.

For example, the anti-gay campaign fighting to defeat the Human Rights Ordinance there accepted thousands of dollars from Monaghan's Ann Arbor PAC.

Gary Glenn, AFA Michigan President, has been on the payroll and staff of the notoriously right-wing think tank The Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The MCPP is another bottomless pit of money that works tirelessly to dismantle the American promise of free public education. Glenn moved to Michigan to work on the impending voucher issue headed for the Michigan ballot in 2000. Glenn still lives within walking distance of the MCPP in Midland, Michigan where Glenn runs the AFA out of his home.

The voucher movement ("school choice" as the right-wing calls it; "parochi-aid" as we call it) was founded soon after the 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision that mandated the desegregation of public schools. Vouchers were created to "rescue" white children from ever-diversifying public schools. Vouchers were the racist panic response to Brown. Vouchers remain to this day a beacon for the religious right. They work to defund public schools and try to re-route taxpayer, public money to fund private and religious schools which are allowed to discriminate. These schools are not accountable to any government oversight, and have the freedom to discriminate against GLBT students, the students of GLBT parents, students with disabilities, students of color, non-Christian students...In short, Glenn was working hard on a movement that is very unpopular, very right-wing, and integrally tied to racism, homophobia, and Christian supremacy.

As noted elsewhere in this site, AFA aligns itself with other right-wing notables such as Dr. Laura, Charlton Heston, "Ex-Gay" quack doctors and many others.