Pentagon admits Christian ministry not a 'hate group'

By Todd Starnes

The Pentagon has admitted that information used in an Army briefing that labeled the American Family Association (AFA) as a domestic hate group was not acquired from official sources and does not reflect Army doctrine.

Meanwhile, the president of the well-respected Christian ministry says his organization may file a defamation lawsuit against the military.

“We are probably going to be taking legal action,” said Tim Wildmon, president of one of the nation’s most prominent Christian ministries. “The Army has smeared us. They’ve defamed the American Family Association.”

The AFA was listed alongside domestic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam during a briefing last week at Camp Shelby in Mississippi.

A soldier who attended the briefing recently sent me a photograph of a slideshow presentation that listed AFA as a domestic hate group because of their support of traditional family values and their opposition to homosexuality.

George Wright, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, tells me the slide was not produced by the Army and it does not reflect their policy or doctrine.