David Caton, the executive director of the Florida Family Association, the Sunshine State outpost of the American Family Association which pressured Lowes to pull its advertising from All American Muslim, runs an organization that is “made up of THOUSANDS OF SUPPORTERS across America who share in the same goal of improving America’s moral environment,” according to its website. (Bizarre use of all caps in original.)
For Caton, Muslims are very scary, and so are gays. In fact, they may not even be people.
Newt Gingrich, who has traveled the country with Caton’s inspiration, the American Family Association’s Don Wildmon, pontificating on how to “redisover” God in America, thinks Palestinians aren’t real people, fertilized eggs are, and that he is somehow anointed to define a proper marriage.
Like Gingrich, Caton can’t figure out what a person is. The people in All American Muslim are not real to him. According to the FFA website, the show “profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks.” The real Muslims, FFA maintains, are “Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.”
Caton is a big fan of the shari’ah scare industry, citing Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer on his website. Following the Lowes cave-in, Caton now boasts that it has convinced 65 other advertisers to pull their ads, according to the Detroit News.
Caton is well-known in his Florida community for using his non-profit, tax-exempt (and therefore taxpayer subsidized) organization (which, according to its most recent tax return, has revenues of less than $200,000) to try to confuse big institutions that his THOUSANDS OF SUPPORTERS might stop buying their two-by-fours.
Lowes looks even more ridiculous for backing down under Caton’s pressure given how his track record is actually pretty pathetic.
Last year, Caton’s minions flooded the University of South Florida with emails protesting the teaching of queer theory. USF, as it should have, ignored them. In 2008, Caton recorded a robocall against a Democratic challenger for a seat on the Hillsborough County Commission because the candidate, Kevin Beckner, is gay. Beckner won. In 2007, the Hillsborough County public schools blocked emails from Caton’s group, and won a court challenge he brought on First Amendment grounds. Caton, who blamed Muslims for the secularization of the school’s calendar, had sent more than 3,500 emails to the district protesting its decision not to make religious holidays official school holidays. Caton appealed, but rather than spend more money on his appeal, the school district convinced him to drop it in exchange for foregoing its right to demand he repay its court costs.
Caton may have some victories, like his campaign against Bubba the Love Sponge. But Lowes seems to have mistaken a gnat for a hammer.
