WASHINGTON, D.C., August 23, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The leader of an organization that may have been targeted by the man who opened fire at the Family Research Council says the Justice Department has done nothing to investigate credible threats of violence against it, because the Obama administration applies “different tiers of protection” to Christians than it does to Muslims, abortionists, and homosexual activists.
LGBT volunteer Floyd Lee Corkins II said “I don’t like your politics” before wounding a security guard at the Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C. headquarters last Wednesday. Federal authorities say the shooter toted a Chick-fil-A bag – but Traditional Values Coalition President Andrea Lafferty said the FBI revealed he was carrying something else: TVC’s address. If he had escaped, he planned to ambush the Traditional Values Coalition, she said.
Lafferty told LifeSiteNews.com that she attempted to contact Attorney General Eric Holder and appealed to investigators at the Department of Justice but was “blown off.”
“If someone had mailed bacon to a mosque, all heck would have broken loose, and they would have sent in attorneys from the Justice Department. It’s considered a hate crime,” Lafferty told LifeSiteNews. “But they ignore the concerns of Christians.”
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Lafferty said after a confrontation, the FBI’s Joint Task Force on Terrorism admitted, “yes, in fact the guy did have your address in his pocket.” The FBI has not publicly confirmed that information.
After contacting the Justice Department, Lafferty says she was directed to the U.S. Attorney Ronald Machin’s office, but the receptionist would not allow her to speak to anyone in a position of authority. Ultimately, the receptionist told her if her life was threatened to contact local police, who could “investigate and file paperwork,” according to Lafferty.
The TVC has received “many, many threats from the homosexual and transgender community,” Lafferty said – adding that LGBT extremists had attacked the home of TVC’s chairman, her father Rev. Lou Sheldon, as well as its office in Anaheim, California.
“The attacks from the homosexual and transgender community have been going on since the ‘80s,” she said.
Like FRC President Tony Perkins, she believes the Southern Poverty Law Center’s designation of TVC as a “hate group” played a role in landing pro-family lobbyists on a hit list.
“Only two groups were targeted: us and Family Research. We are both the two [D.C.] targets of the Southern Poverty Law Center. We’ve been vocal on traditional marriage and lesbian, gay, and transgender issues,” she said, noting her group lobbied against a “non-discrimination act” that would have forced schools to employ transgender teachers. TVC also opposed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s public school curriculum, which it said equated Christians with neo-Nazis.
The SPLC website states, “The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), long listed as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of its demonizing and false propaganda directed at LGBT people.”
She said sexual minority extremists had been “given a green light to go after Christians”—but the responsibility went well beyond Morris Dees and his associates in Montgomery.
“It’s this administration,” Lafferty said. “There are different tiers of protection in this country. The United States Justice Department under Eric Holder has put Christians at a low priority.”
Other religions, she said, received preferential treatment from the DOJ.
In 2010, Eric Holder told a meeting of the group Muslim Advocates in San Francisco that he would vigorously prosecute hate crimes against Muslims. Police in New York are currently investigating whether someone left bacon out at a park hosting a Ramadan prayer service as a “hate crime.” An anonymous caller has claimed he left it out for seagulls and raccoons.
“I have yet to be in a meeting where Eric Holder attended to say, ‘I will protect you Christians,’” Lafferty said. “There’s this favoritism of certain groups of [religious] people over others. That’s unconstitutional.”
“There is not equality with this Justice Department and this administration,” she said.
Christian conservatives say that favoritism extends to matters of lifestyle.
In 2009, President Obama signed a hate crimes bill that gives special protections to those allegedly targeted because they are homosexual.
The Obama administration has prosecuted or aggressively questioned pro-lifers for stepping on abortion clinic territory, investigated pro-lifers as a potential terrorist threat, and branded them as members of a lone wolf movement most likely to commit acts of domestic terrorism.
“I think Christians need to wake up. This is a very dark time,” Lafferty told LifeSiteNews.com. “We have a government that does not believe they need to protect us.”