House Majority Leader: Conservative Christians Are Being 'Silenced' by Mainstream Media
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told attendees at a Council for National Policy gathering earlier this month that Christians are “being silenced in corporate America.”
“Increasingly people like us, conservative Christians are being belittled or forced out of the public square,” the California Republican said. “Conservative Christians are being silenced in corporate America and the mainstream media, including on social media, where we get so much of our news today, are trying to discredit or take our words off.”
McCarthy referenced the religious liberty group Alliance Defending Freedom being removed from AmazonSmile, a program through which the online retailer allows its customers to contribute a portion of what they spend on purcahses to the charity of their choice.
Amazon cited ADF’s designation by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center as the reason its approved status was yanked.
“As you know, ADF is not some fringe group,” said McCarthy. “It is one of the most respected public-interest law firms in the country, with two cases pending before the Supreme Court.”
“We cannot sit still,” the Republican leader exhorted. “I believe if we get criticized for our speech, or if they try to deny it, we should say it louder and more often,” he continued, which drew applause from the audience.
“If ADF is not safe from discrimination, there will be no conservative group that is safe. It is not an isolated incident,” McCarthy stated.
He also listed examples of conservatives being silenced on social media.
“Do you remember in 2016 what did Facebook employees do? They would remove conservative talk from the news feed,” McCarthy said.
The majority leader also identified Twitter of being guilty of censorship for its decision to remove a pro-life campaign ad by GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee last fall after deciding it was “inflammatory.”
“Think about that for a moment,” McCarthy urged the audience. “They consider a pro-life message to be inflammatory, but not abortion itself, of tearing a human life from the womb. These are just a few of the threats that we face today.”
Twitter reversed course and allowed the ad to run again after Blackburn called the company out.
“After further review, we have made the decision to allow the content in question from Rep. Blackburn’s campaign ad to be promoted on our ads platform,” Twitter said in a statement, WBIR reported.
“While we initially determined that a small portion of the video used potentially inflammatory language, after reconsidering the ad in the context of the entire message, we believe that there is room to refine our policies around these issues. We have notified Rep. Blackburn’s campaign of this decision.”
As reported by The Western Journal last month, Google — which controls the largest portion of online ads placement in the world — informed a Christian publishing house it was banning the company’s marketing ads because they refer to Jesus and/or the Bible.
Similarly, in March, Facebook rejected an ad from a Catholic university in Ohio because it included a depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
An ad we placed was rejected by Facebook today for content that is “shocking, sensational, and excessively violent.”
We must agree with them. https://t.co/Jrf4A9W2Tm pic.twitter.com/uiijuSfXgn
— Franciscan University (@FranciscanU) March 30, 2018
The college posted an image to its Twitter page that it said Facebook rejected. The ad does not look particularly violent, showing just a scant amount of blood on Christ’s hands and in his side.
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