In opposing the City Council’s acknowledgement of Humanist Recognition Week,  Vice Mayor Tracy Carroll said the group seeking the resolution had earlier “opposed a week approving Thanksgiving.”  Further, Carroll said, a search on the internet led her to conclude Humanists are “atheists.”  Mayor Craig Fletcher opposed the proclamation because, he said, “they do not believe in Jesus Christ as their savior.”

The resolution in question made no reference to Thanksgiving, as Carroll claimed, though representatives of the local Humanist group said they would have no reason to object to such a proclamation.

In a letter to InsideVero, Phillip Katrovitz said the group also did not object to the Christian Heritage Week proclamation to which Carroll referred.  What local Humanists opposed, Katrovitsz explained, was the sponsorship of the Christian Heritage Week proclamation by the American Family Association.   “We felt that Christian Heritage Week should have been sponsored by a mainstream Christian group and not by an organization labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. We made it perfectly clear that we supported Christian Heritage Week.  Thanksgiving was not even mentioned, so it is disingenuous for Carroll to now claim we objected to a “Thanksgiving proclamation,” Katrovitz wrote.

The Southern Poverty Law Center attributes the following statements to AFA representatives, among others:

“Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.” – Bryan Fischer, AFA director of issue analysis for government and public policy, 2010

“[Islam] is, in fact, a religion of war, violence, intolerance, and physical persecution of non-Muslims.” –Tim Wildmon AFA President, March 6, 2012

“Homosexuality is a poor and dangerous choice, and has been proven to lead to a litany of health hazards to not only the individuals but also society as a whole.” –AFA Action Alert, July 20, 2012