Speechless: Silencing the Christians
| Speechless: Silencing the Christians | |
|---|---|
.jpg) |
|
| Genre | Christian documentary |
| Presented by | Janet Parshall |
| Country of origin |
 United States
|
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 14 (13 + 1 special) |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Dan Scalf |
| Editor(s) | Scott Zachry |
| Running time | 30 minutes (series) 60 minutes (special) |
| Production company(s) | American Family Association |
| Release | |
| Original network |
The Inspiration Network (series) syndication via paid programming (special) |
| Original release | 2008 |
| External links | |
| Website | http://silencingchristians.com/ |
| Production website |
www |
Speechless: Silencing the Christians (also known as Silencing Christians) is a 2008 documentary series produced by the American Family Association (AFA) and hosted by commentator Janet Parshall; the 13-episode series was first televised by the Inspiration Network. The documentary series describes the AFA's opposition to what it claims to be "political correctness", and claims that various factors, such as separation of church and state, hate crime laws, the Fairness Doctrine, and the "gay agenda", are threatening the existence of Christianity. The DVD release added a 14th episode. The series was also broadcast as a one-hour special in 2009, causing controversy at a Tampa, Florida television station.
In 2009, the AFA released a one-hour special version of the program, which deals with their stance against what they call the "homosexual agenda", including interviews with ex-gay people. This special was produced mainly for commercial television stations (especially network affiliates), under the purview of paid programming time, where the AFA purchases the airtime from the station in the same way as a regular infomercial broker would do. The special also served as a tie-in to Donald Wildmon's book of the same name, which was released in early 2009.
In the Tampa Bay television market, NBC affiliate WFLA-TV aired the special on June 27, 2009, on the same day that the annual St. Petersburg pride parade was held, on the weekend of the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Prior to the telecast, the station was swamped with numerous phone calls and e-mails against the station showing the program. After the program ended, the station logged hundreds of phone calls and over 1000 e-mails, all in protest against the show. General Manager Mike Pumo refused to elaborate on the decision, other than saying that the show's content did not "raise the red flag" during pre-screening. Stratton Pollitzer, deputy director of homosexual rights organization Equality Florida, considered the show hate speech, saying, "I think this program is a piece of homophobic propaganda and it has no place on a major network like NBC." NBC is merely the station's affiliated network; from 1966 to 2017, it had been owned by Media General, the same company that owned it at the time of the Stonewall riots; it was announced on January 27, 2016, that Nexstar Broadcasting Group would acquire WFLA as part of its Media General purchase, which led to it and MyNetworkTV affiliate WTTA being part of the newly-minted Nexstar Media Group on January 17, 2017. Brian Winfield, Equality Florida's director of communications, said the special "paints the entire gay community as being anti-Christian and that's just not true. On a day when tens of thousands of Tampa residents and their friends gathered together to celebrate diversity and pride, WFLA chose to profit from screening a show that was dehumanizing to gay people."
...
Wikipedia