Tim Wildmon

AFA president

August 1999 – Fall will soon be here. Which means what? Come on, what happens in the fall? I’m talking the thing that defines the season? The clock is running out on you (a hint). Okay, I can’t believe I have to tell you. The correct answer, of course, is: FOOTBALL.

For me, especially college football. The ol’ pigskin will be flying through the crisp cool air and Americans will fill campus stadiums all over the country to cheer on their favorite team.

One of the reasons I enjoy football – and other sports – is that there is always a final outcome. For all the talk and fanfare, one thing is certain. Three hours after the two teams take the field you are going to find out who wins and who loses. When the clock says 0:00, one team walks off the field feeling great and the other walks off depressed. One set of fans is going to be cheering and the other school’s fans are going to have a sick feeling for awhile – at least until they start getting ready for the next game.

In contrast, the battle in which the American Family Association is engaged – the culture war – never ends. We win a skirmish and two more break out. There are times you want to give up and quit.

Recently Pat Buchanan said:

Ultimately, our culture war is about one question: Is God dead, or is God king? For centuries this issue has been critical. If God is dead, as Nietzsche wrote, everything is permissible, and eventually, one will logically reach the conclusion of Paris’ student radicals of 1968: The only thing that is forbidden is to forbid. But if God is king, men have a duty to try, as best they can, to conform their lives to His will and shape society in accordance with His law. Defection and indifference are not options open to us. We are commanded to fight… For the culture war is at its heart a religious war about whether God or man will be exalted, whose moral beliefs shall be enshrined in law, and what children shall be taught to value and abhor. With those stakes, to walk away is to abandon your post in time of war… Perhaps T. S. Eliot was right when he said there are no lost causes, because there are no won causes. The struggle is eternal.

I think that sentiment motivates most of us who are concerned about what kind of country we are leaving our children and grandchildren. We care. It matters.

We hear a lot of talk about our environment and how we need to take care of nature for future generations. No doubt about that. But we hear far less about the consequences of polluting our moral environment.

Recently AFA launched a major effort to help clean up one part of our moral environment – the Internet – with American Family Online (AFO), our new full-service AFA-sponsored Internet service provider.

With the development of the Internet a whole new world of information became available to anyone who had access to a computer and modem. It is literally changing the way we communicate, both personally and in business.

But as with most advances in technology, there is a very dark side to the Internet. (Did you know that there are over 10 million pornography sites on the Internet? And another 1000 go online every day.) We receive stories every day of people, sometimes children, running into hardcore pornography on the world wide web. The number of men and boys hooked on this stuff is tragic.

But now families all over the nation can be protected from the objectionable content on the Internet.

With AFO, objectionable and harmful material is filtered out before it gets to your home. And our porn blocking software can’t be overridden with a password.

Local dial-up numbers are available in over 1,100 communities across America. If you’re already online, you can get a list of cities at www.afo.net. Or you can call AFO at 1-888-817-9314. When it comes to the Internet, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

But when it comes to third down and 10 yards to go, it’s better to pass than run the ball. But that’s
another story.