Rep. Kevin McCarthy: ‘Troubling’ Amazon Removed Christian Legal Group From Its Charity Program
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House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy wants conservatives and Christians to know one thing: He isn’t going to stay quiet as conservatives are continually subject to censorship on social media, in business, and in the eyes of some media outlets.
McCarthy gave a speech to the Council for National Policy on May 18 detailing how the current political climate is increasingly belittling Christian conservatives for their beliefs and, as a result, they are “forced out of the public square.”
“Conservative Christians are being silenced in corporate America and the mainstream media—including on social media, where some of the most important conversations of our day are taking place,” McCarthy said on May 18.
McCarthy’s speech comes at a time when major social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, are censoring conservatives and libertarian individuals and companies for their beliefs.
Social media companies aren’t the only ones censoring conservative speech. Major companies, like Amazon, also do it.
McCarthy noted Amazon in his speech.
“There are troubling reports that Amazon excluded the Alliance Defending Freedom from its charity program after a smear campaign by a left-wing activist group,” McCarthy told the council. “As you know, ADF is not some fringe group. It is one of the most respected public interest law firms in the country, with two cases pending before the Supreme Court … If ADF is not safe from discrimination, no conservative group is safe.”
Amazon barred a prominent Christian legal group, ADF, from participating in its charity program earlier this month. The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Peter Hasson did an investigation into what happened between Amazon and ADF and found that Amazon relies on groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center to determine which groups are allowed to take part in its charity. The Christian law firm wasn’t allowed to participate, however, a number of openly anti-Semitic organizations remain in Amazon’s charity network.
Republicans, like leader McCarthy, are starting to take notice, which has recently sparked action on the part of Congress to investigate and find answers.
The Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees and a House committee grilled Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in early April over his company’s censorship of conservative commentators and Christian groups.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, notably, asked Zuckerberg about Facebook’s censorship of reports of the IRS targeting conservatives, the censoring of roughly two dozen Catholic pages, and its labeling of conservative commentators Diamond and Silk as “unsafe.”
House lawmakers followed Cruz’s lead the next day, continuing to pepper the CEO in hopes of finding some direct answers.
Read the full text of McCarthy’s remarks:
And increasingly, people like us are belittled and forced out of the public square.
Conservative Christians are being silenced in corporate America and the mainstream media—including on social media, where some of the most important conversations of our day are taking place.
There are troubling reports that Amazon excluded the Alliance Defending Freedom from its charity program after a smear campaign by a left-wing activist group.
As you know, ADF is not some fringe group. It is one of the most respected public interest law firms in the country, with two cases pending before the Supreme Court.
Those cases—Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado and NIFLA v. Becerra—will determine the very future of religious freedom in America.
If ADF is not safe from discrimination, no conservative group is safe. … And this is not an isolated incident.
During the height of the 2016 election, we learned that Facebook employees ‘routinely’ suppressed conservative stories so they wouldn’t show up in Americans’ newsfeeds.
And Twitter has censored run-of-the-mill pro-life advertisements for being ‘inflammatory.’
Think how backward that is. To some in the media and Silicon Valley, the pro-life message is ‘inflammatory’—but not abortion itself, which tears apart innocent human beings in the womb.
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