Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute (CFI), an affiliate of the conservative Concerned Women for America, baselessly claimed that homosexuals and their “lifestyle” are to blame for San Francisco's low 18-and-under population.
From a June 2 article by AgapePress, the news service of the conservative American Family Association:
“The homosexuals have enormous influence,” he [Knight] says. “It's a very artsy city, and everything's very expensive. That's one reason families can't afford to live there anymore. It's all geared toward either the single life or the two-income adult life without kids.”
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“The homosexual lifestyle is about pleasing oneself,” the CFI spokesman asserts, “not planning for the future, not setting aside money for kids, not trying to create a situation where the generations come together. It's about having fun. It's about indulging in whatever desire you want at any given time.”
In his attempt to invoke a homosexual menace as the enemy of family life in San Francisco, Knight ignored a far more obvious culprit: skyrocketing housing prices. As the San Francisco Chronicle noted on May 24: “Simply put, the region's astronomical home prices are making it almost impossible for young couples with young children to move in, leaving kindergarten enrollment slipping across the Bay Area -- and costing districts tens of thousands of dollars each year.”
San Francisco ranked near the bottom of a report on the comparative affordability of metro areas released by Wells Fargo and the National Association of Home Builders, according to an article the Chronicle published two days later. According to the Chronicle, “The median price for a single-family home in the Bay Area in April was $622,000 -- about three times the national median.” However, the spike in home prices is not exclusive to cities with prominent gay populations. The median U.S. home price increased 15 percent in the past year and 55 percent in the past five years, to $206,000, according to the National Association of Realtors. In San Francisco, the price of single-family homes has increased by 65 percent in the past five years. In Washington, D.C., where Concerned Women for America is headquartered, home prices have increased 108 percent in the past five years.
AgapePress claims to provide “reliable news from a Christian source.” It claims that its daily news summary has more than 50,000 subscribers, with almost 70 Christian newspapers and 30 websites subscribing to the full service. An estimated additional 3,000 to 4,000 other websites are using AgapePress' free headlines, while the AgapePress website draws in the neighborhood of 10 million page views per month and 100,000 unique visitors per month.