Southern Poverty Law Center: Social Conservative Organizations Are Hate Groups
BY JOHN ROSSOMANDO
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says it will not back down from its decision to label the Family Research Council and other socially conservative groups as hate groups, on par with the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations, for their views about homosexuality.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins recently asked SPLC to retract the hate group designation, but SPLC Intelligence Project Director Mark Potok told The Daily Caller that will never happen.
SPLC’s Winter 2010 edition of its “Intelligence Report” magazine lists the Family Research Council as a hate group alongside the American Family Association, the Traditional Values Coalition, and 11 other social conservative groups. The report, titled “18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda,” also lists five other organizations as being anti-gay – such as Concerned Women for America and the National Organization for Marriage — but refrains from classifying them as hate groups.
According to SPLC, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America and the other similar groups spread “known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling.”
“Labeling people and groups as hate groups is laying the groundwork to then charge them with hate crimes using the full force of government to oppress people for their beliefs,” said Concerned Women America President Wendy Wright.
Potok told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews SPLC chose to add the FRC to its list of hate groups due to its claims that gay men molest children at higher rates than straight men, its insistence gay activists want to eliminate age of consent laws, and due to comments FRC Senior Research Fellow Peter Sprigg made suggesting homosexual behavior should be recriminalized.
Perkins disavowed Sprigg’s statement calling for the recriminalization of homosexual behavior during his joint appearance with Potok on MSNBC and said it did not represent the Family Research Council’s official stance.
“The group [SPLC] has marginal credibility,” Perkins said. “They actually used to be a pretty good group that did a lot of good working against racism, but that’s been pretty much worked out.
“So they have to find a new gig, and so apparently they have picked up the banner of the homosexuals … [and have made] claim of [us being] a hate group as if it is a trump card and it’s over.”
Perkins told TheDC that the SPLC cherry-picked the scientific evidence it chose to cite against the Family Research Council and other similar groups in its related report, titled “10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked”, and ignored contrary evidence.
“We actually went through the studies they cited in their report and have seen the flaws in them, and we pointed to other peer-reviewed research,” Perkins said. “We’re not saying every homosexual has a proclivity to abuse children or that most of them do, but we are saying there is a link that is out there in the research.
“That’s open there for debate, and we need to debate that. To say this is beyond debate or shouldn’t be debated is just wrong.”
>>Continue reading at the Daily Caller
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Re: Southern Poverty Law Center: Social Conservative Organizations Are Hate Groups
Ricochet didn't make the cut? Aren't we conservative enough? I guess all those threads where we Rico-libertarians defended gay marriage did us in.
As if this country wasn't polarized enough. I've never seen it worse (except perhaps during the 1960's riots).
I grew up in a black neighborhood and went to black schools. Not until Barack Obama became President was I ever called a racist (happened at a congressional town hall meeting last year - twice).
Jul '10
Re: Southern Poverty Law Center: Social Conservative Organizations Are Hate Groups
The SPLC is sort of the hard left fringe of the ACLU. Pay it no mind.
Edited on Dec 6, 2010 at 10:44amAug '10
Re: Southern Poverty Law Center: Social Conservative Organizations Are Hate Groups
What a perfect example of anachronism. From a project that championed the Civil Rights of the poor southern blacks to a office full of lawyers in search of an agenda, the SPLC is the definition of mission creep. But instead of growing creepily larger, which I am sure they did, they crept on over and left the mainstream to become a catch-all stop for lefty lawyers wanting to burnish the progressive cred on their resumes. They probably raise more money in LA, convincing people that there still poll taxes or some boogeymen bs, than they do in Harlem or Chicago. I shudder to imagine what my funding search will find later, bet there's a lot Ford Foundation, Pew, Mellon, and the usual Soros fronts like Tides, Moveon.
Julian Bond -Tonight on Glee !
Aug '10
Re: Southern Poverty Law Center: Social Conservative Organizations Are Hate Groups
Can't restrain myself. A little cursory visit to the SPLC website, the Dockets section brought this gem to the surface. the description of the case against the Baton Rouge School District.
Hundreds of Filipino guestworkers lured to teach in Louisiana public schools were cheated out of tens of thousands of dollars and forced into exploitative contracts by an international trafficking ring run by labor contractors. A federal class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of more than 350 Filipino teachers working in Louisiana under the federal H-1B guestworker program.
We heard things were bad after Katrina, but hundreds of FIlipino teachers ?I hope you find this as ridiculously incredulous as I do. Who knew ? The labor contractors were an international trafficking ring, from where ? NEA ?Maybe this is a problem, but I don't see how it affects the poor in the South unless 350 people showed up in Baton Rouge and couldn't speak English.
You ought to see the Headquarters for the SPLC, pretty fancy aluminum clad, Gehry-esque behemoth a block away from the State Bldg. A mecca for deconstructivist, oppressed peoples in the neighborhood.
Edited on Dec 6, 2010 at 11:50am