CBS and AP Cite Liberty Counsel's Hate Group Label

Hate merchants Mat and Anita Staver

It drives me to distraction that all too often the mainstream media gives a platform to hate groups and their leaders - Tony Perkins and FRC are usual examples - and never disclose to readers and/or viewers the ugly reality about these individuals and groups.   Whether it is out of simple laziness or some sick sense of wanting to appear "balanced," the unwary are left with the wrong impression that these are simple "Christian" and/or family values advocates rather than hate merchants. Mat Staver and his equally deranged wife and their utterly misnamed "law firm" have been seeking to ride the Kim Davis circus all the way to the bank.  Thankfully, their effort has led to CBS News and now the Associated Press to look into and expose their sordid, hate filled, and lie filled nature and tactics.  As Joe Jervis notes, Liberty Counsel is finally being exposed for the generate of lies and hate that it has always been.  Here are highlights:

The Associated Press today published a story which rips the Liberty Counsel’s “imaginary” Peruvian soccer stadium story and points out that the SPLC has very good reasons for categorizing them as a hate group. Nothing in the story will be a bombshell to regular JMG readers, but it’s good to see the mainstream national media report on what we have known for years. Some excerpts:

Kim Davis’ lawyer stood onstage in a Washington D.C. hotel and pointed to a photo on the screen. It showed 100,000 people packed into a Peruvian soccer stadium, Mat Staver told the crowd, all there to pray for the Kentucky clerk battling against gay marriage. The crowd erupted. It wasn’t true.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the Liberty Counsel as an anti-gay hate groups for spreading false information. “A group that regularly portrays gay people as perverse, diseased pedophiles putting Western civilization at risk are way, way over the line,” said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the center. The Liberty Counsel has connected homosexuality to higher rates of promiscuity and incest, Potok said, despite scientific evidence to the contrary. The firm opposes laws banning hate crimes and supports discredited conversion therapies that purport to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals. Staver once declared that the Boy Scouts would become a “playground for pedophiles” once it allowed gay troop leaders.

Having followed these "Christian" and "family values" groups for many years, there is literal no one who lies more and spreads knowingly false information about gays and others whom the "godly folk" view as "other."  If one wants a reason to walk away from the label "Christian," look no farther than these individuals and organizations.