In a long over due move (at least in my opinion), the Southern Poverty Law Center ("SPLC") has added the Alliance Defending Freedom ("ADF") - a purported "Christian" law firm - to its list of certified hate groups. ADF is the group that represented those seeking to uphold Virginia's unconstitutional Marshall-Newman Amendment. For those unfamiliar with SPLC, it describes itself as follows:
The SPLC is the premier U.S. non-profit organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists – including the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazi movement, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, antigovernment militias, Christian Identity adherents and others. We’re currently tracking more than 1,600 extremist groups operating across the country. We publish investigative reports, train law enforcement officers and share key intelligence, and offer expert analysis to the media and public.
So why has ADF been added to the list of SPLC hate groups? Because it fosters hatred towards LGBT individuals, seeks to have us re-criminalized, and spreads deliberate lies and untruths about LGBT individuals and our lives that range from claims about greatly reduced life spans, to equating homosexuality with pedophilia even though most pedophiles are heterosexual men. With ADF (and most of the "family values groups I have monitored for close to 20 years), the truth simply doesn't matter. ADF wants nothing less than a Christian theocracy in America and other parts of the world. It describes the separation of church and state to be a myth. Here are highlights on what ADF is all about and the untruths it disseminates:
Founded by some 30 leaders of the Christian Right, the Alliance Defending Freedom is a legal advocacy and training group that specializes in supporting the recriminalization of homosexuality abroad, ending same-sex marriage, and generally making life as difficult as possible for LGBT communities in the U.S. and internationally.
In Its Own Words:
The only surprise is the rapidity with which this degradation of our human dignity has occurred. It has occurred, with raging effect, and within twelve months, on the heels of government mandated recognition of same-sex ‘marriage’ – an oxymoronic institution if ever there was one. And, for its radical adherents, this has led to a deification of deviant sexual practices. It has further resulted in the inevitable and aggressive persecution of devout Christians who refuse to bow to the false god of sexual license.”—ADF-affiliated attorney Charles LiMandri, “The Tyranny of Made-Up Sexual Identities, 2015
“[C]ontrol of the educational system is central to those who want to advance the homosexual agenda. By its very nature, homosexual acts are incapable of bearing fruit – indeed, strictly speaking, they are not sexual, as they are incapable of being generative or procreative. Thus there is the need to desensitize and corrupt young minds, both to undermine resistance to the agenda and for recruitment among those that are at an emotionally vulnerable stage of development.”
— Then-senior ADF Legal Counsel (Global) Piero Tozzi, speaking at the World Congress of Families gathering in Madrid, Spain, 2012
“We mention the new promotion of pedophilia in the context of talking about the influence of homosexual behavior on college campuses, because, despite all objections to the contrary, the two are often intrinsically linked.”
—Alan Sears and Craig Osten, The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today, 2003
The founding board and original funders included James Dobson of Focus on the Family; Bill Bright of the Campus Crusade for Christ; D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries (now D. James Kennedy Ministries); and Don Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association. Its original purpose was to oppose the ACLU and other “radical groups” as well as to fight for “religious liberty.” Since its founding, the ADF has expanded its operations abroad as it battles abortion, LGBT equality, and what it considers the “myth” of the separation of church and state.
[T]he ADF is attempting to do away with the separation of church and state and graft its version of conservative Christianity onto the legal profession and the culture at large through its legal strategies and the training of thousands of attorneys and by advocating for policy changes on state and federal levels.
The ADF’s longstanding antipathy toward LGBT people has become public through its work on lawsuits, various statements it has made, and materials it has offered on its website over the years. It has also promoted the idea of a “homosexual agenda” — a nefarious scheme to destroy Christianity and, eventually, civilization through LGBT people’s efforts to secure equality under the law. To those who believe in this conspiracy theory, LGBT people are not really seeking equality; rather, they are actually seeking to destroy such things as Christianity, the family and culture.
[T]hey then go on to warn people about homosexuality, to support the pseudoscientific and dangerous practice of so-called “ex-gay” therapy, to falsely link homosexuality to pedophilia, and to claim that schools are “indoctrinating children” into homosexuality. “Lately,” the authors breathlessly claim, “homosexual behavior on college campuses is taking a dangerous new turn — the promotion of sexual relations between adults and children, known as pedophilia.” Despite all objections to the contrary — virtually all real medical associations have debunked the once-common claim that gay men molest children at higher rates than straight men — Sears and his co-author insist that homosexuality and pedophilia “are intrinsically linked.”
As I said, this designation as a hate group is very long overdue. The next group that needs to be added to the list is The Family Foundation based in Richmond to which all Virginia Republicans bow and genuflect.
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