Anti-LGBT Hate Groups Surge as Trump (and Pence) Embrace Their Leaders

Trump with anti-gay zealot (and white supremacist) Tony Perkins.

The Trump/Pence regime has waged a relentless war on the LGBT community over the last 3 years, reversing pro-LGBT policies of the Obama administration, appointing virulently anti-LGBT extremists to the federal courts  (the Republican majority in the Senate rubber stamped these individuals, a number deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association), and openly embracing the leaders of anti-LGBT hate groups. Yet, unbelievably, a minority of gays - many white, educated and with social standing that they seemingly believe will protect them in a manner reminiscent of many 1930's European Jews who ended up in the Nazi death camps - continue to support the Trump regime and Republicans in general.  I find the behavior dumbfounding, especially given the rise of LGBT hate groups thanks to Trump and Pence's embrace of the toxic leaders.  A piece in RVA Magazine looks at this frightening phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

Anti-LGBTQ hate groups are rapidly growing across America, a result, the Southern Poverty Law Center says, of President Donald Trump’s leadership, including his embrace of those groups. The White House in response has issued a thin statement denying any responsibility or blame – while not even offering to make any changes or to help with the growing danger.

While overall, active hate groups of all types fell slightly in 2019 from 1020 to 940, there was a “sharp expansion,” a nearly 43 percent increase, in anti-LGBTQ hate groups, the SPLC reports, warning that the “Trump administration has demonstrated a clear willingness to embrace their leaders and their policy agenda.”

Far right wing Christian evangelicals, including anti-LGBTQ hate groups like the Family Research Council, have become emboldened, enjoying what they have said is “open door” access to the Oval Office.

“Anti-LGBTQ groups have become intertwined with the Trump administration, and — after years of civil rights progress and growing acceptance among the broader American public — anti-LGBTQ sentiment within the Republican Party is rising,” the Southern Poverty Law Center adds.

The White House issued a thin statement in response, refusing to accept any responsibility or blame. . . . the entire statement hinges on the President appointing openly-gay Trump diehard loyalist Richard Grenell as his Ambassador to Germany, then installing him – despite his absolute lack of qualifications – as his acting Director of National Security. It was Grenell who launched the campaign to decriminalize homosexuality – which exists in name only.

The SPLC also issued another dark warning: this hate and extremism “will far outlast this administration,” and not disappear when President Trump leaves office.

“As the country continues to experience white nationalist terror, extremist ideas long believed outside of the realm of legitimate politics are penetrating deeply into the mainstream, spawning public policies that target immigrants, LGBTQ people and Muslims. The Trump administration has installed members of hate groups into government — particularly those with anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim or anti-LGBTQ animus — and put in place highly punitive policies that seemed unthinkable just a few short years ago. These political moves will far outlast this administration, as Trump and his allies in the U.S. Senate have pushed through hundreds of new federal judges, many of whom are hostile to civil rights concerns and will serve for decades.”

While gays are the favored targets of these groups, their ultimate goal is their form of toxic Christianity becoming a de facto established religion in America with those who fail to embrace their toxic dogma condemned to second class citizenship.

Hate Groups On the Rise, White Supremacist Terror Attack Averted

Since he launched his campaign in 2015, Donald Trump has been singing a welcomed song to racists and white supremacists of every ilk.  By doing so, he has made out right racism acceptable in the eyes of his followers and has increasingly normalized the reprehensible. Worse yet, he has emboldened hate groups which have increased 30% over four years and some, such as would be terrorist,  Christopher Paul Hasson, have seen Trump's rhetoric as a green light to attack Democrats and journalists.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Hasson's thwarted terror attacks while a piece in New York Magazine looks at the increase in the number of far right hate groups.  First, highlights from the Post:

A U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant and self-identified white nationalist was arrested after federal investigators uncovered a cache of weapons and ammunition in his Maryland home that authorities say he stockpiled to launch a widespread domestic terrorist attack targeting politicians and journalists.

Christopher Paul Hasson called for “focused violence” to “establish a white homeland” . . . Though court documents do not detail a specific planned date for an attack, the government said he had been amassing supplies and weapons since at least 2017, developed a spreadsheet of targets that included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and searched the Internet using phrases such as “best place in dc to see congress people” and “are supreme court justices protected.”

“The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country,” the government said in court documents filed this week, arguing that Hasson should stay in jail awaiting trial.

“Please send me your violence that I may unleash it onto their heads,” Hasson wrote in a letter that prosecutors said was found in his email drafts. “Guide my hate to make a lasting impression on this world.”

Court documents do not detail what prompted federal law enforcement to begin investigating Hasson but contend that Hasson had been studying the 1,500-page manifesto of right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who unleashed two attacks in 2011 that killed 77 people in Norway, and echoed Breivik’s attack preparations.

[A]ccording to the court filings, Hasson developed a spreadsheet of targets that included top Democratic congressional leaders and media personalities. The list includes “JOEY,” what prosecutors say is a reference to former congressman Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.), now of MSNBC; “cortez,” an alleged reference to freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.); and “Sen blumen jew,” presumably about Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

One individual like Hasson is frightening enough, but as the New York Magazine article reports, there has been a sharp increase in the number of active hate groups.  Here are article excerpts:

There are at least 1,020 hate groups now active in the U.S., the Southern Poverty Law Center announced on Wednesday. The civil rights group, which has tracked extremist activity since the 1980s, says it’s documented a 30 percent increase in hate group activity over the last four years, a time period it says “roughly” coincides with end of Barack Obama’s presidency and the rise of Donald Trump as a political figure.

The SPLC doesn’t just track white supremacists – it also tracks the Nation of Islam – but white extremists engaged directly in promoting nativism and myths about racial superiority make up the bulk of activity included in the organization’s annual hate report. SPLC researchers documented 112 active neo-Nazi groups, 148 white nationalist groups, and 63 racist skinhead groups, in addition to 36 neo-Confederate organizations.

SPLC argues that [Trump’s] the president’s vitriolic anti-immigrant rhetoric and soft-pedaling of white supremacist violence have emboldened hate groups.
 [I]t’s undeniable that members of the far-right have been responsible for an escalating number of high-profile violent incidents over the last several years. It’s also true that Trump, and some of his surrogates in the conservative press, have helped mainstream certain white nationalist myths. Both Trump and Fox’s Tucker Carlson briefly became fixated on the alleged persecution of white South African farmers, though there’s no evidence of a white genocide unfolding in South Africa or anywhere else, and Trump frequently amplifies myths about the disproportionate criminality of immigrants. Since Trump took office, white nationalists have beaten left-wing activists and murdered one protester . . . .
 This radicalization shows no signs of abating. Hours after the SPLC released its report, Seamus Hughes of the the George Washington University’s Program on Extremism broke the news that a lieutenant in the U.S. Coast Guard will go on trial for domestic terrorism charges. The lieutenant, Christopher Hasson, identified as a white supremacist, possessed around 1,000 rounds of ammunition, and created a hit list of liberal politicians and media figures ranging from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
 Trump hasn’t explicitly called for people like Hasson to do violence in his name. But the SPLC’s report reinforces a disturbing trend. However frustrated white supremacists may be over the border wall, others seem galvanized by the Trump presidency.

Hate Group Goes Ballistic Over Parents Magazine Gay Dads

The Southern Poverty Law Center monitors hate groups across American.  While the organization's mission began focused and white supremacist groups, it now follows neo-Nazi and other far right groups.  It also monitors anti-gay hate groups that disseminate deliberate lies and untruths about LGBT individuals with the goal of demonizing us and stripping us of civil rights.  One such group is falsely named "One Million Moms" ("OMM") which in actuality is a very small extremist group operating under the umbrella of American Family Association, itself a hate group, that disseminates wildly untrue propaganda against LGBT, including claims that gays were behind Hitler's Third Reich.  Not surprisingly, Parents Magazine's recent decision to place a family with two dads on its cover has sent the toxic women at OMM into absolute conniption fits.  Like most Christofascists, the leaders of OMM seek to impose their Bronze Age beliefs on all of society.  If given an opportunity, they would erase the very existence of LGBT people and our families.  A piece in The Advocate looks at this latest disingenuous round of OMM hysterics.  Here are excerpts:

Right-wing extremists are losing it over the February cover of Parents magazine, which features a same-sex couple — the first such cover in the publication’s 93-year history.

“Parents is using its magazine as a platform to promote the pro-homosexual lifestyle,” screams an online post from One Million Moms, a Christian right group affiliated with the American Family Association. “Even if families do not personally subscribe to the publication, they should be warned that it could be displayed in waiting rooms of dentist and doctor offices, where children could easily be subjected to the glorification of same-sex parents.”

The cover shows fitness trainer Shaun T and his husband, Scott Blokker, and their 1-year-old sons. A story inside tells of their journey to fatherhood – the boys were conceived with the same egg donor, but one with each father’s sperm, and delivered by the same surrogate. They were born prematurely and spent the first three weeks of their life in intensive care.

One Million Moms doesn’t seem to care about the difficulties faced by the boys or their dads but instead worries about “children being indoctrinated to perceive same-sex couples as normal.” The group also claims that being gay is a “lifestyle … that the medical community identifies as unhealthy,” something that is blatantly untrue.

The organization implores its supporters to sign an online petition expressing their disapproval to Parents. As of Tuesday afternoon, the petition had a little over 10,000 signatures, far less than the million members the group claims. The Million Moms group has a history of objecting to LGBTQ-inclusive media and advertising.

Exposing the "Alliance Defending Freedom," an Anti-Gay Hate Group

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The Struggle to Track Rising Extremism

Click image to enlarge.

Organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center ("SPLC") and the Anti-defamation League are working overtime trying to track the rising extremism gripping America which is being fanned daily by Donald Trump and many within the GOP who have given license to extremists.  What was once dog whistle messaging has now been replaced by open racism and the open dissemination of hate. And it is not just Neo-Nazis and white supremacists who are marketing hatred.   In Virginia alone, SPLC identifies 37 active hate organizations that range from white Nationalists, anti-immigrant extremists and anti-LGBT extremists (go to the SPLC site and check out your state).  With the advent of the Internet and social media, the venues for spewing and fueling hatred and organizing acts of violence has exploded.  A piece in The New Yorker looks at the growing difficulty is tracking extremism and warning law enforcement of the growing threats.  Here are highlights:

Heidi Beirich has worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center for almost two decades. She oversees the organization’s yearly tally of “hate and hard-line, anti-government” groups. On Saturday, she was at the airport in Montgomery, Alabama—she was flying to New Orleans, where the S.P.L.C. is having its board meeting—when she saw a CNN report about the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

“My first thought was, Oh God, this could be one of ours,” she told me by phone Saturday afternoon. The S.P.L.C. maintains an enormous database of extremists and extremist groups. When acts of violence and domestic terror take place, the group runs the suspects’ names against its database to see if there’s a match. If there is, they take that information to law enforcement, and share it with reporters and the public.

I asked Beirich for her thoughts on the news coverage of acts of mass violence, and the debate over the merits of broadcasting perpetrators’ beliefs. “I understand the argument: don’t give these people too much ink, or airtime, because you’re just spreading the propaganda,” she said. “But the truth is these people are committing so much violence, and their ideas are actually influencing public policy—the Muslim ban, the immigration stuff thats going on—I don’t think you can ignore it.”

Even for Beirich and her team, who study the nexus of hate and violence professionally, this week—with the pipe bombs mailed to prominent Democrats, and the deliberate shooting of two black people by a white man in Kentucky—was overwhelming.

But it hasn’t been just the past week—it’s been the past few years. Hate crimes increased in both 2015 and 2016, according to the latest F.B.I. data, and the Anti-Defamation League says that anti-Semitic incidents spiked in 2017. . . . The F.B.I.’s data may not even be the full picture, she pointed out, saying, “Not every state has a hate-crime law, many that do don’t cover the L.G.B.T. population, and there’s no training for law enforcement.”

The suspect in the Pittsburgh shooting was identified on Saturday as Robert Bowers. He killed at least ten people before being arrested. He wasn’t in the S.P.L.C.’s system. “I’m not that surprised,” she said. “We try to collect everything we can about white supremacists, but this is a huge world.” Beirich’s team found Bowers’s posts on Gab, a social network popular with white nationalists and the alt-right.  “Gab, where this guy was posting, is, like, four hundred thousand people,” Beirich told me. “We don’t have information on four hundred thousand people.”

The manias of mass murderers are always particular. But the massacres in Pittsburgh and Jeffersontown—and the pipe bombs sent to a dozen Democratic leaders this week, allegedly by the Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc—share some obvious common causes. They are the toxic politics of the President, and the racist, nationalist fervor that has been inflamed by his rise, and the success and the militancy of the gun lobby, which for decades has refused to acknowledge the obvious: that one way to have fewer killings is to make it harder for Americans to possess guns. Each of these is a national crisis on its own.

What should be plain now is that each crisis is escalating, as is the frequency of political violence. Trump, asked about the Pittsburgh shooting, said, “If they had protection inside, the results would have been far better.” The moral inadequacy is vast. Murderous acts of hate have occurred, on a national scale, several times this week. It is a tragedy that [Trump] the President is not able to see them for what they are.

GOP Senate Nominee Cory Stewart Courts Anti-Gay Exteremists

Corey Stewart with anti-gay lunatic, Eugene Delgaudio.

Since Tuesday when he won the low turn out GOP senatorial nomination in Virginia, there has been plentiful news coverage of Corey Stewart's ties with the alt-right, white supremacists and Neo-Nazis. Now, coverage is trickling out that Stewart has also sought the support of some of the most extreme , unhinged, and dishonest anti-gay organizations in Virginia and elsewhere. Frankly, this news should come as no surprise given the Republican Party's knowing and deliberate self-prostitution to the most extreme elements of the far "Christian Right" - I use quotation marks since these people are neither Christian nor right - especially in a state like Virginia where The Family Foundation ("TFF") - the largest hate group in Virginia - has become the king maker for the GOP. If one doesn't submit to a prostration and kiss the ring of TFF president, Victoria Cobb, it will be a death knell for one's ambitions within the Virginia GOP.  CNN looks at Stewart's  efforts to secure anti-hate group endorsements as well as the insanity of some such groups.  Here are excerpts:

[Corey Stewart] sought and received the support of an anti-LGBT group that links homosexuality to pedophilia and defends conversion therapy. Virginia's Corey Stewart, . . . filled out a "Senate Candidate Survey" for the group Public Advocate of the United States.

The survey asks eight questions about a candidate's positions on LGBT issues, including whether a candidate would "oppose all efforts to make public restrooms and changing-rooms unsafe through so-called 'Transgender Bathrooms' legislation and regulations - which have the effect of encouraging and protecting pedophiles." Another question asks if the candidate agrees that public schools should be "prevented from brainwashing elementary school children with the Homosexual Agenda - such as California's current policy speculating widely about the sexual activity of past presidents and figures?"
 Stewart answered yes to both questions. . . . [Stewart] indicated support for overturning Supreme Court rulings legalizing same-sex marriage, requiring schools to teach there are only two genders and allowing Christian business owners to refuse to participate in same-sex weddings without fear of legal reprisal.
 The surveys bear each nominee's signature. Public Advocate of the United States scores 100% any candidate who fills out the survey and answers yes to all questions. The group's founder and chief executive, Eugene Delgaudio, said in February he believes that former President Barack Obama was a "child molester" and that "adult homosexuals want to recruit and brainwash children." He is an active promoter of the far-right pizzagate conspiracy theory. In May, Delgaudio did an event with Stewart where he said he was backing his Senate campaign. Stewart said of Delgaudio, "I love this guy" and "there's nobody I respect more" than Delgaudio.

Delgaudio, in my view, belongs in a mental institution.  He is truly, that unhinged.  As noted, he supports the discredited use of fraudulent "ex-gay conversion therapy" and conflates homosexuality with pedophilia despite the repudiation of that claim by every legitimate medical and mental health association in America.  Some other facts surrounding Delgaudio are as follows:

He represented the Sterling District on the Loudoun County, Virginia, Board of Supervisors until he was defeated by Koran Saines in 2015.  On July 17, 2013, the all-Republican Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted 8-1 to censure Delgaudio in response to a report issued by the special grand jury that spent five months investigating allegations of misconduct and make permanent earlier committee assignment removals. The Board also voted 6-3 to take away Delgaudio's staff aides and defund the Sterling District office.

This is who Stewart finds "remarkable" and who he says he "loves."  Sorry, but both are delusional and dangerous crackpots. 

White Supremacist Group Banned From Charlottesville

Like many Virginians and certainly countless University of Virginia alumni, I was both outraged and sickened by the Neo-Nazi and white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last August, and by the extremists trespassing on the University of Virginia grounds.   With family members residing in Charlottesville, I know just how furious city residents were to have outside hate merchants and bigots invade their city.  Indeed, in perhaps a slap in the face to right wing forces and politicians who pandered to racists - think Mr. Gillespie - Charlottesville voted roughly 85% for Democrat Ralph Northam in November 2017.  Now, the City of Charlottesville has reached a consent agreement that bans some of the groups that invaded the city - members of which Trumpenführer described as "good people" - from protesting in the city in the future.  A piece in The Hill looks at the outcome.  Here are excerpts:

A white supremacist group that took part in the deadly Charlottesville, Va., Unite the Right rally last year will no longer be able to protest while armed in the city, a Virginia court has decided. 

The League of the South, a neo-Confederate hate group, reached a deal with city organizers on Monday to keep its members, agents or state chairmen from taking part in any future armed demonstrations in Charlottesville, according to the watchdog Southern Poverty Law Center  (SPLC).

The consent decree was the result of a lawsuit first filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court by Georgetown Law's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection against leaders of the League of the South and other paramilitary groups involved in the rally, which led to the death of one woman and injuries for several others. 

The city government and several local businesses later joined the ongoing lawsuit, which names the individual leaders of other white supremacist groups, allowing the opportunity that more groups might strike similar deals with the city. 

Spencer Borum, the group's Kentucky leader, has taken an active role in arming and training the League of the South for possible civil conflict in the U.S., the SPLC says.

Another League of the South leader, Michael Tubbs, pleaded guilty to the 1991 robbery of weapons from an Army base with the intention of arming the Ku Klux Klan, as reported by the Daily Beast. 

Court Tosses Liberty Counsel’s “Hate Group” Designation Lawsuit Against Rating Site

Many among the grifters, hate merchants and charlatans who make up a who's who of the so-called Christofascist have been highly overwrought by the hate group designations that they have rightly received from the Southern Poverty Law Center ("SPLC") - the same organization that tracks Neo-nazi and white supremacy groups.  That whining and bitching rose to new levels when GuideStar, a charity-information site that discloses to would be donors information of purported charities noted the hate group designation for Liberty Counsel, a viciously anti-gay organization that has disseminated malicious anti-gay lies and disinformation for literally decades.  The Chronicle Of Philanthropy looks at the ruling that was handed down by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Norfolk, Virginia.   Here are excerpts:

GuideStar, the charity-information site, scored a major victory as a federal court ruled it was in legal bounds to put a hate label on a nonprofit’s profile.

A federal judge in Virginia dismissed a lawsuit against GuideStar pursued by the conservative Christian legal-defense group Liberty Counsel.

Liberty Counsel sued after a label was placed on its GuideStar profile page noting that the legal organization had been designated a hate group for its anti-LGBTQ stances. Liberty Counsel said the label was defamatory and hurt its reputation. It also charged that the label violated a federal law against unfair competition and false advertising.

Judge Raymond Jackson of the Federal District Court in Norfolk, Va., however, said the designation was “an informative statement” and “not commercial speech” in his ruling— and rejected Liberty Council’s claim that its business was affected. Mr. Jackson also dismissed the legal group’s defamation claim.

Liberty Counsel said in statement Wednesday that it is considering an appeal of the decision.

GuideStar added warning banners last year to the profile pages of 46 organizations, including Liberty Counsel, to notify visitors that the Southern Poverty Law Center had accused the charities of spreading hate. The message directed visitors to the anti-hate group’s website. 

GuideStar announced it was pulling the warning labels last June after the designations caused a firestorm among conservative groups that said they had been unfairly targeted.
The nonprofit information site said it backed away from the labels after its staff members had faced threats to their personal safety from opponents of the labels.

The groups that have received these "hate group" labels  purport to be "Christian" organizations, most claiming the "family values" label.  If anyone questions the hate group label in the case of Liberty Counsel - or Family Research Council and numerous "Christian" organizations, I invite them to visit SPLC's site and look at the documentation.  I defy them to describe the conduct described in any way Christian .  It is also noteworthy that Guidestar backed away from the labels due to threats to its employees by supporters of these bogus charities.  In all of my years of writing this blog, the only death threats I have received has been from "devout Christians."  No Muslims have threatened me - and I am just as hard on Islam as Christianity - nor has anyone else.

The Media Must Stop Legitimizing Anti-Gay Hate Groups

With LGBT Americans under open assault by the Trump/Pence regime, once again it is critical that the mainstream media cease legitimizing anti-LGBT hate groups and allowing them to pretend to be "conservative" or "religious" organizations. Too often these groups are given a platform by networks and others and receive to challenge about their nefarious activities or, for example in the case of FRC's Tony Perkins, white supremacist ties. Here in Virginia, Victoria Cobb of The Family Foundation (Virginia's leading hate group in all but formal designation) will get interviewed and never is asked about the deliberate lies and falsehoods constantly disseminated by her organization against LGBT Virginians. Likewise, when organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom decry their much deserved hate group designations, the media has a responsibility to make it clear why the designation was made.  It takes far, far more than being a religious based organization to win the hate group label.  A piece in Media Matters looks at the media's failure to exposes these groups for what they are in fact: hate merchants seeking exempts from the laws binding on the rest of the citizenry.  Here are article excerpts:

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) began 2017 by being designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and finished the year arguing before the Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commision. Throughout that time, ADF fervently opposed LGBTQ equality at every step while also moving its hardline extremism more and more into the mainstream. The media, in turn, aided the group’s efforts by largely failing to contextualize its unrelenting campaign against queer and trans people. . . . Masterpiece Cakeshop is just the tip of the iceberg of ADF’s anti-LGBTQ work this year, all of which has one thing in common: seeking to make LGBTQ people second-class citizens. ADF’s representation of the plaintiff in Masterpiece Cakeshop case did not occur in a vacuum. The group and its allied lawyers have worked on at least eight other legal cases involving religious exemptions this year. Religious exemptions are often used by anti-LGBTQ groups and people to justify discrimination under the guise of “religious freedom.” ADF helped write, promote, and justify Mississippi’s sweeping anti-LGBTQ religious exemption law and fought for it in court, and it worked with Attorney General Jeff Sessions before he issued religious exemptions guidance in October. In addition, ADF has been leading the fight against transgender student equality in schools across the United States, including by influencing anti-trans “bathroom bills” in at least eight states.

SPLC labeled ADF as an anti-LGBTQ hate group in February due to a history of the group’s leaders and affiliated lawyers “regularly demoniz[ing] LGBT people, falsely linking them to pedophilia, calling them ‘evil’ and a threat to children and society, and blaming them for the ‘persecution of devout Christians.’” The hate group designation was also conferred in part for ADF’s history of supporting anti-sodomy laws, which effectively criminalize homosexuality. In 2003, the group filed an amicus brief in Lawrence v. Texas that defended state sodomy laws and called “same-sex sodomy … a distinct public health problem.” ADF also supports attempts to turn LGBTQ people straight through dangerous conversion therapy, which every mainstream medical group has discredited for decades and which has severe mental and medical health consequences for its victims.

Media Matters has found that major newspapers like The Washington Post and The New York Times tend to avoid using SPLC’s “hate group” label when it comes to anti-LGBTQ groups but frequently identify other hate groups designated by SPLC, particularly white nationalist groups. ADF and its allies have taken advantage of media’s hesitancy to use the label and actively worked to discredit SPLC’s designation, especially when media outlets do use it.
 When ABC News and NBC News used the “hate group” designation to describe ADF in June reports, ADF demanded a retraction from ABC and began an aggressive media strategy to attack SPLC and attempt to discredit ABC’s and NBC’s reports. Right-wing media figures joined the chorus and echoed ADF's and others’ attacks on the designation, and ADF representatives soon made the rounds on Fox News, appearing on Fox & Friends, The Story with Martha MacCallum, and Tucker Carlson Tonight. The network has proven to be a safe space for the group to push this narrative. But it’s not just right-wing media that has been sympathetic to this campaign to discredit the “hate group” label. CNN changed a headline from “Here are all the active hate groups where you live” to “The Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of hate groups” after pressure from right-wing figures and media. News outlets are more than just hesitant to use the “hate group” label, though, and often fail to give any context to ADF’s work at all. Media outlets owe it to their audiences to, at the very least, contextualize ADF and groups like it. Yet a lot of coverage has been lacking in that context. Much of the reporting around the Masterpiece Cakeshop case fell into this trap. Time and time again, media outlets failed to contextualize ADF, instead simply noting that it was arguing the case or sometimes calling it “conservative.” In their reports on the case, The Washington Post, NPR, Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times all mentioned ADF’s role in the case but failed to mention its years-long campaign against LGBTQ equality, and those compose just a small sampling of a larger problem. A report by Time explicitly said that ADF “is making the argument that [the case] is fundamentally not about LGBTQ discrimination but about free speech” but also failed to note any of ADF’s other work combating LGBTQ equality. Leaving out important context about ADF can give readers an impression that the case, or even ADF’s work as a whole, may truly be about “free speech” rather than discrimination against LGBTQ people. ADF’s history proves that, for the group, the Masterpiece case is not about so-called “artistic freedom” or the First Amendment; it’s about preventing LGBTQ people from being fully recognized citizens in public and even private life. If news outlets won’t call it hate in 2018, they can at least give enough information for their readers to see it for themselves.

SPLC Sued By Hate Group Angry Over Exposing of Its Anti-Gay Agenda

Cover page of Coral Ridge Ministries  endorsed anti-gay magazine

The Southern Poverty Law Center ("SPLC") is perhaps the premier U.S. non-profit organization that monitors the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists – including the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-Nazi movement, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists, anti-government militias, Christian Identity adherents, radical Christian extremists and others.  It currently tracks more than 1,600 extremist groups operating across the country. It also publishes investigative reports, works to train law enforcement officers and share key intelligence, and offer expert analysis to the media and public. Each year since 1990, it has released an annual census of U.S. hate groups.  Its founder, Morris Deas, who I met years ago, helped push for the prosecution of the KKK members who lynched Michael Donald when I lived in Mobile, Alabama.  Among the groups SPLC has certified as hate groups are a number of organizations that parade around as "Christian family values" organizations which disseminate deliberate and often grotesques lies and untruths about the LGBT community (they often also have white supremacist and/or white nationalist tendencies).  Much of their anti-LGBT propaganda is modeled on the Nazi propaganda against the Jews and does little more that change the word "Jew" to "gay."

The positive results of SPLC's work is that increasingly the mainstream news media has stopped giving platforms to leaders of these organizations.  A prime example if Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council who has documented ties to several white supremacy groups and who has pushed vicious lies about LGBT people.  Now, some of these groups are suing SPLC because it has rightly exposed them for what they are.  While they whine that they are being "persecuted for their religious faith" their real complaint is that they have lost influence and even more importantly, they have lost income as donors have come to recognize their deceitful lies.  A piece in Huffington Post by a blogger friend helps to underscore the true viciousness and dishonesty of these organizations and they fact that hate is their main stock in trade.  Here are excerpts:

A ministry currently suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for being designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group may soon learn the lesson about past actions coming back to bite.

First, a little background:

D. James Kennedy Ministries, based at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, has filed a federal lawsuit in Alabama against the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center for calling the ministry a hate group. The lawsuit was filed Aug. 22 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama in Montgomery. The lawsuit alleges that the SPLC ‘illegally trafficked in false and misleading descriptions of the services offered by DJKM and committed defamation against DJKM arising from the publication and distribution of false information that libels the ministry’s reputation and subjects the ministry to disgrace, ridicule, odium, and contempt in the estimation of the public,’ according to a statement by the ministry. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center has made it clear that anti-LGBTQ hate groups are designated so because they demonize the LGBTQ community in the most lurid, inaccurate terms:

The religious right in America has employed a variety of strategies in its efforts to beat back the increasingly confident LGBT rights movement. One of those has been defamation. Many of its leaders have engaged in the crudest type of name-calling, describing LGBT people as ‘perverts’ with ‘filthy habits’ who seek to snatch the children of straight parents and ‘convert’ them to gay sex. They have disseminated disparaging ‘facts’ about gays that are simply untrue — assertions that are remarkably reminiscent of the way white intellectuals and scientists once wrote about the ‘bestial’ black man and his supposedly threatening sexuality. And that brings up to the late James Kennedy. The D. James Kennedy Ministries has a huge section dedicated to his life and his work.  One thing it doesn’t have is when Kennedy endorsed . . . . [a] 1986 comic book [the cover is at the top of this post] . . . . his endorsement is the first one on the back cover, with his official title as “Senior Minister, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.”

Kennedy said the following in his endorsement:

Dick Hafer [the comic book’s author] has produced a very accurate portrayal of homosexuality and the problem it poses to our nation and civilization. This unique book deserves an open-minded reading by all Americans, and especially by those who serve in leadership capacities. Kennedy calling this book “unique” is a rather interesting description. If you want, you can go to this link  and this one to see the book in its entirety. But I’m warning you now. It’s not pretty. . . . read the list of endorsers again [see image below]. They include a former Congressional leader and another right-wing organization still present in D.C.

[T]he “research” from this book comes from the discredited researcher whom I have mentioned on so many occasions: Paul Cameron.  SPLC has an extensive file on him and the anti-LGBTQ hate groups who still cite his junk science.

So, basically breaking this down, there are questions which need to be answered by the D. James Kennedy Ministries before it goes about declaring that it is being “persecuted for its religious beliefs” by SPLC. Most specifically, I’m curious to know if the ministry shares the opinion “expressed” by its namesake when he endorsed that awful booklet.  If the ministry doesn’t, then I would recommend that it publicly denounces Kennedy’s past actions. If the ministry doesn’t want to do that, then I guess that answers a lot of questions as to its “hate group” status.

Paul Cameron deliberately falsified his "research" and was thrown out of every professional association to which he had belonged because of his fraudulent studies and utterly false publications.  The organizations that routinely cite his work, many of which have earned their own hate group designations, include Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, American Family Association, Traditional Values Coalition, here in Virginia, The Family Foundation, and, of course, Coral Ridge Ministries.  Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that many of these organizations have tax exempt status since they pretend to be "educational organizations."  In short, every U.S. taxpayer is indirectly subsidizing them. This needs to end.

Charity Database Tags "Family Values" Organizations as Hate Groups

Tony Perkins - the white supremacist president of Family Research Council ("FRC") who is pictured above - is livid that charity database group Guidestar has tagged his organization and similar Christofascists groups a hate groups.  For those unfamiliar with Guidestar, it posts publicly available tax documents for charities to enable would donors to see which organizations make the best use of donated dollars and other information that is relevant to making charitable donations.  FRC is not the only "family values" organization that pretends to be an educational charity to receive the hate group designation even as it disseminates lies and untruths about gays and others.   Having followed the activities of FRC for roughly 20 years, there are few more dishonest organizations other than perhaps The American Family Association and Traditional Values Coalition.  All three are designated hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center which tracks hate groups across America due to the virulent lies and propaganda they publish (some have used Nazi like propaganda against LGBT individuals).  The Raw Story looks at these groups finally being exposed for what they are (The Family Foundation in Richmond needs to be added to the list).  Here are story highlights:

A non-profit resource that posts publicly available tax documents for charities has infuriated anti-gay Christian and conservative nonprofits by  using a widely available database at the Southern Poverty Law Center and tagging  each of them as a “hate group.” 

Charity database  GuideStar— which bills itself as “the world’s largest source of information on nonprofit organizations” — now includes information provided by the SPLC.

Among the putative Christian non-profits with a political bent who made the “hate group”  list are the Alliance Defending Freedom, Liberty Counsel, Family Research Council, and the American Family Association — all of whom promote anti-LGBTQ policies,

Also being tagged with the “hate group” designation is the anti-Muslim group American Freedom Defense Initiative, headed by conservative gadfly Pam Geller.

As Guidestar notes on their website: “The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a respected hate group watchdog. There is disagreement on some of SPLC’s specific choices, but on balance GuideStar believes the analysis is strong enough to share. We leave it to you to come to your own conclusions.”

Fearful that the “hate group” designation may be cutting into their non-profit cash haul, the groups are lashing out at Guidestar for “liberal bias.”

 

FRC vice president Jerry Boykin also blasted Guidestar, calling bet use of the database, “another attack on conservative Christian organizations and individuals.”

Greg Scott, the spokesperson for the Alliance Defending Freedom said his organization would like to ignore it, and attempted to dismiss the civil rights watchdog SPLC as a “tabloid’ operation.

Several of the organizations have pushed back at Guidestar, writing a letter at letter to CEO Jacob Harold that attacks the SPLC, saying it incited violence. . . .

“Despite its denials to the contrary, this highly refined method of ostracism and dehumanization practiced by the SPLC isn’t just about verbal debate – it can foreseeably lead to violence,” the letter read.

In truth, the only ones seeking to incite violence are these false charities.  It is long past time that they public be informed of their true toxic nature.  Kudos to Guidestar..   

Alliance Defending Freedom Added to Certified Hate Group List

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.