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.

UVA Rape Story: More Details of Rolling Stone's Journalistic Malpractice

I've spoken out repeatedly on the now thoroughly debunked University of Virginia rape story.  As a double UVA alumni, I am very familiar with the University and its social atmosphere.  Moreover, three of my siblings attended UVA as did one of my daughters and other family members.  To me, the story never seemed believable.  Now, as more documents are revealed in the defamation lawsuit pending against Rolling Stone, it becomes more and more shocking that the publication ever ran the story.  The Washington Post looks at the growing evidence that Rolling Stone simply cared nothing about the truth.  Here are article excerpts:

Rolling Stone journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely spent five months investigating a shocking claim of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity, and the 9,000-word account of the brutal attack published online on Nov. 19, 2014, sent a tremor through the Charlottesville campus and beyond.

Then, on Dec. 5, at 1:54 a.m., Erdely sent an e-mail to the magazine’s top-tier editors, Will Dana and Sean Woods, with a simple subject line: “Our worst nightmare.”

The body of the message detailed how Erdely no longer trusted the primary source for the most striking anecdote in her article: a U-Va. junior named “Jackie,” who told Rolling Stone that she had been raped by seven men, while two others watched, during a date function at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house in 2012. She wrote that as questions arose about the tale, she tried to have Jackie help her verify the identity of her assailant, and “it spiraled into confusion.”

“By the time we ended our conversation, I felt nearly certain that she was not being truthful,” she wrote, noting that she had come to believe that “Jackie isn’t credible.” She ended her message by saying that the fraternity was planning to issue a statement denying that there was a party at their house the night of the purported assault. “We have to issue a retraction,” she wrote.

Erdely’s e-mail was a signal flare warning of turbulent months to come for the magazine, but, according to hundreds of pages of Erdely’s notes and other materials related to the case filed in court Friday, there were many other warnings — before the story published — that Jackie’s account was inconsistent.

The court documents, submitted as evidence in U-Va. Associate Dean Nicole Eramo’s $10 million defamation lawsuit against the magazine, reveal new details about the reporting that went into the story and show how Erdely deferred to Jackie’s wishes and account instead of digging deeper to verify the student’s claims.

The documents also show that aspects of Jackie’s account of her gang rape closely mirror details from prominent books about sexual assault survivors — including one that explores several gang rapes at fraternities — and the plotline of a “Law & Order: SVU” episode that ran about a year before Jackie first spoke to the reporter. According to Erdely’s notes, Jackie mentioned those books and the television show in her first interviews, and Erdely was warned that the nature of Jackie’s claims had changed over time.

Since that December 5 e-mail, the Columbia University journalism school and the Charlottesville Police Department issued extensive reports determining that the account Jackie gave to Rolling Stone was false. The magazine later retracted the story and apologized to readers. Last July, Dana resigned.

The magazine now faces lawsuits filed by undergraduate members of Phi Kappa Psi, as well as Eramo, who alleged in court documents that the story, titled “A Rape on Campus,” portrayed her as callous and indifferent to survivors of sexual assault.

Libby Locke, an attorney for Eramo, said the documents clearly show that the story was flawed and aimed to portray Eramo and U-Va. in a negative light, despite interviews that indicated sexual assault survivors had great praise for Eramo.

“Erdely’s reporting file demonstrates that there were numerous red flags that put Rolling Stone on notice that Jackie was not a credible source and that the gang rape story she told Rolling Stone was false,” . . . . “But none of those facts stood in the way of Rolling Stone publishing a false and defamatory article, relying on a source who was not credible and painting Ms. Eramo as a callous and indifferent administrator.” . . . . A review of Erdely’s notes show that even mundane facts obtained from Jackie appeared to be false. 

U-Va. Fraternity Files $25 Million Lawsuit Against Rolling Stone

(AP Photo/The Daily Progress, Ryan M. Kelly)

Rolling Stone's utterly irresponsible story from last year that alleged that a brutal rape and abuse took place at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity on the University of Virginia's fraternity row continues to rightly bite Rolling Stone in the ass.  I often complain about lazy journalists not ferreting out the truth, but the Rolling Stone piece was a piece of pure fiction.   Now, Phi Kappa Psi has filed a $25 million lawsuit against both Rolling Stone and worthless journalist Sabrina Rubin Erdely who never bothered to check behind the wild and easily refuted claims of "Jackie," the alleged rape victim.  Not only did the fraternity have no party on the night of the alleged rape, but no one with the name of supposed date/rapist was ever a member of the fraternity.  The Washington Post looks at the new lawsuit.  Here are highlights:

The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity chapter at the University of Virginia filed a $25 million lawsuit Monday against Rolling Stone magazine, which published an article in 2014 that alleged a freshman was gang raped at the house during a party.

The lawsuit focuses on a Rolling Stone article titled “A Rape on Campus,” which detailed a harrowing attack on a freshman named Jackie at the Phi Psi house on Sept. 28, 2012. The article, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, described how Jackie was raped by seven men while two others watched in a second floor bedroom while a fraternity party raged downstairs. The article alleged that the attack was part of a hazing ritual at the long-time U-Va. fraternity.

The Washington Post found significant discrepancies in the Rolling Stone account, including that the fraternity did not host a party that night in 2012 and that a student identified by Jackie as her main attacker was never a member of the fraternity and did not attend U-Va.

Two investigations — by the Columbia University journalism school and the Charlottesville Police Department — later confirmed that there was no gang rape at the fraternity.

“The fraternity chapter and its student and alumni members suffered extreme damage to their reputations in the aftermath of the article’s publication and continue to suffer despite the ultimate unraveling of the story,” the Phi Psi chapter said in a statement Monday. “The article also subjected the student members and their families to danger and immense stress while jeopardizing the future existence of the chapter.”

Rolling Stone retracted the story in April, and the magazine’s editor, Will Dana, later resigned.

In the wake of the Rolling Stone article’s publication, the Phi Psi house was vandalized, windows were broken and anonymous activists scrawled “UVA Center for Rape Studies,” on the building.

“In the most scurrilous traditions of yellow tabloid journalism, Rolling Stone published a devastating story it knowingly failed to verify, in reckless disregard for truth or falsity, or the essential safety, dignity, and welfare of the organization or of those lives it was willing to crush with its defamatory article,” the fraternity contends in the lawsuit. “The story was simply too tempting, too sensational, to let facts get in the way.”

In the complaint, filed in state court in Charlottesville, the 54 undergraduate members of the fraternity describe living through the backlash of the article’s publication in November 2014.

The fraternity brothers say they faced vicious threats online, taunts in classrooms and suffered in recruiting new prospects to join the house.

Many alumni removed their affiliation with the fraternity from their résumés out of concern that Phi Psi membership could hurt their job prospects.

According to the fraternity’s complaint filed in state court: “This defamation action is brought to seek redress for the wanton destruction caused to Phi Kappa Psi by Rolling Stone’s intentional, reckless, and unethical behavior.”

I hope Phi Kappa Psi wins the lawsuit. One of my daughters had friends in the house while at UVA and many years ago as I student I attended parties at Phi Kappa Psi as well as at my own fraternity.

UVA Dean Sues Rolling Stone Over Bogus Rape Article

Admittedly, I have a special interest in the University of Virginia given that (i) I am a graduate of both  the The College of Liberal Arts as an undergraduate the School of Law, and (ii) some ten relatives and past in-laws hold UVA degrees, including three of my siblings and one of my daughters.  I also belonged to a fraternity during my UVA days.  Hence, I always double check those who would malign "The University" as we call it without justification (like some Virginia Tech alumni I know).  But the heinous Rolling Stone article that has now been condemned by the Columbia School of journalism and even retracted by Rolling Stone indeed set new lows in unfounded attacks. Now, Rolling Stone is reaping the fruits of its irresponsible journalism - if that term can even be applied - as what is the first of possibly several lawsuits has been filed.  Huffington Post looks at the first multimillion dollar lawsuit.  Here are highlights:

A University of Virginia dean who played a major role in Rolling Stone's now-retracted rape piece is suing the magazine for defamation. 

Nicole Eramo, an associate dean of students at UVA who handles sexual assault cases on campus, is seeking more than $7.5 million in damages from Wenner Media, Rolling Stone's parent company. Eramo alleges that the November 2014 piece unfairly portrayed her as "indifferent" to the alleged victim's tale. Eramo is also suing the magazine and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, who wrote the controversial piece.

"The portrayal of Dean Eramo in 'A Rape on Campus' and in Erdely and Rolling Stone's subsequent public statements, are categorically false," the suit reads. "Indeed, publicly available information demonstrates that the highly disparaging claims about Dean Eramo are all untrue."

"A Rape on Campus" detailed the alleged sexual assault of a UVA student referred to in the article as only "Jackie." In the piece, Jackie claims she was raped and humiliated by several members of the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi. The story alleges that Eramo encouraged Jackie not to report the crime because "nobody wants to send their daughter to the rape school."

The piece sent shockwaves through the campus. The university asked for a criminal investigation into the matter and suspended all fraternities on campus.

However, reports from The Washington Post and other news outlets called into question some of the story's most shocking elements. Friends of Jackie claimed that her account of the assault changed repeatedly over time. The Post also found that Jackie's description of one of the main fraternity members involved in the incident didn't match anyone in Phi Kappa Psi.

Rolling Stone backed away from the piece after the doubts emerged. After a lengthy investigation by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, the article was retracted.

  Rolling Stone declined a request for comment to HuffPost.

 Sadly, in my view, Rolling Stone wanted a sensational article and really did not care if it was true or not.

UVA Fraternity Announces Lawsuit Against Rolling Stone

I am often critical of the mainstream media because of its laziness and cowardice which in turn allows horrible things to happen - the Iraq War being perhaps one of the more recent examples of an avoidable disaster.  But the media can also ruin the lives of people through the same laziness and at times the bias of reporters who want the facts to be a certain way even if they do not support the reporter's agenda.  A case in point, the vicious and false Rolling Stone article from last fall that maligned both a fraternity at the University of Virginia and on a lesser scale the University itself.  Now that the story has been shown to be false, the targeted fraternity is announcing that it is filing a lawsuit against Rolling Stone for its libelous story.  Here are details from the Washington Post:

The University of Virginia chapter of Phi Kappa Psi announced Monday that the fraternity house will file a lawsuit against Rolling Stone, calling the magazine’s reporting that described an alleged gang-rape by some of its members “reckless.”

The lawsuit comes a day after Rolling Stone editors retracted a Nov. 19 story “A Rape on Campus,” that portrayed the chilling account of brutal sexual assault allegedly occurring in the Phi Kappa Psi house at U-Va. in 2012. A Columbia University report issued Sunday described significant lapses by the magazine’s staff while reporting the gang-rape allegations and the story’s writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, and the publication’s managing editor, Will Dana, apologized for the deeply flawed account. But the fraternity noted that Erdely did not apologize directly to the Phi Psi chapter at U-Va.

“The report by Columbia University’s School of Journalism demonstrates the reckless nature in which Rolling Stone researched and failed to verify facts in its article that erroneously accused Phi Kappa Psi of crimes its members did not commit,” said Stephen Scipione, U-Va. chapter president of Phi Kappa Psi. “This type of reporting serves as a sad example of a serious decline of journalistic standards.”

The chapter spent “130 days of living under a cloud of suspicion as a result of reckless reporting by Rolling Stone Magazine,” according to Phi Psi. A fraternity spokesman said that the chapter is considering expanding its lawsuit to include Erdely, the story’s author.

In March the Charlottesville police department detailed a months-long investigation that exonerated the fraternity and found there was no evidence to substantiate the sexual assault allegations described in Rolling Stone. Fraternity members told The Post in the fall that they knew within hours of the article’s publication that there were significant discrepancies in the account.

“Clearly our fraternity and its members have been defamed, but more importantly we fear this entire episode may prompt some victims to remain in the shadows, fearful to confront their attackers,” said Scipione. “If Rolling Stone wants to play a real role in addressing this problem, it’s time to get serious.”

In the interests of disclosure, I was a member of a fraternity at UVA and one of my children has friends who were members of the defamed Phi Kappa Psi chapter.