The Southern Poverty Law Center Really Hates IFI

Last year, I wrote about the serious ethical problems that have long plagued the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). What prompted my initial article was the discovery that IFI was included on the SPLC’s corrupt “Active U.S. Hate Groups” list. It’s not just IFI that has lost respect for the SPLC. Among the many writers who have criticized the unscrupulous SPLC are Ken Silverstein who wrote an expose in Harper’s Magazine and Myles Kantor who critiqued the SPLC in Front Page Magazine.

Well, IFI is back on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s malfunctioning radar–if it ever left. More precisely, I’m on Mark Potok‘s radar.

Potok is the director of the SPLC’s “Intelligence Project” which tracks purported “hate groups.” Unfortunately, under Mark Potok’s leadership, the SPLC’s ironically named “Intelligence Project” has become radicalized.

Last year in a phone conversation, Potok’s assistant Heidi Beirich explained to me that the SPLC distinguishes between moral claims and hate. She affirmed that the SPLC does not include organizations on the “hate groups” list simply because they believe homosexuality is immoral. And yet, Potok has repeatedly put the lie to that assertion. He is either incapable of or for political reasons unwilling to distinguish between moral disapproval of homosexual acts and hatred of persons. Despite their assertions to the contrary, the SPLC considers groups to be “hate groups” that do not express hatred or engage in hate acts.

A recent blog post by Potok that appears on his “Hatewatch” blog provides clear evidence that the SPLC does, indeed, consider groups to be hate groups merely because of principled moral opposition to homosexuality. Potok’s rage is palpable in his hyperbolic rhetoric as he describes me as “rabid,” “fuming,” “furious,” “fulminating,” and “white-hot lathered.” Potok’s anger in response to my recent articles critical of Obama’s proclamation of June as LGBT Pride Month and of McDonald’s for its affirmation of homosexuality to teens suggests that it is my principled moral opposition to homosexual acts that renders me, in Potok’s strange world, a hater. I wonder if Potok believes that statements of moral disapproval of, for example, polyamory constitute hatred of persons who identify as polyamorists. Or is it just the expression of moral propositions with which the SPLC disagrees that constitutes hatred of persons?

If it weren’t for the fact that the SPLC is for some inexplicable reason still consulted by law enforcement agencies and public schools, I would pay this blog post no more attention than I do any other blog that promotes homosexuality through deceitful, hateful rhetoric and specious, unproven assumptions. But, unfortunately, the SPLC and its pseudo-educational arm “Teaching Tolerance” still wield an alarming degree of cultural influence, especially in public schools. Parents and any other taxpayers who care about how their taxes are used and the ideas with which the next generation is being inculcated should be alert to any resources that come from “Teaching Tolerance” or the SPLC.