The hate business may not be what it used to be – at least on the government level.

The Defense Department has become the latest federal agency to sever ties with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an Alabama-based, hard-left group whose “hate map” is being used against Christian groups.

Well, bully for the Pentagon for showing that bully to the door.

The DOD’s pullback from the SPLC was reported by the Daily Caller, which said that a Justice Department attorney stated in an email that the DOD “removed any and all references to the SPLC in training materials used by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI).”

In 2014, the FBI dropped the SPLC from its resources page after congressional staff, acting on behalf of the Family Research Council (FRC) and other Christian groups on the “hate map,” met with FBI officials to discuss their concerns, according to the Daily Caller.

Once hailed for tracking the Ku Klux Klan and other extremists, the SPLC has in recent years been wielded against mainstream Christian organizations over their defense of Biblical sexual morality and marriage.

If you say out loud that men are different from women, you just took a big step toward the “hate map.”  If you say that marriage necessarily involves both sexes, bingo.  And if you say that it’s not loving to steer boys into identifying as girls, you might earn an SPLC mention alongside skinheads and Neo-Nazis.

The SPLC also targets those who oppose illegal immigration and those who believe Islamic expansionism is a threat to freedom.  All in all, the SPLC might want to consider changing its name to Hate, Inc.

In 2015, the SPLC placed presidential candidate Ben Carson, who now heads the Department of Housing and Urban Development, on an “extremist” hate watch list.  After taking considerable flak, the SPLC removed the citation and apologized to Dr. Carson.

But this guilt-by-association ploy is having a huge effect in Silicon Valley, where cyber giants who fancy themselves do-gooders look to the SPLC for guidance.

“Right now, [the SPLC is] cutting off hate groups from sources of financing by pushing digital companies like Amazon not to allow hate groups to use their services,” said SPLC’s founder, direct-mail wizard Morris Dees.

Google, Facebook and Twitter are under congressional scrutiny for allegedly “shadow banning” conservative and religious postings.

“The most dangerous aspect of this high-tech offensive on pro-faith groups and individuals is buried deep in the algorithms of these gatekeepers for the new economy,” said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel.

Google now supports a “hate news” database that links to articles referencing Liberty Counsel and other Christian groups on the SPLC “hate” list.  The SPLC’s smears have led Amazon Smile, a charity donation program run by Jeff Bezos’ Amazon company, to ban pro-family Christian groups.

Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a $1 million Apple donation to the SPLC and added a portal so iTunes buyers could donate directly. Big Tech, meet Big Hate.

The SPLC’s perfidy has led to “hate” labels on Christian groups listed in GuideStar, the charity group database, which removed some labels after a public outcry.  Discover/Diners Club is now blocking transactions with some pro-family groups, according to Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver.

Making false accusations of hate is profoundly hateful, but it’s also lucrative. The SPLC, which has raised millions since its 1971 founding, has fattened its endowment to more than $477 million, according to its latest Form 990.

In August 2017, D. James Kennedy Ministries, for which I have written several books, finally had had enough and filed a defamation lawsuit against the SPLC in Alabama and also sued GuideStar and Amazon.com, Inc.  The ministry withdrew the GuideStar suit but continued the other litigation.  Liberty Counsel also sued GuideStar, but that suit was thrown out last January by U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson, a Bill Clinton appointee.

In August 2012, Leo Johnson, the building manager at FRC headquarters in Washington, D.C., was shot while preventing an attempted mass murder by a man who said he was inspired by FRC’s presence on the SPLC’s “hate map.”

The shooter, Floyd Lee Corkins II, planned to kill as many people as possible and jam Chick-fil-A sandwiches into their faces to protest Chick-fil-A’s and FRC’s support for natural marriage.  He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in September 2013 for committing an act of terrorism while armed and other offenses.

Apparently, the SPLC did not find this compelling enough to remove FRC from its “hate map,” where it remained until very recently.  However, FRC – along with D. James Kennedy Ministries, the American Family Association, Alliance Defending Freedom, the Ruth Institute, the American College of Pediatricians and many other reputable Christian groups, along with the Jewish-led parents group MassResistance – is still listed on the SPLC’s “Hate Watch” page.

For pro-family activists, it’s become a badge of honor.

SPLC, once a valued organization fighting for civil rights of minorities, refocused some time ago. Part of that “refocusing” resulted in the group’s publication of a “hate map” several years ago. James Wright, head of D. James Kennedy Ministries, is very familiar with the hate map.

“Initially it was related to the question of marriage and the gay agenda,” he shares. “[But] these days if you’re on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate map, it might be anything from your stand on immigration, to radical Islam, to the sanctity of human life, to marriage, to whatever.”

GuideStar has re-published the hate map and Amazon’s charitable contributions don’t go to those groups listed thereon. That includes D. James Kennedy Ministries, which has filed suit in Alabama federal court alleging discrimination and libel against all three organizations.

Wright argues that SPLC, GuideStar, and Amazon have labeled his organization and many others as hate groups for one simple reason: “To try to silence us,” he says. “They don’t want to deal with us on the issues. They want to silence us and make us a marginal voice in the culture.”

He goes on to say “their definition of hate is both morally and intellectually dishonest, unjustifiable” – and that the only way to deal with it is to have the three groups prove their definition of hate before a jury of peers. Thus, the lawsuit.

Apple’s profits going to the SPLC

A spokesman for another group on the “hate map” says it’s dangerous when people are so blinded by their ideology that they finance organizations such as the SPLC. That comment comes in the wake of Apple Corporation CEO Tim Cook announcing his company is donating $1 million to the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League.

Abraham Hamilton III, general counsel and policy analyst for the American Family Association, responds to the donation.

Hamilton offers a solution to deal with Apple’s announced plan to use profits from the sales of its products to support organizations like the SPLC – organizations he says “encourage hate” and are “radically, ideologically driven” and pro-abortion.

“[When] you see this happening, the best way to respond is to vote with your pocketbook,” he tells OneNewsNow.

In other words, consumers will decide whether Apple’s move is good for public relations.

Frustrated by its inability to win elections, the left is attempting to silence opponents through intimidation, either in the streets or in the courts.

The latest example is the hijacking of Guidestar USA by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Guidestar is a database of more than 2 million nonprofit and non-governmental (NGO) organizations. It’s considered the foremost authority on nonprofits, and had a self-avowed reputation for “remaining neutral.”

That changed when a left-wing activist, Jacob Harold, came aboard in 2012. Mr. Harold, whose bio boasts of donating to the Obama campaign, extensive activism on behalf of climate change groups, and hosting a NARAL Pro-Choice DC men’s event, tweeted a photo of himself holding a sign protesting President Trump at the radical Women’s March in January.

Apart from Vermont ice cream magnates Ben and Jerry, it might be hard to find a more radically leftist major CEO. So it’s no wonder that Mr. Harold welcomed the Southern Poverty Law Center as an authority on “hate groups.” Using SPLC’s “hate map” as a resource, Guidestar smeared 46 organizations, many of them Christian, as “hate groups.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a long history of abusing nonprofits and individuals with whom they disagree. They tar innocent people and may have inspired at least two terrorist incidents. The SPLC’s “hate map” lumps Christian and conservative organizations with neo-Nazis, skinheads and other violence-prone groups. The most common offenses? Failing to salute the brave new world of sexual anarchy or unlimited illegal immigration.

On Aug. 15, 2012, a disturbed young man, Floyd Corkins II, who later told the FBI that he had been inspired by the SPLC’s “hate map,” attempted to commit mass murder at the DC-based Family Research Council. He had a knapsack full of extra rounds and Chick-fil-A sandwiches that he had planned to stuff into the mouths of his victims. Stopped by Leo Johnson, a courageous guard who was shot while subduing him, Corkins became the first person in U.S. history to be convicted under Washington, DC, law of domestic terrorism.

On June 14, Bernie Sanders follower James T. Hodgkinson, who had “liked” the Southern Poverty Law Center on Facebook, shot up Republican congressmen and their staffs at a baseball practice in Alexandria, critically wounding Republican Majority Whip Steve Scalise, and injuring four others. The Louisiana congressman had been singled out by the SPLC for an alleged connection to a white power group, a charge he denies.

Earlier this month, Guidestar began adding the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate group labels to 46 nonprofits. Last week, Guidestar – and the SPLC by implication – began getting major pushback.

On June 21, a group of 41 Christian and conservative leaders, including former Attorney General Edwin Meese, signed a letter to Guidestar demanding deletion of the defaming labels, which Guidestar did – sort of. The labels were removed but the damage was done and the information is available upon request.

Next, Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal foundation, filed a defamation lawsuit on June 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia against Guidestar for posting a label on Liberty Counsel’s Guidestar page describing it as an SPLC-designated “hate group.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which built its reputation years ago by monitoring the Ku Klux Klan and other violent groups, still raises money by the boatload with its scare tactics and has a $300 million endowment. That allows it to do things like send a dozen attorneys to New Jersey, where a jury under a liberal judge in a kangaroo court in 2015 found a small Jewish group, Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH), guilty of consumer “fraud” for directing people to counselors who aid people in overcoming unwanted same-sex desires.

The Southern Poverty Law Center also listed former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson in the “hate” category for his stances on marriage and biblical morality before public outrage made them withdraw the label.

Three years ago, the FBI dropped the Southern Poverty Law Center as a source for identifying hate groups. In March 2016, the U.S. Justice Department accused the Southern Poverty Law Center attorneys of “lack of professionalism” and “misconduct” for falsely characterizing the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Immigration Reform Law Institute as “hate groups.”

Maajid Nawaz, a moderate Muslim who opposes jihad extremism, says he is also suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for defaming him and his organization, the London-based Quilliam Foundation.

If there is still doubt as to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s motives, it was laid to rest in an interview with SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok, who said that his group’s “hate group” criteria “have nothing to do with criminality or violence or any kind of guess we’re making about ‘this group could be dangerous.’ It’s strictly ideological.'”

Mr. Potok is also on video stating, “Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on. I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.”

And the Southern Poverty Law Center still has a shred of credibility? Sure they do. Ask any “mainstream” journalist.

More Americans — even those on the political left — are learning the truth about the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Christian Post’s Anugrah Kumar reports the latest:

GuideStar USA, which is one of the nation’s leading sources of information about nonprofit organizations, has announced it will remove from its list of “hate groups” dozens of conservative advocacy organizations, many of which advocate for traditional marriage.

The nonprofit world is huge and growing, and to help people navigate through the labyrinth, “nonprofit tracking” companies have been created. GuideStar is one, and this is from its posted mission:

To revolutionize philanthropy by providing information that advances transparency, enables users to make better decisions, and encourages charitable giving.

That sounds great, doesn’t it?

One little problem. Here is Rachel del Guidice writing at The Daily Signal a week earlier:

The nation’s leading source of information on U.S. charities faces mounting criticism for using a controversial “hate group” designation in listings for some well-known and broadly supported conservative nonprofits.

Many readers can already figure where this story is going:

GuideStar, which calls itself a “neutral” aggregator of tax data on charities, recently incorporated “hate group” labels produced by the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center.

The decision by the tracker of nonprofits prompted 41 conservative leaders to protest the move in a letter provided exclusively to The Daily Signal. The letter, dated June 21, asks the website to drop the “hate group” labels put on 46 organizations.

Among the signatories is the Illinois Family Institute’s Executive Director, David E. Smith.

The Daily Signal also reported a few details about the Leftist leadership at GuideStar. The organization cannot call itself “neutral,” if they are to use the thoroughly discredited SPLC.

The letter from the 41 conservative leaders made their case:

GuideStar’s use of the “hate group” designation for certain organizations, many of them Christian, unfairly and inaccurately adopts the “aggressive political agenda” of Southern Poverty Law Center, the leaders write.

Among the organizations represented are the Family Research Council, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the American College of Pediatricians, the National Task Force for Therapy Equality, the American Family Association, the London Center for Policy Research, and the Jewish Institute for Global Awareness.

The more you learn about the SPLC, the easier it is to call it a “hate group.” Their disdain for Christianity and other social conservative organizations is consistently hostile with the clear aim to do them harm.

The Daily Signal Post spoke with William G. “Jerry” Boykin, a retired Army general who is executive vice president of the Family Research Council: “I think that what GuideStar is doing is another attack on conservative Christian organizations and individuals.”

Why would they do so? The Daily Signal explains:

Foundations, corporations, and other institutions look at listings by such organizations as GuideStar when they determine where to make tax-exempt contributions. They are unlikely to donate money to any organization labeled as a hate group, the conservative leaders argue.

GuideStar responded to the letter by removing those 41 organizations plus 5 others from its list of “hate groups.”

With that, Leftist-run GuideStar has now provided yet another episode that does well-deserved damage to the reputation of the SPLC, while bringing more attention to their nasty agenda.

Click here to read the letter sent by the 41 conservative leaders.

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