There may have been some optimistic naïfs somewhere in America hoping that the bipartisan condemnation of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for a host of ethical ills followed by  the “resignations” of Morris Dees, Mark Potok, and Heidi Beirich signaled the start of some major housecleaning—housecleaning that might have turned up some morals that had long been tucked away in its Alabama attic. No such luck.

First, some recent history:

IFI hosted our annual fall banquet on Friday, November 1. This year’s banquet speaker was Franklin Graham. Shortly thereafter, one of the SPLC’s Grand Inquisitors, Brett Barrouquere, contacted IFI in a then-suspected, now-confirmed effort to ferret out any sexuality heresy that Franklin Graham may have expressed. To be clear, I mean views that the SPLC deems heretical. The Inquisitors at the Society for the Persecution and Libeling of Christians seek nothing less than either exile or baptism in the pagan “LGB” and “T” religion of sexual anarchy.

Although no one expects the Southern Inquisition, I did suspect the faux-friendly questions in Barrouquere’s email were laying the groundwork for a smear of Franklin Graham, so I declined to answer them. Instead, since Inquisitor Barrouquere identifies as a muckraker, I quoted a short passage from The Pilgrim’s Progress, which is the source of the term “muckraker.” About all of this I wrote on November 12.

Then on November 13, the SPLC published the anticipated smear of Graham and IFI. Here’s part of what the Inquisitors (or as they refer to themselves portentously, the “Hatewatch Staff”) wrote:

Graham was guest speaker at the anti-LGBTQ hate group Illinois Family Institute’s annual fall banquet titled “Faith, Family and Freedom.” Graham’s remarks included his support of President Donald Trump and what he called the nation’s faltering state of morality. But his appearance at the Nov. 1 event outside Chicago links him to a group with a history of anti-LGBTQ stances perhaps even more extreme than his own.

The Illinois Family Institute is a state affiliate of anti-LGBTQ hate group American Family Association, though it operates independently.

Examples of the Illinois group’s statements about LGBTQ people include that homosexual behavior is “medically, emotionally and spiritually unhealthy.” In July, Laurie Higgins, a cultural affairs writer for the group, said that trans people are harming children, stating that the “ravenous, pro-‘trans’ behemoth smells the blood of children in our murky cultural waters and is hurtling toward them with blinding speed.” Higgins went on to say that “trans activists [are] in league with ‘many homosexuals’” and are “propagandizing, grooming, and mutilating children.”

While including links to the original sources for most of the quotes or facts in their article, for some odd reason, the Inquisitors omitted a link to my article from which they quoted. Could it be they were willing to sacrifice journalistic ethics to prevent their audience from reading the context for the quotes they cherry-picked?

In the service of transparency and sound reporting, click here to read the article to which the SPLC didn’t link, an article that details the seamy side of the “trans” cult’s assaults on childhood innocence that the Inquisitors didn’t want their audience to see.

Maybe the Inquisitors didn’t want their audience to read about the company TranZwear that makes an “extra-small” silicone penis and testicles called a “packer” for girls under five who wish they were boys. And maybe they didn’t want their audience to learn that handmade colorful underpants called “tuck buddies” that conceal the penises and testicles of boys ages 3-14 who wish they were girls can be bought on Etsy.

I sent the link to Inquisitor Barrouquere, so he could add it to the article. So far, he has not fixed his omission.

Once more for the obtuse, deluded, or deceitful:

The Illinois Family Institute does not hate people. IFI holds theologically orthodox, historical Christian views on volitional homosexual activity, marriage, and cross-sex identification. We also hold theologically orthodox views on love, which is inseparable from truth. We believe genuine love—as opposed to what passes for love today—entails seeking for others that which is true and good. Genuine love as demonstrated by Christ does not entail affirming all the feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts of others. Genuine love entails concern for both temporal and eternal lives.

We believe the assumptions espoused by both the homosexual and “trans” communities are harming individuals—especially children—and society. Schools are inculcating children with arguable assumptions that are presented as objective facts. The medical community is chemically sterilizing and surgically mutilating children. Scientists in the hard sciences fear personal and professional repercussions if they express the scientific fact that the human species is sexually dimorphic. The arts and academia suppress dissent from the “LGB” and “T” ideologies. And nothing poses as great a threat to First Amendment protections as those ideologies. Both ideologies depend on an utterly nonsensical comparison of skin color per se to subjective, internal sexual feelings per se, and no one is discussing the sandy foundation on which these ideologies are built.

If these ideologies are false, then opposing them is the antithesis of hatred. Believing an assumption is wrong, or believing a volitional sexual act is immoral does not constitute hatred of persons who believe differently and act in accordance with their beliefs. Perhaps SPLC hatewatchers hate everyone who holds different beliefs and moral precepts than they do, but they ought not impute their habits of mind to others. We at IFI, like many other people, are fully capable of loving those who believe differently and act in accordance with their beliefs—even false and destructive beliefs. And we will express our beliefs with the boldness and clarity that the sanctimonious deceivers at the SPLC express theirs.

Do theologically orthodox Christians still not realize what their silence is facilitating? Their silence is facilitating their own oppression and that of their children and grandchildren. The “LGB” and “T” dogmatists and their regressive allies seek to outlaw the expression of moral claims derived from Scripture that they detest—all in the deceitful names of compassion and inclusivity.

To those misguided Christians who hold the unbiblical belief that Christians are obliged never to say anything sassy, saucy, bold, or hated by those who propagate evil, IFI says this:

If you don’t like the way we address the egregious evil disseminated everywhere by God-haters—the evil ideas that are corrupting the hearts and minds of children, sterilizing and mutilating their bodies, and robbing them of mothers and fathers—then find another way to speak truth about evil. But don’t waste time trying to find the way that won’t enrage homosexual activists, “trans” cultists, and their legion of feckless water carriers. There is no such way. And remember, Christ didn’t promise Christians a cost-free life. He promised us a costly life that entails taking up our crosses daily and being hated by the world that first hated him.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/SPLC-Attack.mp3

IFI works diligently to serve the Christian community in Illinois with email alerts, video reports, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences and cultural commentaries. We do not accept government funds nor do we run those aggravating popup ads to generate funds.  We depend solely on the support of readers like you.

If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI, please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.  It does make a difference.

On Friday Oct. 8, IFI received this strangely kind email from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) “investigative reporter” Brett Barrouquere (an email similar, I learned, to one sent to Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, but more on that later):

Hi,

I’m a reporter with The Intelligence Project in Montgomery, Alabama. I hope this finds you well.

Currently, I’m assisting a colleague with a story about Franklin Graham speaking to IFI. Why did IFI choose him as a speaker? What did he tell the group? How was he received during his talk?

And, has Mr. Graham spoken to the group before? If so, when?

We are aiming to produce a story next week. Thank you for your time and assistance.

Sincerely,

Brett

I say “strangely kind” because IFI has been included on the SPLC’s “hate” groups list since 2008, one month after I began working for IFI. At the time, the SPLC had zero criteria for determining which groups or individuals constitute haters, a fact I pointed out in articles and to the unscrupulous, unpleasant Mark Potok and his equally unscrupulous, unpleasant henchperson Heidi Beirich, both of whom headed up the “Intelligence Project” that maligns conservative organizations as “hate groups.”

Both Potok and Beirich have “resigned” in the wake of widespread, bipartisan criticism of the SPLC’s profligate, unjustified labeling of conservative organizations as “hate” groups; the SPLC’s abandonment of its mission to combat racism; its greedy profiteering and fear-mongering; and accusations of sexual misconduct and racism leveled at disgraced and fired founder Morris Dees. You can read more about our history with the moral miscreants at the SPLC in my article “A True Story About the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

Upon receipt of this strangely kind email with strange questions about Franklin Graham, who just a week earlier was IFI’s keynote banquet speaker, I decided to find out a bit about Barrouquere. I discovered he omitted something from his job title. On the website Muck Rack, he identifies as “Investigative Reporter at SPLCenter and @hatewatch.”

The SPLC’s Hatewatch describes its mission as “Exposing hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States since 1981.” In the service of “exposing hate groups and other extremists,” Barrouquere contacted IFI to inquire about Franklin Graham. #Eyeroll

Barrouquere is profiled on the professional journalism website Muck Rack, which derives its name from the term muckrake. Theodore Roosevelt coined the term “muckrakers” to refer to journalists who investigate and expose corruption with the intent of reforming society. But the origin of the term muck-rake is older and more fitting of the SPLC’s dirty work. This is what I wrote to Barrouquere:

Dear Brett,

Surely you jest. You want IFI to help the ethically impoverished SPLC’s risibly named “Intelligence Project” produce what is likely yet another smear of a good person?

Muck-raker is a fitting description for those who do the dirty work of the SPLC. Here is the origin of the term “muck-raker” from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress:

“the Interpreter takes them apart again, and has them first into a room where was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand. There stood also one over his head, with a celestial crown in his hand, and proffered to give him that crown for his muckrake; but the man did neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and the dust of the floor…. his muck-rake doth show his worldly mind. And whereas thou seest him rather give heed to rake up straws and sticks, and the dust of the floor, than to do what he says that calls to him from above with the celestial crown in his hand; it is to show that heaven is but a fable to some, and that things here are counted the only things substantial. Now, whereas it was also showed thee that the man could look no way but downwards; it is to let thee know that earthly things, when they are with power upon men’s minds, quite carry their hearts away from God.”

Many don’t know that the SPLC also has a toxic “educational” arm called “Teaching Tolerance” whose de facto goal is to carry the hearts of other people’s children away from God:

Our mission is to help teachers and schools educate children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy.

Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities….

Our program emphasizes social justice and anti-bias. The anti-bias approach encourages children and young people to challenge prejudice and learn how to be agents of change in their own lives. Our Social Justice Standards show how anti-bias education works through the four domains of identity, diversity, justice and action.

Conservatives should no longer be duped by leftist jargon. Anytime the terms “educate,” “civil,” “inclusive,” “social justice,” “anti-bias,” “challenge prejudice,” “identity,” and “diversity,” appear, you know you’ve entered the Upside Down where the meanings of terms bear little resemblance to their true meanings:

1.) Educate=indoctrinate

2.) Civil=incivility toward conservatives, especially Christians

3.) Inclusive=affirm homosexuality and cross-sex identification, ostracize Christians

4.) Social justice=same as above

5.) Anti-bias=promote anti-Christian bias

6.) Challenge bias=same as above

7.) Identity=treat “progressive” beliefs about sexuality as unassailable moral precepts

8.) Diversity=race/skin color, sex, class, and deviant sexuality

The SPLC’s description of Teaching Tolerance omits mention of the chief goal of the SPLC: the eradication of theological orthodoxy from the public square.

Coincidentally, on National Review’s blog “The Corner,” Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) shared that he received a similar email from another “investigative reporter” with the SPLC at about the time IFI received ours. CIS is part of a lawsuit against the SPLC, which added CIS to its infamous “hate groups” list shortly after Trump’s election.

Krikorian’s email, which he hilariously describes as a “Howdy, Hater!” email, came from senior investigative reporter Michael Edison Hayden, who in late September tweeted out “I’m extremely excited about the team we are assembling @Hatewatch.”

Hayden begins with the kind of warm salutation—the “Howdy” part—one wouldn’t expect from someone who views you as a hater and scourge of society: “I hope you guys are having a good day. If you DC folks are a Nationals fan, congratulations.”

Then, Hayden got down to the nitty-gritty “Hater!” part:

Anyway, I wanted to ask you guys about some stuff I have on my plate here. Someone sent me a rather large volume of Stephen Miller’s emails from the run-up to the 2016 election. There are a lot of newsworthy things in these emails…. I know he gave a keynote for you in 2015, so obviously there is some degree of connection but I didn’t know how much.

Hayden went on to ask five questions about CIS’ involvement with Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior policy advisor, including asking about the degree of “closeness” between CIS and Miller, which is similar to the question Barrouquere asked IFI about Franklin Graham.

Krikorian, who, rather than responding to Hayden, forwarded his email to attorneys handling the lawsuit, noted the bizarre conclusion to Hayden’s email:

The e-mail ends, inscrutably, with “Warm regards”. But either you’re writing to the head of a “hate group” who thinks foreigners are “cockroaches” or you offer “warm regards”—it can’t really be both.

The SPLC has proven repeatedly for decades that it is incapable of intellectual consistency, honesty, or morality. The SPLC hasn’t changed its stripes.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/SPLC.mp3

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­­A refreshing and much-needed take-down of the ethically impoverished Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and its avaricious founder Morris Dees inspired me to recount IFI’s true story about our interaction with the blackguards who maintain the SPLC’s “hate groups” list.

The impetus for Carl Cannon’s critique of the SPLC on Real Clear Politics was the recent assault on esteemed scholar Charles Murray at Middlebury College in Vermont, an assault that was inspired by the pernicious SPLC, the same organization that inspired the shooting at the Family Research Council’s headquarters in 2012.

In early March, 2009, about six months after I started working for IFI, we learned that IFI had been put on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) “hate” groups list.

Since IFI stands unequivocally opposed to both violence and hatred, we wondered why we were listed as an “anti-gay” hate group when other institutions like the Roman Catholic Church and many Protestant denominations that share our same views on matters related to homosexuality were not.

Why the SPLC first claimed IFI was put on its hate groups list

For clarification I called the SPLC and spoke with Heidi Beirich. Our conversation was troubling in that Ms. Beirich revealed that even a tenuous, distant connection to statements the SPLC doesn’t like will land an organization on their hate groups list.

She told me that the only reason IFI had been included on the hate groups list was that in 2005, a former IFI executive director had posted a very short article by someone not affiliated with IFI.

Although there were no defamatory comments made in this piece, Beirich claimed that in other articles that never appeared on IFI, the author had suggested that (in Beirich’s words) “Gays are sickly, and people should stay away from them.” IFI had no idea if that claim were true, but if it were, IFI would reject it, find it inconsistent with Scripture, and find it repellent. The problem was IFI had never cited or endorsed such rhetoric, and yet the SPLC had labeled IFI as an active “hate” group based on it.

Beirich also claimed that in the short article IFI had re-posted, the author had claimed that homosexual men have shortened lifespans—a claim that Beirich viewed as incorrect. I responded that I could see how a statistic could be erroneous and derived from flawed methodology, but I didn’t see erroneous statistics as defamatory or hateful.

More important, the same finding regarding reduced life expectancy for homosexual men had been reported by a world-renowned medical journal and cited as true by homosexual activists when it served their purposes.

That study, which appeared in Oxford University’s International Journal of Epidemiology, concluded that “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday.”

Also, in their book Caring For Lesbian and Gay People-A Clinical Guide, authors Dr. Allan Peterkin and Dr. Cathy Risdon suggest that the life expectancy of gay/bisexual men in Canada is 55 years.

What the SPLC’s Mark Potok did next

Following our exposé of the reason for the SPLC’s inclusion of IFI on their “anti-gay” hate groups list, the SPLC started receiving complaints, which evidently didn’t sit too well with them. As a result of those complaints, the editor of their ironically named “Intelligence Report,” which includes the hate groups list, Mark Potok, started leaving troubling voice messages around the country for those who called to complain.

Here’s a transcription of one of those messages:

Yes, Hi, this is a message for . . . from Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center. Very briefly, I just wanna say very briefly – we do list them (Illinois Family Institute) for a reason, which we’ve stated publicly. They (IFI) have been less, in my opinion, than honest about what we really said. They publish and promote the work of a man named Paul Cameron. Paul Cameron is a guy who is infamous for over the last 20 years for producing, for publishing fake studies that allege all kinds of terrible things about homosexuals. For instance, that gay men are, something like, 20 times more likely to molest children; that gay men have an average death age of something like 43 because they’re so sickly and, ya know, sorta do such terrible things. These things are completely false and have been proven false long ago. Our view is that the Illinois Family Institute promotes these complete falsehoods. Then that is hateful activity. We never list any group on the basis of simply disagreeing morally or otherwise with homosexuality. We told the Illinois Family Institute directly that if they remove this material from their website, in fact, that we would take them off the list. Instead, what they’ve done is essentially launched an attack on us to try to get people to call us as you did. Anyway, that’s all. I just wanted to at least briefly explain that it was not quite the way it was being portrayed.

Contrary to Potok’s claim that the SPLC had publicly stated their reason for including IFI on their “anti-gay” hate groups list, to my knowledge, prior to my phone call to them, they had never publicly stated their reason. And stating their reason in a private phone conversation with me doesn’t constitute a public statement.

Was IFI dishonest?

After I heard his voice message in which Potok stated that IFI had “been less than honest,” I called and spoke to him, informing him that in my article, I was scrupulously honest about what Heidi Beirich had said to me. In fact, I even included a follow-up email in which Beirich confirmed the reason for the SPLC’s inclusion of IFI on the SPLC’s  “hate” groups list.

Was the SPLC accurate in their description of what IFI had done?

Mr. Potok stated in his voice message that we “publish and promote the work of a man named Paul Cameron.” This grossly misrepresented the nature of our involvement with Cameron’s work. It suggests that we regularly or continually published and promoted his work, when, by Potok’s and Beirich’s own admission, we published only one brief article.

More troubling yet, this one article contained no statements remotely like these that Potok claimed it did: “gay men are, something like, 20 times more likely to molest children” or that “they’re so sickly and, ya know, sorta do such terrible things.”

Potok dug himself in even deeper when he said in his voice message that it is the SPLC’s view that “the Illinois Family Institute promotes these complete falsehoods.” He was saying that IFI promotes falsehoods that the SPLC’s own evidence proves we did not promote. The SPLC’s own evidence was the one four-year-old article that did not include any references to “child molestation,” or “sickly homosexuals sorta doing terrible things.” Potok was lying.

Suspicious timing of the SPLC’s addition of IFI to their hate groups list

I asked Mr. Potok if IFI had been on the SPLC’s hate groups list since 2005 when the challenged article was posted. He replied “No.” I then asked when we were first listed, and he said 2008. So, they added us to their list in 2008 based on one brief article posted in 2005. Coincidentally, I started writing for IFI in 2008.

Exposing the SPLC’s deceit

In order to expose the deceit of the SPLC, IFI took the offending article down in 2009, and the SPLC took us off the hate groups list. Then in 2010, we were back on. What happened in 2010?

Well, in 2010, Potok and his accomplices Heidi Beirich, Evelyn Schlatter, and Robert Steinback finally got around to manufacturing criteria for determining what constitutes a “hate group.”

In 2010, the SPLC created a definition of “hatred” that is elastic enough to allow the inclusion of organizations the SPLC doesn’t like. The dubious criteria dubiously applied focus on social science research or propositions that the SPLC doesn’t like.

Schlatter explains that the “propagation” of “known falsehoods” about homosexuality will result in organizations being included on the SPLC’s “anti-gay” list and perhaps also on their hate groups list.

I’m not sure if the anti-Christian activists at the SPLC actually understand what a “known falsehood” (also called a lie) is. A known falsehood is a statement that is objectively, provably false and is known to be false when made.

So, let’s take a closer look at just four of the ten “known falsehoods” that Schlatter and co-author Robert Steinback cite in their companion article “10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked”.

Alleged falsehood about hate crimes legislation and the repeal of  DADT

The SPLC has said that if an organization argues that hate crime legislation may result in the jailing of pastors who condemn volitional homosexual acts as sinful, the organization is guilty of “anti-gay” hatred and will be included on the SPLC’s hate groups list. And any organization that argues that allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military will damage the military merits inclusion on its “anti-gay” hate groups list.

How can the SPLC sensibly claim that speculating that hate crimes legislation may lead to the jailing of pastors who condemn homosexuality is a known falsehood? It is a prediction of possible future events that may result from the logical working out of a law. This prediction may not come to fruition, but at this point it cannot reasonably be deemed a “known falsehood.”

And how can a prediction about the effects of allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military be a known falsehood? Certainly, there are differences of opinion on the effects of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but liberal speculation that such a change will not damage the military is not a known truth.

Alleged falsehood concerning mental illness and drug use among homosexuals

If any organization states that homosexuals experience higher rates of depression or drug use might land on the hate groups list. The SPLC engages in some tricksy rhetoric to defend this criterion. Schlatter and Steinback argue that mental health organizations no longer consider homosexuality a mental disorder, which is true but has no relevance to the fact—which even the SPLC concedes—that homosexuals experience much higher rates of mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse than the general population.

What really sticks in the craw of the SPLC is that conservative organizations don’t agree with the unproven speculation by the SPLC and some social scientists that the reasons for the increased incidence of mental disorders and drug use are social stigma and “discrimination.”

Alleged falsehood about children raised by homosexuals

The SPLC deems hateful the claim that same-sex parents harm children. Potok and his minions don’t define harm and apparently reject a whole body of social science research that claims that children fare best when raised by a mother and father in an intact family. Even President Obama in his Mother’s Day and Father’s Day proclamations argued that both are essential to the welfare of children.

While homosexual activists exalt even the most poorly constructed social science research if it reinforces their presuppositions, they reject better constructed studies that undermine them. If organizations don’t accept the ever-fluid, controvertible, and highly politicized social science research that the SPLC favors, they go on the “hate group” list.

Alleged falsehood about persons who choose to leave homosexuality

If an organization claims that people can “choose to leave homosexuality,” it risks being added to the hate groups list.  But there exist people who choose to stop engaging in homoerotic activity, and choose to leave homoerotic relationships, and choose no longer to place unwanted homoerotic attraction at the center of their identity.  There are former homosexuals like Rosaria Butterfield and Michael Glatze who are now happily married to opposite-sex persons. How can making a true statement about the possibility that humans can make choices about their sexual  identity be construed as a known falsehood or hateful?

Next time a feckless school board member or politician cites the Southern Poverty Law Center to discredit the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, or the Illinois Family Institute, do your level best to confront their ignorance and bigotry with truth.

It’s probably too much to hope for, but perhaps the day of reckoning for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has come. Perhaps the shooting last week at the Family Research Council headquarters in Washington D.C. will bring scrutiny to and condemnation of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s pernicious “hate group” list on which the Family Research Council (FRC), American Family Association (AFA), and we, the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), are included.

All three organizations are included on the SPLC’s ever-expanding list of hate groups that also includes “neo-Nazi” groups, ”racist skinhead” groups, and the Ku Klux Klan. FRC, AFA, and IFI are listed as “anti-gay hate groups.”

News reports revealed that shortly after the FRC shooting, the FBI contacted the Traditional Values Coalition, another conservative Christian organization on the SPLC’s “anti-gay hate group” list to notify them that the shooter, Floyd Corkins, had its address in his backpack. The Traditional Values Coalition is so small that very few conservatives have even heard of it, so where might Corkins have learned about  it? Hmmmm, let’s see… Could it be from the SPLC’s hate group list?

In an interview following the shooting, FRC President Tony Perkins said, “I believe the Southern Poverty Law Center should be held accountable for their reckless use of terminology.” While Mark Potok, editor-in-chief of the SPLC’s ironically named “Intelligence Report” and “Hatewatch” blog continues to spew defamatory lies, he takes umbrage at this criticism of the SPLC’s ethics.

Countless liberal bloggers, political pundits, and the mainstream press repeat the SPLC’s specious designation of conservative Christian groups as “hate groups.” But one wonders how many of those who repeat the SPLC’s fallacious claims bother to read the criteria that the SPLC uses to determine who goes on its “hate group” list. Do any journalists, law enforcement agencies, or gullible acolytes of the SPLC bother to analyze the soundness of the evidence the SPLC provides for the inclusion of groups on their “hate group” list?

And do disciples of the SPLC know that it included groups on its “anti-gay hate group” list prior to the establishment and publication of any criteria to determine which groups would go on it?

SPLC’s “hate group” criteria center on social science research and policy speculation with which the SPLC disagrees.

The SPLC has been harshly criticized for its anti-religious bias, even—irony of ironies—its hatred of orthodox Christians. In an obvious attempt to distract attention from the truth of that criticism, Potok and his accomplices Heidi Beirich, Evelyn Schlatter, and Robert Steinback manufactured a set of criteria in 2010 that would enable them to include groups like the FRC, AFA, and IFI on their “anti-gay hate group” list. They apparently counted on Americans not noticing that their criteria bear no resemblance to actual hatred: no expressions of hate, no calls for violence, no claims that those who identify as homosexual are less valuable as human beings.

What the SPLC has done is create an elastic definition of hatred that centers on social science research,  facts, or propositions that the SPLC doesn’t like.

One criterion that the SPLC uses to establish “hate group” status is whether an organization makes any predictions that the SPLC doesn’t like about the potential legal consequences of law or policy related to homosexuality.

The SPLC claims that groups warrant inclusion on its “hate group” list if they propagate “known falsehoods” about homosexuality. I’m not sure if Potok and his compeers actually understand what a “known falsehood” (also called a lie) is. A known falsehood is a statement that is objectively, provably false and is known to be false when made.

The SPLC has said, for example, that if an organization argues that hate crime legislation may result in the jailing of pastors who condemn volitional homosexual acts as sinful, the organization is guilty of “anti-gay” hatred and will be included on the SPLC’s “hate group” list.

And any organization that argues that allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military will damage the military in some way merits inclusion on its “anti-gay hate group” list.

How can Potok sensibly claim that speculating that hate crimes legislation may lead to the jailing of pastors who condemn homosexuality is a known falsehood? It is a prediction of possible future events that may result from the logical working out of a law. This prediction may not come to fruition, but at this point it cannot reasonably be deemed a “known falsehood.”

And how can a prediction about the effects of allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military be a known falsehood. Certainly, there are differences of opinion on the effects of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but liberal speculation that such a change will not damage the military is not a known truth.

Another criterion used by the SPLC to determine whether an organization is a “hate group” is whether the organization cites any social science research that the SPLC doesn’t like.

According to the SPLC, if an organization says that “gays are more prone to mental illness and to abuse drugs and alcohol,” it goes on the SPLC’s hate groups list. I’m sure this is not news to Potok, but there is a lot of research showing just that.

The SPLC engages in some tricksy rhetoric to defend this intellectually and ethically bankrupt criterion. Schlatter and Steinback argue that mental health organizations no longer consider homosexuality a mental disorder, which is true, but has no relevance to the fact—which even the SPLC concedes—that homosexuals experience much higher rates of mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse.

What really sticks in the craw of the SPLC is that conservative organizations don’t agree with the unproven speculation by the  SPLC and some social scientists that the reasons for the increased incidence of mental disorders and drug use are social stigma and “discrimination.”

The SPLC deems hateful the claim that same-sex parents harm children. Of course, Potok and his minions don’t feel any obligation to define harm and apparently reject a whole body of social science research that claims that children fare best when raised by a mother and father in an intact family. Even President Obama in his Mother’s Day and Father’s Day proclamations argued that both are essential to the welfare of children.

While homosexual activists revel in even the most poorly constructed social science research if it reinforces their presuppositions, they reject better constructed studies that undermine them. The truth is that if organizations don’t accept the ever-fluid, controvertible, and highly politicized social science research that the SPLC favors, they go on the “hate group” list.

“Hate group” designation relies on the redefinition of terms

In addition to marshaling only that social science research that fits their subversive sexual worldview, the SPLC does what virtually every homosexuality-affirming organization does, which is redefine terms to silence dissent and enable them to promote fallacious charges of hate with carefree abandon.

Among the many terms that homosexuality activist organizations like the SPLC have redefined are “hatred,” “tolerance,” “acceptance,” “bias,” “discrimination,” and “safety.” What the new definitions share in common is their utility in humiliating, intimidating, and silencing those who believe that same-sex attraction is disordered, that homosexual acts are immoral, and that  marriage is the inherently procreative union between one man and one woman.

The SPLC is continually telling people who identify as homosexual that those who believe homosexual acts are immoral hate them. The tragic effect of propagating that ugly lie is not only that it may lead unstable people to commit acts of violence. The truly tragic effect is that it undermines the potential for relationships between people who hold diverse moral views and effaces the potential for dialogue.

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Following our expose of the reason for the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) dubious and defamatory inclusion of the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) on their “anti-gay hate groups” list, the SPLC started receiving complaints, which evidently didn’t sit too well with them. As a result of those complaints, the editor of their ironically named “Intelligence Report,” Mark Potok, started leaving troubling voice messages around the country for those who called to complain.

Here’s a transcription of one of those messages:

Yes, Hi, this is a message for . . . from Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center. Very briefly, I just wanna say very briefly – we do list them (Illinois Family Institute) for a reason, which we’ve stated publicly. They (IFI) have been less, in my opinion, than honest about what we really said. They publish and promote the work of a man named Paul Cameron. Paul Cameron is a guy who is infamous for over the last 20 years for producing, for publishing fake studies that allege all kinds of terrible things about homosexuals. For instance, that gay men are, something like, 20 times more likely to molest children; that gay men have an average death age of something like 43 because they’re so sickly and, ya know, sorta do such terrible things. These things are completely false and have been proven false long ago. Our view is that the Illinois Family Institute promotes these complete falsehoods. Then that is hateful activity. We never list any group on the basis of simply disagreeing morally or otherwise with homosexuality. We told the Illinois Family Institute directly that if they remove this material from their website, in fact, that we would take them off the list. Instead, what they’ve done is essentially launched an attack on us to try to get people to call us as you did. Anyway, that’s all. I just wanted to at least briefly explain that it was not quite the way it was being portrayed.

Contrary to Mr. Potok’s claim that the SPLC had publicly stated their reason for including IFI on their “anti-gay hate groups” list, to my knowledge, prior to my phone call to them, they had never publicly stated their reason. And stating their reason in a private phone conversation doesn’t constitute a public statement. I believe it was I who stated their reason publicly. If I’m mistaken, I would like Mr. Potok to provide evidence for his claim that they had already publicly stated their reason.

After I heard his voice message in which he stated that IFI has “been less than honest,” I called and spoke to Mr. Potok, informing him that in my article, I was scrupulously honest about what Heidi Beirich had said to me. In fact, I even included a link to a follow-up email Ms. Beirich had sent to me in which she restated the reason for the SPLC’s inclusion of IFI on their hate groups list.

I told him that in my phone conversation with her, I even stopped her so that I could write down exact quotes, and I told her I was doing so. In my article I informed IFI readers that Ms. Beirich stated that the only reason we were on the anti-gay hate groups list was that we had posted one article four years ago by a writer not affiliated with IFI, and that if we took that one article down, the SPLC would remove us from the hate groups list. In my article, I explained that some of the claims that SPLC was making about this writer’s statements–if true–would be repellent to IFI, and that we were in the process of verifying the accuracy of the SPLC’s claims.

Frankly, I don’t know how I could have been more honest.

Mr. Potok stated in his voice message that we, IFI, “publish and promote the work of a man named Paul Cameron.” This grossly misrepresents the nature of our involvement with this man’s work. It suggests that we regularly or continually publish and promote his work, when, by Potok and Beirich’s own admission, we published only one brief article.

More troubling yet, this one article contained no statements remotely like those that Mr. Potok articulated in his voice message: “gay men are, something like, 20 times more likely to molest children” or that “they’re so sickly and, ya know, sorta do such terrible things.”

Mr. Potok then digs himself in even deeper when he says on tape that it is the SPLC’s view that “the Illinois Family Institute promotes these (emphasis mine) complete falsehoods.” “These” is a demonstrative pronoun referring back to the statements he just made. The problem is that he is suggesting that IFI promotes falsehoods that the SPLC’s own evidence proves we did not promote. The SPLC’s own evidence is the one four-year-old article that did not include any references to “child molestation,” or “sickly homosexuals sorta doing terrible things.” Mr. Potok was either stunningly careless with his rhetoric or deliberately manipulative.

I also explained to Mr. Potok that the one article from four years ago contained no hate rhetoric, and that it alone cannot possibly justify labeling IFI a hate group. I told him that simply quoting a source once does not mean that an organization supports or endorses everything that a source says or does.

I also explained that I would have no problem removing the article except that I want to provide evidence for our claim that the SPLC’s reason for including IFI on a hate groups list is flimsy, unethical, irresponsible, unsavory, and manipulative. IFI maintains that the SPLC has no justification for including us on a hate groups list together with actual hate groups like the KKK.

I also asked Mr. Potok if we’ve been on their hate groups list since 2005 when the challenged article was posted. He replied “No.” I then asked when we were first listed, and he said 2008. So, they added us to their list in 2008 based on one brief article posted in 2005.

Mr. Potok continues with his turbo-charged rhetoric claiming that IFI “launched an attack” on the SPLC. Once again, his facts are slightly askew. IFI did not call for people to voice their opposition to the SPLC. But more importantly, phone calls of opposition hardly constitute an “attack.”

Finally, since Mr. Potok was leaving voice messages all around the country claiming that I was being less than honest, I asked him if had even read my article. Surprise, surprise, he had not, and asked me to send it to him.

In light of the dubious and insubstantial reason the Southern Poverty Law Center has provided for including the Illinois Family Institute on their “anti-gay hate groups” list and their subsequent misleading, defamatory, and less than honest voice message, IFI is requesting that we be removed immediately from the SPLC’s hate groups list, and we are requesting a formal public apology for our inclusion on this list and for the voice message, both of which are damaging our reputation.