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

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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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“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19).

In the wake of the Charlottesville melee, the mainstream press is citing the disreputable Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and its “hate” groups list ad nauseum with nary a peep about the repeated criticism of the SPLC as a bastion of anti-Christian bigotry.

The Illinois Family Institute (IFI) is included on the “hate” groups list alongside white supremacist and white separatist groups for no reason other than our biblical view of marriage as a sexually differentiated union and our biblical views of sexual morality—views that are shared by the Roman Catholic Church, many Protestant denominations, many non-denominational churches, Orthodox Judaism, 2,000 years of church history, and the Bible.

It’s not just IFI that finds the SPLC and its leaders unethical. The avaricious founder of the SPLC, Morris Dees, and the dishonest editor-in-chief of the “Intelligence Report” which is responsible for the corrupt “hate” groups list, Mark Potok, have come under sustained criticism from many people for many years. (Click here, here, and here  to read more.)

Several months ago, one such critic, Real Clear Politics writer Carl Cannon, wrote an exposé of the SPLC, to whom Cannon attributes blame for the anti-free-speech assault on political scientist Charles Murray at radical Middlebury College in Vermont.

Civil rights attorney Dees co-founded the lucrative non-profit SPLC in 1971, ostensibly to combat the racism endemic to the South, and on the way, he’s made a boatload of money that has enabled him to live the luxurious lifestyle to which he and his five serial wives had become accustomed. His clients? Well, they didn’t fare quite as well financially.

Cannon explains that when the Ku Klux Klan’s power waned and racism diminished, the SPLC had to find new ways “to frighten people into still donating.” He says that “Scaring the bejesus out of people requires new bogeymen, and lots of them.” Further, Cannon claims that “mainstream conservative groups” are among the bogeymen.

Cannon reports that the “most scathing assessments of Dees and his group have always come from the left” like “Stephen B. Bright, a Yale law professor and president of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights,” who describes Dees as a “con man” and a “fraud.”

Even the far-Left magazine The Nation indicts Dees as “the archsalesman of hatemongering,” accusing him of stuffing “mailbags…with his fundraising letters, scaring dollars out of the pockets of trembling liberals aghast at his lurid depictions of a hate-sodden America in dire need of legal confrontation by the SPLC…. Dees and his hate-seekers scour the landscape for hate…it’s their staple.”

While useful idiots in the mainstream press disseminate the SPLC’s propaganda, thus smearing Christian organizations and lining the pockets of Dees, the FBI has stopped using the SPLC as a resource.

The SPLC has perfected the tactics espoused by homosexuals Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen who in 1989 wrote what they deemed a “gay manifesto for the 1990’s” titled After the Ball, in which they urged “progressives” to utilize the mainstream media in a campaign to eradicate conservative moral beliefs—what they call “homohatred”—or “silence” the expression of such beliefs in public:

[L]ink homohating bigotry with all sorts of attributes the bigot would be ashamed to possess and with social consequences he would find unpleasant and scary…. Gays must launch a large-scale campaign…to reach straights through mainstream media. We’re talking about propaganda…. Gays must be portrayed as victims in need of protection…. Make victimizers look bad…. The public should be shown images of ranting homohaters whose associated traits and attitudes appall and anger Middle America. The images might include: Klansmen… Hysterical backwoods preachers… Menacing punks, thugs, and convicts who speak coolly about the “fags” they… would like to bash… [or] A tour of Nazi concentration camps where homosexuals were tortured and gassed.

The SPLC employs all of these propagandistic tactics to stigmatize and marginalize Christian organizations like the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, Liberty Counsel, and the Illinois Family Institute for our beliefs about sexuality and marriage that derive from Scripture and for our willingness to express them publicly.

These are a few of the organizations that have not fallen prey to ravenous wolves or been taken “captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8).

For their faithfulness, Christ-followers will be hated, but enduring such trials brings blessings:

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12).

The cost of discipleship has been minimal in America for over two hundred years, but the cost is rising due to the unholy efforts of “LGBTQQAP” activists.

While Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me,” many Christians—entire denominations—are choosing instead friendship with the world, ignoring the words of James:

“Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4).

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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.

­­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.

A second article was needed to address adequately the problems exposed in Monday’s school board meeting in Illinois School District U-46 in which the decision to allow a middle school gender-dysphoric student to use an opposite-sex locker room and the decision of school CEO Tony Sanders’ to conceal that information from parents were debated.

It is important for taxpayers in every community to pay close attention to what is being done and said by leaders in U-46, because the serious issues regarding modesty, privacy, the meaning of biological sex, parental rights, and gender dysphoria will confront every community. And the arrogance, ignorance, and hypocrisy of “progressives” who are driving this destructive assault on truth and reality will need to be identified and boldly confronted.

Anti-discrimination policy bait and switch

Board member Traci O’Neal Ellis inadvertently let the cat out of the bag “progressives” furtively carry about and use to humiliate conservatives into silence and submission. But first some background is in order.

Any conservative who opposes the inclusion of “sexual orientation” (code word for homosexuality) or “gender identity” in anti-discrimination policies is routinely called hateful and falsely accused of either not caring about the bullying of homosexual and gender-dysphoric students or of actively supporting such bullying. School board member Jeanette Ward has been on the receiving end of such malignant and false accusations.

It is not a desire to harm students that leads conservatives to oppose the inclusion of conditions constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts (as opposed to objective, non-behavioral conditions like race, sex, and national origin) in anti-discrimination policies. All decent people—and yes, the vast majority of conservative people are decent—oppose bullying of any person for any reason.

Rather, the reasons conservatives oppose the inclusion of these conditions in anti-discrimination policies are these:

1.)  It opens the door for other conditions similarly constituted to be added to anti-discrimination policies.

2.)  It inevitably leads to the erosion of religious liberty, as we are currently witnessing.

3.)  Such policies are later exploited for purposes perhaps intended but never mentioned. In other words, “progressives” use the old bait and switch stratagem, knowing that gullible or gutless conservatives will fall for it.

So, back to Ellis’ revelatory comments.

She referred to the district’s “existing anti-discrimination policy,” that she said “has not changed.” Well, she means it hasn’t changed since 2013 when it changed.

Ellis implied without stating that the non-changing, existing policy mandates that gender-dysphoric boys be allowed in girls’ locker rooms and vice versa. Is that how the addition of the term “gender identity” to school anti-discrimination policies is ever explained, promoted, or justified to community members?

In 2013 U-46’s School Board—which had exactly zero conservative representation—added “gender identity” to its anti-discrimination policy at the recommendation of school attorney Miguel Rodriguez. I can’t find in board minutes an account of the discussion that took place prior to the vote, so I wonder what arguments were put forth to defend the addition. Did school board members inform parents that this policy change was needed in order to ensure that gender-dysphoric boys would be allowed in the girls’ restrooms and locker rooms? Or was it promoted as an effective tool for curbing bullying? Did community members assume the policy change was made in order to prevent harassment and abuse only to see it now used to justify co-ed locker rooms?

Ironically, the footnotes in the board documents recommending the change—a change that Ellis now suggests  requires sex-integrated locker rooms—cites the Illinois Human Rights Act which states the exact opposite: “The Act permits schools to maintain single-sex facilities that are distinctly private in nature, e.g., restrooms and locker rooms.”

It’s important to note that the policy that was changed applies only to “educational and extracurricular opportunities”—not to bathroom and locker room usage. In addition, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 specifically states that schools may maintain sex-separated locker rooms and restrooms.

Ellis, the school board member who suggested that those who oppose co-ed locker rooms are exercising “authority without wisdom” and are “bruising” children, is the same board member who referred to the Republican National Convention as the “Klanvention” on her Facebook page.  Enquiring minds want to know if such a slur might erode the trust conservative community members have in her ability to honor her oath to “represent all school district constituents honestly and equally”?

Ellis concluded her school board statement Monday night with these hollow words:

And to our students, I offer this to you. If you are straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, gender non-conforming, queer, questioning, white, black, Latino, Asian, Native American, bi-racial, or any other racial, ethnic or national origin…if you score a perfect score on the SAT and are headed to Harvard, or you graduate dead last in your class, if you are able-bodied, or disabled, if you are low income or the child of the most affluent family in this district; if you have one, two, or no parents, if you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Scientologist, atheist, agnostic or of any other belief…however you show up in U-46, when you cross the threshold of a U-46 school, I welcome you. You are not “less than”. And because you are welcome here, that means that as a district, we have to work to meet your unique needs and well-being, while balancing others’ needs and well-being. In other words, we must exercise our authority with wisdom, in order to polish, not bruise you.

I wonder if Republican students who may have Republican parents believe those words.

And who “liked” Ellis’ “Klanvention” Facebook comment? None other than U-46 attorney Miguel Rodriguez, the person who recommended adding “gender identity” to school board policy.

Macro-aggressive government employees 

Although Bartlett High School English teacher Gary Lorber’s macro-aggressive conduct at the board meeting may have been unusual conduct for a teacher, his views are widely held by “progressive” teachers in government schools who self-righteously view themselves as “agents of change” and have assigned themselves the duty of shaping the moral and political views of other people’s children. In my experience, this kind of arrogant teacher is over-represented in English departments. They, like many on the U-46 school board, want government schools to have no conservative representation in leadership or teaching positions. One conservative member on a board of seven is one too many for the disciples of diversity.

Lorber’s intemperate treatment of Mrs. Ward, especially his maudlin concluding insult was both unprofessional and cruel. I hope you can find three minutes to watch this video of Lorber’s performance, but in case you can’t, here’s a bit of what he said to his board member, Mrs. Ward:

I do not know how you…have become…so hateful….I wonder what a little girl thinks of you when she looks into your eyes. I wonder what hatred you indoctrinated into her eyes when she looks into yours.

I have never seen a teacher so brazenly and perniciously attack his own school board member. If a conservative had said anything approaching this, he or she would be vilified as a hateful bully. No child of mine would ever sit in a classroom under the tutelage of a teacher so devoid of tolerance, respect, decorum, civility, and humility.

U-46 board policies state the following: “All District employees are expected to maintain high standards in their school relationships, to demonstrate integrity and honesty, to be considerate and cooperative and to maintain professional relationships.” When the board and administration review Mr. Lorber’s statement, do they hear the voice of a considerate, cooperative, and professional staff member?

“Fringe” political “hate” group 

Two speakers at Monday’s meeting alluded to Mrs. Ward’s support coming from a hate group. Rich Jacobs, “husband” of homosexual activist and Kane County judge John Dalton, referred to “fringe political groups known for hate and divisiveness,” and board member Veronica Noland referred to a group labeled a “hate group” by the (ethically dubious) Southern Poverty Law Center. Because of my keen powers of deduction, I suspect the allusions were to the Illinois Family Institute, and, therefore, some context is warranted. And I know from assertions made by multiple board members that the board takes pride in listening and learning from diverse voices (after which some members hurl epithets).

Since the Left loves them some yum yum southern impoverished law center putrescent potage, below are five articles about the SPLC. The first three detail my experiences with the infamous Mark Potok and his laughably named “Intelligence Report.” They reveal how deceitful and hapless Potok is and how bogus is his “hate groups” list:

“IFI Labeled Hate Group”

“When Will the Southern Poverty Law Center Stop Bullying?”

“The Morality Police at the Southern Poverty Law Center”

“The Church of Morris Dees” (originally published at Harper’s)

“The SPLC exposed – Southern Poverty Law Center – Morris Dees and hate crimes”

It is clear that some of the U-46 board and faculty members, like the SPLC, have redefined “hate” to include the expression of moral and ontological propositions with which they disagree. Perhaps these particular board and faculty members hate those with whom they disagree, but they ought not project their habits of mind onto others.

Most people are fully capable of deeply loving those who hold different beliefs and act in accordance with those beliefs. Most of us in this wildly diverse world do it every day. I wonder if these board and faculty members hurl the same ugly epithets at Muslim and Orthodox Jewish students and their parents who likely hold conservative views regarding co-ed restrooms and locker rooms?

Who really foments hatred?

Finally, I would argue that it is “progressives” who act and speak in destructive ways that foment hatred by relentlessly telling children and teens that those who believe that biological sex is profoundly meaningful hate those who reject their biological sex. That is a pernicious lie that undermines the possibility of dialogue with and relationships between people who hold different beliefs. Such a lie works against the purported goal of school boards everywhere to create and sustain diverse communities. By its nature, a diverse community will include those who hold diverse views, including on matters sexual. What “progressives” seek is a “diverse” community (and a “diverse” school board) in which everyone thinks just like them.

Here’s what “progressives” in their arrogance and self-righteousness refuse to acknowledge: Conservatives believe as strongly that “progressive” views on modesty, privacy, biological sex, and gender dysphoria are ignorant and destructive as “progressives” believe conservative views are.

Treating unreality as reality harms the entire U-46 community and undermines the very essence of education.

Last Call for IFI’s Faith, Family & Freedom Banquet

We are excited to have as our keynote speaker this year, former Congresswoman and Tea Party Caucus Leader, Michele Bachman!

Don’t delay, act today!

I’m pleased to see that the Southern Poverty Law Center has come to its senses and apologized to Dr. Ben Carson, removing him from their “extremist” list. But they need to apologize to me too, since I’m still on their list, along with a number of other Christian leaders whom they have branded anti-gay extremists.

To be sure, I have considered it a badge of honor to be on the SPLC’s list, actually writing an article in 2012 thanking them for placing me in their elite category of “30 New Activists Heading Up the Radical Right.”

And, needless to say, I am not a famed children’s neuro-surgeon and potential presidential candidate. In other words, I am not Dr. Ben Carson.

But if the SPLC is truly wanting to do the right thing and this is not simply an embarrassing moment of their own extremism coming to light, then this would be a good time to start apologizing some more.

Several years ago, I received a letter from Mark Potok, spokesman and director of the SPLC, offering to enlighten me in the error of my ways if I, along with others receiving the letter, had been duped by various pro-family organizations.

I immediately reached out to Mr. Potok and the SPLC, but never received a reply.

Subsequently, I wrote a strong open letter to him, once again without receiving a reply.

Perhaps honest dialogue and interaction is not what the SPLC is looking for? Perhaps their radical agenda is based on labeling and defaming their ideological opponents?

The problem, of course, is that the SPLC did lots of wonderful work in the past, exposing hate groups that are worthy of the hate name, such as White Supremacists and Black Supremacists and Neo-Nazis.

Now, tragically, they have added conservative Christian organizations and individuals to their “hate” lists, and many people continue to take their listings seriously.

One man even tried to carry out an act of mass murder at the headquarters of a Christian organization placed on the SPLC’s “hate group” list, finding their location by way of SPLC’s “hate map.”

What makes this all the more disturbing is the specious nature of the evidence they offer in branding conservative Christians “extremists” and labelling their organizations “hate groups.”

I’ll use myself as a case in point.

On their page devoted to me, they write that, “Michael Brown is not typical of most who push the idea that a cabal of liberal media elites have orchestrated a so-called ‘homosexual agenda’ to indoctrinate children into a lifestyle that makes a mockery of Christian values.”

Yet I’m still labelled an “extremist” and listed as one of the “30 New Activists Heading Up the Radical Right.” (Also on this list were men like David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and Malik Zulu Shabbaz, former leader of the New Black Panthers.)

They also write, “Unlike many other voices on the religious right, Brown generally has avoided the kind of slashing rhetoric that often devolves into rank defamation. His work is heavily footnoted and avoids the blanket pronouncements that have gotten others in trouble. But he still can sound conspiratorial.”

I guess you can be careful and nuanced in your wording as well as painstakingly thorough in documenting every statement, yet you can still make it onto their “extremist” list if your viewpoints smack of conservative moral values.

It seems, then, that it is one’s beliefs and values, not the accuracy of one’s claims, that make one an “extremist.”

What, then, is the evidence they cite out of more than 1,000 pages I have written addressing the issue of homosexuality, more than 20 other books on other subjects, and multiplied thousands of hours of radio broadcasts, sermons, and lectures devoted to a wide range of biblical, theological, and social topics?

First, they cite my statement that gay activists deny there is a gay agenda. (I kid you not.)

But this, of course, is a commonly known fact and even forms part of the written semantic strategy of gay activists. In other words, don’t use the term “homosexual agenda” but say, “gay and lesbian civil rights.” (For those who actually deny there’s such a thing as a gay agenda, please tell it to the pantheon of gay activist organizations, such as the HRC, NGLTF, Lamda Legal, GLSEN, GLAAD, and many others. All these organizations have clearly articulated goals and they have helped bring about numerous social changes in recent years, pointing to the success of their agenda.)

Second, the SPLC cites my statement that, “[I]t is not good that homosexual behavior is presented as just another alternative to heterosexual behavior, that bisexuality is celebrated, that transgenderism [sic] is normalized, that sex-change surgery is presented as the thing to do, that ex-gays are ridiculed and their very existence denied.”

Yes, this is part of their evidence that I am a dangerous, radical right, extremist.

Third, they state that, “Brown has also been known to make spurious claims linking homosexuality and pedophilia.”

Actually, in my book A Queer Thing Happened to America, which they cite and quote in their article, I wrote this: MICHAEL BROWN IS NOT EQUATING HOMOSEXUAL PRACTICE WITH PEDOPHILIA. MICHAEL BROWN IS NOT CALLING ALL HOMOSEXUALS PEDOPHILES. (Bold caps in the original.)

How could they possibly miss this?

What I have compared is the arguments used by pederast activists and gay activists (such as, I was born this way; I can’t change; this is about love; this is found in all cultures; etc.). I have not compared the acts.

As for the article they reference regarding Jerry Sandusky, I stated there that “the great majority of homosexual men also deplore Sandusky’s alleged acts,” explaining, though, that almost no one wanted to talk about the fact that the acts were homosexual in nature. (Having sex with teenage boys and young men is not the same as raping a baby.)

The SPLC claims that pedophiles who prey on boys are not homosexual predators, but that flies in the face of the history of homosexual “man-boy love,” not to mention ignoring the legal and scientific documents that speak of “homosexual pedophiles” and “heterosexual pedophiles.”

As for the rest of the SPLC’s evidence – well, there is none, aside from taking issue with my call to, “Speak now or forever hold your peace,” by which I mean that we need to speak up now since gay activists and their allies increasingly want to silence people like me. (They do this, for example, by labelling us haters and extremists!)

All that being said, I’m truly honored to be on the hit lists of groups like the SPLC, the HRC, and GLAAD, and I do wear these listings as a badge of honor (see Matthew 5:10-12).

But if the SPLC is truly wanting to make amends for their dangerous and misleading listings, I will gladly accept their apologies and encourage them to apologize to others as well.

If not, I’d love to debate the relevant issues publicly, be it on my radio show or in a neutral, moderated setting, discussing facts rather than allegations. With the vast resources of the SPLC, they should have no problem finding an adequate opponent to take me on.

So, Mr. Potok and other SPLC leaders, what do you say? Will it be an apology or a civil debate?

This article was originally posted at the Townhall.com website.

Fred Phelps is dead. The fire-and-brimstone preacher, who for many years was pastor of the institution known as Westboro Baptist Church, died late Wednesday in a hospice in Topeka, Kansas. The announcement was made on his church’s website. The wording was simple: “Fred W. Phelps Sr. has gone the way of all flesh.” Thus brings to an end one of most bitter lives in modern history — and one of the most harmful to the Gospel.

Fred Phelps became infamous due to one central fact — he was a world-class hater. He brought great discredit to the Gospel of Christ because his message was undiluted hatred packaged as the beliefs of a church. Even Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center referred to Westboro Baptist Church as “this so-called church.” The damage was due to the fact that his platform for hatred was called a church. That provided the watching and listening world with a ready target and case study for the accusation that Christian conviction on questions of sexual morality is nothing more than disguised hatred for homosexuals. And, like radioactivity, Fred Phelps’ hatred will survive in lasting half-lives of animus.

The media made Fred Phelps into a public image, but they could hardly ignore a prophet of antipathy who showed up with his followers in public demonstrations and took his case for public protest all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court. Phelps and the media needed each other and fed each other. The New York Times described Phelps as “a loathed figure at the fringe of the American religious scene,” but he was not a fringe figure in terms of media attention. I have done my best not to add to his publicity, but as calls from the media in recent days made clear, the time has come for a necessary word.

Fred Phelps claimed to preach against homosexuality, calling out sin as sin. “The way to prove you love your neighbor is to warn them that they’re committing sin,” he said in 2004. That is the full lie of a half truth. The way you prove you love your neighbor is to be honest about sin — including our own sin — in order to tell the good news of the forgiveness of sin and salvation in Christ.

Phelps knew exactly what he was doing.  As The Washington Post reported: “He found comfort in being a pariah. ‘If I had nobody mad at me, what right would I have to claim that I was preaching the gospel?’”

But that raises the most emphatic point — it was not the gospel that Fred Phelps was preaching. The gospel is the declaration of the good news that God saves sinners. It is the declaration of the fact that there is forgiveness of sins and life everlasting to be found in Christ and in belief in Him, and that is not the message for which Fred Phelps was known and hated.

He not only preached against homosexuality using the most vile and offensive graphic language possible, but he also took the next step and organized public protests at events such as the funerals for returning American soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was taking advantage of a moment of national focus and personal grief in order to transform a moment of sorrow and honor into a moment of controversy at the expense of compassion. He was a publicity hound in service to the powers of hell — corrupting the gospel of Christ.

Fred Phelps was so engaged in denouncing sin that the good news, the grace and mercy of God in Christ, was never made clear in his message. The gospel was never the point of his message. He did not represent the scandal of the gospel, but rather the scandal of preaching a false gospel. The gospel does not consist of denouncing sin. As the Puritans used to state so well, the preacher must do the “sin work” before declaring the “gospel work.” But the honest and necessary indictment of sin is but the threshold for the declaration of salvation in Christ’s name.

In Luke 15, Jesus told three parables about lostness and foundness, and in every one of them the point is clear — it is the salvation of even one sinner that causes rejoicing in heaven. Heaven is not pleased with the self-righteous preaching of a self-declared prophet. There is no rejoicing in heaven over the self-righteous preacher who does nothing but condemn sin and to do so in the most hateful and angry ways possible.

Fred Phelps made it easy for people to point to him and assert that theological opposition to homosexual behavior is rooted in nothing more than animus and hatred. He made the very point gospel-minded Christians have been trying to refute. He will be held accountable for a massive misrepresentation of the Christian faith, the Christian church, and the gospel of Christ. He single-handedly committed incalculable damage by presenting an enormous obstacle to the faithful teaching of the gospel. He made the job of every Christian more difficult in telling the truth about homosexuality as a sin and in declaring the good news of the gospel that Christ saves sinners.

What was missing is the attitude found in the New Testament. For instance, in First Corinthians chapter 5 and chapter 6, where the Apostle Paul indicts the Corinthian church for its complicity in sexual sin and lists those sexual sins, including homosexuality, and then says, “But such were some of you .. but you were washed.” The Christian gospel is not proclaimed from a position of moral superiority and smugness, but rather from the experience of one who has come to know God’s grace and cannot wait to share that message of grace with others.

We must be very clear about the fact that Fred Phelps’ sin was not that he said that sin is sin. That’s an essential task of every biblical Christian. It was that he seemed to celebrate the sinfulness of sin rather than be brokenhearted over it, and he never saw it as the opportunity — without skipping a breath — to get right to the declaration of the promise of salvation and forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. The problem is that Fred Phelps gloried in sin and in his denunciation of sin to the expense of the gospel. The good news of the gospel simply never came through. The grace and mercy of God in Christ were never made clear in his message, and he became an enemy of the gospel rather than a representative of the gospel.

An article published at Slate.com just after the death of Fred Phelps raised a very interesting point and a troubling one as well. Tyler Lopez wrote: “But Westboro’s bombastic vitriol makes room for more casual or calculated anti-gay individuals to claim tolerance, love, and mercy. A quick comparison with Phelps can make even the most vicious anti-gay activists look like saints. By twisting the meaning of love and acceptance through carefully worded statements, homophobes are able to do a lot more damage to the LGBTQ community than a group like Westboro will ever do.”

That’s a very important statement and it’s one Christians need to read very carefully. Gay activist Tyler Lopez is saying that it is impossible to distinguish between the sin and the sinner. Hauntingly, it’s the mirror image of what Fred Phelps was declaring in his message. Fred Phelps represented a hatred of sin that became a hatred of sinners, and now Tyler Lopez, coming from the other direction, says the very same thing in the opposite form. He said it is impossible to say that you love me, if you say that you do not love my homosexuality. This points to the fact that Christians remain in a very difficult position, particularly in this age when Gospel truth-telling is becoming acutely more difficult every single day.

Fred Phelps made our challenge much worse. In this case, Tyler Lopez argues that Phelps made it easier for other people [and here he means evangelical Christians] to sound sane and rational. But the most tragic aspect of his accusation is that Tyler Lopez doesn’t consider our message — that is, a gospel-grounded biblical message on homosexuality — to be any better than Fred Phelps’ message. That’s a sobering realization for all of us. We also face the fact that any statement that same-sex sexuality is sin is going to be heard and condemned by many people as hateful and homophobic. This puts those who are the ambassadors and heralds of the gospel in this generation in an extremely awkward situation.

But, these are our times and that is our challenge. Our commission is to make very clear that we do love people, but we hate sin. And yet that doesn’t start with homosexuals — it starts in the mirror and in the church. And the knowledge of our sin drives us to seek refuge in Christ, in whom we find forgiveness and everlasting life.

This article was originally posted at the AlbertMohler.com blog.

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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Oh, for the good old days when the term “hate group” referred to groups that actually hated someone. Now the term “hate group” refers to any group that expresses political, philosophical, moral, or theological beliefs with which the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) disagrees.

Last week, the SPLC released the winter issue of Mark Potok‘s ironically named “Intelligence Report.” Thearticle “18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda” by Evelyn Schlatter lists 18 organizations as “anti-gay” groups with 13 of those to be added to their formal list of “hate groups.” The American Family Association, Family Research Council, and the Illinois Family Institute are three of the 13 that will be included on a list with neo-Nazi organizations.

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 their “hate groups” list. Here are the “known falsehoods” that she and co-author Robert Steinback cite in the companion article “10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked”:

• If an organization claims that homosexuals “molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals,” it goes on the SPLC’s “hate groups” list.
• If an organization says that “same-sex parents harm children,” it goes on the SPLC’s “hate groups” list.
• If an organization claims that “people become homosexual because they were sexually abused as children or there was a deficiency in sex-role modeling by their parents,” it goes on the SPLC’s “hate groups” list.
• If an organization claims that “homosexuals don’t live nearly as long as heterosexuals,” it goes on the SPLC’s “hate groups” list.
• If an organization claims that “homosexuals controlled the Nazi Party and helped to orchestrate the Holocaust,” it goes on the SPLC’s “hate-groups” list.
• If an organization claims that “hate crime laws will lead to the jailing of pastors who criticize homosexuality and the legalization of practices like bestiality and necrophilia,” it goes on the SPLC’s “hate groups” list.
• If an organization claims that “allowing homosexuals to serve openly would damage the armed forces,” it goes on the SPLC’s “hate groups” list.
• If an organization claims that homosexuals “are more prone to be mentally ill and to abuse drugs and alcohol,” it goes on the SPLC’s “hate groups” list.
• If an organization claims that “no one is born a homosexual,” it goes on the SPLC’s “hate groups” list.
• If an organization claims “Gay people can choose to leave homosexuality,” it goes on the SPLC’s “hate groups” list.

Under each of these “myths,” Schlatter and Steinback offer analyses and evidence of such poor quality that their arguments wouldn’t pass muster in many high school English classes in which there are actual standards for logic and use of evidence. I will examine just a few of the many problems in their analyses, which in turn will reveal the intellectual and ethical vacuity that pervades the SPLC.

Same sex parents harm children

The SPLC thinks that the belief that same sex parents harm children constitutes hatred. The first problem is that Schlatter and Steinback fail to define harm. If one believes that homosexuality is morally flawed, then a household centered on a morally flawed relationship cannot be beneficial.

It is entirely possible that a brother and sister in an incestuous relationship or that polyamorist parents could raise children, providing for their physical needs, comforting them, and teaching them their ABCs. But most of society believes that such relationships would harm children because they would teach children that incest and polyamory are morally permissible. Would Schlatter and Steinback include organizations on their “hate groups” list that propagate the belief that incestuous parents or poly-parents harm children?

The SPLC and many homosexuals are outraged over any comparison of homosexuality to adult consensual incest or polyamory because they view homosexuality as moral and incest and polyamory as immoral. But no one is obligated to accept the SPLC’s flawed comparison of homosexuality to race or to accept their moral assumptions. After all, who is the SPLC to impose their moral views on all of society? Why are IFI’s moral beliefs about homosexual acts hateful and the views of those who oppose incest or polyamory legitimate? Why do IFI’s moral beliefs about volitional homosexual acts land us on the “hate groups” list, while the moral beliefs of those who oppose incestuous parents or poly-parents do not land them on the “hate groups” list?

Many people believe that children have a fundamental right to be raised by the biological parents who procreated them. Many people, including Roman Catholics, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and Protestants as well as people who follow no faith tradition, believe it is immoral for homosexuals to adopt or use in vitro fertilization and surrogacy to acquire children. Do they all deserve to be labeled “haters”?

Homosexual parents teach their children that gender is irrelevant to marriage and to parenting. They teach them that homosexual acts are inherently moral. And they deliberately deprive children of either a mother or a father. Those corruptions of truth and essential human relationships harm children.

Childhood molestation, innateness (“born that way”) and homosexuality

The one point about which many on both sides of the homosexuality debate agree is that the causes of same-sex attraction are not known. Many believe that same-sex attractions result from a complex interaction of biologically shaped predispositions and environmental factors. If we do not know the causes of same-sex attraction, and if some of the factors that contribute to it are environmental experiences, how can anyone declare that childhood molestation never contributes to the development of same-sex attraction? And if childhood molestation may contribute in some cases to the development of same-sex attraction, how can it constitute hatred to say so?

Oprah, an inveterate promoter of all things homosexual, recently did two powerful programs about men who were molested as children. One of her guests was a therapist who has treated hundreds of men who were molested as children. He stated that one result of the sexual molestation of boys is “sexual orientation confusion.”

Schlatter and Steinback also assert that it’s hateful, false, and mythical to say “no one is born homosexual,” and then virtually their entire analysis reveals that there is no research proving that people are “born homosexual.” Schlatter and Steinback write, “a great many studies suggest that it is the result of biological and environmental forces.”

Following their repeated assertions that there is no proof that homosexuality is congenital, Schlatter and Steinback suggest the false dichotomy that if people do not choose their same-sex attraction, they must be “born that way,” completely ignoring two essential truths. First, the fact that people do not choose their feelings does not mean that such feelings are biologically determined. Second, freely chosen behaviors that emerge from feelings shaped by biological influences are not automatically moral.

IFI has consistently said that although no one chooses their feelings, people do choose how to respond to them. Saying that people ought not to act upon same-sex attraction is no more hateful than saying that people ought not to act upon unchosen, powerful, persistent attractions to pornography, multiple people, or their siblings. All moral beings have to decide which of their unchosen, powerful feelings are morally legitimate to act upon.

Homosexual men and shortened life spans

Under the “myth” about the shortened life spans of homosexual men, Schlatter and Steinback made the following statement:

Bob Unruh, a conservative Christian journalist who left The Associated Press in 2006 for the right-wing, conspiracist news site WorldNetDaily, said shortly before the federal law was passed that it would legalize “all 547 forms of sexual deviancy or ‘paraphilias’ listed by the American Psychiatric Association.” This claim was repeated by many anti-gay organizations, including the Illinois Family Institute.

Either because of Schlatter’s and Steinback’s poor research or lack of ethics, they failed to include the fact that exactly one week after making the error regarding the DSM, writer Kathy Valente posted a correction which is still on our website. It reads as follows:

In the article entitled “Hate Crimes Bill Moves to Senate” (5/5/09), we mistakenly stated that the American Psychiatric Association’s actual definition of “sexual orientation” includes paraphilias. The APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) classifies “sexual orientation” as heterosexual, homosexual, and bi-sexual. The 547 mental disorders called paraphilias specifically involve non-human objects, physical pain, or unwilling partners as in pedophilia. IFI apologizes for the error.

I hope and assume that Schlatter and Steinback will demonstrate the integrity and professionalism that Ms. Valente did by publishing a correction and apology.

In their argument that talking about the shorter life spans of homosexual men constitutes an act of hatred, Schlatter and Steinback focused on research by Paul Cameron, while completely ignoring research by the well-respected International Journal of Epidemiology that found the following:

[W]e demonstrated that in a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 21 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality continued, we estimated that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years would not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre were experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by men in Canada in the year 1871.

The authors of this article, upset that conservative groups disseminated this troubling fact, issued an update that said, “if we were to repeat this analysis today the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men would be greatly improved. Deaths from HIV infection have declined dramatically in this population since 1996.”

Though mortality rates have dropped due to improved treatment protocols, HIV infection rates for “men who have sex with men” (MSM) are soaring. According to the CDC, “While CDC estimates that MSM account for just 4 percent of the U.S. male population aged 13 and older, the rate of new HIV diagnoses among MSM in the U.S. is more than 44 times that of other men.”

I wonder if Schlatter and Steinback are planning on publishing an addendum to their article in which they address HIV infection rates for homosexual men, or perhaps they’re going to include the CDC on their “hate groups” list.

Nazism

Schlatter claimed erroneously that I “compared homosexuality to Nazism,” which makes me wonder if she even bothered to read the articles in which I referred to Nazism. Here’s an excerpt from one:

Although genocide and homosexual acts are both sins, in man’s economy–and my own belief system–genocide is a far greater sin. And although I believe that all sin represents rebellion against God, I believe that homosexuality and genocide are by nature distinct….I never posited that homosexuals were the moral equivalents of Nazis. Rather, I compared the rationalizations church leaders offered for the silence of the church in the face of the evil of Nazism to the rationalizations church leaders offer for the silence of the church in the face of the evil of using public schools to promulgate destructive, erroneous views of homosexuality….The feckless or deceitful claim that I said homosexuals are equivalent to Nazis makes no more sense than claiming that someone who says the church should address both the sin of murder and the sin of gossip are saying that murderers and gossips are morally equivalent.

Sin in the closet

The SPLC believes it’s an act of hate to say that homosexuality should remain in the “in the closet.” Ms. Schlatter quoted an article in which I said “There was something profoundly good for society about the prior stigmatization of homosexual practice…. [W]hen homosexuals were ‘in the closet,’ (along with fornicators, polyamorists, cross-dressers, and ‘transsexuals’), they weren’t acquiring and raising children.”

Many people believe that immoral behavior should be concealed from the public rather than paraded about or publicly celebrated. For example, many people–perhaps most–do not want polyamorists’ or cross-dressers’ behavior to be public where children can see it. Does the SPLC view those who don’t want their children to see manifestations of polyamory or cross-dressing as haters?

My belief that it would be better for society if homosexuality were not publicly affirmed, normalized, or celebrated no more constitutes hatred of homosexuals than does other people’s belief that polyamory should not be publicly affirmed, celebrated, or normalized constitute hatred of polyamorists.

Ex-gays

The SPLC states that saying people can choose not to act on same-sex attraction or that they can leave a homosexual lifestyle constitutes hatred of homosexuals. Following that logic, what does it mean when someone says people can leave a polyamorous lifestyle or that they can choose not to act on their powerful attractions to multiple people? And what does it say to the hundreds of men and women who have abandoned their homosexual lives that the SPLC says discussing such a path is an act of hatred?

Conclusion

No longer is hate defined as, well, hatred. Anyone who finds the SPLC’s analogies faulty; their research selective; their concealing of inconvenient facts troubling; or their unproven, non-factual moral beliefs wrong, is now guilty of hatred.

The SPLC holds the unproven, non-factual belief that homosexuality is moral and arrogantly demands that all of society agree, or be silent, or be labeled a “hate group.” That strikes me as a strange manifestation of tolerance or respect for speech rights and diversity. Ironically, the SPLC has become the oppressor.

The SPLC hopes that their smear campaign will silence conservatives so that only the SPLC’s moral views will be heard in the public square. No one should allow the unprincipled bullying tactics and specious reasoning of the SPLC to intimidate them into silence. The SPLC’s ontological and moral beliefs about homosexuality are not facts, and dissent from the ethically impoverished SPLC’s beliefs does not constitute hatred.

Please take time to read this comprehensive indictment of the SPLC from the Social Contract Journal, which dedicated its spring 2010 issue to exposing the SPLC.

And if that’s not enough, click here, here, here, and here.

(Originally published on December 3, 2010)

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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.