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

First, some recent history:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once more for the obtuse, deluded, or deceitful:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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

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

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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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Blockbuster news came out this week revealing that Twitter has cut ties with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) because of reports of controversial financial activity, leaders tainted by scandal, and–according to one source–a “toxic” work environment.

The news has rocked an organization whose stated purpose is to combat discrimination, intolerance, and groups that in the view of the SPLC, practice hatred towards others.  The organization reports such groups to the FBI and is often cited by the media.  Academics and others rely upon SPLC’s listings, which they in turn use to ostracize such groups.

Founded in 1971 and based in Montgomery, Alabama, the SPLC is no stranger to controversy.  The group has long been accused of targeting conservative and Christian organizations.  Ironically, the SPLC attacks groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and Jihad Watch, who themselves are fighting discrimination and racism.

Controversy has reached to the very top of the SPLC.  Morris Dees, the co-founder of the organization, was accused back in 1994 of discrimination against black employees, who according a local newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, “felt threatened and banded together.”

In 2007, Stephen Bright, a former president of a sister organization, the Southern Center for Human Rights, accused Dees of being “a con man and fraud” who “has taken advantage of naive people–some of moderate or low incomes–who believe his pitches and give to his $175 million operation.”

Dees was fired this year after two dozen employees complained about mistreatment and sexual harassment.  One former employee claimed that Dees had “a reputation for hitting on young woman” and had caused a staff revolt over his behavior.

Liberty Counsel is coordinating with more than 60 conservative and Christian groups (including IFI) that are considering taking legal action against the SPLC–a number that continues to grow.  The coalition claims that the SPLC, while ostensibly fighting bias and hate groups, is guilty of engaging in the same discriminatory activity that it purports to disavow–actions which resulted in conservative/Christian groups being banned from social media platforms, thus rendering them less effectual.

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, commented after Twitter disassociated itself from the SPLC: “The rest of the tech companies should follow Twitter’s lead and divorce from the SPLC. It appears to have taken a major implosion within the SPLC for others to finally see what organizations like Liberty Counsel have been saying all along.”

What we may be seeing is a revolution against enormously powerful organizations like the SPLC that for far too long have sought to blacklist groups that do not share their far-left ideology and for whom freedom of expression is a one-way street.

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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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­­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.

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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