Unfinished Lives

Anti-Gay Hate Groups Protest Southern Poverty Law Center—For Intolerance!

Montgomery, Alabama – A dozen African American ministers and representatives of anti-gay hate groups listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) picketed and protested in front of the justice organization’s headquarters in Montgomery, according to a post by the SPLC.  Stung by being listed publicly as anti-gay hate groups because of many documented instances of spreading falsehoods and demonizing gay LGBTQ people, these groups are hitting back at the respected civil rights watchdog organization, calling its Intelligence Report campaign to expose anti-gay bigotry “lies” and part of a “liberal plot” to undermine the American family. Black Entertainment National News (BET) reported that the participation of African American pastors protesting the civil rights organization was “ironic.”

Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber, a well-financed cadre of right-wing attorneys affiliated with Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Baptist University and Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, said: “The SPLC has moved from monitoring actual hate groups like the KKK and neo-Nazis to slandering mainstream Christian organizations with that very same hate group label.” Barber went on to charge that “billions” of Jewish and Christian people were being “smeared” by the SPLC as hateful because they teach traditional Judeo-Christian values.  Members of widely-known anti-gay hate organizations such as AFTAH, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, and Abiding Truth Ministries also spoke.  The themes they and their African American clergy supporters sounded at a press conference related to the protests included charges of unfairness, hating God, and spreading lies about these groups, all as instruments of “pro-gay politicking.” 

SPLC’s Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report, swiftly refuted the accusations of attacking these hate groups for their Christian or Jewish faith. Potok said, “Our listing of anti-gay hate groups is completely unrelated to religion, Christianity or the Bible. These groups are listed because they repeatedly lie in an effort to defame LGBT people, an exercise they’ve been extraordinarily successful at. The idea that we are criticizing these groups because they represent Judeo-Christian morality is simply ludicrous.”  Examples of the efforts to stigmatize and defame LGBTQ people by these groups include trumped up charges that gay men are largely pedophiles who prey on the young, are sex-addicted, and instigated the Holocaust against the Jews of Europe.

Abiding Truth Ministries founder, Scott Lively, who has actively sought to foment anti-gay attitudes in nations of the former Soviet Union and Sub-Saharan Africa, sent a written appeal to God to eliminate the SPLC.  Lively’s statement, read at the protest press conference, said, “My prayer, as one who really does hate irrational prejudice, is that the Lord by His sovereign power will remove this dangerous, hate-spreading organization from our nation and cause its leaders and members to repent for their wickedness. … I want to make clear that I am asking God himself to destroy their organization.”  Box Turtle Bulletin, a blog founded to monitor news affecting the LGBTQ community worldwide, maintains a massive dossier on Scott Lively’s hate mongering activities and statements, which can be accessed here.

The SPLC’s Winter 2010 issue of the Intelligence Report lists 18 anti-gay hate groups and their propaganda.  The award-winning  quarterly magazine gives comprehensive research updates on hate groups to law enforcement agencies, the media, and the general public. According to its Intelligence Files, “Opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians has been a central theme of Christian Right organizing and fundraising for the past three decades – a period that parallels the fundamentalist movement’s rise to political power.”

In response to the threat of divine retribution for labeling anti-gay hate organizations for what they are, the SPLC said that if the firebombing by the Ku Klux Klan did not destroy the organization, it is doubtful that anti-gay hate groups will have any better luck.

January 23, 2012 Posted by unfinishedlives | Alabama, Anti-Gay Hate Groups, GLBTQ, hate speech, Heterosexism and homophobia, KKK, LGBTQ, Protests and Demonstrations, Social Justice Advocacy, Southern Poverty Law Center, transphobia | Alabama, Anti-Gay Hate Groups, GLBTQ, hate speech, Heterosexism and homophobia, KKK, LGBTQ, Protests and Demonstrations, Social Justice Advocacy, Southern Poverty Law Center, transphobia | 2 Comments