In mid-December, civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center released a list of 18 organizations that engage in anti-gay propaganda. Of those 18, SPLC identified 13 of those groups as “hate groups.”
The groups listed have to fit the foliowing criteria to qualify as a hate group:
We detailed clearly the criteria we used for identifying an organization as an anti-gay hate group: “[T]heir propagation of known falsehoods – claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities – and repeated, groundless name-calling.” By “known falsehoods,” we mean such things as asserting that homosexuals are more disposed to molesting children than heterosexuals – which the overwhelming weight of credible scientific research has determined is patently untrue. Nowhere in our report do we equate taking a position against same-sex marriage with hate speech.
The 18 anti-gay organizations identified are listed below.. The groups identified as hate groups are shown in bold.
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Abiding Truth Ministries
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American Family Association – They have been in the news a lot recently. Their spokesman Bryan Fischer has said some insane things like that DADT repeal will lead to the end of America because our non-gay army protected all those other armies, that grizzly bears are a curse that must be killed, that the Medal of Honor has been feminized because the recipient didn’t kill enough bad guys and also that Hitler had gay Nazi death squads.
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Americans for Truth About Homosexuality
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American Vision
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Chalcedon Foundation
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Christian Anti-Defamation Commission
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Concerned Women for America – Christine O’Donnell used to work for this group, and they endorsed her for U.S. Senate
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Coral Ridge Ministries
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Dove World Outreach – If this name is familiar, it’s because their leader, Terry Jones, was in the news for his “Burn A Koran Day” stunt.
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Faithful Word Baptist Church
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Family Research Council
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Family Research Institute
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Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment
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Illinois Family Institute
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Liberty Council
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MassResistance
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National Organization for Marriage – NOM is famous for putting out the “Gathering Storm” ad and their involvement with California’s Proposition 8 and the court battle over it.
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Traditional Values Coalition
The Tea Party Nation and its controversial founder Judson Phillips decided to list its own “hate groups.” They don’t give their criteria but it seems to be a list that TPN has a personal beef with:
“The SPLC smeared as hate groups, respectable groups such as the Family Research Center, American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, Liberty Counsel and others as hate groups for opposing repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and Homosexual Marriage. That makes the SPLC our number one liberal hate group,” Phillips writes.
The number two spot went to the DHS for taking part in “silly political posturing from the most corrupt regime in the history of this country.” Referring to Secretary Janet Napolitano as “the DHS Clown in Chief,” the list says that the “DHS will not enforce border security. It makes Americans go through a joke of a security system when they want to fly. It invades their privacy while not going after terrorists.”
The ACLU landed at three for being “a hate group with a law license. A lot of law licenses. If you hate America, the ACLU loves you and if you love America, the ACLU hates you.” And four is the SEIU, which “has not been shy in using violence against companies who refused their efforts to unionize and have not been shy about using violence against Tea Party members.”
And, finally, number five is the NAACP, who had unanimously passed a resolution this year calling on the Tea Party to “repudiate the racist elements and activities” from its members in the past. Tea Party leaders defended themselves by calling the NAACP itself racist, and the Tea Party Nation now refers to the report on the Tea Party “hilariously inaccurate.”
So, liberal hate groups are the right’s traditional boogie men – the ACLU, unions and civil rights groups. (Way to prove you’re not racists guys!) The addition of DHS is a bit of a headscratcher but if your criteria is that you don’t like the group, I guess it makes sense.