Family Research Council Being Labeled A Hate Group Challenged After Shooting

[Jingthing]

Family Research Council is an American anti-gay political lobbying group.

It is labeled a hate group (against gay people) by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a well respected liberal group deeply involved in all kinds of civil rights issues.

Very unfortunately, an armed man acting alone attacked the FRC and shot a guard but he could have potentially been there to kill numerous people. This man had an association with the local gay community although clearly he was not acting as an agent of any gay rights advocacy group.

Well, needless to say this has created some political controversy and fingers are being pointed at gay rights advocates in general.

The FRC is accusing the Southern Poverty Law Center of encouraging gay civil rights advocates to attack them by labeling them a hate group.

Well, clearly that is not true. The SPLC hasn't encouraged violence against anybody! The opposite obviously. They are clearly anti-violence.

The issue of whether the FRC is a hate group has become a public issue.

The column in the link argues that it IS a hate group.

I am not sure it really matters whether they are labeled a hate group or not. There is no question they are obnoxious enemies of gay civil rights. I also don't think it is fair for them to use this incident to politically pressure the SPLC to change their well established guidelines and standards on how they label hate groups or not. But they have done this. So all in all, a bit of a mess, and sadly in the minds of some in the public the actions of this lone gunman will be projected onto gay people in general.

http://www.washingto...d010_story.html

Designating the Family Research Council a hate group has nothing to do with disagreements about marriage equality, nondiscrimination laws or any other policy debate. The real issue is the Family Research Council’s well-documented and continuous pattern of hateful rhetoric.

Linking gay people to pedophiles is hateful. Consider Perkins’s words from 2010: “While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. . . . It is a homosexual problem.”

Calling for the expulsion of gays from this country is hateful, as is arguing for making homosexuality a crime. In March 2008, a senior fellow for policy studies at the council,

, said of uniting gay partners through immigration: “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than import them.” He later apologized but in 2009 told an interviewer, “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.”

Using junk-science to spread propaganda about LGBT people is hateful — as Sprigg does when he says in his 2010 pamphlet “The Top Ten Myths about Homosexuality” that gay men and lesbians can change their sexual orientation.

That is the documented record of the Family Research Council, and it is completely distinct from our policy disagreements.

Edited August 21, 2012 by Jingthing