This article was posted at Catholic News Agency February 2, 2021.
Critics of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) say the organization has become extreme and “thoroughly disgraced,” after the center released its
2020 “census of hate groups,” which included numerous pro-life and family organizations.
Since 1990, the SPLC has issued an annual list of hate groups, listing organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis. More recently, however,
it has also included pro-life and pro-traditional marriage Christian organizations as “anti-LGBTQ hate groups.”
Many of these groups are well-respected, such as the Ruth Institute, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Family Research Council, and several smaller
Christian churches.
“Influential anti-LGBTQ hate groups,” the latest SPLC report says, “became further entrenched in the Trump White House, and the Trump administration
continued its years-long pattern of appointing federal judges with ties to anti-LGBTQ groups. The most high-profile of these appointments was Amy
Coney Barrett, who joined the Supreme Court last fall and has ties to Alliance Defending Freedom, which SPLC has designated an anti-LGBTQ hate
group.”
Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, responded that “ADF is one of the nation’s most respected and successful Supreme Court
advocates, and has won 11 cases at the U.S. Supreme Court since 2011.”
“We work to preserve fundamental freedoms of speech, religion, and conscience for all Americans,” Tedesco told CNA. “Once a respected civil rights
organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center has destroyed its own credibility because of its blatant partisan agenda and discredited fundraising
scheme. It has devolved into a group that attacks and spreads lies about organizations and people who do not agree with its far-left agenda.”
ADF has created a website responding to the SPLC’s allegations.
The most recent SPLC report was released February 1. It presents a series of proposals, including a demand that “public figures involved in inciting
and giving encouragement to the armed insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 — destroying property, injuring dozens of officers,
and leaving five people dead – should be permanently deplatformed from all social media. In addition, corporations should permanently suspend political
donations to Members of Congress and other elected officials that helped incite the violent siege and request that any past political donations
to their campaigns be returned.”
In 2019, the SPLC’s reputation as a watchdog of injustice and inequality suffered a major hit when co-founder Morris Dees was forced to resign after
serious allegations of racism and misogyny.
However, inclusion on the SPLC’s “hate group list” still has negative consequences. For example, online retail giant Amazon has used the list to disqualify
nonprofit organizations from using the “Amazon Smile” program to receive donations.
Last year, NBC reported as scandalous that as 14 organizations designated “hate groups” by the SPLC benefited from the Paycheck Protection Program,
designed to provide relief to small businesses affected by the coronavirus lockdowns.
Among the groups listed was the Ruth Institute, a pro-life organization based in Louisiana. Its founder and president, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, said
the group faced bad publicity and unfair bias from the report.
“NBC relies on the Southern Poverty Law Center for the ‘hate group’ designation. This just means the Ruth Institute is a group the SPLC hates. Big
deal. They raise a lot of money with their hate-mongering tactics. In 2018, their net assets were a half billion dollars,” Morse said.
Morse said “the Ruth Institute is a global, non-profit organization leading an international, interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a
civilization of love. If fighting sex abuse, pornography, and divorce makes us a hate group, so be it.”
