Family Research Council Teaming Up With Catholic League To Wage War On Southern Poverty Law Center And Gays

Since 2010 the Family Research Council has been included on the Southern Poverty Law Center‘s list of active anti-gay hate groups. The Family Research Council doesn’t particularly care for that designation. They erroneously blame the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” label for a shooting last year at their Washington, D.C. headquarters which left a guard/maintenance worker wounded in the arm. But that lone attack does not make the label of anti-gay hate group any less appropriate.

It is extremely appropriate.

LOOK: How Does The Discovery Channel Feel About Being Used By A Certified Hate Group?

Contrary to what the Family Research Council and other anti-gay hate groups like the American Family Association will tell you, the Southern Poverty Law Center doesn’t call them hate groups over a difference of opinion on social issues. The Southern Poverty Law Center labels these groups anti-gay hate groups because they have demonstrated over time a pattern of lying about gay people.

Image of Family Research Council headquarters staff supporting last year’s anti-gay “Eat At Chick-fil-A Day,” posted to their Facebook page

Case in point:

“Our principal concern is not with people who experience involuntarily same-sex attractions as much as it is with engaging in homosexual conduct, which we believe is harmful to the people who engage in it and to society at large.”

[Bolding ours]

That was the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg, on Tuesday, filling in for FRC President Tony Perkins on his daily radio show. (You can listen to it, and read Jeremy Hooper’s response over at Good As You, or listen to it and read Zack Ford’s response over at Think Progress.)

But to be fair to Sprigg, that rhetoric isn’t really representative of his comments about gay people. Usually, his words are filled with much more anti-gay hate.

Case in point:

February 3, 2010, on MSNBC’s “Hardball” with Chris Matthews:

Matthews: Let me ask you Peter, so you think people choose to be gay.

Sprigg: People do not choose to be have same sex attractions, but they do choose to engage in homosexual conduct. And that conduct also which incidentally is against the law within the military. It violates the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It doesn’t make any sense for us to be actively recruiting people who are going to violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Matthews: Do you think we should outlaw gay behavior?

Sprigg: Well I think certainly…

Matthews: I’m just asking you, should we outlaw gay behavior?

Sprigg: I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas which overturned the sodomy laws in this country was wrongly decided. I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.

Matthews: So we should outlaw gay behavior?

Sprigg: Yes.

Image posted by the Family Research Council to their Facebook page

Now, enter CNS News, a project of anti-gay extremist and Fox News contributor Brent Bozell III. Bozell III’s claim to fame includes his father — who in 1954 co-authored the book McCarthy and His Enemies, which defended the disgraced Senator Joe McCarthy, and which the New York Times called “a bald, dedicated apologia for ‘McCarthyism.'” Bozell III’s other claim to fame is his group of anti-left watchdog websites which are expert at twisting truth and logic into pretzels. And Bozell happens to sit on the Board of the Catholic League — more on that later.

LOOK: If Anyone Needs ENDA It’s Conservative Christians, Not Gays, Says Tony Perkins

Bozell’s CNS News Tuesday, in an interview with Southern Poverty Law Center co-founder Morris Dees, wrote that FRC shooter Floyd Lee Corkins “attempted a mass shooting on Aug. 15, 2012, opening fire at the Family Research Council and  wounding Security Guard Leo Johnson.”

Armed with more than 95 rounds of ammunition and 15 Chick-fil-a sandwiches, Corkins told the FBI that he chose the FRC as his first target after looking at a list of “anti-gay” groups on the SPLC’s website.

CNSNews.com questioned Dees about the Hate Map when he was in Washington, D.C.,  last week, asking whether his group has ever considered removing the FRC since the revelation from Corkins,” the gunman who shot the FRC guard.

“Well, first of all, having a group on our Hate Map doesn’t cause anybody to attack them anymore than they attacked us for one thing or another,” Dees said.  “This group that says gay people—statements attributed to their people said that gay people caused the Holocaust.  Demonstrably false things they say about gay people.

“It’s not on our Hate Map because they’re against gay people—and many, the Catholic Church is against people who are gay, so as others—it’s because of the demonstrably false things they say about people that are just total lies that demean gay people, they cause people to attack gay people,” he said.

“They claim that somebody attacks them because they say hateful things, think about how many gay people get bashed because these people say that gay men are pedophiles, which is demonstrably false,” Dees said.

Now, enter the infamous Bill Donohue, head of the (pretty much) one-man show, the Catholic League.

“In a statement to CNSNews.com, the Catholic League took umbrage with Dees’s remarks,” CNS writes:

“Morris Dees is a man in search of people and institutions to hate,” Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said.  “Branding the Family Research Council a hate group is not only irresponsible, it trivializes the status of hate-ridden groups that have claimed real victims.”

“Now Dees is casting the Catholic Church as the enemy by misstating its teachings,” he said.  “Nothing the Catholic Church has ever said about the moral status of homosexuals—which is as irrelevant as the moral status of heterosexuals—could possibly be construed as hateful.”

“Quite frankly, no amount of remedial education can help someone who can’t tell the difference between sexual orientation and sexual behavior,” Donohue said.

“Stupid or malicious, either way the guy [Dees] is a disgrace,” he said.

And now back to the Family Research Council.

LOOK: Nothing Catholic Church Has Said About Gays ‘Could Possibly Be Construed As Hateful’ Says Donohue

“Our team is still dealing with the fallout of the attack, that was intended to have a chilling effect on organizations that are simply fighting for their values,” FRC Executive Vice President Genneral Jerry Boykin (ret.) told CNSNews.com:

“We are very disturbed that the Southern Poverty Law Center is now expanding its reckless attacks against the Catholic Church,” said Boykin.  “The SPLC has made false and inaccurate claims against the Family Research Council for years.   The SPLC should fact check their own statements before making reckless accusations.”

“Hate labeling is dangerous enough but outright misrepresentation of the facts further increases the likelihood of an attack on an organization similar to FRC,” said the general.

“Simply fighting for their values”? Really?

It is shocking that int his day and age, with Google and YouTube, the Family Research Council actually thinks they are not an anti-gay hate group.

Because their “values” and their words make it quite clear they are.

And those who surround themselves with hate group leaders should remember the old adage about “the company you keep…”

Via an image posted by the Family Research Council to their Facebook page

 

Image, top, via Family Research Council on Facebook
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