Spl Being Sued by Focus on the Family
I'll never forget the moment I learned we were on lockdown. Information technology was Aug.15, 2012. My frustration mingled with fear. Trapped on the 6th floor, nosotros knew someone had been shot. We knew nosotros couldn't leave all the same. We knew little else.
While I was missing tiffin, a crime scene played out in the part antechamber below me. My coworker and friend Leo wasn't armed, simply he had played the quick-thinking and inadvertent hero, disarming a swain on a mission to kill me and as many of my colleagues as possible. The gunman had packed his backpack with ammo and xv Chick-fil-A sandwiches — later admitting that he had planned to smear them on our lifeless faces as a political statement. Leo took a bullet in the arm only managed to hold the aggressor until police enforcement arrived.
I wrote and edited for the Family unit Inquiry Quango, a public advocacy organization that promoted the principles I take cared almost since babyhood: protecting the family, promoting the dignity of every human life and advocating for religious freedom. It reads like a tagline, but it's also simply what I believed and the way I chose to match my career with my convictions.
Biology is not bigotry:My daughter thinks she's transgender. Her public school undermined my efforts to help her.
I never expected that anybody would celebrate or share my beliefs. Simply I did expect to be able to discuss and argue these differences without condign a political target in an act of terrorism, the starting time conviction under Washington, D.C.'s 2002 Anti-Terrorism Act.
The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled us a 'hate group'
It was the type of violent incident that ane could expect a group that purportedly monitors "hate," like the Southern Poverty Law Center, to notice, research and decry. In fact, we were on the center's radar just for all the incorrect reasons. The assailant acknowledged later in FBI testimony that he had selected our function precisely considering the SPLC had labeled my employer a "hate group."
It has e'er been easier to smear people rather than wrestle with their ideas. It's a neat who calls names and spreads lies rather than thoroughly reading a brief'south legal arguments or challenging the rationale underlying a policy proposal. The SPLC has chosen to accept the easy path — to intimidate and mislead for raw political power and financial benefit.
Hate groups in America:I grew up a white nationalist. Nosotros never blamed ourselves for mass shootings similar El Paso.
For years, old employees revealed, local journalists reported and commentators take lamented: The Southern Poverty Law Heart is not what it claims to be. Not a pure-hearted, clear-headed legal abet for the vulnerable, but rather an obscenely wealthy marketing scheme. For years, the left-wing interest group has used its "hate grouping" list to promote the fiction that violent neo-Nazis and Christian nonprofits peacefully promoting orthodox behavior about spousal relationship and sexual activity are indistinguishable. Sometimes, it has apologized to public figures it has smeared, and it recently paid out millions to settle a threatened defamation lawsuit.
The SPLC has its own troubles
These shameful secrets are no longer hidden in shadows. The New York Times, Politico, NPR and a host of other mainstream publications are reporting on the corruption and widening credibility gap. The SPLC dismissed its co-founder in March, and its president has resigned amidst numerous claims of sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racism inside the organization — a parade of disgraces that vividly strength the conclusion: The SPLC is hollow, rotten and failing at the very virtues it pretends to celebrate.
The criticism comes from many corners. At that place's the Current Diplomacy editor who seems sympathetic to the center's progressive mission but decries its "hate group" list every bit an "outright fraud" and a "willful deception designed to scare older liberals into writing checks to the SPLC."
In that location'south the retired investigative announcer who helped research and write an 8-function series on the center'south "litany of problems and questionable practices" in the mid-1990s. His Washington Post opinion piece reads with a thinly veiled message: We nearly got a Pulitzer Prize for TELLING YOU So.
But perhaps virtually damning of all are the indictments leveled by old employee Bob Moser in The New Yorker. He remembers being welcomed to the "Poverty Palace" and recounts the middle-sinking reality of it all — beingness "pawns" in a "highly profitable scam."
Oberlin bakery owner: Gibson's Bakery paid a high price for an unfairly damaged reputation
Jobs and years have passed, and I piece of work now for Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF ranks among "the top performing firm(southward)" litigating Outset Amendment cases, according to the Empirical SCOTUS blog, and is the "Christian legal powerhouse that keeps winning at the Supreme Court," according to The Washington Post.
And yeah, my new employer has also attracted one of the SPLC'southward spurious hate labels. The label easily peels and fades abroad when one actually does the enquiry and listens to truth before deciding to troll.
I won't be intimidated by the SPLC
If the SPLC idea that its detest would intimidate or silence me and my colleagues, they're sadly mistaken. I'g lucky — blest, really — that I didn't take a bullet for my beliefs back in 2012. But the center'southward ugly slander and the gunman'due south misguided attack accept sharpened my resolve and deepened my religion in my Savior, who commands my destiny and shields me from the schemes of man. The same is true for my colleagues.
50-1 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther Rex Jr. fell to an assassin'southward bullet. The SPLC pretends to carry his legacy but weaponizes hate labels instead. Unlike SPLC'due south name-calling, Dr. King'south words and vision stand up the test of fourth dimension. "Injustice anywhere," he warned, "is a threat to justice everywhere."
The SPLC, as an institution, has thoroughly disqualified itself as an arbiter of justice. But this land would be a amend place if the center's donors, lawyers and friends would truly believe and utilise Dr. King's legacy — his peaceful pursuit of justice and his dearest of neighbor.
Jessica Prol Smith is senior news writer and editor for Alliance Defending Liberty. Follow her on Twitter: @JessicaProl
Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/08/17/southern-poverty-law-center-hate-groups-scam-column/2022301001/
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