Family Research Council accidentally admits truth about hate group charges

On two recent occasions, the Family Research Council has again attacked the Southern Poverty Law Center's accusation that it passes along propaganda and bad information about the lgbt community.

But if you ask me, FRC should have left well enough alone.

The first instance was during a recent long-winded prayer to God expressing how the organization would like the so-called cultural battle in the United States to turn out.

FRC's "prayer"  encompassed such issues as Planned Parenthood, Obamacare, DADT, and ENDA. 

But what caught my attention is this passage about supposed "Guerilla Warfare Against Conservatives:"

Human Rights Campaign (HRC) leader Joe Solmonese’s called upon homosexual activists everywhere to wage war against Tony Perkins for writing that Christian compassion requires speaking the truth about homosexuality; then the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) asserted and continues to assert that FRC is a “hate group” because it publishes social science data with which some homosexual activists disagree.

The section about "Christian compassion" actually links to the piece Perkins wrote in The Washington Post last year regarding the "supposed harms of homosexuality." It's the piece which he got justifiably grilled for deliberately distorting scientific data.

And that has a lot to do with the subtle change in which FRC addresses the problems with SPLC in the next passage of its prayer.

FRC interpreted the problem with SPLC calling it a hate group as simply because "it publishes social science data which some homosexual activists disagree"

This a big shift from what FRC and its supporters, such as Mike Huckabee, were initially claiming.

Originally, FRC said that it were under attack for upholding the "Judeo-Christian moral views, including marriage as the union of a man and a woman."

Now,  it seems that FRC is giving a tacit acknowledgment that the problems with SPLC  goes beyond the organization's supposed "Biblical beliefs."

And THAT is exactly what the argument should be about - i.e. FRC's deliberate distortion of scientific data to demonize the lgbt community, whether it be:

• misinterpreting the words of legitimate researchers,

• practicing the sin of omission in studies about lgbt health,

• inaccurately comparing married heterosexual couples in the United States to unmarried gay couples in foreign countries, or

• splicing footage of EEOC head Chai Feldblum to make her seem anti-religious.

And then came the second incident in which FRC addressed SPLC's accusations.

FRC member Peter Sprigg gave an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network in which he said the following:

“I don't expect everyone to agree with some of the things that we assert about the homosexual lifestyle but we do present evidence in support of those assertions. And they are certainly not falsehoods or fabrications,” Sprigg said.

However, Sprigg is inaccurate. He went on to make an assertion that most men who molest boys identify as gay or bisexual.

But, according to OnTop Magazine:

Research on the subject, however, suggests that most abusers identify as straight or have no interest in consensual sexual relationships with adults. In 1978, after screening nearly 200 men incarcerated in Massachusetts for molesting children, Dr. Nicholas Groth concluded that “the adult heterosexual male constitutes a greater risk to the underage child than does the adult homosexual male.”

That point is important to remember because in 1992, FRC came out with a study making the same assertion regarding gay men and pedophilia that Sprigg made to CBN. Dr. Groth at that time wrote FRC a letter demanding that his work be removed from its study:

If you are, in fact, familiar with my research, you must realize that my studies have indicated that homosexual males pose less risk of sexual harm to children (both male and female)--from both an absolute and a percentage incidence rate--than heterosexual males. Your statement that "the evidence indicates that disproportionate numbers of gay men seek adolescent males or boys as sexual partners" appears to come from the assumption that if an adult male is attracted to a male child, this adult male's sexual orientation is ipso facto homosexual.

Since your report, in my view, misrepresents the facts of what we know about this matter from scientific investigation, and does not indicate that my studies on this topic reach conclusions diametrically opposed to yours, I would appreciate your removing any reference to my work in your paper lest it appear to the reader that my research supports your views.

Furthermore, the CBN report made reference to a study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior which supposedly backed up FRC's position regarding gay men and pedophilia.

But  CBN conveniently didn't mention that FRC head Tony Perkins was again justifiably grilled for how he distorted the study on MSNBC's Hardball.

In that particular case,  Perkins inaccurately used the study to generalize about the entire gay male community. In addition, he misquoted the study to further generalize about gay men.

All in all, the only thing Sprigg spoke accurately about in the CBN interview was the need for us to start debating the claims FRC makes about the lgbt community. I agree fully with that. And let's begin the debate with how FRC gathers its data. 

FRC is not as blatantly hateful as the Klan, but that makes the organization more dangerous. Under the veneer of respectability and morality, FRC either passes off  junk science or presents social science in a wrong manner to deliberately smear the lgbt community and make us appear - inaccurately - as a public health risk and a threat to religious liberty.

Clearly SPLC's accusations are having an effect on FRC if it feels the need to constantly address them.

However, FRC's problem is that every time it addresses these charges, the organization digs itself deeper in its hole of lies.

Related posts:

The top 12 lies of Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council

The Family Research Council's deceptive use of social science to defend DOMA 


Family Research Council pulling the 'gay = promiscuous pedophiles' card to defend DOMA

Family Research Council has yet to come out with 'detailed response' against SPLC charges 


Family Research Council defends itself with distorted studies . . . again