'Interfaith' website lies about SPLC and its hate group designations

An "interfaith" site, Beliefnet, has weighed in on the controversy regarding the Southern Poverty Law Center and its labeling of several religious right groups as anti-gay hate groups.

But the site is very deceptive in terms of what it chooses to highlight . . . and omit.

Rob Kerby, Beliefnet's Senior Editor, said the following in an article:

Why would anybody accuse 13 Christian organizations, including the American Family Association and Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council, of practicing “hate?”

. . . Could the intent be to smear and silence some of the most effective Christian ministries in America? To blacken their names because they have dared to speak out in the political battle over same-sex marriage?

When a smear campaign against the Family Research Council began last year, it was immediately denounced by Speaker of the House John Boehner and 150 other national leaders, including 24 members of Congress.

 . . . That time the smear was led by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which for years has pursued anti-discrimination cases. It received considerable well-deserved publicity for suing the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups.

However, the SPLC in recent years has taken up the same-sex marriage cause and the battle against “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military.

In late December 2010, the center advised the national press to shun 13 Christian groups because they were hate groups. Among the groups smeared were the American Family Association, the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition. The smaller groups included Abiding Truth Ministries of Springfield, Massachusetts; the Chalcedon Foundation of Vallecito, California; and the Faithful Word Baptist Church of Tempe, Arizona.

That's the tone of the article - i.e. SPLC is trying to "silence these groups because they are standing up against the supposed "gay agenda."

Kerby's article omitted several important facts about SPLC's designation of these organizations as hate groups.

The most important fact is that SPLC labeled the Family Research Council and those other organizations as hate groups not because of their so-called Biblical beliefs about homosexuality, but because these groups knowingly spread propaganda and hideous lies about the gay community:

Even as some well-known anti-gay groups like Focus on the Family moderate their views, a hard core of smaller groups, most of them religiously motivated, have continued to pump out demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities. These groups’ influence reaches far beyond what their size would suggest, because the “facts” they disseminate about homosexuality are often amplified by certain politicians, other groups and even news organizations. Of the 18 groups profiled below, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) will be listing 13 next year as hate groups (eight were previously listed), reflecting further research into their views; those are each marked with an asterisk. Generally, the SPLC’s listings of these groups is based on their propagation of known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling. Viewing homosexuality as unbiblical does not qualify organizations for listing as hate groups.

This propaganda includes such claims as:

Homosexuals molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals.

Same-sex parents harm children.

People become homosexual because they were sexually abused as children or there was a deficiency in sex-role modeling by their parents.

Homosexuals don’t live nearly as long as heterosexuals.

Homosexuals controlled the Nazi Party and helped to orchestrate the Holocaust.

All of these claims have been debunked as lies, but FRC and other religious right groups keep repeating them as truth. And why? Because they are able to hide these lies behind the claim that they are merely standing on the Biblical belief that homosexuality is a sin.

And they are aided and abetted by one-sided, puff pieces put out by sites like Beliefnet, a site which should have known better.

I would sincerely hope that the way Kerby, who claims to be a Christian, wrote this piece is an indication of being overworked. Because if this isn't the case, the other alternative has to be that Kerby is intentionally deceiving his readers by not giving them the full story.

And that would be most un-Christian

Related posts:

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

Family Research Council's 'detailed response' to SPLC's charges leave much to be desired

Family Research Council sneaking misleading studies back onto its webpage