GuideStar will now point out hate groups in charity data, including anti-lgbtq hate groups

Allow  me to warn you now about the possible firestorm which will occur regarding religious right groups and the anti-lgbtq hate group label many of them deservedly earned from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

A website that touts itself as the world's largest source of information about charities has added a new feature: a warning label on tax-exempt nonprofits accused of spreading hate.

GuideStar, a self-described "neutral" repository for data on more than 2 million charities, recently flagged 46 nonprofits for being labeled as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. A banner atop each nonprofit's GuideStar profile includes the law center's logo and a link to its home page. GuideStar's president and CEO, Jacob Harold, said the new feature reflects a "broader shift in how we imagine our role in the (nonprofit) field." Adding new data sources is part of that shift, but Harold also framed the warning labels as a response to the recent rise in "hateful rhetoric" in the U.S.

 . . . Several leaders of flagged groups said they will contact GuideStar and demand the removal of the banners from their profiles. Some of the groups have accused the Alabama-based law center of using its hate group label to smear organizations that don't share its ideology by lumping them in with overtly hateful groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan.

I think you can guess where I'm going with this:

 The list also includes several organizations with multimillion-dollar budgets, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the Family Research Council and the American Family Association.

Harold said GuideStar relied on the law center's list and didn't conduct its own analysis of whether a nonprofit deserves to be labeled a hate group.

"But we are making a judgment to trust that third party," he said. "We feel that's quite defensible."

No doubt, two groups in particular, the Family Research Council and the American Family Association, will whine about how they are  being "persecuted" for their supposed Christian stances on homosexuality and will use their supporters and contacts (which includes members of Congress) to smear GuideStar.

However, I see it from more positive perspective. It's always a good thing to have an opportunity to call out FRC and AFA on their lies. The following videos and links below more than justifies GuideStar's decision.

Help yourself:

Editor's note - AFA will probably claim that Fischer was fired, but he continues to be associated with the organization.

Links:

SPLC profiles of 

The Family Research Council

The American Family Association

And the lies they help spread:

10 ANTI-GAY MYTHS DEBUNKED