Is the Liberty Counsel a Christian group or a Hate group? You tell me

By its attacks on Guidestar and the Southern Poverty Law Center, anti-LGBTQ group  the Liberty Council claims that it is being "targeted" for its "Christian" views on homosexuality (see here if you aren't aware of the full story).

Fair enough. Let's put this to the test.

The Southern Poverty Law have called "traditional values" organizations such as the Liberty Counsel hate groups because of how they attack and vilify the LGBTQ community:

 For Christian Right leaders, the LGBT rights movement and its so-called "homosexual agenda" are the prime culprits in the destruction of American society and culture. In the words of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, the battle against LGBT rights is essentially a "second civil war" to put control of the U.S. government in the right hands, meaning those who reject LGBT rights. 

 The religious right in America has employed a variety of strategies in its efforts to beat back the increasingly confident LGBT rights movement. One of those has been defamation. Many of its leaders have engaged in the crudest type of name-calling, describing LGBT people as "perverts" with "filthy habits" who seek to snatch the children of straight parents and "convert" them to gay sex. They have disseminated disparaging "facts" about gays that are simply untrue — assertions that are remarkably reminiscent of the way white intellectuals and scientists once wrote about the "bestial" black man and his supposedly threatening sexuality.

Let's look at the comments Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver has said about the LGBTQ community compared to his claim that his group is being attacked:

Mat Staver of The Liberty Counsel

 About SPLC and Guidestar:

 “GuideStar and its political ally, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), are intent on destroying pro-family organizations. The ‘hate group’ label is false and dangerous,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. “GuideStar’s CEO, Jacob Harold, is using GuideStar as a weapon to defame, harm, and promote his liberal agenda by using the SPLC to falsely label good nonprofit organizations as ‘hate groups.’ The only purpose of providing the SPLC false and dangerous ‘hate group’ label is to inflict reputational and financial harm to Liberty Counsel. GuideStar has lost all credibility. GuideStar will now have to answer for its reckless, defamatory, and harmful political labeling,” said Staver

 About the LGBTQ community:

 “(Marriage equality) also changes everything in the school when they begin to learn not just about same-sex relationships, but about same-sex activities,” Staver said. “They ultimately get encouraged to pursue this kind of lifestyle. They have gender confusion when young boys naturally are gravitating towards one another and young girls towards one another, if you now inject the same-sex sexual activity into the school curriculum, it will suggest to them and ultimately push them on a road of experimentation where they might engaged in same-sex activity.”- Feb 20, 2015

"One of the most significant threats to our freedom is in the area of sexual anarchy with the agenda of the homosexual movement, the so-called LGBT movement. It does several things, first of all it undermines family and the very first building block of our society, but secondly, it’s a zero sum game as well and it’s a direct assault on our religious freedom and freedom of speech.” - October 7, 2011

“This is an intolerant agenda. This is like dealing with terrorists, negotiating with people who simply have a zero-sum game and they don’t want you to exist. It’s like the Palestinians and the Israelis. The Palestinians in Gaza don’t want the Jews to exist in the land. No matter how much land you give them for so-called peace, it doesn’t really satisfy them. There is no satisfying this radical agenda. They don’t want you to exist. If you do exist, they want you to promote and applaud their sinful lifestyle.” - March 4, 2015 

 As Staver explained, not all sins are equal because, according to 1 Corinthians 6, sexual sins alone are committed against one’s own body and so they are “unique from any other sin.” As such, he said, by accepting homosexuality and gay marriage, our society is “moving into a direct attack on who God is.” “When you destroy human sexuality,” Staver proclaimed, “and when you destroy human life created in the image of God and you destroy God’s creation of marriage as man and woman, husband and wife, male and female, when you destroy that, you destroy your understanding of who God is. That’s where we are moving right now in America” - July 8, 2014 

Staver urged conservative Christians to engage in “peaceful resistance” to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Likening the fight against marriage equality to the fight for racial equality, Staver said, “This is the Rosa Parks on the bus. If they tell you to go to the back of the bus because your skin color doesn’t match what they want, don’t go to the back of the bus. This is the time for peaceful resistance, and this is the time to stand with people who are engaged in peaceful resistance.”

“This is the time like of the Nazi Germany when they’d knock on your door,” Staver continued. “‘Is there a Jew in your house?’ Well, if you say ‘yes,’ than the Jew is dead; if you say ‘no,’ then you’re dead. What are you gonna do? You gonna protect the person? Or are you gonna save your own skin?” 

Responding to Schneider’s fears about the future of public education, Staver argued that we will now witness “the marching of the kids through the public schools and the indoctrination. This is the, this is going to be an assault on them of unprecedented proportions as well.” The Department of Education, he predicted, will soon be ordering schools to tell kindergartners, “‘Hey, you need to experiment as a kindergarten with whether you’re male or female. You need to, like, have some experiments and go out and have same-sex relationships.” - July 1, 2015

You know how I feel about the controversy.  How do you feel?