American Vision must be doing something right. We have been targeted by a number of anti-Christian groups because of our stance on homosexuality. We find ourselves in the company of Focus on the Family, American Family Association, Alliance Defense Fund, Coral Ridge Ministries, Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, Family Research Institute, and other pro-family groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), run by its co-founder Morris Dees, has listed us as a “hate group” under the “other” category on their website.[1] In fact, if you add up all the people in America who support any of the above ministries, the number would be in the millions.
So the SPLC has gone from tracking the movements of skinhead groups and the KKK that number in the hundreds to creating hysteria over mainstream value ministries. Pro-homosexual newspapers and websites have been working overtime to rev up their robot-like followers to repeat the rhetoric of the SPLC. Of course, most of this is done for fund raising purposes. It’s no wonder that the SPLC is flush with cash.[2] Ultimately, the tactic is to strike fear in middle-America so the checks start rolling in. Most communities don’t see skinheads or even KKKers, but they do see D. James Kennedy on television, hear James Dobson on the radio, and listen to Gary DeMar at homeschool conventions. Hate has gone mainstream, the SPLC warns, so you better send a donation before these guys come and get you! Am I making this up? I counted twelve categories of giving on their website. I’m surprised there isn’t a category to donate body parts. The SPLC is a fund raising industry designed to silence Christians. There’s not much money in fighting real hate groups now that only a few of the real haters are still around.[3]
This all got started with the publication of SPLC’s “Holy War” Intelligence Report.[4] We got wind of the hit piece when someone from The Southern Voice, a pro-homosexual advocacy newspaper published in Georgia,[5] called us for an interview on the “hate group” accusation. I’ve been interviewed before by these agenda-seeking organizations. The time spent in trying to set the record straight is not worth the aggravation. Their type of “red-meat journalism” is common.[6]
You might remember that the SPLC is the same group that went after Chief Justice Roy Moore because he refused to remove the Ten Commandment monument from the court house in Montgomery, Alabama. He’s one of their favorite whipping boys. Without God’s commandments, everything is up for grabs except for condemning a worldview that says everything is up for grabs. Early in its 34-year history, the SPLC probably did some good work in the area of civil rights. The group has lost focus in recent years and has decided to persecute and libel Christian groups who hold to a moral worldview that opposes the legalization of sodomy and homosexual marriage.
Now for the gist of the article. Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report, claims that “religious right leaders have veered away from a theological discussion of their opposition to homosexuality and have instead resorted to castigation of the GLBT[7] community.”[8] Of course, this is nonsense. Christians who oppose the practice of sodomy and the legalization of homosexual marriage have always made their case using biblical arguments. In fact, when Christians have referred to the biblical texts that speak to this issue, we heard the typical rejoinders: “Religion and politics don’t mix . . . There’s a separation between church and state . . . Jesus said not to judge. . . You can’t legislate morality.” Those in the homosexual community are upset that opposition has been leveled against aggressive homosexual advocacy, for example, making homosexual practice a part of the public school curriculum, opposing the Boy Scouts for their anti-homosexual policy, and pushing for homosexual marriage over against the will of the people and current law. When a worldview is attacked, it stands to reason that those defending the worldview are going to be caught in the ideological “crossfire.”
Homosexual advocates like Potok want Christians quarantined behind the walls of their churches where they can preach and teach their peculiar beliefs but are forbidden to enjoin one another to act upon those beliefs. For years, to use Theodore Roszak’s phrase, Christians had a theology that was “socially irrelevant, even if privately engaging.”[9] Now that Christians have awakened from the slumber of a false privatized spirituality and applied their beliefs culturally and politically, the homosexual community is enraged. It’s OK for homosexuals to barnstorm the country and threaten businesses and politicians with their own political clout, but beware of anyone who opposes their agenda.
Homosexuals will claim that their cause is a “civil rights” issue, similar to the hard-fought struggle that Blacks have gone through. The analogy is a false one. For example, abortion and homosexuality—two hotly contested political issues—are what people do. Abortion kills a pre-born baby. Opposing abortion does not mean that we oppose women. We oppose one thing women do with their pre-born children. The same is true for homosexuality. The euphemism “gay” has been used by the homosexual movement to hide the fact that homosexuality is really same-sex sex. This renaming tactic has been used by abortion advocates for years. The word abortion is hardly ever used. Abortionists talk about being “pro-choice” to hide the bloody nature of the procedure. To describe what homosexuals do with their “sexual equipment” would turn off many readers at this point. The very nature of the act is unnatural by definition, and any relationship what would based on sodomy is unnatural as well (Rom. 1:26–27). This is why Colin Powell writes of the inappropriate linking of homosexual behavior with the civil rights movement: “Skin color is a benign, non]behavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of human behavioral characteristics. Comparison of the two is a convenient but invalid argument.”[10]
The editors of the Intelligence Report claim that anti-homosexual rhetoric “has fed anti-gay hate crime violence.” A similar argument was leveled against conservatives—especially conservative talk radio’s use of “anti-government rhetoric” in describing the abuses of courts and politicians—soon after Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Supposedly “hateful” speech directed at liberal politicians and their policies had incited a cadre of “right wing” extremists who put words into explosive action. Contrary to the accusations, the elections of 2000 and 2004 demonstrated that conservatives, including anti-homosexual conservative Christians, put their faith into action at the voting booth, not at the firing range or the bomb factory.
The Matthew Shepard case (1998) received national attention when it believed and promoted that he was beaten and left for dead because is only “crime” was being a homosexual. HBO produced The Laramie Project, NBC ran The Matthew Shepard Story, and MTV followed with Matthew’s Murder. The Internet is filled with tributes to Shepard and how his savage death was the result of anti-homosexual hate.[11] These sites argue that while the two murderers were certainly to blame, their rage was fueled by a climate of hateful rhetoric coming from anti-homosexual groups like those named throughout the Intelligence Report.
As any informed reader might expect, the Intelligence Report article is a one-sided propaganda piece and reductionistic in its unsubstantiated claims that if a homosexual is beaten, molested, or killed, it was because of anti-homosexual rhetoric. So how do we explain the Columbine murders, where some of the victims were Bible-believing Christians? Should we indict all evolutionists because one of the shooters was wearing a T-shirt with “Natural Selection” emblazoned on the front?[12] The following appeared on Eric Harris’ web page: “YOU KNOW WHAT I LOVE??? Natural SELECTION! It’s the best thing that ever happened to the Earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms … but it’s all natural! YES!” Sounds like hate speech to me! Where is the SPLC on this one? Evolution—“natural selection”—is taught in every government school as an irrefutable and unchallengeable fact. How many people have been murdered because the perpetrators were influenced by the logical consistency of the evolutionary dogma? How do we know that the doctrine of evolution does not play a significant role on violence against homosexuals?[13] Since they do not perpetuate the species, they need to be eliminated. This is pure Columbine logic based on the rudiments of natural selection.
Then there’s the lack of mainstream media attention on the Jesse Dirkhising case, the 13-year-old middle school student from Rogers, Arkansas, who was tied up and repeatedly sodomized by two homosexuals until he died.[14] There has been a near blackout in the press on this story. No movie of the week. No HBO special. No mention on MTV.
The information in the Intelligence Report is designed to divert peoples’ attention away from the homosexual agenda by laying blame at its critics. I was criticized in a threatening email for claiming that homosexual couples molest the young boys they adopt. I never said any such thing, but he got this impression from the Report. The email writer stated that sexual molestation is mostly done by heterosexuals. This is true, mostly because 99 percent of the male population is heterosexual. Many homosexual molestation and violence cases go unreported. This is beginning to change. Dean Arthur Schwartzmiller has a criminal record going back 35 years. He spent 12 years in prison on sexual crimes. “Police suspect he molested children as many as 36,000 times over three decades in several states, Mexico and Brazil. A search of his San Jose home turned up notebooks with notes on more than 36,000 encounters in categories such as ‘Blond Boys,’ ‘Cute Boys’ and ‘Boys who say no.’”[15] Newsweek also reported on the story. The magazine describes him as “a man who may be the most prolific child molester the country has ever known.”[16] Couldn’t the reporting of these homosexual crimes incite “anti-gay hate-crime violence”? What about the abuse of young boys by priests?
The Southern Poverty Law Center is out to silence Christian groups that believe homosexuality is unnatural, immoral, and hurtful to society. The SPLC is acting as an enabling institution to other anti-Christian groups hell-bent on destroying reputations and ministries in the name of “social justice.”
Endnotes:
[1] www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp?T=22&m=3
[2] Richard A. Viguerie and David Franke, America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power (Chicago, IL: Bonus Books, 2004), 146–150.
[3] http://crime.about.com/b/a/179433.htm
[4] www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=522
[5] www.sovo.com/2005/6-3/news/national/anti-gay.cfm
[6] Gary DeMar, “Read-Meat Journalism,” Biblical Worldview (May 2004), 3, 6, 12.
[7] GLBT: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender.
[8] David Webb, “Rights group take[s] on religious extremists,” Dallas Voice: The Community Newspaper for Gay & Lesbian Dallas: www.dallasvoice.com/articles/dispArticle.cfm?Article_ID=6063
[9] Theodore Roszak., Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1972), 449.
[10] Quoted in World (September 26, 1992), 5.
[11] The ABC News program “20/20” ran a story on November 27, 2004, that outraged the homosexual community. Evidence had been uncovered that Shepherd’s murder was not a “hate crime.” His homosexuality had nothing to do with his death. The truth is that he was the victim of a robbery by two drug addicts. Shepard himself was a heavy drug user who was HIV-positive. The perpetrators of this brutal crime were not “homophobes.” One of them was allegedly bisexual. For account of the “20/20” episode, see Cliff Kincaid, “Exploiting Matthew Shepard,” Accuracy in Media (December 22, 2004): www.aim.org/media_monitor/2331_0_2_0_C/
[12] Denver Rocky Mountain News (June 1999), 4A, 14A, 25.
[13] Barbara Reynolds, “If your kids go ape in school, you’ll know why,” USA Today (August 27, 1993), 11A.
[14] You can read the official affidavits of probable cause in the case at www.americansfortruth.com/JDWarning.html
[15] “California man molested boys for decades, USA Today (June 20, 2005), 4A.
[16] “Karen Breslau, “Cracking a Horrible Code,” Newsweek (June 27, 2005), 35.