Any time the liberal media want to disparage the right side of the political spectrum, they call on a pool of go-to guys and gals to make their case for them. It’s not news reporting; it’s ideological position marketing. One of those groups is the hard-left and anti-Christian Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC is in the money raising business for every known and unknown left-wing cause. It has gone from tracking the movements of violent racists, skinhead groups, and a brief resurgence of the KKK that number in the hundreds to creating hysteria over mainstream value voters.
If you don’t agree with the SPLC leftist litmus test, then you are probably a member of a “hate group.” With its new definition of what constitutes a hate group, the SPLC has become a fund-raising machine. It’s no wonder the SPLC is flush with cash. Ultimately, the tactic is to strike fear in middle-America so the checks keep rolling in. Most communities don’t see skinheads or even KKKers, so the SPLC needs a new tangible enemy closer to home so everyone can be made afraid.
You might remember the census worker in Kentucky who was found hanging from a tree. Mark Potok, a former senior fellow at the SPLC, was Johnny-on-the-spot with his “expert” analysis. He blamed the incident on “anti-government sentiment very much whipped up by militia” types. Here’s the problem. The man wasn’t murdered by anti-government marauders. “Bill Sparkman, the late Census worker, had killed himself, and staged the homicide in the hope of recouping insurance money for his family. Tragic, yes. Right-wing terrorism? Only in Potok fantasy-land.”[1] Even the liberal USA Today got the story right. See this story from Newsweek.
So, were Potok and the SPLC discredited enough that the media, the military, and businesses no longer relying on the organization to ferret out “haters”? You already know the answer. Of course not!
Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor
The most damning assessment of a matter-only cosmos devoid of a Creator is that we got to this place in our evolutionary history by acts of violence whereby the strong conquered the weak with no one to support or condemn them. Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor repeatedly raises the issue of accounting for the conscience, good and evil, and loving our neighbor. It’s shocking to read what atheists say about a cosmos devoid of meaning and morality.
Buy NowAccording to the SPLC, hate has gone mainstream, so you better send a donation before these “haters” come and get you, too! Am I making this up? The SPLC is a fund-raising industry designed to silence conservatives who want their country back, hold elected officials accountable to their Constitutional oath, and maintain certain moral values. There’s not much money in fighting real hate groups, so the SPLC needs a bigger, more menacing group of haters—your next-door neighbors and the church down the street! Muslim extremists who kill soldiers in the name of Allah on an army base, plan to blow up the streets of New York City to kill and maim Americans, and Hamas anti-Jewish/Israel terrorists abroad and at home are of little concern when there are bigger fish to land and money to raise.
Their blind eyes go back a few years. Floyd Lee Corkins opened fire at the Family Research Council, injuring a guard before he was subdued. Tony Perkins, president of the FRC, blamed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” label as a contributor to Corkins’ actions. After Corkins pleaded guilty, Perkins said the following:
The day after Floyd Corkins came into the FRC headquarters and opened fire wounding one of our team members, I stated that while Corkins was responsible for the shooting, he had been given a license to perpetrate this act of violence by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center which has systematically and recklessly labeled every organization with which they disagree as a “hate group.”
Today both assertions were validated in court as Corkins plead guilty to multiple criminal charges, including terrorism. The Southern Poverty Law Center can no longer say that it is not a source for those bent on committing acts of violence**.** Only by ending its hate-labeling practices will the SPLC send a message that it no longer wishes to be a source for those who would commit acts of violence that are only designed to intimidate and silence Christians and others who support natural marriage and traditional morality.
Corkins was carrying 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his bag when he was taken into custody. He wanted to kill people and put a bag next to each victim. The SPLC had designated the Family Research Council as a “hate group” because of the organization’s views on homosexual practices and homosexual marriage.
I haven’t seen the SPLC hate map include college campuses across the United States where students are attacking Jews and promoting the hate group known as Hamas or where professors are supporting Hamas under the cover of “freedom of speech.” Then there’s this: “The Cornell Daily Sun reported students were alerted when violent posts appeared on an online forum from a user named Hamas Soldier with threats “to bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig jews.” “If I see a pig male Jew, I will stab you and slit your throat,” read one post. Another post pledged to “bomb a Jewish house in retaliation for the murder of 500 martyrs.”
The SPLC 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 homosexual marriage, and transgender rights along with dozens of other made-up “genders.”
The folks at the SPLC have been publishing a growing “hate groups” list in their Intelligence Report publication. Their “Special Edition” issue claims there are hundreds of active hate groups in the United States of America.”
You could be living next door to a “hater” and not know it! So, make your donation now! There are 13 “hate groups” in Georgia. American Vision is on the map. AV had been sent some white powder a few years ago. There were even “wanted posters” with my picture on it posted in various places around the property. We are listed as an “anti-gay” hate group. Of course, we’re not “anti-gay.” We wish everybody could be happy. The use of “gay” is a clever marketing device to avoid having to describe what “gays” do that makes them “gay.” We’re anti-homosexual as are tens of millions of Americans because of a particular kind of sexual behavior. We’re also anti-adultery, anti-pedophilia, and anti-multiple marriages. Consider how pedophilia is being described in terms identical to the way clinicians explained homosexual “orientation” to justify its universal acceptance:
Pedophilia is another “sexual orientation,” comparable to heterosexuality or homosexuality, according to expert testimony recently presented to the Canadian Parliament.
The issue at hand was a bill that would either increase penalties or impose mandatory sentences on sexual offenders whose victims are children.
According to a report at LifeSiteNews, Dr. Hubert Van Gijseghem, a psychologist and retired professor at the University of Montreal and one of the expert witnesses, told members of parliament, “True pedophiles have an exclusive preference for children, which is the same as having a sexual orientation.”
The other expert, Dr. Vernon Quinsey, a professor emeritus of psychology at Queen’s University in Ontario, added, “There is no evidence that this sort of preference can be changed through treatment or anything else…. It’s not necessarily that they need to change their sexual orientation; they need to learn to control themselves, with our help.
The SPLC still has a lot of work to do if they are going to stop all the “hate.” One of their tactics is to link the struggles of those who practice homosexual sex to gain full civil rights is to link it to the struggles of blacks. Here’s how the folks at the SPLC are positioning the debate:
The religious right in America has employed a variety of strategies in its efforts to beat back the increasingly confident gay 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.
Have you ever wondered why homosexuals describe themselves as “gay” and not homosexual? They know that describing their behavior would mean turning people away from the idea of special sexual rights. Check out images from so-called Gay Pride parades. You haven’t seen any? It’s because the MSM won’t show them. A moral equivalency is being made by the SPLC between the struggle of blacks to gain their civil rights with men and women who are working to gain certain types of sexual rights. There is no end to where “sexual rights” legislation will take us. Of course, we know where it has taken us. Transgenderism and drag shows are the new normal. Transgenderism has invaded women’s sports.
Voddie Baucham, pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church in Spring, Texas, challenged Christian broadcasters at the 2011 National Religious Broadcasters convention not to equate the homosexual agenda with the civil rights movement. Baucham, who is black, stressed that practicing homosexuality is not the same as being black. “I’m insulted that people equate not just a sinful behavior but a behavior that’s a special category of sin called an abomination with the level of melanin in my skin,” he said. He charged that some black leaders were providing “cover” for homosexual activists to play the “race card.” Baucham cautioned the NRB audience from falling victim to three common attacks in the homosexual agenda: the ad hominem attack, question-begging logic, and the genetic fallacy. Here’s how Katherine T. Phan, a Christian Post reporter, summarizes Pastor Baucham’s message:
With the ad hominem attack, homosexual activists attack the man and label them a “homophobe” or “bad person” and with the question-begging logic tactic they only assume gay marriage is a fundamental right without ever proving it. Genetic fallacy is used when homosexual activists say, “you are using your religion to impose your morality on me,” thereby rejecting the argument simply based on where it comes from, not based on the logic of that argument.
Reading from several Bible verses, Baucham contended that Christians should respond to homosexuality with biblical truth. Some Christians may point to the verse that says not to judge others to justify their silence, he acknowledged, but they should also read the part where Jesus tells us to judge ourselves so that we can judge others.
“Take the log out of your own eye so that you can see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. We’re commanded to judge,” said Baucham.
Referring to Ezekiel 33, the pastor reminded the Christian media professionals that the blood will be required on their hands if they don’t tell the wicked man to turn from his ways.
Showing true love, argued Baucham, is not to just allow homosexuals to live in sin but to call them to repent and speak of what Christ has done on the cross.
“There is nothing more loving than calling a person to repent of their sins.”
For years, to use Theodore Roszak’s phrase, Christians had a theology that was “socially irrelevant, even if privately engaging.”[2] Now that many Christians have awakened from the slumber of a false privatized spirituality and applied their beliefs culturally and politically, the Leftists are enraged, and the SPLC is the enabling institution because it carries so much clout with liberals. It’s OK for Liberals to barnstorm the country and threaten businesses and politicians with their own political clout, but beware of anyone who opposes them in peaceful demonstrations—and God forbid—at the ballot box.
Thinking Straight in a Crooked World
The nursery rhyme "There Was a Crooked Man" is an appropriate description of how sin affects us and our world. We live in a crooked world of ideas evaluated by crooked people. Left to our crooked nature, we can never fully understand what God has planned for us and His world. God has not left us without a corrective solution. He has given us a reliable reference point in the Bible so we can identify the crookedness and straighten it.
Buy Now[1]Lachlan Markay, “Newsweek Trots Out Discredited SPLC Lawyer Mark Potok to Decry ‘Patriot’ Groups” (April 12, 2010).
[2]Theodore Roszak., Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1972), 449.