Yes, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a smear machine. Tragically, their diabolical disinformation and legal activism have produced a generation of youth rebels who hate Christianity, hate American capitalism, hate their own parents and heterosexual marriage, hold law enforcement in contempt, and are comfortable with assassination attempts and violent street action.
SPLC has been at work for two decades spreading vicious rhetoric and the rotten fruits are everywhere. Praise God there is now at least some accountability.
Yet it’s important to document how SPLC has gotten away with this and it’s especially pernicious in the group’s approach to youth. My own experience shows their underhanded tactics.
In fall of 2011, a friend who worked at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, OH shared with me that the hospital’s “LGBT” employee group had become quite influential and members would be proudly proclaiming their affiliation by wearing rainbow lapel pins in the workplace.
This got me thinking about the influence on children who are hospitalized. In October 2011, I broadcast an Ohio radio commentary that eventually came to the attention of the SPLC. Here's part of what I broadcast:
“How do you feel about open homosexuals tending to your child in a health care situation? Do you think these folks provide good role modeling at a time when your child is very vulnerable?
“I was thinking about this recently, when I learned that Children’s Hospital in Columbus has a homosexual employees’ group which participated in the June ‘gay’ pride parade and are planning to be identified with rainbow lapel pins.
“So let’s say your 11-year-old has broken her leg rather badly and needs to be in the hospital for a few days. Which would you prefer—a nurse who’s proud of her lesbianism, who has rainbow identifiers on her work clothing, or a nurse who does not?
“I would like to suggest that parents think long and hard about this. If you want your children to admire people who proclaim a homosexual lifestyle, their involvement with your child during a hospital stay is sure to be an influence.
“And let me be clear that folks involved in these behaviors can certainly be competent workers, but they are tacking on to their workplace role, another identity that is highly offensive to many people, and can be erroneously influential to children, who won’t or shouldn’t see the whole picture of how this behavior really manifests itself.
“Here’s what parents can do: you may want to consider writing a letter that you file with your pediatrician, that should your child ever be hospitalized, you do not want your child to be treated or cared for by one of these members of the Children’s Hospital ‘gay’ employees’ group, except in an emergency situation. But for routine in-hospital care, where contact with your child would be required, your values should be respected.
“And you have the right to do this, based on Children’s Hospital’s own Patient Rights and Responsibilities Form. It reads, ‘As a patient, parent or guardian at Nationwide Children's Hospital, you can expect to.....Receive care from hospital staff who respect your personal values, beliefs and customs, regardless of your race, ethnicity, gender, religion...’
“Whether for your ‘personal values’ or religion, or both, you can state in this letter that you don’t want such care. There are probably pediatricians who will be shocked and give you a bit of a hard time, but so what? It’s your child’s values and the integrity of their faith that is at stake.”
It wasn’t long after this broadcast that the radio station began receiving outraged phone calls from the usual rainbow mob. My own calls included one from a physician who insisted I was terribly bigoted because he knew he was “born that way.” I disagreed with him.
He like others refused to process this fairly and logically. Does Children’s Hospital’s non-discrimination policy mean anything, or not? If not, they need to inform families that their children will encounter open homosexuality (and now, “trans” identities) among staff whether the family likes it or not. And those staff will have private time to convince children to accept these behaviors and identities.
Somewhere along the line, SPLC learned about my broadcast and by early 2012, Mission America was placed on their anti-“LGBT” list.
The “hate” label from SPLC has cost our ministry speaking and funding opportunities, among other injustices. Here’s what I wrote in 2017:
“The SPLC criteria lacks validity. Here’s how SPLC claims to assess a group: ‘All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.’”
“But homosexuality and gender confusion are not immutable. These are immoral, changeable behaviors long opposed for factual, historical, health-based reasons by virtually all major religions.”
Yet like most of the far left, SPLC refuses to consider the ample evidence that no one is “born that way.” They were hypocrites and liars then, and are hypocrites and liars now.
Children have suffered greatly from SPLC interference at school, where districts over the years have felt the sting of SPLC’s unjustified wrath and punitive actions. SPLC led a 2011 federal lawsuit (propped up by the Obama administration) against Minneapolis’ Anoka-Hennepin schools, where several students received a settlement for experiencing “LGBT” bullying and harassment. The school was also required to drop a policy that required discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity to be handled with neutrality. The suit alleged that uncontrolled bullying had occurred because of this “gag” policy.
So there was no way to intervene in bullying unless teachers/staff could affirm homosexuality or cross-dressing? Who besides me is not buying this?
The school also agreed to conduct re-training sessions for staff and the SPLC was to oversee this requirement! Progressive fascism at work, courtesy of offenses under the Democrat-reconstituted Title IX law, a legal sleight of hand thankfully ended under Trump. That law is restored to its original meaning when passed in 1972, where “sex” means biological male and female.
Following up on this settlement, SPLC sent a letter threatening legal action to the East Aurora, IL schools in 2012 if they failed to keep in place an open bathrooms/open sports policy designed around the wishes of transgender activists. The “support” cited was the same nonsense, that “discrimination based on gender nonconformity is a form of prohibited sex discrimination under Title IX.” The East Aurora policy was thankfully rescinded due to community outcry.
Learning for Justice is the re-brand of SPLC’s older education site, Teaching Tolerance, since the group was hardly practicing “tolerance.” Their guidance about supporting “LGBTQ” behavior among students is published in Best Practices for Serving LGBTQ Students: A Learning for Justice Guide.
The ideal SPLC school would allow the following discriminatory, corrupting actions:
· Transgender student dress of all types, short of profane T-shirts
· Silencing of religious objections if “LGBTQ” students feel offended
· Full expression of “pride” by these students
· Pro-“LGBTQ” sex education including how-to explanations of “safer sex”
· Boys must be allowed on female athletic teams and vice versa
· Proms, field trips, dances with any gender expression, sexual orientation on display
· GSA’s or homosexual clubs, presumably for grade schools as well
· Use of any bathroom or locker room students wish, with uncomfortable students required to use other facilities
· Ability to claim harassment or bullying for both physical and verbal offenses, and call this a violation of Title IX
· School-supported secrecy from parents about gender confusion or homosexual identity expressed at school. “Never ‘out’ a student to their families (or others) without their consent.”( page 32)
· Teachers, school staff and students must adhere to what “LGBTQ” students believe is respect and will be held accountable even for social media posts
· Ability to voice objections to “homophobia” or “transphobia” while conservative students will be prevented from voicing their objections
· Expect to be called by students and teachers by the desired pronouns, no matter how nonsensical or untruthful
This guide goes on to reaffirm the “born gay” myth, and to smear talk therapy about the possibility of change (erroneously labeled “conversion” therapy). The guide also states that being “transgender” is not a mental illness and any mental health issues experienced by a gender confused student are caused by societal stigma.
All “LGBTQ” student expression is valid and must be allowed, according to SPLC. How many young people have been tragically misled because of this hate-filled organization?
So Mission America’s erroneous slot on the “anti-LGBTQ hate” list since 2012 still exists because, like the Hotel California, you can try to check out of SPLC’s unwanted attention but you can actually never leave.
Unless ..... SPLC itself disintegrates along with its smear campaigns and reckless interaction with children and schools. That needs to happen immediately.
And many of the SPLC staff should go to jail for a very long time.
