SPLC fires broadside against pro-family event
SPLC fires broadside against pro-family event
Terror-linked fringe group tries to scare speakers away from conference
by Bob Unruh
A “Values Voter Summit,” a time for the nation’s leading conservative voices to gather and discuss issues and events important to their constituencies, apparently is too much for the Southern Poverty Law Center to tolerate.
The fringe progressive organization, which previously was linked in a Washington federal courtroom to a case of domestic terror and at one point slammed GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson with a “hate” label, has launched a broadside against the events scheduled Friday through Sunday.
Posted online and dispatched into the digital world was a pages-long diatribe against the summit, several of its key speakers and the groups participating. They, according to a fired-up SPLC, are not only “anti-LGBT” but also “anti-Muslim.”
So how is the Family Research Council, the organizer of the events, responding?
“We intend to ignore all the SPLC’s bluster on this important event,” the group said in a statement that was released online, “but it may behoove many of you who are attending and/or participating to know who has specifically been named.”
The issue is that the conference, its groups and its speakers are mainstream for tens of millions of Americans, just not the progressives from SPLC who took it on themselves to write to “each public servant invited to speak,” and encourage them to stay away, or “not to lend the credibility of their office to the summit.”
The Family Research Council said it has showcased names in the past including Sens. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Reps. Paul Ryan, Michele Bachmann, Govs. Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal and more.
But the SPLC told those invited this year that, “given the demonizing lies about the LGBT community spread by the host, the Family Research Council, (FRC), and a major sponsor of the event, the American Family Association, we urge you to not lend the prestige of your office or candidacy to the summit.”
Because the conservative organizations hold to biblical standards regarding homosexuality – that the behavior is wrong – the SPLC charges them with “an extensive record of vilifying gays and lesbians with falsehoods – portraying them as sick, evil, incestuous, violent, perverted and a danger to the nation.”
“Demonizing the LGBT community has consequences,” the SPLC claims. “As FBI data demonstrate, this community is one of the groups most likely to be victimized by violent hate crimes. Defaming them publicly day after day – as the FRC, the AFA (American Family Association) and the Liberty Counsel do – only throws fuel on the fire.”
Get the Whistleblower Magazine’s revelations about the SPLC, in its March 2015 edition of “The Hate Racket,” the complete story of how one group fools government into equating Christians and conservatives with Klansmen and Nazis – and rakes in millions doing it.
Ironically, it was the SPLC that was named in a court of law as the inspiration for a domestic terror attack on the Family Research Council.
Three years ago, a homosexual activist armed himself and went to the Washington headquarters of the FRC, intending, as he related later, to kill as many people as he could.
He carried with him Chick-fil-A sandwiches and intended to smear the sandwiches on his victims, as the restaurant chain was in the news at the time because of CEO Dan Cathy’s support for traditional marriage.
Corkins failed because a security guard defended the organization and, although wounded, disarmed the attacker.
A video showed Floyd Lee Corkins II entering the FRC offices and confronting Leo Johnson.
Corkins later was sentenced to prison for domestic terrorism. It was during an interview with FBI officers when Corkins fingered the Southern Poverty Law Center for his inspiration.
During that interview, an agent asked Corkins, “What was your intention. … You’re … a political activist, you said?”
Corkins responded: “Yeah, I wanted to kill the people in the building and then smear a Chicken-fil-A sandwich on their face.”
FBI: “And you, what was your intention when you went in there with the gun?”
Corkins: “Uh, it was to kill as many people as I could.”
Key to the case, according to the government’s document, was that, “He had identified the FRC as an anti-gay organization on the Southern Poverty Law Center website.”
FRC officials repeatedly have explained that they adhere to a biblical perspective on homosexuality, but are not “anti-gay.”
“Consistent with his statement to the FBI, a … search of Corkins’s family computer revealed that on the afternoon of Sunday, August 12, Corkins used the computer to visit the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website, as well as the websites for the FRC and the second organization on his handwritten list. The FBI later recovered from Corkins’s home several printed Mapquest and Google maps, dated August 12, 2012, for directions to the FRC and the second organization, as well as the pad of stationary paper used by Corkins to create his handwritten list of targets,” the government explained in the case.
The new SPLC letter, signed by Michael Sherrard of Faithful America, Sarah Kate Ellis of GLAAD, Chad Griffin of Human Rights Campaign, Michael Keegan of People For the American Way and J. Richard Cohen of the SPLC, now brazenly is calling out the conservative convention participants.
It targets American Family Association and President Tim Wildmon for “visceral anti-LGBT rhetoric under the banner of ‘traditional moral values.'”
It attributes to Wildmon the statement: “What we reject is the idea that you can take homosexuality, which in the Bible is defined as a sin … it’s unnatural, it’s immoral, it’s unhealthy, and laud it and call it wonderful and say this is the same as heterosexuality. It is not.”
The campaign also targets Liberty Counsel and its chairman, Mathew Staver, for providing legal counsel and pro bono assistance in cases dealing with religious liberty, “‘the sanctity of human life’ and the family.”
And for Tony Perkins, FRC’s chief, the campaign reserved some choice language.
“Its real specialty is defaming gays and lesbians,” the SPLC said. “The FRC often makes false claims about the LGBT community based on discredited research and junk science. The intention is to denigrate LGBT people in its battles against same-sex marriage, hate crimes laws, anti-bullying programs and the repeal of the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.”
GOP presidential candidates invited to the event include Dr. Ben Carson; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; U.S. Sens. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham; Carly Fiorina; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal; Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Rick Santorum.
WND CEO Joseph Farah, whom SPLC has also targeted, along with WND, wrote earlier when the organization put Carson on its list of “haters,” then abruptly reversed course.
“Apparently, the racketeering outfit that poses as a ‘progressive’ civil liberties group realized it had crossed a bridge too far in its smear efforts against, quite possibly, the most respected black leader in America (and, yes, I include Barack Obama and all members of his administration and frequent White House visitors such as Al Sharpton),” he wrote.
Corkins ended up pleading guilty to an Act of [Domestic] Terrorism while Armed, and getting a sentence of decades behind bars.
At the time, FRC President Tony Perkins said that the SPLC’s statements about the FRC “gave license” to Corkins’ to attack.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center can no longer say that it is not a source for those bent on committing acts of violence,” Perkins said at the time.
In 2012, WND reported that four of its writers and commentators – Founder and CEO Joseph Farah, marketing coordinator Kevin DeAnna, columnist Molotov Mitchell and columnist Pamela Geller – were on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of the 30 most dangerous activists in the country.
But the SPLC’s attacks are nothing new to WND; it earlier had warned of the growth of groups such as the Constitution Party, Oath Keepers and WND.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/splc-fires-broadside-against-pro-family-event/#GRaPt4erSZIMP8AZ.99