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Pictured above is the 'hateful' and 'violence-prone' Matt Barber, Board Member of Americans For Truth, in his days as a professional boxer.
By J. Matt Barber
Though always left of center, the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)once had a reputation as a fairly objective civil rights group. Founded by direct-marketing millionaire Morris Dees and partner Joseph Levin Jr. in 1971, the SPLC made important and honorable contributions to many of the historic civil rights gains of the 20th Century. According to its own materials, the SPLC was “internationally known for tracking and exposing the activities of hate groups.”
Alas, “power corrupts,” as it goes, and the SPLC, having amassed tremendous power and wealth over the years, has regrettably become corrupt to its core. By way of an ever-escalating wave of “us-versus-them” money-grubbing schemes, Today’s SPLC has morphed into a far-left political activist outfit, famous for promoting a panoply of extreme liberal causes.
Ken Silverstein, writing for Harper’s Magazine, addressed this untoward metamorphosis in 2000:
“Today’s SPLC spends most of its time – and money – on a relentless fund-raising campaign, peddling memberships in the church of tolerance with all the zeal of a circuit rider passing the collection plate. ‘He’s the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of the civil rights movement,’ renowned anti-death-penalty lawyer Millard Farmer says of Dees, his former associate, ‘though I don’t mean to malign Jim and Tammy Faye.’
“The American Institute of Philanthropy gives the Center one of the worst ratings of any group it monitors,” continued Silverstein. “Morris Dees doesn’t need your financial support. The SPLC is already the wealthiest civil rights group in America, though [its fundraising literature] quite naturally omits that fact. … ‘Morris and I…shared the overriding purpose of making a pile of money,’ recalls Dees’ business partner, a lawyer named Millard Fuller (not to be confused with Millard Farmer). ‘We were not particular about how we did it; we just wanted to be independently rich.’” (You say Fuller. I say Farmer. The two Millards say “call the whole thing off.”)
So, what happens when a dragon slayer – paid per dragon head – runs out of real dragons to slay? Well, he invents new ones, of course. Gotta keep those sprinklers-a-sprinklin.’ (According to Harper’s, “Dees bought a 200-acre estate appointed with tennis courts, a pool, and stables.” SPLC’s 2008 Form-990 shows net assets of over 219 million at the beginning of that year. Yup, there’s a spate to be made in the hate trade.)
Homosexual activist Wayne Besen screams with a bullhorn into the window of Boston's Park Street Church, which was hosting an "ex-gay" seminar last April. Will the SPLC investigate virulent anti-Christian activists like Besen in its ostensible campaign against "hate"? How would the SPLC react if right-wing conservatives were to terrorize a homosexual church in the same way?
Well, now I think I’ve seen it all. A Chicago-based Marxist “direct action” group, the Gay Liberation Network (GLN) — which smears Chicago’s historic Moody Church as a “House of Hate,” attacks Catholic Cardinal Francis George as a “homophobe,” and compares the Boy Scouts to racist fringe groups — has successfully lobbied the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to label AFTAH’s website a “hate site.” The GLN and its co-leader, Bob Schwartz, know a thing or two about hate: in 2005, Schwartz told me, as I was standing in opposition to a “gay youth” event in downtown Chicago, that he would have pushed me into the busy city street were it not for the presence nearby of my “friends,” the police. (Read my 2005 account as Executive Director for Illinois Family InstituteHERE; imagine if I had made such a veiled, physical threat against Schwartz: I probably would have been arrested on “Hate Crime” charges right then and there.)
There are few things as sinister, and as cynical, as the Left’s manipulation of “hate” as a political weapon to malign Christians and patriotic, conservative Americans. Thankfully, it seems the only people taking the SPLC seriously anymore are the liberal media and hardened, ‘Move On’-types on the Left. The SPLC is a spent force when it comes to moral authority — and even some honest liberals are seeing through its disingenuous campaign to redefine morality as “hate” and “bigotry.” (Don’t look to the SPLC to investigate homosexual haters like Wayne Besen’s notoriously nasty “Truth Wins Out” anytime soon; Besen is shown at right screaming with a bullhorn into the window of Park Street Church in Boston; click here to read the MassResistance story on the shocking 2009 demonstration.)
GLN's Bob Schwartz knows about "hate" ....
The Left is so steeped in its own ideology and self-righteousness that it is oblivious to how out of step it is with everyday Americans. Sure, there are haters on the right like Fred (“God Hates Fags”) Phelps (who despicably pickets U.S. soldiers’ funerals, and whom AFTAH has repeatedly condemned). But there are far more haters on the Left, and they are much better organized and dangerous to American liberty than those on the opposite end of the political spectrum.
On behalf of Americans For Truth, I am gratified at the outpouring of support we have received from pro-family advocates across the country in response to the SPLC’s shenanigans. We’ll say it again: to defend historic Judeo-Christian moral norms is not “bigotry,” and to disagree with homosexual activists is not “hate.” You can contact the Southern Poverty Law Center HERE. God bless you. — Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org; e-mail us: americansfortruth@comcast.net>
Matt Barber’s statement on the SPLC follows the jump:
Cites ‘gay’-affirming professor’s “about face”; Throckmorton reneges on answering questions posed by pro-family news service
Ironically, Grove City Prof. Warren Throckmorton -- creator of the 2004 video "I Do Exist," about ex-"gays" -- now questions whether many former homosexuals who have experienced "durable change" in their basic attractions actually "do exist." Writes Throckmorton: "It is not appropriate to see the film as a testament to change of sexual orientation."
The following is reprinted with permission from LifeSiteNews, a leading pro-life and pro-family news service: [To subscribe to their daily news feed, go HERE]
GROVE CITY, PENNSYLVANIA, March 19, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) — A psychologist teaching at the conservative-Evangelical Grove City College has been making waves by endorsing same-sex civil union legislation, and claiming that homosexuals can live “normal, natural and healthy” lives.
In a recent interview with the Evangelical news service OneNewsNow (ONN), Dr. Warren Throckmorton reportedly said that “he opposes same-sex marriage but believes the Equal Protection Clause permits homosexual civil unions,” according to the news agency.
“Throckmorton says he personally holds a ‘traditional view of homosexuality and sexual ethics.’ However, when asked whether he believes homosexuality is ‘normal, natural and healthy,’ he said he could not answer that with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response,” ONN reported.
“He said ‘in a professional therapy situation’ it is accurate to say that ‘homosexuals can live normal, natural, and healthy lives that are free of mental illness,'” added ONN.
Although Throckmorton has been known in the past as a defender of the ex-gay movement and reorientation therapy, he has been distancing himself increasingly from those positions in recent years, and has even rejected the “Day of Truth,” in which high school students seek to inform their peers about the immorality of homosexual behavior, calling it “mischief,” and saying that it “builds more walls than bridges.”
Throckmorton’s defection from the ex-gay movement has been met with condemnation by Evangelicals. “Though he works for an evangelical institution, Pennsylvania-based Grove City College, which advertises itself on faith-based websites as ‘authentically Christian,’ Warren promotes a new, morally neutral paradigm on homosexuality that affirms people’s ‘Sexual Identity’ according to their feelings (and comfort level with same),” laments Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH).
“Hold on…. This is wholly against Scripture: there is nothing in the Bible or the long history of Judeo-Christian tradition that even hints at ascribing a morally-neutral or worse — a ‘valued identity’ — to sexual sin,” he adds.
Helping patients to form a gay “identity”
LaBarbera is referring to Throckmorton’s “Sexual Identity Therapy,” a framework for therapists treating patients who are conflicted about their sexual desires.
Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak did an about-face Sunday night and voted for the healthcare reform bill — and at least one pro-life Michigander isn’t surprised.
Stupak has been touted by the national media as a leading combatant against using tax dollars for abortion. But when the bill was finally put to a vote and Stupak voted in favor, many of his constituents were not surprised. Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan explains why.
“We issued a news release months ago calling Bart Stupak a fraud, because what happened at the last minute from a national perspective was no surprise at all to those of us actually here in Michigan,” says Glenn.
We should have seen Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak’s sellout on abortion and ObamaCare coming. Here is a video of Rep. Stupak, a Democrat, at a townhall meeting with constituents in Cheboygan, Mich., on Oct. 29, 2009. Other “Profiles in Cowardice” abound, as pro-life advocate Jill Stanek reports:
The only pro-life Democrat to change his vote from a yes to a no due to the failure to include the Stupak-Pitts amendment was Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL), pictured [right]. (Lipinski is the congressman for the district in which Christ Hospital, my former employer, is located. His father, Congressman Bill Lipinski, was a co-sponsor of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.)
Remember: the same dynamic (bogus “rights”) that will expand taxpayer funding/subsidies of abortion will also be at work expanding taxpayer funding of gruesome transsexual “sex-change” operations — unless we as Americans act to stop it. To read more of Stanek’s ObamaCare analysis, go HERE.
Barber blasts Choi as “insubordinate” and “reckless, self-serving ideologue”
Enough already. Lt. Dan Choi (activist website HERE) is more than a distraction to the military: he’s a misguided “gay” militant who needs to follow his true calling — crusading for the acceptance of immoral sexual behavior. We’re quite sure there’s a job waiting for him at the leftist National Gay and Lesbian Task Force or perhaps the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. The liberal media may love Choi (note CNN’s Rick Sanchez’s somber and deferential tone) but I’d hate to count on the media to defend America. See additional comments after the break and following the video:
“Anti-bullying” bill now moves on to Mass. House – text is still troubling
Congratulations to the vigilant pro-family activists over at MassResistance for stopping this proposed “hate speech” provision in an “anti-bullying” bill (see the proposed text in box at right). It is victories like this that made it easy for me to praise this gutsy organization and its founder, Brian Camenker (and MR blogger Amy Contrada) as a speaker at their recent fund-raising banquet.
For years — no, decades — homosexual activists have been telling us that their agenda (oops, I forgot…there is no “gay agenda”) does not pose a threat to freedom. Then we watched in Canada as religious critics of homosexuality were forced to defend themselves against “discrimination” suits brought through Orwellian government “human rights” tribunals — simply for expressing their beliefs against homosexuality. To label these state-sanctioned spectacles “nuisance suits” would be to trivialize the great harm they have done to their innocent victims. Meanwhile, in Britain and Sweden, Christians also faced government oppression for opposing homosexuality. Other countries stand poised to criminalize “homophobia.”
The silence among American homosexual activists against this escalating PRO-“gay” oppression has been deafening. After all, justifying state censorship of your critics isn’t easy when you’re playing the victim card.
And now we see the first, rudimentary attempts at legislating a “hate speech” regime here in the United States. Consider the removed paragraph above in light of the common homosexualist accusation that groups like Mass Resistance and Americans For Truth “hate gays.” Self-described “queer” militants routinely equate traditional religious tenets or moral beliefs with hatred (all the while demonstrating consistent “malice” of their own with abundant lies and nasty smears against pro-family opponents).
Reprinted from American Family Association’s One News Now. To read the Associated Press article about Sidibe’s statements, go HERE (excerpts are at bottom).
LaBarbera: UNAIDS has ‘backwards’ thinking
By Charlie Butts – OneNewsNow – 3/17/2010
A United Nations Aids agency complains that homosexuals, drug users and prostitute don’t seek help because of laws that criminalize their practices.
Michel Sidibe of UNAIDS is quoted as saying it is unacceptable that 85 countries still make homosexual conduct illegal, but Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), does not accept that thinking.
“They’ve got everything backwards,” he contends. “Rather than have a campaign – for example an anti-sodomy campaign, an anti-prostitution campaign, an anti-drug abuse campaign that targets the bad behaviors themselves – instead they target countries that are trying to implement conservative policies that target homosexuality.”
In compatibility with his logic, Sidibe suggests that laws against the immoral behavior be changed.
