Friends, something astonishing happened to me recently, another result of an ongoing smear campaign against our organization, Mission America, as well as many other conservative Christian groups.
I was invited to be part of a panel at the Columbus Metropolitan Club on the topic of Ohio House Bill 616. It's the Ohio bill that would ban teaching about the topics of sexual orientation and gender identity in early elementary school as well as divisive racial concepts throughout all grades.
The panel was already stacked with people opposed to this bill, including the Ohio Education Association, Stonewall Columbus and Equality Ohio, as well as a very biased Columbus Dispatch reporter. And even the slanted title of the panel, “Ohio’s ‘Don't say gay, Don't mention race’ bill” was daunting. I have written about this bill HERE.
But one of the other speakers hailed from the Center for Christian Virtue and I had hoped that together, we would be able to counter any misinformation. However, after the invitation was extended, I received an email that the invitation was being withdrawn, and to call the director for more details. When I called, I learned that the invitation was withdrawn because Mission America is on the infamous Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” list. Their explanation? That our inclusion on that list was “a line they (the Metropolitan Club) couldn’t cross.”
So the SPLC is the authority here—a far-left, private, scandal-ridden organization that cherry-picks who is guilty of “hate” (using often-invalid assessments) while omitting onerous elephants in the room.
The unjust, bogus SPLC smear label was given to our group about ten years ago. Mission America is not a hate group, and we are joined on this blacklist by many other well-respected Christian conservative organizations, including American Family Association, Alliance Defending Freedom, and Family Research Council, whose headquarters was attacked in 2012 by someone using the SPLC list. So the designation is not simply unjust --- it’s dangerous.
This designation was smacked on Mission America after I broadcast a commentary that no one was born homosexual, and that anyone can change. (Read HERE for our response to sketchy critics.) A campaign was launched against me and yet the campaign came and went, and by God’s grace, this ministry is stronger than ever.
And who is the Southern Poverty Law Center? They are a far-left private organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, who took on the role of monitoring the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups for decades and then began, in what now seems to be a fundraising move to pad its list, designating selected Christian conservative organizations as so-called “hate groups.” How does a group obtain this designation? Sometimes all it takes is proclaiming a biblical stand on homosexuality and transgenderism, and the harm these behaviors cause in our culture and to children.
And not surprisingly, some groups are missing that would certainly seem to fit the SPLC “hate” criteria-- groups like Black Lives Matter, which stokes rioting and violence. BLM spews anti-Christian, anti-American, anti-family rhetoric and unabashedly hates police. An excellent overview of the massive problems with BLM can be read HERE.
By contrast, Mission America supports family issues, the best education for children, and true racial equality (not newly-crafted but essentially racist “equity”).
We proclaim the peace of the cross of Jesus Christ. We don’t hate anyone who identifies as homosexual or is gender confused. We simply state the honest truth—that these are non-biological preferences that can be changed, and are behaviors that should not be presented to children as normal or beneficial.
The moral standards of Christianity are the best for long-term optimal health and happiness, and our struggling culture desperately needs the truth and hope in all areas of human life offered by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPLC seems laser-focused on a narrow, sexually radical, anti-American agenda, even if children are corrupted as a by-product. SPLC’s reckless accusations and ongoing hysterical fundraising machine further divides our country through smears, distortions and lies.
If SPLC was authentically concerned about American culture, their “hate map” would include groups like BLM or at least some of its more radical elements. But such groups are missing, as are individuals who are proudly anti-Semitic, like Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.The SPLC is in reality itself a far-left “hate” group that should never be used as an objective reporter of American cultural movements.
If the SPLC is your “authority,” you have bigger problems than we can enumerate here.
Regarding HB 616, let’s hope some of these Ohio organizations re-think their pro-homosexual positions and begin to get a heart again for actually protecting children and teaching the truth instead of harmful propaganda.
