— Published with Permission of TheNewAmerican.com —
Amazon.com, the online retail behemoth, has linked arms with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the militantly anti-Christian hate group that has grown obscenely rich by promoting intolerance — all while posing as a brave champion of “tolerance.” The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a major Christian legal defense group that has won hundreds of cases involving religious liberty, freedom of speech, parental rights, and pro-life causes, is the most recent target of the Amazon-SPLC bigotry.
In a May 3 posting on its website, the Alliance Defending Freedom explained that it had recently been receiving messages of concern from supporters who complained that they were no longer able to give to ADF through the AmazonSmile program, which allows customers to designate a nonprofit group to receive a percentage of any Amazon purchase. “We contacted Amazon to find out what happened,” ADF reported, “and lo and behold, Amazon informed us that we were removed because the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) determines who is qualified.”
In a letter to AmazonSmile, ADF’s president and CEO Michael Farris explained that “ADF is a faith-based organization and the world’s largest legal organization advocating for the freedom to peacefully speak, live, and work according to one’s convictions without fear of government punishment.” The ADF, Farris noted, “is well respected in the legal profession as one of the nation’s most successful Supreme Court advocates. We have won seven cases in the last seven years at the High Court. Those victories include defending a state program that provides funding for children to attend private schools and defending a church-run preschool against government discrimination.”
The ADF also works, Farris pointed out “to ensure that our public colleges and universities are true marketplaces of ideas, where all students are free to engage in conversation and debate on important issues.” Despite the ever-increasing hostility to free speech on campuses today, “ADF has achieved nearly 400 victories securing campus free expression and academic freedom,” the Farris letter noted.
The smear bullies at the Southern Poverty Law Center obviously view the ADF’s successes as a huge threat to their far-left agenda, which includes pushing militant pro-abortion and pro-LGBT programs. Thus, they have advised Amazon that ADF be considered unqualified for participation in its nonprofit donation program. “SPLC did good work many years ago,” says the ADF, “but it has since devolved into a propaganda machine dedicated to crushing dissent. It does this by labeling anything they disagree with as ‘hate’ — even if those beliefs are widely held and constitutionally protected (as ours — and those of our clients and supporters — most certainly are).”
The SPLC parlayed publicity and credibility gained from its early lawsuits against real hate groups, such as the KuKluxKlan and Aryan Nations, into a continuous fundraising and propaganda apparatus. They have certainly profited handsomely in both of these areas. According to their latest IRS filings, the SPLC’s super-wealthy “poverty pimps” have banked nearly half a billion dollars, the Capital Research Center reports. Much of that lucre is stashed away in bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the British Virgin Islands.
With massive help from the liberal-left giants of the corporate news media and social media, the SPLC defamation artists have been engaged in a decades-long slander campaign against virtually all conservative, Christian, and anti-communist organizations. As we noted in our 2011 article Protecting Rights: Loyal Americans Targeted by the SPLC, the SPLC smeared conservative black professor Carol Swain because of her stance on immigration, and viciously attacked black Christian ministers for opposing homosexual marriage and other LGBT programs.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center tries to silence people on a range of issues,” Dr. Swain said. “It’s not just immigration. It’s also people that are pro-life; it’s people that are concerned about racial preferences, people that are concerned about same-sex marriages, gun control, immigration and patriots.”
As we noted, “A host of prominent black preachers have come under fire from the SPLC. Among them are: Chicago’s Rev. Gregory Daniels; the Washington, D.C., area’s Bishop Harry Jackson; the Atlanta area’s Bishop Eddie Long; the Detroit area’s Rev. Keith Butler; Bishop Wellington Boone of Norcross, Georgia; Pastor Ken Hutcherson of Redmond, Washington; Rev. Jesse Peterson of Los Angeles; and the Chicago area’s Rev. James Meeks.” Their offence, in the eyes of SPLC? Faithfully adhering to biblical morality and opposing the homosexual agenda.
Who are some of the other “hate groups” targeted by SPLC’s “tolerance” police? Among the many leaders and groups we listed as having been singled out for SPLC smears are Dr. James Dobson and his Focus on the Family ministry, Beverly LaHaye and her Concerned Women for America, the late D. James Kennedy and his Coral Ridge Ministries, Scott Lively and his Abiding Truth Ministries, David Barton and his WallBuilders ministry, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, the Chalcedon Foundation, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty Council, the Traditional Values Coalition, Catholic Family News, the Christian Action Network, and the National Organization for Marriage. It goes on and on; the SPLC “hate group” classification is so obviously a politically and ideologically driven hit list, and so blatantly fraudulent that continued reference to it by the establishment media only further cements the validity of the charge that the major corporate media are totally Fake News.
ADF charges that the SPLC “would prefer to silence all opposing views, ridding the public square of civil discourse.” It cites the chilling videotaped statement of SPLC Senior Fellow Mark Potok, who made clear the SPLC’s goal regarding organizations who dare to hold a dissenting viewpoint: “I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.”
In 2012, armed terrorist Floyd Lee Corkins, admittedly inspired by SPLC propaganda, and using their notorious “Hate Map” as a guide, stormed the Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C. office with the intent to “kill as many people as I could.” Corkins had a list of additional conservative groups he intended to attack as well, taken from the SPLC’s website. It appears that the SPLC may have also inspired “D.C. Shooter” James T. Hodgkinson, a “progressive” Bernie Sanders supporter, who targeted Republicans at a congressional baseball game practice and seriously wounded Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.). These incidents show that not only is the Southern Poverty Law Center disreputable and dishonest, but also extremely dangerous. Yet, the SPLC has the audacity to call peaceful, law-abiding Americans “extremists”!
Naturally, the SPLC and its media allies insist that the SPLC’s incendiary smears had nothing to do with these violent attacks on Christians and conservatives, and have been quick to absolve the group from any responsibility. However, in typical, hypocritical fashion, the SPLC and its media cheerleaders continue to accuse Christian organizations and pro-life/pro-family groups of promoting hate, intolerance, and terrorism, simply on the basis of their adherence to traditional Christian moral principles. Consumers who hope to preserve freedom should inform Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, and news media outlets that they should shun the SPLC as the purveyors of hate and defamation their record plainly shows them to be.
