Conservatives, such as CNN's Erick Erickson, are already trying to tie Democrats to the attack. Why? Because people on the left had the audacity to challenge the Family Research Council's decades of hateful and bigoted attacks against gay and lesbian Americans. And other conservatives are calling for the Southern Poverty Law Center to no longer list the FRC as a hate group because of today's violence. That would be wrong.
Because of conservatives trying to take political advantage of the shooting I'm now forced to recap just how hateful and bigoted an organization the Family Research Council really is. I'd have preferred to have avoided that this so soon after the attack, but conservatives leave us no choice.
First let's say a word about the violence.
1. It doesn't matter that the FRC is a hate group, violence is not the answer, ever - period. Violence is wrong, the shooting was wrong. Period.
2. This is more evidence of the increasing culture of violence in our country, and the absurd availability of guns to every nutjob who wants one.
Now back to FRC.
FRC's status as a hate group does not change because some nut decided, wrongly, to use violence. The violence is abhorrent. It is wrong. But it's also wrong for conservatives to suggest that the violence somehow changes the fact that the FRC routinely uses false claims to promote the hatred and demonization of gay people. It's a fact that they do.
Here's what the Southern Poverty Law Center said about why it finally added the FRC to its list of hate groups:
The Family Research Council (FRC) bills itself as “the leading voice for the family in our nation’s halls of power,” but its real specialty is defaming gays and lesbians. 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.
“While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. … It is a homosexual problem.”You really need to read the rest of the SPLC's report on the Family Research Council. It's an eye-opening list of the various reasons that the FRC was finally listed as a hate group.
— FRC President Tony Perkins, FRC website, 2010
Has the FRC decided to no longer endorse the imprisonment of gay people?
Does the FRC still think gay kids know they are "abnormal"?
Does FRC still think homosexuality is destructive to society?
Does the FRC still think gays are pedophiles?
Does the FRC still think gays consider pedophiles "prophets"?
"...one of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the 'prophets' of a new sexual order." - "Homosexual Activists Work to Normalize Sex With Boys," FRC publication, July 1999, http://www.frc.org/misc/bl057.pdfDoes the Family Research Council still think gays are deviants?
"Homosexuals have never been forced to sit in the back of the bus. They are as privileged a group as any. To compare their attempts to affirm deviant sexual conduct to the legitimate discrimination claims of true minorities is a sham," said FRC Director of Cultural Studies Robert H.You can read much more of FRC's anti-gay hate here.
Knight - FRC's CultureFacts, July 28, 1999, http://www.frc.org/culture/cu99g4.html
And here's a post I did a while back dissecting how brilliantly the FRC uses lies and innuendo to foment the hatred of gay people.
The Family Research Council is a hate group. But that doesn't justify anyone using violence against them. Nor does the violence justify conservatives now trying to whitewash FRC's record of hate. The organization's record, sadly, speaks for itself.
