The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which last month declared that Family Research Council, American Family Association, and several other socially conservative organizations are “anti-gay hate groups,” seems to be growing increasingly frantic in their efforts to defend this smear. But in their desperation, they have doubled down on the charge, only reinforcing how absurd it is.

On December 16, SPLC President and CEO J. Richard Cohen sent a letter to several of the individuals who signed an ad urging that liberals “Start Debating” homosexuality and “Stop Hating” groups that express disapproval of homosexual conduct in a civil manner. In defense of the “hate group” designation, Cohen stated this in his letter:

If a neo-Nazi group said all Jews are “vermin,” no one would argue with our characterizing it as a hate group. The same should be true for groups that knowingly spread demonizing falsehoods about gay men and lesbians.

There you have it. Cohen openly declares that he considers FRC fully equivalent to a “neo-Nazi” group that says, “all Jews are ‘vermin.’”

Where is Mr. Cohen’s evidence that Family Research Council, or anyone who works for FRC, has ever said that “all gay men and lesbians are ‘vermin’?” You will search in vain for such a statement.

For the record, FRC believes that every human being, including those who experience same-sex attractions and those who engage in homosexual conduct, is created in the image of God and is loved by Him. How this qualifies as “hate” is a mystery.

We will be preparing a more detailed response to Cohen’s charge that FRC spreads “falsehoods” in our well-documented research, which does show that certain harms are associated with homosexual conduct. Those wishing to examine that research in the meantime can refer to the FRC book Getting It Straight: What the Research Shows About Homosexuality or to our recent pamphlet, The Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality.

However, if comparing a large, widely-respected public policy organization (whose mission statement calls for defense of a “Judeo-Christian worldview”) to “a neo-Nazi group” that says, “all Jews are ‘vermin’” is not a “demonizing falsehood,” I don’t know what is.

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