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Southern Poverty Law Center own up to your own bias
Topic Started: Mar 10 2014, 05:15 PM (261 Views)
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An academic study has accused the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) of having an anti-Christian bias in its reporting on hate groups in America.

Once considered the “gold standard” in reporting on violent anti-government or racist groups in America, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s reputation has begun to wither as it has started targeting conservative Christian groups including the Family Research Council (FRC) for what SPLC claims is anti-gay animus.

SPLC says FRC gins up hatred and possible violence against gays because it has reported certain ideas that are taboo to SPLC: that hate-crimes laws will be used to stifle preachers; that because of HIV-AIDS and other diseases gays may not live as long as others; that gay parenting is not as good for children as more traditional parenting; that same-sex attraction is not inborn; and that gays can stop being homosexual. Believing or espousing any of these ideas makes you eligible for the SPLC hate list. [Full disclosure: the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, of which I am president, was just placed on SPLC’s hate list for espousing some of these ideas.]

Professor George Yancey of the University of North Texas says he is not arguing one way or the other about FRC’s inclusion on the list but merely demonstrating SPLC’s outrage is subjective, selective, and never reckons progressive groups guilty of the same things of which it accuses conservative ones.

Yancey looks at the work of a left-wing group called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), started by Michael Weinstein after he said he experienced discrimination at the hands of Christians in the military.

Weinstein published a story in the Huffington Post titled “Fundamentalist Christian Monsters: Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” in which he accused Christians of wanting to start “a blood-drenched, draconian era of persecutions, naturalistic militarism and superstitious theocracy.” This is not the only place where Weinstein said Christians want to foment mass murder. He said it also in his book No Snowflake in an Avalanche. He also blamed the Fort Hood shootings on how Christians mistreated the shooter and “linked the actions of Christians to Hitler and Stalin.”

Yancey says in these few places Weinstein and his group have violated the criteria established by SPLC to identify hate groups, “promoting a myth of Christian violence not substantiated by previous research and [attributing] motives to conservative Christians that he cannot document.”

Yet Weinstein and his group are not on the "Hatewatch" list. Yancey points to the Hatewatch tag line for the reason – “Keeping an Eye on the Radical Right.” To SPLC, there can be no hate on the left, only on the right.

Yancey, an African-American, specialized for years in the subject of race but began looking at anti-Christian bias in academia some years ago. He says, “The subject of political scientific bias is not yet settled, but evidence of the existence of this bias continues to emerge” and that “the overrepresentation of political and religious progressives can alter the type of scientific research produced.”

Yancey points out that after 40 years of its existence, hardly any academic papers have been done on SPLC, yet in only a few shorts years many books and papers have emerged from the academy looking at the Tea Party. He says his is one of the first scholarly examinations ever done of SPLC and its methods.

“The listing of possible hate group activities is quite broad, and how activities are interpreted as hateful can be subjective," he writes. "Whether certain beliefs malign an entire class of people can be a matter of interpretation. Such subjective criteria make it easy for an evaluator of potential hate groups to be lenient when evaluating groups that arouse his or her sympathy but stricter when evaluating groups toward which he or she is hostile.”

For instance, SPLC dinged Family Research Council for supporting the notion that the best parenting situation for a child is with his own biological mother and father and that anything less, including same-sex parenting, can be detrimental to the child. To SPLC this is a hateful idea and one they say science demonstrates is false. Yancey points to recent research by Professor Mark Regnerus from the University of Texas which shows that “same-sex parenting may be connected to social dysfunctions in children,” all to show that the social science question is hardly as closed as SPLC says.
SPLC also accused FRC of peddling deliberately false information about the higher incidence of child molestation by gay men. FRC cites two peer-reviewed studies to back up the claim. SPLC prefers a counter statement by the American Psychological Association and a meta-analysis by Gregory Herek, a psychology professor at the University of California, Davis, both of which say there is no higher incidence of child abuse among gays.

When pressed by journalist Charlotte Allen of the Weekly Standard that the science on molestation was clearly not as settled as SPLC insists, Mark Potok of SPLC didn’t even try to argue the science. He sent an email doubling down: “The FRC and some of the other anti-LGBT groups portray gay people as sick, evil, perverted, incestuous and a danger to the nation.”

However, that is one thing you discover when you read SPLC’s dossiers on Christian groups it doesn't like. The reports read very much like direct mail pieces, the kind that get liberals to dig deep into their pockets to fill groups' like SPLC already bulging coffers.

In fact, Yancey concludes the reason SPLC cannot or will not change its criteria or at least begin including left-wing groups on its hate lists is that it cannot go against its progressive donors who are sending in such sizable sums – $38.5 million a year, with $256 million in assets feeding $300,000+ salaries.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/09/Southern-Poverty-Law-Center-Ingores-Liberal-Hate
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Let me try that again.

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Yancey points to recent research by Professor Mark Regnerus from the University of Texas


From my link:
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/10/30/1110591/regnerus-admits-gay-parenting/#

Regnerus admits that the foundation of his study is too weak to draw the conclusions that many have made:

Bias, your slip is showing.
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Andrew Breitbart had a bias FOR cocaine, while he pandered the the fiction that Christians are persecuted.
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OP, why do you come to a gay website and post blatantly homophobic BS? Just answer the goddamn question for once.
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R6 Why do you resort to name calling, you don't know me. If my posts bother you so much why read them? You seem to have the "my way or the highway" attitude.
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Believing or espousing any of these ideas makes you eligible for the SPLC hate list.


As well it ought. Somehow I doubt the author of that article would object to Muslims being placed on a "hate list" as a consequence of religious beliefs that foment hatred and violence toward other groups, so why should Christians be immune when they do the same? Besides, the SPLC hasn't placed ALL Christians on a hate list, only those leaders/institutions that espouse hatred in the name of their religion. Right-wing, tea-bagging, fundie type xtians should stop acting as though they speak for all Christian people and churches.

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R7, R6 did not call you a name. Why DON"T you just answer his question?
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OP = :crybaby
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As a gay conservative woman, I supported Arizona’s religious freedom bill, which was just vetoed this week by Gov. Jan Brewer.

I supported it because it embodied the values every American civil rights movement stood for: the freedom to live our lives without being punished for who we are.

In this case, it was a bill making sure people of faith would not be forced to violate their religious beliefs in the event someone demanded they do so.

This bill, like others across the country, was thought necessary because of the emergence of business, large and small, being attacked by the gay left for either espousing Christian values or acting on their Christian faith. Ranging from a bakery to a photographer, individuals were being sued for refusing to violate their religious beliefs.

Having been a liberal “community organizer” in my past, I immediately recognized the strategy being employed. This is an effort to condition the public into automatically equating faith with bigotry.

To make faith in the public square illegal and dangerous, you need legal cases and publicity. Voila, lawsuits against small business resting on the notion that acting on genuinely held faith is bigotry per se.

Under these rules, freedom of conscience is squashed under the jackboot of liberals, all in the Orwellian name of “equality and fairness.” Here we are dealing with not just forcing someone to do something for you, but forcing them in the process to violate a sacrament of their faith as well.

If we are able to coerce someone, via the threat of lawsuit and personal destruction, to provide a service, how is that not slavery? If we insist that you must violate your faith specifically in that slavish action, how is that not abject tyranny?

Of all the people in the world who should understand the scourge of living under constant threat of losing life, liberty or the ability to make a living because of who you are, it’s gays. It has been disgusting to watch supposed gay “leadership” drag young gays and lesbians through an indoctrination that insists that in order to have equality, you must force other people to do your will, make them betray who they are, and punish them if they offend you.

Horribly, the gay civil rights movement has morphed into a Gay Gestapo. Its ranks will now do the punishing of those who dare to be different or dissent from the approved leftist dogma. To all the young gays who tweet and email me that this is about “equality,” how exactly? Forcing someone to do something against their faith has nothing to do with equality for you, has nothing to do with bigotry and has everything to do with a personal, spiritual understanding of right and wrong. In other words, I tell them, not everything is about you.

This reaction to the Arizona bill surprised people, but it shouldn’t have. Keep in mind, the legal targeting of people of faith has been ongoing, with the Obama administration leading the charge. We see it in the Obamacare birth control mandate, which is also determined to force people of faith to abandon their belief under legal threat. The attack on Chick-fil-A because its CEO dared to espouse a faith-based view on gay marriage is another example of the attempt to intimidate people of faith.

That targeting of Chick-fil-A was a massive failure, which is why, I contend, the left shifted its focus to smaller, local businesses that could more easily be intimidated and threatened.

Why would the Gay Gestapo suddenly need to convince everyone that any act of faith must be viewed suspiciously as discrimination and “hate?” Forcing a bakery, Hobby Lobby, Chick-fil-A or a photographer to either violate their religious beliefs or be destroyed is simply a test run. The real target is the church and temple. If the left can convince our society to force people of faith to violate their sacraments in the name of “equality,” why would we allow that to stop at the church door?

This is why bills like Arizona’s protecting individual Christians from lawsuits will have to return, because the left has a mission, and this is only the beginning. It was clear Mrs. Brewer had no choice but to veto the bill, considering the left had completely smeared the state in the process of its media frenzy. Add to that the fact that liberals would like nothing better in this election year than to have this be the discussion in the media instead of Obamacare and the economy. Still, it will have to be confronted eventually if we are keep tyranny from eating away at the fabric of our culture.

Ultimately, the Arizona bill had nothing to do with gays and everything to do with protecting the right of individuals to live their lives in ways that may not include others, or may even offend certain groups. As Americans, we did not go through the growing pains of the civil rights movements only to capitulate to 21st century bullies who have the gall to use the importance of minority rights as a weapon to extinguish those with whom they disagree.

We can have both equality and religious freedom, but only if the bullies on the left are confronted about the truth of their agenda.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/28/brucethe-veto-of-arizonas-religious-freedom-bill-i/?page=all
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Mar 11 2014, 03:58 PM
As a gay conservative woman, I supported Arizona’s religious freedom bill, which was just vetoed this week by Gov. Jan Brewer...

I think you're lying


no sane gay person would agree with that bill





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Ugh, Tammy Bruce; she's even worse than Camille Paglia when it comes to saying any old asinine and illogical thing for attention. Perhaps she should apply her efforts to trying to overturn the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because, hey, serving interracial couples, mixed-faith couples, people of other races and religions than one's own, etc., probably violates some poor shopkeeper's religious beliefs. And while she's at it, maybe she'll figure out that the notion that it ain't right for the proprietors of public accommodations to deny service to someone because they are bigoted against people of that identity has been around for several decades now and isn't some newfangled craziness started by the gays.

Maybe she'll also figure out that getting paid to provide the goods or services you launched a business to provide is not slavery. And perhaps she'll realize that nobody's forcing anybody to start a business in the first place—so if you're thinking about starting one and realize it would actually be against your beliefs to serve entire segments of the population, and that you might end up having to violate the law in order to uphold your beliefs, you should probably consider a different line of work.

Maybe some day it will also occur to her that not only are gays who stand up for their rights NOT attacking Christians, many gays are Christians themselves, and some Christian churches are happy to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies. Perhaps it's time that Christians who are bigoted against gays stop acting like they speak for all Christians and pretending that Christianity itself is under attack when they run into flack for discriminating against gay customers.

The whole "it violates my beliefs" thing is such horseshit, anyway. Nine times out of ten when someone purchases a tray of cupcakes from your bakery, you learn nothing about him and what he plans to do with the cupcakes. He could be serving them at a big gay orgy for all you know, and so what? All you did was bake them. Why does it suddenly become a sin to bake a cake because you happen to be aware that it's for a same-sex wedding?




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The Washington Times? The Washington Fucking Times?

:rofl
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Because it's MY bakery and I DON'T WANT TO.
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2 hot 2 b had bi u
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What sane gay person eats cake?




:spew
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