For the social conservatives who gathered in Washington, D.C., today for this year’s Values Voter Summit, the first day’s speeches must have been a bit disappointing. There was hardly a peep about the LGBT people who are so often the target of vicious rhetoric and false propaganda used by the summit’s host, the Family Research Council, and some of its co-sponsoring groups.

In fact, the star attraction, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, stuck mostly to foreign policy and the economy – as did House Majority leader Eric Cantor. ( continue to full post… )

This weekend, Tony Perkins and his gay-bashing Family Research Council (FRC) are hosting the annual Values Voter Summit, a Washington, D.C., gathering of right-wing religious activists that typically attracts a number of high-ranking, conservative public officials.

Among those scheduled to speak this year are House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer.

They and other public officials will be rubbing shoulders with a host of virulently anti-LGBT activists. The SPLC and a coalition of human rights groups has urged these public officials not to speak at the summit because their appearance legitimizes the lies and demonizing propaganda spread by groups like the FRC and the American Family Association, a co-sponsor. ( continue to full post… )

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and a coalition of human rights groups have written to several public figures, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, asking them not to speak at this weekend’s Values Voter Summit in Washington. The event is hosted by the Family Research Council (FRC), which the SPLC lists as a hate group for its dissemination of false and demonizing propaganda about the LGBT community.

The FRC has engaged in repeated, groundless demonization – portraying LGBT people as sick, vile, incestuous, violent, perverted, and a danger to the nation, the letter says. One of its officials has gone so far as to say homosexuality should be criminalized. Perhaps the FRC’s ugliest lie is its claim that gay men molest children at a far higher rate than heterosexual men – that pedophilia “is a homosexual problem,” in the words of Tony Perkins, the FRC president. ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s Note: The ongoing religious right attack on the SPLC, originally framed last month to suggest that the SPLC bore responsibility for a shooting at the Family Research Council because it had earlier named the FRC a “hate group,” has continued to expand to the point of absurdity. That was shown again last Friday, when Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel said on a radio show that any media that cited the SPLC’s hate group listings “will also have blood on its hands.” What follows is a response to the original criticism launched by the FRC.

Do words have consequences?

For years, we at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have argued that they do. When conspiracy-minded Islamophobes claim that Muslims have a secret plan to force America into a medieval-style caliphate, Muslims in the streets get hurt. When angry nativists assert that Mexicans are plotting to “reconquer” the Southwest, some Americans respond by attacking Latinos.

And when the religious right spreads false and defamatory propaganda like the completely baseless notion that gay men molest children at rates far higher than their heterosexual counterparts, LGBT people end up, much more frequently than most people realize, at the wrong end of a baseball bat. ( continue to full post… )

Leave it to extreme elements of the anti-LGBT right to make Fox News look almost “fair and balanced” after all.

Frequently the target of left-leaning criticism, the cable news network and its most popular host, Bill O’Reilly, are now coming under fire for “helping violent homosexuals to kill Christians.”

Last week, a group of anti-gay activists leveled that charge as part of a campaign aimed at stopping O’Reilly from inviting LGBT rights advocate Wayne Besen onto his primetime program. ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s Note: The following statement may be attributed to Mark Potok, Senior Fellow of the Southern Poverty Law Center and editor of its Intelligence Report and Hatewatch blog.

Yesterday’s attack on the Family Research Council and the shooting of a security guard there was a tragedy. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) deplores all violence, and our thoughts are with the wounded victim, Leo Johnson, his family and others who lived through the attack.

For more than 40 years, the SPLC has battled against political extremism and political violence. We have argued consistently that violence is no answer to problems in a democratic society, and we have strongly criticized all those who endorse such violence, whether on the political left or the political right.

But this afternoon, FRC President Tony Perkins attacked the SPLC, saying it had encouraged and enabled the attack by labeling the FRC a “hate group.” The attacker, Floyd Corkins, “was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Perkins said. “I believe the Southern Poverty Law Center should be held accountable for their reckless use of terminology.” ( continue to full post… )

We used to think the $20 million-a-year American Family Association (AFA) acted as crazy as it does mainly because it allowed mostly free rein to its best-known spokesman, the truly nutty Bryan Fischer. Fischer, after all, spends his days raving about how gay people were behind the Holocaust, how black people on welfare “rut like animals,” how the cure for promiscuity is to kill the promiscuous, even the idea, completely contradicted by science, that the HIV virus doesn’t cause AIDS.

Sure, there was wacky old Don Wildmon, who founded the Tupelo, Miss.-based group back in 1977 and was given to an occasional anti-Semitic diatribe about how Jews control the media and hate Christians. But that was mostly forgotten years ago, and Wildmon and his son generally sound a little calmer these days.

But the extremist bench at the AFA turns out to be deeper than that. ( continue to full post… )

Police investigators in Lincoln, Neb., have not ruled out the possibility that a 33-year-old lesbian allegedly attacked last weekend because of her sexual orientation might have staged the hate crime. But they’re also not ready to call her story, which has ignited interest across the country, a complete fabrication.

Chief Jim Peschong told the Lincoln Journal Star that investigators, aided by the FBI, continue to search for suspects in the case but remain uncertain whether the attack even took place. ( continue to full post… )

Editor’s Note: Police subsequently said they had not ruled out the possibility that the attack was staged.

Last weekend, three men in masks stormed into a woman’s home in Nebraska, bound her wrists and ankles with zip ties, and carved anti-gay slurs into the woman’s body. The men also painted anti-gay slurs on the walls and poured gasoline on the floor to light the house on fire before fleeing, police said.

The fires went out, but firemen and paramedics rushing to the scene in Lincoln, last Sunday discovered the woman, who was a lesbian, across the street, bloody and dazed.

“She had blood streaming down her body,” Raymond Strozier, a neighbor, told the Lincoln Journal Star. “She was crying. She was shaking. She was terrified.” ( continue to full post… )

U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said last night’s shooting in a Colorado movie theater is linked to “attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs,” the Huffington Post reports.

Speaking this morning with radio host Ernest Istook, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and former Colorado congressman, Gohmert said, “You know what really gets me, a Christian, is to see the ongoing attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs, and then some senseless crazy act of terror like this.”

At least 59 people were injured and 12 killed when a gunman opened fire in a movie theater packed with fans attending the premiere of the new Batman movie last night in Aurora, Colo. ( continue to full post… )