Sunday, July 02, 2017

Is the Liberty Counsel a Christian group or a Hate group? You tell me

By its attacks on Guidestar and the Southern Poverty Law Center, anti-LGBTQ group  the Liberty Council claims that it is being "targeted" for its "Christian" views on homosexuality (see here if you aren't aware of the full story).

Fair enough. Let's put this to the test.

The Southern Poverty Law have called "traditional values" organizations such as the Liberty Counsel hate groups because of how they attack and vilify the LGBTQ community:

 For Christian Right leaders, the LGBT rights movement and its so-called "homosexual agenda" are the prime culprits in the destruction of American society and culture. In the words of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, the battle against LGBT rights is essentially a "second civil war" to put control of the U.S. government in the right hands, meaning those who reject LGBT rights. 
 The religious right in America has employed a variety of strategies in its efforts to beat back the increasingly confident LGBT rights movement. One of those has been defamation. Many of its leaders have engaged in the crudest type of name-calling, describing LGBT people as "perverts" with "filthy habits" who seek to snatch the children of straight parents and "convert" them to gay sex. They have disseminated disparaging "facts" about gays that are simply untrue — assertions that are remarkably reminiscent of the way white intellectuals and scientists once wrote about the "bestial" black man and his supposedly threatening sexuality.

Let's look at the comments Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver has said about the LGBTQ community compared to his claim that his group is being attacked: