Following the shooting of a security guard
at the anti-gay Family Research Council, Washington
Post columnist Dana Milbank called it "reckless"
for the Human Rights Campaign and the Southern
Poverty Law Center to say the FRC is a "hate
group".
He further suggested that calling the FRC
"hateful" is an example of "inflammatory labels"
and "hurling accusations that can stir up
the crazies", and questioned why the SPLC
considers the FRC a "hate group" alongside
the KKK and Aryan Nations.
Throughout the piece, Milbank describes the
FRC as "a mainstream conservative think tank",
"a policy shop that advocates for a full range
of conservative Christian positions", "a mainstream
Christian advocacy group, and "driven by deeply
held religious beliefs".
But Milbank's appraisal of the FRC as something
other than hateful is only possible because
of his complete refusal to examine the actual
substance of the organization's infamous "conservative
Christian positions".
For anyone with even a cursory knowledge of
the group's so-called "mainstream Christian
advocacy", the claim that they aren't hateful
is so plainly ridiculous that the very word
"hate" is meaningless if it doesn't include
the FRC.
An accusation of hatefulness certainly isn't
something to be thrown around lightly - it
has to be earned.
And the FRC has been working overtime since
its inception to do just that.
They've made no effort to hide their extraordinary
attacks on the LGBT community; for anyone
who cares enough to look, all of this is a
matter of public record.
The FRC is pervasively opposed to the recognition
and acceptance of transgender people.
In one edition of their Washington Update,
they criticize the rules of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement for providing undocumented
transgender detainees with continued access
to hormone therapy rather than forcibly de-transitioning
them.
As they see it, trans people as a group are
not even entitled to receive their own prescribed
medications.
Contrary to the recommendations of the American
Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric
Association, the American Medical Association
and the World Professional Association for
Transgender Health, which recognize gender
transition treatments as beneficial and medically
necessary, the FRC considers this "exacerbating
a mental health crisis like cross-dressing".
Testifying before the Maryland State Senate,
FRC senior policy fellow Peter Sprigg - whose
medical qualifications include being a professional
actor and an ordained Baptist minister - again
claimed that trans people should only receive
"mental health treatments to help them become
comfortable with their biological sex".
He further added that they transition "to
fulfill their sexual desires", which he describes
as "transvestic fetishism".
In a policy document on gender identity nondiscrimination
ordinances, which Sprigg labels "bathroom
bills", he argues against trans people being
allowed to present as their identified gender,
calling them "often highly unconvincing and
therefore disturbing to witnesses".
To Dana Milbank, this is just "mainstream
Christian advocacy", which apparently includes
denying health care and legal protections
to entire classes of people and calling them
sexual fetishists who are ugly.
The FRC and its staff have also used distorted
and debunked studies to claim that LGBT people
are unfit parents and are more likely to molest
children.
FRC president Tony Perkins describes pedophilia
as "a homosexual problem", and senior fellow
Timothy Dailey has claimed that "disproportionate
numbers of gay men seek adolescent males or
boys as sexual partners".
An FRC pamphlet from 1999 stated: "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."
They've recently cited a widely criticized
study, which included hardly any examples
of long-term same-sex parenting and was found
to be severely flawed in an audit by the journal
that published it, to claim that children
of gay parents were more likely to be sexually
abused, and "fare worse on most outcomes".The
study's author admitted that it was not representative
of stable families with same-sex parents,
and the journal Social Science Research believes
the paper's methodological flaws should have
disqualified it from publication.
The FRC called it a "gold standard" of research.
Is misrepresenting the competence of same-sex
parents and the welfare of their children
just one of those "deeply held religious beliefs"?
Of course, the FRC isn't content with merely
opposing the recognition of our families and
depicting us as sexual predators - they've
repeatedly challenged the very legality of
our consenting, adult relationships.
In 2010, Peter Sprigg appeared on Hardball
and stated, "I think that the Supreme Court
decision in Lawrence v. Texas which overturned
the sodomy laws in this country was wrongly
decided.
I think there would be a place for criminal
sanctions against homosexual behavior."
The FRC was also found to have spent $25,000
lobbying Congress against approving a resolution
condemning Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill,
which would institute the death penalty for
anyone who had gay sex more than once.
Their explanation was that while they don't
support the Uganda bill, they only wanted
to remove "sweeping and inaccurate assertions
that homosexual conduct is internationally
recognized as a fundamental human right".
It's not that they want us dead or anything
- they just don't think we have the right
to do what heterosexuals do every day without
facing "criminal sanctions", like death.
And these aren't just exceptions to an otherwise
respectable record.
At the FRC, such extreme stances are the rule.
Whether they're calling to "export homosexuals
from the United States", asking public health
organizations to tell people to quit being
gay as if it were a cigarette habit, recommending
that teenagers be discouraged from identifying
as LGBT in order to reduce teen suicide, comparing
gay marriage to a man marrying a horse, describing
efforts against anti-gay bullying as "telling
school children that it's okay to be immoral",
or comparing gay pride events to "Adultery
Pride" and "Drunkenness Pride", the FRC has
made a name for itself.
And that name is hate - proud, shameless,
unapologetic hate.
What does Dana Milbank have to say about this?
"Offensive, certainly.
But in the same category as the KKK?"
I have to wonder: if the KKK restricted itself
to calling people of color child abusers and
immoral sexual deviants with pedophiles for
prophets, and demanded that they be denied
health care and subject to "criminal sanctions",
would Milbank similarly object to calling
them a hate group?
Or would it be obvious that these are unambiguously
hateful beliefs?
In asking us not to call this hateful, we're
expected to accept people wanting us demonized,
detained, deported and dead as a normal part
of American political and religious life.
We're the ones being told we must tolerate
this as a simple difference of opinion - after
all, it's just "mainstream Christian advocacy".
To call them hateful is "reckless" and "inflammatory"
of us; to be that hateful is mainstream and
conservative of them.
There's a remarkable irony in Milbank's attempt
to gloss over the particulars of the FRC's
beliefs by simply saying they're Christian.
He accuses us of calling Christian and conservative
beliefs hateful, and yet he's the one claiming
that this unbelievable hostility toward our
lives is just another element of Christianity
and conservatism.
Which is really worse: calling out hate groups
for truly hateful behavior, or saying that
mainstream American religion involves hating
every aspect of our existence?
Not all deeply held Christian beliefs are
hateful, and not all conservatism is hateful.
But hate is still hate regardless of its religious
or political origins.
If these are your deeply held religious beliefs,
then your deeply held religious beliefs are
hateful.
If these are your conservative Christian positions,
then your conservative Christian positions
are hateful.
And if the FRC can't be called hateful, then
what can?
