Labeled
Ed Vitagliano
Ed Vitagliano
AFA Journal news editor

February 2012 – Is it hateful to tell the truth about sex and marriage? The University of Illinois appeared to say yes, it is, when it fired a professor of religion after he explained to students what the Catholic Church teaches about homosexuality.

Prof. Ken Howell taught a class titled “Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought.” In an e-mail to students who were preparing for an exam, Howell explained the relationship between natural law and human morality when it came to sex.

“[S]exual acts are only appropriate for people who are [biologically] complementary, not the same,” he said.

A student complained to school authorities in a follow-up e-mail by calling Howell’s comments hate speech. The student wrote: “Teaching a student about the tenets of a religion is one thing. Declaring that homosexual acts violate the natural laws of man is another.”

Howell was subsequently fired. According to Fox News, associate dean Ann Mester e-mailed other staff and defended the dismissal. “The e-mails sent by Dr. Howell violate university standards of inclusivity, which would then entitle us to have him discontinue his teaching arrangement with us,” she said.

“Hate” is almost universally the bludgeon used on Christians in such cases. In a column for the Washington Post about the cultural battle over same sex marriage, Matthew J. Franck, director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution, highlighted several more cases of social conservatives punished for their views.

“What’s going on here?” Franck said. “Clearly a determined effort is afoot, in cultural bastions controlled by the left, to anathematize traditional views of sexual morality, particularly opposition to same-sex marriage, as the expression of hate that cannot be tolerated in a decent civil society.”

The liberal motivation in such cases is clear. Franck said it goes like this: “The argument over same sex marriage must be brought to an end, and the debate considered settled. Defenders of traditional marriage must be likened to racists, as purveyors of irrational fear and loathing.”

The name-calling serves a useful purpose. The opponent is taken out of the cultural debate like a talented football player is removed from a game by a “dirty hit.” Why deal with the talents of the opposing player when he can be forced to the sideline?

“It’s easier to call someone a racist/sexist/bigot or a liar than it is to prove your own arguments are intellectually sound time after time; after all, who would take what a bigot or a liar has to say seriously?” said Breitbart senior fellow and blogger Alexander Marlow.

Christianity vicious lies?
Leading the charge to smear conservatives – and especially conservative Christians – is the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Based in Montgomery, Alabama, the SPLC was founded as a civil rights law firm in the early 1970s. It has morphed into an organization that, according to its own Web site, “is internationally known for tracking and exposing the activities of hate groups.”

Last October the SPLC held a press conference to protest the Values Voter Summit, co-hosted by AFA, Family Research Council and other pro-family groups.

As SPLC spokesman Mark Potok explained in a column for the Huffington Post, the hate group watchdog had listed both AFA and FRC as “hate groups” on its Web site, along with militia groups and white supremacist groups like the KKK.

Just what did AFA and FRC do to warrant such infamy? Potok said it was because the two groups “regularly spew vicious lies about the LGBT community.” Thus, they are hate groups.

What vicious lies are those? The views specifically cited by the SPLC included the belief that children fare better if they have both their biological mother and father in the home, rather than same-sex parents; that environmental factors – such as childhood sexual abuse or deficiencies in relationships with parents – can play a significant role in whether or not someone becomes homosexual; and that hate crime laws may eventually lead to the prosecution of pastors who dare to speak out publicly against homosexuality.

Obviously, the SPLC disagrees with AFA on these matters. Does that automatically make AFA wrong, however? And even if AFA were wrong, does that make AFA a hate group? Is it hateful to be wrong?

Intimidate and terrorize
Franck said a reasonable debate is not what the SPLC is after. Instead, groups like the SPLC “assert that no rational arguments along these lines even exist and so no refutation is necessary, and insinuate that those who merely want to defend marriage are ‘anti-gay thugs’ or ‘theocrats’ or ‘Taliban,’ as some critics have said.”

It is a strategy that Laird Wilcox calls “ritual defamation.” Founder of the Wilcox Collection on Contemporary Political Movements at the University of Kansas Kenneth Spencer Research Library, Wilcox is an expert on political fringe movements. He has paid particularly close attention to the SPLC.

For such groups there are only two categories of ideas in public life: acceptable and unacceptable. When a person or group makes public an unacceptable idea, it is immediately targeted for ritual defamation. This is done with “the intention of silencing or neutralizing” the offending party and making an example of it for others to see, Wilcox said.

It is accomplished in a simple but vicious manner. Both the person and his or her ideas are given the most terrible labels. Wilcox said “the victim must be dehumanized to the extent that he becomes identical with the offending attitude, opinion or belief, and in a manner which distorts it to the point where it appears at its most extreme.”

One needs only to visit the SPLC Web site to see this strategy in action. In its category on “anti-gay” hate groups, the largest photo on the page is one of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps holding a large sign that screams out, “No special laws for fags.” Visitors to the Web site will undoubtedly be appalled by the Phelps imagery and mentally link his most extreme forms of hatred to groups like AFA. After all, SPLC says it’s a hate group. Mission accomplished.

Wilcox said that with every new “hate group” the SPLC puts on its list, the power of the SPLC only grows. “They have everything to gain: fundraising goes up, they get more media exposure, their credibility increases, and their political usefulness to the far left surges,” he said.

Moreover, the media swallows everything the SPLC dishes out. Since AFA was added to its list of hate groups, numerous media outlets simply followed the SPLC’s lead. For example, one newspaper article about AFA – in its news section, not opinion page – said: “The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks and identifies what it considers hate groups, added AFA to its list in 2010.”

Never silenced
However, any reasonable person will admit that truth is not hatred simply because someone is offended by it. In a free society, it is expected that there will be differences of opinion – even concerning facts and what those facts mean. Out of those heartfelt differences come heated debates and subsequent public policy battles.

Christians must not allow themselves to be party to the cascade of negative emotions that come from verbal battle. They should certainly never act in a hateful manner.

Instead, Paul exhorts Christians to avoid being “quarrelsome, but be kind to all” and “patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition” (2 Timothy 2:24-25). This is to be done, the apostle taught, with a view to the salvation of those who resist the truth of God’s Word.

It is also true that Christians should rejoice when persecuted (Matthew 5:10-12), but that doesn’t mean they should ever rejoice over the assault against the truth that is manifested by that persecution.

Therefore we should always be prepared to defend the truth of God’s word (1 Peter 3:15), a defense that encompasses the full revelation of God’s will – including His commandments regarding sexuality and marriage.

Believers should thus make themselves aware of the strategies of groups like the SPLC and be equipped to respond. While Christians might still be reviled for the truth – and even get fired for it – we can at least be confident that we will remain loyal to it.

A Christian might be punished by persecution, but he should never be silenced by it.

We don’t hate unbelievers. Christians should make sure our communities understand that, even if the SPLC doesn’t – or won’t.  undefined

Speak, serve, act
When a local newspaper cites the SPLC as a hate watchdog, a letter to the editor might help remind readers that it is not hateful to tell the truth in love, even when others disagree.

• Tutoring or mentoring at a local elementary or high school can be a way to impact the community. Remember to represent Christ in a respectful manner that will influence the next generation.

 Whether running for local office or volunteering for a community project, represent the faith in a gracious but unapologetic way.