Good for the National Review’s Rich Lowry—he evidently gets it:
It’s not as if the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) considers the Family Research Council mildly offensive, or barely hateful. Asked if someone addressing a Family Research Council meeting was as guilty as someone addressing an Aryan Nation rally, the SPLC’s research director said “yes.” If Floyd Corkins took the SPLC’s attitude toward the Family Research Council seriously, he would have been shocked to be confronted by an African-American security guard instead of some guy in a white hood about to run out to burn a cross in a gay person’s front yard.
What the SPLC is doing is profoundly illiberal. The whole idea of a “hate group” is an organization that is so irrational and beyond the pale that it has no legitimacy. The SPLC brags about shutting down such groups, and rightly so. You presumably don’t have an argument with the White Patriot Party militia, unless you bring along a lead pipe. Putting the Family Research Council in the same category is a statement that it isn’t worthy of a democratic society — that its views shouldn’t be debated so much as shunned and marginalized.
To learn more about the SPLC, read this:
Southern Poverty Law Center’s Lucrative ‘Hate Group’ Label
Also, note this letter:
And Dr. Michael Brown has a two part letter with this title: “An Open Letter to Mark Potok, Spokesman for the SPLC.” Brown is the author of “A Queer Thing Happened to America,” which I reviewed starting here. Click to read both parts of his letter:
“An Open Letter to Mark Potok, Spokesman for the SPLC”
