Trump to Speak at the Values Voters Conference, which is Not Run by a ‘Hate Group’ (Contrary to What the Fake News Might Report)

The Southern Poverty Law Center irresponsibly  labeled the Family Research Council, led by Tony Perkins, as a “hate group” because the FRC simply attempts to stand for what the Bible says.

However, with today’s news that President Donald Trump will be the first sitting president to address their Values Voter Summit, the media will predictably overreact.  National Memo has already reported:

Speaking of the president’s decision to attend this year’s 12th annual event, SPLC President Richard Cohen told The Independent: “By appearing at the Values Voter Summit, President Trump is lending the legitimacy of his office to a hate group that relentlessly demonizes LGBTQ people and works to deny them of their equal rights.”

“His appearance puts the lie to his campaign promise to be a friend to the LGBTQ community. Bigotry is not an American value, and our president should speak out against it,” he added.

Apparently the radical, violent leftists at the National Memo conveniently forget that the SPLC’s listing of the FRC as a “hate group” directly caused a left wing madman to go to their offices and shoot a security guard in his attempt to actually kill everyone inside.  

Here’s the inconvenient truth about the SPLC.  By lying about groups with whom they disagree, they are implicitly condoning actual violence against them.  David French at National Review wrote about the SPLC when they labeled the Alliance Defense Fund a hate group when Jeff Sessions spoke at one of their conferences this summer:

Let’s be clear. The Southern Poverty Law Center, the “civil rights watchdog group” that ABC and NBC so prominently cite, has become a dangerous joke. It’s a joke because the very idea that Christians are members of a “hate group” merely because they advocate for orthodox Christian principles and the liberty to live those principles is so intellectually and ideologically bankrupt that it’s barely worth addressing.

He goes on to write:

But the joke’s not funny anymore. In our polarized times, radicals use the SPLC’s hate-group designations to justify violence. Politicians and corporations use the designation to marginalize and punish good men and women. Not long ago the Family Research Council narrowly avoided mass murder when a man tried to attack its headquarters. He was inspired in part by the SPLC’s hate-group designation, and his plan was to shoot FRC employees and stuff Chick-fil-A sandwiches into their dead, bleeding mouths.

I agree 100%.  The media should stop using them as a source before more violence occurs.