Whose hate speech is it anyway?
by digby
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins took to Fox News Thursday to say groups that oppose his organization are responsible for creating the atmosphere that led to the shooting at its headquarters Wednesday.
“Let me be very clear here that Floyd Corkins was responsible for the wounding of one of our colleagues and friends at the Family Research Council,” Perkins said. “But I believe he was given a license to do that by a group such as the Southern Poverty Law Center who labeled us a hate group because we defend the family and stand for traditional orthodox Christianity.”
… In the wake of Wednesday’s shooting, which was allegedly perpetrated by a man who was opposed to the group’s politics, Perkins said the SPLC needs to watch its words.
This is more right wing “I know you are but what am I” politics, most recently used to great effect when they called anyone who uses the words racist a racist. (It’s working quite well, by the way.)
But here’s the thing. Even if the shooter is an angry gay man, why would they think he shot at them because the SPLC called them a hate group rather than because of the FRC’s rhetoric itself? Here’s just a brief example of the kind of talk that might set off an angry nut with an agenda and a gun:
FRC: Homosexuality Is Unnatural And Harmful To Society. According to its website, the “Family Research Council believes that homosexual conduct is harmful to the persons who engage in it and to society at large, and can never be affirmed. It is by definition unnatural, and as such is associated with negative physical and psychological health effects.” [FRC.org, accessed 10/1/09]
FRC’s Robert Knight: Acceptance Of Homosexuality Will Result In More Unwanted Pregnancies. In his 2008 work, Chaos, Law, and God: The Religious Meanings of Homosexuality, Jay Michaelson wrote, “many critics claim that homosexuality forfeits or betrays the masculine gender role, a critique sociologist Dana Briton calls a form of ‘boundary maintenance.’ For example, the Family Research Council’s Robert Knight has predicted that the acceptance of homosexuality will reduce the value of masculinity, which will then lead to further societal decay: ‘[A] s man is reduced in stature, all hell will break loose. We’ll see a breakdown in social organizations, with more drug use, more disease, more unwanted pregnancies. You’re mainstreaming dysfunction.'” [Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, Chaos, Law, and God: The Religious Meanings of Homosexuality, 2008]
FRC’s Sprigg: I Would Prefer To Export Homosexuals. According to Andrew Sullivan, the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg said, “I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States because we believe homosexuality is destructive to society.” [The Atlantic, “The Daily Dish,” 3/20/08]
How about this:
FRC: “One of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to… recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order.”
In a Nov. 30, 2010, debate on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” between Perkins and the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok, Perkins defended FRC’s association of gay men with pedophilia, saying: “If you look at the American College of Pediatricians, they say the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a danger to children. So Mark is wrong. He needs to go back and do his own research.” In fact, the college, despite its hifalutin name, is a tiny, explicitly religious-right breakaway group from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the 60,000-member association of the profession. Publications of the American College of Pediatricians, which has some 200 members, have been roundly attacked by leading scientific authorities who say they are baseless and accuse the college of distorting and misrepresenting their work…
Elsewhere, according to AMERICAblog, Knight, while working at the FRC, claimed that “[t]here is a strong current of pedophilia in the homosexual subculture. … [T]hey want to promote a promiscuous society.” AMERICAblog also reported that then-FRC official Yvette Cantu, in an interview published on Americans for Truth About Homosexuality’s website, said, “If they [gays and lesbians] had children, what would happen when they were too busy having their sex parties?”
I’m not excusing the shooter, obviously. He’s another in a long line of Americans with a grievance who are packing heat and shooting at people lately. I don’t care what his cause is, it’s horrific to shoot guns at human beings to make a point.
But Tony Perkins’ crocodile tears about “hate speech” are just a bit hard to take considering the kind of profit he makes at it himself. Of course he doesn’t deserve to get shot at for it. But blaming the SPLC is an attempt to deflect attention from their own hate speech. Certainly, if it’s “irresponsible” for the SPLC to accuse the FRC a hate group, it seems to me that it’s doubly irresponsible for the FRC to accuse them of attempted murder. You can guess what the outcome of that might be.
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