After years of tolerating its unwarranted influence in federal decision making, Congress finally directed long overdue scrutiny at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in a Tuesday hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, “Partisan and Profitable: The SPLC’s Influence on Federal Civil Rights Policy.”
Subcommittee Chairman Chip Roy (R-Texas) organized the hearing, he said, “to examine a troubling reality: that one of the most politically motivated, financially lucrative and ideologically extreme nonprofits in America, the Southern Poverty Law Center, has been permitted to wield extraordinary influence over federal civil rights policy, federal law enforcement training, and the private sector mechanisms that increasingly dictate who is permitted to participate in civic life.”
The atmosphere was combative but collegial; Roy conferred frequently with Ranking Member Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.), but neither pulled any punches in their statements. A large crowd of left-wing activists brought enough people (30 or 40) to fill every open seat in the audience, but aside from an admonishment for loud conversation while waiting for admittance, they managed to behave themselves.
Among the witnesses for the hearing was Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, which was the victim of an SPLC-inspired terror attack in 2012.
“On August 15, 2012, our organization experienced firsthand what happens when inflammatory rhetoric is legitimized by respected institutions,” Perkins testified. “That morning, an armed LGBTQ activist named Floyd Corkins entered FRC headquarters with a loaded semi-automatic pistol, nearly 100 rounds of ammunition, and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches. He later admitted to the FBI that his intention was to ‘kill the people in the building’ and stuff the sandwiches into his victims’ mouths as a political statement.”
Ever since the shooting, however, the SPLC has refused to remove FRC from its “hate map.”
“The SPLC once did legitimate civil rights work,” he assessed. “But today, even former SPLC insiders have acknowledged the organization’s internal ethical failures and ideological turn. Today, they play the game, blow the whistle, and call the penalties.”
Perkins decried the SPLC’s infamous “hate map” as “a political weapon aimed at silencing viewpoints they oppose. … Once a group is branded, the SPLC’s label functions like a digital scarlet letter — deployed to restrict speech, isolate organizations, and undermine constitutionally protected viewpoints.”
Fellow witness Tyler O’Neil, an author and expert on SPLC who serves as senior editor at The Daily Signal, explained how a hate map designation “chills some donors who are afraid that … their information might be leaked, and then they would face repercussions for giving to an organization they believe in.” In addition, he described how businesses such as Alphabet and Amazon used the SPLC as a trusted source for policing YouTube content and participants in the charitable Smile program.
Notably, the SPLC “hate map” does not simply keep a register of all “hate” groups, if such a term could be defined. Instead, it brands mainstream conservative organizations while ignoring most extreme groups on the Left, even those which participate in actual violence.
“By lumping mainstream conservative voices and organization in with actual Nazis and extremists, the SPLC delegitimizes any opinion to the right of whatever line the SPLC deems acceptable,” Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) argued in the hearing. “Richard Cohen, the former president of the SPLC, when discussing whether Antifa would be listed, was quoted as saying that, quote, ‘There might be forms of hate out there that you may consider hateful, but it’s not the type of hate we follow.’”
“This is precisely the SPLC’s intent: not to fight violence, but to silence political and cultural opponents’ one way or another,” Perkins emphasized. “The SPLC routinely lumps peaceful Christian ministries together with actual violent extremists, while ignoring radical groups on the political Left whose rhetoric or actions have resulted in real-world intimidation and violence.”
The underlying problem with this list is that “government agencies have used SPLC materials to shape training and threat assessments,” Perkins argued. “The Department of Defense and DHS previously used SPLC material in trainings that cast suspicion on Christian organizations. Local law-enforcement agencies circulated SPLC lists as though they were intelligence bulletins. Schools have incorporated SPLC materials into curricula presented to children as objective fact.”
“They have the freedom to speak and make lists. They can do it all day long,” Perkins reiterated. “But it’s when the government uses that list to marginalize citizens — you have taken a player, and you’ve made them a referee.”
The hearing revealed that SPLC’s irresponsible hate map designations are indefensible even to its allies. In the course of the hearing, minority witness Amanda Tyler, executive director of the left-wing Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, declared that “civil rights organizations like SPLC … play a vital role in the overall fabric of American society.” Yet, when asked to defend SPLC’s decision to put mainstream conservative groups on the “hate map,” Tyler demurred.
“Is Alliance Defending Freedom a hate group?” Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.) asked. After initially trying to deflect, Tyler had to admit, “I wouldn’t use that term.” But Onder wasn’t done:
Onder: “Is Turning Point USA, in your opinion, a hate group?”
Tyler: “Again, I don’t speak for SPLC —”
Onder: “I’m asking yourself and your organization. Do you believe Turning Point USA is a hate group, Miss Tyler?”
Tyler: “My organization doesn’t label groups.”
Onder: “Is Family Research Council a hate group?”
Tyler: “Same answer.”
On and on this went. Onder later asked the same question of Perkins. “No. None of those organizations” are “hate groups,” Perkins replied. “One of the things we all have in common: none of us advocate violence.”
The hearing also revealed the SPLC’s anti-Christian bias, made obvious by their listing of the Ruth Institute, a small religious charity in Louisiana. This anti-Christian bias is also the reason why FRC became the first major conservative organization to appear on the hate map in 2010. When asked why his organization was on the “hate map,” Perkins responded, “According to the SPLC, the reason is our biblical view of marriage and human sexuality. That is what causes them to classify us as a hate group.”
“Back in 2012, there was a Chick-fil-A Day, where nationwide people went to Chick-fil-A because Chick-fil-A at the time had made a statement in support of natural marriage. And because we, along with then-Governor Mike Huckabee, now Ambassador Huckabee, had promoted that day, Corkins went to the map of SPLC to find FRC.”
How times have changed. Before the hearing, a left-wing member of the audience was overheard outside the room saying, “good for Chick-fil-A” in the context of its recent decision to double down on DEI policies. Sometimes, the Left’s pressure campaigns do intimidate their targets.
Perkins denied that any aspect of a biblical view of marriage is hateful. At another point in the hearing, Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) gave Perkins the chance to clarify.
Harris: “Is the Christian worldview hateful?”
Perkins: “No.”
Harris: “Is affirming that there are only two genders hateful?”
Perkins: “No.”
Harris: “Is believing God created marriage between a man and a woman hateful?”
Perkins: “No. It’s the reason we’re all here today.”
Harris: “Is the Christian worldview that teaches the very morals upon which this nation was founded, hateful?”
Perkins: “No sir.”
Harris: “And does disapproving of someone’s actions mean that you hate them?”
Perkins: “No.”
Democrats on the subcommittee were unconvinced. “FRC was designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by SPLC in November 2010 for its dissemination of false and denigrating propaganda about gays and lesbians,” insisted Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), an open lesbian.
Yet the issue at hand was the SPLC’s “false and denigrating propaganda” about organizations like Family Research Council, which made its influence evident in Balint’s apparently heartfelt comments, “It is so disheartening … to come into this committee and be told that that somehow I don’t have a right to be here, and that somehow I am making Americans less safe just by existing, when tens of millions of Americans just want to live their life and be left alone.”
Christian conservatives believe no such thing. They simply affirm that God’s design for marriage and sexuality is best, without denying the reality that many people reject his design. If Balint and others feel anguish over a mischaracterization of conservative views, let the blame fall on those like the SPLC who have mischaracterized conservative views.
Other Democrats tried to deflect attention from the SPLC. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to make the issue about the Trump administration, while Scanlon invoked a parallel to “McCarthy era” attempts “to paint Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders as dangerous communists.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) simply complained that “it’s quite unprecedented for us to use valuable committee time to target a specific group.”
“I see this as an attack on civil society, as a way to try to quash dissent, as a way to chill advocacy,” argued the minority’s witness, Ms. Tyler. “I really fear for the future of our pluralistic democracy if groups and individuals succumb to the intimidation. … When the state elevates certain ideologies and stigmatizes others, it erodes both free expression and free exercise.”
And that’s exactly why government agencies should permanently distance themselves from the SPLC’s biased, illegitimate “hate map.”
On August 15, 2012, the SPLC-inspired terrorist attack on FRC headquarters was foiled by the heroic efforts of building manager Leo Johnson, who overpowered and disarmed Corkins at the price of a bullet in his arm.
While visiting Johnson in the hospital that night, Perkins testified, “I asked Leo a question that had swirled in my mind all day: why did you not shoot Corkins when you had taken his gun and had it trained on him as you were bleeding and about to lose consciousness? Leo said, ‘Because God told me not to.’”
“That kind of restraint,” Perkins concluded, “the belief that life is sacred — is what the SPLC refuses to acknowledge in the very people it labels as dangerous.”
