The Southern Poverty Law Center has taken upon itself the role of defining what it is to be a “hate group” and to publicly identify such organizations. As best as I can tell, opposition to the SPLC extreme left-wing agenda will qualify a group for listing. Some otherwise responsible organizations have begun using the SPLC determination of hate group status to filter business decisions.
Amazon has a program called Amazon Smile which allows customers to designate 0.5 percent of the purchase price of qualified items as a donation to a charity registered with the Amazon Smile program. When the D. James Kennedy Ministries tried to register to receive donations, it was turned away because it has been designated as a “hate group” by the SPLC. More info here. The reason that ministry has been designated as a “hate group” is that it opposes same-sex marriage. That opposition is based on the ministry’s religious belief stemming from it’s interpretation of the Bible. The ministry claims that it teaches love, even for one’s enemies, and not hate.
The ministry is suing the SPLC and another organization that collects and reports information on charities called GuideStar for defamation. It is also suing Amazon and Amazon Smile under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 under the theory that it has been blocked from the benefit of a public accommodation based on religion. The suit claims that Amazon’s business of providing entertainment such as movies online qualifies the company as a public accommodation just like a brick-and-mortar theater.
This could get interesting.
UPDATE—Corrected the name of the SPLC in the first sentence. I HATE autocorrupt!
The lawyers at Powerline think the lawsuit doesn’t have much of a chance. That sucks
The only reason they might have a chance against the SPLC (which is itself a hate group in my book) is due to the Amazon Smile aspect which demonstrates a tangible harm. How much of a chance? Who knows.
The “public accomodations” seems to be in the same vein as “Christian baker, bake me a gay wedding cake”, no?
Guidestar has gotten too big for their britches lately, what with charging for access to public documents and using SPLC’s lists to decide who is a hate group.
Phone, train.
An organization dedicated to telling people who they should arbitrarily despise. If the SPLC is not the definition of a hate group, I don’t know what is. They’ve been nothing but a leftist front for 30 years.
A hate orginiation projecting hate on others … where have we seen that tactic before
The Orthodox Church is often included because we will not perform marriages except between Orthodox believers who are members of the parish and consist of one cis male and one cis female. We do not accept transgenderism as anything other than a mental/social aberration.
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.
If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”
John 15:18-19 NIV
+Amen! I expect to be hated and reviled!
Gone With The Wind is now being banned as well,
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/08/28/leftists-ban-gone-with-the-wind-call-nfl-fans-racists/
I repeat, we are dealing with an insane viewpoint that demand utter condemnation, not accommodation.
Whatever autocorrupt said, was probably more accurate than the name the organization gives itself. It couldn’t be much less accurate, as only one word in the name fits at all.
Here is the text of Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Lincoln Douglas debates. It clearly shows that he was a White Supremacist, racist, and visceral opponent of miscegenation.
If we are going to judge Southerners by today’s moral standards it would behoove us to do likewise to the Northerners.
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-lincoln-douglas-debates-4th-debate-part-i/