Earlier this month, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) included the Family Research Council (FRC) on a list of "18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda," and designated them "hate groups" because they:
... have continued to pump out demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities. These groups’ influence reaches far beyond what their size would suggest, because the “facts” they disseminate about homosexuality are often amplified by certain politicians, other groups and even news organizations.
Now the Family Research Council is fighting back:
The Family Research Council (FRC) ran a full-page open letter advertisement in print editions of Politico and of the Washington Examiner on Wednesday calling for a “civil debate” with the Southern Poverty Law Center, the liberal group that labeled the FRC and other social conservative organizations as “hate groups” in early December. [...]
“We’re not afraid to debate the issues,” [Tony] Perkins said in a phone interview. “We are not running from the debate. We are confident on the issues we advocate for based on empirical, peer-reviewed research.”
Okay. So, just for fun, how about we look at some of that empirical, peer-reviewed research that the FRC has been spewing:
- ... written that most men who engage in same-sex child molestation “identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual"
- ... “homosexuals are overrepresented in child sex offenses” and similarly asserted that “homosexuals are attracted in inordinate numbers to boys.”
- ... “one of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order"
- “If you look at the American College of Pediatricians, they say the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a danger to children."
- “If they [gays and lesbians] had children, what would happen when they were too busy having their sex parties?”
- “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior.”
- ... claimed that allowing gay people to serve openly in the military would lead to an increase in gay-on-straight sexual assaults.
Well, that certainly sounds like peer-reviewed research to me ... assuming you're defining peer-reviewed as a group of homophobic bigots sitting around agreeing that they hate those "icky fags."