In a strong opening statement about Liberty Counsel posted to the Southern Poverty Law center web site.
“Liberty Counsel is a legal organization advocating for anti-LGBT discrimination under the guise of religious liberty”.
The Extremist Group, as they are listed, was founded by Mathew (‘Mat”) Staver – the former dean at Jerry Falwells’ Liberty University School of law. Liberty Council still shares close ties with the University Law school. That partnership includes the Liberty Center for Law and Policy , based in Washington D.C. The Center for Law and Policy does research and articles about current legation and policy.
Why did Liberty Counsel earn this honor you say? could be this.
In his own words:
“If you ultimately promoted same-sex marriage and everyone started to go towards same-sex marriage, what would happen to society? It would just simply cease to exist. Moreover, you’d have rampant increase in diseases. Already, you have rampant increase in diseases among same-sex activities, specifically men having sex with men. Same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships is destructive to individuals and it’s destructive to our very social fabric.”—Mat Staver, “VCY America,” December 2013
Or this
“We are facing the survival of western values, western civilization. ... One of the most significant threats to our freedom is in the area of sexual anarchy with the agenda of the homosexual movement, the so-called LGBT movement. It does several things, first of all it undermines family and the very first building block of our society, but secondly, it’s a zero sum game as well and it’s a direct assault on our religious freedom and freedom of speech.”—Mat Staver, October 2011, Values Voter Summit.
In March of 2015, Staver stated that he would personally advocate disobedience to any U.S. Supreme Court ruling that favored marriage equality, and that “collectively, we cannot accept that as the rule of law.”
Liberty Counsel has come under fire more recently for claiming that an image of 100,000 Peruvians gathered in payer was for Kin Davis, which was later debunked. Also recently they misrepresented a Kim Davis meeting with the Pope, which was later clarified by a special statement from the Vatican.
For a Man like Staver, who has likened “the homosexual lobby to terrorists, claiming that “it’s hard to negotiate with people who are irrational and who are inventing things that simply don’t exist” not to see the irony of his recent actions, in relation to the Kim Davis case, is astonishing to say the least.
He must be quite proud that his firm, Liberty Counsel, has finally made the top of the list right there beside other great bigot names such as Fred Waldron Phelps Sr. founded the Westboro Baptist Church.
Our hats are off today ,with a wag of the finger to Liberty Counsel, Who made the SPLC Hate map today.