Yesterday, ThinkProgress LGBT noted that a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) identifies 27 active anti-gay hate groups, up from 17 in 2010. Sadly, the 11 groups new to this list from last year richly deserved the dubious honor.
They are:
- United Families International (Gilbert, AZ): This group backed the sodomy laws ruled unconstitutional in the Lawrence v. Texas case and has argued “No one is ‘born that way.’ Policies that would normalize homosexuality by equating homosexual behavior with innate characteristics such as race or ethnicity should be opposed.”
- Save California (Sacramento, CA): The group is leading the charge to repeal California’s FAIR Education Act, hoping to stop teachers from “kidnapping the brains of kids” by teaching about the contributions of LGBT Americans. Save California’s head, Randy Thomasson, blamed a bullied and murdered gay teen for his own death.
- Sons of Thundr (Faith Baptist Church) (Luthersville, GA): The church’s website feautures a “sodomites can be saved” section which claims “ALL HOMOS ARE: SICK, BRAIN DAMAGED, PERVERTS!”
- You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide (Annandale, MN). Bradlee Dean, the group’s president and CEO, has said, “The gay ‘movement’ is part of a sexual revolution that has stripped sexuality of all moral significance for an entire generation. We cannot accept the physical prosecution of homosexuals and we cannot accept the proposal that homosexuality is either private or moral,” but notes he is opposed to actually executing LGBT citizens.
- Parents Action League (Champlin, MN): A small group of parents in the bullying-riddled Anoka-Hennepin School District want to require schools to teach that AIDS is a gay disease and to promote harmful and ineffective ex-gay therapy.
- Jewish Political Action Committee (Brooklyn, NY): This group claims that marriage equality in New York State has created a “surge” of child molestation and distributes signs that say “G-d sent AIDS to punish male gays.”
- Mission: America (Columbus, OH): Lead by Linda Harvey, who has been dubbed “the most homophobic woman in America,” this group has discouraged the hiring of gay and lesbian employees and claimed that “there is no proof” that gay, lesbian or bisexual or transgendered people even exist.
- Windsor Hills Baptist Church (Oklahoma City, OK): The church’s pastor, Tom Vineyard, argued against an employment non-discrimination proposal by making the bizarre claim that half of all murders in large cities are by gay people.
- True Light Pentecost Church (Spartanburg, SC): On the church’s blog, it warns that “The sub-human culture created by the anti-christ and magnified by the Sodomite/Lesbian movement,” has “brought end-time prophecy to a final state,” and encourages followers to “fight the great sodomite/lesbian army.”
- Tom Brown Ministries (El Paso, TX): Pastor and exorcist Tom Brown led the charge in El Paso to rescind an employment non-discrimination law he felt was “condoning immorality.” He also preaches that “homosexuality is actually an emotional, psychological disorder brought on early in childhood.”
- Public Advocate of the United States (Falls Church, VA): Run by Loudoun County, Virginia Supervisor Eugene Delguaido (R), this group is infamous for its over-the-top anti-gay fundraising letters, including comments like, “As homosexuals die off due to AIDS, the remaining AIDS carriers prey on children to replenish the ‘Homosexual Community.’”
The SPLC observed that the advances of the LGBT equality movement “seemed to set off a furious rage on the religious right, with renewed efforts to ban or repeal marriage equality and what seemed to be an intensification of anti-gay propaganda in certain quarters.” These hate groups clearly are among those quarters.
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